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Fighting Shadows with Zetta Thomelin · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists Podcast. My name is gaming Person.
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Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
0:11
Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
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Speaker 1: So five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited. How us My guest
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Speaker 1: today Zeta Tomlin Zetta Welcome.
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Speaker 2: Hi guy, Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward
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Speaker 2: to talking to you awesome.
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Speaker 1: Zetta is an author, therapist, coach and recognized leader in
0:33
Speaker 1: the field of hypnotherapy. She's the chair of the British
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Speaker 1: Association of Therapeutic Hypnotists, vice chair of the UK Confederation
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Speaker 1: of Hypnotherapy Organizations, and she serves as a trustee for
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Speaker 1: the Research Council for Complimentary Medicine. Set has also served
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Speaker 1: as CEO of Children with Age Charity and Vice chair
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Speaker 1: of Mama Biashara charity supporting grassroots projects in Kenya. She's
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Speaker 1: the author of four books, The Trauma Effect, Exploring and
1:01
Speaker 1: Resolving Inherited trauma, Genes, Don't Lie, Dnare Results and Family Secrets,
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Speaker 1: among others. Prior to her career in therapies that have
1:09
Speaker 1: worked in the media as a director of Kronos Group
1:11
Speaker 1: Publishing and his group head at News International Rights. That
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Speaker 1: up obviously obviously just a little bit about you, but
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Speaker 1: share with our listeners before you get going, where you're
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Speaker 1: from originally and where you are currently.
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Speaker 2: I was born in England and I live and work
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Speaker 2: in England, though sometimes across in Germany as well. And
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Speaker 2: I've had an interesting journey towards a work in therapy
1:38
Speaker 2: through as you've outlined, a business background that then ended
1:44
Speaker 2: up in the world of therapy through my own physical
1:47
Speaker 2: illness that caused me to need to change direction and
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Speaker 2: then a whole lot of new learning came my way
1:54
Speaker 2: on that journey.
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Speaker 1: Well that's the perfect entree, so let's go. How did
1:59
Speaker 1: all this start for you?
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Speaker 2: I had viral and caphalitis and at the time I
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Speaker 2: was a CEO of a charity in London at the
2:07
Speaker 2: peak of my career.
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Speaker 1: Viral and which is what It's a.
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Speaker 2: Bit like meningitis. The brain swells and you have all
2:15
Speaker 2: sorts of physical problems and left me at the age
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Speaker 2: of thirty four with difficulties seeing I couldn't read, I
2:25
Speaker 2: couldn't write, I couldn't watch television, I couldn't cope with
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Speaker 2: any light. So my life went from great success to
2:32
Speaker 2: a sort of avoid of nothingness. And I was looking
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Speaker 2: at how to recover, and one day a friend suggested
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Speaker 2: I went for some hypnotherapy to help me with my
2:46
Speaker 2: sleep and to help me kind of deal with the
2:49
Speaker 2: situation I found myself in this sudden change. I think
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Speaker 2: the thing I found most difficult was I didn't know
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Speaker 2: how to be Zetta without the identity of my work
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Speaker 2: all the other things I'd been doing. I had to
3:02
Speaker 2: really dig deep into myself my sense of identity, and
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Speaker 2: time is very long. When you can't read a book
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Speaker 2: or watch a television program, you really have to dig
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Speaker 2: deep into yourself. And I had this experience of hypnotherapy
3:18
Speaker 2: which was.
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Speaker 1: Like, I gotta pause you here because you're saying these
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Speaker 1: amazing things and you're jumping over these juicy parts. So
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Speaker 1: way do it. You're you're you got this job, you're
3:31
Speaker 1: loving it, you're successful. What were you doing specifically?
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Speaker 2: I was a CEO of a charity in London.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so how do these symptoms start to appear?
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Speaker 2: I just I just became really ill. One day I
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Speaker 2: had terrible head pain. I was being sick. I couldn't function.
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Speaker 2: I was just really really ill, and for six weeks
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Speaker 2: I couldn't get out of bed. You know, I was
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Speaker 2: really bad.
