Has Trauma Language Outpaced Healing? Fragility, Capacity, and the Nervous System

Getting Triggered In A Foreign Dentist's Office

I want to start with myself, because I love me some self deprecation as teaching device rather than pointing a finger at "those people" out there. And also offer some kind compassion to my sweet nervous sytstem.

Recently, I shared a reflection on Facebook about going to the dentist in Germany and noticing a familiar threat response in my body. Not because of the procedure itself, but because of the tone at the front desk. Curt, distant, efficient and in one instance, downright scolding. A style that is culturally normal here in Germany and I have learned to mostly roll with.  But even after getting over the initial culture shock and coming to appreciate German directness my nervous system still takes me by surprise when facial cues and lack of warmth hit me hard going into dental surgery. Research on neuroception (the nervous system’s automatic, non‑conscious scanning for safety or threat) shows that the nervous system reads facial expression, tone of voice, and posture as primary safety cues long before conscious thought has a chance to intervene. This concept comes from Stephen Porges’ work on Polyvagal Theory and the social engagement system (see Porges Institute: https://www.porgesinstitute.org).  Yep my by body went into a pretty quick fight and flee.  Happily, because I am nerding out on interpersonal neurobiology and this new STAIR training I am doing with Juliane Taylor Shore I had another lens to befriend my nervous system and increase my capacity to be with what was happening in my body rathr than demanding the entire German culture to be different so I could feel ok.  LOL

This training with Juliane, called STAIR which stands for self-trust and integrated resilience has me learning so much I hadn't learned in grad school about how the brain actually changes and how to take whatever model of therapy you use and make it brain savvy drawing from folks like Bruce Ecker, Bonnie Badenoch, Daniel Siegel, Mark Solms, Jaak Panksepp, and Frank Corrigan.  Juliane drew from all of these folks and more I am sure are in the mix of her method.  I will say more about STAIR but what is important for this piece is to offer how this is changing my work, how clients are noticing, and how I am eager to continue to improve my STAIR skills as clients are telling me that it is making a big difference for them, my referrals have gone way up all of a sudden because of how I am holding myself and my clients and I haven't been this excited in a long time.  I am partly writing this piece to help my learning, but also to support you in learning more about the brain and nervous system and maybe, if you are therapist, join me in STAIR.  

Why Intellectualizing or Labeling Triggers Doesn't Heal The Nervous System

I live cross-culturally. Have been for six years now.  I understand German directness. Intellectually, I know this style is not meant personally. I am not walking around feeling rejected because folks aren't like Californians any longer (boy, I sure did at about year 2 and 3 when I found myself really blue and couldn't figure out why). I have a longer piece on culture shock coming soon, and what is actually happening, but I will keep this more general. Now, I am not confused about German social norms. But my body and nervous system sure are, despite my positive mindset. I still get triggered in contexts where I don't have as much agency: dentist, doctor, immigration office, tax office and I can't speak the language and the tone, body, and facial cues are so different.  I don't think I love lacking agency in the US either but it is a totally different ballgame when you speak the language and the facial cues mostly match what your nervous system predicts as "safe enough". 

When I shared this dentist experience on Facebook, people responded thoughtfully and intelligently. Many offered explanations, comparisons, and their own experiences adapting to similar environments. What stood out to me was not that people were unkind or dismissive, but how quickly many of us move into left-brained intellectual analysis when someone names a nervous system reaction. The implicit message is often, think your reaction away. I think I used to do therapy this way too - thinking that was good therapy.  It wasn't.

I wrote this piece because thinking your nervous system reactions away is not actually materially possible. You cannot get a hug from a computer. What thinking your reactions away is, actually, is the intellectualizing defense or "fix it" as a defense, which can reduce discomfort but often at the cost of cutting yourself off from your body, your safety signals, and your capacity for self-relation. It kind of makes you a little less alive as human.  A behavioral lens might suggest more exposure until the nervous system habituates (in vivo exposure therapy), and that can be helpful in many contexts.

What I am learning through STAIR and interpersonal neurobiology is that when power and vulnerability are involved, the work is less about desensitizing and more about building people's capacity to stay embodied and connected to themselves. Reducing reaction to a situation is not the same thing as increasing a person's capacity to choose a response.  Seems like hair splitting but it is a big deal. Reducing reaction can be about being "well behaved" and "complying" and many people look more together on the outside, but not so healthy on the inside. I have had people come into my office who mastered "holding it all together" with wicked depression because their feelings were shoved into an intellectual file cabinet somewhere, not being attended to in an integrative way.    

