Understanding your Trauma to help with the Drama

summary

In this episode of Mama Needs Me Time, host Molly Ryden delves into the complex topic of trauma, particularly as it relates to motherhood. She discusses the various forms of trauma, including physical and emotional, and emphasizes the importance of understanding and processing these experiences for personal growth. Molly shares her own journey with trauma and offers practical tools for processing it, such as therapy, journaling, and mindfulness. The conversation highlights the non-linear nature of healing and the significance of embracing one's journey to foster resilience and improve relationships with others, especially children.

takeaways

• Understanding trauma is essential for personal growth.
• Mothers often prioritize others' needs over their own.
• Trauma can manifest in various forms, including emotional and physical.
• Honoring your trauma involves acknowledging its impact on your life.
• Processing trauma is about integrating experiences into your life.
• Therapy is a valuable tool for sorting through complex feelings.
• Journaling provides a safe space for emotional expression.
• Mindfulness helps in staying grounded and present.
• Healing from trauma is a non-linear process.
• Embracing your journey leads to personal growth and resilience.

titles

• Understanding the Non-Linear Nature of Healing
• From Pain to Empowerment: Embracing Your Trauma

Sound Bites

• "Understanding and processing our own traumas is essential."
• "Trauma comes in many forms and affects us differently."
• "Honoring your trauma means acknowledging its impact."

Chapters

00:00
Understanding Trauma and Its Impact

10:41
Processing Trauma: Tools and Techniques

15:00
Embracing Your Journey: Personal Growth and Resilience

Transcript

Molly Ryden (00:00.878)
Hello, hello and welcome back once again to Mama Needs Me In Time. As always, I'm Molly. I'm so glad you're here. Today, we're going to dive into a topic that touches all of us, especially those who have given birth or...

Molly Ryden (00:23.81)
Hello, hello, and welcome back to Mama Needs Me Time. As always, I'm your host, Molly, and I'm so glad that you're here. I want to start this episode off with a trigger warning. Today, we're going to be talking about trauma. Most of us have experienced it. All of us have been touched by it in one way or another, whether directly or indirectly. As moms, we're always prioritizing the needs.

of everyone else above our own, but understanding and processing our own traumas will often help us understand the traumas of those around us. And it's not just beneficial, let's be honest, it's essential for us to understand and get through these things for our own personal growth and for us to be as available and present as parents as we can be. So let's...

Just jump right into it. I'm going to be sharing some of my experiences as well as some tips and tricks on how you can start the process of processing or continue to gain strength through processing your own trauma. And again, if you're not ready for this, if you're not at a level of your own self -care journey or self -identification journey where you want to deal with trauma, feel free to skip this episode. I appreciate you.

But we are going to do some learning and figuring out some ways that you can start to process and grow through your own trauma. Okay, so, you know, trauma comes in many forms and it honestly affects all of us differently. There's physical trauma like accidents or injuries. And then there's the more common but also less dealt with emotional trauma. And this can result from experiences of loss, of failure and really

deeply distressing events. And we're also not gonna overlook the cumulative effects of repeated stresses. And this is what's known as complex trauma. And I believe that women of my generation, so in your 30s and 40s, we have been dealt quite the hand of complex trauma when it comes to international and global events, as well as the pandemic and all these different things. And something that

Molly Ryden (02:43.743)
All moms deal with is complex trauma when you're going through that newborn phase and then into toddlers and blah blah. Each season of motherhood is a different chapter of complex trauma, not to mention the whole process of pregnancy and birth. I believe that that's a form of trauma, no matter how smoothly it goes. We're all experiencing like immense physical trauma as our body changes and things like that. So.

Sorry. For instance, like we've always got the ongoing stress of balancing work, home, and the constant judgment that we may be inflicting on ourselves, but that we face having kids and dealing with other parents. And those like continued stresses can leave like really deep emotional scars and they shape our reactions and our health and really how we relate to others, including how we relate to our own children. So there's different ways that you can deal with trauma.

You can ignore it, but that's not going to benefit you. It's kind of like not cleaning a cut or not feeding yourself when you're hungry. Like eventually it's going to catch up to you and you've got to find ways to process and go through it. One of the first and initial ways that I think we can deal with trauma on a personal and individual level is understanding how to honor your trauma.

