[00:07] Welcome everyone to the show.
[00:09] This is another episode of Your Soul's Transformation podcast.
[00:14] I am your host, Dimple Bindra.
[00:15] And today we have Dr. Mario Rocha.
[00:18] He is a licensed marriage and family therapist and has been in the mental health field for over 10 years.
[00:25] He works with individuals and couples who are ready to make changes and want to live their best life.
[00:31] Dr. Mario Rocha specializes in trauma, depression, anxiety, management, relationship issues, life changes, grief and loss, life stage issues, building self-confidence, and helping you achieve your life goals.
[00:50] Hi.
[00:50] Thank you.
[00:50] Nice to be here.
[00:52] Dr. Mario, it's such a pleasure that you're here on my show today.
[00:56] I have been following your work for quite some time already.
[00:59] And today it's an honor for me to even ask you to speak on this topic that so many people are struggling with.
[01:08] Our topic today is navigating creating love and trauma, strengthening couples' bonds in the face of adversity.
[01:16] So my first question, sir, is I'm curious, how does trauma really show up in the day-to-day life of a couple?
[01:25] It must have some subtle signs, right?
[01:28] Well, I think for trauma, it shows up in different ways for different people, but there are some overarching themes that might show up.
[01:41] So if we're talking about PTSD, we're talking about complex PTSD, right?
[01:52] Then we're talking about things that will show up and affect everything about an individual.
[02:02] First, we have to look at the individual and then how it's connecting with the couple. For example, we have things called flashbacks, right?
[02:10] Not only will we have flashbacks where maybe memories of trauma will flash back.
[02:17] Some people will have smells that will flash back of trauma.
[02:24] We also have emotional flashbacks, right?
[02:28] What that means is a certain conversation or a certain thing that your partner does will trigger a flood of emotions that are connected to our past trauma.
[02:47] And we might not understand that that's connected to our past trauma.
[02:52] We just might have a really intense flood of emotion because your partner didn't take out the trash or there was an argument over something, a disagreement over the kids or whatever it might be.
[03:10] And what I always tell clients is if the emotion feels really intense, if the emotion feels like it's coming from a really deep place, then it's probably an emotional flashback.
[03:26] Again, how that shows up for people, it shows up in different ways. Some people, they're more of a fighter when they get into trauma.
[03:37] So they will react in an aggressive way.
[03:40] Some people are runners, so they will shut down and they will not engage with their partner.
[03:48] Some people just freeze up in the moment.
[03:52] There's another response called fawning, which means I kind of go along with everything my partner says and does because I don't want to upset them, right?
[04:10] And that's connected to past trauma because maybe that's how I survived my abuser.
[04:17] Again, it can show up in a whole lot of different ways, in sometimes big ways and sometimes small ways.
[04:26] But really, what I tell clients is it affects all of who we are, right?
[04:34] Trauma affects our biology, our nervous system.
[04:40] Our body and how it responds and how it feels, trauma affects our emotional regulation, that it affects how we feel in our ability to regulate how we feel.
[04:54] It affects our self-esteem and our confidence, it affects how we communicate, right?
[05:02] And really, if it's severe trauma, but really any kind of severe traumatic events will affect our soul, our psyche, right?
[05:14] We have really deep defenses in the deeper parts of who we are that affect again, everything, right?
[05:25] So there's a whole lot of layers to trauma and again how it shows up in relationships.
[05:33] Thank you for telling us that.
[05:34] And enlightening me and our listeners, I'm curious about, you mentioned Fighters, Runners.
[05:41] You also mentioned people who shut down, and then you used a term, you said there are some people, what was the term again that you used?
[05:52] How do you spell it, "fawning," and what does that mean?
[06:01] Like literally a person who would just not react and be like, alright, I'm just going to go with whatever my partner says.
[06:09] Well, the reaction is to please, the reaction is to not create any problems, right?
[06:20] So if the husband gets angry, for example, if the wife is a fawn kind of person, then she'll respond and just go along with everything like, oh, it's my fault.
