Trauma Relief: From Scared and Timid to Calm and Confident

 Real Skills Workshop - Community Event


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Trauma Relief: From Scared and Timid to Calm and Confident

Real Skills Workshop: Bring Relief

Hosts: Rick Wilkes (@Rick) and Cathy Vartuli (@Cathy)

Recorded Sunday, May 23, 2021

:point_right: Replay is below

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Is Trauma Impacting Me? How Can I Tell?

:point_right: Replay is below

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Here’s the Reprogram Your Primitive Brain course mentioned in the video, too:

When we see it, we can’t NOT see it. And trauma-impacted behavior is everywhere! Including in our own lives.

Why? We’re human. We are designed to deal with life – the big shocks as well as the WHAT-THE?!? moments.

We’re also designed to heal those traumas – and we’re not as good at that right now as we need to be individuals, families, communities, and cultures.

Cathy and I recorded a video. You can watch it above.

…And if you’re too busy right now, two of the takeaways are:

  1. If you’ve avoiding doing something that really matters to you, there’s probably trauma impeding your action.

  2. If you react intensely – 2x or 10x as intensely as a situation objectively warrants – then trauma is acting as an amplifier and magnifier in your body-mind, triggering your primitive brain into intense fight-flight-freeze.

There’s more. It’s worth watching. (12 minutes).

And… I so wish that when I realized that I was avoiding what mattered and over-reacting from trauma that there was some… workshop… where I could gain some skill at clearing the traumas that impacted me.

If that is you, you’re in luck! This Sunday, Cathy and I will spend 90 minutes helping you grow in skill at shifting the traumas that are still impacting you.

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Do we learn through trauma?

Yes, we learn through trauma.

  • We learn what to fear
  • We learn what to avoid
  • We learn our limits

Sadly, trauma can leave us scared and timid. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

You see, in animal behavior studies (including with humans), it’s true that trauma teaches us. Trauma HEALING also teaches us – how we can survive, how we can manage, how strong we actually are.

If you’re reading this, I am imagining you’ve had some trauma in your lives. I mean, who hasn’t?

I’m also imagining that some of that trauma still feels “alive” in you now, impacting what you are willing to do… and willing to even consider trying!

Trauma from even decades past, if unhealed (unfrozen, unresolved) can make us believe we’re far less capable than we are.

Is that true for you? Is it time to change those patterns?

If so, you’re in luck!

:point_right: Replay is below

:point_right: Get your Real Skills Workshop 1-Year Pass Here

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Trauma Relief: From Scared and Timid to Calm and Confident - Session Recording

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We welcome your insights, ah-ha’s, and sharing. Please! Click [Reply]

Click for Computer Generated Transcript

Trauma Relief: From Scared and Timid to Calm and Confident

[00:00:10] Welcome everyone. Today’s real skills. Workshop is trauma relief from scared and timid to calm and confident, like would say from the journey from scared and timid to calm and confident. And I want to say first welcome. And also that, you know, as I think about myself through my life, up until the time that someone said, oh, sounds it feels like, you know, a lot of what’s going on for you is trauma.

[00:00:42] And I was like, what? I was never in a car accident. Um, it really pleases me that so many spaces are starting to. I’m into an awareness of Brahma. And while it hasn’t necessarily extended to the workplace and others, uh, trauma informed for understanding yourself and like, why did I do that? Why do I feel so intense about this?

[00:01:09] And also being able to see people in your family and your community and your workplace and the world, and recognize, recognize the dynamics that go on for us as humans. I’m rick@thrivingnow.center. If you want to discuss this and the, and the real skills, and I’m here with Kathy Vartuli, um, who has been exploring Fama and the primitive brain with us and with me for, um, quite some time.

[00:01:41] Yeah, 14 years now, or something like that. It’s a real privilege to be here with you and with our community. Yeah. And I just want to honor each of you that are here. I think a lot of times we forget to acknowledge how much we’re doing, and this is a Sunday afternoon. I don’t know about where you are, but here it’s a beautiful, lovely afternoon and, you know, sunshine and we can be out a little bit more.

[00:02:06] And you’re choosing to spend your time here with us exploring some of the stuff that a lot of people avoid. And Rick and I are going to talk more about that a little bit. What would people like to avoid? What’s uncomfortable, you know, like the things that are timid, we not very confident we don’t have, uh, we’ve, you know, we’re, we’re going into them or like, oh, I’m not sure.

[00:02:27] We’d like to avoid those feelings. It’s much more comfortable to sit on the couch and watch reruns of chopped or whatever your favorite show is. That’s my latest escape is chopped watching people try to make weird recipes that have a jalapeno lollipops or whatever, but. The fact that you’re here, be willing to go a little deeper, exploring how you can help give yourself support and help be there for others.

[00:02:52] I know it helps me so much as I go through the world. I work as an engineer as well, and I’m like, oh, this person is having some blocks around this. It just, it lets me walk through the world much more effectively. My mom was moving homes and she’s definitely in survival brain a lot of the time. And I can like, oh, this isn’t really about me.

[00:03:10] She’s not even seeing me right now. So the work you’re doing right now is so important. And I used to think that if I just tapped enough and cleared enough, I was going to be like, oh, nothing bothers me anymore. It doesn’t happen that way. I’ve been going through life and I’m so much more resilient than I ever was at a couple of years ago.

[00:03:30] Some really big things happened to me. And I noticed I’m really timid in areas that I was never timid before. And so we go through life and while we would, like, I do think we can recover quicker. Life sometimes does happen. And I think I got through those experiences as much. More solidly, partly because I had beautiful help and support from Rick and other people.

[00:03:52] But partly because I knew how to heal it and I have to, I’m like, oh no, I don’t have, I already did this. I already dusted last week. Why am I having to dust again today? And we do have, Rick talks a lot about big T traumas and small T traumas and our survival brain. Anytime it thinks it’s, it’s facing something more than it knows how to handle experiences.

[00:04:16] That is trauma. It can’t run away. It can’t fight. It’s just like, I don’t know what to do. I’m going to die. And that it stores as trauma and we all have experiences. Some of them stick and some don’t rework and were talking about this before the call. Like some people have a car accident and they walk away fine and other person can have a small car accident and they’re afraid to get in a car.

[00:04:39] Again. We don’t always know what’s going to stick partly it’s on our level of resiliency in a given day. Like if I’ve had a, Zilliant like. You know, my mother yelled at me, the dog ran away that the air conditioning stopped working. And then I had a car, a small car accident. I’m much more likely to be overwhelmed then on a day where yeah.

[00:04:57] Things are kind of going well, you know, depends on our resiliency. It depends on what it reminds us of. And we’re going to dive into that a little more, give you the skills and let the concepts. So as thing as life happens, you’re able to get, oh, okay. How can I heal this? How can I feel more confident? How can I choose how I want to move forward?

[00:05:17] So I just want to honor you. If you’re here, pat yourself on the back, give yourself like a attaboy, because we don’t do that very often. And this really you rock that you’re here. I am so impressed that you’re spending your time with us and choosing to make your life better. Being able to recognize when we’re having a trauma response.

[00:05:38] Um, even if it’s downstream like, oh, this morning that was a trauma response and having a skill and a skill means that we can learn it, that we can have enough of a concept of it, like, oh, this isn’t wrote. Um, but it is on, on many ways, pretty straight forward. And then we’re going to try to make it that way.

[00:06:01] We’re continuing to try to refine that. Um, so a real skill, again, is something that you apply that really makes your life have an opportunity to thrive, to expand and express yourself. It’s um, and yes, so we’re going to be learning and we’re going to be trying to maintain a space that is. Well regulating.

