[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00:01.58 Jala Hello world, and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes (she/her) and today I am joined in the study by my very good friend Desirée, (she/her) and we are talking today about a super important subject that I have put off, but I've had on my list basically since the beginning, trauma response, trauma, trauma response. Everybody deals with trauma and right now, ah we're accruing a lot more in our day and age with everything that is going on in the world. So here we are in the study to talk about this. And this is one of those book report episodes. We read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. And that is something that we will be referring to in the back half of the episode after some "what is trauma" basics the way that I usually do on this show. So y'all can listen to that here in a second. But first, Desirée, how are you doing today? 00:00:54.81 Desirée Yes. I am doing great. My husband John and I went to Kansas City this morning and picked up a new family edition, a new little gray and white kitten. The name he came with was Atticus, and we are probably going to end up keeping that. He's about six months old, got mostly gray body, little white socks on his feet. 00:01:22.21 Desirée It's the same rescue organization that we got two of our previous cats, Corvo and Astrid from, and that is very important to me, adopt, don't shop, and going through an all foster based organization to me feels especially responsible because We also have Atlas, who is 18. Astrid is four. Corvo is about two. And so finding a kitten that can fit with all of those different personalities and needs. If it's been fostered, then you can kind of get a better gauge of personality and a better, for sure you're going to get a good fit. So I think we've got a good fit with Abacus. He's just being a little shy and hiding under the bed at the moment. 00:02:07.15 Jala Awesome awesome. And you know when you told me the name I was like you I'm pretty sure you've never read it But so there is this goofy little genre fantasy fiction thing called the iron druid series and the main character in that series His name is Atticus. 00:02:20.07 Desirée Oh. 00:02:23.31 Jala So ah When you say that it makes me think of iron druid So for that reason you should probably seek out at least the first book and just take a take a look at that just for the shits and giggles because that's the first thing I think of now because of the name 00:02:25.09 Desirée Nice! 00:02:37.20 Jala so yeah um ah So I to shout out Lance right at the top of this episode. 00:02:45.29 Jala Lance, who was on the Disability and Ableism episode as well as the first of the Toxic Masculinity episodes. And Lance recommended the book that we're covering today, The Body Keeps the Score. 00:02:59.44 Jala He told me this and I'm like, yeah, that's actually already on my wish list. And he's like, read the book, read the book, read the book, read the book. and I didn't for a very long time because I felt like, man, this is a too heavy topic. 00:03:12.66 Jala I just don't have bandwidth right now, because as everybody has heard me kind of say constantly for the past, oh, I don't know, year at least. Plus, ah it's been a rolling dumpster fire. 00:03:25.32 Jala So, um you know, the dumpster is on fire. It is rolling down a hill. And it is then going into a flooded, yeah whatever, you know it's ongoing kind of stuff. 00:03:35.47 Desirée Yep. 00:03:36.67 Jala So I hadn't had a lot of bandwidth for a heavy topic. And I'm like, man, this is going to be one of those things where I'm going to have to do a lot of internal work. And you know like I'm not shy of doing the work, but I need to have enough energy for it. 00:03:47.41 Jala No, actually, this book is very easy for laymen to read. It is also very accessible for people in academia. It is a good book that is removed enough from the topic, like from the personal level of the topic, because this is a doctor writing this book. 00:04:05.21 Jala you know um It allows you to get some really good information and this insight on different ways that trauma affects people and different treatment methods. And so we're going to be going through some of that at the end so that folks can get a little bit more about that. But definitely for me, it is a strong recommend for people to read this book. 00:04:28.17 Jala don't shy away like me. it's actually There's only one part in the book when they were talking about one treatment method that made me tear up, but it was like tears of relief. Like, oh my God, that sounds amazing actually. 00:04:40.38 Jala um And so it's not something that's going to be like, oh, like I can't get into this right now. You know like you can, you can, I promise. So Desirée, ah at the top of this, what do you think about the book? 00:04:53.41 Desirée Yeah. So I would agree that it's relatively easy to read. um However, my bachelor's is in psychology. So it did feel like something to me that might be a little bit more challenging. 00:05:09.55 Desirée for people who have no frame of reference for that because they talk about parts of the brain and what those do. So I think you'd maybe need at least a little bit more familiarity. And also I have read a lot of Oliver Sacks and his work and I think he is just an incredibly gifted writer as well as a psychology professional. 00:05:33.30 Desirée And so I was maybe judging this a little bit too harshly because I was kind of judging it against Oliver Sacks. So I didn't find this quite as engaging some of the people that Dr. van der Kolk chose to highlight among his patients. I was like, well, I'm sure you had to have someone who would have been Not nearly as traumatizing to read about as this person um So I didn't maybe have quite as positive of an experience with it as you and I didn't find it quite as accessible for a broader audience However, I will say So it's been sitting at my desk at work. 00:05:58.81 Jala and Right. oh 00:06:11.24 Desirée It's been what I've been reading during my lunch breaks and I had a colleague walk by and and say, hey, I love that book. It helped me and my family out a lot. And he shared that he had to listen to it as an audio book because some of the psychology stuff was over his head, but being able to just listen to it as an audio book and let it kind of wash over you and sink in and just doing it in small little bites was a very helpful way to process this book. So that might be a recommendation for folks who pick up the book and find it too hard to read through. Try the audio book. 00:06:45.53 Jala Right, right. That's a good point. Of course, with the kinds of stuff that I'm interested in, I have not had psychology as part of my college curriculum or anything like that that I had gone through. However, I do a lot of independent studying. and you know I was reading the Porges work on (poly)vagal nerve theory and things like that. I've done some other studying and that is, if you want to talk about impenetrable, 00:07:10.21 Desirée Yeah, yep. 00:07:14.51 Jala Let's talk about the porridge's work. But um yeah, so if you have any recommendations, Desirée, that you want to throw out for other kinds of books about this sort of topic, please um you know let me know. 00:07:26.90 Jala If you can't think of them off the top of your head, I will just drop them in the show notes. 00:07:30.69 Desirée Yeah. Oliver Sacks for sure is always at the top of my list for psychology related topics. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, um, is one of his more famous ones, but, and they're also, um, a movie awakenings was about his work and his writing. 00:07:50.66 Desirée So good things. If I think of others, I will definitely shoot them your way. 00:07:56.22 Jala Awesome, cool. um I forget, do we already say like what episodes you've been on? 00:08:02.21 Desirée I don't think we did. 00:08:04.02 Jala Okay, well then we should talk about that. 00:08:06.26 Desirée Yes. 00:08:06.31 Jala ah So you are not found anywhere else on the internet except for you are you exist on Bluesky as somebody who absorbs things that I send you cute animals. 00:08:13.30 Desirée I do. 00:08:16.26 Jala ah Because like, yes, we you know I have left Facebook, I have an Instagram that I don't use, and it's probably gonna go the way of the dinosaur. And then like I have a Bluesky, but I also just found out that Bluesky is doing the same kind of shit that Facebook and Instagram are doing. 00:08:32.06 Desirée Mm. 00:08:33.26 Jala But the thing is, with a podcast, you have to be out on a social media somewhere. 00:08:33.28 Desirée Yeah. 00:08:37.78 Jala So I'm just going to stay where I'm at, Bluesky and Substack. 00:08:38.48 Desirée Yep. 00:08:42.90 Jala Those are the ones that I will be on. um But insofar as stuff that you produced some time that is out on the on the web somewhere for people to access, you've been on various episodes of Monster Dear Monster in the past talking about a bunch of different things, including Kindred: The Embraced, which is the next episode of this show. 00:08:51.68 Desirée Yes. Mm-hmm. 00:09:04.44 Jala So um you were not on the new episode that we are releasing here that like in a couple of weeks, but you were on the Monster Dear Monster episode talking about it. 00:09:15.10 Jala So um obviously that's going to be linked in those show notes for sure. 00:09:15.63 Desirée Yes. 00:09:19.04 Jala But you were also on talking about like Ghostbusters and I don't know where you were on for Riddick. I think I made you sit through Riddick too and some other things. 00:09:26.75 Desirée Yep. 00:09:27.69 Jala All of all my ideas that I made Dave do ah before I had my own podcast. So but as for this show you were on the DEIB episode which is super important that'll be linked in the show notes whenever I do another remaster it's gonna be on that like the next time I need a break and in the log of shows I will do a remaster of that episode. 00:09:50.38 Jala It is still wonderfully listenable. People can go and listen to it now. It'll just be a re-release title at some juncture, I'm sure, because it's very important. And our government is trying to currently get rid of it as an as an idea. 00:10:04.57 Jala Not going to happen. 00:10:06.27 Desirée No. 00:10:07.61 Jala But yeah, that'll definitely be signal boosted. ah You were also on the death positivity episode and the empathy episode, and I don't know if you've been on any others. I might have to like go to my own website and go Google it to see like ah what other episodes were you on. 00:10:23.76 Desirée Yeah, my memory is terrible and talking to you is a good time. So it's not something that sticks out as a trauma thing I'd need to remember. So. 00:10:34.25 Jala Right, right. It's not a trauma. It's not a trauma at all So, you know, it is fine. 00:10:39.43 Jala So ah you were on five episodes. Okay burnout you were on the burnout episode Yeah, I forgot. 00:10:43.34 Desirée Oh, imagine that. 00:10:45.17 Jala I forgot you were on the burnout episode and also you were on the two-year retrospective episode that we did that was looking back at what I'd done so far. 00:10:51.16 Desirée Oh, yes. 00:10:53.17 Jala Yeah. See I knew I'd forget some. 00:10:56.26 Desirée See, I'm more popular than I realized. 00:10:59.63 Jala Well, I just, I forget because I'm like, what, what times that we talked, we're on mic. I mean, we talk all the time. So, you know. But anyway, all of the preamble is over for that. 00:11:09.43 Desirée Yes. 00:11:11.73 Jala we'll get into the show proper here in a second. ah We have a coffee, it's ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. 00:11:16.19 Desirée yes 00:11:18.90 Jala We have bonus shows, bonus content there, ah various interesting things to check out. So go check that out if you want to support us, kick us a few bucks. um We also have a swag shop and the link is in the show notes for that if you want to buy a shirt or other type of thing. 00:11:34.82 Jala So ah have fun with that if yeah that's your thing. Now, let's talk about serious stuff. What is trauma? 00:11:44.73 Jala So and go ahead, Desirée. 00:11:47.76 Desirée We looked at a Psychology Today article and some of that talks about the literal definition, right? So the word trauma literally means either a wound, shock, or injury. 00:12:04.86 Desirée However, those are things that I think people would frequently associate with physiological trauma. 00:12:10.56 Jala Right. 00:12:11.42 Desirée So trauma to the body that's visible to others. A lot of what we're talking about today is more that psychological trauma. So an emotional distress or an emotional wound, shock or injury. 00:12:24.23 Desirée Those things that are not visible to an outsider. There could be a physical cause to it. Yeah. 00:12:33.88 Jala Yeah, and it could be a one time kind of deal like you had an accident or you had this this um really bad fight with a loved one or something like that. 00:12:46.30 Jala Some some kind of acute. situation like a one time boop that it happens and then it's over or it could be a chronic situation where there's a series of things like if you are an abusive situation or something like that and you are constantly exposed. 00:13:04.68 Jala you know um And that ends up, you know, affecting people differently because everybody processes experiences differently. 00:13:12.59 Desirée Okay. 00:13:16.54 Jala So what maybe this is a super important thing for everybody to remember is that what may be trauma to one person may not ah affect somebody else at all. 00:13:27.95 Jala You know, like they may bounce back real quick and be fine. So just because you're okay and you were in the same situation as another person does not mean that that person is not traumatized or doesn't have a a quote unquote reason to feel the way that they do. ah ah Emotions are not a logical thing and the way that people respond has to do not just with the situation itself but also their individual history, their own genetic make makeup, their own neurology, their own everything. like you know Whatever they're bringing to the table and then presented you know to the situation with is super important and will 00:14:12.47 Jala you know Kind of dictate what happens in that situation. like Even with me, like if I'm in a very supportive situation, I've got a lot like a whole social safety net going on and I haven't been having like a lot of stress for a while or anything like that. And then I come ah come across something that is a difficult thing to deal with. 00:14:35.23 Jala It won't necessarily traumatize me the same way that it would if I were unsupported on my own, ah dragged down and dealing with a bunch of stuff that I've you know been dealing with for a long period of time, and so on and so forth. like how much your Your resilience also has to do with like your history. 00:14:57.31 Desirée Well, and an example that I will use as well is having aphantasia. 00:15:04.06 Desirée So I have a complete inability to form mental pictures. That's something I didn't even realize I had until I was in my thirties and all of my home pages for internet things are sciency websites. 00:15:18.05 Desirée And so I just happened to click home and see an article. What does the apple in your mind look like? And I was like, what the? Apple, okay, click on that, read it, and learned about aphantasia and how some people can make picture perfect replicas in their head. Those people do not have aphantasia, but then aphantasia can be varying degrees of you can see pictures, but they're fuzzy or ah they're only in black and white, or you only see outlines or like me, there's literally nothing. And so when people talk about their mind's eye or even their experience of a memory, 00:15:55.48 Desirée I only have the story that I tell myself. So in terms of processing trauma for me, it's a very different experience from somebody who can make a mental picture and potentially has that movie playing over and over again in their head and they have to find a way to interrupt that and consciously do that. Whereas that's something I couldn't even do if I tried. 00:16:18.58 Desirée So knowing your own experiences of the world and being aware of how you process and how you receive things is incredibly important to understanding how you would process trauma. 00:16:30.29 Jala Right, and right. So trauma is subjective. That's the the very short version of of how to say, you know, trauma is different for everybody. Trauma is subjective. 00:16:41.35 Jala But the World Mental Health Survey Consortium found that 70% of adults have had at least one experience that they label as trauma in their life. 00:16:41.38 Desirée Yep. 00:16:51.08 Jala That doesn't mean that it's 70% of adults have been traumatized. That just means they identify it as trauma, which is to say, I will go out on a limb here, but I feel like probably 100% of everybody has had something that is trauma that they probably don't realize. That other 30% probably don't label it as trauma because they think, oh, I've dealt with it, but you know um they may or may not have dealt with it. you know That doesn't necessarily mean that they didn't have a response. It just means that like they feel that it is not you know as big of a deal or whatever. Like a lot of people don't know a lot about trauma, what trauma really does to you. So I feel like the lack of understanding of the subject matter is part of it as well. 00:17:37.98 Desirée Yep. 00:17:39.20 Jala So let's dive into different types of trauma. We've got acute trauma. We talked about that. That's where you have a one time event, short duration, one time event. So that would be, again, something like an accident or a fight with a loved one that is hurtful or something like that. The reaction itself is short term. It resolves on its own or with the help of counseling. This would be, you know, like if you were assaulted or you have a car crash, the sudden death of a loved one, 00:18:07.65 Jala even a medical emergency can create acute trauma. Now, um I can relate to most of this, but you know i would I would argue that like the sudden death of a loved one, that's an ongoing because you have to all the grief that you have to process and you have to go through all of the rest of the encountering it. 00:18:17.01 Desirée Yep. 00:18:21.59 Desirée Mm hmm. 00:18:28.08 Jala If you have yes if you have a car crash and it's your own car, then yes, you have some more steps you have to do. So it's kind of prolongs that stress. For you, you know a medical emergency Like if you go to the but if you have like say for example, I did the medical emergency Can create an acute drama my dad? um he had to go to the hospital and then you know like we had to go and take him and it was just like out of out of basically out of nowhere. He's not in good health, but like he hasn't ah needed to go. and Then like I had to ride in the you know the ambulance with him, EMS with him to get him to the hospital and all this other mess. and um There was a while I was traumatized in such a way from him falling out of bed and him having such problems with ah breathing and everything that i 00:19:17.62 Jala I still to this day have to wear earplugs when I go to sleep because I will stay awake and try to listen for his breathing. 00:19:21.82 Desirée Hmm. Mm hmm. 00:19:26.36 Jala or to hear if he is falling out of bed or something. Now the earplugs I wear just dampen noise. that Of course I can still wake up and I can still hear things, but my sense of hearing is very acute and I'm a very light sleeper. So ah for a while, like I could not sleep at all if I didn't plug my ears because I was just laying awake at night constantly, you know, yeah on that high alert mode, which we'll get into discussing later. 00:19:52.45 Jala So that would be an example of an acute but also chronic at the same time because there were multiple instances over time. 00:19:59.71 Jala An acute one became a chronic one. 00:20:03.49 Desirée Right. 00:20:04.27 Jala So how about you? 00:20:06.13 Desirée And then I was going to say, and then so chronic encounter to acute is the harmful effects of events that are repeated or prolonged. 00:20:17.18 Desirée So your instance of the same thing happened multiple times. 00:20:23.66 Jala Right. 00:20:23.70 Desirée That's where that acute transition to the prolonged and chronic. 00:20:28.29 Jala Right. So a big thing to note here is that an acute event, acute traumatic event, it can cause you to have you a a lasting impact, but when you have chronic trauma, 00:20:44.45 Jala You have constant trauma going on regularly. That is also like chronic stress where it starts, you know, chronic trauma causes chronic stress. It's one of the stressors you can have. And then that causes a bunch of different health problems. And the reason for this is because you don't have enough time to get over the trauma because the trauma keeps coming up and keeps coming up. And then you get freshly traumatized over and over again as you continue on through your life. 00:21:13.39 Jala So that's like the last year for me has been chronic trauma. And, ah you know, so it's been like a kind of rolling shit show. um Now, ah my my situation with my stuff, I've had breaks in between to recover a little bit before the next thing happens. So I'm not like in the worst situation right now. But I definitely need a break. Let's just put it like that. 00:21:37.85 Desirée Sure. And I think at least for me, it also kind of functions the same as seizures. So I had one when I was 18 months old, clinically dead for several minutes. 00:21:49.75 Desirée And then at 18 years old, I had another one and I was told that each subsequent seizure lowers your threshold for the potential of having others. 00:21:59.55 Jala Mm hmm. 00:21:59.69 Desirée For me, I think trauma is kind of the same because I you know become hyper aware of things and then maybe overreact more. than I would have or something because I have this past memory of a trauma. So I feel like trauma can lower your threshold for being able to process future traumas, especially if it's that chronic and it feels like every time you turn around, you're being hit with something else. 00:22:23.99 Jala Well, and part of that too is is twofold. So we'll get into it a little bit more, but the body keeps the score talks about how when you have a trauma, you become hypervigilant. 