108. Exploring Trauma and Healing for Sensitives with Charli McLachlan

Dive deep into the realm of sensitivity, trauma, and healing with Charlie McLachlan in this enlightening podcast series.

Join us as we explore the unique experiences of sensitives and navigate the path to healing. Charlie shares profound insights and practical strategies to empower sensitives on their journey to emotional well-being.

Tune in to embark on a transformative exploration of trauma and healing for sensitive.

Your path to emotional resilience begins here.

Chapters
00:00 - Intro
02:38 - You can't be a trauma coach without living a life of trauma
07:38 - Success is equal to freedom
10:54 - Why is it important to talk about trauma
12:42 - What trauma truly means
15:25 - Does everyone have trauma?
16:48 - How trauma and emotional strength go together
18:41 - How do we know that trauma is holding us back?
20:16 - How to start the trauma healing journey
21:44 - Here's a bonus for people who are highly sensitive
25:18 - Healing has been conditioned to be scary
27:44 - Outro

Know more about Charli's work at:
https://www.charlimclachlan.com

Connect  on her social media account:
Instagram: Charli McLachlan

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Transcript

0:00

Validating the fact that what we go through is real and huge and it's putting powerful language to basically what words that we haven't had. So understanding things like generational trauma, looking at the family patterns and, and not just having to show up and do tradition because that's what the family dictates of you. But when we can understand things a bit broader, then we have space to have conversations, have very courageous conversations. Welcome to the Sensitive Success Podcast, where we explore the unique challenges and opportunities that comes with being a sensitive changemaker in today's world. I'm your host, Frida Kahlbo, and I have spent the last decade recreating my life. I moved from Sweden to New Zealand and now live in the beautiful bush with my husband and two kids. Homeschooling and creating a life and business that works for me with the help of my sensitivity. I'm excited to share conversations with experts, thought leaders, and fellow sensitive people who also see the world through the lens of sensitivity. Thank you so much for being here because it means that you're creating sensitive success too, which is precisely what the world needs. Let's get started. Welcome to the first conversation for the year of sensitive success, and I'm excited to say welcome to Charlie McLaughlin. Welcome, Charlie. Hi. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to have you here. And Charlie is a mom of two young teens and emotional strength and trauma coach. gets excited about seeing people take control over their own healing and well being no matter what they've journeyed through and stepping into their own identity, strength and freedom from the narratives they conditioned to believe about themselves. I love that. And that is so aligned with what I'm doing as well. So that's why I wanted to have you here on the podcast. So start a little bit about telling about your journey and how you come to do what you do. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So Emotional Strength and Trauma Coach. That's the, I guess, the title that I kind of Took me a while to even figure out how do you put all of that into a label, but to make it easy for people, that's where I landed. It's not like I just woke up one day and thought, Oh, this is what I want to do with my life. It ended up being amidst, you know, the journey of life itself for me kind of led me already doing and how I'm already supporting people. Maybe I just put a label on it and. You know, step into that. So I did that and it did come through. Like I often say, you can't be a trauma coach without living a life of trauma as really as confronting as that is. But it's not one of those things you can go and learn about and sort of think, Oh yeah, cool. Take that off. And now I'm a trauma coach. You really come in with your full experience and I'm sure you can relate to it, especially with, you know, the sensitivity and highly sensitive aspect as well. You don't just learn about it and then, and then think, you know, stuff. It's really the lived journey. So. Very, very long story short, I guess 38 year story short, I did live through and experience a lot of trauma in my life, but without even knowing what it was, I just, especially as a child, you look around and you think, Oh yeah, well, this is normal, right? This is what happens. It's what we believe about ourselves. And then we keep growing and doing life and, and we kind of just start to sort of think, well, what, you know, we take in the world around us and think, well, is this normal? Is this my normal? And we sort of start to go inwards within ourselves. And, and then in the last few years, I went through a really horrific and painful divorce. I had been married for 14 years and then went for a very painful divorce, very ugly, kind of all the things that you don't want to have happen happened. And so it was really my journey through that as to how I picked myself back up, how I got myself out of bed, how I refocused and set my intention towards my children, making sure they got through this healthy and safely and well. I guess that was the culmination of all the trauma. And there was a lot of religious trauma in amongst, I guess, both the childhood and the growing up and the marriage as well. So just a lot of that. Things that I never had the words for. I didn't know what I was experiencing and