Call Her Daddy - The Path to Trauma Recovery

Episode Date: November 20, 2022

Unfortunately the journey to trauma recovery isn’t as simple as “time heals all wounds”. Clinical psychologist Dr. Arielle Schwartz illuminates the path to healing and debunks the misconceptions around trauma recovery. She advises on a variety of topics including, how to speak to your partner about your trauma and how to reclaim your relationship to intimacy after sexual trauma. Dr. Schwartz speaks about shame, forgiveness and what to do if you are in a situation where you have to see your abuser. This episode contains something for everyone no matter where you are on your journey to recovery. This episode discusses adult subject matter, including descriptions of sexual violence, and is intended for adult consumption only. Listener discretion is advised. Visit spotify.com/resources for information and resources.

What is up, Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper with Call Her Daddy. Hello, hello, hello, Daddy Gang. Welcome how to begin the process of healing from trauma. And I really wanted to find the perfect specialist on trauma because it's obviously a very delicate subject. And so I found a clinical psychologist. Dr. Ariel Schwartz is truly incredible. I love you all. Please take care of yourselves when you listen to this episode. If you need to pause it, if you want to journal, whatever you need. I love you daddies. Enjoy the episode. Dr. Ariel Schwartz, welcome to Call Her Daddy.

Thank you. It's lovely to be here. So Daddy Gang, Dr. Schwartz is a clinical psychologist whose work focuses on trauma and recovery. So what type of life events can be considered traumatic? You know, it's a pretty broad topic. And I think the first thing that I'll name is that many things can be traumatic. And so it can be something like a sexual assault. It could be something like a act of violence that may be happening in our community, gun shootings and so forth. It can be a car accident and it can be a natural disaster, right?

When we're looking at what's happening in our world. But we also really need to hold that what's traumatic is what's happening within the individual. And so many people can be exposed to similar events or the same event even, and not everyone might come away saying, I feel traumatized. And so then we look at what is within the individual that is, you know, this experience of trauma. And I'm sure we're going to kind of unpack all of that as we go. Yes. Can you explain why time, which, you know, helps a lot of things will not heal all trauma? Right. Yeah. Time is not the factor here. In fact, I think oftentimes can work against us when it comes to trauma recovery, because what really helps us heal is attending to the impact of the event

and attending to how it's still in some ways living within us. And so if we're in some way, just waiting for enough time to pass, the body actually doesn't live on a clock and the body is where this trauma gets held and stored. And again, we'll keep unpacking this. But as we look at time as a factor, it gives us some distance, but it doesn't necessarily do the work that we need to do, which involves turning towards the impact of the event, the emotions, the sensations in our bodies. When we talk about healing, sometimes we use the words like digesting or processing the event. And it's about taking something really, really difficult and giving ourselves the time

to turn towards it and what's disturbing about it, what's painful. I think the other piece about this idea that what healing trauma is, is this idea that somehow we're going to make this thing go away. And the truth is that doesn't happen either, right? We do get more distance from the event, but some things will always just be objectively disturbing because they are. What we are looking for when it comes to healing is that those events don't have as much power over us and our lives. And we feel more able to kind of take back a sense of our own power and meaning and take ourselves back from the events. I think maybe some people could be hesitant to enter trauma therapy because the idea of

confronting the most disturbing parts of traumatic events is too much to handle. How can someone push past the fear and start that recovery process? Yeah, I think it's important to know that the people that are out there to help you work through trauma are really nice. Like, actually, there's people that are really well trained. It starts with having the right relationship. and when you find that right person it they actually will walk you through the stages and the steps to processing this so that it doesn't feel so overwhelming and so scary so things that we do is we help you take like smaller bits we help you resource yourself and really find a sense of your own ground and sense of safe enough here and now so that you can turn towards those aspects of the trauma

