The Bobby Bones Show - MORGAN: [Trauma] How To Heal It, Survival Mode & Why It Looks Different for Everyone

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

TAKE THIS PERSONALLY WITH MORGAN: *Part 1 of the trauma discussion* Morgan brings on Trauma Therapist & expert in all things trauma, Lauren Auer. She shares why it became important for her to explore this specialty in therapy, the technological advancements out there that can help with trauma, and why she dubbed the word "traumalescents." Lauren also shares an important analogy to understand trauma within people and why it looks different for everyone. She also shares why survival mode is important, but also how to stop the ruminating cycle as well as what it looks like when we don't heal our trauma.  Follow Lauren Auer: @yourtraumatherapist_ Follow Morgan: @webgirlmorgan Follow Take This Personally: @takethispersonallySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Clivert Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits,

my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.

So let's get to it. Listen to the. the Clifford Show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok's podcast network on TikTok. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones.

It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last. target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Happy Monday, friends. I'm really excited to have you here this week. We are going to change up

the podcast just as Mitch. I've always been transparent, honest with you guys. So usually we do two people an episode, an expert, and then someone to come on. and share their real life story. Now, that concept is not changing. I love it so much and I love what it's doing for people. But we're going to break down the episode just a little bit further. So we're going to do one person at time for each episode, but two back-to-back episodes, maybe even three will have a similar theme, the same concept is just broken down. I felt like we were jamming so much good stuff into one episode. And I'd love to start to go into more depth with some of these interviews. Plus, if I'm being totally transparent with you guys, I was starting to get

some very real burnout, just trying to do way too much that I don't even have hours in the day to sleep or shower. So breaking this down not only helps me, but I also feel like it's going to really allow me to continue this podcast in much broader, bigger ways. So this week and next, we are focused on trauma and how that impacts our lives. This week, I'm bringing on trauma therapist, Lauren Our, she has years of experience working in trauma. And this is truly her expertise. So she has incredible knowledge for us. And it'll be really important not only hearing this, but going into next week's episode with Haley Dollar Hyde. Lauren R is joining me right now. And she is a trauma therapist. Lauren, thank you so much for joining me on this episode. Yeah, thanks for having me on.

I'm really excited to know from you, what got you into this line of work, specifically this specialty. Yeah, it was unintentional originally. When I was in graduate school, I didn't really know who I wanted to work with. I had some categories of I like didn't want to work with kids and I was pretty sure I didn't want to work with couples. But I really at the end of the day was like, whatever, I'll just try things out. And I ended up getting an internship in a agency that worked with both a offenders, juvenile offenders as well as victims of abuse and their families. And so I had really wanted to work with kids. I definitely was like, ah, that sounds like the scariest population to work with in terms of abuse. And that sounds really heavy. But I actually ended up really loving it.

It was such a unique learning experience, I think, especially working with kind of the three layers of victims as well as offenders and their family seeing like trauma from these different angles. And so that was, it was really fascinating to me. And kind of from there, I just ended up landing in similar situations in terms of where I was drawn to with my work. So I worked at a women's domestic violence shelter as well. And then a rape crisis center as a therapist. where we worked with people of all ages. And then I became the director of that center. And so at that point, I was not only working with clients that had experienced a lot of trauma, but I was also very much in a role of like community outreach. So I was doing trainings for like lease and medical staff and

supervising interns and other therapists and working with people at that. vicarious trauma level. So like people in the field that were dealing with maybe their own trauma, but also maybe being traumatized by some of the populations they were working with. And so it was very interesting to me to see things from all these different angles, all these different layers and that center that I worked for, we would see people in crisis situation. So we would show up at the emergency room, let's say if they're getting like an evidence collection kit done. So like really immediate trauma all the way to people coming in for therapy later in life when they hadn't dealt with something that maybe happened in their childhood.

