Breaking the Trauma Loop with Sarah Woodhouse

0:02 A listener production. This is Crappy to Happy and I'm your host, Cas Doun. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist, a mindfulness meditation teacher, and author of the Crappy to Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring and intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Today, I'm talking with Sarah Woodhouse, who is a research psychologist originally from the UK but now living right here in Australia. Sarah specializes in trauma and she's passionate about helping people to better understand what trauma is and it might not be what you think it is, and encouraging us to be less afraid of looking at and acknowledging all of the things in our lives that might have caused a trauma response in us. She teaches us how to recognize when we get stuck in trauma loops so that we can break free from those old, unhelpful patterns that we often fall into and look, pretty much every one of us has had experiences during our lifetime that have created emotional injuries. And I know that what Sarah has to share will help you to better understand yourself or someone else close to you, and that can only be a good thing. Here is my chat with Sarah. Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today on the Crappy to Happy podcast. So lovely to have you here.

1:33 I'm super happy to be with you. Thank you so much for inviting me on, Sarah. I was really intrigued when I saw your book come out, and we will talk more about that. It's called You're Not Broken, and this is a book that is about trauma. And I think that what's happening at the moment is we're having a lot more conversations around trauma, which is really exciting to me and really broadening our definition and our understanding of what trauma is. Which is why I'm so thrilled to see your book and your contribution to that conversation. So can we start with what is trauma? Yeah? Absolutely, it's the great It is the right place to start, isn't it. The definition I find most people sort of resonate with and can confine their way with is that trauma is a reaction to any experience, and that's really important. It's any experience that makes us feel overwhelmed, threatened, and out of control. And it's an important definition because of that any experience. So of course, you know, when we say trauma, we think of those big severe events, don't we year, bushfires, floods, assaults, whatever it might be.

2:43 But it also draws attention to the fact that there are all of these other, more commonplace, everyday experiences that we've learned now can also lead to us feeling overwhelmed, threatened, and out of control. So it draws attention to particularly that's things in relationships, in the parental relationship in particular, but everyday experiences, you know, slips and falls, routine medical procedures, and really anything in childhood. You know. That's what we've learned, is that it's very easy for a child to feel overwhelmed, threatened, and out of control. So it's easy for them to kind of that fight flight freeze response to switch on. Yeah, and I think that's the key, isn't it. For so long you and I both trained in psychology, and for so long, trauma was considered to be those major kind of single events or the really the huge catastrophic events, and which means that so many people write themselves out of that definition. That will nothing like that ever happened to me. Therefore, I can't say that I've experienced trauma.

3:52 But when you broaden that definition, like you said, to anything that might make you feel was overwhelmed, powerless, threat and out of threat, threatened and out of control or out of control. Yeah, then suddenly a whole lot of people can see themselves in that definition. We still do talk about sometimes and I hear out their reference to big T and little T trauma or big T and other T trauma. Are you able to help us understand what their distinction is for anybody listening. Yeah, Big T traumas are the types of trauma that we've always traditionally considered when we say the word trauma, you know, they're the big severe experiences. And of course trauma is traumatic experiences at least do happen on a spectrum, don't they We would all agree that some events are more severe than others. You know, of course that is just true. We understand that, you know that that's the nature of it. So when we say big T trauma, we're talking about those kind of events that have traditionally pretty much always been acknowledged as leading to a traumatic reaction, and that list grew. It used to really primarily only be you know, we we recognized war, we recognized a soult rape, you know that those things, and slowly the list has got bigger. And that's the list we're referring to.

5:14 And then little TA traumas or in the book, as you said, I call them, other TA traumas are everything else. Because you know, I think you said you don't tend to work clinically anymore. But if you speak to any clinical psychologist, any therapist, any counselor they have known for a very very long time that there's the big TA trauma list and there's all of this stuff over here that can also lead to a traumatic reaction. So really the reason I don't use little T is because I think it's quite stigmatizing. It makes us think that these things are somehow important and these things aren't. It's quite dismissive. Almost it was a little experience, which absolutely isn't true. It's not the case at all. As you would know, if you've ever worked with anyone that's experienced, say, relational trauma, you know it has a huge and profound impact and is now recognized through the ICD ten, which is you know, most recently put in CPTSD complex post traumatic stress disorder in recognition of how damaging relational trauma can be, not typically on the Big T traumal list, but most definitely a trauma. So I don't use the little trauma s SOD, I say, other T traumas, because I think it draws attention to the fact that really it's anything else, and the list is growing, and it's not even a list.

