My Story
What is your story? Many of us may not even know the full scope of our life story, but our story, health and relationship patterns give us clues.
My story starts with having been raised by a father who was adopted at birth and had significant attachment trauma issues. At the time, I did not think much of this despite the challenges in his mood and behaviors that I was struggling to overcome coming out of my childhood. I started traditional medical training at Loma Linda University when I was 21 and thought I had my plan for my life being a medical scientist.
Drawn to foster care and hurting children, I fostered and then adopted 4-year-old boy while during medical school. Bringing with him the trauma that he had experienced in his early years, he ultimately challenged every aspect of my way of thinking, my medical training, and even my spiritual beliefs.
The result has been a combined experiential and academic learning of neurobiology, attachment, trauma, stress, and addictions. What started out as a commitment and determination to help my son overcome his early childhood and attachment issues spread into understanding how my early childhood was now affecting my health with fatigue, mood imbalances, and high levels of autoimmune antibodies that the specialists had no solutions other than waiting for it to progress to further disease and then medicate.
Fueled by how my life has been affected by attachment trauma starting with my father and then my son and then needing to address my own insecure attachment patterns, my mission is to share what I have learned to accelerate the healing journey of attachment trauma of others. Understanding attachment, trauma and the nervous system is just the beginning, and science and the experience of others are now confirming that even the most difficult of situations can improve without requiring years of therapy.
There is lots of hope for better health and a better life! I encourage you to see the potential you or your child has for a better life!
Education & Work
Dr. Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH, is a Board-Certified Preventive Medicine physician with a Masters in Biochemistry and a Masters in Public Health. She is an author, speaker and founder of Trauma Healing Accelerated, LLC and Family Challenge Camps, and host of Bio-Optimize Summit.
After a few years in a general surgery residency in Portland, OR, she decided to forge her career path as a Trauma, Attachment and Addiction Medicine Physician. She believes the healing journey can be accelerated through evidence-based tools and approaches to rewire the nervous system and the effects of chronic stress and trauma on the mind and body. Having both parented children with effects from attachment and trauma issues and then having her own health challenges from chronic stress and traumas, she is intensely invested on finding what actually works practically and how to restore the body to its highest potential for health optimizing the biology.
She is the Founder and Director for Family Challenge Camps, a non-profit organization founded in 2011 providing an experiential transformative intensive for families with children with trauma and attachment issues. She now has founded Trauma Healing Accelerated to bring information and personal empowerment through online courses. She hosts summits on how to optimize the biology in those who want the next level to their health and performance. She has an active medical practice in California in Addiction Medicine and Concierge Functional Medicine.
In addition to her medical training, she is also a Functional Medicine physician and has training and certifications specifically in neuro-autoimmunity, nutrition and genetics for addictions, mental health, and mood and behavioral disorders.
She has a number of certifications in various trauma therapies including Instinctual Trauma Response Model (an art trauma therapy), Somatic Experiencing (developed by Dr. Peter Levine), and NeuroAffective Touch (Dr. Aline LaPierre). Dr. Aimie enjoys bridging the gap between what she sees happening in these trauma therapies and a person’s biology and nervous system.
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