Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / Authoring Your Trauma

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Authoring Your Trauma · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

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Hey, guys and dolls. Before we jump into this episode, a note
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about our content today. This is created for adult audiences only. We advise
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listener discretion, so if you need a breather, take a break and come
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back later. This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about the game
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of living in and with chronic pain and trauma, getting to the heart of
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how to heal. I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show,
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I plan on discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, baalistic practitioners,
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loved ones, and anybody that is interested in having their voice heard in the
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chronic pain and trauma world that we live in. Everyone has heard about the
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value of journaling and writing to help us heal from well from anything, but
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in our case here on this show, there's a lot of trauma and abuse,
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some emotional challenges and anxiety and insomnia and eating disorders. I mean,
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and that's just talking about me, but how many of us actually leverage such
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a beautiful and worthwhile tools such as writing. And you don't have to be
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a good writer to write it out either. And I was a creative writing
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and an opera major and have been working on a book myself and some music
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as well, and the process is so incredibly cathartic and incredibly healing. And
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when I write and I sing, I am working on some dark and twisty
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and broken places that I still am trying to fix, you know, and
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some of them, quite frankly, I'm kind of uncovering the damage of a
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lifetime of abuse and trauma. And sometimes I'm like worried about a suppressed memory
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let's like lurking below that I don't remember popping up on me, right,
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But I definitely always feel better after I put pen to paper, and I
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think you will as well. So let's talk about it, and let's talk
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about x sizing some of our traumas and abuse and some of the icky things
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that we've been through in our lives through the act of writing. So,
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without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to my guest today, Cassie
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Gustafson. Hello Darling, Hello, Hello. Cassie is the author of two
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ya contemporary novels, After the Ink Dries and The Secrets We Keep. Both
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are from Simon and Schuster and both are number one Amazon bestlers, and the
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covers of them are like stupid beautiful too. So. Cassie lives on the
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New England Sea coast of the United States with her pilot husband, and she
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also has a very talkative cat who may or may not be joining us on
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this episode today, we don't know. She heared an MA in English Literature
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and an MFA and writing for young adults. All right, I'm gonna roll
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out the red carpet for you, babe, and I'd like to start talking
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about how you took the healing power of writing when trauma and illness kind of
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took over your life. And let's start with our favorite topic here, trauma
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and abuse, and talk to us a little bit about what happened to at
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a high level, and then let's take it from there. Yeah. Absolutely.
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First of all, thanks so much for having me. Sure of such
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an honor to be here. Yeah. I think my abuse started when I
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was young and I was abused by somebody that I knew and loved, and
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so I think that sets up your body in a lot of ways to fail.
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Yeah, and so from there into college, I think you would be
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hard pressed to find a woman who was not assaulted. But you know,
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we try to get ourselves out of these trauma cycles, especially when they've been
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ingrained in us since such a young age, and we don't have the tools
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to get ourselves out, so we just find ourselves in the same situation.
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So that was my story, And you are absolutely right. You do not
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need to be a good writer, especially when you're starting. Line started out
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with a lot of angsty, terrible poetry. I think it was a really
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important place to start, because you just need to get all of the feels
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that are inside of your body outside and if that helps in your healing journey
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in any way, then it's it's not only you know, cathartic. It's
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very important. It's definitely important. Yeah, So it took me. It
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took me a while to actually find myself to writing, to finding a way
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to put my different abuses into books. I didn't want to write them for
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batim. I knew that I was never going to write a memoir, and
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I so I wanted to use the lens of fiction to share part of my
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story, but do it in a way that I could distance and protect myself
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while also giving one hundred percent authenticity to the feelings and the experiences. And
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in that way, I was hoping that and it could be a little bit
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more more universal while self protecting in that way. So that's how I came
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to writing. It took me a while to get into the place where I
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even could admit to myself that I wanted to write, let alone wanted to
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try it on as a career. But I finally got there, especially with
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young adult literature going through my masters in that, and I think that it's
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the perfect age through which I could explore that trauma because things really came to
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a head for me when I was in high school. And it's such a
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pivotal time in somebody's life, you know, especially for those who are they're
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just trying to find out their place in the world, and then they have
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this extra baggage of this trauma. They're trying to figure out where they are
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in their own bodies, in their own heads, it, let alone their
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own lives. So I think it's just really rich for exploring, you know,
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the emotional territory. Yeah, I think that when it comes to us,
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especially as little girls, I mean high school, I can it still
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consider us to be small girls in high school and we think we know it
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all, and we think we've got our shit together, and we think,
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you know, we're the bees knees, of course we do. And I
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never was able to process anything that happened to me until fairly recently. And
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a lot of what I did though, as growing up and going through these
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things is I have boxes and boxes of journals And in fact, I was
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just doing another episode of right before this one, and I was talking about
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the fact that afterwards saw about the fact that I should probably burn these things,
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like I've had them for so long and they keep going with me,
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and I'm like, a, I don't want to open them. I'm never
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going to read them. I don't want to look. I don't even want
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to go back into that spot, even though I need to in some places,
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I don't think I would be able to read what I wrote, like
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I almost feel like it would be so devastating and triggering for other things.
