Latest / Trauma Free Relationship / Why Insight is Not Enough to Heal Trauma

Transcript

Why Insight is Not Enough to Heal Trauma · Trauma Free Relationship

0:00
Why does understanding your trauma not lead to healing?
0:05
Why does knowing your triggers not help you be less reactive to
0:10
your partner and actually cause fewer cycles in your
0:14
relationship? It's because inside alone is not
0:18
enough to heal trauma. So by the end of this episode,
0:22
you're going to be able to understand the limits of insight
0:25
for healing trauma, what does make the difference in healing
0:29
trauma, what actually does work, and how to begin to take steps
0:34
towards healing your trauma starting today.
0:38
Welcome to trauma free relationship.
0:40
I'm your host, Tom Phillip, and I've been working for years with
0:43
adults who struggle with relational and attachment trauma
0:47
to regain trust in themselves and others so that they can
0:51
experience a safe and secure relationship.
0:54
Let's get started. OK.
1:09
As I mentioned in the opening, one of the things I think people
1:14
get stuck on when they talk about healing their trauma is
1:19
having enough insight. Well, if I just understand, And
1:23
this is especially true when we're talking about the more
1:27
avoidance styles of attachment, because they want to lead with
1:33
their intellect. They've learned to shut off
1:35
their emotions, to turn off their attachment strivings and
1:39
longings. And instead they want to
1:42
primarily engage with others and the world through their
1:46
intellect and makes them really, really smart.
1:49
But it also creates a lack of information about themselves and
1:53
their world that they cannot draw upon.
1:56
So inside alone is not enough to heal trauma.
2:03
It it, it can help with some things.
2:05
So don't get me wrong insight. It's not as if it's not
2:09
important. And I say that because really,
2:12
in some ways, my whole show is is based upon education.
2:15
It's based upon helping others understand and and have a
2:20
language to what they might be experiencing.
2:24
And I think there's a lot of power in that, don't get me
2:26
wrong, But I'm under no pretense that I'm actually healing
2:31
people's traumas by them listening to the show.
2:36
Does it create some sight of a a kind of a placebo effect?
2:40
Yes, I think it probably does. I think people that have some
2:43
understanding then then can take some steps, but in terms of
2:47
actual healing of the trauma, that's, that's not really what
2:50
I'm doing here. What I'm doing is education and
2:53
it's providing insight. So there's definitely a place
2:56
for that. And I, so I'm not downplaying
3:00
inside. I'm not downplaying
3:03
intellectualizing or understanding your trauma
3:07
because I do think we need to be able to understand it and put a
3:11
language to it. So when we start talk about
3:13
things like naming patterns, insight can really be really
3:17
helpful with that. It can be helpful to understand
3:20
how do we see this cycle that me and my partner get into that can
3:25
play out regardless of what we're talking about, this
3:29
negative pattern that can reoccur in my relationship that
3:34
keeps us stuck. Understanding that can be
3:37
helpful and and insight can provide that.
3:40
Reducing shame around trauma. Understanding that you're not
3:44
broken, but rather your trauma is an adaptation to an
3:50
inhospitable environment that your nervous system had to adapt
3:55
for what it was lacking. And that's not a matter of
3:58
brokenness, that is a matter of resourcefulness.
4:02
Your nervous system knew what to do, and as a result, you have
4:09
the work of trying to heal that, to retrain your nervous system
4:13
to know that you're safe in the here and now.
4:17
Because when it encounters signals that say it's unsafe, it
4:22
wants to go right back into that protective mode.
4:24
It goes right back into its defenses because it knows what
4:27
to do to keep you safe. But that doesn't mean you're
4:30
broken. It just means that there's some
4:32
work to do about teaching it how to learn to be safe in the here
4:38
and now. When we talk about creating some
4:40
meaning around our life and purpose, that's very much
4:44
cognitive insight type of behavior.
