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The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast
Welcome to "The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast," the podcast where insightful conversations unfold, and the depth of the human mind is explored. In each episode, I sit down with a diverse range of individuals—thinkers, innovators, and captivating personalities—who share their unique insights and experiences. Together, we embark on a journey of discovery, unraveling the complexities of the human psyche and uncovering the untold truths that influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast
Dr. Deniz Ahmadinia | Trauma, Healing, Parenting | The Edit Alaverdyan Podcast #17
What if the challenges from your past are silently shaping your present? Join us for an insightful conversation with Dr. Deniz Ahmadinia, a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in trauma, as she unpacks the complex world of trauma and healing. Discover how untreated trauma can manifest in unexpected ways and why addressing it is crucial for breaking harmful cycles and fostering healthier future generations.
In this enlightening episode, we broaden our understanding of trauma beyond the conventional definitions, exploring its profound impact on individuals and families. Dr. Deniz emphasizes the importance of healthy attachments in childhood, introducing the pivotal role of the three S's—seen, safe, and soothed—in nurturing secure relationships. Learn about the struggles parents face with unresolved trauma and the significance of co-regulation and generational patterns in shaping a child's emotional development.
Finally, embark on the lifelong journey of healing with Dr. Deniz, as she discusses the necessity of skilled therapists, the role of self-care, and the power of establishing healthy family boundaries. Gain valuable insights into how unresolved childhood trauma can resurface in adulthood and the importance of creating emotional safety for children to express their feelings. Tune in to hear poignant personal reflections, strategies for supportive parenting, and the courageous work of cycle breakers committed to paving the way for a healthier tomorrow.
There is a difference between a parent who just didn't have access to information and a parent who is actively harming their child. Yes, if your trauma is not something that you work on and if you let it linger in time, it does get worse and it comes up in other ways. If you've experienced trauma for a long time or had relationships that were distressing and very dysfunctional, you might have a pull to go. If that person is going to leave, I need to change who I am so that I don't lose that relationship. But healing says there's nothing wrong with me. My needs also matter. I'm like this nine-year-old little girl and I'm looking. My father is getting beat up and I remember what he was wearing. Can you believe it? That's how, like vivid, the ceilings were. The same education I do with adults, I try to do with my kids about there's no bad emotion and that emotions are actually information. What happens in your body when you feel happy? Right, I smile, I laugh, my shoulders are light Like that's your body telling you you're happy. What is anger? Right, that's your body telling you I didn't like something, something felt unfair or somebody was trying to hurt me. Hello everyone, thank you and welcome for today. Today's guest is Dr Denise Ahmadinia. She's a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma. Now, before I get into what was discussed in the session today, I do want to mention that this session, this episode, is a trigger warning. So if you've gone through trauma and if you think that any topics trauma related is going to trigger you or harm you emotionally, just be mindful.
Speaker 1:Today's episode was quite interesting. Dr Denise taught us about trauma, what trauma really is, because trauma is honestly that word traumatized is used profusely amongst people, which I stated in the in the episode that it takes away from the people who have actually genuinely been traumatized and are diagnosed with trauma. So she explained to us what trauma is and we dived deeply into the nervous system. What self-healing is, what inner child work is? What will happen if trauma isn't treated? What trauma does look like. How is it different for for different people, my goodness? So it's just a very intriguing topic.
Speaker 1:I did share a little bit of my trauma that I experienced. I think that you guys are really going to appreciate this, this episode. It was really hard for me to talk about it, but I really wanted to share it and share my healing process so that many of you can relate to it. So, um, she was just a very empathetic person, just full and wealthy of knowledge of trauma and how it really is. And, um, I think one of the biggest takeaways from today's episode is when I asked her how can we open a space to really allow our children to know so much?
Speaker 1:So stay tuned and make sure to subscribe to this channel if you're interested, and remember Dr Denise Ahmadiniya Don't forget this name, because she is just fascinating. I hope you enjoy the show. Thank you for joining me, right, dr Denise? Nice to have you. Thank you.
Speaker 1:So I'm just going to kind of share how we met On Instagram. I was browsing and I was like you know, I really want to have someone on that specializes in trauma, and I put trauma. You were literally the first person that popped up on the page, on the for new page, and I was like first of all, she's beautiful. Second of all, I love that you're real, so relatable and very easy to follow. And why it's relatable is because I think a lot of people experience trauma at one point in their life. But before I start there, I kind of wanted to talk to you about this.
Speaker 1:I think that the word trauma is with you a lot like. I feel like it's like candy, like, oh, I have OCD or, oh, my god, that was so traumatizing and I don't want to say this in a rude way, but I feel like it really does take away some people who have truly been traumatized in their life. What do you feel? Do you feel like abuse? Abuse it's. You know, it's a double-edged sword because it coming more into what mentioned language and on social media. The positive side of that is people who wouldn't have typically tagged their experiences previously as traumatic but were struggling with something, now have access to information that they maybe wouldn't have otherwise. But when it's not used appropriately and it's used sort of like an adjunct, a loose adjective, kind of like OCD, which is, so you know, problematic in so many ways it does minimize the experience of someone whose mind and body have experienced a trauma. So I'm hoping the pendulum you know with these things the pendulum swings one way and then it starts to come back eventually.
Speaker 1:So I think, as it's gotten out more, there's been a big push by trauma educators and clinicians to educate on what trauma actually is or isn't, even with things like the word triggers. Right, like a trauma trigger is different than you having an emotion or just feeling, you know, distressed about something, but it's become such a mainstream term that we use it so lightly. That is so true. Well, why don't we start with maybe educating people what trauma really is? Yes, please.
Speaker 1:So I want to make a note that there is a big divide between what is written in our clinical book, which is the DSM Diagnostic Statistical Name, the Bible, the Bible of Diagnoses, and I'm hoping this is going to shift over the next 10 to 20 years. But in that book, trauma is a single event that has very particular specifiers around it, and I won't get into what those are because I want to talk about what the broader definition of trauma is, but it's so incredibly limiting it has left so many folks out, and the problem with that is not just oh, I identify with experiencing trauma, but you don't actually get access to the resources and treatment that you might need because you fall outside of that very narrow definition. So I don't want to invalidate that definition. It is important.
Speaker 1:However, what is more helpful to think about in terms of what trauma actually is is any event or experience, whether single or repeated, that overwhelms your nervous system's capacity to cope, wow. So to kind of translate this trauma basically means because a lot of people think it's an event. So trauma basically means, from the translation, it's not the event, it's what happens to you after the event. That's trauma. So it's what happens to your nervous system, correct, it's what happens inside of you as a result of that event. So how can people differentiate? Because what you just said was so beautiful. You said a feeling is different, but a trauma trigger is different. So how can somebody know if they've truly been traumatized? Well, such an important question. You know that is so tricky because what I've been hearing, especially being on social media so much of the time, is people will reach out to me and say I'm resonating so much with the things you're posting, but I didn't experience trauma.
