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Welcome to episode 21 of Wellness in Every Season. Today I have Tanisha Shedden with me, and I am going to give her time to introduce herself. But before I do, she is on here because she was my, a mentor for my internship last summer. And I learned a bunch from her. And today we are going to be discussing more therapy things and talking about how it works with moms because we tend to get lost and especially women. So I'm going to allow her to introduce herself and then we'll introduce the topic a little more.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Autumn, for having me on. I'm super excited. I will say you are still to this day the best intern I've ever had. My name is Tanisha Shedden. I am a counselor, coach and speaker. And then I also work as a school counselor. I work with middle school students. And so my job usually have lots of kids, lots of moms. And I work primarily with issues that influence school, but outside of school in my role doing coaching,
I focus on trauma and just the healing journey in general and just help people navigate that because I found that for a lot of people, therapy, one-on-one talk therapy, isn't always like the most helpful when you're going through trauma.
Sometimes you need an extra outside mentoring that's more like focus on just you personally, you finding what works for you, applying those therapy skills outside of the therapy office. So as a therapist, I always wanted someone that could help my clients do that. And so that's why I started coaching in that way.
I help my clients apply what they learn in therapy in their actual life and learn how to actually do the things that you're learning in therapy and implement them into your routines and also just like learning how to regulate your nervous system and all sorts of trauma healing stuff. So that's me and that's what I do.
Give me an example. 'Cause I just wanna like be able to color in like the black and white that I'm starting to see of the example.
Yeah, so an example of what I do in coaching would be like, okay, so you're in therapy, you might be doing EMDR, you might be doing talk therapy, and your counselor is helping you meditate. Your counselor's like, you need to meditate, you need to learn how to relax. And you've been talking about this for a while,
you don't really know how to implement it. And so as a coach, my role would be
to look at your daily routine and help you structure that.
Like, okay, how do I make time to meditate? How do I actually get my body to do it? So I coach you through the sensations of like allowing yourself to meditate, which your therapist in theory should do, but sometimes you don't, sometimes your therapist is not, you know, is not doing those skills with you in the office. And so I would take that time to help you feel like comfortable doing something like that, and then help you make it palatable to your routine.
So for people who are busy, for most people, honestly, like five minutes is what we're gonna start with. We're gonna start with how do you implement that five minute practice into your life? And then also just instructing you in different things because most therapists aren't necessarily trained in trauma actually, that's something you have to get outside of graduate school. So when I finished graduate school, I had a little tiny bit of training in trauma and then I had to learn more and pay for additional training after I graduated. And that's part of what I do as well is give you more of that trauma focused work.
A lot of it is learning how to regulate your nervous system. And there's exercises that I teach you how to do with your body. That includes meditation, but that's just the bottom, like bottom tiers meditation, right? Learning how to reset the biggest nerve, which is something that runs through your central nervous system. It's in your body, it attaches through the spinal, through the cranial nerve, and it goes all the way through your trunk body, essentially, and learning how to access that with certain exercises.
One would be like your neck, you can stimulate certain muscles in your neck in order to access your vagus nerve, and that long-term helps you balance your nervous system, helps you calm down, because usually what's happening when you have trauma, anxiety, and all these things your parasympathetic nervous system activates. So when you get stressed, you have all those spider fly hormones. And when you have trauma, that's happening over and over and over and over again. And so learning how to access the vagus nerve, how to reset and how to get your nervous system to balance and regulate itself through your body is something that I help you do and that is, it's a bit of a process. It's hard to give you an example, but an example would be, I would teach you how to do that. I would teach you how to move your neck in a way that's going to help you balance that, how to move your body in a way that's going to help your body do that, because there's things that your brain does and that you can mentally think about in order to help your trauma. And then there's things that you can physically do with your body that your body naturally would do anyway. It just is a matter of helping your body get along.
And so it helps with things like if you've got night sweats, that's going to help with that. If you've got like issues with your breathing, if you have asthma from your panic attacks and things like that, that's something that that can help with. So it's a very physical process. And it's, it's different from what you traditionally see in a therapeutic setting.
