You are listening to Take Out Therapy, speedy sessions for everyday problems. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter. In my role as a private practice therapist, I don't really just tell people what to do, but in this podcast, I'm doing things differently.
In the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations. Keep listening for awesome tips on how to live a more intentional and less reactive life. Clearly, this is not a substitute for therapy, but I guarantee it might help you.
Listen up. Hi, guys. Thanks for tuning in today.
Boy, did I have to really get my mojo straight before I recorded my podcast this week. It's been like pulling teeth to get things done. Is anybody else feeling that way? As I record this, we're in the middle of ... It's April 2020.
It's April 20th, 2020, when I'm recording this, actually, and we're in the middle of a worldwide health crisis, this pandemic, it's crazy stuff. Every one of us is going through something so differently, and that's something that's become very clear to me, and also, this is a very traumatic time. No matter who you are, what you're doing, this is very traumatic.
I will not go into all the different elements of trauma today because we're going to play a game, but what I will say is that trauma is just adverse stress, frankly, as a therapist. Yes, I know that's not what the book says. Trauma is adverse stress.
Life-affecting adverse stress, ding, ding. Okay, so just keep that in mind, and human beings respond to trauma. We just do, and there's lots that goes into that because we respond to trauma based on how we grew up and what our circumstances are.
All kinds of interesting stuff, situations in our lives. We could do a whole thing on that, but today, like I said, we're going to play a game. So today's episode is a little game called, What's Your Trauma Response? I've gotten really creative on this one.
Yeah, so I kind of realized, I had a light bulb moment that basically I was totally processing the fact that the pandemic is completely traumatic to everyone in so many different ways. I was not, unfortunately, yet processing the fact that I as well was in that trauma, which is a mistake that sometimes helpers get into, right? But I had a very lovely light bulb moment, and I was like, oh, this is a trauma response. So the reason it's really important to kind of understand that you're in a trauma response and see what that looks like is because you might be behaving in ways that are not helpful to you or having lines of thinking or feelings that are really not helpful to you.
And that might be really disintegrating your mental health, frankly, or just in my case, have you just behaving badly. So let's play the game. What's your trauma response? And then you can kind of see where you're at.
And I'll totally tell you where I'm at. And it's great to know because then we can work on it, right, if we need to. And sometimes we're okay with where we are, but just knowing is a good plan.
And the way we're going to do this is that I have these organized into Sesame Street characters. So today you're going to find out what your trauma response is based on your Sesame Street character type. Are you ready for this? Okay.
So there's, I'm going to talk about four different ways that we deal with trauma in kind of clumps. And I'm not going to get into the why we behave that way or any of that. Let's just play the game, right? Oscar the Grouch is my first trauma response.
So sometimes when things are very hard, right, Oscar the Grouch has a lot of anger, maybe even bordering on rage, right? Oscar is going to close that lid and pull away. You know, maybe there's more fear there or just like a really guarded feeling, right? And also kind of this, what I typically call like the messy type, not messy as a judgment, but messy as a place to be, like unorganized kind of messy. There's like this very protective thing that happens.
So I'll just raise my hand and tell you right now that I have recently realized I am Oscar the Grouch in trauma. And I'm like, oh, this is what's happening. So it's so great to know that because now I can be like, okay, this is a trauma response, right? And let me just remind you that a trauma response is basically when your body is so stressed out or you're psychologically so stressed out, right, adverse stress, that your body thinks you're literally unsafe a lot of the time.
And so it does all this stuff inside there that you really don't want to have happening on a fairly continual basis when you're actually like not terribly or like physically unsafe. Okay? And so that's kind of like a trauma response. So we don't want to keep this whole thing going where our body thinks we're really unsafe.
We want to be aware of the fact that we're in trauma and work from there. Does that make sense? So if you relate to Oscar the Grouch, what I'm telling you is that you can just kind of see that as the trauma response and respond to it accordingly. Right? So maybe you're not Oscar the Grouch and you didn't relate to those things.
