In this personal monologue, Brooke Richey—a 20‑year vocalist, musician, film composer, and trauma survivor—shares her lifelong experience of trauma and how she broke free from it. She describes an early traumatic event at age nine when a caregiver forced her to watch the graphic film The Passion of the Christ, which became the originating root of her trauma. Six years later, at fifteen, a different caregiver forced her out of a van and made her walk three miles alone, creating a suppressed traumatic memory that her nervous system blocked as a protective blind spot. Brooke explains the concept of a “trauma train,” where unaddressed trauma keeps a person stuck in harmful patterns, and differentiates between originating root trauma and later suppressed memories. She outlines how suppressed memories arise from a nervous‑system shutdown in response to perceived life‑threatening danger, leading to dissociation and hidden emotional knots. To uncover these blind spots, she advocates “voice journaling”—recording oneself speaking freely about thoughts, feelings, and daily experiences—to label and re‑process hidden emotions. Brooke details why vocalizing is crucial, how listening back rewires the brain, and shares three simple prompts (something that made you laugh, a memorable food, a striking sight) to start the practice. She emphasizes that she uncovered her 15‑year‑old suppressed memory without professional help, encouraging viewers to use their own voice as a therapeutic tool to identify, re‑process, and ultimately free themselves from trauma.
Chapters
Hey folks, and welcome to my channel. I am Brooke Richey. I am a 20-year vocalist, musician, film composer, indie rock artist, and a trauma survivor. I've had countless amounts of trauma in my life starting as young as the age of 9, and that extending onto a trauma train, what I like to call— refer to this as, is Is when you, you don't, um, maybe you resonate with this, but if you don't get off the train, it just keeps the trauma coming. You know, anything. And this goes for anything in your life. If you're in a toxic relationship, if you are, you know, just stuck in habits that you don't want to be doing, like drinking or smoking, and you don't get off the train, you're just going to keep doing it. Uh, so I was 9 years old the first time I was traumatized, and this was by a family member and caregiver. And this set me off to living a life of trauma for about 20 years. And in that time, what this series is going to be mainly focused on is suppressed trauma and how to unlock that trauma, because there's 2 things. So a suppressed memory is, is a kind of a hook on your brain, and I like to refer to this as a blind spot. So if you have a blind spot in your brain that's telling you that you have to live XYZ type of ways even though you don't like it, even though it's not good for you, you're going to keep doing it. You're going to keep doing that. I'm going to say it again. If you have something that you cannot identify in your brain that's telling you you have to suffer, that you have to sacrifice everything, that you have to, um, miss out on your purpose in life, that you don't deserve X, Y, and Z things. If you have something that you cannot identify in your brain, you are going to keep living your life like this. And this is why I'm so passionate about this, because I was 9. I was 9 when someone communicated this to me, and it was never addressed You know, in the event that happened. It was never addressed. I never told anyone, and it set me off on this trajectory of just sacrificing my health, my actual life. Because my turning point, which I finally got to— and I'm gonna get to suppressed memories in a second— my turning point was essentially, you know, the inverse of that experience that I had at 9, but it was like in real time. Or sorry, in the flesh. Like, I actually was trafficked in September 2023. And so that's my— why I'm here doing this is don't do— don't make the mistake I made. Don't spend 20 years of your life trying to, like, fix something that you can't fix. And the way we do that is by first Identifying anything that is subconsciously telling you that you have to sacrifice everything in your life. So before I get started on that, and then we're about to get there on the suppressed trauma, your suppressed trauma might not be the same as the originating root of trauma in your life. I'm going to say that one more time. Your suppressed trauma— Events of suppressed trauma in your life, which is going to store suppressed emotions, the memories of course, but especially the emotions are all balled up in a knot with that suppressed traumatic memory and experience. It might not be the same as the originating root of trauma in your life. For me, for example, I was 9 the first time I had a traumatic event happen in my life. It was a torturous experience. It was horrific what I had to watch on a on a screen, and it set me off thinking that that's what I had to do because it was a caregiver showing me what was on the screen. I'll just tell you, I was forced to watch *The Passion of the Christ* when I was nine years old. If you don't