Factually! with Adam Conover - How to Grow from Trauma with Dr. Edith Shiro

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

The conversation about trauma is everywhere, and it seems like our culture is finally grappling with the concept openly. But here's the thing: if we don't get what trauma really is, on a psychological or biological level, it can be hard move past it. In this episode, Adam sits down with Dr. Edith Shiro, the author of The Unexpected Gift of Trauma: The Path to Posttraumatic Growth, to talk about what trauma truly means, the misconceptions around it, and the tools required to grow from it. Find Edith's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, trauma seems like it's the word of the moment, doesn't it? And it's not hard to see why.

I mean, between the climate crisis, the war in Gaza, the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, rising fascism and more, trauma is everywhere, not to mention the personal traumatic experiences that many of us have had in our lives. It seems like we're grappling openly for the first time with the concept of trauma as a culture. There's a desire now, maybe even a need, to finally acknowledge the vulnerability that we share as humans. And that's powerful.

acknowledge the vulnerability that we share as humans. And that's powerful. The concept of trauma validates the impact of interpersonal and societal harms and the effect that they have on us. It provides us a framework for understanding them. The shape of this conversation feels new and necessary, and that is really cool. But, you know, just like anything in our culture, the conversation can get ahead of reality a little bit in ways that can get confusing. If you pop up in TikTok, you'll see thousands of teens trained in therapy speak, talking about how everything from sleeping too much to getting hungry is a trauma response. And, you know, if everything is trauma, then nothing is. So what is trauma really?

Well, on the show this week, we're going to take a step back and get a deeper understanding of trauma and what it really is. What are the myths surrounding it? What does the popular conversation get wrong? And most importantly, how can we not just overcome trauma, but actually grow from it? Our guest today is going to take us on a fascinating journey through all of that. But before we get to it, I just want to remind you that if you want to support this show and the conversations that we have here every week, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you

every episode of this podcast ad free, and you can join our online community of curious, interesting people who love to talk about concepts just like these. And if you like standup comedy, please come see me on the road. Coming up soon, I'm headed to San Jose, Indianapolis, and La Jolla, California. Head to adamconover.net for tickets and tour dates. And now let's get to today's guest. She specializes in dealing with trauma, and her name is Dr. Adit Shiro. She's a clinical psychologist with a private practice, and she's the author of the new book, The Unexpected Gift of Trauma, The Path to Post-Traumatic Growth. Please welcome Dr. Adit Shiro. Adit, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to having a conversation with you. I'm really excited for this because I always love it when there's a word in the zeitgeist, a concept in the zeitgeist that you hear all the time and you hear it and you never quite know how to take it because you hear it on social media or on the news. I love bringing someone on who can tell us the truth about it and we can really have a detailed conversation about it for an hour. So we're talking about trauma, which again is a word you hear all the time. You are an expert in trauma.

First of all, just tell me what kind of work that you do and what have you learned about it? Absolutely. So I'm a clinical psychologist. I've been a clinical psychologist pretty much all my life. Even when I was in high school, my friends used to call me the school psychologist of all my friends. But really, one of the things that I really love about my work is that I get to see people

go through so much difficulty, adversity, suffering, and then transform it. And that's the importance of really looking into this word trauma, that I tell you, it's new in our vocabulary, but it's not so new in the psychology world, except that before Adam, like maybe 40 years ago, 50 years ago, it was only referred to as people that will come you know, people that would come from war, people that will go through huge accidents, people that had like very tremendous tragedies, like natural disasters, that was trauma. And then, you know, everybody knew PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. But now, right, one of the things that it's so important to really

talk about trauma and why I get, you know, I want to write about it and talk about it. And I've been doing that for many years is that it's an expanded concept, really. It's not just those big things that, you know, that's not me, that's not happening to me. Why are we using it all the time? Because it's referring to our everyday trauma, to our everyday experiences of life. Sometimes big T trauma, sometimes small T trauma, but it's really related to how we have our beliefs shattered for ourselves or the others in the world. So, well, what is trauma? Let's just break down exactly what you mean by it when you say it. Right. So, you know, the way I talk about trauma is anything that happens to us that shatters our belief system and for which we don't have resources to deal with. It can be something individual. It can be something familiar. It can be something collective. It can be a group. It can be a person. But it's something that shakes us to our core. shake us to our core and it really affects the relationships that we have with ourselves and others in the world. So for example, let me give you a collective example. When the pandemic came,

you know, for some people there was nothing, for some other people it was very traumatic, but why? Because the way we understood how the world works was shattered, was shaken, was like, wait, wait, let me, what is this about? Like, how come we can't live? How come I cannot travel? How come my grandmother's in the hospital and I can't go see her? What is it? How is it possible that governments don't know how to deal with this? Why there's so much contradiction?

Like belief systems that we grew up with or that we understood or how dynamics in the world no longer. And even our relationships, our intimate relationships at home began to behave differently. Our children, our spouses, our partners, our friends, some people lost friends, some people broke up, some people got married. So this is a true example of a trauma, a collective trauma experience that really had made people rearrange their lives, reinvent themselves, or begin to understand the world from a different place in order to overcome it. There's a lot of talk about trauma being a physical experience, though. I mean, the way that you just described it sort of matches my normal commonsensical notion of,

oh, man, that was traumatic. What a difficult time that was for me and, and et cetera, the, the emotional piece of it. But so much of the time when people talk about trauma now, they're talking about it as a physical thing that your, your body remembers. There's the concept of intergenerational trauma that is passed, you know, genetically in a way that you hear, I mean, how, you know, scientific are these ideas that trauma can be a physical thing? Absolutely. So this is not that trauma is a physical thing. It's that when you experience something, it's all of your self that is experiencing it. It's your physical self, your emotional self, your mental self, and your spiritual self. So, of course, it can be very new to hear Bessel van der Kolk say the body keeps the score.

