Untangling The Mind: A Trauma Informed Approach

This topic is near and dear as I break down insights gained in my own work with trauma and the work of supporting others through the lens of Buddhist Psychology. This lecture is from a daylong utilizing the liberating power of awareness and trauma-informed psychology to free our hearts and minds from the repetition of traumatic patterns.

Transcript

Okay.

So this concept of untangling the mind.

The Buddha talked about how that we become entangled with this identification with our experience,

This identification may be over-identification with our thoughts,

With our concepts.

From the emotional intelligence lens,

This is often talked about as the perceptual database.

In other words,

There's kind of only four things happening in our experience.

There's what's happening.

Present time experience,

Sense doors,

Six sense doors,

Seeing,

Smelling,

Hearing,

Tasting,

Touching,

What else,

And thinking.

That's only five.

Well,

Anyway,

There's six of them.

Smelling,

Hearing,

Tasting,

Touching,

Seeing,

And thinking.

And then there's what messages we're getting from that,

Which really is kind of benign.

But yet then there's what's happening about what's happening,

Which is association,

Which is based on perceptual database.

And what's a perceptual database?

Well,

It's our causes and conditions.

It's what the lens is that have created meaning to what we call this world.

So there's this teaching from the Buddha that kind of points to this.

I started needing glasses recently,

Like a few years ago.

I've fought it for years.

I was like,

Oh,

Like this.

I started noticing my Dharma talks where my fonts were getting bigger and bigger.

I was like,

16 font,

Four pages.

Oh,

Maybe not.

All right.

It's words from the Dhammapada.

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts,

We make the world speak or act with an impure mind.

And trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts,

We make the world speak or act with a pure mind.

And happiness will follow you as your shadow,

Unshakable.

How can a troubled mind understand the way?

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.

But once mastered,

No one can help you as much,

Not even your father or your mother.

So some of the translation is a little,

Can be a little challenging,

Some of the language there.

Pure,

Impure.

You know,

I prefer skillful,

Unskillful.

Like I said earlier,

Constructive or destructive.

Your own thoughts.

Destructive thoughts.

And then that last piece around like,

No one can help you as much as your mother or your father.

And for people,

Their mothers or fathers,

There were no help at all.

So you know,

This is a very old,

And they were primary parents.

Which still,

It's very useful.

Having primary parents,

Primary adult figures,

Still pretty darn fundamental.

Whether they were helpful or unhelpful.

Primary caregivers are necessary.

But it's the causes and conditions that builds up as we begin to kind of learn things.

And then make sense of things.

And then if there's traumatic experiences during that time,

If there's,

You know.

I mean basically one of the things I like to think about developmentally is between 0 and 12 years old,

Whatever happened to you,

It's not your fault.

You don't have to take any responsibility for it.

Twelve on?

You have to take some responsibility.

Yet so much of that,

You know,

0 to 12 years old is so much of the development that's taking place.

Because it's what we're learning.

We're learning primarily from our primary care.

And then what we do with that,

And how we internalize that,

And how we hold onto that or let that go,

Or process that.

I mean,

I don't know about you,

But through adolescence I was just high drunk or loaded.

Like I didn't want to experience any of what happened to me between 0 and 12.

So I avoided.

Now somewhere along the line I learned how to meditate.

Around 16,

15,

16.

It was somewhat helpful for a little bit,

But I really just kind of used it as an escape like I was talking about earlier.

So the perceptual database,

You know,

Robert Bly called it our knapsack,

Right,

That we're constantly throwing stories of our shadow into.

This idea of whatever we're avoiding just goes in the knapsack.

And then it gets heavier and heavier and heavier,

And that's what we call baggage.

Like all the relations,

When we get out of a relationship and then you just,

I don't know,

Sometimes people just avoid,

They don't seek therapy,

They don't work on themselves,

They don't process,

And they just get into another relationship,

And then they basically come have a trunk by the time they're in a third relationship.

Something like that.

That idea of baggage.

It's interesting the one we talked about.

And sometimes we identify,

We identify with the things that we didn't want to identify with in the first place.

From a Buddhist perspective,

This is my kind of synopsis of what Buddhism is about.

The Buddha was a psychiatrist,

Basically,

The first psychiatrist,

Psychoanalyst you could call,

You could say.

And he was really interested in healing the mind.

