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TraumaDrama Part 2
205 Plays1 year ago
Now that we've explored what trauma is, let's talk about how to treat it! This week, Julie is sharing the approaches she uses in therapy to help clients release the effects of trauma, and heal the pieces of ourselves that are wounded by it.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to outside of session. I'm your host, licensed clinical social worker and therapist BFF, Julie Hilton. We're going to cover all the things here, whether it's mental health, entrepreneurship, relationships, trauma, or just life. Nothing is off limits. Hopefully you'll laugh a little and learn a lot, but most importantly, feel encouraged on your journey to live empowered.
Trigger Warning and Trauma Discussion
00:00:33
Speaker
Hey everyone, before we jump into today's episode, I want to give a heads up that this episode is about trauma, as you saw in the title. And I always want to give a little bit of a trigger warning that a lot of topics are going to be discussed about different types of trauma, different types of traumatic events, those kind of topics. And so I always try to give people a heads up that if this is a little bit overwhelming for your system to hear all of this,
00:01:00
Speaker
Maybe either skip this episode or at least break it up into little parts. Um, doing five, 10 minutes as you can. Um, whatever you need, just be really, really protective of yourself as you listen and learn about trauma.
Trauma Basics Recap and Therapy Introduction
00:01:18
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Outside of Session. And this week might actually really be the final episode of season one. I know that I had planned for last week to be the last episode and then I just got really long winded because we're talking about trauma right now. So I ended up needing to split it into two episodes. So if you didn't get a chance to listen to last week's episode, please go back and listen to that first because we really went through and talked about
00:01:48
Speaker
A lot of the basics of trauma, like what's the difference between big T trauma and little T trauma versus complex trauma, like we really dove into all of that. And so this week we are going to talk a little bit more about the specifics of now that we know what trauma is, what does trauma therapy look like?
Memory Processing and Trauma Effects
00:02:10
Speaker
specifically what does trauma-informed care look like and how do we actually address it in therapy, maybe even in different ways than you have experienced before if you've done any kind of talk therapy in the past. So we're gonna dive into all of those different things today.
00:02:28
Speaker
So the first thing that I want to explain, which there's just so many different layers to trauma, there's so many different things to consider and layers to explore. So I'm going to try to have like a concise way of explaining some things that I know about trauma. The first thing that I want to talk about is the way that our brain
00:02:50
Speaker
reconciles and stores memories. So I want you to think about this like really long filing cabinet. You know how they used to have like little cards like in the library where you would like flip through the little cards. I want you to imagine that being how we store our memories.
00:03:08
Speaker
And what normally happens at the end of the day when we go to sleep, when we are in our REM cycle and when we go through the different phases of sleep, our brain is literally like filtering through all of the information that it got that day and it's making sense of it and it's figuring out how to store that in your memory. So if you have something like what you ate for lunch that day,
00:03:34
Speaker
If it was like a basic sandwich two years from now, you're not going to remember it.
00:03:40
Speaker
If it was the best thing that you ever put in your mouth, you're going to remember it a little bit more. If it had a food ingredient in it that you ended up being allergic to and you went into anaphylactic shock, that's definitely going to be something that stands out in your memory.
Introduction to EMDR Therapy
00:03:55
Speaker
So it's almost like, depending on how important the information was or how important the memory was, your brain stores it differently and it's almost like how easy you can go back and recall it, right?
00:04:07
Speaker
And so, but regardless, it still gets like filed in order and you know kind of relatively like when it happened. And it's just like your brain's filing system, right?
00:04:19
Speaker
Well, what happens when we experience trauma is that our brain is having a hard time making sense of like, what do I do with this? Especially if your body is holding onto a lot of emotions with it still, especially if it's the type of big T trauma or little T trauma that we're talking about where, um,
00:04:39
Speaker
It's just such a shock to your system. It's almost like your brain doesn't necessarily know how to reconcile it and how to file it appropriately. So it's almost like it gets flagged in your system. So like imagine it being in the filing carpet, it's sticking up like it has a little flag on it. And it's almost like we don't necessarily know what to do with this because all of the emotions aren't resolved. If it's like one of those big T traumas, it's like we don't we don't feel safe yet. So it feels like it's kind of like still happening.
00:05:08
Speaker
Like all of this happens in our brain's ability to reconcile a memory. And so if you go to sleep and your brain doesn't know what to do with it, it's almost like it freezes. It freezes it in time and you remember it exactly how it happened.
00:05:27
Speaker
So every time you think back on it, you immediately refill all of those emotions that you felt on the day that you experienced it like it almost like it's still happening. So you know how you have like those really big moments where you can think back on it and it immediately causes you panic or fear or shame or embarrassment, like whatever the emotion is that's kind of gotten frozen to it.
