S2E18 Unbroken: The Trauma Response Is Never Wrong

In our latest episode, we delve into the complex world of trauma with PhD trauma researcher and life coach, MC McDonald. We navigate through the often misunderstood aspects of trauma and redefine it as an 'unbearable emotional experience that lacks a relational home'.

Transcript

Hello,

Everybody.

Welcome to another edition of the podcast.

I'm very excited today.

We've been chatting way too long without recording.

I've already discussed lots and lots of great stuff.

I have MC McDonald here today.

How are you MC?

I am so good.

It's so good to be here.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm so excited for this chat.

Now I came across you and your work.

I stumbled across you on Instagram because you had just released a book,

Which has been pivotal for me and I will share a bit more about that later called Unbroken.

The trauma response is never wrong and other things you need to know to take back your life.

Oh,

I love that language.

Thank you for writing this book.

Could you please introduce yourself to our audience who may not know you yet,

But no doubt will want to be reading this book.

Yes.

Oh,

Thank you.

Absolutely.

I am Mary Catherine.

I go by MC because it's a lot shorter.

Nobody has time for that bit mouthful.

I am a PhD trauma researcher,

Academic and life coach.

And I've been working in the field of mental health and trauma from an interdisciplinary perspective.

So I bring in neuroscience,

Psychology,

And philosophy staff for almost 20 years,

Which is a little wild.

That's very cool.

Very cool.

I want to know,

I always want to know people's origin stories.

What led you to specifically study trauma?

Did you start,

Did you know at the very beginning or how did that unfold?

No,

It's actually so funny.

It was such a,

It was such a winding path.

You know,

Things can look like they make sense when you look in hindsight,

But going through it,

It absolutely did not.

So I started I did a master's degree in philosophy and psychoanalysis,

And I was studying grief and specifically mourning at the death of a child and,

And sort of these hierarchies that we create around grief.

And,

Um,

I knew that I wanted to continue.

And I thought that I wanted to pivot and talk about identity because while I was doing my master's degree,

Both of my parents died.

So I started studying grief and then I lived it like it wasn't,

It wasn't that my parents died.

And then I started studying grief.

It was like,

I was doing this academically and the bottom dropped out,

Which was wild.

Um,

And there were a couple of other losses in that time period as well.

So I was really kind of drenched in it.

Yeah.

And I wanted to think about the philosophy of mind,

What it means to be human,

What is the brain versus the mind,

You know,

Just these kind of arch questions about,

About being human.

And,

Um,

There was a debate at the time going on in the philosophy of psychology about the extent to which we are a story.

And so on one side,

There was this argument that,

You know,

A self is a story,

A series of stories and then,

And then a larger story arc and coherence is really important.

And so when we don't have coherence,

Our identity can start to sort of shatter and get really lost on the other side of the argument.

And this is actually still going on.

There was really recently in New York times article about this.

Um,

The other side argued that this is,

This is false.

We are not a story.

Our lives are not stories.

And by trying to get our lives to conform to story form,

We are doing something that's psychologically harmful.

Hmm.

I know it's really,

Which side of the camp are you on?

Because I could,

I could,

I can see bits of me that want to go in either direction.

I know.

Right.

Right.

I mean,

So when I started this,

I would have fully said that I was in,

In the story camp.

Yeah.

And so I had reached for trauma stories to make an argument about,

About stories and identity,

Because it seemed to me to be the case that anytime someone had a traumatic event,

They would say the story shattered,

My life shattered.

I don't understand who I am anymore.

Because so even if you didn't really realize that your life was a story,

There was sort of the story being told and the trauma shattered something at the core of that.

Um,

And it also seemed really problematic.

There's some people who make really kind of,

Um,

Maybe like straw man arguments very extremely that like,

I'm not myself.

I'm not the same self as I was two seconds ago.

And therefore I have no responsibility for the things that I said two seconds.

Like that just seems to me wrong.

It is only six 20 in the morning.

Please do not blow my mind.

Sorry.

Oh my goodness.

Right.

Okay.

So that we are so rapidly evolving in.

Wow.

Okay.

And we're episodic essentially that we live in these little episodes that have nothing to do with each other.

And so if I made a promise to you yesterday,

That was a different self.

And so if I want to continue to make that promise today,

I have to recommit and I have no responsibility.

It's,

It's very busy to me to have to redo everything.

I know.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Right.

And it also just seems like we,

We,

So I think now what I would say is that I think our lives do conform to story form in the sense that like,

We have a beginning,

We have a middle,

We have an end and that most of the things that happen to us,

We need to integrate into a larger story.

We need to at least lend coherence and meaning to otherwise these stories stick out and they cause symptoms and pathologies that really profoundly get in the way,

Which,

So I think I'm like a little bit more towards the center now,

But,

But still pretty solidly in the,

In the,

Yes,

Our lives.

I think that's just how human psychology is structured.

Yeah.

Do you know,

I think,

I feel like every time we have a conversation about a continuum of something over time,

We will swing from one side to the other,

Because it's like,

Like,

You know,

The politics do the same in government.

Like I used to work in Queensland health,

You would decentralize everything.

They need centralize everything.

Like,

I think it's all just part of the wax and wane of like,

I don't know the pendulum and the cycles and whatever.

So if I'm understanding you correctly,

What you're now kind of summarizing is we have a story of our life.

I mean,

I guess for me,

Part of my story and the way that I,

You know,

Would introduce myself is I live in the country.

I have two daughters.

I'm married to a firefighter,

Like that time type of story.

And then something happens that makes no sense in that story,

Which creates dissonance.

And then our system responds to the dissonance by creating or responding in symptoms.

Yes.

Yeah.

So,

So what do we see?

What sort of symptoms?

Oh,

They're all over the place because I think,

So if it's okay,

If we could kind of step back for a second and talk about like the way that memories get filed,

Because I think this is a critical sort of like neurobiological argument about,

Or neurobiological defense of the story,

Which is that basically anything that happens to us gets filed away because our brains are constantly creating memories for the sake of safety.

The more you remember about what you experienced,

The more likely it is you are to stay alive.

So this is an evolutionary benefit.

And it is,

We've evolved to have an incredibly amazing,

Miraculous,

Sophisticated filing system in the brain that kind of stores all of the things that happen to us in an order that helps us reach for those things and pull them out when we need them the most.

Yes.

And so I think from a neurobiological perspective,

You can say pretty firmly that there is a sense in which the brain is a story,

A set of stories.

Yes.

And that when you have something sufficiently overwhelming happen,

One of the things that gets shut down in that moment,

Which is also an adaptation to help you cope,

Which we can circle back to,

Is that the file,

The kind of dudes in the file room sort of get occupied doing other things to help protect you in that moment.

Yes.

And so the result is that you get a fragmented memory file and that memory file can be fragmented in one of a million different ways.

And the reason that's important is because the way that it's fragmented is going to impact the way that that event shows up as a symptom.

Does that make sense?

Yeah,

It does.

And that was actually a key understanding in your book that made so much sense for me because for such a long time,

I have questioned some bits and pieces that I remember from quite traumatic experiences where they're very like,

I remember a smell for instance,

Or just one very tiny moment in time and then nothing.

And I'm like,

I've made these up.

They're incomplete.

They don't feel like memories.

It was like a normal memory.