without feeling like it's going to completely take you down. I think that's really good to clarify because these are professionals. These are people that will hold you so safely and make sure that it's handled with care and in a clinical way that is based in proof that it will work for you hopefully. And there's also not like one size fits all, like a doctor is going to know this is not working for you. We can do this method. Whereas talking to a friend or a family member, I mean, I've had people write in about that of like, my parents don't understand why I would need this type of therapy. It's like a friend or a family member can not do the work that a psychologist or a therapist or a psychiatrist is going to do for what you personally need. How can our bodies protective defenses that

initially helped us to survive the trauma potentially become harmful? Yeah. There's a lot of ways in which the body kind of, our bodies will react to trauma, will defensively protect us by kind of being more on guard or in some way or another, maybe kind of shut down or lead us to check out from the experience. And that's what we call dissociation, that we have distanced ourselves so far from the threat that's happening, that we then feel like we're in a daze or everything feels surreal. And that's a really intelligent defense structure. But if we don't resolve it and that lingers into our daily living, then it starts to feel like we are still living

that way. And that actually can wreak havoc on your health. And so that's one of the areas of specialty that I look at is how the unresolved trauma can then lead us to continue to carry these imbalances in the autonomic nervous system, where you're still stuck in that kind of keyed up, anxious, panicky feeling, or you feel shut down, collapsed and depressed. And not only does that impact our mental emotional health, but it also can impact our physical wellbeing. I just encourage obviously everyone listening to, if you're able, like try to get help because it's such like an awful way, obviously to live when you're in one of those States. And I think it's very helpful to hear you talking about how you see these situations. And again, there is a path to getting help. Why is the belief that all things happen for a reason, not the same as making meaning of

the trauma? Yeah, our minds are meaning making machines. They really want a sense of the why. And I think what's really tricky about trauma is that sometimes there isn't a why. Sometimes there is very much senseless violence. There are sexual predators out there. There are fluke accidents. And the unfortunate aspect of meaning making in a personalized sense is that we can have faulty meaning making. We can start to say it happened to me because I was getting punished. And so this idea of it happened for a reason gets really tied

in to this quality of shame. Somehow I brought this upon myself. Pride cometh before a fall. These messages that come in through various sources in our worlds. So meaning making isn't the same as trying to find the reason something happened. It's actually less about looking backwards. Meaning making is really about how do we work through the pain of those events to create a meaningful now and a meaningful future. So let's just look ahead. Wow. That's really powerful. When dating, how do you know when it is the right time to share your trauma and how do you go about bringing it up? be very fast to get physically intimate with someone, even though we don't feel emotionally safe to tell them our deepest fears and concerns. And I think right there is the place that we need to start is if we are going to be physically intimate, can we also make space for emotional intimacy, which is actually way, way harder, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. Yes. And so I think that if we

actually can slow the whole thing down in our relationships and I get it, like I get one night stands and I get how we can just kind of, you know, follow, follow the moment. But if we can develop some of that emotional intimacy, at least along the way, it will become easier to have those difficult conversations. And then when we are sexually intimate with our partners, we can talk about our inner world and how it might show up in that process. Yeah. I wonder, like, say you have been with your partner for a few years and the two of you have a very healthy and loving relationship, but you have never shared your trauma with them, or maybe you healthy and loving relationship, but you have never shared your trauma with them, or maybe you've alluded to it, but you haven't gone into full detail.

How do you suggest to approach this conversation for the first time, you know, years into a relationship? Right. I think that is so common and it's such a good question. Right. So I think that you need to know what are the fears that you're carrying about what might occur? Because if you're saying it's a very loving relationship, and yet we're still carrying this fear that somehow you're going to reject me if you know this about me, or that that you'll leave or that you'll think differently about me, which I think is a really common one, somehow you'll look at me differently if you know. And, you know, one thing is that you don't have to share every, you know, darkest, deepest detail when you are sharing something with your partner, because that can be something that's between you and your

therapist or between you and you. And so if there are parts of the story where you really don't want them to know, because it would be objectively disturbing for them too, that's actually okay, right? But you might be able to explore something like, I want to share something really important with you. And I never shared it before because I was scared you were going to judge me or reject me or think differently of me, but we're close enough now that I really think it's time that you know this and I'm still scared, right? So that we can name that. And I've even had clients who've brought their partners into their therapy session as the safe space to share that piece of information. So knowing that we can ask for support for that. I think that's really helpful to know, because I don't know if maybe if it's someone that hasn't been fully able to

