Episode 1 – Small things, all things.

That's why nothing is silly, because any preference you have or anything that you're grateful for is because you have had the full swing opposite direction of it.

Welcome to Therapy is My Therapy, a podcast where licensed counselor Olivia and unlicensed client Tanya delve deep into real and raw conversations in order to demystify what really happens in that 50 minutes hour heads up. This podcast contains strong language and sensitive topics related to mental health. Today we discuss how the seemingly irrelevant things that come up in therapy can actually hold a lot of information. Also, I just wanted to give a heads up that this episode has less than ideal audio quality due to echo and construction noise. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode.

I remember the first time I started trusting my therapist and being like, okay, she's probably onto something here. I had a bad role in jujitsu. So someone who is emotionally chinny whenever I do feel like the other person doesn't have my safety in consideration, and I don't have the skills to defend myself or get out because I was a white belt at the time, I dissociate. And then a few days later, all those feelings of terror and upset kind of defrost, and they come up. And I remember having a full on meltdown, like kind of a PTSD flashback. And I do mean PTSD flashback in a very literal sense of my body just felt immediately transported back to that moment, and not just back to that moment, but back to when I was eight or nine and my mom was just beating the tar out of me.

Right.

I felt the same sensations as a helpless kid, and like you said, my body would just shrink up and I'd be tense and ready to brace for impact. And she guided me through it. And I can't remember how because I was preoccupied with melting down. And I was just wondering for you personally, what sort of tactics or things you employ to kind of get that person back in the here and now.

Yeah, and that's a really good question, and I think it depends on the situation. Obviously, there's not a one size fits all, but especially when it's something that is triggered by a childhood traumatic experience. I like to do a lot of inner child work and say, okay, so you're feeling like this nine year old version of yourself. Can you picture her? What is she doing right now? And it's, oh, she's cowering in the room against the wall and she's afraid she's going to get hit or whatever it is that you're experiencing and remembering and, okay, what does she need from you? Right? Like, what did she need then? What did she wish she would have gotten? And usually the immediate response is, well, she's not going to trust me because she doesn't trust adults. Rightfully so. And it's okay. Well, what do you think you could do to make her trust you? And it's well, I can sit with her and give her enough distance that she doesn't feel trapped or she doesn't feel forced, and then it's okay. Let's kind of visualize you just sitting with this younger version of yourself and seeing what comes up of do you feel like your body is relaxing a little bit? Do you feel like this version of yourself is allowing you to get a little bit closer? Are they going to let you talk to them? What do you think you could say, like, kind of walking through that process of reparenting and allowing yourself to sit with that part of yourself, that's feeling scared? Because I think a lot of the times when we have those experiences, there's so much shame and there's a lot of anger of, why are you doing this to me? I'm just trying to do jiu jitsu. I'm trying to live my life. Why can't you just get over it? We get so angry at the parts of ourselves that aren't healed yet that we then exile them, and with that, the connection to our body and our feelings and everything else. So a lot of the work I try to do is, okay, let's bring her back into the room, and how can we show compassion towards the part of ourself that is kind of getting scapegoated into being the villain when really she just doesn't want to get hit again, right?

Yeah. I'm trying to think back about that instance, and I think that was pretty close to what happened. And I think that was one of those few moments where I realized what a disconnected relationship I had with my body. I think in that moment, plus, I was going full limbic, but I was just like, what are you talking about? What do you mean? She could have been just speaking German to me. And I'm like, I don't understand what purpose this serves, but I was like, all right, I'll entertain this lady's weird game that she's playing. And I'm like, but what I really remarked about over therapy is not just what emotions come up, but what emotions don't come up. In the sense of in that moment, I felt a block, like a wall that I just hit. I'm like, we don't look at that inner child. We don't look at her. She's gone. We don't want anything to do with her. She's dead and gone and buried. And it was hard. I think people don't realize that there shouldn't be shame attached to that. I was pissed about I should be over this. And that's a statement that I'm sure you've heard. And if you want to talk about why we're not over it, because it has to do with the body. It has to do with the brain and the connection between the two.

