The Truth About Trauma

Meredith Ball, a licensed professional counselor dedicated to healing trauma, joins us to unravel the intricate web of trauma's impact on our lives. In this episode, Meredith opens up about her own journey and sheds light on how trauma affects the brain, the underestimated power of neuroplasticity, and the generational gaps in acknowledging these wounds.

I'm Dr. Kimberly Beam Holmes. After a decade transforming marriages at Marriage Helper, I've realized that the greatest tragedy isn't a failed relationship; it's the person who stays stuck and never experiences the fullness of all God intended.

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Transcript

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Understanding Trauma

Speaker 1 0:00

On today's show , I'm speaking with Meredith Ball , who is a licensed professional counselor and also really passionate about trauma . So in this episode , we go into deep dives about what is trauma , how does it show up in ourselves , in our relationships ? We talk about how trauma moves or doesn't move through the brain , what the goal of working through trauma is and how you can begin working through trauma that you've experienced , either by yourself or work through trauma in relationship with other people , how change is possible and a better future is possible , no matter what your past has been . This was such an amazing episode . I learned so much and I'm super excited to share it with you . Let's dive in to this week's episode . So , meredith , why is this topic of trauma so important to you ?

Speaker 2 0:56

So my journey with understanding trauma started about a decade ago and I was going through a divorce and I sought out individual counseling and I had sought out some marriage counseling before then . Obviously that didn't get the results I'd hoped for and so I sought out individual counseling kind of out of desperation , because I just felt out of control at times and I think and I was in my early thirties at that point and I'd had some counseling here and there before then and I think that was the first point where I was kind of desperate enough that I was really willing to dig in and do the work . And so my counselor at that point told me really kind of off the cuff well , you're suffering with a lot of trauma right now . And I think until that point , like I had some very vague notion of what trauma was , but I didn't understand that it's this whole world of really what this was . This was about a decade ago , so at that point I mean , we were still really early on in what I would consider like a neuroscience revolution . And it helps the way we treat people with all kinds of brain injuries , but it informs the way that we do counseling , because we're understanding how the brain works and how trauma gets stored in the brain and how you heal that , how the brain works and how trauma gets stored in the brain and how you heal that . So once she said that , I kind of was .

Speaker 2 2:30

For me it was kind of like a moth to the flame where I just really latched onto that and I started doing . Obviously it was a big part of my own counseling work which really helped me . But also I kind of geeked out on it . Just read about it and you know podcasts were really taking off about that time and like just kind of anything I could get my hands on and learn about .

Speaker 2 2:49

I did and ultimately went to grad school to get my own counseling degree and a big part of that was me understanding that , me understanding trauma . But also the good news about trauma is that it can be healed . So our our brains are neuroplastic , so we're not stuck . Whatever kind of suffering that we've gone through and how our brains might've adapted to that or maladapted to that , we're not stuck with it and I just think that's really great news . And so it's kind of become a big passion of mine to help people find ways of better coping with life , not being stuck with the brain that they have , but being able to do the work and heal from that .

Speaker 1 3:36

Did it scare you when your counselor said I feel or it sounds like you're dealing with a lot of trauma ?

Speaker 2 3:43

Yeah , I mean it sounded , it sounded weighty . I didn't have yeah , I just I didn't really have a conception of what that meant . You know , I think I would have thought of , you know , holocaust survivors or torture survivors or something like that . So it , yeah , it became a journey for me of learning how to use that term .

Speaker 1 4:01

Yeah Well , so let's talk about that term . What is trauma ? Define it . What is trauma ?

Speaker 2 4:06

Trauma can be defined several different ways . I think . For me , the way I think of it is anything that happens to you that overwhelms your ability to cope . Um , another way to put it would just be suffering . Trauma is suffering , so that can be physical , that can be emotional , that can be spiritual . Any way that you're suffering is trauma and it is subjective to the person experiencing the trauma . So what would be traumatizing to one person wouldn't necessarily be traumatizing to the next person , and that has a lot to do with their brain chemistry and things that they've been through in the past .

Speaker 1 4:48

I hear several people . I was at a party several weeks ago and there was a gentleman that my husband and I are speaking with and he was like in the military decades ago , you know , like that kind of guy and trauma came up and he said I just feel like that word is so overused , like it's not , these things that people are calling trauma aren't trauma . And you hear that .

Speaker 2 5:15

Yeah .

Speaker 1 5:16

What would you say to people who kind of are in that mindset ?

Speaker 2 5:19

Yeah , I mean , I think it probably is overused . I think trauma is overused and trigger and narcissism and gaslighting . I mean there's a laundry list of words that are a lot of them .

Speaker 2 5:31

Right , but I think that we have to have those like that language to have really meaningful conversations and ultimately and I do hear things like that like let's just all not be sissies and let's just , you know , muscle it up and live our lives and not be sitting around and looking at our trauma , and what that sounds like to me is dissociation , right , Someone ? Who doesn't want to face their trauma , that's somebody that's having a hard time facing their own pain in their past .