00:22:35.80 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:22:35.89 Jala And that would be like me laying awake at night, listening for my dad's breathing to make sure he's breathing. Um, that's, uh, hypervigilant. Like I'm not sleeping. I'm not resting. I can't let go and go to sleep because I'm listening for my dad's breathing because of my trauma. Right. And, um, like if you've already had a trauma and then something else comes up. 00:22:56.68 Jala uh even if you've processed trauma you still have that memory now something that is again talked about in the body keeps score book is that uh the traumas that you have change the way that your brain functions physically stores memories and information in different places and it 00:23:13.30 Desirée Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 00:23:17.88 Jala Also changes like the way that your brain thinks and what parts of your brain activate so you know depending upon how massive this trauma is even if you recover from that trauma it has altered how you think. 00:23:32.68 Jala So, you know yes, I would absolutely agree with you. This is the very long way of me saying, yes, I agree. I think that that is a correct statement that you know once you've had a certain amount of trauma or you've had any trauma, you you are likely to ah be susceptible to having other traumas in the future. But I also feel that once you've gotten to the point where you have bounced back from a trauma and you have a larger toolkit, 00:24:00.83 Jala with which to cope with your trauma. Once you find what works for you and once you can develop that safety net and realize what happens to you when you are starting to feel a certain way and you have that awareness, it's also easier for you to then get out of that trauma so long as you have your like resilience toolkit available to you at that time. 00:24:26.78 Desirée And I think that is an important distinction, right? Persistence versus resiliency. 00:24:34.58 Jala Right. 00:24:35.05 Desirée So I feel like I have almost a toxic level of persistence. I can push through damn near anything. However, that does not mean that I am resilient. Just because I was able to get through the thing, wake up the next day, get out of bed, go to work. I can persist, but it doesn't mean that I've actually healed or correctly processed. I can still be exhausted and still you know show all the signs of trauma internally because that's again part of that subjective experiencing of trauma and the you don't know what someone else is going through kind of trauma um to it may I may not wear my trauma on my sleeve visibly but internally in my head it's chaos in there. 00:25:29.29 Jala Right. And so there's a couple of things I want to say about that. First off, it's like the thing that is very popular right now for everybody on the internet to say, the horrors persist, but so do I. 00:25:41.82 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:25:42.13 Jala If you said the word persist of course persist, so does Desirée, but Desirée is bleeding out as she's walking along. Right. 00:25:50.59 Desirée Yep. 00:25:50.87 Jala And that's I feel like that's everybody right now. So I mean, like the choice, the word choice there was perfect. 00:25:53.56 Desirée Yep. 00:25:57.72 Jala So for sure. And what I, I for a long time was in the exact same situation that you're talking about here. Uh, you could say I'm still in that situation because there's always shit happening. 00:26:07.98 Jala But, um, the thing is, is that I used to term it as I'm a functional depressive, if you will, like, I'm not like, I say it that way because my dad has a bipolar disorder. 00:26:16.07 Desirée Mm hmm. 00:26:20.66 Jala He also has depression issues. And when he is depressed, he is, he cannot, he cannot. anything, anything, nothing, nothing shuts down. 00:26:28.28 Desirée Yep. 00:26:31.09 Jala And so compared to that, I would compare that to me and I'm like, well, even if there's a lot of bad things going on, even if all this stuff is hitting the fan and I feel bad, I feel depressed, I feel all these ways, I am still able to go about my life and joke with people and sound the same and do my job and do all this other stuff, but I'm the walking wounded. 00:26:48.80 Desirée Mm hmm. Yep. 00:26:55.25 Jala That's the kind of long and short of it. and That was the way that I would term it back in the day. It's not accurate, but that is that is the way that I used to call it. just as a you know that That was what my vocabulary was at that time. 00:27:08.07 Desirée Right. And. Like you said, vocabulary at the time, we're always learning. And so a term that maybe resonated with you at some point, the more you learn, you're like, hmm, that doesn't actually reflect what I feel. 00:27:23.93 Desirée For me, that was resiliency. I used to think of myself as resilient. 00:27:26.75 Jala Right. 00:27:29.12 Desirée And then I've had to shift that focus and be like, nope, just because I'm still able to go through my day, do all my things. Because I don't appear outwardly this way, it does not mean that my internal world aligns with that, so I'm not actually as resilient as I thought. 00:27:50.93 Jala So this also reminds me of check on your strong friends, right? 00:27:55.03 Desirée Yes. 00:27:55.27 Jala The strong friends in this case almost always refers to the walking wounded who are still going about their day, right? 00:28:02.99 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:28:03.96 Jala The people who are not actively at this time necessarily leaning on people or wearing it on their sleeve. Check on those people because those people are probably in it right now. 00:28:15.10 Desirée Yep. 00:28:15.61 Jala So, ah for sure. And the thing is, that the shit of it is, even if you say, hey, how are you doing? ah you know like They're probably still in the, I'm a functioning person right now that's doing these things. 00:28:24.41 Desirée Mm hmm. 00:28:26.84 Jala ah They'll be like, oh, I'm okay. I'm tired. you know That's a lot of it, right? 00:28:30.38 Desirée Yep. 00:28:32.65 Jala I'm tired. and No, no, no, no. There's a lot of stuff wrong. There's a lot of things going on. um you know ah they would They won't necessarily tell you in those terms if you just ask them how they are. 00:28:44.73 Jala like A lot of times I feel like the people who are still able to go about doing stuff without wearing their trauma on their sleeve, they don't realize that they are traumatized. 00:28:56.51 Jala Just like you said, Desirée, with you, you don't actually realize, no, I have this like rolling trauma that i I haven't processed that's still with me that I'm trying to deal with. 00:28:56.97 Desirée Mm hmm. 00:29:06.90 Jala you know So ah other types of trauma, we've got complex trauma that can arise from experiencing repeated or multiple traumatic events of differing types from which there is no possibility of escape, such as repeated child abuse. The sense of being trapped is a feature of this experience. Like other types of trauma, it can undermine a sense of safety in the world and beget hypervigilance and constant monitoring of the environment for the possibility of a threat. 00:29:34.30 Jala complex trauma experienced in childhood has been associated with the development of borderline personality disorder and PTSD. complex trauma, ah the way that it's like different types of things from which there's no, like, here's the thing, like, a lot of the stuff that's been going on for me in the last year has been different types of things. 00:29:44.57 Desirée Yep. 00:29:56.54 Jala What's the new bullshit? What's the new bullshit today? You know, aI mean, I think I would probably term instead of, yeah yes, some of it's chronic, but also some of it's complex because there's a bunch of different fires that I'm trying to deal with ah at the same time. 00:30:12.14 Jala And I think that that's kind of a lot more common than people think, you know, like something that you might not label as trauma might actually be traumatizing you, you know, when you, when you add it in combination with all of these other aspects that you're dealing with. 00:30:15.61 Desirée Mm hmm. Right. 00:30:28.16 Desirée Right. And that that they're differing types. So even if you've developed a really good coping mechanism for say working through one type of trauma. 00:30:39.16 Desirée If you're then sideswiped with another, well, you don't have that toolkit for dealing with this type. So you're still processing the one that you know how to work through. 00:30:50.46 Desirée And then this other one comes along and then this other one piles on top of that. 00:30:54.98 Jala Right. 00:30:55.05 Desirée So there's navigating all of those different types. No one type of trauma is going to be processed and work through the same way. 00:31:05.70 Jala Absolutely. And that is really important because ah going back to what I said earlier about like the more traumas and stuff that you deal with, the more of a toolkit you have. Because like if you've only had one trauma in your life, that one thing that really counts as trauma, you've only got a toolset for that one thing. 00:31:21.84 Desirée Yeah. 00:31:22.01 Jala So like as you go through and experience more life, um provided that you have found a way to bounce back from and heal from that trauma and process that trauma, you know you have gained new tools for anything that comes up at you in the future. 00:31:35.84 Jala So yeah, tell us about secondary trauma. 00:31:40.53 Desirée So secondary trauma is probably. probably my favorite to talk about just because it's one that I think would be skipped over or not necessarily obvious to a lot of people. So it's either secondary or vicarious, and it is from your exposure to other people's suffering. So you're not maybe experiencing the trauma yourself, but especially for people who are highly, highly empathetic, like I tend to think of myself as. 00:32:11.39 Desirée people who are working in professions that are around traumatic events all the time. So people who are called on to be those first responders. They're the ones treating the wounded, treating the injured, caught up in the chaos, physicians, first responders. 00:32:28.68 Desirée even law enforcement. I also think it's important here to highlight veterinarians as people who have a high rate of experiences with secondary trauma. 00:32:40.55 Desirée Veterinarians have an incredibly high risk of death by suicide, just like a lot of other folks in those professions that I named. And so those are the people, like Jala said, check in on your strong friends just because you know someone who is a paramedic who you think has seen it all. 00:32:59.62 Desirée Did they process it and how did they process it and how are they doing with it? 00:33:01.56 Jala Right. 00:33:05.29 Desirée And so I think that's really important to be aware just because someone seems strong, seems resilient, seems all these things. If you're continually exposed to those types of traumas, especially as someone who would be working in those professions, I would also potentially add in educators as someone who spent 10 years in education, you know, 00:33:24.47 Jala Right. absolutely ah Especially with all the shit that goes on in schools with gun violence and all of that other stuff right now too. I mean, on top of everything else. 00:33:35.41 Desirée Yeah. 00:33:36.45 Jala And we will talk about it later. Children, like basically one of the major things in The Body Keeps the Score that is talked about is that what would help with America's cost of health care the most is to help mitigate childhood trauma. 00:33:57.69 Jala And some of that that ah Dr. Van Der Kolk advocates for is having educators and other people who interact with children in the spaces that they spend the most time, such as a school environment, be educated themselves in like coping mechanisms and ways to treat trauma, identify and treat trauma, because these kids can't learn if their brains are shut off from being able to receive new information. 00:34:30.62 Jala It changes the way your brain works. And then when you are in the middle of active trauma, you just replay the same note. And the main thing about trauma is that you have to open up the mind, help help the the body and the mind feel safe enough to become receptive to a new possibility. 00:34:53.79 Jala So, um, that's, that's something that's really, really important. I would also say in here, just, you know, from my own experience, a caretaker, a caretaker also has to deal with, um, you know, like the, the kind of suffering of others situation as well. 00:35:01.53 Desirée Yeah. 00:35:07.72 Jala Uh, not to the same extent as somebody who is a physician or a first responder, of course, but you know, there's, there's different levels of it. There's different ways in which, and you know, that this is just, um, 00:35:20.78 Jala something that that definitely, and in two, I would even say, you know that friend who, Desirée, I know you're this friend for me pretty often, um but like the friend that you talk to who you go to when you have a thing and you just need to talk about it. Usually, when I talk to you, Des, it's like not because I'm in the middle of it and an emotional wreck. I'm talking to you like in a functional way. like Here's the situation. Here's what I'm doing to deal with it. you know like I've got a grip on it before I talk to you, so it's not like I'm dumping necessarily, trauma dumping. But like the people who are the receptacles of the trauma dumping, when somebody will message you, and this is the thing that happens to me a lot, 00:36:03.26 Jala ah People message me with their trauma and prompted they don't ask me how i am they just send me a message and dump and then go off on a thing and just expect me to listen to it and this is. You and I will be doing a boundaries episode coming up in the future I have been setting boundaries actively with these people to say look, it's not that I don't want to help you through this, but I have been chronically dealing with things of my own. I need you to check in with me to see if I have room to handle what you've got going on before you start, because that's a courtesy that everyone should extend to everyone else. 00:36:37.47 Desirée Yes. 00:36:42.42 Jala um just because you don't know what's going on with people. Even if you talk to them on a daily basis, you don't know what's going on with them. They're not going to tell you every facet of their lives. you know um and part of the 00:36:54.30 Desirée and yeah oh I was going to say and as the person who receives a lot of that, right? 00:37:00.64 Desirée Sounds like you think I am a highly empathetic person who can help you process some of that. People who you view like that, I bet other people view them too. 00:37:11.71 Desirée There have been days, especially days where big events happened. I do get a lot of messages from people because they all think of me as that empathetic person who will listen to them without necessarily that regard that, oh, if I'm reaching out to her because of this, 00:37:31.08 Desirée maybe a lot of people are reaching out to her because of this. And yep, I can help you all and I absolutely will. 00:37:33.76 Jala Right. 00:37:37.47 Desirée I'm not gonna be the person who says no. But like you mentioned that can be draining. And so my you might have to start setting some of those boundaries. So people who have an empathetic friend that sets those boundaries, be mindful of that and be accepting of that and appreciate that they are doing that so that they can continue to be there for you. 00:38:01.19 Jala Right. and so ah to me so For me, like if somebody comes to me and they're saying, this is some shit that happened and I'm just really run down, but they're not like in a panic about it and like sobbing their eyes out, then that doesn't take the the toll on me and i' I'm fine with that. 00:38:13.36 Desirée Mm hmm. 00:38:19.00 Jala You can tell me a thing as long as it's not like you are raw and in the moment and you just you just need to unload. like I have to be have enough spoons to be able to handle that before you get into it because I've definitely had in the past year like some times where I've been dragged down to where like I would have been able to manage my own stuff if I had been asked before. 00:38:43.21 Jala dumped on, you know, uh, and then because I was dumped on, it became a problem. 00:38:44.33 Desirée Yeah. 00:38:48.72 Jala And then I became unable anymore. You know, that was like the straw on the camel's back that just made me unable because I didn't have enough of me to help with that. 00:38:56.47 Desirée Yep. 00:38:59.97 Jala So again, the healthy boundaries, healthy here's the thing, the the compassionate friend, it's hard for me to set boundaries like that. It is hard. 00:39:08.70 Jala And it's also hard for me to set boundaries like that as a caretaker. And the problem is the caretakers and the people who are the receptacles of the trauma dumping need it the most. So another subject, we'll get on it later. Think about boundaries. And when it comes to trauma and other people, be courteous when you do check in with folks you know and like say, hey, you want to talk to that person? OK. 00:39:33.59 Jala maybe check in first and say hi, ah and also maybe ask if they have the ability to help you with something right now, or you know can you message me whenever you can whenever you have the ability, if you can't right now, you know that kind of thing. 00:39:36.38 Desirée Yeah. 00:39:51.81 Jala Just give them the choice before you dump. 00:39:52.11 Desirée yeah Yep. 00:39:57.06 Jala because over time these individuals are at risk for compassion fatigue, especially first responders, physicians, veterinarians, law enforcement, because they are so inundated that they have to shut off. 00:40:15.00 Jala They can't be constantly compassionate when they are getting hit all the time. It wears you out. So, 00:40:22.31 Desirée Right. All of the helping professions, you know, Mr. Rogers said, look for the helpers. 00:40:27.49 Jala Right. 00:40:27.55 Desirée Be aware that the people who are doing the helping, especially if they're doing it for a paycheck, they are exposed to it at a significantly higher rate than somebody who isn't. 00:40:41.00 Desirée So unless they're doing volunteer work, which is also amazing, but be aware that the helpers also need help. 00:40:49.47 Jala Right, right. So when you have compassion fatigue, they start, whoever has it, starts to avoid investing emotionally and other people in an attempt to protect themselves from experiencing distress. 00:41:02.03 Jala This is also like another aspect that's not mentioned here is that This also causes dissociation. 00:41:09.50 Desirée Mm-hmm. 00:41:09.67 Jala You dissociate from your own emotions and, you know, like that's your way of protecting yourself from processing the trauma. It doesn't mean you're not being traumatized. You can quote unquote feel nothing, but that doesn't mean you're not traumatized. 00:41:24.19 Jala That just means that you have shut off yourself to process you or in order to function until such a time as maybe in the future, you can process it. The problem is when you never process it. 00:41:36.80 Desirée Yeah. 00:41:37.30 Jala So I've been talking for a minute. Tell us about ah the last type of identified type of trauma according to psychology today. 00:41:47.48 Desirée Yeah, so that is going to be an adverse childhood experience or an ACE, depending on how you like to say that, if you're going to spell out the acronyms person or not. 00:42:00.19 Desirée And that is an incredibly wide range. It's difficult, very traumatic. There are situations with children who are under the age of 17, so that 18 is typically considered an adult, and they either directly face or witness something that was traumatic and are having difficulty um even developing those effective coping skills. 00:42:28.34 Desirée So as an adult, if you can't process trauma because you never learned those skills, children certainly don't have those skills. So ACEs typically 00:42:38.62 Jala Right. 00:42:40.67 Desirée ah those adverse childhood experiences, they disrupt the nurturing bond between children and caregivers. So thinking, you know, what could possibly be traumatic for a childhood for a child? Unfortunately, a lot of times it is going to be those people that they trust, that they rely on as their caregivers who are doing these traumatic things to them. 00:43:06.17 Desirée And so it's negatively impacting their normal course of development, their emotional. um Injuries are going to potentially last long into adulthood because if a caregiver is doing the traumatic thing, they're not going to be in any position to teach the child how to deal with it, to recognize it because then they would have to admit that they were doing a traumatic thing and then seek help for both the child and themselves. Very unlikely to happen. So if children are experiencing these traumatic things, 00:43:41.39 Desirée by someone that they trust not getting any sort of immediate treatment, it would not be unexpected to have an adult develop out of that that is unable to process trauma as readily. and So childhood trauma could be something like the loss of a parent or caregiver, if the child is with a caregiver, neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, 00:44:11.91 Desirée sexual abuse, unfortunately, even divorce can be a really common type of adverse childhood experience. um Research, yeah. 00:44:22.46 Jala I would even say, well, I would even say so, um, back on the fat phobia episode, the fat phobia and eating disorders episode, when I had, um, Breyer and Raul on with me, we were talking about our childhood experiences and those always involved the trauma of either 00:44:27.99 Desirée Hmm. 00:44:43.63 Jala other kids saying stuff to us, but most often it was parents, parents or siblings or both. 00:44:47.66 Desirée Yep. 00:44:49.82 Jala ah and like The level of fat phobia and fat shaming that we experienced was different. you know ah The different types of things that happened to us were very different in like the intensity and the degree of which that thing happened, but like a lot of a lot of trauma that is quote unquote low key trauma, you know, but that sticks with us throughout our entire life is the shit that your parents and your other loved ones, your brothers and sisters, whoever, whoever's close to you says to you when you're a small child, it imprints and it stays forever. 