Healing from the Traumas of Our Past

022 - Navigating trauma as a motherless daughter can feel like you are drowning in an ocean of grief and shame with no life raft in sight. In processing our trauma, we may inadvertently be looking at current day experiences through "trauma glasses." 

Healing from trauma can be very difficult. In this episode, two motherless daughters share their personal stories of trauma and how they have found healing in processing the traumas of their past.

Motherless Daughters Ministry Website: https://www.motherlessdaughtersministry.com/

Transcript

022_Healing_From_Traumas-Auph

Wed, 1/12 7:48PM • 44:12

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

trauma, mother, shame, people, share, story, person, life, feel, therapy, motherless, heal, glasses, loss, reprocess, child, vulnerability, situation, happened, helped

00:06

Welcome to episode number 22 of nurturing words voices of experience a podcast by the motherless daughters ministry. This is your host Dottie and I'm here today with Kristin Mitchener. We will be discussing Brene Brown's research on shame, vulnerability, and sharing our stories with others, as well as share stories from our own experiences with healing from the traumas of our past. 

I'm really glad that we are talking about the topic of trauma, especially talking to motherless daughters, because when you experience the loss of a mother, any trauma that happens before or after, really compounds that grief, and really compounds the difficulty of moving past, whatever trauma it was that you went through, and one aspect of trauma that is so important for us to address is shame. And how we are we are ashamed of our traumas, which just adds another whole layer of emotion. And I really want us to talk about that, because I feel like, the more you talk about shame, the more you get it out, and the less it really takes root inside of you. And so if we can help alleviate that shame, we can begin to heal Dottie what experiences with trauma or shame Have you gone through?

I went through a very traumatic experience in high school, in addition to my mother loss, shame is isolating the shame kept me very isolated. And I didn't want to talk about my experience. My trauma happened 16 years ago, and I'm just now working on healing from it. In fact, this year, I've gone on a journey of healing. It's been a very long year. It's been a very tedious years, but a very difficult year is something that I haven't really discussed much openly because it's been a very personal journey. I have written some blogs about it that we will share in this podcast. The first blog I wrote about it is titled vulnerability and sharing my story, and I would like to share it now with you all. I hate vulnerability. It is painful, uncomfortable and frightening. I hate uncertainty too. I want to be certain of everything. I never knew that I had issues with vulnerability and shame until I started a journey of healing. The pandemic gave me time for reflection that caused me to decide to heal from the past and search for answers. In my quest for enlightenment, I study the vulnerability and shame research of Dr. Brene Brown. I have found her books and talks on YouTube immensely helpful and insightful. I was 16 when my mother died. I didn't know how to cope with the loss. It was the most vulnerable time of my life. The loss was fresh and raw when I reached out to a good friend for support. Instead of empathy and comfort. My friend expressed contempt, indifference and refused to speak to me ever again. I was stunned and shaken. This new worlds without my mother was really painful. I retreated inward after that experience. I had no idea what I had done to cause my friend to reject me. And I was terrified of it ever happening again.

03:47

After that, I decided to reach out to adults. Two of them were teachers at school. I looked up to them. They had wisdom and life experience that I didn't have. I asked them for advice about coping with the loss of my mother and how to deal with things at home. One teacher was a supportive mentor. The other only initially supportive later turned angry. That teacher made the last month of my senior year a living hell telling me that I was bothersome and a burden. As a result, not only was I dealing with grief, but also with humiliation. I still carry the scars from that trauma 16 years later. It was as life changing as a death of my mother. It became the lens through which I view every interaction and relationship. I internalize the message that I am a bad person. I must be to deserve that kind of treatment. I'm afraid that something like that will happen again. And I panic if something feels off with someone who has like get close to me or resist the urge to build walls around my heart or run away to hurt them before they can hurt me showing care and gratitude to other people can be extremely difficult. Writing a thank you note, dropping off a gift, or giving compliments and positive affirmations can trigger a panic attack. My empathetic heart is overpowered by the fear of being vulnerable. It wasn't until I studied Brene Brown's work that I finally had a name for what this is, shame. Browns definition of shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Shame is feeling I am bad. For the painful betrayals I experienced came the belief that something was wrong with me that people really don't care about me, and I am unworthy of support and empathy. Even now, I frequently wonder why anyone would want to be my friend. I worry about being too much, or a bother to them. Reading Browns books, I discovered that the problem wasn't so much me as it was with whom I shared my story. I picked the wrong people to share my story. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection. Brown writes, If we share our shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm. When we're looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, able to bend and most of all, we need someone who embraces us for our strength and struggles. We need to honor our struggle by sharing it with someone who has earned the right to hear it when we're looking for compassion is about connecting with the right person at the right time about the right issue. The two people who hurt and betrayed me, were not strong enough to bear the weight of my story. I was a vulnerable grieving loss kid trying to pick up the pieces of my shattered heart after the loss of my mother. And I chose the wrong people for support and sharing my story. I was too young to know who is a safe person to confide in. Despite the pain of my past, I believe it is important to share your story with the right people. It takes great courage to allow others to see the messy parts of our lives and the pain we carry in our hearts. When we are brave enough to allow someone to see the darkness in our soul, and we hear me to the demons of our past cannot survive the depth of that connection. It is a real gift and privilege to experience that with someone. We realize that we aren't as alone as we think. When we connect with others with our stories, we heal from pain. This is the power of vulnerability. 