Of course, you know, it's like a bestseller. Everybody's reading it. I've heard this book. I've not read it, but it's very influential. I know. It's influential because it's like saying, what do you mean to say that something that happens to me is not just in my head? My body remembers. Yes. And you know, when we talk about trauma, it's not, you know, one of the things that I say is that trauma is subjective. What does that mean? That I cannot tell you what is traumatic for you in the same way that you cannot determine what is traumatic for me. Like we have our own subjective experiences. Trauma is relational. Trauma is about the relationships that we have with ourselves and that get broken. When a child is being abused, when we're going through a breakup,

it's not the event itself only, but it's how the relationships around us are behaving. Because maybe when my breakup with my partner, I lose my friends or I don't have enough support. That's the trauma. Or I'm ashamed to talk about this and that sense of rejection or abandonment or not belonging is the traumatic piece of the breakup, you know? So these are concepts that are much more, have much more layers, many more layers, much more complex than just that.

And all of it that I'm talking about and I'm telling you is registered in our bodies. I love talking about intergenerational trauma because all of this stuff means that whatever I experience and goes through me, it gets registered in my cells, in my DNA, in my everyday behavior. And then I pass it on to my children, to my grandchildren, to my great-grandchildren. I'm a vivid example, let's say, of Holocaust survivors, right? From generations, refugees of war, of Syria, my grandparents. And even though I haven't been at a war, I have registered in my body that experience. And in the same way that I'm telling you very difficult things, I also tell you I have registered in my body a lot of wisdom, treasures, and, you know, beliefs and, and, and, you know, amazing experiences that

get passed on also from my ancestors into my children and grandchildren. So, you know, it goes both ways. I mean, I find this idea really fascinating and I think it's easy to dismiss as kind of woo woo. Oh, the idea that your body remembers these things. For me, I think about the fact that, you know, my mind is my body. Of course, these are not separate, right? Like I am a physical creature walking around things that impact my mind, impact my body because my mind is my body. My brain is in my body, right? And the connection between the rest of the body and the mind is one that we discover more about every day. And we realize that we are, in fact, you know, uh, connected to ourselves in every, in ways that we don't expect and connected

to each other in real physical ways. And it's fine to talk about it in an abstract therapeutical context, but in matter of fact, biologically, this is true. Um, but I'm curious though, because you said, okay, if say you have a, I want to know exactly what form the physical part of it takes, because you said, uh, if you go through a traumatic experience, you lose connections with your friends and family. That's a physical experience. I believe that because you're, you know, we're social animals and our social relationships have effects on our body. So that's sort of like a consequence of the trauma that has like a physical effect.

But is there something physical about trauma itself? Just the experience of going through any type of, does that make sense as a question? Absolutely. So let me just backtrack a little bit because we come from a culture that has separated the head from the body. When we, back in the day, the saying was, I think, therefore I am. That created a line in our neck that was like, okay, I only think and therefore I exist, right?

Right. You know, we know now, and we always knew more of the Eastern cultures, that that's a very fake division, that we are whole, complete. So whatever we feel, we express in our body, and whatever we lose a pet, we are bullied, we, I don't know, are not invited at a friend's party because, you know, and then we feel rejected. Oh, it's very traumatic. Oh, I have had that experience, that sort of social rejection.

Oh, it sticks with you for a long time. It's painful. And why? It's not just painful in your emotions, it's a physical pain because our body registers that as danger. We are wired to detect danger and to respond to danger because we want to protect ourselves. that we can identify where there's a tiger and where is the lion and where are we, you know, the fire. And then we react to that. Nowadays, we're not dealing with lions and tigers and bears, right? We're dealing with social rejection, isolation, bullying, social media, comparison.

And you know the list, right? Am I beautiful enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I accepted? Am I, you know, smart enough? Am I beautiful enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I accepted? Am I, you know, smart enough? Am I rich enough? Am I healthy? How many, all these things can trigger so much of our survival responses in our body that we're constantly registering that as danger. So our alarm goes off. And what does that mean? That means that our nervous system begins to react and say, don't relax. You know, you have to be on guard.

You have to be, you know, looking out for who's going to attack you, who's going to hurt you, what's going to happen. And so what do we do? Adam, typically we have four responses. And I'm sure you know this. The response of fight, flight, freeze. And there's a fourth one that some people use that it's fun. And I'm sure you've this, the response of fight, flight, freeze. And there's a fourth one that some people use that it's fun. And I'm sure you've used, you've heard this. What's the last one again?

Fun. And fun means like, it's like we are so afraid of the person that, of conflict that we are very complacent. Yes, yes, yes. We go along with it we you know we we adjust to everything that goes on because we are not gonna create conflict for nothing in the world so right so you know all these fight flight freeze and fun responses are not just physical responses they're emotional responses you know so flying means that i'm going to avoid everything.

I'm going to, you know, detach. I'm going to dissociate. That's my way of, you know, going away. I'm going to play video games all day long. So I don't have to think. I don't have to feel. I'm going to develop addictions to anything. Choose what addiction you want.

That's how we avoid the suffering or the danger. That's how we protect ourselves. But all of these are trauma responses. And we really live in a society, I mean, this may sound a little dramatic, but we live in a society that constantly is expressing their behaviors through trauma response. And it's being reinforced over and over. Because people that don't stop to think, that don't take care of themselves, that are not expressing their fears or their emotions, are not warning their losses,

but are on the go, or they're having all these addictions and all this consumerism, they're being reinforced. It's great. You're great in society when you do that, right? But this is all based on trauma. This is all trauma response.

