PTSD MYTH #2: "My Trauma Is DIFFERENT, I Can't Heal"

Hey everyone, Kailene here, and welcome to PTSD TV. Today's the second day of our myth marathon. So this episode of PTSD TV is sponsored by Broken to Unbreakable, which is my PTSD and CPTSD recovery program. So for those of you who don't know me, my name's Kailene. I'm a PTSD and CPTSD recovery coach, and after 15 years with my own CPTSD, I was able to recover, and now I help people all over the world do the same thing. And this lovely man to my left here is— Brad Schipke.

Brad Schipke. I am Kayleen's significant other, and I am very excited about today's episode. I went on my own recovery journey and I was there for Kayleen's recovery journey. And, uh, all these myths that we're talking about on our myth marathon season, I don't know if that's what we're calling it. Series. I think that's the word. Um, are super, super duper important because they are things that could totally block you from recovery altogether. And there are a lot of, a lot of these things are things that we actually believed. and we had to overcome and like become aware of in our own lives to break through it, to then get to that other side. So today's a really good one.

So yeah, super, super important. And I think today we're going to talk a little bit about why these are so important and why these can be that big blocker and kind of make or break your recovery journey. So it's really important because we see these in the PTSD community time and time again, every day, every single day. We see people believing these myths, spreading these myths. So we want to debunk some of these myths and let you know the truth and what is actually true on the healing journey and in regards to all sorts of different things. So today's myth is every trauma is special, unique, or different, and therefore healing is different for every trauma, or therefore healing can't happen for every trauma. So every trauma is special, unique, or different. And this is something that we see a lot. This is something that, like Brad and I said, or like Brad said, We did both say it, but Brad said just earlier, he was talking about, you know, when we were on our own recovery journey, some of these myths we believed, and some of these myths actually did hold us back. And this was a big one.

Yeah.

And this is something I see a lot. And actually, this myth, as a society, as a culture— I know we have people from all different parts of the world listening to this— but has, has gotten better in the past, like, decade, just in regards to validation of, of feelings and emotions and mental health in general, but has a long way to go. So every trauma is special, unique, or different. Is this something you experienced on your own recovery journey?

Um, every trauma is special, unique, or different. I mean, I think this was— I mean, I definitely, definitely made a lot of excuses for myself, um, which was kind of in the form of— it might not have been, hey, my trauma is different, or like what I went through was different specifically. That might not have been like the The record that was playing in my head, it might have been like, "Hey, this was a lot harder for me," or "You you don't know what it's like," or like you are like blaming other people for what I went through. Being like, "It's your fault, not my fault." But in in some semblance, yes. I'm trying to think of the right words of the way that I actually thought of it in my mind because I think this is one way to spin it. But As we go through, I'll think about what the exact words were that went through my head, but this was definitely something.

Yeah. And I think that's important to kind of— this is just the idea, right, that we're talking about, not necessarily this specific verbiage or the specific way that we're saying this. You know, another way to say this would be like, excuse me, my trauma is way worse than that, so I can't heal, or my trauma is nothing compared to what this person went through. So don't deserve healing, or I shouldn't need to heal, or I will eventually just get over it.

Yeah.

And different things like when you use the word worse, better, um, anything that you're doing to compare can be really dangerous. And I know this is something that I did on, on my journey because, uh, when I was still struggling, what I used to say to you a lot— and you actually used to validate me in a big way— but I used to say like, well, what I went through is nothing compared to what this group of people went through, or, or like people have it way, way, way worse than me. And so like, I spent a lot of time kind of invalidating myself saying like, well, yeah, you know, I'm struggling, but other people have it worse. Do you remember kind of that?

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

And I think a lot of people do this to some extent saying like, well, mine is way worse, or you don't know exactly what I've been through. And so how could you possibly give me advice if you haven't been through what I've been through? And this is something you'll hear us talk about kind of time and again. That pain is subjective, right? And so your pain is your pain. The only pain you'll ever know is yours. And so it doesn't really matter what Brad went through. It doesn't matter what I went through. It doesn't matter what a certain group of people went through. All that matters is that you're in pain, and anyone in pain deserves healing.

Mm-hmm.

