Spiraling Into Control — An Interview with Lauren Tobey

Introduction — Where the Spiral Begins

There are books that arrive like answers, and there are books that arrive like recognition.

Spiraling Into Control belongs to the second kind.

I remember the first time I noticed the sensation the book describes without yet naming it—the quiet return to an old pattern after months of effort, the familiar tightening in the chest, the small, disappointed whisper: I thought I was past this. It felt like failure then. A collapse of progress. A regression I could not explain.

Lauren Tobey’s work sits gently inside that moment and says: What if this is not failure at all? What if this is integration?

Her writing moves with the clarity of someone who has lived inside the questions long enough to stop trying to rush them. Grounded in trauma-informed education and lived experience, Tobey does not pathologize the nervous system. She listens to it. She names its intelligence. She invites the reader to reconsider what healing has always looked like.

At a time when culture demands optimization, speed, and permanent self-improvement, Spiraling Into Control offers something quieter and more radical: a cyclical, embodied understanding of recovery.

This is not a book about conquering trauma. It is a book about understanding the spiral.

What follows is not a questionnaire, but a conversation—one that begins at the human threshold and slowly widens toward philosophy, uncertainty, and the quiet work of becoming.

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The First Quiet Signal 

Q1. What was the first quiet signal that this work wanted to exist?

Was there a moment when you realized that what you were observing—personally or professionally—needed language that didn’t yet exist?

LT: The first spark that something bigger existed beyond the current literature occurred during what I call, my 3AM research spiral. As a Type-A, academically minded person, one way I cope when my life feels out of control is by immersing myself in information. 

The moment that struck me was realizing the word healing was being used incorrectly. Nearly everything talked about healing trauma or healing my nervous system, but when I really looked at it, healing means to return the body or mind to the previous state. For example, you ‘heal’ from the flu by removing the virus and returning your body to the previous state. But trauma doesn’t work like that. You can’t take a melon baller and scoop the trauma out of your nervous system. 

This planted the seed in my mind, but the actual hint at what this would become would come almost 5 years later.

Q2. When did you begin to suspect that the metaphor of a spiral, rather than a straight line, was the truer shape of recovery?

Was it something you witnessed in others first, or something you felt in your own body?

LT: I went through a cycle when I got divorced. Obviously, I didn’t know it was a cycle at the time. I thought, “Phew, I made it through that, I’m on the other side.”Not long after that I was let go from my job. That job had defined my identity for 7 years, especially after my divorce. I had climbed the ladder and was in a CEO prep program, so the layoff really hit me hard. 

I found myself back in what would become the ‘Ashes” state. During that perios my body realized, “oh my goodness, I’ve been here before.” It was in that moment that I realized me sitting there in the Ashes wasn’t a failure. I hadn’t ‘lost’ my healing, I was just cycling through a familiar pattern.

Regression or Integration 

Q3. Many people interpret returning patterns as regression. What shifted in you that allowed you to see those returns as integration instead?

Was there resistance to that reframing?

LT: This is one of the uphill battles of this work. The healing myth is so ingrained in wellness culture that the message, “You will return to the ashes and these familiar states and feelings,” is not as appealing. It is much easier for people to see the 5 steps to healing than to believe it is a lifelong journey. 

There has been some resistance, but not as much as I thought, actually. Some people hear the message as hopeless, but it is the exact opposite for people in the Spiral. The hope lives in the fact that each return gets faster and you stop losing yourself. The finish line messaging seems more hopeful until someone inevitably ends up back in the ashes and feels they failed at ‘healing’. 

The Spiral is harder to sell, but it’s the truth, and that’s what I stand on. And, the women I work with as so tired of being sold things that sound good in the moment but don’t stand up when life actually happens. 

Q4. How do you describe the intelligence of the nervous system without romanticizing suffering?

There is such nuance in honoring adaptation without suggesting that harm was necessary

LT: I see my life in metaphors and analogies, which was honestly a struggle in the book not to overwhelm the reader with my mental images I create. So what I see when I think about this is a knife in a forge. The knife is sharp and usable; however, with each pass it makes through the forge, each quenching adds strength and density. The fire and the pain is not anything that anyone wants, but each cycle through The Spiral increases strength and density. 

I walk that line carefully in addressing the harm of victimhood. The Spiral encourages excavating the past to find where the trauma coding came from, but not to address the pain or the villian of the story. The suffering is data as we move forward in our lives.

Trauma Responses as Strategies of Survival 

Q5. In your work, trauma responses are framed not as pathology, but as strategies of survival. How do you help readers move from shame to recognition?

Is naming the experience the first turning of the spiral?

LT: Absolutely. The second state of the Spiral is called the Ember. These are the small moments of awareness when you realize something is wrong, but don’t yet have the capacity to hold that truth. These Embers have the potential to start the Flame that allows the performance mask and costume to burn away. 

The Ember trap; however, that I see is women finding those flickers and then getting stuck in the Shame Spiral. Research shows that social criticism and shame carry the exact same physiology as physical pain. So as people live in the Shame Spiral their body is interpretting that as them being slapped and punched on a daily basis, which just further activates the survival strategies. 