00:05:51
Speaker
It's almost like you don't even have to work to access that emotion. It floods through you immediately because your brain has not reconciled this memory yet. Like for example, if I think back on something in my memory, like something really good, like the day I got married, I don't know,
00:06:13
Speaker
I remember that that was a good day. I remember that it was fun. I remember feeling lots of love and being surrounded by friends and family, that kind of thing. But to actually feel what I was feeling on that day, I feel like I would have to sit with it and really conjure up those feelings. I would have to search for them a little bit. I know that's what I felt on that day, but in order to feel that feeling, I would have to search for it a little bit.
00:06:37
Speaker
But if we're talking about a trauma, you don't have to search for those feelings. You know what you felt on that day and you also immediately feel it without even asking those emotions to come back up.
EMDR Process Explained
00:06:50
Speaker
So when we are doing different types of trauma therapy, that's one thing that we're looking at is how do we
00:06:57
Speaker
How do we reprocess that memory so that this time your brain feels like it's complete that you have felt everything that you need to feel that it's over and you can essentially like release all of those painful emotions that are tied to it so that so that it doesn't feel when you think back on it doesn't feel like you're back there again.
00:07:20
Speaker
Because so often that is what makes trauma so painful is that it hasn't, you haven't fully processed it. And so you're experiencing it like you're still there. So the first type of therapy that I want to talk about today is EMDR. And EMDR is a super effective type of therapy for these traumas that we're talking about. And it's also super popular right now. And my practice, what I have realized is that
00:07:46
Speaker
Um, you know, last week we talked about the Big T and Little G traumas being events that you very clearly can remember when they started, when they ended. Um, like it's pretty clear in your mind that it wasn't just another painful thing that happened. Like it was, it stands out in your mind. EMDR is really, really good for doing what we call reprocessing these memories. Um, and I'm going to tell you kind of the basis of how it works.
00:08:12
Speaker
So the way I explain it to my clients when I'm doing EMDR is that when you think about this memory that has been flagged in your file system, there is always a picture like what the memory looks like, what you remember happening like what your mind's eye sees.
00:08:28
Speaker
Then there's the emotion, whether it's fear, shame, panic, shock, like whatever emotion that you feel that gets tied with this memory. And most of us only think of those two things when we think about a memory as like what it looked like and what it felt like.
00:08:46
Speaker
But what's really really important is kind of like the third leg of a memory and that's what I call Like the cognition that goes with it. It's the thought or the belief that you end up telling yourself about yourself because like in that moment because of what's happening and That to me is like when people start to make that connection like they connect that dot with it even intellectually it is such like an aha moment and
00:09:14
Speaker
And so really being able to name what you began to believe about yourself in that moment is so incredible. It's incredibly powerful. And what we call that is your core negative belief. And again, that's what you begin to believe about yourself in that moment, because of what's happening externally. This is what's going on internally. And so your core negative beliefs are the things that you learn to learn about yourself. They're usually like I am or I am not statements.
00:09:44
Speaker
And on surface level, it may or may not be obvious what that is. For a lot of people, they don't realize what they were telling themselves on that day. And so your core negative beliefs, they end up being things like I'm not good enough, I'm helpless, I'm powerless,
00:10:01
Speaker
It's not safe to feel this feeling right now. It can be things like I'm worthless. I have no value. Like there's kind of like different categories that we go through whether it's like a control category like I'm helpless or powerless or I'm responsible for others.
00:10:22
Speaker
They kind of like all boil down to probably a dozen core negative beliefs. And again, like on surface level, you wouldn't realize that that's what you're telling yourself in that moment. But once we really identify that, it's almost just like, oh, wow, like no wonder that's such a painful thing because I still feel when I think back on it, I still feel really helpless in that moment, right?
00:10:41
Speaker
And so again, like even identifying what that core negative belief is or what what the cognition is in that moment, that can be incredibly helpful in a lot of ways. But that is a lot of what you get in certain types of like talk therapy. And
00:10:59
Speaker
It's almost like you learn to intellectualize your experience. And there's a lot of benefit that can come from that. And I'm not saying that there's not like it, it can do us so much good to understand why we came to that conclusion and what's going on. But it only takes you so far because back in, I think like one of the very first episodes that I recorded, I think on anxiety,
00:11:22
Speaker
We talked a little bit about the two brains that we have, like the logical brain that's housed with like our frontal lobe where you've got your morals, your judgment, your reasoning, your language, that kind of thing. And then we talked about the emotional brain that houses your fight or flight response system.
