On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 4 Signs You’re Struggling With Hidden Trauma and 6 Powerful Steps to Start Healing Yourself Naturally

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

On Purpose has been nominated for a Webby Award - help us win by voting NOW! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2021/podcasts/general-series/health-wellness Chances are you’ll experience t...rauma at some point in your life, we all have: a breakup, difficult parents, injuries, or disease. But the emotional effects of trauma do not have to last forever. The memory of the traumatic events fades over time, leaving you with deep-rooted negative feelings you may not even realize you have. In this episode of On Purpose, Jay Shetty uncovers the common signs of hidden trauma & shares a few powerful steps for becoming a stronger you. Like this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally! Episode Resources: Jay Shetty | Instagram Jay Shetty | Facebook Jay Shetty | YouTube Jay Shetty | Website Achieve success in every area of your life with Jay Shetty’s Genius Community. Join over 10,000 members taking their holistic well-being to the next level today, at https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGeniusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Getting better with money is a great goal for 2023. But how are you going to make it happen? Ordering a book that lingers on your nightstand isn't going to do the trick. Instead, check out our podcast, How To Money. That's right, we're two best buds offering all the helpful personal finance information you need without putting you to sleep.
Starting point is 00:00:16 We offer guidance three times a week, and we talk about debt payoff, saving more, intelligent investing, and increasing your earnings. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them make progress with their financial goals. You can listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions. Like, can we create new senses for humans?
Starting point is 00:00:50 So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eugelman on the IHART Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Nuneum. I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bon vivant, but mostly a human just trying to figure out what it's all about. And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place and to really understand it.
Starting point is 00:01:25 We try to get invited to a local's house for dinner. We're kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party. It doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get back to you. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that often weighs us down the whole this back is the awareness that we can never erase our trauma. We never get a do over. So we feel like whatever we will try will in some way fail because that
Starting point is 00:01:49 trauma will always be with us. But it's not about erasing the trauma, it's about releasing it. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. I am so happy. How many of you heard the Willsmith episode that we just had on Monday? It was insane. It was incredible. It was a full one hour 45 minute episode or something like that. And the feedback from all of you has just been phenomenal. Thank you so much for making the time to listen to it, to share it on your stories, to talk about it everywhere. It's been absolutely incredible to see. And I'm so, so, so happy to see that so many of you
Starting point is 00:02:39 taking away so much from it. Anyway, highly go and recommend listen to it if you haven't listened to it already. And today we're talking about four signs you may have hidden trauma and six steps to let it go of what's holding you back. Now, I just want to give a big shout out before we dive in to the 15,000 of you that have left a review on the podcast app. It means the world to us honestly. And I'm going to read out some of these incredible ones.
Starting point is 00:03:06 So here's one from the beginner investor. Jay, I came across your podcast as I took the leap to start my own business and felt the universe was pushing me to grow. Your podcast has been a daily routine for me to keep me focused, motivated and grounded. You're truly walking in purpose and a true change agent. Thank you for sharing. Beginner investor, thank you from you. This is from Akafella.
Starting point is 00:03:29 Whenever I'm consistently listening to Jay Shetty's content, I find that my life happens to be in a good place. No coincidence at all. Thank you and your team for the knowledge and love you put out into the world. I want to give a big shout out to my team that's working tirelessly to bring this podcast to all of you. And this is from Sianna Miller. I started this podcast alongside J's book Think Like A Monk.
Starting point is 00:03:50 I finished the book this morning, but will continue using the podcast. It has helped me navigate growth during a very challenging time in my life, following the first near-death experience I've ever had. Even the strongest minded of us all find ourselves struggling at times for many reasons. And the sharing from people like Jake and greatly help us get through those struggles and find beauty in them. I highly recommend Jay's tools of helping you flourish wherever you're currently planted in life.
