Intro: People often misunderstand people-pleasing. They think it means you’re “too nice” or “too giving.” But people-pleasing is not a personality trait—it’s a survival strategy learned in childhood when your emotional needs were ignored, mocked, dismissed, or punished. A child who grows up unseen and unheard does not learn resilience; they learn adaptation. They learnContinue reading “What People Pleasing Really Is: A Trauma Response Born in a Childhood That Never Felt Safe”
Tag Archives: traumahealing
When Your Life Is Built on Beliefs That Aren’t Yours
For a long time, I didn’t realize that not all beliefs are self-generated. Some are inherited. Some are absorbed. Some are taught so early and so consistently that we never question where they came from — we just assume they’re truth. We’re told how life is supposed to look. How work should feel. What successContinue reading “When Your Life Is Built on Beliefs That Aren’t Yours”
Part 1: When Truth Is Placed in the Wrong Layer
Not all truth heals at the same time.
This piece explores why advice that is technically “right” can still cause harm when it’s applied too early—or to the wrong layer of healing.
Part 4: Boundaries & Alignment
This was the turning point for me—the layer that finally led me to becoming healthy, and ultimately to healing. For me, alignment came before boundaries. Especially at the beginning of my healing journey, when I was consciously trying to understand what was wrong and why my life felt so misaligned. And I fumbled this—often. AlignmentContinue reading “Part 4: Boundaries & Alignment”
Silence & Solitude — Part II
The Clarity It Brings After healing, silence and solitude stop being something you enter — and start becoming something you live from. The noise doesn’t disappear overnight. What changes is how your body responds to it. I started noticing clarity first in my reactions. Things that once sent me into panic, over-explaining, or shutdown no longer had theContinue reading “Silence & Solitude — Part II”
Healthy Comes Before Healing
A Sunday Reflection For a long time, I believed healing meant I had to be “fixed” before I could move forward—before a new relationship, a new job, or a new chapter of life. But healing doesn’t start there. Healing begins with becoming healthy. When you are unhealthy—mentally, emotionally, or spiritually—you don’t heal. You stay stuck.Continue reading “Healthy Comes Before Healing”
Healing Layers — Part Four
From Survival to Living When I was in survival mode, I don’t know that I consciously thought about it this way at the time. But looking back, survival looked like constant planning, rigid structure, and never truly resting. Everything had to be done by a certain time—usually by Sunday evening—so I could finally “relax.” SaturdaysContinue reading “Healing Layers — Part Four”
Healing Layers – Part 3: Waiting, Boundaries & Integration
Integration was the part of healing I didn’t expect. After the unraveling… after the awareness… after the realization that so much of my life had been lived in survival… There came a quiet. At first, it felt unfamiliar — almost unsettling — because for so long my body had only known chaos, anxiety, and constantContinue reading “Healing Layers – Part 3: Waiting, Boundaries & Integration”
The Honest Healing Journey with Kristi 