So like very far removed from the trauma. And so it just became these put in became something I was really passionate about because I feel like I learned so much just from doing that work. about trauma. Like I'd obviously learned about it in grad school and read all the books, but really just being in those environments and working with people. It was just like the best education I think you could possibly get in terms of what trauma is, how it looks, all the different ways it can manifest. And yeah, so total crash course. And then I open my own practice after that. So now that's what I do. Wow. Yeah. You really have seen it from

just so many different steps and angles. And that's so interesting to me because trauma is one of those things that it's not a one size fits all, even though it could be a similar scenario. It's something that has so many multifaceted layers to it. And that's why I'm so intrigued and wanted to dedicate not only an entire episode and few episodes to it, I have a guest coming on after you in the following episode. who's going to share her story actually of some of these things that you talked about that she had happened in her life. And it's wild as we see people experience these things and what it does,

not just in that moment, but throughout the entire course of their life. Yeah. So when you go and you do this kind of work, especially front lines, and you have these initial moments and you're working with people, what are those things that you're experiencing with people and you're seeing them experience where you're like other people should, know what this might look like in case it happens to them. Yeah, it's really interesting because if you would have asked me that after doing graduate work and learning, reading books or whatever, I probably would have been able to rattle off some typical symptoms or things we might

see. But after doing this work for as long as I have, I think one of the biggest things that stands out to me is that it can look so many different ways. I've been in emergency rooms with people getting evidence collection kits done after sexual assaults where we're like laughing and joking. And that's like their way of coping. Like that's their trauma response. I've been with people that are their immediate response is to take care of everybody else around them or just go into planning and doing mode where they're. they're being really productive and really advocating heavily or getting things done. Of course, I've sat with people that are very emotional or angry or dissociated,

like checked out. It's incredible. I think just the human capacity to deal with things and those automatic responses that we develop when it comes to trauma. And I think maybe initially I would have thought that those people that were, taking care of others or seemed really strong or laughing that, oh, those are like the resilient people that aren't super affected by this. But that's not necessarily the truth. I think sometimes those people that have that trauma response of taking care of other people or of putting the

focus elsewhere, it's still living in them internally. And sometimes that is harder to process through and heal from when they're not just maybe doing what you would typically expect somebody in a traumatic situation. And so I guess that's a non-answer for your question. Yeah. It's perfect, actually, because I love to showcase that it doesn't look like you think it would look always. Right. And also to add to that, I think it's important to keep in mind that when it comes to what we would consider to be trauma, it's not really about the event or events themselves or the circumstances as much as it's about how that individual person, their nervous system, their brain, how they experience it. I often compare it to like if two people were in a car

and gotten a car accident and vendor bender, everyone's okay. they get up. One of them might be shaken up a little bit and just like, who we got through that and really able to go on with their life. The other person could be extremely anxious and panicky and not want to drive and really having flashbacks in a hard time or whatever it is. And they experience the exact same event. But one of them might have experienced that event as traumatic, whereas the other one maybe didn't. And so keeping that in mind too, that we can't always just look at a set of circumstances and assume how somebody could feel. And can you experience that?

Yeah. Can you break that down even a little bit further for me? Because why is it that some people, this kind of goes more into maybe more the science side of things, but why is it that some people can process trauma easier, quicker, or so we think, while others really internalize it becomes a whole part of their body and it's this whole process? Is there things that you've seen and experienced that make sense for us to describe why that happens? Yeah.

And I think it's, it can be a little bit complex and multifaceted. And there's so many factors at play there. And so there's like the immediate things that are going on. So for instance, in that example with the car accident, maybe one of the people in the car is having a hard time finding a job and they don't have a lot of resources or they are going through some sort of upheaval or distress in their life or dealing with other mental health concerns or like there's all those immediate things that could be at play that if their baseline going into that experience if they're already disregulated by a variety of other

things going on that is going to impact them on a different. level. But it's also very historical. I think if they have dealt with a lot of other traumatic things throughout their life, if they've had access to processing those things and dealing with them or not, what does the support system look like going forward in the future? Are they going home to a supportive and safe home where they have people that they can talk to. Do they have access to resources? There's all of these factors like past, present, future that kind of make up this unique circumstance around it. And I'm such like an analogy person. And I'm also like a huge plant person. I have to buy plants all the time, especially because it's becoming spring.

