Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Healing Trauma with Somatic Therapy

Episode Date: March 22, 2023

On this week’s episode of the Language of Love session, I sat down with Amanda who’s going through some heavy life changes and is struggling with organization and clarity. A veteran of the armed forces and a recovering alcoholic, Amanda is a fighter, an abuse survivor, and a mom with two beautiful children. She’s seeking some help putting her life back on track. In this session, we talk about: How somatic therapy can be beneficial for Amanda in her recovery from sexual and emotional trauma. Looking to her kids for motivation and how her healing can give her children a better life. How to build trust and a relationship with your body. Specific action steps that I lay out, the A, B and C to healing from trauma and abuse. This must-listen episode is a very emotional one, as Amanda recalls the abuse and trauma she has endured. Listen as I share specific action steps she can take to heal, and lay out a path that she can follow to reach full recovery. Visit my website and check out my books on love, sex and relationships. Be sure to tune in regularly to The Language of Love for great discussions and thought-provoking conversations with accomplished individuals and experts offering invaluable advice on how to love and be loved better.  Mentions: You Are Not Crazy, You Are Just Ascending by Dr. Laura Berman https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Not-Crazy-Just-Ascending-ebook/dp/B0BMLDSXD8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is.

It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Amanda, what is on your mind? How can I help? Laura, I'm going through some changes in life and a lot of it is just heavy, really heavy. And just trying to discern the nutrients within it all because sometimes it just feels hard to organize when you're going through the thick of it. But I recently got out of a rehabilitation center for my alcohol abuse about a year and a half ago.

And that was just the starting point for some big work that had to be done. So I'm trying to remain steadfast and not only staying with my sobriety and my recovery, but also having to uncover years of the things that I was having to numb out. So that's where I'm currently at. It's just in the thick of things. Yeah. Well, first of all, congratulations, because that's no small feat. A year and a half of sobriety, that's a lot to be proud of.

How old were you when you started drinking? Not very healthy relationship with alcohol. I would say I started drinking daily probably around 10 years ago or so. Shortly after the birth of my daughter, we moved to Hawaii, and I was a functioning alcoholic where I had my several glasses of wine, and it really didn't impact me in a negative way, or at least so I thought, until we moved back to Virginia about five years ago. And then the drinking really kind of picked up as the stressors of life continued to mount on. So probably 10 consistent years of heavy drinking. Well, the reason I ask, and I'm sure you know this because I know a lot of recovery programs, most hopefully recovery programs teach this now. And this is good news for you because it wasn't, you were an adult basically and a mother when this started for you. But basically what happens, and this is important to understand based on your regarding your question of like how to move through this really difficult time sober when there are a lot of stuff that's been buried by the alcohol, obviously is going to be front and center now.

Because for a lot of people, I would say almost all people who fall into addiction, basically their development, their psycho emotional development gets arrested there. Right. So if you started drinking when you were 15 and now you're 30, you are emotionally and psychologically still a 15 year old. And so that's really important when you're thinking about moving through recovery, because the amount of resources psychologically and emotionally that you have, the internal resources, the awareness, the perspective, all of that is frozen in time until you do the work to catch up with yourself. So the fact that you started drinking, I don't know how old you were in your 20s, let's say, you look pretty young to me. 34. OK, so you were 24, right? So you were basically an adult, but a much younger adult than you are now. So that's good news, right?

Because that means that you were already functioning in the world as an adult when you became temporarily arrested in your development. But can you tell me a little bit about, you don't have to go into tremendous detail and you don't have to go into any detail if you don't want, but what are the core wounds and traumas that the alcohol served to repress you needing to be with? Well, there was some sexual trauma and abuse, and I really have very little recollection of many memories growing up. I do not recall anything, but looking back on my personality and emotional self in my younger years, I carried around a lot of weight for a long time. And I'm not quite sure what that is exactly attributed to, but there was sexual abuse from a family friend.

