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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.
0:00:02 - Amy Hoyt
Welcome to the Mending Trauma podcast. I'm your host, Dr Amy Hoyt, and, along with my sister, Laina Hoyt, a licensed marriage and family therapist, we want to help you recover from trauma, whether it's childhood trauma, complex trauma, PTSD or any other trauma sustained from abuse or narcissistic relationships. We want to help you develop skills and ways that can help you to recover from the symptoms and the effects of trauma. We are so glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hi Amy here. Are you feeling stuck or overwhelmed by things that pop up in your daily life and perhaps these are because of past traumas or toxic stress? Have you tried traditional therapy and found that it wasn't enough? I know that was the case for me. That's why we developed the whole health lab.
Mending Trauma has put together a program that combines the latest research with proven methods to help you recover from trauma and move forward from these daily stressors and triggers. We use somatic therapy, EMDR, cognitive behavioral therapy and internal family systems therapy. We use nervous system regulation and many other tools so that we can combine the best methods that are identified in the research to help you recover without being completely overwhelmed, so you can work on trauma on your own pace, your own time and still with the mentorship and support of a highly trained, certified staff. That's us no more waiting for appointments or sitting in traffic driving to see a therapist. With our online program, the whole health lab, you can access it from anywhere, anytime, even on an app. Visit MendingTraumacom backslash whole health lab and learn more.
Get your questions answered We've got a frequently asked questions section and sign up so that you can have this life changing program in your world today. Don't let your past hold you back any longer. Take control of your future, and we can't wait to see you in the whole health lab. Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Mending Trauma podcast. Today, we are actually gonna talk about something that we get asked about quite a bit, and that is what is the best type of therapy when you have trauma. We have thoughts about this. What do we think? Lena, yes, we do.
0:02:30 - Leina Hoyt
We understand from all of the research, all of the training that we've been through, through the studies that have been done with the Trauma Research Institute. We know that anything that's going to be effective for trauma has to involve the body in some way, shape or form. And EMDR is one of those things that involves the body, because in order for EMDR to work, you have to have three things going on at the same time. You have to have an image that represents the worst part of it for you. You have to notice the emotions that you have as you hold the image, and then you have to know where in your body those emotions are showing up, or what is happening in your body as you hold the image and the emotions, and then you can do the bilateral movement or the eye movement. And those are the three components that have to be present in order for EMDR to be effective.
0:03:34 - Amy Hoyt
So EMDR is one of the therapies that is really effective for trauma.
Let's just backtrack a little bit.
I think one of the things it's important for our listeners to realize is that, although talk therapy is incredibly beneficial for many things, including relationships and family dynamics, it is actually the least effective when it comes to trauma out of the other types of therapies, and one of the reasons, as Laina said, is because we have to involve the body, and when we are simply talking, although it can be very helpful to solve relationship problems and even cognitive distortions, it's not enough to process the trauma.
But the other thing that's really important for our listeners to understand is that with talk therapy, when we talk about the details of our trauma, we are actually laying down deeper neuro pathways of the trauma, which can be really, really overwhelming, and we don't quite have the resources yet to deal with that sense of overwhelm, and that's why the body and the somatic therapies that we're talking about today are so helpful. And so, as Laina said, we have to use the body, and that in general that's called somatic work or somatic therapies, and EMDR is one of those somatic therapies, the other therapy that we know works really well. In fact, at the trauma conference that we attended this year, bessel van der Kolk said it was one of the best therapies for trauma, and that is internal family systems, or IFS. So, laina, can you walk us through what IFS is and why it's so effective for trauma?
0:05:31 - Leina Hoyt
Sure, IFS, or internal family systems, was discovered, or founded, I guess, by Richard Swartz in the 80s when he was working in some residential programs with really emotionally fragile clients. And what he discovered is that internally we have these different parts which is not multiple personality disorders these different parts that pop up in certain experiences and it becomes their job either to protect us in the future or, if it's a vulnerable part, the job of the vulnerable part is to carry the burden of the terror or the shame or the fear. And one of the things I love most about internal family systems is that it consciously uses the idea of self. Capital S self is what Dick Schwartz calls it, and it identifies that we have a self that is clear and it's our best, highest self, and we use that self to provide resourcing to these parts that are stuck in the past. And it's so beautiful because of that, because of that approach.
0:07:00 - Amy Hoyt
I love that and I was actually listening to a training that he did a couple of years ago. I was listening to it this week and he talked about how he grew up in a home that was very science based and pretty atheistic and that he kept kind of coming listening to his clients talk about, well, part of me feels like this and part of me feels like that. And then watching them as they started to integrate these parts of themselves, watching them come into this highest self, this capital S self, and he talked about how he had never had really any sort of spirituality or religious upbringing but this concept is very spiritual, and that he as an adult has found different spiritual traditions to be really helpful in thinking of our highest self, and that really really spoke to me. I thought it was interesting.