Like I can go back in time and yesterday morning,

I got up and I had bloody,

You know,

Like it's a sequence of,

And there's no real gaps in it.

Like I might,

Well,

I mean,

I'm sure I couldn't tell you exactly what I did every minute of yesterday,

But you know,

It's a sequence like,

But going back into those traumatic memories,

I had always thought until this year,

When I really have started to very much look at this,

That the fragmentation or the lack of them being complete memories meant somehow I had created them or they were not real memories or because it was,

They weren't matching what I know as a real memory.

And I didn't realize that that was as a response to trauma.

Yes.

Yep.

That there's a fragmentation going on.

So you get a really vivid,

One really vivid chunk and then the rest of it falls away.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we were talking,

Sorry,

Before now understanding that I wonder also,

I don't want to dive too much into this because there's so many different viewpoints again,

But I wonder whether the kind of ADHD type of things that my brain does with spreading my concentration and attention is also as a response to traumatic things happening because then your brain is trying to cope by not concentrating or not focusing on things that you don't want to experience,

I guess.

But that lends itself to something else.

The key thing in your book that we are trauma is not a brokenness or a flaw or something to be shamed of.

So can we start there?

Like how would you define trauma?

Cause I think that there's a lot of people still that think it's just the big,

Bad things.

So I know that's a huge question.

I feel like we're going to have a three hour interview,

But yeah.

How,

How can you help our listeners to understand what trauma is to start with?

I think this is,

I'm so glad you,

That we're starting there because I think it's really important.

And this is actually one of the,

One of the reasons that I fell into this rabbit hole of studying trauma was that I was,

So I wanted to grab trauma as sort of like a case study and say,

And use it to say,

You know,

Psychology is structured narratively and trauma proves that neurologically,

Psychologically,

And experientially.

And then when I,

So I went to the,

There's this international trauma conference that happens in the U S every year that's run by Bessel van der Kolk and his folks who keeps the score.

And I went to that conference and it was the beginning of the discussion about how to change the entry for PTSD in the next DSM edition,

Which is going to come out a couple of years later.

And I was so shocked.

I went basically to steal a definition.

So I was like,

Well,

I just want to see what everybody's talking about and whatever.

And then I quickly found that they were arguing still,

There's no definition.

We've been talking formally in the field of psychology about trauma since the 1800s.

And here it was,

This was like 2009,

I think.

And we were still art.

And I was like,

What the hell?

Like,

How is it possible that we haven't agreed about what trauma is?

And I think the source of that,

That kind of flaw is that we've been trying to come up with a list of things that are traumatic.

And so we say,

Here are the four things you can experience.

And if you've experienced those things,

You might have PTSD,

Which makes sense that we would want to define it that way.

But I think that that doesn't work and it's got,

It has a lot of flaws because it doesn't take into account the many layers of lived experience that influence whether or not something that you experience becomes a lasting trauma.

So one of the things that I do in Unbroken is sort of pull apart the definition that is currently being used in psychology and replace it with this one,

Which is you have a potential traumatic event.

Anytime you have an unbearable emotional experience that lacks a relational home.

Oh,

Say that again.

I feel like I'm going to get a chiropractic adjustment of the soul several times in our conversation.

Right.

Can you repeat that please?

Apologies in advance.

That's all right.

No,

No,

This is good.

This is good.

That you have a,

You have potentially have a lasting trauma.

Anytime you have an unbearable emotional experience that lacks a relational home.

And by relational home,

Basically what you're meaning is that you can make sense of it in this kind of story of your life.

The,

I want to say construct.

I always want to say construct.

I don't think that's a good word.

Is it good?

Okay.

Is that right?

Like,

Can you define relational home a little bit more fast?

Yes.

I think if we start with a,

With unbearable emotional experience,

It's helpful because that will tell us sort of why something becomes something where we need a relational home.

So I like the term unbearable emotional experience for a bunch of reasons.

Number one,

There is a concern in the field of psychology and it is a,

It is a good concern that if we let everything count as potentially traumatic,

Then we,

We run the risk of stretching the word to meaninglessness.

And that's a real problem because number one,

The word becomes meaningless.

And number two,

We then stop studying it.

It becomes like the common cold.

Everyone's traumatized by everything.

Like no more research dollars for this.

It's not a big deal.

Yeah.

And so the,

The,

The reason that I like unbearable emotional experience is because it sort of raises the bar sufficiently high so that we don't get to say that anytime we are a tad uncomfortable,

This is a trauma.

Yes.

Yes.

So most of our experiences are bearable.

They might not be pleasant.

They might be difficult,

But most of them we can bear on our own.

And what,

What it means to bear an experience in,

In this kind of construct to use your word is that you can figure out where to put it in your file cabinets.

You can integrate that memory so that you can refer to it with ease.

You can understand what it means for your larger story arc.

How is it relevant in the story of your life?

What,

What did it change?

All of these things.

And we need our memories to be integrated because when they're not integrated,

As we were talking about a minute ago,

They start to interrupt when we have an unbearable emotional experience,

We need a relational home,

A place where someone else can help us to integrate the memory that we can't integrate on our own.

Because if we look at the sort of neurobiology of what's going on,

When you're traumatized,

Your brain does this miraculous thing whereby it,

It modulates 47 different functions of your brain and body to better prepare you for what it is interpreting as threat.

Is that wild?

Yes.

This,

This comes back to my original degree is just in biochemistry and molecular biology.

And the whole point of that for me was like,

How freaking cool are human beings?

Like all these different things happen and we're all in balance.

Well,

You know,

If we're in good health,

We're all in balance.

And it's just because all these systems are,

You know,

Adjusting and modulating and sending signals and whatever.

And we're not even thinking about it.

Right.

And it's happening like in this moment,

We are adapting to the temperature and to hunger and yeah,

40,

And that's probably now an outdated number.

And now it's 57 because I haven't looked since last week,

You know,

Like the more we learn,

The more,

The more complicated it gets.

But one of the things that gets kind of turned down when you're going through an incredibly overwhelming experience is that file room.

And so instead of getting a,

An integrated memory that has beginning,

Middle and end,

And you know where to put it and what it means,

You end up getting a fragmented memory.

And when that happens,

The fragments can end up causing the same.

They look like trauma to the fear center of the brain.

So anytime you remember it,

The fear center thinks,

Oh,

We're going through this again.

We better take up all of exactly.

Yeah.

And so you need another person to help you regulate your brain and your biological function in that moment so that you can figure out together how to put together whatever's missing from that file.

Yes.

And then where it's going to go.

And trying to kind of make sense of it.

That makes really good sense.

It also makes a lot of sense to me that when we're experiencing trauma in childhood and there's not an adult that's around that can help you make sense of things that that's even more discombobulating because you don't even have access.

Like,

Obviously you don't have the development,

The maturity to do it for yourself.

And yep.

If there's not,

Yeah,

Some sort of person around that's yeah.

Someone that you sort of feel safe with to help you make sense of things.

And,

And I think too,

The unbearable part of that definition,

It actually brings up another thing,

Which is we can,

You and I can go through exactly the same experience.

One of us can be traumatized.

The other one isn't because we're bringing all of our lived experience,

Our expectations,

Our thoughts,

Feelings,

And beliefs and everything that we've ever gone through that will affect how we interpret that event.

A thousand percent.

And even to take that even one step further,

You and you might have a different experience of the same experience.

