The Psychology of your 20s - 117. The psychology of trauma ft. Dr MC McDonald

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

Trauma seems like a bit of a black box at times, something that we all experience as part of our life journey as humans but surrounded by a lot of misinformation. In this episode, we are joined by our guest, Dr MC McDonald, author of The Trauma Response Is Never Wrong to break down all of the science and psychology behind why we react to trauma the way we do, suppressed memories, what actually counts as 'traumatic' and the impact of trauma on our body. We also explore some of the more unexpected traumas we encounter and attempt to answer the question "will I ever heal from my trauma?". All that and more in this episode.  Follow Dr MC: https://www.instagram.com/mc.phd/ Purchase her book here: https://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-Trauma-Response-Never-Things/dp/1683648846 Follow me: https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ThePsychologyofyour20s See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s, and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. Thank you so much for tuning in for a really special episode, one that is highly requested. I think people have a lot of questions around this idea of trauma, not just in our 20s, but in our lives in general. It is a super complex, nuanced,

space and I think there are a lot of misconceptions we see the word trauma being thrown around quite casually but what does it really mean from a psychological perspective? That's what we're here to kind of break down today and I thought it would be important for us to bring on a very special guest someone who knows this space well and who can really provide an evidence based insight and opinion on some of the things we're going to discuss. So without further ado, Dr. Mary Catherine McDonald, thank you so much for joining us, otherwise known as MC, of course. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm so excited to be here. Yeah. When you reached out, I was like, this is the perfect person to have on the show. Because, yay. Because I do think that it's a question I get a lot. People are really fascinated by trauma. I think everyone has something that we could class. as trauma in their past, but a lot of the information we receive about it is through social media

is online. And sometimes that can make things, I think, more complicated rather than more accessible. Do you want to give us a little bit of a background and an overview of what you do and how you came to kind of specialize in this area, in this domain? Yes, actually. So I have a very kind of interesting path to trauma. It was not the traditional way. I have an interdisciplinary PhD, so I look at trauma from the perspective of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. And I started out looking at identity, and I wanted to think about what identity was composed of. And the specific thing that I was looking at is, like to what extent is our psychology built in story form? And there was this huge debate in the philosophy of psychology at the time about that. And there was one side that was arguing that we are

absolutely a coherent story beginning, middle and end. And all of our behaviors for the most part fit into a story beginning middle and end. And it's how we organize the world. And then on the other side, there was this smaller camp arguing that that was not true and that that was harmful. And that if you think of your life as a story that you can actually cause psychological harm to yourself. That side to me seemed incorrect. Like, of course, there's a way in which you could have too tight a story and that could potentially be a problem if you're tying your identity to a singular thing that can cause issues. But it does seem to me to be true that our lives generally follow some kind of story form and that we're always telling a story. And so I reached for trauma actually because I thought it was a case that

sort of proved that there is a story whether you identify with it or not. Because so many people, when they've been through a traumatic event, talk about how the story gets interrupted or shattered or broken. And so I picked this up and really intended it to be a smaller argument and a larger argument about the nature of the self and identity. And then I fell down this rabbit hole when I realized that the field of psychology still hadn't even decided what kinds of things counted. as trauma and what kinds of things didn't. And so as soon as I leaned into that, I just fell down this rabbit hole. And then I started thinking like, okay, we need to do this better. We need to get clear on what trauma actually is. And then I just sort of moved into the rabbit hole and I have

been there ever since. My goodness. Pretty fascinating, pretty fascinating rabbit hole to be and I would say. Yes, absolutely. And it was an interesting time, oh, sorry, to fall into the rabbit hole because at the time I was, you know, I was at Boston University, which is where Bessel van der Kolk was teaching. He wrote the body keeps the score. And yet when my professors heard that I wanted to focus on trauma as my research specialization, they said, you know, everyone knows that the trauma is made up. It's not real. These memories are planted in the minds of patients by the therapist. Oh. And this is, yeah, this was like 2010. It wasn't like 1885. So there's been this huge, like resurgence of discussion, as you mentioned a minute ago on social media and in society

about, you know, the legitimacy of trauma. But I think we have to be really, really careful and make sure that we're actually getting that conversation correct, you know. Yeah, and you really do owe it to, I think everyone in society to not, to only say things such as what those people were saying and such as what those professors were saying when you're completely sure. I'm sure it probably came from a lot of Elizabeth Loftus' work as well around like implanted memories and false memories and things like that. But the idea that we actually don't have a good idea and a good description or categorization of trauma is one that I also find really fascinating. It's so interesting when you look at even the DSM or you look at the diagnoses that psychiatrists

can give it's like PTSD or complex PTSD. and that's kind of the two camps and it's like but what does that really mean because each person is going to need a very I think unique path through that and I think that it is also this movement towards a more holistic way of seeing each individual psychology a more personal way of seeing each person's psychology and trauma is part of that that kind of leads to this question that I have and I'm sure other people have, which is what do you define as trauma? Do you think there is any correct way of labeling a traumatic experience? I do, absolutely.