And I lived in a pretty tense home environment. What age were you when? I was 15. And I did not tell anybody for a couple of years until I found out that that person was marrying somebody with a child around 14. And I brought it up and we went to trial. And that was a pretty traumatic thing to go through. And then that caused, well, I don't want to say it caused, but my parents didn't see eye to eye with how it was handled.

I mean, my dad, when he found out, drove across state lines and was arrested for having a loaded weapon across state lines. He had a felony, lost his job. My parents separated. So the sexual abuse was one trauma, but then what, what proceeded was years of, of the unraveling of my, my nuclear family at home. And, and it really wasn't talked about in depth. But there was a constant tension that surrounded it and it created a wide array of subsequential. Yeah. And was your mother supportive of you? Both parents were very supportive. I think that she had a lot of resentment towards my father for taking action that affected our entire family.

And I can totally, absolutely, as a parent now, I can understand his mentality. He wasn't a very present father at home, and he was at times verbally abusive, but I never questioned his love for me. And I can only imagine as a father hearing that news and how he would react. And when you moved back from Hawaii, did you move back to your hometown where your family was or and where the abuse happened or were you living somewhere else? No. So this happened in New Jersey where my mom's family is from. I currently live in Virginia Beach. So we did. I'm a Navy family. So we moved to Hawaii. We got stationed in Hawaii and then moved back to Virginia. So fortunately, I don't have a whole lot of I don't go to New Jersey anymore. So you didn't go back to the environment, which is helpful. So it's interesting to me that this happened to you when you were, let's say, 15, and then you pressed charges, you said, a few years later, right, when you were still pretty young, and you went through that whole trauma, and then you were okay for several years, it sounds like. I mean, for the most part. Yes, I had an unexpected pregnancy with my husband, with whom I'm currently separated.

And that was almost a gift of a different survival mode where I was able to dive into an unexpected situation that turned out being, you know, a wonderful miracle in my life. I was 21 when I found out I was pregnant. I had known him for only a couple of weeks at that point. We were in a really rigorous course, became friends very quickly, found out we were pregnant before we were even dating. So it was a few years of having to grow up overnight, take care of this child. And for the first few years, we were really a dream team. Against the odds, we sort of built this life, created this life.

And before I knew it, when we had established ourselves, it feels like a lot of subconscious things started to surface that was forcing me to go back, turn around and heal. And I knew that I had known that I was an alcoholic and unfortunately had to let a few balls in the air drop before I could recognize that I needed help, COVID being one. Join the recovery world. Every single person who's recovered has had to go through that. But I think what's really interesting about what you're saying and important for what you're going through now is that if I understand you correctly, yes, there were some sort of a predisposition to rawness, let's just say. having grown up, my sense is that this is not, I've never met him. I'm not diagnosing him. I'm just using my gut and my experience and my instincts and what you're telling me that your dad is a great guy, but a narcissist, right? So he could be emotionally abusive and reactive and

self-absorbed and distant. And when push came to shove and someone hurt one of his own, his children or extension of him. And so, of course, he's going to be protective and maybe not think through the consequences and maybe not really even care about the consequences because he's just focused on what he needs in that moment, full of rage and despair over and maybe even guilt over the ways he didn't protect his daughter. Now he's going to, right? When you're raised in an environment with that, where there is emotional abuse, you don't learn that it's okay to be with emotion. You're not allowed to have emotions. You're not allowed to have reactions because you kind of have to walk on eggshells, right? So you learn early to repress. It's what helps you survive. You know,

not that he would have physically abused you had you spoken back to him or had emotional needs or didn't squelch your feelings. But the way a child's mind thinks, it's so petrifying to be raged at or to be belittled that you're filled with terror. It's as scary to the child who's experiencing emotional abuse as physical abuse is to the child of the same age who's experiencing physical abuse, right? It's just petrifying and terrifying. And so that was kind of your baseline. And then you go through this sexual trauma and you squelch it and repress it and don't tell anyone. And then you see this abuser and you're like, okay, now, which is such a beautiful thing to do such a brave thing to do, you know, to step up and be like, okay, now the abuser's marrying

