In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Maria Kampinska explores trauma through the lens of mythology, psychology, and lived experience with guests Gail Dunnan and James Earl—both accomplished psychotherapists specializing in trauma work. Drawing from Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of the Medusa myth, the conversation establishes that trauma isn’t something to be looked at directly, but rather understood through how our bodies respond to it and embody resilience. The episode delves into how trauma manifests physically and psychologically, affecting not just individuals but rippling through families and generations.
Gail Dunnan, a holistic psychotherapist and director of a community interest company, shares insights into working with trauma across all age groups, emphasizing how children’s brains process trauma somatically rather than cognitively. She discusses the behavioral symptoms that emerge—from violent outbursts to complete dissociation—and the stabilization techniques used to regulate the nervous system. James Earl brings a unique perspective on relational trauma, particularly how affairs create a form of psychological injury that mirrors traditional trauma responses, exploring the unconscious patterns couples display and the relief that comes from reintegration and honesty.
Throughout the episode, the hosts examine how our autonomic nervous system responds to trauma through fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses, and emphasize that healing comes not through direct confrontation but through safety, connection, and the capacity to ride waves of emotion. This is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand trauma’s profound effects on families and relationships.
Main Topics
Trauma should not be confronted directly but understood through the body's response and resilience, as illustrated by the Medusa myth
Children process trauma somatically through the nervous system rather than cognitive understanding, requiring stabilization and regulation techniques
Trauma manifests in specific behavioral symptoms including dissociation, aggression, bullying, and emotional numbing that signal underlying nervous system dysregulation
Affairs function as a form of relational trauma, creating existential disintegration that individuals unconsciously seek to resolve through discovery and honesty
The polyvagal theory explains how trauma triggers fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses rooted in our autonomic nervous system
Healing from trauma occurs through safety-confirming connections, trust, and the gradual capacity to experience emotions without being overwhelmed
Trauma effects are transgenerational and lifelong, requiring therapeutic approaches that address both individual and family systems
Full TranscriptJoseph Campbell, the world renowned mythologist and student of Carl Gustav Jung, wrote that the Greek myth of Medusa cap...▼
Joseph Campbell, the world renowned mythologist and student of Carl Gustav Jung, wrote that the Greek myth of Medusa captures the essence of trauma and those that look directly at Medusa, who is seen as the personification of trauma and looked into her eyes, will immediately be turned to stone, that is frozen in time. In order to deal with trauma, he continues, we should never look at it directly, that is, looking into the eyes, because Campbell believed that we should look at how our body responds to trauma and also how it embodies resilience and feelings of goodness. The central myth to both Jung's and Freud's psychoanalytic work are born out of trauma. For Freud, the Oedipus myth is where the boy is removed from his family and later, unbeknownst to him, he kills his father and marries his mother. Whereas Jung chose the Amfortas wound, whereby the young Parsifal, who had also lost his father, had to overcome many struggles and trials. His king had been wounded, which is the Amfortas wound, and Parsifal helps heal that wound. It is the physical pain that is also powerful within everyone that experiences trauma. In the myth of Medusa, her nemesis Perseus, who was tasked to kill Medusa, a deadly gorgon whose hair was made of snakes, and to bring her head back to Polydectes, the king of Seriphos, Perseus wisely enlisted the help of Athena, Hermes and Hades to kill Medusa. In his wisdom, Perseus turned to Athena, Hades and Hermes for advice. Athena gave him the knowledge that you cannot look directly into Medusa's eyes or you'll turn to stone. She gave Perseus a bronze shield with which to protect himself. Hades, God of the underworld, gave him an invisibility cloak and Hermes gave him winged sandals. These three gods have pertinent, immaculate purity, the subconscious underworld and the messenger. Joseph Campbell continues that Perseus collects a drop of blood from Odysseus wound in two vials. One drop has the power to kill and the other has the power to raise the dead and restore life and become a vehicle for soaring into the heights of transformation and mastery, depending on how we approach it. Donald Kaushed, who trained as a Jungian analyst, says when a child experiences something unbearable, he is open to disassociation. These figures become defenses against the catastrophe happening again. The figures must be educated and transformed in the process of therapeutic work because they are defenses against feeling what was overwhelming. Kalsha's trauma says trauma survivors have faced such unbearable feelings that they had to disassociate there's something the psyche does to protect us, and it protects something sacred and imperishable about the human spirit by disassociating that part of us into the inner world and protecting it there with defenses. Peter Levine explains how to recognize the physical expression of trauma. Anxiety, panic attack, fear, anger, irritability, obsession and compulsion, shock and disbelief, emotional numbing and detachment, shame and guilt, particularly if the person dealing with the trauma survived while others didn't. And recently we have recognized the polyvagal theory, which explains the root of the trauma and its effect. The theory developed by Stephen Porges explains the physical route of trauma and our individual response of fight, flight, freeze or form as a result. Psychotherapist Peter Levine says the goal of regulating emotions is not to make the feelings go away. Rather, the aim is to help clients build their capacity to ride the waves of big emotions and sensations. Initially, this occurs because they know that we are willing to join them in these difficult moments. In time, this process helps them learn that temporary experiences of contraction can resolve