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Certified Trauma Recovery Coach Supervisor with Jennifer Kindera · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:10
  Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaymick Verson.
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  My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible cells, to be human,
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  to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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  who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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  authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. You can learn
• 0:32
  more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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  That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, our folks.
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  Really excited to bring back today Jennifer Kindera. I interviewed her several months
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  ago, but wanted to bring her back. She's doing a lot of really
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  positive things in this field, and you can learn more about her by going
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  to Jennifer Kindera dot com. All right, here we go. All right,
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  so five four, three, two and one. Al Right, guys,
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  welcome back to the Trauma divers podcast. Guymic Person here, Very excited
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  to have as my guest today. Jennifer Kindera. Jennifer welcome, Oh,
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  thank you, guys. I'm so happy to be here. Awesome. So
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  Jennifer is a just lost my notes here sorry. Jennifer is a complex trauma
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  survivor who's been traveling the path of recovery for over twenty five years. As
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  a certified Advanced Trauma Recovery coach, she works one on one and in group
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  settings with survivors of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, offering an honese,
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  inclusive, and compassionate space for the unfolding of her client's life journey.
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  Jennifer focuses on some of the byproducts of trauma, shame, codependency, and
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  addiction. Jennifer Who's writings can be found on medium, most often curated under
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  the mental health category, and she also serves as a director of Innovative Client
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  Client Solutions as a mentor to current students at the current at the Oh boy,
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  I'm gonna have to redo this, Jennifer, I missed that. Um
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  you're at the International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching, all right, Hang on,
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  Oh boy, I just okay, we're recording this. I can do
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  that. Uh. I think what happened is I copy and pasted that.
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  I wasn't sure when I put it together how long it was supposed to be
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  or how detailed. Oh no, that's fine. Yeah, I usually I
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  just um ah, International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching. Okay, I'm gonna
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  I'm gonna redo this. International Association of Trauma Trauma Recovery Coaching, YEP coaching.
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  Okay, I hear a pup. Oh that's outside said, all right,
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  thanks, yes, okay, I'm gonna redo this. Okay. So
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  five, four, three, two and one. Al right, guys,
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  welcome back to the Trauma divers podcast. Coming first in here. Super excited
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  to have as my guest today, Jennifer Kindera Jennifer Welcome. Thank you so
• 3:30
  much guy for having me. All right, So, Jennifer is a complex
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  trauma survivor who's been traveling the path of recovery for over twenty five years.
• 3:38
  As a certified Advanced Trauma Recovery coach, Jennifer works one on one and in
• 3:43
  group settings with survivors of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, offering an
• 3:46
  honest, inclusive, and compassionate space for the unfolding of her client's life journey.
• 3:52
  She focuses on some of the byproducts of trauma, shame, codependency,
• 3:55
  and addiction. Jennifer's writings can be found on medium that's medium dot com.
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  Most often curated under the mental health category, and she also serves as a
• 4:05
  director of Innovative Client Solutions as a mentor to current students at the International Association
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  of Trauma Recovery Coaching. Yes, got it, all right, Jennifer.
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  Welcome, Thanks, thanks so much for being here and doing this. Oh,
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  thank you for having me. I'm super excited. Awesome. So let's
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  get started here. Well, actually, before we do, share with our
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  listeners where you're from originally and where you're calling from, and then we'll die
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  back. Okay. I grew up in the Midwest, was a Wisconsin and
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  Minnesota girl for a long long time, and then a few years ago moved
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  down to Texas. So now I live in the Texas heat, Houston to
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  be specific. Yep. And so it was, you know, there's two
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  million people in the state of Minnesota. There's six million people in the city
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  of Houston. So it was a big difference that in the weather is just
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  a huge change for me. Oh well, all right, So you know,
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  as I said before we started recording here, my goal really is to
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  talk about I mean, I you know, I came across you and I
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  was like, this woman is passionate about what she's doing. That's what this
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  podcast about. So and and what I want to do is, folks,
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  how the heck did you get here? That's what Journey of of of you
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  share with our listeners that story. Oh wow, how did I get here?
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  Well? And I'm going to turn fifty this year, so you know,
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  it's been fifty years getting to this point. Um. You know my
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  childhood and growing up years. You know, I was raised with a mentally
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  old mom, and she escalated as time went on. And so when I
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  was a child in the setting of m narcissism, and there was physical abuse
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  and sexual abuse and emotional warfare at and you know, not that I don't
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  have some positive memories, because nothing is ever all bad or all good,
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  right, it was really tumultuous for a long time. And so I remember
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  having my first thoughts of suicide when I was about six years old, laying
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  in the snow outside looking up at the sky, yeah, asking my dad,
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  you know what happens if you go to sleep when it's this cold,
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  and him telling me, well, you would die. And I thought about
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  it, you know, and that was I didn't know that other people didn't
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  feel that way. I didn't know that the way I was being raised was
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  was dysfunctional. You know, we didn't know. We didn't have those terms
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  back then, and we didn't talk about it. Nobody talked about it.
