{"id":9215,"date":"2021-07-06T15:47:31","date_gmt":"2021-07-06T21:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/?post_type=transcript&p=9215"},"modified":"2021-07-06T15:47:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-06T21:47:31","slug":"trauma-recovery-and-post-traumatic-growth","status":"publish","type":"transcript","link":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/transcript\/trauma-recovery-and-post-traumatic-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Trauma Recovery and Post-Traumatic Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image_print\"Print Transcript<\/span><\/a><\/div>

Tami Simon:<\/b> Welcome to <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i>, produced by Sounds True. My name is Tami Simon. I\u2019m the founder of Sounds True, and I\u2019d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion, regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you\u2019d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit SoundsTrueFoundation.org.<\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019re listening to <\/span>Insights at the Edge.<\/span><\/i> Today my guest is Dr. Arielle Schwartz. Arielle is a clinical psychologist, author, internationally sought-out teacher, and a leading voice in the healing of trauma and complex trauma. She offers workshops for therapists on EMDR and somatic therapy, and she maintains a private practice in Boulder, Colorado. She has written a book called <\/span>The Post\u2011Traumatic Growth Guidebook<\/span><\/i>, and with Sounds True, Dr. Arielle Schwartz has created a new audio teaching series. It\u2019s called <\/span>Trauma Recovery: A Mind-Body Approach to Becoming Whole<\/span><\/i>. Speaking with Arielle gave me confidence, confidence that I could be present, turn to whatever painful experiences our dialogue might bring up, and that I could grow and have a heroine\u2019s story. As Arielle teaches, each one of us can turn our life story into a hero\u2019s or heroine\u2019s journey. Take a listen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arielle, as a way for our listeners to get to know you a little bit, to start, could you share your own journey, such that you became an expert, someone who focuses on trauma, healing, and post-traumatic growth? How did that become the focus or one of the main areas of focus for your work as a clinical psychologist?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Arielle Schwartz:<\/b> Sure. So, I think very often we come into the field of psychology, or saying we, those of us that choose to enter into this field, with a kind of combined mission. The combination of our own healing, our own personal journey that brings us to this point, and I think a very collective longing to bring some peace, bring some healing, make this world a better place. Certainly that combination was true for me. In particular, I came into the focus of trauma. Sometimes I think that setting my life\u2019s work around this chose me, and it began probably when I was in utero, right?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It began very young, because I grew up in a family where there was quite a lot of unrest and, starting in my parent\u2019s relationship, starting in the earliest experience of a divorce by the time I was two-and-a-half, that kind of got set in motion at that age. So, I experienced a tremendous amount of early fear in my own system, in my own body and mind, and the unrest that was there continued to unfold throughout much of my childhood. And then at the same time, after my parents got a divorce<\/span>\u2014<\/span>my mom\u2019s also a psychologist, so I also grew up exposed to psychotherapy and ideas of talking about your feelings, or processing your life experiences. So, this came in as information of just who I am in the world really early, as a way to try and work through this, and that was true in one of my households.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In my father\u2019s house, that was not the case. We didn\u2019t talk about feelings. We didn\u2019t explore the inner world. So, I kind of had, in a way, a foot in both territories of what is it like to go through life experiences that are not addressed or not acknowledged, are not worked through, and then what is it like to have a ground of safety in a place where you can work through this and talk through this and find a sense of release or integration or resolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, having a foot in both of those territories stayed with me, stayed with me as I went into adolescence, went into college, and stayed with me in both senses. In the sense that I had an aspect of myself that was very disintegrated or dissociated, and a very health-seeking part of myself, an experience of knowing what inner connection to center also felt like, in part because yoga also became a part of my life at a very young age. I was introduced to yoga when I was seven by my stepfather, so I had that felt experience as a reference point as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was through the lens of the body that, actually, the focus on healing trauma really became the catalyst or the next launching point. So, it brought me here to Boulder in the mid-1990s to study somatic psychology, because I wanted a felt experience of the integration, not just in my mind, but as a felt sense of peace. Somatic psychology lends itself so well to the healing of trauma.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Good place to start. Now, one thing I wanted to ask you about is you mentioned that part of you was disintegrated and dissociated. And I\u2019m curious to know more how you know, in your own experience, if there\u2019s part of you that is not there<\/span>\u2014<\/span>disintegrated or dissociated. How were you able to recognize that in your own journey as a younger person, and how might somebody even now, as they\u2019re listening say, \u201cYou know, I think there\u2019s part of me that disintegrated or dissociated\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yeah, beautiful question. The initial feelings that I had were one of feeling disconnected from my body, coming back to the body-centered piece. I felt aspects of being frozen or stuck, primarily as a young child, of feeling like I lost my voice, or my mind would freeze. So, I would go into these experiences where I couldn\u2019t think clearly, and of course you can imagine, we can all imagine or perhaps have some personal reference point of what that feels like, how much shame can come up when you\u2019re sitting around a group of people or even your own family and you don\u2019t have the words. You don\u2019t feel like you can participate, or at a very deep level you don\u2019t feel like you belong. I carried a lot of that very early felt sense of \u201cthere\u2019s something wrong with me and I don\u2019t really belong here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As I continued to grow up, and a lot of those feelings came with me into high school, but especially when I got into college, it really manifested more as anxiety and depression. So we have these two mental-health anchors that give us a certain label for what feels off inside, but if I were to break that down a little bit more descriptively, I would feel really fluttery, ungrounded, panicky, lots of self-doubt, lots of mental self-criticism in anxious moments. And then I would feel a certain amount of \u201cnothing is going to really make a difference, I can\u2019t really change this.