Close the Chapter Podcast Episode 221: 5 Levels of Disconnection and Strategies on How to Reconnect with Dr. Karol Darsa

Welcome to the Close the Chapter podcast. I am Kristen Boyce, a licensed marriage and family therapist with a private practice, Pathways to Healing, counseling. Through conversations, education strategies, and shared stories. We will be closing the chapter on all the thoughts, feelings, people, and circumstances that don't serve you anymore and open the door to possibilities and the real you. You won't want to miss an episode, so be sure to subscrib.

Welcome to this week's Close the Chapter podcast. I am so grateful you're here with me. My guest is the author of the Trauma Map, and I'm really excited to dive into her book and her five steps to Reconnecting to yourself, which is the journey most of us are on to kind of delayer any beliefs that we've had that don't no longer serve us. We're working through our past to live more fully in the present. So welcome, Dr. Dara to the program.

Thank you, Kristen. Thanks for having me.

Yes, thanks for joining us. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to write the book, the Trauma Map.

Sure. I'm a licensed psychologist. I've been a therapist for close to 25 years. Always been interested in trauma. That was always my passion from the very beginning, for sure. It's because I had to work through my own trauma, like most of us. And then about 10 years ago, I opened a trauma treatment center, focusing particularly on trauma because it was really missing. I was working in rehabs, doing trauma work in different settings, but there wasn't a place that would do intense trauma work the way that I wanted to do. And so having that for so many years, working with clients, running the place, I started seeing a lot of themes of what people are really missing in terms of information and in terms of really wrongdoings of the trauma treatment. That's one of the things that really got my attention. Most of my clients would come from different treatment centers or therapists, and they would say they open me up and they never close me down. So that was the main complaint that I heard over the years. And it started really bothering me, almost getting angry at it, going, oh, my God, how could people not only not help, but do damage, Right? So I said, I'm going to just start writing now, sort of the basic things, what I want people to know in terms of clients, right? So if they go to therapy, like, what they should expect, what should not be done, what could be helpful and what could be really damaging. And that's sort of what gave me the idea of writing the book.

No, I love that that's so true because clients will come in and they'll just feel so almost re traumatized from working with another therapist. And they're doing the best they can, but they don't understand maybe how to work with trauma. How do you define trauma? What's your definition of it?

Trauma is any situation that leaves the person feeling overwhelmed and sort of powerless, where they feel like they can't do anything and their nervous system really completely shutting down, where they just can't cope with it. So that's the reason why some traumatic situations that everybody would call traumatic situation is not traumatic for some people, yet it is for other people. But having said that, I want to make sure people know it doesn't mean you're weak or something is wrong with you and it traumatizes you. We have our nervous system, we have our background, we have our childhood, all of that can really affect us differently. And that's how it's different than stress, because we're day to day having stress. But not every stressful situation is traumatic. Although every traumatic situation is definitely stressful.

That's true. And we can't separate our environment in our mind because the body and the mind and the environment are all connected. I think that's the other piece that people don't realize. Like it all impacts you in some form or fashion. Let's talk about the five steps and then how you develop the five steps to reconnecting with yourself. And I'm thinking your authentic self is the framework of who you really are, not your conditioned self, not who you think you're supposed to be. To have belonging and acceptance.

Right. And most importantly, I have to back up to even explain that because to me, what trauma does is it creates a disconnect inside. And the disconnect is in five different levels. And that's the reason why I found the reconnect steps on five steps as well. So what happens is you either feel disconnected from your body, from your heart as I call it, which is from your emotions. You might feel disconnect from your brain, your thinking capacity. So those are sort of the internal disconnects that happen, the three levels, head, heart and body. And then the two other disconnects I've been seeing over the years is really from the outside. So it's either outside people, loved ones, family members, other people in general. And the last one is from a bigger picture, meaning either from spirituality, from God, from nature, anything that you feel more like a bigger picture representing us. And so those are the different levels of disconnect. I've seen over the years some people can have only one area of a disconnect, but many of them can have five different levels of disconnect. So when I'm working with people, that's what I'm constantly watching for, which level of disconnect there is. And based on that, that's where sort of I'm trying to focus on helping them reconnect. Hence my clinic is called Reconnect Trauma Treatment Center.

Perfect ties in beautifully. How do you assess for someone's like. Well, I don't know. How do you assess for these areas of disconnection for someone that's listening?

