This week on Not That Girl Anymore, trauma therapist Dawn Bouillon shares a deeply personal reflection on talking to her daughters about abuse, racism, and the cultural headlines impacting children.

How do we teach our kids to stay human in a world that often rewards silence?

How do we talk about injustice without teaching them to look away?

Dawn explores trauma reactivation, collective grief, protecting children, and why believing victims matters. If you’ve been feeling heavy or activated by recent events, you’re not alone — your nervous system remembers.

Stay human. Don’t look away.

When empathy is labeled weakness, humanity is at risk. A trauma therapist unpacks faith, fear, moral injury, and the cost of silencing compassion.

In this powerful and deeply compassionate episode of Not That Girl Anymore, trauma therapist and coach Dawn Bouillon addresses a growing and unsettling cultural narrative: the idea that empathy is weakness, manipulation, or even sin. Speaking from both clinical expertise and lived experience, Dawn unpacks how empathy has been distorted—particularly in faith-based spaces—and why framing compassion as moral failure causes real psychological, spiritual, and collective harm. This episode explores the difference between empathy and agreement, discernment and fear, obedience and humanity. Dawn connects empathy to nervous system attunement, moral injury, and trauma, revealing how suppressing compassion trains people to distrust their own conscience and disconnect from their bodies. With honesty and humility, she shares her own story of being taught to override love in the name of faith—and the profound healing that began when she trusted her empathy again. This conversation is for anyone wrestling with faith, deconstruction, moral injury, spiritual trauma, or the exhaustion of trying to stay human in a hardened world. If you feel tender, conflicted, or deeply affected by suffering—and have been told that means you’re weak—this episode is a grounding reminder: empathy is not a flaw. It is wisdom, humanity, and courage.

Why Strong Women Get Caught in Abuse

When Love Becomes Control — Part 3

In Part 3 of our When Love Becomes Control series, trauma therapist and coach Dawn Bouillon answers one of the most painful and confusing questions so many women ask themselves:

“How did I end up here?”

This episode gently dismantles the myth that abuse happens because a woman is weak, naïve, or unaware. Instead, Dawn explores the hard truth: abuse often targets strength—empathy, loyalty, endurance, emotional intelligence, and the ability to carry a lot without falling apart.

You’ll learn how survival skills developed early in life can be weaponized in controlling relationships, how psychological layering quietly deepens over time, and why clarity alone doesn’t always create the capacity to leave. Through a trauma-informed lens, this conversation explains how the nervous system prioritizes survival and familiarity over freedom—until safety is present.

If you’ve ever blamed yourself for staying, hoped someone would love you back into safety, or wondered why your strength didn’t protect you, this episode is for you.

This is not about becoming stronger.

It’s about becoming safer.