Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 738: We Are All Just Shaky Beings with Jan Winhall, MSW

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Episode 738: We Are All Just Shaky Beings with Jan Winhall, MSW · The Trauma Therapist

0:10
Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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My 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
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, all right,
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here we go. So five four, three, two and one, our
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folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have back Jen Winhall,
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Jen welcome, Thank you so much, guys, great to be back
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here. I think we were saying, it's the third time I've been with
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you, and lots has happened over those three three times. I don't know
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if it's three years. Maybe yeah, awesome, Well we'll dive into that.
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So Jen began her career as a social worker and psychotherapist forty years ago.
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She began listening with non pathologizing ears in her shocking stories of sexual torture
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and responses that confused her. As she continued to listen. She learned that
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somehow, these self harming behaviors were actually quote helping individuals to escape in tolerable
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emotional states. They were shifting their mood from flooding anxiety to numbing deadness or
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vice versa. Because these behaviors were so helpful, they were compulsively repeated and
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often became addictions. Jen's book Betweening Trauma and Addiction with Felt Sense of polyvegle
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model bottom up approach, is a result of rethinking the felt sense experienced model
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that she wrote about in her book Merging Practice and Focusing orientto Psychotherapy in twenty
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fourteen, Jen's integrated the polygl lens theory to create a more sophisticated way of
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understanding emotional regulation were addicted behavior is an embodied response to emotional and just regulation.
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Welcome again, um to remind our listeners before you go in here,
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Jane, where you're from originally where you are currently, which is the same
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background, the same Yeah, I'm originally from Toronto, Canada, and I'm
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still here because it's a great place to live. Awesome, awesome. So,
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as we were kind of chatting in the pre interview ut time, you
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said, you know, I said, you know, so, what did
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you want to share today? And you said, becoming more embodied? What
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do you? What do you? What does that mean to you? What
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do you mean? I mean that, I think the shift we are making
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in the trauma world over over forty years now that I've been here, more
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and more towards appreciating body wisdom, appreciating the ways in which our bodies carries
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so much information about how we're living our lives, and we've really been cut
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off from that, you know, in this kind of very western worldview that
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we have, which which really values thinking, conceptualizing, and so you see
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these lots of different programs and cognitive behavioral work, which which I think is
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great, but I think it's only great when it is shared with people in
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an embodied way. So what I mean by that is really working with the
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felt sense, which is Gentlman's work, which is where I began, So
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lucky to have begun there working, you know, really studying with Eugene Gentleman,
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who coined the term felt sense over forty years ago. You know,
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when you said that, I think last time I brought up this quote by
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him that I love. I mean to me, it just encapsulates everything.
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It's that I that I love and it's really inspires me. And he talks
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about um, just that you know that that that felt sense and that authenticity,
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And he said, what does he say? Do you remember the quote?
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I think it's in the Primacy of Human Presence that I sent to you,
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but I'm not sure exactly, but it's worth looking up. Yeah,
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it's um. The essence of working with another person is to be present as
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a living being. And that's lucky because if we had to be smart or
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good, or mature or wise, then we would probably be in trouble.
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But what matters is not that. What matters is to be a human being
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with another human being, to recognize the other person as another being in there?
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What does that mean to you? Isn't that so beautiful? I start
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almost every training I do. That is the primacy of human presence. I
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sent it to you after and he says, even if it's a bird,
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to take the time to see like you and I are seeing, Oh,
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there's another human being here. This is guy, this is another person.
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And in order to be able to be with you fully present and Generalan goes
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on and shows us how to do that. In that quote, you take
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all your thoughts, all everything you've been taught, and you put it beside
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you, and then you take all of your feelings and you're experiencing and your
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lived experience, and you put it on the other side of you, and
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then there's just you in this open space. That in poly vegal language,
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you can stay in a ventral place and feel safe enough to hear people who
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think differently than you, who look differently than you, who act differently than
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you, who may offend you, but you hear them and you experience them
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freshly, gentlemen would say, and then putting your feelings on the other side,
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so that disregulated feelings like we talk about in the nervous system and polyvnggal
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language a lot, right, the feeling the states of threat, flight,
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fight, freeze, and shutting down. That when we can regulate ourselves enough
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to be present in a ventral way, then we can really be open to
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hearing and experiencing freshly. And that's really what presence is. Right now,
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What is your specific love within that, because as you're talking, I'm thinking
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to myself this for many people who become traumatized is almost the antithetical state,
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right it's number one to feel embodied, to be safe in their embodied Um.