\u201d A quality of helplessness would accompany that.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, I think that when we\u2019re looking at what are the signs of trauma, I want to kind of back up on that. It can take a lot of different shapes, depending on how your physiology and your nervous system responds to what is. Because I\u2019m such a somatically oriented person, I think that the feelings of being locked down in my own body were the most distressing, and it\u2019s also where I first started to notice the difference of times of integration or times of release.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, going to a yoga class<\/span>\u2014<\/span>or in college I was invited to go attend a body-mind centering workshop<\/span>\u2014<\/span>and in those moments when something would kind of shake loose, or I would have an emotional release, I would arrive at a point where I\u2019m like oh, this feels like home, this feels like me. The other stuff doesn\u2019t really feel like the core of who I really am. So, I could find these reference points.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Now, I want to go into much more trauma<\/span>\u2014<\/span>trauma healing, post-traumatic growth<\/span>\u2014<\/span>but I want to do something right now, if you will, with me, Arielle, as a gift to our listeners and as a life raft, if you will, for people who are sensitive and are listening to a conversation like this and perhaps find themselves, even already with just the first 10 minutes of our conversation, starting to feel themselves getting anxious or nervous. Because we\u2019re going right into it and we\u2019re talking about trauma. What can they do to<\/span>\u2014<\/span>in an embodied way, peaceful, resourced way<\/span>\u2014<\/span>listen to this conversation?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> What a beautiful question. And it\u2019s so often where we start the whole healing journey from trauma. So, I would invite you, as a listener, to take a moment to really just tune in, to pause and notice what is happening in your own nervous system, with your own breath. How are you sitting, how is your body shaping right now in response to these 10 minutes of conversation? Perhaps noticing if you\u2019re having some of your own connections or memories that are stirring now, even as we continue to speak, and to know that attending to trauma is always a choice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the place that I always like to start, is that you get to choose when, where, with whom, and even whether you want to turn towards those memories. You might choose to attend to some of that with a lot of compassion throughout this talk, or you might choose to kind of say, not now. I\u2019m going to put this away for now and really just let my intellectual brain take in some information. And know that right time and right place might be in your own therapy, or when you have time to really process. If you\u2019re listening to this driving, right, this is not the time to process trauma, or if you\u2019re about to go home and take care of your kids, or if you have to go to work.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, we get to really be at choice about when we open up those places, and that it\u2019s a very valid choice<\/span>\u2014<\/span>to consciously put it away. The other resource that I\u2019ll offer, just as a kind of loosening resource, is that you get to use your five senses to help you ground throughout this. So, if at any point you do feel a little anxious or a little activated, put your feet on the ground. You can hold something in your hands as you\u2019re listening to this that just gives you a sense of ground or resource. Of course, the beautiful thing about listening to a podcast is you can pause and return so that you can pace your listening as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> One of the techniques that I know that you work with and teach people has to do with containment<\/span>\u2014<\/span>that you can create your own container if you start feeling triggered and you\u2019re not in the place to be working with trauma at that moment. Tell me a little bit more about that, because I thought that was really interesting, how I might create a container to help me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yes. So, part of containment is in itself the choice, but within the background and training that I have, which includes EMDR therapy or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, there is a technique that we use that involves creating an imagined container. And this imagined container can be anything of your making, right? It could be a file cabinet. It can be a box with a lid. It can be <\/span>\u2026<\/span> I\u2019ve had people create really beautiful, creative ones, like a hot air balloon that goes up in the air<\/span>\u2014<\/span>and it has a little rope so you can bring it back down when you want to attend to what you\u2019ve placed in the basket<\/span>\u2014<\/span>or a treasure chest at the bottom of the ocean.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, you get to be really creative. I remember working with someone once who had a tremendous amount of complex trauma and he said, \u201cCan I use the Grand Canyon?\u201d I said, \u201cGreat. Just so long as it has a lid, right?\u201d So, our imaginations are really powerful. When we create an imagined container, you can put any distress inside of it and you can temporarily hold it there. The most important piece about any containment practice is that we make an agreement with your psyche. We make an agreement that says, in right time and right place, I\u2019m going to work with what I\u2019ve placed in there. So, it\u2019s not a forever holding ground or waiting room, but it\u2019s a place that we know that we\u2019re going to return to when we have sufficient support.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> And you mentioned someone who had a lot of complex trauma. What\u2019s the difference between trauma and complex trauma?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yes. So complex trauma and trauma live on a continuum, and sometimes we think of single-incident trauma as the experience of, I have a relatively good life, I had good upbringing, supportive parents, and something happened<\/span>\u2014<\/span>a car accident happened, or a fire in our community happened. And that incident has its own stand-alone<\/span>\u2014<\/span>kind of has boundaries around it, so that you know when it began, when it ended, who you were before, and what happened to you during it. It makes it, in some ways, a little bit more specific in terms of what you\u2019re going to process or what you\u2019re going to work through in relationship to that event. But complex trauma is when there are repeated, ongoing, chronic degrees of stress that overwhelm the sensory experience, overwhelm your capacity to process it over time. Often [with] complex trauma, part of the complexity is that it\u2019s also relational trauma.