What Is Trauma - Curious Monki Podcast

Learning about our own traumatic experiences helps us recognize behavioral or emotional patterns that we resort to in order to protect ourselves. This lets us turn down the volume of our inner critic and understand how our experiences shape who we are today. In this 2-part series, learn about trauma physiology, what trauma-informed means, and how to hold space for survivors.

Host of the Curious Monki podcast, Veronica Thai, and Dr. Megan Kirk Chang share a heartfelt and insightful conversation.

Reviews

Love and appreciate your work Dr. Megan.

Something popped for me when the host said, "I do not want to traumatize my clients in a yoga studio." when you both were speaking about triggers.

If you as a practitioner cause a trigger, you are not the perpetrator or the event that caused the trauma.

Triggers are a symptom. They are not trauma itself. I am saying this because there seems to be a synonymous connection between the two, which adds to the practitioner's, or even a friend's or society in general, anxiety or fear.

I did like what you said about how when you first started that you "tried to be perfect" but, that was impossible to maintain and you have accepted that triggers will happen on a healing journey. I just wish more people would see that triggers are not trauma.

I am a trauma survivor of 17 years of horrific abuse and exploitation by one of my parents. Your work is another example of putting science based definitions around all those things that I defined with my "survivor's wisdom". For me it is like blowing dust off of pages of old books and being validated by the words beneath. Thank you so much for your work.

Informative and filled with knowledge. Thank you,Gbless you both. 🙏🏻👼🏻✨️👼🏼✨️🙌💫🧘‍♂️💕💕

This was absolutely amazing! I took away so much from this! Thank you! 😁

Wonderful podcast Megan! You have been in my thoughts and prayers 🙏🏻. So much love to you ❤️
- I finally got a puppy 🐶.

Megan - You are such a clear speaker who presents complicated research accessibly, which to me is a hallmark of both true expertise and a personal connection to the work. You are democratizing and normalizing not only trauma but indeed mental health care. My getting over the preconceived notion that mental health care was only for people who can’t function in everyday life (e.g., those with capital-T trauma) opened an entire world of self-acceptance, healing and development that I am so grateful to experience.

One of my takeaways from the interview regarding trauma-informed practice is the need for a much higher level of mutual trust so we can all self-advocate and be patient with practitioners who are trying to get it right, even (especially) when they don’t. IMO in a call-out culture this requires daily bravery and strength. 🙏🏻🙏🏻