Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Negotiation and Healing with Edy Nathan
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Trauma Thepist podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early
- 0:03Speaker 1: and ad free right now. Become a Plus listener by
- 0:07Speaker 1: going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma Theverist podcast
- 0:11Speaker 1: and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Nevers Podcast,
- 0:18Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
- 0:21Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is got macpherson, and my
- 0:24Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
- 0:27Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us. So five
- 0:38Speaker 1: or three, two and one are folks. Welcome back, Very
- 0:43Speaker 1: excited to have back. Edie Nathan Edy welcome.
- 0:46Speaker 2: Oh, it's so good to be here. Thanks for having me.
- 0:49Speaker 1: You're welcome. So Edi is a certified sex therapist and
- 0:52Speaker 1: thought leader specializing in grief, trauma, and sexuality. She works
- 0:57Speaker 1: with businesses, universities, and long term care homes to help
- 1:00Speaker 1: people understand how these areas filter through their lives and
- 1:03Speaker 1: affect everything from creativity to productivity. Working together, she offers
- 1:08Speaker 1: creative ways to deal with grief, trauma, and sexuality. Her book,
- 1:12Speaker 1: It's Grief, The Dance of Self Discovery through Trauma and Loss,
- 1:15Speaker 1: she examines the emotional and devastating impact of loss and trauma.
- 1:19Speaker 1: She has a new book she's working on, which we're
- 1:21Speaker 1: going to be talking about today. But Edie, welcome back.
- 1:25Speaker 2: It's great to be here.
- 1:26Speaker 1: Thanks, awesome. So remind our listeners before we get go
- 1:29Speaker 1: in here where you're from originally and where you are currently.
- 1:33Speaker 2: I'm originally from Chicago and still have family there, and
- 1:39Speaker 2: I'm currently a little bit of a gypsy. So sometimes
- 1:43Speaker 2: you might find me in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, and
- 1:47Speaker 2: sometimes you might find me in a story of queens
- 1:50Speaker 2: in New York, and sometimes you might find me down South.
- 1:54Speaker 2: So I'm bebopping around.
- 1:57Speaker 1: Awesome, Awesome. So you have a new book you're working on,
- 2:02Speaker 1: before we get there, give our listeners kind of a
- 2:07Speaker 1: sketch of how all this started for you, This interests,
- 2:11Speaker 1: this passion.
- 2:15Speaker 2: Grief and the conversation of grief is not often an
- 2:19Speaker 2: invited guest, and you know, we often me included, we'll
- 2:25Speaker 2: do everything to avoid it, push it down and say
- 2:28Speaker 2: I am not dealing with this. But sadly, when I
- 2:32Speaker 2: was twenty seven years old, I lost my partner and
- 2:36Speaker 2: I was going into the corporate world as a trainer.
- 2:40Speaker 2: And when I lost my partner, realized, wow, I have
- 2:45Speaker 2: no one to talk to, no one understands what I'm
- 2:47Speaker 2: going through. And I then decided to do a deep
- 2:51Speaker 2: dive into how not only could I heal and they
- 2:55Speaker 2: use heal, not healing or heal to heal as a
- 3:00Speaker 2: means of getting over, but learning to live with the
- 3:04Speaker 2: loss in my life. And because of Paul's death, I
- 3:09Speaker 2: just changed the whole trajectory of my life and became
- 3:12Speaker 2: a therapist. And then realized, my gosh, people are coming
- 3:16Speaker 2: in and they're grieving, but they're not just grieving about
- 3:18Speaker 2: the loss of a loved one, or if they are,
- 3:23Speaker 2: you know what's happening. There's complications and those complications are
- 3:27Speaker 2: often because there's been trauma. So that then that led
- 3:31Speaker 2: me to another deep dive looking into trauma and complex trauma,
- 3:36Speaker 2: trauma and how the duplicity of trauma and grief love
- 3:42Speaker 2: to dance with one another. And as a therapist, realized, okay,
- 3:47Speaker 2: so there's a whole sexual piece to this. So then
- 3:50Speaker 2: became a sex therapist and now I talk about the
- 3:53Speaker 2: three things that people don't want to talk about, grief,
- 3:55Speaker 2: sex and trauma.
