Latest / Adult Child of Dysfunction / E 363: You Don't Need "Big Trauma" to Be Traumatized | Stacey Uhrig

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E 363: You Don't Need "Big Trauma" to Be Traumatized | Stacey Uhrig · Adult Child of Dysfunction

• 0:00
  hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Adult Child of Dysfunction.
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  Today we have with us Stacey Urig.
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  She is a non-clinical trauma care practitioner, an educator, and host of Flip Your Mindset podcast.
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  She helps people understand why they think, feel, and behave the way they do, making complex trauma concepts simple, relatable, and deeply empowering through the belief that behavior always makes sense.
• 0:22
  Sorry.
• 0:23
  Welcome, Stacey.
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  Hi, how are you?
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  I am doing great.
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  Glad we got to connect, actually connect this time, so that's amazing.
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  Gotta love technology, right?
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  I know.
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  So I'm just gonna jump right in.
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  We're gonna talk a little bit about how you got doing what you do, but before we even start, I want to actually make note of something that was in your bio.
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  When you say a non-clinical trauma care practitioner, can you explain that for the listeners?
• 0:51
  Yeah.
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  So I'm what's known as a trauma care practitioner.
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  That's how I'm trained.
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  I personally...
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  my technical title is certified trauma care practitioner.
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  I like to put in the non-clinical in front of it because it's important for me to let people know I'm not a clinical licensed social worker, 'cause I often get misrepresented as such, and also I'm really not in
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  the zone of pathologizing.
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  My job is not to treat or diagnose, as would be the case of somebody that was clinical.
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  My job is to listen, hold space, and help somebody understand why their behavior makes sense- And so I like it.
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  For me, I put the non-clinical up there so people understand I'm not in a role to be looking for a diagnosis.
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  I'm really just looking to help people understand themselves better.
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  Okay.
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  Perfect, and that makes a lot of sense because I know I do TikTok lives, and the AI summary always comes up, and it always says, "A therapist describes..."
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  And I'm like, "Okay, guys, another AI summary goofoo."
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  I am not a therapist.
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  I don't, because there is a big distinction, and- Huge distinction and honestly, one of the reasons I didn't go into therapy was because I didn't like the idea of the fact that it- Western medicine tends to, "Okay, these
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  are your symptoms.
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  Let me give you a medicine," instead of getting to the root cause of what's actually causing things.
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  So kudos to you.
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  Yeah, exactly.
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  Same philosophy.
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  Yeah.
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  So part of what I do too, and I think we do the same thing, that I'm a I call myself a trauma informed coach, practitioner.
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  Okay.
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  Whatever, I'm not even sure.
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  People are like, "What do you do?"
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  And I'm like, "I'm a body, mind, and spirit coach."
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  I'm like- we do whatever you need at the moment."
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  Staying in my lane, of course.
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  You mentioned that one of your favorite sayings or one of the sayings that you say a lot is, "Behavior always makes sense."
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  Talk a little bit about that.
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  Because I know in our world of people not understanding why they do what they do, it sounds like- you're saying we do understand why we do what we do.
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  I certainly understand why people do what they do, right?
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  And look, the reality is at the end of the day, we're really highly developed mammals, and we have a lot of natural instincts, and we have things that are inherently very important to our nervous system and our brain,
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  which is to stay alive.
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  And in order to stay alive, we need to feel safe and secure, and connection is a really big part of having a sense of safety and security.
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  It's just a very primal need for us.
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  So when we're growing up or we find ourselves in environments where there's a threat to connection or there's a threat to safety, we will naturally adapt.
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  It's what we do as humans, right?
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  Our mind and our body and our nervous system, they're wired for survival, not for happiness or joy or contentment.
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  So when somebody comes to me and they say I lack confidence," or, "I don't believe I have worth," or, "I'm a consummate people pleaser.
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  I don't know how to set boundaries"- I get really curious about what is it that you experienced at any stage growing up, I'll say zero to 18, where maybe safety and security or connection felt like a threat, where
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  you felt like you couldn't just show up as yourself.
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  Because what I know to be true is when we are born, and I'm very much a practitioner of parts work, when we're born, we're really very grounded and aligned with ourselves.
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  We have a high sense of confidence.
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  We have a lot of courage.
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  We have a knowing of value.
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  Those things are inherent.
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  And so I get curious about what did you need to do?
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  How...
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  What's happening that caused you to feel as though showing up as yourself was not enough?
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  Okay.
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  And so when I help people connect those dots, it tends to make sense to them.
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  and that makes 100% sense, and it sounds like you and I do almost exactly the same thing- Yeah because I truly...
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  and I go a lot into the body, the body-mind connection and probably that's kind of everything.
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  But at the end of the...
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  'Cause I deal with root causes of disease later on, but at the end of the day, it seems like everything, every single inherent, every single belief that you have in your subconscious mind, which is what we run off
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  of- Yeah is from way, way back when.
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  Yeah.
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  And I noticed you do NLP.
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  I'm certified in rapid transformational therapy, so I also utilize hypnosis to access some subconscious work when necessary or when valuable to help them start to recognize, oh, I did shape shift there, and that makes sense.
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  And when you can help them make sense of it, they can look at it and say, "Am I still in that environment?
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  Do I still need to show up that way?"
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  And how do we make that very familiar adaptation unfamiliar and vice versa?
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  And it's all, we're all patterns.
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  We're all just habits and patterns and like you said, adaptations.