00:11:40
Speaker
So when we're intellectualizing our experiences, it's making a lot of sense to us, which can provide a lot of comfort to know why we do what we do. But it doesn't really touch on our emotional brain, which is where all of the emotion with it is stored, like all of the painful emotions. And that is what's connected to your nervous system, because that whole that entire limbic system is all connected. And so if your emotional brain
00:12:03
Speaker
still housing the emotions that are tied to this memory that's where you get the sense of anxiety that's where your nervous system gets triggered when you think back on these memories and you start to have those like visceral responses whether it's like racing heartbeat or your your breathing increases or your palms get sweaty those kind of things you can intellectualize it all day and understand what's going on and like your
00:12:32
Speaker
logical brain, but it's not really doing anything to touch on the emotional brain. So this is why I encourage anybody that has done talk therapy on trauma before if you didn't get the results that you want, you need to do something like EMDR because that's actually going to work on the emotional part of the brain and provide like a completely different kind of release.
Parts Work Therapy and IFS Introduction
00:12:51
Speaker
So, to explain a little bit about what an EMDR session looks like, what your therapist will do with you is you'll decide which memory to work on that day. And what I like to do with my clients is to get them to give me kind of like what I call the snapshot, which is when you think back on that memory, what's the first picture that comes to mind.
00:13:10
Speaker
Because even in EMDR, a lot of times our brains will start to wander to other events and other days and other things that have happened since then that are tied to it. But we really want to work on like one singular memory at a time. And so when I have that snapshot, I can bring you back to it if your brain starts to wander a little bit.
00:13:28
Speaker
Another really good thing about EMDR is that if you're talking about a trauma that you don't want to share a lot of the details about, like you don't feel comfortable verbalizing all of those details, as a therapist, I don't necessarily need to know the details. When you give me that snapshot, you can just call the memory whatever you want to call it and you don't necessarily have to share.
00:13:50
Speaker
which I think a lot of people find really helpful because that's something that they're just not comfortable with. Other people, they find it very therapeutic to share with someone their story, but some people aren't built that way. And so even doing EMDR therapy, you decide how much or how little you want to share the details with your therapist. So we kind of get a little bit of a baseline to begin with. We name what the memory is, and then I'll have you name what those emotions are. Again, whether it's
00:14:16
Speaker
shame, embarrassment, fear, panic, anxiety, anger, whatever the emotion is, we're going to name it. And then we're going to kind of do a scale of how intense you feel it, thinking back on it right now. So I would say on a scale of one to 10, 10 being as strong as you felt it on that day that it happened. One being you don't feel it at all anymore will get kind of like a baseline of where you are when you think about it.
00:14:40
Speaker
For some people it's immediately already out of 10 just thinking it for some people. It's like I don't know I feel like maybe a five right now It doesn't really matter where you start But we're just kind of getting a baseline and then we're gonna name what that cognition is and for a lot of therapists you'll have already done a little bit of that legwork in sessions before to identify like what is your negative core belief that keeps popping up with different things in life whether it's I'm not good enough or I'm helpless. I'm powerless
00:15:10
Speaker
So, if you haven't already done that, you'll kind of name that negative core belief in the moment. And that gives us our baseline. And then I always ask my clients if what you're feeling right now is, let's say, I'm not good enough.
00:15:26
Speaker
What do you want to be able to believe if you could, it's like the magic question, you know, what do you want to be able to if you could somehow? And it's usually just the opposite. If the negative belief is that I'm not good enough, what I want to be able to believe is that I am good enough, that I'm perfectly fine the way that I am.
00:15:42
Speaker
And then I'll kind of get another rating on, well, how believable is that right now? And obviously, if the negative belief is high, then the positive belief is going to be low. And over the course of an EMDR session, we just want to see those numbers reverse.
00:15:58
Speaker
We want to see the feeling and the belief that I'm not good enough to melt away and all the negative emotions that are supporting that, whether again like it's embarrassment, shame, anxiety. As your body releases those negative emotions, we want to see the believability of the positive more adaptive belief to go up so that it becomes more and more solidified in your system that actually
00:16:22
Speaker
on that day when this was happening I was good enough that this wasn't about this wasn't about me not being good enough and so what ends up happening in
00:16:32
Speaker
Okay, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. That's like the end results that I'm getting to. Let me share first a little bit about the process of EMDR. So what will happen is, what they have found is that something called bilateral stimulation is what is so helpful in EMDR. And that sounds complicated, but it's not. It's any kind of left, right, left, right, left, right, repetitive stimulation anywhere on your body,
00:16:59
Speaker
It helps that
Healing Complex Trauma with IFS
00:17:01
Speaker
logical part of the brain and the emotional part of the brain to connect and communicate with each other in ways that it doesn't when you don't have that stimulation going. And so EMDR stands for eye movement. And so a lot of people think that it has to be done with eye movement, but really all that is is your eyes moving back and forth, left, right, left, right. It can also be any kind of tapping on your body that is in that same motion.
