How trauma affects our health and wellbeing

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

Today on the podcast, we are talking all about trauma, what exactly trauma is, how it can manifest in your body, and some of the modalities that you can use to start to clear trauma to have this very important conversation. I’ve brought a very special guest onto the podcast, my own therapist, Natajsa Wagner. This is such an amazing conversation. I really hope you enjoy.

CLARE: Well today I am so excited because I have someone really special to share with you today. Today, we’re talking to my therapist, the keeper of my secrets, my healer, and someone who has changed my life for the better more than she will ever know. I’ve been warm. Welcome to the podcast. Natajsa.

NATAJSA: Thank you. What a welcome. Pleasure to be here.

CLARE: I’m I know I asked you to come along on the podcast because a lot of the work that we’ve done has been so transformative for me and I really just wanted to come on and have a conversation about trauma because I think a lot of people don’t really know what trauma is.

Understand a lot about trauma work and what it is. And I thought that you were the perfect person to have that conversation. So the first question I wanted to ask is, can you share a little about what you do and how you help people?

NATAJSA: So, I guess the way that I usually introduce myself is that I’m a trauma therapist that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I work with a number of different traumas.

So there’s different traumas from shock traumas, so for example, things like car accidents or medical traumas, but I also work with a lot of developmental traumas, which means things that might happen in our early life. So, whether that’s. Some interruptions to our attachment, whether that’s childhood, emotional abuse or physical or sexual abuse, and also neglect as well.

So that’s kind of the scope of what I do. Amazing.

CLARE: And I know that you are the field that you sort of specialize in is psychotherapy. I didn’t even realize this when we were first working together that there was a difference between the different kinds of therapies. So can you explain a little bit about what’s the difference between psychology and psychotherapy?

NATAJSA: So I guess I’d start off by saying both psychologists and psychotherapists are mental health professionals. So in the same way, counselors are also kind of often included under psychotherapy and then we have social workers and we have psychiatrists as well. So all of these kind of clinicians have a professional training.

But some of the differences between psychology and psychotherapy would be someone who’s in the field of psychology is usually going to be following what we kind of know as the medical model, which is where you might go to your GP and you might get you know, a little bit of an assessment done. You might see a psychologist and they would have a chat to you about some of your symptoms.

Some of the things that you might be experiencing and from that assessment, they might then make a diagnosis. And so we see things like, you know, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, PTSD, OCD, just to name a few of those things. And that’s kind of the medical model and the medical model tends to look at people’s symptoms and pathology and give them a little bit of a label.

And for some people, that label is really important and helpful. And for others, it can kind of feel stigmatizing because it’s kind of categorizing, okay, you have all of this and you have anxiety, for example. Psychotherapy and counseling is maybe a little different in that there can still be assessment.

We still look at those symptoms, but we it’s out of our scope of practice to diagnose. So we don’t diagnose number one, but that also means we kind of look a little more holistically at someone’s life experience. So, you know, when you came to me, I wasn’t making an assessment or giving you a diagnosis.

It was like, let’s have a look at some of your life experiences. See what’s maybe leading you here, what you wanna get outta the work together. So it’s a little bit less based on the medical model, although, you know, I do work with assessments and, and look at things like complex PTSD and PTSD, but we’re kind of looking more, you know, how did you get to where you are?

What’s happened in your life, rather than sometimes I think the medical model which says, you know, what’s wrong with you or what are your symptoms and here’s your diagnosis.

CLARE: Hmm. Interesting. And so is the studies that you do similar, different? I’m really curious as to, you know, what, yeah, how, what’s the difference between the, the qualifications that you undertake in each area.

NATAJSA: In Australia, it can be a little bit different. So usually for a psychologist, you know, they’re doing a degree at uni also generally the same with psychotherapists and counselors. So they’re doing a degree as well. Not all psychotherapists and counselors will do, you know, an undergraduate or then go on to do a master’s, whereas a psychologist is usually doing some type of doctorate.