Speaker 1:And doing a lot of education around what actually constitutes trauma is part of the work there, because it is not just a single event and it's not always something that has a clear stop and start and stop to it, which is more what we think about with typical PTSD, for example, where it's a single event and what more of us have experienced is relational trauma. Maybe it's our early attachment experiences or experiences of discrimination, ongoing chronic stress right, and how that impacts your developing nervous system, especially if you experience it at a young age. So it's not always something that happens to you. It can also be the absence of things happening like the absence of good, healthy things, especially as a child. I know both of us are parents, we have little ones and you know how important it is to offer your presence, to offer empathy and support and regulation in order to help them develop into healthy little beings that can regulate themselves.
Speaker 1:Wow, you touched on such a wonderful topic because majority of our viewers are mothers and fathers and I wanted to bring this up, and it's so funny how you kind of naturally brought this up that there is this idea in a lot of mothers minds that when the child goes to kindergarten, kindergarten or preschool, in that first phase of like that stage of discomfort right when they're crying and often mothers kind of I wouldn't say stay away, but they're they feel very guilty because they think that they're traumatizing their kids because of that. That phase that kids go through Is it like a week or two of crying and missing mom and not knowing if mom and dad are coming back. Um, I just, and you also said the developing, um, the developing nervous system. How are these, the developing nervous system? How are these like? How are they combined together? I can't really make my words come together but I think I'm going because it's so intricate.
Speaker 1:I think trauma is such a intricate diagnosis to experience and to be diagnosed with, but also the experience of it is hard. So like I'm not saying going to kindergarten causes trauma, but how does trauma impact the developing nervous system? I was following you every step of the way. Sometimes I get like that because there's so much, there's so many nuances to so many moving parts, so funny. But you know, it's really helpful. When I do education with clients or in my group programs about trauma attachment, it's actually very helpful to talk about what the healthy trajectory looks like, to then go back and understand where did your experience deviate from? Yes, um, so the develop let? Yeah, so I'll frame it in that way.
Speaker 1:My question is complicated and complex, but in a healthy attachment relationship we need to feel, from parent to child, seen, safe and soothed, and that's what helps us develop secure attachment. And Dan Siegel calls those the three S's. Those are not mine, I cannot take credit for that, but those three S's are so incredibly important because they build a sense of predictability between parent and child. Being seen gives us the sense really, I think it's the closest thing to being loved. It gives us the sense that I matter, my needs matter and I'm going to be taken care of and really like my reality, my experience is valid and important. So think about it.
Speaker 1:When one of your kids is crying, they're having a hard time with something. If you come to them, whether you get down on one knee or you communicate in some way that you understand their experience, even if you don't agree that they're crying over the blue cup instead of the orange cup, yeah, that you, you understand their experience or why it's hard for them. Do you notice? Do they calm down? Or do they ask no, they calm down, they calm down, they calm down. So being seen is so incredibly regulating for us.
Speaker 1:Um, feeling safe. Right, that's not just physical safety, it's also emotional safety and we're just now really starting to understand how much more important that is. And I think, generationally and culturally, that's not something that was a part of our parents and the generations above just their knowledge base, because you know, it's like, well, you were taken care of, you had this care of. You had this yeah, very dismissive in a way, but more the, for the focus was more on, like, physical yes, if you had shoes, you had food, you had, you had shelter exactly, and I think that that definitely transfers into our generation until we kind of like, understand and put a stop to it. So I think this is something very important you're talking about, yes, because it's emotionally kids being emotionally seen versus yes, not just physically seen, and all of that's tied into our sense of safety, and that is what is directly related to how our nervous system develops.
Speaker 1:And something like 70% of the brain develops after birth and a lot of those structures in the brain are what we call experience dependent. This is neuroplasticity, meaning that they're shaped by the experiences that we have. So many of those structures are what's responsible for things like emotion regulation, especially the first three years of a child's life, right? Yes, so crucial, so crucial. So the way that a healthy attachment experience affects the nervous system is that it builds predictability, it builds the ability to be regulated, and one of the primary ways that happens is through what we call co-regulation.
Speaker 1:So you know, again, back to like previous generations, it was often thought that that was something that children just sort of learned to do on their own, like it was something that came with age. Like you just learn to self soothe mature and healthy nervous system to come calm the storms of my little one's nervous system and they borrow from that and eventually, as it's repeatedly experienced, that I'm calming you, I'm soothing you, making you feel safe, you internalize that ability as your own. But, dr Granice, if you have a traumatized parent, they're not going to have that maturity. They can't reach to that place to help with their child. Emotional regulation. Yeah, this is one of the ways that generational patterns, especially as related to emotions, get passed down. Is a parent with unresolved trauma, anxiety, grief, other mental health issues, just reactive grief other mental health issues, just reactive has a much more limited capacity to be available for their child in that way, my goodness. So education is important because it's not always about seeking help. But there's see, I'm going to.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say what I feel, because it goes back to kind of, what did you say in the beginning Co-regulate, co-regulation. But was co-regulation discovered or was it studied? Was it out during our parents' time? Like you think about things like this and you're probably not so, and the reason why I'm bringing this up is because I feel like a lot of people tend to blame their parents for a lot of things that they've experienced in life. Right, and I see that all the time like it's because of my mom, it's because of my dad, and I kind of have like this soft spot for parents, like in their generation time, because they didn't know a lot of these things and they tried their best. Because I feel like if we're talking about it, someone's going to put it in the pipe and smoke it. They're going to be like yep, it's, I knew it.
Speaker 1:I'm traumatized because of my mom and then I, I, you know, yeah, they did their best. It's a fine line, and I hasn't working with survivors of trauma. I, I'm very. I will have to walk that line very carefully, because there are some parents who did their best, yeah, and there are some parents who did not. Yes, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:I think there are some people who might be less willing to take accountability or hold some compassion for the lack of knowledge and lack of information, but there is a difference between a parent who just didn't have access to information and a parent who was actively harming their child, absolutely so, making that differentiation. And that really is the distinction between I had a flawed parent, because every human being is flawed. We are not perfect and, honestly, our attachment systems were built to be resilient enough against those things. Healthy attachment in early childhood is not about being a perfect parent. It's often about doing those repairs when you inevitably do or say something that didn't go well or there was a miss. So we're not talking about those situations. We're talking about situations where someone was actively doing things that had a harmful outcome for this person. Do you see, do you have clients like that? I do, and it's so unfortunate. It is because it's not just an individual, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes what we're looking at is a whole dysfunctional family system that operates in a way to allow that person, enables that person to continue behaving in a particular way, and operates in a way to keep the status quo going, and so many of those dynamics are often about power and control, and it leaves a child who really has no power and control in such a vulnerable position. Because we need to be connected to our parents, yes, which is why absolutely right. So it puts children in such a difficult bind when there is a parent who is causing harm. Wow, so we have. You know you'll hear Gabor Mate talk about this in such an articulate way that we have these two needs for authenticity and for attachments, that you know there's a part of us, our core self, that we have this drive for it to be expressed. But we're also just biologically hardwired to need connection for survival.
