How do we heal from trauma? How do we become trauma informed practitioners?

This episode of the Learn With Less® podcast was recorded as a live, virtual event featuring a very special guest, psychotherapist and trauma-informed transformational coach, Michelle Hardeman-Guptill, and was aimed at both parents/caregivers as well as professionals working with infant/toddler families.

We discussed:

• Michelle’s professional and educational background, and how she came to doing the work she does today
• Some good working definitions for trauma (big and little “T”)
• What does it mean to be “trauma informed” as a practitioner? (& whose wheelhouse is this even in?)
• Tips and resources for those hoping to start looking at / continuing their healing journey in their own trauma
• Tips and resources for those serving families, who would like to engage from a more “trauma-informed” lens

HELPFUL RESOURCES RELATED TO THIS EPISODE

What is Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care? handout created by Michelle Hardeman-Guptill

Trauma-Informed Service Providers Collective, a free group from Michelle Hardeman-Guptill

The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van der kolk

Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine

Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists, by Janina Fisher

Polyvagal Flip Chart, by Deb Dana

National Center for Trauma Informed Care

National Child Traumatic Stress Network

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CONNECT WITH US

Michelle: Website / Facebook / Instagram / YouTube

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

TEXT TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE

Ayelet: Welcome back to the Learn With Less® podcast. We are so excited to be hosting this very special live event and I am so very thrilled to be here with all of you in community. I am Ayelet Marinovich, your host of the Learn With Less® podcast. I want to officially introduce you to our very special guests Michelle Hardeman-Guptill. Michelle is a licensed psychotherapist, a trauma informed transformational coach, and an advocate for creating a trauma informed world so that we can all live life from our hearts with compassion, rather than from our fears with defensiveness – well put.

Michelle has been a trauma specialist for the last 15 years. The beginning of her career was focused on children and families, many in the system in some way, many with trauma histories and lived experiences where their voices were not heard, respected or valued. While Michelle continues to work one on one and in small groups with gifted practitioners and creatives who are ready to break through to the next layer of their expansion and possibility, another layer of her work is working with small businesses and corporations to help them create a trauma informed work environment. So from c-level, to management, to staff to customer and consumer, that value of recognizing when someone is responding from a place of trauma (including ourselves!) cannot be overstated.

As Michelle says, “it’s time to look at the elephant in the room.” And it’s always been there, but we have not always been able to know the tools, we haven’t been taught the tools to see it and understand it and deal with it. So Michelle breaks down trauma into digestible and bite sized, practical and often humorous pieces for deeper understanding and a greater sense of confidence and competence in managing the things that distress us, including other humans! Love it. So, that is why I am so excited to have you on the show today, Michelle, and to be able to share this conversation with the greater Learn With Less® community. Thank you so much for being here today with us and welcome.

Michelle: Thank you so much for inviting me into your community. I really appreciate it, I’m excited to be here.

Ayelet: Yeah, good. Fantastic. Well, Michelle, you know, that was the official version of your bio, but we would love to just hear a little bit more about you, about how you actually, you know, came into doing the work that you do today.

Michelle: Yeah! So I guess I’ll start at the beginning, which is that I have my own trauma history. I experienced sexual abuse at a very young age. And part of what happened for me was that my parents… nobody is trained as a parent to recognize the signs, right? Nobody knows. And so they didn’t recognize the signs. And when I finally remembered some things about it, the response was kind of like, Oh, I’m so sorry, let’s just forget that ever happened, you know. And so a lot of the damage of trauma comes after the fact, when someone chooses to share their story, or if they choose not to share their story because they’re afraid to do so.

So I have my own trauma history. And I seemed to have this stamp on my forehead that said, I will listen to your trauma from a very young age. So I had perfect strangers telling me their stories on buses, trains, in supermarkets, you name it. I worked with children in theater, specifically teens. And we were doing a project where they would share their stories from the stage. So we were doing a monologue workshop and group workshop and a lot of trauma started to show up in the room and kids were going home and you know, self harm, substance use. And I realized, you know, I really need to understand how to hold trauma, like I need to understand more about it, I need to learn how to help people compartmentalize it and kind of wrap it up before they leave the room. So I decided to go back to school to become a psychotherapist. And I kind of always specialized in trauma.

And it’s interesting because when you’re trained as a therapist, you’re not actually trained in how to work with trauma. Like that’s what you do after, that’s what you learn after you get your degree, right, they touch on it in little bits and pieces, but it’s not actually like a whole training on like, this is trauma. This is what it looks like. And you have to actually discover that after the fact, which I think is kind of like, huh! You know? So for me, the perspective that I hold is that Yeah, sure, maybe doing some of the deep dive stuff with trauma and really, really working with complex trauma and all of that is in the realm of the therapist, but we’re always dealing with trauma, we’re always dealing with it.

