Reshaping Trauma Responses for Growth

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Have you ever made a decision and then things got really uncomfortable and so it prompted you to change the decision or be unsure if this was a sign that you should change paths and have been really unsure of how to interpret the discomfort that is happening? If so, this episode is for you. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to episode 80 of the Unweaving Chronic Pain podcast. I am your host, dr Andrea Moore, founder of the Whole Self Integration Method, and I am on an absolute mission to help people connect back there to their true selves so they can go out and live lives in whatever way feels powerful and aligned for them. If you know of anybody who could benefit from this podcast, anyone who is feeling trapped or struggling in chronic pain or chronic illness, please feel free to send them over this way. You can also come hang out with me on Instagram at Dr Andrea Moore, and if you are feeling like you would like some additional support with this work, please do not hesitate to schedule a free energy up level session. In this session, we are going to gain so much clarity on what is going on with you, why you may be feeling stuck and held back and, more importantly, what your next steps are in getting back to living a life that is full as it is. 

Alright, let's get into today. So I'm going to start because I have a six year old, as many of you know, and man does. He teach me lessons. Well, recently we had a really, really good one and I've been thinking about this for the past few weeks and I really wanted to share because it has so many valuable nuggets in there For the past. Honestly, it's probably been about a year. I will have recurring nightmares of him drowning like, of him falling into like dark water and then just going straight down. 

My child cannot swim. We have done exactly what you're not supposed to do and put him in a life jacket, and I knew this. To be fair, I actually knew all of this ahead of time. I know most parents might not actually know this, but for whatever reason, I think I happened to read about this when he was really young of why, like puddle jumpers and life jackets and things like that can actually be very problematic and for kids. But I'm not going to go into that because I am not an expert on that. Feel free to look it up if you want more information. 

Obviously, if you're at open water, put your kid in a life jacket, but in terms of like in a pool and in other safe environments, when you put them in life jackets they don't realize they sink. And so my six year old for the past year or so, it's like not that we're around water a ton, but when we are, he's like I can swim, I can swim. And it's really rubbed me the wrong way because I'm like you can't swim and this is not like, oh, like I don't want to, you know, ruin his confidence. He can't swim, he cannot swim. If he thinks he can swim and jumps in water, that's really freaking dangerous. 

So anyways, it has been a point of conflict for me. It starts to get a little scary, especially as he's getting older. I was like we need to address this and it was creating tensions and bad times. Has been an issue since the day he was born because he doesn't want to get his face wet. When we go on vacations, when we're around a pool, when we're around any water, I am an anxious ball. I get so scared of him falling in. It's hard to relax right If there's any water nearby and I was like this. I need to address this. This is not beneficial for my family. It is not beneficial for him. I want him to know how to swim. That just felt so important. 

We had tried some swim lessons. They just weren't working. We weren't really getting anywhere. I had posted in a local group asking hey, like, who's the best instructor? What kept coming up was this one woman who is local to us, who does ISR, infant safety resources or something. I might even be saying that wrong, sorry, but it teaches. You may have seen videos of it. It's like with the babies who know how to like turn over and float if they fall in a pool and I think age six month and beyond, how to float in water if they were to fall in. So it's really, really good for parents who have pools or you know kids who are around bodies of water a lot, because it happens, drowning's happen, right. 

However, when a few years probably when my son was two, I had heard of ISR and I had heard that it was extremely traumatizing, I had heard they throw kids in the water and like the kids feel like they're drowning and that the kids are crying and screaming and like it's this horribly awful thing and it's terrible for them, and I my mind was like it makes sense if you own a pool, because you know you always have to balance that out, right, let's see, do I want my kid slightly traumatized or do I want my kid alive? Right, like, I'll take my kid alive and slightly traumatized, over dead and drowned, I mean it's the reality, right. But I was like it's not for us. We're not around pools very often, like if we are, somebody is watching him. And so I totally just was like that's terrible, I will, I would never do that. That was my attitude towards ISR. But then literally there was like 20 comments all mentioning how wonderful this one instructor was at this ISR place and so I was like, okay, andrea, let's reevaluate. 

