306: REBROADCAST: Understanding The Trauma Map with Dr. Karol Darsa

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Addicted Mind podcast. My name is Dwayne Osterlin and I'm your host. And we are on to another episode. Our guest today is Dr. Carol Darca. She is the author of the book the Trauma Five Steps to Reconnect With Yourself. So today, Carol is going to talk about some of the first steps you need to take to deal with trauma. She's going to go into how trauma impacts us in our everyday life and then talk about things we can do or begin to do to deal with some of our traumatic history and heal our life and feel better. If you have struggled with some trauma in your past, I think you will get a lot out of this episode. Carol really digs in deep and shares her professional wisdom on recovering from trauma. So I hope that you get a lot out of this episode and it's very valuable for you. Let's go ahead and start it. All right, everyone, I have a Wonderful guest today, Dr. Carol Darca, and she is author of the Trauma the Five Steps to Reconnect With Yourself. Carol, I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you wanted to come on to the Addictive Mind podcast. Let's start and just tell us a little bit about you and the work that you do and how you got into doing this work.

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, first of all. Well, I got into this world because I always wanted to be a therapist, actually, ever since I know myself at a young age, having had some childhood relational trauma. Then I just found myself, you know, just studying years after year and really being interested in in the trauma especially much more than any other part of psychology.

So kind of a personal drawing to you, to this work. And it seems like as therapists or helpers that that's the story for many of us who want to understand ourselves, understand our own trauma. This is how we get into it.

That's right. You know, even when I was a teenager, people used to tell me their stories or their problems. And I would be very interested in listening and being helpful. And so it was just not so much to help myself, but also just figured, oh, I know how to. And you know, finding that was actually a gift for me. So I've been always very, very passionate about just the idea of helping people.

Great. Well, I'm glad that you're here because you're going to talk about a topic like you. My own trauma led me into this work and my own seeking of healing and understanding led me there too. So let's just jump in. Let's talk about your book that you wrote, the Trauma Map, and let's talk a little bit about what that is and why did you write this book. And then we'll get into some of the internal parts of the book, some of the things about trauma, because I have a lot of questions for you.

Great. Okay. Well, I've been a licensed psychologist for 23 years, and what I find myself doing a lot is sort of repeating certain information over and over again. And although I'm a big fan of actually processing feelings and really getting in touch with the feelings feelings, I realized what was really missing in a lot of people's minds is really the understanding of what trauma is and what it does. And that to me was a very important thing. Where they knew what maybe trauma was, but they didn't understand that it can impact them to the degree that it was impacting them. So people, I found clients judging themselves much more than what they should be doing. You know, saying things like, I should be stronger, I shouldn't be impacted by that saying. So I said, oh, wait, no, no, no, that's not how trauma works. I need to be able to explain that because really I wanted to minimize the self blame. That was actually my main goal in writing the book.

That is such a common refrain I hear from people all over is that like, there must be something wrong with me, I must be weak and not really understanding the mechanisms in the brain and, and the body that, you know, go on and how we end up maybe making decisions or reacting in ways that don't really fit us because there's this background of trauma.

Especially if you notice there's. With the whole new approach to life of the power of mind and the power of the positive thinking, sometimes that actually really backfires for people because they feel like, oh, well, I should be able to think positively and I should be able to overcome it. And if I don't, there must be something wrong with me. And so that's how I found myself saying, no, that's not how it works with trauma. And because I was repeating myself a lot, I said, there must be an easier way to say this in a written form that sort of people can really incorporate the information better. And also, I wanted to be able to give this information to just general public. So my book is especially written for people who really don't even know the basics of trauma, so they just get a sense of what it is.

Oh, I think that is awesome. Because, you know, being in the helping profession, I find the same thing that I, you know, it kind of. It's educating in the beginning, educating about trauma so that they can just kind of go, oh, oh, this is normal. If you have trauma, this is kind of normal.

Yes. Because, you know, so many people think trauma means if you've been to war or maybe if you were sexually abused. But other than that, people don't consider other things as trauma. And that's where I. So big discrepancy. So that's the main reason I decided to write the book.

