92. Reclaiming Your Life and Identity After Trauma + PTSD feat. Michele Rosenthal

Mar 25

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Today's guest is Michele Rosenthal—a Certified Professional Coach, Board Certified Trauma and PTSD Hypnotist, Licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming AND a trauma and PTSD survivor herself. She is also an award-winning trauma/PTSD blogger, award-nominated author, and keynote speaker as well as a Trauma Recovery Specialist and Mental Health Advocate. In this episode, we discuss Michele's journey, the implications of our trauma definition, the benefits of an integrative (mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual) recovery approach, overcoming trauma addiction, and the 4 steps of healing.

Michele's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michele.rosenthal/

Michele's Website: https://www.mytraumacoach.com/

SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC

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🛋This week's episode is sponsored by Teen Counseling. Teen Counseling is an online therapy program with over 14,000 licensed therapists in their network offering support with depression, anxiety, relationships, trauma, and more via text, talk, and video counseling. Head to teencounseling.com/shepersisted to find a therapist today!

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About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: Welcome to she persisted. I'm your host Sadie Sutton. Every Friday, I post interviews about mental health, dialectical behavioral therapy and teenage life. These episodes break down my mental health journey, teach skills to help you cope with life and showcase testimonials from individuals, including teens, just like you, whether you've struggled yourself or just want to improve your mental fitness.

This podcast is your inspiration to live a life you love and keep persisting.

Hello? Hello. And welcome back to another episode of she persisted. This is going to be a short intro because. COVID I made it almost two years into the pandemic. Almost one year into college. We didn't make it all the way I tested positive on Monday. Hence the delay in the episode going up, but it is a good interview this week.

I can't wait for you guys to listen.

Today's guest is Michelle Rosenthal. She is a trauma recovery specialist and mentor a speaker author, and more.

Michelle is not only a PTSD expert from the educational sense. She is actually a Penn graduate, which is so cool, but she also survived PTSD herself. So we dive deep into this episode into her story. What recovery was like, what works for her, what she sees working for patients, the approaches she takes and so much more if you know someone that has.

PTSD. If you want to learn more about it, if you're like, well, have I experienced a trauma? What exactly does that mean? This is the episode for you. And as always, if you enjoy the episode, make sure to leave a review on apple podcasts and Spotify. If you are at listening and share on social media, make sure to tag me at, at cheap resisted podcasts for a little repost and a shout out.

And with that, let's dive in.

I am so excited to have you on She Persisted

Michele: I'm so excited to be here. You know, it Sadie, when I, when I read about you, when I saw what you were doing, one of the things that so popped out to me as holy cow, or how would my life have been different if I had become as proactive as you, when I was a teen struggling with mental health issues.

So I just. So much admiration for what you're doing and I'm excited to chat with you.

Sadie: Yeah. Thank you so much. That means a lot to hear. Um, I'm really excited for today's episode. We're going to talk a lot about PTSD and traumas and microtraumas and all of that kind of stuff. I think it's something that's really, really relevant right now where we're consuming more content than we ever are.

And I think we, we continue to broaden this idea of. Makes a trauma and what can be a traumatic experience. And so something that's so many people are impacted by. Um, but just start, I would love to hear your story about how you started working within the therapy and, um, treatment

Michele: world. Such an accident, an accident safety.

I never intended to be doing any of this. I knew, you know, when I was very young, I, I, at the age of seven, I knew I was a writer. And, um, because that's, that's when I started writing short stories, I was eight when I wrote my first novel. And so. Pretty much, really my whole little life up until the age of 13 thought, I'm going to be a writer.

I'm going to be a writer. And then I had this horrific trauma happen and a near death experience. That was part of it. And when I came out of that, I was not the same person who I was before. And I was very aware that, you know, physically I was the same person. Um, but emotionally, mentally, spiritually, not that I had words for all of that back then, because this is 1981.

Um, I knew that I was different and that something wasn't right. And I didn't know how to talk about it because I was terrified my trauma. I had a, an allergic reaction to a general antibiotic that I'd taken for just a basic infection. And it literally turned me into a full body burn victim. I spent several weeks in a quarantined burn unit, ICU room.

It was awful. And you know, when we're 13, we don't have coping skills for trauma. Right. And nobody teaches you what to do. With your response to trauma, you know, like when. When we're in kindergarten, everyone teaches you the alphabet you learned to start to read. And in the first grade you learn what to do with numbers, and nobody sits you down in the third, fourth or fifth grade and says, look, here's the manual for your brain.