Although I will say a lot, there are specialized clinics and specialized therapists who do that. I just do it from a coaching standpoint because I'm not in a practice currently that does that. And it makes it more accessible because you're not taking insurance because you are doing it in a coaching capacity. So I like that.
Exactly.
So it's, and I think it's helpful if people can get a little bit of a better price and they don't have to worry about having to go through insurance and all of those things. Because I think that can kind of be hard for people when they're like, well, I don't have insurance. And like, if I don't have insurance, I have to pay like this astronomical price. I'm right, I try to stay right in the middle, you know, something that can work for me and my client, but also like, you know, yeah, insurance has a lot of red tape that I felt like, oh, well, it's easier for people sometimes just to have someone they can directly go to pay. I still try to stick to the codes of ethics, of course, but yeah, it's just accessible.
Yeah, I used to do medical billing and coding, so yes, I love that. And I love that for somebody like me who's going through EMDR for trauma, that I can do my EMDR with my therapist and then use the rest of my time for coaching with you. So I really love that idea.
But I feel like, yeah, with EMDR, it's a very like specific process. And there's some things that come up between sessions that you might not have time to address with your therapist. So I think that's where I can come in as well. If you're in EMDR, some of those memories that are coming up and some of those things, sometimes you just want someone to talk to about them. Like, okay, is this normal? Should I have this?
And new therapists can definitely be that too.
It's just a matter of, right? Like I can kind of give you a little bit of an outside, outside of therapy break. So rather than waiting until your next session with your therapist, you could have a chat with me or go over things that you're like,
"Okay, now this is affecting this area of my life." You know what I mean? And your therapist might not always do that sometimes.
They're just like, "Okay, we're gonna rely on EMDR again to solve that new problem that it's created." So I think it just depends on the approach that they're taking. And I think coaching can serve as a, in addition to, or just in, and instead of, cause sometimes you get to a point where you've done a lot of therapy and you're like, okay, I've done a lot of therapy. There's other things I want to work on now.
Like I want to be more, and I'm definitely more direct approach. Like I will go right in with you. I'm more solutions focused that way. So, um, there's a lot more exploring and unpacking and talking and fluidity in therapy, which I love, but when you're in coaching with me, I don't go that direction.
Usually what I do is like, okay, this is something that we can do to help. What do you feel like the solution is? And we identify that together and just kind of go straight in rather than I know like a lot of times therapy, you're just kind of like, your job as a therapist is to kind of allow the person to explore things on their own and like, you know, kind of just explore ideas rather than pushing them in a specific direction. And so when I'm coaching, I'm going to help you go into a specific direction.
You're gonna identify the direction that you wanna go in, but I'm gonna be like, okay, this is how, how are we gonna get there? And we're gonna get there. Whereas I feel like a lot of times in therapy, you're just like, oh, this is, these are your options. Think about the options, right? Because a lot of the time in therapy, you're just not, you're just not in the mindset of receiving influence. And it's also not a therapist's job to directly influence you in that way. Whereas in coaching, you can.
Right, and there are different types of coaching. So like in life coaching, we're not doing it in the way that you're doing it, where we leave a lot more of the options on the table. So I love that you are using it as a bridge. you're right there going both sides, therapist and not, well, if you're coaching a client, then you're usually a coach, but then you have to tell them this is my coaching hat.
Like, yeah, definitely understand that.
So can you tell us what led you to become a therapist?
Yes, so it's kind of funny. It's not really like any one thing. I think a lot of people are like, you know, you must have been because of, you know, your hard experience is growing up. It wasn't really like that. It was more like I definitely did have a lot of my own trauma. I experienced child sexual abuse. I experienced all sorts of things. I was adopted. There's a lot of stress in my life. But then when I went to undergrad, I wanted to study families because I just initially thought they were interesting because it was like, my family is super crazy. I definitely want to know about what causes that and family structures and all those things. So I studied marriage and family in undergrad. And then as I progressed down that road, I was like, oh, okay, what are my options for grad school? What can I actually do with this degree?
