Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Relational Recovery When You Have CPTSD

Bad things happen to every kid. What turns a bad thing into complex trauma is what came after: whether the adults helped you regain a sense of safety, and whether the truth of what happened could be held in your family at all. Was everyone in denial or dismissive of the bad things happening? That's why books can validate your childhood but can't resolve your CPTSD. All of this is specific to the particular bad things that happened to you and how your two biological parents responded, and that requires customized, real-world interventions. There's no one-size-fits-all with this work.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

With complex trauma, we take the blame for bad things happening in our relationships. But controlling behavior isn't a character flaw. It's what a person does when their no keeps getting overridden and they've run out of other ways to get their safety and security needs met. Yes, a lot may need to change in what you say and do in your closest relationships. It's also true that we live inside societal rules that make men more entitled to do what they want and women less empowered to stand firm in their boundaries, and that shapes the strategies available to us. If controlling behavior is your go-to, this is an episode you'll want to download and listen to.

Interested in working with me directly? www.cptsdmedicine.com

Not sure about your relationship? Is it healthy, unhealthy, fixable, or not? These are key questions many of us have, but we struggle to get answers that make sense, give us hope, and point us toward better outcomes. In this episode I walk through the CPTSD red flags in relationships that survivors miss, and the survival codes underneath them.

This is the CPTSD podcast for survivors who are ready to get unstuck and out of relationship hell. Want to work with me? cptsdmedicine.com

Often I get asked, "Why isn't this getting better?" And when I do, I often run a "Reach Inventory." This episode is a modified lecture from a core CPTSD Medicine teaching on "The Reach." Listen and see if The Reach is shaping your relationships.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/

You didn't choose to be a childhood trauma survivor. That's something I want you to remember. And yet, your childhood trauma has impacted your life considerably. In this episode, I share the origins of your relationship suffering. This is a topic I am often asked to speak about and so it feels good to deliver this content to you here. I hope it brings a fresh perspective to your work, and something I say helps you finally get help that actually helps.

If you want to work with me: https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

Learning how to be your own co-regulator is life-changing and knowing that no one is coming to save you is the ultimate leadership amplifier, and YET those are all very individually focused milestones. Critical for initial success in your CPTSD Resolution, but not enough for comprehensive relational recovery. Up next is Relational Empowerment which is what this episode is about. As the second of two episodes in a 2-episode relaunch, I share with you some big ideas of this kind of empowerment. It is a more advanced skill to take your individual empowerment and test it in the relational field, but you learn new things about yourself, your trauma, and yourself as significant other in ways that cannot happen in individual work. If you would like to work with me: https://cptsdmedicine.com/help-with-healing-cptsd

Getting your heart broken again and again is horrific. It doesn't have to be this way for you anymore, and I would like to teach you how this exausting experience stops. In this two-episode relaunch, this episode focuses on Individual Empowerment as the first experience you need in your relational recovery journey. The good news is that CPTSD Resolution, or healing your complex trauma, is the exact process required for your relational recovery. These are entirely overlapping experiences for you, the human with childhood trauma and secondary adult trauma that led to complex trauma. If you are interested in working with me: https://cptsdmedicine.com/help-with-healing-cptsd

You know the moment. Something lands, a tone, a silence, a left-on-read, and suddenly you're underwater. The flood comes fast and it takes the whole system with it. In this episode I want to name that moment with real precision, because most of us don't even have language for what's happening to us when abandonment hijacks the body. It isn't weakness and it isn't you being "too much." It's a response that makes complete sense once you understand it.

I also want to be careful here, because "self-soothing" is a phrase that gets thrown around in ways that don't actually serve survivors like us. So much of what passes for soothing is really just management, getting yourself quiet enough to keep functioning while the wound stays untouched. That's not what I'm talking about. There's a distinction underneath this work that makes authentic, CPTSD Resolution-based self-soothing possible, and once you learn how to lead it, your relational life will change. I walk you through what that distinction is and then into the actual practice, the thing you can do when the flood hits.

And I'm honest about what real self-soothing is not. It's not abandoning yourself to feel better for a minute. It's not white-knuckling. It's not coping dressed up in nicer language. The wider why is this: the way you meet yourself in the flood is the whole work. When you stop abandoning yourself in the exact moment you most need secure attachment, something at the root begins to change. That's what I want for you, and that's what this episode is for.

When You're Ready

CPTSD Resolution 101 Weekend Workshop Three days, seven people, live on Zoom. You'll leave with a clear, personalized map for your CPTSD Resolution. Offered twice a year in February and September. https://cptsdmedicine.com/weekendworkshop

Happily Ever After — The All-Inclusive CPTSD Resolution Experience Six months of close-proximity training with me. Application required. https://cptsdmedicine.com/services About Dr. Tanner Wallace

Tanner Wallace, PhD and Level 3 IFS Practitioner, is the founder of CPTSD Medicine and the author of the CPTSD Medicine Healing Protocol, a proprietary applied mental health training curriculum that teaches HouseHolder CycleBreakers to resolve complex relational trauma at the root. A former tenured professor of health and human development, she left academia to build the services she could not find as a childhood trauma survivor diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder: a structured six-month container that trains humans to become their own best intervention scientists. Inside her signature container, Happily Ever After, she works with a small number of students to resolve, not manage, their CPTSD.

About the Podcast

Heal First, Then Pick Your Life Partner is for high-functioning adults with complex trauma who are tired of repeating painful relationship patterns. If you perform well professionally but struggle intensely in your closest relationships, this podcast helps you see why.