Dottie, that was wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that. To start. I don't even know where to start. There's just so much to unpack from that. First, yes, you touched on. You're a grieving Lost Child. You didn't know who was safe or unsafe. You're assuming teachers are safe. This is your senior year of high school. You know, you're thinking about college, you said you had confided in one of them about things at home birthing. Well, how were things at home during that time,

08:32

things were really rough. My dad and I kind of bumped heads, I think he had a hard time connecting with me and I had a hard time connecting with him because I was closer with my mother when she died. My mother and I had a lot more in common. And I was a teenager and all teenagers can be kind of a pain to deal with. It's a very tough and trying time of just a lot of emotional and physical development. And I think my father just didn't know what to do. So things were rough. And I was also grieving and he was grieving. It was kind of a mess. And in another podcast, you know, I describe the losses. That podcast is called The Last Goodbye, where I talk about my mother loss story and what was going on at that time, more in depth. So I won't go into it too much here. But there was just a lot of grieving in my family. So it was just a really rough time. And so I reached out to adults that I knew and trusted to try to form just a cohesive mother figure I would just there's older women that I would go to for advice to try to fill in the gap about what what to do and how to handle things because I really did not know and I trusted them. So when one of them betrayed me terribly in a very traumatic way. It was very damaging. 

That sounds like a very difficult time in your life, something I would not know how to navigate through. So you're closer with your mother, your mother has passed, things are not right. Not quite right at home, you're reaching out to people you think are safe, and that you think can help you. And you're betrayed. How do you get over that? How do you maneuver through that situation? And that shame is shaped? Can we heal shame? Is that possible? 

I think it is. And I think it's telling how how hard trauma can be that the fact that this happened 16 years ago, and I am still struggling with it. I also think that traumatic things that happen when we are still children, teenagers, when we're still developing, I think, has a much deeper impact. Because you know, our brains are still developing that that time. And when something very jarring and traumatic happens, I think it just really ingrains into our psyche in our sense of self, especially when you're teenager. And that's the time when you're developing that sense of self. And then to have something very traumatic and jarring to happen. I think that it's kind of natural for that trauma, to just really embed into the sense of self and how you view yourself. That's certainly what happened to me was just like, it just attached itself to my sense of self. And I just felt so much shame about it. When did you realize that you were carrying the shame around with you, that's what happened.

11:53

It was pretty immediate. When it happened. I didn't really talk about it much with people I was, I had so much shame, I didn't want to tell my peers about it. And like the whole thing really just made me just feel ill I just really kept it to my to myself. And I was just so paranoid about it, like ever happened again, I talked about it with a few very, very close friends. But I just there was just so much shame there, I felt so guilty, I felt like I must have did something wrong, that I was bad. It really just destroyed me at the time, I felt very sick, you know, I did not want to go to school, I felt so much anxiety, it just really threw off my body in a way that it has never before been thrown off or since been like that, in many ways. That trauma was so much worse than the loss of my mother, which I know sounds extremely surprising. But it was it was almost easier to go through the loss of my mother. That was this thing that happened at school because here I was at school, I was reaching out to a teacher and then I had people telling me this school administration telling me that I was a burdensome bother that I really shouldn't be reaching out that something was wrong with me. And it was so very jarring that it it really destroyed me and I it made me not want to reach out to anybody at all, you know. And so because I was told that I was a burdensome person that was bothering people. And of course, I wouldn't even share the shame that I felt because I didn't want to bother anybody. I very much turned inward and isolated myself. So I really didn't share it much. 

