February 18, 2025 • 50 mins
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Meredith Ball, a licensed professional counselor dedicated to healing trauma, joins us to unravel the intricate web of trauma's impact on our lives. In this episode, Meredith opens up about her own journey and sheds light on how trauma affects the brain, the underestimated power of neuroplasticity, and the generational gaps in acknowledging these wounds.
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Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On today's show, I'm speaking with Meredith Ball, who
is a licensed professionalcounselor and also really
passionate about trauma.
So in this episode, we go intodeep dives about what is trauma,
how does it show up inourselves, in our relationships?
We talk about how trauma movesor doesn't move through the
(00:20):
brain, what the goal of workingthrough trauma is and how you
can begin working through traumathat you've experienced, either
by yourself or work throughtrauma in relationship with
other people, how change ispossible and a better future is
possible, no matter what yourpast has been.
(00:41):
This was such an amazingepisode.
I learned so much and I'm superexcited to share it with you.
Let's dive in to this week'sepisode.
So, meredith, why is this topicof trauma so important to you?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So my journey with understanding trauma started
about a decade ago and I wasgoing through a divorce and I
sought out individual counselingand I had sought out some
marriage counseling before then.
Obviously that didn't get theresults I'd hoped for and so I
(01:18):
sought out individual counselingkind of out of desperation,
because I just felt out ofcontrol at times and I think and
I was in my early thirties atthat point and I'd had some
counseling here and there beforethen and I think that was the
first point where I was kind ofdesperate enough that I was
(01:38):
really willing to dig in and dothe work.
And so my counselor at thatpoint told me really kind of off
the cuff well, you're sufferingwith a lot of trauma right now.
And I think until that point,like I had some very vague
notion of what trauma was, but Ididn't understand that it's
(02:01):
this whole world of really whatthis was.
This was about a decade ago, soat that point I mean, we were
still really early on in what Iwould consider like a
neuroscience revolution.
And it helps the way we treatpeople with all kinds of brain
injuries, but it informs the waythat we do counseling, because
we're understanding how thebrain works and how trauma gets
(02:22):
stored in the brain and how youheal that, how the brain works
and how trauma gets stored inthe brain and how you heal that.
So once she said that, I kindof was.
For me it was kind of like amoth to the flame where I just
really latched onto that and Istarted doing.
Obviously it was a big part ofmy own counseling work which
really helped me.
But also I kind of geeked outon it.
Just read about it and you knowpodcasts were really taking off
(02:44):
about that time and like justkind of anything I could get my
hands on and learn about.
I did and ultimately went tograd school to get my own
counseling degree and a big partof that was me understanding
that, me understanding trauma.
But also the good news abouttrauma is that it can be healed.
(03:06):
So our our brains areneuroplastic, so we're not stuck
.
Whatever kind of suffering thatwe've gone through and how our
brains might've adapted to thator maladapted to that, we're not
stuck with it and I just thinkthat's really great news.
And so it's kind of become abig passion of mine to help
people find ways of bettercoping with life, not being
(03:30):
stuck with the brain that theyhave, but being able to do the
work and heal from that.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Did it scare you when your counselor said I feel or
it sounds like you're dealingwith a lot of trauma?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, I mean it sounded, it sounded weighty.
I didn't have yeah, I just Ididn't really have a conception
of what that meant.
You know, I think I would havethought of, you know, holocaust
survivors or torture survivorsor something like that.
So it, yeah, it became ajourney for me of learning how
to use that term.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah Well, so let's talk about that term.
What is trauma?
Define it.
What is trauma?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Trauma can be defined several different ways.
I think.
For me, the way I think of itis anything that happens to you
that overwhelms your ability tocope.
Um, another way to put it wouldjust be suffering.
Trauma is suffering, so thatcan be physical, that can be
emotional, that can be spiritual.
(04:27):
Any way that you're sufferingis trauma and it is subjective
to the person experiencing thetrauma.
So what would be traumatizingto one person wouldn't
necessarily be traumatizing tothe next person, and that has a
lot to do with their brainchemistry and things that
they've been through in the past.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
I hear several people .
I was at a party several weeksago and there was a gentleman
that my husband and I arespeaking with and he was like in
the military decades ago, youknow, like that kind of guy and
trauma came up and he said Ijust feel like that word is so
overused, like it's not, thesethings that people are calling
(05:11):
trauma aren't trauma.
And you hear that.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
What would you say to people who kind of are in that
mindset?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, I mean, I think it probably is overused.
I think trauma is overused andtrigger and narcissism and
gaslighting.
I mean there's a laundry listof words that are a lot of them.
Right, but I think that we haveto have those like that language
to have really meaningfulconversations and ultimately and
I do hear things like that likelet's just all not be sissies
(05:41):
and let's just, you know, muscleit up and live our lives and
not be sitting around andlooking at our trauma, and what
that sounds like to me isdissociation, right, Someone?
Who doesn't want to face theirtrauma, that's somebody that's
having a hard time facing theirown pain in their past.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
You know who I think of when you say that.
I think I'm like.
My grandmother would have beena person to say that and she
didn't talk about emotions.
Mother would have been a personto say that and she didn't talk
about emotions.
And you know like.
Like you know, she went throughtrauma.
I know she, you know, livedthrough the Great Depression and
World War Two and you know whathad an abusive husband for
several years of her life.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
you know, like I know she experienced trauma, but she
would have been one of thosepeople who's like yeah, I mean
the greatest generation, for allthe wonderful things that you
can say about them, because theyendured a lot and handed us a
really good legacy, but they didnot do emotions, no, and I
think they just did not knowwhat to do with their emotions.
When you look at the thingsthat you know people of that
(06:38):
generation lived through, likethe Great Depression and the
World War and all these kinds ofthings, I don't think they knew
what to do but to press thatdown and just kind of keep on
keeping on, which can work for atime, but it doesn't ultimately
work.
I mean, you're just living,you're just kind of getting by.
You're not really living lifeIf you haven't addressed the
(07:00):
pain that's happened to you andworked through it, faced into it
and worked through it.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So if a couple of definitions, like working
definitions, to go from, traumais suffering, trauma is being
how did you say it?
Overwhelmed.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Anything that overwhelms a person's ability to
cope.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Ability to cope.
The other thing you hear is bigT, little t trauma.
So do you think, if trauma issubjective anyway, do you think
there's a difference in like bigT trauma, little t trauma?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I think that sometimes you know, like
anything, you have thecategories and then you find all
the exceptions to thecategories.
I ultimately don't know if bigT and little t trauma is super
helpful, but I think it isgetting at the fact that there
might be something differentbetween, like I was in a
helicopter crash, which would bea big T trauma, or you know
(07:55):
somebody, somebody dismissed mewhen I was in middle school.
You know, I didn't, I got cutfrom the middle school
basketball team or somethinglike that.
That might be a little littletrauma.
So I think it does recognizethat there can be degrees of
suffering that can sometimes behelpful.
Sometimes that's not helpful.
Sometimes if it hurts, it hurtsand you need to face into that
and there's only so much valuein comparing your suffering to
(08:16):
somebody else's.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, I can see that.
I think of our friends Davidand Debbie Matthews and the
grief work they do, and one ofthe things I love that they have
said is it's not helpful to tryand compare grief or compare
losses.
Like a loss is a loss, right,and some losses are harder than
others and, more you know, moreterrible than others.
(08:39):
But like Right, a lot of youknow they can, many can be hard.
A job loss can sometimes becompletely devastating to
someone to where, to someoneelse, they would just be like eh
.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Right, exactly, and some of the original trauma work
was done, you know, 20, 25years ago.
Well, it was.
It was started in the 70s and80s by a man named Bessel van
der Kork and 80s by a man namedBessel van der Kork and he
originally kind of he didn'tdiscover trauma, but he started
to conceptualize of it in theway that we do and started
experimenting with treatmentswhen he noticed the way combat
veterans from the Vietnam Warthey all seem to display similar
(09:20):
characteristics of PTSD andwere resistant to certain
treatments and did better withcertain treatments.
So he worked with thatpopulation, I believe in the 70s
.
By the 80s he had moved on to alot of survivors of sexual
assault.
Once again he found thatsurvivors of sexual assault
(09:40):
displayed similar symptoms ofPTSD as the combat veterans and
that some treatments work betterthan others.
So that was a part of his work.
So that was where we kind oforiginally um, started
conceptualizing trauma andtalking about it.
Since then the conversation hasevolved a good bit to talk about
what if I haven't actually beenin a horrible car crash or been
(10:02):
the victim of a sexual assault,but my family was just really
dysfunctional, right Like.
My parents loved me but I hadto earn their approval.
Or my dad was there physicallybut he never displayed any kind
of emotional connection oraffection.
Kind of like a death by athousand cuts is kind of a
metaphor there.
That could be just as traumatic.
(10:23):
It could actually be moretraumatic, because that was the
way you lived life for a periodof time.
You know, if that's all youknew for the first 20 years of
your life and that's create andyour brain has adapted to that
in a certain way and it's madeit difficult for you to go out
in the world as an adult andform attachments, well then
that's trauma.
(10:43):
And there's not, you know,there's not a car, there's not a
crash report to look up oranything like that.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, and I can see how this can end up being
compounding, because if that dadwho was emotionally distant,
like present, but emotionallydistant, well if, if the reason
they were like that is becausetheir upbringing was that way,
then that's how they parent andyou know, I can see it becoming
like a legacy Trauma isgenerational, and that's one of
(11:10):
the reasons that I'm sopassionate about it is because I
believe if you can address yourown stuff, it will ultimately
change the way you relate toyour spouse and your kids and
all the people around you, andit will.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
You will hand down a legacy that's healthier and more
functional than what youreceived.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
How do you get someone so like, kind of on the
counselor's seat?
How do you get someone to seethat that they're dealing with
trauma that needs to be dealtwith, and then, to actually deal
with it, Like I think that'sfirst.
There's the awareness, likegetting someone to be aware and
then caring enough and wantingto do the work to do something
about it.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, I mean a lot of the people that I see in my
work are that.
