If you have your own story of being in a cult or a high control group, or if you've had an experience with manipulation or abusive power, you'd like to share, shoot us an email at TrustMePod at gmail.com.

If you think that one person has all the answers, don't!

Welcome to TrustMe, the podcast about cult, extreme belief and the abusive power from two traumies who've actually experienced it.

I'm Lola Blonk, I know one knows what a trauma is, so.

It's a word I made up and it's cute.

I'm Megan Elizabeth, the original trauma.

Today our guest is Professor at Columbia George Bonanno.

Before we talk about what we're going to talk about, let's talk about this month.

Because it is May, it is mental health awareness month.

And for this month, we decided that we are going to do a series called rethinking trauma.

So each week of this month, we're going to interview a different person about this thing we call trauma.

We wanted to do this series because, like many people with cultic experiences in their background, we have both dealt with our fair share of mental health issues,

which you've heard plenty about if you listen to the podcast.

We've both gone to a lot of therapy and have often found ourselves lost in the endless haze sometimes it seems like of just like talking about our past,

diving into the distressing events we've experienced and expecting that to just inherently make us better without pausing to consider whether we're thinking about it the right way.

We'll be asking questions like, what makes one person traumatized and another person not?

Is traumatized even the right word?

What's actually happening in our bodies?

If we are really struggling with something in our past, what can we do about it?

How can we integrate our experiences into our lives and learn to grow and thrive anyway?

In essence, how do we empower ourselves and not let the memories of distressing events or even full on PTSD run our lives?

We're thinking trauma, baby.

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