it wasn't until I started healing and then hindsight started to give me the language to piece together my experience. A bit of my personal background is that, you know, my background is in education and psychology, um, a bit of social work and homelessness and I was both dragged through the family court and commissioned to work for the family court, so I've had sort of inside and outside view and perspective of courts as well. So that's a lot of very diverse, um, environments and traumatic induced Environments as well. So I guess with all of that combined and with the journey, this just happened, I didn't know how to sort of, you know, run business or formalize anything, but just, there's been this beautiful, I guess, grace in my life that has allowed me to put myself out there. And through the types of relationships and connections that I had had from all the arenas I just shared, allowed something really beautiful to sort of just grow in this space. So in this space, I used my knowledge, I worked one on one with people who are coming out of abuse or narcissistic abuse or coercive control, religion. But then I also run like groups for women who are healing. So there's a community of women to heal together. And then I run training for like Leaders and organizations so that they're aware of what their people are showing up with. So it's, it's very varied, but it all comes down to that language of trauma. I try to take the heat out of that word trauma. It's not a tag word for me. It's or a fad word, you know, that people throw around. It's really the human experience and we can do this so much differently. So that's what I bring to the arena of trauma. Yeah, I love that. And obviously, sorry that you had to go through all this hardship, but also seeing how that can transform into something this beautiful and helping others must feel really meaningful. Yeah, really, really healing. I heal a lot through that as well in taking the power back for myself. But supporting others to take their power back in that situation and to kind of alchemize the situation into something beautiful and healing, despite the, you know, at times horrific experiences that people have experienced. And this is everyday people. It's not like any special people. We've all been through some stuff. You know, we go to the supermarket, you don't know what the person next to you is carrying or journeying. So it's that it's just creating space for people to be. Yeah, themselves and that and to alchemize into a more powerful, powerful meaning. Love that. And I want to talk about more about trauma, but what does success mean to you? That's such a good question. Because I've done a lot of work on that, because I guess, especially in our society, we're conditioned to believe that success is. Earn lots of money, be very popular and well known and buy all the trimmings, you know, have the house, have the cars, have the boats, have the holidays. And that just wasn't it. I was leaning into that and there's actually been, you know, versions of me and stages of me where I've had all of it. You know, I've traveled the world, I've owned the homes, I've done the things. And I realized that was not success for me, but it left me in a place of, well, what the hell is success? And I did not know. I don't think I necessarily a hundred percent know. Maybe. However, for me right now, success for me is freedom and the autonomy to be myself and make decisions based on what I need, when I need them. So, to work in a way that I Honours my soul and my needs first, which is very non traditional and it's outside of the typical nine to five box and sitting in traffic both ways. That's not success to me. It's that self pride and that self knowing that what I'm doing, I show up in full integrity and honour in the spaces that I do show up. And knowing that I can completely, yeah, have that autonomy and that sense of control over myself and that arena success is like having those joy moments. It's not to say that all of life is joyful because it's not or easy again, it's not, but it's knowing that in this space, I'm creating what this needs to be for me and I can find joy in, you know, The atmosphere or the environment that I set up around here, I can find joy in the types of connections that I'm that I attract and people that come to me, I find a hell of a lot of joy when I choose to set my office up at the beach, you know, often take my people often see me working. At the beach, my local beach and just sit there and do all my admin and my office work like that, because that to me is success. And I think lastly, like abundance, I've done a lot of work on like being abundant is a part of success for me. However, abundant doesn't necessarily mean the dollar figures and the numbers. That's not to say I do have it or I don't have it. It's more to say that I find abundance in many other ways. You know, a friend dropped in and bought me flowers the other day. And. That to me speaks volumes. You know, I've had, you know, people reach out and want to offer services or connect or switch services or offer a holiday home for me and the kids to go and stay in for a weekend, you know, it's those little beautiful things that I attract that are so incredibly abundant that I don't have to pour over literally numbers to. To justify it's like actually when I pause and look out there, this is how I measure success for me. I'm seeing all these things in my life. Love that. Love that. And yeah, I agree for me as well. Success is really linked with freedom and to really create the lives that we want to live and to, to be who we are. Yeah. So do you