But if you think of your nervous system, like a plant, like each plant has very unique needs based on its genetic makeup and growing conditions, you'll go to a nursery and this one needs a lot of sun and this one actually does better with some shade and this one needs to be watered frequently and that one, oh, barely water it at all. They all have this kind of makeup already in their system of what they need. Humans are the same way. It's all of those things about how consistent is the care that you're giving it? Are there periods of drought? Our systems, we have our own individual capacities for processing experiences. So some plants can become like really hardy and maybe there's like lots of exposure to wind and harsh conditions while

others are used to growing in more like delicate or protected spaces. So some might develop deeper roots from early stress while other create broader leaves because they're they have abundance in their conditions and trauma that can happen when we're flooded with either more than we can absorb at once. So that would maybe look like if you had a new little plant and you left it outside and there was a sudden downpour that overwhelms the system rather than nourishes it. Like that could be a like really big, I think a lot of times when we think of trauma like a really big devastating event happening, right? That's like that. downpour. But it can also occur when you're exposed to harsh conditions for too long.

So like maybe a plant could thrive in heat for a day. But if it's in hot heat and it's not designed for that for days or weeks, it's too much for too long. And that could really hurt it. Or it could develop trauma could develop if you're deprived of what you need to thrive. going too long without water or light, like being neglected. It's not always something happening around you or to you, but also it can be like the absence of what you need for too long. And so like even two plants of the same species might need different amounts of care based on their unique growing history too. There's not just like a perfect formula around that. So it's not like about the weather itself as much as it's about each individual

plants system and how it responds to that environment. It's really the same way with how our nervous systems develop. We have very unique requirements based on our genetic blueprint and also all these other environmental factors around us. I love an analogy. So the way that you just painted that so perfectly with plants and allows people to understand it just in this deeper way, beautiful. Perhaps my analogies don't hit. But I feel like that, one I think is pretty all-encompassing of what trauma is like. A win is a win. A win is a win.

I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clivert Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.

One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network

on TikTok. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in someone's, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing.

Gregalespian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.

This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends, I'm Anna Sinfield

and in this new season of the Girlfriends Oh my God, this is the same man A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist I felt like I got hit by a truck I thought how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care so they take matters into their own hands

I said oh hell no I vowed I will be his last target He's gonna get what he deserves Listen to the Girlfriends Trust me babe on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No, it definitely is. And the reason I even ask that question is because I think it's really easy for us to get caught up in this belief that I didn't experience it that way.

So why are they experiencing it that way? We like to really just put people in our own boxes instead of understanding that we are individual and we have unique experiences. Right. And so having you share that in that way, hopefully can really help people just be a little bit more understanding of those experiences and that it's not, they're not going to react the same way you choose to react. It's going to be different. Exactly. Yeah. When you mentioned this too, it had me thinking of a lot of what we see on social media is people talking about little T's and big T's. Do you feel like that's really the case or is it just, it's just trauma? Or is that like little T big T's? to actually helpful and truthful in our experience and our learning? Yeah. I think there's a place for it.

I used to teach that and train that because that was the standard. But I guess for me personally, I don't love the language of little and big because I think it can suggest, oh, that one's not as serious as this other thing. I think what it's really trying to say by using little and big is more how I was describing with the plants, like a sudden downpour, like all at once too much. That is big. That would be an overwhelm in a short period of time. Whereas little tea, I think is more the like could be like the neglect or the just not having enough for too long. And again, there's so many. I think it goes so much deeper than that. And so I shy away personally from using that language just because I think it can create some misconception and even some shame around maybe if people are dealing with a lot of trauma responses.

