Do you have trauma brain?

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[markofsaltburn]

My autobiography: 1. Early memories of confidence, curiosity, ease, extroversion. 2. Fuzziness; a sense that something happened. 3. Fear, anxiety, apprehension, shame, withdrawal, unending stress.

[ramona]

I felt called out when you said "Need for constant distraction" as I'm distracting myself with this video😂

[christopherwelch]

Yep that’s me. I was a bullied kid into high school and by my freshman year I gave up. Quit athletics and and hated school to the point of failing classes. I started fighting back my sophomore year and had no parental support at home- I was actually blamed for my issues at school. In my 30s I blew up my life with addiction and almost killed myself with alcohol. I’m recovered now and sober and it took 3 4th steps in AA to come to the conclusion that you talk about in this video. I’m better but I think the damage is permanent. I mistrust people still and I’m very wary of people who are nice to me. I struggle with success and feel I don’t deserve it and I’m not trying hard enough and I don’t even know how to explain my shame cycle. Parents- love your kids. Hug them every day. You have no idea what they’re going through.

[Rose_Ou]

All of the above apply to me. Abused by parents since I can remember. I've been aware of this cycle (and the fact that I let others abuse me when I grew up, too, which I called "bad luck" with people) for 20 years but never knew how to change things. At 44 I'm slowly starting to heal.

[Chandrika-]

"Do they like me? Will they want me?" is the perfect prerequisite for joining a cult. "They like me! They are interested in me! They accept me!" and feeling part of something, feeling included ..
Until you find yourself used and abused. Even then it's hard to leave .. the need for approval is so great.
"They'll hate me if I leave .. I know how they're disgusted by those who are not-spiritual-enough to stay"...etc.
I've spent the rest of my life self-recriminating over having joined - while at the same time wishing I could have managed to earn their love and approval!
Oh dear .. 😣 ..

[DavidPuckArtist]

I have never felt so simultaneously supported and called out by a video 😂 Lots of love to you wonderful healing work you are doing! 💖

[riverpsalmdarksteel]

I've been struggling with all over these, I didn't realize some of them could be from trauma. Thank you

[mdtrtwlt]

I was diagnosed last year with GAD and SAD. This concept of Trauma Brain is me 100% of the time and it makes social and work life situations so painfully difficult because I keep wanting validation and approval from people I honestly don't particularly care about but my ego seems obsessed with their perception of me. It makes it so hard to be in collaborative situations at work because all my ego cares about is having the best ideas and wanting people to think the best of me. Looking at it as Trauma Brain and knowing that I can Reparent is so much more helpful than calling it GAD and SAD because all I have then is a label. Dr. Nicole, and consequently my work, give me so much hope for my future self.

[michellecoleman]

I relate to all of these. Some of them to a hugely uncomfortable degree. There was a lot of fidgeting and sweating palms, holding of the forehead, full breath sighs, and unnecessary wiping of my eyes. I felt an inner seething for that last one.

[matar_y]

#3 really hits home. Ever since the traumatic event in my life I’ve been feeling like I can’t be alone with my thoughts. This is the most difficult at night when I’m trying to go to sleep so I play YouTube videos so that I can fall asleep with “noise” in the background. You finally worded it for me because I struggled with identifying this feeling for a long time. I don’t feel safe in the present moment and haven’t felt safe since my trauma. Thank you for empowering me to understand my own thoughts and actions 🙏

[darksultrywench]

Hi, doc. I don't know if you'll see this comment given how long ago the video was posted, but here goes. A little over a year ago, I lived through a relatively minor event that had a disproportionately big effect on me emotionally and threw me into a kind of depression. We were all on lockdown, I was unemployed, and my life was totally up in the air, so getting therapy was not an option, but I knew something had to change so I looked around online for books and gravitated towards yours. I read it and, for the first time, started reflecting on my childhood experiences and realizing how much trauma there really was in them, in the more expansive definition you give trauma here. Since then, I've had a lot more awareness when it comes to the root causes of certain kinds of emotional responses that I have in my relationships with others (and with myself, to be fair). I do have a lot of healthy practices, which I've had since before I even realized I had trauma brain: I eat well, I do my best to sleep well, I exercise, I sometimes meditate (or at least have a habit of bringing awareness into my actions, interactions, and reactions), I'm fairly well in touch with my body and breathing, etc. I have a long way to go on some issues, though, and this video nailed everything on the head about how my own experience of trauma seeps into my everyday life. It really helps to put a name to these phenomena, because a vague background awareness of them can only go so far when it comes to trying to tackle them. It was difficult for me to watch this and go "yup, yup, yup" as you went down the list, but also very eye-opening. And it's helping push me in the direction of acknowledging what's really wrong and stepping up to work on that rather than resisting like I have for such a long time, thinking that therapy is brainwashing and social conditioning, etc. I'm 42 years old and I don't want to stay stuck in this place anymore, or come circling back around to it cyclically. Thank you kindly from the bottom of my heart.

