We believe in functional mental wellness, a holistic approach to mental health. We know that there's hope for those of us who have experienced trauma, even profound trauma and that's why we created the universe is your therapist podcast, we believe whether you call it God, the universe, source, unity or love that there is something much greater than us that conspires for our good, we envision a world of healing and connection. And we teach you simple, but powerful practices that integrate your mind, body and spirit so that you can come home to your highest self and your truest identity. You are not broken, you are loved, and you can heal. My name is Amy Hoyt, and together with my sister, Lena, we will take you on a journey of healing and self discovery. Hello, and welcome back. This week, we're going to address a question that we get quite frequently. And that is, do I have to go back into the past and look and talk about trauma in order to heal. And we have been researching this and talking about this for quite a while. Between Lena and I and the other founders of mending trauma. And what the research shows is quite different than what's out there in pop culture. And so we wanted to kind of demystify what it takes to heal from trauma. So Lena, why don't you start us out by talking about kind of the typical model of Healing Trauma right now that a lot of people have as a conception.
Sure, culturally, there is a belief that in order to heal from a traumatic experience, you have to go back into it and experience it. Again, in order to resolve it, this can look like you have to talk about it in detail in a therapists office. It also can look like the idea behind exposure therapy, which is if you have enough exposure to the the event itself that somehow that will help you not have such a strong nervous system reaction to the trauma. And the work that we've been doing, particularly focusing in the last year indicates that those are not accurate, and they actually can be much more harmful than beneficial. And so what you and I and our co founders have been talking about is, how do we help people in the public understand that you don't need to recount the details of your traumatic experience in order to process those. And in order to reduce symptomology that you don't have to stay focused on the past in order to affect your present, and to leave the trauma behind in the past.
I think that's such an important point and one that I get messages, saying things like, Are you depressed because you're always talking about trauma. And what it did for me is it brought an awareness that I haven't been conveying accurately, that trauma can be trauma, healing can be future focused. But that doesn't mean we don't just glance back to kind of orient ourselves. But if we turn all the way back and put ourselves in that trauma, it's very difficult to do the work, it's almost impossible. In fact, because of the research that Bessel Vander Kolk, has identified in the Body Keeps the Score, that when we are in a traumatic event, our language center actually shuts down the center of the brain, Broca's region. And so typically, people can't talk about the terrible event
even if they wanted to. That's correct. They can't process it linguistically. And the other thing that happens in the traumatic event is that memory isn't captured the same way in a traumatic event. And so there's not necessarily a flowing narrative, or there may be gaps in the memory. Or you may have somebody who remember certain things at different times. And one of the things I love about some of the newer trauma treatments is that they stay focused on how we want to help you resolve symptomology. And we want to help you take that traumatic experience that you've endured, and keep it keep, keep you focused on how to let it not affect your present and future. We don't want to be mired in the past and we don't need to revisit the horrific imagery or events of the past. There's lots of ways to heal trauma and to move forward Word em to process that don't involve a deep, focused recounting of the experience.
I know that when I was first in rehab when I was 18. And then of course, that was my first exposure to therapy and group therapy and AAA meetings, and then I lived in a halfway house. And so I spent some pretty intense time in a therapeutic environment, both individually and group environments. And one of the things that I picked up on although it was never explicit, no one ever said, you have to drag the past in, but I implicitly picked up on that I had to tell everything that had happened to me in order to move through it. And I'm aware that it did serve a particular purpose one, I had never told anyone about my abuse. And so in that sense, it provided a way for professionals to intervene and make sure other children were safe from the abuser. So that that provided a very specific and important intervention. It also helped take some of the shame away from me, when I talked about what happened, and no one fell apart. And no one said, I don't believe you. And no one said, You're horrible. You're awful, you're unlovable. Right? So the the function of articulating what happened was important, in a sense, however, I didn't stay in that position. Right, and stay there. So I told what happened to me. And then we start moving towards, I guess, problem solving. Right? So it's who still is exposed to this person? What can we do to help? What's our legal obligation is what the therapists were, of course, concerned with. I know now, I didn't realize you know, all of this when I was going through it. But at that point, then what we started doing is looking at the behaviors that came out of those situations for me, right, the symptoms. Exactly. And so for me, drinking was a symptom. And for me, lying was a symptom, right? Because I had to lie in order to drink because I was underage. And I had to, you know, there was a lot of shenanigans in order to get my self medication.
Right. Great word shenanigans, and there were some ah,
oh, my gosh, won't glorify though. No, there were some serious shenanigans, y'all. Let's just say I'm super grateful that we all can change and grow, even man. And I think that's why I don't feel depressed, I feel so much hope. Because I know that once I was able to identify the event, and I never described in detail, my abuse to anyone, right, I was able to describe in general terms sufficiently that people professionals understood it was abuse. And that's another thing I think we need to point out. That we're not saying you'll never utter the words, you know, he hit me or she left me or whatever the event is. But you don't stay there. Right. You glanced back, so that you know where you're at? Okay, I'm over drinking. I'm over scrolling. I'm overworking. I'm yelling as a parent, these behaviors are coming from somewhere, where are they coming from? So you glance back? Oh, okay. It may be this. And then we start to build on that information and move forward.