But on paper, the things that they've experienced are, quote, little that they may think that there's something wrong with them or they're making too much of something. or other people don't understand or invalidating their own experiences. It's just so personal and individual to how somebody experiences something. And for there to be any sort of outward perception of that is basically impossible because we, as an outsider, like, I can't know all of the environmental, genetic, circumstantial, all of these things. There's no way for me to know that unless that person shares that with me. It totally came to my mind because I remember one time, I think I was sitting in the therapy

session and I referred to something as like, oh, it's just like a little tea. And I even felt weird saying it. Like I felt myself invalidating what I experienced. Yeah. And I don't know if it was because people made me feel that way or if I just personally felt that way because I had bigger traumas. But I remember just even saying. And I'm like, you know what? No, it's not. Actually, that was really traumatic. And why am I downplaying that

experience? So I'm glad that you shared that because it's helpful. Just as talking about everything in the mental health space, it's helpful. We're communicating finally about something that's really important. But using harmful language can also make it really difficult on us to truly heal. Right. Yeah. And I think there's also an important thing to keep in mind about how important. like what happens next is and what I mean by that is, you know, there's a traumatic event itself. Let's just say abuse. If a kid experiences abuse and then that's a traumatic event. But then they tell a parent, hey, this thing happened to me.

And if the parent's reaction is like they don't believe them or they're downplaying it or they are blaming them or even if the parent's reaction is devastated and very emotional. And then the parent can't function and the parent, like there's all of these kind of like after effects, I think, too, that can create sometimes an even bigger wound. And there can be even more trauma associated with that or maybe even being in an environment where they feel like they can't share what happened to them. because they don't feel like either they have safe adults or they don't think that the adults in their life are able to handle that.

Maybe they're trying to protect that adult. There's so many things there too that I think is also really important to consider when we're talking about what trauma is and how we experience it. I was just thinking about that when you were mentioning it because so many of these very emotional topics and things that are referred to as trauma, do often come around with this part of I don't believe your experience or it's not what you think it was or invalidating that. And I do believe that is trauma within itself to not have people understand or believe you. Right.

Yeah. And sometimes, I mean, the rupture that can cause. in attachment or even feeling safe enough to heal through that or the what happens next can be huge. So yeah. When something happens this piece of trauma that happens in your life and it's going to play out maybe it's days, months, years, how do you know that you're still living within that trauma versus being healed from it? Yeah. Yeah. I know. These are It is complex. I think there's so many things that we experience that I think a lot of times we don't even realize have anything to do with trauma. Because a lot of times I'll see people in therapy and maybe, let's say, they're dealing with anxiety.

That's something that comes up for them a lot. Maybe social anxiety, let's say. And maybe they've done therapy. Maybe they've done self-help or read the books or listened. to all the podcasts or whatever, but they, maybe they get to a point where they understand logically why they have social anxiety. Maybe they're able to say, okay, that makes sense because I had some really close friends and then we got in a big fight and then I felt really abandoned or whatever. Like, I can point to things in my life that it makes sense that

when I'm in social situations now that I would be anxious. And that's great. But just having that knowledge doesn't necessarily mean that all of a sudden the anxiety is gone. Right. And so I think sometimes people can feel really stuck in that of, wait, I've done all this work. I can put logic behind it.

It makes sense. But when I get invited to a social event, my body is tense and I'm breathing differently and I'm feeling like I don't want to be there. And I'm second guessing everything I say. They're still experiencing it. And so it's not enough to just know the why around it because the parts of your brain that are activated when you're experiencing something traumatic is not the logical part of your brain, that prefrontal cortex that can give explanation and put sense to it. when you're actually experiencing those things, it is like that deeper, more instinctual part of your brain. The like fight, flight, freeze, the knee-jerk emotion, the knee-jerk reaction, how your body braces in those moments.

And really your logical part of your brain goes offline when that's happening. Just like I talk a lot about to illustrate this, if you've ever been driving in the car. And all of a sudden, the car in front of you slams on their brake. And so you slam on your brake and you like put the like phantom arm out to just stop what we call the mom arm like. Right. And there's like nothing there. Like it's just an empty seat. But it's just that like instinctual reaction that we do. And that's such a small little example. But it's a really good illustration of the fact that logically there's nothing there. Like it doesn't make sense. You're not protecting the invisible nothing. But it is just what your body does. It's just that initial bracing. And I think a lot of trauma that we experience, however that looks, there is just those instinctual reactions. It's how we're wired as humans to be. And so being able to actually heal from that and go beyond that stuckness of I can make sense of it, but I'm still having these reactions. A lot of that really has to do with processing from the parts of your brain that were actually online during the trauma. And so there's all sorts of

therapy techniques and modalities that get into that, that kind of fall under the somatic category. But it's about being in tune with your body and what's going on when you think about that and what are you feeling and what are the sensations and therapies like EMDR and brain spotting and polyvagal therapy. There's a ton that kind of fall in that category. But really being able to bring your body into the therapy work is what can really facilitate healing in the sense of where those automatic reactions aren't coming up as strongly. And I did see on your profile that you do have work in EMDR, brain spotting, IFS, somatic. Can you just little kind of excerpts of what each of these things are?

