The Trouble with Trauma

What happens when a word meant to describe something specific becomes the language we use for everything? In this episode of Lumen, hosts Christopher Mooney, LCSW and Kenyon Phillips, LMSW explore the cultural overuse of the word “trauma” and why that shift, while validating, can sometimes blur what people actually need. Drawing from clinical insight, they clarify that trauma is not just something painful, but something that overwhelms the nervous system’s ability to process in real time—often leaving the body reacting as if the event is still happening. Christopher and Kenyon break down key distinctions between single-incident, complex, and vicarious trauma, along with the spectrum of “Big T” and “little t” traumatic experiences—while also examining the risks of overidentifying with trauma as a fixed identity or applying it to ordinary human pain like grief or disappointment. The conversation highlights how unprocessed trauma shows up through reactivity, avoidance, and disconnection, and why real healing often requires body-based approaches, relational safety, and careful pacing—not just talking about the past. At its core, this episode is about precision, not gatekeeping—because when we can accurately name what happened to us, we have a better chance of finding the kind of support that actually helps. 

To book a free consultation with Christopher, Kenyon, or the other providers at Lumen Therapy Collective, visit lumentherapycollective.com. 

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Lumen is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or treatment. If you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact local emergency services or a trusted mental health professional.

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Lumen, a podcast that sheds light on mental health, relationships, and what it means to be human. I'm Christopher Mooney, LCSW.

SPEAKER_02 0:08

And I'm Kenyon Phillips, LMSW. Each episode we unpack psychological patterns that affect our relationships. No jargon, no judgment.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Just thoughtful conversations to help you understand yourself and others a little more clearly. Somewhere along the way, the word trauma became the word we reach for whenever something hard happened.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Yeah. Anything that's that's challenging is now labeled trauma.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

And that's not true, but we look at like a difficult childhood, a bad break breakup, a boss that made us feel small. And look, these these things were they're hard, they're difficult. There's a lot of things in life that are hard and difficult. Most things. Yeah, most things are difficult to deal with, but and they leave marks, right? And they they're these are things that shape us. Yeah. But they and none of that is none of that, it's it's not nothing. It's not nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

It's for those people who are traumatized in the clinical sense, meaning they experience something that was so overwhelming that their nervous system couldn't handle it. For those people who grew up with, you know, serious gratuitous violence, really intense disasters, accidents. The danger here is that people who go through those kinds of experiences start to wonder does this word apply to me? Did I really go through something like that? If you having a shitty boss is equated to me having a life-threatening car accident.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

It it takes away from that. Yeah, it takes away from that word. It almost takes away from the value of the word trauma.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Right? We get the the experience gets a little lost in in trying to figure out the definition and applying it to everything. So I think today what what I would love to address is you know how overused and underserved that word in the populations are. As we continue, kind of, you know, last last time we talked about the overuse and misuse of boundaries. Right. And today we're gonna talk about trauma, maybe uh overuse and misuse of of that word everywhere. Social media is definitely contributed to once again.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Social media contributes to it. Because I noticed social media would have, I think social media, many channels would have us believe that anything we go through is trauma. We're having a trauma response. Right. And, you know, it's yeah, I just I would love to just be a little bit more precise. Because, you know, we're we're committed to busting jargon, but we're also, I think part of that is is just being, okay. This is specifically clinically what this term means. This is what it means in a practical real world sense. And so hopefully listeners can just be empowered.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Absolutely. To under in understanding the the the meaning of these words and maybe having a different relationship with that.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

And how they apply. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

But it's not like we're gatekeeping suffering here. It's not like we are trying to determine, okay, well, you know, your suffering doesn't count as trauma. Mine does.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Right. Yeah. No, that's that's definitely not what this is. Hard things are hard. Yeah. Full stop, right? End of sentence. Then we have the spectrum of, well, this is hard. And then here's something that was traumatic. Here's something, here's something that has lingered in my mind or in my body for for years or since it happened. And that's that's I think going to be one of the distinctions we can get into.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

So absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

This is this is a conversation really about precision because the clinical concept of trauma is specific. It's well researched, and it's genuinely useful. And when it gets stretched to cover all of human difficulty, two things happen that are worth examining. People with serious trauma histories lose the language about that experience, as you were saying. And people with ordinary pain get handed a framework that might m actually make things harder rather than easier.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Yeah. There is because if it's if something is challenging, difficult, painful, but not traumatic or traumatizing and I mislabel it as traumatic or I'm told, oh hey, you went through trauma, then my resilience is compromised. There's a ch because I think there's a difference here that we should probably distinguish between, hey, I went through something that was traumatic and saying I am traumatized and having that be my identity.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Tell me a little bit more about what that difference is.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

The difference is if I label myself as traumatized, I'm traumatized by that, I'm a trauma victim, I'm a trauma, even I'm a trauma survivor. To a certain extent, that becomes your qualifier for existence. That becomes your identity. Right. And the potential issue with that is it rules out getting better. It rules out resilience. It rules out being something other than traumatized. Again, it's really there's a there's a great reward in our society for identifying ourselves with hard things that we've gone through with suffering. We think that this will keep us safe. We think that this will maybe benefit us. And, you know, it's the same sort of idea, the same thinking behind, you know, we don't nowadays in in mental health, we don't say, oh, that person's autistic. We say this is somebody living with autism. This is somebody who's on the autism spectrum disorder. Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Person first, then issue.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

