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Holding Space with Dr. Barker
Holding Space with Dr. Christopher Barker is a psychology podcast focused on how unresolved complex trauma shapes daily life — from childhood through adulthood.
Complex trauma isn’t only about major events. It develops through chronic stress, attachment wounds, emotional neglect, and relational instability. Over time, these survival adaptations can show up as ADHD-like symptoms in children, emotional dysregulation, workplace conflict, burnout, leadership struggles, relationship challenges, and intergenerational family patterns.
Through the lens of EMDR therapy, attachment theory, neuroscience, and trauma-informed care, Dr. Barker explains how the nervous system learns to survive — and how healing becomes possible.
Each episode offers research-based insight and practical tools for regulating triggers, improving relationships, and moving from survival mode to intentional living.
Understanding your story is the beginning. Healing transforms how you live it.
Welcome to Holding Space.
https://substack.com/@christopherbarkerphd
Holding Space with Dr. Barker
How Your Brain Shapes Personality & Trauma Responses | Holding Space On the Road
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this special Holding Space: On the Road episode, Dr. Christopher Barker shares insights from his training in attachment and personality pattern specialization, exploring how our brains shape who we are.
Drawing on the work of leaders like Dan Siegel and Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Barker breaks down a powerful neurobiological model of personality. He explains how our brainstem (the source of temperament), limbic system (emotional processing), and cortex (interpretation and decision-making) interact to form our patterns of behavior.
Rather than viewing personality through a lens of disorder, this perspective reframes our responses as adaptive—rooted in biology and early experience. While temperament itself may not change, therapy offers something equally powerful: the ability to choose how we respond.
This episode offers a grounded, compassionate understanding of why we are the way we are—and how healing begins with awareness, flexibility, and choice.
EMAIL US: BARKERHOLDINGSPACE@GMAIL.COM
Holding Space For You