Have you ever felt like you were finally okay—only to be blindsided by a wave of emotion you didn’t see coming? In this episode of Pursue Your Spark, “When Childhood Trauma Reawakens: Stacey Hettes on Healing After Midlife,” I sit down with Dr. Stacey Hettes, scientist, college professor, and author of Dispatches from the Couch, to explore how deeply buried childhood trauma can resurface in midlife—and how we begin to heal truly.

When Childhood Trauma Reawakens: Stacey Hettes on Healing After Midlife

We dig into the ACEs framework (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and how Dr. Hettes used it to make sense of emotional shutdown, people-pleasing, and her own journey through PTSD. With her background in neuroscience, she explains how trauma physically rewires the brain—especially the amygdala and hippocampus—and how therapy helped her retrain those fear-based circuits over time.

This conversation challenges the idea that healing is quick or clean. We unpack what it means to “fawn” as a trauma response, why shame keeps us silent, and why therapy isn’t about being fixed—it’s about being seen. Dr. Hettes also shares how one triggering moment in adulthood cracked open decades of buried fear, and how that pain became a catalyst for growth.

More than anything, she reminds us that healing begins not when we ask what happened to me. But what did it do to me—and what do I do next?

✨ This is one of a collection of tools to spark your own healing journey. Tune in now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen. Please share this with someone who needs to know they’re not alone.

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