Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mamma may I acknowledges the traditional owners of the land
and waters that this podcast is recorded on. Well, fitt
of stupid. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
You look fine?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I just get like really insecure.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Sometimes I feel right, but also from the fact that.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
When my mum and my dad got a divorce, my
dad convinced me that it was my fault and I
believe in for like three years. I'm gonna go get changed.
I don't relate to that part of you. Never told
me this.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
For Mother Maya. I'm your host, Ashani Dante. Welcome to
But Are You Happy? The podcast where Overthinking finally gets
the airtime it deserves.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
And I'm Doctor Anastagia hernis a clinical psychologist passionate about
happiness and mental health. Have you ever said things like trauma,
dump or casually claimed I'm traumatized. We've actually touched on
this before. How the word trauma has become kind of
a buzzword these days.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Oh totally. I've definitely had to stop myself from over
using those terms.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It's become a part of everyday language. But today I
want to unpack what trauma really means what PTSD looks
like and share some ways that people can get support.
We will be talking about trauma, so do listen mindfully.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
This is going to be a good one. Let's start learning. Okay, Anastasia,
let's cut to the chase. Trauma is a word we're
hearing everywhere right now, from therapy rooms, social media to
also just casually in conversations with friends. So I would
love to hear from your lens the psychologist, what actually
(01:47):
is trauma?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yes, let's unpack the word, the term before I jump
into talking about trauma. Though, I want to say, like
this whole episode, I guess the point of it, at
least from my perspective, is for us to help listeners
build literacy around trauma. Right. It's not about saying you
do have trauma, you don't have trauma. It's not the
(02:09):
Trauma Olympic. We're not comparing traumas, right. We really want
to kind of come about it sensitively and the goal
is to build an understanding and a literacy around the topic. Okay,
what I'm going to describe won't necessarily fit every single
person's experience. As we know with anything mental health related,
it impacts people differently. But if we unpack the word trauma,
(02:33):
it comes from the Greek.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
But for Greaks, Greeks, they're on it that.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I'm right, that's just me too. It's like I am Greek.
But a trauma literally means a wound. Right. So if
we just think physically for a moment, if we take
away like the psychological element of trauma, if we just
think physically, if we go to a hospital, there'll be
a trauma ward. Right. So this is for anyone who
(03:00):
has been wounded physically. When we talk about trauma in
the mental health sense, we're talking about psychological wounds. Okay,
So psychological wounds actually function very similarly to physical wounds. Right.
If I burn my arm and then someone touches it
(03:22):
before it's healed, that's probably gonna feel quite painful, and
it's probably going to be more painful if I have
third degree burns versus first degree burns. Right. So the
wors my wound is, the worst my trauma is, the
more it's going to hurt when someone touches it. Now
that applies psychologically. If I have a psychological wound as
(03:45):
a result of experiencing something in my life and someone
pokes it, or prods it. If someone says something to
me that triggers it. That's where the word kind of
trigger falls into all this. It's going to activate that
wound and it's going to hurt.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It's so interesting because as you're saying that, it reminds
me of when we were speaking about rejection the episode.
We did a rejection and we did unpack wounds, but
I actually didn't know trauma meant wound. Yes, absolutely, it's
always connected.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
So if I kind of flesh it out a little
bit more, trauma is a psychological wound, but it's essentially
the emotional, the psychological, or physical response to events or
circumstances that have been extremely stressful, frightening, distressing, or threatening
in some way, and a person in those situations feels
(04:35):
so overwhelmed that they feel they cannot cope, and so
that psychological wound is formed as a result of the
experiences they go through. Now, there are different types of
trauma right in the world of mental health. We sometimes
talk about big T little TA trauma.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Oh yeah, I've heard that term.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, So when we talk about big T trauma, so
this is tea with like a capital T. We're talking
about those events and circumstances that are undeniably traumatic, right,
So things like domestic violence, things like you know, growing
up in, things like abuse, right, things that we wouldn't
question whether they were traumatic events. But trauma isn't just
(05:18):
necessarily what happens to us, but kind of psychologically how
we cope with those events. Right. They're the big T traumas,
But we can also think about trauma with the lower
case tea. And this isn't to say that it's a
lesser trauma or anything like that, but these are emotional
traumas or attachment traumas. A lot of these develop very
(05:41):
early in life. We've talked before about needs, psychological needs,
emotional needs, so trauma can also develop when a young
child doesn't have their emotional needs met early in life.
And this doesn't necessarily mean that they're exposed to abuse
or anything like that. They might actually come from a
(06:01):
very loving family, but for whatever reason, that childs didn't
have their need for love, support, validation, empathy met in
their early years, and so they develop this emotional wound.
