Flushing It Out | Trauma: Integration - Corinne Coppola

Show Notes

In this episode, Samantha talks with Internal Family Systems Coach, Corinna Coppola.  Corinne talks about her upbringing and why she eventually decided to get into Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a practice.  She talks us through the basics of IFS and gives us a foundation to go by if any listeners would ever want to explore this healing process.  So, listen in as Corinna and Samantha "Flush It Out!"

What is Flushing It Out ?

Flushing It Out with Samantha Spittle, the Introvert's Extrovert. The podcast where she talks to people so you don't have to...for now.

Samantha Spittle 0:00
I'm so excited to jump into this conversation with you today because internal family systems is something that my husband and I came across in our own reading on our own, you know, growth and healing journey. And kind of dove deeper, he actually read the book that I'm sure you've read. I don't know what right now, but it's geared towards practitioners. But I think we're both the type that once we get interested in something we're like, tell me everything.

Corinne Coppola 0:23
Right, right.

Samantha Spittle 0:24
So I'm excited to kind of, you know, help spread the IFS kind of thoughts. But I think before we do that kind of having a talk about trauma, because I think, and I've talked about it casually on the podcast, but you know, trauma. It's something the more I'm reading, and the more I'm learning is there's not like a hierarchy of trauma. You know, we think of it like the bad things that happen, but it's really about how our body responds to it. Absolutely. So. So, you know, like, once again, I'm not excited to talk about this, because it's not the most pleasant of topics. But I am excited in the sense of helping people normalize, talking about those things, and especially expanding our minds to what trauma can be to that there's not a list of these things qualify as trauma, and these things don't. And so, I would love for you to introduce yourself, tell us, you know who you are. And here, we can get into this chat.

Corinne Coppola 1:26
Thank you. So Samantha, I am so excited and pleased to be here. My name is Corrine cupola. And I am an ifs coach mental working in the area of mental health coaching, and really focusing on trauma recovery, because of my own life experience, and I work mainly with women in their 40s and 50s. But also young adults, young adult women, and I do have a few male clients as well, I get a great amount of joy from seeing the light bulb, go on, you know, people come to me with relationship problems, usually, you know, or there's been a transition of some type, whether it's been a divorce or a job, transition, maybe a child leaving college or empty nest or, you know, a dad death of a mom death of a parent, you know, major life transitions, and then it's like, oh, yeah, I need to talk to somebody. And I'm not somebody that, you know, I want to be your coach for 30 years, you know, work with me for six months, in three to six months, and you'll see a lot of changes. So, and I get a lot of joy. So out of talking about trauma. So I am excited to be here. And nickname that I used to have for a nonprofit I used to work for was keeping it real quarried. So I'm used to naming the elephant in the room. You know, calling people out in a in a loving way, very loving, for sure. But that's my job is to be a mirror,

Samantha Spittle 3:06
you know, and I know that because, you know, we've connected off the podcast before I know that it's because you've also done the work too. And so I think there's a difference between like calling people out, and versus seeing someone hurting, and wanting to move them. Like you said, it's recovering when I'm learning that all these life. You know, we all we all have stuff, it doesn't matter you like said there's no list. We all have stuff. We all cope with it in different ways. And one thing I heard recently, too, is like, coping mechanisms aren't a bad thing. You know, that's they help us cope. It's if it's not serving you and things like that. And what patterns are we repeating you know, ways we can look at our life and say, there might be something more here. You know, there, there's things about the way I'm living my life that might not be serving me and how can I start to peel back those layers? So

Corinne Coppola 3:55
absolutely. Like I I'd like to say in some I'm not to I don't want to say dumb it down. But you know, I become a cheerleader like I want. I want you to have the best life I want you to come out of like, because people often come to me with I don't know why these bad things keep happening to me. And you know, I just want to break free of it. And you know, there's such a desire to heal. And if I can create that loving space, that loving safe space for them to really like let the shame come up, let the unworthiness come up to really the not enoughness you know, all of that so that they're not acting it out in their relationships.

Samantha Spittle 4:45
I take a breath there because I thought, oh man, where do we go? Because I'm imagining you know, people listening and it's like, that's me. That's me. Corinne, tell me the answers. Okay, like what do I do now? What do I do? What's the next step? You know? But I know that's not how it works. So stick with us. So, as you said, you know, you've you've done the work. And I would love to hear kind of your own personal journey, whatever you feel comfortable sharing. So people can kind of see a little bit of what that looks like to walk through some of this.

