262: How to Heal Trauma

262: How To Heal Trauma

I want to talk about trauma today. I've talked about trauma a few times on this podcast, and I haven't talked about my story about trauma in a long time. Also, the significant changes in the ways I view trauma in the last six months. I want to talk about how you can clear trauma without reliving the traumatic event or being in insignificant pain for a long time. 

This episode is a lot about healing trauma. I'm going to share a little bit about my story and then share some other things too. If you are new here and you don't know my story and you don't know who, welcome to my podcast. Thanks for listening in. To begin with, I found my daughter after she died, and it was unexpected. It was sudden and it felt like in one moment my mind just snapped. That's kind of how I described it. Like something just broke in my mind. Before Aria died, I felt pretty stable, but now when I think of it more, there are things that brought more anxiety than I had before. 

I was completely unhinged. I felt like I couldn't trust myself. I couldn't trust my mind. I couldn't trust my body. I didn't know what was true or false. I didn't know when to worry about something or not worry about something. I had panic attacks on the regular eye. Relieved Aria’s death over and over and over in my mind. But not only in my mind but with my other kids. I relived that with them thinking they died too. It's just terrible that my body reacted to things without my consent. I describe it like my heart would just start pounding and I'd start breathing fast and it had no control over this. I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's going on. 

I started avoiding things, and that was it. That was the thing why I knew I had PTSD. I was avoiding things that I felt guilty about. Avoiding but I literally could not control myself and avoid them. It was so terrifying. The sensations in my body just got to be too extreme and I lived with this massive stress ball in my chest, and it was so awful. I told people that it was slowly killing me. With this ball in my chest, I was constantly on edge. Jump at loud noises. I remember thinking about how you still love to do roller coasters and things that were kind of adrenaline pumping or fun, exciting things and I was like- I have lived enough excitement in my life, more adrenaline than I've ever needed to live in my life. I do not need any excitement. I don't need to ever experience anything like that again. That's kind of what I thought at that time because my body was in a constant state of stress. I did not need any more. Going on it, literally, was so stressful. Everything was just kind of falling apart in my life and my body just getting sick. 

It's just terrible not sleeping with this other memory that's coming to my mind right now. That may be what I've shared before on this podcast. like I had to check on my kids from my mom and dad's house to our house. It was about 1/2 an hour driving, and I had to check on them. We had to pull over and turn on the light about every 2 minutes, maybe 5 minutes because I had to make sure that they were all still alive. This, literally, it's a horrible way to live. It is awful when I think about that time I'm like I can't believe it. 

I love that I can't believe I lived in such terror and fear and worry and anxiety and I even got to know how I functioned at all. I'm pretty proud of myself that I functioned on some level. It is not a way to live and be on this side of things where I am now. It is absolutely not a way to live. So if this resonates with you or sounds familiar to you at all, I want to first tell you that you're not alone. You're not alone in experiencing this or if you've been experiencing this but also I want you to know that this can absolutely be healed. Trauma is not something you have to just learn to live with or just find the tools to cope with it. No matter what tools you find to cope, your coping body is still under a huge state of stress. 

This example that I heard recently was like, say you're finding ways to cope- say in a car. You go out in your car and you push the gas pedal, that's your way of coping. Then your feet are on the brakes and constantly you're slamming the brakes and slamming the gas pedal at the same time. That car is not going to last very long. For you, it's just so stressful on your body. I noticed that I started to get sick and I started to have so many things happen that just felt really crazy. I felt crazy. I thought I was going crazy and when I learned that I possibly had trauma or PTSD, I read about it. I was like- OK I have a name for this thing. I'm gonna want to heal this. I'm gonna do whatever it can, whatever I can do, whatever it takes because I don't want to live like this the rest of my life. I can't even fathom living like this. 

I want to clarify because trauma and grief can kind of get blended together. Because when your child dies, it's very traumatic. I do believe a lot of moms who have experienced their child dying have trauma. But trauma and grief are not the same thing and I kind of think that grief is what we or you know learn to carry. Everything inside of curvy moms has enough. Like processing their emotions, learning how to feel the emotions like flowing with them but then there's things like anxiety and panic attacks and not sleeping and so many other things that just they're. They're part of trauma in other parts of it that you don't have to live with. 