I have different level of questions. So let's say disconnect from head as I said it, right? So I'm asking for what kind of thinking process, what we call sort of irrational belief system develop. They will say things like, nobody ever loves me. But then you see, actually there's no proof of that really. But that's sort of the feeling of the person or the self judgments is a great proof for me of self disconnect too. Like self hatred, thinking they're all bad or they're all unlovable. That's a very, very common reaction following a trauma. Which again, and you meet the person, you're like, this is such a lovely person, a lovable person. Well, to me, every human being is lovable anyway. That's my attitude, that kind of belief. So that's one sign of a disconnect from your thoughts. A disconnect from the body shows up in different ways. And sometimes in more obvious way you can see the person. They're disconnected. They're just. They have a flat affect. They seem out of their body the way they're sitting, or they're not feeling their body, if you ask them. Or they hate their body. That's so they can feel their body, but they hate their body. Right. And they think it's because of the appearance, but it's actually usually not really. That's just a superficial symptom that shows up. The real answer is because they just can't tolerate feeling themselves because it reminds them of a trauma. Especially if a person has had trauma that affects the physical body, either sexual or physical in nature. If they feel their body, they remember the pain, so. So it's actually a defense mechanism. But that's sort of. The disconnect can happen. Addiction is another sign of bodily disconnect because people use drugs or over alcohol or food to really not feel their body, to numb it out. So that's from the body from the emotions. It can show in different, almost opposite ways. Either a person goes numb, you ask them, how do you feel? Have no idea. I just don't feel anything. Or they're overly feeling. They're run by their feelings, emotions, and they can't even use their logical brain anymore. They're just governed by that. Now. This was again, the internal disconnect in the outside is isolation from others could be one way of disconnect. They can't connect to anyone, they don't trust anyone. Old people are bad, everybody's out to hurt me. Those kind of beliefs could be. And then a sense of loss from God, spirituality, feeling like universe doesn't have my back because I've never been protected. I don't trust in anything. I'm always going to be unhappy. Those are sort of more the spiritual bigger picture realm disconnects.

Let's say someone's like, oh, I got all five. And what do you say to them? Because you know, that can bring up shame, that can bring up something's wrong with me.

Actually, my most passionate topic is about letting go of the self judgment. That's what I talk about over and over. Basis in fact, I think if you can let go of self judgment, you are 50% healed of the trauma. Because honestly, it's not so much what happened that causes these pains, but is that how you interpret what happened causes the pain? So how you treat yourself, in other words. So let's say you're abused physically, verbally, in any shape or form. If you continue that abuse towards yourself, somebody told you all your life you're worthless. And then you continue to say that to yourself, that's when actually it becomes more and more painful. So the moment you can really start that self judgment and just accept yourself however you are, whatever the condition you're in, but that really seeing the loving essence in every human being, you actually can tolerate everything that happened much more strongly. So that is where I'm always focusing when I'm working with people. And that's why we have to be careful listeners or as therapists too, when we're working on ourselves as we discover our issues, our weak points, our trauma symptoms. Not to take that into, oh, there's something wrong with me, but to see that as what can I do? So the focus should be on not the value that we place on ourselves, but what is the next step that I can do? How can I make peace with myself? How can I improve myself? And every time we have to dig in and see what's going on what am I doing wrong, so to speak. And by wrong I mean something that's not helpful to me, that doesn't make me a bad person. So the question always what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Not what does that mean about me?

Because I think right now self judgment is really an epidemic. Me always has been, but I really feel like in the teens, I don't personally work with teens, but in my group there are several therapists that focus on teens and we are seeing self hatred of their bodies, how they look, how they feel about themselves. What are you seeing and what are your thoughts on how we work through self judgment?

