Episode #1 - Understanding Trauma with Jill Anderson of Jill Anderson Coaching
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Description
In our first episode Kerry interviews Jill Anderson a trauma recovery coach in Beaverton Oregon. She is passionate about helping work through the feeling of being stuck. Stress, anxiety and limiting beliefs get in the way of us leading our best life. Jill works with clients to find a felt sense of safety in their lives. Her own life experiences as a trauma survivor-led her to a passion for helping others move forward from the past. Jill is also certified in Trauma Informed Coaching. In her spare time Jill enjoys spending time with her family and friends, camping, hiking, and playing golf.
Show Notes
It was mentioned that Elisabeth Kubler Ross was the author for The Dance of Anger but Harriet Lerner is the correct author. Here is a link to her many Dance With books - they say they are for women but they are for everyone.
Where to find Jill Anderson online:
Transcript
Kerry: 0:01
Hello there and welcome to successfully depressed. And I am Kerry Finsand, your host, this show is all about helping solopreneurs, navigating mental and physical health. today's guest is Jill Anderson of Jill Anderson coaching. today we're going to learn more about what trauma is and she's going to discuss her services that she offers and kind of go further into that. So welcome to show Joel.
Jill: 0:29
Thanks, Carrie, it's great to be here and I'm excited to get in this conversation with you.
Kerry: 0:34
That's I appreciate it. And also you are my first guest, so that's pretty exciting for me. And, uh, you'll be number one in my book,
Jill: 0:42
excellent. All right. Well, let's do
Kerry: 0:45
so I thought it would be great to have a conversation with you. Um, we connected via LinkedIn and I saw that your specialty is trauma and that. I don't know a lot about. And I think for a lot of people, they think of trauma as something major that someone coming back from war or something, or someone had a really bad experience as a child, uh, but I know that trauma is, I guess, a lot more than that. And I want you to help educate me and the listeners about what trauma is.
Jill: 1:17
Yeah, absolutely. It's an important topic because we hear a lot about it lately and that's a really good thing. Because we want, especially as may is mental health awareness month. We really want to take the stigma off of talking about mental health and that it is important, but trauma is, it can be, you know, one of the big T trauma is war, natural disaster, violent crimes. And then they have what they call it a little T traumas that just don't rise to that level. But those are the ones that kind of layer upon each other. Those are your adverse childhood experiences. Those are all the heartbreak, the betrayals, the bullying that goes on in school. It's all those sorts of things that sort of add up. And what they do is they stifle our, our inner voice. They make us play smaller and we show up in a different way than if we hadn't experienced those. If that,
Kerry: 2:11
yeah, I think that's a good starting point. And maybe you could give us a little background about. How you got into coaching, uh, and why this is something that's, you know, important to you.
Jill: 2:22
Yeah. I grew up in a very dysfunctional home and I married into a dysfunctional family. And so it was, it was all of that impact. And when my son was born, He was about to, and he did something and I just yelled at him and I thought, I don't want to be that mom. I don't want to be that person that yells, but we tend to parent, like we were parented. And so it's, you know, the, the trauma is in the water, so to speak, if you will, and all that's going to rise up in these moments of upset. And so I took a parenting course through a coaching organization and it just was such a great fit and it helped break that cycle for me. And so that's where I'm bringing forward to my client.
Kerry: 3:08
So I think that's one thing about, it's nice about when you are going through some type of educational process. And even if you're going through that process to teach others, you're going to learn so much about yourself. And so explain a little bit more about what this coaching program, you know, what incorporates and how it works.
Jill: 3:27
Yeah. I have my bachelor's in psychology from Portland state university. Yes. And I'm certified through for, for ICF I'm certified through the, um, well, through ICF for trauma informed coaching through a company called moving the human spirit. And they're the only company globally that is certified through ICF for trauma informed coaching. I'm certified through. The association for trauma recovery coaching, which is outside of ICF, but on the, the, still the coaching side of therapy. And so what it looks like, the difference between coaching and therapy is coaching takes you where it takes the client where they're at today and then how you want to move forward. And we'll go back to the extent that we're going to look at. Oh yeah, this happened back then. How is it showing up now and where do you want to do. As opposed to therapy, we'll go back and talk more about it. Coaches don't diagnose, we don't treat. And so people who are, have major depressive disorders, people who are actively suicidal, they definitely need to be with a therapist.