You know, it doesn't take thema lot of convincing and maybe
that has to do something withthe broader cultural
conversation that's going on outthere, where I do think people
recognize that theirrelationships aren't what they
want them to be, think peoplerecognize that their
relationships aren't what theywant them to be, their way of
(12:07):
functioning in the world isn'twhat they want it to be, and
that there must be somethingabout their past that has formed
their brain in a certain waythat they can change that and do
better moving forward.
So I'm not.
I mean occasionally maybe Ifind somebody who's a little bit
resistant to that, and that's Imean.
A lot of times that's just theslow work of trying to join with
them, hear what they do have tosay, so that they come to feel
(12:30):
some sort of a connection fromwhich we can continue to do that
deeper work.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
It's probably the bigger issue of it's the people
you don't see that need to workon the trauma.
You don't see that need to workon the trauma, but don't Right,
Right.
So what do you do then?
Like what?
Maybe not you, but what doessomeone do if they're in
relationship, married to friends, with someone who's just like,
(13:00):
clearly suffering from somethings that happened in the past
, but they're just unwilling todo the work?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I mean that's hard, that's really hard.
Empathy is just unwilling to dothe work.
Yeah, I mean that's hard,that's really hard.
Empathy is the way to get topeople.
But you know, at MarriageHelper we teach that you can't
control what somebody else does.
So all you can do is empathizewith that and encourage somebody
that there is help for that.
Most people I mean even thepeople that I see as clients in
Marriage marriage helper who arethere because their marriage is
(13:25):
in a is in dire straits.
Trauma I would say greater than90% of the time trauma is
factoring into that in a hugeway.
Um, sometimes I think it'salmost a relief when I say I
think there's something going onthat's been going on since
before you even knew your spouse.
That's weighing in heavily tothis situation that you find
(13:47):
yourself in and why it's so hardto get it sorted out.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Are you seeing any common threads of like what are
the kinds of traumaticexperiences that people had
previously to their romanticrelationships that are causing
issues now?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Well, I mean, the classic example are mom and dad
whether mom and dad were thereor not, like they are weighing
heavily on your ability to showup and have healthy attachments,
form healthy attachments, liveyour own life in such a way that
you are emotionally connectedto other people.
If that wasn't there, that's abig I don't know if handicap is
(14:28):
the right word.
That's a deficit that can behealed, but it's something that
you have to work on.
So you know, I mean I wasdealing, I was talking to a
couple today and the wife hadtold the husband, based on a
sermon that she had heard, thatshe was kind of in a discouraged
(14:51):
place about their marriage.
Right, all right, she's allowedto do that, right.
So she tells him hey, based on,based on the church service
today, I'm kind of in a badplace.
I'm feeling like we're notconnecting.
I'm feeling like you're notseeing really where I'm at and
(15:14):
we broke this down like I'm not.
You know, this is stuff that Iconfirmed with him.
What he heard her say is like Iam about to be out of here, you
schmuck.
It took him into the limbic partof his brain and there was like
a primal fear that she wasgoing to leave him.
She wasn't saying she was goingto leave him.
She was saying she wasdiscouraged, but that based on
(15:39):
some things that he had sharedwith me about his dad and how
his dad would sometimes comeclose and then basically his dad
had abandoned him, based on thefact that he had also been
previously married and hisprevious wife had left him.
Hear comments like that, whichis actually could be valuable
feedback.
It's hard for him to hear thatbecause he's not, he's not able
(16:01):
to keep that up here in the inthe cognitive part of his brain.
He's going into his limbicsystem and it's it's a terror,
like she's about to be out ofhere.
So it took him to a bad place.
He he tried to deal with it,not by connecting with her
emotionally, but by talking toher about what the Bible said
about marriage.
Well, that's not a helpful play.
(16:22):
I love the Bible.
We want to know what the Biblesays, for sure.
But if someone is hurtingemotionally, you don't start
breaking down.
First, corinthians seven whichis what he tried to do.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
You know, scripture exposition is good and has its
place.
Has its place.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
But not when there's someone who just needs like a
hug.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, Well, and she needs reassurance that he really
is, that he really is seeingher where she's at and they're
doing something different,because they've had a heck of a
year there at Veritelper, yeah,so you can imagine, and some of
it is the fact that they werevery near separation last year,
so, but that's trauma, likethat's trauma, and that is when
(17:10):
you go back into that back partof your brain.
It is pre-cognitive, pre-verbal.
You don't even have access toyour Broca center, which is
where language is formed, whereyou choose the words that you
use to describe a situation.
All you can experience is thefeelings and sensations of
helplessness and fear that comewith that.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Okay, can you give us a brain lesson?
Speaker 2 (17:37):
I'm no neuroscientist , but I'll do my best, please do
.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, so where?
Like up here, you said this wascognitive, back here is limbic.
But what like?
How are?
How are emotions or thoughtsflowing through here and doing
the things that you're saying?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
so you have your brainstem, your limbic system.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Right here, that's right down there, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
And that's been called the reptilian brain.
I've heard that before as well.
And then you've got the limbicsystem, which is where your
feelings are generated, youremotions are generated.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And that's like right back in here.
Yeah, yes, so they go therefirst.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Like it originates here.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
You go through this feelings before you ever get.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Before you ever get to your cortex and if it's, if
it's truly traumatic, you won'tget to your cortex.
I mean, you won't get to yourCortex Subcortical.
The subcortical regions of yourbrain are where the feelings
and sensations happen.
Your cortex is where thecognition happens which is up
(18:45):
here.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So where's the amygdala?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
The amygdala is in your limbic system.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, so it's back here.
That's like.
The only thing I really know isthat the amygdala is what's the
amygdala.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
The amygdala serves as the smoke alarm for your
brain.
So the amygdala perceivesthreats.
And if it perceives a threat,it will send messages throughout
your body that you should bevery worried because something
bad is about to happen.
So the amygdala can be veryuseful to happen.
(19:20):
So the amygdala can be veryuseful, you know if you're
crossing the road and a car iscoming, you want your amygdala
to kick in because it will causeyou to run faster or move out
of the way.
If you've got a really trippyamygdala because you had a lot
of trauma, it may start goingoff and signaling danger when in
fact you, you're just fine.
But it's when in fact you,you're just fine, but it's I
(19:42):
actually heard this said in atraining I did this weekend All
trauma is reactivated traumafrom the past, so it's reminding
you of a time that you were indire straits and it's sending
pre cognitive, pre verbalsignals to your body that you're
in trouble.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So trauma relates to the brain, because your feelings
don't like.
It's like things get stuck andyou're not able to logically
process some of these things andso when those sensations or or
things that remind you of thingsin the past like you said, the
reactivated trauma, like whenthose happen, they kind of like
(20:25):
stay stuck Right.
So it's not just like feelings,like in my heart right?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well, it can be.
I mean, trauma is felt in thebody.
It's got a physiologicalcomponent to it and because your
brain is kind of like the CPUfor your whole body, you know,
like what happens to your bodyis experienced in your brain.
What's experienced in yourbrain is felt in your body.
So, yes, I mean, one of thesigns of trauma is you know, I
(20:51):
can feel it, my heart is racing,I can tell my blood pressure
has gone up, my palms are sweaty, I've got a lump in my throat,
I've got a lump in my stomach,whatever it might be, even if
it's just a jittery feeling thatyou can't quite describe, it's
physiological, it's experiencedin your body, which is part of
what makes it so scary, becauseit's just a feeling of
(21:15):
unsettledness in your body.
It's not something that can berationally explained.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah.
So what is brain spotting?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, so brain spotting is based on this idea
that you can access thesubcortical regions of your
brain and process the trauma.
Okay, it's similar to EMDR inthat, um, where you look affects
how you feel, okay, so, um, Ihaven't been paying attention
(21:50):
because I've been focused onother things.
But if I had been payingattention to you, if you were my
client, I would have beenlooking to see if your eyes went
one way or the other,especially if you were talking
about something difficult,because I would probably notice
that your eyes look up this wayor down this way or something
like that.
And it means you're trying toaccess some trauma capsule in
your brain, which is kind of ashut off part that holds the
(22:12):
trauma, so that you can talkabout what's coming up for you.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So that you can talk about what's coming up for you.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Hmm, so does it matter which direction someone's
like, like if, does it signalcertain things, if they look a
certain way.
I'm not not so much trying tofigure out what the direction
they're looking means, okay, somuch as I'm trying to get their
eyes focused in a place that itseems like they can really
process when they're lookingthere.
And I can actually even hold upa pointer, like if I notice you
keep looking over here, I mightsay Kimberly, I've got a
(22:45):
pointer right here and I wantyou to focus on this.
Let's see what comes up.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
So it used to be like with EMDR.
It was more of like either thethings on your fingers or the
ear like the noises, thebilateral stimulation, and you
keep your eyes shut and then orI guess, you keep them, I always
kept them shut and then, afterlike 30 seconds or a minute or
whatever, then it was like, well, what, like, what thoughts came
up for you?
So this is like the nextgeneration.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Well, it's similar in that it's trying to access
those subcortical regions of thebrain and not so much.
What you try to do is stay downhere.
It's really hard for me becauseI'm a learner, so I want to
come up here and analyze what itmeans.
If you stay down here, you'rejust like well, I remember this
time that this one time when Iwas in college and I didn't know
(23:35):
if I was going to pass thisclass and I tried to ask the
teacher about it and the teachersaid basically indicated he
wasn't willing to help whichreminds me of a time when I was
in kindergarten and I asked forhelp tying my shoes and the
teacher said I should alreadyknow how to tie my shoes.
That's the kind of stuff you'retrying to do.
You're trying to get to justfocusing on what happened and
how that made you feel and whereyou feel it in your body.
(23:58):
Try to literally process it,metabolize it.
I mean, just like you would badfood, you don't want bad food
to get stuck in your digestivetract, you want to metabolize it
.
So trauma needs to bemetabolized, because it's so
painful, we don't want to faceit, so it just sits back there
and kind of hides from us untilit gets activated.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And is the best way to do that through, like a talk
therapy.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah, an experiential therapy, especially like EMDR
or brain spotting, ifs.
