Transcending Trauma and Being Loved

JOE KORT 0:04
Frank, hello everyone. Welcome to Smart sex, smart love, where talking about sex goes beyond the taboo and talking about love goes beyond the honeymoon. My guest today is Dr Frank Anderson, an MD, Harvard trained psychiatrist, world renowned trauma treatment expert, psychotherapist and acclaimed author of the transcending trauma memoir to be loved, a story of truth, trauma and transformation. He’s the co founder of the trauma Institute and trauma informed media organizations that promote trauma awareness, education, integration and healing. Dr Anderson maintains a private practice in Harvard, Massachusetts, where he lives with his husband and two sons. Today, he will talk about his book and his story on transcending trauma and being loved. Welcome, Dr Anderson,

FRANK ANDERSON 0:53
thank you so much, Joe for having me. It’s great to be here. Oh, it’s great having

JOE KORT 0:57
you here. Thank you so much. I know you’re busy and you’ve got your book and your training, so it means a lot to me that you

FRANK ANDERSON 1:02
came Yep, absolutely. All right.

JOE KORT 1:05
Well, let’s start with the questions, and the first one would be, what are some different, some of the different types of trauma people experience in their lives?

FRANK ANDERSON 1:13
One of the things that’s really important to know is that there are many different types of trauma, and all traumas are not created equal. You know, people use this general term like, oh, I have a trauma history, or I’ve been traumatized. That means very different things, depending on the circumstance. And interestingly enough, Joe, like, the the more evolved culture and society gets, the longer my list gets, right? Like we used to, I my list used to be five long. Now it’s like seven long, right? So there’s, I’m not going to go into the whole thing, but, you know, there’s an acute traumatic event, acute stress disorder, when you have a car accident or a one time rate, for example, those are single events when your symptoms, and we’ll talk about the difference between kind of what happens to you and how you react, right? That’s a big difference. Like when people have chronic trauma, their symptoms persist well beyond 3060, 90 days they get chronic trauma. There’s the whole world of relational trauma, which is so popular, and I hate I use that in quotes, because so many people have grown up in dysfunctional families and have relational trauma, or what we call complex PTSD. There’s family legacy trauma. You know, the trauma we can carry that carries down through the generations, through ethnic groups. This is something that often blocks trauma healing, and people aren’t aware of it, because it’s something that they just grew up with. It’s part of the messaging, right? There’s cultural trauma, there’s institutional trauma, there’s medical trauma, and there’s global trauma. So there’s a lot of different types of trauma, and so you can’t just lump them together, and part of my kind of purpose is to help educate people about these differences and what we can do with them.

JOE KORT 3:01
I love that. It’s very helpful for people, especially because, you know, the term trauma is so overused, I think, on the internet, and people don’t understand what it means, and even all the different types that you just described.

FRANK ANDERSON 3:12
Yes, that’s exactly right. And this, this differentiation around what happened to you and how you respond is an important one. You know, I have trauma. I have trauma. People aren’t aware of the reactions to what like trauma is, what happens to you, right? It’s an experience. It’s an event. And I think about frequency, intensity and duration, right? Those are the things I kind of think about when I think about trauma, and what happens to you and how you react, is multifaceted, like some people we were talking about this kind of earlier, some people are kind of unaffected or unscathed by something for a number of reasons. There was enough love and connection. It didn’t have distorted meaning. They didn’t take it personally, and so it was a bad thing that happened, that they were able to process and they move on with you know. Rachel Yehuda from Albert Einstein says we all get one free trauma, like everybody you know, your first trauma you typically recover from, and it doesn’t have lasting effects. It’s the second, third, fourth and fifth that end up being problematic, right? So what happens to you? And then, what are your adaptations? What are your reactions? What are your response? And I always say, Joe, love and connection heals trauma. And I’m going to say love and connection can prevent the development of PTSD like basil will say often, it’s not what happened to you, it’s the surroundings around the event that are important. So when you’re supported, there’s love, there’s connection. You don’t personal. It’s my fault. You know so much relational trauma is a disorder. Distortion of responsibility when perpetrators don’t take responsibility for what they do, victims tend to so it’s my fault. I’m bad, I’m wrong, I’m isolated, I’m alone, and don’t have love and support that’s going to have a much bigger impact on you than if you go through something and you’re really responded to. You don’t personalize it. You have the love and support and connection you need. It’s going to have a different kind of effect. You know, the other thing, Joe, I’ll say, is, like different. There’s the temperament issue, you know, there’s the like, my brother and I grew up in the same family. We didn’t have quite the same experiences with my dad, but we were different people, and we had different temperaments, and if you’re highly sensitive, it’s going to have a very different experience than if you’re not right. So there’s who we are, and there’s how we react to what happens to us. That’s very variable depending on the person and the situation.