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, we have some experience of feeling betrayed by another or feeling as though we were so deeply misunderstood, or as I was sharing about my own experience, a deep sense of not belonging somewhere. Feeling chronically rejected, chronically neglected, or in some cases ongoing abuse, ongoing transgressions and violations, and it can be relational trauma within a family of origin or it might be relational trauma within your community or society, right? An experience of not belonging because of your race, or your gender identity, or because of your sexual orientation, right? We can go on and on with the reasons why someone might not feel as though they belong, and then on top of it are not protected by community members, or they\u2019re not protected even by their country.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> What would you say to someone who is listening who says, \u201cI could name all these different things that happened in my upbringing that I\u2019m aware of, but truth be told, I\u2019m not exactly sure which of all of these unright, not-so-right things created the current level of dissociation and lack of integration I feel. I can\u2019t draw a straight causal line, I don\u2019t quite know, I\u2019m not sure\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yes. I think one of the, maybe the hardest questions that we ever face in this process is the <\/span>why<\/span><\/i> question. Why do I feel this way? And I think sometimes, when we don\u2019t have a clear why, it becomes a reason to discount or dismiss what we\u2019re experiencing. So the counsel that I offer is, let\u2019s not worry so much about what caused it right now, let\u2019s attend to what is. What we do know is that you\u2019re feeling a deep experience of questioning yourself, or you\u2019re stuck in self-doubt, or you are plagued with self-criticism. That\u2019s what we do know. And if we stay with enough curiosity with the symptom, then we start to feel like those lines, those connections start to get drawn, and sometimes it\u2019s like a spiderweb, right? There are so many connections. Well, I felt this way when my mom had this certain look on her face, and then I felt this way in kindergarten when my teacher said such and such, and I felt this way as a teenager when my friends ostracized me. So, we might have multiple times in our life that actually all constellated around that same felt sense. But if we start with the symptom, the symptom will always guide us.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> One thing I just want to point out before we move into the whole topic of post-traumatic growth, which is really what I want to focus on, is you mentioned in addition to containment that we can practice grounding and that we can feel our feet on the ground, and feel ourselves right here. In reading your book <\/span>The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook<\/span><\/i>, in the section on grounding, you talked about how grounding is a relational act. I\u2019d never thought of that before, and as somebody, just for my one little confessional tangent here, we\u2019re not going to take a long time, but as somebody who experienced quite a bit of relational trauma in my early upbringing, I\u2019ve been very drawn to grounding practices. I didn\u2019t realize, oh, this act itself is a relational healing act. And I wonder if you can explain that to our listeners, how grounding is a relational healing act.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> It feels like such a deep honor to even have you share a little bit of your own history, and also to kind of open up this topic of grounding as relational healing for our listeners. It feels so deep to my heart. Where I\u2019ll start here is that the first relationships that we have are with our primary caregivers, right? It even starts in utero. So, when we think about the experience of grounding into our own bodies, grounding is really about arriving. It\u2019s about being at home in self, and it\u2019s about feeling that it\u2019s safe to be at home in self, because there is a sufficient holding environment for us. That holding environment can be in the womb, that holding environment can be the arms of a caring caregiver, right? And when the experience of the other is one of oh, they feel safe to me, they feel calm, they feel peaceful, they feel strong, they feel protective, they see me, right? These are core needs of our youngest self. Then there is a quality of yielding that happens in the body, and yielding is basically saying, I don\u2019t have to resist gravity. I don\u2019t have to hold myself or protect myself from this holding environment because there\u2019s sufficient safety for me, and therefore I can actually let go of that bracing that can happen.<\/span><\/p>\n

This bracing, in my work somatically, can happen so very young. It\u2019s a deep intuitive or instinctual knowing as to whether the other, and I\u2019m putting other in quotes here, as to whether the other feels safe enough. Is there capacity within you to hold me? And as a result, I can soften and relax, and not have to effort. I can just be in me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Really early on, we start to see these role reversals happen, these ways in which you look at this in parent-infant research, when an infant is being raised by a parent who is anxious or depressed, or what I would say unresolved trauma as well, is that the child has to adapt or shape or shape shift themselves to manage the incoming sensory information of the facial expressions or voice tone or body language of the other. In that managing of what\u2019s coming in, there is a split that happens. It\u2019s really subtle, it\u2019s really young, it\u2019s really a split between how do I take care of myself, sustain a self-sense, and maintain my need for this relational world.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, we\u2019re speaking about it at a subtle level, but when it\u2019s even more explicit of an abusive or a really angry caregiver or a very frightening or fearful other, then the way that we brace ourselves to sustain deep inside<\/span>\u2014<\/span>I need to preserve myself, and I need this other for my core survival in the world, right? I need you because to attach is as much a survival need as it is to maybe flee or protect myself, or put up those physiological defenses from whatever feels frightening to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, these are these core ways in which grounding gets sacrificed. The capacity to yield into the body gets sacrificed to be at home within yourself for the relational world. But in its healing form<\/span>\u2014<\/span>and this is why I\u2019m such a believer of psychotherapy or any forms of interpersonal healing is that, again, body work or group work, right? When we can feel that reparative experience of another person who is capable now of being present and attuning to us and attuning to themselves, right? Because the relational world is a two-person experience, right? So long as<\/span>\u2014<\/span>if I\u2019m speaking of myself for a moment as a psychologist, my job is to take care of me so that I can be present for another. When we feel that safety, we have an opportunity to reclaim that sense of, it\u2019s OK to be me and be in relationship to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> In the book, you talk about how we can practice grounding exercises relationally with the floor, and I was like, well, that\u2019s a great plan. I like that. With the earth, with nature, so I thought, that\u2019s wonderful. And with another human being, also wonderful. You\u2019re describing it in terms of psychotherapy, but our healing of that relational wound could often possibly come with our intimate partner or someone that we felt we could really yield to, to use your language. But maybe you could talk some about the floor and the earth and then also how we could practice this with an intimate other.