And so this is a huge reason why you'll never ever hear Brad or myself or anyone that we work with, um, share stories. And this is a thing we decided really early on because we saw the need for this in the PTSD community because so many people are just sharing their traumatic stories. And there's, there's a few reasons that we don't allow that and we don't do that, but one of them is because your pain is your pain. And so it doesn't matter what I went through, it doesn't matter what Brad went through, it matters what you went through. And, and if you're in pain, you deserve healing no matter how you know, seemingly bad that was or seemingly, um, easy that was. So it doesn't matter if I went through something awful and it really, really hurt me, but if Brad went through the exact same thing, maybe it wouldn't affect him at all. That doesn't matter. And so you have to be careful about comparing things like that. And that comparison is, is exactly why we don't share things like that, because if I shared maybe what I went through, you would say, well, wow, that was really bad. Um, I don't deserve to, to recover. Or you'll say something like, Wow, that was nothing compared to what I went through. So I'll never recover. I'll never be able to do what you did. And it's it's human nature to do that. It's human nature to compare and say, well, your experiences versus mine, and you don't mean to do it. And even if I told you no, okay, don't compare, you would compare instinctually.

Yeah, and that's something that Kayleen did. And now that you kind of went through that and said that, it jogged my memory, and I did that exact same thing with Kayleen. I was like. What I'm going through is nothing as bad as her. And it really comes back to like that pain is subjective, right? So it doesn't matter what you went through. It doesn't matter anything, how bad it is comparatively to anybody else. It's pain. You deserve to heal it. And there's a process to heal it.

Yeah. And what we want to talk about, you know, like pain is subjective and that's the most important thing to kind of take away from this. And there's in psychology and specifically in mental health and in the trauma kind of field, they talk about like little t trauma and big T trauma. And basically the premise is like little t is something like, oh, well, maybe you got embarrassed in childhood and it hurt you and it really affected you going forward. And big T is something that like we as a society would like classically deem like, oh, that's really traumatic. Making that distinction can be really damaging to some people because again, you get that comparison and you say, well, this is a little t thing. This is just an embarrassment from elementary school, and how could it affect me this much? And and then you don't seek help for the pain that you're in. And there's a story that I like to tell. It's from Dr. Shapiro's Dr. Francine Shapiro's book Getting Past Your Past, and she shares this story. I forget the guy's name, but this this client came in with. Basically, he was feeling distant from his wife. He was feeling like he was never good enough. He had all these symptoms. And when they did Dr. Shapiro's technique with him, what they found as they kind of searched through his memories was a specific memory of him when he was like— he was like 3 or 4 years old, and he grew up on some sort of farm or next to some sort of farm. And so he was a little kid, and he, he went out to this farm, and there was a cow in the field, and he was in the field, and the cow tipped him over with his nose and started licking his belly. And his mom kind of came running up to him and was laughing, right? I mean, how could you not laugh at something like that? And picked him up. And that's the experience that really, for him, made a real impression on him. And that was actually a traumatic experience for him. And when he told the story— and if you read the book, you'll know this— when he told the story, he actually audibly laughed. So he laughed when he was like, wow, that was the thing that really, really hurt me and that really caused these emotional problems, caused these relationship, these job problems. And so it's something that, like, we as a society would kind of classify as this like little t, this like, well, not a big deal. But you know, when you're a little kid, that really, really hurts. You know, when someone laughs at you and you're not sure why and you're scared of this cow. And like, as an adult looking back, it's easy to dismiss those things. And so it's really important to kind of validate yourself and to know that if you're in pain at all, it doesn't matter where it comes from. It doesn't matter if it's something that is seemingly as small as getting, you know, licked by a cow or as big as, you know, something we would Again, like classic— like classically cinematically defined as trauma. So I think that's really important.

Yeah, that's super important. So if you find yourself saying like, you know, mine was worse or mine wasn't nearly as bad in your head, try to become aware of that as you kind of just go through life and become more aware of your thoughts, um, because that's a sign that you're comparing your trauma. And just try to remind yourself that all pain is subjective.

Yeah, and we'll go back to our myth here, right, which is every trauma is special, unique, or different, and thus healing must be special, unique, or different.

Yeah.

And I want you to kind of reflect on something, and this is something I love to do because I remember like the day that this dawned on me, that I was just like, how, how on earth is it that I went through something unique, right? You went through something unique, Brad. Um, people in Australia, people in New Zealand, people in the United Kingdom, people in Hawaii, people in Canada, Brazil, like all of these people, like None of us went through the same experience, not even close. And how is it that, you know, in the PTSD community, no matter where you are in the world, you experience the same symptoms?

