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🌟 The Power of Being Seen: Narrative-Focused Trauma Care Explained 🌟

• Tabitha • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Have you ever felt the weight of your story, but didn't know how to share it or if you even should share it? In this powerful episode, we explore the transformative approach of narrative-focused trauma care, also known as "story work." Discover how telling your story can rewrite your life, reclaim your identity, and heal the deep wounds of complex trauma.

🔑 In this episode, you'll learn:

  • What Complex Trauma Is: Understand how chronic, repeated interpersonal experiences (like childhood abuse, spiritual abuse, coercive control, emotional neglect, and domestic violence) profoundly impact your emotional, physical, and relational health.
  • The Power of Narrative-Focused Trauma Care ("Story Work"): Explore how engaging your story within compassionate and safe communities helps externalize trauma and rewrite internalized harmful narratives like shame and powerlessness.
  • Practical Tips for Healing: Learn actionable ways to incorporate storytelling into your trauma recovery journey, including journaling prompts, creative expression, and integrating narrative therapy with approaches like EMDR, Brainspotting, and Somatic Experiencing.

🌿 Key Topics Covered:

  • Defining complex trauma and its lifelong impact.
  • How narrative therapy supports trauma healing and emotional regulation.
  • Countering harmful narratives to reclaim your true identity.
  • Benefits of combining story work with complementary trauma treatments.
  • Real-life examples and practical storytelling tools to start your healing journey.

📚 Resources & Recommended Reading:

💡 Remember: Your trauma does not define you. Your story is yours to tell, rewrite, and reclaim. 💡

#ComplexTraumaRecovery #NarrativeTherapy #TraumaHealing #MentalHealthPodcast #StorytellingHealing #TraumaInformedCare #ComplexPTSD #TraumaRecoveryTips #HeyTabiPodcast

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Tabitha Westbrook:

Welcome to hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud, with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here and we are not. Take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now let's get going. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. That is a quote from Maya Angelou, and I will tell you that is a true statement. This week we are going to talk about power of narrative therapy and how it can help you heal from complex trauma. Welcome to hey Tabby. I'm really excited that you're here, so I want to just quickly define complex trauma for you. If you've been here a bit, you may already know this definition, but just in case we have some new folks joining us, I want to just go ahead and give it again.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Complex trauma is something that is chronic, repeated and very often I would say almost always related to an interpersonal experience, so it is something that someone has done to you or done with you or what have you. That is a traumatic experience and a traumatic event. These can be things like domestic abuse, childhood abuse, both physical, sexual, all those things. It can be things like spiritual abuse. It can be things like clergy sexual abuse or prolonged emotional neglect. It can be things like clergy sexual abuse or prolonged emotional neglect. One of the things that I often think about with that is, especially as children, we need connection and care, and when our caregivers don't give that to us, then we end up severely lacking. There's some research out there that shows that childhood neglect is the worst form of abuse. Psychiatrist Kurt Thompson states it this way we all come into the world looking for someone, looking for us, and when we don't have that, as kids we come up against who am I? Am I worth it? Doesn't anybody love me? When we experience abuse, we feel those things.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Now you might be thinking well, what is the difference between a complex, chronic trauma and something like a car accident? Well, let's say you've had a really terrible car accident. That is 100% traumatic. It is not good. You may have nightmares, you may be afraid to get back in a vehicle. It can be a lot of things that happen because of that, and that doesn't minimize that it's traumatic at all to say it's a single incident, but it is one incident and it is definitely something you might need therapy for. There may be other things that you need to do to heal emotionally from that, but it is different than complex trauma in that it doesn't continue on, and that is the true nature of complex trauma is that it is something that happens over an extended period of time, whether that be weeks, months or years and sometimes decades or basically your whole life. The term was first coined by Jada Thurman in her book Trauma and Recovery. This is one of the seminal books on trauma, so if you want to learn where some of this terminology came from, that might be a book to take a look at. And she really is the one to first coin the term complex trauma and complex PTSD and unfortunately it hasn't made it into any diagnostic manuals, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist because it's not in there.

