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Uncovering The Warrior Spirit with Jenifer DeBellis · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Rivers podcast. My name is guiming Person,
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Speaker 1: and I interview incredible people who share the story of
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Speaker 1: how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big thank
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Speaker 1: you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest and
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Speaker 1: our sponsors. So five, four, three, two and one. All right, folks,
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Speaker 1: welcome back to the podcast. I'm very excited to have
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Speaker 1: as my guess today. Jennifer de Bellis. Jennifer, welcome, Thank
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Speaker 1: you so. Jennifer MFA is a PhD candidate, transformational speaker,
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Speaker 1: and award winning author of Warrior Sister, Cut Yourself Free,
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Speaker 1: New Wilderness, and Blood Sisters. She edits Pink Panther magazine
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Speaker 1: and hosts the Restore Your Inner Warrior podcast. She's featured
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Speaker 1: in Psychology Today, and her writing appears in Calix, Medical,
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Speaker 1: Literary Messenger, The Good Men Project, Solstice, and elsewhere. Jennifer,
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Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. Just a little bit about you, obviously,
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Speaker 1: but before we go and share with our listeners where
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Speaker 1: you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Speaker 2: I'm in the same place. So I'm born and raised
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Speaker 2: in Michigan.
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Speaker 3: I've lived other places, but God has me stuck in Michigan,
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Speaker 3: even though I keep trying to go somewhere with three
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Speaker 3: seasons or you know, with the pool all year.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so let's get to it. How did
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Speaker 1: you get into this field? How did this start for you?
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Speaker 3: It started pretty much when I was in the heat
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Speaker 3: of my own trauma. Actually, when I was a teenager
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Speaker 3: and a young adult, you know, just entering into adulthood.
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Speaker 2: I was coaching, so I was doing a lot.
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Speaker 3: I was working with a lot of different athletics organizations,
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Speaker 3: and I also had an accident, a very traumatic accident,
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Speaker 3: a motorcycle accident that I almost died in, and it
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Speaker 3: seemed like my life at this time just really my
1:56
Speaker 3: trauma was compounded. And I was also, you know, a
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Speaker 3: leader in a capacity where other people were experiencing their
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Speaker 3: own trauma.
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Speaker 1: So it was a really excuse me, you're talking about
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Speaker 1: trauma from the accident.
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Speaker 3: Trauma from the accident that also just made me have
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Speaker 3: to confront a lot of emotional trauma from my childhood.
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Speaker 3: In teen years that just started flooding me. Now that
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Speaker 3: I've had all this time, and you know, you have
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Speaker 3: a lot of time in your hands, you can't keep
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Speaker 3: yourself distracted and busy, which is how I coped.
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Speaker 2: I buried my grief.
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Speaker 3: I buried my trauma by staying very busy, being very productive,
2:32
Speaker 3: being very helpful. And you know, during this time in
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Speaker 3: my early twenties, I was given a totally different opportunity
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Speaker 3: to deal with my own trauma, to learn some effective
2:44
Speaker 3: strategies and you know, gain some tools, and I was
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Speaker 3: sharing them with other people. So my kind of coaching
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Speaker 3: other people through their trauma kind of began while I
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Speaker 3: was learning my you know, my own skills and having
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Speaker 3: my own trials and errors and then to be able
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Speaker 3: to say, you know, what worked for me.
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Speaker 2: And it was just that simple.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let me let me back up a little bit
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Speaker 1: if we can, and talk about this to whatever depth
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Speaker 1: you feel comfortable with and stop me whatever. But so early,
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Speaker 1: what kind of how early did the trauma start?
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Speaker 3: Early? You know, I was a repeat survivor of physical violence, okay,
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Speaker 3: and lots of different capacities, you know, some in you know,
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Speaker 3: sexual content and some just physical you know, assault types
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Speaker 3: of things.
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Speaker 1: So as a teen was just like going on in
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Speaker 1: your household type thing, or it was.
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Speaker 3: More like going on outside of the household, but certain
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Speaker 3: you know, certain behaviors were normalized where I just allowed
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Speaker 3: people to treat me a particular way. And you know,
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Speaker 3: people are very predatory, so the predators are looking for
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Speaker 3: people who are easy prey, who they know they will
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Speaker 3: get away with treating them a particular way. And I
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Speaker 3: just fell into these cycles of you know, not sticking
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Speaker 3: up for myself, not defending myself, not even paying attention
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Speaker 3: to the red flags of danger being present right now.
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Speaker 3: You know, most people would run from these situations, and
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Speaker 3: I was just blindly walking into them and not really
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Speaker 3: learning anything from these experiences. You know, how to protect
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Speaker 3: myself and you know, keep myself safe.