That's really important because that attachment trauma, that emotional trauma
stays with them through their life and can absolutely impact
(06:23):
them in adulthood.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
So where does PTSD come into all of this.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
So PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, is what it stands for.
It's a diagnosable mental health condition. So not everyone who
experiences trauma will develop PTSD, right, but everyone who has
PTSD has experienced trauma, Okay, So it's a very specific
(06:48):
diagnosable mental health condition. And there's a few criteria that
I'll talk you through for how we diagnose PTSD. So
someone has experienced a traumatic event or a series of
traumatic events where there has been either a real kind
of threat to their life or a perceived threat to
their life. And what we find is that there are
(07:09):
a whole range of symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares, reexperiencing symptoms.
So I might just sort of be suddenly sitting in
this chair and all of a sudden, I feel like
I'm back in that trauma experience. We see a lot
of kind of negative beliefs that develop about a person's
self or the world that they live in, or other people.
(07:32):
We see a lot of avoidance patterns, so naturally people
will start to avoid things that remind them of the traumas,
and there'll also be difficulties with mood and regulating mood.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So does that mean someone who has PTSD would avoid
a certain situation from playing out again? So what I
mean is, let's say a traumatic event happened in a
specific suburb, right, does that mean they'll forever avoid that
specific suburb.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
So often in the healing process and the treatment, we
try to gradually get a person to stop avoiding those things. Now,
the avoidance can be can be physical avoidance. So it
might be, as you said, I avoid going to a
particular area because that's where the trauma happened. But it
can also be an avoidance of internal experiences. So I
(08:22):
might avoid certain feelings, or I cut off when I
experience certain feelings because they remind me of the trauma,
or I avoid thinking about certain things. I sort of
like push them away as much as I possibly can,
because they again remind me of the trauma and I
want to avoid that. So we might practically avoid things,
but we might also internally avoid certain experiences.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
So you mentioned something around flashbacks and people going back
to the moment where the trauma played out. Can you
speak more to that.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yes, So this is what we call reexperiencing symptoms, and
this is quite specific to PTSD. So again, people who
have trauma but don't have PTSD will not necessarily have
these re experiencing symptoms. So these are episodes that really
kind of take over a person. They can be very
scary when someone is in the middle of it and
(09:17):
they come about without warning. That's I think what the
scary part is for a lot of people. So you know,
they'll just be suddenly like driving down the street or
you know, sitting at home watching Telly, and all of
a sudden, they have this flooding of reminders of the trauma,
and they have very vivid kind of memories and sensory
(09:39):
experiences that remind them of the trauma that it almost
feels like they're back inness that's how strong and overwhelming
it is. So it could be triggered by something like
a smell, It could be triggered by hearing someone's name,
It could be triggered by an internal feeling that they have.
But it's very overwhelming, and it's got to do with
(09:59):
how trauma memories are sort of encoded in the brain.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Look the way that I want to word this, I
want to make sure that I'm being really sensitive to
anyone that does have PTSD. But when it comes to reexperiencing,
do you feel like time does heal, Like you know,
from one year to five years, like the way that
you would relate to that event would be really different.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Right, Yes, and no, people who have PTSD, so they
have these very specific symptoms, time does not necessarily heal. Right.
So I've certainly seen people who have untreated PTSD. They
come to the clinic, their traumatic experience happened five, ten
(10:49):
years ago, and they are still experiencing these flashbacks, these nightmares,
these very strong re experiencing symptoms. We see it a
lot with people who are first responders, who've been maybe
like in the police force, veterans, or people who've experienced
severe trauma, where if it goes untreated, it doesn't necessarily
get better on its own. For people who have trauma
(11:12):
and don't have those specific PTSD symptoms, there can certainly
be that experience for some people that with time, different
perspectives develop, Different kind of healing processes might naturally occur
for a person, and their relationship with the trauma can change.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
So I've heard the term complex PTSD. Is there a
difference between that and PTSD?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yes, lots of terms. I'm glad that we're unpacking them. Yes,
so complex PTSD is really where we're talking about someone
who has experienced multiple, sometimes kind of prolonged or repeated
exposures to trauma. So this might be, for example, someone
who's had repeated experiences of trauma in their childhood, someone
(12:03):
again who's a first responder who's had repeated exposures to trauma.