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Yeah, it's scary. So when you work with people, obviously there
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are many contexts, but what do you love to do within that? It's
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too make a relationship. So that's slowly over time, especially with addiction,
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you're really in a very gentle way coaxing somebody to come back to life.
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And that there's so much in within that. Yeah, because trauma shuts you
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down from life. You know. It's it's like being present has hurt you
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so much that it don't you don't it doesn't even make sense biologically to be
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present. It makes sense biologically it's adaptive to go to dorsal when you've been
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that hurt. Right, But we know from top down ways of understanding things
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that we get into these trauma feedback loops where you know, we're shifting in
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our bodies from that flight, fight, sympathetic charge down into folding into dorsal
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and then sometimes back again. And that's a loop that we can help people
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shift out of. And two of the most powerful ways I found to do
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that are both very embodied and they're about an introceptive process of focusing. So
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teaching people slowly over time and showing somebody that you can make little moments of
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safety. And that's all we really have anyway, right, I mean you
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and I don't know what's going on in the next minute or so, So
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what would what would a little bit of that look like? How would you
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introduce or invite someone to begin that interception? Yeah? The other process I
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just want to say, are those two And that's what my felt sense polyvagal
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model is. The first one is the felt sense and it's intraceptive, and
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the other is the autonomic nervous system, it's neuroception. Steve's Porch's word,
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Right, those are the two really powerful ways that we can read bodies and
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then also teach people how to read their own process is in their own body.
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So what I do is I just start, like we all do.
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We make a relationship. That's that's coregulation. You have to connect a little
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bit and once you start to feel like the person is with you a little
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bit, you know, and that can take a long time and it can
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take a short time. It really I think depends on so many things.
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Who you are, who they are, the point of time, and then
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I just look for little openings. I call them in the body. So
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maybe a person is telling me something and a tear falls down their cheek and
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they don't even know that it's rolling, or they get tight in their throat,
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you know, or you can see them hunch up. You could.
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Bodies talk to us all the time. It's just we're not taught to watch
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and listen to them that we're taught to listen to the words. That's a
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mistake. I think the words are important, but more important because bodies don't
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lie, you know. So when I see something like that, like a
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person's gulping or they're tight up or a tear comes, if I feel like
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it's okay, I might draw attention and say, I noticed when we said
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that, but there was this little tear that fell down your cheek there,
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And you say it very gently, carefully, because the last thing you want
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to do is embarrassed or shame somebody right or frighten them. So that's the
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art of it, right. We can teach what to do, but the
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art of it is you feel into the relationship and the attachment, and when
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you start to feel that they have some kind of safe enough attachment with you,
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you can start to help them notice what's happening in their body. It's
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so interesting to hear you talk because as you're saying what sounds so simple,
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there's so much going on. I mean, just your demeanor, the gentleness,
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what you're saying, how you're seeing it, what you're drawing attention to,
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all of these things, again and again. Every situation is different to
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all people are different. But for many people who've been impacted, certainly by
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interpersonal trauma, just walking into one's your office can be you know, daunting
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and scary. But just to have that exchange, that that relationship as you're
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calling it, and just that one word is so pregnant with so many incredible,
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uh definitions of the different components of how you make that right. Yeah,
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keenln taught me a lot and the focusing community about how to make that
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kind of He never called it like a safe container, but that's what we
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call it. It's kind of right. And part of it is the primacy
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of human presence. It's like, if you if you have a sense that
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I can listen to you freshly without my own all my own interpretations. This
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is experiential psychotherapy. It's not interpretive, right. You might have an idea
12:58
about something that's going on with a client. But as Gentleman says in that
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quote, if you read the whole thing, he says, if there's an
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idea, a concept you have about what might be going on, you can
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kind of go into that place beside you find it and offer it up.
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I wonder, guy, if some of that has to do with you,
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know, that stuff you talk to me about about your dad. It's not
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this is about what happened with you and your dad. It's a suggestion because
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it honors the body knows what's right or wrong, not us, you know.