Kerry: 4:38
And that's where there's, you know, there's this thing about coaching. You think about it, you know, as your, as you, when you're a kid, you're, if you're playing sports, you have a coach and sometimes you have a great coach and that great coach. Can instill a lot in you for a long time. Maybe it's a methodology of just, uh, following a sick, sick into a plan, like a workout plan, for example. Um, and I always know that for me, coaching helps me out a lot and I've, I've only done coaching. From a business standpoint and like a personal training standpoint and the personal train standpoint was just great. Just to have someone to talk to and kind of coach you along. So I can see a lot of value with the coaching, uh, aspect. And then I understand also the aspect that you have,, you know, a counselor to work with to kind of balance out the. And I, I personally see a counselor myself and it's very helpful and I appreciate that, but, uh, I do like, this idea of coaching, someone to talk to you and kind of you're looking at, from like a holistic standpoint, you're kind of pulling everything together from different perspectives. Um, so I think that's a great, a great thing to have coaching, for coaching for you. What are some of the things that you work on to kind of help people deal with trauma?
Jill: 5:53
Ooh, good question. I work with, I work with teenagers and a lot of adults, but the teenagers, especially coming out of the COVID lockdown, there was so much isolation and teenagers are hard wired for connection with their, their friends. And so having that, you know, year and a half or so of isolation was really hard on them. And how do they step forward? So we do a lot of. Regulating and downplaying the nervous system. So that that's really where trauma lives. It's in our nervous system. And it's how we're reacting to what's happening in front of us. And there's a lot of talk about mindfulness and mindfulness isn't meditation. It isn't know being kind or nice. It's being able to experience what's happening to us in the present moment and being able to. Respond to it as opposed to react to.
Kerry: 6:49
Okay. And I know, and just kind of learning from, from your website, some of the different practices that you have, one of them is called brainspotting. Can you tell me a little bit about what that is?
Jill: 7:00
Yeah. Brainspotting came out of EMDR and it's just a, uh, basically a gentler version of that, but we all store memories as like capsules, if you will, in our brains. And if you ever watched someone, when they're telling a story, they'll they'll look, and then they'll just lock onto a spot. And what the brain does is it just taps into that visual memory. And then we can process it from, from just talking about it. And the beautiful thing about brainspotting is they don't actually have to talk about it. You can just think about what happened. And then we noticed that there's a lot of sematic that goes with it, which is, you know, what you're feeling in your body. And they're just noticing what they're feeling and that's, what's a little more gentle about it is they don't have to say any words. They can just say what they're like, no, I'm feeling this, this tension and feeling this, you know, um, movement. And then what we're really looking for is the energy to just pass through and dissipate. And I do somatics, which is of the body. That's noticing. And then I'm also practicing internal family systems and all of these have been opened up for coaching, which is so beautiful because these are different modalities that they can use in therapy, as well as in coaching. And kind of my ideal client would be someone who's had 10 years of therapy and said it didn't work for me. And if that didn't work, then what? Because it doesn't leave them with a lot of options. And that was the case for me, it just didn't work. Coaching was a different modality and it really made a difference. So there's, there's something for everyone.
Kerry: 8:42
So if someone wanted to get into trauma coaching, what's kind of the process, obviously you probably first have some type of consultation meeting and then kind of discuss to see if this is a good fit for both parties or something. And then from there, you kind of. Is there some type of plan that you go through or something, I'm just kind of really curious about how that works.
Jill: 9:04
You mean coaching sessions?
Kerry: 9:06
Sorry. Exactly.