[00:06:30] Now, what that means is that together we’re together, all of us. And if you look at the gallery view for a moment, if that is okay for you, we have people from around the world that are joining in this journey. Every single one of us have enough interest in trauma and what it has meant to us and what it can do for us as we develop more of a skill around it to be here and be here together.

[00:07:03] And while it looks like a bunch of squares, I’d like us to take a moment and imagine that we’re in a circle. And the reason I love the geometry of a circle is that it’s not Kathy and I up on stage. That is not our energy about we, we want to facilitate and support our community in developing this. Your wisdom, your past experiences matter.

[00:07:30] That’s why we have a community forum@bribingnow.center. Um, and so I want each of us to feel like your presence, your life experience, the wisdom that can flow through you and to you now and in the future matters. And as a circle, um, we expand and we can adjust, um, That kind of sets the energetic and we’re learning today and we’re going to be learning in our bodies and in our minds that, you know, the first, some of the first and most impactful learning that we get is from our primitive brain.

[00:08:13] Brahma is a way that we learn. We learn what to fear. Rama is a way that we learn what to fear and what our limits are. And if there’s a real challenge with that way of learning is that sometimes it carries on and sticks in a way that really impacts our freedom. And that’s why having this skill. It makes such a difference.

[00:08:45] You want to talk a little bit about what we’re going to be, what you know about the skill and, and, and helping us ground and, and doing a little tapping to you. Yeah, I just want to emphasize with trauma is not the only way we can learn, but it’s kind of the, like the kid is running into the park into the street or the kid is sticking his finger in the electric socket kind of level of learning where our system is like, no, you cannot do this really overwhelmed.

[00:09:12] We can learn. In other ways, it doesn’t have to be traumatic. Um, and it’s, it’s kind of the backup system. One of the problems is as we exercise different muscles, we can exercise learning by cognitive function by habit, by watching those around us, where our mirror neurons pick things up, you can also practice learning by trauma as, and if we are mirror, neurons can learn that from my mother has a lot of trauma.

[00:09:38] I judge. I learned early on to learn by trauma because that’s what I was seeing. So whatever muscles were practicing, those are the ones that are getting it stronger. If our system like the neuropathways, if we have lots of repeated trauma or that’s the only way we’re being taught, um, then those, those become the neural pathways that become strong.

[00:10:02] And someone in the chat was talking about graduate school and learning, and it can be. Learning can be really beautiful and fun and exciting and curious, or it can be very shaming and degrading and you know, part of it depends on those around us, how they’re treating us, how, like you should know that. How did you not know that?

[00:10:22] I, you know, like the very critical staff? Yes. Or okay, of course you wouldn’t know that. Let me explain it to you. And we also internalize it and we have our own internal dialogue too. Sometimes I can traumatize myself, quote, unquote, like you should know that. How can you, like, you know, no one else is here, but I’m creating, I’m going to sliding down those neuropathways.

[00:10:45] So if, yeah. Let’s you want to do a little tapping? Yeah. So we use an energy technology, emotional technology called EFT tapping. Um, that’s been around for a few decades. There’s lots of research around it. You can Google that, um, at dot com slash mapping. You can find the tapping points and the chart. We’re not going to be teaching copying, but it’s simple enough that you could just watch what Kathy and I are doing repeat after us.

[00:11:14] Um, you’re welcome to change the names. We use acupuncture, acupressure points, but we use them in a different way to stimulate. We call them natural comfort points. And the reason being is that when you’re touching on something that is kind of stuck in your system as a, uh, unresolved trauma, um, by tuning into it, your body goes through this and we go, I accept mine and it’s okay.

[00:11:44] And that was horrible. And we, we tap on these points and, um, yeah, so we, um, you want to start with that around, it’s officially this, you know,

[00:12:03] That feeling of being scared. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of shame often when we’re scared, our culture really rewards confident people. And when I know when I feel overwhelmed or ashamed, I often shame myself for feeling overwhelmed and shamed. So I’d love to just start there if that’s okay. So I might, you all, if you, if it’s good for your body, all of this is the choice.

[00:12:27] We’re not ordering you to do anything. Please listen to you. What’s right for you. But if it feels okay to you, take a nice gentle breath.

[00:12:38] What we’re doing is a very intentional biofeedback loop. If you take a slow gentle breath, and I love making noise, when I exhale that vibrates the Vegas nerve, those are all things that you wouldn’t do. If a bear was chasing you, if a bear was about to swipe you with this clause, you wouldn’t be going.

[00:12:59] So I think we’re going to weave in with our tapping different trauma, uh, coping responses. If you have a glass of water nearby, also, if a bear is chasing you, you would’ve stopped and take a nice sip, cool sip of water. You would be running or a cup of warm tea. So those are, we don’t have control necessarily over, directly over our heartbeat.

[00:13:23] Most of us don’t or a blood pressure, or whether we sweat or not, those are all trauma response, but we do have, uh, ability to control how fast her breathing, how deeply we’re breathing, whether we’re sipping or eating something. A lot of people eat food when they’re traumatized to try to calm themselves down again, bear chasing you, not going to stop to eat something.

[00:13:44] So those are just little ways you can signal to your body that you’re, if you can calm a little bit. So I invite you to take another nice, slow, deep breath.

[00:13:56] Nice. And if you want to look around the room and notice, let your survival brain look, cause it’s always scanning for danger. Please notice there’s no lions, tigers bears. Assuming that that is the case. If there are like live dangerous lions, tigers or bears, please leave the room and call us back when you’re in a safe space, karate chop, even though I have a lot of shame around this, I know I have a lot of shame around this.

[00:14:26] I should be more confident. I should be more confident. I should learn faster. I should learn faster. I should be able to do these things better. I should be able to do these things better right away, right away. And I’m not. And I don’t always, maybe I’m okay. Anyway, I just pause for a moment and let that sink in.

[00:14:54] Maybe I’m okay. Anyway,

[00:15:00] even though they don’t act like I’m okay. Even though they don’t or didn’t act like I was okay and they kind of shamed me and they shamed me, they haven’t had my lived experiences. They have not had my lived experiences and they don’t know what I’m experiencing and they don’t know what I’m experiencing in my body and mind right now.

[00:15:29] I think sometimes they think they know exactly what’s going on. Sometimes they act like they know exactly what’s going on. It doesn’t have a clue. They don’t have work top of the head. They act like I should know more. They act like I should know more eyebrow. They act like I should have more confidence.

[00:15:54] They act like I should be, have more confidence side of the eye and I should learn faster. I should learn faster. You better be calm under the nose. And I feel ashamed,

[00:16:15] Tim, what if I sent love to the part of me that feels ashamed? What if I felt sent love to the part of me that feels ashamed collarbone? What if I let that part know it’s doing a really good job? What if I let that part of me know that it’s doing a really good job, even if it doesn’t believe it under the arm, just because other people don’t understand.

[00:16:42] Just because other people do not understand, just like happy me. I am doing the best I can. I am doing the best I can. And that’s pretty wonderful and that’s pretty wonderful. Take a nice deep breath. And if you have, yeah, that’s coming up, I love the Ebbets. Um, or other thoughts or memories coming up. This is a great time to jot them down.

[00:17:10] Also, something you can’t do in a bear is chasing you, but those, uh, we tend to avoid places that we feel uncomfortable. We talked about that a little bit earlier while they’re floating near the surface. If you can write them down, that will give you some leverage to identify them and do a little tapping on them later and often these, what are, yeah, but I can’t have more confidence yet, but he was really mad yet.

[00:17:33] Like some of the things, the habits or the like, I. Tapped. I said the words, but these re these, uh, reactions are coming up. These, no, that’s not for me coming up or some memory is that time. I was three and I spilled grape juice all over the carpet. I was obviously a bad child, like whatever that is writing those down and doing a little bit of tapping can start opening doorways to healing because a lot of times we’re stuck in that freezer response.

