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Join certified trauma professional Dr. Amy Hoyt and licensed therapist Leina Hoyt, MFT at https://www.mendingtrauma.com as they teach you how to recover from trauma and cPTSD. Trauma shows up in our everyday reactions and sensations and recovering requires a multi-prong approach that considers the mind, body and spirit. Dr. Amy and Leina will teach you the most emerging research and skills to empower you to overcome your past traumas. They address nervous system health, somatic therapy, trauma, cPTSD, EMDR, Neurofeedback, IFS (Internal Family Systems therapy), and many other modes of recovering from trauma. As mental health experts, sisters and trauma survivors, they teach you the tools that actually helped them recover, are backed by research and have helped thousands of their clients. Each episode is packed with clinically effective methods as well as scientific findings to guide you through your own trauma healing journey. Whether discussing cPTSD, PTSD, medical trauma, somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, EMDR or neurofeedback, Amy and Leina will help you recover from trauma so that you can reconnect to yourself and others.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (02:11)
Hi everyone, welcome back. We are excited to be here today. We are talking about one of my favorite topics, which is rigid thinking and how it can be a symptom of trauma. So let's start out Leina talking about how do we know if we have rigid thinking?
Leina (02:32)
That's such a good question. And it's relatively easy to figure out as long as you have some good awareness. And awareness can be really tricky for us as humans. So improving your awareness can help you find out if you do have rigid thinking. And then we're going to use insight or insight to figure out what to do about the rigid thinking. And rigid thinking comes about from
difficult experiences, trauma, anxiety, as we just learned in our neurofeedback class from a high idling speed. And what the symptomology is, is that we get very dysregulated when things don't go the way we think they should.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (03:22)
Okay, so that's one of the hallmarks of rigid thinking. This lack of flexibility and it shows up as getting really upset or like we prefer to say dysregulated when things don't go the way we think they should.
Leina (03:41)
Right, and this can be arbitrary in our own head. Like we have this idea of what something should look like, and when it doesn't look that way, we get very upset about it. So this can be as simple as you have somebody mowing your lawn, and if you have a very specific idea about how the lawn should look after it's been mowed, you go out and you get very upset with the person mowing the lawn
instead of staying calm and saying, this is how I want my lawn to look after you mow it. Or it can show up in significant relationships when we don't get the response or the reaction that we're looking for and we become so distressed by it because we have given it meaning because of our rigid thinking.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:29)
I want to go back a little bit to your example of mowing the lawn. I feel like this could be, it could show up as, especially, I think for some females, you go out there, the lawn doesn't look the way you want. You say, thank you. You pay them and then you go inside and you cry or you are upset internally. So not always a big reaction to the other person, but definitely some sort of
Leina (04:42)
Mm-hmm.
Okay, yeah.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:00)
dysregulation, whether it shows up inside or outside, right, internally or externally.
Leina (05:04)
That's a great point, right. Because it doesn't always show up externally. It can show up in terms of just our internal distress.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:14)
And, know, the way we're socialized as women in North America is, especially people that are, you know, older than 20, we're socialized to keep the peace and be pleasant. And typically someone working on your lawn probably is going to be male, not necessarily, but there's all these gender dynamics as well. And I just want to point that out that
Leina (05:29)
Right. Right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:43)
If you're not yelling at your, you know, lawn maintenance person, it doesn't mean that you're not dysregulated. There's other ways dysregulation shows up.
Leina (05:51)
Shows up, right. Exactly. That's excellent. Yeah, I think about some of the things that happened when we were growing up. Mom had such a rigid idea of how her entertainment should go, and she would get more more stressed as the day went on. And...
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:12)
She loved to throw parties just to let everyone know. That's what you mean by entertainment.
Leina (06:15)
Yes.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:19)
She loved to throw parties and I swear it felt like she threw a party every weekend, but you know, I'm sure that was my childlike view. I'm sure it was more like once a month, but these huge parties and she would have us clean the house and, do all the prep, you know, help with decorations, et cetera, et cetera. And agreed as the day progressed, it was like, man.
Leina (06:19)
Thank you
right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:45)
Why are we throwing this party? Why is she throwing this party? Because she's always so upset.
Leina (06:48)
Yes.
Right and distressed about it because in her mind, I don't even know if she knows this now, but in her mind she was looking for perfection and as the day went on and things weren't looking the way she wanted them to at each stage it would be more more upsetting for her.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:52)
Mm-hmm.
Yes. And I inherited a lot of that and I've had to work really hard on my own rigid thinking and letting go of what, what it means to have people come over and what it means to have a clean house or a clean enough house. You know, rigid thinking shows up not just, think in our expectations, but it also shows up in thought patterns of...
Leina (07:13)
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (07:41)
that are very polar opposite. So there's not a lot of nuance in our thinking. It's this is good. Yeah, exactly. This is good. This is bad. So that all or nothing polar opposite, you know, everything's going to be great or this is all terrible or even, you know, something. I don't know, just people. If you think about
Leina (07:49)
Black or white or all or nothing. Right.
