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Buckle Up, Baby with Mary Beth Fox · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Guy McPherson.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show. Five, four, three, two,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and one. All right. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Super excited to have as my guest today, Mary Beth Fox.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Mary Beth, welcome.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: All right. Awesome. Awesome. Mary Beth is a licensed professional counselor, writer, speaker,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: and founder of Soul Shine Counseling and Wellness. Known as
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the inner child therapist, she helps people heal childhood wounds,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: negative self-beliefs, and relationship patterns rooted in what she calls
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: not good enough stuff. Through her counseling practice, widely read blog,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and growing online platform, she combines clinical insight and relatable
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: storytelling to guide individuals toward lasting emotional healing and a
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: stronger sense of self. She's also the author of a
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: forthcoming book focused on overcoming feelings of not being good
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: enough and reconnecting with one's true soul identity. All right,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Mary Beth, just a little bit about you, obviously. But
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: before we get going, share with the listeners where you're
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: from originally and where you are currently.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Originally, Mississippi, hence the deep southern accent. But I now
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: live in the beautiful mountains not far from you in.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Ashland, Oregon. Oh, nice.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Very exciting. All right. So I love what you're doing.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I love storytelling, identity, negative self-beliefs. Got a lot of
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: those floating around.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Yep. Everybody does.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: How does this start for you? How did all this
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: start for you?
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: So August will be 16 years ago.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: I was actually working for Big Pharma.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: I was a drug rep and I was hit head
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: on by a drunk driver. And my neck was broken.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: And I was told that I was paralyzed permanently from
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: the neck down. As you can see, I am not.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: So the doctors were wrong. And I argued because I
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: knew they were wrong. So after my wreck, that gave
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: me what kind of I thought was an excuse to
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: go to therapy.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, like I didn't have one before or
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: needed one.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Wait, hang on. Just, I'm sorry to interrupt you so quickly,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: but you're head on, you're into the hospital. Are you
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: unconscious for a period of time or what? No.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: No.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Okay. So at some point the doctors say, sorry, but
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: you're going to be paralyzed from the neck down. And
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: were you able to like all of a sudden move
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: your toes and say, how.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Did that work?
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: It was a few days. Okay.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: It was a few days. Yeah.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: And in those moments, my first thought was, who can
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: I get in here to help me in this?
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Because I don't want to live this way.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Okay. So initially you are like immobile. Yeah. But then
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: at some point, how do you determine you can move?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: What did you do?
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I remember telling my mom to hand me my phone.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Um, and she's just looking at me like, do I
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: remind her like what's going on? And I just kept
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: giving me my phone and I couldn't talk well cause
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: I couldn't open my jaw and I just gave me
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: my phone. And so she put it in my hand
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: and I moved my fingers and then slowly everything just
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: started coming back.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: What?
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: It was called, yeah.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: The injury is called the hangman's death. So it's the
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: injury that kills people when they're hanged.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay. All right. So sorry about that. So go on. Continue.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: So obviously a very long recovery. I'm still physically recovering.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: 16 years later, I've had numerous surgeries. Just had a
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: surgery last week.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: On your neck?
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: On my mouth. Yeah.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Damn. Okay. Yeah.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: I went to therapy after that because I was not okay. Obviously,
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: my entire life was forever going to be changed due
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: to all the physical and the emotional of that.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: And so I went to therapy thinking, well, this is
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: my issue.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: The wreck was maybe, I'd venture to say, 20% of
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: my issues and pretty quickly discovered it was childhood trauma.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop right there. So how does
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: that unfold? How do you realize that in therapy? What happens?
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: So as I was there and talking about my wreck
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: and the impact and all of that, I started talking about, well,
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: I'm just really depressed and started realizing this depression didn't
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: come just from the wreck and started admitting to myself,
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: this had been since.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: I was a little bitty girl.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: So the accident, what woke it up, made you realize,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: made you look at it or what?
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: Made me be able to admit it to somebody else because.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: I gave you an opportunity. Okay. Okay.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: From the outside looking in before the wreck, I had
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: it all. I had it all.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: High paying job, was training for a marathon, was a kickboxer,
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: had bought a house at 23.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: All these great things, but I was severely depressed.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: And the day of the wreck, I played hooky, pretended
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: to go to work and I didn't. And so I
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: decided that I had a friend tell me, get up
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: and go work out, get off the couch.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: And I got up, got in the car.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Oh my God. Wow. Yeah. How, how fast were you
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: guys going? Do you remember?
