51: Building Strong Foundations After Trauma with Joanne Green

It's really important to be able to try to gain a little bit of distance and objectivity from a situation and see if how you're behaving , the people you're surrounding yourself , with what you're telling yourself , if those are serving you or if you are literally putting obstacles in your own way .

My guest today is Joanne Greene , the author of by Accident A Memoir of Letting Go , and host of the podcast In this Story , which features micro essays , or micro memoirs as she calls them , joanne and I had a fabulous conversation about trauma and post-traumatic stress and how it isn't necessarily a disorder , that it's a normal response to an abnormal circumstance ,

and , of course , we talked about resiliency . I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation . Find Notes on Resilience on Apple Podcasts . We'd love for you to subscribe and leave a review . Thanks so much , hi , joanne . I'm so excited that you and I are talking today .

We've got this All getting frustrated and heaving heavy size and being very upset with this person for doing absolutely nothing wrong .

And somebody in the line behind me said my grandmother taught me that these are the circumstances that are to teach me patience , and I loved that , and I have now used that not even speaking to other people , just speaking to myself to remind myself that , yes , I'm feeling frustrated or angry and I think right now I need to just remember that this isn't about me

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And then just note what the emotions were that were coming up , what the thoughts were that were coming up , and just deal with it .

So you know , I've always been a whirling , dervish sort of person constant motion , feeling the need to achieve and produce and very passionate about having fun .

And the last person on the dance floor and the first person up in the morning and some of that is great and I love that about myself and some of it , I think now , in my later years , I can look back and say was it very much a reaction and a coping mechanism and a response to a series of challenges ?

And you know they're sort of how I met the challenges . My adult life was a big career , two kids , solid marriage , had to volunteer for everything in the schools . It was this constant , constant , constant until I crashed in the evening like a child who was overtired . You know I would often actually burst into tears , it would come to that .

And in my fifties I was the youngest in the family by a mile and sadly my dad died when I was 26 , but my mom and my sister were both died within a five month period when I was in my late fifties . And I was very close with both of them . My mom's death was natural . She was in her early nineties .

My sister's death was from ovarian cancer , and this really brought me to my knees in many ways . A few years later , out of nowhere , my brother died of a hemorrhagic stroke , and so I lost all my immediate family members and went from being the baby of this family to being the matriarch for my sister and brother's children and grandchildren .

And as I was just kind of getting back on my feet after dealing with all of that grief , I was hit by a car as a pedestrian , oh my goodness . And as I was flying through the air , because the car that hit me was a sedan .

Had it been an SUV , I probably would have gone under and been run over , but because it was a sedan , I was flipped up onto the hood of the car , and as that was happening , my entire self was silently screaming to the universe or God or whatever . Really , really , now , this I haven't been through enough .

And a moment later and this is where the resilience comes in , mania , a moment later , I said okay , let's do this . Wow , and I didn't say this out loud , but I absolutely distinctly clearly remember this . I never lost consciousness . I was severely injured . They were life-threatening injuries .

I had four pelvic fractures and five days of uncontrolled internal bleeding and I , obviously , here I am . I survived and miraculously I survived with no residual damage . Wow , but it was the first time in my life that I was literally helpless . I could not do anything for myself , I could not feed myself , I could not get to the bathroom .

I was truly brought to my knees .

And when something like that happens , we have choices , and I don't think this was so much of a conscious choice , but somewhere I drew this strength , from somewhere deep in my DNA , I believe as the granddaughter of immigrants who left where they were for a new life , to go to a country where they didn't speak the language and knew no one .

I think I drew upon that strength and said all right , what am I gonna do with this ? And it became a golden opportunity for me to learn what it meant to be still , because I had no choice .

To learn what it meant to ask for and graciously receive help , without judging the way that help was delivered , to cut people slack when they couldn't show up for me and not to assume that that meant they didn't love me , but rather that , for whatever reasons , they were not showing up in a way that was helpful for me , and I needed to just accept that there

were so many things to learn that in any given moment , whatever it was that I was feeling , the despair , the hopelessness was in that moment , and then , five minutes from now , I might feel something completely different , and so this , too , shall pass . It's a phrase that I've since learned comes from the Talmud .