Not—

now, not everyone has every symptom, but you experience the same symptoms. Like when you have a common cold, right, you sneeze, maybe you cough. I don't know, I don't even know the symptoms of a common cold, right? But you don't feel well, right? And, you know, if you have the flu, you get sick and, and you have a fever. And that's what happens, right? You have the same symptoms because you have the same issue. Now, you— if you have a common cold and you're in Australia, or a common cold and you're in America, you, you basically, you have the same thing, but how you caught it was different. So it doesn't matter if I caught mine at a soccer game and someone in Australia caught theirs, um, you know, at the park, or caught theirs at work. It doesn't matter how that came to fruition. what is super cool is that you have the same symptoms and the process to get rid of that common cold will be the same, which is you rest and you hydrate, right? So if you, if you break your forearm, it doesn't matter if you broke your forearm, um, riding your bike or doing a stunt, I don't know, or riding your scooter. It doesn't matter if you broke your forearm. When I was a kid, I broke my forearm. Uh, my brother ran over me with his bike and then he broke his forearm. So it doesn't matter how you do it, you know, the process to heal it will be the same, which is You know, the doctor will take an x-ray and put a cast on it. And, you know, maybe it takes 6 weeks to fully heal, and then you do physical therapy. Maybe it takes 8 weeks because you're a little bit of a slower healer. The, the kind of point that I'm trying to make is it doesn't really matter how you break your forearm. If you break your forearm, just, just a plain break right in the middle, it doesn't matter how that happened, if it was falling out of a tree or if it was getting run over by your brother on his bicycle, the process to healing that is the same. And so that's the same thing with trauma. It doesn't matter what you experience or what part of the world you're in or if it's special, unique, or different. Everyone goes through something that is entirely different than someone else, but the process to healing it is the same. And so there's this kind of umbrella process, and I like to use the word umbrella just because it covers everything, that the—

these—

this roadmap, it takes everyone a different amount of time and it looks different, right? No one's healing journey is exactly the same because your life experiences, because of how much work you put in, because of the time you put in. Um, but the roadmap to get there is the same, right? You get an x-ray, you say, okay, here's the problem, you do surgery on it or you don't, and you, you know, you rest it, you put it in a cast, you heal it, and then you nurse it back to health with physical therapy. And it's the same with trauma. Accessing those either memories, thoughts, feelings, emotions, belief, um, that come with trauma or traumas is the same, and in healing those is the same. So you'll hear me talk about the pillars of PTSD recovery. And I can do that basically if you think of it like, you know, I think I used this the other day, there's a stream in front of you, right? And you're standing on one side of the stream and on the other side of the stream is full recovery from PTSD. I would put 3 stones in front of you to get across that stream and they would be the pillars to recovery. And so I talk a lot about mindset, routines, and processing your past. And those are the 3 stepping stones you need to take to get to the other side. Now it might take you a little while, you might be on that first stepping stone for a couple of weeks, and that's okay. And you might be on that second stepping stone for maybe just a couple of days, and that third one, you might be there for months. But those are the stepping stones. Like I said, everyone's journey looks a little bit different, um, but the umbrella process, the kind of stepping stones, are the same. Yeah, that was a lot. Do you have anything you want to say?

That was perfect. I mean, I think that's something a lot of people get caught up in because there's so many There's so many different types of treatments. There's so many different paths that you can take. And from what we found and from our own journey, we didn't really find a single path that gave us overarching principles or things that we just needed to follow to get through to the other side. And it really does come down to just— healing is like a process of identifying what needs to be worked on. It's a lot of— it's like an internal journey, right? Because like, here's, here's what I wanted to say in the beginning, and what Kayleen said in our last myth episode, was that a lot of these myths, this one and like our last one, the reason why a lot of people believe them is because it's half true, right? Like, your trauma is different, right? Like, I will never perceive what you went through. It's impossible for me to interpret and perceive What you went through? Only you could ever go through what you went through in that unique point in time with those set of unique experiences. Like it's impossible. So that part of it is true. The other part is not true, and that's what makes this tricky. The part where it's like mine is my trauma is unique, which means it's impossible, or I can't heal. You you might have healed, but I can't heal. That's the part that is the myth. We have to realize that. It's like this internal journey of identifying what needs to be worked on, because again, it's like you—you're the only person who witnessed what you went through. You're the only person who interpreted it, who perceived it, and you're the only person who can ultimately discover the pathway to healing inside of yourself. Right? So it's a process of discovering and finding inside of yourself when you sit down with. a coach or a therapist or something. Most of it is like asking questions to probe deeper inside of your own mind, to help you go further inside of your own mind. It's like, it's not, it's not a different process. Like, why can there be one therapy, let's just say EMDR, that can help literally millions of people, right? Why can there be one type of therapy, one process that helps millions of people? If everybody goes through a different thing, how could there be one process that helps so many people? How could all these people from around the world join Kayleen's program and get all the same results and heal? It's because the process is the same. Even if the beginning trauma is different, which it's impossible for it not to be different, even if you had 2 people going through the same exact thing, they're different people.

