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From the archives: The Trauma Treatment Toolbox with Jennifer Sweeton · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Are Today we have another episode from the archives with
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Speaker 1: one of my incredible guests. Enjoy Welcome to the Trauma
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Speaker 1: Diver's Podcast, a show about the incredible people dedicated to
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Speaker 1: helping those who experienced trauma. My name is Got macpherson
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Speaker 1: and my mission is to raise awareness of trauma and
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Speaker 1: to inspire each of us to help those around us.
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Speaker 1: All right, guys, welcome back to the Trauma Divers Podcast.
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Speaker 1: I am very excited to have as my guest today
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Speaker 1: doctor Jennifer Sweeten and Jennifer welcome.
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Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks for having me.
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Speaker 1: You're welcome. So. Jennifer Sweden is a licensed critical psychologist,
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Speaker 1: bestselling author, and internationally recognized expert on anxiety and trauma
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Speaker 1: and neuroscience and mental health. Her most recent book is
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Speaker 1: Trauma Treatment to Box one hundred and sixty five Range
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Speaker 1: through Tips, Tools and handouts to move therapy forward. Jennifer
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Speaker 1: completed her doctoral training at the Stanford University School of Medicine,
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Speaker 1: the Specific Graduate School of Psychology, and the National Center
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Speaker 1: for PTSD. Additionally, she holds a master's degree in Effective
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Speaker 1: Neuroscience from Stanford University. OURK Jennifer, share with the listeners
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Speaker 1: where you're calling from and where you're from originally, and
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Speaker 1: then let's dive in.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm calling in from a suburb of Kansas
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Speaker 2: City on the Kansas side. It's called Oleitha, Kansas, and
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Speaker 2: I have a group practice here called Kansas City Mental
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Speaker 2: Health Associates, So we're a trauma informed group practice. And
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Speaker 2: I'm originally from this area of the country, although I've
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Speaker 2: kind of moved all around in my adult life, DC, Boston,
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Speaker 2: San Francisco, Bay Area, Oklahoma, and now about two years ago,
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Speaker 2: moved back to this area. So it's kind of nice
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Speaker 2: to be home.
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Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, Well again, thanks so much for taking the
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Speaker 1: time to do this. Let's start, as we sometimes do,
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Speaker 1: with a quote a Montras something that maybe has inspired
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Speaker 1: you and that can help kind of provide context for
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Speaker 1: what we're about to talk about.
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Speaker 2: Sure, sure, that was a tough one. I think there's
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Speaker 2: a lot of things that have inspired me and have
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Speaker 2: guided me. I think I was like two classes short
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Speaker 2: of a philosophy minor in college, so there's all sorts
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Speaker 2: of things. One that's really stuck out to me though.
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Speaker 2: It's by Abraham Maslow, and it says, in any given moment,
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Speaker 2: we have two options to step forward into growth or
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Speaker 2: to step back into safety. And I think that one
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Speaker 2: really resonates with me professionally, personally and just in my
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Speaker 2: clinical practice with clients.
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Speaker 1: We'll say a little more, when did that become? And
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Speaker 1: I know, lightning bolt, it's not like a lightning bolt moment,
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Speaker 1: but I thought of that, and I was thinking to
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Speaker 1: myself a lot of times, I'm like, I want to
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Speaker 1: go back into safety, but also want to go forward
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Speaker 1: into you know, adventure and so forth. But when did
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Speaker 1: that become resonant for you?
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Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great question. So I think earlier in
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Speaker 2: life I didn't put it in those words. I wouldn't
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Speaker 2: have framed it like that, but the sense was getting
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Speaker 2: comfortable with discomfort, so getting comfortable not being so comfortable.
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Speaker 2: I think where that came from for me was as
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Speaker 2: a child being a competitive gymnast and you're always pushing
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Speaker 2: forward and it never feels safe, and it never feels comfortable,
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Speaker 2: but that becomes kind of a way of life. And
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Speaker 2: I think that set the stage for me pretty early
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Speaker 2: to learn how to be okay with that, or how
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Speaker 2: to take risks and use that in order to move
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Speaker 2: forward and to grow cool.