And then when you’re seeing a psychiatrist and you’re working with someone who’s going to dispense medication and work with you in that way. So. I guess that would also be another differentiation. Psychologists, counselors, psychotherapists, social workers, we’re not working with dispensing medication.

And there can be a level of different training that people have done in those fields, which I think is another good point. Because, you know, for me as a psychotherapist, I’ve done my master’s, I’ve done five years of training, but I went on to do other training to work in this field of trauma.

And I think that is particularly important for anyone who’s working across any of those disciplines. As most people know, when you go to uni, you do your four years and then you kind of go out into the real world and it’s kind of very different to what you might learn in your degree.

CLARE: Oh, absolutely.

Can we just backtrack a little bit? So with that, just from my understanding with a psychiatrist who dispenses medication, do they also do, like, are you having, like, is that someone that you see regularly and do therapy with? Or is it more that if you need medication, you go and see a psychiatrist, but the regular ongoing work is with a different kind of profession.

NATAJSA: And the there are, psychiatrists who are using therapy modality as well. They don’t generally tend to be trained to do that. Although some psychiatrists kind of have an interest in that in the same way that there are some GPs who are actually doing lifestyle medicine or who can provide psychological interventions as well.

So it’s, it’s a little rarer, but there definitely are psychiatrists who will do therapy as well. But usually it’s kind of a time capped limit. It’s kind of your check in. Okay. You know, how’s your medication going and looking at other factors.

CLARE: Interesting. So coming back to trauma and you spoke about doing extra studies around trauma, what does it actually mean if a therapist is trauma informed or trauma trained?

NATAJSA: That is a great question, because I think the term trauma informed can mean different things to different people. What most people, I think, mean when they say trauma informed is that they’re trauma aware, which means that they have some understanding of trauma. So as a therapist, they might have done some studies in trauma.

They might be able to define what trauma is. They could give you a definition. They could talk about maybe some of it. Symptoms that they see in people, the coping strategies, understanding why people behave the way that I do, that they do but that would kind of be just a basic level of awareness.

It’s a little bit like a continuum, so I kind of see it as people might be trauma aware. Then you might have therapists who are trauma sensitive, so they’ve started to implement some different things into their practice that go, you know, it requires a different approach when I’m working with someone who’s got a lived experience.

And because of what I’ve learned, I’m going to implement a couple of different things, maybe in my language, maybe in the way that I do things, maybe giving more time, maybe not having to get people to retell the story of trauma. I’ve started to become sensitive in my approach. And then I think it moves to responsive, which means that, you know, as a therapist, you’re starting to look at what’s the effectiveness of the interventions that I’m making, the modalities that I’m using, how am I responding to people?

Trauma informed to me is when your whole practice really reflects trauma informed principles, and there actually are trauma informed principles, which are kind of the standard for working with trauma. So, what I would say about being trauma informed You never quite get done. You know, I would like to think that in my, you know, 12 years of practice, and I know who I was when I started is very different to who I am now, but there are still new things that I’m learning, like, with any industry and in any business, as you know, you kind of grow and you evolve and you learn different things.

You look at your own biases, you kind of have self reflective practice and you change your practice. So for me, being trauma informed is, you know, embracing all the trauma informed principles and. If I share them with you, I can give you just a couple to give you some examples. But the number one principle is safety and it’s how do we help people feel a little more safe, which can also be a really triggering word when you’ve had trauma.

But how do we help people feel a little bit more safe within themselves with other people, or at least a little less unsafe? How do we do this work in a way where I’m working with you and it’s a collaboration, right? It’s not like I’m the expert trauma therapist and I’m going to tell you how to heal your trauma.

No, it’s like, what do you want to get out of the work together? How can we do that together in a way that feels good? How do I give you choices around that as much as possible? How do I help you to also feel empowered? So, you know, we’re building on the stuff that you already know, maybe adding some more things into that.

And also, how do we work with trustworthiness, which means that, you know, when you’ve had trauma, you don’t always trust people for a very good reason, and you don’t need to trust people, but in therapy, is there a level of trustworthiness where, you know, I say, or I do the things that I say, I’m going to do, I own it if I make mistakes, because therapists make mistakes.