Well, you know, unfortunately social media definitely increase the self judgments in this world. We're just in this era of unbelievable technological lifestyle and so we're constant social media. So that's one of the reasons I have teenager kids. So and when my kid, especially my younger one, was even younger, one of the things that I was explaining to him, I called this tricky brain, came out with this term with him and he knows it. So whenever he goes into self judgment, he looks at me, he's like, okay, that's my tricky brain, right? Meaning like it could still talk because it's hard to get rid of that talk. But that if you know that it's there, almost like to trick you, it's that you just don't pay attention to it. You hear it but you don't turn towards it, you don't pay attention, you don't give more fuel, you don't put more fuel to the fire, so to speak. Because to get out of it is hard. The easiest way is to really divert the attention to something else. Another thing that's helpful is actually talking to other people about it. Seeing that everyone is struggling with the same thing makes you feel more normal. And that's the beauty of being a therapist. Because when I see everyone is struggling the same thing, I'm going, guys, this is just a human condition. It's like we have hair, you have hair, you have eyes. That's a human condition. We're born with it almost, right? So that's sort of the epidemic, the energy of the negativities around us. To fight it, we have to know that just kind of part of it, but we're not going to pay attention. Another thing I find very helpful, essentially it's a very simple tool is to find inspirational talks and people and have it sort of on the background as Almost podcast or YouTube video, ongoing basis to feed the brain with more positive Words. Because when you're on your own, the negativity is so prevalent that, let's say, I don't know, you're drying your hair, you're brushing your teeth. Instead of just listening music, maybe find something there for a few minutes. So start day with somebody's words that say something positive to you. Some reminder. Especially if you grew up with parents who were judgmental putting you down. That's the tape that we have in our heads. You have to counter it, right? In order to counter it, you really have to hear the positive wording over and over again. When you're driving, we have a lot of free time. We can use those with just some positive inspirations. Gratitude list is always good. But in the gratitude list, I think also just appreciating yourself, writing something that you like about yourself, maybe one thing that you did good that day or one thing that you like about yourself that day. And again, it depends a little bit on spiritual beliefs, but maybe applying the belief that human beings, there's this loving essence in all of us, and it's not because you have to do something to be loved or to be worthy of love that we are born with that. It's a right. That's how I see it. Unfortunately, some people try to take away from us, right? Parents, abusers, perpetrators, sometimes school teachers. I mean, anyone could be. But it is our birthright. And so embracing that and reclaiming that, believing in that, I think it's important.

Yes, I agree. So if we look at these five disconnect levels, how do we begin if we want to break those down to heal? Not to go in too much detail, but I want to kind of break down. How do we begin to transform it to a reconnection to self? So if we want to start with maybe we kind of talked about the body first. How do we get to love our body and reconnect with our body and like, really feel safe in our bodies?

Of course, taking care of your physical health is important because if you're physically healthy, you are more likely to embrace it. I think to really separate the love from the look would be important. A lot of people only love themselves if they look good. And I'm not against looking good, don't get me wrong. But it shouldn't be connected to that. So I see the body as truly is a home, because being grounded, in fact, this is one of my practice. Being grounded means being inside of your body. And that allows me to be present, that allows me to function, that allows me not to go into so much Negativity, because if you spend too much time in your head, you're going to go around circles. That's usually the negativity. It's a bit addictive, in fact, the addiction of the thought, as I called it. So I see the body, not, again, not focusing on the look of it, but the being inside. Bringing my thoughts into my body allows me to actually calm down. It's a shell, if you think about it, it's a protective shell. So if you just see it that way, regardless of how you look, regardless of even if you're healthy or not, but it is still a place where you can bring your thoughts in. So focusing on physical sensations when you have the disease of rumination kind of thought will help to calm the nervous system down. So for that reason, seeing the body as a sacred place. So you see what I mean? Like, it's a different perspective than, again, because a lot of people would, wait, say, oh, I don't like my body, because if I focus on it, I feel fat or I feel ugly and that type of a thing. But when I focus on my body, I'm only focusing on the sensation. So it has nothing to do with how I look or how much I weigh. It's really like distinction.

You're focusing on the sensation, not the thought about how you look.

And if you have physical pain, that makes it a bit harder, for sure. But even then, I look more at the functionality too. It allows me to talk, my body allows me to eat. My body allows me to live in this world. My body allows me to hug my children without the body. I couldn't do that if I was just in the air. It allows me to create. It allows me to form relationships. It allows me to walk if I have the luxury to walk. Sometimes we don't even think of what a luxury that is. And many people, it allows me to connect with nature or to breathe and to feel the sun on my skin. Even there, you see, like, I can feel my skin when I have the sun. So that helps me to calm down. So these are the areas of appreciation of the body that we can definitely focus on.

And then let's take the heart or emotions. Yeah, we begin to reconnect with those.