And I think with trauma, it's a similar thing. There's a wonderful book that Oprah Winfrey has done a lot to promote, and she co-authored it, What Happened to You? And it it draws this, it makes the same distinction that we're talking about here. It's not that I am a victim of childhood sexual abuse. I experienced childhood sexual abuse, and I'm a person who's also a therapist and you know, me, for example, and a singer and a dad, and you know, a purveyor of strange and exotic clothing. So it you know, it it it doesn't limit the identity to the pain.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

That's right. And I think that's where that's where we can get caught up. And I think you you brought up this interesting point before that that I was kind of lingering on in my mind as you were talking. I was paying attention. But go on. I it's but I was thinking about yeah, I was thinking about this this thing you said. It's like the the identity we end up holding on to, and that's it becomes the thing that we define ourselves by. And you know, generally in in the work we do, that's that's kind of a dangerous idea, right? It's a harmful idea. And I think what we need to look at is that like you're saying, the big picture. What are all of the pieces that that make up you know ourselves as a whole?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

And when I think of like the narrative approach to therapy and just kind of what is our story, how are we writing our story as we go? When we when we hold on to one negative thing, and and this goes back to when we've talked about negative thinking styles and just kind of like the the repetitive, unhelpful thought process that we have, like always, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, like those things going through our mind. This contributes to it. And I think if we if we mislabel or or this is where it becomes that that thing where it gets harder rather than easier, is if we mislabel something or misappropriate this thing, it's it makes it harder for us to feel like we actually have a chance.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

And it and it keeps there and it it actually pre-writes our story for us, and that is what we want to avoid. Right. When I think of like the narrative approach, and I I love this approach of hey, you know, m all of the chapters written so far, there could have been some really, really awful chapters. There could have been some whack stuff that happened in the pages up to this day.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

But we're writing each day as we go. So if we're really truly living in the present, where we have the ability to write each day as we go. And we we can reference the chapters we've written in the pages we've written, in the sentences, and even down to the minutiae, down to the words, but we still have an ability to write the rest of the story differently as we go through. And and that's what we want to do. We want to set, we want to set the the table and the stage to actually write something different.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Exactly. And to write something that isn't painful, and that it that is I keep saying the using the word resilience, you know, however we can promote it. Tell it tell us what resilience is again. Resilience, as I define it, would be, or as the way I use it is our ability to overcome whatever our circumstances are that are challenging, that are limiting. So an example of someone being resilient is you go through a terrible plane crash, you survive it. You think I'm never getting on a plane again. And then you find yourself in a few years, maybe in a position where you actually do have to travel by plane. There's it's an emergency, there's no way out. And by doing whatever work necessary to overcome those fears and that story, as you mentioned, of what happened in the past, and to believe that okay, just because that happened once doesn't mean it's gonna happen again. That's resilience, being able to get on that plane and travel by plane after surviving a plane crash. That's one example that's pretty basic.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yeah, that's that's perfect. It's like this idea, it's like a force field around us, right? It's this this ability to to weather through difficult times.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Right. So let's go back and talk about clinically what trauma is. Yeah, exactly. And so trauma is, you know, when we have an experience that overwhelms our nervous system. And it overwhelms our nervous system's capacity to process it. So it's not just something upsetting, it's actually something that exceeds the window of what we can actually tolerate and metabolize and and process in real time.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Right. Dissociation is a perfect example of that. Like, what does that look like in the real world? Say you are a child and you are being terribly physically abused, and you actually leave your body because there's no way if you stayed in your body you could tolerate that level of pain.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

That's your nervous system actually like checking out. Just saying, you can't do it.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Like, yeah, this is the only way we can survive here.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Blacking out when drinking is actually a similar thing. It's your brain's automatic safety to say, can't handle all the alcohol coming in. We're gonna shut off everything right now. And just it's it's like just the systems to survive going and that's it. But yeah, I think of it the same, the sim in a similar like it's your your body's automatic like defense and and survival system. So I want to think of the nervous system like a container, right? So it's it's ordinary stress can fill it and it empties, and then trauma overfills it in in a moment. It spills, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

And then whatever spilled is left on the floor.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah. For for us to slip on and and step in and and and soak our socks. Exactly. Yeah. Um, I always I I think of like this, I I use this this reference when I talk about anxiety a lot, which is the idea of we have a bathtub, and if you fill a bathtub to the point of right before it overflows, you know it's it has, and I forget what the the phenomenon is called when you the water actually exceeds the it gets that like skin over it. And so you can fill out an entire bathtub with all your stressful events, everything that's happening to you throughout your life, throughout your day, and all it takes to overflow an entire bathtub is one drop. So you can take an eyedropper and just drop that right on right on the edge of the bathtub, right where that that kind of edge of that that skin on the water is, and all of a sudden, way more water comes pouring out of that bathtub. And it just and it just takes it, yeah. You can try it with a cup, even it's not gonna be just a drop that overflows, it's gonna it's gonna break that surface tension, right? It's all those molecules holding tight. Our nervous system's the same way, it's like that container filling up and filling up, and we do things kind of to self-care to empty it. But right, if we're at the brink and that trauma comes through, it's it's gonna all of a sudden flood and splash over.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