I stick to the boundaries and my scope of practice, and I’m really clear with you. So all those principles, you know, safety, trustworthiness, collaboration, choice, empowerment they’re not just words, they’re kind of ways of doing things. And that’s what trauma informed would mean if you were kind of implementing that into your practice as well.

CLARE: I think that that is what really does make such a difference is having that specialized skill set around trauma, because I know for me, I’ve had a few false starts with a couple of therapists who clearly didn’t understand the nuances of, of dealing with trauma. Trauma. And I love the fact that that, you know, you, you do have that skill set and that it’s something that people can be aware of or look out for if they are looking for someone to support them through through challenging times.

So I’m really curious to know a little bit about your journey. Like, how did you, was this, did you sit there and think I want to be a trauma therapist and hear people share their trauma with me? Or like, how did you come into this field of work?

NATAJSA: I think. Interesting journey, you know, I had a very different career.

I don’t know if I’ve told you about this, but, you know, before I was a therapist my background was kind of working in fashion and also working in sales. So I was looking after a lot of multi site doors and brands. So, you know, as a regional manager, as a national manager for a lot of Australian brands in Australia.

And I was lucky enough as part of our professional development in leadership, I got sent along to a training training on, you know, how to kind of improve your sales, training and leadership. And the trainer was actually studying psychotherapy. And at that time in my career I had started work pretty young, but I was pretty I was in a senior position and I kind of knew how to do my job inside and out.

And I had said, you know, I’m thinking of maybe studying something. Maybe I’ll do. I don’t know fashion design. Maybe I’ll do psychology. I’m not sure. And the trainer that I developed a bit of a relationship with it said, you know, I’m studying psychotherapy. This could be something really interesting for you.

Why don’t you go along and you meet the director of training? So off I go in my early twenties, never having experienced therapy before, not really knowing what therapy is. And I’m having an interview with someone to, you know, attend a psychotherapy training. Okay. And I always tell this story because I think it’s a little funny.

And the director of training is trying to explain to me that in therapy, as I talk about things, there might be some things that come up for me that might be a bit triggering. And at this time, I’m a very type a typical person. And I say to her, I look at her and I say, look I’m a pretty well rounded person.

I don’t know what’s going to come up, but I think I’m going to be able to handle it. And I look back with such. Arrogance, you know, as you think you, you know, everything in your early twenties, right? And so I enrolled without knowing what was going to happen. And I get into my, my first year and things do come up and I don’t handle it that well.

But, but it’s pretty amazing. And I kind of go, this is what I’m meant to do. Oh, I love that.

CLARE: I’ve got a story. Actually, I went on a retreat, a business retreat, years ago, and she, I don’t even know why she worded it this particular way, but basically she said, what’s your, like, what’s your trauma? What’s the traumas that you’ve experienced?

And I looked her and I said, I haven’t had any were my words.

NATAJSA: I’m going to be telling this story.

CLARE: And obviously once you start this work, you realize, holy smokes, I was so even unaware of a lot of this. And then, you know there’s just layers and layers. And the more that you uncover, you go, Oh my gosh, of course, that’s why I’m like that.

Or I didn’t even realize that that was a traumatic event and it makes so much sense now. And Yeah, it’s just kind of funny when you, whenever anyone says to me, no, I’m, oh, I’m like, yeah, you just haven’t done the work yet. Yeah, it’s

NATAJSA: funny what you find when you get into therapy. Oh,

CLARE: absolutely.

Absolutely. So when we think about trauma, something that I found really fascinating over the last couple of years, and some of it’s been through the work that we’ve done together, but even through. Other learnings and things like that is how trauma actually physically manifests in our body. So could you share a little bit about like, like, I mean, maybe we just start the foundations, like what is trauma?

Because obviously people think BT trauma, but there’s a lot to that. And then, yeah, how does that then get stored in our bodies?