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Speaker 1: And I think you know, one can certainly extrapolate into
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Speaker 1: how that would be pertinent and relevant when some in
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Speaker 1: the whole trauma aspect. So let's kind of kind of
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Speaker 1: get down into that. Yeah, so when did when and
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Speaker 1: how did this interest in trauma come about? Tell us
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Speaker 1: that story.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so it's probably some what disjointed, But originally,
4:03
Speaker 2: growing up as a kid, I knew I wanted to
4:04
Speaker 2: be a lawyer. That's what I wanted to be, and
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Speaker 2: I knew I was going to go into law got
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Speaker 2: to college and it seemed like engineering was the more
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Speaker 2: reasonable choice for I don't know, for a variety of reasons,
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Speaker 2: it felt like that was going to be the better
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Speaker 2: stable career for me. So I did that. I went
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Speaker 2: into college. I studied computer engineering, and in the middle
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Speaker 2: of college had a tailbone injury because I was a
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Speaker 2: college cheerleader, had a tailbone injury. Broke my tailbone. It's
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Speaker 2: kind of laid up in the dorm room, found my
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Speaker 2: roommate's psychology textbook and thought, geez, this is a lot
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Speaker 2: more interesting than jab a programming. So decided to switch
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Speaker 2: my major. Sort of an impulsive decision, but that's really
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Speaker 2: what got me into psychology. But I really thought I
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Speaker 2: was going to become a university professor. I ended up
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Speaker 2: going to school, a graduate school for affect of neuroscience,
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Speaker 2: so I thought I was just going to be a
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Speaker 2: basic scientist in a university. I think it was there
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Speaker 2: that I really got more interested in clinical psychology and
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Speaker 2: trauma specifically just through studying the brain, looking at the
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Speaker 2: neuroscience of mental illness, and it prompted me to go
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Speaker 2: ahead and pursue a clinical degree. I actually left after
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Speaker 2: the masters that program and went into clinical psychology, and
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Speaker 2: once there, I realized that trauma was really what my
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Speaker 2: passion was, what it was going to be. There's something
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Speaker 2: that really resonated with me at a deep level. And
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Speaker 2: you know, maybe the cliche is that it was my
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Speaker 2: own traumas and my own history that kind of led
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Speaker 2: to that resonance. Potentially, I definitely think it's had a
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Speaker 2: big role in my life, but really found that that's
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Speaker 2: where my heart was is in treating trauma.
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Speaker 1: Okay, thanks for sharing that. Let's dive in there a
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Speaker 1: little bit, but before we explain, what is affective neuroscience.
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Speaker 2: Affect of neuroscience is a study of emotion in the brain.
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Speaker 2: So what does fear look like? What does social anxiety
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Speaker 2: look like in the brain?
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Speaker 1: That kind of Okay, So you know you're talking about
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Speaker 1: your background, which I mean sounds like you were on
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Speaker 1: a mission, supercharged, competitive from the get go, all these
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Speaker 1: like intense specializations, and you mentioned that, you know, you're
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Speaker 1: talking a little bit about how trauma that interest in
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Speaker 1: trauma evolved and yeah, of course you know it's a cliche,
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Speaker 1: but but it's it's I want to bring in this
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Speaker 1: human element to it. Can you share You don't have
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Speaker 1: to go into details, certainly, but what were some of
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Speaker 1: those things that might have sparked your interests in and why?
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Speaker 1: And why?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, okay. So you know, through through my childhood
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Speaker 2: I was lucky enough to be trauma free. You know,
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Speaker 2: I guess we can think of large T and small
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Speaker 2: TA traumas, but for the most part, trauma free in childhood.
