MORGAN: [Trauma] How To Heal It, Survival Mode & Why It Looks Different for Everyone

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Bobby Bones Show Episode: MORGAN: [Trauma] How To Heal It, Survival Mode & Why It Looks Different for Everyone
Release Date: May 4, 2025
Host: Morgan Huy
Guest: Lauren Auer, Trauma Therapist
Produced by: Premiere Networks

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Introduction to the Episode

In this deeply insightful episode of The Bobby Bones Show, host Morgan Huy delves into the complex world of trauma with seasoned trauma therapist Lauren Auer. Released on May 4, 2025, this episode focuses on understanding trauma, its varied manifestations, and effective healing strategies. Morgan announces a slight shift in the show's format, opting to explore topics in greater depth by dedicating consecutive episodes to similar themes.

Lauren Auer’s Journey into Trauma Therapy

Timestamp: [03:21]

Lauren Auer shares her unintentional yet passionate journey into trauma therapy. Originally uncertain about her specialization during graduate school, Lauren found her calling while interning at an agency working with juvenile offenders and victims of abuse. Her experiences at a women's domestic violence shelter and a rape crisis center solidified her dedication to trauma work. Lauren emphasizes the multifaceted nature of trauma, having worked with individuals in crisis situations—from immediate trauma responses in emergency rooms to long-term therapy for unresolved childhood issues.

“It was such a unique learning experience, especially working with the three layers of victims as well as offenders and their family.”
— Lauren Auer [03:35]

Understanding Trauma: Beyond the Surface

Timestamp: [07:56]

Lauren discusses the diverse manifestations of trauma, highlighting that trauma does not present uniformly across individuals. She emphasizes that trauma is more about an individual's internal experience rather than the external event itself. Using real-world examples, Lauren illustrates how people respond to identical traumatic events in vastly different ways—some may laugh or become overly productive, while others might exhibit emotional or dissociative behaviors.

“It's about how that individual person, their nervous system, their brain, how they experience it.”
— Lauren Auer [10:07]

The Science Behind Trauma Responses

Timestamp: [11:19]

Morgan prompts Lauren to delve deeper into the science of trauma, seeking to understand why some individuals process trauma more efficiently than others. Lauren explains that trauma responses are influenced by a combination of immediate circumstances, historical factors, and future support systems. She uses an analogy comparing the nervous system to plants with unique needs based on their genetic makeup and growing conditions, illustrating the personalized nature of trauma responses.

“Our nervous systems are like plants; all of those things about how consistent is the care that you're giving it. Our systems have our own individual capacities for processing experiences.”
— Lauren Auer [14:10]

Healing Trauma: Techniques and Therapies

Timestamp: [29:42]

Lauren introduces various therapeutic techniques essential for healing trauma, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), brain spotting, and somatic therapies. She explains how these methods engage the body's nervous system to process and integrate traumatic experiences effectively. Lauren emphasizes that healing requires connecting both the logical and instinctual parts of the brain, allowing individuals to move beyond automatic trauma responses.

“Being in tune with your body and what's going on—therapies like EMDR and brain spotting are about being in tune with your body.”
— Lauren Auer [30:07]

The Consequences of Unresolved Trauma

Timestamp: [38:13]

Morgan and Lauren discuss the repercussions of unhealed trauma. Lauren uses the analogy of a junk room to describe how unresolved trauma can accumulate and eventually lead to overwhelming consequences. She highlights that unaddressed trauma can manifest in various ways, such as mood swings, relationship issues, and addictions, which often mask the underlying trauma.

“It's like holding a beach ball underwater—you can struggle to keep it down, but eventually, it might be too much to hold that down.”
— Lauren Auer [39:10]

Breaking the Survival Mode Cycle

Timestamp: [43:01]

Addressing the perpetual cycle of survival mode—fight, flight, or freeze—Lauren provides actionable steps for listeners to begin breaking free from this intense state. She emphasizes the importance of self-compassion, understanding the automatic nature of trauma responses, and integrating body-focused therapies to facilitate healing.

“Detaching that extra layer of shame and blame that you have, but also trying to understand what purpose that might be serving.”
— Lauren Auer [44:00]

Introducing “Trauma Lessons”

Timestamp: [46:04]

Lauren introduces the concept of “trauma lessons,” describing it as a transformative phase in trauma healing where individuals rediscover themselves free from the constraints of past trauma. This period often resembles adolescence, involving vulnerability and self-discovery but ultimately leads to personal growth and resilience.

“Healing is happening. It’s exciting. It’s like refinding yourself.”
— Lauren Auer [48:05]

Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Timestamp: [48:22]

In her concluding remarks, Lauren passionately advocates for the benefits of therapy. She encourages listeners to seek professional help regardless of the severity of their trauma, emphasizing that healing is accessible at any stage of life. Lauren underscores the generational impact of trauma and the importance of breaking the cycle through personal healing.