Speaker 1:And when having any authentic expression in your family with a particular parent becomes unsafe in some way whether it's through shaming, blaming, physical harm, comparison, criticism, all of these things that again we're not talking about one-offs. We're talking about chronic experiences of this that, for a child, they learn very quickly that it is not safe to be who I am. And that's where we start sacrificing our authenticity, presenting a version of ourselves that's more lovable and more adoptable. The people-pleasing behaviors start kicking in. Exactly, we become someone completely different.
Speaker 1:What happens when we're not very authentic with ourselves? We start to get into these patterns, like you were saying, what we might call self abandonment or self neglect, where we are viewed disconnected from ourselves, and not just in kind of like a mental, spiritual way, but even from our own bodies, because all of this starts with a disconnection from emotional experience, right, especially in terms of attachment. If my parent was harsh around emotions or punishing or giving a silent treatment around emotions, I learned to disconnect from my feelings. But feelings live in your body. So when you have to disconnect from your feelings, you become incredibly disconnected from your body, and that's why we see so many people go like I don't know how to trust myself. I don't know what a gut feeling is. How do I make decisions without picking up the phone and calling five friends to say would you feel this way too? What should I do? I don't know what to do. Oh, I see that all the time. It's great to get support, but we're talking about this mistrust in your lived experience and the feelings in your body or your perception of something.
Speaker 1:And so self-abandonment has all these arms out into all these other patterns where you might look like a people pleaser on the outside, where you're excessively caretaking other people, putting other people's needs above your own at the cost of yourself. And at the core of it, really, it's about safety. Right, it's not just you know, you're too nice to people. It's a safety mechanism for it. So it's a nervous system response. It's like fun, isn't it? It is, it's fun. I'm thinking about that I'm like what it's going to look like people pleasing and somebody might even call you out for it, but then at the end of the day it's like I'm not safe, so I'll just say and do whatever, I'll be super agreeable person, exactly, just so I don't get attacked, even though there's no attack there. That's what people feel feel because there's no attack there in the here and now, and that's so important. I mean, certainly people can still get into relationships where there is somebody who is also unsafe and they're repeating those patterns to stay safe.
Speaker 1:But more often than not we carry those survival patterns with us when they're not necessary, like there may not objectively be anything that's unsafe for us anymore, and we can get stuck in all these cycles where we're not getting our needs met because we don't feel safe or comfortable using our voice. We may not have practice at using our voice and we might be so disconnected from ourselves that we don't actually know what to ask for. Like people say, ask for what you need. In a relationship you might be going. I don't know what I need. I'm so disconnected I don't even know what I want to have for dinner. I don't know who I am, and that disconnection runs so deep as far as the choices that you make in your life, your career, the relationships who you surround yourself with, the way you spend your time. It is disconnected from what you authentically need that's so powerful.
Speaker 1:Do you think that it's important for everybody to know about their nervous system responses, even if they're not in therapy? It's good for them to know. Yes, because everyone has a nervous system. Whether or not you've experienced trauma and our nervous system gets activated throughout the day Doesn't mean that you're experiencing something that's traumatic, but it's how the body navigates stress, and we all experience stress. We also all experience pleasure and safety, and that's also part of your nervous system. So that is something that I wish people had more education on, and I think it would also make us so much more compassionate towards ourselves and other people having that education, because terms even like people pleaser can get weaponized against people or used as a slight, when really it is this safety response that the nervous system chooses for you. You don't make those choices. Do you know how many years I was like that? So many years, like so many years.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna open, open up the the brackets a little bit, um, before I begin with with my story and I think it's important to kind of share with everyone. Um, I wanted to kind of say do you want to explain? When faunus because I went to that I'm like, wow, people are not really going to know what it is and then all yes, yes, so you kind of another way that you might talk about the phone response is please and appease. And what becomes a part of that is you become very skilled. It looks like deep empathy, but you become very skilled at monitoring the moods and needs and emotions of those around you. Yes, and almost to the point where you're predicting what that person needs, and you get so good at it. You get so good at it and, let's be honest, like women, get a lot of praise for doing that too, because it's part of the role that we've been assigned, which gets further reinforced. But you get really good at monitoring all those things and catering to other people as a way to avoid conflict, as a way to keep whoever the more dysfunctional or unstable person is, to keep them kind of on your good side. Yeah, so it's a way to keep yourself safe, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you, I was like this for so many years that I forgot how I felt. I picked up the emotions from everybody I was terrified of in my circle and I forgot how I felt. So when I was around them I knew I was doing something wrong. You know, you just feel it though You're like this isn't right. When I go home I'm drained, I'm mentally, physically exhausted, I'm not happy. Every time I have to see that person I get super triggered, like something's off. And until I went to my therapist she's like this is not something you're feeling. Who's the voice in your head? It sounds like this is someone else. And then, who's the voice in your head? It sounds like this is someone else. And then when she said that, I was like, oh my God, the self-criticism, the are you okay, are you? It was all other people's voices in my. It was never how I felt. So I identified that.
Speaker 1:And but, dr Denise, it takes so much time and effort to heal a test and people want instant gratification, right? I don't think I mean like I really have empathy for people that have trauma in their life and I mean that. But how can people be more encouraged to stay in therapy? They quit because it takes time and then you feel you have to go back and sometimes you know, I know that when I was working private property decided to kind of revisit those moments with people and they get triggered for weeks. Um, it takes a long time, it does, and it's I mean, healing is hard work. Oh my gosh, healing is hard work and there is no shortcut to doing it and I think part of it is we have to make a shift just out the world and how we talk about it. That it's not an end result we're trying to get to, because when we think about it that way, the mindset is it's taking me so long to get there, versus framing healing as a lifelong process and I wish it didn't have to be that way, but it is.
Speaker 1:These things become so internalized, whether that voice is from your parents, whether it's from a coach or an abusive relationship or society who has told you in some way that you're unacceptable. We internalize those things. They become our voice, they become the beliefs through which we see the world. Those things impact our nervous system and vice versa, and those things don't shift overnight, especially if there's a part of you that's holding on to them unconsciously, because that part believes it still needs them to stay safe. So I think part of what helps keep people in therapy is doing a lot of that education so that they understand that it's not a fault in them or therapy itself that it's taking a while, but also, I think, really working with a skilled clinician who helps you build up the capacity really to just be with your emotional experience or to be with your body.