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Speaker 2: First real trauma, big trauma was at eighteen and a
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Speaker 2: couple of weeks after my highcho graduation, a good friend
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Speaker 2: of mine died by suicide and that was kind of
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Speaker 2: the entree into it. And had some other experiences shortly
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Speaker 2: after actually in college, and what was noteworthy to me
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Speaker 2: at the time and that always kind of that I
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Speaker 2: was curious about. I'd say curious once I could heal
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Speaker 2: enough or get enough distance from it to where I
7:23
Speaker 2: could look at it a little bit differently. But what
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Speaker 2: was striking to me is what the feeling of trauma is,
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Speaker 2: so how the experience hits you, and what I mean
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Speaker 2: is really more at a physical level rather than just
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Speaker 2: a mental level. So we think about like therapy is
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Speaker 2: being tough therapy or working with thoughts, and even in
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Speaker 2: my graduate program it emphasized the cognitive work. But what
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Speaker 2: was really striking to me about the experience of trauma
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Speaker 2: is that it's very physical, and I remember it feeling
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Speaker 2: as though it took over my entire body. It's something
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Speaker 2: that's hard to really put into words, and as we
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Speaker 2: hear so often, trauma is unspeakable, and that's exactly the
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Speaker 2: way I experienced it, but really excruciating physical symptoms, but
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Speaker 2: not in the same way as a broken bone, And
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Speaker 2: I think those symptoms themselves, that physical experience of trauma,
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Speaker 2: in a strange way, becomes its own trauma, like its
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Speaker 2: own traumatic event. Just having those physical sensations or knowing
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Speaker 2: that that's possible. And so when I moved into clinical psychology.
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Speaker 2: I was very motivated to try to help people who
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Speaker 2: I know had experienced trauma, in part because of those
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Speaker 2: physical sensations, which is really guided my approach to treatment,
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Speaker 2: which is cognitive but with the big emphasis on somatic
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Speaker 2: approaches and memory reconsolidation approaches such as like EMDR but
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Speaker 2: looking at the body memory in addition to the narrative
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Speaker 2: of what happened.
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Speaker 1: If that's yeah, it sounds like you're talking about on
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Speaker 1: one hand, the trauma of being traumatized. How what was
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Speaker 1: your healing journey? Like?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, not linear at all. I think for a long
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Speaker 2: time it was sort of walking around in a haze,
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Speaker 2: sort of a mix between a haze and then sort
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Speaker 2: of re experiencing those physical sensations kind of all at
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Speaker 2: once in a very overwhelming way. I didn't really know
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Speaker 2: what was happening. I was really when it all culminated
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Speaker 2: at probably about twenty years old, about twenty and so
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Speaker 2: I didn't really know what to do with it. I
9:33
Speaker 2: did about a year later, I went to therapy for
9:35
Speaker 2: the first time, and that was an interesting experience. I
9:39
Speaker 2: thought it was marginally helpful, but not really I wasn't
9:43
Speaker 2: super enthralled by it, but I also realized that the
9:46
Speaker 2: reason why it probably didn't do a lot for me
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Speaker 2: is that I didn't disclose any trauma. So I went
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Speaker 2: to therapy and I talked about normal things, but I
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Speaker 2: never actually went there. It wasn't all.
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Speaker 1: So did you not disclose trauma because you didn't feel
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Speaker 1: you'd been quote unquote traumatized.
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Speaker 2: I knew at that point that I had been okay,
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Speaker 2: I very much knew. Yeah, I was fully aware of it.
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Speaker 2: It was avoidance. That's the best way I can put
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Speaker 2: just not really ready to go there, but did want
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Speaker 2: to test out this whole therapy thing. I didn't grow
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Speaker 2: up around therapists or any mental health stuff, so I
10:23
Speaker 2: wasn't really sure about it. But I would say I
10:26
Speaker 2: had a positive enough of an experience to where when
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Speaker 2: I was actually ready to go through the process of healing,
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Speaker 2: I did, and I saw a therapist about seven years
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Speaker 2: later as when I actually started. So I think the
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Speaker 2: healing was in part, well in large part therapy, which
10:45
Speaker 2: I'm still into this day and totally you know different.
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Speaker 2: We've had different episodes of therapy through my life, but
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Speaker 2: really started the trauma work around two thousand and seven
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Speaker 2: or so, and before that, I think there was a
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Speaker 2: fair amount of healing that I did on my own,
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Speaker 2: maybe through close relationships, friends, family, that kind of thing,
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Speaker 2: but nothing has been as good as therapy, I've got
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Speaker 2: to say.
