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The Healing Sexual Trauma Journal with Erika Shershun · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Trauma Thepist Podcast Plus listeners can listen to episodes early
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Speaker 1: going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma Thepist podcast
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Speaker 1: and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Neverist Podcast,
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Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
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Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is got macpherson, and my
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Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
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Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us.
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Speaker 2: All right, Erica, are you ready?
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Speaker 1: Yeah?
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Speaker 2: Okay, all right, here we go. So five four read
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Speaker 2: two and one.
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Speaker 1: Our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to
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Speaker 1: have back, Erica. Shirshan Erica, welcome back.
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Speaker 3: Thank you guys. Great to be back.
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Speaker 2: Awesome.
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Speaker 1: So. Erica is a somatic psychotherapist who specializes in helping
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Speaker 1: sexual trauma survivors reclaim the life they were meant to live.
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Speaker 1: Author of the Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook and also of
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Speaker 1: the forthcoming Healing Sexual Trauma Guided Journal to Out March First,
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Speaker 1: that's March twenty twenty five. She also teaches the PESSI
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Speaker 1: Sexual Trauma Clinical Training. Her approach is trauma informed, rooted
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Speaker 1: in somatic principles drawing on neuroscience and integrative modalities like AMDR, energy, psychology,
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Speaker 1: parts work, and mindfulness. Erica, welcome, thank you. All right,
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Speaker 1: So we're going to get in to the book, the
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Speaker 1: new book coming out, but before we do, I just
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Speaker 1: want to get some background on you. But before we
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Speaker 1: get there, share with our listeners where you're from originally
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Speaker 1: and where you are currently.
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Speaker 3: I'm currently in San Francisco, where I'm from originally. As
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Speaker 3: many places we've moved around when I was a child,
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Speaker 3: So I was born in Japan and then we came
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Speaker 3: to the States and moved around states quite a bit.
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Speaker 3: So I don't claim any one of those places is
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Speaker 3: being where I'm from.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so very excited about the new book, The Healing
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Speaker 1: Sexual Trauma Guided Journal. Now I'm guessing this is based
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Speaker 1: on your previous book, The Healing Sexual Trauma Work.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's overlap, Okay, previous book. There's also some things
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Speaker 3: that are in the previous book in this book.
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Speaker 1: So let's kind of let's kind of move into that,
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Speaker 1: but by way of kind of talking about how this
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Speaker 1: started for you, How the heck did you get here
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Speaker 1: to this, to this point, to this specialization to this,
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Speaker 1: I'm sure what is probably a calling in a sense.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, So, you know, I was on the show about
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Speaker 3: I'm not sure how long ago, six months ago, a
3:01
Speaker 3: year ago, and we went quite a bit into my
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Speaker 3: trauma story. It didn't cover all of it, but it
3:09
Speaker 3: covered quite a bit of it, and so I don't
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Speaker 3: want to repeat all of that. It'll end up taking
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Speaker 3: up the whole time again. But to summarize it, I
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Speaker 3: am a survivor of both early childhood and then young
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Speaker 3: adult sexual trauma, and you know, there were also some
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Speaker 3: other big traumas in my childhood and I sought healing
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Speaker 3: when I got to a place where I could scrape
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Speaker 3: together enough money to go to therapy, and I did
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Speaker 3: that for seventeen years, and I had minimals aults. And
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Speaker 3: at that point of when it had been seventeen years,
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Speaker 3: I had an experience where I was in a class
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Speaker 3: and it was a body workers class and a specialty
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Speaker 3: in that field, and my hands went completely numb. And
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Speaker 3: I didn't know it at the time, but I was
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Speaker 3: dissociating and then I started having flashbacks and it was
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Speaker 3: at that point that I finally realized that really at
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Speaker 3: the root of so much of what I was going
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Speaker 3: to therapy for was these big sexual trauma traumas, these
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Speaker 3: big tea traumas that were causing me a lot lot
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Speaker 3: of symptoms and issues that I just wasn't, Like I said,
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Speaker 3: I wasn't getting results in talk therapy, and so I
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Speaker 3: started researching what to do about trauma that's stored in
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Speaker 3: the body because the symptoms were so intense in my body.
