In this season finale of Poetry in Layers, I share one of the most personal and painful pieces I have ever written. The poem reflects a moment of police brutality I experienced when I was twenty years old. The episode focuses on how racism, mistaken identity, and state violence shape the nervous system long after the event ends. I guide listeners through the poem’s structure, its clipped and repetitive language, and how that form mirrors the rhythm of hypervigilance and survival. Through an IFS and somatic lens, I explore the protectors, the exiles, and the physical responses that emerge when danger comes from those who carry authority.

I expand the frame to explore the cultural and historical patterns that surround these encounters. I reflect on how Black men often become symbols of suspicion, how the phrase be safe becomes a mix of blessing and warning, and how generational trauma lives in breath, posture, and memory.

This episode offers an invitation to witness truth, to honor the body’s story, and to consider how safety and dignity can become shared responsibilities. When I return to the poem a second time, I ask listeners to hear the words and also feel the weight behind them.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:22 - The Importance of Vulnerability

03:36 - The Poem: bus stop Black man

07:00 - The Literary Breakdown

11:41 - The Clinical Breakdown

15:12 - The Cultural Breakdown

18:09 - Reflective Questions

19:27 - Be a Witness

20:50 - Second Reading:l bus stop Black man

23:47 - Closing

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Carl's Publication

The Mis-Execution of a Black Son by Carl Patterson, LPC - https://amzn.to/3UyX6nP

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Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

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Poetry Books:

Citizen: An American Lyric — Claudia Rankine

Incendiary Art — Patricia Smith

Stereo(TYPE) — Jonah Mixon-Webster

Psychology / Healing Books

Black Men and Racial Trauma — Yamonte Cooper

Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience — Sheila Wise Rowe

Racial Trauma: Clinical Strategies and Techniques for Healing Invisible Wounds — Kenneth V. Hardy (Editor)

In this episode of Poetry in Layers, I explore ADHD as more than a diagnosis. I approach it as a landscape shaped by memory, trauma, and the nervous system’s attempts to survive what childhood could not hold. Through my poem what they left me to lift, I trace how attention splinters when presence is inconsistent and how a mind learns to carry absence, instability, and early responsibility long before it has language for any of it.

I look at ADHD clinically and personally, examining how scattered focus can evolve from vigilance, how forgetfulness can emerge from chronic emotional overload, and how endurance becomes a learned posture. The poem moves through fathers who vanish, mothers overwhelmed by their own storms, sisters who grow up too fast, and the quiet ache of wanting to be seen. It also holds the moments of grounding that arrive through fatherhood, when a daughter’s simple gesture becomes enough to steady an entire day.

This episode expands the frame beyond the individual. I reflect on how schools, families, and workplaces often misread ADHD through judgment rather than curiosity and how culture, race, and poverty shape the story of attention. What we call distraction is often the mind’s attempt to manage too many open doors at once.

At its heart, Episode 11 is a meditation on survival, tenderness, and the search for belonging inside a mind that has learned to think in fragments. It is an invitation to look at ADHD, memory, and endurance with compassion and to imagine what becomes possible when we finally feel seen.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:19 - Colors of the Brain

02:50. - The Poem: what they left me to lift

07:30 - The Literary Breakdown

09:10 - The Clinical Breakdown

11:25 - Reflection Questions

12:39 - Second Reading: what they left me to lift

18:07 - Closing

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Carl's Publication

The Mis-Execution of a Black Son by Carl Patterson, LPC - https://amzn.to/3UyX6nP

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Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

---------------

Poetry Related Books:

• Not Here — Hieu Minh Nguyen: amazon.com/…/156689509X

• Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude — Ross Gay: amazon.com/…/0822963310

• Night Sky with Exit Wounds — Ocean Vuong: amazon.com/…/155659495X

• The Carrying — Ada Limón: amazon.com/…/1571315136

Psychology Related Books:

• Scattered Minds — Gabor Maté: amazon.com/…/1785042211

• The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk: amazon.com/…/0143127748

• Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors — Janina Fisher:amazon.com/…/0415708230

• Smart but Scattered Adults — Peg Dawson & Richard Guare:amazon.com/…/1462516963

This episode begins with color: blue for sadness, red for panic, yellow for rare hope. I explore how emotion lives in the body long after language fades, how the nervous system paints its own portrait of what we have endured and become.

In “The Color My Brain Remembers,” I move through those shades, tracing how people translate loss, faith, and resilience into something visible. The poem speaks to memory as texture, the way feeling can color a whole room before a single word is spoken.

What follows is a conversation between therapy and art, between the personal and the cultural. I draw from Internal Family Systems and trauma research, as well as the stories our communities carry, showing how color becomes archive, survival code, and language of becoming.

By the end, the focus is not on explaining healing but on recognizing its tone, that quiet, unnamed color between exhaustion and hope.