And what first started with the reevaluation was how committed am I to this outcome of my son swimming? It kind of went down this whole rabbit hole and you know was had been having like I had had maybe three nightmares and like a you know weeks time about this and I was like, okay, right now I'm making this decision out of fear. I don't want to make this decision out of fear. So I took some time to be with myself, to really get clear and to connect with my own wisdom, and from that connection. It was so clear that, yes, I am 100% committed to him learning how to swim. I want to make this happen. And then I added an extra goal onto it because it felt good to have a deadline, because I'm very good at dragging things out otherwise, because I think this was maybe in July. It wasn't that long ago. So this is a pretty ambitious goal, but in a couple of weeks we are going to Florida and there's going to be a pool there, there's a beach, and I was like I want him to at least have some basic skills in Florida. So, anyways, I was like I'm committed and I'm committed to getting started right away and trying to get some of these skills in before we leave, which is September 28th when we are leaving. 

And it just so happened that ISR had something starting like perfect timing, right Of course, like there one session was like okay, it starts in a week and I'm like awesome. But I was like I don't know about ISR, like I had heard terrible things about it, and so I reopened my mind. And this is so important because, oh my gosh, how many times do we make a decision about something and are just unwilling to reconsider? But here's what I know I've been wrong about a lot of things in my life. I make snap judgments, everybody makes snap decisions, and I was like I don't think it's a coincidence that her name got mentioned over and over, that the timing is absolutely perfect, and so I finally go on their website, which just even took a lot to even go on the website to look which is just funny sometimes how we can be so resistant to something right. 

And I was just like just read, andrea, I'm just gathering information. And I think this is a really important piece, because so often we close our minds off from even gathering information because we either are too scared of the answer, or we're scared of what the answer is going to mean, or we're scared of being wrong or finding out we were wrong. And what I always tell myself and tell my clients when it comes to information gathering whether it is about reading something on a website or whether it is gathering information internally is it's literally just data and you don't have to act on it. I could go on this website and read that it was the most amazing thing in the world and I could still make the decision not to do it right, like just because I find out information doesn't mean I need to act on it. So I was just giving myself that permission to just find information without needing to act on it. 

So, as I did that, one of the very first things I saw on the website was we do not throw kids into the water. And I was like, oh okay, wow, that's what I was really scared of and you've just addressed that. I feel way better about this now, and so I did some more reading and everything lined up and I was like, all right, let's do it. And I was still a little nervous. I'd still again seen enough videos of kids crying and you know how my son was going to respond. They seemed a little like we do it. We're about safety, not about like coddling and I was like you know what? I can only know if I try and I can always just stop going. 

And this is another thing is so often we feel like our decisions have to be final and there's some value in making a committed decision, which I had made for myself, but also being flexible at the same time. So one of the phrases that I've heard is 100% committed and 100% flexible at the same time, and I love this phrase so much because I want to be committed to my son learning how to swim and I can be flexible about how it happens. I can commit to ISR and if I gain new information as we are going along the lessons I can just choose to leave. Nobody is forcing me to be there. Will, might I be out some money? Yes, but I can get to make that decision Right. No one is like you have to come, you have to show up, and sometimes just giving ourselves that out can be really helpful in getting us to take action of like I can always just stop Right, like I can always just try it out and see what happens. 

So that's what I did and the first session was horrible. Oh my God, oh the watching him struggle. He had never been in the water like that without a life jacket. He had never been deep into like that. He had been in the water, you know, in the shallow end, but he, like she, a few times I think she was just testing out his skill to see where he was. He was, you know, treading water really hard, was kind of starting to go under, like I could see the terror on his face. These lessons are 10 minutes long and I could barely make it through. And here's the thing, ah, while yes, he was scared, he was still in the water. He wasn't asking to get out. He was sometimes asking her to, like, stop and hold him, but he wasn't like I need to get out of this water. So much of this fear was my own and my own discomfort of watching him struggle was like so intense, so I used my own tools. 

