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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.
Leina (02:10)
Hi everybody and welcome back to this episode of Mending Trauma. So Amy, what are we talking about today?
Dr. Amy Hoyt (02:20)
Today we are talking about how cultivating a gratitude practice can really help us as we recover from trauma.
Leina (02:29)
Why is that? I mean, I know that you've been really interested in gratitude, and I'm sure that some of the research that you did in South Africa and Rwanda had some peripheral stuff around gratitude that you found through your research was helpful. So what is it about a gratitude practice that helps us build resilience?
Dr. Amy Hoyt (02:52)
That's a great question. One of the things that gratitude does is helps us open up to what we already have instead of that longing for what we don't have. And I think what's really important about that is it enables us to be more present in our life. So if I'm
Leina (03:06)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (03:19)
going through a really difficult time with a family member, perhaps there's some health issues. If I can focus on what I'm really grateful for daily instead of focusing on the what ifs, what if this health journey goes awry? What if they never get better or, you know, they're going to get worse.
That's a lot of future thinking that can really cause a lot of suffering. And we talk about this a lot in the podcast where we're going to have hard things. That's obviously why trauma is so difficult because it's a very overwhelming event or series of events or pattern. And when we start future casting, we're not staying in the present. But instead, I like to, this is something I learned, you know, from AA
Leina (03:59)
Yes.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:16)
years ago, I start borrowing trouble and we start borrowing trouble when we're in the future. And so a practice of gratitude helps ground us in the present. I'm really grateful for the weather. I'm really grateful that we have shelter and there's food in our home. I'm really grateful that I get to vote in November. I'm really grateful that
Leina (04:19)
Right?
Yep.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:46)
I have an automobile that works. And so these are things a lot of us, especially in, you know, Western, the global, you know, Western societies take for granted. And I think that when we really start to get granular about the many, many things we can be grateful for, it helps to keep us out of the future and it helps to keep us out of the past.
Leina (04:49)
Right?
Great point. Yeah, being in the present moment is tremendously difficult for the human brain and it offers tremendous benefits for mental well-being.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:28)
Absolutely. You know, this is really a hallmark of trauma is that we're either thinking about what happened to us. And again, this is valid. This is part of the process of healing, we need to acknowledge what happened to us. And we can start to rebuild the way we perceive the world because of course, as we've talked about,
Leina (05:42)
Right. Yep.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:56)
trauma changes our perception. creates this hyper vigilance and this alertness that something's going to go wrong. But when we're practicing gratitude and building up our reservoir of our ability to be grateful, we're staying present. We're staying out of that hyper vigilance. And it's just, it actually changes the way your brain fires. It changes.
the neural, like the neurological pathways of your brain, which is incredible.
Leina (06:29)
Yep, that is incredible. The other thing that it does is gratitude enhances delivery of dopamine and serotonin. And those are our kind of our happiness transmitters. And it also, gratitude also calms down the hypervigilant or the limbic brain, the fear center.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:45)
Yes.
Okay.
Leina (06:55)
And it reduces fear and anxiety because you're regulating your stress hormones by spending some time focusing on what you have instead of what you don't have or what you wish you had.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (07:03)
Yes.
Yes. We live in North America. We live in such a consumer driven environment where we are constantly told to wish for more, to long for more. And this really, I think, parallels with our cultural focus on external control. So as a consumer, if we are constantly fed that if we have
Leina (07:29)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (07:35)
X Y or Z if we purchase X Y or Z that will lead to our happiness we are giving that control to the external world and As we talk about all the time in the podcast the only thing we can actually change the only thing we have control over is ourselves So not only does practicing gratitude give us back that control where we're able to find peace
Leina (07:44)
Right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (08:02)
happiness and even joy amidst really hard things when we cultivate that internally. There is no car or no outfit or no new hairdo or vacation that is going to give us the amount of peace and joy that a gratitude practice will.
Leina (08:15)
Or vacation.
That is totally true. As we were preparing for this episode, I was looking at the UCLA website and they have a great article about how not only does gratitude help your mental wellbeing, but it also has long-term, if you can change the way you think and see things long-term, it has pretty profound impacts on your physical health as well.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (08:51)
Absolutely. So here's another really interesting piece. I follow the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza and have been to his meditation retreats and, really love the scientific literature about the benefits of meditation. So during, I went to a retreat of his, a five day retreat in Denver a couple of years ago and the very first day,
Leina (09:07)
Right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:17)
as we began our meditation practice, I was so nervous, I thought, I'm not going to be able to do this right, you all the perfectionism coming in. And he talked about how when we can have gratitude, we can easily more easily get in that meditative state that we need to.