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Probably maybe 50.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Okay. That fast?
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: And hit me head on.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay. So you go to therapy. Like you said,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: you got an excuse to go to therapy. Prior to that,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: were you like, I don't need therapy. Who needs therapy?
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: So you get in there. Okay. So who– this therapist
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: sounds like he or she– Was pretty good.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was. She was.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: What was it that they did or said or didn't
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: say or how they were that kind of connected with you?
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: She kept pushing me on what was going on for
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: you before this wreck ever happened.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: Because I kept trying to convince her and myself that
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: everything was fine. I had a good childhood.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: All these things. My life was great. And she saw
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: straight through it.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: So what did she see or what did you see
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: or recognize finally?
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: That what you had mentioned earlier, uh, what I call
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: not good enough stuff. Um, I was doing all these
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: things to prove my worth to everybody and to myself
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: because I didn't feel good enough and started kind of navigating.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Where did this come from? Came from childhood trauma. Like
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: I mentioned, I grew up with an alcoholic father. There
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: was violence in the home that I witnessed. Um, nobody
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: was emotionally available physically. My mom was there. Some, nobody
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: was emotionally there. Um, and you know, I had always
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: had this sense that I wasn't really wanted. Um, and
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: so I was always trying to fight in every aspect
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: of my life to prove that I deserve to exist,
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: to prove that I was good enough and had all
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: these accomplishments and they meant nothing to me because, because inside,
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: I felt not good enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not,
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: you know, successful enough, all this.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: And so all of my.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Accomplishments that society would applaud.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Meant nothing to me.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: So how do things unfold with this therapist?
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: We started, I did some hypnotherapy and just started looking
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: at the fact that I had no of ever being
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: content or happy. All of my memories were from being
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: depressed and from having asked at a young age to
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: go to therapy.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: But no, we don't do that. Wow.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: You have a good childhood. You have a good family.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: You have a good life. You have nothing to be
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: sad about. You just choose to be happy.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Did you have siblings?
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: I did. I'm the youngest.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: OK. And we we had to leave the house due
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: to the violence and drinking. And it was never we
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: were never allowed to talk about it. And well, he's
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: not that bad of an alcoholic.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Well, he died of cirrhosis. So I would say that
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: he was.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: And it's sad thinking about that as my father, because
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: I know his struggles, the generational trauma.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: His father was an alcoholic, was abusive, all of that.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: But me having to pretend everything was fine and hide
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: it to anybody outside the home.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Don't let anybody know what's going on. We have a
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: good family. I heard that a million times.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: So here you are dealing with this horrific accident. At
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the time, from the time you went in the hospital
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: to the time you went to saw the therapist, how
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: long was that?
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: That was probably about four.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Months before I went to therapy.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, so not long. So are you what? Are you
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: walking with a brace at that point?
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: I had a brace from the top of my hips
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: all the way up to my neck that pushed my
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: neck to the ceiling.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Jeez.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. For a few months, I didn't walk very well.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: I had a walker.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: My mother had to bathe me, had to everything for me.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: I couldn't talk for a while much. I had to
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: write everything down just because of the damage to my jaw.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: So you're in this, I mean, this is pretty intense.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: You're in this therapist's office thinking, I got to deal
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: with this accident and my identity. But this other stuff,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: this like foundational core stuff comes up. How are you mentally,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: psychologically dealing with that at that time? Yeah.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: It was very difficult because I had known it was there,
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: but I had dismissed it because it was made up.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: In my mind. It was worse than I thought. Like,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: you're fine. Get over it.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: And so all of the things that I had been
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: through and that I knew on some level were traumatic,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: were not normal, were not okay, were impactful, all these things.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: I had just told myself what I had been heard
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: and I repeated the voices in my head. from everyone
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: I'd heard, society, family, culture, that you have a roof
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: over your head. You have a nice home. You have
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: a family, all of these things. So then I just
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: thought there was something wrong with me. I wasn't good
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: enough because I have all these things. I'm supposed to
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: have this good life.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: What's wrong with you? You're fine. It wasn't that bad.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: All right. Jesus. First of all, I want to say
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: you're incredible. Thank you. I mean, really, really look at you.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I mean, I'm like, hey, Mary Beth, come on. Crazy.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: Come on.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Look what you're doing. OK, so let's take some steps
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: forward here. How do things unfold during this process?