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Speaker 1: How did you cope.
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Speaker 3: While again I wasn't coping very well. You know, this
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Speaker 3: idea of resilience, I hate that word. It's thrown around
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Speaker 3: so much in our culture, and there's a good side
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Speaker 3: and a bad side to it. But I think when
4:38
Speaker 3: we say resilience, it's almost like that mask that we
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Speaker 3: put on that's like we're good, we're fine.
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Speaker 2: And I did master that.
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Speaker 3: I mastered that always being happy laughing in the face
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Speaker 3: of tragedy and trauma.
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Speaker 2: I still deal with that.
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Speaker 3: I still laugh very easily, laugh at inappropriate times, although
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Speaker 3: I'm much more healed and whole and co evident now
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Speaker 3: in my later years than I ever was back then.
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Speaker 2: But you know, I had.
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Speaker 3: All these coping skills and being resilient and just you know,
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Speaker 3: people like she just always bounces back. Nothing seems to
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Speaker 3: face her, nothing seems to keep her down.
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Speaker 2: And I don't necessarily believe that that was the case.
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Speaker 2: I just wasn't dealing with it. So it was like a.
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Speaker 1: Mountain that was Boyden's denial over perfectionism.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely yourself.
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Speaker 1: We're We're were your parents they were there.
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Speaker 3: I mean, you know, but you grew up in the
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Speaker 3: eighties and your parents were like, go play outside all day.
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Speaker 3: Why don't want to see you until it's dinner time?
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Speaker 3: The times were different, so you know, my parents, I don't.
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Speaker 3: I know that my parents didn't realize what kind of
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Speaker 3: trouble we were getting into or what kind of things
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Speaker 3: were happening. You know, now they know because I share
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Speaker 3: these things in my writing, But I don't think a
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Speaker 3: lot of parents knew what was going on, even under
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Speaker 3: their own roof. Like the place is where I was going,
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Speaker 3: and these things were happening, you know, it just times
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Speaker 3: were different. Parents were not helicopter parents back then. I
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Speaker 3: have one friend that I remember having a helicopter parent.
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Speaker 3: The rest were kind of like, even if we were
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Speaker 3: at their house, we were so far deep into the
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Speaker 3: house where the walls were sound proof, you know, just
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Speaker 3: just the times were different.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally totally get that and know that. So
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Speaker 1: you talked about coaching.
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Speaker 2: Yes, so I've got coaching through throughout the years.
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Speaker 3: I've had different roles in my communities, you know, whether
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Speaker 3: it was at church. For years, I coached young adult
6:41
Speaker 3: women and teens and even young moms. And then I
6:46
Speaker 3: went back to college and started formerly training and writing.
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Speaker 3: But a lot of even my PhD right now is
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Speaker 3: focused on studying the psychology of certain historical and mythological
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Speaker 3: female characters who embody this kind of like warrior, kind
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Speaker 3: of survivor spirit.
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Speaker 2: So all of my studies were kind of centered on
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Speaker 2: that kind of you know, I didn't go into.
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Speaker 3: Psychiatry or psychology, but I was always studying that in
7:12
Speaker 3: my writing, and it was always pouring over into the
7:16
Speaker 3: you know, it didn't matter if that if I was
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Speaker 3: coaching someone, like if they were hiring me or coming
7:21
Speaker 3: to see me as a counselor even that they just
7:24
Speaker 3: worked with me. They just noticed right away I was safe,
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Speaker 3: you know that that word safe. They noticed that I
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Speaker 3: was a safe space for them to just start sharing things.
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Speaker 3: And I don't know why people tell me the things
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Speaker 3: that they tell me. It just is a higher calling.
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Speaker 3: I understand it's part of my purpose and I seem
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Speaker 3: to be just a magnet for it. And people can
7:45
Speaker 3: also sense your capacity for compassion, and I think that
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Speaker 3: also comes through going through my own post traumatic growth experiences.
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Speaker 3: And now I just they just sense it, you know
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Speaker 3: that puppy dog look where they're like, Oh, she gets me,
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Speaker 3: She's amazing.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's that's totally awesome. So you said you
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Speaker 1: experienced an accident. Was it a car accident?
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Speaker 3: Car hit me hit Yeah? I was in a motorcycle
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Speaker 3: accident four weeks before my wedding.
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Speaker 1: Okay wow. And it was that event that you said
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Speaker 1: opened up the portals that kind of force you to
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Speaker 1: deal with what had gone on. Talk about that.
