Understanding Birth Trauma and Perinatal Mental Health with Christie Orr-Brown

This episode features a conversation on birth trauma and perinatal mental health between Inner Solutions' Clinical Director Jessica Heil and Christie Orr-Brown, Co-owner of Encircled Therapy & Wellness (https://www.encircledtherapy.ca/).

Christie is a registered nurse and clinical counsellor who has been practicing in Calgary for 17 years. Encircled Therapy and Wellness provides therapy services to pregnant, postpartum, and parenting individuals who need support with mental health. In addition to a decade of acute and community mental health experience, Christie has also practiced in labour and delivery, pediatric intensive care, and pediatric emergency. Christie completed her masters degree in Nursing in 2016, and is a certified clinical counsellor with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association. Christie has advanced training and certification in perinatal mental health and EMDR. She incorporates mindful self compassion, CBT, DBT and narrative therapy in her work with clients.

Christie’s interest in perinatal mental health was sparked after working as a registered nurse in labour and delivery, and after having her two children. After experiencing postpartum depression, anxiety, and intrusive thoughts firsthand, Christie sought additional training and experience in order to help others experiencing the same distress.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the Inner Solutions Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Heil. I own and operate Inner Solutions, a private practice clinic located in Calgary, Canada. Inner Solutions seeks to understand and help our clients by providing empirically supported treatments and evidence-based practices with compassion and expertise. This podcast will provide you with information regarding complex psychological conditions as well as treatments that are available. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Inner Solutions Podcast. I'm Jessica Heil, and I'm here today with Christy Orr Brown. Christy is a clinician who specializes in treating birth trauma. She uses EMDR to be able to help people who've gone through traumatic experiences during delivery and birth. And she also specializes in treating postpartum mood disorders. Christy, I'm wondering if there's anything else that you'd like to share with our audience about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Hi, thank you so much for having me on. Yes, I'm actually an advanced practice nurse by trade. So I've been a nurse for 18 years. And throughout my time as a nurse, I worked in labor and delivery and really developed a passion for perinatal mental health from seeing the medical side of all of those pieces. I'm also a mother to two. So I have two small kids at home. And I really became passionate about this work because of my own journey through postpartum disorder and through birth trauma as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Awesome. Christy, I'm just so excited to have this conversation with you because one of the things that I can get quite passionate about is being able to break down the taboo of mothers talking about how difficult birth and delivery and what happens subsequently with kids afterwards can be for people as well. Having young children is not easy. And I think there's just not enough conversations about that happening. So I'm really hoping that we might be able to dig in a little bit and just provide a different narrative to mothers out there that this stuff is challenging. And there are things that can be done to try to support you during motherhood.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, there's so much that can be done. And, you know, I think the more we have these open conversations, the more we open the door to people being able to be honest and to get the help they need.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Absolutely. I think a place I'd like to start is I'm wondering if you would be able to just share with us what are some of the biggest emotional challenges that you notice when it comes to pregnancy and postpartum.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

You know, what I often tell my clients is that the reproductive phase of life is really a time where any of the other struggles we've had in life somehow become unmasked. We often have, if we go into pregnancy or postpartum with any kind of underlying, you know, anxiety or depression already, a lot of people work walk through life with really high-functioning anxiety, for example. And often what happens is some of those challenges become magnified because during those times in our lives, we add stressors and we lose a lot of our coping skills. So, for example, if one becomes pregnant, uh, specifically if you have had a difficult fertility journey, for example, IVF, or you know, you've had a long road, oftentimes the things that you typically rely on to cope with some of the challenges of life aren't available to you anymore. You know, your exercise routine might be different. We're adding additional stressors, we might be adding hormones to the mix. You know, when someone becomes pregnant, estrogen alone climbs by a hundredfold. So we have a lot of additional stressors, and oftentimes our coping skills get peeled away and aren't as available to us. So a lot of the challenges we see during this period are things that we see during other periods of life as well, but sometimes they become more prominent. So a lot of what we work with is anxiety, depression, rage is a big one. Postpartum rage is one of the most common things we treat, and it's the thing that carries the most shame often. People really struggle to reach out. And then trauma as well, either birth trauma or past trauma that becomes more prominent or becomes more difficult to deal with when we lose our coping skills.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