someone with a kid the same age. Like I got to say something. And then you finally express and then the whole world blows up on you as a result, not by any fault of your own, but still you were the catalyst or your coming forward was the catalyst. Not that that makes it your fault, but the way you were raised, you would have experienced that as your fault. And so then you're in the middle of that and maybe one or two years pass and you're just kind of still repressing, repressing, and then I'm pregnant. So now I'm going into survival mode and I'm rising to the occasion and I'm in triage, you know, and I'm making it all happen. And then finally, when you finally rest and there's no more distractions and you're no longer in survival

mode. And this is what we see time and time again with recovered memories of abuse. They come up at that point when you finally are in a safe place or all those old feelings that you were repressing the crap out of, out of habit and in order to survive and in order to just deal with the highest priority of the moment because you've got a soldier on, you know, it all starts to come out. And because you didn't have the internal resources, because no one ever taught you and you weren't allowed to develop them in your house or practice them in your house, because you didn't have the internal resources of resilience and self-expression and emotional processing and moving with emotions and exploring emotions, you had no idea what to do with everything coming up. So what do you do? You're numb. And then in comes the alcohol. And this is probably sharing a bit much, but I think that one of the turning points is I work for the military and as we would go on work trips, my drinking escalated. And back in 2019, after seven years of marriage, there was a drunken infidelity on my end that I didn't even recall.

And so not only did the things that I was numbing cause my own pain, but it also created hell for my husband. And now he's in the midst of his own, I think, wounded child. And I'm not so sure that he's ready or willing to address that head on because I'm still sort of the villain. And I accept that it didn't happen in the vacuum. But one question I do have for you, because this is something that I feel very shameful about, is that when I woke up the morning after and could put two and two together that I had had an affair on my husband, I was absolutely mortified and all of the things. And within the same 24 hours, something clicked where I felt euphoric, and I didn't care anymore. And it was exciting, and I let it continue for the rest of the duration of my trip without care about what devastation it would cause. I mean, this is a three, four-year, going on four-year story now, but I don't understand my psychology of having inflicted so much pain and terrible choices on a family that I built from the ground up. And I still to this day can't articulate what was going on in my body and mind. I've never had a very close connection with my body. You went on a binge.

That's all that happened. You went on a binge. replace the sex you had with that person with alcohol in your mind. That's what you did. You're like, fuck it. I've already had four drinks after being sober for so long. I mean, I know it was a lot worse than that, but just as a metaphor, follow me, work with me for a second, right? Like let's say right now today or whatever, or someone who's in recovery and has been really working their recovery and sober for a while. And then something happens and they just have a week moment and they have a drink and then another drink and now they're buzzed and they're full

of self-loathing and disgusted with themselves. I'm not saying they deserve that. That's just what the addict does. And then they say, well, fuck it. Bring on the Coke. Where's the next bar? Who's with me? Like, just fuck it. I'm already here. I'm an asshole. I'm a loser. What's the point. And they just move into full on self-sabotage. And there's freedom in that. Because now once you say, forget it, it's a false freedom. It's a freedom you pay for later. Right. But in that moment, you're like, I'm already so fucked up instead of trying to like beat up on myself and try to pull this back from the brink and undo it, which I can't do. Screw it. My life's over anyway. Right. So I might as well. And you were probably also drunk when you made that decision.

