Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Understanding How Trauma Shapes Our Relationships and Success | Dr. Thema Bryant - Clinical Psychologist & APA President

Transcript

Lessons - Understanding How Trauma Shapes Our Relationships and Success | Dr. Thema Bryant - Clinical Psychologist & APA President · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  In this lessons episode, explore how unhealed emotional wounds can silently shape
• 0:04
  high achievers lives. Learn why emotional disconnection often stems from early trauma.
• 0:08
  Learn how suppressed feelings can affect relationships and leadership,
• 0:12
  and learn why true healing blends science, heart, and soul to build both success and personal
• 0:18
  well-being.
• 0:28
  It's so interesting because I've always found that
• 0:32
  we make these decisions with emotions but then we justify them with logic.
• 0:37
  But for some reason, you try and trick ourselves into thinking that it was just logic
• 0:42
  the entire time. So first of all, just speak to why we do this and also maybe give some
• 0:50
  context as to how did your research go in this direction? What was the inflection point that
• 0:57
  pushed you down this path? Yes, absolutely. So my area of research is actually trauma recovery.
• 1:04
  So many times people have gone through very difficult experiences whether they were the direct
• 1:11
  target of the trauma or they love and care about someone who went through a traumatic experience
• 1:17
  individually or we see like collective trauma as well whether school shootings or a veteran after
• 1:23
  war. And so many times when people have experienced extreme stress or trauma, they disconnect.
• 1:32
  And a part of what you disconnect from can be your heart. So when you ask people like,
• 1:37
  you know, how do you feel about that? Oh, yeah, I don't know. Or like nothing. So they're just kind
• 1:44
  of numb. So a part of the healing process is reconnecting with yourself, including reconnecting
• 1:52
  with your heart. And I feel like that's not an easy, it's not an easy thing to prove. If everybody
• 2:00
  just thought, hey, if I just spend like a little bit more time focusing on myself and focusing on
• 2:06
  how I feel, but I think there, I think there's something scary there about going and looking inside.
• 2:12
  Like what actually happens with trauma? Like what's the scientific reason for that disconnect?
• 2:19
  And you're talking about these really horrible examples of trauma. But I think that most people
• 2:27
  have some sort of trauma, childhood trauma, things that they haven't dealt with, things that are not
• 2:34
  as incredibly horrific as school shootings and war, but just things that still impact them.
• 2:40
  Absolutely. What happens with this? So it becomes really a priority for people to feel safe.
• 2:47
  And so one way we can feel safe is, you know, when we hear the teenagers say like, I don't care,
• 2:53
  you tell them there could be a bad consequence. I don't care. And then some of us become adults
• 2:58
  who still convince ourselves not to care because we don't want to be heard again. We don't want
• 3:03
  to be disappointed again. So then people think the solution is the illusion of control.
• 3:09
  And if I try to control everything in my environment and try to control myself,
• 3:14
  including my emotions, then that feels safe to people, then that can be falsely thought of as
• 3:20
  strong. You know, that this person is so strong, nothing moves them or nothing phases them.
• 3:26
  And so the heart has become hardened as a way to feel safe even though we're disconnected from
• 3:33
  ourselves. And do you feel like this goes counter what is the, what is the, I guess, the legacy or
• 3:41
  the traditional way to deal with this? Yeah. So, you know, what happens is basically we can't
• 3:47
  heal a wound that we don't acknowledge. So if I keep saying I'm fine, but I'm actually not fine,
• 3:54
  I'm just kind of diving into being a workaholic, being a perfectionist, being very driven,
• 4:00
  but I think I'm fine. Then the negative consequences can show up in the way that I treat myself.
• 4:06
  So that can be self neglect and self abandonment. It may be the way that I treat people who are
• 4:12
  close to me because that doesn't feel safe or comfortable. And so the way that I parent can be
• 4:18
  affected by my unhealed wounds, the way I treat my partner can be an effect of my unaddressed hurts.
• 4:27
  And so it is important that we start to tell ourselves the truth, that we have been through some
• 4:33
  things that were disturbing or that were upsetting that had an impact and that we then open
• 4:41
  ourselves up to being transformed to making a different decision so that my wounds are not running
• 4:48
  my life. And I think that, so you're saying most people don't even realize that they have these,
• 4:54
  yeah, especially if as you mentioned, if it was a childhood wound, then people will say,
• 5:00
  oh, no, that's just my personality, right? Because they develop this armor so early,
• 5:06
  they don't remember a version of themselves before they were so defended or cold or hard.
• 5:12
  And so what I say is that's actually not you, that's your wound. You never got to develop a
• 5:19
  freely flowing you, but you can you can develop that now, even in adulthood, we can develop it.