So when we're talking about PTSD and trauma, it doesn't
have to be that there's been a threat to someone,
but that they've perhaps witnessed trauma. So when we think
about like you know, paramedics, for example, they're constantly being
exposed to and witnessing trauma, and I know they themselves
(12:25):
can be in some risky situations as well, but even
that aside, just the kind of witnessing trauma that has
that cumulative effect and that absolutely impacts someone and can
disrupt a person's kind of sense of self and sense
of self in the world as well.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
So it's really interesting because for me personally, I probably
about fifteen years ago, I got into a car accident
and it was pretty bad. I had it was like
a head on collision. I broke a couple of bones
in my wrist fractured top rip collapse along, So it
was pretty big deal. I've never been in a car
(13:02):
accident before, and I remember, you know, going through the
healing process and did all the things. I got surgery
and all of that, and eventually, once I was able to,
I was able to get back into the car and
drive independently, and I felt fine. But it's really interesting
because when even now, when I'm in the passenger seat
(13:22):
and yo, who's my husband?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
He might be.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Driving if because my reflexes are probably a little bit
faster than his, so I still do get a bit
hypervigilant in the car and my body goes into reaction
mode because I'm like, oh no. But it's interesting because
I wonder because my mind's like, oh, I can drive,
(13:46):
it's all good, But then my body's doing something different.
You know, there's some dissonance going on, you know. So yeah,
I just find that really fascinating.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
You know what you're reminding me of, which I think
is so relevant to trauma. It's it's control, right, And
I think what trauma really does to people is, in
no unst terms, highlights how little control we have in life. Right,
(14:16):
So when someone goes through trauma, it is an absolute
message of things can happen to us without our choice,
without our consent, and without our control, and we are
vulnerable to that. Really, no one chooses to go through trauma, right,
It kind of happens to us without our choice, without
our consent. So if someone's in a car accident, they're
not choosing that. If someone goes through abuse, they're not
(14:38):
choosing that it happens to them. And so it doesn't
surprise me that when you say you're in the passenger seat,
you might feel more anxious or more hypervigilant because you
have less control in that situation as opposed to maybe
when you're behind the wheel.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Totally totally and it's like I fully trust you and
he's driving abilities like we haven't got into a car accident,
and bless him, he's so patient with me as well.
But it is really fascinating, hey, and you.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Said it happened a number of years ago, right. The
brain and the body, I mean, they're fascinating things. They're interconnected.
But you know, as the book says, the body keeps
the skull. The body does keep the score.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
It really does.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
I think it's fascinating to think about trauma and what
actually happens in the brain and the body when we
go through trauma. And I love a bit of neuroscience,
so maybe we can unpack that.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
We love us some neuroscience.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yes, so let's talk a couple of things. First of all,
let's talk trauma and cortisol. Okay, So cortisol is a hormone.
We all have cortisol. It's in the body. It helps
regulate kind of bodily functions. Cortisol is produced in our
adrenal glands, which sit just above our kidneys. Okay, And
so cortisol does lots of things. It helps with our
(15:53):
blood pressure, it helps with sugar levels, it helps with
inflammation in the body, like, it does a whole range
of things. But during a stressful event, cortisole is released
and it prepares our body for that fidal flight moment.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It also sort of, you know, our body also kind
of stops doing other things like digestion and things that
are not necessary when we need to kind of prepare
to fights. Right, So we want all like kind of
our blood flow to go to our extremities to prepare
us to either run away or fight off the threat, okay,
And cordisole is absolutely activated during stress and trauma. It's
(16:30):
also kind of it stays elevated for a period of
time afterwards, and then it helps us kind of reregulate
our system. What we find for people who have been
through repeated instances of stress or trauma is that their
cortisole system becomes overly active, like it's being activated too much,
(16:52):
and people can end up having some kind of chronic
health conditions as a result of this. They can end
up with headaches, digestive issues, cardiovascular issues, a whole range
of things. If cortisol is being activated too frequently in
our body.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Is that kind of usually why like people get burnt
out as well, because the cortisol levels are spiked.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
It's what happens during burnout. So it's not just trauma,
but it's kind of a chronic stress. So if someone's
just in a you know, as we talked about now,
burnout episode, a state of stress for a long period
of time, whether that's with work, whether that's with life,
whatever it might be, our system, as it relates to
cortisole kind of goes out of whack.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Okay, So that's what's happening in the body. Well, what's
going on in the brain tell us more about what's
going on there.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
I find this bit fascinating. Okay, So the way in
which trauma memories are stored in the brain is different
to how other memories are stored in the brain. Okay,
So when we are in a stressful situation, when we're
in a traumatic situation, different parts of the brain work differently. Okay.