know that film, there's a lot of like evil and spirits. Satan is in it, and by the end of the film. You are watching a man get brutally murdered and his flesh being torn off of him. So I saw this when I was 9, and that was the originating root of my trauma, not my suppressed memory. I actually knew that memory the entire of my— like, the entirety of my experience, like the entirety of the last 20 years. I've always known about it, but it was covered in this shadow. Of the, of the suppressed memory that happened when I was 15, the suppressed trauma that happened when I was 15. And when I was 15, same caregiver did the same thing. Like, same caregiver. When I was 15, I was forced out of a van to walk back home 3 miles by myself. To the emotional psychological abuse I was experiencing, to the narcissism. Which was like torture in my own household at that age, in that development stage of life. So that's what I'm getting at. Suppressed memory, which for whatever reason, my body in that moment, not when I was 9. When I was 9, I was like, you know, I had never experienced trauma before. Now by 15, 16, 6 years later, um, you're like, oh, I do know what trauma is. Your body knows what it is. I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. And that is what— where a suppressed memory comes from. If so, suppress— let me identify this for you. A suppressed memory is the body— the mind's ability— sorry, a suppressed memory is The mind's attempt to protect you. It's your nervous system's response to a perceived threat that is going to take your life. You actually think you're going to die in whatever traumatic experience is going on. So when I was 15, I actually thought my nervous system was like, you're going to die now. Like, because you had experienced this 6 years ago, like that event which happened to me on the roadway. Was actually then being categorized as like, oh, we've, we've been here before with this person in a, in another context of trauma. Now we really feel like we're going to die. Um, and so I suppressed the memory. By the next morning, didn't remember it. And next thing I know, I'm going to school for the next 2 weeks and people are asking me, why are you angry all the time? I'm 15. And I have no Nothing to say, but that's my face. That's my face. And I didn't know. I just didn't know. So suppressed memories, what can you do to uncover them? And here's where we're getting to the good stuff, because it's really unlocking that suppressed memory that's going to help you unroot the originating trauma. Because With that shadow on it, you just— your brain is probably not identifying the originating root as trauma. It's really the traumatic one, the one that was ex— like, you know, this was traumatic at 9, but it's, it's really the one that caused your body to make a hard light switch off. It's that one that you gotta find so that you can, you know, unroot and then reprocess, reprocess, reframe, do all the healing work around the originating root. And like I said, For 20 years, I knew that this had happened to me, like that, that was an experience I had, but that's just it. I just knew that it was an experience and I didn't know that it was actually the originating root until I was able to uncover the suppressed memory of trauma at 15 years old. So, um, now getting into it. So suppressed trauma, um, Suppressed memories—that's that's where they come from. It's a perceived threat so strong that your nervous system is like, "Nope, hard shutdown. We can't do this. We can't go there." And now your brain is your brain is now thinking that anything in association with that experience—and it could be as simple as a two-hour time period—the feeling of what two hours of time feels like—which. That was my experience of getting picked up from school, on the way home, and then walking the 3 miles by myself, about a 2-hour time period. And because those 2 hours of my time were disrespected and taken from me when I had— and it was like, it was one of those ridiculous things of like, yeah, can you just like take me today and I don't have to wait for my sister? You know, a stupid ridiculous thing like that. Where it's just a normal day. That is the association to your trauma. So this is what you can ask yourself. Where do I find myself dissociating? Where do I find myself triggered? Where in my body do I feel a lot of tension? And when do I feel that tension? Because this is what's going to help you uncover that blind spot, the suppressed trauma. Um, and ultimately though, I want to talk about voice journaling real quick before I wrap up this video. If you are not speaking with your voice, you are keeping it all in your psyche and you're keeping it all in your nervous system. It is staying there and it's going to stay there as long as you do not speak it out. And why, like, why does this matter? Because think about, like, the first words, like, we teach to babies. We teach them mom or dad. There's the recognition of the relationship. You're this baby, right? You're this little tiny baby, and you're seeing your caregivers above you, and then you finally are able to put 2 words That's