Because when I went to college, it wasn't necessarily to do something. I didn't go to college to do something, which is like, what? People blow their minds over that because it's not really that great of an investment, right? I was just like, I wanna study families, this sounds cool. And then as I learned more and more, I was like, okay, this could be a job. And then, yeah, I was like, okay, I think being a counselor would be a good option for me. There were other things I could do like child welfare, family advocacy, policy work.
There were all these options that were given to me. And I just felt like, well, I could be a counselor. That sounds like a good gig. It sounds like I really love helping people. I really enjoy it. And counselors have definitely helped me and changed my life, so let's do that. And so I went to grad school for social work and that's kind of what brought me to that. And I think I was more attracted to the trauma work because I had experienced like overcoming trauma myself. So there was definitely some of that in there, but I think it was definitely just desiring to help people and to use what I had learned to improve people's lives. It just really came down to that. And I loved building relationships with people. I think that's something that I found was so fun when I was in undergrad working with my first clients, because during marriage and family studies, they train you to be like a family life educator, which is also a type of, it's like a type of coach.
And then once you get through that, like there's more options that they help you understand that there are.
And so I loved the family life educator option, but I loved building those relationships a lot more. And I loved seeing how therapy could improve people's lives. And so that's the route I went. And it's been a fun ride.
So going off that, because I know some of the answer to this question, because I know some of this started while you were in grad school. So I am interested to learn more about the found project. I mean, how much more can you tell me since I was involved in it? But tell our listeners about it and give us an overview of what it entails.
Yeah. So Found Project is my business, but it started as like a very specific project that I did in grad school to help people who, um, were at high risk area for suicide. And so what I did was I like created a Facebook group and I, asked the community what they would need. And this is like, I started the project, I think it was like at the very beginnings of COVID. So it was 2019. And like, I couldn't go in person to do a lot of things. And so I was like, well, what if we like delivered care packages to people with resources in them?
And so we linked up with the local hospital to have QR codes so that they could, when they were discharged from the hospital for any mental health reason, they could scan this QR code and then they could get one of our care packages with a packet of resources. And it links to a website with all of the local, all of the local mental health clinics in the area. And in Idaho, I was in rural Idaho. So there weren't a lot of resources, which is why we kind of created this. And it just kept evolving into something different depending on what I was doing. So I kind of just was posting on social media and trying to educate people on different mental health topics. And then over time, it just evolved.
When I finished grad school, it evolved into just like therapy content. And then I decided to focus specifically on trauma. And now that's where I offer coaching and I have an online course and hoping to develop more and just create more resources for people who want to improve their mental health, who want to do self improvement, self development and all of that stuff.
We have a blog, we have all sorts of stuff and it's just kind of grown into this like mental health hub of sorts and so That's what Found Project is. And now it's just kind of, you know, it is kind of just like me and, you know, all of the resources that have been created over the last few years.
What is the main objective now? You've talked a lot about trauma. I've noticed from your more recent blog posts.
Mm-hmm. Um, the objective now is to help people on their healing journeys that is simply like, you know what I mean? That's the mission, that's the vision, that's everything is just wherever people are at on their healing journeys, they can come in and they can find something that will help and help improve and change their life. So specifically with trauma, obviously, trauma is really everywhere in mental health, for the most part. I mean, there's a there's a small percentage of people that have kind of more of that genetic feature. But as you look more into the research and more into their generations, there's generational trauma that informs why there is mental illness in their genetic line. So because of how rampant trauma is and how much we've realized, wow, like there's a lot of underlying trauma related factors informing mental illness and mental health concerns because of that that's why I tried to focus it more on trauma and there are people who don't even realize they have trauma who've been able to like look through like some of the resources on the website and be like oh I have trauma that's what this is that's what I'm experiencing. And so that's really what the goal is. It's just anywhere you're at on your healing journey, like every person who's looking for help or improvement in an area, I would consider is on a healing journey, right? We want to change part of our lives that is not serving us anymore. We want to overcome obstacles that we have. And that's a healing journey. And so that's really what it's all about is helping people overcome hard things.