One of the interesting things that happens when we are especially younger, if we been traumatized with any type of trauma, abuse or any sort of trauma, is that the emotion is so strong in order to deal with it, we find a way to check out. Because we think it's an unconscious thing, though. We think if we feel more we the pain is going to kill us. This is unconscious belief. We of course, logically know that we're not going to die, especially as an adult. But as a child, when you're overwhelmed, you think you're going to die. And so that fear stays with us. So much so that even when we're out of abuse situation, even people who are now in healthy lifestyles and good relationships, they're not being abused anymore. They have great people that love them still. This unconscious belief of if I allow those feelings to come to the surface, I'm not gonna make it. It's there. So one of the ways that I worked on it gradually is actually really knowing that it's not gonna kill me. So I started to say things like, I can handle the emotions now. But even then you wanna open emotions very gradually. It's not something where you just open the whole thing and get overwhelmed. And next thing you know you're gonna wanna hurt yourself in some way. Cause you're gonna wanna get. So just really allowing the feeling a little bit at a time. So maybe catching yourself throughout the day. Let's say when you have a stressful situation, your first thing is you want to eat chocolate or you want to vegetate in front of tv. Instead of doing that, maybe take five minutes at first. Just five minutes, go. Okay. Just a validation of I'm overwhelmed. This is a lot of feeling. I'm not sure if I can tolerate it, but let me just kind of notice that and apply some form of love, some form of validation and empathy to myself. I'm sorry that I'm feeling this much. This was a lot at a really tough day or I had all my traumatic memory come to the surface. Anything can happen or somebody really like hurt me today. That stuff like I'm sorry. And then knowledge. Okay. And that's all I can take. Now I can watch my TV because I want to check out. But just adding that few minutes there and gradually increasing your capacity for it. I do that a lot with writing too. Maybe write the feeling out, just let it out. But pretending like it's not there, pretending like it's not bothering me or I never want to ever touch. That is not going to help us to increase our capacity. We have to be able to tolerate more and more with time. But gentle approach, empathic approach. And if you have somebody who's empathic and nonjudgmental in your life, that's even better. I'm lucky to have some few people in my life that I know I can go to Them with anything with shameful stories, embarrassing feelings, and they'll be just like, it's okay, I still love you. And you're a human being. So to hear that is a reminder for me to say that to myself. So you take that in and apply it to yourself or. And. Or if you're good at other people. Because we are often less judgmental to others than ourselves. This is a common thing. So then maybe imagining if your best friend is going or if your child is going through what you're going through, what would be the thing that you would tell this person? And then apply the same word to yourself. So just. It's a slow. But consistently. Definitely you can improve it.

Those are very helpful and practical ways to look at the heart and emotions and healing those. So let's take the third one, which is the thinking, the brain, the thinking. Because I think this one's hard because people can get in what we call ruminating thoughts, looping thoughts. They feel stuck in the thought and they can't get out of it.

Yeah.

Because of distortion in the thinking.

It's actually really. I think the more technology we have, the more ruminating thoughts we had. Because we are constantly in front of the screen. We spend so much time in our left brain, which is our thinking brain. We're constantly going around and around about, I have to do this and this. It's just the Western culture, especially like living in the States, I'm talking about that. So to reduce the thinking actually is first step. So rather than just reducing the negative thinking overall, to reduce the thinking really helps us to get out of that stuckness. So hands comes in the body. So when you find yourself, I can't stop thinking about it. Just really being in the moment and just first of all, orienting to the outside. Okay, where am I right now? Looking around. Okay, I see my painting here. I see the door bottle, the juice I brought in this morning, like, just really slowing it down. Focusing on the here and now and then from there to gradually coming to the physical sensation. As I'm talking to you, I can feel like this part of my hand is somehow cold. The inside of my hands are warmer. Or I feel my feet on the ground just every so frequently. To do this for a couple of minutes will actually build the capacity to think less and to stay with the physical sensation more. Just a few minutes ago, I mentioned it's like there's truly thought addiction. I think we're really addicted to thinking. So we think if we don't think, if we don't Produce, we're not being useful. Our culture is against just sitting down and being. You can only rest when you die. You know those kind of messages. And it's very fast, the speed is over the top. So just sort of slowing it down, being in your body and then eventually replacing the negative thoughts with the positive thoughts. Those are some of the very common one. That's why I think mindfulness. I'm very excited that mindfulness is in our world now and it's spreading more and more. There's a reason why in the Eastern culture, Buddhism, they practice that thousands of years and finally, finally we're kind of interested in it.

How do you define mindfulness? Just real quick, before we get to the other two. External, disconnected. For those not be aware.