“The best thing you can do for yourself and all the people around you is to get to know yourself and figure out who you are without all of that other stuff getting in the way.”
— Lauren Auer [48:25]

Conclusion

Morgan wraps up the episode by thanking Lauren for her invaluable insights and previewing the next episode, which will feature Haley Dollar Hyde sharing her personal trauma journey. Listeners are encouraged to follow Lauren on social media and explore therapeutic resources to aid their healing processes.

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Key Takeaways:

• Trauma is highly individualized and not solely determined by the external event.
• Understanding the neurological and physiological aspects of trauma is crucial for effective healing.
• Therapeutic techniques like EMDR and brain spotting can facilitate deep trauma processing.
• Unresolved trauma can lead to various mental health issues and maladaptive coping mechanisms.
• Seeking therapy is beneficial for everyone, regardless of the perceived magnitude of their trauma.

Notable Quotes:

• “If two people were in a car and got in a car accident and fender bender...one of them might have experienced that event as traumatic, whereas the other one maybe didn't.”
  — Lauren Auer [10:07]

• “Healing is happening. It’s exciting. It’s like refinding yourself.”
  — Lauren Auer [48:05]

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Resources Mentioned:

• Lauren Auer’s Social Media: Instagram @yourtraumatherapist_
• Upcoming Episode: Featuring Haley Dollarhyde sharing her trauma story

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By providing a comprehensive exploration of trauma and its healing processes, this episode serves as a valuable resource for individuals seeking to understand their own experiences or support others in their healing journeys.

Transcript

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[Lauren Auer]

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[Morgan Huy]

Take this personally with Morgan Huy Monday Friends, I'm really excited to have you here this week. We are going to change up the podcast just a smidge. I've always been transparent honest with you guys so you usually we do two people an episode, an expert and then someone to come on and share their real life story. Now that concept is not changing. I love it so much and I love what it's doing for people. But we're going to break down the episodes just a little bit further. So we're going to do one person at a time for each episode. But two back to back episodes, maybe even three, will have a similar theme. The same concept. It's just broken down. I felt like we were jamming so much good stuff into one episode and I'd love to start to go into more depth with some of these interviews. Plus, if I'm being totally transparent with you guys, I was starting to get some very real burnout. Just trying to do way too much that I don't even have hours in the day to sleep or shower. So breaking this down not only helps me, but I also feel like it's gonna really allow me to continue this podcast in much broader, bigger ways. So. So this week and next, we are focused on trauma and how that impacts our lives. This week, I'm bringing on trauma therapist Lauren Auer. She has years of experience working in trauma, and this is truly her expertise. So she has incredible knowledge for us, and it'll be really important, not only hearing this, but going into next week's episode with Haley Dollarhyde. Lauren R. Is joining me right now, and she is a trauma therapist. Lauren, thank you so much for joining me on this episod.

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

[Morgan Huy]

I'm really excited to know from you what got you into this line of work, specifically this specialty.

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah, it was unintentional, originally. When I was in graduate school, I didn't really know who I wanted to work with. I had some categories of I, like, didn't want to work with kids, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to work with couples. But I really, at the end of the day was like, whatever, I'll just try things out. And I ended up getting an internship in a agency that worked with both offenders, juvenile offenders, as well as victims of abuse and their families. And so I had really wanted to work with kids. I definitely was like, ah, that sounds like the scariest population to work with in terms of abuse. And that sounds really heavy. But I actually ended up really loving it. It was such a unique learning experience, I think, especially working with kind of the three layers of victims as well as offenders and their family, seeing, like, trauma from these different angles. And so that was. It was really fascinating to me. And kind of from there, I just ended up landing in similar situations in terms of where I was drawn to with my work. So I worked at a women's domestic violence shelter as well, and then a rape crisis center as a therapist where we worked with people of all ages. And then I became the director of that center. And so at that point, I was not only working with clients that had experienced a lot of trauma, but I was also very much in a role of, like, community outreach. So I was doing trainings for, like, police and medical staff and supervising interns and other therapists and working with people at that vicarious trauma level. So, like, people in the field that were dealing with maybe their own trauma, but also Maybe being traumatized by some of the populations they were working with. And so it was very interesting to me to see things from all these different angles, all these different layers. And that center that I worked for, we would see people in crisis situations. So we would show up at the emergency room, let's say if they're getting like an evidence collection kit done. So like really immediate trauma all the way to people coming in for therapy later in life when they hadn't dealt with something that maybe happened in their childhood. So, like very far removed from the trauma. And so it just became these put in became something I was really passionate about because I feel like I learned so much just from doing that work about trauma. Like, I. I'd obviously learned about it in grad school and read all the books, but really just being in those environments and working with people, it was just like the best education I think you could possibly get in terms of what trauma is, how it looks, all the different ways it can manifest. And. Yeah. So total crash course. Then I opened my own practice after that. So now that's what I do.

