What Happened to You: Understanding Childhood Trauma with Liz Rivera

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We're the Nelsons. I'm Shaun. And I'm Lanette. And we are excited to be back with more episodes for our celebration of National Adoption Month. Yeah, we hope that the things that we share this month, typically about three episodes a week, will help you in your observation of and recognition of National Adoption Month. Yeah, we're really grateful for the opportunity to be sharing different perspectives and opinions and always

0:30looking for that chance to learn. It's really one of our big themes here to listen and learn, especially listen and learn from adoptees but also from birth parents. There's always something new that we can learn to help us do better going forward. Yeah, so this month we're putting out several episodes a week. You'll hear episodes conducted by us or by Alicia Gallacher, who is our Director of Communications. And again, we just hope to kind of flood the podcast sphere with adoption content for this month. Also, we're getting really close to

1:03a hundred episodes, which is super exciting. So this is helping with that too. A little side perk. Perfect. So we hope you enjoyed this episode and at the end we'll chat just a little bit about our newsletter. If you are not subscribed to our newsletter, I'll ask you right now to go ahead and look it up if you're interested in getting more adoption related content in your inbox. So go on over to openadoptionproject.org and click on newsletter to sign up. Well, we are now on the podcast with Liz Rivera. Liz, thank you so much for being

1:35with us today. Thank you. I'm so honored to be here, really. Yeah, we're excited to chat with you. Just for context sake, we met a while back doing some foster care training and one of the books that you recommended while we were going through training was the book that we're going to be talking about today. And they, Lanette and I both have read this at least once. I think I've listened to it probably twice and we learned so much. So let's just go ahead and jump in. So for

2:10the, for our listeners, that the book that we're talking about is What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing. And this is back from 2021. So not too long ago, it was a best seller. And it was a collaboration with Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce D. Perry. And so Liz, maybe do you want to just jump in and kind of give a high level overview of what this, maybe the aim of the book and what maybe the reader would take away after reading it.

2:42So Dr. Perry is really well known in the foster care adoption trauma world. And so he's been somebody that we have followed for years, decades, really. And we've actually been able to have him as guest speaker at different events we've had. And so we have just loved his work. But this book sort of brought him into the mainstream. And I think partly it was because of the partnership with Oprah. But also, it's just the way they present the material that it's so anybody who reads it, it's applicable to everybody and everybody's lives or somebody they

3:15know, or a community in which they live. And I think that's one reason this book has been so amazing and so well received has because is because of its applicability across the board, not just specific to foster care or adoption or to trauma work. Love it. So we're going to do a deep dive here in just a second, and talk about some key principles that the book teaches. And I know you're really familiar with it as as an educator in the foster care arena, that this is something that

3:45you deal with a lot and that you're really acquainted with. So we're really glad that we can have you on the podcast. For our listeners, would you mind taking just a minute and introduce yourself help us get to know you both professionally and personally? Sure. So my name is Liz Rivera. And I'm a Salt Lake City, Utah native and born and raised in Salt Lake went to the University of Utah for both both my degrees, I have a bachelor's in sociology and a master's in communication from the University of Utah. And I currently live in the Davis County area, so still really, you know, northern Utah area. I've been working in child welfare in

4:19Utah for really 30 years this month. So 30 years ago, when I was still just finishing my bachelor's bachelor's degree, I got a job at Salt Lake County Youth Services. And I worked with mostly in what was called the girls group home which were mostly teen girls, although sometimes we had an overflow if we had children that couldn't be placed that ended up there as well. But mostly teen girls. And it was a 24 seven kind of shelter environment. These were kids who

4:49were being brought into foster care sometimes for the first time, sometimes for the 10th time, some of them had disrupted out of foster homes, some of them, like I said, brand new removals, some of the girls we saw over and over again. And I worked there for about two years, two to three years. And then I worked still with the county Youth Services, which is like middle of the night crisis counseling, and then moved over to what was called the shelter care program, which no longer exists. And that was where we had families that we were like

