.png)
Women in the Arena
Women in the Arena is the celebration of everyday women living extraordinary lives in plain sight. We seek to inspire, encourage and challenge you to reach for the great heights you're made for.
Women in the Arena
You Can Overcome Trauma's Silent Grip with ART Specialist Laurel Wiers
Have you ever sensed an invisible weight anchoring you to a hidden past? My guest, trauma and triggers expert Laurel Wiers, and I traverse the landscape of trauma's pervasive grip on our lives, shedding light on its insidious origins and the revolutionary therapies offering hope. From the overlooked incidents of childhood to the more apparent traumas of adulthood, we discuss how these experiences can entrench themselves deep within, dictating our behaviors and interactions, often without our conscious realization.
Take a journey with us as we uncover the stories of individuals transformed by Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), an evolution of EMDR that promises rapid healing. The compelling tale of a man haunted by his time as a janitor, whose life was reshaped by ART, is just one example of the profound changes this therapy can invoke. By utilizing techniques like bilateral stimulation, ART assists in reprocessing traumatic memories, converting crippling memories into neutral recollections, thereby freeing individuals to navigate life without the shadow of their past.
Ending on a note of resilience and personal evolution, we reflect on how vulnerability and the embrace of hope can catalyze a metamorphosis within those tethered by their traumas. Laurel shares the stories of those who have emerged from the darkness into a renewed sense of self, and the joy of witnessing such a journey. This episode isn't just a conversation; it's an opportunity for anyone listening to recognize the potential for change within themselves and to feel the ripple effect of a single, life-altering realization. Join us for a powerful exploration of the resilience that lies within the human spirit.
Thank you for all of your support.
If you like what you hear, please go check out more episodes at https://womeninthearena.net/
Want to connect with me? You can click the "let's be friends" link and send me a message!
***Last thing- This is my WISH LIST of interviews:
• Joan Jett
• Dolly Parton
• Viola Davis
• Ina Garten
Maybe you can help a girl out...***
Go check out all of our episodes on our website at: https://womeninthearena.net/
If you'd like to connect, reach out to me at audra@womeninthearena.net
***One last thing...I have an interview wish list because a girl's gotta dream
- Viola Davis
- Dolly Parton
- Ina Garten
- Joan Jett
Maybe one of you can help me out!
Thank you all for supporting this show and all Women in the Arena!
Welcome and everyone, and thank you so much for joining me again this week. This week, oh, we're gonna talk about trauma, isn't that is on Everybody's thoughts? It's in everybody's lives, in its a topic that, thank goodness, is More of a mainstream topic now we're. Five years ago, ten years ago, it certainly wasn't. And we're gonna speak with a trauma expert. My guest this week is Laurel Wears, and she is a trauma and triggers expert, but she didn't always start out that way. It became that she is a licensed therapist and she has been practicing for over 23 years. Her specialty, which we're gonna speak about in depth today, is Accelerated resolution therapy. She is certified as a master. She is also a National instructor of this therapy, and this is a life-changing, extraordinary therapy that everybody needs to know about. I cannot wait for you to meet her and for us to have this conversation. It is my pleasure and my honor to introduce to you Laurel Laurel. Thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
Laurel:Well, thank you, I've been looking forward to having this conversation with you me too.
Audra:I mean, I mean not that anybody gets excited about, let's talk about trauma, but we all have it, it, it. We can't escape it. If you're human, you have trauma, but we haven't always talked about it. So let's, let's talk about that. Why in the world was there a stigma against talking about something that's a very normal human experience, that is trauma and triggers? I mean, if you're, if you're breathing, this exists for you.
Laurel:I Think one of the big things is back in the day Everybody thought that the only people who had trauma were war veterans. I think even now, sometimes it happens I'll tell people I work with PTSD and they say, oh, you must work with a lot of people who've gone to war. So I think there's kind of this antiquated connection in a sense, that it has to be some Gory, brutal thing that you've witnessed, experienced or gone through to have PTSD or trauma. And I think since then, in the last 25, 30 years, people have realized other things are counted as trauma. Now people would say, yes, if you were abused as a child, that's trauma. If you experienced a rape, that's trauma.