But I want to start actually with the incorrect way because I think that the field of psychology and psychiatry is actually getting this wrong. The incorrect way is to make a list of events and say these things are traumatic and that's it. So right now in the DSM, there are three things that are potentially traumatic. There are three potential exposures that you can have to trauma. One is actual or threatened death. The second is serious injury. And the third is sexual violence.

That's it. Those are the three things. And I think the reason that that's so problematic is because we miss entire populations of people who are showing up with all of the rest of the symptoms of PTSD and not getting diagnosed correctly because they haven't met the criteria for a traumatic stressor. And I think it also reveals that we need to move away from trying to make a list and look instead at responses. William James, who's sort of the father of modern psychology in many ways, described trauma as a thorn in the spirit. And I love this idea because it's a little bit vague, you know, and I think we can move from that and make it more specific so that we don't have this completely vague definition, but that we also don't move to this thing where we're like, okay, these three things are traumatic in any way.

anything else is not. So the definition that I use is any experience that meets these two criteria. You have an unbearable emotional experience, that's criteria one, that lacks a relational home. That's criteria two. And the reason I like this definition, I've adapted this from a clinician, Robert Stolaro, but the reason I like it is because unbearable raises the bar pretty high. So you can't say that every single experience that you're having, every minor inconvenience, every time you are upset, you can't necessarily say that all of those things are unbearable. So it makes it so that what counts as trauma is sufficiently high so that we don't just kind of stretch the word to the point of meaninglessness and call everything trauma, which I think

we're in danger of. And the second part is that this idea of a relational home helps us understand, I think, both what we need when we've been exposed to trauma to make sure it doesn't become lasting trauma, and also what we can give each other. And the idea of a relational home is just that our experiences need a dwelling place. And all of them do. Good, good experiences, mediocre experiences, all of them need a dwelling place. When they're too overwhelming for us to find a dwelling place within ourselves, we need other people to relate the event to, to help us figure out where to put it.

Yeah. Is that kind of like, is that in a sense providing psychological closure, do you think? I can be, yeah. Were you thinking of a particular example? Yeah, well, no, so I was just trying to, because when we talk about relational, I think, I think that's used in a lot of different ways in psychology. And so I think that's so fascinating, that second criteria that you gave. Is there part of the definition that relates to being able to find like an emotional end or some form of closure to the experience that you've been through? For sure. So I think it's.

essentially trauma is an injury of memory and the injury can happen in one of a million ways, but the symptom, the key central symptom that then comes out in other symptoms in your body and we can talk about later, is that the memory isn't integrated correctly. So if you think of your long-term memory, like a file room, you have all of these memories and they're organized really well so that you can pull them out, you can talk about them, you can assign significance to them and you can put them away with relative ease. So if I ask you, like, what was the favorite, what was your favorite suite when you were growing up? You could probably think about it for a while, tell me a story about someone who made you that thing or who got that for you, what that was

like, and then you can put it away and we can, you know, continue our conversation. That's an integrated memory. And so in a sense, it has closure, it has significance, it has meaning. Trauma memories don't close up like that. They're fragmented because we're too overwhelmed in the moment. And so in to put them away in the organized fashion that we put away all of our other memories. And so we have this strange file that sort of sticks out and either has the wrong significance. It's disorganized in one way or the other. And so it doesn't have closure. We can't close it and put it away.

So it remains present in symptoms, intrusion, all of these things. And I think when we are overwhelmed, we need other people to help us, sort those memories and assign significance. So kind of just to work with a silly example, if you have a breakup, let's say your first serious relationship, you think maybe this is someone that you're going to spend the rest of your life with. Maybe you're in your 20s when this happens. It's actually possible. Some people are in your life for getting married. And then the relationship unexpectedly sort of implodes. And you are left now with this fragmented future. You had this, you were telling yourself this story about what this relationship was going to be in your

life and now you have to shift the meaning, the significance, and get closure. Sometimes that's provided in the breakup. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes your friends help you figure out how to get that closure and put that away so that relationship doesn't stay central and present or signify to you that like you should always be alone or should never date again or any of these things. Does that make sense? It does make a lot of sense. And I think actually this idea of breakups as being traumatic is something that I see a lot. And I think we used to, I think that we used to use that phrase or the term trauma, trauma or traumatic. When we were referring to things that I think we can all very easily see and very easily identify as being unbearable, the one I always think about is, you know, people who come back

from serious conflict or come back for more on their veterans and they have PTSD. And now I see it becoming a lot more part of our dialogue in relation to the things that I think a lot of us go through, breakups being one of them. You know, that breakup was so traumatic. Oh, my God, that guy traumatized me. What do you think, why do you think that has become more common? Do you think that trauma and our interpretation of trauma has changed for this current generation? because I don't know, I'm on the fence here because I've,

yeah, have used the phrase, oh, that was traumatic to explain the end of relationships. And your explanation of what that meant, that fragmented memory, it really does kind of, it really does resonate with me. But do you think that the more colloquial use of the term trauma or the term traumatic, our use of it in this current generation, firstly, what do you think that came from? And do you think that is a good thing for the psychology and the progress around how we interpret trauma? It's such a good question, a double part question. I'll answer the first part first of where did it come from.