(18:05):
So the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain
that helps us with storing memory, is generally it's sort
of under active. And the amygdala, which is the part
of the brain that is very much involved with emotions
and senses, it's heightened, right, it's on alert. And so
what happens as a result of that is that when
(18:25):
we go through a traumatic experience, we encode very specific
parts of the trauma memory very deeply. So people who
go through trauma will often say, I can remember the
smell of the shop that I was in when the
trauma happened, or I can remember exactly what time it
(18:46):
said it was on the clock, or I can remember
this overwhelming rush of blood running through my body. Right,
they can remember these sort of sensory details with great detail,
but they often struggle to recall the traumatic event from
start to finish. They say, there are just gaps in
my memory. There are these blocks I can remember, you know,
(19:08):
say the trauma occurred inarticular place, I can remember walking
into it. I then don't remember what happened. Then I
remember the smell, then I remember someone screaming. Then I
have this blank period and then I was, you know,
in an ambulance at the end. So there, so it's
like a puzzle, but not all the pieces of the
puzzle are there.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
That's also like, as you're saying, that can be somewhat
validating for people who have gone through hard times and
not having the words to be able to articulate it
as well, because you can kind of doubt yourself a
little bit, being like, oh my gosh, like what actually happened?
I mean this is a slight tangent, but also it's
related to traumatic events like even let's say abuse, you know,
(19:49):
like you not actually being able to step through the
events right and it's like, okay, well are they going
to believe that person then because neurologically they couldn't actually remember.
So it's like where's the compassion in that.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Yes, yes, it's very hard to feel confident in yourself
or to not feel sort of confused by certain traumatic
experiences if you feel like your memory of it is
not solid. And it's all to do with just how
the brain encodes these memories, and it's why people get
those flashbacks and those re experiencing symptoms because the smell
(20:26):
you know of that shop is so deeply encoded that
then they walk past it years later, they get that
same smell and it brings it all back. For example,
I've worked with you know, veterans who say, you know,
they've they've they've been in battle, and there's a lot
of smells that are out there, and then they walk
(20:47):
past the butcher's shop and they are completely back in
a war zone because the smell of blood wow from
the butcher's shop reminds them of war. So and that
can happen years and years later.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
So what isn't trauma?
Speaker 2 (21:02):
This is a hard one to answer because I don't
want to sit here and say to people, like that
thing you went through, it's not trauma like you thought
it was, but it's not right, Like we're not able
to invalidate anyone's experience exactly exactly. And it's that idea
that trauma isn't just what happens to us, but it's
what happens inside of us and the psychological wound that
develops as a result of it. So you know, if
(21:24):
you go and watch a movie and you feel really
sad when you watch it, you know you're not traumatized
by it. You might have emotions about it, you might
feel overwhelmed by something, you might feel sad by something,
doesn't necessarily mean you're traumatized by it. I always come
back to this analogy of the wound. Does it feel
like a wound has developed for you as a result
(21:46):
of the experience you went through? Or did it just
feel really overwhelming and hard? But there's no wound that
stays with you, right, These wounds, we carry them with us,
they stay with us. They can be triggered up, they
can heal, but as I said, they function like physical
wounds that we might have. They're sensitive, they can be raw,
but they can also heal with time. So someone's kind
(22:09):
of questioning for themselves, isn't it trauma? Ask yourself the question,
do I feel like I've got a wound? As a
result of it that's stayed with me for a period
of time or was that just hard and overwhelming?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
So it's really interesting because I would classify myself as
someone that's highly sensitive and empathetic, right, So it's interesting
you talk about the wound aspect after something that's happened,
because then it gets me wondering, being like, okay, is
there because I know previously in episodes you talk about,
you know, certain diagnoses of mental health conditions, and usually
(22:46):
there's some kind of time period. So would you say that,
let's say, a wound lingers like, is there a specific
timeframe that it needs to be around for alw Is
it hard to kind of name something around that.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
It's hard to put a time frame on it. When
we think about those childhood traumas, those attachment traumas, those
emotional wounds, those can be around through our whole adult life,
particularly if they're not addressed. And the thing is that
a lot of the time, particularly with those childhood wounds,
they can be unconsciously being triggered up. Right, We don't
(23:20):
necessarily even have an awareness of them if we haven't
done some of that self reflective.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Work and that kind of ties in quite beautifully to
what I want to unpack a little bit more because
just around trauma responses, because why is it that some
people respond so deeply to trauma versus other people where
they might bounce back because I know you spoke to
the childhood part, but is there any other factors?
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yes, yes, so the childhood part is an important one, right,
And the reason for this is that when we go
through trauma as a child, we don't yet have the
cognitive capacity in the brain to rationalize parts of it.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
So that's not to say that adults are just rationalize away,
you know, any traumas they go through in their adult life,
But as children, we don't yet have that function in
the brain. What we do have is the function related
to emotion. Kids are very emotional, right, so they internalize
traumatic experiences in a more emotional and self identifying way.
