Transcending Trauma Through Understanding and Self-Compassion

People tend to think that trauma is what happened to them. They tend to think that it's an incident. It's an experience, something they went through that was hard. That is not what trauma is. That is a trauma exposure. That is something that happened to you. What trauma actually is is the wound on the inside of a person that you can't see, except for when they do brain scans. But we don't always do brain scans of ourselves, do we Right? How we recognize it is through the sight of it.

Hey there, welcome to the Grace Health Podcast, your source for aging strong in your physical, mental and spiritual health. My name is Amy Kahnel. I'm a weight neutral certified personal trainer and nutrition coach who loves walks with friends, chocolate and Jesus. Whether you're looking to grow stronger as you age, nourish your body, mind and spirit, or fit all the pieces of your health together to holistically thrive, this is the place for women over 40. I'm here to guide you in the areas I can, and bring on experts in the areas I'm still learning, and I do still learn a lot. So, and of course, we cover it all in a whole lot of Grace. One of the words I know I've heard a lot more about in the last several years is the word trauma. This can come across in many, many ways, but we cannot ignore its impact, not only on our mental health, but also on our body. Author Danielle Bernock is here today to share her experience with the side effects of trauma and understand how unresolved trauma may show up in our body. Danielle's book Emerging with Wings and Heal your Childhood Self are resources as well If you recognize some of the signs of trauma or this sparks something in you. And of course, of course, I encourage you to enlist the help of a professional if you need more, if there is more down in there that needs to be addressed. Let me tell you a bit more about Danielle Bernock before we bring her on. She is a multiple childhood trauma survivor who turned her pain into purpose as an international award-winning author, dynamic speaker and host of the Victorious Souls podcast, a trauma-informed, faith-based self-love coach and founder of 4F Media. She came to Jesus as a child, but trauma made a mess of it. Steeped in pain and without support, her life spiraled out of control. But God understood her pain, pursued her with His love, bringing her back to Himself and healing her heart. Thank you, jesus, for that. He has commissioned her to share the love she's come to know and empower others to embrace their God-given greatness. And, by the way, have you gotten the free download I created just for you, called 30 Non-Gym Ways to Improve your Health for Women Over 40? Yes, this is specifically for you, and these are all research-backed, yet simple ways you can try. I like to say this is a menu, not a prescription. So if you haven't grabbed the download, go get it and see what on there looks interesting to you and then apply them in your own life to help your holistic self-thrive. The link is in the show notes or you can just go to gracedhealthcom, super simple. Okay, let's bring on Danielle, danielle, welcome.

Thank you for having me today, Amy. I'm really excited to get into this.

I am too, and what a testimony just in the bio. I can't wait to learn more. Okay, so you've had a lot. I have to imagine we could take this whole time with you sharing more about your story, but I'm hoping some of it will kind of come out in these questions. I know you have a passion for educating people about trauma and their health, and so I would love for you to tell us where that stems from and tell us the connection between those two.