I think we need to think about that because it's very easy to judge it. And I do this. So I just had a book that came out called Unbroken. The trauma response is never wrong. And in it, I say that, you know, words really matter. And we need to, we don't want to stretch the word trauma to the point of meaninglessness because then we stop studying it. Then it becomes like the common cold. We won't spend any research dollars. We won't try to heal from it. It'll just be part of human existence. And that's really dangerous because it is

in many cases a life or death situation. And so I use in the book some examples that are funny, you know, when my students tell me that they're traumatized by a chemistry exam or by the dorm food or by their roommates, like sleeping patterns or whatever. And I'm like, really, is it really traumatic? Like, let's give me the context there. But I think rather than judge it, it's important to look at like this question of why are we reaching for the this hyperbolic language to explain relatively mundane experiences that seems like a relevant thing you know like is it that we don't feel legitimate unless we have something that's hyperbolic and huge are we trying to express something that's going on sort of in a in a collective unconscious way like we are living in a

really overwhelming time so are we trying to match that general feeling to our, you know, events in our day-to-day lives? I don't know. But I think it has benefits and it has disadvantages. The benefits of more people talking about trauma is that more people are talking about trauma. And so that makes it less likely that people will feel really like too stigmatized to get help when they need it. It raises awareness. It normalizes that this is an experience. And again, we have to be careful of how we're using it. And I think When it comes to breakups in particular, I think some breakups really are traumatic. The book is organized by each chapter has a case study and then some explanation and then a

couple of tools to help the reader heal from whatever they're going through. And one of the chapters is about referred pain. Do you know about this in biology? Yeah, I actually do. But explain it for the audience as well. So referred pain is a really strange biological thing whereby you might have like the classic example is if you have jaw pain and you go to the dentist and you think, oh, maybe I've got a root canal or I have some sort of abscess or something going on. And they tell you that you need to go to the

emergency room because even though the pain is in your jaw, you're actually having a heart attack. Or you might have pain in your shoulder and it's actually a result of your spleen. So the source of the pain and the pain don't necessarily match up. And so I've seen this with many, many clients where they will come in and say, you know, I'm working as a first responder and I love my job, but I'm having nightmares, and I think I might need to quit my job. And then we start to dive more deeply into it. And it's not the job that's traumatic. It's the breakup that they just had because they were planning a future with someone who then unexpectedly turned around and waltzed out of their life and sort of smashed their future to bits. And so, of course, not all breakups

are going to be traumatic necessarily, just like not all war experiences are traumatic. Not everybody that comes back. You can see exactly why it's so problematic to define trauma based on the event because it falls apart immediately. How does it make sense if war is traumatic inherently that some soldiers come back without PTSD? You know? And so I think that we just need more nuance in the conversation. And I know that's a value that you have. Thank you. So I think that it's that it's really important that we look not at kind of what happened, but what sorts of reverberations the event is causing? What sort of traces did it leave? Yeah, I really love that. The idea of referred pain is one that I really do need to speak about more because I do think,

especially in our 20s, right, we all, there are so many huge life transitions. We are like experiencing the world as adults for the first time with an air of independence. So I do think that our kind of grasp on things is inherently quite shaky. So things can very easily disturb our sense of control over our situation and disturb how we are consolidating our long-term memories and how we are creating the narrative for our life. Do you think that there are some people who are innately more likely to experience trauma or interpret events as traumatic based on certain attributes of theirs

or their temperament or their personality? Yes. Please explain more because I'm so fascinated by this. I think about this quite a bit. Right? And so the first thing I want to say is that I think like the 20s is one of the hardest decades of life. And I think it's no one really,

not enough people talk about it that way because people are like, oh, the world is your oyster and you have so many opportunities and you don't have to settle down and everything is open to you. But what they're missing when they say those things, which are true, is that it's also terrifying. Yeah. And isolating and confusing. And there are missteps and mistakes that feel catastrophic. And so the 20s is a very intense decade.

I remember, thankfully, I had a therapist tell me that when I was in the midst of my 20s, which were extremely turbulent. And I thought, okay, if I can just get to my 30s, some of this will calm down, you know, which is true and false, of course. But so I think that that decade is an area where there is a lot of possibility for trauma. And I think in some sense, the shortest answer to your question about like who is more likely to experience PTSD

or to really struggle with trauma is that we don't know, but we know that some people are more resilient than that. others. And it's likely that there are like 48 layers that contribute to what makes someone resilient. And there are researchers who are trying to figure that out. And some of them are pointing to really, you know, singular explanations. And they're saying like, look, some people have more glucocorticoid steroid receptors in their brain. And therefore, they're more likely to experience trauma. Some people have less. And so they're less likely. And that's, of course, probably a layer. But I think you have to add to that what was the you know what were the developmental years like what is the support