Mindfulness is about being aware of the present moment without judging, without going into the past, without going into the future and without judging whatever you're thinking. So it's just really being aware. So as I'm talking, my stomach is hurting and it's not good or bad, it's just I'm aware, like how interesting. Okay, my stomach is hurting. I'm aware of it. I'm not going to attach any judgment to it and I'm not going to try to get rid of it. Because mindfulness is also about just noticing it and not trying to run away from it. And then now I'm thirsty and I'm drinking water. As I'm drinking water, feeling the water in my mouth, feeling the water go through my throat and just really being here. And so that practice builds like a muscle, so to speak, of bringing your thoughts back into the present moment. And that is actually trauma healing. Because what is trauma is about being stuck. It's like our brain is hijacked into the past or hijacked into the worry about future. Anything but the present moment. Right? That's exactly what trauma does to our brain. It impacts it chemically. So if we train ourselves to come. That's why I keep using the word muscle. It's like a workout. You can strengthen yourself and the more you practice, the better it gets. It's not a one day thing for sure. I don't believe in one day solutions, to be honest. You have to practice it regularly.

I agree. A client will say, well, I tried the deep breathing. Well, how many times? Well, I did it once and it didn't work. I'm like, okay, well we got it. Just like you said, it's like going to workout. You got to keep at it and notice how that feels every time. Connect to the sensations in your body. So I love this. Okay, so let's look at the outside. This is external disconnections. Okay. We did the internal, now we're doing the external. And that was people. We talked about isolation and really disconnection from people. Can you share more about how to heal that?

Sure. And that is. Could show in a different way where you become so needy, codependent of other people. Right. You either don't want anyone you're isolating, or you think you can't live alone. There's this really addiction almost right again to other people. So both. To me, it's actually really the same thing. It's truly the same coin, just the flip side of it. And that usually comes from relational traumas. Right? Relational traumas are. Usually comes from childhood parents or loved ones, caretakers that hurt you, abuse in some way. And then of course, you have a hard time to trust other people. So it takes a while. I think that's where therapy comes in really beautifully. Because in therapy is a relationship. It's not so much the technique that a therapist does, but if you connect with your therapist and you gradually learn to trust them, then you can take that into other relationships. It's like a laboratory. Right. Therapy is always. That's sort of how I call it. If you're not in therapy, at least finding one person that you can build some form of relationship. We are relationship beings. We are animals that thrive in there. So however you can find that connection, if it's not your family members, doesn't have to be finding someone else. Could be if you belong to a group or if you're at school, work, really finding somebody that you can trust. If you have addiction, going to AA NA meetings or codependency meetings. Those are great places to find people who actually speak the language of recovery. So that's great ways to find people and really slowly building that trust. But you need the open communication with the person. That's where you can freely express, this is some of my fears coming. But just be again, slow and gentle. We don't expect immediate connection. And. But with that, I have to add, the more you work on yourself, your relationship with yourself. Remember how I was in the beginning saying, like, how you treat yourself is crucial. The more you heal your own relationship with yourself, the easier it gets to trust somebody else and to connect with other people. So there's tremendous amount of parallel things going on there.

Yes, I agree. That's the key. Number five. Okay. Spirituality. I know a lot of people have had trauma in the church with religion, a lot of spiritual abuse, spiritual bypassing, where you're using for example, scripture or something along those lines. Or it could be any kind of thing, like you need to pray more, you need to go to the synagogue more, you need to whatever that looks like. How do people heal? Begin to reconnect with spirituality or nature or whatever that is for the person.

Finding the need for yourself is very important one. So this so unique experience, you don't want to ask somebody else, oh, what do you believe in? So I'll follow you, right? There's not such a thing. I've had clients who were religiously abused and either they no problem staying with their religion, but they found their own church, so to speak, or their own place, or people who are religious levies and didn't want to hear even the letter R, they just couldn't go near it. So it has to be respected. No matter where the person is, has to be respected. There's a lot of different spiritual beliefs or religious practices outside maybe reading them. See if anybody anything attracts you from Buddhism to Hinduism, from Sufism, Kabbalah, religion, like anything could be. So just kind of reading about it or really creating your own religion or spirituality. For some people it's just maybe having a little sacred place in your home and creating, I don't know, you could just put flowers or candles. And if you believe in some form of bigger power, you just pray to that or just connect with that. Or if not, then maybe you believe in that power is just within you, then you connect with yourself. Because ultimately in a lot of spiritual beliefs, connection is that we are really a reflection of God anyway. A reflection of the higher power of the light or the source. And so therefore it's just too about loving yourself anyway. It's not about seeing sort of an external God, like a he with beard kind of thing. So you have to really find your own unique way of what works for you and not judging any of it. So there's, there can't be any push. And eventually finding like minded people that speak the same language. But I prefer journaling for this experience to writing really brings up a lot of this wisdom inside because we all have an inner wisdom. So doing dialogues is one form of journal writing that can connect you to some form of spirituality. I call that almost like a screenplay writing. When you read screenplay, let's say it says Kristen versus Carol, right, we have a dialogue. So then you write, okay, my name is Jennifer, so Jennifer will be me. And then the wisdom, the inner or the inner God. And Then you just write this dialogue. You'll be surprised how much wisdom can come forward. And that could be your spiritual connection. But something where you connect to some meaning of life actually gives us more strength is what I noticed over the years.