my dad. That's, that's my mom. And there's a recognition of the relationship. The label is there. Okay? If you do not have that label, that's, that's your problem. So you need to get talking. You have to speak. You have to put yourself in a position where you can freely express and be vulnerable with yourself, where you can take your guard down. So here's a few ways that you can do this. It might be helpful if you do voice journaling. So what's voice journaling real quick? Voice journaling is the process and the exercise of just freely expressing and having a dialogue with yourself about what's going on under the surface. That's it. Um, you should record these. It's helpful to record them because what you can do with recordings is you can name them You can name the recording whatever you want based off of the content you created, and then you can also listen back to them. And that's where you get all the transformational work that you need, that your brain needs to rewire all of this negative stuff going on under the surface. You need to be able to listen to your voice because when you listen to your voice, that's when you're actually connecting with yourself and It's that's that's the freeing work. If you're not actually, you know, you can listen to the things you say, but if you don't actually listen to the person who's talking, you're not connecting with that person. So this is why it's really important to record them and then and then go back and listen to them. That's where that's where you can start reframing everything, where you can listen and you can listen. You can start challenging your logical brain. Right? You can ask yourself, well, does that actually really make sense that this person would do this to me? Or like, that doesn't actually make sense that I would be doing this then. Like, why would— why am I even doing this? You know, like, whatever comes up for you. So that's voice journaling. And like I said, I did this for 3 years. I said that, shared this in my last video. I did this for 3 years and I was able to uncover my suppressed traumatic memory That memory at the time had been 15 years old, stuck in my subconscious, stuck in my mind. And the wild thing about uncovering a suppressed memory is you will actually feel your— like, you'll actually feel the healing going on in your brain. Same kind of thing like when you feel like your muscles heal after, like, you know, they're really tight and sore, and then when you've given them a few days after, like, a workout or playing a game or whatever, and the tension rolls off. It's the same kind of thing, uh, that you'll feel in your brain. But yeah, so I want to set you guys off right. So suppressed memories, not the same as the originating root of your trauma. It can be, but sometimes it's not. In my case, they were 2 different experiences. Originating root happened when I was 9. The suppressed trauma happened at 15. That suppressed memory then caused a shadow over the originating root, and I thought I needed to find this, which I did, I did. But it was really finding this so that I could get to this, getting to the originating root so that I could then uproot it, reprocess, reframe, move on with my life without reactivity and in freedom. So Then when you're gonna start doing this voice journaling, so voice journaling is the I mean I did it without a psychiatrist, a therapist, or prescription drugs. I uncovered this memory without the help of anyone but myself. That's what I mean. That is the power that you hold. It's in your voice. So you need to I need. Like, I need you to do this. I need you to speak out because I know what potential you hold. I know what light is in you. If you're on this video, I know. I've been there. I know. And the darkness is just like trying to keep you in this, in this like cage like this, but the light is just in you. It's in you. So start to start voice journaling. Um, don't set a time limit. Here's 3 prompts that you can do to start voice journaling right now, recording this on your phone, whatever device, so that you can listen back and then listen to yourself and connect with yourself. You can talk about something that made you laugh, like the funniest thing In the last couple days. You can talk about a food that you ate that just made you shut up. Like, it was so good it caused you to stop interacting in the ways that you were interacting. You were just solely focused on that food at that moment. You can also talk about a sight or some— something you saw that just struck you, an experience you had. Like, for me, I found a shell once that had— that was open, but it had another shell in it that was also open, and the two of them were just there together. I found it on the beach and I was like, that is the most amazing thing. I was just really struck by it. Um, or seeing like two orcas sort of deal. So think of— start there. You're starting on just like very basic things. It doesn't have to be this extravagant thing. You're just starting on the basics. of your experiences so that you can unfold the other experiences. Okay, so best of luck to you, and I'll see you in the next video.