JOE KORT 6:03
And this helps me go into my next question, which we kind of talked about before we started, which is, does everybody who experiences abuse have trauma? And I always say, No, our field has conflated these two things, as if, no matter what abuse occurs, you’re going to have trauma. And I don’t agree with that. What do you think,

FRANK ANDERSON 6:20
yeah, I don’t agree with it either. I think both are true, is what I’ll say. There’s a lot of people in culture and society that have had bad things happen to them, and they diminish it, they downplay it, and they they ignore it, and it causes problems in their life. So there’s one side of people, like, I don’t have trauma, big and strong and tough. Not me. That’s for wusses, you know, there’s that side of the population, and then the other side of the population does over, you know, oh my gosh, I’ve sneezed. I’ve been traumatized, you know? And so there’s this over identification with trauma. Typically younger Gen the younger demographics, really have this Gen Z population is much more overly identified with trauma, especially because they went through the whole global pandemic in these very formative years. You know what I mean? So there is an over identification, and then there’s a downplaying. And the reality is, trauma is what happens to you, which is different than your reactions or your response. Like PTSD are symptoms as a result of having an overwhelming life experience. You know, PTSD is not trauma. Trauma is what you went through, and it’s how you react. Are you having flashbacks? Are you having trouble sleeping? Do you get depressed or suicidal, right? Are you drinking too much? Are you binging and purging like those are all the signs that, hey, maybe something’s going on here that you’re suppressing. And when people often don’t link their suicidality or their eating disorder to their unresolved trauma. So it’s very variable, and I think it needs to be unpacked for every person, because everybody’s different, everybody’s different,

JOE KORT 8:09
right? And sometimes it’s not what happened to you, it’s afterwards, what wasn’t done for you, the neglect of caring for you, that could get the trauma in and of itself, right? Huge,

FRANK ANDERSON 8:20
huge. That’s why I say love and connection heals trauma and it can prevent it, you know, because the most damaging is the you know, let’s use a little boy sexually abused by his father or mother at night. Nobody says anything, nobody knows. He goes downstairs to the dinner table, the breakfast table the next day, silence, right? Absence. So that’s a trauma where you’re utterly alone and neglected in it, right? Very different than September 11 or the Boston bombings, for example. The whole world responds. People are pouring in resources. Everybody knows about it. How you doing, how you’re doing, how you’re doing. So it does really matter what happens after what the environment is like that really has an impact. And you know, Joe that one of the things that’s been interesting critical incident debriefing. So, you know, there’s a school shooting, for example, and there’s a whole team of people that go in to these schools and start putting people in the groups and having them process their experience, we know now that that can be harmful. Oh, and they’re revamping the whole what’s called Critical Incident debriefing protocol, because talking about it too much encodes traumatic memory, not talking about it at all. Being neglected or isolated increases the chance of PTSD. So there is too much, and there’s not enough that is problematic. You know, there is this sweet spot to have support. Work to have connection, but not repetitively replay it or not ignore it like nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine, nothing happened. So both extremes are harmful for people, and we’re really learning what the sweet spot is around the right amount of support to help minimize the effects of, oh, what I I say overwhelming life experience. Now, Joe, I don’t use the word trauma because it’s so overused. I’m like, Have you been through an overwhelming life experience? Well, yeah, okay, let’s talk about that.

