According to the World Health Organization, roughly 70% of people globally will experience trauma in their lifetime. How that impacts life can vary from person to person. In Episode 4, Part 1 of 3 of Finding Your Balance: A Mental Health Podcast presented by Peace River Center and Southeastern University, Kirk and Tiffani discuss what trauma is and how it can affect someone.

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Thank you for joining us today for part one of our three part series on trauma

Welcome, and this is your first time listening you're joining myself Tiffany Fritzsche.

I'm a licensed mental health counselor and my co -host Kirk Kirk say your last name

for us fast hour fast hour Kirk is a licensed clinical social worker and we are

talking today about trauma If this is your first time Kirk and I meet on a regular

basis to talk about mental health, how it intersects with mental illness, and also

how we together can work to reduce the stigma of mental illness and partner to

bring support and education to ourselves and to people around us. So today we're

talking about a buzzword, trauma. I think everywhere we look, we see or hear or

read about the impacts of trauma in children and adolescents and adults, especially

with the implications related to COVID. So Kirk, I know with your role in crisis

services at Peace River Center, a community mental health agency serving Polk Highlands

in Hardee County, I would say the majority of what you see is trauma, right? - Yeah,

through our mobile crisis response team.

People are in crisis for various reasons, but in having any type of emotional

distress, a lot of it is trauma -based, something way back or fairly recent even.

It doesn't have to be years and years ago, it could be something fairly recent.

Some of the additional work that I do with trauma has to do with my work in field

traumatology. As a field traumatologist I'm able to work with individuals after a

disaster situation primarily and and go into those communities and work with folks

who for example like hurricanes we know hurricanes here in Florida and along the

Gulf Coast and the Atlantic seaboard you you people we have weather that comes

through and does some some some damage and Going off to Mississippi or New Orleans

after hurricanes like Katrina that came through sometime now. Wow.

So going into those communities and helping people to start the recovery process and

trying to reframe their experience so that it doesn't become something that that

debilitates them in day -to -day life. - And trauma, it is a buzzword, and I think

it's a buzzword for reason. You know, when you experience trauma, it can make you

more vulnerable to developing a mental illness. It can also make you more vulnerable

to developing a physical illness. Trauma can manifest in your body. We have found

through research in a variety of ways. I know that, so my work at Peace River

Center, I'm the director of children's services, and so one of the things that we

do for all of our patients is assess for trauma history. That's one of the first

conversations that we have. And I think it's one of the most important conversations

because what has happened to us definitely affects how we see the world.

It affects how we respond to the world, how we respond to future circumstances

sometimes. And so it's so important to understand where someone's coming from in

order to get them to where they want to go. So Kirk, working in what you've done

and experiencing the experiences that you've had, what ways have you seen trauma

manifest in people? - So it comes in many forms actually.

There are those that

get catatonic to use a fancy word.

Basically, they freeze up. They can't move forward. That's one of the highend worst

kind of conditions where they cannot function at that point. They can't make a

decision. They barely remember their name. So you've got that aspect of it, but it

comes out in irritability, anger towards those you love,

it can come into just self -destructive behaviors, over -drinking,

overeating, you know, just not caring about anything in worst case scenarios,

and it's not that they don't care, they do,

they've just had their senses heightened and

squashed on by the experience and that replays in our brain,

there's a place in our brain where that memory stays and then it latches on to

emotions and things just kind of grow from there and people do get stuck and part

of the work you and I do with children and with adults and whether it's through

the crisis work that I do and the ongoing work you do in outpatient therapy with

your services, Tiffani is, you know, we start to help people reframe the experience

because I do think there are some people that get involved in treatment and think,

okay, this is going to go away. Well, treatment doesn't take it away, doesn't take

the experience away. What treatment does is soften the blow of that memory of what

occurred so that you can process it and move forward,

getting unstuck, basically. So let's jump back quickly to,

you know, I think a really key question, what is trauma. So when I explain trauma

to families or whenever I'm doing a training, I break it down and it's called the

