Ted Talk 80: Help! My Childhood Trauma Is Holding Me Back…

Podcast Transcription: Help! My Childhood Trauma Is Holding Me Back...

Ted Ryce: Do you feel stuck sometimes? Like, even though you work hard, put effort into the right things, you just feel like there’s this weight that you carry around. Or, perhaps things feel a bit harder, a bit more challenging than they should feel. And it doesn’t feel like it’s the outside world, it feels like maybe you’ve got the emergency brake on just a little bit, and it kind of holds you back. Or maybe you’d just like to flow a bit better in life. What would that be like, if you had that sense of effortlessness, and just flow more in life with your family, with your work, with yourself? That’s gonna be the topic of conversation today.

So, what is up, my friend? Welcome back to the Legendary Life Podcast. I’m your host, Ted Rice, health expert and coach to entrepreneurs, executives and other high-performing professionals.

Now, what we usually do is, we breakdown science-based information on health, on preventing disease, on losing fat, on living a legendary life. But on Fridays, we get a bit deeper. We talk about the conversations that aren’t really being had in the more technical and tactical episodes of this podcast and others, try to get deeper. And we don’t try, we succeed.

So, let’s talk about this, let’s talk about how to get unstuck.What I’m gonna do is, I’ll tell you like this: you may have heard my story, about some of the loss I’ve been through with my brother, with my mother, with my sister, with my father, stepmother, I’ve lost everybody in my life. And you probably think “that must be so hard to deal with.” And for sure, it’s challenging, but I just did - I’ve been working on this. I’ve been working on myself for a long time. I’ve tried all different types of therapies. I’ve drank ayahuasca in Costa Rica, I’ve worked with psychotherapists, I’ve done so many things. Self-development, so many things. And today I just had a breathwork session, and I wanna share what came up for me.

So, as I’ve shared with you in my previous Real Talk Fridays, what I focus on in my life right now is connection – connections with others. I’m 44, I’m single, my ex-wife and I got divorced at the end of 2019, and my whole dating life was put on hold because I got 2020-ed, like everyone else. That’s like a new verb. Is that a verb? Anyway, you know what I’m talking about. We all got 2020-ed.
And what came up for me right now, I’m in Florianopolis, Brazil, a beautiful place, really enjoy being around Brazilians in general, but here in Floripa - Brazil is known for being kind of a dangerous, challenging country to visit because of the crime, because of the language as well. Portuguese is not Spanish. Let me just say that. It’s quite a bit more difficult. And one of the things I’ve taken away from being in Brazil that I like so much - No, I love, I appreciate so much, I almost borderline envy is the connection that Brazilians have with their family, with their friends. They just have such an effortless and deep connection with one another.

When people say, “America is a country that puts family first”, it’s like, do you really? What kind of standard are you using? Because you go to these other countries, and you really see people living that. “I work 100 hours a week, and it’s all for my children!”
Not to go off on a tangent, but you really see people living in connection with their families, with their friends, making time for those things, which is- We pay lip service in America and other Western countries to the importance of family, but we’re off doing other things. “Oh yeah, I’m working 100 hours a week for my family!” Yeah, that’s what they really need, a bunch of money, not you. Anyway, I digress. I grew up that way. My parents were always working. “I did it all for you!” “I was just addicted to work, and I liked buying things that I didn’t really need, trying to feel the emotional emptiness in my soul, but it never works, so I just kept buying more and making more money.” But, I digress.
What I wanna talk about today is, I was doing this breathwork session, and what came up for me is that a lot of my issues connected with other people has to do with this fear/anxiety that I carry around with me always.

And, what came up for me today, that feeling or thought that started to evolve, that imagery, a lot of it comes from my experiences with my mother when I was very young, and for those of you who don’t know, she was abusive. Not beating the crap out of me or those types of things, and there’s no need to get into the details, because the details aren’t actually as important. But, she was mentally ill. She was very scary to be around when I was a kid. And what ends up happening- Now, you may have had that situation with your parents, you may have had a different situation, and we’re gonna talk about how this is relevant to you in a minute. So, let me just finish here.