So honoring your trauma sounds kind of like woo woo hippie dippy, but really it involves acknowledging its impact on your life. And you don't let it define you, but it means you're giving yourself permission to recognize that your feelings are valid and your experiences are real. If you're new here or even if you're not, you've heard me talk about the journey I went through welcoming my first child.

It was a very complex pregnancy. had a lot of bleeding. had a subcarinogenic hemorrhage. And at one point, I'll never forget, the doctor told me to stay cautiously optimistic. Stay cautiously optimistic because we didn't know what was going to happen. And then, you know, we went through a very traumatic NICU stay of over three months with complex medical diagnosis and stuff like that. And for a long time, one of the struggles I had as a mom

Molly Ryden (05:06.594)
was I did let that experience define who I was. You I put up on all the hashtags like, Nick you mom, boy mom, Nick you ninja, like all of those things. I was creating my entire persona of being a mother around the fact that I had gone through this trauma and that like that was that everyone should walk around me.

in a state of just empathy and understanding and that my journey into motherhood wasn't easy, it wasn't fair, and that everyone needed to recognize and honor that. Well, that wasn't, that was overly embracing my trauma. It was not in fact honoring that I did it, I made it through it. And so, you know, we acknowledge and we talk about trauma. And then,

We kind of we don't let it go. Letting it go is not the right word. But like I had to recognize that I wasn't always going to be able to hang on that empathy. I wasn't always going to be able to hang on like, yeah, the first three months of my journey into motherhood sucked ass because it did like it was hard. But I also made it through it. And I won't lie, every August when I get her on to the time where I was admitted to the hospital, my body

members. Even if it's in the back of my brain, kicking around in a file cabinet, it comes up. It's like back on my desk, right in front of me. under recognizing that this was like the scariest week of my life. It was the scariest three months of my life. And so I've really had to carve out a place where it's on my calendar, August 28th every year. It's just a T. And I recognize and acknowledge that this is going to be a hard

week. I'm going to have subconscious physical rememberings and like I'm going to see pictures pop up on my newsfeed, stuff like that. And I have to create space for it. So I honor it. I don't let it sidetrack me from everything and I kind of move through it. It doesn't always go as planned. There are often times where it does get the best of me and I'll have, you know, very emotional moments. I remember when my son turned one, we had to go back to the hospital where he was born.

Molly Ryden (07:26.03)
When I went back there and had my daughter, it was a very interesting experience, but it's honoring it, it's recognizing it happened, and it's moving through it. So then that's how we process, right? Processing trauma is not about erasing the memories. It is not about getting rid of them or jamming them in a file cabinet never to be seen again. It is about understanding them, learning from your trauma.

and integrating these experiences into your life in a healthy way. So like I was talking about, you know, I honor the experience I had and it helps me process it. So what are some ways that you can get through and process your trauma? Number one, obvious reason, therapy. Talking with a licensed professional.

can really help you sort through these complex feelings and begin to heal. I've been in therapy since my son was born and it's taken a long time to process and move through these feelings. We've gone into even further past trauma. In this current time, we're talking a lot about my election trauma, the anxiety I have around political seasons.

But know, like having a professional to help you build those tools. Another way that I work through it is journaling, know, writing. Even if it's just on post -its and you throw them away, journaling about your experiences is gonna provide you a private and safe space to express and understand your emotions. There are also support groups. I, for a while, was in a support group around my son's medical diagnosis, and it was helpful.

I've been able to share my experiences with other moms who are going through what I went through now and kind of, you know, sharing how it's going to get better. It doesn't last forever. You're going to be able to move on and move forward from this. It also helps to reduce the feelings of isolation while you're going through because other people have mutual understandings and are able to help you through support. A big one that you can do on your own.

