You carry the invisible weight of relational trauma—early relational wounds that quietly disrupt your sense of safety and connection, making resilience feel both essential and elusive as you face the unknown of a new year. Resilience is not about avoiding pain or being unshakable; it is your nervous system’s capacity to recover and return to balance after stress, allowing you to move through challenges without becoming permanently destabilized or overwhelmed.
Relational trauma is the emotional or psychological injury caused by harmful or neglectful relationships, usually with people who were supposed to keep you safe—parents, partners, close family, or friends. It is not a vague term for just any difficult relationship or a sign that you’re weak or broken. Instead, it names specific wounds that shape how safe you feel in connection and how your nervous system responds to stress or intimacy. This matters to you because if you carry relational trauma, your nervous system is more easily overwhelmed, which makes resilience both more necessary and more complicated. Understanding this helps you recognize why bouncing back feels harder and why resilience is about patience and care, not quick fixes or self-judgment.
You carry the invisible weight of relational trauma—early relational wounds that quietly disrupt your sense of safety and connection, making resilience feel both essential and elusive as you face the unknown of a new year.
Resilience is not about avoiding pain or being unshakable; it is your nervous system’s capacity to recover and return to balance after stress, allowing you to move through challenges without becoming permanently destabilized or overwhelmed.
Your healing begins when you recognize that resilience is less about willpower and more about honoring your nervous system’s innate ability to regulate, giving you the internal fortitude to navigate uncertainty with both strength and compassion.
If you celebrate, today is Christmas so I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas.
SUMMARY
Resilience — not resolution — is the most valuable thing you can carry into a new year. This post offers curated quotes to strengthen your internal fortitude when life doesn’t go according to plan. For driven women with relational trauma backgrounds, building resilience is less about willpower and more about knowing your nervous system has what it takes. Read on for a collection of reminders that you are more capable than you know.
If you don’t, or if you celebrate any other winter holiday – Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa – I hope the weeks and days have been what you have wanted them to be.
What does it mean to be in a liminal period at the end of the year?
DEFINITION RESILIENCE
Resilience is the capacity to withstand, adapt to, and recover from adversity, not by avoiding pain but by developing the internal and relational resources to metabolize it. True resilience is not toughness or stoicism; it is the ability to feel fully, grieve honestly, seek support, and continue growing in the aftermath of difficulty.
A collective pause and slowing down. A time where our inboxes are lighter and maybe our souls and emotional bodies feel a bit more cozy.
Resilience
In the context of relational trauma recovery, resilience is the nervous system’s capacity to return to a regulated, functional state after stress, disruption, or loss — not the absence of being affected by hard things, but the ability to move through them without becoming permanently destabilized.
It’s a time where, consciously and unconsciously, many of us reflect on the last year, taking stock, inventorying our gains and losses, lessons learned and mistakes made.
It’s a time, too, where, for many of us, we dream and hope and set intentions for what the next year – 2023 – might hold.
None of us have crystal balls. None of us know what 2023 will hold (remember New Year’s Eve 2019 into 2020?). So I no longer wish for myself or anyone else anything other than resilience to face what may come to pass.
How do you build the internal fortitude and resilience to handle whatever the new year brings?
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What’s driving your relational patterns?
DEFINITION
RELATIONAL TRAUMA
Relational trauma, as described by Bessel van der Kolk, MD, psychiatrist and trauma researcher, author of The Body Keeps the Score, refers to psychological injury sustained within the context of significant interpersonal relationships — particularly those with caregivers during childhood. It disrupts the development of secure attachment, emotional regulation, and a coherent sense of self.
In plain terms: Relational trauma is what happens when the people who were supposed to make you feel safe instead made you feel anxious, invisible, or on edge. It shapes the way you connect — or struggle to connect — with the people you love most as an adult.
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As a small gift to you, to strengthen your own resilience as we move forward into the next year, I want to leave you with this emotional nourishment: 99 of my all-time favorite quotes on resilience.
