Trauma, Healing, and Women’s Health: Understanding the Hidden Link

Natalie Tysdal (01:53)

Veronica, it's so nice to have you on the podcast.

Veronica Thompson (01:56)

It's so great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Natalie Tysdal (01:59)

This is a topic I really haven't covered on the podcast and I don't necessarily think that women hear the word trauma and think of their health. Can you tell me a little about your background and how this all applies to our health as women?

Veronica Thompson (02:15)

Yeah, so my background is I'm a survivor of what we call complex developmental trauma, which essentially I would sum up by saying it just means that I was raised in an environment that was not safe. And I went through all of my childhood and adolescence and then into my early adult life in environments that were not safe. ⁓ And so that experience really prompted me to, I was

I needed to heal myself. I also wanted to understand what was going on and why these things were happening and how to even just have relationships with people who I cared about who were really hurt. ⁓ And so that motivated me to get into clinical work. ⁓ I studied psychology and then later social work. So most of my work has been with ⁓ child protection population. And so this is a group of people.

who typically do have generational trauma and then their children are in unsafe situations and so they need some help understanding how to create safe environments for their kids. Yeah.

Natalie Tysdal (03:27)

I have so many questions already, but I don't want to interrupt you. Can you, I know you've written a book about this. We'll talk a little bit more about that, but what does that mean? What, first of all, what is trauma? I think a lot of us go through hard times and some, some people might say like, that was so traumatic. What is trauma and what is an unsafe situation that leads to trauma?

Veronica Thompson (03:33)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, let's think about ⁓ just the word trauma. And let's go back a little bit in history. So the word trauma comes from a Greek word. means wound. So historically, only understood trauma to mean a physical wound. So when you go, if you break your arm and you go to the emergency room, you see a trauma. Yes, you go to a trauma center. And so we understand ⁓

Natalie Tysdal (04:11)

You go to the trauma center. Mm-hmm, sure.

Veronica Thompson (04:17)

Very clearly, I think, that there are physical wounds and when those wounds occur, you need to seek help and healing. And that if you don't, then your body is likely going to try to adjust in some way or adapt in a way that might not be healthy for you. ⁓ Around the mid 1800s, ⁓ before that, I just want to say, prior to that, when people had emotional distress,

when they had symptoms, ⁓ emotional dysregulation, meaning they were having trouble calming down, you know, people might have heard of the word hysteria, ⁓ women who were really showing that there was something going on that was very intense with them. The response prior to the mid-1800s was, you know, you would go into a psychiatric center at the time they were called sanatoriums and,

people use terms like you're crazy and things like that. Around the mid 1800s, a French psychiatrist said, you know what, I think that there is something connected between what's going on with the person right now and things that they have been through when they were younger. And so at that time, it was a radical idea to think that. And,

as we moved, and so he sort of unchanged people and talked to them and tried to help them heal and understand. And that really started a movement ⁓ that we've been on ever since. So in the early 1900s, we had what was called psychoanalytic theory. People might have heard of Sigmund Freud. And so he started to say, yeah, there are definitely things going on with people when they're younger. And if we talk about them and explore them, that can help people to heal. ⁓

So that moved into between, I would say, the 1930s and now. We developed this understanding that trauma, this wounding, is not just a physical wound. It's not just something, you you break your arm and you have to fix it, or, you know, a knife enters your body and you have to get stitches. That there are what we call spiritual wounds, emotional wounds, psychological wounds.

and that if those things happen to you and they just, and then you get passed by and you don't do healing, that that is going to, just like a physical wound, there's going to be some adaptations, there's going to be some adjustments in the way that you interact with the world that can lead to symptoms and pain. And so when the word trauma was first introduced into the DSM, that's the...

Natalie Tysdal (06:54)

Hmm.

Veronica Thompson (07:00)

the manual that mental health professionals use to diagnose mental health conditions. When it was first introduced, it was described as a situation of horror had occurred to the person. So it was characterized by intense fear. And that ⁓ was studied as a response to war, so war veterans. It was recognized that something had happened. They had had these experiences of intense fear.

⁓ And so since then we've had our definition of psychological trauma has changed a few times to where it is now and that is an experience ⁓ of related to death or sexual violence. And so that's what we call the big T traumas. So if you have an exposure to death, meaning you are in a situation where you genuinely believe that you might die.