One question Dottie that I have is we're talking about traumas of the past and how they're affecting us today. What insecurities what doubts Do you have, to this day because of what happened in high school? 

I have a very hard time with something feels off with somebody thinking that oh, it must be about me. Because in high school, I sensed that something was off with that teacher and I actually asked another trusted teacher like hey, is there something wrong here? Something doesn't feel right. Does this teacher have an issue with me? I was told no, no, everything's fine. But then it did end up being about me. So ever since that, if something feels off with somebody, I immediately think oh, no, it must have been something I did, which is not a good or healthy place to constantly think that like oh, it must be about me because most times it's not about you. Someone may just be having a bad day or something. In this case. They were basically attacking you, you who you were and yeah needed. The other thing I struggle with is giving Somebody a card or complimenting them or positive affirmation. The other aspect of what happened was, was I gave this teacher a thank you card at the end of the year thanking her for everything she did for me all the great advice. And instead of the response, I expected the teacher appreciating being thanked and being touched by it, I was met with anger, why are you thanking me? You know, you shouldn't thank me. And it was just such a vile response that I am afraid to ever compliment somebody or give them a thank you note or a thank you card or something very heartfelt. That isn't just a like Happy birthday or very, you know, like something very generic, you know, something from the heart that is meaningful, it's very vulnerable to like, give a heartfelt thanks, hey, I really appreciate the help you gave me and this advice. And you know, it's really kind of detailing out, you helped me with this. And you helped me with that. And it'd be met with a angry response makes me shy away from ever doing that again. And I always have kind of like an anxiety, panic attack, if I ever do give someone a heartfelt thanks or something. And that's not that's no way to live, either. The world is much better if people share their hearts to just have that sort of cut off. And to just shrink away from that is, is not a way that I want to be. But it's something I definitely struggle with, because I want to do everything in my power to not have what happened back then ever occur ever again, because it was so traumatic.

16:31

So it sounds like that experience that trauma has really affected you into your adult years. Because how often do we send just a thank you know, or tell someone, you did a great job. It's very common. And so I can see how something can be so anxiety provoking because of the trauma. That's one point that we think is important to get across is how much trauma affects you in the present. And we cannot escape that trauma. There's ways to work through it. But it's important to to address in to heal from that. And that's what you're doing with your blog writing. Yes. And I know that trauma in itself is very far reaching. And I know I'm not the only one that struggles with it. There's many other blog writers on our website that share their blogs and talk about their personal traumas, I know that you have suffered from some trauma in your own life, would you like to share about your experiences with trauma and how it has impacted you? 

Trauma has been in my life since I was a child. My mother was emotionally absent and had untreated mental illness. So needless to say, I kind of raised myself. From the early years, I had to learn how to navigate the world myself, unfortunately, to add to the challenges I was already facing with an emotionally absent mother, my mother and stepfather would actually get into physical fights. So there was domestic violence in my household as a child, and I would witness this, and there was one particularly disturbing and I it's in, I can see it like it was yesterday. I can feel how I felt in that moment. I mean, it's like it just happened. My mother and my stepfather were on the floor, almost wrestling. And I remember seeing my mother biting at my stepfather shirt. And I felt disgusted in her I felt disgusted. Just as a person. I didn't know what was going on. I was very scared. Which led me to calling 911 Because that's what I was taught as a child if there's an emergency you call 911. So that's what I did. Because I'm seeing my mother and my stepfather on the ground. What was I supposed to do? I did what I thought was right. I reached out similarly to you to someone who I thought could help. In this case, it was police officers, they arrived. My mother was very angry that I had called the police. And after the police officers had left, she came into my room and said, thanks a lot. Now I'm going to have a record. And we're talking about me being four, five years old at this time. So I have the emotional absence of my mother. I'm seeing domestic violence and then let's bring up that topic of shame because shame is creeping in, I felt so ashamed when my mother said, thanks a lot, I felt like I had done the worst thing in the world, even though it's what I was taught to do. And that goes back to the relationship between trauma and shame. And we really got to get down to the root of that shame to start healing from the trauma. 

Wow, I mean, that that would be very traumatic, especially at a very young age, and having all those very difficult experiences, and also the confusion of, you're taught to call the police in times of trouble, and then you're being punished for it, especially for a very young child, that would be very confusing. And he just witnessed domestic violence and just processing like what that what that is, even as an adult to see adults fighting that way, it'd be very difficult for a very young child, because you don't have the emotional development and the cognitive development to really understand what's going on, or even what to do. You know, it's, it'd be very scary. And you were trying just to make it stop and get help. I'm so sorry that your your mother reacted that way that that would be very, very difficult and traumatic.