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And so it's a very different way of working, and I believe it
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creates an enormous amount of safety because people feel that you really see them and
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you value what they think and how they feel and what they've done to survive,
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which is all adapted. I really believe addictions are they're just I mean,
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it's complex in terms of the biology and whatever, but they function really
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as propellers that shift us back and forth from sympathetic to dorisal and back again.
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That's what they're designed to do. And I think they're instinctive. It's
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just how bodies work. Do you believe that behind most addictions there is trauma.
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Yeah, because and again the beauty of this is if from a polyvagal
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lens, from a nervous system lens, you can say yes, of course,
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because if you look, I created a model that has six kind of
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states that are part of the nervous system in it, and it's like a
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visuographic model. You can download it on my website, and you can see
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in that model that all of those states of defense, the flight, fight,
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and the freeze state, the folding in we call it folding in and
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collapsing. They're all part of a disregulated trauma feedback loop, and addictions don't
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happen in the other states, the blended states that are ventral, because we
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don't need them. All right, When you feel grounded and safe enough,
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you don't need to shift back and forth between disregulated states. Your cruising along.
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Life's good, You're lucky. All right, let's just pause here for
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a second to thank our sponsors. All Right, we are back the body.
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You know, when I first started, when I was in graduate school
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and began to learn about embodiment, I was completely out of my element.
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I was like, what do what do you mean? That was me you
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know, I was so much up into my head. And for some people,
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of course, it comes easier and for others it doesn't. But you're
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talking about the safety and this trust, and how does that happen? How
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do you introduce that to someone? Well, I think it goes back to
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presence, the quality of your presence. I think you create safety by honoring
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another person's truth, by not imposing your own. So if I can listen
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to you freshly, I'm honoring you and not placing something on you. That
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feels good. When somebody can really hear what you say and think and really
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respect it, that feels good. Right. When somebody can be gentle and
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loving and vulnerable in their own shaky being, as Endlen would say, that
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was his language to we are all shaky beings. And that's the second paragraph
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in that beautiful quote he talks about. So that's there, but it's there
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in a way that you're also there's a strength in that container. It's like
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I'm leading this. I respect where you're going to go, but I'm holding
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you and I'm not afraid to do that. And there are certain boundaries that
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we need to share and agree upon in order to have this safe container,
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and without that, I don't have what I need to be able to help
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you. So we got to come to an agreement on what they are was
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was this way of being of working very natural to you? Yeah, because
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it's what I wanted. I went to see a therapist and actually I think
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he gave it to me, and I think that's part of why it just
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felt right. And I knew I knew a lot about what to do,
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even though I was, like I would think I was twenty six or something
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when I started that. My first job, that group was with women who
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were incest survivors, and I just got plunked into this job and what the
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hell was I going to do? But I knew two things. I knew
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that I had to be able to listen with what I call non pathologizing ears.
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I knew I never believed that people were that whole thing about being sick.
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It just didn't make any sense to me. Disregulated, struggling yes,
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yes, struggling yes, but to really just listen to how they were adapting
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to their life and their struggles and respecting that and helping them to respect themselves
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for what they were doing. To as in attempts to survive. So there
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was that. And the other thing is that I knew I had to try
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in whatever way to help us to be safe, in us to be present,
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which meant some things that are pretty obvious, like confidentiality and whatever,
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things like making sure the doors stayed closed in a hospital setting. Nobody was
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going to barge in for two hours, making sure that they knew that I
19:33
was going to show up next week. I wasn't going to leave because it
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was too hard to hear the horror of what they were telling us in the
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group. Right, how did you get How did you deal with that?
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As a fresh Well? Yeah, that was that was hard because back then
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nobody talked about vicarious trauma. They didn't, I mean you just we didn't.
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But we had it. I definitely had it. I can remember feeling
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totally traumatized by what I was hearing. Yeah, but I also had a
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lot of support and privilege, and I have always had this little person inside
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that's pretty insightful. I don't know where she came from, but I have,
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and that somehow has always guided me towards going towards what what helps us
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to grow and feel? Oh, I guess what people are now talking about
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as gratitude. You know, we didn't talk about that back then much either.
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But and I had a support group. We had a small group of
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feminist therapists who met who I still know some of them, and we read
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Judith Herman and we gobbled every you know. And then along came Vessel with
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Vanderkock and all those people early on, and we supported each other. But
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it took a while for us to talk about how what we were hearing was
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affecting us in our bodies. Eventually we did go, but it was hard.