system like do you have rigidity as a personality trait or openness and to what extent like so many of these things kind of occur on spectrum so um i think that one of the things that gets in the way of healing is rigidity um but that's again just one layer that i happen to be fascinated with because i don't know that much about glucocorticochorticoid steroid receptors you know like there's It's just, right? It's not the word I tend to use often. Right, yeah. So I think it's going to turn out that as we study resilience and try to figure out what makes

more people sort of naturally more resilient, that we will find that there are many, many things that we can do. And that's really quite hopeful because then that also means that we can probably turn up the volume on certain things and certain traits and help ourselves, you know. You're really selling me on doing like a P. in this area. I'm not going to lie. Oh, you should talk about that. We should talk about that off screen, off the podcast.

Because it's like, I think resilience is this really, this bit of like a black box, right? And in that is things like childhood experiences, which are so entirely unique and which we have not properly mapped. Everyone I speak to, I don't think I have ever spoken to someone. in any capacity on this show who has not pointed to childhood as the origin of something that is going on in our lives, something current and something in our 20s or even in our 30s or beyond. And yet we really don't have much of an idea of what it contains. I think much like how you were explaining trauma, we really see it as like specific events.

So things like abuse or things like neglect or even people who move quite a bit. there are so many small, very life-changing, like, grains of sand that get stuck in the clogs. We don't explore enough. The childhood bullying. Like, I could go on and on and on. And I think this podcast, it provides me with so much anecdotal evidence for the fact that we need to have a more in-depth and nuanced discussion. Because so many people come to me and they say, this thing has happened to me. It seems entirely unique.

there is really no literature on my specific experience. Can you explain it for me? And then it's really interesting because you might look at that and be like, wow, like there is nothing on this. That's so unfortunate. But then you'll have someone else message you the next day with the exact same experience. And yeah, it's not spoken about. I know.

And it's that points to the idea that like we need to be really careful when it comes to the way that we look at psychology as a science. Yeah. Because we expect a kind of, um, precision and truth from it that it does not provide. Yeah, absolutely not. I think that's, you can use as many studies and as many statistical significances as you want.

Yeah. But I think that is also one of those things where it is, this is kind of off topic, but there is this like battle of like, do we make psychology a proper science, which I think it is. Do we add in more of those experimental features to every single thing that we're doing? Or do we allow it to maintain,

to maintain this kind of moldable, flexible, almost like interdisciplinary kind of squishiness to it. No, but it's so fascinating. And it goes back to the thing of like, so we study adverse childhood experiences here in the U.S. I don't know how far that has reached internationally. Actually, interestingly, we did the first Australian child maltreatment study and I was one of the interviewers. So there we go. Oh, amazing.

Yeah. Okay, so you know all about this. I know all about this study. So good. It's so fast. Not good, but good for society. Yes. Yeah. But the other thing is that I can't remember when the original adverse childhood experiences came out was maybe the 90s. It was Kaiser insurance company in the U.S. that wanted to look at the impact of traumatic experiences on longevity and health. Because as an insurance company, they have a stake in this, right? They want to know if you're from an area where you're more likely to have adverse childhood experiences, should we

cover you and insurance-wise. So there's problems in the study designed from the jump. But then no one looked at positive childhood experiences. No one even thought to look at that and how they might counter adverse childhood experiences until like 2018. So all the way from like the 90s or whenever the first time was that the adverse childhood experiences study came out until 2018, I'm probably getting the years wrong, but it was a long time. No one thought, hey, I'm talking about grains of sand you said a second ago what about the positive impacts of the people that you have in your life what about the teachers that you have that are so inspiring what about the friends that you belong to and the team sports that you play and all of this stuff and so as soon as they start looking at

that of course the data completely changes yeah so there's this idea that like again you know psychology is a is a study-based science and studies are only good as study design that is i literally got chills Only a psychology known can get chills at that phrase. Right. I'm like, you're so spot on. I talk about protective factors on this show so much because the whole aim of this, of the psychology of your 20s is to be like, you have agency. You cannot change what has happened in your childhood.

As unfortunate as it is, you cannot go back and rework the experiences that you had. But each of us does have agency and each of us does have things in our life, things that happen to us, mentors, something in our physical environment, something that inspired us that protects us against some of the negativity around those experiences. I think it really does kind of go to show how much, I think psychology is just so unexplored in some domains and there are still so many aspects of it that are kind of uncharted. It's like deep ocean diving. Yeah, exactly. And the more we learn about the brain and neuroscience, the more we realize that the brain is malleable, far more than we thought it was. So even if you did have adverse childhood experiences, it doesn't mean that those things are hardwired. We have far more agency, even just from a neurobiological perspective over what we do with those experiences and how those turn into behaviors and how we can intervene on those things. We just, we need to get that information out to everybody because if you don't know that, then you don't seek the chance.

