Stephanie Underwood RSW

01/12/2026

Not every uncomfortable body sensation means you’re emotionally dysregulated or unsafe.

Think about sweaty palms before a presentation. A racing heart in a difficult conversation. Tension before something that matters.

That does not mean that your nervous system feels unsafe. That’s emotional activation, but not danger.

Your nervous system can turn the volume up and still be functioning exactly as it should. Safety doesn’t mean calm, it means capacity. You can feel anxious and still think, speak, choose, and recover.

When we label every stress response as dysregulation, we teach people to fear normal human reactions. Regulation isn’t about avoiding activation. It’s about being able to move through it and come back to our normal baseline.

01/12/2026

Some of our patterns may not feel “harmful” because they’ve always been there. With emotional
deprivation, the absence of emotional support can feel somewhat normal, not traumatic. So normal, in fact, that it often goes unnoticed.

Schemas don’t just shape how we feel. They shape who we’re drawn to, what we expect from others, and how we respond when our needs aren’t met.

Awareness is not about blame. It’s about finally seeing the pattern so it no longer runs the show.

Healing is possible, and it starts with noticing.

01/11/2026

If you’re a man dating a woman with an Avoidant Attachment - I just dropped a new blog post just for you ✨👇🏻 Check it out in the link below✨

Dating an Avoidant woman? This article explains avoidant attachment in women, & why emotional distance happens in relationships.

01/10/2026

We talk about safety like it’s a feeling. Like it’s something you should be able to think your way into. Like it’s the same thing as comfort, reassurance, or positivity.

However, it’s not. Safety is a biological state.

Long before you form a thought, your nervous system is already scanning your environment and your relationships, asking one core question: Is this safe?

- Is this predictable?
- Do I have control?
- Are others signaling danger or safety?
- How much energy will this cost me?

This process is automatic, you don’t choose it.
And when safety is absent, your nervous system doesn’t malfunction, it protects you.

This series, Built on Safety, is about understanding that mechanism from the ground up. From evolution, to infancy, to attachment, to schemas, to adult relationships.

This carousel aligns with my new podcast series, Nervous System Radio: Built for Survival, where I’ll be walking through this framework in depth and in order.

Because healing doesn’t start with mindset, it starts with safety.

More to come… ✨

Neurobiology RelationalSafety TherapyEducation SurvivalNotPathology

01/07/2026

Perfectionism isn’t about high standards. It’s about safety.

Anxious attachment often perfects the self to preserve connection, which can lead to over-giving in relationships and, over time, resentment when care and effort are not reciprocated.

Avoidant attachment perfects performance to preserve autonomy.

Different strategies. Same fear.

The goal isn’t to stop caring or lower your standards. It’s to disassociate your worth from what you produce or how well you manage others.

Having a secure attachment doesn’t mean being flawless. It means you don’t have to earn the right to belong.

01/03/2026

There are different types of schemas. There are basic cognitive schemas, which help your brain organize information and make sense of the world.

And then there are Early Maladaptive Schemas. These are survival-based relational templates formed when core emotional needs weren’t met.

Both shape how we interpret reality. Only one is charged with pain, protection, and nervous system responses.

We can’t logic our way out of a survival adaptation. We have to work with the nervous system and the relational meaning underneath it.

01/01/2026

Early Maladaptive Schemas aren’t talked about nearly enough. Which is why I’ll be taking a deep dive into each schema this month of January.

Schemas are the deeply held core beliefs that activate our attachment system. Attachment styles themselves are not the root problem, they are coping strategies. Schemas sit underneath them. They shape how we see ourselves, how we interpret others, and how we make sense of the world.

Until these schemas are identified and addressed, real healing is limited, because you are trying to change behaviors without touching the lens through which everything is filtered.

There are 18 early maladaptive schemas.
They aren’t personality traits or diagnoses.
They’re adaptive responses that once made sense.

Understanding your schemas isn’t about blaming your past. It’s about finally making sense of your present. This is where real, lasting change starts.

*** Just to clarify for anyone reading: I’m referring specifically to early maladaptive schemas as conceptualized in schema therapy, NOT cognitive schemas in educational or learning theory.

In this clinical context, schemas develop in response to unmet emotional needs and early relational experiences and are closely tied to attachment patterns. Trauma is one pathway, but not the only one. This page focuses on clinical application, not broad cognitive theory. ***

12/29/2025

Avoidant attachment is often misunderstood as emotional distance or lack of interest in connection. In reality, it reflects a nervous system that learned to prioritize autonomy and safety in response to early relational experiences.

Animals are sometimes experienced as soothing because they offer presence without social pressure or emotional demand. However, this sense of safety depends on regulation, not on the animal itself.

Avoidant individuals tend to respond best to connection that is calm, respectful, and non-intrusive whether that connection is with people or animals.

12/21/2025

** Edited: To be very clear, this post is not about autistic people “not having trauma.” Autistic people can experience trauma. That’s not even the question here. This post is about the growing tendency to label nervous system adaptations that develop in response to trauma as if they were inherently part of the of the autism diagnosis.

Trauma involves acquired nervous system adaptations from exposure to trauma. Autism is a neurodevelopmental diagnosis present from birth. Those distinctions matter clinically and conceptually.

Autistic individuals CAN develop trauma responses when exposed to trauma. When that happens, those reactions are trauma responses - not symptoms of autism itself.

12/15/2025

Anxious attachment often carries buried anger that never had a safe place to go. Years of pain that couldn’t be directed at the caregiver, so that pain and anger was buried.

But we know that when we don’t integrate it, it finds other outlets.

12/03/2025

Some individuals spend their entire lives trying to prove their worthiness to their parents, yearning for acknowledgment of love and acceptance.

Sadly, some spend their life's journey trying to 'fix' themselves, hoping to attain the love and acceptance they crave from their parents.

The issue is that they often fail to realize that there was never anything wrong with them to begin with.