The Complex Trauma Podcast

Inner child healing isn't easy work. For people living with complex trauma, it can be one of the most neurobiologically specific processes in trauma recovery. And the version most people have been handed doesn't come close to touching it.

In this episode we get into what inner child healing actually is, what the young part is really doing in your nervous system, and what reparenting actually looks like and what might get in the way.

In this episode:

• Why the inner child wound shows up as exhaustion, automatic accommodation, and disconnection from your own needs more often than it shows up as a recognizable emotional reaction
• What emotional flashbacks are and why the inner critic is often the young part's most audible signal
• The difference between toxic shame and regular shame, and why that distinction matters for healing
• Why insight dissolves after therapy sessions and what's actually happening when the healing doesn't land
• What reparenting actually is at the neurological level, including the grief piece that most content skips entirely
• Four body-based practices for building a real relationship with the young part of you that never got what it needed

If your nervous system is chronically dysregulated and you want somewhere to start, grab the free Dysregulation SOS Toolkit here.

It's a practical, body-based resource for getting out of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn in real time.

Clinical frameworks referenced in this episode include Janina Fisher's structural dissociation model, Internal Family Systems, and Pete Walker's work on complex PTSD and emotional flashbacks.

Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.

You've done the work. You've been in therapy, read the books, and you can name what happened to you. So why doesn't it feel like enough?

That gap between understanding your story and actually feeling different in your body has a reason. And it's not because you haven't tried hard enough. It's because childhood emotional neglect creates a very specific kind of wound that requires a very specific kind of repair. In this episode we're going past the recognition and getting into what that repair actually looks like and how to start creating it in your real life.

In this episode we cover:

• What implicit emotional learnings are and how to recognize the ones that may still be running in the background of your relationships
• Why insight alone often doesn't move them and what the brain actually needs instead
• The three step sequence that allows the brain to revise an old emotional learning at its root
• Why CEN survivors often have no discrete memory to target and how the implicit learning tends to surface instead
• How corrective experiences can happen in therapy through co-regulation, rupture and repair, EMDR, and somatic work
• How they can also happen outside of therapy in your relationships, your body, and your daily life
• What interoception is and why rebuilding it is a core part of this work
• How to start recognizing a corrective experience when it's happening because it often doesn't feel the way you might expect
• What hyperindependence has to do with all of this
• Why animals, nature, and routine can be legitimate corrective experiences for people who feel isolated right now
• What earned secure attachment is and what the research suggests about getting there
• What tends to get in the way, including shame, and what active receiving looks like in practice

Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.

If you've been diagnosed with more than one thing, and it feels like every provider is treating each piece in isolation, this episode is for you.

Complex PTSD doesn't just show up as one condition. For many people, CPTSD symptoms include a stack of co-occurring diagnoses that are deeply connected at the nervous system level but rarely treated that way. In this episode, I break down exactly what might be happening underneath seven of the most common conditions that show up alongside complex trauma, and why understanding the connection changes everything about how healing can work.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What the window of tolerance is and how complex PTSD shrinks or collapses it
• The faux window of tolerance: the nervous system concept that explains why behaviors like restriction, compulsions, and substance use are so hard to give up
• A quick nervous system primer covering sympathetic activation, dorsal vagal shutdown, and the vagus nerve
• How CPTSD and eating disorders are connected at the nervous system level, including restriction, bingeing, and purging
• The research-backed link between complex trauma and OCD, including a documented posttraumatic subtype
• Why substance use, workaholism, chronic pain, dissociation, and emotional dysregulation are all nervous system adaptations in people with complex PTSD
• Why treating these complex PTSD symptoms in isolation so often stalls, and what integrated trauma-informed treatment actually looks and feels like
• The three phases of healing: stabilization, the thaw, and integration

Whether you're early in understanding your CPTSD symptoms or years into treatment and still feeling like something is missing, this episode offers a framework that finally puts all the pieces in the same room.

Free Resource: Dysregulation Toolkit for CPTSD

Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.

If you've spent your life being told you're "too nice," "a people-pleaser," or that you just need to "set better boundaries," this episode is for you. 

Fawning is the fourth trauma response, and for most folks with complex PTSD, it's been... a thing... for decades. 

In this episode, Sarah unpacks what fawning actually is (hint: it's not a personality flaw), how it gets built in childhood, what it can feel like in the body, and three small experiments to begin the work of coming home to yourself.

