[Content Warning]: Discussions of childhood trafficking (including trafficking by a parent), fragmented and somatic trauma memories, mild language, two near-death experiences involving resuscitation (mention of suicide)

Kristin Howe is a Canadian author whose psychological thriller carries real trauma survivor narratives inside. Her debut novel, Unbound, follows Piper, a survivor of childhood trafficking, and the emotional truth behind Piper's story comes straight from Kristin's own life.

In this conversation with Jan, Kristin talks about writing Unbound as a way to finally hold pieces of her own memory that had been locked away for years. She describes what EMDR therapy actually felt like from the inside, how implicit memories become explicit ones, and why trusting a fragmented memory is still trusting the truth. She also opens up about the Stellate Ganglion Block, a treatment that gave her, for the first time, a sense of what it feels like to live outside constant fight-or-flight.

The conversation moves into some of the harder truths about trafficking, including how survivors are sometimes coerced into recruiting others and then charged as traffickers themselves, and into Liam, a character in Unbound whose story opens up a conversation about male survivors that doesn't get talked about enough.

Kristin also shares how healing changed her parenting, how creativity rebuilt pathways her trauma had shut down, and how two near-death experiences reshaped her sense of purpose as a child. She's the founder of Project Raven, an initiative helping survivors tell their own stories on their own terms.

This episode covers heavy ground with care. If you need support after listening, resources are linked below.

Buy Kristin's Book:
Unbound: Not All Chains Are Visible

Where To Find Kristin:
Project Raven (via Kristin's site): InnerPanda.ca
Insta: @inner.panda.ca
Facebook: @InnerPanda

Mentioned Resources:
Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant

If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:

National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988
National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264

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[Content Warning]: discussions of childhood sexual abuse, addiction and substance use, and generational family trauma.

What if the trauma you're carrying didn't start with you? In this episode of Trauma Interrupted, host Jan Broberg sits down with Lisa Arrigo, a licensed clinical social worker with 30 years in private practice, to unpack the science and lived experience of intergenerational trauma.

Lisa explains how trauma can leave measurable marks on our biology, pointing to Dr. Rachel Yehuda's research on Holocaust survivors and their descendants, and why understanding epigenetics offers real hope, not just theory, for breaking painful family cycles. She and Jan talk about why talk therapy alone often isn't enough, how the body holds what the mind can't always name, and why modalities like EMDR, somatic experiencing, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) exist alongside traditional talk therapy.

Drawing on her own family history and decades treating trauma and addiction, Lisa walks through the window of tolerance, why addiction is almost always a trauma response rather than a character flaw, and how complex PTSD can fragment a person into different “parts.” She and Jan also talk candidly about shame, vulnerability, and why curiosity, not perfection, is the real doorway to healing.

This conversation is equal parts science lesson and permission slip: permission to feel what's in your body, to ask for help, and to believe that whatever was passed down to you doesn't have to be passed any further.


Where To Find Lisa:
LisaArrigo.com
Insta: @lisa.arrigo.therapy
Keep Your Eyes Peeled for Lisa’s upcoming book Fall Risk

Mentioned Resources:
Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma - Janina Fisher (psychoeducational flip chart)
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (Therapist Directory)
The Window of Tolerance (via NICABM)

If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:

National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988
National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264

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❣️ JAN BROBERG FOUNDATION
🌐 JanBrobergFoundation.org
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🔎 SPOT6
📖 The Jan Broberg Story (book)
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[Content Warning]: Discussions of domestic violence, strangulation, prolonged stalking, attempted murder, failures of the legal system.

In this episode of Trauma Interrupted, Jan Broberg sits down with psychotherapist and domestic violence survivor Kelly Sutliff, founder of Kelly's Canines: Tails of Courage. Kelly walks through the night her life changed, the stalking that followed, and the gaps she found in a legal system that couldn't keep her safe even with evidence in hand.

She talks candidly about how a friend's offhand suggestion, "get one of those dogs that bite," led her to Stella, her first protection dog, and how that relationship became the foundation of her own healing. Kelly now trains and places protection dogs with survivors of domestic violence through her nonprofit, giving other survivors the same sense of safety that helped her rebuild her life.

Jan and Kelly talk about what it means to find justice outside a courtroom, the emotional cost of speaking out publicly (including Kelly's experience on the true-crime series Toxic), and why healing has to start with safety before anything else is possible. Kelly also shares grounded, practical advice for anyone who feels stuck in a difficult relationship or trapped by their own past.


