Full Circle Fridays|Week 26: Zig Zag (Season One Finale)

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We have spent so many episodes together discussing the twists and turns of the Trauma Recovery Journey — the wild, unpredictable, deep, and exhilarating road that it is! Today is the close of not just Season One of Full Circle Fridays, but of Season One altogether. Today is Episode 78!! If you are still here all these episodes later, I honor you for that. Thank you for being part of this growing family. I have received so much positive feedback from listeners and those who want to be involved as well. The podcast was supposed to be my way to give back to trauma survivors as a whole, and instead, it gave a lot back to me as well. Another moment in my life when I zigged, and the world zagged. I’ve been cherishing all those who have reached out and been touched by a particular episode, and all those who want to join as a guest. That’s all in the works for Season Two after a short break. I’m toying with a new format, or maybe the same but with some interviews sprinkled it. I have set some time aside to contemplate the route the podcast as Trauma Survivorhood continues to grow. Stay tuned for Season Two!

Trauma Recovery has personally thrown me around in its maze-style, sometimes confusing, often winding road. Now my current healing has led me to a lot of fun, wiggly, surprising, new ways to help others. Coaching is still my main focus as my business continues to grow, but the podcast has certainly been a beautiful addition, an unexpected surprise. If you are ready, schedule a 20-minute free discovery call to see if coaching is right for you. If you choose to work with me, in honor of this last episode of Season One, your Initial Appointment will be 78% off for your 90-minute intake!! Use podcast code “SEASON1” at check out for your initial appointment to start your coaching journey this month. 
*Offer ends on July 31, 2022, and cannot be combined with any other offers. 
 **If you missed Wednesday’s final Wellspring episode called Zeal & Zest, you’ll understand why I am so excited to work with you. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be waiting.

The best resource that I have to give to you today is to remind you that all the zigging and the zagging, all the 3 steps forward and 2 back, all the looping and twisting, all of it … alllllll of it … it’s all worth it. I’ve been thrown for a few loops myself, sat back, and wondered why I wasn’t making progress. I too have had to be reminded of how far I’ve come. I know it’s daunting; I know it seems too long of a road. I can promise that along the way there will be glimpses of healing pop out at each new bend. This isn’t just a really hard race to try get to some monumental finish line. Trauma Recovery is a ‘walking through the winding woods’ kind of journey — where each new turn brings a bit of growth, an ounce of joy, a lot of praise, and a small healing in a small way that seems to make a huge difference. All you have to do is start somewhere.

If you are listening, you are probably already working on your trauma recovery in some way, even just by listening. I’m proud of you for that. Therapy, different modalities, play, leaving bad relationships, dreaming, setting healthy boundaries, self-inquiry, coaching, goal setting, creativity, and the like — those are all huge pieces as you walk along the path. Never give up on yourself. Please never quit trying. When you need help, ask for it. When you feel stuck, do one small, teeny thing to keep a bit of momentum. When you feel like a failure, ask someone close to help remind you how far you’ve come. My friends — YOU are your own greatest resource. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different.

Until next season — stay strong, be bold, and place bets on your own healing. You’ll win every time. Thank you for being here. See you soon for Season Two!

Full Circle Fridays|Week 20: Trauma Informed Care

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I want to make sure that Survivors understand the importance of trauma-informed care, practices, and businesses. There is also another important factor when considering therapeutic care which is called “trauma trained”. This is what I want to share with you today to be sure that you have the best possible options of finding people and professionals that will gently and responsibly care for you and your specific needs.

Trauma Informed Care (also called “Trauma Responsive” or “T.I.C.”) is a model of caring for clients, students, patients, employees, or anyone under your advisement with not just the standards of dignity and respect. This practice goes deeper by changing the lens in which is looks at other humans and what they might be going through. This approach is assumptive that others have been through traumas and is willing to acknowledge the aftereffects that an individual may be suffering.

The six guiding principles according to the CDC are: safety, trustworthiness & transparency, peer support, collaboration, empowerment & choice, and recognizing cultural issues and differences.