I have too, working with clients that have that is definitely. I can find that they feel more supported in their journey towards healing. So I think it is one of the most important pieces. I think the journaling is. So obviously I'm a big believer in it. I love it because you see something come through that you didn't expect maybe to even know, or this wisdom that comes through, it's really powerful.

I ask questions and I wait a minute and then I start writing this. I'm like, oh my God, I'm wise. Like, where's that coming from? So any questions eventually comes in my journals or also in my dreams. Dreams are another great way to ask for questions. Sort of go to bed with the last question, like, okay, I want some answers about what kind of spiritual connection would be my best fit. Then you sleep on it. And then you notice messages either during the day or messages from your dreams. Somewhere, something sort of show up eventually.

Yes, that's powerful. How do you feel like acceptance is part of healing and trauma work? Acceptance of who you are, acceptance of the reality as it is. Talk to me about acceptance and trauma healing.

Sure. Well, because again, I was saying that if you're abused, chances are you will continue to abuse yourself. Right. That also means you're not accepting yourself to me, because abusing yourself means you're not liking yourself or you're hating yourself. So a lot of people, when they say, I wish I never had the trauma, it's actually, of course, very true statement. Nobody wishes that they have trauma. But at the same time, it also means I wish I don't have the symptoms. So to accept the symptoms is also to accept yourself, because we have to. We can't change the past. We can wish it, but wishing kind of goes a little bit into fantasy. Sort of Santa Claus, like, I wish Santa Claus brings me toys. Well, as an adult, we have to find some form of this happened. And the wishing. I don't even want to waste my time on the wishing in a way, because then it means I don't accept who I am. Now. Some people say I'm broken. And I don't like that word because broken really has a judgment to it. So, yes, maybe I have some limitations because of the trauma, that I'm now more afraid of this, or I'm cautious about that. Or I have pain in that way, but that's also part of who I am. Can you show love to those parts instead of trying to get rid of them? Often people come to trauma treatment thinking, I want to just get rid of my memories or I want to get rid of. That's not trauma healing. The trauma healing is to just make peace with what happened. Love yourself despite of everything and really knowing that it's not your fault. Trauma actually is truly means something outside happened to you that is not your fault. No matter how much you think it is, it really is not. And then, so how can you just love yourself with all the symptoms that you have?

What are your thoughts when someone says, I just can't love myself, I hate myself. I feel like I'm unworthy, nobody's going to ever love me. And what do you say to that person? Where should they start? Or where could they start? Let's reframe that. Where could they start?

Yeah, I mean, you can challenge the thoughts, but it only goes so far. Unfortunately. I still like it because I think it's an important thing. Right. That's sort of the cognitive way, challenging it and saying why you don't like yourself and finding the counter arguments. Right. Again, kind of coming back. My spiritual belief is we are all worthy people. So that helps me to help that. But when it's so severe, sometimes that means you will have to really do trauma work because it's not that you're born with that self hatred. It's truly a baby is not born going, I hate myself. They really don't have that. So that means something happened. So that also means we have to kind of address what happened and what are the messages. And many times that might be even, not even their own words. They think it's their own word, but it's maybe somebody else's message that they internalize. So how can you separate yourself from the messages that you got from outside, from the messages that you got from your abusers and finding yourself there? So it takes a while, but if you know that it's trauma related, you are more likely to understand. And if you think, no, no, this is who I am, like I'm worthless, that makes it harder. That's the reason why psychoeducation is huge. And again, that's one of the reasons why I actually wrote my book. Because in there it tells you about, okay, if you have trauma, chances are you're going to hate yourself. If you were raised by loving parents in a loving environment and you were giving value, there's no way you can hate yourself. You cannot find the child who came from this loving environment and goes, I hate myself. They will love themselves. That's what they saw. So knowing that understanding the impact of trauma truly is important. I see that because sometimes people come in and go, oh, but my trauma was 30 years ago. Like, no, no, no, I understand. My parents did their best. No, you think you understand, but your inner child is still very much impacted by that. So talking to that little one inside, not just to the adult, because the adult go, okay, fine, I like myself, but the little kid inside still feels they abused me. That means I'm not lovable. The child doesn't understand the difference, doesn't know how to blame it on the parents or. I'm sorry that I keep saying parents. I'm a parent myself. I don't mean it in that way, but that's just the reality.