[Morgan Huy]

Wow. Yeah. You really have seen it from just so many different steps and angles. And that's so interesting to me because trauma is one of those things that it's not a one size fits all. Even though it could be a similar scenario. It's something that has so many multifaceted layers to it. And that's why I'm so intrigued and wanted to dedicate not only like an entire episode and few episodes to it. I have a guest coming on after you in the following episode who's going to share her story, actually, of some of these things that you talked about that she had happen in her life. And it's wild as we see people experience these things and what it does, not just in that moment, but throughout the entire course of their life.

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah.

[Morgan Huy]

So when you go and you do this kind of work, especially front lines, and you have these initial moments and you're working with people, what are those things that you're experiencing with people and you're seeing them experience where you're like, other people should know what this might look like in case it happens to them.

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah. It's really interesting because if you would have asked me that after doing graduate work and learning reading books or whatever, I probably would have been able to rattle off some typical symptoms or things we might see. But after doing this work for as long as I have, I think one of the biggest things that stands out to me is that it can look so Many different ways. I've been in emergency rooms with people getting evidence collection kits done after sexual assaults where we're like laughing and joking and that's like their way of coping. Like that's their trauma response. I've been with people that are. Their immediate response is to take care of everybody else around them or just go into planning and doing mode where they're being really productive and really advocating heavily or getting things done. Of course, I've sat with people that are very emotional or angry or dissociated, like checked out. It's incredible, I think, just the human capacity to deal with things and those automatic responses that we develop when it comes to trauma. And I think maybe initially I would have thought that those people that were taking care of others or seemed really strong or laughing that, oh, those are like the resilient people that aren't super affected by this. But that's not necessarily the truth. I think sometimes those people that have that trauma response of taking care of other people or of putting the focus elsewhere, it's still living in them internally. And sometimes that is harder to process through and heal from when they're not just maybe doing what you would typically expect, somebody in a traumatic situation. And so I guess that's a non answer no for your question.

[Morgan Huy]

Yeah, perfect, actually, because I love to showcase that it doesn't look like you think it would look always right.

[Lauren Auer]

And also to add to that, I think it's important to keep in mind that when it comes to what we would consider to be trauma, it's not really about the event or events themselves or the circumstances as much as it's about how that individual person, their nervous system, their brain, how they experience it. I often compare it to like if two people were in a car and got in a car accident and fender bender, everyone's okay, they get up. One of them might be shaken up a little bit and just like we got through that and really able to go on with their life. The other person could be extremely anxious and panicky and not want to drive and really having flashbacks and a hard time or whatever it is, and they experience the exact same event. But one of them might have experienced that event as traumatic, whereas the other one maybe didn't. And so keeping that in mind too, that we can't always just look at a set of circumstances and assume how somebody could feel and can experience that.

[Morgan Huy]

Yeah. Can you break that down even a little bit further for me? Because why is it that some people, this kind of goes more into maybe more the science Side of things. But why is it that some people can process trauma easier, quicker, or so we think, while others really internalize it becomes a whole part of their body. And it's this whole process. Is there things that you've seen and experienced that make sense for us to describe why that happens?