A business or school, for instance, stating they are T.I.C. means they are equipped to acknowledge any trauma impact and to work hard to not re-traumatize someone in the aftermath of any incidents that need T.I.C. to be implemented. Some examples of this would be how an establishment’s guidelines are set to handle discipline issues, behavioral crises, or the uncovering of substance misuse. This also looks like creating an inclusive environment welcoming everyone, leadership being examples of vulnerability when mistakes are made, using calm and clear communication of desired behaviors, allowing everyone to set their own healthy boundaries, not labeling, giving ample notice before making changes that affect the company’s population, making sure there is an open door waiting for anyone who would like to seek services or crisis management or discuss their stress-related matters, and considering different cultures so as to make generalized statements.

Looking for trauma-informed doctors, legal aid, insurance carriers, childcare, schools, and workplaces can be the difference in your overall wellbeing and your continued healing journey. Imagine making huge strides in your trauma recovery, only to be re-traumatized by a doctor who doesn’t know how to approach a weight-related issue with trauma informed care to discuss the possibility of disordered eating or triggers around your weight. If you are working diligently in your personal childhood trauma healing but have so much work-related stress that you start to breakdown, you would want an HR team that you can feel safe to discuss your issues with and to figuring out how to implement changes to improve your wellbeing so you can remain an effective employee. Without this, your boss may see some behavior that seems like you are not “giving work your best effort” and end up letting you go without even knowing what you are dealing with. It’s important for someone stepping out of a domestic violence situation to have compassionate childcare so that there is room for some flexibility in dealing with the parent pick up for instance — as well as being empathetic to your child’s behaviors which may be stemming from the disruptive home life.

A step beyond trauma informed care in business practices, I believe it incredibly important to find therapeutic support that is actually trauma trained. This would be your therapist, coach, psychiatrist, and anyone else in charge of your mental health care. There is a clinical difference here between going to a therapist who has trauma informed care guidelines as a standard of administration, practice, policies, and consent versus a therapist who is specifically trauma trained in helping you with your trauma history and mental health and wellbeing.

As trauma survivors, as often as you can, you want to find trauma responsive businesses. It would the same as finding grocery stores that have a wide organic section or buying from vendors with cruelty-free products as some examples of circumstances that honor a person’s goals and desires in their life. For you, a trauma informed gas station may not be important, but your workplace or community co-op that you visit regularly would be very helpful. For your clinical needs like therapy, ‘trauma-trained’ is the key words you are looking out for. As a trauma-trained coach, I would love to help you surround yourself with people who can be sensitive with you along your journey. If you need advice, support, or person- or region-specific resources, feel free to reach out. I look forward to helping you with this and any of your trauma recovery needs.

Full Circle Fridays|Week 3: Cognitive Behavior Therapy

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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on negative thoughts and patterns or loops.  This treatment can be very helpful for people struggling with PTSD, anxiety, OCD, phobias, addictions, and other life-altering disorders.  CBT is designed to help you become aware of your destructive thoughts – to recognize the emotions and beliefs that are attached to those thoughts.  Awareness is always a key step, and namely for CBT, it must be first. 

So many Trauma Survivors are stuck in their mind, with dangerous thoughts about themselves, others, and the world at large.  Often coming in specific thought patterns – like waves – they are identifiable but appear to be justifiable.  Most survivors are battling the idea that they are to blame for their abuse.  Because of that, they tend to attack themselves inwardly. (Although some trauma survivors may also turn their behaviors outward to others.)  However, your actions don’t just “happen”.  Actions are driven by thoughts – whether created by or intruded into the mind.  Sometimes thoughts are coming from someone/somewhere else – something you maybe heard your abuser tell you over and over.  At some point, their words became a belief about yourself, and your mind is doing what the mind does.  The mind’s job is to look for dangerous and help keep you safe.  If your mind has the running thought pattern and belief that you are the danger, it will spend all day attacking you to keep you safe from yourself.  The same is true if your body and mind believe that the world as a whole is unsafe or that everyone is against you, for instance.  Your mind will spend a great deal of time trying to remind you of this truth that the world is unsafe, and therefore your thoughts can be found looping through thinking to try to save you from harm.  The mind is so wonderful because it truly does these things FOR you to keep you protected.  Outside of your abuse and trauma now though, these beliefs and thoughts are no longer helpful.  They have become maladaptive coping skills that you can appreciate your mind for using to save you but realize that they no longer serve you. 