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  When I was twelve, they shipped off my brother, who was my sexual
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  abuser, to military school, and all of a sudden, it was like
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  the abuse just stopped and never a word was spoken. And I spent a
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  lot of years hiding from it, running from it, invisible. I felt
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  invisible. The trauma had created such a distance between my mind and my heart
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  that I didn't I didn't even know that that was there, But I didn't
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  know I should feel any differently. You know, when I went away to
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  college after college, really and I was out from under my parents thumb for
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  the first time, and I started to have horrific panic attacks and awful nightmares,
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  I mean, like violent, awful nightmares every night. And I ended
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  up, I mean, what a gift. I ended up in the therapist
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  office and sitting there and I remember my first therapist vividly, and she had
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  this was after right after college. It was like the minute, the minute
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  I was done and away from my parents completely, this all started to happen.
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  And that was the beginning of it. I did uh several stints c
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  vmdr. I. She told me that one of the first sessions that I
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  dissociated more than any other person she'd ever seen. I wasn't connected to myself.
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  And I know now that that's because we self abandon We're talked to disconnect
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  from our emotions at a young age when we're subjected to that kind of treatment.
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  And I just completely was off the chart. So that was the beginning
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  of my journey to get to this place, you know. So it was
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  it's I don't even know what else to say about that part of Well,
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  if I may for a second here, I mean, first of all,
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  this is I mean, it's it's crazy. I mean, it's so intense,
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  and you know the fact that you're sharing this is I mean, I
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  want to thank you for sharing this. A story like this is just it
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  can be overwhelming, I mean can be overwhelming to hear. Let alone.
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  Experience ends when you know you talked about that that image of you lying down
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  in the snow is very powerful. And then you jumped to college, but
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  you were receiving this emotional warfare that was going on abuse from your brother.
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  How did you manage you know, guy, I don't know. There was
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  there was always a part of me um I think that I didn't know,
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  didn't think that my story could end that way. That I just had to.
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  And and because I was raised in that environment, it wasn't ever it's
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  gonna sound weird, It wasn't ever about me. It was always about wait,
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  what do I have to do to keep the people that are around me
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  from being angry with me and thus being hurt further? And so it was
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  I remember thinking in my head, well, okay, she said to do
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  it this way, So if I just do it this way today and every
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  day, then she won't be mad and I won't get hurt. And then
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  the next day, because she was mentally ill and narcissistic, the expectations would
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  change. So I would do it the way I thought I was supposed to
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  do it, and then that was wrong, you know. So it was
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  I mean, when you're in that kind of survival mode, you know,
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  there isn't any there isn't a thought, and and my brain was growing,
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  my brain was developing. I didn't have the thought of how how are you
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  surviving this? It was just I had to survive. And so you know,
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  then we go to now I know, we go to this level of
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  shame because shame is that social construct emotion that is going to be key to
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  survival. I have to belong to my tribe, my community, my family,
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  because my survival depends on it. So I choose shame over death.
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  Essentially, what unfolded after you started seeing a therapist, Oh my goodness,
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  I didn't even know there was a name or a disorder for what my mom
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  was. I thought she was perfect by when I walked in there. I
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  thought that she was what I was supposed to emulate. And finding out that
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  it wasn't my fault that I wasn't I didn't bring this on. That I
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  wasn't I wasn't going to be able to change this overnight, but that the
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  journey along the way and the glimmers of hope along the way through the pain
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  and unpacking the pain and holding it up to the light were profound. I
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  remember when I got pregnant with my daughter. I have two children, and
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  I remember holding her in the hospital and thinking she is never going to feel
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  the pain that I felt when I was a child. She may have different
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  pain, but she is never going to be physically abused. She is never
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  going to be hurt in those ways. Man, I can feel that's that's
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  that's so crazy. I am tearing up. Very powerful, it's very powerful.