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Speaker 1: So you go to the doctor.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well they're not sure at first, and then gradually
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Speaker 2: they decide I've got in catholitis and I had to
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Speaker 2: I'm told I need to change the way I live
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Speaker 2: my life. A doctor looked at me and said, well,
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Speaker 2: you know, you're not going to be able to read
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Speaker 2: a book again. You're not going to be able to
4:19
Speaker 2: do all sorts of things, so just change the way
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Speaker 2: you live your life. And I'm somebody who I wasn't
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Speaker 2: prepared to just give in at this point. You know,
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Speaker 2: I could have just sort of said, well, this is
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Speaker 2: my life now, I'm going to be limited and just
4:36
Speaker 2: do what I can do. But I wasn't prepared to
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Speaker 2: accept that that was the way things were.
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Speaker 1: What were the proposed treatments.
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Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't. I mean, once I'd recovered, I mean
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Speaker 2: I was no longer seriously ill, but it left brain
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Speaker 2: damage in my brain stem, and so it left me
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Speaker 2: with some problems. And it's how I was going to
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Speaker 2: live with those problems, and I bought it. I mean,
4:58
Speaker 2: we're going back along time now. I'm sixty now, so
5:02
Speaker 2: we're going back to technology was much more simple. But
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Speaker 2: I bought a huge scanner device that was worked like
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Speaker 2: a reading machine and it would read out text to
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Speaker 2: me so I could work, you know, get books. There
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Speaker 2: were some audio books available, but I was trying to think,
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Speaker 2: how can I manage my life? I got an audio
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Speaker 2: diary and all sorts of things. But over time, gradually
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Speaker 2: my site began to improve and things began to get
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Speaker 2: better for me. I think the hypnotherapy helped me a lot,
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Speaker 2: and it made me think I want to know how
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Speaker 2: to do this, so I started to become a hypnotherapist
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Speaker 2: at a time.
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Speaker 1: Hang on, hang on. What was talked to us about
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Speaker 1: your experience with hypnotherapy and how did you get to hypnotherapy?
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Speaker 1: Were you just like so desperate, try anything.
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Speaker 2: I'll try anything. And a friend recommended it to me
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Speaker 2: and said, have you thought of doing this? And I
5:56
Speaker 2: had some hypnotherapy which got me sleeping properly again My
6:00
Speaker 2: sleep had been very disturbed. Helped me with my pain management.
6:03
Speaker 2: I had really bad headaches which were quite debilitating, and
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Speaker 2: I thought I want to understand how this works because
6:12
Speaker 2: I'm feeling a lot better. I'm feeling physically a lot better,
6:15
Speaker 2: psychologically a lot better. So I approached a trainer and said,
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Speaker 2: will you train me? I should I've never trained someone
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Speaker 2: who couldn't see to read and write. You know, obviously
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Speaker 2: we'll have to do things very slightly differently. I was
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Speaker 2: with a group of people. What was interesting about it was, though,
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Speaker 2: because I couldn't sit and read a script or look
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Speaker 2: things up. Everything had to be in my head.
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Speaker 1: So I.
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Speaker 2: Had to learn scripts I wrote. I had to learn
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Speaker 2: how it all worked. I took my exam orally, whereas
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Speaker 2: everyone else of writing an exam paper, I had to
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Speaker 2: answer questions that were directed to me. Obviously, you have
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Speaker 2: practical demonstrations as well. But I found it very, very
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Speaker 2: enjoyable and liberating and found I could do something. So
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Speaker 2: I started to work as a hypnotherapist as a time
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Speaker 2: when I was beginning to see more. I could take
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Speaker 2: a few notes, I could do a little bit, and
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Speaker 2: gradually I began to get more and more recovery. And
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Speaker 2: my doctors said, it's amazing, your brain has kind of
7:25
Speaker 2: re rooted around the brain damaged area through the work
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Speaker 2: that you've done, and I've got I mean, I'm not
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Speaker 2: one hundred percent, but I've reached a level of recovery
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Speaker 2: I could never have dreamed of.
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Speaker 1: Take us, hang on, Zetta, Take us back to your
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Speaker 1: first experience with hypnotherapy.