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But I like the way that you explain how you crafted this and protected yourself
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during this process of writing the books to not only help yourself, but to
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also help others, because I know, I mean, I was an avid
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reader. I still am, and I mean I just devoured ya, you
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know I mean, And it's certainly gotten way better than when I was in
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high school because that was a very, very long time ago. But man,
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it takes a lot of guts to do that, and I applaud you
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for doing it, because we need our little people to be better in our
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world and in our society and not feel scared to talk about things that happen
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to them, and not suppress them and not hide them, and feel okay
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in despair and feel okay in darkness, and know that there are others that
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are out there that share the same thing. So yeah, so I'm I'm
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I'm just stoked that you you jumped in on the YA side of things too.
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When did you start writing? I think I started writing when I was
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younger. I wrote a couple of stories and I just thought, this is
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no good, this is terrible. And I for so long never allowed myself
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to just be bad at things. You know, a lot of my trauma
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instilled in me the sense of perfectionism, that I had to be the good
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girl, that I had to be the perfect girl, and so how could
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I be bad at something? You know, if I were bad at something,
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that would make me inherently bad. And I already felt so bad in
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so many ways because of what had happened to me that there was no space
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in my life or my body to even allow myself the grace to, you
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know, sort of like try and fail at something. So it took me
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a very long time. I was well into gosh, I think I was
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well, I think it was well in my thirties. Oh okay, yeah,
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or maybe I'm thirty thirty one when I finally just decided this is silly,
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this is just something I'm interested in. But of course I couldn't admit
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to myself what I really wanted to do with it. Yeah. Maybe I
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didn't even know at that point that I was going to tell these stories.
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And so I wrote this middle grade which is, you know, ages eight
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to twelve, middle grade ghost story about a boy who moves into a haunted
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house. It was very generic, but you know, it was the impetus
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to try something on for size, to try out my own voice, and
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it's what I used to get into grad school. And in doing so,
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I thought, this is pretty cool, this writing thing. You know,
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I'm not terrible at it. And I was just at that place in my
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life where I thought I've been living in theater for so long of you know,
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not only past trauma and events that had been resurfacing. But also,
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you know, I'm afraid of myself and my own capabilities. But I'm the
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only one standing in my way now. It used to be someone else,
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it used to be these events, and now it's just me. So what
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can I What can I do with that? Yo? What can I do
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to get out of my own way? I struggle with this as well.
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Yeah, absolutely, And so for me, it was, you know,
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saying, okay, well, I'm going to go to school. Then then
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for some reason, it lifted the idea off that I had to be perfect
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because I'm going to school for it. I'm going to learn how to do
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it. Sure, sure to be good at it right away. And I've
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always been very good at school. So you know, when I when I
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went to school, in one of my first classes was about giving voice to
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underrepresented audiences and it was about writing young adults. It blew my mind what
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you could do with young adult literature. I just had no idea what you
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could put in the pages. And all of a sudden, this ghost story
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was like whatever ghost your ghost story? Yeah? And that's when I started
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to develop my first book. After being dry as I started to develop Erica's
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story. You know, I was taking a lot of my shame and trauma
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from events that had happened to me in high school when I had been raped,
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or when I had been assaulted, and you know, but I had
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drank too much. So clearly it was my fault, you know, was
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the narrative I was telling myself when really I was just using alcohol to cope
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with my past. And so I used these these real strong emotions in my
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own life to craft this story about, well, what would happen if this
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girl was in high school? What would happen if she wakes up and she
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finds that she's been stripped, she finds that she's been written on. What
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if the assault that I had experienced was manifested in a slightly different way?
