A Psychotherapist on Healing | Sonya Black

Sonya Black: 00:00:00

70% Of the population in their lifetime experience something that's potentially traumatic. But a very small proportion of people, maybe around 5, 6% of people, actually go on to develop PTSD as we recognize it.

David Brown: 00:00:20

Maybe start off, Sonia, by just telling everybody, like, how did you get into psychotherapy? Like, what made you want to be a psychotherapist?

Sonya Black: 00:00:28

Yeah, it all came about about 20 years ago.

I was working in the Welsh Valleys, actually working as a youth worker and realized more and more that, like, to be able to work with people very specifically to help them to cope with the difficulties that they're experiencing in their life and to be able to overcome that.

So I started training and one thing led to another and then I was training in London at Goldsmiths and Institute Psychiatry and then find myself working in the Priory.

David Brown: 00:01:00

Wow. Okay. And what sort of youth work? When you said you were doing youth work, what was that like?

Sonya Black: 00:01:06

Yeah, it was lots of. Mainly working.

Started off working with people experiencing disabilities, inclusive projects across the Valleys, and then moved on to youth participation and then moved. That was sort of more county level. And when I moved to south east, worked for a while in Winsor and Maidenhead and youth participation there as well.

So involving children basically in decision making, well, policy making, as well as decisions as to where they wanted resources.

David Brown: 00:01:43

And were you always caring? Did you always have that? Like, is that what. When you were a little girl, is that what you wanted to do or did you have.

Sonya Black: 00:01:50

I was always told when I was a little girl I was nosy, and I've now reframed that in the true CBT style to be curious. And I've always been very, very curious about people, people's lives and what makes them tick.

And I'm in a very privileged position, quite humbling to be allowed little windows into, or quite large windows sometimes into people's lives, which is. Yeah, suits me very well.

David Brown: 00:02:20

Yeah. That's funny, actually, considering that I'm doing more and more of these shows now and I don't consider myself. I've never considered myself.

This is going to sound terrible and we're going to get into it straight away and I'm rubbing my head because I know what's coming. This is not a therapy session. And we've said very clearly before that you and I, you're not going to be my therapist. I want you to be my friend.

But I think for a long time I was very sort of. When I was younger, I was very self absorbed. I didn't really care about anyone else at all. But only later in Life.

Have I actually become a lot more curious, particularly about other people.

And I think through doing podcasting, starting off with my boring AI business kind of show, I really enjoyed talking to all kinds of different people and to kind of dig into what they thought and that kind of thing. So I can totally see, you know, how. How that could be interesting. And. And it's been fun for me to do the same.

And then obviously, as you know, life by misadventure, I'm really starting to dig in more into people's stories and kind of what's happened to them. So, yeah, I totally get that.

Sonya Black: 00:03:34

Yeah, people are absolutely fascinating.

David Brown: 00:03:36

They are fascinating.

Sonya Black: 00:03:37

Twenty years later, I still, every hour, every day that I'm with a new client, it's still super duper interesting. Never, ever get bored?

David Brown: 00:03:45

Yeah, no, it's great fun and I love it. So. Okay, cool. Where does psychotherapy sit in the kind of.

And I know we'll get to the topic here in a second, but I think it's good just for some people who may not understand, like their psychiatrists and psychotherapists and clinical psychologists and all this different stuff like where does it sit in the kind of different disciplines and what does it mean and what are the kinds of things that you do versus what maybe other people do?

Sonya Black: 00:04:12

Yeah, so a psychiatrist is somebody who's a medically trained doctor who then does in the same way that somebody might train to be a heart surgeon. They do their consultant training in psychiatry, so they're able to prescribe medication as well as well as that much deeper understanding.

Counselors do a different type of training, different type of regulation that comes with that. And where do we sit in psychotherapy? There's lots and different types of psychotherapy.

Some the more analytic, psychodynamic approaches, looking at your past and the influences of those. But I'm trained as a cognitive behavior therapist first and foremost and clinical psychologist again.

So somebody who's done a counseling psychologist who's got first degree in psychology and then does a clinical training in clinical psychology, research based, usually. So, yeah, where do I sit then when cognitive behavior therapy?

CBT came along back in around: 1979

David Brown: 00:05:44

And I know I'm surprising you with these questions, I didn't tell you, but this is the direction we're going. And then. So I've heard of CBT before, and I've also heard emdr. Yeah, it is emdr, right?

Sonya Black: 00:05:57

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:05:58

And maybe we'll talk about those and maybe the as tools, because they're both tools. Right. And it just depends on maybe what you're dealing with or whatever. And we might touch on that later. But I won't ask you.

This isn't like an exam to say what the difference is. Okay. So loads of people have trauma. I think everybody has trauma.

And like you were saying before, and, you know, there's big T trauma and there's little T trauma, and all of us have little T trauma, I would think. You know, and some people have big T trauma and maybe some don't or. I don't know. Is that right? Or does everybody have something in their life?

Because big T trauma can be different for everybody. Right. It's just. Does that depend on who you are, or is there like a definition around that?

Sonya Black: 00:06:45

There are definitions around it, but it's really. The little T traumas can be just the. The difficult experience. Difficult things happen in life.

But it's what we do with that that makes the difference inside us. And that's where the real difference comes in. There can be. People can feel trauma from all sorts of different things. Tiny micro traumas.

Wake up in the morning, there's no coffee. Right. The way through the spectrum.

So actually really extremely damaging, destructive, maybe usually prolonged things that happen that disrupts the functioning of the brain, and the brain gets stuck with that trauma. And you know, this. So big T trauma firmly sits within that.

So the really big things that happen that damage people that usually very unexpected, that totally threaten that person in some way or another, whether it's that sense of self and who they think they are and who they are, their safety, it's those.

David Brown: 00:07:56

Those bigger things, I assume that stuff like soldiers going to war, car accidents, you know, nearly like anything that you would consider, like a massive thing like you nearly get killed, that. That would probably be a big T trauma for most people.

Sonya Black: 00:08:12

Yeah. Yeah. But it's an interesting thing because like 70% of the population in their lifetime experience something that's potentially traumatic.

But a very small proportion of people, maybe around 5, 6% of people actually go on PTSD as we recognize it.

