This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 127 / Trauma with Jessi Beyer

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

This is a tough one because I’m so fully aware of how IMPORTANT, how complex, and how necessary this topic is. And I truly hope I treat it with the care and respect it is due. On this episode of TIWW we’re going to talk about Mental Health and Trauma. If this topic feels triggering or not supportive to you right now, then hit pause and join us next week. I’ve asked Jessi Beyer, an international speaker and the #1 best-selling author of How To Heal: A Practical Guide To Nine Integrative Therapies That Can Help Release Trauma, to join me. She has been featured in over 160 media outlets, holds a Masters in Critical Psychology and Human Services and, outside of her professional life, she is a K9 search and rescue handler with her dog, Phoebe. If you’ve experienced trauma, ask for support. Find the help you need… nobody can do the work for you, but there are people who can stand WITH you. If you witness trauma, don’t turn away from it. Call it out if, and when, you can. Be OUTRAGED. If someone honors you by sharing about their trauma, listen, hold space, BELIEVE those that trust you enough to tell you about it. To learn more about Jessi and her work go to www.jessibeyerinternational.com or follow her on IG @itsjessibeyer You can find the book Jessi referenced in this episode: The Art of Holding Space by Heather Plett HERE To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com.

Here's a quick glimpse into today's incredible episode. And so when you're looking at ways to heal from it, but also ways to talk about it, you can't just talk your way out of trauma. You have to do something more holistic and more integrative. And that's kind of why it's different is that it carries in not just the brain, not just how your brain works, but also in your body and your soul and your life story as well. This episode is a hard one because I'm so fully aware of how important, how complex, and how necessary it is. And I truly hope I treat it with the care and respect that it's due. On this episode of This Is Woman's Work, we are going to talk about mental health and trauma.

If this topic feels triggering or not supportive to you right now, then hit pause and join us next week. Because I've asked Jesse Beyer, an international speaker and the number one bestselling author of How to Heal, a practical guide to nine integrative therapies that can help release trauma, to join me today. She has been featured in over 160 media outlets, holds a master's in critical psychology and human services. And outside of her professional life, she is a canine search and rescue handler with her dog, Phoebe. Jessie, thanks for being here today to cover, again, a very important and complex and often hard topic. Thank you so much for having me, Nicole. I'm honored to be here and I'm excited to help your audience and your listeners really understand their relationship

with their mental health and how they can take care of it in the new year. Amazing. Okay. So let's start with the word trauma. I think it's one that gets thrown around a lot in today's day and age. And that could be because a lot of people are a lot more people than we thought are experiencing it, or it could be one of those words we're misinterpreting. So I want to start there. What is trauma and what makes it different than other mental health concerns? Absolutely. I'm glad we're starting here because as you said, this is something that over the last couple of years has become a lot more popular.

A lot more people are talking about it, which on one hand is great. There's more awareness. There's more resources. There's more understanding. But on the other hand, it can sometimes be overused like other phrases in our industry and in our world. So depending on what kind of perspective you're taking, there are different definitions of trauma. The definition that I like to look at is trauma is an event that has a negative impact on you in the moment that continues to have a negative impact on you in the moment, that continues to have a negative impact on you

for days, weeks, months, or years to come. If you look from a very clinical perspective, they will list out certain events and certain things that meet the criteria for trauma when it comes to diagnosing PTSD, which is post-traumatic stress disorder. And I understand that you have to have criteria, but I also feel like that can really invalidate a lot of women's experiences because they don't fit their events into this nice, neat little box. So I like to work from that kind of broader, more holistic example of a bad thing that happened that's still continuing to affect you and your quality of life. What makes it different from other mental health disorders is that there is a very somatic

part to it as well. Somatic meaning it stays in the body. So trauma is not just something that happens in your brain and therefore you can use brain-based approaches to heal from it and you kind of check that box and move on with your life. Trauma has the psychological component, but it also has a very physical component. To think about this in a different way, oftentimes if you talk to trauma survivors of varying types, but especially women who have survived some type of sexual assault, they will talk about how they hold pain or hold soreness in certain areas of their body. That is that physical part. And so when you're looking at ways to heal from it, but also ways to talk about it, you can't just talk your way out of trauma. You have to do something more holistic and more integrative.

