Complex-PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving

so welcome everyone um I'm pretty excited about this uh the the the webinar that we're presenting tonight because I think that um what what we've got now is the opportunity for South Pacific to really stand at the the probably the Forefront of um uh dealing with developmental stress complex complex post-traumatic stress disorder we're still reaching around to describe um these symptoms but yet if if you have them if you've got uh If you experience what I'm about to talk about tonight then it is a a completely debilitating uh experience uh and it it it can be best summed up with our model here at South South Pacific so I I want to talk about uh what's what's coming through now that these symptoms are being I suppose looked at in in a different light and uh I always thought South Pacific and and and the program that bill and lra bought over from The Meadows um which is Pia Melody's uh uh model and and wanted to bring to it so sort of generously to Australia is is it allowed people to go in in depth um to uh to deal with the not just that secondary symptom that was traditionally looked at um now I'm just folks I'm just going to do a few things here all you'll see me tonight struggling as I I'll just mute people so it's just a if anyone's got their mic open if you can keep your and muted I don't know how that works for phones but uh we'll do our best so when when this model was was developed it was developed by P Melody and it was very experiential in nature and she WR reminds me very much of um Dr alen Shaw whose work at the moment about affc regulation and early childhood the first 1,000 days of life um and the impact that trauma has there is what P melody was trying to describe in the model when she talked about uh the wounded child and um and so what what what I'll I'll I'll move on to is just um I think what Pier brought to the table was was that we've got to become aware and when what we uh leared is survival skills not thriving skills when we had early childood trauma and and I've always loved this statement of of Kong's the until you make the UNC ious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate that's we I've heard so many people in 12 State meeting say I've got that you don't understand I've got that addictive personality I just got to find some phrase that sums up this thing that I am and And yet when you get down to it and you start to look at what those primary symptoms are as a result of Developmental trauma then all of a sudden the big picture comes to light and it's not that I was an organism predestined to be this genetics have some fact but that environmental impact is what derails us and certainly sends us fatefully down a path until we get conscious until we can uh sort of turn it around and that Consciousness uh you know the saying the examine life is is is no picnic it pmal and Breaking Free one of the resources I'll talk about tonight outlines that the first sort of year to two years in recovery is awful because as you start to become aware of and and become conscious of who we are then it can be really disorientating and as she says in the introduction to Breaking Free that it actually feels more normal to be in the disease than it does to be in the illness so if we if we move into that that model I I I I will be doing a webinar on the model so I'm excited about that um in the next couple of months I'm not sure if it's the next one but our website will tell you but essentially the the bottom of this model tells you the story and that's all I'll read and we'll move move on into this presentation and it it says that children need healthy parenting to develop and maintain attitudes and beliefs and that doesn't really sum up what we're talking about here because it's it's it's one sentence won't sum up even around self-esteem the the the the uh the Soul Murder as Bradshaw calls it when a little person doesn't get those basic needs met and the shame that it then carries and for the folks that have had their uh got these complex post-traumatic stress symptoms uh it it means that that a whole other part of our brain activates in and of itself without our ability uh without skills to become aware and stop it so it can be incredibly disorientating so so learning to have boundaries learning to be in our body uh in our thoughts and our feelings with awareness can be something that we simply don't get if we don't get that healthy parenting and that healthy environment and and so when there's a childhood lack of nurturing trauma abuse neglect it'll it can cause cuse a developmental immaturity and what what uh essentially that gets played out as is that we develop survival skills so we learn to survive and and but but not Thrive and so in that that not thriving uh we'll start to see uh the wounded child reflected in that how we felt during problematic uh childhood experiences now when P put this together it was out without the benefits of Neuroscience and and but it was with the benefit of working with traumatized people including herself so she she her story is quite a public story it's in the beginning of facing codependence and she highlights her own struggles around developmental trauma first tackled as alcoholism for herself and then having to uh then look at the underlying impact of the trauma when she started to develop this model at at the meadow she just got people who identified as having trauma to talk to her now we know now that that's a small percentage of traumatized people because because trauma is shame based and shame based trauma means we don't talk about it so you can ask someone that's been traumatized have they experienced trauma and it's likely if you ask them that directly that they they won't be able to answer you and Bessel vanol points this out when he he talks in his presentations about the history of the DSM di diagnostic manual and how uh when we used to ask traum in a very blunt uh direct way that the statistics were awfully inadequate uh and he mentions around childhood sexual assault that they thought at one point that only one uh in 100,000 women were affected and uh and they there was varying arguments about the impact of that effect uh and yet we know that when you ask about that sort of trauma now in a completely different way uh that that that statistic is is outrageously um mislead so so this felt sense the other thing that want to talk about tonight is what we do know now about NE science and how when Alan Shaw started writing about this he was speculating but with the the Neuroscience that we have and the this burgeoning school of thought from the interpersonal neurobiologist that we've got uh uh more information now about the triun brain I'll talk tonight a little bit about the poly vagal Theory the work of Dr Ed tronic where we where we can see now what literally happens neurobiologically to us that changes our physiology that that impact the way that we experience ourself at a level that that Insight that CBT cognitive behavioral therapy uh can only make a very small inroad and yet it's a really good complimentary therapy if we do that body focused work that we now know we need to do so so the the wounded child when P started to say that that was felt in the body sense in the feeling States then those those that was way ahead of its time when she was looking for that when she developed the Survivors program and going in and getting getting people into their body uh through guided visualizations and meditations that that somatic experiencing of self unlocks those feelings and I remember when I first came here I had the uh benefit of working with Wes Taylor who had been taught by Pier rly uh this uh model and doing the Survivors program as it was then called and just I I saw in front of my own eyes how people uh were able to get into their body and then into their feeling states around things that they had not remembered for a long time or if they' remembered it they were very disconnected from it so this felt sense when Pier wrote about that was was this what we would now say is an implicit memory a memory that comes up from from the brain the part of the brain that doesn't store calendar dates and times and therefore is rarely impacted positively by Insight in recovery so the feeling comes up we can we we're not even really in control of our reality at that time but the but getting in touch with that felt sense is is really important and we'll look at the the end of this presentation on on the different ways now of getting in touch with uh how the brain has been impacted and and how that Trion brain uh working from the bottom of the brain up the top of the brain down can just change the face of therapy now the AAC is really important I think this is where CBT comes in handy uh and certainly in our model our reparenting uh uh tool in our model is is the adapted self reflects the ways we were parented at problematic times so what we're looking for then is the defense mechanisms and the core beliefs that that generational uh uh belief system that can happen in a family and and so we might end up with the same uh I'll talk a bit later on about how family roles genetics and just sibling order