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Episode 773: Your Brain Is a Safe Space with Michele Rosenthal · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson. My
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mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in who
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we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating authenticity,
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genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more about
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my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com. That's
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the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, all right, So
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five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back.
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Very excited to have back. Michelle Rosenthal. Michelle, welcome back. It's
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been a long long time, Hui. It is so good to be back,
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and it's been a long time, but I've been stalking you, following
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you and listening and watching so a long time since we've spoken. But it
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is one of those things like long time listener, first time caller. I
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appreciate it. Been hanging around you for a while. Well. Michelle is
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a trauma recovery specialist, award nominated author, award winning blogger, mental health
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advocate, and speaker. She's Board certified hypnotist, with a specialty in trauma
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and PTSD. She's a Master neuro Linguistic Programmer and certified professional coach. She's
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the author of author of Your Life After Trauma, Powerful Practices to claim your
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identity as well as heal your PTSD dynamic Strategies. That work that was recently
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released with a new title, Brained is a Safe Space. How to Stop
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Trauma and PTSD for Controlling your Life. Michelle, welcome back, Hey guy,
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Thanks for inviting me to just to be present with you, which is
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it's fun, so let's do it. Appreciate that. So for let's start
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at the beginning here. For those listeners maybe who didn't hear your first interview,
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give us a reef introduce. How did all this start for you?
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It's such a great question, and somebody asked me that recently and I thought,
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oh, the quickest way to say this is this all started by accident.
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So I am a childhood trauma survivor and I at a time nineteen eighty
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one, I was thirteen major severe trauma, and when I came out of
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the trauma, I was just a different person. I mean it was very
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obvious to everyone around me, and I could feel it in myself. I
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was not the same person as I had been before. But in nineteen eighty
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one, PTSD was not being applied to civilian kids who had trauma. It
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was being applied to Vietnam vets. So all of my PTSD symptoms, which
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were very evident within the first six months after the trauma, everybody just said,
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oh, she a difficult teenager, and you know, there was no
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way to really help me because I didn't want to be helped. So fast
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forward almost thirty years and I'm struggling with PTSD all that time, undiagnosed,
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just thinking I was crazy. I grew up to be a temperamental artist,
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you know, there was always a label and an excuse. And then when
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I finally finally things got bad enough that I did end up, you know,
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starting a conventional therapeutic approach, not for trauma but for something else.
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And finally got to a point where I realized I was getting worse. The
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more I talked, the worse I got, and I thought, Okay,
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I have to find like this isn't working, and I pulled the plug on
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therapy and decided to start research. And the research I sat in the library
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day after day reading trauma therapy guidelines and trauma psychology books and the history of
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trauma psychology, and I started to piece together what I needed, well,
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what was wrong and what I needed, and I tailed myself to a trauma
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therapist, which before then I didn't even know existed, got my diagnosis,
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went on to heal. And the reason you and I are here today is
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that, by accident, I ended up creating an enormous community of survivors who
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who needed information about PTSD. And at the time that I did that,
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there weren't any other civilian PTSD sites and or layman PTSD sites even and so
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that audience that grew up around the world just everything sort of exploded. The
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blog, the site kind of went viral for what it was in its time,
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and people were asking me for help, and so I decided, well,
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I'd better get trained if I'm going to really be helpful. Because my
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mission became and you know this, and this is where I'll end my mission,
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and became to help others feel faster than I did. Because to lose
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almost thirty years of your life for something that is completely diagnosable and treatable is
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insane to me. And that's how you and I got here today because that
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is still my mission all these years later. Wow. So during those thirty
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years, had you try to find a therapist. How did you manage?
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I managed the way all survivors do. You know a couple of things.
