Ohio Counseling Conversations
Ohio Counseling Conversations
Conversation 32 - I Want to be the Disney of Neuroscience
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Mary Vicario, LPCC-S and Certified Trauma Specialist, established Finding Hope Consulting in 2007. Recognizing a critical need within community training, she pioneered the translation of complex relational neuroscience into accessible, practical tools for fostering healing, resilience, and hope. Her global influence extends beyond her Cincinnati-based practice, encompassing international lectures and training. Mary continues to refine her expertise through affiliations with leading institutions such as The Trauma Research Foundation and Harvard Medical School. Her distinguished 30-year career includes serving as a People to People counseling delegate to China and Mongolia, and as a lecturer at universities and a conference on human trafficking in Germany.
Drawing from her family history that led to her being ‘born into trauma work,” Mary's insights highlighted the crucial distinction between power-over and power-with dynamics in abuse, emphasizing the need to foster genuine connection rather than transactional affection. Understanding the neuroscience of trauma, particularly the brain stem's fear response, helps caregivers cultivate empathy by contextualizing behavior, shifting the focus from "I am a mistake" to "I made a mistake." The conversation underscored the importance of naming emotions to manage them effectively, as well as the value of tools like the Trauma Informed Biographical Timeline (TIBT) for a holistic understanding of individuals with complex histories. Ultimately, the discussion resonates with the core principle of relational cultural therapy that connection is our deepest need, illustrating how fostering supportive relationships is paramount in healing and addressing the profound fear of disconnection.
Resources:
- https://www.findinghopeconsulting.com/
- Finding Hope Resources
- Vagus Nerve
- Foster Parent Survival Guide Workbook
- Wired to Connect by Amy Banks
- How Connections Heal: Stories from Relational-Cultural Therapy by Maureen Walker
- Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey
- PDFs from Guest
- TIBT; 3-Finger Grounding Exercise; Regulate, Relate, Create Manual
If you would like to provide any feedback for the podcast, we invite you to do so at the form linked here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfV0u5jSuQ4hNaGM3Nioymbj4ZuQAIlcxIJrYr98fUgfiwnNQ/viewform
If you or your division have a PSA you'd like Ohio Counseling Conversations to share, you can complete the form linked here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScDWNUFWbzJ6OclTzEh8WvBFdgCi_cXtRq3XYKVQClGwLfUpA/viewform
Both of these links are always available on the OCA Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ohiocounseling
If you’re a counselor in Ohio and would like to get involved as part of production or as a guest, or know someone who might be interested, please email us at ohiocounselingconversations@gmail.com!
Created by the OCA's Media, Public Relations, and Membership (MPRM) Committee & its Podcast Subcommittee: Marisa Cargill, Kendra Thornton, Leah Wood, Victoria Frazier, and Linda Marcel-Rene
Mary's Journey into Trauma Work
Speaker 1Welcome back to Ohio Counseling Conversations, the official podcast of the Ohio Counseling Association. This is the space where we hold meaningful conversations with counselors, educators and advocates all over the state, and today's guest brings both wisdom and heart to the work. Mary Vacario is a licensed professional clinical counselor supervisor, certified trauma specialist and the founder of Finding Hope Consulting. With advanced training from Bessel van der Kolk's Trauma Center, harvard Medical School and the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, mary has devoted her life to translating neuroscience and relational cultural theory into practical healing interventions for individuals, families theory into practical healing interventions for individuals, families and communities.
Speaker 1Her story is deeply personal, shaped by her father, a World War II concentration camp liberator, who showed her through his pain and his resilience what it means to help heal the world. That legacy lives on in the way Mary approaches trauma work grounded in science, led by empathy and always centered on hope. Let's get into it. It is so nice to be here with you today, mary. This is Mary Ricario. Can you give yourself a little bit of an introduction and tell us a little bit about what led you into the counseling profession?
Speaker 2Yes, thank you and it is great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, we're so excited. Thank you, and it is great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, we're so excited to have you. I often say I was born into this trauma work. I was born to an Italian immigrant. My father came here somewhere between 1914 and 1920. We're not really sure when, because it seems as if no vicario has ever entered the United States through Ellis Island. So, yes, they came without papers, making them true wops, which is. I learned where the word came from and I was like oh, now I see why that word was such a. It had such an impact on my dad Without papers.
Speaker 2Without papers. They showed up without papers. So when they came my family tells me we tell this story every year at Christmas when they came, they came for a free public education. However, in the early 1900s they weren't quite sure how to teach students who didn't speak English. So they actually devised a test, a written analogy test that was used to see if the immigrants were ready for school, and if you didn't pass the test, you didn't get into the public schools.
Speaker 2So my grandparents they didn't know what analogies were. They didn't know how to speak English, but they knew how to keep their kids from speaking Italian. So every time an Italian word came out of my father's, brothers and sisters mouths, they got hit in the face. And my dad said his earliest memory was around the age of three or four was going out into the streets of the tenements not a really safe place to find someone, anyone who would teach him English. So he and his brothers and sisters would quit getting hit in the face and he learned very quickly that the teachers who were not allowed to teach the kids during the day could stay after school for free and teach the kids not only English but analogies.
Speaker 2So very early on my grandparents did the best they could with what they had, and it was a pretty harsh beginning for my father.
Speaker 2He went on to sign up for World War II when he was 31 years old and he became a concentration camp liberator Wow, yes. And from that he had nightmares almost every night frequently, and I remember my earliest memory, somewhere around the age of three or four, is hearing my father throw himself out of bed, hearing my mother run out of the bedroom and going in and sitting on the floor with my dad while he told me, step by step, what he saw as he walked through the camp, having no idea he was looking at a three or four-year-old child. Clearly now I understand the science of it. His brain was taken over, literally, his cortex was taken over by the flashback. At some point he'd wake up and he'd go oh my gosh, what are we doing here on the floor? We must be playing a game. And he'd play some game with me. That's the year he died and, true to form, when I was 17, the game he was teaching me was poker, because he thought it would help with my college fund. My student loans tell a very different story.
Speaker 1Yeah, if only.
Speaker 2Yes. So I became very interested at a young age in what helps people survive, something that continues to haunt them and that led me from being a teacher. Because he told me from the time I was little, teachers were the most amazing people in the world and I was going to be a teacher. Into being a teacher, into being a counselor. When I into being a teacher, into being a counselor, when I had a young person come into my classroom, a second grader crack was just becoming quite the epidemic and she had no hair. She was nine years old, placed in a second grade classroom, had never been outside of a crack house and she was terrified. I just didn't know how to teach her. I was in my twenties. She would throw things at us, but you know what? She wouldn't go to the lunchroom she was afraid of. Now I know all the sound and commotion. I just knew tables got knocked over when she went to the lunchroom. So I would eat my lunch in the classroom with her.