So if you experience something today that might not be traumatic for you,

But five years ago,

It might have been traumatic because some of those layers are temporal,

Right?

Like you're in a different position.

Maybe your biochemistry is different.

Maybe you have different.

It certainly is.

Let me tell you,

Perimenopause changed a lot of things.

Wow.

Okay.

So,

So is that going back to the when we're talking about the DSM and for anyone who doesn't understand that terminology,

It's just a,

A reference tool that is used to diagnose psychological health concerns.

I don't know how you would say that like disorders or not,

Not necessarily disorders.

No,

Just right.

Yeah.

So it's the,

It's the,

Um,

Diagnosed interruption,

Statistical manual of mental disorders.

I can never remember what those three.

Okay.

So if,

And this is why it kind of makes sense to me that if we've been talking about trauma and academic circles or,

You know,

Science circles since the 1800s,

But we're still,

And,

And it's true to say,

We're still arguing about the definition.

Like some camps would say it's this.

And some camps would say it's that,

You know,

There's not,

Even though the DSM obviously has a clear definition.

It makes sense to me that there's also all of these kind of,

Um,

Is it societal or conditioned expectations,

Shared expectations of things like,

Or you should just be able to suck it up.

And this is actually a very Australian thing.

Like Australian culture is very much like,

Yeah,

Something happens.

You just suck it up,

Have a big,

She'll be right,

Mate.

And this is like a,

That is a huge generalization and stereotype,

But it is quite prolific.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And because there is that kind of,

I don't know,

Shame or weakness kind of thought or feeling about going through something traumatic and then not being able to cope without help for however long until you make that relationship relationship relational sense.

Um,

I think a lot of people probably are experiencing a response to trauma,

But will not,

Will not seek support.

I try to self-medicate.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Like,

You know,

I've shared with you before,

And I've talked about this on this podcast before,

Like my key coping mechanisms as a kid was to eat,

Like to steal food and eat it to try.

And like,

That was really,

When I look back,

I used to judge myself so harshly for that,

But I look back now and I go,

Wow,

Wasn't I smart at three and four?

The only thing that I had access to that was some sort of soothing or safety kind of feeling was food.

And so I did,

You know,

Um,

But I also see in myself,

Or I shouldn't say,

But,

And I also see in myself,

Um,

All these kind of coping mechanisms,

I'm using these invented covers very,

Very consciously.

And my coping mechanisms were control or try to control everything as much as possible.

Cause that gave me a semblance of a feeling of safety.

That's particularly in my twenties.

Um,

And then I definitely continued the role of the caregiver because of the way that I took care of a parent and I played the role of the good girl because that also gave the perception of safety.

And then my number one coping mechanism was just to keep busy.

So then you won't feel anything.

Yep.

I'm laughing because this is cause yep.

That's me.

Yep.

I mean the high achiever,

Like when I see someone now,

If I,

In my twenties,

If I saw someone and they were like me in terms of like,

They were getting their higher degrees,

They were top of the class.

They were honors students.

They were also working three jobs and they were looking after bloody blood,

Like all these balancing things.

I'd be like,

Yeah,

You know,

You know,

Mover and shaker person.

And now I see people in their twenties doing that.

And I think,

Oh,

I know.

It's like,

Oh,

I wonder how many decades until you realize that that's actually just a conditioned response to trying to do something.

Yeah.

Anyway,

That's a whole other conversation.

Um,

Can we talk about before we get to those types of patterns?

Sorry.

I kind of preempted myself.

Can we talk about,

You said before when the dissonance happens,

Like,

So when a trauma happens,

You can't make sense of it.

There's a dissonance in the story of the life of our lives.

What types of symptoms?

Cause you said before lots of different symptoms.

Can we kind of cover,

And I know that there is hundreds and hundreds,

But what sort of bodies systems are impacted?

Yes.

Um,

The,

So the short answer is all of them,

Because what's happening when you have a traumatic memory that gets tripped off is that your,

Um,

Your hormone levels change your stress response system is activated.

And so,

Um,

Stress hormones go flooding through your body.

And those in the short term can do things like raise your blood pressure,

Raise your heart rates,

Um,

Your respiration rate.

So think of kind of the classic example of like you wake up in the middle of the night to a loud noise.

You can feel in your body.

Yeah.

What the stress hormones are doing all you've gone from your lowest respiration rate,

Lowest heart rate of the 24 hour period to all of a sudden,

Like you're alert and at,

You know,

Your heart rate is at 120 or whatever.

Right.

Yeah,

Exactly.

Um,

And so in the short term that,

You know,

The symptom can be activation.

The symptom can also be deactivation.

So checking out or dissociating.

So instead of the upregulation of,

Of,

You know,

Kind of,

Oh God,

We've got to run away.

You have the disconnect,

Which can look like,

Not being able to remember what you're talking about,

Um,

Not being able to pay attention or to concentrate feeling really disconnected.

This can also this,

All of these symptoms exist on a spectrum it's worth saying.

So you can dissociate at an extreme level and actually feel like you are outside of your body,

Kind of watching things as if it was a movie,

Or you might just kind of feel a little weird and have a hard time paying attention.

And so these are kind of the short term in the,

In the moment kind of trigger symptoms,

Some of them,

Um,

But they can also over time start to look really different because since the stress response system is activated,

Every time you get triggered,

Regardless of what the symptom is,

You're creating a source of inflammation in the body that later can lead to the breakdown of organ function.

Um,

It can lead to chronic pain that we see in like fibromyalgia,

Gastrointestinal things,

Um,

You know,

Reproductive issues,

Headaches,

Pain,

Um,

Sleep issues,

All of these things.

And so it's,

It's,

Yeah,

It kind of depends on what the response is from your stress response system in the moment.

And then it depends on also how long that symptom continues.

And I don't mean that to sound really scary because it sounds like,

Okay,

If I'm traumatized and I don't heal myself,

Then all of a sudden I will have all this inflammation in my body,

Which is true.

But the benefit of knowing that is that we also know what to do about it.

Yes.

And so one of the things that I'm super focused on in my work is like,

What tools can I give you right away so that you can start to chip away at this stuff as you do the bigger work of like reintegrating the memories or doing the healing,

You know,

That you need to do that's maybe more acute because we can intervene over our stress response system more than we think.

Yeah.

So this was again,

Another key.

I feel like you can tell I've got so many pages,

Like dog-eared in your book.

Um,

One of the things that you talk about is that being affected by trauma and also experiencing a sense of safety and connection in your body are not mutually exclusive rates.

And that was like,

Whoa,

Okay.

Hang on a minute.

Because I again,

Had a story of like,

To look at all of this stuff that's come to the surface and we'll talk about the perimenopause thing as well,

To look at all the stuff that's come to the surface,

Which feels incredibly overwhelming.

I'm going to have to do so much stuff,

So much work,

So much healing,

So much,

Whatever processing,

Whatever you want to call it before I can get to this sense of being okay in myself.

And you actually don't agree with that.

It's not mutually exclusive.

You can be processing,

Working,

Healing,

Making sense of things,

And also using tools in the here and now.

Can we talk about some of those tools?

Um,

Because they're so accessible,

But I think they're still not talked about enough.

They're not.

And I think I really hope to see a real change in this in the next like five years where we start teaching this as part of the school curriculum,

Because we understand,

Right.