And when you talk about, you know, your body responding to that sense of danger, like connects to stress, and stress is a real physical thing in the body. Being under stress, it creates reactions. You have stress hormones you have a stress response um it's been shown to worsen health outcomes right if you're under stress all the time i certainly have been in situations where i've been under stress for

many months and have developed health conditions as a result or at least you know symptoms that that resembled i mean i went and got an ekg once because i was like i think i have heart problems and they were like no you doing, you're all right. Your heart's fine. Are you under any stress at work? And I was like, yeah, I fucking am. I'm making the first season of my own TV show and running it all by myself and not able to sleep at all.

And, you know, I was having heart palpitations. So these things are, you know, again, the connection between the emotions in the body is really real. And a lot of what you're saying is very much part of the zeitgeist now, right? It's something that I see people talking about a lot more, whereas we didn't a couple of years ago. I see people talk about it on social media. I made a little joke in the intro to this

about how you go on TikTok and teens who've been to therapy will refer to literally everything as a trauma response, right, and sort of overdo it a little bit. So I wonder, what do you feel that our contemporary conversation that we're now having about trauma gets wrong, though, from your position as an expert? So one of the things that, you know, I don't want to overly criticize people that are overdoing it because the pendulum is going through that direction because it's been avoided and it's been not not taken care of in such a long time that now it's like everything is trauma i understand and not only that but i also want to respect the fact that when you are

developing your defenses to something that is difficult and traumatic or the stress uh that you're going through those defenses are useful because they keep you alive. They keep you going in some way. The problem with that is not the use of those mechanisms and those defenses. The problem with that is that we keep using them. We keep using them. And then at some point, it develops into all these illnesses and all these problems and all these physical manifestations of illness and stuff like that.

So one of the things, thank you for that question. You know, I actually write in my book 10 myths about this. One of the things that we, yes, one of the things that we think that trauma is, is like, oh, I have trauma. Oh, it's going to go away. You know, just give it time. The famous thing like time heals all, in my opinion, that's not the case. Really? It's not, yes, it's not about the

time. It's what you do with the time that heals. Because you can have a difficult situation, you can have stress, and you can have heart palpitations and you say, okay, it's going to go away. But if you don't deal with the situation and with what's going on, that's going to continue and continue and continue and continue. Say, no, time heals. No, time doesn't heal. It gets worse and worse and worse. Somebody is mourning and, you know, they're sad because somebody died in their family. They lost a child. They lost a parent. They lost a partner. And it's all time sealed.

Don't worry. You know, you're going to be fine. You know, let's just let. No, you have to work on your sadness. You have to, you know, allow for expressing those emotions. You have to attend to what's happening to you. You have to do the work. You have to really go through it, like dive deep into this situation so you can come out of it.

Because it's not just because time is going on that it's going to take care of it. So that's one big myth that I put out there for people. The other is like things like, you know, what I told you about trauma is subjective. It's like, oh, no, we all have this trauma. You know, everybody, let's say, that gets divorced is traumatized because divorce is a traumatic event. No, not necessarily. Some people are consciously divorcing or agreeing to separate, and it's fine. And that's not a traumatic experience.

A lot of people who get divorced are happy that they got divorced because their marriage wasn't good. That's at least some large portion of people who get divorced. They're like, I'm better off now. Absolutely. Especially if you do it in a conscious way. So don't assume that what people go through is what's, you know, what's traumatic or not. Right. Another thing that another thing that happens is that people think that, oh, if something good comes out of trauma, which is, you know, my topic that I love talking about, which is the post-traumatic growth, which is when people have something positive come out of an adversity or a bad situation, which does happen, and it can happen a lot. So people say, oh, that's just, you know, you go through something and it just automatically something good comes out of it. No, not at all. You have to work yourself to really go through it, really attend to it,

go and express your emotions and go and work it out and go through all the stages of healing. So you can actually come out on the other side and say, you know what? That traumatic experience that happened to me really allowed me to grow and allowed me to learn and make me a better person. That's definitely something that I keep saying, that it's not like an automatic thing, that people that actually say that is because they did the work and because they went deep into it and they came out on the other side. Well, I'm glad that you're talking about that at all, because I think that, again, when I see people talk about trauma, they often seem to talk about it as though it's some sort of curse, that you had a trauma and you're stuck with it, and that's going to dictate all of your behavior,

and you're going to have all these trauma responses, it's going to impact your health. Even the idea of intergenerational trauma is somewhat fatalistic, that something happened to somebody generations ago, and now it's affecting you today. So are your kids going to have it and you can't do anything about it because it's genetic? It seems very negative and hopeless. And so the fact that you are foregrounding here post-traumatic growth, I think is, oh, that's a breath of fresh air. Like I immediately want to hear more about that. Absolutely. And that's really one of the big intentions of writing my book and also the work that I do every day. Because it's like, trauma is not a life sentence. And I can tell you that not just from a personal perspective,

but from a clinical perspective and from what I see every day with my patients. Not only is it not a life sentence, but it's also, it can be a springboard for transformation if you actually know about it and take care of it and go through the process of doing that. And that's, I think, one of the biggest gifts that we can give ourselves and others and say, you know, I know you're going through something difficult. I know this is painful, but there's hope that there's something else. So, you know, there's a lot written about trauma. And I don't just write about trauma. I talk about what happens after trauma. It's in the aftermath that I'm interested in. It's like, okay, this happened to you. Yes,

