Traci Powell NP

12/01/2025

A lot of people have heard that depression comes from a “chemical imbalance, ” and sadly most believe it.

A new review shows this isn’t true.

This doesn’t surprise me, but it might surprise you.

Here’s what it really means:
Depression isn’t the main problem — it’s a signal that something deeper is going on.
Just like a fever tells us something in the body needs attention, depression tells us the mind or heart is hurting — maybe from stress, old pain, or things that happened long ago.

And if you’ve been dealing with depression for years…
Or if someone even told you that you’re “treatment-resistant”…

Please hear this:
It’s not you.

No one has helped you find the real root of your pain yet.
Once you discover it, you can heal. You can move forward.

And here’s the hopeful part:
This kind of deep healing doesn’t have to take months or years.
In my practice, people fly in from all over the country, and we do this work together in just 3 days — and their lives change in powerful ways.

You are not broken. You were not born with a “chemical imbalance.”

You’ve just been carrying something without the right support.
If you’re tired of feeling this way and ready to feel lighter, freer, and more joyful, you’re welcome to reach out. This is exactly what I help people do.

You don’t have to stay stuck.
And you don’t have to do it alone.

Here’s the article, if you’d like to read it….

The serotonin hypothesis of depression is still influential. We aimed to synthesise and evaluate evidence on whether depression is associated with lowered serotonin concentration or activity in a systematic umbrella review of the principal relevant areas of research. PubMed, EMBASE and PsycINFO were...

01/07/2025

🌟 Exciting News! 🌟
I’m beyond thrilled and honored to be featured on the cover of H.A.N.N.A. Magazine!🎉 This journey of helping others heal from trauma has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and it’s truly overwhelming to realize the crazy path I’ve been on these past few years that has lead to this.
To be highlighted in this way is a true testament to the power of healing, growth, and resilience. 💪🏼✨
Thank you to everyone who has supported me on this new direction in my life — my family, friends, clients, and colleagues. I hope this feature will inspire others to take the first step toward their own healing journey and step into living life authentically and unapologetically.
Check it out the digital copy online at www.SheRisesStudies.com now or find the print version on Amazon this Friday and let me know what you think! 💖

12/20/2024

09/14/2024

04/29/2024

Life lessons from Snoopy & Charlie Brown

03/23/2024

🌸 Good Friday, beautiful souls! 🌸

Welcome to another day of empowerment and growth here at The Rebuilt Woman. Today, let's take a moment to reflect on the incredible strength within each of you as you continue your journey of healing and transformation. 💖

At The Rebuilt Woman, my mission is to provide a safe space for women to find accelerated healing from trauma, depression and anxiety so they can rebuild their lives from the inside out. The journey to healing isn't always easy, but remember, you are never alone. Together, we are stronger than any obstacle that stands in our way.

Here are a few reminders to carry with you today:

1️⃣ You have everything you need right inside you: Despite the challenges you've faced, you have the power within you to overcome and thrive. Sometimes, you may just need a little guidance to help you find it. 😘

2️⃣ Embrace Self-Compassion: Be gentle with yourself on this journey. Healing takes time, and it's okay to take things one step at a time. Practice self-compassion and treat yourself with the same kindness you would offer to a dear friend. 🌺

3️⃣ Celebrate Progress, Big or Small: Every step forward, no matter how small, is a victory worth celebrating. Take pride in how far you've come and have faith in the journey ahead. ✨

4️⃣ Connect with Community: Surround yourself with supportive individuals who uplift and inspire you. Our community here at The Rebuilt Woman is here to cheer you on every step of the way. 👭

5️⃣ Never Give Up: Remember, the road to healing may have twists and turns, but don't lose sight of your destination. You have the strength and power to overcome any obstacle that comes your way. 💪

As you navigate through today, know that you are worthy, you are loved, and you are capable of creating the life you deserve. Together, let's continue to rebuild, empower, and inspire one another. 🌟

Wishing you a day filled with love, light, and limitless possibilities! ✨💕

02/28/2024

Hey everyone!

Wanted to share this answer to post I just made in another group.
The person wanted to know how to help a patient who has a lot of anxiety/panic attacks. I used this method frequently with my clients (and even people in my life!) and it works amazingly fast.

So, if you’re interested who deals with a lot of anxiety or panic attacks, this is a quick simple way to help yourself during times of distress. It’s called pendulation.

Pendulation is a technique that works wonders. It’s a key technique from Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE). SE is a therapeutic approach that is informed by our biology and our inborn ability to heal from trauma. This technique is about noticing the feeling in your body and noticing how that feeling changes and often brings relief within minutes.

Here are the steps:

* When you are feeling distress/panic, start by noticing how you feel physically. Where do they feel the distress in your body? What does it feel like? Then take a moment and breath into the feeling. Special Note: If you feel that you might become overwhelmed by focusing on the distress directly, focus on just a little piece at the edge instead. Then score your distressing feeling from 1-10, with 10 begin the most distressing. What is your level of distress?

* Next either scan their body to find a place that feels neutral or calm, or if don’t think you have any calm parts, focus on your pinky toenail. Notice what that space in your body feels like. Is there anxiety and/or distress there? There shouldn’t be as you have no nerves in that toenail, so it’s not able to carry panic and anxiety. As you notice that about your toenail, what level of intensity would you score it from 1-10? (Note- it should always be considerably lower, if not, find a new body part, such as your eyelashes. I find that toenails and eyelashes are great because they hold no nerves that can contribute to the anxiety). Stay with that calm feeling for a moment, really experience that calmness in that toenail and take 3 big breaths as you focus on teh calm body part.