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May even just one line speak to you and make you feel a tiny bit stronger and more capable after reading the post.
I’m wishing you a wonderful 2023. And above all else, I’m wishing you resilience for whatever life brings despite our plans, intentions, and goal setting.
Signs You May Be Carrying Relational Trauma
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Take this 5-minute, 25-question quiz to find out — and learn what to do next if you do.
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Building Resilience Through Year-End Therapy Work
The liminal week between Christmas and New Year offers a unique therapeutic opportunity—when the world slows down, your psyche naturally opens to deeper reflection that busy daily life typically prevents. In therapy during this period, you’re not just reviewing the year’s events but examining how your nervous system navigated each challenge, noticing which old patterns activated under stress and which new capacities emerged.
For trauma survivors, this annual inventory can feel particularly complex: celebrating growth while grieving lost time, acknowledging resilience while feeling exhausted from constant vigilance, hoping for change while fearing disappointment. Your therapist helps you hold these paradoxes, understanding that resilience tools in our self-care tool chest aren’t just coping mechanisms but fundamental rebuilding of your capacity to withstand life’s uncertainties.
Rather than setting rigid resolutions that your trauma brain might weaponize into another source of shame, trauma-informed therapy during this transition focuses on building flexible resilience—the kind that bends without breaking when life inevitably surprises you.
Together, you explore what genuine resilience means for someone with your specific history: perhaps it’s learning to ask for help before drowning, recognizing triggers before they consume you, learning how to manage stress, or simply believing you deserve the good things that might come. Your therapist helps you distinguish between the brittle strength of hypervigilance (which exhausts you) and authentic resilience (which sustains you), teaching your nervous system the difference between productive reflection and rumination.
Most importantly, therapy during this threshold time helps you metabolize the year’s accumulated experiences—both triumphs and losses—so you enter the new year with genuine integration rather than just exhaustion. Through processing what 2022 brought, you’re not just creating space for 2023; you’re literally rewiring your capacity to meet uncertainty with grounded presence rather than familiar panic.
Because true resilience isn’t about becoming invulnerable to life’s challenges but developing an unshakeable trust in your ability to meet whatever comes, drawing on both your hard-won survival skills and the new neural pathways of healing you’re courageously building, one session at a time.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology.van der Kolk, B. A. (
). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.Siegel, D. J. (
). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are. Guilford Press.Doidge, N. (
). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. Viking.Shonkoff, J. P., &#
; Garner, A. S. (
). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics.Fredrickson, B. L. (
). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist.Herman, J. L. (
Both/And: Holding the Complexity of Your Experience
In my work with clients, I find that the most important breakthroughs happen not when someone chooses one truth over another, but when they learn to hold two seemingly contradictory truths at the same time.
You can be grateful for what you have and grieve what you didn’t get. You can love someone and acknowledge the harm they caused. You can be strong and still need help. These aren’t contradictions — they’re the texture of a fully lived life.
The driven, ambitious women I work with often struggle with this because they’ve been trained to solve problems, not sit with paradox. But healing isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a process to inhabit. And the both/and is always where the deepest growth lives.
The Systemic Lens: Seeing Beyond the Individual
When we locate suffering exclusively in the individual — “What’s wrong with me?” — we miss the larger forces at work. Culture, family systems, economic structures, and intergenerational patterns all shape the terrain on which your personal struggle plays out.
This matters because the driven women I work with almost universally blame themselves for pain that was never theirs alone to carry. The anxiety, the perfectionism, the chronic self-doubt — these aren’t character flaws. They’re adaptive responses to systems that asked too much of you while offering too little safety, attunement, and genuine support.
Healing begins when you stop asking “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking “What happened to me — and what systems made it possible?”
I’m a driven woman, but I often feel overwhelmed by new beginnings and the pressure to be resilient. How can I genuinely embrace the new year without burning out?