That's amazing. Yeah. The I've been talking about, you know, the example I just gave was like single incident trauma. Sure. Which is where you have we have an experience that is that overwhelms our nervous system, makes the bathtub overflow, but it's like a single incident. It's an assault, it's a uh an accident, a natural disaster. A natural disaster. Right. It's like one event. And then there are other types of trauma. More complex. That are yeah, complex developmental trauma is another word for it. And this is something that's repeated, prolonged. Sometimes it's not as intense as, you know, I think about like I was in 9-11, I was down there for 9-11. So when the tower fell, I was down there. That was a single incident trauma. And then complex developmental trauma being neglected by a caregiver on an ongoing basis for several years. You're not necessarily gonna have an acute response to that, although you could. You could, but over time, it does traumatize the person.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Well, this is we talked about this with shame. Yeah, and how and how low level or or lower level consistent trauma or neglect or or experience can contribute to different kinds of experiences later on in life. How we kind of it kind of shapes our personality. We get shame, people pleasing, all those things that we've we've we've talked about uh, you know, at times. And so, you know, this is this is really an important distinction between the two different kinds of trauma. I think, you know, and I've talked with people a lot about this. I think as human beings, we are much more well equipped to deal with single event traumas. Yeah. I think because we can look at it, we can define it, we can say, this thing happened, here's how it hurts me. What do I need to do to get through this? How do I make sense of this so that I can move forward in my life? Right. It's almost like it's cleaner. It yeah, it's a clean, yeah, yeah. It's I think of a clean cut, right? You always want, like, you know, it's just something that's like you can stitch it, you can you can let it heal, you can work on it. There's a there's a defined problem. Right. And it doesn't make it less important, it doesn't make it less traumatic, it doesn't make it less hurtful, but it does, it it almost makes more sense in our minds as humans. That complex trauma you're talking about, that that kind of developmental low level. I think of like uh domestic violence a lot of times. And like that's just you, it's it's that that consistency where you start to doubt yourself. You don't, your, your resilience really wears away. Right. And your ability to tolerate any discomfort then really kind of gets worn, picked away at.

SPEAKER_02 15:48

Right. And it's easy for I think an outsider to say, well, if you didn't experience that single incident trauma, then it's not trauma. But, you know, we have so many examples of complex trauma being experienced by somebody, a child, for example, you know, growing up in a household with, as you said, domestic violence or neglect or alcoholism, you know, like some, you know, alcohol abuse. Or just anger. Anger.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Just dealing with other people's anger.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yeah. And that, as you say, has an effect on the development of the personality and the coping mechanisms. And it usually wears down the coping misses. I think that we talked about ACE's adverse childhood experiences a couple episodes ago. Yeah. That's these are all examples, this complex trauma, developmental trauma. ACEs are so insidious because they basically block us from being able to, or they lower our potential for having resilience.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Feeling for rewriting the narrative.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Yeah. I want to add another piece in here, and this just kind of stuck into my mind really quickly. You know, we work with a lot of people who have attention deficit disorder, we do, and and other learning issues. And I think those when we talk about co-occurring mental health issues, I think the field kind of looks at substance abuse and mental health. I I really think the true true co-occurring mental health issues are learning issues and mental health issues. Because one typically leads to another. And I just want to flag this because you said something about like this when we started talking about like anger and the the experiences of like developmental trauma and complex trauma, when we think of kids who have learning issues and they you know, they grow up in their home and you know, the parents are kind of constantly interacting, it's it's easier to navigate. Once a kid goes to school, they suddenly, even if they're not, even if they're not kind of picked on or highlighted as being different, or but if they start to think and they look around and they start to see that maybe they don't color in the lines the same way, maybe you don't read the same way as the other kids in the class, that's also this kind of like complex low-level experience that can lead to a bigger trauma.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

And and we because it starts to lead to this feeling of of being other and not being okay and not fitting in, and it starts to define that person as something else. So we don't I don't think we usually think of that as a low-level, consistent or complex traumatic experience, but I think in many cases it can be.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

That type of comparing and despairing, yeah. Type of comparison that somebody with a learning difference. Because it's it's quiet.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yeah, because it's quiet and it's it's there's no there's no word for it. Yeah. And I think what happens is that it's an experience and it's a painful experience that can overwhelm. And I think of like just how painful even as most adults, and we've talked about this, the being othered, the not fitting in, but you think about like like a five-year-old or an eight-year-old or a ten-year-old, yeah, if they're it's gonna hit hard. It's gonna hit hard, and they don't have the vocabulary or the ability to identify what it is. Right. And that becomes really that's where if you can't, if you can't say what it is, that actually leads to more of this traumatic experience. Right. Because you're you you don't have the ability to to name it.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

That's a huge part of what I think constitutes trauma. Even the going back to the click on the clinical definition where it's overwhelming. The the nervous system is overwhelmed by whatever the experience is, that in and of itself is also a version of not being able to name something.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

That's right. You can't fit in, you can't, you can't, you don't have the processing ability to make it work, and then you're alone and you're stuck there.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

That's the thing. Yeah. It's really it's so damaging. And to label ourselves as such, this is, you know, I'm traumatized, I have, you know, learning differences. I have ADHD. I'm, you know, I just I'll never get over this. I'm always gonna need extra support. I suck. Yeah. I remember going to grad school, I had a I was a really good student. And and then I bombed a test. And the professor was like, What's going on, dude? Like, you're so on it, you're such a good student. Why did you bomb this midterm? It was a final. Why did you bomb this final? And I said, I don't know. I he's like, everything he I said, I ran out of time. I got freaked out. Yeah. And I froze. And he said, Is there a history of that? And I said, Yeah, when I was starting as a kid, you know, generalized anxiety disorder and also situational anxiety around test taking. It started when I was 10, really common. Right. Yeah. And I thought I'd grown out of it. And I hadn't been in school for decades when I went to grad school. So I explained this to him and he said, Makes sense. You every answer you got, you got right. Yeah. But you didn't get, you only got through half the test. If you had gone to the Office for Disability Services, I would have been able to give you more time on the test. Simple fix, right? Really simple fix. So, you know, you can bet your ass. I called the Office for Disability, it was too late for that class in that semester, but for the next semester and the following semesters, I registered. And and again, I could have viewed that situation two different ways. I could have viewed it as I suck, I fail, I am always going to have this kind of anxiety, and I'm therefore never going to succeed. Or deal with it as, oh, okay, this was a bit of a setback, and there's a solution for it. And going forward, I won't have to bear the consequences of that suffering. I'm not alone. Yeah. I can ask for help. You can ask for help.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

