Latest / The Trauma Therapist / From the archives: Fire. Body. Mind with Annie Brook

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From the archives: Fire. Body. Mind with Annie Brook · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Today we even another episode from the archives with one
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Speaker 1: of my incredible guests. Enjoy Welcome to the Trauma Everists podcast,
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Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
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Speaker 1: of experienced trauma. My name is Got macpherson and my
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Speaker 1: mission is to raise the awareness of trauma and to
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Speaker 1: inspire each of us to help those around us. Five
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Speaker 1: four three two and one, our folks, welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the Trauma Theverist podcast. I am very excited to have
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Speaker 1: as my guest today, Annie Brooke, Annie.
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Speaker 2: Welcome, Thank you so much.
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Speaker 1: All right, So Annie is a sematic author, educator and therapist.
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Speaker 1: She's over thirty five years of professional experience helping ifans
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Speaker 1: through adults resolve trauma. She teaches courses online the Difference
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Speaker 1: between Shock and Trauma, and she's launching ten week Killing
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Speaker 1: Complex Trauma course April seventh. And he has worked at
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Speaker 1: Children's Hospital and the Child Trauma Centers, in public schools
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Speaker 1: with gang youth, with sexually abused foster children, and she's
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Speaker 1: seen families and adults in private practice since nineteen seventy eight.
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Speaker 1: All right, Annie, just a little bit about you before
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Speaker 1: we get go in here, share with our listeners where
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Speaker 1: you're from originally, where you're calling from currently what you're
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Speaker 1: calling I'm.
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Speaker 2: Currently calling from Boulder, Colorado, cool, Okay. And I grew
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Speaker 2: up in basically in South Florida. My parents. My dad
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Speaker 2: was in the Air Force, so we moved around when
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Speaker 2: I was a young child. But my major kid growing
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Speaker 2: up years were in a wonderful place in South Florida,
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Speaker 2: with lots of nature and swimming and all that. So
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Speaker 2: I was very fortunate.
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Speaker 1: Nice. All right, So you've been doing this for a while.
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Speaker 1: How the heck did you get into this field.
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Speaker 2: This was not where I thought i'd end up. I
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Speaker 2: did not think, oh, I'm going to school to become
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Speaker 2: a therapist. I actually dropped out of college and became
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Speaker 2: a little back to the land pioneer. Built a log
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Speaker 2: cabin with a friend and we had a water powered
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Speaker 2: furniture business. I went to Scotland and became apprenticed in pottery.
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Speaker 2: So I thought I was having that life as a
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Speaker 2: stoneware potter. And then a lot of trauma hit. My
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Speaker 2: partner started drinking, which I didn't know about, and then
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Speaker 2: the house burned down, my animals were killed. Yeah, it
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Speaker 2: was major, And of course you're at that fresh young,
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Speaker 2: like building your home and loving the land and making
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Speaker 2: the garden, you know, so in that process I was
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Speaker 2: very loyal. So we built. I got a job on
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Speaker 2: a fishing boat off Cape Cod to earn some money,
2:45
Speaker 2: and then we built a second house. And then I
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Speaker 2: realized I am not doing well. You know. There was
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Speaker 2: the trauma of the house fire, of all the effort
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Speaker 2: of someone who now had a substance abuse, and I
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Speaker 2: just felt like, if I stay here, I'm going to die.
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Speaker 1: How old were you at this time, man?
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Speaker 2: I was twenty three? Oh wow, okay, yep, twenty three.
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Speaker 2: And you know, so luckily I went home to Florida
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Speaker 2: for my sister's wedding and my other sister was visiting
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Speaker 2: from California and she took one look at me and
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Speaker 2: she said, you need to come out here to California
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Speaker 2: and learn how to meditate.
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Speaker 1: Let me just interrupt you. Can you release your the
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Speaker 1: microphone part of your headphone from your sweater? There you go, Oh, okay.
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Speaker 2: That'll be much easier to hear.
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Speaker 1: Thanks so much. It was rubbing on that thing.
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Speaker 2: Okay, let's see if I can keep that out of
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Speaker 2: the way.
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Speaker 1: That's fine, Yeah, all right, good, we'll try to interrupt you.
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Speaker 2: That's so so yeah. So I luckily, you know, I was.
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Speaker 2: I was in this place where I couldn't hardly hold
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Speaker 2: a job. You know, I could feel my mental capacity.
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Speaker 2: It was as if my brain were unraveling. And later
4:01
Speaker 2: that gave me some good perspective about mental health. It's like,
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Speaker 2: when there's too much stress, the brain stops functioning so well.
