Becoming Trauma-Informed
Welcome to Becoming Trauma Informed- The podcast where Dr. Lee and TLC bring you expert advice and strategies to understand what trauma is, how it affects our daily lives, and what we can do about it!
Dr. Lee is a DNP-prepared adult nurse practitioner a clinical trauma professional. She is an expert in helping people understand how past painful experiences affect their bodies & brains- and how to change their future for the better!
T. Lee Cordell, aka TLC, is Dr. Lee's co-host and partner (in business AND life!) He brings his research and historian experience to the podcast, helping us make connections and understand how history repeats itself.
Our podcast is explicit because we talk about lots of triggering and adult content (and we cuss on occasion!) so this is a content warning- listen with care & be gentle with yourselves.
Becoming Trauma-Informed
S4EP09: The Power of Inner Healing with Madeline Popelka
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Hi and welcome to the Becoming Trauma-Informed podcast where we help you understand how your past painful experiences are affecting your current reality and how you can shift those so you can create your desired future. I'm Dr Lee, and both myself and our team at the Institute for Trauma and Psychological Safety are excited to support you on your journey. We talk about all the things on this podcast. No topic gets left uncovered. So extending a content warning to you before we get started if you notice yourself getting activated while listening, invitation to take care of yourself and to pause, skip ahead a bit or just check out another episode, let's dive in. Hello everyone, welcome to this week's episode. I am joined by the lovely Madeline Papelka, who is also very well versed in this trauma world with me, and I'm so excited to have a conversation with you today. Madeline, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me Excited to have this conversation with you.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So for our listeners, you run a community called Healing from PTSD. You're an author, there's a book, and we're going to make sure all of that's linked in the show notes, and I would love to hear just a little bit about who you are and what lights you up. How did you get into the space?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, as you said, I'm a writer. I am a trauma survivor, a mental health advocate and the creator of Healing from PTSD, where I share about my experiences of healing from trauma on Instagram primarily. And I do have a book. It's called You're Going to be Okay 16 Lessons on Healing After Trauma, which was just released last fall. And what brought me to this work?
Speaker 1:Well, I went through several traumatic experiences throughout my life, but because they weren't quote unquote that bad and they could have been worse I just buried my pain and tried to move on, and this started in childhood and about five, six years ago.
Speaker 1:After continuously bearing all my pain and going through different experiences, it all eventually caught up to me and I started to suffer from severe trauma symptoms that made it impossible to work or sleep or do anything other than just cry in my home, essentially, and it completely disrupted my life.
Speaker 1:At that point, I knew that well long story, but I eventually got help and was diagnosed with PTSD, and at the time, I didn't know one person who was living with PTSD.
Speaker 1:I felt really isolated and ashamed. I internalized stigma and really saw it as a personal failure, especially because what I went through again wasn't quote unquote that bad or I didn't see it as that bad and continuously minimized my pain and I held a lot of shame and it was extremely isolating. But then I started to heal and as I started to get in a better position and as I started to get to further along on my healing journey, I got to a point where I felt empowered to share my story and I also wanted to help other survivors like me feel less alone, and I think a part of that was a lot of the literature around PTSD out there is very heavily focused on war veterans, on combat, on really extreme traumatic experiences, and I felt like I wasn't included in that and I wasn't seen in that. So I really wanted to create a space for all survivors, for survivors of all types, where they feel seen, where they feel validated and also to give them hope that healing is possible.
Speaker 2:Wow, I'm curious for you what that decision looks like. Did you wake up one day and go you know what I got to write about this or was it a slow, gradual? I mean because I've met several people and you know, as someone who started a community myself, mine was very wake up in the middle of you know, sit straight up and, oh, this is something I need to do, and I've talked to other people that it was like this gradual. I'm curious what your journey of this was, my healing experience in that transition into okay, I'm going to help other people around these experiences like what that looked like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say overall, for me it was more gradual. Like I kept my diagnosis of PTSD a secret for several months, like I had a really, really tough time telling my family about it. I didn't tell all of my friends because I was worried that I'd be met with judgment, criticism. So that was a really long process in itself of just sharing this part of my life with my inner circle. But after a lot of therapy and working on getting past that and I just felt so much lighter to no longer be holding the secret in anymore and then after that I started expanding my circle.