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First of all, you develop a mask so that you know, you try
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to show the world one thing while you're something different inside. You develop a
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slew of coping mechanisms, none of which are very positive or healthy. You
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know, and isolate, and you withdraw, and you know, in my
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case, I just I really thought I was crazy. I just thought I
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was crazy. And I am an artist, I am a playwright, I'm
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a poet. So I really accepted that some people are crazy and if I'm
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like, I'm one of them. And you know what, creatively speaking,
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that's not a bad thing. So you start to tell yourself the lies that
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get you day to day. And I thought, well, just be as
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good crazy as you can be. But there was always like this little voice
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that would say, I don't think. I don't think the problem is that
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you're crazy. I don't think we have to live like this. But I
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had no reason to listen to that voice because there was nothing in the outside
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world that mirrored that, and because I was terrified to talk about what had
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happened to me. It wasn't that nobody knew, My parents knew, my
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family knew. But I didn't think I could handle the emotional title wave that
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was tied to the memories, and so no, I did not. My
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mother dragged me from therapist therapist, but I would get in there and I
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wouldn't I wouldn't speak. I literally would not talk. So eventually she stopped
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because the flip side of that was I would rage, I would get out
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of there, and I would rage at my mom, you know. So
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so eventually she got quiet and had to just sort of stand by and watch
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the devastation that I that I brought to myself and to my family with coping
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mechanisms that were not good. But what was that point when you said,
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all right, I need to find that trauma therapist or I need to start
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doing that research. Yeah. So, so, you know, I interviewed
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on my podcast that I had many years ago. I interviewed a researcher who
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told me this very this statistic that stuck with me forever, and it explains
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the moment that I got to he said to me, the mind is capable
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of producing fifty percent more stress than the body can actually handle. And my
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body, you know this is back in the nineties. My body got to
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a point where it couldn't handle the stress in my mind. So just I
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had liver issues. I wasn't a drinker, but my liver enzymes were off
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the charts. I had stomach issues, I had gut issues. I had
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like just all of these different undiagnosable, mysterious illnesses. And I was bouncing
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from doctor to doctor, physician to physicians, specialists to specialists looking for how
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to fix all the physical ailments that I had. And every doctor kept saying
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that I don't know what's wrong, Like I can see on your labs something's
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not okay, but I can't figure it out. And I was being shuffled
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around, and eventually I got out of this one very prominent I spent the
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day at an institute in I was living in New York City a time,
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and I spent the day at the institute of this very prominent doctor on like
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fifty second in Park Avenue. And when I got and he told and he
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literally sat down with me at the end of the day of these battery of
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tests, and he said to me, I really can't help you, and
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I just he was like the last stop. And I walked out of there,
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dazed and confused that I could spend an entire day in an institute and
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be told I can't help you. And I stood on the corner of Park
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Avenue. I'm fifty second Street, which if anybody knows, it's like,
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you know, near Grand Central station and the PanAm not Grand Central, but
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near the pan Am building and Saint Patrick's Cathedral. And it was December and
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all of these people it was rush hour, people were leaving work, and
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it was cold, and everybody was so happy. It was the holidays.
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And I just stood on that corner and cried because I was really, really
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sick. I was down to like one hundred pounds. I couldn't eat anything,
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and like I was going to die if somebody didn't figure out what was
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wrong. And it was at that moment that I called my mother from a
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payphone, because we still had payphones in those days. There was no cell
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phone. And I called my mother and I'm like, I'm going to die.
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Nobody's going to be able to help me, and I just sobbed and
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sobbed and sobbed on this street corner. And my mother said to me,
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let's try a different way, and she gave me the name of a therapist
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who had founded an institute on the West side of Manhattan. And I went,
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not for trauma. I went to figure out how to be a chronic
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patient and how to manage the like the fear that that was bringing up.
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But you know that the reason somebody goes to therapy is never the reason they're
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going to therapy is so pretty quickly we started to talk about what was beneath
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that, you know, melt down on Park Avenue. Oh my gosh,
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thank you so much for that. That's so I mean, you painted such
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a picture there, and it's intense and it's it's sad. Yeah, there's
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there's something. I mean, come on, to go through this and to
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think that you're crazy, right, and to try and to navigate that and
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to work with that, and to allow that to happen, and to go
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that, to go on with that. How did things unfold such that you
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said, okay, well, let me ask you this. When did you
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start to feel as if, okay, you know, this is what happened
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I'm on my healing journey finally, right. So for the next couple of
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years I worked with with this therapist and he really he saved me. I
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was non functional, like I was not able to work. I was like
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things were really bad. And he was very progressive for his time. This
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is like nineteen ninety seven nineteen ninety eight, and he was doing emotional freedom
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technique and EMDR and thought field therapy and tatis acupressure. So we were talking
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things through, but we were also energetically using all of these energy modalities and
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so that got me functional. I got back to work within like maybe six
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or nine months, and so that was good, and I got stronger and
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stronger and stronger, and I did you know what most of us do,
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which is you think you're getting better and then you don't need therapy anymore because
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you're on your way so and because you get to that point where you don't
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want to go to the deepest, most painful part, you want to stay
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like in that place where I'm up here, I'm managing, I'm getting better.
