🏔 How I healed my trauma from the most terrifying experience of my life
The practices that helped me recover
🥳 Hey, Kasey here! Welcome to this week’s 🏔High Growth Founders🏔 newsletter.
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In This Issue:
Growth Insight: The Practices that Helped Me Heal My Trauma
High Growth Founders Episode of the Week: Life lessons I learned from facing death, surviving, and recovering
Growth Resource I Love: This week I share a new podcast I’ve been loving
Growth Insight of the Week:
You may know, you may not, but 2 years ago last Friday, I was attacked by a dog and almost lost my life. It was the most harrowing experience of my then nearly 38 years and, on every level, it transformed me as a person.
If you want the full story, you can check out a Twitter thread about the ordeal I shared on Twitter last Friday or listen to yesterday’s High Growth Founders podcast (scroll down for more and links to listen) where I go into a bit more detail about what happened, how I got through it, and what I learned.
This experience taught me that, even though I didn’t realize it, I was already struggling with the result of traumas in my life — a somewhat lonely childhood, an emotionally abusive marriage, a devastating business betrayal, and chronic health challenges.
Turns out there are two types of trauma — Trauma and trauma.
Trauma is what we think of when we hear the word. War, attacks, life-or-death stuff.
But trauma is far more prevalent, it’s the less acute, but more sustained traumatic stressors in life — childhood neglect, bullying, abusive relationships, chronic health issues, severe health issues, toxic work environments, etc.
The way trauma changes your behavior and impacts your brain is similar to Trauma, but those experiences are far easier to ignore or push to the side under the guise of “moving forward” or maintaining a “stiff upper lip.”
I didn’t face or process my traumas until I experienced a life-or-death Trauma and didn’t feel I had any alternative.
You can’t heal from one trauma without beginning to heal from all of them.
Finally facing the pain of my past transformed me as a person, leading me to become a more honest, vulnerable, and authentic version of myself. As I recovered and became a more intentional observer of others, I noticed this inclination to tamp trauma down and ignore its repercussions is more common than I ever thought.
I share all of this for two reasons.
It helps me heal and learn from my own experience.
I hope by sharing my story and the lessons learned, others will find the courage to share theirs and begin healing too.
The Practices I Used to Heal from My Trauma
Before I share some of the methods I employed to help me face my past and heal from it, I want to be clear.
Healing is not a destination. It’s a journey.
I will spend the rest of my life peeling back the layers from my past, connecting the metaphorical dots of my memories, experiences, and their influence on my behavior and mindset, and lastly more deeply understanding myself.
These are the strategies and practices that helped me get to where I am today and what I will continue to leverage to keep growing.
Sharing My Story
Whether it’s a conversation with a friend, writing in my journal, talking to my therapist, or posting on social media, every time I share my story I learn more about myself. Even now, two years later, talking about it is a solace, a reminder of my resilience, and a salve for my still lingering pain.
I remember the night after I had surgery (the second night after the attack), I woke at 1 am to a nurse doing his regular nightly check-in. Sitting alone in that hospital room, I began to cry. And couldn’t stop long enough to drift back to sleep for the entire night.
That was when it dawned on me, the gravity of what I had experienced and the long road of healing that lay ahead.
Somehow I knew then that though I didn’t want to talk about this with anyone, I needed to. And the longer I waited to do it, the harder it would be to start.
Later, I remember telling my therapist my instinct was to crawl into a hole and not talk to anyone about my experience, but he stopped me.
“Kasey, it wasn’t your instinct telling you to hide. That was your training, what you learned as a kid. Your instinct was the knowled you needed to talk about your experience. It was another way you knew you needed to save yourself.”
Therapy. Lots of Therapy.
I am deeply grateful I was already in therapy and had a strong, trusting relationship with my therapist when this happened. That night in the hospital when I couldn’t sleep, my arms were heavily bandaged and my right thumb was broken, so I couldn’t text. Instead, I recorded an audio message and sent it to him in the middle of the night.
For the next 5 months, I saw him two times per week and since then, once a week. Therapy can provide immediate relief, but the most impactful benefits come from consistent, steady work. The progress in therapy is similar to progress in every aspect of life.
It is not linear. It often doesn’t make sense, but therapy promotes healing and growth in ways you can’t possibly predict. I believe everyone should be in therapy, at least for a year or two.
We spend two decades learning how to be good little capitalists — or factory workers depending upon your view of industrialization’s impact on education — why wouldn’t we spend time and money learning to be the healthiest, happiest versions of ourselves?
Practiced Self-Compassion
I had spent much of my adulthood constantly pushing myself to work harder, be more driven, improve myself, etc. Self-compassion, kindness, and gentility were not qualities I cultivated or practiced. Until my attack.
Suddenly, I took care to protect myself from stimuli, people, content, and energy that didn’t serve my healing.
My attack occurred about 2 weeks after George Floyd’s murder. I remember lying in the trauma ward attempted to keep myself distracted by watching basic cable on the hospital TV. Nearly every channel showed violence. Local news, cable news, Law and Order reruns, CSI, and violent movies.
It was disturbing. The Great British Bake-Off and Ted Lasso were pure gold for my mood during those early days especially. Yes, I can watch a violent movie or cop show now, but for the most part, I choose content that lifts me up, instead of stresses me out.
Throughout my healing journey, I learned to give myself what I needed — physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.
Sometimes this meant allowing myself to sob at inopportune moments, others it meant seeking out experiences that filled me with joy and laughter, and many others fell within the full spectrum of the experiences and resources we all need throughout our lives.
These repeated acts of self-love were transformationally healing for me.
Studied Trauma
I am a nerd at heart. Studying what I am experiencing is motivating, but also a relief for me. If I feel I understand a situation or challenge on an intellectual level it provides some assurance that I will be able to navigate it — no matter its complexity.