[06:32] She'll take the blame, she will do extra things to make her husband happy, and vice versa.
[06:39] I mean, men do the same thing, right?
[06:41] If they have this kind of response to trauma, then what they're gonna do is they're gonna feel like they're at fault.
[06:50] So they have to make up for it.
[06:52] They have to please the person and even if the person is abusing them.
[06:56] So that's a fawn response.
[07:00] Thank you, Doctor.
[07:00] This is great because I feel like even though so I always knew about the fighters, the runners, and the people who shut down, the fawners, I would call them people pleasers.
[07:10] Yeah, for sure.
[07:11] And sometimes it starts with home, and I know that as these people go outside and work, then they incorporate or exhibit the same behavior at workplaces, but that's another podcast.
[07:23] OK.
[07:23] My next question is, it's fascinating.
[07:26] And speaking of the signs which you mentioned already, are there any that might just fly under the radar indicating that one or both the partners are wrestling with some unresolved issues?
[07:41] Can you give us with some examples of maybe when a couple gets agitated about something in a partner, and I know they are probably getting triggered, and it might be because of something that happened in the past, their mom did something or their dad did something, they just see that behavior in their partner, and it's hard for them to project.
[08:04] But my question is what just flies under the radar and we don't even know, we don't even know that these two people have trauma.
[08:12] You know, like I said, everybody is a little bit different, but one of the things I notice in relationships where one or both people have trauma is sometimes there'll be a really big disconnection emotionally between the two, right?
[08:31] If one of the partners has some severe trauma, sometimes they don't like to talk about it.
[08:40] Right.
[08:41] Especially if they haven't done the work.
[08:43] If they haven't been in therapy, they don't want to remember it.
[08:48] They don't like to talk about it.
[08:49] They don't like anything to bring up that trauma.
[08:54] Right.
[08:54] So, what they'll do is they'll cut themselves off emotionally.
[08:59] Right.
[09:00] But what that feels like for the other partner is maybe they're feeling like they're not loved, they'll, they'll create a distance.
[09:08] Right.
[09:09] Again, that creates a situation where the other partner might be feeling like, oh, there's something wrong here there.
[09:19] Like there's something bothering you, but the other partner is not really sharing what's bothering them.
[09:25] So then it's like, again, it either creates no communication or it creates maybe the partner blaming themselves like, hey, I did.
[09:37] Am I doing something wrong here?
[09:39] Maybe they blame the partner for not loving them or not opening up, right?
[09:45] It just creates a situation where we're not connected and one or both of the partners don't understand what the other one is going through.
[09:55] Exactly.
[09:55] So we know that vital communication is so important in a relationship, and from your perspective, if one person is experiencing trauma or has experienced trauma in the past, and the other person really didn't or doesn't really know about the trauma of their partner.
[10:19] What do you think will be the best way to bring these couples back on track?
[10:25] What I always say is individual work, individual therapy is an important piece to couples' work.
[10:34] If you're not working on you individually, then it's gonna have a negative impact on the relationship, right?
[10:45] So I would say both people have to realize, OK, we both need individual work.
[10:50] At the same time, I would definitely suggest that the partners start reading up on trauma, start listening to podcasts on trauma.
[10:59] So there's books like "The Body Keeps the Score".
[11:03] There's a book that I really like called "Complex PTSD" by Pete Walker.
[11:11] So there's a lot of books out there about trauma.
[11:14] So I would suggest both partners start educating themselves on trauma and how it affects people in various ways.
[11:26] And then really start to come from a place of understanding, right?
[11:36] When somebody has trauma, what we have to do is give them space.
[11:42] We have to make them feel safe, right?
[11:46] Even safe with all the bad feelings they might be feeling, with all the flashbacks or a lot of times people with trauma, they will project their own feelings onto other people, right?
[12:06] They will project their past experiences onto other people.
[12:11] So sometimes we have to create space for intense feelings and for that to be OK.