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  If Yeah everything adapts.
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  Everything.
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  it's not even just human nature, it's biological nature, how we do.
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  Turtles grow whatever they have to grow to, to adapt in their environment.
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  We do the same thing, and unfortunately, children don't get to choose that for many years.
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  they don't get to- decide what's going on in their subconscious or what messages they're being fed.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So talk about the distinction between, So you deal with a lot of childhood trauma, and the And I don't know your belief about this, maybe talk on this too, but I don't believe, and I tell people all the
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  time, there's a lot of comparison and a lot of people not reaching out for help right now because they feel like, "Oh, mine wasn't that bad," quote, unquote.
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  Yeah.
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  And it breaks my heart, 'cause I tell people if it changed the way you look at the world and it which now changes the way you look at yourself and the way you're acting in the world, then it
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  doesn't necessarily have to be this big T trauma to warrant exploration and help really I agree, and I actually have a huge cringe when people talk about big T trauma and little T trauma.
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  Me too.
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  I'm not quite sure where that compartmentalizing or that distinction came into place, or how that came about, but the reality is those of us who work in the space of trauma know trauma's not the event, right?
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  So we know that an event can be traumatic in the moment, but trauma is really that aftermath.
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  It's the impact of what happened, as you said, that shifts the way that we see ourselves, others, and the world around you.
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  So there's no comparison on trauma.
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  One...
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  a big, bold experience could have the same impact of something that somebody didn't think was, I'm gonna put in quotes, "as bad".
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  But the reality is the nervous system doesn't distinguish between big and little.
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  It looks at, did I feel safe and secure and connected, or did I not?
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  And so it it...
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  And I don't mean to belittle or, diminish, but if you're in a situation where your physical safety is at risk, and your body, designates this as, "This is unsafe," versus being in second grade and come...
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  I've seen this so many times under hypnosis, coming out of the cafeteria for social time and play time on the playground, and maybe you ran to the bathroom before everybody else went out, and by the time you came
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  out, all the groups were had.
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  Maybe they're playing dodgeball or they're playing something and everybody's teamed up, and you're on the outside, also feels like a threat.
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  I know that sounds a little crazy, but at the end of the day, we're so hardwired for connection, these things are equally as impactful.
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  And again, the event is not what we're looking at.
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  It's, what did you choose to believe about yourself in that moment?
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  Which is, I'm not enough.
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  They didn't wait for me.
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  I'm not valuable.
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  It's not rational, but that's the brain of a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old or a nine-year-old, and that leaves us feeling unsafe because we're so hardwired for that connection.
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  Big T, little T, I kinda have a little issue with.
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  I have a big issue with it.
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  I hate it.
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  And, the reality is we get to get curious, as you said- As to what is it that you chose to believe in the moment that was a beautiful and brilliant thing to recognize, and is it true today?
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  Are we still living from decisions we made earlier, or are we living from what's right in front of us right now?
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  Are we living through the unhealed wound?
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  I always say we filter everything through the unhealed wound.
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  Or, are we living it from the view of the adult?
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  And so we get to really get curious about that.
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  And the timeline, going back and doing the timeline work is, it's incredible.
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  'Cause I have, I had one client, and I use this as an example all the time because people come to me all the time and say I didn't have it that bad."
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  And and this one woman- she could not understand for the life of her why she just had this deep-seeded belief that her mother did not love her.
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  And I'm like...
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  And she's like, "I don't understand.
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  My mom tells me she loves me.
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  We had this great relationship.
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  I never..."
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  And long story short, we go back and eventually she, we come up with this first grade scenario where her mom had changed jobs and was late three days in a row to pick her up.
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  And at a sleepover, the mom came down to the sleepover party, and she's six years old, and the mom said, "Good night.
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  Love you girls."
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  And her best friend turned to her and said, "I don't think your mommy loves you 'cause she didn't pick you up on time for school."
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  Yeah.
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  That one moment- It- it's crazy to hear those scenarios, but I have heard similar scenarios.
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  The picking up from school's a big one.
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  And look, the reality is that we are all human.
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  There's traffic or we misinterpreted time or something holds us up.
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  These are not things that have mal intent, right?
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  Everything's done...
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  not everything.
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  But in a situation like that, there's not mal intent.
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  There's benevolent intent.
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  we're going to go pick up our kids.
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  we're gonna have behaviors that are gonna lead our kids to have different interpretations than the initial intent.
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  I think what's important, 'cause people will say to me all the time, "How do I avoid screwing up my kids in a situation like that?"
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  And I say, "I think it's just important to recognize what's important to a child."
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  And instead of dismissing, "Oh, I was only five minutes late"- A really great thing to say to your kid is, "I know how important it is to be picked up on time, and I know how hard it can
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  be to maybe be the last one, and that was not my intention, and it wasn't for any other reason other than I got stuck in traffic, but you're so important to me."
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  And those little nuanced conversations can shift the way a child interprets themselves and what their beliefs can be.
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  We're not gonna be perfect, right?
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  We're human.
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  But I always love to work with my parents to let them understand, hey, it, you can't show up perfect.
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  It's not gonna work.
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  But if you acknowledge the impact it has on your child, now you're bridging a gap.
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  Now you're having a conversation, so hopefully the impact will not be in opposite of what your intention was.
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  Exactly, and I think the biggest point, like even with her, like we kinda joked about it because she's "Yeah, now that I look back about it, it was a really dumb thing to implant so deeply."
