Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Cissy White. The Power & Passion of A Survivor: from the archives

Transcript

Cissy White. The Power & Passion of A Survivor: from the archives · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Or today we even another episode from the archives with one of my incredible guests.
0:05
Enjoy our guys, welcome back to the Trauma Divers Podcast. I am
0:17
super excited that he was my guests today, Christine Sissy White, Cissy welcome,
0:22
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, all right. So,
0:25
Cissy is a trauma mama, writer and joy stalking survivor. She believes
0:29
it's possible but difficult to live, love, and parent will while post traumatically
0:34
stressed. Her goal is to make talk about trauma and healing less clinical and
0:39
more conversational, less abstract, and more accessible. She's currently working at the
0:44
ACES Connection as a Northeast community facilitator and parenting with ace's community manager. She
0:50
believes that trauma and for a movement must be survivor lad Sissy welcome, thank
0:56
you. All right. So I don't know where I've found out about you,
1:03
but I'll tell you one thing. You you have like this energy about
1:07
you even online. You have this energy about you that is is very powerful,
1:14
It's very positive. I think it even comes through in your smile.
1:17
You have this a very infectious smile. Anyway, so I wanted to even
1:22
your bio says it. You know, you're You're someone that I really want
1:26
to have on this podcast and what I love about doing this podcast. So
1:33
anyway, welcome, Thank you so much. All right, So before we
1:37
start here, sharehre the listeners where you're from and where you're calling from,
1:41
and then let's let's do it. Yeah, I'm from Massachusetts, a lifelong
1:44
residence, so I'm in Greater Boston on the South Shore. Nice. So
1:49
now I get to travel a lot on the Northeast, but have always been
1:53
from Massachusetts. Okay, awesome, So let's start out with a quote,
1:56
because I know you have one. What do you have for us? All
1:59
right? So I actually had so many to choose from because I've been a
2:04
quote collector since I was eleven, so I have a collection, but the
2:07
ones I thought were most appropriate for PTSD that spoke to be the most The
2:14
first one was Robin Morgan to admit suffering is to begin the creation of freedom.
2:21
And that one, for me, at least early in trauma recovery,
2:25
like reframed how I thought of pain as a doorway, you know, to
2:30
something to freedom, as opposed to something to avoid. But it was really
2:36
counterintuitive to me. That's why I like that quote because I was really like,
2:38
I do not understand what that means, and I don't even understand how
2:43
somebody can believe that. But in feminism I got it. I understood in
2:47
feminism like we have to start saying what's hard in order to make changes.
2:52
It took a much longer to get that when it came to trauma that there
2:55
was some benefit and admitting the things that were hard in order to change it.
3:00
So that one was the one I wanted to go with just because the
3:06
other one that I really liked and also read all the time and had hanging
3:09
up when I was early in the early days, like three decades ago of
3:14
pgsden I first diagnosed was if we don't suffer who we are, others suffer
3:20
for us. And that one, for me made always made me return to
3:27
why I'm healing. Like at the beginning of healing, it never occurred to
3:30
me that I would ever be happy, which yeah, I got to that,
3:34
but that was not the goal. It was just not to be destructive,
3:38
that was it. Because I was like, I might gonna be able
3:42
to be happy, but I can definitely not make other people miserable. I
3:46
definitely thought that was possible, and that for me was now I'd say with
3:52
self love, I would have done it for myself as well. Wouldn't have
3:54
been there at all, and that would not have resonated for me early and
3:59
healing. I just was like, just don't be a succubus on the planet,
4:03
Like you might not be able to be a contributor, but don't be
4:08
that. That was the way I thought back then. So I just wanted
4:12
to share those two because I think what we think and feel when we're healed
4:15
is really different than when we're in agony. Well yeah, I mean I
4:20
love both those quotes, and I think I think if we kind of invite
4:27
you to tell your story, will kind of those will be unpacked it along
4:31
the way. So I'm really curious because I don't know that much about your
4:36
story, and I really am curious to hear how the hell you got here?
4:43
What do you want that? It's funny because it's fairly recent. I
4:47
mean, my personal journey is long, of course, I'm in my fifties,
4:50
but my professionally being talking publicly about being a survivor, it's really since
4:58
twenty fourteen. And I've always been a writer, so I wrote and researched,
5:02
and it was interested in healing and people's personal stories of all kinds,
5:08
just biography and memoir kind of stories. But what happened was in twenty fourteen,
5:15
I went to the Trauma Conference in Boston, the International Trauma Conference.
