March 3, 2025 • 25 mins
The episode delves into the importance of validating emotions, seeking support, and building self-trust, providing a raw and inspirational perspective on personal healing.
Becca shares how a high-stress work project reopened old wounds, and how, through trauma therapy and internal family systems (IFS), she managed to navigate and process her emotions differently this time.
00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
00:36 Reliving a Traumatic Event
01:26 The Stressful Work Project
03:13 Coping Mechanisms and Self-Trust
04:30 Emotional Breakdown and Seeking Help
05:58 Conversation with Shame
14:21 Reflection and Healing
24:02 Building Self-Trust and Validating Emotions
25:42 Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Golden Girl, a space where we dive deep into health, healing, connection, and
(00:06):
community.
I'm your host, Becca Golden, and this podcast is all about sharing and documenting my journey.
Each episode, we'll discuss topics like health and wellness, what I'm learning in therapy,
work-life balance, relationships, community, and all the ways I strive for more aliveness
and presence every day.
Let's dive in.
(00:27):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to another episode of Golden Girl.
This episode, I have Madeline here with me.
Hi.
And I'm just going to tell Madeline a story about something that happened earlier this
week because I had an opportunity to basically relive a traumatic event, and I now have a
(00:50):
lot of tools that allowed me to move through the triggering experience very differently
than I used to.
And I'm really proud of myself for how I handled it, and it's such a testament to how much
I've learned and grown in this past year of trauma therapy.
It was a wild experience, and I'm really proud of it.
It's so easy to focus on where we still need to improve, but I'm glad that we're taking
(01:16):
a minute to focus on a small victory.
This is a huge victory.
Even better.
It's a huge, huge victory.
I'm very proud of myself for this.
Okay.
So, story.
So, at work, every three years, I have this huge project that comes to a close, and I usually
spend about a year on this project, and so the stakes are pretty high.
(01:39):
It's just a really important thing, and as it comes to a close, it becomes very stressful
and intense.
And three years ago, when I went through this project coming to a close, it was so traumatic
for me, that's what launched all of these events that started my health spiraling out
(02:00):
of control.
This specific project played such a huge role in it, and when I was going through that experience
three years ago, I had a lot of days where I would be on back-to-back video calls over
Zoom for hours on end, and I would ignore all of the needs and signals from my body.
What I do for my job, for work, like I'm in tech.
(02:23):
These are not lives that we're saving, so just take that into consideration when I say
that these were important calls.
Lives were not at stake, but in the context of what I do, this was very, very important,
and I felt the pressure of it, and I put a lot of the pressure on myself three years
ago, and it broke me, and I really couldn't recover.
(02:46):
And when I used to have those days, I would go through the day, and when I was finally
off of the video calls, usually around 8pm, I was off of video calls, and then I would
just feel really stuck and frozen, and then I would have another couple calls not on video
where I was debriefing and making food for myself, making dinner the first meal that I
would have eaten, or sometimes all I had was peanut butter for dinner because I didn't
(03:07):
have groceries because I hadn't had time to shop.
I had no time because I was glued to the computer screen.
So this time around, now I've gone through over a year of trauma therapy, I'm actively
working on my nervous system, and I'm actively working on this concept called building self-trust.
This is something that I've talked about in previous episodes, we talked about it during
(03:28):
the San Diego trip episode a lot, and this is kind of how it works.
It's like, okay, I need to build trust with these inner voices inside of me, I need to
teach them that they matter, and that their needs matter.
So this time around, this past week, I was bringing this project to a close, and earlier
this week there was a day, and I didn't expect this day to go like this.
(03:51):
I didn't have a jam-packed calendar day, but calls popped up and things popped up, and
last minute I ended up having a day of back-to-back video calls where I didn't have time to go
to the bathroom, I didn't have time to make any food for myself, I didn't have time to
do anything, and by the time the day was over, it was like 8.30pm that I was finally off
(04:12):
of all these calls, and I didn't have any food made, I made myself food, and I was just
like, I felt really frozen and stuck.
I was just in these days, and I felt the familiar temptation to just keep all of that inside,
and like not process it.
My nature is to numb and suppress my emotions.
(04:35):
After a long day like that, I was so depleted, like my body physically hurt.
I was so exhausted, so then I'm making dinner, and in my head, I'm like starting to spiral
because I'm thinking to myself, it's 8.30pm, I'm supposed to eat dinner two hours before
bed, I'm supposed to take my binder two hours after I eat dinner, but before I go to bed,
(04:58):
I was so delayed, I had been looking at bright lights, which affects my circadian rhythm,
and it was late, I had found myself in this place of having made all these decisions that
were not in alignment with my health goals, and I was starting to spiral about how upsetting
that was, but I just like kind of stopped that in my brain and just decided not to think
(05:19):
about those things.
And I finally made dinner, and I just like, I couldn't even sit up to eat dinner.
I brought my bowl to the floor, and I just like laid on the floor, I couldn't even eat
it, and I was just, I felt like I was so stuck, and I could feel tension inside me, I could
feel my body was hurting, and I was so exhausted, but I also felt things, emotions, and that
(05:43):
just didn't happen the first time around.
Three years ago, I wasn't feeling anything.
What were you feeling?
I didn't know, but I knew there were feelings, and I could feel that I could either numb
them and suppress them, which was tempting, that felt very enticing, but this time there
was an alternative, and I knew that this feeling of like so much overwhelming tight
(06:05):
stuckness, I was like, oh, that means I have emotions that I have to release.