work through their trauma is sometimes maybe if they're not fully healed, I forget who I heard this from, but it's like, they almost are projecting what they want their, the person's response to be. And sometimes it's going to be a full let down of what they want to hear. That can happen, or we can actually, you know, sometimes we think we're in this loving relationship and we've actually chosen a partner who is that rejecting other. And so it can be very delicate and it is actually okay to tell your partner, this is what I really need from you. This kind of response would help me feel most understood and loved right now, Because often our partners don't know what to say. I think that's great advice.

And I know just from personal experience and friends, like sometimes when you go to your partner to tell them something, a lot of times I think they think that you want them to like do something. And I think sometimes giving someone this type of, you know, heavy information where they do want to be

supportive, you could also be allowing them to understand what you need for them. Like, Hey, I'm coming to you just for support and like love and just to be in a safe space. And I just wanted to share this. So they understand you're not asking anything of them to go do something. Do you think that's helpful? I think that's fantastic. And I love that you brought in that urge to fix, right? Like there's, there's nothing you actually have to do other than to just love me. Yes. Yeah. You're this, and now you know more about me. It hasn't changed who I am. Yes. If someone has experienced sexual trauma, what advice would you give to reclaim their relationship to sex and intimacy? Yeah, I think it varies a lot on the kind of sexual trauma. I work a lot with

individuals who experienced sexual trauma during childhood. And when that has occurred, it's really important to remember that you are an adult now, that you are making choices now, that this is a chosen act. It's a beautiful act of care and love for yourself and between two consenting adults that is really, really different from an assault or an abuse towards a child or a molestation, right? And in some ways, we can use that same process when you're working with any kind of sexual assault that may have occurred in adulthood, so that as we work through that recognition that that is over now, right? And I can now make different choices for myself. But because the body can sometimes still hold these remnants of the

past, the ways that we may be protected ourselves then, or clamped down or dissociated, or the kind of fight flight that still may live inside of us, I really believe that healing is not just the telling of the story. And it's not just the revisiting it in our minds. But it's also really attending to that impact in the body. And by doing so, it often can kind of clear out some of those barriers that may be showing up in our most intimate moments. One of the tricky things, I'll say one more piece about this, is that too often we're trying to work through our trauma in places that actually aren't the most supportive for that. So if you're trying to think about that traumatic

event, or you're reliving it in the bedroom, or when you're trying to parent kids, or when you're going to the grocery store, those aren't going to be the most supportive environments. So in trauma therapy, we have a tool that we call containment. And it's basically taking all of the yuck of that memory and we put it into a temporary holding place. Sometimes it's a waiting room or a file cabinet or, right, you get to be creative with your container, a box with a lid, but it gets held there until the right time, the right place and the right support. And that might just be within the therapy office. And when you're doing therapy, you had mentioned, you know, like it's not just mental, like, especially with sexual trauma, there can be this physical aspect that you revert to because it's like what it's, it's basically your survival

mechanism. Is there a certain type of therapy that you do physically for the person to be able to move on from that physical trauma? Yeah. So there's, there are a whole lot of different therapeutic modalities out there that help us work with trauma. And some of them are what we call body centered modalities and the body center modalities that are trauma informed are referred to as somatic experiencing therapy and also sensory motor psychotherapy. And there's some other trauma-informed body-centered work, but all of them are really attending to how did this land here? What's still lingering? How, in what way your kind of belly still be holding remnants of this or your pelvis or your chest or your throat?