5:19
Now, I had never been to a professional conference in my life. I'm
5:21
the first person in my family to go to college. I was a mom
5:25
at the time, and a single mom, so it was like a huge
5:27
deal for me to even figure that all out to go to a conference for
5:30
four days, and it was paying out of pocket because I wasn't working,
5:33
so it was like five hundred dollars. And I remember I was astounded that
5:41
there were no survivors, Like it was a conference with trauma survivors, and
5:45
it was the buildings of the twenty fifth Anniversary of Developmental Trauma, and it
5:50
was just a longer colk and it was all these amazing people that I had
5:55
been researching, like a trauma survivor groupie. I mean, I knew all
5:59
the means, I read all the books, I had been following all the
6:00
research, but I just didn't know anything about the clinical world at all.
6:05
So I just went as a survivor, which not one person spook as a
6:11
survivor. There was not one book by a survivor, There was not one
6:15
vending, there was zero survivor voice. I was shocked. I was like,
6:23
I literally went home and did artwork about like let the rats speak,
6:26
because they were doing all these studs talking about all these studies about rats and
6:30
mice, I mean, fascinating, really interesting studies and monkeys and all this
6:34
stuff. And I was like, but people have PTSD and we can share,
6:40
like we can give feedback, like it doesn't have to be so obstruct
6:44
Like why aren't there panels with survivors talking the therapist because and I should say
6:50
that the topic of this particular conference was twenty five years where have we come?
6:55
And I had been diagnosed with PTSD twenty five years before, so I
7:00
was like, I've lived the like feel it to heal it all talk all
7:04
the time to change into life. No, we all just have to be
7:08
in the body and not too much talk. Like I'm seeing this then the
7:11
pendulum, but from the patient side, And I was like, this is
7:16
not included or represented at all, Like I mean, and now I know
7:20
that a lot of therapists are trauma survivors, which I didn't know at the
7:25
time, so I was I was astounded, and literally it was just like,
7:30
we can change this, Like we have to change this. We need
7:31
to be talking to each other. Obviously, we can't be talking to our
7:34
own therapists in a like understand the personal professional boundary. But I'm like,
7:41
we could be speaking clinically as peers and parents and like, oh, you
7:46
meant to be doing that with the therapy. But when I came home and
7:49
actually had to parent, here's how it works. And I was like,
7:53
where are those conversations happening so we can see how is applicable it is or
7:57
what works isn't. And so that's what actually made me start writing publically as
8:03
a survivor because I was and then a lot so some therapists reach out to
8:07
me and said, we can't have those conversations with people, like it's unprofessional.
8:11
We if we can't talk to our patients and ask our patients to come
8:16
present at the conferences, right, Um, Like it's a it's an awkward
8:22
balance. We don't necessarily know how to deal with that, um paradox.
8:28
And I was like, well, survivors can just start talking well, but
8:33
also, first of all, I mean I think what you did was uh
8:37
was was awesome and I think you your your actions are completely validated. I
8:41
mean, yes, a lot of therapists are trauma survivors, but that doesn't
8:46
preclude another discussion, a simultaneous discussion with survivors and as survivors. And number
8:56
one number two, Um, yes, the therapists can't invite their clients,
9:03
but that doesn't mean that other survivors can't just go and other therapists can talk
9:07
to them and have that discussion. I want to kind of drill drill into
9:13
that and dial into that. But if we, if we can, if
9:16
we may say, see, can we go back a little bit and you're
9:22
you said you know you were by that time you had experienced where you were
9:24
living with PTSD, had been diagnosed twenty five years ago. I mean,
9:30
I know you know with with with with a sensitivity here and boundaries of course,
9:35
but what was that experience like for you? I mean, as a
9:39
survivor, was how did you come to terms with that being diagnosed? Well,
9:46
yes, even saying getting to the point where you're like something's going on
9:52
or is I knew something go on? You know, that whole process.