I knew that I had emotions that I had to release from that, but I didn't know how
and I was exhausted and scared, and so I called my dad.
I was like, hi, I need to let out my emotions, and he's like, okay.
Why do you think you called him rather than just trying to sort this out on your own?
(06:28):
I couldn't.
I was just stuck, and I do eventually get to that, but it's kind of like a phone and
a friend moment, like when you're in danger, if something bad happens to you, it's a lifeline.
So he's so caring, he's like, well, tell me about what happened.
So I'm like, I had this stressful day.
(06:48):
It reminds me a lot of what happened three years ago, and I feel like I ignored my needs,
and I'm just starting to say all this out loud, and then I'm like, and I know I need
to cry about it to let out all this emotion, but I can't cry, so I need to just cry.
And then as soon as he started responding to me, I started crying violently.
(07:10):
I was like shaking on the floor, crying, like pouring out whatever emotion was in me.
So then as I'm crying, I wanted him to know that I knew that the circumstance wasn't actually
bad.
So as I'm crying and just feeling really just the stress of the day, I'm finally getting
(07:34):
the stress of the day out of me.
I'm saying to him, I know that it was just one day.
I know that this is not what my day looks like every day.
I know that it's not going to look like this tomorrow.
I know that this was temporary, and that it will all be over tomorrow.
However, I feel shame for having had a day that is not in alignment with my health goals.
(07:56):
I feel ashamed of myself for having a day that I swore to myself I would never have
again.
I swore that I would never be a workaholic again.
And in trauma therapy, I do something called IFS, it's called internal family systems.
And it's a way of organizing your inner psyche so that every emotion you're feeling can
(08:17):
have a persona.
And a lot of people will do it with their inner child.
Your inner child is a separate persona from you.
You are the current you, but your inner child is separate from that.
It enables you to have a conversation with your inner child, for example.
But the way that I go through it is I have a conversation with an emotion of mine.
(08:40):
And this is so helpful for me because my experience, I have so many conflicting emotions.
I'll feel guilt and I'll also feel really proud for something, for the same thing.
And that's so confusing to unravel.
So if I can separate the guilt and the shame and the pride and talk to each one as an individual,
it really helps me.
So back to the story.
(09:01):
Because I'm telling my dad all this, I'm like, I had this stressful day.
I ignored all of my needs.
I am beating myself up over it.
I feel guilt.
I feel shame.
I feel shame for the way that I went about my day today.
And I was trying to just tell him that because I was trying to get to the bottom of what
(09:22):
emotion am I bottling up?
What emotion am I suppressing?
So I'm feeling this shame for having allowed myself to have a workaholic day that I had
promised myself I would never do.
So I was ashamed of myself for doing that, for breaking my boundary or whatever.
So then he says, this might not be helpful, but if you think about it, when you know there's
(09:46):
people who might be on a diet and they have a cheat day or they break their diet and it's
not the end of the world.
It's like they're on this diet and maybe they mess up.
Maybe they accidentally eat something that's not in line with their diet.
But then the next day they start over again.
So there's really nothing to be ashamed of.
(10:07):
You had a day and tomorrow you'll be better, but you don't need to feel ashamed of that.
And the way my immediate response fought back to that, I said, no.
And here's why.
And I'm really proud of this.
And the reason for this is because obviously that's such a sweet, compassionate response,
(10:29):
totally reasonable.
But what I work on in trauma therapy and what I've been working on for my nervous system
is validating my emotions.
So what he was saying, and I didn't even have to think about it, my initial instinctual
reaction was, no, you are invalidating my shame.
My shame matters.
I need to talk to my shame and I'm not going to tell myself that this was nothing to be
(10:54):
ashamed of because that invalidates my shame's existence.
And then I have to validate it.
And he was like, okay.
Like he didn't mean anything.
So he was like, okay, what do I say?
And I'm like crying through this.
And I didn't know I was in such a crazy place.
This all happened in a matter of like seconds.
I'm crying.
So he's like, okay, I don't know what to say.
(11:15):
And I'm like, don't say anything.
I think I need to talk to my part.
I think I need to talk to the shame.
And he's like, okay, what do I do?
I'm like, nothing.
And I said, I need you to be a witness.
And it just came out of me.
I didn't even think about it.
It's just, I knew immediately, do not invalidate my shame.
I need you to be a witness.
(11:36):
And I can't believe I said that, but it is something that I've learned in therapy is
that I really love to have a witness.
I don't like to process difficult emotions completely on my own.
It feels really scary and isolating.
I need, I find a lot of comfort in having someone with me through it.
And I didn't know that that was why I was calling him at first, but I think that was
(11:59):
why.
And so I said, I need you to be a witness.
And he's like, okay.
And I'm like, can you just, do you mind just listening while I talk to my shame part?
We're going to talk to it.
We're going to just, we're going to talk to the part like it's a person.
He's like, all right.
So I'm like, hi, shame.
What's up?
I know you're here.
What are you trying to protect me from?
(12:20):
Like, what is it that you're trying to protect me from?
And the shame immediately is like, I'm trying to protect you from being a workaholic.
And I said, okay, thank you for trying to protect me from being a workaholic.
I appreciate that.
I also don't want to be a workaholic.
And the shame's like, okay, good.
