Beyond the Trauma: Holistic Healing and the Power of Hope

Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us Karen Robinson. She is the licensed therapist with 25 years of clinical experience specializing in trauma recovery, anxiety and depression. She provides holistic care to create transformation and healing for trauma survivors.

She believes unhealed trauma limits everything, and she is also the host of heel, thrive and Dream Podcast herself. So welcome to the show, Karen. It's nice to have you here.

Thank you, Jill so much for having me today.

So tell us your story. How did you get started?

Sure.

When I was young, I was raised in a what I would describe as a dysfunctional home. That's a term a social workers tend to use when there's food insecurity, poverty, domestic violence and child abuse.

So it was pretty rough.

And when I was about 12 years old, I did have a pretty serious suicide attempt.

And my joke now, since I survived it is it was either God who saved me or the no name Tylenol. Because remember, we were too poor for the branded stuff. So I did survive the attempt. And a couple years later I ran away from home.

My aunt and uncle ended up becoming my guardians and I did thrive under their care. Was awarded a full scholarship to university, and then went on to get my Masters degree soon after and all the while I knew if God wanted me around that maybe there was a bigger purpose for my life, so that gave me a.

Lot of hope.

Thus, after a few rocky relationships, I'm married to a wonderful man. We have three children.

I left the Department of Defense after 17 years working with them because of sexual harassment and just oppressive work conditions. They did have lots of wonderful leaders, but there was also some toxic leadership along my way.

And I decided I just, I wanted to practice my craft or my profession. And the way that I knew would be best for my clients and myself. Thus he'll thrive dream.

That's the short version of my story.

So can I?

Ask you when, when you were working what.

What was the time frame that you were working with the Defense Department, that it's purely for personal reasons like?

Sure.

Yeah, I left. OK, well, I did five years in Okinawa, Japan as well. So that's part of the.

Yeah. OK. So is after. After the turn of the century. Doesn't that sound so weird to say?

I I had affiliations with the military.

From most of my life, but it ended in around 95, so I was just. I was wondering about relationship work environments were a lot different.

In the Seventies, 80s and 90s.

I have stories, let me tell you.

I I am very positive that you do. Yeah, it was extremely difficult having a high-ranking officer removed from.

Yeah.

Their behavior was just like.

Really.

Yeah.

To women in general. And it wasn't just like.

And this is this is related to trauma because it's very traumatic when you're you're working for somebody who has absolutely no regard for you as a human being because you're female and it's only because you're female.

Just like.

If I were a man, you would never say that to me, no matter where there was a janitor. I mean, you just like.

I don't know, it just it it it blows me away today to think back on some of the things that.

Went on. I know first hand.

In the workplace in this country or in the United States.

Yeah, I I still see.

Active duty retirees, veterans, men and women, and I've heard lots of things as well, because even women who've left quite some time ago.

Of memories that's truly impacted their their lives.

So yes, I I I get it. It was not easy being a woman in the federal government or working for the military or in the military.

Yeah. Really, any any of those things at?

Even in in corporate America, just.

Women only became like real citizens.

In the 70s it was, it was that long and they were allowed to have jobs, but then they were still expected to do all of the stuff that women were expected to do and.

It was. It was kind of ridiculous. If you go back and watch some of the old movies.

You can see it, it's it's really pretty blatant, especially in the movies for like the 80s, the late 70s and early 80s and some of them were funny. But like, I think like.

Yeah.

You can totally see why those were happened. Working women was one of them. That comes to mind where they're just like.

They've had it with their boss and they kidnapped him.

I don't recommend that recommend that person either.

Well, yeah, that's that's just not the way that you handle traumatic situations these days.

Yeah, because I just end you up in jail, and then you'll have jail traumas.

Yeah, the real trauma, it is of some kind of trauma. So mainly, what kind of trauma do you help people with? Is it just like, the every day, everybody goes through trauma because, you know, you can't escape childhood without some trauma involved. I think it's what shapes us as human beings, but there's.

It's capital T trauma, and then there's like little T trauma. So where where do you?

Loyalties. Yep.

Help not on that spectrum.

Yeah, well.

The the honest truth is, is I can work with any of that, but my specialty is complex trauma, so complex post traumatic stress. That's when there's developmental trauma. So something more significant in childhood, like sex abuse, physical abuse, extreme emotional abuse.

Even bullying that goes too far.

The symptoms for survivors are very, very similar, no matter what kind of trauma. But complex trauma usually means there's some sort of developmental trauma. And then, as across the lifespan as life goes on, there is more trauma. Whether that's domestic violence situations, sexual assaults.

