Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / Dr. Edith Shiro - The Unexpected Gift of Trauma

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Dr. Edith Shiro - The Unexpected Gift of Trauma · Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman

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My name is Victor Ferman. Some call me the Voice. I've always been
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fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science, and the crossroads at which they
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meet. Join me now and we will explore these topics and so much more
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with fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to Destination Unlimited.
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Trauma has always been part of the human experience. Our knowledge of the neurological
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and physical effects of trauma has grown over the last decade, and few people
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realize that experiencing trauma doesn't have to sentence you to a lifetime of suffering and
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grief. My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, Doctor Editicira is a licensed
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clinical psychologist with a private practice in Miami, where she specializes in trauma,
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post traumatic stress, and post traumatic growth. Recognized as an expert in the
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field of post traumatic growth, doctor Shiro has focused her attention on immigration and
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acculturation issues, working directly with refugees and torture survivors. Her website is doctor
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Editshiro dot com and she joins me this week to share her experience, research,
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and new book, The Unexpected Gift of Trauma. Please join me in
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welcoming doctor Edit Shiro. Welcome, doctor Shiro. Well, thank you so
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much. I'm so so happy to be joining you today and thank you for
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joining us. And your topic in your book is very very important, especially
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taking our world situation into consideration at this time. So please tell us about
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your early life and your initial understanding of trauma based upon the experience of your
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grandparents. Yes, so, my book, The Unexpected Gift of Trauma Back
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to Postraumatic Growth, comes from more than twenty five years of practice and research
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and some personal experiences and stories too, And really what inspire me from the
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beginning? And thank you for that question, because I usually don't talk about
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so much my personal things, but you know, this is super relevant in
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why I'm so drawn to the topic of trauma. I come from a family
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of Holocaust survivors, my grandparents who are the sole survivors of their families in
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the Holocaust, and then my other grandparents are refugees from Syria. And I
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grew up with stories of trauma, stories of survival, stories of immigration,
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of moving from one place to another, having to change a lot of loss,
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a lot of transformation. And I always saw people around me in my
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own community also of some people that were very stuck in their trauma and that
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would repeat, and you know, their their pain and the developers traumatic stress
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and all kinds of things. Then I saw another group of people that were
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sort of like doing better and they would like cope with things, and they
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were like kind of navigating life. And then I saw a third group of
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people, and my grandfathers in that group that not only were doing better,
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but were thriving and they were transforming, and they were they became wiser and
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more conscious and would appreciate life more. And that really caught my attention early
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on in life, and my studies and psychology were related to like how people
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do better, Like what makes the difference between people that cannot do it and
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people that can? How come some people react in one way and some other
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people react in another way? You know what makes the differences in personality?
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Is it culture? Is it past experiences? Is it biological? Is it
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nature? Nurture? So I kept asking all those questions, and throughout all
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these years I realized that there was a process that I call post traumatic growth
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that has stages that people really if people know that this is a possibility,
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you can enter it, you can go through it and you can have a
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very very meaningful, transformational experience coming out of something as traumatic or as painful,
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as difficult as trauma. And we're going to talk about that a little
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later on in the interview. But I'm curious as to what led you to
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your path as a healer and specifically working with trauma patients. You know,
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I think because I had that kind of those kind of conversations very very young
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in my life with my grandparents. They would not they would tell me stories
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all the time. And my parents were also immigrants in in the country where
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I was living. I was. I was born in Venezuela, and both
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my parents come from different parts of Europe, and then my grandparents come from
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all these other parts of Syria, in Romain and Hungary, and the community
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that I grew up in Venezuela also had all these stories of survival, and
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I think I was feeling always like a little bit like an outsider, like
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I was looking at things from the outside, because I never felt like I
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was one hundred percent similar or belonging to the community that I was. And
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then when I moved to the US, to the United States very young,
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when I was seventeen, I also felt in again like an outsider, because
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then I was becoming a Latin in a in an American country, or I
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was being a Jew in a in like the US or in Venezuela. And
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like I'm always I was always having like to redefine my identity and I always
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had to see people from different points of view, including myself, how that
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would see me, how I would see them. So I was always very
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psychologically minded, and the way my friends in high school were always call me
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like I'm the psychologist there. So I had that from like very young age,
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and specifically trauma, I think because literally I think I've had it from
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these generations and generations, so of having that traumatic experiences that I think I
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carry in my body, and I needed to understand where that was coming from.
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And I needed to make sense of the things that I was feeling and
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the things that I was dreaming about and the things the reactions that I was
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having too are different in my sensitivity to certain topics, and I said,
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this is not just me. It feels like it's coming from my ancestors,
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it's coming from my people, it's coming from my history. So this led
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me to be more curious about this but curiosity could lead a number of ways,
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and specifically you chose to help people. Just why, I'm just curious.