- 3:57Speaker 1: I was just saying to myself, I mean, it's not
- 3:59Speaker 1: just grief, but people don't want to talk about and
- 4:02Speaker 1: sex too, So all right, how is it that you
- 4:10Speaker 1: are able to and we're going to talk about the book,
- 4:13Speaker 1: but we're bringing up all these things. How is it
- 4:15Speaker 1: that you have the what, the courage, the strength, the audacity,
- 4:21Speaker 1: the willingness to explore these topics that many of us
- 4:27Speaker 1: don't want to talk about.
- 4:31Speaker 2: Oh, we probably don't have enough time on this show
- 4:36Speaker 2: to even go into that. Suffice it to say that
- 4:41Speaker 2: I'm curious and that I've had enough pain in my
- 4:44Speaker 2: life that I don't want other people to have to
- 4:49Speaker 2: walk around with the pain that they just keep swallowing.
- 4:53Speaker 2: And what I've learned is that when you step into
- 4:56Speaker 2: the pain, when you are curious about it, when and
- 5:00Speaker 2: you say okay, I'm going to face you rather than
- 5:03Speaker 2: swallow all that's going on, that it actually there's a
- 5:09Speaker 2: there's there's a mitigation of the pain. And the reason
- 5:13Speaker 2: that the first book is called The Dance of Self
- 5:16Speaker 2: Discovery is because it is a dance. And I once
- 5:20Speaker 2: once the realization came, oh, you know what, I can't
- 5:24Speaker 2: fight this because every time I fight it, it gets bigger.
- 5:27Speaker 2: But let me partner with it and learn about it
- 5:29Speaker 2: be curious about it, which you know is often is
- 5:34Speaker 2: a little bit about this next book, which I'm not
- 5:36Speaker 2: ready to talk about here yet, but just to say that, oh,
- 5:40Speaker 2: when we when we invite the grief in, when we
- 5:44Speaker 2: invite the curiosity of what is going on here with
- 5:49Speaker 2: this grief, with this trauma, with my with my sexual driver,
- 5:55Speaker 2: and how has all of that been affected because of
- 5:58Speaker 2: the losses in my life? And you know, the book
- 6:01Speaker 2: is not just about the loss of a loved one.
- 6:04Speaker 2: It is about the losses that we have in our lives.
- 6:08Speaker 2: And those losses can also be the loss of the self.
- 6:14Speaker 1: All Right, So moving on here, there's the project you're
- 6:20Speaker 1: working on. How are we going to talk about that?
- 6:22Speaker 1: What is it?
- 6:25Speaker 2: This is a brand new topic and people have not
- 6:29Speaker 2: heard of this in the context from which I, you know,
- 6:35Speaker 2: deliver it. Okay, So it's called sexual grief, and I'm
- 6:40Speaker 2: calling it the sexual grief effect. The sexual grief effect
- 6:45Speaker 2: is when someone has had a developmental sexual trauma, and
- 6:51Speaker 2: developmental sexual trauma means anywhere on one's timeline, like they
- 6:56Speaker 2: were unwanted, or they had a really bad first sexual
- 6:59Speaker 2: spiritarience or aging or men a rectile dysfunction for women,
- 7:04Speaker 2: menopause disabilities, the timeline just from birth until we're no
- 7:11Speaker 2: longer here. I look at that timeline as one piece
- 7:16Speaker 2: of where sexual grief impacts one's ability to live fully,
- 7:23Speaker 2: and it impacts the ability to have relationships, It impacts
- 7:27Speaker 2: the ability to be in the body fully. What happens
- 7:32Speaker 2: in the sexual grief effect is that it doesn't just
- 7:35Speaker 2: hit the developmental piece. It also hits a piece when
- 7:40Speaker 2: someone has been sexually traumatized from a predatory event. So
- 7:44Speaker 2: I'm looking at both predatory events and developmental experiences and
- 7:49Speaker 2: what each of these events and experiences, what happens with
- 7:55Speaker 2: them is they cause one to feel as if they're
- 7:59Speaker 2: held hostage and they can't live their lives fully, can't
- 8:04Speaker 2: get a job, can't learn, can't be intimate, and it
- 8:09Speaker 2: takes away those those primary passions or even the belief
- 8:14Speaker 2: in oneself. And what this project is is teaching people
- 8:21Speaker 2: how to deal with the hostage taker, the sexual grief effect,
- 8:26Speaker 2: and become their own hostage negotiators. And I know that
- 8:30Speaker 2: using the word hostage right now, we're living in a
- 8:32Speaker 2: world where hostage is a really tough word. But when
- 8:37Speaker 2: talking to people who've got the developmental hits that I
- 8:40Speaker 2: just talked about in the predatory events and the use
- 8:46Speaker 2: of that word, it sounds like you feel like these
- 8:49Speaker 2: events and experiences have left you feeling like you're a hostage.