And when children have experiences of sexual abuse or physical abuse, that is what's going on. The child is so powerless that the adult over them, they don't know if they're going to survive the experience. And that's why that big T trauma is so damaging. We also have an understanding of what we now call little T trauma, which are wounds that occur that

change the way you see the world. And that's kind of how mental health professionals understand trauma in general now. We say trauma is something that when it happens to you, it changes how you experience the world. ⁓ And so this can mean, and we work with all sorts of trauma now. So people can come in and say, you know, I had an experience where I was in school and I raised my hand and gave the wrong answer and my teacher shamed me.

So, and how that changes often can change how somebody sees the world is they suddenly think, goodness, I shouldn't take risks. I shouldn't ⁓ initiate, you I should be quiet. And so an experience even like that can be what we call little T trauma, which is that it changes how you experience the world. It changes how you behave in a way that we, that is not healthy because we want people to take risks and try to answer questions and so forth.

And so people have all sorts of wounds that they've experienced in both their childhood and in their adult life, where it changes how you interact with the world in a way that doesn't allow you to be your full self in the world. It doesn't allow you to grow, to engage with people, to have intimacy, to feel comfortable and safe. ⁓ And so our understanding of trauma has changed a lot over time.

But now we really understand it as some sort of wound that happens that changes how you interact with the world and other people.

Natalie Tysdal (10:01)

Okay, that that helps a lot in understanding what trauma is. Do most people need someone to help identify they've had trauma or are they able to say, was traumatic to me? I think of the the more simple situation of someone getting called out in school and their life trajectory changes because of that. We might not say, that was traumatic, but the little t it changed your perception. Like, do most people need help?

in identifying what they've been through and how it has changed their perception of the world.

Veronica Thompson (10:36)

Yeah, and so I think what we heal through relationships and relationships that are healthy are characterized by love and support, but also speaking truth in ⁓ a loving way. And so it could be internally that a person feels like there's something, there's some fear that I'm holding onto. There's some pain that I'm holding onto that I don't understand.

And if you have people in your support system that you can talk to about it, who can help you sort of draw out what is going on there, what happened, and then identify, you know, how that experience changed the way you see the world so that you can apply some truth to that. And so that would just look like what we just talked about. So instead of, you know, saying, I shouldn't raise my hand, I shouldn't take risks, I shouldn't put myself out there because I might be shamed. So I'd be so reframing that into.

actually it's really not okay for a teacher to shame a student in that way, and so you were not in the wrong there, and it's okay, and what you want to do is be in situations and environments where people are supportive, and if they are not supportive, in you taking risks and being yourself, to sort of learn how to set boundaries and push back. So sometimes people have a support system where they can do that with people in their life.

If you don't have a support system, then that is when I think a therapist can really help you to sort of explore these things. And sometimes you can do both. I've been in therapy for most of my adult life. It's really helped me. But I also have a support system. sometimes when I go out of therapy for long periods of time too. I'll go years will pass where I won't feel like I need that. And then something might come up where I start to feel like there's something going on here.

I've talked about it with my support system. I still can't quite figure it out. Let me go talk to a therapist about this and see if he or she can help me. So it can be both. You can identify it on your own, work with your support system, but there's also therapists available to help.

Natalie Tysdal (12:43)

So let's talk about this from a faith perspective, because I know that's ⁓ where you specialize in this. And a lot of people might not think that faith is where I need to go to heal. How do you integrate that? mean, God puts us through experiences intentionally, right? Like to become who he needs us to be. But how do you integrate that perspective in what you do?

Veronica Thompson (12:46)

Mm.

Well, my faith has been really, really important in my healing journey. And so when I was in high school, ⁓ I was in an alternative school program for high-risk youth. ⁓ And I actually got expelled for something in ninth grade that I didn't actually do. So I was blamed for something. And so I was expelled. And then I didn't go back to regular school until I was a senior and pregnant. Yeah.

Natalie Tysdal (13:32)

No.

Talk about a life trajectory change though. ⁓

Veronica Thompson (13:42)

I just think about these things and just how much your environment really makes a difference. ⁓ And that's sort of part of what I was going to say, which is that during these high school years, I really relied on my relationship with God in such a heavy way. I had been exposed to church earlier in my life, so being exposed to the idea that creation itself is good and loving and I'm valuable.

