Journey with us into the realm of childhood trauma as we take a hard look at its persistent shadows in our adult lives. Our insightful guest, therapist and EMDR consultant Jeremy Fox, aka The Trauma Tamer, is back on the show to guide us through this complex yet crucial terrain. Jeremy drops the powerful nugget, "Your trauma is not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility", setting the tone for this searing exploration into how the healing process begins with acknowledging our traumas, and the importance of seeking professional aid.
Navigating our way forward, we delve into the intricacies of our nervous system with Dr. Fox. We dissect the integral role of emotions, busting the myth that they rule us, and explore how they could, in fact, be signaling a dysregulated nervous system. The episode is rich with discussions on tools to calm your nervous system, and we get into detail on why those grappling with complex post-traumatic stress need to be extra vigilant.
We also unfold the connective threads between Internal Family Systems (IFS) and healing childhood trauma. Diving into our conscious self, we explore its different units and distinguish it from dissociative identity disorder. We decode the three parts of IFS - exiles, managers, and firefighters, along with the 8 C's of IFS - compassion, curiosity, calm, clarity, courage, connectedness, confidence, and creativity. To round off, we discuss acknowledging trauma, the role of EMDR, and how social media can bolster support for EMDR therapy. Remember, your healing journey starts when you are ready. It's never too late to start healing!
You ARE:
SEEN KNOWN HEARD LOVED VALUED
Journey with us into the realm of childhood trauma as we take a hard look at its persistent shadows in our adult lives. Our insightful guest, therapist and EMDR consultant Jeremy Fox, aka The Trauma Tamer, is back on the show to guide us through this complex yet crucial terrain. Jeremy drops the powerful nugget, "Your trauma is not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility", setting the tone for this searing exploration into how the healing process begins with acknowledging our traumas, and the importance of seeking professional aid.
Navigating our way forward, we delve into the intricacies of our nervous system with Dr. Fox. We dissect the integral role of emotions, busting the myth that they rule us, and explore how they could, in fact, be signaling a dysregulated nervous system. The episode is rich with discussions on tools to calm your nervous system, and we get into detail on why those grappling with complex post-traumatic stress need to be extra vigilant.
We also unfold the connective threads between Internal Family Systems (IFS) and healing childhood trauma. Diving into our conscious self, we explore its different units and distinguish it from dissociative identity disorder. We decode the three parts of IFS - exiles, managers, and firefighters, along with the 8 C's of IFS - compassion, curiosity, calm, clarity, courage, connectedness, confidence, and creativity. To round off, we discuss acknowledging trauma, the role of EMDR, and how social media can bolster support for EMDR therapy. Remember, your healing journey starts when you are ready. It's never too late to start healing!
You ARE:
SEEN KNOWN HEARD LOVED VALUED
Hey everyone and welcome to the donor supported Wednesdays with Watson podcast. Our mission here is simple. It is to educate and help people navigate trauma and other mental health issues. We do that by providing help and hope through story and, today, through professionals. Finally, we have a mission for pro bono counseling for those who cannot afford it. If you want to be part of that mission, click on the contact Amy button in the show notes and, while you're there, why don't you rate and review or share the podcast? That helps us get our word out. We will never stop fighting for those who can't fight for themselves, and that is our mission. Now that we got that all the way, let's walk into the healing zone. Today I am excited to bring back to the microphone for the third time probably the only guess that I have brought on for three times. That tells you how excited I am about it.
Speaker 1:This is therapist and EMDR consultant, jeremy Fox. As a disclaimer, jeremy is appearing on the podcast out of his desire to educate. He has been published in publications like psychology. Today is very academic in his approach, and so he and I love talking with each other. He, too, loves imparting knowledge, helping people understand that they don't have to be stuck in trauma, but his words here today are meant for entertainment and educational purposes only and is not a repeat, not a substitute for therapy. Jeremy Fox, aka the trauma tamer, is one of my favorite people in this space because he truly cares. So let's drop into this conversation with Jeremy, as he helps us understand internal family systems as a treatment modality for trauma, especially childhood trauma, as well as regulation of nervous systems and more things that go along the lines of mental health awareness. And so, jeremy, welcome back to the podcast. I am so happy you are here.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's my pleasure. I'm happy to be here and to provide some info to your listeners about how trauma and stress impact the body and mind.
