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Unbroken offers a profound new approach to healing trauma, grounded in a radical reframing of how we understand this nearly universal experience.

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About

Hi, I’m MaryCatherine (MC) McDonald, PhD. I’m a research professor and life coach who specializes in the psychology of trauma, stress, and resilience. I have spent over a decade researching, publishing, and lecturing on the psychology, neuroscience, and lived experience of trauma. I am passionate about destigmatizing mental health issues in general, and empowering people to heal by giving them science-based tools to gain mastery over their own experience.

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What else are we here to do?
"The earth laughs in flowers" - Emerson
💜
Ephemera. Let’s name the nutcracker. 1, 2, 3, go!
Trauma is often like a bomb going off — leaving behind shrapnel we keep stumbling across long after the initial explosion. But what happens when the world around us doesn’t even acknowledge the explosion in the first place?⁠ ⁠ In Unbroken
When we remember, we have cognitive control. We have access to the⁠ parts of our brain that can think rationally. And while we may feel some⁠ of the emotions related to the memory, we typically can put the memory⁠ and emotions away when we need to.⁠
Let's talk empathy for a second. This is a word that gets thrown around a lot - and increasingly often it is misused. True empathy is an act of connection. It’s not pity, fixing, absorbing someone else’s feelings to the point of dysregula