PTSD MYTH #4: "Childhood Trauma is different. You have to remember or relive trauma to heal"

I see them recommended a lot. And one is The Body Keeps the Score, and the second one is Pete Walker's book, The Guide to Healing Complex PTSD. And they're actually something that I'm not recommending, and there's a very specific reason for that. Hey everyone, Kayleen here, and welcome to PTSD TV. This is a continuation of our myth marathon. So today is myth number 4, and 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 Kayleen, and after 15 years of suffering with CPTSD, I was finally able to heal and recover, and now I help people all over the world do the same. And this lovely man to my left here is Brad Schipke.

I am Kayleen Wright's significant other, and I also was there for every step of her recovery journey and went through my own recovery journey as well. And I'm excited to come back to you with our 4th myth of our series.

So our myth today is childhood trauma is different Slash, you have to remember or relive your trauma to heal it. So a little bit going on here, but we— they tie in together in their debunk explanation. So the myth is childhood trauma is different, or you have to remember or relive your trauma to heal it.

So the idea is like, this trauma in my life is different because it happened in my childhood, and I don't necessarily remember everything that went on during my childhood because it happened so far away, or just something— I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be trauma or, uh, childhood trauma, but something that you don't remember about the trauma. Um, and just— or the myth is that you, uh, because you can't remember it, you can't process it, you can't heal it, right?

And that's a really interesting point. And sometimes the way I like to best explain this is talking about dreams. Have you ever had a dream that, like, you woke up from. And like, when you were in the dream, it made absolute sense, and it was just like, this makes total sense, and everyone is— it's great. And then you wake up and you're like, what on earth just happened? And so I don't know, sometimes I like to explain it like that because our brains are so complex, and they have ways of healing, and they have ways of storing information that we don't— are— we're not actively aware of all the time. So if you've ever heard someone talk about like, oh, your subconscious, well, that's kind of what's active when you're dreaming and when you're dreaming, what's basically happening is your brain is making these, these connections, and your brain is really hard at work trying to make sense of your day and your past and learn information. And it's literally actually growing new neurons. It's making new neural connections. And so sleep is really important, but that is not really the point here. The point is that your brain is, is always actively trying to help you and trying to help you heal and learn and grow and all these different things. And it does that in ways that we don't even fully understand sometimes. And so your brain has a lot of information in it. And so if you've ever been in a situation where, you know, like at some point in your life, I bet you knew all the dinosaurs or all the states and all the capitals if you live in the US, or you knew maybe all the— maybe you should still know this— the continents and the oceans and the seas. And, and you had all this information stored in your brain. And if you've ever been like to a trivia night and there's been like just a really random trivia question, maybe like from Harry Potter, right?

Ooh.

And you haven't read Harry Potter and let's say I don't know, a decade. I think it's, it's been a while, at least for me. But let's say you haven't read Harry Potter in a decade, and you don't think about Harry Potter day to day. You haven't thought about it in a decade. But trivia night comes around, and the host asks a question, and you know the answer, and you know all the surrounding details, and you know all that information. And that's because your brain has stored it for you so you can call on it when you need it. And it's just kind of a silly example, but a fun example of how your brain stores information. that you're not even day-to-day using. You're not actively, um, accessing that information all the time. So your brain and your body have ways of storing things, even if you're not consciously aware of it.

And here's the real example, and the real test of Kayleen's memory and her Harry Potter trivia.

Uh-oh.

Of what is the name of the ball that the chaser uses to score points by throwing it through the golden hoops?

Something with a B? The budger? The badger?

No.

The bog? It's not.

Nope. What is it? You're just supposed to know.

Well, I don't know.

Any, any, anyone? It rhymes with waffle.

Oh, the—

what is it? It's the Quaffle.

The Quaffle. I wasn't even close. I know the Snitch.

Yes, that's why I didn't— everybody knows the Snitch.

Okay, well, if you knew Quaffle, Harry Potter trivia, let us know. Let us know how many people knew Quaffle.

Yeah, I pretty Yeah, if you know Harry Potter, you know the Quaffle.

Next time when you're talking, I'm going to think of a good trivia question for you.

OK. As long as it's Harry Potter.