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  And I said it doesn't matter.
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  You were also in a household where you didn't go home.
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  Had you gone home and had the relationship with your mother and said, 'Hey, Johnny said,' or, 'Mary said that you didn't love me because...'
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  But that was never processed, so it goes into that invisible backpack, and it just kinda sits there and festers."
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  But I use that as an example of the big T versus little T because...
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  And I don't like those terms either.
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  It makes me irritated 'cause I'm like, it doesn't matter.
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  like you said, it could be the walking out and not being included in a group, and all of a sudden you're, you just, you, 'cause your mind doesn't know.
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  And especially when you're dealing with a parent and a caretaker, and I know a lot of people out there listening are starting to really hear me say this over and over again, your mind is never going to let
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  you believe that person has done wrong, so we internalize everything.
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  We flip it.
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  Yeah.
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  100% tell me your thoughts on that Yeah, I think it comes back to what makes sense to a child, and I always say that when we're adults and we're looking back, and I hate it when my adult clients,
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  I only work with adults, judge themselves for the decisions that they made about themselves or life or others or the world around them based on a particular experience.
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  But the reality is the child's just trying to make sense, right?
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  meaning making beings, and they're just trying to make sense.
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  What would make sense in this situation?
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  They don't have enough context.
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  They don't have rational thinking, right?
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  The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed till we're in our mid-20s.
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  And so they're really just surviving and trying to make it through the day.
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  And life is hard.
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  That's that, that's the reality.
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  And so I think a big shift in what's coming up is really, at least current parents, like my kids are now 17 and 21 so I'm not, rearing young kids, but I have siblings that do.
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  And I'm always saying to them listen to what your kid is saying to you.
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  Don't dismiss what your kid is saying to you.
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  Get curious.
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  If they say, 'Oh, I hate you,' or, 'You're mean,' or, 'I don't like you,' or you're not nice to me,' instead of dismissing it and saying, 'Oh, don't be ridiculous,' get down on that knee and say to them,
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  'Tell me what's going on that makes you feel like that's important to tell me right now.'"
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  Build the conversation.
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  These are just little tiny humans trying to make sense of the world.
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  And I think one way to mitigate, gosh, in a perfect world less trauma for people over time is to really stop and dismiss and really ask questions of our younger ones so they can actually voice or at least
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  try to voice and process what it is that they're feeling.
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  I just did a podcast yesterday with a gentleman and his big thing was just, he had some attempted attempts at his own life and I mean- Yeah he was 14 and he just, I just didn't feel heard.
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  I just didn't feel seen.
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  Correct.
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  But we're in a d- I feel like we're in a better world right now.
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  We're in a world where we're trying to teach our kids it's okay to be heard.
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  We're not in that be seen and not heard.
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  We're not in that phase of, I feel I'm older, I'm in my late 50s, so back then even if my parents were g- I'd wanna say well-functioning adults, but even if they weren't alcoholics and narcissists, even if they
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  were just a nor- we were a normal family, it was still be seen and not heard.
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  There wasn't this openness and this communication, so everything was buried.
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  Now- And also, I'm in my mid-50s, so same.
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  And 70s, 80s kids, w- the idea was get over yourself, suck it up, people have it worse than you.
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  And there's a dismissal.
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  And, somebody asked me the other day on my Instagram, I did a, a reel about, not everything's actually a trauma, because I'm a trauma specialist, and I think in the day of social media, the word trauma actually gets
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  overused and not used in the right context.
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  And the gentleman said, "What is...
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  what's your definition of trauma?"
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  And I said, "Trauma's simply a wound."
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  If you look it up in the dictionary, it's gonna say it's a physical or emotional or a mental wound.
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  And when I teach my courses on anxiety, I often ask my students, "If you're a parent or you're an aunt or an uncle or you know a child, and they came to you with a physical wound, like a
• 17:54
  gash or some sort of abrasion on their arm, and they said, 'I'm hurt,' what would you do?"
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  And they say, "I would attend to it."
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  Yeah.
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  "Okay, how would you attend to it?"
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  "Oh, I would clean it, I would put ointment on it, I might put a bandage on it."
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  And I'm like, "Okay, and then how would you know if it's healing?"
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  And they said I'd probably look at it and see if it's scabbing, if it's not scabbing."
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  And we went through this whole thing, and I said, "How would you know it was healed?"
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  And they said I could see it.
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  I could see maybe the skin is better," or what have you.
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  I said, "Okay, what happens if somebody comes to you and say, 'That hurts me.
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  That hurts my feelings,' or, 'That upset me,' and you ignored it?"
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  It's no different than ignoring a wound.
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  And here's the thing, if we had a wound on the outside of our body and it was ignored and not attended to, we would adapt in order to not have it touched so it wouldn't hurt.
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  So we might brace it.
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  We're gonna find different ways to protect it.
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  When we have these internal wounds and we to express, if we have to do sometimes it's pre-verbal, right?
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  Or sometimes we're verbal but we don't have the language.
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  So say we're a little, older, we have the language, we do try to express it, and it's met with, "Get over yourself," or, "Let it go," what are they supposed to do with that hurt?
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  So in, in my work, what I say is we still have protective layers that we engage, and those protective layers look like a lot of things.
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  People pleasing, no boundary setting, overextending ourselves, try- anything we can do to make ourselves seem or appear valuable enough to be connected with.