change. Yeah, neuroplasticity is so, I think it's something that people don't understand. I think we tend to think that our brain, we hit 25, it's fully developed. We have all the neurons that we'll ever have, but there is so much like synaptic pruning and rewiring going on. I guess this kind of brings me to my next question, because I want to re-centre us on this discussion around trauma. What is kind of the impact of trauma on the mind, but also on the body? How does it manifest in sometimes our biology but just in our physical responses. Yes. So it's really important to understand that as we go into this,

that we stop separating the mind from the body because the two things are in a dynamic unity and they're always along for the ride. So anything you're talking about that's happening in the mind is also having some impact on the body. So we are designed to toggle between stress and relaxation. And that's just by nature. We've evolved that way. This is one of the reasons why one of my big things is that the trauma response is actually not a sign of weakness or disorder. It's a sign of strength because the first responses that then can become over time maladaptive and turn into symptoms are there to keep you alive.

Yeah. And so we toggle between high stress and relaxation because that's an adaptive way to be in the world and engage with different circumstances and environments that are more. more or less threatening. And so a very silly example is that my house is sort of nestled into the woods. And so every now and then there's a deer right outside my bedroom window at three o'clock in the morning. And a deer right outside your bedroom at three o'clock in the morning sounds like two fully grown humans standing outside your bedroom window at three o'clock in the morning, right? We don't have D here. I have no idea. I would be like, baby. Yeah, exactly. But just bigger and louder. And so at three o'clock in the morning, I am at my my most relaxed. My nervous system is toggled all, basically all the way down. My heart rate is at

its lowest. Breathing rate is at its lowest. All of this stuff is at its lowest. And then I hear a noise. And an alarm system goes off in my brain and body and reprioritizes all of the functions in my brain and body to help me adapt to that threat. And so I go from lowest nervous system activation to highest in less than a second. And you know this because if you've ever been woken up in the middle of the night, you are sometimes like across the room before you're fully awake. Yeah. It's like what is it? It's your sympathetic nervous system like your flight of flight response is so ridiculously alert. It's so fast. Yeah. And that is the kind of the command center of the stress response system. And so when that happens in the middle of the night, I go from relaxed to really stressed to really

relaxed within a matter of minutes. Like I can usually, as soon as I realize it's a deer, within 10 or 15 minutes, I'd go back to sleep. And that's how we're designed, because you couldn't stay in full stress all the time, and you wouldn't want to stay in full relaxation all the time, because then you're not adapting to your environment. When we get stuck in stress, when fighter flight gets switched on and stays on, this creates chronic inflammation in the body, which leads to all sorts of symptoms and breakdowns in the systems of the body that can result in a set of symptoms that is maddening because they can look really disconnected and not related to stress at all. And often we think that they are disease independent of stress and often

they are disease that is related to stress. And so since we're designed to toggle back and forth when we get stuck, that that's when we have problems. And so that is what contributes to sort of the impact of trauma on the body. And that can result in like chronic pain, gastrointestinal issues, sleep disorders, infertility. Like the list is just massive. In the mind, if we go back to the memory files, now we kind of have to move away from the deer experience because that's pretty easy to integrate what happened. I can tell the story about it. I can put it away, all that stuff. But when I have something that's significantly overwhelming, the one of the adaptations that my brain and body move into and that overwhelm is that they shut down

the recording system in the brain. And so that file room, like all the people that work in the file room, run out of the file room to go help with the emergency. And so the result is that you have this unintegrated file, this file that's missing pieces. It either has holes in the story, maybe there's no emotional content, or it doesn't have the right meaning assigned to it. those are kind of the three things that all of our memory files need. And so as an attempt to reorganize the memory, your mind, anytime it's in the presence of something that looks familiar from that memory, will push that memory to the front of your mind and say, hey, here's this file again, right?

That color red reminds me of this scary thing that we never integrated. Let's integrate it. The problem is the, you know, fight or flight system in your brain, you're, you're, you know, amygdala and limbic system recognize that as danger and they're off to the races again. And so that's why memory can kind of put you into this chronic fight or flight. Wow. That is such a great explanation. I think the one thing I really want to point to there was when you talked about the color red, like the role of triggers as well. And I think that that is so, such an interesting way to put it is that triggers are basically the environment reminding your

brain that there are things that it has not yet figured out. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, we should think of them as like in, you know, like the indicator light in your car. Yeah. When that goes off, you don't just get out of the car and leave your car in the highway. Right? I don't know. Sometimes I do. You might want to. Yeah. But you're like, oh, something, something needs to be looked at. Let's take this to the mechanic and look at it. So there's, there's so many misconceptions when it comes to triggers. And that's, I think, one of the primary dangers of when we talk about trauma incorrectly. Yeah.

