The Complex Trauma Podcast

Why Emotional Loneliness Runs So Deep in Complex Trauma

The Complex Trauma Podcast

Show Notes

Emotional loneliness is one of the most common and least talked about experiences in complex trauma recovery. It's not about the number of people in your life. It's about whether your nervous system has learned to let them in. And for a lot of survivors, it hasn't. Not because something is permanently wrong with you, but because your nervous system learned some very specific things about connection a long time ago. In this episode, I break down some of the neuroscience and nervous system mech...

More from The Complex Trauma Podcast

Oct 21, 2026

Ever leave a therapy session looking totally fine, then spend the next three days clenching your jaw, snapping at everyone, and wondering if you’re just bad at therapy? Or find yourself completely checked out mid-session with no idea how long you’ve been gone? In this episode, I answer two listener questions about feeling worse after EMDR and dissociating in therapy sessions. We talk about why therapy can stir so much up when you have complex trauma (CPTSD), the difference between being stirr...

Oct 14, 2026

Why do we keep reliving the same painful patterns, even when we can see them coming? In this episode, psychotherapist and complex trauma expert Dr. Gillian O’Shea Brown joins me to explore how Greek myths can help us make sense of complex trauma, CPTSD, and the relational wounds we carry from childhood. Gillian is SUCH a good storyteller, and she walks us through four myths that might feel a little too familiar. In this episode, we talk about Why stories can reach us in ways facts and diagnos...

Oct 7, 2026

Everyone has parts. So how do you know when a part is just a part of you, and when it's crossed into a dissociative disorder like OSDD or DID? This episode came from a listener healing from CPTSD who just found out she has a dissociative disorder. She asked two questions a lot of trauma survivors are carrying. How common are dissociative disorders in trauma survivors? And with parts work like IFS so popular right now, where's the line between ordinary parts and dissociation? So we're walking ...

Sep 30, 2026

Why can you feel lonely and then want everyone to leave you alone, or set a boundary and immediately want to take it back? Today, I explore why conflicting parts and contradictory responses can feel especially intense after complex trauma, drawing from parts work, attachment research, fear learning, and Somatic Experiencing. You’ll hear why missing someone doesn’t mean the relationship was safe, why guilt doesn’t prove a boundary was wrong, and how the body can move toward something while als...

Sep 23, 2026

How do you grieve a childhood you never had? If you grew up with childhood emotional neglect, you may have heard that grief is part of complex trauma recovery and still have no idea what you're supposed to be grieving, or what that grief is supposed to feel like. This episode is built around a listener's question. She grew up without much affection, remembers wanting it, and came to believe that needing it meant she wasn't growing up properly. Decades later, she's wondering whether she has an...

See all episodes →