Tabitha Westbrook:

That's one of the things that a lot of the clients that I see experience is. They've been in these traumatic experiences for such a long time that it has left them with pretty significant struggles. Some of those struggles and the impact are on their identity. Who am I If someone is speaking over you over and over and over again that you are a terrible person, you're damaged goods, you are broken, you are only to be used? Now, these things don't have to be said explicitly, so they don't have to say it exactly with their lips, but it's the way you're treated.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Sometimes we know how people feel about us just by the way that we're treated. So in marriage, for example, someone who has contempt for you might say demeaning things to you, like I can't believe you like that, or I can't believe you did that, or physically turn their back on you or stop speaking to you or things like that. And while they're not explicitly telling you you don't matter, you have no value, they're implicitly, through their actions and behaviors, saying that to you. And if it's a powerful voice whether it's a pastor, a spouse, a parent or caregiver, grandparent or even a close friend that has a lot of power in your life. Those are things that we may ultimately come to believe about who we are, and so complex trauma really messes with identity.

Tabitha Westbrook:

It also messes with a relationship. An example of a kiddo who doesn't know if a parent is going to love them today or not. You know, is mom or dad or my is going to love them today or not? You know, is mom or dad or my caregiver going to be nice to me today or are they going to tell me I'm horrible or am I in trouble or whatever? And they're learning to walk on eggshells. Well, when they become adults, they don't know how to have an adult relationship.

Tabitha Westbrook:

There are attachment issues. We don't really have enough time in this podcast today to really take that deep diving to attachment, but we will probably do that in the future because it really matters. But you may end up avoidant, like I'm afraid to be in a relationship with you because you're just going to leave me like everyone else, or anxious do you really love me? Are things okay? Because you don't know, because you didn't have a relationship that was steady and stable, particularly growing up, and so it can really wreak havoc on how we interrelate with people. If we've been in an abusive relationship, even if we had a really good, stable childhood, we may come to believe things about ourselves that are not true, and whether or not we have value in a relationship and that can lead to an H-shift attachment. So it can cause all kinds of problems in that arena.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Another area that complex trauma really messes with people is in their ability to regulate their emotions, and I liken this to going one of two ways. Essentially, either people kind of go on lockdown until things explode or they're emoting all over the place, or they just don't know what to do with big emotions Like I feel these big things. They just don't know what to do with big emotions. Like I feel these big things, I don't know what to do with them. So I'm either going to shove them away or try to express them, but maybe I don't know how to do it. Well, and it's a little bit messy and I don't know what to do. It's just craziness and that is something that can be super, super hard for people to really work through and that that is a tough, tough thing for folks, because when folks don't know how to regulate those emotions and what to do with that, then they end up really struggling in a lot of places.

Tabitha Westbrook:

And finally, man, we know and we've talked about it on this podcast before trauma, especially complex trauma, can really mess with your physical health. We know that the body for sure keeps the score and a lot of my clients come in with autoimmune issues, joint pain, all kinds of stuff physically hypertension, obesity, heart disease, all kinds of stuff because of the trauma that they endured. We know that dumping all of those neurochemicals into your system all of the time because you're in fight, flight or freeze is really hard, really difficult and really hard on your body. When it happens for a long period of time I refer to it as swimming in the toxic soup. Then you may have a real struggle dealing with the trauma in you and your body may have a real struggle. That is where good support comes from.

Tabitha Westbrook:

When we have these things, particularly when they start when we're really young, it can be really tough to parse out and sometimes we need a third party. We need help from outside, not inside our head, to get through some things, and this is where narrative-focused trauma care, or what is colloquial termed as story work, can be really helpful. I will begin with this caution Story work isn't your first line, or at least it really shouldn't be most of the time, if you're just beginning to engage your story, just beginning to engage your trauma story work is probably not the first thing that you're going to do in therapy. There are going to be some other foundational things that you need to do so that you can really walk through your story in a safe and healthy way. For example, if a client comes in and their intake paperwork gets things, I apply a sexual assault.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I am not going to be the person to say, hey, tell me every single detail, where were you? What's going on? What day? Was it All that good stuff? If they volunteer some cursory details, I will absolutely listen to them. I will sit with them in that. Or if they surprise themselves by telling me some of it and that happens pretty frequently where I will be talking with a client and they're talking about their anxiety in the first session and what they want to do to resolve it and how they want to feel, and then they will tell me a story of abuse or sexual harm and say, oh my gosh, you can't believe. I told you that. I've never told anybody this before, and when they do that I will take the details they've given me, but I'm not going to probe for a bunch of additional details. It's not helpful to them in that moment they don't know me.