NATAJSA: Yes, this is another excellent question. And I really want to do it justice. I’m going to take a bit of time, maybe explaining what is trauma, because I think there are different ways that different people would define trauma.

And there are also some cultures who see trauma very differently to what, you know, a Western culture would see it, or they would call co It’s called the trauma. something worse than death. And something that they haven’t wouldn’t even experience in their lifetime. So I think the word trauma kind of gets thrown out there a lot.

And there’s a lot more understanding these days, which is great. But I’m going to give a couple of. A few different definitions. So I’m going to give like the, I guess the clinical or the very theoretical one first, but I think it makes sense. And 1 of them, this comes from a Norwegian clinician. I’ll try and pronounce a name called.

But they say psychological trauma. Is the unique individual experience. I think that’s important, right? Of an event, a series of events, or a set of enduring conditions. In which that individual’s ability to integrate their emotional experience is overwhelmed. And so by integrate, they mean ability to stay present, understand what’s happening, integrate and process the feelings, make sense of it.

And I think that’s a kind of good definition that gives a bit of a broad overview, but I want to go deeper. And the word trauma originally comes from the Greek word that means wound. And I think that is really important about how we think about trauma because it’s often seen as a disorder. And actually in the medical model, we call it PTSD.

You know, we call it post traumatic stress disorder. We see it as a mental. Illness rather than actually seeing it as a wound. It’s not a mental illness, right? Something happened to you and now you have experienced this wound and wounds need healing. So it’s not a disorder. And what we see after trauma is a lot of different symptoms, right?

A lot of different impacts or behaviors, and people may get left with some of these symptoms. I just want to add in here as well that not everyone who experiences something that might be a traumatic event will be left with symptoms of trauma. That’s another thing we don’t always talk about. Sometimes when we have enough of the supports or resources or wonderful people in our lives to help get us through, we can actually process and resolve some of these things.

So that they don’t lead to these different symptoms, which then might mean we would get a diagnosis of PTSD or complex PTSD. So I just want to say that as well, because often we don’t think about, you know, sometimes we can go through an event and we’re not going to be left with these things. And there’s a whole number of factors as to why that won’t, won’t be, but we won’t get into that.

But I want to add, add some more if I can. Oh, please do keep going. Another piece I think that this quote doesn’t necessarily mention is that when there’s a trauma event, normal coping mechanisms get overwhelmed. So what that means is, let’s say I’m going through, you know, a car accident, for example, and when that happens, I can’t just breathe my way through I can’t just downward dog or call a friend or everything’s going to be okay.

The way that I would normally cope gets overwhelmed. And I think that that’s another important part of the definition. And then we start to have a physiological response in these events, right? So the technical term we call it is physiological arousal. Some people don’t like that word arousal because it has negative connotations.

Yeah. But you can kind of think about it as you know, there’s an activation in your body, your physiology starts going. Some people call that the sympathetic nervous system, your eyes get wider. The blood starts pumping, your hearing starts to get really sharp. Your muscles start to get activated. Your physiology is starting to gear you up to hopefully move into fight or flight.

So when we think about trauma, we often not always thinking that actually trauma is about what’s happening inside of us. It’s not the event, because when we work with a trauma, what are we working with? The event is over. It’s happened, but we’re working with all the stuff that’s left over. So I think that’s kind of an important definition too, right?

Because we know it’s over. Our brains know it’s over, but our bodies don’t. So this is why people often say, you know you know, trauma is about working with the body and we have to kind of bring in the body to help resolve some of those physiological things. And then another point I just want to add in here as well, because there’s another layer to this, is that trauma is also about our perception, which means that what you perceive as threatening may not be very threatening for me.

So I might not go on to develop impacts of trauma, you know, maybe in my past life I was a rally car driver. So, you know, when I flipped my car on the highway, I was used to that, right? I didn’t go on to develop, I’m not a rally car driver, but I didn’t go on to develop any PTSD from that. And that also means that sometimes trauma is, is about you seeing a trauma, right?