But the reason why I became so interested in becoming a specialist in trauma therapy is because 80% of those people tend to go on to develop anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, maybe suicidal ideation, and depends on the type of trauma more Complex issues, but also impacts on our physical health. Trauma lays down at a cellular level and the body holds those memories. So yeah, it's quite powerful stuff.

David Brown: 00:09:00

So how do we protect ourselves? Let's just get straight to the meat of it. Is there any way that we can protect ourselves?

Sonya Black: 00:09:08

I don't think there's one particular thing that you can do to protect yourself. It's multifactorial. But I think when we understand.

So often when I work with clients, they'll say the thing that has really helped them early on in therapy is understanding how our brain works. So I often describe to people that we've got the old brain where the alarm system sits. This is my very crude description, that works for people.

And the alarm system sits in there, this old structure that we've got called the amygdala and that impacts, links up with the hippocampus and then that in trauma situations, that's there to protect us, that's there to keep us safe. And that links with those very. The things people tend to know about flight, fight, flight, freeze, fawn as those key mechanisms.

But the thinking parts of the brain become impacted.

The functioning of the brain, decision making, memory, being able to problem solve, language, all of those things can start to shut down and depends on the type of trauma, how severe and profound that trauma is as to how the brain shuts down in those circumstances.

So the opportunity for people then to be able to turn the alarm system off, to feel safe again, to feel like they have emotional safety, practical safety, psychological safety, that they're safe again is really, really important for the body to be able to feel that.

And then for them to be able to have the opportunity to be able to process that trauma, to be able to talk about it, to be able to, if it was a road traffic accident, for example, to be able to gather all the information that goes with so that they know what actually happened.

So it wasn't hours and hours in the car, how long it actually was and you know, what actually happened, the information that they might not have been able to access at that time. And so that we can help the fear find its place. So the task then becomes after safety.

And we've got lots of different ways of creating that safety in therapy, if people come into therapy. But then it's been able to say, okay, how do we then update the brain?

So we've got lots of techniques that we use emdrs, one imagery trauma focused CBT really helps people then to be able to update the brain to say, I'm safe I've got this. What other information do I need to add to this memory? So it's not like a big linen cupboard that's messy. We don't want it to be able to.

Every time we think about that trauma, it collapses on us. We want to be able to say, okay, I can open the doors. I know it's there. I can see it, I can look at it, I can take it out.

I can explore it if I need to, but it doesn't overwhelm me. And then I can put it away again afterwards.

David Brown: 00:12:02

Just put it in a box and put it in the corner.

Sonya Black: 00:12:05

Yeah, but then if you do that without processing it and keeping it nice and neat as a jack in a box, and that's not good either.

David Brown: 00:12:12

Yeah, but just never touch the box again. And it's fine. Just stack other boxes on top of it.

Sonya Black: 00:12:17

It's there anyway.

David Brown: 00:12:20

It's fine. You put it in the corner and just leave it there.

Sonya Black: 00:12:23

And for some people, that works fine.

David Brown: 00:12:26

Or not until all the boxes fall over.

Sonya Black: 00:12:29

Yeah, yeah. Boxes of life.

David Brown: 00:12:32

Interesting. So does that. So is that what's really at the base of it, then, is the feeling of safety?

Is that what it all kind of ultimately comes back to, really, is that whatever this thing was causes you to feel unsafe?

Sonya Black: 00:12:49

Yeah, there's a few different themes. So safety is one. I think it's quite a big one. Clients report. To me, that's quite a big one. Powerlessness, power. That power dynamic.

I didn't have any power in this situation. Control. I didn't have any control.

That often then triggers that perception of extreme danger to myself or even witnessing extreme danger or death to somebody else. Else that can be very, very difficult and trigger trauma. So there's a series of themes there.

So the way that you're able to overcome that is to be able to really explore that in detail and allow the brain to have the messages that it needs or to understand the whole story, the entirety of the story. So we create maybe a chronological order, a narrative, so. So that it's part of your story, not just stuffed into a box over there.

David Brown: 00:13:51

Yeah, it's interesting that you say that because. And we were talking again, just sitting over there before we got started. That one of the things that I've noticed when.

When talking to people, because I. I talk about the show to everybody. Right. Because I'm always looking for more interesting people to talk to, so I have to talk about it.

And then everybody goes, oh, I know somebody who, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I talk to people all the time. And they say, oh, you know, nothing interesting has ever happened to me. They're like, oh, I like the idea.

The show sounds cool, might be interesting to listen to. And then they go, but nothing ever, you know, nothing's ever happened to me. I've not had any misadventures.

And then, you know, 10 or 15 minutes or two days later or something, then they come back to me and they go, actually, you know what? I had this thing that happened to me one time and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, for anybody else in the world that would be like a major life event.

But to them it's just some other random like Alan. I'll talk about some people that have been on the show.

So my friend Alan, who's had three heart attacks, like, like he doesn't even think about it as even. Like it doesn't factor into his day to day thinking anymore. And it's just like, oh yeah, I've got this thing and I could die like anybody else.

I would think that, you know, you'd just be pretty freaked out most of the time.

And you know, but in my opinion, or the way I thought about it is that he must have just come, he must have processed that fully and he's able to just. It's just another thing that's happened in his life.

And you know, his wife had the dog attack and you know all these people and you know, Rebecca with the brain surgery and all these people, and it's like they're just kind of like, oh yeah, I had this thing one time, does that.

So I guess my question is in those instances is that when somebody's actually healed, is that what happens is it just becomes something that, like you said, you can kind of open the box and look at it later and go, oh yeah, I remember that. I remember that thing. Yeah, that's really cool. And maybe not cool, but you know what I mean? And you can sort of examine it on its own and it doesn't.

But if you're not healed, it's still kind of front of mind. And if somebody asks you, it's like that immediately jumps into your head. Is that kind of what it's like?

Sonya Black: 00:16:06

Yeah, I think there's lots of things that go with trauma. Lots of horrible bits to trauma, hyper vigilance, flashbacks.

There's all sorts of different things that triggers that could be a smell, it could be all sorts of things. But I think what you're really talking about there is when somebody's done the work and they've been able to update the brain.

We can't erase memories, but we can give them a time and date in the past. They can have their place in the greater story of your life. So it becomes about resilience.