Awesome. I think that's great. Let's go in and start to discuss what is trauma anyway? So if someone's out there in that position saying, you know, I'm so weak, there must be something wrong with me. I'm broken. Why can't I do this? What would you start to tell them?

I usually start with a general definition of trauma, which is a situation where it's so overwhelming that it makes you feel powerless, basically unable to cope. So it's not the same for everyone. Right. In fact, you have two soldiers even going to the army or to a war, and one of them gets PTSD and the other one maybe doesn't. So it's a variety of factors, but it is a situation where you have to feel really powerless and overwhelmed, and you just find yourself unable to cope. So that's one thing. However, those are usually sort of big incidents. I think the most important area where I feel very passionate to tell people is smaller incidents where people don't even realize that they felt this way. Right. They felt traumatized. And the most common trauma that people minimize is relational trauma. So growing up with parents who maybe they were there, they weren't abusing you because obviously abuse is already known as trauma, but they were just really absent. And so your basic emotional needs were not met. And that could actually render you feeling really powerless. But it just happens sort of in small increments and subtle ways that you don't realize to what degree you are impacted by it.

And you know, a lot of people that I find, and I'd love to hear your thought on this, when they come in, they go, oh, but my, my childhood was fine. You know, I had a house, I had food. My parents weren't there, but I didn't even really realize that they weren't there, if that makes sense. I don't understand how could that be traumatic?

Right. That's the most common one that I face as well. That's the reason why I said, okay, people really have to understand that relational trauma has a big impact on people. So I have a client recently that says, well, no, they were loving, they loves me, I know it and I felt it. And then, and as I start asking more questions, it becomes apparent. Well, the father had a terminal illness for 10 or 15 years where the child was constantly in fear of losing the father. That's traumatic. You know, just thinking that your dad is going to die any minute here. And so it's not even just the bad intention of a parent, right?

Yeah. Sometimes it's just that they can't be attuned in that, in that moment because of life circumstances. Not that they wouldn't have otherwise, but if you're terminally ill, it's, you have only limited resource to be there for your child. So that, that makes sense. But my question is that example, the person who's experiencing that says, but I don't really feel like that's a big deal. I mean, I know that was happening. And yeah, that sounds kind of bad. But what's going on with the brain and the body that sometimes is hard to recognize when you have it?

I think it's actually a lack of education because again, people are looking maybe one to one reactions like, I was sexually abused and having a hard time to have sex. Okay, that makes sense. But in the relational traumas, reactions don't function that way. So people have to be really able to look at their symptoms and recognize it. So if they're having difficulty in relationships, romantic, or in work or friends, and you know, that kind of a thing, or they have sort of consistent either anxiety or depression, mood disorders, and they just can't find the origin, that's when they should really be able to look at their past history and go, okay, I can see that because I was raised that way. Then my, my body or my nervous system is reacting such a way.

So being able to put those pieces together, like connect those things together, because sometimes it sounds like at least my experience has been that those, those aren't connected. Like I have the symptoms of depression and anxiety. But yeah, it's like not connected to that past. I don't realize that those are actually influence each other, are part of each other.

That's why I said it's not one to one. It's almost not that obvious. But it often is. I don't think ever symptoms come from out of nowhere. So that's why it would be important to really educate oneself about what constitutes as a trauma rather than thinking it has to be this big event.

Right. And that goes into like one of your chapters in the book. What does it mean to be disconnected from your body? Right. And I think this is part of it or goes into that. So can you talk about how trauma does that?

Sure. Well, anytime something is too much, too overwhelming, too painful, especially if we cannot escape it physically, the situation or the time frame, we have a capacity to escape it in our thoughts or in our spirit, however you want to call it. Or, or we have ability to shut down the emotions so that we don't feel the pain. And then so the next day we can go to school like it's, you know, nothing has happened. And so that's sort of the creation of the disconnect. Originally is a, is a good strategy to be able to live life as normal as possible. But then eventually that coats up to you and you start feeling like, okay, now I feel, I don't feel anything, I'm disconnected. And then you can't even understand where a certain emotion or reaction comes from. But it usually does come from an origin where you found a way to protect yourself from painful feelings.

So you'll have a response in the body, but you can't recognize where that's from until you start to do this work and put the pieces together.