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Everything's amazing. I just needed this little reset. And you tell yourself
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the lie that you need to like avoid the deeper work, and so I
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did that, and then I took a break from therapy, and then I
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went back because my body was still breaking down. And the next thing I
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knew, I was thirty five years old and diagnosed with advanced osteoporosis. And
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this endocrinologist on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, like my whole journey was
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all over Manhattan, and he said to me, if you do, he
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said, your bones are going to start to spontaneously crumble in ten years or
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less. You need to figure out what's going on with your head, because
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this is not just a problem in your body. And he was the first
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doctor to say to me, there's a connection here, like you need to
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figure out what that what's going on And he didn't know, which I think
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people know now you have to ask somebody, do you have trauma in your
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history, because bodies don't. They don't. You know, it's like vessels
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vessels, but the body keeps the score, like we know that now,
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but back then nobody was talking about it. So all he could say to
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me is, what's going on in your head is affecting your body, and
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you've got to figure that out. Well, the idea of my bone spontaneously
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crumbling, terrified and triggered me, and I high tailed it back to therapy
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twice a week, and I accelerated the process until I crashed because I just
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talked, therapy has its place, but if you just keep talking and talking
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and talking about your trauma, you're just we know this now, activating those
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neural networks, strengthening those neural pathways. They work faster than more efficiently,
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so you're really just activating your sympathetic nervous system even more. And it was
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I didn't know any of the science back then, but to answer your question,
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I knew I was getting worse and not better. And it was that
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that really started to scare me, Like if you can be in therapy and
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you're getting worse, what's what's going to happen? And so that was when
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I decided I had to start researching my trauma. I needed to understand trauma
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psychology. I needed to understand physically what had happened to me, emotionally mentally
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what had gone on and the side effects of it, like the fallout of
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trauma. And that was what ultimately got me on the healing path that I
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decided, this is the answer to your question, guy, and I like
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it just dropped in. For a long time, I thought somebody else was
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responsible for my recovery, like I got into therapy, and I wanted my
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therapist to fix it. Like I did my part. I showed up.
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I did my part. I was willing to talk, but it was his
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job to fix it. And what changed was that I realized I had to
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fix it. I had to take on the responsibility of that internal process,
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that internal shift, and it was not my therapist's job to do that.
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I'm not even sure it was his job to lead me to that. It
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was just his job to give me a space that it was safe for me
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to discover and explore what that process would be. And when I figured that
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out, that was a game changer that I was really responsible because up until
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that moment, I didn't realize that that was part of what was going wrong,
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was that I hadn't figured out how to engage on my own behalf and
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pull up that stronger self inside of me that I needed to embody to get
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the job done because I was very much in my survivor victim self. Wow,
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huge, huge, right, big shift. We're speaking with Michelle Rosenthal
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it's want to pause a moment here to thank our sponsors. You have so
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many great insights. I mean, talking to you is really interesting, Michelle,
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because as you're sharing your story, you're dropping these like wisdom gold nuggets
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here. Really, how at what point did you say, Okay, you
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know what, I want to start sharing this. I want to start building
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this community where infusing people with this empowerment. How did that happen for you?
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I never had that thought, guy, I never had that thought.