Corinne Coppola 5:17
Yeah. So it's messy. Sam, it is messy. So buckle up. And I'm happy for you to ask questions and delve into because I think what happens like what I say that how I feel, is I hope I'm living my life, like as a ministry of Love, you know, that? I'm making the invisible visible the unspeakable speakable. Right, so about. So I grew up in a family, Italian, Long Island. And there was a lot of, as you can imagine, you know, there's a reason for stereotypes, a lot of aggressive behavior, abusive behavior, emotional, physical. And I just thought it was normal. Because, you know, I grew up the family was like that I had good friends who were Italian, same thing, you know, people yell, we're expressive, like Italians are just expressive. And, you know, I realized, I also realized, as I was growing up that things were a little too aggressive. You know, I don't, I'm not going to go too much into it. But when I was in high school, I did have a bruise. That was, you know, I had to lie about at school, and then I knew like something was wrong. So that was the last time that anything physical happened, you know, when I was a junior in high school, which is a long time. That being said, also in high school, I started to get into drugs and alcohol. Think I was in eighth grade, when I had my first my first drink, and then, you know, became an alcoholic. not consciously, there was alcoholism in my family. When I say not consciously, I felt awesome. And we go to college, and we party. And you know, I was partying along with everybody else blacking out, you know. And I didn't really think I had a problem. Until, you know, a couple of my girlfriends said something to me after we graduated. Now, I just like brushed them off. But then I was about 2425. And I met the man that I was married to for 20 years. And he sat me down and he said, If you don't stop drinking, I'm not going to marry you. So that I stopped drinking. And I went to some AAA meetings, I didn't find a home in a, which was a shame, because I feel strongly that 12 Step programs are really, really helpful. And since that time, I have been involved in a few different Codependents Anonymous Al Anon, which had been tremendously impactful to me in my life, and my recovery. So I've been sober for over 29 years. So that's one part of my story is my addiction. But my addiction also came out in rage. So you know, my children were young, I have three children who now unbelievably are 2421 and 19. But when the oldest was five, I remember this clearly. She's waiting at the door for her dad for a to get the daddy daughter invitation to him for preschool, you know, and he is standing right outside the the screen door on the phone. And I'm like, because that's one of my buttons is ignoring, right like that. I don't exist. Yeah. And so from my childhood, yeah. And I opened the door, took the phone out of his hand and through the phone, didn't hurt. Anybody didn't hurt anybody but through the phone, and we couldn't find it for a day. Like it was like it. it ricocheted out, I laugh about it now, but that's what got me into a 12 step program. I was like, Okay, this is not normal. I need how this is not the way that it should go. So time goes on and in 2007 2007. In May of 2007, I had memories of sexual abuse. And it turned my life upside down.

And, you know, I thought I was going crazy. This is before the me to movement and there really wasn't a lot of education and great A step in stepped in. And I found the Women's Center in Vienna, Virginia, and got therapy there and was part of a group of survivors. But a key ingredient in my healing was going on nature based weekend for sexual assault survivors. And that changed my life. You know, a few months later, that was May 2007. I had the memories. That weekend was September 2007. And that's really what began my healing journey. I had been doing yoga and meditation for about a year, year and a half before that. And I think that a lot of the somatic practices that I was doing because mindfulness actually as a somatic body based practice, you know, helps that along with perimenopause and hormonal changes help to activate the memories, which often happen, then the how do you say that? I had invited my parents to a therapy session to talk about it, to say, let's get healing as a family. And the response was, I don't remember I don't recollect. And my therapist said that the hair on the back of her neck stood up. So unfortunately, there wasn't the healing that I had, because I had said, you know, this had to happen. This isn't the first time this happened. I thought that it also happened in the family, like something like I really just wanted healing. And unfortunately, there was not reception at the time, you know, when I there would be if I would go to therapy without there being an admittance that had happened, which, you know, I mean, so you know, you weren't like, how do you say, like, I'm crazy. I'm not crazy, like, you know, that whole reality check thing? Oh, yeah. So anyway, I had to distance myself from my family, which is extraordinarily hard. My parents were very involved in my children's lives, they lived long distance, but they visited at least once a month. So it was really, really difficult. For the for the family to go through that I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. So I tried a little, a lot of a little of everything, a lot of different modalities. I did sweat lodges, I did yoga, you know. And I went to shaman, I went to different therapy, like group therapy, weekend therapy, everything that you can think of. And I think that it's all brought me to where I am today. And when I found internal family systems a few years ago, I've done EMDR I've done a ton of things. And I just felt that after the first weekend of the training, I did a year long training after the first weekend, I was like, This is what I've been waiting for my whole life. And it just like came together the the trainers in the John O'Donoghue is a favorite poet of mine. And they read one of his poems to open the training session. It was just like one of those like, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I was one of those. And it's something you know, I've had, I have a bunch of friends who are therapists, and they've always encouraged me to go back to school. And I'm like, you know, I don't want to spend $100,000 and get alone and I have a master's in organization development. I coach people, I have so much training and facilitation. And with ifs, you can do the work. You're doing the work outside, you know of the client, but you're also get it's hard. It's self LED. It's really self LED. And it's every time I work with somebody, it blows me away. And I've heard I heard Dix works, who is the founder of ifs, say in a recent podcasts, that ifs is a way to change the past. And that was really powerful to me.

