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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk with guest host Bruce Muzik about the tools to overcome childhood traumas that are showing up in your relationships.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Bruce Muzik of Love at First Fight.
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What are ACEs Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) (cdc.gov)>, and how are they affecting our relationships?
- The huge impact our childhoods have on our lives.
- Why there is a direct link that predicts disease in our adult life.
- What is affecting our potential relationship satisfaction.
- What a low vs high ACE score means.
- Why certain ACE scores are tied to alcoholism, chronic depression, smoking, autoimmune diseases and more.
- How many ACEs did Joel and Antonia have?
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So you have ACEs…now what?
- Why healing from trauma is possible and faster than you think.
- How these particular trauma therapies are changing lives.
- Why this time period in history is set for healing trauma.
- The burgeoning science of healing trauma.
- Why talk therapy isn’t the best option to deal with trauma.
- Where our trauma is actually stored.
- Bessel van der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps the Score.
- The real thing that is most damaging to people beyond the actual trauma.
- What our emotions actually need to do.
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How is trauma affecting our relationships?
- Which couples struggle the most in their relationships?
- What Bruce experienced in his marriage.
- What safety in our relationship really means.
- When we have cortisol pumping in our veins consistently.
- Why kissing your wife goodbye in the morning is such a big deal.
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Why we all actually have trauma.
- Capital “T” Trauma vs lowercase “t” trauma.
- The one thing we all have to do.
- How attachment styles tie in with trauma. (Check out this episode with Bruce on attachment theory )
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Where to get help.
- What is complex trauma?
- Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker.
- The Crappy Childhood Fairy (Anna Runkle).
- Finding EMDR and trauma therapists at www.trauma.info
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What do we do to handle trauma in others?
- When is challenge vs gentleness appropriate?
- Why personal growth leaders need to understand trauma.
- The model Bruce uses to grow through what we’ve gone through.
- What men need more vs what women need.
- Bruce’s experience of how to support and yet challenge.
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Why labeling our partners can cause more problems than help.
- When blaming stops our progress.
- What focusing on the self does for you and your relationship.
- This important thing you need to learn.
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25 comments
Hmm, I think what I mean is that gentleness and challenge are not mutually exclusive. Though maybe for some people and at some times toughness is the only way to challenge?
Hi, I just listened to the podcast. I am in my 40’s and have an ACE score of 9. I have been diagnosed with CPTSD. I can honestly say that most of my life I was a “push yourself hard” kind of a person. As a kid I witnessed my mom being verbally and physically abused. I used to get hit with a wet, leather horse whip. I never cried, I was strong and determined to get a better life. At 8 hrs old my dad shot my mom in front of me. In the confusion and aftermath no one told me and my brother if mom was dead or alive. For 2 days I assumed my mom was dead. She survived, but was in a comma for months. She had to learn how to walk again. In the mean time we were living with relatives who used to fondle me in the presence of my aunt and uncle who never did a thing to stop it. I was the star witness at my dad’s trial. He walk free. After a few months my dad tried to kidnap my brother…aka his precious boy. Dad never liked me because I was born with lighter skin than him and in his sick mind that meant I wasn’t his. Well, due to the kidnapping threats we actually left our country and came to live in the USA. Here we had to live with relatives who were absolutely mean to us. My mom struggled to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. The irony is that no one knew our domestic situation. We were straight A students, total overachievers; school was our escape and ticket out of that life. Kids in high school assumed I was wealthy because I was in AP classes, but the reality was we were living in a detached garage where we froze our butts in winter and half cooked during the summer. Plus, now there was a cousin who was fondling me again. Bty- my mom turned her back on me. I was labeled “the problem” she even told me once that that cousin was going to buy her a house, but I was the reason why she didn’t have a house. I made it to college. I had 3 jobs and was getting a bachelors in biology. To thus day I have no idea how I survived that hectic schedule: I graduated My first job was working for my local city testing water. Then I met my husband. A rich boy who would laugh at my stories of growing up poor thinking I was just being funny. I told him it’s no joke! Driving a car that would die at every stop sign was my life. We married, and had our ups and downs because my past was affecting me. We attended couples therapy and it worked for us. I stopped working as my hubs had his own business. I honestly did not have to worry about money at all. It was a dream! I couldn’t believe I had a 5 bedroom house ( a bloody mansion to me). My husband made me feel I could for once relax and let someone else take the reigns. He believed in me so much that he told me to keep going after my dream of being a dr or nurse practitioner. I was missing one undergrad class before I could sign up for the nursing program. He would laugh out loud at me trying to explain to him how easy school was now that all I had to do was go to school. No worries about money or being technically homeless, school felt like a walk on rose petals. My hubs would help me study and even quiz me before my exams. I got an A, and he was super proud. We decided to have a baby. But then 2009 came. We lost the house, and even the business as it was a remodeling store. The day my husband was going to pick up his last belongings before turning the business key in he suddenly collapsed in my presence. I started CPR, and kept going until EMS got there. That day he died. I was left with no $$, no credit cards, no job, and a rental agreement I could not pay. I got myself a job and slowly things got