we all go through different traumas, big and small, but what happens after? How do you transform this into the very thing that can take you to the next level, that can do a quantum leap in your life? How are you going to take advantage of the challenges that you're going through and say, you know what? I'm going to take this opportunity to redo who I am, to maybe to die in some way and be reborn in a way that it's like I've never could have imagined. And it's really, it takes courage in some way, if you think about it. It's like really jumping into the abyss somehow a little bit and say, I'm going to trust this process, but I know I'm going to come out on the other side, you know, completely, you know, in a much better place. You paint a beautiful portrait of how you can recover from trauma in that way. And I want to acknowledge that, you know, some people are unfortunately

have much more trauma than others, right? People depending on who, you know, where they're born, who they are, their family background, you know, et cetera, things that happened to prior generations. And, you know, it's, I don't want to portray that as a good thing. Right. And I also don't want to portray that as something that's completely under that person's control. And yet we still need that ray of light in how we think about it. And in terms of that, you are not defined by what happened to you, you know, and that every person has the opportunity to grow as a result, right? No, and not only that you're not just defined by what happens to you, but even at the physical level,

one of the most amazing concepts that we've developed in the science world lately is epigenetics. I don't know if you've heard about it yet. Oh, I know the word, but you tell me what it means. I'll tell you because it's one of my favorite things to talk about because it's, again, another ray of hope. I mean, I grew up, I don't know if that happened to you, grew up thinking, okay, my genetic information, right? What I carry, my genetic information, who I am, my DNA,

and what I've inherited from my ancestors, it's who I am. But we know now, it's fascinating that the genes that we carry in our DNA get expressed or not depending on the experiences that we're having in our lifetime. So are you going to use me as an example? Yes, I have so much information in my body about the Holocaust, about genocide, about war, about, you know, refugees. Yes, you know, that information and indicate my genes to express or not express certain information in my life. And then I pass it on to my children as well. So this concept of epigenetics gives us so much flexibility in the same that our brain has this

neuroplasticity of regenerating. So things are not really set in stone. So that's why this intergenerational thing, you can see it as a very fatalistic way. And what I'm inviting you to do is say, no, there is so much that you can do. We have so much in our hands that we can transform, that we can change, that we can rewrite in our bodies, in our information, the way that we behave, how we make choices in our lives, the attitude that we face, you know, situations, relationships and things. It really allows for getting inspired and having more of an intention in how we do things. Yeah.

And again, I had heard about epigenetics, but purely as biology that, you know, this is the study of how certain genes are switched on or switched off, whether they actually on the on the cellular level, whether they produce the protein that they're supposed to produce or not. That that can change throughout your life or or or that gene could have more or less of an effect. So this is like just, you know, straight up real biology, but you're putting it in a therapeutic context, which is really cool. So let's talk about how do we actually do this, right? You said you have to do the work, you have to process the trauma. I don't know if that's the word that you use,

but you have to go through the process and then you can grow. So what is the first step of doing that? Yes. So I, you know, I describe a five stage model, which I really love. And it's not just that an invention out of nowhere. This is what I see over and over and over with the people that I work with, with the groups that I work with, the communities that I work with that go through these stages. And what I'm providing is a language so we can identify it. So in the same way that we know, let's say the stages of grief, which I'm sure you've heard about, right? Like we all, everybody knows denial and bargaining and acceptance and all this stuff. This, the same, same here.

It's like, there's five stages. You can identify where are you in the stages and let's look at it and say, okay, if I go through this or when I go through this, I know that where I can come out on the other side or I can, you know, get on with the process. And the first stage, which is very important. People always tell me, okay, great,

but how do you get to post-traumatic growth? How do you start? They could say, okay, I'm traumatized. So one of the things that has to happen, which is the first stage, is going into radical acceptance. This is stage of awareness. What does that mean?

Is that you sort of like take a pause in your life after doing all those, you know, defense behaviors that we talked about and all those addictions and all those repetitions and always falling on the same hole over and over, having the same kind of relationships over and stopping and saying, you know what? Let me look at myself and see what's really going on. Let me just take a moment to look at myself in the mirror, maybe to pause, to breathe, to check my body and see what's really going on. And sometimes it comes with a lot of contemplation. Sometimes it comes with a shock. Sometimes, you know, I had a patient that a mother had a five-year-old daughter and she was in the park with her five-year-old in the playground and she was just sitting there. She came from, you know, her life was not so easy as she was describing herself. And she looks at her five-year-old in the playground and all of a sudden this huge memory comes to her and hits her like

a truck saying wow I remember when I was five years old and I was my daughter's age and and I remember my cousins and my neighbors were being sexually inappropriate with me and I was sexually abused but it was like something that she didn't even have recollection. She was so dissociated from that. And I'm getting like an extreme example to tell you like how, you know, you start this process. So for her, accepting that memory or allowing her body to say, you know what, I was no wonder now I understand why I behave this way. Some of the things that are the way I react, some triggers that I have, you know what? I was no wonder. Now I understand why I behave this way. Some of the things that are the way I react, some triggers that I have, you know, some disproportionate behaviors that have no explanation. When you really take the time to stop and say,

wow, what's really going on? And then you really begin to name this and say, you know what? I am depressed. That's really what's happening. I'm going through depression. I'm very depressed. Or my levels of anxiety, like what you did, you said, I'm so stressed. No, of course I'm stressed. I'm about to start my TV show. My heart is going right. My body's in react. That's really what's happening. Just by doing that. And just by doing that, you're already entering a stage of healing where you can really begin to look at it in the face. Can I ask you a question before you go through the rest of the steps? Because there's something I'm very curious about talking to someone who does the work that you do. Because you say you've