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah, and I think it's. It can be a little bit complex and multifaceted, and there's so many factors at play there. And so there's, like, the immediate things that are going on. So, for instance, in that example, with the car accident, maybe one of the people in the car is having a hard time finding a job, and they don't have a lot of resources, or they are going through some sort of upheaval or distress in their life or dealing with other mental health concerns, or, like, there's all those immediate things that could be at play that if their baseline going into that experience, if they're already dysregulated by a variety of other things going on, that is going to impact them on a different level. But it's also very historical. I think if they have dealt with a lot of other traumatic things throughout their life, if they've had access to processing those things and dealing with them or not, what does the support system look like going forward in the future? Are they going home to a supportive and safe home where they have people that they can talk to? Do they have access to resources? There's all of these factors, like past, present, future, that kind of make up this unique circumstance around it. And I'm such, like, an analogy person. And I'm also like, a huge plant person. I have to buy plants all the time, especially because it's becoming spring. But if you think of your nervous system like a plant, like, each plant has very unique needs based on its genetic makeup and growing conditions. You'll go to a nursery, and this one needs a lot of sun, and this one actually does better with some shade. And this one needs to be watered frequently. And that one, oh, barely water it at all. They all have this kind of makeup already in their system of what they need. Humans are the same way. It's all of those things about how consistent is the care that you're giving it. Are there periods of drought? Our systems, we have our own individual capacities for processing experiences. So some plants can become, like, really hardy, and maybe there's, like, lots of exposure to wind and harsh conditions, While others are used to growing in more, like, delicate or protected spaces. So some might develop deeper roots from early stress, while others create broader Leaves because they have abundance in their conditions. And trauma that can happen when we're flooded with either more than we can absorb at once. So that would maybe look like if you had a new little plant and you left it outside and there was a sudden downpour that overwhelms the system rather than nourishes it. Like it. That could be a like really big. I think a lot of times when we think of trauma, like a really big devastating event happening, right, that's like that downpour. But it can also occur when you're exposed to harsh conditions for too long. So like maybe a plant could thrive in heat for a day, but if it's in hot heat and it's not designed for that for days or weeks, it's too much for too long and that could really hurt it. Or it could develop. Trauma could develop. If you're deprived of what you need to thrive. Going too long without water or light, like being neglected. It's not always something happening around you or to you. But also it can be like the absence of what you need for too long. And so like even two plants of the same species might need different amounts of care based on their unique growing history too. There's not just like a perfect formula around that. So it's not like about the weather itself as much as it's about each individual plant system and how it responds to that environment. It's really the same way with how our nervous systems develop. We have very unique requirements based on our genetic blueprint and also all these other environmental factors around us.

[Morgan Huy]

I love an analogy. So the way that you just painted that so perfectly with plants and allows people to understand it just in this deeper way.

[Lauren Auer]

Beautiful. The reason my analogies don't hit, but I feel like that one, I think is pretty all encompassing of what trauma is like.

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[Morgan Huy]

I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

[Lauren Auer]

I don't feel emotions correctly.

[Morgan Huy]

I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I.

[Lauren Auer]

Like him or not.

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Those were some callers from my call in Podcast Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show.

[Morgan Huy]

I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents.

[Lauren Auer]

Even at the age of 29, they.

[Morgan Huy]

Won'T let me move out of their house.

[Therapy Gecko Host]

So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for therapy gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it.

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[Lauren Auer]

Do I want my freedom or do I want my family?

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[Lauren Auer]

When she said, you know, you can leave, right? It was a light bulb and now.

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[Morgan Huy]

No, it definitely is. And the reason I even asked that question is because I think it's really easy for us to get caught up in this belief that I didn't experience it that way. So why are they experiencing it that way? We like to really just put people in our own boxes instead of understanding that we are individual and we have unique experiences.

[Lauren Auer]

Right.

[Morgan Huy]

And so having you share that in that way hopefully can really help people just be a little bit more understanding of those experiences and that it's not. They're not going to react the same way you choose to react. It's going to be different.

[Lauren Auer]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Morgan Huy]

And when you mentioned this too, it had me thinking of a lot of what we see on social media is people talking about little T's and big T's. Do you feel like that's really the case or is it just. It's just trauma or is that like little T, big T actually helpful and truthful in our experience and our learning?

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah, I think there's a place for it. I used to teach that and train that because that was the standard. But I guess for me personally, I don't love the language of little and big because I think it can suggest, oh, that one's not as serious as this other thing. I think what it's really trying to say by using little and big is more how I was describing with the plants, like a sudden downpour, like all at once, too much. That is big. That would be an overwhelm in a short period of time. Whereas little tea, I think is more the like could be like the neglect or the just not having enough for too long. And again, there's so many. I think it goes so much deeper than that. And so I shy away personally from using that language just because I think it can create some misconception and even some shame around. Maybe if people are dealing with a lot of trauma responses. But on paper, the things that they've experienced are, quote, little. That they may think that they there's something wrong with them or they're making too much of something, or other people don't understand or invalidating their own experiences. It's just so personal and individual to how somebody experiences something. And for there to be any sort of outward perception of that is basically impossible. Because we as an outsider, like, I can't know all of the environmental, genetic, circumstantial, all of these things. There's no way for me to know that unless that person shares that with me.

[Morgan Huy]

It totally came to my mind because I remember one time, I think I was sitting in a therapy session and I referred to something as like, oh, it's just like a little tea. And I even felt weird saying it. Like I felt myself invalidating what I experienced.

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah.

[Morgan Huy]

And I don't know if it was because people made me feel that way or if I just personally felt that way. Cause I had bigger traumas. But I remember just even saying it and I'm like, you know what? No, it's not actually. That was really traumatic. And why am I downplaying that experience?

[Lauren Auer]

Exactly.

[Morgan Huy]

So I'm glad that you shared that because it's helpful. Just as talking about everything in the mental health space, it's helpful. We're communicating finally about something that's really important. But using harmful language can also make it really difficult on us to truly heal.

