What Complex Trauma Looks Like in Daily Life
I read What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo and kept thinking about how much of it I see in the therapy room.
There’s something about this book that doesn’t just land in your mind, it lands in your body.
As a therapist working with women who feel overwhelmed, anxious, and constantly “on,” I read a lot about trauma. I understand the language, nervous system, triggers, attachment, but reading Stephanie Foo’s story felt closer to what many clients try to describe when they say, “I don’t know why I react this way… I just do.”
Complex trauma, often called Complex PTSD, isn’t about one event. It’s what happens when there wasn’t consistent safety over time. And the part that’s hardest to explain is that it doesn’t stay in the past.
It shows up in anxiety that doesn’t fully make sense.
In overthinking everything after a conversation.
In feeling like you’re too much in relationships, or like you have to hold everything together for everyone else.
I see this often in therapy with women and mothers here in Greenville. On the outside, they’re functioning, showing up, doing what needs to be done. But internally, it feels like a constant mental marathon, like their mind never really turns off.
What Stephanie captures so honestly is the toll of living like that.
Not just the big, obvious pain, but the accumulation of it. The exhaustion of always scanning, always anticipating, always trying to get it right so nothing goes wrong. The way your body reacts before your mind can even catch up.
And then there’s the part we don’t talk about enough in trauma therapy: how hard healing actually is.
Not inspiring hard. Not something that resolves in a few sessions.
The kind of work that asks you to slow down, notice your patterns, and gently begin to respond differently, even when every part of you wants to go back to what’s familiar.
In her journey, Stephanie explores different paths, therapy, diagnosis, relationships that feel safer, and still, there’s no clean fix. And that’s what makes it feel real.
Because healing from trauma often looks like small shifts:
Pausing instead of reacting immediately.
Staying present in a conversation that would’ve felt overwhelming before.
Beginning to feel your emotions instead of pushing them away or overmanaging them.
It’s subtle. And when you’re in it, it can feel like nothing is changing.
But it is.
There’s also something important in how she writes about relationships. When your early experiences taught you that closeness isn’t safe, connection can feel both deeply wanted and deeply threatening.
I see this dynamic often in couples work. One partner reaches, the other pulls back, not because they don’t care, but because their nervous system is trying to protect them. And without understanding that pattern, it’s easy to feel stuck.
Healing, then, becomes not just about insight, but about experiencing something different in relationship. Learning, slowly, that it might be possible to feel safe with someone.
Not all at once. But enough.
What stayed with me after finishing the book wasn’t a sense of resolution. It was a deep respect for how much effort this kind of healing takes, and how often that work is invisible.
And maybe also a quiet kind of hope.
Not the kind that promises everything will be okay.
But the kind that says: something can shift.
That with the right support, trauma therapy can help you understand your reactions, feel more grounded in your body, and begin to relate to yourself, and others, in a different way.
If you’ve ever felt like your mind won’t stop, like you’re carrying too much, or like you’re stuck in patterns you don’t fully understand, you’re not alone in that.
And there are ways to begin.