Laurel:A car accident but I think we've broadened what the definition is. People realize that it can be something that was spoken to you as a child and you've held onto that for 30 years and Going forward. Now your relationship with other people is based on that one thing that was spoken over you. So I think that it's now people realize it's not so much a huge, horrible event that has to be trauma, but it's anything that makes you feel stuck, that you keep revisiting, you ruminate about or you realize keeps you from performing well, because in a sense, you're scared about that past event, or you're scared that you're gonna feel the way that you felt in the past again that is so fascinating and and as I've been doing these interviews and I've been learning a lot from my guests what the one thing I have learned is that your body remembers, your body remembers and stores trauma somewhere and it's there until you, until you deal with it.
Audra:And you're saying that it could be Something as an I don't want to say just an unkind word. It could probably be a very, a very heartbreaking conversation that was had with you, that carried with you, so you can carry with it with you, both emotionally, physically and mentally. And Would you even know about it? I mean, is this something that you're aware of or is it something that you have Compartmentalized and you've stuffed it away somewhere?
Laurel:Many people are not aware. I see this so often, so I will have people that they come into my office. I'll just tell you about an example. I had a couple weeks ago a woman who has a lot of social anxiety and she came in and she said I don't know what this is about, but I'm tired of it. She's almost 50 years old. And she said enough is enough. So as we got talking about it, I just started asking some questions. Things like well, when you get in a social situation, back to the body piece, you just said where do you feel that in your body? And so she told me what that felt like. And then I would say to her okay, now I want you to think back in your life when you pay attention to that feeling. Where else or when else did you feel that? So she took a couple seconds and she said no, no, it's too silly. Which right?
Laurel:away when they say that. I'm like no, it's not silly, like I can't wait to hear what you have to say, because this is the thing. And so she was like I've never talked to anybody about this and I said, well, tell me about it. And so she told me about something that her mother said to her when she was eight years old. She said that she was not good at a certain activity, and Ever since then she has gone forward in her life thinking that she was less than, and so when we started to play that out, she said, yes, that's the same feeling I feel when I'm in a crowded room, when I see people talking and I want to talk and I want to break in, but I can't because I'm that eight year old girl all over again. And so it's amazing. Is I could say alright, now that we know that memory, we can pull that thing out and set you free from that. It is amazing. It's things like that, even things like pictures.
Laurel:Audra, I had a girl last winter and she was having all sorts of Reactions to watching the news, which happens these days when we hear about things happening, but she could even be in the grocery store and hearing that a snowstorm was coming, I kid you not, she would drop all of her groceries in the grocery store and run out to her car and head home. She was in total fight-or-flight mode. So when she came in we started looking at this and what we went back to was when she was Seven, eight years old, again in her pediatricians office, there was a time magazine article or actually it was the cover of the magazine and on it it talked about some huge natural disaster that was going to destroy the world. Wouldn't you know? That was the same feeling she feels every time she hears about a possible Another disaster that could happen. So we went back, pulled that out. The anxiety about that wiped out.
Audra:I'm my mind is blown. I mean that's just. I mean that's imprinting, I mean that I don't know who else to describe it, but you have these, these words, these pictures, these feelings are imprinting on you and you're explaining these things as as young children and a lot of that that Happens and that because it happened as a young child or unaware. But is it possible that it also happens as an adult and we're not realizing that it's?
Laurel:occurring. Yes, so I can give you another example of that. I had a man whose wife worked in the upper echelon of people, lots of people with money, and he would get invited to go to some of these events and Every time he got invited he would get all sweaty, panicky, to the point that eventually he ended up avoiding them and setting his wife on her own. So when he came in to talk to me about it, we went back and I said, okay, again, let's find in your body that sensation you feel when she asks you to go to these certain events. And then I said, alright, when is the first time, or what stands out in your mind of when you felt that way?
Laurel:The first time he went back to, he had been a janitor Working at a building and in that office building one night, when he was cleaning in an office, a woman came in who had a lot of money and who knew who he was and knew who his wife was. Well, ever since then he felt shame, shame about who he was and that he was not enough, and that was the thing that was Standing in the way between him and going to these events with his wife. So again, we did our thing. We pulled that out and, wouldn't you know, he can go to those events now and there's nothing going on in his body. He may still not like the events, but they're not having that same like heart pounding panic sensation that he had initially.