And I think people, through these experiences realize that actually I would never have chosen that experience. But from that there is growth. And you talk about that a lot in therapy in terms of post traumatic growth.

I can grow as a person as a result of this thing that's happened to me, all happened in my life, and I can grow from that. So it becomes resilience, it becomes strength. It becomes. Actually, do you know what? I do have coping strategies and I do have a place for this.

So very often with anxiety, we'll sort of. We'll say, okay, the threats up here in my coping schools are down here, and that's misaligned.

And very often in therapy, I'll be working with people to be able to say, well, actually, is the threat that bad? And are your coping skills really down here?

And it's about addressing that balance so that people can actually realize that they do have strengths that maybe they didn't realize they had, they didn't acknowledge they had, or maybe they've developed their new things. Does that make sense?

David Brown: 00:17:42

Yeah.

It's interesting you talk about the anxiety bit, because I know people who suffer from anxiety and I can start to tell when they start to get particularly anxious about something. And then what they do is they then become anxious because they're anxious.

And then they recognize that they're anxious because they're anxious and that makes them more. And it just turns into this little, like a little tornado.

Sonya Black: 00:18:09

Whole thing about meta anxiety.

David Brown: 00:18:11

Yeah. And I'm like, okay, stop. Just be anxious. Like, don't just, if you're anxious about something, be anxious about that thing.

And that's okay, because sometimes it's okay to be anxious. Right? Like, at least I think it is, obviously, and you'll probably tell me differently, but it's like stage fright, right?

Like you're, you know, you're. There are some performers who still, like, they're famous, millions and millions, you know, platinum records, all that stuff.

And they throw up before they go on stage every single time. And you would think they'd be over it, but they don't.

They get so anxious before they go on stage, but that gives them some energy and performers get anxious and stuff. So I think there's a normal level of maybe anxiety that people experience.

And does the problem come when you start to get anxious because you're anxious or is that a common thing?

Sonya Black: 00:19:05

So anxiety is just an emotion? Yeah, it's a primary emotion that keeps us safe.

So if we just stay with the anxiety that's helpful, we're able to just say, okay, so we treat it like, what's the weather barometer? And the weather's anxiety right now. But it's been able to then say, actually, let's not worry about being anxious because it's the problem.

Actually, anxiety, the protective emotion, because that's going to arrive, people will quite often come to me and say, don't want to be anxious anymore. Like, well, I can't really help you with that one, but I can help you how you manage that and the worry that you might have about anxiety.

And that's what we're really working with, the worry about worry about worry. I worry. I worry all the time. I'm a worrier. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that.

So it's just been able to say, actually, let's deal with the worry because anxiety is just an emotion in the same way that anger is just an emotion.

David Brown: 00:20:01

But anger is a secondary emotion, isn't it?

Sonya Black: 00:20:03

Anger is also primary because it's up there as a protective emotion with. With anxiety keeps you safe. But it's an interesting thing. People forget about low mood. So said earlier on about this.

People who've experienced PTSD tend to go on.

80% Tend to go on and develop experience depressive disorders, which is quite an interesting thing when you think about it, because that's anxiety and depression. But we don't always think about depression as being productive. But if a key theme of trauma is, is about safety, where do you feel safe?

I want to stay at home. I'd like to stay in my safe place. I want to stay in a place where I feel everything's okay and I'm in control and I've got some autonomy.

So that becomes a key feature, that stuckness becomes a key feature of depression. So lions and gazelles, we recognize anxiety, that Linus is hungry, cubs are hungry, so she goes off to hunt.

So the alarm system gets triggered, the amygdala, she goes to hunt. Gazelle neuroception kicks in and they get that feeling that something's not right.

Chase is on, she kills one and the rest of the gazelle go back to eating because it's an on and off function lioness, on and off function, no guilt. And then if you think about the cubs, what have they been doing?

They have to stay quiet because if they Have a big party and play, they get eaten or something bad happens to them so they stay low. And that's that functional nature, if you like, of some of the features of depression.

David Brown: 00:21:52

I would have never thought about depression that way. That's an interesting. It's an interesting way to think about it. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.

I never thought about it as being protective and maybe a lot of people don't.

Sonya Black: 00:22:07

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:22:08

You know, they just don't see it that way because it doesn't feel that way. Maybe.

Sonya Black: 00:22:12

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:22:13

You know, to you when you're in it. Okay, so how do we. How do we protect ourselves? Is there any way we can protect ourselves or maybe not protect ourselves?

That's not the right thing, because I kind of asked that already. I'm now thinking, sort of post something happening.

Is there anything that we can try and do ourselves to help us deal with that situation in the kind of near immediate to near aftermath to make our recovery better?

Sonya Black: 00:22:48

Yes, there are certain things that help. So knowing how the brain works can help just to understand that process of.

Actually, what I really need in this moment is to regulate my nervous system, to regulate my emotions, to allow my brain that space to update, to know that I'm safe. Because it's the brain that's doing this rather than just the mind. Our thinking is maybe not completely online. It's like a light bulb fusing.

So it's been able to say, okay, how do I create that sense of safety? Who and what do I need around me in order for that to be so. So it could be lots of sensory things.

It might be giving yourself some space, giving yourself some sensory things that help you to realize that actually the brain is okay, I'm okay, I am safe.

Even repeating that, orientating yourself to time, date, weather, what's going on in the world or life in this room right now, sounds inside the room, perhaps, so that you're able to just bring yourself into the moment so you're not going off all the time. So you're given a timeline from the very beginning to be able to say, okay, that was then, this is now, and right now I know that I'm safe.

And that takes some time. But it's also being able to have the space with somebody that you really trust that you can just talk about it.

And that might feel a bit repetitive and a bit. Bit disjointed. And for that person listening, it's just about being with.

It's not about fixing, it's not about doing anything but just being present to It.

David Brown: 00:24:26

That's going to be my next question in a minute. Is as the. Maybe the. A friend of or a partner of or whatever of someone. You know, when something traumatic happens, what should we do?

But that's a different question. So I assume it's different for everybody. Right? So it's not a one size fits all. It's. You've got to kind of try and figure it out.