5:20foster families that were very, very short, like emergency short term placements. So these incidents would call these families in the middle of the night to take kids in. So I did that for about two years. And then I moved over Utah foster care was created in 1999. And I was lucky enough to know somebody who was hiring, who was a part of the organization and hiring people. And she said to me, Hey, why don't you come over as a trainer? And I didn't know I was a trainer. And she said you are. And so she invited me to join this brand organization. And I've been there for 24 years. So going on my 25th year, Utah

5:53foster care, and it's amazing, amazing work. And I was a trainer, I was called a regional trainer. So DCFS divides the state into five regions, I was in Salt Lake Valley region for almost 20 years, and it moved into the administrative position a few years ago, but training is still where my heart is because it's the families are the best part of the work we do. Yeah. Well, and we can attest the fact that you're a great trainer, because we attended many of your trainings and even on zoom. It was great. Yeah, it's better in person. I'll tell you. Well, again, we're super, we feel super fortunate to have you with us. And we're

6:25looking forward to having this discussion about what happened to you. And that is the main question that is asked over and over throughout this book. Let's just jump in. Is that okay? Absolutely. Okay. So in the book, Dr. Perry discusses kind of like senseless behavior that some may exhibit, and really encourages, encourages the reader to look behind that behavior and see what's going on. And it begins to make a little bit more sense to that topic.

6:58What would you share? I think the tricky thing is a lot of times we do see someone's behavior, but we rarely know their story. And sometimes trying to find out their story might be difficult because maybe it's the passing acquaintance, maybe just somebody we're having, you know, just maybe we're interacting with them at a store or in a place of business. And it's a relatively minor interaction, but we can tell something is off. And so I think that this, but I think if we walk through the world with this general idea that there's always more than what we're seeing,

7:31even if we don't know what that is, just knowing there's more. And when we do see those kinds of behaviors that are a little bit concerning or confusing, that we think to ourselves, I don't know this person's story. I may never know this person's story, but I know that there is a story. And I think that that shift in the way we think about things is absolutely vital, even if we never actually know the story. Yeah, I think that's really important. And in every situation of life, right, there's so much going on in people's lives that we have no idea. Let's maybe

8:02narrow that down maybe more specifically to the foster care or adoption situation, thinking about children. What are some of the applications there? So we see a lot of behaviors in children in care that can be confusing or concerning. And one thing that we do try to help the families who are going to be caring for them to understand is that those behaviors serve that child well in their previous environment. So the analogy I always like to use is if you think about somebody who was born and lived underwater their whole life, and they had some kind of breathing apparatus and an oxygen tank, but then

8:35for whatever reason, they're no longer underwater, they're now on dry land, but they don't know how to live on dry land, they only know how to live underwater. So they continue to have that breathing apparatus and oxygen tank they carry around with them. And it's awkward, and it's confusing, and people make fun of them, and it limits their ability to engage with the world, but they're going to keep it on because they don't understand the world is any different. And so that's the kind of thing we try to help foster and adoptive families understand is that this behavior that you're seeing, whether it's stealing, lying, aggressiveness, food hoarding, those kinds of behaviors which are very

9:08common with our kids, that that behavior actually helped that child survive. And so can I honor that behavior? Can I actually say to them, okay, stealing? Not okay. I do know that that probably helped you when you were in a situation that wasn't as safe as this one. So I want to honor that behavior because it helped you. And now I want to help you feel safe so you can begin to let go of that behavior. And that can take quite a while. Yeah, well, and it's clear in many of those scenarios or situations that

9:41something happened that really influenced how their brain is working now. And in that maybe survival mode, their brain is just going to kick in and do what it knows to do without even the child or the person thinking, right? Yeah. And that's hard to retrain or to overcome. What would you share around that? You know, helping get out of helping a child or somebody get out of this, you