The more informed we are about what it is, what it looks like what’s helpful in those situations, what’s not helpful in those situations, the easier it is for us to be able to manage not only the person in front of us, but ourselves. Because when someone in front of us is having a trauma response, we are often having our own central nervous system response to what is going on for them. And when we can separate those two and recognize that that’s what’s actually happening, we can come back into our own bodies, calm our systems and be able to actually hold space for that person to move through whatever they need to move through.

So there’s a lot of divisiveness in our world right now. And a lot of that divisiveness is trauma, it’s trauma responses, it’s people feeling like their identity is being attacked. And we will talk about the definition of trauma in a moment, because that is a piece of it that a lot of people don’t consider when thinking about the word, “trauma.” So I’m on a mission, to create a trauma informed world and to help as many people and businesses and families become trauma informed as possible. Because I know, for myself, if I had had that, after that experience, it would have changed my life, I wouldn’t have been holding on to the trauma symptoms and reminders in my body and in my mind, if I had had some of those things right after the event. Yeah, that’s my story.

Working Definitions of Trauma

Ayelet: Thank you so much for sharing that, first of all. Let’s get into some good working definitions. Because, you know, we collected a huge amount of responses that was like, so beautiful, I sent out a form to the Learn With Less® community. And everyone responded, like we had so many incredible responses, both from people who identify as parents and caregivers, and from those professionals, like educators and therapists, and people like that, who are, you know, working with new families who are looking to be more trauma informed. And so we’ve been sort of trying to work together, you and I, Michelle, to really come up with like a clear, concise podcast episode with for you, to make sure that we can include all of those things, and all of the beautiful questions and challenges and things that are coming up for people.

One definite pattern that we saw again, and again, was really – and I really appreciate this – coming from all of the people who responded was, you know, I don’t even know what is… like, I can’t even define trauma. I’m not quite sure what that is. And I know that, in general, when we’re talking about trauma, I have, you know, quotations, this is, there are you know, definitions for like that big T trauma and little t trauma. So let’s just first spend a little time, Michelle, talking through some working definitions of trauma, both big and little “T.”

Michelle: Okay. Sounds good. So there’s a lot of definitions out there. And they all kind of point to the same things. But probably the most practical definition I’ve read or heard was from Karl Dawson, who is the founder of EFT, matrix re-imprinting, which is kind of like a regression form of tapping, right? So he came up with this four part definition that I love. And basically what he says is that trauma is an event or series of events that are four different things.

One is that it’s sudden and shocking, right? The second piece is that it is a threat to one’s safety, identity or sanity. The third is that it creates a freeze response, a sense of helplessness, that means they can’t get out of the situation, right? They can’t run, they can’t fight. They’re just kind of frozen in the experience. And then the fourth piece is that they often feel isolated. And that was the piece I was talking about earlier, where they might not feel like they can share about the event with anybody, they might feel shame about it, they might feel they’re going to get in trouble. They might, you know, there’s all kinds of things that can happen.

So the main thing is that it dysregulates the system, right? The system becomes dysregulated during that experience. And so trauma is not actually what happened. A lot of people think that trauma work is like going back into the memory and having to like dig it up and feel the feels… that’s not actually trauma work that’s effective, it can be re traumatizing. Some folks want to go there and when they want to go there and they’re ready to go there, that could be very cathartic and beautiful. But many people are very defended against going there – for good reasons, because their defenses have been there to protect them, right?

So trauma’s not what happened, it is what we believed about ourselves, the world, because of what happened, and what happened in our own body and central nervous system in response to what happened. Unlike animals, we don’t have a way to discharge trauma. So animals in the wild will literally go and shake their bodies and  physically, and sigh and do all of these things to release trauma from their body and then they get up and they run off and they go do their thing and they don’t continue to have trauma responses.

What we do as humans is as soon as we see somebody who’s dysregulated or upset or has had something bad happen to them, we go Oh calm down it’s okay here’s a Kleenex. What do you want? What do you need? Right? We try to fix it, rather than saying oh my god… Wow, that’s so, that’s so intense or that must have hurt so bad, or like do you need – what do you need to do? Do you need to shake your body do, you need to scream? Like, what needs to happen to just release some of that energy? Because if we don’t release it comes out sideways later when we scream at our child or we scream at the dog, or it goes inward and we get disease, right? And we get we get stuff that happens in our bodies.

So big T trauma is basically what most of us think trauma is right: war, domestic violence, sexual abuse, you know, kind of the big, the big ones. Little t traumas are, most of the time are wrapped up more around our identity, right? So these are these are smaller traumas like, you know, let’s see what examples did I give in here? I had a couple of examples, things like non life threatening injuries, emotional abuse, humiliation, bullying, things like that.

So the third grade teacher who humiliated you in front of class and told you that, you know, don’t quit your day job, writing is not your thing. Imagine how a child takes that information. That was an attack to their good writer self. And so if that gets reinforced in any way, shape, or form, that becomes a little t trauma, right? That gets wrapped up in their identity. And now they have complexes or neuroses around writing because it was sudden and shocking to their system, it was a threat to their identity, they felt helpless, and they feel isolated and embarrassed, right. So we don’t think about those kinds of traumas. And the interesting thing about those kinds of traumas is if you have multiple little t traumas, it’s more emotionally damaging than one, big t trauma.

