Trauma Talks : With Russ Tellup
Hi, I’m Russ Tellup, a Trauma-Informed Somatic Coach and Level 1 Brainspotting practitioner. In my podcast "Trauma Talks," I dive into the neuroscience of trauma, exploring somatic healing practices, Polyvagal Theory, and IFS (Internal Family Systems) parts work. I also occasionally address the complexities of narcissistic abuse, offering insights and tools for healing. Join me each week as we navigate the journey of recovery, resilience, and self-discovery together.
Trauma Talks : With Russ Tellup
Not Good Enough: Healing Core Beliefs and Anxiety
What if the inner voice telling you "I'm not good enough" isn't just an occasional thought, but a core belief driving everything you do? Sabrina Troback, registered counselor and author of "Not Good Enough," reveals how these deeply-held beliefs form through generations of family patterns and personal experiences—sometimes even before birth.
After two decades teaching children with learning disabilities, Sabrina discovered her true calling helping clients understand and challenge their core beliefs. Her approach dives beneath surface behaviors to address the fundamental feeling of unworthiness that fuels anxiety, self-doubt, and disconnection. As she explains, "That core belief is kind of that inner voice that drives everything that we do... for a lot of people who have had trauma throughout their life, often that core belief is feeling not good enough, not important, not valued."
The conversation illuminates how trauma passes through families in surprising ways. Even well-intentioned parents who avoid harmful behaviors like addiction can transmit the same "not good enough" message through impatience, anger, or emotional unavailability. This generational transmission explains why similar feelings of unworthiness persist despite outwardly different family environments.
Sabrina offers practical wisdom for those struggling with anxiety, explaining that most people only recognize anxiety symptoms when they're already overwhelming. Her book provides tools to identify subtle early signs—sweaty palms, jaw clenching, shoulder tension—and address anxiety before it escalates. She also shares transformative strategies like making specific plans for anxiety-triggering situations, which builds confidence in your ability to handle challenges.
Whether you're wrestling with past trauma or simply feeling perpetually inadequate, this episode provides compassionate insight into how these patterns form and practical steps toward healing. As Sabrina reminds us, "Evolution, not revolution." Small, sustainable changes create lasting transformation in how we view ourselves and engage with the world.
Hi everybody, my name is Russ Tellup, the host of Trauma Talks. It's a weekly podcast where we discuss all things trauma, trauma-related and give you tools to understand your nervous system better so that you can live the best possible life that you can. Today we have a guest named Sabrina Troback. Sabrina is a registered counselor in British Columbia and the author of a book, and we're going to let her kind of give us her journey and where she's headed, Sabrina.
Speaker 2:Hi, it's nice to be here. As you said, sabrina Trobach, I'm in northern British Columbia. I was a teacher for over 20 years, working mainly with kids with learning disabilities, and then, towards the end of my teaching career, I became a school counselor. I went to a workshop presented by a man named Tony Martins, who talked about suicide, but from the perspective of our core belief feeling not good enough, not important, not valued.
Speaker 1:And how trauma. You said that was Tony Martins.
Speaker 2:Yeah, m-a-r-t-e-n-s.
Speaker 1:Okay, thank you, go ahead.
Speaker 2:And so Tony talked about suicide from that perspective, of that core belief, and at the end of the three day workshop I just thought this is what I need to do. And so I went back and forth with Tony for about a year and he agreed to teach me his model of therapy. So I quit teaching and started my own private practice in counseling and after about six months I had a waiting list counseling, and after about six months I had a waiting list. Now what I'm really doing is going back, helping people understand how their core belief has developed throughout their life and then what we need to do to challenge that core belief so they feel more good enough, important and valued. So the model that I practice is a long-term model of therapy. Most clients are with me for at least a year, if not longer.
Speaker 2:So I have a waiting list. I've had a significant waiting list since about six months into practicing. So I decided to write a book as a way to provide a resource for some people who maybe can't access counseling, who want to try to work on things, get a better understanding of their trauma, the impact it's had on their life, and so I wrote the book. Not Good Enough, understanding your core belief and anxiety.