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Speaker 2: Well, at first, I thought, this isn't going to work
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Speaker 2: for me. I don't know how, I don't know how
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Speaker 2: I'll relax into it. I feel, oh, I feel a
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Speaker 2: bit stressed and anxious. How's that going to be? But
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Speaker 2: within five minutes I was loving it, the relaxation I felt.
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Speaker 2: I finally felt someone had some answers for me, and
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Speaker 2: I responded really well to it.
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Speaker 1: So when you say hypnotherapy in your particular specific experience,
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Speaker 1: were was that a single episode? Was that multiple episodes.
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Speaker 2: Of all I had? I had some hypnotherapy a few sessions,
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Speaker 2: and then when I began to train, we all practiced
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Speaker 2: on each other and the trainer practiced on me. So
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Speaker 2: I was having quite regular hypnotherapy for about a year really,
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Speaker 2: And then you know, during that process, I got stronger
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Speaker 2: and stronger, and I continue to do a lot of
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Speaker 2: work with self hypnosis. You know, I changed the way
8:44
Speaker 2: I lived my life a lot and understood the power
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Speaker 2: of suggestion and belief, and I wasn't prepared to believe
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Speaker 2: I was done at thirty four, you know, and so
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Speaker 2: I began to rebuild my life, and that belief I
9:01
Speaker 2: think I had in myself helped my recovery. And I'm
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Speaker 2: not saying we can't Obviously we can't heal everything. I'm
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Speaker 2: not making any ground claims, but I think we can
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Speaker 2: work with certain conditions and using the power of belief too,
9:17
Speaker 2: because if we believe things are going to go wrong,
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Speaker 2: they're more likely to do. So we just have to
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Speaker 2: look at the placebo effect and the no cibo effect.
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Speaker 2: I find that fascinating. I did a lot of research
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Speaker 2: in writing my books around the power of suggestion and
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Speaker 2: how people respond to this. For example, there was a
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Speaker 2: research project done at a university in Munich and they
9:42
Speaker 2: were doing a trial of antidepressants and one of the
9:45
Speaker 2: people on the trial took an overdose of a placebo
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Speaker 2: antidepressant but went into respiratory arrest and began, you know,
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Speaker 2: his system began to shut down because he believed he
9:55
Speaker 2: had taken an overdose and so just that belief had
10:00
Speaker 2: made his system shut down. So what we believe is
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Speaker 2: so important, and I brought that passion into my work
10:08
Speaker 2: that I do with my clients. Now, we're not big
10:10
Speaker 2: on self disclosure to our clients because it's about them,
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Speaker 2: it's not about me. If I feel a little bit
10:17
Speaker 2: about my story will help my client, then I will
10:20
Speaker 2: tell them. And this took me on a longer journey
10:24
Speaker 2: with what I learned from my clients and what made
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Speaker 2: me reflect more, which brought me more into trauma. I mean,
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Speaker 2: I guess what happened to me suddenly losing everything and
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Speaker 2: having to start again, that was a trauma. But I
10:39
Speaker 2: began to look at how trauma affects a family.
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Speaker 1: Soft family.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I found myself working as a hypnotherapist with people
10:50
Speaker 2: obviously who've experienced trauma themselves, but also people who'd had
10:55
Speaker 2: trauma within their family. So that could be a parent
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Speaker 2: or a sibling. There could be a suicide in the family,
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Speaker 2: or there could be abuse of a parent, a parent
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Speaker 2: could have been raped, or going back generations, I've worked
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Speaker 2: with quite a few grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and I
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Speaker 2: began to notice in this work how trauma was affecting
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Speaker 2: everybody in the family. I guess I knew from my
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Speaker 2: own experience when I got ill and I couldn't work,
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Speaker 2: this affect my parents. They were really distressed about what
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Speaker 2: was going on for me, and their life changed as
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Speaker 2: a result because they had to support me a lot.
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Speaker 2: But then I was looking at other people's traumas in
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Speaker 2: their families and what sort of behaviors was it bringing in.
