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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
I was thinking this the same way as well. I technically have 2 ACES. One of these ACES (addiction) ceased to be a problem when I was very young. So, I’m not sure if it really counts as an ACE in the same way it does for my dad who spent almost the entirety of his childhood, if not the entirety, with an alcoholic parent.
The second ACE, having two parents who have experienced mental illness, is something that I don’t think has impacted me to the extent it impacted both of my parents. This is majorly because, despite these issues, my parents were always able to show up as supportive and were attuned to when I had issues. Their mental illness impacted their parenting style (especially my mom’s anxiety), but not in a way I identify as traumatic.
It just shows that there is nuance in every system.
For instance, I believe a study showed something to the fact that having a loving supportive relationship with another adult figure can offset some of the impacts that ACES have. From what I’ve heard, I’m fairly certain this was the case with my mom. That individual for her would’ve been her paternal grandma. I never met her because my mom would’ve been a teenager when she passed away, but I get the sense that she provided my mom with a lot more support than I believe her parents ever did.
I haven’t quite finished the podcast yet, but I wanted to pipe up about the division Joel and Antonia express between people needing gentleness and people needing challenge. I think this is a false division that tends to make us try to sort people according to whether they have experienced ‘enough’ trauma to require gentleness.
In my experience, healing small ‘t’ trauma through EFT tapping, and learning to be gentle and supportive to myself has naturally led to being more able to take on suitable levels of challenge in the world, which has created a virtuous cycle of reward.
The gentleness, support and releasing trauma are intrinsic and ongoing elements in taking on challenge.
Sorry I must correct my post, I meant to say that people experiencing ‘significant’ abuse or neglect in the pre-memory years will not necessarily continue to experience this (or not necessarily to the same degree) in their later childhood years.
This innovative way of healing people is encouraging for the future. But an elephant in the room remains. It is all based on what people were old enough to actually remember. I doubt Dr Bruce thinks this (and will give him the benefit of the doubt), but the idea that you aren’t really affected by anything before the memory ‘cut-off’ point is probably still pervasive, even though in some ways this is probably the worst time to be subject to abuse or neglect, because a) the brain is particularly active in laying down neural pathways in this period, and this is shaped by experience and b) you can’t address what you can’t remember, or at least it’s a hell of a lot harder.
Granted, a lot of the people who remember experiencing significant ‘unsupported’ trauma will have also experienced this before the memory ‘cut-off’ point, but I can think of reasons why this isn’t necessarily the case.
Thank you for sharing your experience. It is encouraging for others to hear that it is possible to overcome and heal from past trauma. We appreciate you Lisa.