can can change one sibling's experience of a family system to another's uh but essentially will all develop an AAC that that will be around our self-esteem and boundaries and reality and and dependency issues uh trying to distance ourself from the original pain and and and Pete Walker makes the who's a psychotherapist from San Francisco I'll mention a book of his as we go along um it uh his book on this issue I think is very complimentary to P's work and he just makes the point that that the AAC the our defense mechanism the survival techniques we got are just about running away from that Soul Murder as Bradshaw put it where we have a toxic shame core that that that toxic shame to a little person equals Death that we just can't survive without Parents Without uh the the stability in a family home and if there's no stability we've got to go into fantasy to create it or at least into disassociation to escape it so so depending on the sort of trauma will be depending on what what shape your AAC takes and that that will then tell you what tools you need to develop in your functional adult as we move along now of course that if anyone's been at South specific you've heard me say this sentence a thousand times untreated primary symptoms lead to secondary symptoms the result of that so those two things untreated so we're talking about untreated self-esteem boundary reality dependency issues then being played out no adult life as mental health addiction lead to crisis unmanageability and enemy issue so in other words our life is derailed at best we'll be medicating at worst we'll be uh we'll be simply um surviving and uh I mean I do make fun of that statement a broken clock can be right at least twice a day so we get it right uh there was a recent study from Harvard that talked about the impact of Developmental trauma and the way that it impacts the brain that AAC could be a very high functioning person when it comes to school or work but but in interpersonal relational uh settings it we can be completely derail whenever we perceive a threat so so uh you know some of us come in here really high functioning as human beings and uh uh and and can be quite confused when we start to tackle some of these issues so so the way out of this is treatment recovery intimacy and reparing and it develops a functional adult and that's what I want to go into in regards to complex post-traumatic stress because uh even the way that we talk about reality uh here at South Pacific needs to be adjusted if we've got complex post-traumatic stress uh symptoms because the that CBT helpful tool can be uh not useful if we're in a flashback if we're in a uh an experience of um uh overwhelm at olymic olymic level then the insight and all those tools of recovery for a while are temporarily offline so the main symptoms to just give you a sense cuz I was in a group today running a PTSD group and and there was a question of look well I don't know about this PTSD thing how would I know I've got it so alterations to to in in regulation and effective impulses so in other words that lyic system will fire and and we will take a bazooka to a KN fight we will overreact or underreact so we will uh we will not be able to have as Steven porer says that that use our upper vagal system to to put the handbrake on and regulate at the the bottom of from the top of the brain down we'll really struggle with that there'll we alterations in attention and Consciousness now for folks that have had developmental trauma that leads to uh uh dis disassociation and personality disorders then we can lose time and space uh and for others in regards to attention and we talked about it in group today we can just simply get quite confused and so we when we lose our executive functioning all of a sudden where we might have been high functioning now making a decision on what we want for lunch can be overwhelming alterations uh in in self-perception so how we experience ourself can be really different and again depending on the sort of trauma some people are really disconnected from their physical body and that's how they end up with physical illness they we we're not we're not connected with pain and suffering uh discomfort um our thought perceptions our feelings um anyone that's been through the South Pacific has been harassed by us all for feeling checks trying to tune us into what's happening in our body so there's those alterations alterations in perception of the perpetrator now this can go right up to where we actually um can have the Stockholm syndrome and and and will have quite a can have even affection towards perpetrators we can uh through as pmal says adult defense mechanisms of minimization denial delusion and memory loss uh continue relationships with perpetrators and see them in a completely different light especially if we get to delusion which is that disassociate sative personality type alterations in relationships with self so we really struggle sorry relationships with others so any inter personal as PS says in in regards to uh our dependency needs that we simply don't do inter dependency well we're either anti-de dependent or to dependent a somatization and or medical problems so we can have hyper we can have hypochondriac sort of responses to things or we can be completely disconnected but we eventually when you live that way they'll be medical problems and alterations in systems of meaning now for anyone that's been through South Pacific uh one of the tools we have is sharing realities and when we share realities we invite people to get curious about what do you make up about you so so anyone that's been through here and has uh looked at those meanings we give ourself as a response to experiencing something uh unsettling from someone else then you'll notice those core beliefs are very much about we're projecting the the beliefs we got from our original inj injury onto the situation that we're having which at times is really confusing to others because they they they just asked to pass the salt or they just said they can't pick you up on time or they forgot the milk but but but the system of meaning we might project onto that can be radically different and uh and and we'll talk more about that as we go on Pete Walker in his book uh complex post-traumatic stress from thriving to from surviving to thriving says that that that the key developmental arrests so these are the things that get arrested once we get this developmental trauma uh self-acceptance is arrested a clear a clear sense of identity really knowing our body thoughts feelings and behavior as P says feeling quite centered in that uh we we we have arrested self-compassion rested self- protection uh have a poor capacity to draw comfort from relationship and and for some folks that uh that that when we've had this developmental trauma uh relationships are just an overwhelming trigger uh right up into and including uh Pete Walker was saying if if at sometimes even getting a therapist can be difficult and we end up picking therapists that continue to R traumatize us and he makes the uh the point that for some of us it's getting a pet or an animal that will give us unconditional love that starts to restore a sense of connection so it's not it's not to sort of say that we can't get well but I just I think what I love about Pete's work is he he simply says that this will be difficult that's what I like about peer Melodies there's a solution but it's not going to be easy sometimes and I think that's important to know when you're trying to deal with this because otherwise I know for myself you can go into hopelessness a poor ability to relax Pete Walker talks about this idea of uh people with postraumatic stress find it difficult to go into neutral to just be uh he he quotes John Bradshaw who talks about um the the the development of codependency is we become human doings not human beings as a result of this uh low self-esteem this lack of inherent worth uh we have an arrest in the capacity for full self-expression uh we can really struggle with Willow motivation we can either be crazily willful or or that self- will run right they talk about 12ep fellowships or we can really lack it and swing between the two um uh peace of mind having some sort of Serenity within can be just really difficult people are especially with anxiety and depression are vibrating at at a level where peace seems to be uh something they'll never achieve poor self-care around our body thoughts feeling and behaviors um real difficulty in believing that life is a gift and Dr sh Professor sha from Harvard University talked about that in a presentation that I looked up on mindfulness and self-esteem and he made the point that somebody that's grown up receiving that nurturing parenting uh basically doesn't get up in the morning and feel wonderful about themsel but they get up with a sense that life's going to work out for them they've got that peace of mind they've got that ability to relax into thems and know that they've got the the skills and abilities to be able to uh uh move on through the day knowing that even if they come up against trials and tribulations they've got what it takes inside to to to cope and and and make better decisions uh the