• 5:27
  And then when this when they don't heal these wounds, for the average person listening to this,
• 5:34
  who is a high performer in their work or in their business or just in life, they just want to kill
• 5:39
  it at everything, do incredible. How do these wounds manifest? Because I think that part of
• 5:45
  you teach so much in terms of healing with yourself with others, but nobody can heal if they
• 5:51
  don't even recognize to your point that they have a problem. So how do these things show up in
• 5:56
  your day to day? Yeah, you may be financially successful, resume, incredible, but my question would
• 6:05
  be, how are you in the middle of the night by yourself? Right? Because many of us can outwardly
• 6:13
  perform that that's our way of coping is to stay busy. But as you were alluding to for some
• 6:20
  people, it's scary to be still and let truth show up. So that's why some of us are workaholics.
• 6:27
  You know, you want to be so busy because you're either running in pursuit of self-worth or running
• 6:34
  from the stigma and shame of your past. And so for you to actually be well, not just look good
• 6:41
  on paper, this is what we're talking about tending to your heart. And it also can affect the way
• 6:48
  you show up in the workplace. We've all had that supervisor or boss who was very controlling,
• 6:56
  very dismissive, very dishonoring. They were not well. They're on top of this business mountain,
• 7:03
  but they're not a well person. And so many times we set it up as an either or we say, do you want
• 7:10
  to be a successful person or do you want to be a well person? And it's not that's a false choice.
• 7:16
  You can be both, but you have to invest in both, right? So we've invested in the business part.
• 7:23
  Have you invested in the inner part? Yeah, because I think that I'm just thinking about some of my
• 7:30
  friends that have been like ridiculously successful from a financial standpoint. And you know,
• 7:39
  they they have their exit or they build their business and then the relationship with the kids
• 7:42
  isn't great or they divorce their wife or they they and then they you see these crazy stories.
• 7:50
  Absolutely crazy stories of people that have had like $100 million exit then they're depressed.
• 7:55
  Yes. And they can't figure out why. And it and they can't say that because everyone's going to be like,
• 8:00
  well, right, I'm going to have to see the same thing happen with lottery winners, right?
• 8:08
  Where people thought like if you made this amount that that's guaranteed happiness and people,
• 8:14
  you know, can live in a mansion and be miserable, miserable. You blend, you blend heart and you blend
• 8:21
  this or how do I say this? Like you blend the heart and you blend science and then you blend soul
• 8:28
  all into this healing formula. Why is it important to bridge these gaps? Like traditionally,
• 8:35
  I mean, you were you were a president of the APA, which was just phenomenal.
• 8:41
  Does traditional textbook APA say that you blend science and soul and heart into healing somebody
• 8:47
  or is this a sort of a new novel idea? So one of the beautiful things,
• 8:53
  trend that's happening in psychology is an increased attention to our spirituality or faith or
• 9:01
  religion, which returns psychology to its roots that it's not just about your cognitions,
• 9:08
  but to really think about ourselves holistically. So your thoughts, your emotions, your behavior,
• 9:14
  your sense of what is sacred to you, your relationships and community. So it's an important part
• 9:21
  and we have, you know, well-established research of these things as what we will call
• 9:26
  protective factors that when you go through the difficulties of life, the stress of life,
• 9:33
  having a sense of what's sacred to you and or having community, those things can protect us
• 9:40
  and help us to deal with life challenges. Okay, so that makes sense. So you do have to
• 9:49
  account for all the factors that impact your data. Like you can't heal yourself fully
• 9:55
  by saying, I'm going to, I'm going to logic myself into doing some inner work and some
• 10:01
  internals and some internal searching, but I'm going to remove the emotions out of it. I'm going
• 10:06
  to remove the spirituality out of it, which I think that's what people tend to do. People that
• 10:12
  are high performing logical people, like how do I fix everything with a solution or a template
• 10:19
  or a playbook, and you're saying that's the wrong attitude to go into any of this. Yeah, you want
• 10:25
  to say, I'm not going to ignore or censor parts of myself. I want to be fully grounded in truth.
• 10:34
  As I always say, you know, to ourselves, what parts of you do you miss? What parts of you were you
• 10:41
  taught to suppress or to ignore? That in order to be successful, I can't be connected to feelings
• 10:50
  or in order to be successful. I can't have relationships. So there are these false
• 10:56
  notions that we've been given and that we then go and teach the people after us. You know, some
• 11:01
  people who were mentored to believe that these things were true. And yet maybe the person who
• 11:06
  mentoring them still has some brokenness or has some aspects of their life that are unfulfilled.