Karen The Resilient Therapist: Finding Hope - Part 4/4 [Podcast]
Listen on YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcast | More
In this final episode of Karen The Resilient Therapist: Finding Hope, we talk about how to find hope after a traumatic experience.
In recent episodes, we've focused on how to recognize and acknowledge our feelings, how to find support, and how to begin the healing process. In this final episode, we'll talk about how to find hope after a traumatic experience.
If you're struggling with post-traumatic stress after a traumatic experience, this episode is for you. In this final episode, Karen shares her tips on how to find hope and how begin the process of healing. Listen in and find the hope you need to move forward.
Thank you for joining us on this journey of healing. We hope this series has helped you find hope and helped you find a therapist who can help you heal from your trauma. Please share this series with friends and family, and keep us in your thoughts as you continue your healing journey.
You can reach Karen via Email at Karen.Ouriel@gmail.com
0:00 - Podcast Intro
0:11 - Episode Intro
0:30 - The sweet spot
3:05 - Struggling with hopelessness
6:16 - Grappling with an identity
7:56 - Holding on to hope
9:59 - Tips for Keeping Hope
11:50 - Build your hope even in good times
13:10 - Why share your story?
16:32 - Outro
Rances
Welcome to Mindset U podcast your source of mindset education. We aim to provide you with free valuable education for you to thrive. Enjoy. After coming face to face with death and coming out on the other side with a broken back pelvis, head trauma and all the post-traumatic stress that you can imagine, how does one find hope? Karen shares her ongoing journey on the final installment Episode four of The Resilient Therapist.
Rances
There's there's a book called The Sweet Spot, which talks about life growth. It has a whole chapter dedicated to post-traumatic growth, right? Where it's the concept of experiencing something that is traumatizing. Right. And we know about post-traumatic stress disorder in which we see we go through an experience and now this same experience negatively impacts us moving forward. Post-Traumatic growth is the same premise, except it impacts us in what we call a positive way, in our positive outlook towards life.
Rances
And the key factor is about the sweet spot, right? Always finding this sweet spot of the edge that is allowing you to grow and develop where you're not going past the edge and you're in a sense, hurting yourself. Right. Or causing more hurtful impact or outcomes. And you're also not too shallow from that, where you're not seeing any growth and development.
Rances
So it's kind of like that.
Moises
And the education world it is called the proximal development zone in the learning world, it's that and I'm sure in the therapy world there's some terminology called for that. I know Dr. Huberman talks about it where it's like recovering from the emotional kind of trauma. Yeah. Like starting to accept that or what he calls extinguishing and then creating the new experiences, which is like you got to have to push the boundary to create this new identity.
Moises
And there is a sweet spot to that. Like, if you go too far and you foresee, you can ruin everything. But if you don't do jack shit like you're not improving, you know?
Karen
I mean, that's true in everything. Everything when you're trying to, you know, improve your fitness level. If you don't push enough, like, hardly anything will happen. If you push too hard, you might get injured or, you know, do some damage. But the sweet spot.
Rances
Is a range for that allows for adaptation to occur, which actually circles back to an aspect of your story that I want I would like you to talk about, which is the times when you had to learn to stay in that sweet spot where you wanted to push a little bit beyond where I know it was more so in the in the mental recovery aspect that that occurred in.
Karen
I think it's a recognition for myself that, again, I might look a certain way. My appearance is not really changed, but there's an acknowledgment that a lot of things changed as a result of this, and it's difficult at times for me to really embrace that. So sometimes I get frustrated with myself that I'm not like better, that things are still a work in progress, that I need to be patient with myself, that the healing process doesn't always go in a straight line.
Karen
That's both emotionally and physically. And when I have what I perceive as setbacks, I, I struggle with that because it can feel to me like a sense of hopelessness. I don't know if I'm going to ever be 100% or am I going to get past this? There's still a lot of uncertainty.
Rances
So where wearing your recovery did that happen?