Starting point is 00:04:18 Thank you, Jay. Thank you for all your amazing reviews. They mean the world to us. And I hope that those of you who are loving the podcast and listening will leave a review for us as well. So let's dive in to today's podcast. Have you ever had the experience where there's something you want to accomplish and you've tried all of the productivity advice and you've done all the steps they say you should do,
Starting point is 00:04:43 breaking things down into smaller pieces, scheduling time for focused work, minimizing interruptions and distractions, and when you sit down to do it, you're blocked. You can't focus, or you find even more ways to stop and limit yourself. Or do you notice the same patterns and challenges keep popping up in your relationships? And you just can't figure out why. You keep over committing yourself, you keep getting into relationships
Starting point is 00:05:15 with people who are more takeers than givers, or maybe every time you start to get close to someone, you get scared and things fall apart. Now, there's so many reasons that any of those things can happen, but if you've explored some of those reasons or red lots of self-help books and work or relationships, and they just don't seem to be helping, it could be that the source is trauma. Sometimes we're aware of our traumas, we've experienced, but sometimes we're not. Sometimes our bodies and minds are holding traumas. We don't even realize. Today we're talking about how to uncover some of those unrealized traumas
Starting point is 00:05:51 along with steps you can take to begin to release them. Now, I just want to have a vulnerable moment and be open and honest with you. There used to be a time when I would say something like, oh, I never get stressed. I never get stressed. I never experienced stress. And what I actually was, well, I didn't understand this then, but what I was actually trying to say is that I don't experience stress mentally,
Starting point is 00:06:16 but I was unconscious to the fact that I experienced stress physically, right? I was experiencing so much stress physically that I wasn't even aware of it. I want to become aware of it. I realized that all the stress I didn't feel in my mind was just being stored in my body. And so some of you may find you experiencing stress in the mind and stress in the body. Some of you may find it either or the point is that trauma and stress finds a place. Its energy, energy doesn't just disrupt itself, like it doesn't just destroy, it needs to
Starting point is 00:06:53 transfer and move. So we have to ask ourselves if we're not moving that energy outwards, it has to be landing somewhere inwards. So that was my personal experience that I wanted to share with you because I too had that internal dialogue of, oh, this doesn't affect me. I'm strong enough for this. And as time's gone on, I've realized that being strong is accepting what we're feeling, not negating it.
Starting point is 00:07:20 And when I look at the studies, you know, according to the substance abuse and mental health services Administration 61% of men and 51% of women report at least one traumatic event in their lifetime Now there are many types of trauma Individual events to things that happen to families other groups or even entire communities Examples are things like natural disasters such as the 2004 tsunami or Hurricane Katrina or Australian or Californian wildfires. Yeah, we can also be affected by hidden traumas that can be the source of everyday challenges. And a lot of us don't realize like traumas could have happened when we were younger. Trauma don't have to be the external horrific event that we think they do.
Starting point is 00:08:05 Sometimes they can be what someone said to us or how someone behaved with us or how someone ignored us. One of the reasons it can be difficult to identify past traumas that are affecting us in the present time is that we think traumas have to be of a certain nature like childhood abuse or a terror attack. We think they have to be obvious traumas. For instance, I know someone who has a very young child was left in a car for a short time while his mother ran into the post office to pick up a package. He had been asleep and his mother thought she'd just be a minute, but there was a lion
Starting point is 00:08:39 and he woke up while she was gone. When he saw she wasn't in the car, he was terrified. He began to call for her, he felt trapped because he was too young to unfastened the belt on his car seat. He became frantic. By the time his mother got back to the car, he was hysterical. For some of us, these types of childhood events are ones we experience and move on from. Our parent is able to sue us, for example, and we feel safe once again. But sometimes these events become written in the memories of our brains and bodies as trauma.
Starting point is 00:09:09 A common and broad definition of trauma is any event in which we had the experience of too much, too soon, meaning our nervous system went into a state of overwhelm and we were unable to resolve the event. Typically, we're unable to understand and process the event at the time, so at least some part of us,
Starting point is 00:09:29 whether we're aware or not, becomes stuck in that trauma, we're unable to fully move on. Or that trauma gets stuck inside of us. For the person I know who had the experience with his mom at the post office, for whatever reason, his mother's reassuring says when when she returned didn't resolve that event for him, and so it stuck with him.
