- You have emotional trauma,
so you need to get over it.
- I think that's a good idea.
- That's what they said.
- Anytime I tell someone to just stop it.
- Just knock it off.
- Don't do that anymore.
- It's like telling someone to calm down.
Works every time.
This is (beep) therapists say
and we're gonna break it down.
"Mended Light."
(upbeat music)
In this segment, we talk about bad advice
that our fans have gotten from their therapists.
And somebody actually wrote
in that a therapist told them
"You have emotional trauma."
I'm sorry, I'm not laughing
at the emotional trauma,
I'm laughing at the idea that the therapist actually said
that you just need to get over it.
Not great.
- Yeah, I would say that's not a win
because if getting over it worked,
they would've gotten over it.
- Yeah, well, and you don't see a specialist
for them to tell you to get over it.
Like the specialist is there to give you the how.
So first of all, let's talk
about what emotional trauma is
versus good old-fashioned, garden-variety trauma.
A lot of- - Garden-variety trauma?
- Garden-variety trauma.
Yeah, I don't wanna minimize it.
That's terrible, I take it back.
But in the psychological world,
we look at PTSD and we tie it
to trauma is related to a physical threat.
Acts of violence, abuse, near-death experiences,
witnessing the death of somebody else,
witnessing something terrible and violent happening
to somebody else.
And there's a little bit of leeway
in my field for emotional abuse to be traumatic.
That's kind of where the buck stops, right?
At least as far as we disagree.
There are lots of things that can be traumatic.
And we define trauma, not just as
you thought your world was safe
and then you realize that it's not.
Sometimes you're born into trauma.
You never had a safe world. - Right.
- Trauma is you experience something
so distressing that your emotional response
to it now interferes
with your daily living and your daily functioning.
Something that causes such a surge of fear,
such a surge of anguish, such a surge of loss,
or sadness, or anxiety, or stress, and all trauma results
in triggers, reminders of the trauma bring up
these intense feelings over and over and over again.
And because we don't like to feel that way,
we tend to avoid the things that are triggering.
So, trauma leads to triggers,
leads to avoidance, leads to hyper vigilance.
I'm always on edge.
I always think something bad's gonna happen again.
And I can't really relax and enjoy my life
or function the way that I want to, that's trauma.
And there are a lot of things that aren't physical threats
that can be traumatic.
What are some things that come to mind?
I think divorce or an intense breakup can be traumatic.
- Yeah., well, we have to recognize
that it's our nervous system's response
and it's keeping us safe.
Right?
And it isn't just a single experience.
It's so often things that feed into each other.
It's a domino effect.
- Yeah.
- And so you might not even be,
you could be consciously aware of
what your triggers come from,
or you could be completely not consciously aware
of what your triggers come from.
- You just know you're having unpleasant emotions
and you can't figure out why
or you attach the why to something else
that's not the real reason.
- Mm-hmm. - Yeah, sorry.
Did I I steal your thunder? - No, hm-multimedia.
♪ Thunder thunder ♪
So, I think divorce or a break up of a relationship.
I think a loss of a friendship can be traumatic.
I think losing a job, losing a career,
staying at home because of quarantine
and having your whole life upended,
right there, there are lots of things.
Or like the strife that's going on in our society right now,
the culture wars, I think actually can lead
to a type of trauma and anxiety response.
There's lots of things that can be emotional trauma.
So the question then becomes, if we can't just get over it,
if that's not the solution, to just toughen up
and do it, what is?
How do you work through something like that?
- I think you need to first recognize
that you've experienced a trauma.
- Yeah. - Right?
Because you can't fix something
that you won't even recognize that's there.
- Yeah. - And then you need
to recognize the results of that trauma.
Like how it's showing up for you.
There are similarities between people,
but then we all have our
very own unique, different experiences.
Recognize the way it's manifesting in your life
and the coping mechanisms that you have because of it.
- Yeah.
- And so, often we feel harsh self-judgment
when it comes to trauma.
- We're great with that.
- So, so good.
But it's isolating, right, when we judge ourselves
and we feel shame and guilt, it's isolating.
- Yeah. - Let's say,
hypothetically speaking, I grew up in a home
and one of my parents had an anger issue.
- Yeah. - Right?
Maybe I didn't experience physically getting hit,
but there was a lot of anger
and some people are more sensitive than others.
And I have a very sensitive disposition.
So, someone raising their voice
for any reason can be a trigger for me.
- Yeah. - And so,
I learned to survive my childhood by not being seen.