So, I was a young boy, 3-4 years old, with this scary mother. And it’s like, if you can’t trust your mother, if you can’t be safe around your mother, you live in a dangerous world. You live in a world where you really need to watch your back around everyone, because if you can’t be safe around your own mother, you can’t be safe around anybody.

Now, that’s not true, and we’re putting words to this, but that was a feeling, as a child, that I had. And I wanna talk about this. You know, all that talk about ‘inner child’, ‘You have to heal your inner child’, it sounds like a bunch of bullshit, doesn’t it? Put down the patchouli, take off the flowing clothes and the man bun, these ultra-spiritual people. But, the truth is that there’s truth to this idea of the inner child. But, we’ll talk about what that is.
Where I’m going with this is that, as children, we go through things. We’re all victims, because we’re little people in an adult world. “Be careful crossing the street, you might get hit by a car.” “Don’t ever run into the street.” Don’t ever do this or that. You can hurt yourself.” And we just, as children, we wanna do what we wanna do. We’re just innocent- Maybe innocence is not the right word, but just naive around the world, because there’s some pretty mischievous children out there, right? I know I was one. But, just naïve about the world and some of the dangers. And so, we get trained by our parents. If you’re a parent, you know that.

What happens, though, is that some of our parents aren’t so great. Like in my case, they can be abusive, neglectful. So, if they’re abusive, you end up having this “Oh mean, the world’s really dangerous.” Your own parents can even be trusted. And when I say abusive, I mean whether physically or emotionally. Whether they’re screaming in your face, or whether they’re actually laying hands on you. But, that's probably pretty obvious, right? It’s gonna mess you up if your parents were doing stuff like that.

But, here’s what I want you to understand too, in case you don’t resonate. You’re like “yeah, I feel sorry for people who have been abused as children, but it’s not really my situation, I didn’t go through that, so I don’t see how this is relevant to me.” Well, I’m about to make it relevant to you.
Here’s the thing. I want you to think about this. Our parents, not through just what they say, but through their actions, they program us for the world. They tell us “Hey, this is how you gotta look at the world, this is how you gotta go through the world. So, even if your parents weren’t abusive or neglectful, let’s say they were super loving, but they struggled with their own emotional stuff, you picked that up, so, even though you’re like “My parents were awesome, they didn’t abuse me emotionally, physically or any way, they were awesome”, but if you saw them struggle, if you saw them mistreated, traumatized, or if they were traumatized before, you pick that up, and you carry that around with you.

And we’re gonna talk about why, in a second, why this isn’t hokey nonsense woo-woo. “Listen, you have to break the hidden cycle of generational bad energy.” We’re gonna talk about that in a second, in case you’re skeptical, and I’ll even refer you to a book, a brilliant book.
But, to go back to this idea, we pick things up from our parents. Also from other people, but most of our early life experiences, at least if we’re fortunate enough to have parents, were from them.

Now, here’s the thing. When you go through things as a child, it’s very different than being an adult. Your brain, your nervous system isn’t quite developed. In fact, your brain isn’t fully formed until you’re in your 20’s.

So, bringing it back to my story, a lot of people will say “You’ve been through so much, your brother, your sister, all this other stuff”, and it’s like, yeah, those things sucked, don’t get me wrong. Those things really sucked. But the thing that I really was affected by – this is what I've learned from doing therapy, from doing breathwork, from drinking ayahuasca in the jungles of Costa Rica, the same thing keeps coming up over and over again.
It’s these early childhood experiences. And not only does it make sense logically, it makes sense in terms of what we know about science, and there’s even research to show it. Again, our nervous system is forming when we’re young, our brains aren’t fully formed until we’re in our 20’s. So, those things you got programmed with in your early life are what holds you back in your adult life. Your beliefs about money, your issues with money, your issues with your health, your issues with your relationship all stem from there. So, how do we get rid of this?

Well, we’ll talk about that in a second, but first I wanna talk to you a little bit more about a book that I said was a game changer. It’s called “The Body Keeps The Score”, and it’s written by a Dutch psychiatrist, Bessel van der Kolk. This is a must-read book, folks. It’s a bit of a tough one, I’m not gonna lie, a tough one to go through, and I don’t mean the information is very scientific – I mean, it is – but some of the stories are really tough to talk about, to listen to.
You think I’ve had a rough life? I’m very grateful for the experiences that I’ve had, and that they’re not worse than some of the experiences that some other people have had. I’ll choose my own burden over what some other people have been through. He shares some of these stories of the patients he’s worked with.