And you continued to be drunk the entire time you kept making that decision for the rest of the trip, right? It wasn't like you had days of sobriety where you were slow dancing with this affair, you know, and enjoying like you were wasted most of the time. And then you just after that, maybe for the times you weren't wasted, you were unconscious in a different way. You were disassociated, right? Because what's the point?

so I mean I only offer that as a point of explanation because I know that it puzzles you why you did that right but it makes total sense to me that you did that because it's typical addict behavior yes and I'm I'm at a point now where I've I've had such a a non-existent relationship meaningful relationship with my body and learning how to get my body to trust the spirit like everything else and i'm back to struggle which i guess is to be expected you disassociated from your body really early in life the sexual trauma was in my mind and i you know once again this is just i'm an offering obviously i don't know all the facts but the sexual abuse was both a symptom of your just you know of your family's entire dysfunction right nobody was watching somebody

was able to get in there and groom you because you didn't feel the support and love that you should have felt, you know, all of that, right? That the secrecy, the feeling that you couldn't tell until you had to tell, like all of that. And the fact that you were raised in an emotionally abusive environment and that that was allowed to go on, all of that made you from probably, I would say, you know, very early age just to survive. A child does not emotionally survive their childhood like that unless they just start disassociating. So it's one of the best and most destructive skills we have. It's one of the best because it's the way that we survive these times. Otherwise, we wouldn't survive them. But it's a problem because then when you're ready

to come back to life, you have to learn how to come back to yourself, right? So my guess is that You started disassociating super early in life and it's a really familiar and comfortable and normal place for you to be. And then the sexual abuse, like put a, to the third or fourth degree, right? Like once the sexual abuse happens, then there's even more disassociation. And then instead of coming back to your body, which is too scary and painful to do, if you don't know how to do it and you don't have support, you start numbing out and now you're finally done with all, all, all, all of that. And now it's time to come back to your body. And so what kind of therapy are you in for all of this? Um, I'm on a couple of waiting

lists. I was in therapy, um, and then left for rehab. And then when I got back, I'm not, I'm not currently enrolled with a therapy. I am in a couple of waiting lists, but I, I've been working for the military, I do have resources at command that I work at that I've been taking advantage of Bible study, just trying to get my hands on any material podcast conversation. Are you on a waiting list because of financial reasons or because of those are the people that take sliding scale or your insurance? Or are you on a waiting list because supposedly those are the people that you most need to see? I can recognize that if it was a priority of mine, I'd be in rehab or I'd in counseling right now. I am on, I went to try to find the most reputable places in the area

and I haven't, I haven't been persistent. So you did the, what my husband calls the bureaucratic move. I do that too, where I'm like, okay, I'll just send an email. I, you know, I didn't really follow through, you know, oh, this is the best place in town. Oh, you have a waiting list. Okay. Put me on the waiting list. Yeah. I can't do anything about it. Sorry. Right. It's like the red tape. You make your own red tape. So that's what you need, my friend. And I would say, forget the most rep. I mean, yes, obviously go to a reputable place, but, but I would say what you need because you're shutting down started so early and there's lots of layers to it that you need somatic experiencing. And if you listen to this show, you've heard me talk

about it a lot. And so if you go to traumahealing.org, you'll be able to find a somatic experiencing therapist in your area. It's like, honestly, one of the very best forms of therapy and healing for trauma, sexual trauma, emotional trauma, physical trauma, and even just not for trauma. And pretty much every one of us who tends not to be in our bodies experience trauma of one sort or another, but it's epidemic. I mean, most of us aren't in our bodies and we numb out. If it's not with alcohol or drugs, it's with social media or shopping or gossiping or whatever. You know, we all numb out to not be with ourselves. Some of us, if we're predisposed to addiction, if it goes too far, then we fall into, you know, the physiological and emotional addiction realm.

but listen, we're all either a soft or hard addict at heart. So you have to do that work or A, to learn how to come back to your body. B, to make it tolerable to be in your body. C, to learn for the first time in your thirties. And it, you know, I would say I learned around the same time in my life, how to experience emotions in a healthy way and how to have the literal experience of seeing that I can go all the way into the belly of the beast of my pain and feel it in a safe and held environment. And it will not take me over. In fact, the opposite, it will introduce me to grace. That's what happens. And after that 10 to 15 minutes now feel lighter and clearer and more peaceful and more connected. And like, I'm literally in my body.