JOE KORT 10:35
I like that. Yeah. I think about as you’re talking you know, I’ve been, I’ve been this field 40 years, right? And I think about my early years and the years before, about all the psychodrama and all the over and over and the person over there, and I’m thinking, What a mistake, right?

FRANK ANDERSON 10:50
Yeah, yeah, it’s we really Yes, we have learned a lot. You know, when I was in my residency program, I remember moonlighting like working extra hours at an inpatient psych unit, and there were all these high functioning women in a trauma unit totally regressed and fell apart because they were overdoing talking about their trauma, mapping it out, like talking about all their parts in a way that was really harmful. You know, one of the one of the things I’m doing now, interestingly enough, is I’m really trying to bring trauma healing to the general public, because there’s just not enough therapists to go around for everybody. And I want to make it more like you’re in charge of your treatment. You do a piece of work, and then you live your life, and then you change your behavior, then you go back and do another piece of work, not the insurance companies in charge or the therapist. It’s like you get educated and you get empowered, and you are a part. I call it like self prescribed. Yes, you’re in charge, because trauma violates our sense of self, and to heal from it, you’ve got to regain that agency and control. So I think, I think we need to shift the field. Yeah, I think we need to shift the field. I actually

JOE KORT 12:16
think it’s shifting already. I know from my social media, especially Tiktok, people will say to me, thank you so much. I can’t afford therapy, and this is helpful. I know I was I, of course, I know people can’t afford it, but I never thought of them using the education, yeah, for themselves. 100%

FRANK ANDERSON 12:32
100% Yeah. I really believe that’s important to kind of bring it to the masses, in a way, because there’s not enough resources for everybody.

JOE KORT 12:41
No, how would you say trauma affects our thoughts, behavior and feelings?

FRANK ANDERSON 12:47
Yeah, so this is a thing that you know, trauma people think about. Well, trauma affects, I say, thoughts, feelings and physical sensations, like our body absorbs the experience. You know, bessels book. Bessel van der Kolk for those who don’t know, the Body Keeps the Score that really speaks to it, because we absorb whatever we experience through the body, you know, and that can get encoded into physical sensation. You know, tightness in your chest, heart racing, stomach pain, whatever it is, it can get encoded through emotion. You know, people can get overwhelmed, they can get sad, they can get panic attacks. So there’s an emotional encoding of trauma, and there’s distorted thinking, you know, I’m bad, I’m wrong, I’m no good. I’m unlovable. It was my fault. So trauma really does get encoded in many different ways, and this is one of the reasons for me Why talk therapy is not necessarily the best for trauma. Because if you’re holding so much in your body, or you have all these medical problems that are a manifestation of your unprocessed trauma, you need to work in the body, you know. And if you’re totally flooded and overwhelmed by images, and you know, you’re living one crisis after another, you need to really focus on the way the emotion is kind of stuck and locked in your body, right? Or the thinking, you know, so it can that’s important for people to know. It’s not just tell me the story and then you’re going to get better, because trauma is encoded in the body in those ways, any sensory modality. You can smell, you could see, you could hear, you could feel. That’s where the trauma gets encoded, and that’s the way we need to kind of work on it if we’re really going to help people heal, instead of just, you know, keep it inside, because it’ll show up in other ways.

JOE KORT 14:53
What do you feel or think about going to the person who caused the trauma? I.