4:10
Speaker 2: And I grew up in a good family. You know,
4:13
Speaker 2: lots of ought to go back to those stories because
4:15
Speaker 2: those were part of what shaped me for sure. But
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Speaker 2: the part of it that was really important in that
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Speaker 2: moment is I found myself in California. I had just
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Speaker 2: a little tiny suitcase. Everything else had burned up, and
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Speaker 2: I went to this school for meditation that taught Sufie
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Speaker 2: based medication meditation. I didn't need medication, which was really good.
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Speaker 2: I went the natural route and my sister helped me
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Speaker 2: get into this school, which basically was open to anyone
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Speaker 2: and it was teaching you Sufi practices, how to meditate,
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Speaker 2: organize your energy. And at the time, this was in
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Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight, so this was before for energy medicine
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Speaker 2: was talked about or worked with. But I had so
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Speaker 2: much integration, and at the same time, I joined a
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Speaker 2: four year training called Healing Ourselves, which used a combination
5:12
Speaker 2: of it worked with the emotional body. We worked with
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Speaker 2: Wilhelm Reich's Neo Reichian or the breath sessions. So we
5:21
Speaker 2: were doing the matwork and processing emotions and bio energetic
5:26
Speaker 2: and I got exposed to group process. So all of
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Speaker 2: a sudden, there's these tools of dialogue and expression and release,
5:36
Speaker 2: and I felt like I was coming back to life
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Speaker 2: because I think with all that trauma, I just numbed out,
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Speaker 2: you know, my heart numbed, my whole experience numbed. And
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Speaker 2: the movement and the container of tools, somatic tools and
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Speaker 2: meditation tools. I was so lucky because it takes a
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Speaker 2: while to come out of shock, and when you have
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Speaker 2: big events, they do shock our system and then you're
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Speaker 2: like walking in the world in a different reality than
6:10
Speaker 2: other people.
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Speaker 1: How did your house burn down?
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Speaker 2: Oh, my partner was. I was in Florida at the
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Speaker 2: time for visiting for Christmas, and my partner forgot to
6:22
Speaker 2: shut down the furnace and it started a fire and
6:25
Speaker 2: he was down working at the mill and saw these
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Speaker 2: huge flames and by the time he could get up
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Speaker 2: there and get the fire department. There was only you know,
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Speaker 2: spruce logs are very flammable, so he was used to
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Speaker 2: me being in the home and I wasn't because I
6:43
Speaker 2: was on vacation. He forgot and it was one of
6:47
Speaker 2: those kind of errors.
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Speaker 1: And you said, you know, naturally very traumatic. How did
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Speaker 1: that trauma manifest?
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Speaker 2: Oh well, I guess yes, you know, I just I
7:03
Speaker 2: just went numb out and let's build our next house.
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Speaker 2: You know, we started this project. We have this land,
7:11
Speaker 2: and so I was just sort of functioning on top
7:15
Speaker 2: of the trauma. And it wasn't until I got home
7:21
Speaker 2: for my sister's wedding that and I lived back at
7:26
Speaker 2: home for a couple months before I went to California,
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Speaker 2: I started to decompensate. And people should know about this.
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Speaker 2: You can function after trauma, but eventually it's going to
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Speaker 2: catch you. You know, eventually the process of the healing
7:41
Speaker 2: is part of the fog or the you know, not
7:45
Speaker 2: being able to hold a conversation. That's kind of how
7:48
Speaker 2: it showed up. And then when I moved to California,
7:51
Speaker 2: I kept moving in and out of shared housing because
7:55
Speaker 2: and I wouldn't decorate my room. I just had a
7:58
Speaker 2: sleeping bag on the flo Now what does that tell you? Right,
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Speaker 2: Luckily I had all these other things where I was
8:06
Speaker 2: in these healthy groups doing group process. I was also
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Speaker 2: I had not only the spiritual work from the meditation
8:15
Speaker 2: and the emotional movement work from the healing ourselves. But
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Speaker 2: I was so fortunate. I started studying improvisational theater and
8:25
Speaker 2: contact improvisation. So I felt like, for the grace of God,
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Speaker 2: I got exposed to sort of body mind spirit learning
8:35
Speaker 2: and integration. And as I started to get more and
8:40
Speaker 2: more healthy my mind, basically I learned how to not
8:44
Speaker 2: be in the prefrontal cortex. You know. Now in my work,
8:48
Speaker 2: I know all the neuroanatomy, I know the brain, you know,
8:51
Speaker 2: I know the neuroscience behind what was helping me. Way
8:55
Speaker 2: back then, at that time, all we talked about was
8:58
Speaker 2: learning how to sit in the center of your head,
9:02
Speaker 2: you know, And we did meditation practices of put your
9:04
Speaker 2: attention in your knee, put it in your elbow, so
9:08
Speaker 2: these shifting attention so you weren't stuck in a trauma loop.
