Ep 6 Book Club - The Body Keeps The Score

The transcription is about a book club discussing the book "The Body Keeps the Score". The book is about trauma and how it affects the body. The author, Bessel van der Kolk, shares anecdotes and scientific information about trauma. The book emphasizes the importance of being mindful of our bodies and the way situations make us feel. It also discusses how trauma can occur in relationships and the impact it has on us. The book suggests that the only way to move forward is to look back and support our inner child. It also highlights the importance of providing safety and nurturing for traumatized individuals. The book club serves as a safe space for people to connect and share their experiences. The participants discuss the book and their own experiences of trauma. They appreciate the opportunity to be vulnerable and have genuine human interactions. The book club plans to continue exploring the topic of trauma in future meetings. So, this week we had our latest book group in which we discussed the book The Body Keeps the Score, and I'd like to start this Social Work Score podcast this week by reading our book review, so this book review was written by Michaela Voss. It was a bit of a fluke how well this month's recommended read has fit with the last Bellbird Book Club book, What Happened to You? The Body Keeps the Score serves as a prequel to our first book, allowing us to dive that bit deeper into the concept of trauma. I find with many books that I don't have to go back and re-read entire chapters, nor would I ever look to read a book I've already read once again entirely. I hate to say it, but this book is the absolute exception to the rule. Buy a copy. Highlight it. Read it ten times. In fact, get your workplaces to buy a copy and have it sitting on a table in the staff room. Each time you read a passage of The Body Keeps the Score, I guarantee that something new will stand out. The information in this book is rich. In saying that, I will try my absolute best to condense the most relevant information from The Body Keeps the Score into a two-page summary, but I do recommend you buy this book and have a copy for yourself and gift it to everyone you know. But I am obsessed, if you can't tell already. The enormity of information within The Body Keeps the Score really highlights the knowledge that the author, Bessel van der Kolk, gathered across his 30-year career as a psychiatrist, working closely with individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. The book is a mix of anecdotes about casework van der Kolk has personally been involved in, personal stories, and more scientific information pertaining to trauma. I personally enjoyed reading van der Kolk's case studies, relating back to my own professional career and the people I have had the privilege of supporting. The title of the book relates to our physical bodies holding on to the trauma and ultimately keeping the score. The imprint of trauma on our bodies is often so entrenched we aren't even conscious of it. The book truly promotes the importance of being simply mindful of our bodies and the way in which situations make us feel and where those feelings are located within us. It is not until our bodies feel safe and can release the trauma that we can really move forward as people. We often discuss the importance of relationships as buffers against stress and as a healing tool in resolving trauma. And what we don't talk about is the trauma relationships leave when they do not fulfil us or even if they abuse us. As discussed in our last book club book, trauma is often understood as an extreme adverse life event, a car crash, a cancer diagnosis, a loved one dying. However, trauma exists in every facet where our needs are not met and we feel let down. The most common trauma we experience as humans is within our relationships as children. The emotionally distant mother, the father with high expectations we can never meet, the parent that leaves and never returns. This is all trauma as well. Van der Kolk even argues that relational trauma is the hardest to treat as it affects us most profoundly. We are innately optimistic whether we know it or not and when we look to primary caregivers to protect us and love us as children, when this fails to happen, it is the ultimate betrayal. The only way to move forward is in fact to look back. There is vital importance in supporting and revealing the inner child of traumatised people which is often protected by maladaptive coping mechanisms. Exposing our inner child requires an immense amount of vulnerability and to be vulnerable we must first feel safe. Self-reflection is key in supporting our inner children to be able to really hear what they are trying to tell us and how they are trying to keep safe. Then we can support them in providing them with love and care that they need and may have missed out on. The biggest takeaway for me personally in The Body Keeps The School is around how we as helping professionals support traumatised individuals towards safety. Van der Kolk states that if we are working to provide safety and nurturing that people missed out on during our work with them, we are in the wrong profession. What I interpret this to mean is that it is not our role to fill the emotional void left by trauma for others. We must understand individuals