Big T traumas are actually much easier to work through, especially if you get help right away. And little t traumas, like I said, get wrapped up in our identity. And so they’re harder to kind of pull out because a part of us is convinced that’s just who we are. And it’s not true. It’s a part right. It’s a part of us that’s holding on to that particular wounding.

So the other way we can look at trauma is there’s acute, so it was one time and then it was over, it never happened again. And then there’s chronic trauma. Same thing, acute trauma is easier to deal with and chronic trauma, it’s going to take longer. And then there’s physical trauma, and there’s relational trauma. So when we meet people who we consider to be difficult, most likely they have experienced relational trauma.

And what they’re searching for is a sense of safety in relationship, and they’re looking to you for that, even if you didn’t ask to be in that role. So that is another piece is that it’s different. Physical trauma is different than relational trauma. And relational trauma impacts our relationships for the rest of our lives. And so that is the scary thing. And as far as what trauma looks like, you know, there’s so, there’s so many ways that they can look, the DSM has some pretty clear criteria for post traumatic stress disorder, or acute stress disorder that lists some of those things.

But just off the top, the first thing you notice is that they’re dysregulated. And dysregulated usually means they’re being reactive, really big, intense, or they’re completely shut down, they’re checked out, or they’re falling asleep, they’re they’re not here, right? Those two extremes are pretty much really clear indicators that somebody is is kind of in a trauma response. And it’s important to notice that.

It’s not always like sometimes people just daydream, you know, it’s it’s not always that so it’s, that this is the place we got to be careful, is that, you know, if we start jumping to conclusions, we start assuming like, well, what is the trauma? Oh my gosh, this kid is constantly spacing out, or they’re constantly reacting, like, there must be that… we have to be careful because sometimes people just have very sensitive nervous systems in general, you know, there’s a lot of factors here.

But keeping that as a possibility without trying to figure out the why… is trauma informed care, right? Just knowing that it’s there. It’s possible it’s not it doesn’t matter what it was how we work with it is the same, right? We don’t need the details. That piece is not as important.

Ayelet: Ok. Right? Because we’re not actually doing the the human thing of trying to fix everything. Right. So I’m good at that. We’re good at that.

Michelle: You know, I have I have a whole list you know, and most people kind of have a sense of what this is, but I’ll just do a real quick rundown just so that we can kind of touch some of those bases things like startle response, hyper vigilance, avoidance of trauma reminders, certain places certain people isolation, excessive worry, nightmares, flashbacks, acting as if or feeling as if you are back in the situation.

Anger and depression substance use reactions that are sudden intense and hard to shift anxiety, chronic or around specific things. increased heart rate, children will often have somatic symptoms, my tummy hurts, tightness, clenching, shallow breathing, holding on to the breath or hyperventilation, obsessive thinking response disproportional to what’s happened muscle tension, twitches, jumping to conclusions, or worst case scenarios, a sense of not belonging, a sense of not being in one’s body intense fear of abandonment, feeling small and insignificant and feelings of anxiety or fear that seemed incongruent with what’s happening. We’ve all felt that.

Ayelet: Yeah, I mean, let’s just acknowledge, too, that was like so many things. That’s a huge list. And that is, we see all of those things all the time.

Michelle: Exactly, yes, yes. Yeah.

Ayelet:  Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much for breaking all of that down. That is fantastic. Okay, now moving along, to… because you touched on this, what it means to be trauma informed, big has all of us can utilize all of these things, right? Because regardless of whether you are a parent or caregiver with tiny humans, who may or may not have experienced trauma, or you are, I mean, we all have, again… Or you are a professional working with families with tiny humans who may or may not have experienced big traumas, little traumas. I mean, they’re, I think this is one of those words or phrases that’s become like a la mode recently is you need to be trauma informed, make sure you’re a trauma informed provider or practitioner. So for all of the people here wondering what does that actually mean? Please, can you tell us, Michelle?

What does it mean to be trauma informed?

Michelle: Yes and no. So it’s an ever evolving definition, right? We are we are evolving that exact “what is this” as we speak, as we get clearer on why this is so important. So in general, in general, trauma informed care is a lens, right? It’s a way of looking at things that basically assumes trauma. There, there’s just this underlying assumption that that it’s possible that trauma is in the room between you and I. It is not a trauma service, a trauma specific service.

So it’s trauma specific service would be psychotherapy, a trauma specific service might be somatic experiencing, or clinical hypnosis, or someone who is trained to work with trauma, you know, and has extensive training in trauma as well as the particular modality that they might be using, right? So that’s a trauma specific service. And we’re not asking anybody to become a trauma therapist by being trauma informed, right? We’re asking that people really yeah, just kind of have this perspective, that trauma is probably in the room, and I’m going to respond differently to someone who has experienced trauma than I might to someone else.