Starting point is 00:09:51 Many years later, he and his girlfriend had gotten into a fight over what she saw as him being possessive and smothering. He was content to spend every night together and would even feel anxious when she had other plans. The way he became aware of this being the trauma wasn't as obvious as this being a strong memory. He actually started meditating to try and deal with some of the anxiety and the fact that he couldn't sleep
Starting point is 00:10:14 and as he meditated more, he actually uncovered this event in his visualization. And this is the power of meditation. Sometimes meditations not relieving your anxiety first, it actually makes you relive your anxiety to understand where it's coming from. Some meditation will first make you relive your anxiety before it relieves it.
Starting point is 00:10:36 And that reliving allows you to experience where it comes from, why it's there, what you are struggling with, and then you can truly make a change in your life to overcome that pain. So I want to talk to you a little bit about the signs of trauma so that you can become more aware of this. One of the most challenging things about trauma is that we're often not able to remember it clearly or fully, at least not at first. And that's why it can be so hard to identify when trauma is playing a role in the challenges that are facing us in our lives. Trauma can have a way of camouflaging
Starting point is 00:11:10 itself, it can blur its edges, so it's difficult to discern, and that's one of the signs that you may be dealing with a hidden trauma that you're unable to track your anxiety, fear, or other emotions to a clear source, or that when you try and remember certain events or periods in your past, they're fuzzy or difficult to recall. Not remembering certain things doesn't always indicate trauma. Researchers say that the intensity of emotions at the time of the event impact how our brains encode memories. If an event wasn't particularly stimulating in any way, good or bad, it simply may not stand out in our memory.
Starting point is 00:11:47 Or it can indicate that our minds are keeping something from us, we're not ready to process. That's the genius of our brain in our mind. Sometimes we think, oh, I wish I knew about this sooner. I wish I was aware of this sooner. I wish I dealt with this sooner. But actually, you're mind in your brain and your life experience are allowing you to process what you need to process at the right time.
Starting point is 00:12:15 This is why I'm always repeating you're exactly where you need to be because we think you can't rush or hurry your rehab, your rejuvenation, your whatever you want to call it, right? You can't rush or hurry your rehab, your rejuvenation, your, you know, whatever, whatever you wanna call it, right? You can't rush your process of healing, but your mind and brain are becoming more prone to healing at the right time. As embodiment expert, Malah Madron says, when traumatic experiences are not immediately accessible to us, that's actually part of a survival response.
Starting point is 00:12:45 Our bodies and minds work together to sort of encase the trauma and shut us off to it because they know we're not currently equipped to deal with it. So it actually helps us survive and get to a place where we eventually maybe. She explains that frequently when we uncover traumas later in life, it's because some part of us perceives that we may now have the resources to begin to work with and resolve that trauma. That's for some reason the mind body intuits its time. Now, as I was saying earlier, that trauma is mind and body. And this is why massage therapists and mental health providers often say your issues are in your tissues, right?
Starting point is 00:13:25 therapists and mental health providers often say your issues are in your tissues, right? Response to trauma is a combined mind-body response, and so traumas can also become evident in bodily challenges. That's a second sign that you may have hidden emotional traumas. You could have seemingly unexplained health challenges, such as muscular pain, digestive problems, or any number of other health issues that don't seem to have an exact cause or source. A psychiatrist and best-selling author, Bessel Vandicole writes, in the body keeps the score, by the way, it's a phenomenal book you have to check it out, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies.
Starting point is 00:13:59 The pastors are live in the form of knowing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs and in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from themselves. Some of those physical challenges can come from some part of us always being on hyper-alert and that chronic stress can have health effects.