Speaker 1:And that's, and that's where I am now and that's the book that's sitting on that beautiful chair behind you, right.
Speaker 2:That is yeah, you're correct.
Speaker 1:Where could they find your book if they're interested in reading it?
Speaker 2:My book is available on Amazon. Yeah, amazonca, amazoncom, all the Amazons.
Speaker 1:And uh, it's not good enough. And what was the second line there? So I can make sure I put it in the show notes so people can find that sure it's not good enough understanding your core belief and anxiety awesome. Okay, uh, how, how long ago was this? That's a huge transition to go from education to therapy, right?
Speaker 2:I started as a school counselor in 2008, 2009, and then started my own private practice in 2010.
Speaker 1:Cool, and do you practice remotely everywhere, or just in British Columbia?
Speaker 2:Mostly in British Columbia, for sure.
Speaker 1:But you do work with people remotely. If they were interested in signing on to us.
Speaker 2:And I only do virtual. I during COVID I gave up my office space and so now I just work virtually, even for people who live in Fort St John it's still just local.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the majority of us did that during COVID.
Speaker 2:It was silly. I was going into my office and talking virtually and I thought, you know, this works just about as well as one on one in person and can save me a bunch of money and not having to pay for that extra space. So I switched over, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, put your money and your focus where it can be more impactful. Right, right Cool. So you said that you learned your modality for healing from Tony.
Speaker 2:That's correct. He created and developed the model of therapy in the 1980s or so, and that really is what it is is getting a better understanding of your core belief, so that core belief is kind of that inner voice that drives everything that we do. And so for a lot of people who are struggling, a lot of people who've had trauma throughout their life, often that core belief is feeling not good enough, not important, not valued. So what we're doing in the model of therapy is we're going back, getting a better understanding of how that core belief has developed and then working on challenging it so that we can change it, so we feel more good enough, important and valued, and we're doing that by going back and resolving a lot of the traumas that we've experienced throughout our lives.
Speaker 1:Now do you find that those that that belief is developed typically during childhood, early childhood?
Speaker 2:Honestly, I think it even starts before you're born. You're growing into an environment and generally if your parents core belief is not good enough, not important, not valued, it's pretty hard for them to teach you anything different. But then it's all the different experiences that happen throughout our life, you know, definitely starting. You know, before you're even born early childhood, later childhood, youth, adult it just kind of keeps going and it's like a snowball rolling downhill. It generally just kind of keeps going and it's like a a snowball rolling downhill.
Speaker 1:It generally just gets bigger and bigger and bigger over time yeah, some of the some of the studies going into to, uh, generational trauma are absolutely incredible. I mean, they're talking about trauma that can affect down seven, seven generations later. Um, I was talking with a friend of mine recently and about this phenomenon and if you think about it, you have somebody that served in the Revolutionary War, for example. That's seven generations ago. That's pretty crazy. So they're going to act and react differently, raise their children differently, and then their children are going to be raised differently, and then on down the line and some of those traumas that that you pass down from generation to generation can go on forever. So it's not not surprising. Plus, in utero trauma too, right?