10:13know, habit that has been caused by trauma and learning to cope or even overcome. So Dr. Perry talks about sequential development and intervention. And when you think about he talks about, you know, the lower brain or the brain stem, and it's very reactive. It's non-volitional. It has no sense of time or understanding that something was 10 years ago versus today. And so one thing we talk quite a bit about in the classes that we do is to help your child to feel

10:44safe and that feeling safe is subjective, not objective. And so what may make that child feel safe may not be something we actually think about, because we may be thinking about car seats and seat belts and holding the hand across the street and locking the doors at night. But that child, what feels safe to them may be something completely different. We had a family who had a little boy in their care who was really struggling sleeping at night. And finally, they asked him, they said, is your room scary? And he said, yes. And they said, what is scary about

11:15your room? And his bed was pushed up against the wall next to a window. And he was terrified someone's going to use a two story house, but he was afraid someone was going to come through the window and take him at night. And so instead of trying to explain to him, which is higher order functioning, the parents just moved his bed to the other. So they asked him, where would you where would it feel safer for your bed to be? And he was little. He was probably four or five. And he said over across the wall across the room from the window. So as far as far away from the window as it could possibly be. And that made a huge

11:48difference for this little guy. But one once again, we wouldn't have thought of because for us, that's not that doesn't seem like a safety thing. But for that little guy, he was so until they can start to feel safe, they're going to hold on to those behaviors. They have to hold on to those behaviors until they begin to feel safe. Yeah, I know that a lot of stats say that about 50% of kids have experienced at least one very traumatic experience. Maybe how would you connect that to this conversation around how the brain works and and coping?

12:23I think one thing that Dr. Perry and also Oprah talk quite beautifully about in the book, especially as we get toward the end of the book are about systems. And they take it from they take talking about trauma from the individual level, the family level, the community level to the systemic level. And I think that our systems are and they talk about trauma informed and Dr. Perry talks about why he doesn't love that term because it's sort of thrown around but doesn't really have meaning. And he said until we really understand what that means, we're not really going to be able to be very helpful to our kids. And and you talk

12:56about 50% of kids that is a significant number of people in the population who are struggling and possibly suffering today. And that struggle and suffer may continue if they're not getting the interventions that they need. And so I think we need to look at this all of the different realms in which this child exists in the family in the neighborhood in the community in the systems of school systems, faith based systems, legal systems system. Dr. Perry talks quite a bit about relational poverty, that so many of our kids don't have very

13:29many people and their parents don't have very many people. And so thinking about how do we create better communities that families are insulated in those communities, instead of just pretending like any any family can just raise their children completely 100% on their own, especially when these kinds of issues come up. Yeah. So how would you say how does our knowledge of this way of processing information of kind of going from the bottom up? How does that how

14:00does that help us working with those that have experienced trauma? He talks about the three Rs, relate, regulate and then reason that so many times, especially as adults, and and reasonably functioning adults, you know, most of the time, most of the time, we tend to live in the top of our heads quite a bit we tend to cognition thinking, you know, when I have a feeling, I almost always push it up to the cognitive part, because I want to understand it and think about it from a cognitive point of view, rather than always just feel it. So I think

14:32that when we understand that really, the first thing we need to do is we need to connect. And, and once again, going back to that safety thing, if these kids don't feel safe, if they don't feel seen and soothed and heard, that they're never going to feel safe. And so we have to relate, we have to build relationship. And then we can regulate where we say, okay, like, tell me how you there's, there's something they talk about in that I can't was Oprah, Dr. Perry talks about it. But one of them was talking about how we can't change how someone's feeling, we can only witness how someone's feeling. And that

15:04regulation is really not about changing how they feel, but letting them feel what it and Dr. Another doctor we love is Dr. Dan Siegel. And he talks about them feeling felt. And that's where that regulate pieces when they feel like whatever they feel is safe and known and okay. And that being in the presence of someone else who bears witness and offers that container around those feelings, that that then helps them to regulate and then only then can we actually reason with them. But most of us we start trying to reason before we do

15:35anything else. And I'm guilty of that 100 times. Yeah, you know, I do that with with other adults with children all the time. I just I live up here. And I sometimes forget that I have to I have to be able to allow myself to move down to some degree in order to fully engage with where they are. Okay, so regulation before reasoning. Yes. So I know that Dr. Perry talks a little bit about the the role of rhythm. Mm hmm. And regulating Do you want to speak to some of that? Yes.