- 8:52Speaker 2: It's like a light bulb goes off. It's like, ah,
- 8:56Speaker 2: you're talking directly to me, because that's how I feel.
- 9:00Speaker 1: All right, let's get specific here. Give us an example
- 9:03Speaker 1: of how these experiences or an experience might keep someone hostives,
- 9:11Speaker 1: might keep them from living their lives in any matter
- 9:15Speaker 1: of ways.
- 9:16Speaker 2: Okay, so let's look at the developmental peace first. The
- 9:21Speaker 2: developmental piece might be religious sexual trauma. In a religious
- 9:26Speaker 2: sexual trauma, it's a developmental hit because nobody is purposely
- 9:30Speaker 2: wanting to hurt that child, but what they are teaching
- 9:34Speaker 2: that child is to have shame about their bodies. Don't touch,
- 9:38Speaker 2: don't be sexually, don't explore yourself, don't allow yourself the
- 9:44Speaker 2: freedoms to understand who you are in terms of your
- 9:48Speaker 2: gender identity, and you become locked, you become imprisoned. And
- 9:54Speaker 2: so these many of these people who are coming out
- 9:58Speaker 2: of these very religious cultural homes find themselves feeling that
- 10:09Speaker 2: they've been held hostage, they've been told that, and these
- 10:14Speaker 2: these are true messages that if they masturbate, they're either
- 10:19Speaker 2: going to die or something's going to fall off. And
- 10:24Speaker 2: those messages, when you're four and six and nine and ten,
- 10:30Speaker 2: stay with you. And so what happens is it's hard
- 10:36Speaker 2: to explore, it's hard to understand the self, and the
- 10:41Speaker 2: sexual driver shuts down. The sexual driver though a Freudian term,
- 10:47Speaker 2: I'm not using it in that way, but it is
- 10:50Speaker 2: one's lust for life. And it's not just I'm not
- 10:55Speaker 2: talking about sex. I'm talking about how you live. So
- 11:00Speaker 2: what I help people do? They say, Okay, let me
- 11:04Speaker 2: first understand that I'm going to label this this is
- 11:08Speaker 2: sexual grief, and it is the effect of the sexual grief.
- 11:11Speaker 2: It's a natural response to what happened. I'm shut down,
- 11:15Speaker 2: I'm stuck, I'm trapped. So they talk to the part
- 11:20Speaker 2: of themselves that's stuck and trapped. That's the perhaps the
- 11:25Speaker 2: religious sexual trauma that's happened to them. And in talking
- 11:30Speaker 2: to it, they first become curious, which is the first
- 11:34Speaker 2: stage to a good hostage negotiation. I call it curiosity
- 11:40Speaker 2: and awe. They then go into empathy because it's really
- 11:46Speaker 2: hard to have empathy to the thing that's hurt you
- 11:50Speaker 2: or entrapped you. And so it is an empathy energy.
- 11:55Speaker 2: And this is not linear, but we do start out
- 11:59Speaker 2: with the curiosity, and we do go to the empathy.
- 12:02Speaker 2: And the third piece to this, and there's six altogether,
- 12:06Speaker 2: but these major three pieces is developing a rapport and
- 12:12Speaker 2: trust and so you begin to really have these conversations
- 12:17Speaker 2: with the part of you that is holding on to
- 12:20Speaker 2: the sexual grief effect, this natural response, and you are
- 12:25Speaker 2: finding ways out we.
- 12:28Speaker 1: Can I mean, I can imagine as you're speaking, how
- 12:33Speaker 1: someone who's gone through that that type of sexual trauma
- 12:38Speaker 1: would kind of worden off that part of them right,
- 12:42Speaker 1: it's brought me so much potentially shame, they don't even
- 12:45Speaker 1: want to talk about it. And you could think about
- 12:48Speaker 1: other ways people would then deal with this part of
- 12:52Speaker 1: themselves that's been closed off, right, facting out addictions, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
- 12:57Speaker 1: That's right, Okay, what about another example?
- 13:02Speaker 2: That was another? So that's that's one example I.