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What could I add to the conversation about assaults, about rape culture, about
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you know, just inherent misogyny that's been, you know, so ingrained in
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our society. I had a lot of the way that I found my way
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into that book was how can I how can I add to this conversation,
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How can I do something in a slightly different way? What if I blur
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the lines between some people think she's been assaulted and some people say it's a
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prank, so you know, just they really just kind of opened up the
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door for me to be able to explore my own trauma because you know,
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this was Erica's story. I kept saying, this was Erica's this is as
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yeah, mean why I like, ah, I mean writing a chapter and
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just ugly sob yes, I feel you. Erica created you, but like
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I feel you girls. Oh god. It was really just like the stepping
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stone that I needed to be able to tell the story that I wanted to
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tell them, which is much closer to my heart, which is my second
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novel, and that's The Secrets We Keep, and that one is about child
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molestation, with the protagonist's father molesting her, and really her whole journey is
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coming to terms with the fact that she's even been abused, let alone that
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I happened to somebody that she cares about too. And so in that book,
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I was able to get closer to the truth and to explore, you
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know, in a small town just like where I grew up in, and
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what that sort of betrayal felt like when somebody close to you has done this,
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and you know, of course there's a lot that I changed. I
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wanted to protect, you know, people around me. I wanted to protect
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my family. Sure, of course the mom in that story is so different
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than my mom. My mom is lovely, but you would never know what
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reading that story. That's fair, okay, mom, we love you,
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We love you, mom, you know. And yeah, it was just
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it was just the book of my heart. It was the book that I
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needed to tell. And so I just I really haven't really looked back ever
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since I started that, and even even my third book that I'm working on
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now. I just thought, Okay, this was such a journey emotionally physically
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because I ended up developing this this severe allergic reaction disease while I was writing
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my second book. I just thought, you know this, my body is
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telling me I need a break from these topics. Yeah, telling me that
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I am literally reliving these things in order to write about them. So with
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my third book, I thought, I'm going to do something completely different.
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It's going to be a psychological thriller, which I've always been very interested in,
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especially from a craft standpoint. How do you craft so many reveals and
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twists and yes yea and things. And I wrote this whole book and it
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was just such a dud. Yeah, I just thought, what did I
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write? And how come this has zero heart? And I feel like my
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other books have a lot of heart. I realized that I was holding myself
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back from once again writing a Mewto story. And as soon as I just
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admitted it to myself, admitted what I wanted the backstory to be, then
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the whole, the whole story just opened up. And I've been going back
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and rewriting, you know, entire sections of it and inserting all of these
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flashbacks that tell the story of these two these two best friends in Hollywood,
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where one has committed suicide and the other feels responsible. Well, and I
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can identify with that, not just in writing, but also just doing this
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show, doing something like this, which started as just I love podcasts,
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and I was like, well, I've got stuff to talk about, you
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know what I mean. I was thoughtful about my intention, but I didn't
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I didn't have any game plan for it actually turning into what it's turned into,
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not just for me, but for listeners and my sweetee and you know,
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so on and so forth. But if I tried to do because I
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try to do another podcast prior, and there was a sex podcast, like,
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great, how many sex podcasts do we need on this planet? Right?
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I could talk about it because I loved doing it so but it was
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such a good learning experience for me to attempt at that my ghost story,
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if you will, and just epically, I mean, I was good at
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it, but it just wasn't. It wasn't me, It wasn't my soul
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food. It wasn't it wasn't a big reveal. It was just like kind
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of talking dirty all the time, you know. It just wasn't what I
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wanted to represent myself as, that's for sure. And so then when this
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kind of came into my world, it has been so incredibly cathartic to have
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these conversations with people because, for starters, you you are not alone in
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this world. Right. Trauma and assault and rape is a very very scary
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place to have been, and unfortunately we both have experienced this, and it's
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so complicated and it's so nuanced, and there's resentment and anger and shame.
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I mean, it's just like the list goes on and on. But by
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doing this, I feel like, at least from my experiences, I might
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be able to touch one person or help somebody through something and byproxy you doing
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the same thing by being here today, because it's one of the most amazing
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things that I've done. But it took me getting in the groove and also
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being okay with being incredibly honest and incredibly vulnerable and incredibly raw. And that's
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scary, it's really scary to do. Can you talk a little bit about
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what that is? Because when you google it, it is like what I
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google for my stuff? You're like, oh, why did I do that?
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Why did I google it? And why did I click on an midge
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like, don't do that? Can you give a little bit of what that
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is? And do you think that that came your illness came from having basically
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starting to face the music of what happened to you and your writing? Is
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that what you think maybe like sugar date or how does it? Can you
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talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah? Absolutely, But first
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I want to say, don't throw away your writing. You were talking about
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throwing away your journals, would advise you, and if you're not going to
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keep it, don't throw it away. Yet you said you're working on a
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book. Yeah, you know, you never know, you're going to need
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a little piece of it. So hold on to it and then after you
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okay, okay, that's fair, or I'll just send them to you and
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you can store them for me. There you go, but then feel free
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to burn them after it. Okay, okay, I'll promise that. And
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then mass cell activation syndrome. I thought of it for a long time as
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an autoimmune disease, and it, you know, I was corrected recently.