(24:25):
They are the center of their own world. If something
happens to them, they internalize it as being potentially their
fault or because of them, or related to them in
some way, and it's a highly emotionally encoded memory. That's
different for adults, who have more of a capacity to
be able to rationalize. You know that person potentially was
(24:46):
abusive and that's because they're a bad person. Children can't
do that as well. Yeah, So to answer your question, yes,
when a trauma occurs, absolutely can impact sort of how
someone deals with it. There's always that genetic and biological vulnerability.
Some people are just more vulnerable unfortunately than other people.
(25:07):
Some people have additional adversity experiences in life, So we
think about adverse childhood experiences that just make it harder
for them psychologically to cope in life by no fault
of their own. I will also add to that that
the nature and the severity of the trauma can of
course impact how someone recovers from it. But there are
(25:30):
so many variances in all of that, right, Actually, one
more thing I will add. It's not just all the negatives, right,
it's also the protective factors that someone has in place
that can help.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
How much support do they have in their life? Do
they have spaces to be able to talk about the
experiences that they've gone through, Do they have positive psychological
resources that help them cope? You know, what are the
kind of protective factors that someone also has because that
can help them through the trauma.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
For me, what I'm really curious about is there are
a lot of phrases being thrown around in pop culture, Like, yes,
we spoke about just trauma, but more specifically terms like
let's say trauma bonding. You know, that's a term that
gets thrown around a lot, and I'd love to unpack
that with you. What actually is trauma bonding?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yes, so trauma bonding specifically comes up in the context
of relationships. So we're talking about trauma as it relates
to attachment between two people. And this is where there
is essentially some sort of pattern of abuse that is
occurring in a relationship and it results in this very strong,
(26:41):
but very unhealthy emotional bond between two people. So there's
two main factors that constitute a trauma bond in a relationship.
So one is this notion of a power imbalance, so
one person in the relationship has more power and control
(27:02):
than the other person. The second part is that there's
this pattern that gets played out where the person with
power will do some quite nasty things towards the partner.
But then they're also the person that kind of comes
to the rescue. So I'll give you an example what
(27:22):
I mean. Right, So say the person who has that
kind of power and control in the relationship says some
really nasty and derogatory comments to you know, their loved one.
They say, oh, what are you wearing that out for?
You look so ugly and that go and change. You
shouldn't be wearing that right, very nasty comments to make
that person goes off. They cry, they're upset they've changed
(27:42):
their outfit. The abusive partner then comes back in and says, Oh,
don't cry, didn't mean it that way. Let me give
you a hug. You know you're beautiful. You know it's okay,
you can wear that original outfit. Right. So I'm just
giving one small example, but it's the person who kind
of inflicts the abuse but then also comforts the person.
(28:03):
So people who are trauma bonded go through this roller
coaster in their relationship of highs and lows, and it's
through going through those highs and lows together that they
form this really strong, but as I said, unhealthy bond
between the two of them, and it also makes it
very hard to then leave that relationship.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
And it also is very confusing too, because they're playing
both roles of the inflictor but then also the rescuer
or the solver exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
And it doesn't just have to be between romantic partners.
It can be a parent and a child. This is
also what we see a lot happen kind of in
cults or in like Stockholm syndrome, where someone sort of
develops this attachment for the person who is essentially keeping
them captive or abusing them in some way. So there's
a lot we can say about trauma bonding, but that's
(28:54):
just sort of the outline of it.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
I feel like, just as you mentioned about cults, I'm like,
I feel like that's another whole episode. Oh yeah, yeah,
So what about trauma dumping?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Trauma dumping again?
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Is that a clinic.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I diagnosed you as trauma dumper? So again something that's
made its way into kind of pop culture. But I
guess we're referring to someone who has been through trauma,
is going through a hard time dealing with their trauma,
and obviously an understandably wants a space to talk about it,
but unfortunately what they do is sort of offload a
(29:30):
lot of that to friends or people in their life
without necessarily considering whether the person on the receiving end
in that moment has the kind of capacity or bandwidth
to actually receive all that trauma.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
It's interesting because I feel like I've definitely been the
kind of person where, you know, this isn't me pumping
up my own tires here, but where I don't know,
I feel like a lot of people share a lot
of things with me, and which is lovely.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
And then all good listener.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I'm a good listener, And it's an interesting one because
I mean, a lot of the time I don't mind it,
but I definitely I had a really tough period in
my life where emotionally, my capacity to listen to anything
was really hard. So it's interesting knowing what's the balance
between Okay, is this person trauma dumping or am I
(30:19):
just hearing them out? Which what I'm curious about too.