21:22

And what I really find interesting is, how different our traumas are, we're at completely different ages, involves different people in our lives. But again, the aspect of shame, I felt shame, I felt like I had done something bad, I thought I was bad. Those were the same emotions that you were feeling. So good thing about this is we're not alone. If you have a trauma that you're trying to work through, and you have shame that you're trying to work through, just know, you're not alone, and someone else is very likely feeling the same as you. It was a very difficult time. And, you know, it still affects me. 

How does how does this still affect you today? 

Well, for a very long time, the relationships I had with men, very much mirrored the relationships my mother had with men in her life, they were volatile, toxic, just a lot of chaos. And so it has affected me differently throughout the years. So as a child, it's general trust issues, not knowing what to do if I feel unsafe, or if I am unsafe, not knowing who safe people are, to really reliving the trauma, creating the trauma that I was exposed to as a child in these, you know, volatile relationships I was getting into myself, it can be a cycle of trauma, if you don't take care of yourself, if you don't take care to heal. It's a cycle. So on this healing journey you talked to us about you actually wrote another blog post. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

Yes. And this other blog posts that's a continuation of this journey of healing, I talk about how the traumas of our past can actually influence the presence and impact that in a negative way. And so let me share this blog with you all. This blog is titled, seeing the world through the traumas of our past.

23:43

We filter our world through the traumas of our past. Our traumas, build the lenses through which we view everything in our life. These aren't rose colored glasses we are wearing. No These glasses are made of our past hurt, pain, betrayals, abandonment, loss, shame, and failures. We see the world in black and white, we do not see the nuances of color of reality. During my journey of healing, I've realized how much I view the world through my trauma glasses. I have been viewing recent events through the lens of the painful betrayals I experienced in high school, seeing only black and white. Oh no, it's happening again. If I could see in color, I'd see that it's not the same. It's a completely different situation with different people. And I am much older and wiser now. I was sitting at my desk at work when a message popped up on the screen for my boss. Do you have a minute to talk? I thought, Oh no. What did I do? I was instantly anxious. Wearing my trauma glasses. I went to my boss's office Close the door. In my mind, I am transported back to the day I was called to the principal's office where I experienced humiliation, my character was torn to shreds. My boss just needed clarification on something about me that had come up in a meeting. I reacted defensively, it was a bit angry and irritated. My boss looked puzzled. It wasn't a situation that warranted that kind of reaction from me. It was a simple question. I didn't know why I was reacting that way. Later, when I removed the trauma glasses, I could see that my defensive reaction was really present day me defending the defenseless. 18 year old me in the principal's office that had no voice. In another situation, a friend sent me a text message that unknowingly to her struck that tender nerve of my high school trauma. I wrestled with my past and the ambiguous tone of that text message. What does she mean? I wondered, when I'm wearing the trauma glasses. I see her as one of the people in that Principal's office telling me that I am bothersome and a burden. And I can't do anything right despite my best efforts. However, this view does not match my friends character, or the past communication we have had. What is the truth? When I removed my trauma glasses, I saw a friend and pain trying to gain control of her out of control situation. What she said doesn't have much to do with me. When we go through life worrying or trauma glasses, we relive the past and perceive repeats of our traumas and new situations. We filter our world through the traumas of our past, we risk experiencing the self fulfilling prophecy phenomenon, or anticipation that our trauma is reoccurring, and our subsequent reaction can result in our originally false expectation to become true. This confirmation bias only strengthens our traumas further. How do we break this cycle? When we are triggered, we need to be aware that we are wearing our trauma glasses and acknowledge our past selves. For example, I need to tell my 18 year old self sit down, I got this, it will be okay. The next time my boss asked to talk to me, I need to leave my trauma glasses behind. The next time I speak with my friend, I need to respond with compassion for her situation. And not with my alter perception while wearing the glasses. It is imperative that we recognize the reality of the present instead of reacting to the past. If we filter our world through the traumas of our past, we run the risk of damaging our current relationships and sabotaging potential new ones. 

Thank you, Dottie, so much for sharing that. I personally, with my own trauma relate to trauma glasses, you had asked me, you know, How has my trauma affected me and me with my trauma glasses on? I chose the wrong men.

