Harnessing Personal Strengths from Trauma: An Exploration with TJ Woodward

What if your greatest adversities could be transformed into your greatest superpowers? Join us as we unpack this intriguing idea with our guest, TJ Woodward - a clinician, advocate, author, and founder of Conscious Recovery. We explore how our coping mechanisms, developed as responses to trauma, can turn into powerful strategies. TJ shares his touching personal experiences and insights, casting a new light on the concept of adversity and resilience.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Hatching Creativity . This isn't just another behavioral health podcast . This is the place where thought leaders converge to talk about real life challenges , breakthroughs and pivotal aha moments . Thanks for tuning into Hatching Creativity . Today , I get to speak with TJ Woodward . He's a clinician advocate , author and the founder of Conscious Recovery .

Speaker 1 0:24

In today's episode , we speak about recognizing the light and the dark sides to the skills we've developed by overcoming traumatic events in our lives . We also talk about understanding people's reactions and being curious and present rather than being judgmental . If you like what you hear , please like , share , subscribe and tell all your friends about Hatching Creativity . One of the things that I've been talking about lately that I'd love to get your feedback on is , through traumatic events in our lives , we end up creating these coping mechanisms of certain things that actually become skill sets that we can use , and I've been speaking about how you can really turn adversity into a superpower , and what I want to do is just I'm going to give you my personal story on this and then I'd love to hear your feedback , tj , yeah , so , due to past experiences in my life and dealing with people who are unpredictable One second there , one way , the next second there , somewhere else .

Speaker 1 1:37

It created my superpower , which is a hypersensitivity to other people and their mood , their body language , the way they speak , their tone of their voice , and I'm always analyzing these kinds of things because I want to make sure that I'm not going to be surprised by somebody's change in one way or another . And what that's done is it's created my superpower , which is the ability to build a relationship with people and being able to really connect by being able to feel that mood . I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and how you maybe people can use something from this podcast to recognize their own superpowers .

Speaker 2 2:24

Well , first of all , I love that you're using the term superpower , because when we created the conscious recovery for teen workbook , I collaborated with my friend and colleague , dr Jessica bird Olmsted , and we actually called what was once known as coping mechanism I in conscious recovery . I call them brilliant strategies , but when it came to the teen workbook , we actually called them superpowers , and what we wanted to acknowledge is that they are superpowers and there is a light and a shadow to all of it . So , like you , I grew up with someone in my life and you didn't exactly say this , but I'll say when you were talking , what was coming through for me is I grew up with a mother who I absolutely loved and loved and she was very unpredictable . It was back in the day when people didn't get a lot of mental health diagnoses and or a lot of treatment for it , so she vacillated between rage or depression . So , like you , I became highly attuned . As a matter of fact , in my 20s , when I was doing my who am I ? What is my personality ? I was taking every personality test that you could possibly take and one personality test I took said my number one trait is highly attuned to the motivation of others . And that absolutely came because , or came from me not really always being able to trust what people were saying or what they were doing . I had to feel the energy of it . I became highly attuned , or what we would call highly intuitive , which has become one of the greatest gifts of my life .

Speaker 2 3:57

Anytime we look at whether we call it a superpower or , as I like to call it , a brilliant strategy many times we look at in what ways is it not serving us ? I always want to start with where did we develop it ? In which way ? In what way is it brilliant ? How is it serving me ? And then , what is the shadow side , or what is the side where it may be no longer serving me , always starting with the positive and looking at , as you said , they developed as a skill and we're actually quite brilliant . Humans are quite brilliant . We develop a way to manage or cope , and I call them brilliant strategies because usually , when we get down to the root of it , people will say some version of it was keeping me safe , and so it becomes an automatic response . When something in our world happens , we get what we used to call triggered , we get activated . We might unconsciously go into that strategy , even though they may no longer really be bringing us what we desire .

Speaker 1 4:57

I love that . I think that's a great way to for people to start that introspective thinking as to and as with everything right , there's two sides to every coin . You've got the dark side , the shadow side , and you've got the light side . In my situation , I definitely feel that that shadow side is a hypersensitivity to fear of abandonment is where mine comes in right . So what ends up creating is anxiety . It creates anxiety . That hyper vigilance to mood and awareness and I think understanding that and understanding that when you are feeling super anxious about whatever a situation is looking back at your superpowers and going oh wait a second , this is what this is , and when you name it , it really makes a big difference in your ability to recognize it and do something about it .

Speaker 2 5:57

That's right , because we wanna start with first of all , as you say , we first wanna recognize that it's there , Most of us , or many of us . Until we're conscious of that , it's automatic , right ? We're walking around and really being run by the unconscious programs of our life or the automatic responses . Forgive me if I'm repeating myself , but one of my favorite quotes from Bessel Van der Kolk is trauma doesn't show up as a memory , it shows up as a reaction . Right , so we end up reacting to the world from something that's not actually happening in the moment . I mean , obviously there are things in real time that we are reacting to , but for most of us , or for many of us , we're actually reacting from the past .