9:13
Speaker 2: You know, you weren't refreshing the past always, but it
9:17
Speaker 2: was clearing the field. And then luckily, because I was
9:24
Speaker 2: doing the meditation and the emotional release and the group
9:28
Speaker 2: process and the play of contact, improv and movement. I
9:35
Speaker 2: was working all my channels.
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Speaker 1: Aside from your sister recommending the meditation. Was were there
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Speaker 1: other people pointing you to these other channels or was
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Speaker 1: it just your instinct?
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Speaker 2: It was she kind of gave me some ideas of
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Speaker 2: what were at what was out there, and then it
9:52
Speaker 2: was my instinct for sure.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So how do things unfold such that you're like,
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Speaker 1: all right, I want to be a therapist.
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Speaker 2: Well, basically it started to happen that I had to
10:06
Speaker 2: make a living of course, right, and so I thought, oh,
10:10
Speaker 2: I'm finally moving in my body, and I want to
10:13
Speaker 2: be a dancer. And then I realized I can't do
10:16
Speaker 2: what dancers do, and I was sort of mad about that.
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Speaker 2: You know, here I am getting healthy, and you know,
10:23
Speaker 2: I started with the meditation, having these sort of things
10:26
Speaker 2: just manifest We would do visualization practices, and I ended up,
10:32
Speaker 2: you know, going to this performance where we did our
10:35
Speaker 2: a month long of improvisational you know, eight hours a
10:40
Speaker 2: day performance. And what happened is at the graduation, I
10:44
Speaker 2: got a ride in a little sports car up you know,
10:47
Speaker 2: to the beach, and then I started seeing little sports
10:51
Speaker 2: cars everywhere and then I found one for three hundred
10:54
Speaker 2: dollars from a friend who was selling it. You know,
10:56
Speaker 2: things would just unfold a kind of synchronicity, and that
11:02
Speaker 2: is sort of how I ended up. Well, I did
11:04
Speaker 2: make a choice to be a therapist because I thought, gosh,
11:07
Speaker 2: it looks like I can't be a dancer. My body
11:10
Speaker 2: doesn't know the skills that dancers have. And I was disappointed,
11:15
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, I want to be able to
11:19
Speaker 2: do something that's creative, and I thought, I'm going to
11:21
Speaker 2: become a body centered psychotherapist. I mean, it wasn't that defined,
11:27
Speaker 2: but I started offering sessions and that was back in
11:31
Speaker 2: the day. It was in seventy nine that people would
11:35
Speaker 2: come to the school I taught at the Clairvoyant School,
11:38
Speaker 2: like I went through their program and then I taught
11:41
Speaker 2: the meditations, and that was such a learning because I
11:44
Speaker 2: saw everybody can learn this. It doesn't matter if they're
11:47
Speaker 2: a doctor, a plumber, a carpenter, or a mom. Given
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Speaker 2: the tools, people's brains open and their experience shifts and
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Speaker 2: they find themselves else. And I was so passionate about
12:02
Speaker 2: that so I volunteered at Children's Hospital to work with
12:05
Speaker 2: the trauma children, and I started people were asking me
12:10
Speaker 2: for individual sessions when I taught at the school, so
12:13
Speaker 2: that started my work. And so then I got a
12:16
Speaker 2: little office and I started doing the Neo Reichian sessions
12:21
Speaker 2: that I was learning in this four year training, and
12:24
Speaker 2: I saw the results people were getting. So it was
12:27
Speaker 2: kind of this following my nose, following what was working
12:31
Speaker 2: for me, and the desire to share and also the
12:35
Speaker 2: desire to you know, be able to afford my food.
12:39
Speaker 2: And so I thought, well, this is a good career
12:41
Speaker 2: because as a woman, I can earn as much. There's
12:44
Speaker 2: not a glass ceiling around. You know. Back in the
12:47
Speaker 2: day there the salaries between men and women. As a therapist,
12:51
Speaker 2: you're in charge of your salary, and so those were
12:54
Speaker 2: some of the all of the factors there was practical
12:57
Speaker 2: and also heartfelt. What really helps someone come out of
13:02
Speaker 2: I mean, I really was afraid I was good to
13:04
Speaker 2: become homeless the way my brain was working prior to
13:08
Speaker 2: getting those tools, and so that's not fun to go through.
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Speaker 1: Right right. So it sounds like, you know, you were
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Speaker 1: addressing your trauma through a lot of somatic work really
13:26
Speaker 1: before the importance of I think, right the.
13:31
Speaker 2: Cemetery before somatic. Yeah, I known about it was well.
