Career Tip 009: Turn that Trauma into Gold.
This is a living blog. It will grow and change over time. Come back for new articles and ideas on this topic. Please share with us how you’re doing your poop to gold work. ;)
Nothing in this post is a recommendation.
This topic is going to be continuously discussed and focused on, not only on this blog but on the podcast. Also in my personal and professional work, as it is quickly becoming part of my purpose as an information provider on this website. It is so important we figure out the gold hidden in our shadows and do not let the trauma dictate our wellness and our lives.
The lows serve us if we let them. Not only do they help us identify the highs, they can give us a way to serve others or a way to reveal our authenticity once we get passed parts of ourselves that were meant to teach us, even the most audacious of crimes. The yin and yang are a great symbols of balance and how to rebalance and accept how things are and were. Over the course of life we realize dark and light balance each other out. We need both. Without their bad experiences, we wouldn’t have had some really incredible human beings on this planet, and we would have not had so much art in infinite forms.
Yes, it is hard to hear it but the adversity helps define us, even make us in some phases of life. What if we stopped trauma bonding with people and instead we spent that time healing ourselves. Could we connect after we figure out that we don’t need to constantly protect ourselves, continue on a path of personal development that results with a nice life and quality interactions with our closest relationships and community? Processing and transforming from caterpillars to butterflies is a birth right. But our culture seems confused. We damage our children and then we wonder why there are so many confused adults. We love our babies but we step over the homeless on the street…who was at one time an innocent defenseless baby. The change starts with each person, to stop passing on trauma and start healing from within.
So many people wouldn’t have done “impossible” things if their lives had been perfect. I know I wouldn’t have lived in 15 amazing places and gathered stellar friends worldwide without some of my trauma. I know I wouldn’t be able to go deep with people and empathize, if I didn’t go through what I have. You see, trauma can be a great cultivator, creator, motivator and a great eye opener - to our purpose, to our path back to our truest essence. It can be a connector but it is better used as a fine-tuner. Yes trauma can break us down and deter our lives in many ways, but there is a link to getting ourselves back to our authenticity and our wholeness. Trauma may rob us of our authentic nature for some time - decades even - but if you work at understanding and hugging the traumas you have had as a child, inherited, absorbed from the environment, culture and religion you were raised in, and expreinced, you are going to succeed at growth. Think of your shadow like a little 2 year old kid who has been pulling at your shirt for decades. You’ve ignored them this whole time. All they’re asking is that you listen to them. Once you do listen to them, there is gold down in there, because you can hug them, and take them out of the drivers seat when you unconsciously let them drive - which you have done many, many times. The gold is in reclaiming your self, from a person you were forced to become to protect yourself and to survive. You deserve a free life, one free of the vices or the pain and suffering. One filled with creation and ideas and accomplishing anything you desire to do whether it be career, exploration, discovery, relationships, creation, and so on and on. I think each person has their own alchemist’s journey to transmuting or transforming their trauma. But the journey only works if you’re willing to stop ignoring the child pulling on your shirt who is trying to talk to you about what happened. Whatever happened to you, that is causing you harm, was not your fault. And it is okay, more than okay, to let go of it.
There are so many great articles on this topic. I for one believe that the true alchemist’s in life are the people taking their own $hit and poopy experiences and turning them into gold, or lead or whatever it is they need. Shadow work can result with bursts of light and endless healing and epiphany, positive relationships, art, or purpose driven work. There is a great joy that people find in helping others to not live out the same fate they had forced upon them. I think the people who don’t get stuck in their trauma, and moved past it, simply had better tools and advice and community and awareness. That is all available to all of us, right now, here, today. Given this beautiful invention of social media and internet, it is a blessing these words have met your eyes at this moment. So let’s get on with it already!