Speaker 1:When that's missing, especially from trauma therapy, therapy can be harmful. It can be incredibly overwhelming and people might leave and never come back to any therapist. That's so true because they believe that that's what it is. But so much of our work and this doesn't really just apply for trauma we're kind of a feeling phobic society at this point but so much of trauma work is safely and slowly building capacity to be with your experience. You can't do deeper trauma work if you haven't built any of those capacities up. It doesn't mean you're fully healed, but it means that I am building my nervous system's ability to stay more regulated through co-regulation with my therapist, through skills, all sorts of practices, so that when I do go back to those memories or I do talk about something, it doesn't overwhelm me to the point where I'm stuck in fight or flight or a freeze response and when people get stuck there, that's when they often want to jump ship.
Speaker 1:Is it possible to fully heal from trauma? I believe so. Not with again, not, your life does not operate around it. It becomes part of your experience and at a certain point you use your lived experience to transform yourself or to do something out in the world. And that's in no way kind of giving a silver lining to trauma. If that resonates for someone, you go with that, but sometimes awful things happen to people for no good reason. But my lived experience, plus what I see in my clients, is lives incredibly limped, full lives that are no longer driven or controlled by fears and survival responses and access to who you truly are. And again, that's always a process, whether you've experienced trauma or not, because we have so many things pulling on us in the world telling us to be different than who we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so basically what you're saying is that you don't have to become your trauma. Some people identify as their trauma and that's why they have a hard time living. And when you heal it's very liberating. But I always wonder like what does healing look like? I mean, it looks different for everyone. Sure, I love that question because I think again, when we think about things from a results driven perspective yeah, cause that's what everybody wants to see the fast, yes, the heavy fashions, um, we think about. I come in with this problem. Healing means the absence of this problem, and what we talk about so much in trauma therapy is that being healed doesn't mean that you never get triggered again. It's not the absence of triggers, it's that you're faced with something that may have in the past been incredibly activating for your nervous system, but you're now able to make different choices through that. So the feelings might still show up, but you have different skills and capacities and awareness and passion for yourself that allow you to navigate through those moments.
Speaker 1:There was a question that I received Dr Janice a while ago and it was a woman, young woman, who was experiencing panic attacks, anxiety attacks, and she had a lot of trauma in her life and sometimes people get so personal I'm sure you get this where they just write their story. Obviously you can't give advice and things like that, but it's you can all I mean. It's just you know you feel obviously empathetic towards people, but don't do that, you guys. It's like such private things that you guys are exposing, sometimes on direct messaging. So I well, it's like an upset, but anyway, yeah, you can't protect that it's, it's, you just never know.
Speaker 1:But anywho, she, um, she had this fear, um, she couldn't afford that. She said my parents can't afford to put me to therapy. First of all, they don't believe in it. But she's like, every time I bring it up, my dad says that's embarrassing, like you're going to embarrass us. You know, like people will know. And the mom was like we can't afford it. We can't afford it.
Speaker 1:But she had written something really interesting. As I was trying to refer her to someone, she said I feel like if I don't get treated, I'm going to become a drug addict and homeless. And that question really just stirred me the wrong way, because people yes, sometimes people can't afford it and sometimes people can't go to therapy, which is abuse, I think, from it's neglect from parents sometimes. But what is it? Can people really go, I mean, like, to that level of like severe, like drugs and addiction, when their trauma isn't healed? Absolutely, so absolutely. Talk to us a little bit about that. People are going to definitely be interested in this. Yeah, I know it's such an important question.
Speaker 1:There is a big shift in how we want to think about those things. And the disease model about drinking and addiction, I personally believe, does a huge disservice to putting those things in a trauma-informed perspective. Tell us about that. What is really underneath addiction is trauma, a hundred percent, and yes, we get. We're much gentler with people when their coping mechanisms are socially acceptable. Right, being an overachiever, being a workaholic, constantly staying busy All of these things are actually ways that we protect ourselves, ways that we distract from our inner experience, and most of them are not conscious. We're doing the best we can to regulate what's going on inside of us, especially if you don't have skills or resources.
Speaker 1:But at the core of it is an avoidance of pain. That's right. That's why they're numbing Right, right? So rather than saying this person is an addict, this person is using something so that they can cope with the pain that's inside of them. And if we don't treat the trauma, this is why we see people relapse. Absolutely, I agree with you. It's a band-aid to what's underneath and that's a you know. It's a very nuanced treatment process because you're always trying to figure out what to address first to make sure that somebody's safe. But if that treatment plan does not include trauma therapy in some way. It's really missing. I agree with you 100%. That is such a powerful statement because not a lot of therapists will say that. So I'm very, very happy because you know they all.
Speaker 1:I think that a lot of therapists immediately jump into the addiction piece and start working on addiction and triggers of addiction, when in reality it's kind of like anger. You know, they say like I have anger issues, but there's no like such a thing. There's something underneath that anger and when you dig deep it's like depression and all these other things that come up as anger. So I feel like addiction's kind of the same. There's all this trauma. So what you're saying is the answer to the question yes. If your trauma is not something that you work on and if you let it linger it in time, it does get worse and it comes up, yes, in other ways and which. This is something that dr maches talks about. Right, that people learn to cope when their trauma isn't healed, they learn to cope with whatever way that they can. Yes, absolutely. And to some it's drinking drugs.
Speaker 1:And again back to intergenerational patterns. We often say, oh, addiction runs in the family, insulin trauma runs in the family. So we're looking at the wrong thing at the time. Unfortunately, trauma runs in the family. So what needs to happen for people to kind of break that cycle? What needs to happen for people to kind of break that cycle?
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the recognition piece. Like I mean, yeah, people are healers. I mean you can be the generational healer. I believe in that. I think it just takes one person to fully just recognize that and find the courage to really do what it needs to take so that I feel like it does pass on absolutely. You pass it on to your kids and vice versa, absolutely. Yeah, these are all the cycle breakers, right? Yeah, and that's one of the things that's been so amazing about being on Instagram is finding a community of people who are the self-healers, who are doing all the research they can to try to understand themselves and their experience, whether they're parents or not, but trying to make things different, whether it's for their family or for the next generation.
Speaker 1:And you know, I think the way that ends up working is that someone in the family at some point hits a breaking point. That might be a person who is sort of scapegoated in the family or perceived to be different than the family, or it's the person who might be perceived as difficult because they start speaking up or naming things that are happening and saying hello, is anyone else seeing this? Like, this is not okay. Like, why do hello? Is anyone else seeing this? Like this is not okay. Like, why do we let dad get away with this? Or why does grandma say this and no one says anything? And you know, I'm mindful, I'm always keeping a cultural lens here because there's so many layers there and how we navigate. Absolutely, I agree.
Speaker 1:But all of that, all of those layers considered again, I'm speaking really more about dysfunctional families, where these issues tend to be more severe. Ready or willing to look at themselves or look at the entire system. That person often can become very villainized in the family because they are. You're changing a cog in the machine, right, and you're changing the system. Yeah, absolutely. No one told me in my family that when I started finding my voice, that it was going to have incredible backlash. The system reorganized and things are much healthier now.