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I think that there's in some ways, some of the people that like
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you, like me, and I think like you too, that that chooses
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to help people or to heal people in some ways. I don't think it's
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a decision that comes from the head. I think there's a decision. It's
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a decision that comes from a more instinctive place. I think that it comes
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natural, more natural to me. I think I've been I have had some
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training when I was a little girl, probably in helping those around me and
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helping my parents adjust to the culture where they were coming from because I was
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a native, but they weren't in helping my grandparents, in helping my brothers,
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in helping my you know, the people around me. But also I
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think it's because there was something that resonated with me in like being very sensitive
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to the other in being very empathic and being very in tune with other people's
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feelings. And I don't know if we can choose that, or if we're
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more born with that, or we get to develop that because of our circumstances.
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So that was always a place that I felt very comfortable with and that
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came very natural to me, and I got very rewarded for that too.
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You know, my friends in school from early on, they were looking for
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me, they were trusting me. So I think it just happened naturally.
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In my case, we share the experience of service through the Red Cross.
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After nine eleven, my wife and I both served as chaplains at the Family
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Assistance Center that were set up to provide services and comfort for those awaiting word
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of their loved ones and also first responders and ground zero workers. Please tell
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us about your service with the Red Cross as a volunteer psychologist in the aftermath
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of nine to eleven. Well, it started in ninety eleven and then continue
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knew for other events, and it was it was a very interesting experience of
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me being that was my first day, September eleventh, and I was starting
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my training at the Acremon Institute. I was there already for a few years,
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but that year started exactly that day. So as I was entering here,
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it was looking on the upper east side and as I was nine in
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the morning, as I was entering the Acremon Institute on Lexington Avenue, and
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I'm looking up and I'm seeing what's you know, these videos on TV that
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I can't understand. I couldn't understand. My brain could not understand what was
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happening. All of a sudden, I have all of my colleagues, everybody
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at the Acremon Institute, and everybody on the Apper East Side. We were
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all running like crazy on the street. And at the time I could not
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get to where I was. I was living in Worstchester and I couldn't even
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get to my home. And because I was around, I think some people
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mentioned my name to the Red Cross, and the Red Cross called me and
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a couple of other colleagues and they required us our presence on the west side
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of the city. We were all going to be gathered and debriefed and trained
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and start right away. I don't know if this happened to you, but
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it started. We started right away that same night on a hotline to start
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attending to the survivors, and that lasted all night, and then the next
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day we were taken to ground zero. I remember using my helmet, a
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helmet that they gave me, and the ID and all of that, and
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we were pretty much spending the day in ground zero seeing how we could give
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some support, do some debriefing, attend to the people that needed see how
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you know, work with the community. And that lasted for like a week
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or so. I didn't really get home get to my home for the two
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three days, and then finally I was able to get home, and then
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I continued working with the Red Cross, and then at some point I was
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also called to work with a woman called Pauline Boss. She's the one that
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I wrote a book called The Ambiguous Loss. I don't know if you've heard
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of her. And we were treating the survivor the families of the victims of
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Union, the people that were forty two b j. It was a union
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that was cleaning the windows of Windows of the World and that was working in
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the restaurant the Windows of the World at that time, and a lot of
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them spoke Spanish, so they were calling me so I can work with the
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Spanish speaking families, and we work with with the families also for a few
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weeks, and it was a very intense experience as well. But one of
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the big lessons victors that I want to share with you about that is that
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we realize in the field of psychology that coming in right away and treating victims
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of trauma by doing the briefing and asking them to talk and tell the story
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over and over and over again is not helpful. I don't know if you
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remember this, or I don't know if this was your experience, but this
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was something that we were discussing in our in our groups with our colleagues,
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in our analysis of what happened. It's like why we went in right away
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and ask the people to tell us how you know, what happened? And
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hard to do because what we were doing was re traumatizing the victims, and
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that was not the right thing to do at the time. And I think
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it was a big lesson for all of us working with trauma to know that
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more important than telling the story in that moment, which would only do more
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damage, would be to give more containment and to provide safety and support in
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that moment, and not so much giving information and not so much retelling the
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story over and over and over again. And I think that's that lesson has
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stayed with me forever, and that's something that I applied a lot when I'm
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working with trauma, and that's something that I teach a lot and say,
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meet the person where the person is at, not because of what you need
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or the information you have to get or how much you know, how many
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words or how much expression you need to hear from the patient, but really
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what would be more convenient in terms of that where they at when they're trauma
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test And that made a big difference. And as chaplains, we were taught
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to be present for them, to be present and comforting and to sacredly listen
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and just not not say anything to stimulate a conversation, just to sacredly meet
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them where they were. Beautiful, beautiful. Absolutely, it was a time
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I'll never forget. We did that for three and a half months after nine
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to eleven, and it was a time that neither of us will ever forget.