Karen
Well, there's there there current tense, not just past tense. If I have back pain, I always have some discomfort that I've learned to tolerate. But there are some days or portions of the day where I don't necessarily know why, but in more pain than than I've gotten accustomed to. And that affects my mood because, like, I feel like, oh, like here it is again.
Karen
Like you can't do whatever it is that you wanted to do. It can happen like I'm emptying my dishwasher or something like that. And then it just sort of like shocks me in a way because I want to think of myself as functional and healed, and I mostly am, but there are times where I'm not. And then in terms of the mental health part of this, the emotional self, I experienced post-traumatic stress.
Karen
And I don't want to say it's a disorder. It's that's what happens when you go through something. It's really mind changing. And I work I'm a work in progress. I, I function. But there's been times where I get triggered and it could be I'm driving and I think somebody is going to hit me from behind in my car or I'm cycling quite a bit and very, very hyper vigilant about cars.
Karen
And sometimes a car gets close and I, I get really scared doesn't I'll see terrified because it just that feeling of, you know, there's danger involved with everything but that feels really terrifying to me.
Moises
And then there's the, the other side of that coin that I'm sure exists because they didn't you just climb one of the hardest kind of bike rides.
Karen
I did. But it was there were hardly any cars.
Moises
So so you get a dishwasher, you get the pain and everything goes to crap. Then you go and you ride a huge mountain. And Karen.
Karen
I climbed whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks. It's, I think anywhere between seven and eight miles up. And that was a goal that I had set for myself. And I did better than I thought in terms of my pace.
Moises
But and that's a year after the accident.
Karen
Yes.
Moises
So I'm just like pointing out like.
Rances
That, like real.
Moises
Like in terms of the way we we think about it, like we and I'm bringing it back to your clients, right, of like how your clients come to you and they just want this fix, this solution. Right. And I'm sure you're going in and out of those states of like, I just want the fix, right? I just want the result.
Karen
Yes.
Moises
But then you kind of go back to yourself and the process and then it's just like you go in and out this duality of, I guess, an identity change, you know?
Karen
Yes. And one that was unwanted and I'm still grappling with how to incorporate that into myself. Like there's a need for me to express this and talk about it. But another part of me just wants to like and that's what I was doing in the beginning. Like, just, I want to denial. Like, I want to pretend that it did not happen.
Moises
So if you were to give one piece of advice to somebody who goes through some a similar traumatic event, right. What would you tell them after this?
Karen
I would tell them that there's a lot of pain involved, but there is the prospect of having life restored. And just to really not lose hope.
Rances
And I, with what you just said, is it's not just something similar to this with any challenge really. Does that based principle applies across across all realms of life, I hope. Right. You said the hardest part about this is those moments when you feel like you lose hope.
Karen
Yes.
Rances
So recognizing that recognizing the strength of of hope in your story, where, like you said, you're still and this is a chapter of your life that's still being written.
Karen
Yes.
Rances
And the whole still being written means that there's a lot of mystery, there's a lot of unknowns that are happening. Like there's a lot of stuff that you didn't even talk about today when it comes to like your your own therapy that you had to go through this and and the things that you had to do to overcome those main obstacles.
Rances
But having that that openness that you talked about, of trying new things of like not thinking that you haven't figure it out and having that openness attached to hope, that's like the key factor here. I think that your your story really delivers.
Karen
I would like it to deliver that being open and really not losing hope even when it feels or seems like impossible.
Rances
What are some of the key things you did to grab on to hope in moments when you felt like you were losing it?
Karen
Simple things, but actually writing stuff down journal, connecting with positive people, having outlets for just being able to talk about things. Being outdoors is really helpful for me. I sometimes like first thing in the morning just looking at the sky and feeling this is going to be okay. It's like there's a much bigger picture here and you're going to be okay.
Karen
So I think some of the self-focus is necessary, but it also can be a negative. So sometimes I needed to literally expand my horizon and not focus so much on my pain.