Speaker 1 5:56

You know who I think of when you say that . I think I'm like . My grandmother would have been a person to say that and she didn't talk about emotions . Mother would have been a person to say that and she didn't talk about emotions . And you know like . Like you know , she went through trauma . I know she , you know , lived through the Great Depression and World War Two and you know what had an abusive husband for several years of her life .

Speaker 2 6:17

you know , like I know she experienced trauma , but she would have been one of those people who's like yeah , I mean the greatest generation , for all the wonderful things that you can say about them , because they endured a lot and handed us a really good legacy , but they did not do emotions , no , and I think they just did not know what to do with their emotions . When you look at the things that you know people of that generation lived through , like the Great Depression and the World War and all these kinds of things , I don't think they knew what to do but to press that down and just kind of keep on keeping on , which can work for a time , but it doesn't ultimately work . I mean , you're just living , you're just kind of getting by . You're not really living life If you haven't addressed the pain that's happened to you and worked through it , faced into it and worked through it .

Speaker 1 7:06

So if a couple of definitions , like working definitions , to go from , trauma is suffering , trauma is being how did you say it ? Overwhelmed .

Speaker 2 7:16

Anything that overwhelms a person's ability to cope .

Speaker 1 7:19

Ability to cope . The other thing you hear is big T , little t trauma . So do you think , if trauma is subjective anyway , do you think there's a difference in like big T trauma , little t trauma ?

Speaker 2 7:34

I think that sometimes you know , like anything , you have the categories and then you find all the exceptions to the categories . I ultimately don't know if big T and little t trauma is super helpful , but I think it is getting at the fact that there might be something different between , like I was in a helicopter crash , which would be a big T trauma , or you know somebody , somebody dismissed me when I was in middle school . You know , I didn't , I got cut from the middle school basketball team or something like that . That might be a little little trauma . So I think it does recognize that there can be degrees of suffering that can sometimes be helpful . Sometimes that's not helpful . Sometimes if it hurts , it hurts and you need to face into that and there's only so much value in comparing your suffering to somebody else's .

Speaker 1 8:18

Yeah , I can see that . I think of our friends David and Debbie Matthews and the grief work they do , and one of the things I love that they have said is it's not helpful to try and compare grief or compare losses . Like a loss is a loss , right , and some losses are harder than others and , more you know , more terrible than others . But like Right , a lot of you know they can , many can be hard . A job loss can sometimes be completely devastating to someone to where , to someone else , they would just be like eh .

Speaker 2 8:56

Right , exactly , and some of the original trauma work was done , you know , 20 , 25 years ago . Well , it was . It was started in the 70s and 80s by a man named Bessel van der Kork and 80s by a man named Bessel van der Kork and he originally kind of he didn't discover trauma , but he started to conceptualize of it in the way that we do and started experimenting with treatments when he noticed the way combat veterans from the Vietnam War they all seem to display similar characteristics of PTSD and were resistant to certain treatments and did better with certain treatments . So he worked with that population , I believe in the 70s . By the 80s he had moved on to a lot of survivors of sexual assault . Once again he found that survivors of sexual assault displayed similar symptoms of PTSD as the combat veterans and that some treatments work better than others . So that was a part of his work . So that was where we kind of originally um , started conceptualizing trauma and talking about it .

Speaker 2 9:55

Since then the conversation has evolved a good bit to talk about what if I haven't actually been in a horrible car crash or been the victim of a sexual assault , but my family was just really dysfunctional , right Like . My parents loved me but I had to earn their approval . Or my dad was there physically but he never displayed any kind of emotional connection or affection . Kind of like a death by a thousand cuts is kind of a metaphor there . That could be just as traumatic . It could actually be more traumatic , because that was the way you lived life for a period of time . You know , if that's all you knew for the first 20 years of your life and that's create and your brain has adapted to that in a certain way and it's made it difficult for you to go out in the world as an adult and form attachments , well then that's trauma . And there's not , you know , there's not a car , there's not a crash report to look up or anything like that .

Speaker 1 10:49

Yeah , and I can see how this can end up being compounding , because if that dad who was emotionally distant , like present , but emotionally distant , well if , if the reason they were like that is because their upbringing was that way , then that's how they parent and you know , I can see it becoming like a legacy Trauma is generational , and that's one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about it is because I believe if you can address your own stuff , it will ultimately change the way you relate to your spouse and your kids and all the people around you , and it will .

Navigating Trauma and Relationships

Speaker 2 11:21

You will hand down a legacy that's healthier and more functional than what you received .

Speaker 1 11:27

How do you get someone so like , kind of on the counselor's seat ? How do you get someone to see that that they're dealing with trauma that needs to be dealt with , and then , to actually deal with it , Like I think that's first . There's the awareness , like getting someone to be aware and then caring enough and wanting to do the work to do something about it .

Speaker 2 11:46

Yeah , I mean a lot of the people that I see in my work are that . You know , it doesn't take them a lot of convincing and maybe that has to do something with the broader cultural conversation that's going on out there , where I do think people recognize that their relationships aren't what they want them to be , think people recognize that their relationships aren't what they want them to be , their way of functioning in the world isn't what they want it to be , and that there must be something about their past that has formed their brain in a certain way that they can change that and do better moving forward . So I'm not . I mean occasionally maybe I find somebody who's a little bit resistant to that , and that's I mean . A lot of times that's just the slow work of trying to join with them , hear what they do have to say , so that they come to feel some sort of a connection from which we can continue to do that deeper work .