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: So, like I said, I went to therapy and.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: I was at home recovering for quite some time. And
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: then the, the, my job in pharmaceutical sales, my contract
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: was up. So they said you, and I wasn't really
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: ready to fully go back to work. They said, your
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: contract's up. You're either going to have to be transferred
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: somewhere else or you're not going.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: To have a job.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: So I picked up, I was in Mississippi at the
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: time and moved to Dallas, Texas. I got to Dallas and,
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: not long before I needed hip surgery number one. So
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: I had hip surgery, was off obviously from work for that.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: And then a few months later, I started not being
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: able to walk again and I needed surgery on the
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: other hip.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: And the company said, no more job. You can't be
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: off anymore.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: And my body was just getting worse and worse and worse.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: And I physically couldn't do it anymore anyway. And so
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: I had no job.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, hang on, hang on. So we haven't even talked
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: about insurance.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Oh, yes. That was before the Affordable Care Act. And
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: I could not get insured. I spent a couple months
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: on the phone every day with doctors reviewing my medical
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: history to determine if I could have insurance or not.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: And every single one denied me. And obviously your job.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Gave you insurance. Yeah. Okay.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: And so insurance, since you bring it up, that was
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: a significant part of the next step. But also me
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: having done so.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Much work in therapy.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Led me to decide that since I physically couldn't work
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: or do much, that I was going to go to
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: grad school to be a therapist because I wanted to
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: help people heal. from the childhood trauma and that not
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: good enough stuff, feeling not good enough in the ways
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: that I had been able to work through and heal.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: And so I.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: Applied to one graduate school only, Southern Methodist University in Dallas,
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: because one, it's a fabulous school, but also they give
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: students health insurance.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: And that was the only way. Oh my God.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: And so throughout graduate school, I had two more surgeries,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: excuse me, one more surgery.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: Or was it two?
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: I've lost my train of thought on that. But I
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: had one or two more hip surgeries, and they were
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: great with me. You know, I laid in the floor
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: during classes. I couldn't sit up for long, that kind
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: of stuff. But they worked with me. So I went
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: to graduate school to be a therapist throughout my recovery.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Okay. So you get into school. Your thought is, I
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: want to help other people with this negative self-belief. Wow,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: which is amazing. Okay, so... How long were you in
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: graduate school for?
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: A little over two years.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Okay. And during that time, are you still in therapy? Yes.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: With the same therapist?
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Yes and no. Somewhat.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: And I did a kind of an intensive program through
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: that therapist and some other And then I did psychodrama
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: training with another therapist in Dallas and did a whole
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: lot of very intense work on my own. Yeah.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: So you graduate, you get out. At what point did
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: you say, I want to start my own gig, my
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: own thing? How does that unfold?
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: I knew that before I started graduate school. That was
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: my goal.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: So I graduated and moved back to Mississippi because I
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: knew the kind of work that I did in therapy
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: was not readily available where I just happened to still
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: own a home in Mississippi. So I moved back there,
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: worked a couple of jobs and then worked full time
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: while building my practice part time, 12 hour days, seven
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: days a week. until I had enough to sustain myself.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: In private practice.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: So what did you want to do specifically? How did
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: you want to work with your clients?