If we understand the way in which our bodies are barometers and we know what to do when the levels start getting off,

Then we have so much more power over the way that we feel in the moment.

And then what we do with the way that we feel,

Because often emotions are going to lead to behavioral changes that will cause problems in our lives.

And so,

Um,

So to start with,

I think number one,

It's super crucial to understand that the trauma response is not a sign of weakness.

This is kind of my whole thing.

It is a sign of adaptation and strength.

What is behind it is this will to survive.

So when you have these symptoms,

We are very quick to turn to shame.

And I think a lot of that is just because the history of the study of trauma and the bad science that we,

We didn't have the technological advancements that we do now to be able to understand what was going on.

And so,

Um,

That coupled with like societal things made the understanding of trauma really radically different in the 18 hundreds in some ways.

But if we understand now what the science has shown us unequivocally,

Then we can start and say,

Okay,

I'm having this response and there's no need to feel shame about it.

So I'm going to take the shame.

I'm going to put it over here.

Okay.

I'm having this response.

What does this mean?

What,

Where is it coming from?

And then what can I do about it?

That awareness is the first step.

Um,

And so for example,

Even as a trauma researcher,

I was well into,

In fact,

I think I was done with my PhD by the time I realized that I had a dissociative response to conflict.

Like I just thought I was bad at conflict.

I did not connect it with my childhood in any way.

I had no idea.

Like it's crazy to me that this sort of,

I've,

I've had multiple of those realizations in the last 18 months.

I'm like,

Oh,

That's right.

But then I kind of,

I mean,

We're getting off topic,

But just a quick sidebar of like,

Then I kind of got to the stage where I was like,

Is my entire identity a trauma response?

And then I was like,

I'm going to choose to believe that.

No,

Because otherwise again,

There's dissonance.

And then we back to the beginning anyway,

Continue,

Please.

Sorry.

So I love that,

That,

That you just brought that up though,

Because really quickly,

I've heard that a lot from people who will start to read books on trauma.

They start to get into the healing work and they do realize that a lot of what they,

Who they,

Who they think they are,

A lot of their identity is based in developmental trauma that they had between the ages of zero and 18.

And so I like to think about that as like,

There's marble in your foundation,

Like someone poured the foundation and there's concrete,

But there's these like streaks of marble.

So yes,

It is part of your identity,

But not in this way.

That's like,

You're broken,

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

And you can turn those things,

Right.

And you can turn those things into superpowers,

But that's a whole other thing.

So to go back to the tools,

Sorry,

It's a fun tangent to learn the place.

There's so much to talk about once you realize.

So when I realized that I have a dissociative response to conflict,

I started to think like,

Okay,

Here's what's going on.

Let me tune into what my body is telling me because often we don't see the symptoms that are appearing before the crisis.

We just experienced the crisis and we think there are no symptoms.

I had no warning that I was gonna have a panic attack.

I just had a panic attack.

And so what I would realize once I started tuning in,

Like,

Okay,

What is the barometer telling me?

When is it going off?

I noticed that there was always an extreme heart rate rise in a situation that didn't call for it.

So I'd be like sitting at a boardroom table with coworkers and all of a sudden my heart rate was like 150 as if I were running.

And I was like,

That was something I didn't even notice before.

Yeah.

It's crazy,

Isn't it?

Because we're so disconnected from our bodies.

This is what I think,

Because if you have gone through a lot of trauma,

You're very good at not being in the now.

And I think this is why I have always been drawn to yoga because yoga,

Like when you're on the mat,

You're so in the moment.

And I have found it,

Especially in hot yoga where you move in a lot and then all of a sudden there's this big like emotions coming.

I'm like,

Whoa,

Okay.

But all of us have cried on a yoga mat before.

But yeah,

I think that what you're saying is exactly true that it's only since I've been doing the real,

I don't know whether you would say somatic as well,

But that sort of real body connection where I'm like,

Oh yeah,

Because I have things like I will cope and cope and cope and cope and cope and cope and cope,

But I'm not present in my body because I get very hyper-focused particularly when I'm doing a creative task.

And then all of a sudden I am way over the threshold and I'm just like overwhelmed and I'm fried and I'm snapping at people or kicking the dog,

You know,

Like just,

And I've,

I wasn't ever seeing the warning signs anyway.

I've interrupted you again,

Sorry,

But I'm just agreeing with the fact that when you're not in your body,

It's hard to spot until you really start to be more in your body.

Yeah.

And then you're like,

Oh wait,

Hold on.

And I think it's so important to talk about this because I think one of the failures about the way that we are currently talking about trauma,

And it's great that we're talking about trauma more than we used to,

But one of the problems is that we talk about triggers as if we always have conscious available,

Like that we always know exactly what the trigger is.

And we don't like the triggers are so humbling.

Trauma is so sneaky that like you have these things,

You don't even connect the dots.

And so if you can,

I think of it as like turning the channel.

If you think of like one of those old TVs with the dials of like,

Okay,

I'm going to turn the channel to the,

To the body barometer.

What is it reading?

What is it saying?

Yeah.

And then when I'm in a situation where I noticed,

Okay,

My heart rate just went,

Just pinged.

And for no reason,

I'm sitting in the office,

What's happening then now I know,

Okay,

So this is what's happening.

I don't need to sort it out right now.

I need to get back to baseline.

And so one of the most simple ways to re-regulate your nervous system.

Once it's off to the races is diaphragmatic breathing,

Which they talk about in the book,

Which is simply right.

Taking a deep breath into where your diaphragm is,

Which is about the middle of your torso,

Right underneath your rib cage.

Because when you do that for like three to six breaths,

You are pushing against something called the vagus nerve,

Which is a nerve in your body that starts in the brainstem and extends all the way through touches all of your central organs and is critical in the stress response system.

And in particular in regulating the rest and digest.

So when you're in kind of a rest state,

So if you take three to 60 breaths like that into your diaphragm,

You push against the vagus nerve in one of the spots that has most of its nerve endings.

Yeah.

And that triggers your body to calm down.

It triggers a rest response.

And so that,

So I'm,

So now I've gone from not knowing that I have this at all to noticing that it's happening and then being able to intervene and also recognizing that like the deep psychological work can't happen until I do that.

Correct.

Yes.

Like I have to get back to baseline.

Like no work,

No,

Nothing productive is going to happen when I am activated to that level.

Exactly.

Um,

I,

I've been practicing on and off all different types of tools.

Um,

And I find there's one,

Um,

That physiological breath,

Which is the two inhales quick and then a long exhale,

Which I find really effective.

Um,

I find the one like the,

You know,

The fish face and then running your tongue around the mouth because that's the vagus nerve as well.

Yep.

Um,

I think it's really important for people to understand that the tools that we're talking about,

I know you've given a really good example.

Most of them are super simple.

Oh yeah.

Like we're not talking about hours and hours of intervention.

And I think listening back to what you're saying and what my experience has been reconnecting to my body,

A key kind of little ding,

Ding,

Ding bell for me is I'm having a reaction that is disproportionate to where I am.

Right.

And,

And for me,

A lot of I've gone past this now,

Thank God.

But,

Um,

In my earlier days,

My coping mechanism of keeping everything down would sometimes meet a trigger.

And my proportion was a D sorry.

Disproportionate response was huge range.

And now I understand,

Uh,

Well,

That was because I was angry at my small self.

