Complex trauma is more common than you might think. Many people face a host of significant challenges such as damaging childhood experiences, relationship abuse, and terrifying life events. The impact of traumatic experiences can surely accumulate over time even though we’re often unaware of the significant mental, emotional, and physical toll. Sadly, we end up merely “holding it together” as we march forward in survival mode. Yet, when we suppress trauma, the core parts of who we are often starve and wither away. Today, I’m joined by a tremendous complex trauma expert, Dr. Danica Harris, who will help us unravel how anxiety and fear can hold us back–and how to heal and move forward. Topics discussed include somatic experiencing therapy, validation, kindness, healing, empathy, body-based healing, glimmers, stalking, rape, emotional abuse, physical abuse, financial abuse, domestic violence, support, Healing Your Way Home Retreat, secure attachment, insecure attachment, and psychotherapy.

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Domestic Violence: https://www.thehotline.org/

https://odphp.health.gov/myhealthfinder/healthy-living/mental-health-and-relationship Additional links are in the show notes.

Mental Health Hotline: https://mentalhealthhotline.org/ptsd-hotline/

NAMI HelpLine: https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline/

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert is offering medical or psychological direction or advice; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr_carlamanly_imperfect_love

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend 

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy

Amazon

Connect with Dr. Danica Harris:

Website: https://theempoweredtherapist.com/

Blog: https://theempoweredtherapist.com/therapist-mentor-trauma-healing-retreat-blog/

Retreat: https://theempoweredtherapist.com/trauma-healing-retreat-somatic-intensives-dallas-texas

Classes: https://theempoweredtherapist.com/somatic-movement-classes-healing-yoga

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theempoweredtherapist/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theempoweredtherapst

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Can Ferocious Validation and Gentleness Heal Chronic Anxiety & Trauma? 

Healing Complex Trauma with the Power of Somatic Therapy

Understanding Complex Trauma and Self-Discovery

Complex trauma is more common than you might think. Many people face a host of significant challenges, such as damaging childhood experiences, relationship abuse, and terrifying life events. The impact of traumatic experiences can surely accumulate over time, even though we’re often unaware of the significant mental, emotional, and physical toll. Sadly, we often end up merely holding it together as we march forward in survival mode. Yet when we suppress trauma, the core parts of who we are often starved and wither away.

I am joined by a tremendous expert who will help us unravel how anxiety and fear can hold us back and how to heal from trauma and move forward. We’ll focus on this real-life question. “I had a bad experience with a former boyfriend who stalked me until I had to move. Even though I know I’m pretty safe now, I’m back living closer to my family, I just can’t make myself feel safe anymore. Anxiety and stress are my new norm. I feel on edge all the time. My parents and friends say things will get better over time. Are they right?” That question is the focus of this episode. Please note as this episode contains sensitive information, reader discretion is advised. If you need further information, please see the special links provided.

I am thrilled to introduce a renowned somatic experiencing expert, Dr. Harris, who is the Co-Leader of Healing Your Way Home Retreats, and she will guide us through the world of healing from complex trauma. Welcome to the show, Dr. Harris. It’s such a delight to have you with us.

Thank you for having me.

Before we launch into this tremendous question and the importance of learning to identify complex trauma or any type of trauma and then find ways to heal from that trauma, could you tell our readers just a little bit about what makes you, you?

Yeah, I love this question. It feels very much like something I would ask one of my clients. I think what makes me, me is my commitment to be myself. It is this returning to myself over and over again that is independent of what life has brought me and what I have been through. What makes me, me is this desire to be me as differentiated from my trauma, my family system, the world around me, but even getting to know myself and let there be many versions of me. I think what makes me, me, it’s my desire to be an embodied version of myself that I actually know and like.

That’s such a beautiful way to start this episode. I wanted to launch straight into the question, but I cannot resist picking up on some things you said. For many people, I found that they become so tuned into what the external world wants of them. I know this from my lived experience and as well as working with clients, but finding that inner self, like who am I? I know what I’m told I should be. I know what social media tells me I should look like or be like or aspire to be like. Amidst all of that noise, how do I find me? What would you say to that?