developed your five stages. Now, you said again, you're a clinical psychologist. Did I get it right? And so you're working at a very sort of high level of abstraction, right? You're talking to folks, you're helping them out, etc. How do you develop these stages? Because sometimes I'll read a book written by a therapist that's very helpful and they'll say something like, you know, we used to think that there's five kinds of grief, but we discovered a new one or something like that. And I'll be like, well, that's, you're not talking about physics. You're not talking about discovering neutrinos or whatever. Right. But you did, you did find out something and you said it's a model. Right. And so what I've always been interested in is how do we judge the, the, you know, how do you come up with these things and how do we judge the truth value of them? Because, you know, it's, it's, it's in a clinical setting, right? It's not as though you're, um, uh, you know, you're discovering it in a lab, right? So, so how do you go about developing these things and how do you know that you're on the right track? Right. I love it. I mean, there's, there's some, you know, in psychology we use quantitative research and we use qualitative research. So yes, some of this is in the qualitative lab. There's questionnaires about

post-traumatic growth. I've gone into different communities and tested and done some of that. But of course, my clinical experience informs me. I want to tell you something. Some of us in the psychology world can come up with suggestions or ideas or names of phenomenons that are happening. And then they change, they go around in the same way that maybe other hard sciences can do it as well, because hard sciences also can be hypotheses or theories and then they change. Yes. And there are some times in which, in this case, when I'm talking about this model

in these five stages, I'm not inventing it because I thought it was very creative to come up with stages. I'm describing something that I'm seeing over and over and over and over. And what I'm telling you is like, you want to call it different. I'm fine with it. I have no problem. I mean, actually, Adam, I have two names for each of the stage because it's not about the name. It's not.

It doesn't matter if it's called radical acceptance, radical honesty, awakening aware. It doesn't matter. But what matters is I'm describing a set of behaviors and a set of, you know, process like emotional and psychological and physical that are happening when the person enters this process. So I'm very, I'm very flexible. And you have seen people go through this. The thing is that I've seen, I've seen people go through this, repeat over and over and over.

Sometimes I actually, I'm in shock sometimes when I'm in the office seeing this, because some of the words that people repeat are exactly, it's like a script. Like, you know, I'll tell you, I'll give you an example. I have people that go through, it can be like the worst tragedy or not so difficult. They say, you know what? I would not wish this on anybody, but I would not change this for anything in the world because it has made me the person that I am. Now, this sentence that I just told you, not only that I've heard this a million times,

I checked with my colleagues and guess what? They heard it a million times too. Yeah. You see what I mean? So this is a real pattern. Yes. I think yes. And I'm also very open and flexible to revise it and to look at it. What I do think is important is to give language to what we're going through.

Because in the same way, every time I give a conference, every time I talk about this, I say, who knows what PTSD is? Everybody knows what PTSD is, right? Because it's the medical, clinical, negative, symptoms-related, you know, how we do so bad. Okay. But then I say, who knows what PTG is? And nobody knows what PTG is, right? And this is the part where I think that, let's say, positive psychology is also doing. It's like, let's look at what we do well. Let's look at how we thrive. Let's look at the things that actually allows us and help us to go forward. Not all the

symptoms that bring us down and all the illnesses and all the diagnosis, which yes, there are some years to that, but we're missing the other part. And that's why I come and say, let's look at the people that have done it well. Let's look at the people that can thrive and that come out of it. And by the way, this is not just resilient people, because that was one of the other myths that I wanted to tell you. This is not just, oh, yes, we're so resilient. That's another favorite word that is going around these days, right? It's like everybody's resilient. They were so resilient.

Their resilience is so great. these days, right? It's like, everybody's resilient. They were so resilient. Their resilience is so great. So I like, you know, I like pushing that a little bit and be a little bit controversial with that because resiliency is bouncing back. It's like, okay, I went through something, but I can bounce back and be my old self and I can recover from this and I can, you know, be exactly how I was. And for some people, that's great. We say, OK, good. You know, you fail and you get back up and that's all good and great. But what I'm talking about, this growth that I'm talking about, it's not bouncing back.

It's actually bouncing forward. It's allowing yourself not to leave things the way they are and come back to the way things were. It's to take the risk to move it to the next level. Yeah. And that is different than resilience. And sometimes people that are very resilient are not even able to go to post-traumatic growth. They're like, because they're comfortable where they are.

They say, okay, I have the tools to handle difficult situations. I have the tools to face difficult situations. I have the tools to face difficult things. And it's fine. It doesn't bother me. I'm okay. Yeah, sure. I'm okay. Yeah. So sometimes it's the people that don't have those tools. It's the people that are more vulnerable. It's the people that break sometimes in those broken places. Is that where we can really grow? That's where you can grow after something's been broken. I just want to return really quick to the, to the question of how you develop these things.

I'm so curious about that because look, I, I come from a sort of, I was raised with a, with a sort of scientific worldview, a harder scientific worldview. And I think a lot of folks have a tendency to dismiss work like you do and say, Oh, it's too fuzzy and fluffy. Right. But, uh, to me, I, and to some extent I understand that I just read a book about attachments theory. Right. And I thought it was very interesting. And the book is like, there's five attachment styles or however many there are. Right. And I, I listened to that and

go, I go, well, that's not the same thing as saying, you know, water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. You know, it's not that hard of a fact. Like maybe someone else would come up with seven. Someone else would come up with four. Maybe someone else would read this book and say, this means nothing to me. It's not helpful at all. But that doesn't mean there's no truth value to it. It's just a different sort of truth value. And I think it's somewhat interpretive, right? It's like you're looking at the behavior of people and you're finding words to describe it in the same way. Maybe there's a comparison between if you're describing art movements, right? You're not describing just paint and how paint molecules you're describing

something that humans did. You're saying this is expressionism and that's impressionism. Well, that's not a hard distinction, but it's a real one. It's not useful in every context, but we can get use out of it. And does that, does that sound right to you? That sounds very right to me. And I love that comparison with art. I'm an art lover and I'm gonna, I know you come from a family of hard sciences and biologists out of that.

