Childhood Trauma Therapists in Austin, TX

You may be grown now, but some parts of you are still carrying what happened.

At Integrative Creative Therapy, we work with adults who sense there is more of their story waiting to be heard. People who have tried talking about what happened and found that something deeper hasn’t quite shifted. People whose inner voice has gone quiet, whose authentic self feels far away, or who have spent years adapting to everyone else’s needs while losing touch with their own. We use EMDR, somatic approaches, and creative arts therapy together, because when words aren’t the right entry point, music, movement, and creativity often are.

Sometimes the hardest part is not understanding why the same struggles keep returning.

Careers built. Relationships held together. Routines maintained. And still, something keeps surfacing. A reaction too large for what’s in front of you. A body that braces before the mind can explain why. Even in quiet, reflective spaces like the Umlauf Sculpture Garden, where everything around you is still, the body doesn’t switch off because the setting is peaceful. Many people arrive believing anxiety is the problem, only to discover that anxiety is the messenger. Beneath it, there is often a much older story waiting to be understood.

Childhood trauma isn’t only about what happened. It’s about the parts of yourself that learned to manage, protect, or disappear in response to what happened. Those parts are still doing their job. They just haven’t had the chance to learn that things are genuinely different now, and that there might be more room for you than there was then.

The work isn’t about reliving what happened. It’s about helping your system finally understand that it’s over.

Why People Come to Childhood Trauma Therapy

Childhood Trauma Therapy May Be a Good Fit If You

Childhood trauma therapy may resonate with you if you:

React to current situations with an intensity that feels disconnected from what’s in front of you
Feel like you can’t relax, even when nothing is actually wrong, like the alertness just never quite turns off
Struggle to trust others or feel safe in close relationships, even when you want to
Find yourself managing emotions rather than feeling them
Have a history of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, neglect, or significant loss in childhood
Experience shame, low self-worth, or negative beliefs about yourself that you can’t reason your way out of
Have tried other forms of therapy, but feel like something deeper hasn’t shifted
Want a space where more of your story can be welcomed, without having to explain everything first

What Changes When Childhood Trauma Stops Shaping the Present

Bracing in your body before you understand why
Feeling exhausted from always being the one who holds it together
Carrying something that doesn’t have a name yet
Staying guarded in relationships even when you want to be closer
Running on hypervigilance and not knowing how to let it down
Feeling like the past keeps arriving in the present without warning

Before childhood trauma therapy

Responding to what’s in front of you instead of what you learned to expect
Recognizing your patterns without being controlled by them
Feeling more settled in your body more of the time
Moving toward closeness with less automatic bracing
Carrying what happened as part of your story, not as something still happening
Feeling more connected to your own inner voice and trusting your intuition more fully

After childhood trauma therapy

How Childhood Trauma Therapy Works at Integrative Creative Therapy

Childhood trauma therapy at Integrative Creative Therapy is not primarily a talking process. It’s a body-based, creative, and integrative process that works with the whole person. We begin by building safety and understanding what you’re carrying. We move at your pace. Nothing is forced, and there is no pressure to tell us everything before you’re ready.

Sometimes healing begins through conversation. Sometimes it begins through an image, a piece of music, a movement, or a feeling that finally has room to emerge.

Here’s what the work actually involves:

Learning how to feel safer in your body, before anything else
Getting curious about what your whole system has been carrying, with compassion rather than pressure
Noticing protective parts and understanding what they’ve been doing for you
Reconnecting with your authentic self and the parts of you that went quiet
Using music, art, movement, or imagery when words aren’t the right entry point
Working with what your body, emotions, and protective parts have been carrying for a long time
Working alongside family when teens or children are involved

A space to slow down, listen inward, and reconnect with yourself.

Integrative Creative Therapy is a trauma-informed practice in Austin, TX, working with adults, teens, and children navigating the effects of childhood trauma, complex trauma, and related challenges. Many of the people who come to us are thoughtful, creative, high-achieving adults who have spent years taking care of everyone else while feeling disconnected from themselves.

They arrive for therapy for anxiety, for childhood trauma, for the parts of themselves that went quiet a long time ago. We believe healing requires more than insight. It requires attending to the body, the creative self, and the parts of you that learned to survive in difficult conditions. We also believe healing often involves reconnecting with parts of yourself that have been hidden, quiet, or working very hard for a very long time.