But what I took from what you said is talk about it. Like actually verbalize it out loud. Because I'm assuming that staying in your own head probably isn't the best place.

Do you need to actually say it out loud to let it. This is how I feel. I feel like when stuff like that happens or whatever, I need to just say it out loud, which is great. I have a motorcycle.

I'm in my helmet all the time. I can talk to myself. No one knows. Brilliant.

And I have a camera and a microphone now and every once in a while I'll go for a ride and I'll film it and I'll just yabber the whole time and then I just delete the whole video afterwards, which is fantastic. But does that make a difference if you say something out loud as opposed to just staying in your head and saying it to yourself in your head?

Sonya Black: 00:25:41

The brain gets stuck in loops and the task in therapy. But the task in trauma therapy is to be able to make sense of those loops. Sometimes those loops don't make sense.

We get between various studies, but six and a half thousand, 65,000 thoughts a day. And we don't always think in sentences. We think in images or abstract. So it's been able to sort of the tasks.

To be able to treat trauma is to be able to have a chronological order, time, date, and also then to be able to support people, to have that narrative, that understanding of what's happened. So it's in the early stages, it takes maybe a number of weeks, maybe three, four months before a psychiatrist would offer a diagnosis of ptsd.

But it's about allowing the brain just to update, to have that space to be able to say, okay, right, the weather's different. Those grounding, those anchoring things that people can notice, that safety that's around them and talking, it's different for everybody.

Depends on the type of trauma.

It might not be always appropriate to speak to your loved one about it, but having somebody that you can talk to about what's happened can really be very helpful. It depends on the person, but sometimes it might be just record what's in my mind. And just put it there. Don't listen to it again unless I need to.

David Brown: 00:27:20

Yeah, that's a good point. So. Because I'm thinking, you know, some people have people to talk to and other people won't. Right. And.

And if you have someone that you can talk to or a friend group or whatever, you're lucky. I think a lot of people don't feel that they don't.

And there's again, going back to my conversation that I just had with Greg, which was quite interesting. So just to fill you in, Greg's a friend of mine, lives in L. A. You know, the world, basically. You know, during COVID he wasn't happy in his job.

He was a bit stressed out. Then Covid hit started to get a. And I'm summarizing this, and he'll probably get in the comments afterwards and go, that's not what it was.

But I think.

I think the whole sense of existential kind of dread and everything just, you know, everybody was fighting and some people are like, oh, no, vaccines. And these people are like, no, you have to vaccinate. And it was just a lot of stuff going on and it just all got on top of him. And so, you know, he.

He started having suicidal thoughts and stuff like that. And he. He had a really good friend who was able to, you know, to. To kind of help him out. And he was talking about that.

And now I've lost my train of thought. I got sidetracked. Oh, no. Yeah. I don't remember what road I was going down. I think I was going to go down the road.

If we talked a little bit about the fact that sometimes you just want to talk to someone. And his point was sometimes you just need to say to somebody, hey, I just want to tell you something. I just want you to listen.

I don't need you to do anything. I don't need you to take on my burden, anything like that. It's just, I need someone to talk to. Can you just listen? And that's it.

You know, and some people have that and some people don't.

Sonya Black: 00:29:13

Yeah. And it's also, I think, somebody to be witness or be present with you. If you're going through something, you can't fix.

The things I've listened to with people and continue to listen to and always will hopefully be in the position where I'm able to do this, work with people, because it's humbling every single time. It's being able to realize that sometimes we can't fix it, we can't make it okay.

Sometimes really, really awful things do happen in people's lives, and it's not okay. And therefore, in trauma, we talk a lot about it's okay to be not okay. And this is a normal reaction for an abnormal event.

David Brown: 00:30:05

It's something I try and do with myself, which is. And I've learned only late in my life, actually. And if I had learned this 40 years ago, it would have been really helpful. And I think you.

And I've talked about this before is I like to let myself feel something. Like, if I have an emotion or I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling depressed or whatever, I actually just allow myself to feel the feeling.

Because for me, it seems like if I just fight just stays around and it's like it just won't go away because it doesn't feel like it got its time, if you know what I mean? That's kind of how I think about it. So if I start feeling down or whatever, I'm like, okay, I'm not feeling up for it today.

I'm feeling depressed, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling whatever it is, you know, like sometimes I get, you know, sort of massive feelings of imposter syndrome and stuff. And I'm like, you know, why am I doing all this stuff? I have, like, I have no reason to do any of this. Why am I doing this stuff?

And it just gets on top of me and then I go, okay, I'm just going to let myself feel that way. I'm not going to try and fight it. In fact, I'm going to lean into it a little bit, explore that. And then.

But I give myself a time limit on doing that. So I'm like, okay, if I'm not sort of through this by 48 hours, then I'm going to move myself on. And.

But what I find now is that, you know, usually it's just a day. And if I just lean into it and just go, okay, I'm feeling a bit shit today. And I just go, and that's okay. I'm going to feel shit today.

And I just tell my wife, I'm like, I'm not up for it today. I'm feeling depressed, I'm feeling stressed, or whatever it is. I'm like, I don't need anything from you. I just let me be.

I'm just going to wallow in it for a little bit and I'll be fine tomorrow. And then usually when I wake up and I realize this doesn't work for everybody, right? And again, you have to find Your own way.

But I find for me, that's one way that it works when I'm starting to experience those feelings, is that I have to let myself be there, if you know what I mean.

Sonya Black: 00:32:21

But that's really interesting because compassion is defined as recognizing that difficulty exists with a desire to end that difficulty. But first of all, we do have to recognize that difficulty is present.

And quite often we just try to push that away, just ignore it, and we keep going, keep going, keep going.

But actually, it's been able to say, well, actually, you know, recognizing that exists is a deeply compassionate thing, but it's deeply compassionate with the desire to end that. So it's that question, what's the wisest kindest thing for me right now? What's the wisest, kindest thing for other people right now?

So it's been able to say, actually, what are my needs in this situation? What do I need? Sometimes, you know, might not need to spend a whole day with it.

Sometimes you can just spend a little bit of time with it and then say, well, what are my needs right now? What would be the wisest kindest thing for me right now? So that you can explore it, you can be present, and you can be okay with it.