Okay, so let's dive into this topic of trauma. And let's talk about survival mechanisms. As soon as I came up with this idea, it was like, I know I'm gonna ask. Could you define what they are for our listeners, like, their survival mechanisms, and then we'll go from there?
Yeah, so a survival mechanism really is something that you or your body will do in response to trauma. It's like a trauma response. So, and they can like they can vary, right. So survival mechanism that you might have people pleasing can be one, right. be one, right? So if you grew up in a house with a very domineering and abusive caregiver, and you notice that when you did what they wanted, they wouldn't be domineering and abusive. You developed a survival mechanism, two people please, and do whatever they wanted in order to keep them happy and from harming you. That is a simple explanation for what it is and what it can look like. There can be all sorts of things, you know, some people's survival mechanisms are are yelling, right? They grew up in an environment that if you didn't yell, you weren't heard.
So survival mechanisms can be, they can be linked to a trauma or they can be linked to really just an experience where their needs couldn't be met unless they behaved a certain way. And usually we think of survival mechanisms as kind of like negative things that people will do to keep themselves safe. But that's how I would define it.
I love that you talked about the generational trauma before this because like it just linked together really well right there. Because sometimes you'll look back and be like, "Well, my family's always been this way." Well, why? So I like that.
Okay, you kind of already did that one. So I'll go to the next question. How do these trauma survival mechanisms impede healing and personal growth for individuals?
I think often the major thing is that they hold people back from being able to show up in the way they want to or they kind of like are self-sabotaging mechanisms after a while. So I know that for a while certain things, certain behaviors like are protecting you, right? So for me, growing up, I had a lot of anger. And I think my anger was like protective, right? Like, you know, just kind of you had this wall up, and not letting people come through the wall and being kind of like this angry exterior, because it kept it kept people afraid, it kept people out that I didn't want there. But then when I got older, right, I realized, oh, like, it's keeping everybody out. And like, I don't want everybody out, especially other people that are close to me. So what usually happens is like,
that's what it does. It just gets to a point where actually we don't need that protective mechanism anymore. And for some reason, there's a part of ourself that believes that we need that protective mechanism, even though we could recognize logically that it is not serving us and that we're doing something or behaving in a way that is actually harmful. So I think that's really at the end of the day, that's what it does is it just, it starts being something that doesn't help us anymore and something that starts to hurt us or hurt the people around us.
And a lot of people think, oh, well, this has always worked for me. And when they receive feedback from others, they're like, but this has always worked for me. And, and they have a hard time recognizing themselves. Well, why isn't it working now again? Oh, yeah, because it is actually causing other people to feel hurt, or it is actually keeping people out of your life or defecting your relationships. Right. So another example is if your coping skill was to just zone out and watch TV or play video games for long periods of time, and then you grow up and you, have a family and then your wife, husband or children or whoever are starving for your attention because you're zoning out because you're stressed and that's what you use to monitor your stress, that's going to become a problem, right? So I think it just comes in the form of, oh, this isn't helpful anymore. It's actually self-sabotaging me from being the best person I can be.
So the question that comes to mind is for the people who are listening, this...
Well, let me first do a disclaimer that if you are recognizing other people in this, it's not good to show up in front of their face. It's not going to work that way.
So maybe I'll start with this question then, not where I was originally going. What should you do? What advice do you have for people who are like, "Oh, I know someone like that," or, "Oh, that's my spouse," or, "My child," or whoever in their family or someone really close to them? What's your advice?
I think that one's hard because I like to work from a framework of like, "I recognize this in myself. How do I fix it?" And I do that because you can't change other people. You know what I mean? Like if you recognize that in someone else and they haven't recognized it and you want to bring it to their attention.
