MARTIN: Hi, everybody, this is Martin and this is the Life Enthusiast podcast. Today with me I have Anu Verma, a consultant, a therapist and a dear person to me because she is going to help us solve the number four problem that I keep telling you about. Remember toxicity, malnutrition, stagnation, trauma. Trauma is the most important of the lot. And here we go. Anu, welcome.

ANU: Thank you so much for having me. So great to be here.

MARTIN: I cannot overstate the importance of dealing with trauma. There are so many ways we get into it, whether it's innocent childhood events or intergenerational issues or perhaps past life, if there is such a thing, and who knows what else. But it's a pond that keeps filling.

ANU: Yeah, it is.

MARTIN: Anyway, Anu, why don't you just tell the lovely listener about how you got here?

ANU: For sure. So, as you just described, childhood trauma, I was a victim of that from the age of three, and it started in my family home which was meant to be a safe space for me. And we had a tenant who was staying there, and he took advantage of me, and he carried on for quite a few years. And what happened after that shaped my whole life.

MARTIN: It tends to break a person. Right? In a child's psychology or a child's mind, it's an impossibility. You're supposed to be safe. You probably just split the personality somehow, right?

ANU: Yeah, absolutely. I felt like my soul left my body because I was suffering from low self-esteem, and I was very suppressed, low confidence as well. It also affected my ability later on in life to have healthy relationships because I didn't trust people. Because of my distorted view of life, I was drawn to others who were also distorted.

MARTIN: It's almost like you had some kind of an antenna with which you can sense others who are like you.

ANU: Exactly. Yeah. Everybody I met was really unique and probably also suffering from abuse or trauma. It affected my intimate relationships as I got older. I couldn't be intimate because I would get flashbacks and the smell of my perpetrator would come up. It affected so many relationships to the point where I thought, what is the point of even trying? I did give up trying a few times. But then I obviously got lonely and isolated, hit depression, which impacted my mental health.

MARTIN: Here comes the story. That which will not kill me will make me stronger. The classic hero overcoming the obstacle.

ANU: Yeah, it is. You're right.

MARTIN: You can now look at it and speak of it as if—horrible stuff happened to me. Mhm. It did. And you're now not bawling and sobbing. You're healed, right?

ANU: Yeah. I've been on this crazy healing journey for the past decade. It's been phenomenal. There's been a lot of obstacles and tests that have come into my life, like relationships that tested me. We grow more in relationships anyway, so I feel like we need relationships to find out more about ourselves.

ANU: We find out about ourselves in meditation and isolation, but the real challenges come in dynamic interactions.

MARTIN: It's the interaction.

ANU: Yeah.

MARTIN: I think we humans are meant to be in dynamic interactions with the terrain. Inhale, exhale. Eat, eliminate. And then with relation. You have to give in order to take. It’s a dance.

ANU: It is a dance. I love that. It’s the power of synchronicity, just really syncing with people. I love it. Unfortunately, there have been some toxic relationships that I was also a part of, but again I feel like that was all part of the journey. Suffering from trauma and dealing with toxic people and learning from that. Because ultimately, just having,

MARTIN: Now you could send them a business card and say, "Come see me. You need it. Sorry to have harmed you."

ANU: Exactly. When I wrote my book, because my book is about my journey through trauma and relationships, some of those toxic people probably went and bought my book to see if they were in it.

MARTIN: Well, yes. That’s good. They should be. I was looking at your website thinking, oh my gosh, this is such a wealth of information. I suppose you now teach what you have learned, right?

ANU: Absolutely. Yeah. I am definitely a thought leader when it comes to trauma. I'm out there sharing my insights and journey with people through social media, my book, and my podcast. I absolutely love it. It has been my sole purpose.

MARTIN: The words on those pages are carefully chosen. Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event. You couldn't reduce it more precisely written out.

ANU: It's true.