6:29 Anything any experience that can lead to that reaction is over here, and that's really one of the main messages in the book. And you actually in the book, I noticed that you refer to I think seventy to ninety percent of people have experienced some kind of trauma, So it's basically all of us. It's basically all of us. Although interestingly that stat is based on this is a tricky thing in research. That statistic is of course based on the Big T trauma, So that's just based on the ones that we have always traditionally understood. So when you begin looking over here, I think it's very very very safe and very obvious to say that all of us have in one way or another experience to traumatic reaction, and that doesn't mean that everyone is still stuck in it. That's absolutely not what I'm saying. The traumatic reaction resolves at a different time and a different speed in all of us. For some of us, we might have experienced the traumatic reaction and it have lasted a couple of weeks, you know, six weeks, four weeks, whatever it might have been, whereas others, of course we're recognizing, are still stuck within that reaction ten twenty thirty years later.

7:44 You talk a lot about traumatic reactions, and I think this is key too. So it's not necessarily the experience, it's your response to the experience. So the same event, therefore, can bring about a different response in different people. I think that's really critical too, isn't it. Yeah, individual events or series of events will affect different people in different ways. So can you tell me when you refer to traumatic reactions, what sort of things are you talking about? Well, there's the initial reaction, but when we scan forward the traumatic reaction. The way I tell people to look at it is there's a reaction in the mind, in the body, and in the behavior and in our behaviors.

8:27 So you're going to see the reaction popping up in all three, and they're all linked. They kind of happen in a cycle. But if you take the kind of the physical and emotional reaction, which is where it starts, right because I use the words overwhelmed, threatened, and out of control, but really what's happening underneath is that our fight flight freeze survival response has been triggered. So it's a very physical reaction and of course emotional along with that. But the physical and the emotional are essentially the same thing or essential that fight flight freeze reaction and the things we'd be looking for there. So physically it's you know, it can be anything sort of often feeling shame, often feeling kind of stuck in a feeling that might be shame, that might be anger. It's anxiety like symptoms for an awful lot of people. And I say anxiety likes. It's not specifically anxiety, but it's anxiety likes symptoms. And we all know, you know, you know, of course we've all experienced anxiety. We all know what that feels like. So if you're experiencing them daily, weekly, whatever it may be, then I would be saying, okay, perhaps there's something going on within your nervous system and that you are potentially dysregulated and almost stuck within that fight flight freeze response, and that's why you're kind of permanently anxious. Essentially, there's so a strong startle response is a really big one

10:00 you often see that I can relate to that absolutely. Then there's all the cognitive stuff as well, So I think often this is missed but because it doesn't make too much sense to people. But low self belief and low self esteem are a big, big, big red flag, and there are lots of kind of complicated reasons that develops over time. But if people are kind of like, well, how do I know if I've got trauma, I'd say, well, that's a big one to look out for. If you do have and have often struggled with self belief and self esteem, confidence, all those things, they're often a sign of trauma, particularly if they're coupled with the other reactions, a really big one that you see in really, I would say the majority of people. So if you imagine, when the fight flight freeze response goes off, your body is flooded with hormones, and that's what's making those anxiety like symptoms and the uncomfortable feelings and the feelings of fear and anything else you might be feeling. It's all hormone driven. It's all to do with those arousal hormones or the shut down hormones. If it's freeze, it's not just your body that's flooded, it's your mind as well.

