Full Circle Fridays|Week 26: Zig Zag (Season One Finale)

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We have spent so many episodes together discussing the twists and turns of the Trauma Recovery Journey — the wild, unpredictable, deep, and exhilarating road that it is! Today is the close of not just Season One of Full Circle Fridays, but of Season One altogether. Today is Episode 78!! If you are still here all these episodes later, I honor you for that. Thank you for being part of this growing family. I have received so much positive feedback from listeners and those who want to be involved as well. The podcast was supposed to be my way to give back to trauma survivors as a whole, and instead, it gave a lot back to me as well. Another moment in my life when I zigged, and the world zagged. I’ve been cherishing all those who have reached out and been touched by a particular episode, and all those who want to join as a guest. That’s all in the works for Season Two after a short break. I’m toying with a new format, or maybe the same but with some interviews sprinkled it. I have set some time aside to contemplate the route the podcast as Trauma Survivorhood continues to grow. Stay tuned for Season Two!

Trauma Recovery has personally thrown me around in its maze-style, sometimes confusing, often winding road. Now my current healing has led me to a lot of fun, wiggly, surprising, new ways to help others. Coaching is still my main focus as my business continues to grow, but the podcast has certainly been a beautiful addition, an unexpected surprise. If you are ready, schedule a 20-minute free discovery call to see if coaching is right for you. If you choose to work with me, in honor of this last episode of Season One, your Initial Appointment will be 78% off for your 90-minute intake!! Use podcast code “SEASON1” at check out for your initial appointment to start your coaching journey this month. 
*Offer ends on July 31, 2022, and cannot be combined with any other offers. 
 **If you missed Wednesday’s final Wellspring episode called Zeal & Zest, you’ll understand why I am so excited to work with you. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be waiting.

The best resource that I have to give to you today is to remind you that all the zigging and the zagging, all the 3 steps forward and 2 back, all the looping and twisting, all of it … alllllll of it … it’s all worth it. I’ve been thrown for a few loops myself, sat back, and wondered why I wasn’t making progress. I too have had to be reminded of how far I’ve come. I know it’s daunting; I know it seems too long of a road. I can promise that along the way there will be glimpses of healing pop out at each new bend. This isn’t just a really hard race to try get to some monumental finish line. Trauma Recovery is a ‘walking through the winding woods’ kind of journey — where each new turn brings a bit of growth, an ounce of joy, a lot of praise, and a small healing in a small way that seems to make a huge difference. All you have to do is start somewhere.

If you are listening, you are probably already working on your trauma recovery in some way, even just by listening. I’m proud of you for that. Therapy, different modalities, play, leaving bad relationships, dreaming, setting healthy boundaries, self-inquiry, coaching, goal setting, creativity, and the like — those are all huge pieces as you walk along the path. Never give up on yourself. Please never quit trying. When you need help, ask for it. When you feel stuck, do one small, teeny thing to keep a bit of momentum. When you feel like a failure, ask someone close to help remind you how far you’ve come. My friends — YOU are your own greatest resource. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different.

Until next season — stay strong, be bold, and place bets on your own healing. You’ll win every time. Thank you for being here. See you soon for Season Two!

Full Circle Fridays|Week 25: Yoga

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Commonly considered a spiritual practice, yoga itself comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “to unite”. Essentially, yoga is about uniting the body and mind. This practice is aimed at bringing harmony to the whole system, so I try not to focus on the fact that it’s spiritual in nature as that may be triggering for some. Thinking of it as a harmony between mind and body and your human spirit is my best definition. The reason I love this resource is that, so very often, trauma survivors experience quite a disconnect between their mind and body. Dissociation, numbing, medicating, and the like are all protective coping skills that keep the mind from feeling into the body and the body from being recognized by and communicating with the mind. Unlike just using the breath as with meditation or breathwork, yoga is an active use of the body while focusing on the breath, linking it gentle to the movements of the poses, and deepening stretches with the relaxation of the exhale.

While I understand this practice isn’t for everyone, and I personally and by proxy know many survivors who dislike yoga, it’s a practice that comes with my high recommendation to at least try. If you end up in the bucket of yoga-scorners, that’s totally okay. Giving it a bit of an upfront effort though may allow it to become one of your most cherished exercises. Yoga is low-impact, often low-cardio, and generally low-effort on the body. Simply put, yoga is always at your own pace, to cater to your own abilities, with no need to rush or push yourself into a pose or to force your body to comply. It’s like giving yourself a trauma-informed care workout.

Along with the benefits physically in working out muscle tension, stress, and rigidity in the body from the years of enduring what we survivors have endured — yoga also promotes overall wellbeing, stamina, flexibility, and calmness while also centering the mind, grounding the spirit, and strengthening the physical core.

There are many different varieties of yoga which I’ll allow you to explore on other sites that are able to explain them all much better than me. However, I will say that my experience with years of many types of yoga has personally given me a greater depth to my flexibility, emotional tolerance, and allowed me to make room for my shortcomings by offering self-love and self-compassion during practices. I am quite a physically rigid person from years of chronic stress and dysfunction. I carry the weight of joint pain and pretty severe inflammation. Yoga allows for a melting away of that internal tightness, while my mind is able to calm itself with balanced breathing and focus on my mind/body connection.

A great place to start if you’ve never tried it is Hatha Yoga — which is the basic core poses and introductory style to yoga as a practice. My favorite, and one of the more challenging yoga techniques, is called Forrest Yoga. It’s akin to Pilates in its gentle difficulty — still following the generic principles of yoga in that the movements are linked with the breath, being kind to yourself is key, and to show up where and how you are. There is aqua yoga, aerial yoga, and regular floor yoga on a mat. There is guided yoga with hands-on posture correction. Now there is trauma-informed yoga practices so that they are yoga instructors but with a trauma informed background for those who really struggle to get into their body and/or who may possibly get triggered if touched. If you find yoga difficult, there’s a type of bodywork called Thai Yoga Massage where you lay on a mat with clothes on and a trained massage therapist puts your body into yoga stretches and uses gentle massaging to deepen the stretches. You just lay there and focus on your breath and enjoy the relaxing massage.

If the class setting isn’t your taste (or safety/comfort level), there are so many online instructors now. (Shout out to the Pandemic for popularizing home exercise classes.) You also could take a few basic yoga classes, or even read some self-yoga books, just to learn the basic poses, and then practice them completely at your own pace and interest level.

I have a routine, first thing in the morning (after drinking a giant glass of water), of stretching my hips and lower back, and doing basic “cat”/”cow” poses to awaken my spine for the day along with some basic neck rolls and core stretches. To end each day (after usually rolling on my foam roller), I do some chest openers, hamstring stretches after a day of sitting, and full body tension releases before going to sleep.

Yoga has just become a part of my habitual rituals. I encourage you to give it a class or three a try. I can say over the years that I know exactly what I want in an instructor now — so sometimes you have to get through a few classes until you find the right teacher who matches your style. Then, you stalk their class relentlessly! Believe it or not, I have never done a true hot yoga class, although I have done yoga in hot outdoor settings. So a real Bikram yoga class is on my bucket list to try soon, so I’m still even learning! If you have questions about this episode or would like to learn more about bodywork, gentle physical movements, or energy work, feel free to reach out. I would be more than happy to help you resource yourself to try any number of available modalities to help rebuild your mind/body/spirit connection.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 24: eXposure Therapy

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Exposure Therapy is a type of behavioral therapy used to help people with fears and anxieties confront them in a safe setting through specific techniques aimed at reducing avoidance. The concept of exposure therapy started many decades ago and therefore has evolved a bit over time as we know more and more about human behavior and the brain. Those who suffer from phobias, fears, OCD, panic attacks, PTSD, general or social anxiety, and general distress may find help with someone trained in utilizing exposure therapy as an intervention.

The main ways exposure therapy is thought to be helpful is: habituation (repeating exposure to decrease fears over time), emotional processing (exploring why you have the phobia or anxiety surrounding the object or place or person and learning to shift your beliefs about it), self-efficacy (learning that you are capable of facing your own fears), and extinction (unlearning fearful or anxiety-inducing associations that have developed surrounding the phobia or anxiety by exposing your brain to it while in a safe environment).

The various techniques or strategies used are: in vivo exposure (facing the fear directly, head-on), virtual reality exposure (using VR to face a fear indirectly), interoceptive exposure (bringing on feared physical sensations to show your mind that they are harmless), and imaginal exposure (walking through a vivid visualization of the feared object, person, place, or activity).

The pacing of your exposure is specific to the condition and the client. To decide this, the therapist and client design a fear hierarchy listing out all fears and anxieties and grading them on a scale of severity. The pace may be: graded (beginning with the mildest to most difficult fears), flooding (starting with the most extreme fear or anxiety especially if it is hindering you from normal day to day life), and systematic desensitization (combining relaxation techniques such as breathing and meditation with the exposure to help your system stay more calm).

From what I’ve read, exposure therapy can be quite difficult and very uncomfortable. Clients of this type of modality should be aware that this takes time — first to build safety with the therapist and the environment and then to achieve the goals of the therapy. You must have a safe and highly supported space with your therapist so that this works the best. Your brain needs to feel secure and calm before and after it gets exposed to what it fears. This is part of the retraining process, to teach the nervous system that the feared object or situation is actually safe. You should also note that the activity or situation cannot be perfectly mocked in the therapist’s office, so the real-life fearful situation or association will feel and seem different. Repeated exposures clinically must build a solid foundation of safety for when you do encounter your fear in real life.

I have not personally used exposure therapy as it doesn’t fit my symptoms and conditions. Please consult with a trained professional.

As a personal aside (and I know I mention this a lot in episodes), I have to share something coming from my heart. I am speaking about this as a type of modality to bring awareness and education; however, I truly don’t know how I feel about this therapy. So I’m just adding in my two cents here because I know from IFS that fears and phobias and anxiety are just really strong Protectors. I have learned through IFS that our Protectors have good intention in the work that they do to keep us safe, and they should be respected and heard. Through working with Protectors and listening to what they are protecting you from, you can gain insight into actual deep healing of the wounds, traumas, exiles, and inner children that they are trying to keep us safe from. I am not a therapist, so please just take my words for what they are. I just felt led to add to this episode about this — that going into your inner realm and listening to what your fears have to say with an IFS-informed or IFS-trained coach or therapist may be a more long-term and true healing option. I don’t say this because I happen to be an IFS-informed coach. I say this because I have seen authentic healing and change from deep within myself via this modality and with my clients as they navigate what their Protectors roles are and why. Perhaps this is similar to the emotional processing technique of exposure therapy, so feel free to explore more on your own or with your support team.