I learned about trauma through my healing process. I wasn't familiar with trauma what it is, and I have since learned most people don't. They have a misconception of what trauma is. I have been conducting trauma-informed self-workshops this year to help educate people of what trauma actually is, and when I first started doing Facebook Lives about this, I came out real strong and I felt very self-conscious at the time. But I don't anymore because it is shocking to some people when I say this Trauma kills people. Yeah, trauma kills people. People dismiss it, they diminish it, they discount it, they don't recognize it and it kills them. There are so many side effects to trauma that people do not know it can hide. People can be traumatized and not even know it. People can be traumatized and pretend they don't know it. But there's a book by Vanderkoek called the Body Keeps the Score and it is true. I teach people how trauma is trapped in the body, in the brain, in the body, in the spirit and in the soul. It is an involuntary wound. People tend to think that trauma is what happened to them. They tend to think that it's an incident, it's an experience, something they went through that was hard. That is not what trauma is. That is a trauma exposure. That is something that happened to you. What trauma actually is is the wound on the inside of a person that you can't see, except for when they do brain scans. But we don't always do brain scans of ourselves, do we Right? How we recognize it is through the side effects. There are a host of side effects. Some are emotional, some are mental, some are physical in the body, some are relational. They manifest in a whole host of ways and one of the things that is a little telltale side with many people it was a part of my story is a thing called mumps. It's called medically unexplained physical symptoms. You go to the doctor. You have this complaint. They say there's nothing wrong with you. Go home, you're making it all up, it's all in your head. No, you're not making it up, it's not all in your head. Many people have been called hypochondriacs, which are suffering from trauma. They don't have something that shows up on tests because it's the body somatizing the pain. Trauma causes cardiac problems, lung problems, skin problems, hair loss, emotional problems, eating disorders, like we talked about on the front end here, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue. Many of the things that they don't know how they started or what to do about them are actually caused by trauma. Not everything is caused by trauma. I'm not going to say trauma is the problem of everything be careful to say that, and I'm not a doctor either but it is an epidemic that is ravaging people's bodies and minds and relationships. And if they refuse to address it which many people do because the word trauma is a stigma to many people it's too big and scary. They think it's something other than what they did, something other than whatever happened to them. It's war, it's earthquake, it's the fires in Maui, it's whatever isn't happening to them. But trauma is that invisible wound on the inside, and no one is exempt from becoming traumatized. You can do things to make yourself stronger so you're less apt to be traumatized. But in one of my books Because you Matter I interviewed a gentleman named John and I use him as an example because if anyone was impervious to trauma, it would have been John. John went to a special school to learn how to be all tough and strong, and they push you beyond your ability to do things. He was in the military. He's a trauma counselor. He goes on site at hurricanes and national disasters. He's highly trained, yet he found himself suffering PTSD because of something that happened to his brother. No one's impervious. Yet people have a tendency to think that if you have trauma, that means you're weak. That's a lie.

You brought up a lot of things here that I kind of want to circle back to. You very quickly went through some of those side effects from trauma. I'm wondering if you can kind of either repeat them or give us a little bit more understanding into some of those, because I know it's very broad, but at the same time I want people to be able to put some pieces together for themselves. I mean, so talk some more about that.

Well, I did not list all of them. There are way more side effects than those. I have an assessment I give away at my website, where people can identify how much of that is presenting itself in your life by behaviors or symptoms, various things like that. Okay, but one of the biggest, I would say, most common that I think, or I experienced myself and when I look back in my life before I dealt with it, one of my primary side effects of trauma was I had gastrointestinal issues. My mother took me to the emergency room I don't know how many times where I was in so much pain I could not, I couldn't uncurl, I was curled up in a little ball and you know they'd like carry me to the car. We go to the emergency room and then they send me home telling me there's nothing wrong with me or you just have gas and I didn't have gas and what was wrong with me is I was suffering trauma. But that was not a part of our vocabulary and doctors aren't even trained to be Emotionally trauma informed. When doctors are trained about trauma, it's about, you know, trauma to the body, where you know they were in a car accident, their arm came off or whatever. That kind of trauma, not the internal trauma, right. So that is a very primary one. Many people suffer from gastrointestinal issues. It's my advice to people would be trauma is not the answer to everything. But if you have gone in different ways to try and remedy various different medical issues you might have and you're getting nowhere, consider the possibility that you have trauma in your life, even if you don't know what it is, and reach for answers. That that's how I healed was I didn't know what was wrong with me, I just knew I was miserable and I want to stop being miserable. Stop being miserable. And so if you're ready to stop being miserable, you have to fight for your own wellness and you have to be willing to do whatever work it requires, because it's not magical to heal right. It takes a lot of hard work and courage.

Oh yeah totally courage.

that's the one thing my counselor said to me when we were we were done and she told me I didn't need her anymore. She said I was a textbook success story and I'm like why? And she immediately responded with the word courage yeah. I was courageous to face things. I was courageous to do what she told me to do, because it takes courage. So I need to bring that up. You need to have courage, but don't do it alone. No one has to do it alone. Whether you get a counselor or a coach or you get some sort of Resource that you're doing it with, you're not all by yourself. You're learning from the expertise of others. Even if it's just a book or a recording or a podcaster something Someone will go with you on the journey that's so true.

That's a really great point. You mentioned something about becoming stronger to be less apt to trauma. What are some things that we can do to become stronger?