Starting point is 00:14:27 You may be thinking, Jay, I don't have for chronically unsafe in my body. It's important to understand that again we're not always aware of these feelings or we may be aware of one aspect of them. What I learned in my monk training to call the branches of the issue, we may feel emotions or body states such as depression, anxiety, and so on, but not connected to the root of feeling unsafe within ourselves. I'll give you an example. When most people sit to meditate in silence, inquire, they'll actually notice that they
Starting point is 00:14:57 might have some body pain or they might have a body ache. The stillness allows you to recognize the pain that exists, whereas when you're rushing, busy, moving around, you kind of miss what your body's actually trying to tell you, right? And it's kind of like with our family, our partners, you can't listen to them when you're rushing around. Similarly, you can't listen to your body or your mind when you're rushing around. And much of our trauma happens in childhood
Starting point is 00:15:23 because we have fewer resources to understand the world around us and to contextualize or rationalize what's happening. Additionally, our prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that deals with logic and helps us understand things rationally, doesn't develop fully until our early to mid-20s. Before that, we process our experiences more through the emotional circuitry in our brain, and we look to care-givers and others around us to help us regulate ourselves emotionally and process information and experiences. If you've ever seen a child fall and a parent gets up and runs over to them and yells, oh no, are you okay? You may have noticed that in many cases,
Starting point is 00:16:01 the child doesn't start to cry until they see the parent is upset. Unless they're legitimately hurt, they get the cue on how to respond from the parent. If the parent freaks out, they're likely to as well. With a trauma the opposite can happen as well, a parent might minimize something that was actually a big deal. And that disconnect between our own experience of something being confusing or upsetting, and an adult telling us it's okay or not knowing about it at all, and therefore not being able to help us deal with it can cause trauma or really amplify the traumatic event. A third indicator that we may have hidden trauma is repeated fears and often fears that seem irrational.
Starting point is 00:16:46 As a coach, one of the most common issues I see come up again and again is fear and relationships. And this can play out in so many ways. A client can have a pattern that relationships always seem to start out great, but as the commitment deepens, they start to feel anxious and afraid. Or they fear being abandoned by their partner, or they fear their partner will learn something about them that will cause them to not love them anymore. I mean, the list goes on. Typically, by the time they come to me, the client has experienced this pattern on repeat and can't figure out why their relationships always seem to end up in the same place or what's causing this fear. Other fear patterns
Starting point is 00:17:22 can include chronic fear of socializing such as social anxiety, fear or obsessive worry over developing health issues such as hyperchondria, fear of losing all of your money or possessions, and the list goes on. These fears really can take any form, but the key is that they are chronic. These chronic fears are often tied to trauma. This is usually where I'd introduce one of my clients to a therapist to work with or to work with a professional in that space because a lot of these may be health-related. Author and philosopher Alander Botton says that this fear is essentially the fear we experience inside ourselves during the trauma projected outward onto the future. As a result, we feel dread and anxiety about our place in the world.
Starting point is 00:18:11 I'm journalist and I'm Morton in my podcast City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop train. to hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train, not where I'm going to end up, and I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters, living outside society, off the grid, and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom, this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we
Starting point is 00:18:47 call the American Dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die, or you can have this incredible rebirth, and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:19:11 Or cityoftherails.com. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement? Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet, roughly 4 in 5 New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals, our podcast How To Money can help. That's right, we're two best buds who've been at it for more than 5 years now and we
Starting point is 00:19:36 want to see you achieve your money goals and it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list our questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is Choc Full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week, and we talk about debt payoff. If, let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey,
Starting point is 00:20:05 how do monies got your back? Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A good way to learn about a place
Starting point is 00:20:20 is to talk to the people that live there. There's just this sexy vibe, a Montreal, this pulse, this energy. What was meant as seen as a very snotty city, people call it as bozangelis. New Orleans is a town that never forgets its pay. A great way to get to know a place is to get invited to a dinner party.
Starting point is 00:20:37 Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Newton and not lost as my new travel podcast where a friend and I go places, see the sights, and try to finagle our way into a dinner party. We're kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party. It doesn't always work out. I would love that, but I have like a Chihuahua who is aggressive towards strangers. I love the dogs.
Starting point is 00:20:56 We learn about the places we're visiting, yes, but we also learn about ourselves. I don't spend as much time thinking about how I'm going to die alone when I'm traveling. But I get to travel with someone I love. Oh, see, I love you too. And also, we get to eat as much as I'm here. I love you too. My life's a lot of therapy bills behind that. You're so white, I love it.
