Author: Janyne McConnaughey, PhD

Janyne McConnaughey, member of the ATN Board of Directors, is a retired teacher educator and Professor Emeritus who taught every age from preschool to graduate school during her forty-year career. She completed a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, from the University of Colorado—Denver in 2006, with an emphasis in Early Childhood and Math Education. After retiring, and an intensive healing journey for significant childhood trauma, she now devotes her time to writing, speaking, and blogging. Along with Brave: A Personal Story of Healing Childhood Trauma (2018) and Jeannie’s Brave Childhood: Behavior and Healing through the Lens of Attachment and Trauma (2019), Janyne is working on a prequel to Brave which should be available in 2020. She and her husband Scott, are now living in the Seattle area near their children and grandchildren and love exploring the Pacific Northwest.

Hands of different colors representing community

ATN: Why and How to Get Connected

How much do you know about ATN? As a new member of the Attachment and Trauma Network Board of Directors, I have discovered some amazing things. I knew some of this from joining ATN two years ago and speaking at the first two Creating Trauma Sensitive Schools Conferences. However, joining the board has definitely reinforced it!

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ATN: The Power of Community

[N]ext week, I will speak for the second time at the Creating Trauma Sensitive Schools Conference, where my topic will be “Behavior through the Lens of Attachment, Trauma, and Dissociation.”

BRAVE: What I Chose to Tell

When I talk about BRAVE: A Personal Story of Healing Childhood Trauma, I sense assumptions from the outset. They are understandable – after all, the title says it’s about childhood trauma, right? Yet at the same time, I want to laugh and say, “Could you just read the book before you make up your mind?”

Posted by Janyne McConnaughey, PhD | Posted in Book Reviews, Our Voices, Trauma |

Author of BRAVE: A Personal Story of Healing Childhood

Two Kinds of Brave

[warning – this post briefly references an act of sexual assault] In her response to BRAVE: A Personal Story of Healing Childhood Trauma, Laura Dennis, ATN blog manager, asked me to address the following: “There are (at least) 2 kinds of being brave. One is an illusion in which we tell ourselves a version of

Posted by Janyne McConnaughey, PhD | Posted in Our Voices, Therapies, Trauma |

Throwing Myself on the Floor

–by Janyne McConnaughey, PhD It was inexplicable. I was a twenty-seven-year-old wife and mother of an infant, and I had just left the family gathering and thrown myself on the floor kicking and screaming. My husband was standing over me with a compassionate but perplexed look on his face. I now understand exactly what happened. In

Posted by Janyne McConnaughey, PhD | Posted in Our Voices, Trauma |

Trauma without Healthy Attachment: How a Child Feels

–by Janyne McConnaughey, PhD I sat on the floor next to her. I understood her fear of abandonment, the trauma she had experienced, and how her mother had been unable to provide any form of comfort. I watched her body shake uncontrollably and offered a blanket. I knew she would not want me to hold

Posted by Janyne McConnaughey, PhD | Posted in Attachment, Our Voices, Therapies, Trauma |

Why Jeannie Can’t Tell Time

–by Janyne McConnaughey, Ph.D. Staring at the analog clock in my therapist’s office, I wondered which hand was the big hand and struggled with my need not to go over my time. “I can’t read the clock,” I said. It was awkward because I was 62, but I really wasn’t. This awkward therapy moment is