What we offer:

EMDR therapy for trauma and PTSD in Austin
Individual therapy for adults navigating childhood trauma
Teen therapy for adolescents navigating trauma and its effects
Somatic IFS therapy
Trauma-informed creative arts and music therapy
Bilingual therapy in Mandarin with Wen Chang-Lit
In-person sessions in Austin, TX, and online throughout Texas and New York State

About Integrative Creative Therapy

There is room for all of your experience here.

Therapeutic Approaches We Use for Childhood Trauma Treatment

Childhood trauma requires approaches that work with the body and with what’s been held internally, not only with the narrative of what happened. At Integrative Creative Therapy, we draw on a set of modalities that work with trauma through the body, emotions, memory, and the protective parts that still carry its imprint, combining them in ways tailored to each person.

EMDR Therapy

People often come to EMDR therapy when other approaches have helped them understand what happened, but something hasn’t quite shifted in how it feels to carry it. EMDR works while the experience is still emotionally present, using bilateral stimulation such as guided eye movements or tapping to help the brain process memories that are still held with their original intensity, rather than settled into the past where they belong.

What this looks like in sessions:

Identifying the specific memories and beliefs tied to your trauma
Building resourcing and stability before direct processing begins
Using bilateral stimulation while holding a targeted memory lightly in awareness
Noticing shifts in how the memory feels in the body and in the beliefs you hold about yourself
Integrating what’s processed so it settles as history rather than a present threat

Somatic IFS Therapy

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy works with the different parts of the psyche that developed in response to difficult experiences. Somatic IFS brings the body into that work, attending to where protective parts are held physically and helping them release what they’ve been carrying. For adults with childhood trauma, this approach is particularly useful for the parts that learned to protect, manage, or numb when they were young.

What this looks like in sessions:

Getting curious about protective parts rather than trying to eliminate them
Noticing where parts are held in the body and what they carry
Helping parts feel seen and understood before asking them to change
Working with Self-Energy as the foundation for healing internal conflicts
Finding more spaciousness, more access to your own inner world, and more choice in how you respond

Trauma-Informed Somatic Creative Arts Therapy

Trauma-informed somatic creative arts therapy offers pathways into processing that don’t depend on language. For adults whose childhood trauma is held in pre-verbal or implicit memory, the body often holds what words can’t reach. Music, art, and movement create entry points for what has been held but not yet processed.

What this looks like in sessions:

Using rhythm and music to create a sense of safety and settle the body
Art-making as a way to give form to what is held internally
Musical improvisation, play, and spontaneous creativity to access states that conversation can’t always reach
Creative expression that builds agency, self-trust, and self-compassion over time
Integration of creative arts work with body-based approaches across sessions

Relational and Somatic Work

Many of the patterns that childhood trauma creates grew in relational soil. How safe it felt to depend on someone. Whether expressing emotion led to connection or disconnection. Whether taking up space was allowed. Wen brings a relational, body-aware quality to every session, using the safety of the present therapeutic relationship itself as part of what creates new experience. This isn’t about analyzing the past from a distance. It’s about what becomes possible in the room when someone is genuinely curious about your inner world and not in a hurry.

What this looks like in sessions:

Building a therapeutic relationship that offers a new experience of being in a relationship with another person
Exploring how early attachment patterns show up in current relationships
Working with trust and safety in the therapeutic relationship as part of the healing process
Identifying relational patterns that originated in childhood and developing new ones
Reconnecting with the capacity for genuine closeness that trauma interrupted

You don’t need to know exactly what’s wrong before starting therapy.

What Childhood Trauma Therapy in Austin, TX Can Help With

Childhood trauma doesn’t announce itself the same way twice. Below are some of the experiences that bring people to Integrative Creative Therapy. If yours isn’t listed here, please reach out.

Anxiety and Hypervigilance

Many people describe feeling on edge all the time, even when nothing is wrong. The mind keeps scanning ahead. The body never fully settles. There’s a low-level alertness that runs underneath everything, making it hard to relax, trust, or feel genuinely present. This isn’t a personality trait. It’s a pattern that made sense once and hasn’t yet learned that what was true then is no longer true now. We work with these patterns gently, with curiosity, and at a pace that allows something to genuinely shift.