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  And when I present it that way, that makes sense.
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  Yeah.
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  And that's what we're trying to do, you and I.
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  It's you're not broken.
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  There's nothing wrong with you.
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  The way that you learned to adapt when you had this internal hurt, and either you didn't feel you could share it- Where you did share it and it was not met with the nurturing it needed so it could
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  process and heal, you're still walking with a wound.
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  And they say time heals old wounds, but I'm not quite sure that's true.
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  No, and I...
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  It doesn't.
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  I always just say that you just keep adding wound on top of wound on top of wound, and then they get all meshed together, and then you have this big ball of goo of wounds.
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  And that's why I always talk about the, like I said, that invisible backpack.
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  Every time, every single time something goes unprocessed.
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  So like you said- In the invisible backpack.
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  Yep, put it in the invisible backpack.
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  So it's And I, the way I put it too is, and you el- alluded to this in the same way, is that it stores.
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  It's going to store somewhere in your body, and- Yeah inside internally.
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  Yeah.
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  And it's going to start to wreak havoc.
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  So it's like you have to get it out.
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  That's why I do...
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  Do you do a lot of somatic work with any of your clients?
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  I do.
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  I- What I do, I'm not a breathwork practitioner, I'm not a movement practitioner, and I don't know if you would call this somatic or not, but I do a lot of visualization.
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  And I feel like the visualization helps them process it in the sense that they can s- My goal with that is to get them to see the hurt as separate from them.
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  They see themselves as wounded, and what we can say is, "There's a part of you that's carrying a lot of pain," and how do we meet it with compassion, and how do we witness it the way it needed
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  to be witnessed when it first happened?
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  It's never too late.
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  So we can finally heal.
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  And I see those internal wounds as like a thousand paper cut lacerations to the soul.
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  So they don't even have to be like a gaping wound.
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  It can just be a paper cut.
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  But we know if we have a paper cut or some sort of little tiny thing, dry skin, whatever, when we get salt or lemon or any kind of acid in it, it really hurts.
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  And so I say to people, "Listen, it's like you have a thousand paper cuts, and then something happens and it hurts all over again," and we call that a trigger.
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  What would it look like if we could heal it so when those same things that would normally be triggering in the past no longer have that same impact because it's no longer an open cut?
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  And when I try to do it that way, it makes sense.
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  So somatic work can be a lot of different things.
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  Some people do yoga, some people do breathwork, some people do movement.
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  For me I like to use a lot of visualization, probably 'cause I am trained in hypnosis and I see the power of that.
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  And it really does have a massive impact with my clients.
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  Oh, I can imagine.
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  Absolutely.
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  It...
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  Visualization is huge in general.
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  And it's, again, in your...
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  It's the...
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  I don't know.
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  I just, I love it.
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  I love that's part of it.
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  I think that's an important part of it, too.
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  Yeah.
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  Huge part of it.
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  So for the people that are working with you or whoever we're talking about out there, and let's say it's been years and they're still procrastinating, they're still people-pleasing, they're still doing all of that.
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  I call it, your kinda leftover residual effects.
• 23:26
  I made...
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  I gave myself a term one time and it was so funny, and somebody's...
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  I called myself, I don't remember what it was.
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  I was on a podcast and it just came out.
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  It was a POACDU, and people were like, "What the hell is a POACDU?"
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  I said, "It's a c- a product of a completely dysfunctional upbringing."
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  I'm like, and but the point is like it designed me.
• 23:44
  It's all of these thinking, but it didn't define me, so now I've spent 30 years unraveling all of that and people...
• 23:51
  But- what are some things that you would tell your people to start asking themselves to make little tiny shifts?
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  I think curiosity is the solve to everything, right?
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  Because what I find is there's a lot of self-judgment.
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  "Oh, there's something wrong with me.
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  I'm such a fill in the blank.
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  It's wrong that I'm a people pleaser, or it's wrong that I don't know how to set boundaries."
• 24:18
  And I would say to them, get curious.
• 24:22
  Why do I feel it's necessary to make sure everybody's happy with me through people pleasing?
• 24:28
  Why is it that I'm uncomfortable saying no or setting a boundary or prioritizing my needs?
• 24:36
  Curiosity is the one thing that I try to engage my clients in and say, what would it look like if we were curious about the behavior versus judgmental and have this inner critic kind of, high volume thing that
• 24:55
  we're hearing up here of all the things that's wrong with us, versus what happened that made sense?
• 25:05
  And curiosity, I say curiosity soft- just softens everything.
• 25:09
  It really does.
• 25:10
  Y- you're not putting yourself on the...
• 25:12
  Because, yeah, even when, the minute you say, "What's wrong with me?"
• 25:17
  And I say that, I, when I talk to corporations and I, do trauma-informed leadership kind of stuff, it's why do people always ask that question, "What's wrong with you?"
• 25:26
  It puts people so on the defensive.
• 25:29
  But we do it to ourselves all the time.
• 25:33
  I talk a lot about social constructs, right?
• 25:36
  And people like order, and our, our whole world is structured around order and control, and it's a lot of shoulds.
• 25:45
  People should show up this way.
• 25:47
  They shouldn't show up that way.
• 25:48
  You're supposed to do this.
• 25:50
  You're not supposed to do that.
• 25:52
  And I always say, "According to whom?"
• 25:54
  All of those rules are set by man at some point in time, right?
• 26:01
  And so when people in a situation like that are saying these guys are supposed to be or should be," I always say, "Okay what would...
