Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Unravelling The Stories of Our Past with Samantha Potthoff

Transcript

Unravelling The Stories of Our Past with Samantha Potthoff · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Theripists podcast. My name is Guimingferson
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: and I interview incredible people who share the story of
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big thank
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest and
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: our sponsors five four, three, two and one. Our folks,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have with
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: my guest today. Samantha Poth Health Samantha.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Welcome, Hi, thank you for having me.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: So.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Samantha is a licensed merriage and family therapists in California.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: She specializes in trauma, anxiety, depression, attachment issues, among others,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: with a unique approach that integrates neuroscience with evidence informed
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: psychotherapy to address the profound interconnection between mental and physical health.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Her unique approach integrates neuroscience moving beyond traditional diagnostic frameworks
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: to create therapeutic partnerships. Were profound healing can't emerge very interesting.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Before we get going, share with the listeners where you're
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: from originally and where you are currently, and then we'll
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: dive in.
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm located in Los Angeles, California, and I actually
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm a native.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: So well, let's dive into it. How did this interest
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: in I guess psychology therapy start broadly, and then we'll
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: dive into more specifics of trauma and so forth.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, actually my story began prior to being a therapist.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: I actually became super interested in the mind body connection
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: after being in medical school, and so it really allowed
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: me to kind of see the what was missing and
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: being trained as a doctor, it was really different when
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: I would approach a patient as a doctor versus approaching
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: a patient as a therapist for obvious reasons, but there
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: is often a time where as a doctor you needed
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: a little bit of an understanding of mental health.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: And I noticed that.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: So we had this one patient who came in and
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: he needed life saving treatment and was refusing to get
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: needles put into him because he had what later turned
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: out to be very traumatic experiences with needles, and I
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: was just hearing about that mental health. Lack of mental
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: health approach really inspired me to like learn more about
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: the mind body connection.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: So did you go through finish medical school and become
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: a licensed physician?
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: So I was actually in my rotations when I left. Yeah,
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: that was for my own medical reasons actually, and that
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: sort of spun me into this whole other dimension of
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: finding a whole new career in therapy, because yeah, it
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: was just sort of a natural fit for me having
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: a background in neuroscience and psychology and undergrad so I
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: was like, wow, this is a really helpful modality.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Wow, okay, so interesting. So what was it about the
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: shift into or how did that come about? More? I
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: guess talk a little bit more about that, because I
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: could imagine, I mean, just to get into medical school
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: in and of itself is a.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Grind, and to say the least.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: The whole pre med stuff isn't of itself crazy, and
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: then to get in is a huge hurdle and worthy
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: of congratulations there. And then to realize that that's not
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: going to work out.
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, It's a huge part of my story and how
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: I became a therapist, right is you know, you work
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: so hard to be go to medical school, like you said,
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: and my own health issues actually pulled me out of
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: it in my third year.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: What were those issues, if I may.
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: Ask, Yeah, actually it's I have this autoimmune condition that
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: randomly came about. I honestly think it's trauma related, which
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: actually has sparked my interest in how I became a
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: trauma therapist, you know what I mean, because the mind
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: body connection was so incredibly powerful within myself that, like,
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: I just learned so much about how those things can
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: affect one another. So there was something medically happening with me,
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: but because of my trauma history, the mental part of
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: it exacerbated what was happening for me physically. And so
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: I really just saw the interplay in myself between something
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: happening medically and then something happening mentally at the same time.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: When did you realize that maybe there was a link
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: going on?
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: So in my own therapy, that's how I So that
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: started my journey with therapy.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Where I was in my life.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I'm still in medical school, I was.
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: I was, and I was planning on going back and
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: all this stuff, and you know, and then you actually
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: have to graduate medical school within seven years or else
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: you have to start over.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: So I learned that and I was.
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: Like, no, thank you, And so it was actually a
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: blessing in disguise. To be honest with you, I think
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: I'm much more meant to be in this space of
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: trauma and therapy than I think unique experiences some of
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: the unique experiences that I've had have really brought me
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: into what I think I meant to be doing more
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: so than what I was doing before.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: So you get into therapy, you realize, WHOA, something's going
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: on here, there's a connection. And what did you do
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: at that point? Did you like, all right, did you
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: realize where you wanted to go, or did you realize first,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: medicine is.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: Not for me, to be honest with you, I really
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: just didn't want to go back and redo medical school again.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: It was a lot, and.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: I became so fascinated with how my therapy was impacting
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: me and what I was learning about my childhood and
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: my life and just sort of how I came to
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: be who I am today that it really made me
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: even more fascinated with the field. So I don't even so,
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: I don't know if it's the chicken or the egg,
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: but like I just I knew this was sort of
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: my path, and I went back to grad school, had
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: to get my masters in clinical psychology, and then you know,
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: thus became my journey of becoming a therapist.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: So, in terms of your pursuit of trauma, specific as
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: trauma and education of trauma, how did that unfold for you?
