How Trauma Shapes Who You Are

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. I put out episodes four times a week to help you learn and grow and improve yourself. Because if you can improve yourself, you can improve your life. So if that's what you want to do, hit that subscribe button and follow along. Today we're going to be talking about who you are in that you, no matter how screwed up you think you are, are perfect right now as you are. And I want to start off by saying, in my line of work I have seen all of the best things in the world. I've also seen and heard all of the worst things in the world. I have heard like the amount of things that people go through in their life, in their childhood, in their teenage years, in their adulthood. The things that people have gone through is absolutely insane. To be in my line of work and not be more and more compassionate for people every single day to not have more compassion is impossible because you start to realize that the phrase everyone that you meet is fighting a battle that you know nothing about becomes more and more true because you can meet people and be like, oh my God, I can't believe the things that you've been through. And I hear abuse, mental, physical, sexual abuse, suicides murders. I mean, it's like the craziest things that neglect and traumas and all of these things, all of the most terrible things in the world. And I want you to understand that some of you listening have been through a lot of those types of things. Some of you listening are sitting there going, well, I haven't really been through that much trauma. Like, my life was pretty good. And I want you to understand this. It doesn't have to be a massive trauma for it to leave a deep scar. And some people feel bad. And I've had conversations with many people. They feel bad because they feel like their lives have been pretty good. Like their parents were pretty good, their life was pretty good. You know, they had some things that happened in their teenage years, and maybe they were bullied and maybe they didn't fit in when they were a child. But they feel like they don't deserve to feel like they have trauma because they didn't have, like, what they consider, like, absolute terrible trauma. And, you know, some people, maybe they weren't abused in some sort of way, or maybe they didn't have any big T trauma, as you can call it. But, you know, they had stuff like their dad worked all the time and never gave them love, or they felt like they had to achieve in order for them to even impress their parents. Or, you know, I have a friend who just told me the other day that he got one B minus in high school and his parents grounded him for the entire summer. And then, you know, there's other people that say stuff like their mother, she would pull away her love when she was mad. Or their mother instilled fear in them because she was afraid and she disguised fear as love. And some people's trauma is neglect and emotional neglect and physical neglect. And I want you to understand that all trauma is trauma in the brain. And so when you look at the brain and we look at the emotional capacity of a child and a human as we get older, you know, big trauma, we'll just phrase them as these, right? Big trauma. And small trauma is a human measurement at. Trauma, at its simplest form is basically not getting what you needed in your development in some sort of way. And I like to think of trauma as like a breakaway from what is love. And so, you know, I'm not saying, like, like your. Your parents have to be perfect in order for you to be perfect. But there are many people who I talked to where their parents had emotional abuse and they had. And that emotional abuse was, you have to be this way or else I'm going to act like I don't love you, or I'm not going to do what you want, or I'm not going to give you food. Like, there's, I've, I've. I can't even like describe. There's so many different things that I've heard. But that is a. If a parent has emotional abuse and emotional neglect, that is a breakaway from a state of love. If someone has physical neglect, that is a breakaway from a state of love. If someone has heartbreak, that is a breakaway from a state of love. And so it can be a big event or it can be a small event that closes you up to development later on in life. And so one thing that I hear with a lot of people is because of things that have happened them in their past. Big T trauma, small T trauma is people tell me this phrase that they feel broken. Like, that's a phrase that I hear very often. They feel broken or they don't feel whole, or they don't feel worthy in some way. They feel like, they tend to feel like something is wrong with them. A lot of times people say, like, I feel like I don't deserve, I don't deserve to be happy, I don't deserve to be healthy, I don't deserve to be wealthy, I don't deserve to be successful. And I want you to understand I'm not trying to undermine anybody's trauma. But when you look at trauma and then you look at it in the brain and you realize that what happens is things happen to us, big things, small things happen to us. But what we tend to do as well is we tend to make a story around it of how that makes us not enough, how that makes us not lovable, how that makes us not worthy. And so there's a thing that happens, right? That's the trauma, the trauma that happens. And then there's the story that we develop around it. And so it's like this thing could have happened 