Speaker 2And one day one of my second graders came with a perfectly good lunch and said Ms Ficario, do you mind if I put the lunch into the garbage can, because she would eat out of our garbage can. So Sarah can have lunch today. And I was like how brilliant is that? And how does a seven-year-old think of that? And so he did that. And then over time he brought two lunches and he said Sarah, do you mind if I eat with you? And she wouldn't talk, she's protecting her food. And this little seven-year-old says I'm not going to touch your food, but you can still protect it from me. And I was like I never would have thought of that.
Speaker 2And then over time he eventually got her to eat her food off of a table. And then she had shared that she was afraid to eat off of a table. It was the first time I heard her talk because her sister ate a stone they found on the table which we now know was a piece of crack and got very sick. And she said the adults didn't help me and I told my sister if she didn't die, we'd never eat off a table again. And this little second grader, like I'm at my desk sobbing, she says hey, ms Vacario's got a sign behind her desk. It says this is is our safe place, so no white foam's going to come out of anyone's mouth and there won't be anything unsafe for you to eat on a table in our safe place, like, oh my gosh, I want to learn what this kid knows how to do, just from the core of his being so literally. I signed up to become a counselor. Get my master's degree in counseling. Yeah, wow, that was probably a really long answer.
Speaker 1No, but I think in doing this podcast and hearing people's stories and having taught career counseling as a counselor educator, I'm always really fascinated about like the journey into the profession and I think we all have stories that are really meaningful. And the stories you're sharing here, I think, highlight so much about connecting with people and that little seven-year-old knew the power of connection like not necessarily any theory or anything behind it, but just that simple power and that's really really awesome and of course.
Speaker 2Sarah and Steve are not their real names.
Speaker 1They're my little made up names for them.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was amazing amazing.
Speaker 1So from early on you sort of had this desire to understand trauma and I think, in doing a little bit of prep work and reading about you in your bio, complex trauma you know, it is one of those interests or passion areas for you. Can you explain, you know, trauma-informed care and the things that you find most meaningful, especially for those who've experienced any kind of trauma or complex trauma?
Speaker 2I think one of my first and most powerful lessons was my first supervisor. She explained to me not all trauma is created equal. And she said and I'm not talking about a hierarchy here she said I was hired at the time to work with children between the ages of two and ten who'd been physically and or sexually abused, who'd been physically and or sexually abused. And she said there's something she called mood syntonic abuse and mood dystonic abuse. And she said mood dystonic abuse is terrible and awful. Mood syntonic abuse is paired with love and affection and love and affection gets tangled up in the abuse. Someone who's supposed to be loving you and kind to you is tricking you and then hurting you. And she said that is a very complex type of trauma, long before the word existed. This was the late eighties. And she said we're going to help the children. We work with experience, affection, without having to trade it for physical or sexual violence to get it. Now they're going to come in here expecting that because the people who were charged with their care took advantage of them in that way.
Speaker 2But that distinction has been very helpful to me and I I train on it and I look at it as a continuum, with those being the extremes, and it's easier to learn from the extremes, but remembering that life occurs in the middle. So the other thing she did was she didn't say we're going to get rid of this symptom, this symptom, this symptom, this symptom. She said we're going to help them learn how to experience connection without having to trade it, safety without having to trade for it. And that really set me on a path of replacement behaviors. And now the neuroscience is showing that replacement behaviors invites the brain to grow, which it loves to do, and then it stops using what it doesn't need, whereas when you try to get rid of something, the brain doesn't like to die and it holds on to it. So, from that not so simple work, but the way she made it so simple and concrete for me really helped me then engage in the play of the children and start to ask how can we help this character find safety?
Speaker 1safety. Yeah, and I like the concept of a continuum. I think that that is really digestible for a lot of us to say okay, like it might fall somewhere in between.
Speaker 2Yeah, Because whenever someone asks me, is it this or is it that, I'm like yes, yes, and that's why it's so complex.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you know, I think when people hear the word neuroscience they're already like maybe a little bit like fearful, because it does feel like more complex, like concepts to maybe digest and understand. But you really specialize in translating that neuroscience into more practical trauma programming. Would you mind sharing some examples of like specific concepts that counselors can use to apply that and especially for people who might be like newer to trauma, informed Sure?
Speaker 2And thank you for letting me know we can supply some of these resources for people because I think in pictures for people. Because I think in pictures, so I often hire graphic designers to help me create pictures of my interventions, and our brain loves pictures. I like to start with a hand brain by Dan Siegel and then I add in the work of Stephen Porges, so I add a piece to the hand brain of the vagus nerve. I add in the work of Stephen Porges, so I add a piece to the handbrain of the vagus nerve which Dan Siegel doesn't talk about. So that's the other thing I do, because Louise, that first supervisor, taught me that life occurs in the middle. I like to take researchers' information and blend it, and I was told by Dan Siegel as a researcher, you're actually told not to do that so that you can focus on your topic. But he's like we need people out there who aren't trying to make their money through research and can pull our research together. Yeah, so in a very simple handbrain, between your wrists and your elbows, that vagus nerve connects to every part of your body and sends your feelings to every part of your body. So think about maybe the last time you were driving and someone cut you off, you feel it in every part of your being. That's your vagus nerve doing its job. Or let's say you're cutting up on the couch with someone you love or a favorite pet or something that just brings you comfort and you can breathe a little easier. That's your vagus nerve doing its job. Yeah, and it comes online at 23 weeks gestation and starts recording memory as body sensation only. So then we're going to move up to the palm of our hand, which is our brainstem, in charge of everything we don't want to have to think about Breathing, clutter, digestion. It's one of the things that cues us in that when someone is so stressed that they wet or soil themselves or vomit, they're having what we call a brainstem fear response. They're having what we call a brain stem fear response, where the brain stem is hijacking the system and clearing you physically so that you can engage in some things that are available in the next part of the brain, which I call the limbic system, which is the limbic system.
