How do you know if you are traumatized?

[Intro] Hi and welcome to my podcast. I'm your host, Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive guide and the owner of Change Radically. My intention both here and in private sessions, is to come alongside you in a way that feels safe and empowering.

So many of us are experiencing similar things and feeling common emotions, but we won't know that unless we talk about it. I specialize in helping people pleasers change patterns and create a life they feel good about. Life should not be consumed by doing things you feel obligated to do.

Do you want to feel a lot less frustrated than stop living in a way that benefits everyone else at your expense? Empowered to thrive in a place of safety, conversations focus on topics that impact our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Parenting comes up too, because I'm a mom to four kids and it's natural for me to talk about the impact that has on life.

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I'll start. Now on today's episode.

Hey there, happy to have you.

We're going to continue the conversation, not specifically around emotional neglect, but around the idea of: Have you been traumatized? Is trauma still affecting your life even if you didn't go through anything big and obvious? And what I mean by that is, some people, don’t know they experienced abuse or they don’t recognize they went through a major life event that they were traumatized by.

The interesting thing with trauma is it's not necessarily the event you go through, but the way you go through it, the perception you have as you go through it, for example. You could be in the water or almost drowning, but if you don't perceive that you almost drowned, if you recognize that help was close by and you didn't internalize this, “I almost touched death and I felt afraid by that”, you may not come out of it at all traumatized.

Someone else may come out of that experience extremely traumatized and have a fear of water. Have dreams where they feel like they're drowning because they're reliving this event that affected them on multiple levels.

But really, it's about our perception, the underlying beliefs in how we go through these experiences.

What I want to bring up today though, is the idea that there are many of us, who are living with unresolved trauma. This matters because it's affecting our present day, it's affecting the way we interact with people, and the way we carry ourselves, and detrimentally affecting us.

So why I'm bringing this up is so that you can recognize ohh, that I have something I need to look at so that I can resolve that is moving forward without it hanging over me and without it having this residual negative effect on my life, and a lot of people grow up in families where their parents just didn't have the capacity, didn't know how to self regulate. Didn't know emotions were something that should be expressed and cultivated. Because I'm not meaning just like an expression of anger where then people rage and they hurt someone or they throw something and everyone is afraid. I don't just mean like ohh, people should just be able to express whatever range of emotion in any way, no matter how it's affecting everybody. Not necessarily. I do think anger needs to be expressed, I think there are safe ways to express it, safe places to express it, and I don't think young children, nobody should be the object of someone's anger, but young children experiencing someone's anger It's gotta be processed because a young kid is internalizing an idea and a belief. If we don't talk about what's going on in the room when someone gets angry and other emotions, then we're bound to internalize and conclude something that's probably not true. Maybe that's a little bit broad, and I have noticed, of course, my children aren't grown yet, so I don't know how all of life is impacting them.

But I've noticed:

My husband Evan will sometimes have an angry tone. He's not an angry person and he's joking, but they're not alarmed by this angry tone when he's playful and he's joking, but I often personally feel. I don't know if I feel triggered, but I flashback. I know that I flashback to that tone and what it meant when I was a child because I had a parental figure who was very angry and it was not in a playful way, so that tone isn't playful to me. That tone is like a very real terrifying tone now, the longer I've lived with Evan, I've been able to recognize.

Ohh, OK, alright. I don't fear what he's gonna do when he has that tone. I assume it's playful. But I also at the same time recognize that it takes me back to another place.

Now if I'm triggered, It's not just going to flash me back, It's going to affect me. I'm gonna feel afraid, I'm going to want to hide or I'm going to want him to stop that tone like it's going to affect me in a big order way.

So, my children, I recognize, don't respond to anger the same way I do because they haven't known it in the same way that I did.

So I guess what I'm trying to say there is, it's not automatic that, oh, a child hears someone angry, they're going to become afraid. I do think we learn. We learn what we need to be afraid of. Anger isn't something that everyone knows to fear, so thanks for tracking with me, we're just going to continue moving in this direction.