And here's, what's going to happen when bad things happen and it's normal. So instead. The anxiety, the fear, the depression, the psychological and emotional pain, the grief, the loss, the sadness, and this enormous amount of guilt that I, that I carried. Um, so. Many years went by 24 years of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Went by while I banged around a life that was completely dysfunctional because I had all of these PTSD symptoms that nobody diagnosed because in 1980, His first year that PTSD became a diagnosis. Yeah. Oh my gosh. They're

Sadie: literally learning about that. And, um, my psych class, we're talking about when that shift took place, that it became an actual diagnosed.

Michele: And what, what are you learning? What do they say

Sadie: about it? It was, it's interesting because, um, we're talking about how it initially was like kind of categorized with other disorders and how, um, it was so associated with this trauma, but there's also a huge percentage of people that will experience the same trauma, but, but recover or will not experience PTSD initially, but then have it come at a later time.

Um, and we're talking a lot about. Makes a diff the differences between individuals that experience a trauma and then develop PTSD and what goes on there, what are the risk factors, um, and what can make that worse? That's

Michele: fascinating. You know, the research shows that up to 70% of all adults in the United States will have a severe trauma in their lifetimes.

Crazy Emily, up to 20% of. We'll end up with PTSD. So in your class, what did they say is the difference? Like, why, why me? Why did I struggle for almost 30 years with PTSD, but somebody else who had the same experience. Came out and was fine.

Sadie: Yeah. It's really interesting. We're talking a lot about the internal experience and kind of your secondary emotions, the primary emotions that you're experiencing.

So like, if you're feeling like fear and response to a trigger. If you then secondarily are like, why am I feeling this way? I should just be processing and moving on. And what is the issue here that really like elongates the emotional experience and can make things a lot worse and can lead to PTSD? Um, when there, there is that shame with what you're experiencing and the emotions aren't like processed through and worked through.

Michele: Well, that's very interesting. I think that's fascinating because what you're also really talking about is self-criticism self-judgment and I find that survivors with PTSD are hyper of themselves. Really, really not nice to, to, to ourselves. I don't know why I'm saying them because my clients, but it's.

Yeah. Because I'm answering what you asked me for almost 30 years, I struggled with PTSD. And when I entered me, you know, a long time to get help, because I didn't, I couldn't talk about what had happened to me, so I didn't want help. And, you know, I'm yeah, I'm sure. Everybody who's listening. You all know when you first know you need help, you don't want to admit it.

So by the time a series of events happened that made it clear to me. I was going to die if I didn't get help. And I went and, uh, after several years of. Very circuitous kind of recovery process. I came out the other side and how I got here today on this podcast with you is because back then in 2007, I just wanted to help other people.

I realized it took almost 30 years for me to heal from something that's totally treatable. I just lack the information and the resources and the knowledge and the team to help me. And I thought, you know, if I had had. I could've healed three decades ago. Instead I lost almost 30 years of my life. To really horrible dysfunction and that just seemed wrong.

And so I decided, well, I know all this stuff now, let me see who else I can educate. And let me see. It became a quest to help other people heal faster than I did. And at first that started out with just a blog and then the blog went viral and people started asking me for more information. So I created a website and then.

More people came on, the website, won an award, and then more people started asking me to help them personally, at which point I decided I can't just keep talking about like what I know I have to go get trained and certified if I'm really going to step into this space of, of helping other people in a more personal way.

And so that's how I came to be a trauma recovery specialist because. Of that weird unintentional thing that happened when I just decided to start sharing the education that I have, that I wish I had known. And I thought, well, let me see if it will help somebody else. It's funny how that works. Right.

Sadie: It's so true.

And I remember the exact same thing after my treatment journey. I was. Why didn't I know this earlier, especially with things like emotion, education, and coping with depression and all of these skills I learned, it was like, if I had known how to cope with these urges and these, these emotions, like two years ago, it would have been completely different situation.

And so I wanted to share those and so complete parallel there. I would love to hear about the education. That was a game changer for you. And I know there are so much to be learned and to explore about PTSD, but are there specific things that you think most individuals are not aware of, that they should be about the PTSD recovery process?

Michele: Absolutely. Um, so first I think it goes back to something you were already talking about when I first started working in this, in this, uh, Industry, if you will, back in 2007, the DSM four was much more strict in its diagnostic criteria for PTSD than the DSM five became. Right? So there's been a huge shift in how people really understand and identify and define trauma.

I used to have my own podcast. And I interviewed all of the greats in the trauma recovery world. Everyone from vessel vendor called to Peter Levine to David, Sally. All the neuroscientists, all of this. And one of the people that I interviewed, and this was around the time that the DSM five was being created.