self-esteem which is p p says certainly in her model is the the symptom we see the most that it's the most defining symptom is that that inappropriate levels of self-esteem so feeling either one down less than or one up better than others and and a lack in self-confidence so I just wanted to put this snapshot up uh again anyone that's ever seen me in a room and if I get near a whiteboard I wish I could just press a button and this comes up every time now P says that around our reality uh when she was developing this model she stood in front of a mirror and said well who am I and came up with on my physical body and all the you know and all that entails as Dan seagull says the embodied brain the central nervous system and and uh everything about ourselves that makes us makes us as humans uh our Consciousness our mind uh our feeling States and our behaviors now traditionally is we would certainly say and uh I've I'll badly paraphrase the the work of William James where he talked raised the idea as you know do we run because we're afraid or are we afraid because we're running what kicks in first now now I think with people that grow up fairly functioning are able to manage themselves from the top of the brain down meaning that they can put on that vagal handbreak around perceived threat if it's not a threat can certainly take in events from outside through their five senses experience the sort of sematic viscral uh uh information or data that comes up from the body if it's not a perceived threat we go in from our history all learn learning and experiences and core beliefs and give it a meaning that meaning defines feeling we choose what to do with it now now the interesting thing with post-traumatic stress is it all gets derailed at the brain at the at that that moment that we have determined it's a threat now if you've gone if you've got post-traumatic stress disorder from a life-threatening single event in your life then it might be that that that a certain smell or a certain sound might trigger that that viscal response for post complex postmatic stress that came from less than nurturing to abusive parenting then then we've got a relational trigger so if you grew up around domestic violence or uh or where it was an unsafe uh situation at home then then when someone comes in and they're red in the face and their eyes are sort of piercing then that might be all it takes for somebody to to go into that lyic reaction uh if you uh used to be struck with a hand if someone used to backhand you and you're in newor York and you're waiting to catch a cab and someone rushes up beside you whacks their hand in the air you could go into a reaction just like a veteran might go into a reaction on New Year's Eve when they hear a firework so I want to talk a little bit about what happens in that Peter LaVine uh who is uh through sematic experiencing U uh the unspoken voice uh this quotes from waking the tiger says that that when do we experience post-traumatic stress so traumatic symptoms are not caused by the triggering event so as adults these symptoms aren't caused by that they stem from the Frozen residue of of energy that is not being resolved or discharged and this residue remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and on our Spirits so so what we what happens is not so much this thing comes from outside of us it happens to us if you've grown up in a family system where you are blamed for how how other people felt this is how it feels post-traumatic stress unconsciously feels as though well you're in front of me I'm having this big response it's about you and if you'll change I'll be better which is the the codependent part of this disease so so the idea uh in in treatment is that we've got to get this allergy out of our body that our Insight might not be able to access so this is what we'll be looking at so so we know that that that that it gets derailed at the brain and as Pia says is in in her functional adult is that we information is that we need to become aware we've got to tune into ourself and so so getting in touch somatically with the body uh can be triggering and painful but yet it can be a big part of the healing because that energy is stored in the body and through feelings and through sematic work we can sort of bring it up and discharge it then all of a sudden we can have uh the story or our narrative around our our uh history or we remember a trauma event but we don't have that stress uh in our body anymore and for anyone that's done any of the treatments we're going to talk about tonight sometimes the effect of it can be quite miraculous uh Dr mlan uh certainly put put for this idea of the triun brain the development of evolution of the different parts of the the uh the way that the brain works and how how these different systems in the brain all work to keep us as high functioning human beings uh that that that if we've grown up in a very lury environment and uh and even if there was stress it was resolved and and if there was trauma there was repair lone of us gra uping a perfect system so even if there is discomfort as long as there's repair we we we will be able to discharge that energy so what what what this triun brain uh information did was open us up to looking well what how does the early childhood impact affect these systems Dan seagull came along and his work on the developing brain developing mind in in in in in his mind site book and is an real Authority in with him and Alan sha now the interpersonal neurobiologists school of thought comes up with this handy model of the brain so I've put this slide here for people to be able to access later on when you look at the YouTube video and certainly look up his resources because this hand model of the brain is a great way to sort of understand uh how he points out the knuckles and the top of the fingers coming over the top is that neocortex the lyic system is the the the part that sits on top of the brain stem and the Hand being the the spinal cord and what he's basically saying is when we get triggered by perceived threat we we literally flip our lid and so we lose our executive functioning and start to function now from the part of the central nervous system that's there to save our life now if we was we were in the surf and saw a Shark field or in the in the the forest and saw a bear or for us Aussies a brown snake coming at you because they can be aggressive we we we need that lyic system to get rid of I've got to get milk I've got an exam do I've got to pick up the kids to just pump adrenaline through the body and run or or uh get some the the the the we might need to fight so we need that adrenaline or cortisol to fight or flight and then the the idea that if we can't uh there was I read a a very powerful account of a man that was bushw walking came across a brown bear it was absolutely nothing he could do except freeze and even though it came over and it caused him some injury it lost interest in him so so just the idea that it's a great way if any of you guys have got kids that have trouble regulating to help explain the brain so please look this up so we know we know from this this this these three parts of the brain that if there's developmental TR for Alan Shaw certainly points out that we we it disorganizes us throughout our lifespan I'll get to his quote in a second Steven por just come along and and certainly looked and and at this these this vager system in the brain this vagal system of the brain and and then gave us uh some information that's been really crucial for for us folks that have been working with trauma uh his book The poly fagal theory is a is a a fantastic ftic resource um and there's some fantastic things on YouTube that you can tun in and and watch Steven so if any of this is Perks some interest please do that he just simply says that that when we perceive threat so if something's coming from outside the body or we perceive threat this our nervous system will will react now our upper vagal system our Leo CeX our social engagement system when we're when we're optimally functioning we'll be able to rest and digest with our parasympathetic nervous system we'll be able to socially engage we'll have good eye contact melodic tone we'll we'll we'll be really present uh with others and be present inside of ourself but if we perceive danger will go into a hyperarousal there's an increased heart rate that sympathetic system takes flight will mobilize and depending on the situation will fight or flly uh we can at this point have disassociated rage those Feats of enormous strength or or Terror and panic where we where if we can't fight it we'll flight it the other thing is that we're really in life threat where we think that there's nothing that we can do and what's interesting about complex post-traumatic stress sometimes we project this onto situations that that aren't life-threatening but we've been triggered into life threat and this is where we we will go into high po Rous we'll have a decreased heart rate our parasympathetic dorsal vagal system activates and we will mobilize and and and in the term freeze and then disassociate and collapse now Peter LaVine when he talks about his sematic expression shows a fantastic