Speaker 1 12:37

It's probably the bigger issue of it's the people you don't see that need to work on the trauma . You don't see that need to work on the trauma , but don't Right , Right . So what do you do then ? Like what ? Maybe not you , but what does someone do if they're in relationship , married to friends , with someone who's just like , clearly suffering from some things that happened in the past , but they're just unwilling to do the work ?

Speaker 2 13:03

I mean that's hard , that's really hard . Empathy is just unwilling to do the work . Yeah , I mean that's hard , that's really hard . Empathy is the way to get to people . But you know , at Marriage Helper we teach that you can't control what somebody else does . So all you can do is empathize with that and encourage somebody that there is help for that . Most people I mean even the people that I see as clients in Marriage marriage helper who are there because their marriage is in a is in dire straits . Trauma I would say greater than 90% of the time trauma is factoring into that in a huge way . Um , sometimes I think it's almost a relief when I say I think there's something going on that's been going on since before you even knew your spouse . That's weighing in heavily to this situation that you find yourself in and why it's so hard to get it sorted out .

Speaker 1 13:51

Are you seeing any common threads of like what are the kinds of traumatic experiences that people had previously to their romantic relationships that are causing issues now ?

Speaker 2 14:04

Well , I mean , the classic example are mom and dad whether mom and dad were there or not , like they are weighing heavily on your ability to show up and have healthy attachments , form healthy attachments , live your own life in such a way that you are emotionally connected to other people . If that wasn't there , that's a big I don't know if handicap is the right word . That's a deficit that can be healed , but it's something that you have to work on . So you know , I mean I was dealing , I was talking to a couple today and the wife had told the husband , based on a sermon that she had heard , that she was kind of in a discouraged place about their marriage .

Understanding Trauma Responses

Speaker 2 14:53

Right , all right , she's allowed to do that , right . So she tells him hey , based on , based on the church service today , I'm kind of in a bad place . I'm feeling like we're not connecting . I'm feeling like you're not seeing really where I'm at and we broke this down like I'm not . You know , this is stuff that I confirmed with him . What he heard her say is like I am about to be out of here , you schmuck .

Speaker 2 15:24

It took him into the limbic part of his brain and there was like a primal fear that she was going to leave him . She wasn't saying she was going to leave him . She was saying she was discouraged , but that based on some things that he had shared with me about his dad and how his dad would sometimes come close and then basically his dad had abandoned him , based on the fact that he had also been previously married and his previous wife had left him . Hear comments like that , which is actually could be valuable feedback . It's hard for him to hear that because he's not , he's not able to keep that up here in the in the cognitive part of his brain . He's going into his limbic system and it's it's a terror , like she's about to be out of here .

Speaker 2 16:11

So it took him to a bad place . He he tried to deal with it , not by connecting with her emotionally , but by talking to her about what the Bible said about marriage . Well , that's not a helpful play . I love the Bible . We want to know what the Bible says , for sure . But if someone is hurting emotionally , you don't start breaking down .

Speaker 2 16:29

First , corinthians seven which is what he tried to do .

Speaker 1 16:34

Yeah , exactly .

Speaker 2 16:36

You know , scripture exposition is good and has its place . Has its place .

Speaker 1 16:42

But not when there's someone who just needs like a hug .

Speaker 2 16:46

Yeah , Well , and she needs reassurance that he really is , that he really is seeing her where she's at and they're doing something different , because they've had a heck of a year there at Veritelper , yeah , so you can imagine , and some of it is the fact that they were very near separation last year , so , but that's trauma , like that's trauma , and that is when you go back into that back part of your brain . It is pre-cognitive , pre-verbal . You don't even have access to your Broca center , which is where language is formed , where you choose the words that you use to describe a situation . All you can experience is the feelings and sensations of helplessness and fear that come with that .

Speaker 1 17:34

Okay , can you give us a brain lesson ?

Speaker 2 17:37

I'm no neuroscientist , but I'll do my best , please do .

Speaker 1 17:41

Yeah , so where ? Like up here , you said this was cognitive , back here is limbic . But what like ? How are ? How are emotions or thoughts flowing through here and doing the things that you're saying ?

Speaker 2 17:56

so you have your brainstem , your limbic system .

Speaker 1 18:00

Right here , that's right down there , right yeah .

Speaker 2 18:03

And that's been called the reptilian brain . I've heard that before as well . And then you've got the limbic system , which is where your feelings are generated , your emotions are generated .

Speaker 1 18:14

And that's like right back in here . Yeah , yes , so they go there first .

Speaker 2 18:19

Like it originates here .

Speaker 1 18:20

You go through this feelings before you ever get .

Speaker 2 18:23

Before you ever get to your cortex and if it's , if it's truly traumatic , you won't get to your cortex . I mean , you won't get to your Cortex Subcortical . The subcortical regions of your brain are where the feelings and sensations happen . Your cortex is where the cognition happens which is up here .