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Speaker 3: So, I, you know, was going through the physical therapy
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Speaker 3: and I didn't understand why I was struggling more mentally
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Speaker 3: with everything that was going on. And this was also
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Speaker 3: a really amazing time of my life where I'm getting
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Speaker 3: ready to marry my best friend, and you know, we've
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Speaker 3: got all these things going on, and I'm trying not to.
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Speaker 2: Let that fall off. The edge of the earth is like,
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Speaker 2: I'm still going to get married, I'm still going to heal.
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Speaker 3: And so I was doing all these things for my
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Speaker 3: physical healing, and I just felt very fragile, and I'm
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Speaker 3: sure that I wore that expression on my face because
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Speaker 3: my physical therapist was asking me, how were you doing?
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Speaker 3: And my physical therapy was very painful. I mean it
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Speaker 3: was excruciating. And I went through that for two and
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Speaker 3: a half years of physical time.
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Speaker 2: And you know, those first.
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Speaker 3: Six months, even after I got married, all these good
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Speaker 3: things are happening for me, and I just feel like
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Speaker 3: I was walking around in a fog. And my physical
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Speaker 3: therapist finally said to me one day, you know, have
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Speaker 3: you seen a therapist? And I was like, no, like
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Speaker 3: I've seen therapists in the past, and so he recommended
9:33
Speaker 3: me to someone in the in their network and I
9:37
Speaker 3: went to see her, and she wasn't anyone who could
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Speaker 3: personally relate to any of my experiences and some of
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Speaker 3: the things that she was saying, I was like, she's
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Speaker 3: just she's not my person. She's not the right person
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Speaker 3: for me here.
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Speaker 2: I mean I say that now. Back then, I was like,
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Speaker 2: I don't know about therapy.
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Speaker 1: Well did you excuse me a second. Did you during
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Speaker 1: this time when you were going through have and you
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Speaker 1: were struggling psychologically mentally as you said we were you
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Speaker 1: making connections to what had happened previously.
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Speaker 3: Absolutely, you were like the floodgates opened. And I wasn't
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Speaker 3: really talking about it to anyone because here I'm really married,
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Speaker 3: my husband's and I going understand all of these things.
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Speaker 3: So some of the things I was talking about, but
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Speaker 3: it was like lots of voices in the head, lots
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Speaker 3: of busy things all you know, going on at the
10:31
Speaker 3: same time, and I'm like a crud, Like how do
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Speaker 3: I deal with this? How do I stop the voices?
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Speaker 3: How do I stop all this?
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Speaker 1: Wow?
10:39
Speaker 2: You know?
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Speaker 3: And so one thing that made a difference for me, though,
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Speaker 3: is the therapist in that office. They had Coogler Ross's
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Speaker 3: Five Stages of Grief, and I took that pamphlet back
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Speaker 3: with me and I started reading it and I was like, Okay,
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Speaker 3: some of this applies to me, some of it doesn't.
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Speaker 3: And then I just started journaling because that was a thing.
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Speaker 2: I'm a writer. That was a thing that I do.
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Speaker 3: And when I started journaling, I started incorporating some of
11:02
Speaker 3: that grief language into my journals and recognizing, oh my god,
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Speaker 3: grief is really complicated and it's not just this like
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Speaker 3: curl up in a ball, don't get out of bed,
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Speaker 3: cry it out, angry fisted tears, beat the pillow, and
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Speaker 3: then go on with it. Which was the only really
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Speaker 3: like the understanding that I had of grief. And that
11:23
Speaker 3: is where I started to apply a lot of self
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Speaker 3: help strategies and I knew what to start looking for then,
11:29
Speaker 3: because once you have a name for something, you can say, okay,
11:33
Speaker 3: let me look more into this. Let me go to
11:35
Speaker 3: the library, let me see what I can find, because
11:37
Speaker 3: you know, we didn't have internet back then, what I
11:40
Speaker 3: can find on these things and start reading.
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Speaker 2: And I'm an avid reader, so that's what I started doing.
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Speaker 3: I started reading on particular things and having these breakthroughs.
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Speaker 2: Once I knew and once I built a vocabulary, I
11:52
Speaker 2: could then.
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Speaker 3: You know, have a different understanding and then tackle things,
11:57
Speaker 3: because trauma is all about tackling it.
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Speaker 1: Get specific, what talk about one of these breaks throughs.
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Speaker 1: What did it look like for you?
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Speaker 2: Uh? One of the breakthroughs?
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Speaker 3: Okay, So I have my own eight stages, So shot
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Speaker 3: and denial is my first stage, then pain, then recall.
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Speaker 2: Then.