That makes a lot of sense. I've got two kids at home as well. Um I've got a 12-year-old and a nine-year-old. And I think about this period as kind of like I call it like the golden years because they're old enough to be able to do things on their own, but they're still young enough that they want to hang out with me. So like it's perfect. Yes. Yeah. But I but I think about in that time of like when they were so young, and exactly what you're saying, that the coping strategies that I would have had back then, like before having kids, it just goes out the window because it's just it's so busy and you've constantly got at least one, if not two babies attached to you, depending on how close together your kids might be. And it's just, yeah, everything that you used to do for yourself is just no longer available. So things like having that uh consistent routine or having the time and capacity to be able to do like healthy cooking or like it's just it all goes out the window. I imagine you hear that a lot from your clients.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Oh my gosh, yeah. And and foundationally too, one of the biggest things that's impacted is our sleep.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

And so when we think about sleep deprivation and the science behind what happens to our brain and our fight or flight uh response, our amygdala when we don't sleep, you know, that has an impact across the board on all of our emotional regulation, our energy, our functioning at work, our memory, all of those things also become impacted, which then adds some additional stress. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

So you're you're talking about sleep being impacted, you've talked about that routine being impacted, you've talked about hormonally being impacted. What are some other ways that you notice that so many people are struggling in their parenting journey? Like, why are there so many people right now that seem to be struggling with this?

SPEAKER_00 6:13

You know, there's there's lots of factors. One of the most common things I hear when people are becoming new parents is actually struggles in their relationship. So we know that statistically, when we have children, our marital satisfaction, if we are married or in a partnership, typically goes down. Now, that's not to say there's all doom and gloom. There's some beautiful things about entering into a co-parenting relationship, but we prepare a lot for what to do with baby physically after they're born, but we don't actually prepare for things in our partnership. We're actually creating a co-parenting relationship when we have a child. And there's often a lot of new responsibilities, new worries, things to think about, planning that's required that we've never considered before. And so division of labor and relationships is one of the most common reasons that people see counseling and couples therapy after kids are born because of the stressors and because of, you know, frustration and resentment that builds when the workload isn't discussed and divided in a in an equitable way. That's definitely one. Another one that we, you know, another reason that people tend to struggle so much. We think about the societal impacts on parents now, and millennial parents just have so many additional stressors than they've ever had before. I've had a lot of clients come to me and say things like, you know, my parents rate my, I didn't think my parents struggled this much, or everyone else seems to be doing okay. Why am I struggling so hard? And when we think about the societal context of parenting, it's just not the same as it used to be. You know, financially speaking, we have more financial demand and our expenses are astronomically different and higher than our parents who raised us experienced. So most of the time, both people have to work outside of the home and inside of the home. We tend to have less support. Families are further apart. A lot of people don't live near family or don't have family that are emotionally supportive or helpful. And so they don't have the same parenting village that they used to have. We also have a great deal of impact from things like social media. You know, there's so much available for us to compare to. And often these standards are very unrealistic, very difficult to emulate, or there are things that really generate a lot of anxiety for people. So there's a lot of things that come on our radar through, you know, scrolling through Instagram or other things that generate anxiety. That's actually what the what they're designed to do. People know if they can hook you in by making you anxious, you're more likely to follow their accounts. And so that's actually a marketing strategy that's used on us, which has never been used before. So we have a lot of additional stressors as parents, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

I'm chuckling over here because I'm like, all of these are, it's so relatable. And honestly, so validating as I'm sitting here, I'm like, yep, like those are all the things that have happened, right? Along with um, like along my own parenting journey, and certainly the clients that I talk to who are also struggling as parents, as we all do, right? Like there's no parent out there that doesn't have struggles at some point. I'm sure that's just so relatable to all of them.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Oh, and it's so to myself as well. You know, I do this work because I'm in it as well. My kids are three and six. And, you know, I notice all of these things. We talk all the time about, oh man, like, you know, how do people do this? Like it's it's so different now than how we were raised in the and the expectations too. We have so much literature on how to be a good parent. There's so much more pressure on parents to, you know, be able to do things in the right way. There's way more literature on, you know, in parenting books to read, and there's so much more out there about raising kids, and it can feel like a lot sometimes. I think it's overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