Speaker 2I focus more on the amygdala, without using that term. So I could say the amygdala is in charge of felt safety, attachment and regulation, which spells the word far, which is really helpful because from six months gestation to the first 18 months of life, from six months gestation to the first 18 months of life, it wants things in that order. If you don't get felt safety, the attachment part doesn't grow in. The attachment part doesn't grow in, then the regulation part doesn't grow in. That's the bad news. I'll never give you bad news without giving you good news. The good news is, after 18 months, the brain doesn't care what order it gets it in. It will grow the missing pieces and you're never too old to have a happy childhood, because this is the part of the brain most impacted by trauma and the part of the brain most able to be regrown, and that's not a coincidence.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, that part of the brain makes sense of the world through body sensations and pictures. Here's where pictures become so important the cortex, or thinking brain, the only part we have conscious control over. Yes, we only have conscious control over one fourth of our brain. It makes sense to the world through pictures and words. Pictures have the passport from the part of our brain that allows us to have executive function, to have choice, to the part of our brain that reacts out of survival.
Speaker 2And so, when I can like, share this very, and people will say that's very reductionistic. And I'm like absolutely, that is my goal. I want to be the Disney of neuroscience Because you know what, when I'm teaching a four-year-old, I get even more reductionistic and I'm like absolutely, that is my goal. I want to be the Disney of neuroscience because you know what? When I'm teaching a four-year-old, I get even more reductionistic. This is your acting brain. This is your thinking brain. How do you want to represent it? Our acting brain keeps us safe, but also tells us who it's safe to be around, and our thinking brain can help us do the things that require more thought, less action.
Speaker 1And it helps to simplify, like whether it's being explained to a child or an adult that like simplifying things make it like, oh, that's, that's what it is. But when we, you know, to your point of like saying amygdala, someone might be like yeah, I've heard that, I know it's in your brain, but like where Right?
Speaker 2Like yeah.
Speaker 1And having like being simplified, make it like graspable, like right I can, I can wrap my head and my hands around this and that's that's my goal.
Understanding Trauma and Neuroscience
Speaker 2And and what I've heard from foster parents and I heard it from them first. I hear it from all kinds of people now, but foster parents are the first people who told me, when I understand this simple science, it takes the sting out of why this child won't eat my food. It's not about me, it's about a fear center that's smelling a new smell, and the fear center's job is to tell you to stop. This is new, this is scary, and she's like, and they're like. Now that I understand, the things that feel like insults to me aren't insults. It's a brain doing what it was designed to do. And then I can go in and try to figure out. How can I help you feel safe enough to maybe take just one green bean?
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. I guess the thing that keeps going in my head, as you're sharing that, mary, is that we think about empathy in the context of feelings and emotions and all of that, but that, like understanding science can also breed empathy. Yes, yeah, yes, I love that Awesome. You know, with some of the models and simplifying things, you've created trauma-informed biographical timelines. Can you explain that to us, walk us through the process and how it's going to help counselors understand their clients better? Sure?
Speaker 2So a trauma-informed biographical timeline is something I started playing around with in the late 90s. I was working for this amazing agency. It was started as Creative Connections in Cincinnati, ohio, and became Hamilton Choices, but what they were doing was they were taking youth that were crossing systems that often fell between the cracks. So, for example, now we're not going to give them mental health treatment because they have a developmental disability. Now we're not going to. They don't qualify for children's services. Or they don't qualify for developmental disability services because they're in the custody of children's services. Well, guess what? Life's on a continuum, these kids aren't one thing than the mental health board at the time the mental health board, the children's services, juvenile court and the Department of Developmental Disabilities, and we took the kids that crossed those systems. So you had to cross at least two. Most of our kids crossed three or four, but some crossed all five, and so once a month these five agencies would bring in cases that they wanted us to help coordinate, and very quickly I realized that what gets written down on the page is our negativity bias, because here's another fun piece of science. Thank you, carl Sagan, for this. I believe it's Carl Sagan. We are related to the worry warts because the optimists didn't make it. Their genes did not get passed down, which doesn't mean we cannot be optimistic, but we have to help our brain. Our brain defaults to the negative, so these points were so negative.
Speaker 2So I looked into the work of one of my mentors, maureen Walker. I love her. She's always like never remove behavior from its context, and so I was working with her and I said you know, I want to create timelines so people can see how all of this has built up to become the human being in front of us today Not the case, but the human being. And she said when she does timelines, she puts above the line things that make your life easier and she puts below the line things that make your life more challenging. So then I said great.
Speaker 2And then I realized red and black are the two colors our brainstem can see. So I wanted people to feel in their body, as best they could, some of the experiences that bring these kids to us in these families. So I put in red the adverse childhood experiences and because we know they've changed the shape and function of the brain and red is when it goes to our brainstem is frightening, it's warning. Black is actually very comforting because it's grounding, but red is kind of jarring. So we put that in red. Then I made them find out the youth's favorite color because this is a human being, not a case and we put their resilience above it in their favorite color. And so I wanted them to, as close as they could get a visceral felt in their body, feeling for what it was like to be Sue Smith Not what's wrong with her, what's happened to her and what it was like to be Sue Smith not what's wrong with her, what's happened to her and what did she do to survive. So then we would look at it and over time I added in naming how you personally feel when you see Sue Smith's life, because there's research that shows that we have these wonderful things discovered by the Italians by the way, I'm very proud of Giacomo Rizzolatti and his wonderful Italian team called mirror neurons, which allow us, or a mirror neuron system.
Speaker 2There's much debate. Is it a system? Are they individual neurons? Whatever, I'm Disney, we're just going to call them mirror neurons but they allow us to feel other people's feelings. The more the person looks like us, the more our feeling, the better our mirror neurons work, which is why identical twins can often have their same language. However, like computers, our brain always has a workaround. The person doesn't look like you, but you get to know them. Your neurons work better. You don't even have to have things in common, just getting to know them.
Speaker 2So I was hoping to do that with the timeline. So I would say, if you're feeling these feelings, sue Smith is the other reason we do. It is, dan Siegel teaches us, if we don't name it, we don't tame it. So those feelings are feelings that live in the lower regions of our brain and I noticed that the feelings that came up were often driving our interactions in our meetings and I'm like, oh, but when we could say I feel frustrated, overwhelmed angry at what happened to Sue Smith, we stopped acting frustrated, angry with each other. Yeah, and then the third reason didn't come until about 2017 or 2007,. Actually it was.
Speaker 2They were doing some studies on bullying and they keep replicating them and getting similar results that the people who are one most apt to intervene and two will have the best interventions are able to name how they personally feel when they see someone else in pain, right.
