Ep. 347: Trigger Warnings: Making us Fragile or Helping us Heal? [REMASTERED]

Could your mouthwash be causing high blood pressure? Can your spit predict cancer?

Nikki Eisenhauer is a licensed professional counselor, chemical dependency counselor, and professional psychotherapist. She is also an incest & abuse survivor. 

In this episode, we discuss if trigger warnings are a tool for healing or a crutch for victimhood, we explore symptoms that your entire childhood may warrant a trigger warning, what actual trauma is, how not to manipulate ourselves & the best way to support those with trauma without absorbing their pain.

This episode originally aired October 9, 2023

If you liked this episode, you’ll also like episode 312: DID THE #METOO MOVEMENT EVEN HELP US?

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0:00 — Are trigger warnings helping or hurting?

0:50 — Nikki's take: good intentions gone sideways

2:55 — What "trigger" actually means

8:25 — How the word trauma got watered down

10:03 — How trigger warnings entered college culture

14:03 — Getting unstuck from a victim mindset

14:33 — Insight: the one thing you can't teach

20:34 — The circle jerk of victimhood

22:31 — Is "seeded trauma" a real thing?

26:04 — When people are addicted to drama

29:17 — Being patient with your subconscious

30:05 — Inner child work and reparenting yourself

32:07 — How to actually support someone with trauma

38:48 — Wrapping up + the Boundaries Course

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever watched or heard something that had a trigger warning at the start of it? It might be easier to take a show of hands for those who haven't seen one. Trigger warnings are pretty common practice now, but as the perceived need for their use becomes wider, it's unclear if this is a helpful tool or a practice gone overboard. My next guest is a licensed professional counselor, chemical dependency counselor, and a professional psychotherapist. She's also an incest and abuse survivor. Today she's going to talk about healing. As we ask the question, are trigger warnings helping us heal or making us fragile? Insightful healer, soulful Sherpa, fellow introvert and podcaster Nikki Eisenhower. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Thank you for having me. That was a beautiful introduction. I'm super excited to spend some time with you today.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yeah, me too. I'm so excited to talk about this because as mental health is health, that concept has entered into the mainstream. So has the number of health mental health practitioners who kind of like tiptoe around topics and present their media content in a way that always has this excessive, it feels, trigger warning. And it makes me wonder like, is it helpful or is it harmful? But what I appreciate about your approach to all subjects is that you're just so straightforward. And I think for my audience, that will be a really refreshing way to explore the topic of mental health.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

I'm excited to do that with you. And when it comes to triggers, it's really, really tricky for mental health professionals and for the general population, because everything about trigger warnings is really meant with the best of intentions. And, you know, I was raised Catholic no longer, but we have a saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I think where it comes to trigger warnings, that's really what's happened. Because at the end of the day, life doesn't give us trigger warnings. It can't, it won't. The universe can't do that enough. And a lot of professionals, I find pussyfoot around this topic because most of us got into this field because we have big hearts. We wanted to figure ourselves out first and help other people figure themselves out. So we're the people out there in the world that are very connected to feelings. And there's a fine line there for me. And I think what has developed is that in this realm of let's be respectful around feelings and people's struggles, we have accidentally created a bigger problem, which is now people feel entitled to be handled with delicacy.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

And that backfires. It absolutely backfires. So, how do you see people misuse the word trigger?