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So it's a funny story. By the time I finished my recovery and I
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went into when I realized I'm responsible, I have to do this, I
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made a pact with myself. I was going all the way recovery for me
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and it's just just me because it's not everybody, and I respect everybody has
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their own definition of recovery. My definition was every single symptom has to be
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eliminated. That means an end to insomnia and end to nightmares and end to
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flashbacks and end to depression. I wanted one hundred percent total freedom, and
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I was going until I got there. So when I finally achieved that,
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I was forty. I had no family, no career, no relationship,
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like none of the things that a forty year old was supposed to have,
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And suddenly the world was like in technicolor when I was used to black and
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white. So it was very like jarring and discombobulating to be healed but suddenly
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not have an identity that was commensurate was like who I was supposed to be
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at that age. And so I was working for my brother at the time
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because I just didn't know what to do with myself. And it was a
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family business, so it was like I could make my own hours. You
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know, if I didn't want to go in one day, it's my baby
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brother, I could just not go in that day. So so but I
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happened to be in the office one day and saying to him, I don't
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know what to do with myself. I don't even know who I am,
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Like I don't have a post trauma identity, and I don't I don't know
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who I'm supposed to be. And he said to me, you know,
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before your trauma, you were a writer. You've been a writer since you
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were seven. That's that's part of who you've always been. And he said,
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you know, why don't you write about what you just experience, like
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what it means to have PTSD and how to heal. And he said,
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but don't do it in a journal. You've got stacks and stacks of those.
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There's this new thing now, it's called a blog. Do it on
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the internet. I'm like a blog on the internet. I didn't even know
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what that was. It was like at the very beginning, there was no
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you know, it was blog spot if you remember blogs I do back in
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the day, right. So, so he said to do that, and
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I thought, okay, But I thought, my trauma is so bizarre and
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rare and it's so graphic. I don't like to describe it because it's uncomfortable
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for people. So I was like, people aren't really going to understand what
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I'm talking about because my trauma is not it's not like a big niche if
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you will. But I thought, okay, I'll start blogging. And so
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there was no intention. I didn't like think I want to help all these
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people. I just thought, well, let me just like do what my
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brother said, because I need to find myself. And it's a funny thing
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when you just get back to the basics of who you are. What happens
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when you just put yourself out there and say this is me, this was
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my experience. And within three weeks, veterans started emailing me saying, you
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know, they would read the blog and they would email me or they would
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leave a comment and say, you know, how do you know exactly how
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I feel? And I would write back to them, I don't I'm just
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writing how I feel. And then rape survivors were writing saying, you just
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put into words what I've been trying to express for fifteen years. How did
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you do that? All right? I don't know. I'm just saying how
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I feel. And it started this whole conversation and the community just started to
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grow and grow because all these like minded people started, you know, people
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shared the blog and so it happened by accident. It never it was never
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intentional, and I think that's part of the beauty of it. It was
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just one trauma survivor sharing her experience, and it spoke to people and we
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all came together to connect, and that's partly what made it so magical.
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I mean, the way you're talking about it and describing it, it does
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sound beautiful. There's just something so authentic about it, and you're bearing your
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soul and sharing who you are without any thought of oh, I'm going to
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go viral and I'm going to create this really popular blog. And I always
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thought album was ever going to read it. So let's jump forward. Now
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what are you doing now? How are you kind of working to help people?
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So now there are a couple of things that I really love. Number
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One, having conversations with people like you so that we collectively share the knowledge,
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because one of the things I think is really missing is that sense of
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community. In fact, the client that I'm working with when we're finished,
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one of her main her or the main thing that she expressed when we first
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started working together is she's so lonely. She doesn't know anyone who's had PTSD
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or who's in recovery. And I think that's a huge element. PTSD symptoms,
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trauma symptoms isolate us anyway, partly because of how we cope and also
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because as we hide, and so I think that connection when we have conversations
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like this and how we can create community around the subject. That's one thing
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that I'm doing that I really value. The other thing is I love to
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speak, so speaking at conferences and things like that same thing is sharing the
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words spreading the ideas so that we help to elevate the process of healing so
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that more people can access it, and writing books and so that's the public
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stuff. No private stuff is what I do you know here in my office
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with clients, where we're one on one slogging through the muck together and rising
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up to it to a different place. You've shared your experience and your story
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about you know, through through years where you just didn't know what the hell
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was going on. When you work with people, when you speak, what
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do you want to communicate? How do you want to I guess, what
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do you feel that you're bringing to the table in your voice, in your
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from your experience? What a neat question. So the first the first thing
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is hope, hope, Like that's if I could only have one outcome from
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my work. Of course I want everyone to feel better, but but that
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comes after hope. To me, you can't achieve anything unless you hope you
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can achieve something. So that's that's the first thing. Because I think we
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get so depressed and despondent and full of despair and and there's no it's not
24:47
like penacillit, like you know, if we all had bronchitis, you take
24:49
penicillin and in three days you know you're going to feel better. But with
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PTSD, it's so unique. The healing process is so individual. There's no
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were all snowflakes. So the only thing we share is the hope from which
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we begin that process. And if you access hope, then it can really
25:11
get you through those difficult moments. So I think that's the first thing guy
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really is is hope. And oddly enough, when I first started, there
25:22
were some clinicians that really hated me. I mean the vitriol, the trolls,
25:29
the threatening emails that I got, that I was a fraud and they
25:33
were going to report me in all this. Yeah, yeah, when when
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the blog got really popular, so that you know, like I wish somebody
25:42
told me much later, and I wish I had known this from the beginning,
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that you know, when people start to hate you, you'll know you're
25:48
really doing some good. But at the time, there was this one psychiatrist
25:53
from Harvard who was just would not leave me alone, telling me that I
25:57
was a fake and a fraud, that I was damaging all these people,
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and I you know, for a while, like you try to take the
26:04
high road, and then I finally wrote back and I said, what what
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are you talking about? Like, what is so fraudulent about what I'm doing?