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It's technically an allergic reaction disease, but it manifests similarly as an autoimmune disease
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in that your body is turning on itself. So for me, mine and
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for me, it's the mass cells, which are your first line of defense
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against any sort of allergies or illness. They missfire. You have, you
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know, millions of mass cells in your body, and they each can release
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over two hundred different chemicals. And these are chemical messengers telling your body,
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you know, we just got stunne by a bee. We just you know,
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twisted our ankle. Send inflammation here so that your body can heal and
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you know, take the proper next steps. For mine, mine missfire and
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they release a bunch of these chemicals when there's no emergency. So how this
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came about because it's a very complicated disease. And it took me even even
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a very long time to even realize that this is what I had, let
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alone seek treatment for it. I was not very kind to my body.
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I think that's also a probably a hallmark of anybody who's gone through trauma.
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You don't think that you deserve, you know, this kindness and this self
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love, and so what has been done to your body, you know,
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is abuse, and you continue the pattern. You continue to abuse it through
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through any sort of addiction or heavy drinking or eating disordered behavior or all of
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these things. And unfortunately, that was a lot of my undergrad just abusing
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my body because I couldn't come around to the fact that I deserve love,
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and so for years and years and years and years, I had just done,
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you know, just really unkind things to my body. And then I
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had all of these shoulds in my head, you should do this, you
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should do that, and one of them was you, you know, you
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you should live your life to the fullest. Even though I'm such a homebody,
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I was like forcing myself to go out and do all of these things.
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And you know, sometimes sometimes that's that's a wonderful part of life,
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and sometimes it's just the opposite of what you need. And what I really
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needed to do, especially as this trauma was trying to break through, was
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to just sit quiet with myself, which was the scariest thing I think that
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I absolutely did. Serious. So what should I do instead? I should
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go hiking in the Himalayas for three weeks, and you know, I should
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be you know, hiking at fifteen thousand feet with heavy packs and severe temperature
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swings. And let's add in accidentally eating some foods that I'm allergic to while
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I'm out there. And so you know, I took I did this trip.
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It was a track can trek back out? You know, you don't
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have the option of of not not trekking back out once you've once you've truck
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back trecked in. So uh yeah, my body just kind of started to
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fall apart on this trip, especially after I realized that all the foods I've
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been eating had wheat in them, which I'm very allergic to. I came
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home. I came home and my body was just falling apart. It was
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asking for me to just slow down. I knew I had a reaction to
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caffeine. I was still chugging it. I was trying to get my first
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book out the door to my agent. The pressure. She was not putting
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pressure on me. I was putting pressure on of course, once again,
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that's what we do. Girl who delivers, right, And I was not
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taking care of my body. Even after I got home from this trip and
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I decided what what did my body needed? An orange theory class. So
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I was in the middle of doing this like intense workouts. It just sounds
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so preposterous. Even when I say it's so preposterous. Girl just punishing her
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totally. And I'm a total homebody too, so I'm like, oh,
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all of this sounds terrible for so many reasons. Yeah. So I was
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in the middle of this very intense exercise class and I was on the treadmill
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running, you know, I think that's the story of my life running and
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I it was like a switch flip. Something happened and I was immediately just
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feeling not good. I was so nauseous, and that nausea continued for like
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nine months. And over the course of that it didn't matter what I ate,
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what I drank. I could put water in my body and I'd just
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be violently nauseous, and what I didn't realize was my mass cells had activated
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in my gastro intestinal track and they were misfiring. And so over the course
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of the next six to eight months, I started developing all of these food
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allergies. And at first it was things like you know, protein powder and
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even like green tea. I just started losing all of these foods, just
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having these violence allergic reactions, crazy to the point where I remember eating some
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boiled cassava, which is a root, with some boiled chicken and some green
24:32
beans, and I was still reacting. It got to the point where I
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was down to eating just ground beef with lard port over it and salt because
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that was the least amount, the least reactive of all the foods that I
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could put into my body. And that went on for about a month and
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I had to, you know, just eat this while I was trying to
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figure out what was going on, while my body was reacting so hugely.
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And finally it must have just been you know, giving my body a little
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bit of time to calm down. I was able to very slowly add in
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some other foods while you know, it dawned on me. I think this
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is a condition that I have, and I was finally able to get some
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help. I found a great mass cell specialist right down in Boston close by,
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and a local primary care physician, and I really credit my mass cell
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specialist was stabilizing my body so that I was no longer you know, on
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the verge of starvation. And then I really credit my PCP was saying,
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you know, there are so many people I see with this with this condition.