Right.

They would interpret it differently. They would perceive different things. They would focus on different things. They'd have different background beliefs that they brought into that situation, which would then affect their interpretation of what happened. So their whole internal world would be different. Their whole experience would be different. But then you're brought through this process of internal questioning and discovery and healing and processing that it's like you're put through this process almost. I imagine a conveyor belt. It's like you're pushed put through this process and by the end you're healed. But it's— that's what I think about is like, if— how can there be— how can there be a process that works on millions of people if everything is different?

Right? Yeah. I sometimes I like to think of it like, if you've ever been bowling and they put up like the bumpers. So, you know, you're the one that's throwing the ball out there. Now, it doesn't really matter how hard you throw it. But if you have guidance from a coach or from a therapist, they're acting as those bumpers. So basically, when you're about to get off track, they say, no, no, wait, wait a minute, let's, let's get back on track. And so even if you're going super slow, like, eventually you're gonna get there. And it might take you a few iterations to kind of get— knock all those pins down. But that's what a coach and therapist is doing, is just kind of like, no, no, wait, wait, let's get back on track. And then, you know, you're to the other side of the bumper, and then you're like, wait, no, no, let's get back on track.

Mm-hmm.

And you kind of go back and forth. And, and some people go back and forth a lot more than other people, and some people have to kind of go down that lane you know, tens if not hundreds of times to really get the, the results of full recovery that they want. And so it's, you know, it's just all a way of thinking about it. Those are just examples to kind of, to kind of show you that like this is, this is your journey. I, I always tell people like if I had a magic pill for healing, let's say I, I created this magic pill and I had this pill in my hand and it would fully recover you, it would cure your PTSD. I could give you that pill. I could literally give it to you. But if you don't actually take it, if you don't take the action of taking it, it won't help you. And so this really is a very personal journey. It's a very internal journey where you have to do the work. I can't do the work for you. Even if, even if I would, even if I was willing to do the work for everyone on the planet, I literally couldn't because I can't be in your shoes. You know, I can hold your hand to a certain extent. I can give you knowledge. I can give you information. I can help you get back on track. But you're the one ultimately that has to do the work, that has to do the healing. Yeah.

And that's super important. If you go to a therapist, it doesn't matter. You're still doing the internal work. You're still doing that internal processing. If you go to a coach, they're going to guide you, but you're going to still have to do that work. And by the way, the best coaches and the best therapists teach you how to go through that process. So it's not just one time a week. You're not going to heal once a week. They teach you how to actually go through it. Or you can go and you can learn for yourself, which is even better, and then apply what you learn. But so many people, they go to a therapist or a coach or something and they expect everything. First of all, they expect everything to just be given to them and they expect it to be like a pill, right? That's like what Kayleen said, where it's like, you take it and I'm done. I don't have to do any work. I don't have to face my past. I don't have to do any of the dirty stuff. You're the expert. You're supposed to help me, right? I'm going to you. You're supposed to help me. But it's like, all we can do is guide you. We can be like, okay, here's the road you have to take, but you have to walk down it. You have to go through all— you have to climb up the mountains. You got to go down the mountains. You got to go through all of the jungles. You got to go through and fight all the beasts.

It's a challenge.

To get through the other side. It's like, you have to take every single step. We can give you every single step of the journey, but you have to take the step yourself. If you don't take it yourself, if you don't take the action, You're not going to get there.