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Speaker 1: Cool. So this is interesting. Listeners. You talked Jennifer about
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Speaker 1: you know, your background and how you're saying it was
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Speaker 1: predominantly cognitive, but yet you're really not only honored, but
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Speaker 1: you felt how trauma impacted the body that it almost
11:27
Speaker 1: sounds like you're a convert into somatic practitioner. Let's talk
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Speaker 1: a little bit about Okay, so you talked about your
11:36
Speaker 1: the trauma in a sense, how did this book come about?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so through working with clients and through a lot
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Speaker 2: of the workshops that I've given, a lot of the
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Speaker 2: trainings that I've done with other clinicians. A theme that
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Speaker 2: started I started noticing just in my own work, was
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Speaker 2: paying attention to the body, paying attention to physical sensations.
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Speaker 2: Of course, you have the Body keeps the Score by
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Speaker 2: Bessel vander Kulk and Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levine. All
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Speaker 2: these great researchers and scientists talking about the importance and
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Speaker 2: it really resonated with me. And so I wanted to
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Speaker 2: write a book geared toward clinicians, but clients can read
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Speaker 2: the book as well that lays out as clearly as
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Speaker 2: possible and as simply as possible, what's happening in the
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Speaker 2: brain after trauma and how you can begin to practice
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Speaker 2: tools and techniques that help the brain change in the
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Speaker 2: direction of help, with a real emphasis on some of
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Speaker 2: these bottom up or body based methods.
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Speaker 1: Cool cool, all right, So I just want to say
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Speaker 1: again that speaking with doctor Jennifer Sweeten, her book is
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Speaker 1: Trauma Treatment Toolbox one hundred and sixty five Brain changing Tips,
12:48
Speaker 1: Tools and headouts to move therapy forward. Actually, the publisher's
12:53
Speaker 1: kind enough to offer a twenty five percent off discount code,
12:57
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that in a bit. For those
12:59
Speaker 1: of you who are interested in and jumping on board here,
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Speaker 1: I'll have the links up at the Trauma theaperspodcast dot com. So,
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Speaker 1: through these workshops and so forth, you saw themes developing.
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Speaker 1: Can we talk a little bit about kind of dive
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Speaker 1: in here about some examples what people can you know,
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Speaker 1: look forward to in the book and so forth. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's broken down into multiple types of categories
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Speaker 2: of techniques and a lot of them are a little more,
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Speaker 2: like I said, bottom up focused, so breathing techniques, body
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Speaker 2: based techniques, movements, and poses, which is kind of an
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Speaker 2: interesting chapter for me to write, and also how you
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Speaker 2: integrate those in with some of the more traditional top
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Speaker 2: down or cognitive techniques. So there is a chapter on meditations,
13:47
Speaker 2: which I think of is very cognitive, and also cognitive
13:51
Speaker 2: therapy ish techniques, which is also very top down, but
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Speaker 2: learning how to integrate those with the more bottom up
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Speaker 2: techniques as well. So example might be a meditation where
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Speaker 2: you're checking in with different sensations in the body, where
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Speaker 2: you're working with different sensations in the body and linking
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Speaker 2: those sensations to different emotional experiences and even then thoughts,
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Speaker 2: you know, because there's this idea that what you're thinking
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Speaker 2: about influences emotions also influences your physical sensations, but also
14:20
Speaker 2: vice versa. You know, sometimes our thoughts are driven by
14:23
Speaker 2: these physical sensations.
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Speaker 1: So just to be clear here, this is a book
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Speaker 1: for therapists and clients, or therapists or or both or
14:33
Speaker 1: therapists us with their clients.
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Speaker 2: It's for therapists to use with the clients, So it's
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Speaker 2: written for therapists, but there's handouts and worksheets that are
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Speaker 2: for the clients, if that makes sense, like corresponding worksheets
14:45
Speaker 2: that go that they can give to the clients.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So in your background, do you, or having had
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Speaker 1: the back experience of the background that you've had, do
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Speaker 1: you feel that the cognitive approach is more prevalent than
15:03
Speaker 1: the sematic approach, especially when dealing with trauma.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely absolutely. I just actually had a client
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Speaker 2: start very recently with me and many many years of
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Speaker 2: therapy trauma and anxiety therapy, and she said, yeah, yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 2: I get the thoughts. I've worked with the thoughts, I've
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Speaker 2: done the ABC sheets, I've restructured the heck out of everything.