Speaker 2So I wanted to get their brains ready to intervene and to come up with better interactions, interventions, so we would name that look like and who could do that. So then we came up with interventions. So everyone in those groups whose systems touched knew oh, here's what I can do when they show up in juvenile detention to help them feel safe, regulated, whatever. Here's what I can do when I go out to a visit at their home. If I'm children's services, here's what I can do to help someone with DD understand this concept so they can feel safer, et cetera, et cetera. So from that we develop a plan that would involve these five systems. But now I've learned that complex trauma brings in multi-systems Right, multi? You know many different people. So we do these to help inform individual service plans. Are they still called ISPs?
Speaker 1Yes, Depends on where you go. But yes, yes, I've seen that. Yes, counselors.
Speaker 2It works too for people with people working in the DD system. They also have to come up with plans, but it's coordinated and you can literally see how what you're doing helps with this trauma that happened at this age. Yeah. And then we can follow up and see how is it working. So I like even have a form we use for hey, how are these interventions going? What can we do?
Speaker 1to tweak them. Yeah, and I think it's so meaningful in terms of like counseling and our holistic approach to helping, is that this takes into like account the whole being right, like you said before, was it Maureen Maureen Walker?
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1Behavior and context. We get to understand it in a much more holistic way by having this timeline and also the understanding of the like that are supporting the client. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's incredible. I love this. I'm like my wheels are turning. You've got my wheels turning this morning and on a Friday morning that we're recording. That's a good thing, right, right. So one of the other things that, when we were preparing and reading your bio information, is that you really lean towards some relational cultural theory to inform your post-trauma work.
Speaker 1Can you share a little bit more with us about how you do that?
Speaker 2Yes, so it's interesting how you said, oh, you're very interested in connection and I'm like that actually drew me to counseling, with trauma coming up right beside it. But the connection piece how do I help kids like the Sarah in my classroom feel safe and connected, which is what I was watching Steve do? So that same supervisor after I'd been working that, the I worked at that behavioral health center. It was a community mental health center when I joined it and then it changed. In the decade I was there it evolved. That very first supervisor was getting ready to retire and she handed me a flyer from, of all places, harvard Medical School. And the conference was called Learning from Women and it was put on by the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, jean Baker Miller, judith Jordan, irene Stiver being some of the founders of relational cultural theory or relational cultural therapy. It's both. And she said your retirement gift to me is to go to this conference, because these amazing women are only working with adults. I watched you translate. I want you to translate their work to children, because our children need this right now. I don't want them to have to wait till they're adults. So it took me two years to save up the money to go to continuing ed for three days at Harvard Medical School. But I did and I fell absolutely in love with relational cultural theory, which we'd been reading Jean Baker Miller's books because my supervisor had a reading group for us to see her in person and hear her talk. So every two years they did it in Boston and I would save up and go and then I'd bring it back and I'd translate it into kids.
Speaker 2So how do you say in a sand tray something that Judith Jordan was like hey, let's distinguish between shame and guilt. Guilt is I made a mistake, shame is I am a mistake. And that is Judith Jordan's research that our friend Brene Brown made very popular. And yeah, so I would play around with. Oh, that character made a mistake and someone got hurt. How are we going to help the person who got hurt and find a new way to do this? Oh, they're bad, bad, bad. They made a mistake. We all make mistakes, and so we started using it in play therapy. I started using some of their language. Yeah, one of my favorite quotes that really changed my life.
Translating Neuroscience into Practical Interventions
Speaker 2Amy Banks was one of the women working with them a few years into my tenure of attending, and she's a psychiatrist and neuroscientist. She has a great book. She has many great books. One's called Wired for Connection or Wired to Connect. And she said connection is our greatest need and disconnection is our greatest fear. So when you don't know what to do, how is the behavior you're seeing? Getting someone connection? Because humans will accept negative attention over no attention. No attention means your brain is dying off. And then she showed us brain scans of brains that were being ignored and disconnections are greatest fear because without connection, again our brain is dying off and will drive us to do things like self-injure if we have to to get stimulation. So that kind of became like a grounding principle. That paired with Gene Baker Miller's principle of all growth occurs in relationship, of all growth occurs in relationship. All relationships are embedded in culture, which feeds into Maureen's work, never remove a behavior from its context.
Speaker 2So they all just started to build on each other and it's been very helpful and very fun. Sometime in the early 2000s, they started meeting at Wellesley College with a small group of people who were applying their work to people other than adults without disabilities, and I got invited. I was like, oh my gosh. I was like, let me into a small room with my heroes. But they were so excited. How are you doing this with children? How are you doing this with children? How are you doing this with people with developmental disabilities? And over time we've just become friends and collaborators and it's been incredible, incredible journey. And I'm, yeah, going back to boston. They don't have their conference anymore because we're all getting older, but Bessel has an international trauma conference in Boston. I head there and then we spend some time together talking about it. Yeah, it's really. Those women are amazing. They are amazing.
Speaker 1I want to make sure that, like I asked this question but I think you've probably already mentioned some of these but like, are there specific key tenants of the theory that resonate most with you?
Speaker 2So I wrote some of them down. The first one that drew me in was all growth occurs in relationships and all relationships are embedded in culture. Yeah, don't separate. Even families have cultures. So my dad was five and a sublime of eight, but he's the one that went out and learned English. So my uncle would always highlight when your father found a way for us to learn English and quit getting hit in the face, he became the head of the family, followed nanny. So when I'm working with families I'm like followed nanny. So when I'm working with families I'm like notice who do they turn to? Sometimes it is the youngest because their brain hasn't been as impacted as the older brains, and so it can go from family all the way up to our larger cultures.
Speaker 2Connection is our greatest need and disconnection is our greatest fear. Thank you, amy Banks. This one from Maureen Walker just guides me every day of my life. Strategies for disconnection are a desire for connection in an atmosphere of fear. An atmosphere of fear when you can identify the fear driving the anger. You can put in the intervention at the level of the fear. So I actually developed an intervention.
Speaker 2I call the anger onion and on the outside is anger, because that's what we see neurobiologically it's driven is anger, because that's what we see neurobiologically it's driven. Then the next layer down is sadness, and at the core is fear, because sadness can slow us down, hence really severely, where severe depression can keep you from getting out of bed, you know, and fear can literally freeze you in your tracks. So to keep safe, our endocrine system releases epinephrine, neuroepinephrine, cortisol. So we have the energy to flock, flee or fight, and that energy often appears as anger. So when I can redefine anger as energy, wow, what would you like to do with the energy you get from your anger Cross, from the unsafe side to the safe side of what I call the fear stress response cascade, which will be yeah.