Oh, you've seen my material. Okay. I saw a little bit of that. And of course, and I want to tell you my, my piece as a psychologist into the heart. You know, we need in our human development to have the heart sciences. And I am fascinated by biology and, you know, by physics. And I think it's advancing us as human beings.

We need it. We want it. It I think it's advancing us as human beings. We need it, we want it, it works, it's great. I also think that one of the pieces that we forget there, or that we haven't taken into account so much because it's very complex, is the human factor. Yes. And as you know very well, I'm sure, even the very scientific lab researcher that is observing a phenomenon or that is studying a very scientific phenomenon, like the very biological expression of a cell, influences that cell and that individual, that living thing, by observing it, right? That molecule gets affected by the human factor. Not only that, also by our own very subjective experience. And of course, here I'm getting into philosophy

and existentialism and all kinds of things, right? In which you say, how much of the observer is affecting what is being observed? How much of my presence is affecting the very thing that I'm studying. Yeah. Right? And who are we when we are, you know, talking to one person versus who are we when we're talking to somebody else?

And, you know, I had a lab teacher, because of course I studied biology also, that would dress every single day in exactly the same way. Because he said, the colors of my clothing affect the rats that I'm studying. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. So he would try to minimize the variables, right? try to minimize the variables, right? Because the least amount of variables that are being intruding into the equation, the more you can see the one thing that you're studying. But how much we can minimize our own human presence? Because the way that we think,

you and I can look at one color and say, okay, this is red, but you're red and my red might be different. And then we get into the whole world of psychedelics if you want. And, you know, like other dimensions of how we think about things and how complex our, you know, our senses are. And maybe we don't have just five senses. We might have a lot more than five senses. I mean, then we get, you see what I mean? We can expand this to other levels that might be scientific, you know, not so scientific, but, you know, taking into account the human factor, I think it's very, it's very real and it's not so woo-woo, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Well, I do not think it is woo-woo. I think that it's operating at a higher level

of abstraction than the quote harder sciences, which is a bad way to describe them hard and soft, but you know, the sort of the science physics and biology and things like that, that are sort of at a lower level of reality while human minds are, we're at a higher level of abstraction. Right. Um, and so we have different language and we talk about them in a different way. We use different tools to discover things about them. And those discoveries are, I think they're a different sort of truth, but it doesn't make them less true. So I just wanted to establish that for, cause we have a lot of, you know, like hard-nosed skeptics who listen to this show and want to sort of establish like when you're talking about these five stages, how are they developed and, and how do you think about them?

So thank you so much for going there with me um let's talk about once you have accepted your radically accepted your trauma um uh what do you what do you do next right so once you're there and you're saying yes this is the name this is what happened to me this is where i am and I'm having addictive behaviors or I'm having stress in my body or this is what's going on, I'm depressed, then you go into the stage of safety and protection and you say, I need help. I can't do this alone. And in my experience, doing this process cannot be done alone. It's never alone. We always are in a relationship. So does that mean that you always have to be in therapy? No, no, it can be somebody else. It can be, you know, a mentor that you had in your life. It can be a friend. It can be your family member. It can be a teacher. It can be a retreat that you went to. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you are held in a space that you are being listened to, that you're being understood, where you can express these things, that they don't just stay in your body and you're leaving it in your body, but you can let it out

in some way. And the important thing here, Adam, is not just that you express them, but that the person that is listening to you is validating and recognizing and acknowledging that for what you're going through. So for example, when you're in the doctor and you're saying my heart and the stress and the program and the doctor says to you, yes, I hear you. You're stressed. You're right. This is very stressful. And I hear why you can be so stressed. I would be stressed too if I were in your situation. That already lowers your heart rate right there. You know what I mean? So that's a super important part of this healing process is that validation.

And in the same way, I can tell you validation at a collective level. When we go through, I don't know. I mean, I'm going to get into a difficult topic, but let's say slavery. Yes. Slavery is not being recognized. You know, the people that have gone through slavery or oppression or discrimination are not being held in that place of recognition, validation and acknowledgement. Right.

They stay in that state of trauma. acknowledgement, right? They stay in that state of trauma. In fact, we have a lot of folks in America who like to say, oh, slavery wasn't that bad. It wasn't a big deal. It was all the slaves were treated well. The enslaved people were treated nicely by the enslavers or all these sort of dismissive things. Oh, the civil war wasn't really about, you know, the sort of denials of history that everybody knows. And that can continue to perpetuate the trauma compared with the famous technique used in South Africa, I believe, of truth and reconciliation. Right. Of having a group come together and say officially this happened. We did. We did the investigation. This happened. These things really happened to you. And then once we have truth, we can move on to reconciliation. That's such an important part of

the healing process that's been used in a lot of countries, not in the United States, unfortunately, around this issue. Thank you so much for saying that. That's a beautiful example. And that is exactly what I'm talking about. And I'm not going to get into the whole war in the Middle East, but you know that some of that is what's happening also. There's no validation, recognition of the suffering of the people, right? Yes. Yes, exactly. And when people are expressing pain, it's because they don't feel that the suffering that they are seeing or that they're suffering is being taken seriously. So validation, very important second step in overcoming the trauma. Yes, yes. And then we're going is being taken seriously. So validation, very important second step

in overcoming the trauma. Yes, yes. And then we're going to the third stage. And I'm not going to go into all the details because I want people to read the book, of course, because with every stage I give examples and exercises and all kinds of things. Okay, I mean, this is an hour podcast.

