Welcome to my podcast. Happily Even After. I’m life coach, jen. I’m passionate about helping people recover from betrayal. I rode the intense emotional roller coaster and felt stuck and traumatized for years. It’s the reason I became a trauma-informed certified life coach who helps people like you navigate their post-betrayal world. I have the tools, processes and knowledge to help you not only heal from the betrayal but create a healthy future. Today we begin to help you live happily even after.
Hey friends, welcome to today’s podcast. I’m so excited to be here. Before I get started, I just wanted to let you know that my podcast has a really cool new feature, and if you go wherever you’re listening to the podcast, at the very top it will say thanks for listening to Happily Even After podcast. And just so you know, you can click on that and you can text me whatever you want. If you want to ask me a question, if you want to respond to something I said in my podcast, you can do that, but I just was really excited about that, and so I’d love to receive a text message from you. It’s super easy and I think it’s a great way to connect with each of you.
Anyways, so now to get on to what I’m talking about today. So I am reading actually not reading listening to a book called the Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate and his son, daniel. And Gabor Mate is a doctor and he’s done a lot of research about trauma and if you’ve been betrayed, um, you’ve experienced trauma. And I’m just going to say, if you’re a human, you’ve experienced traumatic events in your life, things that have left imprints of trauma, and so the idea of healing it I find very fascinating and is my goal. To help my kids heal, to help myself heal to. I want to be the chain breaker. I want you to be the chain breaker. I want you to acknowledge points in your life that maybe you wish were different, but it doesn’t have to hold you back. So, as I was listening, I’m on chapter three and whenever I hear something that it just like it will be like a light bulb moment or an aha moment for me, and I, of course, was driving. So I’m like having my phone on voice memo and I’m talking into my phone because I’m like I need to talk about this, because if it impacted me, I hope it can impact you and make you you know, give you an opportunity to think about things differently or make sense of why this is happening.
Anyways, so the topic it’s called response flexibility and I hadn’t really never heard of this, but it makes sense. So really it helps you endure life’s ups and downs and be flexible in your responses of different things. That’s kind of like a really vague definition, but babies, when you’re born you’re governed by instinct and reflex and within the first 12 months you start having more responses to human interaction. But when you’re first born, you’re not born with this and sadly, and it makes sense that when we experience traumatic events, trauma, any type of trauma, stunts our ability to be flexible. And I don’t mean flexible your body being flexible, I mean your mind, your responses to different things. So I just think it’s important to understand why you are the way you are and you can, you know, fix this or meaning practice becoming a different way if you find yourself having a difficult time being flexible.
So what it is is when something happens to us, we have the inability to pause and choose how we react. Many times people are like, well, I couldn’t control myself, like you will say something to someone and they blow up or their response feels different than what the actual, you know, event was right. It feels very reactive, it feels a lot more intense. It doesn’t match their response, doesn’t match what actually happened, and I think we can see this with kids a lot. But for sure, adults, you can be talking to someone and someone just blows a gasket or just gets furious. You’re like wait a second, what I just said to you was not something that matches that. Or someone just starts crying hysterically. Their emotions don’t match what the event was and that is because something inside of them was triggered. And their response? They have the inability to be flexible and to have a moment to not react to whatever happened.
Trauma can cause us to get stuck in predictable automatic cycle of defensive reactions. And so if you look at yourself and think, wow, every time you know, my brother talks to me, or my dad or my husband or my wife, whatever, I just get really defensive I. This happens every single time. I think that’s something to be aware of and to maybe consider. Do I want to try to change this? Do I want to try to respond differently? Because the beautiful part of our brain is that we can create different neural pathways inside of our brain and choose a different way. But we have to be aware of it first. If we’re not even aware we’re doing this, then we cannot change because we don’t even know. You know we have this issue.
This is a a problem, especially in stressful events. For example, we might get impatient, we might get quickly annoyed, particularly over minor things. So just remember like if something just really small happens if you’ve ever had a, if you’ve had, if you have kids, and like a toy breaks, they might just like start screaming and going crazy. It’s because they, their response flexibility isn’t that’s how they’re responding. It’s not the best way, they just haven’t learned a different way. But when that isn’t corrected and that isn’t, you know, acknowledged when they’re little, it could go into adulthood, right, and so that’s where we want to pay attention. Impaired response flexibility can lead to increased levels of stress hormones. So stress can really activate this experience and it can enhance the risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. This can also potentially worsen existing chronic illnesses. So they have done so much research that trauma can actually cause physical, internal health issues.
And it makes sense because our nervous system is connected to all of our major organs and trauma lives in our nervous system and so when we have different traumatic events. Of course it could totally affect other parts of our bodies. I think sometimes people think like our mind and body are separate, but really our mind and body are very interconnected and to heal we have to heal our mind but also our body and I’m going to add our soul or our heart, like it has to be. We have to think of it as a more holistic approach. We can’t just think, oh, we’re going to heal our mind, but we have to look at it as a whole. If things are going on inside of you, in your body, like it could be connected with different parts of your mind and different traumatic events, and so I just love Dr Mate’s work because it helps us normal folk that are in the medical world but have had a lot of trauma in our lives.