I was angry at my parent.

I was angry at my other parent.

I was angry at everybody,

But I didn't have anywhere to express that or get it out of my system.

So it was all inside of me.

And so my poor husband,

When we first married,

We'd leave a towel on the floor and I'd be like,

You know,

Like just crazy.

And,

And then that starts another shame cycle.

Cause it's like,

What the hell was that?

Like I'm maybe I'm mentally unstable.

Cause that's the other thing,

Right.

If you've got a history of mental illness in your family,

And then as soon as things start sort of feeling a bit unstable.

Um,

So I,

I do think it's really important for people to understand these as simple tools.

Um,

And I think the more that we can,

What would you say?

Um,

I feel like the more that I practice the tools when I'm not in a response,

The more able I am to be in my body and because I'm safe to be in my body.

Cause that's the other thing I've been realizing is that I think I've spent a lot of years outside of my body,

Like in my brain,

I live from the neck up,

You know,

Analyzing,

Logicing,

Seeking safety,

You know,

Seeking control,

All of those things.

Um,

And then getting down into the body has been really key for me.

Like,

Yeah,

I just,

I really want people to understand simple tools.

We're not talking about hugely,

You know,

Um,

You know,

Not going on a 10 day retreat or,

You know,

As lovely as that would be not so great.

Um,

But yeah,

I think that that is a key to the safety and connection thing.

Um,

I also think that like,

I love to give clients,

Sorry,

Just to,

Because I think it's so important that,

Um,

I'd love to try to give clients this idea of like,

You need a toolbox.

Yes.

You need a,

You need a garage of tools instead of we are,

We live in this society where we are like,

What's the quick fix.

What's the thing that's going to heal my trauma.

And the thing is that what is much better is to have 52 different tools that work for different situations because breathing I'm a,

I'm a,

A hyperventilator when I'm panicking breathing exercises do nothing except get me to pass out quicker.

And so I have learned that in those,

Those really heightened States,

When I haven't noticed the run-up to the crisis,

I need distraction tools instead of breathing tools,

Breathing tools are something I should practice in the calm moments,

Or when I'm feeling like a little bit irritated that I'm stuck in traffic or whatever,

Just because they also lead to,

Um,

You know,

They're,

They're great tools in your longevity toolbox and your general health toolbox as well.

Um,

But yeah,

It's having,

Having the tools,

Having a huge variety of them,

Knowing how they work,

Feeling comfortable with them and then being able to know what thing is useful for what situation.

If you can have that,

You're,

You're pretty yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sorry.

That's where I was going with all that waffle.

My point was going to be that not all tools work for all people and not all tools work in all situations.

And so understanding,

Like I always think of,

Um,

I've studied a lot of traditional Chinese medicine.

So the way I think about body and energy and even psychology is very much through that sort of meridian flow kind of thing.

So it's like,

Do I need to ground my energy if I'm overwhelmed and freaking out and I need to sort of really center myself back into that beautiful kidney healthy zone,

Do I need to energize my energy?

Do I just need to balance myself a little bit?

Cause I'm feeling a bit sort of discombobulated at the beginning of some sort of dysregulation,

But I'd kind of don't know where I am.

Um,

I'm so glad you said that because,

Um,

I'm just in the middle of recording.

Um,

Something,

So I talk about self-soothing a lot.

So these tools being self-soothing,

Because I think had I just had someone help me to breathe and,

You know,

Just three or four tools as a kid.

And when you said about like,

Um,

Introducing them in the school system,

You reminded me,

Um,

We used to live,

Uh,

In a place called the sunshine coast,

Um,

Which is Queensland hinterland.

So up from the ocean in rainforest.

And my kids went to a barefoot Buddhist school and they,

They meditated every day.

It was a barefoot school.

So they always connected.

Um,

They did,

I used to go into the school and teach the kids how to tap,

Like simplified EFT and stuff and use like self Shiatsu points.

So,

You know,

Like,

Like know which one's your anxiety point and all those things.

And I just think that school was so alternative,

At least in Australia,

Like very,

Very,

You know,

Alternative.

Um,

And the kids loved it,

But it finished at high school.

Like there was nowhere to kind of go after that.

And I just think if we could just include some of these things or even just the close your eyes and do a little bit of a scan of like,

How am I feeling?

Right.

What is their attention?

What is the message here?

Like instead of just,

Because we,

We still teaching our kids to think with our brains up.

And I keep on saying,

Like,

I've always said to my girls at 18 and 19 this week,

Like your body knows already.

Yes.

You don't have to think about it.

You don't have to figure it out.

You just have to feel if it doesn't feel right.

It's not right.

If you don't feel safe,

Get the heck out of wherever you are.

Like all of those types of things.

I think we've kind of like,

I don't know,

We've wallpapered over this beautiful sensing system of our body and our energy field by saying the only thing that has value is your brain upwards.

It's like,

No,

No,

No,

No.

Yeah.

I was laughing before.

Um,

I wasn't laughing,

But I was giggling internally when you said about all the different symptoms and how they show up because people will go to their doctor and they'll talk about sleep problems.

Right.

And the response is often here's a sleeping tablet.

And as an ex sleep scientist,

Don't even get me started on that anyway.

Um,

And the interruption to all of those things,

You know,

Interruption to your normal hormone cascade,

But we're not at the stage where all health professionals are thinking about trauma being an underlying root cause of a lot of the dysregulation,

Which causes illness and disease eventually.

Right.

When will we get there?

A couple of thousand of years.

It's interesting too.

Cause that also like reflects back to the definition.

Sometimes I'll see this with clients or people will post on social media and they'll be like,

Well,

I went through a thing and it's not traumatic.

And,

You know,

And it's like,

We can argue about the definition of trauma for another 150 years uselessly,

Or we can understand that your body is telling you anyway,

If you have the symptoms of PTSD,

Or if you're having a trauma response,

You have been exposed to a trauma,

Something your system has,

Has labeled as trauma.

You don't have to agree cognitively that that was traumatic or not.

It doesn't have to fit within the DSM definition,

Which specifies that there are only three things that are potentially traumatic,

Which is wild.

Your,

Your body is telling you.

And so it's,

It's such a funny runaround that we do when we're like,

Oh no,

Yeah,

I went through this and yes,

I have these symptoms,

But that can't possibly be this because you know,

That's not how we're currently defining trauma.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's like saying you don't have appendicitis and your appendix,

You know what I mean?

Your appendix is going,

You can argue about that,

But it's not really going to get you anywhere.

Yeah,

Exactly.

Again,

The body is talking,

But it keeps the score.

So many things that I want to include in our chat.

I think when we go back to the story of our lives concept that we're talking about before in your book,

You have an exercise where you help people to kind of pull apart four versions of a story.

And I found it really,

Really helpful.

And we talked about beforehand that I would be happy to kind of share how that helped me.

Because I think a lot of,

I actually think I have probably been more traumatized by my self judgment and self blame than some of actually what happened.

And I didn't realize that before I did this exercise.

So can you lead us through,

And I know we're not going to have time to do it in the fullness of the power of it,

But I highly recommend people go and get a copy of the book where the exercise is in its full version.

But I just think this would be helpful because yeah,

It's helping people understand that there is not just one version of an event.

Yeah.

I think so to kind of motivate the tool,

I think that,

You know,

You mentioned this earlier that like control is one of the things that you're coping mechanism.