And I, as a coach, right, I do as much as I possibly can to make it step by step and like piece by piece and action by action. And like, I, I try to break it down into these little tiny steps as much as I possibly can because I don't want it to be confusing. I want it to be clear. I want it to be step by step. I want to give you the resources. And like Brad was saying, and I'm not going to pump my own tires, but the best coaches, the best therapists, the best kind of healers that you can have with you on your journey are going to do that for you. They're going to break it down step by step, and they're going to put the power in your hands. And that's something that I pride myself in, and that we pride ourselves in, is we want to put the power in your hands. You deserve— this is your life. This is your life. You deserve the power more than anything else. You deserve to have all the resources that you need to fully heal. And so what I'm going to do, and what a good coach and a good therapist will do, is break it down for you step by step and make it as simple as possible so you don't get hung up. So there's not too much resistance. And so you can just keep taking step after step because it's a hard journey. And so, excuse me, just having those steps and just kind of knowing what's next. It doesn't matter if you're on that, that first step for, for a little while, for a couple of weeks, that's okay. But, uh, just having it step by step is really important because then you, you know what the next step is. You know that you can take it when you, you know, when you're done with your first step. And it's really, really important to do that and to chunk it down like that. So it's clear, so it's not confusing, so it's not conflicting, and so you're not lost. You never want to be lost on this journey. You want to kind of know what the next step is and know where to, where to get that information so you can have it. Like Brad said, so you can heal. And it shouldn't be like only when you're with someone, only when you're with the coach, or only when you're with, uh, you know, a therapist or whoever it is. And I'm not, I'm not trying to bag on these people. Like, these, these are amazing people and they're, they're out there to help you. Um, but you want to make sure that you have the power in your hands and that you're learning the right processes, you're learning the tools so you can implement them on your own. And a lot of coaches that I see out there within the PTSD niche and without of it, uh, you know, they'll do like sessions over the phone and it'll be like 6 sessions for like a ridiculous amount of money, but it'll be like 6 phone calls. And there's no way, there's no possible way on the planet that I know of that they can give you the step-by-step action, the guidance, and all the information that you'll need for your journey on 6 30-minute phone calls. There's no possible way. And you, you need the right information, you need the right steps, you need the right processes, and you need to have access to them when you need them. Like I said, like we're talking about, you know, every trauma is special, unique, or different, and we're saying, you know, that's true But the healing process is the same, but the journey looks very different. And so this is why it can be kind of a confusing message, is because yes, trauma is unique to you, but the healing process is not. It's a kind of an umbrella process, but the journey throughout that healing process looks different for everyone. So for someone, you know, they might just be at a plateau in their journey and they just need a few calls just to get them back on track. But for someone at rock bottom, that's not going to work. So you need access to the things that you need for as long as it takes you to go through those steps. And everyone's different.

In that regard. Yeah. And unfortunately many therapists and coaches are like that. They're basically just like a feeding tube to you. And once the sessions are over, the food, the feeding tube is taken away and you starve to death. And what you need to do is learn how to fish for yourself. You need to learn how to get that food for yourself. And it really is like that. Cause it's like, oh, oh, oh, I mean, this happened to me. I mean, when I first started, I went to therapy, I went to EMDR and just, I don't know what it was, generic CBT for a while. And I ran out of money and my insurance ran out and they wouldn't pay for me. I mean, I put the money on my credit card and stuff and I was like, dang, now I got to do this myself, which kind of was actually a really good thing for me in one case because I was like, my feeding tube got taken away from me and I'm not getting this support. I'm not getting this love. I had a really good therapist who was— actually, I went through quite a few bad ones to find this good one, but I eventually found a good one. And I was like, that was taken away. And at that point, she had the path. And I was like, wow, that put me in a really, really vulnerable position because I was like, now my money's gone. I can't afford to go back and I don't know what to do. I'm left alone. And she didn't teach me how to do this on my own. She didn't teach me how to fish for myself. She was just essentially this feeding tube that I had to keep swiping a check to every single week until I ran out of money and then ran out of resources to actually help myself. So I was left in this place where I was like, I didn't know what to do, which was actually a blessing in disguise because then I had to discover what I needed to do. Because then I learned more, I became more committed, more dedicated to myself, and I ended up learning one of the most valuable lessons of my life, which is you can't depend On other people, ultimately you have to be self-reliant on yourself and you have to learn these lessons yourself. And what we've been saying this whole time, you have to be independently motivated and you have to go through and take the steps, right? It doesn't matter if you have someone like a therapist over there; you have to take the steps yourself. You know, they can show you the path, but basically where I was, I don't know if this is an experience for most people. It's like you're just given, you're just given one step at a time, right? Which isn't bad until you can't like either like you move away, your therapist like. You can't do this, or COVID happens, and you can't like see your therapist anymore. You like your your regular routine. Something happens, right? And then you're left in this very dangerous, vulnerable place because you don't have this person helping you. And you should never, ever, ever be put in that place. I never should have been put in that place. All along, I should have been taking care of myself. I should have been, you know, independently learning and healing and learning these processes on how to heal myself. You know, wherever I was, whenever wherever I was, you know, if it's 2:00 AM in the middle of the morning and I wake up and I'm anxious and I can't get back to sleep, I should know how to calm myself down. I should know how to analyze what's going on in my brain, discover the root cause and resolve it right then and there. And I got really, really freaking good at that. So when I was going through the journey, I could laser in on what it was, fix it and go back to sleep, or at least come up with a plan where I was then relaxed enough to go back to sleep. And, um, that's just one example, but you should never be put into a vulnerable situation. And if you're in any type of— I'll call it a feeding tube situation— that's a vulnerable situation. You want to be able to learn how to fish for yourself, how to get food for yourself, heal for yourself independently, regardless of, you know, anything, honestly. And it really comes down to a self-belief in the self-reliance in yourself.