as the experts of their own lives. The only person that can make an individual feel safe is themselves and we must aspire to provide individuals the space and opportunity to uncover how best they can achieve this. Here at Feldberg we recognise the amazing work that social service practitioners are already doing mitigating the impacts of trauma. Whether you are working in care and protection, reducing the impacts of trauma for children, working to support families shift out of a cycle of violence or working in mental health helping people unpack the trauma they have We see you, and you are incredibly valuable. What we are hoping to promote is a greater culture of collective vulnerability across different services and between individuals. We believe our book club is so much more than just meeting once every few months to discuss a book, but a catalyst to achieve this goal. Our Bellbird book club serves as a safe and powerful space that encourages this concept of collective vulnerability. People come, connect, relate and feel safe enough in the company of like-minded people to take their mask off for a minute or for the full hour and be fully present with themselves and with others. For the rest of this podcast I'm going to take some time to talk with Michaela about her perceptions of the book. That was her book review but it'd be good to have a bit of a deeper dive in her perception and then we're going to share a little bit around some of the discussions that we had at this week's book club. I hope you enjoy it. Kia ora Michaela who has joined us to talk about our Bellbird book group. It was her idea, her manifestation and she is our wonderful book review writer. She has written the reviews for both of our books so far and the Body Keeps the Score is the one that you've just heard. Welcome Michaela to talk about book club. Thanks Raj. Yes, we were just saying to ourselves before for someone like me that normally I'm not short of words. It's quite different coming on a podcast and you have a microphone and all of a sudden you feel a bit, I don't know, like a bit... Like we're meant to sound intelligent and like we know what we're talking about. Yes and I'm like, oh there's all this pressure all of a sudden with a little microphone on my jacket. So yeah, it's a very cool experience that's very different. Yeah, but I guess that's really kind of what book group is supposed to move away from in a way because there is all this pressure in our work life to have to be something that we perceive. We're supposed to be professionals and people call us experts and we're supposed to know what we're talking about all the time. But actually when you enter into the book group space, it is a space where it's like actually we're just people who have a shared interest and we're just having a conversation. People can come along to book group. They don't even have to have read the book. We provide the book review. We provide the kind of prompt notes. It's something that is about breaking down some of those pressures to have to be and know everything and be the expert on everything. And actually we're just passionate people who care about our community, who care about the funnel we serve and are trying to connect with others in a like-minded way, right? So this is about letting down those kind of expectations of being a certain something. We're no longer whatever the poor type we wear. We're not the social worker. We're not the professional space. We're just interested people, right? Well, yeah. I think that was the thing from last book club. I was hoping for this but I was surprised it happened so quickly around sort of creating an environment where people can be vulnerable. They can be their authentic selves. And the conversation that was shared across the table especially because we were all, you know, semi-strangers. It was a new group of people together. We were establishing sort of the dynamic of the group. It was really special, wasn't it, last time? I think people really opened up and shared some really personal stories about last book club. The book was kind of talking about trauma. So talking about their own experiences of trauma. It was quite wholesome to be a part of it, wasn't it? Yeah. Well, that's right because I think, you know, we talk about book group as being just a space to share space, right? Like to just be ourselves and not that kind of transactional side of relationships but actually the authentic self. And while, you know, these topics are designed to be kind of for social workers or in the social service space, we had people attend who did not work in that area but just had an interest. So the book was what happened to you around being more aware of it's our experiences that inform our kind of behavioral changes or our trauma responses. It's not what's wrong with the person. It's what happened to the person. And people, yeah, did have a bit of vulnerability and talk about it. And within that, by people being vulnerable, there were connections made because people have similar experiences and were able to empathize or reassure. And so it was very kind of genuine human interaction which was quite beautiful. It was. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed the last book club. I'm looking forward to meeting again next week to have our second book club event. I'm excited, hopefully, that more people will join us this time and there's some new faces have popped up on the event page. So that's exciting to see. So excited to further, I guess, our conversation around trauma because this last book that we selected is also about trauma as a concept, isn't it? So we're moving on to the body checker score. I think there'll be some interesting kōrero raised around what that book has taught us. What was your, I guess, takeaway from the book, Rachel? I think the whole concept of trauma is fascinating. I think we think about it in terms of our neurological responses, the way our brain develops, the synapses, all of that sort of stuff, which was covered a little bit with the Dr. Bruce Perry stuff. And I think about how we hold trauma in our bodies and how that then is exhibited or manifested. In fact, I was having a conversation yesterday with somebody who was talking about trauma release exercises. So how do we release trauma within our body, right? So a lot of people who came back from the war with the tremors and they were diagnosed as PTSD, and actually it's a physical or physiological response to trauma for your body to potentially shake. I often think, you know, this is why we cry. I'm a big leaker. I cry quite a lot. But that is a physical pressure release, right, around how we hold stuff. So I think the interrelationship between our body and our emotional storage of pain and those sorts of things is a really interesting topic. But you are far more knowledgeable about the book than I am. So I'm much more interested in hearing what you thought of it and what really resonated for you. I think what resonates for me, probably within this book, but also within the last book, I think shame attaches itself as a concept to trauma. I think some people experience something that they do find traumatic and they almost feel like they shouldn't. Because I think in our minds as a society, when we think of trauma, we think of death, major car accident, quite serious life events. And what these books do is actually work to dismantle that as a theory altogether. So it's actually saying, no, no, things that are traumatic are subjective ones. People interpret traumatic events differently. And trauma is what you make it for you. So both of us could experience the same event, but have a completely different response. And it could affect us in completely different ways moving forward. Similar to you, I was having a conversation, but with a young person yesterday at work. This young person, for reference, is experiencing obsessive-compulsive disorder. So they're going through the diagnostic process at the moment. They have a diagnosis of OCD, most likely. And they're saying, Mikaela, mum keeps asking me why I'm like this. Mum keeps saying, oh, nothing's happened to you. So why are you having all these mental health problems at 17? Other people in the year at school have had parents die and parents grave having those sorts of things. And they came to me with that shame, saying, why me when I've had this great peachy life? And so then we started talking about what trauma is and things. And I was asking them more questions about their life and things like that. And actually, there is a lot of trauma there. Bullying at school, mum had quite a stressful pregnancy, family immigrants to the country. If you paint a picture, it may not, I guess, with one little part, it may not look like a traumatic life. But when you start piecing it all together, you can see how all of these things, in conjunction with one another, can actually have such a huge impact on a person. And yes, there's no, what we like to say, casualty trauma. So I guess that's a crude way of saying you have a parent, those really life-altering events that society considers traumatic. But I would still say that this young person's experienced lots of compounded trauma. And what we're seeing with OCD is actually just their way, their brain, trying to create safety for themselves. Having these thoughts is actually a way that their brain's trying to have some predictability in their life. And it is really interesting how we, as a society, compare trauma. Yeah, it's not a competition. I don't know why it seems like it is. Yeah, because the amount of times you hear people say, well, it's not as bad as such and such. Or this isn't what happened to me. It was only this. And we minimize it, we compare it. Somehow, there's this magical scale of what is traumatic. And at one end, you've got what you say, like the capital T stuff. And then everything else is scaled back from that. And if it's less than a four out of 10, then it wasn't traumatic. But obviously, the whole point is that it's not the experience itself. It is how we have interpreted the experience. It is what we felt about it. Even, I remember being told when I had my children and going through childbirth, and obviously, that's a physically very painful experience, people kept saying to me, it is not the physical pain that you remember. It is what you thought and felt about the pain at the time. So I worked really hard. It sounds really cheesy. But when I was having labor pains, I was trying to keep my mind very much like, this is a beautiful thing. I'm giving birth to life. I tried to frame it in my mind, in that positive experience mindset, so that looking back, that is the memory, the storage that I