In conclusion, please do the research for yourself before exploring any modality on this podcast, including IFS. If you have questions or would like to try some sessions of IFS, feel free to reach out. Also, if you’d like help finding an exposure modality qualified therapist, I would love to help you resource yourself. Robert Frost said, “The only way out is through.” I take that to mean walking through your inner being and healing the hurt — whether that means self-therapy, exposure therapy, inner child healing, or whatever you choose. Dan Millman said, “You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” While exposure therapy may do that, so will Self-Leadership in the IFS model. I’ll leave you with that. Be well and keep on keeping on, Survivors. You are amazing.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 23: Workbooks

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Disclaimer: This topic I’m sharing on today is a resource that I haven’t personally used. This episode is based purely from education I’ve received about this, as well as hearing feedback from people I personally know who have tried this.

Self-help workbooks, as they are widely known, can be a helpful tool for some survivors. Sometimes referred to as “therapy workbooks” or “self-therapy”, these are designed for people who are suffering from cognitive and behavioral disorders or tendencies. There is a plethora of these workbooks in the market over the last decade. These are almost always for specified topics: Complex PTSD, OCD, Somatic work, Anxiety, Reconnecting to the Body, and more.

Who are these workbooks good for? My personal understanding is that anyone can try this type of invention. And I suppose there is no harm in trying — with the caveat being that you know the workbook may not be enough for your psychological situation. For some, this may be a good supplement in addition to regular psychiatric care, while some use it as a standalone or while on a long waiting list for a trauma therapist. Still — those who are suicidal need immediate help from people who can stabilize them, and also someone, in my opinion, with relational after effects of trauma need a relationship model — like therapy or coaching.

With that said, some of these workbooks are great for learning lots of coping mechanisms and provenly helpful modalities like CBT, DBT, guides visualizations, IFS, mindfulness, body awareness, self-inquiry, somatic experiencing, and other techniques. To try them would mean to do the reading, and then follow guided exercises as you follow the self-therapy protocol given in each workbook. For some, these have been game changers. Others found it hard to keep themselves accountable to the work or found the self-exercises too difficult to do. I have read that some users find writing answers to tough questions more challenging than talking about your answers, while still others like it better.

The workbooks are designed as a teaching model which exercises used to implement the lessons. Similar to any school workbook, these are almost always done sequentially and are a form of spiral learning as you solidify concepts from week to week. As a supplement to other courses that you are enrolled in or other therapies you are involved with, I would assume you could jump to certain sections of the workbook that reinforce something you’ve been integrating outside the workbook.

For me, the most important thing to keep an eye out for with these workbooks is to do some research on the author. These should be well-accredited, trauma-trained authors. For many workbooks, there is a reading book that started it all. So read the book, perhaps, first, to make sure you agree with the material and that the book itself is full of the education that you need and the insights that your spirit is looking for. Then, the workbook may be more effective. If you aren’t much for reading, just do a little research on the author of the workbook and make sure that your needs align with their methods. For each subject, there will be multiple workbooks, so finding the one that will best work for you could mean the difference between it being useful to you in your specific trauma needs versus having a bad experience or getting frustrated with the process.

The biggest reason I’m interested in this topic is because there are some clients that I think might be good candidates for adding workbooks into our coaching practice; ones that are designed for cognitive reframing and re-training specifically that would give them extra support throughout the week between sessions. So if you have any insights on this topic that you’ve personally used or any recommendations — I’d love to check them out so I can personally vet a few workbooks myself. If you have any questions or need additional trauma-trained resources and support, as always, please reach out to connect with me or schedule a free consult today. I look forward to hearing from you.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 22: Voice & Choice

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Trauma survivors who begin to heal often recognize how much they were not allowed to or safe to vocalize their preferences or wants and needs. Abuse and trauma inflicted by someone in power over you makes so many demands on you that you quickly realize there is no place for your decisions or your desires. Especially for children, self-abandonment is very common. It’s a coping mechanism in order to help you stay safe and not be targeted by your abusers — you learn to reject parts of yourself, to suppress down emotions and feelings and wishes. You lose yourself to your abuser. Many developmental trauma survivors will say they felt like they absorbed the emotions and desires of the abusive figure in their life, and they literally may have lost touch with their own sense of self. This means that not only was there a long period of just suppressing and silencing yourself, but after time, you can truly feel as if you really don’t have emotions or wants. This even can lead to complete self-neglect as you start believing you aren’t worth even basic human needs like food and hygiene.

A big step in the trauma recovery process is learning to become self-aware, reconnecting with your own human body and with your emotions, recognizing that you have preferences and desires, and realizing that you are allowed to make choices for yourself and then voice your own choices to others. This can be a very difficult part of the process and may take a long time to rewire the brain into allowing you to do these once very unsafe things.

If you haven’t heard it yet, you have a choice. You are safe in this space to want something for yourself; you are allowed to have a desire and to go after it. You can decide for yourself — whether it’s a boundary, a preference, saying no, or just walking away. Anything you need, you have the right to ask for it, go get it yourself, work toward it, or seek it from others. You have a choice to not do something that makes you uncomfortable or scared, anything that hurts, something that doesn’t align to your moral compass, or even just something you aren’t in the mood to do at that time. You have a choice. Listen carefully — you have a choice.

Sometimes the work takes time to even get to that point — to even reconnect with your true self enough to even see the light that you want something and that it’s NOT selfish. I am speaking from years of personal experience. Once you get there, next you may encounter another hurdle where you finally know that you actually want or don’t want something, but you don’t feel safe or brave enough yet to speak it out loud. That is okay. Self-awareness is always the first step. This is where I challenge clients to try using their voice in inconsequential situations. Practice a boundary in the grocery store check out line by asking someone too close to you to please give you some space. Practice telling a co-worker “No” when they ask for your help — then try it more times without the excuses or even the apologizing that usually follows a No. Just a “no thanks, I can’t do that right now.” You can also try asking a stranger for help with something — like to reach something high on a shelf. You can buy yourself something nice and then practice self-kindness talk when the guilt tries to kick in to make you feel selfish. If you routinely don’t take a full hour lunch or your breaks, start taking those. They are yours; take back that power by allowing yourself a bit of time to indulge every day. These are small ways you can voice your opinion, ask for what you need, and give yourself some self-care and grace to start feeling more confident in your self-awareness and reconnection with what you want. These small circumstances where you can practice should be people who you don’t really care about or maybe ones you’ll never even see again. There’s no harm in just practicing your voice & choice speeches on them just to get the hang of it.

From there, it will, I promise, get easier to ask your partner for what you need sexually, to tell your in-laws no when they ask to come over, to not cater to your boss’s whims when they keep changing your shifts around without notice, to honor your body when you need a rest and to not feel guilty for taking a self-care moment, and to stand up for yourself when someone is treating you like a pushover. It can seem ridiculously hard if you are still back at the beginning of this journey — but this is where life gets really good. This is where you no longer are willing to suppress your true self, silence your inner longings, and self-abandon.

As a trauma-trained recovery coach who practices trauma-informed care, I constantly remind my clients they always have voice and choice. They get to decide what we talk about and what we work on. They can always say no. Even if they at first say “yes” they want to try X, they can stop at any time. You will never hurt my feelings by not being okay talking about something, and I will continually ask consent before we dive into a topic to make sure this is still how you want to use your time. You even have voice and choice from the very first initial appointment which is, albeit, a very formal, not-client led intake session. My 90-min intake appointment is a bit rigid with me asking the questions so I can get all the forms done so from there on you can use your sessions the way you’d like. However, even in that intake process, you are never obligated to answer any questions or divulge information that you aren’t ready to talk about. And, in my opinion, everyone in your inner circle should be helping you to regain your voice and choice and never hindering your process or forcing you to self-abandon your trueness when they are around. So take an inventory of those closest to you and make sure they are supportive to this part of the process. If they aren’t honoring your newly found voice and choice, it may be time to reconsider their role in your life. Anything I can do to help, feel free to reach out and connect. Keep voicing and choicing your way back to your authentic self!

Full Circle Fridays|Week 21: Useful

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On Wednesday’s episode, we talked about discovering which coping skills from your trauma have become no longer needed, that aren’t serving you anymore, or even have been destructive to your well-being. Today, I want to wrap around that concept with some resources that may be useful to survivors so that you can begin to uproot those maladaptive coping mechanisms and re-plant some useful ways to be supported as you seek health and wellness in your trauma recovery.

My personal philosophy is that we are made up of many components. I don’t think that you’ll just find the perfect therapist and your life will change forever. I also don’t believe that you can just find the love of your life and all the pieces will fall into place. I believe in a whole balance of all your main parts: mental, physical, spiritual, psychological, interpersonal, intrapersonal, social, sexual, nutritional, recreational, financial, educational, familial, environmental, and probably a few more that you can think of for your own personal journey. These pillars are areas where we can find healthy attributes and actions that can come together to create a synergy of support, health, and positivity. You may know someone, for instance, who has so many friends and has a great outdoor lifestyle of regular activities but hates their job or their spouse. The imbalance there is going to eventually cause a suffering. As trauma survivors, we have suffered enough. The work we do on our trauma recovery road is deep, painful at times, and healing. In this process, it’s important that we do what we can to find peace in other areas of our lives as best as we can. Again, this is an ongoing progressive lifestyle challenge. The universe is going to ebb and flow your current situation from time to time. No one can be a happy, millionaire, fun, model all the time! Nor should that be the goal.

Here’s where you get to have some fun. Here’s where you get to set your sights on a vision of what a peaceful, happy life looks like for YOU. This exercise may also be a bit triggering as you investigate, so don’t get down on yourself too hard when examining these things. Take some time, when you are grounded and safe, to make a little inventory of some of these cornerstone areas of your life. Write down what each one means for you, figure out what would be useful ways to move ever so slightly toward your most ideal, and then start some small practices. Finding balance in some of these areas will naturally start to move you away from some of those maladaptive coping patterns that you’ve been in because you can begin offering your mind and body and spirit new tools to try when stressed, depressed, overwhelmed, or triggered. Having these ideas of useful resources in your back pocket gives your brain a larger variety of things to choose rather than just its usual default coping skill.

