Insights on trauma, healing, and recovery from Shaya Schtroks, LCSW, MCAP.
Work, food, porn, wine, the phone — every compulsion started life as a solution. The turning point isn't when others complain. It's when the solution starts manufacturing the pain it treats.
Read articleThe partner who feels smothered, the one who can't stop checking, the one who picks fights to test the bond — most relationship patterns were rehearsed decades before the relationship began.
Read articleThe micromanaging, the checking, the correcting, the tightening grip on everyone's choices — control rarely announces itself as what it is: fear wearing armor.
Read articleThe morning-after self-attack feels like accountability — like it should prevent the next time. Instead, it reliably fuels it. Here's the mechanics of the shame-compulsion loop.
Read articleEveryone keeps telling you it wasn't your fault. You may even agree — and the guilt stays anyway. Here's what that guilt is actually made of, and what working with it looks like.
Read articleYou were doing better. Then a song, a date on the calendar, a smell — and it's all there again, at full volume. This isn't a relapse, and you're not grieving wrong.
Read articleWhy you can handle a hard conversation on Tuesday and fall apart during the same conversation on Thursday — and why 'calm down' is useless advice.
Read articleMany people avoid trauma therapy because they assume it means going back in and feeling everything again, at full volume. That assumption is out of date.
Read articleNo flashbacks, no clear narrative — just a jaw that never unclenches, a stomach that drops for no reason, a body braced for something that already happened.
Read articleAnalysis feels like emotional work — it's about the feeling, after all. But there's a version of it that functions as a very sophisticated exit. Here's how to tell the difference.
Read articleYou've connected the dots. You can narrate exactly why you shut down, or panic, or please. So why does the pattern keep running? Because insight and emotional learning live in different systems.
Read articleYou know the behavior isn't helping. You may even know exactly where it comes from. So why does it keep winning? Because it isn't a decision problem — it's doing a job.
Read articleYou know the meeting, highway, crowded room, or bodily sensation is not an emergency. Your racing heart and tight chest remain unconvinced. That conflict is not irrationality—it is how threat learning works.
Read articleSomatic therapy is not massage, forced breathing, or an hour spent analyzing every sensation. It is psychotherapy that pays attention to what your body is already saying.
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