And that's, that's kind of why it's different is it, it carries in not just the brain, not just how your brain works, but also in your body and your soul and your life story as well. Okay. So very important distinctions that you made there. I'm curious if we know, and by we, I mean you, because you're the expert or the universal we, right? Why do we hold or store trauma in our physical beings? Is it because it's unprocessed for some reason? Is it because of guilt or shame? I'm sure there are a lot of

influences, but my question is, do we understand or have some understanding of why we're holding it physically in our body and it's not just staying in our brain? Yes. So the answer to that question is yes and no. Yes, we know some stuff and no, we're still learning. We're still understanding and we're developing. So a couple of different answers here, a couple of different reasons. First, just from a very kind of logical perspective, going back to that example I gave of a trauma survivor who holds tension and tightness and pain in certain areas of her body. If you listener think of something that you're stressed about, that you're scared of, that maybe you're embarrassed about or feel shame about, there's probably going to be a

certain part of your body that tenses up. For me, when I start thinking about that, my shoulders go into my ears, my neck just gets so tight. And so if you think about that on a larger scale, you know, you think of a car accident where you didn't have control, maybe your fists clench like they did when they were trying to hold the steering wheel in place. That over months and years and decades can cause some of that physical trauma, that just like reaction that you have when you think of that event. The other thing that kind of comes into play with this from a neurology perspective is that the brain has difficulty with traumatic events, separating what happened in the past from what happens in the present. And so not only do you have this reaction when you think about that event, but your brain can also get triggered and go into this place of, oh my God, it's happening again.

It's happening again. And you have that same kind of physical response. The soul-based answer to your question, Nicole, is that if you think of the fight, flight, and freeze response. So for listeners who are not familiar with that, when something scary happens, when your nervous system gets activated, you can either fight the attacker off, whether the attacker is a literal person or a car or an avalanche or whatever it is, you can run from it. Or what often happens when traumatic events turn into post-traumatic stress disorder or some type of mental health concern is the freeze

response. You can do neither. Your body shuts down and you're frozen in that moment. When you're in a traumatic event, your hormones are doing crazy things. There's tons and tons of cortisol dumping into your body, which is the stress hormone. And when you can fight someone off or flee from them, again, someone could be any sort of traumatic trigger. When you're able to do one of those things, you can kind of think of that hormone loop as being completed. You got the dump of adrenaline, the dump of cortisol that allowed you to fight or flee, and then you can settle again.

But if you freeze, which is through no fault of your own, that is a completely normal response to a traumatic event. If you freeze, that cycle is not really allowed to be completed. So you have all of these hormones in your body that not literally are being stuck in your body. Like, I mean, that's kind of true, right? Some trauma survivors have chronically high levels of cortisol, but these hormones are not literally stuck in your body, but that completion cycle is unable to be finished. And so that's why some different integrative therapies really work on completing that cycle and allowing that fight or flee response to happen, even if it's not happening in the exact moment, which we can get to later.

Some of the other reasons for this, there's lots of reasons, I'll just share a couple more, but is getting into the neurology of it. So because there are those really high levels of cortisol, among other things, your brain does not process trauma memories the way that it processes other memories. They are not integrated into your life story, which is why when you're talking to trauma survivors about their traumatic event, they often are not able to say, well, this happened first, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then I walked away, and then I went to Subway and got a sandwich. That oftentimes does not turn into this coherent life story. There's flashes, there's sensory

memories of the smell, of the sound, of the car backfiring out of the alleyway, those very specific sensory triggers that aren't necessarily a story. And that's because certain parts of your brain didn't encode that memory properly. So you're left with the very somatic, the very visceral memories of that trauma instead of this integrated story. The final thing I'll say is that trauma shoves you back into your hindbrain and your limbic brain. So limbic brain is the emotional center. It's where your amygdala is, which is the fear center of your brain.