David Brown: 00:33:26

I've just noticed I have a flashing light on our recording, and I don't know what that means. Yeah, sorry about that. There was a little bit of a break there because I had a weird flashing light on some of the recording gear.

But it seems to be working. So we're just. We'll get back to it. Where were we? Maybe I'll put it back on you a little bit. So what am I not asking?

What am I not sort of covering that you think is important to talk about? Because I feel like I'm. I have an idea of kind of the questions that I want to ask, but it's me. I'm kind of in a situation of. I don't know what.

I don't know.

So from your perspective, is there something that I'm missing, or is there something that you think is really important that we should be adding in here?

Sonya Black: 00:34:15

No, I think your questions are great. And I think trauma can often be one of those. I think in mental health, there's always a phrase that people bandy about.

And I think it's really important to recognize that there are difficulties in life. They can feel like traumas at the time. They can feel like they're insurmountable at the time, but in the course of our lives, they become smaller.

If we are only Able to process them, give them their time and date, give them a gravity sometimes as well. But they don't have to define the rest of our life. They leave very key messages in our life. But we do have choice as to what we take from that.

That growth that we take from that learning that we take from those experiences. And where it fits within our lives, we also have choice with that.

The gravity that we give it within our lives, the size that it has within our lives, the shape, the form, all of those things. It doesn't have to be us. It's an experience.

Even if it's one of the most difficult, awful things imaginable, it's still part of our lives and fits within it. I think the other thing that we can't breathe away trauma, we can't yoga away move away trauma. It's there within our bodies.

So there's something there about those approaches can be very, very powerful in terms of accessing where the body's holding that trauma. The trauma has body memories, and that's really important to know, but then it's being able to. And that's why the brain has these things.

So a smell, a sound, a song, something that looks like somebody, you know, can all be triggers for trauma memories. And that can be different for everybody. But we use.

Sometimes people are able to use those techniques to really help them to be able to connect the thinking parts of the brain.

And we often use that within trauma focused CBT to be able to say, okay, we can access where the body's holding that trauma and we can allow that connection when it feels safe, when it feels right for that person.

David Brown: 00:36:51

It's interesting you talk about smells because I have a little thing about smell and I know. So when I was working in a tech job a while back and I was doing a bit of consulting, there was a guy who's developed this.

The only way to explain it, it's like a dome kind of thing, but it's like a 3D environment that you can go into. It's like a room, but it could be as big as our studio here or bigger. So it could be like 10 meters by 10 meters. Or it can be.

They have some that they sit on top of tanks so that when they train in the military, they don't have to go out, but you can stick your head through the top and you can see in 360 degrees. And when they're training people for like, you know, when you. When you've got. I don't remember what the name of the job is.

But there's, like, one soldier who's responsible for calling in airstrikes and stuff like that.

And what he has to be able to do is look behind him to see the planes on the horizon, and then he can tell the guys on the ground, and he's like, in the radio in between. Right. And so they have these training environments, and they. They do this for the military and all that sort of stuff.

But what they realized is, is that the uni that they work with, some of the psychologists said, hey, could we use them to work with some of our patients that have ptsd, particularly soldiers, because we can put them back in the environment, in a similar environment to help them work through whatever they need to work through. And that all sounds okay. Everybody kind of goes, yeah, okay.

But the most interesting thing for me was, is that they said they can also make it smell the same. So they can give the smell of gunpowder and the smell of what a battlefield smells like, and that. That was really, really effective.

So they make these tents, and they have the tents, and it's literally, they've got the smells of. They've got the. The gunpowder and the smoke and all the everything.

And they put all of that together, and they can put them in this environment, and then they can. They have someone, a psychologist there with them going through this. But they. They found that was really effective.

But I found the smell part of it the most interesting bit, that. That was a major trigger for a lot of them.

Sonya Black: 00:39:11

Smells, tastes, any of those sensory things. But we don't actually need to recreate that for people in trauma therapy, because it's there in the body and the brain anyway.

And if you think about the happiest memories you have. So I love being by the sea.

And if I close my eyes and I do some breathing exercises and I drop down into my body, and I'm able to ground myself, anchor myself, and allow myself to access those memories. I can smell the sea. I can hear the sea. I can feel the spray. And all of that is right there in front of me. I can be there in that moment.

The happiest moments I have with my children, I can be in those moments with them as if I'm right there. So trauma memories.

Memories don't have a time and date necessarily, but they do have this trauma memories, have this jack in the box kind of feeling that they're just there when they're not welcome. So what we want to be able to do is to very clearly give them their place so that. That stops so that we can Smell, a certain smell.

But we know that we're now safe.

David Brown: 00:40:24

So when you talk about giving a time and place, do you literally mean, like, almost after the event? You can say to yourself, okay, yesterday this thing happened to me, last week this thing happened.

And consciously, like making yourself aware that this was days ago, four days ago I was in an accident. A week ago I was in an accident. Two weeks ago I was in an accident. And repeating it, Is that what you mean?

Sonya Black: 00:40:52

Sometimes, yeah. So what I have done with clients at various points. So say it's a road accident.

You know, we can actually revisit the place and notice what's different. And maybe there's lessons that have been learned about that location and things have changed about that location.

And the weather's different, the traffic's different, it's not the same exact moment. So by doing that, you're actually updating the brain. But some people will say, no, Sonia, I don't need to go to that place to be able to do that.

So that's where imagery, which is an incredibly powerful technique, and I'm always blown away quite how powerful that is with people, that people will do this work with me, come back and say, my goodness, you know, I feel like my brain has literally just been reprogrammed. This is. Or it's just the intensity of it has come out.

I still remember it, but the intensity, the fear elements have shifted through the work that we've done.

David Brown: 00:41:51

Is this all just a really fancy way of saying if you fall off the horse, you got to get back on again?

Sonya Black: 00:41:56

No, no, it's definitely not that. No, no.

David Brown: 00:42:02

It feels kind of the same.

Like, not exactly in the same way, but it's like you have to at some point, like going back to the same spot, you can't be afraid of, you know, if you have a car accident, you can't be afraid of that spot on the road.

Sonya Black: 00:42:16

Well, that's when we know it's become very problematic trauma, because there's a lot of avoidance and there's, you know, lots of strategies to be able to avoid that. I'll drive the whole other way so I don't have to go down that one spot. I'm using that as one example. But that's just.