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Speaker 2: How were people being affected both physically and psychologically, And
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Speaker 2: I began to notice certain patterns which fascinated me, and
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Speaker 2: then I wanted to know more about it, and it
11:57
Speaker 2: led to me reflecting again to my own story. Because
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Speaker 2: we learn most through ourselves, I think as a vehicle
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Speaker 2: that there was a trauma in my father's generation, and
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Speaker 2: I suddenly had a revelatory moment when I realized I
12:12
Speaker 2: was still being affected by what had happened in his
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Speaker 2: family when he was younger, and how these things can
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Speaker 2: affect us with our psychological behaviors but also physically. I
12:25
Speaker 2: just don't think we can separate the mind and the body.
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Speaker 2: I went to a PTSD conference in London a few
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Speaker 2: years ago, and a professor stood up and said, when
12:34
Speaker 2: did we as physicians decide to separate the mind from
12:38
Speaker 2: the body. We need to bring them back together because
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Speaker 2: people with trauma, for example, fifty percent of people with
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Speaker 2: trauma report pain, physical pain, and there's also medically undiagnosed
12:53
Speaker 2: symptoms that people with trauma present with. Now, if you've
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Speaker 2: grown up in a family with someone with trauma, what
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Speaker 2: are you learning in that environment? And this is what fascinates.
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Speaker 1: Me, whether consciously or subconsciously.
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Speaker 2: Right, often subconscious. For example, I'll give you an example.
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Speaker 2: If you have a wounded parent, as I had. I
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Speaker 2: had a wounded father, your care all goes into supporting
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Speaker 2: that person. You want them to be okay. You don't
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Speaker 2: understand what's wrong. There's possibly secrecy around what is wrong
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Speaker 2: because you're a child and you're not allowed to necessarily know,
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Speaker 2: And so you start to protect the wounded parent. You
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Speaker 2: go into giving mode. And they talk about this idea
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Speaker 2: of merging. You merge with a wounded parent, and therefore
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Speaker 2: your boundaries become weak, and it's all about we and
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Speaker 2: not about I, and you don't develop a strong sense
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Speaker 2: of self. And if you haven't developed a strong sense
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Speaker 2: of self, your boundaries will be very weak in all
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Speaker 2: your relationships. And I began to notice this within the
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Speaker 2: clients I was working with so often a wounded parent,
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Speaker 2: often a mother actually in a lot of the work
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Speaker 2: I've done, though in my case I had a kind
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Speaker 2: of a wounded father. But protecting the parent becomes really
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Speaker 2: important at the detriment of the child, and then they
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Speaker 2: learn about you know, they have to look after everybody
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Speaker 2: and they don't look after themselves. And this comes out
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Speaker 2: a lot with people who've been in a family where
14:34
Speaker 2: there's trauma also loyalty to the family. We pull together
14:41
Speaker 2: to deal with this trauma that's happened in our family
14:45
Speaker 2: and repel kind of all outsiders. You have to stay
14:48
Speaker 2: loyal and there's a price to that loyalty. You develop
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Speaker 2: unconscious patterns around different behaviors which might be guilt, blame, shame,
15:02
Speaker 2: and these things are more likely to happen if the
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Speaker 2: trauma event that's affected the family is something that's sort
15:09
Speaker 2: of socially difficult, like there's a suicide in the family.
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Speaker 2: We don't talk about it. We mustn't talk about it.
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Speaker 2: It doesn't look good for our family that that's happened.
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Speaker 1: Let me just pause you here for a second. I'm
15:21
Speaker 1: really struck by your stories that I mean, here, you
15:25
Speaker 1: were the CEO of this children's charity. You start to
15:30
Speaker 1: experience these symptoms which have this major impact and influence
15:36
Speaker 1: on your life and your health, and you're The way
15:42
Speaker 1: you're speaking now is would you ever thought that you'd
15:47
Speaker 1: be sitting here talking about I mean, it's really amazing,
15:53
Speaker 1: and it's it's so inspiring to hear you. The shift
15:57
Speaker 1: that unfolded for you.