Speaker 2So, and then Judith Jordan always reminds us, power over instead of power with is what we want instead of power over. Power over so helpful for trauma, because that's the dividing line in syntonic abuse. I'm having power with you because I'm grooming, I'm grooming, I'm grooming. Then boom, power over, which puts you automatically into submit. So we know from neuroscience that we have a parasympathetic connection between flock and submit. So if someone's getting you to feel safe and then they hurt you, you skip right past what you need to leave, which is the sympathetic flock, the sympathetic flea, the sympathetic flight, and you go immediately into free submit, which is the brainstem. So that is so powerful. So we play around with that with all audiences. You should see me playing with police officers and I'm like talk about giving your power away.
Speaker 2How do you connect your limits with safety? And one and the cop said you know, I had to pull someone over, he was going 85 in a 25. And I'm like that's dangerous. He goes, yes, and I told him hey, my job is to get you home safely People you love. And when you go 85 in a 25, that kind of puts that at risk. So, unfortunately, I'd like to give you a warning. And when you go 85 in a 25, that kind of puts that at risk. So, unfortunately, I'd like to give you a warning. But when you go 85 in a 25 and I clock it, I no longer have the option of a warning, have to give you a ticket. And he said it was the first time in 17 years someone thanked him for a ticket. And one of the other cops said I don't think he was thanking you for the ticket, I think he was thanking you for the ticket.
Speaker 2I think he was thanking you for treating him like a human being who made a mistake.
Speaker 1Yeah, power with, power with instead of power over yes, yes, yeah, in sort of transitioning some of the other things that you've created beyond. Some of those resources you've shared with us the anger onion and the timelines, and I know we've gotten a couple other that we're going to make sure are linked here. You've also co-authored the Foster Parents Survival Guide. What are some of the essential tools or interventions that you use with that to support families and how counselors can use it?
Speaker 2So the foster parent survival guide was born out of. I worked with children's services starting in 1989. And one of the women I worked with was over adoptions and so when adoptions would disrupt, she'd call me and say, hey, can you walk me through that science stuff again? Give me that handbrain. What's, what's the thing we do with something we get from anger and you know. And so what she said to me I'll never forget it was the first day back from Christmas break. So, like January 2nd, she goes on April 4th. You're going to train on your foster parent survival guide. And I said, great, I don't have one. I know that's what I'm telling you now. So you can have one by April 4th because you're presenting to all of children's services in the county in which we work. I was like, oh my gosh. So I had many late nights because it was not part of my job to create it. So at many late nights and weekends creating this foster parent survival guide. And so we do start with the handbrain.
Speaker 2We look at the anger onion, we look at something called the safety script. So this was something Steve was pointing out in my classroom. So in my classroom it was one of my very first safe places. That was my space, so I put up a sign that said this is our safe place. It just made me feel good. It was behind my desk, as Steve pointed out to Sarah, and I noticed that when someone would do something challenging, I'd say hey, steve, this is our safe place, no one's going to knock your stuff off the desk. So it's really important you not knock Carolyn stuff off the desk because this is our safe place and I literally use that script. Yeah, and I noticed they would calm and we could work together to pick up Sarah's stuff and then we could talk about where all the energy of the anger came from. But just that simple script. And I started using it when I was a therapist as well, and so we've taught it. It's been translated into 10 languages. Wow, One of our foster parents goes around the world and helps kids all around the world and it's been translated into 10 languages. I just cried when she told me that she goes. It's so calming. So at one of those small meetings with the relational cultural women, I brought this in and I said hey, this has been working great since 1989. Can anyone tell me why? So Amy and Maureen took it and did some research and came back when I saw them the next year and they're like this is so cool.
Relational Cultural Theory in Trauma Work
Speaker 2When you say this is our safe place, you get the attention of the fear center, which is the gatekeeper of information, so it lets the thinking great come back online. Or we want this to be our safe place, because sometimes it's not. We're doing the best but we can't residential settings. And then when you tell them how you're going to protect them from the very thing they are doing the survival skill that lets them get some dopamine. Dopamine helps with learning and it helps with calming.
Speaker 2Yeah, then when you invite them so it's important that you not now you've set the limit, but they have the neurochemicals they need to hear the limit and the sound like punishment or shaming, because we're creating something together which, which Amy goes, that gives them oxytocin. Oxytocin makes you want to work cooperatively with people, even people you want to work cooperatively with and you close it all with the reminder we're creating a safe place here together. This is our safe place, we want this to be our safe place. And she said another hit of dopamine to get that myelinated sheath going on the neural connection you're trying to make between safety and protecting each other versus safety is being the most violent person in the room, because that's the only person not getting hurt, yeah. So I was like, oh my gosh, I love you ladies. So now I know the science behind a simple script. I've been using it early 80s a lifetime ago and I was in a classroom.
Speaker 1You mentioned a few times. Like you sort of like to be like the Disney, you know of it all and emphasize really making like these complex concepts or information accessible and fun. What are some strategies that you use to engage clinicians in like learning about it and having this approach?
Speaker 2One of the things I like to do is and I got this from Hamilton Choices they called them our X's for candy or something, a snack, and when someone's willing to participate they get one. But what they're leaving with is one of those little kernels of knowledge. So people tell me like, oh, I've put mine up on my desk or I had someone calligraphy it and it's hanging in my house somewhere. So another thing I like to do is I use lots of pictures, lots of visuals. That helps my brain think. But after they've learned that the hand brain from the hand brain, that pictures have the passport, then it doesn't feel like I'm talking down to you, I'm literally engaging. The passport that lets our thinking brain impact our vagus nerve, which drives our actions, gets the two-way superhighway going from the top down, not just the bottom up. So I also like to and I think I may have already said this today I will never give them bad news without giving them good news. If I don't have a way or someone hasn't created a way and it doesn't have to be Mary Vicario's way, um a way to address this, I'm not going to tell you about it. Okay, I'm going to wait until someone's found a way to address this, because otherwise I'm just burdening you. And I actually learned that from a group of physicians who said people come and teach us about ACEs but they don't teach us what to do about ACEs and we're so overwhelmed by all the horrible things happening to our clients we kind of go into a freeze response. So I'm like thank you. So I always try to have the balance. We like to use humor and it's the humor that allows us to find humor in ourselves in situations. But not laughing at people I think people is actually releases stress hormones into our body, because our body realizes if I can make fun of you, someone can make fun of me. Connections are greatest need, disconnections are greatest fear.