feel like you're successful? Do you feel like you're there? A hundred percent. I absolutely feel like I'm successful. And again, I guess in the early stages, I was really confused because I thought, Oh, maybe success. I'm not doing it right because I come out of the corporate world as well. So it took me a little while to adjust my brain and my heart to, to get comfortable with success being different to what the mainstream had taught me. Yeah. I think it's the brave choice. When we step out and do this, it's Definitely. And as you say, it's a reprogramming of ourselves, like what is really important to me and not look so much as at everyone else. And if we go back to the trauma, I feel like I'm seeing trauma all over the place on social media and everyone is talking about it. I'm actually doing a certification to be trauma informed as a coach. And, and why do you think it's so important to talk about trauma? Honoring the human experience, I think, and I mean, I can only speak from Kiwi culture, like being brought up in New Zealand, but it was really ingrained a part of our culture to just sort of shut up and put up, do as you're told, do what I say when I say, don't ask questions. So we've been conditioned to really shove a lot of ourselves and our life experience, um, to shove it away, to shut it down, to. Gaslight ourselves, you know, when we cry, like, you know, growing up, the saying was very popular, you know, stop crying, I'll give you something to really cry about, you know, and Yeah, it's a hard one. So we really, for me, it's, it's simply honoring the humanness in us and validating the fact that what we go through is real and huge and it's putting powerful language to. Basically what words that we haven't had, so understanding things like generational trauma, looking at the family patterns and, and not just having to show up and do tradition because that's what the family dictates of you. But when we can understand things a bit broader, then we have space to have conversations, have very courageous conversations, choose for ourselves, choose what freedom feels like and what autonomy feels like, validate each other, heal through relationships. Yeah. And then hopefully, you know, we have an opportunity to do this right. And if we can get this right. We can make massive changes to the generations coming after us. You know, I often say to clients, particularly parent clients that I'm with, like, you're healing your life and your lineage. Yeah. Love that. Gave me goosebumps. So powerful. So if someone listening in and they're not really sure what this trauma actually mean. That's a good question. There's no one sort of definitive, like, you know, in the dictionary. However, trauma really is what happens inside of us. As a result of what happens outside of us. So people will often think, you know, like I had a car accident, they'll think, oh, that, that was traumatic, but the trauma wasn't the car accident. The trauma was what happened inside of us as a result of the car accident. So where our needs meet, where we abandoned, did we, did the ambulance turn up on time or where we left? Did people support us in our healing? Did people validate the stress of that? What has it led us to believe about ourselves inside? Yeah. So it really is that internal experience of the external factors. Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And one thing that that I've discovered is I've been thinking about trauma. And if I've had some trauma that I can't remember or anything like that, because my body have felt. Well, you put a post out the other day about the somatic experience of trauma and I like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick on all of those things, but I don't have that traumatic event in my life. Um, So it was like a revelation to see that it doesn't have to be that big thing. It can be those small things that you store up. I hear that a lot. People will say to me, Oh, I don't have trauma. And I'm just like, okay, that's not true, but okay. I don't say it to them, you know, if they're not ready to hear it, but, um, because often people are on their own timeline and just through gentle and very kind exposure to the truth about what's out there. And you're bringing again, that language and that awareness to the fact that, yeah, we experienced trauma. In our bodies, like I said, my background was in psychology and for me, I moved away from that into the more whole body being because we experience trauma in ourselves, cells, in our nervous system, not just in our thoughts and memories and thinking patterns. In fact, that would be the least way that we experienced trauma. We experienced it very somatically and very much in our body. And people don't even sometimes realize that that's what they're experiencing, you know, especially if they, they get a fright from something or they. They're in a relationship in the way that they're responding to something and, and their personal responses are in fact, you know, the stress responses in our body. And so unconsciously our bodies switching into survival mode and doing what it knows and then consciously we don't even recognize that that's what it is. So yeah, it's really the whole, whole being experience. So do you think that everyone has trauma? It's a broad and brave generalization and it can come across a bit judgy. So I don't like to say, yeah, sure. Everyone's experienced trauma, but in my experience and what I'm learning, the more I learn, the more I connect with people. Yes. But it doesn't have to be that big heated, Oh, well, I haven't had a car accident or my parents had a happy marriage