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Speaker 2: It was life changing, and you know you have these
16:04
Speaker 2: people will say sometimes, oh, a terrible thing happened to me,
16:08
Speaker 2: but the good came out of it. I mean, I
16:10
Speaker 2: don't know if you've you know, Michael J. Fox has
16:12
Speaker 2: talked about his Parkinson's and how it has changed his
16:16
Speaker 2: life in a positive way as well as obviously all
16:19
Speaker 2: the negatives and my kind of illness took me on
16:26
Speaker 2: a completely different direction. I would never have dreamt of
16:28
Speaker 2: been a therapist. I was a very businesswoman type person. No,
16:32
Speaker 2: I was very organized, telling people what to do.
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Speaker 1: And it's so interesting because obviously the way you were
16:40
Speaker 1: speaking and the work you've done, it's almost like, well,
16:44
Speaker 1: I'm correct me if I'm wrong here, but you tapped
16:47
Speaker 1: into this other strength resource energy, like you opened this
16:52
Speaker 1: other door in your being.
16:54
Speaker 2: And I have to say I'm much happier as a
16:57
Speaker 2: therapist than I ever was as a c And each day,
17:02
Speaker 2: you know, I'm working with a lot of individuals with
17:05
Speaker 2: really awful stories, you know, and when you see their
17:09
Speaker 2: lives begin to shift and they're beginning to heal, this
17:13
Speaker 2: is just so wonderful, isn't it. I mean, it's just
17:15
Speaker 2: what a gift to be able to help somebody. I
17:18
Speaker 2: can't andy. It sounds trit doesn't it, But it really
17:21
Speaker 2: is wonderful.
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Speaker 1: I don't want to remind everyone I'm speaking with. Zeta Tomlin,
17:28
Speaker 1: author therapist coach. Her books include The Trauma Effect as
17:32
Speaker 1: well as The Healing Metaphor and self Help self Hypnosis.
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Speaker 1: So let me ask you something and I kind of
17:40
Speaker 1: miss this here, but what drew you to this topic
17:45
Speaker 1: of trauma in your clients?
17:47
Speaker 2: I think it just it intrigued me because I saw
17:50
Speaker 2: the impact it was happening on everyone around them, whether
17:53
Speaker 2: I was working with the individual who was traumatized, or
17:57
Speaker 2: whether I was working with someone from a family whether
18:00
Speaker 2: was trauma. I was incredibly aware of the impact that
18:06
Speaker 2: was rippling out. Just fascinated me. You know, there was
18:10
Speaker 2: one family in which there was a suicide and I
18:12
Speaker 2: ended working with the mother, three cousins, a grandmother, you know,
18:18
Speaker 2: all people in this family. I helped one and then
18:20
Speaker 2: they said, all you know, go and see Zestra shall
18:22
Speaker 2: help you deal with this. And I was working through
18:25
Speaker 2: different family members to help them move through that experience.
18:29
Speaker 2: And you know, I find myself quite often working with
18:34
Speaker 2: more than one member of a family because they've been
18:37
Speaker 2: affected by the same issue, but it may have manifested
18:41
Speaker 2: in different ways for them.
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Speaker 1: Are you using a solely hypnotherapy.
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Speaker 2: I use I use hypnotherapy, I use CBT, I use NLC,
18:52
Speaker 2: and I do some coaching work with people, so it's
18:57
Speaker 2: kind of a blend and it depends what suits individual.
