Wounds 2 Wings Psychotherapy Services

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Wounds 2 Wings Psychotherapy Services Wounds 2 Wings Trauma Yoga and Psychotherapy Services

Nicole Brown Faulknor, founder of Wounds 2 Wings;
Registered Psychotherapist CRPO ( #007596), CAPT;
Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga Facilitator (TCTSY-F);
CEO of non-profit organization Wounds 2 Wings Trauma and Embodiment Association of Ontario (TEAO).

The Wound of Being UnseenSometimes the deepest childhood wound is not that we weren’t loved, but that no one was curious...
10/12/2026

The Wound of Being Unseen

Sometimes the deepest childhood wound is not that we weren’t loved, but that no one was curious enough to truly know us. We carry that invisible absence into adulthood through people-pleasing, overexplaining, emotional withdrawal, helplessness, and the exhausting need to earn the attention we once needed freely.

“The antidote is learning to become curious about ourselves without judgment, to recognize our survival patterns without shame, and to build relationships where we no longer have to perform to be known.” Healing begins when we stop abandoning ourselves in the hope that someone else will finally see us.

Because being seen is not the same as being known, and being needed is not the same as being loved.

10/11/2026

Sunday Self Reflection: The Next Opponent is….

You. 🫵🏾

What is emotional distance?

Thank you Self-Growth | Self-Respect | Mindset ⬇️

Sometimes you cannot completely avoid someone.

You may work together, live near each other, share responsibilities, or belong to the same social circle.

In these situations, detachment does not mean becoming rude or pretending the person does not exist. It means creating emotional boundaries while remaining capable of respectful contact. Healthy boundaries can protect your emotional energy without forcing complete disconnection.

You can speak without oversharing.
Be kind without reopening access.
Cooperate without becoming emotionally dependent.
Remain present without returning to the old dynamic.

You do not need physical distance from everyone. Sometimes you need emotional discipline around their presence.

Self-growth education only • Not therapy, crisis support, or personalized advice.

KnowYourWorth InnerStrength

Self Permission Nuggets: You are allowed to outgrow the version of yourself that kept you alive. ✅Sometimes we keep part...
10/10/2026

Self Permission Nuggets: You are allowed to outgrow the version of yourself that kept you alive. ✅

Sometimes we keep participating in what hurts us because it feels more familiar than being who we truly are.

When you’ve spent years surviving rejection, abandonment, criticism, neglect, or emotional pain, you may unknowingly build your identity around avoiding those experiences again.
You become the people-pleaser because being accepted once meant being safe.

You become the rescuer because being needed once felt like being loved.

You become the overachiever because your worth once depended on what you accomplished.

You stay silent because speaking up once came with consequences.

And sometimes, you remain in relationships or environments that hurt you because you’ve learned to confuse familiarity with belonging.

10/09/2026

Friday Love: Love this Tyler Glass 💙🙏🏾!

10/08/2026

30 DAYS UNTIL WE PAUSE. 🇨🇷 | SOLD OUT!

Here’s a question we don’t ask nearly enough:
Who takes care of the people who are always taking care of everyone else?

The caregivers. The healers. The leaders. The mothers. The women who hold everyone together, even when they are quietly running out of space to hold themselves.

Sometimes, we become so accustomed to being needed that we forget what it feels like to simply be received.

To arrive somewhere without having to lead.
Without having to fix.
Without having to be strong.
Without having to explain why we need rest.
What happens when the caregiver finally gets to arrive?

Not just physically, but emotionally, relationally, and within their own body.

This is the meaning behind The Collective Pause.
In 30 days, ten women will gather in Costa Rica, bringing ten different stories, ten nervous systems, and ten different reasons for saying YES to themselves.

And today, we celebrate that all 10 spaces are filled! SOLD OUT! 💙

This was never simply about travelling somewhere beautiful. It was about creating a space where the people who spend so much of their lives giving care can experience what it means to receive it.

Because our capacity to care for others should never require abandoning ourselves.
To the ten women preparing to arrive: You don’t have to earn this pause. You are worthy of receiving care, too.

The countdown begins. 🌴

Your pause is not a luxury. It is part of your healing.

10/07/2026

Aliveness. (We are heading to Costa Rica next month to explore this with 10 women TEAO Canada).

“they say, for trauma to heal, the safety of the present has to reach the pain of the past and joy arrives in the breath and in the complexity of life.”

Because trauma is not only the memory of what happened; it is also what the body learned it had to do to survive what happened.

When something overwhelming happens, the nervous system can carry forward an old message: I am still not safe. I still have to brace, run, disappear, please, control, or protect myself. Healing happens when the present begins offering the body enough repeated experiences of safety, choice, connection, boundaries, and agency that those old survival responses no longer have to work quite so hard. In that sense, the safety of now has to become believable enough to reach the pain of then.

And that helps explain the second part: joy arrives in the breath and in the complexity of life.

Trauma can narrow life toward survival—watching for danger, anticipating loss, getting through the next moment. As safety grows, our capacity grows too. We can breathe more fully, notice pleasure, play, beauty, love and possibility again.

But healing does not mean pain disappears before joy is allowed to enter. A regulated nervous system becomes increasingly capable of holding more than one truth at once:

I can grieve and still laugh. I can miss what I lost and love what I have. I can carry scars without living inside the wound. I can remember what happened without my body believing it is happening again.

That is why the breath is such a powerful metaphor and bodily experience. Each breath happens only now. We cannot take yesterday’s breath or tomorrow’s breath. The body receives this one.

