Empowering Trauma Survivors
Transforming Pain
Educating therapists and loved ones
Read the introduction below.
TRAUMA SPEAKS: TURN YOUR SUFFERING INTO YOUR SUPERPOWER
There is power in numbers, and speaking out reveals the extent of our collective trauma. It's way larger than we ever imagined. Many survivors silence their voices because they feel ashamed or embarrassed at being a victim or unable to protect themselves. Although we, as a society, have come a long way, victim blaming and shaming persist. What’s more, secondary assaults cause further damage to survivors of both childhood and adult traumas. Secondary assaults occur when filing police reports, undergoing medical testing and rape kits, and courtroom dramas. To a child, speaking out may cause fear of losing their families and the only homes they’ve ever known.
Due to others’ discomfort with our trauma stories, we can understand why many try to deny our truths. To acknowledge it would mean looking at their memories and pain or the ways they may have been culpable for our injuries. Society needs to wake up and actively protect survivors of violence instead of the perpetrators. Doing this can help break the generational cycle of trauma, thus protecting our grandchildren's children from childhood abuse.
For most of my life, society has not wanted to acknowledge trauma, denying the severity and frequency of its existence. The denial of traumas often results in shame, powerlessness, and psychiatric symptoms, along with generation after generation of abuse and harmful relations being passed down from great-great-grandparents to the youngest generations. We now know through advances in science and psychotherapy that we can be cycle breakers and change our family's history for future generations. This concept is becoming more front and center in mainstream media, social media, and education.
Because it seems the worldview is shifting from silencing survivors to actively listening to their experiences, now feels like the perfect time to finally write this book that has been inside me for 15 years. With more podcasts, books, education, and news stories about trauma and its impact available, it is exciting because science is finally catching up to what we therapists already know – trauma is not what happened to you, but the injuries that occur inside you from the traumatic event(s). Everything that has happened to you is stored in your body. The good news is that there are ways to understand what your body is trying to tell you. Throughout this book, I will share what I have learned as a therapist with a front-row seat to the movies of thousands of clients’ lives. I have witnessed how most do not recognize their own, nor their family members', symptoms from trauma.
Fifteen years ago, I conceptualized writing this book when I noticed clear patterns of behaviors and speech in my clients that almost always indicated a history of early childhood trauma. Some examples of symptoms due to trauma are substance abuse, overtly sexualized behavior, excessive compliance or apologizing, negative self-perceptions, disbelief in self-worth, inability to set boundaries, and repetitive patterns of harmful or dissatisfying relationships. During a new client intake, patterns in speech, behavior, and personal narratives informed me of the kind of trauma they likely experienced.
Trauma speaks through chronic tension in your body, accidents and health issues, pressured speech, panic, and perfectionism. Its voice may sound passive and powerless or aggressive and controlling. By reading the energies of my clients, I can understand their dilemmas and needs through their speech and mannerisms. What excites me as a therapist is knowing that trauma is mysterious. Like a puzzle, once you figure it out and unlock the code to your healing, you can recognize and change your behavior patterns. Everything you need to know about yourself and your symptoms is inside you. Signs of trauma can seriously impact all areas of your life, but the symptoms are not the problem. What happened to create them is the problem. Once you understand this, you can learn the tools to decode the messages contained in your symptoms. This learning and consciousness of your inner self IS the starting point for your cure.
How will I help you listen to your trauma and decode its messages to create a cure?
Initially, I wanted to join the FBI as a profiler. So, I studied psychology and criminal justice for the bachelor’s degree I earned in 1988. I was fascinated by – and still am – how our brains work and in understanding why we think and behave as we do, with a desire to catch those doing great harm. In other words, I felt an urge to protect victims. My focus shifted slightly when I accepted an opportunity to train with physicians of psychiatry at a state medical teaching hospital and fell in love with doing therapy. After obtaining my master of Social Work in 1991, where I was privileged to experience weekly medical rounds, training, and supervision with psychiatrists, I am now a licensed clinical psychiatric social worker.
Therapy is a bit like detective work, and I want to help my clients figure out the origin of their symptoms and dilemmas so that they can heal. This line of work better fits my personality and created my desire to be a healer.
Since 1991, I have worked in all levels of psychiatric care, from managing daily operations, developing programs, and creating policies for partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and substance abuse treatment programs. I started and own my private practice, “Adolescent, Adult & Family Behavioral Health.” In my forties, I went back to school for three years at a body-centered psychotherapy training school for therapists. This program helped me fully come into my power as a trauma therapist. As of 2024, I have been a licensed medical provider of psychiatric services for 33 years. I have also been a board member of the Main Street Community Foundation Trust since 2018 as a clinical consultant.
In the 2000s, I noticed a movement to break the barriers of secrecy caused by blaming those who have suffered trauma for the pain inflicted on their bodies and souls. The public started speaking out about domestic violence and abuse in churches, large institutions, and sports teams. The floodgates opened publicly to reveal what therapists hear daily in the session rooms. Furthermore, the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control also began publicizing research and education on domestic violence and trauma. Famous personalities came forward, breaking the silence that previously kept church leaders, sports coaches, and other prominent persons protected from the consequences of their actions. The Me-Too movement further provided a voice to millions. On the heels of these new norms, science began to change the landscape of how we understand what trauma is, why it occurs, and what its impact is on our bodies, lives, and relationships. The work of Bessel Van Der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score), in conjunction with a flood of research by scientists of many disciplines, backed what I have seen from my decades of work as a therapist: trauma is stored in our bodies and minds, and cannot be dismissed nor negated. Trauma survivors, who had previously hidden due to fear of being shamed or disbelieved, began to speak up and out, thanks to this scientific shift.