Audra:I'm just, I keep thinking about this and you know, I tell on myself a lot, tell on myself all the time on this show kinds of things that Trigger me, that I push away. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. That's ridiculous. Why am I, why am I feeling this way? Why am I behaving this way? I don't like the way this feels, but I'm gonna ignore it because it, because I'm clearly being irrational. You're saying that. No, I'm probably not. I've probably Been holding something in and, like I said, the body has memory of all of this stuff. I'm holding something in that's triggering that. I mean, I just keep thinking how many people on this planet right now Are walking around feeling all these things? All of them, I Mean, I mean, that's all I can think of, is all of them.
Audra:So I want to talk about, now that we've talked about what trauma is and given it a better definition, definition, a broader definition, and that people aren't thinking, oh, it's Just people that are in extreme circumstances. It's not, it's you, it's me, it's it's your children, it's your grandparents, it's everybody. Yes, give me an idea of what this amazing therapy, this is, this accelerated resolution therapy, because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about this therapy that you're helping to clear from their memories, from their bodies, so they can function and not Feel that tightness in the chest. In my case, not only do. In certain situations I get a tightness in the chest, I get an immediate headache and and try to, and I suffer from migraines. The two might be, you know, be related, who knows? But I'm having a physical reaction and I'm sure that there are lots of people right now are going oh, I have physical reactions, but I know what they are.
Audra:So, tell us what is a RT therapy.
Laurel:So accelerated resolution therapy is about 15 years old. It was an outgrowth of EMDR, which was kind of the gold standard for handling a lot of trauma that an exposure therapy and they're both good therapies, they're great therapies and they work well. But the difference is there's a high dropout rate in either of those therapies because they take time. So when you have exposure therapy you have to keep going, feeling uncomfortable Exposing yourself to something. With EMDR, it can take three to four months to go through the process. So the person who developed accelerated a resolution therapy her name is Lainey Rosenzweig. She took EMDR and I always joke and say she put it on steroids and she made it a very direct and a more brief method to handle triggers and trauma. So instead of three to four months of therapy, you're getting one to four sessions one to four sessions of therapy that are going to pull that trigger out. It sounds like magic, it sounds like a miracle, but it's real and that's how it works.
Audra:It sounds a little voodoo. I got to tell you that it sounds a little voodoo because you're like one to four. It's got to be too good to be true. But you're saying absolutely not. This is a scientific studied, successful therapy. Yes, can you tell us what the therapy is?
Laurel:I can tell you pieces of the therapy. So you're right, it is an evidence based therapy, it's been studied, there's plenty of research on it. So what it does is it's like EMDR in that you're desensitizing even an exposure therapy. All of these therapies want to desensitize you to these images and these sensations that are coming out from the trauma that you experienced. So in either of those you're going to come in and once we figure out the event that's bothering you, you want to make it so that you no longer react to it physically. So when we talk about that, the narrative is not the problem. No one ever gets upset by saying I was in a car accident. It's really the images and the sensations that are associated with that car accident that are the problem. So that's what we want to take and we want to file it away back in your brain so that it's no longer a triggering thing. We want to make it.
Laurel:A neutral memory is how we want to talk about it. So really, all of these therapies, they change the way that your brain is storing those images and sensations. So when someone comes in, I'm going to do bilateral stimulation with them. So that's going to be either I'm going to move their eyes back and forth or I'm going to tap on them and when I do the bilateral stimulation this is the part that sounds a bit voodoo-ish it does change the way that you react to those images and sensations.
Laurel:Now there's an entire protocol that I follow. It's very directive through the whole thing. There's not a lot of talking in it, but basically you're going back and forth from the person watching this event and then we neutralize out their sensations and then we actually attach positive images and sensations to that event so that by the end of the session they can tell you what happened and be neutral. So they will start my session not even able to talk about the car accident, the rape or being bullied as a child, but then by the end of the session they can tell me about it and while they don't like the story, they have no physical reactivity to it anymore because we've desensitized them through this protocol and actually made more positive the way that their body relates to it.
Audra:This is amazing. This is absolutely amazing therapy. And I will give you an example of something that I have been struggling with and I'm sure that there's something in the back of my brain that it's been, it triggers or it, or there's trauma or something. But here's what I've been struggling with and I'm giving this to, sharing this with everybody, because I'm not the only one. Sometimes, when I speak, my brain goes really really fast and I can't seem to get the words from my brain out my mouth and it sounds like I'm stuttering and really what it is. I'm trying to speak all these words off the same at the same time. My brain's going too fast and I know it's because I don't want to say the wrong thing, I don't want to make a mistake. So then I sound like a stuttering, bubbling idiot, like I am right now. I do this all the time on my podcast. I stutter all over the place because I don't want to make a mistake. From what you're telling me, if I went and did ART therapy, I bet you would find out why.