[Lauren Auer]

Right? Yeah. And I think there's also an important thing to keep in mind about how important like what happens next is. And what I mean by that is, you know, there's a traumatic event itself. Let's just say abuse. If a kid experiences abuse and then that's a traumatic event, but then they tell a parent, hey, this thing happened to me. And if the parents reaction is like they don't believe them or they're downplaying it, or they are blaming them, or even if the parents reaction is devastated and very emotional and then the parent can't function and the parent like there's all of these kind of like after effects I think too, that can create sometimes an even bigger wound and there can be even more trauma associated with that or maybe even being in an environment where they feel like they can't share what happened to them because they don't feel like either they have safe adults or they don't think that the adults in their life are able to handle that. Maybe they're trying to protect that adult. There's so many things there too that I think is also really important to consider when we're talking about what trauma is and how we experience it.

[Morgan Huy]

I was just thinking about that when you were mentioning it because so many of these very emotional topics and things that are referred to as trauma do often come around with this part of I don't believe your experience or it's not what you think it was, or invalidating that. And I do believe that is trauma within itself. To not have people understand or believe you.

[Lauren Auer]

Right, yeah. And sometimes, I mean the rupture that can cause an attachment or even feeling safe enough to heal through that or the what happens next can be huge. So yeah.

[Morgan Huy]

Yeah. When something happens, this piece of trauma that happens in your life and it's gonna play out, maybe it's days, months, years, how do you know that you're still living within that trauma versus being healed from it?

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah, yeah, I know these are all gonna be complex. I think there's so many things that we experience that I think a lot of times we don't even realize have anything to do with trauma. Because a lot of times I'll see people in therapy and maybe let's say they're dealing with anxiety, that's something that comes up for them a lot. Maybe social anxiety, let's say, and maybe they've done therapy, maybe they've done self Help or reading the books or listen to all the podcasts or whatever. But they, maybe they get to a point where they understand logically why they have social anxiety. Maybe they're able to say, okay, that makes sense because I had some really close friends and then we got in a big fight and then I felt really abandoned or whatever. Like, I can point to things in my life that it makes sense that when I'm in social situations now that I would be anxious. That's great, but just having that knowledge doesn't necessarily mean that all of a sudden the anxiety is gone. Right? And so I think sometimes people can feel really stuck in that of, wait, I've done all this work. I can put logic behind it, it makes sense. But when I get invited to a social event, my body is tense and I'm breathing differently and I am feeling like I don't want to be there. And I'm second guess. I say they're still experiencing it. And so it's not enough to just know the why around it. Because the parts of your brain that are activated when you're experiencing something traumatic is not the logical part of your brain, that prefrontal cortex that can give explanation and put sense to it when you're actually experiencing those things. It is like that deeper, more instinctual part of your brain. The like, fight, flight, freeze, the knee jerk emotion, the knee jerk reaction. How your body braces in those moments and really your logical part of your brain goes offline when that's happening. Just like I talk a lot about to illustrate this. If you've ever been driving in the car and all of a sudden the car in front of you slams on their brake. And so you slam on your brake and you like put the like phantom arm out to just stop.

[Morgan Huy]

What we call the mom arm. Like, right?

[Lauren Auer]

And there's like nothing there. Like it's just an empty seat. But it's just that, like, instinctual reaction that we do. And that's such a small little example, but it's a really good illustration of the fact that logically there's nothing there. Like, it doesn't make sense. You're not protecting the invisible nothing. But it is just what your body does. It's just that initial bracing and I think a lot of trauma that we experience, however that looks there is just those instinctual reactions. That's how we're wired as humans to be. And so being able to actually heal from that and go beyond that stuckness of I can make sense of it, but I'm still having These reactions, a lot of that really has to do with processing from the parts of your brain that were actually online during the trauma. And so there's all sorts of therapy techniques and modalities that get into that, that kind of fall under the somatic category. But it's about being in tune with your body and what's going on. When you think about that and what are you feeling and what are the sensations. And therapies like EMDR and brain spotting and polyvagal therapy, there's a ton that kind of fall in that category. But really being able to bring your body into the therapy work is what can really facilitate healing in the sense of where those automatic reactions aren't coming up as strongly.

[Morgan Huy]

And I did see on your profile that you do have work in emdr brain spotting. Ifs somatic. Can you just little kind of excerpts of what each of these things are. Because having resources and sometimes people don't even know these things exist.

