The Complex Trauma Podcast

Why do we keep reliving the same painful patterns, even when we can see them coming? In this episode, psychotherapist and complex trauma expert Dr. Gillian O’Shea Brown joins me to explore how Greek myths can help us make sense of complex trauma, CPTSD, and the relational wounds we carry from childhood. Gillian is SUCH a good storyteller, and she walks us through four myths that might feel a little too familiar. In this episode, we talk about Why stories can reach us in ways facts and diagnos...

Why can you feel lonely and then want everyone to leave you alone, or set a boundary and immediately want to take it back? Today, I explore why conflicting parts and contradictory responses can feel especially intense after complex trauma, drawing from parts work, attachment research, fear learning, and Somatic Experiencing. You’ll hear why missing someone doesn’t mean the relationship was safe, why guilt doesn’t prove a boundary was wrong, and how the body can move toward something while als...

What happens when you grow up learning that someone else’s needs, emotions, or version of reality matter more than your own? In this episode, I’m joined by Amy Marlow-MaCoy, MEd, LPC, to talk about narcissistic abuse and its relationship to complex trauma. We unpack narcissistic family systems, gaslighting and DARVO, the roles children can take on in these families, and why survivors may struggle with self-trust, perfectionism, overfunctioning, guilt, and boundaries long after childhood. We a...

Emotional flashbacks are one of the most common and most misunderstood experiences in complex trauma. Unlike visual flashbacks, they don't come with images or a clear memory. They arrive as intense feelings, shame, fear, loneliness, helplessness, often with no story attached and no warning. In this episode, Sarah breaks down what emotional flashbacks actually are. You'll learn why insight alone doesn't change the nervous system's predictions, what's happening in your body when each survival p...

Many complex trauma survivors struggle to trust their memories, emotions, perceptions, and reactions. In this episode, we're exploring why being disbelieved can feel so painful, how emotional neglect and attachment wounds can teach us to question ourselves, and why trauma often leaves us with fragments of memory instead of a clear narrative. We discuss: • Why not being believed can feel abandoning • How self-doubt becomes a survival strategy • Trauma memory and fragmen...

Sleep is one of the most common struggles in the CPTSD community, and one of the least understood. If you've tried the routines, the supplements, the magnesium, the blue light glasses, and you're still lying awake at midnight or waking up at 3am feeling like something is wrong, this episode is for you. Today I break down why sleep is uniquely hard when you have complex trauma, what's actually happening in your nervous system at night, and what might actually help. In this episode: Why s...

You've done the work. You've been in therapy, read the books, and you can name what happened to you. So why doesn't it feel like enough? That gap between understanding your story and actually feeling different in your body has a reason. And it's not because you haven't tried hard enough. It's because childhood emotional neglect creates a very specific kind of wound that requires a very specific kind of repair. In this episode we're going past the recognition and getting into what that repair ...

If you've spent your life being told you're "too nice," "a people-pleaser," or that you just need to "set better boundaries," this episode is for you. Fawning is the fourth trauma response, and for most folks with complex PTSD, it's been... a thing... for decades. In this episode, Sarah unpacks what fawning actually is (hint: it's not a personality flaw), how it gets built in childhood, what it can feel like in the body, and three small experiments to begin the work of coming home...