And then it's like, where do you fit in the time to read all these parenting books? And there is, there's this like societal pressure of like, well, does that mean like because these books are out here, like a quote unquote good parent would be reading these, but you've got these, you know, young children that are hanging off of you, 24-7, right, that need your time and attention. And yet we're expected to also be able to pick up books so we can learn these parenting strategies. And it's just, it's this never-ending cycle where parents are left, I think, feeling like they're just not doing a good enough job. And it's it's tough, right? And all those societal pieces that you're talking about there, like whether it's uh the yeah, the financial pressures, having less family members available to be able to help, like all these things really have such an impact on the way that parents are able to cope today.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

100%. Yeah. And that's the number one thing I hear is this comparison of people saying, I'm just, I don't feel like I'm a good mother. I'm not a good enough parent. You know, I feel like I'm failing all the time. And, you know, we have to think about that in context of kind of the expectations. You know, when we look at the expectations, you know, sometimes they're very unrealistic or unattainable. We're all reaching for a bar that's just continues to get higher and higher. So it can feel really discouraging.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

And you mentioned social media, and I think that is such an important part of what is happening with current day parenthood that we have, whether it's like the social media that we see of our own friends who are also parents, and we all I think put like that perfect snapshot up, right, on our whatever it is, our Instagram stories or like what we post is what we want people to see of us in kind of our like picture perfect moments. And I think it sometimes sends this message to people that are looking at it, assuming like that is what life always looks like for us, right? And so you've got these other parents who might be looking at this picture thinking, wow, like this one parent has it all together. Like they always look like they're having like the best times and they've got like these most amazing crafts that they do with their kids, and they're creating these incredible opportunities with their kids. Like, why can't I do that? And yet what they're not realizing is that is like a very oftentimes is kind of like a carefully manufactured picture that's been put together. It's not representative of what this person's life actually looks like.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Absolutely. And the number one thing we're consuming on social media these days when we look at things like TikTok and Instagram are reels from people that we don't know. And one thing we have to be really mindful of with social media, it started off when us, I mean, I'm 38 now. When I started, I was 21. It started off as a way of connecting just with friends. And that's all you would see. Now it's an incredibly powerful income generating machine. And what you're seeing is marketing. People are trying to sell you themselves. When you follow them, you're creating revenue for them. And I think it's really important to remember that we are being marketed too. They are selling you a version of their life, and they're trying to create in us a sense of lack, a sense of feeling not enough, so that we follow their account to become enough. So we really have to remember that social media is marketing. They are selling us something just like we're watching a car ad, thinking, oh, I could be rugged in my Subaru over the mountain terrain if I owned a new car too, right? It's the exact same thing. And when we start to recognize that these mommy influencers, all of these bloggers, are marketers and they are trying to sell us their lifestyle, we can contextualize it a little bit differently and also just start to pay more attention to how scrolling is making us feel. There's nothing wrong with going on social media if it uplifts you or gives you a meaningful break. But if you find you're getting off of it feeling disconnected, sad, lonely, or just feeling like you're not good enough, it's a good indicator that it might be causing more harm than good.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

I think what you just said is so incredibly insightful that yes, those influencers, like that's that's essentially that's their job, right? And they are they're selling, yeah, they're selling their brand so that they can make money. It they're not doing what they're doing to make us feel good. They're doing it because they are making money from it. And yeah, and so like there's a lot of psychology that goes into like the psychology of marketing. Like we could do a whole other episode just on that alone. But I think it's so important for mothers and parents, I'll say it doesn't have to be mothers, to keep that in mind when you're looking at these influencers who are showing kind of like these um what appear to be these perfect families, right? That that is again an image that they're wanting you to see so that you're consuming the the data that they're putting out.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Very interesting. Okay, I'm gonna I'm going to switch this to a different topic because I do want to touch on another piece of of what you specialize in. So I know that you use trauma treatment to be able to treat birth trauma. And I'm hoping that maybe you could just talk a little bit about how does trauma show up in pregnancy and postpartum? Like, and what do you mean by birth trauma?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