00:17:27
Speaker
So some therapists will have you do the butterfly move, which is where you cross your hands across your chest and you tap like right beneath your collarbone and you tap on yourself in a left, right, left, right motion. Some people will have you tap on your knees the same way, just left, right, left, right. In my practice, I use these little paddles that
00:17:48
Speaker
They are these little paddles that you hold onto and they just vibrate back and forth, left, right, left, right. And I like those the best just because I get to control how fast they go. But essentially we have you bring up the memory.
00:18:04
Speaker
And another really good thing is the vibration or the left-right stimulation. It also helps to keep you grounded so that as you ask your body to bring up that feeling of panic or anxiety or whatever it is that you're feeling, it actually helps to keep you grounded so that you feel safe, so that your body stays like
00:18:26
Speaker
somewhat in the present so that you don't completely go back into the past and get overwhelmed by those emotions. Because while EMDR is definitely
00:18:35
Speaker
It can definitely be hard and emotional and you're like sprinting through and filtering through all of these really heavy emotions. We don't want it to be re-traumatizing. So we want to always keep you grounded. And I always kind of say like one foot in the past, one foot in the present. You don't want to have both feet in the past. And so the stimulation is also good for giving your brain a sense of groundedness. And so what happens is we ask you to kind of like allow all of those feelings that we usually try to shove down and move away from.
00:19:06
Speaker
We ask you to bring up those feelings and sit with it while the stimulation is going. And we only do it for anywhere from 15 seconds to 45 seconds. It depends on how intense the emotions are and where we are in the memory. But we just ask you to go to it and feel it. And then I turn the paddles off. I turn the vibration off. And I very simply ask, what do you notice?
00:19:28
Speaker
And you give me just a few words of I noticed this, I noticed that, and then we go right back
Unburdening Process in IFS
00:19:34
Speaker
into it. And you're not talking while the stimulation is going, you're just revisiting the memory. And what begins to happen is that again, like when you're going towards it and coming back out, it gives your brain the sense of you're not actually there again. So it's okay to process to reprocess it in a different way from a lens of you're safe and in the present.
00:19:54
Speaker
And so what ends up happening is that you start to notice that you notice different things about the memory. So what I have found is a lot of people in the beginning, the memory just gets more clear. And so when I say what do you notice, they'll say things like I completely forgot, like,
00:20:14
Speaker
I forgot that my aunt was there that day. I completely forgot she was there. I hadn't thought about that in years. And I'm just like, okay, let's go with that. Your brain is just remembering pieces that maybe have been lost. And so it's painting like a more clear picture. Or I'll have people say, I remember exactly what I was wearing that day. And if it's something that happened a really long time ago, they'll be like, I completely forgot about that pair of shoes or something.
00:20:37
Speaker
So in the beginning it seems like what you're noticing is your brain is just filtering through the memory from beginning to end and you're getting like a more clear picture. And as that happens every once in a while after every few rounds I'll also check in with you and I'll say like how is the intensity of those emotions.
00:20:55
Speaker
And so especially for people that in the beginning, if it's like a four or five with intensity, as you move towards that memory, you might actually notice that the intensity goes up. And so you might say like, oh, now that I'm actually remembering it, I'm more at like a seven or an eight or a nine. And that's okay. That's to be expected.
Reclaiming Lost Parts through IFS
00:21:12
Speaker
We're just going to take a couple of deep breaths and keep moving through it.
00:21:16
Speaker
I feel like what I've noticed is once your brain kind of gives you as clear of a picture as it's going to, then you really start to filter through the emotions. And so for a few rounds, you might really sit with that feeling of anxiety, and you might really remember what that feels like. And so every time, you know, you do that for 15 or 30 seconds, and you come back out of it, we're going to take a deep breath together. That's helping to give your nervous system the signal that you're okay, that you're safe, that you're not there anymore. And then we go back to it.
00:21:46
Speaker
But what I've noticed is doing that helps to release that initial feeling. But what always happens is that people finally get to access other emotions that aren't typically associated with it because the initial emotion is so big and overbearing.
00:22:02
Speaker
So, it might be something like if you had something happen that was really like your trauma was something that was really embarrassing, let's say. Embarrassment is like the only thing that you get to feel about it, like when you think back on it. Once you start to release that, you might feel something completely different. You might be like, you know what? I'm actually really angry because this person didn't stick up for me or this person was laughing and they shouldn't have been laughing and I'm just like making up examples here.
00:22:31
Speaker
And I'm going to say, okay, go with that because that's an emotion that you haven't even started to process through because it was always overshadowed by the original emotion. So you let your brain sit with that for a minute. And then you might get to a place of saying, you know what, I'm actually really proud of myself because I forgot that I, um, I did finish the day or I did stand up for myself at that moment. I completely forgot that I told people that that wasn't cool or I don't know, like I'm just making something up here.