would have of that experience. So it's not the event as such. It's not, oh, well, it was only this, and it wasn't as bad as that, or it only happened the one time, or whatever, whatever. And I think that's really apparent when we look at the impact of children living with family violence, that often, it is actually the babies who are most likely to grow up to be people who exhibit family violence tendencies themselves, when we think that they don't even consciously necessarily know what's going on. They're not processing it in a conscious way, but the exposure to them in that real pure state of vulnerability, because babies require security, safety, consistency. And because they're not getting that, the impact on them is the most significant, or can be, whereas you could have an older child who's more cognitively able to process what's going on, better able to control their own safety, better able to remove themselves, or whatever. And therefore, their trauma impact is different. And it doesn't make one better or worse. They're just different, right? Yeah. No, I think those are really all fantastic examples of trauma. And I think that's the thing I really like about the Body Textbook for, is the understanding that actually we're all traumatized. It creates some shared humanity and removes some shame, I think, around actually putting your hand up and going, I've experienced trauma, and my hope from the book review, maybe the conversation generated at the book club, is people go away feeling not ashamed to actually, I guess, acknowledge that they've had trauma in their lives, and then potentially reach out to people to maybe talk about how they're feeling, and not feel like they have to keep that to themselves. And I think that's the power and connection, which the book goes into as well, in healing trauma for people. Absolutely. And I think, again, that's partly what Belbird is trying to achieve, too, in that space of book group, as well as, you know, even through this podcast, is that power of connection. Because we are social beings, right? Social work is social. It is about relationships. It's about connection. It's about community. It's about how we support each other. And actually, we're a much healthier environment, a healthier space when we do connect, as opposed to being quite individualized in our thinking. We can get quite divisive, that competitive, that kind of lower level energy space, which is damaging to us ultimately, that actually the positive stuff comes out in that connection. So how do you connect, knowing that it's a safe space to talk about things? Because I'm not comparing my trauma to your trauma. My experience is mine, and yours is yours, and they're both valid. I feel like society has become so individualistic in the way that we live our lives. And so, you know, we go to work, we go home, we spend time with our families, we go to work again. It's just repeat that five days a week. Often weekends, it's only spent with certain individuals. And I don't know, it can be quite isolating without even realizing. I kind of, I have some friends who are a bit older than me, which I'm very thankful for. And they talk about back in their day, they had lots of clubs, and there was more of a fabric to society, I think. People know, they used to know their neighbors. I feel like that's not a common thing now. Community was more, there was more of a presence with community. And so I think through the book club as well, yes, we're talking about all the higher level concepts that are really valuable within the social sector, but actually underpinning all of it is just trying to put the value back into connection just on its own. So actually, here's a space that you can come to, and have a coffee, and have some snacks, and just come and be present with like-minded, safe people that will value any contribution you make. And I think in a society where we're so isolated, that's actually just really lovely. Yeah, exactly. That's right. And that's enough, right? I think also, when we think about, I think about social work in terms of a big part of our job is relationships, it's networking, but there's almost like there has to be this outcome to everything. But there's always like, if we're connecting, we're networking, but it's kind of, it comes back to that transactional nature, I think. Yeah, I think so. You know, that it's got to have a purpose, I've got to exchange something. But actually, the purpose is still there, but it's just not necessarily as transparent because that connection, that trust, that relationship, that safe space, that value, just to have a conversation with somebody and feel connected, nurtured, inspired, maybe. I love the ability within a conversation to reflect, to challenge our thinking, to have ideas that we hadn't thought about before, but in a way that's really inclusive and non-judgmental. I mean, I'm using lots of lovely, fluffy words, and it's sounding so wonderful, but it is about just being human. It is. Stripping it back. And that's what social work, I guess, like you're saying, that's actually the profession, isn't it? We're human-centric. That's right. It is people. But it is people in terms of, it is around just holding space for people. I mean, I say it all the time, social work, it is working socially. We work with people. It's the whole person, the holistic