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We're out of all of the people I see with this condition because it's
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actually somewhat rare. A lot of them have toxicity build up, and you
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know, it was I had some gut infections that I had to deal with.
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I had lived in mouldi buildings, and my body doesn't process toxins like
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normal bodies do. So it was a several year process to identify what I
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had going on, how I was going to detox from all of these you
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know, pretty pretty intense toxins without upsetting my mass cells further. Yeah,
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while I while I tried to write these two books and get them into the
26:30
world. So it was, you know, the hardest time in my life.
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I thought that the trauma that I went through was was the hardest.
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But facing down the trauma while your body is failing. That that was that
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was the hardest. It is very, very hard to do. Very I'm
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writing my second book and my husband is saying, are you sure you want
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to be doing this? Sure you want to be doing this? He sees
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the physical toll that it's taken on me, and I said, you know,
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I said, I have to. The only way is through. I
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can't do this any other way. The only way out is through. I
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love that line, yep, And I yes, absolutely, I knew that
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I had to get through this book or it was going to haunt me for
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the rest of my life. You know, not only this protagonist Emma,
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who's who I suddenly you know, understood intimately and really cared about, but
27:30
my own younger self. While I was writing that book, I had a
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picture of my younger self on my bulletin board, so I can look at
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her and I could remember what it was like to be her, and I
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can I could send the love to this past version that you know, had
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been so self sabotaging, and I could. I could remember what it was
27:52
like to feel, you know, that young and vulnerable. So that that
27:56
really helped but it was. It was tremendously difficult going to that place.
28:00
But I don't think I could have done it any other way. And I
28:04
completely identify with the fact that we've we're cut from the same cloth in a
28:08
lot of different ways, unfortunately and fortunately, but I totally that my body
28:14
is just like so not a wonderland like it is. I'm in pain twenty
28:18
four hours a day. I don't eat very much at all, and when
28:22
I do, I'm sick. The smell of food makes me nauseous, makes
28:26
me I mean, I call it pain puking because I throw up so much.
28:30
I can't keep weighting on. I'm down eleven pounds right now then I
28:33
should be. And I weighed myself this morning and I was like, god,
28:36
damn it. And then my sweets like, well, honey, you
28:38
haven't eaten since Tuesday. I'm like, I know, And I didn't even
28:41
really eat on Tuesday either, And then I don't remember, and you're talking
28:45
about self sabotage so much of that. It's like, it's not this,
28:48
this is not an intentional decision that I'm not gonna eat. It's like if
28:52
I do, I feel horrible. And then when I don't. I feel
28:57
horrible. So it's like, what the hell am I he do? He's
29:00
tired of cleaning up puke, I can tell you that much. And I'm
29:06
tired of doing it, you know. And so when and I've got massive
29:08
amounts of infections in my gut, I've got alime disease, I've got aged
29:11
pylori, I've got coinfections with all this other stuff. I've got babesia.
29:15
I mean, you just name them. And I'm like, oh my god.
29:18
I told everybody we were missing something that I don't just have CRPS.
29:22
I have something else going on. And it took such a toll to even
29:26
get to this place, to get diagnosed and to get these things. So
29:30
now I can actually start going after all of them. But it is it
29:34
is arduous, and it is daunting, and it is scary and it is
29:38
sad. And I know that a lot of my stomach upset and a lot
29:41
of my pain flares when I'm doing some deep work on trauma, getting through
29:48
some trauma stuff, you know, I'm like, oh gosh, wow,
29:51
my pain level just super spiked. Guess what I'm doing. I'm talking about
29:55
what happened to me when I was nine years old or whatever, you know,
29:56
and so being able to be connected with yourself well enough to be able
30:03
to know that that's what's happening and try to like get out of your own
30:07
way, like you said, because self's sabotage is totally real. You don't
30:11
know what you're doing and why you're doing it when you're so young, because
30:15
it feels like you your innocence is completely taken away from you, which it
30:19
is. And then you're like, well, now I'm like an adult and
30:25
I'm nine, or I'm thirteen, or I'm eighteen, or I'm twenty two
30:30
or I'm thirty. You know, it's like, wow, how many times
30:33
does that have to repeat itself in my world of some place around there where
30:37
I'm ever gonna get healthy? I'm ever going to be healthy? And did
30:41
you feel the same way like I this is horrible? Like I am I
30:45
ever going to be who I wanted to be? Because for me, that
30:49
was something that I've been struggling with in the trauma journy, going all my
30:53
hopes and dreams are the things that I wanted to do or not working,
30:59
not happening. But then as soon as I started making some pretty bold changes
31:03
in regardless to dealing and processing with some of this trauma and assault and stuff.