[00:18:00] We’re stuck in the shame and it’s not moving. And if we do a little bit of tapping, it starts relaxing. And one of my favorite things that we’re teaching is if you’re trying to go from LA to New York and you don’t like where you’re at, you’re heading to, if you change your trajectory even a little bit, a few degrees, you can end up someplace very different.

[00:18:21] So if we can go from a 10 intensity to a 9.9, our system is learning to heal and it has room to start kind of moving and shifting that. So even if it doesn’t feel like it’s shifting a lot, even a little bit of change can make a huge difference. And so I want to say that as part of the journey from scared and timid to calm and confident, what you’re, what we’re doing right now is, is what I did when I was learning capping.

[00:18:56] I would listen and I would tap along with other people that are touching on things. Some of them really different that I didn’t have any relation to, but one of them was tapping. I would notice something like I’d get, like during that tapping, I got a flash of a reaction that I had this morning and my reaction was much stronger, um, to the situation than it really called for.

[00:19:27] Now. That’s a clue if we look at. At some of the clues, Kathy and I did a separate video. Um, that’s out there on the center about, um, how can I tell if drama is impacting me? And one of the ways is like, is my reaction outsized, you know? And, um, one of the people in the chat that I don’t feel like I’m doing the best that I can useful, it could be that like saying I’m doing the best that I can is triggering for you.

[00:20:06] Like, honestly, that’s triggering for me, I’m a reformer, you know, it’s, it’s like being an alcoholic at a, at a, a former alcoholic at a party where everyone’s drinking and you’re not, um, perfectionists don’t really, and people who really were like, I got to do the best I can. I got it the best I can, like that kind of ribbon Rama response.

[00:20:31] I need to do the best that I can and be figuring it’s really useful. And so even though it doesn’t fit our response to it, this is how we start making progress on it. I’d like you to do a tapping on right. I just wanted to add something about doing the best we can. So Jean, I think like Rick said the perfectionist in us, we always put the pedal to the metal.

[00:21:00] We can do the best that we can do some amazing feet and we’re still like I could have improved that. And what really caught my attention. I always felt like I should work harder. And then in, uh, four years ago I almost died. I worked so hard that I was in ICU for. For 21 days, I almost died and I was there trying to work more.

[00:21:20] I kept, when I would come out of the coma, I would like talk about work. I’m like, literally I was doing so much, my body was dying and my brain was trying to drive me in that I did a lot of work after that because I was like, wow, that’s, there’s, there’s something dry. You know, I think that some of us get caught up in that always having to do better.

[00:21:39] And I really do think we are doing the best we can in any given moment. So I just wanted to add that, that caught my attention of like, wow, I can drive myself to death and I’m still like literally to death and not re not feel that I was doing a good enough job. And I wasn’t, that’s a trauma clue. That’s another one of those clues that a lot of us have and, or have had, um, yeah, I’d like to, um, to do a tapping on.

[00:22:09] How we react. And like, if you take a moment and if you’re aware of like how trauma has impacted you in a, particularly in a, in a, in a certain kind of situation, like you look at yourself and you’re like, oh, I can’t stand the way that I react in that situation. Like, I really can’t stand it. It’s one of the things that this work, this approach is we have to, it’s useful.

[00:22:48] I’ve found it useful with clients and myself, the start with like how we really feel about ourselves in a, in a situation. Like I really can’t stand Rick when he gets that angry over someone putting up a fence, it’s like, Wait. So like right now here’s a turning red, I’m having a reaction. I’m thinking of myself this morning.

[00:23:18] One of our neighbors is putting up a fence. They’re going to block off our kids from playing in the Creek on their property now. That’s it sucks. Okay. There’s no part of it. That’s great. But it’s like a two or three. It’s not a nine, but I get it. I I’m, I’m following my trauma’s bag, but I really, before I, before I try to call myself about, oh, it’s okay.

[00:23:44] It’s not a big deal. I’ve got a problem at work because it’s a nine reaction. And I hate that. Then maybe you run from it. Maybe you despise yourself. You really can’t stand that. You don’t have your shit together. Um, whatever it is, it’s really useful to tap on that. I find so zero to 10. How do you feel about that reaction you’re having, like, what’s the word that you would describe hate contempt?

[00:24:24] Um, this paced, you know, like frustrated, whatever it is and zero to 10. How big is that feeling? Like? Mine’s pretty big and it’s like discussed and an eight. Okay. Now this came up this morning, fresh. Wasn’t expecting this little drama thing to come up. I’ll go for a walk with my family. Right. And I was just,

[00:24:59] this is, this is the journey because I could scared when we’re scared. Sometimes we get angry. Sometimes we get, you know, we can avoid, but we can also get like really ridiculously angry and start having revenge thoughts and things like that. Yeah. Even though I, I don’t like my reaction, even though I don’t like my reaction to say the least to say the least, I am seeing myself.

[00:25:32] I’m seeing myself, I’m knowing myself a little better knowing myself a little better. And I’ve, I’m learning that drama is impacting the leader and I’m learning that trauma is impacting me here.

[00:25:49] Yeah. I don’t like how I react there. I don’t like how I react here, eyebrow. I can’t stand the way I react. I can’t stand the way I react. Wow. Who is this person reacting this way? It was this person reacting this way. Yeah. They’re so scared. They’re so scared. They’re so angry. They’re so angry. They’re so timid.

[00:26:15] They’re so timid. Hold on, bear. They feel so helpless. They feel so helpless. This traumatized person reacting is this traumatized person reacting this way. I don’t like them. My brother and they’re me. And then me, it’s a traumatized version of me. It’s a traumatized version of me. Part of me traumatized part of me.

[00:26:47] And it’s hard. It’s hard. It’s hard to be taken over by a reaction. It’s hard to be taken over by a reaction it’s breathtaking way hard to be taken over by everyone. It’s breathtakingly hard to be taken over by a reaction. So I still want healing for myself. I still want healing for myself and I am seeing myself a little differently, you know, and they see in myself a little differently now.

[00:27:24] And if you’re not, you can do like, I’m open to seeing myself a little differently. Now I’m open to seeing myself a little differently. Now I am open to seeing myself a little differently. Now

[00:27:39] I’ll check in with your body. Maybe allow yourself to shift in your chair again, like using. You don’t tend to move if you’re hiding from a bear or from an image of yourself and consider again, you having a reaction that react and that same reactant, if your mind bounces someplace else, go back to that one.

[00:28:08] Like, okay, how do I feel about myself there? Is it still as intense? Like for me it was an eight of disgust and now it’s like, yeah, buddy, we need to change this. This isn’t helpful. Isn’t useful. Um, that, and now that I had that, if you have any inkling that you’re on the same side now a little bit closer, a little bit more compassionate.

[00:28:41] You can tap, maybe tap your collarbones. And I’m in this together with those parts of me. And I am in this together with those parts of me, Kathy and Rick are here, Cathy and wake her hair. And in my community is here. And like, I don’t know, like communities here, even the ones I don’t know. And maybe this can shift for me and maybe this can shift for your confidence around this.

[00:29:09] I won’t work hard with confidence around this

[00:29:15] said, wow, I deserve so much more grace than I give myself. Yeah. That’s a trauma response. Love you been there, Dylan. There sometimes was there just a few minutes ago, looking at myself, having this reaction. Um, and thank you because by you sharing that in the chat here, um, I hope, I hope we can all feel like, oh, I’m being really harsh on that part of me.

[00:29:44] That’s a trauma response. Okay. It’s not that I’m actually, the reaction is so abnormal and this is, this is this, like, there’s a thing about trauma that keeps calling us and calling us and calling us and calling us, it keeps rising and rising and rising. And it does. So because the intelligence is also there that this really isn’t you, your nature.

