Hello and welcome to The Healthy Coconut Blog. This blog is dedicated to bringing you information on trauma and trauma healing from a holistic perspective. I’m Gabbie Bodkin, a licensed mental health counselor, and this blog’s author. Today I'll be reviewing important effective communication skills that EVERYONE could benefit from, especially those who experienced childhood trauma. I'm so happy you're here and I hope you find this information helpful.
Communication is essential for all human connections and serves as the foundation for any relationship. Even when we aren't verbally communicating, our nervous system is sending out signals and our non-verbal expressions are communicating messages that we may not even be aware of.
The foundation of communication lies in Emotional Intelligence (EI). EI is comprised of four main attributes: emotion perception, emotion facilitation of thought, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation.
When people experience childhood trauma, the psychological effects of the trauma hinder the development of emotional intelligence. This is because the parts of the brain associated with survival are in an over-active state and the parts of the brain that are associated with emotional intelligence are deemed as non-essential during the stress response states and therefore are not able to develop properly. This process is called "arrested psychological development." Arrested psychological development essentially means that as an adult, your emotional intelligence is fixed at the age/stage when the childhood trauma occurred. So if you're a 34-year-old adult and had trauma when you were 8 years old, your emotional response to situations may be neurologically similar to the way your brain was when you were 8 years old, that is, if you did not undergo trauma healing.
We know that more than 70% of adults experienced childhood trauma (SAMSHA, 2008), so it's also safe to say that instead of adults walking around and living life, we're actually just a bunch of 4, 8, 12, 16-year-olds (i.e. age of trauma) walking around in adult bodies. This is why the information I'm sharing in these posts is so important for everyone. Even if you haven't experienced trauma yourself, it may help you better understand or communicate with someone who has.
Today I'll be diving into the emotional response and nervous system after childhood trauma, how to become more in touch with your emotions, and 3 effective communication tips that you can try.
Emotional Intelligence
In order to achieve high levels of Emotional Intelligence, there are three major brain systems and higher-order neural networks that need to be activated and working properly. Please bare with me as this section provides technical terminology. You don't have to know the names of the brain regions, yet it is important to know the functions of each. The first is the Limbic System and Salience Network(SN), which is responsible for the selection, sorting, and interpretation of stimuli. This network is also responsible for switching between the stressed response and relaxed response states (based on the stimuli that enter the brain. The second brain region is the Prefrontal Cortex and Default Mode Network (DMN), which is activated during resting states and supports functions such as interoception, autobiographical memory retrieval, imagining the future, and certain social tasks. The third brain region is the Prefrontal and Posterior Parietal Cortex and Central Executive Network which is responsible for decision-making, judgment, and the manipulation of information in working memory and supports goal-directed behavior.
Research shows that childhood trauma specifically creates alterations in these brain regions thus reducing an individual's ability for cognitive control, emotion processing, and emotion regulation.
Although the research supports visible deficits in these regions after childhood trauma, neuroscience also views emotional intelligence as a skill-based ability which means that it can be learned even after the developmental window has passed. This is great news because it means these brain regions can be enhanced and high levels of emotional intelligence can be achieved no matter the duration, intensity, and frequency of psychological childhood trauma.
So this is what we're going to focus on in the rest of today's blog- how to re-wire the brain and enhance EI in order to then form effective communication patterns.
How to become more in touch with your emotions
Now that you understand why emotion perception, emotion facilitation of thought, emotion understanding, and emotion regulation may be difficult, we can work to increase your emotional intelligence while decreasing the frequency the stress response system is activated.
1. Understand your emotional distress tolerance.
The first step is to understand your emotional distress tolerance. To do this, you can look at the scale below and identify different concrete examples of when you were at a 0 on the scale, a 4 on the scale, or a 10 on the scale. This will give you a reference point for the scale so you can then work on not going past a certain number (we'll decide that number in a bit).
2. Set your distress boundary.
Ok, now we're going to identify the number on the scale that you feel your stress response system becomes activated. One way to think about this is to identify what bodily sensations you experience prior to going into fight or flight mode. Then ask yourself what is the level of actual danger/distress you experienced before that system became activated. Everyone is different with this as our tolerance is different. For some who experienced complex trauma (i.e. multiple traumas) or severe trauma, that stress response system is probably activated at the slightest notion of distress such as being late for an appointment, which is far from life-threatening. This is because the brain picks up on the physiological response (stimuli) such as a rapid heartbeat and assumes you are in danger which then prematurely sets off that system.
So identify your number, even if it's a 2 or a generally low number on the scale. This number means that you do not feel safe or in control unless you are below this number. So when we are thinking about our communication styles and ability to communicate effectively, we don't want to be anywhere near that number we set.
Once you have that distress number set, you then have to set a boundary for yourself or anyone who may be contributing to putting you past that number. The boundary piece may include an individual boundary of taking a break or engaging in a coping skill when you feel your distress rising. Or it may include a boundary you set with another person. This can be something like a communicated boundary to a friend like, "I am emotionally at my limit right now, however, I care about this conversation and will be able to continue this once I de-escalate."
3. Familiarize yourself with the emotions wheel.
Since we know that recognizing, processing, and reacting to emotions is difficult, we need to practice being able to recognize them within, and then with others.
One thing to note is that the brain pairs emotions with memories so even emotions can trigger that fight or flight response. So 9 times out of 10, if you've experienced childhood trauma, your body may not like sitting in the emotions of fear, sadness, shock, grief, or disappointment. This is because your brain recognizes these emotions as threatening and brings up the trauma memory. This is just a reminder to allow yourself to sit in these emotions even when it is uncomfortable. This will eventually allow that over-active alarm system to become less overactive.
Click here for an emotions wheel that you can reference daily to practice labeling your own emotions. I encourage my clients and those of you reading this to print out the wheel or have it saved on your phone so you can practice labeling your emotions. Once you feel in tune with your own emotions, you can then practice reflecting others' emotions. For example, you could respond to a friend sharing a story and say, "That sounds really frustrating". Typically people will naturally confirm or deny the emotion you labeled. They will either say something along the lines of, "Yes! It was beyond frustrating" or "Actually, I felt more disheartened and disappointed more than anything else." This will all serve as practice and concrete examples for the parts of your brain responsible for encoding emotion.
Once you've familiarized the steps above, you can start attempting to use some communication scripts and tips. Here are 3 tools that can go a long way in communication:
1. Active Listening
This requires a lot of practice as it involves many processes working together. For example, to be an active listener, you not only engage in eye contact and listen to the words by another person, but you're attentive to the non-verbal cues as well. Active listening encourages the one communicating to finish speaking without interruptions. Active listening is free of judgment and involves staying mentally present without thinking of your own experiences, and thoughts, or planning your response.
2. The Boundary Script
This one is most useful when you feel you need to protect or advocate for yourself. This would include communicating 3 things in this order: reflect an understanding of the situation, identify your need, and outline the boundary (what you plan to do in the future).
For example, let's say you have a family member who continuously brings up a topic that is emotionally hurtful or often leads to an argument. You know enduring the topic causes you distress and no matter how you've engaged in the discussions in the past, there is no resolve or emotional protection. So instead you could apply this script. Here is an example of it put to use:
"It sounds like you enjoy discussing this topic as I've noticed you bring it up frequently. While it may be important to you, I actually feel a lot of distress when this topic is brought up. I would like in the future if you could avoid this topic when we are together. I know I'm just mentioning this to you now because I didn't know how to say it previously, but If it gets brought up again when we are together, I will have to walk away from the conversation. I hope you can understand."
3. Permission to take a break script:
This tool is most effective when you notice you're on the hampster wheel of communication. Poor communication often leads to two or more people pointing fingers or communicating back and forth without any resolution or progress in the conversation. When communication gets to this point, it's unlikely that it will resolve and you'll be able to get off the hampster wheel. So instead of circling the same conversation, you can kindly bring awareness to the lack of progress and ask for a break from the conversation. A script for this can include:
"I know this is something we really need to discuss and resolve, however, we clearly aren't getting anywhere at this moment, so how about we come back to this conversation another time."
You can also use this script when you notice one person is mentally checked out and no longer engaging in active listening.
With all things, practice is important so try these skills at home, in the workplace, or with friends and family and see if you notice an improvement in your emotional intelligence and communication skills.
Thank you all for reading this post. As always, I hope you found this information useful. Follow along for more posts and psychoeducational tools on trauma and trauma healing from a holistic perspective. You can also check out my website, [thehealthycoconut. com](http://thehealthycoconut.com/) or Instagram the_healthycoconut for more resources. If you found this blog helpful, please like and subscribe to support these resources.
As always, If you find any of this information triggering or do not feel safe being alone with your thoughts, call a support person or 911 if you feel you are at risk of hurting yourself or others. I’m a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, and I help adults heal from childhood trauma. Follow along for more self-help tools and psychoeducation on the brain and body.
Sources:
Gottfredson, R. K., & Becker, W. J. (2023). How past trauma impacts emotional intelligence: Examining the connection. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1067509
Perry, B. D. (2009). Examining child Maltreatment through a neurodevelopmental lens: Clinical applications of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics. Journal of Loss & Trauma, 14(4), 240–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325020903004350
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