So we, we have this experience, let’s say someone is witnessing a violent assault. They’re not being attacked, but they’re there and they’re present and they’re seeing it that can have the same impact as if they were directly experiencing it. So, I just want to add all of that in there because I think it is complex.

It’s easy to kind of say trauma is this or, you know, this is the event, but actually trauma is what happens inside of you, not the event and a really simple definition would be trauma is something that happens too fast. Too soon, too much, or not enough, for example, like in childhood emotional neglect.

CLARE: Yeah.

NATAJSA: Ted talk over. Sorry.

CLARE: I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you there. Were you?

NATAJSA: Not at all. Not at all.

CLARE: Okay. So there’s so much in here that I’d love to go a little bit deeper into. So let’s, let’s go right back to the concept of trauma. There was something that you said in the definition that I went. Wow, which is that it’s an individual experience and you sort of articulated it a little bit there because, you know, you’re talking about the rally car driver example, but even I know something, sometimes something can happen and 2 people have been through exactly the same thing or been in exactly the same situation.

And 1 person is either like, that didn’t happen. Or that’s not my recollection of what happened, or it wasn’t that big of a deal. And I think it’s always so interesting you know, have me having been on both sides of the coin, like, I’m like, how on earth can you say that that wasn’t a traumatic experience?

Another person’s like, I just didn’t think that it was. And conversely, I’ve had a situation where someone came to me at work. She was incredibly distressed and she said, I need to talk to you about something. Yesterday, you know, I said something to you and I’m sure you probably hate me and she, she obviously hadn’t slept and she was like, and I’m like, I honestly, I hadn’t thought about it again.

And she’s like, no, no, it’s fine. You can tell me. And I’m like, I genuinely, like, I didn’t even think anything of it. I’m not at all upset. I’m not at all affected. Don’t worry about it. And she’d made this had obviously really, really upset and traumatized her. Something that I. Exactly the same situation. I hadn’t had any effect to me.

So you kind of hinted that one of the reasons it’s it might be someone’s support system. It might be their their past. Is there any other reasons why people are having different experiences of the same event?

NATAJSA: Yeah, there’s so many factors. I guess if we took that example of the person who had a response, you know, to, to what you had said that the, you kind of was like, oh, that’s just a few words, you know, that that’s not really a big deal.

You know, what we might say is that person we could hypothesize was maybe getting triggered by something from their own past or their own history. So in a way, it’s not that you were traumatizing. It’s that they’ve had maybe a past trauma that then has triggered up some of those same feelings of maybe where they felt that someone you know, really hated them or they experienced, you know, cruelty or something else.

And that kind of gets triggered up. So that might be a slight difference. And as I mentioned to you yeah, so if I use it, another type of shock trauma again, like, let’s say we, we were, you know, rushed to hospital due to a fall or an accident or something that happened. But, you know, when we had the fall, there were people around us.

And those people came and they held our hand and they told us it was going to be okay. Or you know, when we got to hospital, we got treatment really immediately. They spoke in a really gentle voice. They kind of said, you’re going to be fine. You’re here now. There’s so many things that can contribute to someone actually having you know, a really good experience that enables them to kind of move through and process it.

Let’s say on the other hand, I’ve had an accident. And no one was around and I was waiting by myself for five hours. You know, a lot can happen in that time. When I got to the hospital I didn’t really get the treatment that I needed and I didn’t have any of my loved ones around. Let’s also say maybe I’m someone with my own trauma history and I like to keep a stiff upper lip.

I’m very stoic. I don’t talk about my emotions. Actually, that can be a bit of a risk factor to not being able to fully process some of your experience, because what tends to happen for people is that they do have, you know, emotions, sensations, feelings and experience after the trauma, but due to this big thinking brain that we have, we go, don’t feel that, don’t do that.