I think what you're talking about when you say glance back, I think that's a really great imagery. Because what we're doing is we're, by glancing back, we are seeing where we were. But it's a glance, we're not stuck there. And we return our vision forward. So that when the symptoms happen, we have an understanding of why the symptoms are occurring. And it's not just some kind of horrific character defect we have there's not something wrong with us. When we can understand that our behaviors came out of a survival mechanism that got hardwired into our brain during the event itself. Then we can understand the past in terms of how we are experiencing life now. And we can make educated decisions or informed decisions about what or if we want to deal with.
Absolutely. And I, I want to reiterate something that you've taught me in the last few years. And that is, absolutely everything that got you to this point has been for your survival. Yes. And so when we do that glance back, and we get that context of where our behaviors are coming from, I think it's also really important to understand that we did a great job surviving.
Yes, and those, those coping mechanisms that developed almost instantaneously in the event itself, those were the things that helped us to survive. And we can thank our brain and our past, we can thank our nervous system for helping us to get through in a way that allowed us to function to live, to grow, to grow older, all of those sorts of things. Our brains give us a gift when they engage in coping mechanisms, whether they're adaptive or maladaptive. The intention behind the coping mechanism is always well intentioned, it's always to help us survive or thrive. It's just that in the traumatic event, it gets a little mixed up.
So that's a really good point. And I, if I can, I want to illustrate this with something from my own childhood. So I was abused by someone who came to live with us, right? When I was eight, and I was eight years old, when I was abused. After that event, I didn't know why I did this. But when my mom left me alone with that person, I went after him with a baseball bat. And he was much older than me and after, so that happened, I don't know how much, you know, time had passed between his abuse of me and me, becoming much more aggressive. But after that, she said she couldn't leave us alone anymore, because she was worried I was going to hit him with a bat. And she couldn't figure out why I was so angry. Well, in this in the context of this conversation, that prevented him hurting me again,
exactly. That's a beautiful illustration of that, Amy.
And it also baked into me a temper, right, that I've had to work really hard on my whole adult life, not to yell at my kids not to lose my temper not to have anger as my go to emotion when something's wrong, right. And so that, that literally helped save me psychologically, as a child, and it no longer served me as an adult. Yes. And so that hopefully, that helps our listeners understand how it truly is a gift, when we have those coping mechanisms that look like they don't serve a purpose. They serve a purpose.
And they did serve a very, very important person purpose in the moment.
Exactly. And so we can actually think ourselves like, I'm, I'm so grateful that I was a violent child at that point, because it was for a very functional purpose.
And it saved you from additional abuse from that individual exam, as you are not ever left alone with him again.
No. And that was a blessing. Absolutely. It was the gift of that maladaptive coping strategy, if you will. And so I think that's a really important point for our listeners to understand is that we're not just saying Good job, you survived. We're literally saying, literally, those behaviors that you find problematic now saved you. Absolutely. And thank yourself, and thank those behaviors for helping you get to this point, because you are here. And if you're listening to this podcast, there's a part of you that's wondering if, you know, there's anything else you want to address. So you're kind of curious, you're here in this world, and in this space and alive because of those behaviors. And at the same time, those behaviors aren't serving you anymore. So let's take a look at him. Right? You don't want to pass on those behaviors.
Right? And as we were talking about in another episode of our podcast, when when we can be aware of and curious about our behavior. And when we can identify whether or not, it is serving us now. That gives us the opportunity to make a decision. And we've talked so much in our work together with mending trauma about being having an agency, and not just reacting. And when we have a traumatic event there is hardwired into us a nervous system reaction that is subconscious. But one of the things I've been thinking about so much lately is, there's nothing wrong with you. You, you, me, you the collective view, you have had difficult things happen to you that affected you, but you are not broken. Right? You are having symptoms.
That's right. And those symptoms in our society often look like oh, they have baggage or they're damaged or
or needy. We all are, yes, every
single person has symptoms, because hard things happen to every single person. Yes, there is no getting out of the experiences of life that are painful, right. And so one of the things we can do is kind of Lena and I have been realizing we want to give our listeners more hope that they don't have to be stuck in what happened. And even telling the story right now of my childhood. I don't have a nervous system reaction. Because I'm, I've done EMDR I've done tapping, I've done yoga, trauma informed yoga and meditation. And I've been working on even forgiveness at this point. I'm not completely there yet, but I feel like I'm so close. It's a very long process for me. And I'm not saying everyone else has to forgive their abuser, all adults have.
It's a very, very individualized thing. It's an individualized journey.
It's personal. And this is my next step. Not, I'm not saying it's anyone else's next step, right. So what are the ways that we treat trauma as professionals, that doesn't include a detailed accounting of what happened to you or the event.