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> I\u2019d love to. I think that practicing grounding with something like the ground beneath us, literally the floor. Or for me, I\u2019m on my yoga mat every day, right? To practice grounding in something that has a sort of relative predictability, right? Unless you\u2019re living in San Francisco and you don\u2019t know when the next quake is coming, for the most part, the earth provides a relative predictability, that that floor beneath you is not going to move. So, as you soften<\/span>\u2014<\/span>this is really all about softening those defenses that resist gravity<\/span>. <\/span>So that as we use the breath and allow your weight to settle into, whether you\u2019re seated or laying on your back, but allow your weight to settle down into your hips, into your legs, trusting that the floor is there beneath you, that it\u2019s not going anywhere and that it\u2019s safe now to let go.<\/span><\/p>\n

Safety is always the tricky word, right? It doesn\u2019t feel safe, right? Because the feeling of \u201cit doesn\u2019t feel safe\u201d is a remnant of the trauma. So, I think what\u2019s so delicate about grounding is that the more that we let go of that defensive positioning in our bodies, the more likely we are to feel the memory of other times when it wasn\u2019t safe. The body is going to open up and it\u2019s going to have stories to tell. So even with a grounding practice, we pace ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think this is where nature is such a beautiful intermediary, in a sense, because when we\u2019re taking a walk in nature, we have this way in which we can be beautifully distracted by the sounds of the birds, the beauty of a sunset, the color of the green on the trees, the movement of water. All of these different sensory experiences offer the sensory grounding points, and we don\u2019t have to focus so much on what I would say is the interoceptive world, the internal world of the body and the felt sense. So we can ground through our exteroceptive world, our external senses, and that can feel like a lovely, safe way to come home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then the relational grounding, as we speak about whether that\u2019s just being held by another. I think even if you don\u2019t have a partner that offers that relational grounding, receiving something like craniosacral therapy, where your head is being held, where someone has their hand under your low back, right? Where you\u2019re being attuned to those types of relational, touch-based groundings can be so powerful. Of course, it\u2019s going to offer, hopefully, some relational attunement and repair for those memories that might surface of relational times when it wasn\u2019t safe.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> All right. Now, I promised our listeners we\u2019re going to move to post-traumatic growth, and as a bridge to that, before we even get into how we\u2019re growing after all of this stuff that happened to us in our early life, this whole notion of recovery, healing, I\u2019d like to understand more, even in this context of what we\u2019re just talking about, relational wounds. Do you ever get to a place where 100 percent it\u2019s done? It\u2019s done. It\u2019s not going to come up again. It\u2019s over. Or is it like no, now I know more about how to work with myself, and I have more go-to moves, and I know when I need to call the craniosacral person or not? Is it more like that? I\u2019d love to know from your experience, Dr. Schwartz.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> I\u2019m going to go with either the onion or the artichoke metaphor here, right? The more that we kind of layer off, there\u2019s very often another layer underneath there. And in part because it\u2019s a very, very complex world that we live in. And at this point on the planet I think not only do many, many of us have our own personal traumas but we are also then experiencing the legacy traumas that have been handed to us from generations that have unprocessed traumatic wounds. That could be within your own family, it could be within your culture, and it could certainly just be within the collective experience of how much there has been, how [many] transgressions and how much trauma has occurred on this planet<\/span>\u2014<\/span>even, for example, in relationship to the earth itself and our climate.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, I think that for many, many people, when we start to walk a path of trauma recovery, that later piece<\/span>\u2014<\/span>that latter piece that you named of I know myself better. I\u2019m more likely to identify when I\u2019m getting triggered. I\u2019m more likely to turn towards and pull my resources and attend to that with greater efficiency and resiliency and care<\/span>. <\/span>That tends to be my experience, both for myself and also for the people that I work with. I think that the more that we normalize, the less that we\u2019re going to go, \u201cOh no, why did this come up for me? I thought I did all this work on myself, and how come this thought or this feeling or this memory resurfaced?\u201d And I always go, \u201cOh huh, well. Well, something happened that brought that back to my attention.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then we can be curious. I wonder what that\u2019s needing from me now, right? I\u2019m a new person. This wound that I worked with a year ago or five years ago is resurfacing and I now have a new array of resources, and a new way of thinking cognitively, and a new way of being with myself that I can loop back around to that old wound with a new level of wisdom and integration.<\/span><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that at some point perhaps we do go, \u201cHuh, that one feels done, great.\u201d But that doesn\u2019t mean that we maybe don\u2019t have more.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Well, and it\u2019s interesting, because as soon as you take us out of this separate-self context and put us in connection with all of history and everything that\u2019s happening on the planet, then suddenly this whole notion of being \u201cdone\u201d seems almost irrelevant in a certain kind of way.