Speaker 1 18:48

So where's the amygdala ?

Speaker 2 18:50

The amygdala is in your limbic system .

Speaker 1 18:52

Okay , so it's back here . That's like . The only thing I really know is that the amygdala is what's the amygdala .

Speaker 2 18:59

The amygdala serves as the smoke alarm for your brain . So the amygdala perceives threats . And if it perceives a threat , it will send messages throughout your body that you should be very worried because something bad is about to happen . So the amygdala can be very useful to happen .

Speaker 2 19:20

So the amygdala can be very useful , you know if you're crossing the road and a car is coming , you want your amygdala to kick in because it will cause you to run faster or move out of the way . If you've got a really trippy amygdala because you had a lot of trauma , it may start going off and signaling danger when in fact you , you're just fine .

Speaker 2 19:37

But it's when in fact you , you're just fine , but it's I actually heard this said in a training I did this weekend All trauma is reactivated trauma from the past , so it's reminding you of a time that you were in dire straits and it's sending pre cognitive , pre verbal signals to your body that you're in trouble .

Processing Trauma Through Brain Spotting

Speaker 1 20:02

So trauma relates to the brain , because your feelings don't like . It's like things get stuck and you're not able to logically process some of these things and so when those sensations or or things that remind you of things in the past like you said , the reactivated trauma , like when those happen , they kind of like stay stuck Right . So it's not just like feelings , like in my heart right ?

Speaker 2 20:30

Well , it can be . I mean , trauma is felt in the body . It's got a physiological component to it and because your brain is kind of like the CPU for your whole body , you know , like what happens to your body is experienced in your brain . What's experienced in your brain is felt in your body . So , yes , I mean , one of the signs of trauma is you know , I can feel it , my heart is racing , I can tell my blood pressure has gone up , my palms are sweaty , I've got a lump in my throat , I've got a lump in my stomach , whatever it might be , even if it's just a jittery feeling that you can't quite describe , it's physiological , it's experienced in your body , which is part of what makes it so scary , because it's just a feeling of unsettledness in your body .

Speaker 2 21:17

It's not something that can be rationally explained .

Speaker 1 21:21

Yeah . So what is brain spotting ?

Speaker 2 21:26

Yeah , so brain spotting is based on this idea that you can access the subcortical regions of your brain and process the trauma . Okay , it's similar to EMDR in that , um , where you look affects how you feel , okay , so , um , I haven't been paying attention because I've been focused on other things . But if I had been paying attention to you , if you were my client , I would have been looking to see if your eyes went one way or the other , especially if you were talking about something difficult , because I would probably notice that your eyes look up this way or down this way or something like that . And it means you're trying to access some trauma capsule in your brain , which is kind of a shut off part that holds the trauma , so that you can talk about what's coming up for you .

Speaker 1 22:20

So that you can talk about what's coming up for you .

Speaker 2 22:23

Hmm , so does it matter which direction someone's like , like if , does it signal certain things , if they look a certain way . I'm not not so much trying to figure out what the direction they're looking means , okay , so much as I'm trying to get their eyes focused in a place that it seems like they can really process when they're looking there . And I can actually even hold up a pointer , like if I notice you keep looking over here , I might say Kimberly , I've got a pointer right here and I want you to focus on this . Let's see what comes up .

Speaker 1 22:49

So it used to be like with EMDR . It was more of like either the things on your fingers or the ear like the noises , the bilateral stimulation , and you keep your eyes shut and then or I guess , you keep them , I always kept them shut and then , after like 30 seconds or a minute or whatever , then it was like , well , what , like , what thoughts came up for you ? So this is like the next generation .

Speaker 2 23:13

Well , it's similar in that it's trying to access those subcortical regions of the brain and not so much . What you try to do is stay down here . It's really hard for me because I'm a learner , so I want to come up here and analyze what it means . If you stay down here , you're just like well , I remember this time that this one time when I was in college and I didn't know if I was going to pass this class and I tried to ask the teacher about it and the teacher said basically indicated he wasn't willing to help which reminds me of a time when I was in kindergarten and I asked for help tying my shoes and the teacher said I should already know how to tie my shoes .

Speaker 2 23:49

That's the kind of stuff you're trying to do . You're trying to get to just focusing on what happened and how that made you feel and where you feel it in your body . Try to literally process it , metabolize it . I mean , just like you would bad food , you don't want bad food to get stuck in your digestive tract , you want to metabolize it . So trauma needs to be metabolized , because it's so painful , we don't want to face it , so it just sits back there and kind of hides from us until it gets activated .

Speaker 1 24:18

And is the best way to do that through , like a talk therapy .

Speaker 2 24:21

Yeah , an experiential therapy , especially like EMDR or brain spotting , ifs . There's a lot of I mean , there's a lot of stuff going on right now in the counseling space that's really aimed at not so much trying to figure it , figure out what's going on cognitively , but just get the feelings and sensations like , bring them up to the surface so that they can be dealt with and connections can be made .