Those are just some examples of how your thoughts can progress into thought patterns, which then can exacerbate anxiety or even create it.  An important part in the CBT process is to start challenging your thoughts by getting curious about them.  You can challenge your thoughts and fact check them for accuracy.  With CBT training under your belt, this resource will help you to be aware when you are thinking destructive thoughts and teach you techniques to pause and identify the legitimacy of these thoughts.  Even if they don’t feel untrue in the moment, there are other questions you ask of your thoughts. Firstly though, if they are untrue, you are able to process through the incorrect thought or idea and move forward.  If it seems true at the time you, you can also ask your thoughts: if they are necessary, does thinking this serve me, is this something I need to dwell on right now, is there another way I can frame this thought so it’s not so upsetting, etc.   Thought patterns - that maybe are years old and have deep rooted beliefs and emotions attached to them – can be difficult to identity as inaccurate.  This may mean realizing that your perception of current reality is inaccurate, and it can feel jarring to come to terms with the grandiosity of your negative thoughts.  This is a huge step in CBT technique training.  These thoughts are often linked to behavior patterns (often self-destructive and may be addictive) as if your mind has given you this attached behavior as a prescription to cure the thought.  However, we know this only sets you into a patterned loop again. 

This is where CBT is very useful with survivors who have a maladaptive coping skill of a dependency such as food, drugs, or alcohol, as well as anyone suffering from OCD.  We had spent decades trying to stop behaviors without giving the necessary attention to the thoughts that drive the behaviors.  CBT came about in the 1960’s and is designed to flip that script and start recognizing, challenging, and reframing or reshaping the thought patterns that are behind the coping behaviors.  Especially if you suffer from intrusive thoughts that tend to appear out of nowhere or come to you in your own mind but sound similar to your abuser, getting to the root of the thoughts themselves are paramount in your healing journey. 

We had previously talked about the basics of functional care for yourself.  This type of healing found through CBT is a great steppingstone on the path to healthier, intuitive eating, and even better sleep.  A lot of survivors find themselves struggling in these areas due to intrusive thoughts.  If you aren’t having success in a lot of the basics of self-care, you may have these underlying forces of destructive and obsessive thought patterns that are sabotaging.  Thinking on negative things creates a worry and a stress that is hard for the body to know what to do with; often the negative thoughts get trapped in parts of our body unable to resolve either because they are not solvable, not true, not properly perceived, not useful, etc.  Sleeping and digestion can be interrupted by being overstressed and worried.  Retraining your thought patterns is a lifesaver for some.

CBT is not successful for everyone, but it actually is highly successful for most thought-driven behavior issues.  It has been one of the top researched therapies and is fairly simple to try.  Although some CBT sessions can be emotionally triggering, the risk of CBT is low.  It often is covered by insurance as a type of talk therapy with a CBT trained therapist.  It is a hugely goal-oriented therapy, so you can really measure your gains quite easily and build momentum from there.  While this is not a get-well-quick situation and often takes a time to progress to mastery over your thinking, this is a recommendation that the reward can be life changing and healing from many types of suffering.  CBT also incorporates other techniques while learning to change your cognitive mind that are also helpful for every day issues found amongst survivors.  CBT can teach or utilize writing, breathwork, calming techniques, visual relaxation, and reframing.  All of those things are recommendations for survivors to try as well.  They are all powerful tools for your toolbox and to pack them with cognitive retraining is a double down on positive steps forward. 

Remember – as we talked about on the last episode, self-compassion is a motivator and leader.  So if you think CBT may be right for you, talk with your trauma recovery coach or therapist for more info.  Then let self-compassion hold your hand down into this therapy to attempt to conquer your self-harming and self-destructive thoughts.  This is a great first way to honor yourself with compassion by trying something that could put a whole new perspective on your world and future.   

*Just a quick side note: CBT has been so impactful that you can even find self-help CBT guidance in the form of CDs and workbooks to guide you through doing CBT on your own.  If you do stumble upon this as an option for yourself, please note that self-CBT may be harmful or ineffective for someone suffering with severe PTSD or clinical depression or extreme OCD, etc.  In that case, I would recommend you work with a professional and then later you can use the self-guided workbooks as reinforcements and continuing work on yourself.  It may be helpful to ask your trauma coach or therapist if the self-help option is appropriate for you.