Well, the primary thing is self-care, but then you can get more specific about that. Many people don't want to do self-care. They've been trained and taught and programmed in their mind that self-care is self-centered, it's frivolous, it's, you know, getting your nails done or something very ineffective, just very superficial. But self-care is about taking proper care of the person, who you are, on your inside, your mind, your will, your emotions, your body. Because we need to love ourselves, because if we love ourselves, then we will start to see the value in ourselves and we take care of things that we see that are valuable. You know, we think our car is valuable, so we take care of it generally more when it's brand new. But still you know we take care of things that we deem to be valuable. So we have to see the value in our self, and self-care is how we demonstrate that we have value in our self. And two ways that I share in one of my workshops about doing self-care is mind management and building up resilience. Mind management is about you know, when you go to a restaurant or a store, there's a manager, right, Right. And when you have a problem, you, like I, want to talk to the manager and you're going to complain to the manager because he's the boss or she's the boss, they're the one who has the power to do something. Well, if we will do mind management, we need to look at ourselves as the manager of our mind and take our complaints to our self and think about what are you thinking about? Have you ever stopped to think about what you're thinking about, or do you let your mind just wander all over the place? Because an unruly mind makes room for a lot of unruly happenings.

And that reminds me too of that Bible verse. You know, take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ, because we've got to recognize that. And then the ones that are not beneficial, the ones that are not, you know where God wants us not to say that he doesn't want us having harm. I mean we will have trouble, right. But at the same time, if the thoughts, if the mind is not productive, then I think that's a good reminder too to take captive. And I want to go back to something. When you're talking about self-care, you know, I think too sometimes as Christ followers, that can feel almost antithetical, because we are so raised to serve others, love others, serve others, take care of other people, show the good works you know, or show the goodness of Jesus through your actions. And it can be very challenging to love others as yourself.

Exactly that's why it's important to love yourself, because he said to love others as you love yourself, and if you don't love yourself, you will not love others. Well, and this whole self needs to be taught in the church better. It's one of my focuses, my process. I take my clients, my students through as self. It's an acronym C expose, love and free, and it's powerful. I went through training and teaching in Christ erroneously to try and destroy myself. You know, I'm supposed to die to self. You're supposed to obliterate self. You're supposed to kill the self. You're supposed to crucify the self To a point, with the trauma in there, together I was suicidal and I know that was wrong. But then I was supposed to try and kill myself. But then that wrong. But then it confused me to know and I wrote about it in my first book how the Lord brought me out of that. Ourself is our soul. That's who we came to save. Ourself is the seat of our choice and that's the primary gift he gave us from the beginning in the garden. Adam and Eve. What did he give them? A choice. He didn't hide the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He didn't say, oh, I need to make sure they're stuck on me before I give them this choice. No, he put choice front and center. Choice is front and center and our choice comes out of our self. So we need to know who our self is. When we suffer trauma, we lose a sense of self. We lose a sense of our identity. And when someone who's traumatized comes into the church, sometimes they just throw a bunch of scriptures at you, you know, lay hands on you and expect you to just be fine. Well, it doesn't work that way. There's work you have to do. There is reprogramming that has to be done. There is healing on the inside that has to take place. It's a lot of work and I have a friend who released a book recently to help churches with this, also called Trauma in the Puse I think I've heard about that and it's not about trauma happening at church. It's about the traumatized people who are in the church and how spiritual disciplines are messing them up because they're not trauma-informed.

Yeah, and I think too, it's a both and situation as well. I mean, we've got to take care of ourself and lean into the word that God gave us with all of that, but one is one will not be effective without the other. I think it's what you're doing.

We actually love ourself.

Yeah.

Creator.

Right.

Because if we love ourself, love does two things it shows value and it does what is best for the person. It's in their best interest. So, if you love yourself, you're going to see your value and you're going to want what's in your best interest, which is connecting with your Creator and being transformed into the image of Christ.

Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned a second ago that one of the ways that trauma showed up for you is with eating disorders. I was wondering if, in as much as you're comfortable, if you would mind sharing a little bit about that part of your story and tell us how that related to trauma and maybe how you identified that it was related to trauma. And so I would just love to hear if you don't mind sharing some more of your story about that.

My eating disorder began as somewhat kind of anorexia but then quickly turned into bulimia, as was my eating disorder, and it came from two things. It came from a bad body image. I had a bad body image which came from trauma, but then also the trauma and losing my sense of self, and I was in so much pain and I hated myself and I attacked myself. And eating disorders were both a way to try and be skinny because no matter how skinny I was, I was always too fat and to torment myself. It was a way to hurt myself. I was trying to hurt myself.

Did you recognize that at the time that you were trying to hurt yourself?

No, I had no idea of self-awareness.

Okay, okay, I'm sorry to interrupt. Go on.