17 years ago to somebody, but they developed some sort of narrative. And that narrative is now carrying into 17 years later and changing the way that they interact with themselves, with the world, what they think about themselves, what they think about the world. And one of my favorite things, if you listen to this podcast for a while that you'll hear me say, is I love three legged dogs. And the reason why I love three legged dogs is because that dog is the same amount of happy as a dog with four legs. That dog is the same amount of love as a dog with four legs. That dog is the same amount of joy as a dog with four legs. Which means that this losing of the leg didn't change what they thought about themselves in the world, because they don't develop narratives like we do. But something can happen to us, and it could be big, it could be small. It could be. For instance, let's just take something that a lot of people deal with, right? Heartbreak. Lots of people have heartbreak. And from heartbreak, it's not like they just go next. The next relationship, they just go very easily into, right? Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But usually it's like, this person broke my heart and now there's a story that's attached to it, and I'm not worthy of love and I'm not smart enough, and I should have shown up better for them. And they develop some sort of narrative about themselves. Dogs never develop some sort of narrative about themselves. Like our dog Toby, who passed away a few years ago. He lived. He was almost 14, right? He started losing his eyesight, and I started feeling really bad for him, and Lauren started feeling really bad for him, but he didn't feel bad for himself. That's a human construct. Like, Toby was not less happy as his eyesight started to get worse. You know, there's no thought in Toby's mind, or there was no thought in Toby's mind of, something is wrong with me. And so many humans will say something like, I feel broken. I don't feel whole. I feel like part of me is missing. I feel like a part of me was stolen. And I want you to understand all of that. So I don't want to say, like, in this, once again, I don't want to say that trauma doesn't exist, and I don't want to undermine people's trauma. That's not what I'm trying to say any sort of way. I want you to start paying attention to the story that you're telling yourself around whatever that thing might have been. Right? Whatever. If it's a heartbreak, let's go back to that. What's the story that you're telling yourself around it? What's the identity that you've given yourself since that thing has happened? Right? It's just a story that you're telling yourself. And you can believe it if you want to, but it's just a story. It doesn't mean that it's true. The more that you repeat it, though, the more that you start to believe it. And as you start to believe something, like most people think that their beliefs are truth, but your beliefs are just a story that you've been saying to yourself. It's a thought that you've been repeating over and over again. And so when you look at it, you have to realize it's not that you are broken. It's not that you're unhole. It's not that you're unlovable. It's not that you're unworthy. It's not that something is missing. It's that you won't stop repeating that story. And we will be right back. Teachers are deep into new units this time of year, IXL lets kids practice the exact skills they're learning in class, helping lessons stick and boosting confidence. Heading toward the spring IXL is an award winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning, whether they're building math confidence, strengthening reading and writing skills, or reviewing science concepts. It covers math, language arts, science and social studies from Pre K through 12th grade with personalized interactive content that adapts to the child's level and PACE. IXL is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the United States. 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So if, like for instance, I'll give you an example. If you're a parent and you have a stressful day and you have a hard day and you accidentally blow up because your children, something happens, right? They don't pick up for themselves 3, 4, 5 times of asking them and it's just, it's like a boiling port and you blow up and then an hour later you're like, what the hell am I doing? Like, I can't believe I did that. And then there's a behavior where you blew up, which happens to a lot of people, right? You just got to a tipping point. And then you take that behavior. A lot of people take that behavior and make an identity out of it. So it's like I blew up and they start thinking I'm a bad mother. No, no, no. Those are two completely different things. There's behavior and there's identity. And so you have to be able to separate the two of them and say, okay, no, I'm still a really good mother. I just had a hard moment. And so it's like, you can still say, I am worthy of love. It's just I didn't. I wasn't really sure what I was doing back then. If you had behaviors that caused the heartbreak, you know, and you have to start realizing it's a story we're telling ourself. And the real important thing is what is the underlining story that you're telling yourself around these things that have happened to you in your past. You know, if you tell a child that monsters are under their bed every day, they will be terrified to go to bed. And so what monsters have