Dr. Sasha Reiisi: Healing Childhood Trauma in Small Doses

You are already parenting differently than you were parented. That was the promise you made yourself. Then the case started, and there are days when you have nothing to give anyone, and you can feel yourself becoming somebody you did not sign up to be.

Dr. Sasha Reiisi is a licensed professional clinical counselor and a doctor of education, practicing in California with adults, couples and families. His specialty is early childhood trauma, and he built it the long way round: years of clinical work with children from birth to five, much of it with low-income families and single-parent households. What changed his direction was noticing that the difficulties he was treating in a three-year-old showed up almost unchanged in a thirty-year-old, still unrepaired, still shaping decisions the adult could not trace back to anything.

He and Lisa start with what trauma actually is. Not the event, he says, but what the nervous system does during it, and the conclusion a child draws afterwards. He gives the small version that carries no obvious incident at all: the parent who is late to the school gate most days while every other child gets collected, and the belief a child assembles out of that about whether anyone shows up when they say they will. He also takes apart the idea that damage is permanent. Repair is possible at any age, in either direction, and adults keep giving their parents chances to get it right long after it looks reasonable to.

The practical half covers what to do when the person who hurt you will not acknowledge it, and what reparenting means in that case. Why healing is relational and community matters alongside therapy, plus a straight answer to Lisa's question about support groups that keep people circling the same grievance instead of moving. Why the body is half the work, what bilateral movement is, and why he takes teenage clients for a walk rather than sitting them in a chair. And his answer for anyone with no time: healing happens in the pause before you go out the door, and in the apology after you snapped, and children need roughly ten minutes of real attention a day.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why trauma is what happens in the nervous system, not the event itself
• How trauma builds with no single incident, and what a repeatedly late pick-up teaches a child
• Why repair is possible at any age, whether your child is four or thirty-four
• What healing looks like when the person who hurt you will never acknowledge it
• How to tell a support community that helps from one that keeps you circling
• Why talking is only part of trauma work, and how movement reconnects you to your body
• What bilateral movement is, and why hard conversations go better on a walk
• How to make real progress in small doses when you have no time to spare

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 "I want to do better than my parents"
5:00 What trauma actually is, and where it happens
9:00 Trauma that builds: the late pick-up, the empty fridge
11:00 Why repair works at any age, even decades later
13:00 When the person who hurt you will not acknowledge it
15:00 Talk therapy, community, and getting back into your body
17:00 Bilateral movement, and hard conversations on a walk
19:00 Which support communities heal, and which keep you circling
24:00 Healing in small doses when you have no time
27:00 Micro-progress, and moving from automatic to aware

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Dr. Sasha Reiisi on Instagram (@dr.sashareiisi): https://www.instagram.com/dr.sashareiisi/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.