Jill: 9:08
Yeah. Yeah. So clients connect with me and we always do a 30 minute discovery call and that's their opportunity to meet me and talk with me and ask questions and make sure that that's a right fit for them. And even if a parent reaches out to me and has a conversation with me, I still have a discovery call with the teenager if they're calling for their team. So that that team can be on board because you can bring someone to a session, but if they're not wanting to be. They're not necessarily going to, to do the work or benefit from it. So it just lets them meet me and get on board with the,
Kerry: 9:44
I think one thing that just kind of jumping back to when you're talking about, you know, it's kind of the mindfulness of really trying to feel the feels, you know, trying to understand that. And that's one thing for me more recently, I've got into, into that in my own practice. And before it's just, you kinda, you bottle things up, you don't pay attention to the. I've definitely noticed just be in the moment and actually feel like, you know, am I happy? Am I sad? How is my body feel? And, and I think that's a great practice to have. And when you do that with your clients is a lot of times, where the kind of closing their eyes kind of thing. Um, and kind of focusing on themselves in the moment, um, Is that kind of the typical process or of how it worked. They sit there and they kind of close their eyes and you'd kind of talk them through kind of getting into that moment or,
Jill: 10:34
oh, it just depends. There's, you know, it depends on who I'm talking with. A lot of people are, are very comfortable closing their eyes and going inward people who aren't used to feeling or recognizing what they're feeling inside. That can be a little bit. So we start a lot more gentle. They can leave their eyes open. They can just one of the best ways to get someone comfortable with feeling that way is just to kind of see how they orient in a room. So where did their eyes naturally gaze to? What did they like to be holding in their hand? Um, if there's a, you know, a sense in the room and they're, they're drawn to that. So we start to notice those things and then we can move more into emotions because emotions are tough. They're. Sometimes they're hard to identify and you know, what we're what's happening in the moment is only about 20% of what we're thinking and feeling. And the rest of it is emotion. So if you think of the iceberg and the tip, you can see that's what you're cognitively seeing and thinking in the moment and the emotions are what are under the water. And this is what rises up at these moments when. I don't know where that came from, but it's, it's always there. And so it's just getting people really comfortable with feeling that and on the big spectrum of emotions from, you know, happy to really angry, most people tend to want to stay over here and avoid this and leaning into there's no bad emotions. There's some emotions that are harder to experience. And so we just want to gently lean into that and get comfortable with acknowledging. Yeah. Wow. That really was hard. Yeah. That kind of sucked. And then we can bring it back a little more neutral, but if we keep avoiding the bad, that's, what's going to bubble up from our outer iceberg into those moments when we don't want it to like, when somebody cuts us off in traffic and we say something we wish we wouldn't have.
Kerry: 12:33
Yeah. That's where, uh, what I've learned is that you have. That pause, pause for a second. And then you'll, it helps you make a better decision in theory, you know, and then. So you won't react to that person as much. If you kind of say, you know, am I getting, am I mad? Maybe because I'm running late and I'm just, you know, in a bad mood and it's all really me and yeah, maybe it's someone cut me off and stuff happens. It's not fun, but what's it going to do if I freak out? You know? So, in my own practice, I've been looking at that as well. I really like to iceberg, uh, visual, because I think that. It's such a great visual because everything is below this. Most of it's below the surface and people don't understand what's below the surface and they only see what's above the surface. So that's a great analogy. I guess another thing I'd be interested in is when people are talking about trauma, It's probably a, walk in a tight rope there because you don't want them maybe to experience things too much because maybe it will set them back. So I guess, how has the coaching kind of help them where they want to explore something, but in maybe kind of a, in a safe way?
Jill: 13:46
Yeah, that's, that's a great question also. And you know, just really quickly back on the emotions, emotions are great information. But they're not directives so we can be angry. And not that yeah, anytime it's, it's important because people start to think, oh, I'm angry. And it's that pause that allows that moment of reflection. But ask me your question again.
