“You are not broken. You adapted.”
If you grew up in a home where your needs went unmet, your feelings were dismissed, or love always felt conditional, you may not carry a single dramatic memory you can point to — just a quiet, persistent sense that something was wrong, and that the “something” was you.
It wasn’t.
In “The Self Beneath the Wound” hypnotherapist and psychotherapist Lorelai Dali draws on over fifteen years of clinical practice — and her own healing journey — to offer a compassionate, practical guide to understanding and healing complex childhood trauma (CPTSD). This is not a book about a single bad day. It’s about the slow, cumulative wounding of growing up without the safety, attunement, and unconditional love every child needs — and the very real, very learnable path back to yourself.
Inside, you’ll find:
– A clear framework for understanding how complex trauma forms — and why it so often hides behind coping mechanisms, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and chronic anxiety
– A six-step healing path, developed over fifteen years of clinical work, guiding you from cognitive understanding through grief, inner child work, somatic release, and ultimately reclaiming a life no longer defined by what happened to you
– Dozens of exercises, reflection prompts, and real (composite) client stories that make the healing process concrete and achievable
– Honest, specific guidance on relationships, parenting, shame, work, and the everyday moments where old wounds quietly resurface — and how to meet them differently
Whether you’re just beginning to suspect that your childhood shaped more than you realized, or you’ve been doing this work for years and are looking for the next layer, this book meets you exactly where you are — with clarity instead of jargon, compassion instead of judgment, and a path forward instead of just an explanation.
You survived. Now it’s time to heal.