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Speaker 1: More paid, more paid, and.
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Speaker 2: Then oh my god, I just had a brain freeze.
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Speaker 2: Guilt and shame.
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Speaker 3: So I'm gonna come back to that one because that's
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Speaker 3: right in the middle for a reason, anger, depression, hope
12:31
Speaker 3: and acceptance.
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Speaker 2: And then recovery was.
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Speaker 3: The last one I put in there because I feel
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Speaker 3: like if you have whatever trauma is, you're always in recovery,
12:39
Speaker 3: just like if you're recovering from anything, you're always in
12:41
Speaker 3: recovery because then you could always cycle back into something,
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Speaker 3: and you recognize what you have to do when those
12:47
Speaker 3: triggers come, when those temptations come to fall back into
12:50
Speaker 3: bad patterns or old you know, labels. And so for me,
12:55
Speaker 3: the guilt and shame that was number one. That that
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Speaker 3: was the breakthrough for me was all of the guilt
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Speaker 3: and the shame that I carried around for a lot
13:06
Speaker 3: of different things.
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Speaker 2: You know, as you.
13:07
Speaker 3: Get older and you look back at your childhood and
13:10
Speaker 3: something that happens and you think, why the heck did
13:13
Speaker 3: I let that happen. That's a very common thing. We
13:16
Speaker 3: live in a culture where people say that stuff to you.
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Speaker 1: How could I let that happen?
13:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you deserve that.
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Speaker 3: Look what you put yourself in, or look how you
13:25
Speaker 3: can conduct yourself or carry yourself. And it's that culture
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Speaker 3: of thinking that's so backward and insensitive, and so that
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Speaker 3: was a part of my experience growing up, was this
13:39
Speaker 3: idea of this shame, this compounded shame and guilt of
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Speaker 3: a lot of things. I was already in that mindset,
13:48
Speaker 3: wearing that identity of those labels when this hit me
13:52
Speaker 3: really hard.
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Speaker 2: And so then it was like, you know, can you.
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Speaker 3: Think of a way to make me feel worse about
13:58
Speaker 3: myself in every capacity, ever layer of my being? Boom here,
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Speaker 3: I am, oh.
14:03
Speaker 2: Keep smiling.
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Speaker 3: That's where I was in that moment of guilt and shame,
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Speaker 3: and I don't want to stay here. And you have
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Speaker 3: to get to that point where you're in the gutter
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Speaker 3: and you're on your you're crawling your army, crawling out
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Speaker 3: of that awful, yucky, dark place that you.
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Speaker 2: Say, I don't want to be here anymore.
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Speaker 3: I know what it's like to enjoy parts of life,
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Speaker 3: and I want that to be my life all the time.
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Speaker 3: And so you have to have that hunger and that
14:30
Speaker 3: hope of a future that you have to have a
14:32
Speaker 3: specific vision of what your future self wants and is
14:37
Speaker 3: going to look like, so that you're chasing that and
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Speaker 3: you're fighting for that. And I think you know that
14:42
Speaker 3: was that was a big wake up for me.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. So during that time,
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Speaker 1: you had just gotten married m h and were you
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Speaker 1: thinking to yourself? What were you thinking to yourself? I mean,
15:02
Speaker 1: what how did you get to the gutter point being
15:07
Speaker 1: newly married? What did that contrast intersection look like? How
15:12
Speaker 1: are you? What are you sharing? What are you not sharing?
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Speaker 2: You know, I was sharing things.
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Speaker 3: You know, my husband and I have a very open
15:20
Speaker 3: relationship as far as like communication. We talk a lot
15:23
Speaker 3: more than a lot of couples that I know, and
15:26
Speaker 3: so I was sharing a lot of stuff, but I
15:28
Speaker 3: wasn't sharing the raw of it. I had so much
15:31
Speaker 3: to share so it really didn't matter. But I was
15:33
Speaker 3: sharing more of the once I was like identifying and
15:37
Speaker 3: overcoming and there was a lot of good that came
15:39
Speaker 3: out of that. Because my husband has a lot of
15:40
Speaker 3: trauma from physical violence of his own in the back,
15:43
Speaker 3: in his past, and so what.
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Speaker 2: I was sharing with him was ministering to him in
15:48
Speaker 2: ways that I really didn't realize.
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Speaker 3: I didn't plan that and script that out, but I
15:53
Speaker 3: was sharing things with him and with others that I
15:56
Speaker 3: had already gotten past, a really raw, vulnerable thing, because
16:00
Speaker 3: back then I wasn't ready to make myself completely vulnerable,
16:05
Speaker 3: because I didn't feel safe in that capacity with anybody,
16:10
Speaker 3: and I had good reasons to not feel safe with anybody.
