What I Learned in Therapy

Hey, welcome back to what I Learned
in Therapy with me Jamie Lang.

What I learned in Therapy is a podcast
about, well therapy, obviously.

Um, it is about storytelling
and it's highly philosophical,

and it's about healing.

It's about telling the stories that
make us who we are and telling them

over and over and over in different
ways so that we can continue to see

different aspects of ourselves and
accept the way that we change and grow.

I am a licensed clinical
professional counselor.

I own a healing center called the Vault.

I.

Run a lot of groups here at the
Vault and I just got approved to

open up my own yoga teacher training
school, which is really cool.

And I'm also starting a new program
that I'm gonna talk about a little bit

today, um, in conjunction with some
other things I've been thinking about.

So if you'd like to learn more about
what's going on at the vault and

uh, what I'm gonna talk about today,
you can head over to the website.

It's located in the show notes.

Um, if you don't wanna do that,
just google the Vault, Boise,

Idaho, and you'll find me.

You can also email at
WLIT with jamie@gmail.com.

So let's jump in.

I'm just gonna take a big, deep breath.

There's a certain kind of woman
I often sit with in therapy.

You'd most likely recognize her.

She's the one who never misses a deadline.

She's the one who remembers birthdays,
who stays late to help clean up.

She's the one who everybody calls
when things start to fall apart

because she always seems to hold
everything and everyone together.

On the outside it looks like grace,
but on the inside it's something else.

It's not ease, it's not freedom.

It is a kind of controlled holding, a
learned position that comes from years

of managing what was never hers to carry.

When I say she carries it
with grace, I don't mean she

floats through life untouched.

I mean, she's learned to
metabolize chaos with a calm face.

She's learned how to keep others steady,
even when she's unraveling inside,

and that kind of grace
is often misunderstood.

It's not effortless.

It's very effortful.

It's the result of a finely attuned
nervous system, one that learned

long ago that safety wasn't a given.

So it became the source of
safety for everyone else,

and that's what we so often miss.

Hyper independence, hyper
effectiveness, hyper efficiency.

It's not a character trait,
it's a learned state.

It forms in environments where
tenderness didn't have a place to

land, where chaos became familiar,
self-reliance became the only way to

feel safe in a world that rarely was.

And I know this, not just because
I've studied it or because I sit

with women every week in my practice.

I know it because I've lived it too.

There's a story I carry and I'm
going to tell it not for shock.

I tell it because it demonstrates
the beginning of trauma.

And I tell it because it's the wisdom.

I now stand inside.

My family and I were in
a horrific car accident.

I was seven years old.

We had this, um, light
green, maybe even sea green.

Scout, it was like a Jeep.

Um, they don't make 'em anymore, or if
they do, they make 'em quite differently.

Um, I don't remember the weather.

I remember it was dark outside.

What I remember is that my
brother and I were sitting in

the backseat, no seat belts.

We had suckers in our mouths.

We had just had pizza and we
were celebrating my dad's new

job, a new sense of security,

and we were driving out
to see his new office.

What I remember most is the
moment the world split open.

Suddenly there was a tractor in
the middle of the road, no lights.

My dad swerved and swerved again,
and that scout rolled like dice

three or four times into the front
yard of a house along the road,

and somehow I landed
in the back of the car.

Or outside of it.

I can't quite remember, but I
remember that everything went black.

And then the sound of glass
beneath me and my mom screaming

our names and my dad silent.

We were herded into the house.

The house we crashed, almost crashed into,

um, and they had a fire
going and it was really warm.

And the contrast of the heat and
the cold outside and the trauma

in our bodies, my mom passed out
and I thought for sure she died.

And my nervous system was arrested in that
moment, I looked at my mom on the floor,

and then I heard the police
saying that they were gonna have

to cut my dad out of the car.

With the jaws of life,

he was hanging upside down,

and so I believed he was dead too.

That thought didn't pass.

It stayed.

It etched something into me

and then it was the cops asking
questions and I didn't have an answer.

Just ringing my hands together, trying
to locate the center of my body, and

that's how we learn.

Hypervigilance, not through
words, but through experience.

Nobody told me to become vigilant.

My body did it on its own.

It wasn't fear exactly.

It was kind of alertness
that never turned off.

Like I had to be ready at all
times because everything could

fall apart at any moment.

That's when my nervous system
stopped being a place of rest.

That's when it became a scanner.

That's when I became a scanner.

The day after the
accident, I went to school.

I remember my mom saying, don't go, but
I, I needed to get away from the wreckage.

My dad was.

Coming home from the hospital and
I don't think I wanted to be there.

I needed to find something still
and structured to pretend that

the world still made sense.

And I went to school wearing
the jacket I had on the night

before during the accident, and
my mom's blood was on it when

she pulled me in close to her
after waking up from passing out.

She left blood on my coat

and I wore it like a badge, not
like I wanted, you know, Hey, look

at me, I'm wearing my mom's blood.

But I didn't know what else to do
with the rupture because no one told

me how to hold it, so I wore it.

And I didn't know it then of
course, how a moment like that could

rearrange an entire nervous system.

I just knew that something
in me had changed.

The center of myself felt stolen and
in its place I learned to orbit around

other people's needs, other people's
emotions, other people's chaos.

My dad's chaos, and
that became my gravity.

By 16, I had found a
new way to survive food.

Yes, food is for survival,
but I began using food not for

nourishment, but for regulation.

I had watched my father do the same.

It was subtle, quiet.

No one named it out loud.

But I saw it.

My body saw it.