Where To Find Kelly:
Kelly's K9s: Tails of Courage
Toxic: Sleeping with a Stranger
Kelly’s Insta: @real_talk_with_kelly
Kelly's K9s Insta: @kellys_k9s_tailsofcourage

If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:

National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988
National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264

🎧 LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE
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🎵 Spotify
▶️ YouTube

❣️ JAN BROBERG FOUNDATION
🌐 JanBrobergFoundation.org
🫂 Survivor Circle (free community)
⏳ T.I.M.E. Program
🔎 SPOT6
📖 The Jan Broberg Story (book)
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[Content Warning]: Discussions of childhood emotional neglect and humiliation, description of a sexual assault survivor's experience, references to substance use disorder, and grief following the death of a family member.

Kristine Jensen has spent more than four decades in the therapy room, first helping others, and eventually turning that same clinical eye on herself. A licensed psychotherapist and certified clinical trauma professional, Kristine spent her career treating clients for shame long before she recognized it in her own life. It wasn't until she retired and moved to the California coast, expecting a quiet next chapter, that a childhood memory resurfaced and cracked open decades of unexamined pain.

In this conversation with Jan Broberg, Kristine traces the years-long process that led to her book, Bruised Not Broken: Healing the Shame of a Troubled Childhood, from naming shame as a distinct survival strategy (not just low self-esteem or depression) to recognizing the collapse-appease-submit response that so many survivors carry from childhood into adulthood. She and Jan talk candidly about over-functioning, "earning love," and the fraud feeling that can persist even after decades of outward success.

The conversation moves into healing itself: how self-compassion, not reliving trauma, is often the path forward, why healthy anger is a sign of progress rather than a problem, and how humanizing the people who hurt us can become part of reclaiming our own freedom. Kristine also opens up about a harder discovery in her own story: that her stepfather wasn't the only source of her wounds.

This episode is for anyone who has wondered why the work of healing doesn't feel finished, even when life looks good from the outside.

Buy Kristine's Book:
Bruised Not Broken: Healing the Shame of a Troubled Childhood

If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:

National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988
National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264

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🎵 Spotify
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❣️ JAN BROBERG FOUNDATION
🌐 JanBrobergFoundation.org
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[Content Warning]: discussions of domestic violence, coercive control, child abuse, grooming, sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, and complex PTSD.

What happens after you escape abuse? In this deeply personal conversation, Jan Broberg sits down with trauma recovery coach and Brave and Free founder Anna Lopes. Anna shares how childhood exposure to domestic violence shaped her understanding of love, how she entered a coercively controlling marriage at nineteen, and how she ultimately escaped with little more than a hidden passport and determination to survive. Together, Jan and Anna explore coercive control, financial abuse, digital surveillance, spiritual abuse, grooming, complex PTSD, and the long road of recovery. They also discuss the trauma response of fawning, rebuilding identity after abuse, and why healing happens through supportive relationships and community. This episode offers validation, language, and hope for survivors navigating life beyond survival mode.

Where To Find Anna:
Insta: @Iambraveandfree
Brave and Free community
Discovering Yourself After Abuse Workbook

If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:

National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988
National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264

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🎵 Spotify
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❣️ JAN BROBERG FOUNDATION
🌐 JanBrobergFoundation.org
🫂 Survivor Circle (free community)
⏳ T.I.M.E. Program
🔎 SPOT6
📖 The Jan Broberg Story (book)
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In this episode of Trauma Interrupted, Jan Broberg sits down with Dr. Kate Lund, licensed clinical psychologist, resilience expert, author of Bounce and her new release Step Away: The Keys to Resilient Parenting, for a conversation about what it actually takes to build resilience, in ourselves and in the kids we're raising.

Dr. Kate traces her path into psychology back to a childhood diagnosis of hydrocephalus and decades of managing a chronic medical condition, and the two explore how early struggle can shape a life's calling. They talk candidly about how trauma doesn't always surface right away, sometimes it takes decades, and why healing as an adult is one of the most powerful things a parent can model for their children.

The conversation moves through practical, usable tools: a simple breathing technique called the relaxation response, the power of daily gratitude journaling, a self-compassion exercise that sparked real breakthroughs in Jan's own survivor community, and honest talk about comparison culture, social media, and letting go of perfectionism.

Above all, this episode keeps circling back to one idea: there is always possibility on the other side of a challenge.