Harassment in the workplace or it could be something like a medical procedure that went very wrong.

A natural disaster, like when the earthquake and tsunami's happened in Japan's I work with people that were there and that was pretty significant traumas as well.

And of course, combat trauma is also pretty complex, with the moral injuries that can happen. So the bottom line is I have worked with almost any kind of trauma that you can possibly conjure up.

And I specialize and have the advanced certifications and working with folks with complex trauma.

So how would?

How would somebody this is going to sound like a silly question probably, but how would somebody recognize that they have complex trauma going on in their life, I mean.

Yeah.

Sometimes people go through things that are traumatic in their lives and they think that they're OK.

It's just like.

We just we'll ignore it and make it all better. And then.

It. No, it's really not a silly question, and even though some of the symptoms can look similar depending on the different traumas, you know people are still different and so there's like this whole list of symptoms that can happen, but not every person's going to have every symptom. But I think a good guideline.

Is to to be aware of is. If your daily life is impacted like you're really having trouble functioning.

And also if you have this desire to rely on a substance that could be alcohol, drugs, food, or maybe you see an uptick in ***********, sex addiction spending over, you know, shopping too much. Like, if anything that's really disrupting your flow of life.

And then things like sleep are usually impacted when first when trauma first happened. It's extremely disruptive and then as time goes on, if you, if you.

Are healing in a healthy manner that should get better. If it isn't, that's another symptom that it's time to get more help. If your sleep is really whacked out, another way to tell if there's trauma impacting you is if it's impacting the relationships around you. So if you're showing up differently for your partner.

Children. If it's hard to maintain relationships with friends and coworkers.

It's it's probably trauma that you're being impacted.

OK. So that's just a few of the symptoms.

Can it go away? I mean, can you just bury it and then at a later point in life it come up?

And could you comment?

That happens all the time.

Yeah, and the reason is is what some other people some people do when they've had some trauma is they become workaholics and that's one.

Way to bury.

The trauma for a while, but usually something later in life will trigger and then everything comes piling up. That or it just gets it more intense over over time the symptoms until people can't ignore it anymore or they're people are on the brink of divorce. Or there's the kids start cutting off their parents because of the.

Toxic behavior. And so at those points I see a lot of people later in life, like, OK, I can't. Something's wrong. I can't do this anymore. And so, yes, to your question.

So would it be the parent?

Who's dealing with the trauma or the kid who's saying no? I'm not having a relationship with him anymore because of the trauma.

Yeah, I've seen it happen both ways. It just sort of depends. I've also seen adults adults allow their parents to still bully them like I've had recently, an adult that was 55 years old and whose parent was, you know, in assisted living still.

Cursing them out, belittling them.

And so I'm like, well, how is your parent doing this to you? And they're like, oh, well, I call them every day. And I'm like, have you thought about not calling them every day?

Or have you thought about setting a boundary?

And they're like, oh, I have to respect my parent. And I'm like, well, at this point, you're 55 years old. You also are worthy of respect. And so just doing some, you know.

Reshaping how people think about the being parented is one thing that I see, and then there are times where kids cut off their parents because of.

They're like, yeah, I don't have to take take this anymore and they split it away.

When parents cut off kids, I see that less frequently.

And it could be for a wide range of issues. It could be that the parent has these expectations on their child that the child's not willing to do or have boundaries. So the parents are like, forget you.

And like there's usually some sort of addiction going on when that happens and if the child, the adult child, doesn't want to support a gambling habit or some sort of substance they're like, oh, there's no point in this relationship because they're so sick at this point. The illness has truly taken over every aspect of their life, so it's heartbreaking.

And that happens.

Sad.

Yeah, it does happen, though I love your comment that unhealed trauma limits everything. Expand on that a little bit.

Yeah.

I think.

Unhealed trauma, especially when it's significant, limits everything is more accurate.

And what that means is it can show up in every area of your life.

The the list is.

Too long and in fact, I plan to write a series of books about this trauma can impact your parenting.

It can impact your relationship with a partner. It impacts sex, can impact friendships, impact relationships with coworkers.

Leadership, like some survivors, cannot tolerate authority at all because of the abuse authority has done in the.

Past.

It you know already said the pack sleep, it can impact your appetite where you're eating too little or too much. It can impact your irritability, so your mood and your mood fluctuations.

Impact your hormonal health.

It impacts every area of your physical body, so a lot of times trauma survivors end up with migraines, fibromyalgia, immune disorders.

Heart conditions, blood pressure, everything on top of your bottom. And there's studies now that prove this, like as a young therapist, I suspected this correlation between trauma and the impact on the physical body. But now research is very clear of this connection. Trauma can impact your spirituality.

