Teen Moms Anonymous
Teen Moms Anonymous is a podcast for teen moms and adult mothers who were teen moms, especially those who survived violence and abuse. Our focus is on promoting emotional health and wellness because we know that emotionally healthy mothers are better equipped to nurture the emotional development of their children.
Host--
The host is Dr. Chris Stroble, founder of Teen Moms Anonymous, a ministry for teen moms and adult mothers who were teen moms, especially those who survived violence and abuse, and the award-winning author of Helping Teen Moms Graduate: Strategies for Families, Schools, and Community Organizations.
To learn more about Teen Moms Anonymous, please visit www.teenmomsA.org
Teen Moms Anonymous
Breaking Free: Understanding How Trauma Lodges in Your Nervous System
The long shadow of trauma doesn't simply disappear with time, especially for teen mothers who've experienced violence and abuse. Rather than fading into the past, unresolved trauma physically embeds itself in the body, rewiring the nervous system and reshaping brain development in ways that continue affecting mothers decades later.
Dr. Chris unpacks the neurobiological reality of trauma, explaining why many adult women who were teen mothers experience heightened sensitivity, emotional reactivity, and difficulty regulating their responses—not because of character flaws, but because of physical changes to their nervous systems. Drawing from trauma specialists like Jasmin Lee Cori and pioneering researcher Peter A. Levine, she explores how traumatic experiences create a state where survivors are simultaneously "revved up and constricted," functioning with "a foot on the accelerator and brake at the same time."
This episode offers a compassionate understanding of the brain science behind trauma, detailing how emergency responses get trapped in the body, creating a "stacking effect" where each subsequent stress compounds upon unresolved previous experiences. Particularly illuminating is Dr. Chris's explanation of how trauma impacts three brain regions—the survival-focused reptilian brain, the emotion-centered limbic system, and the thinking-oriented neocortex—affecting everything from memory to concentration to emotional regulation.
Beyond simply explaining trauma's physical impact, this episode offers practical pathways toward healing. From somatic (body-based) therapies to improving self-regulation—your emotional thermostat—to building resilience, Dr. Chris shares how mothers can gradually reclaim control of their nervous systems. Using the powerful metaphor of freeing a car stuck in snow, she illustrates how healing happens not through forcing the process but through gentle back-and-forth movements that gradually build traction.
Ready to understand why past trauma still affects your mothering today and discover pathways toward genuine healing? Join our supportive community of teen mothers and adult women who were teen mothers by visiting teenmomsa.org or connecting with us on social media @TeenMomsAnonymous.
Hi everyone, thanks for tuning in to our Teen Moms Anonymous podcast. We are a podcast for teen mothers and adult mothers who were teen mothers, especially those who survived violence and abuse. Our focus is on emotional health and wellness, because we know that emotionally healthy mothers are better equipped to nurture the emotional development of their children. I'm your host, dr Chris Stroble, founder of Teen Moms Anonymous, a ministry for teen mothers and adult mothers who were teen mothers, and the award-winning author of Helping Teen Moms Graduate Strategies for Family, schools and Community Organizations.
Speaker 1:In a prior episode I talked about how adult mothers who experience the tale of violence that is so prevalent in the lives of teen mothers often don't want to talk about the violence and abuse in their past. Their stance is it's in the past, I've let that go, I've forgiven that person. I'm not going to keep talking about what's in the past. It's understandable you wouldn't want to talk about the violence and abuse in your past, but if you have not taken decisive steps to heal from those traumatic experiences, they are not just in the past. They're showing up in your life today as a 20, 30, 40-year-old mother. This is because trauma gets stuck in the body and impacts our nervous system, brain development and emotions. This is what today's episode is all about Understanding how trauma gets stuck in the body and how it impacts our nervous system, brain development and our emotions. For today, I'm referencing the award-winning book Helping Teen Moms, graduate, by Christine M Stroble, and Jasmin Lee Cori's book Healing from Trauma, which is all about understanding your symptoms and reclaiming your life.
Speaker 1:In today's episode, as with all our shows, the content is for informational purposes only. If you feel you need to talk to someone, please consult a medical doctor or licensed professional counselor. If you feel you need to talk to someone, please consult a medical doctor or licensed professional counselor. If you are in an emergency, please dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room. So let's get started. It will help to understand how trauma gets stuck in the body, if you understand what happens when we experience a traumatic event, events like violence and abuse that's so prevalent in the lives of teen mothers. So consider this what happens in trauma?
