Have you ever wondered why punishment and crisis response alone fail to keep children safe?

In this episode of The Sensitivity Doctor, Dr. Amelia Kelley is joined by Scarlett Lewis, the mother of six-year-old Jesse Lewis, who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy. Scarlett shares how the message her son left behind, “nurturing, healing, love,” became the foundation of a global trauma-informed movement focused on prevention, nervous system regulation, and relational healing.

Grounded in neuroscience and lived experience, this conversation explores how invisibility, hopelessness, and chronic nervous system threat contribute to violence and distress, and how trauma-informed education can support sensitive and neurodivergent children before crisis occurs.

Key takeaways:

• Trauma-informed education helps prevent violence by addressing nervous system dysregulation early.
• Feeling unseen or unsafe at school increases risk for emotional distress and aggression.
• Nervous system regulation skills reduce bullying, reactivity, and chronic stress in children.
• Post-traumatic growth shows healing is possible after profound loss.
• School safety improves when prevention focuses on belonging, not punishment.

Links and Resources:

• Choose Love Movement: https://chooselovemovement.org
• How We Can Finally Stop School Tragedies: A Critical Conversation with Mark Hulsewé

Connect with Dr. Amelia Kelley: About | Dr. Kelley's Books | Instagram

Have you ever felt disconnected from life, emotionally exhausted, or like you don’t quite belong anywhere? In this episode of The Sensitivity Doctor, Dr. Amelia Kelley is joined by Gina Cavalier to explore how trauma, chronic isolation, and prolonged survival mode impact the nervous system, physical health, and emotional regulation, sometimes contributing to suicidal ideation.

Blending neuroscience, lived experience, and embodied healing, this conversation offers grounding and hope for highly sensitive and neurodivergent listeners who feel worn down by life. The episode closes with a gentle colour-based meditation designed to support nervous system regulation, restore energy, and reconnect you to a felt sense of safety and belonging.

Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicidal ideation. While some themes are heavy, the focus is on healing, support, and hope.

Key takeaways:

• Belonging is a biological nervous system need, and prolonged disconnection signals threat rather than personal failure.
• Suicidal ideation often emerges from chronic survival stress and thwarted belonging, not weakness or impulsivity.
• Trauma healing requires regulating the nervous system through embodied and relational safety, not insight alone.
• High sensitivity and neurodiversity can intensify the effects of relational trauma, especially when emotional needs are repeatedly dismissed.
• With safety, connection, and compassionate support, it is possible to move from survival mode into a life that feels meaningful and alive.

Connect with Gina Cavalier

• Website: https://ginacavalier.com
• Instagram: @gina_cavalier
• Book: Planet Walking: A Handbook for the Living

Connect with Dr. Amelia Kelley: About | Dr. Kelley's Books | Instagram

In this powerful episode of The Sensitivity Doctor, Dr. Amelia Kelley sits down with Terry Tateossian to explore how early trauma, immigration stress, and chronic survival mode can shape women’s hormonal health, emotional regulation, and midlife well-being. Terry shares her deeply personal story of escaping a communist country, navigating puberty in a refugee camp, and later reclaiming her body through mindful movement, nutrition, and self-compassion, offering hope and practical insight for anyone healing from trauma across the lifespan.

Key takeaways:

• A trauma therapist’s lens helps explain how early survival stress can disrupt hormonal development and long-term nervous system regulation.
• Gaslighting recovery begins when women learn to trust their bodies instead of dismissing emotional or physical symptoms.
• Working with an HSP therapist can support sensitive nervous systems overwhelmed by chronic stress and hormonal shifts.
• An ADHD therapist for adults can help distinguish natural energy and curiosity from trauma-driven overworking patterns.
• Somatic therapy for trauma reconnects the body and emotions, allowing healing beyond willpower or logic.

Connect with Terry Tateossian

• Website: thehouseofrose.com
• Instagram @how.good.can.it.get
• Midlife Bestie: YouTube | TikTok

Connect with Dr. Amelia Kelley: About | Dr. Kelley's Books | Instagram

In this powerful and deeply human conversation, Dr. Amelia Kelley is joined by actress, podcaster, and mental health advocate Alessandra Torresani for an honest exploration of motherhood, identity, and healing after birth trauma.