Speaker 2:Right, you know the behaviors can look a bit different but the message behind the behavior is is the same and that's often what gets passed down. You know I'll work with families where you know work with a client who says you know I'm I'm never going to drink. I grew up in an alcoholic home. I do not want my kids to ever have to go through that. So I'll say to the to the client okay, you know, on a scale from one to 10, how good enough or how not good enough do you feel in your dad's eyes he says you know seven or eight out of 10. And then I'm working with that guy's son, because I work with families, and I say to the son in your dad's eyes, how not good enough do you feel? He says a seven or eight out of 10.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:I go back and tell the dad that and the dad goes I don't understand. I never drank, I have never drank in my house. There was never alcohol in the house and there's not. But he's impatient, he's got a bit of anger. He's not really present when he's there because he's struggling with his core belief that he hasn't really resolved, because he's struggling with his core belief that he hasn't really resolved. So his ability to be able to really connect and be present with his own family is still very guarded as well. So, even though the behavior has changed and the intent was there to create something very different, that behavior, that core belief, continued to be passed down, even though the behavior looked very different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a brain can find a lot of different ways to validate a core belief. I mean, we spend our lives validating a core belief. It's not true to begin with.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it drives everything we do for sure, and when something comes up that doesn't support that core belief, we just minimize it. Oh, it's not really that big of a deal, don't worry about it. Brush it off. But when something comes up that we can use to feed that core belief, we absolutely will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you and we can come up with just about anything to feed those core beliefs. I mean, when you're looking through that filter and and yeah, I mean you're you'll your brain will try to find every way it possibly can to validate that belief.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely Cool. Can you tell us a little bit about the book?
Speaker 2:So the book is written as a bit of a handbook, so you're reading a little bit of information and then you're applying that information to your own personal experiences. It is written for people who have anxiety. As a learning assistant teacher for 20 years, I know that people with anxiety struggle with reading. So how do you write a book for anxiety? For people who have anxiety, it makes it really challenging. So the book is written where there's very few pages that are full texts on both sides. It's broken up into very small chunks, lots of diagrams, lots of charts, where you're really just reading a little bit at a time and then you're doing an activity that applies that information to yourself. It's definitely something that needs to be read over a period of time, not something you want to kind of get through in a weekend. The more time you take to read through and process it, the more you're going to get a different understanding of the information.
Speaker 1:And then what?
Speaker 2:kind of exercises would you expect to find in the book there? So it's looking at you know where is your core belief? How has your core belief developed? So you're looking at experiences that you've been through, how those core beliefs have developed, and it's looking at how that core belief is reflected in your own actions and behaviors. What is your anxiety like? Often, if that core belief is not good enough, we're going to have more self-doubt, more insecurity, which is what anxiety is. Anxiety is not believing in myself that I can handle something. So it gives you a better understanding of how that anxiety looks. What does your anxiety look like? We often know what our anxiety looks like when it's really, really high, say, you know a 10 out of 10. But we don't necessarily know what it looks like as a three, four, five, six.
Speaker 2:That means we're not doing anything about it until it's really really high. So in the book we're looking at a whole bunch of more subtle symptoms of anxiety, like sweaty palms, picking at your fingernails, clenching your jaw, tight shoulders. We're looking at these more subtle ones so we can start to get an idea of what our symptom looks like at a, three, four, five, six. And then we also look at strategies. What are strategies we can put in place so that we can bring that anxiety down before it gets really really high?
Speaker 1:So you're really approaching it from a somatic type of space, right?
Speaker 2:Very much so. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we also look at anger and how we say. Anger is not a standalone emotion, anger is a coping. It's an emotion, but it's also a coping strategy we use to push down other emotions. So we generally don't like to feel any of our emotions. But you know, emotions like fear, sad, loneliness, vulnerability, rejection we don't like to feel those. So if I get angry now, I can feel angry. I don't have to feel those other emotions. So the book looks at what are some of the emotions that you think are underneath your anger, what are some of the emotions you've experienced throughout your life. Over time, if we just keep pushing those emotions down, they get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So we often see things like feeling unheard, feeling powerless, feeling vulnerable. We don't like to feel those emotions because we felt them so many times throughout our life. They get bigger and bigger and bigger. So now, when something happens today, it's not just about today, it's about all those times that we've held in that emotion as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, that makes total sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the book kind of goes through and looks at all those different areas and more as well, and you know by the end of the book the goal is is that you've got some new understanding and some significant tools to help you better challenge that. As you're doing that, you're also challenging that core belief not good enough, which then means you're developing the core belief good enough developing the core belief good enough.
Speaker 1:So would you say that the book is a standalone healing tool, or is this something that you would use in lieu of working with you later on to to solidify some of the stuff you learn in the book?
