Trauma Aware America

09/15/2026

Much of “finding care” is actually an enormous amount of labor that falls on the person who is already struggling. Researching providers, explaining your history, advocating for yourself, preparing for appointments, and trying to make sense of what happened afterward all require time and energy.

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology perspective, care happens through relationships, not just through a service being provided. When the system requires people to carry the burden of coordinating, educating, and protecting themselves, it adds another layer of strain instead of creating the conditions where healing and support can happen. The amount of work involved is real and often invisible.

09/14/2026

Those are great books! I read them both when my kids were little, applied what I learned to communicating with my kids and others. It works on husbands, too. As long as they aren't total buttheads.

This is one of those books I want to hand to every parent and teacher and say, “Read this before your next hard conversation with a kid.” 📚

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk is packed with practical ways to handle frustration, big feelings, boundaries, cooperation, praise, conflict, and discipline without turning every difficult moment into a power struggle.

What I love most is that it isn’t about being permissive. It’s about communicating in a way that protects the relationship while still holding the boundary.

If you spend any amount of time raising, teaching, coaching, or supporting kids, this one deserves a spot on your shelf.

I linked it in my Amazon storefront and in the comments!

❤️

09/14/2026

In a therapeutic relationship, the therapist is the one responsible for holding the frame, maintaining safety, and being attuned, emotionally and structurally. That includes being clear, consistent, and conscious about boundaries, power dynamics, and the impact of their own presence and responses.

If a therapist’s behavior mirrors early relational injuries—even unintentionally—the client’s system can respond with a deep attachment, because that bond feels necessary. It’s not about fault. It’s about the lived, felt reality of needing someone to be there and the pain of that being mixed with fear, confusion, or uneven ground.

It can hurt deeply when that dynamic isn’t acknowledged in the room, when it’s left unnamed, or worse, subtly blamed on the client’s way of relating. But from an IPNB perspective, that’s a profound misunderstanding of what’s happening in the relational field.

From an Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) perspective, the therapist’s role is to co-create a relational field that supports regulation, reflection, and integration. If something starts to go off—if there’s confusion, dependence, idealization, fear of rupture—it’s the therapist’s job to notice that and make space to explore it. Not to avoid it. Not to blame the client. Not to lean into being “needed.”

When a therapist doesn’t take responsibility for that field, and a trauma bond forms, it’s a rupture of care. It’s a failure to steward the relationship with the awareness and attunement that’s required when someone brings their most vulnerable, tender nervous system into the room.

Tragically, unnecessarily, this is a frequent problem trauma survivors face in the mental illness industry. It ain't about health and it ain't about care.

09/14/2026

And hardly anybody wants to talk about how su***de prevention begins with housing stability, income security, access to appropriate care and healthful foods, and the absence of oppression, domination, extraction, and abuse. Because that would require a cultural change.

09/14/2026

Being Here Now: Well-Being As Presence and Embodiment

Our capacity to be present and embodied is a measure of our well-being, though it naturally fluctuates.

Presence means being able to stay sufficiently engaged with what is actually happening now, rather than primarily perceiving and responding through the lens of past experiences or continually anticipating what might happen next.

Embodiment means being able to remain connected with what is happening in the body as it is happening, rather than having to override, suppress, or disconnect from bodily experience.

Present embodiment does not mean always feeling calm or comfortable, but to accurately perceive what is happening now, distinguish it from what happened then or what might happen later, and respond to the circumstances that exist rather than those we fear. 😱

Our ability to be present and embodied is relational rather than the product of solo effort. When we have relationships and environments that provide sufficient safety, responsiveness, agency, rest, and resources, we gain more capacity for being present with ourselves, other people, and the world. 🌏

Human beings naturally move in and out of different states, and capacities rise and fall accordingly. The goal is to have enough flexibility to return to presence and embodiment when circumstances allow.

That is more useful, scientific, and humane than measuring well-being by symptom counts, productivity, compliance, or how well someone can perform calm.

👉 For my latest and deepest work, subscribe to the Trauma Aware America blog. You will also find over 400 ad-free posts about trauma and recovery from an IPNB perspective, as well as a new forum where you can ask questions and join discussions where rage baiters and click farms cannot interfere.

✅ Subscribe: www .TraumaAwareAmerica .org (you'll need to remove the spaces before each of the dots.)

09/14/2026

After 15 days Facebook lifted its link restriction on my account. I just posted two external links and they are both live! There was no extortionist pop-up from Meta One. Of course I'm very pleased! And I'm also the wiser. I will enjoy freedom to post links again but I will also remember that foremost any of these platforms can do what they want and there's really nothing we can do about it.

Back in the YahooGroups days, around 2005 or 2006, Yahoo shut down my entire account on a bogus Terms of Service (TOS) complaint from a national organization that didn't like my truth telling.

I watched my two statewide discussion lists of 1,500 members, as well as smaller groups for local activities. They all disappeared!

I discussed this with a lawyer I happened to know. He looked at the terms of service and noted it said something like, "We retain the right to terminate any account that appears to violate the terms of service." The operative word was "appears." If someone filed a complaint it appeared that I had violated the TOs. There was no review, question, nothing. Just shut me down.

Facebook could do the same at any time for any reason. So I'm going to go back to the days of websites and mailing lists for my core work and use social media as outposts that are helpful but not vital.

My newer and more in-depth work will appear on the blog first and maybe only. So you might like to subscribe. Like the bulk of my work, there is no cost.

Just go to
www.TraumaAwareAmerica.org

And enter your email address in the "subscribe" box. I don't take advertising money, so you don't have to worry about spam.

You will receive an email for each blog post and an occasional update. I plan to eventually develop some kind of newsletter, perhaps each one with a theme, to make it easy for you to find the information you need about the topics that are important to you.

And if you leave a comment under the blog post you read, I will definitely see it, unlike here on Facebook where the overwhelming activity can make me miss things. You're welcome to ask questions and make requests. I want what I build to meet the needs of the people who turn to it for support.

This is how I built my prior online social networks. It was fabulous to see people caring for each other online and through in-person group events. Friendships grew. And when the bad players made the bogus TOS complaint, there was a whole community that rallied to recreate what we had before those bone-headed carpet bagging weasels destroyed it.

That's part of how I learned to not make assumptions about what people seek and need in a community space. Instead, I try to listen, understand, and support the creation of what supports individual and collective well-being.

I'm not leaving Facebook yet, but how I'm involved with it will continue to shift toward something far better than what its algorithms could ever offer. I hope to see you there!

09/14/2026

Happy on the outside, Dying on the inside. Here are 3 simple strategies to prevent the next "happy" doctor su***de. Closing keynote @ Psych Congress 2019.

09/14/2026

There is something deeply backwards about the way Facebook is treating small creators right now.

The accounts flooding your feed with clickbait, exaggerated science, engagement bait, and misleading claims are competing very successfully for your attention. Meanwhile, creators who spend hours researching, writing, teaching, and creating original work can find their content buried in that noise.

And Meta’s One program adds another problem. If I want to share more than two external links a month, including links in comments, I can be charged $150 to $500 a month. Those links are often how I direct people to my classes and books, which help support the work I give away here for free.

So when you share one of my posts, you are doing something that matters. You are helping good information travel farther in an environment that increasingly rewards sensationalism, and you are helping me continue producing this work without putting all of it behind a paywall.

Especially share the posts that link to my classes and books. Those purchases help subsidize everything I continue to give away here.

Thank you for your support! ❣️