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Speaker 2: But I'm telling you, there's something trapped inside of me.
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Speaker 2: And she put it very eloquently, she said, it's in
15:27
Speaker 2: my body. It's trapped in my body, and it can't
15:29
Speaker 2: get out. I was like, ah, And of course that's
15:33
Speaker 2: why she found me. It is because she she knew
15:36
Speaker 2: that I'm going to come from a little bit of
15:37
Speaker 2: a different perspective. So that was really striking to me.
15:41
Speaker 2: And I hear things like that a lot.
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Speaker 1: Right, right, I mean, you know from where I'm sitting.
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Speaker 1: It's it's not completely surprised. It's a little surprising because
15:52
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm dealing with I'm talking to people like
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Speaker 1: you who were cognizant of the import whorts of somatic
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Speaker 1: approaches to trauma. But it's nonetheless is surprising to me
16:06
Speaker 1: to hear that there's still what is it not an acceptance,
16:11
Speaker 1: not an understanding within the educational system or what.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's been a while since I've been
16:16
Speaker 2: in grad school, so I don't know exactly today what
16:18
Speaker 2: they're teaching, but it was not emphasized at all. Yeah,
16:21
Speaker 2: my graduate work, not at all. And I think with clients,
16:26
Speaker 2: they're not always going to be the ones that necessarily
16:28
Speaker 2: bring it up. I mean this client that I recalled did.
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Speaker 2: But I think there's so much fear of the body
16:34
Speaker 2: and a lack of feeling safe in the body and
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Speaker 2: experiential avoidance that I think our clients sometimes will tend
16:41
Speaker 2: to pull us out of the body and back up
16:43
Speaker 2: here into the mental right where they'll come in and
16:46
Speaker 2: they'll say things like I just need to stop having
16:48
Speaker 2: this thought about, you know, dying in a car accident.
16:51
Speaker 2: But it's not the thought, it's these overwhelming, terrible physical
16:54
Speaker 2: sensations that go with the thought that are unbearable. It's
16:57
Speaker 2: not usually the thought, but I think just and our
17:00
Speaker 2: work with clients because of that experiential avoidance, like they
17:04
Speaker 2: pull us out of the body back up here. So
17:07
Speaker 2: I think it can be a challenge to get people
17:09
Speaker 2: down into the body, especially after trauma, in a safe, tit, traded,
17:13
Speaker 2: and manageable way.
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Speaker 1: What do you think is are some of the qualities,
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Speaker 1: Jennifer that help you do this work, specifically work with
17:23
Speaker 1: clients who've been impacted by trauma.
17:27
Speaker 2: I have a lot of hope. I think I'm optimistic.
17:31
Speaker 2: I think that's super super important. Sometimes I'm asked, how
17:35
Speaker 2: do you do this work without easily burning out? And
17:38
Speaker 2: I say, it's not like watching the news on TV
17:41
Speaker 2: and being a kind of a passive recipient of bad news.
17:44
Speaker 2: I have a lot of faith in the techniques and
17:46
Speaker 2: the therapies that are out there that I've been trained in.
17:49
Speaker 2: And I think that's a big thing. Just funny because
17:52
Speaker 2: I consider myself to be a pessimist usually in life,
17:54
Speaker 2: but when it comes to trauma, I'm very optimistic about
17:57
Speaker 2: people's ability to change cool.
18:00
Speaker 1: Right in terms of a like an early clinical error,
18:05
Speaker 1: mistake whatever, whatever you want to call it a misstep
18:10
Speaker 1: shares something with us.
18:11
Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, okay, I'll share one that's maybe a little
18:15
Speaker 2: bit harder to define and a lot more impactful than
18:18
Speaker 2: just you know, your your typical error, and it's not
18:20
Speaker 2: going to be so early of one. I do think
18:23
Speaker 2: I've done, you know, committed the early errors that most
18:25
Speaker 2: people have, you know, maybe doing exposure work and not
18:29
Speaker 2: properly helping the person titrate into it, and they're associated
18:32
Speaker 2: things like that. I think about that, you know, in
18:34
Speaker 2: graduate school, having that experience, but I would say in
18:38
Speaker 2: the past couple of years something that has really changed
18:41
Speaker 2: not only the way I do techniques, but has changed
18:43
Speaker 2: me overall. I think as a psychologist. I think of
18:47
Speaker 2: one person in particular who had a criticism of me.
