Poetry in Layers with Carl Patterson

Family Solutions Media
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Mental Health

Some might say life is about experiences or maybe even the journey. Some might add life is about the people we meet and the time we share together. As we grasp these experiences - some good, some bad - and continue along in our journey, we collect stories. These are the stories that are told to us and the stories we create. Poetry in Layers brings to you these narratives through a lens of mental health. Each episode will be layered with vulnerability, openness, exploration, self-expression, and the availability of healing. Thanks for listening.

  1. 11/21/2025

    Black Man. Bus Stop: Generational Trauma and Brutality

    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. ---------------- 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 --------------- 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 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)

  2. 11/07/2025

    What They Left Me to Lift: ADHD and Trauma

    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. ---------------- 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 --------------- 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: • 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

  3. 10/24/2025

    The Color My Brain Remembers: Trauma, Memory, and the Body

    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. ---------------- 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 ---------------- 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 ------------ 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

  4. 10/03/2025

    Garage Widower: Intergenerational Trauma

    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. ---------------- 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 --------------- 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. ------------ 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

  5. 09/26/2025

    The Sunset Is Beautiful, Isn't It? Attachment, Avoidance, and Childhood in a Divided Home

    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. ---------------- 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 --------------- 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  ------------ 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

  6. 09/19/2025

    For Those Who Think We Are Difficult to Love: The Fawn Response and Self-Worth

    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. ---------------- 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 --------------- 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 ------------ 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

  7. 09/12/2025

    The Moment We Knew: Faith, Family, and a Collective Farewell (Grief)

    In this episode of Poetry in Layers, I open up about grief through the poem “the moment we knew.”This piece is about my grandmother, the woman who held my family together with cornbread, prayer, and a presence so steady we only understood its weight once she was gone. I share how food became faith, how prayer shaped structure, and how grief sometimes arrives like a pause after Sunday dinner. Together we explore the roles matriarchs play, the way families reshape when they lose their center, and how love continues to show itself in the ordinary, in recipes, in memories, in the way we live forward. Through narrative therapy, Internal Family Systems, somatic reflections, and spiritual psychology, I peel back the layers of this poem to reveal how grief reshapes our bodies, our families, and our faith. This episode is an invitation to honor the people who made love feel like structure in your life, and to recognize that their presence is still here, transformed but enduring. This one is personal. It is about loss, legacy, and the ways love lasts longer than absence. ---------------- Chapters: 00:00 - Introduction 00:22 - Where Grief Simmers 02:19 - The Poem: the moment we knee  05:27 - The Breakdown: the moment we knew 06:42 - The Clinical Breakdown 06:54 - Narrative Therapy 08:01 - Internal Family Systems 09:30 - Somatic Therapy & Polyvagal Theory 11:44 - Spiritual Therapy  12:18 - This Poem Won’t Save You 14:13 - Reflection Questions  15:30 - Second Reading: the moment we knew 18:45 - Closing --------------- 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 Relater Books: • The Carrying: Poems by Ada Limon • Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay • The Black Maria by Aracelis Girmay • Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith • Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969–1980 by Lucille Clifton Psychology Related Books • The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk • It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine • Bearing the Unbearable by Joanne Cacciatore • When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi • Grief Is Love by Marisa Renee Lee _____________ 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

  8. 08/29/2025

    Juvenile: Oppositional Defiance, Conduct Disorder, and Survival

    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. ---------------- 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 --------------- 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

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About

Some might say life is about experiences or maybe even the journey. Some might add life is about the people we meet and the time we share together. As we grasp these experiences - some good, some bad - and continue along in our journey, we collect stories. These are the stories that are told to us and the stories we create. Poetry in Layers brings to you these narratives through a lens of mental health. Each episode will be layered with vulnerability, openness, exploration, self-expression, and the availability of healing. Thanks for listening.

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