00:45:27.75 Jala And like we're always dealing with the stuff that people told us as a kid, and you know There's still things I'm trying to unpack that I still have trauma responses about that happened to me when I was little. It's just from like words. and it's not even like you know ah Sometimes it's not even and presented to you in a way that's like, oh, you know I'm straight up fat shaming you. 00:45:51.67 Jala It might just be like, You know, oh, maybe get this other one, you know, over here because it'll, it'll look better on your, your shape or your size or your, you know, something like that, where they're like round about doing something that that's like fat shaming, for example. And that still affects you, you know? 00:46:09.58 Desirée Well, or even I'm sure you've covered this on at least one episode. If you happen to lose weight and a parent comments and they're trying to be positive. 00:46:18.47 Jala Oh yeah. 00:46:18.96 Desirée Oh, you look much better in that than you used to. That still has that traumatic. 00:46:24.40 Desirée So I didn't look good before. I wasn't, you know, meeting expectations before kind of thing. 00:46:30.55 Jala Oh, yeah. 00:46:31.95 Desirée There are all sorts of things parents say that are just meant to be an off the cuff, one time comment. 00:46:32.13 Jala Yeah. 00:46:39.17 Desirée They have no idea that they're leaving a lasting trauma. 00:46:42.11 Jala Right. Right. It's not. Yeah. And that's what I think what my point really is, is that a lot of times the things that traumatize us aren't even necessarily the times where the parents are very straight up being severe or brutal or something like that. Sometimes the way that you say something, the word choice that you use or the facial expressions or whatever will just cause something that you say to have this adverse response. And when you're a child, that's much more impactful because 00:47:13.09 Jala You don't have any kind of resilience built up yet. You don't know how to deal with that. You know you don't know how to reconcile that. You just know that suddenly you failed for some reason. 00:47:24.00 Desirée Well, and it is often not even intended to be harmful, right? A lot of times parents especially first-time parents who have never had a child and they're just trying to learn how to parent and so not understanding the potential impacts, right? So I said I had that seizure at 18 months old, was clinically dead for several months, I was put on phenobarbital. 00:47:54.23 Desirée phenobarbital is part of a concoction of drugs that is used in pet euthanasia and other medical things to deaden nerve endings. So as a result of being on that drug, I didn't feel physical sensations. So my mom would tell a story and to her it was kind of funny. Oh, we couldn't spank you. So mommy had to learn how to punish you a different way. And all I had to do before long was just say mommy is disappointed. 00:48:21.76 Desirée and I would crumple. And so she looked at that as a triumph of, oh, I learned how to do this parenting thing. 00:48:23.56 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:48:28.52 Desirée And that is psychological drama. I'm so still processing and trying to figure out You know, why do I need authority figures to tell me I'm doing a good job? Well, it's because that was the only punishment method that my mom saw fit because the only other thing she could do was take away my books or my pets, which she wasn't going to do. So, well, let's figure out psychological damage. 00:48:52.86 Jala Right, right. So research has shown that the more ACEs or ACEs a person experiences, the greater their risk for future mental and physical health problems. Again, ah this is this it actually Trauma can even go down to genes firing differently because genes can be turned on and off depending upon environment and circumstance and a bunch of different things. So yes, there is like genetic traces of trauma that can turn into generalgen generational trauma. 00:49:27.76 Jala as well where you know you have, say for example, the you know they've there have been studies done on the people who are descendants of slaves and you know this the slavery imprinted on those people and then their children had different you know like responses and different medical problems and things just because of the stress that their parents endured. 00:49:35.30 Desirée Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 00:49:51.32 Jala so It is wild and it rolls forward. so um Child health experiences or experts are increasingly attuned to checking for ACEs, and it's believed that mitigating or preventing ACEs could prevent many future cases of depression, heart disease, and other common disorders. Again, kind of cycling back to ah Dr. van der Kolk, 00:50:16.00 Jala Advocating for people to find a way to kind of early onset early, you know, catch it early and help treat it, help, you know, help the children process it before it becomes like chronic or complex trauma. 00:50:33.47 Desirée And they're having to lean on educators and other people who interact with children outside of the household to be trained to identify these things and treat them. So contributing to that um secondary, vicarious trauma. 00:50:46.50 Jala secondary trauma that they yeah the listen ah the the ah the educators and other caretakers are dealing with for sure. So let's move on to talk about the effects of trauma. 00:50:58.79 Desirée Yes. 00:50:59.36 Jala So ah the sympathetic nervous system jumps into action, stimulating the release of adrenaline noradrenaline and stress hormones that prepare the body for a flight fight or flight or freeze response. 00:51:12.57 Jala short-term fear, anxiety, shock, and anger or aggression are all normal responses to trauma. Such negative feelings dissipate as the crisis abates and the experience fades from memory. But for some people, the distressing feelings can linger interfering with day-to-day life. And they can also have those responses anytime that trauma is triggered. So ah there's some Instances that are discussed in the book of like veterans who come back from war and then like they are just with their loved one and then their loved one says or does something that triggers their trauma and then they just go off and they don't know why but they are just losing their mind over something and just so enraged or whatever. 00:51:56.18 Jala And it's because of like this trauma and they had to go to therapy to figure out what that was and then a way to to get around that so they could correct that situation because it was damaging, they're obviously damaging their relationships with their loved ones. 00:52:10.83 Desirée Right. And those trauma things that activate the body, activate that memory activate the trauma. It doesn't have to be a specific scene that plays out the same way. 00:52:26.46 Desirée It can be a smell. 00:52:28.38 Jala Right. 00:52:28.38 Desirée It can be a sound. It can be something that is in no way connected, but those little traces will then reactivate that trauma. 00:52:38.77 Jala Yeah, absolutely. So how about you tell us about long term trauma? 00:52:45.28 Desirée So long-term trauma, people who suffer from that may develop emotional disturbances. So these are things that would present as extreme anxiety or anger, sadness, survivor's guilt would also be pretty common, disassociation, as Jala mentioned earlier, the inability to feel pleasure or anhedonia, PTSD. 00:53:09.56 Jala Yeah. And yeah. 00:53:10.88 Desirée Yeah. 00:53:11.57 Jala So, so the anhedonia, like that, you know, that feeling and I know all of us know that feeling where you've had so much stuff happen to you that you just feel like you don't care about anything and you just kind of lay in there and you don't care about anything. 00:53:13.89 Desirée yeah 00:53:29.31 Jala Nothing, nothing matters. You're just there or like, you don't feel like you're alive. right like you don't don't don't feel You feel like your life has left your body and you you don't feel like you're there anymore. 00:53:41.06 Jala It's because you're just operating. you You might be functioning, might be going about your day, but inside you feel dead. yeah i The dead inside you know goth thing. so That would be here. 00:53:52.55 Desirée Or even things... that used to bring you pleasure or used to be able to relieve stress or relieve anxiety are no longer giving you that same return, right? 00:54:06.91 Jala Right. 00:54:07.31 Desirée So as an avid gamer, going and playing Elden Ring for a few hours is a great stress reducer for me or Fallout. 00:54:18.18 Desirée You know, the games where you can just sort of get some of those feelings out, not have to use a whole lot of brain power. thinking about conversations and decision trees, things like that. And if you are doing those activities that used to feel good to you, used to be stress relievers and you're not getting that same result, that's a trauma response as well. 00:54:41.04 Desirée So it doesn't mean that the thing isn't fun anymore. 00:54:41.32 Jala Right. 00:54:44.78 Desirée It could be a warning signal to you that I'm having a trauma response because I'm not able to get that same pleasure or same enjoyment. 00:54:53.49 Jala Right. And that also kind of leads into there's several different it things that could lead you to the point of having anhedonia, including depression and things like that. So like, um, it could be trauma and the trauma could also cause the depression. I mean, like, 00:55:10.10 Jala you know it's a big rolling wave and the thing is that nothing exists in isolation. You have to kind of take a look at all of the different factors you've got going on in your life right now to figure out you know what's the source of you know what's the likely source of this and kind of work through that. and Very often, that involves having you know a licensed professional, having a therapist or something that you can go to sort it out and figure out what identify what is going on here and what is the thing that I need to be working on right now until I feel okay again. 00:55:43.33 Desirée Well, and so there I can share a little bit of my experience. I mentioned I worked in higher education for 10 years. I love my students. I miss my students. I had to leave higher education because it was so incredibly stressful and doing that and being in a PhD program and all the other things of living, working full time to pay for all of this stuff. I reached a point where I was having trouble sleeping. 00:56:13.49 Desirée ruminating thoughts and eventually ended up seeking a therapist to talk to you about all of this work stress. And of course, right about the time I decided, okay, I can do this thing that I tell other people to do and get a therapist. And then I also have an interview for the job that I have now, which is working still for the state, but in a much more low stress environment. And that was a conversation with my therapist of, okay, well, 00:56:43.61 Desirée You got a new job. Great. Congratulations. But you're still traumatized. You still have things to work through, right? And yes, absolutely. Even if the thing causing the trauma ends, it does not mean that the impact and the effects of what that trauma did to you, particularly if it was extended trauma, it doesn't mean that that just magically goes away and okay, I can go on about my life now. Nope. You still have a whole lot of unpacking. 00:57:13.16 Desirée to do to figure out how to feel safe again how to feel secure and work through all those things that we're activating you and putting you in that bad situation. 00:57:25.43 Jala Right. I mean like If you have an abusive relationship and you leave that relationship, you're still damaged. You still have to fix things. 00:57:32.13 Desirée Yeah. 00:57:33.42 Jala You know you have to unpack what happened to you and you have to face it and work through it. so um you know that That's a thing. like A lot of people, because the a key to getting better you know to getting past the trauma processing the trauma so you can move forward and can feel like there are options available to you and there is a new path open to you in the future. ah In order to get to that spot you have to at some point. 00:58:03.82 Jala face the trauma that you were dealing with and process what happened. And that is not easy. And that is, you know, like that is ah mammoth tasks. 00:58:11.75 Desirée No. 00:58:15.46 Jala So that is, that is the reason why a lot of people just kind of avoid it and they brush it under the rug and go, well, as long as I'm able to still do these things that I'm doing, it's fine. 00:58:26.04 Jala It's not, it's not. So. 00:58:28.97 Desirée Right. And, you know, there's so many daunting things about mental health as well. And the stigma around seeking help or the inability, because it can be expensive. All of those things are individual challenges, but I think However you work through your trauma, however you process it, whether it's with the assistance of a professional or not, if it's something you can work through on your own with a trusted group of friends, ultimately doing that work and investing in yourself will help you 00:59:06.55 Desirée I don't necessarily say be more resilient, but potentially be more aware so that the next time you encounter something like that, you will recognize those warnings earlier. You'll be able to identify what is actually activating you and what is being activated so that you can put the stop to it sooner and maybe not traumatize yourself as much in the future. 00:59:34.99 Jala Right, right. So another thing like we we did well like I stopped you before we got to it. But PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder is also a thing that people who go through long term trauma ah can have as well. 00:59:43.56 Desirée Yes. 00:59:52.75 Jala So I just want to make sure that I added that into the list because I stopped you before we finished there. But I will say to just about this again, So an example of, ah there's also situations where you have a trauma, but you don't realize, you don't recognize in the moment that it is a trauma until like later when you get triggered. 01:00:10.91 Desirée Sure. 01:00:13.00 Jala And then you're like, oh, I didn't even realize that was a thing for me. I have things to unpack. I had a couple of those happen here um and in, Fairly recent past so ah one of those was around hurricane Harvey and I've talked about this before but during hurricane Harvey there was massive flooding in Houston my neighborhood in specific was on the news because they were life lighting people out because the houses were completely inundated my house had some water in it but it wasn't like ah completely flooded out, but I woke up to ah my shoes floating towards my bed from the closet and like all this water in the house and you know my parents are disabled. At this time it was only me living with them and we had pets and things and I was trying to figure out how I was going to get my disabled parents onto the roof. 01:01:02.49 Jala ah and trying to bale water by hand out of the house. ah So um that that was a situation that I had to deal with. 01:01:07.55 Desirée Yeah. 01:01:10.57 Jala And I didn't realize that that was a trauma past, like because ah because of course, like every time it rained for like a month, I was just like awake you know and and unable to go back to sleep. 01:01:19.59 Desirée Yeah. 01:01:21.10 Jala But ah that was for like a month, and then that stopped. And then I thought I was fine, because we dealt with it, we moved on. um all of that, but then a little while later when I was talking about it to someone else and I was recounting what happened to them, yeah then it was like I was catching, you know, the words were catching my throat and I was starting to tear up and I was like, oh, oh. I didn't realize it affected me this much until I'm talking about it right now. I need to process. 01:01:49.83 Jala I need to sit with this some more and talk about it some more and journal and process this. And I did. and And obviously now I can talk about it and it's fine. But um another one was related to the cancer that I had a couple of times and you know how it relates to like the same female at birth, you know just like system in general. 01:02:08.57 Jala And I didn't realize how sensitive I was about that topic in general and in all the things that relate to it. until there was a conversation in the wellness channel of my server um about different stuff, you know, about those bits. And then I was just like, I had ah a trauma trigger and I had to disappear for like a month while I was processing it. And um I processed it. And then after that, we've continued on with that exact same topic and it's been fine. But like I had, I was completely blindsided by that. I didn't know that that was a thing for me, you know? 01:02:44.22 Desirée Sure. 01:02:44.98 Jala I thought I had processed all the different aspects of that previously because I had worked on it for a long time, but then there was something else to sandbag me. so um This is all to say, it's kind of circling back to when we were talking about 70% of people identify things as a trauma that they've had in their life. They've had at least one trauma. That's that they are aware of that have definitely given them an effect that they can notice that just because they don't notice it yet doesn't mean that they haven't been traumatized. 01:03:09.19 Desirée Yes. 01:03:15.30 Jala you know ah It can slip under the radar where you don't realize how strong of a response you've had until later, that kind of a thing. 01:03:21.11 Desirée Well, and particularly you mentioned Hurricane Harvey. So those big traumatic events where you're switched into survival mode in that moment, being able to process the trauma of what's happening would almost feel like a luxury to have the time to do that, the time to think about it. 01:03:41.05 Jala Oh yeah. 01:03:42.75 Desirée And it may not be something that you can get around to. for an extended amount of time because you're dealing with all of the aftermath of that. And so being able to recognize I'm going to need some to take some time for this just because I survived it doesn't mean that that was the end of the harm that was done. 01:04:02.48 Jala right Absolutely. Let's underline that a few times. Well said. Well said. so yeah so continuing on about the long-term trauma, because I totally cut you off, went off on a tangent, but it's important stuff that I wanted to get out and it was it was right there, right there. 01:04:19.35 Jala The amygdala becomes hyperactive when you have long-term trauma. and that its overreaction to minor perturbations leads to an outpouring of stress hormones. So, ah yeah, been there. 01:04:37.10 Jala living in defense mode and ever vigilant to the possibility of threat, people may be experiencing ongoing problems with sleep or physical pain and counter turbulence in their personal and professional relationships and feel a diminished sense of self worth. I feel like there's a lot of people listening to this who have probably felt that in recent memory, if not right now, ah just because of the kinds of the levels of stuffs kind of hitting us constantly right now. 01:05:04.74 Desirée Yeah, for sure. 01:05:05.13 Jala It's a it's a very stressful time to be alive. So, so yeah, um positive. 01:05:11.68 Desirée Oh, I was going to say in just underlining that, you know, these are physical manifestations of what's going on psychologically. And so that might be hard to connect those dots, but thinking through what is normal for me, right? 01:05:20.76 Jala Right. 01:05:29.40 Desirée Like I am a person who only sleeps about six hours a night. If I suddenly start sleeping eight hours a night like most other people, that is a change and that is something that would be problematic for me and potentially could signal a trauma event happened, so it's not necessarily not sleeping. um For me, that would be sleeping too much. So is it a significant change? Has it occurred in a relatively short amount of time? Is it abnormal for me? Even if it's normal for 90% of the population, if it's abnormal for you, that could be a sign of a trauma activation. 01:06:10.21 Jala Right, right. And so a lot of your ah pound of prevention, you know, is really being in tune with like, what what your body is feeling like having body awareness, mental awareness of like, how do you usually react to this thing? 01:06:27.95 Jala how do you usually feel you know and the problem is that right now we're in it we've been in kind of like this chronic stress mode more or less for a lot of people since pandemic right um and so like with the chronic stressors it's hard to remember what a normal felt like and that's something I've heard a lot of people say. 01:06:27.96 Desirée Mhm. Yeah. 01:06:45.79 Jala So, um in that kind of a case, that might be a situation where if you don't already have a therapist, that might be a situation where you need to go talk to somebody. Because if you don't know where to start, the therapist will help point you in the direction right that you need to go in to start unpacking things. 01:06:54.54 Desirée Yep. 01:07:03.61 Jala So yeah, positive psychological changes after trauma are possible when people acknowledge their difficulties and see themselves as survivors rather than victims of unfortunate experiences. These can include building resilience, the development of effective coping skills, the development of a sense of self-efficacy, I can get through it, I can do it, I've been through so many other things, you know? 01:07:31.79 Jala ah Some people may undergo post-traumatic growth. So that forges a stronger relationship, and redefines their relationships with new meaning and or a spiritual purpose and gaining a deeper appreciation for life. 01:07:47.96 Jala It may sound contradictory, but post-traumatic growth can exist right along PTSD. And I've got a story for you. The cancer I mentioned. So when I had the cancer, and I had it multiple times, it scared the shit out of me. and all these people came out of the woodwork to support me because I couldn't afford to get the operations I needed in either of the two cases and so because our health insurance in this country sucks. 