Like you've never felt what it feels like to be in your body. And the few moments of whatever day you're in your body, it's painful. So this is a long way of saying nothing's going to get better for you until you do that. Every day feels like one of those awkward first dates with my body where we're making just small talk and it feels inauthentic and i i i do need to put more effort into getting that clinical help because i if i could do it my own i would have been able to do it by now it's out of my pay grade and no way in hell you can do this zero chip and who the hell what the hell are you saying that for is a recovered addict of a year and a half that you can do that that you're even thinking you can do it on your own you already know you can't do this

on your own you've learned that through recovery haven't you have you did you do your recovery on your own no i went through a 42 day in process inpatient program wonderful program called warrior's heart in the middle of nowhere texas and you did a meeting not that i needed a fence because again if it was a priority it would have happened but i as soon as i got home from rehab I found out my husband had an affair of his own and moved her in with her son and I so the holidays were going on I'm a single mom and I'm just doing my best to stay above water and take care of the kids and that is an excuse of why I haven't haven't pursued it but it should be number one on my list because if i'm not yeah because not forget you like obviously you're

someone who easily forgets yourself so let's forget you for a minute in this and just think about your kid and your friends and the people you care about but even just your kid you are accidentally communicating and teaching her how to do what you do to stay out of your body a b you aren't fully present with her even when you're with her if you're not in your body c all the little ways in which you're experiencing anxiety grief pain fear loss that are bubbling up in you all the time she is feeling because that's what you you know i don't know if you can remember but you felt that's what kids do. They are like hyper empaths. And so when you heal yourself, forget you and the benefits to you, you are giving her a completely different life.

You're teaching her and modeling for her resilience, taking responsibility for your emotional health, not just your physical health or your addiction health, but your emotional health, modeling for her, right? Like I have done with my kids as I went on this journey, like they would see me or I would say, okay, I got to go release some emotion now. I'll see you later. I'm feeling really agitated. Like just in these small ways, I know it's changed their lives because it is normalized for them, healthy, emotional release and processing looks like. Because if you don't do that, it goes somewhere. It goes one of two places or both. It either goes into illness in your body, inflammatory diseases and chronic diseases. It transmutes to that, all that stuff

you're not facing and dealing with. Or it comes out in an outburst or in an irrational reaction or in a not being able to get out of bed for 24 hours or not being able to make it to her dance recital because you're stuck in the car bawling your eyes out, right? Like there's all these different ways in which it comes out in a destructive way toward her. As most of you know, for the past several years, I've been on a pretty intense grief journey. And it's been a path of healing. I've shared lots of that healing with you and lots of the healing resources that I found. And I am so thrilled to announce that I am doing my first ever retreat for grieving mamas.

So if you or someone you love is a mama who has lost a child in any way, at any stage, at any age, I would love for you to come join me at 1440 Multiversity in the Redwoods near Santa Cruz, California for four amazing days of beautiful, uplifting community and healing. We've got David Kessler. We've got Paul Selig. We've got Catherine Woodward Thomas. We've got me. We've got body work. We've got organic food, beautiful rooms. Go to 1440.org.

Check it out. It's right there on the homepage. I really hope you can join us. So if your motivation to go and get help is only for your daughter, if that is what you need because you don't have enough love for yourself yet to do it for yourself. do it for her right and and my kids are that's 100 true and just yesterday i have i have a somewhat of an inside joke with the kids where you know when we're having to process a difficult emotion i always ask them if they would like to have a doula present or if they need to that they would

like to go through the labor alone but signifying to the kids and obviously in the age appropriate way that i'm dealing with a difficult emotion it could be from traffic it doesn't it doesn't have to be anything significant and then talking them through what it's feeling like as I allow it to process that's good to exit because I don't want them to I I spent my entire life being told or at least implicitly that you got to keep it inside you got to keep it inside and my my I have a 10 year old daughter and a seven year old son who are both very sensitive people and it's been incredible it's not their job to help me heal yes however it's been very helpful to have them around to to as a as an hourly reminder that I have two young kids that I'm writing on the slate