9:54
Yeah, it was. I was in college when I got diagnosed. I
9:58
saught therapy and college, and again I was the first person in my family
10:01
to go, so college was a culture shock. And when I was in
10:05
college, my grandmother had been diagnosed with a maran cancer and died. My
10:11
stepfather and my family which of origin, which had been abusive, he also
10:18
died. And then in the same eighteen month period, my sister met our
10:22
biological father who had abandoned us when we were when I was a baby and
10:28
she was a toddler. And it all happened in this really short, compressed
10:33
amount of time. And I was in college, and so I started getting
10:35
anxiety attacks which I had never had, and just absolutely terrified me. Thought,
10:39
I was, you know, if that was having a heart attack.
10:41
I didn't know what anxiety was. And so I had seen the movie Born
10:46
on the fourth of July, way back when I'm with Tom Cruise, and
10:50
it was I was sitting in the front seat and I was with college a
10:54
bunch of friends from college, and we went back home after the movie and
10:58
we had done we were doing like a stress test, and I remember my
11:03
test. My score was off the charts. And I remember writing my journal
11:07
before bed life for someone with so much stress, I'm doing really well.
11:09
And I woke up the next day and had like a full blown anxiety at
11:13
jack and went to health services and was like, I did not understand what
11:20
was going on. And then they started asking a little bit about my family
11:22
history and past, and that was kind of where everything came. It was
11:28
at that time in college. I probably went to therapy twice a week for
11:33
the rest of college, and that was when I got the diagnosis of PTSD
11:37
and started realizing my family life wasn't like everybody else's. My mom was sixteen
11:43
when she had kids. Her partner was abusive, my stepfather was an alcoholic,
11:48
so there was physical violence. And this is partly why I am in
11:52
the ACES movement now, is because there was lots of different types of trauma,
11:58
and even that back then, therapy really focused on like if there had
12:01
been sexual abuse or not, and not the intersection of poverty, we're being
12:07
working class, sexism, you know, interpersonal violence, all the different and
12:15
all those are intersect you know, they all intersecting things that are really important.
12:18
So that was so much all at once, and then I was dealing
12:24
and then I was in college, and I was also like an amazing and
12:26
exciting time, like the world was opening up and I was learning about books
12:31
and research and all these fascinating things. So it was just a big time
12:35
in my life. And that diagnosis. I was furious when I was diagnosed
12:41
because I had gone to therapy for three months before I was diagnosed and kind
12:48
of understood that the diagnosis and the trauma was related to abuse. And I
12:52
didn't understand, and this relates to my activism why I was the one who
12:58
had to at the diagnosis. So I remember when I was filling out the
13:01
forms and the therapist was saying, you can get insurance coverage for this.
13:05
Because I was too afraid to tell anyone at home I was going therapy.
13:11
I had to fill out a diagnosis and she's like, you can put generalized
13:15
anxiety disorder if you want, you qualify, you know, that would be
13:18
that would be covered. And I just listed the names of the people that
13:20
abused me and she's like, you can't do that, and I was like,
13:26
I don't understand why I have to get the diagnosis. I completely rejected
13:31
it. I was like, that doesn't make sense, you know, She's
13:35
like, when you can put generalized anxiety disorder? And I was like,
13:37
but it's not general it's not generalized at all. It's really specific. And
13:43
so she said, well, you can propost traumatic stress and I was like,
13:45
well that's more accurate. I'm gonna that's more accurate. But if we
13:50
only treat me and not the cause, I was like, it doesn't make
13:54
sense to me. I don't understand why the person getting help again, it's
13:58
getting diagnosis, Like that will hurt me and it won't help the cause.
14:05
So I had a really hard time fundamentally with that concept of being diagnosed.
14:09
UM. It was a real struggle, like just that idea. UM.