19:02
Speaker 2: And I think my own journey of healing, whether it
19:08
Speaker 2: be my illness and getting back on track. And I've
19:11
Speaker 2: worked with quite a few people who have had serious
19:14
Speaker 2: illnesses that need help getting back on track. One in particular,
19:18
Speaker 2: who had really extreme grief when their father died. They
19:23
Speaker 2: were very close to the father, and then they didn't
19:26
Speaker 2: cope well with that grief. Then they became very seriously
19:29
Speaker 2: unwell and it took them a couple of years to
19:35
Speaker 2: begin to recover. And someone send them to me, and
19:40
Speaker 2: I've helped her on her journey of recovery, and she's
19:43
Speaker 2: now talking to other people about how you recover from
19:46
Speaker 2: illness when you've been in a state of real distress,
19:51
Speaker 2: and how you need to deal often with what's underneath it,
19:54
Speaker 2: like for her, that terrible grief. We had to work
19:58
Speaker 2: with that as part of her journey to healing her
20:01
Speaker 2: physical illness. So it's just interesting how many different ways
20:09
Speaker 2: trauma can come into people's lives, and often it's not
20:12
Speaker 2: your own, you know, if it's somebody else, it's trauma,
20:16
Speaker 2: and you learn from them, for example, to dissociate from
20:21
Speaker 2: emotional situations, because that's what your parents does, so that's
20:24
Speaker 2: what you then do. It's not your problem, it's their problem,
20:28
Speaker 2: but you're enacting their response to that problem, and you're
20:32
Speaker 2: going to carry that into your children's lives, you know.
20:36
Speaker 2: I've read so widely on this, a lovely book by
20:39
Speaker 2: a woman called Emily wander Cohen called Generation after Generation,
20:43
Speaker 2: and her mother was in a concentration camp, and there
20:49
Speaker 2: were many ways in which this affected bringing up her children.
20:52
Speaker 2: But one was a perfectionism her mother, because she'd been
20:56
Speaker 2: in a concentration camp. You don't want to draw attention
20:59
Speaker 2: to yourself by getting something wrong, you have to keep
21:01
Speaker 2: be right. You have to be good to stay safe.
21:05
Speaker 2: You know, that's how you stay safe. So she had
21:07
Speaker 2: this incredible perfectionism which she brought into her family, and
21:12
Speaker 2: then they were trying to live up to this perfectionism
21:15
Speaker 2: and it created a lot of problems for them. So
21:17
Speaker 2: it's so interesting how you trace the psychological responses to
21:23
Speaker 2: a trauma. But how infect I think, in fact is
21:26
Speaker 2: not too strong a word a family and then everyone
21:31
Speaker 2: is responding to that and learning different ways of being.
21:36
Speaker 2: Guilt is something that so many families have. For example,
21:40
Speaker 2: if there's a suicide in a family, everyone takes on
21:43
Speaker 2: guilt for not having saved that person, and then that
21:48
Speaker 2: might go on to the next generation that that guilt. Shame,
21:52
Speaker 2: you know, I'm ashamed of my family. Shame is a
21:55
Speaker 2: very interesting emotion because in our development it had a role.
22:01
Speaker 2: I'm sure you've come across this that we have to
22:04
Speaker 2: be safe, we had to be part of the tribe,
22:07
Speaker 2: and so we don't want to do anything that will
22:09
Speaker 2: get us ejected from the tribe or we will die
22:12
Speaker 2: in isolation. So shame was an emotion that developed for
22:17
Speaker 2: us to keep us behaving in a certain way, to
22:20
Speaker 2: keep us safe within the tribe. So shame can come
22:26
Speaker 2: into a family where something's happened. Maybe it could be
22:30
Speaker 2: an abuse, situational rape, but also it is that you
22:33
Speaker 2: can feel shame. But if it's not your shame, and
22:37
Speaker 2: you learn shame, how can you deal with it? Because
22:40
Speaker 2: it's not your shame or blame? You know, the safe
22:44
Speaker 2: thing to do is to blame someone else for what
22:47
Speaker 2: happens to me. And so we learn to blame other
22:51
Speaker 2: people rather than taking responsibility for our own lives. And
22:56
Speaker 2: blame is a really passive place to be. It's a
22:59
Speaker 2: stark place to be because if you're projecting out and
23:03
Speaker 2: blaming somebody else, you're stuck in a passive position. You're
23:06
Speaker 2: not taking control. And these are all the kinds of
23:10
Speaker 2: emotions that come into the trauma situation. So I came
23:15
Speaker 2: to it, I guess from my own trauma and how
23:17
Speaker 2: I responded to that. But then I began to reflect
23:20
Speaker 2: on my family trauma and what happened in my father's generation,
23:25
Speaker 2: which happened before I was born, and I remember Sai.