16:13
Speaker 3: I had a lot of chronic issues with friendships and
16:16
Speaker 3: trust and you know, abandonment and all those things. They
16:19
Speaker 3: weren't fears of those things, they were real manifestations in
16:23
Speaker 3: my life. And so I also had to work on
16:27
Speaker 3: letting people back in and trusting people to be completely vulnerable.
16:30
Speaker 3: And if you asked me back then, well, you know
16:33
Speaker 3: you're going to do this stuff in the future that
16:34
Speaker 3: I'm doing right now, I would have left and left
16:37
Speaker 3: and left in no way.
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Speaker 2: I would have been saying, you're crazy.
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Speaker 1: Do you know me?
16:42
Speaker 2: You're crazy? And then here I am.
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Speaker 3: So you know, there was that moment where I was
16:48
Speaker 3: just sharing what I felt comfortable and ready to share.
16:52
Speaker 1: Well, you it sounds like you would do a lot
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Speaker 1: of this by yourself, Yes, therapist, coach, did you have someone?
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Speaker 3: No? So I No, so I had Again, I was
17:04
Speaker 3: doing a lot of reading, and I also read.
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Speaker 2: A lot of classic literature.
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Speaker 3: Believe it or not, I was gravitating toward these narratives
17:13
Speaker 3: that had these same kind of overcomer female protagonists who
17:18
Speaker 3: were coming out of their struggles, and I was drawing
17:22
Speaker 3: so much.
17:23
Speaker 2: Encouragement from that.
17:24
Speaker 3: I was, you know, drawing encouragement from talking to other
17:28
Speaker 3: survivors of physical violence and seeing them make progress.
17:33
Speaker 2: Also and being online. Well this was before online, but
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Speaker 2: I do that now. Okay, So but even back then,
17:41
Speaker 2: how was I? You know?
17:43
Speaker 3: I was doing that. I was doing those things. And
17:47
Speaker 3: you know, over the years, I've my husband has had
17:49
Speaker 3: a couple of really good therapists, and I've gone with them.
17:53
Speaker 2: But I'm not gonna lie.
17:55
Speaker 3: Every time I went to therapy, the therapists kind of
17:57
Speaker 3: shook their head like you seem to have all the
17:59
Speaker 3: skills you need.
18:01
Speaker 2: And then I started to say, well, what the heck
18:03
Speaker 2: happens at therapy?
18:04
Speaker 3: I thought part of it is just coming and being
18:05
Speaker 3: like waw, let me tell someone everything other than my
18:09
Speaker 3: journal or.
18:10
Speaker 2: God, this this is all the ugly.
18:14
Speaker 3: And you know, people therapist after therapists would just say
18:18
Speaker 3: to me, you have the skills. You know, they'd seen
18:20
Speaker 3: me one or two times and then they would be like,
18:22
Speaker 3: you're good. And that just to me was mind blowing.
18:26
Speaker 3: So I think that just drove me harder to be like, Okay,
18:29
Speaker 3: keep doing what you're doing, keep being a good you know,
18:33
Speaker 3: advocate for.
18:33
Speaker 1: Your in defensive therapists. It's not just about that, right, Oh,
18:39
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other things that go on, yes,
18:41
Speaker 1: but all right, let me just remind everyone I'm speaking
18:43
Speaker 1: with Jennifer de Bellis. So you obviously are not only
18:50
Speaker 1: very empathic and compassionate, but you are like you exude
18:58
Speaker 1: this what is it? This rank, this this warrior spirit?
19:05
Speaker 1: Obviously it comes through How did you get to this
19:08
Speaker 1: point or when did you get to this point, Jennifer
19:11
Speaker 1: where you're like, Okay, I want to help others, maybe
19:15
Speaker 1: I can help others. What did that look like for you?
19:18
Speaker 2: I've always been that way so well.
19:20
Speaker 1: With this in this context specifically, I'm talking about.
19:24
Speaker 3: Oh so okay, So aside from all those things in
19:28
Speaker 3: my younger years, now fast forward, I go back to
19:31
Speaker 3: college to train as a writer and to teach at
19:35
Speaker 3: the college level. And I'm still in a smaller capacity
19:40
Speaker 3: ministering to people and coaching different young adults who I
19:43
Speaker 3: go to college with.
19:45
Speaker 1: When you said coaching, do you mean sports and sports?
19:47
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, life coaching.