So here’s the thing, we can’t hurt anybody by assuming that trauma is in the room, right? If anything, we’re going to get better results with everybody. Because we’re automatically assuming that this person is seeking safety, that this person is seeking connection, that this person needs to know that you are a safe human, right? And how we approach that there’s lots of different pieces to that.

So Gabor Mate has this great phrase, and he says, you know that we need to come from the perspective of what happened to you, not what’s wrong with you. So a lot of times when our kids are acting out, or we see humans, adults acting out, we you know, what’s wrong with you? Why are you doing that? And that makes sense. But it’s not trauma informed, because what we want to understand is what’s actually happening for them, what’s happening inside of them, right? And trauma informed care really is just a, it’s also just a framework for understanding how profound and complex and deep the impacts of trauma are on us socially, physiologically, and emotionally.

Ayelet:  Oh, that was really good. Can you please say that one more time for the people in the back? Trauma informed care is that…

Michelle: It’s a framework for thinking or working with others. Really, that’s, that’s driven by the understanding of how impactful complex and deep the effects of trauma are on us socially and emotionally and physiologically.

Ayelet: Amazing. Also, I just want to name the fact that like, look at Michelle, she is literally living this. She’s not reading from a handout, she has created a handout, which I put into the chat here, and which we will link to in the show notes of the episode once it’s released. But she like this literally is what Michelle does every day all day. And she’s sharing her amazing knowledge with us. And I just, it’s so great that you can just do that and give these working definitions and beautiful. Anyway, I just wanted to say that out loud. So.

Replacing Judgement with Curiosity

Michelle: I want to just add in it’s really just this core component, really of trauma informed care is that we are replacing judgment with curiosity always. And so I would imagine that Ayelet does this, like when she teaches what she teaches like this is probably a core component, right is that he stay in the curiosity, we stay in the wonder of what’s happening.

And so when we’re working with any human, we want to, and we see that they’re in reaction, we want to ask like, Hmm, I wonder what might have triggered this for them? To look for the cause, to actively look for the cause of what might have happened for this child or this human that caused this response and to not take it personally because we cannot be inside another person’s head. We cannot be inside their neurobiology. We do not know what’s actually happening for them and us saying the word ice cream might not mean anything to us, and it might be an incredible trauma reminder for the person in front of you and you don’t have to get it you just have to validate it. Yeah, validation is key.

Ayelet: I mean, it’s so interesting, because as we’re sitting here talking, I’m thinking about, obviously, how this applies to us in our parental roles for those of us who are parents, especially of young children, especially if those young ones who cannot regulate their emotions, who are constantly having these big, big feelings and reactions to everything throughout the day, right? And so not only is it just, it feels like such good practice to just be there and reflect back to them and validate back to them what they’re experiencing, all of their feelings. This is how we build emotional regulation. This is how we build self regulation skills. This is what co-regulation is. Right?

Michelle: Exactly. Exactly. And co-regulation is everything. Yes. Like I said at the beginning, if I can assume that this is a trauma response, right? That it’s not me. I didn’t do something, you know, it’s like, this is a trauma response for this human. Can I, what do I need to do to come my central nervous system so that they can regulate to me? It’s everything. It’s everything. So when I’ve worked with clients in the midst of their psychosis, in the midst of, you know, an angry outrage, and I just breathe and open my body and stay calm, they regulate to me.

But if I let my central nervous system get out of control, or I assume anything, or you know, jump into my own response, then I’m going to join them, I’m going to go with whoever is strongest in the room. And generally, the grounded is the strongest, as long as we can sustain it, right? As long as we can just stay in that, keep breathing and keep our bodies open, it’s huge.

Ayelet: It does, it totally re adjusts the energy in the room, when you have somebody who’s just standing there, stating facts, being there, holding space, right? It is so much more powerful and so much more effective than the person who’s going, “blah blah blah!!!!” Or joining in on that high level high energy, high emotion, as you just said, but wow, yeah, so this, of course, then also applies to us as grownups with other grownups.

Right, whether it’s a partner, a parenting partner, whether it’s a client, whether it’s a parent of our own selves, or whatever, like coworkers, obviously, this is all applicable. Yes, it’s all there. So if you are, for instance, maybe you’re joining us as a Learn With Less® facilitator, right, and you are a professional, who works with families, and now you’re venturing into like leading these sort of family enrichment classes, well, this is the kind of thing that you’re going to want to be aware of and knowledgeable about and be able to hold that space and take that deep breath and hold that space for any one of your families or every single one of your families. Carly is here. And she says, “Absolutely!” And and how powerful that is.

And so, it’s so interesting, right, Michelle, because we, when we saw all of those responses to our questions about you know, what is your challenge? What what are you challenged by? What questions do you have about being trauma informed? A lot of what came up for people is as, say, a speech language pathologist or somebody else working with families, is this even in my wheelhouse, right? Well, I think yes, from what we’ve been talking about, as you can see, yes, this is not about being a trauma therapist, as a say, occupational therapist, physical therapists, speech language pathologist, this is about being trauma informed. And being able to assume trauma is in the room, if you are a professional, or if you are a parent or caregiver with your own family.