How do we find ourselves? I think a little at a time with a lot of curiosity and interest and then non-judgment. I think that so many of us are disconnected from ourselves for survival reasons. As you said, the world is trying to tell you or tell us who we are. I think that layered on that and what keeps people disconnected from themselves is they’re not tuning into themselves with nonjudgment. It’s like, “There’s this thing about me that I don’t like and therefore I’m more disconnected.” Whereas if that comes up inside of me, I think like, “What is this thing and why don’t I like it? Who told me I don’t like it?” I think it’s that layered approach of curiosity, interest, and then non-judgment.

I want to slow it down here because you said something that’s really important, very special. “Here’s this part of me that’s coming up, this judgmental part. I don’t like this. Why don’t I like this?” The really big piece, “Who told me I don’t like this?” You took me back instantly into my own childhood. As kiddos, we think we’re pretty darn good. We think we’re pretty darn wonderful until people start telling us we’re not.

I remember I was taking ballet and one of my sisters made fun of me and said, “You look like a crab when you do that.” I thought, “I’m doing it wrong. I’m not good at this.” When we slow things down that, and sure, maybe it looked crab to her, but I internalized that and really fell out of love with ballet. We often don’t track all of the experiences that happen in early childhood forward, some from before were preverbal at the time where we were taught to dislike something about ourselves.

I’m not talking about the parts where we might hit a sibling or something and mom or dad say, “Let’s be kind. Let’s touch gently.” Those were all really good corrections, but sometimes, it sounds you might agree, we had all of these messages that we then internalize unknowingly on an unconscious level that we’re wrong, we’re broken, we don’t fit in, we’re misfits.

We go through our life with that schema of ourselves, like, “I don’t belong here, or I’m wrong, or I’m not good enough,” and then we take in new experiences to that same lens and we’re not likely to feel very connected to ourselves or even know who we are, know what we like. I see this with clients all the time. They’re like, “I don’t have any idea what I’m interested in or what I like.” Part of that is because they’re not interested in themselves because they were taught not to be. They were taught to be critical of themselves and really cautious of themselves to try to prevent further judgment or critique from others. I just really feel if we can sit with ourselves nonjudgmentally, we stand to learn so much about ourselves, others, the world around us.

The Power of Ferocious Validation and Support

One more piece. I know that one of your taglines, I’m looking at it over here and I really love it. Ferocious validation and gentleness. Not just validation and gentleness, but it’s ferocious validation and gentleness. I like, “That feels good.” Could you tell our readers just a little bit about what you mean when you say ferocious validation?

Yeah, I love that that stood out to you. To me, being ferocious, it’s like I’m going to be unrelenting in my own healing and I’m going to be unrelenting in the gentleness, acceptance, validation, healing of others. With my clients, what I’ll often say is like, “I will be on your side and have your back until you are ready to, and I’m going to be so freaking on your side.” That doesn’t mean that I, we’re not going to look at things with accountability. There might be things you need to do differently that’s real. Sometimes we do need to change behavior, but we’re not going to hate ourselves whole. We have to be gentle to get there.

I would so much rather sit alongside someone when they are this critique of themselves as coming up and I can offer them a space to be non-judgmental, non-critiquing and say like, “This is what actually is and this is who you are and what you’ve been through. We don’t have to hate ourselves. In fact, we will not hate ourselves in order to feel different.” We have to allow ourselves to be a human being, which means that we’re flawed, we’re imperfect just like everyone else. That’s where our answers really exist. I do feel I have a ferocious advocate inside of me, both for myself and for those that I work with. This world is hard enough, we don’t need to be any harder.

I’m a bit speechless, very uncommon for me, the reason being the piece you said, “I will have your back until you are ready to have yours,” that struck such a deep cord in my heart. Not only is that how I feel about my clients and my loved ones, but there was something in you saying that, verbalizing it in a way that I’ve never heard verbalized quite that succinctly before, that made my heart feel really safe, which is really interesting. How lovely it would be if a parent, a partner, a best friend somebody had said that to you in your time of need? Maybe they did.