Trauma symptoms can only heal when we listen clearly to what they tell us and bring love, compassion, and desire to meet their needs. Many of us who have experienced childhood violence struggle to meet our personal needs, listen to our bodies, or believe our instincts because of the trauma we endured. By the end of this book, you will be able to decipher the messages your body is sending you and recognize trauma’s voice. You can use the included worksheets, homework, and journal prompts to open your consciousness as my clients do. You will figure out what roles, personality traits, and defenses you created unconsciously in childhood as protection. You will learn to un-shame yourself for the protections your mind created to keep you safe and decide which ones to keep and which ones no longer serve who you want to be.
Further, you will gain insight into the disruptive energy patterns that were likely in your childhood and how they created who you are today. You will learn how you may have attached to the energies of your childhood. A child's vulnerability has no protection against adult energies (behaviors, beliefs, expectations, how your needs are met). Most children believe what their parents and other adults tell them about themselves and the world! If you were treated with kindness and respect, you will grow up to expect others to treat you well and, most likely, will not stay in unhealthy relationships. If you grew up being told it is your responsibility to be “good” so your parents will not hurt you, you may accept relationships in which your partner blames you when they behave badly. You are attaching to the messages in the energy from your younger years and believing them.
If you do not currently have the support you need, I will share ways to become conscious, create safety, and begin planning for your future. I will give you roadmaps to create treatment plans, journaling prompts, and worksheets needed to support you. I will share meditations and tools in every chapter to bring love and understanding to your symptoms, creating internal safety with dark emotions. I deeply understand the ways you may protect yourself from feeling terrifying emotions. One of the most critical aspects of this book is teaching you that emotions are messengers, not enemies.
I use a model with my clients that works and will help you move towards, instead of away from, your most feared emotions. I developed this model, Gagnon’s Method: Stages of Functioning technique, to alchemize dark emotions. It is comprised of three stages of functioning that we go in and out of during our days, weeks, and months. Being mindful and aware of your stage at any given moment will give you a new way of perceiving and handling your emotions. Learning to feel safe in your body when experiencing stressful emotions is necessary to gaining control of your symptoms. This is the place where you can turn your suffering into your superpower.
I will help you feel confident that if you listen to the lessons in this book, you will have the tools to be the cycle breaker. Generational trauma does not have to continue. When you do the work in this book and bring consciousness to how your trauma speaks, you will be able to stop your family history of violence. Do not be afraid of the things about yourself that you have consciousness of; be scared of the aspects of yourself that you do not. What I mean is if you do all the work here, learn boundaries, and protect your spirit, you will learn to recognize how trauma speaks and to listen clearly to meet your trauma with love and support. This will bring the unconscious into the light. You will learn to parent from your heart and spirit, not the teachings of your past.
Special considerations are provided for teachers, coaches, and adults who work with children, and the importance of not standing by if you instinctually feel a child's trauma is speaking to you.
I will talk to you in each chapter from three voices:
First, I will speak as if I am the voice of trauma. Here, I will model for you the wisdom of Trauma’s voice. The first step to coming home to yourself is to listen to and recognize how trauma speaks to us. I will teach you the wisdom of your body when it sends you messages and defenses (protective behaviors, thinking). Your bodies speak the truth, dear one, and I will help you to listen.
Second is my voice as a therapist, guiding you through the processing and education exactly as I do with my clients. I will teach you what I know and help you understand how to use the information in your own life by providing you with worksheets, meditations, journal prompts, treatment plans, and tools for each topic. Through general client stories, you’ll be able to understand what I am teaching you. Also, on these pages, you will find deep support and care around the topic of managing contact with toxic family members. There are many options for stabilizing your family system before considering a complete break in contact. As this is a last resort option, I will guide you through alternative avenues to create a healthier relationship with your needs and your family.
Third, I will speak from my own experiences as a survivor of early childhood trauma and what the voice of healing sounds like. I will tell you the truth about healing – it is not pretty; it is messy, often painful, but always worth it. Author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) wrote a line that I use often: “Ruin is a gift” and “Ruin is the road to transformation.” Let me explain by telling you a story.
My husband and I traveled to the Rocky Mountains a year after a wildfire scorched a portion of land next to Estes Park, Co. Driving into Rocky Mountain National Park, we witnessed the stark darkness of the acres upon acres of completely burnt forest. We could smell fire and saw signs warning us not to stop our cars or walk on the earth due to unstable, dangerous ground. Initially, I felt sad, a sense of grief at the destruction around us. Then, I realized there were clusters of White Birch seedlings everywhere, poking up out of the burnt ground. We slowed our car and were delighted at the wildflowers everywhere we looked, the colors of the rainbow bright against the death of the trees. This would no longer be a dense forest of evergreen but a lighter forest of White Birch, flowering bushes, and bright-colored plants. At that moment, I knew I was learning a life lesson – this is what healing from trauma looks like.
I will use some parts of my own story, sharing what I feel will help you relate and understand that anyone, anywhere, of any position, career, color, religion, or gender, may have experienced trauma(s). You are not alone and not to blame. I’ve been there. In my story, you will witness my 3-year-old self and some of the ramifications of trauma in my life. Some of the spoken words are mine, but most are those spoken daily in the therapy room. I was just like you until I developed a loving relationship with my trauma, learned to understand what my trauma was speaking, and what she needed to turn into wildflowers and White Birch.