These are some of the common places where this gets held. Maybe I never got to use my voice and ask for help or call out. Maybe I never got to reach out and feel like someone really held me afterwards. Maybe I'm in some way or another kind of still carrying that fight inside of me or that urge to flee that never got to happen. So these therapies work with the body, not only recognizing that the body holds the impact of what happened, but it also holds the urge of what wanted to happen or this instinctual nature that lives within us, that we can reclaim that instinct. And now in a very mindful way, the body can sense that now is different from then because I can use my

voice or I can very slowly, mindfully move my feet and realize I'm no longer stuck immobilized in that situation. Wow. Yeah, that is very powerful. I can imagine doing it in such a safe space can slowly allow you to reclaim that aspect of your life and seeing it in a different way, obviously with repetition, but that's really helpful to know because I think, you know, there are so many young women that listen to my show that I think at times there's such shame around the topic that even speaking to anyone about it, it's almost like your darkest secret that you feel shame for when it is not your fault whatsoever. Obviously there's, you know, a common belief is like like i should be over this by now what would

you say to someone who is feeling guilt or shame in regards to their trauma and in their recovery yeah first of all i'm so glad that you brought shame into the conversation it's a really important piece to name and it's very often linked to that misattribution of blame onto self and in some way or another protecting the other. And we get trained to do that. We get trained to do that in our childhood. We get trained to do that in our collective mindset in society and to be somewhat genderized here, but very often the perpetrators are male and they're protected. They're protected by the systems. And so even I've heard experiences of women who've called the police, the police talk to the man first, right? And do not actually protect the woman. So this whole thing of there's

something wrong with me, maybe I'm just making it up. And then this question of, oh, I should just be over this by now. I mean, I've heard people say, oh, well, you've had two therapy sessions. Shouldn't I be over this now? And family members have said that to them, right? Like what's wrong with you that you're not, that you're not past this. And the truth is, you know, having worked for over 20 years with individuals with trauma, there is no timeline to healing, right? And that, especially with sexual trauma and sexual trauma that often has either repeated because it began when you were a teenager or even in childhood, it's so important to be gentle with yourself, to know that this can sometimes take quite a while to unpack and unwind from, and

there's nothing wrong with you. So practice of self-compassion and acceptance are really those antidotes to shame. Yeah. I love that you're clarifying that because it's helpful to have open conversations to make people feel seen. We see you and we hear you and you are not alone. It's a very common thing that happens, but there is a way for you to live your life without that weight of shame as you obviously get help and you start to recover because this doesn't

define you. Do you think that forgiveness is a necessary part of healing? So this is a great question and you'll get different answers from different people. So my very clear answer on this is no way. I think that jumping too fast to forgiveness can be really detrimental to recovery. I've seen it send people backwards, especially because women have often prioritized other people over themselves. And so it is your choice. If you want to forgive somebody else, your abuser, whoever that might be, and you don't have to, but the only purpose for doing that is for you, right? For you to feel that you have moved on. It's not for them.

That's their journey, their trajectory of how they make amends or reconcile this with themselves. But the benefits of forgiveness, if that's something that you choose is that it's yours it's your way of saying you don't have power over me anymore I mean I've had young women write in and there are some people that have to still see the perpetrator right and you know if it was in a family dynamic whether you know when the holidays are coming up I know I get a lot of messages writing in if I'm so anxious to go home. And like, I think there's the forgiveness aspect. It goes back to the shame and the guilt of like, should I just forgive them because everyone else has moved on

and how can I not move on? Do you have any advice and like, just like something tangible, especially during these holiday times or whenever someone has to potentially see someone that did harm them, like how to mentally get through that. Yeah. I think that the other emotion that we're dancing around here in a really important way is anger and anger is a fantastic emotion. It is your protector. It helps you recognize what isn't okay.

