Courses & relational trauma education
My work centers on relational trauma recovery. These self-paced educational courses explore the relationships, family patterns and questions about worth that can follow us into adulthood. You don’t need an executive title or a life that looks put together to begin.
Inside Fixing the Foundations
In this excerpt, I use a house to explain what I mean by a psychological foundation. It’s a two-minute look at how I teach relational trauma recovery.
Explore Fixing the FoundationsThe video couldn’t play. You can try the player again or read the complete excerpt below.
In the video, Annie speaks to the camera from a table. The transcript contains the spoken content; no slides or diagrams are needed to follow the explanation.
To begin, I want you to imagine a house. From the street, it looks impressive. Two stories, maybe three. It's got good bones. It's well-maintained. Nice landscaping. The kind of house you’d drive past and think, “Oh, that’s a family that has it together.” But underneath the house, in the part no one sees,
that foundation has cracks. Most are very, very old from when the house was first poured decades ago, and maybe some are newer cracks from the settling of the house, so to speak. Some are from a leak that started years ago, and no one noticed. But still, the house is still standing. The house has been standing for years, if not decades.
But every time there's a storm, every time the ground shifts, the cracks widen a little. They get a little bigger. And the people who live inside the house, they feel it. The floors slope just slightly. Doors won't close the way they used to. They're all jammed up. And there's a draft nobody can seem to find. Something is off, but nothing has fallen down, yet.
That's relational trauma in an ordinary life. The house is your outer life, the career, the reputation, the relationships, the identity, the résumé. From the outside, it can look impressive. From the outside, people may even admire it. From the outside, no one would guess anything was wrong inside.
But the foundation is what you were given or not given in the first years of your life, in your family of origin, in your early attachment experiences. It's from the messages you got about who you were and what you were worth, and whether the world was safe or not safe.
Your starting point
If several parts of your life feel connected, start by reading about Fixing the Foundations. If one relationship or subject brought you here, browse the focused courses below. Each title opens that course’s own page with its contents and current availability.
The courses are separate from my individual practice. You don’t need to work with me in therapy or coaching, or be established in a career, to explore them.
They offer education, not individualized treatment. You can also begin with the free article library while you consider what kind of support you want.
10 courses · All subjects
Start with Fixing the FoundationsWatch a lesson excerpt first
You want to understand how several patterns connect, rather than focus on one relationship or one part of life.
The subject: Relational trauma and foundational patterns across adult life.
A broader starting point when questions about relationships, self-worth and your history seem connected.
You’re trying to make sense of a deeply manipulative relationship and the doubt it left behind.
The subject: Manipulative relationship patterns and their effects on trust and judgment.
A focused subject: manipulation and betrayal, rather than the full range of early relational patterns.
The relationship is difficult to describe because what others see and what you experience don’t match.
The subject: Covert narcissistic patterns and the confusion surrounding less visible harm.
The emphasis is on subtle, hard-to-name dynamics, rather than requiring an obvious or publicly recognizable pattern.
You’ve noticed a familiar pattern in the people you’re drawn to and the relationships you choose.
The subject: Recurring patterns in attraction, choice and romantic relationships.
The central question is how you choose partners, rather than understanding one particular harmful relationship.
You want to understand narcissistic dynamics in a parent or partner relationship and the effects they can leave.
The subject: Narcissistic patterns in family and partner relationships.
A focused look at those dynamics; Clarity After the Covert addresses their subtler, harder-to-explain presentation.
You’re trying to understand a relationship marked by emotional volatility and changing expectations.
The subject: Unstable relationship dynamics and their impact on adult life.
The subject is emotional instability within a relationship, not a diagnosis of someone in your life.
You love being capable, but it’s become difficult to feel worthwhile when you aren’t producing or taking care of something.
The subject: Overfunctioning, perfectionism and the pressure to earn your worth.
A closer look at effort and worth, rather than treating ambition itself as the problem.
A familiar role or direction no longer fits, and you’re trying to understand what comes next.
The subject: Identity and direction during a significant change in adult life.
The subject is a disrupted sense of direction, rather than choosing a partner or examining one family relationship.
You’re thinking about what you learned growing up and what you want to do differently as a parent.
The subject: The connection between your history and the parenting patterns you want to understand.
A parenting-specific starting point rather than a general course on adult relationship dynamics.
Questions about money seem to carry more than the numbers: shame, safety, family expectations or old roles.
The subject: Family messages, emotion and recurring patterns around money.
Psychological and relational education about money, not financial planning or investment advice.
These are self-paced educational programs, not therapy or personalized treatment. Each course page explains its current availability.
Before you join a waitlist
No. Courses offer general education and reflection, not diagnosis, clinical assessment or personalized treatment. If you need clinical care, seek an appropriate clinician.
Open the individual course page for current availability and the next step for that program. Exploring a course here doesn’t enroll you or add you to a mailing list.
Open the individual course page for current availability and the next step for that program. Exploring a course here doesn’t enroll you or add you to a mailing list.
No. You can begin with the free article library and return when you have a clearer sense of the subject you want to explore.
You don’t have to choose today
If you’d rather read before choosing a course, begin with a question from the library or a personal letter. There’s no purchase or subscription required to browse the articles.
Find an article Read the Sunday letters