[00:30:13] I mean, I tend to attract people that are really sleep with other people for the most part. Um, you know, that want healthy boundaries, safety, respect, freedom for others, and, you know, generosity. I get to be, I get to feel your generosity every single day and email and other ways that you support the community.

[00:30:36] Thank you. Um, and we can, we can be really disgusted with a reaction. And I believe that that is where our inner intelligence is saying, Hey, this is impactful. This is actually impacting other aspects of your life too. But right now we’re aware of this. Does this make sense, Kathy? Absolutely. I’d like to add to that when we’re, when we’re feeling timid, overwhelmed, um, lack of confidence.

[00:31:08] We feel aren’t we get reactions in our body and we have stories in our heads, like thoughts in our heads. And often there’s a cyclical thing. So I’m when, um, I was doing something very challenging last week and I knew my. It wasn’t my heart, but my, I had anxiety so bad. I’m like, I think I’m having a heart attack.

[00:31:29] So I’m having all these feelings in my body, which are feeding into the thought in my head. Like this is too hard. Who are you to do this? Just, just shut up and keep your mouth shut. Like all the, there was the verbiage of my head. There was a sensations in my body going on and they were feeding into the shame, which was making my body feel worse, which was making them the chatter.

[00:31:50] It was turning up the volume and the chatter in my head. And one thing that can really help is if you can separate those things. Cause they kind of catalyze each other. If I’m having like intense, like, oh, okay. The actual feeling I have in my body is a lot of tension in my shoulder. Kind of a buzzy feeling in my body and my heart hurts like it.

[00:32:11] And it’s it’s tension. I’m not actually having heart attack. Okay. That’s, what’s actually feeling in my body. I wrote down. Would you, would you, um, lead a tapping on that for this exercise that we’re doing and then we’ll get to the, the thoughts in your head, right? Okay. So I invite you just notice, think of a time you felt really timid or ashamed or overwhelmed and just take a gentle breath.

[00:32:38] You don’t have to step all the way into those feelings, but notice, see if you can remember what were you were actually the sensations, not the thoughts you had, not the story about it, but the actual sensations, some of you will go. I felt sad in my heart. We know we want to go even deeper than that was like, did it feel heavy?

[00:32:56] Did it feel tense? Did it feel hot? Like actual, like something you could actually feel sensation wise and write those down and see if you can notice how intense they were. So my heart was hurting at a 10 that day from the tension. And I, luckily I work at a company where they do ultra skit, where we work with ultrasound and they had just scanned my heart and it looks great.

[00:33:17] So I knew I could put that aside, but, um, you know, just noticing what the sensations are. And let’s just, just notice how intense they are. And we’re going to just do a little more tapping. So deep breath, karate chop, even though I have all these sensations in my body, even though I have all of these sensations in my body, and that must be proof, there’s something wrong.

[00:33:44] Doesn’t that proof that there’s something wrong. What if they’re just sensations that I’m feeling? What if they are just sensations that I’m feeling? I don’t complain when the sensations are good. Nope. No sensations are good. What if I could just feel the sensations? What if I could just feel the sensation and let them go

[00:34:12] top of that? I can’t let them go. You’re giving me, I can let them go. I brought there’s proof that I did something wrong. This must be proof. I did something wrong side of the eye. It must be proof that I am wrong. It must be proof that I am under the eye. They’re so intense

[00:34:36] under the nose. I decided they mean I’m wrong. I decided they mean I’m wrong. 10. What if they don’t actually mean that? What if they don’t actually mean that collarbone? What if they’re the warning signal on my dashboard, a warning signal on my dashboard under the arm, indicating that I’m under stress. Top of the head, one of my guests takes, says it’s the light goes yellow.

[00:35:06] Okay. Thanks. So then the, like those yellow, I don’t say the car is wrong.

[00:35:15] I probably go and get gas. One side of the eye. So maybe these sensations mean I need to get some support.

[00:35:30] Maybe the sensations mean I need some support under the, I just like the check engine light. I like the check engine light. My system is saying, please get support, get support under the nose. Please do some tapping. We use to do some tapping 10, take a small break, make a small break. Stop beating yourself up.

[00:35:56] Oh, I get stopped. Beating myself up. What if they’re just a signal? I need something a little different. We are a signal. I need something, a little different top of that. I don’t need to hold onto them. I don’t need to hold on to them. Nice. Deep breath. We often feel like the negative things will last forever.

[00:36:22] Humans cannot sustain emotions very long or feelings very long. I hadn’t cried in a long time when I first started working with brick and I was afraid if I started, I would never stop, but I had a couple of good like hours purges or people can’t cry forever. Like I felt like I was going to in the moment, it’s a story we tell ourselves.

[00:36:46] So for having a lot of head intense feelings, if we can breathe and tap with them, if we can just feel them or we can get a friend to talk to us, we can take breaks from it. It’s okay to feel those feelings are not going to, they’re not actually proof it’s when we take them as proof that were damaged or broken or wrong in some way that we start feeding this loop.

[00:37:06] That goes,

[00:37:10] yeah. So I want to say that our. The loop that we’re used to, there’s a virtuous loop, a healing loop, calm and confidence loop, which says, okay, I’m definitely noticing something I’m activated. If it’s more than activated, I’m triggered more than I figured. Well, I’m really like, ah, and it may not be when you’re really intensely triggered in it drama that you have a lot of capacity on your own tap.

[00:37:46] If you do this work. When it’s something from earlier today or last week, and it’s not a nine, 10, 11, 2,020 trillion, it’s a drama it’s impacting you. It’s maybe related to something else. That’s from your past that you remember when you build up a, a new pattern that your brain can choose, it’s gonna choose it more and more.

[00:38:14] Why? Because being triggered is really expensive. Being panicked is extremely expensive to your biology. It costs a lot. It can cost your vitality. It can cost your sense of yourself. It really is expensive. And the primitive brain wants you to survive. And if there’s a more beneficial kind of reactions like, oh, I’m triggered.

[00:38:43] I start to tap my collarbone. I had to train myself that anytime I started to feel a little anxious for about a hundred days, six months, um, at least, you know, we’re about somewhere around six months, I took anything that I started to feel anxious about. Oh, this is a six, oh, this is an eight. This is a four.

[00:39:05] I I’m noticing it. Now it’s a two and I did some tapping. And then what I started noticing is when the anxiety hit my reactive system, instead of my response, I started tapping. There was enough of an ability to pause so that the healthy thriving cycle is I’m noticing something like pause. Polymer my system, those grounding exercises that we talked about when let’s just do another breath and astound

[00:39:42] might even like happier your heels on the ground, like dah, dah, dah, you might rub your chest here. You’re feeling like you want to yawn so good for the nervous system. And then you can feel gravity working, let it do a little bit more of the work. Oh, okay. When we say, let it go, there’s a physical quality of, you know, gravity can take a lot.

[00:40:13] It can, it can take a tension in your jaw like

[00:40:20] that. And that sends a signal cause and calming. I believe that this way of approaching trauma. So it’s confidence and it has, for me, it, because it says I can see, like what’s more clearly now as I’m tapping and I’m documenting, I’m not having to hide it. What, oh, why I’m really reactive around that. And I can be with that.

[00:40:55] Now that builds up confidence, even amidst all the rest of the noise, you start building up a kind of confidence that says, you know, I can be with that. That’s what trauma takes away from us. It takes away our sense that we can be with the things that happen in life. But I know many of you and you’ve got tremendous capacity for courage.

[00:41:18] You’ve been through so much that, you know, to, to be able to handle so many things. If you’re in this virtuous cycle of pause, calm confidence, and then take a small step, the step toward more relief, a step toward what matters to you. And then, um, yeah. Um, I’m gonna step for those of us. I get impacted very quickly, regardless of, you know, call me a highly sensitive person.