Speaker 1:And guys, jeremy is somebody to walk in this lane. His passion is matched by knowledge and a continued thirst for knowledge, and so I strongly encourage you look in the show notes. He too, has a podcast, and just all the things that he does is just so remarkable and just such a heart of gold. And so he is out of Georgia for those of you listening, and so he would be able to provide services to you and the event that you're interested in his contact stuff will be there, but I do want to thank you for coming back. I would strongly encourage listeners to go ahead and listen to the episode that we did on EMDR before this one. They're not necessary. I think it would flow very well into our conversation today.
Speaker 1:As all the listeners and Jeremy you know, we have been focusing on childhood trauma, how it affects us in adulthood. So we know we have childhood trauma, but it's really important to let people know that it affects an adulthood if we don't deal with it. Today I want to talk about something near and dear to my heart, because I'm always working on this, but it's the importance of nervous system regulation when childhood trauma is present. How that regulation helps us heal and alleviate some of the issues related to our trauma, and so I wanted to bring you back to discuss that, because when we don't discuss childhood trauma, bad things happen, as we know. One of my favorite quotes and I have been on I've had the opportunity to hear you audio wise a lot but one of my favorite Jeremy Fox quotes was on this podcast, and it was your trauma is not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility.
Speaker 2:Appreciate you quoting that yeah.
Speaker 1:It's huge. It's huge, I'd put it everywhere, I'd steal it. Your trauma is not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility. And there are people listening to this who need to deal with childhood trauma, and they are probably saying, but why do I have to do that? They did it. Well, the reality is to that point that beautiful quote what they did to you is not your fault, or what they didn't provide for you is not your fault, but the way you move forward as an adult is your responsibility.
Speaker 1:And it is one, jeremy, that I've had to battle with over the years, because it doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem fair to endure particularly childhood trauma, not given the coping skills or anything to take on the responsibility of healing. And so I kind of just blindly found my way through a good therapist a good EMDR therapist, I might add, though we're going to be talking about another modality today but it doesn't seem fair. But in reality, my healing is my responsibility, and I know and you may be able to speak to this as a therapist, I know that when I do take responsibility for my healing, we can interchange those words with. I also take ownership of it, and so it sticks For me, it's my healing.
Speaker 1:It's stuck because I owned it. I took ownership of it. So let's start with one of the most obvious questions, as we are dealing with trauma and the home, childhood trauma in particular. Why, why wasn't it okay for me? Let's pretend I didn't get go to a psych ward and I was. I was moving along life fine, maybe having some flashbacks and PTSD symptoms in my house and all the things. What would have happened or what could have possibly happened to people who don't decide to address childhood trauma at some point? What kind of things or kind of negative things happen when we just go along to get along and just kind of move on?
Speaker 2:Well, it's a great question because I think more people are dealing with that than we recognize and I think it's chalked up to personality differences, when maybe it's not, when maybe really what's going on isn't just that someone is disagreeable, maybe they feel unsafe. So what happens is people begin to project the similar situations that they went through and I won't get too graphic. So physical abuse, emotional manipulation, whatever that happens. People in childhood. That's considered normal. Normal is what we encounter as children. Whatever that is, we file that away as the norm. So if normal is having to this is a very common one, by the way deal with an intoxicated parent and read the room and literally have to guess how he or she is going to behave when he or she gets home.
Speaker 2:Or you can be beaten. What's going to happen? Going to that high alert mode and that supplicating, pacifying, placating behavior, maybe even a neediness, maybe even really clinging, having to go into pleasing mode. If that's something you carry with you in your relationships, then that's going to burn you out right? Or you have to learn to disengage and not care at all about attachment because your parent wasn't there. Well, clearly that's going to impact negatively your romantic relationships or friendships If you don't emotionally engage and get close to others. You can't forge friendships that way. So if you don't do the healing work on severe trauma, you will be alienated in some way from your social environment.
Speaker 2:As an adolescent and adult, you will either potentially be disruptive and dysregulated in a way that you fear abandonment and, sadly for many, that results in the sort of behaviors constant checking, in accusations of cheating, of not being there that results in abandonment. It's tragic, and what's even more tragic and compounds the sadness there is, this stuff can be worked through. It's not just part of your personality or you, or even something that is just your attachment. That can be turned around. And so that's a huge component is, your relationships will be impacted if you don't address those early memories that keep coming up in that present form, because traumatic memories are traumatic not simply because of whatever action happened.
Speaker 2:It's, however, your brain, it's the way your brain stores it. It's as a present, focused memory that replays in that form. You don't think of it as, oh, that poor, that terrible thing happened, that was unfortunate. You experience it viscerally and emotionally, and so it feels like that could happen anytime, and when something reminds you of that, maybe someone doesn't text you back right away, instead of thinking from your prefrontal cortex that, okay, he or she's busy, they just got off work and maybe don't have good phone reception, or they're driving and going to get back to me later, you may feel as if you're being actively abandoned. That memory of the past comes up and tells you this is what's happening. Not, this is what happened.