SPEAKER_01 2:58

So trigger comes from post-traumatic stress literature. Okay. And I am someone who thought I would have chronic post-traumatic stress from the way that I grew up, having an abuser in the home, having my biological father abandoned, my mother is, by my estimation, a sociopath. Every sociopath is a narcissist. When you grow up with chaos and trauma, we have so many triggers. So many triggers. And our triggers are very, very nuanced. If we have different experiences, like something like a car accident that's very traumatic, very easy to see the obvious triggers there. Yeah, the next time that person goes to get in a car, they're going to be triggered by getting into a car because their trauma was associated with an automobile accident. When our trauma is our childhood, it means that we have triggers attached to so much. We have triggers attached to even good things happening. Because for someone who grew up with a lot of chaos and a lot of abuse and neglect, when a good thing happens, it's not a purely good thing. It's when is this next bad thing going to happen? And so we actually have good things that can trigger our anxiety. Trigger is really a good word for it. It's what triggers, what brings on, what cultivates a response in the body. What's happened in this trying to make things easier on people, dynamic, is that we've forgotten why we have those triggers in the first place. The example I give a lot of times is let's say you got bitten by a dog when you were a kid. Obvious trigger would be you're scared of dogs. Okay. We all kind of get that. You don't need a psychology degree or in this field to understand that, right? Like that person's going to be a little more hesitant with dogs, maybe have some anxiety response around dogs, unless they really work through making peace with those dogs. That's the obvious trigger. Now, because of how our psychology works, that we are not consciously aware of everything that our minds are picking up. Okay. By design, we couldn't be. We would all go nuts. We would all feel fried if we consciously picked up every single thing around us. So let's say, if when you got bitten by that dog when you were a kid, let's say a blue truck passed by right when you got bitten. That might be a subconscious trigger. And the triggers are our nervous system associating something dangerous, something scary with a stimuli in an attempt to warn us. So we don't get triggered just to be exhausted and anxious and feel fragile and delicate in the world and exhausted by the world. We actually feel that anxious response to what our triggers are, because those triggers are our own safety system going, hey, so if a dog runs at me and I've been bitten by a dog, of course I'm going to feel triggered. That's my system going, hey, girl, a dog has hurt you before. Warning, warning, warning, there's a dog coming. Okay. So there's working with those obvious sort of bold face triggers. Okay. But there's also the triggers that we're not consciously aware of. So the person that got bitten by the dog and the blue truck passed by right at the moment, our minds will grab a detail like that and log it in because something traumatic is happening. And we'll tell our bodies, oh, this bad thing happened. You got really hurt. And you know what was happening? You were getting bitten by a dog, and this blue truck was passing by. And because this is just a warning system of gathering information, for the whole rest of my life, I might feel a little uneasy when a blue truck passes by and never consciously understand why or what that is. So we have to be able to understand triggers and work on triggers consciously. And we also can understand that we may have some subconscious triggers, like that truck. We can also have emotional triggers that are very, very hard to nail down. Okay. For a lot of highly sensitive people who grew up with neglect or immature parents, one of the triggers is not feeling important. How do you give a trigger warning to somebody about them maybe not feeling important? You can't. Right. So we can only really give the trigger warnings to the big, bold, obvious things like, hey, if you were bitten by a dog, I'm about to bring a big old dog into this room. Okay. And so I think we're we're blurring the line between conscientiousness and trigger warning. If I know you were bitten by a dog and my big 80-pound dog is about to come into the room, as a conscientiousness, I may open my mouth and say, Hey, Meredith, I know you're a little iffy about dogs. He's sweet. He's about to come in. Like, just let him sniff you, you know, and know that you might have a little moment with that, and we'll talk about that. And if you go, oh my goodness, I can't deal with a dog, okay, I can leave him out of the room. Like that's a real conscientiousness between two human beings that are caring and compassionate and reasonable with each other. Somehow that has gotten expanded and blown up to where we're wrong, we're bad, we're harmful people if we don't give that trigger warning.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Right. Yeah. And another word that I feel is used very frequently, and I'm not sure to what accuracy is the word trauma. How do we know if something is actual trauma within ourselves?