And then in the back of your brain, it regulates all of your base body function. So breathing, heart rate, sweat, things like that. When a traumatic event happens, you get tossed back there because we don't care about cognitive thinking when we're trying to save our own lives. And so that, again, is not a very human part of your brain in the sense of this developed prefrontal cortex where we can talk about all these things and understand them. It's very much base body survival. And that's why sometimes people struggle when they're trying to talk about it and conceptualize it, because if they get triggered, they get thrown back into that part of their brain where it's not really possible

to share some of those things. So lots and lots of reasons there. Again, we're still understanding it more and learning about it more, but that can kind of help set the scene for why it is such a somatic event. Okay. I want to talk about some of the integrative therapies in a second, but before I do, I want to talk about, you mentioned sort of the benefit of the word trauma being used a lot, that it's being talked about more, that there's more eyes on it. There's more people doing the work that you do. There's more people willing to get help on all the things that hopefully are positively coming out. Previous generations though, often handled trauma by ignoring it or pretending it was something other than what it was or victim blaming or stuffing it down.

And we're learning probably still too slowly that those things don't work. So what are some of the old school or more traditional approaches that do not work and we should set aside as we're thinking about trauma? Definitely. So kind of going back in the history of trauma and PTSD, trauma as a thing has been happening since the beginning of time, right? People have been experiencing traumatic events, whether that's a war, whether that's a sexual assault, whether that's a natural disaster, those things have been happening from the beginning of time. The diagnosis of PTSD and the clinical recognition of that started in recent wars, where veterans would be diagnosed with things like shell shock, where they would exhibit, you know, startle responses at loud sounds and nightmares, right? And that's kind of the only population that was given recognition of PTSD. definition has gotten broader to where the clinical definition now is something along the lines of

you must have witnessed or personally experienced a life-threatening event such as x y and z so it's not just veterans or war military members anymore it's it's a broader population and what has come with that is a better recognition of hey this can happen to anyone this can happen over a short period of time which is often diagnosed as can happen over a short period of time, which is often diagnosed as adjustment disorder, or a long period of time, which is chronic PTSD. There has been a lot more research, like you said, a lot more therapeutic options. And what we've been working with in terms of therapeutic options for the last decades since the inception of this diagnosis is a combination of medication and talk therapy.

Medications most commonly used are SSRIs, which are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. That part doesn't really matter. They're called SSRIs. Those are often the same medications that are used for depression and anxiety. And then talk therapy. So things like cognitive behavioral therapy, prolonged exposure, things that are kind of like what we're doing now. We're sitting down, we're talking, we're having a conversation, we're using strategies to modify thought processes and behavior responses regarding that traumatic event. That's really been all that the clinical psychology has worked with for the past ever. And if you read the clinical guidelines for the treatment of PTSD,

those are the therapies that they recommend. I want to be very clear in what I'm about to say that I don't hate those therapies, but I hate the way that they're positioned in the psychological community. If you read the literature and the scientific studies about that medication and those types of talk therapies, the estimates vary widely, but about 50% of people that complete those therapies in the treatment of PTSD do not receive clinical benefit they do not receive symptom remission from those therapies in addition to that there are very very high dropout rates from those therapies which may contribute to the lack of clinical remission but anywhere from 10 to 70 to 90% of people, depending on the study, don't complete those therapies. So what that brings up in my mind is, first of all,

why do trauma survivors hate these therapies so much that they're dropping out of them? And second of all, if they don't drop out, why are only 50% of people getting benefit? Again, I want to be very clear. for the 50% of people that get benefit. Wonderful. Go for it. I think it's fabulous. I see a talk therapist every week. I have nothing against talk therapy, but when the psychological community positions those therapies as these are the ones that work and all of these other things are completely useless, there's no research, they're not supported. So we're only going to recommend these things. Not only are you not servicing the 50% of people who are not benefiting from them, but you're also preventing people from getting that holistic healing experience. Because a lot of people think that what their doctor tells them is all that there is, right?

They go to the VA medical center and say, hey, I'm struggling. And they say, great, here's a talk therapist, go. And that trauma survivor thinks that that's the only option they have, right? They don't know any better. They're not gonna do the hours and hours of research on these different types of therapies. And so we need a more encompassing definition of what trauma therapy can look like

so people know their options. Again, I wanna be very clear. I don't hate talk therapy. I just hate that people are saying, it's the best thing in the world. It's the gold standard therapy when it really only works for like half of people. Okay, so I want to repeat what I think I heard

and clarify for understanding. Again, not against medication or talk therapy. And as it relates specifically to trauma, there is some evidence that it works in some cases, but not in others. And ultimately what we're saying here is what I believe in all aspects of everything, this one size fits all solution is outdated. more robust variety of options because we are all different humans and may benefit from different things or different options than the person sitting next to us. Is that fair? That is a hundred percent correct. And it's actually quite interesting. You used outdated, which I love because when you think about, we're going to get into this, but as you think about some of the integrative therapies that we're going to talk about, they are concepts that have been used for thousands of years in indigenous and eastern cultures. And so we think, oh, these

