Breaking Free From Quick Fixes : Healing Deep Wounds

You. Hey there everybody, and welcome to this video on Breaking Free from Quick Fixes, healing deep wounds for good. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this video, we're going to talk about the allure of quick fixes, the problem with them, the impact of deep wounds, and strategies to begin healing deep wounds. And let me give you a hint, this video is also not a quick fix. There's an old adage, you can do it quick, cheap or right. Choose two, you can't have all three. And a quick fix is often trying to do it quick and cheap. Quick fixes can be a problem. Deep wounds are traumatic. When you say a deep wound, you often hear things like, it cut me to the core, or it's something that I've carried with me all of my life. It makes me feel empty inside, or it's a pain deep inside that I just can't get to. At their core, deep wounds cause people to feel unsafe and powerless. Whatever it was that caused that deep wound, whether it was some sort of trauma or loss or abandonment or rejection or whatever it was, left the younger you feeling unsafe and powerless. Quick fixes are often superficial. So the problem, it festers. Think about when you get a cut on your arm and if you don't do good hygiene and bride it and clean it all out before you put the bandage on it, there's a good chance it's going to get infected. Well, a quick fix is just like slapping a band aid on it and hoping for the best without doing the cleanup work that you need to do. Quick fixes are often too narrowly focused, failing to address all of the causes of the distress so it keeps coming back. Antacids are a perfect example. A lot of people pop antacids like their candy. Well, you can pop antacids to make your stomach quit hurting when you've got some stress related GI distress. However, guess what? That's not fixing the problem. That's just basically a chemical band aid and it's going to keep coming back. So you can keep popping those antacids, but it's not solving the underlying problem. We recently had some shingles pop off of our roof for like the third time. And this analogy some people may relate to. We had roofers come out the first time that we lost a couple of shingles in a storm and they replaced those two shingles. Then next time we had a storm, the two shingles right next to it came up. Oh, we had them come back out. They did the same thing. Same thing happened the next time the next time there was a storm, we lost two more shingles right next to where the roofers had just repaired the shingles. All they were doing was going up there and tacking down the two shingles that had come off. They weren't addressing the larger problem of some of the adhesive had come loose. So it's important to address all of the issues, not just tack it down, but to do it right. Quick fixes unfortunately set people up for failure, which compounds their sense of powerlessness and ultimately a bigger bill. If you let even, let's talk stress. If you let stress go unchecked for long enough, it's not just a mental thing that's going to wear you out. It's going to impair your immune system, it's going to keep you from having good sleep, it's going to impair your relationships. There are a lot of costs or items that will go on to that bill that you've got to address in the long run if you don't do it right the first time. Quick fixes basically are simplistic and people are complex. There's no way around it. The impact of deep wounds, as I said, it may lead you leave you feeling powerless and and unsafe physically. Over a long term, if those deep wounds aren't healed, they're going to alter the brain structure and your neurotransmitter balance. And I have a lot of videos on the impact of trauma on the brain and how it leads to basically a rewiring where the brain is always in high alert mode, is always in sort of a stress state. Interpersonally, it impacts your ability and willingness to trust others. These deep wounds are almost always interpersonal in some way. Whether it is suddenly somebody filing for divorce, leaving you dying. Whatever the case may be, it may or may not be an intentional thing on their part. For example, if they die, not their fault. But it still is a deep wound to a child and it can have long lasting impacts. So it may impact your ability and willingness to trust others that they're going to stick around. And it can lower your self esteem if you feel like this happened to you, they did this to you because you deserved it or because you weren't good enough. Ultimately, these deep wounds cut to the core and think the core is your heart and it cuts to the heart of your beliefs about yourself and the world. Emotionally, deep wounds contribute to anger, anxiety, depression and flat out dysregulation. Dysregulation is when you may feel flat some of the time, but then when you get upset, you're really upset, you're flat to furious. And there's no in between. There is no content. There is no mildly happy. There is no kind of depressed. It is. You either don't feel much of anything or you just are in a tsunami of emotions. Cognitively deep wounds that are left to fester and, you know, change how you interpret and experience the world. If you are feeling unsafe, if you are feeling powerless, if you are feeling bad about yourself, if you don't believe that you can trust other people, then everything that happens is going to be filtered through that lens. And the lessons, and I have this in quotes, because they're not always 