Are we all just too fragile, or does the world need to accommodate trauma better?

There are two trends in this land of trauma and nervous system awareness right now.  One, to get annoyed and call people too fragile.  Two, to expect the world to change so it never triggers you. First, a context note: when I use the word fragility, I am not referring to weakness or oversensitivity. I am describing what happens when nervous system activation is treated as definitive authority, the totality of one's identity, or a stopping point in relating, rather than as a signal that is asking us to do something like offer self-compassion, sense make what the body is responding to, and then use the signal to make a choice. Fragility treats activation as an unchangeable fact.  Resilience treats activation as information that needs attending.

When people say, or silently think, "quit being so fragile" or "stop seeing everything as trauma", they are usually not reacting to the person's pain itself. They are reacting to what happens around that person's pain. And don't get me wrong, while an advocate for the nervous system, I have also been guilty and annoyed by all the "calling everything trauma" that is so en vogue.  We will find our way to informed nuance in this article together.  

Here is a familiar scene.

Someone shares that they felt hurt by a colleague’s tone. Before anyone can slow down and inquire what this hurt is signaling, someone says protectively and judgmentally, “That’s harmful.” Now the employee's nervous system signal is treated as a fact and all relating in that work team stops so we can make a moral statement about the "harmful thing".  The room changes. Not because danger is present, but because the stakes suddenly got raised.  What I am advocating for is making friends with "I am feeling harm" as a signal that we can stay with together in a relational way that builds capacity without withering, shaming, or policing the space.

I can imagine you have been in a situation like this.  It is quite a body thing that happens when someone's pain is reacted to this way in a group.

Shoulders tighten. Words become super careful. No one is curious anymore, everyone is just on guard hoping not to be the next harmful person on the team.

Something in the group brain conveys there is a right response here, the stakes are high, and I might fail. It shuts down a lot of creativity on a work team.
But saying "so stop being so fragile" to the employee is an alternative reaction which isn't the answer either (which is where I certainly have gone in my head on more than one occasion and certainly gets lauded in the public square these days.)

Another scene.

A friend says, “I’m activated, so we need to stop this conversation.” That can be wise in the moment. I teach couples this for sure.  But later, the friend uses activation as the way to have the final word again. And again. And again. There is never a return to the dialogue. Never a repair. The relationship begins centering the most reactive nervous system in the room and you find yourself not wanting to hang out with this person any more because they kind of run the relational show.

You aren't withdrawing because you are cold. You are withdrawing because you don’t know how to stay in connection without getting punished for "triggering" this person and no one likes to feel powerless or punished.  So secretly, on the DL, you think, “Why are they so damn fragile?" and avoid them.  Again, not a healing solution in terms of response.  But I totally get it. 

Another scene.

A person shares vulnerability, but without meaning to, it comes with an invisible demand. Agree with me. Validate me in the exact right way. Take my side. Respond to me and reassure me right this very second. 

The listener receiving these cues has a whole mine field of nervous system responses in reaction to this hidden demand. First it is pressure. There is a subtle fear of getting it wrong, being blamed, or losing footing in the relationship.  A lot of uncertainty gets kicked up and not feeling related to but demanded from lands like a hollow woozy thud in the gut. This isn't a mind thing, this is a body thing. The body/mind is always scanning for belonging and safety, remember, and this invisible demand reads as "not belonging" and "not safe" before the mind is even aware of what is going on.

This is often the moment people harden and say things like "why are people so sensitive these days?" or "they just need to read [insert latest pop psych or business book on mindset or self-regulation]".

The listener isn't reacting this way because they are an arrogant jerk, and they aren't trying to be holier-than-thou when they give you a primer on mindset, or desensitizing, or thinking positive. But they are intellectualizing rather than relating to themselves or to the person who shared their vulnerability.

