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>> Carlee: Do you feel like you've tried everything to manage the aftermath of your trauma, but with no success? Like you should be over it already. Maybe people have even told you you should be over it already, but you're just not. If so, this episode is for you. Hi. I'm Carlee Myers, a stress management expert and this month we're talking trauma and tragedy on The Stress Less Show. I'm really excited to bring on Danielle Massi who is a holistic mental health therapist and the owner of the Wellness collective. This is their second time on the show. I'm so excited to have her back now. She is a cancer survivor and she understands the importance of holistic health and hopes to bring awareness to everyone about the benefits of taking care of yourself. Mind body and spirit. One of her favorite topics is the mind body connection and the power of altering your brain chemistry in charge of your thoughts. Now. I'm excited because we had her on episode 36 where we talked about mental health, but this month we're gonna dig a little bit deeper into the aftermath of trauma. So Danielle, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Welcome.
>> Danielle: Thank you. Thanks for having me back. I'm excited too.
>> Carlee: Absolutely. So we're we're digging a little bit deeper and I just. I'm so excited for you to share to share your thoughts now. I know we already shared your story on episode 36. So guys if you want to hear her full story go check out that episode. We're going to dig a little bit deeper on to a specific part of her story because I think it's really important to this topic.
>> Danielle: Yeah. Thank you. And please go check out at episode 36 because it gives a lot of backstory to this but I'm picking up where I left off with this specific part of my story. I had a surgery - a hysterectomy - and it was. Brutal to say the least. And when I went through this surgery I came out and the hospital was not able to manage my medication properly. So I was in excruciating pain that they could not regulate. And it took hours for this to happen. By the time they finally were able to release me and let me go to a hospital room, my parents who were there during my surgery had left. And so at the point where I needed my parents the most - especially my mommy because attachment reasons we really look for our attachment figures in moments of extreme pain. She was gone. And so I had an immediate trauma response in my body where I had a bit of a freak out and it took. Months and months for me to really reconcile this where every time I was triggered by my mom, I would go back into that trauma response similar to what might happen with someone who experiences some really intense in their life like being a poor which is called big T trauma. When our response to a trauma is really overwhelming and we can't work our way out of it it's considered a big T trauma. Little T trauma is trauma that we engage in pretty regularly and we don't recognize the fact that they are traumatic and have an intense effect on our body. We sort of brush them off and hope that they'll go away. So everyone has experienced trauma in some way. It's just a matter of maybe you've experienced a few little T traumas and maybe one big T or maybe there's no big T yet but it may come. So this is a really much needed topic and I'm so thankful to you, Carlee, for bringing this onto the show and highlighting it for a period of time. It's so important.
>> Carlee: Yeah.
>> Danielle: Yeah. The tips that I'm bringing to you guys today are first and foremost, I want you to know the underlying cause of your trauma. So on the outset of my trauma in particular, it might look like it might not be a trauma response. Like waking up and not finding someone there is sad, but it's not necessarily something that would cause trauma. Right? But if we look a layer deeper, we have this biological attachment need to our primary caregivers in the moments where we are at our lowest we look to them to provide safety. So for me not having that secure attachment figure to go to was traumatic. So knowing that means that I know what is going to happen to me in the future when this particular thing which for me was attachment gets triggered. Second tip that I have for you all is to understand what trauma looks like in your body. So we know that there's little T trauma and big T traumas and they might look different. One of the stereotypical things we talk about trauma is war veterans because they tend to have really overwhelming big T trauma. So for them in their body, it might look like you know sweating, having a meltdown, screaming at someone, but Little T trauma or even big T trauma that is really normalized in our society say things like rape or just having a sexual encounter that goes really poorly is not discussed in the same way. So for instance knowing what that looks like in your body it might be during sexual encounters feeling like you're not actually present. So that's called dissociation and that is something that happens within someone's body where they're having something happen to them and they almost feel like they're floating outside of themselves. And that is extremely common especially for women.