There was a word for it, and somebody helped you with that too. Yeah. You know, I want to get into that the the people who help. And, you know, there's this, there's the, there's, there's another kind of trauma that I think we we we talked about that single event. We talked about the complex trauma. There's vicarious or secondary trauma. Yeah. And I was thinking about this. We had this wonderful conversation with with Kat about grief and loss. And she referenced vicarious and secondary loss as well. And and it this happens with trauma too. And we see this with people who are consistently exposed to other people's trauma. Right. And that would be us. Therapists. Therapists, first responders, caregivers, anybody really in the caregiving field. And it is it's real, it's documented, and it is definitely worth naming, especially in for anyone who works in a helping role. Even if they're not, even if their job isn't a helper. Right. Right. Even if they're not a social worker or or therapist or a first responder, if you're just taking care of a someone who's sick or a loved one or someone who has some kind of medical issue, when you think about what you're you are exposed to as a helper, right? That is that can really contribute to trauma. And what does that look like, that secondary vicarious trauma? How does it show up? That's it's gonna show up, I think, with as as you know, exhaustion. We start to say burnout, burnout, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, feeling. Think about the feeling when you when you're working with somebody, you can't, you don't have the answer, yeah, or you can't fix, or it's just there's something in front of you that you you don't have the ability to make it stop. Those those are the kind of feelings I think about just being as a as a therapist, like the the consistent conversations and just kind of input of really difficult things, and that can be a spectrum of difficulty. It can be like, hey, I had this interaction today, or the anger, or all the way through hearing just about other people's horrible experiences. It it's a weight. You feel it, it's a weight on your chest, it's a weight, and and you feel that pit in your stomach. And over time, it works much like that complex trauma where it it wears down on you. Yeah, it wears down on you and it leads you to feeling more or you're more prone to bouts of depression, maybe dysphoria, sadness, just shutting down.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Shutting down, trying to protect yourself as if the trauma has occurred, has happened to you. Yeah.

unknown 24:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Yeah, it's kind of hard to not take that on yourself. Yeah. Right? You're you're filling, you're you're filling your bathtub with or your yeah, your bathtub with other people's like really awful experiences.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Right. That's so interesting. I had I had a friend comment not too long ago, you know, ever since you became a therapist and stuff, like you are so much happier. You're just you're so upbeat. And isn't that kind of weird? Like, aren't you like exposed to some heavy stuff? And and I thought about it and I was like, I really like, you know, Kat Hurley talked about being a a grief nerd and just talking about how working in, you know, she's working in a very difficult field, yeah. Grief, loss, and bereavement. But she's like, I really am passionate about it. And if I can help people get through it, you know, that's and I think that's sort of my I guess that's my take as well. I'm a therapy nerd, uh trauma nerd, maybe. I it it it it is enlivening, yeah, and deeply satisfying to, you know. I never liked small talk anyway. So this being able to go hard and deep. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Yeah. Let's just let's just let's just get there. We'll we'll hit it. Yeah. Um Kenyon, you do so much work with body and somatic work. I'm wondering if you can talk about how trauma happens in the body for for people.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

I'm a big believer in Bessel van der Koch and his book, The Body Keeps the Score. In the 70s, he created the PTSD diagnosis. And his theory, and it's beautifully sort of put forth in the book, The Body Keeps the Score, I recommend people read that, is that trauma is stored in the body. We don't really think our way out of trauma, we move our way out of it. We and Vanderkoel writes you know, if we don't feel safe in our bodies, we're not gonna feel safe in our environments. If we don't feel safe in our environments, we're not gonna feel safe connecting with other people. And if we don't connect with other people, we're never it's kind of like your narrative therapy example. We're the story is gonna be written, we're never going to connect, we're never gonna get over this or build any kind of resilience. So the the body remembers whatever the traumatic episode was and stores it effectively.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

And so it sounds like body work is also part of trauma work, like it has to be part of the trauma work to work to work through these things.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

I that's why I'm a huge proponent of DMT dance movement therapy, which uh involves moving the getting people to feel safe in their bodies again through movement. It's not necessarily like dance, it's not like a TikTok dance or Broadway or jazz hands. It can be, but it's it's mostly about like understanding that okay, if I want to move past this, yeah, I've got to get through it. If I want to get through it, I've got to kind of get it out of my body and learn to feel, as I said before, safe and comfortable in the body, which we it's a phenomenon that's well documented. We feel safer when we're moving as humans. If we're moving together, maybe eye contact and having a face-to-face conversation is tough for many of us, especially people who have experienced trauma. But walking side by side, fishing, taking a run, not having to make eye contact, but knowing that you're there next to me and we're having a conversation, suddenly that feels really safe. Yeah, there is a safety in somatically. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