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You know, I'm imagining that for many newer clinicians there's this compulsion almost
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to want to give, which oftentimes can feel like putting knowledge upon someone.
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Yeah, but you're not talking about that at all. Was there ever that
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feeling in you? I mean, you're plunked out in this intense group with
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women. Well, there there is a lot of I do do a lot
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of psycho education and polybagal theory. There's a lot of psycho education, but
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it's delivered within the context of believing in the essence of what helps us to
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heal, which is to be a human being with another human being and to
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know how to create a safe container and to lead. And I think,
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you know, it's important to really know how to lead as a therapist,
22:11
right to not be afraid to take some sense of empowerment sometimes because people are
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lost. They're lost, look like taking a sense of apparent well, really
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reinforcing a boundary. For example, like if a client doesn't want to come
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or they want to you know, I'll come and see you every three weeks.
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And you know, I know I can't do this work with you every
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three weeks. I need you to show up and be with me and I
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can see you and see how you're doing every week. Otherwise we don't have
22:45
a safe container, that kind of thing where we're not afraid to say these
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are the things that I believe we need in order to set things up right.
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You know. Right now, I'm I'm writing, just starting to write
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a work book for the general public on using my model with trauma and addiction.
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And it's I'm having fun with that. And one of the things I'm
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spending a lot of time on is the introduction of how to set it up.
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And I think that's a really important thing that we don't probably spend enough
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time on, is setting up the journey making sure people have enough of what
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they need to go on the journey, because it's a horrible journey in a
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lot of ways. It is. I mean, we know that, we
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know it's going to come, and it's oh, it's you know, it's
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like transition and giving birth. It's really tough. So we need to make
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sure we've got what we need to go on that journey together. So this
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is what resources you're talking about, or I'm talking about enough safety, how
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to marginalize people, how to trans people, how to queer people, how
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do people have called how do we act as allies and support people to be
24:07
able to be safe enough in their bodies to go on the journey, Because
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if you don't have enough safety, it just has where we started, where
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you said, traumatized people aren't going to go in there. That's true.
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So sometimes a lot of what we need to do is instrumental. It's like,
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do you have enough foodie, do you have a roof over your are
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you safe in your home? You know, because if you're not, we're
24:30
not going on that journey. And you know, this goes back to Judith
24:34
Herman, right. Establishing safety is the first part of that three part journey.
24:41
That she talks about. It's before that we were we were you know,
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I was sending women to groups and stuff that and they were just being
24:49
totally re traumatized because people were doing like have the duty work, primal scream
24:57
work and stuff like that, and there wasn't enough safety. So it was
25:03
really Judith Herman in her book Trauma and Recovery where she said, wait a
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minute, we need to have this three phased and that's still very much a
25:11
part of what we do now, right, And it just speaks so clearly
25:15
and nicely with polyvagel theory that we have to have enough safety. Safety is
25:21
the north Star safety guides us. So and even in the book I'm talking
25:26
about you need to make sure that you have a private space that's quiet and
25:33
available to you so that you can sit quietly by yourself and concentrate while you're
25:44
using the book. So all of that is just so important. It's like
25:48
you're going on a canoe trip. You've got to make sure you've got enough
25:52
supplies, You've got enough food to last you when you're going over the rapids,
25:56
you know. And I'm not sure that we really talk about that enough,
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right, They almost seem those things almost seems so obvious. Yeah,
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but they're not. But they're not obvious and certainly yeah, a lot of
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people are like, what do you mean have this private space for myself?
