First, I need to warn you that the following contains mention of sexual traumas I have experienced. If you have had similar experiences and it would be too much to read about these events, I encourage you to skip this blog; if you are interested in learning about C-PTSD without being exposed to what I am (very vulnerably) sharing, please check out my other post: What is C-PTSD and How Do We Treat It? If you are interested in a personal account of healing such experiences, however, I invite you to read on.
For a long time, I believed that survival was the best I could hope for.
My trauma didn’t come from one single event—it came in layers, over time, woven through my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. As a young child, I was sexually abused by a non-family caregiver. I was unable to tell anyone about “my shameful secret” (I put that in “quotes” as I now know that shame was not mine to hold) for many, many years. In elementary school, I was bullied mercilessly, learning early how unsafe it could feel to exist visibly in the world. When I was fourteen, my father died and my world shut down; this loss changed my family irrevocably causing me to eventually lose my mom to addiction as well. At sixteen, I was raped while on vacation—an experience that shattered whatever sense of safety I had managed to rebuild.
As an adult, I entered two relationships with abusive men—both of whom initially held the promise of love and safety but ended up shattering my sense of self. By then, trauma felt familiar. My nervous system knew the terrain of fear, hypervigilance, shame, and self-blame far better than it knew safety or rest.
This is what complex trauma often looks like—not one isolated incident, but repeated violations of safety and connection, especially during formative years. And for me, the result was Complex PTSD.
For much of my life, I lived with chronic suicidal ideation. Not always active. Not always loud. But persistent—an ongoing undercurrent of this is too much or I don’t want to be here anymore. I was high-functioning, capable, and outwardly “successful,” yet internally exhausted by the effort it took just to stay alive.
I tried many things. Talk therapy helped me understand why I felt the way I did. Insight gave me language, context, and meaning—but it didn’t resolve what my body was still holding. Trauma doesn’t live only in memory. It lives in the nervous system.
As a young therapist I somehow attracted countless traumatized clients seeking supportive talk therapy. I offered presence and attunement and the role was such an honor. At times, however, a client would describe situations similar to what I had experienced, that I had yet to fully process, and I would be thrown into internal dysregulaton—in one instance a full-fledged flashback in session ensued. I knew I needed help but was not making much progress with my (wonderful) therapist I had seen for about 10 years at that point. Everything changed when a colleague gently recommended Brainspotting.
When the Body Is Finally Included in the Healing
Brainspotting was different from anything I had tried before. It didn’t ask me to explain, analyze, or relive my trauma in words. Instead, it worked with how trauma is stored—beneath conscious thought, in the brain and body.
For the first time, healing didn’t feel like forcing myself to push through pain. It felt like listening—carefully and respectfully—to what my system had been trying to communicate all along.
Through Brainspotting, my body began to release what it had been holding for decades. Memories softened. Triggers lost their sharp edges. The constant internal alarm slowly quieted. And something I had never truly experienced before began to emerge: a sense of internal safety.
Over time, the chronic suicidal ideation that had followed me for most of my life faded. Not because I learned to “think more positively,” but because my nervous system no longer felt trapped in perpetual threat. I wasn’t just surviving anymore—I was healing.
Why Complex Trauma Requires a Different Kind of Care
Complex PTSD isn’t about weakness or pathology. It’s about adaptation. When trauma happens repeatedly—especially in childhood—the brain learns to stay alert, guarded, and prepared for danger. These responses once kept us alive. But over time, they can make it difficult to feel safe in relationships, in our bodies, or even in our own minds.
For people with complex trauma, healing often can’t happen through insight alone. We need approaches that work bottom-up, that honor the intelligence of the nervous system, and that move at a pace that feels safe rather than overwhelming.
This is why I now specialize in trauma treatment using Brainspotting, EMDR, and parts-based approaches such as Internal Family Systems. These modalities don’t erase the past—but they help loosen its grip on the present.
From Survival to Possibility
I share this not because my story is unique—but precisely because it’s not.
So many people living with complex trauma walk through the world believing they are broken, too damaged, or beyond help. I once believed that too. And I am here—both as a clinician and as a human—to say this clearly:
Healing is possible. Even after everything.
Your nervous system is not defective—it is doing exactly what it learned to do to protect you. With the right support, it can learn something new. Relief is not a fantasy. Safety is not reserved for other people. And you do not have to carry this alone.
If you live with Complex PTSD, chronic suicidal thoughts, or the quiet exhaustion of long-term trauma, there is another way forward—one that doesn’t require forcing, reliving, or explaining everything that happened to you.
Sometimes healing begins not with more effort, but with finally being met in the places words could never reach.