100% accurate, especially if they happen to you as a child. But we'll get to that. But the lessons that you learned or the beliefs that you formed as a result of that deep wound start to become overgeneralized. You start to expect that everyone is untrustworthy, Everyone will leave. Additionally, stuff that hasn't been filed keeps coming back. When we experience a trauma, our brain's taking it and it's going, I don't know what to do with this. This totally contradicts everything that I expected about the world, other people, myself. I don't know how to file this. Help me out. So it sits there in sort of file limbo, which we'll call the amygdala. And because it hasn't been filed, the brain periodically will say, knock, knock, knock. Have you figured out what to do with this yet? So sometimes these thoughts, feelings, beliefs will come back as flashbacks, will come back as memories or dreams or nightmares, and that can be detrimental as well. It's exhausting environmentally. Over time, many sights, smells and sounds have become associated with that deep wound. So you're regularly reminded of it. What do you do? Healing for good. And remember I said it's not a quick fix. And you're not going to get all the tools you need to heal for good in this video. For a lot of people, counseling is very helpful at starting to debride that wound and clean out the infected stuff. But to begin, you need the energy in order to tackle this problem. Just like when you have open heart surgery, your body requires energy to heal. You can't get up from open heart surgery the next day and go back to work like nothing happened. You gotta rest. You gotta let your body heal. So you need to recognize the impact of the wound on your brain, your energy, and your health. Yeah, it may have happened 20 years ago, but over that 20 years, how has it impacted how has it infected or altered the way you think, the structure of your brain, your energy and your health? So your body has to heal too. It's not just a cognitive or mental thing. You're going to have to reduce as much physical and emotional stress as possible. You're going to need energy to do battle with your demons. And I want you to think of it. I, I use a whole lot of metaphors throughout this and kind of mix my metaphors, so pick which one you want. But it's important to have enough energy in order to allow your body to heal and to be able to actually focus on what you're doing. You don't want your surgeon to be distracted while they're operating on you. Well, you don't need to be distracted by 16 other things while you're trying to heal yourself. Some of the things to reduce stress, physically sleep, decent nutrition, pain management, preferably non pharmacological, not medication and relaxation strategies, actually physically relaxing. I know, what a concept. These are all things that a lot of people take for granted or feel guilty for doing. But they're essential to help keep your body factory tuned up and running smoothly so you can be there for everybody else, so you can move toward your rich and meaningful life. When you don't have enough sleep, when your nutrition is crappy, when you're in pain or your tense all over, that's a stressor that's only going to slow the process of allowing your nervous system to heal. Feelings are not facts, but they can certainly be exhausting. When you feel anxious, you may be going, oh, I don't like this feeling, it must mean something's wrong. Before starting to process stuff, it's essential to have tools to manage your stormy emotions. We're going to talk about your emotions in a few minutes. But emotions are kind of the first thing that we notice. Most of the time we don't notice the thoughts first. It's the emotions. We feel anxious, we feel angry, we feel this feeling and then we try to figure out what it's all about. Just like physical, extreme emotional pain needs to be down regulated so you can get into your wise mind. If you don't down regulate your distress, your anxiety, your anger, your depression, it's going to slow the healing process. It's going to be working against you. You're going to have, let's say it's anger. You're going to have the little anger person in your head interpreting things through an anger lens and you're going to have the person over here that's Trying to heal, going, I don't want to think that way anymore. And you're going to use a lot of energy kind of arguing with yourself. So it's important to be able to downregulate when you are stressed out. And I'm just going to use that as kind of a garbage term right now. Angry, anxious, depressed. When you are in distress, your brain is on fight, flee, freeze, fawn or forget about it. It's not on. Hey, let's think about this. You are not thinking when you are feeling. So it's important to down regulate your feelings, acknowledge them, we're not ignoring them, but down regulate them so you can say, okay, I feel anxious. Let me take a look at it, let me examine what's going on. Just like when you get sick, you have a cold, you've got, you know, all kinds of symptoms that you've got going on. You step back and you say, okay, let me examine what's going on and figure out what to do with this. You don't ignore it, you address it, but you've got to take a look at it. Downregulation does not equal resolution and a lot of people take down regulation as the quick fix. Just like the antacid, it makes the pain and the belly go away, so it must be fine. No, no, no, it's gonna keep coming back. Kind of like a pain pill. You take a pain pill