Speaker 2:I think it's something you can do. I wrote it for people who can't access counseling, so it definitely is something that you can do and, um, it can be used as a supplement. A lot of my clients have the book as well, but it definitely is something that takes you do and it can be used as a supplement. A lot of my clients have the book as well, but it definitely is something that takes you right from the very basics, very beginning, and helps you really understand it at a very detailed, in-depth level, almost more scientific than it is kind of the counseling fluffy piece.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but imagine you talk a lot about polyvagal theory. Come up in the book at all, or not specifically with the terms.
Speaker 2:I don't go into a lot of the different models that we use. We're just really digging into. These are some of the activities that we can do for sure so you do.
Speaker 1:You are giving some exercises and things in the book that people can do to release some of that stress and some of that sympathetic energy Absolutely, yeah, cool. So if someone was to work with Sabrina, what does that look like?
Speaker 2:So in the beginning, what we do is really just spend a lot of time understanding our own anxiety, what anxiety looks for us, strategies that we can put in place. Then we start by gathering information. So this is really where I'm gaining all of my information I can about you. I get you to tell me your whole life story. Now we go slow. We start with things that are, you know, a little bit easier, slowly moving more into that trauma. As we start talking about our life experiences, we build more confidence in being able to talk about it. So then, when we get to the traumas that are harder to talk about, we're already feeling a bit more confident in being able to do that. So we go through, as we're going through that, I'm looking for things that I think that have developed and created that core belief. But also what happens is the client gets to see things from a bit of a different perspective.
Speaker 2:Often with pretty much everyone in our family or that we talk to, we're a little guarded right Because we don't want things to be held against us. We don't want to be judged, we don't want to take up too much time, we don't want to upset someone else. I'm the therapist, that's it. So they can just talk openly about everything to me. So they often make connections and get a better understanding of why they're struggling now, why their anger is the way their anger is now, by looking at some of these past experiences. Then we go back and look at specific areas and really work on getting resolve and getting a better understanding of why those things happened, being able to let go of the understanding, the consequences of you know life now, trauma. That happened 20, 30 years ago. What's the impact of that today? And then how do we work on challenging that and letting it go? So today can just be about today.
Speaker 1:Sure, today can just be about today, sure. So I get this question a lot. It sounds like a silly question, but maybe you can help me pull it apart and dive into it a little bit. What is trauma in your opinion?
Speaker 2:And I think that's a good question, and I think trauma can look very different. I don't think we need to compare trauma to other people's trauma, because there's always going to be someone who had it better and there's always going to be someone who had it worse. Trauma is something that has a really significant impact on you. That has likely caused you to put your guard up. It's created a wall where you feel I need to protect myself. That trauma is often the instigator of what we needed to do that, so it could be anything from yelling as parents who yell to extreme violence and abuse. It can look like a lot of different things, but if it's something that's kind of altered how we deal with things, where now we feel like we need to keep everybody at a bit of a distance, we need to protect ourselves because we don't want to get hurt again, trauma usually fits within that guidelines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would almost say that it's. It's anything that creates those core beliefs, right? Any? And, like you said, that could be something that happened prior to birth. So I think that, yeah, trauma can be. I don't think there's anyone on earth that does not have trauma to some extent in their lives.
Speaker 2:For sure. You know I think, yeah, everybody's going to have. I think we can. That core belief can develop in experiences that may be not seen, as you know, traumatic, but trauma is definitely going to build and develop those core beliefs for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are people that you can talk to and I've had clients where we'll talk about their childhood and they're very fond of their childhood. They don't really have anything that they can point to that was traumatic, but maybe their dad put a lot of emphasis on education and it created this I'm not good enough type mentality when it comes to education or athletics or whatever it may be. I got my certification from the Trauma-Informed School of Positive Psychology. It's in the UK and the woman that teaches the courses her name is Caroline Strawson.