Trauma is a Stress Response

Michelle: Well, and part of trauma informed care is that you refer! You recognize when you are outside the scope of your professional training, right, and your personal experience, or your own capacity, right, like we get to do that we get to say this is outside of my capacity. You know, as a therapist, there are times when I have to turn away people who are really struggling because I already have a lot of really struggling people on my caseload, and I can’t maintain if I don’t make sure to refer that person to another person, right? I got to keep my cup full. I’ve got to make sure that I’m taken care of for I cannot be the best provider that I can be.

So part of trauma informed care is also taking care of you, doing your own trauma work. Learning about trauma, referring out talking to people being in a consultation space where you can talk about some of the difficult parents or difficult children or difficult partners or whatever we need to talk about to be able to really just like have a place to let it go without judgment so that we can come back into ourselves because what happens in the brain when we’re in a trauma response.

The other thing I want to say about trauma is that trauma, like let’s throw that word out, let’s say, it’s a stress response. It’s under anxiety disorders in the DSM. It’s a stress response. So okay, maybe there wasn’t trauma, it’s still a stress response, it’s still the same thing that’s happening in the body and the brain. And we’re going to work with it in the same way, you know. So we need places as providers, to release our own stress, to shake out our own bodies to go dance to do whatever we’ve got to do to release this, I have rituals that I do at the end of my day, every single day to release my clients, and so that I don’t take them home with me in my head, it’s so important that we have those practices for ourselves. Otherwise, we can’t keep doing this right in a sustainable way.

Ayelet: It’s so true. I mean, this is, again, for those of you who are here with us live, who happen to be in the Learn With Less® Facilitator Program. This is again, why, of course, this is what we’re creating for families and community. And then this is also what we create together for our community of facilitators. That is why it is so important to have that continued support and community with each other. Fantastic.

Okay. So before we move into the next section of today’s event, which we’re going to be talking more about sort of specific tips and resources, I want to just first address that, we have a couple of things I want to show you in the chat, direct your attention to… Michelle has created an amazing handout for today, all about, what is trauma and trauma informed care. And you can access that here in the chat, as well as some basic ways that you can do more to Learn With Less®, if you are interested in any of the things of course that we have to offer. So, of course, those will be linked in the show notes as well. Alright, so we’re going to I see, we’re getting a few questions in the chat. And we are going to move to a Q&A in just a few moments.

But first, let’s go ahead and talk a little bit about some tips and resources for those hoping to start looking at or continue their healing journey in their own trauma, right? Whether you are or are not a parent or caregiver yourselves, sharing a little bit about a few tips for those hoping to look at their own trauma journey. And of course, as well as whether or not you’re a parent or caregiver yourself.

Michelle: Yeah. So the biggest thing to remember, I saw some of these on the comments and the questions, really was like, how do I basically not screw up my kid because of my own trauma, right? So I want to give some assurance here, relationship is about rupture and repair, end of story, we cannot be in relationship…

Ayelet: Full stop.

To be In Relationship Is To Both Rupture and Repair

Michelle: Right! So we cannot be in relationship without rupture and repair. So what we need to get good at is the repair. That’s what we need to get caught up because we are going to rupture, we have to radically accept, as parents, we’re going to screw up, we’re going to screw up big, and the healing comes in that repair. The damage is avoidance, secrecy, not taking responsibility, pretending it didn’t happen. That is the damage of trauma. So if you can come back to your child, any child, whether you’re working with them, or they’re your own child or any human, and come back and say, This is what I did, and I see how it impacted you. And I’m sorry that what I did or said impacted you in that way. Here’s my plan to try to work on it in myself, so I don’t do it again. Does that sound good? That’s it right? We come back.

Or if a child is in reaction, or human is in reaction to something that we’ve done, we regulate our system, and we see if we can help them regulate theirs, right? We cannot combat stress and a stress response with more stress. We cannot combat it by yelling at it, we cannot combat it by, you know, telling it we’re right, we cannot combat it with any of those things! We have to combat it with quiet spaces, quiet energy, validation, I see that you’re upset or I see that your face is really tense and your your hands are balled, you know, because sometimes we can say it looks like, you’re, I think you’re angry and “I’m not angry,” you know.

But if we stick with the facts, just like you said earlier, Ayelet is like, you know, we have to stick with the facts, I see that you’re, you know, your jaw is clenched, and your and your hands are clenched. What’s happening? That what’s happening question again, right? What’s happening to you or in you rather than what’s wrong with you, you know, why are you acting that way? So I really want to encourage parents that awareness is key. If I’m aware that I just had a reaction that doesn’t seem to make sense, right? Then I need to take that step back, reflect, see where that came from. So the biggest tool I can offer you is Oh, what’s happening? Okay, I’m activated. I don’t like the word triggered, by the way. I like to use word, “activated,” even though it’s in my paperwork, because that’s the word most people use.