14:16
And it is partly why I'm also interested in social change, because I think
14:20
if we just treat symptoms without treating causes, UM, I don't know,
14:26
like where are we going to get right? Right? So, you you
14:31
got the diagnosis while you were in college. Yeah, okay, and you
14:35
know from that point until you went to that um uh that conference was many
14:45
years right, yes, twenty five okay, wow? So what what Obviously
14:52
we can we can't cover everything here, but I'm curious what led you to
14:56
that conference. Two things I I would say one feminism just understanding that the
15:03
personal is political, and that who tells stories, who has access to information,
15:09
who writes narratives, you know, is often a cultural thing, and
15:13
it's not necessarily who has the most information or knowledge. It's like that is
15:18
sometimes just who has access. And so I wanted access, and I definitely
15:26
felt like I could get acces there. There was no reason to not try
15:30
to get access directly from the biggest experts I could possibly get, so that
15:33
I could kind of like somebody that's like I want to have a church experience,
15:37
a religious experience that's personal, Like I wanted to figure out for myself,
15:41
how did I interpret what the experts were saying. It's going through somebody
15:46
else who's interpreting what the experts are saying. So that was one piece of
15:48
it. The second piece of it was, and this is informed all my
15:54
work as being an adoptive mother, because the adoption community has really led them
16:03
led the way that I think of both advocacy and therapy in terms of adoptees,
16:11
reframed what adoptees needed and then let the therapeutic community know where they got
16:19
it right and law and adoptive families ended up supporting adoptees in that work and
16:26
created quite a movement that shifted and made changes in you know, laws about
16:33
whether we disclose or not who adoptive families are, laws about people's access to
16:38
their stories and identities, even when they're hard. Challenge basic notions about you
16:45
know, if people just forget it won't impact them, or if they don't
16:48
know certain things, it's better. It challenged fundamental ideas about what it means
16:55
to be family or have a story or an identity and adoptive being. Emily's
17:00
really understood before, I think gent the general public community how impactful trauma was
17:07
because they had kids who had a lot, often had trauma either poverty,
17:11
abuse, galacked and understood that even when that trauma was only one, two
17:15
or three years, it didn't have to be a whole childhood. It would
17:19
have significant impacts on how kids engage in school, how they bonded, the
17:25
kind of it. And so when I became an adoptive parent and learned about
17:29
attachment style parenting, I learned that there was this enormous network of adoptive parents
17:33
who were educating each other and then they would arm each other with information like
17:37
when you go to your pediatrician and your pediatrician doesn't understand co sleeping because they
17:42
don't understand attachment and tells you to do let your kid cry it out if
17:48
they have a trauma history, like you have to ignore all that and do
17:51
this and then educate them. And it's such a different model. Or like
17:55
if you go to your school and your school says your kids needs this,
18:00
but you end up you end up as a parent who as a kid with
18:03
a disability of any kind, you need to let them know, actually,
18:07
you know, like here's what might help. And they were the ones who
18:11
helped bring trauma sensitive schools and with into being because they knew it was actually
18:18
the attachment trauma network. Folks who are both adoptive parents, who both had
18:22
been educators, who understood that even though I'm an educator, once they had
18:27
a child that has had attachment issues themselves, things they thought weren't the things
18:33
that the things they thought weren't weren't the things that actually worked with their kids,
18:37
and they realized, oh, we have to learn something else. So
18:41
this educator partnership ended up transforming this movement and has been leading the trauma sensitive
18:49
schools movement, which is really strong now and informs many of us now in
18:55
the trauma community because we're like, oh, communities can do things, can
19:00
do things, families can do things, and of course therapists can do things.
19:03
But we all have our place. So you you you walked out of
19:10
that conference, what happened? What was? What did you lead there with?
19:15
I started writing publicly, I mean almost within two months. I wrote
19:19
a piece about that experience, about becoming the person you needed and find like
19:23
where are the survivors? Why is are there so many survivors and so much
19:27
silence? Why doesn't anybody pull us or ask us what we need or if
19:33
the health helps? Aren't we in collaboration and communication? And so starting just
19:40
blogging on my post like hell right now. I started writing for Elephant Journal
19:42
a little bit for the Boston Globe Spirituality and Health, and just started asking
19:48
like ethical questions about why aren't we allies? And what did you find out?
19:55
What was? What was? What were you hearing back? It was
19:57
really a professional well um, I mean I think we still have it today
20:03
and when we talk about aces and trauma, there's a very professional personal divide
20:11
between when we show up as a professional versus when we show up as a
20:14
survivor. And many of us are both or many things, but it's vulnerable
20:21
if we lead as a survivor. Yeah, you're you're, You're bringing up
20:26
a lot here that I'm attempted to go down. But I'm really kind of
20:33
intrigued and inspired by your passion of advocacy and so forth. So you you
20:37
started writing in these different platforms and you're talking about this this kind of hard
20:47
line on this distinction. And I love that word you use about vulnerability.
20:52
It's it's to to to to present or to show up as both, right,
20:56
because, like you said, so many individuals who, so many therapist
21:02
counselors or whatever who are in this field specialization of trauma have experienced trauma,
21:11
but are so our survivors being heard now at that level. I think it's
21:18
improving a lot. I think there's more to go, but I think it's
21:22
improving. And in fact, it was interesting because I so I wrote this
21:29
piece for Elephant Journal and it was it was how can anyone love me?