What has been made more apparent in recent years through research is that if we do not include the body, in Trauma Recovery, then we have limited recovery. And the concept as discussed in Bessel Vander Kolk book The Body Keeps the Score is that the body maintains memory, the body has a memory. One of our co founders, Wendy, she is a cellular biologist, and she talks about how the cells can contain memory. And when we understand that, we understand that it's not enough just to talk about what happened, we have to be able to create opportunities for the body to express to move to complete an action if that's what needs to happen. And the treatment that I've tended to use most frequently is EMDR. Because you don't need to go into detail about what happened to you. And it also creates what's called a dual awareness. You're in the room with me right now, following my fingers with your eyes back and forth. And you're also aware of whatever your mind is processing in that moment. And that's why no details are necessary in working through trauma with EMDR. And the dual awareness and the ability to let your mind do what it needs to do is just wonderful. And some of the other things that we're learning about the trauma informed yoga, some of the breathing exercises or breath work that we can do, all of those things are linked to a bodily experience. And those can really release so much of what is holding us back or is contributing to current symptoms.
Absolutely. And the Western notion that the body and the mind, and the spirit, as a matter of fact, are all separate is it's a construct, it's not accurate, and it's troublesome. Think of your own experience in life. Do you conceptualize your body step? Apart from your brain separate from your soul or spirit, I don't know anyone who does, they are melded together. It's inseparable. And it makes sense that they affect one another. We also know that things like myofascial release, correct, is really helpful for releasing trauma than in fact, emotions can be stored in the fascia, and emotions are stored in the body, as you said. And a lot of times the body is considered our subconscious mind. Right? So think of the example of me going after my abuser with a bat. I didn't consciously know why I was so angry, which doesn't make sense unless you understand how trauma gives you such fragmented memories, right. But my body remembered, correct, he was not safe. And so my body held that subconscious memory until I was, you know, I think I was 18 when I started having flashbacks and remembering. So our body has so much knowledge. And literally not only just holds the emotions, but holds the memories,
correct. And our body, I love how you've been referencing in some of our latest podcasts that our body has information for us. Yeah, we don't need to be afraid of our body. And let me issue a caveat with that. When our body has been used or abused by somebody, then what we experience in our body can be very scary. And we want people to understand that that is one of the symptoms of trauma is that the body and felt experiences and emotions felt emotions can seem very daunting and really scary. But when we think about how we can use our, excuse me our behaviors as clues, then we take a lot of the stigma out of it. And and we return to a place where we can see our body and the experiences, or felt emotion on our body as more informative, instead of just scary.
Absolutely. And as we have talked about, we're not going back to sit in the event. We're simply getting oriented. And then we are moving forward. And so we did an episode of EMDR you're welcome to check that out where Lena walks me through EMDR you can see how nonverbal it is. Right? We also have tapping, Emotional Freedom Technique, correct, otherwise known as tapping, and we have breathwork meditation has been the number one I would say breathwork and meditation have been both the most effective for me in terms of healing. I'm one of the first long meditations I did. I went to the Joe Dispenza advanced week long retreat in Denver last year. And I went with the goal that I wanted to heal from this abuse. And I didn't know what that looked like. I didn't know what that meant. I just knew that there was still things in my body that hadn't processed. And the very first meditation that he walked us through that was a little bit longer. I had the most incredible healing experience for my whole body was just enveloped in warmth, and particularly the lower regions of my body and energy centers. And I knew I knew in that moment that I was being healed, and that my body was healing itself. And it was it was really beautiful. And really, I just didn't expect it to to happen so quickly. Right? But that's the miracle of allowing our body to give us that information. Right? Yes. Okay, so you don't have to sit in your trauma. No, you don't have to talk about it. No, you just have to orient yourself and work with someone who can help you work through both the mind and the body to heal. Right. And this is all backed up by the latest research in trauma.
Yes, and there are lots of options. You mentioned a ton of them I mentioned Several, just foiling know that your body has something to say it has information for you. And once we start attending to that, then the body can start relaxing apps. It doesn't need to be so vigilant.
No and it's so helpful. There's so much hope. Absolutely. Okay, well thanks again for joining us and we will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you want to go deeper on this subject or any other subjects we've covered in the podcast, we are so excited to be launching our signature membership program at mending trauma.com This is a trauma informed mental health membership where we combine clinically effective practices courses and mentoring while putting you in the driver's seat. We teach you how to heal your trauma with the latest research combining mind body and spirit we want to walk you through a healing journey while also empowering you if you have felt this episode is helpful. We would absolutely love if you would go to Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your pods and give us a review. We'd also love it if you would share it with someone you think it might help tag us on social media at mending trauma.com Or at Amy Hoyt PhD, we would love to reshare and also if there's anything we can do to help we would love to hear from you email info at mending trauma.com Give us your suggestions or topics you want to hear about. We would absolutely love to be of more service to you. We're so excited because we have so many good episodes coming up in season two, and we can't wait to go on this journey with you