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: I worked with children, young ones and adults, and I
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: loved working with the little ones because helping them and
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: their parents could change the trajectory of their entire lives.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: So that even when they went through things like I
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: had been through and things, you know, different and all
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: of that, that they had somebody who could guide them
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: in that so that they didn't get to the point
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: of damn near dying like I did before they could
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: begin to heal. And so the more I worked with
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: children and adults, I started realizing, and then after I
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: had my child, my work isn't with little ones anymore.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: It's only adults.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Because if I can work with adults, especially those who
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: are parents, that does more than working with the children.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: And helping the parents see what they can change so
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: that they don't have children who grow up not knowing
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: how to heal and move through life in healthy ways
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: like I didn't know. And the thing that I found
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: common with every single little one, teenager and adult, is
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: this massive.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Feeling of not being good enough.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: And so that's kind of what drives my work because
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: I've never met, and I don't think I ever will,
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: whether they're honest about it or not, a person who
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: has not felt good enough at some point in their
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: life and helping them navigate into childhood, where did this
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: come from? And there's even research about um, in the womb,
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: things that, um, babies can, can absorb from their parents' environment,
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: all that, and, and how that shapes the rest of
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: their life.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: This idea of, you know, well, let's change our negative self,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: negative self beliefs. It sounds great. I mean, it's hard.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Come on. We all know it is. How do you
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: do that? Give me an example. Let me, let me,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: if you can, Give me an idea of how you
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: work with someone. Pick someone. We don't have to use
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: their name or whatever. They walk in. What do you do?
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's always.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Funny is not the right word. But, you know, funny
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: for lack of a better word. When they come in,
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: usually in the first session, I ask them about their childhood.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: And they so often say, oh, no, I had a
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: good childhood.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Well, yes, you could have. We're going to check.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: Some potential aspects of that, but, but also you can
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: have what you consider a good childhood and you still
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: had things that were traumatic for you. And so I
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: helped them navigate through looking at things that were not
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: considered trauma or but that were, and I called them,
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: I call them repeated emotional traumas. So it could be,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: you know, somebody that, you know, felt like they were
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: not pretty. And at four years old, you know, maybe
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: mom said, Hey, uh, you shouldn't wear that color dress.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: That's, that's, that's ugly on you. Um, you know what,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: you need to wear this instead.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: And so little bitty message in there, it say four
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: years old is I'm not pretty. I'm not good enough.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: And say, you know, throughout their childhood, if, you know,
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: Red Rover, Red Rover, the game, you know, send somebody over.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you ever played that, but say
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: that they are picked three or four times last. And
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: the girl that she thinks is pretty gets chosen first.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: That's another repeated emotional trauma that connected to the originals.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: And so that starts.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: Building this big, huge belief of I'm not good enough.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: I'm not pretty enough. And so all these different things
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: throughout their life start kind of coming to them and
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: add to that and get bigger and bigger and bigger
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: to where, in my kind of opinion, that can often
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: be those repeated emotional traumas in the brain bigger than, say,
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: you know, the loss of a loved one in childhood,
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: a house burning down. And I think the reason that
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: that can seem bigger is because when something like that happens,
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: we know that.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: That's hard for a child. We are patient with them.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: We hopefully, but often they get what they need because
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: that's recognized, but these other things are not recognized.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Additionally, what you're talking about deals with person's identity, right?
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And that's very powerful. So you you work with someone,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: you work with your clients to kind of uncover, if
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: you will, these issues. But so how do you, quote unquote, heal?
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: How do you work with that? Yeah.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: So I tell that voice in your head, I'm going
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: to help you see it's not yours.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: It's not yours.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: It became yours and it became your identity, but it's
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: not yours. So we go back. And we start looking
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: at where did that come from? Society, family, culture, sometimes religion.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: So for say the girl I was talking about at
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: four years old, mom said, put on a different dress.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: So when you look in the mirror or you're getting
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: ready to go somewhere and you put 250 pounds of
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: makeup on because you think you're not pretty.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Whose voice is that? Whose voice is?
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: That was mom's. That was mom's.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: So if you take off all that makeup, And you
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: know that that was mom's voice, not yours.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: It became yours. What is your true voice there? What
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: is your true voice?
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: You know, oh, look, I have curly red hair. I
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: love my curly red hair.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Okay. It's not terrible. It's not this.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: And then you're talking about identity. That does become somebody's identity.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: But it was never their true soul identity. And so
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: it could also come from culture, society. You know, society says,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: I'm just making this up. You should have blonde hair,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: straight blonde hair. And so, well, I'm not that. And
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: so then there's another voice from society telling you when
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: you look at yourself, you're not pretty enough. You're not
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: good enough. And so it's identifying where did these voices
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: come from?