and yeah, it takes the edge off the pain. So your stress response is not going in overdrive because you're in pain, but it doesn't resolve the problem. Just because you're not hurting doesn't mean you're not. Health doesn't mean you're healthy. And my husband gets on me about that all the time. When I take non steroidal anti inflammatory, I tend to not feel as much pain so I tend to go out and overdo it and make the problem worse. So it's important to recognize that just because you're tolerating your distress, just because you're not feeling angry anymore doesn't mean that whatever triggered that anger has been dealt with. Your distress tolerance skills, these are your down regulation skills. Thoughts, well have thoughts that are distress tolerant. Instead of saying, oh my gosh, I can't handle this, I can't take this, saying this really sucks but I can get through it or I've gotten through worse things, I can get through this. You can also just try alternate thoughts, say I'm not going to think about that right now, it's really distressing. I'm not going to think about it. I'm going to think about this over here. Whether it's a TV show you watched or where you're going on vacation or something completely different, when you change your focus to something that is not stressful, then the stress response system also switches over and goes, oh, hey, we're not stressed about this anymore. So you actually naturally sort of down regulate activities. Breathing, I know, gotta breathe. Slow breathing can help you down regulate. Now some people, when they do deep breathing where they inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for fourS, that helps them a lot. For other people, it triggers dissociation. So if it triggers dissociation for you, other things that cause you to use deep breathing that are not as mindful and body focused as square breathing would be blowing bubbles that can either be bubble gum or the little bubble stuff, bubbles you blew when you were a kid, or singing loudly. All of those things will cause you to breathe slower and more deeply, which will trigger your vagus nerve and trigger your relaxation response. Call a support. This is another one. If you're talking to somebody, then you are typically having more distress tolerant thoughts because you're on the phone with somebody going, okay, I've got somebody at my back, I'm safe doing sit ups. I know that one sounds weird. When you are distressed, when your stress response is kicked off, your heart rate's racing, you're breathing faster, your body can't figure out, well, you're not moving, so why is all this going on? They have found that if you start moving your big muscles and start doing something that ordinarily would increase your heart rate, then when you're finished doing that, as you relax or cool down, whatever word you want to use, it actually triggers the relaxation response in your body. So sit ups, push ups, walk quickly up and down the stairs at your office, whatever it is. Guided imagery. Lots of different options here. A couple. Think of a time when you were safe and loved. Thinking back to a Christmas at my grandma's house, you know, that can be something that I think of totally unrelated to what is stressing me out. But it's a time I felt safe and loved and that helps trigger those oxytocin and other calming and bonding hormones. Imagine a support angel, whether spirit angel, whatever you want to call them. I tend to think of my mother or my father when I'm in distress, when I'm under stress and I imagine them being here with me and I think to myself, what would they say? What would they do? And thinking of A happy place. That's again, something that's totally different. Thinking of the vacation you're going on this summer. You know, imagining yourself on the cruise and the wind blowing through your hair and the smell of the ocean, whatever it is. Again, the goal is not to ignore what's causing your distress. The goal is to help you down, regulate, notice I'm not saying calm down. Help you downregulate your nervous system so you can think clearly. Turn down the noise of the anxiety or the anger so you can think clearly about what needs to happen. Once you're good at tolerating distress, at handling your emotions, you feel confident and competent in dealing with with distress when it happens, then you can move on to getting to know your emotions. Anger and anxiety are your sentries. They are on alert and they warn you of possible threats. It doesn't mean there is a problem. It means, hey, there might be a problem. Sometimes I say that there are internal smoke alarms, whatever works for you. But anger and anxiety don't mean they're is a threat. It means that, hey, there might be. Check it out. And sometimes anger and anxiety will pop up for no apparent reason. And you're like, I just woke up and I'm angry. I have no idea why. I. That's fine. Acknowledge the feeling and evaluate what are the facts for and against my feeling right now. Guilt is self anger and resentment is nurtured anger. Resentment is anger that you've said, oh, I'm going to hold on to this and I'm going to keep it forever and ever. You got to carry it around. It takes energy and it's draining. Shame is a feeling of being unacceptable as a person. Shame is what I think of as our internal bully. It's the one that says you're never going to measure up. You'll never be able to amount to anything and you're not good enough and I'm gonna beat you every time. Depression is hopelessness and helplessness. It's kind