Speaker 1 24:48

Can you do it through journaling ?

Speaker 2 24:50

Journaling is really helpful for that . Yeah , absolutely .

Speaker 2 24:54

But there needs to be like a spoken verb or like a verbalized I think there's a lot of power in the word , like I had a client tell me this week . You know I really felt better after last week's session . I think there were some things that once I said them , you know , they didn't seem to have as much power over me . So I think that that can be true . But journaling is really powerful too . I mean , I tell people all the time a prayer journal or write a letter . If there's a person who's really wronged you and they're not alive or they're not willing to do the work , write them a letter and say what you need to say . There's a certain extent to where you can resolve the loop that you're stuck in . Even if you don't get that resolution from the person that wronged you , you can resolve it within yourself .

Speaker 1 25:40

What does resolution of trauma look and feel like ?

Speaker 2 25:44

So I would say that your trauma has been resolved when you can think about something painful that happened to you without feeling triggered , without feeling activated . So I can just report to you what happened . Right , I'm not stuck in a place of shame , I'm not stuck in a place of fear . I've worked it out . It doesn't have that kind of hold on me anymore . It's not , it's not , uh , it's not causing my amygdala to go off .

Speaker 1 26:13

Does that mean that it's unemotional ?

Speaker 2 26:17

No , because it could be very emotional in the sense that it could be . I mean it could be nostalgic , it could be . I mean it could still be painful without being activating , it could be sad , it could bring up sadness or anger . I mean , I think if pain is pain right . So if you think back on it , there could be sadness , there could be some anger , there could be some anger , there could be some righteous anger . It's just not going to get you to that place where you feel out of control .

Speaker 1 26:45

Yeah ,

Healing Trauma and Attachment Theory

Speaker 1 26:47

I think that makes sense . I was thinking about my mom and how you know , before I was born , how my parents had been divorced and my dad had cheated on her and the people at the church did nothing about it and anyway , like it was , like it was a very traumatic experience for her . But when she talks about it now , I've never seen her flood Like I don't know . I don't know that she went and did work with counseling , but probably maybe . But she still gets sad when she talks about it . But I wouldn't say that she's like triggered .

Speaker 2 27:23

And that's probably because she's done her work over time and that can look like all kinds of things . I mean there are all sorts of internal and external resources that can help us heal , yeah , but yeah , I mean I've heard her tell her story and she's not she's not activated by it .

Speaker 1 27:41

Yeah , right , right . It's hard . She doesn't want to go back to some of those places where the things happened , but you know .

Speaker 2 27:50

I believe I even heard her tell somebody at a workshop that I was at that . You know , sometimes she still struggles with issues of forgiveness or whatever , but she has a decision-based forgiveness , so it's not something that keeps her up at night , right ? Yeah , I think I'm paraphrasing that , right yeah , yeah so uh so with brain spotting .

Speaker 1 28:11

Like really , the key with brain spotting is it's a , it's a tool that you use as a practitioner . It's not really something that the general public is like oh , tell me about brain spotting .

Speaker 2 28:25

I mean , I think that there are things that you could learn that could be helpful Just knowing that there are different . I mean , our brains are just incredibly complex and there are parts of our brain that can be accessed that if we're , if we allow ourselves to kind of go into that space , we can find some healing .

Speaker 1 28:51

The word makes it sounds like there's spots on the brain . So I'm like is this like an MRI that we go through and see the spots are ? Where are you looking ?

Speaker 2 29:01

Right , but my mom , my mom said the same thing . She's like oh , I think I have some spots on my brain .

Speaker 1 29:07

Yeah , that is what it makes it sound like . Well , and I was reading or listening to this audio book last week talking about the trauma diamond where so do you know , dr I think daniel amen , he's likea so this person doing this book had like gone to his clinic and gotten an mri to see what areas of the brain are activated . I don't know what they were showing this person to like get these air , or if they were just seeing , if they were on all the time , but it was these four different areas in the brain that are probably in the areas that you were talking about earlier . Um , that it's like they make this diamond and it's like , if all of these areas activate , it's a clear like it is a evidence that you have experienced trauma . Have you ever heard of that ?

Speaker 2 29:55

I'm vaguely familiar with dr . I don't know about the trauma diamond .

Speaker 1 29:59

I didn't know about it either .

Speaker 2 30:16

But yeah , I mean certain areas of the fact that a person in pain will have a lit up brain and a person who is not in pain will have a quieter brain , and that can be graphically represented , but represented in a photo basically .

Speaker 1 30:34

Can someone talk about their trauma ? Too much to where it becomes unproductive ?

Speaker 2 30:40

Yeah , I think so . I think so . The goal is to heal . The goal is to heal and I hesitate to say move on , because I hear that a lot and I think it can sound insensitive like just move on . It's like a way of minimizing pain . But yeah , you can if it's , if it's getting in the way of you getting to the next thing . I mean , ultimately , you ask what would healing look like ? Being able to turn around and help the next person . I mean that's evidence of healing . If you're just sitting there and navel gazing , well , that's probably not productive . That said , well , that's probably not productive . That said , there's always trauma content that you haven't quite gotten to . I mean this and this is where I can really get in my head . But uh , apparently , from what I've heard from the professionals , nearly all of us have like um , pre-birth trauma , like trauma in the womb , delivery trauma , trauma like that's traumatic . Now , our cognitive brains aren't online when that happens , so we don't remember it .