That’s so beautiful because that piece that you’re talking about, which can then lead us into the reader’s question, it sounds we’re in a romantic relationship where, unfortunately, there’s a lot of abuse. As you know, 1 in 4 people are victims of domestic violence. That’s the reported statistic. We can only imagine, that 25%, how much bigger it is in real life depending upon what you term abuse.

Is it physical? Is it “just” physical? A lot of people, as we know, the brain experiences emotional abuse in the same way it experiences physical abuse. It’s very much the same in the brain. When we look at someone that you expected to love you, you had a right to have them love you and keep you safe. I mean that seriously. That’s my perspective.

We deserve that from our romantic partners. We deserve that from our family members. We deserve that from people who call us friends. When we are betrayed or abused by someone, it takes that part that believes that we have each other’s backs because love is action. That’s what love does. Can you tie that into this dear reader who was stalked by a former partner, former boyfriend? That’s the antithesis of what a loving person does. We don’t stalk people that we love. It’s scary.

Very scary. When I was listening to what you were sharing about this reader, I was recalling that, early on in my own training, I worked in a domestic violence and sexual assault agency. Stalking was something we dealt with a lot with our clients. I remember some of the training that I had early on, and this has really stuck with me, thinking about the impact of stalking in particular.

One of my supervisors said to me, “The thing with stalking is that we never, or we rarely know when it’s actually over.” Unless the person gets arrested and goes away, and even if we move, stalking is intermittent. It’s coming up when you least expect it or maybe it’s like, “I’m expecting to see this person, but sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.” There’s a lot of unpredictability with stalking and so it makes sense to me that for this person, one of the things, the hypervigilance, it sounds like she has, “I can’t make myself feel safe.” I’m thinking, “Of course you can’t make yourself feel safe because there’s a part of you that’s not sure it’s completely over.”

Somatic Experiencing and the Body’s Memory of Trauma

Thank you, Dr. Harris. I appreciate that you picked up on that piece about, “I can’t make myself feel safe.” That is such a common thing with trauma where people are blaming themselves. They’re living in anxiety, having panic attacks and they feel badly because they feel as if they’re broken because they can’t get it under control.

One of the things I appreciate about your credentials, you are a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and you and I are very aligned in our belief that the body holds so much information including trauma. It remembers. Using that as point to launch from, could you tell us about somatic experiencing and how you might use it with this individual or any individual, whether they’ve been stalked or have encountered physical abuse, emotional abuse? How it’s important to pay attention to the body and help the body heal?

I love that we share that because what the mind knows and what the body interprets and holds are so very different. One of the things that happens with trauma is there’s such a split between what the brain and the mind says exists and what the body knows exists. I think sometimes, we want to talk ourselves into safety, almost like it’s a math equation.” I moved, therefore, I ought to feel safe.”

No, you may be safe. That might actually be true. You moved. This person may not know where you live. You may in fact actually be safe but that doesn’t immediately translate to what the body has felt, the non-narrative parts of what you experienced. However you felt fearful or terrified or vigilant or whatever when this abuse was occurring, we have to now work with that piece.

We’ve worked with the mind, the mind can say like, “The stalking has ended,” or, “I’ve moved and therefore, I’m with family and friends and I should be safe.” Now we have to work with that lingering somatic experience, what your body is holding onto from that trauma. The way I would work with someone with this, and this came up for me a lot as you were reading this, is I would think like, “We need the body to know that she’s safe.” I might ask the client if they were sitting across to me, “When did you know the stocking ended?” If they couldn’t answer that question, the next question would be, “When did you know you were safe?” My guess is this person doesn’t have an answer for that.

We would need to establish an answer. We need to find do you feel safe. Are you, in fact, safe? If the brain can survey and say, “Yes, I am safe,” then we need to help the body to feel safe. How do you know you’re safe? I don’t mean the math stuff, I don’t mean the math equation, I don’t mean the cognitive stuff. I mean what does safety feel like in your body? Can we help the person lean into those moments of neutrality, safety? In somatic experience, we call it North of neutral. Can we get the person feeling North of neutral so that they’re not stuck in a hypervigilant pattern?

