Amber Trejo, LMFT

Amber Trejo, LMFT Trauma and Attachment Specialist | I help people heal from complex trauma and break the cycle.

There’s a version of you with small hands, wide eyes, heart like an open window who learned far too early that love coul...
11/13/2025

There’s a version of you with small hands, wide eyes, heart like an open window who learned far too early that love could be conditional.

She was soft before the world asked her to be sharp.
Curious before she was told to be quiet.
Bright before she learned to dim herself to survive.

And somewhere along the way, you traded her laughter for control, her wonder for vigilance, her trust for armor.
Not because you were broken but because you were brilliant. You adapted.

But healing, true healing, is a homecoming.
It’s remembering the girl who used to spin in the living room with tangled hair and no sense of shame.

It’s learning to feed her when she’s hungry, to hold her when she’s scared, to protect her from those who have harmed her.

It’s realizing that growing up isn’t about outgrowing her.
It’s about becoming safe enough for her to come back.

To all of you trauma survivors who are finding the little girl again and learning how to be the person she always needed - sending you so much love 💕

Xoxox,


I hope you allow goodness into your life even when it feels scary.Xoxox, P.S. if you want help with this process that is...
11/07/2025

I hope you allow goodness into your life even when it feels scary.

Xoxox,


P.S. if you want help with this process that is rooted in our nervous system comment GUIDE and I’ll send you a free guide I made for you!

10/30/2025

Have you EVER been in the US foster care system? Did you know that you can get access to FREE therapy through ?

I’m talking free weekly sessions indefinitely with a therapist near you.

Therapists who have a heart for people who have experienced trauma and have volunteered to offer pro bono sessions to a client in need.

More information in my stories/highlights if you want to volunteer as a therapist or get free therapy.

Now first of all let me say this, I know I won’t be perfect. I know my kids will have their own hurts and quite possibly...
10/26/2025

Now first of all let me say this, I know I won’t be perfect. I know my kids will have their own hurts and quite possibly even their own trauma.

But one of my biggest fears as a cycle breaker is that my kids will grow up so safe, so loved, so emotionally attuned to, so easily able to access basic necessities - that they’ll think this is the norm.

That they’ll look at someone who’s hurting and not understand.

That they’ll lack the empathy and compassion that were forged in me and their dad through suffering.

Because breaking cycles isn’t just about ending abuse, neglect, or emotional chaos.

It’s about raising children who use their safety as a foundation to serve, not as a pedestal to judge from.

I’ve learned that compassion and empathy aren’t inherited and they also don’t need to only happen in the aftermath of trauma. They can be taught.

Validating their feelings and making them feel loved is vital AND it’s not enough.
True cycle breaking means helping them see their privilege.

It means saying,
“Because you’re safe, you have a responsibility to help those who aren’t.”

So we started early:
teaching them about things like privilege, racism, sexism, and ableism in language they could understand. We didn’t get it right all the time and our process is evolving but we had conversations, we read books, we told stories.

Teaching them about consent, kindness, and the courage to speak up when it’s uncomfortable.

We talk about people’s stories, not just their behaviors.
We practice gratitude and responsibility.

Because the goal isn’t just to raise emotionally safe children.
It’s to raise compassionate humans who understand that healing their lineage also means helping to heal the world around them.

Sending all the cycle breakers on this journey so much love

❤️

For years, I believed I was lazy.I believed something was fundamentally wrong with me because no matter how hard I tried...
10/23/2025

For years, I believed I was lazy.

I believed something was fundamentally wrong with me because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep up.

By the end of high school, I was failing several classes.
I barely made it through community college, dropping out more than once.

Every failure felt like proof that I was the problem.
But what no one told me then and what I didn’t understand until years later, is that who you are when you’re being abused, neglected, and traumatized regularly
is not who you actually are.

My “laziness” was pure exhaustion.
My lack of motivation was a nervous system frozen in survival.

My brain wasn’t wired for thriving; it was wired for detecting danger.

And when your body lives in fight, flight, or freeze long enough, it shuts down everything that isn’t about survival.
Focus, curiosity, hope, even the desire to dream.

Then something changed.

I found safety. Not all at once, but slowly.
And as my body began to believe it wasn’t in danger anymore, my brain chemistry shifted.
Energy came back. Creativity returned.
I started to feel alive for the first time. I went back to school and found it EASY to learn and maintain good grades.

Pete Walker said,

“Effective recovery is unwinding the natural potential you were born with out of your unconscious. This is your innate potential which may be, as yet, unrealized because of your childhood trauma.”

Your potential isn’t gone—it’s been waiting.

And when your body learns safety, you start meeting the person you were always meant to be.

✨ Comment “GUIDE” if you want my FREE guide on how to heal your nervous system after trauma ✨

Is it you?Discipline doesn’t rewire survival.Safety does.Gentle, consistent, body-level safety.The kind that tells your ...
10/22/2025

Is it you?

Discipline doesn’t rewire survival.
Safety does.
Gentle, consistent, body-level safety.
The kind that tells your nervous system,
‘We don’t have to fight for our life anymore.’
Healing isn’t about forcing change it’s about creating enough safety for change to become possible.

If you’ve tried and failed at something it may not be because you don’t have enough “willpower” - in fact - it most likely has nothing to do with that.

Try having compassion for the part of you that developed this response to keep yourself safe at some point. Try thanking that part for all it has done. Try letting that part know that you’re an adult now and you can take it from here. Then add small baby steps that bring safety and connection to your nervous system in a consistent way.

💬 Comment guide and I’ll send you my free guide to healing your nervous system after childhood trauma. It includes a checklist of things you can do that will help increase safety to your body! Hint: none of these things include bullying or shaming yourself for falling short.

We spend years trying to earn the love that should’ve been freely given.We shape-shift, overachieve, overgive, and call ...
10/09/2025

We spend years trying to earn the love that should’ve been freely given.

We shape-shift, overachieve, overgive, and call it “healing.”

But what we’re really trying to do is make sense of pain that was never ours to carry.

Healing is realizing you were never hard to love and nothing you could have done could have made them change.

Real healing begins when you stop performing for love
and start listening to your body’s quiet plea for safety.

👉🏻If you’re ready to learn how to actually calm your nervous system after childhood trauma so you can feel safe, grounded, and present in your own skin again comment GUIDE and I’ll send you a completely free guide to Healing the Nervous System After Childhood Trauma.

10/06/2025

❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

10/06/2025

How can something feel so good and hurt so much at the same time?

10/05/2025

If there's one thing I wish every parent with childhood trauma knew, it would be this👇🏻
Parenting will trigger your wounds.
Not just sometimes-often.
And when those wounds get touched, you may find yourself in an emotional flashback.
That means emotionally, you're no longer in the present moment. You're back in your own trauma. Your body reacts as if you're still there-as if the danger is happening now. In those moments, it's not your adult self running the show. It's the younger version of you, the one who had to survive.
And when that happens, no parenting book or script will save you. It all goes out the window.
Here's what will actually help:
1. Realizing you're in a flashback-not reacting to the current situation.
2. Taking a moment to step away and speak to your younger self: "You're safe now. You're an adult. No one is going to harm you."
3. Grounding techniques that anchor you back in the now.
Some of my biggest triggers were:
1. The overwhelming love I felt for my kids-it made me fee exposed, terrified of losing them.
2. When my children reached the same age I was when trauma or neglect happened. It was like a mirror to my younger self. Seeing how little and vulnerable I truly was.
3. When their meltdowns made me feel trapped, powerless, and like it would never end.

You're not alone in this. You're not failing. You're reliving.

And healing is possible.

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Indianapolis, IN

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