Speaker 1:One of the things that she talks about is when she was little, she was in gymnastics and she would try these little gymnastics moves in the living room to show the parents and get praise Right, and her dad would always say 9.9, 9.9. He would never give her a 10 and he thought it was kind of funny and they would joke about it. But what it did is it instilled this belief in herself that she, she's never going to be enough, she'll never be able to get that 10, and so something that can be just purely um, innocent from the from the perspective of the parent can cause some pretty, pretty, pretty big damage for sure, and I see that a lot in a lot of um the clients that I work with, even where where there is trauma, often the things that they remember are more of those subtle little things where it was just one more time where they didn't feel good enough for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and there's some of us like myself. I've had, I had, a highly traumatic childhood with plenty of physical, emotional, sexual abuse. I mean, if you can think it up, it happened. But compared to somebody who had a relatively good childhood but developed those beliefs in other ways, it's basically the same thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I really encourage my clients to not compare themselves to others. Your experiences are your experiences. Your trauma are your trauma. They're real to you. It doesn't really matter what goes on for anyone else around you. If you're hurting, you have a right to work through and try to figure that out. Yeah, you know a lot of people minimize it and go. Well, you know I could be a lot worse, so I'm not going to worry about it. No, your trauma is your trauma and know I could be a lot worse, so I'm not going to worry about it. No, your trauma is your trauma and it's okay for you to figure it out and sort through it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I served in the military and I live in a military town so there's quite a bit of military here in Colorado Springs where I live. So there's a lot of people dealing with PTSD, combat related PTSD, things of that nature. So it's easy in this type of environment to fall into the trap of big T, little T. My trauma isn't as bad as your trauma. You are more deserving of help than I am. It's hard to get out of that and it's very systemic.
Speaker 2:For sure. I think that's been going on, for you know, just like we talked about generational trauma, that idea in society has been going on for generations and generations and generations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Tools that you can think of that pop into your head. As far as podcasts that people can let, do you have a podcast?
Speaker 2:first of all, no, I do not have a podcast. A podcast, first of all. No, I do not have a podcast. I have a youtube channel and I'm on instagram and facebook and tiktok, but I do not have a podcast channel. I do, I do a lot of podcast interviews, but I don't do. I don't have my own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, we'll definitely have to get the link to your youtube channel so we can include it in the show notes as well. So, people for sure. Yeah, are there any podcasts that you enjoy listening to that that you might be able to point people toward that could? Um, you know I've listened.
Speaker 2:My, my, my favorites are. I listened to a couple crime ones that I listened to quite a. The things that's really really really important for trying to resolve trauma is we have to get better at feeling our emotions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have to feel to heal.
Speaker 2:Exactly. We see, you know, if we take, if we take two kids, let's say they're seven years old and they, they, they grow up in two different environments and they are, let's say, abused by a neighbor and they come home and the one child comes home and there's a lot of chaos. There's a lot of violence, a lot of yelling, a lot of fighting. Parents are really disconnected. There's a really good chance that child's not going to talk. There's a really good chance that child's not going to learn how to feel their emotions and sort through things. The child's probably even going to try to say, hey, I need some help here and they're going to be exhibiting some behaviors that are different, that are concerning, but the parents are dealing with so much of their own chaos they don't see it. Whereas I take another family where a child's been abused comes home, there's a really high likelihood, if that family is connected, they talk about their emotions. The child is able to have a voice. The parents feel they are good enough, important and valued. There's a really good chance that that child's going to tell the parents what's going on. When they tell, the parents are going to get them the help. They're going to get them the counseling. Whatever they need to do, they're going to help them sort through their emotions around it. And even if the child doesn't tell, the parents are going to go something's off. They're just acting a little bit different. This isn't quite right. They're going to keep talking to the child until the child gets comfortable, where they can tell them, and then they're going to get them the help.