- 13:05Speaker 1: Wanted to go there. Hold on a second, how revalent
- 13:10Speaker 1: is that type of trauma.
- 13:14Speaker 2: It's I don't have a percentage, but it's more prevalent.
- 13:18Speaker 1: Than we would think we would think.
- 13:20Speaker 2: And along the developmental timeline, we've got period poverty for
- 13:24Speaker 2: young young women who didn't know that they were going
- 13:29Speaker 2: to have their periods and sadly think upon getting their
- 13:34Speaker 2: periods that they are bleeding to death. And what ends
- 13:38Speaker 2: up happening is every month they go through that trauma
- 13:42Speaker 2: and their bodies. As you know, Besil Vanderkook often talks
- 13:46Speaker 2: about keep the score and they're just waiting and because
- 13:49Speaker 2: the trauma is not dealt with, and then if there
- 13:52Speaker 2: actually is financial difficulties in being able to get the
- 14:00Speaker 2: the appliances or the things needed, you know, during their
- 14:04Speaker 2: monthly periods, if they don't have the money to do it,
- 14:08Speaker 2: oftentimes girls will miss school and that's where the period
- 14:12Speaker 2: poverty is also enhanced. And then we're talking about the shame,
- 14:16Speaker 2: and the shame goes into this is something that's happening
- 14:19Speaker 2: to this young girl and she's not prepared and she loathes.
- 14:25Speaker 2: She is really filled with self loathing and discussed around
- 14:29Speaker 2: something that should be beautiful, and there is a sexual
- 14:35Speaker 2: grief effect and she is held hostage by this every
- 14:39Speaker 2: single month. And the women who finally deal with this,
- 14:43Speaker 2: some gynecologists will help some of these women really deal
- 14:47Speaker 2: with their shame around it, but often it's just disregarded
- 14:51Speaker 2: and women don't understand why. They may accordingly have something
- 14:56Speaker 2: called vaginismus, which is the clamping down of the of
- 15:00Speaker 2: the vaginal muscles, and it makes penetration difficult, if not impossible,
- 15:07Speaker 2: And sometimes there's something medically wrong, but sometimes it's an
- 15:11Speaker 2: emotional piece.
- 15:15Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking that this experience, it's
- 15:20Speaker 1: just fraught with these landmines of silence and shame, and
- 15:28Speaker 1: you can't talk about it, and even in the doctor's
- 15:31Speaker 1: office if they even ask about it.
- 15:34Speaker 2: So okay, So that's the developmental If we look at predatory,
- 15:40Speaker 2: we can look at any anyone scenario that is of
- 15:47Speaker 2: a predatory nature. And I say predatory so that you know,
- 15:52Speaker 2: anyone who's listening, you know, will not necessarily feel the
- 15:58Speaker 2: overwhelm of anything that I might describe. But any kind
- 16:02Speaker 2: of predatory event which is not is it is a
- 16:09Speaker 2: situation that does not happen by choice. A predatory event
- 16:13Speaker 2: is something that is done to you and you have
- 16:17Speaker 2: not made a choice about this. And it happens to boys,
- 16:21Speaker 2: it happens to girls, it happens to people who are older,
- 16:26Speaker 2: but there is usually an age range where it is
- 16:29Speaker 2: most prevalent, which is often between the ages of seven
- 16:35Speaker 2: and sixteen, and those predatory events cause so much harm
- 16:44Speaker 2: in self esteem, in desire, in learning, in cognitive abilities,
- 16:51Speaker 2: in focus, and children are often misdiagnosed, Oh they've got
- 16:56Speaker 2: add Oh they're depressed, and they're just medicated, rather than
- 17:00Speaker 2: actually doing a deeper dive and asking the questions, has
- 17:04Speaker 2: anyone ever touched you inappropriately? Did anything ever happen to you?
- 17:09Speaker 2: Because because the doctors don't want to know and they
- 17:11Speaker 2: don't want to do the deeper dive. Often I'm not
- 17:13Speaker 2: I'm not blasting doctors, sure, but we you know, and
- 17:17Speaker 2: the you know. Certainly our school systems, the teachers are
- 17:20Speaker 2: supposed to be aware, but oftentimes if there are, it
- 17:25Speaker 2: will come to multiple absences versus really tracking something in
- 17:31Speaker 2: terms of learning within the classroom.
- 17:35Speaker 1: So from an experience like that and the one you
- 17:37Speaker 1: mentioned previously, obviously there's the trauma and everything that involves.