Samantha Spittle 14:31
There's so much so much. Thank you first is thank you. That's it's a good too much, by the way. So first, thank you for sharing. Because you said something from the very beginning is that you want to make the unspeakable speakable. And you I didn't want to interrupt you but you said multiple things that because you're where you are with your healing journey, you're able to just kind of talk through them and each one is Psalm, a big deal. You know, it sounds so juvenile. But I think, you know, when we hear other people's stories, even if it's not the same story, there's just these little pieces that weave through. You know, the idea that Italian family and you know, we talk we curse. I mean, I lived a long time and jersey, you know, it's like, a lot, you know, but just because something's normal doesn't mean it's right. And I think that that is that was the first thing you said, where I thought, oh, like, it's kind of like the hair sticking up in the back of your neck. You might not know what but when you hear someone say something like, I thought it was normal. So just wanting to kind of touch on that. And then of course, you talked about addiction, and rage. And, and then having this memory of sexual abuse. And I think it just it shows how we carry so much stuff. And it might come out in different ways from people. And, you know, it could have the origins from the abuse. But like I said, That's why with trauma, there's there's so many different things that can be and then re traumatizing as well. Right? With your family. I mean, there's just so much there. And, and so just thank you, those were just things I was thinking about as you were talking so

Corinne Coppola 16:14
well, I want to just add, if I may like the retraumatization. So one of the things that I was blind to I'm putting my fingers up in quotes, for those of you that I mean, we don't know if this is going to be video that I was blind to was the man that I married. Did a lot of hiding. So there were a lot of secrets in my family. So oftentimes, like we marry somebody, or we partner with somebody with the unconscious intention of healing our childhood wounds, it's called a maga. Right. And we that

Samantha Spittle 16:55
again, you gotta repeat that because that's, there's multiple things you've said, or I'm like, Korean, I got it. You need to say that that's my, that's my like Oprah line in the podcast a lot in season one. Say that again. Say that again. Because that is something that once again, in the world we live in with coaching and therapy, it's so normal. And my goal is like Alright, listen up, listeners. This is big. Let's say that again.

Corinne Coppola 17:21
So I'm unconsciously what we do is that we search for and partner with people with the in like unconscious intention of healing our childhood wounds, but what happens is that they continue to re traumatize us. Because we haven't, we're looking to them to heal our wounds instead of healing them ourselves. So of course, I married a man with some secrets. And I'm not going to say it's his fault, either, because he had stuff that happened to him in childhood, right? So it's like, I don't know if you've ever seen this graphic, I'm sure you have on in social media where the two metal people are like knee to knee. And there's these little kids inside of them. That's exactly what happens is that we have we have these wounds. And it's just like, these poor little kids, they don't, they don't know better. You know, I was 26 when I got married. Yep. You know, and, um, and we thought, and I thought he was the love of my life. And he thought I was the love of his life, you know, and for 10 years, it was really like that. And then things started. And I would say, you know, even before that, before 10 years of marriage, you know, there were, there were issues, there are issues almost from the beginning, if I look back, and if he was honest, you know, actually, the priest before we got married, had said to me, he looked me dead in the face. He goes, I don't think you should marry him. Seriously, and I we thought he was a young priest, we thought a seminarian, and we were like, is he making a passive her? Like, we were like, Why is he saying that? So, but he was right. Because he said, he doesn't treat you the way that you deserve to be treated. And I was like, What do you mean, you know, where I, you know, if I was honest, or if I had like, higher self worth, and again, that I don't fault. You know, I was very much in love. He was very much in love. You're very much in love. And for a long time, you know, we really tried our best and then I'm trying to remember. I think it was 2009. It came out that he wasn't faithful. We separated For. We didn't separate immediately, we waited a while we try to work it out. And then Sam, there was like, one of those minor things like, like, I just want to tell your audience this, like, I've gotten a lot of questions over the years, like, how did you know? How did you know? And you will know in whatever moment it is, in that moment, you will know what to do. Like, I came home from vacation, he had said that he had put the mail on hold, the mail wasn't put on hold. And in that moment, I was like, Okay, if he's not telling the truth about putting male on hold, I can't imagine what else is going on. So