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah, and I think it can be very confusing looking for a therapist because there's all these acronyms and all these specialties. And I think people are like, oh, that person. Their profile says they're trauma informed, but that could mean that they took a trauma class in college 20 years ago. I think it is good to have some level of understanding of maybe like what some of these things are. EMDR and brain spotting are two techniques that follow the same neuroscience, two different ways to go about it. And it basically utilizes the neurobiology of how our nervous system is connected to our brain and how we process things and bilateral movements or eye position, because our eyes, how they, where they look, how they look, all of that stuff is really how our brain is processing through things and activating all those other parts of our brain, the left and the right hemisphere. And so it's like these specific techniques that are designed to I guess, wake up or activate those deeper parts of your brain while you're doing the processing in a slow way, in a controlled way. That's another thing, like we say fast is slow and slow is fast. You really can't rush through it. I always say it's hard to explain it because it sounds really weird. It'd be like me trying to explain to somebody like how to ride a bike if they've never even seen a bike. I really think there is part of it. You almost have to do it because you're activating the subcortical systems of your brain. Subcortical meaning the parts that are without word and without logic. And so to explain it in logical ways with words is hard, but it's.

[Morgan Huy]

Also cool because you're tapping into a part of your brain that to us feels like it's not active, even though it is. But because it's not transferring language in the way that we understand, this is a way to access a piece of you. It's kind of like plugging yourself into a, an outlet and being like the whole thing actually finally turns on. And it is how I'm like seeing it.

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah, basically, yeah. Because if you think about it, how often you're just going about your life and you know you're walking but you're not like going, okay, lift this leg up, put this leg down. Now this one. Like it's just so automatic where we're not actually in our body, we're not thinking about it. You could be off in your mind thinking about something completely random while fully going through a task physically. And so it's so natural for humans to not actually fully be in their body when they are just going about day to day life. But especially I think sometimes when we're recalling things like memories or emotional pieces of trauma, it's almost like we naturally go away from our body and just go up to our brain of like telling the story. And that feels almost protective in a way. And it's not conscious, but that is what we do. And so being able to create that, like slow it down, create that safety, wake up the whole body and the whole presence while being able to process through stuff, that's what's going to create the change.

[Morgan Huy]

Is this also when you can access something? Because I know in like the trauma that I've experienced, there'll be moments where before I had really worked through a lot of stuff where I really packed it down and pushed it away. Does EMDR and brainspotting help you access the stuff that you pushed out of your mind?

[Lauren Auer]

In a way, yeah, sometimes and sometimes not. I think sometimes people are afraid to do these types of therapies because they're fearful of a what if I recall memories? Or what if I've blocked something out that comes up? Whatever. Sometimes that may happen. However, our brains are incredible that when our brains do block out memories or we don't have access to that, there's a reason for that. Our brains are always trying to protect us and your brain is not going to recall those things if it doesn't feel safe enough to do so. So sometimes that is a slow process and you can rest easy in the fact that if memories are coming up, it is because you are at a regulated enough place to be able to handle those things. Also, there are sometimes things like preverbal memories or medical trauma where maybe you're under anesthesia or something where you literally aren't going to have active memory and you can't recall that, but your body was still experiencing whatever that is. And so sometimes there is truly no memory associated with trauma that we've experienced and it's not necessarily the goal. You don't need to have the memory in order to heal from it.

[Dutch Representative]

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[Anna Sinfield]

The number one hit true crime podcast, the Girlfriends is back with something new. The Girlfriend Spotlight. Our first two series introduce you to an incredible gang of women who teamed up to fight injustice, showing just how powerful sisterly solidarity can be. And we're keeping this mission alive with the Girlfriend's Spotlight. Each week a different woman sits down with me, Anna Sinfield, to share their incredible story of triumph over adversity. Like Tracy, who survived a terrifying attack.

[Lauren Auer]

I remember that feeling of okay, this.

[Anna Sinfield]

Is how I die and turned that darkness into the most incredible journey.

[Lauren Auer]

I want to take over the world and just leave this place better than I found it.

[Anna Sinfield]

Which took her all the way to Paris for the Paralympic Games.

[Lauren Auer]

Oh my gosh, this is amazing.

[Anna Sinfield]

So come and join our girl gang. Listen to the Girlfriend Spotlight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Morgan Huy]

I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

[Lauren Auer]

I don't feel emotions correctly.

[Morgan Huy]

I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

[Therapy Gecko Host]

Those were some callers from my call in Podcast Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show, I live with.

[Morgan Huy]

My boyfriend, and I found a piss.

[Lauren Auer]

Jar in our apartment.

[Morgan Huy]

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents.

[Lauren Auer]

Even at the age of 29, they.

[Morgan Huy]

Won'T let me move out of their house.

[Therapy Gecko Host]

So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for therapy gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it.

[Morgan Huy]

Wow. It's so cool that we have access to these things and to be able to do this to help ourselves. I don't want to just slide past that because the fact that we have technology in things like this in place to start to heal ourselves is such a cool place to be in in life. So that's just awesome to me as.