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Speaker 3: And that was when I first learned about somatic work,
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Speaker 3: and I decided to shift gears and go in to
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Speaker 3: grad school for somatic psychotherapy and ended up focusing on trauma.
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Speaker 1: And this was after like seventeen years. Yes, of I'm
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Speaker 1: assuming traditional talk therapy or and like wow.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And it's something I see frequently. Many clients
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Speaker 3: I've worked with have gone to five years, twenty years
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Speaker 3: of talk therapy and not gotten symptom reductions, and like
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Speaker 3: in my case, their symptoms actually got worse. And you know,
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Speaker 3: that could be a couple things. Like one way I
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Speaker 3: view it is that sometimes our symptoms get worse when
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Speaker 3: our systems feel resourced enough to heal them. And it's
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Speaker 3: sort of you know, your bodies inner wisdom like yelling
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Speaker 3: to you pay attention. You've got to do something about this,
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Speaker 3: and now is the time, because the truth is, people
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Speaker 3: are not always ready when the trauma happens. They don't
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Speaker 3: always have enough resources. And I'm talking about all types
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Speaker 3: of resources, so we're talking about external and internal resources.
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Speaker 3: And it's by no fault of their own. It's just
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Speaker 3: the circumstances they're in and may have been born into,
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Speaker 3: and you know, it's what's going on in their life
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Speaker 3: and where they're at. So I always look at it
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Speaker 3: as a positive when people's systems suddenly start to yell
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Speaker 3: out to me, do something now. And the difficulty there
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Speaker 3: is people don't feel ready, often like it's hard experiencing
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Speaker 3: those symptoms, so it doesn't feel like it's a positive thing.
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Speaker 3: But I try to help people see the positive side
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Speaker 3: of it that they are ready.
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Speaker 1: So you have this experience in this class which inspires
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Speaker 1: you to pursue therapy. We're becoming a therapist. You go
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Speaker 1: through a graduate school and at what point. First of all,
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Speaker 1: I want to congratulate you on the book or books.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's a huge accomplishment right to
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Speaker 1: write a book. I wrote a book, it didn't get published,
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Speaker 1: so I know how much stuff goes into it. But well,
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Speaker 1: let's talk about the book The Healing Sexual Trauma Guided
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Speaker 1: Journal that's do out in March. What was the impetus
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Speaker 1: for this book? Erica and Who's it four?
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Speaker 3: So the books for any survivor sexual trauma and also
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Speaker 3: a lot of therapists start using the book with their
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Speaker 3: clients in session. So what inspired the book is while
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Speaker 3: I was trying to heal, which things got a little
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Speaker 3: worse while I was in grad school and I had
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Speaker 3: some other factors playing into it. But I ended up
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Speaker 3: being diagnosed with PTSD at that time, and so it
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Speaker 3: was it was a real struggle going through grad school
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Speaker 3: with all of this going on, and and I you know,
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Speaker 3: still went to a series of therapists while at grad school.
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Speaker 3: It was a requirement, which I think is a great thing,
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Speaker 3: and not all grad school programs do that. I required that,
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Speaker 3: but I still didn't get the support I needed, Like
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Speaker 3: no one was giving me like tools to say like
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Speaker 3: this is what's happening in your system, this is why
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Speaker 3: you're doing this, and this is what will help and
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Speaker 3: if you do this on a regular basis, this will
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Speaker 3: lead to results and this will help you. And no
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Speaker 3: one ever gave me that. So that's what I was
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Speaker 3: desperately seeking. And so I started finding things on my own,
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Speaker 3: and also some additional trainings I was taking outside of
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Speaker 3: grad school, and I started piecing together the things that worked.
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Speaker 3: And then as I started seeing clients, survivors kept finding
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Speaker 3: their way to me. So you know, I could see
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Speaker 3: what was helping them, what was working for them. And
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Speaker 3: you know, I looked at the books that were out there,
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Speaker 3: none of them really spoke to me at the time.
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Speaker 1: Well, let me ask me interject here a couple of things.
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Speaker 1: You're saying a lot of stuff that I I it's
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Speaker 1: so interesting. I want to see coighlight in a sense.
