Lessons - Understanding How Trauma Shapes Our Relationships and Success | Dr. Thema Bryant - Clinical Psychologist & APA President

In this lessons episode, explore how unhealed emotional wounds can silently shape high achievers lives. Learn why emotional disconnection often stems from early trauma. Learn how suppressed feelings can affect relationships and leadership, and learn why true healing blends science, heart, and soul to build both success and personal well-being. It's so interesting because I've always found that we make these decisions with emotions but then we justify them with logic. But for some reason, you try and trick ourselves into thinking that it was just logic the entire time. So first of all, just speak to why we do this and also maybe give some context as to how did your research go in this direction? What was the inflection point that pushed you down this path? Yes, absolutely. So my area of research is actually trauma recovery. So many times people have gone through very difficult experiences whether they were the direct target of the trauma or they love and care about someone who went through a traumatic experience individually or we see like collective trauma as well whether school shootings or a veteran after war. And so many times when people have experienced extreme stress or trauma, they disconnect. And a part of what you disconnect from can be your heart. So when you ask people like, you know, how do you feel about that? Oh, yeah, I don't know. Or like nothing. So they're just kind of numb. So a part of the healing process is reconnecting with yourself, including reconnecting with your heart. And I feel like that's not an easy, it's not an easy thing to prove. If everybody just thought, hey, if I just spend like a little bit more time focusing on myself and focusing on how I feel, but I think there, I think there's something scary there about going and looking inside. Like what actually happens with trauma? Like what's the scientific reason for that disconnect? And you're talking about these really horrible examples of trauma. But I think that most people have some sort of trauma, childhood trauma, things that they haven't dealt with, things that are not as incredibly horrific as school shootings and war, but just things that still impact them. Absolutely. What happens with this? So it becomes really a priority for people to feel safe. And so one way we can feel safe is, you know, when we hear the teenagers say like, I don't care, you tell them there could be a bad consequence. I don't care. And then some of us become adults who still convince ourselves not to care because we don't want to be heard again. We don't want to be disappointed again. So then people think the solution is the illusion of control. And if I try to control everything in my environment and try to control myself, including my emotions, then that feels safe to people, then that can be falsely thought of as strong. You know, that this person is so strong, nothing moves them or nothing phases them. And so the heart has become hardened as a way to feel safe even though we're disconnected from ourselves. And do you feel like this goes counter what is the, what is the, I guess, the legacy or the traditional way to deal with this? Yeah. So, you know, what happens is basically we can't heal a wound that we don't acknowledge. So if I keep saying I'm fine, but I'm actually not fine, I'm just kind of diving into being a workaholic, being a perfectionist, being very driven, but I think I'm fine. Then the negative consequences can show up in the way that I treat myself. So that can be self neglect and self abandonment. It may be the way that I treat people who are close to me because that doesn't feel safe or comfortable. And so the way that I parent can be affected by my unhealed wounds, the way I treat my partner can be an effect of my unaddressed hurts. And so it is important that we start to tell ourselves the truth, that we have been through some things that were disturbing or that were upsetting that had an impact and that we then open ourselves up to being transformed to making a different decision so that my wounds are not running my life. And I think that, so you're saying most people don't even realize that they have these, yeah, especially if as you mentioned, if it was a childhood wound, then people will say, oh, no, that's just my personality, right? Because they develop this armor so early, they don't remember a version of themselves before they were so defended or cold or hard. And so what I say is that's actually not you, that's your wound. You never got to develop a freely flowing you, but you can you can develop that now, even in adulthood, we can develop it. And then when this when they don't heal these wounds, for the average person listening to this, who is a high performer in their work or in their business or just in life, they just want to kill it at everything, do incredible. How do these wounds manifest? Because I think that part of you teach so much in terms of healing with yourself with others, but nobody can heal if they don't even recognize to your point that they have a problem. So how do these things show up in your day to day? Yeah, you may be financially successful, resume, incredible, but my question would be, how are you in the middle of the night by yourself? Right? Because many of us can outwardly perform that that's our way of coping is to stay busy. But as you were alluding to for some people, it's scary to be still and let truth show up. So that's why some of us are workaholics. You know, you want to be so busy because you're either running in pursuit of self-worth or running from the stigma and shame of your past. And so for you to actually be well, not just look good on paper, this is what we're talking about tending to your heart. And it also can affect the way you show up in the workplace. We've all had that supervisor or boss who was very controlling, very dismissive, very dishonoring. They were not well. They're on top of this business mountain, but they're not a well person. And so many times we set it up as an either or we say, do you want to be a successful person or do you want to be a well person? And it's not that's a false choice. You can be both, but you have to invest in both, right? So we've invested in the business part. Have you invested in the inner part? Yeah, because I think that I'm just thinking about some of my friends that have been like ridiculously successful from a financial standpoint. And you know, they they have their exit or they build their business and then the relationship with the kids isn't great or they divorce their wife or they they and then they you see these crazy stories. Absolutely crazy stories of people that have had like $100 million exit then they're depressed. Yes. And they can't figure out why. And it and they can't say that because everyone's going to be like, well, right, I'm going to have to see the same thing happen with lottery winners, right? Where people thought like if you made this amount that that's guaranteed happiness and people, you know, can live in a mansion and be miserable, miserable. You blend, you blend heart and you blend this or how do I say this? Like you blend the heart and you blend science and then you blend soul all into this healing formula. Why is it important to bridge these gaps? Like traditionally, I mean, you were you were a president of the APA, which was just phenomenal. Does traditional textbook APA say that you blend science and soul and heart into healing somebody or is this a sort of a new novel idea? So one of the beautiful things, trend that's happening in psychology is an increased attention to our spirituality or faith or religion, which returns psychology to its roots that it's not just about your cognitions, but to really think about ourselves holistically. So your thoughts, your emotions, your behavior, your sense of what is sacred to you, your relationships and community. So it's an important part and we have, you know, well-established research of these things as what we will call protective factors that when you go through the difficulties of life, the stress of life, having a sense of what's sacred to you and or having community, those things can protect us and help us to deal with life challenges. Okay, so that makes sense. So you do have to account for all the factors that impact your data. Like you can't heal yourself fully by saying, I'm going to, I'm going to logic myself into doing some inner work and some internals and some internal searching, but I'm going to remove the emotions out of it. I'm going to remove the spirituality out of it, which I think that's what people tend to do. People that are high performing logical people, like how do I fix everything with a solution or a template or a playbook, and you're saying that's the wrong attitude to go into any of this. Yeah, you want to say, I'm not going to ignore or censor parts of myself. I want to be fully grounded in truth. As I always say, you know, to ourselves, what parts of you do you miss? What parts of you were you taught to suppress or to ignore? That in order to be successful, I can't be connected to feelings or in order to be successful. I can't have relationships. So there are these false notions that we've been given and that we then go and teach the people after us. You know, some people who were mentored to believe that these things were true. And yet maybe the person who mentoring them still has some brokenness or has some aspects of their life that are unfulfilled.