or I never went through anything hard. If we can come into honoring the body experience and knowing it's okay, it's safe. Then yes, I think people might realize that it's not this big overwhelming monster. It is something that we all share. It's something we all have in common. And when we look around the world at everything happening, how can we not? How can we not have it? You know, especially when we're sensitive, we pick up on all the things that can really, really affect us. So I think if we make it not the big scary thing and we make it the gentle human experience, then, then yes, I do think that all humans experience it to different degrees. Yeah. Yeah. I like that shift from this huge, overwhelming, scary experience to something that we can take one step to heal and to look at. So you talk about trauma and emotional strength. How do you see they go together? Very much so in terms of, you know, our emotions and the way that we experience life. I think for me, it's just equipping people with, again, the language. And the awareness of all these things, you know, when we start to realize we have emotions, like in the English language alone, we've got over 150 emotions. When you start to look at other languages, they, they have beautiful words to describe even more, even more than 150 human emotions. And yet when it comes to emotions, humans will often just go happy, sad, afraid. And. Or angry, it's like the four kind of common ones, but actually underneath all of those is just huge. So I think it's just equipping with language. And then once again, coming into that somatic space, realizing that, Oh, I'm not just, I'm not just like angry. So therefore I'll say I'm angry. How are you experiencing that anger? What is that doing in your body? How are you feeling? Where are you feeling heat and inflammation? Where are you feeling muscle tension and a lack of control? Where are you feeling like you want to just go and have this burst of adrenaline and energy? And what's driving that? And why is it in that part of your body? And you know, and all of that. So it's more than just thinking through the thing. It's experiencing the thing. So I guess I support people to learn how to support that in their bodies. And often I won't, I won't say to someone like, what are you feeling? I'll say, where are you feeling? You know, and that changes the dynamic completely. So to me, the trauma healing experience and the emotional strength experience, they go hand in hand and sort of support each other. Yeah. Powerful combination. Definitely. So how, how do we know if trauma is holding us back from creating the life or the business that we want to create? That's a good way of asking the question. I guess when it's affected us, you know, on the inside and how we show up and what we now believe about ourselves and what we believe about the world or what we believe about people and relationships. As we start to heal, all of that stuff starts to change. So. We start to back ourselves more. We start to know ourselves more. We start to prioritize ourselves more, love ourselves more. So I think as we start to have that healing growth and awareness, it kind of creates this path in front of us of what do I want to choose? Do I want to stay stuck in the nine to five rut? Or do I want to pursue something for me? Because now I know I'm worthy of pursuing something. I'm worthy of my creative ideas being out there in this world. And I want to move into that. So I think that the trauma just creates these roadblocks and sometimes we don't know we have them and that's fine. However, another part of the human experience is connection and learning and understanding and awareness. And I think as we start to have all of this and allow it into our lives. You know, very gently. Yeah, we start to see that path kind of open up. And I guess the roadblocks come up and we then figure out, Oh, do I want to deal with this? And maybe we don't. Maybe it's too hard and we walk away. Or maybe we say, okay, okay, I'm going to get the skills to deal with this roadblock and move this one. Heal a little bit, move on to the next one. So if someone is listening to this and feeling, yes, I feel like I need to work on this. Where do you recommend them to start? Well, I absolutely believe that. Yeah. Everybody. Start with, with feeling, what do I feel? Where do I feel it? Just get really curious about that and have a play with it in your own life. And that's going to reveal some answers and some backgrounds and some reasons, and you can deal with that. However you like to process that for yourself, get some support. Get some therapy. There's so many options of therapy. So in my mind, therapy is not going and sitting down with a counselor for an hour. It can be that, and that's really good. I have done that at times in my life. And there are many other types of therapy as well. So if there's serious trauma there, you can get some serious trauma therapy work. If there's other stuff that you just need a little bit, it might be different types of modalities. That you want to indulge in, it can even be, you know, like getting into boxing or art or climbing the mountains or, you know, anything that's going to allow your body to process freely. Dance is another good one. Breath work is a powerful one. There's so many modalities out there. Be really courageous, be really self compassionate, and just know that as you do start to reach out and piece all of this together for you, there are going to be hard days. And that's okay. So know that it's okay to feel a little bit challenged. That's good. When there's a challenge, reach out and