uh resource in his work around a a a fox carrying up a marup that's that's that's dangling and and being taken back to its den but it's alive but it's ill free the only thing left for it is to hope that the Predator loses interest so we have in our brain these abilities to do this to save our life but for human beings we've got that this uh parasympathetic vental vagal system that actually can handbreak that and if we've grown up in a fairly safe environment and we've leared to regulate we have access to that regulation when we haven't we can relationally be triggered into this other response so therefore that slide that I put up about uh reality it is we we get overridden if we get a trigger that that triggers that that that complex post-traumatic stress then then our body activates that libic system and we will go to that fight flight and freeze response now you'll notice I've put for there and I've I've taken that word from Pete Walker's book uh and now even Dan seagull when he talks about this now puts puts faint down there uh and and and a in a sense that that we're not freezing we're not going into a where our heart rates dropped and we're literally uh now not functioning hoping to survive if the Predator loses interest we've we we go into survival skills to the predator and so in our case it's generally another human being so we will trigger our codependency traits and and and we'll go into what he calls the four FS later on as a way of expl explaining but I suppose the T point from this slide is Insight at this point when we're triggered doesn't work we haven't got a connection to to that neocortex information where that Insight will be helpful if it's implicit memory if it's coming up and overwhelming as a as a feeling State then we're not going to we are now going to go into survival uh mode and and that can be really confusing to people around us although it's very common for us to keep recreating generationally the trauma so we might have grow up with domestic violence or grow up with sexual trauma and then here we are in no adult life we've created a relationship where that's present so sometimes the threat is in front of us because we've recreated it but other times uh it can be just a a trigger I I worked with a man once and and uh his mother who was highly traumatizing and humiliating of his reality leading to posttraumatic stress uh the smell of keen's curry powder was completely disorientating for him and it threw him into fight every time and of course he picked a relational partner when he wasn't really conscious about this that every time she was unhappy uh with him of course Curry was on the menu when he got home and so that that relational drama and how this plays out so I'd probably be asking you guys out there to think about well what you what is there any examples of that in your own life where you see uh that that that simple trigger just a fragrance and all of a sudden we're into uh into that sort of reaction and yet we go ahead and find someone that'll play that other part in that relational trauma so the reality issue is broken down uh and and the the anxiety or depression or PTSD that it can create is that at that body level it's much more complex than we thought that the trien brain the lyic reactivity the fight flight free for and then and then I always put in for folks that come into uh treatment uh if they got any addiction at all there'll be an acute withdrawal syndrome that can take you know anything from that first stay up to 18 months postacute withdrawal syndrome and acute withdrawal syndrome the way that the brain itself is going to uh be reorganizing itself just from the addiction and then the physical illness and unwellness there's the typ I can just see our PR meder Jackie Grant now just squirming in a seat um so this this the physical side of this which I want to talk about the biggest study they've ever done on adverse childhood experiences in a second because it's it's it's not just the mental illness or the addictions that that we see this in our society it's obesity it's uh it's the heart problems it's it's the way that our body starts to break down leading to an including early death uh what we'll look at is is also the way that once we grow up in an environment like this the the first thought wrong disease that they talk about with addiction but it's the seat of Obsession Obsession that we find in addiction but also codependency the cognitive distortions defense mechanisms and core beliefs in the inner critic the feeling state is very interesting at the South Pacific we talk about the the adult appropriate feelings but then the toxic levels of feelings that can accumulate when we've got we've come from developmental trauma and then had adult life experience where we have very damaged boundaries and we we go between those primary symptom states of the Wounded child and adult adapted child uh that would now be experienced in that implicit memory and one of the statements I like here we we come here trying to feel better but in in in recovery generally we have to get better at feel feeling it's developmental trauma got us out of our body out of our connection with our feeling States uh and and accumulated toxic feelings we we now need to get into that and release some of that especially the shame and then behaviorally what's hard in early recovery is everything I just mentioned for a while is really difficult to start to manage so changes behavioral and this is what uh really uh is difficult about early recovery that that if you're an alcoholic that's coming with depression then I need to get myself to an AA meeting even though I'm relation challenged by being there I need to get over my reluctance to use the phone or get a sponsor or talk to people at a meeting and so the change is behavioral but it could be difficult and we can't afford to wait to feel better to make that change that's the hard thing uh and I suppose in early recovery what we try to do is start to get into the yoga mindfulness Focus focused awareness or creating support systems of of empathic people that that can uh help us even when we're in that state of unwellness when I do the webinar on the model I will be bringing in these symptoms of trauma in action but essentially if we've experienced developmental trauma uh the the secondary symptom column there and the relational issues column is what we will experience in our adult life today uh in regards to self-esteem there'll be negative control issues that get then get played out as relational esteem issues where the better than or less than that if we have really struggled and didn't grow up around healthy boundaries then we will experience as a result of poor boundaries now adult life resentment and rage either external rage overt rage to others or that covert rage to self we we turn that shame inwards and then essentially relationally we'll either experience relationships as a meshing where we're locked in uh trying to be negatively controlling of each other or abandoning we we we're in avoidance or mment complex post-traumatic stress uh experienced as that feeling bad and flawed toxically shame based and trying desperately to be good and perfect or in that over uh um over inflated grandiosity if you did grab a family system that told you you were special and different then you're in a spiritual crisis I'm not talking about a religious crisis but living inside your own skin is difficult and so being connected to the vit information from your body having a good clear centeredness around your thinking uh being able to be in touch with your emotions and make sort of moderate decisions is impossible and so therefore relationally we're going to be dishonest with others we will not be able to just share what's happening within for because for a lot of us we don't even really know what's happening within I'm going to just tell you anything to get rid of you and the great the great dishonesty of of cptsd and and and codependency is I'm fine it's it's I'm just not going to tell you what's going on I know in in treatment we had a discussion recently about well if I'm I'm if you didn't last me I'm not lying which is that immature primary symptom experience of s now in dependency we will start to see whether rather hits the road if we were leads weren't meant we were too dependent and and now we anti-de dependent we will see addiction issues we will see depression or anxiety we will see physical illness we can't outrun this pathology it doesn't magically get better that stress will play itself out somewhere and therefore relationally we're going to have trouble with interdependence we're either two dependent or any dependent so coming together and working relationally can be incredibly difficult we will simply have intimacy issues and there'll Simply Be intensity issu so I just known those in the next webinar I really want to go into that I met with P Melody last year it was an amazing experience and she laid all this out in a sense of these secondary symptoms and relational issues and so we talked about them now symptoms of trauma in relation to our model I don't want to Define trauma at any great length tonight but we're simply saying that if we experience