11:12 So if you are continually or often experiencing very racing thoughts, you know, obsessive worries, obsessive fears, you know, when your mind just spins and spins and spins, that's off very often a sign that your survival mechanism has been triggered. You're not feeling safe, something in your environment has made you feel threatened or reminded you of a past threat, and all these hormones have kind of flooded your body. So it's important to understand that it's not just those anxiety like symptoms in the body. We're going to experience them cognitively as well. And then there are the behaviors. Most people that have experienced trauma have some kind of avoidant behavior because we respond to to whichever symptom is we're feeling, we push it away. That's the nature of trauma.

12:06 We push the feeling away because it's overwhelming and it's a bit scary, and we most certainly don't want trauma, so we push it away instead of doing what we need to do really, which is looking in the eyes and taking some time to see it, you know, and sitting with our body and our mind and really seeing what's happening. So on the small end of the scale, it might be something like compulsive distraction, you know, constantly checking your phone because you're feeling these anxiety like symptoms or what's going on in your mind, whatever it might be, and you don't like it. You want to move away from it, so you grab your phone, compulsive TV watching, compulsive spending. And then of course at the top end of that's kind of avoidance scale, you've got full on addictions and alcoholism and things like that. They're the symptoms that I tend to talk about because really, here what I'm trying to do is help people who don't necessarily have PTSD, but who have the lower level symptoms. But of course then if we look at the PTSD symptoms, you're going to also potentially be experiencing severe flashbacks and symptoms like that.

13:12 Interesting that you talk about the avoidance and the wanting to push it away. I think you can't talk about trauma without also talking about shame, and nobody wants to talk about shame. You do refer to that link in your book as well. Can you talk a little bit about that. I think that shame is this like Brene Brown obviously has done all of the work around shame and vulnerability, and she says it's a universal experience, but it's still one that nobody wants to really acknowledge or look at. Are you able to talk a little bit more about that about the trauma shame kind of link. Yeah, very happily. It's so important because there is a huge link you know before shame most often sits a traumatic experience. That that link has been proven. It's in every single model of trauma, or the vast majority of them shame. Shame is there because we know that it's ubiquitous if you've experienced trauma. One of the mechanisms that will keep the symptoms going and keep you stuck in the reaction is shame. And what's that about. I mean, it can be very unique, you know, in terms of what we each feel shame about. But I think that the main thing that I feel people need to understand is that very often we feel shame about having had the emotions and having had the reaction. Does that make sense?

14:41 So it's the shame is almost coming from the belief around it is I'm weak. I shouldn't be feeling these things. So emotionally, we're already avoiding, we're pulling back, and not only that, but we're also feeling deeply as shamed that we weren't stronger. And that's why we need these convers stations. We need to teach our kids. It's highly like you'd highly likely, if not an absolute given, that you're going to experience a traumatic reaction. There is no shame in that, you know, if we bring the conversation about trauma into the public space, as we did with anxiety, I don't I suffer anxiety sometimes I have no shame around it because it's part of the public conversation. Now I meet another mum or a dad or whatever, we'll often say, oh, I'm feeling a bit anxious today. It's it's a lingo that we're all really comfortable with now. And my dearest hope is that is that we get as comfortable with trauma.

15:37 And I know it will take a while because it's a complicated thing, but that in itself will help undo and pull back some of that shame response, you know, and there are other things going on. Too often the shame will come from not having our feelings validated, and which is another reason we all need to get up to speed with this, because if somebody experience this is a traumatic reaction, one of the worst things that we can do is invalidate it, you know, not accept it, essentially say come on, it wasn't that bad, don't worry about it, get on with it. If the reaction happened, it needs to be witnessed. It needs our loved ones, our friends, whoever it might be, to say, Okay, I see it, I get it, you're you know. It's not a conversation even about the event. It's a conversation about the reaction. It's an acknowledgment of the reaction. And without that we can end up feeling deep shame because our feelings weren't validated.

16:31 Yeah, and it's kind of at its core, I think, especially when we talk about childhood trauma, and you mentioned before relational trauma and I would like to get to just some of those definitions, but it's sort of got this core of unworthiness, doesn't it Like if as a child you've experienced trauma ahead your feelings invalidated. It's this internalized belief that there is something wrong with me, or I'm somehow unlovable or unworthy, and without even that registering at a conscious level, it's kind of embedded somewhere deep in our psyche. Would you agree? One hundred percent? And that's part of the reason that we see you know, I mentioned low self belief as one of the cognitive reactions, one of the symptoms we would expect to see. It links to that shame based self that we will develop along the way. Yeah.