Speaker 2We also I like to do something called free write, where you give you a prompt or whatever comes to mind and I highlight and if what comes to mind has nothing to do with the prompt, that's because the lower regions of your brain needed to write about that. So we play around with that. Some let's chats, especially when we're online, but I like to engage the audience in the science. So, instead of seeing that chocolate increases your dopamine by 150%, I give everyone a piece of chocolate. I invite them to eat it. Now I've known to give them two, because one piece of chocolate is like one potato chip. It's just cruel. So tell me how you feel as you're eating the chocolate and I write all the feelings down and then I highlight. These are all the emotions connected with the neurochemical of dopamine.
Speaker 2So then we go into teaching about dopamine, its impact. Then that leads us into if I'd given you crack, cocaine and they're all like what or methamphetamine, I would have increased. Crack would have increased your dopamine by 1,000% and meth by 2,000. Then we go into the science of what that does to the brain and body, how you can address it. Then we go into the science of what that does to the brain and body, how you can address it. Then we move into alcohol, which functions slightly differently because it kicks in on the second pass, and then heroin and how that impacts the brainstem. Blah, blah, blah. But we walk into it. I want you to experience in your body.
Speaker 1Yeah, that experiential piece. It's helpful in learning. Yes, like really digesting it differently.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, literally. So I tried to do that as much as possible. Dan Siegel talks a part of your brain called the plane of possibility. So before I teach on it, I say stand up and do this activity with me, where you're twisting around and you're seeing a spot on the wall. Then you're coming back, then you're closing your eyes and in your imagination you picture yourself twisting around, seeing that spot on the wall, but then you picture yourself going 12 inches further and noticing that spot. Then we come back to the original spot, then we put our arms down, still in our imagination, put them back up, back to the original spot. Then we put our arms down, still in our imagination, put them back up, go to the first spot, go to the 12 inch spot, notice it. Go to the six inch spot, notice it. Then come back around, noticing each spot on your way back, and then put your arms down, open your eyes, twist and see how far you get. And you will physically get further most of the time just by using your imagination. Then we go into the science of the plane of possibility. And then how do we use this in counseling?
Speaker 2Well, when I'm working with people who have had a hard time protecting their children. We invite them to imagine what they wish their life had been like. So instead of doing their trauma timeline because they've already lived it, they don't need it we do their resilience timeline and have them rewrite their life the way they wish it had been. And we've noticed over time and people have come to us and said, once I could imagine it, I could start to offer it first to someone else's kids who were the age I was when I got hurt. But over time I was able to offer it to my children instead of being angry with them and they didn't know why. Why when my kid turns three do I get angry with her? And when we would look at their trauma history, usually when their trauma started. Yeah, having that mirror neuron response, but it's working against you instead of with you.
Speaker 1Yeah, so okay I know wonderful, yeah, I know that's. I think that that's really helpful in sort of giving access and ideas of like how we can encourage our own clients with their planes of possibility.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, so I try to bring it to life. There's something I've created called the four part plan. That looks at the work of John Rady, who works with people. He started with children with attention deficit and has actually found that his interventions in his book Spark actually not only help children with attention deficit but all types of mental illness. And he's now testing it on addiction and he has some studies on it. He hasn't turned that into a book yet that I'm aware of, but he talks about the type of stimulation all of our brain needs One concentration, so that's the didactic part.
Speaker 2And I also give them coloring things they can color and draw and doodle and tell them if you doodle you actually learn more information than if you take notes, unless you take notes to regulate, like I do. And then sensory, so how do I get their senses involved? Then physical intervention, so like the possibility how do I get them up and moving, um, possibility, how do I get them up moving? And then, finally, mindfulness how do I help them regulate after I've shared a challenging story. So then they're also learning these micro ways to regulate, like I.
Speaker 2I call it, uh, three-fingered grounding. I learned it from my friend donna. She goes when I'm stressed at a children's services meeting, I just think I am kind, creative and passionate, and she's like I can now just touch my fingers and I get the feelings for kind, creative and passionate without having to remember the words. So I looked into the science of that and when you repeat something three times and do so, you get dopamine because the brain thinks you're going to need to learn it. And then you repeat it again three times and you get dopamine because the brain thinks you're going to need to learn it. And then you repeat it again three times and you get dopamine. Educational neuroscience shows that that starts to build a neural connection. So we actually do that activity together. And then I tell people now you don't have to remember the words, just touch the fingers and your vagus nerve will do its job and you'll get the feelings for being creative, kind and passionate or whatever three words they picked.
Speaker 1Awesome, Awesome. These sound like incredible experiences and, like I know this there's just some of the experiences you've had. I know you've also done international work in China, Mongolia. What do you feel like are some universal truths about trauma and like, and how's that shaped your practice so?
Speaker 2it was so powerful to go to cultures so very different from ours and so very different from one another. And, um, when I would look at, yes, all growth occurs in relationship, but all relationships are embedded in culture. So, like one of the things I learned in China the hard way, someone had to pull me aside and say we need you to stop. Let me explain why. They had to get me away from the people who were monitoring what was being told to us. Every child that comes from mental health treatment has ADHD and something, and that was making me crazy, because there's a huge difference between attention deficit disorder, which is hypervigilance, and post-traumatic stress disorder, or an anxiety disorder, which is hypervigilance, and post-traumatic stress disorder, or an anxiety disorder, which is hyperactivity and which is hypervigilance. And I kept raising my hand going. But you can't have both of those because the treatments are, and so finally, someone pulled me aside If you have anything worse than ADHD, the child disappears. So all of our children will have ADHD we will start all of our trainings with.
Speaker 2We fully support the Chinese government's rule of one family, one child. I said I know that was blowing my mind, because there were. Then they would go on and describe all the challenges caused by that. It's like, yes, and no child has ever been adopted outside of China. That's the one where they had to escort me out of the room. I'm like I treat those kids all the time. I know they're real. I think we're going to escort her out of the room. I wasn't paying attention to cultural context, because I'm used to free speech. Right, and they're not. They were doing what they had to do to protect the children.
Speaker 2To operate within the system To operate within the system. It was quite a learning that I had there, and so then it actually helped me. Like with family systems, it's not my job to go in and bust up your system. Help me understand your system. And then how can we bring safety to your system? Because the person with the power over in your system is afraid too. Power over is a fear response. How do I help that person feel safe enough?
Speaker 1How do we get to power with this, exactly, in this larger or smaller system? Yes, yes.