FRANK ANDERSON 15:00
I said, I will change my answer to this now as a result of my own healing. Okay, I think you know working through trauma with the person who has harmed you can be highly beneficial and make therapeutic change in ways that sitting in a therapist’s office for 20 years will not okay. So there’s a way that working through it in life can have much greater impact than talking about it in isolation. Okay, and I’ve been in therapy for 35 years, and I did so much healing with my father, person to person right now, what I say about this is release what you’re carrying before you deal with The person who harmed you, because sometimes people force, forgive, forgive, confront, confront, and it’s premature. There’s nothing helpful, and it’s often re traumatizing. You know what I mean? So like, if you’re gonna confront somebody or talk to them prematurely when you’re when you’re Trump, when you’re still holding so much of your trauma, you haven’t processed enough of it, or you’re angry and you’re trying to get back at them, or culture and society, or your religious organization says forgive them, to move on. It won’t work. It won’t work. You know, I spent, and I write about this in my memoir, seven years with no contact with my parents, right? I wasn’t strong enough to withstand their denial, and they were not open to listening to me. So I needed to set a boundary, and I needed to do my own work, and it was kind of bad. I didn’t think it would ever last seven years. I never that was not a plan. It just evolved that way. But by the end of those seven years, I re entered the family because I was different. I wasn’t so affected by what they said. I knew what happened to me. Nobody was going to tell me otherwise, and so I was able to stand up and show up differently because of the work that I would have, that I did, that I did on myself. Do you know what I mean? So I say, heal your trauma first, then confront, deal with, forgive, speak up to your the person who harmed you second. I call it the second phase of healing. I really do. I think it’s you can’t do it prematurely, and you can’t do it after you release what you’re carrying about, what happened to you.

JOE KORT 17:48
I love this because I feel really strongly that you should go to the person. I’ve done it in my own life. Well, I went to my father, and I can look back, I did do pre healing before I went to him, and finally finished with my mother. I didn’t I went to her before, and I could see the difference. I love what you’re

FRANK ANDERSON 18:04
saying, right? It’s I’m really teaching the second phase of healing, you know? And because some people are like, Don’t forgive, never forgive. I’m like, No, that’s not true, or you have to forgive. I’m like, well, that’s not true either, right? Heal your trauma, release the energy that you’re carrying that doesn’t belong to you based on what happened to you first, then and often, like when you do that, you could see the humanity in your perpetrator. You could see how broken or limited they are, or you could see the wounds in them. Now, it doesn’t mean you let them off the hook, and it doesn’t mean you forget what happened. It means you have a different view, because you’re not carrying that stuff anymore. And so then you interact with them from a different place, from a place of strength and power, not from a place of hurt, resentment or victimization, you know? So it’s, it’s an important thing. And I didn’t think, I didn’t really know this until I went through it myself. Yeah,

JOE KORT 19:14
I love it. Can you talk a little bit about what internal family systems therapy is and why it’s so effective in helping trauma survivors.

FRANK ANDERSON 19:22
Yeah. So I’ve been the lead trainer, one of the lead trainers for the IFS internal family systems, model of therapy. I wrote the trauma curriculum for them. Wrote a book transcending trauma, describing it. It’s a model of therapy that Dick Schwartz, who’s the founder of the model created, and the best way, honestly to describe it is inside out one or two. Like everybody has different parts or aspects of their personality, just like the Pixar movie, inside out, right, joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and they’re almost like little people. Inside of us, little aspects of our personality, and they hold things for us. They can hold trauma, they can protect us, right? They can be just normal aspects of our personality, right? So when we think about ifs everybody has parts, some protect, some hold pain, and there’s a way to work with your internal system, talk to the different parts, be with the different parts of you that hold the pain or hold the trauma or drink or cut or get angry to push away the trauma, right? And so there’s also a healing modality. It’s a model of therapy for healing trauma. And ifs also says that everybody has self energy, everybody, and I love this about it, has wisdom within themselves. Everybody has the capacity to heal. It doesn’t need to be cultivated. You’re born with it. You don’t have access to it because trauma blocks access to your core self, but you have it within you, because you know so many people are like, I’m broken, I’m no good, I’m empty, I’m nothing, I’m like, No, that is not true. You have that in you, you just don’t have access to it. I’m going to help you gain access to your wisdom and your strength.