17:27 Absolutely, And when we talk about those attachment relationships, you know, those very early experiences that sometimes we don't even remember. You know, we have these early experiences that we as infants and as young children that we don't often have a conscious memory of. But along the way we've internalized these ideas, as you said, like this unworthiness or this shame. And this is why I think it's so perplexing to people because a lot of people can't necessarily put their finger on a specific event or you know, something concrete that they can track it back to. And this is why so many people feel like, well, this, it's obviously just me. There is something wrong with me.

18:15 Absolutely, that's exactly the path. That's exactly why there must be something wrong with me, you know. And that's why I called the book What I Did. You're not broken, because the vast majority of people I speak, and I'm sure as a psychologist you can attest the same, feel like they're fundamentally damaged. There's something wrong with me. I'm broken without realizing. It's the trauma talking. It's the trauma that has led you and pushed you and pushed you to adopt this identity. And it's freeing realizing that because once we know what the problem is, we can begin to treat it, because it's very treatable once we know what it is. I hope that you're enjoying this conversation and realizing the benefits of positivity in your own life. If you are enjoying the show, please be sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified when you apps drop and head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review. So getting back to that, you know, you've used the word relational trauma a few times, and I just mentioned about attachment just for people listening who kind of going, what are you talking about? Can are you able to just run through what some of those kinds of trauma are that we talk about in psychology or in the research or whatever.

19:34 Yes, I mean, essentially the best thing is just to replace the word relational with relationship. You know, it's really any traumatic event that happens within the relation relationship context, and very often we're looking at the parental relationship. I don't know, would you agree with that that in your practice we can primarily see exactly so really we say relational, but I don't know why we don't just say parental. It's interesting, isn't it? Because it is the majority of them that I think we're facing, and that most people face, and they can show up in all kinds of ways. What have you seen in your practice? I'm really interested? Oh well, I guess you know, in terms of early attachment relationships, I think so many people come into therapy with their anxiety or their depression, or their adult you know, relationship struggles and as psychologists. We go into your personal history and tell us about your family growing up, and often there was like you said, and invalidation of emotions or in my family, we just didn't talk about your feelings.

20:46 Oftentimes there might have been you know, alcohol or you know, domestic violence or you know, other issues like that. So even people who don't again, don't put themselves in that category of like I didn't. I wasn't a bit used as a child, and I wasn't neglected, and I had two parents at home, but you know, mum was never really available to me, or my parents worked really long hours, or you know, it's normal family stuff for most people. Yeah, it's normal family stuff. Thank you for saying that. I really appreciate your clinical perspective because that is exactly why, isn't it. It's normal. Family still creates emotional injuries in people. Yeah. Absolutely. The last that really leaves scars.

21:27 Oh, the lack of emotional connection, you know, the lack of feeling seen and heard, you know, to grow up without that. But worse too, and I'm sure you've seen this, so I feel like you've just alluded to this, but worse to feel like you're lucky, to feel like my family's really normal. Like the narrative in my family is I'm lucky, We're normal. Everything's great. Mum does drink every day, but she's a whop, you know. But still there's something in us that's growing because really instinctively a child know something's not right. But worse, you know, things aren't right in every family, and my family of course, you know, I've got three children. There are moments of things not being right. But I know through my work that the worst thing I can do is dismiss. If I sit them down and say, you're absolutely right, things aren't right, I hear you. You know, that's the healing, that's the honesty that allows them to develop a strong identity to be able to recognize their feelings. So if you grow up in a home without that, where exactly as you've just said, you know, feelings are pushed away, dismiss your experiences are dismissed, and worse than that, you're told you're lucky.