Starting point is 00:21:16 Listen to Not Lost on the iHeart Radio App or wherever you get your podcasts. The fourth sign of possible hidden trauma is the opposite. Instead of fear, it's numbness or an inability to connect with our emotions. I once knew someone who was frustrated because no matter how hard she tried, her husband was unable to articulate how he felt about things. He relied on reason and logic to make decisions, but he was unable to connect emotionally with her or their children. It started to negatively
Starting point is 00:21:46 affect their relationship and as a result they went to couples counseling. There, the therapist helped the husband identify that during his childhood, when he displayed emotions, his parents ignored him or told him to get over it. They prized intelligence and the intellect, saw emotions as weakness and never described their own feelings. As a result, he learned to suppress his emotions and even grew to see his lack of emotionality as one of his strengths. Yet it was crippling his ability to relate to his partner and his children. Now I want to share with you the steps for uncovering and addressing trauma. We've talked about how to spot the signs. Now, what do you do about it? Unfortunately, our fear of rejection of looking
Starting point is 00:22:29 deeply into ourselves and so on may keep us from seeking help, especially if you feel severe emotions such as overwhelmed depression and anxiety, you want to seek the help of a qualified therapist, counselor or coach. Sometimes we can get by with the little help from our friends, as they say, but it's extremely important to have some source of reliable and verified support. That's the first step towards uncovering and addressing trauma. Once you've identified that you have one or more of the signs of a hidden trauma, you need to find a place that's what clinicians describe a psychologically safe to uncover and address it. You can think of psychological safety as sort of protected area in which you're safe to explore. Think of a wildlife preserve where the animals inside are free to roam
Starting point is 00:23:14 because there is a protective friend surround them to keep the threats real or perceived at bay. If we're not psychologically safe, our nervous system is in our sympathetic or our fight or flight mode, or we can get into overwhelm which is our freeze mode. As Marla Madron explains, deep healing literally cannot happen when our nervous system is engaged in flight, fight or freeze. When our body and mind are in this space, we cannot access the vulnerability necessary to heal because we're too preoccupied,
Starting point is 00:23:47 consciously or unconsciously, with our own survival. When we feel psychologically safe, our nervous system could shift into parasympathetic mode, which is where healing happens. If your partner is abusive or downplays your feelings or simply doesn't have the resources to support you in this work, or if you don't feel comfortable with your coach or therapist, for example, you will not have the psychological safety you need to be able to recognize and deal effectively with trauma. The second step to releasing trauma is that once we found a space of psychological safety,
Starting point is 00:24:20 we can start to look for clues as to the source of the trauma. Alan the Barton says that when it comes to uncovering our traumas, we don't want to focus right away on going into our past events or remembering exactly what happened, but instead invoking curiosity about what it is we're afraid of happening now. As he says, our apprehension holds the best clues to our history. What is it we're feeling right now that can give a clue as to a potential past trauma? One of the exercises I like most around this idea is to write down your beliefs. You're going to take some quiet time, preferably when you're relaxed and alone, so take a
Starting point is 00:24:54 screenshot of exactly where you are on the podcast right now so you can come back to this later. That said, if it feels safer for you, you can do this in conversation with a trusted friend, counselor or coach, and sometimes this in conversation with a trusted friend, counselor, or coach. And sometimes doing it along with a trusted friend or partner can help you get deeper into your own beliefs because you're being vulnerable together. And plus something they say might help you connect with something in yourself. For this exercise, you're simply going to list out every core belief you can think of that you have about your life or about relationships. I like to tell people to go
Starting point is 00:25:27 for lifting around 15 beliefs. That's a lot. But what that does is it helps you get past the easier or more obvious ones to the deeper ones. This can take some real reflection and sometimes you may even end up doing it a few times, so be ready for that. Or a belief might suddenly occur to you later while you're brushing your teeth or driving, but this exercise will help you get started thinking along those lines and opening yourself up to what's ready to come into your awareness. Some of the beliefs people have shared with me are things like, if people know the real me, they won't love me. Men leave or are unfaithful. The main goal in life is to create as much certainty as possible. If I can control my environment, I can be safe. I can never be safe. In the end, everyone is out for themselves.
