Perhaps the most insidious part of childhood trauma is the message we receive: from our parents, from other adults, from society, that what happened to us didn’t happen, or didn’t matter, wasn’t real, that we were, ‘making it up’, that it wasn’t a big deal, or that we were weak, maybe even annoying, or stupid for not getting over it.

Adult Children (grown adults exposed to abuse as a child) often spent our entire childhoods being gaslit: being told we shouldn’t cry or be upset, that nothing was wrong, and that things didn’t happen the way we thought they did. We were coerced into doubting our...

  While we live in a society in which academic and career achievement are prized, there are times in life when it’s okay to be naïve, inconsistent, or flat out wrong. Not only is it okay to be these things, doing so allows us to learn. It seems logical that in...