Right?
If I'm not seen, I'm not heard
and then I'm not- - Yelled at.
- I'm not yelled at, I'm not berated.
And I'm not basically told, because in those actions
we're told that you're not lovable.
You are not worth it.
All those things.
You are being rejected.
- And my anger is because of you.
- Right.
And I'm responsible, like I'm the child
and now I'm responsible for the adult's behavior.
Right? - Yeah.
- And so, that coping mechanism is what helps you
to survive your childhood and you think,
well it's not that bad.
Like I didn't grow up in a war zone.
I wasn't beaten.
I wasn't sexually abused.
- And if I may really fast, that I think
is the biggest hindrance to recognizing
that you've experienced a trauma
is what I call the Olympics of suffering.
Right?
That, well, I wasn't sexually assaulted
or I wasn't you know, I didn't have this happen
or that happen. - Right.
- So, it can't be a trauma.
Like that's reserved solely for people
who've gone through this sort of thing.
And the fact is once again,
anything that is distressing enough
to cause an intense fear response,
anxiety response, anguish response
as well as triggers and avoidance,
qualifies as a trauma.
- So, I go through my childhood, my adolescence
being safe by not being seen, by not being heard.
- Yeah.
- And not being worthy of being seen and heard.
- 'Cause if they see me, they're not gonna like me.
- Right.
There's so many different ways.
Like we can take it from there.
But it's not safe to be seen and heard.
Right? - Right.
- And then I go to college,
I'm a professional, I'm successful in my career.
And yet, I can't speak up for myself.
Like I'm in a conference room
and I have a differing opinion.
It's still not safe for me to be seen and heard.
- Yeah. - And then I'm like-
- Or if I try, I have to lead with I'm sorry.
- Right, right.
The apologetic behaviors.
- I'm so sorry, but I just have to say, and then, yeah.
- And so, this can look different for a lot
of different people, but that's just one so simple example.
And then, I internally berate myself.
Why can't I speak up?
Why can't I have a voice?
What's wrong with me?
You know?
And I can see how t's affecting my career.
And then instead of stepping out of that place and saying,
okay, this was my experience.
And with that experience
you don't even need to say,
that makes the adult in my home
that behaved this way, that makes them a bad person.
- Right. - For the most part,
there are people who cause horrific abuse
and they do it on purpose.
And I'm not talking about them.
But for the most part,
parents love and care about their children
and they're doing the best that they can.
- Yeah. - Right?
Even if the best that they can is just a continuation
of the trauma that they experienced earlier in their life.
Right?
- And the treatment they received
and this is how we handle, being a parent is overwhelming.
And being a parent is hard.
At least that's my experience.
And I definitely know, I have moments as a parent
that even though I adore my kids,
I'm like that I need to go undo what I just did.
Like I could see it in my daughter's face
that she feels unworthy
because I was impatient with her
and I need to go make that right.
You know?
And that's a universal parenting experience.
- Yeah.
So, getting to this place of recognizing the trauma,
recognizing how it affected your real life,
recognizing that you had coping mechanisms
from that trauma that served you during that time.
And the biggest challenge with trauma
is we often carry those coping mechanisms
into other areas of our life.
The ones that kept us safe are no longer keeping us safe.
They're keeping us stuck.
- It's like the monkey bars, right?
You have to let go of the rung that got you
to where you are so that you can move forward.
- And so often all
of this is happening in an unconscious level.
And so, we have to bring that consciousness up.
And the challenge with bringing that consciousness up
is we've maybe tried to do it
in the past and it is so painful
and we don't know what to do with those painful experiences.
So, they go right back in the box.
They go, right back buried into the ground.
- Yeah.
- The image I see in my mind when one
of those experiences comes up for me,
it's like, I have this beautiful living room
and in the corner is a pile of dirt
and manure and it stinks.
And I just keep throwing a pretty Persian rug
over that pile of manure.
And I'm like, let's just pretend that that's not there
and it doesn't stink,.
But you like, you can't.
- You can't cover up the smell.
- Yeah.
And so, that's like-
- It's gonna seep through
and it's gonna seep through like
when you have company over
or like some inopportune time.
Similarly, when you've experienced emotional trauma
and you just try and bury it and bury, it's gonna come out
in times that you don't plan,
or times that are inconvenient,
or even damaging for you in your relationships.
It has to be uncovered
and dealt with and addressed and cleaned up.
- Sometimes we get to the place
where we finally recognize it.
We finally recognize how it's affecting our lives.