But it's interesting because you say that analogy of like, let's take it to the mechanic and get it looked at. But sometimes I, and please correct me if I'm wrong, you obviously know a lot more than me on this topic. But I feel like sometimes with the coping mechanisms that we use, particularly around suppression, mean that people really don't want to look into the engine. Because like, is there a part of it that is so traumatic sometimes

that our brain eliminate, needs the memory and like completely shuts off from connecting with it. I think the the example I always think of is people who talk about suppressed memories that things traumatic things that have happened in childhood they don't remember until they're in their 20s or 30s. I know it is quite controversial these days that kind of field and that understanding of that but do you think that sometimes our mind does really conceal traumatic events from us consciously? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think, so the trauma response is adaptive. Its main goal, like if it was a video game, is to protect you and make it more likely that you stay alive. And so if it can reduce pain, if it can reduce exposure to threat, it will do that. And that feels to us sometimes disorganized. And it feels like, because we've labeled it this way incorrectly, it feels like a sign of weakness or disorder. But it's so critical to understand that. Biologically, it is adaptation. And so when you're a kid, especially, I mean, maybe not especially, maybe this is just a more vivid example,

but when you're a child, if you're exposed to something that you have no language for that is so overwhelming that your system decides you have to be taken out at that moment in order to survive, it will do that. And so this is essentially the freeze response where you will dissociate and disconnect from the experience and actually not really fully experience it. And your brain, I think that our brains, I think this is miraculous. Like I think we've gotten it so wrong when we label it as disorder because it's a miracle that there's something in your system that's like, you know what, this, we're going to opt out of this.

We're going to push this all the way down because the other thing that happens is that often you're in a situation where your system decides that there is no one who can provide a relational home. That, for example, if let's say the abuser is a parent or someone in your family, there is no safe space to go because to do so would be to risk your, you know, primary location in the world with your family. And so, and you're like six. So what are you going to, you know, what are you going to do? And so I think that our brains do this miraculous calculus whereby they decide what we can cope with and what we can't. And I think it's really important that we don't disturb that

because what needs to come up will come up. And it will come up in the format that it has decided that it should come up in. So you might not remember, we have this like, I think, missed idea that if there is a trauma in the past, we have to go diving for it. you know, and go do a bunch of ayahuasca and find out exactly what it is and relive it in all of its, you know, awful glory. And we know that that's not true. We know that if you show up in adulthood with a set of behaviors, it's important that you work with those behaviors so that you can live

a life that is more fulfilling. You don't always need to go back and uncover the thing that your brain is trying to hide from you, you know? I really love that explanation and I love how you put that, that we don't need to go diving for a traumatic experience, it will come up, perhaps even when we feel safe as well, when we feel like we're ready, yeah, like we're ready to experience it. That kind of leads to my next question, which is that how do we manage our trauma, trauma that maybe is concealed from us, but also trauma that is not concealed from us and very present in our lives and really taking up space that we wish could be devoted to other things. Yeah, yeah. Yes, that's the million dollar question.

So I think there's three steps here, and I can unpack each of them. The first is to notice it. The second is to validate it. The third is to integrate it. And I think these are healing from trauma actually isn't rocket science. We've known more or less how to do it since about the 1800s at the absolute or like later. Like it's possible we've known that for a lot longer. That's just when we started writing about it in a formal psychological way.

we create so much noise and problem for ourselves with shame and the way that we talk about our symptoms and so going back to the first one notice it I think that if we could view our bodies as the barometers that they are we could realize that our bodies and our systems are adaptive and they are giving us data all the time 24-7 your body is giving you important data about what it needs, what it's going through, and what needs to happen next. And so I think just kind of if you imagine, like, turning your radio dial to the channel of your nervous system and finding out, like, even the most simple things, which we do not typically think about, what do you feel when you feel relaxed?

What do you feel when you feel energized and excited? What do you feel when you feel upset? Like, in your body, what is that experience like? when you're nervous do you get a stomach ache do you start sweating do you turn red like everyone is a little bit different and it's so important to kind of tune in and figuring out to figure out what your body is telling you because that's the key to noticing that you have trauma to begin with yeah because your body will be setting off an alarm in a situation when there's no need for an alarm but you might have been experiencing that for so long that you don't even notice that the alarm's going off

Yeah, absolutely. And so it's the first one is to notice. To notice it. The second is to validate it. So we are very tempted in our society to go to war with our feelings and to treat our symptoms as if they are to be managed before we integrate them. Yeah. And so if something inconvenient is going on in my body, like I'm just going to shove it all the way down until it goes away. And that will work for a certain amount of time and then it will stop working and everything will implode.

That for sure happened to me. And so validate what you're feeling instead of going to war with it, instead of shaming it and saying, I should be over this by now. Why am I still feeling this way? I'm an adult. I'm 23. I shouldn't be this sad over this break. You know, whatever it is that you're shaming yourself.

And then the third thing is integrated, which requires a couple of other steps. So what we're working on here is figuring out what needs to be integrated, right? How is the memory fragmented? What is still sticking out? Two, what are some ways that you can grow? around yourself as you lean into working with the memory file. So how do you recalibrate your nervous system essentially? And three is getting the memory to kind of more or less conform to the formatting of your

other memories so that it's not continuing to come up in symptoms or behaviors that show up like in your relationships or at work or ways that are getting in the way of your future. Yeah. I really, I'm listening to that being like, oh, I'm taking notes. I am taking notes because I do feel like that integration, that integration point that you've mentioned is so fascinating. And I was thinking, as you were saying, that like, what are my memories shaped like? Do they have a beginning, middle, and end?

