A Healing Path: Reflections on Nervous System Healing & Relational Trauma
I’m glad you found your way here. Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of yourself — in relationships, in old roles, or in the echoes of relational trauma. These writings are here to help you gently reconnect — to understand your nervous system, soften self-blame, and begin healing the relational wounds that made you forget your own needs.
These writings aren’t about fixing you — because you’re not broken. They’re an invitation to notice your patterns, release what no longer serves you, and find gentle ways back to freedom, alignment, and self-trust. Healing doesn’t have to feel like drudgery. It can be a steady return — a homecoming to yourself.
Not Sure What Kind of Relational Trauma Healing You Need? Take the Quiz
Get resources tailored to meet you right where you are and offer the support you need most. You’ll walk away with:
✨ Clarity about what’s pulling at you most
✨ 3 simple, actionable steps to guide your growth
✨ Tailored blogs and practices to support your next move
👉 Take the quiz and discover your pathway today.
Free Resources for Nervous System Healing & Relational Trauma Support
The Morning Reset: 5 Therapist-Designed Routines for Real-Life Mornings
Some mornings start with dread, anxiety, or that heavy pull of shame—and it feels impossible to reset alone. That’s why I created this Morning Reset: five therapist-designed practices I use with clients and in my own life. Simple, compassionate tools to help you ground, soften, and start your day feeling steady—and I’ll be right there with you.
Is It Love—or a Trauma Bond? A Self-Reflection Guide to Help You Get Clear
Some relationships feel magnetic at first—like home—only to leave you anxious and doubting yourself later. 💔 That’s why I created this gentle, therapist-designed self-reflection guide: to help you sort through the confusion and reconnect with your truth. Inside, you’ll find prompts, signs to watch for, and grounding practices I use with clients and in my own life—so you don’t have to figure it out alone.
Your Path to Nervous System Healing & Relational Trauma Recovery
These writings are organized around themes that reflect different aspects of relational trauma healing and nervous system regulation. Each one offers its own kind of treasure—whether it’s quieting a restless mind, setting healthy boundaries, or reconnecting with your body through compassion and embodiment.
Can't Turn Your Brain Off?
When your mind won’t stop racing, these blogs offer gentle tools to calm your body, ease tension, and remind you—you’re safe, and it will be okay.
Calming an Overactive Mind: Trauma Recovery & Nervous System Tools
Tired of Body Shame?
When you’re tired of fighting your body, these blogs offer gentle reflections and practices to help you release shame and begin to feel at home in yourself again.
Healing Body Shame Through Compassion & Nervous System Awareness
Giving More Than You Can?
When you’re drained from saying yes too often, these blogs will help you set boundaries without guilt and build relationships that feel safe and balanced.
Boundaries & Self-Compassion: Healing Relational Patterns
Looking for Inner Strength?
When life leaves you exhausted or weighed down by trauma, these blogs offer tools and reflections to help you rebuild trust, find safety, and discover your inner strength.
Finding Safety & Inner Strength After Relational Trauma
Read With Me
Love learning through books? These blogs share reflections on powerful reads and the insights they spark about healing, resilience, and self-trust.
Reflections on Healing, Embodiment & Growth Through Books
Newest Reflections on Relational Trauma & Nervous System Care
Read more✨ Hey, by the way…
We all have our own ways of protecting what hurts—patterns that once kept us safe but now keep us stuck. Sometimes the first step toward healing is simply seeing those patterns clearly.If you’re curious which protective pattern shows up most for you, take my Healing Pathway Quiz.
It’s gentle, quick, and eye-opening—and it helps you understand what your nervous system might actually be needing right now.[Take the Healing Pathway Quiz →] click here: Quiz
It’s Not Always Depression: A Therapist’s Review
It’s Not Always Depression by Hillary Jacobs Hendel, LCSW Learn how It’s Not Always Depression reframes anxiety, emotion, and vitality through neuroscience and compassion—and what it teaches us about healing. Discover six powerful lessons—from the science of emotion...
What Do Healthy Boundaries Actually Look Like?
What Do Healthy Boundaries Actually Look Like? If you grew up in a family or culture where saying “no” felt selfish—or where love was earned through accommodation—boundaries can feel confusing. You might know what they should look like, but when it comes time to set...
How to Reconnect with Your Body When It Feels Like the Enemy
How to Reconnect with Your Body When It Feels Like the Enemy Here's what happens when you stop fighting your body and start listening instead. When the Body Feels Like the Enemy When you’ve spent years receiving messages that your body is too big, too soft, too...
Why Do I Keep Repeating the Same Relationship Patterns?
Why Do I Keep Repeating the Same Relationship (or life) Patterns Even Though They Don't Serve Me? First, let me validate something that might surprise you: Those patterns actually do serve you. They’re protecting you from something. The problem is that something...
Build Inner Resilience: A Research-Backed Method That Works
The Surprising Science of Self-Compassion for Building Inner Resilience That Lasts Have you ever thought: Why do I fall apart so easily when things go wrong? Why can’t I stop spiraling when I make a mistake? Sometimes I feel like I’m failing at life because I can’t...
Feeling “Gross” In Your Body? My Exact Guide for What To Do
Learn the three-step process I use with clients to shift from feeling "gross" in your body to feeling safe—using compassion, curiosity, and consent. What do you do when living in your own unique body leaves you feeling “gross”—like you want to hide away? How do you...
Reconnect With Your Body: 3 Lessons From Ecstatic Dance
How I stopped performing and started listening to my body through the 5Rhythms approach If you’ve ever struggled to reconnect with your body—to feel safe, present, and fully in it—you're not alone. Has it felt like your body was more of a display than a home? Like you...
What Is Embodiment, Actually—And How Do You Do It?
What Is Embodiment, Actually—And How Do You Do It? Here Are 5 Ways People say, “Be embodied.”But what the hell does that actually mean? Sure — be in your body.But how do you even know if you’re in your body?How do you do embodiment?And why is everyone talking about...
What Is Erotic Energy? A Therapist’s Review of The Dry Season
Discover 5 powerful lessons—about pleasure, people-pleasing, and becoming visible to yourself—that can change the way you understand erotic energy and intimacy. In A Dry Season, Melissa Febos reflects on her decision to stop having sex after realizing how much of her...
Overthinking Again?
What to Do When Overthinking Won’t Stop (and Your Usual Tools Fail You) Ugh. I see you, my friend—those nights of relentless overthinking when your brain just won’t shut off. You’ve got great regulation tools, and you’ve tried them all: breath work, journaling,...
Panic Attack Relief: 7 Favorite Ways to Go From a 10 to a 2 Quickly
Seven therapist-recommended techniques to manage anxiety, stop panic spirals, and ground yourself quickly. When panic strikes, it feels like your whole body has been hijacked—your chest tightens, your thoughts spiral, and you can’t catch your breath. It’s like being...
Stuck in Self-Sabotage? What You’re Missing and How To Fix It
When Self-Sabotage Creeps In Is self-sabotage getting in the way of a goal you truly care about—leaving you procrastinating, resisting, or even working against yourself? You want to: feel better in your body nourish yourself consistently build habits that support your...
Jenny B. Smith, LCSW
Stay connected with our newsletter for thoughtful insights on mental health, personal growth, and emotional wellness. Each edition offers practical tools, compassionate guidance, and inspiration to help you embrace your inner resilience and create more freedom in your life. Let’s walk this journey together—straight to your inbox.
jenny@jennybsmith.com