• 26:13
  First of all, why?"
• 26:15
  "And second of all, what's going on with that person that doesn't feel comfortable to them?"
• 26:21
  And I also work with organizations, we often talk about, say, burnout, because that's such a big one, because all of these adaptations often lead to burnout.
• 26:30
  And I'll say to them, "Listen, you hired them for their capabilities.
• 26:35
  The burnout is the capacity.
• 26:37
  So you vetted them.
• 26:39
  They have the capability of the skill set.
• 26:42
  What is going on?
• 26:43
  Get curious about what is diminishing the capacity for them to meet the capability that they have," right?
• 26:53
  And so again, this is not a judgment of this guy's, not a good hire.
• 26:59
  You hired them for a reason.
• 27:01
  The question is what is going on either externally or internally within the organization that is diminishing the capacity for them to realize the full potential of their capabilities?
• 27:16
  Yeah, and burnout is such a big thing right now.
• 27:19
  Huge.
• 27:20
  It's funny when I talk to people and they're like I just don't get..."
• 27:23
  They come to me literally, a- and it's that stressful, I don't know what clientele or what demographics you work with.
• 27:29
  Most of my people are 40 to 60, I could probably- Same okay.
• 27:34
  And it's just everything's going great, like I should...
• 27:37
  on paper I look great, and I'm just physically, mentally, absolutely freaking exhausted, and I don't know why.
• 27:45
  Yeah.
• 27:46
  Yeah.
• 27:47
  But and that could...
• 27:47
  we go, eventually usually during that conversation, we do get into that, "Don't shit on yourself."
• 27:54
  100%.
• 27:55
  And I think also, one of the adaptations I see often, and I wouldn't be surprised if you do too, is this inability to be okay with rest.
• 28:06
  Yes.
• 28:06
  That productivity is the, thing that we're all achieving, and people dun- don't understand, again, we're not robots, we're humans, and rest is restorative.
• 28:15
  And why is there an internal ick and cringe and fight against not always being productive?
• 28:26
  Why is it not comfortable for people to just sit and be or relax?
• 28:34
  And there's usually a deep physical sensation deep inside the system, this agitation, if you will, of sitting and not doing, and we get to get really curious about that.
• 28:47
  And one of the, it's the most simple thing, but it's something I think about all of the time that I learned when I trained under Miranda Sapir for Rapid Transformational Therapy, is what is familiar and what's unfamiliar- and
• 29:01
  how do we swap the two, right?
• 29:04
  So familiar is go, and my worth and my value's aligned with what I do and what I provide and what I produce, and it's uncomfortable for me to just sit and be, but yet that's what I want.
• 29:20
  We get to get curious about this piece first, and then how do we slowly I was gonna say make it balanced where we can have both.
• 29:29
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:30
  It's all about the reframing at the end of the day.
• 29:33
  And I know a lot of the people that I deal with too, it's just that, and especially in the beginning, that not only even just the you, your worth is determined by your productivity and your go go, but
• 29:48
  honestly it's just that high...
• 29:50
  I was...
• 29:51
  I didn't like still.
• 29:52
  I didn't like comfort.
• 29:53
  I was literally addicted to that kind of that adrenaline rush.
• 29:58
  And- same that, that took, I would say probably took a good five years of just getting out of that to where if I sat down, it was like, "Okay, this does not feel right."
• 30:07
  It didn't feel right- It- for a really long time.
• 30:09
  Or y- you were just kinda always waiting, that hypervigilance that you hear people talk about, where you're just kinda always waiting for something else to happen.
• 30:19
  And- Correct.
• 30:19
  And, I have a really good story about that.
• 30:22
  I am someone who struggled with significant anxiety for about 30 years.
• 30:30
  Okay?
• 30:30
  And I'm 55 this year, so that's a very long period of my life.
• 30:35
  And started therapy at 15, didn't have the word anxiety, didn't know what anxiety was, but man, was I so stuck in this overdrive sensation, right?
• 30:47
  And then sometime in my early 40s, I would say I remember being at an Easter dinner somewhere, and I had been doing this work for a very long time, and I was starting to let go of that need
• 31:00
  for hypervigilance.
• 31:02
  And I said to somebody, "Oh my God, I don't know what's wrong with me.
• 31:06
  I'm so tired.
• 31:09
  I'm so tired.
• 31:11
  I don't understand.
• 31:12
  I'm resting..."
• 31:13
  And I heard a whisper, I get a lotta downloads.
• 31:16
  And I heard this whisper that said, "You're not tired.
• 31:20
  This is relaxed."
• 31:23
  And I went, "Huh."
• 31:28
  When w- I don't, I can't remember the last time that my body was not in this hypervigilant mode.
• 31:38
  I don't know what relaxed is.
• 31:41
  Yep.
• 31:41
  And in it, I was designating it, again, as something wrong that I'm tired, but really it's just that my body was embraced for the next thing, as you mentioned, and it just was peaceful.
• 31:56
  And that was unfamiliar to me.
• 31:58
  And it allowed me to get curious and go, "Oh, is this what relaxed feels like?"
• 32:05
  'Cause I haven't had access to that since I was, like, 11, okay.
• 32:09
  And I was 40.
• 32:10
  Again, that made sense.
• 32:13
  There were reasons why that made sense.
• 32:16
  And so I like people to get curious, and I've had clients come into me in the past and say, "I think there's something wrong with me.
