By: Sally Dunn
For many survivors of trauma, life can feel like an endless loop of limitation—an internal cage built from fear, exhaustion, or long-standing emotional patterns that no longer make sense but remain impossible to shake. In Creating After Abuse: How to Heal from Trauma and Get On With Your Life, Dr. Lisa Cooney offers a way forward. Blending her extensive professional experience with deeply human insights, she guides readers toward a new possibility: not just recovering from the past, but actively creating a life beyond it.
The book opens with a strikingly simple invitation: recognize the truth of your own experience. As Dr. Cooney explains, “The very first step is acknowledgment without judgment.” It is a principle that threads through every chapter and becomes the foundation for meaningful transformation. Many people, she notes, attempt to improve their lives while still minimizing or intellectualizing the impact of trauma. But avoidance comes at a cost. “What we refuse to acknowledge, we cannot transform,” she says. When someone can finally admit, “Yes—this happened, it affected me, and I’m ready for something different,” the healing process begins in earnest. Energy that was once tied up in resistance becomes available for change.
From there, she emphasizes the importance of cultivating both internal and external safety. Without this, she explains, “no amount of mindset work will stick.” Trauma overwhelms the nervous system, sometimes for years or even decades. Safety—real, embodied safety—is what allows the system to exhale, regulate, and open to possibility again.
Untangling the Myths That Hold Survivors Back
A central element of Creating After Abuse is correcting common misconceptions that often derail or sabotage healing. One of the most damaging is the belief that trauma must be a single catastrophic event to “count.” As Dr. Cooney explains, “Trauma is any experience that overwhelms your capacity to cope.” This includes not only physical or violent incidents but also emotional invalidation, chronic stress, neglect, or internalized shame.
Another widely held misconception is that “time heals all wounds.” Dr. Cooney challenges this directly: “Time doesn’t heal it—presence does.” Without conscious, intentional engagement, the body continues to store unresolved patterns, no matter how much time has passed.
She also highlights the pitfalls of trying to “get over” trauma through positive thinking or spiritual bypassing. Because trauma is stored in the body, not the mind, cognitive strategies alone are insufficient and often leave people feeling like they’re failing. “They’re not failing—they’re using the wrong tools,” she says. Her book offers those tools, grounded in research, lived experience, and years of working with survivors.
Reclaiming the Body: Safety, Sensation, and Somatic Truth
Beyond emotional healing, Dr. Cooney addresses the physical aftermath of trauma: the tension, shame, or disconnection many survivors experience in their own bodies. Her approach centers on teaching the body that it is safe to feel again.
“Trauma disconnects us from our sensations because, at the time, feeling was overwhelming,” she says. Through breathwork, grounding practices, somatic awareness, and guided inquiry, her methods help shift the nervous system out of the fight-or-flight or freeze response. Once the body experiences safety, shame naturally begins to dissolve.
A key aspect of her work is restoring agency. “When someone learns they can make choices about how they breathe, how they move, and how they respond internally, they reconnect with their inherent power.” This is not abstract. As she emphasizes, “Safety isn’t a concept; it’s a felt experience.” Her book guides readers in building that experience step by step.
Rebuilding Self-Trust, Relationships, and Creative Momentum
Trauma often disrupts relationships and derails long-term goals. Dr. Cooney explains that this happens because trauma damages trust—trust in others, but also trust in oneself. When the nervous system is constantly scanning for danger, openness and creativity take a back seat. Her book offers tools to restore that sense of trust, including one simple practice that readers can begin immediately.
She calls it the “micro-truths” exercise: pausing throughout the day to ask, “What is true for me in this moment?” Without judgment, the answer becomes a bridge between inner awareness and outer action. Over time, this strengthens boundaries, clarity, communication, and emotional alignment. “This alone begins to rebuild the bridge between your inner world and your outer actions,” she notes.
This practice, and many others in the book, help readers cultivate authenticity in relationships and learn to follow through on goals, projects, and dreams that trauma may have once eclipsed.
What’s Possible After Trauma? Dr. Cooney Has Witnessed It
Dr. Cooney has supported countless survivors in reclaiming their lives, but the transformations still move her. The moments that surprise her most, she says, are when someone reconnects with a forgotten part of themselves—a spark of joy, a voice they thought was lost, or a creative fire dimmed by years of self-doubt.
“I’ve watched clients who spent decades feeling broken suddenly reconnect with joy,” she says. She’s seen people who once couldn’t speak about their trauma “stand on stages and inspire thousands,” and artists and entrepreneurs reclaim the brilliance that trauma once obscured. These breakthroughs can unfold faster than many expect. “Trauma can take years to accumulate,” she notes, “but breakthroughs can happen in a moment of clarity, presence, or courage.”
Creating After Abuse is ultimately a book about possibility: the possibility of healing, expansion, creativity, and coming home to oneself. For anyone who has felt stuck, shut down, or limited by the past, Dr. Lisa Cooney offers a clear, compassionate path toward a different future—one created from truth, safety, and the freedom to rise.
To explore Dr. Lisa Cooney’s transformative approach firsthand, you can find Creating After Abuse now on Amazon.
Disclaimer: The content of this article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or psychological advice. Readers are encouraged to seek appropriate professional guidance for any specific health, psychological, or personal concerns.