Grief is something we learn to carry and learn to live. Live within a sense I'm making, gets so much fluid lighter when you learn to flow with it and flow with the emotions. But then this side of the trauma part of it, this is something I don't even try to learn to live with. It’s because it's not something you have to learn to live with, it can be healed and cleared and it's not something you need to continue to live with. 

So I went on a mission and I wanted to heal this. I was very intent on it. I wanted to feel like I could be the mom again. That feeling like I know it's pretty terrifying or a helpless feeling to feel like you can never be with your kids by yourself. For any time my husband would go, say he had a job at that point, and go on a work trip. It's like- Oh my gosh what am I gonna do? I can't be with these kids by myself. -that kind of stuff. It's just it's really a helpless feeling and I wanted to feel like I got this. I can take care of my kids, it's not a big deal. 

This led me to EMDR (Eye Movement and Desensitization and Reprocessing) which absolutely changed my life and this was the first time I experienced that trauma can be healed. It was a lot of work. I went to therapy twice a week for a year. Very intense emotional sessions and in the middle of every session I'd be thinking that I just hate this. I don't want to be here, I don't like this. But every single session I left with, I have hope. I'm so grateful I'm doing this. I felt really good. My therapist was really amazing. I think he did a great job and I was really really grateful for that anyway. I did heal a lot of my trauma with that. 

I do think there are many ways to heal trauma and that is a route to heal. I do have a soft spot for trauma or a tender spot for me because I've experienced it and I know how horrific it is and I know how horrific it is to live with after your child dies. 

Grief is one thing and trauma is another and experiencing both at the same time, it's just horrific. It's so awful. I feel like I can't even put into words how horrible it is. I have known for a long time that I've wanted to help others who live with trauma to live without it. 

It hasn't been something I've felt I was called to do to go get training for EMDR. But this past I've been talking about rapid resolution therapy a lot on this podcast. This past February I came across it and I found it to be significantly amazing for anxiety to the point where I just don't have anxiety. I haven't had it since February. I've had it here and there for different reasons but my kids are absolutely not anxious. I'm not anxious, which is just a really weird feeling for me but I am very happy with it. 

As I've been trained in rapid resolution therapy, I've seen over and over and over again how quickly trauma can be healed even just in a single session or within a few sessions how painless it is, and how more uplifting it is. I know this sounds crazy, but I had someone else when I was kind of talking about this type of therapy that I was very excited about and she got really emotional about it. 

I spent years here healing myself and healing my trauma and doing so much work and you're telling me that there's this thing that could heal my trauma in just a few sessions? What about all that work I did? You're thinking this too because I guess for me, I get kind of taken aback because - yes, of course, you did all that work. All that work that you've done is not all for nothing. It's gotten you to where you are today and I have spent years or all year I guess, I should say. It was very intense work to get to where I am today and to find something that can help others in such a short amount of time so others don't have to go to therapy for years and years doing EMDR and reliving horrific things on the worst day of your life. This is incredible, it's amazing. I've watched and I don't even know how many sessions now, where trauma is healed. 

I want to talk about my perspective now on trauma how I think about trauma and why trauma can be healed so quickly. This is the way I think about it and if you can just think with me this time while we're talking about it. Think about it this way with me and let's see what you think about it. If you think of your mind as always scanning for information, you're unconscious. Mind the part you don't even realize it. Its number one prime directive is to keep you alive to have you survive. It's to survive and then possibly thrive after that. Survival is absolutely just the number one thing and it's constantly scanning for information and data and bringing in things that are threats. Noticing those threats and when something is a threat or becomes a threat, it gets bigger in our mind because the mind wants us to pay attention to it. It makes it bigger because it's dangerous and scary. This is a problem, pay attention to it. Sometimes, things that come in as information that comes in, data that comes in, can get way enlarged and sticky and really huge because it was something that could have been disturbing or painful or sudden. Whatever our mind perceived as disturbing, it enlarged this. 

If you think of a little tube, where information comes into mind. The mind processes it through the data processor spot and within that processing spot, it processes it and then it goes through this tube and it goes into the brain like memory. I remember I brushed my teeth this morning. The data of brushing my teeth came in, I went through the tube and went into memory. I can remember I have zero meaning attached to it. I have no emotional attachment to it, it just went fine. It was just like that's a memory I can look back on. So that is how a lot of memories are that can just go into file storage. 