The other thing I thought was super interesting is he talked a lot about how the self is our innate ability to heal ourselves, which I love, because so often I think we have been taught that we need someone else to heal us, and while we do often, I mean I often need the help of an expert when I'm stuck, and that's what I do. I work as hard as I can until I get to where I can get, and then I need an expert. Inherently, he's talking, though, and encouraging people to allow themselves to realize that they have everything they need within themselves to be whole. Yeah, it's such a beautiful concept it is. Why does it work for trauma?
0:08:51 - Leina Hoyt
The reason it works for trauma is because we go on kind of an exploratory journey and what we're trying to do is we're trying to discover these parts of us that are oftentimes younger, that came into being from something traumatic, and when we discover those, we try to get to know those parts. So we want to know what their biggest fear is, what job they're trying to do for us, because, as Dr Schwartz says, there are no bad parts. Every part has good intentions. They just end up arguing with each other and you know that situation where you have an argument going round and round in your head and there's a part of you that's saying this and there's other parts like no, da, da, da, da, da da. It's a perfect explanation for that phenomenon. And when you're able to identify and get to know these parts, they can become friends with each other and there's less internal arguing.
0:09:51 - Amy Hoyt
Which would cause less internal distress.
0:09:54 - Leina Hoyt
Exactly. It's just really lovely. I have a client that I've been working with off and on for a few years and we talked a few weeks ago and we've been doing IFS work probably for about four months and she got on the phone and said to me I have to tell you this experience I had with internal family systems. I said great. And she said do you remember last time when we were working and I said, ooh, this part will not let me open the door? It was a protector part that wouldn't let her open the door to her, less her vulnerable part. And I said yes, and she said well, one afternoon I just started thinking about it and in my mind I visualized I was going to take the protector part and hold the protector's part's hand and I said to the protector part it's okay, we will do this together, but we're going to open this door.
And so she got the compliance of the protector part, which we absolutely have to have in order to do a lot of this resolution. And she opened the door and she said, oh my gosh, it's a baby, a naked baby, like a newborn baby. And the protector part, she said, started getting all up in arms and angry like why isn't this baby dressed? And and she said and I turned to the protector part and said because it's a baby, the baby doesn't know how to get dressed. The baby isn't doing anything wrong, she just doesn't know how to get dressed. And she said in that same afternoon she was able to bring the baby and the protector part and herself to a table visually and she was able to have them communicate with each other and the protector part was able to soften enough to kind of reassure the baby, the infant, and express understanding why the baby was naked. It was so powerful, it was so interesting.
0:11:58 - Amy Hoyt
That is interesting and so, to just re-emphasize for our listeners, this is not multiple personality or, you know, now called DID. It is definitely just different aspects of us within ourselves. So I love that, and the goal, of course, is integration and acceptance of all of us. So I love that. This illustrates that. I want to go back just a second to EMDR and why EMDR is, how that is helpful for trauma, because I think you know we have talked about EMDR several times on the podcast, but in terms of why this is such a good therapy for trauma, what comes to mind for me is that, again, you're not talking about your trauma in detail.
0:12:57 - Leina Hoyt
Yes, yes, that's one of the reasons why is so powerfully helpful. You mentioned earlier in this episode that when we talk over and over again about the trauma, we deepen those neuro pathways of the trauma. And what EMDR does is it can be done almost silently. So when I'm working with clients and doing EMDR with them, they don't even have to tell me what the image is. I'll just say you know, think back to time when you're really distressed or when this event happened a car accident maybe and tell me what image represents the worst part for you. They visualize it. They tell me they have it.
I say notice what emotions you have. Sometimes they'll tell me, Sometimes they won't. And then I'll say find where in your body those emotions are being expressed or held. And then we start tapping, because I do a lot of this via zoom. So we do tapping and it opens the front to back of your brain and left to right side of your brain, and so you don't have to go through all the details again. It's all being managed by your subconscious brain through this protocol of EMDR and it can be really astonishingly powerful.
0:14:28 - Amy Hoyt
Absolutely Okay. Thank you for that. Okay, the next type of therapy we want to talk about for trauma is nervous system work, essentially and you can, you know, you'll see people talk about somatic experiencing, which is a type of nervous system work. You'll see people talk about somatic practices, trauma informed yoga, trauma informed meditation. These are all somatic practices or body practices that are geared in part to helping you develop a flexible nervous system.
And you know, on social media and in popular culture, you'll see more and more about the nervous system lately, which I absolutely love, and it's really important that I think we make it clear that the goal isn't to constantly be regulated, because that's not possible.