13:34
Speaker 1: Especially the association between the importance of working with sematically
13:38
Speaker 1: in trauma, because that even association had been had been forged.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was lucky. I actually I think I
13:47
Speaker 2: got the first somatic psychology degree in the country. I
13:51
Speaker 2: went to Antioch and I said, look, I want to
13:55
Speaker 2: create my bachelor's degree. I had dropped out of school
13:57
Speaker 2: years late earlier before I and my pioneer work in Maine,
14:01
Speaker 2: and so I put together all the things I was
14:04
Speaker 2: studying and created a degree called somatic psychology. And that
14:09
Speaker 2: was in nineteen eighty I think. And you know, they
14:13
Speaker 2: didn't really have a degree like that. But I was
14:16
Speaker 2: able to antiochus support your own learning, and I had
14:21
Speaker 2: so many, you know, skillful mentors. And then I went
14:24
Speaker 2: to JFK Graduate School to get my masters in psychology,
14:30
Speaker 2: and both of my professors looked at me and said,
14:32
Speaker 2: you are thriving already doing what you're wanting to learn,
14:37
Speaker 2: And they sort of talked me into dropping out. They said,
14:41
Speaker 2: you're doing the work, you don't need us. If it
14:44
Speaker 2: were different, we would say something different, and I was like, Okay,
14:48
Speaker 2: feet on the ground. That's how it got started.
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Speaker 1: We're seeing you know what I mean, what you're talking about,
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Speaker 1: what I'm noticing. I mean, obviously you're very creative person.
15:03
Speaker 1: I'm curious out of left field, but I'm curious about
15:07
Speaker 1: the pottery. I mean, you have artist's hands. I can
15:10
Speaker 1: see them, I recognize them. Yeah, are you still doing pottery?
15:16
Speaker 2: Oh? I want to. You know, I hope as I
15:18
Speaker 2: get towards more retirement possibility, I'll go back to pottery.
15:23
Speaker 2: But I'm not doing pottery. I'm doing painting and I'm
15:26
Speaker 2: doing singer songwriting. So I have a little you know,
15:30
Speaker 2: I've been working with my instruments and music and so. Yeah,
15:36
Speaker 2: but I have used my hands all my life and
15:39
Speaker 2: that's key too.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's one thing, you know, to have experience
15:44
Speaker 1: your own trauma, gone through that and your own healing process.
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Speaker 1: But it's another thing too, to begin working with people
15:53
Speaker 1: who've also been traumatized. What was that like for you?
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Speaker 2: Well, I didn't think of people as traumatized. I really
16:00
Speaker 2: just thought of them as people and that I, you know,
16:05
Speaker 2: had some skills I could share. And I think I
16:08
Speaker 2: first started sort of when I lived back in Maine,
16:12
Speaker 2: I taught a yoga class, so I got enjoying teaching.
16:16
Speaker 2: And then when I taught at the Meditation school, I
16:20
Speaker 2: loved that, you know, and I was using movement and meditation.
16:25
Speaker 2: I called my class the oh I'm forgetting the name. Oh.
16:30
Speaker 2: It was about body connection. So we did body awareness
16:34
Speaker 2: and movement and breath, and then we would sit down
16:37
Speaker 2: and do personal inquiry, like how do you handle your life?
16:42
Speaker 2: When we were working with the sensations of the hand,
16:45
Speaker 2: when I was working with the eyes, how do you
16:47
Speaker 2: see yourself? So I was always making the link for
16:50
Speaker 2: people between their experience and their understanding. And so then
16:57
Speaker 2: I got I was fortunate to get jobs, know the
17:00
Speaker 2: experience working with the children at Oakland's. That was a
17:03
Speaker 2: volunteer job, but I got to work with the children.
17:07
Speaker 2: And when you can apply your learning and you see
17:11
Speaker 2: the benefit, oh my gosh, that's what really set me
17:15
Speaker 2: on the path of my career. I got to work
17:18
Speaker 2: in you know, mental health centers. I worked with foster children,
17:23
Speaker 2: and I could see I learned so much. You know.
17:26
Speaker 2: It wasn't just I sat in my little pedestal of
17:28
Speaker 2: my office and doled out you know treatment. It's like
17:32
Speaker 2: I really got the great experience of feet on the ground,
17:37
Speaker 2: working with hard populations, difficult real difficult life situations, and
17:44
Speaker 2: every time the same skills worked, presence, embodiment, compassion, and education.