Because, here's the thing is, so often we mistake discomfort for a trauma response and the thing is is, over time, I actually think when this happens over and over, discomfort can cause an internal trauma response, meaning our nervous system is acting as if we are in a life or death situation. It is going into fight or flight mode, it is going into freeze mode or fawn mode, right, it is literally going into a trauma response in response to discomfort, in response to emotions. And the problem is, this isn't a true trauma, not in the big T trauma sense. The problem with the word trauma and I know I've said this on the podcast, but I think it's been a while is that it's really poorly defined. I absolutely will relate to, like everyday situations that happen or uncomfortable situations, as being traumatic for the nervous system because they are, because of what I'm talking about right here, like our nervous system can have a trauma response to things, though that are not true traumas, and this distinction is huge. And I get that this distinction might cause trauma responses and people or might be pissed people off who are listening or make it feel like not acknowledging certain things. 

And the point is is no, that's not actually true at all. It is acknowledging the difference between is what my nervous system reacting to appropriate for this level of response from it? If the answer is no, then we kind of have a problem. It creates an inner tension. The body is now seeing something as life or death that just isn't life or death and we get to honor that response. When that is happening, we have to honor it. That is where so much of my work comes in is honoring our nervous system and learning how to work with a nervous system that is reacting to situations that are not too true traumas as if they were like. That's my favorite place to work with people. That is like where the bulk of my work is with people, but part of that work being successful is understanding the difference and helping your nervous system see that it is responding to something that is just not an actual trauma, but it is responding as as if it were. 

So we have to be respectful of the nervous system for how it's responding, while also helping it see that the discomfort it is experiencing is not life or death and that, in fact, is safe. We're not talking about trying to force our nervous system to perceive discomfort from abuse as safe. That's not what we're talking about, not discomfort from a truly life-threatening situation. We're not trying to convince it it's not life-threatening. That would be ridiculous. But when we start viewing things like struggling at something new, rejection, people saying hurtful things to us, like fears of being canceled on the internet if you're an entrepreneur, making mistakes, even injuries and pain that are not life-threatening, when we see all of these things as life-threatening and respond to them as such and enforce this response in our nervous system, we do ourselves and our children a massive disservice. When we feel fear, when we feel anger, when we feel grief, when we feel sadness and our nervous system has a trauma response to that discomfort of those emotions, we have to help our nervous system see that those things are actually safe. Because what happens when we enforce the trauma response by being like huh, you're right, this is bad. 

So, like in that moment of my son struggling, had I been like stop out of the water. Now, this is traumatic. That would have been more traumatic on his system, especially in the long run. Then, just allowing him to struggle and knowing that he absolutely was safe he was in the water with a certified instructor whose life's work is about keeping children safe in the water Like I'm pretty sure she's a safe person, and since it was the first day I met her, though, I was also there. The water was four feet deep. If, for some reason, she failed to do something, I could just jump in and get him right, like he was totally safe. He was scared and he was struggling, and by actually allowing him to move through those emotions with a safe person by him, and then knowing that I could help to talk to him afterwards and help him work through any of it afterwards, that's how I talked myself down and allowed me to get through this 10 minutes. I can't tell you how long that 10 minutes felt that first day. 

Now, the second day was just as bad, and I really started to notice, though, that I felt like she was going a little fast between like repetitions of doing things, and my son is someone who I know him is someone who just needs to like understand what is happening and just have like a heads up like you just can't move too quickly with him, right, like he is someone if anybody knows human design, he's a one. Okay, that is like I need to know exactly what's happening, like even if it's just right in this moment Okay, now I'm going to put you back in the water, right. Or like, okay, now we're going to float, because that helps you breathe while you're in the water. Like giving an explanation of what's happening, just that little thing makes the world of a difference to him. And she wasn't really doing that and most of the reason was because she had lost her voice or a woman couldn't talk. So I think that was contributing to it was that she wasn't explaining things because she like physically couldn't. 