You're not going to give away all your secrets. Exactly. That's at a baseline. You don't have to tease us. You can give us one little hint though of of what how do we do the next stage yes so but the third stage is a new narrative so it's like becoming it's like how do you then after things have been into pieces or destroyed or you know a shattered how do you put things back in a way that have not been put back before how do you try things new you know new things like it's almost like trying out new custom it's like um okay i've always been a psychologist but maybe and also i'm also you know i want to try out how to want to be a musician because i love music and this is something that i've never tried

or you know i have a new group of friends or i go travel to different parts this is something that I've never tried. Or, you know, I have a new group of friends or I go travel to different parts. This is the stage where people read books, listen to your podcast and to everybody's podcast, you know, start to get into more spiritual stuff or, you know, they begin to open up. They begin to open up to new things and to different things and say, let me, the world has expanded.

You know, the way that I knew how the world worked is no longer. So let me see what else is out expanded. You know, the way that I knew how the world worked, it's no longer. So let me see what else is out there. You know, the person that gets divorced, it's all of a sudden start, oh yeah, I, you know, I didn't know there were other people like that or I'm dating differently or like my relationships are different, for example.

You know, so this is what happens in this new narrative stage. Then we go into integration, which is a fourth stage in which you really put all of this together. And I'm not going to go into all the details, but it's really integrating the old with the new and coming up with a more whole self. And then we get into the fifth stage, which is the stage of wisdom and growth. And that's the stage of post-traumatic growth. This is where you arrived in a place where you have a clearer sense of your priorities, when your relationships are more meaningful, when you are more like knowing what's important and what's not. and over, say to me, Edith, you know, going through this and being more healed now and processing my trauma has allowed me to see my life purpose more clearly.

Like now I know what I have to do. I'm more clear into what's important to me. And they connect, you know, to something else, maybe even more spiritual. They're more like they go then and help other people that have gone through this, or they are more active members of the community. Like something happens there, you know, for them that really is transformative.

And that's such a beautiful vision, especially by the way, I love when you talk about the new narratives piece, that sense of there being more possibility in the world than you thought there was. I'm right now, you know, at an age where I'm sort of starting to have similar feelings, right? I'm like, oh, wait, there's more. I thought my life would be on this track and I achieved a lot of it. Some of it I didn't, you know, and here I am. And is this what the rest of my life is going to be like?

And then things start happening like, oh, wait, no, there's something. There's new possibility in the world, right? That's one of my favorite feelings. Whether it's I'm learning about something new, I'm doing something new, I'm meeting new people, I'm picking up a new hobby, I'm traveling, I'm discovering forms of freedom I never had before. Such an important part of life is to, is to keep, you know, turning over that soil and discovering new possibility. Absolutely. And I wonder, I wonder, Adam, and you know, you don't have to talk about this, but the fact that all of your family has been into the, you know, the sciences, into the,

I think you say that, no? Yes, I do. So something must have happened and, you know happened for you to explore maybe or to talk that has made you say, I'm not going to go down that route, but I'm changing. There's something that maybe was not so pleasant and maybe that's a lot of some suffering, some pain there that has told you, I'm going to break from this and I'm going gonna allow myself to explore all these other possibilities all these new narratives I'm not gonna repeat what my some of my what my family is because that comes from some trauma I guess or some pain or something something well came from I had I had attention deficit disorder in college and I was not able to study anything hard enough in order to go to grad

school that's that's what happened and I started to grad school. That's what happened. And I started to do comedy instead of doing what my family had done. But that attention deficit disorder might have been something else. It might have been, you know, I don't believe so much in all of those diagnoses sometimes because sometimes it's that you were so creative. You were such a creative, you know, your imagination was amazing. Maybe you had other skills that were not so accepted

in your very structured school or the expectations that you had in your whatever family or teachers. And then that turns and then maybe you suffer from that, from all that, like, you know, not allowing yourself to express like that. And then that turn into you saying, you know what, I'm handling into from another in another way. I'm taking this and I'm going to a different route and I'm exploring different possibilities and I'm growing from this. So look what you have done, let's say, with the trauma that you went through. Sure. I love that framing because it means I've already grown. I already did it. I didn't even need to read the book. I did all the post-traumatic growth. No, no, because it keeps going. It keeps going. Oh, there's more to do. There's been many traumas. I'm having traumas

every day, you know. We all are. But I want to say when we get to, you know, the end of this and you described having the growth, I want to talk about how possible this really is, because I think for so many people, you know, especially people who have, who have suffered a serious trauma in their lives, you know, some, you know, violence or assault or, you know, some really, really, really bad things happen to people, you know? And I imagine, I know people who are just been struggling for years. I'm still trying to deal with this thing. You know, I'm trying to, I'm going to therapy. I'm doing X, Y, Z, like, oh, I'm just trying to get over it. And you can feel like you're just rolling the boulder up the hill forever, you know,

and that you'll always be working on it. You'll have to keep going to therapy forever. You'll never quite get over it, whatever it was. And you're saying, no, actually you, you really can heal and repair and grow. And you've seen people do it. Is that right? Yes. And I'm not saying it's easy.

I really am. I'm not saying this is easy. This can take time. This is not an automatic thing. This is not a pill that you just take. And it does require sometimes a community of people to help. You cannot do this by yourself. And sometimes it's harder than others.

I completely agree. And sometimes it takes someone or many people to help you realize what are those traumas that are keeping you going. And, you know, a lot of the times is even people that have gone through therapy and help have not dealt with the original traumas and the things that the really, really painful, broken things that might be even before they could even express where they are. And that requires some radical interventions. So, you know, the whole field of psychedelics, for example, is one in which it has broken into that path and it has allowed some people to really heal faster. I was going to ask you about psychedelics, which is something we discussed on this show before. Yeah. In what ways are psychedelics useful for healing or treating trauma?