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Oh, it's so interesting you asked me that because my husband who produces my show is asking me to define what trauma is and isn't. And this again, like triggers, like a lot of things in mental health that I speak on, I don't think that we can nail down the human condition in a finite way, in a way with specifics and testing science, the way that people want, because this human condition is just too complicated. And so when we're talking about trauma, and I think you're right on, I think one of the worst things to happen to actual real trauma in the past 10 years is that almost everyone online will use the word trauma for anything. They've watered it down, it means nothing. It's like the word good. If I lead a group, one of my rules is you can't say good if I how you're feeling, because it means absolutely nothing. Because what has developed is that word has lost its meaning. You could be bleeding out, your arm ripped off your body. How are you doing? Oh, I'm pretty good. You know, like it just does not mean anything anymore. And in an attempt to be caring and considerate of people who have trauma histories, we have sort of watered it down so much that we're actually disrespecting and disregarding people with actual trauma histories. Oh, wow. Okay, that's really younger generation in college. So colleges started doing this trigger warning stuff and started teaching kids in college that they are entitled to a trigger warning. Okay, that that's what being a good person is, that's what being a nice person is. And what's happened is this vitriol that if you're not doing that, like these people just decided this is the right way. Like I've been in the field of mental health for 17 years. Nobody polled me and asked me, should we have trigger warnings on everything? Because I would have said no, because the intention that paves that road to hell in wanting to take care of that person accidentally entitles that person. It encourages that person to feel entitled to that trigger warning. And then guess what happens when they don't get it? They feel victimized, they feel wounded, they feel delicate, and they feel like the victim of a conversation or a teaching. That is very drama-filled, it's very histrionic, it's very immature. And so I believe part of what we're seeing out there in the universe, out there in the modern world, is immaturity at a level that we have not dealt with. And this trigger warning stuff, as kooky as it is for me to connect this, I believe it's part of it because we have generations of children entering adulthood, coming out of college as adults, who feel so delicate that they can't handle what's going on in the world. So I'm a bit miffed at my field for not taking a beat to back step and take this back and go, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is backfiring. This is backfiring. We initially started these trigger warnings to try to help people with trauma history. The, the, but it's not working. It's making the population more delicate. The truth about an actual trauma survivor is that they're the toughest people you'll ever meet. There's something called trauma-informed. It's something that has been taught, very popularized. Okay. I don't like it as a trauma survivor. I have been in groups with other professionals, other yoga teachers, different, different types in service and helping that have this trauma-informed teaching. And they piss me off because they treat me like I'm delicate. I find it incredibly insulting and dismissive. The worst thing that you can do for a trauma survivor is treat them like they're delicate, because it encourages them to go into their wounding more and dig that wounded hole deeper instead of crawling out of the woundedness hole, standing outside of that hole and going, wait a minute, look how strong I am. When we're trying to define trauma, okay, it's tricky, tricky, tricky. Okay. Because if I was hurt as a child and sad and my mother just walked past me without looking at me, that's neglect. Neglect is a form of trauma. Now, I'm in my 40s. If 20 people walk past me like I don't matter, and they look through me, I want to have cultivated as a healthy adult enough resiliency, enough self-sufficiency, enough not taking the universe, the world, and other people's actions personally to not have that tear me up, to not hit my wound of I'm not important. My mother would walk past me and treat me like I wasn't important. Now all these other people are traumatizing me. We have we have to let go of that. And we have to know that trauma is nuanced and delicate when we're children. Things that would traumatize us at four years old and six years old and 10 years old, frankly, has no business traumatizing you at 16, 20, 25, 30, and 40. And something is missing in these teachings where I'm seeing people that are 35 that are wounded by things that really, in an age-appropriate way, make sense that would wound them at six years old. So they have not developed enough resiliency, enough bounce to deal with real life, is what's happening.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

