Trauma and Healing

Trauma isn’t just something that happened in the past; it’s the body and mind’s learned pattern of survival in the present. When something overwhelms us, our nervous system adapts to keep us alive. The problem is that those adaptations can keep running long after the danger is gone.

Healing doesn’t mean erasing the past. It means learning to understand how it lives in the body and mind, and gently retraining those reactions. Together, we’ll work to bring awareness to how your system responds — physically, emotionally, and cognitively — and develop new ways to feel grounded and safe.

I use approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and mindfulness-based grounding to support trauma recovery. We focus on helping your body and mind relearn safety, agency, and meaning — not through force, but through understanding.

To help track your level of activation, I use what I call the Trigger Scale — a simple 0–10 scale that helps you describe how activated or overwhelmed you feel. It uses a bit of humor to make difficult emotions easier to talk about and understand.

Trigger Scale (0–10):

0 – Dead. I’m not concerned about how triggered the dead are, but if I’m going to work with them, I insist on prepayment.
1 – Barely conscious. Utterly relaxed; the farthest point from being triggered.
2 – Vacation-level relaxation. Deep calm — the level of the most relaxing vacation imaginable.
3 – Calm and present. Centered, grounded, and open.
4 – Everyday functional stress. Healthy daily stress that supports engagement and productivity without anxiety — the ideal target level for living your life.
5 – Noticeable tension. You’re managing, but stress is starting to take a toll.
6 – Mildly reactive stress. Stress begins to push behavior (for example, impulsive eating or withdrawal).
7 – High reactivity. Emotional control is slipping; you may say or do things you later regret.
8 – Edge of control. Stress drives potentially long-term negative consequences (for example, telling off a boss or ending a relationship impulsively).
9 – Crisis approaching. Thoughts and emotions feel overwhelming and unsafe.
10 – Crisis level. The person is about to seriously harm themselves or someone else; emergency support is needed.

The goal is’t to avoid triggers entirely but to learn how to live mostly around a 4 — where healthy stress supports engagement and growth without tipping into anxiety. Awareness becomes your compass for returning to balance.

Over time, you’ll learn how to notice when you’re drifting away from safety and how to return to steadiness. Healing is about reclaiming your ability to live in the present — steady, self-aware, and free to choose your responses instead of being driven by old pain.