of and how they are witnessing me deal with challenging emotions is going to either contribute to their toolbox or it's going to give them an additional thing that they're going to have to process later on in life. And I'll be damned if I'm one thing that they have to heal from. Absolutely. And not only can you be one more thing that they don't have to heal from, but you can be a path to skills and tools, like you said, and a lesson that it's okay to ask for help. And who are the helpers? Find the helpers, as Mr. Rogers would say, right? Like there are so many helpers, find the helpers. And you have to do that for yourself. No one else is going to do it for you and do it for your kids, do it for the little girl in you who was never properly

supported. But I can absolutely unequivocally 100% promise you, you cannot get through what you've been through and heal without help, without the help of someone who really understands trauma and who can help you come back to yourself, come home to yourself and feel safe there. And when you do, then that's when things get really juicy and really a hundred times easier. And the traffic jams and the crises, while you feel them, are held so much more lightly. And there's so much more room for play and joy and expansion and exploration. And the good news is, and I talk about this in my newest book, in the book, You're Not Crazy, You're Just Ascending, but there's so much amazing, and you're ascending.

I mean, that's what healing is. It's an ascension. There's so much high frequency energy on the earth right now, just from the astrological stuff and the solar flares and the way the poles have shifted and the core of the earth has changed directions. And there's so many things that they've been able to monitor that the electromagnetic fields and the frequency of the earth has actually increased. Now, the reason that's relevant to this conversation is because these high energetic frequencies are so conducive to healing because they are pulling you to a higher, healthier place. But in order to get

there. So normally we have to kind of move ourselves up, right? And we release pain and trauma and toxic thinking and old patterns and we get lighter and we rise, but we kind of have to intentionally like do that. We are now being like pulled up. And so the tide is so supportive of healing right now. What would have taken, and I'm seeing this even in my work with people, What would have taken six months, let's say, now takes two or three. It's like everything's been supercharged. So this is such a beautiful time and such an amazing opportunity to take advantage of when you dive into your healing because it will be supercharged.

It is. And it's so interesting to see whether it's commercials, advertising, everything is based on trying to get you to take the exit, the detour before you get to that. I feel it's, it's, if you're feeling discomfort of any, of any type, that's not normal. Yeah. Fix it. And, and I've subscribed to that for so long where something is inherently wrong with me. I've got to numb, I've got to whack them all this because everything is telling me I don't

need to live like this. There's an easy button and I'm realizing because I'm the queen of back roads. I'm the queen of shortcuts and there is no shortcut to going through the pain. and the journey is a lot longer than i was expecting it to be and i'm accepting of the fact that there's no period at the end of the sentence you don't you don't reach healing and then it's you know often it would be incredible you do reach a in someone in your situation right or someone who's in a lot of pain or has experienced a lot of pain that's still playing at in their lives and in unhealthy ways, you do reach a tipping point of healing, right?

So just taking me for instance, I did for years and have done intensive healing work and trauma work and have come to a place where, you know, I don't really get triggered easily or at all. I can, I'm extremely resilient. I can deal with horrible things happening and, you know, be able to move through them with grace. And all of a sudden, a whole new layer of the onion will come up to be peeled away. And I'll all of a sudden recover like a crazy, toxic, horrific trauma memory because it's

almost like my system knows, all right, you're cool. You're you're really in a solid place. You can be peaceful like we were talking about. oh, OK, so it's time for the unconscious to unwrap another little present for you. Right. And then but now I'm fortified right now. I can move through that thing with the knowledge and the experience that, A, I can do it. B, I know how to do it. And C, it's not going to last forever. And D, when I come out the other end, I'm going to be even stronger and more healed than I am today. And then after a while, another frickin layer of the onion will be ready to be peeled

away. Welcome to life. Until we die, we're healing. But the good news is that you don't feel like you're feeling now for the rest of your life. You feel better and better and better. And it gets better and better and better. Not necessarily in like in a graph where the line goes smoothly up and, you know, you take a couple of dips, but if you look at the whole trajectory, you're going up and up and up. Absolutely. And as we're talking in the back of my mind, I do question why isn't it that I haven't prioritized getting back into a regular routine. And I think part of it is that there's fear around if my identity has been surrounded by pain, I'm a little bit nervous to mourn the loss because that's the only self I know. And as much of a hell as it's been, it's the only me that I have really known for a long time.