Mm, something even better.

That's the only thing I'm good at.

That's the only thing I'm good at too. So point being, point being, your brain and your body store information that you're not actively aware of. And so basically what that means is even if you don't remember something, even if you don't think it day to day affects you, it's stored in your brain, sometimes in your body, and you have systems in your brain. And this is kind of a complicated thing to just explain with, with audio, but you have basically systems in your brain that can access that information for you, even if— again, even if you don't consciously remember it— and can heal it for you. Your brain is really complex, and there are tools and strategies that you can use to basically help your brain do that. So you don't necessarily have to remember anything, or even if it was from childhood, or you don't have to relive anything to actually heal it. And your brain has something called— we call different channels. And basically it's like different pathways. And you— we use tools, and you can be taught tools to access these different pathways that are kind of like all roads leading to the same point.

Mm-hmm.

So let's say that same point is the trauma. And if you think of that as just like it's in the middle of, I don't know, we'll say a circle, and off of that circle there are, we'll say, 4 to 10 different roads. Those are channels. Channels being things like your 5 senses, channels being things like your emotions, your thoughts, your beliefs, uh, sensations in your body, people, places, things. So all of those roads access the same thing. And so you can use tools to basically kind of hop on that road and access the core of what you're trying to access without necessarily remembering what it is. Does that make sense auditorily?

Memory is just one channel. Right? So when you go through trauma, like, your brain stores it, and then it comes out through your emotions, through the feelings, through the thoughts, through the beliefs. And those are all channels. So you can think of it that way too, in like kind of reverse. Like, trauma gives you or changes your beliefs, changes your thoughts, changes your bodily sensations, changes your emotions, changes your memories, right? Um, well, it gives you memories, but, um, Those are all different channels to to access that. So if you don't remember the trauma, you can access it through maybe your emotions or your feelings, right? So you follow this feeling or you follow this belief that you know when you think about this belief, it just like brings on all this emotion and makes you feel really bad. So like that could be a channel towards healing the root of that trauma. And a lot of times, you know, that's how it starts because even with people who remember. or they think they remember the trauma, they start out with one of these channels, right? So you can start off with this. You identify pretty much, you become aware of what, whatever it is. So it could just be like this bodily sensation. It could just be like, you know, your heart. That was a big one for me. And then like using techniques to kind of explore that feeling, to then see how that then connects with like the thoughts in your mind and the beliefs. And you try to identify that and you kind of work around, you kind of like piece together. This picture. And then as you kind of heal through these different channels and through these different layers of your trauma, more and more things become apparent to you, more and more things come into your awareness. Another way to put it is like you, you could like, you know, solve this one problem, and then a new problem like comes to your awareness. And that's kind of like the journey is like you, you kind of focus on one, one problem at a time, right? You focus on this one problem and then you process that, you overcome that, whatever, and then you move on to the next one and the next one and the next one.

Mm-hmm.

And oftentimes the one, the next problem doesn't really reveal itself until you solve the one that's in front of it. And this can, I'm getting a little off track here with the topic today, but that process can cause people to think that they're constantly relapsing when really they're just resolving and then resolving one problem and then facing a new problem. So we always say when you come to a new problem, you want to celebrate because you're old, you're leaving your old problems behind. And if you keep solving your problems and finding new problems, you're making progress. So whenever you find a new problem in your life, it means you're leaving your old problems behind. And that's a really, really good thing. Um, but to bring it back into what we're talking about today, having to remember, you don't, you just need to really, there's all these channels. You just have to access it through these different channels to then process the core. And then a lot of, a lot of times things reveal themselves as you get in there and kind of like work it around more because it is all subconscious.