[12:19] Right.
[12:20] So, there's a lot of work for both partners to create a safety net in the home and within a relationship.
[12:31] So that's going to mean a lot of patience, a lot of individual work, and a lot of communication with each other, you answered it.
[12:41] Can I share an example with you, and you can help?
[12:45] So I had this personal client that I was coaching, and he was a senior leader in a very big company.
[12:55] And his wife also worked at Amazon, and both of them had a lot of issues whenever they would speak to me individually.
[13:04] So I tried coaching them together; that never worked.
[13:06] So I tried coaching them individually.
[13:09] And it's always whenever I try to tell them, you guys have trauma, you need to create more empathy and be more compassionate towards each other.
[13:20] But my challenge with them was every time I would talk to them individually, the wife is always blaming the husband and the husband is always blaming the wife.
[13:30] So forget about even getting into working on themselves.
[13:34] It was always a very emotional session with the wife.
[13:39] It's always like a fighting session with the husband.
[13:43] He's only, he's always about she's doing this and she's doing that, and the wife is like, but I don't feel loved, you know, I do so much. So in such relationships where I knew both of them experienced trauma in their past and sometimes the trauma is from their childhood and also the trauma is from each other.
[14:05] They each other are traumatizing themselves, living together, right?
[14:09] What would your 1 to 2 advice be in case they listen to this podcast again without, without knowing them in detail, I would say in all of my work, what it boils down to is we are defending ourselves from feeling feelings that we don't want to feel bingo.
[14:35] Right on.
[14:36] You got it.
[14:37] Yeah.
[14:37] So with, for example, the husband blaming the wife or getting upset or being angry, what we need to do is learn how to feel what we're feeling and tap into what is there?
[14:56] Right?
[14:57] So there's a lot of anger, right?
[15:01] We're not judging now; where is this anger coming from?
[15:09] Tell me about how anger has affected your life.
[15:13] Let's learn how to sit with the anger.
[15:17] And as we sit and uncover anger, usually anger is a secondary emotion.
[15:25] So we're processing; we might eventually go into hurt and fear and other emotions that anger is kind of masking for, and again, the same with the wife, right?
[15:42] This feeling that she's doing everything and she's not being appreciated, right?
[15:49] OK.
[15:50] Let's tap into that.
[15:51] Tell me about being appreciated.
[15:54] What is that experience like for you?
[15:57] Right?
[15:57] And being able to go to the emotion and being able to regulate, right?
[16:02] Because remember we talked about trauma is we don't know how to regulate what we're feeling in the moment.
[16:09] We don't know how to understand it.
[16:10] So we react in ways to help us cope with what we're feeling and experiencing.
[16:19] So if we can sit with our feelings better, if we can go there and understand why they're there because they're all there for a reason, then we can work through the feeling, we can get the understanding of the feeling, right?
[16:34] So a lot of times sometimes people don't want to feel things because they might feel weak, right?
[16:41] They might feel vulnerable.
[16:44] And so what I would say is we have to go there to do the healing to do the work and we're not gonna stay there, but we have to, we have to go there.
[16:55] Right?
[16:56] I love that.
[16:57] Like sitting with yourself and I say this usually sit with yourself, feel the pain and then heal the pain.
[17:05] Mhm Right.
[17:07] I love that.
[17:08] And for those listening, who might be in this, you know, traumatic relationship, they themselves experience trauma and they're recreating the trauma with their partners because their partners also have similar trauma or something totally different.
[17:25] What would be something that we can tell them, which will just help them to start addressing these issues together without feeling like it's all too much because like you, you mentioned already, sometimes they don't want to even talk about it.
[17:40] They don't talk; they couldn't, they want to either fight or they're running away or they are just keeping quiet and shutting down.
[17:49] But I encourage them to talk about it, like sit down talk, have compassion, have empathy when you're trying to listen.
[17:56] But what is your advice, doctor?
[17:59] Oh, well, that's good advice.
[18:02] What I would say, it's hard to do that.