- 17:47Speaker 1: But we're also bringing in the grief piece here. So
- 17:50Speaker 1: how does that come into play with what you're just
- 17:53Speaker 1: talking about now.
- 17:54Speaker 2: Well, when anybody is held hostage, there's grief what's interesting
- 17:58Speaker 2: is the the PA, the American Psychological Association, did a
- 18:03Speaker 2: big study on hostage survivors and if you look at
- 18:08Speaker 2: the list of words the descriptions that the hostage survivors
- 18:14Speaker 2: depicted as how they felt, it absolutely aligns with anyone
- 18:21Speaker 2: who is a developmental sexual grief survivor survivalist or a
- 18:30Speaker 2: predatory you know, sexual has had a predatory event that
- 18:35Speaker 2: they've survived. So what we're seeing is that the grief
- 18:41Speaker 2: is very much aligned with anyone whose grief is a
- 18:45Speaker 2: big piece just across the board for any hostage survivalist.
- 18:51Speaker 2: And I say survivalist because I think that we use
- 18:54Speaker 2: the word survivor so often that it loses its meaning.
- 18:58Speaker 2: And so what I will do often is I will
- 19:01Speaker 2: find different ways to express what's going what's going on,
- 19:04Speaker 2: And a survivalist means that you're you're standing up in
- 19:08Speaker 2: the face of the event or the experience and you're
- 19:13Speaker 2: moving with it, and it's not something you get over.
- 19:17Speaker 2: It is something that you learn to integrate, and then
- 19:21Speaker 2: you learn about who you are and you grow your
- 19:26Speaker 2: personal identity, you grow your sense of self and your
- 19:33Speaker 2: sexual driver that that driver that allows you to have
- 19:37Speaker 2: that lust for life, that that hunger to learn comes
- 19:43Speaker 2: alive again.
- 19:47Speaker 1: Is you said than done? Right? Oh?
- 19:50Speaker 2: It is? It is? It is. Yeah, it's I'm not
- 19:53Speaker 2: saying that this is easy. I am saying no, of
- 19:55Speaker 2: course not. And that's why I've been lately. I've been grappling.
- 20:00Speaker 2: And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this with
- 20:03Speaker 2: the idea of what is healing, because I think that
- 20:08Speaker 2: that so often in my world as a clinician, that
- 20:13Speaker 2: the word healing has meant to some it's all better,
- 20:18Speaker 2: and it's not all better.
- 20:21Speaker 1: It's right, right, right? I think yeah, I mean I
- 20:26Speaker 1: think it for me. It depends on the person and
- 20:32Speaker 1: their situation. I mean, the first thing that came to
- 20:34Speaker 1: your mind is the first thing that came to my mind.
- 20:37Speaker 1: Abu said that was well. Healing to me means so
- 20:42Speaker 1: about a year and a half ago, I went for
- 20:44Speaker 1: a divorce that was really hard, and for me, healing
- 20:47Speaker 1: in that constant, in that context would mean not being
- 20:52Speaker 1: held hostage to the weight of that event and everything
- 20:58Speaker 1: it means to me because I still am, I very
- 21:03Speaker 1: much still am. I'm still dealing with the X, Y
- 21:06Speaker 1: and Z of the intricacies of that coming out of
- 21:12Speaker 1: nowhere and dealing with that on a day to day
- 21:15Speaker 1: basis and everything it means. So you know, healing wouldn't
- 21:18Speaker 1: mean that it never happened, or I would be never.
- 21:22Speaker 2: You forget it, Oh, oh I'm healed. I've forgotten no, right.
- 21:27Speaker 1: But I think I think, you know, we each have
- 21:30Speaker 1: maybe different gauges at different stages of our life where
- 21:34Speaker 1: that's going to be defined differently. Oh.