Here’s some ideas to get you started:

Mental — get out in nature to reconnect by disconnecting, turn off the news, find a therapist or coach, utilize a mood tracker app, ask for help when you need it, try volunteering somewhere meaningful to you

Physical — practice some joyful movement, go swimming just for fun, take a friend on a hike, switch up your routine, set an alarm to stand up once an hour at your desk to stretch, find a type of bodywork that you enjoy receiving

Spiritual — try meditation, keep a dream journal, ask someone you admire about their spiritual beliefs, seek help for any religious trauma in your past

Psychological — read “The Body Keeps the Score” (van der Kolk), if you believe you have a psychiatric issue consult with your doctor, ask a trusted family member about your family’s psychiatric health history, find a grounding technique that really works for you

Interpersonal — learn about active listening, join a team sport in your community, ask your partner to try couple’s counseling to improve communication skills for you both

Intrapersonal — work with an IFS practitioner to improve your Self energy and Self leadership, set aside time for self-inquiry and reflection at the end of the day, practice self-affirmations, look at yourself in the mirror for just two minutes in the morning and smile at yourself

Social — ask a friend to try a spin class at your gym, attend a function that seems casual and set a time to be able to excuse yourself, pick an acquaintance that you aren’t emotionally invested in so you can practice boundaries on them, try a book club

Sexual — Google “Goop’s Erotic Blueprint” and do some exploration of your inner workings, if you’ve had sexual trauma you can find a sexual trauma therapist, ask your partner to try something new with you if they are comfortable, practice self-care and self-exploration

Nutritional — try intuitive eating, work with a trauma trained practitioner who specializes in eating disorders, drink more water, turn off commercials when watching tv

Recreational — do something daring like rock wall climbing, if you have physical limitations try something adventurous via virtual reality, go somewhere you’ve never been in a 30-mile radius of your home, have a picnic at a local park

Emotional — get a “Feelings Wheel” and try to name your emotions, for ladies track your menstrual cycle to see if you have strong emotional dips that could be discussed with your doctor, allow any grief or anger from your past abuse to come to the surface in a safe way, find support with a coach or therapist to explore repressed emotions

Financial — find a trusted advisor, set up a budget, clip coupons for regularly needed items for just one month and explore the savings, think about whether it’s time to ask your boss for a raise, give to charitable organizations that mean something to you

Educational — try taking a free online mastermind in an area of learning that you are interested in, discover the power of YouTube by learning a new instrument, contemplate if maybe going back for another degree would make sense for you, for brain stimulation try a dance or pottery or art class just for fun, download some brain training apps

Familial — take an inventory of the relatives in your life and ask yourself which ones have your full trust and which ones you may need to have no contact with and everything in between, let your closest family know your trauma recovery journey so they can begin to understand you and the changes you are starting to make, find a family therapist if you believe it would be a help to any discord in your immediate family, set aside a family dinner night just once a week or once a month based on everyone’s schedules

Environmental — invest in an air filter at least for your bedroom, add more plants to your home and office, work with a professional to help you quit smoking, recycle, get a BPA free water bottle, try some detoxification patches

This is obviously not nearly a complete list. But I hope these are a few useful ideas to get the ball rolling as you take an inventory of these areas of your life. Imagine the power of implementing something small like daily self-affirmations for your intrapersonal health as a supplantation to the inner critic who loves to come in as a coping skill when you are under stress. Eventually, the affirming Self will have more habitual ground in your life than the critical. These are just some examples.

I will always stand by the opinion that everyone needs to find their own regimen for improving their day-to-day lifestyle, health, and wellness. It is imperative to have a strong healthy lifestyle while journeying down this trauma recovery maze. I would love to help anyway I can — so if you need some more ideas or for some personalized resources, reach out and connect with me. I’d love to hear what you do to help yourself in these key areas of life. Keep progressing and be gentle with yourself. A masterpiece isn’t painted in just a day. Small incremental changes will lead you to a content lifestyle. Find balance. You got this!

Full Circle Fridays|Week 20: Trauma Informed Care

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I want to make sure that Survivors understand the importance of trauma-informed care, practices, and businesses. There is also another important factor when considering therapeutic care which is called “trauma trained”. This is what I want to share with you today to be sure that you have the best possible options of finding people and professionals that will gently and responsibly care for you and your specific needs.

Trauma Informed Care (also called “Trauma Responsive” or “T.I.C.”) is a model of caring for clients, students, patients, employees, or anyone under your advisement with not just the standards of dignity and respect. This practice goes deeper by changing the lens in which is looks at other humans and what they might be going through. This approach is assumptive that others have been through traumas and is willing to acknowledge the aftereffects that an individual may be suffering.

The six guiding principles according to the CDC are: safety, trustworthiness & transparency, peer support, collaboration, empowerment & choice, and recognizing cultural issues and differences.

A business or school, for instance, stating they are T.I.C. means they are equipped to acknowledge any trauma impact and to work hard to not re-traumatize someone in the aftermath of any incidents that need T.I.C. to be implemented. Some examples of this would be how an establishment’s guidelines are set to handle discipline issues, behavioral crises, or the uncovering of substance misuse. This also looks like creating an inclusive environment welcoming everyone, leadership being examples of vulnerability when mistakes are made, using calm and clear communication of desired behaviors, allowing everyone to set their own healthy boundaries, not labeling, giving ample notice before making changes that affect the company’s population, making sure there is an open door waiting for anyone who would like to seek services or crisis management or discuss their stress-related matters, and considering different cultures so as to make generalized statements.

Looking for trauma-informed doctors, legal aid, insurance carriers, childcare, schools, and workplaces can be the difference in your overall wellbeing and your continued healing journey. Imagine making huge strides in your trauma recovery, only to be re-traumatized by a doctor who doesn’t know how to approach a weight-related issue with trauma informed care to discuss the possibility of disordered eating or triggers around your weight. If you are working diligently in your personal childhood trauma healing but have so much work-related stress that you start to breakdown, you would want an HR team that you can feel safe to discuss your issues with and to figuring out how to implement changes to improve your wellbeing so you can remain an effective employee. Without this, your boss may see some behavior that seems like you are not “giving work your best effort” and end up letting you go without even knowing what you are dealing with. It’s important for someone stepping out of a domestic violence situation to have compassionate childcare so that there is room for some flexibility in dealing with the parent pick up for instance — as well as being empathetic to your child’s behaviors which may be stemming from the disruptive home life.

A step beyond trauma informed care in business practices, I believe it incredibly important to find therapeutic support that is actually trauma trained. This would be your therapist, coach, psychiatrist, and anyone else in charge of your mental health care. There is a clinical difference here between going to a therapist who has trauma informed care guidelines as a standard of administration, practice, policies, and consent versus a therapist who is specifically trauma trained in helping you with your trauma history and mental health and wellbeing.

As trauma survivors, as often as you can, you want to find trauma responsive businesses. It would the same as finding grocery stores that have a wide organic section or buying from vendors with cruelty-free products as some examples of circumstances that honor a person’s goals and desires in their life. For you, a trauma informed gas station may not be important, but your workplace or community co-op that you visit regularly would be very helpful. For your clinical needs like therapy, ‘trauma-trained’ is the key words you are looking out for. As a trauma-trained coach, I would love to help you surround yourself with people who can be sensitive with you along your journey. If you need advice, support, or person- or region-specific resources, feel free to reach out. I look forward to helping you with this and any of your trauma recovery needs.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 19: Senses

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 Check out the YouTube video and/or the Podcast audio.

Most of us know about the five senses — touch, taste, sight, scent, sound. Feeling, tasting, seeing, smelling, hearing. Right? I do want to talk about those, but this is also about the elusive sixth sense as well as the other senses 7 through umpteen-nine-forty. I happen to believe in many other senses, just like I believe in lots of non-textbook 4F trauma responses from weeks ago.

For starters, the sixth sense is said to be an “intuitive faculty giving awareness not applicable in terms of normal perception”. Intuition, yes, is a way to sense the world around you. Gut feelings can be just as real and predominant as tasting or touching. Yet — the sixth sense has this allure of clairvoyance, as though it has something to do with the movie about seeing dead people. I think that’s one way to look at it — a different type of sight for some who can see spirits and people from the beyond. However, it’s not just that. Everyone has some sense of gut instinct like we talked about weeks ago in the episode called “Red Flags”.

Another form of sight is seeing people’s energy, like reading their aura in texture, contrast, and color. Some people have a sense where they can feel vibrations from other living things as easy as most of us can smell a flower. There is also room here to talk about empaths who don’t just sense someone’s emotions but take the emotion on themselves. Empath’s also get a real “paranormal” tag on them as well — as though they are doing something extraterrestrial instead of just something extraordinary. I believe we all have the capacity to see with our intuition in some way or another — some just have a more tapped into source of knowing, sensing things in a stronger, more vibrant way. While ordinary people would walk into a room and feel a sense of energy if everyone seems happy and chatty, there are some who walk in the room and see colors flying around each person’s energy bubble — like they can see more detail about the room’s overall feel. That’s a sense.

For trauma survivors — most of us have this learned alertness to read other human’s temperatures so to speak by gauging moods, recognizing micro facial expressions, and noticing changes in vocal tone. While this may seem like a gift, it can actually be an exhausting trauma response called hypervigilance. For some, studying body language and learning how humans interact is fun and fascinating. For trauma survivors, this may be something we don’t even recognize we do, yet all the while the stress of hypervigilance can be taking a toll on our body as we wonder why we are so drained. Still yet this is another sense that we’ve developed, and although it comes from a place of fear and angst, it’s a sense nonetheless.

Some people have a very strong connection to their inner body; this is something I would consider a type of sensing as well. Trauma survivors, as we know, can be quite disconnected from their body and lack those sensational feelings which makes it hard to read their own hunger meters or fatigue gauge. Yes, even the ones who are strong at reading the whole room might not be able to read their own leg sensations.

Another way we sense the outside world is via emotions. Emotions themselves are the reactions to the raw data of the world around you. Emotions are produced unconsciously and act like sensory receptors to the outside world. It is a way of expressing a sensory moment long before your cognitive brain can put words to it. This is an invisible connection between the stimuli and your emotional response. We know that often trauma survivors are also disconnected from their emotions. For some, it was a way to shut down the brain’s hormonal response to the trauma and abuse around them. So while it may seem like it’s not a big deal because “everyone has emotions” — the ability to sense your emotions, allow them, and feel safe with them is a superpower. A lot of the work that survivors do is energy spent on trying to reconnect to their emotional sensory parts.