And if your spouse has had an affair, if you’ve experienced infidelity in your life, that is a very traumatic, even discovery day, like it’s a traumatic event. There’s a lot of other trauma associated with it, but it is something that you will want to heal and acknowledge. And also, chances are the person your spouse that had the affair, they have some traumatic things in their life right. What caused them? I get this all the time. People will message me and you know they. I ask them what they’re struggling with the most and they always tell me about their spouse and I get it Like if they did this horrible thing to me. And now I’m sad and I’m devastated and I can’t get over it. But instead of just pointing fingers, of course the actual event right, that happened.
But I want you to go inside of you to figure out, okay, what is going on for you, because you’re the only one that you can heal, you can change, and so I just I like this point of response flexibility, because it is something that you can change. You can pause and decide. How do I want to react in this situation? And I have a quote from Viktor Frankl. So Viktor Frankl said between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom, and I love this quote so much because many of us don’t even take a moment, we just respond immediately. And so learning to pause and consider, that is going to give you so much power and so much you’re going to grow so much and so much freedom because you’re not allowing yourself just to react. It’s very exhausting and I get, life is stressful, life is complicated, but if you can just pause for a moment, just pause for a moment, you can choose a different way. So the reason why that we lose our response flexibility is because something happened to us. Right, we’ve had a traumatic event, so our mind and body remember that, and so it immediately wants to respond to that that and so it immediately wants to respond to that. But when you’re, you can be flexible and you don’t react meaning you’re not just automatically, because if you’ve ever seen someone react, they just are like I couldn’t help it, right, and so, instead of automatically reacting, you just take a moment and pause, and this is is I’m going to.
You know, I’ve talked about your prefrontal cortex, the CEO part of your brain. This is where this part of your brain is. It’s in your higher brain, it’s not in your caveman brain, right? People call it monkey brain, your caveman brain, right? People call it monkey brain. It’s just, it’s not. This is your higher brain. This is what distinguishes us from animals, right? We are human beings that we have the ability to be more flexible in our responses. We just don’t. We don’t have to just respond without thinking about it. But because of trauma, because of things in our past, many of us don’t even, we’re not even aware that we’re doing this. So remember, our prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role in executive functions such as decision making, problem solving, self-control and contributing to emotional regulation and social behavior.
So, when you know this and when you feel yourself just wanting to immediately react, if you can pause, you’re just going to have a better outcome and you’ll be able to consider a different choice, because it is probably unhelpful, whatever you were going to say or whatever you usually say or usually do, to react. It’s probably not the best way. And there is another way. I thought about this example that many some of you, when you’re driving and someone cuts you off, this is a great way. Pay attention. If you’re wondering like do I have a good response flexibility, if you immediately go to what an idiot. Can’t he see that I’m here, my day is ruined now? So if you have words like that, then you probably want to recognize like oh, maybe my response flexibility is non-existent, right, like you allow stress and those hormones just to take over and you just react.
However, if you’re responding like, oh, this guy must be really having a stressed out day, like I’m going to let him in because he must need to get there quicker than I do. I didn’t like that, but I also don’t want to like sit in my car and yell at the stranger right. You can have a little bit more compassion for the person that cut you off, but you don’t let it ruin your day, you don’t? You know, tell every single person you meet that day like, oh my gosh, this guy cut me off. And I’m not saying, if you do do this like, don’t judge yourself, it’s just good information for you to notice.
Oh, there’s a better way to be, and it’s probably because you’ve had trauma in your life that has inhibited this part of your brain, in your prefrontal cortex, for you to have this response flexibility. But, good news, you can practice and choose differently so you’re not always reacting, because always reacting is exhausting, right, and it makes the stressful situation more stressful. So remember that it’s not saying there’s something wrong with you. It’s not saying that you’re broken. It’s just something to know that this is what trauma does to your brain and there is a way out of it once you recognize it. Okay, just remember trauma diminishes your capacity for response flexibility diminishes your capacity for response flexibility and I’m guessing there are lots of things in your life like pay attention when in your relationships because I think that’s the most damaging one our relationships with your spouse or your kids Do you find yourself reacting, or are you able to take a break, take a pause and not react to whatever they’re saying and consider like, be curious instead of angry, have more compassion, and this takes work.
I’m going to say five years ago or so, I was definitely more, I had lower response flexibility, but now I feel like I have a lot more flexibility in my responses. I don’t make everything about me. I don’t make everything. I don’t react to everything. I’m much more. I’m much calmer, not so stressed out, so it’s totally possible to create different neural pathways in your brain. So just pay attention to different situations. I’m guessing we all have more stressful situations in our life, whether it’s our job, friends, that we somehow react a certain way.
I think driving is a huge one, right, but if you find things that you’re just immediately reacting to, consider like what’s going on for you, do I like this about me, do I want to be this way, and what? Maybe in your life, in your past traumatic situations have you had, and acknowledge them, and don’t make yourself wrong for being this way, because it makes perfect sense why, but it’s probably not helping you live your best life, anyways. So I hope this was helpful and just know it’s really hard to see yourself. I mean, that’s why I love having a coach, because they can help me see my responses, what I’m actually doing as I’m talking. They can, you know, help point out those things. It’s a lot easier for someone else to point out than for yourself. That’s why having a coach is so helpful.
I think it’s easy for all of us to see other people’s weaknesses and things that they need to change, but it’s really hard for us to see it in ourselves, and so hiring a coach can be so helpful and help you become the person that you really want to be. Anyways, have a beautiful day and I’ll talk to you next week. If you want to learn how to live happily even after, sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachjenwith1ncom. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at Happily Even After Coach, let’s work together to create your happily even after.
