TUYT 64

Amy Hoyt20min

Amy Hoyt

00:16

If you've enjoyed our episode or the content that we provide on the universe's your therapist, check out our signature program, the whole health lab in the whole health lab. We walk you through healing from trauma physically, emotionally and spiritually. If you're wondering if you have trauma, go to many trauma.com/quiz. Take our quiz, and you'll be able to determine if trauma is affecting your life. If it is, and you find that you want to go further, we would love to be your guide as you recover from trauma. Hi, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today's episode we are really excited about because it is about cultivating gratitude, especially after trauma and how to do that as we go into November and the season of gratitude and thanksgiving, at least in the US. It's something I love about the month of November, the focus on being grateful. But we don't want to dive into toxic positivity, where we just wash over the trauma so that so we're not you know, that's not the direction we want to go. We want to do the both and you know, we can be grateful and cultivate gratitude, and still acknowledge what we're dealing with in our healing journey. So welcome back. And let's dive in to why gratitude why I mean, obviously, it's a tradition, and people are very thankful in November. But what is it about gratitude? And why are we obsessed with gratitude.

Leina Hoyt, MFT, MA

01:49

Gratitude is such a resilience factor. And resilience is building up the ability to be less impacted by difficult hard, traumatic things. So if you want to have less reactivity in your life, gratitude is one of the things that you can cultivate, that will help with that one of our members on the whole health lab calls it the great and what you were just explaining. So the great and is my life can be really hard. And I can be grateful that I have a house, a roof over my head, I have people who love me.

Amy Hoyt

02:33

I love that. One of the things that I've been really excited about is the research that shows gratitude. And cultivating gratitude is not simply, you know, for resilience building. But it is also helping with depression and anxiety, and a slew of other symptoms that we get from unresolved trauma. And so in a very practical way, gratitude is a healing tool. And what we know about our listeners, and the people that we help on a daily basis is that sometimes gratitude can be really, really difficult when you've had hard things happen to you that have changed your perspective on the world. So what we want to do today is kind of look at how trauma can change your perspective on the world. And then we also want to step into that, that idea of given that we can cultivate gratitude by doing these specific skill sets. So talk to us about what happens to our brain after trauma and how that might be hard to then go through life with gratitude.

Leina Hoyt, MFT, MA

03:51

When we've experienced trauma, our brain in order to protect us from future trauma becomes hyper vigilant. And it's not as helpful in the way we live today where there's no lions or Tigers or bears. The hyper vigilance then allows us to look at things through a negativity bias in the hopes that we'll be prepared and nothing bad will happen again. So that is a natural response in the autonomic nervous system. In order to help our survival. We know that the brain does not do very well with seemingly opposite things at the same time, and that's where the great aunt comes in. Because when we start to notice things that we are truly grateful for. It actually sets up new neural pathways in our brain and it helps to dissolve some of that negativity bias, and it helps to dissolve some of the hyper vigilance.

Amy Hoyt

04:55

Yeah, absolutely. And there, there's a little study I saw just a couple of weeks ago that said that people who decorate for the holidays, before Thanksgiving, it might have even said before Halloween, have less depression. And I thought that's so interesting, because, you know, I've always thought, Why? Why are people pulling out all of their holiday decorations? So early? Whether it's Christmas or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa? Why, why are we pulling these out so early? And that study was so interesting to me. So it got me thinking, why would people be less depressed and have a better holiday season if they had their decorations out. And the holidays are focused on giving, and gratitude. And so by shifting our focus for the last quarter of the year, we really, really do set ourselves up for more optimal mental health during what can be a challenging time for people.

Leina Hoyt, MFT, MA

06:02

That's so great. I love that, you know, our friends, Tracy, that we grew up with Tracy and Susie Tracy sets up all of her holiday decorations the day after Halloween and starts playing Christmas music the day after Halloween. So she cottoned on to that about 15 years ago. And it I mean, I didn't talk with her in depth about it. But it makes perfect sense that you're setting yourself up for joy and focus on the purpose of the season, and that it would help your mental health. That's cool. Yeah, go Tracy.

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