• 32:22
  I'm so tired all the time."
• 32:24
  And now I use that and I say, "Are you tired, or are you accessing some peace and this is what it feels like not to be in that go survival, hypervigilant, fight or flight mode?"
• 32:39
  And they go, "Oh."
• 32:42
  I don't know, is it?
• 32:44
  I'm like, "I don't know.
• 32:45
  Let's explore it" Yeah.
• 32:50
  No it's a process.
• 32:51
  It's definitely a process.
• 32:52
  So you said that you had anxiety from the time you were young.
• 32:56
  15- Yeah was when it Yeah is when it started Yeah.
• 33:02
  Did you...
• 33:03
  So did, I'm just curious as far as your path of he- so that's you've been healing for 40 years.
• 33:09
  Yes.
• 33:11
  You've been doing the work.
• 33:12
  When did you know that you wanted to get into helping other...
• 33:15
  that you had enough tools and that was your focus, was helping other people not have to feel what you felt?
• 33:22
  Yeah.
• 33:22
  It's one of these things where it's been a long red thread, of connection.
• 33:28
  So in every role I've ever had in any organization, I tended to be someone that people felt that they could go to for advice or wisdom always.
• 33:38
  And I was always this revolving door of people coming in, shutting the door, and laying down this big bold thing that they're really struggling with.
• 33:48
  And it would always surprise me because I'm like, "What?
• 33:51
  Do I have a sign that's 'Drop your stuff here?'"
• 33:54
  But I think that there was a sense that I was a safe place to do it.
• 34:00
  And in addition, I tended to actually have some good wisdom to tend to share, and it always was my favorite part of my day.
• 34:09
  It had nothing to do with my role.
• 34:11
  I loved doing it.
• 34:12
  And to your point earlier, I always said, "I think I missed my calling."
• 34:16
  I should've been a therapist, and I'm so glad I didn't go that route now.
• 34:20
  But that has been a, a long thread for a very long time, starting in my 20s.
• 34:26
  At some point in my 40s, I got into multi-level marketing, and I was actually very good at it 'cause I had a very good sense of self, actually.
• 34:34
  I had a lot of confidence.
• 34:37
  Not worried about other people's opinions, but I could see that, worrying about other people's opinions, was what was holding so many people back.
• 34:47
  So I was doing a lot of coaching with my team and unraveling a lot.
• 34:52
  So all of this is experiential going along.
• 34:55
  And again, back to that whisper, I started hearing coaching, coaching.
• 35:00
  And I didn't really know what that meant, but I also knew I didn't wanna be in multi-level marketing, into my 80s.
• 35:07
  And I was in my late 40s, and I thought, what do I wanna do for this last act?
• 35:13
  And I went to my husband and I said, "I think I'm supposed to be coaching."
• 35:16
  And he goes, "What does that mean?"
• 35:18
  And I go, "I don't even know.
• 35:19
  I just have to follow it a little bit."
• 35:21
  And so the path was a little wonky because I had a big following because of my social presence from that multi-level marketing, and people saw me as a mind shifter, as a mindset shifter i- if you will.
• 35:37
  And that was something that they were calling me.
• 35:40
  I wasn't calling myself that.
• 35:41
  So- I went through a couple of different things to get to the point where I opened a coaching practice, but I truly thought I was gonna do life coaching, and I was kinda dipping my foot in and thought,
• 35:52
  "That's the path I'll probably go get trained in."
• 35:55
  But what I ended up doing was getting trained in hypnosis within about six months of my opening of my practice, mainly 'cause it had been so beneficial for me on my healing journey.
• 36:07
  I'd been with traditional therapists for 25 years.
• 36:11
  It wasn't working.
• 36:12
  I was still drowning in anxiety.
• 36:13
  I took a leap of faith and went and worked with a clinical hypnotherapist, and there was a shift in me I'd never had before.
• 36:22
  And I was hearing my clients say, "I wish I understood why.
• 36:25
  I wish I understood why."
• 36:26
  And there was a part of me that understood it's under the hood, it- it's in that subconscious, so I really wanted to understand that.
• 36:33
  So this training with Marissa Peer was very intense.
• 36:38
  While I was in that training, and you have to do a lot of reflective practice, so you're practicing with other people, what I recognized was everything that somebody was struggling with was, and I'm gonna put it in quotes,
• 36:53
  a trauma.
• 36:54
  W- a perfect example, the situation that I mentioned earlier on the playground.
• 36:58
  Like, all these little nuanced things had these big impacts.
• 37:03
  I got very curious about that, and so as soon as that training was over and I was credentialed as a rapid transformational therapy practitioner, I immediately jumped into a year-long training in trauma because I really wanted to understand
• 37:21
  it for a variety of reasons.
• 37:22
  From my own lived experience, I was starting to connect some serious dots.
• 37:26
  I had absolutely disqualified myself from having had trauma, and was recognizing, oh, I lived through a lot of trauma.
• 37:35
  And also there were some people very close to me in my immediate family that also had some significant experiences that I would label as traumatic, that I could see the trauma, the impact, and I was really passionately, obsessively
• 37:52
  curious.
• 37:52
  And so I studied trauma for three years w- and I shifted my practice to really be to where it is today, which is really helping people understand that these lived experiences, these adverse experiences actually really do have an
• 38:10
  impact.
• 38:11
  So that's h- that was my whole path.
• 38:15
  Love it.