Speaker 1:I shared about it on, like my personal Instagram, and then a few people who I'd known for a long time reached out to me and were like well, like this really resonated with me, thank you for sharing. And then I was like you know, other people need to hear this message too. So it was more of a gradual thing in a way. I was like working my way up to it. But I had to start small because taking those first initial steps after, you know, hiding in shame, that was really difficult.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm hearing a connection to a concept that's obviously very important to us because it's in the name of our business. But you know, the psychological safety piece of like you said, shame serves to isolate, whether it's yourself, like cutting off pieces and parts of yourself, or to cut you off from other people, and psychological safety is the opposite of that of oh actually I can like be my full self with myself and with other people. And it sounds like that was kind of like a tiptoe process around this diagnosis of like can I share that?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I think it was really hard because myself and many other trauma survivors, we have opened up to people and have been met with a really like horrible reaction.
Speaker 1:And I think that I shared my PTSD with some close friends where they were dismissive. They were like oh, like I have panic attacks all the time or like, oh, it's not that bad, or why didn't you do this to avoid the situation? And I think having those initial conversations go so badly made it really hard to work the courage up to try again with others. And I mean it's kind of interesting because, looking back now and seeing how I share online versus with people in my circle now, I'm realizing that sometimes, right now, it is easier for me to share with strangers on the internet than it is to share with people who are closer to me, because there's more at risk when we're sharing with people who are closer, like if I'm, if I'm met with you know, a hater online, then it's easier for me to dismiss as like oh, you know, I don't know them, like it doesn't matter. But if it's someone who you are invested in and have a relationship with and you get a bad reaction, then that really hurts yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're talking about that invalidation piece, which we we talked about. You know, trauma is there's a need that's not met, right, there's a need that's not met. I'm vulnerable in a way that leads to harm instead of connection or love. And then there's this other piece that I think is so re traumatizing that people don't understand, and it's the invalidation piece of Okay, well, I went through this. Hey, I'm going to tell you about this need not being met. I'm going to tell you about this hard thing that I went through, or this harmful thing that happened to me, and then I'm going to be met with invalidation of my experience and that I think, in some ways, can feel more painful and more traumatic than the actual thing that happened itself.
Speaker 2:So it's not always the event. Sometimes it's. Yeah, this really hard thing happened and then, when I tried to get support around it, I was told, like you said that, that it's not that bad. I hear people tell me that. Well, at least I didn't. I'm like look, there's no trauma. Olympics, there's no pain. Olympics Like, exactly, whether you're a bronze or a gold, you still have pain, you still disconnection, you still have shame.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I talk about this a lot and it's about sometimes the things that happen after the traumatic event require just as much healing, or more healing, than the actual event itself. Like victim blaming is incredibly harmful. Yet going to the people who you believe you can trust, the people who you believe will support you, the people who you believe have your back, and having them dismiss you and make you feel like you don't matter and then that can just continue to spiral. And if you get these messages from all different people, then instead of being like you know I deserve better than the reactions that they're giving me, you internalize it and you start thinking well, maybe I'm the problem, so it just can be incredibly painful. So I'm so grateful that you have this podcast and you know the work that you do, so people can become more aware about trauma and how it affects people and can hopefully make a more positive impact on people's lives instead of continuing the cycle of harm.
Speaker 2:Thank you and yeah, absolutely, I get so excited you know we've talked about this in the podcast before where people are like why do you keep having people who do similar things to you as you on the podcast? Like what if they go follow them instead of you? I'm like, great, right, like they can follow both of us. What I want is for people to find a space in which they feel safe, and if that is a space that is different than mine, you know, if they feel safer over here, more connected over here to somebody because their stories are similar, because there's some other form of resonance, like that is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:I'm I feel so happy around that and honestly, I feel like this is one of the few places where you know you and the other people I've gotten to talk to, where it really is this like look, if we go out of business because nobody has PTSD anymore or nobody has trauma anymore, or like nobody needs us, I'm so excited I will go start. I joke. I'm like I will go start a doggy daycare. I will go like, do whatever, I'm totally cool to go out of business.
Speaker 1:Honestly, if we ever lived in that world Right.
Speaker 2:I'm like I feel like there's so many other businesses and this is actually something that I really enjoy talking about. I don't enjoy that it exists. I enjoy talking about it because I think it doesn't get talked about enough. But there are so many systems or businesses or ways in which we've set things up in the world where the solution actually requires there to be a problem. If that makes sense of like, if I solve the problem and the problem doesn't exist anymore, then the solution doesn't work anymore either.