I think it’s so important to emphasize something you said earlier. When it comes to something stalking, which is similar in many ways to domestic abuse in general, whether it’s emotional abuse, physical abuse, spiritual abuse, or financial abuse, you never know when it’s coming next. That intermittent pattern, not knowing when it’s coming, when it might come, keeps you in that hypervigilant state, that chronic state where your sympathetic nervous system isn’t resting.

It’s building up adrenaline, building up cortisol so that you can fight, flight, freeze, appease, or fawn. It’s really taxing mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. For this individual, as you rightly pointed out, even though they moved away, it doesn’t mean that their nervous system knows that they are safe. Their nervous system may believe that sound of a car or maybe that shadow is him. Maybe that squeak in the floor is him. Maybe that car behind me is him. All of those triggers.

I agree that we can cognitively tell ourselves, “I’m 60 miles away or 100 miles away or 3,000 miles away,” but the body does not register that. The body’s very different from that prefrontal cortex that’s giving us all the reasoning. The body’s going, “You need to survive, you need to be safe.” Yes, thank you for emphasizing that.

We can take this little bit to anyone who’s experiencing hyper vigilance, onset of panic, heavy anxiety. What are some steps they can take? I do want to let readers know when I mentioned Dr. Harris’s retreats, you’ll be able to look in the links we have because she does have retreats where you can immerse yourself in healing experiences. I’m not a big salesperson, but I did look at her retreats and I’m like, “That looks fabulous.” I encourage you to look at the links.

I’d just like to give it back to you, Dr. Harris. If you can give us some coaching, some go-to tips for the person who wrote in, but for all readers, on how to get into their body, create some stillness within, create some safety so that they can start creating new neural networks that are more calming in nature.

Daily Practices for Cultivating Safety and Stillness

I think one of the places trauma healing or trauma work will sometimes go wrong is that we get so focused on what does the person do when they’re highly activated? What do they do when they’re in the trauma response or when they’re flooded or whatever? You’re getting at this. I think that what we really need to do is what can you do day to day to try to decrease that hypervigilance?

I’m also going to say the urgency that runs in your body, that high activation, anytime you’re outside of your window of tolerance, meaning your nervous system is having to do more, tolerate more, handle more than it really can handle. We just have to have more moments of our life where we’re actually at a healthy baseline where we’re not in fight, flight, freeze, fawn, appease, and all of that. We have to have as many safe moments as possible.

The truth is, for most of us in our daily lives, there is safety, actual safety, relative safety maybe to the world around us, but we’re not attuned to it. We’re more tuned into threat, especially if we have this experience of complex trauma. One of the things that I try to help clients with, rather than just looking for threats everywhere, can we look for safety everywhere too? I like that as a foundational practice outside of the trauma responses. There’s stuff we can do when someone’s activated, for sure. As you and I sit here right now, I would want to us to be able to find and access safety, not just existing here, but how do we know that we’re safe right here?

I look behind you and I love the colors of your books and the variation. Your offices or the space that you’re in is bright white and I see a green plant. These are cues to me that you’re in a safe space. You’re in a contained environment. The door is closed. I’m picking up on cues in your environment that are helping me to feel safe in connection with you.

Sitting here in my own space, I’ve got a little thing of flowers just to the right of my computer screen. There are flowers I picked out at the farmer’s market this morning. That’s just such a lovely experience. I’m allowing myself to slow down and look at these flowers and be in engagement with you. Even as I’m talking us through this, I can feel in my own body I’m settling.

I feel more in my chair right now than I did one minute ago. It’s because I’m slowing down and being in this present moment. If I can be right here, right now, I’m not in a hypervigilant response. For the folks reading, I’d encourage them, look around you. Slow down and look around you and find something that is pleasing, something that is drawing your attention, even just neutral, and notice it. Notice it enough to notice what is it that’s catching your eye. Even that right there is going to build some presence.

I love how you are bringing it down to a really understandable level, a day-to-day thing. It’s interesting, as I looked at your background, one of the things that caught my eye, I am not a big stuffed animal person, but I saw a really nice little elephant and I love elephants and my eyes went to that. It’s interesting because the other day, I saw a stuffed octopus that, and the fabric on it was very velvety. I thought, “That would be nice to touch.”