Starting point is 00:26:16 Expressing my feelings makes me seem weak. And from there, we can start to get curious as to why we might believe that or where that belief might have come from. The third step to releasing trauma in something I can't emphasise enough is to go slow. Again, an appropriately trained and licensed coach or mental health professional can be extremely helpful with this. A friend who is a body worker and bodywork teacher once told me that the most common mistakes new therapists make is that when they encounter a bunch of tight muscles, their automatic reaction is to want to relax
Starting point is 00:26:49 them all. They want to make everything softened because they assume that's a good thing, but it can actually create more problems. She said the body comes up with solutions for problems, such as an unstable shoulder by doing something called armoring. It tightens the muscles around the joint to protect it. If we suddenly loosen the muscles, we can destabilize the entire joint and we can even cause a phenomenon where the nervous system actually creates more pain. And that pain and that armoring can be physical or it can be psychological, but it's often a combination. So the point is when we look at possible traumas, to go slowly to try and see what's really going on, to not assume we know, but to take on an attitude or curiosity and respect for the process. We can even hold gratitude
Starting point is 00:27:36 to our minds and our bodies for finding an effective way to deal with the situation, given the resources it had at the time. Malama Dron says that when we start to connect to our traumas, we often feel shame that we didn't deal with the situation differently at the time. Gratitude helps to shift this feeling. We can actually say to our younger self, thank you. Thank you for doing the best you could. Thank you for getting me to this place. Now I'm here and I can help.
Starting point is 00:28:06 And that links with step four. When we revisit traumatic events or periods, whether they were two years ago or 20 years ago, a key is that we don't want to revisit them as that younger self. We want to revisit them from present time with all of the learning and perspective that we have now. Otherwise, we may simply relive that experience and even retraumatize ourselves. From present time, we can be in observer mode. We can see other elements of what was going on that we most likely did not see at the
Starting point is 00:28:35 time. We can create context and awareness that we weren't capable of having then, and we can bring all the tools of life that we've learned since then to heal. Number 5. As you start understanding and working with your trauma, some of them may naturally start to release as your perspective shifts. Remember the person I talked about earlier who'd been left in the car at the post office? After a series of relationship failures that always seemed to boil down to his girlfriend telling him some version of the fact that he was smothering her or too clingy, he made a belief list. Among his beliefs, which he was surprised to discover, was she may not come back.
Starting point is 00:29:12 He didn't understand that what that meant at first, but when he got curious about it and took it into meditation, eventually he landed onto that memory. And from there, he became open to the realization that he really was the clingy guy's girlfriend's described for a good memory. And from there, he became open to the realization that he really was the clingy guy his girlfriend's described for a good reason. And he committed to doing what he needed to do to resolve the trauma, not only for the sake of his future relationships, but also for the sake of himself so that he could feel a sense of safety in his own life that he hadn't felt before. But he was the thing, even though he'd become aware of the trauma, his next relationship was better, but after a time as they got closer, his smothering behavior started
Starting point is 00:29:51 again. In this case, actually starting to feel safe was the trigger for his trauma. As professor of psychiatry, Stephen Porgius says, if you've been traumatized by someone whom you deeply trusted, such as a parent sibling sibling or other loved one, Feeling safe can actually be a trigger because you felt safe once before that safety resulted in trauma So the two can be linked. I know it's kind of mind boggling, but but sit with it This is another reason to take it slow. If those feelings of fear or anxiety start to resurface don't push forward Those feelings of fear or anxiety start to resurface don't push forward. Acknowledge it, get help, talk to your partner or your therapist or coach, meditate, breathe. If you're a spiritual person, pray, reach for that support.
Starting point is 00:30:35 But another thing that he needed to do was want to release the trauma. And that's step five. It sounds counterintuitive. That's why you're listening, right? Of course you want to release the trauma and yet it's often not so simple. When we release a long held pattern, we will change and that change can be scary.
Starting point is 00:30:52 Sometimes we unconsciously cling to the way we are, trauma and oil, because we have no idea who we will be without those patterns. We hold on to a knife in our hands, even though we're being cut, because we're more familiar with that cut. One of the most powerful ways to address this challenge is to create a powerful image of your future self that you can link to. And this incorporates the sixth step for resolving trauma. One of the things that often weighs us down,
Starting point is 00:31:20 and holds us back, is the awareness that we can never erase our trauma. We never get a do over. So we feel like whatever we will try will, in some way, fail because that trauma will always be with us. But it's not about erasing the trauma. It's about releasing it. When we release our grip on it, we're free to see and access the lessons that trauma can offer us. We can actually become a stronger version of ourselves through working with that trauma.