And I want to add on that because I think that's great. And with, with some things too, you, you access a channel, right? And you might not remember, like this is what we're talking about today, that it's childhood or you don't remember it, you don't wanna relive it or whatever. You can access a channel and there are tools that you can use that basically you work on actually healing the root of this. And when you're just working with that channel, again, even if you don't remember what it is, what can happen is this kind of like domino effect where your brain and your subconscious will essentially do the hard work for you. Again, you need to give it a nudge with the right tool and you have to put the work in to kind of open the door to allow your brain to do that. But sometimes what happens is you're— you, you go in and you process this channel, and you start and you work with tools on this channel, and it can have this domino effect. And using that channel as a jumping-off point— again, even if you don't remember your trauma, it's stored in there somewhere— can cause this domino effect where essentially you knock down that one domino and you heal that, and it can knock down a bunch more dominoes where you, for some people, might not even ever have to remember what is actually— what actually happened or didn't happen or anything like that. And so essentially, kind of, you, you get more than one thing at a time because of the power of your subconscious mind. So it might be something that a lot of people, you know, they come to me and say, well, I don't remember, and I feel like that's holding me back. Like, how can I heal if I don't remember? Um, but that can work to your advantage, of course, because you don't have to remember something that really, really hurt you, but you can use the tools and skills anyway, and those will act as kind of a domino and essentially like wipe the slate clean without you ever having to remember. So you basically solve the issue without even really ever having to like truly, truly face it as you would think, like cinematically.

Like, right, right. And another way to think about that is like imagine that you are chained to a boulder. The boulder is, you know, like the— like a trauma, and then the chain is links together. Maybe it could be different memories or whatever, but it's like this connection of things. And really you just have to find one of those links, because all these links in the chain are connected by, like, it could be, for example, a single belief. So like this single belief could be the reason why you are attached to this boulder and you can't go anywhere, whatever. But then you break one of those links and like you're set free, right? So that's another way to think about it.

Mm-hmm.

Or a web. Like one belief can be the root of so many different issues. And once you solve the core, The rest of it is healed.

So you don't necessarily have to remember and you don't have to relive your trauma to heal it. Yeah, and I know that's a strategy that some people use and it, it definitely works for some people, but I think for a lot of people they have a lot of resistance, of course, to kind of even the idea of that. And you, you don't have to relive what you went through in order to heal. And, um, I, I have something written on the board. We usually kind of take some notes before we before we actually sit down and record, and we, we chat a little bit about what we want to say and things like that. And something I wrote on the board is, you know, healing is hard. The healing journey is really, really challenging, but it shouldn't be traumatic in itself. The healing journey should not be a traumatic experience. Yes, it is challenging. Yes, it is tough. Yes, it is hard. Yes, there are roadblocks. You're gonna fall down. You're gonna have to get back up. It's gonna hurt. Like, definitely there's a lot of bad days. There's a lot of confusion sometimes, and, and you're gonna have to pick yourself up more times than you'd really like to, more times than anyone would really like to. And it's really hard and it's challenging and you're gonna want to quit. And I know I'm not making it sound like it's this big, great magical thing because it's not, um, because it's really hard. Um, but it shouldn't in itself be traumatic. So you should be making progress and there will be good days and there will be bad days, but it shouldn't be traumatic to the point where like you feel like you, you can't heal or you don't have a process to, to heal in a safe way, and it might not be something that you want to do, but it shouldn't be something that traumatizes you. So I just wanted to kind of bring that up today, um, because we were talking about, you know, reliving trauma is not something that— I know for me, that's, that's a belief that I held, and that's a myth that I believed at the kind of the beginning of my journey, was like, oh my gosh, like, I'm gonna have to relive this to, to, yeah, to heal it. And that, that is not the truth.

No, no. Um, there— it's, it's a It's definitely a hard journey. You're going to be releasing emotions. But one thing we always say is like, you should always be in control. You should always have one— you should never be totally consumed by the trauma when you're healing. You should always have one foot in the present. You should always be able to pull yourself out of that when need be. If you're getting like sucked into the past memories and everything else, that is— that's not where the healing happens. The healing happens when you can like you're still in control. You can pull yourself out. You can still think and not be consumed by the emotions, not be consumed by these other things. You can release the emotions, but also be in control of everything.

Yeah.

So it should never get out of control. It should never, ever retraumatize you if done properly.

Yeah. And there's a proper way to do it. And of course, as with anything, there's an improper way to do it.