It reminds me of my dog, a giant schnauzer, big, black, cuddly, wonderful. A pet really can anchor you, give you hugs, give you a sense of safety. It’s often reciprocal. I know when I hug my schnauzer, he’ll do a deep sigh, a thank you, and I’m breathing back with him. My husband give me what I call a cow hug. He will give me a big hug and our hearts are next to each other. Soothing and all of these things. If you don’t have a partner, maybe you have a best friend, a hug, somebody who respects your boundaries. All of these day-to-day things.

As you said, the green of a potted plant. That’s why offices, hospitals often have green or nature scenes, a little walk in nature, mindful breathing, all of these things, day to day that can remind your nervous system in increasing amounts that there are pockets of safety, pockets of stillness, pockets of joy, whatever they might be. Over time, Dr. Harris, do you believe that all of those little pockets accumulate into something more?

I do. I think when we can begin to teach our bodies, brains and bodies both, to begin at tuning to neutral, safe, enjoyable, interesting, whatever words you want to use, a stimuli in our environment, then we begin to slow down because we have to slow down enough to notice. It’s such a reciprocal relationship like, “I’m intending to notice what’s good and safe around me,” then I notice it. I slow down even more. Now I’m able to notice even more.

I think if we can build that muscle internally, then we begin to find glimmers and things of interest in our daily life. The relationship I have with my outdoor plants has evolved so much over the last couple of years because I’ve really built this practice for myself of, “I am attuned to the world around me in a way that isn’t just in vigilance.”

I find myself really noticing the different types of leaves and the different growth patterns of my plants and I almost could laugh at myself saying that because five years ago, this wouldn’t have been true for me. I would’ve just been like, “I don’t know what plants are out there,” but I have a relationship with these plants now. I have a relationship with my space because it feels good to me.

These are things that bolster us. When I’m not feeling resourced or when I’m not feeling myself, I have all these tools now in my life that I can turn to that are glimmers, that are positive things around me because I’ve built a relationship with them. That’s what I’m hoping for with people who are in healing and recovery. Build a relationship with your life where you can be safe and present in it.

Thank you for that lovely foundation. You were making me think of two things. First, I was thinking of my mentor Thomas Moore, who wrote one of my mentors who wrote Care of the Soul and in that book, he talks about the power of rituals. Read that part. It’s an older book but so very relevant nowadays. I was reminded of when you’re brushing your teeth, that can be a ritual. When I start my client day or lighting a candle for them and for me, burning incense or sage in the morning or night, all of these little rituals, a cup of tea, drawing a bath, even a very short shower, an experience of being present.

Feeling the water, feeling your body, feeling the cold or the hot, whatever it is. I agree with you. All of these things can anchor us if we’re mindful if we’re not rushing through them. It’s so interesting that sometimes we think we’re saving time because we’re rushing. I would imagine, at least for me, I know when I’m rushing, I end up causing more chaos for myself than if I just slow down and enjoy it. That’s the first thing.

I want to just go back to that piece that I really amplified at the beginning where you said as a therapist, and I will say to my clients, “I’m your advocate, I am here for you. I am your guide holding your light for you until you can hold it yourself.” That’s the phrase I use, that I hold the lantern for them. There was something in the way you said that at the very beginning of the episode. I want to emphasize that because the power of somebody’s intentional, genuine empathy, that genuine empathy and positive regard, those statements, which are different from somebody saying somebody saying, “I am here and I will have your back until you’re able to.”

“I am here.” That is so powerful and intentional, which is very different from somebody saying, “Just get over it. Move forward. You’re making such a fuss.” Night and day, the impact of those two statements. If you have support around you, enjoy the intentional support. If there are people around you that are trying to hold you back or dismissing you, that can actually activate your hypervigilance, your fight, flight even more because your body, mind and spirit are saying, “I am not safe because I am not seen.”