into a natural expansion of positive emotions such as relief, gratitude, empowerment or joy. This is how to heal trauma, not by doing, but by safety. Confirming experiences of connections and trust, security of knowing that you belong. This is a vast subject and the topic of complex post traumatic stress is even bigger to discuss and may be difficult to enter into that today. But loss in any capacity inspires grief. And grief is most often experienced in five denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The tragedy of trauma is the basis of the Western psyche. It is in the Christian religion that Christ was nailed and died on a cross. This can symbolize that human nature has the ability to endure unbelievable pain and overcome it. My question is how do therapists help clients and their families with the repercussions of trauma, the residue of which is lifelong and Transgenerational. I am Dr. Maria Kampinska and today I'm delighted to be joined in this discussion with my guests Gail Dunnan and James Earl, both psychotherapists who have their own practices and both work with trauma and its effect on their parents and family, on their patients and family. Firstly, can I introduce you? Gail, thank you so much for joining me and please tell me more about yourself and your work. Hello Maria. Thank you very much for having me. I'm a holistic psychotherapist and an interdisciplinary psychologist. I have a private practice and I specialise in trauma and I also am a director of a community interest company which support people in the local community with different approaches to psychological trauma. We are an Approved centre, primary care networks, which means that encompasses about 17 HP surgeons and we get referrals from all sorts of health and social care settings. And I am also the author of two books, mental health books, one for adults and one for children. Wonderful. Thank you again for joining me today. And James, James Earl, can you give me a bit more of your background? Hi Maria, thank you very much for having me on today. I'm a psychotherapist in private practice and I specialize in working with relationships. So I'm a relationship counsellor. The variety of problems I usually encounter in that line of work include communication problems, sexual problems and the recovery from affairs. And it's the recovery from affairs that quite often appears in the form of a trauma because when an affair is discovered, it's a kind of non negotiable fact that people try and get their head around and yet quite often they actually can't. So although we might say the discovery of an affair isn't as life shattering as say, watching somebody being blown up on a battlefield, it can leave a very similar kind of trace. Of course. In addition to that, I regularly meet individual patients who have experienced trauma of different kinds. Recently I started work with a film company called Shoot you and the director of that company, Quint Barr, and we've been putting together short videos on mental health. Part of the intention of this is that in the post pandemic times we are noticing a huge upswing of mental health problems and so we thought it would be helpful to do short 90 second videos about common mental health problems. So so far we've done one on anger and one on trauma and others are to follow. There'll be anxiety and depression and alcohol and various others. So I'm particularly interested in trauma because it links together two worlds that I've been in. One is the world of psychotherapy, of course, but the other is philosophy which I used to teach. And the philosophical aspect of trauma is that quite often the problems that are experienced in trauma are kind of, you know, have a sort of philosophical quality and in as much as they're given, they can't really be negotiated. It's, it's a matter of fact, that's what you're saying. It's not something, it's not something that you can prepare for. I think that's the key. And this isn't. That's so important actually, because otherwise, you know, actually that's a good question to start with actually. Gail, can you prepare for trauma? Do your clients ever know that they are going to be in A traumatic situation, can they prepare? I think it's a question of really intervention with children, I would say, to build resilience, because the stronger your mental terrain is, that would affect how your autonomic nervous system reacts to trauma and how quickly you can adjust back. And what sort of work do you do with your children? Can you give us an indication of how you work with your children? Is it only children you work with? You work with adults as well, Gail? No, we work with any age group with children particularly, who have suffered trauma. You know, children's prefrontal cortex is actually not involved in trauma. So a lot of the work has to be somatic. Yeah, so we do a lot of stabilization techniques, resourcing, really precision regulation of the nervous system. That can be anything to do with recognising emotions, naming them, you know, and really looking at behaviour, because the behaviour is actually the symptom. And what sort of behaviour do you see? We can see anything through from, you know, violent behaviour, physical or abusive behaviour towards their own family or peers or school. We can see a lot of bullying, quite reciprocal in both ways. Complete dissociation, you know, shut down, not having the language to speak about it. And what's the acting out in relationships, James? How does it. How does somebody find out? This is the big key, isn't it? We often talked about relationships and, you know, we've had the recent ones in, in the news about the politician who had an affair, and people used to say, well, how did his wife not know? Or how does the husband not know what happens? It's unwise to make any assumptions in general about what the partner knows, because sometimes the person having the affair thinks the partner must know, even though it's not being discussed. And indeed, sometimes that is true, because there is a thing where we have an unspoken contract that if the contract becomes spoken, it no longer works. So in some circumstances, some couples, there's an agreement to not talk about something, but to allow that to happen. But if the person having the affair is making that assumption, it's a dangerous assumption, unless they know it's the case. But of course, definition, you can't really ask because as soon as you mention the unspoken contract, it fails to work. So in general, I think, I think the majority of couples, where there is an affair, the other person generally doesn't know. They might suspect, but they don't actually