And, uh, it was Judy Crane. And she's the founder of the refuge, which is this wonderful trauma recovery place actually here in Florida, where I am. And she said that the baseline definition of trauma is any experience that is less than good. That feels less than. Well, that changes everything. Doesn't it?

Because when I started and with the DSM four, you know, PTSD, you had to have experienced something really life-threatening and life altering. And. T to shift to a place where we're really opening and widening the lens. So, number one, I would say to everybody really be aware of what trauma is because it's not the, the, the easily spotted life, life life-threatening experience.

Sometimes I remember I went to the trauma conference in 2009 in Boston with Dr. Bessel van der caller. And I remember him saying. And one of his lectures that the number one leading cause of PTSD in children was neglect. Wow. And I remember being surprised, like there's no nothing happens, right? There's no abuse, that's physical, mental, emotional, sexual.

There's no abuse that precursor. But when you think about it, it was really about a lack of safety. It was like the essence of the lack of safety. You don't know where your next meal is coming from. You don't know who's going to take care of you. That's what neglect really is. And not really. If we think about how do you define PTSD?

Yes. It's, you know, trauma is an, an experience that overwhelms your ability to cope. We can say it in so many different ways, but to me, PTSD is really a complete. Have any sense of self-efficacy safety and control. And when you live in that space, whether it comes from something that everyone can understand would be life altering or no one can understand, it doesn't matter how, and this is the second point.

So the first point is you have to really understand the definition of trauma as wide and yeah. Number two it's personal. There is. So much evidence that trauma happens. And as you were alluding to earlier, everyone makes the same moment differently. You know, I was, uh, I was in Manhattan on nine 11 and all of us the same experience that day.

And all of us had an intensely individual experience that day and how we all moved through it was completely different. So number one, you have to be really clear on what trauma is and. How you experienced it. Number two, you have to be really willing to step into that place of understanding that regardless of what somebody else thinks your experience of trauma should quote unquote, be the only experience matters is what is, does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah.

Sadie: Yeah. And that's so interesting. And it's funny, you mentioned. The experience of nine 11, because we were looking at the study that was done of what percentage of people develop PTSD based on what environmental factors were there. Like, did they see it on TV? Were they close? Were they injured?

Where a fan was a family member injured and it's really playing with that idea of like what level of safety was threatened. And then after the fact, like, how did they. And process that situation.

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What do you wish people knew about trauma, recovery and healing from PTSD?

Michele: Oh, here's the number one thing.

And it's the thing. Nobody, nobody ever told them. Um, and you don't ha you don't hear it very much. Um, I'm going to tell you two things, actually, and I think it's like number one, a and number one B. So no matter, because I think they're both that important number one is trauma. Recovery is not a conventional.

It is an integrative process. So there's not a single person heals PTSD and talk therapy. Even Dr. VanDerKolk will say that this is not my theory. This is like a fact, we are a culture that. So highly of conventional therapy that I feel that all too often, people get stuck there. Neurologically speaking, the more you tell your story, the more you are strengthening and embedding and activating your trauma, neural pathways.

And yet that's what talk therapy teaches us to do. No, I think it's immensely important to be able to put words and language to your feeling and your experience. It's incredibly important to be able to speak it and get it out of your head and into the world so that there's distance between you and that, but there is a time and a place for that.

And then after you're in that moment that you've accomplished that ability. Then you need to move on because trauma affects every part of who you are. I like to say we have four realms, the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual and healing has to happen in all four of those places. So in order to do that, you really need an integrative path that addresses the physical because your body holds the memory of that trauma.

Even if your body was not involved in it. You know what I mean? By that? Emotional abuse. You might say, well, nobody ever hit me, so I wasn't abused. Not true. Not true at all. All abuse is physical abuse because your body is taking that energy in and creating a physiological response to your experience and that encodes and the memory of every cell.

So every trauma is physical. Every trauma is emotional. So. I think it's really important for people to start thinking about PTSD recovery as an integrative process. It's not about being alternative or conventional. It's about being integrative. So you have both sides covered that's one a and then one B is at the center of all trauma recovery.

And this is true, whether you have PTSD or not doubly true for PTSD. In my opinion, this is solely my theory, but this is how I approach it all. This is how I healed. So I believe in it deep. Um, and I'll tell you how I got here because I studied, I was all alone in my recovery. I did five years of talk therapy.

I fell off a cliff of depression. I was in a worse space than I'd ever been, and I didn't know what to do. And so I thought I've, I don't know who can help me because. If therapy doesn't work, this is back in the nineties. I didn't know where else to go. What else to do? So I decided to research trauma and I started reading all of the theories on trauma psychology from the 1880s when it began with Sharko and Janae all the way forward to best bull VanDerKolk.