view, from micro to macro, from the individual to the environment they live in, to the community they live in, to the social policy decisions that are made. It's all so important on every level that we operate, and I agree. There are social policy decisions, concepts that are making us as a community more isolated as individuals. We stay home more. We work more. There's all these policies around getting people to go back out to work and not staying home with their children and all this sort of stuff, and again, that's a different podcast around politics. But thinking about that sense of connection, that is everything from the individual conversation, the ability to be vulnerable, through to the social policy or the community events or whatever it might be, and I was just thinking around that ability to be vulnerable because sometimes, coming all the way back to that trauma conversation, we can feel like we're the only ones experiencing something, and I've lost both my parents, and I think a lot about grief, and one of the things that occurred to me is that grief is a very common experience, but it feels deeply personal, and it's a weird thing because people don't like to talk about it because it feels so personal, and yet, on lots of levels, we've all experienced grief. It might not be a parent. It could be anyone we've loved, or it could be an animal, or it could just be leaving a town that we loved and we've had to move somewhere else. I mean, I think about the person you just talked about who's an immigrant. There's grief in that as well, leaving behind, potentially, an unsafe or a difficult situation or a place that they loved and felt connected to and now feel at home, and now they're displaced. There's grief in that, and grief is traumatic if we don't process it or how we store it, that sense of identity that comes with losing your parents and not knowing who you are anymore, that fucker-puffer, that connection, that family, so the interweaving, I guess, of connection and what that means around trauma. So I think, yeah, just as we were talking in my brain, I was trying to be like, okay, so people listening to this podcast, how is this all relevant to Book Club? Well, essentially, yes, it is a book club. We release a book every two months, and I write a nice review about the learnings, which is typically very relevant for work in the social sector. So you come along and you do get some really good learning, some really good practical, often, skills around how to engage with clients, how to engage with whanau, how to engage with your colleagues, even. But actually, at the heart of the book club is creating a space of vulnerability and a space where people can come and connect over shared experiences, and I think that's what it is. We're building a community. You don't actually need to be an avid reader to come and join us. Yeah. I was going to say, you said we're building a community, and everyone's invited. Yes, the last couple of books we've looked at have got a trauma kind of theme to them. That theme will be changing as we move through different books and different book clubs. Come along if it resonates. But yeah, we hope you have enjoyed our little conversation about Book Club. So we're going to play a game together, Rachel. We're going to use some of these reflective prompt cards that we have at Book Club, and we're going to ask each other some questions related to the Body Hex score. Are you ready to play? I'm ready. Okay, so I love this question, probably because I wrote it myself. So I may have some extra thoughts on it. Yes, potentially. But the question is, why do you think relationship trauma is so harmful to us as humans? So I'll give some context just briefly around relationship trauma. So in the Body Hex score, the author suggests that the most traumatic events in our life, the worst trauma that can happen to you, is the trauma you experience from relationships. And what the author means by that is as humans, we look to our primary caregivers and our natural support systems as protection, and it's an evolutionary concept. And so when people we look to for support and love let us down, it is the most traumatic thing we can experience because it really gets us to our core. That's what relationship trauma is in reference to. So I'm going to share a little something about myself in response to that, because when we think about trauma, obviously, we think about those big events. You will have heard us talk in the book club section about Trauma with a capital T, and I'm definitely one of those people that on the outside, people would look at me and say, I haven't got anything to kind of complain about or worry about, right? But a story for me around my childhood is that as a baby, I was a child that cried a lot, and my mother did not know how to comfort me. And she would tell me that she would lie in bed, this is a board, rigid with sort of tension, she would be lying in bed listening to me scream, not knowing how to respond to me. And she would say to me, all through growing up, you were fed, you had had your nappy changed, you didn't need to be crying, she didn't know how to comfort me. And so she would just let me scream. And I think about the impact that that still has on me 40 something years later, about my needs being met, about feeling like I deserve love and comfort, about