With all this said, with just this handful of examples of senses beyond the dominant five, I’d like to offer you a resource that can go with you wherever you are, whenever you need. You may have heard this before, but I’m going to lay it out for those who haven’t. Then, I am going to add to it if you want to level up in your healing journey.

There is a coping technique called “5–4–3–2–1”. This is used for grounding when feeling dissociated, overwhelmed, flooded, triggered, or in an anxiety or panic attack. What I love is that the “rules” for this technique is that it always start with a deep, cleansing breath. I adore this because before you get to those five dominant senses that we learned in elementary school, you actually first connect with your breath. Inhale and exhale should be the first two senses, in my opinion. They are receptors to first the outside world on the in breath and then the inside world on the out breath. Just my conjecture. Anyways, after you take a deep breath, you activate your senses by finding and being aware of:

5 things you can SEE
 4 things you can TOUCH
 3 things you can HEAR
 2 things you can SMELL
 1 thing you can TASTE

What this does is ground you to the world immediately around you using your senses to establish safety in yourself and yourself to the space you are in. I often will use this, and half the time I flip numbers 4 and 3 around because I can’t always remember. However, it doesn’t matter; it still works. It’s about activating your senses to create an awareness to your reality to bring yourself back from floating away, to calm your nervous system, and to detach to what triggered you.

A challenge to yourself would be to first breathe, then do the 5–4–3–2–1, and then try this add on sensory technique. If you are beginning to feel safe and grounded after the first two steps, you can use this re-centered chance to quickly use your internal senses to re-align to your mind/body/spirit connection. I call this an add-on because it really deepens your sensory input and can allow for future triggers or panic attacks to be less severe.

So you could try something like tapping into your intuition and just sitting for 5–10 seconds to hear what your gut has to tell you. Ask yourself “what is my gut instinct right now?”. While this may be from a grounded place now away from your triggered event after the 5–4–3–2–1 technique, your gut may want to tell you why you got activated. You gut may also want to tell you what next step it thinks you need to take like making a phone call or taking a walk or laying down for a minute.

You could also take a moment to check in with your sense of hypervigilance. Acknowledge that it’s there if it is; thank it for trying to keeping you safe, but explain to it that in the trigger you just went through you actually were already safe and didn’t need the activation right then. If it overreacted to a stimuli, let it know that. See if your hypervigilance can take a step back and ground itself into a less actively participating part. (Some of that language is “IFS” like, so feel free to check out that episode if you don’t know.)

Another add-on option after the 5–4–3–2–1 technique is to tap into the sense of your body or emotions. Taking just 30 more seconds to ask your body what it needs or naming the emotion that was happening in that chaotic moment earlier. What emotion needs you to recognize it so that it can find healing and not be so activated next time? What wound needs some attention so that you can be calmer in the future? What had you not heard in your body previously that was feeling ignored (like hunger, muscle tension, thirst, etc.)?

Going beyond your five senses will expand your internal and external world. I hope learning these techniques was helpful. They are free to use, always accessible, and no special equipment is needed. This is now a resource for you whenever you need it. If you have questions or comments about this episode, feel free to reach out to me directly. If you are ready for more coping techniques in your healing journey, schedule a free consult today to see if coaching is right for you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 18: Repressed Memories

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Today’s topic comes with a disclaimer. I have no scientific degree, no clinical backing for this topic, and no business probably putting this out here. Yes, I know it’s discredited by some sciences, balked at in some of the legal community, and a highly controversial topic. So — why not, huh? Humor me?

As a trauma recovery coach, I would be remiss to not shine a light on something that is huge in the collective trauma survivor world. I’m going to say outright in case you want to skip this, this is an episode in favor of repressed memories, that I personally believe they exist, and I have personal experience with this. So there’s that. I’ll give you a second to find the ‘off’ button if you’d like.

If you are still with me, all I want to do is give a bit of info, define a few terms, and lay out some resources if you find this educational piece helpful. To be clear, from the literature, repressed memories seem to be present vastly in trauma brains and very uncommonly in non-trauma survivors. According to medical journals, repressed memories are the capstone of trauma response — top of the line of avoidance, dissociation, disconnection. In other words, if you have repressed memories — it’s for a paramount reason. There is a lot of respect to be given, in my opinion, to the brain for why it chooses to sort some things into the “repression” box.

A clinical psychologist in DC attempts to explain how your brain does this by saying that “it drops the memory into a ‘nonconscious’ zone — a realm you don’t think about.” I understand the controversary, truly. I get how it can make sense and also make no sense. I also know that the understanding the mind is still a work in progress. We barely know a fraction of what the brain is truly capable of. Is it really a long shot to believe the brain can hide something from its own self?

I mean, if you think about it, ultimately, your brain’s operating system is all about organizing clutter. Dreams are largely believed to be a key tool that your brain uses to sort out something it can’t understand, right? It’s basically a nighttime defragging to categorize your day’s activities. It’s as if repressed memories went into the trash bin icon on your desktop. “There; it’s gone.” And continue on operating on your brain goes. We know from computer though that we can easily access the trash bin. The laymen of the world could click “empty trash can”, and then honestly have no idea how to retrieve it from there. Some of us tech savvy folks would know that you can “system restore” and undo the delete. Beyond that if the system restore point was deleted too, then what? Well — a lot. Hackers, for one, seem to have no problem with data retrieval whether deleted 3 times or zipped in password protection or locked away in a cloud, right? The FBI has no issue bringing in its special operatives when they need to hunt something off a computer that’s been removed. Wait, even beyond the “system restore” trick? How? I have no idea. We know they can do this though, right? That’s the important part.

So why then is it such a stretch to think that your human brain, which has a lot of computer similarities, doesn’t have a trash bin/”empty trash bin” option on something horrible you went through on X date in time? And if so, then why then can’t we see that someone could use the system restore button to get it back, or beyond that more technical support therapy to unrepress what was once repressed? Yes, I know unrepress is not a word, but it should be, so I’m using it.

This idea of repressed memories — this is a beautiful representation of a protector (from IFS — check out the episode if you missed it). Perhaps one of the strongest protectors. In fact, can something even hurt you if you can’t remember it at all? This repressed protector part of us is doing a job to keep us safe — something we can be really grateful for. The retrieval of said memories also somehow seems to have its place in healing. I joked about unrepressing them, but it’s actually called recovery. Repressed memory recovery is a thing — not an exact science, but there are methods that are available for uncovering what the mind is covering from itself. IFS can work for some, along with EMDR, guided visualizations, revisiting locations/pictures/smells, trance writing, hypnotherapy, and psychedelics. These are just a few things — but actually everyday occurrences can bring repressed memories flooding back to the mind. Flashes of scenes from something someone said, random visions, coming to you in your dreams, scents that can bring you right back to your trauma, and more. Then there is the mystery of why does one trauma survivor have repression as a protective mechanism, and some remember every detail of the trauma they went through? That is a question we can’t even begin to answer yet.

That’s why I chose to write — as briefly and uneducated on the topic as I did — because repression is important to understand as a trauma survivor or someone who works with survivors. If you have a feeling that you have repressed memories, please find a therapist or coach to work with. If you have accidentally uncovered repressed memories, understand that you may be in the throws of re-traumatization and should seek support. Don’t be ashamed to ask for help. If you have questions after listening to/reading this or want support with your repressed memories, feel free to reach out. As always, I’ll do my best to guide you to the best resources. I’m still learning about this as a topic, so maybe in the future I will revisit it in a more informed and personal way as I grow from my own mind’s repression. Stay tuned and take good care of yourself.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 17: Quotes

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I ingest a lot of material via podcasts, books, online certification courses, and impactful media. While I love it all and learn all the general concepts easily, sometimes it’s hard to metabolize everything I listen to and watch. Everyday in my app called “Grid Diary”, I have a box for Quotes & Revelations. These are things that I really want to stick or something I may want to revisit, so I jot the quotes down in this section of the journal. Today, I thought it would be fun to share some of these that I’ve been accumulating over the years by scrolling back through and highlighting some of my favorites for you.

Important note: If I type something out with quotations in my diary, it means I tried to type it verbatim. I almost always write the actual speaker down unless they say exactly who they are quoting. For instance, a podcast guest might say “my therapist likes to tell me…” in which case I just write the quote that I liked and cite is as the podcast guest’s name or maybe as “X’s therapist”. If they say, “Martin Luther once said …”, then I attribute that quote to Luther himself and do not go back and cross reference that quote. Now that I’m sharing these on my podcast & blog, I’m painfully aware that these may not be 100% accurate due to the things mentioned above. This is a ‘just in case’ disclaimer. With that said, if you like something you hear here, recognize that it is secondhand and proceed with that caution. Let’s dive in!

“Be the energy in the stagnation. Be the stillness in the chaos.” — Big Sean

“I’m going to achieve the shit out of being peaceful.” -Glennon Doyle

“Attachment often masquerades as love.” -Brene Brown

“You don’t think your way into a new type of living; you live your way into a new type of thinking.” -Parker J Palmer

“Languishing is not the presence of mental illness; it’s the absence of mental wellness.” -Adam Grant

“Energy is expensive. Don’t give it over for free to ignorance.” -Trent Shelton

“You have to work with the Ying Yang in you. Some days you are facing the shadows, and some days you are facing the sun. But you are always still there.” -Rich Roll

“Look at what happened to you but without the extra narrative.” -Kimberly Snyder

“You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time. I am allowed to be excited about where I am and still look ahead at more goals.” -Sophia Bush

“Our own histories are malleable.” -Paul Conti

“The cosmos carries on without you. We are not central to its unfolding.” -Oliver Burkeman

“Stoicism has nothing to do with manifesting. Stoics think, act, and then accept. They do not dream, expect, or wait. They are not naïve, entitled children.” -Ryan Holiday

“I try to think about what Steve Jobs would do and then what the Dalai Lama would do. I find polar opposite spectrums of thought — combining strategy with sincerity, for instance.” -Jay Shetty

“Retreat is all about the re-entry.” -Mike Posner

“Postpone nothing.” -Seneca

“We bring ourselves along kicking and screaming on this spiritual path.” — Willa Baker

“When you kiss your child, don’t layer on top of the experience all the things you might wish.” -Epictetus

“Time is a human construct. It’s subjective. You can create your relationship to time. Take action just a little before you feel you are ready. Find the energy by realizing life is short.” — Robert Greene

“When you are leveling up, your inner critic is going to pop up.” — Ava Johanna

“Don’t ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence.” — Tim Ferris

“Our only obligation is really to discover our personal legend and to honor it and to fulfill it.” -Paolo Coehl