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Speaker 1: You said you were searching nothing. No one was really
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Speaker 1: there to provide some resource for you. What did you find.
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Speaker 1: Give us one or two things that you did find
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Speaker 1: that did work for you, It did help you.
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Speaker 3: The first thing I found is an exercise called toe tapping.
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Speaker 3: It's a traditional Chinese medicine exercise and it's quite simple.
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Speaker 3: You lie down on any surface and you just tap
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Speaker 3: your big toes together and your heels are a little
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Speaker 3: bit apart, and you just get this rhythm. Going to
11:19
Speaker 3: do that right now, but you have to be lying down.
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Speaker 3: But I mean, you can try it that way. It's
11:27
Speaker 3: not going to give you the same results. But I
11:31
Speaker 3: read about it in a book. It was a book
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Speaker 3: by a doctor Western doctor who's also trained in Eastern medicine.
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Speaker 3: And it goes back hundreds or thousands of years. Wow,
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Speaker 3: it's not like a new practice. I believe she didn't
11:55
Speaker 3: talk about this, but it makes sense that it's using
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Speaker 3: the meridian sis stone and that those are pressure points
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Speaker 3: where you're tapping together just below the nail. The nail
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Speaker 3: on your big toes were the widest part of the toe,
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Speaker 3: so you're hitting there. So it was the first thing
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Speaker 3: that helped to start reduce my flashbacks and decrease the
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Speaker 3: frequency and the intensity. And it was like, it doesn't
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Speaker 3: just happen like overnight gradual, but it happened. It started
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Speaker 3: to happen quickly.
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Speaker 1: I can't imagine or I can imagine you reading this thinking, wow,
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Speaker 1: let me try toe tapping. I mean, I don't want
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Speaker 1: to project here, but you must have been like, I
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Speaker 1: gotta I'll try anything. Yeah, that's gonna I mean this
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Speaker 1: that sounds, it sounds I don't want to say crazy,
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Speaker 1: but whatever works, so you started this. That's incredible.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, So I in grad school, because I was in
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Speaker 3: a somatic program, we'd often start any sort of experiential
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Speaker 3: we were doing, they we would be instructed to ground first,
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Speaker 3: but no one ever explained why do we have to ground?
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Speaker 3: Like what is I guess it's just assumed everyone knows.
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Speaker 3: But I didn't know fully what that meant and why.
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Speaker 3: And so I knew enough to know when I would
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Speaker 3: go into a flashback or get triggered, like you're not
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Speaker 3: really in your body. You know you're not fully. I
13:45
Speaker 3: mean there's a whole range of where how much you're
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Speaker 3: in your body or you're not in your body your
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Speaker 3: energy we're talking about here, so to the extreme, some
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Speaker 3: people actually feel out of their body. But I knew
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Speaker 3: I wasn't grounded. So when I read about it it's
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Speaker 3: a grounding technique, I thought, you know, maybe this will help,
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Speaker 3: But I didn't know it would help as much as
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Speaker 3: it helped. Like she didn't say this helps with flashbacks,
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Speaker 3: and I wasn't doing it when I was having a flashback.
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Speaker 3: So what you do? You make a practice of doing
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Speaker 3: it every day. So I would do it every day
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Speaker 3: for five minutes, which is like minimum. It would have
14:31
Speaker 3: been better if I did it every day for twice
14:34
Speaker 3: for five minutes or ten minutes, like for anxiety, it's
14:37
Speaker 3: really good to do twice a day for ten minutes.
