Allison Bruce

Most people do not want comfort as much as they think they do. What they are often seeking is relief. There is a meaningful difference between the two. Comfort can be restorative. It can be the warmth of home, the steadiness of a safe relationship, or the deep exhale that comes when the body is finally allowed to rest. Relief, however, can become something more urgent. It can become the reflexive need to escape anything that stretches us, challenges us, exposes us, or asks more of us than we...

There is a moment many people recognize, even if they do not yet have language for it. A moment where something inside of you is ready to move forward, ready to feel different, ready to loosen your grip on what has been heavy for so long. And at the very same time something else tightens. You feel it in your body before you can explain it. A hesitation, a contraction, a quiet but firm no. This is often the place where people turn on themselves, asking why they cannot just move on or why they...

What if your symptoms are not random? Not inconvenient? Not something your body is doing to you? What if your body is actually speaking to you? Asking to be witnessed? f What if this is all part of a conversation your body has been trying to have with you for a very long time? In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk writes, “Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.” That imprint does...