better. Meds school and even nursing school were not an option. I attended night/online classes to get a teaching credential. Got a job as a teacher. Stayed in same school 4 years only to be pushed out by vice principal who despised me. Got another job at another school teaching jr High. There I had an incident that ended up being the drop that broke me completely and absolutely. I had a girl student make accusations of touching her in an inappropriate way. I’ve never cried so hard in my life. The accusation was levied against me on Friday, by Monday at the meeting to decide my faith. The student said she had mad that up because she was angry at me for marking her late to my class and apologized. The damage was done. I was absolutely suicidal. I didn’t understand life or felt there was a purpose. I literally left the school campus to check myself into a mental clinic. It’s been 2 years. Last year I worked in a different field because I was too traumatized to go back to teaching. I’m feeling better, but it’s been a lot of work. Self reflection, talk therapy, and finding the right meds. I used to think I was a worthless piece of crap that was too weak to “handle life” and I should just kill my self thinking that at least by not being alive I would no longer be a burden to my mom and brother. Now I see Im beyond strong and resilient. I’m looking forward to going back to the classroom where I can continue to help my “kids”. I also know that I’m a wonderful being that puts out love and compassion into my immediate surroundings. I have 4 little rescue dogs that are my pride and joy as I see them transform from scared, and aggressive to loving and calm. They are my greatest therapy. I treat them as I should of been treated by my family when I was a child being abused. The more love and patience I give them the more my soul heals. The episode is right on the money when they said that what does the damage is the lack of support after the trauma. For others out there who like me lacked the supportive and loving environment I say – be kind and gentle to yourself. Tell the child version of you that now that you are grown up you will not let others or your old scared child self abuse her anymore. Hugs to all and give yourselves credit. We are not victims, we are frigging warriors.
As someone who has done years of EMDR on trauma(s) that happened before the age when I could ‘remember’ and also since this age, I can say it’s very, very effective in dealing with both. Sometimes during EMDR (as someone going through it) the ‘images’ that occur can be memories, or sounds or thoughts or feelings or.. lots of things. I’m guessing (and my understanding is) that if the trauma happened before you can ‘remember’ you will still have some (sensory) fragments of it that can be worked on.
I also wanted to pop in something about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) here as Antonia mentioned it in the podcast as another way of re-experiencing/challenging trauma. My own experience with CBT was terrible and I finally realized why when Bruce was talking about it. I always thought it was because it was just more dealing with the mind vs the body (which I still think it is) but NOW what I think was the major issue for me was that I tried to do it on my own, using workbooks and guided exercises, and so… well I was simply re-experiencing my trauma without the support piece. I suppose someone could use CBT with a therapist/professional and therefore get the support, but I found it simply put me back in the trauma and so therefore unable to do much other than get triggered.
And finally, thank you for the warning at the beginning, whatever you want to call it. There was a time when my trauma had made my life so small that individual words, seemingly unrelated to my trauma (and completely irrational to most people) would trigger me. I’m not there anymore (thanks to EMDR!) but it’s great you give people the chance to decide whether they want to continue listening.
Thanks for the excellent podcast and I’m loving Bruce’s interviews.
As far as the concept of “trigger warnings” goes, I do agree that exposure can be a way to cope with and overcome these things. However, I see these warnings as fundamentally about consent instead of shielding someone.
When someone provides a content warning, I can either consent to interacting with the material or I can decline and go do something else. I find this is very important, not just for “triggers,” but also for things that frequently make people feel uncomfortable.
Digital consent is probably very important to me because of my generation. I was a young teenager when I first started exploring the internet on my own. Over a decade later, as a woman in my 20s, I realize that I was subjected to inappropriate content without the ability to consent as a minor. The two primary instances I can think of were NSFW. I was neither seeking this content out nor in a place where this would typically be. One was the front page of an art site where you were supposed to mark any NSFW images as such. And it wasn’t just artistic nudity, which I would’ve been fine with. There was also a large problem on tumblr with porn bots who would follow pretty much everyone. And no matter how many you blocked, several more would find your page. And I was far from the only person to experience this as a minor. Adults have experienced it to (I remember my dad once had this happen when searching for directions to Dick’s Sporting Goods…)
So that’s my stance on “trigger warning,” though I’d prefer to call them “content warnings.” Some people do exercise them to shield others, but I just think of it more as: Do I consent to continuing knowing that I will encounter heavy topics potentially upsetting things?
“Homophobia” (literally “fear of men”) is a nonsense buzzword invented by leftists. What many homosexuals and leftists call homophobia is actually disgust or disapproval experienced by many heterosexuals towards homosexuals when they view affection between homosexuals or when they consider how destructive and disease-transmitting homosexual anal sex and other homosexual sexual practices are.
“Transphobia” is another nonsense buzzword invented by leftists. There is no such thing as transgender, there is only a man or woman with a mental disorder called gender dysphoria. One cannot change their biological sex, they can just mutilate their genitals through “sex reassignment surgery” to mimic the opposite sex, and take sex hormones of the opposite sex which mess them up emotionally, physically, and mentally even more. A more accurate term for them is gender impostors. The fact that the suicide rate for gender dysphoric people is something like eight times the normal rate shows you these people are not happy or mentally healthy or stable.