Speaker 1:A traumatic event, is an emergency for the body, and the body reacts to this emergency. Sometimes it reacts by fight or flight, which we've all heard about, but sometimes it can't do either and ends up freezing. This freezing is also called immobility response because we become immobilized, paralyzed by our terror. One of the innovative researchers in trauma, Peter A Levine, believes that trauma results when our instinctual responses that fight or flight to a traumatic event, aren't allowed to cycle all the way through. So an emergency happens, we freeze and, unlike our animal mentors, we don't shake at all, release the energy in our nervous system. That arousal stays in the body and leads to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which Jasmin Lee Cori discusses in Chapter four of her book Healing from Trauma.
Speaker 1:Chapter four is all about trauma-related disorders. With this undischarged energy, our system becomes more sensitized and the next trauma or upset stacks on top of this. With the stacking effect, each new trauma adds more energy, your symptoms get worse and you feel more and more helpless when something difficult happens because you haven't learned how to physiologically deal with it, deal with it in your body. Holding all this stacked up energy in the body has a very disorganizing influence. influence asmin says it disorganizes our nervous system and how we process information. We're both revved up and constricted at the same time. And every time we get into a state of physiological arousal which Jasmine notes can come even with normal excitement, pleasure or surprise everything hooked up with the trauma tends to get re-stimulated. What a mess, she writes. Levine likens it to having a foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time.
Speaker 1:It is thought that in PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder there is a cycling back and forth between hyperarousal and the freeze response. This may show up as alternating between a highly sensitive reactive state and numbing. Highly sensitive reactive state and numbing. Jasmin writes on page 15 that if you zoom in very, very close, you will see that the distress changes the cells of the nervous system, tipping it toward being more excitable. In a process called kindling, this excitability increases. This shows up in our lives as becoming more easily triggered and more difficult to calm down, because the nervous system is now its own source of provocation. It is very hard to change the cycle.
Speaker 1:Repeated trauma, as Jasmin continues, can deplete certain neurotransmitters that are overtaxed, which in turn leads to mood swings, depression and other post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. It can also lead to being unable to tolerate high levels of stimulation, which is to say most aspects of modern life. She says high levels of stimulation, which is to say most aspects of modern life. She says this overstressed condition leads to reactivity, which she discusses in chapter three. But I'm going to read this section now because it offers a really clear and relevant explanation of reactivity and as I read this, think about yourself and how you respond to situations. Are you highly reactive and sensitive and maybe have a bigger reaction than the situation calls for? So she writes this. I'm going to read this from page 28.
Speaker 1:As trauma survivors, there are areas of our life where we are particularly sensitive. Often, these are the places where we are less protected and more thin skinned. We may have more sensitive stomachs, more sensitive ears and more sensitive hearts. Some of the sensitivity we may be born with, and some of it may be the result of trauma with, and some of it may be the result of trauma. Part of this responsiveness may feel like a liability to us, but part of it is an asset. It's an asset when it allows us to tune into the needs and feelings of others, though not at the expense of our own, or when our aesthetic sense and intuition are more keenly developed and we're able to feel subtle energies that others don't have, even that others don't even know exist. It's a liability when we can't go places that other people go, when we have chemical sensitivities and when we constantly get our feelings hurt. Another way to talk about this thin-skinned quality is to say that trauma tends to make you more reactive.
Speaker 1:Reactivity here means having a bigger reaction than the situation calls for. Whether it is more fear, more insecurity, more anger, more distrust or more of any other emotion, we all get reactive at times. Yet those who are caught in trauma-related disorders become reactive a lot of the time. She continues to write that it helps if you can understand this reactivity. You're not reactive because you're choosing to be a pain to those around you is not simply that you're. It's not that you're simply a drama queen, and it doesn't mean you're irreparably broken or deeply flawed. It just means something is hitting a raw nerve, stimulating something related to the trauma. Or your nervous system is permanently wound up to the trauma, or your nervous system is permanently wound up, overworked, exhausted, or your immune system compromised.