Laurel:So I have two thoughts when you say that yes. One is is there a time that you can look back and say I made a mistake and I never want to feel that way again?
Audra:Oh I can give you a list.
Laurel:But with speaking specifically, that you can look back and say, oh, I had this event and that's where I did that, and now I'm working so hard to not relive that. I would dare to say, if you can find that, then yes, that may be what your body's reacting to. That's one piece.
Audra:Wow, you know, you just said that and a memory came back to me immediately. So are you ready? And the first thing we're going to start with is a silly.
Laurel:Exactly this is what everybody does.
Audra:I was fourth grader and we had to do speeches and you had to write your own speech. And you had to give your own speech. And I wrote this speech. I had my parents proofread it. I practiced, I practiced and I practiced and I did it perfectly. Every time when I practiced I even practiced in front of my teacher and I remember him saying you're as cool as a cucumber, you can do this, you can do this. Then, when it actually came time to give the speech in front of all the class and you see all these fourth graders just smearing at you I couldn't get it out. I could not get the speech out. I had flashcards in front of me, I had everything. It was awful. I remember feeling awful.
Laurel:So that's it. So let me ask you this so when you think about, as you just told me, that story and you think about how it feels in your body, when you have this sensation of I want to say this thing, but the words are back here and they come flooding out and I stumble, does it feel the same as when you felt in fourth grade and did that?
Audra:Yeah, because I feel like I'm going to throw up.
Laurel:Yes, that's it. So we could art you for that.
Laurel:That's how it works, isn't that beautiful? And you know what I love about that is, this is what I do with so many professionals, so I have pastors, teachers, executives same thing and so often it goes back to what you just said those grammar school, middle school, high school speech classes. Let me tell you, I should probably just go sign up for the high school and be like after speech 101, you need to let me work with everybody so I can erase that event from them. But it's tied back to that, and people like you right now, they never even realized because, right, that's what happens. Whether we want to call it triggers or trauma, what your brain is saying to you is let's never repeat that, let's never feel that way again. And so it's reacting to that, but in a sense, it's making you hyper vigilant, which is making you make mistakes.
Audra:Oh my goodness, and like I hadn't thought of that until you just said that. I mean, guys, I'm 52. This was fourth grade, I was nine. I hadn't thought of that in decades. Yes, oh my goodness. And so I interrupted you. You said here's the first thing, and then I had to vomit all over you. I'm sorry. What's the second thing?
Laurel:Well, the second thing is actually not applicable anymore, because your first thing worked. My second thing was going to be that sometimes people with ADD, their brain works faster than their minds, or actually their mouth, so they do that often too. So I was going to say, if it's not something like that, which it clearly is, then maybe it's a little bit of ADD. If you had that.
Audra:So adults can have ADD as well. I mean, I you know we hear about kids, and so adults can have this too.
Laurel:Oh, yes, Plenty of them. So many people don't even get diagnosed as children, and then they get diagnosed when they're older, and that's one of the things is that their brain is just too fast and so their mouth can't catch up, because their thoughts are way ahead of them.
Audra:Oh my goodness, see, see, I could have both.
Laurel:You could some people do, and you know what it makes us lovely, charming, intelligent individuals when we do.
Audra:I like to call myself quirky, but you know that works too. This is, this is an amazing therapy. And you said it's quick. Yes, it's one to four sessions. Yes, so can anybody do this? I mean, what if people are like oh, I don't think I have trauma, I don't have been, I haven't been diagnosed with trauma, I'm fine. So can anybody, anybody off the street, come and see you and say I think I need some help? Yes, they can.
Laurel:So what I like to say to people is I try more so now than previously to move away from the word trauma because, like you said, people have this idea of what we look like when we're traumatized. So I like to just say, if you have triggers or stuck points or things that make you reactive in a situation and you know it's not quite in line with the other 80% of people in the room, those are the things that I would encourage people to look at to say, oh, this could be helpful. Like with my athletes. It's the things that are keeping them from leveling up sometimes.