physical sexual emotional intellectual spiritual abuse or trauma there's two Extremes in that it's overt or covert so you can be physically abused by no physical nurturing or physical abuse Abus by being physically attacked and that goes for all of the above or a mment or abandonment now the the iron there is if I'm a mesed with a parent if I'm drawn up to meet their needs I'm being abandon it's a secondary abandonment but if I'm just abandoned I was abandoned now the trauma does change the chemistry of the brain and Alan Shaw in this quote I'm just about to say it's it this this change in the way that the the brain organizes itself leaves us predisposed for addictions or compulsions because we don't regulate from within so I'm going to reach without to pull something inside of me either a chemical or a process to affect regulate the developmental trauma disorder that that that Bessel vaner tried to put through for the dsm5 didn't get accepted but he was making the argument with a lot of other professionals that that complex post-traumatic stress or post-traumatic stress disorder doesn't sum up exactly what what uh he was seeing as symptoms from clients that that it needed in in and of its own right a a a diagnosis it wasn't successful but essentially uh what he was drawing from as well is the biggest study that was ever done on on adverse childhood experiences uh was the ace study you can look this up online if you're interested the only reason I put it up here is that um it it's much the effects of trauma are much more widespread it's not just people that turn up at a treatment caler for an addiction or a mental health issue our Hospital ER and and and uh uh medical centers in general are full of people that are struggling with the with the physical illness side of this disease so up there it goes through the the the uh the intense affects of this in regards to how someone experiences thems what they end up doing to ward off the recurrence of those emotions so that's where we can see all those addictions uh behavioral reenactments of the TR the trauma so people go on in what uh John Bradshaw and Patrick K would call trauma bind so a down to the trauma we'll continue to act it out or draw people to us in our life that'll generationally pass it on to our own children and then there can be multiple sematic problems and and so that that graph there just gives you an indication of when people have had adverse childhood experiences just what other symptoms we start to see so it's much more this this looking at attachment looking at the impact of it is much more complicated than we once thought so so this deceptively it's it's deceptively simple on the surface um and as Alan Shaw says that that real relationships of the earli stages of Life indelibly shape our survival functions in basic ways and that for the rest of the lifespan attachment processes lie at the center of the Human Experience so this this this was once a theory that is now through neuroscience and MRIs from Alan Shaw's research and many others research starting to to to give us some really concrete evidence now how effective the attachment communication were facilitate the maturation of the brain systems involved and and simply the way we regulate our system if we would you know what we know about parenting now Dan seagull's parenting book on on on parenting from the inside out that you know once upon a time babies were this precious thing that we sort of put in a crib and we looked through glass that and celebrated their birth now it's skin to skill immediately and parenting starts straight away the cords cut and unless there's a physical health ISS issue for the baby or the mother that the the it is skin to skin and we start that affect co-regulation immediately and then that sets up the brain through through that early development to to to once we're distressed be soothed distressed soothe then we learn how to self-regulate when that doesn't happen then we learn how to survive Gaba m is a just a just a wonderful voice in The Recovery community at the moment uh he's hungry ghost book is a is a bestseller uh excuse me folks widely available on YouTube for his lectures are amazing but he's been and I'll leave this quote for you guys to read but he's certainly talking now about the we need a paradigm shift to how we deal with addictions how we deal with the Brad Shaw 30 years ago was talking about uh that it was second child scapegoats that were clogging up the the the uh the jails that that that treating people uh that that were developmentally traumatized now separate them from the trauma and just deal with their adult experiences uh misses the point and and Rehabilitation will never happen until we bring those two together he says here that I will read it because it's important hardcore drug addicts that I treat are without exception people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives the commonality is childhood abuse these people all end their life under extreme adverse circumstances not only did they not get what they need for healthy development they actually got negative C circumstances of neglect that's what sets up the brain biology of addiction in other words the addiction is related both psychologically in terms of emotional pain relief and neurobiological development to early adversity so these scientists are coming forward and giving us fantastic information now Pete Walker comes along and he says that variances in childhood abuse and neglect so depending on the abuse and neglect in our birth order or genetics uh will gravitate us towards a specific forf survival so the fight flight freeze and fall and we do this we do this to prevent Escape or ameliorate further traumatization so in other words we've got to survive we can't leave Bradshaw made that quote on healing the shame that binds you that little Johnny can't walk into the lounge room and say Mom you're a crazy alcoholic dad you're a crazy codependent I'm going to go live with the Smiths we have to prevent Escape or amarate to fall to the system to survive he says that that that what he notices is that that that fight types will end up with a narcissistic defense flight types obsessive compulsive defenses freeze types can we where we develop disassociated type defenses and fall types is that development of the codependency which we know well here at South Pacific now all those things like they have positive uh characteristics that can go with them uh which you'll see in front of you they're not all bad and this is is where that adult adapted child in pe's work uh she talks very much that Society likes people that can be in there better than needless and wless good and perfect really industrious uh uh uh and and and um in their MO you know in their moderation uh in control so that so for a while there those people's can be running companies we can turn up to a treatment in our Maserati we can uh not necessarily be that real dishevel now some of us are disheveled we're in that scapegoat uh assessing compulsive addiction and we might end up somewhere different than that so it can have positive attributes which I'll leave you there to to to be able to pause on when you get the YouTube video what I wanted to talk about is the detrimental characteristics this is another way of identifying well how would I know what sort of trauma that I experienced and what sort of defense mechanism do I have now I think whenever you pull things from a book I've pulled this from Pete water Walker's book like when I pull things from Peter's book it never does it justice but if anything on this uh excites you I'll do a plug here I'll put it at the end but this book of Pete Walkers don't worry it's coming up at the end uh it complement it brings codependency and complex postraumatic stress together in in tool so this he says you usually have a subtype as well uh so so but but it's looking for what would that look like so so um this is where you'd see the detrimental characteristics of those different types now the for one's interesting because it talks about the codependency of seriousness the servitude the loss of self in other words look I I can't share what I think and feel because of what you think and feel that John Lee quote we have our wall here uh people pleasing doormat becoming a slave uh perfectionism we end up becoming a victim and and a par a parfi child if you look at the the other ones there it's looking for what do you identify and relate with uh and and and starting to see if there's any symptoms if you'll notice in the flight one uh when I was talking to Pete recently he was saying that that in his new book a chapter that he sees is really important is is is busy aholic that it's not just workaholism it's it's trying to outrun that chronic sense of Abandonment that we feel implicitly that that that Abandonment for a child is death I'm going to survive life's not going to work out for me so I've got to stay busy uh to function so for you flight types you might relate to that so so looking through that it gives us a sense of of of just how complex this this is as it plays out in our adult life it's hard to hide these detrimental consequences underneath the the positive ones