And he was like,

There's a problem here.

Right?

We're maybe too associated,

Too attached,

We crave too much for pleasure and too much to avoid.

And suffering is about everything that we avoided continually coming back until it's dealt with.

What is karma?

Karma is a way of saying,

Okay,

All of this experience is going to continually repeat itself until we attend to it.

So the wounds of the mind,

The wounds of the heart,

And why they keep coming back in meditation and story,

This is something,

I tried to avoid it for a long time.

I'd go into these deep meditative,

We were talking about concentration earlier,

And I'd see the stuff and I was able to kind of like,

Okay,

I see you,

Big shark,

I see you,

I'm just going to swim over here.

Right?

And it's kind of staying in a little bit of a mindfully blissful state.

And that shark didn't go anywhere.

It just took a lap and then it popped back up again.

Same thing with these identifications,

These traumas,

These adverse life experiences,

These rehashing of past experience that has not been attended to.

So this whole point of Buddhism is to see clearly.

And we don't have to go looking,

Right?

We don't have to go looking for the past,

Like I was saying earlier,

Just learning to sit with the discomfort of everyday life and then when is training,

Sitting on this cushion in this way in pain.

Then we don't have to force the pain,

Right?

But being uncomfortable.

Life is uncomfortable.

Whoever told you it was comfortable,

Did anyone tell you that?

I was told that.

I was led to believe that.

We should all be happy and then when I wasn't happy I was like,

Oh I'm somehow defective.

No,

No.

Life is uncomfortable and there's a lot of unhappiness.

And Buddhism isn't actually about being happy.

I know,

That sucks.

Buddhism is about being content.

Content with our experience.

I guess I was talking a little bit recently about kind of Nibbana,

Nirvana,

This idea of enlightenment.

Buddha Dasabhikkhu,

This Thai monk that was pretty rebellious,

Who was a teacher to many Western teachers,

Used to call not for the full Nibbana,

For full kind of release of suffering,

But actually he would say pay attention to little Nibbana,

Little moments of peace and ease and actually what is a lifetime of freedom from suffering?

Little moments of peace and ease.

So it's not about expecting that all of a sudden one day,

Boom,

It's all gone.

It's really incrementally,

Can we create a little bit more space,

A little bit more space,

A little bit more space.

And what that means is when it's uncomfortable,

We attend to that.

And it can be little small pieces of uncomfortability.

It's building our reservoir.

Does this make sense?

Oh,

So what's happening?

What's happening?

Then there's what's happening about what's happening,

Which is the stories,

Is the unattended perception or the repetition of perception that continues to come up.

I heard it once talked about by the Dalai Lama's translator who is brilliant,

A brilliant man,

Mental imputation,

He called it,

That we mentally impute onto this moment perception,

Perceptual and from our perceptual database.

So it's just,

I mean if you think about it,

It's just moment after moment after moment.

Last night I was in this room and I was talking about how I hadn't been and even just this morning a little bit and how there was some mental imputation,

But then part of the idea is to be able to,

The observer is to be able to,

Can I actually just be with this experience as it is?

Because there might not be suffering attached to it,

This experience.

But yet it's kind of like when you haven't seen your family in a while,

Like the holidays or wherever those obligation to see people that are difficult perhaps to see.

And can we meet that as a brand new experience?

And it's tough.

My mother,

Part of the reason why I'm here is that my mother just got out of the hospital,

She just had a pacemaker put in and she's had several small heart attacks over the last two months and been in the hospital numerous times.

So showing up with compassion and trying to kind of be there and be the good Buddhist son and then she'll say something,

Snag.

And I'm like,

Ooh,

Ooh,

Ooh,

I get hooked.

Luckily it's just for a moment and I can observe it,

Oh,

Hooked and breathe.

It's been actually really interesting to watch it recently,

The perceptual database showing up.

Because one of the ways it's talked about is that,

Okay,

So there is what's happening,

Our present time experience,

Six senses,

Then there is what's happening about what's happening which is perception.

And then there is some kind of feelings connected,

Usually either avoidance or attachment,

Craving or avoidance.

But there's actually a whole scope and when we start to look at emotional intelligence,

We start to see,

Okay,

There's actually more here than just pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Neutral.

That's a useful,

I think it's useful especially in emotional regulation,

Is this pleasant,

Unpleasant or neutral and not getting into the whole story about it.