three E's. And I know this is something that we've talked about before. So the

three E's of trauma, you've got the event, you've got the experience and you've got

the effect. And the event can look like a lot of things. I know, you know, you

and I have, sometimes our day -to -day job is a little bit different because my work

is mainly with children and families, but we can see abuse and neglect, that's a

big one. - Yep. - Sometimes we see,

you know, the death of a loved one, sometimes we see, you know, a loss of a job,

loss of housing, you mentioned, you know, the hurricanes, absolutely a natural

disaster would classify as a trauma. I know I'll share a personal story a couple of

years ago. My house, for some reason, it caught on fire. And I had two small

children at the time, one wasn't even walking, he was an infant, the other one was

less than five. And I remember thinking, I wonder how this is gonna affect them.

Everyone was okay, we woke up in the morning, my daughter actually, she had wet the

bed and we were in a potty training and so I'm like, ah, you're right. And You

know showering and doing all the things and everybody's dressed and ready to go and

we would not have been ready had she not had her accident and so you know we're

about to walk out the door You know to get ready for you know work to leave and

then the alarm goes off and we're like well That's weird and then so I'm thinking

you know because the alarm like you don't know what's triggering the alarm And so

then someone was like banging on the doors, and I'm like oh my goodness is 7 130

boundaries, please like why is the door and so we thought well That's you know very

unusual and so my husband's like let me go see what's going on And he looks

outside he you know walks out the back door and our roof is on fire Kirk our

entire roof And I remember thinking huh, oh that's gonna impact our day And so you

know we did what we had to do the fire department came out the fire was out You

know in no time at all, and I remember just thinking in the back of my mind as a

children's therapist, right? Huh, I wonder how this is gonna impact them. I wonder,

you know, the little baby, you know, not even walking, can't even talk, you know,

baby, baby, but my daughter, she was, I think she was maybe, she might have been

three and a half maybe, and she was fine, you know, totally fine.

She ran up to the fire chief and she demanded that he go back to the house to

get her bike, because that was a priority. - Yep. - And the firefighters came out,

and what was so cool that I didn't realize at the time is that they actually keep

a bag of toys on their fire trucks for just an occasion as this. And so they gave

both of them stuffed animals and they gave them frisbees and they gave them things

to play with while they were kinda stuck outside waiting. And what a trauma

informed, you know, approach to not only meet the needs of let me put your house,

you know, out of the fire, like let's, you know, stop the fire, but also let me

give you a toy. Let me give you something to like feel like, huh, like I'm okay.

And so I watched them very closely because, you know, as a therapist, we're

constantly analyzing everyone. And I remember just kind of like watching for like,

For like how is she gonna be what's gonna happen? You know just being extra mindful

of her and Would you believe that the only major reaction that she had?

Was later that day a friend of ours let us you know stay in her house And so you

know we went over there You know and getting cleaned up and the shower in her

house didn't have like a handheld like attachment And so my daughter you know at

our house you take the thing off the shower head you could wash their hair, you

know, to keep the water out of their eyes. That showerhead did not. It was just

like a stationary one. And so as I was washing her hair, the water got in her

eyes and the breakdown happened. The tears and the screaming and all of the

emotional just excess of that day came out and it came out when she was getting

her hair washed. You know, no complaining about the toys, no fear about the house.

It was that. And, you know, trained as a, you know, a clinician, you know, I, you

know, I'm specialized in trauma. I thought, what a good reminder that people go

through things and they react to things and you don't know what's going to be the

trigger. Exactly. Right? And some people go through things and you think, well, how

are they still standing, right? And they are. And then some people go through things

and you're like, "Are you kidding me?" Pull it together again, right? Which we would

never as clinicians say that out loud, right? But I know that, you know, that event

is whatever the event is, but the experience is different per person,

right? Exactly. And so then you have this experience, how does it affect me? How am

I emotionally affected? How am I physically affected, but then you have, you know,

the effect of, you know, it's natural to have a short -term effect. Okay,

well, now I've got to figure out, you know, what am I going to do next, and now

I'm angry because I don't have this, or, you know, just, you know, those short -term

effects of finding my new normal after whatever this is, and the amount of time it

takes to find your new normal is going to vary depending upon how impactful that

event was. Right. And it's a ripple effect, too. - It doesn't stay stationary.