And is the reason why some of those files still sticking out because they don't have an end yet and I need to write that end for them. And I think that that is like the idea perhaps of closure of like, okay, why does this memory and why does this event feel like it is still a part of my life when I haven't seen this person in years or I no longer live at this place where this happened or I'm no longer an infant, I'm no longer a child, I'm a fully formed adult, how come this memory doesn't have an end? Why do you think we find that with certain events or experiences that they continue to kind of be part of our storyline even when we don't want them to be?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's a thousand reasons. I'm kind of, I'm laughing because I just got this. I'm writing a response to someone who just wrote to me about, you know, a friendship that broke up 50 years ago, 50 years ago. Oh my goodness. Still hung up on. And I was, that's, I had the exact same response when I read the email like, what?

Is that even possible? That's actually scary. I don't want that to be me. That literally is. Exactly. I'm like thinking, because I've got, I've, I've got 50 years left. I could, I've still got time. Like, what is the things in my life right now that are going to be?

That are going to be, haunting me. Sweeting 50 years later. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's because, you know, number one, you mentioned a while ago about agency.

We don't think of ourselves as having agency over our stories and over our psychology. And if we can empower ourselves to get a little bit more knowledge, that is a huge step forward to figuring out what we need. If we go back to memory files for a second,

so every memory file needs to have a story, like what happened, beginning, middle, and end. emotional content, what is the feeling of that story? Is it funny? Was it sad? Was it both? Whatever? And then a set of meaning tags. What is the significance? How does this fit within your larger story arc? And I think that last piece is, I mean, you can work in a memory in any of those pieces, but I think the last piece is one of the places that leaves things open for us.

We assign the wrong significance to something. And so a breakup instead of becoming a learning opportunity that was really sad, and tragic, but still a learning opportunity, becomes the reason that you are, you know, disorganized attachment and the reason you will always be alone. And in some sense, again, going back to the brilliance of the system, the brain knows that that significance you've assigned is wrong. And so it keeps pushing it forward and saying, you better look at this again. You better look at this again. And so again, if you go back to noticing, like, what is coming up for yourself what is repeatedly what are you repeatedly remembering and then instead of judging that

asking like okay what's here yeah like so this friendship came up that like that ended 50 years ago what's here for you about that yeah and do you think it's like some so i you know it's hard not to apply these to our own experiences right like you're giving me these examples and i'm thinking about this one particular event in mind and do you think it's because it points to like a deeper truth that we think we have about ourselves? Like, do you think that in that instance of that, of that guy that or that man, that perhaps it's like, it's not about the friendship breakup. It's really, that's kind of a proxy for something deeper around how he feels about himself.

Where do you think that that comes from? Yeah, I mean, it's got to have significance somewhere, right? So it's got to be that he's got, I mean, I can guess. I wish I had more details because I could maybe guess more accurately. But I would imagine that he's got a deep-seated fear, that he's worried that he's a bad person. And so a friend ghosting him without explaining it has left this open wound of like, if I could just have this one person's validation, then I would know for sure that I'm not a bad person, which is, of course, false.

but like when when things kind of gain an outside significance it's usually because there's an underlying fear or a story you're telling yourself that you're or a story that's been told that you're trying to distance yourself from so maybe he doesn't think he's a bad person but someone has his mom always said that and she's maybe you know and so he's he's worried that that that validates that um there could be a thousand things but I think usually when something is open like that, that there is something, like I sometimes ask clients, like, what's the fear beneath the fear? Yeah.

So don't tell me rejection. What happens if you get rejected? What is that reveal? And usually it's something really primary, like, oh, my, you know, that I'm, that I am evil or that my mother was right, that I didn't deserve to live, you know, like some horrible thing that hasn't been processed from forever ago. Wow. And I guess bringing it back to that breakup example that we were using, it's like,

oh, this not only has this distorted, this idea of my future, but then additionally, maybe it's pointed to the fact that you do think you're unlovable because that's how your parents treated you or that because you did experience childhood bullying where you never felt like you were quite ready to be accepted by anyone else. So I just think that's so fascinating. And once again, points to that holistic perspective that sometimes we need to take when it comes to trauma that you cannot apply a one-size-fits-all methodology or, explanation to everyone's individual circumstances. I think that everyone is incredibly different

and has a different narrative, as you were saying, this whole idea of a storyline. I've got one last question for you. And this is a question that I get all the time. And I always, I answer in a certain way, but I would love to see how you answer as someone who knows more than me. I feel like that is obviously very true. So the question is, does trauma ever go away? Can I ever live a life without trauma? So I am always like, yeah, I think so. But what do you think? It depends on what go away means. Yeah. Like I think sometimes the question gets framed up, can you heal? Is healing from trauma possible? The answer to that is absolutely. Is erasing trauma possible? If that's the frame you have on it? No, that's not possible. But it can be managed. And the way that we can explain this is by