So in my experience, I mean, I'm not a provider of psychedelics, but I've worked with, you know, with colleagues and with patients that have gone through it and I recommend it when it's necessary. Very, very important. I want to clarify that I am talking about psychedelics in a clinical setting in which there is a pre-preparation, an intention, a clear setting, a post, youation of the use of psychedelics and a work that has to be continuing and professional and ways and allow for associations in the brain, they can break patterns that have been within the body for so many years that it's so hard to break or it will take a lot of time or a lot of work for somebody that really to get out of that repetitive pattern of behavior, especially when it's depression or anxiety or really

severe PTSD. And psychedelics have proven to do something about the expansion of the neural pathways and the breaking of the neural pathways in the brain and rewiring in a different way that has allowed people to really come out of it. And it's such a blessing. I've seen it with my patients individually. I've worked with it with couples in which the communication of the couple becomes so much better, so much more expanded with so much connection and empathy that they can get the

conversation to the next level. So it really is a wonderful tool. I'm not saying it's for everybody, but it's an example of how to really work with it. There are other things like EMDR. everybody, but it's an example of how to, how to really work with it. There are other things like EMDR. It's a great tool. I've heard wonderful things about EMDR. Um, I know folks who have used that to great success, but yeah, psychedelics, I've heard this version of it before that it's sort of, you've got all these, these deep down pathways, these ruts, these grooves in your mind, you know, in your neurology and in your, you know, your sort of more functional psychology, just the way your brain works. And psychedelics sort of, they scramble stuff up a little bit. They sort of throw,

you know, like, like, I don't know, toss the cards up in the air, right? And then you got to reshuffle the deck. I don't know what metaphor I'm using here, but the idea is that it's sort of, or maybe turning up new soil is a metaphor I used before, right? Where you have an opportunity to relay some new patterns down and code some new patterns in there. And that makes sense for the things I've heard it treating before are PTSD and addiction that, you know, where you've got this really dug in loop, right? I feel good if I drink this, I'd feel bad if I don't. And then it gets deeper and deeper and deeper. And I see trauma as being part of the, as being something similar. It's too deep and you need to shuffle things. Exactly. But you know, this is, for example, with addiction, that's a great example

because in our medical world, what gets treated is a symptom of the addiction. It's like the alcoholism or the drug addiction or the dependency on gambling or shopping or on sex, on pornography. But what psychedelics do and what the work that I do also, it's like, forget about the symptoms. It's the root of what's happening, the source that is creating all that pain and suffering that is making you, you know, go grab the bottle or get into that to like numb the pain, just numbing the pain and dissociating from the pain.

And until you deal with the pain itself, things are not going to change. And, you know, I can tell you all these things that you've probably heard. It's like the medicine is in the pain. The breakdowns is the breakthroughs. It's like when you really dug deep into that place that hurts the most is that when you get the most out of it and when you actually can come out of it. And what happens is that a lot of people have such sophisticated ways of defending against the pain with addictions and with behaviors and with codependency and with all kinds of intellectual, rational things that they don't deal with the pain ever. And they

cannot come out of it because they don't stop because it's not easy. It's not an easy thing to do. And a lot of the times it's painful, scared, scary, difficult. And, but you know, that's, you know, in my, in my, in my opinion, this is where the, the, the answer is and where, where things can go. I love talking to you about this, but we have to sort of start to bring it in for a landing here. I hope that this conversation has given, you know, some folks listening a, you know, a view of, of maybe, maybe some ways that they can dig up some old patterns and lay some new ones and, and given people a sense of possibility. You've certainly given it for me.

What is the first step for folks apart from buying your book, which of course I know you'll want to say. Of course I want to say that. Where do people like in folks' lives, right? If there are folks like, I want to go through this process regarding trauma, what is the, where should they turn? So for sure, you can find me on Instagram at Dr. Edith Shiro. My website, very important, www.dredithshiro.com. And really even, I mean, I, of course, see patients. I do groups.

I attend to people. I give conferences. But also helping others and finding other ways to really start this process of healing. Sometimes you do it individually. Sometimes you do it in groups. Sometimes you do it in different matters that is not just therapeutically. So for sure, the book helps because it gives you tools and it gives you skills that you

can already begin to use. And then you can find me. I can guide you into where to go, what to do, and also refer you to other people and other esteemed colleagues that are doing the work as well, for sure. Well, because I've had the experience before of buying a book like yours and being like,

this book is going to change everything. Then I read the book and then I don't do the thing that's in the book. You know what I mean? That's a small detail. It's putting into practice. That's the difficult part. But well, the book, of course,

you can pick it up at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com. There's books that's right behind me here called The Unexpected Gift of Trauma. I hope folks check it out. Adit, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been absolutely wonderful having you. The same, the same.

It's really amazing. And thank you for bringing such important topics to light. I always appreciate people that are doing this and you have been amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Adit. Well, thank you once again to Dr. Adit Shiro for coming on the show. I hope you loved that conversation as much as I did. You can pick up her book at factuallypod.com slash books. Your purchase there supports not just the show, but your local bookstore as well. If you want to support this show directly and all of the incredible conversations that we bring you

week after week, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name on this very show and put it in the credits of all my video monologues on YouTube. This week. I want to thank Stuart Pym and Jasmine Andrade. Thank you so much for supporting the show and keeping it as a free service for all the fine folks who listen every week. I want to thank my producers, Tony Wilson and Sam Roudman, everybody here at HeadGum for making this show happen. Once again, you can find my tickets and tour dates at adamconover.net. Thank you so much for listening or watching. We'll see you next week on Factually.