28:22

I brought more problems and subsequent trauma onto myself. You mentioned that in your blog post about you know, the self fulfilling prophecy. What I feared most I was creating in my life. And you know, that goes into self sabotage, which I believe is related to shame, just that self hatred, going into every interaction as an adult with holding on to that shame holding on to that self hatred, holding on to just those icky feelings that you have about yourself and trying to be a functional adult with a career and a family and friends. That's difficult. 

Yes, that that is very difficult. It is hard to move on from trauma, because you're constantly reliving it. It's really a post traumatic stress response. You know you you can have PTSD from these experiences where you're so fearful of it happening again, you would do anything to keep it from happening again. And then you unconsciously cause it to happen again and it can destroy current relationships. When you feel shame from the past, a lot of that turns inward and the self hatred starts up and that can also impact how you relate to people. If you have a low self esteem, you're less likely to I want to reach out, you view yourself very negatively. At least that is my experience. Everything just turns inward. Because you feel so much shame. It's very negative emotion about yourself. 

One of the many things that upsets me about your story that you shared, my story that I shared is that we were children. We were children. And these were adults. And not just adults, but adults with very important positions in our lives, teachers, administration, mothers, fathers, public police officers, were children trying to navigate this crazy situation that's going on, and how, you know, you live through the trauma, you're in survival mode, you've got your trauma glasses on, you don't want to live like this forever. What do you do? And I know for me, personally, counseling has helped a lot. Regular counseling, not just, you know, a few months here, I'm talking about, you know, I'm on your six or seven with my counselor going weekly. What about you? What, what have you found that has helped you?

31:16

Well, first, I want to say I definitely agree with you about feeling angry about the adults in both our situations, the adults in our situations, failed us, you know, they, they they should have been better, they should have known better. And, you know, everybody failed in these situations. And so I definitely agree with that, that feeling. I have also been in counseling for about the same amount of time, as you have mentioned, six or seven years. First, I was going weekly, and then it was like, now it's kind of like every other week or, you know, every three weeks or so depending on how things are going. But it's a very long process with such deep traumas, it takes a lot of deep therapy, to get to get through it and heal the counselor I have I actually sought out specifically to deal with trauma, that's something that she specializes in. And she specializes in a special type of therapy that is for post traumatic stress disorder called EMDR. Eye Movement Desensitization reprocessing, and it involves usually its eye movements, but in my case, it's alternating beeping in the ears, or sometimes I'm holding something that buzzes alternately and my hands. So basically, you you discuss the trauma that is affecting you and how it makes you feel. And then the therapists guide you through it. And you talk about something, an aspect about it, and then you either stop and you look at a light going back and forth and your eyes, follow it or listen to the beeps or like, you know, feel the hand buzzing in your in your hands. And they've done studies where having that there's alternating beeps does something that different hemispheres of the brain, and it helps reprocess and reframe that. And so the therapist who has special training in this therapy guides you through it, and you basically reprocess those traumatic memories. And it really does help I have healed a great deal from some other traumas in my life. I'm still working through the EMDR with this high school thing, it seems like just when I think I've beat it, it still part of it still lingers on. It's the trauma that just will not go away. But it's still a process. And that's why I'm on this journey of healing this year. Just trying to reprocess and reframe that trauma. What about you, Kristen, what has helped you heal? Have you done anything special in your therapy that has helped you heal from your trauma? 

Yeah, definitely. I've also done the EMDR. I process through a trauma I had when I was a little bit older. I was in middle school, and it also involved my mother again, and you have to relive it. you relive it in EMDR. You really do and you go scene by scene, what's in the room? What do you smell? What are you wearing what's around you and it really puts you back into the scene of the crime essentially. And that's why I want to point out that continued therapy is important because it's rough. It is very difficult, trying to heal from trauma. No matter what the trauma is, what age you were when it happened, what age you are now it is difficult. So the importance of regular counseling, I would say, would be my recommendation and what has personally helped me the most. Also, writing has been very therapeutic, a lot of journaling, and a lot of blogging. motherless daughters has a great platform, Barbie can share our stories on the motherless daughters blog. So that's been a real source of healing for me, just knowing that maybe some of my pain will help someone else, I can't go back in time to that four year old little girl and pick her up out of that house of violence and chaos, and make her feel better. Again, I can't do that. But what I can do is share my story, and have someone hear it and it make a difference.