Samantha Spittle 20:43
I am like, Thank you for sharing that. I've just been watching a lot of Netflix shows. The Tinder swindler the vegan, bad vegan. The reason I say that is because you just said if he's lying about this, now, I'm not wanting our audience to freak out, you know, however, my life experience has also shown what I used to get very upset over little things like, and I thought, Oh, I'm just being dramatic, though, that I am this person who says, if you're lying, like if they can kind of lie or not tell you about this. Who knows. But that's just me, because I watched too much Netflix. That's just me. Know, life experience has shown me that that is that is in our intuition. It is in truth. And the reason I brought up the Netflix stuff is I'm just watching, you know, these women, there's so many red flags, but we are just so quick to and not even sweep it under we don't mean to sweep it under the rug, but just validate or, you know, put ourselves we don't know what we're talking about. And so thank you, thank you for bringing that up, because that is not talked about enough. So yeah, no, you're

Corinne Coppola 21:52
welcome. And, you know, I'm not trying to pair him in a bad light, because what happens, or what happened, I believe with him is like, he doesn't want people to hurt. So it's just better not to say anything. You know, 100% I think that that was a culture that he was raised in, you know,

Samantha Spittle 22:14
conflict avoidant, I think you nail on the head, it's not wanting to villainize it. And I think that's why I said, it's like not wanting to make everyone, you worry about every little thing. But it's that if there's little things happening, that is a signal that there's conflict avoidance, right? And so it's like, yes, let's start working through this before it gets to something really big.

Corinne Coppola 22:36
And so when I will say that ifs, like, if I had known then what I know now, right? Like, I was taking everything personally, like, how can you do this to me? How could you do this to the kids, blah, blah, blah, where it had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with me. But because I had gone through betrayal. In my early years, my 345 year old was acting out, you know, in a way that couldn't help. But take it like that. Now, fast forward, we did a lot of counseling. We did a clap, you know, anyway, we got back together. And then we worked hard. And then in 2014 2000, late 2013, he lost his job. And then early 2014, things started to fall apart between us. And we split again. And for the final time in June of 2014. And it took us two and a half years to divorce, you know, and then again, like my rage was coming up, and you know, all that lovely part of myself that I that now I can have a lot of tenderness for right and compassion because now I've learned the tools, right? But what I want to do is like it doesn't take somebody 15 years, you know, to get to this point, it will take you know, it'll take a few years, like at least you know, like I there was so much like, I just want to forgive if I can get to forgiveness, then like that's the Holy Grail. I just want to forgive and, you know, I'm not sure that that's always the answer for people. You know, I mean, for me, it's been helpful, really helpful. I don't know if I've gotten to 100% Forgiveness, I've got more compassion and understanding. But I'm and I've gotten more educated around languaging things out loud. So instead of taking things firstly, what I will say now to someone is the story I'm telling myself is yes, I love that. So, and I really would like to check it out. with you, because I'm not sure what's going on in your head. But that's what I'm so that alone would have diffused so much. But it's hard to be able to diffuse. If you haven't done what you just said, like you're worse care of that

Samantha Spittle 25:19
little girl. And what I've learned, not, you know, from reading and life experience now is that to be able to work through a lot of this, you have to feel safe. So if you're in a relationship where you are not safe, you know, emotionally, you know, any of the things physically, emotionally all of that, then that's a lot to bring up. So kind of needing to be in that space. You said something before. So you know, we've kind of walked through kind of the journey, trying the things. And my goal today, too, was to also kind of introduce this internal family systems to people. And so I'd love for you to kind of break down what that is. But before you do that, you said something. When you were talking through your experience, you talked about trying different somatic experiencing, like EMDR. And so can you just kind of define those things real quick for listeners? Sure, kind of these are, I feel like they're not buzzwords, but they're words that I saw, I've now used because of my life, but I'd love to have you're sure.

Corinne Coppola 26:26
You can even because I'm not sure off the top of my head shorthand VR and it was like, has to do with the eye eyes and visualization. Do you know that?

Samantha Spittle 26:36
Yeah, it's, um, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing?