Leina (09:36)
Oh interesting. That actually makes sense to me, because gratitude is about being present.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:39)
Yes.
Hmm. And so is meditation. But here's the really cool thing is there is a link between meditation. So I'm linking gratitude to this as well and increasing your heart rate variability and heart rate variability is the hallmark of health in many ways, but it's absolutely the hallmark of a healthy nervous system.
Leina (09:44)
Right.
Right.
Yes, yes, we were just doing one of our neurofeedback trainings, distance learning, and our presenter was talking about heart rate variability and how essential it is to having a regulated nervous system.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (10:20)
Exactly. so gratitude is, it's like a little mini neurofeedback session, right? We're training our brains to get into the correct brainwave that we want to feel present and calm.
Leina (10:31)
Right, yes.
Yes. Well, in this article that I found from UCLA, and we'll link it into the session notes or the podcast notes, but it talks about how stress triggers a fight or flight response in our nervous system, right? That's your limbic system that's responsible for that. So your heartbeat fast beats faster, your muscles contract and adrenaline pumps, but gratitude can help calm the nervous system.
What happens when we take a moment to be thankful causes physiological changes in your body that initiate the parasympathetic nervous system. And the parasympathetic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that lets you rest and digest. So gratitude and the response it causes can help bring down your blood pressure, your heart rate, and your breathing, and will help with overall relaxation.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (11:36)
Absolutely. Now, let's talk about someone who's constantly hypervigilant, who is what we would say in neurofeedback, showing a really high level of that high beta brainwave. That practicing even a little bit of gratitude is going to be difficult. And so we love micro steps and
Leina (11:51)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:02)
One micro step for someone who's extremely anxious and kind of stuck in their limbic brain is each morning just make one on your phone, open the notes app and just type one thing you're grateful for. If it's the same thing every day, that's okay. I'm grateful I woke up. I'm, you know, that's okay. That's true.
Leina (12:23)
Yep. Some of you may not be grateful you woke up, so you can choose a different thing to be grateful for.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:29)
I'm grateful I have my favorite drink in the morning. I'm grateful that I had somewhere to sleep last night. So get as granular as you need to. You don't have to have a ton of wealth or a ton, a wonderful situation to develop gratitude. can be, I'm grateful I have a phone to write my notes in. can be, but one, one thing you're grateful for.
Leina (12:32)
Yes.
Right.
No.
Sure. Yeah.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:57)
And you can build on that over time.
Leina (13:03)
One of the books that I've talked about before when we've talked about gratitude is the gratitude diaries. I think it's Janice Kaplan. used to be an editor at USA Today. think maybe not USA Today. But anyway, her book is so fantastic and she did this experiment over the course of one year where she focused gratitude on different areas of her life.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (13:26)
Hmm.
Leina (13:26)
And I just find it so inspiring and such a great reminder about how gratitude can be the oil that that kind of greases the wheels of everything in our life, our emotional well-being, our sense of calm, our relationships, that kind of thing. And that's such a great book. And then the other book I found about six or seven years ago is called The Gratitude Journal.
And I got it off of Amazon. And it's called the Gratitude Journal for More Happiness, Optimism, Affirmation, and Reflection. And it is a one page a day journal where you identify what you're grateful for. You identify what things would make a great day today. And then you can include positive affirmations if you want.
And then in the evening you go back and you talk about the good things that have happened today and what I learned today. So I'm terrible at filling these things out. I think I typically only did the top two normally, but it was still a really great way to focus my attention on things that I was grateful for and what had gone well during the day.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (14:45)
Yeah, I love that. I gifted that to several of my older children. And again, I'm not great at journaling all the time, especially going back at night by nighttime. I'm done. I'm like, I'm out, but it's okay because we can do those small steps and just fill out part of it or just think of one or two things we're grateful for.
Leina (15:01)
Right.
Exactly.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (15:14)
And that's enough to begin that new neuropathway.
Leina (15:19)
Yep, that's awesome. Thanks, Amy. All right, thank you for joining us, everybody. We hope you have a great week. Feel free to reach out to us and request any topics that you're interested in. We love interacting with listeners and love to provide things that would be of more help to you. a great week. Bye-bye.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (15:39)
Thanks so much everyone.