21:36
With all my issues? And it was read by like a quarter of a
21:37
million people, and I was not a big blogger. It was huge and
21:42
I realized in the comments that people wrote, and it was about trauma,
21:45
but I didn't use trauma and the title so many people and it was about
21:52
how I was looking for a role model, but I wasn't willing to be
21:57
public. I wanted other people. I was looking for a survivor who was
22:03
professional, had a decent family life, had a decent sex life, seemingly
22:08
had a decent financial life, like seemed like they had an okay enough life
22:11
to be public and say here's how I got here. It's been hard,
22:17
here's what worked, Here's what did it. And then I was like,
22:19
I'm not willing to do that. That's what I was writing about. That's
22:23
when I finally was like, I'm waiting for something I'm not even willing to
22:30
do. I'm looking for it. Then I was like after that, it
22:34
was like I just totally went there. And luckily for me, which because
22:41
I had been a writer and believed in the power of telling story and thankfully
22:45
and many years of experience with clothing personally, because it could have been really
22:49
bad, but I had experience at that so I knew I had felt and
22:57
mostly had a good experience, And so I started writing about how hard it
23:02
was to be a survivor, and not like hard like poor me, but
23:06
just like why didn't anyone tell me how hard it would be when I had
23:08
kids? Why didn't even tell me how hard it would be that co sleep?
23:11
Like that's so different as a survivor or, Like how come no one
23:15
said love would be like the hardest thing I would ever have to figure out,
23:19
Like that would be that would be the tricky one. And then so
23:25
many people would write and comment and say thank you for saying that, like
23:29
no one's ever said that. That's my experience, and the it was like
23:33
the harder I said it was, the more people said thank you, the
23:38
more I said, like I didn't understand this. And I remember I wrote
23:42
one piece about how paying attention was the hardest part of parenting for me because
23:49
to get through childhood I checked out. I didn't listen to my body.
23:52
I didn't pay attention to my body. I zoned out, Like it was
23:56
super adaptive. But then when you're a mother, you're like safe. You
24:00
know, you were finding your kids wants, needs, thoughts, feelings,
24:03
and I was like, I was like it was like a part of my
24:07
brain that I had never used and I was just remember being like this is
24:11
so hard to not check out? How come no one talks about this?
24:15
Like? Right? Do other people find this easy? Like I don't like
24:19
paying this much attention. I want to go dange for you? Right there?
24:25
Actually a hard right, you know, just just quickly what what what
24:30
what's coming up for me? Is you're you know, I don't know that
24:34
resonated with me about you know, the harder you said it was, the
24:37
more people like started speaking up. And it's so easy I think for for
24:45
us to you know, talk to people and everyone. You know, you're
24:48
like, oh, how's it going? I was going great? But when
24:52
people are like honest and open about how tough it can be, and especially
24:56
when like you know, yourself moving through this world as someone who's experienced trauma,
25:03
and like you said, you know, what you had to do when
25:06
you were a young kid was very adaptive. But that's certainly not going to
25:10
fly when you're a parent. When someone else is saying speaking the truth,
25:15
you're like, yes, finally, thank god, you're you're saying it and
25:21
you're you're resonating with me that that that is like okay, finally this is
25:25
my people, you know, because that it's oxygen. And I think we
25:29
tend to think sur if we talk about how hard it is, we're gonna
25:32
like scare survivors or we're gonna intimidate survivors. But I think survivors just if
25:37
if if we've known it's hard, and somebody's like, it's like if you
25:41
a vertigo and you don't know what vertigo is, even if the doctor can't
25:45
make your vertigo away, but they can be like, that's vertigo. You're
25:49
like, okay, all right, other people have had this, Like,
25:52
oh okay, they've had it too, Like it's a little easier. It
25:56
doesn't make symptoms any easier, but you want you have a construck and you're
26:00
like, oh, show, it's not just me that thinks it's hard.