Corinne Coppola 26:42
Thank you. So reprocessing, for me was the most important part of that class. I am a huge visualization person. So when I was in my sessions, I was able to really use the power of visualization. And it's sort of like been this mosaic in my life. So I've done like, yoga for trauma, yoga for addiction, mindfulness, trauma, sensitive mindfulness, your long meditation training through inward bound mindfulness education year like all these different things, yoga nidra. How what out like anything under the sun. If you asked me, I'd probably have done it. I have not done the somatic experiencing

Samantha Spittle 27:31
repricing outside, like you said, it's the reprocessing. And it's just ways what I wanted to bring up about the somatic experiencing the EMDR. But you said it with all the yoga and everything is all these Wait, I think that when we hear therapy, we think of talk therapy, as that's what you do you and then we think, Oh, well, we either don't have what do I have to work through my childhood, my childhood was great. And like I said, if there's not that, you know, this is the top 10 list of trauma, if you if you're not on that, you know, one, if you do have things there, it makes total sense that you don't want to unpack them. And then number two is, if it's not on the list, it's like, well, there's nothing there. And I think with a lot what I'm seeing with everything from yoga, you know, because reading the book, The Body Keeps the Score, all these different therapies that are bought, it's all in our body. So there's so many different ways to work through it. And so, you know, we won't take too much time on that, because we want to get into ifs, but I just, you mentioned it, and I wanted to make sure people knew that. That's part of my goal, too, with the VIPs. And just the guests and whatnot, is to kind of show people that working through our stuff doesn't look like the way it did in the 80s and the 90s on the therapy couch, you know,

Corinne Coppola 28:47
right? Not so much different things. Yeah, I, I think that there is absolutely a place for talk therapy, I would not be here. Well, I look. However, the body, like our issues are in our tissues. The body is the key to the freedom. Everything is about noticing, like mindfulness is the awareness, right? Of what is going on around you and inside of you. And then having compassion and kindness towards it. So it's like Viktor Frankl talks about mindfulness as the space between stimulus and response. And in that space is your freedom. And he's a Holocaust survivor. So the more space we take, the more freedom we have. And we think we cannot take space. And it is a lie. Because the more space we take, it's like oh, now I can do the next right thing. Yes, and this are the next best thing. Like I tell my clients a lot just do the next best thing like when you're in overwhelm? Yeah. Do you need to get up from the couch? Do you need to go outside? Do you need to take a deep like? Simple, simple, simple. And I'm telling you, the big changes are in changing the little things in the simple habits. So, because it's we think we have to do big like white, right, like, go big or go home? No. And we've been told like we can't Rast. Yeah, but if we can't rest. Yeah, we can't be. Yep.

Samantha Spittle 30:34
And I think, like you said, it's not these big things. It's the little things, it's being reminded of these little things. And so it's kind of you hear different the same things in different ways. And it just, you know, remind, at least for me, you know, it's like, oh, taking the pause, you know, the power of the pause. I remember that was a podcast episode from season two. And the power of it's that moment, you know, between the stimulus and the reaction, so huge,

Corinne Coppola 31:00
and it's hard. Like, one of the things I'm just going to quote one of my teachers, her name is Tracy Stanley, she's fabulous. She does a lot of like rest and relaxation. But rest is our birthright. Like, if we actually thought about rest as our birth, right, I think we live a lot differently.

Samantha Spittle 31:22
Yeah. But speaking of step stimulus, and whatnot, I know, like, it's not exactly where ifs comes in. But with this internal family systems, I would love to hear, like I said, it's something my husband and I got introduced to, and it just for me, you know, there's different parts. And I've always described, that's how I've described myself a lot. You know, I've got this part over here that wants this and this part that does this. So I felt like when he started telling me about it, I was like, Oh, my gosh, I'm smarter than I thought.

Corinne Coppola 31:53
Right? Well, that the word part just really allows us to neutralize, because we take everything as personal as possible, right. So what this is really about is like, just what it says internal family systems. So we have an internal family, with all of these parts of us, that integrate to help us, you know, be supported in the world, however, and this came out of Dick Schwartz working with bulimia clients. So it sort of came out of he was being taught by his clients how to do this, because it's a very intuitive process. So that's what I love about it, too, is that no session is the same. So the big part of it is that we are guided by the self self energy with the capital S. And however you want to define that the divine within the universal consciousness, the Christ consciousness, however, Holy Spirit, whatever you would like to define it, but we have this internal innate goodness that we're born with. From that, it would be great if that's how we always operated in the world, but because we get wounded as we go through our growing up our development process, parts of us get split off. So tender parts are called like, the exiles. And those are the parts of us, for example, like shame, unworthiness, guilt, fear, self doubt, you know, those all come into like that umbrella of exiles. And then we have a layer of protectors, which are the managers, the firefighters, right, and they can be any type of behavior. So a protector, like all I can use one, like this was so providential. So I have an internal family systems practice partner that we meet every week, and we practice with each other. So sometimes, I'm the client, and she's the practitioner, and vice versa. So yesterday, I was the client because I was activated. And I like to use that word activated rather than triggered by a conversation that I had with my partner over the over the weekend. And what I recognized was what came out of that was, oh, I have this two or three year old protective part that was feeling way overwhelmed that I was not. I was very confused. I didn't have clarity, like so my personal situation right now is that I'm living in Chincoteague, Virginia temporarily. I have a gap in my rent. So because I'm not going to be there during the summer, and then I'll return in the fall and early winter, like from September through November, December. So there's a lot of parts that are activating about, I don't have a plan, I don't have a plan, I don't have a plan, right. And wanting that part, a part of me that wants to control a part of me, that feels overwhelmed, a part of me that doesn't trust, right. So all of these different parts had to be worked with, in a way that, then I felt integrated. I mean, I was so overwhelmed yesterday, I didn't get a lot of stuff done, you know. And after that session, and, and being able to shine the light and let this part speak as to what it needed. Like it needed to be held in my lap, it needed to be seen, so that, then that part doesn't have to quote unquote, drive the bus so that I'm not acting from this scared, frightened, fearful, three or four year old, who barely knew how to, to express myself, like didn't know how to express myself, I just was very scared. And, and now I'm back in the saddle, you know, the next day, like, even last night, you know, it was like, oh, and then I was reminded, also,