Laurel:Sometimes something like an injury can keep an athlete from performing the way that they need to, because they're so scared to go out and get injured again that they're going to play differently when they go on that field, if we can't pull that memory out. So anybody can do it. As long as there's three things that they can meet the criteria, which is are they motivated to change, can they hold a thought and can they move their eyes or allow me to tap on them or have some type of vibration going on, so they can have bilateral stimulation. As long as they can do those three things, anybody can do this therapy.
Audra:What's the science behind the bilateral therapy? I mean bilateral stimulation, because that sounds really interesting to me. For the life of me, I can't think how in the world that works with your brain. So I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated.
Laurel:So there's the research shows that when you have bilateral stimulation going on, that there's something that's happening in the brain that is Occupying a part of our brain. That makes it then easier for these thoughts, images and sensations to come out. Because if I say to somebody sometimes very rationally, so like with you the question I just asked you when I said, can you think back to a time when you felt this way and you had that moment like, yes, I just saw fourth grade, sometimes the rational brain won't release that. So what I actually will do in my office is I will sit in front of somebody and say Ask yourself, when else in your life Did you feel this way?
Laurel:If they can't come up with it just by us chatting like this, and then I will take my hand and I will move it like this back and forth in front of their eyes to create bilateral Stimulation and it's amazing, boom, it comes out. So there's something about that process that does keep the brain busy enough that it allows other things to be released because it's staying Occupied over here. That's the bilateral simulation piece. But that's not the heart of why these therapies work. The heart of it is really the neuroscience behind memory and really what's called memory Reconciliation. That's the science that makes it work.
Audra:So can you give me a little bit more information as to what that science is? Because I mean, now I can ask you questions forever, because now, now I am hooked, I am in.
Laurel:I love it. Yes, I Love to geek out on memory consolidation. So what's really fun about it is that people thought up until a couple years ago that when you Recalled a memory it was always the same. It reminds me of one of those Pixar movies where, like the ball comes down whenever that movie is like the memories there and it's really not like that. It actually a memory changes Every time you recall it, because what's happening in your brain is when you recall a memory and then it goes back after.
Laurel:You actually have proteins that synthesize in your brain every time that memory goes back. So the interesting thing about that is, when you're recalling it, you're pulling in all this information from all the different parts of your brain when it's coded. But because it's not like a book on a shelf, because it doesn't go back the way that it came out, what that means is when we remember it, it actually becomes unstable, and that instability, that fragility of that memory, is what allows us to change it. So while I have you remembering it and it becomes unstable, then I can go in and pull out those images and sensations that you just remembered and I can let you keep intact to the story piece.
Laurel:Remember the narrative, because that's in a different side of your brain as the images and sensations, and now we can think about different Images and sensations and then when we're done doing that, we put it back in the brain and between it's like about six hours later. It's called this window of memory Reconciliation. That opens up when we remember something and then, when we're done, six hours later, it closes and all the things we attach to it are with it. So when my clients come in at the end of the session they feel really good, but by the next morning Damn that protein synthesis has happened and that memory is now associated with those positive images and sensations. So that's the piece that makes the change so capable, that is oh my gosh, this is just blowing my mind.
Audra:You had said just a couple moments ago about people being stuck. I mean, there's, there are lots of adults walking around that are stuck. They just they don't know why. Why am I stuck? Why can't I move forward? Why can't I Reach that goal? Why can't I do this? Why can't I do that? Can you tell me a little bit more why or what the possibilities are could be of why people are walking around stuck?
Laurel:Yes, it's limiting beliefs that people have. But what some people don't realize is many of our limiting beliefs are rooted in experiences in our life, right. So think about people that can't lose weight. Sometimes they're stuck because way back someone said to them oh well, he's just always going to be a little bit chubby. And there's that belief that this is who I am, and so sometimes they will self sabotage because this is who I am.
Laurel:But if we can go back and change that limiting belief, just by changing the way you remember what was spoken to you and you imagine that your mother or father said something different, it's amazing. It like dissolves the whole set it has on you. When you do that Changes then the options that you have going forward. And if it's not even things spoken over you, it can be even just interactions, like if you came from a family that every time you spoke your heart or you cried, right, you got in trouble. For that.
Laurel:You sometimes don't really recognize what it ties back to, but you just have these limiting beliefs. So then you take it into your marriage and then when your wife or your husband says to you, can you tell me a little bit more about that, you clam up, and it's not even that you want to, but your body is telling you up Nope, this isn't what I do. Right, there's a limiting belief about who I am. I am not a person that can do that, because I've been told don't do that. We can go back and take those moments you can take like the first, worst, or I'll take the top three memories where that behavior was reinforced. Wipe that out, change it and then your possibilities open up as to new behaviors that you can have in the future.