Dr. Harris, thank you for amplifying that. You gave two terms earlier. You offer so much richness. I just want to keep diving into the pieces. You talked about two things that may or may not be familiar to readers. Window of tolerance and flooding. If you could explain both of those and how they refer back to trauma and the reader’s question.

I think a simple way to explain the window of tolerance would be to understand that we all have this window and everybody’s window is unique to them, but we all have this window which we can handle stress. At any given point, to be at the top end of our window, that might be when we’re a little stressed about a work thing or something like that. Maybe we know Saturday hanging out on the couch, we’re at the lower end of our window, but ideally, we’re in our comfortable range. Our body is in its comfortable range of existing, but for those who have complex trauma or shock trauma, like a single incident of trauma, what we find is they are often likely to be outside of their window.

Meaning that this experience I just had was too much for my nervous system to handle. Those with complex trauma tend to live outside of their window, meaning that any little stressor just sends them into a fight, flight, freeze, or potentially a trauma response of some sort. What we are trying to do with somatic experiencing or these body-based modalities is trying to get someone to be back in their window of tolerance more often. The more time we’re in our window of tolerance, the more resources we’re going to feel, the safer we’re going to feel. We’re not going to be as attuned to threat, danger, and hypervigilance everywhere.

Generally, readers, your window of tolerance as you do therapy, as you do retreats or whatever, support groups, whatever it is, and you’re not broken. This is not about you being broken or that you’re human. If you’ve experienced trauma, you can see it as a nice window that opens up wide. You have more tolerance when you feel safe because you can let in all this air and go all of this air and go with the breezes.

When you’ve been traumatized and you haven’t worked on it, that window is very closed. Even little minor ruffles in the wind are going to feel unsettling. That’s when the flooding comes in where you feel overwhelmed and you’re in a reactive mode rather than a response mode. You’re just trying to survive.

Doing the trauma work, which is what Dr. Harris specializes in, helps you come to a set point where you can slowly open that window to your own degree. You may see other people out there who have ginormous windows of tolerance. They may be securely attached and have never experienced traumatic events in their life who are very few or mild ones.

Dr. Harris, you’ll get this. I’ve had clients tell me, “I’ve only been abused a couple of times. I have friends who have been raped three times.” You can’t compare. I’m not saying any form of trauma is ever okay, but comparing your trauma to anybody else’s trauma denies your lived experience and harms your healing.

I think this habit of comparing ourselves to others to dismiss our own pain, I know that’s a pattern that people establish to protect themselves from the depths of their own reality or to protect themselves from someone else judging them or invalidating them like, “If I don’t validate it then I don’t have to worry about being invalidated.”

Our trauma stands alone. My lived experience and your lived experience both get to matter and they can be different. If I’m discounting mine to say, “Yours is worse,” or if I’m saying, “Mine’s worse than yours,” then I’m discounting yours. That’s not good for the connection anyway. Not only do we not need to be doing that for ourselves, we shouldn’t be doing that in terms of our connections with others, either. Your experiences in mind both get to exist and they both get to have had an impact on us.

Healing Trauma: Beyond Time, With Intention

When we go back to the question, the final part where they are saying, “My parents and my best friend say it’ll go away in time, are they right? My perspective is that time does not heal trauma. If you’re not doing anything about it, it festers and worsens just lurking there. Not just lurking. It can actually get worse over time. What would you say in response to that reader’s question? Are the parents correct? Is the friend correct in saying that it’ll just get better over time?

The exact same reaction that you just shared. It’s not time that heals trauma. It’s intention, it’s strategies, it’s the more moments you spend in the moment that this moment. What I would say is it’s not time that will make it better, but over time, things can feel better if you use that time to heal.

Are there any other pieces, Dr. Harris, that you’d like to highlight for about this question or to our readers in general about trauma healing? I know there’s such a deep subject, but any other final pieces?

I’d like to say to this reader and then I think this applies to everybody reading as well. You already survived it. Hear me when I say that. You already survived. You’re already on the other side of it. If you can visualize yourself being on the other side of this really awful experience, then you can see that you’re living a life beyond the trauma, beyond the bad thing that happened.