* Next, scan slowly back up from the calm body part to the part that felt the distress (this is the pendulating). Check in and ask what the level of intensity is in that spot now. It should be lower. Again stay with the distress for a few breaths. Then, shift your attention back to the part of your body where there is no distress. Check in to be sure the distress level there is still low and take 3 good deep breaths into that space. Then shift back to the original place of distress and check in on what the level of distress is from 1-10. As continue to pendulate, the distress level should continue to decrease and eventually be down to a 0 or 1.

This is a very simple technique that shows you that you they have the ability within yourself to significantly decrease your anxiety. Often you can believe you have no control when severe anxiety sets in, because it feels like it’s taken over your whole body, but pendulation helps you see that you do have places of calm and can use those place to help relax the stressed feelings. It’s a great exercise that can work within minutes and brain major relief. Give it a try!

11/04/2023

My client: “Isn’t it amazing how resilient kids are? I mean I lived through all kinds of emotional and physical abuse, yet as a 12 year-old, I figured out how to deal with it by becoming a rebel, smoking pot and running away.”

Me: “I can see how it looks like that was resilience, but in fact it wasn’t. The reality is resiliency has to be modeled for children by their caregivers. It is learned. Resilience is the ability to cope with a negative event and then grow after facing adversity and stress. No one taught you healthy coping skills, so were not able to respond to hard situations in a way the helped you through and then no one around you helped you cope after bad things happened. Not only that, they were the actual cause of the bad things! So, instead of being able to be resilient, your child mind found creative ways to escape and disconnect from what happened to you by lashing out and numbing out so you could get on with life. That’s called dissociation. Because your brain had no other way to handle the stress you were under, to protect you it led you to reach for things that would help you mentally escape, because physical escape was not possible. Dissociation is resourceful as a child, but it’s not resilience. The trouble is, in adulthood, dissociation can become problematic. It disconnects us from ourselves and others, and a lack of resilience causes us to unravel when hard things happen, even if the hard thing is something mild. Adults lacking resilience will, in fact, cry over spilled milk, or possibly even rage and flip out in reaction to even the smallest challenges.”

Client: She has no verbal response, but I can see the wheels turning in her mind helping her brain become more open to a different perspective of her childhood and of her long believed idea that she was always a rebellious problem child who her parents had trouble coping with. Maybe, just perhaps, she was never the problem. Maybe they didn’t have the skills they needed to be able to teach her how to manage tough moments.

Friends, please don’t believe the lie. Children are NOT born resilient. Just because you see a child go through something hard and they are still running around like a kid doesn’t mean they are resilient. They have no choice but to go on with life, but that doesn’t mean hard times & stress aren’t affecting them. Resiliency is learned and developed over time when the people around them model what it looks like. If a parent gets a flat tire and starts flipping out, cussing and melting down over the inconvenience, the child learns when inconvenient things happen, it’s hard to deal with them, but if that same child’s parent gets a flat tire, shows a little frustration but then calmly says to the kid, “Hey buddy, this is annoying and disappointing that we won’t get to the zoo as quickly as we’d like, but we can get it fixed and be on our way soon,” the kid learns life can bring disappointment & challenges but it doesn’t have to totally derail us. When kids experience and witness repeated healthy reactions and emotions related to life’s hard moments, resilience and healthy coping is created. When this is lacking in the child’s life, the child’s mind & body will create alternative ways to cope.

Kids look resilient because they are great at hiding how they’re feeling, especially if they live in a home where their feelings and needs don’t matter or no one has time to pay attention to them. Some kids may appear resilient to others because maybe they don’t act out after something bad happens, but that is not resilience. It is shut down. They may have learned it’s not safe to speak how they are feeling, so they hold it all inside until one day it manifests as an anxiety problem, which then unfortunately, all too often leads to the kid as being seen as having a personal issue (he/she’s just an anxious child) when the reality is the issue was created in the same way resilience could have been created. Whatever repeated parental responses a child experiences will determine which way it goes. Resilience happens by repeatedly having a constant, loving, comforting, secure presence. Anxiety happens when repeated examples of poor coping and overreactions by parents during adversity causes stress and fear in the child. Anxiety develops when the fear has not been relieved, not because of a personal failure innate in the kid.

What kind of response to adversity are you modeling for your kids? Are you raising future anxious kids who will become anxious adults who believe they are the problem, or are you raising kids who will be prepared to handle life’s many challenges with grace and ease, who grow up to be secure in themselves and their ability to respond to life’s continued big and small stressors? If the answer is the first one, there’s a good chance you too didn’t have someone to model resiliency for you. Please reach out for help to learn to handle stress better, if not for you, then for the sake of your kids and their futures. 💜

06/09/2023

I am thrilled to announce that I had the incredible opportunity to be a guest on the Label Free Podcast! 🎧✨

Click below to join me and host Deanna Kuempel as we dive deep into fascinating discussions about personal growth, self-discovery, healing past hurts and most importantly living label free!!🌱💪

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In this episode of Label Free Podcast, host Deanna Radulescu interviews PREMIERE 'VIP' guest Traci Powell, a dual board certified neonatal and psychiatric me...

05/21/2023

We all need to let off steam every now and then, but it's important to distinguish between healthy expression and harmful patterns. Please remember, venting should be a good idea for relief and facilitate problem-solving. If you notice these signs in yourself or others, it may be worth reflecting on how you communicate frustrations. Strive for empathy, understanding, and constructive dialogue to ensure relationships remain healthy and supportive.