Invisibilia - True You (podcast)

I listen to podcasts daily and every once in a while one really hits me. This Invisibilia episode was fascinating to me for the "woman who records herself sleep talking, and is amazed at what she finds."

What's she find? This big, tough woman finds out that she has created a kid friend -- maybe an inner kid -- who she hangs out with and giggles and has a whole relationship with that involves playing. To deal with her childhood trauma. 

I, like most people who have dealt with trauma as a toddler, am fascinated by how people process and heal from trauma. Trauma (the kind that gives you PTSD in your young, almost pre-verbal formative years) is a challenge to treat. The brain industry still doesn't have it down. There are some tools but, like most brain stuff, it's an imperfect and long-term deal. The aftershock of kid trauma is like a cement block always existing in the middle of your adult life. Your adult life has grown around it and by the time you realize it's there and how limiting it is -- it's firmly entrenched. It's not going anywhere. It is you. You have to either grow around it and accept it's extreme limitations (and not live fully) or scavenge for tools to work with to dismantle it. Those tools are imperfect and messy -- every time you grab a sledgehammer you have to face what it is you need to desperately destroy (that's part of you and enmeshed in your brain and body) and you're never quite sure how it will work. Will you be more triggered and/or how do you come out on the other side? How do you retrain your brain and body to forget everything it ever knew and give it something new? Like, I'm just a person who wants to get to Inbox Zero daily, see my friends on weekends, try the Impossible Burger and live my goddamn life instead of having to think about physiological patterns and retraining my neural pathways. What replaces that giant cement block that's been there forever, for better or worse? I don't know - people feel their trauma different so if you're one of those kids -- maybe you feel this way and maybe you don't. But I do.

And this episode really struck me at how much her whole being knew what she needed -- and gave it to her. I will admit I was incredibly jealous. Her brain is "treating" her without any effort on her part (seemingly). How amazing is it that her brain knew she needed this support, this relationship -- and it just created it for her? Bodies (brains included) are amazing.