Right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (08:09)
your relationships like this person's, you know, one of the big keywords right now is safe. This person is safe. This person's unsafe and not having any nuance in your characterization of people and not being able to see complexity.
Leina (08:25)
Yeah, that's also an excellent point. Right. Yeah, I can remember one time about 20 years ago, you said to me, people are complex. Like there's good stuff about people and bad stuff about people. And, you know, me as a therapist, was like, duh, hello. But it was such a, it was such a timely reminder.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (08:43)
Right.
Yeah, yeah. And it's the rigid brain, of course, develops in trauma to keep us safe, quote unquote safe. And that, you know, we all know, especially our listeners who have been here for a while, that one of the things that trauma does is it hijacks our perception and creates a sense of alertness and hypervigilance. And we perceive threat
Leina (08:54)
Correct.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:14)
in many, many places and through people that wouldn't necessarily, is not necessarily always accurate.
Leina (09:24)
And we're not saying you're making things up. Let us be clear about that. I can remember when I first introduced this to one of my like significantly traumatized clients. She was an adult that had been horribly, horribly traumatized in her childhood. And I was trying to explain this idea of perception. And what she heard is that I was telling her she was making it up and I was so startled. And so I had to kind of
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:26)
Correct.
Leina (09:54)
lean back and acknowledge the distress she was experiencing as that's what she was thinking I was saying and then help her understand that I didn't mean she was exaggerating or being dramatic.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (10:08)
No, it's subconscious.
Leina (10:10)
Yes, it's not a conscious thing that happens. It is deeply subconscious and it's the way we experience ourselves and the world.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (10:22)
I think what would be helpful for our listeners to understand is what we're learning in neurofeedback. And that is the way that the body and the brain receive and process information. So when we're receiving information, it comes up the nervous system to the brainstem. It goes through the back of the brain before it reaches the frontal cortex. It goes, excuse me, it goes occipital lobe, parietal lobe, sensory motor strip, and then it goes to the frontal cortex.
When we've had trauma, that information gets slowed down and not processed as well and get stuck in the back of the brain. Which can be also, that's another way just to make sure our listeners understand this is all subconscious that we get stuck in that limbic brain, which is, beneath
Leina (11:05)
Right.
Right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (11:22)
the temporal lobes and we really are not able to perceive threat accurately and it's not because we're paranoid, it's because our processing in our brain is stuck.
Leina (11:39)
Right. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. Yeah, because when it's getting stuck in the back of our brain and it's not getting to the prefrontal cortex in timely manner, we can't make meaning of it using our highest, wisest, calmest self. It gets stuck in the panic parts of our brain.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:02)
Yes. And the frontal cortex is our wise mind. Yeah. So rigid thinking is a hallmark of trauma, first of all, because literally the brain stops processing as efficiently and our information gets stuck towards the back of our brain and very slowly makes it way to the front of the brain, if at all.
Leina (12:06)
Right. Yep.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:29)
So that's one reason that rigid thinking shows up. I mean, that's one explanation, the brain explanation. And on the conscious level, when we can categorize things as either good or bad, safe or unsafe, black or white, it creates a perceived sense of safety.
Leina (12:49)
Yes, and I love the emphasis on perceived. Yes.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:53)
It is a lie. We are not safe because we can rigidly categorize things. But our brain says that that's safer and we feel better because if something's bad, we think we can control whether or not we are engaging with that.
Leina (13:11)
Yes, yes, and in quotes, right? Bad in quotes. Yeah.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (13:16)
Correct. yeah. There are things that are purely evil, right? And I have no problem stating that. I mean, I have no problem recognizing evil in the world. And there are very few people that are a hundred percent bad. So we like to divorce behavior from characterizing a person.
Leina (13:21)
Sure. Right.
Right. Yeah.
Right.
Yes, yes, that's a great way putting it. I think about how rigid thinking costs us so much because it's such an energy drain. We don't have this ability to kind of go with the flow or roll with the punches or be in a place of radical acceptance. And once we're in radical acceptance, then we can move forward. But if we're spending a lot of time, seconds, minutes,
hours, days, stuck in this idea of what should have been when it's over. All that energy is being focused on something that's already done that we can't do anything about. And it's important to be able to shift our focus and our energy into what do do now?
Dr. Amy Hoyt (14:28)
Yes. And so how do we overcome this rigidity?
Leina (14:36)
I think the first thing is to be aware of it. How does it show up? And it's going to show up most frequently in your relationships, whether it's how you relate to people at work or in line at Starbucks or in your family. And when you have rigid thinking, tend to have what people outside of you would categorize as high expectations.