Speaker 2 31:45

Yeah , but the back of our brains do so . There's always content there that's coming up .

Speaker 1 31:55

How does trauma relate to attachment theory ? Well , it's all about attachment theory . Is it the same or are they different ?

Speaker 2 32:04

They're closely related . I mean , I think attachment theory would explain attachment . What can happen when a person grew up in an in an environment of complex trauma ? So the two main ways that people are going to maladapt if they grew up with complex trauma is they're either going to be highly anxious or highly avoidant , or both Very common .

Speaker 1 32:34

But which and maybe this is just like where it comes down to practitioner preference which one do you go Like ? Do you go the attachment theory route , or do you go more of like the brain spotting ?

Speaker 2 32:48

Oh , I think they're very complimentary .

Speaker 1 32:50

You think you just do , but how do you do both Like ? What does that look like in practice ?

Speaker 2 32:54

Yeah , I mean it comes up a lot in my work with Marriage Helper because we cover attachment styles in the workshop so people will latch onto it because of what they learned in the workshop and it's so common . It's so common that you know we use this language of the standing spouse and the reluctant spouse . So the standing spouse is the one that wants to save the marriage , the reluctant spouse is reluctant . So often the standing spouse is anxiously attached and the reluctant spouse is avoidant . I see that all the time . Yeah .

Speaker 2 33:28

And so the avoidant spouse or the avoidant person is the way they are , probably because when they were young they showed some sort of weakness or vulnerability and they were reprimanded or shamed for that . So that's not fun . Nobody wants to be shamed or reprimanded . So the way that they cope is they don't show up emotionally . They feel like they're defective in that area . So they've kind of been on the run for a lot of their lives . If their marriage is on the rocks they don't know how to show up and do the work because that's incredibly painful and they don't want to feel that pain . They're afraid of being exposed . So sometimes when I explain it to people and it could be after a brain spotting session where something has come up Sometimes when I just explain it to people in those terms , they're like oh , like psychoeducation is very powerful . I think marriage helper has an educational workshop , so you get people that information and it's like oh , that makes sense , like I wasn't given a safe place to face these hard emotions so I haven't and I've never learned how to do it . I just associate that in the limbic part of my brain with pain and I don't do it .

Speaker 2 34:47

The anxiously attached person probably had a parent or a caregiver that was there some of the time but not there other times . So they never knew which version of the parent they were going to get . So they're always anxious wondering is this person going to show up for me today or not ? And if they had that as a kid , that's a lot of times how they will experience their spouse , especially if they're having a hard time in their marriage . It's like oh well , which version of them am I going to get today ? Are they going to be there or are they not ? Is this marriage going to make it or is it not Constant ?

Speaker 1 35:25

anxiety , just kind of running in the background of everything they're experiencing . So then what ? How do you so then ? What does it look like in practice to move these two people out , Like one of them out of avoidant and one of them out of anxious , both into secure , while at the same time addressing the trauma ? Mm hmm .

Speaker 2 35:42

So I think that when you start to address the trauma , which I mean trauma , counseling is helpful , but it could be that you just have a safe person who can help you have safe conversations , that you just have a safe person who can help you have safe conversations . As you start addressing that pain that is there and noticing the patterns of behavior that are unhelpful , you may , organically , you may just notice it organically , you're showing up in your relationship differently . That's that's what I would . I mean , that seems to be the work to me . Let's address the trauma , let's not brush it underneath the rug , let's talk about it , because if we can do that in a safe place , that's when you're building new neural pathways to where , all of a sudden , it's not scary to have a difficult conversation . It's not fun , necessarily , but it's necessary and it's it's you're able to do it so that you can get to a new place .

Speaker 1 36:36

OK , let's back up then . So , um , let's say it's me and Rob and Rob's the I mean he'd probably fit more in avoidant , I'd probably fit more anxious . I would agree with that assessment Exactly . So let's say that's the situation and he but , but and there's the marriage issue . Like he's reluctant and wants out , I'm the one who wants to make it work . So are you saying that ? Like having conversations about past trauma , not like something that may have happened in the marriage , but like this , when I was eight years old or whatever , and just being able to have that conversation together where I'm just sharing like man , this was really hard for me . This is how I felt , like crying , all the stuff , and then him just being able to sit there and say , like man , I hear you . That must've been so hard . Like , what are the magic ?

Speaker 2 37:27

words Makes a lot of sense to me .

Speaker 1 37:29

It's like it could be that it could be that Easy , Like I don't .

Speaker 2 37:33

It's not necessarily easy .

Speaker 2 37:34

It's not easy be that easy , like I don't . It's not necessarily easy . It's not easy , but it could be really nothing more than that . Because if you're having a discussion with Rob and he's avoidant and he was , and he's like you know , I think the reason why this conversation has been so hard for me is because when I used to speak up , my dad used to tell me that I need to be a man and muscle up . That shut me down . So I've been shut down all my life . And then I went into the army and there's a bunch of guys there that are shut down .