“The Color My Brain Remembers” invites you to notice the colors that live within your story and to imagine what new shades might rise when you allow them to be seen.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:19 - Colors of the Brain

02:47 - The Poem: the color my brain remembers

06:00 - The Literary Breakdown

08:38 - The Clinical Breakdown

12:40 - Reflection Questions

14:03 - Exploring Colors

15:11 - Second Reading: the color my brain remembers

18:17 - Closing

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Carl's Publication

The Mis-Execution of a Black Son by Carl Patterson, LPC - https://amzn.to/3UyX6nP

---------------

Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

---------------

Poetry Related Books

• The Book of Healing — Najwa Zebian

• Poems of Healing — Edited by Karl Kirchwey

• I See You: Healing Through Poetry — Corrina Wilson

Psychology Related Books

• No Bad Parts — Richard C. Schwartz

• The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk

• The Pain We Carry — Natalie Y. Gutierrez

_______________

Carl Patterson is a licensed professional counselor, published author, public speaker, and spoken word artist. Click the link to learn more about Carl and his works - https://www.familysolutionsok.com/carl-patterson

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This podcast is published and produced by Family Solutions Media, a media program of Family Solutions Counseling. For more great content, please check out our LinkTree - https://www.linktr.ee/familysolutionsok

In this episode of Poetry in Layers, I explore the weight of intergenerational trauma—the way shame, silence, and emotional abandonment pass from one generation to the next like a baton in a race we never agreed to run.

I share personal reflections on my relationship with my father, read from my poem The First Time, and present my new piece garage widower. Through poetry and story, I unpack how absence and avoidance live in families, how they shape our coping, and how cycles of pain can be inherited without ever being spoken aloud.

This episode looks at trauma through an Internal Family Systems lens, offering language for protector parts, silence, and the body’s strategies for survival. I also leave listeners with reflective questions to help them notice the “garages” they retreat to and imagine what healing might look like beyond them.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:22 - Intergenerational Trauma

00:49 - The First Time I Attempted to Fight My Father

03:01 - The Story We Inherit

05:03 - The Poem: garage widower

06:29 - The Literary Breakdown

10:40 - The Clinical Breakdown

13:04 - Reflection Questions

14:05- Second Reading: garage widower

15:50 - Closing

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Carl's Publication

The Mis-Execution of a Black Son by Carl Patterson, LPC - https://amzn.to/3UyX6nP

---------------

Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

---------------

Poetry Related Books

• All the Flowers Kneeling — Paul Tran.

• Don’t Call Us Dead — Danez Smith.

• Postcolonial Love Poem — Natalie Diaz.

• Citizen: An American Lyric — Claudia Rankine.

Psychology Related Books

• It Didn’t Start With You — Mark Wolynn.

• Break the Cycle — Mariel Buqué.

• My Grandmother’s Hands — Resmaa Menakem.

• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents — Lindsay C. Gibson.

• The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk.

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Carl Patterson is a licensed professional counselor, published author, public speaker, and spoken word artist. Click the link to learn more about Carl and his works - https://www.familysolutionsok.com/carl-patterson

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This podcast is published and produced by Family Solutions Media, a media program of Family Solutions Counseling. For more great content, please check out our LinkTree - https://www.linktr.ee/familysolutionsok

In this episode of Poetry in Layers, I share one of my most personal poems, “the sunset is beautiful isn’t it?” It explores childhood, attachment, and the experience of growing up in a home shaped by both love and fracture.

I reflect on how avoidance often becomes a survival strategy when closeness feels unsafe, and how beauty such as a sunset, music, or art can serve as a refuge when relationships carry too much weight. Drawing from my own family story, I connect the poem to attachment theory, Internal Family Systems, and the ways the nervous system adapts to conflict.

This conversation expands beyond one household. It speaks to the patterns many of us inherit, especially within families navigating systemic pressures and cultural histories. It also considers both the protection distance provides and the cost it carries, while pointing to the possibility of choosing new paths.

Through poetry, reflection, and therapeutic framing, I invite you to sit with the tension between awe and avoidance and to imagine how healing can emerge when love and safety grow together.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:22 - Two Things Can Be True

01:16 - Who Modeled Healthy Relationships For You?

04:20 - The Sunset Doesn’t Ask You To Hold The Galaxy Together

06:24 - The Poem: the sunset is beautiful, isn’t it?

08:38 - The Literary Breakdown

12:50 - The Clinical Breakdown

19:35 - Reflection Questions

20:51- Second Reading: the sunset is beautiful, isn’t it?