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And we're grateful or the opportunity to be of service to the community.
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So what inspired your new book, The un Expected Gift of Trauma? So,
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you know, that's a book that I pretty much developed and the research
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on twenty five years ago, and this was part of my doctoral dissertation and
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I was working at the time with the Cambodian refugee community in the Bronx and
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I was interviewing the Cambodian refugees that went through, as you know, a
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genocide back in nineteen seventy nine, and they most of them fled either to
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la or to the Bronx, and we had the privilege of really meeting with
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them and working with them, and I pretty much lived with them for a
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year, learning their customs, their traditions, their culture. I was very
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fortunate to have the social worker and a community leader worked with me and introduced
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me to so many people, and it was beautiful, and from them I
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started to do. I was very curious to see how from this group of
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people or this community, who were the ones that were thriving, Who were
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the ones that were transformed by the experience, Who were the ones that really
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stood out in terms of their evolution, their consciousness, their appreciation for life,
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They're having a purpose in life. So I got to interview some of
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these members of the community and I learned so much. And I did that
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previously with Holocaust survivors, and then from then on, I did that with
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that immigrants, I did that with torture survivors at Bellby Hospital, and I
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did that also with refugees from Central American and that kept going and for many
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years and as I decided to publish that book, I sat down in twenty
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nineteen two, you know, polish it and rewrite it. And as I
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was doing that, a lot of other things have happened that also informed my
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book. One of them was living in Miami, there was a collapse of
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that of the towers, the Sort Site towers. I don't know if you
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heard of that. That ninety eight people died, and it was in my
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community. I mean a lot of these people were part of my community in
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Miami. And then we're people from all over the world. And I was,
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you know, I was the psychologist in the place that was dealing with
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and providing support in organizing together with a group of therapists into how to how
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to help this community. And that was really literally as I was writing my
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book on the chapter on the collective trauma, this is what was happening.
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So throughout my practice of all these years, plus the experiences that I've had
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personal and professional, I really think I wanted to to send this message with
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the book and say, how we go through difficulty, how we go through
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trauma, how we go to adversity, and there's a possibility of transforming that,
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of changing that of transmuting it into growth, into consciousness, into wisdom,
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and how we can do that. Beautiful. Thank you for doing this
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work. This is just amazing and beautiful work. So thank you so much
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for doing this. Oh it's a privilege. Honestly, I learned so much
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every time, and every time I hear my patience or a group of people
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go through this, I get, you know, I get very moved every
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time because you know, the people tell me. You know, I would
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not want this to happen to anyone, or I would not wish this on
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anybody, but I would not change it for anything in the world because these
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experiences have shaped me and make me who I am, and I would not
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want to change that. So that's a very powerful statement I hear over and
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over. Absolutely. Let's clarify for our listeners a few terms that they may
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have a basic understanding of, but from a more clinical perspective. Let's start
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with the word trauma. Yes, so trauma used to be you know,
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a more First of all, it came from the medical world, in which
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trauma was more of a physical symptom or a diagnosis of a broken bone or
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a or a pit in the body. Then it was used more as a
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psychological term, especially for soldiers coming from the world, that we're traumatized.
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That's where PTSD started to develop, and shell shock and all these terms.
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But today we understand that trauma is a much more expanded definition of an experience,
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of an overwhelming, difficult experience for which we don't have the tools to
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face or to deal with. So any experience that can be overwhelming, or
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an experience that can be a life shine uttering, or any experience that shakes
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your belief system and for which you stop to understand who you are, who
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the other person is, and how the world works, and for which we
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don't have the tools or the resources to deal with, can be traumatizing.
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And I say that also keeping in mind that trauma is a very subjective definition
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or subjective experience, because I am not somebody that can tell you if you're
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traumatized or not, or I mean, or if you are experiencing trauma.
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Because for some people, you know, some experience can be very traumatizing and
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the same experience is not traumatic for somebody else. So I always give the
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example of the pandemic. You know, the pandemic can be a collected trauma,
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but for some people was very traumatizing. For other people it wasn't.
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And it can be the same circumstances, the same event, the same place,
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and people can experience it differently. So that's one one way of understanding
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trauma. The other aspect of it is that it's relational. So trauma is
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not just what happens, but it's what happens inside of you, and what
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happens with you in relationship to yourself, to the others, and to the
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world. Sometimes when our belief system gets shattered, when how we understand ourselves
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and others in the world doesn't function anymore, doesn't work anymore, it can
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be very traumatizing. So that's also a definition of trauma that I use.