There's a lot of I mean,there's a lot of stuff going on
right now in the counselingspace that's really aimed at not
so much trying to figure it,figure out what's going on
cognitively, but just get thefeelings and sensations like,
(24:44):
bring them up to the surface sothat they can be dealt with and
connections can be made.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Can you do it through journaling?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Journaling is really helpful for that.
Yeah, absolutely.
But there needs to be like aspoken verb or like a verbalized
I think there's a lot of powerin the word, like I had a client
tell me this week.
You know I really felt betterafter last week's session.
I think there were some thingsthat once I said them, you know,
(25:10):
they didn't seem to have asmuch power over me.
So I think that that can betrue.
But journaling is reallypowerful too.
I mean, I tell people all thetime a prayer journal or write a
letter.
If there's a person who'sreally wronged you and they're
not alive or they're not willingto do the work, write them a
letter and say what you need tosay.
There's a certain extent towhere you can resolve the loop
(25:32):
that you're stuck in.
Even if you don't get thatresolution from the person that
wronged you, you can resolve itwithin yourself.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
What does resolution of trauma look and feel like?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
So I would say that your trauma has been resolved
when you can think aboutsomething painful that happened
to you without feeling triggered, without feeling activated.
So I can just report to youwhat happened.
Right, I'm not stuck in a placeof shame, I'm not stuck in a
place of fear.
I've worked it out.
(26:05):
It doesn't have that kind ofhold on me anymore.
It's not, it's not, uh, it'snot causing my amygdala to go
off.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Does that mean that it's unemotional?
Speaker 2 (26:17):
No, because it could be very emotional in the sense
that it could be.
I mean it could be nostalgic,it could be.
I mean it could still bepainful without being activating
, it could be sad, it couldbring up sadness or anger.
I mean, I think if pain is painright.
So if you think back on it,there could be sadness, there
(26:37):
could be some anger, there couldbe some anger, there could be
some righteous anger.
It's just not going to get youto that place where you feel out
of control.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
I was thinking about my mom andhow you know, before I was born
, how my parents had beendivorced and my dad had cheated
on her and the people at thechurch did nothing about it and
anyway, like it was, like it wasa very traumatic experience for
her.
But when she talks about it now, I've never seen her flood Like
(27:09):
I don't know.
I don't know that she went anddid work with counseling, but
probably maybe.
But she still gets sad when shetalks about it.
But I wouldn't say that she'slike triggered.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And that's probably because she's done her work over
time and that can look like allkinds of things.
I mean there are all sorts ofinternal and external resources
that can help us heal, yeah, butyeah, I mean I've heard her
tell her story and she's notshe's not activated by it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, right, right.
It's hard.
She doesn't want to go back tosome of those places where the
things happened, but you know.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I believe I even heard her tell somebody at a
workshop that I was at that.
You know, sometimes she stillstruggles with issues of
forgiveness or whatever, but shehas a decision-based
forgiveness, so it's notsomething that keeps her up at
night, right?
Yeah, I think I'm paraphrasingthat, right yeah, yeah so uh so
with brain spotting.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Like really, the key with brain spotting is it's a,
it's a tool that you use as apractitioner.
It's not really something thatthe general public is like oh,
tell me about brain spotting.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I mean, I think that there are things that you could
learn that could be helpful Justknowing that there are
different.
I mean, our brains are justincredibly complex and there are
parts of our brain that can beaccessed that if we're, if we
(28:46):
allow ourselves to kind of gointo that space, we can find
some healing.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
The word makes it sounds like there's spots on the
brain.
So I'm like is this like an MRIthat we go through and see the
spots are?
Where are you looking?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Right, but my mom, my mom said the same thing.
She's like oh, I think I havesome spots on my brain.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, that is what it makes it sound like.
Well, and I was reading orlistening to this audio book
last week talking about thetrauma diamond where so do you
know, dr I think daniel amen,he's likea so this person doing
this book had like gone to hisclinic and gotten an mri to see
(29:30):
what areas of the brain areactivated.
I don't know what they wereshowing this person to like get
these air, or if they were justseeing, if they were on all the
time, but it was these fourdifferent areas in the brain
that are probably in the areasthat you were talking about
earlier.
Um, that it's like they makethis diamond and it's like, if
all of these areas activate,it's a clear like it is a
evidence that you haveexperienced trauma.
(29:52):
Have you ever heard of that?
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I'm vaguely familiar with dr.
I don't know about the traumadiamond.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I didn't know about it either.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
But yeah, I mean certain areas of the fact that a
person in pain will have a litup brain and a person who is not
in pain will have a quieterbrain, and that can be
graphically represented, butrepresented in a photo basically
.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Can someone talk about their trauma?
Too much to where it becomesunproductive?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, I think so.
I think so.
The goal is to heal.
The goal is to heal and Ihesitate to say move on, because
I hear that a lot and I thinkit can sound insensitive like
just move on.
It's like a way of minimizingpain.
But yeah, you can if it's, ifit's getting in the way of you
(31:03):
getting to the next thing.
I mean, ultimately, you askwhat would healing look like?
Being able to turn around andhelp the next person.
I mean that's evidence ofhealing.
If you're just sitting thereand navel gazing, well, that's
probably not productive.
That said, well, that'sprobably not productive.
That said, there's alwaystrauma content that you haven't
quite gotten to.
I mean this and this is where Ican really get in my head.
(31:25):
But uh, apparently, from whatI've heard from the
professionals, nearly all of ushave like um, pre-birth trauma,
like trauma in the womb,delivery trauma, trauma like
that's traumatic.
Now, our cognitive brainsaren't online when that happens,
so we don't remember it.
(31:45):
Yeah, but the back of our brainsdo so.
There's always content therethat's coming up.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
How does trauma relate to attachment theory?
Well, it's all about attachmenttheory.
Is it the same or are theydifferent?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
They're closely related.
I mean, I think attachmenttheory would explain attachment.
What can happen when a persongrew up in an in an environment
of complex trauma?
So the two main ways thatpeople are going to maladapt if
they grew up with complex traumais they're either going to be
(32:26):
highly anxious or highlyavoidant, or both Very common.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
But which and maybe this is just like where it comes
down to practitioner preferencewhich one do you go Like?
Do you go the attachment theoryroute, or do you go more of
like the brain spotting?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Oh, I think they're very complimentary.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
You think you just do , but how do you do both Like?
What does that look like inpractice?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, I mean it comes up a lot in my work with
Marriage Helper because we coverattachment styles in the
workshop so people will latchonto it because of what they
learned in the workshop and it'sso common.
It's so common that you know weuse this language of the
standing spouse and thereluctant spouse.
(33:14):
So the standing spouse is theone that wants to save the
marriage, the reluctant spouseis reluctant.
So often the standing spouse isanxiously attached and the
reluctant spouse is avoidant.
I see that all the time.
Yeah.
And so the avoidant spouse orthe avoidant person is the way
they are, probably because whenthey were young they showed some
(33:37):
sort of weakness orvulnerability and they were
reprimanded or shamed for that.
So that's not fun.
Nobody wants to be shamed orreprimanded.
So the way that they cope isthey don't show up emotionally.
They feel like they'redefective in that area.
So they've kind of been on therun for a lot of their lives.
(34:01):
If their marriage is on therocks they don't know how to
show up and do the work becausethat's incredibly painful and
they don't want to feel thatpain.
They're afraid of being exposed.
So sometimes when I explain itto people and it could be after
a brain spotting session wheresomething has come up Sometimes
when I just explain it to peoplein those terms, they're like oh
(34:24):
, like psychoeducation is verypowerful.
I think marriage helper has aneducational workshop, so you get
people that information andit's like oh, that makes sense,
like I wasn't given a safe placeto face these hard emotions so
I haven't and I've never learnedhow to do it.
I just associate that in thelimbic part of my brain with
(34:44):
pain and I don't do it.
The anxiously attached personprobably had a parent or a
caregiver that was there some ofthe time but not there other
times.
So they never knew whichversion of the parent they were
going to get.
So they're always anxiouswondering is this person going
to show up for me today or not?
And if they had that as a kid,that's a lot of times how they
(35:07):
will experience their spouse,especially if they're having a
hard time in their marriage.
It's like oh well, whichversion of them am I going to
get today?
Are they going to be there orare they not?
Is this marriage going to makeit or is it not Constant?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
anxiety, just kind of running in the background of
everything they're experiencing.
So then what?
How do you so then?
What does it look like inpractice to move these two
people out, Like one of them outof avoidant and one of them out
of anxious, both into secure,while at the same time
addressing the trauma?
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
So I think that when you start to address the trauma,
which I mean trauma, counselingis helpful, but it could be
that you just have a safe personwho can help you have safe
conversations, that you justhave a safe person who can help
you have safe conversations.
As you start addressing thatpain that is there and noticing
(36:03):
the patterns of behavior thatare unhelpful, you may,
organically, you may just noticeit organically, you're showing
up in your relationshipdifferently.
That's that's what I would.
I mean, that seems to be thework to me.
Let's address the trauma, let'snot brush it underneath the rug
, let's talk about it, becauseif we can do that in a safe
place, that's when you'rebuilding new neural pathways to
(36:24):
where, all of a sudden, it's notscary to have a difficult
conversation.
It's not fun, necessarily, butit's necessary and it's it's
you're able to do it so that youcan get to a new place.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
OK, let's back up then.
So, um, let's say it's me andRob and Rob's the I mean he'd
probably fit more in avoidant,I'd probably fit more anxious.
I would agree with thatassessment Exactly.
So let's say that's thesituation and he but, but and
there's the marriage issue.
Like he's reluctant and wantsout, I'm the one who wants to
make it work.
(36:56):
So are you saying that?
Like having conversations aboutpast trauma, not like something
that may have happened in themarriage, but like this, when I
was eight years old or whatever,and just being able to have
that conversation together whereI'm just sharing like man, this
was really hard for me.
(37:16):
This is how I felt, like crying, all the stuff, and then him
just being able to sit there andsay, like man, I hear you.
That must've been so hard.
Like, what are the magic?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
words Makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
It's like it could be that it could be that Easy,
Like I don't.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It's not necessarily easy.