19:49
Speaker 3: Coaching clients through where people want to do one on one,
19:54
Speaker 3: you know, self help sessions like Okay, tell me, walk
19:58
Speaker 3: me through how to deal with anger, walk me through
20:01
Speaker 3: how to deal with you know.
20:02
Speaker 2: So I would do these and a very science fact.
20:06
Speaker 3: I'm very into reading scholarly literature and backing everything up
20:11
Speaker 3: with science and what the industry standards are. I'm not
20:16
Speaker 3: trying to.
20:17
Speaker 2: Say chuck it all up.
20:18
Speaker 3: And I do also encourage people to go to their
20:21
Speaker 3: therapists and I help them come up with the right
20:23
Speaker 3: types of questions and things maybe to focus on with
20:26
Speaker 3: their therapist.
20:27
Speaker 2: So I'm kind of like a companion to a few
20:29
Speaker 2: people over the years.
20:31
Speaker 3: But aside from that, and I was trying to get
20:34
Speaker 3: out of that because I was trying to build a
20:37
Speaker 3: totally different area of my life. So now fast forward,
20:41
Speaker 3: my first book comes out, which is my coming of
20:43
Speaker 3: age Stories. There's a lot of physical violence in this book,
20:46
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of.
20:47
Speaker 2: Overcoming of it.
20:49
Speaker 3: And I am out touring with a book, and every
20:52
Speaker 3: time I would share any of the work from that
20:54
Speaker 3: particular or those topics, young women will come up to
20:59
Speaker 3: me after the readings and say all these very complimentary things.
21:02
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I can't believe you got through that.
21:04
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Really you seem so confident, you got
21:06
Speaker 3: your crap together. And it just, you know, the back
21:10
Speaker 3: of my head. I just kept walking away from these
21:12
Speaker 3: experiences almost broken hearted, thinking, Wow, there are all of
21:17
Speaker 3: these women who their lives are just starting, and they're
21:21
Speaker 3: carrying around.
21:22
Speaker 2: So much heavy baggage.
21:24
Speaker 3: They're not living, they're not even living in a quarter
21:27
Speaker 3: of their potential because they're weighted down and don't know
21:31
Speaker 3: how to cut themselves free from all this trauma.
21:35
Speaker 2: And so it kind of again, I'm meditating on it.
21:39
Speaker 3: I go to a reading, I have an experience, and
21:41
Speaker 3: I come back from that experience and I'm like, I
21:43
Speaker 3: have to write the book.
21:46
Speaker 2: I have to write the book.
21:47
Speaker 3: Like it was just at that moment where I was like,
21:49
Speaker 3: I wish I had a book to get this teenager
21:51
Speaker 3: who had just told me she just literally that day
21:54
Speaker 3: came out of the hospital after she tried to kill
21:55
Speaker 3: herself a third time, and she's showing me very real scars,
21:59
Speaker 3: and she you knew how to cut herself the right
22:01
Speaker 3: way too, And so I'm looking at it, going, God,
22:02
Speaker 3: thank god you didn't succeed. But as her grandma's pulling
22:05
Speaker 3: her out of this reading, I'm going, oh my god,
22:07
Speaker 3: I wish I had a book. I could just put
22:08
Speaker 3: it in her hands. I had nothing, just a few words,
22:12
Speaker 3: and I went home and I said, I'd got to
22:14
Speaker 3: write the book.
22:14
Speaker 1: And that was the first What was that book in
22:19
Speaker 1: the sense, what did you want to say to that
22:22
Speaker 1: young girl?
22:24
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, that she's not alone, that she's
22:27
Speaker 3: not crazy for all the things that she's struggling with
22:30
Speaker 3: and doesn't know how to deal with them and doesn't
22:32
Speaker 3: know how to get past them, that those are all
22:35
Speaker 3: very normal things, and that there is a way, there
22:39
Speaker 3: is a way out, not only to get beyond those
22:42
Speaker 3: struggles and to loose the grip of that trauma, but
22:46
Speaker 3: there's a way to live with happiness, a fulfilling life
22:50
Speaker 3: where you feel like you are thriving within your purpose
22:53
Speaker 3: and living confidently and more equipped to when other things arise.
22:58
Speaker 3: In your life, because you don't get through trauma and
23:00
Speaker 3: then never experience trauma again. It's not all life works.
23:03
Speaker 3: And so I wanted to give young girls like her
23:07
Speaker 3: a pocket companion that had all kinds of things I
23:10
Speaker 3: wished I had had when I was first overwhelmed with
23:14
Speaker 3: my trauma and didn't know how to deal with it. So,
23:18
Speaker 3: you know, it's a lot of different things. It's the
23:20
Speaker 3: information that they need, it's the strategies that they need.