The reality is, the listener is making these overly "fix it" "advicey" comments because their own nervous system no longer feels safe staying open, curious, or present.  I know when I go down the "why is the world so fragile" rabbit hole, it is because something is getting jiggled in my nervous system that has me go into thinking rather than relating. This is the bread and butter of the work I now do with couples. We slow way down and capacity build what is happening in each partner's nervous system when someone gets triggered to grow the embodied capacity to stay curious, not make moral judgments, nor keep us stuck in fragility.  And I do this all with a keen eye on not pressuring or coercing each other to be in a different places, as we stay curious.  I will say more about why pressuring for change can create stuckness.

Why Thinking Your Way Out of Triggers Rarely Works

Part of what complicated my own reaction at the dentist was that I live and work across cultures.

Culture is not just customs or manners. Culture trains nervous systems. Researchers studying cultural display rules and social neurobiology have shown that cultures differ not only in what emotions are expressed, but in how much expression is expected for safety, trust, and belonging. This body of work draws from cross-cultural research by Paul Ekman and David Matsumoto on emotional display rules (for an accessible overview, see https://www.paulekman.com/universal-emotions/). It teaches bodies what tone of voice means safety, what tone means efficiency, and what tone means threat.

In some cultures, warmth signals trust. In others, neutrality signals respect. Interestingly, research on multicultural societies suggests that in environments with high diversity and immigration, people rely more heavily on warmth cues like smiling as a low-cost way to establish safety across differences. This is why folks from the US and the Americas in general smile so much.  We had to amplify signals of warmth to signal safety when so many cultures were colonizing the land.  Studies in cultural psychology have found higher smiling frequency in more heterogeneous societies as a way to signal trust when norms differ (see Adam H. Anderson et al., summarized here: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/culture_shapes_how_leaders_smile). I had a Scandinavian girlfriend share how annoying she finds US emotional expression too much.  I see here point and there is something else going on.  Nordic cultures are largely monocultures with very different emotional display rules.  

None of these rules are right or wrong. But they are not easily interchangeable for the nervous system.

Here is what some folks got wrong in the comments on my Facebook wall when they said, “It’s not personal, it’s just cultural.” They were speaking cognitively, not with the training of clinicians who understand the limbic system and the body. That quick move into fixing, explaining, or moralizing never helps the nervous system find calm, it leaves people feeling judged and alone. When humans respond intellectually to nervous system threats in others with intellectualizing, that in it of itself signals the person responding is also in a reaction - it just "looks more correct" in our hyper contained and intellectualized world. So both parties - the one triggered and the one intellectualizing the trigger need some capacity building inside with their own systems.

Here is why I know this. Research on social pain and belonging shows that relational coldness, exclusion, or lack of attunement can activate threat circuitry in the brain in ways that closely mirror physical pain, regardless of conscious intent or how positive your mindset is when you receive the cold response. This finding is most closely associated with Naomi Eisenberger’s work on social pain and the anterior cingulate cortex (for a readable summary, see https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/rejection). Nervous systems do not respond to explanations or advice alone.  It is great to read books on cultural differences.  They really help.  But they may not help what happens in your nervous system.

And to be honest, the training I am doing with Juliane Taylor Shore is calling me out on how much explaining, especially when someone is activated, is often a kind of acting out on my part as a therapist. It is changing how I practice. If I simply say, “Here, read Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset,” as a solution to someone whose nervous system is flooded, I may actually be reinforcing an intellectualizing defense rather than helping someone build capacity in their nervous system.

These habits of explaining, reframing, and problem-solving nervous system responses have been trained into many of us for decades. My hope is that this piece helps us with new knowledge and new skills, and recognize a basic fact on the ground: nervous system reactions require a particular kind of response to support capacity building. Pure intellectualizing and problem-solving, on their own, tend to fail here. 

Add institutional power to the mix, such as doctors, dentists, immigration offices, or bureaucratic gatekeepers, and those trigger-happy nervous system cues get louder. Studies on tight versus loose cultures suggest that in more rule-bound environments, predictability replaces relational buffering (the subtle cues of warmth, attunement, and responsiveness that help nervous systems feel safe enough to stay regulated), which can intensify threat responses for nervous systems trained in high warmth or multicultural contexts. This framework comes from Michele Gelfand’s research on tight and loose cultures (see https://michellegelfand.com/research/). I did one of my fave interviews with Michele for Sidewalk Talk you can listen to here. 

My body is not confused about German culture. It is responding to tone plus power plus vulnerability exactly as designed.