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My guest is doctor Edit Shiro. Her book is called The Unexpected Gift of
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Trauma. Doctor Shiro, please tell our listeners let me get your book and
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find out more about you and your amazing work. Thank you so much so.
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My book can be found that Amazon, birds and novels, in the
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Woma, every platform, in audible, in the kindle, in all forms,
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and really really hoping that you get it. Can find me on Instagram,
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Doctor Edishiro on Facebook doctor Edishiro my website www dot Doctor Edishiro dot com.
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And I'm always open and available for feedback, for conversations, for dialogue
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and to really keep the conversation going. And we'll be back with more of
21:18
doctor Shiro after these words. On the Home Times Radio Network, the cutting
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you by the AD Council. Back with doctor Eddchiro Her new book is called
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The Unexpected Gift of Trauma. Now, we were talking about trauma in the
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last segment, and most of us are familiar with the acronym PTSD post traumatic
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stress disorder. What is the genesis of this and how does it manifest in
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that was affected by it? Okay, so PDS is postraumatic stress disorder,
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and I came from understanding the symptoms that the soldiers that were coming from war
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in the United States pretty much we're coming with symptoms that were they were unable
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to function with their families. They thought that they were missing their friends or
24:25
their their the other soldiers that they were with. So they said, Okay,
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go home, take a rest, and then come back to war,
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and that would make it even worse. I mean, there's an amazing story.
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I tell a little bit in my book, but the woman that really
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tells the story really well is Judy Herman. She's a psychiatrist in Boston that
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wrote a book, Trauma and Recovery, and she was pretty much one of
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the first ones that would advocate for these people that were very traumatized not to
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be sent back to war and not to be ex posed to more trauma and
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to really make peties their diagnosis for clinicians to say, you know, these
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people are suffering severe symptoms of depression, of anxiety, hyperarousal, splashbacks,
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nightmares, in ability to relate to others, to their own families, are
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feeling numb, having dissociation, being dissociated from themselves, of their emotions,
25:26
having responses of fight and flight and freeze. I mean, everything and anything
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you can imagine, physical paining, chronic illnesses. I mean, we still
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see it in our veterans of war. And it's unfortunate how pervasive this diagnosis
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is and how difficult it is to overcome it. And also either it affects
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not only the soldiers or the people that suffer repety is deep, but also
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those around them. You know, it's it's not just an individual diagnosis,
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but the people that live with somebody with PTSD are affected to the families,
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the community, the society. So something to think about. You know,
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it's not just the individual, but it's also all around it and also the
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generations to come. Because one of the things that victory that I mentioned when
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I talk about trauma is that it's intergenerational. So all these things that that
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we experience in this moment, get registered in our bodies, like are very
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well known psychiatrists. Bessel Undercole says, the body keeps a score. It's
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like everything gets registered in our bodies, even when we don't remember, and
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then we get to pass it on to our children and our grandchildren, our
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great grandchildren, and that kind that trauma. It's like a vicious cycle.
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So that the example, usually sexual abuse, when they're sexual abuse in one
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generation, gets passed on into the next generation, and the next generation alcoholism
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and many other kinds of trauma that get passed on. So something to keep
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in mind and to know that this is not just an isolated event. Does
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the science of epigenetics come and to play with trauma. That's exactly right.
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And I love that you mentioned epigenetics because a lot of people don't know about
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it, and it's it's pretty much it's more recent that we're talking about epigenetics
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and it's being developed even more. And epigenetics is the science that studies the
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expression of genes and the information that we have in our DNA can be expressed
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or not expressed depending on the experiences that we have in our lives. And
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that's a fascinating concept because it doesn't It allows us to have some flexible and
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some say into the information that we have in our biologically and how we shape
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that and that expression of the genes not only for our lives but for our
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children. So a mother that is pregnant and she's going through a lot of
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stress and a lot of traumas and that baby is being developed can absorb and
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manifest information in their genes that then gets later expressed. Whereas a baby that
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has been in the in the womb and with a mother that is more relaxed,
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or that it's more in harmony and that it's more in a calm environment,
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can can that baby can be born with different information in their genes.