know, and they certainly don't agree. And how do they work it out? What are the telltale signs, the active, you know, the actions that adults play out? Well, I think changes in behavior are clearly the most obvious. But I mean, what's interesting is when somebody's having an affair, the motivation for that affair is quite often that they want to meet needs that are not being apparently met in the primary relationship, feel for some reason they can address those needs in the primary relationship, the meeting of those needs, so they look for them elsewhere. But what they discover is that although temporarily that that kind of works, you know, they can. And they may even say, now I'm having these other needs met, then I'll perhaps be happier in my marriage. What they discover is that longer term they feel like they're doing the splits. So it's a sort of existential state of not being integrated. And what I think then follows is that people leave their phone unpassword protected on the breakfast bar and it's almost as if they've got an unconscious desire to be found out so they can reintegrate. And indeed, people that have had affairs discovered will quite often say it was such a relief that he now knows or she now knows. And I can only imagine that's not because of the problems with lying because I guess you've got to be prepared to lie if you're doing something that breaks a contract. It's more to do with that feeling that you're, you're doing the splits and you'd rather be in one place than two. So when you can, you know, rejoin a narrative with your partner, it's actually a relief. And you say with your children or adults, Gail, that you deal with, how are they brought to your attention? What is it? Because normally if you're not a psychotherapist who understands the secondary nature of behavior, behaviour and can interpret that, how do people come to you, Gail? I would say in my private practice it's concerned parents that have noticed, as Jane said, change in behaviour. They can present in eating disorders or self harming or just withdrawal. And you know, in the referral system that we work with through the primary care networks, that's possibly due to changes in behaviour too, but more to do with, I don't want to use the word antisocial behaviour, but behaviour that's outside the norm as say, you know, perhaps troubling behaviour at school, that sort of thing. I would say it's definitely behavioural changes. And how do you address, can you give us the difference in how you address a child as to how you address an adult, Gail? Well, we would do a lot of what we call bottom up processes, which are somatic processes, because trauma lands in the body and the brain and the limbic system, the nervous system. We do what we call foundational work, which is resourcing and stabilization with children. The assessment, the language around the assessment psychotherapy forms has to change because it's obviously different to an adult. But we do a lot of bringing down clusters, identifying any intrusions, trying to reduce the triggers and a lot of emotional regulation and behavioural regulation techniques. And what do they look like? Is that in form of play? We would do play therapy, we do sensory play, we do Lego therapy, I do sound therapy with children. They could look like a timeline which we would do with art and craft materials. So it's not all narrative focused, it's more process focused and it's to help them understand what they're doing. So do you. Is this a mirror for them? Yeah, but also it's to kind of work on their belief systems because trauma with, you know, certain beliefs and cognitive perceptions and really it's to help them avoid mirroring abusive behavior as well actually. Yeah. So what sort of children have this trauma? What is the trauma for a lot of these children that come to you? I would say we've got a lot of parents who have perhaps gone down the drug abuse route, perhaps find themselves in prison. Some children have encountered some sexual abuse, physical abuse, bullying at school. We do a lot of self harming eating disorders, I would say. Yeah. And as you say that the. These are referred to you, how much time are you given? I mean sexual abuse is quite a big subject. Or physical abuse. Do you get enough time to deal with these in your therapeutic setting with the children? Yeah, we're actually funded, we're a community interest company so we attract funding from all sorts of different areas and all the practitioners that work with us will work on a, what we call a reduced rate and we work with people until we feel that they're okay. They perhaps maybe need to have some intervention once every two months as opposed to every week. So we do. Nothing we do is for free actually. We always ask people to try and pay what they can afford. We feel it devalues the service if it's free. So our pot keeps getting topped up by lots of different activities we do because we work with a lot of adults as well and we put on group sessions and workshops which people donate to. Yeah. And do you use the same methods for adults as you do for children? Yes, I think the difference would be the assessment forms, you know, the language around the assessments. And we would use a little bit more cognitive work with adults. Yeah. But with. I mean, with adults and children, you know, we all know trauma lands in the body, so a lot of our work is somatic. But I would say predominantly with adults, we do a little bit more cognitive work. And moving to you, James. You know, when Viktor Frankl was in a concentration camp, he said the way he got through his life and this is now coming. You know, lots of people are talking about Viktor Frankl, particularly at this particular time, is trying to make sense, trying to make a meaning out of the traumatic situation. Is that what you find with your adults? Yes. I mean, if I can give you an example of sort of thing that I've worked with in the past, which is actually not a relationship issue, but one that I think illustrates something about the nature of trauma. I was working with a first responder who in the 1980s had attended a really serious rail crash railway accident and had been trying to cut through the twisted metal to get to somebody who was in pain and clearly, you know, in serious trouble. And by the time he got to the person, the person had sadly passed away. And his experience of that was so awful that it was. Stayed with him. I think the treatment that. The sort of help or support he got at the time was absolutely minimal. Apparently he said that anybody that had been at that crash site was given the day off the next day. That was it. Obviously, we know a lot