Speaker 1:Living with a high level of emotional reactivity is hell. It's no fun for you and no fun for people around you. You feel sensitive about everything and feel like life never lets you rest. Being reactive is essentially feeling chronically overwhelmed. So now think about yourself. Or think about yourself is how do you respond to situations? Are you sensitive and highly reactive. This being highly sensitive and reactive is an example of the violence and abuse that you may have experienced, that that is not just in your past, that trauma impacts your nervous system and is likely showing up in your life today, as a 20, 30, 40 year old mother. It's impacting how you respond to situations and others, how you you relate to yourself, others and your children. Understanding how trauma affects the body can help you understand your symptoms and you can stop blaming yourself for them. It's really all about what happened to you.
Speaker 1:As I was saying, Jasmin notes that repeated trauma can deplete certain neurotransmitters that are overtaxed, which in turn lead to mood swings, depression and other PTSD symptoms. It can also lead to being unable to tolerate high levels of stimulation, which is to say, most aspects of modern life. She says this overstressed condition leads to reactivity, which is being highly sensitive. When we're reactive, it's like our switchboards can't quit firing. The alarm bells are ringing, the fire station has been called and all hell is breaking loose. When we're aroused like this, we don't have a big range of options. When the fire department has been called, it's no longer an option to go back to bed. It's not so easy to ratchet down and see that there is no problem, at least not until your nervous system can regain self-regulation and become modulated again.
Speaker 1:Later in this chapter, jasmine discusses self-regulation, which, as she writes, is a wonderful term but it took her a long time to understand it and it is a difficult concept to understand. But before discussing self-regulation, she discusses how trauma impacts brain development and that much of what happens in trauma occurs in the lower brain centers, the survival brain Caught in lower brain centers. Jasmin writes on page 16 that a lot of what happens in trauma and in our subsequent reactions occurs below the thinking brain, which functions almost automatically. It is helpful to understand the different levels or sections or registers of the brain. At the very base of the brain structure is the brain stem and cerebellum. This is the survival brain, called the reptilian system, found in a reptile's brain. It is primarily concerned with physical survival and maintenance of the body and it operates automatically quite automatically, she says.
Speaker 1:The next register or level of brain center is the limbic system, which includes two areas we read about often in trauma research the amygdala and the hippocampus, related to emotion and memory. Exposure to chronic trauma can shrink the hippocampus, resulting in memory loss as well as decreased ability to put traumatic events in context and to see them as past rather than current events. The amygdala has been linked to the emergency alarm systems. An over-revved amygdala creates a state of ongoing arousal and a host of mental health problems. After the development of the limbic system, the next level up or register up is that of the neocortex, the cerebral cortex brain, which makes it possible to learn, think, imagine, plan and use language. While these three systems are intricately linked, any one of them may predominate at a given time.
Speaker 1:In trauma states and during times of danger, it's generally the more primitive survival part of the brain that takes over. Hovering at this lower survival brain, life is dull. This is because it's our higher brain, the cortex, that gives life the richness and complexity that is the basis for what we might call meaning in life. Our opinions, tastes, preferences and emotional nuances are irrelevant to the survival brain. In fact, Jasmin writes that they'd be in the way. So when we are in survival mode, which happens during some states of activation or alarm, the survival brain in essence turns off these features, leaving us with just the bare facts. And we're trying to survive. The similar shutting down of the higher thinking centers occurs when the emotional brain, the limbic system, gets very active. When that happens, emotion tends to take over and the thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex, shuts down.
Speaker 1:Some of the results you might see in situations that include trouble focusing or concentrating, being highly distractible, poor short-term memory, poor impulse control so you act more impulsively poor judgment, being very disorganized and you may think this sounds a lot like me. Well, if your story is one of repeated violence and abuse, this is how those traumatic events impact brain development and leads to these symptoms. So we truly are the result of what has happened to us. The question is not why is that person acting that way, it's what happened to that person. And in their book, What Happened to You, Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry, a child psychiatrist and neuroscientist who studies the brain, challenges readers to shift from focusing on what's wrong with you or why are you behaving that way, to asking what happened to you. What happened to you as a teen mother? If your story is part of that tale of violence and abuse that is so prevalent in the lives of teen mothers, these traumatic events play a huge impact in how you are behaving today, reclaiming your life. You may be asking can I regain control and reclaim my life and, if so, how?