It's not easy be that easy, likeI don't.
It's not necessarily easy.
It's not easy, but it could bereally nothing more than that.
Because if you're having adiscussion with Rob and he's
avoidant and he was, and he'slike you know, I think the
reason why this conversation hasbeen so hard for me is because
when I used to speak up, my dadused to tell me that I need to
be a man and muscle up.
(37:54):
That shut me down.
So I've been shut down all mylife.
And then I went into the armyand there's a bunch of guys
there that are shut down.
We didn't talk about ourfeelings, you know, and we had
to attend to the, you know,whatever was going on there.
Then what that is is, all of asudden, you realize that Rob's
avoidance isn't actually aboutyou.
(38:14):
Yeah, it's about past trauma,yeah.
So talk about the like, talkabout the power to face into any
kind of problems that might bein the marriage.
It's about stuff that's wayback there, yeah, and that's
nobody's really trying to be abad or malicious person.
I mean, it's, to use your dad'sterm it's, you know, good
people doing bad things, noteven realizing that they're
(38:35):
doing bad things some of thetime.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
They just haven't had the framework for knowing how
to create a healthy dynamicwithin themselves and with other
people and the value of thecounselor is to be able to be
the, because you're like,basically you're saying it could
happen between two peoplewithout a counselor.
The problem is we get caught inthat limbic system and we will
(39:00):
assume things that the otherperson said.
That's not what they said ormeant, but we take it personally
.
So the value of the counseloris like to kind of calm it down.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Neutral third party.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Neutral third party.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
I can point out stuff .
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
It really does.
How do you like?
What about when it comes to um,people thinking cause this is
the other thing?
Like the beginning of ourconversation, like oh my gosh,
what are the things I am doingthat I don't realize?
I'm doing that.
My kids, in 20 years, are goingto be sitting in someone's
counseling office.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Well, if you're a parent, just make peace with it.
Despite your best efforts, yourkids are going to I mean,
they're going to have thingsthat they get maladapted.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, like the interpretation of things, right
yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah, I mean it's maybe it's easier to see it in
the more extreme examples, butI'm I'm working with this couple
right now and they, like I'm soconvinced they're going to make
it, I get like I can't help,but I get really invested.
But she she because she isanxiously attached and has
terrible trauma in herbackground, she tends to react
(40:18):
and it's very explosive.
So things got tough between herand her husband.
She's exploding at him.
Oh my gosh, why would you dothat?
Why didn't you contact me then?
Why didn't you say this?
Why didn't you do that?
Always overreacting, a lot ofexplosive anger out of her
anxiety that she's going to losehim.
(40:39):
Well, of course, that becomes aself-fulfilling prophecy.
He couldn't take that becauseshe was always blowing up, she
was very clingy.
So he leaves, he moves toanother state, a neighboring
state, because he has to havespace, because he can't take
that, because he's avoidant,right, like he doesn't know how
to face into that.
So they came to the workshophere and I was with them and she
(41:06):
had in her mind that they weregoing to address these issues
and he was going to go home withher because they did well at
the workshop until Sunday, whichis the last day of the workshop
and he said this has beenreally great.
I've learned a lot.
We have a lot to think about.
We'll talk about it on our nextcoaching session in a week.
(41:30):
And then he got in his car andwent home.
Oh no, so she gets on the phoneand screams at him the whole
way home.
And they're different cars.
Oh no, so I was, but they aredoing great in coaching.
Because I said this makes senseEvery man who's ever played a
critical role in your life hasleft you, and we've done that
(41:54):
work to name out who thosepeople are.
You are afraid of thathappening again.
All you know to do is to clingand react, and that has pushed
him away.
And that pattern is very deep,like it's not something that you
just switch off.
No, you've got to form newhabits.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
That's that reptilian brain You've got to build new
neural pathways right.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
He, to his credit, is leaning in and trying to
understand.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Now that doesn't mean he has to tolerate her blowing
up in his face.
You know he needs some space.
So there's going to be a planwhere there's going to be tears,
where they step back into eachother's lives.
But still, I mean, it's still astruggle.
They were talking about the waycommunication went this weekend
(42:49):
and he got involved withsomething and she didn't hear
from him for a while and shestarts assuming the worst.
She starts assuming that he'sgone and she didn't hear from
him for a while and she startsassuming the worst.
She starts assuming that he'sgone when really there was just
some other complicated dynamicsgoing on.
But that's trauma, right?
That's not rational.
He said if there's anythingthat can be done, I'm going to
do it.
I'm here for you.
(43:10):
It's just that this iscomplicated and I have to
protect myself from some of theoutbursts that are happening.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
You mentioned earlier about how empathy is such a key
here.
But then there's also thesituations of, like you know,
someone gets triggered, so tosay, and so they blow up.
Have these behaviors thatpeople tend to put boundaries up
with?
So this is my question.
So like did there come a pointwhere implementing boundaries
(43:46):
hurts the empathy and hurts theprogress?
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, I mean that's, that's the balance right?
There's a lot of like razorthin, tight, tight ropes, that,
that that we're trying to walkin life and and I think that's
one of them I don't think thatlove just lets other people walk
all over you so boundaries canbe necessary.
Boundaries can be hard forpeople like this woman that I'm
(44:11):
talking about, becauseboundaries feel like rejection.
Right boundaries feel likeabandon.
Right Boundaries feel likeabandonment.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
It's like it feels, like it spirals.
It continues to make thesituation worse for her, which
doesn't mean that she shouldn'thave the boundaries.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
The thing about boundaries is, if they're done
right, they're always out oflove, but they often don't feel
like love to the person thatyou're setting the boundaries
for.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
So you know you lean in and you try to understand as
best you can.
You know there are behaviorsthat are unacceptable, that
demand consequences, and you canput those in place and still
have empathy and compassion forwhat the person is going through
.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
So what keeps people from like who are?
So?
Not the people that are justnot willing to do any work, but
the people like this couple, orthe couple who's willing to
begin opening up and be thelistening ear and work like what
would keep that person orcouple from healing and being
(45:12):
able to move forward in apositive way?
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Well, I mean, it is a lot of facing yourself when it
comes to couples, when actuallyI'm counseling right now with a
mother and an adult daughtersame kind of situation.
You've got to be more focusedon your own stuff and how that
needs to be healed in order toshow up and make the
(45:38):
relationship what you want it tobe.
So you know, not everybody hasa spouse that's willing to do
the work.
Not everybody has a mom or dadthat's willing to do the work,
or a brother or sister.
So it's you know it's kind oflike sometimes forgiveness
doesn't mean reconciliation, butit doesn't mean that you can't
do the work to resolve thingswithin yourself so that you're
(45:58):
able to show up in therelationships that you do have
in a way that's healthy.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
So you can still do the work alone.
It doesn't have to be with theperson that the fracture came
with, or the person or the placeor person where the trauma came
from.
Like you can heal, you can heal.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Absolutely.
And the therapist in many wayscan be that, that safe place to
help you process.
Yeah, I was working with awoman this week who's both of
her parents are passed away andshe was processing some hurts in
relation to her mom that werewhen she was much younger and,
(46:38):
based on what she had told meabout her mom, I was convinced
that her mom loved her and thatshe just didn't wasn't able to
find a backbone in a certainsituation that we were
processing Since her mom is nolonger alive.
I said would it be OK if Ispoke as your mom?
I said would it be okay?
if I spoke as your mom, and so Iguess you would call that like
(47:00):
an enactment or something, likeI tried to step in and play that
role, like I absolutely lovedyou and you deserved to have my
protection.
You were the kid in thatscenario and I was the adult and
I needed to be the adult.
And I put you in a situationwhere you had to be the adult
and that wasn't fair and I'm sosorry that you didn't have care
(47:21):
in that moment and that it'simpacted you so deeply.
Um, the reason that I wasn'table to stand up and be your
protector in that situation wasbecause I had my own stuff and
that is not about you.
I think that brings abouthealing.
Like I think that, based oneverything I know about that
(47:44):
woman, and she agreed with me, Isaid hey, if I misspeak you
correct me, this is your work,but I believe that is what her
mom would want her to hear, andso, in a very real way, we can
bring about something differentin her brain and in the way that
that she shows up now with herkids.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
I love that.
What would you say would be thenext steps for someone who's
listening and thinking?
I want that healing.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Well, obviously, counseling is great.
Spark of Life is great.
They do grief.
They do grief work which isreally closely related to trauma
.
If trauma and grief were like aVenn diagram, they'd be, they'd
be overlapped.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Have you been to one of their retreats?
No, I haven't.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
I love David and Debbie, though I've done several
marriage helper workshops withthem.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
So one of these days you love David and Debbie,
though I've done severalmarriage helper workshops with
them, so one of these days I'veheard a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Yeah, how you need to be complete with your
incompletes and stuff like thatDavid has several things that
that I've.
Oh, David says it's never toolate to have the childhood you
always wanted, and I've saidthat in my own work to a number
of clients at this point.
But there's that there's also alot of great books on the topic
.
You know, you can kind of whetyour appetite with books.
(49:05):
Bessel van der Kork wrote kindof the Bible of trauma, which is
the body keeps the score.
That's a really good book.
It's very dense, it's moreacademic.
One of my favorite authors thatwrites on the topic of trauma
that I think is a little moreaccessible and kind of a start
towards the healing work is DanAllender.
He wrote a book called.
(49:34):
He's written a bunch of to start.
If you're trying to read on thetopic and just kind of get
yourself acclimated to what yourown healing might look like, he
has a podcast.
I mean you can fall down therabbit hole too, of trauma.
Yeah, once you get into thisstuff.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Yeah, what would be the last thing you'd want
someone to know?
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Hmm, the last thing you'd want someone to know.
I think that change isabsolutely possible.
Positive change is absolutelypossible.
Sometimes it can bring up morepain to get there, but I believe
it's a short-lived pain and Ibelieve you can absolutely get
(50:14):
to the other side.
Pain and I believe you canabsolutely get to the other side
.
You can't control other people.
That can be hard, but if youwant something different for
yourself, you can absolutelyfind healing.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
I love that, Thank you.