eventually people start to see these and they become very difficult to manage and and and as we know with with the 12 steps of codependency they become unmanageable as we try and have power over these our life becomes unmanageable and then we start to affect ourselves and and everyone in our lives so so so some of the ways to deal with this and I always feel like this back end will be inadequate because there's so much to do um but but it's as Pier says that first eight months of recovery can be tough because for a lot of us the defense mechanisms we had kept this stuff at arms length it kept everything away it was fantastic to go into better there and invulnerability because you didn't feel anything people could leave you and you didn't even feel the abandonment you were shut down but eventually as this stuff starts to come up and that vulnerability and that implicit memory bursts its way through then all of a sudden we've we're between a rock and a hard place so we've got to get into recovery generally so we so so dealing uh you know one of the the ways that we'll notice this is is through the reparenting model at South Pacific and we call it our adult adapted child and and so it's it's trying to shrink this this this iller critic that is the core the adapted part of the toxic shame it could be caused from any uh form of abuse or abandonment uh or am mment uh the most asked question here is look I wasn't sexually abused or I wasn't physically abused surely my trauma can't be as bad as my my uh you know colleague here that in recovery who who has had that experience what we know now what the a study showed that that emotional and intellectual abuse where a child's reality is completely uh put down uh that ongoing humiliation was the phrase can lead to complex post-traumatic stress the same as physical abuse the same as sexual abuse so some of the common attacks that that we know from the inner critic so if you're thinking well God have I got this inner critic some of us in in recovery absolutely know what they're in a Critic uh sounds like John Bradshaw certainly made the point that that once you know what your inner critic's like if you want to shame me stand back let an expert have a go I usually our own internal dialogue is much more harmful than anything anyone else can say to us as an anal but perfectionism black and white thinking self-hate loathing or disgust micromanaging not just others but ourselves so worry Obsession we go around in Loops over futurized so never being able to just let go and let God always having to plan lists unfair devaluing comparisons so always putting us up against someone that's we got no chance to compare us with uh toxic levels of guilt uh shooting uh even when this was spell checked earlier it was like is that really no it's not a word but if you're a codependent and uh you've got an inner critic you know what shooting is you'll shoot ourselves and we'll shoot others busy holism work holism over productivity not being able to go to neutral harsh judgments of self and others and in particular name calling I had an awful experience with a friend a fantastic musician and lovely man but he grew up with Incredible sexual abuse in an overly religious home and I saw him once make a mistake and he really thought he didn't make a mistake he'd blame someone else for this mistake over over a period of a weekend when he realized that that blame was his fault I'd walked around the corner just at the time when he literally punched himself in the face and it was just sad he felt awful shame that I saw it but but nothing about my Lear nervous system was was was was was shaming of him I just felt the pain that that's what happens to it makes me emotional just thinking about it the it it it's that's the pain we're in when when when you've got this sort of inoc critic so I know some of you out there that are listening to this now or listen to it after the fact know that pain um theal attacks that we can have so this can we could end up really uh in very bad places with this and this was another word drastic sizing no that's not a word folks but if you're a Cod of pendant or someone who has this you know everything is drastic and we overemphasize it catastrophize hyp condr is not a word either but that that idea that will turn anything into a disaster the Cup's always half empty time urgency never enough time always struggling to get to where what what we need we think we need to get done disabling performance anxiety and that doesn't have to be a performance that could be just getting the kids to School uh and and pers perseverating about about being attacked so we it's it's it's perverse it's all incomp accomplishing and we're just continuing to worry that we won't be safe so this this critic being experienced is uh when we experience it it's going to initiate flashbacks especially emotional flashbacks thoughts will be triggers for that shame we'll have shame internalized parents so that those shame call messages now so so we we will have shame binds with ill we'll have perfectionism and emotional neglect and we will use shame as blame un unfairly turned on ourselves so so what we do with the reparenting part of our model is really important uh I won't go through this at depth but I just want to focus that the what we do know is that the adult adapted child the part of us that reflected how we were parented its main goal is to attack criticize a b and overindulge us and we try and hide that wounded more vulnerable part of ourselves and appear to the world better than we are now to do that for any length of time we're going to have those addictions mental health issues and physical illness issues so the IDE in recovery is Peter says is that I it's going to be turning it in and going to that affirming nurturing and respectful limiting uh in regards to our self-esteem boundaries reality dependency and moderation issues now here's the kicker if you've got complex post-traumatic stress then the other thing we have to manage here is our state and we've got to learn how to to uh start to get that integration that neural integration that Dan seagull talks about I've put these slides in that are coming up and you can find this on Dan seagull's website we we we share this information in our Healthy Lifestyles lecture here at South Pacific so it's a revisit for you guys that have been here but I won't talk about it much but what what Dan said is once that that the way the brain the left and right hemispheres have have had that damage that Allan Shaw talks about that in recovery through focused awareness we can start to develop H an environment that our brain can repair now now uh in the mindfulness webinar I did recently I I I cited some of the Harvard studies where they talk where they had research from eight weeks of mindfulness grows the gray matter in the brain they've got MRI images of this and they show the electricity in the brain and the different activation points in the brain from pre and post it's it's an amazingly exciting time to to uh uh to to to notice that we can change and create new Pathways as well as Al alter active Pathways so so this information that you'll see in this slide here I'm not certainly not going to read through that but you'll get this slide when it comes out tomorrow in the YouTube video if you can pause it for any of you guys that went through here this is the information in our Healthy Lifestyles lecture about how in your day you can weave in these seven different ways of of of of now growing your your brain and and learning to integrate in a way that brings you that real peace that that that that starts to deal with those complex post-traumatic stress symptoms and the other thing on Dan's website and on YouTube is his wheel of awareness he he talks about the triangle human experience which I'll go through in a second but this idea that Focus awareness the fact that our mind can choose what it focuses on and this is that bit about making the unconscious conscious if we're just lumbering through life thinking we're a victim to our thoughts and a victim to our history then we're doomed we become a prophet but once we become aware that that through practice because it's not easy anyone that's practice mindfulness with a codependent brain it's it's tough work spending time with yourself uh but through practice we start to be able to escort that that that that part of our uh those symtoms you know back to uh a state of Wellness now Pete walk outlines in his book that somatically getting in touch with our body for some folks re-triggers trauma but it's an opportunity to heal it's an opportunity to access some of that feeling stuff and release it so so some of the things I'm going to suggest in a moment are going to bring this stuff up but we're going to deal with it in a different way and this is just his his trial Human Experience that that the good news is is that if we can change that focused awareness it really literally affects the organ so what what we might have been predisposed to through trauma or genetics can actually start to be adjusted and and we can live a different life in recovery and this is I I think this is an enormous bit of information but the thing that goes