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Speaker 3: But it's cumulative, it builds up. And she did share
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Speaker 3: in the book, and I'm forgetting I think her name
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Speaker 3: is Emory Chasin, but I'm not certain if I have
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Speaker 3: that exactly right, but she did share that she would
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Speaker 3: have she has all of her clients do it because
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Speaker 3: it moves the energy. It helps the flow of energy
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Speaker 3: in the body and from the eastern lens. When the
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Speaker 3: energy isn't flowing, you have block blockages are created, and
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Speaker 3: so this helps to gradually on do those blockages. From
15:23
Speaker 3: what she said, So, so I lost my train of
15:33
Speaker 3: for what I was why I brought her up. But oh,
15:37
Speaker 3: just that like it didn't say it was going to
15:40
Speaker 3: help with that, but because it's cumulative and it grounds you,
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Speaker 3: it did help with that. And so oh, I was
15:48
Speaker 3: going to say, she's She said that she'll have clients
15:52
Speaker 3: come back after several years, who you know, all of
15:56
Speaker 3: a sudden, their symptoms are back, and the first thing
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Speaker 3: she'll ask them is are you doing in your toe
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Speaker 3: tapping and they'll say no and why not. So that
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Speaker 3: was enough to like convince me it was worth giving
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Speaker 3: it a try.
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Speaker 1: Because wow, very very interesting. So I'm assuming that that's
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Speaker 1: in the book.
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Speaker 3: It isn't. It isn't. I mentioned it briefly in the journal,
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Speaker 3: but it's in the Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook in the
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Speaker 3: first chapter and and I have that for free on
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Speaker 3: my website as a download, and I also have another
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Speaker 3: download that it's in on my website that's free.
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Speaker 1: So the book, the Healing Sexual Trauma Guided Journal, you
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Speaker 1: said it was for survivors therapists who using it.
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Speaker 2: What did you want to do with the book?
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Speaker 3: So what I wanted was to have like people that
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Speaker 3: were like me. I knew there has to be a
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Speaker 3: lot of them out there's desperately searching for help with
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Speaker 3: their symptoms and trying to feel better and heal, and
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Speaker 3: they're not getting results or they don't, like I didn't
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Speaker 3: have money for a time to go to therapy, so
17:15
Speaker 3: you know, they're struggling to have a resource that was
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Speaker 3: actually going to help them get some results. No, that's
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Speaker 3: what I wanted to see. And there wasn't any books
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Speaker 3: that were body based out there for healing from sexual trauma,
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Speaker 3: with the exception of Stacy Haynes's book, which was really
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Speaker 3: geared toward the sexual part of sexual trauma, and a
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Speaker 3: lot of survivors are not ready to go there when
17:51
Speaker 3: they want to start healing. Like many many terms.
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Speaker 1: The focus is on the sexual part.
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Speaker 3: I see very much about sexuality and how it impacts
18:05
Speaker 3: how the trauma impacts you that way. So it's a
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Speaker 3: good book, but like I said, so many survivors that's
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Speaker 3: not what they're thinking about. They're not worried about having sex.
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Speaker 3: They're really turned off from it for a time many.
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Speaker 3: I mean, it can go either way. You can have
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Speaker 3: a sexual aversion, or it can go the other extreme
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Speaker 3: sexual compulsion, and you can have like repetition compulsion at
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Speaker 3: play there with the reenactment and hoping to find a
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Speaker 3: better outcome on an unconscious level. It's always operating on
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Speaker 3: an unconscious level. And so even when that's brought to
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Speaker 3: survivors awareness, they often don't want to go to a
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Speaker 3: book that the focus is sex sexuality as they're healing.
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Speaker 1: So given that, what would you say the focus your
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Speaker 1: of this book is, well.
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Speaker 3: It's integrative healing. The whole system, the whole body. We're
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Speaker 3: not just thinking about our sexuality. We're thinking about all
19:25
Speaker 3: the ways trauma has impacted us and why our body
19:28
Speaker 3: does what it does and did what it did. And
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Speaker 3: understanding that alone is so healing. To understand what happens
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Speaker 3: to trauma and memory, why your memory is as it
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Speaker 3: is about the traumatic event, which again you know, there's
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Speaker 3: a spectrum, but the memory doesn't encode in the same
19:55
Speaker 3: way the mind during a traumatic event, so we don't
20:01
Speaker 3: have the same kind of memory recall. So understanding that
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Speaker 3: it's so helpful. So many survivors are just beat themselves
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Speaker 3: up because the way their body responded, I should have
20:20
Speaker 3: done this, I should have done that, or the way
20:23
Speaker 3: they don't remember, or there's just no so many I mean,
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Speaker 3: the gaps in memory. There's so many ways that survivors
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Speaker 3: are hard on themselves when none of it was their
20:41
Speaker 3: fault and their body was just doing the best it
20:45
Speaker 3: could to keep them alive because the body always goes
20:48
Speaker 3: towards survival and that's what their body did. That's what
20:52
Speaker 3: all of our bodies did in a traumatic circumstance, and
21:00
Speaker 3: we're here, right, so we survived. It did what it
21:04
Speaker 3: needed to do to help you survive.