And there is something out there that's for me that was so important for me during those high school years because I couldn't find God anywhere in my environment. You know, I was in a neighborhood where there was a lot of violence and drugs and, you know, people could blame a ninth grader for something they didn't do and sort of get away with it. There was no one advocating. And so I couldn't find God in the environment. And so was really important. So this goes back to what we were just saying about truth.

Right. If I believed everything that people told me or people, how people treated me during that time, then I wouldn't, if I had believed that as the truth, I would have never been able to heal. And so my relationship with God was so important because that's where, you know, during prayer, even though I was in that environment, I prayed almost every night. I prayed for deliverance, you know, God, please help me get out of this situation. I knew it was unhealthy.

But if I hadn't had that basis of truth, that I am valuable, that I'm made in the image of God, that God is for me, that he has a path for me, I would not have been able to heal. So it was really important for me to hold on to what I believed in my faith. And during my prayer, I was sort of like, God, I don't know what you want me to do with all of this, because I'm just surrounded by all of this crazy stuff.

I just later, I just found myself sort of saying, I have to find healing. And that's how I sort of landed. I started in a community college because I didn't have really good education in high school. And then I just progressed from there. And God allowed me into these spaces where I just was, they were people who were, you know, at the top of their field teaching me things. And I just, I feel like that four years of just intense prayer and reflecting on what was going on was so, so important.

And I think in my practice as a, so I mentioned before that, excuse me, that I worked in CPS. After the coronavirus pandemic hit and I moved out of New York City, ⁓ I started to work in individual therapy. And I did that in a clinic for a little while, but then after I left there, I opened a practice where I do faith-based psychotherapy. And I do find that people that I work with,

really do benefit from holding on to faith principles ⁓ that tell us what the truth is. You have to have some sort of foundation of saying, if it's not the truth that that teacher is supposed to shame you for raising your hand, how do we know that's not the truth? Well, we know that's not the truth because God himself made you, loves you, and is guiding you to be your full self. You were made for a purpose, on purpose, and

The Bible tells us that we're supposed to love one another, that that's the most important thing, right? When Jesus was asked, there's so many rules, there's so much to think about, what's the most important thing? He said, love one another and love God. And so holding on to those things as being true, I have found has been so helpful both for the people that I work with, people in my own support system, and then me also.

Natalie Tysdal (17:34)

You know, I think about trauma and I think of, you know, the questions people have when someone dies and it is, but why would God choose to let that, that child die from cancer? Like we hear those questions in faith communities often. And that same question, I think believers often have that question of, but why God did I have that trauma? Why did you let that trauma, that horrible thing happen?

not just death, but sexual abuse or whatever it is. ⁓ How do you talk to people about that? What recommendations do you have for people on that?

Veronica Thompson (18:16)

Yeah, I think that the way that I think about it and has really helped me is to understand, understand myself and everybody that I talk to in ⁓ a time fashion, meaning there's a history and there's a future. And when, I really do rely strongly on a biblical foundation. So I just think, okay, so,

Adam and Eve were manipulated in the garden by the serpent. And what that is is, and this is really interesting because we talked about trauma before in terms of physical trauma and spiritual trauma. And I really understand the original, know, Garden of Eden story underneath those two frameworks of trauma, meaning when death was introduced to the world, right, he said, don't do that or you're going to die. They don't immediately die.

physical death, but they're separated from God. And that's a spiritual wounding. And so I really understand it as at that time, something happened where we were separated from God and God had to intervene in history and that all of human history is this process of God trying to draw us back to Him. And once Jesus came into the world, He said, now you can be my full presence through the Holy Spirit.

Now, my understanding is that, excuse me, once we are ⁓ back in the presence of God through the Holy Spirit, we still live in a world where a lot of people are not. And so my understanding is that the sexual abuse and the abuse that I suffered when I was younger, one of the things a lot of people say is, God allowed this to happen to you for a reason.

And my response is usually,

The reason that it happened is because of evil, not because of God. God is allowing us free will. I think the misunderstanding I think that people have a lot of times is God wanted this to happen to me for some reason that he has. But I don't think that's the right way to frame it in your mind. I think the way to frame it is this did happen and the reason is evil. And so now my role here is to figure out how to heal that.