Speaker 2Yes and they. It was also interesting. They wanted two different things from us. So the in China. They wanted us to help them develop a counseling program that would in China. They wanted us to help them develop a counseling program that would help the intergenerational families break up and the elderly go to these beautiful facilities they've created for them. And I remember the counseling person in charge said, no, no, we let people talk about what they want to talk about, so that we can help them have a better life. No, no. Here's why the government is starting counseling programs because we're trying to accomplish this goal In Mongolia, who had recently been freed from communism.
Speaker 2Their request was and I quote because it still chokes me up when I hear it I want you to help us. We want you to help us free our people's minds from the shackles of communism. All growth occurs in relationship. All relationships are embedded in culture. Yeah, so if you've had to work within an unsafe system, just because you got safety doesn't mean you stop working in that same way. You have to learn something new. So that really helped me come up with yeah, isn't that? It was so powerful.
Speaker 1Yeah, powerful.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, tall order, but also like using this approach to recognize that, like all relationships, right Like going back to that foundational kind of explanation of the theory Connections are greatest need, disconnections are greatest fears.
Speaker 2You literally get twice the dopamine for helping someone else. It's the most powerful way to get dopamine, which is that strongest neurochemical in your body.
Speaker 1Yeah, yes, yes, I love my dopamine Me too. This is, I mean, yeah, that is really powerful. I know, like beyond even, that you created, like other, like methods and teaching for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, to really be trauma responsive in working with that population. Can you share some unique considerations that, like clinicians, need to take into account when they're working with that population?
Speaker 2Yes. So, as a caveat, I was in China in the early 2000s, so things may have changed in the past 20 some years, but so I'm not speaking for all of China. I'm speaking from my personal experience in China. So one of the foundational things that I learned from Julie, dr Julie Gentile, and is well, because I was an educator and I first I was. I got my degree in elementary, montessori and traditional elementary education. So I had lots of child development classes and I learned the difference between pre-operational thought, concrete operational thought, formal operational thought, which has served me very well. So concrete operational thought you're very concrete. You need pictures, you need to experience it and when you're healing trauma, you need all those things because trauma lives in the part of the brain that engages in concrete operational thought. Trauma memories go there, not to the memory center in the cortex, and then preoperational thought is even before that, and one of the hallmarks I try to highlight for people is in pre-operational thought. Your brain is so concrete it cannot comprehend treachery, so when do these types of thoughts show up? So I created a tool and it pulls together Julie Gentile's work that looks at in a brain, that is I'm trying to use the language I just learned from Ross Green a brain that is not displaying a high level of developmental variety. Pre-operational thought occurs frequently between the ages of three and six. Somewhere between six and nine. We move into concrete operational thoughts somewhere between nine and 12. I think I got my numbers right. I might have them backwards, it might be seven to nine for concrete, but yeah. So when you understand how the brain works when it is in preoperational thought versus concrete operational thought, you can then add the overlay of a mild intellectual disability fits into concrete operational thought. Moderate to severe fits into pre-operational thought. However, disabilities or as I heard Ross Green call it last Friday in training developmental variety doesn't change with age, but the dignity or the way in which we interact with people needs to change with age. Way in which we interact with people needs to change with age. I'm not going to treat someone with a moderate intellectual disability like someone between the ages of two and five. However, I do need to understand how their brain works so that I can engage their brain with tools that we know help a brain that is in pre-operational thought, then how do we engage that with dignity? So, for example, if I'm going to make a visual schedule. We are going to make it together. How do you want to decorate it?
Speaker 2One of our moms we were working with was right on that border between concrete and pre-operational thought. It was working very hard to get her children back. It was doing everything she needed to do, but it was having a hard time sequencing, which is very different. You're not sequencing real well when you're in pre-operational thought and you're just learning it in concrete operational thought and you're just learning it in concrete operational thought. So we ended up taking pictures of her children acting out the things she needed to do to get to work on time and it was so great. So she's got her son, who hates to brush his teeth, brushing his teeth for the picture and she was so excited oh, this is what we can do to get him to brush his teeth, you know.
Speaker 2And by the end she had the little two-year-old picking up her little briefcase and barely her head, barely over the briefcase. She was literally never late for work again, but this was something that allowed her to feel connected with her family. Her family got to feel connected with her and we just normalized that. You know what sequencing is hard for all of us, and when you're under stress, like you're trying to get your kids back or trying to be a mom of three kids, that's stressful. This is why McDonald's is taking the word McDonald's off all their signs, because when you see the M, it goes into your brain at three to 400 milliseconds. When you stop to read the word, it goes in at a full three to four seconds. And guess what? By then you've passed the exit that has the McDonald's. So we can normalize it that this helps all of us. It has the passport from the acting brain to the thinking brain and we can give people dignity as we work with them. Power with, not power over to create the schedule.
Speaker 1So that is powerful. I like I can't help but think I know I shared with you before we started today that, like my undergrad degree was in media and I remember, in I don't know what class, it was like a news writing or media writing course, where, like, there's a lot of like one-liner things that you remember and one of them is kiss, which we don't you know. Keep it simple. Yes, Sweetie.
Speaker 2Let's keep it simple, sweetie I love that, um.
Speaker 1And then the other one. I think this was more for like a TV or video writing course, because it was, say, cow see cow, that if you say a word, like you want to show a visual and that that is helpful because, like that's how we help people's brains comprehend and understand, and so you know it's not too far of a stretch from what you're you're sharing too, is like if we can just connect in the ways that are are simple, but sometimes it's engaging like multiple senses, say cow see cow, like then we have the power to really make a difference in someone's life and their family's system too. Yeah, yes, that's a great example. My media brain it's always still there, even though it's been a while since I've had those classes. But you know, one of the questions that we ask on the podcast is related to the name of the podcast name. We're called Ohio Counseling Conversations and we really always want to know from our guests what important conversations do you think counseling professionals should be having like with each other or their clients here in Ohio?
Speaker 2I have a list for that too. Bring it on.
Speaker 1We love a list.
The Foster Parent Survival Guide
Speaker 2First of all, we need to support our most marginalized, and one of the things I try to highlight is the difference between uninformed care, trauma-informed care and trauma-responsive care. Uninformed care is what's wrong with you. That's your main question. Trauma-informed care is what's happened to you. But trauma-responsive care, because it gives you the keys to the kingdom is and what did you do to survive? Because all behavior is purposeful, all behavior is learned and all behavior is communication. So when you can look at that survival skill and say what was the purpose, where was it learned? What are they communicating, we can often find the hidden resilience. And that's for every marginalized group From our groups that are being targeted right now and marginalized and our trauma survivors. It's like oh, she's just a runner, you know what? You just turned her into a survival skill and denied that it was a survival skill. So what does she run from and what might she want to run toward? So, identifying who's the most marginalized, that's what we would do in the play therapy who's the most unsafe, and we'd start with how do we help this person feel safe? So how do we help our marginalized groups or anyone who's feeling marginalized? That's my number one. I think the rest kind of fall under that, but I love to talk about the top five resilience factors found in people who've experienced trauma and not gone on to recreate it.