Is it more likely people that trauma dump is because
they're not getting the therapy that they need.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
It could be, Yeah, it could be absolutely, they're obviously
finding some benefit in talking about it. Yeah, totally so,
But when we think about trauma dumping, it's very kind
of like one sided. It's often kind of out of
context as well, right, Like you might be catching up
with a friend at a cafe and like suddenly they're
talking about something really quite emotionally intense and in depth,
(30:53):
and there's like people sitting, like, you know, a half
meter away from you having their breakfast. So it's kind
of out of context, and it's a bit like without
consent as well. It's not like your person is saying, look, hey,
I've been going through tough times. You mind if we
have a bit of a chat about it. I'd really love,
you know, just for you to hear me out, or
for you to give me Europea on things like. It's
not with the consent of the other person. It's just
(31:14):
sort of you know, drops literally just dumping it on there. Yeah,
sometimes it can also happen, I will say, because the
person who's been through the trauma might actually be somewhat
detached or desensitized to the traumatic experience itself. So for
them it doesn't feel like an overly emotional thing for
(31:36):
them to talk about or overly it doesn't feel overly traumatic.
And I'm not saying that they're not traumatized. I'm saying
that their way of coping might have actually been to
shut off from those emotions. But so it doesn't actually
feel that different to them, kind of like you know,
talking casually about a random topic over a coffee versus
talking about something traumatic, because the emotional difference isn't there.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
It kind of feels like in a way that you
kind of need to give a trigger warning before you
even have a conversation. Like let's say, you know, you're
at the cafe with your friend.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, yes, you need to ask the concent It's so
funny you talk about trigger warnings actually, because we certainly
went through the phase where trigger warnings were, you know,
before podcasts at the started podcast at the scd pation.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Absolutely, And if you notice nowadays, it's not really so
much of a thing because the research is actually not
there to support trigger warnings. You'll notice on this show
we don't provide trigger warnings. Sometimes we'll just say to people,
you know, listen, mindfully, take care of yourself. But it's
not a trigger warning because actually the research has shown
that trigger warnings are not that effective and they can
(32:39):
actually have the opposite effect. They can actually increase anticipatory
anxiety for people who might have some lived experience relevant
to the topic before the content is actually sort of
said or shown, So it kind of creates this this
anticipatory anxiety before they even watch the show or listen
to the podcast. So actually it's a good reminder that
(33:02):
just because something intuitively sort of seems like it might
be a good idea, the research is not always there
to support that it is.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
There. Doctor Anastasia is going to tell us why getting
the right kind of help for trauma is important and
how to do so. So where do we even start
when it comes to getting the right kind of help.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
I'm a big advocate for going to your GP as
the first point of contact, right They're the professionals that
will be able to help point you in the right
direction to getting the treatment that you need. But it
may involve seeing either a psychologist or a psychiatrist, or
sometimes a combination of both, depending on whether you have
(33:46):
trauma PTSD complex PTSD. Depending on what the diagnosis specifically is,
the treatment that you receive will differ, and definitely in
this kind of takeaway part here, I'm not here to
tell anyone that you can cure your trauma in the
ten minutes that you're going to spend listening to this
next bit. Because trauma is complex, it's complicated, it's deeply personal.
(34:08):
It affects people in so many differ diferent ways and
really needs to be handled quite sensitively. The good news
is that we have a lot of evidence based treatments
that show good effect when it comes to healing from
trauma and treating PTSD.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
So you mentioned before and a lot of your clinical
work that you've helped people move through trauma is I
guess what I'm trying to say is like, how do
you embrace life after trauma?
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Like? Can we yes? What does life after trauma look like?
What can it look like?
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Because it looks like a lot of different things. But
actually I like this conversation because there's something called post
traumatic growth, and I think this is important to bring
into the conversation because trauma gets talked about a lot,
but post traumatic growth doesn't necessarily get the same amount
of airtime. No. So post traumatic growth was a term
that was coined by two psychologists, Richard Tedesky and Lawrence Kloon,
(35:07):
and they developed this idea in the nineties. And it
was this this notion that there are key areas in
a person's life where after experiencing trauma, they can actually
have some positive moments of growth. And I kind of
want to say, revelation for themselves as well. So while
this is not at all to invalidate or take away
(35:29):
the pain of the trauma itself, but as part of
going through that healing process of trauma, there can be
post traumatic growth, which is nice to know.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
That is nice to know gives us hope. So what
does post traumatic growth actually look like?