26:03
I'm not the only one that's dizzy. I'm not the only one that's you
26:07
know whatever. And there's a lot of power in that. And I think
26:10
we we feel like we have to do something so much, and if we
26:14
give people the ability to be like like in writing groups, sometimes I give
26:18
a prompt the hardest thing about trauma is dot dot dot and just let people
26:22
finish the sentence, Like we don't have to cure it. We don't have
26:25
to fix it. We're just sharing what's hard, and that in and of
26:30
itself will lighten us. Just that if that's all we do and give ourselves
26:37
permission to say, oh, this is heavy, we can lighten our own
26:42
load too, like in our journal by doing that. And I feel like
26:45
sometimes we try to perk ourselves up so much and that warring energy. That's
26:51
like there's a difference between gratitude and allowing. And it was really hard for
26:57
me as a survivor to understand self care because it felt like I had to
27:03
fully be allowed to feel as awful as I did in order to find places
27:07
where I could feel better. But it felt like in the beginning, everyone's
27:11
rushing in to try to make me feel better, and it felt like I
27:15
was letting them down because I'm like, it just feels bad. It feels
27:21
bad. And then when I can finally say that, a lot of people
27:23
are like, yeah, it feels bad. Like I think, you know,
27:27
your your voice is so needed in this field. You knows. As
27:36
you're talking, Syste, I'm thinking to myself, where where do you fit
27:41
in a sense, within the within the dynamic of therapists and survivors and conferences
27:49
and so forth. And as someone who talks to a lot of people in
27:53
this field, I'm listening to you and I'm thinking the way you're speaking is
28:00
is almost existing in between what a lot of therapists and the way a lot
28:07
of therapists are speaking. What they're saying and what survivors are saying. It
28:11
almost like the bridge in a sense, you know. Yeah, And that's
28:15
funny because I do feel like when i'm I do actually feel like a translator.
28:22
Yeah, And I often feel like sometimes I'm trying to tell survivors like
28:26
I think this is what survivors what therapists mean like, or this is what
28:30
the professionals are trying to do. It can feel alienating or something, but
28:33
like here's what I think is happening, and vice versa. I can feel
28:37
like I'm talking about professionals. Sometimes I'm like, here's what survivors, here's
28:41
what we're saying, kind of like when you're not in the room, you
28:45
know, like it's hard to be honest with our therapists about questions about the
28:53
ethics of the power dynamic or something, you know what, like you don't
29:00
want to have those We can talk to each other and many of us,
29:06
but we're not talking kind of like as groups to each other. And I
29:10
think we have I think there's a lot of survivors miss what is beneficial about
29:15
therapy, and I think there's a lot of things that therapists don't understand of
29:19
why survivors don't always access more from it, you know, And I think
29:26
we could vote, we could all benefit. Let me just remind everyone the
29:30
I'm speaking with Christine Sissy White. Her website is called heal right now.
29:37
That's heal right spelled w R I T E right now. I'll have her
29:44
site linked up at the show Nuts page as a Trumps podcast dot com.
29:48
So what would you say your mission is um? I mean for those of
29:57
I would say it's I care what the theories about trauma are, but I'm
30:03
more interested in sharing and understanding how trauma feels. So at two people as
30:11
we're experiencing in our day to day lives as just part of our story,
30:17
so we all So, I guess on the one hand, it's like a
30:21
two part mission. I was like, I want to be really specific about
30:25
the internal experience of being a trauma survivor, which is very changeable, and
30:30
it is very different but also connecting, breaking down the personal and professional because
30:37
we all have a story and we're all sharing each other, we're sharing a
30:42
bigger story together. So I feel like there's like their opposite. There's like
30:47
this big global, universal thing I'm trying to do, Like we're all just
30:49
have a story. It's not just about trauma. But on the other hand,
30:56
here's how trauma can feel, or here's how love can feel if you're
31:02
a trauma survivor. Here's how parenting can feel if you're a trauma survivor.
31:06
Here's how the medical community can feel if you're a trauma survivor. So that
31:14
it's both really specific and really general. So it's kind of spiritual and it's
31:18
kind of like a I feel like it is kind of spiritual and kind of
31:21
like a writer. So it is like, so we don't feel alone.
31:23
I don't think we're alone, and I don't I think if we go deep
31:26
deep enough, we are all there's a lot of commonality, but I think
31:33
we talk sometimes in ways that distances us instead of brings us together. So
31:37
I guess my goal is trying to break that down. And I have so
31:41
much to learn as anybody. I have my own blind spots in area and
31:44
my own weaknesses and like so it's definitely been a long journey not to be
31:49
like us and them, because I used to have a very idea of like,
31:56
I don't know, it's just like almost an adversarial relationship like survivors or
32:00
professionals, and I just don't. I feel like it's way more complicated than
32:06
that. And there's there's like roles we can get in that divide us.