Well, you have this crazy day.
So and I'm like, yeah, I know.
Just so you know, I chose to have that day today.
(12:42):
I know that it might have seemed like I'm becoming a workaholic again, but I chose
to get on those calls back to back.
I chose to take on that stress for one day because I knew it was temporary.
And the shame was like, oh, I didn't know it was temporary.
I didn't know that you chose that.
I thought it was happening to you.
And I said, nope.
I knew what I was doing.
I decided to have a day like that because I know that tomorrow I'm going to do better.
(13:04):
And the shame was like, okay, so you're not going to be a workaholic anymore.
And I'm like, no, I'm still not going to be a workaholic.
And it said, okay, well, I felt betrayal from you because you told me that you wouldn't
have a workaholic day like this.
And you did.
And that broke trust with us because you did the thing that you told me you weren't going
to do.
And that hurts my feelings.
(13:24):
And that makes me feel betrayed.
And I said, I understand that you'd feel that way.
I'm sorry that I broke the trust.
I'm sorry that I did actions that I said I wouldn't do.
I didn't deny it.
I just validated the shame.
Right.
So basically this whole conversation is just me saying to the shame, thank you for being
here.
I validate your existence.
I appreciate what you're trying to protect me from.
(13:47):
And I'm on the same page as you.
I also don't want to be a workaholic.
And then the shame went away.
And then you felt immediately better.
Yeah.
Wow.
And my dad was like, what the hell just happened?
I love that.
Kudos to your dad.
And the fact that you said, I just need you to listen and witness this with me.
(14:09):
And he said, okay, is really amazing.
That's really amazing.
And so then you felt better.
Yeah.
I think it's nice that I had someone that I could call who felt like a safe space for
me to just process whatever it was.
To do a really quick recap, I basically relived a traumatic experience.
And while I was in the thick of it, I could feel myself being pulled to repeat old patterns
(14:35):
that didn't serve me.
And instead, I didn't quite know what to do yet, but I knew I needed to do something.
I called my dad.
I reached out.
I did not isolate or withdraw.
I proactively sought a witness to just be with me while I figured out what it was.
I was in a very fragile place.
(14:55):
I felt the need to express my emotion.
I let out my emotion.
And then I validated my feelings that didn't align with the logic.
Like I knew logically.
No, but they were great.
It was just a day.
That dialogue.
But it was a feeling that needed validation.
And before I called my dad, I was just stuck spiraling in my head of like the logic playing
(15:18):
over.
It was not productive.
And all I needed to do is cry it out and validate that everything I was feeling was
valid and have a witness.
And it was so beautiful because I never did that before.
And to relive an experience that your nervous system perceived as traumatic and choose to
(15:38):
do it differently on the fly without even warning.
It's not like I knew this day was coming up.
But I chose it on the fly.
My body wanted to be better.
My body wanted to feel peace.
And my body knew that doing the really scary thing, just facing all of this emotion head
(15:58):
on and allowing it to be released for my body, even though that was not familiar to me, that
was a new pattern.
It is very scary to establish a new pattern.
It's so much easier to repeat a pattern that you know is harmful, but is familiar.
It's a lot harder to establish a new pattern.
(16:19):
And you can know the tools, but it's so easy to just fall back into your old, unhelpful
patterns.
And I didn't.
My instinct was not to.
My instinct was, hang on, let's wait a second.
There's another way.
And then I did it differently.
And I'm so proud of myself.
Here's the real question.
(16:40):
Did you eat dinner after?
I did.
But it didn't feel like I was eating to numb.
It felt like I was eating because I knew I needed nourishment and I felt like I had.
I had.
I heard it's wrong word, but.
I had processed all the emotions that were stuck and that created space to then feed
my body what it needed, nourishment.
(17:03):
Whereas before, three years ago, I would feel stuck and then I would make myself eat and
then I'd just feel more stuck.
I doubt my body was even digesting the food back then because you need to feel like you're
in rest and digest food.
But it's just, I was so proud.
I am so proud of myself because it seems like the simplest example.
(17:27):
You're upset, you call a friend.
The friend is like, well, it's just one day, nothing to worry about, don't worry.
And for some people that might feel invalidating.
Interesting.
But I never would have thought about that before.
Yeah.
Because I invalidated myself all the time back then.
Yeah.
So I didn't isolate.
I reached out for help.
I faced my fears.
(17:48):
It took a lot of courage for me to do this.
I was just so scared to cry it out, but I did.
How did you feel the day after?
Going through that day was so taxing on me because of where I'm at with my healing.
I don't have the stamina to have days like that very often.
And I had had a hard week leading up to the day.
(18:10):
The next day I felt really tired and burnt out and just depleted.
But I didn't feel stuck emotionally.
I didn't feel like I was carrying the trauma or the stress of that situation.
I was really tired, but I think if I hadn't reached out for help and I just kept all that
emotion in me and all the stress, it creates more health symptoms.
(18:34):
You have to process the stuff.
And I'm a highly sensitive person that I've learned that.
You didn't bottle it up.
You let it out.
I didn't bottle it up.
I let it out and I didn't withdraw.
I used to withdraw from people.
I used to isolate and I wouldn't want to answer my phone.
I wouldn't want to answer texts.
I proactively reached out for help.
And I knew that the help I needed was really within myself, but I knew that I needed support
(18:58):
while I processed it.
You did.
Yeah.
