Articles on Trauma and Relationships
How We Let Anger Sabotage Our Intimate Relationships
Anger is a strategy, not just an emotion. Learn why angry complaint pushes your partner away and what to do instead, from a trauma and relationship specialist.
What’s Wrong with Being Right
Being right feels like safety. But as a relational strategy, it backfires spectacularly. Learn where the need to be right comes from and how to choose connection instead.
Trauma and Responsibility (when Healing CPTSD)
What happened to you isn't your fault, but healing is your responsibility. Learn how to stop letting unresolved trauma damage the relationships you care about most.
You Are Not Food: Breaking Free from Non-Reciprocal Relationships
Growing up with entitled caregivers trained you to give without receiving. Learn why one-sided relationships keep repeating and how to stop being someone else's supply.
Perfect is the Enemy of Safe
Perfectionism isn't ambition. It's a survival strategy from childhood that destroys your relationships. Learn where it comes from and how to keep your standards without the suffering.
False Empowerment and Trauma Healing: 5 Patterns to Watch Out For
What looks like empowerment is often grandiosity in disguise. Learn five patterns that masquerade as healing but actually push people away, and what real empowerment looks like.
Warning Signs of Antagonistic and Entitled (aka "Narcissistic") Relationships
Dismissive, invalidating, manipulating, raging. Learn the 6 warning signs of entitled relationships, why people with trauma histories are especially vulnerable, and what to do about it.
Knowing about DARVO Prevents Emotional Abuse
Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim and Offender. DARVO is the pattern emotional abuse follows. Learn it, and you'll never be confused by manipulation again.
Red Flags of Therapist Abuse (and Coaching Abuse)
When things go wrong in therapy, we blame ourselves. But our healing space should be the safest place we have. Learn 10 red flags that your practitioner isn't safe.