And somatically, I mean like in the body. Yeah. Yeah, there is, there's totally a I I I'm just thinking and reflecting on times that I've been, like if I am with somebody doing those things, it there is there is a sense of safety. It's not just the camaraderie, it is that you do therapy that way. You do ecotherapy. I do. I love I love going out with people in in the woods, taking a walk on a trail. I've gone fishing with a client before, and I plan on doing more of that. If anybody wants to go fly fishing, 100% out for that. You know, I won't be braining any fish though. Like we're we'll catch and release. Okay, I got it. Yeah. But no, it's it, it is a it's a different experience. It's a shared experience that you can have where you you I think you get to realize that other humans can be safe. Yeah, the other home and in that and you can allow yourself to open up a little bit more.

unknown 29:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

But once that experience of of you know the the nervous system being overwhelmed has occurred, the nervous system has a great memory. Yeah, our bodies have a great memory, and it will hold on to that in because again, we're always scanning for danger.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

So that's why I think in you know, even basic things that are I'm very grateful they're in the common sort of lexicon now of touching grass. You know, people talk about touching grass. But I mean, that actually is that's a sound move for somatics.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

It's such it's such good advice from and everybody's always like, okay, boomer. But that's like I thought about I was on a I went for a long run yesterday and out in the woods, oh no, Sunday, and and I was just way out in the middle of the woods, muddy, covered with just like all sorts of everything. Yeah. And I thought I actually had that thought. I was like, oh, like I'm out here touching grass. I was like, it's such a boomer thing.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

But that is it is, but I mean, it was around before the boomers were, yeah. I I've had the the incredible experience of just being able to like do long distance running in a natural environment, in like, you know, foothills or even mountains when I lived in Colorado or or Montana. And it is absolutely grounding.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

It is so grounding because I get a sense of perspective when I'm out there in the natural world and I realize, ooh, I can't control this. I didn't make this.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

And it it's humbling, but it's also very calming. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

I want to come back to that when we talk more about like maybe how to deal with some trauma, because that's a really good point, like getting out and re-like grounding and and kind of forcing yourself into the environment that that could sometimes be scary too. Right. So I want to acknowledge that. I want to talk about big T and little T. We've heard this a lot, you know, especially as therapists. We always hear, like, oh, that's a big T trauma, that's a little T trauma. Right, right, right, right. These are really useful clinical distinctions that that we want to make sense of. So tell me what a big T trauma is.

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Big T trauma is something that's undeniably traumatic. It's what most people think of, I think, when you hear that word. So it's it's something that happened that you survived, that someone survived, but at great, tremendous cost. Like there's no way you could get out of that unscathed.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

So when you mentioned being at ground zero and for 9-11 for 9-11, that would be we would look at that and say, that's a big T trauma. Yes. Here's an event we can say, obviously, everyone who was, I would say, arguably in the New York area, like dealt with a trauma that day. Big time. And that was, and and because a lot of people knew people, or or if you were there and you experienced that, is nobody would look at it and go, like, yeah, it wasn't traumatic, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:14

No, no, no. There was like there's an FBI. I remember the FBI agents were out in the streets, and and one, and one of them was like, We're all gonna had lost it and was like, We're we're all gonna die. You're all gonna die. And I was like, Oh, okay, we're dying. I'm dying today. And to get through, to survive that meant I have PTSD. Right. I I I did all the preparations one does while running away. And so, yeah, that's big T trauma.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Where you there, there's no question. Little T trauma can relate more to almost like the complex trauma that we were talking about earlier, experiences that may not look so dramatic on the outside, but they're but they did overwhelm the nervous system of the person involved. So that can be chronic, especially if it's we're talking about childhood, chronic neglect, chronic criticism. A parent who's emotionally unavailable. That's part of neglect. Being consistently dissed and dismissed, yeah, humiliated.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

There's like no real story to point to, but there's a there it sounds like there's this consistent experience that gets internalized. And and so I think it's more like a the consistency is the key. You're right. Your nervous system's learning something about the what the world is like, yeah, but you keep operating that way long after that experience is done.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Yeah, it's like death by a thousand cuts versus big T trauma, which is like the guillotine.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Right. It's yeah. I'm just I'm just sitting here like thinking it's like, God. But that is it's so accurate. That's I was like I think like a good French revolution reference. Reading the Sade will do it to you. Yeah. This distinction's important though between the two things because I think a lot of people dismiss their own experience by comparing it to something worse. That's the point. Well, I wasn't abused, my parents were just not emotionally present, or you know, I didn't go through, I wasn't at, you know, ground zero, I wasn't in the towers, I, you know, I was away at school, or like by the way, everybody who I didn't mean you know, but like ever everybody who's experienced something traumatic does that.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

That's one of our defense mechanisms. That's right, is to minimize and compare, comparatively minimize. Well, I didn't have it so bad.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

I hear that almost every day from from somebody that I'm working with in some way or another, that kind of well, it it's other people have it much worse. Other people have been through much worse. Look at well, look at the other things I have. Right. If I have an apartment, still problems. Always people always say, Oh, it's a first world problem. It's a first world problem. That is minimizing the experience of of something that may have been really traumatic.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

That's a really wonderful point because experience is subjective. There is yeah, there's a spectrum, but at the same time, we all wherever you land on that spectrum, and I'm talking about privilege, I'm talking about equity. Yeah, it's problems are problems. You said at the beginning of this episode, you know, hard things are hard, full stop, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:35