And that's the journey that I've been on, which is, we have, I'm here, you know, in this long history that has led up to here, and I'm a part of a puzzle that's gonna continue long after I'm gone. And so my role here in this life, in this existence, is to have all of the joy that God wants for me. I'm married, I'm in a happy marriage, of course all marriages have...

difficult moments, but in general, we're really happy. I'm a mother, I'm a sister, I'm a friend, and I go to church. There's just a lot of joy that God wants me to have. But also, if I know that these situations are happening, this childhood sexual abuse, these other traumas, that I feel like my calling then is to engage in that, in the spiritual warfare, to say, how do we come together as a faith community to stop these things from happening?

And it's one of the reasons that I'm sort of stepping out of individual therapy, individual and family therapy, which is that I think a lot of times people think that healing is something that you do in isolation and it's not something you do in isolation. I just really want to call people together to say these things are happening and people are experiencing them emerging into their adulthood and never talking about it with anybody.

and then they come into my office and they want to heal, you know, in a one-hour session per week. And a lot of times when people are sort of saying, yeah, I was abused in this way or I had this experience that was really difficult, but then I go and talk to my parents about it or my support system and they think, why are you talking about this? This happened 30 years ago. And that's why I think the time component is so important. It's if...

these things are happening, our job is to address them and to heal them. So I don't just want to heal myself from being sexually abused as a child. I want to look at it as a broader issue and say, okay, this is an evil that's happening in the world. It's happening to children. And so that's how I make sense of it and create purpose is to say that was, you know, one of us scripture is God turns what the enemy meant for evil into his purpose.

And that's how I understand that. That was meant for evil. It wasn't God wanted me to be sexually abused so that I would learn something. It's that evil, I encountered evil and now God is gonna turn that and use it for his purpose so that over time we can heal this issue and stop it from happening.

Natalie Tysdal (23:30)

Yeah, I think that perspective

is so important that evil will happen. And then how do you turn that? I heard someone say recently that when, and I won't quote it exactly, but the thought of it was when you can actually talk about the thing that hurts so much without feeling like it's the secret is when you've started to heal, because then you're actually, doing something about it or helping someone. You're freely able to discuss this thing that was so

Veronica Thompson (23:38)

Thank

Natalie Tysdal (24:00)

shameful or hurtful or in your mind. And for some reason that the light bulb came on for me with that, that that's when God's using it for good. When we're able to talk about it and even answer people's questions about it or help people ⁓ through what maybe you had been through. It sounds like that's what you've done with the book that you've recently written. ⁓ What advice do you give people there?

Veronica Thompson (24:08)

Yeah.

Natalie Tysdal (24:28)

⁓ Some of that you've probably already given, but what advice for getting started through trauma? And again, like I think some people don't realize that they've been through trauma. They might not look back at their childhood and think that thing or that divorce or those arguments or that whatever that was actually created trauma, big T or little T, that affected my life and my perception of the world.

Veronica Thompson (24:54)

Yeah, yeah, I would say if you have, if you want to try to understand whether or not you've been impacted by trauma, it really does take a little bit of slowing down. You know, take a breath and reflect on the things that happened to you in your life. And I think this is so important that we do this because a lot of times in, you know, people go often to churches when they

that when they're searching for some spiritual meaning or purpose in their life. And there are really great churches out there. There are also churches that are too focused on sort of tradition and maintaining culture. And I would say that the scripture, one of my favorite scriptures is don't be transformed, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. And so there's this invitation to sort of say, okay,

These things have happened in the previous generation. That's how my parents did things. That's how my, you know, teacher, coach, whoever. do we, what was good about that, that we can take with us in moving forward? And what wasn't good? What might have been harmful and that we want to address and not move forward in the generations? And so I would really encourage people to.

You don't have, and I think a lot of times people are a little bit nervous because they don't want to feel like they're criticizing their parents or their grandparents. But I would just say it's okay. None of us are perfect and we're growing. Hopefully we're growing each generation and doing things a little bit healthier, a little bit better. It's okay to look back and say, you know, what out of that, my experience do I want to take forward with my children, my grandchildren? And what do I want to leave behind and heal?

And I would encourage people to really take a moment to think about that if they haven't.

Natalie Tysdal (26:48)

Yeah. ⁓ and, and I think our generation more so than our parents, definitely our grandparents talking about your feelings, talking about what you went through. mean, that was very much a, that's just going to stay under the rug and we're moving on from that. What's the damage in that? And for people who, know, maybe they have, I've, I've heard this from a lot of people, maybe they have parents that they know they're getting some of the things that have been passed down, but the parents are not willing to talk about.