>> Carlee: I was going to say one of the things that I always hear is that you like your laying in the bed and you're like you're looking like you're floating and looking down at yourself in that or wherever that situation is.
>> Danielle: Oh yeah yeah. This is extremely common and that is a trauma response dissociation is a trauma response, but we don't call it that. So knowing that when we dissociate when we kind of float outside of our bodies that is the trauma response is extremely important to recognize. That can happen for people in other situations to think about when you have a boss who yells at you. For those of us who have been traumatized by an experience like that before, we might feel like we're outside of our bodies and that is a trauma response. It can also look like in the body like you completely shut down and everyone around you is like the Charlie Brown parents where it's like womp womp womp and you can't hear it because your body is having a spasm. It's just completely freaking out. Knowing what it looks like in your body is key to healing your trauma period.
>> Carlee: I think that's really powerful because I don't think people are talking about. I mean even like I'm saying as we record this. It's three days past the 15 year anniversary of my mom being shot right. And. For about 10 years, it's part of my story. If you guys have been listening and following the show you probably heard a little bit of it. Ten years of disassociation or some of these some of these bodily responses and even working with a therapist I didn't learn. So I think just understanding how it shows up in your body is just a key step to even say oh OK I'm experiencing a trauma response now maybe we should go back to tip number one and say OK what is the underlying cause of this. Because this can't keep happening because it is disruptive.
>> Danielle: Yeah it's cyclical. And I think we don't recognize that as a society. So very often for us if we would do go to therapy or we talk to other people about it, we skip over it. I have friends casually talk about dissociating during sex. Casually like it's nothing. And it is in fact a trauma response. And I've experienced it myself before. So knowing what it looks like, knowing what causes it, that means that we can get to step number three. The last tip that I have for you guys is to learn to manage it every single day because at any given time something to trigger that trauma response. So going back to the example of having some kind of sexual issue occur. When that happens, we need to know OK. This is a trigger for me. This is something that triggers this response, so I need to calm my body down right now. I need to work on that in this moment. The more we understand our triggers, the more we can get ahead of it or even staying away from instances where it might occur or if there's things that are unavoidable like you want to have a healthy robust sex life and you can't avoid that to just do something about preparing for it ahead of time like creating a really nourishing safe relationship with your partner.
>> Carlee: So when you say to try to change the relationship or the way our bodily state is you have any like quick just like... Punch kind of punchy tips search holes upon our bodies and get out of that triggered state?
>> Danielle: Absolutely. I think I talk about this fully in episode 36. So for sure if you haven't checked this out, go back to there. But what we want to do is we want to shut off our fight or flight response and activate rest and digest because our body is essentially in fight or flight mode when we experience trauma. We need to get out of there we need to shut ourselves down. We need to protect. So the quick tip for that is breathing techniques to actually shut down fight or flight. My favorite is box breathing. Breathe in for four. Hold for four for breathe out for four hold for four. And you just keep repeating that over and over again until your body starts to calm and you'll know because you know what it looks like in your body. So when you start experiencing rest and when you stop experiencing the things that you know your trauma response, you did it. And then you can re-engage.
>> Carlee: Awesome. So for the listeners we want to know do you know what triggers you comment below and let us know? And so Danielle. For those of us who don't know what triggers us like we're just like oh my goodness we don't know what triggers me. I don't even know how to get started. You wanted to you have something to help people get to the next step.
>> Danielle: I do. And you need to work with a therapist that specifically works with people who have a trauma response. So look up trauma informed therapist if you're not in the Philly area and if you're in the Philly area come see me because it's something that I work really really exclusively with. I do a lot of work with trauma and I'd be happy to help you work through this
>> Carlee: So you can find her, we're gonna be tagging her on Instagram Facebook everywhere we post this video so you can shoot her a DM or shoot her a message. And if they want to check out your Web site what is that?
>> Danielle: It's wellness P H L Doc com.
>> Carlee: Wellness P L dot com you heard the woman. So that concludes this episode of The Stress Less Show. If you enjoyed this week's episode, let us know by giving us a big old thumbs up and hitting that follower subscribe button. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.