And I think like,

This is not to get derailed,

But we need to learn how to forgive ourselves for what we reach for in these moments of desperation,

Because they are attempts on our system from our desperate system to adapt.

And so you're reaching for food because that's going to increase dopamine levels and also push against the vagus nerve when you're full.

So you're doing the same thing as diaphragmatic breathing.

And then there's all these other benefits as well.

So the felt sense of safety is there,

Even though it's not necessarily through a particularly helpful pathway.

Exactly.

Right.

Right.

And so what we're looking for,

I think what happened,

One of the central kind of wounds of trauma is that we lose the illusion that we have control.

And so we get sort of shot down this path of like this,

This horrible shattering thing happened.

I had no control.

And now I also have to grapple with the idea that I used to think I had control and now I don't.

And so one of the weird results of that is that we give up our story and assume that there's only one telling there's only one explanation.

There's only one interpretation.

So this happened and it's my fault.

And that is the story that I will tell for the rest of eternity.

One of the most powerful tools in healing trauma.

And this has been true since we have been studying trauma is narrative.

Because one of the things that we're doing when we are integrating memories is we are,

We are correcting the story in our memory file and also the label that's attached to that story.

So what does that story mean in the larger story arc of our lives?

And so since I think we,

You know,

We are the authors and narrators of our experience.

We also have the possibility to change our stories.

Yes.

It doesn't have to be that it's all your fault,

Even though that's what you may have thought when you were 12 and this out of control thing happened.

And so you internalized it and decided that it was your fault as a way to kind of put the folder away.

You can take the folder back out and retell the story.

And so the tool,

I know,

Right.

But people are so resistant because it's like,

No,

No,

No,

The thing happened.

And this is the memory.

And what we're not realizing is that the facts and the interpretations are two different things.

Yes.

I'm not asking you to tell lies or make up stories or create things that aren't there,

But to look instead at everything that's in that file folder,

Because there's a list of facts,

Like almost like a police report,

X,

Y,

And Z happened,

But then there's a set of interpretations.

Yes.

And so the tool really briefly is just to take a story that you're struggling with an issue in your life that you're struggling with.

And it's great to try this out with sort of a lesser thing than like the biggest,

Biggest shame story of your life.

And you just say,

Okay,

I'm going to write out four different interpretations of the events.

And I don't even have to believe in the interpretations.

They can be wild interpretations,

But the point is to sort of disconnect this idea that like,

There's only one way to tell this story.

And a miraculous thing happens every time I do this with a client or a group,

Which is that people are really resistant.

Then they finally are like,

Okay,

Fine.

And they start creating these interpretations and they realize a bunch of things.

One is that the facts don't equal the interpretations.

These are two different pieces of the folder.

And that even if they're writing fantastical stories that they don't believe in as versions,

They start to see that there's space.

Yes.

It's like a wedge in your making sense file where you're like,

Oh,

Hang on a minute.

The field of possibilities all of a sudden got way wider.

Exactly.

And that does do magic.

Yeah.

I feel like the process for me was the same sort of thing that I,

I used to do a lot of NLP coaching back,

Back ages and ages ago.

And I used to have this,

You know,

You see it in a client's face or they're really,

Really struggling with something and you do some sort of process that disconnects that sort of the meaning,

But the,

The interpretation has changed and someone goes from being feeling or looking really stressed or overwhelmed to this.

There's this thing that happens with people's foreheads where they just,

All of a sudden there's this release and it's like,

Maybe something else is possible.

That's what this did for me.

That kind of,

It just opened up the possibilities.

And then it's like,

And then everything's up for interpretation.

I'm going to have to say,

Cause I'm like,

Right on a minute.

Right.

Wait a second.

Yeah.

I love how you just said that because that's,

That's exactly what happens.

It opens up for possible and you're like,

Hold on.

Okay.

What else might be true?

Yes.

And then usually what happens is that a little tiny chunk of the shame starts to fall away.

Yes.

And you start to say,

Okay,

Maybe,

Maybe it was partly my fault and this person's fault as well.

You know what I mean?

I don't know how much you want to get into your,

I'm totally happy.

So I,

I won't share exact like points in time,

But yeah.

So I think the key thing that I guess I could communicate that doesn't kind of get too crazily personal is my meaning of a particular story was that at the age of eight,

I should have been able to try better,

Do better,

Take care of my parent better,

Control the situation better,

Prevent harm happening better.

And I didn't realize that that was the story that I had until I actually got out the magnifying glass.

And then I was like,

You know,

The 48 year old version of me can go,

How on earth could an eight year old be expected to have that sort of resourcing available to her?

And was it your responsibility in the first place?

Right.

Because my construct of myself was my role,

You know,

That kind of family of origin,

I always say,

Call them sticky labels.

Like my sticky label was you take care of your parent.

That's right.

That's what I gave myself.

No one even gave it to me.

I just decided it was my job because otherwise things felt too dangerous and unsafe.

So my sticky note was the caretaker.

So therefore the story that goes with being the caretaker is it's your fault if something bad happens or it's your fault if harm happens.

And then when you look at that through a 48 year old's lens,

I mean,

It's ridiculous.

But I think because you invite crazy fantastical versions that are like wildly,

You know,

You know that that's not the interpretation,

But it's kind of like,

I don't know,

You're sort of adding a fantasy thing into the mix or something that completely,

You know,

That then it's almost like your brain can then seek the truth of something.

And am I right?

I don't,

I can't exactly recall,

But he's part of the process also is that there's a bodily check-in somewhere in there,

Isn't it?

Yes.

Yeah.

So you,

When you tell yourself the stories,

You,

You then pause and you read the stories back and you check in with yourself.

What,

What comes up when I tell myself the version of the story that an alien came down and made me do this thing?

Well,

That makes me naughty,

Naughty alien.

And then what you experience is this range of bodily responses to something that you thought was fixed.

And then you start being like,

Oh,

There's space there too.

My body can feel different in relation to this experience,

As well as the story,

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was that because this came at the same time as really doing a lot more of that somatic work.

And so my body,

As soon as I read,

Like one of my stories was,

I was to blame the other story was you know,

You have a parent who deals with addiction and mental health issues who is very unwell and was unable to resource herself or you.

And the felt sense in my body was just one of like relief and release versus the shame field one,

Which was like the tension in my shoulders and the like defensiveness and the want to protect,

Which is also what the rage that I was talking about before comes from.

It's like,

You're on a trigger.

It's like,

If everything's my fault,

Then as soon as something goes wrong,

It's like,

You know,

Like crazy disproportionate response.

Um,

But then when I felt in my body,

That sense of relief,

I was like,

You know what?

It actually doesn't even matter what the truth is because the truth is such a construct as well.

What matters is at this time in my life,

It's more important for me to feel a sense of safety and connection and relief and release than it is to hold on to something that's causing me more pain than the,

Probably the original event.

Cause it's that self-flagellation over 40 fricking years.

Yeah.

That has created so many layers of yeah.

Pain.

Yeah.

Pain and dysfunction and.

But,

And then,

And it's so like,

Let's pause for a second for the brilliance of that adaptation at that tiny tender age because you it's safer to hold yourself accountable when you realize,

And you haven't even made this,

Like,

This probably wasn't even a thought the adults in my life who are supposed to be accountable are not.