Your faith on how you see God, whether you believe or.

Uh.

Your ability to trust others. It can impact the energy around you, right? Let's see. I'm on A roll here.

It can impact your mental health. A lot of significant or severe mental health issues. When I used to work with with folks that were diagnosed only with schizophrenia, this was in my early career and when I worked with them, I learned that every single one of them had significant, significant.

Trauma like we're talking being stabbed or tied down to be brutally assaulted, like really horrific.

Oh yeah.

Incidences and it it I'm like there has to be a connection between them having this severe diagnosis and their trauma, emotional health, your ability to cry or if you shut down and go numb. While that's impacted by trauma.

Let's see. Spiritual uh relation, yeah.

I think that's a pretty.

Your career.

Pretty significant, yeah.

Your ability to learn like my survivors, either were dissociating in class and could not focus and get work done or school was their everything and they're like straight day perfectionistic people that struggle on that end of the house like super anxious.

So I I think I have covered.

3rd.

On screens.

Can I ask you about the schizophrenia? Just for clarity, for me, what is that like?

Split personalities it could. It could it present that way? Or how does that? How does?

No.

That look.

I think I think you're thinking of dissociative or dissociative identity disorder, which used to be called multiple personality disorder, and that's when survive.

Energy.

Right.

Ours really shut down and take on other personas, like their their little self that was injured comes out or this big protector comes out like there's different parts of us that come out because of the trauma, the schizophrenia. The easiest way to explain it is psychosis. Like you can have psychosis.

With other mental health issues, but with schizophrenia is pretty severe. Like it's hallucinations. Auditory, visual, tactile.

Delusional thinking. So really not being grounded in reality, you know. And so there is a genetic component as well to schizophrenia. So it's it's complex. You know, they still are studying the brain, but I I do believe that trauma is one of the factors in it just from my.

My experience as well, and there's some research too as well.

It's really interesting. It's like.

I I can see how DID happens to people who experience trauma because it's just like.

It just makes total sense, but you you're gonna. Your brain is going to try to protect different aspects of you and different we all are.

We're all a variety of different personalities at any given time, but most of us they kind of blend together and we can rein them in. And it's not like.

Now I'm presenting as something totally different than the identity that I'm.

That I normally.

Present to the world.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. DID in and of itself is pretty rare, but it is real. Like I know when I was a young therapist, I doubt it. It's the validity.

It just seems so extreme and out there, but I have witnessed it.

To small degrees and big degrees, just not very often, but I've been in the field a long time at this point.

So how did people find you if they wanted to work with you and and how do you work with them? Is it one-on-one and groups? How does all that look?

Yeah. So I do work with people one-on-one and I also have a.

The group style that's like the membership model where I do some coaching on a different theme on trauma every month. I do it in baby doses so the clients aren't flooded and overwhelmed. And then after the coaching, it goes into a support group so they can use their collective wisdom to also.

You know, empower and help each other and this just feels very validating to them. Like one meeting, one woman mentioned that her sister cut off and how that cut her off and how hurtful that was. And then a couple of other members were able to say that that happened to them too, and they just felt so.

Validated and felt less alone because other.

Survivors had that experience, so the group membership is my favorite thing. It's the most cost effective thing to get into to work with me, but I also do one-on-one I do coaching intensives every month, free for the community, and I also host 3 summits a year now, which is pretty exciting.

It's really exciting so.

I guess I would ask how would people?

Want to work with you? What? What would they be experiencing that they could get immediate relief from by working with you?

It's a great question and it's hard to answer in a way because people are so different.

We think the most important piece of therapy.

Is having a therapist that's one competent in trauma. It's amazing how many therapists out there who are not competent.

The words trauma informed are, you know, very popular nowadays. Yeah. Buzzwords. Thank you. And it just means that people have a couple classes, and that's great if it's your. If it's a nurse or a dentist. But when it's your therapist, you really want them to be competent. If you're struggling with with symptoms of trauma.

As words.

So that's one having a trauma competent.

Therapist the next is you wanna be with someone that really hears you. It truly strives to understand what you've been through. So I've heard all kinds of stories of of, of therapists not believing survivors or or questioning. Like. Are you sure that's you remember that correctly.

Like I because of being trauma competent bio already know that memories are fragmented and that's logical for what's happened, right. And so I don't questions peoples memories.

By go with how they feel? If so, if they feel that something terrible has happened to them and they don't remember all the details, that's OK we still can proceed with the trauma work. OK, so I think the feeling that most people experience when they first start with me, it's just a sense of relief.