16:08The first time I ever heard Dr. Perry talk about this, I actually, I think this was before texting was a thing and I called my brother, because my little brother, my mom used to say he would stand in the playpen and he would just when he was little just sway back and forth like that. And he still does it. Like if you if you're standing up, if you both are standing up talking to my brother, he will start swaying back and forth like that. And inevitably we all start doing the same thing and it probably looks bizarre. We're all doing this. He's done it since he was little. And I and we always thought it was just this funny quirk he

16:40had. And then when Dr. Perry was talking about rhythm and 80 beats per minute, I called my brother and said, this is what you're doing when you're doing that. And he it was just so unconscious. But he was he from when he was very, very young, adopted this rhythm of regulation. And if anyone ever gets a chance, and I'm sure if you get on YouTube, you probably could see some talks by Dr. Perry. He is hilarious. And we had him once for our annual symposium. And he was talking about rhythm. And he was talking about this woman that was a she was a dance

17:11instructor. And she was trying to tell him how important dance was that she thought he thought she was stupid. And it was just all dumb. And then he said, then they started doing it. And he realized that he was stupid, he was dumb. And it was actually really helpful. And that's and he started integrating that into his work. Because and another guy, Bezel Bandra, he talks about this too, that we often think about our brains as disembodied from our body. But our brain and our body are so deeply connected, the polyvagal, the Vegas nerve that goes from the very top of our brain all the way down to our body, that that

17:42integrates our brain our body so deeply in that rhythm, that rhythmic action, whether it's dancing or swaying, or bobbing, or rocking, that that rhythm sends messages from our body to our brain, and then from our brain back to our body, it's recursive, that is very, very soothing. And so for people to find ways to adopt rhythm, and maybe walking, you know, whatever it is to integrate that rhythm into their daily lives, is a very powerful way to regulate at a very

18:13deep level, not just at a cognitive level. Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting that I remember, I remember listening to this part of the book while I was on a run. Ah, and I run a lot. And for me, it helps, obviously physically, but there's something about it that I couldn't really put a finger on that helped me emotionally. And when I'm listening to this, I'm like, I run it basically the same cadence every time I go running. And that regulating aspect of running just is able to calm me and things that

18:48are stressing me out or that are difficult, are more easy for me to grasp and understand. And yeah, so I, I personally had that just realization that it's, it's really important for just regulation in general, to have some type of rhythmic experience. Absolutely, absolutely. So on a similar vein, Dr. Perry says, and this is a quote from the book, a person's capacity to connect, to be regulating and regulated, sorry,

19:20regulated, the reward and be rewarded is the glue that keeps families and communities together. What insights might you share from your experience to that quote? So we deal with kids who don't have often don't have that they don't have someone to regulate them to know them to soothe them. And so in foster care, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to help families. And some families come to us with this already in place, and we don't have to do a lot.

19:50But a lot of families, you know, they, like any human being has insights and, and skills that they can develop. And so we try to help families understand that their, their first role with these kids is to help them to feel safe. Is that regulation is that soothing and for them themselves to also have that because it starts with the adult. So I do another training that is called circle security that I absolutely love. And one thing that they talk about in that

20:20training is that adults have more degrees of freedom for change than children do. And so when in a relationship with a child, the adult is always the one that needs to make the change. So if a child if a child is struggling with relating with regulating all those things, I need to look at myself first, not in a blaming or shaming way, but in an honest and introspective way and think, okay, this kid, we're struggling in my relationship,

20:50we're not relating, we're not regulating, there's that we're not gluing together, there's not a lot of bonding going on here. What, what in myself can I shift to better meet the child's need and where they are. And when we're able to do that, and the kids can feel it. And I've had this experience with kids where there's a kid maybe that I'm struggling with and I don't really get them. But once I do, and I find that rhythm in myself, which is a phrase from Edtronic, which Dr. Perry talks about Edtronic in the book. And I find that rhythm in myself that matches