Yeah. And it doesn't mean— this doesn't mean that it's easy. Right? No, it doesn't mean that like, um, just because we say it's not— it shouldn't re-traumatize yourself doesn't mean you're not gonna cry. Doesn't mean you're not gonna release emotions. You know, when I was healing, like, I, I cried so much, like, just releasing all of the emotions inside of me. But I was still in control. It wasn't like I was letting my emotions run wild. It was— it was— I was doing a very intentional process which then caused this release of emotion inside of me, and allowed me to kind of process what I went through. So it's not going to be easy. You're going to feel emotion. You're going to feel that pain, but it's not traumatic pain. I say that in a different way, like emotional, you know, kind of like release. And like, I don't know, when I say pain, that might not be the right word to describe it to you right now, but you're going to feel emotion, but it should never be traumatic. You should never relive it. You should never be going through that. Um, actually, we, we've heard stories from, um, clients who went to certain, um, certain, um, what, like treatment centers or something where they were told to do this, where they were told to like— basically they triggered them into this state where they were completely out of control. So if you're, if you're going to a place like that, just please know that that's not the right way to do this.

And if you're ever uncomfortable on your healing journey, I think this might be a, a crystallization of what we're saying is like, you know, if that's something that you want to do, of course that's your choice. And, and there, there, that works for some people, you know. That might not be the most comfortable way to do it, and it's not something that we would recommend, and it's not something that we've heard works kind of long term. Um, but it, you know, it's ultimately up to you to do the things you're comfortable or not comfortable with on the healing journey. However, you should never be put in a position where you feel forced to do something that you're uncomfortable with. And so for a lot of people, they get into the situation where I've heard stories about like, it's like a group therapy, it's like a support group, and basically everyone shares their story and gets kind of triggered in front of each other, and, and they, they trigger them. And you know, if you are uncomfortable and if you don't want to be in that situation, that's not a situation that you should be in. There's, there's a good instinct that you have, and that I believe you have, that there's a difference between wildly uncomfortable and this is scary and this is going to hurt and I'm a little bit nervous about this and it's going to be a lot of work but not traumatic. And so there's kind of a line between that. And if you can kind of listen to your intuition and listen to your gut, sometimes people say just like, just like trust your gut and kind of go with what you think is right. If you don't think it's right but someone in a lab coat is telling you that it's right, it's not right for you. You have to trust yourself on this journey. You shouldn't be forced to do anything that you don't want to do, especially when it comes to— I mean, especially when it comes to anything, but especially when it comes to trauma. Like Brad said, it's going to be hard, it's going to be challenging, but it should not re-traumatize you. And you use the word pain, and it's a little bit hard in regards to actually the vocabulary that I feel like we have access to that we're using is like there's definitely pain on your healing journey, but you shouldn't be in pain like you're being traumatized. And so I hope that comes across clear in a way that you don't have to do something that you're uncomfortable with Or that hurts you. You shouldn't be doing things that hurt you.

Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a funny, it's a funny thing to describe. Um, but yeah, those, those types of support groups, although well-meaning and really trying to help people, um, usually just end up being unfortunately a bunch of people who kind of focus on how broken they are. They just keep reliving and reliving and reliving and reliving Versus trying to identify what the problem is. You know, what's the problem? What's the solution to the problem? Versus like, I'm just going to tell you how much I hurt, how much, how broken I am, how, how much all these people in this world hurt me. And I'm focusing on all the negativity versus on really kind of like lasering in on the problem and trying to solve the actual problem. You know, to everything. Because there's in a lot of those groups online and off. That's what it is. It's just like there's no solutions. It's just, it's not— there's no focus to solving the problem. It's just wallowing, marinating, wallowing, marinating in the negativity.

And while we're on the topic, just, I know we got a little off topic here, but it is an important thing to, I think, bring up is what we see a lot in, in books that— in PTSD books and in recovery books and in books that, you know, you, you And Brad and I did on our journey as well. You know, you try to go to as a resource and you try to go to for some help. And if you've ever done this, and there, I'm gonna mention 2 books and I'm gonna mention them by name, and it's, and it's not a dig at them, but I think it's important because they're very popular PTSD books. So I want you to steer clear of them. Um, and one is The Body Keeps the Score, which I'm sure a lot of you have heard of. And the second one is PT— Uh, Pete Walker's book, which is—

Oh, right.

