About Me
I have Complex PTSD because I was raised by a borderline personality-disordered parent. I make no apologies for standing in that truth — and neither should other survivors.
For twenty-two years of my adult life, I felt like I was crawling around inside a dark cave looking for a flashlight. That’s what living with unprocessed childhood trauma felt like to me. I overthought everything, analyzed everything, and tried desperately to make sense of chaos without understanding what trauma had actually done to my brain, body, identity, relationships, and expectations of the world.
By 2018, I was deeply frustrated by how little practical education existed for Complex PTSD. I had two therapists who genuinely cared and helped me, but I also watched them work within a field that still had enormous gaps in its understanding and resources for developmental trauma. I felt neglected by psychology as an institution, and I couldn’t shake one thought: if survivors waited for the institution to eventually figure out everything we needed, some of us were going to spend our whole lives waiting.
I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to heal and start living my best life while I still had a life to live. That frustration led me to start a private survivor support group, where we began learning together.
By 2021, that work had grown into DefeatingChildhoodTrauma.com. I wrote about the problems I was encountering in recovery, but I didn’t want to stop at explaining what was wrong. I wanted clarity first, with the goal of finding practical solutions survivors could actually use.
Over the years, that work grew into:
- trauma education
- maps and visual aids
- trauma glossaries
- master toolboxes
- journaling systems
- flashback tools
- emotional regulation
- cognitive tools
- and a whole lot of science
At the time, I had no idea any of it was leading toward one larger framework. I was working on individual problems as I found them, trying to understand each one clearly enough to build something useful around it.
Then, on April 9, 2026, I saw the larger structure for the first time:
The Trauma Matrix snapped into place.
For the first time, I could see how patterns I had studied separately over the years were feeding one another. Self-abandonment, negative noticing, learned helplessness, catastrophizing, trauma attraction, imposter syndrome, repetition compulsion, and the other patterns I had been writing about weren’t just sitting beside one another. They were interacting.
The Trauma Matrix didn’t complete some master plan I’d been consciously building all along. It showed me, after the fact, where years of work had been leading. That changed the direction of everything.
About This Site
Defeating Childhood Trauma is the home base for that work.
There are years of free education here because understanding matters. Many of the articles go all the way back to 2021, and I still stand by that work because it documents the path I was taking long before I could see the larger map.
What You’ll Find Here
- Trauma education — plain-English neuroscience, attachment, identity, emotional regulation, flashbacks, survival patterns, and the Trauma Matrix
- Practical healing tools — structured resources for catastrophizing, self-abandonment, emotional resiliency, trauma bonds, identity repair, Window of Tolerance, flashbacks, mental replay, and more
- 1:1 guidance — personal help identifying what’s keeping you stuck and deciding what to work on next
That’s what this site has become: a place to understand the pattern, find tools for changing it, and get support when you want help working through it.
What Makes My Work Different
I’m not interested in collecting trauma facts just to sound informed. I want to know what the science means in real life.
I’ve always been solution-centered. I want to identify the core problem, understand what’s driving it, and then figure out what we can actually do about it. Clarity comes first because good solutions depend on understanding what we’re really trying to change.
Psychology has produced valuable research, brilliant clinicians, and important advances. It has also produced some spectacular quackery and spent far too many years handing survivors disconnected pieces while expecting us to somehow assemble the damn puzzle ourselves.
I build systems because I need the puzzle assembled. So do a lot of other survivors.
My Mission
My mission is to give trauma survivors the science, language, maps, tools, clarity, and agency we were never given when we needed them most.
I believe:
- CPTSD is adaptive, not defective
- lived experience belongs in the room
- trauma education should actually lead to usable solutions
- healing requires more than awareness.
- survivors shouldn’t have to spend their entire lives waiting for an institution to eventually catch up before they start rebuilding them
That was the whole reason I began this work in the first place. I wanted to be free. And once I started figuring things out, I shared what I learned.
A Final Note
I built this space because I know what it feels like to crawl around inside a dark cave desperately looking for a flashlight.
For years, I wanted somebody to hand me one. Eventually, I realized I was going to have to start building my own.
That began with a support group, became a website, grew into years of articles, tools, maps, science, and systems, and eventually revealed a larger structure I couldn’t see at the beginning.
Now I share that work with other survivors who are tired of merely understanding why they hurt and are ready to start figuring out what changes next.
Beyond the Site
I also teach trauma science and survivor-centered education on YouTube, where years of science videos, visual explanations, and Trauma Matrix content have become another major part of this work. You can also find me on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and Lemon8.