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So that's that's fascinating. You know, bits of information and research that we
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need to take into account and that has been shown that can that happens over
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and over um with different kinds of express and traumatic experiences as well. So
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it's possible that if I had a great great great great grandfather who had a
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very horrible traumatic experience that his genes were modified to carry I guess the genetic
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memory of that experience and I could actually have that is that correct, that's
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my understanding. Also, again I'm not the one doing the research on epigenetics,
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but from my readings and my understanding and my work, I've seen that
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I've seen that not only personal but professional. So for example, the information
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that I have of being a Holocaust survivor, even though I've never been at
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war and I've never been in those circumstances, in concentration comes there's there's the
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episode of that information that it's stored in my body, that I have a
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knowing and an understanding of that that might be genetic. And some of the
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times I see that, for example, with patients that have the experience of
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sexual abuse, that have repeated patterns of behavior that they say little that comes
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out of nowhere from you know, they're from three generations down that are repeating
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the same kind of cycle of traumatic responses or behavior that has repeated from from
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their parents, grandparents or great grandparents. So you know, it takes a
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lot of awareness, consciousness and work for us to be able to stop that
30:36
cycle of transmission, of traumatic transmission. And I think that's why talking about
30:41
this is so important. You know, it's disrupting the cycle of trauma which
30:48
you know takes a lot of courage, a lot of strength, and it's
30:52
worth it absolutely. What have we learned about the neurological and physical of trauma
31:00
in the last decade? What are you Are you referring specifically to the changes
31:07
in the brain. Are you referring you know? Because you know, depending
31:11
on the experiences that we've we seek, we have, we see that the
31:15
brain of people have gone through traumatic experiences has a different different characteristics or shapes
31:23
a little bit different than people that have gone through that have not gone through
31:27
trauma. Also, the way our nervous system is wired um can gives us
31:34
a lot of information into how we experience trauma. So people that have been
31:38
in survival mode a lot of the time in traumatically trauma responses facing danger or
31:47
emotional danger or psychological danger, are wired in a way in which their nervous
31:53
system is constantly firing and it's constantly on guard, and it's constantly looking for
32:00
how to defend themselves from danger. And we usually see responses usually three or
32:07
four typical responses, which are the fight response, the flight response, the
32:13
freeze, and the phone. And when I mean fight, I don't mean
32:16
just physically fighting. I mean also when you become more irritable, when you
32:24
have more insomnia, when you're not able to eat well, when you're not
32:30
sleeping well, when you're constantly like picking fights with your family members, with
32:36
your friends, with your children, when there's like a very disproportionate reactions to
32:45
certain things that happened during the day. This can all be fight responses,
32:50
and there can be stored in the body in ways that you're not even aware.
32:54
There's like very little consciousness sometimes with these responses, and the same with
33:00
flight response. Flight doesn't just mean like you're running away from the tiger that
33:04
it's going to eat you. Flight response can also mean like being completely avoidant
33:09
of a situation, like becoming dissociated, disconnecting from your emotions, pretending that
33:16
something isn't happening, pushing problems under the rug, playing dumb like you don't
33:24
know what's happening, for getting things that are normal, normally more easy to
33:29
remember. These are all flight responses, right, and then freeze responses,
33:36
not only the body has more rigidity and more immobility, but also your mind.
33:44
It's like I can't make decisions, I don't even know what I'm feeling.
33:47
I've become numb or anesthetized, like I don't feel my feelings, I
33:52
don't feel anything. I have a very hard time choosing what's right and what's
33:55
wrong. You know, a lot of the people, for example, during
33:59
the pendemic, we're feeling paralyzed and they could not make decisions that you know,
34:04
where to go. The uncertainty was too much. The dealing with loss
34:07
was so traumatic that they were literally paralyzed in in who they were in like
34:15
understanding who they were, what they were doing, and what was happening in
34:19
the moment. So these are these are things that not just happened in our
34:22
emotions, but also in our bodies. And one of the wonderful things that
34:28
you share in The Unexpected Gift of Trauma is that you've devoted three decades to
34:34
developing your five stage framework for post traumatic growth. How did you create your
34:40
framework for post traumatic growth? So? I didn't create it. It was
34:47
developed through really learning from my patients and really learning from the communities that I
34:55
was working when that I repeatedly saw this stage is happening. And one of
35:01
the things that I want to do with my book is give a language to
35:05
this process. So in the same way, Let's say that Elizabeth Coogler Rass
35:09
describes and gives languages to the stages of grief in which we all experience it.
35:16
You don't have to create it, and you don't have to invent it.