00:23:00
Speaker
It's like your emotions have become this big bundle and it feels like it's all anxiety, but once you start to process through it, you realize that it's a combination of a lot of emotions. And again, because of the bilateral stimulation, because we're going to it and coming back out of it, your brain has the ability to view it through the lens of the emotional and the logical brain so that they can work together to make sense of how to reprocess this memory.
00:23:30
Speaker
And no two EMDR sessions are necessarily the same, but they kind of flow a little bit similarly to a place where what I noticed is people like the first portion of it, you're getting a more clear picture, then you're filtering through emotions that you've never been able to necessarily feel about it before. And what happens by the end of the session usually is that people start to say,
00:23:56
Speaker
You know, when I turn off the vibrations and I say, what do you notice? They start to notice that the memory is just getting really fuzzy.
00:24:03
Speaker
They're having a hard time labeling what they feel. It feels very like distance. If I try to say like, where is that intensity on the scale? They're kind of like, I don't even know where it is anymore. It's, it's lower, but I can't really name it anymore. And that is very common and it's very good because that means your brain has filtered through everything that it has kind of stored with it.
Julie's Therapeutic Approach
00:24:26
Speaker
and it's trying to make sense of it. And so that's where I usually conclude the session because I want to give you time just to sit with it. And the really cool thing about EMDR2 is that as you go to sleep at night,
00:24:39
Speaker
you continue to process through that day's information. And this is almost like new information that it's reprocessing. So the whole goal of EMDR is that what people report is they say, I still remember that this thing happened, of course, it's still not a pleasant memory. But when I think back on it, it doesn't feel like it happened yesterday anymore. It feels like it happened 10 years ago, or whenever it actually happened.
00:25:04
Speaker
And it's almost like I can think back on it, but it's like a billboard when you're driving by, like it's there and then it's just kind of gone. And you're not flooded with that initial emotion anymore.
00:25:18
Speaker
And that's good. That's what we want. That means that means you've kind of like all the emotion that was frozen with this memory has melted.
Impact of EMDR and IFS on Self-Beliefs
00:25:25
Speaker
And in the filing cabinet, it can finally get filed where it's supposed to, which again, it's still a memory that you're going to remember for the rest of your life. But it's not flagged anymore. And it doesn't hold the intensity of whatever that initial emotion was anymore. And so it's no longer as triggering as it used to be.
00:25:47
Speaker
And to be honest, using EMDR looks a little bit different from therapist to therapist because we all have a little bit of our own approach with it. Things that we have found work really well with our clients and you kind of like evolve it just like everything else in like a clinical setting. You figure out
00:26:05
Speaker
like what works with your clients. And so if you have ever done some EMDR and it didn't look exactly like that for you, that's totally fine. There's different ways that it can be applied. Some people have a more of a somatic approach. Some people kind of stick to this script a little bit more closely. Again, like not necessarily a right or a wrong. You just kind of like figure out what works for you as a clinician.
00:26:29
Speaker
So that's typically what it looks like in my practice. And so what we'll do is the next week when you come back in, we'll bring up that memory again. And the goal is, again, that the intensity of the emotion that was there before is just less, and the believability of what you wanted to be able to believe about it is higher.
00:26:49
Speaker
And for some memories that are really intense, really big T traumas, it might take several sessions of reprocessing to finally get you where you want to be. So it may be that you start the first time you reprocess it, the intensity might be at a 10 and you might end and it might be at an eight. And it's like that's not the progress that I want because eight is still really painful. So we might have to revisit it a couple of times.
00:27:13
Speaker
And what I've learned is that a lot of times you just have to break it down into really bite-sized pieces. So instead of focusing on the entire memory, you focus on a very small portion of it and let your brain just digest and reprocess one piece of it before you move on to the next. And that can be really, really helpful as well.
00:27:32
Speaker
But overall, it should start to feel like a really big release in your system because you're not holding on to the tension from all of these really heavy emotions. And over time, what happens is you start to notice like, like if you've done EMDR for a really long time on multiple memories, what you'll realize is that if you're negative,
00:27:54
Speaker
core belief has been I'm not good enough. If you work through a bunch of the memories that have kind of held up that belief, what you'll realize is that entire belief starts to crumble. Therefore in life, it starts to become more believable that actually I am good enough and I always have been good enough. And all of these things that I thought were evidence that I wasn't good enough, one by one they have started to crumble.
00:28:19
Speaker
I use the analogy of, you know, the game Jenga a lot. Like if you have this tower of memories that have built up the feeling of I'm not good enough, when we pull them out one by one, it might not seem individually like it's making that huge of a difference in your system. But eventually, if you pull out enough of those blocks, the whole tower is going to crumble. And it's going to feel like this huge relief of this belief that I'm not good enough has finally been
Intricacies of Parts Work for Complex Trauma
00:28:43
Speaker
dealt with. And I don't believe that about myself anymore.