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Speaker 2: In addition to.
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Speaker 1: That kind of framing and context and psycho education, what
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Speaker 1: else you including in the book?
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Speaker 3: So in the well in both books there's practices. There's somatic,
21:26
Speaker 3: body based practices, and some other practices that are a
21:33
Speaker 3: combination of things. The Workbook has more practices in it
21:39
Speaker 3: the Guided Journal. I have five foundational practices, so that's
21:45
Speaker 3: really clear what I want people to prioritize in the
21:51
Speaker 3: In the Workbook there's quite a few more, and so
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Speaker 3: I felt like it would would help to have have
22:03
Speaker 3: it like this is these are the ones if really,
22:06
Speaker 3: if you do nothing else, do these. And I introduced
22:11
Speaker 3: them one chapter at a time except the last two
22:17
Speaker 3: or in the fourth chapter, so it's not overwhelming, and
22:24
Speaker 3: it doesn't take a lot of time to do them.
22:28
Speaker 3: So usually they can be done in twelve minutes a day.
22:32
Speaker 3: Other than when you're having symptoms, you're going to need
22:35
Speaker 3: to do do one of them more frequently.
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Speaker 1: Erica from your what did you take from your experience
22:46
Speaker 1: working with clients that you put into this book?
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Speaker 3: I think this book. I what I love about the
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Speaker 3: new book The Journal is that it really flows from
23:03
Speaker 3: one topic into the next, and I approached it more
23:08
Speaker 3: like I'm talking to a client all the way through,
23:11
Speaker 3: and the experience of writing it also really flowed. Excuse me,
23:18
Speaker 3: just need a tissue, So it feels gentle that way,
23:28
Speaker 3: and I yeah, I feel like I took more than
23:36
Speaker 3: anything else, just that, like the client's presence, the having
23:46
Speaker 3: a hard time putting it into words, but all the
23:53
Speaker 3: all the desire that they have to heal and and
23:59
Speaker 3: there's suffering, you know, like just really holding that and
24:05
Speaker 3: holding the knowing that they can heal, that it's possible,
24:13
Speaker 3: and it doesn't have to take years. On average, my
24:18
Speaker 3: clients see me for one year if there's a lot
24:22
Speaker 3: of childhood other types of childhood traumas, so it's usually
24:29
Speaker 3: a CPTSD diagnoses two years is the average. So it
24:35
Speaker 3: really doesn't need to be years and years of therapy.
24:41
Speaker 1: It's interesting now we're living in a time, excuse me,
24:45
Speaker 1: in a culture where I think we are talking more
24:50
Speaker 1: about sexual assault and healing, and you know, to what
24:55
Speaker 1: degree that's helping people. I'm not sure. I think it's
25:01
Speaker 1: maybe helping somewhat, but I'm interested in how you you know,
25:07
Speaker 1: to what degree this culture, you know, the Me Too movement.
25:11
Speaker 2: How did this impact your work, your book.
25:14
Speaker 1: How did you want to situate this work that you're
25:18
Speaker 1: doing the book?
25:22
Speaker 3: Well, I think the Me Too movement has helped quite
25:27
Speaker 3: a bit to give survivors the courage to seek help
25:32
Speaker 3: and also to speak out. In some cases. It's you know,
25:36
Speaker 3: it's very much an individual choice and there's not a
25:40
Speaker 3: right or wrong about speaking out, but those who want to,
25:45
Speaker 3: I think it's really helped support that. But this political
25:52
Speaker 3: climate is quite challenging. You know, for all the gain
25:59
Speaker 3: that happened with the Me Too movement, there's this pushback.
26:02
Speaker 3: You know, my book got banned. I mean, like, why
26:06
Speaker 3: why ban a book that helps people heal? It's kind
26:10
Speaker 3: of twisted.