Speaker 1:That is huge and so many negative consequences, not to mention and we both are huge fans of the Body Keeps To Score that book. And what's the author? I always forget Vessel Vander Kolk.
Speaker 2:I don't actually forget, I just don't know how to pronounce it.
Speaker 1:Vessel Vander Kolk wrote the Body Keeps.
Speaker 2:To Score. Vessel Vander Kolk. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:That's why I always ask just who wrote it, because I never can remember his name. So you so eloquently outlined something and I have a question for you, and this is a little bit of a left turn, and if you can't answer it, fine, we'll edit it out. But one of the things that I have found to be true in my mentoring and even in some of my because I grew up in a children's home and so there are all those kids experienced childhood trauma, especially among the female gender, is incredible promiscuity From relationship to relationship, from relationship when sexual abuse was present, and trauma. Does that make any sense in terms?
Speaker 1:of can you tell us why?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, yeah, you really are hitting me with something pretty intimate. I think we want to be careful here to put out there and I know, and I don't know exactly the composition of your audience, I know there's quite a few Christians out there and I think I want to throw out there. So there's people's choice, sexuality wise, of how they want to engage and how often, how frequently, and then there's research that does show that abuse can result in earlier onset of sexual activity, and so we can't ignore that. There are some linkages there and we're not saying anything about that other than correlation, and potentially there's probably some, potentially some research out there that explains causative factors. Maybe I'll tell you that from a relational, if we want to couch this in relationship someone who is in a turbulent home environment, trying to couple off and who has been shown we'll go, we'll say it this way Someone who's been shown as a child that sex and love are the same thing and which is, by the way, earth shattering, lead is trucked.
Speaker 2:If the idea is a child that this is how you love a family or this is what you do, this expresses that the child cannot compute that that is unbelievably damaging they. It's complete, it throws off development in ways and of course with EMDR you can reset that. That's the good news. But the bad news there is that often many children are taught this is something that you do, this is like a love language that you do to earn favor or just what you have to do. And so we don't know until someone explores in therapy if that's the reason that they're doing something like that, or until they tell someone right that well, this is just what you do always to show love, or this is what I'm expected to do to show I'm worthy of love or any affection at all. This is what you have to do to earn it. That narrative can be very destructive and you know promiscuity is associated with that.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure, and promiscuity for sure and I meant to use that word, but I would also go so far as to say even platonic romantic relationships, where whereby I see a lot of trauma survivors jumping from, and I mentor nine women, and so it literally is usually when you're, when you have childhood trauma, you and I'm thinking of my sister, to be honest with you right now where we weren't provided for and we, we had all the neglect and the abandonment and all the things, and so she grew into an adult that now believes that she has to have a man in her life to basically even support her basic needs, even though she has a job now. That was modeled for us by our mom as well. But the difference between her and I is our paths converged when she was 17 and I was 14, and I did get into situations where we began addressing what had happened to me, whether it be the sexual abuse or the abandonment or whatever, and so jumping from relationship to relationship was not my story. I did get married and was in a domestic violence. I stayed there for 12 years and I believe I stayed there for 12 years because of unresolved trauma, 1000% like I didn't. That, relationally for me was I'm not going to repeat what was modeled for me, and so I'm staying in this marriage because I need family and need people, and so listeners out there, my point of asking Jeremy that question is unresolved childhood trauma is going to erode at yourself yourself, value the way you, the way you take care of yourself or you don't take care of yourself, and whether or not you think that you need other people to fill holes that are not meant to be filled by other people, and so I find that really interesting and unresolved childhood trauma, and so that's that's why I asked you that question. Let's talk really quickly before we go into one treatment modality. That is another one that I just want to provide for the listeners.
Speaker 1:I had a couple reasons why I wanted a second podcast with you. One of them was we you know we're living in a world that we're we're seeing a lot more. I saw a stat the other day that mental health insurance companies reported a rise of mental health claims. It was triple digits over since March of 2020. And so we're going. We're seeing a lot of people walk around with what you and I will be very, very termsy when we say this but a dysregulated nervous system. And that dysregulated nervous system in a child is bad enough that when we don't address the childhood trauma through something like EMDR or internal family systems, which we're going to talk about in a minute, that causes again the body keeps the score. But I want my listeners I know what a regulated nervous system is. I want them to know what it is. And you are a professor I told you you're going to be Dr Fox. Can you tell my listeners First of all what is a regulated nervous system and why is it important to have it?
