Making the Whole Beautiful

A companion to your relational trauma recovery journey.

Annie Wright LMFT

You're Not Crazy; You're Having a Feeling Memory

Anyone who has been disturbed by strong emotional and somatic sensations to innocuous events may benefit from understanding how their trauma memories are stored.

It’s Not All Your Parents’ Fault

Personal Perspective: To understand how and why we endured relational trauma, we need to consider a wider lens of social justice issues.

Cultivating Creative Moments of Healing for Yourself

Cultivating creative moments of healing can be a powerful intervention to help us overcome our relational trauma histories. Here’s how to do it.

The Unique Pain of Random Rewards and Variable Parenting

Very often, those from relational trauma backgrounds will turn to the very people who failed them for support. Again and again. Here's how to break this pattern.

The Importance of Play and Fun in Relational Trauma Recovery

Play and fun are important parts of relational trauma recovery work. But knowing what feels like play and fun can be very hard if you come from a trauma background.

Keeping Yourself Physically Safe Is a Healing Task

If you come from a relational trauma background, developing and growing the skill of keeping yourself safe as an adult is a critical healing task.

Addressing Your Health Is a Fundamental Self-Care Skill

Relational trauma survivors often struggle with attending to their medical health as a fundamental self-care skill. Today we explore why this is, and how to overcome it.

Becoming a Parent Can Trigger Grief and Healing

It’s normal and natural to feel your grief triggered again after becoming a parent. This isn’t a bad thing. Here's why.

An Inability to Visualize a Positive Future Can Be a Trauma Sign

If you struggle to envision a positive future for yourself, you're not alone. Here's how to support yourself.

You Don’t Need to Be “Fully Healed” Before Living Life

A common belief for those who come from relational trauma backgrounds is that you need to be "fully healed" before pursuing your dreams. But this belief is false.

How Do I Actively Grieve My Past?

Grieving the abstract loss of your abusive or dysfunctional childhood is a critical healing step. But what does it mean to actively mourn your childhood?

What Is the Window of Tolerance, and Why Is It So Important?

Expanding one's "Window of Tolerance" is a critical healing task. Here's what that means and how to actually achieve it.

Making Sense of Complex Relational Trauma

Here are the symptoms that can come from such stressors.

How to Recover From the Effects of Narcissistic Parenting

If you suspect your parent was or is a narcissist, you may have been negatively impacted. Here's what you might experience as an adult and how to overcome it.

Was Your Parent a Narcissist?

A spectrum of troubling traits, and a range of effects on children that can stretch into adulthood.

How Trauma Can Impact You, and How to Overcome It

How to better identify your own trauma history, and how to overcome it.

You Can Be a High Achiever Even with a Trauma Background

There are wide misconceptions about how trauma should affect people, and what a trauma survivor should look like. It's time for a reframing.

Collusion Can Be a Form of Abuse, Too

Abuse doesn't just happen at the hands of an obvious abuser; it can also happen through the actions or inaction of those who collude with the abuse.

How Do I Actively Re-mother Myself?

We will fail and disappoint ourselves sometimes, but by acknowledging the concept of the “good-enough mother,” we can aim for good, not perfect.

5 Signs That Your Childhood May Have Negatively Impacted You

If you're unsure as to whether or not your childhood was traumatic, remember: No one is an expert on your experience but you.

Was My Childhood Traumatic?

Many people question if their childhoods were traumatic. How can someone concretely know? By both looking within and widening one's lens.

What Is Remothering, and Why Is it Important?

The point is to have different experiences with yourself and with others to help you fill in developmental gaps or unmet needs from childhood.

How Parts Work Helps Us Get to Know Ourselves

Parts Work is a therapeutic lens that assumes that each of us has many different parts to our minds and psyches.

10 Reflections on Relational Trauma Recovery Work

We are geared for growth, wholeness, and healing. All we need are the right conditions.

Creating Your Second-Chance Family of Choice

A second-chance family-of choice is made up of the people we choose to be in our lives versus who we were forced to be around when we were young.

Moving Beyond the Role of Identified Patient

You can best take care of yourself by clarifying your own boundaries, learning how to assert them, and tending to your emotions.

How Does Someone Become a Family's "Identified Patient"?

Through no fault of their own, some individuals — typically children — are forced to carry the burden of a family's system failures.

The Multifaceted Causes of C-PTSD, and Ways to Heal

There are relational, cognitive, somatic, emotional, and life skill levels of work to recover from C-PTSD.

Giving Trauma Its Proper Name

PTSD usually occurs after a single traumatic incident, whereas C-PTSD usually develops as a result of repeated trauma.

How Do I Know What Brings Me Joy?

Knowing what brings us joy can feel particularly hard if we come from relational trauma backgrounds. Here’s how to discover what brings you joy.

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