The Guide to Healing Complex PTSD or something like that. And they're, they're just 2 books that come to mind because I see them a lot and I see them recommended a lot. And they're actually something that I'm not recommending. And there's a very specific reason for that. And for one, it's the belief that healing is possible, specifically in regards to Pete Walker's book. You want to always be surrounding yourself with the belief that it is possible to heal. But for 2, something that they have in common that many, many, many PTSD healing books have in common is the very first thing that they do and see if you can identify it. What's the first thing that you read in a PTSD book? What's the first thing that you read on a PTSD blog when you're reading the about page? What's the first thing that you learn about someone who tries to heal people from PTSD? What's the very first thing that you learn? I want you to think about it. You learn their story, their traumatic experience, okay? And so the very first thing, this is the most common thing I see. In gruesome detail. in excruciating detail the very first thing you, you read in The Body Keeps the Score. I would not recommend doing that. And in Pete Walker's book, I only actually skimmed his story because I didn't want to read it, okay? And you see it again and again and again. Every single PTSD book— usually what we do now and what I learned on my recovery journey when I was trying to get this help and when I was trying to seek resources from people was to skim the first few pages and skip them because the very first thing they do is they try to validate themselves, and they don't need to do that. And it's really, really dangerous because the market for those books are people who are extremely hurt and who have been traumatized. And the very, very last thing you need when you're hurt, when you're traumatized, when you're trying to heal your own brain, your own body, the very last thing you need is to think about, is to worry about, is to compare, is to experience what someone else has experienced. And they are very good storytellers, which makes it all the more dangerous. Okay, they are professionals at the detail and at the excruciating elements that come out of these stories. So I want to just kind of blanket statement— I know we got a little off track here, but it's something that we talk about a lot, something that I'm very passionate talking about because it is so harmful for people that are just trying to seek help. And some of the stories that you'll read first thing in those books— and if you are going to read those books, any sort of book on PTSD really Skip the first few pages or just skim them. And what I would do is I would see what the chapter title is and and read the chapter backwards. And if it if it the last paragraph is and so that's my story and that's how I ended up here. Skip the whole chapter. So I just I know I went off on a little bit of a rant there, but I do that honestly out of love and I want to protect you all and I want you to be able to protect yourselves. You should never be put in a situation where you feel uncomfortable, like in. Like Brad said, online or in the real world where you feel like you have to, or someone's encouraging you to relive. And you should never be put in a situation where someone is trying to validate themselves and what they've been through by sharing a traumatic experience. Really, really dangerous.

Yeah, that's very, very dangerous. And again, these people are probably very well-meaning, but they so are. Another thing that you want to look for in just books in general, since we're on the topic For example, Pete Walker. I don't know if he still has CPTSD, but in at the time that he wrote the book, he said that he still had CPTSD for over thirty years, and he might be able to teach you some great things on how to cope with going through CPTSD, but he's not going to teach you how to heal it. And just to be aware of where. where you're getting your information. If you're— because that, that alone, for a lot of people, probably make them believe that they are too going to suffer for 30+ years with their CPTSD, which is just not the truth. You know, Kayleen and I both had it and we're not. So, um, just always be on watch for, you know, the stories, the negativity. You don't need to hear that stuff.

Yeah.

You do not need to hear that stuff. How does that help you? If you're like, I want to hear other people's stories, how does that help you? You feel a little better, but all you need to know is that, okay, this person— actually, you don't even know. You need to know that this person felt the same way and then came out the other side. You need to know that that transformation is possible, and that's not even being given. All they're really— here's the transformation that they're selling is that, hey, this person was normal, went through this traumatic thing, and now is broken. So that's what you know. You need to see, hey, broken to healed, right? That's the real— like, that's the belief that you need to build is bridge that gap from, okay, this is where I am right now. You don't need to look at the past and be like, okay, this is how I got here. You need to look at where am I going in the future?

Where—

what's life going to look like when I'm done with this thing? And a lot of people can't tell you that because a lot of people are still hurting. And like I said, Pete Walker is like— honestly, bless his soul for really going out there and really trying to help people. But just know what you're going to learn and what you're not going to learn. And always be aware of what inputs are being put into your mind and how they are affecting your belief system, because that is really, really important. Because if you're around a bunch of people who have been suffering for decades and decades and decades, you'll likely become another one of those people.