MARTIN: So let's talk about, well I guess people know what trauma is. They become dysfunctional, and at some point, they become unable to cope with life as we know it, or as they know it. Either they learn to overcome, or things get much worse.

ANU: It's true. I feel like as well, we want to try to understand these traumatic incidents at an earlier age because longer we leave it, the more they'll suffer. In my case, it took three decades to understand what happened to me. My whole motto now to life is to try and catch it young. Let's go into schools and educate people about abuse and trauma and encourage children to speak out about it.

MARTIN: Yes. Unfortunately, there are a lot of damaged people, and it's usually passed on by damaged people damaging others. It's almost like a thermonuclear reaction, where one neutron hits into an atom and releases two more neutrons. Before you know it, you have a big explosion, right?

ANU: Exactly. I was actually visualising it when you were doing that. Yeah, it really is.

MARTIN: One broken person can touch many lives.

ANU: They say hurt people hurt people.

MARTIN: Yes that. Well, I guess we're talking to the person who's recognized it in themselves or in somebody they know. Now what? Now what do we do? The plan you have is awesome, right?

ANU: Thank you. So first of all, it's about understanding, acknowledging, accepting. Because so many of us live in denial. We think, oh no, that didn't happen to me.

MARTIN: It’s not so bad.

ANU: Yeah or we shut it out. In my case, I blocked it out because I didn't want to deal with it. Opening that can of worms is going to cause so much mess. Where will I start? So yeah so many people, it takes work to actually work at it, so people just want to take a more relaxed approach.

MARTIN: Yeah, taking drugs is so much easier.

ANU: Yeah, exactly.

MARTIN: Let me just numb myself out. I don’t want to feel a thing. Do you have any heroine? I would like to take some now, thank you.

ANU: Yeah, I think in America it’s fentanyl.

MARTIN: Fentanyl is the preferred choice of being nearly dead. They are chasing the bliss moment, but it’s on the edge, right? So, one grain too much and you’re dead. And it happens a lot. 100,000 people per month in the United States are dying of overdoses. Mainly because of not coping with their trauma. Why are so many people wanting to not feel what is there?

ANU: Because it’s painful. It hurts.

MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah. I would want to shut it off. Alcohol’s pleasurable. Sex is fun. Oh, shoot, for you, no.

ANU: Exactly. Yeah. So alcohol, smoking or even TV addiction. So many people get addicted to TV. I was, I had emotional eating issues, so I was eating so much, and I put on like two stones.

MARTIN: That's 32 pounds for you Americans.

ANU: Yeah. God, it's just. You just think, so many of these responses which could have been tackled if the whole traumatic incident was dealt with sooner. Unfortunately, and I know this goes with a lot of other children or people who speak out about what happened to them. It's not really, nothing happens. It's all just pushed under the carpet.

MARTIN: Right.

ANU: And that's the major issue right there. People just are just not wanting to talk about it.

MARTIN: Yeah, so on your website, I see a couple of packages. One is, "I am all in. Help me dig out." The other is, "I've done a lot of work. I'm pretty clear on what I want. I can focus on this."

ANU: Yeah. I can take you through them. In terms of the whole process,

MARTIN: Let’s start from the beginning. Number one, admit it.

ANU: Yeah, well, acknowledge it and then accept it. And then once you’ve accepted it you can start to work on it.

MARTIN: Yes.

ANU: And the first stage would be to talk about it. So, you need to find a friendly therapist that you can sit down and talk about the incident just for you to gain clarity on it. I mean, you don't need to talk about it. You can even write it down. Journaling really helped me, so that was fantastic for me because it was on the basis of my journaling that I then was able to publish my book.

MARTIN: Look at that. There's gold in them there painful moments.

ANU: So rise above it, talk about it, but just try and process what happened. Because the reason why I say this is because we get so stuck in our amygdala part of the brain, which is our kind of fight or flight system. It doesn't see sense and it's just there to protect you. So we want our prefrontal cortex, which is our logical part of the brain, to actually put it all into perspective and to understand it correctly. Because it's only by logical reasoning can you then start to heal from it.

