Still Here

"e;Nothing that bad happened"e; may be exactly why you are still suffering.For the woman whose childhood looked fine on paper but whose body has never felt safe. For the one who walks into therapy convinced she has no right to be there and walks out still flinching at small things. Complex PTSD does not always come from a single event. It comes from a thousand quiet ones, and it lives in the nervous system long after the mind has moved on.Still Here is a field guide for women in the long, non-linear work of healing complex post-traumatic stress.Across three parts, The Recognition, The Work, and The Long Arc, Maren Cole walks you through naming what actually happened, learning to read an emotional flashback in real time, calming the survival brain with body-first practice, and living forward into a self that is no longer constantly braced.Inside:- Why every prior diagnosis, anxiety, depression, high-functioning, was probably incomplete - The anatomy of an emotional flashback, and how to tell it apart from a present-day mood - The single most useful skill for catching a flashback while it is happening - How to sit down with your inner critic without trying to destroy her - The daily glimmer hunt, and why noticing safety is harder than noticing threat - How to recalibrate trust, parent without re-inheritance, and survive the flat period - What the second decade of recovery actually looks like, and why it is its own laborWritten for women who have read everything, tried everything, and still feel ten years old in the supermarket parking lot, and for the clinicians, partners, and friends who love them.For readers of The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker, and What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo.You were a child who needed someone to be strong for her, and no one was. You are allowed to stop bracing now.