Veronica Thompson (27:17)

Yeah. Yeah, I've had some really ⁓ heartbreaking ⁓ situations. It happens actually a lot when adults in our generation, because I think we are encouraged a little bit more to talk about our feelings and to talk about things that happened. When people try to go back and talk to their parents about it and their parents just say, no, I'm not willing to go there. ⁓

Some people in my family are that way, ⁓ and some people can talk about it, some people can't. I try to love people wherever they are with the understanding that I need to have people in my life who can talk about it. So part of ⁓ the symptom development of PTSD, one of the characteristics of that is avoidance.

Basically, that means that it's a topic that you avoid, that avoidance in it, yeah, and that avoidance in of itself causes other symptoms to occur. And so you can interact with people who say, you know, I just can't go there. It's too big. It's too heavy for me. We want to respect how people, what people can and can't handle, and also their journeys, because sometimes it takes a while to unpack it. So it might say, I'm not there yet. ⁓ But it's...

Natalie Tysdal (28:16)

It hurts. Yeah.

Veronica Thompson (28:42)

you must have a space in your life where the truth can be free, where you can say this happened and it's real. ⁓ The danger, I think, is sort of the gaslighting where you start to think nobody can handle this and so I just need to shove it down deep in my body and that's where you start to get physiological symptoms and inflammations in your body and you can get physical symptoms. ⁓

And I think that those things are very connected. There's ⁓ a woman who was Miss America. She came from a very wealthy, prominent family and she was Melissa. you have.

Natalie Tysdal (29:21)

She's from Denver. We've actually interviewed her several times. Yeah. I was

going to ask you, because her story is, she ⁓ waited for her abuser to die before she revealed it to her family, who still didn't want to believe it, because it was a member of the family. But yeah. what's the name of her book? It's Escaping Me. ⁓ But I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah.

Veronica Thompson (29:44)

It's completely escaping. Yeah, it's escaping me too. But I

love her story. It's such a powerful story. I am so grateful for her courage in sharing all of that because she really does share a lot of ⁓ information about her story. But I think that the physical manifestation of her trauma ⁓ is something that we need to keep in mind. That if you don't deal with trauma, that it's still there.

And at some point it's going to impact your body and the way that it impacted her is she just became paralyzed, literally paralyzed and couldn't move for a period of time. And so her story is so powerful.

Natalie Tysdal (30:22)

Yeah.

Yeah, it's Marilyn Vandiver. Yeah, ⁓ I was trying to find the name of the book, but again, I'll put it in the show notes because it's a powerful story. And she was older. I mean, a grandmother before she finally was able, can you imagine the freedom, the release in her physical body of being able to finally let that out? And there are people listening who have been through this.

Veronica Thompson (30:28)

Vandiver, yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Natalie Tysdal (30:55)

or they know someone who's been through this. you talk about the physical health, which is generally what I'm talking about on this podcast. And that's why I wanted to ⁓ discuss this is that it does impact our physical health more than we realize.

Veronica Thompson (31:11)

During my healing when I first ⁓ emerged into my adult life and I was working in social services, I used to get sick all the time because I was just sort of in survival mode. I was in a stress response all the time. And so I'd be able to go, go, go for months at a time. And then at some point my body would just crash and it would be twofold. Luckily I worked at a place where they were very supportive.

But it would be two weeks, I would just be out of commission with some sort of very intense flu or something else going on. And so it can disguise itself ⁓ in other ways. would, know, meditation, prayer, slowing down, breathing, those things can help calm your body down and it can give you the space in your mind to think about what's going on here.

Natalie Tysdal (32:05)

Yeah, yeah. Well, I know you have a book coming out. ⁓ When it comes out, I would love to promote it. And I know you're working on another one. So congratulations on those things. And anything else that you want to mention or where people can find you?

Veronica Thompson (32:16)

Thank you. Thanks.

⁓ The best place to find me is probably on my website, veronicathompson.com, and then can scroll down to the bottom and sign up for my newsletter, and so that when my book comes out, we'll send out an alert for people who are interested in that. And I will just say that healing is a process, and we heal in connection and community. And so I'm really grateful to you for inviting me on so that we can talk about this, and I hope we can have, in our communities, we can keep having conversations about this.

Natalie Tysdal (32:53)

I do too. Thank you so much Veronica. It's great to meet you.

Veronica Thompson (32:56)

Yeah, you too. Thanks a lot.