more about trauma even in the last 30 years. And, you know, we don't behave like that now. At least I hope we don't. There's more support around. But it was interesting with this guy because he said he would wake up in the middle of the night. So typical sort of trauma symptoms, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, you know, cold sweats and so on, as if he was revisiting the experience all the time and going back to what you asked me, trying to make sense of it. And the struggle there is that although it's a natural human thing to try and make sense of it, it is also almost beyond comprehension. It's just a terrible thing. And there's no control that you can really get over it. So what I think quite often happens is people revisit the scene of the trauma to try and get in the hope that they can finally get control over it. And of course, that's a doomed enterprise. They'll never get control over it because it's done, it's in the past, and it's, you know, it's what it is. So, in fact, the intrusive thoughts are a sort of positive attempt by the person to try and get control over the awfulness of the. And what we do in therapy is not encourage the person to keep telling that story. Because if you think about it, just telling the story again and again and again will just, if there's no control to be had, will just be more and more experiences of the same thing which, you know, the patient's all too familiar with usually. Yeah, it can re. Traumatize. Absolutely. Yes. And actually, I think before we got a bit wise about these things, quite often we felt we were being helpful by asking the, you know, you do need to hear the story. Because if you don't hear the story as the therapists, you don't know what they're trying to. What they're wrestling with, certainly don't need to hear it repetitively. What we end up doing with that is teaching the person what they might do with a really terrible, non negotiable piece of awfulness in their life. Because it's not so much about getting closure. I wish there was such a thing as closure. Of course, that's a myth. There's no such thing as closure. But what there can be is a clear path forward where the trauma is still there, but it's not standing in your way the whole time. Yeah. And in your. Which I have seen your short videos, the 90 second videos, which are fabulous and very, you know, sort of. Actually, what I love about videos like yours is that they tell you so much in such a short space of time that you're actually saying you can't put it away and ignore it. You have to put it in a box, but leave the box door, you know, the lid open. That's the sort of, I think, the really subtle thing because, you know, we tend to think in binary terms. Either we've got to talk about it the whole time, or we've got to sort of try and forget it and get closure. And of course, with something like, you know, seeing somebody die in front of your. In front of you when you were hoping to save them, you know, you can't really do either. So what we suggest is that the client be helped to compartmentalize. And you might be surprised to hear a psychotherapist recommending compartmentalization because it might be seen as a, as you know, in other contexts, a rather bad thing. But in fact, in this context, it allows you to say, the trauma's there. I can visit it whenever I want to, but I know that when I do visit it, I won't get control over it. So I am choosing most of the time not to visit it. Now, the point about leaving the lid open and allowing yourself to visit it when you choose to is that then your unconscious doesn't throw it up at you and say, look at this, look at this, look at this. You've got to get your head around it. And if you're saying to your unconscious, as it were, well, I can look at it whenever I want to, I know it's there. I'm not pretending it's gone away. I'm not trying to lock it up, but at the same time, I'm not going to just sort of dive into it for the sake of it. Then generally your unconscious can start to relax because it knows that you know it's there and you're doing what you need to do. So then the intrusive thoughts get less and the dreams get less. I mean, you know, I'd love to say this is 100% of the time. It always works. Of course it doesn't, but, you know, as a general principle, I think it works for a lot of people. And how important is it, Gail, can I come to you and ask you, how important is it for the family and others to understand what the child or adult are going through? Because obviously in the work you do, James, it's already there because the couple comes in, they've recognized something. But, Gail, do you include the family and at what point and how do you introduce them to what's going on with the child or adult? We found very early on that the work we did perhaps needed to be supported by a wider network of people surrounding children. So we offer support for the families as well, around legitimising actually what trauma is and what trauma looks like. We also would give them a lot of psychological education around trauma. We would talk to them in very basic terms of the neurobiology of trauma, actually, because once people understand how it works, it becomes easier to manage as such, and it becomes easier to recognise in a family member. And how do you talk about. Do you talk about it in front of the person who's had the trauma? Do you talk to them separately? No, we actually run two kinds of workshops which are actually free. So we would invite families to come to the workshops and learn all about the neurobiology of trauma, what to look for support mechanisms, how they can resource themselves and stabilise themselves as well as the person they're supporting. And we also offer obviously private, one to one time with the client. And then we also offer workshops for health and social care services. So, you know, we would get inquiries from schools or perhaps mind got surgeries. So we would put on separate workshops and just accommodate, you know, who's on the workshop and how does it affect them? Does it make them understand more? Does it actually make them far more compassionate? Does it make them stop taking drugs or stop hitting the child? Yeah, I think psychological education is key here because also we can see a lot of psychosocial conditioning that has gone on historically. So it could be something that they've experienced as a child and so they continue that pattern of behaviour. Sometimes the workshops can actually re traumatise people. So we've got to be careful around the language that we use. But my history really is anatomy and physiology. I used to. Used to teach. And so I find that if you give