Speaker 2:Sure, I mean. So what we're talking about here is that we have the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system branches of the autonomic nervous system right In order that they respond generally the way that we want them to. So we'll describe what what dysregulation looks like, because that's a great way and understanding oh, I took for granted what regulated works like so or looks like excuse me, so dysregulated on the anxious end would be small sounds, images, things that startle you in. Your heart rate goes up, you your muscles tense, you become ready to engage in fight or flight and because those are the real sympathetic responses there that you've got, that's high intensity. So you're either fighting or fleeing and that takes a lot of metabolic energy, takes a lot of blood flow, your heart rates up, you have to defend yourself or be ready to run a distance. So if things set you off to feel that way frequently, guess what that does? That depletes your cortisol. It causes you to have massive cortisol dumps in your body of that stress hormone you eventually have less of it and it gets triggered more and you're chronically tired, low level anxiety, feeling of unease, of restlessness. So that's dysregulated nervous system on that level. If you dissociate or you avoid, often there's chronic numbness and we're going to get to that actually when we talk about parts work a little bit here in just a few minutes.
Speaker 2:But dysregulation on the anxious end we hear a lot about because it's pretty observable and you know the postures, the movements, the things that people will be familiar with in anxiety. But when you look at dysregulation on the parasympathetic end, right of freezing because that's a parasympathetic response, freezing and your and blunting out okay, so switching to a vulnerable, freezing state we would call it. That comes from earlier dissociation among your, your ego states, among your normal part that carries on daily living activities, and then an emotional part, if you've had severe trauma that you sort of try to dissociate from when it gets activated, and so sometimes people will have a quality of life that's rather numb or blunted out or truncated. The I'm fine, everything's fine mean essentially of a dog in a burning house. If people haven't seen that, look up. The I'm fine, everything's fine mean you're essentially reducing your emotional experience to a very surface level because you've learned to blunt that out and to hyper regulate almost where you're unavailable emotionally.
Speaker 2:How many times we heard that term emotionally unavailable men or how it, whoever right?
Speaker 2:And that often comes from learning that emotions are liability and so that's the other way we stay dysregulated is through chronic emotional avoidance and then, by the way, that can end up and eventually blowing up having a breakdown, things like that that when something finally pops that balloon that you've been blowing up continually. And so another thing to think about there is that regulation looks like responding appropriately, right, it looks like acknowledging your emotions but not being ruled by them. I mean it goes back to Aristotle saying it being angry at the right time, for the right reason, for the right link is a difficult thing. Your emotions are things that you're always in a in a dance of trying to observe in the right way, but generally being able to react a certain way, with anger, with anxiety, with Whatever emotion is appropriate, because sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, and then that not being the rest of your day or week, that's more regulated. Regulation doesn't mean you don't experience emotions. It means you experience them but they don't rule you.
Speaker 1:Right and I love that was just a beautiful explanation of it. And and for me, and again, the reason why I have this podcast is because I do, I have some experience and I can tell people what happened, and so the reason why I asked Jeremy that question again, we're honing in on when we don't, when we don't appropriately deal with childhood trauma, it turns into a, an, a dysregulated nervous system. As an adult and I know that I walked around for two decades with the dysregulated Nervous system and you referenced that can also result in many things, one of them being a breakdown. My listeners know that I spent five days in a psych ward Because I just had a complete nervous breakdown, because I we use the cheetah analogy a lot on my podcast. We're a cheetahs, the fastest animal on the planet, and it will run, run, run, run, run, run until it can't to get away from danger.
Speaker 1:And and that was me and so the other thing that happens as a result of that and what we watched this, particularly in the environment that we find ourselves in today, that you mentioned that air, that, that balloon, is an analogy that I love when we don't let some air out the balloon by regulating a nervous system through modalities like EMDR, which is counseling, or something that we're getting ready to talk about, or going for a walk, making sure you're moving your body, Deep breathing exercises.
Speaker 1:I mean there are a million different ways that we can calm the nervous system down. And for the trauma patient particularly for the complex post-traumatic stress Like me, the people that have CPTSD, even though that's still not technically a diagnosis, it's even harder, and so I find that, even though I dealt with my childhood trauma, that I have to be mindful on a daily basis to make sure that I am literally taking deep breaths, because for 35 years of my life, it was just about surviving, it was just about getting to the next thing, and so my nervous system was all Wack and I still very much work on that and and I cannot stress how much moving your body Does that deep breathing exercises, you know, breathe in, breathe out, making sure that you're getting properly oxygen, oxygenated things like listing things.