18:52
Speaker 2: She said that it kind of felt like I wasn't
18:55
Speaker 2: a person. So she said, you know, you feel like, uh,
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Speaker 2: and it's like you do these techniques, but I'm not
19:02
Speaker 2: really getting a sense of who you are, and you
19:05
Speaker 2: can kind of come off as a clinical robot. And
19:07
Speaker 2: she didn't tell me this until about like two and
19:09
Speaker 2: a half years into treatment, and she was totally right,
19:15
Speaker 2: And I remember thinking a lot about that, and there's
19:18
Speaker 2: a piece of that that kind of in a way
19:21
Speaker 2: maybe nervous or kind of scared me, this realization that
19:24
Speaker 2: maybe there's a part of myself that has to enter
19:26
Speaker 2: the room a little more than I had been doing.
19:29
Speaker 2: And when I say part of myself entering, I'm not
19:31
Speaker 2: just talking about like self disclosure. But you know, any
19:34
Speaker 2: time you're with somebody in a session, there's so many
19:37
Speaker 2: things there that are unsaid, and we kind of can
19:41
Speaker 2: control now how much we're putting our own walls up
19:44
Speaker 2: and how much we're putting them down. Of course, we
19:47
Speaker 2: refer to that as boundaries. And I think I had
19:49
Speaker 2: been trained in a way to really keep things air tight,
19:53
Speaker 2: very very very contained, very controlled, and here's this client
19:57
Speaker 2: who is growing and learning and really needed a little
19:59
Speaker 2: bit more fluidity, I think in the therapeutic alliance. And
20:04
Speaker 2: so I would say that that was an ongoing mistake
20:07
Speaker 2: that I was making or I wasn't calibrating it very well.
20:12
Speaker 2: And so I've had to do a lot of work
20:13
Speaker 2: on myself in the past couple of years to make
20:15
Speaker 2: sure that I am allowing more of myself into the
20:18
Speaker 2: room and even though that might not look different, or
20:21
Speaker 2: my words that I'm using might not be super different,
20:23
Speaker 2: it's a different feel and I think it means that
20:25
Speaker 2: I'm a lot more emotionally connected. I think the work
20:28
Speaker 2: has been a lot deeper since then, but I've also
20:31
Speaker 2: become a whole lot more vulnerable in some ways.
20:34
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, I mean, I really appreciate you sharing that
20:37
Speaker 1: because it does sound like a vulnerable sharing. And that's
20:40
Speaker 1: exactly the word that came up for me as you
20:43
Speaker 1: were talking about that, vulnerability. Yes, And I happened to
20:48
Speaker 1: love this topic because I myself when I was I've
20:54
Speaker 1: talked about this before. When I was working at this
20:57
Speaker 1: clinic that I was working at for five years here
20:59
Speaker 1: up in northern California, I was frushed out of graduate
21:02
Speaker 1: school and one of the psychiatrists who was supervising our
21:06
Speaker 1: training said to us, we were working with kids like
21:09
Speaker 1: between the ages of twelve and twenty five, and we
21:11
Speaker 1: were assessing and training early psychosist and he said, you know,
21:13
Speaker 1: if you're going to do this work, you've got to
21:16
Speaker 1: be willing to take off your clinical hat. And I
21:20
Speaker 1: interpreted that as me basically forget everything I knew, rob
21:26
Speaker 1: myself of my degree. You know, I just kind of
21:28
Speaker 1: went all the way there, and what he was saying
21:30
Speaker 1: was exactly what you were saying is you've got to
21:33
Speaker 1: be willing to Well, I won't put those words into
21:38
Speaker 1: your mouth, but how I interpreted that now is you've
21:40
Speaker 1: got to be willing to be a human. You've got
21:42
Speaker 1: to be willing to to a certain be yourself and
21:46
Speaker 1: make that that's where those connections are formed, and that's
21:49
Speaker 1: what those Yeah, and that to me is really exciting.