I have had a lot of trauma in my life. I wish I hadn’t, but it’s undeniable. Because of it, I have had 3 experiences with depression. But still today, I don’t consider myself a depressed person. I like this quote about depression. I think we need to de-stigmatize situational health issues and stop downplaying what happens to us. “Some people say depression is a disease. Some people say depression is genetic. Some say it is due to a chemical imbalance. And there is something to be said about each of those. But what if depression was not a disease, but a normal response to abnormal life experiences.” Once was in high school after I was attacked by 6 peers at a party, once was after I got off of top model, and once after my dad died. I got a dog two of the times (I think Chloe reincarnated into Mucci - so I believe that I have one animal spirit guide in life ;). The middle time, after top model, I struggled for 10 years with feeling right inside. I just ignored it. Today I call the dogs my living Prozac. They are a replacement for a pharmaceutical because I am anti pharmaceuticals for my own treatment and to be honest for most people. I come from addictive parents and never wanted to be dependent on a medicine for my mental health.The years with the dogs have been stable and loving and filled with growth and more comfort than I ever knew without them. Times were not always easy, but there was a constant support there from my companion and that helped me tremendously. The years without the dogs…were tough. Very tough and often scary. That’s because I lived in constant motion, self judgment and vices. Running from my own behavior and my own fears to face what happened to me. Clearly I believe in animal therapy more than distracting myself. I believe in having something that needs you to take care of it to get you out of bed and give you purpose. But I also think animals can be a distraction. I believe most in facing the abnormal experiences that cause us to feel bad about ourselves and putting a compassionate pair of arms around the experiences so that we can transform them. However we can do that, I believe that is the answer. But wow, it was all so hard to figure out. We all live in a world full of distractions from the work we need to do on ourselves. The work to heal from adversity we experienced in life and early on in life. They say “the beginning is often our end.” How cruel. But it’s true so often more than not, yet it doesn’t have to be the way it is.
We can learn to change our circumstances and our stories. We can change how we talk about ourselves and how we treat ourselves and others. It just takes time and effort. It’s the most valuable thing you can do for yourself, your family and your career. I can’t wait to show you what I’ve been working on later in the year on this topic. I’m still in the process of life. I think knowing the balancing of my dark and light is lifelong journey makes it that much more of a lifestyle versus a burden. It makes it a choice I am able to get excited about instead of dreading anymore. I chose to work with shadow work for 3 years and then do plant medicine to do my process. Now I am working on creating and doing more shadow work to get deeper into my authenticy. I tried traveling, writing, talk therapy, vices, disappearing, you name it. The best way for me was just to face it and get rid of what I could and transform the rest. Daily. We have to feed our soul good things daily the way we feed our body. This self care is constant and it is the most important work we can do. There are lots of ways you can get started and work this all out for yourself. Feel free to reach out to me anytime for help finding the best way for you to process your ACEs in a safe and healthy way themelrosepodcast@gmail.com.
I’d love to hear your stories too. I want to hear what you are looking for to help you in your growth and what you’re all finding in words, inspirations, and ideas to help our community do this work. I’m still in the process of weaving my story into gold, so until that story is ready, please enjoy a few articles I found helpful on this topic.
I love the books How to Change Your Mind and You are a Badass. I will recommend lots of books in this blog.
This first article has some good ideas. But before you talk to someone about your ACEs score, make sure you do so with someone you trust. Oversharing is a symptom of trauma and you deserve to be held in a safe space while healing. Also, know that when you tell a story about what has happened to you, your body can believe it is going through the experiences all over again. Please make the sharing of your story ceremony and release. Use the energy around it to create and express.
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Excerpt from ACESTOOHIGH.com
8 ways to People Recover from Post Childhood Adversity Syndrome
8 ways people recover from post childhood adversity syndrome
There can be no better time than now to begin your own awakening, to proactively help yourself and those you love, embrace resilience, and move forward toward growth, even transformation.
Here are eight steps to try:
1. Take the ACE questionnaire.
The single most important step you can take toward healing and transformation is to fill out the ACE questionnaire for yourself and share your results with your health-care practitioner. For many people, taking the 10-question survey “helps to normalize the conversation about adverse childhood experiences and their impact on our lives,” says Vincent Felitti, co-founder of the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study. “When we make it okay to talk about what happened, it removes the power that secrecy so often has.”
You’re not asking your healthcare practitioner to act as your therapist, or to change your prescriptions; you’re simply acknowledging that there might be a link between your past and your present. Ideally, given the recent discoveries in the field of ACEs research, your doctor should acknowledge that this link is plausible, and add some of the following modalities to your healing protocol.
2. Begin writing to heal.
Think about writing down your story of childhood adversity, using a technique psychologists call “writing to heal.” James Pennebaker, professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin, developed this assignment, which demonstrates the effects of writing as a healing modality. He suggests: “Over the next four days, write down your deepest emotions and thoughts about the emotional upheaval that has been influencing your life the most. In your writing, really let go and explore the event and how it has affected you. You might tie this experience to your childhood, your relationship with your parents, people you have loved or love now…Write continuously for twenty minutes a day.”
When Pennebaker had students complete this assignment, their grades went up. When adults wrote to heal, they made fewer doctors’ visits and demonstrated changes in their immune function. The exercise of writing about your secrets, even if you destroy what you’ve written afterward, has been shown to have positive health effects.