Well, you know, usually the moment we have a feeling, something in our body always reacts. It's usually our stomach or we tighten our muscles or something. So. But because people again don't want to feel the feelings and they go away later on, that becomes a habit as a sort of an ongoing survival strategy, so to speak. Right. So if, if you ask them to feel their body, they can actually feel the tightness. But that could be a reminder of a past, which is why people stay disconnected from their bodies for a long time so that they're not reminded of the painful feelings.

So part of that is a survival mechanism that keeps them safe from their history or that it's a reminder. And so the body automatically reacts to that and then has that, you know, I tighten my jaw or go quiet Or I disconnect and I leave the situation, even though I probably, in the moment, should be there or I should be doing something different that's more, I guess, balanced or healthy or what I want to do, yet my body directs me in a different. Different way.

Exactly. That is basically our way of coping with painful feelings and painful situations. So it's. It's smart. We're smart.

Right, Right. But then it's smart in one way, but then causes issues in another way, unfortunately.

Exactly. But it happens so unconsciously. That's the reason why I think, actually it would have been great to have this knowledge on an ongoing basis, you know, for people to know, so that we become much more aware and conscious of how we are and who we are, rather than just going automatically into, I don't want to feel, I don't want to remember. We have a limited capacity to actually face painful situations as human beings. We all are that way.

Right. Can you go more into that. That limit and what that means?

Sure. I mean, just think of the way that we are raised. Sometimes when we are crying, the first thing that we hear, don't cry, don't get angry. It's just like, but be happy. Right. So the feelings are always encouraged, but the other feelings are always put down. And that's why I said, even this in this new century, this whole thing of the power of the mind and being happy and positive thinking doesn't really give space for the other feelings. So we got the message. We see our parents how they are. They don't show us when they're sad. Maybe they show the anger, but that's pretty much it. And so we just kind of follow them as role models. We go, that's sort of how I must be taking care of my feelings. Nobody talks about feelings in schools. We talk about everything else but feelings.

Right.

So we get the message that it's not so pleasant as a conversation.

And I think as that happens, like, if you have, you know, as human beings, we have all these arrangements of emotions that come up, and if those emotions are punished, like, you know, hey, don't cry. You have nothing to be sad about. Everything's great in your life. Why are you being sad? That person learns that sadness is something that's going to be punished. And so I better not feel that feeling. And if I'm going to feel that feeling, oh, my goodness, I'm going to. I don't know, I'm going to shut down. I'm going to turn it off. I'm going to run away. I'm going to use drugs. I'm going to use sex. I'm going to use something to distract me from that sadness. Because if I have that sadness, I'm a bad person.

Right. And even maybe sometimes thinking I can't handle it, the pain becomes so great. There's a fear that I've noticed a lot in people, is that if I feel all of that, I'm going to die or I'm not going to be. I'm going to break down. That's the fear that you hear from people. And then so they start accumulating more and more and more. And unfortunately, people think they can actually push away the feelings, but they're not really pushing away. They're really pushing it down. And that's where the problem is.

And when they push it down, what then happens is going to come up.

In an unexpected way and in a more intense way, probably and even more painful way. Because now you are opening something that's accumulated and just been sort of sitting there for years. And then it might not even match the situation. So you spill the water and you're yelling, and you're like, why am I yelling? Just for spilled water.

Right, right, right. It doesn't match because it's not really about that. It's about all that. That history and that past.

Right. That's why. Imagine if we were actually raising our kids from the beginning, just really normalizing feelings. Like, you want to cry, it's okay. You are angry. It's okay. Let's just talk about it. Let's just express it. Let's just say it's okay. You don't always have to be happy. I'm not expecting you to be. It doesn't mean you're not strong enough. And those would have been great messages, but I don't know, maybe another hundred years, maybe.

But it's like that message to be, you know, more fully human. Like our arrangement of all our different feelings, that we can have them and work through them and find ways to help ourselves in a positive way.

Right. And one of the problems of dismissing feelings or putting things away or dismissing our body is that we are ultimately not accepting who we are. Right. So it actually creates an internal problem. Because feeling is not something from outside. It's my feeling. So the moment I don't want a feeling, I cut off my feeling. I cut off a part of myself. I'm saying I don't accept me. Right? Same thing with the body. If I'm feeling a tightness in my stomach and I don't like that or a headache because of an emotional situation. Then I cut that off and okay, back to being not whole and not accepting who I am, which is very.