someone a little bit of education around the anatomy and physiology of trauma, actually you can see a light bulb go on because they start to recognize their own triggers, their own symptoms. So we not only educate people, but we also teach them stabilization techniques for their own triggers and their own intrusions. And what type of thing do you suggest? What time do you show that? What type of stabilization techniques do you actually advocate? Well, you chatted about the polyvagal theory. You know, the universal accepted model of the nervous system has changed from the late 90s with Porges work. And we teach them that they can actually go in between what they call the spinal sympathetic chain, which is fight or flight, or the dorsal branch version, which is slow down, shut down or depressive behavior. And we teach them that it's okay to be in either of those states and that everything isn't permanent. So me personally, I'm a meditation teacher. So I would teach people there are lots of different meditations, short or long, that we can teach people to bring their nervous system down so they can do some precision regulation. And moving over to you, James, when you're. When you've got a couple who come in, do they come in and say so and so has had. My partner has had an affair. Is that their presenting problem? Very often it is, yes, exactly that or I discovered this affair, you know, a week ago. It's usually the case that people come within a few days of discovering something. And my experience is if you can work with them immediately while they're in that crisis, you get much further with them. There's a period of about. And it's. This is a real, you know, sort of rough estimate of about six weeks. The, the event is front and center and after that starts to lose intensity to some extent. Although it can take a couple of years before you're back onto the, you know, into a sort of more normal groove. But if you work in that six weeks, and ideally right at the beginning of that six weeks, you can usually help people negotiate what it is they're trying to transact with their partner. And certainly in terms of the discovery of an affair, I think there are two parallel processes going on which, if you can introduce the couple to that idea, they can usually make sense of it and work with it. One is that you ask them to process the breach. So whatever has happened, they've got the person that's not. That's playing catch up and hasn't known about it, but now does know about it, has got to ask the questions that allow them to see the size and shape of it and to decide as a result of that process what they want to do. And therefore there is a sort of requirement that at that point the other person must tell the truth. This is not an ethical issue at all. It's a practical one of saying if you want the other person to process, you've got to be open with them because they can't catch up with the narrative that you've known about that they've not known about. So it's encouraging the person that's been affaired against to ask questions and the person that's had the affair to be honest in this situation, it's actually necessary. And the second process that's going on is a parallel process, and it doesn't happen after that one, it happens alongside it, which is deciding what they want for the future. When they're discussing the breach, they're also modeling how they might want things to be in the future. So assuming they might want a bit more openness and honesty, it's another reason why that transaction of the breach has to be relatively clear and transparent. But, you know, people are quite resistant to that process. So, for example, the person that's had the affair will say, your questions are really intrusive. I don't want to answer them. And anyway, if I did answer them, they'd be hurtful. And the other person and the person asking the questions will feel they're being almost prurient, even though they've. They've, you know, they. They're the one that's been hurt. But nonetheless, it's a sort of, you know, it's a question of encouraging to go through that process. So they both know because, you know, to use a rather corny analogy, but I think it works. You can't really move forward Using a map until you know where you are on the map. So you've got to be, you know, both together on the map. And that requires a degree of openness about what's just happened. So that's the process that I generally try and help them with. Firstly, talk about the trauma, the affair, the discovery of the affair and what was going on. And then secondly, you know, alongside that discuss what you want for the future. And do you always see the couple together? Do you ever take them separately? Well now that's a very question because in relate where I used to work, they always see the individuals and the couple separately as well as together. So the first couple of sessions will be with the individuals. I will do that if the couple wants me me to. Because there may be reasons where either person is reluctant to speak openly in front of their partner. So sometimes it can be helpful. But on the whole I prefer working with the couple from the get go and unless they ask, I am happy with working with them both in the room. And is that always the best way, do you feel? Well, it's the quickest way quite often. Okay. Because I think sometimes when you know there's one person coming to tell you their story and the other person telling you their story and of course as a counsellor you're absolutely obliged for each of those individual sessions to be confidential. So you're not allowed to raise any of that material in a subsequent couple session. So there's quite a lot of work that then has to be done with inviting the individuals to raise those pertinent issues in a couple session because you can't. So, you know, quite often cutting through all that and just doing the couple sessions I think is quicker. Now you know, clearly that can sometimes inhibit people from speaking completely openly. But you know, one of the things we're trying to encourage here is a more open acknowledgment of needs and wants and you know, more honest transaction for the future. So in some ways, you know, I think modeling the couple in the, modeling for the couple in the room, what they might want in the future is a good thing. And is it easier when they don't have children? Well, actually it's interesting because I think children complicate the situation because what it generally means is they don't have the liberty of leaving the relationship. Although people will think, you know, well, am I staying or am I going? If you've got kids, there isn't a going, there's a