Speaker 2It's from an older study by Valentine and Feinauer and it looks at agency, which we define as power with instead of power over. How do I have power with others, so together we have the power to accomplish our goals? That's agency. It's not autonomy, where I'm pulling myself up on my bootstraps and doing it myself. How do we look at self-esteem? When do I feel like I'm of worth and value? How do I affect change and what are my interests? Because your interests are what allow you to recognize what you don't want and say no. So in trauma, the first thing they take away is the value of your opinion. So you can't say no.
Speaker 2Then we look at external supports. What helps me feel safe Can even be a positive imagining what helps me feel safe that doesn't hurt someone else. And then affiliation what groups am I a part of? How do we contribute? And finally, who are safe positive adults? Because, as we discovered in the pandemic, even adults need safe, positive adults.
Speaker 1So how do we?
Speaker 2build resilience, because I think as we teach people to build resilience, it will help them identify the hidden resilience and survival skills. Like people who steal, are very creative and determined and they're good at strategy. How do we engage their creativity, their determination and their strategy so they can grow? A new way of being Helping people build an internal locus of control so we're not always dependent on people outside of us telling us of worth and value. And my friends who are marketers are like we hate you when you do that, because then someone doesn't want to wear our purse because it's got someone else's initials on it.
Speaker 1Sorry, not sorry, exactly Sorry.
Speaker 2So one of my shortcuts for that is how do we turn our evaluative praise which is important, good job into descriptive praise? Oh, you were able to walk away from the fight with your brother, so I'm describing what you did yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1An acknowledgement of what happened.
Speaker 2And then you can put the value on it yourself. Yes, I only have three left, you're good, keep going. Safety on the internet oh my gosh, because trolls are trained, just like you were trained in media, how to get our brains going. Anger is clickbait and anger is also energy, and when you get group think going, you feel insulated from it and you can actually do harm. Yeah, with the best of intentions, you, when your fear center can't tell tone, which it can't in social media, in email, in text, it always, always assumes a negative tone. You don't get an option. So if you want to throw fuel on a fire, try to solve it through text or through email or social media, because no one's mirror neurons are working and both of your fear centers are assuming negative intent, even if that's not what is intended. Yeah, yes. So how do we help people of all ability levels have safety on the internet, especially our people who can't or struggle to comprehend treachery? Yeah, and and then I'm always looking for interventions, and by interventions I don't mean a recipe or cookbook like follow these steps, I mean a way of being people heal from pre verbal trauma and complex trauma, because those are the people that are often excluded from the studies of what gets labeled efficacy-based and then people assume you can apply it to that group. If they were exclusionary criteria, you don't get to apply it to them. So when we understand the neuroscience of how things go into our visceral memory and that if we can turn a visceral memory which doesn't have what won't have a picture, won't have a date, well we have to turn it into a picture. So when someone says blah, blah, blah and you feel like you need to punch them, what does that feel like in your being? Great, yeah. And when someone says blah, blah, blah and you feel safe, what does that feel like in your being? Give it a shape, size and a color on this person in a mandala and my newsletter is about that this month actually oh, wonderful. So it gives you a picture and then you name it.
Speaker 2So, like one of our youth who had very early trauma in the first six months of life, horrible sexual trauma in the first six months of life was terrible. Was always in trouble as a teenager for creating drama. So a brilliant therapist who was not me, because I'd be like, of course, you bring drama wherever you go. You're a teenager, not helpful. Also, know your populations, teenagers, not mine, but that's okay, because I'll take the little ones. This brilliant therapist, carol Hudgens Mitchell, said when you think about drama, where does it show up in your being? Let's give it a size and a color. Where does it show up in?
Speaker 1your being.
Speaker 2Let's give it a name, a size and a color. She did. And she said if you could name it, what would you name it? She said the burning feeling. Great Now, when you think of when you feel safe and calm and comfortable, or you think about what would help the burning feeling feel better. Because we weren't sure she had had experiences of safety, because she had several challenging homes she had lived in since six months of age, and she said, oh, you know what would feel good, a big blue blanket of love. And she drew water. And then she came back in a week and said you know, I started.
Speaker 2So the therapist then asked who gives you the red burning feeling? Who gives you the blue blanket of love feeling? She was like my friends actually give me the burning feeling because we're the cool kids and we're so mean that if we don't have people to pick on, we pick on each other. And the kids we pick on give me the blue blanket of love feeling because even when we pick on them, they don't say anything back. What would it be like to be with people who didn't have someone to pick on? So she started shifting her friend group based on which feeling they gave her, yeah, yeah, and so I would love more interventions on that, sensory interventions, interoceptive interventions, so we can get to our vagus nerve, which does drive our actions. Our thoughts can impact it, but if we're three floors below it and we're using words, we're not going to get the two-way superhighway working.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, we need to meet where they're at like in a different way, maybe like meeting clients where they are. Looks like this too, yes.
Making Complex Concepts Accessible
Speaker 2And finally, regulation skills versus coping skills. So regulation lengthens your fuse. Coping is what you do when your fuse is gone. And then how do we practice them? Because coping skills live in our spontaneous speech center, which is the first thing to go offline under stress. But if we practice something, it can live in the lower regions of our brain and become a feeling in our body, which makes it a regulation skill, not just a coping skill. It is something that's growing and lengthening your fuse.
Speaker 1I love it, Mary. This is like a very beefy episode full of so much stuff that I think like, no, I love it. I think that there's so many powerful takeaways. No, I love it. I think that there's so many powerful takeaways. And I just want to thank you for sharing all of this and sharing these resources and giving us a lot to chew on as we sort of take this back and see how we can apply and learn more in this trauma responsive context. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2Yes, thank you for having me and for the really thought out questions. They gave me a structure but a depth as well, which you probably can tell because I've hammered on a lot. But it really those questions took effort and I appreciate that effort greatly, thank you.
Speaker 1Thank you so much for joining us and thank you for listening. We will see you next time on Ohio Counseling Conversations.