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Were there particular modalities or interventions that your therapist was
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: using that maybe inspired you or helped or didn't help.
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah. For me, I find that a lot of trauma
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: can actually come about from childhood. I don't think anyone
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: really gets out of childhood unharmed. There's no such thing
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: as the perfect parent, you know what I mean? And
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: so I think for a lot of people, it's just
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: learning about themselves, about their history. I was trained psychodynamically,
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: which means that you find like people's childhoods and what
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: they learned growing up to be really significant.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: And I think the way that we approach the world
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: is learned.
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: And I think that I just saw that firsthand within myself,
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: and I see that with all my patients, and I
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: think it's really helpful, at least in my experience, to
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: have made it through my own therapy and dealt with
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: those things myself so that I could really help kind
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: of guide others on that journey.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Was your was your own therapists psychode not dynamically trained?
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: She was, Yeah, And she also utilized some things like DBT,
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: which stands for dialectical behavioral therapy, Because when you're looking
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: at the mind body connection. You want to help someone
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: sort of suite their own nervous system so that it
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: doesn't amplify what other whatever health issues is happening in
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: my case, and so it's really looking at the interplay
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: between what's happening physiologically and what's happening emotionally. And DBT
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: helps you sort of regulate and teaches you how to
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: sort of regulate your body and your emotional responses.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And now I'm guessing that was helpful to.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: You, absolutely, and I utilized that with a lot of
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: my clients as well.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: No, No, psychodynamic Uh, therapy is an interesting choice to me.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: It's very interesting because you correct me if I'm wrong here.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: The therapist is like the blank slate, the stays behind,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: as opposed to maybe other types of therapy. We're self
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: disclosure maybe comes into play more. Talk to us about that,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: how that, how you work with that, how that sit
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: with you as a as a modality.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: So, honestly, like I was trained psychodynamically, and so I was, yeah,
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: I had to be this like blank slate, and I
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: recognized that that wasn't the best fit for me in
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: terms of how I wanted to be as a therapist,
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: and so once I built my own career, I takes
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: I'm very integrative, so I take approaches from psycho dynamic therapy,
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: but I myself am very a relational therapist, and so
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: I find the relationship to be very healing, especially.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: With trauma work.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: Oftentimes people with trauma deal with these things on their
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: own and by themselves, and so I think that was
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: something that I really saw was helpful in being a
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: trauma therapist, was.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Being relational, was being like, wow, like.
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: I hear your story, and that was that must have
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: been so difficult, and like how intense and how much
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: that's impacted your life, And things like that I think
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: are just so important to validate someone's experience with trauma.
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: And I noticed that when your trained psychodynamically, it's not
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: you can't really You're not really the blank slate, isn't
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: really giving all of that validation that you want to
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: really give and being the person in the room and
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: the human.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: What qualities of psychodynamic therapy did you find helpful and
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: do you find helpful?
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Now I'm sorry, what was the question again?
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: What aspects of psychodynamic therapy did you find helpful? When
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: you in your own work and do you utilize now?
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So I love looking at childhood. This is where
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: like an attachment sort of lens breaks off of like
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: psychodynamic for me, where it's like really looking at how
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: somebody's un childhood and unmet needs from childhood have really
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: impacted what their needs are now. And I think that
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: figuring out sort of someone's environment and early childhood experiences
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: and really understanding that is really imperative for like conceptualizing
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: a client in general. So I tend to ask a
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: lot of questions about, oh, well, where did you think
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: you learned this, or where did that negative voice in
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: your head come from?
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Who does it sound like what I mean?
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: So it's using sort of interventions that tie in some
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: of the information that I've learned through psychodynamic exploration.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I think that's really cool, for lack of a better word,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: And I think it's really admirable that you studied as
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: a psychodynamic therapist and yet you kind of shifted. I mean,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I think that takes a lot of self awareness when
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: you jumping back a little bit, when you had your
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: medical experience, when you were involved in that and you
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: realized you wanted or needed to see a therapist was
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: that decision in and of itself difficult for you?
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: To be honest, it was not.
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: I come from la and as you know that everyone
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: here has a therapist practically, and so it was very
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: there's not that much stigma, and at least how I
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: grew up, there wasn't stigma around getting help or seeing
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: a therapist.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: So it was not unusual for me to think about that.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, did you find a therapist? Was it by word
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: of mouth or how did you choose a psychodynamic therapist?