going back to those memory files. Like if I open the file cabinet and I take out the file of the morning that my father died and I start talking about it, I'm going to feel sad because it was a sad day. That memory file has sad as the emotional content, right? That doesn't mean I haven't healed. That doesn't mean that the trauma is still present, that it's getting in the way of my life. If I go to tell you the story and this happened a long time ago, if I go to tell you the story and I cry for three days and can't go to work, that's a sign that the emotional content is outsized and still needs integrating. Or if I tell you the story and there's no emotional content, that's also a sign of an issue. But our memory files are supposed to have feeling.

that's that's how our brains are are built and so if the question is will i ever stop feeling the answer is no but the feelings change in in in the way that they are expressed hugely when you integrate the memories and i think that that's hopeful because it is it's so helpful I think the thing I always think about is around integration, like you will get better at making. This event will no longer define you. And I think that in a lot of the things that happened to us, especially in our 20s, right,

there isn't, we haven't had the diversity of experiences to see in hindsight that we have a lot of years ahead of us. We've only really had like max like 29 years if you're in your late 20s. And even by then, I feel like you're kind of encroaching on the 30 space, but particularly people, in their early 20s, right? Like five years ago, you were still a child. You have no hindsight of what five years means.

You have no hindsight around the other things that are going to take precedence over the bad times and over the hard memories. Like, I think that's something that I really had to realize, you know, my, yeah, I'm not going to get into that. I'm not going to trauma dump on this call, but yeah, I just think about this one experience that I had. And for a couple of years,

felt like that memory was like the core of my identity and that like everything could be looped back around how hard that was and then suddenly like not suddenly there was also work but different things began to crop up that were really joyful and that I wanted to find a place for and I kind of had to rearrange the luggage of my brain I had to like rearrange my storage space and push that memory to the side a little bit, it could no longer have like a whole massive platform in the middle. And perhaps that's how I, that's how I see integration of is that, you know, that piece of luggage is still there, but it's not like your primary piece of luggage. Or it's like, I always think about it as well in terms of like, you know, when you buy like a new

t-shirt and you like wear that t-shirt for like ages and ages and ages. But suddenly it's going to be replaced by your new favorite item of clothing. And it's not that that item is still not important and still didn't have a part of your life as in your photos. And nobody can ever take away the significance that it had. Like that's critical. Like you might not wear it anymore. It might just be a memory.

But like that was for that period of time your favorite thing. Yeah. You know? And I think like sometimes we resist progress and healing because we think we can lose what we've already lost, but you can't. Yeah. That's such a beautiful way to put it. Well, I want to say thank you so much.

Is there anything else that you want to say around? trauma, a misconception, something you think we need to know that perhaps we haven't spoken about yet. I think I want a listener to know if you're struggling with trauma and the after effects, the traces the trauma has left, that it won't always feel like this, that you are not alone, even if trauma has tricked you into thinking you are, and that healing is possible. There's so much more life to live. Yeah.

that's such a beautiful way to put it. Thank you so much for coming on. This is perhaps one of my favorite conversations. I also feel like. That's so flattering. No, it was really amazing. Sometimes I honestly was in this call being like, oh my God, I didn't even have to pay for therapy this week.

Cancel that appointment. Done. Like, it was actually, I learned so, so much. I'm going to. Oh, yay. I was so glad. Yeah. So also, I really want to plug your book,

because this was only like a 45. minute conversation and there is so much more as anyone can imagine to this topic and to this conversation so where can they find you where can they hear more from you so the book is called unbroken the trauma response is never wrong it's available on amazon and anywhere you get books we're working on getting it into many different countries so it's being translated in a couple different languages you can find me on tictock and instagram it's the same handle it's just mc. phd and I'm always talking about trauma and trying to demystify the symptoms and help people heal. There we go.

Something that I think we all need. Make sure you add that to your feed. A bit of a Dr. Seuss rhyme there. But I do think that it's something that we need to speak about more concisely, I think, and integrate more into our conversations around what really is trauma, what does it mean? and how can we move forward around that, especially in our 20s? So I want to say a huge thank you for coming on board just to share your wisdom. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me.

Yes, that's so lovely. Please come back. We'll do a part to do for sure. Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. Whatever we want. Yeah, done. And as always, thank you so much for joining us today.

If you enjoyed this podcast and feel cool to do so, please feel free to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you're listening right now, really helps this show to grow and reach new people. Also makes my day and I would really appreciate it. If you have an episode suggestion or just want to be part of the community, please follow along at That Psychology Podcast on Instagram. You will be the first to know about new episodes, new guests like The Amazing MC, and all that is going on behind the scenes.

So thank you so much for listening and we will see you next week. Hey, what's good, y'all? you're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Kier Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing.

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