4:48
And that can be very important as well, including improving
4:52
empathy for ourself and others. We need to be able to recognize
4:56
when that part of us takes over and just wants to beat the crap
5:00
out of ourselves for past mistakes or for the trauma that
5:05
we suffered when we were shamed and ridiculed for having a
5:09
feeling that that really said more about the adult in our
5:14
lives and way less about us. But nonetheless that impacted
5:18
us. And now we hold all those types
5:21
of maladaptive responses that we have to deal with.
5:26
Insight can be helpful in US understanding and naming that,
5:31
but there is a limit to insight and there's things that insight
5:34
cannot do. Insight cannot calm or regulate
5:38
your nervous system. No amount of understanding, no
5:42
amount of insight can help you regulate your nervous system.
5:47
No amount of insight can help you feel safe in the moment.
5:52
That's something that only your nervous system can do.
5:56
No amount of insight can help you rewire those implicit
6:02
memories that are even beyond language.
6:07
Those moments when in your body you just feel unsafe, but you
6:12
don't know why. When the smoke alarm goes off
6:15
and says there's smoke, there must be a fire.
6:18
Your body's responding the way it's been trained to do that and
6:22
no amount of insight can change your body from trying to to
6:27
trigger the smoke alarm to help warn you to impending danger.
6:32
And then finally, no amount of insight can heal your attachment
6:36
wounds that are again stored pre verbally, meaning that took
6:42
place prior to language. If if you were abused
6:48
emotionally, not given what you need prior to about two years of
6:52
age before your left hemisphere and and prefrontal cortex really
6:58
come online because those are the the dominant areas that help
7:02
us understand verbal language and speak it ourselves.
7:07
Before that, that all that is stuck in your right hemisphere
7:11
and in your amygdala. It's pre verbal, meaning it's
7:14
without words. And this isn't part what your
7:18
nervous system is doing when it goes off, when you feel flooded
7:22
by anxiety or shame, what's happening is you're you've
7:26
gotten some kind of message and been triggered as to danger.
7:33
And it may be, it may not be a fire, it may just be smoke.
7:37
But your body's doing what it knows to do and no amount of
7:41
insight can stop that from happening.
7:44
So trauma isn't a logic problem, it's a survival memory problem.
7:51
And an insight is necessary, but it is not sufficient.
7:56
Let me say that again. Insights necessary, but it's not
8:00
sufficient. There is things it can help you
8:03
with, but there are limits to to what insight can do for you,
8:09
which is why I opened the whole show was saying, why does
8:13
understanding your trauma not create healing?
8:15
Why does knowing your triggers not make you less reactive to
8:18
your partner and cause fewer cycles in your relationship?
8:23
It's because those things are beyond what insight can provide.
8:27
And so I think it's really important for us to understand
8:32
what the limits of inside are, not that we shouldn't chase and,
8:36
and, and tackle some kind of understanding around what's
8:39
happening to us. As I said, I've had a lot of
8:42
responses with this show, people letting me know that it would
8:47
even within a first few moments of, of an episode, it can it can
8:52
change their life according to them.
8:54
This is what they're writing to me.
8:55
And I'm very blessed to have those responses and I'm a very
8:58
appreciative of that. Do I think that all of a sudden
9:00
they're healed and don't have to struggle with the trauma
9:03
anymore? Absolutely not.
9:05
Do I think that they are, you know, they've completely tackled
9:07
their their triggers? Absolutely not.
9:10
But I do think they have a greater understanding.
9:14
And I do think that they have a language now in which they can
9:17
start to try to heal, because I think that's one of the, the
9:22
real power of this podcast is helping people put a language to
9:27
their experience, things that seem unformulated, unorganized.
9:33
Hopefully through this show, you're creating some kind of
9:36
organization to your experience. That would be, that would be the
9:42
pinnacle of, of the show to me. If I can help people do that,
9:46
that is absolutely fantastic. And, and I've gotten feedback
9:50
that that is part of the value of this show for people.
9:54
But when we start talking about healing trauma, we have to talk
9:57
about it from a top down versus a bottom up problem.
10:00
And when we're talking about a top down, we're talking about
10:05
more cognitive inside approaches to healing trauma.