redefinition of the relationship. You might don't want to be a romantic couple, but you are going to have the other person in your life probably forever because of your children. Now, you know, there's an exception to that, which is if somebody wants to walk out on their kids, but that's extremely rare. You know, most people that have had kids want to be in their kids lives for obvious reasons. So the choice is, are we continuing as a romantic couple or are we just co parenting? And actually the requirements vis a vis the kids for both those situations are exactly the same. You've got to have good communication, you've got to be gently affectionate with each other. And you know, if you're helping a couple post an affair to, to get to that stage, it's almost putting the cart before the horse to decide whether they've got to be a couple here and now or whether they can leave that one for a little way down the line because they've got to communicate well if they've got children. So moving over to you, Gail, can I ask you how many of the children that are traumatized come from two parent families or are they often impacted more because they are from single families? Single parents, Yeah. I mean, if you were to look at the adverse childhood experiences list, the ACEs list, one of the questions on there is regarding their, you know, family situation. And divorce or separation isn't really a major factor in it. It's the run up to it or the build up to it, let's say. So in answer to your question, I'd say probably 80% of the children we see would have come from that sort of situation of a family home. Yeah. And is there some way, I mean, as you say, James, that we didn't have this in our training even as therapists until the 1980s. Trauma wasn't recognized until that period of time. So they only recognized trauma from, you know, even from the soldiers. And what they went through was shell shock and the complex PTSD was. I don't really think that's ever been fully recognized. But here we are, we're talking about the affect of trauma. So do parents now be. Should we teach this in schools? I've always had this, you know, sort of. When I was training to teach, I did drama workshops with children from battered wives. And it was wonderful because although the workshops I did, I wasn't a trained psychotherapist at that time. Although they were sort of around various social constructs or family constructs. It really gave children an opportunity to express themselves. Are we missing a trick by not doing this in schools? And can we put More pressure on schools to do this. What do you think, Gail? Yeah, I mean, we deliver a mental health first aid qualification which is trauma informed. And last week I went to a school in Leeds, a huge secondary school, and taught 20 teachers. They weren't faced there were more pastoral and safeguarding staff. Some of them did still teach. And after the two days the trauma informed, you know, redelivering the course, the school realised that perhaps they need to send another community teacher. Because me having the conversation with safeguarders and pastoral teams, none of them seem to be very trauma informed. So I think, yes, to me it comes down to the whole point of psychological education and that can be delivered in quite a simplistic way to children. And we know that we have a number of charities that help in schools, but I believe that there should be more actually psychotherapeutic sort of communication within the school, so not rely on the teacher. Teachers have so much on their minds that they do often recognize that something's wrong, but how do they work with it from there? Even the pastoral care is limited because they really don't know what the next steps are and they often will take a child to refer them to various social services. That may not be the right approach. And to have counsellors in school may be the answer. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm writing a research project at the moment around different approaches to psychological trauma in the UK and I interviewed a social prescriber quite recently and we had a big discussion around the fact that we should have more trauma informed staff, really multidisciplinary, so people are all from the same page, really. Yeah. And how would you do that? I think when you look at the curriculum, I mean, I was a teacher, but I was post 14 education. I feel. Well, actually I feel it comes down to government policy because the Health and Social Care act hasn't changed since 2012. So I think, you know, the government is moving forward in looking at patients centered care, so people can have a choice, an informed choice, but that doesn't include children. So I think it really goes back to government policy. And what about you? What do you think, James? Do you think we need to do more in schools, particularly about relationships? I think people are very confused about relationships at the moment and there's so much information that schools and teachers have to take on board. But what's your take on that? I mean, the quality of sex education, which I think they now call sex and relationship education, is generally not good and I think it would avoid some of the problems that I See, if we were teaching kids about relationships in a slightly more intelligent way. So for example, it's one most people's experience that some of their best sexual experiences are with people that they've just met or are dating, and that some of them least interesting sexual experiences are with long term partners. You know, we might say that's a sad fact. And yeah, I agree that may be the case, but it's also not something that we like to do talk about. In fact, what we do is we sort of mythologize about it and we say, well, you know, when you're young and single or just dating, you're having sex, but when you're with somebody you love, you make love and it's a thousand times better. But of course, if you tell people that you set them up for feelings of failure and it leads to the sort of problems that, you know, come into my room. So, for example, relate estimate that 80% of long term relationships involve infidelity. That's an insanely high figure if you think about it. I'd say it tells us that humans aren't very good at keeping their promises. But equally, I think what it tells me is that it's quite a difficult ideal. So if you're going to try and aspire to that ideal, you need to know what the conditions all these things are. But of course we don't talk about them. You know, we talk about the mechanics of sex to kids and then secondly, we give them a load of romantic myths about meeting the right person and everything being, you