Practical guidance for finding and working with trauma-informed professionals. Covers therapist certifications, treatment modalities, support groups, and what to do when your spouse won’t get help.
Sooner or later, someone raises the question: are betrayed partners codependent? It usually arrives gently — a counselor leans forward, kind-faced, and says something like: I wonder whether there’s some codependency here we should look at. And something in you goes very quiet. That question — are betrayed partners codependent — has an answer now. … Read more
The specialist quoted you a number and you said you would think about it. You have thought about it. It is more than the car payment. So you closed the tab, and the searching stopped, and three months have gone by with the symptoms doing what symptoms do. There is a great deal of ground … Read more
There are two options in front of you. One meets at a church twenty minutes away and describes itself as a ministry for hurting wives. The other is a clinician-facilitated group with no faith framing at all, and it costs money. Whichever you pick, some part of you expects to be judged for it. Choosing … Read more
Two days. One therapist, just the two of you, six or eight hours a day. The website says it delivers six months of therapy in a weekend, and the price is somewhere between four and ten thousand dollars. You are three weeks past discovery, you cannot sleep, and part of you wants to put it … Read more
You have asked four times. Once calmly, once crying, once at eleven at night in a way you regretted by morning, and once by leaving an article open on his laptop. Each time it ended in the same place — him defensive, you further from where you started, and the actual question never answered. How … Read more
You have found someone with the right letters after her name. Before you book, it is reasonable to want to know what those letters mean about the hour you are about to sit in. Not the requirements — those are mapped elsewhere. What the training contains, and what a certified partner trauma therapist does differently … Read more
His number is in your phone. You have opened the message four times and closed it four times. Part of you wants to tell him because he is your pastor and this is the worst thing that has ever happened to you, and that is exactly what pastors are for. Part of you is doing … Read more
You have worked out what the letters mean. Now you are looking at a calendar, a bank balance, and a husband who has agreed to go to counseling but has not agreed to much else, and you need to decide who books an appointment first. This is the practical question underneath the alphabet. Not what … Read more
You did the responsible thing. You found a counselor, you got him to agree to go, you sat on a sofa in a quiet room with a box of tissues on the side table and you told a stranger the worst thing that has ever happened to you. And somehow you left feeling worse than … Read more
You have a list of names. Some came from a friend who has been through this, some from a search you made at two in the morning, some from a directory your church handed you. Every name has letters trailing behind it. CSAT. CPTT. CCPS. LMFT. LPC. APSATS-trained. Certified Partner Coach. You are trying to … Read more