[00:41:53] I’m definitely a sensitive person. I know myself now. And so when something happens, um, it, it is going to be more impactful for me. And to know that I have this as, as a skill I can use back when I’m home, back when I have some safety to help deal with we’re let go recalibrate. Um, No it’s changed. It’s changed my capacity.

[00:42:26] I could not do this type of work with you all if I didn’t have the skill, you know, so we do the please. I’d like to hear what you want to say. And then, um, Some tapping on the thoughts that are coming through real quick before we’ll take the break. Yeah. So what Rick said about how trauma impacts our ability, our, our confidence that we can take care of things.

[00:42:55] And one of the things like Rick’s a sensitive person, I imagine if you’re here, you’re not someone who’s like, oh, shrug everything off. We learned from the trauma very quickly. You didn’t have to hit us over the head. 10 times. Some of us got hit over the head 10 times, but you didn’t have to hit us over the head 10 times for us to notice that that’s a dangerous area to go.

[00:43:14] We were able to learn from the trauma pretty quickly, like, oh, don’t go there. That hurts. Don’t do that. And the problem with trauma is we learned that we can’t cope with something so means beyond us when it may not actually be true. It just might be, we were having a bad day. Like I know there’s some days I feel dumb as a stick.

[00:43:34] I’m like, you try to teach me something or I’m trying to learn it. And I just, it won’t sink in. And the next day, if I’ve got some rest and some food, two minutes later, I’ve got it. But if I’ve convinced myself on that day where I was low resource, that I can’t learn it, it’s much harder for me to learn it later.

[00:43:51] And it could, because I’ve convinced myself that I’m not good at I don’t cope well with that, or I don’t learn well. And one of the things that can happen is as we start having more areas of our life, if we have traumas that aren’t healed, say, we’re like, oh, I can’t drive the car because of that accident.

[00:44:07] I don’t learn well because that person yelled at me when I was learning something. Oh, and I can’t repair things. I was trying to get the dishwasher repaired and I kept calling people and try and I could never get it like, oh, I’m not our brain starts deciding we’re not very effective overall. So it’s, we’re not just timid in those little spots.

[00:44:25] We start going, oh, I don’t know that I’m a very effective person in general. I don’t know that I can, can actually do this. And we start getting more and more timid. It’s a kind of a Kimberlina effect where everything gets affected by the individual traumas. And I love that. What we’re doing here is we’re actually reversing the process or reclaiming our power.

[00:44:47] And we talked about the sensations just a few minutes ago. The other side of it is the voice chatter and there’s outside people. What I’d like to do, if you would a tapping on that, like makes me feel stupid. I feel like stupid is dramatic. I traumatize myself for feeling stupid from the trauma. That’s making me stupid and then we’ll take our seven minute break and then we’ll come back and we’ll, we’ll go into the, the mind chatter.

[00:45:18] Um, so do you want to leave the tapping or do you want me to, uh, Yeah. All right. So take a nice gentle breath, karate chop, even though sometimes I feel so stupid, even though sometimes I just feel so stupid and I’m convinced that I’m not very good at something. I’m convinced that I’m not very good at something.

[00:45:43] And I’ve been traumatized because I feel like I’m not very good at it. I’ve been traumatized because I feel I’m not very good at it. And then I’m in my survival brain and then I’m really in my survival brain, which is not very smart, which isn’t very smart and it’s focused on surviving and it’s focused on surviving, not on learning, not on learning or loving.

[00:46:07] No wonder. I didn’t learn that very easily. No wonder I didn’t learn that very easily. No wonder I didn’t learn that. Well, no wonder. I didn’t want him that. Well, top of the head I’m traumatized about being stupid. Traumatized about being stupid. And I’m probably stupid because I’m traumatized and I’m probably stupid.

[00:46:30] I brought and no one learns well in primitive brain, no one learns well in primitive rain side of the eye, that part of our brain is not for learning intricate tasks. Yeah. That part of our brain is not relearning interpret tasks under the eye. It’s for running from a lion or running from a lion or under the nose.

[00:46:54] It’s really good at running from a lion. Really good at running from a lion shit. It sucks. It learning calculus, fucked up learning a guitar collarbone. I kind of convinced myself. I’m not good at learning these things. And to convince myself I’m not good at learning new things under the eye, which activates my trauma response.

[00:47:21] And every time I try to learn it, which activates my phenomenal response every time I’d try to learn it top of that. What if I’m really smart? If I’m not traumatized? What if I’m really smart? If I’m not in drama, the spawn react them and I can learn how to do that. And I’m doing it right. And learn how to get out of that.

[00:47:41] And I’m doing it right now.

[00:47:46] Take a nice deep breath.

[00:47:52] Yeah. I really appreciate you all going there with us because it is, it’s not a comfortable topic and. If we don’t look at it, we’re kind of stuck with whatever we decided in the moment of trauma. So you’re getting to rewrite your life and your experiences and your expectations of yourself. And you’re creating all kinds of possibilities.

[00:48:14] I really appreciate. And yeah, and, and to amplify it is what clue, if you feel stupid, it’s a clue that you’re in trauma response. Now, some people draw, use their trauma to drive them forward for a particular kind of achievement, but it’s very primitive, brainy, you know, less, less all who have done that. And so as, as we take a break here for seven minutes, we’re.

[00:48:52] So I’m going to invite you one take care of any biological needs that you have for water or a break bio break,

[00:49:02] and also knock down some things for you. If this is a clue, if this is resonating around the stupid, um, oh, what, where in my life, my trauma would be making me heal and accuse myself of being stupid because I’m aware I don’t have all my resources online. You know, like pushing a car versus driving a car.

[00:49:32] It’s different, harder. Don’t feel like you feel like there’s something wrong here. Also, if there’s a reaction, like the one that we touched on earlier, check in again with yourself, see what your emotional reaction is. Maybe write that down. You’re still in the container while we’re on break. So sometimes I can let things come up.

[00:49:53] We’re still in the safe container. We’re just taking a break. So if you want to journal or record stuff, while you’re in this space, it’s a really powerful time. Okay. So, and if you’re listening to the replay, the old, like you’re with us, you’re a time and space traveler. Take a break. We’re going to reposit the recording now and we’ll be back.

[00:50:21] Welcome back.

[00:50:25] There was some great stuff, discussions in the chat while we were, um, asking, like, we’ve talked about some of the signals that something’s wrong. Rick was sharing about overreact, overreaction, a strong reaction. Um, and we’ve talked about a little bit about like thinking you’re feeling overwhelmed. You’re feeling like you’re stupid.

[00:50:44] There’s also a lot about numbing and running away avoiding that can come up too. And those are more subtle. Like one of the reasons we talk about the ones you can really notice like an overreaction and kind of like. Wow. I didn’t mean to blow up like that, or I didn’t mean to be like, why was I so scared?

[00:51:00] They’re more active sensations versus the numbing and avoiding we’re really good as humans at not noticing what we’re avoiding or not noticing when we’re not like a lot of us have really strong muscles there. So it’s kind of a freeze response and also a flee response. Like I am very scared of Heights.

[00:51:18] I’ve tapped on it a zillion times. Apparently haven’t found the core on that one, but I am very scared of Heights, but I very good at avoiding things without even realizing I’m avoiding them about anything that would make me go on height. So like I, and then I’m like, oh yeah, I probably should do some more tapping on that.

[00:51:35] Um, so it just something like if. If you have friends that can help you point that out. That’s a good thing. Like Rick will sometimes point out to things like you’ve said, you were going to do that like 10 times and you didn’t do that. Is there something going on? Like I didn’t even record in my brain that I was really avoiding that.