a very important practice, to me is gratitude. But to be grateful for that, and the uncertainty that I have right now, because then I can open to the miracles that are waiting for me, right? If I am so tight, and so planned, God, at least that's what I believe, then doesn't have the canvas to paint in my life. Right? Like, I'm so controlled. So like, a firefighter part would be my addiction, some kind of addiction, and addiction doesn't have to be, by the way, I just also want to clarify around trauma. Like it does not have to be the type of trauma I have. I have clients who had great childhoods, but because of the attachment, right, the safe attachment versus the anxious attachment versus whatever other, you know, versus the avoidant attachment. Like, we tend to get into conflict with each other. So anyway, I just wanted to say that about trauma that it doesn't need to be this big, overarching, debilitating, I have clients that had really good childhoods, just didn't have the secure attachment, 90% of the population doesn't have it. And ifs can really help with your attachment style, and becoming more secure in yourself. So then you can respond in a way that you actually consider across from your partner and say, so this is a story I'm telling myself, instead of acting from that part, that's four years old, and scared.

Samantha Spittle 38:25
Thank you, Corinne for mentioning that about trauma, can you give like a definition of trauma?

Corinne Coppola 38:31
Sure, so trauma oftentimes, so it doesn't have to be I think we have this, like, fallacy that trauma has to be like the big T, you know, it has to be like a major car accident or something major for your childhood or, or, you know, a disease like cancer, illness, but really, trauma is just when your nervous system is unable to handle whatever outside stimulus occurred. So for you'll see this in the wild, right? That the animal will be under attack, maybe it'll get away and then it shakes it up. So it would be very helpful. There is actually a modality that I'm trained in called trauma, releasing exercises, that helps people release the trauma in their body. Animals do it all the time in the wild. That's why they don't you know, wipe out so to speak, but we're not able we keep it internal. So that's really, and there are three different kinds of trauma, there is the acute trauma, like the instant, you know, something happened like car accident, then there's chronic trauma that happens, you know, repeatedly or a few times. Then there's complex trauma, which is different, different instances overall. longer period of time.

Samantha Spittle 40:01
So, yeah, and I think that's important for people to kind of hear, to know that there's, there's not, you know, one of my past guests talks about the the pain Olympics, you know that, that we're not competing for the worst story. And so I think doing the work of healing. And because I find myself doing this, as I'm working through my headaches, you know, and there's times where I, because I have experienced some really hard things, I've walked through some hard things with people. Sometimes at times, though, working on my headaches, I almost feel like, I start to judge myself, which that's something I'm working on. This feels so little, you know, and I just think that that's one of those judgments, we have to get out of the way because it's how our nervous system reacts. And, as you said, there's so many different kinds. So

