04/19/2026
💭Allow yourself to know what you know. An excerpt from a paper I wrote on trauma:

An individual’s need to push trauma away as to not remember the distressful event is a natural defense behavior known as the defense cascade and includes fight, flight, freeze, and faint (Kozlowska, Walker, McLean, & Carrive, 2015). Trauma embedded over time will only lead to increased problems and emotional pain. Renowned trauma researcher Bessel Van der Kolk (2014) writes, “As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage” (p. 233).