[18:05] If we don't understand it ourselves.
[18:07] If we don't understand ourselves first, then it's hard to communicate from that place.
[18:15] Right.
[18:16] Even, like, for example, if I'm working with a couple or an individual who had trouble with empathy, OK.
[18:27] Well, that's, we don't want to, again, judge that or blame that.
[18:32] We want to explore that.
[18:34] What is that about?
[18:35] Why is it there?
[18:36] Why can't we connect with empathy?
[18:39] Right?
[18:39] Why can't we connect with others?
[18:42] So again, I would say we want to start working on understanding ourselves first, and the more you can understand yourself, the more you will be able to have empathy with your partner, the better you will be able to communicate with your partner, your needs and desires, and be vulnerable, right?
[19:15] Again, read books on trauma, start educating yourself.
[19:20] Again, both people do the work individually and then come together and talk about it, right?
[19:25] Read a book together separately and then come together and talk about how, how did that, what did you get from that book?
[19:35] How did you, what did you learn?
[19:37] What came up for you?
[19:38] Right.
[19:39] So, I would say we have to make a commitment to do this journey together, right?
[19:47] So if you're in a relationship and you look at it and you say this is worth saving, this is worth doing the work, then you want to make a commitment, that means again, making a commitment to go to all those places that you don't really want to go to, right?
[20:09] To have the tough conversations that you don't want to have to read the books to open up and be vulnerable.
[20:18] And again, for somebody who's had trauma, that's a scary, scary place to go to.
[20:24] However, get support as well.
[20:28] So again, a good therapist, a good coach, someone who's going to be there to support you through the process, I think is also really important.
[20:41] Yeah, I love that.
[20:42] So what about, let's talk about, you know, intimacy and connection with your partner. Keeping the spark alive is tough, especially when people have trauma.
[20:56] But what about when you're dealing with such situations where like we were talking about trauma again, and how can couples or any tips that you have that?
[21:07] How can they really try to increase their intimacy and connection?
[21:11] Especially when they don't want to talk.
[21:13] They are fighting all the time.
[21:14] They feel the other person is toxic.
[21:17] They feel like all the problems in the world are started by the partner and their focus is just the partner, and therefore they lack intimacy.
[21:25] So any tips on that?
[21:27] Yeah.
[21:27] Well, I would say it always takes two to tango.
[21:33] You're in a relationship with somebody, there's two people involved, and both people are playing a role in what is happening in the outcome, right?
[21:45] So I always tell clients, even if the other person is 90% at fault, there's a 10% you're contributing in there somewhere, right?
[21:56] And we have to look at that first.
[21:58] So what I would say is we have to understand what the root is because again, for every couple, it's going to be different, right?
[22:07] So I've experienced some clients with trauma who again, their biology is triggered.
[22:18] So they can't get aroused because they are triggered from their trauma, and they're having emotional flashbacks, they're getting, they're feeling unsafe, they're feeling all the feelings from their trauma flooding them again, right?
[22:37] So that's a thing where we need to focus on grounding and regulating our nervous system and really tapping into that.
[22:48] And you know, I've seen a lot of that talk in, you know, on the internet these days, but that's not the complete picture, right?
[22:59] That's only one piece of the puzzle, right?
[23:02] So when we're talking about intimacy, there's more than just the body, there's feeling safe, right?
[23:10] What other emotions are showing up?
[23:13] So, again, for somebody else, it might mean that maybe one person is really critical, and they had a hard time with a critical mother in their life.
[23:25] So they're feeling really hurt or they're feeling really angry or resentful.
[23:31] So the issue with them is emotionally, they can't connect, so physically they're not able to connect.
[23:38] So now we have to deal with resentment or the hurt and really learn how to heal that and communicate with each other on that.
[23:47] So again, I think it's really pinpointing what it is, identifying why there's a lack of intimacy.
[23:55] And again, I think it's all rooted in the same thing is we have to feel safe enough to go there.