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: I honestly went on psychologytoday dot com, which is a
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: great resource for people, honestly, and I sort of just
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: looked up. I didn't know I wanted psychodynamic. I didn't
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: even know what that was when I was starting my
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: own therapy, but I sort of selected someone that dealt
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: with health issues and things like that because that's sort
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: of what I was dealing with and what I was
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: going through was losing the medical career with my own
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: health issues and going through all that.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: That in and of itself almost sounds traumatic.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: It was, to be honest, it was I think, like,
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: I think that actually like really benefits me though as
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: a therapist, because I have been through some stuff, you know,
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: and I think my clients can tell that without me
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: necessarily needing to talk about my whole story or what
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: I've been through, because it's not about me, but it
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: lets me. It gives me a really good insight into
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: like really understanding how the client feels because I've.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Been in a lot of situations myself.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I think that's a good place to put a frame
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: around right now, talk more specifically about that, I mean,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: and how do you or rather what specifically do you
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: think allows you to do this work.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: I think it's empathy.
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: I think I have a ton of empathy just growing
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: up in my family. I've needed that and it's really
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: been an opportunity for me to sort of grow as
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: a person myself. And growing as a person myself has
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: allowed me to be a therapist and allowed me to
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: sort of be there for other people in the ways
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: I wish people were there for me, you know, Like
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: being a therapist is I think a really big healing journey.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Just being a therapist.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: And going through your own work and working through your
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: own stuff, and it really provides a great sort of
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: path for other for helping your clients with similar issues
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: or things like that.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting, Samantha, your journey in a sense, it's
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: like your realization that you needed to heal or begin
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: a healing journey, was that path that got you into
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: this field. For a lot of people, you know, they
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: get into this field for a variety of reasons, and
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: then it's they either are are encouraged to do that
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: work or realize that they need to do that work.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So it kind of flipped in a sense. So how
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: do you work now, what do you do specifically? Who
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: do you work with?
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I work very relationally, so that can work
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: with a lot of different things, but I specifically love
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: working with intellectualizers. I've you know, coming from such a
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: background of neuroscience and being you know, trained as a
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: physician and this and that.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Like I get it.
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: I get being here up, you know, like from your
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: neck up. And yeah, and so I work a lot
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: with clients that are from here up, and it's sort
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: of teaching them a little bit more about like, Okay,
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: how do we check in with ourselves? How do we
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: connect to our bodies a little bit better and more often?
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: And so I find people that are here up are
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: a lot of a lot a lot of the times
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: have trauma histories, right, Like, so I work a lot
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: with people that have trauma, a lot of people that
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: are intellectualizers, like I said, and I take a very
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: relational approach because to me, that's like the most important
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: healing factor is finding a.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Good fit for a therapist.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, you mentioned DBT. I like certain aspects
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: of that. How did that help you specifically? What was it?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So DBT specifically really helped in terms of mindfulness practices.
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: I really love mindfulness and I feel like I try to,
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: you know, give a little bit of that to each
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: one of my clients because I think we are in
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: a society that is so like it's so difficult to
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: be present nowadays, and so mindfulness is all about how
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: do you become more present, how do you become more
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: in your body in the world and what you're doing
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: in this very.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Moment of time.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: And so yeah, I mean that's what I love about DBT,
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: in addition to the regulation and you know, being assertive
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: as a woman, you know.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: All these different things. It's I think it's a great modality.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: One of the things that always stood out to me
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: was the contemplict of wise mind you know, and I
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: remember when I first heard that and too for someone
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: to say, okay, if if you know, what would you
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: would your wise mind think in this in this situation
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: or what would their perspective? It's like the idea that
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: I even had that that that even was an option
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: to me. It's kind of exciting and liberating and encouraging.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean this culture that we're living in
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: and you know, the states you'd mentioned, it's really difficult
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: to be present. What are you seeing now in terms
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: of in a broad picture of trauma, do you feel
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: that it's being recognized more, it's being addressed more. What
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: are you seeing from your work?
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: To be honest with you, it's a little bit of like,
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: I am seeing it being recognized more, but I'm also
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: seeing a little bit more shame involved with recognizing one's
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: own trauma. I've been noticing that a lot more actually,
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: where it's like people don't want to necessarily admit to
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: the trauma or think or want to label it as
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: a trauma or identify it as a trauma because you know,
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: I think people tend to minimize it a lot more.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, let me.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Ask you a personal question. Is that hard for.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: You to admit that, like my medical stuff was a trauma.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Well, or even that, or to even realize stuff that
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: happened to you in childhood was a trauma or traumatic
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: or that you've gone through.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, yeah, I think it is.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: It's hard to when it's what you know, it's sort
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: of that's what you think normal is, you know, And
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: so I think for someone to say, oh, actually, that
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: wasn't okay, or that was actually a trauma, I think
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: is a little bit of a jarring.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: You know. It can be like a whoa, I didn't
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: realize that that wasn't okay or that that wasn't normal.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: When I when I got out of grad.