Kerry: 14:12
Basically what you with trauma it's like walking, maybe a tight rope a little bit. They want to improve that experience. So it's not so hard then, but re-experiencing trauma into practice or getting coached. It could be a scary moment for them. So I guess what's, what's the balance. Is it some type of baby steps or something or,
Jill: 14:37
yeah, yeah. We always start with resourcing. So it's your brain doesn't know the difference between a perceived event and an actual. So talking about something that was really scary, can be really scary and can be activating. And that's why it's, you know, people are so easily traumatized. And so through the somatic practice, we really strengthen their resources. And, you know, we'll talk about, you know, oh, I, I see your, you know, rubbing your, your sweater, you know, what does that feeling that you like about that? And they might say something, but it just makes me feel safe. So row is looking for areas and strengths, like. My client's strengths. What do you love to do? What would people say about you? And then we build on those and we notice, you know, as we're talking about that, how does it feel to say those things? How, how do you feel inside? And then we just slowly grow that. And then once we have, you know, a really strong resource, then we can turn around and look at something that's a little more upsetting. And so there's a lot of pendulating back and forth between, you know, we're going to look at what's going really well. And then we're going to look at, what's not going so well. And then we're just going to go back and forth. And that allows us to just do this gentle dance, if you will, into a more upsetting topic. But it's, it's really important to strengthen the resources first because that, uh, that builds trust between me and the client between the client and themselves. And that's what's most,
Kerry: 16:11
I liked that, that dance that makes that's a good way to look at that. Just cause kind of moving back and forth, where, are some good resources to learn more about that? I'm interested in learning more about myself. Any good YouTube videos or anything online you can think of or books or,
Jill: 16:28
oh yeah, you can. There's a lot of ways to look at, um, Peter Levine. Has a lot of different videos of Dr. Peter Levine and he's the founder of the somatic experiencing Institute. And he has some great videos to watch. Um, there's a book that's oh my gosh. Probably 30 years old at this point by Elizabeth Kubler, Ross called the dance of anger, but it's really beneficial in terms of learning how, you know, specifically anger work. Because if you have this dynamic set up with whomever you're speaking with, and this is your pattern, you do this, I do this, you do this. I go there. Well, this talks about breaking that pattern, what that looks like. And let's just say it's between, you know, a husband and a wife and they're battling. And so they're locked in this dance. And so what one does is it just changes those steps. Okay. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to alter this and then it forces everyone else to alter their dance as well. And that's when you can open up these conversations and start looking at why are we doing that? I don't even know. And then you get into this conversation of let's say like, no flip the script, you know, what would work, what's working well, let's do more of that.
17:49
It's
Kerry: 17:49
kind of that, you know, your incent mentality is to get upset over something. And the other person's mentality is to respond, being upset too. And so if both, at least one person looks at differently, for sure there's some type of change, but both people look at it, then there's definitely be a positive change. So that's, I see that dance back and forth. uh, I'm going to get those resources from you and include those in the show links because I'm, I think those are, that sounds really interesting. Maybe it's cause I like to dance. That's why I like this analogy too, so, but.
Jill: 18:21
Yeah, I'll definitely send those to you and it's yeah, it's good to find a lot of different resources that you can use. And you know, whether it's books, it's podcasts like this, which is going to be amazing. It's talking with someone you can talk about. You know, your best friend, it's just the importance is to talk to someone and find someone that you feel safe
Kerry: 18:45
with. Yeah. I think, I think those are good points. I think the other thing I kind of want to kind of pivot to is, you know, the collective trauma, we've all been dealing with the last few years with this thing that this pandemic and for Al for everyone, it's been a different way where some people. Have thrived through it. Others have had to pivot their businesses through it. I know for me it increased my anxiety and just what's going on in the world, all the uncertainty. so one of the things I've really been noticing, uh, since I have a lot of friends that own businesses, especially, in the hospitality industry and the fitness industry, which are two ones that were pretty much crushed, um, I want to talk about trauma in business. I want to start off with the. A nice opinion piece that I read and a Canadian publication called globin mail. The quote is don't underestimate the trauma that business owners are enduring because of COVID-19. Let me say that one time, again, don't underestimate the trauma that business owners are enduring because of the pandemic, uh, that was written by a gentleman named Rob scissor, Nick, and the globe and mail. So I'm not sure if you have any customers or have you experienced any friends or just any research on any type of trauma in the business space in the last few years, or if you haven't just what you've seen happen.