10:10
And those are limited. One of the most famous books
10:14
written on trauma by Bessel Vanderkolk is called The Body
10:19
Keeps the Score, and he named that book specifically because
10:23
of what he spent decades learning about trauma.
10:27
That trauma is stored in the body.
10:30
It's not just stored in the verbal side of the brain.
10:34
And so a a top down approach would be much more cognitive
10:39
types of approaches, insight types of approaches.
10:42
These dominated therapy in the early 19 20s in America through
10:52
psychoanalysis, very insight driven and through the cognitive
10:57
revolution in the 70s and 80s, very insight driven and, and,
11:01
and those are powerful. Don't get me wrong, I'm not, I'm
11:03
not bashing those types of therapies, but when we're
11:06
talking about healing trauma, what we have come to learn
11:10
through better science and and better experiments and better
11:14
instruments that we you can use to measure trauma is that a
11:18
bottom up approach works better. Because trauma is often stored
11:24
in body sensations, in implicit emotional memories and in
11:31
relational expectations, which is very much what our attachment
11:36
styles are about. And so that all those things,
11:40
body sensations, implicit emotional memories and
11:43
relational expectations, those are stored in the body.
11:47
They're not stored in the verbal side of the brain.
11:51
So part of healing is to be able to engage the body, and we call
11:56
it moving up and to the left, meaning we engage the body, we
12:01
move it up to the right hemisphere where we can now be
12:05
able to understand and feel a broader range of our emotions
12:11
and our sensations. And then through that bodywork,
12:15
we move it over to the left hemisphere where we can then put
12:19
words to it. And in doing this, that gives
12:22
you a much greater chance of actually healing your trauma.
12:26
So understanding those implicit memories that lead to your
12:30
relational expectations, what you expect of yourself and
12:34
others that then can be put into language such as I have a fear
12:40
of abandonment that is being triggered in me right now.
12:44
And I can communicate that to my partner so that I can experience
12:49
safety in this very moment and not just respond to what my body
12:53
is telling me feels unsafe. That is much more of a bottom up
12:59
approach as opposed to a top down approach.
13:04
So, you know, one of the dangers I think of trying to rely on
13:09
insight alone is that we can sort of over intellectualize
13:14
things, right? We can tend to overanalyze our
13:17
feelings instead of actually feeling them, explaining our
13:22
reactions rather than regulating them.
13:26
Well, I only got upset because you said this.
13:29
If you could say it this way, I wouldn't get upset and wrong.
13:35
That doesn't work. That's first of all an
13:37
intellectualization and an over explanation of how you became
13:42
dysregulated. One, you're not feeling your
13:45
feelings. Two, you're putting all the the
13:47
emphasis on your partner, not yourself.
13:50
It's you that became dysregulated, not your partner.
13:54
And so you have to take ownership of that.
13:57
And so a much better way to do it is to allow yourself to feel
14:00
those feelings, learn how to catch those feelings when
14:05
they're when they're less intense as opposed to the peak
14:09
of their intensity. And then being able to regulate
14:12
yourself through different tools so that we are able to able to
14:22
regulate ourselves in that moment and communicate what is
14:25
happening to us in that moment. So that is very different than
14:30
saying, well, I only got upset because you did this.
14:35
So, you know, intellectualization can often be
14:38
used as a defense, especially using insight to avoid
14:43
vulnerability. And again, a lot of this, I'm
14:46
going to emphasize here, the more avoidance style of
14:50
attachment because a lot of intellectualization and the
14:55
cutting off of feelings, they're not experiencing it in the body.
14:59
That tends to be the modus operandi of the more avoidance
15:04
style of attachment as opposed to the more anxious style.
15:08
The more anxious style, they're not always feeling their core
15:12
feelings. What they're feeling is a
15:13
conglomerate of emotions that is overwhelming in the moment and
15:18
often shows up primarily as anxiety.
15:21
The smoke alarm has gone off, the person smells the smoke.