It was really beautiful.
Good.
After it all happened, my dad was like, I don't really know what just happened, but I'm glad
you're feeling better.
The funniest thing is as soon as I had gotten to this point, I was like, hang on, hang on,
I need to take notes.
Oh my gosh.
And the reason is because I block out my traumatic experience.
(19:19):
Sure.
And I didn't want to forget this.
This was traumatic.
I was really emotionally charged and delicate.
These are emotions from the deep, deep depths, the core of your heart, the trauma from years
ago.
This was the deep bad times.
These were the deep bad times and I was reliving it.
It's like a bad dream, but you do the dream differently.
(19:40):
So after it was done, I was just trying to write down what happened so that I didn't
forget how I had worked through each of those steps in my head because it really all happened
in the span of a few minutes.
I still think that conversation you have with the shame sounds super valuable.
It is.
And those are the types of conversations I have in therapy all the time with all of my
(20:01):
inner emotions and parts.
And sometimes it's parts of me who are different ages.
Sometimes it's parts of me who are different emotions.
I have discussions with my emotions as if they have their own point of view.
It's amazing how much they have to say.
Yeah.
And it's weird.
It took me a while to wrap my head around it because I'm like talking to my imaginary
(20:24):
friends in there, but you have to just let that go.
Go for it.
Yeah, just let that go.
And it opens up so much room for deep healing that I didn't know was possible.
Yeah.
Well, and I could see someone who doesn't know you who's just listening to this podcast
to buy a center saying, man, that sounds really silly.
That sounds goofy and weird.
But I think people who have that initial reaction are probably the ones that have a lot of emotions
(20:48):
that have a lot they want to actually say.
Or maybe there are people who just aren't so sensitive.
Some people, their emotions aren't as complex.
They just feel what they feel.
I think it's because of the way that I was raised.
I was conditioned to believe that my emotions weren't valid.
My emotions were too much.
My emotions were inconvenient.
(21:09):
I used to cry all the time.
When I was a kid, I would cry all the time.
I was constantly crying.
To the point where it just became annoying for my family to deal with.
It's like, she's always crying.
But it's because everything was always so overwhelming for me or upsetting for me or
I didn't feel like I had the ability to convey what my experience was.
(21:30):
I felt misunderstood.
There were so many reasons that I needed to cry, but I learned that crying was not appropriate
for all the situations.
And I learned to bottle up a lot of this.
So for people who weren't as sensitive as a kid and weren't taught that, maybe it doesn't
matter.
Well, maybe it does.
I don't know.
Maybe it does.
I'm glad that you cried and I'm glad that it washed away all the bad feelings.
(21:53):
It really did.
It was so beautiful and raw.
The next time this happens, the next time you have a unforeseen traumatic experience,
you will be equipped to phone a friend if you need a witness and to talk to your emotions
the way that you've practiced in trauma therapy in order to wash that away the next time.
That's the goal, right?
(22:15):
Yeah, and I would say it's not about washing it away because that's also maybe dismissing
them.
Okay.
Maybe the wrong phrase.
I want to be moving through the emotions and processing them instead of dismissing them
or suppressing them because for me, it's a new experience to honor the emotions that
I have that don't really have a logical explanation or the emotions that don't feel fair because
(22:40):
a lot of my emotions aren't fair.
A lot of my emotions don't feel justified.
I justify my way out of them, but I have to honor them.
I know that this is a big ask, but I would love if you recorded one of these trauma awakenings
because it's very vulnerable, but it really is so moving.
(23:02):
If that ever happens to you when you push record, I mean, I have recordings of me having
these revelations from over the last couple of years when I was just doing my documenting
of my unraveling of my health, but yeah, I would have recorded the whole thing if I
hadn't talked to my dad.
(23:23):
Yeah.
I didn't know I was going to have that.
Sure.
But yeah, I wish I could have recorded it.
I wish I had the podcast set up and it doesn't feel too vulnerable for me.
Part of my existence as a human is that I want to be seen for who I am, I want to feel understood.
The more tools I can give everyone else around me who's interested in knowing me to get to
(23:46):
know me, I want people to understand me at my core because that makes me feel good.
I would love it if people got to witness me moving through my trauma.
That sounds great.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
Wow.
Thank you for sharing that story.
We were talking about the importance of building self-trust.
(24:07):
Building self-trust means validating your emotions.
Yeah.
And saying no when someone is leaving you astray and you know that it's not the solutionizing
that you are looking for.
Yeah.
When someone is offering you advice that does not align with where you're at, I think it's
okay to say that advice doesn't make sense for me.
(24:28):
There are other people in my life who have a lot of mindset shifting that helps them.
We were talking about this before, but affirmations can sometimes feel like gaslighting to me.
If I'm telling myself over and over, there are a lot of affirmations out there that
you can find that are just repeating phrases to help teach your brain to believe in something.
(24:49):
But for me, if I don't believe the affirmation is true, it's very harmful for me because
that's just repeating gaslighting language in my head.
That's like telling myself a lie over and over that breaks self-trust.
Yeah.
I think whatever self-trust means for you is what you should focus on.
And for me, that means validating all my emotions.
(25:10):
Good.
Emotions validated.
Thank you for listening to my story.
I loved it.
You always validate my emotions too.
That wasn't what I expected.
What were you expecting?