22:41 I think confusing. Most people that I've spoken to have relational trauma are confused. Why do I feel this way? Why is it so hard? Why do I find relationships so difficult? Why am I so insecure. You know, often you find that why I'm so insecure in my relationships today with other moms or with other dads. Confusing, I think is often the phrase I hear. And so relational trauma slash attachment trauma. I guess also when you talk about relation relational trauma there that would include bullying, you know, if you're bullied at school, any anything that having having your best friend go behind your back and tell all your secrets, you know, all of those betrayals. And and then there's the big, major event kind of trauma. I'm just trying to run through the kinds of trauma that people might be able to kind of connect with.

23:33 So the. Major event disaster, accident, injury, illness, that kind of trauma. Yes, absolutely, yeah, so they're on that. They would be that kind of big t stuff that we mentioned. Yeah, and then their relational stuff would tend to be stuff tends to be stuff from childhood. I would say eight. Most often it's in the home, but as you've just alluded to, it can absolutely be outside of the home. Or what you'll find is it begins in the home, but then it's kind of it begins the cascade and then it will happen outside of the home as well, because obviously the trauma stacks on top of each other. So they're perhaps learning that traumatic reaction in the home.

24:15 Mum and dad aren't available, they're not listening, Dad's drinking all the time, whatever it might be, or dad's you know, one of them's violent, whatever, however that might show up as so that traumatic reaction is happening in the home, and then you'll often see that mirrored outside because really the first traumatic reaction sets us up for all the rest. That's a really important point that you make. You said, obviously it starts in the homeland. I think that's obvious to a lot of people. Trauma compounds. Yeah, so you also talk about new tea and old tea trauma. So do you want to just talk about that a little bit, because I think a lot of people would relate to that too. Yeah, it's really important. I don't know why we don't talk about it more often because within the research community it's very well known. I'm sure clinically it is as well.

25:03 When somebody presents with an adult trauma, so something's happened in adulthood. As as a clinician, I'm sure you would agree, you treat the trauma. Of course, that is a traumatic experience, and it's a new trauma, but most often there is a previous trauma. Because the biggest predictor of trauma today, so any of our listeners experiencing it today, the biggest predictor is previous trauma, right, Okay, So I hope that everyone can hear that and that can land so that sets the way, so we know that if you experience a trauma in adulthood, not for everyone, but for the vast majority of people, it lets us know that there was a previous traumatic reaction, So something happened before. Something might have happened before. Many times it could have been this could have been your seventh traumatic reaction. But even if there was just one when you were aged three, age four, age fourteen, whatever it was, the new reaction lets us know that most likely there was there was one before, because that's the one that paves the way, right.

26:10 And why why is that? How or why is it that one trauma will likely predict another one? Well, because it's it's just set up the reaction in us. So and unless we've had treatment, and unless we've we've resolved that reaction in a really meaningful way, or the body has fully and completely resolved it. We we're more easily triggered. We're more easily so if you almost imagine, that's probably the simplest way to explain it, isn't it is that first reaction set off in us a are we were, we were on high alert. So from the moment that happened, we've lived life for many people, potentially quite peacefully, but we have been in some way looking out for threats in a way that we that we weren't before that first trauma happened. So it's almost as if we're kind of scanning what might happen. But then also there's the issue of being triggered, so that the new adult trauma may well be a trigger for an old trauma. And by that I mean so the new trauma actually might be a retraumatization. So something in our environment today and I've personally experienced this, it was you know, the word retraumatized or traumatized. It they are different, but it essentially the same mechanism is happening. So it's where something in our environment or a situation or a problem,

27:42 an issue, whatever it might be, has reminded us of a past threat and then set off that old reaction. So either of those scenarios could could explain it. And I think also just as you were talking then, I was thinking about how I did an episode, a solo episode of the podcast last year, and listeners may have heard it. It was right at the beginning of COVID, and I was talking about emotional resilience and I referred to the window of tolerance. And so you obviously you'd be familiar with the window of tolerance, but I think that's a really important concept too. It's like our the level of stress we can effectively handle before we become disregulated, is lower, like our tolerance is lower, right, I think that's a really important thing for people to understand that because of your previous experiences, it may well be that the way your nervous system is wired, it may be that you have a slightly lower capacity, like a lower threshold for stress, and therefore you're more likely to be triggered into a trauma reaction later because of that narrower window.