17:53
Speaker 2: And I really think therapy is primarily education to help
17:58
Speaker 2: clear out the brain that's latched onto the trauma, you know,
18:04
Speaker 2: the body mind. And I was so fortunate that I
18:09
Speaker 2: was in the movement arts because that led me to
18:13
Speaker 2: Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's work where and continuum work, where you
18:18
Speaker 2: literally with Bonnie's work you learn the developmental process, how
18:24
Speaker 2: the brain develops from infancy. And so I went back
18:29
Speaker 2: and crawled as a grownup, I went back and reshaped
18:33
Speaker 2: my own experiences because I didn't know it at the time,
18:38
Speaker 2: but I read the book The Magical Child when I
18:42
Speaker 2: was twenty seven by Clinton Pearce, and because I was
18:45
Speaker 2: in the four year Healing Ourselves, I did my you know,
18:50
Speaker 2: tantrum about realizing I was not with my mom after birth.
18:55
Speaker 2: I was an incubator, and I knew I was sort
18:59
Speaker 2: of a challenged kid in that as a younger child,
19:03
Speaker 2: I was high arousal temper tantrum and my mom didn't
19:07
Speaker 2: know what to do with me. You know, my father
19:09
Speaker 2: passed away when I was two and a half and
19:12
Speaker 2: she had three young kids. So she had been a
19:14
Speaker 2: social worker and went back to school for early childhood education,
19:19
Speaker 2: and fortunately she taught us crafts and art, and then
19:24
Speaker 2: she moved us all to South Florida so we could
19:26
Speaker 2: be around nature. And her instinct to do that I
19:31
Speaker 2: think really helped me because nature helped me manage. But
19:36
Speaker 2: I remember I had this you know, needing to be perfect,
19:40
Speaker 2: and I didn't understand that till years later. I'm doing
19:43
Speaker 2: my understanding of the Earliest Impressions pre and pery natal,
19:49
Speaker 2: which is the study of zero to eighteen months precognitive impressions.
19:56
Speaker 2: And so I was back in, you know, the anger
20:01
Speaker 2: and the understanding. What did I go through in the incubator?
20:05
Speaker 2: What did I go through not knowing where my mother
20:08
Speaker 2: was right when I was born? How did that shape
20:12
Speaker 2: my temper? Tantrums and high arousal? So I had, you know,
20:17
Speaker 2: it was almost like I was a living laboratory of
20:21
Speaker 2: my studies. And so I and when I was eight,
20:26
Speaker 2: my mother. I remember I was playing you know, street
20:30
Speaker 2: street softball with the neighbors and the picture struck me out,
20:34
Speaker 2: and he was my friend from across the street. As
20:36
Speaker 2: soon as I struck out, I was so mad. I
20:39
Speaker 2: went up and started punching him, and my mom just
20:42
Speaker 2: took me and took me off the street and put
20:45
Speaker 2: me in my room and said, you don't come out
20:47
Speaker 2: till you don't have a temper, and oh my gosh,
20:50
Speaker 2: you know it took about three hours. Wow. I remember
20:54
Speaker 2: jumping from bed to bed so furious, but it was
20:58
Speaker 2: it was she gave me limits, and sometimes parents don't
21:03
Speaker 2: know how to do that. That's why I have this
21:05
Speaker 2: free download in my library, my PDF of about one
21:10
Speaker 2: two three magic. It's not my work, but it's the
21:14
Speaker 2: very effective support for parents so they're not overridden by
21:20
Speaker 2: the children, but actually helping contain the children so they
21:23
Speaker 2: feel safe. And parents always say, wait, we're not supposed
21:27
Speaker 2: to give limits. We're supposed to allow our child's expression.
21:30
Speaker 2: And I would say yes, and and I learned that
21:34
Speaker 2: children don't feel safe without limits when I work with
21:37
Speaker 2: the sexually abused foster children, because I was just I
21:40
Speaker 2: was the creative music director and I was giving them
21:43
Speaker 2: all this music and freedom, and they would kick at
21:46
Speaker 2: me and spit on me. And it wasn't until I
21:49
Speaker 2: got like, wait a minute, this is not working. And
21:52
Speaker 2: so I started setting limits and being real and they
21:56
Speaker 2: started bonding with me. It's like the whole nature of
22:00
Speaker 2: our they settled. They felt safe because they couldn't control,
22:05
Speaker 2: they couldn't you know, be mean. You know, they were
22:09
Speaker 2: no longer able to be the bully or be the abuser.
22:13
Speaker 2: And I was like, no, I'm here with you. And
22:17
Speaker 2: so that was an incredible learning of how to help
22:21
Speaker 2: be with children, really be present with children.
22:25
Speaker 1: Let me ask if you could share an early clinical error.