No matter where you are. That's right. It it's it what matters is how is how it was overwhelming and whether it was overwhelming to our nervous system at that time with the resources we have. When I think about explaining, like, you know, when we talk about like, oh, people do the best they can with what they have at any given moment. And I've talked about that that last piece being an important distinction. At any given moment. That is the same thing with internalizing trauma. If it overwhelms our nervous system at the time we experience it, depending on the resources we have available to manage it. So I mean, at 46, I might have a huge vocabulary as a therapist to explain a feeling.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

But 10, I probably didn't have those words to use. Right. So now I can I can explain it. I can I can have an experience that'd be like, okay, it might not have the same impact as when I was 10 or 8 or 15 or 25. Yeah. You know. So that's we want to think about like what resources we have available in that moment too. No, that's important. So go ahead. No, no, no. No, I want to so when we think about recovery, like, you know, in a significant amount of people who, you know, develop a problematic relationship with substances, underneath that, they're probably managing a lot of unprocessed trauma. Oh, all the time.

unknown 36:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

All the time. Often little, little tea. Little T. It could be big T. Big T is like, oh, there's a lot of things happening. I gotta go to the bar. Right. That's almost it's almost like socially acceptable. Oh, this really horrible thing happened. I need a drink. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

But it's been said by a lot of recovery sort of theorists that addiction, substance use disorder, whatever you you any of these sort of like problematic behaviors are a trauma symptom. And I think Russell Brand initially popularized that idea as well before he kind of like moved. He's in now. But he he he wrote a book called Recovery, and that's the central premise. Yeah. Is that these are that addictive behavior needs to be understood within a context of trauma and symptomology. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Kenyon, you talked before about the difference between I have a trauma history and I am traumatized. Yeah. And one describes something that happened, and the other is a story about who you permanently are. Right. And I so let's go back and look at the the hierarchy and kind of like, you know, what when we talk about trauma to cover all of human difficulty, a few specific things that happen that are are worth naming. Right. So we have a problem with, you know, the people with serious trauma histories, complex developmental trauma, assault, war, they start to wonder whether they are allowed to even use that word, as you said. Right. Does this word apply to me?

SPEAKER_02 38:31

Because yeah, because we hear things, especially on social media, like everyone has trauma.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Right. And so it's it's the experience becomes not that difficult or not that different from everybody else. Right. And then it's and then it's that's not a small thing that when we think about it. It really minimizes the importance of people who have experienced war, assault, you know, any of the other complex. And and you know, we we haven't mentioned people coming back from war. No, and and veterans, and I think just how tremendously underserved they still are, even though everybody talks about support, support your troops, like, oh, we need to be aware of like PTSD and war and and the experience of that, it is they're still just so grossly dismissed and underserved. Absolutely. With and especially dealing with trauma. Yeah. And it's interesting because most of our trauma treatments come out of research done with troops and veterans coming back from war.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

As I said, Bessel Vanderkohl came up with the the PTSD diagnosis specifically through working with Vietnam vets.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Yeah. We think EMDR, all that research was done on vets. ART, accelerated resolution therapy, that that was a lot of the work was done and research was done with with vets. And and these are all related to like the again, physical eye movements and how the body kind of like processes trauma and where it's stored, et cetera. The other the other thing is you know, this identity trap that I think people get caught in that's it's that's what we were talking about earlier. Yeah, right. Identifying with your trauma. Right. It becomes a fixed state, right? It's that my in and like the it's I am traumatized rather than my nervous system learns something that I'm I'm now working on to to to change or to update. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:23

Exactly. Rather than saying I experienced something that was really difficult. Yeah. It's almost like this thing happened. I am never gonna get past it. Yeah. It's sort of like that idea of having of being broken.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Right. One is one is a noun, one's a verb, I think. It's this kind of idea of like, here's my label versus here's my process and here's what I'm working through.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

It's very different to say I am traumatized than it is to say I'm doing trauma therapy. Yeah. The second is empowered. The second is related to change.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Words are extremely important. Yeah. We can't just dismiss things as semantics. I think the we've talked about this when we when we went over negative, you know the kind of negative thoughts and the negative. Unhelpful, yeah, unhelpful thinking styles. It's the same thing. We we the way we reference ourselves is important. The way we talk about ourselves is extremely important.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

So yeah, we want to we want to work on identifying different words and how we reference trauma.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

And how we reference ourselves. I mean, am I we we we contain multitudes. We are many things. You are many things. That's right. I love to talk about how you're a therapist and a banjo player and a dad and a runner, yeah, and a tech nerd.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

An eggplant parm connoisseur.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

Eggplant parm connoisseur, photographer.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

We can actually just we can actually get rid of all the other stuff and just talk about eggplant parts.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

Let's just talk about eggplant palm let's because let's prioritize and hierarchize it. But the the thing is, and you've also been through some tough stuff. You know, how much of our identity do we hang on what we've been through or what we love to do? I've been through some shitty stuff. Yeah, and I can tell you right now, the things I love to do take up a whole lot more of my life than memories and complications related to my PTSD.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