23:19 - Closing

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Carl's Publication

The Mis-Execution of a Black Son by Carl Patterson, LPC - https://amzn.to/3UyX6nP

---------------

Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

---------------

Poetry Related Books

• Soft Science — Franny Choi
• The Carrying — Ada Limón
• Citizen: An American Lyric — Claudia Rankine
• Black Girl, Call Home — Jasmine Mans

Psychology Related Books

• All About Love — bell hooks
• Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving — Pete Walker
• The Myth of Normal — Gabor Maté

• No Bad Parts — Richard C. Schwartz
• Set Boundaries, Find Peace — Nedra Glover Tawwab

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Carl Patterson is a licensed professional counselor, published author, public speaker, and spoken word artist. Click the link to learn more about Carl and his works - https://www.familysolutionsok.com/carl-patterson

------------

This podcast is published and produced by Family Solutions Media, a media program of Family Solutions Counseling. For more great content, please check out our LinkTree - https://www.linktr.ee/familysolutionsok

In this episode of Poetry in Layers, I step into the quiet ache many of us carry: the belief that we are somehow difficult to love. Drawing on the wisdom of bell hooks, I explore how so many of us learned early that love feels safer when we make ourselves smaller, quieter, and easier to manage.

Through poetry, reflection, and clinical framing, I trace how these patterns often begin as survival strategies, ways of staying wanted in unpredictable emotional climates. I speak to the fawn response, the masks of composure, and the protectors we develop to keep connection within reach. But beneath those roles live younger parts of us still waiting to be chosen, not by anyone else, but by us.

This episode is for the child who hid their needs behind politeness, the adult fluent in everyone else’s comfort but hesitant with their own, and anyone who has ever wondered if they take up too much space to be loved. Together, we reframe that question and begin to imagine what it means to stay with ourselves, to move from endurance to belonging, from palatable to whole.

This is both a confession and a reclamation. A reminder that you were never too much, never too hard to love.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:20 - About Love

02:20 - Clinical Context

03:45 - The Poem: for those of us who think we are difficult to love

10:00 - The Literary Breakdown: for those of us who think we are difficult to love

12:40 - The Clinical Breakdown

16:20 - Reflection Questions

17:20 - Second Reading: for those of us who think we are difficult to love

25:05 - Closing

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Poetry Related Books:

• The Tradition — Jericho Brown

• Soft Science — Franny Choi

• The Carrying — Ada Limón

• Citizen: An American Lyric — Claudia Rankine

• Black Girl, Call Home — Jasmine Mans

Psychology Related Books

• All About Love — bell hooks

• Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving — Pete Walker

• The Myth of Normal — Gabor Maté

• No Bad Parts — Richard C. Schwartz

• Set Boundaries, Find Peace — Nedra Glover Tawwab

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases.

_____________

Carl Patterson is a licensed professional counselor, published author, public speaker, and spoken word artist. Click the link to learn more about Carl and his works - ⁠https://www.familysolutionsok.com/carl-patterson⁠

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This podcast is published and produced by Family Solutions Media, a media program of Family Solutions Counseling. For more great content, please check out our LinkTree - ⁠https://www.linktr.ee/familysolutionsok⁠

In Episode 5 of Poetry in Layers, I turn to Gwendolyn Brooks’ legendary “We Real Cool” as the heartbeat behind my own poem, juvenile. Brooks captured the brilliance and danger of youth in just eight lines, and her work pushed me to write a poem that confronts how young people today are judged before they are understood and criminalized before they are comforted. juvenile is written in couplets that pit “we” against “they,” echoing the constant tug-of-war between survival and surveillance, freedom and judgment. It’s about the beauty and tragedy of growing up in a world where trauma is the foundation.

This episode is about what lies beneath the surface of teens and preteens experiences. I explore how Liberation Psychology, Narrative Therapy, Somatic Therapy, and Internal Family Systems help us see beyond labels like ADHD, oppositional defiance, or conduct disorder. Behind those diagnoses live kids carrying grief, abandonment, racial trauma, and protector parts that learned survival at all costs.

This episode offers both a critique of the systems surrounding youth and a call to therapists, teachers, parents, and communities to witness them with depth, dignity, and compassion. These kids are the poem.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:20 - We Real Cool Inspiration

01:34 - Mental Health Crisis Amongst Youth

02:54 - The Poem: juvenile

04:06 - The Literary Breakdown

05:04 - Introduction to Clinical Breakdown

06:03 - Liberation Psychology Breakdown

07:35 - Narrative Therapy Breakdown

09:12 - Somatic Therapy and Polyvagal Theory Breakdown

10:55 - IFS Breakdown

14:20 - Working with Youth

15:18 - Reflection Question

16:07 - Second Reading: juvenile

17:21 - Closing

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Carl's Publication

The Mis-Execution of a Black Son by Carl Patterson, LPC - https://amzn.to/3UyX6nP

---------------

Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

---------------

Poetry Related Books

Infections of Loss by Rushika Wick → https://amzn.to/PoetryLoss

Tales of Trauma to Triumph by Kat Copeland → https://amzn.to/TraumaTriumph

Psychology Related Books

Writings for a Liberation Psychology by Ignacio Martín-Baró → https://amzn.to/LiberationPsych

Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy by Susan McConnell → https://amzn.to/SomaticIFS

Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine → https://amzn.to/WakingTiger