35:20
But knowing that there are stages of grief, you know, you're able
35:23
to identify it, You're able to process, and you're able to know a
35:27
little bit what's coming. The same way the process of post traumatic growth,
35:31
you know, starting with the first stage of radical acceptance, which is because
35:37
people ask me all the time, so how do we start this? How
35:39
does that happen? And I say, well, when you get to the
35:44
point in your life when you radically accept, honestly completely what's happening with you
35:50
right and you say I am an addict, or I am a victim of
35:54
sexual abuse, or I am an immigrant to have difficulty in this moment,
36:02
or I have been affected by my divorce or you know, or the pandemic
36:08
is you know, having profound consequences in my life at this moment. But
36:15
it takes a lot of courage to look at those monsters or that shadow in
36:21
the eye and say, yes, this is me right now. And some
36:23
people call that like the deep night of the soul. Some people call that
36:28
when you touch rock bottom. It's like when the risk you know. I
36:32
love this poem by Anna says, when the risk of staying a bud is
36:38
bigger and more painful than the risk of blooming, that's when you begin to
36:44
go through this process of transformation. And then you go into the second stage,
36:49
which is a stage of safety and protection and which you reach out and
36:53
say, you know what, let me express and say and get validation and
36:57
recognition and acceptance for what I'm going through. And usually that's from people go
37:01
into therapy or go look talk to a religious leader or to a chaplain,
37:07
or to go into a support group. Then you get and then you get
37:10
to talk about it. And of course this is longer. You know,
37:14
each stage it can is more descriptive, but just to mention them. The
37:17
third stage is a new narrative. People start to experience and try out new
37:23
ways of thinking. It's like, okay, so far my belief system didn't
37:28
work so well. It was shattered. I no longer I didn't I don't
37:30
understand how things works. Let me try out new ways of understanding. Let
37:34
me see if I can reinvent myself, rewrite my story, try new identities,
37:40
see the world from a different perspective. And then we're going to the
37:45
fourth stage of integration, in which we not only accept who we are in
37:50
that moment, but also we integrate who we were before. So I am
37:54
a whole person with my past trauma and with my present way of being.
38:01
And you get to integrate the stories and make it a whole. And then
38:06
the fifth stage, which is my favorite, is the stage of wisdom and
38:10
growth. In the stage, people usually voice how appreciative of life they are,
38:16
how meaningful their relationships are. Usually people have come to some sort of
38:22
a spiritual awakening, and I don't mean religious, I mean spiritual, like
38:28
I'm a connection with a whole more interconnectedness, a connection with a higher self.
38:34
And then and people usually get to a sense of purpose and meaning like
38:38
usually people turn their pain into purpose, turn their wounds into the medicine.
38:45
They go from the breakdown into the breakthrough. So it's a very very beautiful
38:50
stage. And this is not linear at all. People go back and forth
38:53
sometimes to one one thing and another, they go in circle, so you
38:58
know, it's very it's very exable how these stages go and you refer to
39:02
the stage of awareness as radical. Why is it radical? Because we tend
39:08
when we care in pain and we were suffering, our natural response is to
39:14
defend from that. So as long as we're using avoidance and fighting and paralysis
39:21
and being triggered, we're not accepting what's happening. We're maybe a little bit
39:27
knowing that there's something going on, or maybe not or but we tend to
39:30
defend that. But it's only when we radically get rid of all these defenses
39:35
and radically say, Okay, I'm open and vulnerable and I'm willing to accept
39:42
what's happening to me right now. That's the place when you begin this process.
39:46
We're like in the movie Network where they stuck their head out the window
39:49
and said, I'm mad as Helen, I'm not going to take this anymore,
39:54
exactly exactly. That's it. Yeah. People usually have tell you the
40:00
story like that, They say, I came a time when I told myself
40:04
this and that's wouldn't happen. You know. Her book is called The Unexpected
40:08
Gift of Trauma. Doctor Adet Shiro will be back with more after these words
40:14
on the Own Times Radio Network. Humanity Healing International is a small nonprofit with
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eleven am Eastern on Olden Times Radio. What is dedicated? The thing that
42:00
drives me every day as a dad is very on him. We call him
42:05
a day day for sure. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's
42:09
attention, affection, knowledge, and there's this huge responsibility in making sure that
42:16
when he's no longer under my wing, that he's a good person. I
42:22
think the advice I would give is you don't need to know all the answers.
42:27
The craziest thing was believing that your dad knew everything. So as a
42:31
dad, you felt like you had to know everything. You had to get
42:34
everything right. It's okay to make mistakes as long as it's coming from love.
42:38
Then you know it kind of starts to work itself out. I want
42:43
him to be able to sit back one day and go we work together.
42:45
We did a good job. That's dedication. Find out more at Fatherhood dot
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gov. Brought to you by the US Department of Health and Human services and
42:54
the ad Council back with Doctordicio. Her book is called The Unexpected Gift of
43:08
Trauma, Doctor Shiro. When someone has processed the five stages, what may
43:15
they do? As you describe it in the book, to stay elevated?
