Healing Trauma

10/21/2026

10/20/2026

Earlier this week we looked at how the body settles outdoors. A second gift unfolds more slowly. Away from the people and places that shaped your roles, you may notice a quieter version of yourself surfacing: less managed, more curious, less concerned with how you’re coming across. Standing beside something vast, like the ocean, a ridge, or a night full of stars, shrinks everyday worries to their actual size while making you feel part of something larger.

Jung believed modern people suffer from a particular loneliness. In Man and His Symbols, he wrote that we feel isolated in the cosmos because we’ve lost our emotional connection with the natural world, the felt sense that a river or a tree has something to say to us. Reclaiming even a little of that connection is part of finding your way back to yourself, which is also the heart of my new book. This week on my Substack, I’m writing more about what nature can teach us about ourselves. Link in bio. Where do you feel most like yourself outdoors?

10/19/2026

Pay attention the next time you step outside after a long day indoors. Many people feel something shift before they’ve had a single thought about it. The jaw unclenches. The belly softens. The eyes, which have been locked on screens and faces and to-do lists, start to wander toward the movement of branches or the light on water.

That shift is your nervous system at work. Natural settings offer what the body reads as signals of ease: open space, slow movement, rhythmic sound, nothing that demands a response. A mind caught in a worry loop often loosens there too. If you’ve noticed yourself craving a walk on hard days, or feeling restless after too many hours inside, your body may be telling you what it needs. It’s a request worth honoring, even in small doses. Five minutes under a street tree counts. So does an open window. Where outdoors do you feel yourself let go first?

10/09/2026

Earlier this week we looked at why company can feel like too much, and why that watchfulness made sense. The natural next question is where to begin. For a body that learned to stay on alert around people, an intimate heart-to-heart is a big ask. Gentler forms of togetherness offer an easier entry point: two people reading on the same couch, a walk where neither of you needs to fill the silence, an afternoon at the library among strangers absorbed in their own work. Many adults call this parallel play, a term borrowed from child development.

Your nervous system takes in other people through rhythm, sound, and proximity, well below words. Animals offer a version of this too. The weight of a cat on your lap or a dog breathing steadily beside you lets the body soften in ways that may feel easier than human closeness for now. These moments are small, and they accumulate.

My new book is about finding your way back to yourself, and part of that return is discovering that closeness with others gets easier as you feel more at home in your own body. More on that soon. For today: who or what helps you feel at ease without a word being said? Tell me in the comments.

10/07/2026

Co-regulation often gets described as if being near other people should automatically calm us. For many people the opposite happens. A warm dinner with friends leaves the jaw tight. A partner reaching for a hug brings a flicker of stiffness. A day with family requires a full day alone afterward. When that happens, it’s easy to conclude something in you is broken or cold.

Your body is being precise. In a well-known study, psychologist James Coan and colleagues found that holding a trusted person’s hand reduced the brain’s response to threat, while a stranger’s hand did much less. The body cares about who is beside it. If the early people in your life were hard to read, your system learned to stay alert in company, and that alertness was protective. It deserves respect, and it eases gradually as your body gathers experiences of people who stay steady.

Where does your body relax most easily: alone, with one person, or in a group? Every answer is useful information. Notice yours this week.

09/30/2026

Earlier this week we looked at how the body learns to settle through other people. The other half of that picture is just as true: you are part of someone else’s nervous system weather. Your partner, your children, your coworkers, and the friend who calls on a hard night all register your tone, your pace, and your breath, often before a word is exchanged.

This changes what self-care means. When you rest, slow down, or take a few minutes to come back into your body, you’re building your capacity to show up. With more room in your system, you can keep a difficult conversation open, sit with someone’s grief, and keep paying attention to a painful world. In Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Jung compared the meeting of two personalities to the contact of two chemical substances, in which any reaction transforms both. Every encounter carries something of you into it.

My new book is about finding your way back to yourself, and that return tends to reach the people you love, too. More on that soon. For today: who in your life benefits when you feel more at home in your body?

09/28/2026

Many people carry a quiet belief that a truly healthy person handles hard moments alone. So when the breathwork, the journaling, and the walk around the block barely touch the distress, but a friend’s voice on the phone does, it can feel like failure. Your body is telling a different story. It’s showing you how regulation first worked.

In the 1970s, developmental researcher Edward Tronick studied what happens when a mother’s face goes still and unresponsive during play. Within moments, infants worked hard to reconnect, and when that failed, they became visibly distressed. We come into the world tuned to other people’s faces and voices, and that tuning stays with us for life. Your system is always reading the room: the pace of someone’s speech, the ease in their shoulders, the warmth in their eyes. Self-soothing is a real and valuable skill. It grows out of countless earlier experiences of being soothed by someone else.

Whose presence helps your body soften? Notice them this week, or name them in the comments.

09/19/2026

Earlier this week we looked at the inner critic as a frightened protector. The natural next question is what to offer in its place. Many people hear “self-compassion” and picture something soft or indulgent. In practice it is steadier than that. It is the decision to stay on your own side when you are hurting, the same way you would stay beside a friend. Your body responds to it. Criticism tightens you. Warmth lets the breath drop and the shoulders come down.

Jung wrote that accepting ourselves fully is one of the hardest things we are ever asked to do. He pointed out that we readily offer kindness to others in need, and then asked what happens when we discover that the one most in need of our kindness is ourselves. That question sits close to the heart of my new book, which is about finding your way back to yourself. More on that soon. For today: where in your life could you speak to yourself the way you speak to someone you love?

09/18/2026

Notice what happens inside you after a small mistake. A forgotten email, a clumsy comment, a day when you got less done than you planned. For many people a familiar voice arrives within seconds: “What is wrong with you?” “You should know better by now.” It speaks so quickly and so often that it stops sounding like a voice at all. It sounds like a fact about who you are.

In my work I see how early this voice is formed. A child who senses that love depends on being good, quiet, helpful, or impressive learns to police herself before anyone else can. The critic is that old strategy, still on duty decades later, still trying to keep you safe from rejection. You can respect what it was trying to do and still question whether it should be in charge. The next time it speaks, try asking: whose tone is this, and what is it afraid of?

09/11/2026

lot of people conclude they’re failing at this work because nothing dramatic has happened. They expected an insight that reorganized everything and instead got weeks that felt more or less like the weeks before them. But reconnecting with yourself tends to be gradual and mostly unglamorous, and it’s easy to miss while it’s happening.

The change usually shows up as timing. You still say yes when you meant no, but you notice a day later instead of a month later. Then you notice on the drive home. Then you notice while the word is leaving your mouth. Eventually there’s a small pause before the automatic answer, and that pause is the whole thing. It’s also worth knowing that you’ll keep slipping. Everyone does. What shifts is that the return gets faster and you’re less punishing about needing it, and that combination does more for a person over a year than any single breakthrough would.

My new book about how that connection gets lost and how it can be rebuilt, in small and doable ways is coming hopefully by the end of the year. I’ll be sharing more as we get closer. Join my email list for updates. Link in bio.