Ep 5: Writing Through Trauma: When Memories Won't Let Go

Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Podcast Guest:

Stacy Brookman - Resilience & Leadership Coach / Life‑Storytelling Expert & Podcast Host / 35 Years Corporate Experience / Founder, Real Life Resilience / MBA & Certified Life Coach

Have you ever noticed how some memories just stick to you? Not the normal ones, but the kind that hit you out of nowhere — a certain smell, a tone of voice, and suddenly your heart's racing. It's all happening again.

If you work with trauma as a social worker, therapist, or healer, this might explain why you feel so drained, even when you thought you left work at work.

Stacy: "I was in a bad marriage to a very emotionally abusive person. I didn't know what that was at the time, at all. But having gone through that, I discovered writing and I discovered how to become resilient. And resilience isn't just pushing through and getting, just buckling down and getting your stuff done. That is not resilience. I discover you can do that, but then your life is falling apart in other ways, or your body is falling apart in other ways. So to be a resilient doesn't mean just being strong and powering through really tough situations or tough times in your life. Being able to bounce back and bring in that joy in your life in the midst of tough times."

Taniya: "I think resilience is something a lot of social workers and healthcare professionals know about. They see it for every day in their work. And I think they obviously usually think it's about toughing it out, toughing, they're so used to seeing it. They are usually very resilient within themselves. They've had hard knocks, but they find it really hard to ask for help."

The Five-Minute Breakthrough

Stacy: "Think about some of the toughest things that you've experienced write them down as far as what did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? What did you taste and what did you touch? Use all of the senses. And when you're doing that, because all your experiences that you've had, your tough experiences are wrapped around in your head. Especially if you're like working with clients and you're hearing their tough stories and you're experiencing when you do that vicarious trauma, like just hearing somebody else's traumatic story or bystander trauma, some people call it.

Your Brain Doesn't Know the Difference

They hide from you at first. And then maybe a certain smell or somebody says a certain phrase or piece of music or something, and boom, come right back to stress you out and cause you, all kinds of physical and emotional chaos in your body. And when you write those down, you have to find words, first of all. For what's happened to you. Find words for the grief you're feeling for somebody else, or the grief you're feeling for yourself or the tough things. And yes, it's tough sometimes to recount that. But it's going to empty that outta your head and allow you to have the power over that traumatic experience, not that experience to have the power over you.

Poetry as Witness

Taniya: "I know as a writer, as a poet, I always found my poetry when I was really affected by a client. I found that very soothing and healing. It was like that poem was like a witness so certain clients obviously sometimes affect you a lot more than other clients. So I always remember just seeing that poem on that piece of. I myself to feel whatever I was feeling really helped."

Stacy: "There have been a lot of studies, a ton of different studies about writing. In fact, it's called the Two Minute Miracle because writing just two minutes a day, maybe in the morning in a certain way, you've gotta write about your feelings about some of the tough things that have happened to you can boost your immune system. It if you have chronic pain, it can ease chronic pain. Some folks who have had headaches, it's helped relieve those. So there's a lot of studies that point to the physiology, but also the psychology."

The Science Behind Writing Therapy

Stacy: "For instance, when I was going through my traumatic event, which was marriage to a sociopath. And then when you divorce a sociopath, it gets a hundred times worse. So my brain was in chaos. I was fuzzy, I was trying to keep the wheels on the bus going, trying to power through and what I was really doing, accepting. This abuse, really honestly, I was just accepting it. I could have stepped out at any time in the 10 years. I did not. I chose not to. I thought what I could do would be to help and fix it, and that's not what happened within a sociopath or narcissist.

But if you are going through any of this, your brain is in chaos. Sometimes you are forgetting things. Your brain is foggy or you're in the middle of something and you're like, you forgot what you're doing. You just fall in bed, just exhausted. And it's because those memories are affecting you. Whether you realize it or not."

When Your Brain Is in Chaos

Stacy: "So writing down, like I said, to write the senses, what did you feel? What did you taste? What did you touch? What did you smell? What did you see at that moment? Pinpoint one moment in time and start writing not even sentences, just snippets. About all of those senses that starts coming back. And then you can release that onto the page because your brain is okay, it's big, it's awful, it's horrible. It feels like it's happening to you, but it happened to somebody else. You're, 'cause you're getting those stories from your clients or whatever. That various trauma. Your brain doesn't know the difference. And so it's trying to protect you. And what you really need to do is write it down in black and white. And when you do that. Your brain says, oh, I get that. Okay. And you are much more clearer. Okay. This is not happening to you. You don't need to raise all the inflammation in your body. You're not in a fight or flight system right now, it's okay. And you can release that on the paper and then you never have to show it to anybody if you don't want to. But it's something that is definitely healing."