43:21
Yes, and stay elevated is a way of saying, Okay, Now you've
43:27
learned from yourself and from your relationship with others, how you can develop the
43:31
strength, how you can get to growth, how you become more conscious and
43:37
more aware. So what do you do after that? Because life is not
43:40
linear, and life happens, right, all these challenges happen, and more
43:45
adversity might happen, and other things. So one of the things that I
43:49
think it's very important is to become very aware that you are able to sustain
43:54
this lessons and to face new challenges with the tools that you've developed in all
44:01
this process. I want to mention something very very specific, which is a
44:07
protective factor that I learned about when I was doing my research on the post
44:13
traumatic growth, the spiritual part. Did you know that during this spiritual connection,
44:22
the person that becomes more conscious and more aware tends to develop a part
44:30
in the brain, in the cerebral cortex that becomes thicker, and people that
44:35
have become more spiritual and have become more connected have this thicker part in the
44:40
cerebral cortex. And what's interesting about that is not only that we're having a
44:45
physical indicator of this, which is already is fascinating, this is research by
44:51
doctor Lisa Miller University, but also that this is a protective factor again new
45:00
trauma against new challenges and new adversity. What does that mean. That means
45:06
that because you've gone through the process of traumatic growth, you already have a
45:10
protective layer around you facing new challenges and new trauma. So you become more
45:16
resilient, you become more aware, you have all these tools that you can
45:22
use for yourself. And to me, that's rightless, that's fascinating and that's
45:27
incredible. So things to do being more use mindfulness of course, include meditation
45:34
in your practice. Use movements. You know, we know now that moving
45:38
the body and moving ideas, moving emotions, being in movement is always healthy.
45:45
I always recommend incorporating music and art and dance into our lives because not
45:54
only is it fun, but it also is healing, and it's we're healing
46:00
than what we can imagine. Vibration frequency has healing properties that are very very
46:07
important. One of the things that we know from research is cultivating good relationships.
46:14
And I'm not going to get into all the research about it, but
46:16
we know that people that live longer, that are happier, that do better
46:21
in life, have meaningful relationships. So these are all tips and suggestions and
46:29
ideas to stay elevated, to stay in the growth, to stay in the
46:35
resilience and at the end of the unexpected gift of trauma. You offer some
46:39
tools that the readers can use. Please tell us about some of those tools.
46:45
Well, I offer a couple of questionnaires. I don't know if that's
46:49
what you're referring to that we're developed by. Yeah, we're developed by today
46:52
Shi Calhoun, and the other one developed by JOSEPHS. Sup which were measurements
47:02
of postraumatic growth. And it's very simple questionnaires. One has like I think
47:07
fifteen and the other twenty items and you just respond to that and it's a
47:12
way for you to see where are you at in the measuring of postraumatic growth,
47:16
which means like yes, you're in your way or you're maybe at the
47:21
beginning of the stages or maybe you need to work harder to get to post
47:24
traumatic growth. But I think what's important about these questionnaires and about understanding post
47:30
traumatic growth is that it is a possibility. The fact that people would know
47:35
that this is an option, that there is an alternative to trauma. I
47:39
think it's the most important piece of information and say, yes, there's an
47:45
outcome to this. There is an exit to a trauma, traumas and a
47:50
life sentence. We can do something different. Can you share with us an
47:53
example of a success story with someone applying your methods. Obviously you can't mention
47:59
name, but just an example. Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna take
48:02
this example that it's not so extreme, which is during the pandemic, I
48:07
gotta. I had a couple that came to me horrified. The wife was
48:12
horrified that she found her husband cheating on her. And of course because they
48:15
were at home with the four children and looking at their phones, she saw
48:21
in his phone like all these messages from another woman, and so of course
48:24
she was shocked. She was really speechless. She thought her life was falling
48:31
apart. She didn't know what to do. She comes to her husband to
48:36
therapy and in a very courageous way. Instead of deciding to break the relationship,
48:45
they both decided that they were going to take the risk of going through
48:49
this process that I was offering them. I said, yes, I mean,
48:53
a lot of people decide at this point that they're gonna separate or that
48:58
they're going to break their marriage. I'm giving you another possibility. Why don't
49:01
we try this and see what happens. And they were willing to do it.
49:06
And they worked so hard to go through the stages of postraumatic growth,
49:10
and they were willing to go deep in their dark place of the relationship.