But I like to use the word activated because it takes, there’s some ownership here. Like, I’m noticing something is happening in my system or my mind or whatever. So I’m activated. What is that? What does that remind me of? Oh, this reminds me of all of the times when, you know, my dad would get mad at me for such and such and I would feel really embarrassed. Okay. Is that what’s actually happening right now? No. Okay, so alarm system parts that are holding on to the story. We’re good. We’re okay. That’s all right. And we take a breath and we move on. That that series of what am I feeling? How big is it? What does it remind me of? Is that what’s actually happening right now and then doing what I need to do to regulate my system, and then coming back in or giving myself a break, is key to working with our own system, right?

When my children were around the same age, as my sexual abuse, all my stuff came up, I was terrified, I didn’t want to leave them with anybody. I, you know, didn’t want them taking bags together, like all of this stuff came up. And luckily, I was being trained as a therapist. So I went to my colleagues and supervisors and was like, what’s normal? What’s not normal? Like, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. And it was so incredibly helpful to just own that I was having a trauma response, to ask the questions I needed to ask, to assure myself that I was doing everything right, that I was doing everything I needed to do that I was very comfortable talking about body parts, that there was no shame in our house around bodies, you know, all of the things.

And then I was able to calm my own nervous system and know that, like, I know what the signs are, you know, what the signs are, and I know the people that my children are around. I can take a breath, you know, and, and relax. I know, I know that I can ask my children questions, that there are no secrets in our house. You know, I’ve set the stage for my children to be able to talk to me about these things.

So there’s so many different I mean, as far as like, what helps and tools like there’s so many things, but the biggest thing to remember is, what you know, if I’m if I’m experiencing stress, what do I need? Like what’s helpful when I’m experiencing stress? Do I need a break? Do I need to drink some hot tea? Do I need to go for a run? You know, what do I need to do? And so when we’re working with children, one of the first things we can ask, actually, is asking the parent and the child when you get really upset, what helps you? What helps you calm down? Do you have a special teddy bear? Do you like hugs? You know, or do you like not like hugs? Like, do you really not want people to touch you when you’re upset? To have those conversations ahead of time before there’s ever a problem? And maybe even as part of your assessment!

No matter what you do, you know, that’s another trauma informed lens is that no matter what you’re doing to do like an ACES questionnaire, and an aces questionnaire, basically rates kind of the most common traumas that people can experience. And when there is more than… I think it’s like three or four, you know, you’re going to be having some trauma responses in the room. Simple, Simple, Simple, Simple.

And we’re not used to asking those questions, right? We’re afraid we’re being invasive, we’re afraid, like, oh, people don’t want to talk about that. Actually, people really want to talk about that, you know, secrecy is where the damag is, you know? So if we can help people share in a contained way, it’s a questionnaire, right? We don’t want to open a can of worms and I don’t want to give an assessment that says lame, all of the deepest, darkest traumas you’ve ever experienced, you know, like, we don’t want that.

But we do want to know if there’s a trauma history, we can have some checkboxes, you know, so that that person also knows like, oh, wow, this person may know how to hold space for that, right? Let’s see. Okay, so someone asked, I love this question. Someone asked what is good enough?

Ayelet: Yeah that’s a great question, I saw that, too.

What is “Good Enough?” When It Comes To Trauma?

Michelle: I was like, Okay, good enough, is everything we’ve been talking about? Yeah, holding space for another’s feelings another’s reaction, as long as they’re not like being violent or, you know, abusive, then we have a right to walk away or do whatever we need to do but to to hold space. And if we can’t, to come back and do the repair, do not avoid the repair. The repair is how to be good enough. I used to write apology letters to my children. And then they started to write apology letters to me, it was the sweetest thing.

Because it taught them like it is important to take responsibility. Right? But we don’t have to beat ourselves up. We don’t have to tell ourselves we’re bad people we don’t have to be in self judgment. We want to go back again to that curiosity right. Why did I do that?

Ayelet: This right here is the key and I think because all of us anyone who has ever been in relationship with anyone else has experienced this like oh, I really messed that one up. Yeah. And in the moment especially, I think especially as parents, right? I will just speak from my own experience. As a mom when I mess up with my toddler preschooler, school aged child. I even when when my children were babies, I knew that I was not always going to get it right. I know that I am not always going to get it right. That is a fact. When you do you feel like an Olympic athlete right? You feel superhuman. That’s great.

When you when you don’t and you feel yourself. I love that, activated… and you’re having the thing and you still can’t catch yourself because when you are activated, triggered, whatever you want to call, like, it’s really hard to come down from that in the moment, the more practice you have, the more easy it gets to do in those moments, however, you’re never going to get it right 100% of the time. And, and I actually I hate saying “get it right,” because even that it’s like, no, you’re not going to, you’re not going to obtain perfection. How about that, right? Because number one, no one needs to be perfect.