“Who are you if you are not you? What will your life be if it’s not what you planned for?” -Nora McInerny

“I’m not even as interested in resilience. PREsilience — preventing the need for resilience. Prior to being resilient — just keep it really steady. Don’t decline and bounce back; just don’t degrade at all.” -Dr. Jha

“True freedom is freedom from yourself.” -Michael Singer

“Vulnerability is the cornerstone of confidence.” -Oprah

“When the ego weeps for what is lost, the spirit rejoices for what is found.” — Ancient Proverb

“You laugh until you sob, and then you sob until you laugh.” -Esther Perel

“I sensed a pathway to love myself back to healing.” -Tara Brach

“When we break our word to ourselves, what does that do to our self-confidence?” -Lewis Howes

“Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.” Galatians 6:4&5 (MSG)

“Sometimes what you prevent is just as (if not more than) important than what you create.” -Eddie Pinero

This small sampling is just to get your mind pondering and wandering. Create something beautiful today; find joy in something small and wonderful. Be kind always, but mostly to yourself. Have a blessed day and keep on the good journey, fellow survivors.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 16: Psychosomatic

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We’ve recently talk about the neurobiological problems caused by and/or worsened by trauma. Today, I’m choosing the sensitive topic of psychosomatic after effects. The word psychosomatic literally means an illness or condition caused by or aggravated by a mental component, such as stress and conflict (and of course trauma). This is talking about the interaction of the mind and body, not just that your mind is “making something up”. These are actual ailments, real pains, true sicknesses, and genuine symptoms that your body is experiencing. This is an unconscious process — not something that people are just imagining or pretending that they are happening to them. This is important to stress because, for way too long, the medical community has dismissed people with “imaginary issues” when no cause can be found, so they send them away and with no relief found. Luckily, modern science is evolving, and, in this instance, that’s a really good thing.

Someone with a psychosomatic illness or disorder can’t find a physical or scientific reason for their condition. That’s because the roots aren’t a germ or bacteria or virus — they are psychological. All the while real — just a different cause. On the more mainstream side of things, we know, for instance, that high stress can cause hypertension. Science has now confirmed that a lifetime of high stress or worry can cause heart related diseases and conditions. We can know that short-term difficulties like the loss of a job, grief, or sleepless nights with a newborn can change moods, eating habits, sleep routines, and add physical symptoms like heart palpitations, headaches, or GI distress. All of these are easy ways to explain psychosomatic issues.

For trauma survivors, most of us will find some sort of physiological condition linked to our trauma. This is nothing to be afraid of or ashamed about. This is just the nature of the human body. It was not built to withstand long-term trauma, ongoing neglect, chronic stress, childhood abuse, etc. One way of studying this further is to take a look at the ACE study and see the jarring results of what developmental trauma’s impact is on a survivor’s long-term health as well as the increased risk for many life-shortening diseases. Indeed, the ACE study found that trauma survivors can experience accelerated biological aging due to shorter telomere length!

Here’s another example of how this may play out. Like we talked about in Basics earlier this year, the normal life functioning things like sleeping, eating, physical activity, social interactions, and hygiene are all basic life needs — but are often found to have areas of deficits in trauma survivors. All of those basic functions of healthy lifestyle are necessary to keep the system up and running as well as possible. So let’s say that a trauma survivor may endure a sleep disorder, improper sleep, or truncated sleep due to night terrors. We know from science that sleep disorders are a huge cause of concern with our body’s circulation, capacity, and output of energy. From there, this survivor may be too tired to exercise and often has headaches from lack of good sleep, so the trauma survivor is now at higher risk for heart complications. If they are always tired, which causes cravings of sugars and high glucose index foods such as complex carbs, they may be struggling with their weight. And we all know how damaging that can be to one’s physical health. All of this is just stemming from night terrors due to trauma which is now disrupting their sleep and then in turn controlling all these other functions of the body. To say that trauma survivors have these psychosomatic conditions is very clear to see, and to see why.

That’s why there is no shame here because the trauma was not your fault; therefore, your somatic responses to the underlying trauma and stress as are also explainable. This is also not the end of the story. In addressing the trauma, processing through it, and finding healing, this could restore a peaceful night sleep to the above trauma survivor and start a reversal on all the other associated problems and health conditions.

These types of episodes are difficult to share because they sound so daunting. However, as you know by now, I believe everyone can find healing. The road to the recovery of your trauma will lead you to improved mental health, which in turn brings you to enhanced physical health by way of stress-reduction therapies, rebuilt relationships, creating healthy boundaries, better life functioning basics, finding time for play and creativity, and a cleaner overall bill of health and wellness. No, trauma recovery will not cure you of all your diseases. However, you may be surprised to find that some of your chronic conditions (some even from childhood) may begin to dissipate and diminish in the light of greater mental health status, finding peace, reconnecting to your body, and healing your inner child. As always, I’d be more than honored to come along for the ride as you seek a new way of life on this healing journey. Please reach out if this episode was helpful for you, tough for you, or if you have any questions.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 15: Origins

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There is power in tracing the origins of your trauma. Be forewarned that it can also be a slightly jarring or triggering process as well. The usefulness of understanding your trauma’s historical path is to bring some peace to your soul and forgiveness to your authentic self. The actual true origins may not be able to be completely uncovered, so I find healing is the pursuit of the origins and what you can uncover simply by taking some time to trace and explore the roots.

For some, this episode may not resonant. For instance, if you were suddenly attacked by an unknown assailant, you may not even know your abuser’s name, let alone their heritage of abuse. Perhaps if your trauma has something to do with many bullies in school growing up, you may not be able to learn their true familial history of bullying or what it was that was paining them so much that they took the liberty to harass you. If that’s the case for you, that’s okay.

I’m really sharing this for is people who have suffered under the generational trauma of their family’s abuse or neglect. Victims begat victims; hurt people hurt people. We’ve all heard those phrases. Taking a deep dive into the roots of your generation’s past can be a real eye opener, not just in healing your own past, but for really making solid growth that will affect your future generations.

So how do we do this tracing? We have a few interesting ways. The most powerful way I’ve found is constructing a genogram. A genogram is more than a family tree. It is a display of the family’s interpersonal relationships, medical history, hereditary patterns of abuse, or other factors that may have truncated relationships. This is a way to trace types of abuse between members of the family tree, addictions, divorces, loss of contact of various members, death ages, and more. The genogram serves to explain interactions between its members. This visual representation of one’s family can be quite telling as you often can trace back trauma, abuse, and patterns of addiction for many generations. The power to be able to see this displayed in front of you allows a softening to see what all those other members have gone through along with you as the main trauma survivor. Each branch that is broken because of infidelity, divorce, abuse, or addiction — these are all telling of the factors that put you in the place you have found yourself today.

This is what I meant, though, when I said we can’t often actually find the true origin per se. Eventually you know less and less about the genealogy many generations removed. So if your great-grandfather abused your grandfather abused your mother abused you … who then abused your great-grandfather? We have found a pattern but not an original source. That’s okay because in the finding of the pattern, much is explained and explored.

There are a few great online tools to help you construct a genogram. You can also do this with the help of your therapist or coach. Understanding that this can be a very emotionally taxing activity, please make sure you are well supported as you do this.

Another quick mention that I’ll leave you to explore on your own is Dr. Murray Bowen’s “Family Systems Theory” — which is a solar system type construction of one’s emotional cohesion between family members (for good or for bad). From there, you can apply each member’s “roles”. Lastly, another exploration would lead you to define those roles within the relationships using Dr. David Olson’s “Family Circumplex” model. These are great additional investigations and discoveries after you’ve been able to create and digest the findings from the genogram.

As always, if you’d like help tracing some of the origins of your family’s trauma history or if you have questions about this episode, please reach out so that I can help you find the best resources for your situation. I would love to support you as you inspect your generational trauma history as a means for your personal growth and trauma recovery in breaking cycles of abuse and dysfunction.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 14: Neurobiology

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Last week, in talking about medication, I shared a bit about the psychological and psychiatric aftermath that trauma can bring. Today, I’d like to explain some of the neurobiological effects of trauma.

You may not realize that the brain is developing for about the first 25 years of a human’s life. The significance of that when it comes to trauma means that during the developmental years especially, the brain is quite literally maturing within the context of dysfunction, chaos, abuse, neglect, trauma, and chronic stress. This equates to forms of “brain damage” during those early years. It is true that adults who suffered childhood trauma can have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, an enlarged amygdala, and a smaller hippocampus. These are actual biological changes to these parts of the brain that can be seen on brain scans.

The effects of just the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex could mean: impaired cognitive behavior, difficulties with decision making and logistical planning, reduced self-awareness, and compromised social skills. The enlarged amygdala leaves survivors with problems with regulating emotions, and more importantly an overactive trigger response, hypervigilance, and high increases in overreaction to stimuli and threats. The smaller hippocampus strips survivors of spatial navigation, memory function, learning abilities, focus, and processing.

Is it any wonder that developmental trauma survivors have social issues, memory deficits, trouble with executive functioning skills, and overwhelming flight/fight/freeze responses to what others might say are “normal everyday stressors”?

I chose this topic today to help survivors understand themselves better and to let them know that I see them. I also chose this today so that anyone listening/reading will see a need to have compassion on what others are going through. You may not understand why your co-worker went into a shutdown frozen state just because the boss’s high energy was a little dramatic that morning, but maybe now you can try to give grace. As Oprah always says, “It’s not ‘What’s wrong with you?’. The question is ‘What happened to you?’”

This is of course just a basic intro to neurobiological after effects of trauma. I haven’t even touched on what happens due to the increased (or decreased) levels of some hormones and chemicals on the body and brain over an extended period of time. Prolonged exposure to stress, trauma, abuse, and dysfunction during the brain’s development is toxic to the body and the brain.

Survivors, yes, this may have happened to your brain during your trauma. And this is exactly why you are not broken, cursed, or fragmented. You are a whole person who has survived a whole lot. There is no shame in your behaviors and impairments due to this. You are not alone. There is fascinating new science out there working on your behalf to research, treat, and rewire some brain impairments. Neuroplasticity is real, and there are wonderful new ways of “retraining the brain” using reverse engineering to move you out of surviving mode and into thriving mode. If you want more info, you can check out there Dynamic Neural Retraining System for some encouragement and acknowledgement of your plight.