Look at that. That was nothing. I feel shaky or tremble. You stop that and we kind of stop all of our natural responses that need to happen. So these are just a couple of factors, you know, our past lived experience, how soon we get support, the way that we might cope with our emotions, our feelings if we want to talk about that and also for some of us, you know, there’s Our past experience of trauma, sometimes can mean that that there’s a little bit of a predisposition to being in positions that might be a little bit more risky because, you know, we might have grown up in situations that were unsafe or risky and then we find ourselves in those positions again.

There’s so many different. It’s kind of impossible, but there definitely are some factors that could, could influence why someone may or may not go on to develop those symptoms.

CLARE: That’s so interesting, isn’t it? And it’s really interesting to the, the physiological responses. I know now in hindsight, I realize why.

You know, I might read something in the news and get super activated by it and feel really anxious and, and I, I didn’t really make the connection, but my body was like, my body remembered, even though my logical brain was like, why am I feeling like this? Or why does this person or why does this situation make me feel like this?

The body’s remembering it and it’s having those physiological responses and I guess. I’m like my own experience of a lot of the work that we’ve done is that I don’t feel as activated in sometimes like not even at all. Like, it’s almost like I remember that it’s happened, but it’s not making me have the same level of, is it possible?

Can you completely clear trauma from your body or can you just kind of like make it a little bit less bad, your physiological responses?

NATAJSA: I wonder what that means. You know, I think the answer could be different for different people. Like, what does it mean to clear a trauma or heal? Like, what I would say from that physiological perspective is that I think, when you have that energy happening at a trauma event, right?

All of that kind of fight or flight energy. What often leads to those unresolved symptoms of trauma that people are left with and that they then meet the criteria for PTSD, whether that’s flashbacks or nightmares or hypervigilance, is that that energy hasn’t been able to move through the body. So, you know, for example, in some of the thematic work and the trauma work that I do, we work with that energy so that it can move through the body.

And often that means revisiting the trauma memory. So going back to the memory, working with what’s happening in the body. So we can help the body to, you know, do what it wanted to do and complete and move through those energies. Cause as I said to you we know that with trauma, it’s something that happens too fast.

Too soon too much, you know, when in a trauma incident, there’s no time for you to respond. So your body, your brain just takes over. So we have to kind of go back to the original memory or event in some way. And this is kind of regardless of whatever therapy you do, we kind of activate the memory, we go back to the memory, and then we work with.

Processing that and the somatic therapy, it’s like, how do we help the body resolve some of that through the physiology? Because again, the brain knows it’s over, but the body is often braced or contracted or holding tension and not able to complete some of the things that it might’ve wanted to do.

And then once we do that, there’s kind of a resolution and people feel differently in their bodies, but they also feel differently in their memories about things. So I do think, you know, what, what I would say is that the body is capable of healing, whatever that means to you, but it’s also not just a physiological piece, sometimes with shock traumas, like we really focus on that, like, you know, if somebody had a medical trauma or a fall or a car accident, you know, Actually, working with the shock and the physiology is relatively easy, but we also have relational pieces, you know, if we think about things that happen in childhood in terms of abuse or neglect the physiology piece is one piece, but you also have to work with stuff like grief, like, you know, how do I process that this happened to me, or, you know, how do I grieve that this did happen, or how do I grieve that, you know, I didn’t get the things that should have happened.

How do I work with relationships and trusting human beings when other human beings hurt me? How do I have boundaries when I was taught to, you know, take care of my parents, or I had to be a people pleaser. So it’s kind of like healing or clearing trauma is not just the physiological. I think that’s one thing.

There’s a big focus at the moment on like the nervous system and, you know, polyvagal theory and somatic Work and that’s really important, but there’s also lots of relational things that, you know, it’s not just about the nervous system. It’s about, you know, learning to I think, process these really human experiences like grief, you know, and pain and suffering with another human heart and brain, you know, that cares about you.

That’s how I see therapy anyway.

CLARE: Yeah, so much in that. And I, I love, I’ve never really thought about that relational piece that you just mentioned there, because that is 100%. It’s not just about, oh, I don’t want to have a physiological response. It’s really like, how do I then navigate the world and how I operate, how I communicate with people when I do have this traumatic event.