23:29
Speaker 1: Well, obviously you've found out about that through curiosity and research.
23:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've been told I was never allowed to
23:37
Speaker 2: ask questions about I mean, in brief, and I don't
23:41
Speaker 2: want to get into the insouts of it. But my
23:44
Speaker 2: aunt and her three children all died, and this was
23:47
Speaker 2: something that wasn't talked about. There was a picture of
23:50
Speaker 2: her in my grandmother's home, but we didn't talk about it.
23:53
Speaker 2: So it was a secret. And secrets are really scary.
23:57
Speaker 2: Secrets make us quite fear full, and dealing with the
24:02
Speaker 2: reality is often better than the secret. There's a really
24:08
Speaker 2: good writer who wrote a book, Gabrielle Schwab, on the
24:11
Speaker 2: haunting of secrets and trauma in a family. And it's
24:16
Speaker 2: like fighting shadows because you don't know what it is.
24:18
Speaker 2: I wasn't allowed to know about it. My father, up
24:22
Speaker 2: until he died, said I don't want you to research this.
24:25
Speaker 2: I want you to promise me not to look into this,
24:29
Speaker 2: because I don't want you to be hurt by what
24:32
Speaker 2: happened in the family. And I am hurt by what
24:34
Speaker 2: happened in the family. You know, you've had this secret
24:39
Speaker 2: all these years. You won't talk about it. And as
24:42
Speaker 2: I began to unpack it, I realized how much it
24:44
Speaker 2: had influenced his behavior, how he had clunged me as
24:48
Speaker 2: a child because these three he had lost two nephews
24:52
Speaker 2: and a niece under the age of eleven when he
24:55
Speaker 2: was a young man, and so I was the surviving
24:58
Speaker 2: child in this family. My father only had one sibling,
25:02
Speaker 2: so when I was born, I was like those that survivor.
25:06
Speaker 2: I was the only person coming out of this family.
25:09
Speaker 2: So I was really clung to and various behaviors came
25:14
Speaker 2: out of this experience as I began to understand it more,
25:19
Speaker 2: and so yes, it was only after he died I
25:20
Speaker 2: felt I could research it, and I did, and it
25:22
Speaker 2: was a very it was a very emotional journey because
25:28
Speaker 2: it was a story in that involved newspaper headlines. You know,
25:31
Speaker 2: I was seeing headlines about my own family in the
25:33
Speaker 2: press going back to the nineteen fifties and all before
25:38
Speaker 2: I was born. And I, you know, I remember saying
25:40
Speaker 2: to my mother, you know, gosh, how could you think
25:42
Speaker 2: this wouldn't affect me, because my mother's still alive, And
25:46
Speaker 2: she said, well, you know, it happened before you were born.
25:49
Speaker 2: And we started to talk about it, and I started
25:52
Speaker 2: to explain to her, a woman in her now nineties,
25:56
Speaker 2: how this trauma had affected her marriage, her life, our life,
26:02
Speaker 2: and we needed to work with the healing, you know,
26:06
Speaker 2: it needed to end. Now that healing needed took her
26:10
Speaker 2: and I'm very proud of how she's gone on this
26:14
Speaker 2: journey with me. A little bit because we'll be watching
26:17
Speaker 2: television together. Some s got, oh, Darling, that's generational trauma,
26:20
Speaker 2: isn't it what's happening there? And I'll go, yes, yes
26:23
Speaker 2: it is, and I'm delighted, and I really and it
26:28
Speaker 2: led to me writing the book The Trauma Effect, which
26:30
Speaker 2: is in part my own journey, and then sort of
26:35
Speaker 2: looking at the themes of guilt, playing shame, all the
26:37
Speaker 2: things that come out of it, and then how to
26:39
Speaker 2: deal with it, because when I was researching all this,
26:44
Speaker 2: it's a lot of people discussing the theory and the
26:46
Speaker 2: ideas and all the things that happen and can come
26:50
Speaker 2: out of generational trauma, which is quite a hot topic
26:53
Speaker 2: at the moment, whether it be a whole society that