We are, we are humans, that is literally not the point. And number two, it’s about the repair, as you said, Michelle, because it’s about coming back and saying, example from my own life, I have recently noticed that I am totally nutso about like, I get wild about being on time. And it’s partially because, I finally identified, that it’s partially because my own mom has a problem with time management, right. And that pissed me off as a kid and as a growing up adult, and it still pisses me off. And it makes me feel this ball of frustration. Yeah, so I will not be late, right? And I get this terrible anxiety. And when my kids are fooling around and not putting on their shoes, I start going nuts. And I have this big, big, big reaction. And they’re like, What is wrong with you mom, basically, right? Like, I can see it in their faces. And I can feel it in my own body. And finally, I have started to acknowledge it to them, because I finally was able to identify it. Right?

Michelle: Exactly, exactly.

Ayelet: And now I literally said to my kids, like, Listen, I want to just say out loud, like, I’ve realized this about myself, I get really freaked out, I get very anxious when I know I want to be on time, and we are not on time. And I’m really sorry that I yelled at you. And that is on me. And I’m really sorry. And if you see me going like that. And if you’ve not that it’s your problem, and not that you’re responsible for it. But you can say to me, Mama, it’s okay. It’s okay if we’re late. And that actually might even help me. But personally, I need to say that to you. And I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled at you.

And oh my gosh, the other day, my now four year old was like breaking out he didn’t like how I was talking to him. And he removed himself from the room and then came back when he was ready. He said I’m sorry Mama, I just wanted a sandwich. And I’m like, Oh, my God, it worked, right? Because it does work. And it does work. You don’t have to get it right. You just need to repair and acknowledge when you are overstimulated, over, you know, whatever, when when you are in that moment.

The Brain’s Amygdala Is Like a Mood Ring

Michelle: So here’s here’s a piece I want to give because I did see that there were people who have their own trauma, right, that were that were asking questions. So the way that the brain operates is that, trauma and trauma responses live in the emotional, the limbic part of the brain, right? The emotional center of the brain, when that part of the brain, think of the brain as a mood ring, right? When that part of the brain is red, the part of our brain that thinks about consequences that thinks through situations that’s able to plan is offline, there is no blood going to that part of the brain, it’s black.

I don’t care how smart you are, I don’t care how long you’ve been meditating, if there is a trauma reminder, trigger activator in the environment, the amygdala is going to go on fire, there’s no blood coming here. So there’s no point in having a conversation, there is no point in trying to do an intervention, there is no point in any of it. Until l I can get that amygdala, a lovely shade of green. And when there’s a lovely shade of green, then I’ve got all the blood flowing here. And I can actually do what I need to do or figure out the problem or whatever.

So your son going, that’s what he did, he went and made his amygdala green, so he could come back and acknowledge that he was frustrated and that he had a particular behavior. So those of you with trauma history, one of the things that I hear all the time is Oh my god, there’s so much like it feels overwhelming, just even starting, why did I even have a kid? I’m just going to screw them up. Because you know, I’ve got all of this complex trauma in my history.

Here’s the thing when you start to do the work of that process: What does it remind me of? Where is this really coming from? Is that what’s going on? Okay, alarms, you can turn off now take a breath, the more you do that, you… there are traumas I haven’t actually worked on because they kind of stopped being triggered because my central nervous system was trained to go through that process of what oh, okay, you know, and so that is so helpful to just recognize that no matter how much trauma you do have, the goal of any trauma treatment is not to go back into the memory, it’s to teach the central nervous system that the world is safe right now. That’s it.

So when we think about being trauma informed that lens of what can I do to create safety in this moment for this person who’s in front of me is probably the the most pivotal piece being trauma informed.

Ayelet: Amazing. Amazing. Okay, let’s drop the mic for Michelle. Alright, so those were some amazing tips. That was I think we all have a lot to think about, here. What about for people who would like both again, for those who are on their own trauma healing journey, and those who would like to have more resources, what you like to recommend as far as resources, for engaging and serving families who would like to engage, you know, from a more trauma informed lens. And just just again, I would like to acknowledge in the chat, we had a comment that said, I so needed this today. Thank you for letting me feel real and not crazy. And yeah, yes, amazing, right?

Michelle: Yes. So okay, so someone, when you’re on your own trauma journey, there’s, there’s so many different ways to work through stuff, right. So you know, sometimes we need a guide. Sometimes, I love that there was this great Facebook picture of like, the therapist and the client, and there was like this big ball of yarn with all these different colored strings all wrapped up together. And it was like the therapist was kind of helping to like pull the strings down one by one, right, to kind of help you like, okay, here’s one, let’s just focus on that one. I know there’s other stuff here, you know.

So some trauma specific modalities that that I personally love for myself, and also for my clients are Brainspotting, EMDR, EFT – the tapping, dialectical behavioral therapy, which is actually set of skills. So there’s a lot of really good DBT workbooks out there. And those skills are mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. And they’re all based on how trauma impacts all of those areas. Trauma keeps us from being mindful, trauma keeps us from being able to even acknowledge that we’re having an emotion, let alone control it, trauma tells us that when we’re in distress, the world is falling, we’re gonna die, terrible things are gonna happen.