It permeates throughout. - In a big way. And sometimes you don't realize how that

ripple is gonna affect you until the ripple part comes up and then back down on

top of you. And then you have the long -term effects, right? And sometimes you don't

even realize those long -term effects are happening until you start to notice some

deficits. And I think when we think about what is trauma, how does trauma impact

us? This is a really complex issue. - It is. - It's not a buzzword, right? It's 50

buzzwords all combined. And so what I'd like, if you don't mind, maybe we can just

kind of talk about what you've seen in these long -term effects of trauma.

And when is it, okay, I've developed my new sense of normal and Yeah, this is hard

and I'm gonna have a lot to navigate over the next couple of days or weeks or

months But but I'm gonna be okay versus I'm not okay,

and I don't even realize I'm not okay. Right, right? And lots of times, you know

In the situation you described with your daughter with Washing the hair and the soap

getting in the eyes and it just opened the gates to let all that emotion kind of

let loose. We protect ourselves. We have this armor that we wear after it gets

thicker if you've experienced something traumatic in your life.

And then something happens that gets through the armor and it's just you're right.

You don't know what that person has experienced at that in time,

that all of a sudden, they're just breaking down in front of you. Again, it doesn't

have to be a month after the event or a few days after the event. It could be a

year or more.

Somebody adjusts. When it's that far out from the issue or the

crisis event. You know, it's hard to point back to that. When I talk about trauma and talk with

folks in the workshops that I do, one of the things I tell people is that,

you know, this is one of the few mental health diagnoses you have something that

has to have occurred or a series of something. So it isn't just one event. It

could be cumulative events. And so, and we like to process things as humans to have

a cause and effect. This is one of the few areas where there is a cause and

effect that we can kind of point to. And again,

not just one event, it could also be a series of events that builds up over time

and depends on how you address it. And then it's one of those memories that gets

seeded into the deeper parts of our brain.

Hippocampus works with memory. So I prefer to the hippocampus as a sloppy secretary

because it holds on to those memories and keeps them there. And then something comes

along and then goes, "Oh, what does the color blue is reminding me of something and

the hippocampus pulls out this event, which was traumatic and all of a sudden you're

anxious, you're breaking out in sweats, you're getting irritable and angry and you

can't concentrate, you can't focus, and that's at a proportion with what a typical

reaction would be for whatever the situation is, right? Correct. You could be sitting

in a classroom and then all of a sudden you're getting irritable with somebody

clicking their pen or overly sensitive to comments being made,

things like that, and people cope in very different ways. One of the key symptoms

to PTSD, post -traumatic stress disorder, has to do with avoidance.

So people do avoid something that reminds them of the event. And even then, there

are things that trigger because there's a whole sensory experience that takes place,

especially around our memories, you know, you've got the sight, sound, taste, feel,

you know, all of that can come into play and, you know, it can bring up that

memory at odd moments, and you're like, "What's going on?

I don't understand." So you get confused, you can't focus, and people don't like

that feeling, so they'll turn to things that make them feel better for that moment

such as alcohol or even drugs and that can develop into something worse and then we

see lots of folks who become addicted to those items substance and get into

substance abuse and a lot of substance abuse issues probably got their start after a

traumatic event and then gets diagnosed. And sometimes people think okay the the

substance is right or the alcohol but it's not always that. Sometimes it's food,

right? Sometimes disordered eating. Sometimes it's the avoidant behavior of I know I

should do this but I'm just gonna sleep. I know I should do this. I know I have

this deadline but this pressure this anxiety is triggering you know that reaction

like what you were talking about this paper that's due or this you know deadline

for work and I cannot deal with that right now so I'm gonna sit on my couch and

watch four episodes of something you know four hours worth when I could have already

been done with the assignment but I can't bring myself to do it because it's almost