Shame and Negative Self-Beliefs

Some people describe a quiet but persistent voice that says they are too much, or not enough, or somehow different from everyone around them. They can’t always trace it to a specific event. It just feels like the truth. That belief can feel like the truth right now. Not because it is, but because it’s never had a chance to be questioned in a space that felt genuinely safe. That’s what we’re here to offer.

Difficulty Trusting Others and Relationship Struggles

Wanting to be close to people while also bracing against it is one of the most exhausting places to live. Many people can’t count on anyone, not fully. They may want connection but find themselves pulling back before it can be taken away. These patterns usually started as the only reasonable response to an environment where closeness wasn’t safe. In therapy, the relationship itself becomes part of the healing: a consistent, warm, genuinely curious space that offers a different kind of experience over time.

Emotional Dysregulation

Some people flood easily. Others have learned to shut down completely. Both are responses that made sense once. The work isn’t about controlling emotions but about developing enough internal space that feelings can move through without taking over. Gradually, what used to feel like a wall or a flood begins to feel more like a river you can actually be near.

Grief and Loss

Childhood trauma frequently involves loss: the loss of a parent, a sense of safety, the childhood you deserved, or a version of yourself that never got to develop. That grief doesn’t always arrive as sadness. It can look like anger, emptiness, numbness, or an unexplained heaviness that doesn’t seem connected to anything current. Childhood trauma therapy creates space for grief to be acknowledged and processed on its own terms.

Trauma Responses and Survival Patterns

Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are not personality traits. They are responses that developed in real conditions, for real reasons. For adults with childhood trauma, these patterns can operate automatically in ways that feel involuntary. Therapy helps you understand your own patterns, get curious about when they activate, and gradually build more choice in how you respond.

Depression and Disconnection

Some people describe it as: ” My body keeps going, but I’m not really there. A flatness that’s been present for so long it feels like personality rather than pain. A disconnection from yourself and everyone around you that you can’t quite explain. When depression has roots in childhood, it often doesn’t look like sadness. It looks like distance, like going through the motions, like the parts of you that used to feel alive have learned to stay quiet.

Understanding Childhood Trauma and Its Effects

Childhood trauma is more common and more wide-reaching than most people realize. The sections below offer context for what it is, how it shapes the developing brain, and how it shows up in adult life.

What Childhood Trauma Is

Childhood trauma refers to experiences that were more than a child could process on their own, and that weren’t met with enough support or repair to fully heal. It can come from a single event or a pattern over time.

Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse
Emotional or physical neglect
Loss of a parent or loved one through death, separation, or abandonment
Witnessing violence in the home or community
Bullying, racism, or discrimination
Growing up in an environment of chronic unpredictability, instability, or fear
Medical trauma or prolonged illness in childhood

What Childhood Trauma Does to the Brain

One thing people often find reassuring is learning that what they experience isn’t a character flaw. It’s a response. The developing brain organized itself around what it learned it needed. Some of those adaptations are still running.

The threat detection system becomes more sensitive and harder to turn off
The capacity for rational regulation has less ability to override the threat response
Memory may be held in fragments, sensory rather than narrative
The window of tolerance narrows: the zone within which you can function and regulate becomes smaller
Stress hormone systems can become dysregulated, affecting sleep, mood, and physical health

How Childhood Trauma Shows Up in Adulthood

The effects often aren’t recognized as trauma-related. They show up as patterns that feel like personality or simply like how life is.

Anxiety that feels baseline rather than situational
Depression with no clear external cause
Difficulty with trust, boundaries, or emotional closeness
People-pleasing, perfectionism, or hypervigilance
Shame and negative self-beliefs that don’t respond to evidence
Emotional reactions that feel out of proportion to what’s happening

Childhood Trauma and Relationships

Childhood trauma often shapes the attachment system, affecting how safe it feels to depend on others, express needs, or remain close when conflict arises.

Difficulty trusting partners, friends, or authority figures
Patterns of over-functioning, under-functioning, or oscillating between the two
Reactivity in conflict that feels hard to manage
Choosing familiar dynamics even when they’re painful
Difficulty feeling fully present or secure in relationships

Why Childhood Trauma Affects Adulthood

Something in the body responds before the thinking mind has a chance to catch up. What was learned in childhood about what is safe, who can be trusted, and how to manage hard experiences gets encoded at a level that logic and time alone don’t reach. That’s why understanding what happened isn’t always enough to change how it feels.

