What Happened to You? A Guide on Trauma, Trauma-Informed Therapy, and Oprah

Our June Calm Collective Book Club pick was ‘What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing’ by Dr Bruce Perry (psychiatrist) and Oprah (I bet you know who she is already). What an amazing guide to both the human side and the neuroscience side of trauma.

We should have more conversations around trauma to better understand ourselves and the world around us. The modern world is overwhelming and we know so many of us experience trauma at one time or another. As a trauma-informed Psychologist, I thought I’d start the discussion here.

What is trauma? Simply put ‘that which overwhelms our ability to cope’.

When we are younger, this may be developmental trauma in the form of adverse childhood experiences. If we are in a serious car accident, this is single-incident capital ‘T’ trauma. Complex trauma may be ongoing workplace bullying, coercive control by a family member, or community violence. Vicarious trauma may occur for first responders repeatedly witnessing overwhelming events.

What determines if it is trauma for you in that moment is whether you have capacity to cope or not. A good example is if you are under attack by a wild animal and you are able to fight back and flee without major injury – your brain is likely to determine that you have coped well. It relies on the dubious logic of our human mind.

What we know about trauma is incredible and can be life-changing for those who have experienced trauma. We now see how our brain changes, how this affects our baseline of stress, and how we can create resilience. Asking the question with non-judgemental curiosity ‘what happened to you?’ allows us to draw on our humanness to understand what our brain has learnt about the world and what it needs.

It draws on the brilliant neuroscience of neuroplasticity – how amazingly reactive and changeable our brain is. A traumatic experience changes our brain structure. Neuroplasticity shows that we have the power to change this. We can do this by strengthening neural pathways – like bushwalking, where the path most trodden is easy, smooth and flat, whereas the path least taken is challenging, requires concentration, and is more effortful.

Dr Bruce Perry and Oprah’s book would be a great therapy companion for those who are trying to figure out their brain and trauma. For example, state dependent functioning is a theory around how our brain operates differently based on our nervous system function at that time – ‘a calm body allows for a calm mind, a calm mind thinks differently’. Likewise, when our brain decides we are not safe, our nervous system is dysregulated and we end up thinking differently. Dr Bruce Perry explains this more thoroughly (and more eloquently!) in the book.

Trauma-informed therapy ties together our understanding of this neuroscience and our knowledge of how we can create a sense of safety and security through interpersonal relationships. In the modern world where we know experiences of trauma are the norm and not the exception, it is important to look for trauma-informed practitioners across all aspects of medical care.

What do you want to know more about? Let’s discuss on Instagram @calmcollectivepsychology.

Warm wishes,

Grace

2024 So Far…

When I decided on Psychology, I was driven by my own intense curiosity about the world and especially about people – how they became who they are, what drove their actions and choices, and how we all co-exist on this planet. It is all pretty mysterious, right?

How do we decide what to do, when we have hundreds of decisions to make a day? What influences that?

This is great novel writing fodder, which was another way I made sense of the world. 

We know our past experiences, culture, values, personality, social supports, and personal context impact us. They inform the decisions we make, from what to say to what to eat. What makes these decisions more meaningful is the interconnectedness of our common humanity.

In our Gaythorne practice, when we decide on a cup of tea, it matters less about whether it is peppermint or camomile, and much more about how you experience it – hopefully with genuine warmth and care.

I have been reflecting on this and how incidentally we build community, one small decision at a time. Community is so important to us, fulfilling our need to know we are not alone and to have our experiences validated and shared.

Calm Collective Psychology has grown into a community that shares common experiences, like anxieties, self-criticisms, and inevitable times of suffering (as is our human way), and common values like compassion, self-growth, knowledge and empowerment.

It is a beautiful corner of the world to share, and I hope to facilitate that sense of community more for you as the year unfolds.

One moment I’d like to share with you was a recent talk I gave to a group of clever and curious high school students about their career pathways. This got me thinking a lot about ‘why psychology’ and how we get from point A to point B in our lives — as you can tell! I strongly believe in a sense of community as a guiding force and a place to borrow strength when we need it (including those cheerleaders we all need).

 Our first quarter of 2024 has flown by, as you can tell by this quarter 1 review coming a little late. I am just now taking time to land and noticing this sweet community pulling together. I am happy to count myself as one of your cheerleaders but also not the only one — the common humanity of it!

We have been through a deeply challenging few months, with many crises unfolding around us in Australia and conflicts abroad. It is a time where you might imagine compassion to run dry, but I find it is evolving into something new and resilient.

I hope your quarter has given you a little of this – if not, how can you connect to your community and your values more strongly in these next few months?

The Calm Collective Newsletter will be featuring a lovely new freebie — a journal prompt to guide you into a moment of self-reflection — sent out to our existing subscribers today and to any new subscribers in their welcome email. This email also includes our next Calm Collective book club pic!

Warm wishes,

Grace

Why is Everyone Talking about ADHD?

I wonder if you’ve had this thought over the last 3 years: ‘why is everyone talking about ADHD?’

 For many, I know it has felt like suddenly everyone was getting diagnosed, from someone you follow online to your next door neighbour. There’s a good reason for that! Let’s break it down.

Over the years, ADHD has had a few culture shifts, from the introductive of subtypes (remember when we said ADD and ADHD?) to changes in our understanding of gender’s impact on presentation. The recent introduction of research centred on women and girls revealed that females are more likely to present with inattentive-type and therefore less likely to be diagnosed. Also, diagnosis is more likely to happen later in life, and more likely to occur during peak periods of stress and hormone change (puberty, pregnancy, and perimenopause).  

We also learnt that chronic depression and anxiety can be caused by undiagnosed ADHD. Many people who had been seeking answers around why they struggled for years with their mental health, despite trying multiple treatment options, had a new pathway to explore. Especially if they are experiencing inattentive-type ADHD, which is less often recognised in childhood, but still has huge impacts on adulthood (like workplace stress, feeling out of control, being unable to manage finances).

These two things rippled across the healthcare community and created more awareness and… you guessed it… more people getting diagnosed. So long story short, these people always had ADHD, we just weren’t very good at recognising it!

I’m sure we still don’t know the full picture of ADHD yet as the research is still young and evolving. Maybe in a few years, we will have much more nuance to add to this discussion.

For now, let’s consider why it’s wonderful-important-overwhelming that suddenly ADHD is in the zeitgeist. We know diagnosis alone improves health outcomes. For many, support options such as medication, therapeutic care, and lifestyle changes make a huge impact. A life changing impact even!

People report being able to do things they’ve wanted to do for years, like read a book, finish a project, or improve their finances. I have heard one person say they had not read a book in twenty years and after starting medication, they read 3 books in a month.

This isn’t to say that medication works for everyone, or for every aspect of ADHD, but I wanted to share an example of why we need to keep this awareness rolling.

If you’ve read this and you’re still going – but what is ADHD really, check out our list of common experiences of adults with ADHD below.

Or… if you’ve read this and you think it might relate to you, check out our ADHD Assessment package. 

Warm wishes,

Grace