are new integrative therapies. They're all natural. They're all this. And it's like, no, no, no, we're returning. We're returning to our roots. We're returning to things that have been used for years. And that whole debate between like Eastern medicine and indigenous medicine and modern psychology is a whole nother thing. But just think about that as you're presented with some of these integrative therapies, they're not these new magical things that modern society came up with. They're going back to ways of being that humans have used for thousands of years. I like the word remembering. You said returning. I think remembering is a piece of it too. Remembering. I think these things still live in us somewhere, these knowings. Okay. So let's talk about some of these returning, remembering options of therapeutic or integrative therapy. what might that look like? Definitely. So there are tons of different options. Obviously, Nicole, you said in the beginning, my book has nine of them. There are more than nine, but those are just the nine that I chose to talk about. Broadly, the way that I like to categorize them is that there are

methodologies that include healing with nature. There are methodologies that include healing with movement. And then there are methodologies that include healing with animals. I'm going to talk about all three and kind of give some details about those. So starting with healing with nature, I haven't yet met a person who hasn't gone outside at least once in their life. And depending on what ecosystem they like, what types of trees and grass they like, looked up at the sky or looked at a tree and just felt, just felt a little bit better about life. That is kind of the power of nature that is being tapped into with these nature-based healing methods, such as ecotherapy or adventure-based therapy. Within those spaces, there are lots of different formats. Ecotherapy can look like anything from

actually indoor ecotherapy, which I'll talk about in a second, to, like I mentioned, these multi-day backcountry adventure healing type things. Within that framework, there is traditionally, and in the sense of therapy that I'm talking about, there is a licensed clinician there who's guiding either group practices or individual discussions. And then there's also kind of the co-therapist in nature. Not only does nature bring that spiritual sense of relaxation and some of those things that we do not yet fully understand how that works in the body, but it also can model a healthy relationship. A lot of trauma survivors, their trauma is rooted in some type of relational

disconnect, whether that was a terrible relationship with their parent as a child, or maybe with their current spouse or whatever that looks like. Trauma is often between two people. And so relationships can be disrupted. It can be really hard to trust people. It can be really hard to open up depending on the background of your trauma, but you can actually build a healthy relationship with nature and with animals too, which we'll get to, that can model and kind of give you comfort and an experience in beginning to build healthy relationships with humans again. When you're looking at some of the therapeutic activities that happen with these nature-based

therapies, if it's one-on-one, there is talking, right? Like these therapies have talking between the clinician and the person who's going to therapy, but it's often a lot of metaphor work. So you'll see a rock smushed between two trees and that can help you discuss and open up about a certain part of your life or how you feel stuck or you feel claustrophobic if you're in crowds or whatever that is for you. If it's group work, a lot of times it's team building activities, it's movement, it's leadership, it's trust, it's asking for help, it's different activities that incorporate those types of elements. Indoor ecotherapy, I do want to touch on for a second because I think it's incredibly fascinating. Basically, it's the concept of bringing natural and outdoor elements indoors. So it could be hanging paintings or pictures of nature. It could be having a little bubbling fountain that makes that sound like a river. It could be opening

a window and letting in some fresh air while still being indoors. The clinical benefit of this is that for people that are unable to participate in traditional ecotherapy, such as maybe cancer survivors or people who are hospitalized or on bed rest, they can still get some of those benefits. When I first heard about this, I was like, no way, right? Like there's no way that looking at a painting of a tree is going to help me feel better in a clinical sense. But the original studies on the power of nature for healing worked with paintings and photographs of trees in hospital rooms. Like they didn't even use quote actual nature and they still saw clinical benefit in terms of emotions and healing rate in those patients. So tons and tons of

content there, but that's kind of a brief overview of the nature-based ones. So the next group is kind of the healing with movement. And like I mentioned earlier with kind of that completing the cycle of the emotions and the hormones that's happening in the body, that's what a lot of movement-based therapies do. Two of the primary ones are dance movement therapy and trauma-sensitive yoga. And before people freak out and are like, I can't dance. Like, what do you expect me to do? Tango across the room in order to heal from trauma? It is not traditional dance. It is a space to allow your body to move in the way that it needs to. So for example, I've gone to dance movement therapy. I love the woman that I was working with, but I was so funny. We finished and she asked me, she's like, so how was it? And I was like, uncomfortable. And she's