By the way, not everything that hurt you rewired you. No. That's and and so within this when we talk about trauma and resilience and how we move through it, it's really it's really important to remember that that not everything that hurts us rewires us. Not everything that hurts us lingers for a lifetime. Not everything that hurts us sticks with us and and and changes who we are as a human. It's right, it's a reference point, it's something that happened, but it can be it can be an experience that we transcend, it can be an experience that we kind of work through. It can just be a difficulty that that we've had to navigate. Right. And then other times it does rewire us and kind of like has a lasting impact. But there it's important, and and this is where I think the the issue with what I see you see with social media comes in. That trauma content performs really well online. Yes, it does. So people are getting tons of clicks because they talk about trauma. Hopefully, we get tons of clicks today talking about trauma. But you know, it's it's the issue becomes everybody goes, oh, that's me. In a 30 second clip online, somebody goes, Oh, that's me, that's me. It's it must be trauma. It must be this trauma issue. I definitely have have this thing. And I think it really takes away, it changes the framework and it changes the framework of how we think about trauma, but it's because it it actually resonates with us. Emotionally, and I think that's why people that's why it works so well to hear it all the time. But it's it's not accurate. Resonance, when we have a resonance, when something resonates with us and it sits with us, that that's not a diagnosis. That's just that it feels like it, it it feels kind of like we connect with it.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

We connect with it, it's familiar. Um it yeah, we identify without I want to be careful about using the word identify. To feel something though, to feel something deeply is connecting. And the other part of like trauma content performing well is the same reason like there's always traffic when there's an accident because people want to look, people want to like rubber neck. There's some we have as humans, we have a compulsion to look at terrible things, things that overwhelm our nervous systems. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

I think it's I think it's it's it's we I always think it's a fear of like we we're worried about what could happen to us. We have to see. We have to see. No, it's like a vicarious thing. You know, if we build this, if we build these identities though around social media frameworks or things that we read or hear on online without any support, without any, without understanding context and nuance, it actually can delay the real work that we need to do. And I think that that's that's it can set us back for sure. Yeah. Kenyan, let's talk a little bit about how trauma shows up. Yeah. Like unprocessed trauma, like the genuine nervous system level trauma that overwhelm and and some of the different ways that it tends to Yeah, because there's a there's a stereotype that like a traumatized individual is just gonna have like flashbacks all the time.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Like you think of like the classic Vietnam vet or something, you know, who from growing up in the 80s who was like, you know, shell-shocked. And it's it's very that's one version, not the only version. So yeah, they're speaking to that reactivity that's sort of like disproportionate to what's actually going on in a given situation where someone is very clearly responding, the body is clearly responding to something that's happened in the past that's not happening in the present.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

Right. It's as it has no connection to the to the now. Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 46:15

And that's you know, that can often be called sort of labeled as as a flashback. This is the one that I see more than any other, and that's avoidance.

unknown 46:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 46:26

Avoidant behavior. Yeah. Anything that uh involves having to deal with situations, people, circumstances, conditions, uh feelings, conversations that are at all related to the traumatizing event.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Okay. So that that can look like anything that kind of almost uh that mirrors what like that event could have been.

SPEAKER_02 46:52

And I've I'll see it. Here's an example. I'll see it. There's say there's an adult child who was not physically abused by his mother, wouldn't legally be called abuse, but definitely shamed chronically, and about, you know, for example, his appearance. Your appearance is you're unkempt, you you know, cut your hair, get a, you know, shave, whatever that like over and over and over and over. So that as an adult, when that monk calls, he shuts down, he avoids, he can't even answer the phone because it brings back all those times that his parent, the mother, criticized his appearance and made him feel less than.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Yeah. It's like this traumatic recall, right? It's always just pulling back, and then you just avoid anything that's gonna even bring up any of that feeling again.

SPEAKER_02 47:47

So that that's a that's one that I wanted to highlight. And it also stems uh it that also kind of bleeds into substance use disorders because that's a great way to avoid feelings, especially if they're if we're dealing with, you know, traumatizing memories. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

And that can be either avoiding the situation totally and just retreating into substance use or going to the thing and engaging in substance use, right? Like just let me know. I need a drink, I can't handle it. Right, let me without a drink. Let me numb myself out in the in the place, or let me numb myself out and not even go. Like those both things I think happen. One of the other ways I think trauma shows up is with this kind of like hypervigilance, right? This idea, like our our body per like we're always scanning for threat. We're always looking, is this safe? Is this room safe? You know, like we talk about the nervous system constantly being engaged at fight or flight, like that is hypervigilance. If I'm if I'm walking around always on, always plugged in, and like my alarm is constantly like on, then you know, the car alarm's going off as I drive down the road. That's like that's that hypervigilance. And I think that that can be a real kind of you know experience for for people who have trauma. And I've I've seen that a lot. Like there's just a general nervousness constantly with no off switch. No, there's like no ability to switch it off.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

And that and there's a cost that we pay for being in that sort of level of high anxiety all the time.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:15

It looks like the body actually shutting down, which is another part of trauma. There are physical symptoms of unprocessed trauma. Tension, chronic back pain is one that you hear about a lot. Stomach stuff. Totally. Oh, I'm so calm. So many gastroenterologists they don't know what's going on with me, but it's like, oh yeah, it's probably linked, it could be linked to a traumatic episode from your past. Right. Not being able to sleep, insomnia.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

No, but we want to find, we always want to find, like, oh, there must be some medical condition. It's like, well, it's it's it's considered medical, but it's a mental health issue, right? But it is, it's it's a lot, it's so many people with stomach issues related to trauma and anxiety and just what they've what they've been through. And then I think the one that we see a lot is repetitive relationship patterns.

SPEAKER_02 50:04

Recreating the dynamic that produced the trauma.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Because not and and and the important distinction here, and I talk to people a lot about this, is it's not bad things, we don't do them because they're comfortable. We do them because they're familiar. Because they're familiar. And people often conflate the the two things. It's like, oh, I do it because it's co- it's what I'm comfortable with. Nobody is comfortable with being in a in a in an abusive relationship ever. That's just not but they're familiar. And and and they might twist or misinterpret, you know, love or attention or some of these other things that are happening in that moment. But I think that's a really important thing to understand is that comfort and familiarity are two very different things. So let's look at maybe some of the ways that we can, you know what like genuine trauma work requires.