26:12
Speaker 2: Where did it get banned?
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Speaker 3: Well, that was in Michigan, Oh yeah, and in twenty
26:21
Speaker 3: twenty two. It was banned in Michigan and in a
26:26
Speaker 3: school district. And it was just it was available in
26:32
Speaker 3: the library. It wasn't like some required reading. It was
26:38
Speaker 3: something there for people who needed it, and someone decided
26:44
Speaker 3: it wasn't they shouldn't have that resource, right, So just
26:51
Speaker 3: the you know, it's like all these nominations being paraded
26:58
Speaker 3: in front of us that are accused of sexual assault,
27:04
Speaker 3: and you know, the Supreme Court. I mean, it's just
27:08
Speaker 3: the political climate is pretty horrendous right now, and it
27:15
Speaker 3: really does feel like a backlash against survivors in part.
27:22
Speaker 3: So I'm not sure if that answers your question.
27:26
Speaker 2: But yeah, it does. I appreciate that.
27:29
Speaker 1: I was just curious on you know, your experience, your
27:35
Speaker 1: personal experience, your professional experience that has all come into
27:41
Speaker 1: this work. I mean, just talking to you, you can
27:44
Speaker 1: feel how much of yourself you've put into this book
27:48
Speaker 1: and the caring you have, the passion you have, and
27:53
Speaker 1: the compassion you have, and it's it's inspiring.
27:58
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, thank you. I am you know you
28:01
Speaker 3: asked about my clients. I'm very much inspired by them
28:05
Speaker 3: and seeing seeing their growth in their healing taking place
28:10
Speaker 3: in real time, like week after week. That's so inspiring
28:14
Speaker 3: to me.
28:15
Speaker 1: The idea that you know, people can get better. A
28:21
Speaker 1: lot of times I think we don't feel that, we
28:24
Speaker 1: don't What do you mean, I can get better?
28:26
Speaker 2: Really?
28:26
Speaker 1: You know, knowing that, like owning that, like you said,
28:30
Speaker 1: in and of itself, can be really healing or a
28:34
Speaker 1: step towards healing.
28:35
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And often we as therapists have to hold
28:40
Speaker 3: that for clients until they start to see some movement
28:45
Speaker 3: and can begin to let in, Yes, it's possible.
28:52
Speaker 2: So as we kind of wind down here.
28:59
Speaker 1: For the you know lot of obviously a lot of therapists,
29:01
Speaker 1: mental health clinicians of all kinds are listening to this.
29:04
Speaker 1: And you said survivors as well as therapists are uh
29:09
Speaker 1: utilizing this book. What is your hope for the book.
29:16
Speaker 3: So that it reaches as many survivors that can benefit
29:20
Speaker 3: from it. Yeah, I really want to just help more
29:28
Speaker 3: and more people have that that healing.
29:33
Speaker 1: Is there a particular uh kind of like target audience.
29:39
Speaker 1: I know you said survivors, but you also said, you
29:43
Speaker 1: know there are certain books out there or maybe a
29:46
Speaker 1: book out there for example, that focus is more on
29:50
Speaker 1: the sexual part of this. It sounds like here's focus
29:53
Speaker 1: is maybe less on that. You know, is there a
29:57
Speaker 1: particular target audience for this one who might want to
30:01
Speaker 1: work more obviously somatically or et cetera.
30:05
Speaker 3: Well, see, I don't believe you can heal from trauma
30:09
Speaker 3: without working somatically. So I feel that across the board,
30:17
Speaker 3: I don't think you'll fully heal if you don't fully embody.
30:23
Speaker 3: So the Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook I brought in holy
30:26
Speaker 3: vagel theory. And I hadn't seen that.
30:31
Speaker 4: This was in twenty twenty one, excuse me, And and
30:40
Speaker 4: I hadn't seen any books on sexual trauma talking about
30:44
Speaker 4: how to work with the nervous system.