21:53
Speaker 1: But it's not always easy. No, not always easy. So
21:58
Speaker 1: talk with you, if you will, talk a little bit
22:01
Speaker 1: more about that whole process. How did that, how did
22:05
Speaker 1: that unfold? What was that like?
22:09
Speaker 2: Didn't unfold well? At first? I think like my first
22:13
Speaker 2: reaction is more like pulling away a little bit more
22:17
Speaker 2: like No, I don't think so as I worked on it,
22:24
Speaker 2: I found it to be easier with some people than others.
22:26
Speaker 2: Of course, I think where I made some gains is
22:28
Speaker 2: really through my own consultation and my own therapy. So
22:33
Speaker 2: I mean, I've had the same therapist since two thousand
22:35
Speaker 2: and seven, and I mean, gosh, how many times has
22:37
Speaker 2: she said to me, you're intellectualizing? This is what you
22:41
Speaker 2: think this is not what you feel, this is what
22:42
Speaker 2: you think. And I know you think that you need
22:44
Speaker 2: to get out of here, you know so many times.
22:46
Speaker 2: And she's very psychodynamic, and so she has really helped me,
22:50
Speaker 2: I think with this. But I think, even like four
22:52
Speaker 2: or five years and I'm working with her, she said
22:55
Speaker 2: that I struck her as mysterious. I'm like, how would
22:58
Speaker 2: I strike you as mysterious. I've been telling you everything
23:00
Speaker 2: for like four years, but there was something about the
23:04
Speaker 2: way I could kind of come off. And so I
23:06
Speaker 2: think through my own therapy it's really been helpful. Through
23:10
Speaker 2: my own consultation with other psychologists, it's been helpful. And honestly,
23:15
Speaker 2: I can't really say how this is helpful, but I
23:17
Speaker 2: think through meditation it's been helpful, even just for brief
23:22
Speaker 2: periods of time before I see someone just practicing a
23:25
Speaker 2: meditation where I get more in touch with myself. I
23:27
Speaker 2: find that if I'm more connected to myself, I'm bringing
23:29
Speaker 2: myself into the room more and that really has deepened
23:33
Speaker 2: my connection with the people I work with. Awesome things.
23:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, thanks for clarifying that. So if we
23:43
Speaker 1: kind of jump back to the book here, you know,
23:49
Speaker 1: you talked about the Best of Medicals book and Peter
23:52
Speaker 1: Levin's work and so forth. What do you think your
23:56
Speaker 1: book is adding to the playing field, if you will.
24:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's bridging science and practice between brain
24:06
Speaker 2: science and clinical practice. Where you have these neuroscientists off
24:09
Speaker 2: in neuroscience land doing this research. In the clinicians and
24:13
Speaker 2: the trenches doing the work, you're never really hearing about it,
24:15
Speaker 2: and when they do, it's very obtuse and it's difficult
24:17
Speaker 2: to understand. So it's bringing this in a way to
24:21
Speaker 2: clinicians in a way that I think is digestible and
24:23
Speaker 2: also to clients, or at least that's the intent, is
24:25
Speaker 2: to brand to clients in a way this digestible so
24:28
Speaker 2: that you know what's happening in your brain and you
24:31
Speaker 2: know this isn't like a moral failing or that you're
24:33
Speaker 2: going crazy. There's some pretty predictable brain areas that have
24:37
Speaker 2: been changed, and there are techniques that we can use
24:39
Speaker 2: to begin shifting those activations and those connections in the
24:42
Speaker 2: direction of health. Wow.
24:43
Speaker 1: I love that. I think that's exactly what a lot
24:47
Speaker 1: of people need, actually, because as you're right, I mean,
24:50
Speaker 1: all these great books come out and especially with regards
24:54
Speaker 1: to Euroscience and clinicians are like, Okay, this is great.
24:58
Speaker 1: How the heck.
24:59
Speaker 3: Am I going to, you know, bring this alive in
25:02
Speaker 3: the room here once again, I'm speaking with doctor Jennifer Sweeten.