Corinne Coppola 40:55
So I love this. So this actually segues lovely into internal family systems, because the judgment, so we can easily say, the part of me that judges, myself or others, you know, there's a part of me that judges, and usually what will happen is that a client can pull up an instance of, how do you say, like stress, or whatever is happening, right? So, for example, if someone is going through a retirement at work, right, by their choice, but things aren't going well, the way they might have thought, during their exit, I'll have a conversation, I'll have a conversation with the client, what it what needs your most attention right now, like going internally, what most needs your attention. And so there could be a couple of different parts, there could be a judgment part that feels like they need to be treated differently, there could be a part that I've put in so much time and energy into this organization, and I'm being treated unfairly, you know, so then checking in and noticing what has the most juice around it. Right that. And so let's go with the, then we'll take it from there and say, let's get this part that is being that this is unfair. This is just unfair. So the part that feels that they're being treated unfairly. So then going into the body somatically, noticing what sensations are you noticing in the body, right now, it could be a tight chest, it could be butterflies in the stomach, it could be weights in the shoulder, it could be anything, like sweaty palms, whatever they name it. So you name it. And then from there, asking the client, so can you picture this part. And that's where things sort of get creative. It can be a color, it can be a shape, it can be whatever, for me, my parts often usually show up as minions are like, those little m&ms with like sticks. I mean, you know, I can't see anything, there's no, that's the wonderful world of that. So then you're able to then guiding the client and asking, What are you noticing? It's just honestly like, what are you noticing? Then they'll respond, whatever they're noticing. And then how are you feeling towards this part is really important that it's called like the sixth or the eighth. See, I think the ACS to make sure that the client is feeling compassionate or curious or creative. Like there's some kind of softness, if not like you, what might come up is like, I'm angry towards it, or I hate it. Well, that's another part that gets in the way. So can you ask the angry part? To step back? Can you ask the part that hates it to step back so we can get to know this part a little bit more. So you're just trying to have a conversation and to get into connection with this part? And then oftentimes saying, Okay, what was the first, do you get a sense of how old this part is when they first came onto the scene? And it might be as a teenager, it might be a middle school, it might be elementary school, you know, fourth or fifth grade, it might be two or three, it might be pre verbal, right? But just getting a sense of how old it is.

And then from there, asking it,

what is the job? What's its purpose for showing up so like, the part that might feel like it's not fair wants this person just to be recognized for all The goodness right just wants to be. So oftentimes the part that's protecting is wants the higher good. It's It blows my mind like wants, like the purpose of the protection actually wants the same thing that yourself the asked was for your being. Yeah, it's wild

Samantha Spittle 45:22
how that they go about it in different ways.

Corinne Coppola 45:24
And it's just goes about it in a different in a different way. And then from there asking the part, what is it needing? Or maybe even? What is it afraid would happen if it didn't do its job? So like, it might be afraid that this person would fail, that this person would get hurt? You know? And is there another job that this part would like to do instead? Like, is this part feeling tired? Because this part, you know, how is this part and it's just it really sort of guides, I'm giving like a very, you know, annotated version and trying to explain but and then what happens is that it settles down, right? That it's not driving the bus and so that more of the self, the big ass can direct it, and direct her being in the world, so that you can be more compassionate with your partner, or your boss or your child.

Samantha Spittle 46:31
Well, you know, it's funny, because I was I had two different thoughts in my head. And so to kind of help frame this for people to is, I think with the movie Inside Out, you know, that was so good for kids to see, but also adults to see when you talk about driving the bus, you know, just that movie, I feel like simplifies it of just, you know how that can work. And of course, this ifs is the, you know, adult version. I feel like, you know, it's of course not the same thing, but

Corinne Coppola 46:59
it is the same thing. I mean, in a way it is it's the easiest way to explain it. So thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Samantha Spittle 47:06
Yeah, well, the other example I was gonna give and I don't know who listening will remember this. But the show Herman's Head, I remember watching that back in the day, an old show, but it was the you know, guy, I don't even remember because I probably was too young, I shouldn't have been watching it, I'm sure. You know, this guy, there was all these people living in his head, you know, and it would go from his outside world to then you would see the part like the living room or whatever, these people all lived in his head. And I mean, maybe I watched a lot of Dirty Dancing Pretty Woman favorite movies when I was way too young. But also herb, apparently, I watched some random shows that maybe that helped me understand these different parts. And so anyway, but I bring up this random example, though, because there's this part of me, that is, like, this sounds because of I'm comparing it to this 80s You know, sitcom, like this is kooky. You know, this is we will, then you know, we've got now 40 years later or whatever, inside out, which I was about to say 20 years, but it is not 2000 anymore, it is 2022. But now we have inside out and it's like, no, wait, this really does make sense. There really is. So would you say to to kind of simplify ifs? Is it a way to I think the right word is personify just our being and to kind of look at it as you know, whether it's people or like you said, for everyone, it's different shapes or characters or something like that. But is it a way to just kind of help make sense of the way our parts are in us?