Perhaps you are Elmo. Is your trauma response to be kind of like, I'll just name a bunch of traits here, like needy or unsure of things or yourself, like kind of this, like maybe disempowered state of things, feeling like kind of inadequate or maybe even like clingy, right? Or overly sad or frankly, appropriately sad, right? Or perhaps, you know, Elmo, he's always like, oh dear, you know, is that going to be safe? And, you know, he's like really always kind of thinks of the worst case scenario and reminds us of that, right? Elmo is very, you know, he's pretty emotional little fella. So are you Elmo? Do you have some of these traits, right? As a response to trauma, meaning not normally, you don't really operate from this place and maybe it's kind of unusual that all of a sudden you're like Elmo and you're kind of like scratching your head going, what's up with you? This could help you kind of explain that.
Or maybe you're like those little chemistry dudes on, you know, the Muppets, the, I looked it up, Bunsen and Beaker, those guys, right? They're just like, put this over here, put this over here. Things are blowing up, right? And they are denying and minimizing, right? And like, you know, I'll go into more traits, but sometimes people in trauma are sort of like they distract themselves or others from it purposefully. Like let's not look at that.
Look over here, right? Maybe some numbing. I think a lot of people are numbing right now and I got no judgment, friends. I got no judgment.
However, right, the whole point of kind of talking about this is like, if that feels to you or like that resonates that that's a trauma response, then maybe, right, you would want to take a look at that and see like, oh, do I need to change my behavior there? Right. Or, you know, distracting or just like minimizing or I also think of this kind of trauma response as a very like self-focused or self-protective place to be, which, hello, totally appropriate, right? There's no like, by the way, there's no right or wrong response. I'll just be frank with you.
Sometimes we have a lot of these responses to hard things, right? And then, you know, and then another part of us kind of pokes out and it's more like that big bird piece, right? That feeling things deeply, just feeling it all, being willing to go through this together or separately or whatever, just willing like this, okay, this is happening. You know, having a little bit of grace, meaning an acceptance that this shit is not going to be perfect. Did you guys hear Brene Brown's podcast on the FFT? If not, just run and do that, please.
She's so, you know, I'm a total fangirl. Anywho, there's also like a lot of room here for self-kindness. And if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, just maybe Google it.
No, I have an episode, I think, on self-compassion. I touch on it in almost every one of my episodes because it's kind of important to be nice to yourself, friends. So let's do that, okay? Let's understand that we are in trauma, very personal, right? Very different for each of us and very real trauma.
And that some of our responses have more to do with kind of the past and what we've been through versus like today and what's happening. Like really, I don't, to be honest, I will self-disclose and say I probably don't need to be so angry right now. I could probably lose some of that and things would feel a lot lighter.
Yeah, that's a trauma response is to like that anger. Dude, like that protects, there is a purpose to every thing that we're dealing with and going through, but just having the emotional maturity, right, to just see what it is and see that that's a response for trauma and know that that's what's happening. And just like love yourself in that, right? Like never forget that frankly, we all got here on our own little path and like shit happened, right? And even as grownups, sometimes we behave inappropriately, okay? So we can all just cop to that, know that we're doing it, love ourselves despite it and just work with it, right? And hopefully like the people in my life after this, hopefully they won't think I'm batshit crazy, right? That is my best case scenario.
No, it's, you know, it's, we're all doing our best, you guys, we're all doing our very best in this crazy, crazy time of our life. And I'm here with you and I see you and just keep doing your best. I'll be here.
All right. Thanks for listening. Hey, before you go, I just want to tell you a few more ways that I can provide you with the content you might be looking for.
If you're somebody who deals with overthinking, I actually have a free downloadable guide on my website about how to deal with overthinking. I also have a guide you can download that helps people who are thinking about exploring the therapy process and it helps go from tip to tail of like, how do you hire a therapist? What kind of therapy do you need? And then just so you know, I'm all over my social media. I really enjoy providing good content on social media.
So I'm on Facebook and Instagram and it's Rebecca Hunter MSW. And then within Facebook, I offer a private group for people who are interested in kind of learning the nuts and bolts of how to recover from anxiety. So just a reminder, I have my podcast, but I'm also here for people in a lot of different ways and just trying to get a lot of information out there.
So thanks for listening. You are listening to take out therapy, speedy sessions for everyday problems. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter.
In my role as a private practice therapist, I don't really just tell people what to do, but in this podcast, I'm doing things differently. In the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations. Keep listening for awesome tips on how to live a more intentional and less reactive life.
Clearly this is not a substitute for therapy, but I guarantee it might help you listen up.