Speaker 1:We all know the five things you, you know the five senses, so five things you can see for here and and so on, and my listeners have heard me talk about that before. Or you're going to end up either Very ill because the body keeps a score and it's like we're like I was, or not with us anymore and that's what we don't want.
Speaker 1:So let's talk quickly and that this is not and I want to make sure that everybody understands this, this is not your modality, but I am fascinated to learn about it. There is a treatment modality of childhood trauma and really family trauma, I assume, because family is, in the name of it, called internal family systems, and I literally know nothing about it because I knew that you would. You would educate me and my listeners, and so, as we were moving towards the end of our conversation and the importance of Dealing with childhood trauma, let's talk a little bit about internal family systems and how it can be effective, should somebody decide they did not want to go the EMDR route, which you are a EMDR consultant. I am an EMDR patient. I would preach it all day long, but I don't know about IFS. I may say that after that, after you tell me what it is, Sure, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:Ifs is internal family systems, as you said. It's from Dr Richard Schwartz, who is a psychologist, and really it's the internal family of Parts, the system of them as they relate, and Real. The ideas in there are familiar, but there's a powerful way that they're being expressed. So the idea that our conscious self is made up of different units. Now, what's important to realize here is this is not and this is a common myth and A point that I want to hit before we even get any further, because I've heard it so often Well, does that mean I have multiple personalities if I have different parts? No, and that's called dissociative identity disorder. Now, and that Is something that occurs due to extended trauma and you, you lose track of time, you don't know where you've been, you have parts that are Co-conscious that will come out and you don't remember in your executive self what happened. But we have other parts that come out and we wonder well, why did I do that? That doesn't seem like me, that's not my Normal response to things. Why was I so sensitive to that? And beyond, like, just being tired and reacting out of that Right, certain things where we have an uncharacteristic response that would, that would be abnormal in our day-to-day living. So those are kind of the differences there. So there's there's essentially three different parts in in IFS, so that the theory goes that we have a unified self unless and until a Traumatic event occurs or repeated trauma that Caused that to fragment in ways that protect the self, and so a traumatic event can create an Exile part of the self that holds shame or fear or feelings of inadequacy, right. So and and I found some very helpful explanations for this stuff from Kathy and Simmons she's got a good website on this and I can provide these, these links from integrative psychco has some, some good stuff and we'll I'll send you the URLs. But you've got exiles, managers and firefighters as parts. So exiles are the parts that hold shame, feel like I said, trauma memories, essentially managers or essentially that apparently normal part in what we call the theory of structural dissociation, which I work with as my thing with EMDR, is the part that appears essentially it can't appear as the part that publicly faces the world.
Speaker 2:You're trying to conceal the trauma. You keep things sort of disentangled from emotions. You as much as possible try to build a reputation as being very, very stable, or really it's that the part is what it sounds like. It's manager part. It may appear perfectionistic. Your job is to manage the exiled emotional memories that are tinged with sadness or shame or what have you. So this can result in over control, right, avoiding triggered blunting and doing things that cause you to restrict emotional expression.
Speaker 2:And firefighter parts are those that are reactive. Okay, so the manager parts are essentially those that are proactively trying to suppress and keep exile parts protected. But firefighter parts are more reactive and can you know, express as anger or as numbing. Okay, that's that more reactive response to push back against any triggering of that traumatic memory. And so you could have some addictive behaviors there, or rage come out, something to protect and push away from the trauma being uncovered. And so IFS helps to essentially mediate and moderate among those three types of parts in service of the true self. So IFS has some very cool terminology involved, like there's eight C's of IFS compassion, curiosity, calm, clarity, courage, connectedness, confidence and creativity. So that's pretty interesting. Those are some guiding principles there and that's the like. The true self is those things, composed of those things.
Speaker 1:Fascinating, absolutely fascinating, and so an IFS therapist then would bring the client into their office and help them first identify maybe those three parts and then, and then just kind of peel back. So, for example, the manager, if you will, I did that for for for many years, but what was the one before the manager?
Speaker 2:The exile part, which is what holds traumatic memories.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that holds traumatic memories, and so I walk into a therapist that does IFS and they essentially help me parlay, if you will. First of all, you know that that exile part with where the traumatic memories are stored, and shame especially and that's a word that resonates with me a lot and my listeners have heard me many times say shame, says I'm, you know, I am the mistake. Not I made a mistake and and but so. But I struggle with that, that definition, because sometimes we experience shame. In the case of sexual abuse, for example, I, you know, I didn't make that mistake.