Very painful and lonely and isolating and can be depressing and anxious and bring about a lot of, a lot of other problems.

Well, that's when people actually become more prone to addiction, especially. Right. If you're not whole, then you are going to want to take something that makes you feel good again, makes you feel whole again. So it's not so much only what happened from outside that causes all this upheaval, but it's also how then we treat ourselves because of it. Right. How much we hate the fact that we are hurt and how much we hate the fact that we are injured, how much we hate the fact that we were abused. So all of that, it's like who we are is what we can't make peace with.

Right. And it's like this information kind of tells people this is normal. You're a normal human being. If you've experienced this. This is what human beings do.

Right. We have a long way to go.

Yes, we have a long way to go. Let's talk about, because your first chapter is Recovery is Possible. So let's about that. Recovery is possible.

Good. Yes, recovery is possible from trauma. Although I should really emphasize it's not always like 100% thing, because recovery also means accepting that you might not feel like trauma has never happened. Right, right, right. There's a distinction. I, I, I think it's an important one to say because I don't mean when I say recovery is possible, that that means you can live peacefully, you can love yourself, but you will still know that you had a traumatic history and it will show up from time to time, but that you are okay with it. That to me is what recovery is as opposed to I will feel as if like nothing happened. That's probably not possible because it changes.

I'm so glad that you said that because that's, I have the same understanding that yes, these things, you may have grief or sadness or loss about things in the past or trauma and have still some responses to it. But in a way, like you said, it doesn't take over your life. It's there, but it's okay that it's there.

Exactly. And you continue to accept yourself with it. That's, to me, is the most important thing. But recovery also, again, looks different for a lot of people because in the past people thought recovery means I have to be able to tell you exactly what happened. In fact, I have to tell the story many times without being really impacted by it. And that's how I know that I recovered from my trauma. We don't see the trauma recovery that way anymore. We look at more symptoms and the connection to the body, the ability to live your life peacefully and in a safe way rather than are you able to tell me exactly what happened?

So how does someone start this process then? I know the first part is education, like reading your book or reading books on trauma, but once you start to understand that, you kind of go, oh, okay, I realized that I have some trauma and I have, you know, this is normal. What's the next step? What do, what do people do?

The way I look at it, the next step for me is eliminating the self blame. Often people, even if they were abused as children, you'll find you'll hear in their, in their words to themselves, there's some sort of a self blame about why they were abused. So I target that which is sort of the mind. If you look at my book, I talk about different steps and that's one of the steps because I want to make sure that people's thoughts about themselves start shifting, shifting. I also encourage people to look at the way they're treating themselves. Right. So that's what I was saying earlier. It's not so much what happened, but it's what you do with it to yourself. Like if you're abused, do you think then you deserve to be abused? And you continue to abuse yourself, then you're never out of trauma because you are now traumatizing yourself. So I want to make sure that a person first really learns to treat themselves differently. So once they have a bit capacity with that, then the next step is actually to really learn tools that help your nervous system to calm down. This is when the mindfulness and the breathing exercises or yoga, tai chi, you know, those type of body oriented stuff comes in place.

So really starting to work with the physical sensations of trauma, not just the cognitive realm.

Right, Exactly. If you only stay in your head, you will understand it, but it doesn't mean you will really be able to have a capacity to process what happened or to, to get out of it in a calm manner. So yes, the body oriented stuff helped with that a lot.

And I think a lot of people, maybe this is a cultural thing or a way in which we looked at mental health and maybe an older paradigm was like, well, if I just understand it, then I'm done.

I think that's our wish. Then we don't have to feel the Pain. It doesn't work like that. It's a good step. Let me start it this way. It's a good step. Then you're doing all the calming activities that we just talked about. Then if you want, but only if you want to go deeper, then you can go into the memories. But I say that because for some people, no matter how much they've done the foundational work, still they might not want to talk about what happened or they might not want to remember what happened, and it's okay. As long as they know how to manage their lives and they are functional and they have some sense of calmness in life, that's okay. But some people prefer to go deeper into it because they're seeing it, that it's just really affecting them.