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: How big are they? How loud are they? How often
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: are they showing up?
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Because when you can identify whose voices those are, then
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: you can look and see it's not my voice. So
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: it's not your voice. Then let's look at what your
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: voice is.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And all these elements you're talking about, all these steps
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and stages are huge in and of themselves, right? For
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: someone to recognize, first of all, for someone to recognize
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: that that particular incident was traumatic for them, has impacted
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: them all these years. It's huge. Like you said, a
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: lot of people are like, I had a fine childhood.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: I wasn't traumatized. I wasn't in war. I haven't been
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: sexually assaulted. I wasn't in a crazy car accident. But
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: then to start realizing that those little things have really
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: impacted the trajectory of your life is crazy. And then
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: to see that's not my voice. So this in and
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: of itself, this whole process can, and correct me if
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: I'm wrong, can in and of itself be destabilizing for someone. Like, whoa.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Then who am I?
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: And that's why I talk about true soul identity. Because
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: most people die never really knowing who they are. Because
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: they've attached themselves to the identity of these voices themselves.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: And so you're exactly right. When we remove roles and
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: we remove these voices of society, family, and culture, who
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: am I?
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: What am I? How do I exist? I don't know
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: who I am. So it is.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: Going back to who you were born as, that true
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: soul identity.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Were you a curious child?
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Were you somebody who would, you know, explore nature and,
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: you know, like to put things together? Were you somebody
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: who just had this energy that drew everybody together. And
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: so it is going back to that. It's not about
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: finding yourself. It's about removing the layers of life, the
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: voices and all of that to return back to that
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: true soul identity that you forgot and maybe didn't even
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: know to explore and see who you truly are removed
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: of all of that.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Wow. So do people come to you specifically for this
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: type of work? Whether they know it or not, they
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: show up. They're going to get it.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: A lot of them, a lot of them do. It's,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: it's a lot of kind of word of mouth.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: That's pretty much how I get all of my clients
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: is I saw somebody that they knew and, and them knowing,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: you know, when it's somebody who's, who comes to me
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: because they had a friend or somebody that they knew
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: worked with me and they tell me, I.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Want you to be my therapist, but I'm not.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Sure that I do because I heard you really hard
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: and you're tough and like, and you're just going to
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: say it like it is.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: And this is going to be hard. Not telling buckle up, baby.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: It is going to be hard because if it were easy,
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: everybody in the world would heal to this level.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Oh my God. All right. Um, how do people learn
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: more about you and what you're doing? Yeah.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: So I also write a blog. It's called the inner
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: child therapist. Um, it's the inner child therapist.com. Um, and
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: I actually have a free guide on there. They can
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: go search in the search button, um, on my website, um,
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: just type guide and it will, um, give them a free,
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: not good enough stuff guide where I explain this and
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: go deeper into that. Um, Um, to help them understand
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: where this not good enough stuff, those voices, where they
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: came from, um, and helps them kind of navigate their
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: true soul identity. Um, there's tons of stuff on my website, um,
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: for that. I'm also on Tik TOK. I post a
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: couple of times a day at the inner child therapist, Instagram,
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: and also Facebook. Okay.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: We'll have all that linked up here at the show
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: notes page at the trauma therapist podcast.com. Um, Mary Beth,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: come on. Really, you're just so freaking inspiring. How are
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: you doing now? How are you feeling?
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I am content and it took me a long time.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: To get here.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Physically, I have to rest a lot. I'm also a
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: stay-at-home mom and all the other things that I do.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: So I get up very early in the morning and
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: do my work so that then I can lay down
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: and rest.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: I usually have to rest.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: Maybe two to four hours a day because I physically
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: cannot sit up for long. I can't do a whole
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: lot of physical activity anymore. But I'm still in physical
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: therapy twice a week. I'm learning how to get stronger
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: and I'm okay. I have learned how to create a
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: fabulous life.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: And when my own.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: Not good enough stuff pops back up, I know what
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: to do with that and how to help myself or
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: go back to therapy when I need to. But overall,
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: I truly have created a life that no BS. I
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: truly enjoy in love.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Love it. Love it. Love you. I'd love to have
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: you back. It was great meeting you.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: All right. Take care. Thanks.