like, yeah, that's therapy. It's like, yep. Yes, it is. So what we did in that session, just to give a really clear example of what that can look like is she says, where are you feeling tension in your body? And I say, oh, you know, my shoulders kind of sore. I did a hard workout yesterday, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, okay, you know, well, how would your shoulder want to move if it could move? And I'm like, well, you know, I kind of want to massage it out, like stretch it. She's like, no, no, what is it trying to do? And I'm like, okay. And so I let my shoulder do it at once. And it kind of starts creeping up towards my neck. And I'm like, okay. And so I let my shoulder do it at once. And it kind of starts creeping up towards my neck. And she's like, okay, you know, what else does your body want to do? Keep, keep following that train of thought. And I ended up in this very protective position with both my

arms crossed over my chest and my shoulders kind of hunched forward. And that allowed for this really clarifying discussion about safety and openness and relationships and how I've been hurt in the past and how that leads to self-protective tendencies in the future. And that was a young girl. She'd been adopted by a family in the Americas, and she just wanted to push on a pillow. She didn't want to talk. She just wanted to push. She wanted to push. And so that's what she did. She pushed on a pillow. And eventually what came out was that she had been assaulted by her adopted brother and she couldn't push him off in the moment. And so what she needed to do in dance movement therapy was push him away. So that's kind of what that therapy can look like. Trauma-sensitive yoga is a little more obvious. It is generally a hatha-based or yin-based yoga, very slow movements. But what makes it different than kind of traditional yoga or workout yoga

is the incorporation of choice. So instead of saying, all right, now move into a downward dog or move into child's pose. The facilitator for trauma-sensitive yoga could say something like, okay, now we're going to just move into this position, or you can do this, or you can do what feels right for your body. Or if you want, you can get up and leave the class, right? There's that element of yes, no, or whatever else feels good for your body. When you think about trauma, again, it is something that is outside of your control, because if you could control it, you would stop it. You wouldn't allow the thing to happen to you. And so giving this opportunity for trauma survivors to gain a sense of control over what they do with their bodies is a very critically important element of trauma

sensitive yoga. The other part is that in a traumatic event, especially something like a sexual assault or a mugging or something where there was a very bodily boundary that was broken, trauma-sensitive yoga provides an opportunity to rebuild trust with your body. You have an opportunity for your body to tell you, hey, that's too much in this direction, or hey, I want to do this instead, and hear that, and then listen to that, and give your body what it needs in that moment. So lots of healing work that can happen there. The third category is the animal-based healing, and the most common forms of animal-based healing are equine-assisted therapy and canine-assisted therapy. Equine-assisted therapy

can either be group or individual, and it takes place on a farm because that's where the horses are. And it involves, well, let's put it this way. There's two different models of equine assisted therapy. The first is the EGALA model, E-A-G-A-L-A. And that kind of works through a multi-step process where you are using the horses and the landscape and some certain props to kind of work through your trauma story. Some examples of this include if you see a horse that you resonate with being bit by another horse in the field, you can take that horse that you resonate with and move it to a new pasture or a new paddock to a place of safety, which maybe was something you were not able to do for yourself

because you were a child in your parents' home or whatever that is for you. So those types of kind of metaphors, movement, interaction with the animals, bringing them to a safe space is kind of a lot of the elements in EGALA-based therapy. In EGALA-based therapy, there is the four-legged stool, which is that there is you as one leg, there is the horse as the other leg, there is the mental health professional as the third, and then there's the equine specialist, so the animal handler as the fourth. And all four of those individuals are critically important elements of EGALA equine assisted therapy. The EPONA model is the other model of equine assisted therapy or the other most common

model. And that uses more movement and direct interaction with the horse. So in the Igala model, it is entirely on the ground. You will not get on the horse. You are not expected to ride the horse. But in the Epona model, there may be some mounted activities. You're not going to be expected to gallop across the field or anything like that, but it could be, sit really tall on this horse. What does that feel like? How does that strength feel in your body? Or maybe lay down with your head on the horse's rump and feel it breathing underneath you. What is that like? And so that incorporates not only the equine interaction, but also the movement