This is one of the most requested topics on The Complex Trauma Podcast. Sarah brings together the foundational work of Pete Walker, current research on complex trauma and emotional neglect, parts work and structural dissociation from Janina Fisher, polyvagal theory, and somatic experiencing into one  conversation about why so many of us learned to disappear into other people, and how we begin to find our way back.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The difference between fawning and people-pleasing, and why the distinction matters for healing
• How fawning develops as a brilliant survival adaptation in childhood, often before you have language to remember it
• Why the latest research shows emotional neglect is the strongest predictor of complex PTSD
• Seven somatic markers of fawning, including the rehearsing, the scanning, the voice change, and the disappearance
• How blended states (sympathetic activation plus dorsal shutdown) explain why fawning leaves you exhausted and wired at the same time
• The reframe that changes everything: you are not a fawner. You have parts of you that fawn.
• Three small, sticky experiments you can try this week: The Body Audit, The 1% Honest Answer, and The Tiny No
• Why titration (slow, tiny, repeated) is the only way trauma responses actually unwind

Mentioned in this episode:

• Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker
• Fawning by Dr. Ingrid Clayton
• Embracing our Fragmented Selves by Janina Fisher
• Waking the Tiger and In an Unspoken Voice by Peter Levine
• The CDC-Kaiser ACE Study
• Why Regulation Feels So Hard with CPTSD (previous episode)
• Sarah's conversation with Janina Fisher (previous episode)

Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.

If you've ever sat in your therapist's office and thought "I sort of just want you to take care of me" and then felt embarrassed for even thinking it, this episode is for you.

Listener Laurie wrote in after the "I Finally Stopped Shrinking" episode asking why being truly seen by a therapist can feel so activating, why grounding doesn't always hit the way her therapist intends it to, and why part of her just wants her therapist to show up more parentally even though she knows that's not the answer.

We took her question and ran with it.

Today I'm joined by Katie Fries, LCSW, RPT, founder of All of You Therapy in Philadelphia, to talk about what's actually happening in the nervous system when the therapy relationship itself becomes the source of activation, and why that's not a sign something is wrong with you.

In this episode we cover:

• Why wanting your therapist to parent you is not pathology, it's your nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do
• Why being truly seen can trigger a threat response for people with complex trauma
• When grounding can actually widen a rupture instead of helping
• What needs to happen before any regulation tool can land
• What co-regulation really looks like in the therapy room
• Why the therapist's own nervous system regulation matters more than most people realize
• What relational repair actually looks like in practice
• How to bring a rupture into the room even when it feels terrifying
• How to know if this is a healing edge or a therapist fit issue

About Katie Fries: Katie Fries, MSW, LCSW, RPT is the founder of All of You Therapy, a group therapy practice in Center City Philadelphia serving clients throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Katie works from a relational, body-oriented, experiential lens with a deep specialization in early relational trauma, attachment, and parent-child relationships. She is trained in AEDP, IFS, Gestalt, Theraplay, EMDR, and Psychedelic Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy among many others. Katie also offers clinical and business consultation.

Learn more about her therapy practice: allofyoutherapy.net 

For theraists looking for consultation: katiefries.com

Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.

If you've ever wondered why the harshest voice in your head won't quiet down, this episode might help you reframe the why's behind it.

This week I sits down with Emily Pagone, LCPC, founder of Authentic Growth Wellness Group and host of The Inner Critic Podcast. Emily specializes in IFS therapy, EMDR, and somatic approaches with a particular focus on complex trauma and neurodivergent trauma recovery.

We talk about what the inner critic actually is through an IFS lens, why it developed, and why trying to silence it usually backfires. We get honest about our neurodivergent nervous systems, masking, and the shame that builds when your brain was never really understood growing up.

If parts work is new to you, this is a great place to start. If you've been in it for a while, there's still something here.

Find Emily at the Inner Critic Podcast on Apple and Spotify, and on Instagram at Emily @emilypagone. Learn more about her therapy practice, Authentic Growth Wellness Group here.

Listen to The Inner Critic Podcast on Apple Podcasts 

Listen to The Inner Critic Podcast on Spotify

Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.

You did the work. You stopped shrinking. You let someone in. And it still ended with you feeling invisible.

So what do you do with that?

In this episode I'm responding to a message from a listener going through a divorce. She didn't shrink. She showed up fully. And it still ended in abandonment.

 Her question was simple and devastating: how do you reconcile that? And, how do you ever trust again?