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Yeah, so it's broken down into kind of growth in
five different areas of a person's life. And what I
sometimes recommend people to do is not just kind of
think about these five areas for themselves, but actually maybe
kind of do a little bit of journaling and self
reflection around these areas. So the first area that the
psychologists identified was around appreciation of life. So this is
(36:09):
the idea of someone kind of having this renewed sense
of gratitude for life. I mean, we hear this a
lot from people who may have gone through you know,
near death experiences or very serious illnesses. You know, people
who've survived cancer things like this, where on the other
side of their treatment, they kind of have this new
(36:30):
appreciation for life, This idea of like savor all the
small moments because you don't know when you know they
might be taken away from you. So some of the
questions you can kind of reflect on to help you
think about this. You know, are there any moments or
experiences in my life now that I value more deeply
post trauma as opposed to before my trauma? Are there
(36:52):
any things in my life that maybe I was taking
for granted that now I can reflect on and go,
you know what, I'm actually really grateful. I appreciate those
small moments in my day, the things that I was,
you know, just kind of going through my day passing
by and not thinking much about I really value and
appreciate them now.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
It really does give you a new perspective.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yes, absolutely, So that's the first one about appreciation for life.
The next one is about relationships and improved relationships. So
some people might find that with post traumatic growth they
have a greater sense of not just appreciation, but empathy
and compassion for others. Again, sometimes going through or witnessing
(37:34):
something traumatic does shift our perspective, and it shifts our
perspective not just on life, but how we relate to
other people and how we feel about other people's suffering.
We all suffer in life. It's part of being human.
We can't avoid it, but we can sometimes develop a
(37:56):
greater compassion for other people suffering. So you might ask
yourself questions to reflect on, like how have my relationships changed,
perhaps for the better post trauma? How have I changed
in terms of how I I show up in relationships
for the better post trauma? So again some kind of
prompts to reflect on.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
I love that. What about the third one?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
The third one is all about new possibilities.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
I like that one.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah, So again we see that sometimes people during this
post traumatic growth phase might consider new experiences, new hobbies,
new life paths that they hadn't considered before. It might
be that they try out a new career, it might
be that they try new activities. There's this kind of openness,
(38:44):
you know, if we think about that personality structure that
we've talked about before, that personality trait around openness, we
find that in post traumatic growth some people might have
a new sense of openness to different things in their life.
So again you can kind of reflect on what new
interests or hobbies or opportunities could I discover in this
(39:04):
post traumatic growth phase. They're maybe kind of bigger pursuits
in my life life that I'd forught about or considered
prior to the trauma that now I feel like I
have some sort of motivation to pursue further.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
It's really interesting and again it kind of I know
you already spoke to it around you know, it's not
around diluting, you know, or invaliding people's experiences of the
trauma traumatic events that they've gone through. But there was
something you mentioned before around this is happening to me
and a really a reframe as well on that is
also wise, this happening for me, and it's like, oh, okay,
(39:40):
what are the lessons I'm getting? And you know what
you're already speaking to is you know, this is a
renewed sense of purpose and perspective and character as well,
which is it's really nice to see that side of
the equation too.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yes, absolutely, absolutely, Okay, what about the fourth one. The
fourth one is all around personal strength. And when I
say personal strength, I'm really kind of referring to these
internal characteristics around you know, resilience, a sense of being
able to to survive difficult things, right, these kind of
(40:13):
character strengths that we can lean on that go. You
know what, I'm really proud of myself for having these
personal character traits and these personal strengths. So you could
ask yourself about what situations post trauma have I been
through where I've really kind of been impressed with myself
or surprised myself with how well I've dealt with that,
or how well I've coped with it, or I feel
(40:35):
with how resilient I've been as a result of it,
or what sort of skills or qualities within myself have
I further developed and refined. That I'm really proud of
myself for.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
I love that. I mean, I'm really loving all of these.
I'm actually really excited to do this maybe on my
train ride.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yes, do some journal out the journal?
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Get out the journal, Okay.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
And then the last one is about kind of spiritual
or existential change. So when I say spiritual, I don't
necessarily mean religious, although it can be for some people.
But it's this idea of some times something bigger than us, right,
this sense of having some sort of purpose in life,
that there's maybe something bigger than us in life, and
(41:20):
these existential thoughts that can come about that are not
necessarily dark and scary but can actually be really helpful
for us. So this one is all about meaning, purpose
and values. As we come back to very often in
our chats, this kind of reframing of what are my values,
What are the things that are deeply important to me?
(41:41):
How can I lean further into those into my life
post trauma? What is my sense of purpose in life?
Where do I find my purpose in life? How do
I find that? How do I lean into it? So
all these kind of bigger picture, more sometimes existential questions
can be helpful for people to reflect on to feel
that deeper sense of meaning post trauma.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
It's like what they say around like how often you
can find your purpose from? Yes as well?