That is a key moment to realize that actually this is now getting in the way of my day to day life and me moving on.

And it's starting to define how I live rather than actually being a discrete experience over that period of time, whatever that period of time might be. So. But you can't just, it's not just jump back on the horse because sometimes really, really, really difficult things happen in people's lives.

And that's just, I, I, I get the distinction. It's got to be done very, very, very carefully.

David Brown: 00:43:09

Yeah. And falling off a horse is one thing. If you fall off a horse. If you fall off a horse, get back on right then. I mean, I've had motorcycle accidents.

I mean, I used to ride off road all the time, and I'm five miles out in the woods, and if I have an accident, I can't be afraid to get back on the bike because I'll never get out. Like, I have to get on the bike and keep going. I've been hit in the road, on the road.

Like, I didn't have an opportunity to be afraid of riding again. I, like, had stuff to do. Like, I had to get to work. And so I got back on the bike.

And, you know, when I've had, touch wood, I've had a couple of car accidents in my life, you know, one kind of major one and a couple as passengers. And so, you know, again, but it was like you just, I was able to just get back on. I totally appreciate that.

There are, there are layers to this, and there's some things that happen to people, you know, and there are major serious traumas where somebody's not going to go back into that situation. I'm not saying that I would say those are small T traumas, probably, if I was able to do that and it didn't have a massive impact anyway.

Why is that flashing again? Okay, sorry. I keep getting distracted by the gear. It seems to be working. I'm going to leave it alone and pretend it's not happening.

Okay, so the other big question, I guess that I'd mentioned earlier, which is if you know someone who's had a big trauma, how can we help those people? Is there anything that we can do? Is there anything we shouldn't do as opposed to, we should do high level?

Obviously every situation is different, blah, blah, blah. So we'll give the caveat.

But generally speaking, as the friend of somebody who something happens to that has a major life event, what should we do not do to.

Sonya Black: 00:45:06

You've almost answered the question yourself. You're very, very close to answer that yourself. And it's about saying to that person, how can I show up for you right now?

What do you need from me right now? Because everybody is so different. Everybody is so individual. So it's about giving it back to them.

Because one of those key themes of trauma is a lack of control, lack of power. What do you need from me right now? How can I show up for you right now? And they might not know in that moment, but just leave it there on the table.

There might be something about practical things that you can do. Cook food, take care of some stuff, be there for them, be at the end of the phone, don't forget about them.

Because this doesn't have a prescriptive period of time that you'll be over it in this period.

David Brown: 00:45:55

And telling them to get over it probably isn't helping.

Sonya Black: 00:45:57

Yeah, that's not going to help. So it goes back to that compassion stuff. First of all, we have to just remember that this is difficult stuff.

There's something about knowing that you're not going mad. This is a normal response for an abnormal event. So often people say, I just think I'm losing my mind. I just totally feel like I'm losing my mind.

I keep getting these flashbacks. I feel like I'm right back there.

And I was like, no, that's just what the brain's doing, trying to make sense of this thing that's happened, this really difficult thing that's happened. So it's that sort of thing, being able to just be present in it.

And that whole process immediately after something really, really difficult happens is safety. How can you create that sense of safety with that person, allowing them to have a lead, that one. What do you need? And then you're able to.

Yeah, then you're able to work with them on that.

David Brown: 00:46:57

Interesting. And I know I keep mentioning Greg and this is going to drive you crazy, but he said something really interesting at the end of the.

At the end of our chat, which is. He said, don't ask people how you can help them. Ask how you can support them. Yeah, because people don't like to be helped, but they don't mind to be.

It's just that little word.

Sonya Black: 00:47:18

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:47:18

And it. But it has a big. A lot of times, it has a big meaning. And it's like a lot of people don't. They feel some. They have some connection to help.

And it's not a. They feel like then they're putting you out or that you need help. And it. It creates something as opposed to just saying.

And I noticed you were doing it and all the things that you said. You never said help. No, you said all sorts of different ways of saying it. How can I show up for you? How can I, like, just don't use the word help.

And I thought that Was really interesting. I think the reason I keep mentioning is literally before you got here, I was editing that episode.

So I'm like really, you know, listening to it again. But yeah, and I thought that was really, really interesting. Just a little, you know, kind of comment.

That was an offhand comment by him, but I thought. Yeah, and I just again noticed it when you were doing that. So.

Sonya Black: 00:48:08

Yeah, because it's the helplessness that fits within trauma, that lack of control, that lack of power happening to me. Feelings.

David Brown: 00:48:18

I like show up.

Sonya Black: 00:48:19

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:48:19

How can I show up for you? That's a good way to say how.

Sonya Black: 00:48:22

Can I show up for you? What do you need?

David Brown: 00:48:23

Support is kind of close to help.

Sonya Black: 00:48:25

Yeah.

David Brown: 00:48:26

But showing up, that's a little bit different.

Sonya Black: 00:48:28

I want to be here for you. I care for you, I love you, I'm your friend, I'm your partner, whatever.

David Brown: 00:48:33

Yeah.

Sonya Black: 00:48:33

But just how can I be here for you right now? What do you need from me?

David Brown: 00:48:37

Yeah, I like that.

Sonya Black: 00:48:40

Yeah. And that's the, you know, it's just a nice place to start. And sometimes, you know, the person genuinely might literally have no idea.

But just being present to that just. I don't know. I don't know how I'm going to get through this. I don't know how I'm going to find the strength to get through this. I don't know.

I just don't know. But what I find and blows my mind every single client I work with is people step up and they find a way to get through.

And it's absolutely incredible and totally humbling to be present to that process and that journey that somebody goes on with it, that they find strength from a source they didn't even realize they had.

David Brown: 00:49:23

It makes me think of my in laws in.

I won't say their names, but something my wife said that we've adopted in our house, which is if we get really angry about, usually about someone else or something's going on or somebody's, you know, slighted us in some way, the other one, that we both do it to each other. So it's quite evenly matched at this point.

But like, let's say, you know, somebody does something to my wife, she gets really angry or whatever and I just go, well, you know, do you just want me to go beat them up for you? And I'm not going to do it, but it's the asking of the question. And she's like, yeah, would you just go punch them in the face? That'd be really nice.