[Lauren Auer]

I'm sitting here thinking about this, it's incredible. I, like, geek out over what I do every day. And just the stuff that I like, the healing I see is just incredible. I love it.

[Morgan Huy]

You're doing incredible work in making some very big life changes for people on that flip side of trauma. What happens if we don't heal our trauma? What happens if we just go through our life and we just keep shoving it down, pushing it away, not ever fixing it? It just stays down, never comes back out.

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah.

[Morgan Huy]

What does that look like in somebody? Because I do think a lot of people experience this, like, with people in their lives where they're like, you haven't worked through anything. And I can feel this coming out at me. So what can that look like for someone? Because I think it helps us understand a little bit more just maybe what people are going through.

[Lauren Auer]

Like, those things, it doesn't just dissipate. I'll give you another analogy Because I just can't help it. It's how my brain works.

[Morgan Huy]

But I love analogies, so you can keep doing that.

[Lauren Auer]

It's. If you had a room in your house that it was like your junk room and everything, I'll deal with that later. Went into that room and then you shut the door. Like, you could shut the door and pretend it's not there, it's not going to just go away. And eventually, like, there is going to be other consequences to that. In that sense, maybe it's like, eventually you need to sell your house, and now it's this huge thing. Like, sometimes there's something that happens where it's like, you can't avoid it because something so big happens. I feel like I saw this a lot, like in Covid times that people were able to manage or push down whatever it was. But when this global thing was happening, for some people, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. There is some unrelated thing, and sometimes even like a small thing that is just gonna tip that scale. And then all of a sudden you start feeling really overwhelming symptoms. I do think that sometimes people can successfully shove it down for a period of time, but it's like holding a beach ball underwater. Like you can. You really have to struggle to keep that in. And eventually it might be too much to hold that down, whatever that looks like. And so a lot of times it does even come out in little reactions, little moods, or how we are doing in relationships with other people. Our tendencies to maybe shut people out or like all sorts of things. A lot of times it comes out like we cope with things through things like addictions or all these other things that might not be a huge problem. And I don't like to pathologize even that stuff. It might be an unpopular thing. But even addiction, right. If somebody leaned on an addiction or a substance to numb themselves, let's say, after traumatic things happen because they just maybe didn't have the capacity or the resources, or they just straight up weren't ready to touch it and they found something that got them through that time to where they could manage daytoday. Hopefully to a point where, you know, usually that thing that helped them manage becomes its own problem. And then now they're dealing with the consequences of that. I'm like, I'm so happy that they found something to get them by when they needed to. Also there's consequences to that. And sometimes then it's a bigger problem. But we do need those things, even if they're unhealthy, even if they aren't really serving us long term. It's not always realistic to, oh, I experience a trauma, like gonna go start journaling every day and get into a yoga practice. That's not always possible. And so, yeah, I think sometimes we do what we need to do to get by, but sometimes those things we do to get by become their own beast. And sometimes people go to therapy, I think, because they think the problem is the addiction or the relationship problems or whatever it is, and it is the problem. But like, where did that problem come from? Almost always it's going to connect somewhere to some sort of trauma that they've experienced at some point in their life.

[Morgan Huy]

Yeah, we talk A lot about root causes on this podcast. And man, if that ain't the cure all for just about everything is like, you gotta get to the root of something that's happening instead of just fixing something with a band aid.

[Lauren Auer]

Right.

[Morgan Huy]

Mental, physical health, all the things. Yeah. Something that's also very much involved with trauma. I got a question about this from a few different people, actually, which makes me think a lot of people are handling this in this way. But you end up in a survival mode or a fight or flight, and you just ruminate in this cycle of that for however long. And it's really hard to break yourself out of that. However that looks like for someone who's trying to get out of survival mode or a fight or flight or that freeze that you mentioned too. What are some first steps they can take to break that ruminating cycle?

[Lauren Auer]

That part of them that is, let's say we'll go with fight. Being reactive or touchy or has big emotions. That part of them, it's not connected to the fact that there's not that same level of threat in the moment. It's like logically they might know this is different than the trauma I experienced, but it's an automatic reaction that's coming up because their system is just noticing things in their environment, triggers whatever it may be, dysregulation and like ringing the alarm bell. And so those reactions come up automatically. And so part of it is having that understanding. So you're not adding fuel to the fire by blaming yourself or being hard on yourself for that of this is automatic. This is just is happening. Detaching that extra layer of shame and blame that you have, but also trying to understand, like, what purpose that might be serving. Because if your system thinks that it's going to be in danger, your system is going to react. It just is. And that's wonderful because you want your system to react if it feels like there's danger. But again, I think it really goes back to being able to not just put the logic behind it, but like connecting those parts of the brain and helping bring your body into that processing so that you can logically understand it. But you're really. What needs to happen is your cells, your nervous system, your body needs to understand, like, this is different and I'm safe now. And there's. I think there's like some self talk and stuff that can go along with that as well. But it is a process and like allowing yourself the time that it needs to get through that period of time.