So while awareness and recognition is critical, not staying there is just as  or even more critical.

Q6. Which section of the book resisted you the most while writing?

Was there a chapter that demanded more patience, more vulnerability, or more precision than the others?

LT: The biggest resistance I had throughout the whole book was being sure that everything was focused on my response to situations and my process of going through the Spiral before it had a name. As I told stories, I felt myself still slipping into the ashes at times. Revisiting many of the moments I address in the book was emotionally difficult, and I had to be very careful not to let the book become my own catharsis. Throughout the process, I forced myself to reread and ask, “Is this section about me, or about the reader?” If it were about me, it needed to be rewritten or cut. 

Precision became very important as I wrote about people who are very much real and still in my life. They did not request this book. I walked a fine line between using the story to illustrate theories without exposing each individual to too much critical scrutiny. This was especially important for my kids. I want this book to be something they proudly hold up, not something they’re embarrassed their mom wrote because it exposed their story.

Is Truth a Felt Sense in the Body

Q7. How do you recognize truth while you’re still shaping it on the page?

Is it a felt sense in the body, a softening, a steadiness—or something else entirely?

LT: Writing the book was a much more introspective process than I ever thought. This caused the process to take nearly 3 months longer than I expected. However, the opposite was closer. I would recognize truth on the page when I could read it back and I wasn’t holding back or trying to protect the story or myself. 

Writing the book mirrored the Spiral itself. I leaned toward performance and protection. I had to catch those patterns on the page the same way I had learned to catch them in my life. As I wrote the book it got faster just like it gets faster in life.. 

In the book, I discuss how identity is earned, not discovered. The me who wrote the final draft of this book is different from the me who wrote the first one, as I continued to master how not to edit myself out of my own story.

Giving Language to Something So Intimate

Q8. The Spiral Framework offers language for experiences many people have never been able to articulate. What responsibility do you feel when giving language to something so intimate?

Does clarity ever feel heavy?

LT: Clarity turns out to be one of the heaviest things that we carry. I feel a great responsibility to the readers of my work. These are some of the worst moments of people’s lives, and I want them to be seen and heard, and to find understanding. When writing about mental health, there is always a sense of responsibility for how each sentence could be read by people at different stages of their lives and in different states of the Spiral. 

Since I write directly to someone, I must be aware that I am not there with them to assess how they are handling the book. I help to lighten the weight of the work by writing like I talk, with moments of humor and asides. These moments give the reader a second to pause and take inventory of where they are.

Q9. Trauma reshapes the nervous system over time. In your observation, what begins to reshape it back toward capacity?

Is it insight, repetition, relationship, safety—or something quieter?

LT: The nervous system is a pattern-matching machine. So every experience in life is encoded as either a threat or safe. When you have a new experience, your nervous system takes the information, assesses it against the threat or safe database, finds the closest past situation, and reacts based on that last experience. All of this happens underneath your level of consciousness, so even though your brain says, “This is safe,” your body doesn’t. Based on how that situation gets played out, your nervous system logs a new entry in the database. 

When you live in survival mode for so long the threat database is overflowing and the safe database is extremely sparse. So your body can obviously find matches in the threat database more quickly. Mastering the Spiral involves giving your nervous system small moments of felt safety so that you can begin to build that safe database.

Control Often Emerges as a Response to Overwhelm

Q10. Control often emerges as a response to overwhelm. How do you help readers understand control not as a flaw, but as a form of protection?

And how does that understanding change their relationship to it?

LT: Control is so often viewed negatively, especially for women. “She is controlling.” never lands right. We are often told, culturally, to just let go of control and not need to manage everything. For someone who has been in survival mode for so long, this is nearly impossible. They have been forced to control every reaction and every movement for so long. 

The Spiral tells the reader, of course, you are obsessed with controlling the environment, the mood, the room because, without that control, life feels unsafe. Control is not inherently negative, but how we frame control is so important. We often you control as part of the Shame Spiral, “Why can’t I just let go of control?” But, when we reframe that question as, “Why is control important to me right now?” we shift from shame to curiosity. 

Q11. Recovery is rarely linear, yet our culture insists on visible progress. How do you navigate writing about cyclical healing in a world obsessed with forward motion?

Have you had to unlearn certain narratives about growth yourself?

LT: The entire book is my answer to that question. The Spiral Framework exists because linear models failed me, and they fail most of the women I work with.  

I had to unlearn that myself in real time. The second time I hit the Ashes after my job loss, my immediate thought was, “What did I do wrong?” Like I’d failed at recovery. Like I should have been further along. That’s when I realized mastery isn’t about avoiding the spiral. It’s recognizing where you are and what the state needs without losing yourself inside it.

Writing about that honestly meant being willing to say things the wellness industry doesn’t want to hear. You will be here again. You will return to the Ashes.

What Writing Gives that Education Can’t

Q12. What does writing give you that clinical language or structured education cannot?