Each episode takes an ordinary moment of adult life — attending a family wedding, going through old photographs, ending a relationship, writing a holiday card, having a hard conversation with someone you love — and shows you what's actually happening underneath it through the lens of complex trauma. You'll hear my take on the lived experience of CPTSD, drawn from five years of building a proprietary trauma resolution curriculum and from my own work as a survivor who no longer qualifies for the diagnoses I once did.

This is diagnostic, declarative, and unlike anything else in the CPTSD space. Hosted by Dr. Tanner Wallace, PhD, founder of CPTSD Medicine.

I know that loop intimately: hurt by the relationship almost constantly, yet too terrified to actually leave. I've lived in it, I've watched people I love live in it, and I've sat with so many students who've been circling it for years. So this one is survivor to survivor. In this diagnostic episode I name the trap out loud and tell you why it can hold us for so long.

Here's what I want you to hear: it was never really about whether your partner can change enough, or whether you can bend enough to make it tolerable. I used to believe that too. The real question is whether you know, all the way down, that you're okay on your own no matter what. As long as there's a part of you programmed to hold on at any cost, you'll stay—and you'll reach for the false exits instead. The egregious betrayal that finally "lets" you go. The new person. Enough numbing to mute the fear. Or sabotaging things so badly that they leave first. I've reached for some of those myself. None of them resolve the core wound, which means we just carry it into the next relationship and run the whole thing again. There's no relief without resolution.

I also get honest about why understanding this won't free you. You can see the survival code running and still feel it run. Insight is not the same as updating the belief at the root—that only happens when you discover a truth so valid your body actually feels it. I close the episode with a mini-facilitation you can do on your own: find a quiet, private place, bring to mind the human you feel you should leave but can't, and take inventory of the beliefs, fears, and messages that come online. Because the question was never stay or go. It's whether you're okay either way. When that lands as yes, you're never staying just because you can't leave. That's the sovereignty I want for every one of us.

When You're Ready

Happily Ever After — The All-Inclusive CPTSD Resolution Experience Six months of close-proximity training with me. Application required. https://cptsdmedicine.com/services

About Dr. Tanner Wallace

Tanner Wallace, PhD and Level 3 IFS Practitioner, is the founder of CPTSD Medicine and the author of the CPTSD Medicine Healing Protocol, a proprietary applied mental health training curriculum that teaches HouseHolder CycleBreakers to resolve complex relational trauma at the root. A former tenured professor of health and human development, she left academia to build the services she could not find as a childhood trauma survivor diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder: a structured six-month container that trains humans to become their own best intervention scientists. Inside her signature container, Happily Ever After, she works with a small number of students to resolve, not manage, their CPTSD.

About the Podcast

Heal First, Then Pick Your Life Partner is for high-functioning adults with complex trauma who are tired of repeating painful relationship patterns. If you perform well professionally but struggle intensely in your closest relationships, this podcast helps you see why.

Each episode takes an ordinary moment of adult life — attending a family wedding, going through old photographs, ending a relationship, writing a holiday card, having a hard conversation with someone you love — and shows you what's actually happening underneath it through the lens of complex trauma. You'll hear my take on the lived experience of CPTSD, drawn from five years of building a proprietary trauma resolution curriculum and from my own work as a survivor who no longer qualifies for the diagnoses I once did.

This is diagnostic, declarative, and unlike anything else in the CPTSD space. Hosted by Dr. Tanner Wallace, PhD, founder of CPTSD Medicine.

Abandonment wounds are among the most discussed injuries in the trauma field, and for good reason: they produce intense suffering and a chronic, low-grade conviction that one is perpetually being left behind. In this episode, I walk through a Case Analysis from Happily Ever After featuring a student working an assignment on abandonment wounds. I use it to show why specificity is not a refinement but a precondition for successful CPTSD Resolution, with concrete examples of what genuinely matters when working this terrain.

When You're Ready

CPTSD Resolution 101 Weekend Workshop Three days, seven people, live on Zoom. You'll leave with a clear, personalized map for your CPTSD Resolution. Offered twice a year in February and September. https://cptsdmedicine.com/weekendworkshop

Happily Ever After — The All-Inclusive CPTSD Resolution Experience Six months of close-proximity training with me. Application required. https://cptsdmedicine.com/services

About Dr. Tanner Wallace

Tanner Wallace, PhD and Level 3 IFS Practitioner, is the founder of CPTSD Medicine and the author of the CPTSD Medicine Healing Protocol, a proprietary applied mental health training curriculum that teaches HouseHolder CycleBreakers to resolve complex relational trauma at the root. A former tenured professor of health and human development, she left academia to build the services she could not find as a childhood trauma survivor diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder: a structured six-month container that trains humans to become their own best intervention scientists. Inside her signature container, Happily Ever After, she works with a small number of students to resolve, not manage, their CPTSD.

About the Podcast

Heal First, Then Pick Your Life Partner is for high-functioning adults with complex trauma who are tired of repeating painful relationship patterns. If you perform well professionally but struggle intensely in your closest relationships, this podcast helps you see why.

Each episode takes an ordinary moment of adult life — attending a family wedding, going through old photographs, ending a relationship, writing a holiday card, having a hard conversation with someone you love — and shows you what's actually happening underneath it through the lens of complex trauma. You'll hear my take on the lived experience of CPTSD, drawn from five years of building a proprietary trauma resolution curriculum and from my own work as a survivor who no longer qualifies for the diagnoses I once did.

This is diagnostic, declarative, and unlike anything else in the CPTSD space. Hosted by Dr. Tanner Wallace, PhD, founder of CPTSD Medicine.