Because having resources and sometimes people don't even know these things exist. Yeah. And I think it can be very confusing looking for a therapist because there's all these acronyms and all these specialties. And I think people are like, oh, that person, their profile says they're trauma informed. But that could mean that they took a trauma class in college 20 years ago. think it is good to have some level of understanding of maybe like what some of these things are. EMDR and brain spotting are two techniques that follow the same neuroscience, two different

ways to go about it. And it basically utilizes the neurobiology of how our nervous system is connected to our brain and how we process things and bilateral movements or eye position because our eyes, how they, where they look, how they look, all of that stuff is really how our brain is processing through things and activating all those other parts of our brain, the left and the right hemisphere. And so it's like these specific techniques that are designed to, I guess, wake up or activate those deeper parts of your brain while you're doing the processing in a slow way,

in a controlled way. that's another thing. Like we say fast is slow and slow is fast. You really can't rush through it. I always say it's hard to explain it because it sounds really weird. It'd be like me trying to explain to somebody like how to ride a bike if they've never even seen a bike. I really think there is part of it. You almost have to do it because you're activating the subcortical systems of your brain.

Subcortical meaning the parts that are without word and without logic. And so to explain it in logical ways with words, it's hard. But it's also cool because you're tapping into a part of your brain that to us feels like it's not active, even though it is. But because it's not transferring language in the way that we understand, this is a way to access a piece of view. It's kind of like plugging yourself into an outlet and being like the whole thing actually finally turns on.

And it is how I'm like seeing it. Yeah, basically. Yeah, because if you think about it, how often you're just going about your life and you know, you're walking, but you're not like going, okay, lift this leg up, put this leg down. Now this one, like it's just so automatic where we're not actually in our body. We're not thinking about it. You could be off in your mind thinking about something completely random while fully going

through a task physically. And so it's so natural for humans to not actually fully be in their body. when they are just going that day-to-day life, but especially I think sometimes when we're recalling things like memories or emotional pieces of trauma, it's almost like we naturally go away from our body and just go up to our brain of like telling the story. And that feels almost protective in a way.

And it's not conscious, but that is what we do. And so being able to create that like slow it down and create that safety, wake up the whole body and the whole presence while being able to process through stuff, that's what's going to create the change. Is this also when you can access something? Because I know in like the trauma that I've experienced, there'll be moments where before I had really worked through a lot of stuff where I really packed it down and pushed it away. Does EMDR and brain spotting help you access the stuff that you pushed out of your mind in a way? Yeah, sometimes. And sometimes not. I think sometimes people are afraid to do these types of therapies because they're fearful of what if I recall memories or what if I've blocked something out that comes up, whatever.

Sometimes that may happen. However, our brains are incredible. that when our brains do block out memories or we don't have access to that, there's a reason for that. Our brains are always trying to protect us. And your brain is not going to recall those things if it doesn't feel safe enough to do so. So sometimes that is a slow process. And you can rest easy in the fact that if memories are coming up, it is because you are at a regulated enough place to be able to handle those things. Also, there are sometimes things like pre-verbal memories or medical trauma where maybe you're under anesthesia or something where you literally aren't going to

have active memory and you can't recall that. But your body was still experiencing whatever that is. And so sometimes there is truly no memory associated with trauma that we've experienced. And it's not necessarily the goal. You don't need to have the memory in order to heal from it. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagine. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes,

creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment. And the next, we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. If you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be.

Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.

This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern.

Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Gregalespian and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.

This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that, trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends...

Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed.

I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's so cool that we have access to these things and to be able to do this to help ourselves. I don't want to just slide past that because the fact that we have technology and things like this in place to start to heal ourselves is such a cool place to be. in life. So that's just awesome to me as I'm sitting here thinking about this. It's incredible.

I like geek out over what I do every day, just the stuff that I, like the healing I see is just incredible. I love it. You're doing incredible work and making some very big life changes for people. On that flip side of trauma, what happens if we don't heal our trauma? What happens if we just go through our life and we just keep shoving it down, pushing it away, not ever facing it. It just stays down, never comes back out. Yeah. What does that look like in somebody? Because I do think a lot of people experience this, like with people in their lives where they're like, you haven't worked through anything and I can feel this coming out at me. So what can that look like for someone? Because I think it helps us understand a little bit more just maybe what people are going through.

Like those things, it doesn't just dissipate. I'll give you another analogy because I just can't help it is how my brain works. But I love analogies. So you can keep doing that. It's if you had a room in your house that it was like your junk room and everything, I'll deal with that later went into that room and then you shut the door. Like you could shut the door and pretend it's not there. It's not going to just go away.

And eventually, like, there is going to be other consequences to that. In that sense, maybe it's like eventually you need to sell your house. And now it's this huge thing. Like sometimes there's something that happens where it's like you can't avoid it because something so big happens. I feel like I saw this a lot like in COVID times that people were able to manage or push down whatever it was. But when this global thing was happening, for some people, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. There is some unrelated thing and sometimes even like a small thing that is just going to tip that scale. And then all of a sudden you start feeling really overwhelming symptoms. I do think that sometimes people can successfully shove it down for a period of time.

But it's like holding a beach ball underwater. Like you can, you really have to struggle to keep that in. And eventually it might be too much to hold that down, whatever that looks like. And so a lot of times it does even come out in little reactions, little moods or how we are doing in relationships with other people, our tendencies to maybe shut people out or like all sorts of things. A lot of times it comes out. Like we cope with things through things like addictions or all these other things. that might not be a huge problem. And I don't like to pathologize even that stuff.

It might be an unpopular thing, but even addiction, right? If somebody leaned on an addiction or a substance to numb themselves, let's say, after traumatic things happened because they just maybe didn't have the capacity or the resources or they just straight up weren't ready to touch it and they found something that got them through that time to where they could manage day to day, hopefully to a point where, you know, usually that thing that helped them manage becomes its own problem. And then now they're dealing with the consequences of that. I'm like, I'm so happy that they found something to get them by when they needed to. Also, there's consequences to that. And sometimes then it's a bigger problem.

but we do need those things, even if they're unhealthy, even if they aren't really serving us long term. It's not always realistic to, oh, I experience a trauma, like going to go start journaling every day and get into a yoga practice. That's not always possible. And so, yeah, I think sometimes we do what we need to do to get by, but sometimes those things we do to get by become their own beast. And sometimes people go to therapy, I think, because they think the problem problem is the addiction or the relationship problems or whatever it is. And it is the problem. But like, where did that problem come from? Almost always it's going to connect somewhere to some sort of trauma that they've experienced at some point in their life. Yeah. We talk a lot

about root causes on this podcast. And man, if that ain't the cure all for just about everything, is like you got to get to the root of something that's happening instead of just fixing something with a band-aid. Right. Mental, physical health, all the things. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Something that's also very much involved with trauma.

I got a question about this from a few different people, actually, which makes me think a lot of people are handling this in this way. But you end up in a survival mode or a fight or flight, and you just ruminate in this cycle of that for however long. And it's really hard to break yourself out of that. However, that looks like for someone who's trying to get out of survival mode or a fight or flight or that freeze that you mentioned too, what are some first steps they can take to break that ruminating cycle?