So when we think about so we'll talk about birth trauma and then just trauma in general. Birth trauma is generally the experience that one has when after you've had your birth or your or your pregnancy experience, you're left with lingering difficult feelings or distress associated with that experience. So when it shows up, we often see after a delivery, a birthing person might, you know, have trouble not thinking about the delivery, or it comes up as like intrusive thoughts, or, you know, they don't want to talk about the delivery, or maybe they can't stop going over and over and over it again in their head. Sometimes it leaves us with negative beliefs about ourselves. We might have a belief, you know, I'm not a good mother, or I didn't do what I was supposed to do. So it's kind of the it's the legacy of the birth that can leave people feeling really distressed. And that can be, you know, I've seen people that have had a very recent birth experience that have felt this way, or that have carried that for several years after their children have been born and still haven't been able to shake the distress associated with that experience. And sometimes we'll see it. I've had people come in saying, I don't want to look at the pictures of the day they were born or the day I was in the hospital because it just all these memories fled back. Um, you know, I haven't been able to get my stride as a mother, you know, or as a parent. In more extreme circumstances, I've seen uh parents have a hard time even looking at or bonding with their babies because it's a reminder of the really traumatic experience that they had. And I will say that regardless of how a birth goes, anyone can experience birth trauma. It's not always related to say the quote difficulty of the birth. Some people will come in and say, I don't know why I'm traumatized. I know other people that have had way more difficult births than me. And it often is not even correlated with how objectively challenging a birth is. But sometimes in our experiences, we have moments where we feel like we have lost control or we feel unseen, or we feel like, you know, we're not able to do what we need to do. And having those moments can have a profound impact on people as they move into parenthood.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

I think what really stands out to me that you just said is that it doesn't have to be something that would be like considered like an objective trauma, right? It doesn't have to be that somebody has had a life-threatening experience for it to be considered traumatizing, that it's just if something went awry in your own subjective experience, where it's just not the the birth that you thought you would have or the delivery that you thought you would have. And that something like I think about that piece where you're saying like some sort of like a feeling of of control being taken away, right? Um, like a lot of that really sticks with with people where it just, yeah, if it just doesn't go the way that we had anticipated that it might, it can just drastically change the way that we're going to view it after the fact. And then the beliefs that come up for people that I've noticed for mothers after the fact, when they look back at their delivery, where they start to have a different viewpoint about themselves or the world that seems to be formed during that uh that labor and delivery. It's it's really quite impactful that uh such a, you know, it's it really, I mean, it's for for most women, we're talking about a series of, you know, hours to sometimes like a couple days, right? Of being delivery, but it can have such a drastic impact on somebody's mental health from thereafter, right? And it can last, like you said, for years and years and years.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

It absolutely can. And, you know, I, you know, I've I've worked in labor and delivery. I come from a nursing perspective. You know, I do believe that, you know, we have a lot of interventions that are sometimes necessary, you know, that we've never had before. And, you know, those interventions are incredibly valuable. But we also have to recognize that sometimes extreme medical intervention or having moments where someone's autonomy or control are taken away in whatever, and however that looks like, and however necessary it could be, can have a lasting impact on us psychologically and can really be something that gets in the way of us feeling empowered and enjoying our time with our children postpartum. So something we really need to address and to recognize more. I think a lot of people really carry this and don't feel that they can talk to anyone about it. It often gets very dismissed. A lot of well-meaning people will say things that can actually make people feel very ashamed, very sad, very isolated in that traumatic experience, which can often worsen its impact, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Absolutely. So a lot of invalidation about the distress that a woman may have experienced during their labor and delivery when somebody, and I think, and that's oftentimes the thing that can make the difference between whether somebody would view this like I mean, it's it's gonna be if the birth didn't go the way that someone had anticipated, again, whether it's objective or subjective, I think that's gonna be distressing no matter what. But in my experience, it's oftentimes how the other people in their lives have supported them in that afterwards, like in that narrative. And whether there's been a validation of the distress that they've gone through or an invalidation, that part can really change the uh the intensity, I'll say, of the traumatic experience after the fact.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Absolutely. And if we think about trauma, you know, if we look at any other form of trauma, you know, if someone survived, say, in a horrible accident, there's no, there's no time when people would think it appropriate to say to that person, yeah, but you're fine. Everyone's okay now, and that's all that matters. But when we've had a difficult birth or we've had a a birth that feels upsetting to us. And let's be honest, I mean, even a birth that is uncomplicated is incredibly difficult. Like birth is a really difficult thing. Um, it's, you know, Herculean in its intensity and effort, it's life-changing. And it's also often the first time a birthing person has even been in hospital, you know, so it can be a huge experience for anyone. And then oftentimes what a birthing person hears after the fact is yes, but you and baby are healthy, so it's okay. Everything's okay. You just have to focus on how you're doing now and focus on look at your beautiful baby, it's okay, right? We can be grateful that we're okay and that our baby is okay and be traumatized at the same time. It's not one or the other, right? We can hold both, and we do. Believing that our birth did not go how we wished it had gone, feeling distressed about the birth doesn't mean we're not grateful for the the baby that we had. Or we're not acknowledging that, you know, it could have been worse. Sure, it could have. Oftentimes things could have been worse. That doesn't mean though that we're not significantly impacted by what happened to us and we don't deserve to have care for that.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