Speaker 2 38:02

We didn't talk about our feelings , you know , and we had to attend to the , you know , whatever was going on there . Then what that is is , all of a sudden , you realize that Rob's avoidance isn't actually about you . Yeah , it's about past trauma , yeah . So talk about the like , talk about the power to face into any kind of problems that might be in the marriage . It's about stuff that's way back there , yeah , and that's nobody's really trying to be a bad or malicious person . I mean , it's , to use your dad's term it's , you know , good people doing bad things , not even realizing that they're doing bad things some of the time .

Speaker 1 38:37

They just haven't had the framework for knowing how to create a healthy dynamic within themselves and with other people and the value of the counselor is to be able to be the , because you're like , basically you're saying it could happen between two people without a counselor . The problem is we get caught in that limbic system and we will assume things that the other person said . That's not what they said or meant , but we take it personally . So the value of the counselor is like to kind of calm it down .

Speaker 2 39:09

Neutral third party .

Speaker 1 39:10

Neutral third party .

Speaker 2 39:11

I can point out stuff .

Speaker 1 39:12

Yeah , that makes a ton of sense .

Speaker 2 39:15

Yeah .

Navigating Boundaries in Trauma Recovery

Speaker 1 39:22

It really does . How do you like ? What about when it comes to um , people thinking cause this is the other thing ? Like the beginning of our conversation , like oh my gosh , what are the things I am doing that I don't realize ? I'm doing that . My kids , in 20 years , are going to be sitting in someone's counseling office .

Speaker 2 39:36

Well , if you're a parent , just make peace with it . Despite your best efforts , your kids are going to I mean , they're going to have things that they get maladapted .

Speaker 1 39:46

Yeah , like the interpretation of things , right yeah .

Speaker 2 39:52

Yeah , I mean it's maybe it's easier to see it in the more extreme examples , but I'm I'm working with this couple right now and they , like I'm so convinced they're going to make it , I get like I can't help , but I get really invested . But she she because she is anxiously attached and has terrible trauma in her background , she tends to react and it's very explosive . So things got tough between her and her husband . She's exploding at him . Oh my gosh , why would you do that ? Why didn't you contact me then ? Why didn't you say this ? Why didn't you do that ?

Speaker 2 40:33

Always overreacting , a lot of explosive anger out of her anxiety that she's going to lose him . Well , of course , that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy . He couldn't take that because she was always blowing up , she was very clingy . So he leaves , he moves to another state , a neighboring state , because he has to have space , because he can't take that , because he's avoidant , right , like he doesn't know how to face into that . So they came to the workshop here and I was with them and she had in her mind that they were going to address these issues and he was going to go home with her because they did well at the workshop until Sunday , which is the last day of the workshop and he said this has been really great . I've learned a lot . We have a lot to think about . We'll talk about it on our next coaching session in a week .

Speaker 2 41:30

And then he got in his car and went home . Oh no , so she gets on the phone and screams at him the whole way home . And they're different cars . Oh no , so I was , but they are doing great in coaching . Because I said this makes sense Every man who's ever played a critical role in your life has left you , and we've done that work to name out who those people are . You are afraid of that happening again . All you know to do is to cling and react , and that has pushed him away . And that pattern is very deep , like it's not something that you just switch off . No , you've got to form new habits .

Speaker 1 42:13

That's that reptilian brain You've got to build new neural pathways right .

Speaker 2 42:18

He , to his credit , is leaning in and trying to understand .

Speaker 1 42:22

That's great .

Speaker 2 42:25

Now that doesn't mean he has to tolerate her blowing up in his face . You know he needs some space . So there's going to be a plan where there's going to be tears , where they step back into each other's lives . But still , I mean , it's still a struggle . They were talking about the way communication went this weekend and he got involved with something and she didn't hear from him for a while and she starts assuming the worst . She starts assuming that he's gone and she didn't hear from him for a while and she starts assuming the worst . She starts assuming that he's gone when really there was just some other complicated dynamics going on . But that's trauma , right ? That's not rational . He said if there's anything that can be done , I'm going to do it . I'm here for you . It's just that this is complicated and I have to protect myself from some of the outbursts that are happening .

Speaker 1 43:18

You mentioned earlier about how empathy is such a key here . But then there's also the situations of , like you know , someone gets triggered , so to say , and so they blow up . Have these behaviors that people tend to put boundaries up with ? So this is my question . So like did there come a point where implementing boundaries hurts the empathy and hurts the progress ?

Speaker 2 43:48

Yeah , I mean that's , that's the balance right ? There's a lot of like razor thin , tight , tight ropes , that , that that we're trying to walk in life and and I think that's one of them I don't think that love just lets other people walk all over you so boundaries can be necessary . Boundaries can be hard for people like this woman that I'm talking about , because boundaries feel like rejection . Right boundaries feel like abandon . Right Boundaries feel like abandonment .