Meredith.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Fantastic conversation.
I learned so much and I believethat the audience is really
going to love it and find hopein it as well.
On today's show, I'm speaking with Meredith Ball, who
is a licensed professionalcounselor and also really
passionate about trauma.
So in this episode, we go intodeep dives about what is trauma,
how does it show up inourselves, in our relationships?
We talk about how trauma movesor doesn't move through the
(00:20):
brain, what the goal of workingthrough trauma is and how you
can begin working through traumathat you've experienced, either
by yourself or work throughtrauma in relationship with
other people, how change ispossible and a better future is
possible, no matter what yourpast has been.
(00:41):
This was such an amazingepisode.
I learned so much and I'm superexcited to share it with you.
Let's dive in to this week'sepisode.
So, meredith, why is this topicof trauma so important to you?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So my journey with understanding trauma started
about a decade ago and I wasgoing through a divorce and I
sought out individual counselingand I had sought out some
marriage counseling before then.
Obviously that didn't get theresults I'd hoped for and so I
(01:18):
sought out individual counselingkind of out of desperation,
because I just felt out ofcontrol at times and I think and
I was in my early thirties atthat point and I'd had some
counseling here and there beforethen and I think that was the
first point where I was kind ofdesperate enough that I was
(01:38):
really willing to dig in and dothe work.
And so my counselor at thatpoint told me really kind of off
the cuff well, you're sufferingwith a lot of trauma right now.
And I think until that point,like I had some very vague
notion of what trauma was, but Ididn't understand that it's
(02:01):
this whole world of really whatthis was.
This was about a decade ago, soat that point I mean, we were
still really early on in what Iwould consider like a
neuroscience revolution.
And it helps the way we treatpeople with all kinds of brain
injuries, but it informs the waythat we do counseling, because
we're understanding how thebrain works and how trauma gets
(02:22):
stored in the brain and how youheal that, how the brain works
and how trauma gets stored inthe brain and how you heal that.
So once she said that, I kindof was.
For me it was kind of like amoth to the flame where I just
really latched onto that and Istarted doing.
Obviously it was a big part ofmy own counseling work which
really helped me.
But also I kind of geeked outon it.
Just read about it and you knowpodcasts were really taking off
(02:44):
about that time and like justkind of anything I could get my
hands on and learn about.
I did and ultimately went tograd school to get my own
counseling degree and a big partof that was me understanding
that, me understanding trauma.
But also the good news abouttrauma is that it can be healed.
(03:06):
So our our brains areneuroplastic, so we're not stuck
.
Whatever kind of suffering thatwe've gone through and how our
brains might've adapted to thator maladapted to that, we're not
stuck with it and I just thinkthat's really great news.
And so it's kind of become abig passion of mine to help
people find ways of bettercoping with life, not being
(03:30):
stuck with the brain that theyhave, but being able to do the
work and heal from that.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Did it scare you when your counselor said I feel or
it sounds like you're dealingwith a lot of trauma?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, I mean it sounded, it sounded weighty.
I didn't have yeah, I just Ididn't really have a conception
of what that meant.
You know, I think I would havethought of, you know, holocaust
survivors or torture survivorsor something like that.
So it, yeah, it became ajourney for me of learning how
to use that term.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yeah Well, so let's talk about that term.
What is trauma?
Define it.
What is trauma?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Trauma can be defined several different ways.
I think.
For me, the way I think of itis anything that happens to you
that overwhelms your ability tocope.
Um, another way to put it wouldjust be suffering.
Trauma is suffering, so thatcan be physical, that can be
emotional, that can be spiritual.
(04:27):
Any way that you're sufferingis trauma and it is subjective
to the person experiencing thetrauma.
So what would be traumatizingto one person wouldn't
necessarily be traumatizing tothe next person, and that has a
lot to do with their brainchemistry and things that
they've been through in the past.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
I hear several people .
I was at a party several weeksago and there was a gentleman
that my husband and I arespeaking with and he was like in
the military decades ago, youknow, like that kind of guy and
trauma came up and he said Ijust feel like that word is so
overused, like it's not, thesethings that people are calling
(05:11):
trauma aren't trauma.
And you hear that.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
What would you say to people who kind of are in that
mindset?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, I mean, I think it probably is overused.
I think trauma is overused andtrigger and narcissism and
gaslighting.
I mean there's a laundry listof words that are a lot of them.
Right, but I think that we haveto have those like that language
to have really meaningfulconversations and ultimately and
I do hear things like that likelet's just all not be sissies
(05:41):
and let's just, you know, muscleit up and live our lives and
not be sitting around andlooking at our trauma, and what
that sounds like to me isdissociation, right, Someone?
Who doesn't want to face theirtrauma, that's somebody that's
having a hard time facing theirown pain in their past.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
You know who I think of when you say that.
I think I'm like.
My grandmother would have beena person to say that and she
didn't talk about emotions.
Mother would have been a personto say that and she didn't talk
about emotions.
And you know like.
Like you know, she went throughtrauma.
I know she, you know, livedthrough the Great Depression and
World War Two and you know whathad an abusive husband for
several years of her life.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
you know, like I know she experienced trauma, but she
would have been one of thosepeople who's like yeah, I mean
the greatest generation, for allthe wonderful things that you
can say about them, because theyendured a lot and handed us a
really good legacy, but they didnot do emotions, no, and I
think they just did not knowwhat to do with their emotions.
When you look at the thingsthat you know people of that
(06:38):
generation lived through, likethe Great Depression and the
World War and all these kinds ofthings, I don't think they knew
what to do but to press thatdown and just kind of keep on
keeping on, which can work for atime, but it doesn't ultimately
work.
I mean, you're just living,you're just kind of getting by.
You're not really living lifeIf you haven't addressed the
(07:00):
pain that's happened to you andworked through it, faced into it
and worked through it.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
So if a couple of definitions, like working
definitions, to go from, traumais suffering, trauma is being
how did you say it?
Overwhelmed.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Anything that overwhelms a person's ability to
cope.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Ability to cope.
The other thing you hear is bigT, little t trauma.
So do you think, if trauma issubjective anyway, do you think
there's a difference in like bigT trauma, little t trauma?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
I think that sometimes you know, like
anything, you have thecategories and then you find all
the exceptions to thecategories.
I ultimately don't know if bigT and little t trauma is super
helpful, but I think it isgetting at the fact that there
might be something differentbetween, like I was in a
helicopter crash, which would bea big T trauma, or you know
(07:55):
somebody, somebody dismissed mewhen I was in middle school.
You know, I didn't, I got cutfrom the middle school
basketball team or somethinglike that.
That might be a little littletrauma.
So I think it does recognizethat there can be degrees of
suffering that can sometimes behelpful.
Sometimes that's not helpful.
Sometimes if it hurts, it hurtsand you need to face into that
and there's only so much valuein comparing your suffering to
(08:16):
somebody else's.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, I can see that.
I think of our friends Davidand Debbie Matthews and the
grief work they do, and one ofthe things I love that they have
said is it's not helpful to tryand compare grief or compare
losses.
Like a loss is a loss, right,and some losses are harder than
others and, more you know, moreterrible than others.
(08:39):
But like Right, a lot of youknow they can, many can be hard.
A job loss can sometimes becompletely devastating to
someone to where, to someoneelse, they would just be like eh
.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Right, exactly, and some of the original trauma work
was done, you know, 20, 25years ago.
Well, it was.
It was started in the 70s and80s by a man named Bessel van
der Kork and 80s by a man namedBessel van der Kork and he
originally kind of he didn'tdiscover trauma, but he started
to conceptualize of it in theway that we do and started
experimenting with treatmentswhen he noticed the way combat
veterans from the Vietnam Warthey all seem to display similar
(09:20):
characteristics of PTSD andwere resistant to certain
treatments and did better withcertain treatments.
So he worked with thatpopulation, I believe in the 70s
.
By the 80s he had moved on to alot of survivors of sexual
assault.
Once again he found thatsurvivors of sexual assault
(09:40):
displayed similar symptoms ofPTSD as the combat veterans and
that some treatments work betterthan others.
So that was a part of his work.
So that was where we kind oforiginally um, started
conceptualizing trauma andtalking about it.
Since then the conversation hasevolved a good bit to talk about
what if I haven't actually beenin a horrible car crash or been
(10:02):
the victim of a sexual assault,but my family was just really
dysfunctional, right Like.
My parents loved me but I hadto earn their approval.
Or my dad was there physicallybut he never displayed any kind
of emotional connection oraffection.
Kind of like a death by athousand cuts is kind of a
metaphor there.
That could be just as traumatic.
(10:23):
It could actually be moretraumatic, because that was the
way you lived life for a periodof time.
You know, if that's all youknew for the first 20 years of
your life and that's create andyour brain has adapted to that
in a certain way and it's madeit difficult for you to go out
in the world as an adult andform attachments, well then
that's trauma.
(10:43):
And there's not, you know,there's not a car, there's not a
crash report to look up oranything like that.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, and I can see how this can end up being
compounding, because if that dadwho was emotionally distant,
like present, but emotionallydistant, well if, if the reason
they were like that is becausetheir upbringing was that way,
then that's how they parent andyou know, I can see it becoming
like a legacy Trauma isgenerational, and that's one of
(11:10):
the reasons that I'm sopassionate about it is because I
believe if you can address yourown stuff, it will ultimately
change the way you relate toyour spouse and your kids and
all the people around you, andit will.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
You will hand down a legacy that's healthier and more
functional than what youreceived.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
How do you get someone so like, kind of on the
counselor's seat?
How do you get someone to seethat that they're dealing with
trauma that needs to be dealtwith, and then, to actually deal
with it, Like I think that'sfirst.
There's the awareness, likegetting someone to be aware and
then caring enough and wantingto do the work to do something
about it.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, I mean a lot of the people that I see in my
work are that.
You know, it doesn't take thema lot of convincing and maybe
that has to do something withthe broader cultural
conversation that's going on outthere, where I do think people
recognize that theirrelationships aren't what they
want them to be, think peoplerecognize that their
relationships aren't what theywant them to be, their way of
(12:07):
functioning in the world isn'twhat they want it to be, and
that there must be somethingabout their past that has formed
their brain in a certain waythat they can change that and do
better moving forward.