So, how do you help somebody who kind of gets stuck in that six-year-old mindset, to use your example, mature in such a late stage of life, like in their 30s or 40s and beyond? How can a person make that shift from creating victimhood as an ingrained part of their identity to something that they can look at in a almost a third-party lens and build strength from it?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

So here's what's really tricky and what's really sad. Okay, the only people that I can help are people who have insight. When people grab victim mentality, and there's a time and a place, the way that I put it is like in my own story, like Meredith mentioned at the beginning of the show, listeners out there, that I have some severe trauma history. Getting sexually abused by someone who's supposed to be a safe parent in your home is up there on the trauma scale. So what happens is there's a time and a place where if we were traumatized, we have to deal with being victimized. But that needs to be a season that we move through and get to the other side of. Part of this trauma warning stuff is teaching people to stay in the trauma. Why I'm so anti-victim mentality. So, what I say is you have to acknowledge being victimized, but you don't want to buy real estate in the victimhood. It's a shitty place to live.

unknown 15:33

That's good.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

You know, like it's true. And so we have to know that difference as professionals, and this is a sad truth right now. I would say many professionals in mental health don't know the difference between helping someone get through the victimization phase and they accidentally, in trying to support them, help them buy real estate in that victimhood. This is how personality disorder develops. And when we talk about personality disorders like narcissistic personality disorder, okay, there's a martyrdom part of that complex. Women tend to lean into that. We tend to think of narcissism more as like the kind of obnoxious businessman type. Okay. And that certainly is real and exists, but there's a lot of nuance to narcissism. And so when we stay too long in that, I'm the victim, I'm the victim, it starts to cycle on itself. That's why, Meredith, when you don't give me my trigger warning, then I'm the victim of that too. And then if you don't handle me the right way, then I'm the victim of how you're handling me. And so this victim thing starts to behave in our lives almost like we're standing in one spot, just dig in this victim hole, dig in this wounding deeper and deeper and deeper. The truth is, you can't get out of holes if they get too deep. And each of us is responsible, whether we know it consciously or not. This is part of why I have a show, because it breaks my heart that we could basically help people make a choice in their life to walk a path towards healthiness. Some people will miss that exit and they will continue and live forever in their victimhood. Okay. The difference is insight. Insight is something that in every counseling program in the country, they teach counselors that you cannot teach insight. We don't know where it comes from. We don't know why certain people have it and why other people don't. I am shocked after 17 years in this career that we're not hearing more professionals talk about insight, but it is a thing that we cannot measure, we cannot study in any kind of scientific way. And again, that's part of my beef because how do we help people with this human condition if everything has to be studied with science and be evidence-based, when so much of the human condition, in my view, cannot be. So, how do we help somebody? Talking somebody out of their own victim mentality is very, very difficult. They need the insight, and insight, all it is, is it's the ability to look inward. I suspect, just like with my show, that many of you listening to Meredith's, to your show, have insight because we are the creatures on the planet that are very curious. Okay. We are the creatures on the planet that we want to change, we want to evolve. We feel called to evolve beyond our younger selves, beyond our younger problems. Whatever that calling is, anybody who has it knows damn good and well. You don't hear anybody name it, but look out at the world. There is a stark difference between people who are complacently living their lives and those that are evolving past their struggles, beyond their struggles. That difference is insight. I know you have it, I know I have it. It's the ability to look inside of yourself and go, oh, wait a minute, I don't like my own behavior there, or wait a minute, I don't like how I responded there, or wait a minute, I lashed out at somebody. That's not how I want to live. And then we put effort towards figuring out why we had that behavior and why that feels so bad. There's a personal responsibility element that I find. So if there's a cake that I'm trying to bake up, what I'm looking for to even be able to see if I can help somebody is they've got to have insight, they've got to have personal responsibility. Victim mentality really feeds on it's everybody else's fault. And and one of the things, if we are to heal in this life that I'm a big believer in is I am not responsible for what happened to me as a child, but I am damn well responsible for the effects of it because there are no white knights that are going to ride up and save me. I have to save myself.

unknown 19:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

And when we're in this mindset of that was too hard for me, I should have gotten a trigger warning. To me, that is such a I'm sorry for this term, but I don't have a better like clinical term. To me, that's like a circle jerk of healing. You're not doing any healing at all. You were just spinning around between now I'm the victim of that and now I'm the victim of that. If there is a phrase that I could eradicate from the planet, like if I had magical superpowers, it would be, but it's so hard. But it's so hard. It's the number one thing that I've heard all my career. When when we figure out, well, this is what I need to do, and that it's a way we lie to ourselves, and trigger warnings is one of them. I think why do I need this trigger warning? Because it's so hard.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Yeah. I think we need uh, first of all, t-shirts made that say circle jerk of victimhood. Because get out of the circle jerk of victimhood. That's kind of amazing. I love what you're saying about observing your own behavior. And you, I love the word insight. I also like the word anthropology because I have found with my own observations that if I treat them in an anthropological way, meaning like I pretend that I'm wearing a national geographic like adventure hat. And I look at myself and I'm like, wow, wow, that was a really interesting response to that stimulus. Wonder, wonder what caused that. And then, you know, going from there, and it kind of creates permission to dig in, and in a way, I think it creates a safe place for that word that you said, that curiosity to happen. I have something else that I wanted to run by you that I'm pretty sure I made up, and I need you to tell me if this is a real phenomenon. And the reason I want to bring it up is because it may be helpful to someone listening, because presumably the people that are engaging with this right now are those who are curious, who are ready to put into action the insights and the lessons that they're. gonna learn from episodes like these, right? So I have called it seeded trauma. And it's when someone's life experience has shaped them in a way that their baseline of just survive to like threats and stressors is no longer present. So that they seed conflict and they seed threats and stressors in order to feel normal. Is that a thing or is it truly a thing in my head that I made up?