15:25
They associate the smoke with an absolute fire, and they
15:29
attribute that fire to their partner.
15:32
And so they're just showing up as a sort of overwhelming
15:37
feeling of emotions as opposed to being able to shift through
15:41
the anxiety and really identify, oh, in this moment, what I'm
15:45
really feeling is this fear of rejection, this fear of not
15:50
being good enough. And that's what's driving all
15:53
this other anxiety. And so it's not as if we can't
15:56
over intellectualize if we're anxious.
15:59
But primarily, I see this a lot with the more avoidance styles.
16:04
And then, you know, finally, I think we can use
16:06
intellectualization as a sort of self judgment.
16:10
You know, I should be past this by now.
16:13
More condemnation of where we think we should be as opposed to
16:16
where we really are. Why am I still struggling with
16:19
this? I should be over this by now
16:21
and. And that is definitely true with
16:24
the more avoidance style of attachment.
16:27
That's definitely true because they often think my feelings
16:31
aren't getting me anywhere. This isn't helping anything.
16:35
I shouldn't be feeling this anymore and yet I am.
16:38
So I'm just going to continue to shame myself and, and lack any
16:42
self compassion in these moments and beat myself up.
16:46
And so they have a part of them that is very much sort of a
16:51
judgmental ridicule that that beats them further down and
16:57
shames them further down, which only perpetuates their trauma.
17:01
Because part of their trauma was they were shamed for having
17:03
feelings in the 1st place. They were shamed for having
17:07
needs in the 1st place. And so inside can be helpful,
17:13
but insight without a sense of embodiment can keep people stuck
17:21
in their trauma. Again, it can be sort of a top
17:24
down approach as opposed to a bottom up approach.
17:28
So embodiment is very important and that leads us to what does
17:33
it take to really heal trauma? If insights important, it's
17:37
sufficient or it's necessary but not sufficient enough to heal
17:41
it, then what does actually heal trauma?
17:44
And I think there are core elements of it.
17:47
So the first one certainly is nervous system regulation.
17:51
We have to be able to regulate our nervous system in order to
17:56
be able to feel more safe in the here and now, safety before
18:02
insight. So if our body moves into fight,
18:08
flight or freeze, it's too late. We're not going to have the
18:13
insight necessary to be able to regulate us.
18:16
We first have to be regulated and we first have to begin to
18:20
feel safe. Then we can apply our intellect
18:24
because otherwise our intellect is just going to have that fire
18:28
alarm that goes off that says you're in danger, you're in
18:30
danger, get the heck out of here or fight back or, or flee or
18:34
whatever you're going to do or freeze up.
18:38
And, and as a result, your, your thinking, your
18:41
intellectualization is just going to respond to feeling
18:45
unsafe in your body. And so being able to regulate
18:50
our nervous system, being able to understand how we can get
18:55
back in the window of tolerance. And I've mentioned that before,
18:59
basically that's just the area where we feel safe, we feel
19:04
grounded, we feel safe and we feel connected in our body.
19:08
That's being in the window of tolerance.
19:11
When you're outside that window is where you're, you've gone
19:14
into fight, flight or freeze or you've disassociated.
19:21
And and so you've popped out of that what we call the window of
19:25
tolerance. If you just think about like a
19:27
normal window, it means you've gone above the window or you've
19:31
gone below the window. And so being able to regulate
19:35
our nervous system and learning how to do that is absolutely
19:39
crucial because again, it's that embodiment piece that really
19:43
makes the difference. And being able to heal and being
19:47
able to then apply insight and understanding to what just
19:52
happened physically with you. A second one is sort of the
19:57
embodied awareness, understanding your sensations
20:01
before the narrative. I get people so often that want
20:05
to come in and want to talk to me and they want to just tell
20:08
stories about what happened or they want to go back and they
20:12
want to talk about what created the trauma in the 1st place and
20:15
how mean their parents or caretakers were and and all the
20:20
horrible physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
20:23
That they suffered through and, and I can understand them
20:26
wanting to tell that story. I really can't.