Who knew I knew that my mother said this to me a lot growing up , but it's actually an ancient Jewish teaching . This , too , shall pass , and it's so valuable , and there's more that I learned . But it was really about resilience . Because here's the thing , as you well know , and as I'm sure you share in your talks , bad things are gonna happen to all of us .

Illness will happen , if not to ourselves , to those we love .

Injury happens , relationship failure happens , job failure happens , loss absolutely happens , and loss isn't just death , it's all kinds of losses , and when that happens , it's really good to have a little toolbox or tool chest that you can refer to , and so I've developed one , and I really wanna share that with the world .

I mean , we've all had those moments where you just like come on , so you know , and your story is the and an example of resilience , but did you know that as it was happening ? Did you know the word resilience ? Did you understand the role that it was playing as it was happening ?

Interestingly enough , I later found out that I was actually in danger of dying when I was having the internal bleeding . But I didn't know that at the time and I thought that because I had survived the accident , I was gonna be okay .

I didn't know that I was gonna be this okay , like , really okay , like I climb mountains and do yoga and very no residual damage at all . But I've always been a strong person . I think I come from strong women . I've always been kind of a badass , wow .

So I have learned much about it since , but it was not something I ever thought about or felt that I had . So and then you cultivated it exactly now I think about it and and cultivate it but like you were saying you just had it . You weren't sure if it was .

You know , your ancestors that just kind of were channeling through you and like , nope , we're gonna survive this . So we all have a survival instinct and it's just a matter of how does it manifest after you have experienced a traumatic event ? Now you know you talk about your trauma . Did you have post-traumatic stress ?

My best friend is a is a psychotherapist , phd in psychology , and she said to me you know , don't assume that you have to have PTSD . And that Absolutely empowered me to feel like Okay , wait , I'm having a very Normal , understandable reaction to trauma .

There's no disorder here , mm-hmm , certainly not at this stage , and I would benefit from some targeted therapy From someone who deals specifically with trauma . And so that's what I did . So I don't think I . I think I did have post-traumatic stress . Mm-hmm but I didn't have post-traumatic stress disorder .

thing was to put me into kind of a meditative state where I would imagine that I was Surrounded by a bubble where if I was hit by a car I wouldn't get hurt . I would bounce off , and she wanted me to step . Imagine that I was on the curb Shortly before , like seconds before , I stepped off the curb and walked by the way .

It happened in a crosswalk , in broad daylight , and I was not distracted , I was focused . I wasn't on my phone which isn't to say that I wasn't sometimes looking at my phone when walking , but that time I wasn't and she said and I want you to turn your head to the right , mm-hmm , which is the direction that the car was coming from .

A car stopped for me in the intersection and then another car came at 50 miles an hour , slammed into her , which caused her to slam into me . She said turn your head . I couldn't move my neck . There was nothing wrong with my neck , money , yeah , my neck was not injured and so my eyes popped open and I and I said , why can't I move my neck ?

And she smiled and said Because the trauma is already lodging there . You're protecting yourself from seeing this oncoming threat and we will take care of that . And by the end of the first session I had full range of motion in my neck . So I signed up for more sessions , believer , and so that's one thing I think people don't understand .

Yeah , also that our brains work in some very strange and interesting ways and we tie Experiences to other experiences , and so sometimes when we're reacting to a trauma , we're reacting both to the trauma we think we're reacting to , but also an earlier trauma or an earlier something . So those are a couple things .

And we were talking and I told her I've been a survivor of the bombing . It is not something she knew before that . And then she said oh , then I know why you're crying . You are Responding to a trauma . It's just not happening to you at this moment , but your body thinks it's happening to you and you are sort of processing in this moment .

And it was one of the first times I had experienced something like that and it was so helpful to realize . Well , there is a reason I'm crying . It isn't connected to what's happening to me at the moment , but it is connected to something that has happened to me . There is a reason behind it and I just to add that to .

I think that's something that can be really difficult for people to understand about trauma .

Yeah and I would Crumble , I would end up in the fetal position , I would be hyperventilating . I've done a lot of work and it's been 11 years , but still now , when I'm a passenger in a car and there's a near miss , I have an oversized reaction . Yeah , and now I've learned not to be afraid of it , to just go with it , and then it passes and I'm okay .