SPEAKER_01 22:31

So I'll tell you what I think you're getting at and tell me if I'm off in left field or if I'm getting what you mean. So hypervigilance is something that develops when you've had a lot of struggle and a lot of conflict and a lot of pain. And when we get that when we're young, the truth is it's kind of like over our age pay grade. So it just kind of shuts down our entire system. And so we wind up very hyper aware of all conflicts. It's as if the inner child in all of us goes, okay, really bad things have happened to me. And so the best I can figure out how to do is I'm just gonna try to be aware of everything. And so I'm gonna live life like, oh my goodness, is that person out to get me? And oh my gosh, that person, they rolled their eyes at me, they are judging me, they are looking at me funny. We're gonna try to people please because if if people are happy with me, they're not gonna yell at me, they're not gonna shame me. And that's that's my best shot. And so the inner child in us really starts to guide these things. One of the reasons I do my show is because it shocks me. It enrages me. It is one of the biggest disappointments I think I will ever feel that all of us have somehow missed out on an emotional education.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

We have to be able to do conflict with ourselves and with other people if we are to live good lives. And none of us get a conflict class. And so a lot of us are terrified of conflicts within ourselves. So most people just have denial and avoid themselves. And then we're terrified of conflict with other people. So when I hear you say like seeding, I'm wondering if and watching you get curious like putting on that national geographic I see that as resiliency skills that you were either taught as a little girl or you picked up along the way as a strategy to not feel shameful and guilty and like bad bad me as you were excavating your own archaeological digs to learn more about who yourself is to you and shape yourself in the ways that you want to. That's a resiliency skill. And it's not rocket science but my God is life hard when you don't know how to do that. And that's part of why I believe the collective mental health out there, the suicide rate is raising and is just rising and rising and rising and rising despite all this talk about mental health in the last 20 years, which means what we're doing isn't working. It's not right. So I think you're just naming a resiliency skill and and being able to plant seeds for yourself that will grow over time. A lot of us that had childhood trauma struggle with perfectionism. Again, a lot a lot of people are puzzled as to why because the little kid in us goes you know what I'm so smart that I I figured it out if I'm just perfect all the time nobody can get upset with me. And so perfect is going to be my way to feel safest on this planet. And I hope you can hear the little kidness in that like how naive that is how utopian and idealist part of healing and growth is letting go of those childlike ideals and learning how to get really grounded and real with ourselves. I think it's the inner child in academia and the inner child in people that want and expect trigger warnings because it's that little kid that goes, you know what would be great if we could just be warned about everything and avoid everything.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Yes. And now I will say I was taught to look at situations and conflict and discomfort through the lens of scientific exploration because that was always something that was fascinating to me. But the seated conflict I think that I'm trying to portray is something separate. It's something that I've observed in other people I'll give you an example. So I know a couple of people like this but one person in particular she had always had some drama in her life and I use the word drama very broadly I don't know much about her trauma or anything like that. But it was just like hey how you doing and it was always whew like question for you.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah. Drama that happened to her or drama that she participated in creating because to me there's a big line.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

I don't know her childhood enough and I'm just using her as an example because she's top of mind. So she may not be the ideal example but there was always some problem with her and there was like an illness or a family conflict or she couldn't pay rent or it was just always something. And then whenever she would make changes in her life where things would be calm and I'd be so happy for her like now she's not in that job. Now they they bought a home they won't be at the whim of you know their their renter or whatever it was like she made new conflict because that her baseline was drama and there's another person who did this and it was in a relationship context. And so when I say seated conflict that's what I mean it's like they just can't be happy with peace and it seems like it's another way to recycle victimhood.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