This is not fragility. It is predictive neurobiology doing its job.  And my clients have predictive neurobiologies doing their jobs with their spouses, their bosses, their kids, their friends, and our work is to use those signals to build capacity rather than compartmentalize or intellectualize.

When Head Led Cultures and Top Down Professions Miss the Nervous System In The Workplace

There is another layer worth naming here, especially in workplaces shaped by HR, executive leadership, consulting, and other top down ways of instituting change management.

Many people in these roles are highly skilled at adaptation. They have learned to regulate through cognition, reframing, desensitization, and performance. Stuff we have already talked about.  These strategies are not wrong. They are often what allowed someone to succeed inside demanding systems.  And these strategies are very culturally and psychologically en Vogue and even signal morality and superiority.

So a quiet belief can form underneath those heady skills.

Something like, "If you still react, you have not adapted enough."

This belief is rarely stated outright. It shows up subtly in phrases like, just reframe it, don’t take it personally, that’s just the culture, or you’ll get used to it.

From a nervous system perspective, this is a misunderstanding.

Desensitization is not always growth. Sometimes desensitization is numbing, which allows survival in a work environment that cannot be changed.

“Desensitization is not always growth. Sometimes desensitization is numbing, which allows survival in a work environment that cannot be changed.”

— Traci Ruble

Some reactions, though, are not, in fact, signs of immaturity. They are intelligent signals that power, vulnerability, or unpredictability are present in that workplace.

Embodiment is not a failure of mindset. It is information.  And STAIR helps you use that information and choose rather than react or adapt.

Because remember, adaptation can cost something too. It can narrow our emotional range, reduce relational attunement, or disconnect people from signals in their body that let them know what matters to them or what they need to feel belonging and safety. I find burnout comes from adaptation not overwork. 

When leaders and head led cultures mistake desensitization for capacity, they often unintentionally shame people whose nervous systems have not been shushed into compliance or shamed into collapse but still speak loud and clear to them.  Very active nervous systems coupled with capacity, self trust, and integrated resilience inside of dysfunctional environments end up being the people that can create careful, less reactive, more inclusive and thoughtful systems change.

Understanding nervous systems invites a different question.

Not how do we get people to react less.

But how do we help people grow capacity while staying connected to their bodies when triggers happen.

Six Common Nervous System Reactions to Someone Else's Reactions or Trauma

When we are near someone with a lot of trauma-related material arising, or someone whose nervous system is activated, our own body often chooses a protector strategy.

It usually looks like one of these.

1. Cut Off

You feel your energy drop. You become efficient. You change the subject. You shorten the call. You stop asking.

Inside, it often sounds like, I cannot handle this.

2. Judgment

You become the evaluator.

Inside, this is too much. This is ridiculous. This is attention seeking. This is manipulative.

Judgment is often a way to get distance without leaving.

3. Scolding

You become the parent.

Inside, you need to toughen up. You need to stop making everything trauma.

Scolding is often a desperate attempt to restore order when you feel helpless.

4. Intellectualizing

You become the brain.

Inside, let me explain this. Let me fix the narrative. Let me take control through understanding.

This can look like compassion, but it often bypasses attuning to the person.

5. Over Accommodating

You become the soft landing.

Inside, if I do everything just right, they won’t fall apart. If I anticipate enough, we can avoid rupture.

This is exhausting and leads to resentment and burn out over time.

6. Codependency

You become the nervous system manager.

Inside, their stability is my job. Their growth is my job. Their mood is my weather.

This can masquerade as love, but it is often fear of conflict wearing a caring costume.

None of these make you a bad person.

They are what bodies do when they do not know another way.

The Middle Path: Relational Strength, Self Trust, and Integrated Resilience

I want to offer a different option. Something that holds compassion and responsibility at the same time.

I take your nervous system seriously. And I believe you can grow capacity.

This is not authoritarian. It is loving.

It is also not indulgent. It is honest.

The Inner Work: What You Do in Your Own Body First

If you want to stop swinging between hardening and over accommodating, the first place to work is inside your own physiology.  And don't worry.  You don not need to bat a thousand on this.  Maybe only the Dalai Lama does.  So don't read these and feel pressured, pretty please.

Step 1: Name Your Reflex

When someone starts spiraling, notice what your body wants to do with curiosity and kindness if you can.