Where To Find Dr. Lund:
KateLundSpeaks.com
Insta: @dr_kate_lund
Resilient Parenting with Dr. Kate (Podcast)
The Optimized Mind (Podcast)

Buy Dr. Kate’s Books:
Step Away: The Keys to Resilient Parenting
Bounce: Help Your Child Build Resilience and Thrive in School, Sports and Life

If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:

National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988
National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264

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🎵 Spotify
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❣️ JAN BROBERG FOUNDATION
🌐 JanBrobergFoundation.org
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🔎 SPOT6
📖 The Jan Broberg Story (book)
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[Content Warning]: Discussions of childhood trauma, family violence, compulsive coping behaviors, religious and cultural trauma tied to LGBTQ identity and shame, and grief following the death of a parent.

What happens when the anger you've been taught to suppress finally has somewhere to go? In this episode of Trauma Interrupted, Jan Broberg sits down with Devin Scott, LMSW, NBC-HWC, and founder of Find Your Meaning, to talk about the parts of trauma recovery that don't get talked about enough: rage, disgust, and the long, non-linear road back to an authentic self.

Devin brings both clinical training and lived experience to this conversation, walking through why anger needs to be permissioned before it can be processed, how a child's disbelief from the adults around them can turn PTSD into complex PTSD, and why the coping strategies that once kept us safe often resemble pieces of who we really are underneath.

The conversation moves through breathwork and embodied consent, Buddhist and yogic frameworks for integrating mind and body, the double bind many LGBTQ people face between social conformity and countercultural pressure, and in one of the episode's most tender turns, what it means to make new meaning after profound loss.

This is a conversation about slowing down, trusting the body, and learning that healing isn't a straight line toward feeling nothing. It's learning to read the pain, the anger, and the grief as information, and building a life that can hold all of it.

Where To Find Devin M. Scott:
Find Your Meaning

If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:

National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988
National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264

🎧 LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE
🍎 Apple Podcasts
🎵 Spotify
▶️ YouTube

❣️ JAN BROBERG FOUNDATION
🌐 JanBrobergFoundation.org
🫂 Survivor Circle (free community)
⏳ T.I.M.E. Program
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📖 The Jan Broberg Story (book)
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[Content Warning]: Discussions of childhood trauma, addiction, feelings of isolation, abandonment wounds

What does it actually take to heal, not manage, not cope, but truly heal, from the wounds we carry from childhood? In this episode of Trauma Interrupted, Jan Broberg sits down with Jessica Baum, licensed mental health counselor, founder of the Relationship Institute of Palm Beach, and author of the new book SAFE, to explore what the neuroscience of healing really tells us.

Jessica brings her expertise in interpersonal neurobiology and attachment theory to some of the questions survivors ask most: Why can't I just heal on my own? Why do my closest relationships feel the most unsafe? Why do I keep repeating the same patterns no matter how many self-help books I read?

The answer, she explains, lives in the body, in streams of implicit memory laid down long before we had words for what was happening to us. And the path is not a solo one. Healing, Jessica argues, requires at least one anchoring relationship: a safe nervous system to hold space while we revisit and integrate what we could not process alone.

Jan shares her own journey openly in this conversation, her experience of intergenerational trauma, the abandonment wounds she carried into adult relationships, and the moment when being truly believed by another person accelerated her healing in ways decades of effort had not.

Jessica also introduces her free Wheel of Attachment tool and a 40-minute bonus conversation with her mentor Bonnie Badenoch.

Where To Find Jessica:
Insta: @JessicaBaumLMHC

Buy Jessica's Books:
Safe: An Attachment-Informed Guide to Building More Secure Relationships
Anxiously Attached

Bonus Goodies From Jessica:
Wheel of Attachment (PDF)
Bonus 40-min conversation with Bonnie Badenoch

If you or someone you know is experiencing emotional distress or suicidal ideation, please access the resources below:

National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call/Text 988
National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) : 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
National Alliance for Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264

🎧 LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE
🍎 Apple Podcasts
🎵 Spotify
▶️ YouTube

❣️ JAN BROBERG FOUNDATION
🌐 JanBrobergFoundation.org
🫂 Survivor Circle (free community)
⏳ T.I.M.E. Program
🔎 SPOT6
📖 The Jan Broberg Story (book)
🗞️ Newsletter

📲 CONNECT
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✍️ Share Your Story

💌 Fan Mail

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