00:28:46
Speaker
Okay, so that's a very that's an overview of EMDR and I'm already at like 30 minutes But I feel like I could talk about that for hours because there's just so many complexities to it but I want to move on because
00:29:00
Speaker
What I have found in my practice is, again, EMTR is good for those memories that you can very clearly remember and that really stick out in your mind. But for so many of my clients, like I talked about in last week's episode, for so many of my clients, it wasn't necessarily big things that have built up like the dysregulation in their system. It was like the patterns and behaviors of their family growing up that did all of these
00:29:26
Speaker
paper cuts again that make up complex trauma. So the type of therapy that I like to do for that is completely different and it's called parts work. And I personally use what's called internal family systems and if you've never heard about that I'm going to share some like
00:29:45
Speaker
Again, like a high level overview of that today, but I highly encourage you to give IFS a try because it works so well. Hands down, it's my favorite type of therapy that I do. So this is really like what we, when we talk about healing our inner child, this is what I'm talking about. This is how it works. So the premise of this is that we all have different parts of our personality. I am not saying that anybody has multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder.
00:30:13
Speaker
What I'm saying is that all of us have different parts of our personality. So an example of that is I have a part of my personality that is very outgoing, that loves being social, that loves being around friends. This part can be like
00:30:35
Speaker
incredibly like funny and just like loud and go with the flow and loves adventure and those kind of things. I also have a part of my personality that is very introverted and very shy and kind of depending on which part is in the driver's seat that day, I act and look very differently.
00:30:56
Speaker
And so a lot of people would say that that's just like different moods. But what we like to do with IFS is to really define those parts to say almost like they're completely different personalities, and they help us in different ways. And so if I have to go to some kind of like networking event or something like that, I want my outgoing personality in the driver's seat, because she's going to be the one that helps me make connections and is going to have more fun.
00:31:20
Speaker
Whereas if my introverted part is in their driver's seat I'm going to have a lot of anxiety and I'm not going to make as many good connections like I'm almost like I'm not going to make as good of an impression on people as well. So with IFS you're learning the different parts of your personalities that show up in your day-to-day life now and you get to know them really well because you realize that they formed in response to something that happened that you needed that part for.
00:31:49
Speaker
And there's a lot of complexities with this too. So I'm trying to think of like, just what I need to share today to explain how we work on trauma. But essentially,
00:32:00
Speaker
When we're working on trauma, we want to be called what is self led, which if you think about like who you are at your core, some people call it like your wise self. The one that is calm, has a lot of like clarity about life is pretty confident in decision making and you trust this part of yourself. That's like at the core who you really, really are. And we want that version of yourself to lead as much as possible.
00:32:31
Speaker
because that's when you're also being your most authentic self as well. Not that these other parts don't help you in other ways, but you want it to be, you still wanna be self-led. So when we're working on trauma, particularly like childhood trauma, this complex trauma, what we start to realize is that when we have a younger part that's hurting, it's almost like she gets frozen wherever she was when the pain happened.
00:32:56
Speaker
And so the way we work through it in therapy is that we have yourself now, like your wise self, now the adults visualize going to her wherever she is and to help her get what she needed in that moment that she didn't get. Because with complex trauma, what I've realized over and over again, it's all about the needs, the emotional needs and physical needs that we had as children that our parents and caregivers didn't need for us.
00:33:26
Speaker
And I will say that everybody can relate to this because even if you have the absolute best parents in the entire world, there is no way that a parent can meet every single one of their child's emotional needs. Like it is literally impossible. So at some point you will feel like your parents failed you or they didn't meet all of your needs, right? So this is why I say that this type of therapy can literally benefit everybody because everybody has those moments.
00:33:53
Speaker
Um, but what we have you do is to go back to that younger self and just sit with her. And I always have people kind of like press pause, like in a movie, wherever she's stuck in this, this painful scene. And again, one of the things that is different with EMDR, it doesn't necessarily have to be a specific memory, but it can be, you can remember that these things were happening when you were, let's say third grade.
00:34:17
Speaker
And you can remember what your bedroom looked like in third grade. So it's not a specific day, but you have an environment that you can picture her being in. And you have your wise self, your adult self, go to her and just sit next to her and kind of like introduce yourself to her.
00:34:34
Speaker
And you say, what do you need help with right now? Like what do you need right now that nobody is helping you with that maybe I can help you with? And there's lots of visualization that goes into this type of therapy that is so incredibly powerful, but you visualize giving her that need or helping her with that need.