If you want more info or need help beginning to explore this, feel free to reach out to me. Also, try to breathe through this information. It is daunting, yes; it is a lot. What happened TO you is not the end of your story, though. I am happy to tell you that there is hope through science, therapy, coaching, with lots of effort and practice. Your brain is here to work FOR you and WITH you, not against you. Let’s start making that a reality together. You got this, and I would love to help.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 13: Medication

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First thing to say is a disclaimer. I am not a physician or medical provider. I am not recommending any kind of self-diagnosis or self-medication. I will never recommend trying anyone else’s prescription drugs or the use of street drugs or any kind of illegal activity surrounding this topic. This is merely a base of information for trauma survivors and an attempt to help bring light to psychiatric issues as well as remove any stigma in discussing this. If you believe you have a diagnosable condition or need a psychiatric evaluation for medication, please contact your medical provider, therapist, health insurance company, or send me a message on the “connect” tab of my website for more info or help pursuing this. With all that said, this topic may be triggering or sensitive to certain listeners/readers, so take care of yourself after this.

Trauma has a number of after effects including but not limited to: relational, emotional, neurobiological, biological, sexual, psychosocial, intergenerational, and psychological. There’s no way around this. Trauma changes you — inside and out. There’s no way to tell whose trauma is going to wreak havoc on the body and get stuck in the GI tract, where someone else might suffer sleeping issues, another has structural changes to the brain, where another person becomes extremely avoidant of other people, and then some survivors have a psychiatric disorder or diagnosis. There is no shame in whatever happened to you because of your trauma. Your trauma or abuse was not your fault. None of it — in no way, shape, or form. What happened to you and how your system responded to it is nothing to have a stigma about. A childhood abuse survivor may have a hyper-aroused, overactive nervous system that ends up presenting after years and years as an autoimmune disorder. The truth of the matter is — the body and brain can only handle so much stress, traumatic events, and abuse. You were not meant to go through what you went through. While some have an autoimmune complication from their trauma, you may have a psychological complication from yours. It’s as simple as that.

Here, I can only offer you support and encouragement to not be afraid or ashamed to ask your medical provider to get you the help that you may desperately need. Psychiatric issues like anxiety, depression, personality disorders, DID, bipolar, and OCD are all manageable chronic conditions. Finding a medication that works for you to help treat the symptoms while you work on therapeutic interventions, somatic treatments, and rewiring the brain is very important. For some survivors, unashamedly, they need to be on medication for the long haul. There is no right or wrong way to your care. We often talk about the proper regimen for each survivor. Something that may be a lifesaver to one may be a triggering intervention for another. There is no black and white answer to your situation. Each trauma survivor has their own needs, has to make their own attempts at progress, and will find their own path eventually. What we know to be true is that generally speaking many psychiatric drugs take time to work and also often take many tries to find the right match for each person. This is something we must be patient about, and it’s very normal to get discouraged from time to time during the process.

Because trauma can alter the brain and damage the way the nervous system functions, mental health struggles are a very common problem among survivors. Psychotropic medications can help untangle addictions, calm hyperactivity, improve depressive symptoms, regulate hormone levels in the brain, and normalize thought processing, etc. It’s also VERY important to add a disclaimer that psychotropic drugs can trigger or increase suicidal ideation. Please make sure you are totally honest with your medication provider about how you are feeling once you begin a new type of medication. Be truthful with all of your symptoms in your body and mind so that the physician can help weed out medications that may not be worth risking trying for you as well as to increase the ability to find the medication(s) that will work best for your conditions. Please be sure to show up to each follow up appointment and list any new or worsening symptoms. Talk with your therapist or coach if you are starting to feel unwell, having any unpleasant side effects, and/or are experiencing any suicidal ideation. The more professionals that are involved in your care, the more people who are able to help you in any crisis and to help you as you regulate on these medications.

This episode is way too limited about all the things that a survivor needs to know about psychological aftereffects from their trauma. This is just a basic overview to shed some light on what might be going on with you personally and where to start to get help. This can be overwhelming if you’ve never yet been formally diagnosed with any psychiatric conditions. Please reach out to someone to start investigating this. If you don’t have anyone, please send me a message, and I’ll try to resource you in any way I can. You are not alone, and there is help available to you. I can promise that.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 12: Lighthouses

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Throughout your trauma recovery journey — a labyrinth as we identified earlier this week — a recommendation I like to make to clients is to have a list of lighthouses along the way. An actual lighthouse has lots of uses and facets. Major functions are to warn ships of hazardous coastlines, shallow shores, rocks, or reefs; they also serve in safely guiding in harbor approaches and departures. They are a beacon of light to help maritime navigation. If there is a high cliff, a lighthouse can be shorter in stature, but if on a shallow shoreline or even in the water, the lighthouse must be quite tall. The whole point of the lighthouse is to shine so brightly that it can be seen while the sailor is still far enough away from shore to make any corrections and adhere to the warning the lighthouse gave. Each lighthouse is unique — painted different colors for easy recognition during the day to help map olden day voyages, different types of lighting depending on its era, changing light patterns if two lighthouses are close together for identification as landmarks, and, in known fog areas where a light may be hard to see, a sound signal would be used at appropriate times. Lighthouses were a form of GPS for ships before GPS was a thing, and even now are still used for harbor guidance or when GPS fritzes out.

Now imagine that you are the ship (or the captain of it). This pilgrimage we find ourselves on in our trauma healing often has dark spots and has times where warnings are needed. Identifying your own lighthouse escorts prior to a catastrophe is very valuable. I mean this in a way of a proactive list of resources that can assist to prevent a shipwreck and a reactive one in case of shipwreck. As a coach, if a client has a known history of dangerous or life-threatening behaviors, we conduct a safety plan and maintain crisis management plan on file. This gathers up their warning signs as well as resources of how to handle those warning signs. However, I really believe, as you build your toolbox of recovery aids, keeping a short list of lighthouses close by is relevant for any trauma survivor.

Some examples of the proactive lighthouses that are warning where there are dangerous shoals or injurious rocks ahead could be: identifying your known triggers and triggering situations or people, recognizing a lack of self-care routine that signals impending overload, understanding your Four F reactions to catch yourself when about to enter one, or learning to watch for somatic signals in your body that tell you need rest. In olden days a light keeper was present to get emergency help for a shipwreck, which is now replaced with remote monitoring for said crisis management. Some of these reactive lighthouses for trauma survivors could include: having a list of safe people to call in a crisis, knowing your emergency numbers for a mental health breakdown or a domestic violence incident, keeping an emergency self-care safety plan in case you begin to get overwhelmed or consider harming yourself, learning how to challenge intrusive thoughts, self-harm, or suicidal ideation with CBT prompts, or using guided meditations specifically for trigger situations (like Flood, Calm, Cool, Collected, and Lazy River).

There are also beacons to help us dock safely in harbor when we need rest and to guide us out of harbor when we are ready to set sail to the seas again. This could be a compilation of a trauma informed therapist, a trauma coach, a yoga instructor, a bodyworker, a somatic experience practitioner, or even a close, safe friend or partner who knows when to remind you about productive rest or encourage you to take time away from a stressful situation. These are paramount to keeping you well on this journey to trauma recovery and authentic health and wellness.

If you don’t have a trusted guide to help you gather these types of resources, I’d encourage you to send me a message on the “connect” tab of my website or schedule a free 20-minute consultation to see if coaching is right for you. Together, we will find ways to keep your mind, body, and spirit on a healthy journey — sailing in safety and wellness, enjoying the waters, and floating along in peace and security.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 11: Keys

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If you are new to this podcast/blog — this is a perfect episode/post to jump in on. I’m recapping from our most important ‘key ideas’ from past episodes, AND we have a special offer today!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Today marks our 33rd episode together! I want to thank you all for joining me as we walk our trauma recovery healing journey together. It’s been my honor to speak to you these past episodes, and I look forward to delivering more helpful content to serve you the best that I can. Also, I have been contacted by a few trauma survivors, authors, and other coaches who want to do interviews with me on the podcast. So in the coming future — look out for some “Saturday Specials” where I’ll have bonus content collaborating with special guests right here on the Trauma Survivorhood podcast. Lastly — if you are listening to this episode — I want to offer you a podcast discount on an initial appointment. First steps — schedule your 20-minute complimentary discover call and see if coaching is right for you and if we are a good match to work together. If you move forward coaching with me, you can use coupon code PODCAST33 for your initial 90-minute intake appointment to receive 33% off!

*This cannot be combined with any other discounts or coupons, and must be scheduled and paid for by Friday, April 8, 2022 — so schedule your discovery call soon and let’s get started our journey together!*

Now for today’s episode. I want to talk about some of the keys to even starting, figuring out, and maintaining trauma recovery. Let’s get going! Over the past 32 episodes, you’ve heard me say plenty of “this is super important” or “this is really key” or sometimes I’m fancy and say “this is so paramount” for our healing. Let’s take a look back at some of those. (Many of those episodes are mentioned today. For a few list all episodes, check out the podcast’s website here.)

Way back on the Basics episode, I explained that it is a big key to even recognize that trauma survivors are often disconnected from their mind, body, and their True Self. In the CBT episode, I shared how awareness is really a key step. In fact, I said, specifically to CBT, awareness must be the first step in finding help. In the Four Fs show, I shared how important it is to understand the Four Fs in order to recognize which one(s) you gravitate toward and when you are steering into a Four F response. In the Good Enough post, I challenged you in the importance of being able to recognize the coping skills you developed if you were an under- or over- parented child. Obviously — the theme here is that awareness to your situation, recognizing your abuse or traumas, seeing how it shaped you, and knowing truly how you are now as a trauma survivor are the first steps in really even starting the journey.

During the Flood episode, which was a guided meditation in case of a trigger attack, I said the first key was establishing safety in your body and the space you are in. In Everything & Nothing, I said that mindfulness within your meditation practices is key to begin being present so you can reconnect to your mind and body. In the Humming episode, I stated that Vagus Nerve Stimulation is key to calming anxiety and relaxing the body. The thread tells us that once we can be aware of our current circumstances and our coping skills within our trauma world, we need to shift from constantly being on edge to a state of being present with our body, mind, breath, and finding peace in the present moments. This allows us to reconnect to ourselves, others, and the world around us — which is of course exactly what our trauma disconnected us from. For many of us, this is a practice — either with mindfulness practices regularly, in some kind of self-care practice, or therapy or coaching schedule. The more often we can practice being with our emotions and in our own body, the more apt we are to be able to stay with them when we are triggered. In the Everything & Nothing medication, I quipped that “this is the more important thing you’ll do all day, yet it is nothing at all.”