01:08:13.92 Jala As a result, there were GoFundMe efforts to ah help fund these situations you know so I could get better. and People came out and they gave this outpouring and they really helped me through. 01:08:26.00 Jala I did I definitely ended up also in medical debt, but like I would have basically not been able to even get the procedure with the debt even ah without this aid from other people. 01:08:39.32 Jala and so um I was definitely traumatized. As I said, I had a lot of things to work through. I had various you know various things I had to process that I'm still finding new things that I have to process right ah even this past year or several months ago at this point. 01:08:53.67 Jala At the same time, I also had this kind of shift within myself. Number one, it was a very humbling experience for all these people to come out that I didn't think cared, you know share these like stories. 01:09:07.92 Jala Because everybody, like when they think you're going to die, everybody has to come and tell you everything that they never told you. right Because like they don't want you to die before they told you the thing. 01:09:13.82 Desirée Yep. 01:09:17.45 Jala So everybody sitting here telling me all these things about how I inspired them in this or that way, or, you know, how my positivity during this situation or that or, you know, throughout all of the various, you know, fires that I deal with, yeah all these different things, how these things inspired them or helped them or, you know, like I was there for them and I was always listening or whatever the situation was. 01:09:17.67 Desirée Yep. 01:09:39.74 Jala Oh, my art inspired them or something. um And then, like, they told me all this stuff. It was, number one, it was like, oh, my faith in humanity has been restored, right? And it was humbling to me. And it also, again, kind of gave me this this feeling of momenta mori, like, understand that you will die. Like, I've faced death a lot in my life. I've faced the potential of my own death a lot. 01:10:04.30 Jala I've been in in near death situations multiple times or things that could develop into a death situation. 01:10:07.66 Desirée Yeah. 01:10:10.46 Jala And so um between all of those, it kind of shifted me into being a person who very much wants to make sure that the people around me know how I think of them, what I think and feel about them. 01:10:23.46 Jala They know because I tell them I'm complimentary, I'm gushy, I will out pour things on people and be like, oh, you're the best. I love you. And all this other mess. 01:10:34.29 Jala Because I had these situations and like, you know, I definitely after that felt like, you know, yes, there's lots of other kinds of situations I've been in ever since, but like my capacity to kind of wrap my head around it and find a way forward was definitely strengthened by this history of things and that one particular thing that I had to overcome. So. 01:11:00.00 Desirée Well, and that is also representative of what we started off talking about. So much of this is subjective, right? 01:11:08.20 Jala Right. 01:11:09.27 Desirée Somebody else would have crumbled dealing with the things that you dealt with. I hear that all the time. People praising, oh my gosh, I don't know how you did two master's degrees at the same time and worked full time and did all this stuff. 01:11:23.74 Desirée and They see that as they're complimenting me. They're building me up. They see me as the strong person who is resilient and amazing. And inside, I feel like I am just crumbling because nobody sees. I was trying to be vulnerable and share with you that this was traumatic for me and your toxic positivity. 01:11:47.21 Desirée toxic positivity, just spinning it into this amazing thing that you you perceive that is actually hurtful to me because I was trying to get some support and some compassion for, yeah, that really sucked. I would never do that again. I would never wish that on anybody else. 01:12:06.50 Jala Right. right and ah there's also i I don't remember at this point if we've talked about it on an episode or if this is me just talking to people. Everything blends together and I don't remember what's on mic and what's not. 01:12:17.30 Jala but um so There's a lot of people in the podcasting sphere. 01:12:21.29 Desirée Mm hmm. 01:12:22.34 Jala It a burnout episode. We talked about it on the burnout episode. so ah All these people are like i don't know how you manage to do x y and z all these different things that you do and oh my god and all this other stuff but the problem is that they say it in this way that's like admiring right and then what that does and I'm gonna call him out too i don't know if he's gonna listen to this episode this is the test Dave Jackson! Dave Jackson, yeah you! you're one of those people that people tell you all the time I don't know how you do all the things that you do and you're in burnout situation You didn't listen to that burnout episode. 01:12:53.29 Jala Did you sir? I don't know if you're listening to this But if you are if you are definitely I'm calling you out sir ah But anyway, like he's had to recently back up back off and change a few things in order to maintain his workload because I you know like it's a finely tuned balance right that you have and when you have trauma in life and whatever happened to you and burnout and needing a break being human you know maybe wanting some time off you know uh anything comes into that situation when you put yourself into that that big of a situation where you've got these many things even if it's self-imposed that that can cause you trauma you know and that's something that you know drama burnout 01:13:09.35 Desirée Mhmm. Sure. Mhmm. 01:13:33.66 Jala trauma can cause burnout, burnout can cause trauma. I mean, it's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. So um all of that to say, though, that like regardless of the source of where the thing is that's causing you a stress that might actually turn into a trauma, 01:13:52.24 Jala you know something's got to give at some point and you can cause trauma to someone by giving them the toxic positivity, that positive spin on a thing that actually is like balancing a bunch of plates that are spinning on the ends of sticks while you're also on top of like a rolly ball that you're balancing with one foot you know or something and like anything moves wrong and you're falling and everything's coming down. 01:14:24.55 Jala So, yeah, let's move forward, oh unless you have a story yourself, Desirée, that you want to share, I mean, other than one that you just did. 01:14:31.76 Desirée No, I think it's just good to reiterate the, you know, it is amazing to process that you can grow from these things. 01:14:42.54 Desirée The human experience is very short. We've got a hundred years on the long end here and if we can learn and grow and do all these things, it's gonna be messy, it's gonna be chaotic, it'll be positive, it'll be negative. That is amazing if you can find that silver lining. So we're absolutely not trying to say, you know, don't be one of those inspirational speakers who talks about, oh, I went through this traumatic thing and now I have this positive thing. That is amazing if that is how you feel. And there are probably some things where I feel proud of, yep, 01:15:21.60 Desirée I went through that and I survived and now I've got this other you know product on the other side of it and it was a good outcome. But just be aware that that might not be the experience for everybody. 01:15:35.81 Desirée And you know if you've done that great, I am so, so happy for you. 01:15:36.05 Jala Yeah. 01:15:41.94 Desirée That's not my experience most of the time. A lot of the times when I look back on the traumas that I experienced, If I had any way to undo it, oh boy, would I. 01:15:54.29 Jala For me, I think the only things that I would actually undo from the different things that I've dealt with that were traumatic, um the ones that I would undo would be the ones where I have regrets tied to them. 01:16:04.76 Jala The rest of them, i actually um I'm in the camp of, that's how I became the person I am right now. and If that wasn't there, what would I have done? How would I have developed differently? 01:16:15.57 Jala You know what I mean? so um 01:16:16.96 Desirée Sure. 01:16:18.35 Jala In my particular case, I don't have that same vantage point, but that's just you know like a personal. Again, it's subjective. It's personal, so um for sure. 01:16:24.21 Desirée Yeah. Well, and there's some, some things that people would think of as traumatic that, you know, are traumatic for me going back to the death positivity episode and death in general. It's a thing I talk about all the time, experiencing the death of a pet. They are all absolutely taking a piece of my heart with me when they go. And yet I just signed up for another one. 01:16:52.14 Desirée just signed up for another trauma in, we're going to say 30 years. 01:16:52.41 Jala Right. 01:16:56.27 Desirée That's how long Atticus is going to live. And I would do it over and over again, because I can have that perspective of you have one really bad day, maybe a couple, not so great weeks or months leading up to when they die. 01:17:12.52 Desirée But that compared to the years and years and years of just hearing him run around and play with his toys and scratch things and know that he's with me and not out freezing on a street somewhere or getting hit by a car or any other number of horrible things. I'll do it over and over again in a heartbeat. I will re-traumatize myself over and over again because the positives outweigh the negatives. 01:17:39.09 Jala Right, right. And see, that's kind of um where I was trying to go as well with mine. like i I wouldn't take away pretty much most of the traumas that I've experienced in my life just because um those things, I came out of that with some kind of lesson learned and There are some things that, yes, I'm still processing, but I don't feel like I have active trauma right now that is something that isn't at least partially processed that I'm in the middle of working on, unless they come and sandbag me, you know like it has happened. 01:18:12.40 Jala ah But like at least it the sandbagging is a part of a thing that I didn't realize that that small facet of a thing um was the specific 01:18:12.79 Desirée Yep. 01:18:21.85 Jala the trigger that was going to happen or whatever and oh and I stopped for like a month and then I fix it and then I move on and then now it's no big deal, right? um So, you know, there were positives that came out of it. I grew as a person and I would like to think that part of the reason that I can be the the person that people come to is because I've had these experiences. I have a way to relate to those experiences. 01:18:46.88 Jala when people have it, i I can tell them what has and has not worked for me in a similar situation, you know, that kind of thing. So and then, of course, not having someone there for a large portion of those traumas and having to process them on my own. 01:19:03.01 Jala I'm also sensitive to leaving people without someone, you know. 01:19:06.77 Desirée Yeah, which flows very nicely into how do you support somebody that is coping with a trauma? 01:19:08.12 Jala So. 01:19:14.43 Jala Mm hmm. 01:19:17.48 Jala So very, very first thing, spend time with them. 01:19:18.39 Desirée Number one, spending time. 01:19:25.71 Jala Don't avoid them. Companionship is healing, whatever kind of companionship there is. That's why stuff like ah animal therapies exist, right? ah It doesn't even have to be conversations, you know? 01:19:33.77 Desirée Yeah. 01:19:36.47 Jala You just be hanging out. But um don't avoid them and don't feel like you need to bring it up. You don't have to bring up their trauma. 01:19:42.01 Desirée Right. 01:19:42.78 Jala You can just be with them. Do whatever it is that they want to do, or if they just can't process enough to give you a thing you know a thing to do, pick something that's pretty like low brain power right that they can just do and kind of have on autopilot or just kind of take in right and just spend time. Or ah don't do a thing. Just be there. Be there. 01:20:06.84 Desirée Yep. And so acknowledge what happened. If they seem open to that, whatever reaction they have, be prepared to accept that. It could be a violent reaction. It could just be a lot of tears for people like me who are sympathetic criers. If you're sharing something with me and you're crying, oh boy, the waterworks are going to start. 01:20:33.78 Jala No. No. So then you also want to make sure that you're listening to the person if they want to talk about it. Even if they're repeating themselves, they're repeating over and over again the same thing. You be patient and you sit there and you listen because the reason why they're doing that is because your brain does that thing. it Your brain is literally on loop and your brain starts over again at the beginning and that's part of the trauma experience. And in order to work through it, someone has to get through that that loop. So you know you need to just listen to what they have to say. so But also don't force them to talk about it. If they don't want to talk about it, 01:21:18.15 Jala don't bring it up. Don't, don't say, Hey, well, no, you really need to tell me, no, you got to tell me so you can, ah no, don't let them do it in their own time. The processing of trauma happens differently for everyone. What works for them is different for each person. And when they are ready to start processing is going to be different for each person. So, uh, it's, it's very subjective. 01:21:45.19 Desirée Sure. And practicing your own active listening skills. So if they are wanting to talk, repeating pieces of it back to them, phrases like, okay, I you know heard you say this, potentially positing feelings if they haven't expressed a specific feeling. So you said this, were you feeling frustrated in that moment? Did that make you angry? 01:22:12.81 Desirée and leaving that open for them, they might say, oh, no, I did sound really pissed off when I said that, but I wasn't angry. I was feeling this. So then accepting that your interpretation was wrong and letting them go down that pathway of sharing what they were experiencing. So practicing that active listening and then repeating those pieces back. 01:22:36.96 Desirée demonstrates to them that you're actually receiving that information, you're listening to them, you're trying to understand their situation. 01:22:45.63 Jala Well, and not only that, but if you are asking that key question of how did you feel or something, or if you are positing, did you feel like this, uh, helps them to do the self reflection necessary to figure it out. Because if they don't say, yeah, they're going to go either, they already know what the feeling that they had was, or they'll go, I don't know, 01:23:10.09 Jala what I feel about it, which means that they are really raw and that I haven't gotten through processing any of it yet, really kind of situation. 01:23:17.29 Desirée Yeah. 01:23:17.86 Jala Because like as they work through it, eventually they'll figure that out, but this is not the time where they they have those words yet. 01:23:26.29 Desirée And even if they're sad. you know, encouraging them to do fun things with you. And that might require some creativity on your part. So thinking back to a couple of years ago, my the dog was not doing super well. My birthday was coming up. I didn't want to leave him to go do anything celebratory, but I had a friend who said, you know what? 01:23:55.53 Desirée I'm gonna come over to the house and there's a pottery painting studio in town and they ever since the pandemic started doing takeaway kits so she went there and got a couple pieces of pottery little cups of paint to take away a pack of brushes picked up some takeout and brought that over to the house so you know my dog was doing well enough that he wasn't in pain or anything like that. I just was paranoid and didn't want to leave him alone. So that way I got to experience 01:24:28.16 Desirée that fun time with her. She got to you know celebrate my birthday, which was a big deal to her and be like, hey, I want to show you that I care about you, that I love you, but also that I'm cognizant of you don't want to leave the house. And so we got to have good food, got to do a fun activity together. 01:24:49.70 Desirée maybe that requires like bringing over some coloring books something that you can just pick up at whatever stores nearby some coloring pencils things like that and just go and hand them a book you have a book maybe you sit in silence the whole time just coloring your own little page making coffee for somebody food is a great way to show somebody hey I care about you bring them a little treat something like that and encourage them to participate in those activities, in those things that are fun and hold, that you can do something fun and enjoyable while also experiencing trauma or anxiety or some of those other not as good feelings. You don't have to feel guilty for doing this fun thing. 01:25:44.14 Desirée It's not that you're trying to distract yourself. It's not that you're trying to not process these things. You're just engaging with the world and not completely shutting things out. 01:25:54.28 Jala Right. And that's part of what the really one of the biggest challenges of trauma and processing trauma is, is being in the moment, being present in the moment. So ah by helping, by reaching out to people, listening to them, letting them, you know, do the talking here ah and then letting them like engage with you in the world doing something. um Also, if you have the kind of relationship where you can have a physical touch, ah it is emphasized in Van der Kolk's book. 01:26:30.74 Jala um that physical touch is important because of the deep dissociation that happens with trauma. A hug if you are on the level of friendship or care or relationship with that person. A hug or touching their arm or something if that is something that you know you already have an established rapport for. it like You don't want to just go hug somebody you've never hugged before, but like if you have that level of rapport, 01:26:54.78 Jala that you do have physical contact with them, giving them that support, not saying anything, just being there, giving them a hug, just holding them. That is so important to help ground them in their body because they kind of leave their body. They have this out of body experience and they are in their trauma, they are in repeat, and they are not in the moment, they are not there with you. They're in the moment of their trauma. And so that helps to like bring them back a little bit so that they can start processing it. 01:27:24.29 Desirée And a little bit of understanding and persistence on your end, right? Understanding maybe reached out to them and usually they're a friend who gets back to you within an hour. And it's been two days since they texted you, but you know that they're processing a grief of a loved one dying or still dealing with insurance nonsense from a car accident or something and So it's atypical behavior for them. 01:27:56.76 Desirée Don't take it personally. They're not ignoring you, whatever. Just reach back out. Something as simple as, hey, thinking of you. Love you. 01:28:04.39 Jala Right. 01:28:06.05 Desirée Just acknowledging that they are on your mind and just pinging them with those little reminders to help kind of keep them grounded in that present, right? 01:28:18.00 Desirée So a lot of Depression comes from ruminating on the past. A lot of anxiety comes from worrying about the future. If you can try to be grounded or help your friend, help your loved one be grounded in the moment, you can't be too focused on the past or the future if you're living in that present moment. and So doing whatever you can to help them be in that moment. 01:28:42.94 Jala Right. And also a really big key. Keep on reaching out to them just because they don't want to talk right now or they don't they don't have the spoons to engage right now or something. 01:28:54.07 Jala Doesn't mean that, you know, they won't in the future or that they are OK, you know, like God forbid. 01:28:59.52 Desirée Yeah. 01:29:01.44 Jala No, um you know, and then keep reaching out to them even past the time that you know, they might be acting, quote unquote, normal for them again. um because Just because they're back to acting the way that they normally act does not mean that they are done processing all of the things that they are processing. you know ah Again, because of the different levels of relationships that people have with each other, it really is going to depend on how close of a relationship you have with this person as to 01:29:32.35 Jala How much you might expect to eventually get let in right so but keep reaching out to them keep spending time with them ah because that that's ah a rolling thing it's a thing that's gonna keep being a thing cuz say for example in the case of a death of a loved one. 01:29:39.89 Desirée Mm-hmm. 01:29:52.55 Jala if you have a loved one and they die, everybody reaches out to you in the first like few weeks. And then there's like this drop off where nobody's checking in on you anymore. And um you know like that's rampant. 01:30:03.64 Jala And so you don't want to be that person. You want to be the one that keeps on checking in on them. you know And touching base, not just you know um about just, hey, how are you doing? 01:30:17.60 Jala If you have a level of relationship where you can ask, you know like how are you feeling? How are things overall? How are you how are you handling stuff right now? you know like that That would be ah something that you might consider if that's, the again, the kind of relationship that you've got. 01:30:37.74 Desirée and not making assumptions. So this is something kind of grounded in a lot of something I've talked about on previous episodes, nonviolent communication. 01:30:40.64 Jala Right. 