I had no idea that communicating with your feelings was the way that you were going to
resolve bad feelings, and I'm really glad that you were able to recognize that that
(25:34):
was going to be helpful once you were able to recognize that it was a tool and then achieve
it.
So kudos.
Thank you.
That's it for today's episode.
Let us know if you want to hear more of my trauma healing adventures, and we'll see you
next time.
Bye.
Bye.
Welcome to Golden Girl, a space where we dive deep into health, healing, connection, and
(00:06):
community.
I'm your host, Becca Golden, and this podcast is all about sharing and documenting my journey.
Each episode, we'll discuss topics like health and wellness, what I'm learning in therapy,
work-life balance, relationships, community, and all the ways I strive for more aliveness
and presence every day.
Let's dive in.
(00:27):
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to another episode of Golden Girl.
This episode, I have Madeline here with me.
Hi.
And I'm just going to tell Madeline a story about something that happened earlier this
week because I had an opportunity to basically relive a traumatic event, and I now have a
(00:50):
lot of tools that allowed me to move through the triggering experience very differently
than I used to.
And I'm really proud of myself for how I handled it, and it's such a testament to how much
I've learned and grown in this past year of trauma therapy.
It was a wild experience, and I'm really proud of it.
It's so easy to focus on where we still need to improve, but I'm glad that we're taking
(01:16):
a minute to focus on a small victory.
This is a huge victory.
Even better.
It's a huge, huge victory.
I'm very proud of myself for this.
Okay.
So, story.
So, at work, every three years, I have this huge project that comes to a close, and I usually
spend about a year on this project, and so the stakes are pretty high.
(01:39):
It's just a really important thing, and as it comes to a close, it becomes very stressful
and intense.
And three years ago, when I went through this project coming to a close, it was so traumatic
for me, that's what launched all of these events that started my health spiraling out
(02:00):
of control.
This specific project played such a huge role in it, and when I was going through that experience
three years ago, I had a lot of days where I would be on back-to-back video calls over
Zoom for hours on end, and I would ignore all of the needs and signals from my body.
What I do for my job, for work, like I'm in tech.
(02:23):
These are not lives that we're saving, so just take that into consideration when I say
that these were important calls.
Lives were not at stake, but in the context of what I do, this was very, very important,
and I felt the pressure of it, and I put a lot of the pressure on myself three years
ago, and it broke me, and I really couldn't recover.
(02:46):
And when I used to have those days, I would go through the day, and when I was finally
off of the video calls, usually around 8pm, I was off of video calls, and then I would
just feel really stuck and frozen, and then I would have another couple calls not on video
where I was debriefing and making food for myself, making dinner the first meal that I
would have eaten, or sometimes all I had was peanut butter for dinner because I didn't
(03:07):
have groceries because I hadn't had time to shop.
I had no time because I was glued to the computer screen.
So this time around, now I've gone through over a year of trauma therapy, I'm actively
working on my nervous system, and I'm actively working on this concept called building self-trust.
This is something that I've talked about in previous episodes, we talked about it during
(03:28):
the San Diego trip episode a lot, and this is kind of how it works.
It's like, okay, I need to build trust with these inner voices inside of me, I need to
teach them that they matter, and that their needs matter.
So this time around, this past week, I was bringing this project to a close, and earlier
this week there was a day, and I didn't expect this day to go like this.
(03:51):
I didn't have a jam-packed calendar day, but calls popped up and things popped up, and
last minute I ended up having a day of back-to-back video calls where I didn't have time to go
to the bathroom, I didn't have time to make any food for myself, I didn't have time to
do anything, and by the time the day was over, it was like 8.30pm that I was finally off
(04:12):
of all these calls, and I didn't have any food made, I made myself food, and I was just
like, I felt really frozen and stuck.
I was just in these days, and I felt the familiar temptation to just keep all of that inside,
and like not process it.
My nature is to numb and suppress my emotions.
(04:35):
After a long day like that, I was so depleted, like my body physically hurt.
I was so exhausted, so then I'm making dinner, and in my head, I'm like starting to spiral
because I'm thinking to myself, it's 8.30pm, I'm supposed to eat dinner two hours before
bed, I'm supposed to take my binder two hours after I eat dinner, but before I go to bed,
(04:58):
I was so delayed, I had been looking at bright lights, which affects my circadian rhythm,
and it was late, I had found myself in this place of having made all these decisions that
were not in alignment with my health goals, and I was starting to spiral about how upsetting
that was, but I just like kind of stopped that in my brain and just decided not to think
(05:19):
about those things.
And I finally made dinner, and I just like, I couldn't even sit up to eat dinner.
I brought my bowl to the floor, and I just like laid on the floor, I couldn't even eat
it, and I was just, I felt like I was so stuck, and I could feel tension inside me, I could
feel my body was hurting, and I was so exhausted, but I also felt things, emotions, and that
(05:43):
just didn't happen the first time around.
Three years ago, I wasn't feeling anything.
What were you feeling?
I didn't know, but I knew there were feelings, and I could feel that I could either numb
them and suppress them, which was tempting, that felt very enticing, but this time there
was an alternative, and I knew that this feeling of like so much overwhelming tight
(06:05):
stuckness, I was like, oh, that means I have emotions that I have to release.
I knew that I had emotions that I had to release from that, but I didn't know how
and I was exhausted and scared, and so I called my dad.
I was like, hi, I need to let out my emotions, and he's like, okay.