JOE KORT 21:26
I really like that. What about when people say, Okay, I’ve done all my work, and then something happened in my life, and it reactivated my trauma, and now it’s like I never did any of my work and I’m not fully healed. What do you say?

FRANK ANDERSON 21:39
Yeah, that’s another thing that has changed and evolved for me over time. Honestly, I have to say I used to believe in permanent healing. Yeah, no way. I do not believe in permanent healing anymore, but this is the way I describe it, Joe, I will say this like, if you do your work, you will be able to release the energy that you’re carrying, and then you elevate to a new vibration. You’re you’re living life at a different level, because you’re not carrying that trauma. Now something’s going to happen in your life that could reactivate it, but you’re not back at square one. You’re reacting from a different level. And you learn something new, and you recover quicker because of what you went through, and then you raise to the next level. So for me, it’s like an elevation every time your trauma gets activated, there’s something new to learn, there’s something new to release, and there’s a higher level of interacting in the world each time you do the work, you know what? Sometimes I say, Look, we all have a choice. We could repeat it, we could repress it, or we can repair it, right, and we have an OP, you know? You can just push that crap away, and then you’re right back at square one, yeah. But if you do work each time there is a true evolution, and it’s not going back to square one.

JOE KORT 23:07
I love it. I’m glad you’re saying this. People need to hear that about your book. What inspired you to write it? And you said, the book is a piece of your heart and soul. Will you talk about it?

FRANK ANDERSON 23:17
Yeah, this. You know, I’ve written two prior books that were kind of clinical books for therapists to learn about trauma. And I was, I’ve always been a very open book kind of person. Joe, like, Hi, I’m Frank Anderson. I’m gay, I have a trauma history. Nice to meet you. Like, like, it’s kind of who I am. And you know, I’ve always liked to break down this divide between the US and them, like, I’m the expert, you’re the trauma survivor. Like I’m like, you don’t become a damn trauma survivor. I mean, you don’t become a trauma expert unless you’re a trauma survivor. Sorry. I just like, that’s the way it goes in my book. Like, why would you unless it was your mother or somebody in your life who’s totally affected by trauma. So I clearly became a trauma expert because of my own trauma history, and as I’ve really tried to help the general public heal, kind of thought, what better way to teach than through story? Like, why not tell my story as a way to help other people heal. And you know, when my publisher first recommended that, I was a little bit shocked. I’m like me, like, who wants to hear my life story, right? But over time, I was like, wow. Like, I have done a lot of work, and I have a pretty significant trauma history, and I am not where I was before. I have really come a long way. So if I can help other people through telling my story like I am all for it. And you know, Joe, what’s been, what’s been so amazing is the way people are responding like I so many people are reaching out to me. Good. Oh, my goodness, I can relate that i. Didn’t feel accepted, either, or I cheated on my wife too, or I did this like these themes are universal, right? I went through a form of conversion therapy when I was a kid, right? And people are not. People are reaching out, saying I didn’t go through conversion therapy, but I was constantly forced to be somebody who I wasn’t for most of my childhood too. Like to have people relate to these themes has been very important. And I really every time I’d come up with I did have this like thing in my head, the moments that made me, the moments that made me and I just kept collecting my moments, collecting my moments, then it turned into a memoir, right? And I would come up to a moment, it’s like, oh my gosh, am I really gonna say this? Like, am I really gonna say this? And I kept coming back to truth. Is important. Truth is important. And I, I, you know, I don’t, I didn’t. I don’t have shame around it. I really, I’ve done enough work, and I’m not carrying shame around what I’ve done. And so it was, I just kept saying, Okay, I’m gonna put it out there. Okay, okay, I’m gonna put it out there. Nobody has attacked me. Nobody to date has attacked me for anything I’ve written about I’ve only heard Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So it’s been a very powerful experience to kind of put myself out there in such a raw way, yeah, and to not get backlash from it really, to get Yeah, to

