Episode 335: Making Your Trauma Responses Work For You with Dr. Amelia Kelley
The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast
Kate Anthony
4.4 • 573 Ratings
🗓️ 11 September 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Podcast favorite Dr. Amelia Kelley is back on the show! Today we're unpacking something I know will resonate with so many of you: our trauma responses. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn… we all have them. But what if instead of shaming ourselves for these responses, we learned to use them for our benefit?
Amelia and I get into what each response actually looks like day-to-day, why they happen so quickly in the body, and how to bring more consciousness when they show up. We also explore ways to reframe them so they can become tools that work in your favor: turning fight into advocacy, flight into creativity, freeze into stillness, and fawn into compassion and service.
✨ Podcast episodes are available in two formats - audio and video! If you'd like to watch the video version of this episode, you can find it here.
What you'll hear about in this episode:
- The four trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn (2:36)
- Why these responses happen so fast in the brain and nervous system (5:41)
- The role of naming and grounding in shifting your experience (17:47)
- How to recognize your default response and bring more choice into it (19:55)
- Using trauma responses in intentional ways, like boxing, cycling, meditation, or setting boundaries (38:20)
Learn more about Dr. Amelia Kelley: Dr. Amelia Kelley is a trauma-informed therapist, author, co-host of The Sensitivity Doctor Podcast, researcher, and certified meditation and yoga instructor. Her specialties include art therapy, internal family systems (IFS), EMDR, and brainspotting. Her work focuses on women's issues, empowering survivors of abuse and relationship trauma, highly sensitive persons, motivation, healthy living, and adult ADHD.
She is an adjunct professor in Psychology at Yorkville University and a nationally recognized relationship expert featured on SiriusXM Doctor Radio's The Psychiatry Show as well as NPR's The Measure of Everyday Life and 411 Teen. Her private practice is part of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at the Kinsey Institute. She is also a resident trainer at PESI offering continuing trauma-focused education to professionals.
She is the author of Powered by ADHD: Strategies and Exercises for Women to Harness their Untapped Gifts, Gaslighting Recovery for Women: The Complete Guide to Recognizing Manipulation and Achieving Freedom from Emotional Abuse, coauthor of What I Wish I Knew: Surviving and Thriving After an Abusive Relationship, as well as Surviving Suicidal Ideation: From Therapy to Spirituality and the Lived Experience, and a contributing author for Psychology Today, ADDitude Magazine, as well as Highly Sensitive Refuge. Her work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Yahoo News, Lifehacker, Well + Good and Insider.
Resources & Links:
ALL NEW: The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast Episodes are Now Available on YouTube!
Focused Strategy Sessions with Kate
The Divorce Survival Guide Resource Bundle
Phoenix Rising: A Divorce Empowerment Collective
Kate on Instagram
Kate on Facebook
Kate's Substack Newsletter: Divorce Coaching Dispatch
Dr. Amelia Kelley's website
Dr. Amelia Kelley on Instagram
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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY, COACH, OR THERAPIST IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN ADVICE WITH RESPECT TO ANY PARTICULAR ISSUE OR PROBLEM.
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Episode link: https://kateanthony.com/podcast/episode-335-making-your-trauma-responses-work-for-you-with-dr-amelia-kelley/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So let's say you're in fight. Okay. If you're screaming and you're upset, still say the words, but try whispering or slow, slow your words down. So our nervous system is reading all this input all the time. So if we are just furious with someone and we're raising our voice |
| 0:23.3 | and we're tensing everything, choose one aspect of your fight response to relax. So it could be, |
| 0:29.3 | I'm going to still yell at you, but I'm going to relax my jaw. Or I'm going to still say what |
| 0:34.4 | I have to say, but I'm going to slow it down a little. |
| 0:38.0 | That's just the step towards the final part of it is then doing something truly grounding. |
| 0:48.0 | Welcome to the Divorce Survival Guide podcast, where we have open and honest conversations about |
| 0:54.1 | co-parenting, separation, divorce, |
| 0:56.5 | and the hardest question of all, should you stay or should you go? I'm Kate Anthony, your |
| 1:03.2 | divorce survival guide, and I'm here to help you navigate some of the roughest waters you've ever |
| 1:08.5 | swum in and answer some of your toughest questions. |
| 1:11.6 | I've been to hell and back. And now it's my mission in life to help you get to the other side of this process with your sanity and your heart intact. |
| 1:46.7 | Hey everyone, welcome back. I am super excited because I have with me one of my favorite guests, one of my favorite people, Dr. Amelia Kelly. You have heard her on the show numerous times. Dr. Kelly is a trauma-informed therapist, author Tedx Raleigh speaker, |
| 1:51.7 | and host of The Sensitive Doctor podcast, which I have also been on. Thank you very much. She specializes in trauma recovery, adult ADHD, and a highly sensitive persons using |
| 1:58.5 | approaches like IFS, EMDR, and brain spotting. |
| 2:03.0 | She runs a women's ADHD support group and contributes to psychology today and highly |
| 2:09.8 | sensitive refuge. |
| 2:11.3 | You can learn more about all the things that Dr. Kelly does at Amelia Kelly with an E-E-E-E-Y, K-E-L-L-E-Y.com or follow her on the socials at |
| 2:23.5 | Dr. Amelia Kelly. Amelia, thank you so much. Welcome back. Thanks for being here. I'm so excited |
| 2:30.3 | to talk to you. I haven't talked to you in forever. So this is just exciting on so many levels. Yeah, I know. I know. It's been, it's been too long. So today we're going to talk to you. I haven't talked to you in forever. So this is just exciting on so many levels. |
| 2:34.8 | Yeah, I know. I know. It's been, it's been too long. So today we're going to talk about |
| 2:39.0 | using your trauma responses for you. So being fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. |
| 2:51.4 | Right. |
... |
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