Thais Gibson
Hello and welcome to the Personal Development School podcast. I'm your host. HAYES Gibson, and I create regular podcast episodes to teach you about your relationships, attachment style and the subconscious mind. My goal of this podcast is to give you tools and awareness you need to thrive in your relationships, feel deeply connected, and find harmony and fulfillment in your relationships and personal life.
So I hope you tune in here with me each and every week.

I want to talk to you about some tool that can assist you along your journey in Reprograming PTSD. So first and foremost, before I dive into this, I do want to put a disclaimer that says, if you feel like you have PTSD or you resonate with different parts of the serious symptoms, I do highly recommend you work with a professional.

But what I'm going to provide for you is a set of key tools that you can use that will help assist you in that journey. Right? Or to strike up conversations you can have or working with that professional. So when we talk about PTSD, if you haven't already, please make sure you check out the earlier part of the series.

Like, what is it? What are the symptoms? What are the root causes? We talk about the ACE survey. You can sort of take a little look at all of those different components and get a nice little view overall of what PTSD is and what it's all about. But some of the major things that happen when people have PTSD is we have a lot of minds in our minds as they talk about a lot of traumatic imprints that make us give meaning to ourselves and to the world.

So if we have a painful event, the caregiver in childhood, we might go, Geez, if I can't trust them, I can't trust anybody. And therein lies the meaning we give to the event. I can't trust anybody. And we carry that out. And this is how trauma really residuary A builds up and be impacted throughout the course of our lives.

To ask ourselves how did something that happens 40 years ago was ten years ago? How is it still affecting me right now? Because the program and the meaning that took place as a result of it are still alive and are still a part of the way perceptually view the world. And so one of the first things we have to do when we're wanting to reprogram PTSD is understand all the meaning we gave to people events.

And some people will say, well, what if I don't remember all the painful events? That's okay. Notice the type of meaning you give to people events today like what are the personalization of the four wounds you have? Do have a lot of. I am helpless showing up. I'm trapped. I am a bird, I'm unseen, I am. I am unloved.

I'm unworthy. I I'm not enough in some form and disrespected. I'm stupid, which I don't like using that word, but it's a war wound that a lot of people will have. It's very painful at the end of the sort of bottom rung of the ladder, meaning they'll give to things I unsafe people cannot be trusted. I will be betrayed.

I am rejected like these are a lot of the poor wounds. You'll see. And so we can notice, like, what are these people meanings? We get to things and we have to start working to heal that relationship to ourselves by by collaborating and reprograming these wounds specifically. And I heard a quote recently and somebody posted on Facebook group and it's a really beautiful quote.

It's sad, but it's profound. And it says when kids are abused or go through abusive circumstances, they don't stop loving their caregiver. They stop loving themselves. And in more severe cases of PTSD, this is very true. And what I often see when people are struggling with PTSD and wanting to work through it, and there is a very strong lack of awareness in a way in how to love oneself, like there is a complete absence of self-care or of taking oneself into consideration of showing up in the relationship to self, of having boundaries to protect oneself.

And that's largely because there wasn't the proper care shown or demonstrated, especially in the more severe cases of PTSD. A by the caregiver modeling because a lot of caregivers who are in a place where they're there may be potentially creating patterns of see PTSD in the child. A lot of those caregivers don't have their own healthy self-care, and a lot of them are really in a quite a bit of trauma.

Or what you can see is that there's just not care and proper self-care habits and rituals taught to the child. And when we combine that with painful imprints like I'm unloved or I'm unlovable or I'm not good enough or I'm not worthy, or I have to work through life to earn my worth to stay safe. A lot of these like types of mentalities or thought processes that are quite familiar to somebody who goes to see PTSD will often see is that equates to somebody having no concept of proper self-care.

And this is a really important thing to learn. Okay, So then number one, find the mind in your mind fields. What are they? What are? And the way you can discover them is what are the things that trigger me most? And, and like when I'm really triggered and upset, what is the meaning I give to events? So for example, if you feel triggered by being taken advantage of because like somebody violates a boundary of yours or tries to take too much from you, what do you make that mean?

Okay, so what's like the meaning you give to that? Do you make that mean I'm unsafe? Do you make that mean I'm unloved? Because people just want to take from you and you make that mean that it's an injustice. Like I can't speak up or I'm unseen and unheard and nobody cares about me. Like, what are the pieces of meaning?

And what you'll notice is the events that tend to trigger you. There will be patterns in there. You tend to have the same core pieces of meaning that come up the most, and from that you'll be able to go, okay, these are the things I need to reprogram. So number one, find the meaning. Do the reprograming work on the meaning.