JOE KORT 26:45
get loved, to be loved, like the name, what would you say? The core message of your book to be loved is,

FRANK ANDERSON 26:52
yeah. Well, I mean, I did spend pretty much my whole life wanting to be loved. I think everybody in this world wants to be loved and deserves to be loved. I think everybody’s been through overwhelming life experiences, and I think everyone has the capacity to heal and free themselves from their trauma like that is really the core message for me, is we’ve all been harmed. The other thing is, we all have harmed. This was an important part of the book. Is that you know, when you experience trauma, you internalize perpetrator energy, and we tend to hold on to victim and other perpetrators. This is what’s happening in our political world right now. But I’m good, you’re bad. Yes, it was very important for me to say I’m really good and bad, and by the way, so is my perpetrator. So was my dad. You know, I was part of like, if we’re truly going to heal from trauma, we have to stop othering people, and we have to acknowledge the ways we’ve harmed and we’ve been harmed. You know, when I started raising my kids and I started seeing some of the behavior in myself that my father did projected onto me. I was mortified. I was mortified. There was a times in my life I was suicidal, really, you know, and I was like, We are all both, and I think we need to acknowledge that if we’re going to really heal from trauma. So that was another important piece for me, for sure.

JOE KORT 28:39
It’s a really good, good message, I think, for both sides. What before we end? What other messages would you like to make sure people know about your what you wanted to say before we end?

FRANK ANDERSON 28:52
What’s the messages? Yeah, I guess those I said, Well, I can say this. Trauma blocks who you are. Trauma blocks your authentic self, and healing is possible. Releasing that energy is doable. I think everybody has a purpose in life, and I think once you release your trauma, you get to your purpose, and you can live a more authentic life. And I really I want people to know that it’s possible for everyone. It’s why I’m so committed to bringing healing to the general public. Because, yeah, I think the world is ailing. I think many people are lonely, and I really want to get this message out to the world that healing is possible, and love and connection are really all that matters.

JOE KORT 29:44
I love that. That’s so nice, such a great message. And, you know, because such dark stuff, and they’re able to help people, especially by reading your book. And I’m good, can’t wait to do that. I plan to to be able to see you’re a real person. And then you went through this, and you overcame it, and here you are on the other side. Right, you got, oh, I know. So how can people find you and where can they buy your book?

FRANK ANDERSON 30:05
Yes, absolutely, I can now say, because it’s a general public book, you can find my book where all books are sold. Never used to be able to say that before. You know Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any you know target, anywhere books are sold. You can get to be loved. My website is probably the best way to reach me. Frank Anderson, md.com, people can follow me and follow all the stuff that I’m doing. And I’m on all the channel, all the social media channels probably most active on Instagram, which is Frank, underscore, Anderson, MD, and I’m on Tiktok, and I’m on LinkedIn, and I’m going to be on this new what is it called Blue Ivy, or

JOE KORT 30:54
something that blew the sky.

Speaker 1 30:56
Blue Ivy is what’s her name’s daughter, right? Daughter is Blue Ivy, blue sky. I’ll probably be on blue sky, not quite on there yet, but yeah, all the social media places,

JOE KORT 31:09
awesome. I’m so, really, so happy when you said yes to my team coming onto my show. I want to you know, because I know you, you are a big presence in our field, and so I really appreciate it. Thank

FRANK ANDERSON 31:22
you, Frank, yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s great to talk. Yeah. You

JOE KORT 31:26
can hear more of my podcasts on at Smart sex, smartlove.com, and you can also follow me on Twitter, Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook. That’s all my handle there, and all of them is at Dr. Joe court, D, R, J, o, e, K, O, R, T, and you can go to my website, jokecourt.com and you’ll find more of my podcasts there as well. So thanks for listening, and until next time, stay safe and stay healthy. You.