know, easy and sweet. But you know, it would be better if we talk more intelligently to kids. But what about the difference between the male and the female approach to sex? You know, automatically when a woman has sex, the oxytocin kicks in and it's a totally different hormone to the masculine hormone. And I think this is where people come unstuck. It doesn't matter about transgender, gender fluidity, whatever's going on, because the hormonal change and the hormone that is activated within that relationship is very different. And what about the spiritual nature of a relationship? Because at the moment we are bombarded with social media that talks about sexualization. Everything is to do with, especially for young teenagers. It's quite, I think, you know, it's disturbing the amount of these porn sites, pornhub and so on, that young people engage with and what's expected of young girls to show of themselves to young men and vice versa. And that actually gives sex, I think, a bad name. Not that, you know, that One off sexual relationship can't be engaged in. But the long term nature of a good sexual relationship is just not looked at. Is that true or is that me again, as you say, being over romantic? No, I think, I think it's definitely true. I think the differences between men and women may be in my experience less than some people would say. So I mean, I don't subscribe the men are from Mars, women are from Venus thesis. But you know, I think if we're equally prone to these social constructions, then men and women's attitude towards sex is quite different. I mean, if you look at porn for example, one of the problems with porn is it's an entirely male view of sexuality. And you can evidence that very clearly by saying all the camera angles or virtually all the camera angles are what a guy sees, not what a woman sees. And secondly, most of the acts being depicted are things that men tend to like or fetishize and women may not like so much. So it's a very gendered view of sex. And of course if you give that to, you know, 14 year old boy or younger even, you're helping condition them to avoid sex, which is unrealistic and highly distorted. So yeah, I think we've got to address these issues too. One way of doing that might be to talk to kids about what they think is going on for the two genders and how they think that sex might take a part in their lives. Because we're quite uncomfortable with the way in which it sits alongside. Well and you know, we tend to on the one hand sort of sexualize everything in society. On the other hand, say sex is only sort of reasonable and safe. It's within, if it's within love. So you know, if we've got that romantic myth of containment within love, how can we sexualize the whole of society? It doesn't you know, it doesn't sort of. It doesn't, it's not congruent, if you see what I mean. Yeah, I believe difficult to know how you actually put that into the educational system. And are we trying to overburden the education system with these psychological, the impact of psychological. The psychology of relationships. Do we need. And something I always thought about when I was training to teach, to have training on how to be a parent. I think that would be a very good idea. I mean if I can go back to another piece of thing, another piece of education that might be really helpful. One of the things that I think kids could really benefit from is looking at how there are aspects to life which are in themselves traumatic. So I would argue that everybody will experience trauma at different levels. Let's take, for example, the death of a parent. Unless you happen to really, you know, have never connected with your parents or dislike them or, you know, whatever. Most of us will see that as a, you know, a very sad event. But, you know, it's inevitable if things follow a normal course. But we don't really talk about what that means. You know, why is it that we'll have these non negotiable, terrible things happening to us? And just if I may, there's a lovely little story which illustrates this very well. The young man goes to the religious master, the priest, and says, could you give me a blessing because I'm getting married tomorrow. And the master says, yes, of course. And he thinks about it for a little while and then he says, my blessing, my son, is that your father dies, you die, and your son dies. And the guy looks at him and says, why did you curse me? What did I do? And the master says, well, that's not a curse. That's the order it should happen in. Yes. And, you know, the point is this, that the guy saw that as awful, because it is awful. It's trauma. You know, you're going to leave your kids alone in the world if you've got kids? None of nothing in that makes me go, we don't talk about these things with kids. I don't know why, but we should. Yeah, that's a really good point. And just to ask you, Gail, as a woman, I don't know if you have children or not, but the trauma of birth, we all actually naturally have gone through a trauma. The birth itself is a trauma. I know you have children, James, and I'll come back to you. But, Gail, what do you think about that? Is it recognized? Sorry, this may be a whole different program because I do have children, and I suffered from PTSD from the birth of my daughter. And back then it wasn't recognized. I'm going back 16 years and I've actually had therapy and I've had, you know, EMDR and things to cope with that. But at the time it was recognized, it was recognized as postnatal depression. But actually when you unpick that, it was ptsd. And I think, you know, sort of, I hear a lot from young people who are now trying to. Girls who now have had children. They're either working from home or they're trying to raise a child, a baby. And they now have to try to understand, who is this person? How do I deal how do I make sense of this? What do you think, James? I wish this was a regular lesson at school. I don't know quite how it will be done, but I suspect that Gail might have some thoughtful about that. But parenting, relationships, these are all things which everybody's going to be involved in and yet we somehow seem to sideline. In fact, we turn it into, you know, a rather sort of mechanical thing because sex education is still basically about mechanics. And of course, sex and relationships are about meanings, not mechanics. And this is so interesting. And Gail, do you find that the trauma that you see in your children reflects and imitates a trauma the parent has gone through? So are the children who have been traumatized that come to you? Have their parents been traumatized as well? So not just the knock on effect of what the parent