Winter might be the time for holiday caroling, but quite different sounds emerge from my body at this time of year. As the ice and snow bombard western Canada, an ordinary car ride with my spouse becomes an exercise in terror. The moment I find myself freezing in the passenger seat any unprocessed or semi-processed trauma comes zooming out of my nervous system like an army of flying monkeys. While I cannot purge trauma from my life experience, I can name it, recognize it, ove

Recovering from trauma, I use hatred not as a vehicle for hurting others, but as a vehicle for changing myself, for changing the world. Eventually, hatred will be displaced by joy and curiosity.

I keep living into the same answer. It is the same answer because it is the same question. I give people millions of chances. I don’t start from cynicism. I make allowances for mistakes, fatigue, and frailty. And still I am disappointed. I am hurt, ignored, mistreated, or misunderstood. Time after time, I reach the same conclusion of midnight desperation: No More.

For someone who suffers from relational trauma and medical trauma, having to rely on doctors, surgeons, nurses, and healthcare administrators I don’t trust is a subtle but exquisite form of torture.

Having long been gaslighted by authority figures, I tend to gaslight myself, but I am done. Believing myself is healing, is health.

I didn’t have a PTSD episode while awaiting my colonoscopy to annoy my gastroenterologist, but annoyed he was. He is a busy, important...

What does trauma look like? Appearances can be deceiving, as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common and can happen to anyone.

A survivor of cancer and childhood abuse learns she is not entirely free of her troubled past

Recent revelations about author Alice Munro cause this writer to reflect on her own childhood

Trauma prepares one for trauma. I have a deep and developed knowledge of suffering. I know what it is and how I want to handle it. I know...

While Gabor Mate in his new book, The Myth of Normal (https://drgabormate.com/), explicitly forgives parents who inflict their trauma on...

I shall close the long and gruesome history of gaslighting in my life with the following fact: my psychiatrist of almost 20 years lost...