Why do you think you called him rather than just trying to sort this out on your own?
(06:28):
I couldn't.
I was just stuck, and I do eventually get to that, but it's kind of like a phone and
a friend moment, like when you're in danger, if something bad happens to you, it's a lifeline.
So he's so caring, he's like, well, tell me about what happened.
So I'm like, I had this stressful day.
(06:48):
It reminds me a lot of what happened three years ago, and I feel like I ignored my needs,
and I'm just starting to say all this out loud, and then I'm like, and I know I need
to cry about it to let out all this emotion, but I can't cry, so I need to just cry.
And then as soon as he started responding to me, I started crying violently.
(07:10):
I was like shaking on the floor, crying, like pouring out whatever emotion was in me.
So then as I'm crying, I wanted him to know that I knew that the circumstance wasn't actually
bad.
So as I'm crying and just feeling really just the stress of the day, I'm finally getting
(07:34):
the stress of the day out of me.
I'm saying to him, I know that it was just one day.
I know that this is not what my day looks like every day.
I know that it's not going to look like this tomorrow.
I know that this was temporary, and that it will all be over tomorrow.
However, I feel shame for having had a day that is not in alignment with my health goals.
(07:56):
I feel ashamed of myself for having a day that I swore to myself I would never have
again.
I swore that I would never be a workaholic again.
And in trauma therapy, I do something called IFS, it's called internal family systems.
And it's a way of organizing your inner psyche so that every emotion you're feeling can
(08:17):
have a persona.
And a lot of people will do it with their inner child.
Your inner child is a separate persona from you.
You are the current you, but your inner child is separate from that.
It enables you to have a conversation with your inner child, for example.
But the way that I go through it is I have a conversation with an emotion of mine.
(08:40):
And this is so helpful for me because my experience, I have so many conflicting emotions.
I'll feel guilt and I'll also feel really proud for something, for the same thing.
And that's so confusing to unravel.
So if I can separate the guilt and the shame and the pride and talk to each one as an individual,
it really helps me.
So back to the story.
(09:01):
Because I'm telling my dad all this, I'm like, I had this stressful day.
I ignored all of my needs.
I am beating myself up over it.
I feel guilt.
I feel shame.
I feel shame for the way that I went about my day today.
And I was trying to just tell him that because I was trying to get to the bottom of what
(09:22):
emotion am I bottling up?
What emotion am I suppressing?
So I'm feeling this shame for having allowed myself to have a workaholic day that I had
promised myself I would never do.
So I was ashamed of myself for doing that, for breaking my boundary or whatever.
So then he says, this might not be helpful, but if you think about it, when you know there's
(09:46):
people who might be on a diet and they have a cheat day or they break their diet and it's
not the end of the world.
It's like they're on this diet and maybe they mess up.
Maybe they accidentally eat something that's not in line with their diet.
But then the next day they start over again.
So there's really nothing to be ashamed of.
(10:07):
You had a day and tomorrow you'll be better, but you don't need to feel ashamed of that.
And the way my immediate response fought back to that, I said, no.
And here's why.
And I'm really proud of this.
And the reason for this is because obviously that's such a sweet, compassionate response,
(10:29):
totally reasonable.
But what I work on in trauma therapy and what I've been working on for my nervous system
is validating my emotions.
So what he was saying, and I didn't even have to think about it, my initial instinctual
reaction was, no, you are invalidating my shame.
My shame matters.
I need to talk to my shame and I'm not going to tell myself that this was nothing to be
(10:54):
ashamed of because that invalidates my shame's existence.
And then I have to validate it.
And he was like, okay.
Like he didn't mean anything.
So he was like, okay, what do I say?
And I'm like crying through this.
And I didn't know I was in such a crazy place.
This all happened in a matter of like seconds.
I'm crying.
So he's like, okay, I don't know what to say.
(11:15):
And I'm like, don't say anything.
I think I need to talk to my part.
I think I need to talk to the shame.
And he's like, okay, what do I do?
I'm like, nothing.
And I said, I need you to be a witness.
And it just came out of me.
I didn't even think about it.
It's just, I knew immediately, do not invalidate my shame.
I need you to be a witness.
(11:36):
And I can't believe I said that, but it is something that I've learned in therapy is
that I really love to have a witness.
I don't like to process difficult emotions completely on my own.
It feels really scary and isolating.
I need, I find a lot of comfort in having someone with me through it.
And I didn't know that that was why I was calling him at first, but I think that was
(11:59):
why.
And so I said, I need you to be a witness.
And he's like, okay.
And I'm like, can you just, do you mind just listening while I talk to my shame part?
We're going to talk to it.
We're going to just, we're going to talk to the part like it's a person.
He's like, all right.
So I'm like, hi, shame.
What's up?
I know you're here.
What are you trying to protect me from?
(12:20):
Like, what is it that you're trying to protect me from?
And the shame immediately is like, I'm trying to protect you from being a workaholic.
And I said, okay, thank you for trying to protect me from being a workaholic.
I appreciate that.
I also don't want to be a workaholic.
And the shame's like, okay, good.
Well, you have this crazy day.
So and I'm like, yeah, I know.
Just so you know, I chose to have that day today.
(12:42):
I know that it might have seemed like I'm becoming a workaholic again, but I chose
to get on those calls back to back.
I chose to take on that stress for one day because I knew it was temporary.
And the shame was like, oh, I didn't know it was temporary.