In the CBT episode, I declared that an important part of the CBT therapy process is to challenge your thoughts with curiosity. This doesn’t just apply to that modality. It is in fact how we must come into our emotions, body, and mind — with curiosity. It is how we coach in our sessions. I help train you to stay curious by being curious for you with lots of questions to help root out how you came to believe things you believe about yourself so we can challenge those feelings with gentleness. That’s why we call Trauma Recovery Coaching client-led because you are leading your own healing, and even when your coach speaks it’s often to ask questions to lead you further into your thoughts or feelings until you find what you are searching for.

In Acne of the Soul, I shared how important it is to give yourself permission to decide what’s right FOR YOU and what’s not. In the Basics episode, I explain how important it is to find a self-care regimen that works for you. In Books, I state that the “process is more important than the destination” when we talk about trauma recovery. I want you to hear that NO ONE can direct your healing. As your coach, my job is not to tell you what you must do, but to tell you some ideas of what you CAN do to help yourself. For instance, I will simply be reminding you that self-care is a must for survivors, challenge you to find something that is self-care, and ask how you are doing with it. What that looks like for you is not for me to dictate. Along the way, you’ll discover things that don’t work for you. There may be certain grounding techniques that make you more activated based on your abuse history. You may not be ready for a particular level of breathing. You may hate yoga. Perhaps you know you have to find a fulfilling career, but you aren’t comfortable to leave a current position. THAT’S the process. That’s what I’m here to help you sort out, to listen as you muddle around your pros and cons lists, to challenge you but then encourage you if something doesn’t work out. We mustn’t be afraid of the process of finding our healing.

In the Basics episode, I said, for certain, that kindness is key. Later in the Kindness, Find Us episode, I double downed that even recognizing we have a self-kindness part is a must. In the Compassion episode, I commented that just by seeing our inner suffering, by looking at it, we can truly understand how important self-compassion really is. There is no easy way to go about this healing road. It’s bumpy, twisty, scary, dark at times, and definitely not a joy ride … and it’s worth it. Along the way, you will fail, falter, and fret. You must learn self-kindness and loving compassion to give yourself the patience and grace you need to do this hard work.

Finally, just recently in the Jubilation episode, I said “it is important to make room for celebration” of the small wins along the way. As your coach, I will never let you run on by a sentence of how you did X or said Y or didn’t do Z and NOT recognize this huge accomplishment. Whether it’s a boundary you kept, someone you said no to, a phone call from a triggering person that you didn’t answer, a new coping skill you used, an old coping skill you didn’t, a healthy risk you took, a complement you accepted, or anything of the like — I will help train you to celebrate your wins by reminding you how amazing you are even when it’s a small thing.

This journey is meant to be walked together. Consider being coached along your recovery path. We’ll find the Keys that work for you and get you set on a smoother, more manageable road. It will be my honor to follow along, point things out, encourage you, challenge you, and cheer for you because you are truly amazing!

Full Circle Fridays|Week 10: Jungian Philosophy

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Today I’d like to give a brief overview of Carl Jung and his contributions to the world of psychology. It’s worth taking a deeper look into his theories, philosophies, therapy, and archetypes. He contributed to a great deal of this generation’s way of thinking and of processing.

Carl Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875 but was alive in the generation before me. He died in 1961 after my parents were born. His perceptions are still being fleshed out, sometimes challenged, and slowly being adapted into modern therapy. I mention this because I’m not a hard-core Jungian follower, but I find him to be super insightful when diving into the world of trauma therapy and coaching. He’s being highlighted today on Full Circle Friday as an outside resource that I believe we can gain knowledge from, but I don’t necessarily go all in on every one of his concepts.

Jung is responsible for main concepts such as: the Collective Unconscious, personality archetypes, dream symbols, and the start of tying spirituality together with psychology. His father was a pastor, so he was very invested in religion and history. While I’m not driving down that road as a topic, I do believe that seeing the psyche as a mental, emotional, and spiritual realm is a really big deal when you are actively seeking out trauma recovery and are on a journey of psychological healing.

Briefly — the Collective Unconscious has been studied for decades now and has bled its way into modern psychology. It’s worth noting that Jung considered this an inherited aspect of all humans, similar to “nature v nurture” in my opinion. The Collective Unconscious was presented like the nature part of all new humans — born into a world that, without any experiences, gave us beliefs and human mindsets in a particular culture and are just assumed to exist. This was his main theory that ran throughout several of his book and other concepts.

From there, another branch of Jung’s contributions that still is at play today is his Dream Theory. He believed that the unconscious and subconscious realms of dreaming translate into images, narratives, answers, and ideas that can be used (when remembered and examined) to find healing in your conscious. This is a fascinating subject to me. I do feel like dreams have a way of showing and guiding. I even did my senior thesis paper on dream interpretation over 20 years ago! Earlier this week, in the Journal episode, I explained why I’m beginning to journal my dreams as well.

For trauma recovery healing and other psychological uses, I find Jung’s most important contribution to be that of the archetypes and personality work he did. Jung examined and categorized personality traits and was able to uncover a whole lot about their psychological functions. Two decades after Jung’s death, Myers-Briggs adapted a final set of personality traits and added them to Jung’s original three coupled traits. Then he created a personality test. If you have never taken a Myers-Briggs' personality test, you really ought to, in my opinion. As an INFJ, I highly recommend it. The insight alone from that will give you depth to your personal journey, healing, and understanding for how your personality works in this wild world.

These personality categories have been used to help people find healing within relationships by understanding theirs and their partner’s functioning roles, as well as learning styles based on your personality indicators and even your career and parenting style. These all stemmed from Jung’s original concepts and study of human function.

In Jungian philosophy, we find four main archetypes of human patterns and behavior: the Self, the Persona, the Anima, and the Shadow. Jung presented three components of Self — the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. The Self being the individual and the personal unconscious being your memories and life experiences.

There are also tests available to find your Jungian archetype and explanations of each to find out why it’s important to help you understand yourself. Beyond that, there are his philosophies which I think are worth a bit of studying, and now even a Jungian style therapy available. There are Jungian analysts and all kinds of complex ways to dive deeper into Carl Jung’s work — if you feel led to do so.

To close, here are a few of Jung’s quotes that I find very insightful and healing to my trauma recovering self:

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”

“We cannot change anything unless we accept it.”

As you can see, these quotes and many of his philosophies line up with the work we do in trauma recovery as part of our healing journey. If you do need support, I’d love to chat with you more about my coaching services. A final and favorite quote of his that I leave you with: “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” Well, doesn’t that just perfectly complement our work in our full circle healing! And what a privilege it would be to walk beside you on that path. Feel free to shoot me a message on the connect tab of my site or schedule a 20-minute complimentary discovery call to see if coaching is right for you.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 9: I.F.S.

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Straight from the IFS Institute itself, “Internal Family Systems is a powerfully transformative, evidence-based model of psychotherapy… IFS is a movement. A new, empowering paradigm for understanding and harmonizing the mind and, thereby, larger human systems. One that can help people heal and helps the world become a more compassionate place.” IFS was developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz just a few decades ago. In that short time, this model of therapy has revolutionized the lives of many trauma survivors. The basis of this model comes from the belief that all parts within each human have a positive purpose and intention, no matter the way they present to the human and the world as a whole. Before we go any further, let’s discuss what I just meant by “all the parts”.

Firstly, IFS identifies the Self as a whole, healed person. Your true Self, that authentic Self that I’m always going on and on about. The Self is not the watcher or observer the way that some meditation-based models explain it. The Self is the one who the watcher watches. The Self, the Seat of Consciousness as you may know it, is you. You can know you are operating as a Self-led being when you are experiencing the 8 C’s that IFS uses: confidence, calmness, creativity, clarity, curiosity, courage, compassion, and connectedness. When those 8 C’s are harmonized and working together, you would say you in your true Self. This is often described as feeling “Centered” — which is probably one of my favorite C words.

Next, the parts come into play. The IFS model is often called “parts work” when you are doing therapy literally working with your parts.

The Exiles are the (often) child-aged parts that have been isolated from the system due to trauma or abuse, which are shunned, shamed, feared, or guilted into exile. Exiles are the parts that are least heard, but that are one who want to be heard the most. Because Exiles are traumatized and often silenced or invisible, they can be hard to find. Once found, they can be hard to communicate with. However, the Exiles are what IFS intends to root out, listen to, and heal.

The Protectors jobs are all attempts to keep the Exiles from being seen because they hold so much shame and fear and guilt so that the Protectors feel they are a threat to entire system. The Protectors come in two forms: Managers and Firefighters.

Managers are a proactive role — the ones who like to keep the system in order. They are protecting the system from ever getting out of control — at work, in relationships, in stressful situations, anywhere. The Managers’ jobs are to keep the system from being hurt, rejected, or shamed anymore. This can come in the form of caretaking, overworking, drill sergeant like task management, overachieving, overanalyzing, strict preparing, constant planning, worrying, complicating relationships and events with overthinking, and drastic protective measures, etc.

Firefighters are the reactive parts that, when an Exile gets triggered, it lashes out in an attempt to put out the fire of feeling the Exile’s (often strong) emotions. This looks like self-destructive behavior, risky choices, self-harm, suicidal ideation, binge-eating, drug and alcohol addictions, any number of numbing behaviors, and more.

Both protectors are working to control the system from the Exile being activated, they just approach with different techniques. Both protectors believe they are doing what they can to attend to the Exiles, and to keep the system safe and healthy. This is why IFS believes that all parts of a person are intended for good, no matter the outcome of their protective style. Even the parts that seem self-punitive are honestly self-protecting. This shift in thinking allows you to befriend your parts, hear them, be gentle and kind to them, and work toward a resolution instead of striving to just “stop doing the negative behavior” associated with each part’s role.

This is why I personally believe that all healing is always possible because the system is always trying to keep the true Self functioning. Along the way, you have learned coping skills — some protectors that have been around since the very first instance of abuse as a child — to keep you safe. They did serve a purpose. As a child, if you couldn’t leave your dysfunctional home and the only solace you found was in binge-eating junk food, that mechanism allowed you to survive in the home until you could leave. That’s why it’s no longer serving you now, why you can appreciate its role in your life then, and why you can heal that part (the binge-eating protector AND the exiled scared inner child who used the binge-eating to survive). You can indeed heal through inner child work, re-parent yourself now, heal your exiles (which are often very young versions of yourself), and make a full circle recovery back to your true, centered Self. IFS can help you rebuild your intrapersonal bridge within yourself, repair your self-trust, and reunite with your self-abandoned dreams and goals like we spoke on a few weeks ago.