Audra:This is life-changing. It is life-changing therapy. It really is. Why are you the first person to introduce this to me? Why aren't, why aren't therapists and physicians Shouting from the rooftops on this? Because then we would have a whole lot more healthy people Wandering around rather than people being miserable and being on antidepressants. Oh no, I got the idea. I just said it. I just said it because you know, if you, if it was cured, then you would have to be on the antidepressants, which makes money. Oh okay, now I got it. I answered my own question.
Laurel:Well, you're there. You know it's so hard. I think anytime we find things like this that works so well because it's like you said earlier, it seems too good to be true. That's actually the name of the book of the woman who developed this therapy. It's called too good to be true, but it's like anything right.
Laurel:When we first learned about chiropractic care and other things, people thought it was voodoo. They thought it was wacky woo. And how long do we have to prove that these things work before people consider it to be a Credible alternative to the regular drugs and things that go on? There's so much resistance, like you said, in the medical community to anything new or something that could be possibly easier. And I think why I'm talking about it and you haven't heard about it before is because when you get in this arena, right, everybody knows, like I said, the other two types of therapy that work. This one's 15 years old. Well, emdr is 25 years old. People go with what they know. It's always hard to jump in and to break in and say look at me, look at me, I'm similar but different and I have great effects as well. So, and money, there's always money. We need research and some other therapies have more research than we do at the moment. So then everyone goes back to that and they're gonna use what's you know, got more money dumped into it.
Audra:I mean, and you said something that hit home for me because the medical community is slow to embrace these things once again.
Audra:I'm gonna tell on myself. My mother is a nurse. She is, she's been, she's run the gamut from critical care to ER, you name it. She did it when I was and I said I told you I suffer from migraines, my, for the longest time. She would tell me that chiropractic care were not real doctors. Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've I have been told that's not a real doctor. You can't be cracked all the time and it actually help you. I think it'll make you worse. I'm telling them myself.
Audra:Six months ago I started going to a chiropractor because I had tried everything else to get relief. And guess what it has? It has relieved them Significantly. Yes, never gonna make them go away. It's never gonna cure them until they find a cure for it. It's something I have to live with, but they are significantly reduced because I tried a non traditional therapy. It works. And you're saying the same thing because it's only 15 years old. But 15 years old seems a whole lot of long time to me than some of the drugs that we take. Right, that it's. It's slow to embrace, got it. So how did you get introduced to it? Because you were a traditional therapist. Yes, you, you did you? You were one of the the traditional medical community. That was like Eh no, we've got all of these therapies that have been here for years and years and years. I'm gonna use what I know. So what changed your mind?
Laurel:So actually I did it a little differently than that, in that I actually wouldn't treat PTSD, because what I knew, audra, was that what I was taught didn't work. So traditional therapy says let's talk about this, and if we talk about it enough and enough times at length, you're gonna feel better. So I did that when I was a new therapist and what I noticed was that there was not progress in those types of cases and people weren't getting better. Now they felt better talking to me, obviously, but they would come back week after week after week and it was minimal change now.
Laurel:Sometimes you'd get the random case for time healed the wound and it was okay. But what I knew and was experiencing was that this is out of my wheelhouse and I don't know what to do with it. So what I started doing was sending them to people who did EMDR, or I would send them to someone who did exposure therapy and I pretty much crossed it off. But then I had a client and she really wanted to work with me and even though I said I don't think I can do this, I'm gonna send you to someone else. She was really intent upon no law, I think you can figure this out. Well, as happens, dance would have it, or divine intervention, I would like to call it.
Laurel:I got injured and was watching television one day and there is a veteran support group on TV, on public television, and they were talking about how they were getting better and they had mentioned this therapy and I was like, oh my word, that sounds fascinating, I need to look this up. So I did, and within a month I was at a training and I came back and I worked with that woman and she was my first case and I was like, look, I know this is supposed to work. I haven't done it yet. It's gonna be a little wonky, so work with me on this and let's see what happens. I'm doing this treatment, I'm holding my breath, I'm praying, I'm crossing my fingers, thinking, oh, I hope this fixes her.