I mean, you can, right? You can simply say, hey, I noticed that you, you know, and get home. You like to you like to be on video games and TV or a lot. Like how come you do that? Can you can you spend more time with us or whatever you're wanting, right? Because if it is a problem that's affecting you emotionally, you can state your emotions about it, like in a constructive way. Hey, like I feel like there's a lot of things that we could do with the kids instead of, you know, beyond technology. Or there's, uh, I feel like there's a better way to handle this. Do you want to see if we can come up with something that we can do instead?
Right. Rather than pointing out, like you're always watching TV. You're always yelling. You're always doing this and you need to change. because there's probably negative things that you do as well. And you can't just point a finger. It's just all about making that request from a viewpoint of, okay, how does this affect you and how can I help this person like collaboratively make a different choice? You can do that. But I think it's honestly more constructive to begin with working on yourself and starting to to say, okay, why does their manner of coping bother me? And how can I understand it better before I approach them about a new boundary or a new thing that I want from them? Because you're asking them, when you're asking someone that you see have this pattern, you're asking them to give up something that makes them feel a sense of safety emotionally, or, right, if it's trauma, if it's truly like a survival mechanism that's negatively affecting you, then when you ask them to change that, you're asking them to give up their sense of safety or emotional control or emotional need. And so they're going to have to go on a journey of learning another way to cope that gives them that same emotional fulfillment, satisfaction, or release.
So that's the one thing is, yeah, that's why I'm just like, go to counseling together,
or you know what I mean? Go. Yeah, you can definitely propose things, but I think it's always up to an individual to make changes. And so you can always point out, hey, like I've noticed that a lot when you're stressed, you play a lot of video games or you watch a lot of TV or you start yelling a lot more. Do you need like 20 minutes when you get home to just like do your own thing and then we can kind of get our family back together and get our structure going differently so that you can have time to relax, right?
Because I think people take it personally when people behave that way in like relationships and families. But in reality, it doesn't have anything to do with you, right? People's stress responses aren't about you. It's about their own stress. So that's what I would say.
What about if it's if you're seeing it in yourself? Okay, you've already shared that a little bit.
Yeah, if you're seeing seeing it in yourself, it's a lot easier because you have the awareness and now you get to make the decision of okay, like what can help me. And so I like to start with trying, trying something different, right? Like, what did you used to do to manage your stress before this thing? Was there something? Did it didn't even ever teach you how you could manage your stress? We'll start there. And then it's okay. No one ever taught me how to manage my stress or maybe they did, but it still wasn't healthy and it wasn't working for me.
Let's explore options of things you can do. What about a 10 minute break? What about going on a walk? What about deep breathing, taking deep breaths? What about, you know, drinking more water? What are these things look like?What is healthy? Or what about setting a time limit on the things that you're doing?
Because if we're gonna keep using the example of just like vegging out on media, scrolling on social media, watching TV, or playing video games, I feel like those things are used a lot for just releasing stress. What if we just put a time limit on it rather than doing it all night?
Right, so it's just a matter of, okay, I'm doing this thing to cope with my stress, but I'm doing it way too long, or I don't have control over how much I'm doing it. So it starts with identifying what the problem actually is.Is there a problem with watching TV, playing video games or scrolling? No, it's usually the time. So we limit the time. What if we're drinking, right? If we're drinking, that's another thing we have to, okay, what can I do instead of drinking every single night to numb my emotional stress, right? I'm gonna have to start limiting my amount of drinking first. I'm gonna have to wean myself off. And then in addition to that, I'm gonna have to find something to replace drinking, replace like healthy skills to do instead of drinking. And in that case, it's adding in things, mindfulness skills you can do, mindfulness skills you can find something, maybe there's a sport you play that you enjoy, Maybe there's recreational activities that you enjoy, all of those things. Maybe there's a hobby that you haven't done since you were 15 that you enjoy. All of those things are stress reducing things.