part that we talked about earlier. In the Epona model, there's also things like grooming the horse or doing stretching with the horse. And oftentimes in equine assisted therapy, they'll let you take a picture with the horse and bring that home with you. And so you can kind of remember what that peace and safety felt like, even if you're not right there. The last thing I want to say about equine assisted therapy is why horses? Because horses are very, very unique when it comes to healing from trauma. In the first sense, a horse is big. And if you're not used to being around horses, you walk up to a horse, you're like, holy shit, this thing is huge. And if you are able as something that weighs a 10th of its weight to move it to a new pasture

or to ask it to step over this bar on the ground or whatever exercise you're doing, if you can move a 2000 pound animal, you can control your life and how you heal from trauma. You can move through that if you can do that with a horse. The other part of it is that horses are prey animals. They are not predators. And so they're able to model what is called a healthy level of awareness where they're on guard. You know, they're looking for any predators that could come after them, but they're not in this constant state of hypervigilance like some trauma survivors are. So horses, again, they can be that model for this healthy awareness, this healthy anxiety of what is going on around them without constantly being afraid. With canine-assisted therapy,

this is one of the more common integrative therapies. I think most people who have been to college, at least once their student wellness center brought in therapy dogs during finals week or something like that, you could go and snuggle them. I definitely did that when I was in college. But formal canine-assisted therapy is the pairing of a trained therapy dog with a licensed mental health professional. The dogs, like the horses, are co-therapists. They're very intuitive. They can help with regulation exercises. So, okay, put your hand on the dog's

chest. We're going to breathe at the same rate as the dog. They can be funny. They can break the ice. They can be goofy. And they can also model what it's like to mess up, right? Because I'm in training with my dog to be a therapy dog handler and she's not perfect. She's a very well-behaved dog, but there will be times where she looks at a squirrel and wants to go chase the squirrel or knock something off the table because she's so excited. And for a trauma survivor, especially someone who is perfectionistic in the sense of their whole world is built on this rigid structure or else it will collapse. To see something mess up and to see the handler of that something still love it,

still care for it, laugh it off, can be really healing for this person who feels like they have to hold on to everything so tightly. The other thing with canine-assisted therapy, again, they can bring in that movement piece. You can take them for a walk, you can groom them. And they also bring in that relationship piece like with nature. A lot of kids are more comfortable interacting with animals. And so they can have this healthy relationship with the dog or even adults too, right? This is not limited to children. They can talk to the dog and the therapist is listening, right? And can kind of guide that conversation, but it's much less threatening to look at a dog and talk to a dog than it is to sit across from a human and talk to them. So very brief overview of all of those

different models of healing, but those are some of the things that you can expect and some of the benefits that you can receive from these integrative methods of healing. So as you were going through all of them first, you know, there was so much of this feeling of like, all of that makes logical sense. It, you know, I can see how those things would be helpful. Another kind of theme that kept running, the word choice kept running through my brain as you were speaking. And again, not my area of expertise, but I would imagine for most people recovering from trauma, one of the elements that's really

hard is that that choice or agency or control over ourselves was taken from us. And to rebuild that, how important it is, which brings me to the thought that you said earlier is yes, medication and talk therapy are valuable choices, but let's not limit people's choices when they're at a time where they probably need, they need to decide what's going to work best for them. That's what my brain keeps saying. Definitely. And that's what happens when you tell people this is your option. If that option doesn't work for them, they don't know any better to say, okay, well, let me go try equine assisted therapy or ecotherapy. What can often happen is they either go, therapy is terrible.

It's never going to work. Why did I do this? Or they go, I'm terrible. I'm never going to work. Why did I do this? Or they go, I'm terrible. I'm never going to heal. Why should I even try? And either way it ends up with them not getting the help that they need. So I'm so glad we're rounding around to that because that's, that's what I'm trying to give people. I'm not trying to say integrative therapies are so much better and you should never go to talk therapy. I'm saying you have options and you have choices and you can find something that's gonna work for you

because everyone's healing journey is gonna look different than the person sitting next to them. And if the first thing you try doesn't work for you, it's not a you thing. Yeah, I think that's so, so, so important. Okay, I wanna ask two more questions. The first is, we live in a patriarchal world.