Laurel:And it did. And Like I wasn't as much shocked as she was and that was, you know, six years ago now and then I kept doing it and doing it and doing it and I was like, oh my gosh, this stuff actually works. So that's how I stumbled into it. But it changed my practice, it changed my life. I went from the person who said go see someone else, I can't work with you too. I run towards that. When I talk to people and they tell me things, my head just automatically is like, oh my gosh, I hear a stuck point. These people need to work with me.
Audra:Well, tell me about the patient that you are the most proud of, other than your first, because she's the one that introduced you this therapy. Who are the one that you're most proud of? Because it was the most significant case and had the most Significant outcome? Oh, you know, I know. I'm asking you who your favorite child is. I know.
Laurel:There are so many. Honestly, it's really hard. But I would say one of them was individuals I worked with who had been involved in satanic worship like sacrificial stuff in Africa, and she was exposed to some of the most horribleness of horribleness. And when she came to see me, she had a very hard time performing at work. She was riddled with anxiety, she was triggered, as you can imagine, by so many things and so fearful, and on top of that she also had some horrible situations with parenting and working with her.
Laurel:It was one of my favorite cases because to see her transformation at the end of it was beautiful. She could go back to work and she could speak her mind without fear. She could have her kids go trick-or-treating and not have that mean something to her. That was super awful before and she could run again. She wasn't able to run. She wanted to do a half marathon. That was her goal. She had such anxiety and breathing issues because of all these events in her life that she couldn't. She now is training to do a marathon and she can run with a clear head. She's just lovely lady. That's one of the things that blew my mind to be like you can take something that someone is a prisoner in that they see it when they close their eyes. They see it every day and you can pull that out. Now. She was a case that I had to do like four sessions with four or five sessions, but the freedom was just life-changing and beautiful.
Audra:What do they look like when you know that you've helped them? I just want you to describe their face.
Laurel:I can imagine it, but I want to hear it from you In a sense they almost look bewildered initially, truly, because they know what they felt when they sat in my chair. And at the end of the session they sit there and they look at me and you can see some people. Their faces almost look younger. They say they feel lighter. But they're sitting there bewildered, thinking what just happened. How could it be that easy? And you can just see the lightness. Sometimes you get those tears of joy, the smile or that exhaustion that I just worked through a lot of stuff but it's over. It's just immense relief and hope. It's hope that I now am going to be different, I can go back to who I was before this thing happened to me.
Audra:I love that you give people hope. I mean, that's your real gift. Is that you give people hope from things that you said so beautifully is that they're imprisoned. There's a lot of us walking around that are imprisoned in our own minds.
Audra:We just don't know it yet and you release them from that and give them hope to do whatever it is that they want to do. I want to make sure that the audience knows that you wrote a book. You wrote a book about this and it certainly if it's a thousand pages, it's probably not long enough to describe all of the help that you have done. So give us a little bit into this whole. Not your mother's therapy. I'm just now that when you and I first met, I was like I'm intrigued but I don't understand it. But I purposely don't ask a lot of questions before we record because I want you to hear my actual reaction. These are my actual reactions. I am stunned, I am just I can't. I will be very honest with you. I'm going to go look and I'm going to go research ARTR therapy just because I am. Now I'm so intrigued, I'm like, well, what else can I do? So I digress. Tell us about the book that you wrote.
Laurel:So my book actually isn't about this type of therapy. So I give a talk about not your mother's therapy, which is about this type of therapy, because it's not your mother's trauma therapy. But the book I wrote deals with trauma, but on a different level. So I wrote it about infidelity. So it's called Betrayed, not Broken and I wrote it about 10, 11 years ago and I wrote it out of frustration by watching people get bad help to heal from the trauma of infidelity and after sitting through enough cases of people becoming more hurt than helped, I was like I got to do something. With all this stuff in my head. I need to give somebody a resource so if they don't come to therapy, they can get help and they can be well. And so I literally wrote it out of frustration and that's what Betrayed Not Broken came from and to tie it into ART.
Laurel:What's super cool is that I work again with people who've dealt with infidelity since I wrote the book. I get a lot of clients that I'm helping with with that, but there's so much tied into that that this trauma therapy helps with. So, for example, the hotel that the partner found their partner at they can't drive down that road without being triggered or they can't walk in the house and see the couch that they know that their partner had been kissing the fair person on. I can take those images and we can get rid of them. And so what's interesting is I wrote the book before I learned the therapy and now they work beautifully together because I can help you restore and heal and move on if you want, to repair if you want. But I can also say and not only that, now we can get rid of those triggers so you can have even more peace going forward.