23:23
Speaker 3: It's this self guided monthly journaling thing where you're going
23:29
Speaker 3: back and investing in yourself and changing your perspective on
23:33
Speaker 3: things and figuring out what your triggers really are because
23:36
Speaker 3: a lot of times we don't understand what the triggers are,
23:39
Speaker 3: and we have to with a lot of different guided approaches,
23:43
Speaker 3: whether it's working with a therapist, working with your counselor
23:46
Speaker 3: at school, or a trusted group you know, support group,
23:50
Speaker 3: or a trusted friend or family member, or a coach
23:53
Speaker 3: or somebody else where you know, in all these other
23:56
Speaker 3: self help strategies, any combination of these things, sometimes all
24:00
Speaker 3: of them are necessary in order for you to be
24:03
Speaker 3: able to tap into what are these triggers? How do
24:05
Speaker 3: I deal with the things that I need to deal with,
24:08
Speaker 3: cut myself completely free from the things I don't need
24:11
Speaker 3: to deal with. Because a lot of times survivors of
24:13
Speaker 3: trauma hold on to the labels of the experience, and
24:18
Speaker 3: then they think those labels are what identify them and.
24:20
Speaker 1: No labels like like what abuse?
24:24
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like yeah, like abuse, like like victim.
24:28
Speaker 2: You know, uh, there's a lot, you know.
24:30
Speaker 3: Even the label survivor like suggests that you have you
24:35
Speaker 3: have endured something. And you know, there's all types of
24:39
Speaker 3: you know, labels, other labels too, where the guilt and
24:42
Speaker 3: chap comes in. You're the troublemaker, You're the one who.
24:44
Speaker 2: Asked for it.
24:45
Speaker 3: All the different labels that come in you. Why does
24:48
Speaker 3: this keep happening to you? Because you're an idiot, you know.
24:52
Speaker 3: So when I say labels, it's a very complicated thing.
24:54
Speaker 3: And sometimes we think that those labels are what identify us,
24:59
Speaker 3: but really they do shape our character. But we can
25:03
Speaker 3: let go of those things and live a life free
25:06
Speaker 3: of them because they don't they don't have a place
25:08
Speaker 3: in our life. There's never a place in your life
25:11
Speaker 3: where you have to walk around and say, I'm a loser,
25:14
Speaker 3: I'm an idiot. I'm a repeat victim all those things
25:17
Speaker 3: and you add them all up into the same sentence,
25:20
Speaker 3: and you know, talk about overwhelming. Why get out of
25:25
Speaker 3: bed in the morning. That's depressing, right right?
25:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean as you're enumerating all these aspects and
25:32
Speaker 1: elements of this process, of this journey in and of
25:37
Speaker 1: itself is overwhelming. I mean there's so many things. Yes,
25:40
Speaker 1: you talked about, So all right, as we kind of
25:44
Speaker 1: wind down here, what what are you doing now? How
25:48
Speaker 1: are you working? Who are you working with?
25:52
Speaker 2: So?
25:53
Speaker 3: You know, my book Where Your Sister Cut Yourself Free
25:56
Speaker 3: came out in a second edition, which I'm really excited
25:59
Speaker 3: that I get a seconds on it.
26:00
Speaker 2: My publisher, Library Tales Publishing.
26:03
Speaker 3: Partnered with this distribution partnership with Simon and Schuster, and
26:06
Speaker 3: they went through the catalog and they picked my book
26:09
Speaker 3: as a book that they believed didn't get its fair
26:11
Speaker 3: chance because it came out during the pandemic. So this
26:15
Speaker 3: is going on, and I'm also at the same time
26:17
Speaker 3: developing this podcast series, Restore Your Inner Warrior, which is
26:21
Speaker 3: a broader range of just dealing with trauma. So I'm
26:24
Speaker 3: trying to move beyond just this niche of just dealing
26:28
Speaker 3: with people who are overcoming abuse and types of physical
26:32
Speaker 3: violence trauma to say, we all have different points of trauma,
26:36
Speaker 3: and some of the struggles are very similar. And everywhere
26:41
Speaker 3: I was going to speak also, they were asking me
26:44
Speaker 3: to censor this, you know the talk. Can you not
26:47
Speaker 3: use those words? Can you just talk about it on
26:49
Speaker 3: a broader scale. But I started thinking about, you know
26:52
Speaker 3: what we rally, we really need people to talk about
26:56
Speaker 3: it on a larger scale. So that's when I started saying,
26:59
Speaker 3: let me incorporate a lot of these principles into a
27:02
Speaker 3: broader approach to dealing with overcoming trauma and re establishing
27:10
Speaker 3: or for the very first time, some people are building
27:12
Speaker 3: their self esteem and confidence. And so that's what I'm
27:16
Speaker 3: doing right now, is I am trying to come up
27:19
Speaker 3: with literature in the form of self help books and
27:23
Speaker 3: also this podcast series because a lot of my readers
27:26
Speaker 3: don't want to sit down and read, They want to
27:28
Speaker 3: just pop in their buds and walk around. And I
27:32
Speaker 3: so that's what I'm doing right now as I'm developing
27:35
Speaker 3: these broader messages.