01:30:48.67 Desirée So a lot of doing that nonviolent communication work is understanding that your experiences, your perceptions of the world may not line up with the those of other folks and It's also going to change over time, right? So even if you experience a similar event now, doesn't mean that if you experience that same event 10 years from now that you would respond the same way. 01:31:20.31 Desirée So you know for example, had a cat pass away a few years ago and I immediately within a week had to have a new kitten because it just felt like Bridget had left such a big hole and I just needed something new and alive in my life. 01:31:40.00 Jala Right. 01:31:40.12 Desirée And later on, 21-year-old cat passes away, and it was probably a good six months before we brought Corbo home. So if you experience these traumatic or sad or whatever life events, you're not going to respond the same way every single time. And that doesn't mean that one response was any more or less valid than the other. 01:32:04.54 Desirée because we're all these messy melting pots and so there's also that confluence of the other things in your life that are influencing how you're responding to that. So not making assumptions that what you've experienced is how someone else would experience it and that's going to come across in how you're asking about these things. So if someone tells you at a traumatic event Or really anything that they're trying to process before you just leap to that conclusion that they want advice or that they want support. Ask that simple question. Do you need advice or support from me in this moment. 01:32:43.22 Jala Oh my God. Let us let us oh go ahead and finish your sentence first, but um okay. 01:32:49.64 Desirée Well, just even saying, identifying those two specific things, right? Because if you just say, what do you need? Oh, I don't know. I don't need anything. I'm good. But if you are making them choose between advice or support, because ultimately it's going to be one of those things that makes them think about it and think about what they need. And you're giving them those concrete things. And maybe you don't ask it in those words. Maybe you say, 01:33:16.41 Desirée you know, can I bring you this? Would that help? That's still saying, you know, a concrete, yep, that's a thing. It really would help me to just, you know, have my favorite comfort food that would help me get through this grief because that would give me something positive to remember or positive to focus on. 01:33:38.53 Desirée So just asking concrete questions rather than open ended that puts the onus back on the person. 01:33:38.62 Jala Right, right. 01:33:45.70 Jala Right, because they can't. like they They're still deep, deep in their trauma ah and and they're trying to to work through it, but they can't they can't be in the present moment right now. 01:33:56.17 Jala so If you ask them a present moment question, they're not going to have an answer for you. If you give them concrete things, they can focus on those things because they have specific words that they can go yes or no, which is a very simple rather than a complex and leaving it open to them kind of way. 01:34:15.39 Jala and I Said oh my god and interrupted you for a minute there because the advice thing so it happens so much everybody wants to give advice and I've been I've been ah that person who's been like, what I'll usually do is I'll be like, well, can you maybe X? 01:34:26.85 Desirée yep 01:34:37.98 Jala you know, like I'm not telling them they need to do a thing but I'm asking like is could you do this possibly and you know, like troubleshooting, but like in ah in a questioning kind of way. 01:34:45.11 Desirée Yep. 01:34:46.44 Jala And then that opens it up to them saying, oh no, I've done that already. 01:34:50.29 Jala You know, there isn't really, you know, whatever. And then it becomes a conversation in that way. But um like a lot of times though, ah people will do the whole, well, I think that you need to ask or you should ask like, no, no. 01:35:07.82 Jala Ask if they want advice. if they do, then you can proceed and give them your advice. you know not the and don't say, can I give you some advice? 01:35:18.00 Desirée Mm hmm. 01:35:19.24 Jala that that Because then that that makes them feel like they're the asshole if they tell you no. So don't do that. Don't say, can I give you some advice? Because that's like patronizing for one, that that has a connotation there of just like, well, you obviously need help. 01:35:34.59 Jala And so I'm the one who can give you that help. 01:35:35.23 Desirée Right. 01:35:37.07 Jala like that No, we don't need any of that energy here. Say, would you like to hear what I think you might be able to do or what you could you know might what might help? you know Would you like the advice that I'm thinking of right now? If you don't, it's cool. you know Great. There you go. That's it. um But also avoid asking questions that begin with why. 01:36:00.76 Jala Why were you there? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's victim blaming. You know, like that has the potential to be very victim blaming. Even if you turn it around to, well, why was he or the aggressor or the whatever? 01:36:08.20 Desirée Mm hmm. 01:36:13.63 Jala No, no, no, no. Cause then that opens it up to the potential reason for that being, you you know, the, the person who's traumatized that you're trying to help fault. And we don't, we don't want to try to go to fault here. 01:36:24.10 Jala We want to get them past the trauma, you know? So. 01:36:28.41 Desirée And it doesn't mean you can't ask any why questions. You know, if they've said, well, I did this and I felt that, you can say, well, why do you think that? 01:36:39.43 Desirée That depending on, again, your relationship on the context, things like that, Just be mindful. Mindfulness is a huge part of trying to be human and just get through the day. And that's a big part of this as well. Also understanding, unless you are one of those trained therapists out there, you're gonna make some mistakes. You're gonna get things wrong. That's why those exploring with curiosity, exploring and saying, you know are you did that make you feel angry? Did that make you feel frustrated? 01:37:13.72 Desirée those sorts of things are demonstrating curiosity. So even if you are wrong in what you are proposing, it's not likely going to be taken as an affront because you're expressing that genuine curiosity. And if you're coming at it with that mindset of just being curious and wanting to connect with them person to person, you're not going to be as upset if they say, Oh, no, that's not it at all because you were approaching it with curiosity. Oh, okay. Then tell me what it was. 01:37:44.05 Jala Right, right. And also don't use trivializing cliches like everything happens for a reason. God gives his biggest test to his strong. 01:37:56.58 Jala No, no, no. 01:37:57.49 Desirée Ugh. 01:37:58.65 Jala I just I know how you feel. 01:38:01.26 Jala No, you don't. No, you don't. Don't assume you know how they feel. You don't have their exact experiences. 01:38:06.07 Desirée Mhmm. 01:38:08.61 Jala You can, now you can, I can say, ah It's 100% okay to say I had a situation that was kind of similar and I felt like this or I can imagine how you feel or you know just from the experiences that I've had in my life that are sort of you know in the ballpark here. 01:38:28.83 Jala I can imagine, I can probably get an idea, not, I know exactly the thing that you are feeling. 01:38:38.90 Jala like No, I might be in the ballpark, but I'm not going to ah be 100% apples to apples. Even if you were in that same moment with them, you know it's not going to be the same for them as it is for you. 01:38:49.69 Desirée Right. You know, two people experience a car accident together. Maybe the person driving has a completely different experience than the person who was the passenger and different processing of the traumas, different, maybe the driver feels more responsible than the passenger. Maybe the passenger feels guilty for not notifying the driver of a thing that they saw all sorts of different emotions and processing and things in the same traumatic event. Do people sitting side by side completely different experience of it are gonna they're gonna have to go through a completely different experience to get past it. 01:39:30.90 Jala Right. And I'll also bring up another thing from my history as well. So when I was growing up, ah some things happened that were traumatic. Surprising no one. Right. 01:39:41.31 Jala And um so some things that were traumatic happened to my entire family. OK. 01:39:46.46 Desirée Mm hmm. 01:39:47.10 Jala And so we went back to the place that we lived. and we were there for some family reunion or something. And we were driving around in that area and I was very happily going, I remember this street and over there is this thing and blah, blah, blah. And then like my parents couldn't remember where to turn. And I was like, oh, it's up here on the left or whatever. And I remembered where we were. And they were just like, oh my God, you remember those areas so well. And I was like, yeah, we used to live here. And then remember this. And I would tell them all of these nice memories that I kept with me just despite the trauma that happened in this place. 01:40:20.48 Jala And then my parents had totally blocked it out of their memory because they, you know, processed it differently than I did. You know, so like when we were all together, I took it in a different way than they did. And another way of thinking about it too, and this is something that if you have siblings you might consider, my sister and I, not all of the same traumas growing up, of course, 01:40:43.16 Jala We had the same parents though and we therefore some of those traumas that we had overlapped and we both had the same trauma at the same time. The ways that we ended up fucked up that developed out of that were totally different between the two of us. 01:40:54.61 Desirée yep 01:40:58.39 Jala My parents like to say that we're like night and day ah because I ended up being very open about everything and my sister is a very, very private kind of closed individual. 01:41:01.24 Desirée Mm hmm. 01:41:09.87 Jala And like it goes way deeper than that, of course, but the ways that we processed it and the ways that we interpreted it and the ways that it affected us in our lives were different. And of course, again, we have both had our own various compounded other additional traumas that were specific to us only. But, you know, there were also some things that we mutually experienced. So like if you have siblings and you both had this same experience, don't assume that you know what your sibling felt or how they reacted or how that that you know what whether or not they carry it with them and have a trauma response to it or whatever. 01:41:50.15 Jala you know so yeah ah That covers the entire of the ah Psychology Today thing that I wanted to cover just for like the overview about the subject matter. So ah we'll kind of go from here into some different stuff from The Body Keeps, the score itself. ah These are going to be kind of just, my notes are basically my highlights from when I was reading through the books. So they're just going to be in the order in which the book presents them. 01:42:20.90 Jala ah So this some of this will circle back to stuff we've talked about before, and some of it will be new information. But one of the first things I wanted to mention is the book says there are fundamentally three avenues of treatment, top down by talking. 01:42:36.21 Jala reconnecting with others and allowing ourselves to know and understand what is going on with us while processing the memories of the trauma. This is your talk therapy, this is talking to your loved ones after the event, or if it's, God forbid, something where you have like authorities and you have to give like a police report or something and you have to recount that in words, that's where this is. 01:42:57.96 Desirée Mm hmm. 01:42:58.25 Jala ah Two, by taking medicines that shut down inappropriate alarm reactions or by utilizing other technologies that change the way the brain organizes information. Some of this we'll talk about later. um And bottom up, by allowing the body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma. So ah this last one here, ah allowing the body to have experiences that contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse from the trauma. um i I have a little bit of a story I'll share. I'm not going to name the name of the person. A person that I know had sexual trauma was abused. 01:43:43.95 Jala And ah this involved like a choking kind of situation. And so a way that they kind of reclaimed and processed through their trauma was to have that kind of choking situation in a sexual situation, but they have control over it and can tell, you know, has a safe word, has all that, and, you know, has that as a kink as part of their sexual vocabulary, right? 01:44:11.63 Desirée Mm hmm. 01:44:11.72 Jala So um and this is a way that they have kind of overcome and kind of constantly reaffirm their power over the situation so this thing that. Deeply traumatized them become something that now that same action is empowering to them and they can like own it you know and kind of move forward from there. 01:44:32.82 Jala in their relationships and have like a healthier relationship with it. So um that is a really strong image, but that's the first thing I thought of when I read this was you know like having this this contradictory experience that kind of reasserts your power over whatever it is that you were powerless from. 01:44:54.81 Desirée Mm hmm. 01:44:55.81 Jala So and then which one of these is ah best for any particular survivor is an empirical question. ah Everybody kind of processes differently, but most people, at least in this doctor's experience, require a combination. So like you need to have Multiple approaches usually to processing trauma depending on how deep that trauma is as well um there is a bottom up even if it's not like contradictory experiences of the exact same thing trump you know the traumatic event. ah Having experiences that make you feel safe in your body. 01:45:33.54 Jala would also be like another thing I would say for bottom up, like reaffirming your mastery of self, your control over yourself. um you know Your presence in the here and now is also part of that third section. 01:45:49.49 Desirée Sure. And also the taking medications piece that may not be something that everybody is comfortable with doing, or it could be something that would be and incredibly frustrating for people because medications will respond differently based on your individual physiology. 01:46:10.54 Desirée And so a drug that works remarkably well for 99.99% of the population. might have a debilitating effect for you. For me, that it's not a psychotropic drug, but Nexium. I was prescribed Nexium once, and it was before it was over the counter. So super, super safe. For the vast majority of people, for me, it gave me a crippling migraine, the first and only one in my life. 01:46:40.18 Desirée where I had to lay down in a dark room couldn't have eyes open had to have a little sleep mask on just to power through and get the drug out of my system and then it became so safe it's over the counter you can just go pick it up at any drugstore. 01:46:40.23 Jala Oh wow. 01:46:56.32 Desirée So if a medicine that's treating stomach things can have that kind of reaction, keeping in mind the psychotropic medications, same kind of thing, something that might be amazing for one person could have a catastrophic effect on another. And that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It just means that's your body chemistry. And there are all kinds of different ones that you can try. 01:47:21.64 Jala Absolutely. So another thing that I wanted to mention from the book, traumatized people look at the world in a fundamentally different way from other people. So the instance that they cite is that for most of us, a man coming down the street is just some guy taking a walk. But if you are somebody who had like a burglary happened to you or something while you were walking down the street from a man who was in a coat like that or whatever, then that can send you into a panic. 01:47:50.16 Jala you know um and so like A stern school teacher might be intimidating to an average kid, but for a kid whose stepfather beats them, that can trigger them. 01:48:03.31 Jala and can you know that That school teacher can represent a torturer and precipitate a rage attack or terrified cowering in the corner. and You don't know what somebody's bringing to the table. 01:48:11.53 Desirée Mm-hm. 01:48:14.40 Jala you know So you know it it this I wanted to bring up because if you're walking along with somebody or if they are having like this excised reaction to something that you look at and go, I don't get it, they're probably having some kind of a trauma response in that moment. So like be mindful of that. If somebody is having this excised reaction, like if you were talking to somebody and then you say something and then like they fly off the handle about something super small, 01:48:44.18 Jala Don't just get irritated and mad and start a yelling match or something with that person. like they like Stop and think, like is this normal for this person to do this? Do they do this to everything? Because if they do, then yes, you can fly off the rage and have a whole fight or whatever. But like if it's not normal for them to do that, if they are having this this reaction that's beyond the bounds of what they normally do, it's probably because they have a trigger that was just sprung. 01:49:09.59 Desirée Well, and so also understanding the different ways that people process the different things, right? 01:49:16.15 Jala Mm hmm. 01:49:16.67 Desirée So I brought up aphantasia. I think it has helped me immensely with processing traumatic things because I don't hold on to thoughts the same way as people who, like I said, have that video constantly playing over and over. 01:49:32.59 Desirée However, the flip side to that is that desensitization therapy probably would not be effective for me because that would just be re-traumatizing me over and over again to present a physical a visual stimuli. That would be like experiencing that for the first time all over again in a lot of ways. So I might be able to process those traumas a little bit easier in one way, but being presented with a visual stimuli that reminds me of something that was traumatic is going to feel like just ripping a band-aid off. 01:50:08.73 Jala Mm-hmm, right, right. So another thing about people who have dealt with trauma, depending on the type of trauma and this this particular thing I'm about to say really to me, I've definitely seen this a lot with veterans. When I used to do rucking events, I was around vets all the time and this is 100% vets. The world becomes sharply divided between those who know and those who don't know about that traumatic experience. So people who have not shared that experience can't be trusted because they don't understand. And I was actually one of those weird cases where I didn't have the trauma, ah ah but I was a person who was empathetic and thought of the world, like saw the world in a way that was similar to the veterans. 01:50:53.76 Jala that I was hanging out with and so I was okay and I was let in ah way deeper than I ever thought I would ever be to where like we were having you know like I was staying there rucking with them and they were telling me all about their like you know problems with their relationships and stuff because of this this exact thing. 01:50:53.80 Desirée Mm hmm. 01:51:09.22 Jala You know, and they were telling me about all of this stuff. And so, you know, like I got in in the in group somehow, even though I didn't have that experience with them on the battlefield. And I think part of that is because of the respect that I had and the awareness that I had. So I understand that, like, in some cases, even if you want to be there for someone, 01:51:30.59 Jala really, really badly. If you haven't experienced anything in the ballpark of what they're experiencing, it might be a case where they don't feel that you will ever understand fully. And saying that, being upfront and saying, I can't understand how that you're feeling, but I'm going to do my damn best. 01:51:51.15 Jala you know goes a long way and respecting that and pointing it out and being aware of it yourself that you know you don't you aren't entitled to the deepest levels of their trauma because you know you want to be there no like sometimes they really just need somebody else who's also experienced the same thing so a lot of times when I've got somebody who's got a deep big thing and they come to me with it and i it's out of my depth. right ah It's not something i can I have anything I can compare to have a vantage point to empathize. so ah Part of my recommendations, if I am allowed to give a recommendation to them, is that, you know well, maybe you should look into you know this, or here's a link to a group of other people that this is a support group for people who've dealt with this particular thing. 01:52:42.55 Jala you know Because I can't give you that and I want to be here a hundred percent I'm gonna do my damned best but I know that in a lot of ways. The best healing you're gonna get is from someone else who's been there so that's why the support groups exist right. 01:53:02.28 Jala So we're, of course, therapy and things like that. But like in the beginning stages before they have a therapist, you know, they might want to go to a support group first. So ah and of course, that's also like affirming to them because they get their feelings and their reactions affirmed by people who've been there. And that goes a long way, too. And so validating people's experiences as well, but validating their emotions You are valid in how you feel, you know, like you are, you are okay to feel that. 01:53:33.40 Jala Yes, that's, that's, that's normal. Anyone who would have this situation would feel X, you know, making them feel like they're not like a weird creature, you know, like a that's that person with an extra head or whatever, whatever kind of visual you want. 01:53:49.35 Jala So it's, it's important to making that bond and building that bridge. 