It's like, yeah, it's like where they need to go. One of the things that I found a lot is in this journey is a lot of that, what we kind of talked about before. But, you know, now I understand all the trauma. I've got it, I understand it. Yet I can't change. I'm still stuck. And we really see that in addiction, that self blame and even that self loathing that comes from that is such a difficult part of it as well.

You know, you just actually reminded me of the word I often use when I work with clients with trauma is grief. So when you start facing what happened to you, the most important part of our work is actually to be able to grieve what happened and to be able to grieve what you didn't have. Often people basically grieve their childhood because right when you're born, of course, like any other human being, you. You just want to have life normally with healthy parents, healthy situations. You just want to go to school, play with friends, and just grow up. Right. That's just an instinctual desire. It's not even cognitively there, but it's just there. And when you don't have that, you know it, you know that you didn't have it. And so that has to be grieved. It's a. It's a big loss.

Yeah. And there's a lot of pain there. And I think that sometimes takes some time to recognize the loss itself because it's been so disconnected. I think one of my ideas is that our brain at the time isn't wired to remember it as an adult. It's remembering it as a child. And so we are disconnected from that. And sometimes especially like closeness with other human beings or connection or compassion, when we've never had that in our history. We don't even know what it is. And when we start to discover it through getting help, having a supportive therapist or supportive community or 12 step or wherever you go, then I think that is where the grief really starts to happen. Because you, you recognize what you didn't get.

Exactly. You know, you were talking about sort of the inner child in a way. Right. I had a client of mine recently was telling me about a fight she had with her husband and then she said I was angry like a two year old. And I said okay, that's it. Bingo. What happened when you're two year old? Because she's like, well, I was okay. My parents were nice. And then as I started getting into this two year old experience, she realized like parents were really physically absent and emotionally very absent. You know, they just gave everything supposedly. But I'm talking about just presence. That's a different thing. Then she said, I pretty much grew up on my own. Yes. So when you react now as a two year old, you're right, of course it upsets you because you're 50 year old, but this comes from your childhood.

Right. And being able to make that connection. What about another thing? As you're talking, I'm starting to think about like this work because it really seems like we can do some of this work on our own, but having someone else in our life to help us. Like what you're saying with your client, you're reflecting back what you see. You're helping them kind of dig a little bit deeper, think a little bit harder, ask more directive questions. What about that part of it? Like having that other person reflect back.

I think the best is professional help because professionals are, you know, objective people. I mean, some people are lucky with their loved ones, they can do such a work in some relationships, but it, it's, it can be also very triggering. So a relationship can be healing. Right. And, or can be very triggering because it's your romantic partner especially.

Right.

I think you have an objective person like a therapist, then the whole focus is on you. It's, it's just about you. Which is a really nice feeling for, for people who didn't have that growing up in, in their childhood.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean it gives them a place to, to really process. But needing that reflection back, especially that compassionate reflection that maybe they didn't get.

Yes. It's like someone being really in the same wavelength as you in that moment. It's just they, they don't just understand you, but they feel how it was hard for you. And that helps the person feel it for themselves. Especially if you had a parent who was saying things like, okay, just move on, you. You felt fine. Let's just go. I have to basically take you to school now, you know, or I have to wash the dishes. Let's go on. There's no time to sit for a parent with a child and go, oh, honey, I'm sorry you're feeling hurt. Let's just sit for a minute and let me just comfort you. And when that's missing in a childhood experience, you could get that from a relationship or from a therapeutic relationship, too.

Right. And this takes time to do that.

Yes, it does, definitely.

Right. So let's talk a little bit about that. Like if. If we were to. Because you have the map, right? You know, the trauma map, which is kind of a map towards healing for someone out there who's struggling. What. What might that look like for them? Maybe on a timeline and, you know, this process of moving through these things. Yeah. What does it. What does that look like?

