Hey friend,
The questions you submitted for this month’s Q&A revealed something I see constantly in my practice. The gap between understanding trauma intellectually and actually healing it while living in the real world.
Questions about how to reparent yourself while still needing others. About persistent anxiety nightmares that survive decades of therapy. About implementing healing strategies when the person who originally wounded you is still calling every week.
Your questions weren’t asking for surface-level coping strategies. They were asking something much more complex: How do I heal when the conditions that created my wounds are still present? How do I trust myself when I’ve spent years being everyone else’s rock?
These are the questions that keep ambitious women staring at the ceiling at 3 AM—because real healing doesn’t happen in a therapy bubble. It happens while you’re managing difficult family dynamics, learning to set boundaries that protect rather than punish, and trying to stay present during your child’s meltdown when your own nervous system is activated.
In this month’s Q&A, I address these questions directly. The messy, nuanced reality of healing while still living your actual life.
The complete Q&A goes deeper into specific frameworks for healing while still in contact with emotionally dysregulating family members—including practical steps for creating what I call nervous system boundaries. I also address why nightmares persist even after extensive therapy work, and what it actually looks like to trust yourself when you’ve been conditioned to be the overfunctioner in every relationship.