Speaker 2:Now both those kids experience the same trauma. Grow those kids up to 25 years old? Their lives are going to look very, very different. So it's trauma significant. But how it's dealt with is also really, really, really important. The better we get at sorting through it and dealing with it and dealing with the emotions of it, the more we're going to be able to let it go. Generally, the sooner we deal with the trauma, the less impact it has. If we don't deal with it and we wait 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, the experience is over, it's gone. We can't do anything to do to change that. But the emotions have built and built and built for all those years, making that trauma more and more and more significant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think emotional intelligence definitely plays a major role in that too. Right, being able to vocalize the way that you're feeling. When I was a kid, the only two emotions I knew was angry, and really angry. So there was no way for me to express that I was hurt or that I was scared or any other emotion other than angry. So as you become an adult and you don't have a way to verbalize, even to yourself and acknowledge the way that you're feeling, it's really hard to process those emotions.
Speaker 2:For sure when I start with a lot. Most of my clients that I work with are adults, and when I start with a client I'll ask them how they feel and a lot of them will tell me a thought Well, it just shouldn't happen. I don't believe that's not an emotion. What's the emotion that you feel? We have spent so much time suppressing and pushing down those emotions often unconscious, not even aware we're doing it that when we actually have to think of an emotion, it's blank. We don't even know where to begin.
Speaker 2:So one of the things I do with my clients is they all get an emotions sheet and it's got a list of a whole bunch of different emotions on it. So when they're feeling something, rather than trying to have to figure out what it is in their head, go to the sheet, read through it. They will jump out the page at you the emotions that you are feeling. So now you can get a bit more of an idea of what those emotions are. After you practice that for a while, you don't need the paper anymore, but it can be a really good guideline. Part of what makes feeling emotions challenging is it's actually very rare that we feel one emotion. We're usually feeling a combination of three, four, five, seven emotions at the same time. So to try to identify them when I've been pushing them, pushing them down for so long, can be really, really challenging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and certain topics become vacant when you try to come up with trying to. For example, I did an experiment on my Facebook page where I asked everybody what does love feel like? And I kept getting responses like it feels like a warm summer day, it feels like butterflies flying through the air, or you know all these different experiential type of explanations for what love feels like. And then I asked what betrayal feels like? And it's my stomach feels like it's flipping upside down, I can't breathe, my heart rate goes crazy, my blood pressure goes crazy. So all these somatic type experiences for something like betrayal, that minute it sticks in your head. The way you're feeling sticks in your head. Your brain takes a snapshot of that so that it can bring you back to it whenever it needs to. But something like love is so much more difficult for us to put into words what it feels like.
Speaker 2:And I think we have to be. We have to be a bit careful with that word love. We've gone from the older generation where you never heard, it was never said, and now it's said all the time. So I can say to my child I love you and then at supper say I love spaghetti. Well, right, and I've heard. You know I, you know, I've had kids. What is what is love? Love is keeping a secret. Love is keeping the peace.
Speaker 1:That's scary.
Speaker 2:Love is, yeah, exactly, so we really need to be careful. If you, if you have a lot of trauma, there's a really good chance that your, your experience of what love is isn't very healthy.
Speaker 1:Or or if you've even felt it at all. Right, Exactly, Many of us have never felt love and connection and couldn't tell you what that feels like.
Speaker 2:Right. And the scary part about that is that then becomes your normal Right, and so if you grew up with disconnect, you're comfortable in disconnect, and so having a relationship, having a family, is really, really challenging. There's going to be some of that disconnect there just because that's your comfort zone. You may not like it, but you know it so well, it's comfortable for you, it's your safe place.
Speaker 1:Well, our brains are definitely drawn toward the familiar, whether that familiar serves us or not.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, and a lot of times it doesn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I do an exercise with clients when I'm kind of getting to know them. If I already told you this, I apologize. I've done a few recordings today so some of them are all running together. But I'll do an exercise with my clients where we talk about a nervous system mapping, where we we go in and we write out triggers that bring us to certain States, whether that's a safe, connected space, a fight or flight, like a sympathetic energy type space, or more of like a dorsal, vagal kind of freeze state freeze at FON state and along with that we'll put the triggers what it feels like when we're there, what beliefs we have when we're in that state, and then the percentage of the time that we spend in those states. And it's amazing to me when I did mine the first time, I was% of the time is stuck in freeze. You know 30% of the time stuck in fight or flight and 10% of the times connected and and and that you know that prefrontal cortex and it's amazing how little time a lot of us spend in that state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, you know, I think 10% you're probably doing okay.