[CraftyKarin]

I saw your video with Mel Robbins and when you were talking about having very few memories of childhood because of being in state of anxiety and not present it hit me so hard, out of all the things that have resonated with me in reading and watching people like Brené Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert and so on, I don’t think anything had such an impact on me as that. It was likely finally finding someone who can really connect the dots. I’d been reading a reparenting book and I got stuck in parts where you were meant to think of your childhood and what it was like and I couldn’t really recollect. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I’d fail at reparenting because I couldn’t remember. And now this, all 5 of these make such sense to me. I even distracted myself from the present right now by going on YT and watching this video. I recently concluded that I always need some background distraction in order to focus, for example when I’m drawing I found it much easier to keep going if I was watching a livestream from an artist drawing or painting and talking, instead of just drawing ‘by myself’ or with only music, I get uncomfortable. Now I think that’s because my inner critic starts ramping up whenever it gets a chance and by having some form of distraction I don’t feel that so I can keep going. But I guess the point is that I need to figure out how to deal with that discomfort, that inner voice, so I can do this on my own. Because that’s another thing I do - always feel like I can’t do things by myself, like I always needs someone to give me advice, because I don’t trust my own the outside confirmation thing really. I’m getting better at it, I’ve been reparenting through daily journaling, but there’s still a lot to uncover.

[ayoungethan]

In another video she talks about Trauma (big T, intense acute threatening event) vs trauma (little t, low grade chronic/cumulative threats). We often ignore the latter because each individual event doesn't "add up to much" but this distinction helps us understand why the symptoms of trauma seem much more prevalent than exposure to Traumatic (big T) events. And also probably the line between what constitutes Big T vs little t trauma differs from person to person and over time as either triggers build on and intersect with each other or as we do the necessary healing/growth work

[alishak]

My mother was killed when I was in the house when I was 13...25th anniversary this year hitting me like a ton of bricks. This video helped me. I will work on getting help very soon for this. Thanks for being you. I'm so thankful I found you.

[tinag]

Oh wow. #1 ! Why I was obsessing over people I don't even like very much. It made 0 sense, but I was still doing it. Thank you for this.

[imaspecialgirllalala]

I almost didn’t watch this because I thought “there’s no way any of this applies to me because I don’t think I’ve experienced anything terribly traumatic” and I read the points in the thumbnail and they apply so here I am...

[angelaprime]

I never subscribe to anything on You Tube, but I felt subscribing to this channel was the least I could do to say thank you to Nicole. Even after years of therapy, never has a therapist helped me like The Holistic Psychologist has. Thank you will never be enough for helping me have a better life.

[gorgeousbianca]

Tears in my eyes because I operate in my trauma brain. 💔 I Often wonder there are people ever in the world who are wildly confident in themselves and work about feeling secure naturally 😩

[mollie]

Nicole, I want to cry tears of joy from watching this video. I felt so heard and understood about things that I thought were unique to only myself!! It’s amazing how trauma affects us isn’t it. Thank you and I’m now going to watch the reparenting video. 🤍🤍🤍

[samantharivera]

Dr. Nicole, you never cease to amaze me with your insights. I have always considered my strong suit the social world. I am ALWAYS watching everyone, especially when hosting events. I fixate on micro reactions, where people place their eye contact, their self awareness, my own. I used to think this made me highly socially intelligent, perhaps it still does, but I know this must be linked to trauma brain because I find that as I ask myself a lot of the questions you have offered to me, I am seeing that beneath I am easily exhausted around others... trying to manage everyone's feelings is too great a feat for one person. While my rational mind knows that it isn't my responsibility and it is a waste of energy to care, I still do. This has resulted in me being a lot more selective about who and how many people I spend my time with. This won't fix my mind, but maybe seeing this for what it is, social anxiety, will help forge the path ahead for more healing. If others reading this can relate, I hope you know that you aren't alone.