Speaker 1:But this is something that when I'm working with clients who are coming to these realizations in their own families, that I share that with them, like be aware, whether it's in your family or your relationships could be your marriage, your friendships, people who are not healthy, people who have been taking something from you or trying to control you don't like when you change. No, because their needs are no longer being met. And oftentimes I work with so many folks who struggle with things like self-abandonment and people creating difficulty setting boundaries that when they start making those changes in their relationships, that not only do they get a lot of backlash, but a lot of relationships end up falling away. And if you've experienced trauma for a long time or had relationships that were distressing and very dysfunctional, you might have a pull to go. If that person is going to leave, I need to change who I am so that I don't lose that relationship. But healing says there's nothing wrong with me. My voice is important, my needs also matter, and if that person isn't willing to at least meet me halfway or be respectful towards me, I need to really think about if this is the right person for me to be around. Okay, that person may have been benefiting from me my old me, yeah, being my survivor self, not having needs, not having a voice, small, whatever it might have been. So the idea of being a cycle breaker is wonderful and very powerful because you know again, as a parent, you see, you know, in moments where you lose it, you're like, did I just say the thing that I said I was ever going to say, or did I respond? And then when you do it differently, you see the impacts of that. So it's so, so powerful. And I'm a big believer that when you do that healing work, it's not just for the future generations, that there's something in you that helps to heal past generations that couldn't or wouldn't do these things.
Speaker 1:But it is an incredibly difficult journey, depending on who you have around you. I also think that it could get very lonely. It absolutely can and a lot, many times I feel that that loneliness can drive you back to that toxic circle because nobody wants to stick with that. I mean, who wants to be lonely? I mean there's a difference between alone and lonely. But lonely genuinely, I think that the overcoming trauma and recognizing what's around you and eliminating the toxic family members, the toxic friends, it could be very lonely for some time, especially when you're learning to be comfortable in your own skin, and so a lot of times people go back to those people and it's so sad to see that. Yes, and for some people, you know, it's not about cutting someone out necessarily. That is such an individual decision. How we switch legs at the same time. That girl means a lot, such an individual choice about what's right for you, and that's so complicated when it comes to family members. If it's yes, you know, I think about it more in terms of degrees of distance, rather than it's black and white, like you're in a relationship with them or you're not, and for some people, not making a relationship is the right thing, um, but if you are still in connection with some of those people who have a hard time with you being the more healed version of yourself or the person who's not willing to tolerate certain things anymore, if you go back to those relationships, a lot of the work is around managing expectations, not expecting that person to be someone different than they are, and that acceptance work is grief work. Yes, so absolutely.
Speaker 1:My next question was many people are living with it? I mean, for a lot of women it's their, you know, maybe mothers or mother-in-laws. For a lot of males it's their dads, who are just re-traumatizing re-traumatizing, I mean you can't divorce family. How do you help people that are living with the members that are triggered, the actual cause of their trauma, but they can't exit those people. How do you heal them? How do you help them? Yeah, what you said, coping yes.
Speaker 1:So if that person is choosing to remain connected to that family member per se, your work is going to focus more on what your boundaries look like, and even more so than that, is you coping with the guilt or the shame that comes up when you set those boundaries? Yes, that can be hard. Yes, and those family systems? That person wants you to be the old version of yourself. So you setting a boundary, even if it's actually like we don't set boundaries with people we don't want relationships with. Right, we set boundaries with people who we actually want to keep around. Wow, that's an interesting point. Can you say that again? Let me process that we set relationships with, we set boundaries with, people we want to keep relationships with. Okay, if we didn't want that person around, we would just cut them out completely. Yeah, it's so much easier. It is, but with family it's hard. It is hard, it sucks that we have to do that. It does. It does Especially if you're made to feel guilty, made to feel like you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 1:It does especially if you're made to feel guilty, made to feel like you're doing something wrong, or you're told, maybe even directly, that you're being selfish. Or you get those responses of like well, I'm just an awful mother, right, I can't do anything, right. Those kinds of things, oh God, like makes us collapse in on ourselves and we're working so hard in our therapy to like use our voice and stand up for ourselves. And those are like those younger parts of us that get activated in those moments and our like wise, adult self sort of goes away and we become a child again and we're like, oh no, I need to be connected to this person, forget my boundary Right. So so much of the work is recognizing that what you're asking for is not unreasonable is recognizing that what you're asking for is not unreasonable there's nothing wrong with you for asking for respect or for having a reaction to someone being really harsh and critical or shaming you or for someone talking over you constantly. Whatever it might be is helping the younger parts of you validate the pain that they experience so that adult you is much more equipped and validating of what's necessary and what's needed to protect yourself now. So it is really tricky and there's no perfect formula for how someone might do that, because everyone's family situation is different. But I will say, as you're doing, that work, having relationships or community around you who supports you, loves you, really accepts you, even if it's one person, can be such a game changer, because you have someone in your corner, having your back and validating to you that you are worthy. I love that.
Speaker 1:I have a question and I think many people will appreciate this question. You could guide us. How do you sit with the discomfort of boundaries, like you make boundaries, but then everyone's kind of like uncomfortable and then you're the fond person, you're, oh, my god. I said something to my mother-in-law, but I want to save her because I don't like the way she feels because of my boundaries. How can people learn? Is it a loaded question really? So how can, um, how can people sit with the discomfort of other people? Yes, oh, such good question.
Speaker 1:We always try to save people, always try to save people. Yes, and I would also say that us trying to save people is also us trying to save ourselves, because of whatever reaction they might have when they're uncomfortable. Yes, yeah, a couple of things come to mind. Let me see if I can formulate this in a clear way. A couple of things come to mind. Let me see if I can formulate this in a clear way.