It’s common for driven, ambitious women to feel this pressure. True resilience isn’t about never feeling overwhelmed, but about developing healthy coping mechanisms and self-compassion. Focus on sustainable practices, like setting realistic boundaries and prioritizing rest, rather than striving for an unattainable ideal of strength.
Why do I struggle to maintain my resilience when facing setbacks, even after all the work I’ve done?
This often stems from a disconnect between external achievements and internal emotional processing, possibly linked to past relational trauma or emotional neglect. Your success might be a coping mechanism, but it doesn’t always build emotional resilience. Learning to acknowledge and process difficult emotions, rather than pushing through them, is key to developing deeper, more sustainable inner strength.
How can I build resilience in my relationships when I’ve experienced attachment wounds and fear vulnerability?
Building relational resilience involves gradually practicing secure attachment behaviors and healthy communication. Start by identifying your attachment patterns and understanding how they impact your interactions. Then, with trusted individuals, take small, brave steps towards vulnerability, allowing yourself to experience connection and repair, which strengthens your capacity to bounce back from relational challenges.
Is it normal to feel anxious about the future, even when I’m trying to be resilient and positive about the new year?
Absolutely, it’s very normal. Resilience doesn’t mean the absence of anxiety or fear, but rather the ability to navigate these feelings effectively. Acknowledge your anxieties without judgment, and then gently redirect your focus to what you can control. Practicing mindfulness and self-soothing techniques can help you stay grounded amidst uncertainty.
What does it truly mean to ‘enter the new year with resilience’ when I’m still healing from past emotional neglect?
Entering the new year with resilience while healing means embracing your journey with self-compassion and realistic expectations. It’s about recognizing your progress, even small steps, and committing to continued healing, rather than expecting a sudden transformation. Resilience in this context is the courage to keep showing up for yourself, nurturing your inner world, and building a supportive environment as you move forward.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver, poet, from “The Summer Day”
Further Reading on Relational Trauma
Explore Annie’s clinical writing on relational trauma recovery.
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As a licensed psychotherapist (LMFT #95719), trauma-informed executive coach, and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, she guides ambitious women — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs — in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
After 2020 showed us how quickly plans can unravel, resilience becomes more valuable than rigid goal-setting. True resilience means developing the internal resources to navigate whatever comes—pandemics, losses, unexpected changes—while maintaining your sense of self and capacity for growth, rather than tying your worth to achieving specific outcomes.
This liminal period creates a natural pause in our usual routines, allowing our nervous systems to shift from constant doing to simply being. It's when many people unconsciously process the year's accumulated stress and grief while simultaneously opening to possibility—a unique psychological state that supports both integration and intention-setting.
Holidays often intensify trauma responses because they're inherently about family, tradition, and belonging—precisely what was complicated in traumatic childhoods. You might feel simultaneously triggered by family dynamics and grieving the warm holiday experiences you never had, making this season particularly complex for healing.
Toxic resilience demands you "stay strong" while bypassing genuine emotions. True resilience means feeling your feelings fully while maintaining faith in your capacity to move through difficulty. It's not about being unaffected by hardship but developing the tools to metabolize pain without being consumed by it.
Quotes work like emotional anchors—brief, memorable phrases that can pull us back to center during overwhelming moments. When your prefrontal cortex goes offline during stress, a memorized quote can serve as an external reminder of your values, strength, and the universality of human struggle and survival.
What's Running Your Life?
The invisible patterns you can’t outwork…
Your LinkedIn profile tells one story. Your 3 AM thoughts tell another. If vacation makes you anxious, if praise feels hollow, if you’re planning your next move before finishing the current one—you’re not alone. And you’re *not* broken.
This quiz reveals the invisible patterns from childhood that keep you running. Why enough is never enough. Why success doesn’t equal satisfaction. Why rest feels like risk.
Five minutes to understand what’s really underneath that exhausting, constant drive.