01:53:53.79 Desirée Right. 01:53:54.80 Jala If you don't have one already there. 01:53:57.71 Desirée And being able to convey, I care about you. I am witnessing the way that you are having this traumatic experience. 01:54:12.75 Desirée have effects on you and impact you and I am concerned and I want to do whatever you need. Not whatever is most comfortable for me. Not whatever is going to make me feel validated or like I was helping and get that little endorphin rush of yay I did a good thing. 01:54:33.66 Desirée But I want you to know I'm here, I want you to know I care, and I will be that support piece, whatever that means for you. So prioritizing that other person. 01:54:46.66 Jala Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So ah trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way the mind and brain manages perceptions. 01:55:00.48 Jala It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our capacity to think at all. I mentioned that before where I was saying sometimes people are stuck in that loop and they can't get out. 01:55:11.69 Jala They can't think. Like if you say to them, what do you need? They don't have an answer for you because they can't think about that. They can't. 01:55:20.85 Jala So you have to give them options so they can just pick one. you know um And yeah we've discovered that helping victims of trauma find the words to describe what has happened to them, it's very, very meaningful, but that's not enough for most people who have deep trauma. They need more than talk therapy. right ah The act of telling a story doesn't necessarily alter the automatic physical and hormonal responses of the body that remain hypervigilant, prepared to be assaulted or violated at any time. 01:55:52.57 Jala So for real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present. Again, there a lot of therapies that are mentioned in here are about bringing this person out of the past into the present moment through different forms, different iterations. And even something, like I said, as small as a sustained hug, not like a hug, bro hug, you know, but like a sustained hug. 01:56:22.75 Jala ah touching their shoulder or whatever if you have the relationship where that's appropriate ah is a very good place to start. 01:56:31.95 Desirée So another element that reiterates the physical and psychological connection, because we are all one big meat sack with all of this stuff contained in it. Dr. Vander Kolk talked about taking some patients camping and noticing, making the observation that they were strikingly clumsy, very uncoordinated, having trouble pitching the tents, and even thinking about the quieter moments. So not doing something as complex as pitching a tent, but thinking through 01:57:13.09 Desirée Even in their most relaxed conversations, how their physical body was held, having observed enough, a lack of a natural flow in their gestures and their facial expressions things seeming to be tilted or disjointed, not in alignment. All of that is because your body is. 01:57:33.56 Desirée responding very different differently to what your mind is doing. Thinking through things that might feel automatic to you to do physically and having that interrupted by those psychological thoughts and trauma and realizing that your mind, your body aren't in sync. 01:57:53.57 Jala Mm hmm. And that's something that I didn't realize um before when I before I read this book, like I didn't put the coordination stuff in there. But some folks that I know who have dealt with a lot of traumas do have coordination issues. And I didn't put two and two together to realize, oh, that's actually because of all the trauma that they've experienced um until I read this book. And I was like, oh, shit. 01:58:20.59 Jala ah so Oh, okay. That's good to know. That's good to know. um and I say that because um you know to my mind, I'm like, oh, well, you know if they're uncoordinated, that's something you can you can work on and and better. 01:58:32.55 Jala You can improve that. But like I don't know if it's something you can improve after you've had a trauma unless you've actually processed the trauma. like you I don't know if that's a quote unquote damage that happens that now like that's just how it is from now on and you can't really improve it. 01:58:48.08 Jala I have no idea. so that's 01:58:49.58 Desirée Sure. 01:58:50.74 Jala you know, that that's a new possibility. I haven't looked into whether or not that's something you can you can um train past or something. But, you know, not assuming that somebody can do that, you know, not, and you know, can get past this thing. um You know, like, I didn't realize that was a trauma thing. 01:59:11.32 Jala end of that. so ah um Another thing, there was this really terrible, terrible study that was done um about learned helplessness in animals. We're not going to talk about the entirety of that. It was terrible. um you know like that they were basically trying to shock animals to see ah you know what they did. like they had them in cages, they shocked them, they couldn't get away. and Then eventually they opened the doors and the ones who ah hadn't been traumatized, they of course like left the moment that they saw the door open and there was a shock thing happening. But like the ones who had been traumatized just laid there and even though the door was open, they didn't leave. and That's because it was learned helplessness, they you know that being there, 01:59:58.57 Jala And that door being open like that didn't affect their response because the trauma has already enforced that they can't do anything about the shocks. And this is pertinent because, of course, many traumatized people also give up. Like people, especially if they're in a long term, like a chronic situation, they are in an abusive situation. They are with an abusive partner or whatever situation. 02:00:24.75 Jala they Even if they have a way out, it'll frustrate the people who love that abused person because they won't go. But they won't go because the trauma has ensured that they won't go, you know? 02:00:39.18 Desirée Right. 02:00:40.23 Jala So, so yeah. 02:00:42.19 Desirée Yeah, definitely one of my least favorite parts of this book or any psychological research is these ah doctors are frequently inflicting trauma to then see the response and I absolutely hate it that you know they've done things like that to college students as well, but there was a time but before regulations and things were put into place that all sorts of things happened to students who signed up for a gift card or something in response to participating in a study. And you know great that we've learned that 02:01:23.51 Desirée This is how a traumatized person or animal would behave and so we can recognize like Jala said that importance of you might be frustrated with a person who to you has a clear way out and if things would get better, why wouldn't you leave? Why wouldn't you do that? 02:01:40.92 Desirée trauma affects you in really startling ways that you wouldn't necessarily think makes sense. But to that traumatized person, they've learned that things aren't going to get better and they're just going to keep trying to endure. 02:01:57.74 Jala Right. And it might not even be something that they mentally are like, oh, yeah, I just have to stick. Like they're not even aware that that's what they're doing. 02:02:07.11 Jala They just can't. They can't get out of the situation and they don't have words for it. And that's a good indication of trauma. Right. 02:02:14.23 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:02:14.52 Jala but So um ah so there was also something said by Freud. He was talking about how somebody who had an abusive relationship ended up ended up getting into repeated abusive relationships. Now, we know that's a thing that happens. ah All of us have known somebody that has been in that situation, I think. And he called this the compulsion to repeat. And he and many of his followers believed that these reenactments were unconscious attempts to get control over a painful situation. 02:02:47.07 Jala um I would say more it's like the devil you know situation because like that ended up being when when you read further in the book like not something that was ever proved to be like accurate like they don't have anything to back that up that was just a thing he posited that you might think oh well maybe they're just they're repeating this kind of situation because eventually you know it's kind of like that um this thing I cited earlier about the friend who um had the same situation happen but then in that 02:02:50.95 Desirée Mhm. 02:03:01.39 Desirée Mhm. 02:03:15.05 Jala new situation, they had power where they didn't before. And so that reaffirmed their power and helped them process trauma. It's not that. ah it's again, it's probably more of the ah learned helplessness thing. They end up going to the devil they know the kind of fear that they're already familiar with rather than the unknown, which is a bigger fear, especially if you haven't processed your trauma yet. 02:03:41.87 Jala you're going to just slip, yeah like you're my life more likely to slip back into the same kind of thing and be on repeat because that trauma has your mind on repeat. so um One thing that was interesting, though, is that there was a study done on vets that they had them watching like some romantic comedy or something with their hand in a bowl of really, really freezing ice water, and then having them watch Graphically Violent Platoon, Oliver Stone's Platoon, and then 02:04:15.27 Jala ah They were measuring how long the vets could keep their hand in that ice water, and so seven out of the eight vets kept their hand in the painfully cold water 30% longer during Platoon, the movie that replayed for them the kind of shit that they went through. 02:04:32.63 Jala So um they ended up calculating that out and into the amount of analgesia produced by watching fifteen minutes of this combat movie and they said it was equivalent to that being produced by an injection with eight milligrams of morphine. 02:04:49.54 Jala So about the same dose a person would receive in an emergency room for crushing chest pain. So what this is suggesting is that for traumatized people, re-exposure to that stress might provide for them a relief from anxiety, ah probably because of the familiarity. 02:05:09.48 Jala that they have with this. They've been through it and they know how it goes. They know what comes next and it's something familiar to them because this right here with this relief from anxiety might also be part of why somebody who's been in ah an abusive relationship will circle back to another abusive relationship because there's somehow this analgesic effect for them to have a repeat of that same situation. 02:05:38.52 Desirée Sure. Or a disassociation event where they're going through the traumatic thing and they disassociated to get through it before. 02:05:41.31 Jala Yes. 02:05:46.95 Desirée So now they've just got a little gap in their thoughts because they just made themselves not be there to get through it. 02:05:57.52 Jala Yeah, absolutely. So shifting over to talk about medicines, um this book, ah Dr. Van der Kolk talks about medications and he he mentions the faults of medications, but not in a way to say, oh, medications are useless, but rather that our society leans on medication far more than, you know, like Western society. 02:06:23.74 Jala ah leans on it far more than other places in the world where ah they are also dealing with the same things, but they're they're dealing with it in non-medicating ways and able to do that and still go on and live happy lives, right? 02:06:39.76 Jala You know, like long lives and everything like that. 02:06:40.52 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:06:42.33 Jala So um what he is kind of saying when he's poking at these medications, our number one big pharma is trying to make the most money out of us, right? So they want you to have something that you have to be stuck with. 02:06:52.80 Desirée Yeah. 02:06:56.07 Jala So of all the different things that have been said about medication in this book, it mostly is saying the medications will work. If they work for you, they will work, but only as long as you are taking the medicine. 02:07:08.43 Jala The moment you're off that medicine, it's not working for you anymore. And then you don't have a coping skill unless you develop other ways to cope. And so this book goes into a bunch of different ways that you might be able to um work through your trauma in conjunction with the medication if you need medication, you know um so that you can eventually get better instead of just managing your symptoms without treating the root problem, which that's this that right there is something that like all of our are um for-profit medical industry has a problem with. 02:07:29.70 Desirée Sure. 02:07:46.90 Desirée Yeah. Well, and also being aware of what you are putting in your body, regardless of if that's a drug, if that's a food, and alcohol, which we maybe don't think of as a drug, coffee, caffeine, also much to my chagrin, a drug, you know, just being aware of what you're putting in your body and asking the questions, saying, hey, what are the potential side effects of this? There are professions professionals, even not necessarily your doctor, but a pharmacist. 02:08:22.63 Desirée who you could have that conversation with of, okay, I was prescribed to this medication. Can you tell me all of the ins the outs? If I mix it with this recreational drug or with alcohol or whatever, how is that going to react and understanding those things as well, rather than just, well, the doctor gave me this, so I should take it. And again, putting that onus on you. Oh, it didn't work for me. So there must be something wrong with me. 02:08:53.12 Desirée No, knowing, oh, well, you know, the pharmacist did say that a potential site of this side effect of this drug might be that, and that is what I'm experiencing. So that's where you go back to your physician and say, hey, I had this side effect. Is there something else we can try? 02:09:10.37 Desirée to being very aware of what you're being prescribed and how it's impacting you. And like Jala mentioned, also not just relying on this antidepressant to be a magic pill because whatever caused your trauma, whatever caused what's going on, can't be carried by that one little pill. They're also going to be extenuating circumstances, external factors that you're going to have to deal with to process that as well. 02:09:38.81 Jala Right. So um shifting some focus to talk about like just the mechanics of what happens with trauma. So the stress hormones of traumatized people take a lot longer to return to baseline than for normal people who haven't had a trauma. I say normal people. People who have not been traumatized ah Let's just say recently, because everybody's had a trauma, and then they spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mild stressful stimuli. so Again, like this is that moment where you say a thing and then your friend jumps down your throat about it and you're like, but that was the smallest thing on the planet. it's that They're having a a trauma response, and this is the physical aspect of that. 02:10:23.24 Jala so um The insidious effects of constantly elevated stress hormones include memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleeping disorders. And they also contribute to many long-term health issues, ah depending on which body system is most vulnerable in a particular individual. So it can manifest any number of different ways. 02:10:43.88 Jala So long after the event has passed, the brain may keep sending signals to the body to escape a threat that no longer exists. And this has been noticed as a thing that happens since at least 1889 when Pierre Janet published the first scientific account of traumatic stress. 02:11:03.67 Jala So being able to move, though, and to do something to protect oneself is a critical factor in determining whether or not a horrible experience will leave long lasting scars. If you are empowered to do something, then that makes you less likely to be as traumatized. Like, for example, 02:11:24.60 Jala Going back to Hurricane Harvey, ah in my situation, I had the power to wake up and then bail water out of the house. right ah If I woke up and the house was already flooded and I was like floating away on my bed and then I had to get on the roof and had somebody had to have somebody come and and pick me up, that would be different. But like we were able to stay in the house, bail the water, handle all the situations ourselves. 02:11:50.29 Jala and like move on down the road. um So although that did leave me with trauma, I am not as traumatized by Hurricane Harvey know as other people who had a more powerless situation face. Like if they had their entire place flooded out and they they had to leave and they didn't have anything when they got back 100% different. 02:12:11.02 Jala you know So, um, frontal lobes of the brain are damaged by trauma. That's just something that is, is a truth. It it happens, um, which that. 02:12:23.27 Jala ends up um making it to where people become creatures of habit. I mean, people do that anyway, because they like the comfortable road, right? But um it also means that their invention, their innovation, their discovery, their wonder, that all of the the kind of newness, the freshness kind of gets taken away, kind of fizzles out. um Just because the brain is damaged doesn't mean that it can't heal. In some cases, it can. 02:12:50.91 Jala um So it just kind of depends. For some people they bounce back and then they they recover, but if it's enough trauma over enough period of time, that damage may be permanent. 02:13:03.66 Desirée sure and they're like The brain is a fantastic organ and we know a very, very tiny fraction about what it does, about how it's impacted by all of these different things. Even looking at something that we think we totally understand and are comfortable with like anesthesia. People wake up during anesthesia, experience all sorts of different side effects of it. And you know so we don't really know as much as we think we do a lot of times about how the brain works, about how it responds to different things. And it's also in incredibly good at compensating for stuff. If one area of the brain is damaged, it might be able to transfer some of those functions to a different area of the brain or work out other ways that it can kind of work around that 02:13:59.98 Desirée Doesn't mean it always works as intended though. 02:14:03.19 Jala Right. So folks with PTSD have their floodgates wide open. They don't have a filter, so they are on constant sensory overload. 02:14:14.60 Jala And in order to cope, they shut themselves down and develop tunnel vision and hyper focus. And reading that, I'm like, oh, oh, that's where those periods of time in my life went. 02:14:22.46 Desirée Yep. yep 02:14:28.11 Jala Oh, uh so yeah if they can't shut down naturally they may enlist drugs or alcohol to block out the world that's where you get um you know like the tropes of the alcoholic war vet or whatever uh that kind of thing the tragedy is the price of closing down includes filtering out sources of pleasure and joy as well which I've commented um I don't know if I've ever said it on the show here, but I had a trauma response for a long time due to ACEs, ah the stressors from childhood, where I would turn off, 100% turn off, and like everything would turn off. and I would turn off anytime there was a strong emotion and it didn't matter if it was pleasure and like joy, I would turn off and I would not feel anything for a while. 02:15:10.39 Jala ah because that was just how I dealt with it. and I've worked very like I also couldn't talk when that happened. like I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. I i was literally just shut down completely. and um I had a long time working on this right over years and years and years. and I got to the point where I sometimes shut off but it's not very often anymore and it's only to bad situations ah so that's good and that's really like a crisis response right and then when the moment's over then I turn back on again and then it's fine. ah But I also got to the point where I can talk and I can move when I'm going through things but it took a long time to get there because I was a real strong reaction that I had. 02:15:56.48 Jala So ah just mentioning that because when I was reading, filtering out sources of pleasure and joy, I'm like, yeah. Yeah, I've been there. 02:16:04.96 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:16:06.74 Jala So again, that anhedonia was kicking in. 02:16:11.45 Desirée And ah Dr. van der Kolk also highlighted an example of something that I kind of alluded to before as well, where he had two patients who were in the same car accident, and their response to that trauma was completely different. Right, one said their mind went blank, and They were able to look at brain scans of this person during therapy as well. And their brain responded by just showing marked markedly deactivated decreased activity. Right. So not only were they perceiving that they were shutting down, but their brain was reflecting that as well. 02:16:56.57 Jala Right. 02:17:00.44 Jala So moving right along, one of the reasons that traumatic memories become so dominant in ps PTSD is that when it's so difficult to feel really alive right now. 02:17:12.03 Jala So like when you can't be fully here, you go to the places where you did feel alive, even if those places are filled with horror and misery. 