Many people spend years in therapy and still struggle to feel truly safe in relationships. But why is this?

The answer lies in the body. You can understand your trauma, but still feel unsafe. Oxytocin helps turn that understanding into actual feelings of safety in your body. Known as nature’s most powerful anti-inflammatory, oxytocin plays a vital role in regulating the nervous system, forming secure connections, and shifting the body out of survival mode.

In this episode, Dr. Aimie is joined by world-renowned oxytocin expert Dr. Sue Carter to discuss how this powerful nine amino acid peptide hormone holds the key to healing trauma, creating genuine safety, and forming secure connections. Dr. Carter has studied oxytocin for over four decades and reveals why this hormone is essential for moving from survival to thriving.

In this conversation you hear why traditional talk therapy alone often falls short, how early life experiences program our capacity for connection, and practical tools for naturally increasing oxytocin to create a felt sense of safety in your body.

You’ll learn more about:

• How early attachment experiences shape your nervous system and relationships
• The difference between vasopressin and oxytocin in the stress response
• How trauma and chronic stress disrupt your ability to feel safe, even in loving relationships
• Why oxytocin is nature’s “fire extinguisher” for inflammation and chronic illness
• Practical tools to support healing and regulate your nervous system

Whether you’re a practitioner or someone navigating your own healing journey, this episode offers evidence-based insights into how your body creates its own pharmacy of healing hormones and why safety in relationships is the biological foundation for all healing.

Dr. Carter is the scientist who first discovered the relationship between oxytocin and social monogamy and the formation of adult social bonds. She has a longstanding interest in birth and lactation and the evolution of human sociality and love. She is currently examining the developmental effects of oxytocin pathways and their role promoting in the capacity for social bonding, parental behavior and healthy relationships across the lifecycle.