Paul Conti

Like if you and I chose a word right now and said it 500 times, we would know it's just a silly experiment, but we'd both be saying it tonight, right?

Because our brains are also creatures of habit.

So if you over and over and over have to isolate yourself from affect and you develop those mechanisms, well, you develop those mechanisms and they don't go away any easier than if we said the word 500 times and decided to forget.

The first thing, the very first thing, is to acknowledge to ourselves and often to others, which might be one other person, it might be in words, spoken, it might be written, what the trauma has been.

Because the lessons of trauma, the evil lessons of trauma, and I'll use the example of my own life, the lesson that told me that I was shameful, cursed, and hopeless.

It's a very evil lesson, but my brain will say it over and did say it over and over and over to me.

And if that just sits inside, that's how trauma festers, that's how trauma hijacks our thoughts, our emotions.

So being able to say to ourselves and to another, this is what's happened.

right?

Okay, this is what's happened.

We're built to massage words and to create meaning through words, right?

Like we don't massage pictures, right, images.

We talk and massage meaning with words.

So when I finally went to see a therapist and I could say, you know, my brother, whatever words I would have said, like he killed himself and I can't

accept it or I can't imagine it.

And like, I let it happen.

Like, so I had to say those things, right?

So then I could begin to bring some sense of truth to it, you know?

And I think it was a long time ago, but the therapist probably said something like, okay, probably sees on you, you let it happen.

It's your fault, right?