Very interesting about this book too - he talks about the nervous system. This is all about the nervous system, folks. Success is about managing our emotions. Success in the area of your life, health, wealth, relationships, it’s about managing your emotions. It’s about overcoming those things that you dealt with in the past, or for lack of a better world, traumatized by in the past. Trauma is holding us back
Watching your parents struggling to pay the bills, watching your parents being mistreated by their boss, or because of their skin color, or whatever the reason is. It’s traumatizing. And if you think that’s too strong a word, it’s just a shortcut to say that those negative events that have happened in our life get burned into our brain, because they help us prepare.

Evolutionarily speaking, those negative events, we have what’s called a negativity bias, as human beings. You’re like “Oh, a baby, oh, cat videos, look at the puppy, the puppy is so cute.” Okay, great, but it doesn’t really leave a lasting memory, and least not for most people. But, something negative happens, and it’s just- All of us, we’re wired like that. I read my reviews on the podcast sometimes, and I’ve got hundreds, 500, 600, I forget how many, mostly positive reviews, but there’s a couple of 1-star ones, and someone said really negative, and guess what? I remember that one negative review more than all the other 599 other reviews. It’s just how we’re wired as human beings.

And the reason for this is that we did come from a very dangerous place in the past. Hunter-gatherer life was dangerous, so was agricultural life. And not just from predators, people who are better fighters than they are hunters and say “Well, I’ll kick your ass and take your stuff” – I’m talking about just from disease, from the environment, from the harsh winters. So, we come from a very dangerous world, and now, we’re all sitting- I don’t know about you, but I’m sitting in a luxury- It’s a studio, but it’s a nice, big studio, luxury- There’s a desk chair, super comfortable, we’re all in these climate-controlled- “Oh, this chair, let me buy a more comfortable chair.” Oh, my bed’s a little too firm or too soft.” We’re all in these nice, cushy places in modern life, but we still have the same brains, the same wiring. And it works against us today, because we’re really wired for dealing with short-term threats, not with the chronic stress that we deal with these days.

So, without going on too much more of a tangent there, what happens is that we get programmed by our childhood before we have the rational framework that we have as adults. Those things mess us up, because those unresolved memories get stored with the same level of perception as the child that we were, me dealing with my scary, mentally ill mother at 4 years old – now, I say she was mentally ill, I have all these stories and rationalizations about it, and they’re true, but I still carry around that kid that was super scared.

Now, how do we get past this? How do we get unstuck, what we can do to get unstuck from those things in our past? Which are ways to get unstuck? And again, I want you to think about your childhood, those things that happened to you. What are the things that stand out to you? What is holding you back? What are those memories that just come back to you in a snap? You can’t even remember what you ate three days ago for dinner, but this thing that happened to you when you were 4, or 6, or 8, or whatever, what is that thing for you, that comes up so easily? Maybe it was more than one thing.

Now, let’s talk about this. How do you get rid of that stuff? Which are the methods to get unstuck? Because those are things that are holding you back from the life you wanna live. Or even if you don’t hold back, if you want more, if you want that next level - because there is always a next level – there is no one so enlightened that they don’t need to work on themselves. You’re not Jesus, you’re not Buddha. We all need to work on ourselves, so how do we do that? And I wanna talk to you about these two ways, and then also reference this book, “The Body Keeps the Score”.

So, one of the ways that has become very popular is talk therapy. And there’s a lot of good things with talk therapy, I don’t wanna talk bad about it. There’s also medication. You can take medication that can cause a shift in your mood.
And then, there’s what some people are calling, what cognitive psychologists might call the bottom-up approach. So, this is healing - I hesitate to use the word healing, but I’m just gonna go with it - healing from the body first, working with the body. Talk therapy is that top-down approach, “Let’s talk about your childhood, let’s talk about these things.”