If we can really spend the next phase of life being in outside of survival mode and into I survived, then we may open up a little bit more space to look around and be in this present moment and be outside of that trauma response and let ourselves have all the grief and all the pain and all that that exists and also live in this life in this moment now that you’ve survived the awful thing that happened.

I absolutely love that and I think it’s so important to do that shift into, “I survived this. I can own that I made it through that other side of what was obviously a very terrifying experience or set of experiences.” One last piece, sorry, that just came to me. I’m wondering your experience. Often, when I have worked with a client, I’ve done a lot of work with domestic violence and healing from all of that, most of the time, a person having a pragmatic set of steps to follow if they feel like they’re in danger.

Knowing where the police station is, knowing where the fire escape is, knowing where, you know their car keys are having friends or family on speed dial, just taking the time to do some cognitive steps, some very rational steps about what you could do if you ever felt threatened. Do you believe that that’s helpful to people just having a little plan, spending 30 minutes on creating a plan and saying, “I can handle this. If it comes up, I know I’ll drive to the police station. If somebody’s following me, I’m going to go and I’m going to park my car and march into that police station. Watch them follow me into there.” That kind of thing. What do you think about pragmatic steps that?

I think they’re great so long as they’re contained. An example I’ll give is I’m someone who, when I walk into a new space, I want to know where the exits are. It helps me feel settled. I spend about 30 seconds on that when I walk into, particularly a restaurant or something like that. I walk in, I just observe, I look around, I see where the exits are, and then I allow myself to disengage from that and then I’m present with my friends or my family or whoever I’m with.

That, to me, feels very functional. If we walked into a restaurant and I spent the entire time looking at the exits or watching every other person who’s in the restaurant or saying like, “I want to go count how many steps it takes between where I’m seated and the exit,” then we’re not working in a functional way any longer. I’d say pragmatic steps that soothe you and do not take over. I love those. Get as concrete as you need to get

Wonderful distinction. I absolutely agree because the brief survey, know you’re safe, you’re in an okay situation. When you move to a new place or in a new place and you figure out, “These are the steps,” then you allow yourself to go into that pocket of safety we were talking about earlier. If you’re staying hypervigilant and watching everybody, you’re not broken, but you’re just hardwiring in those hypervigilant patterns that keep you in that not so healthy state of being chronically stressed.

It has been such a joy and a pleasure to spend time with you. Our readers can find you at The Empowered Therapist. Is that correct, Dr. Harris? Excellent. You’ll be able to find her retreat, you’ll be able to find her resources, you’ll be able to dive into her work and get in contact with her. Dr. Harris, thank you so much for gracing us with your time. It has been such a pleasure.

Sure. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. Readers, as always, thank you for sharing your time and energy with us. It’s always a joy and a privilege.

Important Links

• The Empowered Therapist
• Care of the Soul
• When Grief Stays: Making Room for What Remains
• Healing Your Way Home: A retreat led by Dr. Danica Harris, SEP & Dr. Brittany Escuriex, SEP
• Somatic Movement and Meditation: A Virtual Experience to Help You Return to Yourself
• Dr. Harris on Instagram
• Dr. Harris on Facebook
• NAMI HelpLine
• Mental Health Hotline
• National Domestic Violence Hotline
• Dr. Carla Manly’s Website
• Dr. Carla Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Manly on X
• Dr. Carla Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Manly on TikTok

About Dr. Harris

Dr. Harris is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and complex trauma expert, working internationally as a coach, facilitator, presenter, and educator. Trained as a Counseling Psychologist, Dr. Harris prioritizes helping folks heal so they can live more embodied and empowered lives. Dr. Harris is the Co-Owner and Executive Director of Empowered Healing Dallas, a group therapy practice where her team provides trauma-informed therapy, using somatic and relational approaches when working with clients. She is also passionate about support for therapists and healers and provides mentorship and consultation to providers looking to increase their trauma-informed knowledge and business practices. She considers herself a co-journeyer, and hosts healing focused retreats and intensives for fellow complex trauma survivors. You can find Dr. Harris on her Instagram platform, @theempoweredtherapist where she provides education and support to the broader community.