And I'm going, okay, I'LL get to that, I'll do it tomorrow. And we're not going to do it.

But it's that again, it's almost just acknowledging that and going, do you just want me to just go rough them up or what? Like, you know, and it's kind of like, yeah, that's what I need right now.

It makes both of us feel better and it's like the silliest thing that we do. But. But we picked that up from her sister and her husband and it's like, it's just kind of the silliest thing, but it seems to really work.

Sonya Black: 00:50:27

But it's about protection. So it's just, I'm not advocating that at all. But you know, it's just that real sense of, you know, what you need.

It's like, I want to feel safe again, I want to feel protected again. I want to know that things are okay. But there's some things that happen to people in the world that it's never going to be okay again.

It's life changing, a game changer. And that's that sort of post traumatic growth at the end of it to be able to say, actually this has changed me.

This has, has altered my value base and how I make sense of the world and how I make sense of the people in the world. So it's remembering that bit, but with the lighter traumas. Yeah, humor is really important to have a sense of humor with it, to have a sense of.

Because it becomes very, very serious very quickly otherwise. So to be able to, if you can, bring humor into it while not losing the essence of what's happened and what you need.

David Brown: 00:51:26

So what have we missed? Have we missed anything?

Sonya Black: 00:51:30

Roughly? Quite a lot. But yeah, it's a big, it's a big topic.

David Brown: 00:51:35

So if it happens to you, talk about it, try to give yourself some context of where it happened in time. And then it's not now and then, it's a different time now than it was when that happened.

To give yourself some separation from it and then just give yourself some time. Maybe give yourself some time and give yourself a break and yeah, it's okay to take some time to process this stuff.

Sonya Black: 00:52:01

Absolutely.

David Brown: 00:52:01

Be too hard on yourself.

Sonya Black: 00:52:03

Compassion, kindness, very important. Stay with the facts, stay with the evidence.

David Brown: 00:52:07

Yeah, okay. And, and then as a supporter, it's asking how you can show up for them, not how you can help them, but how you can support them to get through it.

And if they just need their space, then you need to give them their space.

Sonya Black: 00:52:26

But, but you can sometimes be in that space with them, too. Yeah, but just not fixing.

David Brown: 00:52:32

Exactly. Yeah.

Sonya Black: 00:52:33

Just tea making or whatever's needed.

David Brown: 00:52:35

Unless they ask you to go punch them in the face and then go punch them in the face. No, I'm not. We're not advocating punching anyone in the face. Although sometimes people need it. Okay, awesome. Well, that was cool.

Sonya Black: 00:52:49

Okay, thank you.

David Brown: 00:52:50

I'm glad you came in. Sorry, we had a little technical difficulty there in the middle.

I'll probably cut out most of it, but there'll be a little jump around, but that's okay. And I had, I don't know, a brain fart halfway through as well, so that was fun, too. Anyway, thanks, Sonia.

Sonya Black: 00:53:09

Thank you.

David Brown: 00:53:10

All right, we'll see you soon.

Sonya Black: 00:53:11

Yeah, we'll see you soon. Well, if you need me to redo any bits, there's so much there that I could talk about, honestly about. I think for me, that is the essence of it.

I wish people could realize this alarm system on the brain gets switched on, impacts on the thinking. Part of the brain. Task of therapy, then, is to fix that and to help them to regulate that. That's where breathing comes in. That's where movement.

That's where bodily stuff comes in. And that's the message. I just want to get out to people.

But we've got to do that very carefully because you can't just dive in there because you don't quite know what's going to come out. And time and time again, I've worked with clients and they want to rush ahead. You know, super intelligent people, very successful.

And they're like, okay, so you give them. How do we do this?

You give them the treatment a little bit, and then the next thing you know, they're sort of diving in there and you're like, no, no, no, no. We're not doing the updating work yet because we need to do this grounding bit first.

We need to be really, really careful on the grounding bit and really make sure that we've got the stabilization absolutely nailed before we can move on to the next stage. And then there's that stage can actually be surprisingly quick. Then it's that last stage that how does the world now make sense to me?

How do I fit into the world now with this experience? And that's the growth bit.

David Brown: 00:54:42

That's the clip. That's the summary right there. Brilliant. Okay. It's all still running, of course.

Sonya Black: 00:54:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Brown: 00:54:54

That's the whole show. We'll just use that bit. That's it. That's the whole summary of all of it.

Sonya Black: 00:54:57

Yeah, that's it in a nutshell. That's what I want people to know. And it's not their fault. It's not. I think that's the other bit. It's not your fault.

It's the other key message that I think would be very, very valuable to people to know. It's not your fault that your brain is doing this. It's not your fault that this has happened. It's not your fault. You didn't ask for this.

David Brown: 00:55:20

I don't think I've had anything specifically majorly like a capital T. I mean, like I said, I've been in a couple car accidents and stuff like that, which, again, I've kind of processed, and I had a little wobble at the time, but then I've been able to kind of get through it. But I also think about regret, and it feels to me in a similar way that I feel about regret, which is. And I think.

And I don't know if regret is tied into depression. And some. Sometimes people get in their head and they're like, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. And, you know, I did this. And then they.

They start looking backwards too much and they're like, oh, my God, I did this thing. And I. You know, and they. They get these senses of. They're like, maybe a bad person or like, whatever it.

And at some point, I used to suffer from that a little bit, and I used to worry. And then I just got to a point and I went, do you know what?

I don't actually regret anything, because all of that stuff, whether it was my fault or not, has made me the person that I am now. And whenever I make a decision, I make the best decision that I can with the information that I have at that moment, right?

In five minutes, I might have more information that then says, maybe that wasn't such a great decision to make. But I didn't have that at the time. So I didn't have that data to be able to make the decision that I made.

And so for me, that's how I square the circle, right? And I just kind of go. And I just leave it. And I go. I made a decision in that moment because that's the information that I had.

And yes, okay, with hindsight, that's changed because I now have more data. But I can't continue to beat myself up over that because the situation's different.

Sonya Black: 00:57:10

And that's why I'm jumping up and down here, because that's where you enter into guilt and shame. Guilt, shame, regret. And that all sits within there. And then that takes you into this vortex that becomes depression.

