“Treatment Gap Treatment Gap Unsustainable,” watercolors, permanent marker, psychiatric hospital pencil, 12×9. Illustrates the cycle of struggle and hell caused by treatment gaps due to systemic issues in the medical industry, as well as individual provider shortcomings.
Shay earned their “Ph.D. in CPTSD” (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, also called Developmental Trauma) through their lifelong experience and recent years of recovery and study.
Shay’s life is a story of exceptional developmental and subsequent trauma with few resources. It has been unbelievable in its peculiarities, horrors, and striking series of events. Like in ancient tragedies, this life trajectory was set before they were even born. One might even imagine the stars predicted it.
However, the arc of Shay’s life was set by intergenerational violence, Developmental Trauma, and ginormous dark family secrets. It’s a sad family, which holds much trauma handed from one generation to the next and the next and the next.
Since 2014 Shay has spent massive amounts of time reading, listening to podcasts, attending trauma summits online, interacting in PTSD communities, and checking out a wide variety of possible solutions and applying them appropriately. Modalities they tried include Alexander Technique, Family Constellations, Dance/Movement therapy, Somatic Experiencing therapy, and the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM). Shay tried some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), too, but it is a bad fit for many trauma survivors and was not helpful for them. Thankfully, NARM is neuroscience-based, somatically oriented, and inherently non-pathologizing, non-shaming, and non-coercive. Just what all therapy should be.
Shortly after experiencing psychiatric abuse called “standard treatment for PTSD” in 2018 they began to study and utilize Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), also more recently called Relational Neuroscience, as the core of Shay’s PTSD recovery framework. This led them to discover the benefits of Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB) for PTSD and chronic pain (Shay has diagnoses of quadrilateral Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), bodywide myalgia, and other chronic pain conditions.)
Shay has applied what they have learned, sought people who are good for their nervous system, let go of people who aren’t, and focused on creating positive new experiences to replace old bad memories. This has been particularly necessary in the medical realm, due to the degree of Medical PTSD (MPTSD) caused by non-consensual surgery in 2019.
In addition, Shay has been forced to self-advocate as they faced a series of medical practitioners whose care was trauma-un-informed and therefore unhelpful in important ways or even deeply harmful. There has been no accountability or justice for the harm to which Shay was subjected by the medical industry in Delaware.
In early 2020 Shay started as a Relational Neuroscience educator. She now co-teaches the “Foundations of Regulation” online course with BodyIntelligence/Alexander Technique instructor Imogen Ragone, as well as in-person workshops and presentations.
Shay draws on their prior experience as an activist to create a #TraumaAwareAmerica, so all trauma survivors can find the help they desperately need and so greatly deserve.
Facebook Page: Trauma Aware America
Instagram: shayseaborne_cptsd
YouTube: Trauma Awareness with Shay Seaborne, CPTSD
DISCLAIMER: This is not medical, psychological, pharmaceutical, or legal advice. The contents of this site represent Shay Seaborne, CPTSD’s lived experience and understanding of the neurobiology of trauma through study and experiences.