Yeah. And I think that's a— I love what you said because I don't think I said it. I don't think I remembered to say it about You know, everyone who writes books, like especially on PTSD, and they're writing books to try to help you and to try to help you heal, and they are so well-meaning. And I think that maybe something that didn't come across against these people. Yeah, they are so well-meaning. And like Brad said, like bless their souls for going. It's it's not an easy task to write a book, you know, and to publish it and to ship it and to print it. It's a lot of work. You know, like this is put yourself out there challenging thing to do. And you yeah, exactly. You put yourself out there.

Yeah.

You, you make your— you leave yourself kind of vulnerable, not in a bad way, but you let yourself get vulnerable sharing that story. And so it's, it's by no means a dig at that, but when you're suffering with PTSD, when you're still struggling, it is a really dangerous input. So that is another good point Brad is talking about. You know, just Pete Walker in his— in the intro of his book, you know, he basically says he still has CPTSD. And again, his book is a little bit older. And Pete, if you're listening, we love you and we appreciate everything you've done. Um, we just want to try to tweak that to make it a little bit better. So everyone can really benefit in the, the most beneficial way, um, the best way from that. And that's to avoid the stories and to learn from someone who's actually come out the other side and healed. You don't want to learn from someone necessarily that is still suffering. You know, that's, that's not the best place to get advice. You want to get advice from someone who's done what you want to accomplish. So just be careful there. But everyone has good intentions in regards to writing books and things like that. So Really not meant as a dig, and it doesn't mean there's no valuable information in there. But really be careful about stuff like that.

Yeah, it can be a totally well-meaning book and also not the best thing for you.

Right? It's both.

It's not one or the other. Right?

So so that was a little unexpected. So we can get back on track here. Our our myth here is childhood trauma is different, or you have to remember or relive your trauma to heal. And so. Just to kind of sum up what we were talking about here is, you know, your mind and your body, they store information. They have these different channels that you can access these trauma or traumas, uh, with these channels without being invasive. So there are safe, non-invasive ways to heal PTSD and CPTSD, and you can heal. And the healing journey in and of itself should not be traumatic. And that kind of got us onto the rant of the books. You know, when you read a book, it should not be traumatic to read that first chapter of the book. So really consider skipping that chapter or not reading it at all. And make sure you're getting advice from people who have done what you want to achieve. The best place to get bad advice is from people who are at the same level as you or are below you. If you're in a PTSD community and you're getting advice from someone at rock bottom, you really need to think about what that advice will do to you. You want to take advice from someone who you would willingly trade places with. Okay, so don't take your advice— as well-meaning again as they are— don't take your advice from people who are suffering, who are at rock bottom. Take your advice from people who are on the top of the mountain reaching their hand down. Be really, really careful about this. You don't want to take weight loss advice from someone who is very, very, very much overweight or has never been on a weight loss journey. You don't want to take marriage advice from someone with 5 divorces. Okay, so you really want to be careful about where you get your advice.

Yeah, because you, you will— if, if you are on the internet, if you are on social media, if you are in these groups, you will see people who are like, PTSD is impossible to recover from, PTSD permanent. You'll hear all of these myths that we're talking about today. You can't do this because of this. You can't do this because of this, because of this, because of this. And if you start surrounding yourself with that, you'll start believing that. And it is so, so dangerous. And if you actually analyze, okay, where is that coming from? Like, what is, what is their background knowledge on that? What are they basing this belief on? What are their references to that belief? What are their supporting premises to this proposition? And if you ask, or if you just think, you'll be like, oh, there's not much there. Or they'll just be reflecting. They'll be reflecting information from their own life. They will be basically— it'll just be like a big echo chamber of beliefs of people who are down in that location and haven't broken out. And if somebody just does try to break out, then they get pulled right back down into this group of people. Who just believe all the same thing. Like, it's like, oh, this is impossible. This is— you just look through history of all the greatest minds, of all the greatest inventions. Everybody said, hey, that's impossible, that's stupid, don't do that. And what happens is most people, you know, get pulled back down because they don't want to be shamed, they don't want to be stupid, they don't want to believe in something that everybody else doesn't believe in, and therefore they get stuck down there. And that's really what's happening with PTSD right now, is that there's just this this mass, like the masses have this false belief that it's impossible to heal. And then if you're part of that mass, it's really hard to break out because they're just gonna pull you right back down. They're gonna give you all the reasons why you can't do this. But again, if you dig behind their reasons, you're gonna see there's not much there. So really, really watch out for that. Really watch out for all of these myths if you're being surrounded by people like that. Stop, please.

