You Are Not Crazy

You Are Not Crazy

This week on Your Traitor Within, I sat down with Kiki Mullican, known online as The Trauma Drama Mama, for a conversation about toxic family systems, scapegoating, chronic illness, agoraphobia, OCD, trauma bonds, and the long, painful process of realizing that what happened to you really did happen.

Kiki’s story begins in a place I found very moving: the library.

As a child, she would go to the public library in Baltimore and read psychology books she did not fully understand yet. She was not reading them out of casual curiosity. She was reading them because she thought if she could understand enough, she might be able to help the people in her family. She might be able to fix what was broken. She might be able to make everyone safe.

That is something many children in chaotic or emotionally unsafe homes understand.

The child becomes the researcher.

The child becomes the helper.

The child becomes the one who tries to explain the family to itself.

But as Kiki says so clearly in this episode, knowledge was never going to fix her family. She wanted to show them, in black and white, what needed to change. But people can only change when they are ready and willing to see themselves honestly. Without that willingness, the person telling the truth often becomes the villain.
That is where so many scapegoats are born.

Kiki and I talked about what it means to be the one who names the dysfunction and then gets blamed for it. She described growing up in a frightening family system shaped by addiction, abuse, and emotional danger. She became, in many ways, a de facto parent. She tried to save her mother. She tried to make sense of what no child should have had to make sense of.
One of the lines from the episode that stayed with me was Kiki’s reminder that we do not get a fresh new brain at eighteen.

People love to say, “You’re an adult now,” as if adulthood magically wipes away the nervous system, attachment patterns, survival strategies, and beliefs a child had to build in order to survive. It does not. The foundation is already there. The work of healing is not pretending that foundation never existed. It is slowly, patiently, and often painfully rebuilding it.

We also discussed chronic illness and trauma. Kiki lives with rheumatoid arthritis, and we talked about the connection many researchers and clinicians now explore between trauma, chronic stress, the nervous system, and autoimmune conditions. This conversation is not about saying illness is “all in your head.” Quite the opposite. The body is real. The pain is real. The damage is real. The body keeps the score in ways many people are still learning how to understand.
Another important part of the episode centers on agoraphobia.

Kiki explains that agoraphobia does not always look the way it does in movies. It is not always a person who never opens the door, never leaves the house, and keeps every blind closed. Sometimes it is a person who can go to a Beyoncé concert one day and then struggle to leave the house the next. Sometimes it is not a fear of places as much as a fear of people, judgment, being watched, or being misunderstood.
That distinction matters.

Because when people misunderstand what a condition looks like, they often accuse the person of faking. Kiki spoke about the cruelty of being judged for what others could not see: the illness, the fear, the panic, the limitations, the internal work required just to leave the house or sit in a parking lot with the doors locked.

And then she talked about exposure.

Not the glamorous kind.

The real kind.

Driving a little bit farther than last time. Sitting in the grocery store parking lot. Having setbacks. Trying again. Repeating the same step over and over until the nervous system begins to learn something new. She said something that I think so many people need to hear: you do not have to be unafraid. You are doing it while you are afraid.

That is healing.

Not perfection.

Not a straight line.

Not one dramatic breakthrough.

A million small steps.

A million moments of choosing to try again.

We also discussed OCD, intrusive thoughts, and what Kiki calls her Traitor Within. She described OCD as “a courtroom battle that you can’t win,” which is one of the clearest descriptions I have heard. The mind argues, cross-examines, objects, and asks “what if” until the body feels unsafe even when the present moment is not dangerous. Kiki talked about the slow work of naming the thought, grounding in the present, and learning to respond differently over time.

One of the most moving parts of the conversation was our discussion about suicide prevention and human connection.

Kiki shared that she used to teach suicide prevention to mental health professionals and spoke about people who were on their way to end their lives when a stranger smiled, said hello, or asked if they were okay. That moment of connection changed something. It reminded them, even briefly, that they were seen.

We also discussed why suicide is not selfish. People in that level of pain are often not thinking clearly about the impact on others. Many believe they are ending pain for themselves and fixing things for everyone else. That belief is heartbreaking, but it is not selfishness. It is suffering.

Kiki’s work now is about helping people recognize that they are not crazy, not alone, and not responsible for everything that happened to them. Through her social media platform, she gives language to toxic family dynamics, scapegoating, trauma patterns, and the effects of being raised in systems that made you believe you were the problem.

One of the strongest takeaways from this episode is that self-awareness matters, but it is not enough.

Kiki said her therapist once told her she had self-awareness from a very young age because it was abused into her. Many trauma survivors are incredibly self-aware. They analyze everything. They monitor every mood in the room. They know exactly when something shifts. But awareness alone does not heal the wound. The work comes after awareness: support, therapy, community, repetition, nervous system repair, and learning to live differently.

At the end of the episode, I asked Kiki what she would want listeners to take from her story.

Her answer was simple and necessary:

You are not alone.

You are not crazy.

It really did happen.

It really had those effects on you.

And there is hope on the other side.

You can connect with Kiki here:

Instagram, Threads, and TikTok:
@the.trauma.drama.mama

Facebook:
Facebook.com/thetraumadramamama

Listen to the full episode of Your Traitor Within here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-traitor-within/id1797804404

Watch on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@JessicaAnnePressler

If you are in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 in the U.S. for immediate support.

Thank you, as always, for being part of this community.

— Jessica Anne Pressler, LCSW