20:29
But here's the thing, telling the story doesn't heal the
20:33
trauma. And at some point I often have
20:36
to stop them, slow them down to try to get them into their
20:40
feelings of what they're saying. Not just the intellectualized
20:45
version of the story, but actually experiencing that in
20:50
the moment so that they can then learn how to regulate themselves
20:55
in the here and now. And so you're, you're literally
20:58
healing trauma by learning to be safe in the here and now based
21:03
on something that happened there and then in the past.
21:07
And so the bodied awareness is really important, learning to be
21:11
able to hold your emotions and, and learning how to linger in
21:18
them long enough that you can learn from them, glean what
21:23
they're trying to tell you, feel them and locate them in your
21:27
body so that the you can then organize them into a place where
21:33
you can communicate what's happening to you.
21:36
And often times again, I see a lot of, of people that we have
21:41
in our coaching program, they just want to bypass that
21:43
completely. They want to go right to the
21:45
storytelling without trying to re experience it.
21:48
Why? Because re experiencing is
21:50
painful. And hey, I totally get that.
21:52
But if you don't learn how to re experience that and create a
21:57
different outcome for yourself. Learn to regulate yourself
22:00
through that pain. Learn how to hold it and stay in
22:03
the window of tolerance and not pop up into fight, fleet fight
22:07
or flee, freeze. Excuse me then.
22:11
Then you're just repeating the same patterns inside yourself.
22:15
Those same trauma triggers are just playing out over and over.
22:19
So being able to hold that and that emotion long enough to
22:23
learn from it and to regulate it, that can make a tremendous
22:27
amount of difference. I think also having a corrective
22:32
relational experience, being able to use others to help
22:37
regulate you is really important to being able to heal your
22:41
trauma. Often times the lack of having
22:45
somebody help you regulate yourself when you were a child
22:49
or when you were in real need in your adolescence or when you
22:55
were in your first marriage and you were struggling and your
22:58
partner was not there for you time and time and time again,
23:02
that taught you that you could not depend on others to help you
23:06
Co regulate. And so part of a secure
23:10
attachment is being able to Co regulate over time.
23:15
Being able to come in a vulnerable and soft way and
23:19
express your core vulnerabilities to a partner who
23:23
can, in that moment, empathize and show up for you and help you
23:28
regulate by helping you take on some of that pain you're in that
23:33
helps you feel better in the moment.
23:36
There's a reason we go to therapist.
23:38
There's a reason we go to our best friends.
23:40
There's a reason we go to our mother who might be our best
23:43
friend. There's a reason we reach out to
23:45
people because when we're in pain, when we need somebody, it
23:50
is others who helped lessen that pain for us.
23:54
They may not be able to step into our shoes completely and
23:57
experience exactly what we're going to, but news flash, they
24:02
don't have to. You don't have to experience
24:05
exactly what somebody else is experiencing and know exactly
24:09
what that is like in order to be able to share and empathize with
24:13
them and be a compassionate other for them and be able to
24:18
help them regulate those emotions and ultimately feel
24:21
better. So being able to get a different
24:25
experience through learning how to Co regulate is very healing
24:30
for our trauma. And then finally, I think
24:34
repeated experiences, not realizations, being able to
24:39
repeat those healing experiences over and over so that we become
24:43
less triggered over time, so that we are able to regulate
24:48
ourselves more easily is really what helps heal trauma.
24:53
Being able to be more in touch with our body, to feel our
24:57
emotions and those sensations, to understand where they come
25:01
from, and to be able to create a sense of safety for ourselves in
25:05
the moment is really what allows us to heal our trauma long term.
25:11
Because healing is less about understanding your past and more
25:15
about experiencing safety in the present.
25:18
And I'm going to repeat that again because that is so
25:21
crucial. There's a lot of, I think even
25:23
therapist that still think you have to go back to the moment
25:27
where trauma was created and work through those memories in
25:31
order to be able to feel safe in the here and now to fix your
25:34
trauma. And that's just not true.