35:53

Writing has helped me as well. And it does make me feel better sharing my story. And knowing that maybe the trauma that I went through was in a way worth it, if it helps somebody else heal from their trauma. I also want to point out that I know a lot of times in society, there's a lot of stigma around mental illness in general, and therapy. You know, after my mom died, I was initially very opposed to therapy, because I didn't want people to think I was crazy, you know, because I thought well, therapies for like crazy people. And I must be crazy if I'm in therapy. So I resisted it for for a while. But I want to say that you are a strong person, if you seek out therapy, if you go to therapy, it does not mean that you are a weak person, or that you're crazy, that stigma is not true. You are a strong person, because you're you're facing your demons in your life. You are a strong person to willingly and intentionally face the traumas in your life and work on healing from it. It really does take a strong person to do that. And I just want to commend people who are doing that, and just tell you that you are a strong person, you may not feel that, but you are a strong person. 

Yes, definitely agree with that. So one thing that you said, when talking about Brene Brown's work is the importance of hearing the words Me too, I want to ask you a question. We both said how sharing our story has helped us and how we hope it will help others. But we have to be careful with who we share our stories with. Do you have any insight into that? 

Earlier in the other blog, I shared the quote for Brene Brown, which I just I just love that quote, I think Renee browns, just a very wise person, I encourage you to read her books, like they're just really fantastic her work, but she talks about if you share your shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm. That is very true. If you share your story with a person that is untrustworthy, they may tell somebody else they may, there is a lot of risk to sharing your story, it is a very vulnerable thing to share your story. That's why it's important to be careful who you share your story with find safe people, someone that has earned the right to hear it, someone that may understand that, you know, may understand your story, you know, as you're sharing with a friend, you know, if a friend starts to share their story, you know, and it maybe relates to you, then I think that'd be a safe person to share it with, you know, like, Hey, me too, and share your story. There's a lot of power in sharing your story. Because then other people could see that they're not alone, that there's other people out there that have the same experiences. That's why our blogs are so powerful, because our blog writers share their story and pour out their hearts. And it is a safe venue. You know, there's many women that follow our page or podcast or Facebook page that have similar experiences. And it's very powerful to know that there are other people out there that have the same experiences. It's very comforting to know that you aren't alone. 

I really like what you said about sharing your story with someone who's earned the right to hear it and not everyone deserves to hear your story. Not everyone needs to be privy to your story. Be open and trust. If someone is being vulnerable with you and sharing their story, you know, that's a good indication that this may be a safe person. And you don't have to tell your entire story all at once. You can ease into it, you can talk about what this is your trauma, this is your life, your experience, you're in control at the time, maybe you weren't in control, maybe you didn't have control. You couldn't have control. You're too young, any number of things. But this trauma is yours. And it's yours to own and it's yours to transform and it's yours to heal from.

40:43

And it's your decision, who you talk to how much you tell them about your story. Having someone confide in you. I know for me, personally, helps me feel a little bit more comfortable about sharing personal information about my life, if I know they're willing to share as well. 

Yes, I think a lot of it is just knowing your audience. You know, like I know when I blog on motherless daughters, I know my audience I know that the audience, people I'm sharing my story with on you know, the website is going to relate because it is about motherless daughters and like our journey, just like if you're talking with with someone in your life, know your audience, is this person a gossip? Are they someone that you know, is just one of those gossipy people that will just share your story with anyone and anyone that come across. Don't share your story with just a random person and just like spill your guts, you know, like, there's a certain nuance to it. If they're vulnerable with you and sharing things from their life, you may feel more comfortable, being vulnerable and sharing with them. 

One thing I would like to quickly add, and I know this from experience, if someone is talking to you poorly about someone else, they will likely talk to someone else poorly about you. That's another way you can kind of gauge who's safe. 

There's so much that goes into dealing with trauma that we have discussed in this podcast you have shame you know, after the the events and how you view yourself and how you view the world and how it just colors, your perception, you have vulnerability and sharing your story you have how the past impacts the presence and just dealing with constantly battling the past and the present together. There's just so much that goes into trauma, and many types of trauma. You know, I have a different type of trauma than Kristen has yet. We have very similar experiences and can discuss and connect on that. I just encourage you to share your stories with others that also may share that same trauma. And I also encourage you to try therapy. I think it's really great and very beneficial. Thank you Kristin for also sharing your story on this podcast. I think it's really going to be beneficial to our listeners. 

Thank you also Dottie for sharing your story. The trauma that we've talked about. It's not easy. One thing that we really want to get across is that you're not alone. Like he said our trauma is so different her and I but the shame, the vulnerability. It's all there. You're not alone. 

Thank you for listening to nurturing words voices of experience, a podcast by the motherless daughters ministry. For more information on our support groups and programs, please visit www dot motherless daughters ministry.com