Conversations with Carolyn Spring

We're often used to the idea that it's hard to tolerate distressing emotions. But for many of us as trauma survivors, we can be easily triggered by positive emotions too. Good feelings can be strange, novel and frightening. When we've experienced grooming, they can appear to be the prelude to abuse. And they can feel just plain wrong! In this podcast I look at why we can find positive emotions so difficult, and what we can do about it.

Therapy can be, and often is, transformational. But why? I benefitted greatly from the empathy and attunement offered by my therapist, but over time I also had to adjust my expectations about how change would occur in me. I had to learn to consider what's really going on when we feel misattuned-to as well. I needed validation and acceptance, but I also needed to be challenged. Here's the story of how that played out in one particular therapy session, and the question that at first offended, and then transformed me.

Trust is so key for smooth human relationships, but it's also invariably damaged after we have suffered trauma, especially abuse. So how do we learn to build it again? In this episode I talk about how there aren't 'three top tips', but how it's a meticulous process of firstly learning to trust ourselves, to tune into our internal radar, and then to bring our front brain online to assess the data we're presented with – especially when we say 'no' to people.

In this second and final part, I look at the cognitive mindsets and practical approaches I've employed to keep going even when everything in me wants to give up: because 'keeping on keeping on' matters to me, not least because by doing so, things do invariably improve.

There's often nothing we can do to prevent challenging times happening – they're part of life. But when they hit, how do we keep going? In this episode (part 1 of 2), I look at the painfulness of overwhelm of trauma, the heart-cry of which is often 'There's nobody there' and the need for us, in learnable ways, to develop self-compassion.