has gone through, that's transgenerational trauma, but children often repeat the trauma that a parent has gone through if they're not conscious of it. Do you see that in your work? Yeah, I would say there is a proportion of that, yes, Maria, definitely. I think it kind of revolves around people learning to feel safe in dangerous relationships, actually. Yeah. And how do you do that? How do you recognise that? How do you address that? I think we would, you know, if you look at how the body kind of regulates itself with emotional regulation, teaching children to recognise big feelings, teaching about boundaries, healthy boundaries, teaching about self esteem, really examining people's negative and positive cognitions about themselves. I think it was Erickson that talked about, you know, each thing we go through is a milestone, that we should be helped to progress through things rather than get stuck. And he was the one that, you know, so it's so important and we've lost all those rituals in our life that takes us, you know, to another step further forward in our life. So we've gone from now, you know, the birth, we go into the childhood, the infant, the child and then the teenager without really understanding the transitions of all those areas. Do you think this would help people when they're in a relationship, James? And what is the repetitive nature of these, you know, family, you know, these relationship betrayals? Let's say. Yes. I mean, I'm just going to pick up on the idea of these sort of stages because I think one of the things that has always struck me is that when people are talking about difficult teenagers, it is sometimes helpful to say this is the job that the teenager actually has to do. So when they're sort of, you know, being difficult and non communicative and using slang that we don't understand expressing views that we find perplexing. They're not doing something which is deliberately, you know, meant to. Well, it may be really meant to upset us, but it's actually got a purpose for them which is developmental. So preparing to become their own selves and to get out from under the sort of the twin gods that existed in their universe while they were a kid. And they've got to somehow sort of demote to human level. And, you know, I think just understanding that process can help both, you know, teenagers navigate it, but as importantly, parents navigate it. You know, I suppose quite a good motto from that is, don't try too hard to understand your adolescent kids, but also not to leave them too independent. Because if you take no notice of what your child's going through, it can be equally as dangerous, that isolation. Because very often, mostly I think this happens in. In America, but also can happen here more and more knife crime. I don't want to get into this too much and we don't have time, but if you're not mindful of what your child is going through, they will go into the wrong areas and they suddenly get stuck in a mindset that you cannot even begin to recognise. So it's that fine line, isn't it, James? Absolutely right. Remaining emotionally available and yet, you know, sort of allowing space to be themselves is the key thing. But isn't it also when a child observes parents being able to talk, they learn equally to be able to talk. So it comes. Does it come back to the parents? I think if you can model for your kids how a good relationship looks, they're going to be equipped for life. And of course, no relationship is perfect. So we're talking about what I think Winnicott calls good enough parenting. I'd extend that as far as good enough. Relationships don't need to be perfect, they need to have a degree of conflict in them because the individuals in the relationships are different and that can be a source of energy rather than distress. Yeah. And it's important that the couple can move forward and as they grow, of course there'll be a difference. And then it's explaining that difference, understanding and then coming back together again. What's your take on teenagers, Gail? It's a big story. I just wanted to refer back to. I wrote a book last year about supporting children through their mental health, as you know, and very early on in that book I actually do a chapter on the stages of human development, so parents could read it and think, wow, this is where I'm at with my child, going back to what James said, you know, that they need to work through the process. And also with Winnicott theory of good enough mothering, good enough parenting. But there's a lovely poem actually by Gibran which you've probably seen. It's called On Children. I've actually put a copy of it in the book and it says that your children are not your children. They come, they come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. And I just think it's such a poem about parenting. So whenever I'm feeling a little bit challenged by teenagers, I go, I go back to Ericsson's theory of human development. And like James said, it's a process they've got to go through. But if you don't understand that as a parent, it can be very challenging. Yeah. So just quickly, now that you've finished there, Gail, we've got a very short space. James, how would you make sure that people, because it does, I think, often come from a relationship, that children have problems? What would you do so socially to let people know about the relationship, to make it stronger so that people don't fall into the trap of trauma? I think we have to be more honest about the conflicting needs that we're looking to meet in long term relationships. I think it's Esther Perel who says that we're trying to be a business partner of co parent, a lover, a best friend, and it's an almost impossible list. But you know, talking with kids about that kind of list might be a really good thing. So it's how do we do that? And I do think James and both of you have hit the nail on the head with James, with your videos that you're making and obviously with your books as well. Gail. And I do know that I do speak your mind, which is also to help people understand the psychology and the mental health problems people go through. But this has been a wonderful beginning. I can only say it's a beginning because it's such a big story to trauma. So, Gail Danan, I would like to thank you immensely for joining me today. And James Earl as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. And let's hope that people get something from this, even if it's just the first step into the world of understanding that trauma has its effect and it can affect families, children and society. So from your mind matters. I'm Dr. Maria Kompinska and thank you for joining us today.