Molly Ryden (09:45.378)
where you don't need other people around is mindfulness and meditation. We talk a lot about mindfulness in the mom needs me time community and these just help you stay grounded. They help you to be present. Part of my mindfulness and meditation every day is journaling, just writing down my thoughts on the day, my thoughts on what's coming. And it gives you a place.

that makes it easier to process past traumas without letting them become overwhelming. It helps you kind of, if you think about it, meditation and mindfulness kind of are like a force field, right? So the more aware you are of what's going on with your body, the more aware you are of your mindset and where your brain is, the easier it is to be like pew, pew, and like shoot the nasty thoughts away or to make them smaller and fit them into a better container. Now, here's the biggest reminder and takeaway I want you to have.

Processing trauma and mental health care in general is not linear. As I said, some days are going to be harder than others. For me, it's the beginning of August when I have reminders of, you know, my traumatic birth experience and my Nick use day. And every year my son's birthday is going to be one of those days where I have to really focus in.

and fortify my mind and you know, I journal about it. I know some moms who write letters every year on their son's birthday or their child's birthday. You can write a letter to them. You can write a letter for yourself either way. Just remember that some days are going to be harder than others. And this is about making incremental changes that are going to lead to a fuller and more peaceful experience. We're not trying to like snap our fingers and be done with trauma. That's

That's not how it works. It takes time. And honestly, by confronting these traumas and processing them, we're healing ourselves, right? And we also get to improve our relationships with others and our children. You know, as we become better equipped to handle our own emotional needs, we then in turn are better at handling their emotional needs. And we teach them through our example, like how we cope with life's challenges and our experiences.

Molly Ryden (12:03.328)
rubs off on them, right? Like they are always watching. They're always watching. I can think of a moment clearly not too long ago where my daughter, who is two, was basically picking on my son and he was getting visibly frustrated. Like he was, he had his fist clenched and his teeth were, like he was biting down on his lip and he looked over at me.

and he just took a deep breath and was slowly breathing out and he said, I don't like what you're doing and I need space. And that was a big parenting moment for me because I have had that same emotional and angry reaction to things so many times. But it wasn't until recently, probably in the last couple of years that I recognized I need to take a deep breath. I need to take a step back and I need to communicate that like

I need space. And my childhood trauma, my past relationships, things like that, I learned from all of those. And I've learned what it takes for me to be able to calmly and effectively deal with the situation. Embracing your journey is what transforms you to see yourself in the world. So this leads to personal growth, increased resilience, a deeper understanding of what it truly means to take care of yourself.

And that is so fucking empowering. I will never stop pushing my fellow moms and women around me to really figure out what it is you need. What has happened to you and why do you feel this way about certain situations? I don't know if they're gonna listen to this. I will not name names, but I have a few friends who are so dedicated and obsessed with having clean and perfect houses.

And whenever they're like, I have so much to do. I asked them why. Why? And it's a prime example of millennials, right? Like we grew up with a generation of parents who liked stuff. They had stuff. Our houses were often cluttered. They collected things like they they just had stuff. And so so many of us have reverted to this minimalistic. I can't have stuff. It gives me anxiety because it is triggering trauma. It is.

Molly Ryden (14:30.186)
It is bringing about feelings you had of uncertainty and discomfort and different feelings in your life. And you never processed it. You never figured out why. So really understanding where your trauma is coming from and how you can deal with it is vital for being the best version of yourself now and really growing as a person. So I challenge you. I'm trying to end every episode this season with a challenge.

Think about it. Spend some time reflecting, meditating and thinking about why certain behaviors make you or why certain things make you behave a certain way. Like, why are things triggering? Is it trauma? And if it's trauma, how do we honor it and move through it? And, you know, think about those those things we talked about with, you therapy. Not everyone's like full stop and all be all, but it is beneficial journaling.

finding a support group, finding other women or finding other people who have been through the things you've been through and kind of ditching that feeling of isolation and feeling like you have to do it yourself. And then also meditation and mindfulness, know, journaling, gratitude, all those different things. It's really beneficial in how you can process your own trauma. That's all I've got for you today. Again, thanks for tuning in. I hope you found this enlightening or empowering.

You know, taking the time to honor and process your own experiences is legit one of the biggest profound acts of self care that benefits not just you, but the whole family. So until next time, take care of yourself. Make sure you're carving out a little bit of that me time every bit or every day. And we'll see you next time.