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

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Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

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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

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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