And so after that session, he, that night, he really was like I'm really scared and that's really unusual for him, like after the fact, to say that he was really scared of something. So we talked, we cuddles, I spent so much extra time with him and letting him be like it is really scary to learn new things right, that's totally normal. And helping to bring in why it's normal to feel scared when we do new things. And also help remind him of why we were doing it. To tell him how much fun he would be able to have in the pool and how many fun things he can do when he's not stuck in a life jacket, because you can have way more fun in the pool without a life jacket on right. To remind him that we were going to get to get to get to get to go to Florida, which he loves, and he had a great time right. So he's just helping him see why he was doing all of this. 

We repaired and this is the other important thing is we forget we can always repair. This is not about this work parenting, just life is not about avoiding discomforts or struggles or even trauma because we can't, we cannot do that, but we can repair afterward. And so the next day he was ready to go again and I asked her in front of him, because he asked me to. He said can you please ask her to slow down? So I had texted her this already, but I wanted him to hear me tell her this because he really wanted to. He was like I really want to make sure she knows. And so, right in front of him I allowed his fears to be heard. He got to witness being stood up for right. He felt heard. He got right back in that water and she respected the little tweaks I mean, it was like the minorst of tweaks and that day was so much better. 

Already it's been three weeks now and, oh my gosh, the differences in him are I would not have ever expected far better than I ever imagined. He is floating, he's swimming short distances, he is putting his head under the water. This is a massive, massive deal. This has just been from the willingness to stick this out and the irony was it was literally 30 minutes total right of swim lessons that we had to stick it out for. For him to kind of move past this hump. It felt a whole lot longer, it felt a whole lot more difficult, but when I look back I was like, oh my gosh, it was literally just 30 minutes and that 30 minutes felt like three weeks. But once we got through that, the progress he has made has been phenomenal. 

And the bigger thing that I'm noticing in him is he is a kid who does not do well with praise Probably unshockingly, because neither do I. It's like, oh, I wonder where he gets that from right, like if you're like, oh my gosh, you worked so hard, that's amazing. He gets really uncomfortable. He's like mom, stop, right. Like this teacher the other day was saying something in front of him and he gets really like. I can see him like squirming and it's like stop, stop. So he is not. He is not someone who like naturally feels proud of himself or like. I see that come easily for him, which, of course, is something I'm always trying to like help instill in him In these swim lessons. 

It is the first time I have really seen him be proud of himself. I see him at his. Often she's holding him, so he's not facing her right and he often is. He's so focused in the lessons he rarely even looks up at me, but I'm watching him the whole time. I can see him like, after she pulls him back up and you know it's like oh, you know you did it, like that was awesome, you held the float for three seconds or whatever it is. I just see him get this huge smile on his face and just like I can feel the sense of pride. I can like hear it afterwards when he's, you know, talking about it. And this is because I allowed him to be uncomfortable, to struggle, to learn that he could do it, that he could get through it. 

Earlier I said it's a massive disservice when we do not do this for our kids and I wanna come back to that point Because it's not just about our kids, it's also about for ourselves when we do not let ourselves see that we can make it through the struggle, that we can make it through hard things. When we quit the second, things get hard. It reinforces trauma responses in our own body. It teaches our body that things being hard because we don't yet know how to do them Cause of course we don't, cause we haven't done them yet, or maybe it's been a while. It teaches our nervous system to fear learning new things. It teaches our nervous system to fear the struggle that is involved with growth, because the struggle is always going to be involved with growth. And when I say struggle, we could probably make a whole episode on that definition, because I don't mean it has to be unnecessarily hard, but there's gonna be discomfort. There is discomfort with growth. Maybe that's the better word. 