Moises
It's funny because like what I'm hearing is like hope almost derives from pain. I mean, I think, like, I think that's where it starts for most people. Like where you start to like understand the concept of hope, the phrase like it comes from from pain. But I think to develop it like as a skill because I think it's something that drives the human forward.
Moises
Yes, right. To do it in the good moments. It's a really hard thing to bring hope out when everything is great.
Karen
Well, yeah, you don't need it, you know?
Moises
Yeah. It's not a need, but it's almost like if you're able to, like, pull that out at any given time, like, here, here's my tool. I want to change my life, you know, I want. I want this new thing. I'll just take this hope out, right? But I feel like the rudimentary, the binary level of like hope, like where derives from typically shows up when there's an extreme amount of pain.
Moises
I think.
Karen
You're right.
Rances
So then going back to that pain, right where you talked about earlier on, how the the physical training, the exercises, that aspect kind of trained you up to manage yourself in pain. Basically, you you're practicing. You were like you said, when everything is going well, like there's no need for hope. So how do you make sure that everything's not going well in a controlled fashion?
Rances
Go exercise.
Moises
You beat the crap out of yourself. Yeah.
Karen
It's not a bad skill set to develop. And if that's a way to do it, why not? You're going to benefit. And in pretty much every way.
Moises
I mean, yeah, that makes some sense because when you're, you're exhausted, like you're looking for the end, you're looking right.
Karen
And when you feel it can't go on anymore and then you prove it to yourself, that I actually can is.
Moises
Like, yes.
Karen
It's a reinforced like concept, like how I was able to like when I saw that that mountain was pretty high and I was like, I don't know if I can do this, but then I was like, just go a little bit at a time and find your rhythm and don't stop till you get to the top. And that's what I told myself.
Karen
And it was painful.
Moises
Hmm. That's awesome. Caryn, first, I want to thank you for. For sharing your story. Uh, I think it's very powerful. Um, and it has, I think, can benefit a lot for a lot of people who are going through similar experiences, not just physically but emotionally, mentally. So I want to thank you for sharing your story and being.
Rances
Vulnerable and sharing these, these moments of, of fear of, of trauma with, with everyone. So to turn that into a question like, why would you want to share this.
Karen
On a personal level, it feels part of my healing process. And if I can, I don't want to say inspire. If I can reach someone through my story and I can help them, that is something that would be really important for me and just to be a resource for other people, because I think this is something that also even more than ever I'm aware of the power of connecting with other humans is really it's a real thing and we need that.
Moises
And if somebody wanted to connect with you, where would they find you?
Karen
Right over here. It's I can give my contact information. I would be very that would be awesome for me if I if I could anyone that would like to speak with me about this. Hey, I'm going to get my information.
Moises
Well, I mean, I yeah. Website, email.
Karen
Okay. My email is my first name, which is Karen. K-A-R-E-N with a dot after my last name. O-U-R-I-E-L at Gmail. That would be the best way to get in touch.
Moises
All right, beautiful.
Rances
Awesome. So, Karen, we heard your story coming from a person who was inspired to help other people who was inspired to take on her fitness to multiple levels and because of her own mental health, really live a life that is not really a common thing in how a moment almost took all of that away from you. But your sheer will and mindset made sure that you were able to bring that part of your reality back to you, where now you're talking about like going up seven miles in a mountain.
Rances
And there was another thing about that you recently did a you got like forgot what was it first or second place was that.
Karen
You had some personal records this year. Oh yeah. Course that I've done before.
Rances
Yeah. So personal records. Meaning that even before surgery you beat those records, correct? So like the story of resilience, basically resilience and focus and mindset of development and growth and expansion. So thank you so much for spending the time.
Karen
With us.
Rances
And sharing.
Karen
Value. The fact that you guys asked me to do this and I appreciate it.
Rances
What's your health, love, life, spirituality, career, finances all have in common? Your mindset. Mindset is a source of creating change to learn how to install these and other life transforming concepts. Browse through our free collection of courses. I the project. Com.