22:31
Speaker 2: Oh oh oh, I'm so sorry. You know, I still
22:36
Speaker 2: send this child blessings. I was working as a therapist
22:40
Speaker 2: in the public schools and I had, you know, my
22:43
Speaker 2: background and my years of experience, and I was hired
22:49
Speaker 2: to be the therapist and help the children. And this
22:52
Speaker 2: one school was this little girl and she was going
22:57
Speaker 2: to get you know, kicked out if she didn't behave
23:01
Speaker 2: and so they had me working with her and we
23:03
Speaker 2: were out in the hallway and I got enrolled in
23:06
Speaker 2: a power struggle and it really taught me how you
23:11
Speaker 2: have got to pay attention about power struggles with children
23:14
Speaker 2: and with your clients. And in life in general, because
23:19
Speaker 2: all of a sudden I was using my authority power
23:22
Speaker 2: with her and she was using her too bad for
23:25
Speaker 2: you power back with me. We were just in a
23:30
Speaker 2: power struggle and I kind of, you know, I couldn't
23:34
Speaker 2: hold the compassion of space. I got triggered and got mad,
23:39
Speaker 2: and I said, we're marching back into the classroom, you know,
23:42
Speaker 2: And I was I was aggressive with her, and I
23:44
Speaker 2: really regret that.
23:47
Speaker 1: You know, what should you have done specifically.
23:51
Speaker 2: Well, I don't. I think now I think I maybe
23:56
Speaker 2: needed to get another person to help me, you know,
23:59
Speaker 2: because this was also an ethnic difficulty. The child was
24:04
Speaker 2: Native American and she was in the public school, and
24:09
Speaker 2: she didn't want to be there, and she sure didn't
24:13
Speaker 2: want to hear anything from a white Caucasian therapist trying
24:17
Speaker 2: to help her. Right, So that was a that was
24:20
Speaker 2: sort of the thing I didn't realize from the beginning.
24:23
Speaker 2: I mean, now I really pay attention to all that,
24:25
Speaker 2: But I was just so, oh, I've got some tools,
24:28
Speaker 2: let's help. So I should have slowed everything way down,
24:32
Speaker 2: and I should have just sat down against the wall
24:35
Speaker 2: and not said a word with her, just stayed out
24:39
Speaker 2: in the hall and just waited, you know, not forced anything,
24:44
Speaker 2: but just waited to see what could unfold, right right that.
24:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me just remind everyone that I'm speaking with
24:52
Speaker 1: Annie Brooke and just mentioned your website. Here is anniebrook
24:58
Speaker 1: dot com. That's A and I E. B. R Okay
25:03
Speaker 1: dot com and I'll have that linked up at the
25:05
Speaker 1: show notes page here at the Trauma You're welcome Trauma
25:09
Speaker 1: Therapists podcast dot com. So, you know, as I said,
25:15
Speaker 1: you've been obviously doing this for a while, and it
25:19
Speaker 1: seems to me like you bring so much of your
25:22
Speaker 1: being to this work when you talk to or maybe
25:30
Speaker 1: you don't talk to, but if you could talk to
25:33
Speaker 1: younger therapists, therapists just starting out, and specifically who you
25:39
Speaker 1: know want to work with people who've experienced trauma, what
25:43
Speaker 1: would you say to them?
25:44
Speaker 2: Do your inner work? And I do. I do mentor therapists.
25:49
Speaker 2: I have training programs for therapists because I want people
25:52
Speaker 2: to have the skills I have, because they really really work.
25:56
Speaker 2: And when you go back and you heal all the
26:00
Speaker 2: way to even your own birth, you know, or your
26:03
Speaker 2: own life events when you're not in shock or you're
26:07
Speaker 2: not overriding your natural embodied intelligence you're a better therapist.
26:14
Speaker 2: You can stay present. And I also say, don't be
26:17
Speaker 2: just simply a listening therapist. Use movement, give interventions that
26:22
Speaker 2: reinform the brain and the body. So if you just
26:27
Speaker 2: talk talk, talk, or you just empathize, empathize, empathize, you
26:31
Speaker 2: don't have the person down on the ground pushing or
26:35
Speaker 2: feeling their own embodiment. So then you're working too hard
26:40
Speaker 2: as a therapist because you don't have the potency in
26:43
Speaker 2: the room for change to happen. So I use a
26:46
Speaker 2: lot of body based interventions based on infant development or
26:51
Speaker 2: perceptions of sight and sound and touch, and I've seen
26:57
Speaker 2: such results, like one kid, you know, I was teaching
27:00
Speaker 2: in Switzerland for a while and I only saw this
27:03
Speaker 2: child one time and the dad brought him in and
27:05
Speaker 2: we didn't even speak the same language. But I realized
27:09
Speaker 2: from what the dad was saying is that the kid couldn't,
27:14
Speaker 2: you know, couldn't focus in school. And my first thought was,
27:18
Speaker 2: I bet he doesn't feel his own body on some level.