Whereas today I did a breathwork session, and Sabine, who I can’t wait to get on the podcast, she is so amazing, we did a bottom-up approach. Did we talk about things? Yeah, we shot the shit a little bit at the beginning, but what the session was about was, you’re gonna breathe in this particular way, and she’s gonna take me through this session with music, she guides the session, and then whatever comes up for you is what comes up for you.
Because the problem with the top-down approach, using our rational mind to deal with things, it can lead us into false narratives. For example, one of the things I learned about myself is, yeah, it sucked that your brother was kidnapped and murdered. It sucks that your sister committed suicide. Those things suck, not good. But they happened. And that’s why, well, of course you’re struggling, because those things happen, that’s the story.

My life is hard, it’s hard to have relationships, it’s hard to have financial success, and it’s hard to be healthy because of those things that happened. So, it makes sense, right? Rational. But, what I’ve ended up learning is that those are stories, definitely things that I need to work through, things that I needed to work through, maybe some work still needs to be done, but the real root of my problem is those early childhood experiences with my mother. This childhood trauma is holding me back.

That’s what gets lodged into your nervous system, specifically into your hippocampus, a part of your brain concerned with learning and memory, and also which ends up affecting your amygdala, which the alarm system of your brain. And what happens to people is, these events that we go through, these traumatic events - Again, if you’re not resonating with my story, it’s not about my story. I’m telling you my story as an example, but this is about you and you’ve been through, about those events that you can remember easily, those things that come up for you when someone asks you ‘What bad happened in your childhood? Did your parents do anything, or maybe you saw your parents struggle with something – what’s a memory that you have about that, or a negative memory that you have as a child?”

The answer to that question, that’s the thing. You can recall it – don’t have any idea what you ate for breakfast a week ago, but you can recall these memories from your childhood. And hopefully, you can recall the good times too, of course. But, have you ever noticed, back to that negativity bias, that these negative experiences that we go through, they’re just so much easier to recall. And again, it goes back to – I don’t wanna say a design flaw of the brain – but probably a better way to call it is a mismatch, what evolutionary biologists refer to as a gene-environment mismatch.

What that means, by the way, is that our genes programmed us to be a certain way. That’s why it’s so hard to lose fat. That’s why it’s so hard to not buy the shiny thing – you know that you should save money, but you end up buying things. Or eating a lot when you know you shouldn’t eat – you’ve got a whole lot of weight to lose, but that part of you is saying, “Eat now! You don’t know when we’re gonna be able to eat again!” You know you’re gonna be able to eat again. We’ve got Uber Eats if you’re like “Oh God, I’m starving!” You’ve got Uber Eats to deliver your food. We don’t live in that world of scarcity.
What I’m trying to say is that we’ve got to dig a bit deeper. Let me talk to you again about this book, “The Body Keeps the Score”. So what are we talking about? These events that - And they don’t have to all be from our childhood, they can be from later if they’re very traumatic. I could name a few that were very traumatic for other people.

But the point is this – those things that happened to us, I don’t wanna say they leave scars. I think that’s a bit too much, but they do is, they train our brains. They get programmed, they get stored in our hippocampus, an area of our brain that’s concerned with learning and memory. Of course, that’s where they’re stored. And then, that affects your threat detection system.

So, if you’ve ever known someone who walks around on edge- You don’t know anyone like that, right? Just mention something about politics on Facebook, people go crazy, what do you think that’s about? Do you think it’s really about the politics? Do you think it’s really about the political conversation? It’s about that person who is already walking around on edge. What can do that? Certainly childhood trauma, certainly trauma later on in life, if it’s very intense, certainly - we can traumatize ourselves.

I’ll give you an interesting example. Have you ever noticed on Netflix that every week there’s a new serial killer documentary, and you start listening to it – I don’t watch that stuff at all, by the way? With what I’ve been through, it’s not what I wanna spend my time learning about, or experiencing or watching. But, very interesting, because I was like “Who’s watching this stuff? Who is listening to these podcasts about murderers? What’s wrong with people?”