100%. Yeah. And you're you're talking about dialectics at its best, which is therapy, right, that we specialize in over here. So the idea that both things, there it's amazing, right? Because both things could be true at the same time. Yes. I can be incredibly grateful that I have this healthy, amazing baby. And it was still really distressing. Like both true.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Absolutely. Right? You can both of those things can coexist and often do. Most of our life exists in dialectics. Exactly. It's so rare that something is actually like truly just black and white, right? All or nothing. Absolutely. And motherhood's no different. We're sold this bill of goods that it's supposed to be this magical transformative experience. And no matter what happens, it's all okay because all that matters is we have this healthy baby. Or sometimes, you know, we don't. We have an unexpected complication, and now we're dealing with things that we never thought we'd have to deal with. You know, and in all of those times, we really need to feel loved and cared for and supported, you know, and and there's no other time in life where we're told we need to just ignore our emotional selves and that everything should be sunshine and rainbows, except for this. It's a societal, it's still something we really need to break through. I think some of the the cloud of rainbows and butterflies that tends to come with new motherhood and the expectations of how we're supposed to feel.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's so important that as mothers, we all participate in the act of breaking down the stigma of talking about how hard it is. It's it's probably the hardest thing that I've ever done in my life is to parent my two amazing, incredible children. Like I, you know, it's I would never change it. I am so happy to be a parent. And it is so hard. And it especially during those first, I'd say the first three months were, you know, they're just so incredibly challenging for so many different reasons that we already talked about a little bit uh earlier on the podcast. But really, like it didn't ever like get, I'd say maybe it got easier in some ways, but it's still challenging. Like it's not easy.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

It gets different. Yes. Yes. You go through there's, I think there's always a a really positive fun part for the most part, and then there's a really challenging new part. And part of the stress is parents is that we're constantly adapting to changing beings. Our children are not stagnant every time we figure something out, they're on to the next thing. Then it changes.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Exactly, right? It's never, it's never the same kid.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

And we're also not the same person either, because we're also growing and evolving. Absolutely. And I think the point that you touched on is so important is saying, you know, I love my kids and it's really hard. And we're back to that dialectic. You can love your children fiercely and not wish things to be different and desperately want to break from them at the same time.

unknown 25:01

Right. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Absolutely. I would throw myself in front of a train for my child at a moment's notice, but sometimes I really don't want to be around them.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Yes, exactly. That's exactly true. Right. It's and I think that's it's just so important to be able to say that as mothers. And I think also where we have an opportunity here is as clinicians too, right? Being able to say that this is normal and we may be clinicians and also mothers, and we're still struggling, right? Because I think that oftentimes uh there can be this perception that, oh, if like if you're a clinician and you know things about like mental health and how to deal with emotions, then that just means that like parenting must be easy for you. It is not. And we need to just get this message out there, like every parent struggles, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Absolutely. And I think it's really important to understand too that the process of working through therapy, it's not creating strategies that this will become easy, because it's not. What I've learned though is the importance of cultivating more self-compassion as we talk about this more and as we realize there's such a common humanity to this and that we are all in fact struggling. And, you know, that's one of the things that we talk about is the importance of having other like close friends that are also parents, because usually things are all shiny and rosy when we talk superficially. And once we actually start talking, you realize everyone is struggling with this. Everyone's exhausted, everyone's got a million balls in the air, everyone's saying, I don't know what to do with this, or how do I parrot through this? You know, and once we realize that a lot of us are struggling, it can open the door to just being a lot kinder with ourselves around having these experiences and around feeling like we can't do it all. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that is so true. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Now, when let's come back to trauma. So we've got kind of our our, I'm gonna call it the normative struggle of parenting, which is everybody goes through it and there's gonna be these waves where sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's harder. And then there is trauma, which is different because it does come with the things you mentioned. There are the intrusive thoughts, there's the flashbacks, there's the emotion dysregulation, there's the impact on how we view ourselves, all of that. How do we know if, like, if we've gone through a birth that is feeling traumatic, how do we know if we're at the point where we probably do need to reach out for help to cope with our trauma versus when we might be able to get through it on our own?