Recently, I recommended Dr. Schwartz’ book No Bad Parts in my episode called ‘Books’. I personally have been self-studying parts work for a few years and have entered into the self-exploration of my own inner child healing since the Pandemic. I am working on joining an IFS circle training this spring. I am not trained as IFS-certified, however, I do use a lot of this language in my coaching sessions. If you had developmental trauma, IFS is impactful and healing down to the roots of your original traumas.

Because I’m not clinically trained in this modality, I’m going to encourage you on a couple of things. Firstly, read No Bad Parts to get a better grasp beyond this quick synopsis that I just shared with you. This was a very incomplete quick overview. Keep learning and even try some of the self-therapy exercises in the book.

Next, think about whether you are at a place in your trauma recovery journey where you believe IFS Therapy would be a good step for you. Whatever you decide, coaching is always an option for you. However, I don’t plug IFS just to plug my own coaching services. I honestly want you to find healing, and I know the IFS model process can help. Please send me a message on the “Connect” tab of my website if you are not able to find an IFS therapist, are placed on long wait lists, or are struggling to know if IFS is right for you. I will help you with any resources I can offer. Even being coached with this type of language while I work on my own training can be helpful for you especially if you have read Schwartz’ books on this topic and are able to flesh out the basic concepts. I can help you go a bit deeper while you wait for a trained therapist’s help as well. Healing the inner child is work that will literally change the trajectory of your adulthood from here on out. I look forward to walking this journey with you.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 8: Humming

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Yes, I said we are going to talk about humming today. If you didn’t know that you have this powerful resource at your disposal, well, then I’m glad you’re here with me today.

If you listen to any of the Mindful Monday episodes, you know I’m often guiding you to breathe deeply with an elongated exhale. I also do this with some clients during sessions if they are activated; we pause and take three breaths with the diaphragm engaged on a 4-count inhale followed by a slow 8-count exhale. This is the power of even quick breathwork practices. Why the elongated exhale? This is proven to help regulate your nervous system and signal relaxation. When you are stressed or triggered, breathing and heart rate will speed up as your sympathetic nervous system activates to get your body ready for danger. The elongated exhale kicks in your parasympathetic nervous system, which will tell your body that the threat is over, and relaxation is now a safe choice.

All this is possible thanks to the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is part of your autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for your reflex actions, heart rate, breathing, digestion, and more. It’s the longest cranial nerve spanning your brain to your colon, all throughout your chest and stomach where your visceral organs are kept. The vagus nerve works within the parasympathetic nervous system to calm the sympathetic system’s responses. When the vagus nerve is activated, we call this type of stimulation VNS. The long exhale and diaphragmatic breathing are one way to do VNS. So apparently, what happens in the vagus nerve doesn’t stay in the vagus nerve because the science is out that VNS is key in helping calm anxiety, relax your system when in a triggered state, and even helps with people with epilepsy. (If that last thing is interesting to you, check out info on “vasovagal nerve fainting and seizures”!) In fact, I could go into so much more detail, but let’s face it. The science is all over the interweb written or recorded by people much more scientifically smarter than I am. For that, I encourage you to take a deep dive into this if the nervous system is interesting to you. While you are looking, there are even great yoga type VNS exercises and all kinds of great advice to help your body try to regulate itself!

What does this have to do with humming? Well, for all the reasons I shared above with the diaphragmatic breathing. This amazing vagus nerve is connected to your vocal cords and all the muscles down the back of your throat. Guess what? When you hum, ohm, chant, or even gargle — you are stimulating the vagus nerve. Using VNS is a powerful back pocket, use-anywhere-you-are, cost-free, readily available resource.

I like to hum when I’m shopping in the stores because I tend to have anxiety out in large spaces with lots of people around. I hum when I’m doing something super repetitive that causes a frustration in my spirit. I also do a breathwork for relaxation using humming. You can just hum a little tune, but you can also purposefully breathe and hum. All you do is replace the exhale with a hum. Using the breath that you inhaled, you’ll hum out the air instead of just blowing it out in a classic exhale. In breathwork practice, humming usually looks like a similar 4-count in and 8-count hum, because a prolonged nature of the calming thing (exhaling, humming, chanting, saying ‘ohm’) is always best for the quickest results.

I’ve run across many people during my training in and time as a trauma recovery coach, and I’ve learned there are a good amount of people who really do not like meditation and breathwork. For them, they find it triggering to their trauma, and playing around with their breath makes them more nervous and tense. From anyone I’ve heard that really has a dislike for either, they love to hum! They believe (and I know they are right) they can get the same vagus nerve stimulation from humming as with breathwork.

So, I offer this today to you — to add to your toolbox of trauma recovery journey resources. Give it a try! Send me a message if you do and let me know what you think. Just select the “Connect” tab from the website link below. I’d love to hear if it works well for you.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 7: Gaslight

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You’ve probably heard this buzzword throughout the past decade. Gaslight was a 1944 movie created from a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton. If you can stomach the film, the insight into the term we now use as a common verb “gaslighting” will make this concept very clear. At 14 years old, Paula, played by Ingrid Bergman, witnessed her aunt being murdered. After that trauma, she was sent to study opera in Italy. Years later there, she has a two-week love affair with a man who she falls in love with, and they marry and return to London to live in her aunt’s home that she has inherited. In order to help her with her traumatic memories in the home, her husband, Gregory, played by Charles Boyer, tells her to put all the house’s belongings in the attic and seal it up. With a criminal mentality and a desire to take these riches for himself, Gregory later goes into the shut-up attic himself to investigate all the pirate’s booty stored from the wealthy aunt’s estate. While up there, Paula is hearing the sounds in the attic, and the gas lights in the home start to dim as he creeks around up there. When she tells him this, he has to cover his tracks, so he lies and tells her she is imagining the whole thing. This is where we get the phrase “gaslighting”. He told her she must be seeing and hearing things because he didn’t see the gas lights flickering. It’s only the start of the many things that Gregory says to get Paula that have her slowly start thinking she’s gone “mad”.

This. Is. Psychological. Abuse.

There’s a broach she thought she had lost, which he actually stole. He tries to make her feel forgetful, so he moves a picture off the wall and tells her she moved it and that she must have forgotten. He hides a piece of jewelry, and then in front of everyone at a party, she pulls it from her handbag and gets hysterical thinking she stole it. After this meltdown, he decides it’s best for her not to go out in public, which starts an abuser’s favorite tactic: isolation.

This real-life process doesn’t happen in a two-hour movie time frame. This is a slow, manipulation over days, months and sometimes years. An abuser uses gaslighting as a control move to make the victim feel, through their lies, that they are going insane. Without having a trust in their own sanity, the victim begins to not trust themselves to do another else. It turns into a helplessness where now they rely more and more on their abuser because they think the abuser is the only one helping them. This can look similar to Stockholm Syndrome. In the movie, in order to “keep her safe” from herself, Gregory has a plan lined up to get her placed in an institution and take over the legal rights to the estate and her care, which would allow him full say over her life and inherited wealth. So dangerous. All this time, he is straight out lying to her making her think she is the one who has gone crazy. This is brainwashing. These are invisible chains.

When a detective, Inspector Cameron, played by Joseph Cotton, eventually gets involved in Paula’s life, he starts to piece together what is really going on. One scene I love goes like this:

Paula (distraught and hollering about the events): He said I was going out of my mind!!

Inspector: You’re not going out of your mind. You’re slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind.

Well, if that isn’t the truth! What’s the irony here is that it is so upsetting to think you are not mentally well, so when someone makes you feel like that even though you are well, you actually can start to feel confused enough to question the reality of everything. Everything becomes messy and garbled as if you are insane. It’s a terrible abuse that truly can make you mentally unwell even when you weren’t in the beginning.

This is one of the most common types of abuse techniques used. When the gaslighter’s control or abuse is recognized in the early stages of a relationship, the victim may speak out to their abuser. Gaslighting is a response like “trust me, I’m only doing this because I love you”. “Why are you being so sensitive?” “If you were better with spending, I wouldn’t have to do be in charge of the checkbook. I don’t even want to handle the finances, but you can’t do it, so I have to.” They will also straight out lie once they’ve gained trust. They’ll tell you a friend said something horrible about you to them and make you start questioning your outside relationships. Isolation and confusion are always what they are going for.

Any type of relationship can have gaslighting. From a boss, partner, child/parent, even friends. I have had a number of relationships where I have discovered I was being gaslit. A rule of thumb I use now in given situations is: When I’m in a discussion and I start to think “wait, am I going crazy?”, I stop and think “Gaslighting!!” And I end the conversation. Do I really think to myself, “am I going crazy?” Yes. There are people in my life that will twist me in a corner, and I actually have a cognitive thought about the confusion of my actions, words, perception. If they tell me “you didn’t say that”, and I start to wonder, “wait, did I say it or am I going crazy?” If they say “you’re being too sensitive, I didn’t even mean it like that”, my brain whispers “are you too sensitive or are you just going crazy?” It’s the strangest thing, but psychology calls this “crazy making” — something that draws your cognition, emotions, or feelings to start feeling illogical or not able to trust your perception. This makes you start wondering about reality all together. It’s very scary. Once in a while, it may truly be a miscommunication — but if I find myself thinking this over and over with the same person or in the same conversation, it’s time to run!

If you are in a relationship of any kind with someone who is a narcissist, you know this type of gaslighting behavior better than anyone! If you’ve had any type of experience with gaslighting, this is a type of trauma — a psychological abuse. This is not just something to brush off. You may still be struggling with lack of self-trust if you’ve endured gaslighting for any season of your life. This also makes you more susceptible to gaslighting relationships in the future, so it’s common if you’ve encountered multiple gaslighting traps. Maybe you are even still in one right now. Maybe because it’s gone on for so long and you love the person so much, you aren’t even sure if you are in a gaslighting situation, but you are wondering.

With any of this, and more, I’d love to help you discover the truth from the lies your abuser told you, help you rebuild the self-trust bridge inside yourself, and work through any narcissistic healing. Please reach out if you need support in this area. If not to me, to any professional who can help you get a reality check from the outside looking in. Be careful who you choose to talk to about this — because if they are close to and believing your abuser’s side of the story, they may confirm their lies and make you doubt yourself even that much more. On the “Connect” tab of my website, please send me a message if you have questions about this episode’s content.