Starting point is 00:31:45 As researchers show healing from trauma actually makes us more resilient going forward. One of the best ways I've seen is to also help and serve others who are struggling. When we're involved in the change and the transformation of others, we start to see its possibility even for ourselves. There's some beautiful thoughts that I love to help us understand this. Musician and Monk Leonard Cohen wrote, there is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. And Ernest Hemingway wrote, in a farewell to arms, the world breaks everyone and afterward
Starting point is 00:32:18 many are strong at the broken places. I want to tell you a story. This story moves me every time I read it and share it. So I want to share it with you. When Daniel Tauley was just six years old, she woke up to her family house on fire. Now she lost her mother in that fire, though she eventually began to recover on the outside,
Starting point is 00:32:38 excelling at school and participating sports and everything else, but on the inside, she was still plagued by constant nightmares of being trapped in a fire. On a more subtle level grief permeated all of her thoughts and decisions about life. One day a friend who was an artist gave her two paintings. One carried in the corner of a room, the other stood in the light arms outstretched. She realized these were her options in life, and she had to choose. She used those portraits to create a vision of her future self. She would someday be that
Starting point is 00:33:11 woman with her arms outstretched. Years later, while on a trip with a friend, she met a man who was a fire dancer. He would dance and perform with fire. Tauly was mesmerized and vowed someday she would get up the courage to do the same. And slowly, once there by time, she did. And she consciously began to reconcile the confidence she felt doing fire dancing, with the terror she felt as a girl. It was a long road and Tawli says she'll never be without those vivid memories or the sadness
Starting point is 00:33:43 of losing her mom, but she made a decision to cross that bridge and become something living not from grief, but hope. And she says these days, the nightmares have almost disappeared completely. We can use this idea of learning and growing and developing resilience to help paint this picture of our own future self who is not confined by our past experiences, but rather is informed by them. Hope for a stronger, more loving and resilient version of ourselves can bridge the gap between releasing the trauma and becoming a richer version of ourselves. Author Victor Franco, who wrote about his experience in the Holocaust in his book Man's
Starting point is 00:34:21 Search for Meaning One Said, what is to give light, must, and your burning? This isn't meant to glorify suffering, yet suffering is something we all experience in life at one time or another. We can be consumed by this fire, or we can view it as the fire of the blacksmith's forge that can help us reshape ourselves into someone even stronger and more beautiful. Thank you so much for listening to On Purpose today. Make sure you tag me with what you're practicing, what you learned. Please pass this on to someone who needs it, and I'll see you again next week. Okay, I have some big news.
Starting point is 00:35:05 Thanks to all of your support, I have been nominated for a Webby Award, pretty much the Internet Oscars. Actually, we have, on purpose, the podcast has been nominated in the category of Best Health and Wellness Podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if it makes any difference in your life and has ever had an impact, it would mean the world to me if you vote for us for the People's Voice Award at the Webby's. The link is in the caption.
Starting point is 00:35:34 Please, please, please go and vote. It will take all of 20 seconds and it would mean the world to me. If you come and support me and my team, let's go win a webby, check out the link in the caption. I can't wait to see if we get number one, fingers crossed. I'm Dr. Romani and I am back with season 2 of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting at narcissists before they spot you.
Starting point is 00:36:02 Each week you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Regardless of the progress you've made in life, I believe we could all benefit from wisdom on handling common problems, making life seem more manageable, now more than ever.
Starting point is 00:36:30 I'm Eric Zimmer, host of the One You Feed Podcast, where I interview thought-provoking guests who offer practical wisdom that you can use to create the life you want. 25 years ago, I was homeless and addicted to heroin. I've made my way through addiction recovery, learned to navigate my clinical depression, and figured out how to build a fulfilling life. The one you feed has over 30 million downloads and was named one of the best podcasts by Apple Podcasts. Oprah Magazine named this is one of 22 podcasts to help you live your best life. You always have the chance to begin again and feed the best of yourself. The trap is the person often thinks they'll act once they feel better.
Starting point is 00:37:08 It's actually the other way around. I have had over 500 conversations with world-renowned experts and yet I'm still striving to be better. Join me on this journey. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Miyaan Levan Zant and I'll be your host for The R Spot. Each week listeners will call me live to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision.
Starting point is 00:37:40 There's y'all are just flopping around like fish out of water. Mommy, daddy, your ex, I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out the R-Spot on the iHeart video app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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