But they finally have a home to kind of get some help with. It doesn't mean that they're going to be healed in a couple.

Of.

Weeks, but they they are relieved to know that I'm going to be on the journey with them and that there's baby steps that we can take for their healing journey.

I hope that answers your question.

It does. It does. And I know that you offer a.

A journaling prompts is it a PDF?

For people, maybe that.

Yeah.

Kind of take the first steps towards.

Trauma recovery.

Sure. One of the things I see sometimes is people don't have hope and feeling bad.

There.

Having things changed so I made a little tool. It's called the hope tool.

And what it is is the HOPE. There the stands for different journaling prompts that can kind of help you be reflective and teach you that there is hope. So, for example, he stands for purpose and passion, so it's just, you know, helping guiding you towards, you know.

What do you think your purpose is, or what could it be and like what are you passionate about? So it just helps.

Survivors explore and hopefully plant a little seed that there is hope to be had, so I do recommend that tool.

That's awesome. And we'll put the link to that in the show notes so.

How long do people generally work with you?

Because they specialize in complex trauma.

It's it's a while it's years. Honestly, the shortest time where I can say that there's going to be some.

Healing is 9 months because it takes a few months for people to trust and feel comfortable enough to talk about really hard things.

So after the couple months of trust building and and building up their coping skills, we call that bottom up approach. Then we can do the top down approaches of evidence based trauma therapies. And since I've been trained in all the models or most of the model.

Well, I can at that point. I know the client really well and what's going to what they're going to respond to. And if they don't respond to, let's say, if I do cognitive processing therapy and it feels too fast to the for them, I can pivot and do another type of therapy that might be a little more gentle. So it depends on the client and their ability to.

To tolerate the trauma work, but nine months seems to be the minimum for good trauma work.

Is it the minimum to start seeing results in their life?

No, it just see that one's also hard to answer because it depends on how willing.

Enable.

They're able to put the work and the effort in to. So if I have a client in front of me that's determined to feel better and wants and stuff results, I'll say OK, let's do an, AB and C if you do AB C, you are going to feel better, you know, and so if they are able to do that.

Then yes, they're going to feel better sooner.

But again like.

It depends on how much trauma they've been through. Like some people have really, it's amazing they're still walking around, they've been through so much.

Yeah.

Do you see a lot of?

Those people, I mean.

Do do they end up working with you because they've been like?

Hit rock bottom I mean.

Yes.

I don't really understand how that would happen. Like did the police recommend that you speak with them or mental institutions?

Yes.

All of that, but I have one of my recent clients was arrested.

For assault, it was pretty.

Minor in the cell category like she didn't.

Actually hit someone, but she was in their face and had and was touching them with her finger.

And so she was. And she was, even though she didn't hit that person. She was very ashamed about being arrested. And it was rock bottom for her other people. It's something to do with drugs or alcohol and being arrested.

I mean, it can be several different things. It could be, the partner says if you don't get help, I'm divorcing you.

And.

Right.

I have one client who's a combat vet who also had early trauma. It took us over a year to process his little tease.

In his little tease would be huge teas for someone else who didn't have little T's or had, you know, an easier life. So you know, that's why I I don't believe in cookie cutter treatment. I believe that each client I see gets a very thorough assessment where I really look at all the areas of their life and see what, where they've been impacted.

And then coming up a plan together.

Is how I like to do it.

That really sounds amazing. Like you, you actually transform their life because you help them with concrete, actionable things that they can do to move beyond the trauma and to cope with it.

Is that a fair assessment?

Yeah, honestly, I wouldn't have been able to do this work for so long if it if it wasn't so rewarding. You know, there's really hard moments. I've heard some horrific things that I won't repeat on a podcast because it would traumatize listen.

Owners.

But I've heard some things that have really caused me not to sleep at night, right? And so to to know that.

That, you know, people can get better is is crazy powerful and it's really my mission to.

Help people who are ready to be helped, like some people just aren't there yet. But if you're ready, well, that's my specialty.

Yeah, you can't change somebody for them. They have to want to change themselves.

Yeah, yeah.

Karen, this has been.

An interesting conversation and I would like to know what's the one thing you'd like the audience to take away from our discussion today.

That baby steps in your healing work.

Pick a category or what I call a pillar of your life and think what's one small step I could do to make this better or different.

It could just be simply as is picking up a journal and and.

I call it brain dumping so that you're not carrying all this stuff in your head. This brain dump it in the practice of that and see how much lighter that you feel.

So it's a take away.

Yeah, that works.

Incredibly well, thank you so much for joining me and for sharing that with us.

You're welcome. Thank you for having me.