And I can remember one time when I was doing supervision at the nonprofit, one of my newer therapists was talking about how distressed they were. And I talked about letting go of expectations. And I see now that this was a hallmark of her early childhood trauma. She said to me, I shouldn't have to lower my expectations. And I was trying to explain
we don't lower expectations because we want less. We lower expectations because we're having more flexible thinking so that we're not so upset all the time.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (15:41)
That's a great distinction because let's, let's talk about something that I think would be very relatable in that example. And that would be like a parent child relationship. So as a mother, I can, you know, my, my default was definitely rigid thinking and, a lot of perfectionism and especially before, you know, three of my children were diagnosed with different special needs. I had this
Leina (15:59)
Right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (16:10)
ideal of what our family would look like with typical people. Well, that does not happen when you have blind, deaf, and autistic children in your family. Just, so there's, there's this idea, like you said, that if we lower expectations as parents, that that somehow will create
Leina (16:14)
Sure.
Yeah.
You
Dr. Amy Hoyt (16:39)
a pass for our children not to behave in a certain way or try to be moral, ethical, decent people. But that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about abandoning, teaching our children morals, values, and ethics and lowering our expectations of their behavior in terms of, what we have taught them in terms of right and wrong.
Leina (16:48)
Right.
No.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (17:08)
So there is still room in our paradigm for right versus wrong, for ethics, for morals, et cetera. But what we're talking about is lowering our expectations of them performing to what we want so that we can feel comfortable.
Leina (17:22)
Exactly.
Ooh, I love that. Yes, so we want what's best for our kids or the people that we love. What you're talking about is enhancing your awareness of do I want this for them so I can feel less stressed or I can feel better or I can feel competent or good at my parenting job or my job in general.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (17:50)
Yes. So one example I'm thinking of is maybe a year or two ago, I got this app called Power School on my phone and it tracks all your kids' grades. And you get these alerts about every assignment, about every exam. Oh my gosh, I went from being a non-helicopter parent with our oldest, because I never had this app with our oldest, I don't know.
Leina (18:08)
This sounds terrible.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (18:19)
Or maybe I did and I just never checked it, but we moved, we are in a new school, et cetera, et cetera. And all of sudden I have this app and I, my anxiety just starts going through the roof. And so instead of regulating myself, I start texting my child, Hey, I noticed, you know, your grade dropped in dududuh class or. You know, and mind you, he was getting above a 3.0. So it wasn't like, now
Leina (18:47)
Great.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (18:48)
because there is always room for parents to help coach their children to perform the agreed upon commitments and standards. So I'm not saying we can't check in on their grades, but he would get an A minus or a B plus and I'd be like, hey, I noticed your grade dropped. And it caused so much friction in our relationship.
Leina (18:59)
Standards.
Alright.
Right. Yeah.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (19:16)
I had to ask myself, why am I so worried about this? Well, it's because he wanted to go to a certain school for college and I knew it was hard to get into. And he has these very big career goals. And it's taken me this whole last year to realize that even though these were his goals and I was trying to quote unquote help him, it was causing a lot of disconnection in our relationship.
Leina (19:25)
Right, yes.
Yes.
Yes, and there was a lot of distress on this child's part.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (19:51)
Yes. Yes, that was the disconnection. I was creating disconnection in our relationship because I was hounding him about his grades. So, I had to, you know, I guess my point is that when you have rigid thinking from trauma and you work on it through all the tools that we talk about in our podcast, sometimes we easily go back into that. And
Leina (19:55)
Yes! Yes!
Right.
Yes.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (20:20)
I jumped back in accidentally without even realizing it and then had to kind of work on backing up my expectations even though they were based on his said goals.
Leina (20:33)
Correct. I think that's a really good thing to use as an example and good for you for back, know, back stepping that, right? I can remember when those apps became really popular about eight or 10 years ago and I would have parents come in and I actually had to say to parents, if you keep checking this multiple times a day, your relationship with your child will disintegrate. And it's important for you to manage your anxiety around this
so that you're not bothering your child multiple times a day about what you're seeing in this app, because the child will not be able to come to you because they won't have a sense of acceptance or safety emotionally.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (21:15)
Yes.
Yes. So tying that back into rigid thinking, yes, we're parents. Yes, we want to lower our expectations of their behavior so that we can prioritize connection, but that doesn't mean if they're failing that we, you know, let it go and ignore it. Yeah. As always, there's moderation needed in all of this. It's complexity, it's nuanced, and that's literally the opposite of rigid thinking. So, you know,
Leina (21:33)
Ignore it.
Yeah.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (21:48)
But we are grateful that you're here with us each week. We know that you're working hard on your mental health and it's such an honor to have you listen to us. So we appreciate you and have set a micro goal this week to just be aware. Do I have rigid thinking about an area in my life?
Leina (22:09)
That's a great idea. And with the holidays coming up, rigid thinking can become more pronounced because they're very stressful. we have, as we talked about in a couple of podcasts ago, we talked about magical thinking around the holidays. just like Amy said, try to pay attention to it. Let that be your first step. Don't worry about having to fix it right now, but just be curious and interested.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (22:23)
Hmm.
All right, we will see you next week.
Leina (22:38)
Have a great week, everyone.