And, um, the thing that I came away from after months of research and stuff, Was it at the real center of PTSD and trauma recovery are two things. Number one, trauma addiction, addiction being defined as a compulsion to do something that, you know, isn't good for you, but you just can't. And for those of us with PTSD, it's, it's this compulsion to keep revisiting the past, being driven by the past, connecting to the past, imagining the past, we know it's not good, but we can't stop.

So the trauma addiction needs to be dealt with, and that's not a consciously chosen thing. I mean, that's a whole other tangent, but I'm not saying that we're consciously choosing to do that. I'm just saying that it gets put in place because of unconscious and neurological physiological changes that occur because of the trauma.

So number one, the trauma addiction has to be overcome. And number two trauma puts in place and PTSD challenges, even more an identity crisis. You are not who you with. You cannot go back to who you were before. And if you have PTSD, you don't like who you've become. You. Don't like who you are. And yet you can't imagine who else to be.

And within that quandary is a real problem because if you are not anchored in an identity that feels good to you about who you are. It is very hard to have a life that works. So. Let me pause there. Cause once I get going Sadie, I you're asking amazing questions and they're, so I love

Sadie: it. I have heard like different parts of your, your perspective, but I, I, it's amazing.

And it's so interesting to hear and I would love to dive into the, the integrative approach to treatment and really understand what that is because obviously talk therapy. Isn't the answer, um, because it only addresses one part, but if you are. Presented with a client and you were taking it in an integrative approach to treating their PTSD.

What do

Michele: you do? I build a team immediately because I am, so I'm a board certified hypnotist. I am a master neuro-linguistic programmer and I am a certified professional coach. So as a trauma recovery specialist, I bring in a bunch of. I chose to be alternative as a practitioner because I feel that it's very easy to find someone to work with in the conscious realm of talk therapy, but the conscious world, a conscious realm of your mind is just 12 to 15% of your brain.

That's it. It's like this big, the other 85 to 88% of your brain is your unconscious. And that holds all of your longterm memories. All of your associations, your beliefs, all of your behaviors are driven by what your subconscious mind is doing. So we have to access that and talk therapy does a great job for accessing the conscious mind, but it's only in charge of your analytical, rational thinking.

It's only in charge of your short-term memory. So there's very little that can change on a deep, long lasting level by talking. So I immediately looked to build a team. I work with a lot of therapists, counselors. Well, it just is psychiatry lists that we refer back and forth. They'll bring me in, I'll bring them in if I think it's necessary.

And then from there you need a body worker. I love things like massage is great, but I, you know, there's yoga for trauma. Which I think is phenomenal really helps you get back in your body. PTSD survivors, often dissociate. I spent a lot of my years like that, so I know how important it is to be able to come back into your body.

And I think there's a lot that can be said for energy work. I love, you know, things like emotional freedom technique, tapping acupressure technique, and thought field therapy. Was a thought field therapy was my favorite personally, in my own recovery. And, and, and then I think there, there also, you know, trauma and tension releasing exercises, Dr.

David work, Dr. Peter Levine's work. These are so Matic experiencing. So I literally have practitioners in all of these things that are colleagues of mine, and I will bring them in to work. A client that I'm working with, or sometimes someone will reach out to me and say, look, I could feel it. My body is holding all of this and I'll immediately just refer them out to a body worker because that may be the place they need to start.

And I say to them, once you've done. Come back to me. And then we can reassess if what I'm offering is useful or if you've already finished what you needed to do, because there's no one size fits all recovery. So does that start to answer what

Sadie: you're wondering? Yeah, I think that's so interesting. And I would love to hear if there is like a, a step one per se.

I know everywhere. Processes different. We did touch on when you're first asking for help. You, you have to admit that you need help. Is there something like that where you have to admit that this is bigger than you? Is it getting rid of that addiction to the experience? What, what is step one and trauma.

Recovery. Yeah.

Michele: Step one. I think you're right. I, I always feel like, um, there are like four steps of trauma recovery. Step one is denying that you need help. Yeah. Step two is admitting you need help. Step three is knowing you need to do the work, but not wanting to do it. And step four is actually doing the work.

And this is partly why it takes so long because we have to move through all four of those levels. And some people move faster than others. So I was really slow. So, um, so my recovery took a long time, but, but there was also less education. So maybe, maybe everybody can move faster now. But I think once you get into it, And this is, you know, you're probably already learning this.

I mean, immediately you need to establish a sense of safety and control. Everybody says that, but having been said, I don't think that's always the first step. I don't think you can necessarily. Create a sense of safety and control right off the bat. If you have symptoms that are out of control, you're not going to just sit down and be like, oh yeah, I can create a sense of safety right now.