49:16
They looked at each other and told each other these very difficult things. They
49:21
worked on their what was happening in the past. They were working on the
49:24
way they communicated, and their intimacy, in their emotional connection, in their
49:31
contract, their marital contract. And by the end of this process, I'm
49:37
not going to say it's perfect, but the way that they tell the story
49:42
is that they have become It's like a new marriage. They have been they're
49:45
married to new people. They understand each other from a different place, they
49:51
appreciate each other differently. They've transformed themselves in how they relate, not only
49:57
to themselves, but to each other. Their four child don't have come to
50:00
me as a boyd and say, wow, my parents really have done something
50:05
very different. It's such a good example for us to see what they can
50:07
do in our relationship. And of course it's not perfect. I don't want
50:13
to idealize this because I've seen them later on and they have to have a
50:16
little problem here and a tweak there. But the tools that they have and
50:21
the understanding that they have of each other has deepened their relationship and that has
50:25
taken the relationship to places they didn't even think was possible. And that's what
50:30
I think. It's that, you know, makes such a big difference and
50:35
what I appreciate so much. That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that with
50:38
us. You know, we're living at a time of great strife, major
50:44
instability on so many levels, and of course the horrors of war in Ukraine
50:49
and elsewhere. What will those who have experienced this, and especially their children
50:54
need to do. Yeah, yeah, when we're talking about collective trauma,
51:01
especially um, the responsibility of the culture and the society of acknowledging what's happened.
51:13
It's so important and I'm really, really moved and worried, but for
51:21
the children and the descendants of the people from that have gone through the Ukraine
51:27
War and that have you know, the things that that we're going through in
51:30
difficult and traumatic times. Because it's not just for the time being now,
51:35
but how this gets pass on from generation to generation. And one of the
51:40
things that it's very very important to do is that to gather in groups,
51:46
in communities or even as a nation, even from the leadership, you know,
51:52
coming from the from the position of leadership, but also from the from
51:55
the ground, in coming together and telling stories, like telling stories about what
52:02
has happened, how everybody survived, what they did to make it better,
52:08
how they recognize each other and validate each each other's experiences. That the beginning
52:15
of a healing process. Because trauma, what it does is fragments and isolates
52:22
our war. They not only distances people because of loss, because of death,
52:29
because of physical proximity, but also because it tears away the identity of
52:35
the person, of the family, of the tradition of the culture. It
52:38
really undos like the fabric of the culture, and it takes the community to
52:49
put it together again in ways that makes sense. And for the adults to
52:54
tell the stories to the children and fore gatherings to be able to reconnect with
52:59
what was the tradition of the culture. But you see what I'm talking about,
53:02
It's not a one day thing. This is a whole process that takes
53:07
time, that requires a lot of support not just from the from the leaders,
53:12
but also from other communities and for the world to recognize this, you
53:16
know, for that's that's the way to heal. And I know I'm talking
53:20
about big things, and I know I'm talking about ideal situations, But if
53:24
you ask me how to heal this, this is what I see. What
53:29
would you like readers to take away from the unexpected gift of trauma? So
53:35
Victor, thank you for that question. First of all, that trauma is
53:39
not a life sentence, and trauma can have the possibility of health and growth
53:45
and thrive and transform. The second is that use the book as a way
53:52
of having the language, the words, the identification of these stages to it
53:57
to see where you're at at this stage. Are you more in radical acceptance?
54:00
Are you more in awakening and more? Are you more in the new
54:04
narrative stage? Are you where are you with that? And to know what's
54:07
coming, to understand where you're in the process. Three, for people that
54:12
are accompanying or that are friends or family of somebody that is traumatized, this
54:16
is a very healthy, important book because it gives you an idea of what
54:21
the other person is going through, So it gives you more empathy and more
54:23
compassion, more understanding. And another one is to understand trauma not just as
54:29
an individual, but also as a collective, systemic experience. That it's relational.
54:36
Then understand that it's not like an isolated event, but that it affects
54:39
people across the board, and that affects generations up and generations down in the
54:45
same way that healing and growth and transformation can do the same. So when
54:51
you're you know we have in the Jewish tradition, when you heal one person,
54:53
you heal the world. The same when your growth, when you're doing
54:57
the work of growth and information, you're transforming everybody around you, and you're
55:02
transforming your ancestors and your descendants. The wisdom of doctor editshir Or. Her
55:08
book is called The Unexpected Gift of Trauma. Doctor Schiro, please tell our
55:13
listeners one more time where they can get your book and find out more about
55:15
you so they can find the book in on all the platforms Amazon, Barnes
55:22
and Novels, any of the indies, Walmart and our audiobook and Kindle.
55:27
Would love for you to get it, to read it, to have the
55:30
conversation with me or with others about what you what moves you from this book.
55:36
You can find you on Instagram at doctor Edi Shiro tr dot Edi Shiro,
55:42
on Facebook, my website ww dot doctor Edshio dot com, or as
55:47
Victor and He'll nowhere to find me, doctor Schiro. Thank you so much
55:52
for joining us and sharing this wonderful and very positive message in a world that
55:58
needs positivity right now. Thank you so much for this wonderful mutation. It's
56:02
been a pleasure talking with you really, and thank you for joining us on
56:07
Destination Unlimited. I'm Victor the Voice Furman. Have a wonderful week.