Speaker 2:And this is a place that I feel really excited about, because if we start teaching people the solution or we help people heal, we help people feel more connected and that solves the problem, then we continue having people getting even more connected and it's like it gets better and better and better, and it's one of the places I feel like where the work will continue and it will be from this place of like. Okay, great, now everyone stepped out of, like I don't feel safe till I feel safe and now we can focus on how do I move from safety to thriving, and that's really fun work to do, absolutely. So let me ask this because you know it sounds like this wasn't exactly in your plan right Before you went through your healing journey. What did you think your life was gonna look like?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. So I went through trauma throughout my life and when I was 26, I was certain that I had life figured out. At the time I was really not tuning into myself. I was just living life based on society's expectations, my parents' expectations, other people's expectations I was going to live up to. I was like this is how I'm gonna thrive in life. And at that time I was like I'm going to get married, I'm going to buy a house, I'm going to, you know, have kids. I was a marketing consultant at the time and I was like, oh, I was going to have these Fortune 500 companies, I'm gonna grow into this big consulting business, and that was my plan. I really thought that I had my life figured out.
Speaker 1:And then I went through a few traumatic experiences when I was 26. And then again when I was 27,. But my PTSD symptoms didn't really come into full force until I was 28. So then, at that point that's when I was number one, just like really struggling. And then two, I finally got help from my therapist. And then I started to do the internal work and started to really tune into my needs and really understand that they matter and instead of just following this blueprint that others had laid out for me and just trying to achieve success, whatever it looked like to me at that time, which was money and power and all the like. That was my definition of success at that time and I was really trying to live up to it, trying to, like make my parents proud. And then when you go through life-changing experiences, it can put things into perspective for you and I think when I was struggling with PTSD, I really felt like I lost myself, Like I was like I don't know what I'm doing anymore and I don't know what my purpose is.
Speaker 1:I was not passionate about marketing consulting anymore.
Speaker 1:I lost interest in everything that I had interest in before, and a part of it, I think, was depression, because there are some hobbies that I had like reconnected with a sense then, but a lot of it, like in terms of like career and stuff like that I was just like this is not the path for me.
Speaker 1:So it did take me a while to figure out what do I wanna do? Like I decided that I wanted to do work that was meaningful, which is what led me to where I was here and throughout those years also, I did end up marrying the partner that I was in at that time but since then have gotten divorced, have come out as queer in non-minute relationship with a loving woman. My life is just completely different, like I could have not imagined my life turning out to be as it is now before I started experiencing trauma, and while I'm not grateful for all the experiences that I'd been through that led to the self-discovery and the self-awareness and a deeper understanding of myself, I am grateful for the growth that I have done as a result of healing.
Speaker 2:Man, I'm just, I'm listening to you. That 26 part hit me. I don't know how old you are. I'm 36. And I 26,. I don't even know if I have words. I've interacted with a few 26 year olds recently and I love that age. And I also look at my, these humans that I love so dearly, that are 26 and I go I promise you you're gonna know less when you're 36 than you do now when you're 26. And I think that that's the sign of I had a friend say this the other day that the sign of wisdom is is that you consistently realize you know less than you thought you did. I love that.
Speaker 1:Right. I really love that. It is so true. I'm 33 now Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I'm totally, I'm totally feeling that way and I'm still figuring it out and I'm realizing now, like when I was, you know, 26, I was like, okay, this is the end of gold, like this is where I'm going to be. And now I realize that it's more about the journey and I realized that, like I am going to continuously evolve and I may never have it figured out, but there's nothing wrong with that. I think I'm finding a lot more peace now where I am, and just feel a lot more content instead of continuously trying to become more successful, trying to become a better version of myself. I think that's one gift that I've received from healing From God, thank you.
Speaker 2:I feel really grateful you're bringing this in here because you know the healing word is that word's got a lot of stuff behind it for a lot of different people. You know, I, I, if I'm sure if we pulled a thousand listeners and said, hey, how would you define healing? They'd all have a definition. And just a side note is that, as a nurse practitioner, in the nursing profession we aren't allowed to say that we help heal people, because in the medical profession physicians heal people, not nurses. So it's very fascinating and a little political and we don't have to go there. And it's been really interesting for me because I've specifically avoided that word a lot in my marketing and messaging because I could have lost my license for saying that I help people heal. So it's just been this really fascinating piece.