What about you? What about your life? Is residually affecting you? That we could stop and get curious about it and say, should it have affected you still? Is there something unresolved there? And again, I am bringing this up because if your life can get better, if your life can be easier, more peaceful, and more joyful, then why not? If there's nothing that's residually affecting you in this negative detrimental way then fabulous.

But what if there is? What if you struggle with intrusive thoughts? By the way, many of us struggle with intrusive thoughts.

My kiddos just told me a week or two ago about how they had a bizarre thought. It wasn't bizarre, but to them, they're like, mom, I have this thought that, like, what if this happens? I'm crossing the parking lot, and no cars are coming, but what if somebody comes and they hit me, they run me over like something like that?

And I was like, yeah, I mean, I have thoughts like that too. And then my other child was like, yeah, I have thoughts like that too. And we talked about it a little bit.

Those types of thoughts come and go for many of us. What do we do with them? That's a question.

You know, I basically might have thought, but I don't necessarily do much with it. At times, It's like, oh, yeah, that might happen, OK, but I'm going to keep walking to my car like I don't see anyone else. I don't see any cars around. I'm safe at the moment. I'm just gonna keep going.

There's a lot we could do with that conversation, but I'm bringing it up because sometimes if we don't talk about it, we think, gosh, I'm the only one who has these intrusive thoughts when no, no, I walk down the stairs and sometimes have a thought like, Oh my gosh, like, maybe I'm just going to trip and like, fall all these stairs. 

OK, maybe. But it hasn't happened like in the gazillion times I've walked down the stairs. So I'm just going to keep going down the stairs, OK? I can hold on to the railing if I feel nervous. And I'm not trying to make little of these things, I'm just saying, It's what we do with what comes our way. We don't have to give every thought power. If we do, we're going to be tormented.

Alright, that's a thought. I noticed the thought and I let it go. Woo, thoughts come and go all day long. I'm sure you also feel this way.

There be times in your day, you start and you're like, I felt happy. I felt hopeful. I was excited for the day and then something just shifted and, I got into this negative dark, hopeless place where like oh my life feels so monotonous and I just wish there was more time for me. I wish there was more excitement, what's the point of all this? That type of thing is also typical. This happens to many of us.

So what I might suggest in that case is you step outside, just like get out in the sunlight if it's raining, maybe just still get out if you can get out to a covered area. Step outside. Shift your day. There may be other ways you can shift your day. If you have a chance for a 20-minute nap, that might help a lot. Sometimes we need rest and our body is just needing a recharge, a reboot, and it changes everything for us. I'm not talking about that I'm going to go to sleep because I'm depressed. I'm going to go to sleep because I'm frozen and I don't know what else to do. I don't mean that, I mean frozen as an emotional response like a freeze response where like.

I'm so overwhelmed by the big thing in front of me that I'm going to stop and do nothing because I don't know what to do and I'll just go to sleep.

So I'm not referring to those scenarios. I'm talking about when your body needs a recharge and the whole world looks brighter when you wake up because you feel about you're rested. It might be time to get a cup of tea, or something else that's like comforting but nourishing.

You know what it is for you. You may need to call a friend and just bring someone else into your experience.

Hey, I know this is going to pass, but I just needed to talk to someone right now while I'm here.

Because again, this is us, reminding our inner child. I go back to the inner child because our inner child shows up all the time in our lives. Our inner child needs to know I'm not alone in this.

So when you phone a friend, It's like we're going back in time and reminding that little kid help is close by.

There's an adult, there's a parental figure. There's someone nearby noticing us and helping us. Now you're that parental figure for that little kid you're noticing, oh, they need a friend to talk to you right now. They need support in this moment or they need to go outside and get some sunlight. They need a nap and a rest like we are being the loving, wise adult that our inner child needs by noticing what they're experiencing.