02:17:12.90 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:17:18.96 Jala So, um you know, you tend to like I don't know about you okay here let me ask you this question so well maybe maybe this doesn't work for you because you have your aphantasia so like uh if you're in a situation where you are feeling stressed and blue and whatever but like especially like for me if I'm depressed 02:17:26.81 Desirée Yeah. Mm-hmm. 02:17:38.84 Jala I will start thinking about different bad things that happened in my past. And I'm just thinking about them. like I'm not I'm thinking on them, but I'm not like emotionally attached to them because I'm in that depression state of not really feeling a whole lot. 02:17:51.29 Jala right um But then like I'll just think about these things and kind of reflect back on these different things that happened in my life. 02:17:51.96 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:17:59.33 Jala And um that's it. I'm thinking about it. and you know, I'm reliving the kind of intensity of those moments in my head, even though like, I'm not actively feeling them. ah Does that make any sense? 02:18:15.83 Desirée I'm sure for people who can make pictures in their heads. 02:18:18.76 Jala Okay. Right, right. Because like, you can't really relive the moment because you can't make the picture in your head to feel that way again. 02:18:22.09 Desirée And it doesn't mean that I don't ruminate on things. 02:18:30.82 Jala Right, right. 02:18:31.03 Desirée Ruminating was part of why I went to therapy because I would be lying in bed trying to fall asleep and thinking through telling myself the story of a terrible thing that happened at work that I didn't have any control over and X, Y, or Z. But that was only in those moments of extreme quiet, trying to fall asleep where I couldn't distract myself with something else or there wasn't something else trying to pull at my attention. When you're trying to go to sleep, that's literally the one thing that you're trying to focus on. 02:19:08.04 Jala Right. 02:19:08.56 Desirée So for me, that idea of revisiting trauma feels kind of like self-flagellation, right? Like hitting yourself with the spiky cords or whatever. 02:19:21.90 Desirée And to me that doesn't feel productive to go back to that and so that's also I think why it was so upsetting when I was experiencing that because that's not how I normally move through the world. I have a strong tendency towards anxiety and thinking through all of the possible futures and all of the possible Well, you know, if this then that and telling myself those stories. But that depressive side, I tend to be able to move through that pretty quickly because I don't want to be that ruminator. 02:19:58.12 Jala So i thought while you were talking, I was thinking about it. And I think I have i have it. So like i I don't get depressed a whole lot. um I don't like have a chronic depression thing or anything like that. ah But of course, like everybody, I have times where I am depressed. It happens. um So when those times happen, I was thinking back to earlier when we were talking about the thing with the vets watching Platoon and how it's analgesic effect. 02:20:21.09 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:20:21.20 Jala Maybe that's what I'm doing. Maybe I'm trying to make myself feel better in the moment by reliving these things. 02:20:22.92 Desirée Yeah. 02:20:25.59 Jala Because like I'm not again, I'm not re-traumatizing myself when I'm doing it. 02:20:29.61 Desirée Sure. 02:20:29.94 Jala But maybe like in thinking back on it and in seeing that in my mind again, it's a way of like calming myself down from the present moment. 02:20:34.91 Desirée Mm 02:20:38.50 Jala That might actually be what I'm doing. 02:20:40.03 Jala ah Cool. So real-time realization on the air here. So yay, let's talk about HRV, which for me tanks this week. 02:20:50.43 Jala So there's a thing that you might find if you happen to have a Fitbit or a Garmin or something like that that tracks this number, a measurement called the heart rate variability or HRV. 02:21:02.37 Jala It's used to test the flexibility of the ah systems of breathing and heart rate. So as we breathe, we continually speed up and slow down the heart. And because of that, the interval between two successive heartbeats is never precisely the same. HRV is measuring this stuff. 02:21:21.08 Jala So a good HRV, the more fluctuation to that HRV, the better, is a sign that the break-in accelerator and your arousal system are both functioning properly and are in balance. So why is that important? When our automatic nervous system is well balanced, we have a reasonable degree of control over our response to minor frustrations and disappointments, enabling us to calmly assess what is going on when we feel insulted or left out. 02:21:49.88 Jala effective arousal modulation gives us control over our impulses and emotions. As long as we manage to stay calm, we can choose how we want to respond. Individuals with poorly modulated automat autonomic nervous systems are easily thrown off balance both mentally and physically. 02:22:06.02 Jala since the ottoman autonomic, I cannot say that word tonight, nervous system organizes arousal in both body and brain. Poor HRV, that is a lack of fluctuation in heart rate in response to breathing, not only has negative effects on thinking and feeling, but also how the body responds to stress. Lack of coherence between breathing and heart rate makes people vulnerable to a variety of physical illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, in addition to mental problems such as depression and PTSD. 02:22:35.52 Jala I measure my ah HRV all the time now ah for me in particular the reason why my HRV is low right now is actually not from the stress I got past that point that all the recent stresses and I had good HRV for a little while but then I got real busy trying to catch up with all the stuff that was put to the side during the stressful situations. 02:22:55.90 Jala So I have just been over exhausted and too busy. And so I have been trying to make time to just chill. And that is that is what will help me get back out of this ah little slump that I'm in right now. But it was very comic, though, when I woke up about two days ago and looked at my HIV and it was at the very bottom. 02:23:17.29 Jala so I even feel that bad. and like I didn't have any excise situations or anything. Now, HRV fluctuates all the time. I think really the thing to be concerned about with HRV is if you stay in the red all the time, 02:23:33.22 Jala That's a problem. If you're down there for a couple of days when you're really busy or you didn't get enough sleep or whatever the problem is, then that's doable. That's fine. You can get back to good, right? But like if you are chronically in that same situation, then that becomes an issue. like If you see it in in the like tanking, like if you if you track that measurement and you see your HRV tanking, it means you need to have some time out, some processing time, some rest. 02:23:58.71 Jala a bunch of different things. So like whatever it is that works for you, again, it's subjective. 02:24:04.27 Desirée Right. 02:24:08.46 Jala Tell us about Porges and the Polyvagal Theory. 02:24:08.65 Desirée which Yes. So I was going to say that leads us right into polyvagal theory. So that's built on Darwin's observations. um And they added another 140 years of scientific discoveries to those insights, because Stephen Porges, this is from around 1994. So nope, we're not going to calculate how long ago that was. 02:24:33.37 Desirée ah So the polyvagal theory provided us with a more sophisticated understanding of the biology of safety and danger. So one based on the subtle interplay between the visceral experiences of our bodies and the voices and faces of the people around us. 02:24:49.41 Desirée So this is essentially explaining why someone looking at you and you perceive them to have a kind face or soothing tone to their voice can dramatically alter how you're feeling. 02:25:02.54 Desirée So this polyvagal theory clarified why knowing that we are seen and heard to validated 02:25:02.88 Jala Right. 02:25:10.54 Desirée is important to us and can make us feel calm and safe. And the flip side of that, why being ignored or dismissed can precipitate rage reactions or turning inward and mental collapse. It also helped us understand why focused attunement with another person can shift us out of that disorganized and fearful state. So feeling like you're connected to somebody, that person to person connection can help pull us out of these things. 02:25:41.49 Desirée So it really had us look beyond just that pure fight or flight and put that emphasis on social relationships and how those social relationships and that feeling of being validated ultimately can help us understand and process our trauma. So again, reaffirming that connection between mind and body and how we can strengthen that um by being mindful of our connections. 02:26:15.58 Jala Right. And so something also like the reason why I ended up digging into porches and polyvagal theory, which boy is that, is that a honkin big technical thing to try to plow through. Um, the reason why I was digging into it is because of the yoga connection, because there's a lot of stuff out now because they've been doing a lot of studies on yoga. 02:26:36.53 Jala and how that works with the vagus nerve and you know like how yoga helps to calm down the systems. like We already knew before that the that yoga helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system which regulates your sleep and your digestion and a bunch of other things and it kind of down shifts you from a heightened state. 02:27:01.61 Jala So yoga as an activity is something that actually helps with trauma. And they actually studied this with a bunch of vets and they found that like, I don't know, it was it would like it deeply, deeply helped these vets. It's something like 60% of them got some so much better or something like it was a real high percentage that like really responded to yoga where they weren't responding to any other treatment, including medications and things and talk therapy and other types of therapies, but yoga did it for them. 02:27:30.40 Jala And it's because of that down shifting and that making the body feel safe because that's what that is. 02:27:30.51 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:27:35.98 Jala When your parasympathetic nervous system is active, it makes you able to relax. It unclenches your ass. it makes you able to get into the mode for sleep, which is why there's all these things where it's like five yoga moves you can do as a a ritual to get yourself ready for sleep. And part of that is because ah your body likes regularity. So if you do things as a ritual, then it triggers the Pavlovian response of you're getting sleepy because you're doing the thing that you do right before you sleep. Right. And then the second thing is because it's activating that parasympathetic nervous system, which down regulates everything from the heightened state that you've been in all day, drinking seven cups of coffee and dealing with every fire. Right. And reading the news and doom scrolling or whatever you're doing. So, um, all of that said, like that is something that, uh, folks might consider if it is like, there is, there's yoga that is able to be done by every body. 02:28:34.10 Jala Uh, so there is some form of yoga that you can practice and there are free resources on the internet for that. So, um, if it's something that you might be interested in doing just to see if it'll help with your sleeping or your whatever, like their, their, their resources look into it for sure. 02:28:51.14 Jala Uh, it is definitely something that helps me, uh, during all of the crises and everything. The only physical fitness that I got was yoga. 02:28:56.77 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:28:58.98 Jala And that I was doing that very specifically to help me deal with everything. And you know like I bounced back from all the most recent piles of of shit because of doing the yoga. So um definitely, Porsche's theory also provides the explanation of ah like the automat autonomic nervous system regulates three fundamental physiological states. The level of safety determines which of these is activated at any particular time. When we feel threatened, we instinctively turn to the first level of social engagement. 02:29:32.54 Jala When we call out for help, support and comfort from the people around us. But if nobody comes to our aid or we're in immediate danger, the organism reverts to a more primitive way to survive, fight or flight. So we fight off our attacker or we run to a safe place. However, if that fails, if we can't get away and we're or we're held down or we're trapped, then you try to preserve yourself by shutting down and expending as little energy as possible. We are then in a state of freeze or collapse. 02:30:00.54 Jala Hey, guess what? That's what I was doing with that trauma response all the time. So so I was trying to fight going directly into that free state. So yeah, 02:30:08.56 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:30:12.45 Jala yeah the reptilian brain, the ultimate emergency system gets activated. And this is most likely to engage when we are physically immobilized or pinned down by an attacker, whatever. ah There's no escape from a terrifying caregiver because you're a child, something like that. 02:30:29.37 Jala Collapse and disengagement are controlled um by an ancient part of the, again, that parasympathetic nervous system ah that is associated with digestive sifts symptoms like diarrhea and nausea. It also slows down the heart and induces shallow breathing. So again, ah yoga part of yoga is pranayama, which is the breath work. And that breath work emphasizes deep, full breaths, slow, deep, full breaths. 02:30:56.99 Jala And so it helps to counteract the tendency when you are in a heightened emotional state of having very shallow breathing. That's also why stuff like the box breathing techniques and the other breathing techniques that were talked about when we were talking about um getting away from like the capitalist hellscape that we live in, you know like the trying to trying to get away from the capitalist brain, deprogramming capitalist brain, ah Moxie mentioned, a bunch of different breathing techniques. Those are also useful for trauma as well. So um so yeah, like that that helps quite a bit. 02:31:34.40 Desirée So I think if y'all take away nothing else from this, I would want folks to take away mindfulness. 02:31:43.61 Jala Yes. 02:31:43.73 Desirée And sure, that's like a catchy, crazy buzz wordy, whatever, but ultimately only you. can figure out what will help heal you. You might need help to do that. Maybe that's a therapist. Maybe that's a confidant. Maybe that's a YouTube video. Maybe that's a book. Maybe that's a whatever. But only you can know what's going to help you. So you have to do that work of being in tune with yourself to be mindful. Because you know yoga may be fantastic for one person. 02:32:16.91 Desirée Dr. Van Der Kolk highlighted a patient of his who had experienced sexual trauma and so some yoga poses were just absolutely activating and they didn't immediately make that connection as to why. And ultimately they were able to work through it and become empowered by it and be like, okay, yep. i If I want to be intimate with someone in the future, that's a pose I'm gonna have to work through and so, but they had to do that work to identify why it was activating to them, why they were having that response to something that was seemingly innocuous and supposed to be good for them. 02:32:57.44 Desirée So yoga is not going to be that cure all for everybody. 02:33:00.39 Jala Right. 02:33:00.56 Desirée In fact, it might be more traumatic for some people, but only you will know that and only you can identify that why of it. So being mindful of how you're processing things, how you're experiencing things, same thing with breathing. You know, that's something maybe to you it has to be a very intimate and you can only really do that work if you're by yourself. 02:33:27.58 Desirée For some people, maybe that's something that you need to do with a group and just everyone sits down and takes deep breaths together. Another recommendation I would have is LeVar Burton's podcast. LeVar Burton reads. He opens every single episode with like, all right, let's all take a deep breath together. 02:33:46.28 Desirée Not going to lie, I was in tears the first time he did that because it was that connection of somebody that I've admired for so much of my life that I felt connected to you saying, let's take this moment together to do a deep breath. So whatever is going to work for you to get that connection, do that work to identify that so you can move forward with what will actually be effective. 02:34:08.87 Jala Right. Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way and then being able to work through those whys and wherefores and those feelings and process everything. 02:34:20.75 Jala ah Mindfulness as a practice is something that is also emphasized in this book as being real important. 02:34:21.02 Desirée Mmhmm. 02:34:26.28 Desirée Mmhmm. 02:34:27.89 Jala I mean, like we've talked about it off and on. I actually have not done a mindfulness episode, so I need to put that on the list. ah But I think it's because it's such a broad thing and it applies to like Fucking everything so it's real hard to how do you cover that as a topic? 02:34:40.48 Desirée Right. 02:34:41.83 Jala ah But anyway ah part of what's important about this is that traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies? so if you are mindful and you understand what is making you feel this way and what you know, like what are what are you feeling for one and 02:34:58.13 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:34:59.49 Jala What is triggering this feeling for two? 02:35:01.13 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:35:02.28 Jala Then that can help you start the process of working through everything ah because people who are super traumatized ignore their gut feelings a lot. They're real ace at that. 02:35:13.75 Jala And they also numb awareness of what is playing out in front of them or around them. They just kind of push away any kind of internal warning sign. Uh, and then like when they finally like realize what's going on, then they feel bewildered or confused or ashamed, uh, because they, they become vulnerable and to respond to any kind of sensory shift by shutting down or going into a panic. They develop a fear. 02:35:41.31 Jala So, you know like if you are having a trauma response, if you can be mindful of that and stop and then question and say, wow, I'm feeling X. 02:35:54.16 Jala Why, what, what happened that made me feel X? What, what is going on right now? You know, then that can help you, but you have to be able to take that step back and be aware of that. 02:36:06.48 Jala You know, a lot of times too, people have pain that is held in their bodies. Something else that's mentioned as very good for people who are going through trauma or have gone through trauma, potentially good for people who have gone through trauma ah is a massage. 02:36:14.56 Desirée Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 02:36:21.59 Jala Because people hold pain from trauma and loss and grief in their bodies and this can be translated into tension in different spots of the body ah Which can be once released can cause people to get really emotional and cry Or something like that in the middle of a massage because you know like they're getting this release that you know is physical But it ties them into the present, but it's also tied to the trauma is itself ah but again If somebody has you know like sexual abuse on their bingo card right of things that are happening to them that that they've had traumas from, then that touch might be completely different, might not help at all because that's you know a different thing. 02:37:03.93 Desirée Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 02:37:06.42 Jala It just depends. you know like It might be okay to touch them in certain spots and not others, you know depending on on things. so Anyway, um yeah, the most natural way for people to calm themselves down when they're upset is by clinging to another person. So ah when you've had a physical violation of your body, they desperately crave touch, but they also simultaneously are terrified of body contact, which makes it real hard for them to work through. 02:37:37.90 Desirée Well, and to again, recognize the interconnectedness. So your immune system is also impacted, right? When you are in this constant state of arousal and being oversensitive to threat, your immune system could then become compromised. So your cells are going to start attacking themselves. So one of the studies that Dr. van der Kolk did, 02:38:07.13 Desirée um showed that on a deep level, the bodies particularly of people who had experienced incest had trouble distinguishing between situations where there was danger and when there was safety. So if you are never feeling safe, never feeling relaxed, you're constantly in that state of arousal. um That imprint of the past trauma does ah not only consists of distorted perceptions and information coming from the outside, how that's being processed also results in not being able to feel safe, not being able to correctly identify safe things. And so your mind is misinterpreting all kinds of other events, things that might have felt innocuous, you can't perceive that way. 02:38:59.18 Jala Right. And also about the, the immune system. So, um, it's interesting because there was a link between people who have been traumatized and rheumatoid arthritis. And actually both my mom and my sister both have, uh, autoimmune it stuff, but they're different. 02:39:17.74 Jala They're different ones. So I wonder if that's actually traumatized. I don't know. And there's not a way for me to pin that down, but like, that's, that's something that I'm wondering. 02:39:22.46 Desirée Yeah. 02:39:26.21 Jala So. Another thing that was mentioned in the book was talking about the DSM, which is the ah diagnos ah diagnosis manual for all practitioners and everything. so There was a proposal that he worked on to give a a diagnosis of disorders of extreme stress, not otherwise specified or rather complex PTSD. So again, kind of complex PTSD being it's not one set cause, one specific acute moment, or even a chronic thing. It's like the pile up, right, of all of these different things causing this. 02:40:02.89 Jala And um he was advocating for this being in the diagnostic manual, but then it was struck down. So ah what that means, of course, is that without a diagnosis, that means people are being misdiagnosed constantly. How are they going to be treating people who are coping with the fallout of abuse or betrayal or abandonment when they're forced to diagnose them with depression or panic disorder, bipolar, borderline personality, and which aren't really addressing what they're actually coping with. I mean, like that's a symptom rather than the cause. 