I believe that. How does is, you know, we live in a patriarchal world. I believe that. How does gender impact both the trauma we experience and how we experience trauma? Yes, both fantastic questions. I love talking about this. So in terms of the trauma that we experience, I'm going to use veterans as an example, because it's very clear cut. There's a lot of gender-based research on that when it comes to trauma. So with that, women who are in the military are significantly more likely to experience sexual trauma and men are significantly more likely to experience combat-related trauma. And so there's kind of this element of power and control that's like, yes, okay, it's very obvious women are more likely to be victims of sexual assault as well as non-binary individuals are even way more likely to be victims of sexual assault.

But there's this context of power dominance that is often present in a lot of women trauma survivors than in male trauma survivors. That is not to say that there are not male victims of sexual assault or dominance-based trauma. A hundred percent, it happens. They deserve the same amount of care and empathy and healing as women. But just kind of looking at the base statistics, there are differences in kind of how that trauma manifests and what is more likely to turn into PTSD than just an event that someone can heal from on their own. In terms of the experience of trauma, because we live in such a male-dominated

world, if you're looking at different psychoanalytic theories, including Lacanian theory, which is from Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, kind of comes out of Freud, which we don't need to get into the nitty-gritty of. But if you look at him, the male, the masculine world is very logical. It likes words. It likes scientific comprehension. And so when you throw these integrative therapies at a male-dominated world where there's not as much research on it, you can't put it into words because you can't describe what a sunset makes you feel.

It's very much feeling-based emotions, internal flow, movement, things like that. That clashes with this very black and white, male-dominated, logical, straightforward, verbal-based world. One of the nerdiest facts that I ever learned about psychology, I love this so much, is that the area of your brain that is responsible for turning thought and feeling into words is called Braca's area. And when that is, or I'm sorry, when you are experiencing a trigger, when you're flashing back to your trauma, that part of your brain essentially shuts off. So you can't talk about it. Literally, it's not just, oh, it's hard to talk about. I don't want to do it, which is totally valid. You literally neurologically cannot talk about it. And so

that's why we need some of these integrative therapies. But when we live in a world that loves so much to understand, to pick apart, to put words to, which again, if you're looking at Lacan's psychoanalytic theory is because it's masculine, right? And trauma and emotion and feeling and integrative are very feminine, that clashes. So what that results in is kind of what we're seeing in the psychological community, which is a disowning of some of these returning, remembering types of therapies in favor of something that we can understand, we can put in a lab, we can study it, we can control it, and we know exactly how it works. There's no space for that ambiguity, for that kind of feminine flow with some of these integrative therapies. And that hurts not just women, obviously, but anyone who's looking for

that holistic integrative healing, again, any male, female, non-binary individual. And that all stems back to a patriarchal society and also a white society, which is a whole nother topic. But those things really prevent people from accessing and understanding and feeling comfortable with the types of healing that may work for them. Okay. Just because of time. And I have so many questions going through my brain, and I'm glad that you mentioned, so my focus for today is gender, but I know that there are so much more that's playing a part, socioeconomic status, race, religion. I mean, probably so many things. One of the things that breaks my heart, I mean, it all breaks my heart, but is how often trauma survivors are re-traumatized in the way that they're dealt with or the handling of their trauma. So my question is how do we best support

people, the people we love, the people we interact with when they're experiencing trauma? What can we do to support them? Yes, such an important question. There are approximately 73,000 ways that I can answer this question. I'm going to pick two. One is on a community level and one is on an individual someone you love level. So from a community level, and this is specifically about sexual assault survivors, again, so many other things I could say, but with sexual assault survivors, research has shown that hospitals and communities that have a trained sexual assault nurse examiner on staff to help handle cases of sexual assault in terms of the medical evaluation, the psychological evaluation,

hospitals that have that, their survivors are much more likely to report not only a positive experience, but to continue forward with getting a sexual assault kit, with moving forward with talking to the police, with connecting with community resources. So a sexual assault kit, with moving forward with talking to the police, with connecting with community resources. So these sexual assault nurse examiners are kind of the focal point that help trauma survivors move from that immediate post-assault situation to beginning to get to a place of healing. So on a community level, you can advocate for sexual assault nurse examiners in your communities. If you already have one, great, go to the next neighborhood and advocate there. But my dream for sexual assault survivors is that every hospital or at least one hospital in every kind of residential