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> So true. I think that in a way, even if we recognize<\/span>\u2014<\/span>and this will of course eventually loop us back to post-traumatic growth. But when we recognize that part of that process is very often, when we have found a sense of resolution, even with just one piece of our own traumatic history, it can inspire a deep longing that now that I\u2019m free, I want to free somebody else. I think that as we then relate to another person\u2019s pain, it can also bring up to the surface huh, I had worked on this, but that really touched off something else for me, or that deep sense of compassion and recognition of<\/span> again, how much has occurred on this planet, invites us into compassion work as trauma work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> OK, how do you define post-traumatic growth for people who aren\u2019t familiar with that term?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yeah. I think for so long that the field of recognizing what is post-traumatic stress and what is post-traumatic stress disorder kind of turned the lens onto the symptoms and onto the distress, and with great value. I mean, we really needed to attend to that. When we shift the language into post-traumatic growth, it really opens up this recognition that the story doesn\u2019t have to end with the distress or the problem, and that resolution isn\u2019t about going back to what was, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

So you and I are both here in Boulder, and when we had the fires, right? We\u2019ve had fires in our area, we\u2019ve had floods in our area, one of the questions that often comes back is well, how do I get my life back to what it was before I lost my house, or to what it was before my community burned down? I mean, these are big, deep questions. I think the post-traumatic growth offers in\u2014we\u2019re going to actually change the question to, who are you becoming now, what new insight, what newness is going to emerge from this loss? It\u2019s not about forcing it or trying to stick a positive spin on something, it\u2019s about the deep experience of staying with the pain or the despair or the hopelessness or the grief of the loss, and recognizing that that\u2019s not the end of the story. As we work that and commit ourselves to meaning-making and to being with this, that something can evolve from that.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s that evolution of self and that evolution of behavior and identity that\u2019s what we\u2019re looking at as post-traumatic growth. It might be a new spiritual sense of self, it might be a new sense of oh my gosh, I thought that no one really cared, and now I realize all these people came out and they brought me meals, and I have to adjust what I believe about people, right? It can be a lot of different things.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> You write in <\/span>The Post\u2011Traumatic Growth Guidebook<\/span><\/i>, we adapt to adversity by one, orienting to our strengths, two, attending to our pain, and three, taking charge of the narrative that defines our lives. I wanted to go into each one of these. The first point, we adapt to adversity by orienting to our strengths. I know that one of the ways you\u2019re sometimes referred to is someone who leads with a strength-based or a resilience-based approach. So, what does that mean, to lead with a strength-based approach?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> When I first trained to treat trauma, we were trained to do a whole history taking of basically all the things that had gone wrong and all of the symptoms that the person was having. I can promise you, if you do an interview with that lens alone, you end the session feeling pretty bad.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> No, I\u2019m already on the floor just reflecting on it, yeah. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Totally. Like oh my gosh, that\u2019s the whole story, right? And it feels like it\u2019s the whole story. So, what we do instead is we actually go, tell me what\u2019s working. Tell me how you\u2019ve survived so far. Tell me who\u2019s got your back, who\u2019s in your corner. Who helped you get to here at a point when you felt like you didn\u2019t know if you were going to make it another day? Who gave you the hope to keep going? Who believed in you, right? So we have all of these inquiries that we can begin with that let us know, what are the existing strengths, what are the practices that you already do? When you wake up in the morning and you\u2019re having a tough day, what\u2019s your go-to that helps you get through that tough day?<\/span><\/p>\n

So we\u2019re gathering what\u2019s already working, and then we can turn toward the symptoms and the memories of difficult events, but they\u2019re not going to fill up the whole lens of awareness.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Interestingly, when you were asking who helped you develop these strengths, I thought of the same two core figures that before I was thinking about created all the relational trauma in my life<\/span>\u2014<\/span>you guessed it, that mother and father. So, that\u2019s interesting, that our strengths and the sources of pain could actually come even from the same humans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> It\u2019s very true, and it\u2019s really common that, again, it speaks to the complicated nature of our human relationships, that it\u2019s not all one or the other, right? A single relationship can both be hurtful and damaging but also imbue us with some of the strengths and some of the best resources. But I will add one more piece, which is that when we\u2019re looking for a really good ally, right? Sometimes this work sounds a little shamanic, and I think it is, right? So, it\u2019s OK to use some of the same words here. When we\u2019re looking for a good ally for trauma recovery, it\u2019s best to find an uncomplicated ally to start, right? I think it\u2019s a very mature stance to hold the \u201cboth\/and\u201d about someone who is both a cause of relational trauma but also imbued you with gifts.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a very mature way of turning towards that relationship. I think, very often, we need to start with as pure of a resource as we can find, and that could be your pet, right? That might be the tree in the backyard that you always went and sat under because you had your safe place there. Then there might be that one teacher in school that noticed that you were sad and took the time to listen to you. Or it might be a therapist in your life, right? So you can find the uncomplicated resource, and then eventually we can build towards that capacity to hold the both\/and of the fact that we\u2019re going to love people and we\u2019re going to be hurt by those same people.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Tell me more, Arielle, about how I work with an ally in trauma recovery.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Let\u2019s say somebody was like, \u201cOK, I\u2019m going to pick my pet.\u201d Let\u2019s just say, or it could be something else, but whatever people choose, how do they work with it?