Well, this past that’s happened is a word that you’ve mentioned a couple of times that I just love. If you could explain a little bit in case the listeners don’t know, which is somatic. What exactly does that mean?

NATAJSA: Yes. So somatic means it comes from word soma or body. So it’s kind of like working with the body.

So there’s usually when we think about working with trauma, different modalities and different ways to approach it. So some of the more, traditional ways in the past have been let’s work cognitively, which means like, let’s work with the brain, let’s work with your thoughts and let’s work with your thinking to kind of change how you experience trauma.

And we call those kind of top down strategies. Cause it’s like working with the brain down and we kind of need those. And then we have the somatic or the body strategies, we’d call them bottom up, which means like, how do we influence your body to then talk to your brain, which is more kind of working with the nervous system stuff and working with the, the, the whole body to get a shift in your experience.

CLARE: And what does, when you say working with the body, like what kind of things does that look like?

NATAJSA: Yeah, so some of the different modalities I’ll name some of the modalities and then maybe I can give some examples. But for me, those modalities, some people might be familiar with something called somatic experiencing.

That’s kind of one of the main trauma modalities in the field. That’s one of the modalities I’m trained in. And the other is sensory motor psychotherapy, which is using the body, but also using talk as well. So when we say working with the body, we’re helping people to pay attention to what’s going on in the body.

And you might know, you know, from some of our sessions, like I will often direct things and saying, what do you notice happening inside or what’s happening in your face, your arms, your legs helping people to sense into and track what’s going on in my body and what does my body want to do and linking that with, you know, our emotions, because emotions also start in the body, linking that with our thoughts and our cognitions, because we need that stuff too.

But really looking at how is the body like operating and organizing itself and what do we need to do if we’re working on trauma in a trauma memory to help the body complete something that it couldn’t get to complete. That’s very much how we do it when we’re processing a trauma memory. But in the beginning, when we usually start working, you know, We’re also just learning maybe how to help with some of those symptoms, like, let’s say I feel a lot of hypervigilance and I feel anxious a lot of the time, you could have a therapist who gives you some thought exercises right to change some of your thinking about that, or you might see someone who works with it.

The body and they might help you change your breath, for example, or they might say to you, you know, like, notice what happens if you put one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly and just start to kind of breathe normally or what’s it like if we, you know, do some grounding or anchoring through the feet and you let your feet drop into the ground or your back really rest into the chair.

So it’s using the body as an intervention or a resource. To support a different state, a shift in your nervous system where you might be able to feel, you know, a little less of that fight, flight energy, and maybe more into a little bit more of what we call parasympathetic energy, which is more peaceful, grounded, connected.

CLARE: Interesting. Okay. I, I thought somatic work was think like where you like, it might be massage or dance. He’s that are these tools as well that can be used in this space or am I getting things a bit.

NATAJSA: I think, you know, There’s so many different things that I think can be used to support people in their journey.

So I guess somatic therapy has a little bit more of that therapeutic framework, but then you do have things that work with the body and there actually are somatic dance therapists, you know, movement therapists as well. But even things like yoga, right? Some people might say, well, that’s a somatic modality.

There’s so much research around how yoga actually supports people, you know, to reduce the level of stress and activation by working with the body postures, by working with breathing by you know, some of the practices that it incorporates as well. So there’s lots of, I guess, different ways that people can support themselves, whether that’s exercise, whether that’s, you know, Yoga or Pilates, walking in nature the difference would be, you know, those things are not necessarily directly working with your trauma memory.

You’re kind of doing those things as a support and a resource. And then in therapy, you might come and, you know, it’s like, okay, let’s work on that memory and let’s really use, you know, not only some of the cognitive strategies, but the body ones too.

CLARE: Yeah, I love that learning so much. So, the, I think you’ve kind of touched on a bit of this already, but what modalities as part of your training, have you studied or tried personally?

And is there any that you want to share a little bit about? You know, so maybe you’ve had a bit of a like, wow, I was not expecting that how they, how they worked.