that paralysis of the mind of like I just need to escape. Well it's a flood of

emotions that come out of nowhere and it's what do I do with this and it's

overwhelming and avoiding that moment, avoiding that feeling that way,

I'm going to binge watch whatever is on Netflix this day. Well,

the other thing that I have found and tell me if this has been true for your

experience is that sometimes, you know, going into that survival mode,

I think that our brains are so smart and I think our bodies are so smart and they

have you know Built -in checks and balances to protect us sometimes to our own

detriment And I think that there's a sense of nope I can't handle that right now

like nope not gonna happen And so like you say you shut down and you get into

this survival mode of I do not have the emotional energy To deal with So I'm gonna

put it on a shelf. I'm gonna put it in a box because I have to survive and you

don't have the luxury of Processing because I have to survive and you have to get

through it and then hopefully There's this safeguard to where Once you get through

your day or once you get through whatever that deadline is then you can take a

break You can decompress you can unpack and you can process it But for a lot of

us, that time never happens, right? And so then that processing doesn't happen,

and trauma is not always your friend. Trauma is not waiting for a convenient time

to pop up. It pops up whenever it wants, like in class with the pen clicking. I

know for me, to self -disclose, I lost my dad when I was 15.

We actually had a house fire growing up, and my dad was fire. I mean, we lost

everything that we owned. And, you know, I did the work. I thought that I had

processed through it appropriately, you know, as much as you can. Right. And then I

thought I was fine. And then I remember on my wedding day, boom,

there it was. There it was. And, and even, you know, I'd had those conversations

of, you know, those, who's going to walk me down the aisle or, you know, who's

going to do this? And we figured it out. Like, who's going to the first dance

going to be? So all those conversations had happened, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm

fine. And then I remember that morning I thought, no, I'm really not fine,

but it had been such a long time. Like I'm trying to think how long I've been

married. This is embarrassing. I can't remember exactly the years right now. Math is

hard, Kirk. But I mean, over a decade of like, I thought I was okay. And I think

Sometimes that's such a good reminder that sometimes anniversaries will happen or big

life events, and then I thought I was okay for a while, and then I had my first

child. And this big realization of, you know, growing up, both of my grandfathers

had passed away before I was born. And I grew up with wonderful grandmothers that

adored me and all the things, right? But I had never had a grandpa. And I can

vividly remember growing up being 9 years old 10 years old thinking my kids are

gonna be so lucky because they're gonna have a grandpa And I don't have a grandpa

and all of my classmates have grandpas and they do grandpa things and it's gonna be

awesome You know like but like that's what I vividly remember sitting by my

fireplace thinking like this is gonna be the coolest thing for them ever I can't

wait to have babies and then I forgot all about that and then I remember when I

had my first child, that memory came back in a flood. And I remember thinking like,

"Oh, man. Oh, well, that stinks." You know, they're not going to have my dad as a

grandpa. No, I was so fortunate enough that my husband, his father, is alive, and

he has been the best grandpa above and beyond. And so, like, my kids,

They do have that, but I remember thinking like it's so interesting that even when

you've done the work And even when you believe you know the best of your ability

that you've processed the trauma It still comes up sometimes with life experiences,

and I think well How do you handle that because I think it's not enough to

acknowledge that you've gone through trauma Which that is a step for sure, right? I

think the other side of that is What do you do when it pops up?

How do you allow the memory to come because that's part of your story, right?

Without allowing that memory to control your emotions and without allowing that memory

to control your actions because we are not victims, right? We are survivors of our

circumstances and we are overcomers of those circumstances. I will not be a victim.

And So how do I get to a place to where my trauma is a part of who I am,

because it is, but it doesn't hold me back from who I can be. And so I know for

me, the biggest thing has been to find joy in today.

To find joy in tomorrow, because there is sadness everywhere that you look, there

is. But there is also abundant one if you look for that as well right exactly

exactly thank you for joining us today if you enjoyed our show please hit that like

and subscribe button and if you or somebody you know is struggling with any type of

trauma here in central Florida if you call us locally at 863 -519 -3744 or you can

call the national number 988