28:57 Absolutely, it's so important. It's a and it's it's a it's a very hopeful thing to realize because we can widen that window in the window. My healing has involved using that language. And okay, so how do we I mean mine was probably here and doing this with my hands, you know, it was it was tiny anything and everything switched my flight fight freeze off. I would hear a bird or a noise, you know, and it was I was immediately up there. It was everything just just brought me straight back in. It was oh so intense, and over time I widened my window of tolerance. And it's it's such a hopeful, wonderful way to work. And and you know, if anyone's interested in it, it tends to be sematic therapists, isn't it who will work that way?

29:46 Sematic psychotherapists or sematic experiencing who work with the body to teach you. It's a very empowering way to work because they teach you how to do that, you know. And essentially it's really about moving from always observing threat and uncomfortable feelings in your body to moving into a situation where we can always or you know, attempt to at least notice that the comfortable and the good not only in our environment. So I am safe. I'm sitting on my bed I'm safe, my blankets, really comfortable, whatever it might be. But also within our body, you know, so where does your body feel comfortable today? For a long time, the only place I felt comfortable or that didn't feel like it was rigid with anxiety was my butt cheeks. So my somatic therapist had me live in my butt cheeks for years. It was like, that's where we're going because that's where your body is comfortable. Be where it's comfortable. And then slowly you feel the relax it.

30:43 You know, you realize, oh, isn't that Okay? Now I think my legs are my legs feel really comfortable. Okay, let's be in your legs. How does the sunshine feel on your skin? So it's changing that embodied experience and changing our relationship with our body. It's so important. I'm so glad that you mentioned that because I think so we as. A species, we are so in our heads all of the time trying to intellectualize and analyze everything, and really the way forward with this is, as you say, getting into our body, because that's where all of this is living, that's where all of this is happening.

31:24 The other thing that you refer to in your book is Intergenerational Trauma. Do you want to talk a little bit about that. Yes, I don't know too much about the kind of current research, but to me neither No, but it's absolutely incredible. Essentially, what we have learned is that trauma can pass from one generation to the next. That's essentially the message, and there are lots of different I would say, we're not completely clear on all of the mechanism mechanisms of how that's happening. We think there is a genetic element in as much as there's an epigenetic element, So how our environment is making our genes express themselves. We think there's you know, of course socialized or you know, so for example, say a parent with PTSD is parenting a child, of course their PTSD is going to affect or their trauma is going to affect how they parent. That the children are going to be picking up on the parent's feelings, They're going to be picking up on the parents' fears.

32:36 You know, I can relate to that one. I'm sure a lot of people can. We most often will adopt the fears that our parents have. And if you have an extremely fear based parenting system going on, don't touch that don't do that, you're going to adopt a very similar similar way of being. So there's the genetic epigenetic physical sort of mechanism, and then there's the socialized parenting mechanism. We're not entirely sure completely what's going on, but nobody disputes that it's happening. It's being shown in longitudinal studies that are not doubtable, if you know what I mean.

33:16 Yeah, I just wanted to mention it because I think, again, there are people who who will say, but I don't relate to any of this. I'm having these responses or these trauma responses, or I'm behaving in a certain way, or I've got these you know, feel insecure on whatever it is things that you've mentioned, and it may it may be something that has has been passed down in some way. I just feel like there's so many things that we can't see or name or necessarily clearly identify that could potentially be having an impact. Oh, it's so important to recognize. I would really because you mentioned very traum before. We didn't really talk about it, but we used to set the age of amnesia for a child at about three, so we thought kids couldn't remember anything before the age of three, but it's most recently been moved. We don't think many people can really remember before the age of seven. So just let that land, you know. So what we know is it's really easy for a child to experience a traumatic reaction. So we know that, we know it's easy for them to feel overwhelmed, threatened, and out of control. We know that not many people remember before the age of seven, and we know relational trauma is really common. So let's all just do the maths.