And so there's a grief process and not knowing who I'm meeting on the other side and the loss of ego. That's painful, too. Yeah. Well, you definitely won't lose your ego. No, I'm not in any danger of that. I've got plenty to go on. I'm not saying that because you have plenty, but I mean, none of us will lose our ego. But what you're talking about, there is some grief in there, but really what it is, is fear, right? It's in a general sense, it's staying with the devil you know, rather than the devil you don't know, right?

It's like, I don't even have a clue. I can't even conceptualize who I am without this pain. That's in a distance I can't see. And I'm so filled with anxiety as my set point, as my baseline, that I try to fix, manage, and control and predict everything. And so if I can't predict it, I'm going to avoid it. If I can't see the outcome and control the outcome, even though you can't freaking control everything, anything, but like pretend to myself that I can control the outcome,

I'm not going to do it. Right. And that's what you're running into now. There may be some grief. And I think the grief is really that little girl's grief of what was taken from her and that teenager's grief of what was taken from her. You know, there's many versions of you. There's one that's three. There's one that's, well, there's definitely one that's 15, but there's several in between like seven. There's all of these moments where you just stayed frozen in a shock bubble like we do when we're traumatized. And those parts of you are grieving because they were not protected. They were not taken care of. They were not honored in the way they are. They don't feel safe. They weren't allowed to have a childhood. They weren't allowed to be carefree.

They weren't, no one was watching out for them. No one cared about them. No one saw them. Like there's so much grief there that will come out just without thought. Like you're very smart. So it's almost dangerous for you to do talk therapy because you'll just talk around everything and you won't, it'll keep you out of your body. So that's why I want you to do the somatic experiencing instead, because you can talk yourself into or out of things, right? You've been sober for a year and a half. That's a sign to me that you are strong when it comes to motivation and self-motivation. when you can see the outcome and you know the goal in mind and you can systematically you know like you can do that really well i did years of therapy even while i was drinking and it would

turn into well how are you feeling about the things that i'm feeling about it's great to be cerebral about certain things but i'm a it's a defense at understanding my body i have here so you're absolutely correct that you know the therapy although it was beneficial in some ways I kept hitting a brick wall trying to intellectualize what you can't transcend it so there may be some grief and it is very natural to have fear but I can promise you that if you do this work and you come home to yourself you are going to finally realize how worthy of love you really are for the first time in your whole frickin' life. Really understand it. And you'll be able to access a higher level of spiritual connection and insight and information.

You'll be happier. You'll be more peaceful. You'll be more fun to be around. You'll be more engaged in the world around you. You'll physically feel more pleasure in your senses. it's going to be fun on the other side. We may not know exactly what she looks like or what she wants to do or who she's going to be or how, you know, but it's going to be fun. Not perfect, but a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it because any direction is, and I've noticed even the smallest shift in direction, you look back and it might be an insignificant degree, but you can end up miles and miles away of from where you were headed in the first place so i'm starting to see those shifts and really anchor into that small progress because i love immediate just like

everybody i love immediate gratification and i love to do the things i'm like this is this is a pot roast i can't expect to put it in the microwave and to have a delicious dinner it's going to require a lot of time and i cannot think my way through this no you can't thank you can't strategize and you can't intellectualize your way through this, but I will say that somatic experiencing in general, but especially during these times that I described works pretty fast. So you're going to feel relief pretty quickly. And then you're going to start getting to the, just to give you a warning, because I understand your personality now, then you're going to get to a point where you're feeling good and you're going to want to stop going