On today's episode I get into why adult relationships can reopen old wounds rather than heal them, what your nervous system is actually doing when someone starts pulling away, the difference between a trigger and a real present wound, and what rebuilding trust actually looks like from the inside out.

This one is for anyone who thought they'd finally broken the pattern only to find themselves right back in the wound.

Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.

In today's episode, I'm sitting down with Libby Ward, creator, speaker, and author of Honest Motherhood: On Losing My Mind and Finding Myself, to talk about what it really looks like to wake up mid-motherhood and realize you never actually knew yourself to begin with. Not because motherhood took you away from yourself, but because trauma did that long before your kids ever showed up.

We talk about the overfunctioning, the perfectionism, the hypervigilance disgused up as "being a good mom," and the moment Libby hit a wall in her car on an ordinary morning that changed everything. 

We also get into repair, the grief that comes with cycle breaking, and why loving your kids, while beautiful, is not actually enough on its own.

This one is raw, honest, and so worth your time.

In this episode we cover:

• How Libby recognized her childhood trauma well into motherhood
• The nervous system reality behind why "just calm down" isn't a real option
• Overfunctioning and perfectionism as trauma responses
• The granola bar moment (you will feel this one)
• What cycle breaking actually looks like on a regular Tuesday
• The grief of knowing better and still struggling
• Why repair might be the most powerful thing you can offer your kids
• Libby's book Honest Motherhood and what's inside the pre-order bonus

Links and resources:

Libby's website: https://libbyward.com/ 

Pre-order Honest Motherhood: On Losing My Mind and Finding Myself at https://libbyward.com/honest-motherhood-book

Follow Libby on Instagram

Follow Libby on TikTok

Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.

You might not call it shame. But if you were emotionally neglected, there's a chance it's been running the show.

Most people who grew up emotionally neglected don't have a name for what they carry. They just know that asking for help feels wrong, that they can't stop replaying conversations, that being seen makes them want to disappear.

This episode is about why that story forms, where it lives in the body, and why it's so hard to recognize as shame at all.

I break down the difference between shame from overt trauma and the kind that grows from absence, why a child's nervous system is wired to turn unmet needs into self-blame, and what it actually looks like to start healing something you can't even point to.

In this episode:

• Why emotional neglect is described as an invisible injury
• How shame forms as a survival strategy to preserve attachment
• The version of freeze that looks like high-functioning
• Why self-awareness can sometimes be shame in disguise
• What it means that your nervous system never built a map for settled
• The grief of growing up in an environment that couldn't hold all of you
• What healing actually looks like when insight alone isn't enough

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Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.

Sex and complex trauma. It's one of those topics that doesn't get nearly enough airtime, and yet it comes up so frequently in the therapy room.

In this episode I'm talking with Rachael Garner, a certified sex therapist and EMDR clinician who works with complex trauma survivors, about what actually happens to our relationship with sex, desire, and our bodies when we've experienced complex trauma. And there is a lot more nuance here than most people realize.

We talk about why dissociation during sex happens and what your body is doing when it checks out. We get into the difference between physiological arousal and actual desire, why zero libido sometimes has nothing to do with your partner, and how sexual neglect, not just abuse, can shape the way you relate to your own sexuality.

We also talk about what healing looks like in this area, why it has to be slow, what partners often get wrong even with the best intentions, and how nervous system flexibility connects trauma work and sexual healing in a way that's genuinely hopeful.

Rachael Garner is a Certified Sex Therapist, an EMDR Certified Therapist, and an EMDRIA-Approved Consultant-in-Training specializing in complex trauma and sexual issues through a somatic- and attachment-based lens. She is in private practice in Jackson MS, where she resides with her husband and two boys. 

Learn more about Rachael and her work at https://www.garnercounseling.com.

Thanks for listening to The Complex Trauma Podcast!

Be sure to follow, share and give us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Follow on Instagram: @sarahherstichlcsw 

Follow on TikTok: @sarahherstichlcsw

Learn more about EMDR & trauma therapy in Pennsylvania with Reclaim Therapy

This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or nutritional advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Remember, I'm a therapist, but I'm not your therapist. Nothing in this podcast is meant to replace actual therapy or treatment. If you're in crisis or things feel really unsafe right now, please reach out to someone. You can call 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, text them, or head to your nearest ER.

The views expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not represent the opinions of any organizations or institutions. Reliance on any information provided by this podcast is solely at your own risk.