Yes.

It's not safe for me to be angry at them or to call this out.

So I have to,

Then I have to be angry at myself.

And then that anger and that shame,

Those are very,

Uh,

Energetic,

But they're energetic.

They motivate you.

And so you,

We carry those and then we get this false correlation in our brain that if I'm not feeling ashamed,

I won't move forward,

You know,

Or I won't make progress.

That's so true.

Right.

Which then can get in the way of healing because we're like,

Well,

I can't let myself off the hook for this because this is the thing that got me out of the situation that I was in.

Yes.

But it also got me into,

You know,

10 years of uni that I probably didn't want to do.

And relationships where I've always been a step away from people to keep myself safe and blood,

Like all of these things.

Um,

And I think that,

Um,

For me doing that exercise really got me clear on,

Like,

I I'm one of my favorite self-inquiry questions is at what cost,

Like if I'm,

If I become aware of something at what cost,

And because it is only when you are aware of the cost that you can do a cost benefit analysis and figure out if you're willing to pay it.

Right.

Right.

So it's like this shame story served me well for many,

Many years,

But it's also costing me my relationships,

My health,

My ability to calm my nervous system.

Um,

It's,

And I,

And I really saw it as,

Because when you have an identity of a caretaker,

When that's your story of yourself,

You automatically begin to think that everybody else in your life cannot cope without you.

Right.

That is a very dangerous place to put yourself because a it's wrong,

Be you're disempowering other people.

And I was seeing that what was happening was I was overstepping my boundaries in all areas of my life,

Like getting my nose up and everybody else's business,

Trying to control things,

A sense of safety thing,

But also over mothering,

Um,

You know,

Just creating dependency because that was kind of like,

I,

Um,

I've started working in the last 18 months with a good narrative psychologist.

So that very much around stories that's been pivotal in me understanding all of this.

And this time about December last year,

I had a phone call with her and I just had this moment.

I was in my car outside of the hospital when my stepdad was being treated for dementia.

And I said to her,

Claudia,

I think I'm ready to put my cape away because I'm fucking exhausted.

I'm so tired.

And I think we were talking about before.

I really feel like the gift of perimenopause is that,

Well,

For me,

At least two things happen.

First of all,

All the coping mechanisms that were working for her for a long time stopped working.

Yep.

And lots of stress collided and my ability to juggle that disappeared.

And actually,

Now that you're starting to talk about,

You know,

When you said before the 47 things that happen to modulate,

Right.

So we know perimenopause when our hormonal rollercoaster starts happening,

That changes all the different systems in the body.

And so it kind of makes sense to me when you,

When you said that,

I was like,

Oh,

Another light bulb.

Yeah.

Because you're fairly,

I mean,

I guess as females,

We're always going to have that cyclical nature anyway,

Whilst we're ovulating,

But you know,

There's a,

It's kind of like a,

You know,

An upper and a lower kind of,

You know,

Wax and wane.

Yeah.

And we learn to cope in that window and then something happens to change the window.

And all of a sudden I just couldn't cope anymore,

But the blessing has been that you have to look at this stuff.

Well,

Well,

The choice was either go into a deep,

Deep depression,

Which I think when I'm,

When I'm hearing you saying about the disassociation type of thing,

I think I,

My reaction was that hypervigilance for a long time.

And then when you run out of the ability to do that,

I went in the other direction and ended up in a very dark hole.

And I didn't realize I couldn't see it for myself.

But yeah,

The blessing is that it's made me actually,

Yeah,

Really look at a lot of these patterns and just go,

Yeah,

I actually don't see myself as that anymore.

I'm like,

For the first time in my life,

I don't feel like it's my responsibility to fix everybody's problems.

And I tell you what my highest value ever is freedom.

Yeah.

I cannot tell you the freedom that comes.

I'm sure hooking your identity to anyone else on the planet and their success or failure or totally.

I'm like,

Oh my goodness.

If I don't know this,

But anyway,

I think that,

You know,

You can trust the timing of your life.

So the same experience with my,

When my father died was that I had all these coping mechanisms that I had,

That had worked from zero to 24.

And then as soon as,

When he died,

They stopped working and it was the most profoundly disorienting moment of my life.

And this is like,

Not,

Not the loss,

Which was its own thing.

This is like six months after the loss,

Just this,

Like,

I don't know how to be in the world anymore.

Yeah.

Nothing that I have that I usually do is working now.

What?

And it was,

So do you think the mechanism is kind of similar?

Like grief is such a stressor in itself.

Perimenopause is a stressor biologically,

Emotionally,

Mentally.

Is that because we were talking before about that transition,

You know,

The transition of any significant,

You know,

Change in our lives and grief would definitely be one of them.

Of course.

Yeah.

It kind of makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think,

You know,

You just said it,

Like,

I think any of these transitions give us an opportunity to shake things up and see what,

What might have been sort of hiding in the corner,

You know,

That for me,

It was a childhood that had trauma that I hadn't looked at.

And for you,

It was this whole lifespan that had,

You know,

This caretaking default there that hadn't been looked at.

And yeah,

It's just,

It's,

You know,

It's shocking because then it always then comes in addition to something else.

So you're coping with the change of perimenopause and the change of loss or whatever you're going through,

Whatever the transition is.

And then it's also like,

Okay.

It's like an Apple strudel.

We used to have a funny ad on Australia in Australian TV about,

I think it was Sarah Lee Apple strudel.

What would you say to someone who is listening?

And because I'm asking this,

Because I had a conversation with a friend around this and it is how I used to feel.

She basically said,

She's like,

I'm so proud of you looking at all of this stuff.

And I was like,

I didn't have any choice.

Like it was either be deeply,

Deeply depressed and not want to live literally or figure it out.

And I'm very,

Very grateful and very aware that I have,

You know,

Enormous privilege in the support circle that I have access to and the health professionals I have access to.

And she said,

I'm not brave.

I'm scared that if I scratch the surface underneath this stuff,

I will never ever be able to cope with the emotion and the pain that's under the surface.

Here's the thing.

Number one,

I so understand that fear.

And I think it's very natural that we,

When,

When is,

I mean,

What the nature of something that is overwhelming is that it overwhelms us.

And so we don't want to look at it.

And so we put up all of these barriers and we say,

I can't scratch the surface because that is a tsunami and it's going to take me out.

The thing is,

Is that,

And this is why there's so much biology and neurobiology in the book is that our systems know that already.

And so nothing is going to take you out.

Nothing can take you out in the way that you're thinking,

At least,

Of course,

I think it's important to understand that not all of us survive trauma.

It can be terminal.

And at the same time,

You know,

Our systems are wired in such a way that when we do delve into an area that's too deep,

We disconnect or we panic and the panic is awful,

But it's temporary and it has a purpose.

And so I think if we can like both understand and normalize these symptoms and then again,

Get a toolbox for ourselves so that we know how to cope with those,

Those symptoms,

Those emotions that come out as a result of that,

There's nothing we can't face.

Yeah.

The way I said to her,

I remember saying many,

Many times,

And I've,

You know,

Tried to work with psychologists before and I never found that right fit,

Or I probably just wasn't ready to be really,

Really honest.

The protective mechanisms were too alive for me to let anyone in.

And it would only be that I'd seek help at crisis point.

And my way of dealing with crisis was just to lock down control even more.