Here we can hear our emotions, our fears, our discomfort, our tears, and we can make so much space for them. And, in fact, when we can make some space for them, that is often what then gets us to the next step. But the second we allow them to take over our inner guidance, to take over that part that was 100% committed to that action that we chose from an authentically guided place. We create an incredibly unhealthy and unsupportive internal dynamic. It's equivalent to handing over the car keys to a six year old and expecting them to take the lead. They just can't do it, and not only is that not fair to them, it's incredibly dangerous and likely will lead to a very bad outcome With kids and with ourselves. 

When we do this over and over and over again, we create fragility in our kids and in ourselves, we create apathy, we shrink our lives and our kids' lives, and none of this, of course, is done on purpose. I've done this to myself. I have seen where I have done this to my child, because I have used this very trauma informed work and I have gotten it confused with learning new things and the hard that comes along, and for a while it felt like any struggle, any big emotions, any fears were things that should be avoided. But over time, as a parent, I have realized that that is the biggest disservice to my child and to myself, because I have seen where it has, as a parent, has also been very harmful to see his struggles as traumas, because they aren't. They are him working through a new skill and on the other side of that struggle is pride and courage and bravery and resilience that he all gets to learn and feel for himself, which sets you up for a growth-minded life. Right. You can grow so much more when you are willing to face those tough times. 

And I think as adults and I know in myself it became very scary to struggle to make mistakes, to learn new skills because it all required feeling those really uncomfortable emotions that my body was responding to with a trauma response. The more I have trained my body to see that these struggles of learning new skills, these struggles of making mistakes, the discomforts that come with growth because my goodness do discomforts come with growth are actually safe, and not just safe but empowering and supportive in leading the life that I want. It's what has helped me open my life back up again, building my capacity to be with that discomfort. It didn't happen overnight. I don't think this is a like put your bootstraps on and just deal with a type of thing right, like. That's not what I'm saying. It is being very intentional about learning this skill of how to teach your system that these things are safe if it has learned that it's unsafe. 

If you have a system that doesn't have a trauma response in response to discomfort or emotions, you don't need to do this. This episode isn't for you. This is for so many with chronic pain, though, who have perfectionism, and people pleasing patterns, whose nervous systems do have this, though, and so please know that there is a way out of this, and it's being very, very clear that you are not unintentionally Forcing the pattern, which I am seeing happen more and more, but instead you are teaching your nervous system that it is resilient and that it is safe, and that growth is safe, and that discomfort that is aligned with your 100% committed action that you have chosen is exactly what's gonna get you to living a life that it feels full out and absolutely amazing to you, where you get to use your voice, bring your passions into this world and bring in your unique gifts. So I want to encourage you if you recognize yourself in this story. If you recognize yourself as Either the parent who has a massive amount of difficulty in watching their kids struggle and therefore are actually so unintentionally because I know it is not intentional depriving their kids of gaining resilience and learning new skills because it feels I'm putting quotes here trauma informed, not to let them struggle, then one Congratulations like truly, the fact that you are able to see this is Massive. It is such a big deal and it is one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself and your kids to be able to see this as a pattern that you hold. And again, you are not alone in this pattern. This was a pattern that I held for far too long and I see Growing more and more. I could do a whole episode on that as well. 

So if you're someone who recognizes this again as a parent, or you recognize this for yourself, you see where you try something out and then very, very quickly give up. You try to Do a certain process. Once maybe, you learned of a new journaling prompt or a Meditation that sounded good and you tried it and you had an uncomfortable reaction and so you wrote it off as this doesn't work. This isn't right, this isn't good for me. Or maybe you decided you wanted to start going for walks, but some pain flared up afterwards so you said, nope, that's it, this isn't right, this is wrong. Right. This very Visceral reaction of like this is bad. Something uncomfortable happened. 