And it turns out, number one, it’s mostly women, very interesting. Also very interesting, men are most likely to be the victims of trauma, but women are more likely to be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. So, very interesting juxtaposition there.
And, listening to this stuff, I was like, this cannot be good for you. I mean, a little bit, okay, but people who are just binging these serial killer podcasts and watching this stuff about serial killers, that cannot be good for you. I started to look into the research, and for sure, guess what? You’re making yourself on edge. Think about how you can remember, if you happen to be one of these people who listens, or know someone who’s really addicted to this stuff, think about how you can remember the story.

Think about how it’s burned in your brain. Again, you don’t know what you had for breakfast yesterday, but you remember all the details of that serial killer, what their name was, what they did, what their life was like, all the terrible things they did, you can recall it. It’s burned into your brain. Guess what? That makes you a little bit more on edge. It makes your amygdala, that threat detection system, a little bit more on edge. It makes you a little bit more wary of people. “Oh my gosh, he could be a serial killer.” “Oh, I don’t know about this guy. He’s got a smile on his face, but a lot of serial killers, they’re likeable people.” You start thinking everybody’s a serial killer.

Kind of an interesting story. When I was in Bangkok, at the end of 2019, I was renting a place from a Chinese-owned company, and the girl who let me into the apartment, and was there to handle, If i had a problem, she was a 24-year-old Chinese woman from Xinjin. I believe it’s near Hong Kong.
But, what’s interesting about Chinese people is that they don’t have Facebook – the only news, or any entertainment at all goes through the Communist Party. It’s all pre-approved. You can’t just watch, read or listen to whatever you want.

So, she’s in Thailand, which does not have those strict laws, and she’s been there for 2 years, and she came to me one day, because we developed a bit of a friendship. She was a hard person to be friends with, that’s a story for another time, but I like learning from people, from different cultures, and she’s like “Ted, I just saw this story about a Chinese woman who was killed, and she was in Chicago, and they’re just killing Chinese people and Chinese women.”
She started getting scared. She read about this one murder, and the victim was a Chinese woman, and it made her very fearful. And one of the things that sucks is, you and I, we’re like “Okay, yeah, we’ve seen enough of bad news”, where we get the game, but she hasn’t seen that much, and she’s starting to get exposed to more and more of this stuff, and in China they don’t have it. I don’t know what they have, but they don’t have that. And so, it’s starting to program her mind.

So, even if you didn’t have trauma as a child, or you’ve never been through anything so bad, if you’re watching very traumatic things, you can give yourself- and again, this isn’t just me talking here. There’s research showing this. You can give yourself a little PTSD, especially if you’re indulging in it a lot.
So, these are the things that start to hold us back. And so, we walk around a bit on edge, a bit in that fear, that anxiety, whatever you wanna label it, those negative emotions stop us from showing up in the world the way that we want. Those feelings, those memories, the way we’ve trained ourselves through watching serial killer documentaries, it ends up training you to be more fearful, to be more scared, to go through the world more scared of whatever it is.
And so, how do you get rid of it? Well, in the book “The Body Keeps the Score”, he talks about that. So, we talked about talk therapy and how it’s a top-down approach. We talked about medication, which is basically – that’s a different thing altogether, you’re popping a pill and it’s changing your brain chemistry. And we talked about the bottom-up approach, which is becoming the thing now. It’s more in line with how we learn as people.

We have experiences, and those experiences change us. Sure, talking about the experience can help, but having experiences, having these corrective emotional experiences – if that’s the right term, I don’t know, perhaps you’re a psychologist and can tell me – but having these experiences emotionally, that allow us to release some of that stuff, or to become aware of it, that is how we get to the next level, and that what Bessel van der Kolk talks about in the book. And he also talks about how exercise is more effective than popping antidepressants. And he talks about how yoga is more effective than popping antidepressants.

Very interesting, by the way. Check this out. What we used to think about antidepressants is, it’s a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which is a science-y way of saying it helps your brain have more serotonin, a neurotransmitter known to be associated with a better mood, less stress, less fear, so higher serotonin. But, what they found out is that that’s not how it works. It works by increasing something called BDNF. When you take an antidepressant, it takes about a month to kick in, that’s what the doctor will tell you. But, it influences your neurotransmitters right away.