you been creating in your own mind? Have you been telling yourself a lie? You know, when you really start to look at it, it's this thing that we can start to work through and we can start to come in contact with and maybe become like a little bit like, you know, you can do this in a safe space. You could do it on your own. You could do it if you want to start going to therapy, but, like, start thinking and maybe diving a little bit more into this thing that happened to you in your past. So, like, for me, like, my father passed away when I was 15. He was an alcoholic. There was a lot of moments that I remember feeling very unsafe around my father from this. I remember my father was driving him and I to boy scouts, and we were going on like a. It was like a weekend camping trip, right? And I remember my dad driving, and I was probably fourth, fifth grade. I remember him pounding Budweisers. And when you're in fourth or fifth grade, even to this day, I still don't. I still don't think anybody ever should drink and drive. But I remember being a little kid, and that's like the scariest thing in the world. I felt very unsafe in that moment because I was like. What I had been trained to at for fourth and fifth grade is like, you will get in a car accident. You will die. And I'm sitting there, and my dad literally is taking a six pack and he's getting a beer. He's putting it in the cup holder between the two of us, and he's drinking it as he's driving. And then he would finish it. He'd throw behind us. He'd pick up another one. And so from there, it was like this. This feeling of, like, I'm not safe, all of this that came from it. And I developed stories about how I wasn't safe in the rest of the world. And so you've got to start thinking about the stories that you're telling yourself. And so how do we start to resolve these things? Well, the first thing I think is really important is for us to talk to someone, anybody. We can talk to ourselves if we want to. If you don't feel safe talking to someone, if you don't feel like you have somebody to talk to, you can talk to yourself. You can talk out loud. You can journal through it. You can start to think through it. I would recommend talking to somebody that you trust more than anybody else in the world and be like, hey, I've got this thing that I've just never really spoken about, and I just want to be able to speak to somebody. Is it okay if I do? And maybe you decide to go to therapy and you decide to go to a therapist and start to talk to them about it. What I have found from being somebody who never spoke about my father to any of my friends, because I was so ashamed of him, and I was just ashamed when he would show up to my baseball games and be drunk and falling over. I was so ashamed of all of that that even when my father passed away, I never told anybody. I didn't tell my friends. I didn't tell my teachers any of that stuff. It was like he passed away and I went back to school, like, five days later. And so I want you to understand this. Shame breeds in the dark. And as you get better at talking about these things, these things have less power over you. And so these things that we're afraid to talk about because we think that people will not love us or they will judge us are the things that are keeping us in place and keeping us stuck. And so I recommend the first thing is just try to talk to somebody. It can be a friend. It could be a therapist. It could be journaling, whatever it might be, whatever feels the most safe for you. If you feel like it's a very significant trauma, I do recommend that you talk to somebody who is qualified to talk you through it. Right? So that's the first thing. Talk to somebody. Shame breeds in the dark. Try to get it out into the light. The more that I realized that I started speaking about my father, the less that that had control over me, and the more that I was able to kind of ease into it and not feel like I was stressed and holding onto it for 20 years. So that's the first thing that I would recommend. The second thing that I would recommend is to start to identify your story and tell yourself a new story. So stopping the story and telling yourself a new one, I think is really important because we repeat these stories all day long, you know, in when you think about this. Like, for me, I'll give you an example as well. So I'll just keep using myself. I wasn't planning on using myself so much as an example, but I will. I didn't talk about my. My dad at all. I was not vulnerable. I wasn't open to emotions and feelings. And when I first started this podcast, like, this podcast has completely changed my life for everything that I've done, but also for me, like, just internally, I made a decision when I started this podcast. Like, I'm not going. I'm going to be an open book. I'll just tell people every single thing about me. I'll tell people my dad, I'll tell people my traumas. I'll tell people about all of the things as it pops up. No shame on it. As I started doing that, because, number one, what happened was the shame breeds in the dark, so I was bringing it to the light. Number two, I started to realize that I had felt in the past, like, all of that trauma, all the stuff that had to happen with my dad, I was holding onto it and not releasing it, and it was controlling me. And I had an old story that needed to be rewritten. Then as I started sharing this stuff, as I started talking about it, I started to actually take control of it and