27:21
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of people who use their bodies
27:24
Speaker 2: but don't feel them. And so I did leaving through
27:27
Speaker 2: the bone, the touch, hands on where I would take
27:31
Speaker 2: his upper arm and I would hold it and pull
27:34
Speaker 2: out the slack, give it a little tension, and then
27:37
Speaker 2: feed it into his skeleton. And you could see the
27:40
Speaker 2: light bulbs in his eyes. It's like, oh, my gosh,
27:46
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden he was there and I just,
27:49
Speaker 2: you know, I feel like crying. It's like, oh, sometimes
27:52
Speaker 2: it's that simple. Now, I would say, you know, I
27:55
Speaker 2: do have touch training. I use educ touch in cycle therapy,
28:00
Speaker 2: which is not always clinically approved of. But I have
28:04
Speaker 2: a touch license and I have people sign a touch
28:08
Speaker 2: contract that means they can always say no, they will
28:13
Speaker 2: talk about it. If there's a distress, we will talk
28:16
Speaker 2: about it. So it's never this schmoozy kind of touchy thing,
28:21
Speaker 2: you know, because it is delicate. And I also know
28:24
Speaker 2: enough about shock that you don't go near a traumatized
28:28
Speaker 2: person until you've cleared the shock in the field and
28:32
Speaker 2: there's a relational safety. And I would annoy. This is
28:36
Speaker 2: what I would say to new therapists. Don't be a
28:38
Speaker 2: do gooder, because people come in to help help. And
28:41
Speaker 2: I tell you, when I worked with the gang kids,
28:44
Speaker 2: and I would be working with a sixteen year old
28:46
Speaker 2: guy that could have thrown me across the room, and
28:49
Speaker 2: another therapist would come in and get too close to
28:52
Speaker 2: him spatially, and so the kid didn't, you know, knew
28:56
Speaker 2: that that therapist was putting the client in danger. He
29:00
Speaker 2: would get he would, you know, have a blowout because
29:04
Speaker 2: a therapist wanted to help so much she was ignoring
29:07
Speaker 2: his spatial boundaries. And these are things you have got
29:12
Speaker 2: to know about as a therapist. Sometimes I will sit
29:15
Speaker 2: not opposite a client because we're in a sagital plane
29:19
Speaker 2: and that's sometimes a plane of confrontation. So I'll pull
29:23
Speaker 2: my chair up beside them, and all of a sudden
29:25
Speaker 2: they relax, or I'll have them if they can't, you know,
29:29
Speaker 2: if they're thinking, thinking, thinking, I'll give them movement practices
29:33
Speaker 2: that actually interrupt and open the back of the brain.
29:38
Speaker 2: So my book From Conception to Crawling has lots of
29:41
Speaker 2: those resources. And then I wrote a book called Help
29:46
Speaker 2: for Sensory Challenges, because if your client is not perceiving
29:51
Speaker 2: and those perceptions are not functioning well, they go into
29:56
Speaker 2: shock or they're in their head or they're their body,
30:00
Speaker 2: but they can't feel anything. I've seen it all, really,
30:04
Speaker 2: and you kind of have to be a good detective.
30:06
Speaker 2: What is this person doing, how are they expressing? What
30:10
Speaker 2: is their internal sense of self? Sense of safety? And
30:14
Speaker 2: here's where I want to say, infants can make up
30:17
Speaker 2: identity beliefs. Now, that's amazing. But I worked with a
30:20
Speaker 2: six year old who was in the incubator. She came
30:23
Speaker 2: in because she was having meltdowns in school. She brought
30:26
Speaker 2: a little card she made and on every page it
30:29
Speaker 2: said bad baby, little baby in a box with tears, Bad,
30:34
Speaker 2: bad baby. And I thought, oh no, how can this be.
30:38
Speaker 2: She had a good family. Why does she think a
30:41
Speaker 2: baby as bad? And I thought about it for you know,
30:45
Speaker 2: I really had to think about it, like, Okay, bad
30:50
Speaker 2: things are happening. She has no locus of control. That's
30:54
Speaker 2: what an incubator experience is like. And the way to
30:58
Speaker 2: organize the nervous system so you don't die of terror
31:03
Speaker 2: because of chaos and you know, not being able to
31:06
Speaker 2: orient to the mother at night or the father, she
31:12
Speaker 2: would self attack. And so now I have a whole
31:14
Speaker 2: program of teaching people about self attack thinking. The brilliance
31:19
Speaker 2: of the nervous system primitive level is it keeps the
31:22
Speaker 2: fight response going when you feel endangered, and it keeps
31:28
Speaker 2: a locus of control like self exists, and if you're
31:32
Speaker 2: too overwhelmed, you can go into existential shock and not
31:37
Speaker 2: even know if you exist. And that's why when you're treating,
31:42
Speaker 2: you want to know am I treating shock or trauma?