Speaker 2 6:36

Something happens , it touches a wound within us . We go into an automatic response which could look like a reaction and in some ways it keeps us safe . But we reach a point where we're saying , wow , I'm either going into anxiety , a fight , flight or freeze . I'm going into that automatic response and I keep doing this and I'm getting the same results over and over and over again . Because the ultimate question is what do I truly desire ? What do I truly desire here ? And for most of us , we desire to connect and , in some ways , those brilliant strategies or the superpower that we've been using isn't allowing us to have the deeper connection that we truly desire , because we're reacting out of our past and , until we heal that , we're really not in the present moment . Experience it's something I'm here physically , but my reactivity is coming from something that in some cases , happened decades ago .

Speaker 1 7:31

Well , those are programs , right , those subconscious programs that happen , and it's really helpful when you can recognize those things , and the way I've found to recognize them has been understanding when I'm feeling emotional about something . You talked about biases on our last podcast and it doesn't necessarily have to be a bias , but definitely when you're feeling emotional about something , you've touched a wound somewhere .

Speaker 2 7:57

That's right . Yeah , of course a miracle says what I'm upset about is not what I'm upset about , and I love that because then I can start to inquire , like if I'm having a big reaction to something and it doesn't necessarily seem proportional to what's happening , then there's something for me to see there and I love that you're saying the gateway or the doorway to exploring that is through the emotion . Wow , I notice I'm having this intense emotion . Let me be curious about that . And usually it comes down to some core idea . You know , we talked about bias the last time and I think bias at this point has almost a negative connotation .

Speaker 2 8:34

The truth is , we're all biased to everything all the time . I like a sunny day , I don't like it when it rains . I like California , I don't like Texas . You know we could just go on and on and on and all the ways that we have a perception about the world . It's not necessarily about getting rid of those , but it is about becoming aware of them and realizing that life is happening and I'm the one creating the meaning . And as I start to explore that , I start to realize that I actually can have a different relationship with the world when I start to unpack or unlearn or become curious about all of the core decisions that are creating the way I view and experience the world .

Speaker 1 9:12

I agree , and I want to also pull back for a second too , because you touched on something really interesting a minute ago , which is about other people's reactions .

Speaker 2 9:21

Yeah .

Speaker 1 9:22

And I've seen many situations in my life , in situations that I've been in , where somebody's reaction doesn't match what I would expect their reaction to be . From that situation , and one of the things I've learned is to step back and to look at that and , instead of judging that person on that reaction or go man , that person's a real whatever about reacting that way where that person's overreacting , because that's the worst thing you could say . If somebody's overreacting , because what ends up happening is oftentimes people are over what we think is an overreaction to whatever that situation was is a reaction to past trauma and past situations . So you may say I'd stop being crazy to somebody . Yeah , now that person may have a trauma around somebody talking to them like they were crazy at some point in their lives and that you may have just meant it like , hey , you know , punch in the arm , kind of fun , whatever , and that person is totally upset by that conversation .

Speaker 2 10:34

Yeah , and often they're not even aware of what's happening , right . And so if you look at our work in behavioral health , I see this over and over and over again . I see people reacting to patients or clients based on their behavior , and then we label the behavior instead of becoming curious about the behavior . And I think that's the fundamental shift that you and I are up to right now . It is becoming aware of wow . This you know , in my , in my case , when I worked full time in treatment , there were opportunity after opportunity where I could either judge someone's behavior or I could be curious about it and I'm like wow , she is having a very , very large reaction to the fact that the dinner isn't what she expected it to be . Right , there's something there . There's some big reaction If someone says , oh , I thought it was Mexican food night , which the program I worked at . That was like the big thing Thursdays , everyone's happy that it's Mexican food night and if that ever got changed sometimes people would have a massive reaction and it really isn't about the dinner .

Speaker 2 11:31

So if I can become curious and start to ask questions and then we can actually help someone become aware , not of their behavior , but maybe what's actually at the core of that , through presence , through curiosity , through asking questions , and maybe they'll have a moment where they realize , oh my gosh , it's actually not the dinner that I'm upset about , it's this other thing , and you talked about it so perfectly that the gateway or the doorway is always through the emotion . So if I'm working with someone , I would ask them what are you feeling right now ? Can you become aware of what you're feeling in your body ? What emotion is present ? Let's not go into the story . The story sometimes takes us out of the emotion , and the emotion , then , is that gateway into the deeper understanding of what's truly happening .

Speaker 1 12:16

I agree and I love the introspection . Thanks for tuning in to Hatchin' Creativity . We appreciate your support . Please don't forget to like and subscribe and tell all your friends about the show and remember it's never just about one thing .