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: School, I was working in a clinic and we were
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: assessing and treating young kids who were sure showing the
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: early side of psychosis. And you know, not surprisingly, ninety
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: nine nine percent of those kids received trauma. And it
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: got to a point where I was just so blown
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: away by.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: These kids. You know, we do these phone calls where
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: parents would call in and see if the kid was
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: appropiated with the teacher or the therapist, and you get
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: this long list of behaviors and symptoms, and at the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: end we would ask about trauma, and there would always
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: be some form of trauma that would had often gone undiagnosed.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize if we were fighting in the living
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: room or the gun went off in the living room,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: it was traumatic. But then the kid would come in
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: like a week later, and it would just be this kid,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: this normal kid with a book under their arm, or
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: stuffy under their arm, or a tablet, and you look
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: at your sheet with all this stuff on it and
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: look at them and the oh, my God. And that
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: was the moment where it's like Jesus, I felt like
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I needed to do something to help get the word
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: out about trauma. And for me, having gone through the
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: bullying that I went through as a young kid, was
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: really shaming to talk about and to name. And as
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I started interviewing more people like yourself who were talking
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: about their own experiences, that allowed me to talk about
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: it more. But I guess I'm surprised to hear you
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: say that, But I'm not surprised to hear you say that.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: It's why is it so.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: Hard now to talk about it.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Even in the wake of me too and everything.
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there's such a culture of like the
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: need to feel positive and the need to like just
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: sort of pretend, like you know, I think it's especially
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: with social media, right, like you put out like, oh,
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: everything's great, everything's fine, like this, look at my family,
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: look at my friends, like you know, you don't exactly
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: you don't post the moments that are like difficult, you
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: know what I mean. And so I think people like
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: to portray themselves in a certain way and have a
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: certain image about them as known. You know, a lot
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: of people don't want to be the negative Nancy, you
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: know what I mean, talking about their trauma, so to speak.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: And I think that that is what I just keep
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: hearing from people I work a lot with, like younger
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: adults too, and I think that that's a lot of
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: what I've been hearing.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like I don't want.
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: To bring the conversation down when I talk about it
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: with my friends, or I don't want to, you know,
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: think about it that way.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: So as we kind of wind down here, share with
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: us kind of generally how you work with a client,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: you know, when they first come to you, how do
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: you feel them out, maybe feel comfortable, et cetera, et cetera.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: Well, like I think like as a relational therapist.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: When people come in, it's really just about being curious,
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: like I want to get to know you, how to
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: like help me make sense of you, right, like you're
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: the expert, and it's just me about helping guide sort
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: of figuring out like, Okay, what are some good ways
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: to get like some good questions to get to know
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: this person, and just from a place of curiosity because
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: everyone makes sense. If you can rewind the tapes long
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: enough is sort of what I say, where it's like,
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: if you can return rewind the clocks long enough or
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: orind the tapes long enough, you can understand and everybody
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: and why they are the way they are.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: And so that's sort of how I approach things.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: I like that. I've never heard that before. Yeah, I mean,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: I mean if you keep going back, things are going
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: to unfold, things will be able to come into view
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in a sense exactly.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: I think people act in patterned ways and it's just learning. Okay,
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: where did these patterns come from?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Awesome?
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: All right, So what's the best way for people to
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: learn more about you?
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: So people could go to my website, which is Therapy
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: COLLECTIVECA dot com, and I have a web I have
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: a page on that, Okay.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: And in terms of who you work with, who would
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: you say are your ideal clients, your niche whatever.
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So I tend to like with the intellectualizers. I
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: work a lot with business people, lawyers, doctors, that kind
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: of thing.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: And I have I work.
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: I'm a part of a collective, right So there's other
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: therapists that I work with that you know, have other
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: specialties and.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Things like that.
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: But I tend to see, yeah, more of the you know,
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: uh CEO type people that are just struggling to connect
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: to their bodies and know what's going on.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right, Okay, awesome, all right, Samantha, we'll have
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: all this linked up here at the show notes page
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. Super inspiring. Appreciate
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: you being here.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: All right, take care.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Thanks to.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Him, keep sand and to
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: The MOMSI