21:22that kid. And it's, it's almost like magic. But until I get it, I can't give it to this kid. And so it always starts with the adult, once again, not in a blaming way, just as that in introspective and insightful way. Yeah, and that will lead to our ability to connect with that child or that person in much more meaningful ways. And Dr. Perry talks a lot about connectedness. And the more that an individual feels that connection and community, it's easier

21:55for them to overcome, like addiction, it's easier for them to kind of thrive in in their lives. Anything that you would share thinking about connectedness, and particularly about just that relational aspect that we're trying to gain a deep deep connection with people. I think there's been a lot of conversation, especially since the pandemic, about the epidemic of loneliness, plague of loneliness, a pandemic of loneliness,

22:30we hear quite a bit. And that we assume and Dr. Perry talks about this in the book too, that the technologies development is outstripping our capacity to adapt to it, and to find a way to use technology to increase our connectedness, whereas the reality is the technology is actually decreasing our connectedness, even while it seems like it's increasing it. And so I think that we have to sometimes be really intentional about this, because we want in fact, I was

23:03thinking about this, I'm grateful you guys asked me to do this, because I re listened to the book, I haven't listened to it for a while. I really really listened to it. And I was thinking about this in my own life, I've had, I took care of my parents, my dad had a stroke in 2005. And he and my mom in with me and my mom and I took care of him for about 13 years until his death. And then I kept my mom with me and can you take care of her and she died almost a year ago. And so now I'm living alone with my dog. And I've realized lately that that

23:36deep connectedness in my day to day life is has been reduced by not having those people living with me in my home. And when I was listening to Dr. Perry talk about this, I thought, I need to be more intentional about finding connectedness in my life, and not just wait for it to just show up magically, or the connections I do have to somehow become more connected or something that I actually need to go out of my way. Now, I as an adult, relatively well

24:06functioning, most of the time adult, I can do that. But children can't. And people who are vulnerable, like you talked about with addiction, or other mental health issues and struggles, they may not be able to do that as well. So once again, it then falls upon us as a community, that we then need to be the ones who are intentional about connecting to the more vulnerable people in our communities, if they aren't able to access that on their own. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that you kind of highlighted this, just a moment ago,

24:41that especially with the pandemic, a lot of people finding themselves in situations where they are alone, or seemingly alone, and are lacking some of those connections. Adults are more capable, not always, but more capable of filling those voids and filling those needs, hopefully with healthy things and making those connections. But I love the sentiment that as an adoptive parent or

25:13caretaker in foster care, it's our role to help them learn how to do that. I love the way that you described that. That makes a lot of a lot more sense to me. So thank you. Part of the book talks about the adverse childhood experiences. Do you want to speak to that a little bit? So Dr. Perry also talks about how, and I thought the way he talks about it is so brilliant. One thing about Dr. Perry is he never gives you the simple answer. He

25:46always complicates it. He always goes deeper, which is actually, you know, one of the things we absolutely love about him. But when he talks about ACEs, I loved what he said when he said, you know, like to Oprah, you know, as a talk show host, if she just gave her guest a questionnaire, had him fill it out, and then got a number and said, Oh, you're six. But that doesn't really mean anything. So the ACEs is a way of counting up the number of adverse childhood experiences an individual may have. And they are, the original research had 10 items. And so the ACE questionnaire that's used for most

26:18research has those 10 items on it. And researchers have used that to say, okay, how many bad things can happen to you before it starts to have really negative effects on you is basically what they're trying to discover. Now, Dr. Perry talks about that, that number, while it can be a starting place to give us an idea of some of the things that someone has gone through, what's happened to them, it doesn't tell the whole story. First, there's a lot of criticism that there's actually probably more than 10 ACEs more than 10 adverse childhood experiences.

