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June 29 - November 29, 2025
Beauty After Bruises claims that the way to fix these emotional flashbacks is to ground yourself. So the next time I found myself in a panicky and depressive state, I read their Grounding 101 tips: Open your eyes. Put your feet solidly on the floor. Look at your hands and feet. Recognize they are adult hands and feet. Name five things you can see and hear and smell.
The default mode network is so called because if you put people into an MRI machine for an hour and let their minds wander, the DMN is the system of connections in their brains that will light up. It’s arguably the default state of human consciousness, of boredom and daydreaming. In essence, our ego.
And scientists have found that some people who suffer from depression, anxiety, or C-PTSD have overactive DMNs. Which makes sense. The DMN is the seat of responsibility and insecurity. It can be a punishing force when it over-ruminates and gets caught in a toxic loop of obsession and self-doubt.
The DMN can be silenced significantly by antidepressants or hallucinogenic substances. But the most efficient cure for an overactive DMN is mindfulness.
“See, for people who are traumatized, all they know is rupture,” Dr. Ham explained. “They always have to come to the abuser with an apology. But it’s never about them having their own needs. It’s not a mutuality thing. It’s a one-way street.”
“So for people who are traumatized, that means they’re constantly apologizing…but they’re not having their own issues witnessed and repaired. Or they’re constantly demanding an apology and not—” “Recognizing the other person. Right!”
What is important is to approach all of these interactions with curiosity for what that truth is, not fear. He said I should approach difficult conversations with an attitude of “What is hurting you?” instead of “Have I hurt you?”
Being healed isn’t about feeling nothing. Being healed is about feeling the appropriate emotions at the appropriate times and still being able to come back to yourself. That’s just life.”
Dr. Ham would tell me that PTSD is only a mental illness in times of peace. The whole point of PTSD is to prepare you for being on the verge of death at any moment. My parents prepared me to face a vicious world with danger around every corner.
Because objectively, PTSD is an adaptation, a mechanism our genius bodies evolved to help us survive.
Much of my research had stated that people with PTSD had shrunken prefrontal cortices—that experiencing triggers often shut down the logical centers of our brains and left us irrational and incapable of complex thought. But Siegle told me he’d discovered that research to be flawed. He’d found that for many people with complex PTSD, the exact opposite was happening. In moments of intense stress and trauma, our prefrontal cortices were actually far more active.
“As far as we can tell with complex PTSD, in really stressful situations, you’ve got this coping skill that allows the prefrontal cortex to just shut off some of our evolutionary freak-out mechanisms and instead have high levels of prefrontal activity. So our bodies stop reacting.”
“If running away has never been an option for you, you have to be cunning and do other things. So it’s like, this is time to bring all of our resources online, because we’re going to survive this.”
People with C-PTSD might have an outsized, gnarly freak-out about a cockroach in the house or a flash of anger on someone’s face. But in times of real danger—when someone furious is coming toward us with an actual machete in their hand, ready to kill—we face the problem head-on, while everyone else is cowering.
When it came time for Siegle to name this phenomenon—the dissociated state that means you don’t always have emotions that are totally appropriate for a situation—he called it Blunted and Discordant Affect Sensitivity Syndrome. The acronym for this? BADASS.
“The vision was always, you know, the little girl comes into the clinic after being abused and totally has no self-esteem. And the clinician just says, ‘Well, maybe you’re just a little bit BADASS.’ That’s where I want to go with that.”
He frequently canceled plans without rescheduling new times to see her and didn’t call when he promised to. He blamed it on his busy schedule, but his flakiness was driving her increasingly up the wall. “Is this normal?” she texted me every few days. “I don’t want to seem needy or weird. But I can’t sleep. I feel all this anxiety and rage. It’s all I think about.” “Totally normal! Of course you feel that way. Most people would feel bad about this. But your C-PTSD means that you especially value stability and reliability!”
You pushed me to be authentic in my interactions with him. You had a level of insight that I’ve never gotten from anyone, even other therapists! And you never made me feel ashamed. It was such a relief and is still such a relief. I’m actually able to date now and have fun! You’re my knight in shining armor, Foo!”
How about that. My struggles with C-PTSD made me more empathetic. They made me more attuned to what people needed and uniquely skilled in comforting them.
I’ve learned that the beast of C-PTSD is a wily shape-shifter. Just when I believe I can see the ghoul for exactly what it is, it dissipates like a puff of smoke, then slithers into another crevice in the back of my mind.
Sometimes the beast requires new weapons—new forms of IFS or CBT, new mantras, new boundaries.
So this is healing, then, the opposite of the ambiguous dread: fullness. I am full of anger, pain, peace, love, of horrible shards and exquisite beauty, and the lifelong challenge will be to balance all of those things, while keeping them in the circle.
I accept the lifelong battle and its limitations now. Even though I must always carry the weight of grief on my back, I have become strong. My legs and shoulders are long, hard bundles of muscle. The burden is lighter than it was. I no longer cower and crawl my way through this world. Now, I hitch my pack up. And as I wait for the beast to come, I dance.