25:05
Speaker 3: The book is Trauma Treatment Toolbox one hundred and sixty
25:09
Speaker 3: five Brain changing Tips, Tools and head outs to move
25:12
Speaker 3: therapy forward. We have a promo code for podcast listeners
25:17
Speaker 3: here who like twenty five percent off, and that promo
25:20
Speaker 3: code is Guy twenty five, so g Uy twenty five.
25:24
Speaker 3: So as we kind of wind down here getting ready
25:26
Speaker 3: to close out, how about sharing a go to book
25:30
Speaker 3: recommendation aside from your own work.
25:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, so for clinicians, I'm thinking clinicians, definitely, if you're
25:38
Speaker 2: going to work a lot with trauma, the body keeps
25:40
Speaker 2: the score. Definitely get that. A lot of your clients
25:43
Speaker 2: will have already read it. So a lot of times
25:46
Speaker 2: it will work with clients who've already been in therapy
25:47
Speaker 2: for years and they're very self aware and they're up
25:51
Speaker 2: on the latest and the greatest. So I'd say the
25:53
Speaker 2: body keeps the score from just a therapist perspective. Also,
25:58
Speaker 2: maybe along the lines of ways that you bring yourself
26:02
Speaker 2: into the therapy room, and that you can maybe a
26:06
Speaker 2: book that shows that you can be yourself in therapy.
26:09
Speaker 2: Check out Irvoll you know, he's from Stanford. Irv Yolam's
26:12
Speaker 2: book Loves Executioner and so it's it's a book where
26:19
Speaker 2: he's going over ten different patients and what his experiences
26:23
Speaker 2: were with them.
26:24
Speaker 1: Awesome. And before you go, I'm kind of compelled to
26:28
Speaker 1: ask you and advice you'd have for younger clinician, newer
26:33
Speaker 1: therapists getting out there who were interested in learning about trauma,
26:37
Speaker 1: because I'm really intrigued Jennifer by your background, you know,
26:41
Speaker 1: coming from a kind of heavily cognitive background but yet
26:44
Speaker 1: really understanding and appreciating the body's role in this. What
26:48
Speaker 1: would you say to new therapists who are like, you know,
26:50
Speaker 1: I want to start learning about trauma. I don't know
26:53
Speaker 1: where to start.
26:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, get training beyond graduate school for sure. So
27:00
Speaker 2: so go to the trainings in EMDR, go to the
27:02
Speaker 2: trainings and cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure. Go to
27:05
Speaker 2: all these trainings. Even if you're not going to use
27:07
Speaker 2: all of those techniques, You'll notice that they start to
27:09
Speaker 2: come together and make sense in a new way. As
27:12
Speaker 2: you combine information from these different trainings. I'd also say
27:16
Speaker 2: just good old fashioned practice. You need to get to
27:19
Speaker 2: that ten thousand hour point right to become an expert
27:22
Speaker 2: in anything, and to stay in your own therapy and
27:25
Speaker 2: consultation as much as you can, because I probably with
27:30
Speaker 2: any work with clients, but I think especially with trauma work,
27:33
Speaker 2: your own stuff. You will always bring your own stuff
27:36
Speaker 2: into the room, even though it's unspoken, and you want
27:38
Speaker 2: to make sure that it's being brought into the room
27:40
Speaker 2: in a way that's helpful and manageable to you so
27:45
Speaker 2: and in a way that helps the relationships and helps
27:47
Speaker 2: people feel soreate with your own work.
27:51
Speaker 1: What's the best way for people to get in contact
27:53
Speaker 1: with you, Jennifer.
27:55
Speaker 2: You can get to my website. It's just my name
27:56
Speaker 2: Jennifer Sweeten dot com.
28:00
Speaker 1: Thank you for that. Cool Again, I'll have that links
28:03
Speaker 1: up at the show notes page at the Trauma Papers
28:05
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Again links for Jennifer's book and you
28:08
Speaker 1: can get twenty five percent off were using discount code
28:10
Speaker 1: Guy twenty five. We'll have all that topic show notes page. Jennifer,
28:14
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on here and sharing
28:17
Speaker 1: your experience and your specialization I appreciate it.
28:20
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me all right. Take care,
28:23
Speaker 2: take care,