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Sure, your pet, your best friend, right? Maybe it is your spouse, maybe it is a grandparent, right? We can get so broad in where we\u2019re looking for these allies. But I think of a few places where I love to bring allies in. One is that when we\u2019re looking at the experience of self-criticism and a really harsh inner voice, that sometimes pulling in that loving, uncomplicated ally in moments of really being hard on yourself, and then just imagining how your dog would look at you. What your dog would feel if it knew how hard you were being towards yourself, right? Or your best friend, or whoever that ally is, right? So that we bring their most compassionate, loving presence in as a placeholder for our own difficulty with self-compassion until we can generate that for ourselves. So, that\u2019s one.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second is that we can bring in a compassionate ally for specific events that happened, especially, if we go back to these relational traumas, where there was an experience of not being seen, not being protected, not being nurtured, not having wise counsel, right? And we can bring in an ally or sometimes even a whole circle of allies. So, if you imagine a child who is being yelled at by a parent, and we go back to that memory, but this time we bring your allies in. What would that ally do in this situation? They might take the child out of that scene and say, \u201cYou know what? You don\u2019t get to talk to her like that.\u201d Or maybe they stand up on behalf of the child and speak up to the parent who is yelling, right? Or maybe they, afterwards, are sitting with and helping the child process what that felt like, because nobody ever did that with them. So, we create repair scenarios with the allies to give the felt sense of what should\u2019ve happened, even if it didn\u2019t happen then.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> If I can ask you a personal question, Arielle. What allies do you like to work with in your own process?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Ooh, I like that question. So, I have quite a wide circle, and I love having a pretty broad group of people that I can draw on in different times. So, some of them are quite imaginal. For example, I have a lion. I\u2019m not in my office space, I\u2019m in my home office right now, but I have a picture of this lion, a drawing of this lion in there, and sometimes I imagine that lion sitting next to me on the floor and just being a great protector, right? So, I can pull my imaginal lion in.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have a memory of a dog that I had when I was a young girl who I loved. I have my grandparents, who were very good and saw me, and very caring. I can even sometimes just imagine not only them coming to me, but me going and sitting in their house, which of course has long been sold and they\u2019re no longer alive, but I can imagine sitting in their house because then I have the combined felt memory of being in a safe place with caring adults. I could go on and on. I have a best friend Katie. So, I have people that I bring in.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Beautiful. OK, I\u2019m going to go back to this quote that I liked so much. We adapt to adversity by orienting to our strengths, you talked about that, attending to our pain, and that\u2019s what I want to talk to you about next. I mean, you\u2019ve talked some about how, first of all, we get to choose when we do it, containment, grounding. But let\u2019s say somebody is listening and they\u2019re like, \u201cOK, we adapt to adversity by attending to our pain. You don\u2019t know how big my pain is. It\u2019s so freaking big, and the idea of attending to it is just, it\u2019s too big.\u201d What would you say to someone who has that response?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yes. The key word here is pacing. We\u2019re not going to digest all of this at once, it\u2019s just simply too big, so we break it into bite-sized pieces. We do that \u2026 I think very often, the feeling is, I\u2019m going to keep this all back behind the dam, but I\u2019m so afraid that if I even let a little bit out, the whole floodgate is going to open up and I\u2019m going to be overwhelmed. So, we really, really break this down and work with just the front-leading distress and then we regroup back to our resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, from a somatic perspective, and I know that you\u2019ve had Peter Levine on this program before, is that you work with pendulation or titration so that we attend to just a little bit of the front edge of the distress, and then we come back and we metabolize that. Titration is a chemistry term, right? You\u2019ve got a little bit of an acid in a base, right? And if you add all of the white vinegar and baking soda together, you get an explosion. If you take a few drops of vinegar and you mix it with the baking soda, it\u2019ll fizzle up and it\u2019ll settle back down, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re attempting to achieve with your nervous system\u2014to create safety through structure. We\u2019re just going to take this one part of the memory and we\u2019re going to let the rest stay in the container. We\u2019re going to make an agreement with the rest of it that in right time and right place we\u2019re going to get to that too. So, we create boundaries around the traumatic material.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> That\u2019s really helpful. I bet you\u2019re pretty booked up as a trauma therapist. You seem very, very skillful, very skillful.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yes, thank you. I think I\u2019m booked till 2030 or something.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Something like that. All right, and then we adapt to adversity by taking charge of the narrative that defines our life. You talked about this idea of meaning-making and how important that is to post-traumatic growth. Give us some ideas of how we make meaning of the really terrible shit that\u2019s happened.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yes. Well said. First of all, the phrase that I most dislike is \u201cEverything happens for a reason.\u201d It\u2019s bullshit. So, we can curse on here, right? And I think that it\u2019s such a disservice. Really bad things happen, and there\u2019s no reason. But what meaning-making is is not necessarily about looking for some kind of, like some predivined reason that something happened to us. It\u2019s actually about coming into how do you relate to what happened.<\/span><\/p>\n