Speaker 1:Now I know that, now that I'm healed, but as a, as a child, I did not, did not know that. So an IFS therapist then would would, with the client, say here are here's where trauma is stored, these things we can move, and then this is the manager part of you that is trying to live a normal life and this is the firefighter part of you. So when you get triggered you do these things, and so then essentially they bring all those Cs and clarity was one of them to the client for for trauma. Okay, is there any somatic experience involved in that?
Speaker 2:You know what I'm going to be honest with you. I think that people can definitely involve that. I think there's probably quite a bit of it. I've never done an IFS session, I would think so. So there's also five Ps of the true self presence perspective patience, playfulness, persistence. So there's all these kind of nice phrases that go along with with IFS. There's going to be some somatic element of noticing what goes on in the body and any trauma therapy that's provided by an experienced therapist.
Speaker 2:So what this parallels is EMDR and, well, really the structural dissociation model, which is, by the way, not EMDR but has been used in it. So this idea that when a traumatic event happens again and we know it's traumatic because it shatters your feeling of safety the emotion that comes on with it is stored differently in the brain as present tense, the emotion. It's so tinged by emotion that the memory becomes untethered to time context. It becomes like this terrorizing sensory memory, Right. So what that does is it divides the self into that apparently normal part that's trying to take care of daily living activities and an EP or emotional part. And so I think what's different of IFS? It delineates essentially exiles and firefighters as those emotional parts where one holds a lot of shame and one is reactive and tries to protect that, whereas that apparently normal part would be the manager, right in IFS terms.
Speaker 2:But so when this happens, the manager part is excuse me, in structural dissociation terms the apparently normal part really presses to conceal and so cuts off from the body. And so I think the manager part may be a good analog for that, for, yeah, for that apparently normal part in the IFS model. And so there's that desire to push away and say no, don't go to the body. That's where the pain is, and that disconnect is perpetuated because you think of like a crystal that's broken apart or something that's been divided into puzzle pieces. And so the key there is recognizing there's one body for all these parts there, that the key is, through sensory experience, of noticing what that is, that it's not going to kill you. That's a big fear people have. Is, if they experience the emotion, they can't handle it, and so that is felt in the body. And so these things are definitely somatic focused.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you bring up a really good point. There's so many people don't seek help. I mean like I got chills when you said that that phrase don't go there, that's where the pain is, right, it just it landed so so well with me because that's what I did so from. I remember my first trauma around three, the last trauma around 35. And that was my mantra don't go there, that's where the pain is. And so the that's the point of these two podcasts that you've been on is that we want our listeners to understand a the danger of unresolved trauma period, regardless whether it's childhood or not. We just happen to be focusing on childhood trauma. We want you to understand the dangers of unresolved childhood trauma, whether that be yours.
Speaker 1:I have a lot of listeners who have children in their homes from adoption and have a have, have have adoption of foster care, trauma and things like that, but the danger and not dealing with it. And you couldn't have really capstoneed your two episodes better by that statement. And people avoid pain. We are wired to avoid pain at all costs. But what we don't realize is and as it's interesting because the pandemic also precipitated we might my friend and I started a tree farm and it's the spring and so I'm full on out there pruning them and every time I cut off a branch it just a little part of me dies. But I know that cutting off that branch, and even though it leaves a scar, ultimately at the end of the summer, when the winds come in, it needs to be a strong tree. It's going to be strong because we went to where it hurts, we that tree, we scarred that tree, we went to where it hurts.
Speaker 1:And so listeners out there, I promise you I am a living, breathing example of like Jeremy said, so many people are afraid you're going to die from the actual emotion, when in fact and I'm not trying to scare anybody here, to use Jeremy's terms, but in fact you will live a shorter life if you don't deal with your trauma, because your heart rate variability and that's a big fancy word for saying your heart does not have enough time between microbeats. This is not your, your beats per minute, this is your heart rate variability. How many milliseconds happened before in between heart beats? And you need that to be around 100. And mine sits somewhere around 40 or 50 when I'm regulating the best I can.
Speaker 1:I'm not trying to scare anybody. But the body does keep the score. When you're so, that emotion that you're so afraid of cannot be possibly as scary or as damaging to you as the long term effects of holding that trauma in your body. Every, literally every fiber of your being is holding that trauma. And so and not not to, not to mention just pure quality of life. I have such a quality of life now. I'm not living in manager mode.