That can be useful in that what's happening about what's happening.

So there's what's happening,

What's happening about what's happening,

There's what's not actually happening and then there's what's happening about what's not actually happening.

And so these last two are basically suffering.

So what's not actually happening is the old story,

So some of the stories that come up with my mom or have come up in the past,

Stories walking down the street and having a memory and then maybe there's a feeling that comes up about it,

It's not actually happening.

But there's some kind of mental imputation based on my perceptual database that gets projected and then maybe there's a physical sensation that takes place.

So just at lunch,

I wasn't sure if I was going to talk about this or not,

Just at lunch I was walking across the street out of the bookstore and across the street was a guy that I had gotten into fights with as a kid that we went to like high school together and we had this like ongoing animosity towards each other.

And I saw him across the street and he just looks older but not different.

And instead of what had,

Actually I just kind of softened and looked at who is this person and recognizing who they were,

Who they are,

Like their name.

And then as he walked across the street I just really tried to soften my whole core and he smiled and I smiled and shook his hand,

How you doing?

We're almost 50,

You know what I mean?

And a couple pleasantries and I walked away,

Take care,

Yeah take care.

Nothing.

There was no,

I walked away and I was just like,

Wow,

That was a different experience.

And so what I think is happening within Buddhism is to say attending to what's past,

Attending to it so that it doesn't keep getting dragged into our future.

And that is what we can call negative karma,

This idea of kind of I'm going to keep imputing my past experience onto my present experience.

But we get distorted,

We get confused.

This stuff happens without us knowing about it.

And that's where it's conditioned.

My conditioned reactivity would have been to walk the other way,

Avoid eye contact as a way to not have an altercation or just to let him know I didn't like him.

You know?

That's my conditioned response.

And then even younger there was maybe other conditioned responses that involved physicality.

But not so much.

Actually I kind of always leaned to I wanted you to know that I didn't like you but I didn't really want to engage with you.

It was an avoidance strategy.

Pretty good at avoiding.

I've been avoiding my whole life.

I'm an escape artist.

But I try not to do that today.

And part of that is this seeing clearly,

This kind of coming out of distorted view of I don't have to live by the old example.

The conditioning.

I can see the conditioning.

So within this practice we can see the conditioning.

And then with the space that mindfulness gives us choose to not engage in that old way.

And just be open,

That's what happened when I saw him.

There was a choice that I made.

And it was just to allow him to walk across the street and to try to see him as just whoever he was.

This person.

And it was a pleasant engagement.

No,

It couldn't have been.

I mean it might have been something different.

I don't know.

But that's what it was.

And so just allow to not get into what it could have been.

But just,

You know,

This is what it was.

Anyway that's something that just happened.

I'll give an example,

A little context to this practice.

So what's happening,

What's happening about what's happening.

There's what's not actually happening.

Which is the stories that we attach to that we mentally impute onto,

You know,

Perhaps common,

Perhaps not common.

Like perhaps things that are new,

Perhaps things that are not new.

Maybe they're old.

I mean I like the idea of going home or seeing family or old friends or ex-relations,

You know,

Past relationships.

They're good barometers for where we're really at.

But it's all good when we're,

You know,

The lights are low and there's a bell and we're sitting in a meditative hall.

Everyone's trying to be nice to each other.

We're on our best behavior.

P's and Q's.

It's out there.

The outpatient clinic.

Things can get dicey.

Driving.

Boy,

I still have anger,

I realize that.

I mean I don't think it's ever going to go anywhere but I used to have really bad road rage and then I did all this years of meta practice and I was like,

May you be happy,

May you get to your place safely,

And then I moved to LA.

That practice went out the window because I was realizing how frustrated I was getting and angry for no reason really.

Yeah.

So,

What's not actually happening is really it's something for us to do.

That's where we can have the clarity.

That's where we can come out of the distorted perception.

And you're like,

I think it's like Brene Brown or something that says,

You know,

Is this true?

Is this really my experience?

Is this really happening right now?

Or is it based on past experience?

Just kind of spot check,

Ask ourselves that.

It's like the whole idea of like can we be courageously vulnerable to ourselves,

Let alone anyone else?

Can we actually just acknowledge what's really happening here to ourselves and then allow ourselves to feel it?

