Life Journeys Counselling & Training: Sue Genest MSc, CCC.

11/04/2025

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) is caused by prolonged or repeated exposure to extremely threatening events. These events can include:

🩵 Childhood Abuse
🩵 Dometic Violence
🩵 War
🩵 Torture
🩵 S*x Trafficking
🩵 Slavery
🩵 Genocide
🩵 Kidnapping
🩵 Imprisonment
🩵 Medical Abuse

Traumatic stress can change your brain's chemistry and structure. Studies suggest that trauma is associated with permanent changes in key areas of your brain, including your:

🧠 Amygdala: the part of your brain that processes fear and other emotions.
🧠 Hippocampus: the part of your brain that's largely responsible for learning and memory.
🧠 Prefrontal cortex: The part of your brain that's involved in executive functions, such as planning, decision-making, personality expression, and controlling social behavior.

If you have experienced any of these events and are experiencing any of the listed symptoms, you may have CPTSD. A trauma-informed therapist can help you process what you've been through and teach you tools to manage these symptoms.

Healing is possible and you are not alone. 🫶🏻

11/03/2025

11/03/2025

DBTSkills. Mindfulness Module. Walking the Middle Path.

Worksheet via https://mhck.net/

11/03/2025

11/03/2025

11/03/2025

11/03/2025

DBTSkills. Emotion Regulation Module. DBT deals with all emotions and says that no emotions are ' bad' or ' good'.

We need the whole range. Including anger.
What we usually need to learn to do is manage our anger and learn to express it appropriately.
Below is the infographic ' the Anger Volcano' which illustrates what happens when we don't have the skill to regulate anger.

DBT Emotion Regulation Skills help with this.

Visual credit : Hope Trust.

10/30/2025

Credit:

Doing "the work" in a relationship doesn't mean fixing your partner or managing their emotions. And it definitely doesn't mean losing yourself in the process. ⬇️

We're told relationships take effort. And they do…the kind that starts with your own self-awareness and emotional responsibility.

Real growth in a relationship begins with personal accountability. It looks like regulating your own nervous system, communicating your needs clearly, and taking responsibility for your own happiness and healing.

What it doesn't mean is becoming your partner's therapist. Or suppressing your needs to avoid conflict. Or taking on their unresolved trauma as your project to solve.

When you focus on your own growth instead of trying to change someone else, you stop waiting for permission to feel secure in your own relationship. ❤️

10/26/2025

What Trauma Does to Your Body Over Time (Even If You Don’t Talk About It)

There are things we survive — but never speak about.
Things we push down with a smile, a laugh, a “I’m fine.”
But the body keeps a different kind of memory.

It doesn’t forget what the mind tries to bury.

🧠 Trauma is Not Just a Memory. It Becomes Biology.

Trauma isn’t just what happens to you —
It’s what happens inside you as a result.

Whether it’s childhood neglect, emotional abuse, betrayal, loss, or years of living in survival mode — trauma doesn’t just live in your mind.
It rewires your nervous system.
It reshapes your hormones.
It recodes your immune response.

Over time, trauma becomes physical.

🔬 Here’s What Trauma Does to Your Body (Over Months… and Years)

1. It dysregulates your nervous system.

The body gets stuck in fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
You might feel always on edge, or always exhausted.
Your vagus nerve — the one responsible for calming your body down — goes offline.
Suddenly, loud sounds feel threatening.
Touch feels overstimulating.
And rest? Impossible.

📉 Chronic trauma = chronic dysregulation = chronic stress.

2. It hijacks your hormones.

Your adrenal glands don’t know you’re safe.
They just know you’ve been running from lions for too long.

So they keep pumping:
• Cortisol (your stress hormone)
• Adrenaline (your panic hormone)

Eventually, this can lead to:
• Adrenal fatigue
• Burnout
• Thyroid issues
• Hormonal imbalances like estrogen dominance or low progesterone

🌀 The body starts to think that calm is dangerous — and chaos is normal.

3. It weakens your immune system.

When your body is always in crisis mode, it stops prioritizing healing.

Studies show that trauma and PTSD:
• Increase pro-inflammatory cytokines (which age you from the inside)
• Suppress immune function
• Make you more vulnerable to chronic infections and autoimmune conditions

🛡️ The immune system can’t protect you properly when it’s constantly in battle mode.

4. It affects your gut (deeply).

Did you know 80% of your immune system and 95% of your serotonin lives in your gut?

When trauma strikes, your gut gets hit too.

Trauma is linked to:
• IBS
• Leaky gut
• Food sensitivities
• Bloating, constipation, or diarrhea
• Gut-brain axis dysfunction

🍽️ This is why trauma survivors often struggle with digestion — it’s not “just anxiety.” It’s biology.

5. It gets trapped in your fascia, your lymph, your breath.

Trauma isn’t just in the brain — it lives in the body:
• Muscles hold memory.
• Fascia tightens with fear.
• The lymphatic system stagnates under inflammation.
• Breath becomes shallow.
• The diaphragm freezes.

That’s why trauma healing often requires more than just talk therapy.
You need to move it.
Breathe it.
Drain it.
Release it.

🕊️ You can’t think your way out of trauma — you have to feel your way through it.

💥 Silent Signs of Long-Held Trauma

Sometimes trauma doesn’t look like flashbacks.
It looks like:
• Chronic fatigue
• Autoimmune flares
• Hormonal chaos
• Constant people-pleasing
• Panic over small things
• Neck tension that never releases
• Being “too strong” for too long

The body whispers before it screams.

✨ The Good News: Healing is Possible.

But it’s not linear. And it’s not quick.

Healing trauma means:
• Safety first — the body needs to feel safe to let go.
• Nervous system repair — through lymphatic therapy, breathwork, cold therapy, somatic work, and nervous system regulation.
• Restoring trust in your body, slowly.
• Unfreezing the parts of you that went numb to survive.

It might take years.
But you’re not broken.
You’re healing.

🕊️ Final Words for the Silent Warrior

If you’ve carried pain no one saw,
If you’ve survived seasons that nearly broke you,
If your body is tired in ways you can’t explain —

Know this:

✨ You are not crazy.
✨ Your symptoms are valid.
✨ Your body is doing its best to protect you.
✨ And you are so worthy of healing — slow, gentle, whole healing.

You didn’t choose the trauma.
But you can choose to unlearn the fear,
Restore the safety,
And come home to your body — one breath at a time.

✍️ https://www.facebook.com/share/1HJQvPNV5e/?mibextid=wwXIfr

☀️
DM me at The Soul Journey with Sarah Moussa to book an appointment with me in person or online.
Much love,
Sarah
Shamanic Healer 🍀
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