26:48And there's some research that does incorporate other other ones as well. And then also, as Dr. Perry talks about, it also doesn't talk about at what time. So Dr. Perry talks quite a bit about timing in this book about when those things happen to somebody that earlier is always worse than later, usually, I shouldn't say always, it's usually worse than later. And then, and buffering that the child may have. So there is a whole there's what's called paces, which are protective factors. And so a lot of research now is including ACEs. So what

27:18went wrong, but also the paces, what went right, and to increase our understanding of what actually buffers because you can have somebody who has an ACE score of six or seven, which is extraordinarily high, and not that uncommon. But they had a maybe they have a pace score that's very high as well. So they may have grown up very vulnerable, but also had a lot of people that were trying to help them overcome that thing. And so the the ace wall really important in a great starting place to start talking about these things, it in and of itself is

27:48probably not sufficient. Yeah. Yeah, so we can't just we can't get just that score, right? We can't we can't say, well, x happened to someone. So y z is the answer. It doesn't it doesn't work like that. No, it'd be nice if it did, though, it would be really, it would be really nice. Maybe on the same thread. What would you share? I mean, there's a there's a lot around this that we can

28:21that we can talk about. But for children who have experienced neglect, I don't know how to ask this question. But I guess what should caretakers be aware of specifically when they're when they're working with or interacting with a child who's struggled with neglect? I like what Dr. Perry said about this when he said it's not just what happened

28:51to you. It's also what didn't happen to you that should have happened to you. Yeah, which is really neglect. And neglect is also the most common reason that children come into care into foster care in Utah, probably actually, that's true nationally, is neglect, usually physical neglect. Because that's most obvious kids don't have a safe place to be. They don't have food, they don't have water, they don't have, you know, physical care, they're unsupervised, those kinds of things. And so we do see a lot of neglect. I talked to a one of

29:22our adoptive parents, parents who are two of my favorite human beings on the planet. And their their first child, they adopted a girl of nine years old, who had been through some pretty significant abuse, both in her first family, and then in her first adoptive family. And then she ended up back in foster care came into their care. And so I met them really through through that situation and kind of watched all of that evolve. And it was amazing to watch a little girl thrive in

29:52their care. And then because she things have gone so well with her, they decided to do it again. And so they brought in another about when she was about 11, they brought in a nine year old boy. And he had come into care for neglect, years of neglect, years and years of years of really severe neglect. And as they had him in their care for several years, and they were my guests, some of my frequent guest speakers and pre service, they would we would talk quite a bit about what what the difference was between the girl and the boy. And one thing that she

30:22said to me, she said, abuse is something that happened that shouldn't have. And you can talk about it. And you can, you know, make some not sense of it, but you can understand your reaction to it, and how you deal with it. And there's a lot of healing. So they had a lot of experience with the girl. But she says, neglect, you don't even know what you don't know. You don't even know. And she said, every day is a new thing with this kid, things that we think he would know that he just doesn't know at all. And so she said, neglect is so much harder,

30:52because it's, it's, it's an absence. And how do you, how do you see an absence? And she said, it was just so much more difficult than than the actual I'm not an advocate for abusing kids over neglecting them. I'm not saying that just saying that neglect is this is this is this nebulous thing that is a lot harder, I think, to make sense of than if it's a more discrete events that we can kind of get a hold of a little bit better. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I knew that neglect was probably one of the highest, maybe causes for children entering care.

31:27And I thought that that would be a good place to talk about that. And that, yeah, that's hard to swallow. Because you can't see what you can't see. Yeah, that's the challenge. Yeah. In the book, it talks about the painful path of wisdom. In speaking about learning resilience over time. What I guess what caretaking mistakes are easy to make in traumatic situations when you don't really respect that path of

31:57wisdom. I think trying to get the child to get over it too quickly or assuming that they have gotten over it now that they have this wonderful safe family, and that I've talked to so many families through the years that have adopted children that they had in foster care. And, and they say to me that we, we thought that we thought they'd gotten over this or why haven't they gotten over this already. And I think that the term use the path. I think that's one thing we forget sometimes this is a path. And this is often a very long and

32:30winding and sometimes regressive path. We get so far and then we end up going back again and having to redo pieces of it because we either missed them or we just have to do it again for whatever reason. So helping families understand that this is a long process. This is not quick. And I still remember years ago I had a uncle in my class and he they he and his wife had taken in their niece. And he raised his hand and he said, Well, when is she gonna when is she gonna get over all this stuff? And we're talking about some behaviors. And I

33:02said, How long has she been with you? He said three weeks. I just started laughing. And I said, Well, not in three weeks. And then tried to be kinder a little bit and try to help them understand this is this is a long term process. And I think if people can just say, Okay, let's start and I love what Dr. Perry talks about when he talks about micro doses, and just little doses over and over and over and over again, that if we just say, Okay, this is not going to be quick fix. This is going to take time. We're going to see it through and we're going to have lots of surprises along the way, and we're going

33:35to learn so much. And let's go and then and trust that all of that, those little pieces you're doing day by day, will add up to something amazing, but it may take years. And sometimes we'll go into their adulthood before some of that start that healing starts to really happen. Yeah, it takes an immense amount of patience. Yes. Yeah. And hope. Yeah, a lot of hope and, and belief right that this that we can help. And without that,

34:08then I mean, it's just that I think people can get really stuck in that cyclical behavior. Yeah, really hard to overcome. Well, Dr. Perry and Oprah also discuss whether trauma is causing humanity to move backward in the book, do you want to speak to that a little bit? I thought it was interesting to talk about that and how when we're in a traumatized state, we tend to see others as threats most often. And I thought that that was very insightful and thinking about our current in just our

34:42United States of America, current political climate and how there's a lot of us and them and right and wrong and good and bad. And that's very simplistic and once again, lower in the brain thinking. And I think that that makes a lot of sense because if we feel as if we're under threat, we do drop down, we drop out of our ability to reason and make sense of and relate, and we move into that more survival function. And then we start acting like three year

35:12olds and dealing with conflict, you know, through aggression instead of through talking and understanding and goodwill. Yeah, so you're talking talking, understanding goodwill. So I'm thinking about the person who is interacting with someone who's lost their ability to think rationally, right? They've, they've dropped down into that lower lower level of thinking. What are some skills or strategies that the caretaker or or person can use in in those conversations or interactions that can help?

35:44So this is more research on on adults. But if I try to like, change your mind about something, and you feel very strongly about it, and it feels like to you, it feels like what you believe is keeping you safer. And I try to think about what you believe is keeping you safer. And I try to change your mind that actually my trying to change your mind is only going to cause you to hold onto that belief more deeply because that now and that and you're also going to now see me as a threat. But if I can say, help me understand your point of

36:16view, help me understand your experience. That actually is the pathway to really beginning to have a dialogue that actually has some influence. And I think that's the way to start talking with our kids is just saying, help me understand what that was like for you, help me understand what this means to you, help me understand. And I think if we just start with that very open and very curious, there's a line we use sometimes get curious, not furious, you know, getting curious with with them and saying, help me understand. And when someone feels, once again, Dr. Dr. Siegel stuff seen, soothed, heard, they

36:50feel like you care about them. That's actually where our influence lies. We feel like we are an enemy. And so becoming a true friend. And that means they may say things we don't agree with, we don't agree with everything they say, or their perceptions. But until they start to feel like we're on their side, that relate piece, there's nothing else that's going to be happening. And so glad we have you on the podcast today. Oh, yay. Your knowledge is just coming through. I love it. And there's another quote that I want to read from

37:21the book, and maybe have some of your thoughts toward it. And then we're going to kind of just start wrapping up. I mean, you have a lot of great things to share. Maybe we'll have you you open up and share a little bit more. But so in in the book, here's a couple quotes. So Dr. Perry says, if we truly want to understand ourselves, we need to understand our history, our true history, because the emotional residue of our past follows us. And then Oprah follows that by saying, but that can't happen until there is a tipping point of

37:51awareness. And to the to that conversation to those thoughts, what would you add? Yeah, and I think that a lot of times, crisis can lead can well, I think crisis can do one or two things, crisis can either make us go back to our bunker, and bury in even deeper, because we feel so threatened. But crisis also, and it doesn't have to be like a huge crisis, it can be even just like a move, like moving homes or different job or just some significant change in our life, even

38:22if it's not necessarily a negative change, can can open up our perception. And so the question is, when that perception gets opened up, am I willing to see something different? Or am I going to retreat back to what I've always done and always known? And I've had both those experiences where I've been willing to say, okay, show me more. And I've been like, I don't want to know, I'm just going to go back to my little regular life and just live my life the way it's always been. So I think there still is a choice point there, that when we do have

38:54whatever it is, it allows us to have greater awareness and insight, we still have to choose to allow ourselves to be our perspective be broadened. Because I think for a lot of us, our instinct is to go back to protection again. So I think that choice we have those experiences, I think we have those experiences a lot, actually, even sometimes on a daily basis. But do I allow it to change me? Or do I retreat? And like I said, I've done both things. I think we all do both.

39:24So what happened to you, rather than what's wrong with you? Or what's going on? Why are you behaving the way you're behaving? The question what happened to you? Any other considerations from your, you know, experience that you would share to maybe the perspective, adoptive parent or perspective caretaker in the foster care system when it comes to that question? Or anything else in the book that maybe you want to leave wisdom wise with us? So first, I want to tell people, get the book. Or listen, I you have it on

39:57audible, which I love because you get to hear Dr. Perry and Oprah Winfrey having this amazing discussion. And it's just, it's so beautiful. So first, get the book. And then the second thing, we've talked about this shift for a long time. So when we train pre service, we talk about the trauma informed shift, which is away from what's wrong with you to what's happened to you. And then I was doing reading some stuff or looking at some stuff online. And I was a young man who had had a very traumatic history and he had been in foster care. And he said, the question what's happened to you is really important. He said, but I am more

40:30than what's happened to me. And I think that they do both Oprah and Dr. Perry do a beautiful job in this book of really expanding beyond while this question is central. They do a really wonderful job is expanding beyond just what happened to you, that there's actually a lot more information we need to know. And then also, a person is also how do you how did you respond to what happened to you? What allowed you to respond that way? Or what didn't allow you to respond that way? You know, who are you? What tell me about yourself? You're a human being that

41:01something's happened to and that human being is still there. And I want to know more about that individual. And so I think while knowing someone's history is vital, I also want to know that person and who they are and why they've reacted perhaps the way they have. I love that. Thank you so much, Liz. Any any other last parting words or thoughts coming to mind when thinking of I mean, this, this topic is so vast. Thinking about trauma, thinking about what's happened to people. Any any last or other

41:35thoughts that you would like to share before we wrap up? Just that I'm hoping that when people read or listen to the book that they they feel a desire to know more because there's a lot like you said, it's vast. Dr. Perry's work is vast. He's this is his third or fourth book. There's a lot of other researchers that are amazing out there doing really critical work. And so I hope people feel excited about learning more. Because this book is a great starting place. And there's so much more to learn. Perfect. Well, Liz, thank you so much. We are so glad that you have been on the

42:08podcast with us and we look forward to some future collaboration with you. Absolutely an honor to be here with you today. This is a great conversation. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the open adoption project. Yeah, we're so grateful to be able to share a lot of content this month, November, 2023 for national adoption month. Yeah. So we just would love to remind you to subscribe to our newsletter. If you have not done that yet, you can go to open adoption project dot org and

42:41click on newsletter and there's a subscription form right there that you can fill out. Also connect with us on social media. We're on Instagram and Facebook at open adoption project. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here and learning with us as we just keep just keep talking and learning about all of these different nuances of adoption.

Transcripts are generated automatically and may contain errors.