Together, they unpack what it means to parent without disappearing. This includes caring deeply for your child while still staying connected to who you are. Alessandra shares her experience of traumatic postpartum complications, medical gaslighting, and the emotional toll of losing trust in her body. She opens up about how returning to dance, her first love, became a vital part of her healing. This was not as exercise or performance, but as a way to reconnect with her body and nervous system.

This episode also dives into mom guilt, self care, community building, body image, screen time, and the powerful impact parents have when they model self respect, strength, and emotional regulation for their children.

Whether you are a parent feeling stretched thin, someone healing from birth or medical trauma, or simply navigating how to stay connected to yourself while caring for others, this conversation offers validation, insight, and permission to take up space again.

Key Takeaways

• You do not have to disappear to be a good parent
• Trauma lives in the body and healing often requires movement, not just talking
• Listening to your intuition with medical providers matters
• Modeling self care helps children feel safer, not abandoned
• There is no timeline for reclaiming yourself and readiness is personal
• Community can be created, even when it is not inherited

Connect with Alessandra Torresani

• Podcast: Emotional Support Pod
• Instagram: @alessandratorresani

Connect with Dr. Amelia Kelley: About | Dr. Kelley's Books | Instagram

As we step into a new year, I’m joined by Dr. Gina Anderson, learning scientist, TEDx speaker, and founder of Luma Brighter Learning, for a conversation that will help you rethink everything you have ever believed about resolutions, self growth, and connection.

Instead of chasing perfection or pressuring ourselves with rigid goals, Gina invites us into a gentler and scientifically grounded approach to change: one daily connection and one daily moment of learning.

Together, we explore what connection actually looks like (and why it often needs to start with yourself), how to access your “true self” through quiet reflection, and why the brain lights up differently when we learn or feel seen in community. Gina also shares powerful insights on neuroplasticity, internal warmth as a signal of emotional safety, and why your breath is the one thing you can always return to.

If you have ever struggled with resolutions, self esteem, nervous system regulation, or feeling disconnected after trauma, this episode offers a compassionate roadmap for rebuilding your inner world one small moment at a time.

Key Takeaways:

• Resolutions often set us up for self judgment. Replacing them with learning and connection creates sustainable growth.

• Connection does not always require other people. One of the most powerful forms is connecting with your own mind.

• Emotional “warmth” can be a real physiological signal that you are tapping into your true self.

• Neuroplasticity shows that your brain can change, even after trauma, through intentional practice and connection.

• Three simple practices can transform your year: connect with one person, get your body moving, and give yourself a daily “sunshine message.”

Connect with Dr. Gina Anderson:

TEDx Talk: The power of being present

Website: lumabrighterlearning.com

Personal Website: learningwithgina.com

Sunshine Project: ripplesofsunshine.com

Instagram: gina.anderson.ceo

LinkedIn: Dr. Gina Anderson

Connect with Dr. Amelia Kelley: About | Dr. Kelley's Books | Instagram

In this compassionate and eye-opening episode, Amelia sits down with breakup and relationship coach Cole Zesiger, who has helped millions online learn how to navigate heartbreak with clarity, emotional safety, and self-respect. Cole shares the deeply personal story of his early divorce, the patterns of anxious attachment that shaped his relationships, and the unexpected journey that led him to rebuild his life and help thousands do the same.

Together, Amelia and Cole break down why breakups feel neurologically like withdrawal, what “euphoric recall” has to do with your ex, why the holidays intensify loneliness, and how to make the no-contact rule actually work without feeling like you are losing your mind. Cole also explains the biggest mistakes people make right after a breakup, the surprising science behind why your brain becomes obsessed with your ex, and how to rebuild a life that feels bigger, safer, and more meaningful than the one you are grieving.

Whether you are in the early shock, the confusing in-between, or trying to stop the cycle of “one more text,” this episode offers compassionate insight, grounded strategies, and the hope you might not realize you need right now.