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Because it's like, if I'm doing something fraudulent, I want to stop.
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But I've like checked and as far as I know, everything I'm doing
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is really okay. And you know what she wrote back to me, She
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said, you're a fraud. You're giving people hope. And I thought,
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well, if that's fraudulent, then I'll do it all day long, because
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how's anybody going to heal if they don't have the hope that they can do
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it? Like, you have to hope in something, and if you don't
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hope in yourself, borrow hope from somebody else. So I think that's like
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we all have to start with that tiny little feeling of I hope I can
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get this done. And that's the number one thing that I want my work
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to express, is that if you find anything in my work or what I
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say, or my books or my whatever that gives you the tiniest bit of
27:02
hope that you can achieve what I've achieved or what all these other people have
27:06
achieved in their recovery, then I've done. I've done my job. I
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get super passionate about that, so I'll pause there. But so important to
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break through to that place of hope. I totally agree, And was was
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that hope? Did you have that hope during those doing those ten years whatever?
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Not? In the beginning. In the beginning, when I was saying
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to myself, look, you're crazy. Some people are supposed to be crazy.
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This is good for creativity. Just go be good crazy, I didn't
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hope that I could heal. It never occurred. I didn't know there was
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anything to heal from once I started to once I started to do all this
27:48
research, so I researched what happened to me, which led me to trauma
27:52
research, which led me to trauma psychology research, which led me to dissociation,
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which led me to PTSD, which led me to a PTSD self test.
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M that was interesting. There were twenty two questions and I answered positively
28:07
to twenty of them. And I took that to my therapist at the time,
28:11
who was not a trauma therapist, and I said to him, do
28:15
you think this means I have PTSD? And he said to me, what
28:21
is PTSD? I thought, Oh my god, and I wonder I'm be
28:25
getting worse. I'm in the wrong place. This man is wonderful and he's
28:30
lovely, but he's not equipped to help me. But that gave me hope
28:34
because that self test started to let me know I'm not crazy, Like something
28:40
happened to me that has caused a change in me that could be changed again,
28:44
Like we're organisms felt for change. So that gave me hope, and
28:49
that hope is what I lived on from. Like that was like I don't
28:55
know, like two thousand and five, and that hope got me through the
29:00
next two years of my recovery and out the other side. So and I
29:03
think it was I think I got it done quickly because I hoped so fervently
29:11
that it could be done. So I think it's what are you what are
29:17
you thinking and asking that question? Well, I just think that you are
29:26
sharing so courageously, your your story, your openness, And I think I
29:36
was struck by you know, you said for ten years you were going on
29:41
and not knowing what was going on. I mean, that's the hell of
29:45
a long time to be wearing a mask and to be trying to come up
29:52
with the good, the good crazy. You know, that's an incredibly long
29:56
time and I think I'm just really struck Michelle by uh, your your openness
30:04
and your authenticity, and it really comes across and it's very powerful. You're
30:08
very you're very powerful presence and speaker. Yeah, yeah, thank you.