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Yes? If I can share an example from one of
the best books I ever read, Man's Search for Meaning
by Victor Frankel. He's a psychiatrist in World War II.
He's in a Nazi concentration camp, and he has a
manuscript that he's written of a book, and he wants
to publish it and release it to the world. And
for him, this is this big sense of purpose and
(42:34):
having that purpose psychologically helps him through all the trauma
that he experiences. And then you know, post surviving the war,
he's able to kind of pursue that. But He talks
a lot about this sense of holding onto meaning and
being able to find meaning during and post trauma as
a way to help us through it.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
After this shortbreak, we hear from a listener whose friend
keeps trauma dumping on her and she's not sure what
to do. Stay with us.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yabbib biby empowering serious Christian BRB having a crisis.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
We've reached that time in our episode where we answer
a question or dilemma from one of you, our listeners.
This dilemma comes from Tina.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Every time my friend and I catch up, the conversation
turns heavy, she ends up traum dumping, and honestly, it's
starting to wear me down. I care about her and
I do want to be there, but I'm not always
in the right headspace to take on so much. Lately,
it's been affecting my own mental health, and I'm not
sure how to bring it up without hurting her feelings
(43:43):
or making her feel like I don't care. I just
need a bit of balance. How do I set boundaries
without making her feel like I'm shutting her out?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Oh, Tina, Oh, this is hard, this is hard. Absolutely, Look,
I understand the situation that you're in. It sounds like
you're a good friend because you keep catching up with her,
but you obviously want to balance your needs as well
as her needs. So look, I think if in doubt,
(44:12):
have a conversation. That's kind of my takeaway here. Maybe
just choose a time and place to have a conversation
with your friend about this. It's obviously a big topic
and a sensitive topic for her, so approach it with sensitivity.
But I would encourage you just sort of reflecting back
to her a bit of what you've heard her say,
(44:32):
you know, So like, look, I know you have been
going through a really hard time with your ex, through
this divorce, and it's really all consuming, and you've been
telling me a lot about it, right, So just like
just tell her what she's been telling you so that
she knows you're listening, and then let her know your limits,
you know, lean into I love you as a friend,
(44:55):
I want to be here to support you, but there
are just some times where I don't have the capacity
to be that ear for you, to listen to what's
going on, or to be able to sort of provide
you with the support and advice and guidance that you
perhaps you need. In that moment you know, I love you,
but I can't always do it, and then kind of
ask for some sort of shared understanding, right like, because
(45:18):
this is some sort of like negotiation process you want
to you want to engage in, so you know, is
it okay that if you feel like you want to
talk about the divorce and your ex, that you tell
me that that's what we're going to chat about, so
that I can let you know if I've got capacity
in this day or in this moment to be able
to talk with you about it, And is it okay
(45:39):
if you sort of understand that maybe sometimes there's going
to be situations where I've just got a lot going
on in my own head that I'm not going to
be able to be that emotional support for you. To
see how she responds to that, you could also follow
up with trying to help her find other supports, you know,
like other other friends or other people you can get support, advice,
guidance from. Have you considered talking to a professional about this?
(46:02):
You know there are other ways in which you can
really look after you. Because I do care about you.
I just need to communicate with you that I have
my limits too.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Luck Tina with the conversation. We know you're going to
do so well. Atastasia, can you reiterate the main takeaways
from today's episode?
Speaker 2 (46:22):
So, first of all, it's important for us to understand
what trauma is and what trauma isn't. Second, trauma can
develop into PTSD or complex PTSD. Third, sharing and talking
about trauma has a place in friendships and relationships, but
with boundaries. And lastly, if you get the right help,
(46:43):
you can overcome trauma and really thrive in your life.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
If you have a burning question for us, there's a
few ways to get in touch with us. Links are
in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
And remember, while I am a psychologist, this podcast isn't
a diagnostic tool, and the advice and ideas we present
here should always take into account your personal medical history.
The executive producer of But Are You Happy is Naima Brown.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
Our senior producer is Charlie Blackman.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
Sound design and editing by Jacob Brown. I'm a Shandy
Dante and I'm doctor Anastagia heronus. The names and stories
of clients discussed have been changed for the purpose of
maintaining anonymity. If this conversation brought up any difficult feelings
for you. We have links for more resources in the
show notes around the topics we discussed today. You can
(47:29):
also reach out to organizations like Lifeline or Beyond Blue
if you're wanting more immediate support. Tune in next week
to learn why rejection hurts so much and how we
can start challenging those negative thoughts it stirs up.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Thanks for listening, See you next time.