Trauma-Related Childhood Abuse — Keep in mind that May is Mental Health Awareness Month a time to examine oneself and learn all you can about mental health and how it affects everyone. Stress. What human beings living in this wild and crazy world today don’t experience it. Yet, people who live with complex post-traumatic…

A Harmful Combination — Everyone experiences stress at one point or another in their lives. Perhaps you face a new boss at work or a medical problem of your own, or a family member. Countless incidents cause stress. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) deals primarily with trauma experienced in early childhood. CPTSD leaves those…

How do you control it? — Dissociation is a normal part of the human experience. Road hypnosis, where you travel distances without remembering doing it, and hyper-focusing on a movie in a theater are only two examples. One of the most well-known characteristics of dissociative identity disorder (DID) is dissociation. The things people living with DID…

A Subject We Must Talk About — There is possibly no topic more controversial or taboo than speaking about incest. Culturally, there are strong emotional and moral limits to incest, and many adverse effects are associated with it. This article will not describe the acts involved in incest except to acknowledge they happen. Instead, we will focus…

Clearing up some misconceptions and answering questions — Trauma is all around us, with most of it being dealt with just fine by the person having experienced it. However, some trauma is not so easy to shake, and it can mean life-altering changes that affect people all their lives if there is no intervention. Practitioners of both mental…

Many people are ill-informed or know nothing about mental health disorders, including complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) and how it affects those around them. There are hundreds if not thousands of mental health challenges, and unfortunately, lots of stigmata surround them. This article will explore trauma and how the public…

Life-saving people who change lives — In the last twenty years, a new profession has taken root, one that can ease some of the tremendous workloads of mental health professionals. I’m talking about peer support specialists and the wonderful work they are doing in many settings around the United States. What are peer support specialists? What…

Overcoming and Living Well — Rejection often refers to the feelings of grief, sadness, or shame that someone feels when others do not accept them, including parents or others in their lives. Sometimes children feel rejected by their peers and suffer tremendously from anxiety and self-loathing. As a result, children who experience rejection trauma have…

We were not meant to be alone — Humans are social animals; we depend on socialization to keep us in touch with ourselves and others. In today’s world, we have become more connected via technology, but we have lost the ability to have a deep conversation and really connect with someone else. Childhood trauma causes adults to sometimes…