that sense of the value of who I am around being part of a family and being loved. And it's a sort of simple example, part of that journey, in that bonding and attachment process between my mother and I. My mom decided that she wanted to wean me, she didn't want to breastfeed me anymore, I did not want to be weaned. So I had to go and stay with my grandmother for a couple of weeks while my mom dried up. And I think about the rejection in that, and the lack of attachment, and the lack of bonding, when that human relationship level of trauma, I think is very real. I, you know, obviously, historically, I've never classified it as traumatic, because we don't put words like that to our experiences, because it wasn't that bad, it was just this, or it was just that. But actually, the ongoing long term impact I know, for me, on that relationship with my mom, or the challenges of that relationship, that lack of attachment at a very young age, has been lifelong, and definitely impacts how I relate to other people, what my own experience was as a mother, and how I related, attached, bonded with my babies. So I think, you know, we are human beings, we're social creatures, we are, that connection, that relationship is critical. And those closest to us are the ones that can do the most damage. And so I think it's a really important concept to recognize around what we carry with us all through childhood. You know, those first 1000 days, so critical for our brain development, for our emotional intelligence, you know, all of that, and what that means if we're let down by the people who we expect should be loving us and keeping us safe and secure. Thanks for sharing. I mean, you know, and again, it's that kind of, you know, the label, right? So my instinct immediately went, no, no, no, that's not trauma. That's just, you know, like, that was just my childhood. Because we undermine and diminish and reduce, you know, minimize and all of that stuff. But it is interesting how that still shows up for me in my day-to-day life and becomes my story, right? My story of not being wanted, not being good enough. You know, we've all got stories like that. That's actually a very human experience, that feeling of not being good enough, you know, when we share it with each other. But again, it's that deeply personal space. So how to journey through that and say, actually, you know, my mom was doing the best that she could. She was a young mom, she didn't have a lot of support herself. You know, I can understand it and explain it as an adult in a cognitive way, but the emotional impact still manifests. Yeah. And I think as well, by acknowledging that something is traumatic, this kind of ties into the first book, What Happened to You? In that book, it talks a lot about post-traumatic stress as a concept, but then society doesn't talk about post-traumatic wisdom. And I think that's a really important thing to recognize, especially with this conversation, through acknowledging for you in this setting, yes, that is actually a trauma you experienced with your mom and as a baby. It's not saying in the present or even at the time that we don't need to diminish the hurt. We don't need to say that you're not a really worthy person because of what happened. You've developed post-traumatic wisdom from that. And actually, you have learned a lot about yourself and now can empathize a lot for other people, probably because of that experience. So we're not removing the hurt, but we're removing the shame from it, not just for you, but for everyone by talking about traumatic things that have happened to us and actually removing the shame around trauma as well, because from trauma comes wisdom as well. When I think about you saying removing the shame, I think it's also, in some context, removing the blame as well. Yeah, I think so. Because I don't see it as... I like that concept of what happened to you because it wasn't... It's not even like, oh, what did they do? No. It's not... Everybody's trying to make their best... Most people making their best way through life. People do things. I'm sure there will be stories that my children say about me as being a terrible mother. They definitely have got not great mommy moments. So having that wisdom that allows some compassion, some understanding, some empathy, what do we learn from it, how do we grow from it, doesn't diminish the reality of each individual person's feelings. But also, it's not helpful to necessarily blame people for hurting us because they themselves... Hurt people hurt people. So there's a cyclical nature of it. It's actually just about managing what has happened and how we feel about it and what do we learn from that. I love that expression, the post-traumatic wisdom. Thanks for sharing. My pleasure. Okay, so I'll put you on the hot seat. Great, now I'm doing this. Okay, so I guess this... I mean, obviously, they all interrelate, but this question, when I was reading them, this one really resonated for me as well. So this question says, how would you make sense of the below quote from The Body Keeps the Score? And the quote is, holistic healing means touching the parts of yourself that terrify you. So what do you make of that, Makayla? Well, I think that we've all learned about the ego and the deeper parts of yourself, probably at one point in our lives. And I think, for me, I think