- 21:37Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I think that the sexual grief effect will
- 21:41Speaker 2: will consistently be defined and redefined. The notion here is
- 21:48Speaker 2: giving people the agency to have to have the knowledge
- 21:53Speaker 2: to say, oh, I'm going to be my own negotiator here,
- 21:57Speaker 2: and I'm going to negotiate with the things that take
- 22:00Speaker 2: me down. And what's taken me down right now is
- 22:03Speaker 2: this memory or this pop in memory. And I'm going
- 22:06Speaker 2: to take a time in moment, and this time in
- 22:09Speaker 2: moment is to be curious or to have a little
- 22:11Speaker 2: bit of empathy, because I'm being really hard on myself
- 22:14Speaker 2: right now because I think, you know, because going out
- 22:18Speaker 2: on a date or having going out with friends, or
- 22:23Speaker 2: going for that job interview, I'm having a hard time
- 22:28Speaker 2: believing that I can do this. So let me just
- 22:31Speaker 2: stop for a moment, have a little bit of empathy,
- 22:33Speaker 2: be curious about Okay, so what's the messaging here. Okay,
- 22:37Speaker 2: I'm going to negotiate with my hostage taker right now
- 22:40Speaker 2: because these are old messages and that message doesn't have
- 22:43Speaker 2: to hurt me right now. I can deal with it.
- 22:46Speaker 2: I can talk with you, I can be curious with you,
- 22:50Speaker 2: and I can say I have another part of me
- 22:55Speaker 2: that's developing and growing, and that's the part of me
- 23:00Speaker 2: that I'm going to nurture right now. And it doesn't
- 23:02Speaker 2: mean that I'm going to ignore the fear or ignore
- 23:07Speaker 2: the fact that my mouth has just like gone dry
- 23:10Speaker 2: and my throat is like just not saying the words.
- 23:15Speaker 2: I'm going to remember what I've gone through, who I
- 23:19Speaker 2: am in this moment, and if I can't do something,
- 23:24Speaker 2: that's okay. And that's also negotiating with the hostage taker.
- 23:31Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. I mean, that's so powerful. The
- 23:34Speaker 1: idea that there can even be healing within these contexts
- 23:39Speaker 1: for many of us is like what, yeah, yeah, I
- 23:44Speaker 1: can have an agency. I can be curious about that.
- 23:47Speaker 1: I can't even think about that. I cannot imagine I
- 23:53Speaker 1: did not experience any type of sexual developmental trauma that
- 23:59Speaker 1: we're talking about here, editory and so forth. To me,
- 24:04Speaker 1: I can't imagine. I was bullied when I was a kid,
- 24:07Speaker 1: which did jack me up and impact my life in
- 24:12Speaker 1: many ways. But the idea that you know, you're presenting this,
- 24:19Speaker 1: I can see a lot of us, a lot of people.
- 24:22Speaker 1: I can even feel wait a minute, I can look
- 24:27Speaker 1: at it in this way. I can't be curious about
- 24:31Speaker 1: this and negotiate that to me is a huge that's
- 24:36Speaker 1: mind blowing.
- 24:39Speaker 2: And it's not, and it's not instead of any work
- 24:42Speaker 2: that anyone is doing here. Okay, this is a yes.
- 24:45Speaker 2: And so I don't want anyone to think, oh, well,
- 24:49Speaker 2: Edie's talking about this and she's saying this is the
- 24:51Speaker 2: way to do this. No, I'm saying, whatever you're doing,
- 24:55Speaker 2: keep doing it. This is a yes. Had you becoming
- 24:59Speaker 2: your negotiator and having the agency to say, you know what,
- 25:02Speaker 2: I'm going to be curious as terrified as I am.
- 25:05Speaker 2: I'm going to be curious. Hey, okay, you know right
- 25:08Speaker 2: now my mouth has gone dry. And the minute your
- 25:10Speaker 2: mouth goes dry, instead of saying okay, I'm going to
- 25:13Speaker 2: ignore this because then you know what, the mouth goes
- 25:16Speaker 2: dry and then you start to sweat because you've ignored it,
- 25:19Speaker 2: and then the anxiety starts, and then the heart starts pumping.
- 25:22Speaker 2: Then you go into like you want to you're freezing
- 25:25Speaker 2: your you're flying away, and it's it's it's just all
- 25:31Speaker 2: of the reactions to trauma occur. What if you start
- 25:38Speaker 2: to identify, I know what my taells are, dry mouth,
- 25:43Speaker 2: I start to get itchy, I start to think about
- 25:46Speaker 2: something that has nothing to do with what's going on.
- 25:50Speaker 2: If those are my tells of I am about to
- 25:54Speaker 2: really not feel good, I'm just going to start to
- 25:57Speaker 2: have a pop a pop in memory. That's the moment
- 26:01Speaker 2: of oh wait a minute, hold on, let me be curious. Okay,
- 26:03Speaker 2: dry mouth, what is what's going on with you right now?