What isn't helpful is when the person I'm with , often my husband , says it's fine , it's fine , calm down , everything's fine , you're gonna be fine . It's like , yes , it's not a rational process , right , I know , I'm fine . It's that it's triggered some absolute need to flee the scene and I can't , cuz I'm in a car , see , belts it in and on a freeway right .

I mean the thing meditating , hiking , sitting , giving myself permission to read in the middle of the day , which I used to think was completely slothful Is that even a word ? It ? is I love it but now I allow myself all of that and but I still feel it amping up when I go there , when I start to talk about it .

brains , but also for our bodies , and I know I hear you on the sort of tightening up I definitely have times where I realize , oh , I have now tightened every muscle of my body in anticipation of this Thing that I'm talking about . That is not a danger to me in any way .

So you know we have been talking about going through trauma and our individual responses . Do you think that you know our society , the organizations that we're involved with , have any role in helping trauma survivors and supporting us as we go through these things ?

I think that people and society in particular , and the workplace in general , doesn't account for the amount of time that it takes to recover from trauma , and time and space , it's a process that cannot be rushed , but it is a process that needs to happen for many of us Again , not everyone , we're all wired differently but for many of us we need to be cut a

certain amount of slack and I think that you know I was someone who never cut myself any and then the workplace in general and our need to constantly be productive is such .

I mean , I remember this with losses because I had so many in a row and you know there was this expectation that a few days later I would be back at work and right back up to speed , and it just does not go that way with anything .

And when I began to go back to work of course , too soon , because that's who I am it was important to me to feel like I was making progress . I would talk to myself over and over again . This is , by the way , a great tool for everyone .

We talk to ourselves all the time , and most of the time we're giving ourselves messages that are not self-serving , messages like who do you think you are ? You're not good enough . All right , you just got away with that , but they're going to find you out all those kinds of things . And I made it a point to try to give myself empowering messages .

I can do this , I can do this , I can do this . I didn't believe it at the beginning , but eventually I said it enough times to myself that I started to believe it . But also , you don't need to prove anything here . You don't need to be a hero . You don't need to stay for eight hours when your body after three is telling you that this is enough .

Go home , lie down , take a nap .

So I think , even when tough things are not happening , it's really important to be able to try to gain a little bit of distance and objectivity from a situation and see if how you're behaving , the people you're surrounding yourself with , what you're telling yourself , if those are serving you or if you are literally putting obstacles in your own way toward healing .

And I think so often we are because of messages we've gotten from society or our parents or whatever . I should be this the word should really you really ought to question that word and I think that we very , very much need to listen to ourselves , to our bodies .

Our bodies are very wise and they give us messages all the time and we're too busy to listen , and so I think to build resilience , it's important to slow down , it's important to find moments of stillness . Breathing is absolutely key . We often hold our breath .

Yes , don't do that and try to keep on breathing , breathe deeply and be honest with yourself about what serves you and what doesn't .

So I've written a book entitled by Accident a memoir of letting go , which opens with the actual crash and follows me through the next few years where I have a few other opportunities to practice what I've learned , because that's how life is , and I get caught in a hurricane and I get a cancer diagnosis and you know spoiler alert I'm fine and things happen , and

so that's my book by Accident a memoir of letting go . It's available everywhere Amazon , you know , your bookstore can order it and it's also an audiobook and an ebook , and I read the audiobook . So cool . And I'm an old radio person , so I highly recommend that version if you're an audiobook listener . Also , I have a podcast that I'm producing .

I write micro memoir , so flash , nonfiction short essays that are often nostalgic , sometimes funny , sometimes pithy , sometimes very serious , and they're about four , four and a half minutes long . They're pretty much always under five minutes and it's called In this Story with Joanne Green .

It's available on all podcast platforms and my website , where I invite you to visit and I answer every email , is Joanne J-O-A-N-N-E , hyphen green , g-r-e-e-n-e Excellent .

I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency , compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership . This builds strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil . If this is something you want to learn more about , visit my website , www . manyachylinski . com , or email me at manya at manyachylinski .

com , or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter . Thanks so much .