get the support that you need. Honor your boundaries. That's a really hard one. I work with people a lot on boundaries. It's so hard. It changes who you attract. It changes who's in your circle. It changes the voices that are echoing. You know, if you're stuck in a circle of family or friends that are not encouraging. Then you're not probably going to succeed at pursuing this as easily as if you have now attracted people who are going to have your back. Women who are going to say your name. People who are going to support the hell out of you and praise your amazing gifts that you have to bring into this world. Yeah, knowing your worth. Getting into nature, all of these things that actually echo who you are. And if you're ready to do the work, take a deep breath, hold on for the ride. And know that when you step out, there are incredible and powerful people like us out there that will, you know, catch you and hold your hand and journey this with you. Beautiful. So is there something special that we should think of as highly sensitive? Maybe something that is really beneficial to us or something that is not so beneficial? I think the things that are beneficial is learning to trust your own gut, especially as a highly sensitive. As a highly sensitive, your gut is incredibly trustworthy. You know, you know it in your body and in your being, and it's actually your brain That makes you second guess everything So if we can do some of these beautiful powerful Somatic experiences like getting into nature likes of being surrounded by peaceful people who feel safe like doing breath work and movement and somatic things Yoga is another good one. Anything that allows us to really, truly connect with ourself and our body and increase that self knowing and that self trusting and then honoring that step by step, again, surrounded by people who get it and who are similar. Yeah. I think being highly sensitive, we often attract people who like to control or exploit that sensitivity. It benefits them greatly. You do get controllers and abusers who They really get off on your sensitivity because it completely benefits them. So I often, I teach it like a self compassion module in my eMERGE course, and I often say to people like everything that you have to give to others, because you're incredible at this, you've got the most incredible compassion skills and sensitivity skills and support skills. And you do that so beautifully for other people, friends, bosses, colleagues, partners. Do it for you first, you know, you know, you can do it because you're doing it for other people, but allow yourself to know that you can give it to you. So, uh, yeah, it takes a little bit of practice, but keep going and know that you're freaking worthy of it. Love that. Yeah, definitely. We need to be our own best supporters. If we're not, no one else will either. So yeah, definitely. So is there something that you wish everyone knew about trauma? It's okay. And it's going to be okay. You know, it's not to say that whatever happened is okay. But your experience of this is real. Your experience and how it affected you is a hundred percent real. No matter what anybody else says or accuses or judges. And healing is really scary. It's been made to be scary. I believe it's been conditioned to be scary. So know that if you step into this arena, that you are already brave. You're creating safety for yourself and you are so worthy of it. Yeah. Trauma doesn't have to be your whole story. Yeah. And if anyone wants to know more about your work, where is the best place to find you? Thank you. I am on all socials. It's 2024. So you got to be there even if you don't love it. Um, Instagram, I am there, Facebook, I am there, LinkedIn, I am there and I have a website too. So it'd be all. You can look up Charlie McLaughlin and these things should come up or emotional strength and trauma coach, um, depending on the flip of the platform is where the name changes. And yeah, I offer the, like I said before, the one on one. Work, which you can reach out any time to book in. And then I run my courses throughout the year. So I've got one starting in February. That's the Emerge course for women. That's a small group for women healing after trauma, abuse, burnout, or who are just ready to claim their identity back. It's an eight week course. And then I run my workshops for training on trauma informed practice sporadically throughout the year as well. So they're just advertised on those platforms. Perfect. And we'll put the link in the show notes here as well. Anything else that you would like to say to the sensitives that are listening? Thank you for being you. Thank you for allowing your sensitivity into the world and into our relationships. Often what we think is like, You know, a soft thing is actually a powerful, powerful thing that we have to offer. So as parents, as partners, as business people, as friends, as intuitives, as animal lovers. as creatives. It's an incredible tool. So thank you for being you. And please keep leaning into that beautiful part of you and bring it into the world even more beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on, on the podcast and, and for the work that you do in the world. It's so important. So thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Sensitive Success. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share it with someone who could benefit from this message and come over and connect with me on Instagram at Frida Karpel. And remember, sensitivity is neither good or bad. It's what we make of it. Embrace your sensitivity and use it to create sensitive success your way.