30:17
Well, I really feel like, you know, we spend so much time
30:19
hiding when that because because of our self judgments. Right, it's because of
30:27
how we judge ourselves that we hide before anyone else has a chance to judge
30:33
us. It's that we agree with their judgment that that is the problem,
30:40
or that we judge ourselves because we don't let anybody else see the truth.
30:45
So I really feel like the process itself evolves as quickly as we evolve inside
30:57
our own mind in terms of how we perceive who we are truly and authentically.
31:07
So in order to really heal, you have to take the mask off,
31:11
you just really do, and you have to stand in all the ugliness,
31:18
the glorious ugliness of who who trauma has turned you into. And and
31:22
to me, that's the starting point of being able to know what you want
31:27
to achieve, because if you can't stand authentically and say these are I literally,
31:34
I literally while I was still in therapy, like the first round.
31:38
Is there no after after the hole? Like your bones are gonna crumble.
31:42
When I went back into therapy, I was so full of fear, and
31:47
I realized that part of the problem was that I just didn't have a good
31:53
grip on my own self. And I didn't know I researching identity oddly enough,
32:01
since I was nineteen, just the topic of identity had just really captivated
32:07
me. Not because I understood why. I just found it interesting. And
32:12
of course, all those years later, I realized, oh, it's because
32:15
I didn't have a right, like the right identity. I didn't have a
32:16
grip on my identity. But what I found really intriguing is that when you're
32:24
that terrified, it forces you to look at who you are. If you're
32:30
willing, it's an invitation to look at who you really are. And I
32:32
sat down one day and I decided to write all the things I hated about
32:37
myself because I didn't have a picture of what it meant to heal. Like,
32:43
I just knew I didn't want to be this, but I didn't know
32:45
what was that. So I sat down and I was like, all right,
32:49
I'm just going to write out all the things I hate about myself.
32:51
It took five legal pages, like those long yellow legal pad and I folded
32:55
each page and I have my clients do this now. I folded each page
32:59
line wise, so there was a column A on the left and a column
33:02
B on the right, and on the left column I wrote everything I hated
33:07
about myself. Five pages of everything I hated about myself, from the way
33:12
I looked, to the way I behaved, to the way I thought,
33:14
to the way I felt all of that and then in Colin B, I
33:17
literally wrote the opposite of each item, and then I folded it so I
33:22
could just see Colin B like the opposite of who I was. And this
33:27
helped me start to create and deepen my hope, right because now I'm looking
33:32
at Okay, if I could choose to be somebody else, if I could
33:36
start to build a new identity, it would be the opposite of who I
33:38
am. And now on Colin B, when that's all I have to look
33:43
at, I have some concrete ideas for what that means. And just that
33:49
gave me hope that I could start to see ahead. And it's a simple
33:52
exercise anyone can do, but when you do it, you stand more authentically
33:57
on who you are because you've had the willingness to look and say this is
34:00
me. That's powerful. Michelle Rosenthal, what is the best way for people
34:08
to get in contact with you? My Trauma coach dot com. Very easy,
34:15
My Trauma coach dot com. And you'll see on the header of the
34:20
site if anybody, if it's useful. I have a I'm really big on
34:25
neuro the neurology of healing. So there's a train your brain audio that literally
34:30
trains your brain for peace and calm. It's less than twenty minutes. We
34:35
all like. The new research is it takes sixty six days for the trauma
34:39
brain to create a new habit. So I recommend to everybody do this for
34:45
sixty six days and then, you know, just delight and see what happens.
34:50
A lot of the feedback I get is people fall asleep while they listen
34:53
to it, which is perfectly fine, but they start to feel calmer,
34:58
they sleep better, that they feel just a little more grounded in who they
35:04
are. So you can just do the smallest thing and it starts to create
35:07
a shift that can give you hope for being able to do the bigger things.
35:12
So thanks for this time, guy, it's been. You are just
35:20
really amazing. You have so many insights I think that are really unique and
35:25
powerful. So great to talk to you. I'd love to have you back,
35:30
and hopefully it'll be less time than years. I'll really quickly write a
35:39
new book. Connect. But thank you so much, guy. I have
35:45
such admiration for what you do, and partly to close this out because of
35:50
how authentically you do it. It's always been one of the things that I
35:54
really so appreciated about you. So thank you for being you. Well,
35:58
You're welcome. I appreciate it. Great happen you Backer today. Thank you to building