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  I mean, so here you are, you're helping others. How did
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  that? Did you? How did I get there in that passion? Well,
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  and you know, for a long time walking this path on my own
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  in therapy, EMDR reading what I could, you know, um, learning
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  about what was going on with me, the neuroscience of it, all of
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  it. That was enough, you know. And I worked corporate America,
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  I managed a resort. I had several different you know paths on my career,
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  my in my professional life, and um, you know, in the
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  back of my he though, it was always a you know, kind of
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  what do you want to be when you grow up? You know and when
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  I don't know. A few years ago I connected with a woman who was
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  a trauma recovery coach and not in a professional capacity, but I submitted a
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  writing piece to an anthology and they accepted it and she messaged me after and
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  we started to talk and she said, you know, we have this Facebook
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  forum group. If you're entrusted, it's all survivors blah blah blah, and
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  so I joined that and it was kind of the beginning of this relationship with
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  her and she she was doing one to one coaching, and then she decided
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  to open up the International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching to train others to do
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  what she did. And she messaged me when she had the first class and
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  said, I think you'd be a great fit. And I went and I
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  didn't sign up for that class. I went in the next session and it's
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  it's been it's been quite a journey. You know. I love what I
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  do. And one of the things that I think about all the time is
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  that there was no reason for what happened to me, or what happens to
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  others who are put in, you know, those situations as children. There's
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  no reason. But this gives us purpose. This gives us purpose to go
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  out there and be of service and help other people to navigate these waters that
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  are so insane and the byproducts of what trauma brings us. You know,
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  the trauma came first, and then came the addiction, and then came the
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  shame and the codependency, and actually the addictions probably after, but you know,
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  and I would say that the big you know, before that happened,
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  I should intercept put this in there. The biggest catalyst for me to start
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  to look for something on a deeper level and in terms of service, was
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  that my mom took her own life when I was in my thirties and left
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  me to clean up the mess. And it was a mess. And so
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  that was you know, at that point. Then I veered off my path
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  and started to drink wine and went downhill really fast and ended up in treatment
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  in two years. And you know, it's just there's been a lot to
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  my story that we can't possibly cover, and you know, but all of
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  those parts and pieces brought me to this place where I have learned. There's
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  always something new to learn. I want to keep on learning, and I
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  want to keep on teaching, and I want to help people to navigate this
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  because that whole realization of this is not your fault and you matter. You
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  matter enough to heal, you matter enough to take the chance to trust someone.
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  I mean, for a trauma survivor even trusting one other person, it's
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  like they don't even know where to start. When you're working with people,
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  you know, you talked about trust and so forth, what are you seeing
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  as as some of the challenges that in addition I guess to trust and so
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  forth, that you feel people who suffer trauma are are struggling with you know,
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  you meet you, you get engaged with a client, you meet a
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  client, and so forth. What are you seeing from your experience that oftentimes
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  people are struggling with to take that initial step to get in there. UM
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  A lot of times I see a lot of um relational issues. They're having
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  trouble with their boss, their boyfriend, their husband, their wife, you
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  know, and they get in because they think, you know, and then
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  they're also having it can be such a variety of things. They can be
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  having UM A lot of net thoughts about themselves in the world at large they
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  can have, and which is shame. They can be having trouble relationally and
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  their partner is saying, I think you need help and them you know,
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  or they're they're overcome with waves of emotion and anger that they just don't know
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  how to deal with because they've stuffed it down for so long. And you
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  know, one of the most important things that I talked to clients about is
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  that you know your psyche. Your brain is built to protect you. And
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  it's like a sponge. And what happens when you oversaturate a sponge the water
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  leaks out the edges. Right. So here they are, they're going along
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  in their life and they've got their their house and their white picket fence and
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  their two point five kids and their dog, and all of a sudden,
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  they're having panic attacks or overwhelming emotions or relational issues, and they find they
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  think about they're having a lot of thoughts about you know, when I was
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  a little kid, this is how my parents did this, and this was
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  this. I feel really awful when I think about that. And you know,
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  we enforce I do a real bottom up approach with this, you know,
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  because we can't heal trauma just in the front of the brain. It
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  doesn't work. If that worked, I wouldn't have clients that say, I
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  was in talk therapy for fifteen years and I never felt any better. We
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  feel we talk about where you're feeling this in your body. What are other
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  modalities we can employ to help you navigate this? You know, yoga.
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  I mean when I talk about I'm big in the self care, self compassion
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  arena with my clients and with myself. You know, functional self care,
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  physical self care, emotional self care, internal self care, relational self care.
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  How do we employ those things in your life to keep you moving forward?
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  You know? And some days we don't move forward. Some days we
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  just want to sit in bed with the covers of our head and that's okay.
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  You know. It's this unprecedented validation of where they are at at any
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  moment in time. Yeah. So I see a lot of that with people
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  coming in. Um, you know, a lot of uh. You know,
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  I'm having trouble with my daughter. She reminds me of me at that
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  age. I don't want her to go down that path, that kind of
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  thing. You know. So what is some of what are some of the
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  differences between like what you you do as a coach and say, what's you
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  know someone else does as a therapist as a licensed therapist. I'm sure you
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  get that question a lot. I get that question a lot. I have
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  a whole page devoted to it on my website of FAQs UM. Basically,
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  you know, there's there's several differences, but I would say that the gap
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  is um. You know, I am not a therapist. I do not
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  diagnose anyone. If somebody comes to me and says, um, well,
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  I mean I want a diagnosis. Do I have depression? Do I have
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  anxiety. I don't do that. I send them to a therapist. Um.
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  You know, the analogy or the metaphor that I like to use with
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  people is you know,