So I'm not.
I mean occasionally maybe Ifind somebody who's a little bit
resistant to that, and that's Imean.
A lot of times that's just theslow work of trying to join with
them, hear what they do have tosay, so that they come to feel
(12:30):
some sort of a connection fromwhich we can continue to do that
deeper work.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
It's probably the bigger issue of it's the people
you don't see that need to workon the trauma.
You don't see that need to workon the trauma, but don't Right,
Right.
So what do you do then?
Like what?
Maybe not you, but what doessomeone do if they're in
relationship, married to friends, with someone who's just like,
(13:00):
clearly suffering from somethings that happened in the past
, but they're just unwilling todo the work?
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I mean that's hard, that's really hard.
Empathy is just unwilling to dothe work.
Yeah, I mean that's hard,that's really hard.
Empathy is the way to get topeople.
But you know, at MarriageHelper we teach that you can't
control what somebody else does.
So all you can do is empathizewith that and encourage somebody
that there is help for that.
Most people I mean even thepeople that I see as clients in
Marriage marriage helper who arethere because their marriage is
(13:25):
in a is in dire straits.
Trauma I would say greater than90% of the time trauma is
factoring into that in a hugeway.
Um, sometimes I think it'salmost a relief when I say I
think there's something going onthat's been going on since
before you even knew your spouse.
That's weighing in heavily tothis situation that you find
(13:47):
yourself in and why it's so hardto get it sorted out.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Are you seeing any common threads of like what are
the kinds of traumaticexperiences that people had
previously to their romanticrelationships that are causing
issues now?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Well, I mean, the classic example are mom and dad
whether mom and dad were thereor not, like they are weighing
heavily on your ability to showup and have healthy attachments,
form healthy attachments, liveyour own life in such a way that
you are emotionally connectedto other people.
If that wasn't there, that's abig I don't know if handicap is
(14:28):
the right word.
That's a deficit that can behealed, but it's something that
you have to work on.
So you know, I mean I wasdealing, I was talking to a
couple today and the wife hadtold the husband, based on a
sermon that she had heard, thatshe was kind of in a discouraged
(14:51):
place about their marriage.
Right, all right, she's allowedto do that, right.
So she tells him hey, based on,based on the church service
today, I'm kind of in a badplace.
I'm feeling like we're notconnecting.
I'm feeling like you're notseeing really where I'm at and
(15:14):
we broke this down like I'm not.
You know, this is stuff that Iconfirmed with him.
What he heard her say is like Iam about to be out of here, you
schmuck.
It took him into the limbic partof his brain and there was like
a primal fear that she wasgoing to leave him.
She wasn't saying she was goingto leave him.
She was saying she wasdiscouraged, but that based on
(15:39):
some things that he had sharedwith me about his dad and how
his dad would sometimes comeclose and then basically his dad
had abandoned him, based on thefact that he had also been
previously married and hisprevious wife had left him.
Hear comments like that, whichis actually could be valuable
feedback.
It's hard for him to hear thatbecause he's not, he's not able
(16:01):
to keep that up here in the inthe cognitive part of his brain.
He's going into his limbicsystem and it's it's a terror,
like she's about to be out ofhere.
So it took him to a bad place.
He he tried to deal with it,not by connecting with her
emotionally, but by talking toher about what the Bible said
about marriage.
Well, that's not a helpful play.
(16:22):
I love the Bible.
We want to know what the Biblesays, for sure.
But if someone is hurtingemotionally, you don't start
breaking down.
First, corinthians seven whichis what he tried to do.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
You know, scripture exposition is good and has its
place.
Has its place.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
But not when there's someone who just needs like a
hug.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, Well, and she needs reassurance that he really
is, that he really is seeingher where she's at and they're
doing something different,because they've had a heck of a
year there at Veritelper, yeah,so you can imagine, and some of
it is the fact that they werevery near separation last year,
so, but that's trauma, likethat's trauma, and that is when
(17:10):
you go back into that back partof your brain.
It is pre-cognitive, pre-verbal.
You don't even have access toyour Broca center, which is
where language is formed, whereyou choose the words that you
use to describe a situation.
All you can experience is thefeelings and sensations of
helplessness and fear that comewith that.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Okay, can you give us a brain lesson?
Speaker 2 (17:37):
I'm no neuroscientist , but I'll do my best, please do
.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, so where?
Like up here, you said this wascognitive, back here is limbic.
But what like?
How are?
How are emotions or thoughtsflowing through here and doing
the things that you're saying?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
so you have your brainstem, your limbic system.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Right here, that's right down there, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
And that's been called the reptilian brain.
I've heard that before as well.
And then you've got the limbicsystem, which is where your
feelings are generated, youremotions are generated.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And that's like right back in here.
Yeah, yes, so they go therefirst.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Like it originates here.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
You go through this feelings before you ever get.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Before you ever get to your cortex and if it's, if
it's truly traumatic, you won'tget to your cortex.
I mean, you won't get to yourCortex Subcortical.
The subcortical regions of yourbrain are where the feelings
and sensations happen.
Your cortex is where thecognition happens which is up
(18:45):
here.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So where's the amygdala?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
The amygdala is in your limbic system.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, so it's back here.
That's like.
The only thing I really know isthat the amygdala is what's the
amygdala.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
The amygdala serves as the smoke alarm for your
brain.
So the amygdala perceivesthreats.
And if it perceives a threat,it will send messages throughout
your body that you should bevery worried because something
bad is about to happen.
So the amygdala can be veryuseful to happen.
(19:20):
So the amygdala can be veryuseful, you know if you're
crossing the road and a car iscoming, you want your amygdala
to kick in because it will causeyou to run faster or move out
of the way.
If you've got a really trippyamygdala because you had a lot
of trauma, it may start goingoff and signaling danger when in
fact you, you're just fine.
But it's when in fact you,you're just fine, but it's I
(19:42):
actually heard this said in atraining I did this weekend All
trauma is reactivated traumafrom the past, so it's reminding
you of a time that you were indire straits and it's sending
pre cognitive, pre verbalsignals to your body that you're
in trouble.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So trauma relates to the brain, because your feelings
don't like.
It's like things get stuck andyou're not able to logically
process some of these things andso when those sensations or or
things that remind you of thingsin the past like you said, the
reactivated trauma, like whenthose happen, they kind of like
(20:25):
stay stuck Right.
So it's not just like feelings,like in my heart right?
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well, it can be.
I mean, trauma is felt in thebody.
It's got a physiologicalcomponent to it and because your
brain is kind of like the CPUfor your whole body, you know,
like what happens to your bodyis experienced in your brain.
What's experienced in yourbrain is felt in your body.
So, yes, I mean, one of thesigns of trauma is you know, I
(20:51):
can feel it, my heart is racing,I can tell my blood pressure
has gone up, my palms are sweaty, I've got a lump in my throat,
I've got a lump in my stomach,whatever it might be, even if
it's just a jittery feeling thatyou can't quite describe, it's
physiological, it's experiencedin your body, which is part of
what makes it so scary, becauseit's just a feeling of
(21:15):
unsettledness in your body.
It's not something that can berationally explained.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah.
So what is brain spotting?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, so brain spotting is based on this idea
that you can access thesubcortical regions of your
brain and process the trauma.
Okay, it's similar to EMDR inthat, um, where you look affects
how you feel, okay, so, um, Ihaven't been paying attention
(21:50):
because I've been focused onother things.
But if I had been payingattention to you, if you were my
client, I would have beenlooking to see if your eyes went
one way or the other,especially if you were talking
about something difficult,because I would probably notice
that your eyes look up this wayor down this way or something
like that.
And it means you're trying toaccess some trauma capsule in
your brain, which is kind of ashut off part that holds the
(22:12):
trauma, so that you can talkabout what's coming up for you.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So that you can talk about what's coming up for you.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Hmm, so does it matter which direction someone's
like, like if, does it signalcertain things, if they look a
certain way.
I'm not not so much trying tofigure out what the direction
they're looking means, okay, somuch as I'm trying to get their
eyes focused in a place that itseems like they can really
process when they're lookingthere.
And I can actually even hold upa pointer, like if I notice you
keep looking over here, I mightsay Kimberly, I've got a
(22:45):
pointer right here and I wantyou to focus on this.
Let's see what comes up.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
So it used to be like with EMDR.
It was more of like either thethings on your fingers or the
ear like the noises, thebilateral stimulation, and you
keep your eyes shut and then orI guess, you keep them, I always
kept them shut and then, afterlike 30 seconds or a minute or
whatever, then it was like, well, what, like, what thoughts came
up for you?
So this is like the nextgeneration.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Well, it's similar in that it's trying to access
those subcortical regions of thebrain and not so much.
What you try to do is stay downhere.
It's really hard for me becauseI'm a learner, so I want to
come up here and analyze what itmeans.
If you stay down here, you'rejust like well, I remember this
time that this one time when Iwas in college and I didn't know
(23:35):
if I was going to pass thisclass and I tried to ask the
teacher about it and the teachersaid basically indicated he
wasn't willing to help whichreminds me of a time when I was
in kindergarten and I asked forhelp tying my shoes and the
teacher said I should alreadyknow how to tie my shoes.
That's the kind of stuff you'retrying to do.
You're trying to get to justfocusing on what happened and
how that made you feel and whereyou feel it in your body.
(23:58):
Try to literally process it,metabolize it.
I mean, just like you would badfood, you don't want bad food
to get stuck in your digestivetract, you want to metabolize it
.
So trauma needs to bemetabolized, because it's so
painful, we don't want to faceit, so it just sits back there
and kind of hides from us untilit gets activated.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And is the best way to do that through, like a talk
therapy.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Yeah, an experiential therapy, especially like EMDR
or brain spotting, ifs.
There's a lot of I mean,there's a lot of stuff going on
right now in the counselingspace that's really aimed at not
so much trying to figure it,figure out what's going on
cognitively, but just get thefeelings and sensations like,
(24:44):
bring them up to the surface sothat they can be dealt with and
connections can be made.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Can you do it through journaling?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Journaling is really helpful for that.