34:31 You know, if people are sitting there going well, you know, Okay, So I do have low self belief. I've got racing thoughts, I've got anxiety like symptoms. I'm constantly checking my phone or I'm you know, avoiding my feelings all the time. I can't be still, i can't be present. I've got a strong startled response. But there is no there's nothing back there. I had a great childhood. Come on, trust the symptoms, you know that. My favorite phrase really into it at the moment is the body members. Okay, the body remembers, the mind doesn't. The mind obfuscates, the mind makes excuses, the mind minimizes, the mind goes off on all kinds of tangents to lessen our pain because the truth is too painful, so we make up all kinds of excuses and narratives and all the rest of it.

35:20 But the body remembers. So if you are experiencing these symptoms, trust your body. Yeah, Okay, it's telling you there's something there that needs to be healed. So yes, whether that comes from very trauma, from childhood or intergenerational trauma, trusts the symptoms. Stop. Stop the natter and the conversations and the will it makes no sense, and just listen to your body. Yeah. I just wanted to make one little side comment about that intergenerational thing which I find fascinating, and that is I don't remember where I read this, whether it was your books here or somewhere else, but there is a period of time when your grandmother pregnant with your mother, knowing that females are born with all of the eggs they will ever produce in their body, like all of their eggs are in their uterus at the time of book birth, and that they develop while that baby is in the womb. So there is a moment in time when you were an egg a little bit of DNA in your mother's wherever where are they stood uterus while she was a baby in your grandmother's womb? Does that make sense? Is that very confusing?

36:34 No, it makes tatoe sense. It's an incredible image, isn't it right? When your grandmother was pregnant with your mother and you were an egg in your mother's infant womb, so there was a point in time where all three of you occupied the same physical body. And so mind laying, isn't it. And when you think about the DNA, how trauma affects the expression of your genes. So we know that you know your environment. Situations that happen in your environment can affect how your genes are expressed, how your DNA is expressed. And so if your grandmother experienced, for example, trauma or you know, famine or poverty, or went through the war or something like that, there was a point in time when her DNA was directly impacting yours.

37:24 Yes, absolutely, Just a little. Side note that I just personally find really interesting when it comes to all of these unexplained kind of symptoms or experiences that we have. I think it's worth just keeping in mind that there is so much that is in us, like bread into us, that we don't necessarily ever fully consider. We think that we start off there's an egg and a sperment, you get made and it's a blank slate. But that is not the case. We're all kind of imprinted with this stuff. Absolutely more than that, I would say, when you when you work with real top notch trauma therapists, very very many of them, I would say, increasingly so in the last ten years, we'll ask what your birth was like, Yes, you know, they want to know, and it's not hocus pocus.

38:14 What was your mother's pregnancy like with you was do you know? Was she stress? Was she looking after a ton of kids? How was she? Was she on any medication? Was there any alcohol? A You know, they want to know what was going on when you were in the womb, And they really really want to know what was going on during your birth, because we know now absolutely in the womb and the birthing event. Of course, if you think about what I've just explained about the fight flight freeze, how common it is in children, it's you know, it's an animal instinct. Could there have been a traumatic imprint a traumatic memory from then? So yeah, it's mind blowing and true. It's both of those things.

38:57 And Sarah, so now that everybody listening has realized that they probably having a trauma response, whether they've realized it or not in the past, they know now, and some people would listen to this episode and many people would realize they are very clear on what they've experienced in their early life or even in their adult life, and there are others who perhaps haven't. But as you said, the good news is that once we know, then there is so much room for resolving these issues and for healing these issues. And we always like to finish on a high note on this show. So where do people what are some of the treatments. I know that you're not a clinician. I don't do clinical therapy anymore myself, but what are some of the treatments that are working and where should people start with exploring some of these options.