• 38:15
  Yeah, I know.
• 38:16
  And most people do...
• 38:17
  they use what worked for them too, and it's I remember when I was going through my process, I was I literally joke and I say I was like just freaking throwing spaghetti at the wall.
• 38:25
  Like- 100 I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try that.
• 38:28
  And that's why I tell people, "Don't discount anything."
• 38:30
  Just because it worked for me does not mean it's gonna work for you.
• 38:33
  There's a million different modalities out there, like you said.
• 38:36
  But I truly agree with you, though.
• 38:38
  It's, I'm very big into the nervous system.
• 38:41
  I think it's all in your body, and it's all of those unprocessed childhood experiences that got stored in the nervous system.
• 38:50
  So yeah, going...
• 38:51
  you have to pull that stuff to the conscious level.
• 38:53
  That's, you know- Yeah at some point you have to delve there.
• 38:57
  Like I tell people, you can talk all day long and I have nothing against traditional therapy.
• 39:02
  I've gone.
• 39:03
  I still go.
• 39:04
  But to me, it was kinda like I hit a wall.
• 39:07
  I'm like, I can talk about this all day long, but it's not it's not hel- it wasn't getting me over that hump.
• 39:14
  And what I've learned about therapy, 'cause I'm a huge proponent of therapy, everyone in my family's engaged in therapy at some point in time, is that I think also in the '80s and '90s, the idea was if you're
• 39:29
  stuck emotionally, you go to a therapist.
• 39:33
  And that's not a wrong guidance.
• 39:36
  However, what I've learned is that- Going to a therapist is like going to a generalist, right?
• 39:44
  It's like going to a PCP.
• 39:47
  But if you have something nuanced, like trauma, which is what is keeping you stuck, and you're working with a therapist that's never trained in trauma, which unfortunately, I have my own podcast, I have a lot of trauma therapists
• 40:01
  on, and the main question I always have them answer is, "How much trauma training did you get in your ch- master's?"
• 40:09
  And they say very little."
• 40:11
  And anything that they know they've done well after the fact.
• 40:16
  And so it opened up this aha for me of, oh, no wonder I was so stuck for so long, because I was going to a generalist even though I had a bum knee.
• 40:25
  I should've been with an orthopedist.
• 40:28
  So it's like I've been dealing with trauma, didn't know it was trauma.
• 40:31
  I really needed to be with a trauma-trained therapist, and I didn't know that there was even such a thing or that there was a distinction or that there were different types.
• 40:42
  And so I think it's important for all listeners to understand that you have the opportunity to ask the questions to the therapist of, what's your training in trauma?
• 40:54
  What do you know about ACEs?
• 40:57
  A lot of therapists don't know about ACEs and adverse childhood experiences, and that's a key indicator right there.
• 41:05
  And this is all a learning experience for everyone, and I think like you, me, my goal is to just educate people of what that industrial complex looks like and how do you make sure that you're working with somebody
• 41:20
  that can actually meet your unique specific need.
• 41:24
  Yes.
• 41:24
  And I think it's so important, and I think it's so important for the people out there listening too, because I've had people say to me I feel bad."
• 41:30
  You don't ever feel bad that you go pick a new therapist or pick a new coach or pick a new whatever it is.
• 41:36
  You need to feel safe 100%, and you need to feel like- You just need to feel safe, and to be...
• 41:44
  to share and to know, like you said.
• 41:47
  And I'm a very big proponent, and not everybody agrees with me on this one either, is I think it's important, to me at least, that the person has some lived experience.
• 41:56
  100%.
• 41:58
  I will not...
• 41:58
  i- if my husband-- If somebody comes to me and says, "Tammy, I'm grieving s- I lost my husband two years ago, and I can't get over this," I can help them with basic stuff, but I'll send them to
• 42:09
  a grief counselor.
• 42:10
  Because- 100% I'm like, "I've never lost my husband.
• 42:13
  I can't put myself in your shoes."
• 42:15
  And I just, I don't know, I just think it's so important.
• 42:18
  My very first coaching client said to me, "Tammy, I've been going to therapy for 11 years.
• 42:22
  I've given her $110 a week for 11 years."
• 42:25
  She goes, "In 18 minutes you told me one thing that I could do that would change my life, and more about me let me come up with the...
• 42:33
  more about me than I did in 11 years."
• 42:36
  And I said, "Because I was you."
• 42:38
  I've heard the same thing, and I am also a big proponent of what you're talking about.
• 42:42
  It takes a village and, in the space of trauma, there's a lot of addiction.
• 42:46
  And but that's not something that was ever anything that I battled, or that I had a deep, intimate experience with.
• 42:55
  I certainly have peers in the trauma space that is their jam.
• 43:00
  That is how they got into their work.
• 43:03
  That is their expertise.
• 43:05
  And so I often have people that I say, "Okay, if it's addiction, I'm sending it over to this person.
• 43:11
  If it's grief, I'm sending it over to this person."
• 43:13
  And, I don't have a scarcity mindset in that I'm not looking to work with every single person that came to me.
• 43:20
  The ultimate goal is that they get support.
• 43:23
  And if it's not something I feel I can support them on the best I will absolutely say, I really think you'd be better served over here because they have a lived experience with that, and I don't, and I
• 43:37
  really want you to get the best out of this that you possibly can."
• 43:42
  So I think we really need to, get curious also with our practitioners.