Yeah, absolutely.
But there needs to be like aspoken verb or like a verbalized
I think there's a lot of powerin the word, like I had a client
tell me this week.
You know I really felt betterafter last week's session.
I think there were some thingsthat once I said them, you know,
(25:10):
they didn't seem to have asmuch power over me.
So I think that that can betrue.
But journaling is reallypowerful too.
I mean, I tell people all thetime a prayer journal or write a
letter.
If there's a person who'sreally wronged you and they're
not alive or they're not willingto do the work, write them a
letter and say what you need tosay.
There's a certain extent towhere you can resolve the loop
(25:32):
that you're stuck in.
Even if you don't get thatresolution from the person that
wronged you, you can resolve itwithin yourself.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
What does resolution of trauma look and feel like?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
So I would say that your trauma has been resolved
when you can think aboutsomething painful that happened
to you without feeling triggered, without feeling activated.
So I can just report to youwhat happened.
Right, I'm not stuck in a placeof shame, I'm not stuck in a
place of fear.
I've worked it out.
(26:05):
It doesn't have that kind ofhold on me anymore.
It's not, it's not, uh, it'snot causing my amygdala to go
off.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Does that mean that it's unemotional?
Speaker 2 (26:17):
No, because it could be very emotional in the sense
that it could be.
I mean it could be nostalgic,it could be.
I mean it could still bepainful without being activating
, it could be sad, it couldbring up sadness or anger.
I mean, I think if pain is painright.
So if you think back on it,there could be sadness, there
(26:37):
could be some anger, there couldbe some anger, there could be
some righteous anger.
It's just not going to get youto that place where you feel out
of control.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
I was thinking about my mom andhow you know, before I was born
, how my parents had beendivorced and my dad had cheated
on her and the people at thechurch did nothing about it and
anyway, like it was, like it wasa very traumatic experience for
her.
But when she talks about it now, I've never seen her flood Like
(27:09):
I don't know.
I don't know that she went anddid work with counseling, but
probably maybe.
But she still gets sad when shetalks about it.
But I wouldn't say that she'slike triggered.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
And that's probably because she's done her work over
time and that can look like allkinds of things.
I mean there are all sorts ofinternal and external resources
that can help us heal, yeah, butyeah, I mean I've heard her
tell her story and she's notshe's not activated by it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, right, right.
It's hard.
She doesn't want to go back tosome of those places where the
things happened, but you know.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I believe I even heard her tell somebody at a
workshop that I was at that.
You know, sometimes she stillstruggles with issues of
forgiveness or whatever, but shehas a decision-based
forgiveness, so it's notsomething that keeps her up at
night, right?
Yeah, I think I'm paraphrasingthat, right yeah, yeah so uh so
with brain spotting.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Like really, the key with brain spotting is it's a,
it's a tool that you use as apractitioner.
It's not really something thatthe general public is like oh,
tell me about brain spotting.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I mean, I think that there are things that you could
learn that could be helpful Justknowing that there are
different.
I mean, our brains are justincredibly complex and there are
parts of our brain that can beaccessed that if we're, if we
(28:46):
allow ourselves to kind of gointo that space, we can find
some healing.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
The word makes it sounds like there's spots on the
brain.
So I'm like is this like an MRIthat we go through and see the
spots are?
Where are you looking?
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Right, but my mom, my mom said the same thing.
She's like oh, I think I havesome spots on my brain.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, that is what it makes it sound like.
Well, and I was reading orlistening to this audio book
last week talking about thetrauma diamond where so do you
know, dr I think daniel amen,he's likea so this person doing
this book had like gone to hisclinic and gotten an mri to see
(29:30):
what areas of the brain areactivated.
I don't know what they wereshowing this person to like get
these air, or if they were justseeing, if they were on all the
time, but it was these fourdifferent areas in the brain
that are probably in the areasthat you were talking about
earlier.
Um, that it's like they makethis diamond and it's like, if
all of these areas activate,it's a clear like it is a
evidence that you haveexperienced trauma.
(29:52):
Have you ever heard of that?
Speaker 2 (29:55):
I'm vaguely familiar with dr.
I don't know about the traumadiamond.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
I didn't know about it either.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
But yeah, I mean certain areas of the fact that a
person in pain will have a litup brain and a person who is not
in pain will have a quieterbrain, and that can be
graphically represented, butrepresented in a photo basically
.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Can someone talk about their trauma?
Too much to where it becomesunproductive?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, I think so.
I think so.
The goal is to heal.
The goal is to heal and Ihesitate to say move on, because
I hear that a lot and I thinkit can sound insensitive like
just move on.
It's like a way of minimizingpain.
But yeah, you can if it's, ifit's getting in the way of you
(31:03):
getting to the next thing.
I mean, ultimately, you askwhat would healing look like?
Being able to turn around andhelp the next person.
I mean that's evidence ofhealing.
If you're just sitting thereand navel gazing, well, that's
probably not productive.
That said, well, that'sprobably not productive.
That said, there's alwaystrauma content that you haven't
quite gotten to.
I mean this and this is where Ican really get in my head.
(31:25):
But uh, apparently, from whatI've heard from the
professionals, nearly all of ushave like um, pre-birth trauma,
like trauma in the womb,delivery trauma, trauma like
that's traumatic.
Now, our cognitive brainsaren't online when that happens,
so we don't remember it.
(31:45):
Yeah, but the back of our brainsdo so.
There's always content therethat's coming up.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
How does trauma relate to attachment theory?
Well, it's all about attachmenttheory.
Is it the same or are theydifferent?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
They're closely related.
I mean, I think attachmenttheory would explain attachment.
What can happen when a persongrew up in an in an environment
of complex trauma?
So the two main ways thatpeople are going to maladapt if
they grew up with complex traumais they're either going to be
(32:26):
highly anxious or highlyavoidant, or both Very common.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
But which and maybe this is just like where it comes
down to practitioner preferencewhich one do you go Like?
Do you go the attachment theoryroute, or do you go more of
like the brain spotting?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Oh, I think they're very complimentary.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
You think you just do , but how do you do both Like?
What does that look like inpractice?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, I mean it comes up a lot in my work with
Marriage Helper because we coverattachment styles in the
workshop so people will latchonto it because of what they
learned in the workshop and it'sso common.
It's so common that you know weuse this language of the
standing spouse and thereluctant spouse.
(33:14):
So the standing spouse is theone that wants to save the
marriage, the reluctant spouseis reluctant.
So often the standing spouse isanxiously attached and the
reluctant spouse is avoidant.
I see that all the time.
Yeah.
And so the avoidant spouse orthe avoidant person is the way
they are, probably because whenthey were young they showed some
(33:37):
sort of weakness orvulnerability and they were
reprimanded or shamed for that.
So that's not fun.
Nobody wants to be shamed orreprimanded.
So the way that they cope isthey don't show up emotionally.
They feel like they'redefective in that area.
So they've kind of been on therun for a lot of their lives.
(34:01):
If their marriage is on therocks they don't know how to
show up and do the work becausethat's incredibly painful and
they don't want to feel thatpain.
They're afraid of being exposed.
So sometimes when I explain itto people and it could be after
a brain spotting session wheresomething has come up Sometimes
when I just explain it to peoplein those terms, they're like oh
(34:24):
, like psychoeducation is verypowerful.
I think marriage helper has aneducational workshop, so you get
people that information andit's like oh, that makes sense,
like I wasn't given a safe placeto face these hard emotions so
I haven't and I've never learnedhow to do it.
I just associate that in thelimbic part of my brain with
(34:44):
pain and I don't do it.
The anxiously attached personprobably had a parent or a
caregiver that was there some ofthe time but not there other
times.
So they never knew whichversion of the parent they were
going to get.
So they're always anxiouswondering is this person going
to show up for me today or not?
And if they had that as a kid,that's a lot of times how they
(35:07):
will experience their spouse,especially if they're having a
hard time in their marriage.
It's like oh well, whichversion of them am I going to
get today?
Are they going to be there orare they not?
Is this marriage going to makeit or is it not Constant?
Speaker 1 (35:25):
anxiety, just kind of running in the background of
everything they're experiencing.
So then what?
How do you so then?
What does it look like inpractice to move these two
people out, Like one of them outof avoidant and one of them out
of anxious, both into secure,while at the same time
addressing the trauma?
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
So I think that when you start to address the trauma,
which I mean trauma, counselingis helpful, but it could be
that you just have a safe personwho can help you have safe
conversations, that you justhave a safe person who can help
you have safe conversations.
As you start addressing thatpain that is there and noticing
(36:03):
the patterns of behavior thatare unhelpful, you may,
organically, you may just noticeit organically, you're showing
up in your relationshipdifferently.
That's that's what I would.
I mean, that seems to be thework to me.
Let's address the trauma, let'snot brush it underneath the rug
, let's talk about it, becauseif we can do that in a safe
place, that's when you'rebuilding new neural pathways to
(36:24):
where, all of a sudden, it's notscary to have a difficult
conversation.
It's not fun, necessarily, butit's necessary and it's it's
you're able to do it so that youcan get to a new place.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
OK, let's back up then.
So, um, let's say it's me andRob and Rob's the I mean he'd
probably fit more in avoidant,I'd probably fit more anxious.
I would agree with thatassessment Exactly.
So let's say that's thesituation and he but, but and
there's the marriage issue.
Like he's reluctant and wantsout, I'm the one who wants to
make it work.
(36:56):
So are you saying that?
Like having conversations aboutpast trauma, not like something
that may have happened in themarriage, but like this, when I
was eight years old or whatever,and just being able to have
that conversation together whereI'm just sharing like man, this
was really hard for me.
(37:16):
This is how I felt, like crying, all the stuff, and then him
just being able to sit there andsay, like man, I hear you.
That must've been so hard.
Like, what are the magic?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
words Makes a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
It's like it could be that it could be that Easy,
Like I don't.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It's not necessarily easy.
It's not easy be that easy, likeI don't.
It's not necessarily easy.
It's not easy, but it could bereally nothing more than that.