Do you want to disappear. Do you want to correct. Do you want to lecture. Do you want to diagnose. Do you want to over promise.

Just naming your reflex is already a nervous system intervention.

Step 2: Get Your Feet Back

Literally.

Feel your feet. Feel the chair. Let your exhale lengthen slightly. Let your eyes widen and take in more peripheral vision.

This is not self help fluff.

This is how you keep your prefrontal cortex online.

Step 3: Find the Fear Under the Irritation

Under irritation is often fear.

Fear of being swallowed by their emotions. Fear of being blamed. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of being trapped by their needs. Fear of feeling powerless to make things feel calm again.

If you can contact your fear without acting it out, you become more free.  I talk to my fear "Oh sweets, you are afraid of this person's trigger. That makes so much sense.  Can you feel I am with you. I have you." I often touch my heart and belly and rock a wee bit and my whole body smiles.

Step 4: Choose Your Stance

This is the moment of choice.  Only after you have found your feet.

Not how do I fix them. Not how do I get away.

But what stance builds relationship and capacity.

This is where I love the Keats idea of negative capability.

The ability to remain with uncertainty, complexity, and unfinished emotions without rushing to certainty or control.  Thanks Dr. Renee Lertzman, Environmental Psychologist for reminding me about this Keats idea. 
Sometimes your stance may be you need a break first to find your feet for a good lone while and that is ok.  

The Relational Move: What You Say and Do Next

1. Reflect Before You Analyze

“I can hear how intense this feels right now.”

Then pause.

That pause really really matters. And that pause is not just for them it is also you staying with yourself.

2. Stay With Someone Without Rescuing

“I want to stay with you. And I also want us to go slowly so we don’t get swept away. Is that ok with you?” Asking for consent a lot is a big big deal when someone is triggered.

3. Ask One Curious Question That Restores Agency

“What do you need in this moment to stay present here?”  Keep the language kind of open or shame or advice can creep in.

4. Name the Pattern Without Shaming

“I notice when this feeling shows up, the conversation stops. Would it be ok if we practice coming back to presence in the here and now by feeling our feet and taking a pause?”

5. Make a Small Boundary That Protects Connection

“I can talk about this for twenty minutes. Then I need a break. I want to come back after. Does that work for you?”

6. Repair If You Got Heady and Judgmental

“Earlier I got tight and went into my head. I want to try again. I care about you.”

This is how people learn that conflict is survivable.

What STAIR Therapy Is

Because this piece lives on my psychotherapy blog, I want to pause here and name what I am actually learning to do with people in the room through Juliane Taylor Shore’s STAIR training. In this training, STAIR stands for Self Trust and Integrated Resilience. I am less interested in getting you out of your nervous system responses and more interested in helping you build an embodied relationship with them so you can return to choice.

In STAIR, we are not trying to convince a person that what their body is doing is wrong. We slow things down enough to notice what is happening inside in real time, and we work directly with affect, sensation, and relational cues. The focus is on undoing aloneness and restoring choice. Clients learn to recognize when something inside them has gone onto the not-okay list, meaning it feels intolerable, dangerous, or overwhelming, and then we work toward gently moving that experience onto the okay list. Okay does not mean comfortable or pleasant. It means I can stay with this without abandoning myself, collapsing, or attacking. Capacity grows through supported contact with the experience over and over, not through override.

This is also where STAIR differs from in vivo exposure or desensitization. Exposure aims to reduce reactivity by repeated contact until the nervous system responds differently over time. STAIR is less interested in whether the reaction disappears and more interested in whether the person can stay present, resourced, and connected while the reaction is happening. The work is about building inner rails so that when activation shows up, there is room for curiosity, agency, and choice rather than shame or shutdown. It is deeply neuroscience informed, but it privileges embodiment and relationship over explanation. In practice, this means less fixing and more staying. Less telling people how to think, and more helping them learn how to be with themselves and others when things get hard.

What STAIR Therapy Looks Like In A Psychotherapy Session

Before laying out the treatment plan, I want to name something that connects STAIR back to the heart of this article.

A key ingredient of STAIR is that the therapist does hold a treatment plan, structure, and direction. But the therapist cannot enter a coercive state with that plan. We are not treating the nervous system as if it is failing, broken, morally incompetent, or behind. Nervous systems are always doing their best to protect, predict, and survive based on what they have learned. When we meet activation with shame, pressure, or a subtle demand to perform better, the brain does not enter a healing state.