Key Takeaways:

• Why your brain treats heartbreak like survival mode and how evolutionary wiring makes you want to chase your ex even when you logically know better.
• The real reason no-contact is so hard and how to create a plan that protects your emotional and neurological energy.
• What euphoric recall is and why your brain only replays the good memories plus how to ground yourself in the full truth of the relationship.
• How to rebuild your life after a breakup by focusing on the pillars that shape your sense of identity, connection, and purpose.
• Why the holidays intensify heartbreak and practical ways to lean on safe relationships, structure, and self-compassion to get through the season.

Connect with Cole Zesiger:

Website: coachcolezesiger.com

Instagram: @coachcolezesiger

TikTok: @colezesiger

YouTube: Cole Zesiger

Book: Exes & No’s - available for pre-order (bonus course included)

Connect with Dr. Amelia Kelley: About | Dr. Kelley's Books | Instagram

This week on The Sensitivity Doctor, Dr. Amelia Kelley sits down with TEDx speaker and filmmaker Mark Hulsewé for a courageous and necessary conversation about the root causes of school shootings and what must change if we want to protect our children.

Mark’s work focuses on the emotional, social, and systemic breakdowns happening inside our schools, and how our long-standing “kids will be kids” mindset is allowing cycles of humiliation, abuse, and violence to escalate into tragedy. Together, Amelia and Mark dive into the uncomfortable realities of bullying, the unspoken social hierarchy within schools, and why traditional approaches to school safety completely miss the heart of the problem.

This episode offers a rare blend of honesty, hope, and actionable solutions. Amelia challenges Mark’s ideas, Mark challenges the system, and both reveal complementary paths that can truly change the future. Whether you're a parent, educator, mental-health professional, or someone who cares deeply about the wellbeing of children, this conversation will reshape the way you think about school safety and mental health.

Key Takeaways:

• Why “child on child abuse” is a more accurate term than bullying.
• How the unspoken social hierarchy inside schools fuels violence and despair.
• What alternative education models like Montessori, Waldorf, and RULER get right.
• How early emotional intelligence education can prevent long-term harm.
• Why simple, low-cost wellness screeners can identify struggling students before crisis.

Connect with Mark Hulsewé:

TEDx Talk: “Ending School Shootings”

Connect with Dr. Amelia Kelley: About | Dr. Kelley's Books | Instagram

In this deeply validating and eye-opening episode, Dr. Amelia Kelley sits down with psychologist and birth trauma specialist Teela Tomassetti, founder of the Reproductive and Perinatal Trauma Center in Canada. Together, they bring long-overdue attention to an experience far more common than most people realize: birth trauma, which affects up to 45 percent of birthing parents.

Teela shares her personal and professional journey into this work, including her own traumatic childbirth experience and the years-long process that followed. She breaks down what birth trauma really is, how to recognize it, and why so many women dismiss or minimize their own symptoms. Amelia also shares her own powerful birth stories, offering a rare, vulnerable look at how trauma can stay alive in the body long after delivery.

Whether your childbirth was traumatic, complicated, confusing, or simply not what you expected, this episode gives you the language, validation, and tools to begin understanding and healing your story.

This conversation is for mothers, partners, birth workers, medical professionals, and anyone who wants to better support the postpartum experience with compassion and truth.

Key Takeaways:

• Birth trauma does not only happen during delivery. It can occur before, during, or long after childbirth.
• Trauma is subjective. Only you get to define whether your birth felt traumatic, regardless of medical outcomes or others’ opinions.
• Highly sensitive and neurodivergent mothers may experience birth environments more intensely, making compassionate care essential.
• The golden hour is a myth that pressures mothers. Bonding is not a moment. It is a relationship that forms over time.
• Postpartum is not six weeks. For many mothers, recovery emotional and physical can take one to two years.
• Birth debriefing is a powerful way to heal: through understanding, story sharing, and validation from supportive people or professionals.
• Birth trauma impacts the nervous system, identity, and attachment. But healing is absolutely possible.

Connect with Teela Tomassetti:

Instagram: @theteaonbirthtrauma

Practice: Reproductive and Perinatal Trauma Center

Instagram Practice: @perinataltraumapractice

Connect with Dr. Amelia Kelley: About | Dr. Kelley's Books | Instagram