100% right on yeah now I understand what you meant by seated. So I am of the belief and I don't believe any other professionals are talking about this like this you read that I have an addiction specialty. I am of the opinion that the last 20 years of the internet has done this plus if you have childhood trauma it's like a double whammy people can be addicted to drama and we are creatures of pattern. And so one of the really sad things if you come from a dysfunctional family and I've had to face this in my own life it is not fun to face it. But if you live in drama every day of your life because of the family you were born into your system your subconscious like I was talking about earlier we're not conscious of everything expects drama because that's been the pattern. And we are such creatures of pattern like I know so few people now know how to drive a stick but like I know how to drive a stick and if I drive a stick and drive an old stick and then I get in an automatic I know damn good and well I'm in the automatic. I can consciously be telling myself I'm in now I'm in the automatic car and my foot is gonna reach for that pedal at least 10 or 20 times because my subconscious learns more slowly than my conscious mind. So just because I say oh I'm in the different car now my body my subconscious is still operating that vehicle that I was driving even for those few days.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

That's such a weird message for people to be patient with yourself as you cognitively become aware of you know the hiccups and the obstacles that are keeping you from total wellness and your your operational you know hard drive from catching up to what your brain knows. Hey there it looks like you're enjoying this episode so far. But you know what's strange? Apple tells me that 19% of you who listen on this app aren't actually following the show. To guarantee that we stay connected in this busy world of podcasts double check that you've hit the follow button on your podcast listening app. And if you have already I'd like to invite you to my private Facebook group just search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes to request to join. It's free. Okay, back to the show.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Yes yeah and that's part of why people using the word trauma so cheaply is a problem because it's not just like you were in a car accident and need to like do some phobia work about getting into the car. If you grew up with drama and chaos and instability your system is likely addicted in a subconscious way to drama. And if people don't have the insight there's insight again to look inward and go, wait a minute, why is there this messed up pattern where I finally get to stable ground and then I make a choice that destabilizes me. What is going on? I don't want that for my life that that's why to me true healing takes personal responsibility because you have to be able to own that to be able to change your relationship with that in a subconscious way. It's part of why I'm so passionate about inner child work. That sounds so hokey and ridiculous to so many people at first I get it because the people who need and will benefit from inner child work the most are the ones that weren't handled or spoken to as children appropriately. So they have the biggest eye roll to hearing inner child work. That inner child work gives us the opportunity to reparent that inner part of ourselves that's stuck with some of those messed up things we accidentally learned. Like I like I've said about me, I never set out to understand manipulation. I never wanted to be an expert in manipulation and helping people hear heal from narcissism. I have accidental PhDs that I never wanted from life in these things because I either needed to figure out master manipulation or it was going to kill me. Yeah. When we heal we're learning how to not attract manipulators but also how to not manipulate ourselves I think it's a it's a sad unfortunate well-intended manipulation that people need trigger warnings.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