SPEAKER_00 27:26

It's a great question, you know, and there's and there's two parts to this. You know, the first one is I absolutely blatantly refuse to subscribe to this idea that motherhood is martyrdom and that if we should tough it out, if we can tough it out, we should. Um if you are not happy, then it's a great idea to talk to someone. If these things, if you can white knuckle your way through the day and these triggers and flashbacks are coming up, doesn't mean that you should. You know, what the number one indicator that we need to seek help is if we're not enjoying this period of our life as much as we wish we were. You know, we work really hard to become parents. Oftentimes it is a very hard-won battle. Um, even like pregnancy alone is grueling and exhausting. And you deserve to be able to enjoy that time as much as is possible. You know, so if it's getting in the way and you're noticing that it's dampening your joy, you're not able to look at photographs, you're not, you know, you're not feeling the way you wish you did, you know, and some of that's an illusion. We're not happy all the time when we have children. But if you're finding yourself feeling really low emotionally, feeling really sad, hearing birth stories of other people and finding that really triggering or uncomfortable, you know, all of those are signs that it would be a great idea to chat with someone about your experience and if you might need some more trauma treatment. The other thing that can come up too is things with attachment. So if we're noticing it's hard to bond with our babies, or if we're noticing a lot of anger or rage, one of the number one reasons people come and talk to me is actually rage. They find they get triggered and overwhelmed and they become over the top angry and they feel terrible about it and they don't know where it comes from. Typically speaking, when we look at rage, a lot of the time we can find that there's trauma underneath. Something really tender is being triggered. Sometimes people aren't even aware of it necessarily. But the thing about parenting is it can really unmask a lot of past hurt. Millennial parents are cycle breakers, by and large. A lot of us are raising our children differently, intentionally, than how we were raised. And so a lot of times when we see our children growing up and they're exhibiting behaviors that perhaps we had when we were young that might have triggered something traumatic, it can be very triggering for us. It can become very dysregulating. So a lot of parents I see come in because they felt that they had dealt with their childhood trauma and then they became parents and a lot of it resurfaced. They're also noticing the things that they give their children that they wish they had gotten when they were young. So a lot of these things can also be very triggering and uncomfortable. So if we're noticing that our children are triggering something in us, our emotional reactions are perhaps not what we'd hoped they would be, or we feel like we're losing control over our emotions, that's another sign that we might have some trauma that we need to work through.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

I think that is so helpful to hear because there is a range of emotion that can happen that will happen for every parent when it comes to having kids. And then there's a range of emotion that I think your wisdom just knows it's maybe a bit more or a bit like more frequent or more intense than what should I say should be there. Again, I don't love some of these words that I'm using, right? Like should, like that's a little bit of a judgment word, but our wisdom knows, right? When we're within that range of like, okay, this is normative versus like, well, maybe I'm getting a little bit out of that normative range. And I love what you're saying rather than judging ourselves for having these emotions, because emotions are they're valid, like they're coming from somewhere. Instead of judging it and thinking, well, I shouldn't be feeling this way, instead ask, where is this coming from? And could it be possible that this is tying back into something that maybe like a deeper root, right? Is there something here that I haven't yet unpacked that if I'm able to do that, perhaps I'm gonna have a different experience?

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Absolutely. And, you know, I I talk to a lot of parents saying things like, you know, there's no reason to suffer when we can work through some of these things and create an experience for you that might be better. You know, are we always gonna be calm and regulated with our kids? No. You know, we we're human beings and we can be triggered, it's like just like anyone else. But, you know, if it's above and beyond what you feel comfortable with, if you feel like there's a cycle that's being perpetuated where you feel sad or shame or guilt about how you're interacting with your kids, you know, it's a great idea to unpack that with someone and find out where it comes from, or find skills to show up in a way that feels more authentic to how you want to parent. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

So then what if somebody was to decide that they they do want to pursue treatment and that there's maybe ways to be able to unpack some of that and just change the experience that you're having within your own emotions for your parenting, then like what would a therapist be able to do to be able to help heal trauma? What would that look like?