It's not Correct. And just like your heartbeat, if your heartbeat was completely the same all the time and there was no variability, that is considered a sign of not having a healthy heart, whereas in heart rate variability, it's the variability that actually shows the health of the heart, and so the nervous system is similar in that we are. We are trying to develop flexibility in our nervous system so that when stress does come up, we can handle it, and when we're not stressed, we can also handle it. So there's a lot of talk about regulating ourselves, and I even fall into this trap when I'm talking to my children, I'll say you know, I think I need to, I need to go get regulated. Or, you know, it sounds like you need to do some regulation. That's actually not quite as accurate as allowing us to feel what we need to feel, acknowledging it, which then develops a flexible nervous system.
So one of the things I think for our listeners to understand is that with nervous system work, nervous system regulation, you have to go into the body, because that's where our nervous system lives, and the brain and the nervous system are connected through something called the vagus nerve, and this is the vagus Nerve theory is polyvagal theory Thank you by Steven porges, is really an important concept because what happens is it truly connects the cognitive with the physical, and the nervous system, you know, reaches down to all parts of our body, and so it's in charge of our subconscious, conscious processes like our heartbeat and our breathing, and it also is in charge of how our organs work, and I mean a lot of processes that require a lot of work for the body, but we're not consciously Privy to that work, it just happens. So what happens in trauma to the nervous system?
0:17:47 - Leina Hoyt
Our nervous system gets hijacked during trauma and then it gets stuck during trauma, and so that's where some of this parts Work can come in, this internal family systems. Work can come in because the nervous system becomes so overwhelmed that it responds in One of three primary ways, although there are a couple of additional ones. One is fight, one is flight and one is freeze, and the vagal, the vagus nerve is responsible for the freeze.
0:18:17 - Amy Hoyt
So nervous system work is really important with trauma and it's going to help us learn to be aware of our body and learn to actually sit in our feelings as well as move towards regulation, as that is a A helpful way of going through the world. But first we have to allow ourselves to feel our feelings a lot of the times. So, besides nervous system work, so that's our third type of therapy that's very effective for trauma. The last type of therapy is neurofeedback, and neurofeedback is really incredible for trauma recovery, although it's a little harder to access because it does take Special equipment. So do you want to tell us a little bit about neurofeedback, lena?
0:19:07 - Leina Hoyt
Yes, we are lucky enough to have one of our founders in Mendin trauma Finishing her training in neurofeedback, and so I got to be one of her test or practice subjects, and it has totally changed my life. It's given me an explanation for what's happening in my brain. I have one part of my brain that's always over functioning and then this other part of the brain that's under functioning, and what Wendy's been doing is she's been setting up these protocols and hooks, these leads, their, their leads yes, hooks the leads up to my head in different places, and then we I play a game and it trains me to get better at calm focus, to get better at relaxing, and I just think that it's been life changing for me.
0:20:05 - Amy Hoyt
I love it. I had the same experience. I was also a test subject and it was. It's been incredible. So I think it was 12 or 16 weeks where I went three times a week and each session was between 10 and 20 minutes. And again she puts the leads on different parts of the brain and then starts training the brain. I work on puzzles while I'm doing my neurofeedback and, honestly, I started sleeping better. I had a way easier time being regulated, especially in my parenting when I would get you know. That's typically where I get very overwhelmed and essentially it helped calm my brain down. I mean, it's it's night and day.
I think it's just such an incredible tool and it's showing a lot of efficacy for complex trauma and that's another thing that came out in the latest trauma conference by the trauma research foundation. And so neurofeedback is something I think you'll start to hear a lot more about as you keep your ears open for trauma recovery. But it does require you know equipment that can be more expensive and you also need to make sure you find a practitioner that is certified. So those are the four types of trauma therapy that are right now considered the most effective for helping you recover from trauma. We have EMDR, we have internal family systems, we have nervous system work and we have neurofeedback. And what we're so excited about is that we offer all of these through our program. And that's one thing we feel really strongly about is, if the research says this is effective, then we're going to add it into our trauma recovery program and we've seen pretty miraculous results from from all of these modalities.
0:22:14 - Leina Hoyt
Absolutely yeah. One of the things I love about neurofeedback is it trains your brain without me having to white knuckle it, like me having to try so hard to figure out how to get myself to relax, and it's just. It's a lovely way to train the brain without having a lot of conscious effort put into it.
0:22:38 - Amy Hoyt
Yes, absolutely. And, as Wendy always says, if you don't have access to neurofeedback, these other modalities such as EMDR, ifs and nervous system work. They will do similar. You will get similar results over time. Neurofeedback is a little bit quicker, but with neurofeedback you can train your brain. You still have to learn new behaviors and new ways of being in the world, so it all works hand in hand.
Well, that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us and we will look forward to being with you next week. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Mending Trauma podcast. Lane and I are really grateful that you spend time with us each week. We know you have a choice and that time is currency. We would love if you would share this episode on social media and tag us so we can reshare If you feel so inclined. Go and give us a five star review wherever you listen to pods, so that we can get the word out and help more people. We know that we are all working hard on our mental health and we wish you great success this week in implementing these new skills. We'll check in next week.