with it is is is that it's it doesn't happen over long because we've got those existing Pathways so so the thing is they there's that saying recovery don't give up 5 minutes before the miracle happens I think we need a lot of support to maintain motivation at times when our symptoms get triggered the sooth contain move on here at South Pacific was just our way of bringing in the work of Steven pores Peter LaVine Pat Ogden and and and it goes the important thing here is that that poly vagal theory is the mechanical Act of breathing mindfully breathing starts to override that limbic central nervous system that implicit memory the way the visc starts to react the the mechanical Act of breathing goes along way to changing our physiological experience of self doctors know this ER people know this yogis know it you we we change our heart rate by how we focus on the breathing Peter LaVine has got many ways that you can brace the body but the ones that we've got on that diagram there are just the butterfly hands diaphragm and the central part of our heart lungs just trying to connect but it's also a lovely bracing for the body that when we are in that lyic reaction we disconnect from self especially with disassociating and just trying to come into the body feeling the warmth of the hands bringing our attention to our breathing and just focusing as a way of getting us out of that panic now the CBT bit comes in once I get back into my body my executive functioning starts to come down and I've got access again then going through that reality and and starting to process this at depth can be really helpful learning about our defense mechanisms learning about our needs is really important and and then the idea of of remembering to reparent radical acceptance Serenity prayers 12 step or other Therapy Group information that you can access at that Point's now available because we've got that executive functioning back if we don't get centered if we don't get back into our body and lower the the you know start to learn to regulate our AFF effect we can't access any of those tools which is infuriating when you're in recovery so the tips for dealing with this shame and dealing with the pdsd is is is uh having some sort of after care recovery plan now Patrick K has a thing called a fire drill for sex addicts and I actually think that it's a great tool for people with complex post-traumatic stress to have a plan of once I get activated in this what might I be able to uh you know what are my triggers what do I feel in my body and what are some of the cses of action that even when I'm stressed I can do I work with a lady that once had chronic uh panic attacks was the result of Developmental trauma and I knew it was her on the phone this was before we had call recognition that that if if the phone rang and L was talking it wasn't a prank call it was her and she was ringing from wherever she could get access to a phone and I would just start that that was pre butterfly hands but just getting it a breathe calmly into her belly getting in touch with her body and slowly but surely I'd hear her on the other end of the phone and over time she learned to ring when she was triggered she'd start to ring when she knew she was going into that attack or she knew she was walking towards an environment or a situation or a family gathering where where it might get triggered so it's learning to identify that that stuff in advance take care of yourself set good boundaries learning about our shame bonds and starting to reduce that shame and therapy is really important that mindfulness that I talked about from the Harvard uh Institute very important affirmations as much as the affirmations and statements of gratitude have an incredible effect because it's focusing our Awareness on a positive I was talking to a lady today that was doing amdr and she she she mentioned the the the part of the treatments that she really like was was was focusing on something quite positive and feeling that that effect in the body of the thing that was negative and starting to sort of have that shift around that was really important for her and essentially in pe's language is growing that functional adult now I wanted to put these up there because what we're doing in South Pacific at the moment is referring people through into our our uh our PTSD program L uh closed PTSD program and then feeding people out into the community for for these different sorts of therapy so I just want to quickly explain them the one on the top right is some uh veterans uh that are doing uh improvisation uh acting uh getting getting into their body in a different way and they're getting real responses to to uh the symptoms positive responses to their experiences of PTSD from trauma on here you'll see the I've put the brain spotting logo for the Australia Pacific region I've been TR actually I think I I've got my brain spotting tool here somewhere that I use um brain spotting is an extension of EMDR it works it's you can look it up on the internet there's some uh wonderful support coming from brain spotting now it's where e is is moving to uh support coming from uh Steven pores and Dan seagull getting excited as and Bess I think sorry not Dan single Bessel vanic about this idea that we we we work directly with the amygdala which we know has is is uh is that midbrain that that that throws us into that that response that overreaction so we're starting to to learn where once upon a time we would we would uh sometimes overly traumatized people to deal with aditional trauma we're now learning ways to to go to the source of where the body holds the energy and that's where I put down trauma release exercises TR neuro feedback radical exposure tapping by the Canadian Dash Australian uh doctor Dr Laura McKinnon uh that I mentioned the overcoming trauma through yoga I think that in in recovery if you've got this complex post-traumatic stress it's giving yourself that opportunity and sometimes you've got to try a couple of different thingses to to see if it works for you some of these therapies if you're used to talk therapy can be really a little bit odd in the beginning to to go and do improv therapy or to do uh trauma focused yoga the experience of EMDR where someone's you know moving or their fingers in front of you brain spotting where we find a place where there's an anomaly in the focus and and just sit there resting in it and getting in touch with the way the sematic experience of the body uh these all these things in in and of their own right are really quite different than just talk therapy so uh ask questions get informed uh speak to people that are doing it and and try some of these things out as a way of moving forward and and getting some real relief for these symptoms I wanted to put some of these books up I'm a huge fan of pml's Breaking Free it was ahead of its time uh it's the workbook that goes with facing Cod pendant uh like Alan Shaw's earlier literature I've got his the science and art of psychotherapy there but but the the the breaking free book was ahead of his time where it said that trauma is is held certainly pre in the body in the feeling states which of course the work of Ed tronic Allan Shaw Peter LaVine Pat Ogden Steven pores is now saying well that that's uh you know neurobiologically that's correct we can't outrun that pathology that the the it's the bottom of the brain firing up we lose that that that ability to vaguely break so so Breaking Free Pier was on to that many many years ago and so these books could be good resources and like if you go to Amazon they'll make other suggestions get curious get looking and hopefully uh uh you know all these bits of literature uh generally even though these guys are researchers and scientists they're trying to deliver a powerful message to people in recovery that that we can deal with trauma and lead to deal with trauma differently than just the talk therapies they can be complimentary but but once we go into that that sort of uh body sort of lyic reaction then then those talk therapies are offline for a little while so so I wanted to mention those the recovery slogans and and uh the complex pdsd can be interl I think there's a lot of folks that found their way in 12-step fellowships before we know what we know today about treatment uh the the the fact that it uh I I like to look at Dan seagull's uh integration sort of neural integration methods and look at the 12-step fellowships and see how they overlap the repetition of information the the attitude of gratitude the slogans that are easily remembered by by repeating under stress uh the the social connection that comes from being in a situation where you get that me too when you share where people look at you and have empathy which really is is creating something relationally very different from the trauma that lot of folks experienc experienced in their family system so so these things can be really powerful Tools in recovery when when we're trying to deal with some of our stress and Trauma uh the Serenity Prayer I remember pinching this off the internet as soon as I saw it I I I thought it's a it's a wonderful way of of how do we use the serenity prayer as a mindfulness tool so that