I experienced uncomfortable emotions, Uncomfortable body sensations, and it feels like it puts a wall up. Then I want you to know that not only are you not alone, but you don't have to stay stuck here, because these things will be the biggest hindrances to growth, because they are literally responses that have formed in the body that are reinforcing this pattern, that the discomfort that is involved with growth, that is involved with holding big emotions, is a threat. And there's nothing that will shrink your life more than that alone and will also get in the way of healing, because the healing process from chronic pain, from trauma, is going to involve holding uncomfortable emotions and allowing them to move through. And you get to have so much compassion and love for yourself and take the time you need to build that skill. But we cannot avoid that skill. There's no way around that skill. But you get to back up and meet yourself exactly where you are in it. 

This is not about trying to flood your system or move through it too fast or use this as another way to beat yourself up, or you already should have this skill. No, of course not. Notice where you're applying this very concept to this very thing, right Of, oh, I'm gonna beat myself up for not having the skill and I'm just gonna give up because I'm not already there. Of course you're not there. You haven't learned it yet and you haven't learned it in a way that's compassionate and loving and has really met yourself where you are. Because here's what I found for myself, as someone who very much struggled with perfectionism and very much struggled with holding any type of discomfort of learning new skills, especially emotional regulation ones or anything that involved feeling big emotions in my body is I found so much of the work that already existed out there was coming from a standpoint of assuming that somebody already has the capacity to do this, to be with this. They weren't coming from the standpoint that the nervous system does see this as a threat for some people in some nervous systems and that part gets missed and so it becomes very unsafe in the nervous system to do this very healing work. 

So, in order to do this healing work. If you wanna do inner child work, reparenting work, trauma healing work, repatterning work, any even thought work right, any of these types of things, whatever name you wanna call it you first have to have the skill of holding discomfort and emotions in your system. And if you don't have that skill, no shame. Just start there. Though and that's exactly what so much of my program and my work with clients is about is we first make sure that somebody has that skill, has the nervous system, safety, and then we build on it. Then we build to where you can start to be with these things, where we can start to understand the message they're sending, where we can then move past that into up-leveling energy levels, up-leveling your ability to use your voice, to set boundaries, to submit that book proposal, because you know you can handle the rejection that may come with that. It opens the door to an entire life that you can then live. But you first have to step back and gain that skill, because if you try to skip it, everything else will jam up. 

If you have been feeling plateaued on your healing journey, it is likely because this skill has been jumped over. It is like trying to learn calculus when you haven't yet learned how to do basic addition. It doesn't work. You have to learn the basic skill first, and there's no shame if you don't know it. It's just stepping back and learning it, it's no big deal. This wasn't taught in schools. Your parents didn't teach you this because they didn't know it either. 

So can you give yourself a gift of first just acknowledging oh hey, no wonder these things feel so challenging for me, of course, this all makes so much sense and then give yourself the even greater gift of reaching out and asking for support in building this skill, because it's not one that actually just happens naturally. It's not one that's gonna happen just with time. If that was gonna happen, it would have happened. In fact, time will only make it worse, because time's only gonna reinforce the threat pattern, unless we are intentionally building this new skill. And so this is something you wanna learn and you wanna know how to do it in a way that is right for you, because it's not gonna be the same from person to person. 

This is not about some step-by-step approach that everyone starts here and ends here, right. It is about meeting you where you are, and if you wanna learn how to do that and know what is exactly the next best step for you. Then go ahead, schedule an energy up-level call with me today, and that's exactly what we're gonna do we're gonna walk through, learn about where you are and learn about what the next best step for you is, and give yourself the greatest gift you have ever given yourself and as the opportunity to expand your life back out again. All right, as always. Thank you so so much for listening. I so appreciate you, and if you have found this helpful, please leave a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or, of course, whatever rating feels right for you and share it with a friend or somebody else who could use this information as well. All right, I'll see you next time. 

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