So to me, the most important thing to do when you decide to get help is to follow what feels right to you. Not what everybody else thinks you should. And I'll give you an, I'm not saying to disrespect anybody. I'm not saying to discount other people's advice. I'm saying that the better you feel, the faster you'll heal and there's nothing that feels good about.

I'm um, so you better do it in a way that feels congruent and aligned with who you are. So after five years of talk therapy, everyone just thought I needed a new therapist, but what I knew was I just needed to stop talking about it because talking about it, it was driving me insane. And I didn't know all that I know now about the neuroscience of why talking is the wrong thing to do at a certain point.

I just knew it was not right for me. And so while everyone kept telling me, you need another therapist, I said, no, I'm not, I'm not doing that. I'm going to figure out something else. So you have to trust yourself while you're being ecologically safe and making sure you get the help you need. And what I did was start researching how it's about fear safety.

It's not necessarily about safety and control right away. I don't think it's about how are you going to. Face your fear basically. And the safety and control comes into play in how you do it, the modality that you choose, the practitioner that you choose and how they support you in that process to me, because I think when we make blanket statements, like everybody needs to create a safe space.

I don't think everybody's capable of creating a safe space right off the bat. And so I don't like absolutes. The only absolute I will say is that you have to believe in who you're working with. And we know that you've probably studied like 90% of all therapeutic outcomes is from the therapeutic relationship.

So to me, that's the most important thing to nail. And after that, then you need to be able to figure out how are you going to attend to your fear? Because that's where the real problem lies.

Sadie: What do you think makes the difference between like short-term recovery and relapse versus long-term recovery from PTSD and truly healing?

If, if that's the word that would be used?

Michele: That's such a cool question. Let me think about that. The difference between short-term and long-term oh, I'll give you a great example. So it was in talk therapy for two years and, um, and. And we were using some EFT, some tapping and some, and I know we used EMDR and I got worse.

So we stopped that and we just stuck with an E EFT for awhile. And, um, and, and things seemed really good. I had been incapacitated. I couldn't work. I was talking and finally like putting language to all of this and feeling like I had a person that I felt safe talking to and doing all the tapping, I was able to go back to work and that seemed amazing.

And like, I'm done, right? Like I don't have to go into those deep, dark, scary places. Look at me. I'm amazing. I'm back at work. I'm functional. This is awesome. And, uh, and, and so I started showing up in therapy and I don't know if you've ever done this, but you talk about everything. That's not related to what you need to talk about.

Sadie: Yes.

Michele: Right. And, and I know when my clients start doing that, I call them on it. My therapist didn't call me on it. So we spent like six months talking about creativity and writing and all kinds of other stuff that had nothing to do with any of the work I needed to be doing. And at the end of those six months, I got a grant.

To go be a writer in residence at, at, at a program in Vermont for the summer. And I was like, dude, I'm outta here. I'm so fine. I'm wonderful. I'm amazing. I got this grant here I go. And I left and I don't know if he knew if my therapist knew. But I knew I'd been faking it for the past six months. I know that I'd been deflecting because I didn't want to talk about the deeper, darker stuff.

That was still really terrifying me about who I was. And so, so I would say that the difference between long-term and short-term. To a large extent comes down to how honest you are with yourself. And if you've pushed yourself to go all the way, because I'm sure it won't surprise you to hear that. You know, within two years I was worse than I was before, because I wasn't done and I was trying to keep up.

And then you just start going back to all of your old coping mechanism. Because you're not finished and you do, what's familiar and all that old coping mechanisms, self destructive, self abusive kind of stuff. It's just waiting for you to feel a little bit of weakness and it pops right back in and says, here, here, here's how you handle this.

Yeah. But different than with a longterm is you push yourself through the worst part of it. And you come out the other side and you can breathe. I'll tell you a funny story. Um, so hypnosis and NLP neuro-linguistic programming saved my life. I was suicidal at the time that I was like, every nothing has worked.

I don't even believe in hypnosis, but I don't know what else to do. And then either going to like end it or I'm going to go to this appointment. And I went to the appointment and, um, and it turned out to be like the thing that I needed at the right time with the right person and within, um, like six weeks, I was just waking up feeling so calm.

So, you know, my, my first book is a memoir of trauma and recovery, and there's a chapter called weird state of bliss because I just was waking you up in this weird state of bliss every day. And I called my practitioner and I said to her, something's really wrong. And she said, what is it? And I said, well, Every day, I just wake up feeling so calm.