That part of them that is, let's say, we'll go with fight, being reactive or touchy or it has big emotions. That part of them, it's not connected to the fact that the fact that they're not. there's not that same level of threat in the moment. It's like logically they might know this is different than the trauma I experienced, but it's an automatic reaction that's coming up because their system is just noticing things in their environment, triggers, whatever it may be, dysregulation, and like ringing the alarm bell. And so those reactions come up automatically. And so part of it is having that understanding so you're not adding fuel to the fire by blaming

yourself or being hard on yourself for that. This is automatic. This is just, it's happening, detaching that extra layer of shame and blame that you have. But also trying to understand like what purpose that might be serving because if your system thinks that it's going to be in danger. Your system is going to react. It just is. And that's wonderful because you want your system to react. It feels like there's danger. But again, I think it really goes back to being able to not just put the logic behind it, but like connecting those parts of the brain and helping bring your body into that processing so that you can logically

understand it, but you're really what needs to happen is your cells, your nervous system, your body needs to understand. Like, this is different and I'm safe now. And there's, I think there's like some self-talk and stuff that can go along with that as well. But it is a process and like allowing yourself the time that it needs to get through that period of time. Yeah, for sure. I appreciate you answering that for some people. Because I do think, especially coming out of COVID. I think that caused a lot for a lot of people. But more than that,

we're just in some crazy times right now and people are going through it. You dubbed a new word in healing called trauma lessons. Am I saying that correctly? Yeah. Can you break that down for me and what it looks like? Because when I watched this content, I was like, oh, this is so cool and super important.

How like when you become a parent, when you become a mother, how it can feel almost like adolescence in that you're like trying to figure out like who am I where do I fit like what is my that kind of like awkward new version of yourself trying to figure out the bridge between who you were and who you now are and I noticed that in trauma healing I was seeing a lot of that too of this kind of what felt like almost like adolescent period in the healing process of like huh now that I see this thing differently or now that I don't have those certain reactions coming up as big anymore,

or now that I'm looking at this thing in a new light, who am I without the identity of the trauma and the stuff around me and how it's a period of time that can feel really vulnerable and really scary, but is also like really good and beautiful. And so I get excited when therapy, when people are like coming to me and being like, man, like I don't know why I all of a sudden, I don't know what to do with myself or who am I or I always used to just, you know, nod and smile in these certain situations. And now I find myself like speaking up and that's scary and like, what does that mean? Like all of these things that almost freak them out about themselves. And I'm like, yay, like healing is happening. It's exciting. And I feel like that's just people be.

becoming who they actually are without all the junk that forced them to adapt in all these different ways. It's like almost like refinding themselves. Yeah. I loved that word and I love that. So thanks for coming up with it. And I do like to end our episodes always with whether it's a piece of advice, whether it's something that we didn't touch on that you feel is so important. I believe it open-ended up to you that you like to leave us on this place. So floor is yours. Let me know if there's anything that comes to mind for you. Oh, gosh. There's so much. I'm biased, obviously. But like, I think everybody can benefit from therapy, whether they feel like they have, quote, little T trauma or big T trauma or anything

at all. Like being a human is hard. And there's always going to be stuff. I know that there can obviously be barriers for people finding a good therapist fit or feeling like they can access those things. At the end of the day, the best thing you can do for yourself and all the people around you is to get to know yourself and figure out who you are without all of that other stuff getting in the way. And, you know, I always say trauma can be passed down through generations. So can healing. It's never too late. It's not like, oh, that happened forever ago. It's truly never too late. I just really encourage anybody that if they have any inkling of I should do that eventually, listen to that, do that. It's one of the best things you can do for yourself.

Yes. That was a perfect way to end on. We did it. So thank you so much, Lauren, for being here, for sharing your expertise and just helping change the world for some people because it's important. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm always happy to talk about this stuff. If you want to follow Lauren on socials, her Instagram is Your Trauma Therapist underscore. I'll put it in the description too. Next week, my friend Haley Dollar High joins me to share some of the trauma she's experienced and how it's impacted her throughout her life. Her story is one of a lot of resilience and so much strength, so don't miss it.

You can follow the podcast Instagram. Take this personally and don't forget to hit subscribe and rate five stars because we do have some trollers hanging out in the reviews. As always, I'm really happy you're here. Thanks for listening, and you guys are awesome. We'll talk next week. A win is a win. A win is a win.

I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.

So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.

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