3. Practice mindfulness meditation.
A growing body of research indicates that individuals who’ve practiced mindfulness meditation and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) show an increase in gray matter in the same parts of the brain that are damaged by adverse childhood experiences and shifts in genes that regulate their physiological stress response. According to Trish Magyari, LCPC, a mindfulness-based psychotherapist and researcher who specializes in trauma and illness, adults suffering from PTSDdue to childhood sexual abuse who took part in a “trauma-sensitive” MBSR program, had less anxiety and depression, and demonstrated fewer PTSD symptoms, even two years after taking the course.
Many meditation centers offer MBSR classes and retreats, but you can practice anytime in your own home. Choose a time and place to focus on your breath as it enters and leaves your nostrils; the rise and fall of your chest; the sensations in your hands or through the whole body; or sounds within or around you. If you get distracted, just come back to your anchor. Here are some tips from Tara Brach, psychologist and meditation teacher, to get you started on your mindfulness journey.
There are many medications you can take that dampen the sympathetic nervous system (which ramps up your stress response when you come into contact with a stressor), but there aren’t any medications that boost the parasympathetic nervous system (which helps to calm your body down after the stressor has passed). Your breath is the best natural calming treatment—and it has no side effects.
4. Yoga
When children face ACEs, they often store decades of physical tension from a fight, flight, or freeze state of mind in their bodies. PET scans show that yoga decreases blood flow to the amygdala, the brain’s alarm center, and increases blood flow to the frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex, which help us to react to stressors with a greater sense of equanimity. Yoga has also be found to increase levels of GABA—or gamma-aminobutyric acid—a chemical that improves brain function, promotes calm, and helps to protect us against depression and anxiety.
5. Therapy SIDE NOTE FROM MELROSE - I TRIED TALK THERAPY AND FOUND THAT TALKING ABOUT MY TRAUMA OVER AND OVER WAS NOT HELPFUL AT ALL FOR ME - SO I AM NOT TOTALLY SOLD BY TALK THERAPY OR BY RELIVING TRAUMA AND CONSTANTLY TELLING A DAMAGING STORY OVER AND OVER TO STRANGERS WHO ARE PAID TO “CARE” BUT DON’T AND ARE DESENSITIZED TO TRAUMA. ALSO ADVISED NOT TO TRAUMA BOND TO OTHER PEOPLE EITHER. THIS IS ALSO NOT PRODUCTIVE.
Sometimes, the long-lasting effects of childhood trauma are just too great to tackle on our own. In these cases, says Jack Kornfield, psychologist and meditation teacher, “meditation is not always enough.” We need to bring unresolved issues into a therapeutic relationship, and get back-up in unpacking the past. When we partner with a skilled therapist to address the adversity we may have faced decades ago, those negative memories become paired with the positive experience of being seen by someone who accepts us as we are—and a new window to healing opens.
Part of the power of therapy lies in allowing ourselves, finally, to form an attachment to a safe person. A therapist’s unconditional acceptance helps us to modify the circuits in our brain that tell us that we can’t trust anyone, and grow new, healthier neural connections. It can also help us to heal the underlying, cellular damage of traumatic stress, down to our DNA. In one study, patients who underwent therapy showed changes in the integrity of their genome—even a year after their regular sessions ended.
6. EEG neurofeedback
Electroencephalographic (EEG) neurofeedback is a clinical approach to healing childhood trauma in which patients learn to influence their thoughts and feelings by watching their brain’s electrical activity in real-time, on a laptop screen. Someone hooked up to the computer via electrodes on his scalp might see an image of a field; when his brain is under-activated in a key area, the field, which changes in response to neural activity, may appear to be muddy and gray, the flowers wilted; but when that area of the brain reactivates, it triggers the flowers to burst into color and birds to sing. With practice, the patient learns to initiate certain thought patterns that lead to neural activity associated with pleasant images and sounds.
You might think of a licensed EEG neurofeedback therapist as a musical conductor, who’s trying to get different parts of the orchestra to play a little more softly in some cases, and a little louder in others, in order to achieve harmony. After just one EEG neurofeedback session, patients showed greater neural connectivity and improved emotional resilience, making it a compelling option for those who’ve suffered the long-lasting effects of chronic, unpredictable stress in childhood.
7. EMDR therapy
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a potent form of psychotherapy that helps individuals to remember difficult experiences safely and relate those memories in ways that no longer cause pain in the present. Here’s how it works: EMDR-certified therapists help patients to trigger painful emotions. As these emotions lead the patients to recall specific difficult experiences, they are asked to shift their gaze back and forth rapidly, often by following a pattern of lights or a wand that moves from right to left, right to left, in a movement that simulates the healing action of REM sleep.