Speaker 2:And I think so often there's this idea that, okay, I'm going to, you know, go through the three stages of trauma recovery. I'm going to establish safety, I'm going to remember the things that have happened to me, I'm going to grieve it, I'm going to mourn it, I'm going to make meaning out of all of it, I'm going to, like, get to the bottom of all those feelings and then I'm going to reconnect and reestablish, like how I want things to look. And you know, a really key part of my healing journey was like hey, guess what? The goal is not to be 100% healed, because if that's my goal, I'm never going to get there. And then the focus is going to be on what's wrong and like what's still not healed, versus like, wow, I have healed so much and my life is so good and like, yeah, there's these couple areas that could probably still use some like tender loving care, and I can also focus on what's good and what's working now.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think that it's so important to do that because I firmly believe that healing is a lifelong journey and there will always be something that we need to heal from, whether it's something from our distant path that passed, that is, you know, bothering us now, or if something new comes up, like there will always be something. Life is full of so many challenges. I think that, in order to make this journey more sustainable, to like to make it possible for you to continue to, number one, like, just like live is to find those pockets of joy, because we are not here to just simply survive and to just get through the day struggling, like I think joy is what makes this life worth it, like that's what makes me still being here worth it and I am speaking as someone who has attempted suicide, so it's like, in order for me to stay here, I need joy in my life, and everyone deserves that. Every single person deserves moments of joy.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you speaking on that and sharing your truth around that, because so many people that I came into contact with and what was interesting as a nurse practitioner is I'm going to make an assumption and tell me if I'm wrong but you know a lot of people when they come into health systems after attempting suicide or come in for a patient or depression, you know, and even everyone who comes into a system. There's two questions we asked have you felt down or depressed in the last two weeks, which is an absolute hilarious question to me now, because I can't think that anybody walking in the hospital does not answer that any more, given our current, the current state of things. And the other question was you know, do you have thoughts of hurting yourself or thoughts of hurting or harming yourself or others? And what I found so fascinating about those questions is I don't actually feel like they caught what we were trying to catch, because a lot of times we would catch people that did not want to actively harm themselves. They just did not want to live the way they were living anymore, right, and so we have this conversation a lot in at our institute around.
Speaker 2:There's a difference between I don't want to live anymore and I don't want to live anymore like this, yeah, yeah. And that second one, I think, is where so many people are, yeah, and we don't catch them there, and so then they end up going to that first place of I don't want to live, yeah. And so I think the work that you are doing is so important, because when you have PTSD, you know talking about, like the symptoms, the clusters of symptoms with that as somebody with both traditional, also traditionally defined PTSD and complex PTSD the symptoms that go along with that they make life so hard to live. They do, yeah, and you're right, like when you can't find that joy it's, it's like I can't find that thing that helps me want to stay here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly Exactly, and even just like the smallest thing can make a huge difference. And for me, when I started going to therapy, when, when I live, I could not find the good and anything, not one thing, and I was like my life is miserable, I I was just like I just needed to find hope in some things and it was honestly a practice, because it's really hard, like, honestly, like life is mundane most days, like we're forced, we're forced to work, like this is, like this is not what I like signed up for, like we like our society is messed up in so many ways, and it's like really hard. It in for me, when I was thinking about joy before I was thinking about, oh, something like spectacular needs to happen, like something cool needs to happen. I need to be like excited about this one thing.
Speaker 1:And again, like life, like life is unlike that, like most days it's, you know, just, you know going through the motions and that sort of thing. And I think I really had to train myself or change my perspective to find the good in the little things and to start to enjoy the little things in my life, whether it be a slow morning with a cup of coffee or just like going outside and appreciating the beauty in flowers, like whatever I may see to, like just having like reminiscing with a friend and like having a good laugh about something. It's like it's to me. I started to find the good in those little things and then it started to change my perspective and then I slowly started to find good and joy more often, instead of just being stuck in like this like area of like tunnel vision where I was just like life sucks and there's nothing good out here. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's so much like, there's so much neuroscience behind what you're talking about too, which I think is important for people to know, because I think a lot of times people think, oh well, why don't you just change your attitude? Or why don't you just? You know and I know that that's a question that's not coming from an invalidation perspective, it's coming from someone who's never tried to change how they're thinking about something like that and not been able to do it. So it's like I have so much compassion for people who are like, well, why don't you just you know that statement, why don't you just? I'm like, if I could, I would, yeah, right, like I promise you, if that would have worked, I would have done it.