Speaker 1:I'm not living in firefighter mode. The exile doesn't exist for me, and that happened because of EMDR, and everybody knows I'm a big fan of it and I'm a big fan of you of doing that, and I think there's so much more out there to still be learned from EMDR as we see people like myself with these huge bodies of trauma healing from it and able to do things like we're doing today, and so I just want to thank you again for being on the podcast. You're a dear friend. Is there anything else that you can think of that we've not addressed that? It's important. I just really want our listeners to not ignore trauma period and especially not ignore childhood trauma, whether it's their own or somebody in their home.
Speaker 2:Well, I want to say that it's wide in your perspective of what trauma includes. So for people who think, well, everything isn't trauma and we need to stop labeling you stubbing your toe as trauma I hear that I think there's. The word is sometimes used in a way that's not that helpful. But a lot more also, I'll say. On the other hand, is trauma that we leave unresolved, that we may label as something like depression or anxiety, which anxiety comes from traumatic experiences or things that we just write off and refer to some other way. And identifying is the first step to clarifying and even integrating. And so what we have to realize is if we felt really humiliate on a consistent level growing up, that's trauma, right, that's not just stubbing your toe.
Speaker 2:To go back to that sort of really dismissive, I'll say that Well, right, but it's like well, did you grow up feeling chronically unsafe or a little bit on edge because of a parent who was erratic? That wires you to be more on edge and feel unsafe in your relationships. Now I find that to be traumatic. I would think that that constitutes, it's like it's an emotion tax. You're being literally taxed, not financially, but you're in the other sense of the word. You're having limits, putting something extracted from your emotional well being by being on edge all the time. That gets your frontal lobe out of the picture. You're not as active cognitively, you're in emotion mode, and that stops you from really experiencing and noticing things in a mindful capacity. Why not address and ameliorate that, if we can right? Why not integrate past memories where they belong in the past, instead of reliving them? And something to keep in mind about that is it's never too late to start and there's no step that's too small. So if you go in with a responsible therapist and you do the work weekly, bi-weekly, whatever monthly is a little bit you're just going to see shorter. It's going to take longer and you're going to make shorter gains right Now. If that's right for you, if that's your pace, that's still better than nothing. You'll still be further than you would have been 12 months into the future with doing nothing. So I want to encourage people on that front.
Speaker 2:We therapists tend to be a bit of an insulated bunch where I lovingly say this, but we talk a lot about healing. We talk a lot about stuff that can be off-putting if you have the slightest hint of introversion or you don't want to talk about that stuff. So just be aware that a responsible therapist is going to recognize you don't want to open up right away. Good, that's smart. It may have been unsafe for you to do that as a kid. So be careful, be skeptical, not cynical, but be skeptical and allow yourself to make small gains if that's what works for you, because that's still better than thinking ah, I can't get into that therapy stuff because I've got to emotionally hemorrhage right away. No, you don't. In EMDR you don't have to share everything you're thinking, by the way. You just have to show that you're in the room and not dissociating.
Speaker 2:So that's, another thing huge and that's something that men find valuable often not to be too sexist here but or people who just don't want to share everything or feel mushy With EMDR. You can just know that the person is in the room processing it. They're reprocessing at their own pace and we don't have to. And actually we will interrupt people and say okay, go back in, because the brain's faster than the mouth.
Speaker 1:Oh, that happens to me all the time in EMDR. That's very interesting.
Speaker 2:Back in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You have to do that or else we won't get with it. We don't want to break the flow.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and I know what it is. I mean, I've been doing it long enough. I know, I know the nonverbal, even like come back, come back, but that is such an encouraging word to my listeners and particularly my mission. One of the C's on this podcast is trauma-informed counseling. I shared with some and this will come after your episode but I shared with somebody that I had an interview with this morning that I have a goal of raising one million dollars over the rest of my life to help people with pro bono counseling with a 501c3. That's how important this is to me, because I know that you don't have to live in pain, you don't have to live in the dark, you don't have to live on any of that. But, jeremy, one thing that I do want to ask you and I wouldn't ask this to any professional that I have, but I consider you a friend and this is more personal in nature, but I know that there are people out there wondering Okay, my trauma. I just decided to keep my head down and do the thing.
Speaker 1:I was an excellent student, I have a graduate degree, I have a business, I have 26 years in the same business, well respected in the industry, all the things From the outside. Looking in, people looked at me and thought I had it together, drove nice cars, had nice houses, did all the things. I never would deal with my trauma because I was all about the grind that turned into a burnout and it turned into a five-day psych ward visit. I don't want that for people under the sound of our voices. So can you tell, can you stress one more time before we close why it's so important to deal with trauma? Because what happened to me is not burnout, like most people think of it, an occupational burnout, even though it was occupational, because that was just work, work, work, work, work. But it was do, do, do, do, do so that I could avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. And so maybe we don't use the term burnout.