And trauma impacts the way we communicate with others, because we’re trying to communicate from a reactive place or an activated place rather than from that calm, central nervous system. So those tools are just incredible. Let’s see, I had like a whole little list here of other things, clinical hypnosis, TRE – tension, stress, and trauma release… is basically a kind of a way of teaching people to actually like do the shaking and moving things through their body, which is so powerful. When I do Brainspotting. Sometimes people their bodies will start to shake in their teeth or chatter, and they’re like, what’s happening? And I’m like, this is beautiful, you’re releasing trauma, like, this is literally your body doing what it was designed to do to shake this stuff out.

Ayelet: Right? Like you were talking about earlier, as an animal does.

Michelle: Yes, exactly, exactly. And the best thing we can do for our kids, she was like, shake it out, like, Let’s dance it out. Let’s stomp, like, let’s just really, you know, move it through our bodies, and then anything related to Somatic Experiencing, Hakomi, working with the body, the body is essential. You cannot do trauma treatment without addressing the body and the central nervous system response, we in the last 10 years, it’s become really, really clear that just talking about trauma will never, ever, ever heal and solve trauma, talking about it in a safe space where you’re allowed to have all of the feelings and do the shaking, and do all that kind of stuff is beautiful, because it’s incorporating the body, right, and it’s incorporating the witnessing.

And it’s all of those things. I have a whole list in the handout, of resources. The two top books that I would suggest are The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van der kolk. And Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine. Both of those books really explore what happens in the brain and body through trauma responses. There are tips and tools in those books that can be really supportive. I think the challenge for many folks is like, this is wonderful, and I know for myself, this was my experience… I couldn’t touch the deeper trauma with a 10 foot pole without having somebody take me there because the thought of trying to do it alone in my bedroom was terrifying.

Ayelet: With a book. Yeah.

Michelle: So they can help you build tools. They can help you build central nervous system regulation skills, those are all vitally important. And when you are ready to really do the deep dive to again like to take that part that’s holding that story and give it everything it needs and bring that part back inside so it’s no longer running the show, that is going to be deep work. And Internal Family Systems is something I mix with brain spotting to do that, because it is so, I can’t even tell you like I’ve been a trauma therapist for a long time. And when I found Brainspotting, it was like I found the Holy Grail. And when I was able to combine Brainspotting and the parts work, the level of shifts for folks with complex trauma is just incredible.

So highly recommend IFS and parts work – there is a good book out there. I don’t know if I listed it, I don’t think I actually did about IFS that might be helpful to just start learning to use parts language. I use it with, with everybody – I use it with my husband, I use it with my kids: So a part of me is really pissed right now. Another part of me gets why you’re doing what you’re doing, right? A part of me is kind of worried about this, but another part of me knows that everything’s gonna be okay. So identifying which part of us is activated can be really amazing.

Psychoeducational tools. So there’s a flip chart by Janina Fisher is basically just a psycho educational trauma flip chart, I think is what it’s called, I use that sucker all the time, I need to get a new one. It’s like ratty at this point, because I use it all the time. And for there’s a smaller version, like a desktop version, I highly recommend it. For anybody who works with humans. It’s just really helps you understand and really clearly and succinctly describe what’s happening in the brain. It’s just, it’s so good, I highly recommend it.

Another one is the polyvagal theory flip chart. And polyvagal theory, basically, it’s a whole thing. And it’s really useful information to again, understand what’s happening in the central nervous system and to have tools to calm the nervous system. The thing about trauma work is like you can do all of those things. And the way I kind of talked about is like, but you’re mowing the weeds, they’re going to come back, you got to pull him up by the roots. And that’s where that deeper work when you’re ready, and you feel like you’ve got lots of tools and resourcing to go ahead and go in and pull those things out. Because you don’t really need them anymore.

There’s a movie that just came out by I can’t remember their names. But Gabor Mate is one of the key people in it’s called The Wisdom of Trauma, another excellent film in very clearly describing what trauma is and how impactful it is in our society. Gabor Mate is tearing apart the medical system and substance abuse systems and basically saying, What the hell are you people doing? If you’re not trauma informed, you’re doing damage. And so he’s very vocal about how we just completely ignore this piece of trauma and what we’re going to do about it, because I think what a lot of people think is like, Oh, God, if I open that can of worms, like we’re never, it’s never gonna stop, right. And that’s not true, we have tools to be able to help close the box back up, stick it on the shelf until we’re ready to deal with it later.

And then there are some links for those of you who are providers, just for some documents around trauma informed care that I found really useful National Center for Trauma Informed Care. And then there’s the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, they have some workshops that are I think, either free or very, very low cost on how trauma impacts children that are excellent if you have children, if you have your own trauma history and or if you work with children, it’s it’s really there’s a lot of great information.

Ayelet:  Amazing. Again, all of those are listed inside of Michelle’s handout, the link for which is in the chat and will be in the show notes when this episode is published. Okay, well, thank you so much for all of that. We’re gonna go ahead and open up for a Q&A at this time.

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