32:12
So how do you get your word out? I mean, looking at your
32:15
site right now, you do speaking, you're writing what? And I also
32:21
work at Asis Connection, and I think to me, the reason I work
32:24
there and I love it is that website was started by a survivor who was
32:30
a journalist and who wanted to bring together She was a science writer and wanted
32:37
to bring together professionals and survivors and community activists in one place sharing everyone has
32:46
on that network on as Connection, which I love is everybody is allowed to
32:52
share, so people can share, whether they're it's doctor Filetti as the co
32:57
principle of the Asis study, or it's a grad student who just learned about
33:00
it yesterday, and people are cross connecting on a social network that's entirely about
33:06
aces. So I feel like that's the other place where it's like the adoption
33:15
community, we've broken down a little bit. The topic is the thing that
33:21
drives us and not our role, and that allows us all to be saying,
33:27
Okay, how does how do average childhood experiences affect If I'm a police
33:34
officer? What does that mean for like me and how I do my job?
33:37
But also me in being a police officer. If I'm in an academic
33:42
pro setting, how does it affect me as a professor, but also the
33:45
students I'm seeing. So we're under like we can be in multiple roles and
33:49
in conversations with people and breaking that role down a little bit, and that
33:53
I really do think that's where survivors and uh, the wider professional community are
34:04
starting to talk and engage because we're seeing it also has to exist in community
34:08
and family. Whatever we do to heal if if we can't do it in
34:14
our family life and in our personal life and in our community spaces, it's
34:21
not it's not gonna laugh. Yeah, yeah, well, all right,
34:24
let's let's wind down here. I'm just realizing that I've got to have you
34:29
back because there's there's a lot to talk about, and um, i'd love
34:35
to have your voice continue on on this podcast, So let's um get some
34:42
go to book recommendations from you. What do you have for us? Okay,
34:45
I have There's Nothing wrong with You, no matter what you think by
34:47
Sherry Huber. I would say this is really good for survivors, but it's
34:52
also good for therapists to understand why you might have a client that doesn't have
34:58
any idea what you're talking about when you say self love, because it's about
35:02
ending self hate. And I think for a lot of people survivors who have
35:07
developmental trauma, self love is too far abridge, it's too high a mountain
35:14
to climb. So first just ending self hate, okay, and starting with
35:17
that. And also it's really as a survivor. There's a line in there
35:22
that says, how you treat other people is about who you are. How
35:27
you treat yourself tends to reflect how you are parented. And that changed my
35:32
life, just that concept and that this book. Oh oo, Okay,
35:40
there's some work there yea. So that one, I would say is really
35:45
difficult survivors, and to understand a survivor if you feel like you're just not
35:49
getting a survivor you're working with. And then the other one that was most
35:53
helpful for me, even though I know bessel Vandercult's book is brilliant and I
35:58
love it, Invisible hero It was Fella Ruth napper Stack wrote, and it
36:04
was more accessible to me because she wrote as a therapist who was struggling with
36:12
reaching her clients. What she was doing as treatment wasn't working, so she
36:16
started looking at guided imagery and different techniques, and so it's a little bit
36:22
about her story, but also for me at least, it was a gentle
36:27
introduction into guided imagery, meditation, all those things which, at least to
36:35
me at the time, because I wasn't very in touch with my body,
36:37
seemed really far out. But it was very safe, warmly and nicely done
36:44
and not too academic, which for me resonated. So I still it's still
36:47
one of the books I churned to and when I still use guided imagery when
36:52
life throws me a curve. So those are the two i'd say at the
36:55
best, Okay, there's nothing wrong with you, no matter what you think.
37:00
And Invisible Heroes, both of which I'll have looked up here at the
37:02
show most page to this podcast dot com su see. Thank you so much,
37:07
UM for for coming on here. And just it's an honor to speak
37:15
with you. I mean, it's not honor to get to speak with you.
37:16
And I can't wait, literally really seriously to have you back. I
37:22
can't wait to be back. And I guess I told you you're like the
37:23
David Letterman for US trauma words. And I'm so thrilled to be here,
37:30
and I would love to continue the conversation because honestly, this is my passion.
37:32
This is my passion. These conversations it shows. Thank you so much,
37:37
all right, take care