Protective patterns learned early run automatically, without being updated by what’s true now
Implicit memory holds the emotional and physical imprint without narrative
Approaches that work through the body, emotions, and creative expression can reach what insight alone cannot

What to Expect in Your First Childhood Trauma Therapy Session

There’s nothing you need to have figured out before you come in. The first session is an intake and assessment session designed to help us get a fuller picture of your experiences, relationships, and current challenges. Together, we’ll begin connecting the dots and understanding the root causes of what you’re struggling with so we can create a treatment plan that feels right for you.
Here’s what you can expect:

We’ll talk about what’s bringing you to therapy and what you’re hoping to gain from the process.
We’ll explore what you’ve tried in the past and what has or hasn’t been helpful.
We’ll discuss your relationships with parents, caregivers, and other important people in your life to better understand your attachment patterns.
We’ll review significant childhood experiences and life events that may be contributing to your current struggles.
We’ll provide psychoeducation about the nervous system so you can understand your symptoms with more compassion and less shame.
We’ll begin identifying what safety, trust, and pacing look like for you in therapy.
We’ll answer any questions you have about the therapeutic process, treatment options, or timeline.
We’ll introduce practical self-regulation tools to help you start building a greater sense of safety and stability in your body.

You don’t need to prepare anything special. Just come as you are, and we’ll take it one step at a time. At the end of your first session, you’ll leave with a clearer sense of whether this feels like the right fit. Most people describe feeling seen and not pressured. You won’t be pushed toward anything you’re not ready for.

Therapy can help you feel more connected to yourself, your relationships, and your choices.

Frequently Asked Questions About Childhood Trauma Therapists in Austin, TX

What Is Childhood Trauma?

Defining Childhood Trauma

Many people wonder whether what they went through even counts. Sometimes there wasn’t one big event. Sometimes it was growing up in an environment that felt slightly off, never knowing what mood you’d come home to, or learning early that some parts of you were safer left unexpressed. All of that leaves a mark, and all of it counts.

Trauma and PTSD

You don’t need a diagnosis to know that something has been affecting you. PTSD is one way childhood trauma can show up, but not the only one. Complex PTSD (C-PTSD) more accurately describes many people’s experience, with deeper effects on self-concept, relationships, and the capacity to regulate emotion. Whether or not you have a formal label, your experience is valid.

What Counts as Childhood Trauma

If something overwhelmed you as a child and wasn’t met with repair, it counts. This includes:

Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse
Emotional or physical neglect
Growing up with a caregiver struggling with addiction, mental illness, or significant instability
Loss of a parent, caregiver, or siblings through death, separation, or abandonment
Bullying, discrimination, or racism
Medical trauma or frightening illness in childhood

What Are the Signs of Childhood Trauma in Adults?

How Childhood Trauma Shows Up Later in Life

It rarely shows up as explicit memories with recognizable causes. More often, it shows up as: feeling like you can’t count on anyone, reactions that feel too big for what’s in front of you, or a persistent sense that something is off without being able to name it.

A chronic, low-level anxiety or alertness that feels like your baseline
Emotions that flood fast or shut down completely
Difficulty trusting others, even people who seem safe
Shame and negative self-beliefs that don’t respond to logic
People-pleasing, perfectionism, or harsh self-criticism
A sense of disconnection from yourself, your body, or other people
A flatness or emptiness that’s just been there for a long time

How Do You Know If You Have Unresolved Childhood Trauma

You don’t need to remember a specific event. If the same patterns keep showing up in your relationships and reactions, and they feel resistant to change, childhood trauma counseling may be a useful place to look.

What Are Examples of Childhood Trauma?

Types of Childhood Trauma Experiences

Childhood trauma comes in many forms. What they share is that they left something unprocessed in the developing child.

Emotional abuse: criticism, humiliation, rejection, or threatening behavior from caregivers
Physical abuse or the threat of physical harm
Sexual abuse or unwanted sexual exposure
Emotional neglect: not having emotional needs consistently met or acknowledged
Physical neglect: inadequate care of basic needs
Loss of a parent through death, abandonment, or separation from a loved one
Witnessing violence at home or in the community
Repeated childhood abuse or ongoing patterns of harm
Bullying, racism, or discrimination
Growing up with chronic instability, unpredictability, or fear

What Disorders Are Caused by Childhood Trauma?