The repetitive directing of attention in EMDR induces a neurobiological state that helps the brain to re-integrate neural connections that have been dysregulated by chronic, unpredictable stress and past experiences. This re-integration can, in turn, lead to a reduction in the episodic, traumatic memories we store in the hippocampus, and downshift the amygdala’s activity. Other studies have shown that EMDR increases the volume of the hippocampus.
EMDR therapy has been endorsed by the World Health Organization as one of only two forms of psychotherapy for children and adults in natural disasters and war settings.
8. Rally community healing
Often, ACEs stem from bad relationships—neglectful relatives, schoolyard bullies, abusive partners—but the right kinds of relationships can help to make us whole again. When we find people who support us, when we feel “tended and befriended,” our bodies and brains have a better shot at healing. Research has found that having strong social ties improves outcomes for women with breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases. In part, that’s because positive interactions with others boost our production of oxytocin, a “feel-good” hormone that dials down the inflammatory stress response. If you’re at a loss for ways to connect, try a mindfulness meditation community or an MBSR class, or pass along the ACE questionnaire or even my newest book, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal, to family and friends to spark important, meaningful conversations.
You’re not alone
Whichever modalities you and your physician choose to implement, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re not alone. When you begin to understand that your feelings of loss, shame, guilt, anxiety, or grief are shared by so many others, you can lend support and swap ideas for healing.
When you embrace the process of healing despite your adverse childhood experiences, you don’t just become who you might have been if you hadn’t encountered childhood suffering in the first place. You gain something better—the hard-earned gift of life wisdom, which you bring forward into every arena of your life. The recognition that you have lived through hard times drives you to develop deeper empathy, seek more intimacy, value life’s sweeter moments, and treasure your connectedness to others and to the world at large. This is the hard-won benefit of having known suffering.
Best of all, you can find ways to start right where you are, no matter where you find yourself.
The interesting thing about the following article is that this study followed judges. Not one of them had an ace score of 0. So it makes us all feel better that no one really gets out of childhood unscathed, and that the people making the judgments might have some understanding of those with higher scores? Or at least we can hope!
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The Repressed Role of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Addiction, Disease, and Premature Death: In My Beginning Is My End
Vincent J. Felitti, MD - Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California San Diego
April 3, 2019
If you want to watch a training video on ACEs as it relates to mainly obesity please go here. If you can see why we use some of the coping mechanisms and how they feel like they are protecting us, we can realize that the sooner we shift our mindsets, the sooner we can start spinning new story and new processes for growing our lives into more wellness, and then success we desire.
The Above Training Description
Have you ever considered how we get from there to here? How do we go from a newborn with its extraordinary potential to the person lying on the street whom we overlook? The answer relates directly and in unexpected ways to difficult problems of social functioning, judicial institutionalization, addiction, medical practice, and public health. This training will look at The ACE Study and you will learn how researchers explored the origins of these problems, and how they came to see that the perceived problem is often someone’s attempted solution to problems about which they keep themselves unaware. The training focuses on the analysis and observations of several people who had experienced tremendous health and emotional challenges.
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From PACES CONNECTION
Turning Gold into Lead: Understanding the Role of ACEs to Our Work as Judges
LYNN TEPPER 11/6/18. 4:27 PM
Judge Lynn Tepper and a courtroom therapy dog.
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[Editor's note: Judge Lynn Tepper, 6th Judicial Circuit, Florida, wrote this for a newsletter published by the Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator, Office of Court Improvement, and kindly agreed to cross-post it to ACEs Connection. ]
"How do we go from a newborn with its extraordinary potential to the man lying on the street whom we overlook? The answer relates directly and in unexpected ways to difficult problems of medical practice, social functioning, institutionalization, addiction, and public health. The ACE Study is about what we learned exploring the ORIGINS of those problems, and how we came to see that the perceived problem is often someone’s attempted solution to problems about which we keep ourselves unaware."
So began Dr. Vincent Felitti’s plenary presentation at the Annual Education Program of the Florida Conference of Circuit Judges: “The Repressed Role of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Addiction, Disease, and Premature Death: Turning gold into lead." (Click here to see his presentation and his PowerPoint.) Those “problems” and “attempted solutions” fill the divisions of courts and inter-related systems. The original 1998 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study, of which Dr. Felitti, was co-principal investigator with Dr. Robert Anda, of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), revealed an extraordinary, unexpected relationship between our emotional experiences as children and our physical and mental health as adults. The ACE Study revealed that humans figuratively turn the "gold” of the potential of a newborn into "lead” by converting the childhood traumatic emotional experiences into disease later in life.