there's definitely a mask that you put on, or I put on every day before I leave home. You do your makeup and your hair, and then I put on this invisible mask, which is what I want to show people of myself. And I think the mask serves a great purpose. And it's worked really well for me, actually, most of the time. And I think what that quote is referring to is that to actually heal and to grow as a person, sometimes I have to take the mask off. And when I take the mask off, I don't necessarily like what I'm showing other people. And I don't really like what I'm looking at either, because it's embarrassing. Like, for me, anyway, that's the feeling that comes with it. And I think maybe that's why I talk about shame so much, because I think without the mask, there's a sense of feeling unworthy. And here's my little story for you. I feel like most people in my life have just seen the mask and taken it at face value, because I don't like taking it off myself, unless someone almost asks me to or challenges me to. But the whole story about how Rachel and I, for the listeners, actually met was about five years ago. I moved home to Rotorua and was working in an organisation locally here. And, you know, come to work every day with the mask on, honky-dory. And honestly, my mask is high energy, very confident. It's a confident mask. It's a perfectionist. Yeah, it's doing everything super well, super efficiently. But for some reason, I don't know why, Rachel, you have some sort of x-ray vision, I find. And honestly, for the first time in probably my whole life, I felt like someone, they weren't seeing the mask. Like, in front of you, you had your x-ray vision glasses on, and you were seeing me wholeheartedly. And you were challenging those yucky, deep parts of me that I didn't want to go to. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to acknowledge it. I didn't want to deal with it. And actually, it was really hard. It's shameful. And I think that's 100% more than quite getting it. In terms of healing your trauma, you have to go there first. There's some other books that I've been reading lately that talks about, when you numb one feeling, you numb it all. You can't selectively choose what feelings you feel. You can't selectively, in your brain, choose what experiences stay with you. You have to acknowledge and accept everything for what it is. And actually, by doing that, I think I got to the point, and it was difficult, of actually being able to sometimes choose, today, I'm going to leave the mask at home. Or in this conversation, I can actually take it off and be vulnerable and make a mistake and acknowledge some past mistakes I've made. And that's where growth is, right? Exactly. Growth comes from discomfort. And it's about trying to create that space of robust conversation where we can allow ourselves to be challenged. Because, yeah, we can wear this mask. I mean, we all have masks or hats that we wear. Today, I'm mum. Today, I'm the social worker. Today, I'm this. But actually, who's Rachel? And parts of Rachel, I don't necessarily like, because I can be stroppy and selfish and whatever, whatever, right? But actually, those are the facets of all of us. And if I never acknowledge those facets in their entirety, then I don't grow and I don't learn and I don't develop. But for a caterpillar to become a butterfly, they turn into a big mush of pulpy mess, right? And that's the journey. And sometimes, we have to allow ourselves to unravel a bit. Because particularly when we've been through traumatic situations, that sense of control, that sense of being in control, keeping ourselves safe, no one can hurt us. We know what we're doing. We've got armor pads all over ourselves. That keeps us safe, but it also keeps us stuck. And to be able to grow and develop, then you need to be able to have some change. And I think that's the thing. The mask is a response to trauma. The mask is like, actually, I'm done living in the hurtful times. I'm done feeling vulnerable and things happening to me. If I put this mask on, then I'm safe now. But it does inhibit you. You can't breathe in it. And actually, in terms of my work with people in the community, I think there's some beauty in actually, by being vulnerable with people, people be vulnerable with you. And by showing other people that you're not perfect, and I guess kind of being vulnerable with them, they be vulnerable with you. And actually, in terms of moving forward with healing from trauma, you need those relationships. And so, with the mask, you don't get those. And you're stuck with it. So it does a lot of good taking it off, but it takes a lot of courage. And so by no means am I saying it's an easy process. And by no means am I saying that at times now, even still, I'm like, no, no, this is a mask day. It's not coming off until later at home where no one can see. But going there to those yucky parts of yourself is really important. And that ties in again to the previous book around resilience. Yeah. Right? Like some days, my resilience is just really low. Yeah. And actually, I'm going to put the mask on because that's what keeps me safe. Yeah, exactly. And then other days, actually, no, I can be vulnerable. And I totally agree with you. When we are our authentic selves as best as we can be, we're modeling for others that they can be authentic themselves. And