little diagram you know once we get online this I've got to state that that that fact that once we get sort of back uh and we get our executive functioning back down and we got that executive functioning available then we can work through this for instance for us SP is it's that it's that contain uh move on part of the the butterfly hands that we've got to get that affect regulation down with those other tools I mentioned but this could be really helpful now one thing in putting this together uh I i' neglected to uh to put out was Pete walker uh in online has a wonderful uh uh toolbox in the back of his book that's available on his website Pete walker.com now I'll make sure that we we're actually putting out a little caveat to this presentation that those symptoms of complex postraumatic stress there's an expansion so we will put up in YouTube on YouTube within the week just a little a little add-on to this so look out for that if you please subscribe to s's website page but he had um he's got 13 steps for managing the the the flashback that can happen for for complex posttraumatic stress so I'm going to read these to you so you'll have access to this but you can get the print out I'll make sure that we get the print out of this made available but it's the 13 steps of managing flashbacks number one is say to yourself I'm having a flashback that might sound ludicrous but if we're in delusion and denial we can absolutely just disassociate a way so so just coming to terms with the fact that that that this happens to me that I have this illness I know that people are against labels sometimes in recovery that labels are Just For Soup cans but to see your drama clearly is to be liberated from it so to know that I have flashbacks to inform loved ones that that can happen to me is important reminding our that I feel afraid but I'm not in danger once like with that sooth contain move on I work out I'm not in danger I can start to soothe myself so I feel afraid I'm triggered but I'm not in danger own your right and lead to have boundaries when P Melody first put out uh the the facing code appendant in the preface she says that the most important tool if you're reading this is to establish boundaries otherwise you will continue to be victimized or continue to be an offender so so only our right to having personal boundaries is really important I speak reassuringly to the inner child one of the wonderful gifts that people get out of our changes program is they're introduced to that vulnerable part of them they get an image for it they get a felt sense of what that part of them's like and so learning to to to to start to affirm that part of us that that missed out on that that level of affirmation when When We Were Young can be an important part of this deconstructing eternity thinking so those negative core beliefs about the rest of our life are so important slowly but surely through therapy and journaling to deconstruct and not just to go to a unconscious autopilot around reminding ourself that that you're now in an adult body now now what we know about the wounded child as P says it's a felt sense it's age regressive we feel smaller so being mindful that I'm an adult person with resources right now is important uh easing back into the body fear launches us into heady wiring and numbing and spacing out so sometimes learning techniques through mindfulness having a bath getting massage uh to uh some of the uh weighted blankets or toys different textures learning how to come back into our body gently is important um unless there'll be processes that we can do for that resisting Lea child's critic for for catastrophizing so noticing that that that that part of the nurturing Lea child is also containing it and and and and making sure that we've got those boundaries we need allowing oursel to grief is a huge part Peter talks about that with our model that that that once we identify what we didn't get and and start to get in touch with what we did get that that essentially it's a grief issue and and the stages of grief uh as Virginia s teer points out become very apparent in early developmental trauma recovery and cultivating safe relationships and seeking support a phrase I've liked for a long time of recovery is I came from a a a uh family of origin I might have already created a family of uh of of creation uh as P says sometimes you come to terms and you come to in recovery and you work out wow I work here and I live here and I'm married to you it can be shocking as we try and work out that our life is a bit of a reaction to our trauma but then we lead to create a a family of choice uh where and 12-step fellowships whether it be coder or alanon or AA can be a source of that that family of choice and other support groups of that nature can be helpful learning to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks it's essential for us to know what are those things on my fire drill that are likely to trigger me and what are some of the things I can put in place to support myself around those while I'm working on as Lorry McKinnon says desensitizing those buttons that I need to have in place those fire drills as Patrick KH says to take care of myself figure out what you're flashing back to one of the things Dan seagull says about not generationally passing this trauma on is about getting our history straight we've got the research now that tells us that if I have made sense of my own life story it goes a long way to not ret traumatizing unconsciously the the the children in in my life so so getting a sense of well when I do flashback what am I reliving right now can be can can really change that perspective on what's Happening and the other message that he says and Pier says the same thing is is that it's a slow process so patience generally is an an asset that we have as a as codependent people because we've got that immaturity as our core so you know one of the ways that 12-step fellowships uh support people with that is is living just for today and sometimes just for the next five minutes I'm going to get through this I hope tonight has has been helpful for for people and please by all means give us some feedback uh please email us if you can uh any questions or anything you might want to know more about if there's any uh quick questions out there now I'm happy to answer it uh just throw them through on the chat line and uh I think I had 15 minutes to go about two hours ago so so I'd be happy if I see a question come through I'll answer it um if any of the things I've mentioned tonight are something you're suffering with or continue to suffer with please it's not uncommon for people that need to come back to treatment if you have been in treatment before if you've never been to treatment and youve found your way to this webinar please seek support there's our contact details there around email our website uh we have 247 uh access to someone that can you can speak to about our programs their confidential free assessments uh and and not just the inpatient program but we have day patient programs now so if you've gone to treatment somewhere else or or or elsewhere um and you've come back to Sydney Australia uh and some of our programs now are online please contact us we can do that backend support uh so you can continue to get that benefit as KH says and PM Melody says that and as Pete Walker says in his book it takes some time it takes some time and so so we need that backend support to change that story learn how to affect regulate learn how to feel again and learn that functional adult um uh I known for myself I've I've made it known I just celebrated a milestone of my own recover of 30 years and and it was about a couple of years into recovery relationally I started to see those symptoms I'm a flight for type in the 4Ss and it wasn't until I got to uh to work with P Melody's model and then more recently starting to do my own work in regards to the radical exposure therapy to brain spotting uh bringing yoga into my life uh these these things have changed the way even my recovery in the third decade is experienced so I if you're out there and you're still struggling please you know I think recovery is a lifestyle Choice it's not necessarily something that happens just to you um I know that's a challenging concept some people want to move on and and and live really radically different lives I think that's possible but we we can't outrun that pathology so please get the support you need uh thank you very much I I I'll probably sign off now the details are there and as it says in our our for you when we when you come here we we say expect a miracle and when people leave here we hope they take that message with them that you are a miracle so take care and good night

Channel: South Pacific Private

Views: 628,374

Keywords: south pacific private, PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, post traumatic stress, trauma informed, psychotherapy, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, problem with drinking, complex PTSD, traumatic event, steve stokes, NSW rehab, depression, anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms

Id: 6sbYIKC7-Tw

Length: 77min 37sec (4657 seconds)

Published: Mon May 02 2016