31:45
Speaker 2: Am I treating someone who has a massacres protection body pattern?
31:50
Speaker 2: Or do they have a schizoid where they fragment and scatter?
31:54
Speaker 2: So I want to know how. One of my favorite
31:56
Speaker 2: tools is the hula hoop. I have an imaginary hula hoop,
32:01
Speaker 2: and I want the client to be able to feel
32:05
Speaker 2: their spatial self, their physical self, a sense of safety
32:10
Speaker 2: and protection. And sometimes people have never known protection, so
32:15
Speaker 2: they're not going to want to come into the body.
32:18
Speaker 2: I worked with a ten year old whose mom brought
32:21
Speaker 2: him to me because he wouldn't put on sunscreen, and
32:23
Speaker 2: in Colorado that's not so great. And I was working
32:26
Speaker 2: in a warm pool. That was part of my treatment
32:28
Speaker 2: method when I had a pool, and with this kid,
32:33
Speaker 2: I was floating him and the water is a good
32:36
Speaker 2: way to feel the body. And I was floating him
32:38
Speaker 2: and I thought, I don't really feel like you're in
32:40
Speaker 2: your body, So I asked him, I said, hey, do
32:43
Speaker 2: you think you're in your body? And he said, no,
32:45
Speaker 2: I'm on the ceiling watching you. And I was like,
32:49
Speaker 2: I thought so, and so I said, okay, let's play
32:53
Speaker 2: a game. You tell me when you think you're in
32:56
Speaker 2: your body. So I was using movement with him through
32:59
Speaker 2: the wall and having him put his attention on himself
33:04
Speaker 2: and his body and finally said, I think I'm there,
33:07
Speaker 2: and I said, yeah, I can feel it. And you
33:10
Speaker 2: know that kind of reflection. If the therapist can provide
33:14
Speaker 2: that kind of education and compassion, people heal right. You
33:20
Speaker 2: don't want clients for years and years, right, You want
33:24
Speaker 2: a good referral base and you want to do good work,
33:27
Speaker 2: but you want to help people heal all.
33:29
Speaker 1: Right, Bonnie. As we wind down here, we're what's the
33:33
Speaker 1: best way for people to learn about you and your work?
33:36
Speaker 1: Because I think a lot of listeners are going to
33:39
Speaker 1: be listening to this going, oh my gosh, how do
33:41
Speaker 1: I find out what this knows?
33:44
Speaker 2: Well? The simple way is to follow me on Instagram. Okay,
33:48
Speaker 2: I share little quick tools and it's just Instagram dot
33:51
Speaker 2: com slash Annie Brook Therapy okay, one way. And then
33:56
Speaker 2: Fridays every Friday, ten am Mountain time, I do a
34:00
Speaker 2: Facebook live where I do somatic practices and I love
34:05
Speaker 2: sharing them. Now if people want the online courses and
34:10
Speaker 2: the real studies, you can get my books. I don't
34:13
Speaker 2: know if you can see them, but I have a
34:14
Speaker 2: bunch of.
34:14
Speaker 1: Books, okay, and again i'll have those linked up here
34:17
Speaker 1: at the show.
34:18
Speaker 2: And I love teaching in these online courses. I lead some.
34:22
Speaker 2: They're evergreen, so you could always take them, but I
34:25
Speaker 2: lead them live different courses and so take you know,
34:30
Speaker 2: get with me. Ideally after COVID, I'll be teaching in
34:34
Speaker 2: person again. But in the meantime, come and study because
34:40
Speaker 2: you can learn these things. And once you get your
34:42
Speaker 2: you know, training wheels on enough about embodiment because it
34:47
Speaker 2: is an immersion, then you can apply all these And
34:51
Speaker 2: I can tell you I have successfully run a two
34:54
Speaker 2: year training program and I have people out there doing
34:57
Speaker 2: the work and they come to me for super vision.
35:01
Speaker 2: And that's what I want to do, is get more
35:03
Speaker 2: and more therapists out there doing the good work.
35:07
Speaker 1: Well, you are certainly one inspiring individual. I love chatting
35:12
Speaker 1: with you today.
35:13
Speaker 2: Thank you.
35:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really appreciate appreciate you taking the time. Awesome,
35:18
Speaker 1: and I want to thank you so much for jumping
35:21
Speaker 1: on here. Great chatting.
35:23
Speaker 2: I'm glad we're what you're doing, you know, just helping
35:26
Speaker 2: people get resources. It's really how we all heal. So
35:30
Speaker 2: thank you too, You're welcome.
35:32
Speaker 1: Take care of you well