And I, you know, I used to wake up terrified every day, but in this weird state of bliss and she said, well, what's wrong with that? And I said, well, I feel so calm. It's making me anxious. And it was just ridiculous because it felt so bizarre to me, but that's how you start to know you've really changed.

Right. And. It's holding onto that and expanding that and deepening it and creating an identity around, you know, my, my second book, your life after trauma is all about identity and the process of reclaiming identity in the, in the trauma and PTSD recovery process. So when you get to that place where you feel better and you build an identity around it, that's how you know, long-term, long-term.

Gains and outcomes because now it's not just like, well, you feel a little bit better, but you're essentially the person. And sometimes hiding that you haven't really changed all that much versus really pushing through the hardest hairiest scariest place to get to the other side and then build a whole identity around that.

Now you're grounded there. Now you're eager it in to that new version of you and that. Powerful because your self-definition is a large part of what drives all of your behaviors, your reactions and actions. So that doesn't make me question. Did I answer it to your satisfaction?

Sadie: Absolutely. Now that's so, so, so interesting.

And I would love to hear. If you think we talked about like the, how safe you are making yourself feel after, after a trauma, do you think that the severity of the trauma you experience can impact how long you're struggling for and the degree to which you're, you're struggling with PTSD?

Michele: I know. I don't. I mean, I guess obviously you could say yes, but I don't think so because so much of who we are is the programming that came into us between the ages of zero and seven you're you're a psychology major, you know, that already and, and studies show that the child's brain 90, some odd percent of the time is in theta waves.

Beta brainwaves is deep trance. That's what hypnosis. So, you know, we have alpha, which is, you know, light trance. We have beta, which is where you and I are right now, conscious. And then you go, well, all of them, we have Delta. So it beta alpha theta, Delta. Children are basically almost asleep. If you think about it, they have no filter.

Everything comes into them. Every offhand comment, every visual expression, the way every adult handles the major or minor sir gets wired in. So how are we experienced? A trauma is not just. Who we are. It's all of the stimulated that we've ever taken in that is creating the filters through which we see the world.

So in, in that respect, then everybody is so unique because of that. And then it impacts every single moment after.

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Are there ways to increase your, your resilience to these traumatic experiences that we all experience?

Michele: Yeah. Yeah. So let me tell you an interesting story. So new year's Eve, 2006. We had just moved from New York city down to Florida.

I had convinced my whole family, my brother and my parents to come. I needed to get out of the city. I knew, I just thought I was crazy because I didn't have a PTSD diagnosis. It had been about 23 years at that point. And, um, I knew. That I, I just, I needed to get to a beach. I felt like if I can get to the beach, I can figure this out.

So I convinced everybody to move to Florida. Um, I was not in an okay place. And, uh, we went to a, maybe a big major hotel here. It was our first new year's here. My brother was three years younger and my parents, we went to a huge party. Everybody's all dressed up, everybody's dancing and smiling and eating and partying.

And where. I'm in the bathroom in a stall, bawling my eyes out because another year is end date and I am just as crazy as ever. And another year is beginning, just as dark as the one I've just come on through. And I can't, I don't, I don't know how I'm going to continue living like this. And. You know, eventually people start banging on the stall door because you're taking too much time.

So I had to wipe off my face, dry my makeup, get back out into this party. And I grabbed my brother's hand and I just said dance with me. And I've, I've loved. I've always been a dancer since I was five. I just loved music. I loved the feeling of music in me. And um, so we get on the dance floor and about 20 minutes go by and I realized I'm feeling remarkably.

Like, everything that I was crying about is still true, but I'm feeling remarkably better. What is that? And another 20 minutes goes by and I'm very aware of. Of how different I am feeling I'm feeling better and better and better with every moment that passes. And I start trying to tune in like, what's going on.

I can't even figure out what is this feeling? What is this feeling? And I keep asking myself, what is this, this feeling? What is this feeling? And it took about an hour of dancing, just freestyle. To realize that the feeling I was feeling was joy, but I was so unused to feeling that way. And I hadn't been dancing in years.

Like when you're depressed, you don't hit the dance floor. So I was so unused to it. I was shocked that I could feel joy and a little, like a little light bulb went off to me and said, oh, Misha, you need to feel joy more often. This is what it does. Now back then, No, the science of joy. I didn't know that it doses you, that it creates dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, all of those good neurotransmitters that elevate your mood, that help you have the strength and the courage to do things that are difficult among other things.

Um, all I knew was I felt. And that I didn't want to kill myself. So I thought, okay, I need to dance every day. And I'm not kidding. Sadie. I had moved from Manhattan where I had worked in entertainment PR I was a publicist for nightclubs. So I was in my clubs all the time, but I didn't have the opportunity to dance.