My body felt it binging, felt
like an abundance in a world

that so often felt scarce.

That was so scarce.

Like I was trying to feel the absence,
not just of safety, but of being held

by being located by being attuned,

and then the purging.

Because when you grow up
with internal chaos and.

And external unpredictability you
find whatever control you can, even if

it hurts, even if it disappears you.

I didn't know then that this too
was a trauma response, that I

wasn't weak or broken or vain.

. I was brilliantly adapting to a system
that never learned how to keep me safe.

This wasn't self-destruction,
even though it looked like it.

It was self-protection in a language
I hadn't yet learned to translate.

And the irony is, even though it came
from survival, it still left its mark.

Not in ways that scream, but in
quiet imprints in the relationship

I have with my body still.

With rest, with balance,

with fear.

I carry those echoes still, but not as
shame, I don't think, but as memory,

as evidence of what I lived through and
how I brilliantly adapted to stay here.

To

stay here.

And I'm not the only one
of course who adapts in

ways that seem

ridiculous.

A while back, I, I sat
with my friend Aubrey.

I love her.

We met as freshmen in high school.

I.

She watched the whole thing develop.

She is one of my most trusted friends.

I don't have to speak a word to her.

I can just look at her and
we're dancing in language.

What surprised me, I.

As we spoke about those days, how we both
were developing adaptations for our trauma

was her willingness to share her own

unconventional adaptations,

her own ways of coping,
of managing and surviving.

There was no shame in that conversation.

Just two women once, two girls.

Speaking the truth of what has kept
us alive, and it was so honest, and

even though I know I'm not alone
now, I still continue to feel that

comfort of feeling less alone.

I don't think that ever stops

because that's the thing about trauma.

It isolates, it convinces you.

That your adaptations are strange,
even pathological, and maybe

they are, but they're survival.

But when someone says, I did that
too, or I feel that same way too.

Something loosens.

The grip of secrecy, softens
and the body exhales.

We weren't broken girls.

We were girls doing the best we could
do with what we had, and we made it not

without scars, but with an unshakable
knowing of what pain can teach.

I continued to return to
that conversation with Aubrey

because it reminded me
of why I do this work.

The younger version of me didn't have
the language, the tools, the safety,

to name what was happening in her body.

She had no map for what
regulation felt like.

No one said, Hey sweetie, this is
your nervous system on overload.

No one explained that.

What I felt like chaos
was actually adaptation.

And so now I build what I needed.

I created girls on the mat to
offer a different path, not

to fix girls, to be clear.

Not to fix them, they don't
need fixing, but to equip them.

To give them access to safety, not as
a concept, but as a felt experience.

Girls on the mat is more than yoga.

It's more than a summer camp.

It's nervous system literacy,
it's trauma prevention.

It's a space where breath becomes
agency, where movement becomes memory,

where self-respect is practiced.

Over and over and over.

Girls on the Mat is a trauma-informed
philosophy rooted program designed

to change the future of girlhood
through the ethical wisdom of

yoga and spirituality and healing.

Our mission is to offer girls of all ages.

From infancy to adolescence, tools for
inner steadiness, emotional literacy,

and embedded and embodied confidence,

and the vision is big.

Like I said, it's not just a
seasonal camp here at the Vault,

not just a four day program.

We're building scalable, age specific
formats from prenatal bonding,

all the way to teen leadership
and sports based empowerment.

Because girlhood, if you
know a girl, close your eyes

and think of her right now.

Think of her.

If you're driving, don't close your eyes.

I think of a girl.

You know, I'm thinking of my niece.

Her name is Abby.

She is precious.

Because girlhood doesn't need
to be something we survive.

It can be something.

We intentionally grow, something
we intentionally cultivate and

something we intentionally protect.

The world is aching for this,
and girls on the mat is ready.

And here's something I wanna say.

As a therapist, I don't do this work
because I figured everything out.

That is for sure I know, know, shit.

I do it because I've walked through
fire and came out with language

because I know what it means to feel alone
in a body that doesn't know how to rest.

That is learning how to rest because
I still carry that little girl inside

of me, the one who was scanning for
danger when she should have been

sleeping peacefully in her bed.

Therapists aren't immune to trauma
or not immune to maladaptive coping

or chronic vigilance in in the body
or the ache of being misunderstood.

But what I know now and what
I teach now is that healing

doesn't require perfection.

It requires a presence.

And the more I listen, the more I
intentionally learn that my nervous

system isn't asking me to erase the past.

It's asking me to stay here.

To stay with the sensations, the
memories, the grief, to stay with the

parts of me that still flinch and to
stay with the knowing that I don't

need to be fixed, I need to be met.

Buddhism teaches us that
everything is interdependent.

That nothing exists in isolation, not
trees, not ecosystems, not people.

So it makes sense that healing
too must be relational.

Hyper independence taught me to go it
alone, but healing has taught me and

will always continue to teach me to
come back to the village, to let others

hold me, to admit when I'm tired.

And to trust softness.

Again,

One of my favorite authors,
mark Nepro, wrote quote,

to listen, is to lean in softly
with a willingness to be changed

by what we hear and quote.

And I have been changed

because I listened finally and created
space for more listening, not only to

myself but my clients, and to the girls.

To the girl I was, to the wisdom
I carry and to the body that.

Never stopped trying to speak

and I heard you are here.

You are whole and you are love.

This is for every girl who never felt
safe enough to say what she needed and

every woman still carrying her inside.

You

are here, you are whole.

You are love.

Thank you for listening and go
spray paint that big old world

out there with all of your love.