27:37
Speaker 1: Now is the podcast series? Is it one where you're
27:43
Speaker 1: interviewing people or is it you solo or both?
27:47
Speaker 2: It's both. I just started it.
27:49
Speaker 3: I just got through my first four weeks, and you know,
27:53
Speaker 3: the first few weeks was really me trying to get
27:55
Speaker 3: through the different parts of the second self help book
27:59
Speaker 3: that I'm working on, Rectore or Your Inner Warrior, and
28:01
Speaker 3: it felt more scripted. But you know, once you commit
28:04
Speaker 3: to something, you're like follow it through and then learn
28:07
Speaker 3: from it. So again I'm learning from like, Okay, don't
28:10
Speaker 3: have to get so deep into one episode. You can
28:12
Speaker 3: split it into three. But you know, I'm working on that.
28:16
Speaker 3: I have a couple of guests who I want to
28:18
Speaker 3: bring on. I actually want to do a couple of
28:20
Speaker 3: book club types of things. So I have a book
28:22
Speaker 3: club that's going to come on and do a Q
28:24
Speaker 3: and A with me. So I'm gonna do a whole
28:26
Speaker 3: bunch of things because you know, I want I want
28:30
Speaker 3: to experiment with what listeners will respond to and maybe
28:35
Speaker 3: don't respond to all of them.
28:37
Speaker 1: Finally, here, if I was to ask you, like, what
28:44
Speaker 1: your mission is, what would you say that is? How
28:47
Speaker 1: would you respond?
28:48
Speaker 2: Hmm?
28:49
Speaker 3: So my mission is to really help people see that
28:54
Speaker 3: they hold the power to restore that inner warrior. They
28:58
Speaker 3: hold the power, and however they bring in the help.
29:01
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what that help looks like.
29:04
Speaker 3: We're not created to be an isolation. So find community,
29:08
Speaker 3: find that outside support. Whatever that system looks like for you,
29:11
Speaker 3: you have to create it. Also, there's no one formula
29:15
Speaker 3: that that you can just plug yourself into and say, okay,
29:17
Speaker 3: this works. So my really mission is to be one
29:22
Speaker 3: of the outlets that is a safe space for all
29:26
Speaker 3: types of survivors of trauma to come and find community,
29:30
Speaker 3: to find that support, to share their own stories so
29:33
Speaker 3: that they also feel heard, receive that compassion that we
29:38
Speaker 3: all crave. We all crave that compassion when you meet
29:41
Speaker 3: people who don't only speak your language, but they speak
29:43
Speaker 3: your dialect.
29:45
Speaker 2: And that's what.
29:46
Speaker 3: So that's the type of community that I am trying
29:50
Speaker 3: to cultivate. And you know, so I think maybe I
29:53
Speaker 3: answered in a roundabout way. My mission is wrapping all
29:56
Speaker 3: of these things up into one.
29:58
Speaker 1: I love it, Love it Jennifer to us, how do
30:01
Speaker 1: people reach you and learn more about your books and
30:04
Speaker 1: your podcast series and what you have going on. It's
30:07
Speaker 1: the best way.
30:08
Speaker 2: So two ways.
30:09
Speaker 3: So my website Jennifer devellis and that's j E N
30:12
Speaker 3: I F E R D E b E L l
30:15
Speaker 3: I S dot com or Restore your Inner Warrior dot com.
30:20
Speaker 3: And that's the same name as the podcast Restore Your
30:23
Speaker 3: Inner Warrior, which is available in audio and video on
30:27
Speaker 3: every streaming platform that there is out there.
30:30
Speaker 2: So those are the two best ways to find information, okay, and.
30:34
Speaker 1: We'll have all that link up here at the show
30:35
Speaker 1: notes page at the Trauma Theapist podcast dot com. Jennifer,
30:38
Speaker 1: You're awesome. Love to have you back at later date,
30:41
Speaker 1: so inspiring. Thank you for being here, Thank you for
30:46
Speaker 1: having me all right, Take care mean too.