Speaker 1:Jasmin argues that to reclaim our lives and take back the control room, we must know, understand and practice self-regulation. As she writes, self-regulation is a wonderful term that took her a long time to understand. Self-regulation is like having a thermostat and being able to regulate the temperature in the room, but in this case we're talking about our own energy flows, our moods, our own energy flows, our moods, physiological arousal, and meeting our physical and emotional needs. Another word for self-regulation is self-modulation. Self-regulation is the ability to bring your system back into balance after it has been activated. So you may be asking how do I self-regulate? How do I regulate the thermostat, the temperature, bring my system back into balance after it has been activated? Well, she notes that somatic or body-based trauma therapies help us achieve this, but also ordinary activities like sleep, exercise, self-soothing and spending time in nature. Learning to regulate your emotions and physiology of your body is a skill that takes practice, doesn't happen overnight. In terms of somatic body-based therapy, the one you may be most familiar with is massage therapy, and in her book Healing from Trauma, Jasmin identifies and explains several more body-based therapies.
Speaker 1:Words related to self-regulation include regulated and dysregulated when we're within the bounds set by the thermostat, which, jasmine notes, we are in control of. We are regulated. When we fall into chaos or outside our normal range, we are dysregulated. Trauma survivors, she writes, are often dysregulated in their physiology, their body, their emotions and also their lives. And all of this is to say that trauma impacts the body. And all of this is to say that trauma impacts the body. It impacts our nervous system, brain development and emotions. It leaves a footprint, tracks in the body. And, as Bezel van der Kolk hope I pronounced his name right says in his classic recovery book, the body keeps the score, but we can reclaim our lives.
Speaker 1:Another part of taking back the control room is resilience, which is the ability to bounce back. Resilience, bouncing back resilience is the ability to bounce back and recover. The dictionary equates it with elasticity, the ability to spring back quickly into shape after being bent, stretched or deformed. Jasmin writes as you can see, it is quite a magical quality. It is magical when you can restore to wholeness what has been mishappened, when what was buckled and bowed becomes upright again. Without resilience, we would be very deformed. She writes. Imagine if every fall and flow we ever experienced remained visible in our structure, if every scratch and scrape were still on our faces. This also holds true on a psychological level. She says we don't want to carry around the imprints of every scolding, every rejection, every disappointment and heartbreak we've ever experienced. If it were not for resilience and the process of repair, we couldn't open again, couldn't risk again, couldn't love again. So resilience, our ability to bounce back and recover, is very important.
Speaker 1:Jasmin ends chapter two discussing how to get started healing from trauma, how to get out of being stuck, and I love the illustration that she offers about growing up in the Midwest, and I'm just going to read that briefly. She says as someone who grew up in the Midwest, I learned how to get my car free from stuck on ice or in snow. You can't get out of a stuck place just by putting your foot on the gas. You get free by rocking back and forth, back and forth, until you've gotten enough traction that you can really move. Likewise, you get out of trauma not by spinning your wheels in it, but by moving back and forth in very small increments until you have enough traction. This moving back and forth is called pendulating or oscillating. She shares more in this chapter and again, if you want to know more about getting out of being stuck in trauma. Her book Healing from Trauma is a great resource.
Speaker 1:So just to wrap things up as I opened, adult mothers who experience the tale of violence and abuse that is so prevalent in the lives of teen mothers often don't want to talk about the violence and abuse in their past. Their stance is it's in the past, I've let that go. I've let that go, I've forgiven that person. I'm not going to keep talking about what's in the past. It is understandable you wouldn't want to talk about the violence and abuse in your past, but if you have not taken definitive steps to heal from that violence and abuse those traumatic experiences, to heal from that violence and abuse those traumatic experiences they're not just in the past the impact of that trauma is likely showing up in your life today as a 20, 30, 40 year old mother. This is because trauma gets stuck in the body, affecting our nervous system, brain development and emotions. Understanding how trauma affects the body can help you understand your symptoms and you can stop blaming yourself for them.
Speaker 1:Today I talked about what happens in trauma. A traumatic event like violence and abuse is an emergency for the body and the body reacts to this emergency. Sometimes it reacts by fight or flight, which you've all heard about, but sometimes it can't do either and it ends up freezing and, unlike our animal mentors, we don't shake it off. Without a way to safely release the energy in our nervous system, that arousal stays in the body, gets stuck in the body and leads to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD, and leads to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD.