Because if you're having adiscussion with Rob and he's
avoidant and he was, and he'slike you know, I think the
reason why this conversation hasbeen so hard for me is because
when I used to speak up, my dadused to tell me that I need to
be a man and muscle up.
(37:54):
That shut me down.
So I've been shut down all mylife.
And then I went into the armyand there's a bunch of guys
there that are shut down.
We didn't talk about ourfeelings, you know, and we had
to attend to the, you know,whatever was going on there.
Then what that is is, all of asudden, you realize that Rob's
avoidance isn't actually aboutyou.
(38:14):
Yeah, it's about past trauma,yeah.
So talk about the like, talkabout the power to face into any
kind of problems that might bein the marriage.
It's about stuff that's wayback there, yeah, and that's
nobody's really trying to be abad or malicious person.
I mean, it's, to use your dad'sterm it's, you know, good
people doing bad things, noteven realizing that they're
(38:35):
doing bad things some of thetime.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
They just haven't had the framework for knowing how
to create a healthy dynamicwithin themselves and with other
people and the value of thecounselor is to be able to be
the, because you're like,basically you're saying it could
happen between two peoplewithout a counselor.
The problem is we get caught inthat limbic system and we will
(39:00):
assume things that the otherperson said.
That's not what they said ormeant, but we take it personally
.
So the value of the counseloris like to kind of calm it down.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Neutral third party.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Neutral third party.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
I can point out stuff .
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
It really does.
How do you like?
What about when it comes to um,people thinking cause this is
the other thing?
Like the beginning of ourconversation, like oh my gosh,
what are the things I am doingthat I don't realize?
I'm doing that.
My kids, in 20 years, are goingto be sitting in someone's
counseling office.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Well, if you're a parent, just make peace with it.
Despite your best efforts, yourkids are going to I mean,
they're going to have thingsthat they get maladapted.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, like the interpretation of things, right
yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah, I mean it's maybe it's easier to see it in
the more extreme examples, butI'm I'm working with this couple
right now and they, like I'm soconvinced they're going to make
it, I get like I can't help,but I get really invested.
But she she because she isanxiously attached and has
terrible trauma in herbackground, she tends to react
(40:18):
and it's very explosive.
So things got tough between herand her husband.
She's exploding at him.
Oh my gosh, why would you dothat?
Why didn't you contact me then?
Why didn't you say this?
Why didn't you do that?
Always overreacting, a lot ofexplosive anger out of her
anxiety that she's going to losehim.
(40:39):
Well, of course, that becomes aself-fulfilling prophecy.
He couldn't take that becauseshe was always blowing up, she
was very clingy.
So he leaves, he moves toanother state, a neighboring
state, because he has to havespace, because he can't take
that, because he's avoidant,right, like he doesn't know how
to face into that.
So they came to the workshophere and I was with them and she
(41:06):
had in her mind that they weregoing to address these issues
and he was going to go home withher because they did well at
the workshop until Sunday, whichis the last day of the workshop
and he said this has beenreally great.
I've learned a lot.
We have a lot to think about.
We'll talk about it on our nextcoaching session in a week.
(41:30):
And then he got in his car andwent home.
Oh no, so she gets on the phoneand screams at him the whole
way home.
And they're different cars.
Oh no, so I was, but they aredoing great in coaching.
Because I said this makes senseEvery man who's ever played a
critical role in your life hasleft you, and we've done that
(41:54):
work to name out who thosepeople are.
You are afraid of thathappening again.
All you know to do is to clingand react, and that has pushed
him away.
And that pattern is very deep,like it's not something that you
just switch off.
No, you've got to form newhabits.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
That's that reptilian brain You've got to build new
neural pathways right.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
He, to his credit, is leaning in and trying to
understand.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Now that doesn't mean he has to tolerate her blowing
up in his face.
You know he needs some space.
So there's going to be a planwhere there's going to be tears,
where they step back into eachother's lives.
But still, I mean, it's still astruggle.
They were talking about the waycommunication went this weekend
(42:49):
and he got involved withsomething and she didn't hear
from him for a while and shestarts assuming the worst.
She starts assuming that he'sgone and she didn't hear from
him for a while and she startsassuming the worst.
She starts assuming that he'sgone when really there was just
some other complicated dynamicsgoing on.
But that's trauma, right?
That's not rational.
He said if there's anythingthat can be done, I'm going to
do it.
I'm here for you.
(43:10):
It's just that this iscomplicated and I have to
protect myself from some of theoutbursts that are happening.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
You mentioned earlier about how empathy is such a key
here.
But then there's also thesituations of, like you know,
someone gets triggered, so tosay, and so they blow up.
Have these behaviors thatpeople tend to put boundaries up
with?
So this is my question.
So like did there come a pointwhere implementing boundaries
(43:46):
hurts the empathy and hurts theprogress?
Speaker 2 (43:48):
Yeah, I mean that's, that's the balance right?
There's a lot of like razorthin, tight, tight ropes, that,
that that we're trying to walkin life and and I think that's
one of them I don't think thatlove just lets other people walk
all over you so boundaries canbe necessary.
Boundaries can be hard forpeople like this woman that I'm
(44:11):
talking about, becauseboundaries feel like rejection.
Right boundaries feel likeabandon.
Right Boundaries feel likeabandonment.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
It's like it feels, like it spirals.
It continues to make thesituation worse for her, which
doesn't mean that she shouldn'thave the boundaries.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
The thing about boundaries is, if they're done
right, they're always out oflove, but they often don't feel
like love to the person thatyou're setting the boundaries
for.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
So you know you lean in and you try to understand as
best you can.
You know there are behaviorsthat are unacceptable, that
demand consequences, and you canput those in place and still
have empathy and compassion forwhat the person is going through
.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
So what keeps people from like who are?
So?
Not the people that are justnot willing to do any work, but
the people like this couple, orthe couple who's willing to
begin opening up and be thelistening ear and work like what
would keep that person orcouple from healing and being
(45:12):
able to move forward in apositive way?
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Well, I mean, it is a lot of facing yourself when it
comes to couples, when actuallyI'm counseling right now with a
mother and an adult daughtersame kind of situation.
You've got to be more focusedon your own stuff and how that
needs to be healed in order toshow up and make the
(45:38):
relationship what you want it tobe.
So you know, not everybody hasa spouse that's willing to do
the work.
Not everybody has a mom or dadthat's willing to do the work,
or a brother or sister.
So it's you know it's kind oflike sometimes forgiveness
doesn't mean reconciliation, butit doesn't mean that you can't
do the work to resolve thingswithin yourself so that you're
(45:58):
able to show up in therelationships that you do have
in a way that's healthy.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
So you can still do the work alone.
It doesn't have to be with theperson that the fracture came
with, or the person or the placeor person where the trauma came
from.
Like you can heal, you can heal.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
Absolutely.
And the therapist in many wayscan be that, that safe place to
help you process.
Yeah, I was working with awoman this week who's both of
her parents are passed away andshe was processing some hurts in
relation to her mom that werewhen she was much younger and,
(46:38):
based on what she had told meabout her mom, I was convinced
that her mom loved her and thatshe just didn't wasn't able to
find a backbone in a certainsituation that we were
processing Since her mom is nolonger alive.
I said would it be OK if Ispoke as your mom?
I said would it be okay?
if I spoke as your mom, and so Iguess you would call that like
(47:00):
an enactment or something, likeI tried to step in and play that
role, like I absolutely lovedyou and you deserved to have my
protection.
You were the kid in thatscenario and I was the adult and
I needed to be the adult.
And I put you in a situationwhere you had to be the adult
and that wasn't fair and I'm sosorry that you didn't have care
(47:21):
in that moment and that it'simpacted you so deeply.
Um, the reason that I wasn'table to stand up and be your
protector in that situation wasbecause I had my own stuff and
that is not about you.
I think that brings abouthealing.
Like I think that, based oneverything I know about that
(47:44):
woman, and she agreed with me, Isaid hey, if I misspeak you
correct me, this is your work,but I believe that is what her
mom would want her to hear, andso, in a very real way, we can
bring about something differentin her brain and in the way that
that she shows up now with herkids.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
I love that.
What would you say would be thenext steps for someone who's
listening and thinking?
I want that healing.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
Well, obviously, counseling is great.
Spark of Life is great.
They do grief.
They do grief work which isreally closely related to trauma
.
If trauma and grief were like aVenn diagram, they'd be, they'd
be overlapped.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Have you been to one of their retreats?
No, I haven't.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
I love David and Debbie, though I've done several
marriage helper workshops withthem.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
So one of these days you love David and Debbie,
though I've done severalmarriage helper workshops with
them, so one of these days I'veheard a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Yeah, how you need to be complete with your
incompletes and stuff like thatDavid has several things that
that I've.
Oh, David says it's never toolate to have the childhood you
always wanted, and I've saidthat in my own work to a number
of clients at this point.
But there's that there's also alot of great books on the topic
.
You know, you can kind of whetyour appetite with books.
(49:05):
Bessel van der Kork wrote kindof the Bible of trauma, which is
the body keeps the score.
That's a really good book.
It's very dense, it's moreacademic.
One of my favorite authors thatwrites on the topic of trauma
that I think is a little moreaccessible and kind of a start
towards the healing work is DanAllender.
He wrote a book called.
(49:34):
He's written a bunch of to start.
If you're trying to read on thetopic and just kind of get
yourself acclimated to what yourown healing might look like, he
has a podcast.
I mean you can fall down therabbit hole too, of trauma.
Yeah, once you get into thisstuff.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Yeah, what would be the last thing you'd want
someone to know?
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Hmm, the last thing you'd want someone to know.
I think that change isabsolutely possible.
Positive change is absolutelypossible.
Sometimes it can bring up morepain to get there, but I believe
it's a short-lived pain and Ibelieve you can absolutely get
(50:14):
to the other side.
Pain and I believe you canabsolutely get to the other side
.
You can't control other people.
That can be hard, but if youwant something different for
yourself, you can absolutelyfind healing.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
I love that, Thank you.
Meredith.
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Fantastic conversation.
I learned so much and I believethat the audience is really
going to love it and find hopein it as well.
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