26:56
Speaker 2: can be affected like colonialism more or or individual a
27:01
Speaker 2: generational trauma. But no one was telling you what to
27:04
Speaker 2: do to make it better, you know, And that's what
27:07
Speaker 2: I thought, someone needs to can't want to do to
27:09
Speaker 2: make it better. So I'm going to hear myself and
27:12
Speaker 2: I'm going to take that information and show other people
27:16
Speaker 2: how to do it. And that's that's the journey I
27:19
Speaker 2: went with in that book. And then within three days
27:24
Speaker 2: of writing the last full Stop, I had a new
27:27
Speaker 2: door open. And I suddenly found out I had a
27:30
Speaker 2: half sibling I didn't know about. Through a DNA test
27:34
Speaker 2: just to find out my genealogy, you know, where where
27:38
Speaker 2: were all my roots? And I suddenly found I had
27:40
Speaker 2: a half sibling I didn't know about. I'm an only card,
27:43
Speaker 2: spent fifty six years as an only child. Suddenly I
27:46
Speaker 2: had a sibling I didn't know about. I thought, I
27:47
Speaker 2: thought I'd now dealt with all the family trauma, and
27:51
Speaker 2: now I have a new subject. And I thought, what
27:54
Speaker 2: does this mean? You know, because suddenly my identity changed.
27:58
Speaker 2: And then I became really interested in identity. I've been
28:02
Speaker 2: the only child that has that's a real label. I
28:06
Speaker 2: wasn't anymore, and I had a half sibling. And I
28:09
Speaker 2: had to share my dad with somebody. He's dead, but
28:11
Speaker 2: I still had to share. I had to share, to
28:14
Speaker 2: learn to share. And I went through this process almost
28:17
Speaker 2: like a child when the second child is born and
28:20
Speaker 2: being a bit of a tantrum. He's my dad and
28:22
Speaker 2: I've got to learn to share my dad now and
28:26
Speaker 2: through I did meet my half sister, who is wonderful,
28:30
Speaker 2: a delight. I couldn't have somebody better in my life.
28:34
Speaker 2: But then her world was turned up soon because she
28:35
Speaker 2: didn't know either, and she started saying to me, but
28:40
Speaker 2: there's no help. I don't know where to turn. You know,
28:42
Speaker 2: I'm not who I thought I was. My identity is
28:44
Speaker 2: blown completely out of the water. There's a podcast, there's
28:47
Speaker 2: not many books. What do I do? So here's another journey.
28:51
Speaker 2: I need to go on another healing journey. How do
28:56
Speaker 2: you integrate that? How do you deal with it? And
29:00
Speaker 2: the number of DNA tests out there now, people doing
29:02
Speaker 2: this stuff to find out where they come from. It's
29:05
Speaker 2: a huge you know, I hear everywhere I turned. Now
29:08
Speaker 2: there's another story. Oh I found out I had a siping.
29:10
Speaker 2: I found it.
29:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, Zeta, we have to wind down. You're incredible. Oh
29:16
Speaker 1: you you are really incredible. You're such an inspiration. My gosh.
29:22
Speaker 1: That a Tomlin. The books The Trauma Effect, exploring and
29:27
Speaker 1: resolving inherited trauma, as well as the healing metaphor hypnotherapy scripts.
29:32
Speaker 1: Your story is amazing. Love to have you back here.
29:36
Speaker 1: How yeah, I appreciate really really you got me fired up.
29:40
Speaker 1: How do people learn more about you and what you're doing? Well.
29:43
Speaker 2: I have a website which is my symptom. My name
29:46
Speaker 2: is Zeta Tomlin dot com and my books are available
29:51
Speaker 2: through bookshops through Amazon as usual, so you can find
29:54
Speaker 2: out more about me there.
29:56
Speaker 1: Okay, thanks, we'll have all You're welcome. We'll have all
29:59
Speaker 1: this linked done at the show notes page at the
30:01
Speaker 1: Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. Zetta loved meeting you. Thank
30:06
Speaker 1: you so much.
30:06
Speaker 2: Thank you. I've really enjoyed to you.
30:08
Speaker 1: Thank you all right, appreciate it