The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast11 Sep 2025

Episode 335: Making Your Trauma Responses Work For You with Dr. Amelia Kelley

Podcast favorite Dr. Amelia Kelley is back on the show! Today we're unpacking something I know will resonate with so many of you: our trauma responses. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn… we all have them. But what if instead of shaming ourselves for these responses, we learned to use them for our benefit?

Amelia and I get into what each response actually looks like day-to-day, why they happen so quickly in the body, and how to bring more consciousness when they show up. We also explore ways to reframe them so they can become tools that work in your favor: turning fight into advocacy, flight into creativity, freeze into stillness, and fawn into compassion and service.

✨ Podcast episodes are available in two formats - audio and video! If you'd like to watch the video version of this episode, you can find it here.

What you'll hear about in this episode:

The four trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn (2:36)
Why these responses happen so fast in the brain and nervous system (5:41)
The role of naming and grounding in shifting your experience (17:47)
How to recognize your default response and bring more choice into it (19:55)
Using trauma responses in intentional ways, like boxing, cycling, meditation, or setting boundaries (38:20)

Learn more about Dr. Amelia Kelley: Dr. Amelia Kelley is a trauma-informed therapist, author, co-host of The Sensitivity Doctor Podcast, researcher, and certified meditation and yoga instructor. Her specialties include art therapy, internal family systems (IFS), EMDR, and brainspotting. Her work focuses on women's issues, empowering survivors of abuse and relationship trauma, highly sensitive persons, motivation, healthy living, and adult ADHD.

She is an adjunct professor in Psychology at Yorkville University and a nationally recognized relationship expert featured on SiriusXM Doctor Radio's The Psychiatry Show as well as NPR's The Measure of Everyday Life and 411 Teen. Her private practice is part of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at the Kinsey Institute. She is also a resident trainer at PESI offering continuing trauma-focused education to professionals.

She is the author of Powered by ADHD: Strategies and Exercises for Women to Harness their Untapped Gifts, Gaslighting Recovery for Women: The Complete Guide to Recognizing Manipulation and Achieving Freedom from Emotional Abuse, coauthor of What I Wish I Knew: Surviving and Thriving After an Abusive Relationship, as well as Surviving Suicidal Ideation: From Therapy to Spirituality and the Lived Experience, and a contributing author for Psychology Today, ADDitude Magazine, as well as Highly Sensitive Refuge. Her work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Yahoo News, Lifehacker, Well + Good and Insider.

Resources & Links:
ALL NEW: The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast Episodes are Now Available on YouTube!
Focused Strategy Sessions with Kate
The Divorce Survival Guide Resource Bundle
Phoenix Rising: A Divorce Empowerment Collective
Kate on Instagram
Kate on Facebook
Kate's Substack Newsletter: Divorce Coaching Dispatch

Dr. Amelia Kelley's website
Dr. Amelia Kelley on Instagram

===================

DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY, COACH, OR THERAPIST IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN ADVICE WITH RESPECT TO ANY PARTICULAR ISSUE OR PROBLEM.

===================

Episode link: https://kateanthony.com/podcast/episode-335-making-your-trauma-responses-work-for-you-with-dr-amelia-kelley/

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(389)

Episode 382: The Rise of Misogyny: What Midlife Women Need to Know with Laurie James

Laurie James, somatic practitioner, coach, and author of Sandwiched, returns to talk about the rise of misogyny and what it means for women inside their relationships, their families, and the broader ...

20 Aug 49min

Episode 381: Kate On: The Peace Self-Care Can't Give You

What if self-care never quite fixed things because it was never designed to? There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to create peace inside a relationship that keeps taking it a...

13 Aug 31min

Episode 380: When Supporting Your Trans Child Changes Your Marriage with Elle Baade

They say art imitates life, and this episode is a perfect example. My guest—and new bestie—is Elle Baade, author of the novel Consequences of Normal. The book follows Jane, a mother fighting to find h...

6 Aug 42min

Episode 379: Kate On: What Boundaries Actually Are and How to Set Them So They Stick

If setting boundaries were easy, we wouldn't need podcasts, books, or frameworks to teach us how to make and hold them. Boundaries are hard. But they're also essential to keeping sanity, strength, and...

30 Juli 40min

Episode 378: Legal Separation vs Divorce with Nicole Sodoma

Separation is one of those words that confuses, intrigues, and scares a lot of people. In fact, one of the first questions that comes up for many considering divorce is, "Should we legally separate fi...

23 Juli 41min

Episode 377: Kate On: Unraveling Divorce Guilt

Guilt. So many women feel it intensely when they're contemplating divorce, or when they've already made the decision to leave. In this episode, I'm talking about the guilt of breaking your marriage vo...

16 Juli 27min

Episode 376: "Needy No More": From Anxious to Secure Attachment with Chris Rackliffe

I'm back with anxious attachment style coach Chris Rackliffe and he's got a new book, Needy No More: The Journey from Anxious to Secure Attachment. We pick up on our previous conversation about anxio...

9 Juli 44min

Episode 375: Kate On: Finding Your Sense of Self After Divorce

What happens when you spend years orienting your life around another person and suddenly have to learn to live from the inside again? When I got out of my marriage, I had no idea who I was. I had zero...

2 Juli 37min