MARTIN: So let's just really state it clearly. So the amygdala, that's like the involuntary reaction. It's sorting all the sensory inputs on safe, not safe, safe, not safe. And it's instant response.

ANU: Yeah, exactly.

MARTIN: For example, people who have fibromyalgia, or ME, as it's called in the UK, these people have dysregulated amygdala. That is, you're supposed to push it and it's supposed to let go like a doorbell. You push on it and it goes ding. But with people who have this dysregulation, you push it and it goes DING!

ANU: Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, that is, and again, you're really good at explaining things because I really visualize it.

MARTIN: Right. So there we have these people who have a completely disproportionate reaction to the input. And that's where you're just explaining that we need to engage the count to five. Some people count backwards. Five, four, three, two, one. That's the most famous tool to use. Do not react. Respond. First count to five and decide how you're going to respond.

MARTIN: Right.

ANU: Be proactive and not reactive. Yeah, absolutely.

MARTIN: That's the other way of saying it. Okay, so there we are. We have acknowledged it. We have figured out that we have a problem and we are now starting to come up with responses.

ANU: Yeah, yeah. So, okay, the first thing that I like to do with my clients is we have to do an assessment and to understand whether they do have, like, PTSD or trauma.

MARTIN: Describe the monster.

ANU: From there, we can assess distress levels and any issues they may have functioning in their daily lives. We look at any addiction behaviors or relationship behaviors. So once we’ve done all that, then we create a timeline of their life from birth to now and mark any negative events. We put stones on negative events and roses on positive events.

MARTIN: We can find some, right? It's not all drama.

ANU: Yeah it’s not all drama. Exactly. I love that. That's just a fantastic technique just to do for anyone really, because then you really start to understand your life. You start to see patterns as well. Oh, okay, my grandma died then but that's probably why I became depressed then. And so it's really nice, you can really start to understand your life a bit more.

MARTIN: Right.

ANU: And then phase one of the therapy is safety stabilization. So I need to ensure that clients feel safe and supported, grounded. So we do a lot of beautiful meditations in a safe space, kind of visualizations.

MARTIN: Right.

MARTIN: We need to start reframing our life experiences. For many people, it's like taking a telescope, or maybe a binocular, flipping it over, when you look into the wrong end of it everything looks small and invisible. Whereas if you flip it, whatever you focus on, whatever you aim it at goes bigger.

ANU: Yeah.

MARTIN: When you point it at the roses, they become more important in life.

ANU: Exactly. I think that's beautiful. It's a fantastic thing to do just for anybody. Go and get some roses and stones from your backyard.

MARTIN: Rewrite the biography.

ANU: Yes, definitely.

MARTIN: That still sounds like the short package. The identification.

ANU: Oh, yeah. So, we want to ensure clients are grounded and feel safe. Because when you're a trauma survivor, you don't feel safe. You feel like everyone's out to get you, which is why you're in fight, flight, freeze or fawn response. Okay, so after that, we then do emotional regulation, which is where we work through quite a few different sessions actually. We look at their relationships, their boundary skills, and we look at all aspects of their life, how they are in the workplace. And again, really fantastic to look more into feelings and emotions trying to understand patterns.

MARTIN: The life skills we should have learned but didn't.

ANU: Yeah, right.

MARTIN: A damaged child in an environment that's not very supportive ends up just missing out on learning the useful things.

ANU: Exactly. Yeah, it is, absolutely. Yeah. I fully agree. Really important skills. And then the kind of final phase, well, final two phases is where we then start to process the trauma. Because once the client feels safe and stabilized and is emotionally regulated, they can then start to work on the actual incidents, the traumatic incidents. Because then the whole idea is to reduce their distress levels related to that incident so that they can talk about the incident like I have today, where I don't get distressed by it, when I can just talk about it.