And coming to their aid, how can I help now? A little kid doesn't always know how they need help. So, as the wise, loving adult, we offer suggestions and you might feel like Corinne, I don't know what I need. I get that. That's OK. You're going to learn as you go. So it's trial and error. You know what? Let me step outside. I mean, make myself that warm drink or that cold drink, like, whatever. Let me rest if I can, even if it's for 5 minutes, you have 5 minutes, close your eyes for 5 minutes. I don't think everything has to be like perfect like ohh I need to have this amount of time. No, shuffle things around to make this work for you. Use what resources you have. If you've heard me say it once, you're gonna keep hearing me say it like I'm talking about.

Making the most out of what you've got. I'm going to use 5 minutes to take a walk. If I've got 5 minutes, do I want to take an hour-long walk? Yeah, but if I expect that every time I'm never gonna walk, I've gotta take the 5 minutes when I can, and then at the end of the week if I took 5 minutes every day, that's 35 minutes friends. I'm happy with that. Like I'll do that if I have to because it's satisfying to know, ohh I did get a walk-in If I have to.

Yeah, we gotta use what we got and make the best of it, and we each can do that. And maybe your personality, like that's not how you would normally look at things. That's OK. It's alright.

Try it out, just give it a try. I've heard people tell me I sat outside for two minutes and it made a difference.

Heck yeah! So go do it.

We all can make space for two minutes and 5 minutes here and there. We all can.

All right. So again, sometimes this unresolved trauma shows up in forms that seem typical like I've got intrusive thoughts or I feel dysregulated throughout the day. That's OK. That's normal, but it doesn't mean you have to live in that constant. There is help. There's a different way.

Gosh, I remember not wanting to live. Like, I just, I didn't wanna live anymore. Like life was so difficult. It was so hard. It was so lonely. It felt so dark. I mean this is like my childhood, it was my normal and I didn't know it could be different.

But I had those thoughts in the home I was growing up in Like I had those thoughts often. I know I'm not alone in that. It was just an indicator of my internal reality.

Whenever we say like, I just don't want to keep going. I feel like that is an indicator that, like the internal reality is really hard, and that's why I do the work I do.

That's why I'm here because I want to help you experience what I know is possible.

I know it's possible to wake up and live the life you're living. I'm there friends. It's only getting better the longer I go. The more I heal, gets better and better and better.

I want to leave you with this: Just consider as you go through your day, what are your emotions like. What are you feeling at different times of the day? Just notice them but take note. Like, take note, so that you're able to consider them at a later point or reach out to me, and we can consider them together.

What is your day-to-day internal world like? Excuse me. Also, remember, you don't have to believe. Please don't believe every thought you have, and bring someone into your headspace. Bring someone into your internal world. Someone that you feel safe and comfortable with. It is better when you're not just doing it alone, experiencing all the hardship alone.

And I also just want to close by saying there is hope. If you feel like your internal world is scary, heavy, dark, or bleak, If you battle feelings of hopelessness and despair, It doesn't always have to be that way.

It can change. It can get a lot lighter and a lot brighter.

And reach out to me or someone else who you feel might be able to help you and see where it goes.

I'm always, always, always rooting for you. Always here, ready to just listen to what's going on in your life and offer guidance.

Much love.

[Ending] We've come to an end. What did you think about what you heard? I hope that there's something you pull from today's episode and start implementing it into your life.

Create the change that you want to see, the change that you hear about.

You have the opportunity to transform your life, and I'm ready to link arms with you and help and guide you to the life that you want to live. If you resonated with what you heard today and it touched you, would you share it with your friends? Would you also go ahead and rate my podcast and write a written review? It would mean so much to me.

I hope that we'll connect, whether it's for a session or just to connect because I enjoy meeting new people.

You can find me on Instagram, at @corinne_changeradically.

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You can also always e-mail me at corinne@changeradically.com.

If you have thoughts, questions, or anything that you just want to talk about, send me an e-mail. I hope that you have a wonderful week. But no matter what your week is like, in the quiet moments, maybe it's when you pillow your head at night, or when you're driving in the car or taking a walk, or maybe it's going to be in the midst of the chaos with your children, or the craziness of work, I hope that you'll remember how significant you are, that there is meaning and value to your life, and that I’m so glad that you're alive, catch you again next week.