I come very often to Viktor Frankl, and his writings after the Holocaust, right? This very deep sense of what happened happened. Sometimes we don\u2019t have an understanding of why it happened, but what we can do is adapt to how has that shaped us. And then, who do I want to be in the world? How do I now continue to shape myself, given that these events happened to me, so that I don\u2019t remain victimized by what happened? Although it\u2019s very tempting to do so, right? Because the victim story\u2014I\u2019m not trying to make it wrong\u2014it\u2019s just basically saying nobody has yet recognized how much this hurt me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once that can finally be recognized and validated, and that\u2019s a huge part of it, then we can move beyond that to say OK, this did happen. It impacted me and shaped me in these ways. It was really painful. It\u2019s a really, really sad, painful, big story, and how do I then take responsibility? It\u2019s very existential, right? How do I take responsibility for my life and the way that I am now going to shape it as I move forward?<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s delicate. It\u2019s delicate because, for example, if you\u2019ve been in an accident and you\u2019ve lost your legs, right? The experience of shaping your life as you move forward is still going to have limitations. It\u2019s still going to limit some possibilities, in some cases, of what you can do, but it\u2019s not going to limit all possibilities. So, there\u2019s very often this dance between being with and accepting what happened and how it\u2019s shaped me, and then with that base of reality. How do I then go, OK\u2014and here is where I do have some capacity to create change or shape my life in a meaningful direction. And now we\u2019re coming back to the word meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, what is a meaningful direction? What\u2019s purposeful? It\u2019s anything that lights you up, that gives you drive, that gives you a sense of, I\u2019m waking up today and this is how I want to spend my day. This is what I feel like is either my sense of \u201cI\u2019ve got worth\u201d or \u201cmy life isn\u2019t for nothing,\u201d right? I\u2019m going to make a difference in this way. I\u2019m important. So, we can start to shape our lives in that direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes that direction is just, literally, how do I take care of myself so that I can not react to my kids, so that I can be loving to the people that I interact with in my day, right? That can be a sufficient meaning. Sometimes it\u2019s, I lost a child, and now I want to create an organization to help other parents who lost a child. It can take so many different forms. Going back to Viktor Frankl, he speaks about meaning-making as having either kind of experiential meaning in the sense that I\u2019m going to climb a fourteener and that gives me meaning, or experiential meaning in the sense of I\u2019m going to raise children and that\u2019s going to give me meaning. Or maybe we get meaning out of creativity, right? I\u2019m going to write a book, or I\u2019m going to build a house. I\u2019m going to create something in the world that gives me a sense of purpose. Then meaning-making can really be about this sense of: who I am is not predetermined by what happened to me, it\u2019s what I do from here.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Now, I want to circle back for a moment. You placed this very interesting emphasis on how we each need to have our pain validated, validated as part of this process, or how that\u2019s so important when our pain is validated that we can move on and move to this next phase of healing and meaning-making. There\u2019s a couple of things I thought around that. One, I was reflecting on how, for the longest time, it was hard for me to validate really deep traumas that other people had, because I just got so freaked out and I couldn\u2019t do it. And I could tell I couldn\u2019t do it. I wish I could, but I couldn\u2019t. I\u2019d love to hear more for all of us who aren\u2019t professional therapists, how we can get better at validating other people when they\u2019re suffering and they\u2019re looking for that from us. How can we not withhold it?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yeah. So, there\u2019s two things that come to mind. One is that it can generally be easier to validate something when you\u2019re not implicated in it, right? If someone\u2019s saying, \u201cYou hurt me.\u201d We all get defensive, or many of us do. It\u2019s much harder to validate our own impact on another person, and I actually want to start there in saying that that, in some ways, is the deepest relational grounding, when we can catch our own tendencies to get defensive or reactive or to deny somebody else\u2019s experience, especially when we\u2019re somehow related to it, right? Related to their experience of hurt. If we can catch where it can trigger shame or it can trigger self-blame or it can trigger self-protection, and if we can slow that process down and say, \u201cHuh, that really hurt you, didn\u2019t it? I really see that.\u201d It may not have been the intention, right? My intention wasn\u2019t to hurt you with what I said, but I really hear that it hurt you, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

So, some of it is really learning how to be\u2014I think about nonviolent communication and of course I speak about that in the book as well, that there is something so important about those interpersonal exchanges, and learning how to be really good with conflict. And to tell you the truth, our world sucks at it. The models that we get out there in terms of politics, and world leaders, we don\u2019t get a lot of really good negotiated conflict models. Often we didn\u2019t get those modeled in our own families, and so if that\u2019s a practice that you as a listener can commit to, look at things like nonviolent communication. Look at practices that can help you recognize when you\u2019re moving into defensiveness and see if you can get curious about what that is about. So, that\u2019s when you\u2019re implicated, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

When we\u2019re not implicated, it can generally be easier to validate somebody else\u2019s pain. But even then, sometimes it can trigger us, right? It can trigger us because we don\u2019t want to hear about what they\u2019ve been through, or it touches off memories of our own pain, or we\u2019re just too busy, right? We\u2019ve got all of these ways that we just don\u2019t see each other, we don\u2019t see each other. We ask \u201cHow are you?\u201d But we don\u2019t really want to hear the answer.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, to validate as a skill involves slowing down, involves really being willing to see and recognizing that sometimes we\u2019re not in that place, right? If we\u2019re not able to be present with another person, then they\u2019re suffering. It\u2019s a sign that we need to either have our own suffering attended to or simply be on retreat, right? There is good place for stepping back until we feel resourced enough to enter into the relational world.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> OK. What about on the other side for a moment? Someone who has had their trauma and suffering validated ad nauseam but doesn\u2019t seem to be feel satisfied. It\u2019s not enough, I still need to tell another person my story one more time. What\u2019s going on there, and what is it that they\u2019re holding on to or looking for?