I didn't know that you chose that.
I thought it was happening to you.
And I said, nope.
I knew what I was doing.
I decided to have a day like that because I know that tomorrow I'm going to do better.
(13:04):
And the shame was like, okay, so you're not going to be a workaholic anymore.
And I'm like, no, I'm still not going to be a workaholic.
And it said, okay, well, I felt betrayal from you because you told me that you wouldn't
have a workaholic day like this.
And you did.
And that broke trust with us because you did the thing that you told me you weren't going
to do.
And that hurts my feelings.
(13:24):
And that makes me feel betrayed.
And I said, I understand that you'd feel that way.
I'm sorry that I broke the trust.
I'm sorry that I did actions that I said I wouldn't do.
I didn't deny it.
I just validated the shame.
Right.
So basically this whole conversation is just me saying to the shame, thank you for being
here.
I validate your existence.
I appreciate what you're trying to protect me from.
(13:47):
And I'm on the same page as you.
I also don't want to be a workaholic.
And then the shame went away.
And then you felt immediately better.
Yeah.
Wow.
And my dad was like, what the hell just happened?
I love that.
Kudos to your dad.
And the fact that you said, I just need you to listen and witness this with me.
(14:09):
And he said, okay, is really amazing.
That's really amazing.
And so then you felt better.
Yeah.
I think it's nice that I had someone that I could call who felt like a safe space for
me to just process whatever it was.
To do a really quick recap, I basically relived a traumatic experience.
And while I was in the thick of it, I could feel myself being pulled to repeat old patterns
(14:35):
that didn't serve me.
And instead, I didn't quite know what to do yet, but I knew I needed to do something.
I called my dad.
I reached out.
I did not isolate or withdraw.
I proactively sought a witness to just be with me while I figured out what it was.
I was in a very fragile place.
(14:55):
I felt the need to express my emotion.
I let out my emotion.
And then I validated my feelings that didn't align with the logic.
Like I knew logically.
No, but they were great.
It was just a day.
That dialogue.
But it was a feeling that needed validation.
And before I called my dad, I was just stuck spiraling in my head of like the logic playing
(15:18):
over.
It was not productive.
And all I needed to do is cry it out and validate that everything I was feeling was
valid and have a witness.
And it was so beautiful because I never did that before.
And to relive an experience that your nervous system perceived as traumatic and choose to
(15:38):
do it differently on the fly without even warning.
It's not like I knew this day was coming up.
But I chose it on the fly.
My body wanted to be better.
My body wanted to feel peace.
And my body knew that doing the really scary thing, just facing all of this emotion head
(15:58):
on and allowing it to be released for my body, even though that was not familiar to me, that
was a new pattern.
It is very scary to establish a new pattern.
It's so much easier to repeat a pattern that you know is harmful, but is familiar.
It's a lot harder to establish a new pattern.
(16:19):
And you can know the tools, but it's so easy to just fall back into your old, unhelpful
patterns.
And I didn't.
My instinct was not to.
My instinct was, hang on, let's wait a second.
There's another way.
And then I did it differently.
And I'm so proud of myself.
Here's the real question.
(16:40):
Did you eat dinner after?
I did.
But it didn't feel like I was eating to numb.
It felt like I was eating because I knew I needed nourishment and I felt like I had.
I had.
I heard it's wrong word, but.
I had processed all the emotions that were stuck and that created space to then feed
my body what it needed, nourishment.
(17:03):
Whereas before, three years ago, I would feel stuck and then I would make myself eat and
then I'd just feel more stuck.
I doubt my body was even digesting the food back then because you need to feel like you're
in rest and digest food.
But it's just, I was so proud.
I am so proud of myself because it seems like the simplest example.
(17:27):
You're upset, you call a friend.
The friend is like, well, it's just one day, nothing to worry about, don't worry.
And for some people that might feel invalidating.
Interesting.
But I never would have thought about that before.
Yeah.
Because I invalidated myself all the time back then.
Yeah.
So I didn't isolate.
I reached out for help.
I faced my fears.
(17:48):
It took a lot of courage for me to do this.
I was just so scared to cry it out, but I did.
How did you feel the day after?
Going through that day was so taxing on me because of where I'm at with my healing.
I don't have the stamina to have days like that very often.
And I had had a hard week leading up to the day.
(18:10):
The next day I felt really tired and burnt out and just depleted.
But I didn't feel stuck emotionally.
I didn't feel like I was carrying the trauma or the stress of that situation.
I was really tired, but I think if I hadn't reached out for help and I just kept all that
emotion in me and all the stress, it creates more health symptoms.
(18:34):
You have to process the stuff.
And I'm a highly sensitive person that I've learned that.
You didn't bottle it up.
You let it out.
I didn't bottle it up.
I let it out and I didn't withdraw.
I used to withdraw from people.
I used to isolate and I wouldn't want to answer my phone.
I wouldn't want to answer texts.
I proactively reached out for help.
And I knew that the help I needed was really within myself, but I knew that I needed support
(18:58):
while I processed it.
You did.
Yeah.
It was really beautiful.
Good.
After it all happened, my dad was like, I don't really know what just happened, but I'm glad
you're feeling better.
The funniest thing is as soon as I had gotten to this point, I was like, hang on, hang on,
I need to take notes.
Oh my gosh.
And the reason is because I block out my traumatic experience.