Tabitha Westbrook:

We don't have enough relational equity yet to be able to walk through that story, and so I am going to lay other foundational things. I'm going to build our therapeutic relationship. I'm going to start teaching them how to connect with their bodies and I'm going to start teaching them how to manage their feelings, either to have them in the first place and not just shove them in the containment unit, or how to manage them when they do come up and walk through them, without that confusion of to manage them when they do come up and walk through them, without that confusion of what do I do? Here? We're also going to begin working on building healthy community and things of that nature, stuff that clients typically need. Now, everybody is different, so I am not going to say it's a one size fits all. There is a therapeutic process that we go through, but everybody's is different and I am dealing with a person in front of me when I am working with someone. So what worked for Sally may not work for Bob, and that's okay, and we will tailor it to what someone needs.

Tabitha Westbrook:

But telling your story in detail is probably not a first session thing, unless that is what you had planned to do, one of the things that, as you enter into this work with someone, is really truly creating that safe environment. And there's a particular type of narrative work I really want to talk about here and that is narrative focused trauma care. This is developed by Dan Allender and he is at the Allender Center at the Seattle School, which is in you may have guessed it Seattle Washington, and this particular type of narrative therapy has a particular rhythm to it. So basically, what it does is it integrates psychology and theology aspects of things to help people really compassionately engage trauma and abuse. It is so common that I see abuse survivors and complex trauma survivors say I don't have any compassion for myself and I don't think anybody has compassion for me, and so by really looking at how to do this compassionately and how to enter in compassionately, it is incredibly healing for survivors.

Tabitha Westbrook:

This particular type of narrative therapy really dives into the core narratives of relationships, your family dynamics, particularly your family of originatives of relationships. Your family dynamics, particularly your family of origin not just your current family dynamics, although it does do that as well your sexual development and the experiences of abuse, and it is addressed not only for you personally but also collectively. Now I am a systemic therapist through and through, and I'll tell you what that means. It means that we are not in a vacuum, and that is firmly what I believe, and I think that's also what the Bible teaches. You can't just deal with me as an individual and not know my context. My context includes my family of origin, my current family structure, my friends so not only my friends in the community, but my therapist friends, right. So we have different contexts there. We have the context of my church community and my overall community within the Space Island and the context of my community in the nation I live in and the global community, because whether or not we know people from other places on Earth, there are other places on Earth and there is a global community as well.

Tabitha Westbrook:

One of the best ways that I think the Allender Center talks about this is looking at all of those contexts together, and they look at not only your personal context, but the community and global context as well. So what is happening? How does that play into your story? And that is something that I think a lot of folks don't think about. You may not realize how your faith community impacts your story, and that may need some discussion and some exploration. For you, those are all really important things, and I'm not saying we vilify a faith community by any means. What I'm saying is it does have an impact and that can be an incredibly positive impact. But we need to understand it and know that our systems and contexts matter to our well-being, our way of being, all of these things. So one of the things that the Allender Center says and I'm just going to quote this directly from their website and I will link that in the show notes quote this is directly from their website and I will link that in the show notes by sharing our story with trusted others who are able to name both our deep woundedness and our deep goodness, we grow a deeper capacity to know and live into our calling and engage in life-giving relationships with God and others. One of my favorite things about this aspect is not only beholding the woundedness without someone turning their face away from you, but also beholding your goodness, and for so many trauma survivors it is so hard to see that there is any goodness, particularly in a story of developmental trauma. Oh, there's no goodness for that person there.

Tabitha Westbrook:

One of the most powerful things I've ever experienced was in my own experience with story work when I took my level one training. I remember being engaged and I had done some story work on my own with someone else. I've done workbook, I've done an online group, but this is my first time really in a true story group in the flesh a true story group in the flesh, and it was unbelievably powerful. First of all, I brought a story that I thought was lightweight. I didn't know these people super well, I was a little bit nervous and so I brought a story that was like chill. I knew it's definitely a traumatic story, but it wasn't like my biggest trauma, if you will, and I will never forget how my group saw me. They clearly saw the harm that I had experienced, but then they also saw the goodness of the little girl in the story, my little self.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Now, when I'm talking about parts work or my little self or anybody's little self or any aspect of anybody, I am not talking about whole other people living inside of us. What I am talking about in this context is we are every age we have ever been, and if you think about something like, let's say, playing on the playground and I'm an 80s kid, so we had those merry-go-rounds that were a little bit sus and scary, but they were so fun to me and I remember what it was like in the delight my body would feel when we would spin around really fast. Was it very dangerous, probably, but it was a lot of fun and I can still remember that feeling as if I were there, because that little girl is in me, right, she grew up to be me and so I can look at those things and go oh yeah, my little girl delighted so much in that my little self really had fun. And to be able to look on the traumatized parts of ourselves when we were kids or even as an adult, and give compassion and see goodness is so important. I know that sounds a little trippy, maybe to some of you, but I understand and I know that is a lot different way of thinking about how our bodies and minds experience traumatic memory. But one of the things that I can tell you is that it is profoundly healing to be able to look at that and go hey, man, I was trying really hard and in my story I really was. I was trying to please people who mattered to me and it wasn't very pleasing to them and it wasn't my fault. I wasn't pleasing to them. It's not that I did something wrong. It's that they were really broken themselves in that moment and they were not able to give me what I needed and I thought it was mine. And that's true of most kids. When things go wrong, kids tend to internalize it because they don't have that other's thinking yet. And so you know, when I was able to give compassion, care and kindness to my little self through the story work and to have that goodness that I couldn't see be seen, it was incredibly healing and powerful for me, and what that helped me do was see my own traumatic story differently and to integrate a bit more. I was able to really find the meaning and I was able to really make it just a chapter in my book versus something that every time I brought it up it had really been distressed, and I think that is one of the things that is just super helpful.

Tabitha Westbrook:

When you do really good narrative-focused trauma care, it really helps you have more clarity from your experiences and you can see things differently than maybe just when they were in your head. There is something so powerful about writing out your story and look, these aren't like novels, right? You're writing a contained story, so it is a story from a fortune right. So it's a snapshot in time that you write. I think the max I ever wrote was about a thousand words, which isn't huge. It's basically a blog post and there's still so much in that that you can parse apart and have nuggets of.

Tabitha Westbrook:

And, especially with a really good facilitator or a really good group, there are going to be things that are just seen, that you can't quite see, or that maybe you learn to see differently. You also really learn to see the dynamics of a situation. So as you're looking at that, you go oh my gosh, I can really see how, here I was really just trying to do X, y, z and my caregiver, my spouse, this pastor, whatever had a totally different agenda for me and I didn't know it and I ended up deeply harmed. And that is something that when we look at that, we go oh, oh. I see that differently. Another really cool thing is we see the places God showed up. There are some of my own stories that I have worked through in this capacity. I have clearly seen the place where Jesus was as I worked through things, which was really cool. You know he's always there with us.

Tabitha Westbrook:

But it's really hard to see and I know there are some of you listening who are like, okay, well, he was there. Why he stopped it, and that is a story and topic for another time. I can promise you that he is there and I know that it doesn't always feel like. I can just promise you that he is there and I know that it doesn't always feel like that and I just want to acknowledge that, as we're talking about difficult things. But my story, where I was able to see his presence, I was able to see where his footsteps were, I was able to see what he held me and watched me through something, and that was really powerful. And that wasn't something I could see just by thinking about my story. It was something that I had to see when I wrote it out and had it engaged, and that was powerful. It was like okay.

Tabitha Westbrook:

And then you also get this clarity while having the empathic witness. For those of us who have had childhood trauma, for sure, it is awful when someone turns their face away. I mean, if you had a caregiver or an important person turn their face away from you in a time of need when you needed compassion or care or connection or goodness. It's heartbreaking. Instead of having either a facilitator they are best who's a facilitator or a group turn their face to you and do not look away from your harm, your shame, your trauma, even if you are the harmer. So powerful, so powerful, and one of the most profound things I have experienced was being part of a group where someone shared a story where they were the perpetrator of harm.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Now, when I say this, I want to be clear he's not the kind that you would report. It is not some sort of reportable offense. It is not like, oh, I murdered somebody or something like that. It wasn't that kind of I'm not a murderer, but, like, we all hurt people from time to time. We all do things that are awful and mean and unkind. And these people who had shared their stories of being the harmer, had repented. They were not continuing to walk in that, but they were still in shape. And when we were able to engage their story and go, yeah, yeah, you did that, you did harm we were also able to go, wow, what was the context? And then I can see why you might have been unkind to this person or done this thing from the context that you were in again. That doesn't excuse harming someone, but it does help us understand what was going on, what's happening in that moment, and then go.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I cannot go with the shame because I didn't stay in. It didn't stay as I remember, I did something different and I looked at it differently and I agree with you. But sometimes we hold those things. I know a lot of us. When we think about a conversation we had that we didn't super love, we look at that and we like replay that and remind a million times and we might not have even upset anybody. So imagine, holding on to, I did do something, I don't know how to let it go. I don't know how to forgive myself. I don't know how to let it go. I don't know how to forgive myself. I don't know how to move on.