SPEAKER_00 32:43

You know, there's two parts to trauma healing and kind of how I see it. A lot of times trauma isn't just the incident in itself, but the legacy of that incident. It's the beliefs, as we talked about, that we're left with about ourselves. It's how we're showing up in the world. And oftentimes trauma related to how we're parenting comes with a lot of shame. And so a big part of how we work with trauma is really providing education, understanding the cycle and the impact of past experiences on how we're showing up today. You know, a lot of people find that just gaining insight in a non-judgmental space or being able to share details of things that they can't share with anybody else and hear that it's valid, that it was in fact difficult, can feel really healing and more comfortable, or even just understanding why we show up the way we do in certain situations or why we feel the way we do can be a really powerful part of healing. The other thing that we do in our practice is EMDR. So you've had some great episodes in past where you've talked about EMDR as a trauma processing modality. What I like about it is that people don't necessarily have to share every detail. So if you're someone that's coming to therapy, not really sure how much of your past you want to share or talk about, you know, EMDR is a great modality for being able to gently explore some of those triggers without having to share all of it. Um, and that involves using bilateral stimulation, so either buzzers that you hold in your hands or eye movements to process some traumatic experiences and then try to reduce the distress associated with those experiences and convert them more into long-term memory. So the experiences might still feel sad or have some, you know, some feelings attached to them, but they're not going to come up in your system as highly distressing the way they would like post-traumatic memories do, where you feel like they're happening all over again and they feel dysregulating and and very jarring. We can reduce the distressing impact of those memories and also create meaning and associate some some different beliefs about ourselves with those memories.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

That sounds awesome. So there's a variety of different ways to be able to treat some of the impact, that negative impact that has happened because of the traumatic experience. It doesn't necessarily have to be just one particular model. There's yeah, multiple things to choose from. And that's nice too, because then that I think gives clients back options, and especially for women who've just gone through delivery and birth, back to that theme that a lot of them feel like they've lost that control. So I like that idea that you can offer this kind of array of here's the ways that we could look at treating this, and ultimately it's all going to come to the same outcome. But then the the client gets to choose, right? Like this is going to be kind of the way, the path forward for me.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Absolutely. And I think one of the most important parts, you know, when we experience trauma, there's almost always an underlying theme of loss of trust, whether it's trust in ourselves, trust in our systems, trust in our, you know, the people supporting us, you know, we lose trust. And so the therapeutic process, you know, is often, in this case, guided very much by the client and what they need and how they're feeling as a way of rebuilding trust and a way of refining trust in our own selves and our own bodies and in others as well. So, you know, I tell all of my clients as we, as we begin exploring these things, it goes at the pace that they want to go. It stops when they want to stop. And we do it in a way that feels comfortable and grounding for them. You know, they're the ones driving the bus, which I think is such an important part of regaining that sense of control, as you said, um, and regaining trust in themselves and their ability to know where their boundaries are and what they need going forward. It's such an important part.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

So important. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. Christy, last question for you, and then I think we'll wrap up. If somebody was listening to this episode and they thought that they could really benefit from being able to work with you, how would they find you?

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Absolutely. Yeah, we have a website. So it's www.encircledy.ca. You can go online and you can book a free consultation with us anytime. You can call our intake line at 403-993-3263. I work with a wonderful psychologist at Encircled, uh, Megan Burse, who specializes in pregnancy, postpartum, and parenting, specifically with neurodiverse individuals. So with those that perhaps are diagnosed or maybe suspect that they might have some neurodiversity, Megan is an excellent resource for those clients as well. So if you'd like to reach out to either one of us, you're welcome to visit our website, encircledherapy.ca, or call us at 993-403-993-3263, and you can arrange a free consult just to chat and see if we're a good fit.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

That's so perfect. Christy, this has been amazing. I honestly have been sitting back here, just listening to everything that you've said. And like I I've learned quite a bit today, and it's honestly been truly like quite validating as a parent, too, to just listen and sit back and just know that there's this is just such a typical experience for so many parents out there. And then right, there's the experience of trauma on top of that too. So I just, my heart goes to everybody who has gone through something traumatic during birth and delivery because I can I can only imagine just how challenging that could be on top of all the challenges that come with typical parenting. So just thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and looking forward to having opportunities to connect with you again in the future. Thank you so much for the chat. It's been lovely. Thanks so much for listening. If you found today's episode helpful, please go ahead and leave us a review. And you can also follow the show so that you don't miss out on any future episodes. For more information about us, you can check out our website, www.inersolutions.ca.