Corinne Coppola 48:49
It's a way to for integration. Okay, so and it's really a wick. For me, for me personally, this is the way it is is like a highway of compassion, right? Dick towards wrote a book, very important, but no bad parts, so that every part has a role. Like we don't want to look at the shame. We don't want to look at the guilt. We don't want to look at the anger. We don't want to look at the fear. We don't want to look at the self doubt, right? But if we can say, well, let me get curious about this. What's going on with self doubt? What are you trying to protect? What's your job? Like? Why are you here? What are you needing? Like, you know, the the other. The complimentary practice is called rain. The rain meditation practice, you know, recognize, allow, investigate and nurture to me. They're very complimentary. You know, you're recognizing what's going on. You allow it to be there. You're giving permission for whatever's going on to be there. You investigate it. You ask it questions. What are you needing, and they And is the nurturance. Right? So, oftentimes, I mean, ifs is is different. I don't want to confuse people. But I'm saying they're complementary practices ifs is a much deeper practice. And really, anyone listening, I want to be really serious about this, that please make sure that you're using a practitioner that has been trained by the IFS Institute, because there are so many copycats out there right now. And it is not to be played with because this is people's mental health, mental well being. And just be thorough in it, you know, in your, if you decide to investigate this as your own practice, please make sure that you're doing due diligence with the practitioner that you are working with.

Samantha Spittle 50:52
So thank you for sharing that. Because exactly, it's, um, it's serious work. And I, you said it with integration, you know, it's taking all these parts, you talked about driving the bus, it's just a good visual, you know, of who's in control. And it's funny how it's like, you know, when we try to repress stuff, we think, you know, we think it's like, oh, we're just going to set that over here, we're just going to tuck that over here. We think we're taking it out of the driver's seat, but it's going to find another way to, to drive, it's going to find another way. And, and I love what you said too, about, there's no bad parts and, and seeing it because all these different sides of us, and especially I was thinking about your story, kind of, you know, as we wrap up coming full circle, you know, you talked about the rage, and it would be easy for you to just say, I'm a rageful person, so I need to just do some meditation, some deep breathing, and I'm just going to become this calm person. But the rage was that part of you that was feeling I'm, you know, you know, your story, me. And so you could try to just put the bandaid on it, as you said, you know that but that wound needed some air, you know, it needed to heal. And so I think that, I mean, that's why for me and Jeremy and I, you know, we've talked so much about it, it's just given us language, to say, Oh, this, this is the part, you know, this part wanted, was fighting for this, you know, or this part was wanting to be seen and heard. So Right.

Corinne Coppola 52:24
So I think like, if there's one simple practice you can take with yourself is to start using the word part. You know, there's a part of me, that's feeling lonely. There's a part of me that's feeling tired. And just asking, like, Oh, what am I needing right now? What is this part of me needing? Let me see if I can check in, I'm doing a really a bridge. That's, you know, not, oh, that's but it's just really goes to like the power of the pause. Because what this is like, this is another thing. And I think I said this in a prior conversation with you, Sam is like, if it's hysterical, its historical. And when we are noticing that something is not in balance with what happened, you know, like your reaction is like, a little bit intense. There usually is a story behind that. There's usually like, Okay, where can I make the U turn, we're always looking to the other person, like if they would just change if they would just, and I'm telling you, I used to be one of those people, like, you know, and I can sometimes still, you know, trip up like that. And then Whoa, whoa, no, no, what's going on here? What needs to be healed in me? And if we can look at it that way, oh, what needs to be healed in me?

Samantha Spittle 53:47
So good. Well, I, as you said, We just scratched the surface of this, but I I truly, thank you, thank you for sharing so much of your story. I say often that not everyone's meant to share, you know their story publicly. But for those that can, I'm extremely grateful, because I do think it's it's hearing, you know, kind of that next level deeper, some of the stuff that is, you know, feels unspeakable and that when it is speakable, it makes such difference. So I truly thank you for sharing your story and health and helping us kind of get more language around all of this and of course, sharing your expertise with ifs. And so if people are curious to learn more, of course, about you, working with you, and, you know, whether it's ifs or other other ways you work with people, how can they get in touch with you,

Corinne Coppola 54:37
they can go to my website, Corrine cupola.com, and set up a discovery call with me 2030 minutes of your time, you'll get at least one practice that you can implement immediately to help you because all I want to do is really reach as many people as possible I'm on a mission to help Over 1 million families by 2026. It's a high order but I also say that if you heal one person you're healing, you know, seven generations in front and seven generations and back and then all the people around you because the healthier you get, the healthier the family gets, the healthier the work system or work environment like everybody, one person changes, everybody changes. So and I'm also doing a workshop for sage sisters on April 19. That is more in depth around internal family systems and authentic relationships. So join me there.

Samantha Spittle 55:41
Yes, and I look forward to talking about more of this stuff and sharing you of course with the flushing out audience as valuable, insightful partner and I'm just grateful for your expertise and sharing and so I definitely recommend checking her out and learning more.

Unknown Speaker 55:59
Thank you, Samantha.

Corinne Coppola 56:00
I appreciate the love