[00:51:52] So that’s where it’s really nice to have a community to kind of go, huh? You said that you really wanted to do that. Like you want to learn to play the guitar. You have a guitar, you have the lesson plan. How come you haven’t done that? Um, I’m using one that Rick also often brought up for me. Right. And if we’re trauma informed, then we’re not looking at the person as if they have this lack of willpower and discipline, you know?

[00:52:19] Gosh, how could we even be friends? Um, it’s more, oh, I’m curious whether you’re noticing that there’s something going on, as you think about it, what comes up for you? Um, in the chat, there was a very specific example given, and for those of us that have a specific momentous, um, experience like, um, and I’m not feeling drawn to read the specific examples, but if you have something that you keep flashing to and you know, it is very impactful.

[00:52:58] And especially if it occurred during childhood or in developmental times, maybe when you first went into workforce or birth was in a love relationship sometime where you’re really vulnerable. Um, there’s there, there are approaches with tapping for very specific events. Like there’s one called tell the story when it’s one thing that practitioners use like myself.

[00:53:25] Um, but you can start with this yourself. Like I encourage people if they have apt on it and they’ve done some work on a specific trauma and they feel like they can do this, write it out in detail as much as you can remember. Right. A sense apart from before it was a trauma, like, oh, I was doing this and I was having a good time helping my friends.

[00:53:54] And what are you feeling? Oh, I’m feeling open and light. Then you put that in there. So write a sentence. And then in parentheses, what are you feeling? Oh, I’m feeling open and light. Like, this is something I really enjoy doing and then what’s next. And then the teacher. Okay. And if you, if you freeze there or something comes up for you in the middle of the sentence, right?

[00:54:16] I feel like I couldn’t move. I feel like. They’re horror and put the number zero to 10. You can tap while you do this. What if it is helpful to you? Like top the points just through while you’re writing it out, make it at least a page, because a lot of times, especially for people that have been through therapy on a specific event now specific event is one where there’s a movie that you could be the narrator and that’s what you’re doing.

[00:54:52] And now that you’re armed, like armed as in like, ah, yes, this is the experience. You can read a sentence out loud and tap and read the sentence. Six times I was just helping my friends. I was just helping my friends. I felt so this and, and pause, I have found with clients, um, that like. By reading it with the deep respect, for the impact that is had writing it out this way and then do this, set it aside and come back to it the next day and the next and the next take a break if you need to, but give it the attention and the comfort that it deserved.

[00:55:45] You can imagine, like, if, if, if you had loving people, safe people, like probably you are today, we often become the person it really needed to be. Um, and we can bring that back in time. It’s like, oh sweetheart, you weren’t doing anything wrong, buddy. Hey, and by giving yourself that attention, you’re now showing yourself.

[00:56:11] That you’ve, you’ve developing a skill, a skill to handle, even something that was impactful from the past. Then taking a look at the two or three other events that remind you of that one and doing the same thing. So now you’ve got, you know, four, um, and maybe there weren’t others, but chances are, if it impacts you back then it impacted you in other situations.

[00:56:37] That is the really quick description of how this works. And, um, out on the thriving, now that center, you can ask for, um, specific support, um, I’ve had. I’ve had people share their writing with me, um, or how they feel about it afterwards. So these know that supportive, thriving now.com comes to both Kathy and I, if you want to share something, um, we are part of, we are in service and a part of your, this community.

[00:57:10] Uh, if that’s helpful, one of the things I want to add is that trauma often happens when we feel isolated. There may be people around us judging us or criticizing us, but we feel alone and unsupported. It’s very hard to dissolve it if we feel alone and unsupported. So I put in the chat again, the center, which is free, you can join, um, and you can join and share.

[00:57:33] It’s a place to feel connected. Um, if you’d like a little more support, Rick has the circle, which is so powerful, thriving now.com forward slash circle. I was, I was very active for a very long time and it made a huge difference. Um, and then we also have. Reprogram your primitive brain. So it’s a program that Rick and I put together.

[00:57:54] Um, it’s at thriving now.com forward slash brain. If you want to take a look, it’s a very intensive program. We went very deep. Um, and it’s one of our most favorite program because it really walks you through the ways and exercises to really. Um, oh, primitive brain, sorry. Primitive dash brain. So that thriving now.com/brain as a, as a presentation about framing the primitive brain and then reprogram your perimeter brain.

[00:58:21] Is it thriving now? Dot com slash primitive dash brain, depending on how much support and help you want with that. I just encourage you whether whatever you do, whether you work with us or someone else, please don’t try to solve this by yourself. You will often feel really overwhelming and it can reinforce the fact that I’m broken, or I can’t fix this, or I’m not competent realize that a lot of trauma was occurred when we were in isolation and we don’t, it’s much easier to solve when our survival brain knows we have support.

[00:58:55] So I just really want to encourage that for everyone. Um, I’d love to talk a little bit about the mind chatter that goes on. So when we’re, we’re faced with we’re, we’re experiencing this feeling of I’m not competent. I’m timid, I’m held back. We have the sensations in our body. Um, and there’s also the mind chatter going on.

[00:59:15] So what happens is our survival brain, our subconscious, however you want to call it, it, it, it kind of absorbs the information around us. We have mirror neurons, they’re parts of our brain that lets us learn from observing people around us. That means we can also be traumatized by things that happened to other people, not just us.

[00:59:35] So if we have a parent or a sibling or someone who’s very like goes through a lot of trauma, we can actually learn to be traumatized from them where the, the mirror neurons pick it up. What happens is we absorb those words and it’s a very effective survival mechanism. If you learn that if you do, if you leave money boot footprints through the house, your dad’s going to backhand.

[00:59:59] You. Like, and that’s something that we’ve worked with people about like, okay, that’s something that can happen to people. Then there’s part of our brain that will absorb that information. And if we try to walk in the house before dad can see us before we can leave that money footprint, we’ll hear some of the words either he said, or that mean that to us.

[01:00:18] What do you, what the hell are you doing? Get your dirty feet out of there. You’re always tracking dirty stuff. So we’re here that in our head and that can hold, that can create the sensations in our body. It can trigger us again. It can make us feel very timid. The one thing I think is most important to remember about this.

[01:00:37] This is so critical. So I really want you to remember this, that part of us that’s yelling at us is not bad. It is misguided. It is trying to protect you. It means so well and yelling at it or trying to eradicate it will just make it worse. Just imagine, or some are our survival brain. They say has the intelligence of a small dog.

[01:01:00] If you have a small dog that’s scared or angry and you yell at it, bad dog, bad dog, stop that. Does that make the dog calmer? No, it makes the dog more reactive. If you tell it it’s okay. Like you think, I often think those parts is my favorite thing. That part has been working so hard for so long. Yeah. So let’s, let’s do that.

[01:01:24] Cause that can dissolve some of the stress in there. Okay. So just take a nice deep breath,

[01:01:32] karate chop. It’s okay to be begrudgingly thankful because that part of us and often feel like it’s caused an awful lot of problems. Karate chop, even Eva. There’s part of me that always chatters at me, even though there’s a part of me that always criticizers chatters. Sometimes there’s several parts telling me I’m not doing a good job telling me I’m not doing a good job.

[01:02:00] Putting me down nagging at me, nagging at me. Those parts never meant any harm.

[01:02:13] What if those parts never meant any harm? What if they’re really trying to protect me? What if they’re really trying to protect me in the best way they know how the best way they know how it may really suck

[01:02:34] and they’re doing the best. They know how, and they they’re doing what they know now, top of the head. Hey, angry parts, angry, scared parts I rally. I know sometimes you’re really fearful, fearful side of the eye, and sometimes you’re really angry. Sometimes you’re really angry under the eye. And I don’t always like how you talk to me.