So perhaps the deeper truth is:

Trauma healing isn’t asking the past to become less painful. It is allowing enough safety, relationship and aliveness in the present that the past no longer gets to decide what every present moment means. And somewhere inside that growing capacity, joy doesn’t replace grief, it learns how to sit beside it.

Gratitude Is More Than an Emotion. It’s Something the Body RecognizesPerhaps one of the least discussed aspects of grati...
10/06/2026

Gratitude Is More Than an Emotion. It’s Something the Body Recognizes

Perhaps one of the least discussed aspects of gratitude is this: gratitude requires receiving.

For people who have survived by doing, protecting, controlling, anticipating, rescuing, or never needing anyone, receiving can actually be difficult.

Biologically, gratitude appears to engage brain systems involved in reward, social connection, moral reasoning, and regulation of emotion. It can interrupt the brain’s natural tendency to prioritize threat and scarcity.

Our nervous systems are extraordinarily good at noticing what is wrong, unfinished, unsafe, or missing because those things have survival value. Gratitude does not erase that survival system; it gives the brain another piece of information: “Something is also here that is nourishing, supportive, beautiful, or safe enough to notice.”

And that distinction matters. Gratitude is not pretending everything is good. A grieving person can be grateful. A traumatized person can be grateful. Someone experiencing injustice can be grateful and still know that something must change. Healthy gratitude expands reality rather than denying it.

At its deepest level, gratitude isn’t “I should be happy because someone has it worse.” That is comparison, and sometimes shame.

Gratitude is:
“In the middle of everything that is true, I can still recognize what is holding me.”

That is why gratitude can belong equally to neuroscience, embodiment, spirituality, and ancient wisdom. It doesn’t require us to deny suffering. It reminds the human nervous system and perhaps the human spirit, that suffering is not the only thing present.

Hello Monday. How beautiful is this? 💙🙏🏾!Repost from AwakenΩne 👁 ( Ajit Mehrat )•One day, someone will love my daughter....
10/05/2026

Hello Monday. How beautiful is this? 💙🙏🏾!

Repost from AwakenΩne 👁 ( Ajit Mehrat )
•
One day, someone will love my daughter.

And as much as I hope they love her gently, honestly, and wholeheartedly, I know I cannot protect her from every disappointment that comes with giving another person your heart.

So my job isn’t to make sure nobody ever hurts her.

My job is to raise her so deeply rooted in her own worth that heartbreak never convinces her she is unworthy of love.

I want her to know the difference between someone choosing her and someone simply keeping her around.

I want her to recognize when effort becomes one sided, when communication becomes manipulation, and when love starts asking her to become smaller just to keep someone comfortable.

I want her to understand that walking away does not always mean she stopped loving someone. Sometimes it means she finally started loving herself too.

I hope she chooses someone who makes her feel safe enough to remain completely herself. Someone who celebrates her strength instead of competing with it. Someone who listens to her boundaries instead of testing them.

But more than anything, I hope she never believes she needs another person to complete her.

Because long before someone falls in love with her, I want her to have already fallen in love with the woman she has become.

And if her heart ever gets broken, I hope she remembers:

She can grieve.

She can cry.

She can miss them.

She can begin again.

But she never has to abandon herself just to keep someone else. ❤️

Sunday Self-Reflection: When Being Needed Feels Like Being Loved(If this is something that resonates for you) Self-Inqui...
10/04/2026

Sunday Self-Reflection: When Being Needed Feels Like Being Loved

(If this is something that resonates for you) Self-Inquiry:
Who am I when no one needs rescuing?

They say, sometimes rescuing other people isn’t only kindness. It can become a way of regulating our own pain.

If I learned early in life that being helpful, needed, easy, strong, responsible, or the one who fixes everything got me love, attention, safety, or belonging, my nervous system may have learned a powerful message:

“If you need me, you won’t leave me.”

So I help. I fix. I carry. I solve problems nobody asked me to solve. I feel responsible for other people’s emotions. I stay in relationships long after they hurt me because someone “needs” me. And for a moment, rescuing gives me relief: I matter. I have a purpose. I am valuable here.

That temporary relief is what can make the pattern feel addictive.

But there is an important difference between caring for someone and needing to rescue them. Caring says, “I can love you and stand beside you.” Rescuing says, “I need to save you so I can feel okay, needed, safe, or worthy.”

And underneath the rescuing may be a much younger question:

“Would you still love me if I stopped doing things for you?”

Healing can mean learning that we do not have to earn belonging through exhaustion. We can support people without carrying them. We can let people experience consequences, make choices, struggle, grow, and find their own strength.
Because being needed and being loved are not the same thing.

10/03/2026

Grab a Tea. ☕️ So much was learned in Oxford at the Transforming Trauma Conference last month. So Insightful 💙🙏🏾!

Reposted from

Feeling guarded around a critical parent or family member makes total sense when you’ve experienced a history of judgment or emotional tension. But the real toll of traumatic stress isn’t the momentary caution you feel while sitting in the room with them—it’s staying stuck in that high-arousal state long after you leave.

When your nervous system remains elevated for days, affecting your sleep, your mood, and your ability to be present with your own partner or kids, the dynamic becomes truly draining. Modern culture often tells us to cut off anyone who causes discomfort. However, highlights an alternative: if you possess the tools to regulate your system, grieve the lack of validation, and return to real safety afterward, you don’t always have to run from stressful dynamics.

Choosing to stay in relationship with complex people—while knowing how to soothe yourself on the back end—allows you to preserve your agency and build genuine emotional strength without letting their behavior run your life.

Address

9 Samuel Street
Kitchener, ON
N2H2M7

Opening Hours

Monday 7am - 10am
Friday 8am - 1pm
Sunday 7pm - 9pm

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