Audra:And maybe even have hope for a better relationship in the future. Yes, because you're no longer carrying that stuff with you, exactly. Yes, it was destined. You were destined to do this therapy even before you knew that you were going to do this therapy, because you've been. You've been writing about how to get beyond trauma for a really long time, and I find that really, I find that really ironic, considering that in earlier in your career, you avoided trauma therapy and trauma patients.
Laurel:Exactly. I find that interesting. All the time I think who is this? How is this me? And I end up here.
Audra:You know, the most amazing thing happens when you lean into something that makes you frustrated or angry. I have, I have, been told many times to not waste your anger and use it its energy to do something else. You used it to change people's lives. That's amazing, that is incredible and that is an incredible gift that you have decided to share with the world, because if you can make people just feel 1% better about themselves, how much have you released them from? Absolutely, I, just, I just. It boggles my mind at how much you have changed people that they can walk into open, crowded spaces, they could go to movies, they can, they can go to parties, they could perhaps speak without stumbling all over themselves. I'm just, I'm just so intrigued and grateful that you've embraced this therapy and you're you're helping people and you're trying to change the world, one person at a time. I am so grateful that you have embraced this and you leaned into something that scared you and did it anyway so you can help other people.
Laurel:Thank you. I'm honored to do this work. Truly, I feel so often like how did I get so lucky to be the person that gets to sit next to you as you journey through this and to journey with them together and to be able to celebrate at the end. It still brings tears to my eyes.
Audra:What a what a beautiful experience that you get to hold space with somebody that is freed for something that has entrapped them. Yes, and this is a beautiful thing. I am watching the clock because we're running out of time, because I could chat your ear off. I could chat your ear off. This is one of my favorite parts of the show that I get to stand back from the mic because I want to give you the opportunity to have a quiet, intimate moment directly with the audience, without me interrupting, because I want you to be able to leave them with a message of hope, of a moment of maybe even, you know, giving that person that needs to hear your voice and opportunity to hear it. So I'm going to stand back and I'm going to give you the mic.
Laurel:If you're somebody that you know there's something that's keeping you from being who you know you're destined to be, who you know your purpose to be. There's something that's happened to you that you know. If it hadn't happened, you would be different, no matter how small or insignificant it seems to you or how silly it seems to you. I encourage you that, even though it's part of your past, don't let it be part of your future, don't let it hold on to you anymore, don't let it have power over you anymore, and step into the journey to rewrite that story, so that you can be released into everything that you're supposed to be walking into.
Audra:That is amazing. How can they take action? Give them, give them in the next easy action step so they can move towards what you had just said, they can always reach out to me.
Laurel:It's easy to find me on LinkedIn or you can go to my website, moralwearscom. You can text the word reset to 33777 and I actually have a trigger checklist and on that is all of my contact information. And if you decide that you want to find somebody close to you, you could go to the website, which is accelerated resolution therapy dot com, and there are therapists who are also trained some of them I have trained in this method as well and you can look somebody up and see if they would be able to help you with the things that you're looking for.
Audra:I will make sure that all of the links, your contact information, the website for the ART therapy to find therapists I'll make sure all of that is in the show notes. In the event, someone wants to reach out to you, even ask questions Maybe they're intrigued but not quite convinced I want to make sure that people have access to you so they can know that there is opportunity and hope at the end of this and it's not that out of reach, it's not that much out of reach.
Audra:No it is not. Thank you, laurel. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for being patient and waiting for the interview, since I had a medical delay in the middle of the list. No worries, thank you for being willing to talk about this in a way that is not scary, is not overly intimidating, and feels like it's real and authentic. And you know, oh, and me too. Oh, I can do that, I can do that. Thank you for breaking it down and making it accessible for the audience. So then maybe that'll encourage them to take that next step forward. So thank you so much for being here.
Laurel:Thank you for giving me a moment to share this, because we both felt someone's life is going to be changed because of what we talked about today.
Audra:I'm betting on it. I'm betting that there is somebody that's listening that needed to hear this, and I don't know who it is. You don't know who it is, but I can't wait until that individual goes. Oh, I get it. You never know who might reach out to you. So thank you for being vulnerable with this therapy, thank you, thank you to all of you for being here and we'll see you again next time.