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No I can't. I don't. Yeah, I don't, and some people
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can't have it. So then it's like, okay, well then then maybe
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that's the thing to start with before you even start go on the journey or
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open my book further, just start with that. Have you got those things
26:33
that you need, you know, or even a safe place to keep the
26:38
materials that you're going to develop while you're you're you're in therapy or you're using
26:45
whatever workbook or whatever you're doing. You know, do you have a way
26:48
of keeping that safe so that other people don't see it? And people you
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know, you know, that's not something you really think about either, but
26:56
once you get into the work you realize it in the correctly important. So
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we're working with addiction, people are shamed writing down the things that they've done
27:07
or that they want to change, and especially with sex addiction. So you
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know, it's like, okay, well let's think about that. How do
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you make a safe container for all of the materials and the tools and the
27:21
journaling and the process recording and all that you're going to be doing. Yeah,
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it's one to remind everyone. I'm seking with jen Winhall. Jen's how
27:33
do people get in touch with you? It's the best way jen Winhall dot
27:38
com my website. I'm not since I guess the last time I was with
27:44
you. I've been teaching. I'm an educational partner with the Polyvigal Institute and
27:48
I've been teaching a course there that, honestly, guy has been amazing the
27:52
people that have come. We're just wrapping up the first one. The next
27:56
one starts in May on my book, the first Saturday of May, so
28:02
it's every one Saturday a month. We do focusing partnerships, so we work
28:07
together in partnerships, and that has changed everything. That was Jenlan's idea,
28:14
Right, you work together and you have a practice of focusing in partnerships,
28:18
and so we take the ideas and the concepts which I love, but we
28:23
bring them into the body and we do it together together with another what colleague
28:32
or yeah, Yeah, Each student is partnered with somebody else and they meet
28:36
fifteen times over the six months and they get a certificate from the focusing Institute
28:40
and also from the Polyvagele Institute, and then you're really well, I had
28:45
to do that because I had to know that when people use the model,
28:48
that they were bring it in an embodied way. And also that we have
28:53
to do our own work because we are our instrument and if we don't know
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what's going on inside us, how are we ever going to invite somebody to
29:03
come along with us. So people are growing, They're saying things like,
29:10
well, I signed up. I never knew I was going to learn all
29:11
this about myself. That transformations are incredible. Yeah, that's amazing. We
29:19
can get that. That link is will be on your website. Yeah,
29:25
okay, we can also put that in the show notes at the traumat Thatvers
29:27
podcast dot com. But this that idea of you know, being a human
29:33
with another human being, it sounds so simple, you know, you rattles
29:38
off our tongues in one simple sentence, and yet there's so much behind that,
29:45
right, I mean, the way you talk it sounds so simple,
29:48
it sounds so effortless. But it's not from many people, from any No,
29:53
no it's not. But it's getting better. Guy. I mean I
29:56
look around now and I see lots of people who are really in the spotlight,
30:03
who are willing to share a lot of vulnerability. And I'm doing it
30:07
a lot too, because it helps people when you share your story, you
30:14
know, it really helps people to know we're all we're all just shaky beings.
30:21
I mean, come on, who are we kidding? You know,
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and people that in the world that want to be like the kind of narcissistic
30:27
it's all about me, you know, I mean really, I think what's
30:33
so beautiful is that there are a lot of really great therapists out there now
30:37
who are sharing information they don't want to. They're not it's not about the
30:42
glory. It's about being real and really changing the world because we're in big
30:48
trouble. We're in big trouble, and so that's an amazing thing, right,
30:56
And yeah, it is hard for most people because we're not socialized to
30:59
do it. But once you're in there and you can feel that sense of
31:07
grounding that comes from being just you know, a shaky being, it's so
31:14
wonderful you just don't want to stop. It just keeps growing and you meet
31:18
more and more people that have that same capacity because they've developed it's just you
31:25
develop it over time right, and a lot of us are older that are
31:30
speaking out now, and we're elders and we have wisdom. We've done a
31:34
lot of work. We've been doing this work for a long time. People
31:40
like Janina Fisher that I had a chat with I introduced her at the Polyvagal
31:45
conference. It was so lovely, like, yeah, I mean, it's
31:48
just amazing. He's incredible, she is, and she's just a person,
31:52
you know, I jam, I like your scarf, you know, I
31:56
mean really it's it's um. I love that that part of what's happening in
32:02
the world there. That's really cool. That's awesome. I mean, that's
32:07
what I hope this podcast is about. And that's why it is. I
32:10
invited you back because you're just amazing. You are. I love talking to
32:16
you, and like I said before, your energy is just so inspiring.
32:21
Um. I can't wait to get this out there. Jan We'll have you
32:27
your your website linked up and I'm excited to get that link to the new
32:32
course workshop yeah on poly vegel Institute dot org. If you can't sign up
32:37
until the beginning of April, I think, but yes, I mean,
32:42
honestly, it's been an amazing experience for me teaching that group. Awesome.
32:47
Well you are invited back anytime. Thank you so much for being here.
32:54
Okay, all right, take care.