make it more of my story. So I was like, oh, my God, I can now see that had all of that stuff with my father never happened. I wouldn't be. I wouldn't do what I do now. Like, there's no part of me. I would have. No. I would have no reason to do what I do now. And so for me, what was like, my biggest moments of shame and what I was trying to hide turned into, like, my strength of this was instead of being a victim, I was able to go, you know what this was? This was exactly what I needed to do what I'm supposed to do in this world. And I'm going to figure out a way to have these things make me more powerful versus hold me back and start to repeat these things in my head, this new story versus, like, oh, I'm a victim. Oh, my dad didn't love me. Oh, I'm not safe. I. And start to change it to, no, no, no. I was given this. Like, having that my dad do all this stuff and go through things I went through as a child was my gift. It was given to me for me to learn, to grow, to improve, to get better at, so that I can help change the world as well. And so you start to rewrite the story that you've been telling yourself. Right? So tell yourself a new story, identify your story and then tell yourself a new story. That's the second thing. Number three. The third thing that I recommend is to start getting better at accepting just acceptance of who you are, acceptance of what you've been through. And when you accept, you don't necessarily wish it would have been different, which is a very key piece to this. When you accept something, you don't wish it to be different. And so it's like when you look at it, let's put it this way, when you don't accept something, there's a part of you that wants it to be different. Which means that you're stuck in this cycle of something was wrong, something shouldn't have happened, versus like this is exactly what was supposed to have happened. For me to get to whatever the next thing is in my life to improve, to get better, to have self awareness. I don't believe that anything happens in this world that's not supposed to happen. For some reason, I don't tend to know that reason. And I don't pretend to act like I'm smart enough to. But if I can accept it, I can move past it and not feel like I'm stuck in that moment in my life. And so the third thing is to accept the fourth thing. Forgive. Okay, this one might take a lot more. This isn't Ivan. If you just want to go back and listen to my episodes on forgiveness, I go much, much deeper into it. Why all of that? I want you to try to see if you can start working on forgiveness of the other person if there's another person involved, not for them, but for yourself. Right. Forgive so that you can let go of that energetically so you're not white knuckling your way through life. That's the first thing I'll say. And the second thing I'll say is forgiveness for yourself. There's a lot of people listening. I think most people that I've come in contact with need to get better, forgiving ourselves for things that we've done in the past. Right. You have to understand every person, including yourself, is always doing the best they can with everything that they have. That might seem like there's no way, but if anybody could do better, they would have done better. And so forgiveness, that's a road that we can all go down. I recommend for that one, just go back and listen to an episode that I've done on forgiveness where I can go into much more clarity, where there's more time. Okay, so that's number four and number five, which comes back to what I started talking about at the very beginning. Right? Realize that you are not broken. You're not on hold. There's not something stolen from you. There's not something missing. Your trauma builds you and you can build a new identity for yourself from that trauma. But now what you can do as an adult listening to this right now go, what do I want my new story to be from this? Which then turns you into the person that is the author of your story versus a victim of your story of something that happened in the past. And so what I'd recommend is that trauma, those things that you've been through, all of that stuff, can you build a new identity for yourself from all the things that have happened to you? If you can do that, you're gonna start to live a very incredible, empowering life. So that's what I got for you. You're not broken. You're amazing. You're perfect as you are. We can always keep evolving, keep getting better. But you're a perfect person as you are because guess what? All of us are screwed up in some sort of way. So that's what I got for you for today's lesson. If you're out there and you want to master your 2026 goals, I have a free 30 minute workshop video that will help you figure out your goals, get very clear on what they are and plan them out. If you go to goalsmastery2026.com you can download it for free. All you have to do is get out a pen and paper, push play, and at the end of the 30 minutes, you have all of your goals and for next year planned out with a plan of what you need to do each day to hit those goals. So once again, if you want to download it for free, it is goals mastery2026.com and with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. This is the exclusive table with the view. This is your name on the list. This is three times points on dining with Chase Sapphire reserve and a $300 dining credit, Chase Sapphire Reserve. Now even more rewarding. 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