• 43:48
  And I think it's interesting before when you said, 'cause I've heard it too, when people said I just feel so bad.
• 43:52
  I don't wanna leave that person.
• 43:53
  I don't wanna hurt their feelings."
• 43:56
  Yeah.
• 43:56
  That, to me, is an opener.
• 43:58
  That, to me, is a big indicator of, okay, we've got an extreme people pleaser who deprioritizes their own needs to make sure everybody else is happy- in despite of their nervous system and their needs, and we get to
• 44:11
  explore that of what is it about this connection and this relationship, why is that person's needs for being happy greater than your need for feeling better?
• 44:25
  And it- And it's just a great opener It really is, and it's funny when people come to me and say that.
• 44:30
  I'm like, "Oh yeah, you're my people."
• 44:33
  100%.
• 44:34
  I can tell you where you need to be.
• 44:36
  Right here, my friend.
• 44:40
  So that's great.
• 44:41
  So it tell people if they wanna work with you, how you work, what your platform looks like, what you do.
• 44:47
  Talk about that a little.
• 44:49
  Yeah.
• 44:49
  So I have a couple of ways that I work with p- people.
• 44:51
  Number one is I do one-to-one coaching with individuals or leaders in organizations that are maybe having a hard time with this in their organization.
• 45:01
  But I love to do one-to-one coaching and that kind of bespoke, let's get customized to specifically your needs to see what this challenge is and how do we go back and make sense about it, and look at it
• 45:13
  from a different perspective.
• 45:15
  I also run, about three times a year, a course that I developed.
• 45:19
  It's an eight-week live course, even though it's online.
• 45:23
  It's in person, but online, and that is all about having a different relationship with anxiety.
• 45:28
  Because to your point, we do best with the things that we have the most intimate experience with, and that is something I've an intimate experience with.
• 45:37
  That's called The Calm Code.
• 45:39
  Okay.
• 45:40
  People can find all of that at my website, which is flipyourmindset.com.
• 45:48
  And I also utilize Instagram as a mega psycho-educational platform.
• 45:54
  I'm constantly on there.
• 45:56
  I'm very consistently sharing content that is psycho-educational, and it's just my name- Okay at Instagram, which is Stacy Urig.
• 46:05
  But the one thing I would love p- people to get curious about is over the years I developed a survey, a free survey, to help people understand how their lived experiences might be impacting them in ways that they
• 46:19
  don't understand.
• 46:21
  And the name of that survey is HURRT, H-U-R-R-T, and it stands for Healing Unresolved Roots of Trauma.
• 46:30
  And it was really based on this idea that the ACEs exam, which I love, the ACEs survey, was so limited with just 10 questions.
• 46:39
  And there was no question in there that looked at resilience factors either.
• 46:45
  And so I created this survey.
• 46:47
  It's about 75 questions.
• 46:49
  It includes resilience factors as well as adverse experiences and emotional neglect, and it gives people a score that gives them insight as to why they might be challenged, and gives them some free and low-cost resources to just get
• 47:07
  ex- curious again, to explore, "Oh maybe these things were more impactful than I realized."
• 47:13
  And that to me is always a great stepping stone and to just opening up that curiosity and peering into the work that could be done.
• 47:22
  Perfect.
• 47:23
  And do you have a link directly to that, that I can put in the show notes?
• 47:27
  I sure do.
• 47:27
  It's flipyourmindset.com/hurrt, which is H-U-R-R-T.
• 47:33
  Okay.
• 47:33
  So I will put that.
• 47:34
  So if you're listening and you wanna grab that I highly encourage you, because it's, those surveys are so enlightening, and it's not just the- Yeah like you said, the 10 questions.
• 47:42
  It's easy for me to go, "Oh, I'm a nine out of 10 on the ACE scale," because nobody knew what was going on in my house, so no one ever went to prison.
• 47:49
  So I would've been a 10 out of 10, but that does not- Yeah even begin to scratch the surface, exactly.
• 47:55
  I like that.
• 47:56
  Yep.
• 47:56
  Yeah.
• 47:57
  Absolutely.
• 47:57
  So thank you so much, Stacy, for coming on.
• 48:00
  You guys, I will put in the show notes everything to reach out to her.
• 48:04
  And before you go, if you had to give the listeners one final words of wisdom for the day, something practical, tangible, or just something to make their day a little brighter, what would it be today?
• 48:16
  I would say if someone is really challenged with the way that they're showing up in the world that is not the way that they want to, I would ask them to ask themselves the question, "What makes this make
• 48:31
  sense?"
• 48:32
  And really allow yourself to not fantasize or dream about what your experiences were growing up, but just get really curious and be honest with yourself without judgment, and say maybe I did adapt and that's okay."
• 48:49
  And so I really...
• 48:50
  The biggest thing is what makes this make sense for me?
• 48:54
  Okay.
• 48:55
  I love that.
• 48:56
  I love that.
• 48:57
  So thank you again so much for coming on.
• 49:00
  And for everybody else out there listening, you got it.
• 49:02
  Just ask those questions.
• 49:04
  What makes this make sense?
• 49:06
  Be curious.
• 49:07
  Do not be judgmental.
• 49:08
  And as I always say every single morning, ask yourself, "What do I need today?"
• 49:14
  Because that's what you need to do to nourish your body, mind, and spirit.
• 49:17
  So thank you so much, guys, and I will see you back next week.
• 49:20
  Have a good day.
• 49:21
  Thank you.