In this interview episode of The Trauma Educator Podcast, I’m joined by Erica Hornthal, a licensed clinical professional counselor, board-certified dance/movement therapist, and the founder of Chicago Dance Therapy. Known as “The Therapist Who Moves You,” Erica has spent decades helping people understand movement not just as expression, but as a direct pathway to healing, regulation, and change.

Together, we explore what it really means to become body aware, how trauma shapes the way we move, and why changing movement patterns can shift how we think, feel, and relate. We talk about movement as a tool for processing emotions, working with rumination and repetitive thought loops, and developing clearer boundaries and limits through the body.

This conversation also touches on motivation, self-care in busy lives, body image, and how learning to move in a way that is right for you can unlock potential that cognitive insight alone often cannot access.

If you want to understand where you currently are in your nervous system healing after complex trauma and what your next steps can be, take my Nervous System Healing Quiz → https://www.effiekli.com/quiz

For science-backed tools to help you process emotions on a deep body level, watch my free workshop The Alchemy of Emotional Processing After Trauma → https://www.effiekli.com/optin

And if this episode resonates, don’t forget to follow, subscribe, rate, and share to help expand these trauma-educated conversations and bring nervous system awareness to more people around the world.

In this solo episode of The Trauma Educator Podcast, I explore a common experience amongst people who live with complex trauma: when harm is denied, minimised, or avoided, and the focus shifts through shame onto your reaction instead.

We look at how being blamed for responding to harm becomes a second trauma, how emotionally numb systems uphold these dynamics through dismissal, and why those who are most emotionally alive often become the scapegoat.

This episode unpacks shame projection, avoidance disguised as maturity, and the self-doubt you go through when your perception is repeatedly invalidated.

I also explore hyper-perception and noticing relational patterns as nervous system adaptations and gifts, and how healing is not about becoming less sensitive, but about reclaiming sensitivity as grounded discernment. We finish by clarifying the difference between responsibility and self-erasure, and how self-trust is rebuilt when you stop asking what’s wrong with you and start asking what you were responding to.

If you want to understand where you currently are in your nervous system healing after complex trauma and what your next steps can be, take my Nervous System Healing Quiz→ https://www.effiekli.com/quiz

For science-backed tools to help you process emotions on a deep body level, watch my free workshop The Alchemy of Emotional Processing After Trauma → https://www.effiekli.com/optin

And if this episode resonates, don’t forget to follow, subscribe, rate, and share to help expand these trauma-educated conversations and bring nervous system awareness to more people around the world.

In this solo episode of The Trauma Educator Podcast, I explore why fear of abandonment can feel so intense and challenging in relationships and how emotional neglect and misattunement shape a nervous system that learns to survive through attention, validation and performance.

We look at how unmet early needs create an internal sense of emptiness and starvation, why receiving romantic attention can feel soothing but never truly regulating, and how performance, controlling behaviours and reassurance-seeking become survival strategies rather than relational choices.

This episode also explores why rejection & abandonment don’t just hurt but often lead to collapse in the nervous system, why certainty becomes an obsession in attachment trauma, and what it means to shift from survival-based attachment to adult, choice-based relating.

Finally, we explore what healing actually looks like: developing felt safety in the body, increasing capacity to tolerate uncertainty, and learning that safety isn’t earned through being chosen.

If you want to understand where you currently are in your nervous system healing after complex trauma and what your next steps can be, take my Nervous System Healing Quiz→ https://www.effiekli.com/quiz

For science-backed tools to help you process emotions on a deep body level, watch my free workshop The Alchemy of Emotional Processing After Trauma → https://www.effiekli.com/optin

And if this episode resonates, don’t forget to follow, subscribe, rate, and share to help expand these trauma-educated conversations and bring nervous system awareness to more people around the world.