[00:00:35] Vesna: Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna. Today I'm gonna talk about is past trauma holding you back. So I've heard trauma talked about Big T, little T, right? I feel like.
[00:00:47] It's a word that's used so much today and the word carries a lot of power, I feel like, because language and the power of words, uh, shape our reality and change our nervous system and, change our biochemistry. And the word trauma, I guess in history has been associated with things from like post-war trauma, physical trauma to the body, significant accidents and. Big events going on, and then obviously there's childhood trauma, and then there's other things that happen in our life that can be like little T trauma. And I wanna talk about this because I hear about it so much I hear women talking about how that is a real barrier for them, right?
[00:01:27] Because this happened, I'm always gonna be like X, Y, Z, right? And in my work I have. done this for a long time, that I've been witness to many stories of significant abuse and, trauma in childhood for many, you know, not many, but some clients and I wanna show you how they were able to come through it and live a very rich life regardless of their, trauma in the past.
[00:01:51] And so. I hear trauma being used like a label to keep you stuck. I think it's legitimate and people need help healing through trauma when [00:02:00] it happens, but I don't believe that it's holding you back in your life.
[00:02:03] I've heard some really horror stories like horror, horror over the years and I, you know, listen to clients and my patients and I think, wow. And it's in those moments that I really go. Wow, we are really resilient. Like we are really much more powerful.
[00:02:18] ‘ you know, when I see these clients, they're out living their life, creating families, creating business, like doing things in the world and living a rich and expressive life and not repeating patterns that maybe happened in their childhood. So they're living fully. Even though they've had significant trauma, and so I've been, I guess I've had a front row seat to see the power of a human being to overcome trauma and that
[00:02:41] there is something inside of us that helps us to heal from those experiences and still be untouched.
[00:02:49] or not damaged, I should say, to be able to live a full and rich life. So I've seen people struggle with trauma and I've seen people thrive with trauma.
[00:02:57] So let's talk about it. So first of all, when we are talking a lot about trauma and we're identifying with it a lot and we, you know, you're on social media and you are chatting about it, or you're chatting about it with friends, or you're getting some help about it, you know, 10 years on or whatever it is.
[00:03:13] When we talk about and, uh, bring up memories of our trauma,
[00:03:19] we are using the power of thought to feel that experience in this present day moment So our reality is created from the inside out, right through the power of thought. This energy of thought. We can think of something. And have a complete experience of it in our body, like it's actually happening.
[00:03:39] And so when we talk about it and we bring it up and we revisit it or we dwell on it, then we are going to be stimulating that stress response in the body. Like we are still in that moment of trauma back 10, 20, 30 years ago. Okay. You know, talking about things and, and bringing them up constantly [00:04:00] is not helping you to move forward.
[00:04:01] That's one thing that I wanna say, because it's important to really see the inside out experience of our life that
[00:04:07] we can relive trauma
[00:04:09] by thinking about it
[00:04:10] and seeing it in our mind's eye
[00:04:12] and talking about it. Right, and I actually heard something the other day by Dr. Joe Dispenza. He was saying on an invi, which I thought was fascinating, and when I heard it, I thought, Hmm, that makes kind of sense.
[00:04:24] there was some research and they found that 50% of our memories are not accurate, right? So 50% is, we've embellished it. We've used our imagination to make it worse than what it seems, right? And I'm not, I'm not marginalized anyone's trauma here, by no means, please, I know this is a sensitive subject, but sometimes if we look back at times of.
[00:04:44] Hard times. Like I know in my hard times I look back and it feels, oh God, that was so hard. But I'm sure that I'm embellishing some moments. You know? Like I got through that, I came through the other side completely fine. Like, but when I look back on it, I get that feeling of that was so hard. Right? And, um, anyway, this study showed that we actually trigger a lot of our imagination.
[00:05:05] and our memories aren't a hundred percent accurate, okay? Because of the feelings that we can create in through the power of thought.
[00:05:11] The second thing to acknowledge is that
[00:05:13] trauma is real
[00:05:15] but it's not a life sentence. So really acknowledging trauma, getting the help that you need in those times is a hundred percent important, right? we need to, talk about it, express our emotions. We need to find a way to heal through that process.
[00:05:30] But afterwards, you know, it's not. Necessarily our destiny or a life sentence that we are going to suffer because of our trauma. And I see many people who have, as I said, significant trauma that go on to live happy lives and they have broken the patterns of their past. Right? So people, you know, I've seen dealt with men who have had childhood trauma, from their parents and.
[00:05:56] Have made a different decision when they have their own families. Right. And quite [00:06:00] easily. Right. And this, and I think this comes down to the power of a new state of mind. Our ability to have fresh thinking around something. So not about, willpower or forcing a behavior like we are never gonna be like our parents.