we can accept that. Yeah. Okay. Do you want to do another question? Yeah, why not? Let's do another one. Okay. Your question is, how does the body keep hold of trauma we have experienced? What are your thoughts on that? So the body keeps a score. I lied before when you were like, what was your biggest takeaway? This is actually my biggest takeaway. There's a chapter in it. And it talks about how they didn't experiment on people who had quite intense trauma. So people who were sexually assaulted. It was some really heavy cases that they discussed. And so they tried to put these people in psychotherapy for 10 weeks. And what they were finding was actually counseling. It wasn't working at all. And they were thinking, why? We've got the best experts, people with the most knowledge around CBT, all of these mental health skills, and their symptoms remain the same. They can't live a normal life. And so then I don't know how they even came up with this idea. But they thought, oh, well, why don't we try something completely different? And we'll chuck them in a yoga course for 10 weeks. And we'll see what that does. And the results were crazy. So essentially, the book says that 10 weeks of yoga for people with trauma is a more effective way of healing. And 10 weeks of psychotherapy was the best counselor therapist you could find. And it blew my mind. Because historically, for me, as well, with the mask comes sort of a reluctance to engage in anything still. So I think, oh, if I keep busy enough, if I keep fast enough, maybe I can avoid my own thoughts, like run away from it, probably. The effect of yoga on a body in terms of the nervous system and regulating it is crazy, because people who have experienced trauma in the early days, or whenever really, their body gets stuck in that flight or fight response. And so actually, before you can go to that higher level talking therapy play, you actually just need to regulate your nervous system. Because people may appear that they're engaging in conversation, doing basic daily tasks, but their body's literally saying, threat, threat, threat, threat. And so they're super highly strung. And yeah, I just thought, how interesting. And if you look at it, kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but a completely different triangle altogether. Safety on Maslow's hierarchy is the bottom tier, right? And then you go up and you get to higher level cognitive processing. So we should be looking at trauma the same. So actually, if people don't feel physically safe within themselves, so within their body, but constantly jittery, like looking for threats in the room, we can't expect them to sit in front of us and talk about what happened to them for an hour. Let's work through this in a smart way. And so yeah, the yoga part of this book, I just... So it comes back to those, there are those trauma release exercises. And some of them, we talk about people with trauma who get tremors, that was definitely shell shock, and that from the war, that was a very common manifestation. And actually, how you can undertake exercises that almost force your body to get the shakes or the tremors, or like you say, to be the jittery, because it expends that energy and releases it. And then once the energy is released and people can relax, then cognitively, they're in a better space to be able to receive or be attuned to some healing. But while their body is holding it so tightly, we can't possibly connect with their brain, right? And I think this is also a funny... Well, it's a really good question and talking point as well, because I think in some other cultures, not just mainstream Western ways of managing trauma, they all really acknowledge the body holding the trauma. So you'll see, you know, like Reiki practices, that's a Japanese practice, like, you know, around absorbing energy from the body. But in the Co-op of a Māori worldview, it's around like the midi-midi, the healing properties and that. So I think other cultures really do acknowledge... That physicality. Yeah, but then Western culture is quite... In the head. It's in your head, yeah. And then I think the book, yeah, just moves away from that a little bit and suggesting that when we look at trauma, it has to be a lot more holistic, right? Well, those were great conversations. Thanks so much for these reflective prompts. It'd be great to hear maybe some other thoughts of what people heard about, or what they thought about the book, or hear from them. Great. I love the book, both personally and professionally. From the anecdotal stories in the beginning to kind of the practical application to my social work practice, I thought it was a 3 out of 10 book. The book club is amazing. Although I didn't think it was the type of book, after the very insightful conversation today, I will be reading it. I really enjoyed the author's differentiation between the different formers and how the body holds on to the different stresses from different formers. Book club is amazing. It's a really safe and positive space to share your thoughts and feelings amongst professionals, and you get really young kai. So shout out to both this cafe for hosting us. Ngā mihi. So that's this month's book club book review, The Body Keeps the Score. Please do read it. A great book. Thanks so much for spending time with us, and we'll see you next time around.