My Stories
My blog, essays and articles feature stories on healing from trauma, coping with disorder and practicing mindfulness
Awakening: How Occupational Therapy Uncovered Hidden Trauma
It was March of 2018 and my third attempt at medication in three years. To try to ease my troubled mind. I had tried drugs before — prescribed or not — but this time, I was more desperate than usual for one to work. Because it wasn’t just myself I was trying to save, it was my marriage. My husband and I had recently experienced another incident. Another episode of me unconsciously going after him. Attacking him. Followed by [...]
CPTSD, PTSD and Trauma: How Practicing Self-care Helps Me Find Myself Post-trauma (+5 Steps to Assessing Your Self-care)
Self-care was a new concept to me when I first started learning about it in my late 30s. After my repressed trauma had surfaced. And it was by practicing self-care that I was able to find my way back to [...]
Anxiety, Depression and Trauma: Meeting Yourself Where You’re at (+6 Journaling Tips to Get There)
I recently read an article that discussed feeling sad at the beginning of a new year, and it made me think of the concept I learned during trauma recovery of meeting yourself where you’re at. A concept that saved me [...]
CPTSD, PTSD and Trauma: Building Confidence by Setting Goals (And How You Can too)
In setting my goals for the new year, I realized that one of the things that stops me from thriving is my confidence. Or lack of. It’s like I can do the things I’ve always done (which at some point [...]
PTSD and Trauma: How Having Hobbies Saves Me from Depression and Helps Me Be Mindful (+5 Tips for Getting a Hobby Started)
For decades, having hobbies was a foreign concept to me. Doing mindful things in my free time wasn’t possible because there was no free time. I spent so much of my time surviving that I wasn’t living. I knew how [...]
PTSD and Trauma: Taking Back Christmas
It has been four years since my repressed trauma surfaced. And since my worst memory was from Christmas Eve, it has also been four years since I’ve celebrated Christmas. But this year, I’m taking Christmas back. For four years, [...]
10 Ways to Connect to Our Interoceptive Sense to Help With PTSD
I didn’t know I was having a fight-or-flight response. For 23 years. A response that sent me flying outside of my body — dissociating — every time I became triggered. When there was too much sensory input. When I [...]
What Receiving a Bipolar Diagnosis in My 40s Says About Me
I’d been struggling again. And was feeling suicidal. So I decided to make an appointment with yet another psychiatrist. It had been three years since my last psychiatric evaluation. I was long overdue. It took me months to get [...]
CPTSD, PTSD and Trauma: How Stranger Things Season 4 Acknowledges Repressed Trauma
(Spoiler alert) My husband and I recently finished watching Season 4 of Stranger Things, and I’ve been reflecting on how much it dealt with repressed trauma—with a memory so traumatic that it is blocked from our conscious mind—and it made [...]
CPTSD, PTSD and Fight-or-flight Response: Living in a Trauma Cycle and 7 Steps to Ending It
When you’re living in a trauma cycle, your thoughts are wired for chaos. And you remain in a fight-or-flight state. Running from problem to problem. From crisis to crisis. Where I lived for over 23 years. The best way to [...]
OCD, PTSD and SPD: Learning to Relinquish Control and Stay Present
My husband recently needed to go to Rome, Italy for a film he was producing, and I got to go with him. I hadn’t been to Rome in 20 years when I’d had the privilege of studying abroad. Now, 20 [...]
CPTSD, PTSD, Self-love and Trauma: 10 Simple Ways to Practice Self-care Every Day
Notice I titled this, “10 Simple Ways,” and not, “10 Easy Ways.” As a trauma survivor, self-care is never easy. It is often the last thing I want to do. But it is the quickest way to begin to feel [...]
PTSD and Anxiety: Working Against Our Fear Response (and Tips for Feeling Safe)
My husband is a producer and had a film in a film festival—for which I couldn't have been more proud—and we got to go to the festival in sunny California—for which I couldn’t have been more excited. But I wasn’t [...]
“Loved reading this Jenna, what a great explanation of how your OT helped you. I have taken a few tips for a client of mine I am treating at the moment! Great post. Cheers!”
JAYNE OT