Speaker 1 44:16

It's like it feels , like it spirals . It continues to make the situation worse for her , which doesn't mean that she shouldn't

Navigating Healing Through Boundaries

Speaker 1 44:22

have the boundaries .

Speaker 2 44:22

The thing about boundaries is , if they're done right , they're always out of love , but they often don't feel like love to the person that you're setting the boundaries for .

Speaker 1 44:32

Yeah .

Speaker 2 44:33

So you know you lean in and you try to understand as best you can . You know there are behaviors that are unacceptable , that demand consequences , and you can put those in place and still have empathy and compassion for what the person is going through .

Speaker 1 44:50

So what keeps people from like who are ? So ? Not the people that are just not willing to do any work , but the people like this couple , or the couple who's willing to begin opening up and be the listening ear and work like what would keep that person or couple from healing and being able to move forward in a positive way ?

Speaker 2 45:16

Well , I mean , it is a lot of facing yourself when it comes to couples , when actually I'm counseling right now with a mother and an adult daughter same kind of situation . You've got to be more focused on your own stuff and how that needs to be healed in order to show up and make the relationship what you want it to be . So you know , not everybody has a spouse that's willing to do the work . Not everybody has a mom or dad that's willing to do the work , or a brother or sister . So it's you know it's kind of like sometimes forgiveness doesn't mean reconciliation , but it doesn't mean that you can't do the work to resolve things within yourself so that you're able to show up in the relationships that you do have in a way that's healthy .

Speaker 1 46:03

So you can still do the work alone . It doesn't have to be with the person that the fracture came with , or the person or the place or person where the trauma came from . Like you can heal , you can heal .

Speaker 2 46:16

Absolutely .

Speaker 2 46:23

And the therapist in many ways can be that , that safe place to help you process . Yeah , I was working with a woman this week who's both of her parents are passed away and she was processing some hurts in relation to her mom that were when she was much younger and , based on what she had told me about her mom , I was convinced that her mom loved her and that she just didn't wasn't able to find a backbone in a certain situation that we were processing Since her mom is no longer alive . I said would it be OK if I spoke as your mom ? I said would it be okay ?

Speaker 2 46:55

if I spoke as your mom , and so I guess you would call that like an enactment or something , like I tried to step in and play that role , like I absolutely loved you and you deserved to have my protection . You were the kid in that scenario and I was the adult and I needed to be the adult . And I put you in a situation where you had to be the adult and that wasn't fair and I'm so sorry that you didn't have care in that moment and that it's impacted you so deeply .

Speaker 2 47:25

Um , the reason that I wasn't able to stand up and be your protector in that situation was because I had my own stuff and that is not about you . I think that brings about healing . Like I think that , based on everything I know about that woman , and she agreed with me , I said hey , if I misspeak you correct me , this is your work , but I believe that is what her mom would want her to hear , and so , in a very real way , we can bring about something different in her brain and in the way that that she shows up now with her kids .

Speaker 1 48:03

I love that . What would you say would be the next steps for someone who's listening and thinking ? I want that healing .

Exploring Healing Trauma and Grief

Speaker 2 48:15

Well , obviously , counseling is great . Spark of Life is great . They do grief . They do grief work which is really closely related to trauma . If trauma and grief were like a Venn diagram , they'd be , they'd be overlapped .

Speaker 1 48:30

Have you been to one of their retreats ? No , I haven't .

Speaker 2 48:32

I love David and Debbie , though I've done several marriage helper workshops with them .

Speaker 1 48:36

So one of these days you love David and Debbie , though I've done several marriage helper workshops with them , so one of these days I've heard a lot of it .

Speaker 2 48:40

Yeah , how you need to be complete with your incompletes and stuff like that David has several things that that I've .

Speaker 2 48:46

Oh , David says it's never too late to have the childhood you always wanted , and I've said that in my own work to a number of clients at this point . But there's that there's also a lot of great books on the topic . You know , you can kind of whet your appetite with books . Bessel van der Kork wrote kind of the Bible of trauma , which is the body keeps the score . That's a really good book . It's very dense , it's more academic . One of my favorite authors that writes on the topic of trauma that I think is a little more accessible and kind of a start towards the healing work is Dan Allender . He wrote a book called .

Speaker 2 49:34

He's written a bunch of to start . If you're trying to read on the topic and just kind of get yourself acclimated to what your own healing might look like , he has a podcast . I mean you can fall down the rabbit hole too , of trauma . Yeah , once you get into this stuff .

Speaker 1 49:50

Yeah , what would be the last thing you'd want someone to know ?

Speaker 2 49:53

Hmm , the last thing you'd want someone to know . I think that change is absolutely possible . Positive change is absolutely possible . Sometimes it can bring up more pain to get there , but I believe it's a short-lived pain and I believe you can absolutely get to the other side . Pain and I believe you can absolutely get to the other side . You can't control other people . That can be hard , but if you want something different for yourself , you can absolutely find healing .

Speaker 1 50:26

I love that , Thank you . Meredith .

Speaker 2 50:29

Thank you .

Speaker 1 50:29

Fantastic conversation . I learned so much and I believe that the audience is really going to love it and find hope in it as well .