021. Overcoming Fear Of Abandonment: For Humans Healing From CPTSD
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
Release Date: 10/24/2025
047. Being A Girls' Girl: Relational Manipulation As A CPTSD Survivor
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
You've had the experience — someone tells you what's being said about you in the group chat you're not part of, or you overhear it, or it lands in a comment section, and suddenly you're defending a version of yourself you don't recognize. The spiral is immediate, the shame is disproportionate, and you can't tell whether to retaliate or apologize. In this episode, I teach the Embodiment Equation: why leaving the body in childhood sets up an implicit contract that invites relational manipulation, why women under patriarchy reach for character attacks as a counterfeit source of power, and what...
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046. Feeling Unseen At Work: A CPTSD Guide To The Appreciation Wound
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
You've done excellent work. You know it. And yet you find yourself scanning the room for confirmation that someone else knows it too. That quiet ache of feeling unseen at your job isn't a professional development problem. It's one of the most common places a CPTSD wound shows up uninvited. In this episode, I introduce The Appreciation Audit, a four-question self-inquiry practice designed to help you trace what you're actually asking for when you say you feel "underappreciated," and who you're really asking. We look at how childhood emotional neglect wires the nervous system to experience a...
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045. Protecting or Vilifying: How We Relate to Our Parents in CPTSD Resolution
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
You've probably noticed that your relationship with your parents lives in one of two places: protection or blame. You either minimize what happened to keep the peace, or you've swung into a narrative that finally names the harm but hasn't actually moved anything in your body. In this episode, I unpack the three-phase arc that most CPTSD survivors move through when reckoning with their parents' role in their wounding, and I introduce the concept of Merciful Validation as the earned posture that lives beyond both protection and vilification. Using real-life scenarios like honoring a parent's...
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044. Healing In Real Time: CPTSD Resolution Advice For Success
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
You have spent years trying to explain what happened to you. You have narrated it in therapy, processed it with friends, and written about it in journals, yet the same patterns keep running your life. That is not a failure of effort. It is a signal that the work needs to move from retelling to real time. In this episode, I introduce The Three Rooms, a framework for recognizing where you are spending your healing capital and capacity: The Retelling Room, where narration lives; The Numbing Room, where avoidance lives; and The Training Ground, where present-moment activation becomes the actual...
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043. Knowing Feeling Gap: Help For CPTSD Healing
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
You can understand something completely and still feel nothing has changed. That's not a willpower problem. That's the knowing-feeling gap — and it's one of the most common and frustrating experiences in CPTSD healing. In this episode, I break down why intellectual insight alone rarely produces lasting behavioral change for complex trauma survivors. Drawing on real examples from parenting, partnership, and professional life, we explore how trauma-based information processing operates on a separate internal system from conscious awareness — one that consistently overrides what you...
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042. Accelerating Your Healing: Speeding Up Your CPTSD Resolution
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
Many survivors living with CPTSD wonder if healing can happen faster or feel frustrated by the pace of their progress. In this episode, I explore what it actually means to accelerate your healing and move toward full CPTSD resolution. I discuss the possibility of no longer qualifying for a CPTSD diagnosis by addressing trauma at the root, rather than managing symptoms on the surface. We look at the mindset shifts, patterns, and forms of Self Leadership that support deeper, more efficient healing, and what often slows survivors down without them realizing it. This conversation is for anyone...
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041. Being Mean To The Humans We Love: Understanding CPTSD Overwhelm
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
Many childhood trauma survivors living with CPTSD struggle with moments of being critical, harsh, or “mean” toward the people they care about most. These reactions often appear suddenly and can leave you feeling confused or ashamed afterward. In this episode, I explore why criticism and irritability show up in close relationships when the nervous system becomes overwhelmed. Using a recent personal example, I walk through how rising stress, fear of unmet needs, and old trauma scripts can quickly bypass vulnerability and turn into frustration or anger. We also discuss a healthier pathway for...
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040. Moving Through A Betrayal: CPTSD Help
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
Betrayal in a relationship can create a powerful sense of distance, leaving you feeling like there is an invisible force field between you and your partner. For individuals living with CPTSD, unresolved betrayal can activate deep attachment wounds, mistrust, and emotional disconnection. In this episode, I explore what betrayal energy feels like in the nervous system and how to move through it in a grounded, Self-Led way. We discuss how survival patterns, the need to feel chosen, unprocessed grief, and competing priorities can shape the healing process after betrayal. This conversation offers a...