But when something is traumatic and is perceived or thought or felt as disturbing, that event or that moment can get blown up in the mind. Instead of this little Pebble going through this little tube, it's this massive sticky marshmallow trying to shove a massive sticky marshmallow through a little tube that fits a little Pebble. it's not going anywhere. it's not going in there because it is so big and sticky. It's this sticky marshmallow that is stuck where the mind is reading something is happening right now. My mind just continues to read this data and information over and over and over again so my mind is constantly thinking that there's a threat again. This is happening again. it's not even something you can control and that's what's so terrifying about trauma. 

I would try to use prayer and just be like- OK, I'm just going to let my child go to sleep and I'm going to not worry about them. I'm going to put them in God's hands and not worry about it. Literally, I felt like there was nothing I could do but pop up in an absolute panic probably 2 minutes later checking on my baby and making sure she was breathing. Like it was not in my control, I just reacted and responded and so all of this is happening where you don't have any control over it. It's all like subconscious, it's all where you can't make a change from this place. When all of this massive goofy marshmallow is there, it can't go in no matter how hard you try. It can't go into the past, it can't go into memory. It's just stuck in that present moment. 

With rapid-resolution therapy, we shrink that marshmallow so it can go through that tube and go into memory. If you think of it too much, the mind is reading like a snapshot so it sees this photograph of an event that happened and the mind just keeps seeing this like that picture is just there in your mind and it keeps happening again and again. Even though it technically is a past event, not something that's happening now your mind doesn't know that. There hasn't been that communication to mind to understand that it is not happening right now. It doesn't exist, It's not happening. With this type of communication, we communicate fully to our conscious mind and our unconscious mind that the event is no longer happening. Bringing and shrinking that marshmallow, putting it through into storage. So that you can look back at the memory, you can see that it happened. You can notice that it happened, you can know it happened but you're not living the memory as if it's happening now. As if it just happened or if it's about to happen. I would say for sure this is my story where I do not worry about my kids dying in their sleep. Actually, I just shared it on Instagram, so I'll share it here now. Justin, my husband, just left this morning on a trip and he is gone for a few nights. I'm by myself in the middle of Montana somewhere with all of my kids. This absolutely would never have happened in the beginning because there's no way I would not have been able to be by myself. And I am now by myself with seven kids and it is not even a problem. I don't even think about it. It doesn't even concern me in the slightest and I can remember that Aria died. I know that memory is not erased from my mind. I can clearly if I wanted to go walk through that memory, but that memory is not something that I'm reliving or playing over and over in my head or even with my other kids.

A friend just reminded me of when I watched Freeland when we went on a ladies’ trip and I'm like yeah so we went on a ladies’ trip a couple of months after Aria died, maybe six months and I had a baby four weeks after Aria died. So she came with me and this friend was so kind to watch her or sleep with her in the room overnight because I could not do that. I had to ask people to watch my babies if I was somewhere else. I literally could not be with them. I could not be with her overnight. It's just crazy. I wanted to share that healing trauma is absolutely possible and that's like for me, it's huge. I'm marveling at the fact that I can sit here by myself now and it's not even a problem. 

I'm wondering if there were other things I wanted to talk about. Part of it is from the rapid resolution therapy perspective. It's pretty much that and then the other part of it is in rapid resolution therapy, we harvest the energy from that memory and put it towards where you want to go. It's not only just taking that energy from that memory so that memory can go into the past and then the memory can be a memory rather than an ever-present, ever-happening event but it also can become fuel for where you want to go in your life and what you're looking for. 

I just want to share a little bit about this because it's a really painless process. It's effective and quick and you really don't have to do anything. You just show up. You sit there and listen to whoever you're doing this with. If you do it with me, they would listen to me talk and I'd be walking you through things but it can be scary if you've gone to therapy. For trauma, you might have experienced something called retraumatization where the way they're trying to get you to clear the trauma is by having you relive the experience. A lot of people are terrified of getting any help from trauma because they don't want to relive that again. What I've been so impressed by is it's so painless and you don't have to relive anything in order to clear it. 