This is one of the places STAIR has been quietly but profoundly changing how I work after more than twenty years as a therapist. When therapy becomes overly medicalized, behaviorist, or narrowly outcome focused, it can unintentionally pressure people into compliance and conformity. A pressured nervous system may look regulated from the outside, but internally it often feels tight, brittle, or self abandoning. Compliance can masquerade as health.

What STAIR emphasizes instead is capacity. You lightly activate the protective network that is already online and, at the same time, introduce new relational and somatic experiences that allow the nervous system to learn something different while staying connected. This requires a deeply respectful, almost reverent relationship to the human nervous system. Not indulgent. Not permissive. But loving, skilled, and non coercive. ( I am still learning and still practicing but this stuff is life changing for me and my clients. So I am committed to continuing to learn.)

I am learning that this work asks for a different posture from me as a therapist. A commitment to stay relational rather than corrective. A willingness to slow down rather than push outcomes. And a deep respect for the brain as inseparable from the body.

If you are wondering what it actually looks like to work with me, here is a plain language treatment plan you can read and track. We would personalize it together.

Primary goals

1. Increase self trust, meaning you can listen to your signals without being hijacked by them.

2. Build integrated resilience, meaning you can move through stress, conflict, and discomfort without shame, shutdown, or escalation.

3. Expand your okay list so more internal experiences become workable rather than intolerable or overwhelming.

4. Reduce aloneness by strengthening your ability to stay connected to yourself and to others during hard moments.

How we work in sessions

1. We slow down and track what is happening right now in your body, attention, and emotions.

2. We name the protector move that shows up, such as going heady, getting sharp, collapsing, pleasing, or withdrawing.

3. We practice skills that bring you back to choice, such as orienting, grounding, pacing, and relational repair.

4. We sense make the context, including power, culture, and relationship dynamics, so your nervous system response is understood rather than pathologized.

5. We rehearse small, real world moments where you can try a new response without overriding yourself.

Between session practices

1. A two minute check in once a day: what is my body doing, what emotion is here, and what do I need to stay present.

2. One micro experiment a week: a small moment to practice staying connected and self compassionate rather than going numb or going into control.

3. A repair practice: learning how to come back after a hard moment with yourself or with someone else.
   I recommend picking up a book called Setting Boundaries That Stick by Juliane Taylor Shore, the founder of STAIR if you want more practices.  

How we know it is working

1. You recover faster from activation.

2. You have more choice in conflict and less shame afterward.

3. You can tolerate discomfort without abandoning yourself.

4. Your relationships feel more workable because you can stay present while also holding boundaries.

When Trauma Language Helps and When It Harms Relationships

Trauma language has been profoundly liberating.

It helped us name that reactions are patterned, not moral failures. That the body carries history. That shame does not create change.

This is revolutionary.

And.

Trauma language can harm when we are fast at spotting every trauma without the training to meet the response in the body.

When we teach people to identify threat faster than we teach them to grow capacity, we do not create freedom of choice.

We create a nervous system identity.

I am activated. Therefore you must change.

That is not healing. It is a new oppressive hierarchy.

My Values As A Therapist

I am not interested in moral superiority and shame.

Not in religion. Not in academia. Not in psychology.

Shame produces compliance, not change.

I am interested in a non-compliant form of personal growth.

If someone is choosing to edit their behavior for the sake of community, I want it to be because of love, not fear.

If I am adapting to my own nervous system, I want it to be because I value my life, not because I think I should be a perfect person.

When I go to the dentist, the work is not demanding the front desk person be warm.

Understanding nervous systems does not excuse harm, and it does not require endless accommodation. It simply gives us more choices than shame or shutdown.

The work is noticing my body, resourcing myself, and choosing how I enter the interaction.

That is the opposite of fragile. That is me staying vital, alive, self trusting, and resilient in the face of life lifing.

It makes me responsible.

If this reflection resonates, you may also like my follow-up essay focused on how these dynamics show up generationally, especially at work. Cuz you know we love to shame on Gen Z right now and all this new training is giving me some new thoughts about this generation of young people, big time.  Stay tuned.