Speaker 2:But the joy in the mundane, like you just spoke about, I think is so beautiful and you know one of the practices we actually talk about. We talk about a bunch of mind and body-based practices to help process stress and trauma. We talk about Tantra and you know Tantra is finding the bliss in the mundane. It's how can I be fully present in my body in this moment, right here, and enjoy it? And there's two things that popped in my head around that as you were talking, and the first one is is that you know, when you have trauma to the level that you're talking about, like PTSD, we oftentimes spend a good amount of our time trying to get out of our bodies because it feels so uncomfortable to live inside of them, because there's all these intrusive thoughts and these physical sensations and all of this stuff. So we spend all this time trying to get out of our body and that finding the joy in the mundane actually requires you to come back into your body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's terrifying yeah, it really is, and it's really uncomfortable, especially if the way that you had been coping for so long of your life has been dissociating and bringing yourself out of your body. It really is a really challenging practice to stay in your body, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't realize how checked out of my body I was until I went through the healing process for myself and even now I keep finding little like pockets where I'm like, oh nope, that's a place. I go straight to dissociation, like let's come back. The other thing that came up it was a quote that I heard from Russell Brand, which I still am just consistently astonished at how that man has changed in shifting his healing journey. And he was saying that, you know, part of his healing is putting himself into positions where he is uncomfortable and practicing, recognizing how to stay in his body and how to stay present in that. And he says this quote that I've actually said to myself a couple of times since I've heard it. He says this situation is not bothering you. You are bothering yourself about this situation.
Speaker 2:And what was really beautiful when I first heard that, I got really mad because I was like, wait, no, I'm not, like this external thing is happening. And then what I realized was can I recognize that in this state where I've processed through the things that I've been through, and when something hard now happens, that isn't an actual threat, that isn't actually hurting me, but it's reminding me of that hurt or that discomfort. Can I practice actually being with that thing and staying with that thing and not checking out or fighting it or running from it, and that practice has been incredibly uncomfortable and also incredibly powerful. Do you find it easier now when you notice those discomforts, those physical or emotional discomforts as they come up? Do you find it easier to stay present now? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I feel like I've been able to build my tolerance for that and, especially after doing so much healing work, I have learned that these uncomfortable practices, as you were saying, often lead to the most breakthroughs. You really see the benefits in these uncomfortable practices. That said, I still need to check out. Sometimes there are times when I am avoided, like depending on what's going on in my life. I'm like I can't process that right now. I can't be here for that. I just need to get through this day. So for me, it's all about the balance. Like I put things on the back burner, but not for too long, and I think that's what all of us that's part of healing is learning our limits, learning how to be honest with ourselves. Like am I avoiding this or do I really need this break for myself right now?
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you for distinguishing that, because I think that that's really important. Some people might have heard what I just said and gone. Oh okay, lee is saying to stay in the uncomfortable. No, no, no, no, no, no, right, like, I'm gonna practice staying in my window of tolerance and widening that, and I'm also gonna practice recognizing when I have rode that edge for too long and we're about to go off the cliff.
Speaker 1:Right, right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think the other thing that I really wanted to ask you about, because this season is about leadership and you're leading a good amount of people now, and I love that you're on Instagram, because Instagram is the place that I am not, and so it was so cool to just go and see. I'm like, wow, there's all these people over here who are doing this. That's amazing, and I think that that's really good evidence that we're all allowed to have our space to find community and choose the ones that feel good for us. And I'm curious like it is one thing to lead yourself through this journey and it is another thing entirely to know that other people are following you, both on your journey and through theirs. And so what have you learned from this experience of growing, this following and creating this community of people you know about yourself, about them, about the world, about?
Speaker 2:any of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would.
Speaker 1:I mean, there is so much, but I think the biggest thing is that it really reinforced that we are all unique individuals with diverse backgrounds, and healing and trauma is deeply personal to everyone.
Speaker 1:Like, even if two people go through very similar experiences, they'll impact our lives in different ways and we may need different things in order to heal, because no two people are the same. So I would say that that is like the biggest thing and that's something that I wish everyone knew about too, because I think that that's where a lot of like invalidation comes from, where they're like oh well, I know one person who went through this, so it must be the same for you, and that's not the case at all. So, yeah, that would be my biggest thing and that's something that I also need to remind my followers about. A lot is like hey, I'm on this healing journey, I'm sharing my insights and what I've learned and, yes, you may find them really relatable, but at the end of the day, we are two different people on two different journeys. So if not everything resonates with you, then that is perfectly fine and it doesn't mean that you are on the wrong path or anything like that.
Speaker 2:It's the what we like to refer to as the both and or the two things are true, right, my journey is valid, my journey is valid, your journey is valid, and even if they look different or our needs are different, or we go through, like you said, the exact same thing and our interpretations of that are different, they can both still be valid, exactly, yes, and that's a perspective that trauma and shame really shuts down.