31:06
It's it's pretty it's pretty remarkable what's happening in my life. And doors
31:10
are opening and windows are opening, and birds are singing and I just need
31:12
to start eating. Yeah, yep, yep, yep, yeap, and
31:18
and and it's and it's good because now we and this is like what I
31:22
said in the beginning too, is we're here for each other. We're I
31:26
mean, I'm here for you, You're here for me right now. We're
31:29
here to every We're here for people that are listening, and for anybody that's
31:33
listening to this story that needs to reach out to either of us, please
31:36
do. We'll I'll make sure that we've got her contact information or her social
31:40
and all of her stuff and show notes and on social media and stuff as
31:42
well. But I mean, I'm offering you up, Hi, please reach
31:47
out to Cassie. No. But yeah, that's why we're here, because
31:49
if there's if there's if there is something that you want to talk about or
31:52
not not necessarily be on the show, but you just need an ear.
31:56
So many of you are reaching out to me on Instagram and social media.
32:00
Yeah, and I really appreciate the opportunity to have dialogue with you guys as
32:04
well. So it's pretty neat what you've been able to accomplish and what you've
32:07
been doing to help yourself and help others. But I'm so proud of you
32:12
for protecting yourself because that's really really hard to do too. Absolutely well,
32:15
right back at you. Yeah, you know the actions that you need to
32:19
take, but you know that the one that you need to take first and
32:22
foremost is to face that head on, and it really does change your world.
32:28
Maybe maybe our lives are never going to be exactly what we thought they
32:30
would or quote should be. Sure, No, nothing is what I thought
32:35
it would be right now, my life, not one thing. So but
32:39
it's amazing the beauty that is around you that you just can't see when you're
32:44
in it totally and when your body is still stuck back in its trauma cycles
32:51
and once you start to really face the depths of this happened to me,
33:00
you know, and and in exact measure, this is exactly what happened to
33:04
me. I really do think that that was the only way that I could
33:08
get to the other side. You know, I still deal with my condition.
33:15
But I can tell you right now I'm not eating ground beef and large
33:21
but large, Like I'm not even kidding with my food. When you said
33:23
I'm all I think I'm gonna throw up on my keyboard in my microphone right
33:28
now, I was like, oh God, and my stomach's been all jacked
33:30
today anyway, So I'm like, oh great, And it's it's so funny
33:36
that you brought up ground beef too, because I hadn't eaten I didn't what
33:40
didn't eat meat at all for a very long time, and then I specifically
33:44
didn't eat I still don't eat pork and what have you. But all of
33:46
a sudden, it was like, it's probably like nine months ago, maybe
33:52
a year ago, we were like driving by in and out Burger or whatever,
33:54
and I'm like, I'm craving beef, Like that is so weird,
34:00
And so we started to slowly implement like good, healthy, happy cow meat,
34:06
you know, not like gross meat, and it is unbelievable. It's
34:09
literally all I want to eat and it's the only thing that my stomach can
34:14
stomach. So I'm like just sitting here, go just shaking my head,
34:19
going come on, I'm so glad I'm not doing lard though. Ooh my
34:22
goodness. Well, I'm glad that you got through all of this stuff and
34:29
that you're managing, you know, the mass cell activation syndrome. All these
34:32
syndromes. They sound so fake, Like I've got chronic regional pain syndrome.
34:37
Totally sounds made up. I can guarantee it's not, you know, I
34:45
know. And every single guest that's on your has had some random, weird
34:49
something or other that we're like, oh god, I don't know if I
34:52
should google that, but I do anyway, you know, because we've got
34:53
to. But you had said something in our meet and greet that stood very
35:00
close to my heart, where you had said I had to write this out
35:02
of my body and I I've used the words I've identified a lot with this
35:07
because that's what's happening here with you today apparently. But wow, because it
35:14
is so incredibly powerful, Like I opened up the episode with the power of
35:17
the written word and getting stuff out. And like we said, you don't
35:22
have to be a great writer, you don't even have to want to be
35:23
a writer. Just go grab a beautiful journal and start doing something, you
35:30
know, even if it's a little poem, even if it's one sentence,
35:32
like just start it. And it's been very very powerful for me, and
35:38
I am writing some of this out for sure, and it is very,
35:43
very, very challenging to do though when it comes to like absolutely well,
35:47
part of me wonder is if I could have avoided having this condition period,
35:53
yep, had I been able to process all of this, you know,
35:59
all the gunk that's just been harboring in the shadows of my body for so
36:02
long, so long. Yeah, you know, it's it's not a it's
36:06
not a question to cast blame on myself or anything like that or to further
36:10
punish myself, because I'm hopefully past that stage in my life so at least
36:15
I think so. But it's it's really just about recognizing the power of you
36:22
know, the power that was stripped from you, and then the power that
36:27
you have now in writing it, writing it down and acknowledging it. And
36:34
like I said, you know, nobody was there for that little girl.