I want to ask you how we can support others who have had trauma because excessive trigger warnings are not helpful but in some ways they are in some instances obviously they are appropriate and welcomed but like one of the reasons that I set you up with the bullets of like your backstory in the intro is because I just you know it's like yeah so um Nikki in a 40 minute friendly podcast format can you please just disclose all of your trauma like that's that's weird. And so like the real life version of that is when you're talking to somebody and they maybe drop a little crumb of something that is hinting at some trauma. What's the best way in a conversational format to let people know that they have the floor and you're here to support them within keeping inappropriate boundaries and with keeping support of their actual healing and not you know not doing it wrong basically like how do we actually help each other okay yeah I've got some tips for that one is know that you're the support think about beams in a house there are load bearing beams and there are support beams right there there are beams in the house that carry the weight that cannot be removed.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Each individual human being out there has got to be their own weight bearing beam and you're just the support. So you go into it like it is not your job as a friend or an acquaintance to carry the load for them. It's a load that they have to carry just like you have your real life grown up pull up your big burrow panties kind of things that you have to carry in your life. And so the idea is not to carry it for the survivor. Okay so there's that you're just a support being sometimes survivors depending on how much healing they've done so far want their friends or their family members to be the load bearing being okay again there's personal responsibility we have to know what our when I teach boundaries every October I teach this it's this is my side of the street you have your side of the street and when we come together we overlap. That's true of all people if we're overlapping and we ourselves have trauma or somebody else has trauma one of the the big tips I can give you is do not have pity do not have pity there's not one human being out there unless they are a dysfunctional martyr who wants pity pity is like looking down on someone we want empathy empathy has an equal quality to it okay look at that person for their strength wow it's amazing that you've gotten through that what do you want to share with me about that is a very different vibe than I don't know how you survived that. Gosh I it would just kill me I'd lay down and die if that happened to me we have a lot in our society that encourages being the victim victor being the victim is hot right now. I would say it is a cultural trend. So you also as a human being in support you get to evaluate is this person really in struggle? Are they playing up this struggle because attention seeking is very um paid off right now in our society. And if it's somebody that's just attention seeking then it's on you to protect your energy. So see them as strong. Also know the boundary and it can never be a hard line. I wish there was some formula I could give you for this and most things in this life I don't think there are hard lines. We want them we want things to be all or nothing black or white because there's a simplicity to that if somebody is all good cool. If somebody's all bad cool because I can kick them to the curb I don't have to deal with them. We struggle with human beings with the complexity and the nuance of everything in the middle support and listen but if it starts to get too much for them or for you help them find a therapist. Encourage them to find a therapist sometimes trauma survivors want to turn their friends into a therapist and you'll know that if you feel that if you feel really drained you know when we're really helping somebody there's a real deep truth really helping another human being that's why volunteering someplace feels so good actually energizes us. Okay if we're getting really drained because somebody's story is real heavy it's okay. There's a lot that I've had to learn to be able to support trauma survivors without re-traumatizing myself or carrying their pain as my own. If this is not your profession, you have every right in terms of self-respect in respecting their personhood and their trauma history to not just sit there and try to absorb what is too much for you to absorb or hear. And so you are helping them even if they don't like it. I thought you were my friend God now I have to go pay some person to listen to me. You wouldn't even listen to me. You have to be able to hang in there for your own self and say I am always willing to listen but I want to make sure that you're getting the qualified care and this feels too big for me. That's not a dirty secret. That's not telling somebody else hey you're too big of a problem I don't want to deal with you. It's hey this is really big and that's why there's professionals for this stuff. Let's find some books together. You know do you want me to go to a first session with you if you're scared to go by yourself? Like how can I help support you in being able to ultimately stand on their own two feet. That help helps you guys enabling helps somebody be more in their victimhood. And the truth is even when you can't put your finger on what's happening or what was said or why your gut, your intuitive gut knows because it feels good, it feels right it feels like a yes in your body when you're actually helping somebody and it starts to feel icky. And it's not that that the trauma is icky it's that this is too much for this space or this person really needs some quality care, some systematic strategic care that's outside of my wheelhouse. That's not a dirty secret, you guys and that's support can't just be hello I am here to give you whatever you expect from me.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Yeah just like with parents it's like love has to come in the form of so much yes but also some no yeah boundaries which is the perfect segue into sharing about your boundary course but I before you share about that and before we wrap up I just want to thank you for you know addressing this this taboo topic this you know thing that I think is expect that we're expected to just go with in 100% agreement without questioning it. And I love how you laid out ways that we can support ourselves and those around us ultimately makes for like I mean not to be a dramatic but it makes for like a better society right when we can be helpful and we can make matchmake people to the professional help that they need and then support them along the way. So as we wrap tell people where they can find you on Instagram I mean you got to tell them about your podcast and then definitely your boundaries course. And I know that's a lot but all three are so good.