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039. Improving Communication With Your Partner: A CPTSD Guide to Relational Healing
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
Many humans living with CPTSD find themselves asking, “Why doesn’t my partner get it?” You may feel like you are trying to explain your needs, yet the same misunderstandings keep happening. Communication challenges are common in relationships impacted by CPTSD, especially when trauma-driven patterns shape how needs are expressed and received. In this tutorial-style episode, I walk through practical steps for improving communication with your partner in ways that support relational healing. You will learn how trauma filters can distort what you say and how your partner hears it, how...
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038. Outgrowing Trauma-Driven Anger: A CPTSD Perspective
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Help With Healing CPTSD
Anger is common for humans living with CPTSD, especially in relationships where attachment wounds are easily activated. Many high-functioning adults oscillate between suppressing anger and reacting from it, unsure what is healthy and what is trauma-driven. In this episode, I explain how anger develops within unresolved complex trauma and what it means to outgrow trauma-driven reactivity. You will learn the difference between suppressed anger, protector anger, and Self-Led inner authority, and how CPTSD Resolution shifts anger from explosive or hidden into grounded personal power. HELP WITH...
info_outlineWhy do I have the fear of abandonment?
When you live with CPTSD, attachment threats activate the oldest and most overwhelming survival responses in your system. The fear of being left is not simply emotional discomfort. It can feel like a full-body alarm, a collapse in your sense of safety, and a terror that you will not survive the pain.
This experience is common, deeply uncomfortable, and confusing. In this episode, you will learn why abandonment fear feels so intense, how it forms, and what actually helps you begin to soothe it. Healing begins when you understand the internal mechanics rather than blaming yourself for the reactions you cannot yet control.
- What are the signs of abandonment issues?
- How do I heal my fear of abandonment?
Can’t stop fighting in your relationship?
→ Follow the Fight Smarter Field Guide — a self-guided learning experience to understand your conflict patterns and practice responses that lead to repair, not regret. https://cptsdmedicine.com/the-fight-smarter-field-guide
In a relationship, but wondering if you should leave?
→ Begin the Red Flag Learning Path to recognize trauma-driven patterns and rebuild your inner compass toward love that doesn’t hurt.
https://cptsdmedicine.com/red-flag-checklist
Just been broken up with and need answers to feel sane again?
→ Explore the “Why Is This Happening to Me?” Study for clarity, validation, and grounded relief after heartbreak.
https://cptsdmedicine.com/why-is-this-happening
Thinking your career is hurting your love life?
→ Start the Overachiever’s Audit Study — a 10-minute self-reflection to see where achievement has become protection and how it may be blocking intimacy.
https://cptsdmedicine.com/overachievers-audit
Work With Tanner 1:1 - https://cptsdmedicine.com/services
If this episode resonates and you’re ready to heal your CPTSD at the root, learn more about Happily Ever After.
About Dr. Tanner Wallace
Dr. Tanner Wallace is a childhood trauma survivor, former university professor, and Level 3 Internal Family Systems Practitioner who specializes in CPTSD Resolution. She founded CPTSD Medicine to offer applied mental health training for high-achieving adults who want a clear, structured path to heal trauma at the root and stop repeating painful relationship patterns.
About the Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner Podcast
Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner is a podcast for look-good-on-paper adults with unresolved CPTSD, anxious attachment, or repeated relationship pain. If you look confident on the outside but feel overwhelmed, confused, or ashamed by the patterns you cannot break, this podcast teaches you why.
Each episode breaks down how trauma shapes your emotions, triggers, and relationship choices, and offers practical, research-informed steps to heal at the root. Learn how to stop trauma-driven reactions, understand emotional flashbacks, build secure attachment, create healthier relationships, and finally feel safe inside your own system.
Hosted by Dr. Tanner Wallace, PhD and Level 3 Internal Family Systems practitioner, this podcast provides applied mental health training for adults who want clarity, stability, and a structured path to CPTSD Resolution.
If you want to heal deeply, choose partners wisely, and build a life that feels secure and aligned, you are in the right place.