MARTIN: In memory, it happened. But it doesn't kill you.

ANU: Yeah, exactly. And again, that's healing, when you can actually talk openly about something.

MARTIN: Yeah, well, it’s not different than going and talking about the camping trip you took where nothing awful happened.

ANU: Exactly.

MARTIN: It's just a memory.

ANU: It is memory. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes. So that's like the therapy side of it and then the coaching side of it is a bit more intense where there's a lot more worksheets and there's a lot more proactiveness involved because once they've healed from the trauma or are healing from the trauma, they can then go on to look at all of their lives. Obviously, the major life events that we have is our relationships that we have with people like friends and intimate relationships and work as well. We want to be making sure that the trauma hasn't impacted our ability to thrive in our workplace. Because it normally does, doesn't it? Because it really does affect our self esteem.

MARTIN: Yeah, if I'm undeserving, how am I ever going to ask for a raise or a promotion?

ANU: Exactly. Yeah. Yes. We work on empowerment and to really just live a more fulfilling life. Who doesn't want that? Of love and fulfillment.

MARTIN: Okay, well, with my past practice, I'm well aware of multiple modalities that we can use for dissolving the intensity of the memories. Right. Do you want to talk about that at all? What, how you go about it?

ANU: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, the main kind of two that are really effective that I use in my practice is PET, which is prolonged exposure therapy. I don't know if you know about that one.

MARTIN: No, I want to hear from you.

ANU: Okay. So with that one, what I love about prolonged exposure therapy is, it is narrative therapy. So they do talk about the incident, and it's repeated on quite a few different sessions. And that's because we're really trying to habituate the way that,

MARTIN: Yeah. The memory, right?

ANU: Right, exactly. Yeah.

MARTIN: You know what's interesting? I have heard of people using MDMA for these type of sessions. Under the effect of the MDMA, there will be a recording of the memory. Because when we're reliving or remembering something, it's being recorded back into the brain. And so depending on your mind's state or emotional state, it will either be amplified into ugly or diminished or amplified into not so bad. Right?

ANU: Yeah.

MARTIN: And so with the MDMA, you just turn off all the negativity all at once.

ANU: You do. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. And I guess this is why it got so addictive because people wanted to have that feeling all the time and in higher intensities than just like a microdose amount.

MARTIN: That's the unpleasantness.

ANU: Yeah, it is, it is.

MARTIN: Okay, so that's your PET.

ANU: Oh, yeah. And with that as well, what we do is like, we look at fearful events, well incidents or many, many clients will associate trauma with a fear. So whether that's leaving the windows open in the house, they might have a fear of crowded spaces. Or they might fear of men, you know.

MARTIN: Or, just tall, dark or blonde, or short, fat. Whatever it is, right? It could be anything, but it's the memory that keeps coming through. Yeah, I'm totally sensitized against cream of dill sauce. Do you want to hear a story?

ANU: Yeah, go for it.

MARTIN: I was four years old. My mother checked me into a kindergarten and perhaps well meaning, but strongly disciplinarian lady. I said: “I don't want to eat it.” She fed it to me anyway. I threw it up. She fed me that.

ANU: Oh. Oh, well, there you go. You've done it right there.

MARTIN: To this day I don't like cream of dill sauce.

ANU: Oh God.

MARTIN: Go figure, right? Why would I like it?

ANU: You did it right there then. Oh, boy.

MARTIN: Well, I mean, this is a nothing story, right? Like, it only affects me in the sense that I don't like disciplinarian ladies and cream of dill sauce.

ANU: Wow. I know. Fantastic. Yeah, that is a really good example. But with PET and the reduction of the distress levels, since we call it like the subscale, it's to do with actually exposing yourself gently to these fearful incidents.

MARTIN: Yeah.

ANU: And gradually you then,

MARTIN: And wear them down.

ANU: Yes, exactly. And obviously, we have to work together because you can't do it all at once. It has to be like this whole,

MARTIN: Gradual.