Speaker 1:But whatever that is that happened to me breakdown, burnout, whatever. I don't want to happen to my listeners.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you just explained it beautifully. I think it is burnout, because the doing, chronic overdoing, is now. Let me, now, let's really tie this all together with a bow. So you've got like an overactive manager part, or, in theory of structural association terminology, the apparently normal part, the A and P, which says at all costs, do at all costs, achieve at all costs, close yourself in your achievements and so the development of the you know outward facing persona.
Speaker 2:And as you build that up which, by the way, I'm not a success hating therapist, I don't think that all you need in life, unless you want it, is to sit on a blanket and just dwell on, you know, the hidden meanings of life. I myself have quite a bit of care for doing in the world. I have passion for that, so I empathize with it. But what happens when you only attend to that is, you build up no capacity to think about and to feel about whatever past event happened and you become unable to when it breaks through. Finally, then there's that burnout. It's just that the straw, the last straw that broke the well I mean.
Speaker 2:Burial Camels that will say that metaphor. But that's so. You have reduced professional efficacy. You have feelings that you don't that. What is the use? You're not doing enough, it's never enough. You don't have a core anchoring sense of well being or worth that can buffer you against, like a negative grade or something that comes out of somewhere and hits that, nicks that armor. So when you're, when you're only doing and you're not actually developing in internal resources there, or the recognition that this could come out, or recognition in your body that there's still some unaddressed trauma, that when you feel that when we say the body keeps the score, what we mean is that the memory has somatic elements number one and that when you're reminded of it you may feel panic. And if you don't deal with that and it comes up, you may be so upset by it that you're dysregulated and that you have an incident where you feel unsafe and you feel absolutely shattered. People can even feel like they're back in the trauma to the point that it almost looks psychotic to someone who's not a trauma expert, right? So that's what we're talking about. Deal with that stuff. Let them air out a little bit at a time before it becomes an episode, because again, like I just said, I won't belabor the whole thing again. You can do it a bit at a time, even in therapy. So there's a phrase slower is faster.
Speaker 2:When it comes to trauma work, you make some big gains. Giving people the, the, the freedom, giving clients the freedom to go slowly. That makes them feel safe and well they should. A professional, ethical therapist is going to put the client in the emergency within reason, because we know that autonomy is one of the biggest things that has been robbed from trauma survivors and that they need to restore in their own lives, and we have to acknowledge that. So I would say the biggest burnout thing is pace yourself, find your values, what, what gives you meaning beyond just work stuff. If your work is an extension of who you are, like it is for many therapists Recognize, though, that that's who you are and that you sometimes have to also tap into other things that are who you are your hobbies.
Speaker 2:If you don't have cult caring relationships, begin cultivating them by going to meet up groups or, at a time you know a bit, at a time if you feel meeting new people and some kind of a context, and in reaching out to friendships that you do have, even if it's just to talk to them and get your mind off things. Do activities that require your attention so that you don't perseverate or ruminate on things that are related to work. If you find yourself thinking only about negatives, speak to a therapist or, preferably, or friends or whomever you will. That jumpstart you thinking about something that's more positive. Behavioral activation therapy is amazing. And basically doing things in spite of thinking they won't help, and then tracking. You really feel afterward and not thinking, well, I won't feel better. You don't know that. You do not know that you have to try. You have to have that curiosity that is often lost to trauma.
Speaker 1:And it's so funny that you said that, because when you were saying a few minutes ago, you use another term I almost said and be curious, ask questions, do the things, and so well, you absolutely answered that beautifully, and one of the things you said there I want to highlight is when your trauma finally comes through and so you can. You can go to grad school and get a 4.0 and do all the things and be wildly successful. But I tell people all the time, if you don't pay attention to trauma, it will pay attention to you. So thank you so much for being here again today. Guys, jeremy is an amazing human being. Again, if you're in Georgia and are in need of some counseling services, he is a EMDR consultant, which is an amazing achievement, especially at his age, and he's just a remarkable human being. Tell us your handle really quickly.
Speaker 2:At Fox Therapy LLC on Twitter, at Fox Counselor on Instagram, and those are the big ones I mean, and you can, I'll include my email for anybody and you can give that if you want.
Speaker 1:No, I'll put your link tree in and thank you so much for being here. I just adore you, as you know, and if there's anything I ever can do to help you as an EMDR testimonial not that you need it, I'm sure you have plenty of people coming to you I will be there for you know that. So thank you so much for being here today. Listeners will be back in two weeks. I hope that you will remember that you are seeing known for love and value you.