[24:05] We have to feel safe enough to go to the problem, to express the problem, to give the other person room and time and the patience they need to do the work to heal, right?
[24:22] So yeah, that's my thoughts on that.
[24:26] And, and again, once you do that, then it's just about again, communicating, needs communicating, getting back in touch with why, why did we get together in the first place?
[24:41] What do we love about this person?
[24:43] Getting back to the root of what attracted you to them or, you know, go out and start dating again and how can we create this spark?
[24:56] Because again, a relationship is just like anything else.
[25:00] If you don't put in the work, you're not going to get a result.
[25:05] And that, that includes intimacy and connection.
[25:08] Like I know I'm sure this is not true for everyone but for most men, it's a little easier to get to a place of wanting sexual intimacy.
[25:18] Right.
[25:18] But again, if your partner is having a hard time going there, then we need to create an atmosphere for them to feel safe, to allow them to get there.
[25:32] So, again, what part am I playing instead of blaming my partner that they don't want to have sex?
[25:38] Well, what role am I playing?
[25:41] That's creating an environment that they might not be feeling safe in?
[25:47] Right?
[25:47] How can I create an atmosphere where they feel safe, and they can start to open up emotionally and connect again, and, you know, kind of start from there.
[26:03] I love that. Any last words of encouragement for someone who's listening in?
[26:11] Yeah.
[26:11] Well, I'll say that a lot of times we lose hope when we're going through things, you know, especially with trauma, and you know, it's really intense.
[26:23] It's really tough.
[26:24] Like I said, you know, when you have experienced trauma in your life, it affects all of who we are, right?
[26:35] And it's really tough work.
[26:39] It's really hard to see in the middle of relationship problems that this can work out.
[26:48] So I would say if there's not abuse going on, hey, there's not toxic kind of behavior going on.
[27:01] I would say that anything can be worked out if you put in the work I've seen really tough cases, really tough situations, really.
[27:12] You know, relationships on the brink.
[27:16] I've seen them come back and get better.
[27:20] It's just about the commitment you're willing to make, and are you really willing to go to these tough places we're talking about right individually first and then as a couple.
[27:32] So I would say, get some help, get a good therapist, get a good team around you who will support you in the process.
[27:44] Do a lot of reading, do a lot of educating yourself on how trauma affects you and things can't change.
[27:55] I've seen it happen over and over again.
[27:58] And yeah, that's what I would say about that.
[28:02] Thank you, doctor.
[28:03] I love that and I love that advice that we should never give up hope, especially on ourselves first because if we can heal ourselves, then we can definitely be there for the other person, which is our partner.
[28:16] So, if you can, please tell us, where can our listeners contact you?
[28:24] Yeah, I think the easiest way might be to go on my Instagram, @DoctorMarioRocha on Instagram.
[28:35] There's a link to a website where I have some blogs, and you can contact me for therapy or any questions that anyone might have.
[28:49] So I'm hoping to do some more writing here too in the future.
[28:53] So that will show up on my Instagram page as well.
[28:57] So I would say, yeah, that will probably be the best bet because you can kind of get to all the links from there.
[29:05] Awesome.
[29:05] So listeners, just go to Dr. Mario Rocha on Instagram if you are on Instagram and we are going to put the link for Dr. Mario Rocha's Instagram on our podcast, sir.
[29:19] Thank you so much.
[29:19] It was a pleasure having you on our show.
[29:22] Thank you.
[29:22] It's nice to be here and to all our listeners, always remember, metamorphosis, not medication, and I must stay.
[29:31] So listen, if you're struggling with something, all you need to do is book a call with me, and I promise that I am going to provide a lot of value to you.
[29:42] You'll probably believe that this is the best thing that you have done for yourself in a very long time.
[29:48] All you need to do is click on the link below and book a call.
[29:52] And if we are not a good fit for each other, at least you have gained some value from speaking to me, which I promise I will deliver.
[30:02] So go ahead and book the call with me right now and let's talk, and I'll see you on the other side.