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Aw thank you so much. Well okay my podcast is Emotional Badass where Moxie Meets Mindful and I have conversations just like I'm having with you right now a lot of the shows are just me by myself sharing the story or sharing something to try to break down this complexity of the human experience. I think in trying to make mental health and the human condition such a clinical pursuit or clinical understanding we've lost a lot of what we need as human beings. And it's not rocket science but it's it's profound. And so for me we're missing out on sharing stories. I think since the beginning of humanity we have mostly passed down wisdom by sitting with each other and and sharing stories like around the fire and not telling people what to do, but to really saying hey this is how I've done it and this is what I've figured out. And then the next person in line gets to add their wisdom and their life experimentation. And if we embody that more and more and more on the individual level I am a believer that that's really and truly how we ultimately heal society so many sensitive people look out at the world and go, oh my goodness, what do I do to fix all of this? And if you let that go and you just look inward, when you you work on healing you growing you we all might need a little bit of fixing but at the end of the day we aren't broken and we're learning how to navigate more so than fix. The world needs our differences, our individual differences, our quirks that's kind of what my show is about is breaking down a little topic and trying to bring more of this nuanced humanity that is just it's more complex than what we want it to be. Because when it's simple, it's simple but being a human being has never been simple. So every year I teach the boundaries course it it's my big course I teach it for we do four four weeks we spend six weeks together we do four weeks of learning new material and then I do two weeks of reviewing and it's not a course like you've ever taken before I'm an experiential teacher and it's really going through the experience. So many people come to boundaries work which is one of the most foundational things we can do to understand ourselves where we start and stop and other people where they start and stop so that we can relate with as much clarity and healthiness for ourselves and other people as we possibly can. And it's part of thriving and not surviving this life. Part of what I teach you in that course is a lesson I call how to light up for yourself. We have a triggers is tricky lesson because I don't ever want anybody coming to boundaries work thinking aha I will let my inner child drive the bus of my life and I'm gonna just have enough boundaries to where I'll never get triggered again. It's actually the opposite when we learn that we get to lean into our triggers hey that blue car that used to freak me out and I don't exactly know why, but my subconscious picked it up when that dog bit me when I was 11 I'm gonna lean in I'm gonna look at every blue car that passes me. I'm not gonna have that weird feeling about a blue car for the whole rest of my life I'm gonna look at every blue car as an opportunity to go, hey, blue cars are totally neutral for me until blue cars actually start to feel neutral for you. We have so much power to not avoid our triggers but to transform our relationship with them. And that is freedom that is true healing it's part of what I offer you in that course. I want you to not just learn like you would from a book I want you to experience what I have laid out for you in this boundaries course so that you have the art form of communication inside of you. Every situation that we're going to find ourselves in is going to be different y'all you know even my hydration level is going to be a different impacting factor. You know the heat outside if I'm cold uh if I'm hungry if I'm tired all these things so nobody can really give you one little bitty formula for boundaries or good mental health. It's about you embracing this work as an art form and you get to be the artist in your own life. If that interests you if the way that Meredith and I've y'all we've had a conversation today interests you just come check me out. And where can they find you and where can they find the course? You can find me at emotionalbadass dot com you can find the boundaries course at that address emotionalbadass dot com slash boundaries you can sign up we have a code for you to get a special discount just Meredith's listeners if you're out there and you're a big fan of this lovely woman who does this amazing show it's just Meredith and you'll save a hundred bucks off the course and there are our payment plans and that's important to me. I try to keep the cost of what I'm doing low and offer it to more people out there because I really do want to spread this healing knowledge as far and wide as I can. And that's part of what the podcast and these types of interviews do for me. And so it helps me reach more and more and more people and keep those costs down. So you'll learn a lot about me if you come hang out with me and what has gotten me to a life where I no longer have post-traumatic stress. And it's from this foundational boundaries work I try to give you my all. So come find me emotional badass is the easiest my last name is hard to spell emotional badass is the way to find me and light and love.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

Thank you Nikki this was awesome thank you so much for having me I am always willing to talk about anything you would like thanks for listening since you've made it this far I'd like to invite you to be a part of my private Facebook group and there I post content that I don't share anywhere else. You can talk to me directly about past and future episodes and I even do occasional giveaways. Search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. And if you liked this episode you'll also like the one with the journalist asking if the Me Too movement actually helped women. That's episode 312. And stay tuned next week when I talk with the leading breast implant illness expert asking if breast implants could be making women sick. Until then keep it curious