I was working. So now I'm in this tiny little beach town and I'm thinking, well, I'm going to go dance every night. And then I realized there are no nightclubs here. Right there they're dance studios. So, so I signed up for a dance class every night of the week. And for two hours every night, whether I had slept or not, whether I had showered or not, whether I had spent the day crying or not, it didn't matter.

I made myself go because that's part of recovery, you have to commit and you have to be accountable and responsible to yourself. So I made myself go in a very interesting thing happened with that. Three months, the nightmare, the recurring nightmare that I had was happening less frequently. I was sleeping more.

I been sleeping. Big one to twos or asleep four, which was like a huge accomplishment to me. And I started to be more embodied because I was dancing. You have to like coordinate your mind and your body. And Dr. VanDerKolk talks about this a lot. He talks about how great Argentine tango is for PTSD recovery now, but back in 2007, that was the dance that I

Sadie: started doing.

Gosh, that's crazy.

Michele: Isn't that crazy? And here's the really funny thing. I fell in love with my dance instructor. That was back in 2007. He's still my dance partner today. He's well, he's my everything partner on, off the dance floor, because you just don't know where joy is going to lead you when you just place your intention in the idea.

I need to feel good. And if I can just feel good, I could probably. I could probably figure out how to heal. So for the first six months of dancing, I didn't try to heal. I didn't do any set dance. I just let myself practice engaging with something that felt good because that was unfamiliar. And here's the answer to your question?

I think Joel. And if that's not accessible because we all think it's not. So you don't have to start there, but just feeling good. You know, Dr. Rick Hanson talks about taking in the good, it only takes 17 seconds to create a new neural pathway. Now, if you were to take 17 seconds and make it last for five minutes, just think about how deep that neural pathway of feeling good becomes, and the brain operates on a use it or lose it.

Program. So the more you use the good neural pathways, the more you stop using the less than good neural pathways, the more the real estate of your brain starts to change. And so I started dancing in January and my recovery was complete by October. I didn't do anything from January until July. And then in August.

I, I tried to go back into the healing space by myself and it, like, I didn't know how to balance or hold myself in that space. And that's when I decided to go find a hypnotherapist as like, okay, this is my last shot. And, um, it was the dancing that made me have the courage to do that. And it was the dance thing that held me in a.

In a safe and contained space through the hardest part of my recovery, because I would do that hard recovery work and then I would go dance. And so I think it's really important to have that connection within yourself and to use the neuroscience of joy to elicit the strength and the courage. That you need to have to be able to get things done at the same time that you're giving your body and your brain, these good neurotransmitters that help elevate all of your capabilities in that recovery space.

Sadie: Yeah. Yeah. I love that so much. And I think that's huge. I remember a big part of my healing from depression was accumulating positives throughout my life and building relationships that made me feel good. Making me feel worse and planning moments of joy to look forward to. And that was a huge, huge, huge part of continuing to, to keep going.

I would love to hear what your favorite resources are for people that are struggling with PTSD or healing from a trauma, whether it's books or podcasts or different types of therapy, whatever it is that, that you really believe in and, and support, what are, what are those reasons?

Michele: So that's a, that's a fun question.

And I am integrative in my recommendations because of course you have to understand trauma. So of course you need to, I mean, Dr. Vander corporate writes great books, but they're very dense and they're very hard to read. If you are sleep deprived and concentration challenge, those of us would be DSDR. So, um, if you can, if you can tackle those, I took them slowly.

I re-read the same pair. 10 times. Cause I couldn't understand like hold it. Um, but, um, but, but then there are other authors that I feel are much easier to read like Beth, but Roth child Bellerose, napper stack, Sharon Salzberg, Peter Levine. Um, Rick Hanson. And I mean, there are just so many wonderful writers about trauma that are really normalizing it.

So I would say, you know, definitely do your research to find now, go onto Amazon and find who who's writing about PTSD. Pete Walker has a great book on complex PTSD. Which not everybody covers. So that's one thing is to educate yourself about trauma and PTSD. I mean, I've written three books, so definitely pop over to my trauma coach.com and take a look I've written.

Um, My first book was a memoir. So it gives you like the whole, you know, the good, bad, and the ugly of what trauma and PTSD looks like. But also what recovery looks like too. And then my second book was all about identity and how to create your post-trauma identity. And the third book is all about how to heal your PTSD.

Like literally that's the title heal your PTSD. So I think it's, you know, get on to Amazon and start looking at. Any of the resources that I've just mentioned, and it will start also connecting you to other resources in that category. But then I also think it's important to get out of there. You need to be able to connect to something outside of trauma.