Now, I must give you the warning my therapist regularly gives me. You cannot intellectualize your way out of trauma. You must do the work of feeling your feelings.
I know I use intellectualism as an escape from the tidal wave of emotions my trauma causes. And that escape does not last. Eventually, the emotions will return and without the willingness to face them head-on, they will flow back to you in unforeseen — and undesired — ways.
But understanding I was not alone in how my trauma manifested itself and the powerful and overwhelming emotions I was experiencing were normal calmed my worried mind and strengthened my resilience to keep peeling back those layers.
The books that were most helpful for me:
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. This is where I first learned about the concept of Post Traumatic Growth and that the primary difference between people who experienced it and people who didn’t was that those who did, believed they could. Faith made the difference.
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. Van der Kolk is known as the pre-eminent expert on trauma and this book explains much about its devastating impact on children and adults who experience it. His interview with Krista Tippet on her On Being podcast also helped tremendously, as I couldn’t manage to read his full book for at least the first year. His book and that interview helped me understand that to own my life, I needed to understand my triggers and heal from them.
Complex PTSD from Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma by Pete Walker has been life-changing in helping me understand the ways my childhood shaped how I interact with the world. Especially his care to address those that struggle to identify as traumatized because their parents never physically abused them. My parents in many ways were wonderful and supportive and I had a remarkably privileged upbringing. But they were also extremely critical and I felt very lonely. It wasn’t until this experience that I started to uncover how my history of extremely dysfunctional relationships was the result of my childhood.
Fell in Love with My Grief
About six months after the attack, I explained to my therapist I felt I should be worried about this sadness which did not seem to be fading. What’s more, I felt I should be worried that I wasn’t worried at all.
I found the sadness to be comforting. Like a warm blanket, I said.
He explained that the comfort my grief provided me was the sign that I needed it, especially because I denied myself that sadness and pain for so long. Since then, when I begin to feel sad, I let myself feel it, bask in it even. I know we’ve been taught that wallowing in our misery is the ultimate form of self-indulgent self-sabotage, but I think that’s bullshit.
When I allow myself to fully feel my emotions, even the negative ones, they move through my body and release on their own. And it makes the experience of living more vivid. If you numb yourself to the bad stuff, you will inevitably numb yourself to the good as well.
I, for one, would rather experience the full spectrum of life than mute my emotions to reside safely in the middle.
Focused on Gratitude
The science behind a gratitude practice is astounding.
When we express gratitude and receive the same, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin, the two crucial neurotransmitters responsible for our emotions, and they make us feel ‘good’. They enhance our mood immediately, making us feel happy from the inside.
FromThe Neuroscience of Gratitude by Positive Psychology
I know I could have looked at my situation and focused on how unfair it all was and how brutally hard recovery would be, but instead, I focused on a sense of gratitude that I was still alive, my neighbors heard my cries for help, and saved me, and my strength to fight back throughout it all.
No, I didn’t feel grateful in every moment. I allowed myself to feel the unfairness of it all and cry for my loss, my pain, and the scars snaking up my arms.
Gratitude saved me.
When you wholeheartedly believe you are facing death and survive, let me tell you, feeling gratitude for every little part of this thing called life is natural. And beautiful.
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I don’t know what you’ve been through or what you’re going through now, but I know you’re stronger than you often give yourself credit.
Just know that your healing journey is yours alone. You can learn from mine or from others’, but you will have to chart your own course, do your own research, conduct your own personal discovery and navigate your own path through to the other side.
If this issue has helped at all, please share it with a friend or colleague who could use the support.
HGF Episode of the Week:
Life lessons I learned from facing death, surviving, and recovering
As I mentioned above, I learn and grow every time I talk about what I went through. I don’t ever want to be the person who defines their life and worth by their trauma, but I will forever look at my life as before the attack and after. It changed me.
This feels like a particularly pivotal anniversary. After only one year, I was still so deep in the process of recovery, I didn’t have the perspective I do now. Taking the time to talk through my story was healing for me and I hope that it can be educational for you.
In this episode, I talk about what happened, but also what I learned and how I grew from it all.
I get into the details of my experience, so please be careful about what you can handle listening to. Take care of yourself.
Listen now! Online | Apple | Spotify
Growth Tool I Love:
This is a different style of tool. It’s actually a podcast I thoroughly enjoy and learn from. It’s Creative Elements by Jay Clouse. He interviews some impressive creators to learn how they built their businesses. He asks insightful, thought-provoking questions and I finish every interview filled with ideas of how to improve my business.
I highly recommend giving a listen. Here are a few of my favorite episodes so far:
Nathan Barry [Relentlessness] from $150K/yr in ebooks to $30M in ARR with ConvertKit. His breakdown of building a stripmall vs. a skyscraper transformed how I think about the next phase of my business as a creator. Apple | Spotify | Website
Wes Kao [Rigorous Thinking] – Should you teach a cohort-based course? I’m preparing to launch a cohort based course with Wes’s company, Maven — stay tuned for that! — so I loved listening to her dive deep into everything she’s learned at altMBA and now building Maven.
Michael Bungay Stanier [Simplicity] – How to Begin Setting a Worthy Goal I was thrilled to hear this interview. I love Stanier’s TEDx talk about the Advice Monster and listening to him describe how he approaches goal setting made me immediately buy his new book: How to Begin. It just arrived yesterday, so I’ll keep you posted on what I learn.
Apple | Spotify | Website
What’s your favorite business podcast? I would love to learn from you!
Thanks so much for reading this one. It had a lot of very personal content that I know isn’t always easy to consume. I appreciate your willingness to be uncomfortable.
In Love and Growth,
Kasey