SPEAKER_02 51:04

It's well, you mentioned body-based stuff. I think trauma work isn't just about talking. It's not just like, oh, let's talk about the terrible thing that happened to you. Often when we're doing trauma therapy, the person can talk about it. Right. But there are things that haven't been processed yet.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:28

And so I think, you know, titration is an important word here, which just really means going slowly. Like if we're titrating, we're going slowly, we're approaching whatever the trauma was in little bite-sized pieces, baby steps. We don't the your system's been flooded before, your nervous system's been flooded before if you've been traumatized. So we don't want to flood it again. Yeah. And a lot of that is for me ends up being kind of like body-based.

SPEAKER_01 52:01

You know, you're not just gonna like tell somebody to sit down and just like, hey, let's crack this open and just tell me about the what happened to you.

SPEAKER_02 52:09

What did you go through? Sometimes uh trauma. Give me all the details. No, yeah, you're right. But but maybe a client wants to to talk about, you know, a client who's gone through some let's say assault. They don't want to talk about what happened to them specifically, but they'll tell they'll they'll want to talk about like a David Cronenberg movie, body horror movie.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:30

And then it's the then the work becomes, oh yeah, let's let's engage at that level. Right. And then maybe after a couple sessions the client will feel comfortable talking a little bit more specifically about what happened to them.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

There's a when I did the ART training, when we we talked about how memories were formed, and we used to think that memories were just like you'd go to a library in your brain and you take the book off the shelf and you'd open it to a page, and that was your memory. And when you every time you would recall something, traumatic event, even if it wasn't traumatic, but any memory, but but really what we were looking at trauma, that oh, it's it's just I have this event that happens. So when I take this, I'm remembering, I'm I'm reading about the smells, the sounds, the sights, like all of our senses, like everything that overwhelmed us at that time, everything that felt awful. That's not actually how memories work. And in what research has now uncovered is that every time we talk about a traumatic event, every time we remember trauma or any memory really, but you know, here we're talking about like these these things that have happened. It's your brain is recreating the scenario, it's recreating the experience in your mind. Your brain's actually pulling from different shelves to say, here's that smell. Let me pull that that sight back in, let me pull that body feeling back in. And your brain recreates the experience so that you can recall the memory. And so every time you talk about it without actually working through it, like in a in a healthy way, like say with a therapist or or just in a in a process, right? You you are in effect re-traumatizing yourself each time. And so that's why we want to be really careful and titrate, as you're saying, like the the work around trauma treatment, because we we don't want to just continuously like reflood ourselves. There is no reason to overflow that bathtub again. Right. We can we can slowly, we can take a small Dixie cup and just keep like taking small little, you know, eventually you'll work through it. But that's and in and that's where some of these like EMDR and ART and some other trauma therapies are are really wonderful because you you get to have a different relationship with that memory as you're recreating it. Right. And if if people want to learn more about ART and EMDR, I I highly, highly recommend looking into it or call us and ask, I'll talk about it for forever. But that's because it you're you're you're recreating a memory or recreating experience. So every time you you don't lose the memory of what happened, but you do have a different relationship and it has a different effect on your body. It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't have to shut you down.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

Right. There's also I think it's important to point out that like not every challenge we go through needs trauma therapy. Right. A lot of this stuff shows, I mean, a lot of the stuff is it can be grief, you know, loss. You know, Kat Hurley did such a wonderful job of defining all these different types of loss that we don't necessarily, you know, associate with loss or grief. And so, you know, some hard things just require time. They just require time, you know, time and conversation.

SPEAKER_01 55:55

And that doesn't have to be with a therapist, that can just be time and talking to somebody else who went through something. Yeah, a survivor. Yeah, I think about support groups, they're so jinx the the any situation or any setting where you don't feel alone and you can talk about this, and that's that's just it. It's you know, not everything needs like some intense kind of like excavation. Right. I think that like we don't we don't need to dig so deep all the time. No. Sometimes it can be really more hey, what are we doing right now to make sure that this this doesn't feel so awful when I when I recall it?

SPEAKER_02 56:31

And sometimes that's just being alongside somebody who you trust and feel comfortable with, as you said, like a fishing trip or running or you know that's where I think 12-step, you know, 12-step groups and recovery groups and smart recovery and any of the other kind of like recovery dharma.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

Yeah, if you think about even even when I think about you know religious practice, yeah, Buddhist tradition. Yeah, it's not necessarily the the the message. It doesn't have to be like, oh, you're hearing about, you know, Buddha or or you know, Jesus or you know, whatever it might be. It's just you're you're in a place congregating together and and working towards a similar goal, or just having a similar understanding of of of life.

SPEAKER_02 57:17

No, it's why concerts are similarly therapeutic. That's right. You know, or even going to the movies. Not that everybody really does that anymore. No. People just stream in their homes. But having a shared experience, being around like-minded people, yeah, is in I think inherently therapeutic. Thanks for listening to Lumen. If today's conversation resonated with you, we encourage you to follow, review, and share Lumen with anyone you think would appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

We'll be back soon with another conversation designed to bring a little more light to the human condition. I'm Christopher Mooney, LCSW. And I'm Kenyon Phillips, LMSW. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Lumen is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact local emergency services or a trusted mental health professional.