It helps you set boundaries and ultimately it's supposed to protect you and help you say no so when somebody violated your boundaries and violated you and then you have to go be back around them I want to say like people say like wrap yourself in a you know like a blanket of light or something like wrap yourself in a blanket of anger like take your imaginary swords and your armor with you and, and walk in there with the knowledge that this was not okay. Right. You can channel a little bit of that fierceness inside of you. And, you know, if you've got little like imagines of like darts coming out your eyes or whatever you want to do, like, right. Like it's okay to

be angry. Even if other people think that there's something wrong with you, that you, that you're angry, it's a, it's a protection and you need it. If you're going to go back, be in, to be in proximity, especially in a family environment where maybe other people have bypassed that or made it okay, or welcome that person back in or fail to confront them, which makes me angry. Right. You're right. Like the word anger, it makes it, I think there's again, like that feeling of when other people are like, why can't, you know, let's move on. Let's try to, it's like, I now have control over myself and I am going to not allow other people to make me feel shamed

that this still is affecting me. If anything, what's wrong with you that you don't understand this. Exactly. Well said. Thank you. Can you explain what you mean by healing is not linear? Yeah. So if we think about a healing journey, I often think about it as either like circular or in some way, like more of a spiral coming out from the center, moving outward, and that we are going to meet certain landmarks again and again, your example of going home for the holidays being a perfect one. There are certain places that we might go that are going to confront us again, or where we have to revisit certain memories of the past or ghosts from the past.

And so if you are human and you are in some way, you know, on this journey and you're confronting those memories, you're going to feel a little bit of what we call a regression, right? Like, okay, I felt so strong in my therapist's office and I'm feeling really like I've gotten power over this now in my life. And I'm feeling like my relationships are reflecting that. And then I go back home and I feel young and I feel like I don't have my voice and I feel powerless again. And what is wrong with me? Nothing is wrong with you. You are human responding to those triggers again. And the other beautiful thing about when we recognize that,

oh, wow, I got triggered and I'm back in those old feelings. And being home is just one example. We can get triggered by a movie. We can get triggered by a look on someone's face, by someone's body language, by how someone treats us at any point in our lives. And so if we get triggered in a way, it's giving us an opportunity to go back and go, huh, what about this is still needing my attention so that I can then actually propel myself forward again. And so in a way we can recognize that that growth isn't so linear. I think of it like the seasons of the year and that there's times when we grow and times when we have to rest and times when we hibernate.

Yeah. I really appreciate that because I think that you can get really down on yourself. I totally relate to that of like being in the therapist's office and feeling like, oh, I got this. Like I am going to do so well when I have to do X, Y, Z about this or confronting someone or being around someone. And then when you get there feeling so depleted and honestly upset with yourself that you, and you feel not as strong as you thought you were when really it's actually the first step is like you even recognizing the situation, whereas maybe prior you were dissociating or whatever it was. And so like giving yourself the grace to know that it is a, it's a long process at

times, but long in like, it will be gratifying at the end. Cause you put work in yourself and you're all you have. And one of my last questions is if someone is listening to this episode and has experienced trauma and thinks that, you know, they may be ready to take the first step towards healing, what would you say to them as they're kind of nervous to begin this journey? Yeah, I think we have to, first of all, get rid of that stigma that somehow going to therapy means there's something wrong, right? It's actually a courageous thing. It's awesome.

And personally, as someone who is a therapist, but also a client, I really think therapy is a great gift to yourself. And so, as you said before, it's an investment and it's an investment in yourself, in your wellbeing. And that the more that you begin talking to others, you realize that you're not alone. You know, I think that the statistics say that it's one in three women that will experience some kind of sexual assault across our lifetime. And that is a lot, right? And so as we can recognize that our vulnerability is also our strength. And the more that we are willing to show up in that and commit to our own recovery,

that's where post-traumatic growth comes in as well, because we actually can shine that light and lead that way for others as well. When they see that we're willing to have this conversation, right? They're like, wow, wow. You know, Alex had that conversation. That's amazing, right? I can have that hard conversation. And so it's really about trusting that you can find the right people to support your healing journey. I can't thank you enough for coming on because it's, it's such an important conversation to have. This is not your fault. If you're listening and this has happened to you this is someone else that is evil and inhumane that made a disturbed decision that does not define you for the rest of your life and you have the ability to change your life and make it your narrative so hearing

from you and giving us these tools and just beginning the conversation dr schwartz you're amazing and thank you so much thank you so much