of like your internal circuit breaker. Told you. I was going to mix a bunch of metaphors here. When you are angry or anxious for too long, eventually your body says, there's no sense using energy to continue to fight this fight because we are not going to win. I give up. I surrender. Remember, fight, flee, freeze, Fawn, or forget about it. Well, this is the forget about it part. It's the circuit breaker that says, I'm hopeless to solve this problem. I'm helpless to solve this problem. I surrender. I don't know what to do. The next step is to identify what situations trigger your distress. How do those situations remind you of the deep wound and what beliefs about the trauma festered and infected your current experiences? So let's apply this to really understand what I'm talking about here. So, for example, if the deep wound was my mom loved drugs more than me and let me go to foster care, that's a deep wound that cuts to the core. For a lot of kids, the infection. How did that experience infect this person's outlook and beliefs about others and themselves? Now, whenever they get into a relationship, they expect to be abandoned. So the deep wound happened and then it just permeated their life. How do you deal? How do you deal with it? Well, all right, well, we acknowledge the, the infection. We say, h, this is unpleasant and I don't want to feel this way anymore. Explore the deep wound. Validate how you felt at the time. You were four years old being hauled off to foster care. You were angry and felt terrified and abandoned, whatever, okay? Validate how you felt. It's not. And you felt like your mother loved drugs more than you, okay? That's how you felt. That's how you perceive the situation as a four year old. It is what it is. So validate that. Telling a child they're wrong for how they feel is invalidating. So don't tell your younger self that you were wrong for how you felt. Validate it. And then respond to the younger you the way you wish someone would have responded to you at the time. If you wish somebody would have said, mommy's sick. And it's not that she doesn't love you. It's not that she doesn't want to be with you, but she is too sick to be able to be a parent to you right now. She can't. She's having difficulty taking care of herself. Something like that. Giving you a hug, helping you feel safe. You can do that to yourself now. You can look back and go, you should have gotten this. And sort of imagine yourself doing that. For the younger version of you, examine your beliefs about the situation in the original context with what I call fresh eyes. You're now, you're not looking at the situation like a four year old. You're looking back at the situation as a 24 year old and you recognize that, hey, it wasn't about me. It wasn't that my mom loved drugs more than me. It's that she hated herself more than she could handle. She was not able to cope with life or whatever really was going on, but recognizing that what happened Wasn't because you were unlovable. It was because of your mom's illness. Sickness, whatever. Look at the facts of the situation and find those alternate explanations. Was it because I'm unlovable and everybody's always going to abandon me because I'm not lovable? What are the facts for and against that? And what are alternate explanations for why your mom did what she did? And then examine the continued validity of these beliefs in the current context. When I get in a relationship, I will be abandoned. Okay. You may think that you may have that schema set up in your mind and explain. Expect that. But examine the facts for and against that belief. Quick fixes may temporarily stop the pain, but failure to address the infection means it's going to come back with a vengeance. Healing requires a combination of tools that can help you tolerate distress in the moment and feel safe and empowered. Now, sometimes people call these quick, fixed fixes. Yes, it turns the volume down on the pain so you can think clearly enough to actually address the issue. Have you ever been at a concert or somewhere that maybe the house was really, really loud and you were trying to study, or you're trying to focus on something and it was just too noisy? Well, that's kind of like what you're dealing with. When your emotions are at full volume, you can't think clearly, so you need to turn down the volume down, regulate those emotions. You're not ignoring them. You're not invalidating them. You're saying, I acknowledge you. Now, let me turn you down a little bit so I can figure out how to address the situation. Healing is not something you do. In addition to everything else, you need time and energy to battle these demons. So don't plan on starting to go to therapy and continuing to work 40 hours a week and continuing to chair the PTA and continuing to blah, blah, blah and continuing to blah, blah, blah. It ain't gonna happen, okay? Something is going to fall by the wayside. Deep wounds may happen quickly, but failing to properly tend them causes them to fester and impact all aspects of your life. So think sepsis. If you get a puncture wound, that happens quickly. And if you heal it, if you, you know, tend to it correctly and quickly, you prevent it from spreading. But if you don't tend to it quickly and correctly, then it starts to fester and impact all of the organs of your body, and then you get what they call sepsis. Would you want your heart surgeon to do it right or to do it quick? Recovery takes time, but when it's done, right. It lasts. It's worth it.