25:36
Lots and lots of research have shown you don't need to do that.
25:39
What you need to do is to be able to experience something
25:43
similar to those feelings and learn how to regulate them in
25:47
the here and now so that you can, one, regulate yourself and
25:51
two, reach out to others to help you regulate as well.
25:55
So healing is less about understanding and your past and
26:00
more about experiencing safety in the present.
26:04
So let me just say, you know, at the end of this podcast, here's
26:09
what we're kind of closing this out.
26:12
Are there ways that you feel like oftentimes you
26:14
intellectualize, maybe you find yourself listening to tons and
26:18
tons of podcasts? Thank you.
26:20
By the way, if I'm one of them. But you're not actually doing
26:23
some of the work that creates sort of more embodied type
26:27
healing. Do you find yourself over
26:31
intellectualizing your emotions and your experiences?
26:35
If so, then I think you really need to try to shift and do some
26:40
of the harder work, but the work that's actually going to get you
26:44
further down the road. And so the types of things that
26:47
are going to get you a bigger bang for your buck in terms of
26:50
your time, your money, your expense is things like somatic
26:54
healing, breath work, mindful mindfulness, you know, focused
27:00
on sensations in your body, attachment based experiences
27:05
such as Co regulating, trying to embrace vulnerability.
27:10
These are the types of things that actually are going to get
27:14
you further down the road in learning how to answer some of
27:17
those fundamental questions we asked at the opening, as opposed
27:21
to just trying to gain more insight into what's happening to
27:27
you. I want to end with just a brief
27:29
example. I had a couple I was working
27:33
with a number of years ago and it, it, it was a heterosexual
27:38
couple. The, the wife was female, the
27:42
husband was male in this particular example.
27:46
And I was working with the wife, and we were working on her sort
27:51
of defensiveness. And she would get triggered and
27:55
then she would play out what she had learned from the
28:00
relationship with her mother. And so she would dysregulate.
28:04
She would put tremendous amounts of pressure on her partner to
28:07
conform to her expectations of the way he needed to act and
28:11
respond. In those moments, she would say
28:14
very hurtful, awful and mean things to him, demean him, put
28:19
him down. All of this was in an effort to
28:23
try to get what she needed in the moment.
28:26
All of this was in an effort in some ways because she lacked any
28:30
other skills to be able to articulate what she needed.
28:36
And so in my work with her, we were able to get her to a place
28:41
where she could hold the pain of not getting what she needed,
28:47
such as a attuned response from her partner, a sense of safety
28:53
and security, a feeling that she was important and valued and
28:58
that her feelings mattered. And she eventually was able to
29:03
breakthrough her defenses enough that she was able to hold on to
29:08
this vulnerability of of what she really craved and needed.
29:13
And she kept crying and saying over and over, I just want to
29:16
feel safe. I want to feel secure.
29:18
I just want security in my relationship.
29:20
I just want security. And it was through this process
29:24
and holding on to that long enough because what I did was
29:28
not let her move away from those feelings.
29:30
I encouraged her to stay with those feelings.
29:33
And I kept telling her, you are safe right here, right now.
29:37
You are safe with me. You are safe with your husband.
29:40
And when she was able to move out of that experience, when
29:43
it's sort of that that wave of vulnerability had passed, she
29:48
was actually able to feel lighter.
29:51
She felt much more healed in a sense that she was able to feel
29:56
less need and less fear, not only within herself.
30:00
She's now getting triggered less often and she's able to trust
30:05
herself more and her partner in her relationship.
30:10
So that is kind of an example of a bottom up ability to be able
30:15
to heal your your actual trauma. Notice we weren't telling
30:20
stories. Notice that she wasn't just
30:23
telling me what had happened in the past.
30:25
She was telling me and feeling what was missing in the present.
30:30
And so that's a little bit about what we mean when we start
30:35
talking about the limits of insight and how to actually heal
30:41
your trauma. Thank you so much for listening.
30:44
My name is Tom Phillip and I'm here to remind you to stay
30:46
grounded, clear and connected.