The reality of what we work with. And when someone comes in and says, I had a perfect childhood, or I'm like, nobody's perfect, I'm a parent. I'm million and one ways that I have misstep because of my humanness and learning to acknowledge that, offer empathy, process. How do you feel when I got short just now, what came up for you? Learning to have this open dialogue and let the child have a voice. We, most of us didn't get that opportunity. So that's why work, nurturing that inner child, doing the inner child work, the trauma work, is so imperative, I think, to transforming the next generation.

Yes. And surely comes in very handy in there too. Again, writing to your little one inside talking to or him, them as the adult. And if you can't have that loving voice, because sometimes people say, I don't like my inner child. I hate my inner child. She's the reason. He's the reason, you know, and then maybe finding another voice whose voice sounds. And if you know somebody in person, that's great. Maybe imagine your best friend talking to your inner child. If you don't have that, it could be even somebody like a Mother Teresa, a figure talking to your inner child. Like, what would Mother Teresa will tell your inner child about the experience or who they are? So, fine, it's. There's a lot of creativity another way, but you have to have the willingness to also work on that. One of the things that when I realized how much I was judging myself years ago, because I've been working on myself since I'm 18, I kind of put like this statement into my head. And my statement was, I have no Choice, but love myself. So the moment I say anything negative to myself, I'm like, nope, you're not allowed. Like, I just like, cut it off right away, try to find my humanness and say, like, all humans are the same. I'm no different than anyone else. And just applying love daily practice. And over the years, I got better and better at it.

Oh, I love that. It definitely is a practice for sure. So where can someone find you? Where can they find your book, the Trauma Map? Where can they learn more about you?

The Trauma Map is on Amazon audiobook or ebook or printed book. And actually I did the audiobook. So it's my voice because I have an accent. I didn't want another accent to read my book. I want it to be authentic.

I love it because I love it when the author reads their own book. There's a connection in my nervous system that goes, ah, okay, I can get to know you. So yay. I'm excited.

Yeah, so that's what I did. And in terms of where to find me, I'm not such a big social media person, but I still have Instagram, Carol Darzale, Underscore, Reconnect, or the Trauma Map. I also have a YouTube channel. I haven't done in the last year much, but I have over 50 videos. So if you want to learn things, I like teach grounding techniques there. I teach about tapping techniques, different breeding stuff, or psychoeducation about trauma. That's can also find it either Trauma Map or if you just say Carol Darza, I think, or Dr. Carol Darca, you can find me there too.

Wonderful. And we can put that in the show notes too, so we can put the links there. Is there anything you wanted to share that we did not cover about trauma healing?

Yes, I think the important thing is to know that trauma doesn't have to be something huge like sexual trauma or physical trauma or war, but actually smaller traumas, such as relational traumas, are the most impactful one that people know the least. So having had an absent parent, even though they never hit you, they never hurt you, you had money and food at the table, but they were just emotionally unavailable could be also traumatic. And that's an important information that I want all listeners to know that is very, very important.

It's what happens inside of us, not what happens to us. And so I think what you're doing is healing what happens inside, what you feel about yourself inside and about the world around you. So that's why I love you. Broke it down to internal versus external. That was really helpful. So thank you so much for joining us and being on the show today, and I am so grateful for the work you're putting out the the world.

Thank you very much for inviting me again. I'm really happy to be here. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to the Close the Chapter podcast. My hope is that you took home some actionable steps along with motivation, inspiration, and hope for making sustainable change in your life. If you enjoyed this episode, click the subscribe button to be sure to get the only updated episodes every week and share with a friend or a family member. For more information about how to get connected, visit Kristen K R I S T E N D Boice B o I c e.com thanks and have a great day.

Sam SA.