39:44 First, someone said, there's an enormous amount you can do at home. You don't have to if you want to go for it. Absolutely love therapy. I've worked with so many therapists over the year years. I still do, but you don't necessarily have to do that. If you have a resistance to it, or you're afraid or it feels too much. Begin where it feels comfortable. So if that means trying to feel your feelings more at home, you know, so a simple thing is pausing, acknowledging and allowing your feelings. So trying to be with your anxiety. So oh, I feel really anxious today, dropping into your chest and being with the physical sensations, tracking the sensations, and that's a common technique used by somatic psychotherapists. You know, that's really what they're going to be trying to do, is getting you to embody and be with the feelings and then releasing them in different ways. But you can work on that at home, of course, feeling your feelings and being in your body and with your body. Trauma healing is all about moving and shifting, so you can begin to adopt you know, you can start yoga. You know that there are these very loving, gentle ways of reconnecting with and moving our bodies that will help things begin to move, because really trauma tamps things down. We're stuck, we're locked in a reaction. What we want to do is get everything moving again, you know. So they're two relatively simple

41:15 things you can begin to do at home. But I would always recommend that people work with other people's support is key, especially if we've got trauma and we've come from a home where we haven't been validated, we haven't necessarily had the emotional support we needed. Give it to yourself now as an adult, I would I would say, you know, find a good trauma therapist. There are many, many great ones. The trauma treatments now are incredible. You know, whether you go down. So I mentioned the sematic line, So find a sematic experiencing practitioner or a sematic psychotherapist. Or if you don't, if you're not comfortable working with the body, which for a long time I was and it wasn't the place I could start. It was too overwhelming for me, then just talk therapy, you know, find a psychologist, find a therapist, but please make sure that they are very, very fluent in trauma. You know that it's really very important. And I would always also argue that I tend to encourage people to find people a therapists who are very fluent in trauma and very fluent in addiction. And I think that frightens people when I say that. But it's not. Addiction is a very curious thing, and it's not that I'm saying that everyone who has trauma has an addiction. But what we do know, if you think back to what I said, is that trauma points us towards avoidance, so we will avoid our feelings.

42:42 And the people who understand avoidance, the therapists who understand avoidance and really get it and will really help you pinpoint it and get really, really honest about it, are people who are trained in addiction. So that's also something to look for. So people are trained in trauma and trained in addiction. If you can find someone with those too, that to me is the most powerful match trauma and addiction. Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And I just wanted to add too that I just think self compassion is so important and because, as you say, or as we discussed earlier, there is so much shame and self judgment and what's wrong with me that goes along with some of these trauma reactions, that that capacity to offer yourself some kindness is just so so critical, and for addiction as well, and for all of the other things that we've talked about. We're not good at self compassion. We're not good at self kindness.

43:41 We are not good at that. That is the journey. Honestly, that is the healing journey. And I think it's the thing I resisted the most, you know, I was so hard on myself and I think many people can relate to that. But yes, it's something you can begin to do at home. Today is playing with that idea. What does that feel like if I talk to myself kindly? What do I say? You know, think about a loving parent. What would a loving parent say? Really, that's what we're trying to do that. You know, they would stop and give us a moment if we were overwhelmed, wouldn't they That's what a loving parent would do. Then, wouldn't make us crash on with the day. They'd say, sit down, what do you need? What do you need? How are you?

44:22 You know? So it's really thinking about what that might look like for you, that really compassionate parental in a voice, and beginning to play with it and see how it feels. But thank you for bringing that up, because there's something people can do at home along with that kind of feeling our feelings and getting moving. I would say that those three are really really key, really critical. Sarah Thank you so much for your time today. It's been so valuable. The book is called You're Not Broken, Break Free from Trauma and Reclaim your Life. I'll put links to where people can buy that in the show notes. As I think we've well established this as a topic that everybody everybody, if not you personally, then everybody around you.

45:03 So which is why I think that we all really need to get across this. So I'm so grateful for your contribution. It's been great. Thank you so much. Been really really lovely to chat to another psychologist. It's been really lovely. That's Sarah's book is called You're Not Broken, and it's available right now in all good bookstores. You can find out more about Sarah and her work at her website Sarah Woodhouse dot com, or follow her on Instagram and Facebook at the Sarah Woodhouse. As always, please come and connect with me on Instagram at cast Done underscore xo, or Facebook at Cassdone dot xo. Check out my website cast Done dot com and I will catch you on the next episode of Crappy to Happy.

45:49 Crappy to Happy is presented by cast Done, produced by Davis Lenski, Audio production by Darcy Thompson. Listen Now