Does the page allow a different kind of integration?

LT: Clinical language gives you the what, and to some extent the why, but for me writing gave me the ability to truly get inside of the experience. That’s the difference. I can tell you that the dorsal vagal state is characterized by hypoarousal and reduced social engagement. Or I can talk directly to the woman sitting on her back porch at 10 PM, scrolling her phone, unable to name a single thing she wants for dinner, wondering why she feels nothing when her life is technically fine. Both of those are accurate. But the second makes you stop and think, “That’s me.”  

Q13. How has your relationship with uncertainty changed over the years?

Has living within a spiral altered how you experience unpredictability?

LT: Uncertainty used to send me over the edge. It was something unpredictable, meaning I couldn’t control it, which meant danger. Living within the Spiral, however, gives me the understanding and the skill to know that my nervous system can manage what comes. Mastering the Spiral doesn’t mean never dealing with uncertainty or struggle, but it does give you the ability to recognize which state you’re in and identify what your nervous system needs to turn the event into a data point of felt safety, rather than threat.

Trauma Work Heals,  or it Reveals

Q14. Do you believe trauma work heals—or does it reveal?

Is the goal resolution, or relationship?

LT: Absolutely not. Healing implies a finish line and a return to a previous state of stability. This is one of the biggest lies in trauma work and the wellness world. The human body just doesn’t work that way. The goal is mastery of the Spiral, or achieving a relationship with your nervous system so you work with it rather than against it. 

Q15. What do you hope lingers after the final page is turned?

Is it comfort, permission, language—or something less tangible?

LT: I want the reader to close the last page and feel the permission to appreciate her own nervous system. I want her to feel a sense of hope that even though there isn’t a finish line, there is a way to master the Spiral, which will make each rise quicker each time and increase your strength and durability.

16. What are you still learning to listen to?

Is there a signal in your own system that you are only beginning to understand?

LT: Absolutely. Since there is no finishline there is a lesson in each spiral, whether it is a 1 hour spiral or a 6 week spiral.

One fo the things I’m still learning to read is the difference between productivity and avoidance. They feel almost identical in my body. I can be building something meaningful, and the energy behind it feels like purpose and direction. But sometimes when I slow down long enough to actually check in, I realize it’s the old pattern of collecting information as a way of performing. Halway through writing the book I redesigned my whole website. Did it need a redesign, kind of, but did it need a redesign at that moment, no. But, redesigning the site was progress and movement, but it was a means of avoiding the feelings that were surfacing while writing.

I can catch it faster now. That’s the whole point of the Spiral. You don’t stop the pattern, you just stop getting lost in it for as long. But I’d be lying if I said I always catch it in real time. Sometimes I’m three weeks deep into overworking before my body sends a signal loud enough to get my attention.

Q17. What question are you carrying forward now?

As the spiral continues, what feels unfinished—in the most generative sense?

LT: I know that the Spiral Framework works. The book is done. The podcast is live. The foundation is built. And now I’m in the part where the work wants to grow faster than one person can carry it. I want this framework to be something women reference the way they reference attachment styles or the window of tolerance. I want to reach as many people as possible. I want to write more books. I want The Spiral to become somethign that moves through the world on its own.

The ironic tension though is that the woman building it is the same woman who wrote a book about what happens when you run survival patterns in the name of productivity. I still feel the pull to do more, move faster, push harder, because women who need it are out there right now, tonight, scrolling their phones at 1 AM, wondering why they can’t feel their own lives.

The question I’m carrying forward is how to honor both of those truths at the same time. The urgency of the work and the reality of my own nervous system. How to build something big without becoming the cautionary tale inside my own framework. I don’t have that figured out yet. But the fact that I can name it means I’m on the right spiral.

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A Reflective Closing — The Space Between Turns

Conversations about trauma often rush toward solutions.

This one does not.

Instead, it lingers in the shape of a spiral—returning, widening, deepening. What emerges through Lauren Tobey’s work is not a promise of transcendence, but a permission to reinterpret the very experience of returning. Shutdown. Control. Numbness. Exhaustion. Not as moral failures, but as signals of a system that once had to survive something overwhelming.

The spiral does not erase what was endured. It carries it forward differently.

There is something quietly revolutionary in that stance. In a culture that prizes resilience as performance, Spiraling Into Control asks us to consider resilience as relationship—to our bodies, our limits, our histories.

Reading this book, and sitting in this conversation, feels less like acquiring knowledge and more like remembering something the body already knew.

Healing is not a staircase.

It is a turning.

And each turn asks not, Why am I back here?

but, What new capacity do I bring this time?

Perhaps that is the invitation this interview leaves us with—not resolution, but reflection. Not a call to fix ourselves, but to listen more closely to the patterns we once tried to outrun.

Within PebbleGalaxy’s explorations of Literature, Mindfulness, Inner Worlds, and Slow Living, this conversation becomes a shared pause—a reminder that growth may be circular, that awareness deepens in layers, and that returning does not mean failing.

The spiral continues.

What might it be trying to show you now?