But challenging,

Is it true?

Because sometimes we're having a re-stimulation of past traumatic experiences or adverse life events,

Resentments,

Whatever you want to call it.

We're having it and we're not exactly realizing that it's actually not happening now,

That it's actually based on past experience.

So even when I get hooked,

My mom's not going to change her personality for me,

For my specific spiritual condition.

That's not going to happen.

So curiosity,

Openness,

Acceptance and love helps keep me kind of,

Okay,

Like I'm open to that's what's happening.

I'm accepting that that's,

You know,

That's what's happening there and I don't have to react to it.

Right?

I don't have to react to it,

Which is that's my work.

It also doesn't mean that we don't set boundaries.

I don't want to totally put my mom on front street so I won't go into all the boundaries like I said with her all the time.

But I do because it's necessary,

Setting boundaries.

Curiosity,

Not distorted boundaries.

Like no more people.

That's a boundary that I've heard before.

Wert used to work with this guy and he said at nine years old,

You know,

There was some abandonment and he made a decision at nine years old,

No more people in his heart.

Coping mechanism.

Survival strategy for a nine year old.

No more people.

You know,

20 years later,

That was a belief that he had locked in.

You won't get hurt if you don't open up to people or let people in your heart.

So what was our practice?

Was that have curiosity with that.

Be open to what is what needs to be expressed there.

Can we through body awareness,

Through this practice of mindfulness,

Of attention,

Can we open to that that might not be constructive anymore.

You know,

It was maybe constructive at that time,

But we have more tools now.

And I believe that that's what's happening here within this Buddhist context.

I believe that's actually what the Buddha is saying.

Attend to the unattended sorrow.

See clearly and allow the healing to take place.

The wounds of the mind,

The wounds of the heart.

It doesn't mean we have to continue to repeat the traumatic experiences.

We don't have to have this repetition.

There's a repetition compulsion that happens in the mind too during meditation.

I don't know if you guys have noticed that,

Where the same story will keep coming back.

And for years I would just push it away,

Push it away,

Push it away.

Not now,

Not now,

Not now.

Sometimes not now is a skillful means.

Because we need some stabilization,

We need some resources.

These are very useful.

Stabilizing the mind,

Stabilizing the heart,

Stabilizing our life.

Resourcing therapy,

Writing,

Sitting retreats,

Reading a self-help book or two.

Taking,

Finding different ways to take care of ourselves.

But that's only two pieces.

The last piece is what we call trauma resolution.

Which means seeing it clearly,

Attending to the wound,

And allowing it to process.

It's not an event,

It's a process.

So that last piece,

What's happening about what's not actually happening,

That's basically what I was just talking about.

It's this where we are mentally imputing,

We're bringing the past,

We're experiencing it now.

It's like when you're in a movie and you're watching the movie screen and you're having emotional reactions to what's happening on the movie screen.

You ever have like a cry because it's sad or something like that?

It's not actually happening.

But yet we're having these reactions.

And that's the beauty of movies and these kinds of things.

And what are they doing?

They're triggering or re-stimulating some stuff within us.

Some unattended sorrow perhaps.

So in 1996,

This man who was my mentor,

His name was King Gaskins.

He was my counselor when I was 16.

And kind of the first guy who really,

He was this big tall African American man.

I hadn't had a lot of experience with African American adults.

Kind and laughing and crying and showed emotion and was also very tough.

We were on a field trip where I was a guidance counselor.

We were cliff diving.

We were at O'odham Seiko.

And he dove and snapped his neck and he drowned.

And I was in the water and I was trying to save his life,

Me and another person.

And we couldn't.

And he died.

And then there was 20 other kids that were like standing around that all of a sudden me and this other 22 year old had to figure out how to deal with and get out of this canyon.

So that was pretty traumatic.

I used to not be able to tell that story without getting all emotionally overwhelmed.

Years of therapy and lots of connection and lots of endless practice and allowing some of that guilt of not being able to save his life and some of the shame of feeling responsible.

Choosing my own life over his.

Kind of stuck with me for a while.

Like you know,

What's it now,

2019?

Is it 19 or 18?

2019,

Right?

Yeah.

So a long time.

So the letting go of the pieces meant attending to it.

And what happened was that about a year ago,

I got this job working with a veteran.