36:37
Nobody was validating her experiences. You know, I had a lot of people
36:42
who loved me, but they didn't know sure of course, the same way,
36:45
yeah, lives in breeds in secrecy, So that you know that that
36:52
little girl she needed, she needed an unconditional love and support and validation.
36:57
And it's it's really taken me many years to get to this place, but
37:02
now I can look at her with empathy and love and understanding. And when
37:07
I'm when I'm writing it, writing this stuff, I'm writing it for her
37:12
too, because she didn't have a voice and she didn't have that support.
37:20
But I think in order to even start to understand that you need to write
37:24
it down. There's there's a couple of steps. You know. I I
37:30
had no idea that my generalized anxiety disorder, you know that the beginnings of
37:37
an eating disorder in high school. I had no idea that it was related
37:43
to my abuse as a child, Like like, how would we We wouldn't
37:46
think that, we would We blame ourselves and we think this was me and
37:50
the wrong spot, the wrong time. You're nine? The hell there's something
37:53
inherently wrong with you? Yeah, you know, because somebody chose you and
37:59
there're be something wrong with you. They want to do these vile things to
38:04
you. What does that say about you as a as a person? Sure,
38:07
so you must be inherently flawed and so it really took you know,
38:13
a counselor in high school who had recognized that I had been abused, even
38:15
if I wasn't really talking about it or myself was showing all the classical signs
38:21
of of this, you know, having uh panic attacks in class and things
38:28
like that. She she handed me a book about abuse, and it was
38:34
the first time that the that the abuse and the body had really been like
38:39
connected. You know, I spent so much time in my head with my
38:43
anxiety and you know, like OCD tendencies and and and and everything, that
38:50
I started to be like, oh, yeah, this happened to my body.
38:54
You know, this is this is all tied together. And it still
38:58
took me so long to connect the two, to connect you know, what
39:04
was happening in my mind and and my my life with my with what would
39:07
have happened with my body with this trauma. And so I think the first
39:14
step is to to recognize that that I I just I didn't even see it.
39:20
I didn't even see that. Yeah, that that was the That was
39:22
the first part. And then yeah, I just I feel like this had
39:27
been stuck in my body for so long, and especially when you are continuously
39:31
punishing your body you know, for it's your perceived shortcomings. Yeah, whatever
39:37
happened to you, You're just you're going to stay stuck and it's all you
39:44
know, your body doesn't trust you to be able to let this stuff out
39:47
and to finally say, okay, I'm ready to just I'm ready to just
39:51
accept you. I'm ready to start trying to love you. It's it's really
39:53
hard to break that cycle. It's not like it happened sinstantaneously, and you
40:00
know, and then finally you just have to say, okay, well maybe
40:02
I can play with that idea, and then slowly you just like bridge the
40:07
gap between you know, your mind and your body. And then at some
40:10
point I feel like you can just embrace it. You can embrace your whole
40:15
self, all the parts, you know. And it's it's really weird because
40:19
sometimes even today, I'll feel a little fragmented and I have to I have
40:25
to stop and I have to physically speak out loud to that part of my
40:30
body that's feeling like it's like it's pushed away or distance from me, to
40:34
kind of like pull it back together. This is such a good way of
40:37
putting it because and then I'm learning a lot from you on this episode today,
40:39
just like learning from you, but also learning a little bit more about
40:44
myself, which is always like what how how did I not know that about
40:47
me? You know, and the separation and the self sabotage stuff like I
40:52
know what I was doing is always super rebellious. I was always running,
40:55
like you said, you're a runner, you know, I'm running on a
40:59
drodmill eve away from my problems. I'm running away from my life. I
41:01
don't want to look myself in the mirror. I don't want to be honest
41:04
with people that should know what happened to me, that should have been protecting
41:08
me, that should have could it would have right. And then you know,
41:13
all of a sudden, you're forty six, Wait, what just happened
41:16
here? What? Why? Now? Is? What's happening is that I'm
41:21
just now starting to finally get fall in love with myself. It's taking that
41:25
long, and it's very sad, but hey, I'm glad that we're at
41:31
this part where we can actually feel like a human being that wasn't like totally
41:39
left out in the dark dead. You know. It's kind of how that
41:45
that that feels, that anxiety, that depression, the need to want to
41:49
drink or do drugs or whatever it is, you know, to escape,
41:52
to run away from whatever it is that you're feeling about what happened to you
41:55
and being able to accept that it's okay that this shit happened to us,
42:01
and it also happened. You said it eloquently in the beginning about how it's
42:05
pretty hard pressed to find a woman on a college campus that hasn't been raped
42:10
in, pillaged and assulted like that is sad. The fact that I have
42:15
no problem finding guests for this show about this topic is mind boggling. If
42:22
anything, it's made my mind exp just explode more and make me want to
42:25
help others far more than I ever thought I would ever want to. So
42:30
I am so proud of you and what you've done and what you've accomplished,
42:35
and how far you've come from everything that you've been through in the process and
42:38
then publishing these two epic books. When's your third book gonna come out?