30:47
Speaker 3: And it's out there born now, which is great, it's
30:52
Speaker 3: really getting out there now. But you know, it's such
30:57
Speaker 3: a huge piece of the work and getting triggered, and
31:01
Speaker 3: how do you ignore that, Like, that's the body, That's
31:05
Speaker 3: how we go into a dysregulated state, is our nervous system.
31:11
Speaker 3: How do you ignore that in trauma healing. That's why
31:16
Speaker 3: I don't think it's possible to heal trauma without bringing
31:20
Speaker 3: in the body.
31:22
Speaker 2: Once again, i'm speaking. Oh sorry, I mean to cut
31:24
Speaker 2: you off there.
31:26
Speaker 3: Well, I feel like I didn't answer your whole question.
31:28
Speaker 3: But you know, in terms of the audience, I mean,
31:32
Speaker 3: I think it finds its audience. I like the Healing
31:35
Speaker 3: Sexual Trauma workbook got published in Spanish, Portuguese, I'm sorry,
31:41
Speaker 3: not Polish, not Portuguese, sorry, Spanish, Polish and Russian. So
31:50
Speaker 3: you know, I had I got a letter from someone
31:53
Speaker 3: in Poland who had been through horrible trauma, and so
32:00
Speaker 3: I you know, I hope it's reaching some of the
32:04
Speaker 3: people that have going through war crimes and then you know,
32:16
Speaker 3: all any type of sexual trauma. I just feel like
32:22
Speaker 3: anyone who has been through it, they need help healing.
32:28
Speaker 3: And there's some things they could take from the book
32:32
Speaker 3: and they might not you know, the sexual trauma work,
32:36
Speaker 3: but they're not meant to do every practice in it.
32:39
Speaker 3: They're meant to find what works for them. But I
32:45
Speaker 3: think the guid to journal is there's very little that
32:51
Speaker 3: wouldn't work for everyone in there. And you know, I
32:55
Speaker 3: do talk about the sexual healing piece of it a
32:59
Speaker 3: little more in the workbook. I touch on it in
33:03
Speaker 3: the Journal, but don't go to a depth about it.
33:06
Speaker 3: I mean, it's an important piece of it for some
33:09
Speaker 3: people because for some people that's where their symptoms are,
33:13
Speaker 3: Like they might be married and it might be really
33:17
Speaker 3: impacting them their relationship, and of course that's a really
33:24
Speaker 3: horrible thing to have to go through and they need
33:27
Speaker 3: support and healing from that. But you know, my point
33:30
Speaker 3: earlier is is that that's not where in my experience,
33:35
Speaker 3: that's not where most survivors are coming in.
33:40
Speaker 1: As a reminder, I was speaking with Erica Scherschan the
33:43
Speaker 1: new book coming out is titled The Healing Sexual Trauma
33:47
Speaker 1: Guided Journal do out in March twenty twenty five, art Erica.
33:53
Speaker 1: How do people learn more about you, raps, get in
33:56
Speaker 1: touch with you and certainly learn more about the book.
34:00
Speaker 3: So they can go to Healing Sexual Trauma dot com
34:04
Speaker 3: and there they will find the first chapter of the workbook,
34:08
Speaker 3: a free download on that, and then they will also
34:13
Speaker 3: see there if they're interested, a free ebook called Many
34:19
Speaker 3: Ways to Ground So if so, they can choose what
34:25
Speaker 3: grounding practice would feel best to them. So there, and
34:30
Speaker 3: then my therapy website is Felt Sense resonance dot com.
34:36
Speaker 3: Or they can go to eric astrition Therapy dot com.
34:40
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll have those linked up at the show notes
34:43
Speaker 1: page here at the Trauma theristpodcast dot com. Erica again,
34:46
Speaker 1: congratulation on the book. Really inspiring talking to you.
34:50
Speaker 2: I mean I can feel.
34:53
Speaker 1: Your this is what you do. You feel it, right,
34:57
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the work you do, and it
35:00
Speaker 1: just resonates and I just find it so inspiring.
35:04
Speaker 2: So thank you for being here.
35:06
Speaker 3: Thank you guys. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak
35:09
Speaker 3: with your audience and with you. Thank you.
35:12
Speaker 2: All right, We'll be in touch.
35:13
Speaker 1: Take care, take care,