So there's no way that you're going to let someone pass that,

You know,

Like iron clad barrier.

But I said to her,

What would be possible?

So I used to say to people,

I don't want to open Pandora's box.

That's what I've kind of felt like.

I said to her,

What if you can trust yourself?

And she's like,

I don't know.

And I don't know what will happen.

You know,

People are ready if they're ready and whatever,

There's no,

No judgment at all,

But I just do think not,

But,

And in my own journey,

I'm very grateful that I chose to trust myself and trust the support that I had because yeah,

It's opened up a sense of freedom that I didn't understand was even available.

Yeah.

It's back to that field of possibilities,

Right?

Yes.

Yep.

And I think it's,

I'm smiling because I'm the next thing that I'm writing,

I'm working on a book on joy right now.

This is where I wanted to end our conversation,

Final chapter,

Because you and I are kindred souls.

So I talk about,

I like,

So when one of our kids left home,

My husband and I were like,

Well,

Goodness gracious,

Who are you?

And what are we going to do together?

So we bought a motorbike,

We bought this big cruiser bike.

And,

Um,

I,

It's been a fantastic tool for me in this journey because it's something that always opens up a sense of joy and freedom.

So they're the two things that like my highest values and it doesn't matter what else is going on.

Once I'm on the back of the bike,

I'm like,

Yeah,

Like,

You know,

Just like,

It just opens that up.

And so I often talk to the kids and like friends and whatever about joy of writing.

If you have it's tiny little joys,

I always get tiny little joys.

Let's talk about tiny little joys,

Tiny little joys.

So I was,

Um,

I was really convinced by some of the research that was coming out of the,

So positive psychology has existed in since about the early 1990s.

And there were all these,

There was this huge movement in psychology of like,

Okay,

Let's stop looking just at pathology.

What would happen if we look at positive emotion as well?

And how could we use things like gratitude and hope to increase psychological resilience?

And,

But there was this bump against trauma because positive psychology was like,

Okay,

These tools don't seem to work very well with people who are traumatized,

Especially recently traumatized.

So if you ask someone whose life has just shattered to make a list of things they're grateful for,

They might just look at you like,

Are you kidding?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's yeah.

Yeah.

Disconnect.

Right.

Or if you ask them to hope for their future that just disappeared,

Like it just seems like the wrong thing.

And so there's like this kind of weird,

Even though positive psychology is talking about post-traumatic growth and resilience,

They sort of leave behind folks who could benefit from the,

The interventions the most.

And so I was angry at positive psychology and I was really convinced by the neurobiology that came out because they identified that essentially there's this area of your brain that they termed the hope circuit.

And this is a part of your brain.

I know,

Right.

That is I love language,

The hope circuit,

The hope circuit.

I know.

And,

And the hope circuit is counterposed with the fear circuit,

Meaning they can't be out at the same time.

So if you are in,

Right,

If you are in the hope circuit doing things,

The fear circuit by definition closes down.

And so like,

I knew that,

And I knew the neurobiology worked with that,

But then I was trying to adapt these tools from positive psychology with my clients and small groups and it was not working.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I was like,

Okay,

What would happen if we try to adapt these things?

And one of the things is what if we scale them down?

And so I think a lot of folks who have a trauma history have an aversion to joy because joy feels very disruptive.

It can feel really scary.

It can bring up negative associations.

It can cause you to shut down because it's also overwhelming and traumatic or panic feelings are overwhelming.

So,

So folks have a hard time with that.

And so I was like,

Okay,

What if we just scale all the way down?

And instead of seeking out big,

Joyful experiences or finding big,

Joyful things,

What if you just found like a thing on your desk that gives you joy and then just kind of swim around in that experience of joy for a minute.

And then what if you did that every day?

And what I found with myself and with clients is that like within like a really short time,

Like five days,

Your world starts to look different because you start,

It becomes second nature to kind of be looking for these things,

Seeking them out and then imprinting them.

Yeah.

And so what's happening is you're starting to rewire your brain.

Yeah.

Cause you're changing the way that you're filtering your reality.

Cause we know that one of the things the brain does is it can't cope with all of the stimulus.

And so it only notices the things that are threats and what you expect to see pretty much.

Right.

Because we have,

That's an evolutionary advantage for you.

If you notice the scary things,

You'll,

You'll yeah.

Exactly.

So you have to manually imprint joy.

So I started this practice called tiny little joys,

Which is really just that,

Like,

What is,

There's gotta be something in your periphery that,

That makes you feel joy.

I have this little pin that one of my clients made that says tiny little joys.

Damn it.

So cool.

That's right on my desk.

And so like that,

Like just showing you that thinking about it,

Thinking about the person that gave it to me,

Feeling what that's like in my body,

Noticing that shift of like lightness and letting go of tension.

And the,

Like,

You know,

My,

I may,

I smile,

My face changes all of that stuff is that's,

That's the beginning.

I love it.

I forgot even why I started talking about joy.

That's the practice of noticing.

Yes.

And,

And that it not,

I love the fact that when you talk about this,

It's not the big things because I used to back when gratitude was having its heyday back in the,

You know,

The Oprah gratitude days,

Like back in,

I don't know,

Probably the late nineties.

I want to say that came directly from positive psychology.

That was like the first tool was gratitude.

Yep.

But I'm fully in a trauma response and someone's telling me to write down five gratitudes every night.

And I'm just like,

Can you F off?

Like,

Are you serious?

Like,

I'm just trying to keep my self safe here.

Yep.

But the tininess is the key.

Yes.

Yep.

And then you start to kind of,

Yeah,

You filter your reality like that.

And then you start marinating in the things that bring you joy.

And then joy becomes more of the,

It's almost like the safety and connection.

Yes.

Thing.

Isn't it?

It's like the more you experience it,

The more that,

Cause I I'm very aware that this has changed for me again over the last couple of years,

But that sort of familiar hell versus unfamiliar heaven concepts.

So if you grow up in a,

An unsafe or not even unsafe,

Like just ever changing environment where you're always trying to find your feet,

Having things go well and go easily is really hard to cope with.

Exactly.

And people that haven't,

Yeah.

People that haven't had that experience don't understand that.

Yeah.

That's one of,

That's been one of the biggest disconnects between my husband and I is he's like,

Why can't you just relax and enjoy it?

And I'm like,

Because I have to look for the threats.

My job is to keep people safe.

Like,

Yeah,

Just completely different views of the world,

But so when's the joy book out?

I'm very excited.

Oh,

I don't know.

I don't,

You know,

The book publishing world is like,

Yes,

I know.

I know.

Yes.

12 years.

It'll be,

I just finished the proposal this week.

So good.

I cannot wait to have that in my hands.

And I have so enjoyed our conversation.

I know over time,

I've just,

I loved your book.

I loved the exercises.

I love the whole concept of unbroken trauma is not a broken thing.

It's actually a really healthy adaptive response to something that's overwhelming.

And yeah,

When we can put down the shame and reframe the story to something that is helpful and healthy,

It's life-changing.

So thank you.

Thank you for the work you do in the world.

Amazing to chat.

You too.

Thank you so much for having me.

See you later.

Reviews

That was superb! I’m thankfully past the times when my undealt with trauma was rearing its head in panic attacks and unhealthy behaviors, but this is such a helpful discussion. I love the concept of the hope circuit!! Thanks for sharing this work