Working with another mom, it was super fascinating how we cleared other traumatic events in her life that were not even related to her child's death. How the trauma around her child's death also cleared because we cleared things that were not related but they were traumatic as well. This way of doing it like the mind is so amazing that it will just automatically move that to the other things too. You don't even have to talk about your child's death at all. It does not even have to be a thing we discuss. It's just so fascinating to me. I can hear, maybe, skepticism of it because I'm like six months in of facilitating it and doing it and seeing amazing results and every single time I'm still just amazed. I'm so excited about it and I love giving this gift to other moms so that you can be free of the trauma that you're suffering with. I know how hard it is to live every day with it.

I have a free 101-call session that I'm offering right now. Again, everything I offer is not guaranteed to last forever. They changed things up a lot so if you want to get one of these free one-on-one calls, I am offering this to clear trauma that has made you feel crazy and is slowly destroying you. It's a completely free call. 

I have the reason this came about is because I've often thought that with my business, someday I want to do a nonprofit of some sort. Though I don't really want to do a nonprofit, I want to do something in some way to help women heal trauma. Because it is so horrific to live with and I was like- hey you know what I could do that right now. I could offer those free one-on-one calls and assist moms in clearing that trauma. That's where this idea came out and I just want to assist you and help you and show you how amazing this is too. You don't need to spend years in therapy. You don't need to spend years reliving it.

Something you can expect in this free one-on-one call together is we will not relive those memories. You don't have to just go back and relive those horrific moments in your life, you also do not need to share every part of your story. Some people can get nervous to come and be like- oh, I have to share the most intimate details of my life and it's actually not true. You only have to share with me what you think I need to know or what is relevant for me to know for what we're doing. When you come, I do most of the talking which is really different and weird compared to therapy but it is really incredible and really effective. It is far different than any therapy you have ever experienced. I can promise you that if you've been in therapy before, this is going to be amazing. It is not a painful process, it's mostly light and it can be emotional but not painful. 

I just want you to know that you do not need to have years of therapy and sessions to heal the trauma you're suffering with. We can make a very big significant difference with just this one call. I'm not going to promise it's going to be completely gone in one call, but a huge significant difference where you can be like- wow that was amazing and so worth my time to do this one-on-one free call. 

I wanted to just share a little bit about my story and then also I thought that I could still recommend EMDR. I don't put it down because I think it's amazing and it was amazing for me. If you could heal trauma in three sessions or in a full year of twice-a-week therapy sessions, which one would you choose? If I had known that there was another option like this, I didn't want to heal the trauma as quickly as possible. Maybe you're thinking, well no you can't heal anything quickly. Grief has not healed quickly or you don't process their grief quickly but trauma absolutely can be because it's different than grief. They're two different things and trauma is actually not even emotional. It's a survival mechanism that gets stuck in the mind so your body is working exactly how it's supposed to. It is clear that in your mind, everything just continues to flow and that memory can finally go into a memory. 

If you are living with trauma, my heart goes out to you. I want to give you a giant great big hug because it's horrible. Come do this free 101 call that's all I can say. There are absolutely no strings attached to it. If you want to continue to work with me after that, you can feel free to. I do want to do these calls for you and there's no pressure at all to do anything else. I really want more moms to experience what it's like to live trauma-free because I'm so grateful every day. I can't believe I can feel so calm in my body. I can go to sleep and I don't have to worry about my kids. I don't at all and it's just amazing and a huge gift. 

And I would love to give that gift to you. You can go to https://www.meganhillukka.com/ clear trauma Tuesdays. I'll put the link in the show notes as well or just go to www.meganhillukka.com and find the button that says work with me and you'll find it there as well. Again, I don't know how long I'm going to be doing these free one-on-one calls so if you want to do one, I would Sign up today, and let’s get started on that. 

That's all I have for today, I will see you next week. Take care, my friend.

Have you felt anxiety after your child died?

The racing mind, unable to sleep, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, unable to breathe, panicky kind of anxiety, whole body riddled with anxiety?

Watch my free video on anxiety and grief below!

So that you can think clearly, feel calm in your body, and live your life without the chains of anxiety.