And down you go, because you're ruminating and you get stuck in all these loops. The brain gets stuck in loops on your behalf, but you're stuck in these loops.

And I don't think about rumination and these sorts of thoughts just as sort of loops of the brain. When clients describe it, it literally feels like a vortex and it just sucks. The closer you get to it, it literally just sucks you down and into it.

And it's that vortex that I'm always super keen to keep clients away from.

So the earlier you can recognize those loops of the brain, that rumination, which rumination tends to be usually largely about the past, it's about just being able to say, I recognize that for what it is. There's lessons that I've learned from that. It's made me who I am and now I can move forward.

David Brown: 00:58:14

Yeah.

Sonya Black: 00:58:16

Whereas anxiety is about the future.

David Brown: 00:58:18

Yeah.

Sonya Black: 00:58:18

What if, what if, what if?

David Brown: 00:58:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anxiety is always that you're worried about what's happening next. And that, again, where meditation. I mean, I did. I used to.

I started going to the Buddhist meditation in Chiswick. So there's a Buddhist monastery. Look, just like a house, but it's a little Buddhist monastery by the station. And. And I used to go.

And that was really, really good for me to sort of calm myself and to stop doing that and just to, you know, shut my brain down and to be quiet in my own head. And I, I. And, you know, a little bit about my background personally. But, you know, we moved around quite a lot and.

And when I was young, and so I never had friends from.

I mean, I don't know anybody that knew me when I was a kid, before the age of, like, 14, literally, there's not a single person that knew me that I'm in that. That I, you know, I don't have any friends like that and I never did.

And because we move so much, like, stuff was always getting broken or it was getting lost or, like, you know, like furniture was changing.

Like, even that little stuff that a lot of people take for granted, you know, you always had the same bed, you always had the same dresser, you always had. Mine were always different. And so I was always losing stuff or it was getting broken, like, whatever.

So I had zero attachment to anything when I was younger. People, things, anything. Stuff would come in and out of my life like I didn't care.

People could come in and out of My life, I just didn't get attached, like, and I just didn't allow myself because I had grown up in that way. And as I got a little bit older, sort of in my younger midlife, I always.

I was really angry, kind of with my mom about that, because I felt like she fucked me up. Because I. Like, I just don't have attachment. Like, I could literally just walk away and I'd be fine. I could still duck.

I probably couldn't do it today. Maybe with my wife that I have now and the family that I have now and where I am, I think I've settled a little bit from there.

I would probably feel it a little bit, but I could still walk away relatively unscathed. And I always saw that as a major weakness. Like, I was fucked up and weird because of it.

But the doing the meditation and everything and kind of listening and learning a bit about Buddhism and being.

Being able to let things go and not be attached and not have that attachment to stuff, I actually worked out that that's probably a superpower, if anything.

Sonya Black: 01:00:59

Yeah, potentially.

David Brown: 01:01:01

So I don't get.

Sonya Black: 01:01:02

Potentially. It's sort of that other thing that we haven't spoken about with trauma, of dissociation, but it's been able to sort of.

So this quote, it's not things that disturb us, it's the view that we take of those things. And that's Epictetus, 2,000 years ago, you know? And it's not things that disturb us, it's the view that we take of those things.

And I just think that's very powerful. But that's what Buddhism, what the meditations can. You can take from those.

To be able to say, actually it's been attached to something that's causing me the pain. But that's a whole different podcast, I think it is. Yeah.

David Brown: 01:01:43

But that's the whole hot call thing, right? It's like, don't hold on to the hot call because it's only burning you.

Sonya Black: 01:01:47

Yeah, yeah.

David Brown: 01:01:49

But when I. That was really good for me, and that was quite transformative for me just as a person and.

And kind of going through that because it changed the way I viewed. But I didn't change.

Sonya Black: 01:02:01

If you hold onto this bottle, I can hold onto this for a minute, and it's okay. If I held onto this bottle for 45 minutes, my shoulder's gonna be aching.

If I held onto this bottle for 24 hours, I'm gonna be really very uncomfortable. If I then hold onto this bottle for, I don't know, a week, it's gonna be. So the task is to be able to put it down Exactly.

And then to be able to know it's there and you can look back at it, you can have it, but you're not holding onto it and it's not causing you pain and discomfort.

David Brown: 01:02:35

Which, again, is, for me personally, I think that's where my detachment comes in handy, because I can do that with anything. That's why I'm able, maybe why I'm able to sit with something for 24 or 48 hours and then go, right, I'm moving on.

And I just let go of it and I don't get stuck with it and I just fucking move on. And it's like. But. But it's also. I think it's why. I don't know where I got to the point where I'm just like.

I started to realize I need to just sit with something for a little bit and just let it be okay for me to feel whatever I'm feeling and acknowledge that I'm feeling something and then move on. But that's a whole different thing about men and emotions.

And I think all that stuff, because we were sort of, you know, certainly in the time that I was raised, like, men didn't have emotions and we weren't really allowed to be anything other than angry or happy. Like that was it. We had two emotions, angry and happy. Maybe sad if someone died, like your mom. But other than that, like, literally, that was it.

It was very binary. And so, you know, we. We don't even have the language to talk about emotion. Which that is.

That is a totally separate show that we'll get into at some point that I'll get into with someone is that, you know, men, men don't. We're not even equipped. Older men from different generations aren't equipped even with the language to talk about and describe how we feel.

That was the thing with Greg where he was talking about anger and they.

In his therapy that he had, they were talking about anger as a secondary emotion because it really comes from a primary emot emotion, which is like frustration or hurt or hurt or whatever.

Sonya Black: 01:04:22

And it becomes blended with other things. But it's also, it's also that primary emotion of protection. Yeah, but it's. Yeah, it can be very much that sort of what's. What's behind that.

And when I work with clients very often, you know, you can see and feel it, you know that it's. It's hurt that's sitting behind that. When I'm working with people in relationships, I'm so angry with him. Or her. Are you?

Or is it actually really about the hurt of some behavior or actions or words?

David Brown: 01:04:53

Or are you angry with yourself for the way that you reacted to whatever happened? Yeah, it gets quite complicated. I get that. Anyway, thank you for the manic therapy, Sam.