00:34:52
Speaker
So what I've noticed is that if, if we're going back to a place where you are really, really young, like I would say like third grade and below, a lot of times those kids need nurturing. Like a lot of times they just want to hug from you. They want someone to say it's going to be okay. They want someone to say, um, you didn't do anything wrong. A lot of times they just need comfort and nurturing. They want to look at you as like a mother figure.
00:35:23
Speaker
that can protect them. Like they need a lot of nurturing and protection. What I have found is as you get a little bit older, um, like I don't know, maybe eight, nine, 10 years old up to a preteen, a lot of what kids needed was more of an explanation because they had things going on in their life and they just felt very much like they can't make sense of what's going on.
00:35:45
Speaker
So they're old enough to know that something's wrong, but they don't have context yet. And so what I have found is a lot of like our middle school self and like late elementary needs someone to sit down and get on their level and in an age appropriate way explain like what the heck is going on in the family and to say things even like
00:36:04
Speaker
that your parents don't have it together right now. They're doing a lot of things that are causing a lot of pain and not only is it not your fault but like explaining to them that that parents don't have it all together.
00:36:17
Speaker
Um, and they're needing a lot of times some kind of explanation for what's about to happen. Like if, if you're going, if your parents are going through a divorce or something like that, they're needing a little bit of explanation of what the future is going to look like for them so that it can take away some of those anxieties that they have about like, my life feels like it's falling apart and it gives them context. Um, and they probably still will need a lot of like emotional support to like a hug or something like that too.
00:36:42
Speaker
Then what I have found is that when you get into the teenage years, a lot of what teenagers needed is to be heard and to have a voice and to be safe to speak up for themselves. Um, and again, still needing like a lot of like direction and explanation too, but it's almost like when you go back to your high school self, you don't necessarily come as a parent. It's almost like you come as like a big sister or an aunt or somebody that can, that they can confide in and share with and trust.
00:37:12
Speaker
And the way you do that is sometimes they just need to visualize a hug, but sometimes they need to visualize being able to say in those moments what they should have been able to say or what they needed to say to an adult, and they need you there to back them up.
00:37:27
Speaker
or they might actually need you to say those things for them. They might actually need to sit with you and for you to be able to say to the parent, it's not okay that you're treating her this way. You need to listen to her. Um, so we go through this visual visualization of giving your younger self what she needed. And then after you do that, you say, are you ready to go? You've been stuck here for so long. It's time for you to leave and it's time for you to come be with me. Like I'm going to take care of you now. You're going to be a part of my family.
00:37:56
Speaker
We are going to update you. You're going to be in 2023 and If there's some hesitancy to leave like you kind of work with that part to say like okay What else do we need to do here for you to feel like it's safe for you to come with me?
00:38:10
Speaker
So the whole premise behind this is you're going to start taking care of your younger parts as we go back and give them what they need. But one thing with IFS that I really like is you go through this kind of like visualization before you close the session, which is to help that part go through what we call the unburdening process.
Visualization in IFS for Emotional Relief
00:38:27
Speaker
Because we realize that these kid versions of ourselves, even teenage versions of ourselves,
00:38:33
Speaker
They ended up carrying so much that they should not have had to carry. Responsibility, shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, these core negative beliefs, stuff like that. They have been carrying that for you this entire time. And we want to go through a process called inverting that's going to help them release that.
00:38:55
Speaker
So what I like to do with clients is give them a couple of examples of how it can go, but then also let them be totally creative with it. So I'll say a lot of kids like to do things like imagining themselves standing under a waterfall and washing all of these burdens off of them. So if they've got like fear written on them, they can watch the fear just like wash away, or maybe they want to jump into the ocean and do something with water.
00:39:21
Speaker
Or maybe they want to build a bonfire and they want to write these things down and throw it in the bonfire and watch it burn. Or they want to stand in a field and like throw it up like grains of rice and watch it scatter into a million pieces. You want to do something where these burdens aren't intact anymore. So even if they tried to pick them back up, they couldn't like it's permanent.
00:39:42
Speaker
So I've had some people say that they want to be like on an airplane and they want to parachute out and they throw them like into the wind jumping off of a plane.
00:39:55
Speaker
And that lets me know that whatever part we've just rescued is a very adventurous part, which I think is really cool. Some like to do things like break dishes or go to like one of those rage rooms and like break things in a rage room. Those are parts that obviously are gonna be a little bit more angry about the burdens that they've had to carry. Whatever feels good and you kind of intuitively know in that moment, like your younger part will let you know how she wants to release those things.
00:40:22
Speaker
But you go through this process and what you realize is that once she has been given permission to let these things go What you typically realize is that when you get her out of the memory she feels quiet and Weighed down and a lot of times people will say that it looks like she's got like dark circles under her eyes. She's exhausted and
00:40:46
Speaker
And after we go through the unburdening process, I always say, what do you notice about her now that she's not carrying these things anymore? And people will say she's so light. She's so carefree. She so just wants to be a kid. And you realize that that's, that's who you should have been able to be as a kid. But you had to take on so many adult problems that it's almost like you lost that piece of your childhood.