During his presentation, Dr. Felitti explained, “Adverse childhood experiences are the main cause of health risk behaviors, and hence of disease, disability, premature death, and healthcare costs. People with an ACE score 6 or higher have a life expectancy almost 20 years shorter than an ACE Score 0.”
What we learned from this presentation as individuals may be revealing to us. In fact, each judge in attendance had the opportunity to complete the 10- question ACE questionnaire electronically and anonymously. As you can see in the table below, none of the responding judges had an ACE Score of 0, and in three of the categories, the judges had higher scores than the respondents from the original study.
CATEGORIES OF ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES
Abuse, by Category
Original Study
Judges
Psychological (by parents)
11%
15%
Physical (by parents)
28%
17%
Sexual (anyone)
22%
12%
Neglect, by Category
Original Study
Judges
Emotional
15%
12%
Physical
10%
6%
Household Dysfunction, by Category
Original Study
Judges
Alcoholism or drug use in home
27%
22%
Loss of biological parent
<18
23%
32%
Depression or mental illness
in home
17%
24%
Mother treated violently
13%
9%
Imprisoned household member
5%
3%
These scores and the reality that the professional lives of the judges reflect extraordinary accomplishment certainly would be “gold” and not “lead”, despite the childhood traumatic emotional experiences. Key to understanding that outcome are the responses to the two “buffering relationships” questions, which were not part of the original ACE Study, but were administered to circuit judges prior to them attending the conference. One of the insights from the ACE Study was a “primary prevention” approach. Having “buffering relationships" is one of those “primary prevention” approaches that builds resiliency so that the “extraordinary potential” of a newborn is realized, not lost. As the table below illustrates, most of the judges who responded to these questions had strong buffering relationships that mitigated the impact of their ACEs.
Question
Definitely True
Probably True
Not Sure
Probably Not True
Definitely Not True
When I was a child I had a supportive home environment.
70% or 162
18% or 41
4% or 9
4% or 10
4% or 9
When I was a child I had stable, responsive, supportive & caring relationships with adults & caregivers.
75% or 166
18% or 41
2% or 4
2% or 5
3% or 6
As judges, what we learned might lead us to an understanding of what lies beneath the behaviors we see in court by litigants, and the risky behaviors that lead parties and defendants into our courts, our jails, our detention centers, and our local mental health and substance abuse facilities. Our take-away? The health risk behaviors linked to ACEs may be viewed by the public and health field as a problem, but may be viewed by a patient, defendant, delinquent, dependent party, and litigant as a solution. That view has a lot to do with why certain problems are so difficult to treat. As Dr. Felitti pointed out, “We’re not treating the problem; we’re attempting to treat someone’s solution.” This has major relevance to treating all addictions and the vast disruptive, chronic, seemingly unresponsive behaviors that cross our thresholds every day. Summarized succinctly by my colleague in the 6thcircuit, Judge Linda Babb, “We have been treating the symptoms” and not looking at the adversity in which that individual spent their childhood.
(l to r) Judge Lynn Tepper, Dr. Vincent Felitti, Dr. Mimi Graham, director of the Florida State University Center for Prevention and Policy.
At the conference, Judge Scott Bernstein (11thcircuit), Chief Judge Jonathan Sjostrom (2ndcircuit), Judge Alicia Latimore (9thcircuit), and I briefly shared our experiences regarding individuals impacted by ACEs in virtually every division of the court and the benefits of being trauma-informed and developing a trauma-informed courthouse and community partners.
Over 75% of the judges who responded to the post-test that was administered believed they may have missed telltale signs of ACEs or trauma in the past; 75% think they might handle “disruptive” parties more effectively moving forward; and 77% think there are things they can change in their courthouse or courtroom as a result of what they learned from Dr. Felitti’s presentation. Ideally, our judicial response will include:
how we handle and respond to litigants, defendants, and all who appear before us;
what sentences and dispositions we may impose;
what types of assessments we may order;
which bench guides and tools we may utilize to determine “What happened to this person?” instead of “What did this person do wrong?”; and
embracing the “Big Ten” found within the Family Court Tool Kit: Trauma and Child Development and the constantly updated array of resources and interactive materials on the Florida Courts website.
Dr. Felitti studied the connection between ACEs and health. Unexpectedly, he uncovered for the courts and our community partners a path past our litigants’ “past.” By applying science to what we do every day and responding appropriately to ACEs, we have a chance to change the trajectory of each life we touch. We have an opportunity to change the world if we see it through a trauma lens.
https://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/userfiles/file/HealthCare/reserve_alchemy.pdf
CDC violence prevention article
http://centervideo.forest.usf.edu/video/center/acestudy/start.html
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