Right? Yeah. Like we talked about last time, the body keeps the score. They talk about the study they did where they connected people who had experienced trauma to all the brainy stuff and looking at their brainwaves and all the sciency things. And I believe they had them write, like, ahead of time, they had them write a narrative of the trauma that had happened to them, and then they had them read it while they're connected to all the stuff. And what they found was that when you've experienced trauma and you have PTSD and you remember the event, your brain is responding as if it's happening in real time. It's not responding as if it's a memory. So when your body clenches or you experience any of the somatic symptoms, it's not, oh, this is a bad memory. No, your body thinks it's in danger right now. It's releasing cortisol as if it's in danger and it's absolutely responding as though you are in total survival mode. So now nothing in your body is going to function properly and you're not going to sleep as well. You're going to probably start holding on to weight because your body doesn't think it is safe to let go. Your heart rate is going to go up, blood pressure is going to go up and everything else is going to shut down and you're going to be stuck in the fight or flight mode. And so that's why it matters and why we can't just get over it because it's not over in our brain, it's still happening.

So for me, a lot of the sessions will be I bring up this one point and then we kind of just free associate or trace it back. And oftentimes I'll find like, oh, this feeling I somehow am immediately transmitted. Like this one instance where grade eight, I wanted to hug this guy and he just said, Get away from me. And he had his reasons, but like you said, children don't. I don't understand. I just think I default to what I've been taught is, oh, I'm bad and I'm unwanted and I'm unlovable. And I just remember going through that and crying and kind of I kind of feel like she's like Lansing a boil, so to speak. She just kind of like opened that up. It's gross. No, it's Dr. Pimple popper, but it's gnarly and all this comes out. Yeah, and it's gross. It's so gross.

I mean, that's a really good analogy for what it's like though. Healing is really gross. It feels really cringy and yucky. I think those words are more accurate than bigger fancy words of like it's really hard to sit in things that were embarrassing or shameful or sad. It's just constantly hitting at trigger points.

Yeah, I referred to the emotions as sticky because it clings on to you and you just want it to go away. But I was like, got this boil lance. And I just remember feeling like immense sense of shame and immediately apologizing and shaming myself. I said I should be over this and then I thought, oh, wait. I was just, like, laughing because then I bring it up here. I'm like, you have probably had Fortune 500 CEOs in the fetal position crying over a childhood memory. It doesn't matter who you are. If that memory doesn't get essentially processed and contextualized and shown that it's a safe place to be, it will always just take you right back to that place. Every time my therapist would start it, I would do the social niceties of like, hi, how are you? How's the weather? How's your cat? What's going on? And the small talk. And, yeah, it makes sense that it's partly that I'm conditioned to make the person comfortable, which is not the case in therapy. Like, you guys are here for us, in a sense, and to kill time. And she would just start with, like, I'm ready. And it is so daunting. And I'm, like, ready. For what? Do I just launch into my brain? Would panic, in a sense? Do I launch into a whole this happened and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? Or do I start slow? Or how do I navigate this? And I have found that it is scary being given so much choice and agency to talk about something as troublesome and annoying as my feelings, because those have historically never mattered, right? And I'm like, how do I pick? And I know I have had a lot of trouble. I usually pick, like, the big, sexy, big T traumas where I'm like, this horrible flashback. It's tough, revealing things, and sometimes small things, small things that I didn't think mattered. She'll be like, what's that? And then I can sense in my body, like, how hard I'm trying to hide it. We're like, you know, don't mind the man behind the curtain that's not there. We don't look at that. And it turns out, like, something small is also so rife with information. And, yeah, what goes on in your mind as you might zero in on something that's like, there's something here, and we'd like to explore that.

Yeah, a lot of it is pattern recognition of, okay, you brought up these three things. Something is linking them together, and that's why you brought those up. Or I notice a lot clients will start with the big, overwhelming thing going on, and then they'll abruptly switch to talk about something that does not seem as dire. And almost always, I'll notice a connection between the big thing they're talking about and then the small thing. And I'll say, you know, I'm noticing that because a lot of times people will say, this is so classic. They'll say, Well, I know this isn't related at all, but I also have this thing. And then they say it, and I say, Well, I'm noticing it actually relates a lot to the last thing you were talking about. And they're like, what? What do you mean? No, it's not. I'm talking about my pets. And over here, I was talking about this abuse, and I'm able to kind of really gently point out similarities. And then there's that moment of people recognizing that the small things are almost always indicators of something larger. It's just like when we're feeling like, a big physical pain or something, there will be something really tiny, like, oh, my head kind of hurts. It's like, well, yeah, if you broke your leg, you're going to have other sensations in your body. So it's like putting together all the different pain points and looking at the bigger picture of them.

