054. Getting Flooded: What Real Self-Soothing Looks Like

You know the moment. Something lands, a tone, a silence, a left-on-read, and suddenly you're underwater. The flood comes fast and it takes the whole system with it. In this episode I want to name that moment with real precision, because most of us don't even have language for what's happening to us when abandonment hijacks the body. It isn't weakness and it isn't you being "too much." It's a response that makes complete sense once you understand it.

I also want to be careful here, because "self-soothing" is a phrase that gets thrown around in ways that don't actually serve survivors like us. So much of what passes for soothing is really just management, getting yourself quiet enough to keep functioning while the wound stays untouched. That's not what I'm talking about. There's a distinction underneath this work that makes authentic, CPTSD Resolution-based self-soothing possible, and once you learn how to lead it, your relational life will change. I walk you through what that distinction is and then into the actual practice, the thing you can do when the flood hits.

And I'm honest about what real self-soothing is not. It's not abandoning yourself to feel better for a minute. It's not white-knuckling. It's not coping dressed up in nicer language. The wider why is this: the way you meet yourself in the flood is the whole work. When you stop abandoning yourself in the exact moment you most need secure attachment, something at the root begins to change. That's what I want for you, and that's what this episode is for.

When You're Ready

CPTSD Resolution 101 Weekend Workshop Three days, seven people, live on Zoom. You'll leave with a clear, personalized map for your CPTSD Resolution. Offered twice a year in February and September.
https://cptsdmedicine.com/weekendworkshop

Happily Ever After — The All-Inclusive CPTSD Resolution Experience Six months of close-proximity training with me. Application required.
https://cptsdmedicine.com/services

About Dr. Tanner Wallace

Tanner Wallace, PhD and Level 3 IFS Practitioner, is the founder of CPTSD Medicine and the author of the CPTSD Medicine Healing Protocol, a proprietary applied mental health training curriculum that teaches HouseHolder CycleBreakers to resolve complex relational trauma at the root. A former tenured professor of health and human development, she left academia to build the services she could not find as a childhood trauma survivor diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder: a structured six-month container that trains humans to become their own best intervention scientists. Inside her signature container, Happily Ever After, she works with a small number of students to resolve, not manage, their CPTSD.

About the Podcast

Heal First, Then Pick Your Life Partner is for high-functioning adults with complex trauma who are tired of repeating painful relationship patterns. If you perform well professionally but struggle intensely in your closest relationships, this podcast helps you see why.

Each episode takes an ordinary moment of adult life — attending a family wedding, going through old photographs, ending a relationship, writing a holiday card, having a hard conversation with someone you love — and shows you what's actually happening underneath it through the lens of complex trauma. You'll hear my take on the lived experience of CPTSD, drawn from five years of building a proprietary trauma resolution curriculum and from my own work as a survivor who no longer qualifies for the diagnoses I once did.

This is diagnostic, declarative, and unlike anything else in the CPTSD space. Hosted by Dr. Tanner Wallace, PhD, founder of CPTSD Medicine.