And a lot of us, like it's shocking and sad how many people I've worked with that just go to work, come home, watch TV and repeat. They don't have things like hobbies or they don't go see movies or they don't go to the park, they don't go play tennis, they don't go do anything. And so it's a matter of building your life
and restructuring it in a way that you experience fulfillment and enjoyment
and things that you like, instead of just being on this endless hamster wheel of like work home and sleep, work home sleep. Like that'll make anybody depressed.
So having a growth mindset.
Yeah. Learning, growing, developing, yeah. Being willing to make changes
and also just remembering the things that you used to do or the things that you've always wanted to do and being willing to take action to do them. Because I think so many people get stuck in routines that they actually don't enjoy and forget that they do have power and control to make new ones.
That's good stuff. Okay, do you have specific examples or case studies
from your experience that demonstrate recovery from trauma survival mechanisms?
Yeah, all sorts of things. So I'm trying to think of an example that's like not really identifying anyone. Okay, this one's a good one because I worked with someone once that really struggled with and I worked with a child once that was just like tons of children actually I worked with tons of children who've had struggles with throwing fits and things like that. And usually what we do for that is helping them learn skills right helping them learn how to regulate And when you're working with a child, you actually work with a caregiver as well. So what we did was we had mom and dad practice emotionally attuning to that child. So the child would start freaking out, get really anxious. And so what we did was helped parents come to the child and rather than using discipline as a don't throw a fit,because these were actual emotions from trauma, we help them, okay, like we hold them, we're just gonna, they're gonna throw the fit, we hold them,
and then we instruct them with skills that are going to help them in the future after they have calmed down. And then we practice those calm down skills
over and over again, outside of the time that we're actually throwing the fit.
And then over time, yeah, we saw no more fits.
And so similarly with an adult, we do the same thing. It's more of like they come into coaching or therapy and then we sit down and outside of the time when you actually are stressed, we practice breathing or we practice putting together a puzzle or playing in sand or whatever the calming thing is. And then we say, okay, you can do this anytime you feel stressed. And it's good to have us practice like skills that are helpless calm down outside of the time actually stressed because then when we are stressed, we'll remember. Whereas when you're
stressed, you kind of just like have blinders on and you're like focused on the thing you're stressed about. And you don't always remember, oh, I can, I can go do this instead, I can kind of get my mind off things. I can figure out how to solve the problem, I can calm down, etc. All those things.
Wow. So you're rerouting your brain, it sounds like. And you're allowing your brain a break to then think through the problem while you're de-stressing.
Exactly.
I love that.
Exactly, that's the service of de-stressing. I think a lot of people, they don't want to de-stress because they feel like if they give themselves a break, they won't be able to solve the problem because they need the stress to push them to solve the problem. But in reality, if you just give your brain a break and you let yourself move your thoughts into a different direction and you focus on something else for a little bit, your brain is able to let go of all those hormones and then you can be like okay I'm gonna practice acceptance, I accept that this is a problem. I feel very like emotional about this problem but let's look at the options now like I've calmed down a little bit how can I actually get out of this and I think that's something that's missing because when we're in the freak out zone we're just like there's nothing we can do like I feel trapped you start feeling like the walls caving in and I think that is there's ways to get out of that.
And I think so many people just struggle to know like how, they're like, I can't get out of that, I just get stuck. And you will get stuck for a while, but as you practice like what you can do instead outside of that window of space when you're actually stressed, the more you'll be able to practice it when you're actually stressed and calm yourself down. But people forget that it's actually a skill that you have to practice and learn and repeat before you can do it. It's just like if you're learning how to walk or learning how to shoot a basketball, often basketball players miss their shots because they haven't practiced their shots, right? So they start practicing their shots at practice over and over and over again. And then when the big game comes and everybody's watching and the pressure's on, then they can now make that shot because they practice it.And it's the same thing with the emotional skills.
So well said. Okay, anything else that we should know about trauma
and overcoming it?