00:41:12
Speaker
And I think that that is what is so incredibly healing about this process is that your younger self gets to be who she was supposed to be able to be, but she's that with you now. So what I've noticed with my clients is they feed off of that energy because like she's with you now. And so I have clients that have more fun playing with their kids or doing like arts and crafts with their kids because they invite their younger self to do it with them.
00:41:40
Speaker
And so you're actually like interested in arts and crafts again. Or I have people that are like all of a sudden I love being in nature again. Like I forgot how much I loved just being outside exploring. Or I'll have people say the other day I was just like I cranked the music up and I was like dancing while I was cooking. And it just like it
00:42:01
Speaker
it helps you to be more carefree like she was supposed to be because she's with you now and she's not burdened down by all those things anymore. And so how all of this heals trauma is again, when you have that complex trauma, so much of what was traumatizing is that you weren't getting these emotional needs met. And you have the ability as yourself now to be able to go back and give yourself
00:42:28
Speaker
everything that you needed and to get her unstuck out of those places where she's been stuck, honestly for a lot of people, like decades, right? And it's such a relief to the entire system because you start to really feel like, okay, I'm not stuck there anymore.
00:42:43
Speaker
And it's also really healing because if these people that hurt you as a child are still in your life, you start to interact with them very differently as an adult, like it's easier to set boundaries, it's easier to be around them and not feel, you know how sometimes you get that feeling when you're around someone, like you feel like a little kid around them again, like their presence just sends you back to feeling like you want to be really small or you want to hide.
00:43:08
Speaker
doing this work, you realize that my younger self is not stuck back there feeling that anymore. So neither am I. And so you have a different energy when you're around them, you can set boundaries better, it's less triggering. In a somewhat healthy relationship, it might actually offer you a chance to do some repair on the relationship. Or you might just be really, really protective of yourself and say that's not a boundary because it doesn't seem like there's the potential for that level of growth.
00:43:38
Speaker
So that kind of sums that up. Like that's what parts work is and it is incredibly healing. And what I love most is this is the type of therapy that's really the therapy is between you and you.
00:43:54
Speaker
You don't need anybody else to help you with that healing process. I'm here to facilitate, but it doesn't require anything but you helping yourself and you have everything already that you need to be able to do that. You just need someone to help facilitate it.
Season Wrap-up and Future Episode Teasers
00:44:09
Speaker
I love this type of therapy because it really helps to rebuild trust within yourself that I think trauma
00:44:15
Speaker
Unfortunately, causes us to lose over time. Like we don't trust our intuition. We don't trust our gut. We don't trust our decisions. And doing this type of therapy really helps you to be able to say like, no, I can trust myself. I do know what's good for me and I can make decisions according to that.
00:44:34
Speaker
Okay. So once again, this is an episode longer than I intended, but there, there's just so much to say about both of these types of therapy. Um, next season on outside of sessions, season two, I'm going to be doing a ton of interviews with other therapists and mental health professionals and, um, other experts that can bring their
00:44:57
Speaker
expertise and their knowledge and they can help explain some of this so that you're not just hearing my point of view. But I already have in mind a couple of my colleagues that I want to talk to bring on to talk about EMDR and IFS separately. And I'm so excited to share more with you. But with that being said, if
00:45:12
Speaker
If either one of those things are intriguing to you, or if it's a type of therapy that it feels like it would be good for you, I really encourage you to either reach out to me and I will help you find someone in your state that is trained in these type of therapies. If you're in Georgia or Florida, maybe we would be a good fit to work together, but I'm always happy to help try and connect people to a therapist that would be good for them. So feel free to reach out to me. All of my information obviously is in the show notes and the show information.
00:45:41
Speaker
With that being said, we are coming to a close on season one and I just want to say thank you to every single person that listened and made the show such a success. I have had just such a blast doing it and I have learned a ton about myself along the way. I couldn't have done it without you, so I just appreciate it so much.
00:45:58
Speaker
So continue to share with all of your friends everything that you've gotten out of these episodes, put them on it so that it can continue to grow. And as soon as I have information about when season two will be released, I will be posting that obviously all over my Instagram and letting you know. But until next season, I hope everyone is well and I hope that you are taking good care of yourself. And I just wish everyone the best on your healing journey. We'll talk to you next time. Bye.
00:46:26
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Outside of Session. Remember, while I am a licensed therapist, this podcast is not a substitute for individual therapy. The contents of this episode are for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you are having a mental health emergency, please dial 911 for immediate assistance or dial 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.