Jill: 20:12
Yeah, I think we we've all watched it and it's been devastating for service industries, especially the hospitality. And it's important to, especially if you are a business owner to, you know, find a way to be grounded in what is working well and what you really want, because the, I heard this beautiful analogy about. You know, being relaxed and calm is like being in the river. And when the snow falls, the snow just falls and becomes part of the river. And when the river is frozen over and the snow falls, it just piles up on it. And it creates this pressure that then, you know, makes it, it causes these fissures. And so that's what we're trying to avoid. And the collectiveness is just being able to, you know, come at it from a trauma informed perspective. What's going to make my customers feel safe. What's gonna make my employees feel safe. What's gonna make people feel safe to come back out in society. And this is what we're all grappling with right now is how do we emerge from this, you know, like collectively into a healthy
Kerry: 21:27
and you're a small business owner and and obviously it affected you. Did you pivot to doing. Like zoom type, sessions with your customers or, or did you just, how did you handle that?
Jill: 21:40
Yeah, I had never heard of zoom, you know, before I'd heard of, you know, teams meetings, but yeah, I just, you pivot and nobody comes. There's very few people that actually come into my office anymore. I'm kind of excited when they, when they started doing that. Yeah. Everything's everything's tele-health and it's been, you know, th the upside of COVID is that it has made everyone have to pivot, you know, and big meetings before where people weren't able to attend because of some physical limitation, you know, and they were saying, why can't you just put this on video? And they're like, oh, we can't do that. And now all of a sudden, oh, look what we can do. Everything's online. And so there have been some, some really incredible areas of growth that have come from this and there have been some areas. We've seen where this
Kerry: 22:31
needs some intention. The one thing that I think that has been the positive is the resilience of some of these business owners, how they keep pivoting. I know a guy that, uh, in Portland owns, Imperial bottle shop. It's a, beer bar, and he's just tried so many different things out. He tried making his place to pop up for. Warm, ciders and warm cocktail drinks, for people to be outside and have during the pandemic in the early days. All types of different things. It's got like a bagel pop-up I think he's done at one point. Uh, so it's, I really like to see that and it just excites me to see people try. And I know for him, it's gotta be just so exhausting to keep trying and keep trying. Especially when it's not your fault and there's no playbook on how to get through this, everyone's trying to figure it out. So,, I think that's one thing that we have to think about too, is just,, to be easier on ourselves because this is kind of new to everybody.
Jill: 23:27
Yeah, absolutely. In that the whole, not your fault part is so important because the hard part in this is there's no bad guy to blame. There's COVID and, you know, rules came down and you can be upset with people, but ultimately it's because of this pandemic that this has happened. And that ability to pivot really gets into the fixed mindset or a growth mindset. And when you're in a fixed mindset, it's hard to think of what else might possibly. But that's where it's really important to look around you and start looking at, what else could we try? What else might be true? What else might be plausible? And if it doesn't work, let's try something else. And, you know, Simon Simic has an amazing talk on, on growth mindset. If you're in a, oh yeah,
Kerry: 24:17
I think send it my way. I mean, I love to listen and learn to things. I think another thing. I'm just kinda thinking about back when you're talking about with your business, kind of how you, how you pivoted. I think in some ways the tele-health and it's good to see people in person too, but I think the tele-health then opens up you as a business owner to accuse. You can talk to people in a wider, wider area, as well as for scheduling. Like I do some, some counseling and I mostly actually I've only been doing tele-health now for a couple of years. And I like it because it saves you a lot of time and you're in your house, so you can be more comfortable too. So I think that's, might've been a benefit to your practice.
Jill: 24:57
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And it's, it's allowed me to have clients that are all over the country, so I don't have to just see people who are in the, you know, Portland, Metro area. I have clients who are in Wisconsin. It's lovely to just be able to wait, you know, we have to navigate time changes, but it's really expanded, you know, who I can see. So it's, that's absolutely been a benefit.