So, what is going on? Well, it influences something called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Guess what else releases that? Aerobic exercise. And guess where this stuff takes action? In your hippocampus. Where did we talk about negative memories are stored? In your hippocampus.
Am I losing you? I hope not. I hope the dots are being connected, if you’re not into the brain science that I’m into, but hopefully you’re starting to see these dots being connected here. Very interesting – small hippocampi, if you have a small hippocampus, you’re more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder. So, there’s all these things connecting experience in our brain, and we’re able to even tell, people with smaller hippocampus are more likely to have post-traumatic stress. Guess what makes your hippocampus bigger? Aerobic exercise. It causes neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells in your hippocampus. So, I hope you’re able to start connecting the dots there, folks.

Bessel van der Kolk also talks about EMDR. I forget what it’s called. But, it’s EMDR. Now, it’s something that I haven’t experienced yet, but I’m gonna be meeting with a psychologist who specializes in EMDR, and I’m gonna experience it and I’ll tell you. There’s raving reviews about it.
There’s even peer-review research on it, so I’m very curious. I’m really having success with the breathwork, but if you're having these blocks, if you’re not able to achieve the success in your life, there is an answer, and it comes through experience.

Yes, talk therapy can help. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a psychologist, but I’ll tell you, my personal belief, having tried antidepressant medication before, and saying “This is bullshit”, is that it is bullshit. It’s a Band-Aid. I’m not saying never use it, but if you’re like “I’ve just been on antidepressants for 10 years”, you’re probably going about things the wrong way. There are other options. Now, I’m not saying to stop taking it right away. Work with your doctor. But, if you’re on something, and you’ve been on in for a long time, you might wanna try working with someone else who can help you go a bit deeper, instead of the Band-Aid that antidepressants seem to be.

By the way, another quick point about the book, Bessel van der Kolk talks about when antidepressants first came out, and he thought this was gonna change the game. Just take a pill, and people are gonna be cured. They’re gonna be cured of their depression, their anxiety, how amazing. He even did research. He participated in research on these antidepressants. I believe Prozac was the one. And years later what he says is, people struggle with this stuff because they have intense emotions, and what taking an antidepressant does is, it helps a person handle those intense emotions. But, what he realized, and what I believe to be true as well, is that it’s just a distraction from doing the work, the deeper work that needs to be done.

So, I’m gonna end things here, folks, because I could keep talking about this, I’m so passionate about it. I know it was a bit all over the place, but I wanna ask you, what is your big takeaway from today? What is the big takeaway? What is the big lesson? What is the actionable thing that you could even do today? That’s what I wanna leave you with.

So, thank you so much for listening. I’ve got a call with a client in five minutes. If you enjoyed today, I highly recommend you subscribe if you haven’t already. I love doing Real Talk Fridays. It allows me to go a bit deeper in my story, what I’ve learned, what’s going on in the world, and how it’s relevant to our lives.

Most importantly, we focus on what we can do to break the cycle that we’re living in, to create the life that we truly deserve. So, again, looking forward to serving you in next week’s episode. In fact, it’s gonna be amazing, I promise. So, if today was a bit deep, we’re gonna be talking about a much more superficial thing. We’re gonna be talking about concurrent training, the right way to combine cardio and strength training with yours truly. There’s not gonna be any talk about inner children, so don’t worry. Because both are important. The techniques are important.

So, even if you are struggling with some depression, some anxiety, and you’re interested in what we talked about today, about your hippocampus and how we can create new brain cells, increase our hippocampal volume through exercise, you’re gonna wanna listen to this episode, because I’m gonna teach you how to combine strength training and exercise together. I’m gonna tell you how to prioritize cardiovascular training, what the right way to do it is, so that you’re still getting some strength training in, and it’s gonna be great, folks.

If you wanna keep the conversation going with me, hit me up on Twitter. That is where I am now spending all my time on social media. Not all my time, but all my social media time. So, connect with me, I’m @ted_ryce. So, follow me there, hit me up, send me a message, do a mention, let me know what you thought of the episode, and thank you so much for all your support.

I appreciate you, and always, let’s take action and live our best lives! You only live once! I love you, have an amazing weekend, and speak to you on Monday.