[01:03:01] And I don’t always like how you’re talking to me under the nose or what you say and what you say or imply. Gotcha. But I’m really grateful that you care so much. I am really grateful that you care so much about any tribe really hard when you try really hard, never shut up

[01:03:30] top of that. That must mean you care a lot.

[01:03:39] Eyebrow. I’m not always sure how to deal with. I am not always sure how to deal with that part side of the eye, but I don’t have to fight you quite so much.

[01:03:53] Under the I, what if I can appreciate you? What if I can accept you under the nose? Maybe we can even tap together. Maybe we can even pop together. And if we release the trauma that created you, and if we release the trauma that created you, fertilized you, what if we give you a new job? What if we could give you a new job, a new mantra under the arm where you could encourage me, or you could even encourage me top of that head support me and love me, support me and love me in a different way.

[01:04:41] Take a nice deep breath.

[01:04:46] If you’re yawning. That’s great. If you notice any kind of, I’ve had people release energy by yawning, burping. I had one person that farted a lot, one person picked up it’s okay. Everybody’s just releasing energy. We’re all humans here. And, um, thank you. I think the more that we’re aware that there’s a part of us that says in this circumstance, I’ve learned this, I’ve learned that if I yell at you in advance, you’re less likely to get injured.

[01:05:20] You’re less likely to poke the bear. And so I am going to do that for you. That, that part of us, when we talk about acceptance and tapping me acceptance is like this acknowledgement. Okay. I am starting to understand the intelligence here. I’ve hated it. I, I, haven’t not a skill or support to know what’s going on.

[01:05:51] I could tell that it was wrong and it hurt, but there’s actually an intelligence primal intelligence behind it. That actually wants me to survive. Thank you. I want to survive to that. Every part of me wants to survive. Yay. We’re all on the same team. One of the things about trauma, especially, um, pharma that comes from people that are supposed to love and care for us is that it appeals all of a sudden, like there’s an adversary right in the nest.

[01:06:19] And that goes for people working together as a team to accomplish something that’s important. Our work goes for a love nest, you know, where people are raising children. And as soon as. Our primitive brain goes, we’re not together. We’re adversaries on now, a very different program, a program that made it possible for my great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother is survived.

[01:06:49] The adversarial relationship within, within bubble. And we, we activate a program. These real skills. About being more calm and confident, like calming our nervous system, calming our chatter, becoming more confident. Like to me, there’s a part of me that wants to survive so much that it will actually whip me in advance so that I don’t get struck again.

[01:07:22] Wow. That’s love. And it even sounds like my dad that’s real imitation, but like you said, when you strip away, like I’m not there. My, my dad’s dead, you know? And when I’ve given that part of me, like, thank you, you helped me survive being a child. What does it mean to be a dad now? Because that’s where trauma can start like interfering.

[01:07:56] We can be afraid of, of being in a role. That’s really matters to us. And so a lot of the tapping that I did early on was I had new kids. I was homeschooling, and I would notice that I would react a certain way. And so like, if you’re noticing your life, that you’re reacting in ways that are interfering with you being who you want to be looking at, these roles in relationships is useful.

[01:08:26] It is so helpful and it’s vulnerable. It’s vulnerable too. So thank you for, for being here with that. I’m happy we have about 10 minutes left. Do you have a sense of where we, where we go from here? I don’t think we’re going to ask for volunteers right now. Um, there’ll be the space in the circle. Um, it’s a very affordable lighting scale.

[01:08:50] There’s even a two month gift membership. If that’s where you are right now, um, that’s available as well. Yeah. So I put in the link, I’m also, there’s thriving now.com forward slash inner tapping. If you liked that part of reclaiming the parts that are yelling at you, that’s our version of that. And it’s been very effective if you it’s a free a webinar.

[01:09:11] If you want to take a look at that, one of the things we’re talking about, real skills going from timid to confident, and we’ve talked a lot about the timidity. Um, one of the things I’d like to touch on, like getting there, it’s like tapping clearing stuff, baby steps, getting support. Rick talked about those earlier as we start feeling more confident that can feel very uncomfortable to a lot of us don’t have muscles for being confident.

[01:09:40] And I’d like to just speak to that. Some of us are from marginalized communities. People that have had an expectation that we won’t be as confident in the world. And I certainly applies to everyone in the world, but I think there’s a certain social conditioning for people that are people of color or different abilities, uh, women in engineering or whatever like that.

[01:10:02] There’s a certain expectation that we’ll be a little more timid. And then certain, certainly every human being feels us. Sometimes it’s like, how do I be confident? How do I walk through the world without running other people over still giving room for other people? And it’s, it’s weird because like, if I’ve always been a very timid person and we’re interacting with our family, for instance, our friends, they may see us kind of standing up for ourselves as being more aggressive.

[01:10:30] Like they’re used to taking up that space that we haven’t been taken up and they’re like, okay, There’s an awkwardness about it. We can easily take that our survival brain could take that as, oh, I’m not supposed to grow because we may have that. If we’re feeling timid in many areas, we may not have been taking up a lot of space.

[01:10:48] We may not have been taking up our own space or owning our boundaries because we didn’t feel like we had the right to, or we weren’t going to make the right decision about it. So as we start being a little more confident, it can be awkward and we just don’t have, it feels different. Our survival brain doesn’t like different, different means scary.

[01:11:07] Maybe I won’t be good at this. So I’d just like to invite you to realize that we’ll do a little tapping on that if that’s okay, Rick, um, to kind of just like, oh, this is new it’s okay. That it’s uncomfortable. Okay. All right. So I invite you to take a nice deep breath, karate chop, even though they don’t really expect me to be different.

[01:11:33] Even though they really don’t expect me to be different. And I’m not really sure how to be different here. And I’m not really sure how to be different here. I’m actually healing myself. I’m actually healing myself right now and I’m getting more confident and I am getting more confident. I want to play more, want to play.

[01:11:55] I want to play more. I want to speak up more. I want to speak up more. I want to share my idea. I want to share my ideas and see them come to fruition. I want to try things. I didn’t try before. I want to try things I didn’t find before. And all of this can be a little awkward and all of this can be a little awkward to say the least for me and for everyone else, for me and for everyone else.

[01:12:25] It’s off of that. What if I give my personal self permission to be awkward? What if I give myself permission to be awkward eyebrow, I was awkward. When I learned at time I shoe, I was awkward when I learned a time I shoo side of the eye. And somehow I’m pretty good at that now. And somehow I’m pretty good at that.

[01:12:45] Now under the eye, it was probably awkward. When I learned to drive a car, just probably awkward. When I learned to drive a car under the nose and other people were uncomfortable to

[01:12:59] chin and we all somehow survived

[01:13:05] collarbone. I’m going to test drive this confidence thing. I am going to start being more confident under the eye, and I get that. I may be uncomfortable and I get, I may be uncomfortable top of that. Other people may be uncomfortable. Other people may be uncomfortable. They may even criticize me. They may even criticize me side of the eye.

[01:13:32] Cause they’re used to taking up the space. I wasn’t, they are so used to taking up the space that I wasn’t under the eye. And I’m choosing to take up my own space now. And I’m choosing to take up my own space now under the nose with compassion, for myself and others, with compassion for myself and for others.

[01:13:53] Chin, I’m going to practice this a little bit at a time.

[01:14:01] How about that? I’ll probably screw it up once in a while, knowing me, I’ll probably screw it up every once in awhile under the eye, but then I’m going to get really good at it

[01:14:16] top of the head so I can step into my own life. Well, I can step into my own thriving life and my confidence.

[01:14:32] You know, I, I mentioned that I spent about six months, um, tapping, um, probably like I’d notice it five or six times a day. And I just go around her to go to the bathroom, take a break or something. And there was a line like the people that knew me prior to that six months, the people that were friends and the, like, they, they thought, you know, me as a certain way.