Kerry: 25:23
That's great. So it's, there's definitely some positives, but, um, that'd be another thing I was thinking about is for you just to handle, you know, being a S excuse me, being a solo entrepreneur. As yourself, it can be lonely. And, so what are some things that you do to kind of feel like part of a community and kind of, uh, feel motivated and stuff? Every day?
Jill: 25:50
I do a lot of online training and so I'm with, I, I feel like I'm, I'm never alone. There's always a training to go. It's important to be involved. You know, I'm involved in, in two different networking groups and you know, those are starting to meet in person. Again, it's important to really lean into what you find joy in because trauma puts us into a, our brain goes into this conservation mode. And the first thing that fall off is things that are fun. You'll hear people saying I don't have time for that anymore. And that's exactly where you need to go is something that brings joy. And so it's important to be outside, go for walks, hike, golf, whatever brings you joy. And so that's, what's really important to lean in.
Kerry: 26:39
Yeah, definitely. We both like to get out into, into nature and go for hikes and it just it's too bad cause like our society now we're all just so connected and it it's great. We're connected online, but also we need to get out and to, to mother nature and, and. Be a human touch, the earth, you know, touch the ground and, you know, get your feet wet in the water. And, um, I'm fortunate that my, I like to do that stuff. My wife's very active outdoors person. And so she's, if I'm not motivated, she's also helpful to, to drag me along and then I enjoy it, you know? So, um, You have a quote, uh, on your website, it says together we gently build sustainable momentum of health while learning, coping healthy, or healing and empowerment skills that equip you with the needed tools to move through challenges and losses. I really like that quote, uh, I want you to maybe speak a little bit to that.
Jill: 27:33
Yeah, it's important to remember that trauma cuts us off from relationship and it cuts us off with relationship from ourself first. And we start thinking, I'm the only one going through this. Everybody else has it figured out. So through coping skills, we look at, you know, really kind of digging in on what is really true. And are you just believing what you're thinking? You know, what's your evidence that this is the case and what's your evidence, you know, for what's working with. You can see it. How do we know this is working well? Oh, well, because I'm feeling better. And so through learning coping skills, it just is allowing them to slow down on, in order to step back into whatever area they're feeling limited. Yes.
Kerry: 28:18
Is there any, specific, practices and coping that are a good starter point for just anyone to start using?
Jill: 28:25
Yeah, just connecting to your breath.
Kerry: 28:28
Oh, that's a good one. Yeah.
Jill: 28:29
And you know, really remembering to take a deep breath. And if that doesn't feel good, you know, go outside, feel the sun on your skin, you know, just do a big stretch. Something that, that moves you from where you're at right now and just do something different. Tony Robbins says, you know, just take a step to the left. Literally just take a step on you're in a different place.
Kerry: 28:54
I know for me, if I exercise in the morning, just go get myself the gym and maybe takes me a little while to get going some days. But like I, that was like today. And then I felt just amazing afterwards. You just, so it was just that first step that the inertia you need to kind of get going everything. I definitely agree with that. I think you've really answered this. Obviously it's a very, uh, deep topic and I wanted to kind of a general understanding of trauma and some resources which we'll provide to people. So I think this is a great starting point. And then in the future, as I learn more, uh, I would like to have you come back again. And so we can maybe deep dive into maybe a specific topic. And, I think it would be a lot of fun. Let's do that.
Jill: 29:37
Oh, I would love to. And thank you again for having me on, and I'm happy to get you whatever resources you need that will be of benefit to you and your,
Kerry: 29:46
I definitely appreciate that. I also want to make sure that we help get the word out about the practice that you're doing. Where can people find out more about you and your practice?
Jill: 29:59
They can find me online. Www dot Jill Anderson, coaching.com. And I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook and Instagram.
Kerry: 30:10
Yes. And I've been, I've been liking your comments a lot on LinkedIn lately, your daily, mindfulness and our other posts you've been doing on LinkedIn. I appreciate those. So again, thank you for being on the show. Uh, I just want to thank everyone for listening. people can find me on my website at kerryfinsan.com, which should be launched by the time this airs. I'm pretty excited about that. and my ND note is, remember you are not alone in life or business.