And I was teaching,

They wanted me to teach mindfulness and trauma informed kind of group therapy for a bunch of veterans.

And I thought I was done with my own trauma processing around that.

And I went and I was kind of helping these guys and was teaching meditation and working with them.

Mostly it was an all men's group.

And it was useful that it was an all men's group.

They have women's group and men's group.

It's called Veterans Path.

It's actually a really great program.

And that's also where I came up with trauma addiction and shame or trauma compulsion and shame because the guys that had survived had tons of shame about surviving.

And there was a lot of compulsive behaviors that were playing themselves out as a way to kind of avoid the traumatic repetition that was taking place.

So what happened for me is that I recognized that,

So I was sharing that story.

I was sharing that story and kind of how I came into being a therapist.

And then this peace came,

It was shame.

The peace came up that I hadn't attended for a long time.

I hadn't attended to.

I thought I had dealt with it all.

But because of the environment and so many people,

I don't know,

There was another peace.

And I was like,

Oh,

This is interesting.

So mindfulness of,

Oh,

This is interesting.

There's another peace here.

And so I got back into therapy and I went and did some specific trauma work using actually EMDR,

Which is very useful.

And then sitting some retreats and working with some of this bottom up,

Not top down.

So there was no talk therapy involved.

And talk therapy is great and super useful,

But not always.

Not for trauma.

Trauma is often held in the body and deep.

And so stabilization is useful and resourcing extremely,

Extremely necessary.

And then trauma resolution is a process.

So trauma informed meditation practice is really stabilization and resourcing is what we're talking about.

And that's so when we're allowing another peace,

Just can we be open to it?

Can we meet it?

We meet all suffering with compassion.

It's the appropriate response.

Compassion for our own suffering,

Compassion for the suffering of others.

One of the things that happened when I saw the guy across the street is,

You know,

I mean,

He kind of looked homeless and he had some struggles.

That may not be true,

But that's the story.

But there was immediately there was some compassion.

That there wasn't hatred anymore.

That's just what I can say had happened today.

I think that's all that's kind of coming to me right now about this untangling of the mind.

I guess I mean,

The main piece is like,

Yeah,

Can we meet each experience with that openness?

With something like what,

With some curiosity,

Like what is here?

Because our habitual instinctual reactions are to avoid in various ways or seek some kind of a pleasure experience,

Which is also avoiding.

So either pushing away and like no more people,

No more people pushing away,

Aversion,

Isolation,

Protection or checking out,

Numbing out.

I want to be drunk.

I want to be high.

I want to be,

You know,

In some kind of blissful state,

Which we also talked a little bit about.

I think earlier spiritual bypassing.

And how,

You know,

Sometimes people come into meditation and I've definitely been guilty of this and just want to bliss out,

Man.

I want to be on the bliss raft.

But that's not reality.

Relax,

Observe,

Allow what needs to come to the surface to come to the surface.

Continuing to seek resources and stability.

Using the practice of aim,

Connect,

Sustain as a stabilizing form and relax,

Observe,

Allow as an opening for what is,

To allow that which arises to express itself and to pass away.

Yeah,

I think that's,

I guess I'll open up for thoughts or comments,

Questions about what's been shared.

And then we'll do a little bit more practice.

We're actually going to shift into some heart practices after this.

Thoughts,

Questions,

Exploration.

What do you mean by bottom up?

Thank you.

What I mean by what current kind of trauma informed care and what mindfulness based interventions mean by bottom up is that we're talking nervous system,

Base brain,

So regulatory responses,

Fight flight freeze,

Body centered,

Then emotional centered,

Then cognitive centered,

Right?

So if we think about the three brains,

The three levels of our brain,

We have a reptilian brain or a lizard brain,

Right?

Which is like,

Am I okay?

Am I okay?

Am I okay?

Am I safe?

Am I safe?

Am I safe?

This is very useful and it's kept us along this long,

Right?

It's kept us alive this long.

And often that looks like hypervigilance.

Often that looks like phobias,

That looks like scanning environments to be safe.

So that's bottom down.

The regulatory top,

I mean,

Top down,

I mean,

Top up,

Sorry,

Is this idea of kind of,

Can we regulate that physical fight flight freeze?

Can we soften our hypervigilance,

Not completely disregard it or circumvent it,

But can we soften that reactivity?