No, I was still growing up at that time, I was still a kid when that happened and I did drugs and stuff all the same time. I was involved in a lot of very harmful behaviors, trying to destroy myself. But then the Lord apprehended me and he had to bring me out of that. It was a long, long messy journey because of the lack of trauma informness I had in my journey going through it. That's what I want to help people with, so they don't have to struggle quite as much because they can have the information to connect the dots and to call it trauma. We need to not be afraid of the word trauma because there's no proper shame in it. People will feel shame, but the shame does not belong there. I don't want to deny that it's there, but it has no right to be there because there's no shame that we deserve from trauma. No one is to blame for their trauma. It's an involuntary wound and children blame themselves for their trauma. It's an automatic thing that they do.

I really like how you said no one is to blame, or you're not, at least in your own self in trauma, because I think the natural instinct for a lot of people is to go back well, what should I have done differently? What did I do wrong? What did I do to create this? You know something like that, and so I thank you for that. I guess the grace in that I'm not really sure what the right word is, but that's a really great point. I'm wondering if someone is listening and maybe is thinking, huh, I'm wondering if this might be part of my story, or maybe she recognizes some of herself in your story. What would you recommend that they do next? Because the last thing we want to do is just leave someone hanging with the realization that, oh, maybe this trauma has impacted me a lot more than I think.

I would suggest someone to get a copy of my first book, emerging with Wings, because I really it's written like a love story. It's my story. It's got a hero, a villain and the person overcoming but it really unpacks how the trauma occurred, what trauma is and how I healed the whole journey of that and help people to recognize oh, that's trauma. Because I dismissed my trauma for a long time because it wasn't as bad as so, and so is it because I was measuring it. I have a quote that's gone viral out there from that book that starts with trauma is personal. That was such an epiphany to me. We as humans compare ourselves all the time, but comparison is poisonous. There's always a winner and always a loser and if we're comparing we're not dealing with ourselves. We need to own our own life. You know I can't own someone else's trauma. I don't want to. But when we compare that we're doing ourselves a disservice. So I would suggest to get a copy of my book. It would unveil so many things about trauma and about grace too. I have religious trauma in my background as part of my pile of trauma that I had and my epiphany of coming to know grace. Your podcast is Grace's Help. I didn't know grace for a long time and in my book I unveil how I came to know grace as well and the struggles with it, and I think it would be quite fruitful for someone struggling.

Got it, got it. Thank you for that. You know, when you were talking about comparing the trauma and all of that, I think that's another thing that a lot of us will do is like, well, it's not as bad as that, so I'm not going to. It's not as bad as this person, and I think I learned this first, and I don't know if she coined the term, but from Brene Brown, calling it comparative suffering, and I don't. I don't know where the origins come from, but I think that that's so true. Like we, we can't just because someone else may have it worse doesn't mean it's not difficult for us.

Right, and there is a whole school of teaching out there. I was raised with it. Well, it could be worse, right, so that means yours is nothing. That's not true. So true, I try to bring illustrations for people to really understand. So let's say you know, I broke my finger and you broke your arm. Well, you broke your arm, it's worse. So I'm not going to the doctor, what I'm going to? Just leave my finger and not tend to it. But we do that emotionally all the time. But if we look at our body, we wouldn't do things with our body that we do to our self emotionally, right?

Yeah, great point, great point. Okay, one of the things that I saw that you described yourself as, when I was kind of preparing for this, was the lady on the internet who loves you. Where did this come from? Tell us about this.

Yes, that lady on the internet who loves you. It started a little bit before the pandemic. I was getting into doing live videos on Facebook more, getting more comfortable with video and being in front of people and I wanted people to know they're loved. But I was still green at doing all these things so I started kind of like dodging around a little bit. I'm that lady who wants to say she loves you and kind of dancing around it from the beginning. But then once we started hearing about the pandemic and the spirit of fear that came over the world was tangible. I lived a fear based life for a long time. I lived feeling unloved for a long time. I don't want anyone to live like that. I started showing up saying I'm here to, I love you, and just going into it more and more. And it's just I. One day I just I owned it. I just owned it. I am that lady on the internet who loves you. You think I can't love you because I don't know you. People hate people for no reason. I can love you just because I choose to love you. I know what it's like to be unloved. I know it's like to suffer fear all the time and I'm going to love you If no one else loves you. I'm going to show up to tell you that I love you because you are worthy of love.