because you're like, why do I want to go in there and then go into my body and feel the shit when I'm having a great week and I've been feeling really good and I don't want to go there? That is a sign you really got to go. As long as your tendency is to not feel the hard feelings, if you can get away with it, you need to be in somatic experiencing. I mean, you need to be in it now either way, but down the road when things start to get better, as long as you are wanting to avoid those feelings you still need it I'm just telling you that in advance because I think you're going to want to stop no and that's going to be the first thing on my to-do list I don't know if maybe it's because I wasn't looking for that route but it doesn't seem to be a widely

advertised oh it's not aspect of of healing because I have been dragging me because I've been doing therapy for the years and years and I I didn't feel like I was making a whole lot of headway but the somatic experience I think that is what's going to make the biggest difference because that's the issue that I'm facing yeah reintegration and and having my body trust me again yes and you trust your body the two of you are going to build a relationship and there's I mean I'm a talking therapist or as my kid called my kids used to call me when they were little a talking doctor I'm a huge believer in talk therapy but it only will take you so far and then you have to start doing the somatic piece. And I'm doing more and more. I mean, I find myself doing more

somatic experiencing with people than talking because I just find it so helpful and quick and powerful. But it's both. Right. So you've already done the talk therapy. Right. You can understand everything intellectually. You get it. Right. There might be a few insights and there will continue to be insights and awarenesses and connections made down as you continue your journey forever. But this is the time to do that work now. So you'll definitely be able to find someone and they do work remotely as well, like via Zoom or whatever, if you don't have one in the town. But pretty much every town and certainly every city has an array of somatic experiencing therapists. And I honestly think since you're in the military and I'll get on my soapbox for a

minute. The military supports EMDR, which is pretty helpful, although I don't know. I feel like it's there because there have been studies on it and it is helpful to an extent. I mean, it rewires your brain a little bit, but it's more often tends to be used as a band-aid. It doesn't really fully help you get to the core healing. And the other is cognitive or behavioral therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy and those are extremely intellectual right like how are you thinking about things can you reframe your thoughts right but i do not see the military doing so far somatic experiencing and they need it more than any of us need it all the ptsd we have our annual suicide training that we got to get done on the computer

It's very systematic, and I know that everybody's doing their best. It's certainly not a knock on them, but you're right. I think that we're limited with the amount of resources, at least helpful resources anyway. EMDR was provided at the rehab that I was at. Very fortunate. I didn't see a whole lot of benefits for that first. She said, you know, you have to have a happy place in mind that you can come back to at the end. and I said I don't I can't think of a happy place everything every at that point everything

was making me feel anxious but yes I think that is my next number one priority is to get into some somatic healing and to learn the language of my body so that I can better communicate back and forth with it yeah because what I'm saying right now is there's just a barrier or communication barrier. And you'll learn how to do it. And then your default will still be to slide back. I mean, I just had a major surgery. I went into total disassociation and it completely abandoned my body because I was pissed at her for opening the wound and I didn't know how to deal with it. And I was traumatized. So I just left the building. And as soon as I realized that and how mean I was being to my body, how pissed I was and how like how in my mind I wasn't physically

doing punishing things to my body, but I was furious with it. I caught myself, I shifted, I moved back into my body. I, you know, I now like you just, you'll keep, it'll keep happening, but it'll happen less and less and you'll get stronger and clearer. So I'm excited. I'm excited for your journey. I think it's going to be, I think you're ripe for it. I think you're ready for it. And I think it's really going to bring you the final mile in your healing. And then once you do that, everything else will start to become so much clearer because you won't be trying to manage or run away from things. You'll be able to see things with more clarity and more proactively than reactively, if that makes sense, in your relationship with your ex

or your separated husband or with your kids and with your work and with everyone else. So check out traumahealing.org is sort of the national website. And they have a find a practitioner tab where you can find someone in your town. And keep us posted on how you're doing. Oh, I absolutely will. I absolutely will. All right. Good luck to you.

Thank you. York Yard for a crush