[01:15:00] Um, and the people that I met after that, it was fascinating to have the first person say, wow, Rick, you’re just really calm and confident, no matter what seems to come up. I remember that person. I remember the moment that that happened and it wasn’t because I was as calm and confident as I am today. That was 20 years ago.

[01:15:24] What it is is that I had. I had started to give myself a sense that the anxiety that was coming up from all the drama that I had gone through, all the unsafety that I had gone through, um, was quieting. And that, that inner voice was starting to say, yep, even though I could be freaked out here, like my mother would be, I’ve decided to be a bit more calm and confident.

[01:15:53] Anyway,

[01:15:57] sometimes the side of it doesn’t sound like

[01:16:05] it’s still make it. And, and I think that that’s still true while I, I have aspirations to be able to continue to develop this and share it and teach my kids and teach and share it with others and learn from you all. Um, I know what a difference it’s made in my life. Um, people that know me now know that I’m not my mother’s worried son and butts.

[01:16:34] My mother she’s 80. I’m so glad she’s still around. Not everyone is blessed that way. And if I want, I want to hear worry. I know who to call and I do like the worry channel. And, and I’m so grateful that the inherited trauma from her way of viewing life, which you touched on Kathy, like we inherit the way that we deal with things and we can inherit that, oh, when this comes up, you get, you know, you need it as if it’s terrifying, oh, you be timid here or you be angry here.

[01:17:10] Or we see anger and we become timid. That polarity thing. It’s all primitive brain. Um, And so as we bring this to, to a close, I want to happy. I want to hear your closing thoughts too. I really want to invite this to be a sharing of wisdom, Kathy and I have devoted a lot of time and attention. I hope it shows, but it’s not from a place of where the experts were.

[01:17:38] We are so curious because it matters so much. We notice what has done for us. We want to, we want to be working for places and working with people and loving people who are trauma informed that they can say, oh, I’m noticing that my I’m really reacting to what you just said. It feels like really amped up by some trauma from my path.

[01:18:01] I’m going to take a moment and just call myself such a difference. When I do that. With someone else, it was like, oh, but you just said, it’s okay. It’s really set me off inside. And I’m going to go take care of myself and I’ll be okay back in about five, probably five or 10 minutes. I’ve done that like five times in the last few years.

[01:18:27] And when, when you do that and you can tend to yourself or like, oh, I could really like, get some reassurance, let’s hear or support support. You mentioned you’re in it together. You’re no, you’re right. You were breaking the adversarial thing. That fight flight and freeze is all about. It’s all about adversary.

[01:18:48] You start getting the parts of you working together. You start connecting with the parts of other people that are on your side too, that want to work with you. And you recognize that, oh, there’s also this adversarial thing going on at sometimes. Wow. Fascinating. Oh, you’re going wah. Yeah. It’s fascinating.

[01:19:13] One thing I want to add, like you’re able to step out of it much quicker. They’ve done a lot of studies on chickens and rats were ones that had the trauma and recovered learn how to recover are much more resilience in those that never had experienced the trauma. So the work you’re doing is building up a strength and inherent resilience that people that have never had to struggle with will never have, they’d have to go through a similar experience to get there.

[01:19:41] So while it may seem very like there’s part of me, that’s like, whoa, it’s not fair. I have to do all this work. You’re also teaching your system how to survive, how to heal, how to bounce back. And that’s a beautiful gift to give yourself. You will have ability to face things and kind of go, oh, okay. Yeah, this happened, it sucks.

[01:20:00] And I’m going to get over it. I’ve already, I’ve done it before. I know how to do this again. So the gift you’re giving yourself, not only just for yourself, but role modeling it outward, that’s really precious. And I value who you are and how you walk through the world. And I really appreciate you spending the time with us thinking deep into your courage and building your confidence.

[01:20:22] And we hope that everything we shared serves you well complete the circle. Um, I all right, we invite your wisdom. We, the bribing now.center is a place that is working for those of us that are municating. There is an opportunity for us to have connection where we can really express something that’s.

[01:20:50] That’s dear to us. And while Kathy and I have taken the airtime and the facilitator roles here, that doesn’t mean that there’s lot. There isn’t space for you to share your questions, your authors, your personal life experiences, and how you, other things that you’ve done to help heal and strengthen your calm and confidence despite the traumas that you’ve experienced.

[01:21:15] So in the, in the link that I’ll send out or you’re watching the replay on that website, you can reply right in that red. Um, it’s a welcoming place for feedback around us. Thank you all. Thank you, Kathy.

[01:21:36] All right, bye. For now.

We Covered…

  • How we learn what to fear through trauma
  • How trauma impacts our confidence by making us “certain” we can’t handle “it” – even if there’s other proof that we can.
  • How we can end up scared or timid because an unresolved trauma keeps our primitive brain “in charge” in certain situations.
  • How to specifically use EFT Tapping to calm intense body sensations, engage with the mind chatter, and give our energy a different – empowered – pattern.
  • …and so much more. Lots of tapping, too.

Resources Mentioned…

1. Thriving Now Community Center – This Site!https://www.thrivingnow.center/

2. Thriving Now Emotional Freedom Circle

3. Reprogram Your Primitive Brain

4. Grounding Exercises

5. Inner Tapping

Great to have you on this journey with us!

Please do share your wisdom and insights and experiences and ah-ha’s here with us in a reply.

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thanks so much Rick and Cathy. useful tapping - and insight

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Amazing program, @RickThrivingNow and @Cathy! Thank you!

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Were there particular ah-ha’s that felt useful to you?

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Absolutely. I do things in stages. I took three days to listen to it, many parts on repeat. Much to process. One thing I will share now is that I really liked your example of not digging your own reaction to the neighbor’s fence. I realize I often skip over the shame and self judgment I have when I have a reaction rooted in a trauma. I would like to bring more compassion into my relationship with myself when it comes to my trauma responses. It was skill building to tap along with you both on that topic. Looking forward to a one on one with you tomorrow!

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Yeah, I used to either just allow myself to be reactive or prematurely demand that I not be reactive before the trauma is addressed! Ugh. Didn’t work.

Thank you for sharing that. Helps me to tune to what people are finding useful.

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I appreciated many aspects of this session. I liked the practice Rick suggested for dealing with a specific event: tell the story and give it the attention/comfort it needs. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I plan to.

I also resonated with Cathy’s comment that trauma often happens when we feel isolated and thus it can be hard to resolve when we feel alone/unsupported. It explains why this year (covid-triggered PTSD related to health + living alone + pandemic-induced isolation) has been particularly hard.

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It’s one of the things Cathy and I talked about preparing for the Neutralizing Social Anxiety Workshop coming up this week.

We can be a perfectly lovely and confident person, and at the same time the isolation can deplete us of essential nutrients – Connection, Engagement, Feeling Supported and a Part Of.

It’s really hard, too, when we’re sensitive to find such support, trust such support and connection, and cultivate confidence in We-Spaces. It’s not just our own anxiety. I know when I pass someone on the trail who is radiating that fear of strangers that my nervous system has to work (!) to remain calm and confident.

We’re in this together in ways that are complex and crucial. I am grateful for interactions like this one here to help support my own system in feeling nourished. Thanks @Rach !

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20-30 MINUTES after being triggered

We can argue with ourselves, accuse ourselves of being weak or whatever…

The biological truth is that when we get activated in our primitive brain (triggered) it takes TIME and self- and co-regulation to get to a place where we’re back to higher-level capacity. It does.

To judge ourselves harshly for this biological truth is to berate ourselves for having to shit after we eat. It’s that NORMAL to require time to calm down and confidence up again.

And yeah, I wish I had known this decades ago. And yeah, I wish the people around me knew this decades ago. :peace_symbol:

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