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June 02
You can’t out-organize trauma. You can’t schedule your way out of burnout. But you can begin to heal, and in doing so, everything else starts to shift.
Dr. Lorre Laws has spent over three decades helping people do just that. Known affectionately as “Dr. Lorre,” she’s a bestselling author, integrative nursing professor, and founder of The Haelan Academy, a nonprofit that supports trauma recovery and holistic well-being. She’s also a woman with ADHD who knows what it’s like to look calm on the outside while feeling dysregulated, scattered, or stuck on the inside.
In this conversation, she and Tracy explore how trauma and ADHD often intertwine, especially in women who have spent years high-functioning their way through stress, disconnection, and self-doubt. They talk about the nervous system’s role in attention and emotion, why so many ADHD women push themselves past the point of depletion, and how healing often starts with something as simple as breath and awareness.
Dr. Lorre shares powerful insights from her journey, what changed when she finally connected the dots between trauma, ADHD, and burnout, and how she now helps other women do the same. She offers concrete, compassionate tools for slowing down, listening to your body, and shifting out of survival mode… without shame or overwhelm.
This episode is for every woman who’s ever thought, Why can’t I just get it together? You’re not broken. You’re not lazy. You’re likely just carrying more than your nervous system was ever meant to hold—and this conversation will help you start to set it down.
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YOUTUBE
"Dr. Lorre presents her healing formula: Three A's (Awareness, Attending, Alignment) plus Balance to achieve Regulation, Reconnection, and Restoration, emphasizing nervous system work before self-care."
- Lorre Laws
"She reveals 91% of nurses have PTSD symptoms and describes systemic healthcare trauma where violence is normalized and victims are blamed with "what could you have done differently?"
- Lorre Laws
"Burnout" narratives are actually trauma responses with 89-95% symptom overlap between burnout, compassion fatigue, and trauma, requiring nervous system regulation over traditional self-care."
- Lorre Laws
- Dr. Lorre Laws' adult daughters recognized her ADHD behaviors during the pandemic, saying she had "worse ADHD" than her diagnosed daughter, leading her to seek assessment despite initially dismissing the suggestion.
- After one computer test (TOVA), she was dismissed because she was a successful professor with a PhD, showing how high-functioning individuals are overlooked for ADHD diagnosis.
- Her extensive trauma history created hypervigilance and masking behaviors that prioritized academic achievement as survival, hiding typical ADHD presentations behind high performance.
- Dr. Lorre explains how unintegrated trauma gets stored in body tissues, staying dormant until activated by stressors, affecting how ADHD symptoms manifest uniquely for each individual.
- She describes "left-shiftedness" as a trauma response where people become overly analytical and disconnected from emotions, appearing functional but feeling isolated and overwhelmed internally.
- Trauma creates cellular dysfunction through "cell danger response," where mitochondria get stuck in survival mode, causing chronic fatigue and brain fog commonly experienced with ADHD.
[00:45:00 - 01:05:44] The Three A's Framework and Healthcare Trauma
- Dr. Lorre presents her healing formula: Three A's (Awareness, Attending, Alignment) plus Balance to achieve Regulation, Reconnection, and Restoration, emphasizing nervous system work before self-care.
- She reveals 91% of nurses have PTSD symptoms and describes systemic healthcare trauma where violence is normalized and victims are blamed with "what could you have done differently?"
- "Burnout" narratives are actually trauma responses with 89-95% symptom overlap between burnout, compassion fatigue, and trauma, requiring nervous system regulation over traditional self-care.