Speaker 1:I mean when you think about how much time when you're driving down the road, are you thinking about something that happened two weeks ago that's bothering you, or you know? We're constantly ruminating on things in our head rather than just being in the moment and experiencing the moment for what it is.
Speaker 2:Right, or thinking about things that haven't even happened and probably are never going to. But we're running all these what if? Scenarios in our head and that's all time that we're not getting to be present, we're not getting to connect with family and friends and even within ourselves. Most people don't like to just sit still. They're driving, they got the music blaring because sitting still in their own thought that's way too scary.
Speaker 1:We don't do that Very scary, yeah yeah. So I've got a couple exercises that I do when I catch myself wandering, you know, to bring me back to present Some breathing exercises and some other somatic stuff. Do you have anything that you that's kind of go-to to pull yourself back into that present place?
Speaker 2:Breathing is, you know it, what? Working with my clients, breathing is one of the very first strategies we talk about how it does bring you out of that fight, flight freeze. It drops the cortisol levels in your brain, allows you to kind of use more of that logic and reason and thinking through things for sure. The other big strategy that we talk a lot about is making a plan. So anxiety is often about lack of confidence, not believing in yourself. You can handle things. So even when we look at triggers, it's not really the trigger that creates the anxiety, it's my belief in my ability to handle the trigger. So some people might say you know, I have a trigger of yelling, but not everyone has a trigger of yelling, and so if it was really yelling, everyone would have a trigger of yelling. But if I grew up, my trauma is connected around yelling. That's going to be a trigger for me. I'm not going to believe in myself as much that I can handle it.
Speaker 2:Well, what makes us feel more confident in handling something is making a plan.
Speaker 2:So if I have a worry, thought or something that I'm ruminating over and I actually take that thing and write it down on a piece of paper and say, okay, if this happens, what do I do?
Speaker 2:And I make a plan of what I would do to handle it. Now I'm going to feel more confident. Now that's going to bring the chances that that thought's going to keep coming over and over again down significantly. But if it does come up, I need to answer it and go oh, I made a plan for that, I know what I'm going to do, and so I'm retraining my brain from, rather than just getting caught in these scenarios and spinning and spinning and spinning. Actually, when those scenarios come up, stopping and making a plan and realizing on the other side of it, I can handle it. Might not be comfortable, might be a lot of work, but I will handle it on the other side, once we realize that we don't need to worry as much about all those things that brings that fight flight freeze response, because much about all those things that brings that fight flight freeze response because that fight flight freeze that's what it is is I don't know how to handle all these things once we believe more in ourselves, then we can be overwhelmed down.
Speaker 1:For sure, yeah, for sure. Um, you know what I? I have like a list of things, of tools, you know, that are go-to tools I can. I can remember and use right away to pull myself back into a connected space If I feel myself going into a trauma response. A lot of that is like patterned breathing or visualizations, if I'm able like, if I'm not driving things like that. Would you, would you equate that to having a plan or making a plan, or are you thinking about more like making a plan as it's happening, rather than already having a plan in place?
Speaker 2:Breathing often can be a part of the plan, for sure. Right, or visualizing would be a part of the plan, but it could go deeper than that for sure. So say, for example I'm you know, I'm going out for dinner tonight with some friends, but there's going to be new people there that I don't really know. And I'm you know, I'm going out for dinner tonight with some friends, but there's going to be new people there that I don't really know and I'm having some anxiety about that going into that freeze where I'm thinking, trying to think of excuses so I can avoid not going.
Speaker 2:So, what's my right. So what's my, what's my anxiety that's creating that is I. I, you know I'm scared of going to dinner with people I don't know. So I write that down. So then I say, OK, well, so what can I do to help me manage that situation better?