And the power. You want the power ultimately. And I do want to just make a note because The therapist that Brad is referring to was amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. Yeah, just I mean she was great. And so you know we're not like a like a mom.

I don't know she's just super loving. She was just really great.

She was a sweetheart. Yeah. And so you know we're not saying that these are bad people and like she's not she's amazing. But just you know they're they're trained to do a specific thing and that's great and they're. a tool that you can and want to use sometimes. But ultimately, you need to have the power for yourself. And, you know, sometimes what can happen in people's lives is, you know, you'll, you'll experience something traumatic and you'll go to therapy and maybe you'll, you'll do the right techniques and you'll heal. And that's awesome and that's great. And then maybe you won't need to go anymore, which is awesome. And again, then because you're kind of reliant on yourself. But sometimes what happens in life is, is something else traumatic can happen. And when that happens, now you have to go through the process again and you don't have the process to call on right away. And so you have to go back basically to start from the beginning of that process and essentially kind of spend all that time and money again when you should have kind of learned the process in the first place so you have it to serve you. And again, I'm not saying that therapy's bad. Therapy's an amazing tool, but it's a tool in the whole journey as a whole. So I just wanted to make that point, but everything you said I think was awesome.

Yeah, no, I— there are some absolutely amazing Therapists out there.

Definitely. Great. So I think we debunked that myth.

I hope so. I hope you don't think every trauma— well, I mean, every trauma is special, different, unique, whatever, therefore I can't heal. Yeah, I hope you don't believe that.

It's, it's, it's important to, um, to think about. And our, our, uh, kind of action for you today, again, and throughout the myths you'll hear us talk about this, is I want you to think about how this has affected your own life and how this has Excuse me. Maybe stopped your own healing journey or gotten in the way of you taking the right action. And I know for me, it got in the way for a long, long time because I said, well, I don't really deserve to heal. I haven't been through what they've been through or what he or she or they have been through. And so it stopped me for a long, long time because it was like, well, what do I have to complain about? Like, look at these people. Look at this person. And it it, it stopped me. It was a big blocker for me to get the resources, to get the help, to get the understanding of myself that I needed to fully heal. So think about how that has affected your own life and if it's blocked you from recovery in the past.

Yeah, yeah, really, really, really reflect on it and all the myths that we talk about. And like we were talking about in the beginning, it's not— it might not reveal itself as these specific words, but if you're ever comparing yourself to other people or being like, theirs is special, mine's not as good, or You know, mine's worse and theirs is nothing. Like that's that's when you know you're kind of believing this myth right here in your brain, and you're blocking yourself from taking that leap forward. And that could be the thing that's blocking you right now is just is that belief that you know mine's different, therefore I can't heal. And I don't know if you want to get into the beliefs about this, but if you believe that you are different and therefore you can't ever heal, you will. Never heal because your belief will feed your actions, which will feed your results, your thoughts, and then strengthen that belief. So over time, that feedback is going to get stronger and stronger and stronger. That belief is going to be stronger, and you're going to take less and less action. And all your results are based off of your action. Are you going to be taking destructive action, which is going to give you worse and worse results, therefore ingraining this belief further and further and further? And that's why all of these are so dangerous. Because it's a self kind of fulfilling and strengthening process of this false belief that is preventing you from healing in the first place.