Amen, that's so good. That's a great way to end with those questions. I do have a few questions I ask all my guests, though I love learning about people's tattoos. I don't have any, but I have found that when someone chooses to put a tattoo on their body, they often have a meaning behind it. So I was wondering, if you have any, if you would mind sharing what that, what it is, and, if not, but you and if you had to get one, what would it be and where would it go?

Yes, I have a tattoo. I have one. I'm supposed to be getting another one. My daughter and I want to get one the same to share, but time happens, we get distracted and we haven't agreed on it. The pandemic happened, so we'll see if that actually does happen. But yes, I have one tattoo. I designed it myself. I had wanted a tattoo for a very long time. My kids both have tattoos. After I got over the whole thing that people said it was against God to get a tattoo because they cite things in the Old Testament, I learned from my kids. I learned a lot of great things from my kids and I wanted to get a tattoo. But to me, a tattoo is permanent, so it needed to be very meaningful and it was during my five year part of my life that I lived in Arizona very life-changing part of my life that I got the tattoo and it's something that I designed earlier in my walk with the Lord. It's a heart that has a H, I and an S, so it spells out his, and it has a signature underneath it of Jesus. I have it on my shoulder. I wore the shirt just so I could show you if you want to distance. Yeah.

Oh, that's gorgeous, Super cool. Thank you for sharing that.

I was prepared for that one because it meant a lot to me to do that and I have that opportunity for people to see that when I'm out, yeah, and maybe it will speak to people. But what I thought about is it's like I feel I'm branded. I branded my body, I belong, I belong to Jesus there you go.

You never know, you might get it.

Originally the H I stood for holy inside.

Holy inside. That's beautiful. You might get a really nosy person like me asking about it someday. So, speaking of Jesus, do you have a meaningful Bible verse that you would like to share?

Oh, I have so many of them, but I did pick one. Okay, I picked first John 419. We love because he loved us first. One of the things I teach on and share in all the places I go is I talk about love lives in a circle. Love lives in a circle. God is love. The Bible says God is love. He's a trinity Father, son and Holy Spirit and love lives in a circle. They all love one another. We were created in the image of love, so love is a very fabric of our being. It's why we need love so much and why we suffer so badly when we don't have it. But God wants us to know we're loved and so he started the circle. He gave love to us first. Many people who come to know Jesus. If they don't get the grace message and the love message, they might be thrown into. You need to love God. You need to love God. You need to love God. You need to love God. Well, if you don't know that he loves you, you are not going to be able to love him back. Because love lives in a circle. Love is giving and receiving, giving and receiving. If I tried to give you love but you won't receive it, love was not complete. If you try to give me love and I don't receive it. Love is not complete. Love lives in a circle of giving and receiving.

That's wonderful, that's so true. Thank you for that. How can people connect with you?

Well, my website, danielle Burnockcom. It's B-E-R-N-O-C-K. It sounds like a U, but so that's why I spell that. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Twitter, I'm on, I'm on all the places. I have my own YouTube channel. I have my Victoria Souls podcast. You can Google my name and find me pretty much anywhere.

Great, very good, and we will have links in the show notes as well, if you want to check those out. And then, danielle, I want to give you the last word. What is one simple thing that you would like my community and me to remember? This can be big or small, but just one little nugget that you want them and want us to remember.

It sounds so trite. Love is the answer. You know, god is love and your podcast is graced health, dealing with health. The Bible says that Jesus came to give us life and that is the answer, and that abundantly. And if we won't deal, we won't love ourselves and deal with our trauma, we won't live in health. Our health will suffer if we don't let that love come in and heal us from the inside out. The tagline on my website is Connecting People to the Love that Heals and he heals us inside out. Top to bottom Skinder, mero, head to toe.

Yes, yes, okay, that is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day. Thanks for listening today. If this episode was valuable to you, could you do one of two things that are enormously valuable to me but super simple for you? Number one just share this with a friend. Super simple. Number two provide a rating and review, particularly if you listen in Apple podcasts. This is super valuable for me. Also, if you haven't yet subscribed to my monthly journal, why not? I send it out twice a month and it is a private fun space for me to share some of my favorite foods and recipes, movements, books, sermons and more. You never know what you're going to get, but I promise it will add value to your day. You can sign up at gracedhealthcom slash monthly dash updates and, of course, the link is in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time.