Speaker 1:But one thing I'm thinking about is it can be incredibly helpful for us, even just cognitively, to recognize and understand that the person that might struggle to respect our boundaries, or the person who has difficulty changing or is unwilling to change or take accountability, when we can see that that's a person who struggles in some way, maybe they have their own intergenerational trauma, maybe they it might be so severe they have a personality disorder, right, the whole spectrum of things. But when we can start to see them more objectively, it helps us to reframe their response to us, because a lot of that guilt and that urge to save comes from again, like younger parts of us, younger versions of us that needed to make it okay so that we felt safe. But those were also the same younger versions that came to see themselves through the eyes of that person. So if we can start saying you know, this is and this isn't about bashing that person, but seeing them objectively in all their parts, the good parts, the not so great parts, and like the parts that might harm us a bit, that allows us to say when this person does this thing to me, it is not because there's something wrong with me or because I did something that's not okay. It's because of the things that they struggle. So even just that can start to depersonalize it for us. It doesn't mean that we're not going to have our feelings, but it just starts to create a little bit of distance between how we experience them reacting to us. So that's often a place that we start A lot of cognitive reframing around what it means that that person's having a reaction, and then a lot of physical self-soothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of people experience this more. It's easier to identify what comes up physically because then you have like the sweaty palms and like the beating heart and then you notice that they're acting different. So you're picking up like body language cues. It's hard to kind of experience. How can we soothe ourselves physically? You know, I would say it depends on what your specific bodily reaction is, because everyone's going to respond differently. Some of us might respond feeling intense anxiety. Some of us might sort of shut down and go a bit more numb. So depending on what you experience is going to indicate what the recommendation would be. What's the most common. I think most common sometimes actually is a combination of both, where you might feel the anxiety but you're so you, it's so unsafe or has been unsafe that you shut down. Honestly, this is maybe a little like too much information, but I have seen people experience severe, like diarrhea from anxiety. It's like I'm not kidding, it's like the physical reaction, gi symptoms that you get from that stress. Yes, and it's so like oh, it breaks my heart Absolutely. So here's the thing there's things that we would do when we're like sitting at the family dinner table while this is happening and there's things that we might do if we go excuse ourselves from the family dinner table.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I always recommend to people is, you know, in therapy, really exploring what feels somatically soothing to your body, and these sometimes are the smallest things, like it could be a hand on a place in your body. It could be sort of petting yourself somewhere that feels comfortable for you. For me, I don't know if this is more so since I've had kids, but rocking or swaying feels incredibly regulated. You know what mine is. It's so funny. I love to hold my own hand. It's the best feeling in the world and I do that when, in difficult situations too, or like decisions, I just go like this yes, it's, it's so soothing, I just like it feels like someone's holding my hand, please.
Speaker 1:When your body is in fight or flight, right, all those stress hormones are activated. Physical contact initially, you know it's from like parents a child counteracts that with our caregiving system and it down regulates the stress response. We can actually do some of that for ourselves as adults. Like physical touch is one. The stress response we can actually do some of that for ourselves as adults. Like physical touch is one of those things that can actually down regulate your nervous system. That is so beautiful that you just that was a short right there you just you just made your seriously, though.
Speaker 1:I learned this beautiful passion work, though, and one of the reasons I love that work is it's so empowering that it's so much about like just accessing the wisdom of your own body that we have these systems built in us. We have to figure out how to activate them, and it's not that complicated. It's not easy, but it's not that complicated. So, starting with simple things like touch, rocking, swaying your breathing right, all those types of things that people often can't see you when you're doing them, whether you're at a dinner table, you're at the airport, you're in a meeting, whatever that might be and if you need to get up and excuse yourself, there might be things, especially with anxiety. Anxiety is so physical, right, and yes, there's so much energy in your body, um, that often we might need to do things to like physically expel that energy out of the body. And sometimes just the sheer act of standing up and walking away from that person, from that environment, from that table, feels very empowering to the body, to the nervous system, especially if historically you weren't able to leave those kinds of situations, which is a big step. I think that's something to definitely celebrate and to get to that, and you don't even have to announce I'm leaving because I'm used to it, I need to excuse myself. Yeah, that's very powerful. I love that.
Speaker 1:So this is connected to its compassion work. You said self-compassion, self-compassion work. That's really interesting. Um, does this have anything to do with inner child? Inner child work and self-compassion have a lot of crossovers. Um, with inner child work, we're often talking about going back to younger parts of ourselves to really listen, validate, like, hear the stories, hear the feelings that were there and eventually work up to meeting those needs that were unmet at the time. Um, inner child work is not just about pain. It gets a bad rap for, like, I'm only revisiting pain with inner child work. It's also about accessing all these amazing parts of who you were as a child the freedom, the creativity, the joy, maybe the loudness, whatever was there. But where that intersects with self-compassion, work is the soothing and comforting, the holding space for feelings and relating to yourself in a way. Really that's the way a healthy care would have related to you.
Speaker 1:Dr Denise, is this true that when sometimes emotions come out, especially during anger, they say that it's? If there's trauma, it's usually, you know, people are stuck at a certain age. So, whatever trauma, you could be a 10 year old experiencing trauma at 10. When you're 40, you can kind of go back to you know, having your emotions come out. That can look like a 10 year old emotion. Is that true? Yeah, tell us about that a little bit. Yes, it's almost as if, like when we have these big wounds that we don't work through, there's parts of us that sort of get frozen in time. Frozen in time, yes. Yes, like I have the mindset, the beliefs and the emotions of that 10 year old that get activated when I'm 40.
Speaker 1:And that's why often you might see someone experiencing something like that's so disproportionate to what's happening, like what is going on here. What's often going on is something about that situation was familiar to a past trauma, whether it was a rejection, abandonment, physical harm, right the trigger that sends us back in time to when we first experienced those things. But that's also a time where we may have been alone, we didn't have skills, we didn't have the same capacities that we do now as an adult. So it can look like someone's sort of like regressing or that it's disproportionate or doesn't quite fit the situation. That's a good indication that there's some wound that was there at the time.
Speaker 1:So, uh, when dealing with adults that have, um, I guess, anger, do you feel that many of the times it could be like that rage that comes out? It could be due to, like, childhood traumas. Often it can be, um, you know, my mind goes to a few places here. Sure, I I think about and there's overlap here, but let me spell out what I'm saying. First, I think about survivors who have had things that to them, experiences in their life that were unjust, unfair, and where that anger is actually an appropriate response, but it wasn't allowed to be expressed at the time. Yes, right, and that's.
Speaker 1:It's a scary process for people when they do this work, but a lot inherently, a lot of people start feeling their anger towards parent, perpetrator, whoever was part of that experience for them, and that's a healthy thing to move through, not to get stuck there. But often what's under that anger is sadness and vulnerability, needs that were not met, like I wasn't protected or you weren't there for me or I was left alone. So that's one place my mind goes to with the anchor. I say this because I work with a lot of folks who have partners or parents who have a lot of narcissistic qualities. That's a different kind of anger and rage. That doesn't mean that those folks also don't have trauma, because they absolutely can, but we would work with those things in a quite different way.
Speaker 1:So working with someone kind of the first category which I think is more of what you were asking for, working with that anger, would really be again going back to the experience of whatever the pain was, and this doesn't necessarily require someone to have a memory of this, and I want to be clear about that because I get that question a lot on Instagram. It's like I don't have a lot of childhood memories. Can I do this work? Isn't that a sign of trauma? It is, it is, but people wonder if they can do the work. Trauma work if they don't have a memory.
Speaker 1:And so much of what we're working with in more body-based therapies that are somatic or mindfulness based, even inner child work, is we're working with the ceiling in the body and kind of following what comes from there, so you don't have to have a specific memory. Often there's so much information that's held in the body without us having to have an explicit memory. So just a note for anyone who's listening, wondering if this would still apply for them, but going back and actually allowing that, for example, 10-year-old to feel the feelings that they weren't allowed to at the time and sometimes we do that by speaking out loud to the person they wish they could have said that to. Sometimes it's writing a letter and sometimes it's somatically working with how to discharge anger or aggression in your body. Because, again, if we think about survivors who whether this was childhood trauma, sexual trauma who couldn't escape or leave the situation, your body's going into a fight or flight response just naturally. But if it can't act on that, a lot of that energy stays locked inside the body and that's why we get this sort of like chronic stress response experience in the body that can result in all these health difficulties because there's that stored energy. So for some people they really do need to do that work where they're working physiologically with moving anger through the body, not because they shouldn't be angry, but there's something sort of physiologically stuck there that's leaving them feeling really dysregulated, something sort of physiologically stuck there that's leading them feeling really dysregulated.