And we call it the belief cycle. And, and this is something that we could talk about like literally for another 2 hours, but we'll keep it kind of short and sweet. And so I'll just kind of repeat that cycle just a few times so you can maybe get an understanding of what we're talking about. And your beliefs, what you believe feeds what actions you take. So What you believe determines whether or not you get help or not. So if you believe that you're worthy of healing, you're going to take the action of getting help. If you don't believe you're worthy of healing, you're maybe going to take a destructive action. So you're going to cope, run numb. So your beliefs determine what actions you take. The actions you take give you results. So if you believe that you're worthy of healing and you take the action of seeking help from a therapist, You might get the result of feeling a little calmer, maybe sleeping better through the night. So you might get a good result from that. So again, your belief feeds your actions, which feeds your result. Now your result feeds your thoughts. It determines your thoughts on what happens. So if you sleep better through the night, right? So you believe that you're worthy of healing. You take the action of going to a coach or going to a therapist. You get the result of sleeping better through the night. And you think, wow, I slept better through the night. I'm going to be able to fully heal. And so those thoughts feed the belief again. So it feeds the belief again that you are worthy of healing. So your beliefs feed your actions, your actions feed your results, your results feed your thoughts, and your thoughts feed your belief. And that's obviously just kind of an auditory example. Again, this is something we could talk about for hours, and it's something I do talk about for hours. Um, and when I teach it, I teach it for a much longer time because it is so important to understand that this can build you up or this can break you down. And so this is why there are limiting beliefs. This is why there are destructive beliefs. Because if you believe that you're worthy of healing, that's going to build you up and up and up and up and up. If you believe that you're worthless and don't deserve to heal, that's going to bring you down and down and down to rock bottom, sometimes further. And you can change your beliefs. That's the other thing.

Mm-hmm.

Within that cycle, it, it does kind of— maybe not exponentially, but it brings you up or it breaks you down in a cycle format. But you can change the way that that cycle goes. So you can break limiting beliefs, you can change harmful beliefs. And that's why we're kind of spending time on these myths, to debunk them, to hopefully start to change your beliefs about them.

Yeah, and essentially every one of these myths are just false beliefs that we're trying to break. in your mind, because these are the things that might be stopping you from recovery because of that cycle, that belief cycle. Because if you believe recovery is impossible, recovery then will be impossible for you because of that cycle right there that we just explained. Yeah.

Great. Great. So that's what we have for you today. Yeah. Do you have any final words?

Um, no, that's it.

Okay. We love you. We're here for you. We believe in you at the very, very highest level. And we will be back with our next myth, our 3rd myth, which is a secret until we tell it to you.

Until we tell you next time.

So thank you so much for joining us. If you feel like, you know, you're hearing these myths and, and they're maybe changing some beliefs in you and you'd like to share this in maybe a PTSD Facebook group, or you'd like to share this somewhere on a forum or on a blog where people are kind of congregating who have PTSD and who are seeking help, we would love, love, love if you share it. It's, it's our mission to help as many people as possible fully recover from PTSD and CPTSD. And it's, it's really important because these beliefs honestly can sometimes be the biggest thing and the only thing really stopping you from getting to that next level and to getting to getting the help that you need, or, or, you know, working with the coach or working with the therapist that you need to work with to, to fully heal or to again get to that next piece. So if you— we, you know, we love when people share the podcast and share the, the YouTube videos and things like that because we really are trying to help everyone on the planet recover from this. And it's really important that people know that these are just myths and they don't have to believe them and they can change their beliefs. So that's what we have. Thank you so much for joining us.

And, uh, yeah, if you, if you guys enjoyed this episode and you kind of want to learn a bit, a little bit more about what we do, um, or want to learn more about the belief cycle, uh, right now Kayleen's running free training, um, where she actually goes through the steps of the belief cycle visually so you can see it and everything.

And those pillars that we talked about.

And the pillars. So if you like this episode, you'll get a lot more value out of that too. It's at overcomingptsd.info/go. Um, the link will be in the description, so feel free to check that out after the episode.

Yeah, so that's what we have for you.

We love you, we're here for you, and we'll see you for myth number 3.

For myth number 3. See ya. Bye-bye.