Yeah, the small things, all things is huge and seemingly insignificant. Things really bear a lot of fruit. There was a partner, and I was actually really happy that I could share my food with them without them eating all of it. And then, yeah, Catherine was like, that's interesting. Say more. And I was like, well, it's nice offering them something and knowing I'll get something back. And she's like, Why is that? I go, well, you say I've got a chocolate bar, and I hand it to them and they just eat the whole damn thing, and they leave me with nothing. And then I get mad. And they're like, Why are you mad? And then as I'm describing, I'm like, oh, I see how this relates to relating, because as a result, I'm scared to ever offer anything. And then I talk about it's nice giving my chocolate bar to this person and knowing that they care enough about me to ask, like, hey, can I have all this? How much of it? And you can negotiate that boundary.

Yeah, I mean, the second you said, oh, I can share a plate with my partner, my brain just immediately said, people have taken too much from you. That's why nothing is silly, because any preference you have or anything that you're grateful for is because you have had the full swing opposite direction of it. And in a relationship, what that symbolizes is I can give to you and know that you're not going to take everything. And I also know that when you have something to give, you are going to share it. And that is, like, the cornerstone of a healthy relationship. So things that seem tiny are usually just indicators of a larger pattern.

Yeah. And most people don't know that about therapy. They only think to go to therapy when something's gone wrong. I went to therapy because with my partner at the time, I was literally afraid to be in the room with him. And he didn't do anything to me. He's a lovely, wonderful person, but I'm, like, just on edge. My body was like, Get away, get away. And so I went for that and the childhood trauma, and eventually, in a sense, I ran out of trauma and I was like, do we stop? I don't know, do we continue? Because I'm boring you. I'm boring with like, I gave someone my chocolate bar and it was nice. I'm like, how can you possibly be entertained by this? And then, yeah, she communicated to me that, no, these small things are huge. They are a great symptom or not symptom, but a great indicator data point of something deeper, something about how you relate or how others relate to you. And I've likened a lot of it to physical therapy, where, say, I went into PT for my knee exploding, and once that was done, I was like, oh, now what? I can walk, I can't jump. That great, whatever, but I'm physically ambulatory. But then, yeah, she noted that. Well, do you want to just barely scrape by? Do you want to just be able to walk in maybe a light jog? Or do you want to actually go back and engage in jiu jitsu in the fullest capacity? Then you have to refine. Then you have to essentially look at the small things and just work on those. And then you can actually go further, faster, farther, or I already said farther, but yeah, you can go further and faster.

And when we're used to accepting breadcrumbs as an exciting thing of, oh, thank God, they're not just taking they're giving something. Even though it's tiny, it's something. I'll take it. I'm alive. Let's just stop there. If I ask for too much, then it's going to be an issue, and it makes it really hard to shift out of, okay, I don't just need to live in survival mode. I am allowed to grow and I'm allowed to have a bigger life than just survival.

Yeah. And that's been it. I have gone from feeling what I apparently described to her as a small animal back into the corner of her cage to someone who is out and about and exploring and just gaining a dialogue with my body and its wisdom, which a phrase I thought was super like New wave, woo woo bullshit. Your body's wisdom. Turns out it does actually know what's going on a lot more than my brain. It has led me to have a bigger life. So, yeah, I guess on that note, this has been awesome. Thank you.

And that concludes this episode of therapy is my therapy. If you enjoyed enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing to our podcast so you never miss an update. Once again, thanks for tuning in. The content discussed on this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not act as a replacement for therapy. Although we may share tools that have worked for us and talk about symptoms that we've experienced, it is not meant to be used for diagnostic purposes and does not constitute medical advice.