Speaker 1:That leads to this question of mine. You're saying that it's important to go back and allow that person to feel the feelings that they needed to feel, but it wasn't allowed. So when a parent has a child come in and dropped a bomb with something like mom, you know, I was touched inappropriately, or somebody said something inappropriately, how can that parent give space for that child to genuinely feel what they're feeling? How can they do that without the child kind of holding it in and then having the experience of 40 year old and then going back to, you know, scary emotions of a 10 year old? So how can we let our kids feel their emotions? Such a scary news. What you're really asking is how do we build emotional safety?
Speaker 1:But yeah, a parent in child, yes, and I would say it starts far beyond those moments where there's the big secrets or big scary thing that's coming into play, starting with just how we navigate everyday experiences with them. If we shut down their emotions, if we tell them things like you know, don't be a baby, boys, don't cry. All that stuff, girls don't get angry. Girls don't get angry. Exactly If we give them the message in some way that their emotions are wrong, bad or they're only loved when they have happy, easy emotions, they are going to shut down their feelings and learn that they cannot bring those things to you. If we are reactive to them when they make a mistake, if they drop something and they break it, we shame them and we yell and again we all have reactions that are unfavorable.
Speaker 1:The repair is what's the important process there, but it's really those small moments that build up safety so that, if and when something does happen, there isn't the fear of being shamed, there isn't the fear of being shamed, there isn't the need to hide and I think that's what's so common in people that I work with is the level of shame that is carried about emotions to the point where someone might harm you and you believe that you've done something wrong and you don't speak about it. Something wrong and you don't speak about it, and that's what shame does? It tells us to hide it. So if we feel like there's no safe adult to talk to, there's no one who's not going to punish me, yell at me or tell me that I'm wrong, I'm going to keep that to myself.
Speaker 1:So, talking a lot about emotions, the same education I do with adults, I try to do with my kids about there's no bad emotion and that emotions are actually information. It's an information that your body is giving. Like what happens in your body when you feel happy, right, I smile, I laugh, my shoulders are light, like that's your body telling you you're happy. What is anger? Right, that's your body telling you I didn't like something, something, something felt unfair or somebody was trying to hurt me. When we start doing that education, really young, um, emotions are neither good nor bad and we can help our kids approach their inner experience with a lot of compassion and it becomes less about which feelings to have versus how to help them navigate through and that's the co-regulation piece. It's like someone's here with me. It's not scary, it's not overwhelming, and there's nothing wrong with me for having this too.
Speaker 1:So this should be done from the beginning, like talking about your emotions, so that later on the safe space is already created, so that kid can come to you versus their 10 and you're now trying to create that space and they've kind of okay, that makes sense. Exactly now all of this is different with teenagers, right? I think, yeah, just um, socially and just it's a big change. It's a big change. So, for anyone who has teenagers out there, compassion to you. But if your teen is not talking to you, that doesn't necessarily mean that you didn't create a safe space. There's other factors that go into them not talking to you, but generally they'll come back to you at some point where they know there's a part of them that knows.
Speaker 1:Like if I really needed to talk to someone about this, there is a safe adult here, and think about a child who's gone through trauma with no safe adult, how incredibly isolating that is and the level of shame that you might and self blame that you might hold on to for years and years. Oh my gosh. I'll tell you my story. So we are, and I openly talked about this. This is my little trauma. Well, not a lot of trauma, it's a big trauma, but it took me a while to work on this and I think it's this situation that really led me to become a therapist myself, because, I don't know, I have this theory that a therapist, a good therapist, does not only have a degree but has a life experience to kind of help right. So I was, I think, nine or 10.
Speaker 1:We were in Russia, and we were in Russia, I think I was born with a lazy eye, so it was like some doctor that my parents wanted to take me to to look over my vision, and it was nighttime and we were staying at my father's friend's house, I believe. And so it's like 2 am in the morning we hear a knock on the door and it was like these three men, and then my father's friend opens the door and they're like, oh, we're looking for so-and-so. And then the lady, the babushka we call them babushkas she said, oh, he's not home. That was her son, my dad's friend. And then, you know, I think it's like 3 am and then 4 am. They came back a few times looking for that gentleman, and the third time my brother was, I think, like five months, six months old.
Speaker 1:Um, they broke in and they started like harassing my parents, like they were in a physical altercation with my dad. They pushed my mom and I'm this nine-year-old little girl and I'm just viewing all of this and I'm just like what is going on and I just want to make this clear. I'm able to talk about this now because I genuinely believe in trauma. I think that everybody needs to get help, like trauma. Therapy is life. If you guys have gone through this, please like it's really important to reach out for help and I'm able to talk about it because I got help. So just wanted to clarify that.
Speaker 1:But I'm like this nine-year-old little girl and I'm looking my father is getting beat up and I remember what he was wearing is getting beat up and I remember what he was wearing. Can you believe it? That's how, like vivid, the ceilings were and, um, it wasn't. We didn't. We never talked about it. Like me, my mom and my dad, we talk about this Well, not with my dad, but I talk about this with my mom a lot but this wasn't something that we shared, like back then. It was just different, you know.
Speaker 1:But I'll tell you something that really shaped my life. Like I never believed in weakness, and I'll tell you why. Because we were all sitting down at our tape, uh, at our house, and you know, back in the day, during the wartime, we didn't have lights, we didn't have water, so we're just a bunch of candles. It was my grandparents, my uncles, everyone was over over, we had just come from Russia and my dad turns around and I vividly remember his words. He said but my daughter was so strong. I remember those words and I think that I really took that as an identity and that all my life, like, I never really believed in breaking down and being weak, even though it's okay to sometimes right, like sure, sometimes you have to quit, sometimes you, you're weak and it's okay to accept it. Like, don't sit in a victim chair, obviously, and complain about it, but do something about it, also feel it it's okay.
Speaker 1:So, um, I don't know that that just changed my life completely, but what I wanted to go, why I'm sharing this story, goes back to that having a space, a child having a space to talk. My parents are phenomenal parents, no questions about that, but during that, at those times, talking was not really it. Just it was weird, like it's yeah, especially culturally in the Armenian culture, what do you mean? My dad kneeling down and saying, are you okay, how are your feelings? Or my mom, it was just like, all right, we, we got robbed, moving on, but for me, I held on to the anger. I was like I'm to go find those guys that hit my dad. Honestly, it was so hard. So, yeah, I, if, would I be different if I had a space to kind of share my fears? Absolutely yes, how that would have shaped. I would have probably been a person without anxiety, a person that didn't experience panics and, honestly, kind of going back to it. Now they are from that.