And then moving to emotional center and recognizing that often out of that fight flight freeze,

There is an emotional either overwhelm or avoidance.

And then very often what happens for people that are very kind of in that reptilian or that kind of regulatory functioning,

Instinctual functioning,

Is that they tend to be very intellectual people,

Very smart,

They're well read,

They're very used to using their rational mind.

So talk therapy won't really get to the core.

So using the bottom up approaches,

Which are body centered,

Mindfulness based practices.

And then emotional intelligence and somatic experiencing and EMDR,

Brain spotting to some degree,

Although I don't really know about brain spotting a whole lot.

I tried it once and it really wasn't my thing.

So versus top down,

Which for some people top down is also very useful and helpful,

But there's a way in which trauma often lives and is unexpressed in the physical body or in that real,

That's where when you're talking through and emotionally processing through things,

You can touch it.

But there's pieces that don't get addressed,

Kind of like my story that I was talking about how I had worked lots of top down therapy and processing and healing and writing and all these different things and there was still a piece that was really deep in there that when I,

I think what I believe is when I was resourced enough it was able to reveal itself and I was able to attend to it and I didn't have to rush it.

And so different things work for different people,

Top down or bottom up.

A lot of these interventions,

Especially like people that get explosive,

Angry,

Defensive,

Which was my kind of go to for a long time,

The top down approaches don't work because when this is the brain and when we're in a reactive pattern,

We flip our lids and our cognitive ability is disconnected.

So what happens is we become very sensitive,

Which is the limbic system,

The emotional system,

And then we become very reactive to how emotional we are.

Because that's shame actually involved,

Like why can't I control this?

But it's just,

At the minute,

It's like it's not our fault.

It's not our fault,

We're not to blame.

So using the bottom up is about soothing the regulatory system,

Soothing the cognitive ability,

Reconnecting.

I'm trying to remember what I learned in MBSR about that we're often unaware and so we're disconnected and then we're out of balance and that's what's happening when we're flipping our lids.

So what we need to do is get awareness,

Get some connection,

Physical sense,

Breath,

Body,

Counting,

And then find that balance again.

Which,

Thank you,

Because you just reminded me of something else I wanted to cover,

Known as the polyvagal system.

Polyvagal system,

You guys familiar with that?

It's basically the center line.

It's from your adrenal glands shooting up your spine,

The inside,

The core,

Up to your brain and it's what says like fight,

Flight,

Breathe,

Go,

Go,

Go.

It's excitatory,

It's also stress response,

Cortisol.

When we flip our lids,

We're getting a message usually triggered by a perceptual database that is somehow distorted or maybe not actually.

Maybe there is really,

But it's fight,

Flight,

Freeze and sometimes it's distorted and sometimes it's reality and that's one of the hard things to know.

So doing a couple,

There's a couple interventions that I work with.

One is called a calming breath.

A lot of this work is done by Stephen Porges.

Stephen Porges,

PhD,

Is basically the creator of the polyvagal response,

Polyvagal theory.

Super kind guy,

Very connected,

Not really a mindfulness guy,

But he's like,

Yeah,

That's really good.

Like deep breath,

Yeah,

That's really helpful.

Yeah,

Body centered practices.

Oh,

Qigong,

Yeah.

Good stuff.

So doing something as an intervention for when this flips up another body,

I mean another bottom up approach is to do a calming breath,

A four count inhale,

Diaphragmic,

A hold for a two count and a six count exhale.

So this is going to slow down the cortisol response.

Let's just do it together,

Okay?

I'll use my finger.

Two more times.

So that's a regulatory system.

And there's some different things you can do which are like clinching,

Tightening your face,

Tightening your belly with and then releasing on the exhale.

So like that,

What do you call that?

Progressive relaxation,

Tension release exercise.

That stuff's pretty helpful too.

All right,

We're going to end this and take a break.

So thank you for your time and attention.

Reviews

A lot of information in a short period of time so much to explore further. Very real experiences and personal. Thank you for sharing!

Thank you. I have let several major life events compound for years, and I have a tendency to ‘avoid’. Occasionally my body steps in and forces me to recognise and confront…which has happened this week. Your talk was so helpful, and necessary for me to hear today. I will return to this in the future, I’m sure!

Thank you!

Very good explanation on our responses to our trauma and these affects

Very interesting thanks