Okay, so my book is really more foundational work. So I would recommend, especially if you don't know much about trauma and you're not sure what. How it includes the body or what does, you know, this connection mean? I'd recommend to start reading the book and sort of following the steps. I also have good exercises there like grounding, mindfulness, eft tapping, emotional freedom technique. And so those actually could really give a good foundational room for. For someone to be able to just sort of have a sense of, okay, I get my nervous system now, or I have a bit of a sense. But if you are needing more work and you are suffering much more than what a book can help, of course, then I highly recommend for the person to go, you know, to seek for professional help, basically, because books are great, but what I noticed with people is they read it, but then they don't really retain the information that much. Either you have to reread it or journal it. I recommend highly, like daily journaling, like reading. Write your feelings, your observations so you can work on yourself. Even if you go to therapy once a week, one hour, the rest of the time you still have to work on yourself alone anyway. One hour.

I think, like, what you're saying, all these different points that kind of come in, if you're dealing with this attachment trauma, understanding that some of this is very wired into the brain, especially if it's in your childhood, because you were, you know, at those age of. Age of brain development, you know, things are being kind of laid down and our attachment styles are being laid down and everything that. Having all these different directions to get that support. So, like, yeah, getting a good book on trauma, like your book, that starts to educate you on it and so you can understand it. Getting a professional therapist, getting support in a community, listening to podcasts like this, you know, talking about it, you know, there's different. All these different avenues to help get you there.

I actually, I'm happy to see recently that the trauma is talked much more. It is being demystified, destigmatized more and more. So I'm much more hopeful. In the past, it was again, just. It means you had to be in a war for it to be recognized. And now people are much more open about it. Even TikTok like you're just seeing these videos, people talking about their traumas. And I think there's more empathy now, which is what we need.

Yeah, I would agree. I think there's a lot more compassion, and we're beginning to be able to see this as not just something, you're weak or you're broken or something's wrong with you. Put it in a box. Don't behave that way. We're really, like, looking. Looking at it on a deeper level, which is relieving. I mean, I think we have a long way to go, but I think it's definitely helpful to people, especially, I think stories of hearing others who are struggling and going, oh, my gosh, I recognize that. I'm just like that.

Yes. And a lot of celebrities have helped along the way too. They talking about their sexual abuse histories and how that impacted them, or if they have addiction, when they come out, they talk about their struggles with it and how it was related to trauma. So it is becoming much more conscious, at least for the United States. For other countries, it's a different story.

Yeah. But hopefully it'll expand everywhere and more people will see it, and your book helps in that process, so that's great. So I have one more question. As we kind of get close to the end of our time here, I like to ask guests, if someone's out there and they're listening to this podcast and they're struggling, maybe they think they're struggling with trauma or they know they're struggling with trauma. If you could say one thing to them, what would you want to tell them?

I want to say two things.

Okay, you could say two. You could say two things.

One thing is, please do not blame yourself. Self compassion will actually go a really long way. So that's to me, is the most important thing. And the second one is maybe practice something like mindfulness, something where you are focusing more on the present moment in the here and now, rather than being stuck in the past or flying into the future. So those two things will actually help, just like a good foundation for, for anyone struggling with symptoms of trauma and.

Get your book, because I think that would be a good start too, if you're going to do all these other things. So with that, how can people find you? If they want more information, how can they get a hold of you?

Great. Actually, I have a trauma treatment center in Los Angeles called Reconnect Treatment Center. So that would be one way. I have 30 people working in my center. So we do great trauma work, highly, intensely and effectively. So that's one website, reconnectcenter.com another website is my personal website, karoldarsa.com. so it's K-A-R-O-L-A R S A.com and then Instagram. Carol Darcy, Reconnect.

Awesome. Thank you. I will put all of those in the show notes@the addictivemind.com so people, you don't have to remember them, just go there. You can get them all. Carol, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast, sharing your wisdom, talking, talking about trauma and helping everybody out there.

Thank you again for inviting me. It was a pleasure. Always.

All right, everyone, thank you for listening to the Addicted Mind podcast. All the show notes will be@theaddictivemind.com and do me a favor. If you are getting a lot out of the Addicted Mind, please rate and review us in itunes or share the podcast with a friend. That really does help people find the podcast and think about joining our Facebook group. Just go to Facebook, type in the Addictive Mind podcast, click join and continue the conversation online. All right, everyone, have a wonderful day and I will talk to you on the next episode.

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