Speaker 2:So I think it's amazing that you're reminding the people who are coming into your space because I don't know, I think, without experiencing that many people seeing something you've written or reading something you've written, you've wrote or said, and having them all interpret it in their own way, like until you've experienced that, like it's kind of hard to explain. Like everyone's going to come to your page and everyone's going to come to your book and they're going to read it through their lived it, like they're going to run it through the filter of their own lived experience, and sometimes people do that and you're like that is absolutely not how I meant that or how I would have interpreted that myself, and also cannot be valid. Can their interpretation of this? Could that make sense in some way? And so I know it's like expanded my leadership, to have to think like oh, just because I see the world in one way and I'm explaining it to people does not mean that that's how they're going to, how they're going to interpret it.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, absolutely, and I think for me it has caused some anxiety in like before I post or anything, because I am trying to consider other people's experiences, because I do want it to be a safe place for everyone, but then I can't put that on myself at the same time because with the variety of experiences that are out there, I just can't like it's impossible. So I do learn, though, if I say something and people are like, hey, like this word choice like didn't feel right to me. You know, I love the hearing from people and that's how I grow and become a better leader.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm really grateful that we were able to have this conversation, because I'm so grateful when there are other people out there that are talking about these topics that are just like so stinking hard and you're willing to say, you know, very matter of factly, like this is what my life looked like then and this is what it looks like now.
Speaker 2:And you know, these are the things that I've been through, and so thank you for being willing to do that, because I know how hard it is and the world needs more of it, and I get excited when I see other people doing that, because it means that hopefully there's a change that's really being facilitated.
Speaker 2:So, if any of our listeners are readers, I'm checking out the book. I was just telling them before we started that I was like it's in my queue, like I think it's like number five on the list of the ones that are coming up to read, and we'll make sure that we've got it linked in the show notes for everyone to check out. And I want to say that I already love the title, because there's so many books out there on trauma that are like this is the horrible thing that happened to me, and the focus is on the trauma and I love that the focus of yours is like, yeah, we're going to talk about this and we're going to validate it and you know that joy piece of where's the joy? What are the things that we can do in order to not just like sludge through the mundane but actually find those glimmers of hope and joy and and fun through it?
Speaker 1:absolutely, yeah, that, and that was the goal, because I did read a lot of trauma books out there which had so much great information in them. But I read them and, as someone who you know was diagnosed with PTSD and had gone through trauma, it felt like they were more like this is what's wrong with you and this is what's happening in your brain, and like all the science behind it, and I'm like, like you know, I don't need this information right now, like I and I wrote this book because it's what I really needed to read when.
Speaker 1:I was struggling. I really needed someone to be like what you went through is horrible and there is no shame attached to it and we're going to get through it together, like so, yeah, I just hope that you know, by sharing my story and my insights, people know that they aren't alone and they see that healing is awful well, yeah, thanks for the book, because you're right, I, as somebody who's read a lot of those clinical ones, whenever I have somebody first coming to me and they're like hey, I'm reading the body, I'm like stop stop.
Speaker 1:I'm like, if you want, if you want some more panic attacks and nightmares like yeah right.
Speaker 2:I was like that book took me two attempts and like six months to get through as somebody who understands all of the clinical pieces of that. So like I really I love, I love you're trying to learn and let's find some other things and and so I mean it's a phenomenal book and it's. It's written. It's not written in a trauma informed way.
Speaker 2:It's written to help you understand trauma, not to help, like not to help you, not feel like. I threw out it right, so it's great when we have other resources. So yeah, we'll definitely make sure we have that and they can come follow you on Instagram. What's your handle? Just really quick if they want to type it in yes, healing from PTSD super simple, that's yeah, that's it do we call them handles? And I just completely date myself.
Speaker 1:I call them handle. So I'm right there with you.
Speaker 2:I was talking to my kids and I said, like this gif? And they were like, mom, a gift, you mean a gift, and I was like it's oh, yeah, yeah. They're like really okay, so I love that. Maybe what's your social I don't know, it doesn't matter healing from PTSD, come back, that's it, and we'll make sure people can connect with you, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me all right, everyone, we will see you next week.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Invitation to head to our show notes to check out the offers and connections we mentioned, or you can just head straight over to Institute for trauma comm and hop in our email list so that you never miss any of the cool things that we're doing over at the Institute. Invitation to be well and to take care of yourself this week and we'll see you next time.