MARTIN: That's sort of like wearing off, imagine you have a, I don't know, a rasp or a file in your hand and you're smoothing something off. Right. The edges will come off, but it will take multiple passes. Not. You don't do it like that.

ANU: Exactly, exactly. Yes. So, that's PET. And then the other one is IRRT, which is Imagery Rescripting and Reprocessing Therapy. And this is a bit more impactful for childhood trauma. So, you'd use that if there was like a perpetrator. Because we really do go into the whole story and what we do is completely,

MARTIN: Well, you say the words rescript and redefine. Right. You just really have to rebuild that entire childhood perspective.

ANU: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We do like, the inner child as well. What would your younger self say to your adult self? And it's really beautiful, to be honest, because we can really then start to heal and really take away the shame that, or the self-blame that we might have and to really nurture the child because we blame ourselves a lot of the time. And so, yeah, it's really bad.

MARTIN: Yeah. To this day I thought that I was the cause of my father hitting me. Right.

ANU: Yeah, exactly.

MARTIN: Was I?

MARTIN: Right. I keep wondering what did it, what triggered it? Right.

ANU: That's a trigger. Exactly. Yeah. Was it my fault? And I love that Goodwill Hunting, you know that scene where he say: “It's not your fault” Because it really isn't. It wasn't our fault.”

MARTIN: Yeah, right. Yeah. The child is the innocent player there.

ANU: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so those are the two kind of major processes which are really impactful in my therapy practice.

MARTIN: All right.

ANU: Yeah, yeah.

MARTIN: There's so much to you. All these podcasts and blog posts. You just keep on spilling information into the world, right?

ANU: Oh, yeah. So I learned so much. I learned like NLP. I learned CBT. I learned like hypnotherapy. I became a Reiki master, emotional freedom therapist practitioner. And I love it. I just love energy healing and I just love mindset work. And Tony Robbins, I did his strategic intervention coaching course and I went to all of his seminars like the Date with Destiny, which cost thousands, but it was all part of my journey and I benefited so much from everything.

MARTIN: Yeah. I don't know if I mentioned it, I did all of this too.

ANU: You did?

MARTIN: Oh yeah, the whole deal. I did the Tony Robbins and I of course, I don't practice that with my business, but I have a hypnotherapist and NLP training and all of that business. So I can totally relate to what you're doing and how you're going about it. And I think, well, I don't know how I would work with hypnotherapy over the zoom call because I would be wondering if that person doesn't come back when I say come back, I can't go there and shake them. You can do a lot of work just like this, right?

ANU: Yeah. Oh my God. And plus, there's so much power in just playing YouTube videos, the guided hypnosis YouTube videos. Playing those just before I sleep, it just has so much of an impact on me if I need to work on anything, like if it's anxiety or a bit of sadness I might be experiencing. Because these emotions they come back, they're not gone for life. Healing's a constant process for me. I have to keep working on myself.

MARTIN: Well, so the website is victim2victor. The number two is a number. So victim number two. victim2victor.net not dot com go there and just explore. There's just so much there. Get the book.

ANU: Gosh, thank you.

MARTIN: I mean, what a title. I mean, you picked it.

ANU: Oh, yes. I'm actually a multi-author on that one. Yeah. But again, I just. Yeah, I love it. I love these really powerful names, Dauntless Victim to Victor.

MARTIN: Yeah, well, that's what it takes.

ANU: Yeah. Definetly.

MARTIN: We all need a whole lot of healing. I don't know of anyone who isn't damaged in some way. Well, I'll say it one more time from Life Enthusiast perspective. You will hear me talk about four legs upon which illness will stand, will be toxicity, malnutrition, stagnation and trauma. I will do a lot for you with toxicity and malnutrition, but I want to collaborate with people who will help you with the trauma and well, here's one opportunity.

ANU: Thank you. I love it.

MARTIN: Talk to Anu, book an appointment on your website.