Speaker 2:Well, I want to drive on my own because I want to be able to leave whenever I can leave, but I don't want to go in by myself. So I'm maybe going to ask one of my friends to meet me in the parking lot. I'm going to arrive a bit early because I'd rather be the first one there than the last one there. Now some people might say no, I'd much prefer to be the last one there. Great, Then be the last one there.
Speaker 2:Where do you want to sit? Do you want to sit so you can see people coming in and you can see the door, or do you prefer to sit more where you're kind of facing something that there's not a lot of stimulus, like a wall? So now my plan is I'm going to drive by myself, I'm going to meet my friend in the parking lot and walk in together about five to 10 minutes early, and I'm going to sit so I can see people coming in. I feel more comfortable when I can see the entrance of a building that I go into. Now I have a plan for how I'm going to handle going for dinner with people. I don't know that's going to bring my anxiety down If it starts to come up. I remind myself of what my plan is and that I can handle doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would imagine, after doing it multiple times, you start to rewire and you just go for dinner with friends. You don't know, that's right, you don't even have to consciously think through it for sure.
Speaker 1:I always kind of equate it to going sledding. You have this brand new hill full of brand new fresh snow and you go down the hill and you go a little slow. You go down again, it goes a little faster, and then a little faster and a little faster and you go about halfway down and decide to turn right. You're not going to turn right. You got to start a whole new path and get that to dig into the snow. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Cool, Um any other? Anything else you'd like to share with the listeners?
Speaker 2:Uh, I, I just think you know. If you're, if you're listening to this and you're trying to get a better understanding of your trauma, you're on the right track. You're doing something that a lot of people aren't even doing.
Speaker 1:Probably the majority.
Speaker 2:Exactly. There's so many people who aren't even willing to take this. So just keep working at it. We want small steps. Don't worry about taking great big leaps. Little tiny changes over a significant period of time is much more beneficial. I always tell my clients evolution, not revolution. So just what's one little thing you can do different? Practice that for a while. And then what's one new thing you can do different? Practice that for a while. Small steps is way more sustainable than great big steps and steps really fast. We need to take time and practice. We gotta, like you said, with the sled, we gotta build that, that trail, so that we feel more confident going down it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we need to practice. Yeah, big steps can be really scary. We're really small. Actionable steps can be a lot more manageable, especially if you're in a freeze or a fight or flight state.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:I think even if you're in a conscious connected state, it's still scary to take those steps.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Smaller the better, the more we feel like we can handle it for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, Sabrina, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It was nice chatting with you.
Speaker 1:Do you want to just tell everybody about your book one more time, so we can get it out there one last time? People can write it down.
Speaker 2:Sure. So the book is called Not Good Enough Understanding your Core Belief and Anxiety and it's an activity book where you're going through and sorting through information. It is on Amazon. You can also go to my website at trobackholisticorg. On my website is a link to all my socials. I also have a blog on there that's got a lot of information. It's got a page of all the podcast interviews that I've done and of course, it has a link to my book my book sales as well. I am also on YouTube and Facebook. Those ones are Troback holistic counseling. I am on Instagram at uh, nge for not good enough, so NGE, underscore Troback, and on Tik TOK. I'm NGE, underscore core, underscore belief.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and if you don't mind just shooting me an email or a Facebook message with links to all that, I'll include those in the show notes too, so people can find them easily. Sure, once again, thanks so much, sabrina. I really appreciate your insight and your knowledge.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me. Thank you, have a great week. All right, guys. Once again, my name is Russ Tellup. I am a trauma-informed somatic coach with MindBodySpirit and BrainspottingCScom. This is Sabrina Troback and she is the author of Not Good Enough Understanding your Core Beliefs and Anxiety Anxiety and we'll get some links to all of that in the show notes that you guys can go purchase that book on Amazon and go check out her website and her YouTubes and all of her socials and connect with her. So thanks again for joining us and we'll see you guys next week.