02:40:38.53 Desirée Sure. And the DSM has all sorts of complicated things going on with it. 02:40:45.65 Desirée um And ultimately, my advice there too would be if you feel like you have been working with a professional and you're misdiagnosed, you have a second opinion on that because The DSM is not meant to be the same type of diagnostic tool that a physician might encounter. So it's not, you know, this break in this bone needs this specific treatment kind of thing. It's very open to interpretation, interpretation of symptoms. And I would hope that it's getting better. I really would. I would hope that adding different layers to 02:41:25.81 Desirée the diagnoses and being able to identify this as distinct from that will lead to better accurate diagnoses. But also that thing that we talked about at the beginning and have reiterated throughout objective makes dealing with segment psychological diagnoses that much more complex. 02:41:47.39 Jala Right. So um we already covered some more of the stuff that we've talked about previously here in this next section. So I'm going to skip down to ah talking about where what how we remember things is 02:42:06.07 Desirée Mm. 02:42:07.90 Jala interesting because depending upon whether it's a a good memory or a bad memory, like a traumatic memory, we remember things differently. So we can retain or like ah retain an intense and largely accurate memory of the event when something terrifying happens. We remember insults and injuries the best when the adrenaline is going and all of that. like it It's something that spikes and stays with you longer than um something that's a good thing that happens. 02:42:43.64 Jala ah depending upon how personally meaningful a situation was and how emotional it felt at the time, that that key factor being the level of arousal in one way or another, ah that is basically what dictates whether or not people remember something. 02:43:02.32 Jala So, ah precise memories, for example. ah What's cited in the book is a lot of people, ah most people in America, remember where they were, if they were at least you know of adult or young adult age, where they were on September 11th. 02:43:17.96 Jala But only a few of us actually have any memory at all about September 10th. 02:43:18.46 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:43:23.54 Jala I don't remember September 10th. I don't really remember September 11th in super great detail. I just kind of remember like the moment that I heard. And then after that, like I don't have a whole lot of memory after that. so But that that kind of fragmented memory that you have, like that that's ah typical. But also, there's two major differences between how people talk about memories of positive versus traumatic experiences. 02:43:53.18 Jala one how the memories were organized into their physical reactions to them. So weddings, births, graduations, all recalled as events from the past, like stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Nobody said that there were periods where they totally forgot any of these events and nobody like forgot parts of what happened or scrambled it or anything like that. 02:44:15.10 Jala Whereas with traumatic memories, they're disorganized. Our subjects remembered some details all too clearly, like the the smells and um you know like the sights that they saw. But they could not recall the sequence of events or other vital details, like the first person who arrived to help or something like that. And also, 02:44:38.36 Jala ah they There was a study done on how participants recalled their trauma at three different points right after it happened when they were most troubled by their symptoms and during the week before the study. And all of the traumatized participants said that they had not been able to tell in anybody precisely what happened right after the event. Almost all had repeated flashbacks overwhelmed by sights, sounds, sensations, and emotions And as time went on, even more sensory details and feeling feelings were activated. But most participants also stated they began to make some sense out of them. They began to know what happened and could begin to start telling the story to other people. And that's called the memory of the trauma. So ah gradually those images and flashbacks decreased in frequency. But the greatest improvement was in the ability to piece together the details and sequence of the event. 02:45:30.45 Jala By the time that they did the study, 85% of them were able to tell a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end. Only a few were missing significant details, which would mean that they're probably not done processing, right? 02:45:43.09 Jala so um It was also notable that five who said they had been abused as children had the most fragmented memories. ah Their memories still arrived as images, physical sensations, and intense emotions, ah but they're just associated. 02:46:02.26 Jala parts of of this experience aren't assembled into a Coherence story and this makes it hard when you have somebody who was like the eyewitness of the attack or the victim of the attack in a court of law Trying to recount what happened that becomes quote-unquote unreliable Because they haven't processed the trauma to be able to tell the story yet So 02:46:28.45 Desirée Yeah, no, the whole memory the thing is fascinating to me because of how I process the world and not being able to make pictures for good or bad, right? 02:46:39.29 Desirée Like I don't have a video of my wedding day running through my head any anymore than I have a video of a car accident that I was in. 02:46:48.89 Jala Right. 02:46:48.96 Desirée So not having the positive, you know, I also don't have the negative. And I think, so my understanding is that at best estimates, only about 5% of people in the world have aphantasia, right? That's still a huge number of people because one, you know, I don't know what 1% of seven or 8 billion is, but it's still a huge number to multiply that by five. 02:47:17.18 Desirée That's not an element that's taken into consideration when people are doing most of these studies, unless they're specifically looking at aphantasia and there are a whole array of other different types of mental abilities or some might say aphantasia is a deficit depending on your perception. They're whole litany of other ways that people. 02:47:39.60 Desirée perceive the world differently and that impacts memories, that impacts how you process trauma. And you can't take every single one of those into consideration in every one of these studies. 02:47:51.40 Desirée But I always have to wonder, is that an element that would be impacting these studies? 02:47:56.78 Jala Right, absolutely. So we're coming close on time here, so I'm gonna kinda breeze through some bits that I wanted to talk about towards the end of this book. 02:48:05.46 Desirée Yeah. 02:48:08.79 Jala ah The major challenge of recovery is reestablishing ownership of your mind and your body. So um finding a way to become calm and focused, learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, 02:48:25.26 Jala and finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you while not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you had to manage to survive. 02:48:37.29 Jala So there's a lot of like self-denial or like, you know, re-scripting of what happened because something about what you had to go through, you know, to get to the other side of your trauma is shameful to you or hurtful or something. 02:48:52.08 Desirée Mm 02:48:52.52 Jala And you're blocking that from your own memory. So, uh, also in order to regain control of yourself, you do need to revisit the trauma, but only after you feel safe and won't be re traumatized by it. 02:48:56.40 Desirée hmm. 02:49:06.58 Jala You don't want to, uh, get back into it too soon. Like everybody's processing times are different. So just because somebody else who went through it, got over it faster, doesn't mean that, you know, uh, that, that needs, Oh, well, I've got to go dig into it, even though I'm, 02:49:22.99 Jala I'm still feeling ways. No, no, no. You need to do it in your own time. you know um So ah learning how to breathe calmly and remain in a state of physical relaxation is an essential tool for recovery. So again, there's different ways you can go about doing that. Breathwork is amazing, and that is something that I think is pretty safe to kind of recommend to most people um you know that that's something that's really good uh things like taichi or quigong or rhythmic drumming throughout African drum circles are a thing as healing practice they're singing bowls as a healing practice sound therapy is the thing yoga of course is something 02:50:05.27 Jala Martial arts is another one that's, especially if somebody is a victim of an attack and they are kind of you know dealing with that trauma to give them the physical empowerment of having that training and that discipline and that focus and that strength within their body, ah that verb set, right? But then also having them, ah one thing that he mentioned in the book was um Somebody who had been assaulted sexually ah was a massive karate master, but she froze in the moment. and so she In order to kind of get through it and to retake her power, she had to go through a simulated assault it within a safe environment after she had processed enough to be able to do this right ah and fight them off. 02:50:52.48 Jala so that ah she wouldn't freeze again. And then she ended up having another situation later where she was you know threatened and then she approached it calmly and scared the shit out of the people that were trying to attack her and then you know think they left. 02:51:07.03 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:51:08.17 Jala So um you know like ah there's a bunch of different ways. There's a bunch of different means by which you can get to a point. you know ah For some people too, stuff like acupressure or acupuncture also works really well. um Not just for ah things like chronic pain, which is something that my dad has, but also acupressure tapping certain pressure points helps regulate your body as well when it comes to something like trauma when you're having a trauma response. but 02:51:39.57 Jala Mindfulness has been shown to be a positive effect on a number of psychiatric, psychosomatic, and stress-related symptoms, including depression and chronic pain. um So mindfulness, again, major thing that we want to talk about, and we definitely have to get that on the agenda. 02:51:57.37 Desirée And different things that you can do, like grounding exercises and folks can Google that, but essentially just, you know, being aware of all of the sensations of your body from your toes all the way up to the tip of your head and breathing through it and actively focusing on it and processing what those sensations are. That's something you don't have to pay for. It's not something that you have to have another person or someone to be an expert to tell you how to do, how to position. 02:52:31.23 Desirée your body, any of that. Something that is not at all effective for me, but might be for other folks journaling, being able to write your feelings and get them out that way. 02:52:40.05 Jala Works for me. i Yeah, I started doing some journaling as a result of reading this book. I'm like, huh, I haven't done that to help me figure out words for things before, but I did and it worked. 02:52:51.20 Jala And I'm like, huh, okay, I got a new tool. Sorry, continue. 02:52:54.13 Desirée Yeah, works remarkably well for the vast majority of people and I pathologically hate writing my thoughts down because I've got a fear that they could then be used against me in the future. So journaling for me, I absolutely will not be vulnerable in that way, even with myself. 02:53:14.80 Jala Right. 02:53:14.88 Desirée Um, but for some folks that could be super helpful. And so that's where knowing yourself and knowing how you process things and why you process things doesn't mean that, you know, journaling is the end all be all. And someone should really, really force me to do that. Nope. There are a dozen different ways to get the same kind of result. Be aware of what doesn't work for you and try something else. 02:53:42.24 Jala Yeah, absolutely. So ah we may think that we can control our grief, terror, shame by remaining silent, but naming offers the possibility of a different kind of control over the situation. ah Something that said in the book is that communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized because trauma takes away your words. 02:54:03.75 Desirée Mm-hmm. 02:54:04.03 Jala There are a lot of ways in which like when something traumatic happens, you don't have words. so um there there's us He cites a situation where he was finding it difficult to feel his feelings deeply and also report them to someone else. 02:54:17.75 Jala so You can either sit with your feelings and process those, or you can talk about it and say the thing. 02:54:22.31 Desirée Yeah. 02:54:24.35 Jala you can't do both simultaneously. Can you be reciting something talking about this story about, say, Hurricane Harvey and then burst into tears? Yes, ah yes, you can. You can. But that means that the feelings are so strong that you need to stop and eventually let go and process those feelings because they just welled up on you. Right. So that's indicating a problem that you need to handle. So ah something that was interesting is that neuroscience research has shown that we possess two different forms of self-awareness. 02:54:54.53 Jala one that keeps track of the self across time and one that registers the self in the present moment the first are autobiographical self can create connections among experiences and assemble them into a coherent story this system is rooted in language. 02:55:09.99 Jala So our narratives change with the telling, our perspective changes as we incorporate new input. um The moment-to-moment self-awareness is based in physical sensations, but if we feel safe and are not rushed, we can find words to communicate that experience as well. So this is important because ah these things end up getting dissociated from one another When somebody is dealing with trauma and then the language gets taken away and then they're also not physically present in their body so they're not there they're not there. You know ah so that's why both aspects the physical and the emotional slash mental need to be worked on ah in order for healing to really occur. 02:55:51.73 Jala So um yeah, it's also interesting because another thing that happened in the book, they were talking about how speaking and ah writing styles change depending upon whether or not somebody was talking about a traumatic event or not. And um like this even changes the handwriting that they have, which is interesting. So um Yeah. 02:56:13.45 Jala And then it kind of goes through some other things where they're talking about eye movement, desensitization, desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR, which is a type of treatment that basically it just has like eye movements. 02:56:29.95 Jala It says follow my finger or whatever. And then like they're moving your eyes around, but then somehow ah that does something to your brain that helps you process trauma. It's wild. 02:56:41.14 Jala I read it and I'm like, huh? 02:56:41.38 Desirée Yeah. 02:56:43.59 Jala huh I don't know, um but it gives them access to loosely associated memories from and images from their past if you're somebody who's traumatized and helps you to get through that. That is a possible treatment method. They talk about ah acting classes and doing amateur theater and things like that as a way to process trauma because ah acting is like the opposite of a trauma experience because in trauma ah you are like not in the moment you're stuck in the past you are so you are trying to avoid emotional situations in drama you're trying to you know leech out all of the life more or less but in acting uh when you have a story that you are acting out on stage like a play 02:57:29.32 Jala there is drama and it is about grappling with these things and overcoming them and finding the words and finding the courage and doing all this other stuff. So acting as an art form helps people to kind of get out of their trauma and into a character, which then allows them to feel safe so that they can process their trauma. So it's a pretty cool thing to think about. 02:57:54.79 Jala There's also some stuff about neurofeedback and how like you can actually get your brain to rewire. They were even mentioning something like ADHD was shown to like become like lesser slashed completely cured or whatever um by the use of neurofeedback in some cases. 02:58:17.47 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:58:21.53 Jala so like There's a bunch of different treatment methods for a bunch of different um situations available. and so it really like if ah The whole point of mentioning all this is because if something like a talk therapy doesn't work for you, it's not your thing. 02:58:36.99 Desirée Mm hmm. 02:58:38.62 Jala There is like 100 million different ways to approach this. There are a bunch of different non-medicated ways of trying out different forms to work through what you need to work through for your trauma. 02:58:53.01 Jala so um just because one way doesn't work or the conventional ways don't work doesn't mean that there isn't ah an option for you. There's so many ways ah for you to work through things. And for a lot more detail, definitely recommend that folks go and check this book out. um Overall, I think that's about the most that I have to say here. Des, do you have anything further that you want to say from any of the stuff on the back half of this? 02:59:23.23 Desirée Yeah, so i the EMDR was fascinating to me that interrupting your brain signals with these lights and movement and things like that, because my um undergraduate thesis was on schizophrenia diagnoses and eye tracking dysfunction. 02:59:27.23 Jala Right. 02:59:39.74 Desirée So being able to interrupt the brain or see things in the brain going on in coordination with eye movements that we are not aware of at all. Our eyes are constantly bouncing all over the place. 02:59:49.79 Jala Right. 02:59:52.03 Desirée in ways that can be detected. I have talked to my therapist a couple times about my psychology degree and some of that experience and also aphantasia and ironically enough EMDR came up as something that he was like, yep, that would probably not work for you because I'd ask you to imagine that event and picture it and you're not able to do that. 03:00:15.11 Desirée So we'd have to find something else to work for you. 03:00:17.07 Jala Ah, well, shit. 03:00:18.49 Desirée So being, ah which is fine. 03:00:21.62 Jala Yeah. 03:00:21.83 Desirée um But just knowing that about myself and if I didn't know that I had aphantasia and you know, I would be so frustrated at something not working. 03:00:33.38 Desirée Just like I was frustrated every time someone tried to make me do a damn meditation and picture myself on a beach. 03:00:33.47 Jala Right. 03:00:39.32 Desirée Yes, I would love to picture myself on a beach. I want to be on a beach. But I can't. 03:00:44.13 Jala Right, right. 03:00:44.39 Desirée And so just not, you know, being able to do that, not being able to engage in the same way that everybody else was and not understanding why and experiencing the frustration of, well, I don't get anything out of meditation. 03:00:57.48 Desirée Well, there was a reason for that. So just not placing the blame on yourself because that was something else the book did highlight several times. It's very natural and very easy to blame yourself because you're with you all the time, right? 03:01:13.44 Jala Right. 03:01:13.75 Desirée You can see all of your faults, even ones that maybe you're not ah allowing yourself to admit and being kind with yourself, being gentle with yourself, and being open to possibilities. 03:01:27.12 Jala Absolutely. So, yeah, um if all of this sounds interesting and you want to know more, check out the book, check out the ah author that Des mentioned in the beginning, Saks, and yes. 03:01:40.16 Desirée Oliver Sacks, yep. 03:01:42.54 Jala And otherwise, deaths where in the world can people find you if you are to be found on the internet? 03:01:45.04 Desirée Yeah. Where am I? So I have not left any of the social media platforms. I am either at dneyens, D-N-E-Y-E-N-S. ah That should be on Twitter and Bluesky. I'm on Instagram and Facebook, Desirée.neyens in those places. 03:02:09.65 Desirée I am not active on any of them other than every single one of them. I've got at least one person that that's how they want to communicate with me. So I'm staying in all the places because I don't want to shut off communicating to people, but I will almost never be posting anything, although potentially with a new little kitten there might be a picture too that pops up somewhere, probably Blue Sky. 03:02:34.09 Jala Right, right. Of course, you have to be at least on one platform where I can send you cute animals. I mean, like that's just the rule. 03:02:39.80 Desirée Yes. 03:02:43.27 Jala So yeah, as for me, you can find me on Bluesky and Substack and my Discord and the Duckfeed Slack and still, for right now, you can find me on Instagram, at jalachan. Of course, you can find me at jalachan.place, where you got this episode and all of the others. Until next time, take care of yourself. Remember to give somebody a big hug, touch your strong, or touch your strong friends. That too, I guess, if you had that relationship. Check in on your strong friends. And I don't know what other what other tropes did we say earlier? I don't know be mindful and smile. Okay Good night Right. 03:03:25.03 Desirée Adopt, don't shop. 03:03:27.32 Jala Yes. Yes adopt. Don't shop mic drop [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]