Mental Health Conditions Associated with Childhood Trauma

Childhood trauma can contribute to many different mental health struggles. Diagnoses can be helpful, but they rarely tell the whole story. Many people are more interested in understanding the patterns underneath than finding the perfect label.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (C-PTSD)
Generalized anxiety disorder and other anxiety conditions
Major depressive disorder and persistent depression
Borderline personality disorder, which often has roots in relational trauma
Dissociative disorders
Eating disorders, often as a form of emotional management
Substance use disorders
Attachment disorders

Childhood Trauma and PTSD

Complex PTSD often fits better than standard PTSD for people with chronic childhood trauma. It includes trauma symptoms alongside deeper effects on self-concept, affect regulation, and relationships. Both respond to childhood trauma counseling.

What Does Childhood Trauma Do to the Brain?

How Childhood Trauma Affects Brain Development

The threat detection system becomes more sensitive and harder to turn off
The capacity for rational regulation has less ability to override the threat response
Memory may be held in fragments, sensory rather than narrative
Stress hormone systems can become chronically dysregulated

Window of Tolerance

The window of tolerance is the zone within which you can engage, relate, and regulate. Childhood trauma often narrows this window. Trauma therapy works to gradually widen it over time.

Why Does Childhood Trauma Affect Adulthood?

Why Trauma Stays With Us Into Adulthood

Something in the body responds before the thinking mind has a chance to catch up. What was learned in childhood about what is safe, who can be trusted, and how to manage hard experiences gets encoded at a level that logic and time alone don’t reach. That’s why insight alone isn’t always enough to create change.

Why Do Some People Remember Childhood Trauma Later in Life

What gets held from overwhelming childhood experiences is often sensory and emotional: a feeling, a quality of atmosphere, a body response, without a clear narrative. This is why some people carry effects without specific memories, and why some memories surface as safety builds through therapy.

How Do Therapists Treat Childhood Trauma?

How Childhood Trauma Counseling Works

People often come to us after trying other things that helped partway but didn’t quite reach what needed to change. The work here is paced and relational. We start by understanding what you’re carrying and building enough safety to work with it. We don’t push. We don’t move faster than you’re genuinely ready to move.

Dealing with Childhood Trauma: Treatment Approaches That Work

EMDR helps the brain process memories that are still held with their original intensity. Somatic therapy works with how experiences are held in the body. Creative arts therapy offers entry points when language isn’t the right pathway. At Integrative Creative Therapy, we use these in combination, tailored to what each person needs.

How Childhood Trauma Therapy Is Different from Regular Therapy

Talk therapy can help you understand what happened. Childhood trauma therapy is designed to work with the body, emotions, and implicit memories that continue shaping life in the present. That’s what makes the difference for people who’ve already done insight work but still feel stuck.

Childhood Trauma Therapist in Austin, TX

At Integrative Creative Therapy in Austin, TX, we offer in-person sessions at our Mueller neighborhood office and online therapy throughout Texas and New York State. If you are looking for a childhood trauma therapist in Austin, reach out to schedule a free 15-minute conversation.

Who Should See a Therapist for Childhood Trauma?

Who Is Childhood Trauma Therapy For?

Childhood trauma therapy is for any adult carrying the effects of difficult or overwhelming childhood experiences who wants to understand those effects and create real change. You don’t need a diagnosis, clear memories, or a crisis. What helps is a genuine readiness to look and a willingness to work with what you find.

Who Is Most Affected by Childhood Trauma?

The effects tend to be more significant when trauma was repeated, when it happened early, when there was no safe adult available, and when the child had to manage alone. Our practice specifically supports Asian Americans and immigrants navigating the intersection of childhood trauma and cultural experience.

When Should Someone Seek Therapy for Childhood Trauma?

There is no single right moment. Some people come when things have reached a breaking point. Others come because they’ve been functional for years, but sense something deeper hasn’t moved. Both are valid. If childhood experiences are showing up in your relationships, your body, your reactions, or your sense of yourself, that’s enough.