Get yourself into a better situation. So remember, this is just something that I like to remember, that advice is free to give and very costly to take. So it's free to give, everyone's giving advice, but it is very costly to take. It can keep you trapped at rock bottom. It can keep you in a cycle of PTSD and, and feeling like you're healing and then relapsing and then healing and then backsliding and all these different things for decades. So advice is free to give and very costly to take. You really want to be careful about that.

Also have some really, really good news.

Okay, let's hear it about Kayleen. About me?

Yeah, if you're looking for a good book, drum roll, roll, drum roll please. Um, Kayleen will be— is she's in the process of writing a book.

Yep, I didn't know her full-length book.

I didn't— well, I mean, we're talking about books now. I can promise you one thing, that there's not gonna be big traumatic stories. It's just gonna be helping you identify the problems and actually solving problems, which is Surprisingly, a surprisingly rare thing to find nowadays. But that's what you're gonna find.

That's what we thought we would do. You know, we see so many people kind of refer books and sometimes get hurt from books, and that of course is something that goes against every fiber in my being. So that's what we thought we would do. We kind of fill that space and give you all a book that won't hurt you and will actually genuinely help you take steps forward and get kind of relief into your hands in, in a really powerful way, a really powerful, simple way.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

So you can look forward to that.

So you can look forward to that.

Yeah.

So that's the good news. I didn't even know that was the good news today.

That's the good news.

That's the good, good news. So that is what we have for you all. Uh, what we really want you to do always with all these myths is to ask yourself how this plays in your own life. How has this slowed your healing, stopped your healing altogether? How has this myth come into play? Has it come into play? Does it affect you? Really think about it and think about what we kind of just said and how we debunked it. If it's something that comes into play in your own life, and we have some more good news.

We do.

Right now— see, now you're surprised.

How does that feel? Feels good.

Um, right now we are doing PTSD recovery consultations. So if you feel like any of these myths have held you back, but now you're kind of starting to get on the other side of them and you're starting to say, wow, these, these kind of have left me stuck and not knowing where to turn, and I thought I had to remember, and you know, I thought it was hopeless— and if you're kind of coming out on the other side of these myths and you want a personal one-on-one consultation with us, then right now we are doing PTSD recovery consultations. Sometimes you'll hear me call them clarity consultations to get a really good idea of where you are right now and where you want to go and exactly how to get there. So if you're interested in a free consultation, you can go to overcomingptsd.info/call. So you can go to overcomingptsd.info/call and you can book a consultation with Brad or myself and we can help you get that clarity So, you know, the next steps to take.

Yeah. That's C-A-L-L. And the link will be in the description as well. And, uh, I hope we can, we can talk to you.

Yeah. So that's what we have. A lot of good news, a lot of surprise good news. There you go.

There you go. Never know what you're going to get.

You're going to get— so thank you all for joining us. We love you all. We believe in you all at the very, very highest level. We're here for you all through this challenging time. We're going to continue our myth marathon as we go along in the week here, which is awesome. Because we're really enjoying doing it. So we hope you all are enjoying it as well. And if you're in any PTSD communities and you see these myths a lot, feel free to kind of share the podcast or the YouTube if you're watching on YouTube, or any sort of thing that you want. You know, we want to help as many people as we possibly can, so don't hesitate to share with people or to send it to people, or, you know, start like a '90s email chain. Um, you send it to 10 people and I'll love you forever sort of, sort of thing. But, um, feel free to, free to share and different things like that. So that's what we have For you, unless you have any. Do you have any final words?

I did, but I forgot.

Okay, okay. So we'll see you all soon.

Bye, bye, bye.