I cannot stress how important this is. This is really when we look at like, how trauma is affecting us all this time ago, it's because we didn't reprogram the meaning yet. Okay. Number two, meet the needs that were unmet. We keep ourselves in a state of traumatization on autopilot without meaning to when we have profoundly unmet needs and we continue to not meet them and the relationship to ourselves.

Example Somebody is emotionally neglected as a child and in their adult lives they are still emotionally neglecting themselves to a severe degree. So how do we change that? How do we heal from that? We heal from the past by healing. Whatever the past imprinted us with in the present was emotionally neglected. I have to do the work and understand how to stop neglecting my own emotions, how to show up for my emotions, have a relationship to my emotions, realize that my emotions are just feedback mechanisms, and they're letting me know when something is out of alignment within me and they're giving me guidance and let me establish that relationship.

Let me start to feel again. And suddenly I'm actually undoing the traumatic imprints from the past, which is how we heal and hope that's really clear. Number three, when I talked earlier about the output of there being a total lack of self-care, part of healing from PTSD is learning how to properly self-care and this kind of goes hand-in-hand with the ability to downregulate.

This is often an unfamiliar thing with individuals who are going through this. So what does self-care mean? And a lot of people who are probably listening to this, if they do struggle with PTSD or even think like they're close or they have some symptoms that overlap, self-care can be a very weird thing. It can be like kind of a confusing foreign concept and it's like, Do I take a bubble bath?

Like, what do I do? And self-care really means a few key things. It means learning to make time for yourself, to check in with yourself and see what you need, and then act on those needs. So if you have habits to check in with yourself and go, Oh, how am I feeling any time for myself a little bit.

I need to just veg this evening instead of going to commit to the plans that I have or I need time to regulate my emotions or journal or things like that, whatever you need. You have to have an ability to check in with yourself and then act on those needs. And then, of course, we have like high level self-care things like what food am I putting into my body?

Am I taking bubble bath and taking care of my hygiene? Am I taking care of, you know, the different areas of my life in terms of like having a direction for my career, taking care of my budget, my money? All of a sudden, areas of life, those can all be components of self-care, but really like the epitome and root level of what self-care is, is do I take myself into consideration?

Do I see my needs? Do I act on them to make space for myself in my life? The example I often give of people who are going through a lot of trauma is that when trauma happens, especially when you think of trauma with a child, it's already an injustice. That doesn't mean the people who accidentally or purposely enacted the trauma are these bad, evil people.

Of course, there can be things that are really, really not good. But a lot of the time trauma is just passed by accident because people who it's the hurt people hurt people thing. Right. And so what is not okay is if you go through trauma as a child and then we keep living through that all of our adult lives and what we have to do and what we owe in the relationship to ourselves to do as human beings is to go find any single little weed that a person planted in our subconscious mind and go pluck it out at the root.

And what that means is every weed, every every time there is a painful event and I gave it meaning and I made that person's trauma define who I am, let's say a parent or a caregiver and a foster home, whatever it might be. Let's say that person did something really unhealthy to you. The fact that we allow that to define our worth in our identity, in our adult lives is an extra injustice, and we have to be able to go, what did I make that mean?

Did I make that painful, that mean that I'm unlovable? And if so, what an injustice that a child would take that on and believe that. And I owe it to myself and to my inner child, to a certain degree to go in there, be clear about what those things are, and pluck all those weeds out by doing that reprograming work.

So I just want to say that for a moment. Okay, So we have reprograming the meaning, we give, the things we have, and that means about myself or the world. I can't trust humans. Relationships are unsafe. I can't do a relationship. It's too hard. All the pingel meaning and stories we have meeting our unmet needs, developing proper self-care, developing boundaries.

One of the major things we will see is whenever anybody goes through persistent and or consistent pervasive trauma, there's usually a very strong correlation between that person going through what they went through and then not having boundaries, because usually we had to break our own boundaries to some degree and in some way in order to stay safe. It could be that if you set a boundary, you were punished.

So you equate at a subconscious level boundaries equal, I become unsafe. It could be that when you do set a boundary, you get a withdrawal, a lack of love, and you go. Boundaries make me unloved, and then I'm at risk for abandonment, which also makes me unsafe. It could be that you couldn't afford to have boundaries because maybe you were caretaking your alcoholic parent or whoever it might be.

You were caretaking and you needed them to be okay and survive for you to feel okay and safe. And so you keep caretaking and your boundary listeners might even be rewarded. It could be that you get love when your boundary lists. So all of these things can be at play and it's important to recognize them. What do we do to heal that?