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Yes, yes. I think that\u2019s a rich question right there. One of the layers to it that I hear is what we can think of as the \u2026 It\u2019s a tough term, but I\u2019m going to use it, of the secondary gain of staying attached to the victim story. There is a way in which, if I feel that, to actually let go of that can feel too threatening, because I might lose the access to the other that I\u2019m actually keeping hooked into my story, so that I can keep my story alive, right? So that there is this way in which it becomes this vicious cycle of I\u2019m enlisting someone into a certain codependance with my wound, and as a result I actually don\u2019t have to change my self-identity. So, the third stage of healing is really about letting go and a deep transformation. It\u2019s a grief process and that grief might even be the identity that is hooked in to the trauma story. This is really powerful.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, there\u2019s the cognitive answer for this question, but I also want to offer a somatic answer to this question, because very often what we get validated is our story or even our emotional response, but what gets missed in the attunement is actually how the body has constellated or shaped itself around the wound, and it\u2019s being held in the tissues, it\u2019s being held in the soma. So, until there has been a new felt sense, and until it\u2019s been worked out at that level of how the nervous system and the physiology is actually shaped and repeating itself as almost a repetition compulsion of the trauma state. We need to get resolution at that level, and then we\u2019ll see more freedom of mind. The question you\u2019re asking is, how do we do that?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Well, if you can answer that, please.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> I think that a big part of it is building the courage to go toward the felt sense of the pain. When I say go towards it, I don\u2019t mean simply like sit still and meditate with it on a cushion, but I really mean actually allow yourself to curl in towards it, to shape it, to express it. Let your hands go into fists, let your face contort into the shape of the pain. Let your body curl in, let your whole body actually show what it felt like below the storyline. Then see how your body wants to begin to unwind this, right? If there\u2019s an underlying collapse, how can we reclaim a sense of mobilization and movement in the world? If there\u2019s an underlying freeze, how do we shake this out and let the body begin to release this? So, it\u2019s deep work.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> The last point, Arielle, that I wanted to end on is that in writing about post-traumatic growth, you write about how we can each embrace the hero or heroine story for ourselves in our own lives. I\u2019m wondering if you could, for a moment, if you wouldn\u2019t mind, you can have your imaginal lion with you, you can have whomever you want, I\u2019m just joking with you. Tell me the heroine story version of you in this moment. How would you tell that story?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Oh wow. I\u2019m going to pause on that one for a moment. It\u2019s funny, I\u2019m taking a look in my space that I have right now. I have this picture that my daughter drew. So, my daughter is 18 now. I believe she must have drawn this in elementary school, so she might have been 10 or so when she drew this picture, and it\u2019s of herself of the back of a dragon, flying in front of the sun. So, it\u2019s kind of a cool image to have as a reference point for a moment, but there are a few pieces that come to mind as I reflect on your story.<\/span><\/p>\n

One is that there is absolutely no way that I could have walked this heroine\u2019s journey without the support and those allies, and some of them in real physical form, right? And that the experience, and one of those I tell this story in <\/span>The Post\u2011Traumatic Growth Guidebook<\/span><\/i>. One of those earliest allies came as a perfect stranger, came in as a perfect stranger at a vacation resort, at a time when I was 15 and feeling suicidal. And a perfect stranger who was willing to see me came up and had a healing conversation with me and saw me, and told me that I had a life in front of me that was really important to live, and helped me get a sense that there was something much larger in this universe holding me.\u00a0 And that experience of a single healing conversation\u2014 and I\u2019m not saying I would\u2019ve ended my life at 15\u2014but it turned my life around. It gave me a sense of, if that is possible from a perfect stranger, what else is possible in this world?<\/span><\/p>\n

So, that\u2019s one of those early kind of synchronistic moments that launched an experience of a heroine\u2019s journey. The other is that this deep, ongoing returning to the practice. I was sitting with … It\u2019ll come back to me, but I was sitting with a long-term client yesterday, and something like 10 years of working, and she\u2019s done really, really beautiful work and has a history of just tremendous complex trauma. Her continuing to show up for herself and to do the practices\u2014and sometimes it can feel so slow. Like what\u2019s the point of all of this, am I really making progress? And then there is this tipping point that happens. I think that that\u2019s it, is this commitment to coming back again and again, so that there isn\u2019t just one magical moment, there isn\u2019t one session that\u2019s the big magic bullet healing session, right? It\u2019s the ongoing commitment to a daily practice and a regular returning back to those stuck spots again and again.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have a quote that I love, and maybe I\u2019ll end with this quote, and it comes from the movie <\/span>The<\/span><\/i> Best Exotic Marigold Hotel<\/span><\/i>. I don\u2019t know if you ever saw this movie, but the quote in it, and everything is kind of falling apart, including the hotel. Everything is kind of falling apart, but this Indian man in the hotel in the movie kept saying, \u201cEverything will be all right in the end. And if it\u2019s not all right, it\u2019s not yet the end.\u201d And there\u2019s something touching for me about returning to that. If it\u2019s not all right, then it\u2019s needing something else from me. And what is that, what\u2019s that next step?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> I\u2019ve been speaking with Dr. Arielle Schwartz. She\u2019s the author of the book <\/span>The Post\u2011Traumatic Growth Guidebook<\/span><\/i>, and with Sounds True, Arielle has created a new audio teaching series, it\u2019s called <\/span>Trauma Recovery: A Mind-Body Approach to Becoming Whole<\/span><\/i>. I have to say, I\u2019ve loved being with you, loved the conversation. Thank you so much.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AS:<\/b> Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TS:<\/b> Thank you for listening to <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i>. You can read a full transcript of today\u2019s interview at SoundsTrue.com\/podcast. And if you\u2019re interested, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app, and also if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i> a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

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