[00:06:13] And trying to make that like every day you have to remind yourself, I'm not gonna show up like that. But actually they've entered a new state of mind or they've had fresh thinking and because they have that awareness, it's easy for them to not repeat the patterns of their past.
[00:06:27] And I think that's really huge. Right? So the amount of people that I've spoken to that have had that awareness, right, that they've seen that, you know, that's how my childhood was. I'm never going to repeat those patterns. And it wasn't something they struggled with because they had so much awareness around it.
[00:06:41] So I think. What's important to realize is that trauma is not a life sentence. It is something that's happened in the past, but it doesn't predict your destiny.
[00:06:49] Trauma and identity is the next point that I wanna talk about. Trauma is something that happened to you. It's not who you are. some of the stuff that I hear online is that people really identifying and trying so hard to work through, you know, trauma for many, many years. And I had a client who had significant trauma in childhood, significant, and had issues with intimacy later on in life. And the advice given to this person was, just, um, the times when you are going to be intimate with your partner then those are the times that, you know, just breathe deeply and in your mind.
[00:07:25] Just have this mantra, it's all okay. It's all okay. I can't remember what it was, but remember thinking, listening to this thinking, wow, you're so not in the present moment. Like, how could you be intimate? Like that you're in your head the whole time. And of course it felt awkward for her and it felt uncomfortable.
[00:07:38] And then she was like, oh, it's because of my trauma that I can't do this. And I was like, I just don't think that's maybe the right advice. Right? Like, and we really talked about it and she could see how that was potentially an issue being in your head. And then the next time I spoke to this person, she had a completely different experience.
[00:07:54] Right. And I think that sometimes information that we. Take [00:08:00] in because we wanna feel better, right? We wanna move past a point in our life. We feel stuck. We dunno what the step is. Next step is, or whatev, we are feeling very uncomfortable emotions. Or maybe we see our patterns and we wonder why we can't break them.
[00:08:12] But maybe along the way we've been given advice that probably isn't the best advice,
[00:08:16] And maybe that's caused us to go
[00:08:18] so far deep into this trauma
[00:08:21] that we identify with it
[00:08:23] and it feels immovable.
[00:08:25] It feels permanent. But maybe it's just a shift in thinking that could be enough to pull you out of that kind of stuckness, to pull you out of that pattern, right?
[00:08:35] To help you to see the way forward.
[00:08:38] The thing to remember is that we are wired for change, right? So we can't stay the same. We would have to work very hard to try and stay the same. We are absolutely wired for change, right? Neuroplasticity. Our brain is constantly rewiring. Even after trauma. We have new experiences. We get. Insights along the way, insights that gives us fresh thinking, that gives us a new perspective So we can carry around a lot of old thinking about what is keeping us stuck in life. That's just old thinking. Like it's an old way of seeing something, you know, just like we attach to beliefs. It's just a very old way of seeing something, which we don't recognize because that thinking's always there, right?
[00:09:16] So sometimes we get this really layered thinking that we don't see things clearly. But we have the ability to have insights and new states of mind and fresh thought to see things in a different way, and therefore have a different experience and therefore, break patterns, break beliefs, break old habits.
[00:09:33] Break out of what's been keeping us stuck maybe for years through the power of fresh thinking or through the power of thought, right? So really our mind is always changing and we always have new possibility available to us. Regardless of what happened in the past, and I think a lot of, you know, Freudian psychology was the baseline for that.
[00:09:56] You know, your childhood determines your life. Right. And I [00:10:00] just have not seen that to be true in the close relationships that I've had with patients and clients over the years. I've not found that to be true. Whatever's happened in the past, I think that it's always a hundred percent it's always important to deal with any trauma or any hurts or anything that's happened from the past, whether in that moment or anything that comes up next, deal with it in the moment, or, you know, get the proper care for it.
[00:10:22] But as you're moving out of that, really look at. You know the possibility of that's not going to keep you stuck, you are going to see things differently. You're gonna have a new state of mind, and you are gonna have a different future regardless of what happened in your past.
[00:10:35] It is possible to have trauma
[00:10:37] and live peacefully now you don't have to fix every thought or every memory that comes up. They will come up when you look at, you know, soldiers who come back from war with PTSD, the loud noises, and it triggers a memory, right?
[00:10:49] And then they understand that their mind is, flagging that noise just to keep them safe. Right, because it, it did that during times of war. And then when it hears it again, it's just a, a habit, a wiring that happened to keep them safe and then each time they acknowledge that they are safe, eventually that triggering doesn't happen.
[00:11:09] But we don't need to fix our memories. We don't need to fix every thought that we have. We need to understand that in new states of mind arise, we can get fresh thinking, we can get insights, and that will move us forward without years of processing.