And then we get stuck in a place of judgment.
And so, we have to step out of that place
of judgment for ourselves.
And we need to show ourselves love,
the love that we never received.
- Yeah. - In that experience, right?
Whether it was intended abuse or not intended abuse,
we felt unloved, unlovable, rejected, unworthy.
Right? - I think some people hesitate
to engage in self-love because it feels cheap.
It feels fake.
Like, well, I'm just here loving myself
'cause no one else will love of me
and that's really sad
and that means that I'm not really lovable
and I'm just trying to make this work.
And the fact is it's quite the opposite.
Self-love is the most reliable type of love.
Because if you put your trust in other people,
they may or may not come through for you in that regard
and the people who were hurtful to you
may not be, I don't see them necessarily
as a reliable judge of character.
We, I think care far too much about what other people think
as if other people's opinions are somehow far more valid
than our own, but everyone's struggling
with their own perspectives,
struggling with their own baggage,
struggling with their own burdens,
and that bleeds into their interactions with other people.
So, just because someone has had a problem
with me doesn't mean I'm the problem.
- So, going back to that place
of showing ourself that love, that worthiness,
that we never felt and doing it in small steps.
And there's a lot, a lot of ways to do that.
But just recognizing that that's what's going on for us
and finding that place.
I've been reading this book called "Eal Love"
and he's got a series of books on real love.
And I really love his perspective
in that all of us are looking for unconditional love.
Like that is a human need that all of us have
and the pains that we experience in our life,
the traumas if you will, comes from that lack
of unconditional love.
Or so we're trying to get love,
but so often it's imitation love, which can look like a lot
of different things or we're trying to protect ourselves.
- Yeah.
- And the question that I love to ask
is 'cause it just feels like a huge ball of yarn
that gets all tangled up and there's tons of knots
and it's like, how do I even undo this?
The question I love to ask myself, is this serving me?
- Yeah. - Right.
Like I can see my own behavior patterns.
Is this serving me?
And going to that place of loving myself,
loving myself for getting through
whatever those hard experiences were.
- Yeah.
- And if it's not serving me,
asking myself like how can I let go of this
and replacing it with something that will serve me?
- Yeah, well, and I think, I love that question.
Does it serve me?
It's similar to a question I do in therapy.
'Cause I don't like to label things as right and wrong.
I like to ask, is it working?
Right?
And I think if we can shift in our mind
from kind of a meritocracy view of love,
like we love people because it-
- Meritocracy.
- Yeah, meritocracy is a form of government
where you get what you deserve.
And you get ahead based on your efforts
and if you fall behind it's based on your lack of effort
and we approach love a lot this way.
- So, like a quid pro quo?
A this for that. - Yeah, yeah.
- You have to earn your worth.
You have to earn your love.
- You have to earn your worth and earn your love,
and therefore it's hard to give love
and it's hard to love yourself
if you don't feel like you've earned it yet.
- Yeah. - But what if
we approach others and ourselves with this idea
of we all have value, we all have worth that's innate.
We're all worthy of love.
And that by loving one another and by loving ourselves
we bring out the best.
It's not we bring out the best and then we get the love.
It's the other way around.
And so, if you feel you haven't earned love.
So what.
- Well, and that's not- - Start by living yourself
because that's how you're gonna get out of the hole.
- And that's not the way real love works.
You don't earn real love. - Right.
'Cause sometimes our kids don't earn it
and we love 'em anyway.
So speaking of coping mechanisms,
we have another video, "Sex Fixes Everything,"
that is something that a therapist said.
- You're saying it doesn't.
- In our relationship it definitely does.
- Whoa.
- Like, subscribe, click the bell, share with your friends.
How do you work through emotional trauma?
How do you get to a place of self-love?
We wanna hear from you in the comments.
What is something terrible that a therapist has said to you
or just bad advice that someone's given you
that you'd like us to respond to
and completely poke holes in?
Let us know in the comments below.
If you've been through a trauma,
we have a free resource, a free video series
that we'd like to send you.
Link for that as in the comments below.
- And remember to keep shining, we need your light.
- [Jonathan] And because we're deliverers,
like that's why they call us Dominoes,
because we deliver.
- [Alicia] What was Dominoes?
- [Jonathan] I'm starting a thing right now.
But here comes the video that we promised.
So, we deliver. - I love videos.
- Yeah, of course. - Especially of you.
- [Jonathan] Aw, when I'm gone do you ever
just like watch videos of me?
- [Alicia] Maybe I should start.