I think the biggest thing that you should know about trauma is that it's not like a, it's not like a one and done thing. I think because I'm in a coaching role and I do encourage people, I think sometimes people are like, "Oh, like, so you can heal my trauma." But that's not the exact answer. Trauma, it's like a lifelong journey of healing. You're always gonna face something difficult. So you're always gonna be kind of going back to, you know, going back to things and being like,
okay, how is this affecting me? And then trying to move forward again. So it's not like, you know, it's not like you slap a band-aid on it and it's all better, right?
It's not like you learn all these skills and it's all better. you just get better at dealing with it. But it doesn't mean that like everything that's affected you will just melt away. And I think it's so important to remember that it takes a lot of work, intentionality, and time and practice to get through.
And people who go on that journey, like I commend you. I've done it. I still am doing it. It's super hard because you make step forward and sometimes you have some fallbacks, right? And so it's all about continuing to go and continuing to practice those skills because you have to think like when someone actually has trauma, they've been like dysregulated for so long or there's been something big enough that has like really changed their whole life experience. And so you can't expect that, you know, all of the problems will be all the way solved forever once you go down a healing journey. I think you can solve a big bulk though.
For me, definitely there's certain experiences. Like I used to have a lot of panic attacks. I used to have PTSD pretty severely. I don't have it anymore. And it's a completely different experience. Now it's every like six months to a year,
something will come up and be like, oh my gosh, like that happened. Or I'll have a new memory, or I'll have something that really like sets me off. It makes me really uncomfortable or triggers me or whatever. But the difference is now I have the skills to recognize what that is, what it feels like, and how to kind of move through it. But it doesn't mean that those will never happen again. And I think that's the most important thing to know about trauma is that like, it might still affect you for the rest of your life. You're just gonna be able to deal with it better over time. And it's not gonna feel like the trauma I have does not feel at all the same as the trauma I had when I first started, right?
So, you know, everything was like, I was just so sensitive to everything. My window of tolerance was really short. I was very emotional. I really had a hard time handling things. And now I'm at a point where I can handle them. My window of tolerance is a lot bigger. I don't feel as sensitive or I don't have panic attacks. I don't have all of these responses anymore because I understand my trauma in a different way than I did when I first started. I'm like, Okay, I see the hope I see the light.
A lot of it will kind of either go away or feel differently. Right. So like, I used to not even be able to say like, I experienced child sexual abuse, like I used to not even be able to like, make that sentence happen without like having a complete meltdown or like, you know, you know what I mean, it just was a different
experience. Now, it's something that's happened to me, but it's not living in my body and causing me to stress anymore. Right? Like I still have all the memories. I still remember what that was like. I still have everything all of that. Like it didn't go away. It just doesn't hurt me anymore. Which is something that I think that's the difference. Right? I think a lot of people are like, if it just goes away, it won't hurt me anymore. But actually, that's not the case. If you go on the
journey, that's when it won't hurt you anymore. It's not the memories that are the problem. It's your responses, it's your body, it's your view and all of those
things. And once you change that side of it, it's you that changes that helps improve the experience. It's not the experience itself changing.
That makes sense. Okay, do you want to let us know about the latest of what's happening in the Found Project and where we can find you.
Yes, okay. So exciting the latest that's happening is you can, you know, there's
coaching still happening, there's courses still happening, and then the podcast is Found Life podcast. You can listen to the show there, learn more, lots of interviews. There's meditations on there and then solos that are short that we just talk about a quick topic. And then find me on Instagram @foundbytanisha and then I will also be speaking for TEDx Salt Lake City in September. So check me out there.
Yay, you can officially announce it because she's told me on the down low a while ago. I'm so excited.
Oh yeah, yes. The date has passed, the contract is signed, I can't tell people.
I'm so excited for you. All right, anything else you're excited for in your professional life? I mean, TEDx.
Well, I am excited for school to start and to see my little middle schoolers again,
for sure, for sure.
All right, well, thank you so much for being with us, for all that you shared,
and we hope to see you around in our world and also follow her because she's awesome.
So thank you. Thank you so much.