(19:19):
Sure.
And I didn't want to forget this.
This was traumatic.
I was really emotionally charged and delicate.
These are emotions from the deep, deep depths, the core of your heart, the trauma from years
ago.
This was the deep bad times.
These were the deep bad times and I was reliving it.
It's like a bad dream, but you do the dream differently.
(19:40):
So after it was done, I was just trying to write down what happened so that I didn't
forget how I had worked through each of those steps in my head because it really all happened
in the span of a few minutes.
I still think that conversation you have with the shame sounds super valuable.
It is.
And those are the types of conversations I have in therapy all the time with all of my
(20:01):
inner emotions and parts.
And sometimes it's parts of me who are different ages.
Sometimes it's parts of me who are different emotions.
I have discussions with my emotions as if they have their own point of view.
It's amazing how much they have to say.
Yeah.
And it's weird.
It took me a while to wrap my head around it because I'm like talking to my imaginary
(20:24):
friends in there, but you have to just let that go.
Go for it.
Yeah, just let that go.
And it opens up so much room for deep healing that I didn't know was possible.
Yeah.
Well, and I could see someone who doesn't know you who's just listening to this podcast
to buy a center saying, man, that sounds really silly.
That sounds goofy and weird.
But I think people who have that initial reaction are probably the ones that have a lot of emotions
(20:48):
that have a lot they want to actually say.
Or maybe there are people who just aren't so sensitive.
Some people, their emotions aren't as complex.
They just feel what they feel.
I think it's because of the way that I was raised.
I was conditioned to believe that my emotions weren't valid.
My emotions were too much.
My emotions were inconvenient.
(21:09):
I used to cry all the time.
When I was a kid, I would cry all the time.
I was constantly crying.
To the point where it just became annoying for my family to deal with.
It's like, she's always crying.
But it's because everything was always so overwhelming for me or upsetting for me or
I didn't feel like I had the ability to convey what my experience was.
(21:30):
I felt misunderstood.
There were so many reasons that I needed to cry, but I learned that crying was not appropriate
for all the situations.
And I learned to bottle up a lot of this.
So for people who weren't as sensitive as a kid and weren't taught that, maybe it doesn't
matter.
Well, maybe it does.
I don't know.
Maybe it does.
I'm glad that you cried and I'm glad that it washed away all the bad feelings.
(21:53):
It really did.
It was so beautiful and raw.
The next time this happens, the next time you have a unforeseen traumatic experience,
you will be equipped to phone a friend if you need a witness and to talk to your emotions
the way that you've practiced in trauma therapy in order to wash that away the next time.
That's the goal, right?
(22:15):
Yeah, and I would say it's not about washing it away because that's also maybe dismissing
them.
Okay.
Maybe the wrong phrase.
I want to be moving through the emotions and processing them instead of dismissing them
or suppressing them because for me, it's a new experience to honor the emotions that
I have that don't really have a logical explanation or the emotions that don't feel fair because
(22:40):
a lot of my emotions aren't fair.
A lot of my emotions don't feel justified.
I justify my way out of them, but I have to honor them.
I know that this is a big ask, but I would love if you recorded one of these trauma awakenings
because it's very vulnerable, but it really is so moving.
(23:02):
If that ever happens to you when you push record, I mean, I have recordings of me having
these revelations from over the last couple of years when I was just doing my documenting
of my unraveling of my health, but yeah, I would have recorded the whole thing if I
hadn't talked to my dad.
(23:23):
Yeah.
I didn't know I was going to have that.
Sure.
But yeah, I wish I could have recorded it.
I wish I had the podcast set up and it doesn't feel too vulnerable for me.
Part of my existence as a human is that I want to be seen for who I am, I want to feel understood.
The more tools I can give everyone else around me who's interested in knowing me to get to
(23:46):
know me, I want people to understand me at my core because that makes me feel good.
I would love it if people got to witness me moving through my trauma.
That sounds great.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
Wow.
Thank you for sharing that story.
We were talking about the importance of building self-trust.
(24:07):
Building self-trust means validating your emotions.
Yeah.
And saying no when someone is leaving you astray and you know that it's not the solutionizing
that you are looking for.
Yeah.
When someone is offering you advice that does not align with where you're at, I think it's
okay to say that advice doesn't make sense for me.
(24:28):
There are other people in my life who have a lot of mindset shifting that helps them.
We were talking about this before, but affirmations can sometimes feel like gaslighting to me.
If I'm telling myself over and over, there are a lot of affirmations out there that
you can find that are just repeating phrases to help teach your brain to believe in something.
(24:49):
But for me, if I don't believe the affirmation is true, it's very harmful for me because
that's just repeating gaslighting language in my head.
That's like telling myself a lie over and over that breaks self-trust.
Yeah.
I think whatever self-trust means for you is what you should focus on.
And for me, that means validating all my emotions.
(25:10):
Good.
Emotions validated.
Thank you for listening to my story.
I loved it.
You always validate my emotions too.
That wasn't what I expected.
What were you expecting?
I had no idea that communicating with your feelings was the way that you were going to
resolve bad feelings, and I'm really glad that you were able to recognize that that
(25:34):
was going to be helpful once you were able to recognize that it was a tool and then achieve
it.
So kudos.
Thank you.
That's it for today's episode.
Let us know if you want to hear more of my trauma healing adventures, and we'll see you
next time.
Bye.
Bye.
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