42:42
By the way, I'm still working on it, so we haven't gone out
42:45
to sell it yet. But okay, well I don't care for that answer,
42:49
and I know we're getting short on time here, and I want to
42:52
honor our time together. This has been absolutely wonderful. I mean, even
42:57
though these are yucky topics that we talk about, it's so good for us
43:00
to show that we can laugh through and we can smile from when we can
43:01
learn from them, we can cry through them, and we can still be
43:05
stronger, better, amazing women men on this planet, you know. And
43:09
so thank you for sharing your story with us today and being vulnerable and real,
43:15
and thanks for helping the YA people too, because YA is not just
43:19
for young adults by the way either. Okay, Like I like young YA
43:23
novels like I like them because a lot of what they do is they take
43:27
me to a place that either I missed out on, uh because I had
43:31
to adult so freaking young, and and or it brings back some memory of
43:37
something that I need to either address or something that was a really positive part
43:43
of my childhood and my you know, young adult years, which is hot
43:47
which gets lost when you've been in such dark places, you forget like,
43:52
oh my god, I really did not have that bad of a childhood or
43:55
whatever, you know what I mean. Like my parents were My step Daud
43:59
and my mother are amazing. My dad and my Stepma's a whole other different
44:00
conversation, but you know, it's like that's for another show, and but
44:06
it is pretty amazing what we can what we can get through, and what
44:09
we can do with grit and grace. And you're doing it just perfectly,
44:14
so there and you're showing up every single podcast and doing this. It's unbelievable.
44:22
Thank you for continuing the vulnerability over and over and over, over and
44:25
over. I hope that that's part of your healing journey. It is,
44:30
it absolutely is. I didn't know what was going to be. Okay.
44:32
We can find you online at Cassie Gustafson. Cassie Gustafson dot com is c
44:39
A S s I E g U S t A F s o n dot
44:43
com. She's also Cassie Gusty on Insta. You're Cassie Gusty one. On
44:47
TikTok. You're on TikTok. Okay, I'll forget you and her too,
44:52
not really, I pretend I'm on TikTok loosely. The kids are doing it
44:59
these day, the kids, I know, damn kids everywhere, and your
45:05
books, the secrets we keep and after the ink dries, I will put
45:07
all this in showes and on Instagram, of course, email marketing, all
45:10
of the stuff. Is there anything that you that you'd like to leave us
45:14
with before we hit the dusty trail. I just want to say thank you,
45:19
and I admire you for doing this, for continuing to show up for
45:22
people over and over and over and over again and be vulnerable every single time.
45:27
It's just so admirable. Thank you. It is definitely challenging, but
45:31
slap on a little lipstick and you just do the thing. That attitude,
45:38
well, I love it. Thank you so much for being here with us
45:40
today. I really appreciate it. And it's been nice to get to know
45:43
you a little bit further as well. And I'm looking forward to the third
45:45
book. So let's cross our fingers that it's not a psychological twister with ghosts
45:51
all over the place. All right, guys, thanks again, Cassie,
45:52
it's been a pleasure. You are exclusively invited to share this right the damn
45:57
trauma out of your bod via the IP pain journey Together, Let's get to
46:01
the heart of how to heal with you by my side and Cassie's side.
46:07
Do you know someone that needs to hear this conversation today? Did you need
46:09
to hear it, because if so, listen up, open your ears for
46:14
the episode, Do whatever you need to do. If you are struggling and
46:16
you've got challenges processing trauma, please reach out to us. Welcome to the
46:21
Pain Game Podcast. That's what we're here for. Let's connect and hear your
46:24
stories of strength and grit. I'm here to provide you with as safe of
46:28
a place as I possibly can to share your stories. Whether it's live on
46:30
the podcast or just want to talk to me, I'm here for you.
46:34
Please follow the Pain Game Podcast wherever you digest your podcast content, we will
46:38
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46:43
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46:46
on the other side.