Writing to Release the Chaos

Taniya: "It's like when it comes to vicarious trauma and when you've been totally burned out by the work that you know social workers and healthcare professionals do, it's really fuzzy. What is your feeling and what is the client's feeling? What is your experience and what is the client's experience? It all gets like really en. And majority of the time that you're saying you're not even conscious of that.

And I know a lot of social workers and healthcare professionals, one of the reasons why they actually even start. On these brilliant, wonderful professions to being so giving is sometimes they themselves have had a really dark experience, whether that's sexual abuse, whether that is narcissistic abuse, whether that is domestic violence, whether that is. Having somebody very close to them die of a terminal illness, usually not all the time, but majority of the time, they've experienced a real dark pain and they wanna reach out and be there for someone else when nobody had been there for them. But then in helping others, they forget."

When Everything Gets Enmeshed

Stacy: "It gets buried, but it's still there until you write and get it out. That's the beauty. In fact, practically nobody gets out of childhood without some sort of emotional scars and wounds. And we take those experiences with us into adulthood, and that's how we operate in the world.

And let's say something happened to you as an 8-year-old or a 16-year-old or 14-year-old. You take that eight yearold mind at that moment with you, and you make an agreement with yourself. I'm never going to trust an adult, or I'm never going to do this, or whatever that agreement is, you take that into adulthood and it affects the way you operate.

For me, it was my voices should not be heard. I need to stand in the corner. You're not worthy of being heard. And this is what I discovered by writing, I don't raise my hand. I never raised it in kindergarten grade school, high school adulthood. I didn't say, no, that's not right. And I only found it at age 45 through writing. I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't like that life theme. That's awful. I thought I was a professional woman. But no, when I look back, that's the pattern. I didn't stop and say, that's not right, because I had pulled the W over my eyes, and I had made that agreement. My voice should not be heard. But once I started writing and I found it, oh my gosh, I am shouting from rooftops."

Discovering Your Hidden Patterns

Taniya: "By writing, you tend then rewrite patterns in your brain, some of those neural pathways, right? You start rewriting your story."

Stacy: "You can absolutely, you're really discovering yourself. You're discovering what you're really all about. And so once you discover that you, then you can change it. You can rewrite your story."

Rewriting Your Neural Pathways

Stacey: "Yeah, absolutely. This is why I think writing is so good, it's so universal and it can be so private. So part of that shame is I don't want other people to see how bad I am or that I am not worthy. I don't want other people to see that and know that. Writing down your feelings and when you find you pinpoint those critical points in your life and you start writing about them in private and it, this is not your eighth grade English teacher writing.

You don't have to worry about grammar. It is just free writing, which you don't even use capitals or punctuation, nothing. You just start writing and keep on writing or typing and. What that does is it allows you privately to get that mess out and acknowledge it, look at it and look at it and say, oh my gosh, that's not true. That's my 8-year-old self talking about that, and that's what I've been thinking all along. Oh, wow. I'm much better than that. I deserve that promotion, or I deserve to be happy. And so all of this chaos is in your head, and once you get it out in black and white, it's like a third person or a sounding board and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just wrote that. That's not true, but I must be believing it somewhere because I've written it. And so you get that clarity."

The Privacy of Writing

Stacy: "So first of all, you do not have to be a writer to write about your life stories. That's, like I said, it's not eighth grade English. Nobody's gonna penalize you. It doesn't matter if you're a really horrible writer, this is still gonna help you.

It is called the two Minute Miracle, but I encourage people to free write, get up in the morning, spend 10 minutes free writing, just whatever's in your head. If it's your grocery list or whatever, your brain's gonna keep throwing out junk. But eventually, if you keep writing, don't lift your pen from the paper. Don't lift your hands from the keyboard. Keep typing. Eventually those golden nuggets of your subconscious are going to come out. Once you experience that, it's really amazing. You're like, oh my gosh, I can't stop writing. I can't stop. It's amazing. And you get all of that out.

I tell people make a list of 15 or 20 turning points in your life and then make a list of maybe 5, 10, 15 conflicts you've had in your life. And then make a list of five or 10 things that desires that you've had in your life. And when you look across all three of those lists, is there anything that stands out that's on two or all three of those? That's where you need to start writing"

Getting Started: The Practical Steps

Stacy: "And the beautiful thing is you are going to heal as you go along Here's what I tell people. What if somebody is about to go through what you're going through or what you've gone through? What if somebody is also having the same doubts, fears, stressors, all of that sort of thing, and your writing could help them. Wouldn't you want to share that?"

Your Story Could Help Someone Else

Your takeaway: Trauma memories don't just live in your mind. They get stuck in your body. And when you're a helper, your brain doesn't filter what's yours from what's theirs. But writing — raw, messy, just-for-you writing — is like hitting the eject button. It moves those memories from chaos to a place you can actually handle.

Try it this week. Two minutes, no rules. Just see what happens.

Next episode: How your self-care routine might actually be exhausting you — when wellness becomes just another thing you have to perform perfectly.

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