We learn to develop our own boundaries. Have a really in-depth course inside the school about boundaries, about the different types of boundaries. I have other videos on this channel about different types of boundaries, a boundary identification process like how to set them exposure response work to reprogram your relationship so that you can start to have boundaries, which really means like starting to set boundaries over time and reprograming that it's okay and it's safe.

There's so much to say about that, but feel free to check out other videos in the channel about that or to do a deep dive in the course about that. The next one we have here is emotional literacy, and this is a really important concept when it comes to healing. And it's actually important not just for people to see PTSD, but for healing any major challenges we go through when we learn to put our feelings into words, when we learn to describe what our boundaries are, when we learn to understand ourselves that emotional literacy starts in the relationship to self.

And you can think of when somebody develops emotional literacy, it's like they build out a relationship to themself. They go, Oh, this is what I need. Oh, this is what I feel, oh, this is my boundary. And when we have that awareness within ourselves, it equips us with all the appropriate tools to then go out into the world and to heal and to be able to apply these tools in practice and have more thriving and functional relationships and interactions with other people.

So that emotional literacy also an interesting thing that you'll see is that provides a sense of relief, like when we are able to say, Oh, this is how I feel. This is why. And we understand, not only is that deep self-awareness and understanding within our self relieving, but also the mind naturally feels relieved when it has context for things.

You'll notice people with anxiety, like part of the biggest struggles with anxiety for individuals is, Oh, I'm anxious and I don't know why. It scares me that I don't know why it feels so unpredictable. And then people get anxious about being anxious and anxious about having an anxiety attack. And emotional literacy is like, imagine you have context and you can pinpoint all the reasons why you have anxiety and you put cause and effect together.

That provides a huge breakthrough in terms of healing needs, expressing your own needs, learning to advocate for your own needs, learning to communicate what your needs are, learning to meet your own needs. I think I might have said that already. I'm learning to express your needs to others and advocate for them. I think I just like totally repeating myself.

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Unknown
I'll give you the quadrant number one learning to identify my own needs. Number two, learning to express my own needs. Number three, learning to meet my own needs. And number four, learning to receive my needs being met. Okay, So a lot of people can get really good at two and three aren't in a particular order there. But a lot of people can be really good at that.

They can do the healing work and get on, you know, start doing a really good job. And they're like, I know my needs now. I'm needing them myself and I'm getting good at that and I'm expressing them to other people. But then if you look closely, they're not allowing themselves to receive and this is very common for people to see PTSD because there's a lot of I'm worthy, I deserve to receive, I deserve to be love for who I am, not what I do.

A lot of that reprograming needs to happen first. So if you find that your blocks are receiving your needs being met or you think it's unsafe or you're going to be a burden, you have to go back to the drawing board and reprogram those stories. And then the ability to take yourself into consideration when you make decisions, the ability like we were talking about earlier, to tune in with yourself, check in, where am I at?

Somebody is asking me to go do something with them on Friday. How do I feel about that? Do I want to? Am I tired? Do I need time to myself? Is there something else I would rather be doing? And we have to be able to, like, tune in, check in with ourselves. Extremely important. And last but not least, you're going to have to learn how to downregulate.

And this means if you're still going in, you're still on the switches on at ten or 11 p.m., you have to consciously learn how to relax and part of that is a practice and doing relaxing activities in a practiced way so that over time the repetition of being exposed to relaxing actually allows us to downregulate our nervous system and get into parasympathetic nervous system mode.

And even if we're loving what we're doing or worried, you know, feeling great at ten or 11 p.m., if we are not learning to shut off effectively, if we don't have a practice where we get into rest mode, then living like that, being really on, which is very common for like, you know, a lot of people working on Wall Street or in very, very intensive corporate jobs, things like that.

If we're not learning how to rest, just be to just breathe, to read, to, to have everything shut off, to not be like you have to be somewhere doing something. If we're not good at that, then we're going to have to bring that to our nervous system can be familiar and more functionally and easily get into that mode.

So I hope this makes a lot of sense. These are all very important. Reprograming Tools for healing. See PTSD. I've personally gone through all of these and healed myself, and I've worked with a lot of people on this and this is not me saying. And the reason I kind of hesitate as I'm saying this is and this is not me saying you can just do this work here and that's it.

I really do advise that if you find yourself in this position, you do seek out help. I was already in school going through a whole bunch of different learning and in-depth programs and degrees. When I was healing myself. So this isn't me saying everybody else can do that to like, get the proper help, the proper support. But these are going to be really important, almost non-negotiable parts of your healing journey, these things.

So if you feel like this is you write them down, get on them. Let me know if you have questions in the comments below. Thank you so much for being here. Please like, share and subscribe and I will see you in the next video.