Speaker 1:I discussed trauma's impact on brain development and the different levels of brain development. The three levels include the survival brain or reptilian system, which includes the main structures. It is primarily concerned with physical survival and maintenance of the body and it operates quite automatically. The next level, or register of, is the limbic system, which includes two areas we read about often in trauma research the Amygdala and the Hippocampus, related to emotion and memory. Exposure to chronic trauma can shrink the Hippocampus, resulting in memory loss as well as decreased ability to put traumatic events in context and to see them as past rather than current events. I discussed the next level, or register up of brain development is the Neocortex, the prefrontal cortex, sometimes called the top of the brain, which makes it possible to learn, think, imagine, plan and use language. While these three systems are intricately linked. Any one of them may predominate at a given time. In trauma states and during times of danger, it's generally the more primitive survival brain that takes over. Hovering at this level the survival brain, life is dull. This is because it's our higher brain that gives life the richness and complexity and meaning.
Speaker 1:I discussed how to reclaim your life and take back the control room. It starts with self-regulation. Self-regulation is like having a thermostat and being able to regulate the temperature in the room is like having a thermostat and being able to regulate the temperature in the room, but in this case we're talking about our own energy flows, our moods, our physiological arousal and meeting our physical and emotional needs. Self-regulation is the ability to bring your system back into balance after it has been activated. When we fall into chaos or outside our normal range, we are dysregulated. Trauma survivors, Jasmin writes, are often dysregulated in their physiology, their body, their emotions and also their lives.
Speaker 1:I talked today about the importance of resilience, the ability to bounce back and recover. The dictionary equates resilience with elasticity the ability to spring back quickly into shape after being bent, stretched or deformed. As you can see, she writes, it is quite a magical quality. It is magical when you can restore to wholeness what has been mishappened, when what was buckled and bowed becomes upright again. Without resilience, we would be very deformed. She writes. Imagine if every fall or flaw we ever experienced remained visible on our structure, if every scratch and scrape were still on our faces. This also holds true on a psychological level. We don't want to carry around the imprints of every scolding, every rejection, every disappointment and heartbreak we've ever experienced. If it were not for resilience and the process of repair, we couldn't open again, couldn't risk again, couldn't love again. So resilience is very important.
Speaker 1:I finished talking about how to get moving, how to get out of being stuck, and Jasmine writes about her experience growing up in the Midwest and getting her car free when it was stuck in ice or in snow. You can't get out of a stuck place just by putting your foot on the gas. You get free by rocking back and forth, back and forth, until you've gotten enough traction that you can really move. Likewise, you get out of trauma not by spinning your wheels in it, but by moving back and forth in very small increments until you have more traction. This back and forth movement is known as oscillating, and she talks more about this also in her book Healing from Trauma, which is a great resource if you want to get stuck out of the trauma that you've experienced. So this is our show for today.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to our Teen Moms Anonymous podcast. We are a podcast for teen mothers and adult mothers who were teen mothers, especially those who survive violence and abuse. Our focus is on emotional health and wellness, because we know that emotionally healthy mothers are better equipped to nurture the emotional development of their children. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stroble, founder of Teen Moms Anonymous, a ministry for teen mothers and adult mothers who were teen mothers, and the award-winning author of Helping Teen Moms Graduate Strategies for Family, Schools and Community Organizations. I hope this information has been helpful to you. If it has, send us a message We'd love to hear from listeners. You can email us at info@ teenmomsA. org Again, info@ teenmomsA. org. That A stands for anonymous teenmomsA. org. Or you can visit our website, teenmomsA. org, fill out the contact form and, finally, we are committed to walking alongside you on your journey of healing and recovery, so stay connected to us. Follow us on social media Instagram and Facebook at Team Moms Anonymous, visit our website, teenmomsA. org, and subscribe to our blog and our podcast.
Speaker 1:If you're in the Greenville Spartanburg area of South Carolina, we offer local in-person support groups where teen mothers and adult mothers who were teen mothers can connect with each other, with others who've walked your journey. You will find emotional and moral support and find information and resources to help you grow into a more confident, skilled woman and mother. undefined onsider joining one of our support groups. We look forward to connecting with you. So thanks again for listening to our Teen Moms Anonymous podcast. We'll see you the next time.