[Morgan Huy]

Yeah, for sure. I appreciate you Answering that for some people, because I do think, especially coming out of COVID I think that caused a lot for a lot of people. But more than that, we're just in some crazy times right now, and people are going through it. You dubbed a new word in healing called trauma lessons. Am I saying that correctly?

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah.

[Morgan Huy]

Can you break that down for me and what it looks like? Because I. When I watched this content, I was like, oh, this is so cool and.

[Lauren Auer]

Super important how, like, when you become a parent, when you become a mother, how it can feel almost like adolescence in that you're, like, trying to figure out, like, who am I? Where do I fit? Like, what is my. That kind of, like, awkward new version of yourself, trying to figure out the bridge between who you were and who you now are. And I noticed that in trauma healing, I was seeing a lot of that, too, of this kind of what felt like almost like adolescent period in the healing process of, like, huh, now that I see this thing differently, or now that I don't have those certain reactions coming up as big anymore, or now that I'm looking at this thing in a new light, who am I without the identity of the trauma and the stuff around me and how it's a period of time that can feel really vulnerable and really scary, but it's also, like, really good and beautiful. And so I get excited in therapy when people are, like, coming to me and being like, man, like, I don't know why I. All of a sudden, I don't know what to do with myself. Who am I? Or. I always used to just, you know, nod and smile in these certain situations. And now I find myself, like, speaking up, and that's scary. And, like, what does that mean? Like, all of these things that almost freak them out about themselves. And I'm like, yay. Like, healing is happening. It's exciting. And I feel like that's just people becoming who they actually are without all the junk that forced them to adapt in all these different ways. It's like, almost like refinding themselves.

[Morgan Huy]

Yeah, I loved that word, and I love that. So thanks for coming up with it. And I do like to end our episodes always with whether it's a piece of advice, whether it's something that we didn't touch on that you feel is so important, I leave it open. Ended up to you that you'd like to leave us on this place. So floor is yours. Let me know if there's anything that comes to mind for you.

[Lauren Auer]

Oh, gosh, there's so much I'm Biased, obviously. But like, I think everybody can benefit from therapy whether they feel like they have, quote, little T trauma or big T trauma or anything at all. Like, being a human is hard and there's always going to be stuff. I know that there can obviously be barriers for people finding a good therapist fit or feeling like they can access those things. At the end of the day, the best thing you can do for yourself and all the people around you is to get to know yourself and figure out who you are without all of that other stuff getting in the way. And you know, I always say trauma can be passed down through generations. So can healing. It's never too late. It's not like, oh, that happened forever ago. It's truly never too late. I just really encourage anybody that if they have any inkling of I should do that eventually. Listen to that, do that. It's one of the best things you can do for yourself.

[Morgan Huy]

Yes, there's a perfect way to end on we we did it. So thank you so much, Lauren, for being here, for sharing your expertise and just helping change the world for some people. It's important.

[Lauren Auer]

Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm always happy to talk about this stuff.

[Morgan Huy]

If you want to follow Lauren on socials, her Instagram is your trauma therapist underscore. I'll put it in the description too. Next week, my friend Haley Dollar Hyde joins me to share some of the trauma she's experienced and how it's impacted her throughout her life. Her story is one of a lot of resilience and so much strength. So don't miss it. You can follow the podcast, Instagram, take this personally and don't forget to hit subscribe and rate 5 stars because we do have some trollers hanging out in the reviews. As always, I'm really happy you're here. Thanks for listening and you guys are awesome. We'll talk next week.

[Dutch Representative]

Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24. 7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

[Morgan Huy]

I found out that was related to the guy that I was dating.

[Lauren Auer]

I don't feel emotions correctly.

[Morgan Huy]

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails.

[Therapy Gecko Host]

Those were some callers from my call in Podcast Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lauren Auer]

That's the fun part about being an artist that you need to have the patience for finding your pen.

[Reggaeton Historian]

I'm like culture's favorite Regaton historian and Mosi Cologa. On an episode of my show the Regatta podcast I sit down with Bod, a bod who's demanding her place in the male dominated music industry.

[Morgan Huy]

That's the game.

[Lauren Auer]

Like who stays and who leaves, you know?

[Reggaeton Historian]

Listen to Regaton Colagata on America's number one podcast network iHeart. Follow Regaton Colagata and start listening on the free iHeartradio app today.