NATAJSA: Sure. So I’ve done a lot of different therapies and I really believe in trying them all. Most of the therapies that I’ve done are experiential, which means they’re kind of not just learning there you get to experience them in your body.

So every therapy that I’ve done, I’ve practiced or, you know, done some therapy in myself. As I mentioned, my main modalities, and for anyone who’s interested in, you know, what’s somatic therapy, how do I look into this? There’s somatic experiencing which is the work of Dr. Peter Levine. And if anyone is wanting to, you know, just get an understanding of what does this even look like?

How would I apply this? There’s a really great book called Waking the Tiger that he wrote, which has some really basic examples in there of how people can start to work with the body and how they could support themselves with some good resources. That’s 1 that I recommend. The other is sensory motor psychotherapy.

So that is another type of somatic, talking therapy. We might say that involves kind of talking, but also you know, working with the body. A lot of people might’ve heard of EMDR, which is eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing. That’s one of the main kind of evidence based treatments and recommended treatments for trauma.

So I’ve had EMDR personally. I’ve also had somatic therapies personally for me and I’m really honest, you know, I’m kind of biased. I am a somatic therapist. I prefer somatic therapies mostly because you get to understand your own body. And you get to work with your own nervous system, and I also think that the therapies, the somatic therapies can be really gentle.

And I’m a big fan of therapy that’s gentle, not overwhelming because the trauma was overwhelming. So I don’t think that therapy needs to be too overwhelming or intense. So somatic therapies I find kind of gentle and really wonderful. I do a lot of parts work, which is working with parts or some people have heard of internal family system.

So working with the different parts of ourselves that we might have, like the part of me that wants to go to the gym and the part of me that wants to stay in bed and eat all the chocolate.

CLARE: Oh, interesting. Yeah.

NATAJSA: And a number of other ones, you know, I won’t list them kind of all off, but gestalt therapy is the other training that I’ve done, which is a really kind of relational and experiential training.

That’s kind of my, one of my main modalities as well. But what I will say is that. Some of you might know who are listening someone called Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, who wrote the body keeps the score. And what he would say you know, is that when we’re working with trauma is that we need a lot of different tools and it’s not just one thing it’s kind of like trying to build a house with just a hammer.

And there’s lots of different modalities for different people. Not everything will work for one person. I also like to say, obviously I’m a therapist unbiased. I think therapy is wonderful, but for some people it might not be therapy that works for them. You know, they might have their own spiritual practices.

It could be coaching. It could be something very different. There’s many different ways to healing and I think you find the right one that works for you.

CLARE: Hmm. Oh, beautiful. Well, thank you so, so much for coming and sharing. As I said at the start, you know, the work that we’ve done has been absolutely life changing for me and, you know, If, if you’re listening and if you are in that category where you think you don’t have trauma, I really encourage you to do a bit more exploration in that space.

If you are someone who can relate to the concept of trauma and, you know, you’re, you’re really curious to continue this work. I really highly recommend Natajsa, but I want to give you the opportunity now, you know, people are listening and thinking, wow, there’s some work that I would love to do in this space.

What’s the way that people can connect with you and work with you.

NATAJSA: Oh, they can jump onto my website, which maybe you’ll put a link up because my name is a little bit different to spell, but it’s Natajsa Wagner dot com. I do have a little bit of a wait list and I only usually take on a few clients a year, but I do have some links there to the Blue Knot Foundation.

So some people might know the Blue Knot Foundations, the National Center for Excellence in Complex Trauma in Australia. So I’m a trainer for them, a facilitator, but they also have a list of other. What they would call trauma informed clinicians. So who’ve been through a process to kind of provide information around their training and how they approach trauma.

And you can contact Blue Knot and actually, you know, perhaps get a referral to another clinician. I do have a couple of little mini courses on my website for anyone who wants to just get started and go, you know, what is trauma or what’s complex trauma, how can I get some education around this and some information on my blogs, but websites probably the best way.

CLARE: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us all today.

NATAJSA: Thanks for having me.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio