In this episode:
We’ve all heard of post-traumatic stress disorder, so listen in as Jasmine Vatuloka from Rising Rooted Wellness, a post-traumatic growth coach with a counseling background, discusses the transformative nature of post-traumatic growth.
Resources:
Connect with Jasmine on Instagram
Book Reference: Unbroken Brain by Maia Szalavitz
Book Reference: The Mountain Is Your by Brianna Wiest
Bottomless to Sober – Coaching, Writing Classes, and Workshops
Transcript:
00:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I’m Jessica Dueñas and this is Bottomless to Sober, the podcast where I talk about anything and everything related to life, since my transition from bottomless drinking to a sober life. Hi everyone, thanks so much for tuning in. On today’s episode I have a special guest, Jasmine Vatuloka, who is actually a post-traumatic growth coach with a background in counseling. I’ve seen Jasmine’s post on social media for her practice rising rooted wellness. Just talk a lot about this idea of post-traumatic growth and I thought that for anybody who’s listening in, who has been through tough times and is recovering not just from substances and just life itself and traumatic events I just thought that Jasmine would be great to have on to share information on what post-traumatic growth is and resources and things like that. So hi, Jasmine, thanks so much for joining.
00:57 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Hello, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate you. Yeah, just recognizing my voice and finding it important enough to have me on. So thank you.
01:07 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, thank you, thank you. So I think for a lot of people listening, you know, when we hear the term post-traumatic, we think PTSD, right, post-traumatic stress syndrome, etc. So could you tell us a little bit about what is post-traumatic growth?
01:23 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
for anyone who’s hearing this term for the first time, yeah, totally, and I love that you bring that, because we have sort of this idea of whatever is post-traumatic kind of comes with this dark cloud over it, as if it is something that is like, okay, we have to brace ourselves for whatever this topic is going to be.
01:41
But something that I find really inspiring about post-traumatic growth is that it’s incredibly empowering and it’s very it fuels a person with hope. When we experience trauma, an imprint is usually left if it’s on our way of conceptualizing ourselves as a human being, our sense of safety in the world, our sense of safety in relationships, whatever it might be that shifts for us. There’s definitely a shift in who we feel we are before and after trauma exists so or presents itself. So post-traumatic growth is sort of the reconnection to yourself and the sort of reclamation of your voice, your power, your story as you, as you integrate all of the lessons from your healing journey and you move forward into the world with a sense of choice and autonomy. Essentially, we feel like we lose our power after trauma and I think in the post-traumatic growth phase of healing, we are realizing that we have choices and we have power and that we can actually make the life that we want, without the burden of our traumatic imprints. So, in a nutshell, that’s how I would describe it.
02:57 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
I love that right, because I love hearing terms like empowerment and also just that reconnection piece I think is really relevant. I think, for people in recovery, a huge part of why we drank or consumed other substances is a sense of isolation, a sense of shame, a sense of just feeling very alone in the world, and I think that the idea of connection between people is really important for people in recovery. But there’s also just that relationship to self right, and so if there are opportunities for people to reconnect with themselves after traumatic events, yeah, like that to me just very powerfully speaks to the word hope, and so I’m really excited that this is the work that you do with others. So I guess my other question was how does post-traumatic growth connect to your personal story? I feel like a lot of times when we pursue career paths, there’s a personal passion behind it. So whatever you’re comfortable with sharing, I feel like we love to hear how does post-traumatic growth relate to your journey?
04:04 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Yeah, so winding the time wheel back a few decades, I was born into a family with where you can consider as well generational trauma to really be something that is imprinted into your experience right from the get go.
04:19
So I was born into a circumstance where there was a lot of chaos, and I was exposed to violence right from the get go, and so my own sort of nervous system as a little toddler and a little baby was quite activated from the get go, and I also had a baby sister, and so as a young one I really internalized however that may have come to be a parentified role to and a protector role of my sister and my mom, who was a survivor of domestic violence.
04:56
And so this little seed grew and grew and grew until I found myself in many relationships that were very disempowering from early ages, with my friendships as well as early romantic relationships, where I was trying to understand what my needs were, unconsciously trying to get them met with whatever tools I didn’t have, and trying to navigate what that looked like as a little kid.
05:23
And of course, that blossomed into abusive dynamics as I grew into a young adult and my process of reclamation in my power has been really around like finding my voice and using it, supporting other women and doing the same thing and navigating what safety in relationships looks like as an adult and as somebody who wants to be a mother and somebody who wants to have a kind of traditional nuclear family where I feel safe and I can kind of heal the cycle of generational trauma and maybe dysfunction that I’ve seen and what was modeled for me.
06:00
So, yeah, there are, like you know, there are, there are other stories within the overarching story, but it’s a very common thing that I see with, like honestly, most of most of, if not all of my clients, where there are little seeds that are planted sort of in earlier years and then they, they grow into certain kinds of ways of navigating relational dynamics and then there’s a breaking point and then there’s a recovery point and all sorts of different ways of coping with that breaking point, which is so human and totally there’s nothing wrong with that.
06:34 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So, yeah, yeah, and you know it’s interesting that you talk about kind of like the seeds being planted in your youth. So right now one book that I’m working through in a group setting is Maya Salavitz, unbroken Brain, and basically you know, one of her big points with regard to addiction is that it starts way before our first like drink right or way before our first like interaction with a substance, because typically you know she talks about like brain development and how much everything has such a really strong imprint on children. And so there’s even like the conversation of adverse childhood experiences, which you know ACEs, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes for people there. I have like an NPR link that has the ACEs test that people can take but just really high correlation between adverse childhood experiences and a subsequent substance abuse years later. And it can be and you know the childhood experiences can be things such as abuse, but it can also just be, say, like divorce in the home, right, a parent that’s completely absent.
07:42
So it’s I’m glad that you’re bringing up the, this connection to the childhood roots, because I think a lot of people, probably a lot of people who listen to this episode, are just like wondering well, where did my problem start and oftentimes there’s roots that go before your first drink. So I’m glad that you brought that up and I know you mentioned a little bit about your client. So how do you find post traumatic growth showing up for the people you work with, whether it was your previous therapy clients or, now that you’ve transitioned into coaching, your current coaching clients?
08:16 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Well, with coaching clients it’s sort of like our goal. So, like in more of the counseling setting, it’s like we’re looking at what is presenting and then going into the past and unfolding it and unpacking it and sort of unweaving the tangled web that we’re left with, whereas with coaching it’s more like looking at what is presenting and then saying, okay, how do we want to, where do we want to go, what is that goal post at the end of the tunnel and how are we going to get there? And maybe there’s some unpacking of the past in order to understand how we’re going to move forward or what those blocks might be that are preventing us from moving forward. But there’s this real like orientation towards post traumatic growth is the goal. So with my coaching clients, a lot of them are finding that it’s in relationship that they are struggling because those inner wounded parts are coming online and they are upset and they are realizing, like with the creation of what a person might call safe relationship, safe enough relationship, whatever safety feels like for the person. There’s kind of like a process of grief that also becomes activated when somebody is meeting your needs in live time as an adult. But then you’re realizing, oh, this is a new experience for me to have my needs met, because that’s not my childhood experience, or the opposite, a real sort of inflamed sense of meeting your needs to be met by your adult partner because of that wound that’s there but them not having the skills to be able to do that. Or maybe it’s a sort of inflated sensitivity of needing everything to be met in a sort of like hyper vigilant, coming from sort of a hyper vigilant state trying to assess whether or not they are actually safe in relationship, whether or not it’s actually possible to create safety for themselves as an adult, because there isn’t really the embodied experience of what safety is or what safety feels like, because as a child or as an adolescent that wasn’t there or it was there on paper, but perhaps just like some subconscious, underlying needs that were really subtle were just missed over.
10:27
And none of this is to ever criticize or blame parents, because of course everyone’s doing the best that they, you know, I kind of have the belief that we all grew up with emotionally immature parents. Like I know, this is something in the community that people are like. My parents were immature emotionally and it’s like people are so emotionally mature and articulate now Like this is a brand new thing, and so just I always sort of encourage people to extend some grace where they’re, where they can, assuming that the parent was not actually intentionally causing harm. But I see, yeah, predominantly I see a lot in people trying to navigate how to articulate getting their needs met, articulating their needs at all, navigating their emotional responses when people aren’t able to meet those needs and how to just sort of like do the dance of really activated inner child in an adult body and validating that those needs are still present and how we can help people self soothe in order to tend to what those needs are without necessarily projecting all of their trauma onto another person and causing harm to that person.
11:30 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So yeah, yeah, no, that’s fascinating, so like if I were almost visualizing it, like I picture, and again, in the context of coaching, so not therapy. So in the context of coaching, someone comes to you who has gone through, say, traumatic events, and you’re setting the goal. The goal is the post traumatic growth, right Again, that that space of reconnection with oneself. So, in a sense, and are the steps basically like that? They have to be able to define safety for themselves, but for some of them they’ve never experienced it, right?
12:06 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Yeah. So it’s a lot of understanding, like what is safe enough, I think, for folks, and like really marking and imprinting for the person, like every single little win, because for some people, like we think that we need to do something at 100% in order to really experience a corruption or a sense of healing. But even just like the tiniest little, like even every 30 minutes, just remembering to look outside the window to give yourself a sense of like, okay, I’m here, I’m in the present moment, I’m safe, my nervous system can just like relax from this conversation for a little bit and then coming back for like 15 seconds, like even that little decision to tend to yourself and to tend to the needs and to create safety for yourself is a win. And so just really sort of assessing in the present moment, like what feels, like it needs support, and then helping people create a sense of support and connection to themselves. And then eventually, you know, folks realize that as they’re able to attune to their own needs.
13:11
What I witness, at least in my session, is that as folks are feeling like they’re able to attune to their own needs more quickly, they’re feeling more empowered to be able to have those conversations with other people relationally because there’s less risk because if I’m only okay if another person is tending to my needs, then that person can tend to my needs or not, but there’s risk in that and there’s becomes a dependency on that becoming the outcome. Whereas if a person has ability to soothe themselves and work with their own nervous system, their own emotional regulation skills, there’s a lot more agency that comes in that, a lot more choice and how you want to navigate the world and interactions with all kinds of relationships bosses, partners, friendships, parents, whatever.
13:54 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and you know. So what I love to was your word choice safe enough. The reason why that jumps out to me is because I know a from my own personal experience. Like there, I was in a phase at one point and I’ll speak specifically to romantic relationships where the idea of being vulnerable in the first place was paralyzing and I was in my mind. I was like, well, I’m going to create safety by never opening up. And if you ever encounter that right, like if someone is like, well, I’m not going to have a boundary, I’m just going to go ahead and create a whole wall. And how do you work backwards with people from when they they’re coming at you and they’re like, oh well, don’t worry, I know safe because, yeah, I just created a whole wall or a whole fortress and I stuck myself in the middle of the fortress with like alligators and a moat or all that. So, like, how do you work backwards from that? Or how do you help people work backwards from that?
14:57 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
I think just circling back to that feeling of safe enough, like if you’ve got this fortress, this is like imagining like a thick, thickly lined castle that goes up to the sky and alligators and dragons and everything, and it’s just like if safe enough for you looks like just looking out the window of your fortress and just seeing what’s outside Cool.
15:16
And if it looks like just talking to your alligator and saying like hey, I don’t need you to be, you know a kilometer out, I don’t need you to be patrolling in this way, I just want you to be at the door, like whatever it feels like to you to create just like 1%, 1% of vulnerability while you’re still maintaining your personal boundary. Because when we’ve been through experiences of trauma, oftentimes it’s a violation of our personal boundaries and so we need to like we feel that we need to like swing the pendulum all the way over to really protect our boundaries Sometimes. Sometimes that’s the response right and that that’s okay, and to just sort of like normalize that that’s where a person is at and that, instead of trying to make it like you’re doing something wrong, like we are trying to dominate our own selves again, and like internalize even further this, like responsive, I’m doing something wrong, I’m bad, I’m not okay, like whatever. I’m just honoring something happened to me. I feel like I need to put up this 1000% boundary and like that’s okay.
16:21
And I don’t I don’t ever push clients to like not respect their boundaries but once there is, oftentimes, once there is a sense of acceptance of, okay, this 1000% boundaries, here the boundary like kind of like it loses a bit of rigidity because, because it’s been honored, and then it might feel like a little bit okay to come down like to 999% or whatever you know and and you know, just to honor a person’s nervous system where they’re genuinely at, I think is really, really important, especially as survivors, you know.
16:54 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
That’s really thank you. That’s such a really helpful way to visualize it, because I think sometimes you know I also love your previous statement that we are in an age where, there, I feel like we’re in an age where so many people have been diving into personal development work and I do think that this is absolutely new for our generation. I think, especially like for me as a woman of color and you know, my family immigrated to the United States you know this being silent was so important to kind of keep a low radar right, like if I’m struggling, I’m not gonna go ask for help because I don’t wanna disclose my status as being, say, an undocumented immigrant, which was the case for my mother, right, and so there were. There’s no way that we were gonna, or my mom’s generation or the women before hers. We’re gonna have the luxury or the privilege to really have conversations about our feelings, because really they just haven’t survived, right, like they just had to get through the basic like needs, like making sure that there was shelter, making sure that there was food, making sure that there was clothing, and our generation. Thankfully we, overall many of us have those things already, and now it’s like well then, what’s next? And so I really appreciate you making that point, because I think, like when so many of us are like what the hell? And we’re so frustrated with our parents’, generation and those before them, I think it’s important to recognize, like that people are functioning as a result of the environment that they’re in, and when you are just surviving, you’re not gonna have that luxury of having conversations about your feelings and what you’re dealing with and handling. You’re just getting things done.
18:29
So to like bring that back to the other thing that I was gonna say was this idea of, yeah, the castle and the moat and the gators and people having the 1,000% boundary because they have been so wounded before.
18:45
I love that you talk about like, okay, once they’ve assessed a little bit of safety, bring it down to 999%, because I think what happens now, what I’ve noticed, is social media. You know, people make their grandiose posts on social media all the time, and I’m guilty of it. I post all the time too, and I think it’s very easy to see what other people are sharing as their experiences and measure ourselves up against that, and so if someone, for example, I’m very open about the things I have gone through and it is very healing for me. However, I never want other people to think that they have to go to the extreme of what I have done to get my story off of my chest in order to make progress. So when you have someone coming to you and they’re practicing that comparison of like, here I am and I have my moat with my gators and I see this other person who has like demolished the castle and has like planted a field and is frolicking around with all these little flowers and such how do?
19:49
that person kind of focus their growth on themselves.
19:53 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Oh my God, I love that question and I also really just like when I circled back a little bit before, when you had said that like it’s a luxury to be able to be in this time and this generation where there’s so much information available, like I really feel I think about generational trauma a lot and I really think that it’s a privilege to be where we’re at right now and it’s a privilege and we’re on the backs of all of the people who’ve been in a state of survival to get us here and so in. I think that like, hurt people, hurt people and we can pass along generational trauma. We also are privileged enough to be passing along generational healing by being in this space. So like, yes, there’s validity in your needs not getting met, yes, there’s room for grief and anger and rage, even fine. And like it doesn’t cancel out the fact that it’s really amazing that we have this access that we have right now and to be able to be in a space where maybe our parents, grandparents, cousins, ourselves even might be in the castle. And then there are folks out there that have like a sunshine, sunflower field and they’re just like tra-la-la look at me, like in my post-traumatic growth phase which I think like it’s really important to just remember that where everybody is at is beautiful and it is okay and it’s not wrong. Like you can’t do this wrong. We all are born. I think it’s important to remember our own privileges, like we’re all born in different intersections of many different factors and so if you need to have a castle and the gaiters in the moat, that’s okay, because there’s a reason for that and there’s no wrong way to go about your healing process.
21:31
I think that, like shame is really insidious and shame is really a huge part of navigating trauma and it’s a part of why I use my voice on social medias, because I’ve lived in a bubble of shame and I’ve lived in my own castle with maybe it wasn’t gaiters, maybe it was more of like just I don’t know fire breathing dragons like, but it was like one big, safe, purple dragon that just like covered the whole castle and kept me really safe. But it wasn’t that kind of energy Like it was a very fearful energy, like I lived in a castle of shame and fear and just being like a really scared little kid. And so I think it’s totally okay if you have your own dragon, your own gators, your own castle. It doesn’t.
22:17
It doesn’t mean that there’s anything Wrong with who you are, and I think that, like that voice that comes up or the narrative that comes up that says there’s something wrong with how I’m healing, that’s where your healing is is is, in whatever narrative that’s coming up, to say that you’re doing this incorrectly because there’s no way to do it Incorrectly, like even though social media has all of these kinds of like different people who make it seem like it’s something All of those people have a life behind their grid and behind their phone, where they’re a hot mess, just like all of us, because it’s a hot mess to go through trauma, it’s a hot mess to heal it, like there’s no other way to talk about it, like it’s not pretty. So I think that we don’t need to Minimize our experience further. A shame our experience further, because that is just kind of like the, the narrative of what it is to be in survival, and so we can just soften that a little bit and accept where we are. You know, it’s my hope for people anyway.
23:18 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and you know, and this is perfect because it kind of leans into my next question, because I was going to ask, right like, what are Common challenges that you see people facing as they are experiencing this growth? Right, because I mean, I think, like one of them has got to be that the comparing their journey to someone else’s journey and Feeling like they’re doing it wrong. I think that that’s common and I see it happening in recovery spaces too, where people think that their version of sobriety is wrong, when, mind you, there is no right way to Stop using substances that are deadly to you. Right, like, for some people, they go through phases and do harm reduction, some people cut Everything out co turkey, some people go to the doctor and get medications. Right like, there’s all sorts of different ways to get to that end goal for yourself and your relationship with substances, which absolutely makes sense in terms of also trauma recovery.
24:16
I also wonder, like, if guilt ever comes up, first, say your clients as they’re making progress, because, like they’re, again, I think from a recovery standpoint, there can sometimes be the guilt because suddenly we’re, we’re doing well, and there might be this internalized false narrative that we tell ourselves in recovery often that like oh well, you know, I caused so much Pain in my thinking, I caused so much drama in my drug abuse and I stressed everyone out. And how dare I now be happy?
24:48
Right, there’s a complicated grief that can come up. So I’m curious how you see that showing up for people specifically with post traumatic growth and obviously, like, as you all are listening, like I want to recognize that hand in hand work people’s recovering from Addictive substances can very easily fall under the umbrella of people recovering from traumatic experiences. So you know, obviously we’re not talking about two separate groups of people.
25:12
Sometimes Weaves and sometimes it doesn’t but I’m just kind of curious how it shows up in Jasmine’s experience with the people she gets to work with.
25:21 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Yeah, they definitely. They interlock and interweave. I think that guilt comes up a lot, like this sort of survivors. Guilt is something that I kind of hear often. You know, like I I’ve showed up really messily in certain circumstances or when I was in I try to kind of like use language of different parts with my clients, so kind of like we’ll have sort of survivor brain or trauma brain is is online and that’s what we used to describe one life. We’re really emotionally Disregulated or nervous systems really activated, and so it influences our thoughts and our feelings and our behaviors. And so when I’m in survivor mode or survival mode, I kind of like I Interact with people or act in certain ways, and then I feel bad about that later when I look back on it and I see the impact that that had on other people, on my job, on my relationship with myself.
26:16
Some people feel guilty for even how they interacted with them themselves, and so I think that guilt is a super common like and it doesn’t mean that anything. Again, like it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with a person for experiencing guilt. I think guilt is a there’s a human emotion and it’s it’s one that deserves honoring because it shows where your values are, and so when you are unpacking the emotion of guilt, it’s probably that it’s rubbing up with a value as to how you feel about it, that it’s rubbing up with a value as to how you want to be or how you Value yourself to be, or the image that you want for yourself, and that the way that you know things have unfolded have been not in Alignment with what those values are. But again, when we’re acting from a space of survival or a space where our sort of like inner child wounded parts are really online, we act. We actually don’t have access to the same parts of our brain that we do when we’re regulated, when we’re calm, when we have been, you know, practicing or certain self-care practices, whatever those might be for longer periods of time. We have more access to, kind of like our Prefrontal cortex, like the part of our brain that allows us to regulate and have conversations from a space where our rational parts are online. So I think, yeah, guilt is super common.
27:38
And I think another thing that’s an Like, not an issue, but something that comes up often is Sort of just intellectualizing, like there’s so much information out there and social media really like adds fuel to the fire, and so there’s so much intellectualization and kind of like hyper awareness as to what’s going on internally for a person.
27:57
That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re processing what’s going on. Just to speak to your feelings is not the same thing as feeling your feelings, and so I think that that’s another little caveat that kind of comes up as a little bit of a trend in in sessions where it’s like Okay, I’m hearing you say that you’re feeling guilt, I’m hearing you say that you’re feeling shame, I’m hearing you say that all of these things are present for you, but can we be with those feelings? Can we actually feel those feelings? How do we Express those feelings in a way that is healing for you, positive for you, not going to harm anybody or yourself, and how can we work with those experiences in a way that is supportive for your post traumatic growth, instead of maintaining your trauma loop of whatever. Whatever that is for that person?
28:43 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, yeah, that part on intellectualizing versus experiencing, I think, is like you said. We have so much access to information where we can talk the talk really easily, and so I guess how does someone go from saying I feel guilt to actually experiencing it? Is it like, do you have folks like name the sensation in their body? Like how are someone able to go from just yes, I know I have this versus I’m dealing with it?
29:17 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Yeah, it kind of depends on the person, their comfort level with going into emotion, because we all have our own relationship with ourself and we all have our own relation like. Therefore, we have our own relationship with our emotions and so if a person is feeling very like they have a castle, but not only to people into the world but also towards their own heart, it’s the same thing. It’s like you know, okay, what is 999 look like for you in terms of accessing that guilt, whereas somebody who has no castle at all and this is something I’m really proud of for myself and my own journey is I wouldn’t say that I’m 100% comfortable feeling all of my feelings, but I’m pretty close and in my own process of being like okay, like we can feel this and it’s not going to kill me, because I think that’s what we, when we have difficult or constricted relationships with our emotions, we oftentimes have a reason for those boundaries being around our heart. Like it can become so overwhelming to experience an emotion like guilt, it can completely consume us and we can’t get out of the bubble. So it’s about, like you know, if somebody does have sort of a boundary with their own heart to access their emotions, it’s about like titrating, we call it so like going into that feeling a little bit in a way that is safe, and then coming back to putting your wall back up. Okay, I’m going to let it down just a little bit, feel it for like 35 seconds with a person who can actually walk me through this. I’m going to put the wall back up and creating a sense of actual safety in the body so that we’re able to go into those experiences and feel our feelings.
30:49
And then, if a person is totally comfortable feeling their feelings, then we might do full blown practices.
30:54
We might, like you know, bring that into a session, we might ask a, we might create a ceremony around it.
31:01
We might do, like you know, with with anger. I think is really especially important for women. Like, a lot of us carry a lot of anger, to the point where it might even make a person sick, because there isn’t a, like, socially acceptable way for a woman to be angry still somehow, you know, and so I really encourage my female clients who all clients really but like, especially with, like you know, I want my women to be able to access their anger, like to do walks and to like do things with their or to sing, or to scream or to like hit pillows or whatever it is to like actually allow that energy to move instead of stay stagnant in their body, because our emotions and our feelings, like our feelings, are intellectualized idea of what we’re experiencing in our body, but our emotions are just energy and so we can express our energy and whatever capacity feels safe. But it’s about really assessing that boundary internally as well as our external boundaries towards the world. So there’s no one-size-fits-all, I guess.
32:05 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Yeah, and that’s a super helpful point that you made and I love that in terms of, like a way to express I actually have started taking boxing classes and I highly agree with that Like it’s so good, it’s so therapeutic, just to guess, get that energy out. And a couple of things you know remind me of a book that I love also Brianna Weiss book. The Mountain is you.
32:26
Yeah, I love that book. Yes, when you were talking about guilt and how guilt is basically showing you where your values are, right, you know, her text just does a really excellent job of pinpointing the different pieces of information that different emotions are actually giving you. And so, as opposed to feeling bad about the different emotions, as opposed to resisting those different emotions, like really being able to sit with them and kind of get curious and figure out what are those emotions telling you. So, with that being said, for someone who you mentioned is struggling with guilt, and that guilt is pointing out what their values are, what would you recommend as a way for people to find out what their values are?
33:09 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Well, I think that there are tons. I think in this case, like language is actually really important. I know I was just sort of like don’t intellectualize, feel, but now in this case I’m like okay, intellectualize a little bit, like I think there are a lot of really good resources out there where you just look Like I think we don’t really similarly with needs and feelings, like we don’t really realize how many words there are to actually create a sense of cognitive structure around our experience. And so if you don’t know what your values are, like, just go look up a list of values and like just circle them and you’ll actually find like I recently had a session with my therapist where she was like, do you wanna do a values exercise?
33:47
And my ego came out and I was like, okay, I think I know what my values are, but it was so good to go back because our values change. And it was so good to just go back to just like looking at a sheet of paper and like, okay, out of all of these things, what are the 10 most important, what are the five most important? And then of those five, like which three feel the most relevant right now? And you can learn a lot about yourself by just creating a little bit of language. Yeah, and let your values change, and I think that our values really change after we’ve been through trauma as well.
34:17 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Well, and you know the interesting thing too, going back to this idea of our generation having the privilege and the luxury to be having these conversations, we definitely were not talking about our values in the home.
34:28
Growing up, I feel like that narrative of family values is a common term thrown around, but I feel like the only values that I feel like that I was ever exposed to as a kid in terms of conversation was just like the general, like family values, like oh, women do this, women don’t do this, we do this like this, we don’t do this like this.
34:49
Right, and really, again, that was never giving me the opportunity to slow down and sit with myself and think about, well, what actually matters to me. You know, and I think so much of the work that I’ve had to do in recovery has been, you know, working on going through different beliefs that I’ve always had and then being like wait, does this actually resonate with me? Or have I just been like doing like busting my tail trying to meet some of these goals because other people set them up for me and I just bought into them, right? Or like my family was told that these were things that mattered and so I just automatically followed suit. So that’s been really empowering and I think that, yeah, I’ll post a resource in the link in the show notes also to a value survey for people to check out, because it is really helpful to have a sense of what actually matters to you like forget your family, forget what the people before you did and really tap into yourself.
35:46
Yeah, so my second to last question is I feel like you’ve probably hit on it, but if there was anything else that you would recommend for folks in terms of strategies for dealing with the growth period after a traumatic event, I think it’s important. I would love for you actually if you can differentiate therapy between coaching, because you have had the opportunity to navigate both walks as a professional and when should someone see a therapist for their trauma? When should someone transition into coaching for their trauma? Like, if someone’s like man this is me I’ve been struggling how do they?
36:30
know which path to take.
36:32 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Yeah. So when you, it’s so wild because we live in a time where coaching is just like such a broad scope and so there are a lot of somatic coaches out there that probably would be able to be really supportive when it comes to like post-traumatic stress symptoms. But if you’re finding yourself like really really, really, really, really really stuck there are certain areas of town that you can’t go to, you’re having like chronic panic attacks, like those symptoms of your PTSD symptoms are really loud and really frequent all the time and you’re feeling like you are really not able to move through them, I would really support getting, or really suggest getting support from like a mental health professional. It’s just a different experience. It’s just a different experience, like educationally, where a person is coming from in terms of coaching. You don’t really know. I would really also recommend that you vet your coaches, like I would. Really there’s such access to coaches out there and like where it’s like trauma informed or all over the place, but we don’t always know what that means for certain people, and so I really encourage people to, when you’re seeking help from a coach, remember that you’re seeking sort of supportive tools to help you from where you are presently to go towards the future. In some cases that might look like doing emotional regulation tools. For some coaches that might be just like goal setting and following through with like little goals here and there. I don’t know, I don’t know all of the coaches, but I know there’s so many out there but just like doing a little bit of research to really identify what your needs are and then choose from there in terms of coaching and to do your. It’s kind of a catch 22 because you don’t really know what your needs are until you get support. And so sometimes my experience okay, I’m gonna go into a bit of my experience right now, that’s okay A few years ago was working.
38:29
I knew that I had a lot of traumatic stuff that I was processing and I sought support from a coach, thinking that because they had a really glowing presentation online, I thought that this person was gonna be the one that was gonna help me go through it. And there was this real kind of codependency energy that I was going into the relationship with of like this person is going to six me, help me, heal me, whatever. And that’s not the energy that you wanna go into these relationships with, but that’s the energy that I went into this relationship with and I was attracted to this person because of the way that they talked about trauma, the way they talked about healing. They were very spiritual but in a way that seemed very like grounded in ancestral work, in a way that seemed very in alignment with what I valued. And so I did like pay a good chunk of money to go into a container with this person where actually my needs were not met and harm was kind of done because their trauma or their lens was not what I thought it was.
39:38
And so I think, just like really getting articulate and articulate with what you are looking for and advocating, like really advocating for what those needs are are really important and it’s kind of difficult because sometimes, like for myself, I had to walk through it to realize that my needs were something else than what I thought they were. So just being really careful and honestly like nothing, nothing bad can come from seeing a therapist like a mental health professional first and then sort of working through is it here in this kind of space that I need support, or is it in a space that’s more coachy that I need support? But I think it’s always important to prioritize, sort of like your safety and your stabilization and with that it’s probably better to go the mental health through. Yeah.
40:28 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Okay, that’s really helpful because I think, like, that question comes up a lot for folks and so I always love to hear different people’s takes on that, that question, for sure, and I think that the vetting a coach is incredibly important because, you know, anyone can call themselves a coach and so basically, like, if you are going to invest in someone supporting you, just making sure that they’ve got the resources and the tools to actually help you get to where you want to be and if not, again like same thing with people in recovery who come to me, I always encouraged them to go to mental health professionals for therapy, for really, like doing that, digging into the past- I always am like you know, because I work with a therapist myself like I have a coach and a therapist and I feel like they’re both very helpful for my mental health in different ways, right like the coach movement, I feel like for me a coach is action based and forward moving, is kind of like a good accountability and support and like a good cheerleader and so like mirror up to you and call you out, but I think the therapist is the one that really helps you kind of like dig into those skeletons in a in a safe way so that you can kind of harm to yourself either.
41:36
What’s your inspiration so awesome.
41:38 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Yeah, and it’s like it’s not a, it’s not a linear process, like I think that in my head at a certain point I was like okay, well, I need to do all of this, like skeleton digging up, and then I need to like figure out what my forward steps are. But I find that it’s just a constant ping pong, because as I move forward I’m like wait, but that is activating something, what’s that? And so then I kind of so, you know, I think it’s it’s great to have access to both, like if that is accessible. Like you know somebody that can kind of like toe the line a little bit between both?
42:09 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
yeah, yes, I’m so glad that you brought that up because you know I’ve just hit six, six, one, I think six I have hit three years sober. I don’t know where the number six came from.
42:21
Thank you. And this past year, so in my third year of recovery, I actually went back and got a new therapist with a background in disordered eating, because I realized it took me two years of not drinking to discover that I had such a complicated relationship with food and my body that I was like, whoa, like this is not, I’m not. I can’t talk to a personal trainer about this, I can’t talk to just like a health coach about it, like no, no, no, I need to talk to a therapist and really dig in. And so I’m so glad that you brought that up, because it this is absolutely not linear and you know we didn’t really intense work this past year for me to really reshape my, my mindset around my body and eating, because I just I had no clue. I literally had no clue how much of the seeds that were planted when I was a child, like how much those grew into full blown, like just lack of self acceptance and certain areas of my life that were really hurting me.
43:27
And again, because alcohol for me was my primary issue, I couldn’t see the other layers of the onion. So it’s like kind of with alcohol, and then you just keep going and going and so you know, who knows that I feel like more will be revealed as my life continues. But I’m just really glad that you brought that point up because I want folks to realize that like there is really an endpoint for either or for that kind of support, right like you have both at the same time. There may be times when you going to a therapist isn’t relevant and really coaching is going to help you, and then there’s times that you need to stop everything and go back to a therapist because something has come up. So just thank you so much for bringing that up, because I think that’s a super, super, super important point.
44:11 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Of course.
44:12 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
So, jasmine, anything else that you want to share about the work that you do, anything else or how can people connect with you? Like, what’s the best way to put for folks to find you because you are taking clients correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:26 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
I am taking clients. The quickest way to get in touch with me is probably through Instagram because I, like many others, seem to not be able to put my phone away as often as I should. But I, yeah, I’m at rising rooted wellness on Instagram or my website. You can get in touch with me there as well, which is rising rooted wellness calm. But, yeah, I am taking on one on one coaching clients for folks who are navigating post traumatic growth and I’m going.
44:54
Oh, and I just released a little book. I don’t know if you saw it on Instagram. It’s a little. It’s a little like nurturance book for self care. It’s a three months habit tracker and it’s got coloring pages on every day for those three months so that there are little pockets of slowness like woven into your day. There’s a lot of free practices, like weekly self care challenges. It’s really supportive. I wanted it to come out for winter time because I know a lot of folks struggle in the winter, myself one of them being one of them, and there are actually there’s a values list in the book as well as needs and emotions and like over 150 affirmations for your times when you’re struggling, like it’s packed full of all sorts of like seeds for growth. So yeah, so that’s also a part of who I am now. I guess that’s in the world.
45:46 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I will definitely share that as well. Yeah, I mean Jasmine, thank you. Thank you so much again. I think that you have provided a wealth of education in you know the time that we’ve been having this conversation. And again, folks, you can follow Jasmine at rising rooted wellness on Instagram. I will put all the links for the different things that came up in our conversation in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Jasmine. I really appreciate your time with us today.
46:13 – Jasmine Vatuloka (Guest)
Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for having me, and I’m just going to have that image of the castle with the gators in the front in my mind, I think, for the rest of the day. Yeah, thank you so much.
46:27 – Jessica Dueñas (Host)
Hey, if you are enjoying what you are listening to, I invite you to subscribe and share the podcast, but also go to my website, bottomless to sober calm, and find out other opportunities to work with me, from free workshops to writing classes to one to one life coaching opportunities. You can schedule a free consultation for that. Everything is available at bottomless to sober calm. See you then.
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