What If I’m Not Sure My Experiences Count

If you’re asking whether your experiences count, that question alone is worth getting curious about. Many people minimize what they went through, especially when it didn’t look like what they imagine trauma to be. If something has shaped how you move through the world, it’s worth exploring together.

Can Childhood Trauma Be Healed?

Childhood Trauma Recovery

Yes. Healing isn’t about erasing the past. What changes is your relationship to it: how much it activates the present, how much it shapes your sense of yourself. Many people who complete childhood trauma therapy describe a significant shift in how freely they can live, relate, and feel present in their own lives.

Healing Journey and What to Expect

Healing is not linear. There are periods of progress and periods where old patterns resurface. What the research consistently shows is that trauma-focused approaches produce real, lasting change. We have seen people come in carrying something for decades and leave with a genuinely different relationship to it.

Does Therapy Help With Childhood Trauma in Adults?

Yes. And the kind of therapy matters. Talk therapy can offer real insight. Childhood trauma therapy is designed to work with what insight alone doesn’t always change: the body, emotions, and implicit memory that continue shaping how you move through the world. At Integrative Creative Therapy, that means using EMDR, somatic work, and creative arts therapy together, because different people need different pathways in.

What Does Childhood Trauma Therapy Look Like for Adults

For most adults, the work begins with building safety and capacity before any direct processing. As that foundation deepens, so does the work. Most people describe not just symptom relief but a more fundamental shift in how they experience themselves, their relationships, and their own inner world.

How Long Does Therapy for Childhood Trauma Take?

It depends on what you’re working with and what you’re working toward. Complex childhood trauma typically requires a longer course of work than single-incident trauma. We discuss the timeline openly from the start and revisit it as the work evolves.

When Does Childhood Trauma Therapy Begin to Work?

Most people notice meaningful shifts within the first several months of consistent work. Early changes often show up in the quality of daily experience: more spaciousness, less reactivity, a greater ability to settle. If you’ve been carrying this for many years, some depth of work is usually needed for lasting change.

How Much Does Childhood Trauma Therapy Cost in Austin, TX, and Do You Accept Insurance?

Understanding Therapy Pricing Structures

Price per Session

Individual Therapy: $250 / 60-minute session and $200 / 45-minute session.
Group Therapy: $80 for a 75-minute session.
Music therapy for individuals living with dementia and their caregivers: $55 per pair for a 75-minute session.

Insurance

Integrative Creative Therapy is an out-of-network practice. A superbill can be provided for clients who wish to seek reimbursement through their insurance provider.

Out-of-network benefits may allow partial reimbursement depending on your plan
Superbill provided upon request for insurance reimbursement
Income-based sliding scales available — reach out to ask

Location

1701 Simond Ave, Austin, TX 78723

Mueller neighborhood, Austin, Texas
Near Mueller Lake Park
Near the Thinkery
Serving Downtown Austin, University Hill, and Westcott
Online therapy available throughout Texas and New York State

Session Options

In-person creative arts and music therapy sessions in Austin, TX, and online therapy for clients throughout Texas and New York State.

Financial Assistance

Need support finding affordable care?

Lotus Therapy Fund — for Asian Americans seeking mental health support
Loveland Foundation — for Black women and girls and nonbinary individuals

Do You Offer Online Childhood Trauma Therapy in Texas or New York?

Online Childhood Trauma Therapy in Texas and New York

Yes. Online childhood trauma therapy is available throughout Texas and New York State using the same EMDR, somatic, and creative arts approaches as in-person work. A good option for people managing distance, scheduling constraints, or who feel more comfortable working from their own space.

Childhood Trauma

Therapy Near Me in Austin, TX
In-person sessions are available at 1701 Simond Ave, Austin, TX 78723, in the Mueller neighborhood. We serve clients from Downtown Austin, University Hill, Westcott, and the surrounding areas. Reach out to confirm availability and schedule a free conversation.

Sometimes curiosity is where the process begins.

A free 15-minute consultation is a low-pressure way to connect, ask questions, and get a sense of whether this feels like the right fit. You don’t need a clear picture of what happened or what you’re looking for. You don’t even need to know what you need. Just a willingness to start listening to yourself again.

Find Childhood Trauma Therapists in Austin, Texas at Integrative Creative Therapy

Bring the parts of yourself that feel easy to share, and the parts that don’t.