area has at least one sexual assault nurse examiner to work with these survivors and give a very personalized, empathetic, and knowledgeable guide to those survivors. From a personal level, you know, supporting people that are nearby you, the concept that I like to share is called holding the space. It is not something I came up with. It's been around for a while. But what it means is that you are a place of safety where someone can come in any emotional state, and they're not going to be judged. They're not going to be criticized. They're not going to be fixed. You're not going to come in and start throwing solutions with them. You are going to sit with them and be with them and reflect what they're feeling back to them. You're honoring, acknowledging, accepting, and receiving what they're sharing with you in a very nonjudgmental way. And people hear this and they're like, okay, great, Jess, but what do I do?

And that's the question. And that's not the question're like, okay, great, Jess, but what do I do? And that's the question. And that's not the question we need to be asking because it doesn't matter as much what you do or what you say, or the perfect thing that you can come up with. It matters that you are sitting next to that person with empathy, with an open ear where you're not going to judge them. You're not going to criticize them and you can give them what they need. Oftentimes, if you can provide that open door for people to come in, they will eventually tell you what it is they want. Maybe they want help finding a therapist. Maybe they need someone to take the kids for the weekend so they can have some time to

themselves. Whatever that is, that may come out. But that will never happen if you don't provide this open space for them to come to. There is a wonderful book that we can maybe link to all about holding the space. And so if you're interested in learning more about that topic, check out that book. It's an incredibly helpful resource that can give you a better understanding of what to do when you're not doing anything for someone and how that is a really powerful place to be. What is the name of that book? That's a great question that I can't remember offhand.

Send it to us and we'll put the name of that book in show notes. One more quick question. How important is believing them? When somebody comes to you with their trauma, how important is the, we hold space and believe what they're telling us? Absolutely critical. Because if someone comes to you with a story that is so close to their heart, that maybe has taken them decades to tell someone and you say, no, I don't believe you. That didn't happen. Not only does that ruin your supportive relationship with that person, but that can also re-traumatize them and prevent them from ever telling anyone else about that story. So it is so important.

You don't want to go so far as to pick sides or pick a fight on their behalf. You know, if someone comes to you and says, my husband is abusive, you don't want to start going, oh, you know, screw him. He's terrible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not the point of it, but you absolutely do not want to turn around and say, are you sure? Are you sure that happened? Are you sure you didn't do something to cause it? Cause that is just absolutely heartbreaking. And unfortunately it happens all the time. Yeah. Okay. Um, if you are listening and want to learn more about Jesse and her incredibly important work, you can check out her website, jessebyerinternational.com or follow her on Instagram at it's Jesseessiebyer. And for the love of all things, holy, get your hands on her book, how to heal. It's a practical guide, which is my

favorite kind of book, how to and advice and guidance and all that fun stuff. Jesse, thank you for doing what you do. And, um, you are exactly the right person to have this conversation with, uh, and thank you for your time. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for everyone to take some of this information and really start to move forward on their own healing journeys. Me as well. Okay. The reality of the world we live in today is that gender still greatly impacts both

the trauma we experience, for example, sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse to name only a few, but it also impacts how we experience trauma with women at greater risk of PTSD following these types of events. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that women are the only ones with trauma or even trying to compare traumas. I'm just pointing out that our gender is playing a role in it. And it's too heavy a load to carry alone. There are so many things that we can do that we must do to both protect and support each other. So here's my call to action. If you've experienced trauma, ask for support. Find the help you need. Don't give up. Nobody can do the work for you, but there are people who can stand with you.

And sometimes animals. I learned now today too. If you witness trauma, don't turn away from it. Call it out if and when you can and be outraged. If somebody honors you by sharing their trauma, listen, hold space, believe those that trust you enough to tell you about it. Here's what I know about women. We are so much stronger than we've been given credit for. We're so much more powerful than we believe, but that does not mean that we need to be strong all of the time. Asking for help is often the bravest thing you can do.

And lastly, nobody, and I mean, nobody deserves it. Do what you need to do to survive. And lastly, nobody, and I mean nobody, deserves it. Do what you need to do to survive. And the rest of us should fight like lives depend on it. That is woman's work. Hell, that's everyone's work.