And so I think. People like Tom bill, you has a great podcast called impact theory, Lewis, Howes, you know, the school of greatness. I think it's important to listen to things that are, that have nothing to do with trauma so that your brain starts to open itself up to. There is a world outside of trauma and there's really good stuff going on, Dr.

Joe Dispenza. I love his books. So, you know, it's, it's figuring out what other interests you have. And it's a parallel track. It's the trauma track, but it's also the, who are you track and, and bring into your trauma recovery things that are really personal to what turns you on. So what lights you up and maybe you don't feel turned on, or maybe you don't feel it.

Maybe. I feel like the tiniest little spark of interest in something follow that spark because it can lead you to a place that suddenly floods with light. And so I'm not a big proponent of, oh, you have to just stay with all these trauma resources, because I think it starts to get a little much after a while.

You know, what's wrong with you once you understand. You don't need to keep reading up about it. You should read other things and start opening yourself to, okay. Who, who else am I besides this? Because there's this, um, for, for your New York city listeners, you know, the museum of modern art is, uh, has the wonderful collection and my mom's an artist, so she's.

At all the museums all the time. He's a little overwhelming as a kid, but I appreciate it now. And there was this huge, huge, um, really big white canvas. It took up the whole wall. I'm not kidding. It was white paint on a white canvas and you could see the brush strokes. And then down in the lower right-hand corner was a black.

And I remember looking at that and saying to my mom, really like anybody call this art, like I could have done this, but it's the most beautiful mem uh, metaphor. Because as PTSD survivors, we see ourselves as the black dot and the rest of the white canvas is trauma. But the truth is, and what you realize and discover when you've reached your car.

Is that you are the white canvas and the trauma and the PTSD is the black guy. And that's really what it's all about. And getting to that moment comes from integrating your recovery team and integrating the resources and integrating your research and integrating all of how you feed yourself in a way that makes your world bigger because trauma and PTSD causes to collapse and condense and constrict our world.

How we try to stay safe. That's how we stay in control, but healing is about opening it up. So, so when you ask, what do I think people should be looking at in terms of resources? I think the world as a resource, because I think reconnecting to yourself, others and the world is really what trauma is all about.

And so you need to go wide and be big. And when you do that, you don't know. We're a tiny idea in a pottery class that you're taking leads to a huge breakthrough in your somatic experiencing, but you have to be open to having those kinds of experiences so that you can create the recovery process. That's right for you.

One of the most amazing things that I learned in this whole. Was that we are all alone and unique in our trauma experience. That's what you and I were talking about at the very beginning. And we are completely unique in our recovery process. There is no such thing as one size fits all, but in the middle, we're all universally the same, that PTSD, that trauma experience.

Completely the same. Now that doesn't mean that I have as many flashbacks as somebody else or that they have as many recurring nightmares as I did. What it does mean is that the feeling, the depression, the fear, the terror, the lethargy, the. The overwhelmedness if I could make up a word, um, that's the same.

And that's why every single person that sits down in my office, people will start to say, I know this will sound crazy, but, and I say that doesn't fly in here in this room. There's zero. Apologies because how you experiences it, how you experience it is what's true for you. And there's pretty much nothing.

I haven't heard because 15 years of doing this and having lived it for 30 years, myself, Got it. So, so I think it's really important. And I think the biggest point and the beauty of what you're doing is to let people know that they're not alone, that they are completely normal in what they're experiencing, and that there is a way out and they just have to find it and find the people to help them, which is not a straight path.

You know, my mom called my trauma recovery along and winding. 'cause it just went like this. It was like a lot of times you couldn't see around the corner and it looked grim, but, but eventually if you keep going, you'll find your way out. It's there. Yeah.

Sadie: Yeah. I love that so much. Where can listeners find you continue to consume your content and connect with you?

Michele: Sure. At my trauma coach.com, everything is there. There's a free audio, two. And your brain for peace and calm. So you just download load that right from the website. And, um, there are some blog posts. I just, I, for a long time I wrote a blog and then I didn't feel like writing. I've just started writing again.

So there's some new content up. We do a lot of social media and, uh, and you can connect with me just by sending me a note straight through the site. So. And that way we all stay connected. We're all in this together because we don't heal in isolation. We heal in community. And that's one of the most amazing things about what you're doing is you've created this great community that extends healing around the world.

So I thank

you

Sadie: for that. Thank you. I know this interview is going to be so helpful for, so, so, so many people and I found it so interesting and educating, so I can't thank you enough.

Michele: Thank you, Sadie.

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