When you live with CPTSD, the urge to control often has nothing to do with power and everything to do with perceived threat.
In this episode, I explore how controlling patterns emerge from Protective Parts that learned vigilance when something essential was once truly at risk: safety, attachment, stability, or dignity. Control became a strategy for survival when support and trust were not available.
Over time, however, control can create instability in relationships. What begins as an attempt to prevent pain can unintentionally make others feel unsafe, reinforcing the very isolation and threat the system is trying to avoid.
I share how CPTSD shapes these protective responses, why responsibility and hyper-vigilance become intertwined, and how you can begin to locate more trust both internally and externally.
When You're Ready
CPTSD Resolution 101 Weekend Workshop Three days, seven people, live on Zoom. You'll leave with a clear, personalized map for your CPTSD Resolution. Offered twice a year in February and September.
https://cptsdmedicine.com/weekendworkshop
Happily Ever After — The All-Inclusive CPTSD Resolution Experience Six months of close-proximity training with me. Application required.
https://cptsdmedicine.com/services
About Dr. Tanner Wallace
Tanner Wallace, PhD and Level 3 IFS Practitioner, is the founder of CPTSD Medicine and the author of the CPTSD Medicine Healing Protocol, a proprietary applied mental health training curriculum that teaches HouseHolder CycleBreakers to resolve complex relational trauma at the root. A former tenured professor of health and human development, she left academia to build the services she could not find as a childhood trauma survivor diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder: a structured six-month container that trains humans to become their own best intervention scientists. Inside her signature container, Happily Ever After, she works with a small number of students to resolve, not manage, their CPTSD.
About the Podcast
Heal First, Then Pick Your Life Partner is for high-functioning adults with complex trauma who are tired of repeating painful relationship patterns. If you perform well professionally but struggle intensely in your closest relationships, this podcast helps you see why.
Each episode takes an ordinary moment of adult life — attending a family wedding, going through old photographs, ending a relationship, writing a holiday card, having a hard conversation with someone you love — and shows you what's actually happening underneath it through the lens of complex trauma. You'll hear my take on the lived experience of CPTSD, drawn from five years of building a proprietary trauma resolution curriculum and from my own work as a survivor who no longer qualifies for the diagnoses I once did.
This is diagnostic, declarative, and unlike anything else in the CPTSD space. Hosted by Dr. Tanner Wallace, PhD, founder of CPTSD Medicine.
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
