Hey, welcome to the Mathiaship Barker podcast.

My name is Matthias.

I'm a psychotherapist from Spokane, Washington, and this is a podcast about mental health

and moving towards what's meaningful, even despite hardship.

Today we're talking about trauma, so I want to offer a little bit of a trigger warning

today.

If this topic feels like it's getting overwhelming or just as you're listening, if it starts to

feel like it's just a bit too much, a good idea it could be to go on a walk, maybe get

a bit of a snack, get some water, do some deep breathing, relax your muscles, do some

stretching.

Just do what you need to feel safe and to feel like you can return to a place of calm

before continuing if you start to feel a bit overwhelmed in the midst of this one.

Because we're diving deep into it, we're diving into, well, some of the most traumatic

things that have happened to us.

And I make a case in this podcast for why pressing into those memories, those stories, those

life events can actually be tremendous for life, you think, and explain a little bit

about what that process might look like.

I hope you find it so severe and so distressing that it imprinted itself upon you and lives

in your memory in such a way that a crew's interest in compounds and gets bigger and takes

up more and more room to where you just feel like you're huddled in the corner.

It zooms into your life in ways that feel really random and opportune, like you'll be

at your birthday party or having a meal with a friend or trying to, I don't know, spend

...