Speaker 1:Your body remembers, so like it's muscle memory, honestly. So when something happens, I start like trembling a little bit and then now obviously I'm a therapist I go back to. That's what it is. It's my body responding to a certain thing. I hear, or sometimes even a smell. There's the trauma. That's the. That's the it is. It's my body responding to a certain thing. I hear, or sometimes even a smell. There's the trauma. That's the. That's the trauma trigger, you know. So it's not like a regular emotion, it's actual trauma trigger, like a cookie smell or like a smell of like I don't know like which is like a russian dish. It just triggers me because I ate that.
Speaker 1:That week I was there and so you remember these things. You remember these things and the brain processes traumatic memories differently. Like you saying, I remember what he was with, oh my gosh, vividly, vividly, and for some people they can remember every detail, visual, smell, all those kinds of things, and for others it's really fragmented pieces of memories, like these little islands of memory that aren't coherent but is processed very differently. And everything that's present at the time, even if it didn't directly have anything to do with the trauma, like the food that was there, gets associated with that response in your body, absolutely. So you smelling that food or hearing a certain sound, your body goes right back to them. It does. And the funny thing is that that night we left the house, so we were driving away to my dad's other friend's house.
Speaker 1:But every time I have that physiological experience, even now, like when I have like a panic, I have to get out of the house and drive. You know what I'm saying. So it's work. It takes years and years and years of work to kind of even come to recognize that. I can't imagine a child going through such a thing and not having the space to talk about it. We're sealed. Yes, oh my God, that destroys you. It just alters your everything.
Speaker 1:I think oftentimes you know I had said trauma might be considered anything that overwhelms the nervous system's capacity to cope. I think oftentimes that might be one of the key differences in why someone might one person might experience something as traumatic and the other person doesn't. It's not just the event or experience itself, it's what happens after. Who's there to support you? Are you believed? Are you listened to? Can you talk about it?
Speaker 1:If a child is left alone in that pain, that is traumatizing, and many people I work with, no matter what age they experience their trauma at. Oftentimes, what feels more traumatic to them is the aftermath yes, what did it happen? Or the response that they got when they shared it with someone who was supposed to be safer, who was supposed to protect them. So, oh, yes, being able to have that shared experience, um, is so, so important, and it comes back to this idea of co-regulation. But it's because we're social beings, like we're not meant to live or cope or even heal in isolation. No, and I want to be clear about that because it's a funny thing being an individual therapist, right, right, you do all this individual work and I wholeheartedly believe in that. But I want to make a point to remind people that we also heal in relationships. We heal in community. Yes, and you know that's something that Western psychology is further away from than other traditional healing modalities and experiences.
Speaker 1:But, to be gentle with yourself, that it is not just you and you alone, that the people you surround yourself with also plays such a huge role in your healing. Yeah, well, this has been amazing. Could keep talking. I know I'm like I want to ask this question, I want to ask that question, I want to be here, I want to go there, but what is what? Are we at a good hour and a half, I think, my watch on flight day pre what? Yeah, yeah, see.
Speaker 1:So I mean, this is, this is the kind of topic that we can go on and on and on, but I really yeah, we can and we will probably because it's important but I mean, like what, what advice do you would you give people that right now are struggling with trauma, memory and feelings, but they're just so ashamed to kind of reach out. They're scared. They're scared for help. Yeah, first and foremost, just to remind you that whatever happened to you is not your fault. Still, yeah, but especially nothing wrong with you, because that, for so many people, holds them back Right.
Speaker 1:Accessing help and support is. You know, why? Would I get help around something that was my fault or I'm blaming myself for it? Help around something that was my fault or I'm blaming myself for it? We're just feeling so shameful that they don't want to be seen by anyone around those experiences and with trauma, we really have to remember that, while you might carry the burden of it, there was a person out there who made a choice to harm you and that is not something that was your responsibility Absolutely, and to let people know that there is hope.
Speaker 1:There are so many different trauma healing modalities and that's something that is so wonderful to me, and you know a lot of people in the field are very hardcore about like this is the only modality, this is the only one. I'm a big believer in the fact that different things work for different P-corrects and different things work for you at different points in your life and in your healing journey. So if you go to a therapist and one they're not trauma-informed. Find someone else. You are allowed to interview your therapist yes, you are, and it's important to ask them questions about their training, what experience they have working with the particular type of trauma you've experienced. It is okay to ask about what your treatment plan is or the type of therapy they're using, but to know that if you go see someone and it doesn't feel like the right fit, that doesn't mean that therapy isn't right for you. It means that you need to find a different clinician or a different. Thank you for saying that. Thank you for saying that Energy to find a different clinician or a different. If we're saying that, thank you for saying that energy. Yes, make sure you connect with what's your therapist. That's beautiful and absolutely it's not because of therapy. It's just a different and we know what the common factor was researched like. What's more important is the relationship you have with your therapist than the actual modality that they're using.
Speaker 1:I I wonder this is a question that I ask all the therapists that are on the show Do you, do you ever take your clients home, like in your mind, right? I mean, over the years, I think I've gotten more skilled at leaving work at the office, but it's hard. I've noticed it's also harder for me the more sessions I have in a day, like, I lose that capacity. So, yeah, it's been a learning experience. But, um, you know, I think for me personally especially clients who have experience that mirrors mine in any way those are the ones where it's harder to have separation. Those are also sometimes the ones where I feel like I'm making the biggest difference or I'm most skilled because of my lived experience. But, um, yeah, I mean worship, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean, the reason why I'm saying this on air is because everyone, when they see me, they always ask me how do you do your job? How did you? Do you ever take like? Well, you know, yes, sometimes they come up in your dreams because you're like I should have been so planning your next session. But the best, best thing I could ever say is that a good therapist would never leave their client like they should always go, because, I mean, you're always processing their healing and all of that. So I don't know. I'm always interested to know like do you? Yeah, I asked my last one too. She's like I do. I actually do all the time for me.
Speaker 1:I have to get really clear space between my sessions and doing a skillful thinking. Yeah, no, yes. So like, how am I being with your yes mindset? I need the clinical thing ritual. You know, go home to my family, yes, but yeah, I think somebody who can shut it off so easily is not a human being in the room. As much, thank you.
Speaker 1:I agree with you 1 million percent and I, for me, even I think that's something that has come with more years of practice. Honestly, because in your training you're so worried about things like over disclosing or you know, you're just focused on like, am I doing the right intervention? I know, right, you leave yourself out of the room and I think the more you do this work like it's that becomes secondary and it's more about human connection. 100, that's the best, that's the most healing thing about yeah, it is providing that connection that they didn't really probably have ever. Yourself, dr Denise, thank so much. I'm so grateful that you accepted my invitation and that you're here today. Amazing conversation, very intelligent, and I'm very grateful for you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, absolutely.