Tabitha Westbrook:

Story work is so helpful, especially looking at the context that you were in and that sort of thing. It also really does push out shame. Things held in darkness just tend to grow like mold. But we put our stories out there and people don't turn their faces away and engage them with compassion, care and kindness. It's really healing because shame can't live in the light. It just can't, and shame always gives the enemy a foothold, I will have you to know and anytime that we just hide it and say I can't be known, if you knew me you wouldn't love me. Though we can be in that place and have our shame, our greatest woundings, our greatest uglies be held by people that don't turn their faces away. We can go wait. Maybe I need to think about myself differently. Maybe God sees me differently and that can be incredibly profoundly healing.

Tabitha Westbrook:

And from most places, when we do good narrative work, there's also ways that we incorporate things in like brain spotting or somatic experiencing or EMDR into the healing place. So if I'm looking at this going, I feel that I'm the most worthless human and I can see where it came from. When I look at my story, I don't know how to let it go. That's a great place for some brain spotting or EMDR to help you process. How did I get here and how do I let this go, and how do I move toward what God says to be true about me? How do I shift the experience of my mind and my body and start rebuilding those new neural pathways to understand that it really is different and that my belief was actually rooted in what people said about me and the harm that I experienced. So there's a lot of things that you can go through there and that is one of the great things like oh, this came up in my story work, let me take this into some EMDR and some brain spotting or somatic experiencing and do even more healing in those spaces, and so all of these things can go together super well.

Tabitha Westbrook:

So how can you begin the process of considering basically the narrative focused trauma care for yourself? Well, one of the things is realizing you have a story. We all have a story and I truly believe that even if you can't think of 85 traumatic stories, you can think of some that were really rough or even just really embarrassing. Right, it might not have been like I had this traumatized life, but like I've had some experiences that I might want to write out and work through, and that can always be a great place. I do think that when we learn to engage stories well, we also see others differently, and we learn to see others as having a story and going oh man, I wonder what your story is. You know, learning to draw that out and invite that out of other people. Again, shame grows in the dark and the more that we're real with each other as a society, in appropriate ways, of course, the better around. I think things are, and more healing occurs systemically throughout society.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I told you I was a systemic therapist through and through, but that can be a great thing. I will tell you maybe don't write out your whole story by yourself without some support. If you've had a lot of trauma, you may consider journaling, though. What would it be like to start telling my story in a safe place with a safe group or a safe therapist? What might that be like for me? How might that be healing? How might that be helpful? And that's just a good place to start. If you already have a therapist or a coach that you love, you might ask them do you know story work? Do you understand it? Is this something we could work on together? They may or may not, or they may help you find out from what that is. Or you can look on the Alder Center's website. Again will be in our show notes that you can say hey, who do they list on their site and see if there's someone near you or a story group that's going on online? That could be really helpful for you.

Tabitha Westbrook:

I want to end by saying that you really need to engage your story with kindness and compassion. It'll probably take a little more time and patience than you would like like literally every healing aspect ever but it's worth it. Your trauma doesn't define you. Your story doesn't define you, but it tells you things about your goodness and the harm you've experienced that are really worth knowing, about your goodness and the harmony of experience that are really worth knowing. It helps you integrate that into your overall story. It helps you to walk differently when you need to. I hope this was helpful. I hope that you learned a little bit about narrative-focused trauma care work and how it can help you resolve and heal from complex trauma.

Tabitha Westbrook:

If you found this episode helpful, be sure to give it a like or subscribe. Please review it on any of the podcast platforms that you listen to it on. It really does help people find us and I look forward to seeing you next week on our next episode of hey Tabby. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrookcom forward slash hey Tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-B-I and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.

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