ANU: Yeah, well, yeah, what I like to do is if they can just put their details in, contact me and yeah, we can liaise that way because.

MARTIN: I see there's a form here at the end. Yeah.

ANU: You know how it's like when you're scheduling, it changes all the time.

MARTIN: True enough.

ANU: Yes. Get in contact, everybody. I absolutely love doing this and I love healing people. I love impacting lives. It’s my sole purpose and I feel like that's what I've been brought down on Earth to do and that's why I struggled with all of these crazy life incidents. It's in order for me to help others now.

MARTIN: Yeah. You know what's interesting? I started a support group 12 years ago on Facebook and I called it the “Your Fibromyalgia Support.” I will post this there, but there's 127,000 people on there talking to one another about all of their pain and all of their drugs and not getting it through their heads just how seminal or critical is the emotional undertone that are probably the beginning of the problem, we started out about when we talked about the amygdala versus the frontal cortex. That's where a lot of illness begins. Because when your body stays in the fight or flight side of the autonomic nervous system, it doesn't repair, it doesn't rest. It just starts to essentially digest itself or kill itself early. Anyway, I'm just saying it here so that I can remind myself and remind them that they need to look at trauma as the primary problem.

ANU: Honestly, yeah. I feel like it's the sole issue with all of the illnesses that we suffer from.

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah. I would say that about 80% of the causation of health problems is in the subconscious realm.

ANU: Yeah. Interesting.

MARTIN: I would say it's that impactful.

ANU: It is, yeah.

MARTIN: Well, thank you. I know you're a beacon of light.

ANU: Thank you.

MARTIN: Just the example that you are living. Right. The way you're living your life now compared to where it might have gone.

ANU: Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. Well, I see that you've gone to schools. You really collected the degrees like it was a hobby.

ANU: Hobby.

MARTIN: It's amazing.

ANU: Thank you. But again, a trauma response. You either will become an addict, you know, try and commit suicide, which I did a few times. I tried, but I failed.

MARTIN: Thank God. Really.

ANU: Yeah. Or you’ll become like an overachiever and an over compensator and a people pleaser.

MARTIN: Interesting thing about suicide, women attempt it more often, but they're not quite as aggressive. Men, on the other hand they tend to be quite, what's the word? Well, they're more successful at it because they are just way more testosterone. They just go all in.

ANU: Tragic.

MARTIN: Tragic indeed. Because we're losing somebody who could have contributed a lot.

ANU: It is sad.

MARTIN: Well, that's the thought that I want to end on.

ANU: On that note. Yeah, let's end on a positive, like.

MARTIN: Okay, so I would like to say those of you who are still struggling and contemplating the end action, as in, I have too much. I want to end it. I would like to tell you this. It's possible, highly possible, with some skill and guidance, with coaching, to find your way out of the swamp, right into the sunny beaches. It's possible. You're looking at two examples.

ANU: Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, it really is. If you need anyone to talk to we're here. Reach out to a therapist or start to journal because just by acknowledging what happened to you and actually starting to really understand what happened to you is the first steps to heal.

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah. Cannot fix what you cannot describe. Well, I don't know how much more I can praise you but,

ANU: Oh, you're so kind, Martin.

MARTIN: Well, truly, it's people like you. I mean, tell me how many people you have helped dig out of the blackness of despair?

ANU: It's hard to say.

MARTIN: But it's a lot, right?

ANU: Yeah. Yeah. Because on my podcast, on my book. I mean, we don’t really get to find out really, do we?

MARTIN: No. So there you have it. If you have problems of addiction or chronic pain or emotional distress, all of that is probably caused by some dysregulation, some trauma from your past, all of which can be discovered and undone.

ANU: It can. It can. Have hope.

MARTIN: Absolutely. Well, this is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast, life-enthusiast.com here's Anu Verma. She is a trauma and therapy Coach. victim2victor.net thank you.

ANU: Thank you. Goodbye.