- 26:07Speaker 2: What are you afraid of? I'm right here with you.
- 26:10Speaker 2: I'm going to just get a glass of water. I'm
- 26:13Speaker 2: going to make sure that my swallow reflexes are working,
- 26:17Speaker 2: or I'm going to do something like this where I'm
- 26:19Speaker 2: going to concentrate and refocus on just trying to feel
- 26:23Speaker 2: my thumb print. And you are actually negotiating in that moment,
- 26:30Speaker 2: in the.
- 26:30Speaker 1: Sense that you're what your your prefrontal cortex is online.
- 26:37Speaker 2: You were oh yeah, you're you know, absolutely, you're aware.
- 26:41Speaker 2: Your prefrontal cortex is online, You're you're, you know, you're,
- 26:45Speaker 2: you're Usually what's happening when there's a trum trauma response,
- 26:51Speaker 2: your your brain is in freeze mode. Your prefrontal cortex
- 26:56Speaker 2: is saying danger, danger, danger, and you're like, yeah, I
- 27:00Speaker 2: got a run, I gotta run. But before that happens,
- 27:05Speaker 2: there are often tells that happen in the body, and
- 27:11Speaker 2: if we become curious about what those tells are, whether
- 27:14Speaker 2: it's dry mouth. I used to have horrific anxiety. My
- 27:19Speaker 2: sense of smell would become stronger when I was about
- 27:24Speaker 2: to go into a really bad panic attack, and I
- 27:28Speaker 2: started to track it, and I started to be curious about, Oh,
- 27:31Speaker 2: you know, I'm starting to smell onions, like that's really strange.
- 27:36Speaker 2: Oh I'm about to have a panic attack, because I
- 27:38Speaker 2: could track it. And that's where curiosity comes in. And
- 27:42Speaker 2: what I found is if I paid attention and I
- 27:46Speaker 2: was curious, and I could then say, oh, okay, so
- 27:50Speaker 2: let me just breathe, let me ground myself, let me
- 27:57Speaker 2: say to myself, what is caught using the panic is
- 28:01Speaker 2: something that I'm imagining and it's really not happening now,
- 28:05Speaker 2: and I can do something about this and that curiosity
- 28:09Speaker 2: versus I'm ignoring this because whenever I tried to ignore
- 28:13Speaker 2: the panic, you know what happened, it got bigger and
- 28:17Speaker 2: bigger and bigger. But if I said, oh wait a minute,
- 28:21Speaker 2: it's happening right now, I'm going to pay attention, and
- 28:24Speaker 2: I became curious. And at that point I wasn't even
- 28:28Speaker 2: talking about these negotiations strategies. I was able to actually
- 28:34Speaker 2: find my own agency to calm myself down.
- 28:38Speaker 1: Remind everyone we're speaking with eating and eighth and dio
- 28:42Speaker 1: is we get ready to close down here? So in
- 28:46Speaker 1: broad sense, what are we talking about here? For listeners.
- 28:52Speaker 2: Broad sense the pain that you're in. If you are
- 28:57Speaker 2: in pain because of a developmental trauma along your timeline
- 29:04Speaker 2: or a predatory event, the natural response you have is
- 29:10Speaker 2: yours and you have a right to it. But if
- 29:13Speaker 2: it's taking you down and interrupting your life, there is
- 29:17Speaker 2: a way to interrupt its agency by creating your own
- 29:23Speaker 2: agency and it can't hold you hostage anymore. When you
- 29:30Speaker 2: learn the negotiation strategies that I have available for you,
- 29:37Speaker 2: and if you go onto my website sexualgrief dot com
- 29:41Speaker 2: you'll find the six strategies two becoming a hostage negotiator.
- 29:49Speaker 1: Right, you will have that. Ah, listen up here at
- 29:52Speaker 1: the show notes page at the Trauma there is podcast
- 29:54Speaker 1: dot com. Love having you on here, love being here.
- 29:58Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate your passion. Uh.
- 30:02Speaker 1: And you have this this way about you that is,
- 30:09Speaker 1: you know, I get off the I get off the
- 30:12Speaker 1: call with you and I'm like, that's the person I
- 30:15Speaker 1: want to have as my therapist, you know. Anyway, I
- 30:20Speaker 1: really appreciate you, appreciate you being here. We'll be in
- 30:22Speaker 1: touch absolutely, all right, take care, okay, bye,