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The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Katie (00:02):
Hi everyone. Thank you for tuning into the Hustlenomics Podcast. I’m your host, Katie. And today I’m so excited to be talking with Janine worth as a CEO of path to healing therapy and coaching and the creator of the groundbreaking pain to purpose Academy. Janine is on a mission to free women from the burden of unresolved trauma. Without spending years in therapy, Janine is a licensed psychotherapist clinical hypnotherapist heart centered life coach, and the author of the monthly advice column, ask Janine for CEO magazine. So Deneen thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Janine (00:35):
Thanks Katie. I’m so excited to be here.
Katie (00:37):
Absolutely. So it sounds like in your bio, you have some wonderful accomplishments, but I would love to learn more about your background and kind of how you got to where you are today.
New Speaker (00:45):
Sure. So I am someone who had a traumatic childhood and that was fine. You know, I noticed early on that, you know, the way that my parents were showing up or not showing up was completely different to my friends in that, but what really got me interested in trauma, PTSD, emotional baggage and painful life experiences was on the day that I got my driver’s license. So I grew up up in South Africa and then you get your driver’s license at the age of 18. The very day that I got it that night, I went to aunt with a friend to celebrate and we were then hijacked kidnapped. And one of the Cylons also attempted to rake me at gunpoint. So, you know, everyone talks about that fight flight or fear reaction. You know, that freezer action when something traumatic or life threatening happens to you and you never know beforehand what your reaction will be until you’re actually in the moment.
Janine (01:48):
And we found out that night that my default setting happens to be fight because one of the guys actually grabbed me by the arm that had taken us to this really secluded beach area. And he was dragging me up this June. And when he gone to the top, he pointed the gun at my head and said, take your clothes off. And in that moment at once as if something inside of me just snapped and I looked at him and I said, you will have to shoot me first. And in that moment, I actually meant it because I mean, I was 18, so I wasn’t married. I didn’t have children or dependents or anything like that. And I just thought to myself, you know, I’ve just gotten to the point where my, my adult life is actually starting. I’ve got my driver’s license. Now I can start making my own decisions.
Janine (02:37):
And then something like this happens. And I could see from his face that he was so shocked and surprised. He didn’t know what to do because you know, the usual response would be crying, begging, pleading, or just doing what he wanted. And he was just like standing there, like what now? And then I completely ignored him. And I was shutting down to his accomplice and saying, you know, you’ve already taken our money, our watches, our cell phones. It was one of those huge Nakia back in the day where you knew immediately, if it wasn’t your handbag, just by picking it up. I said to him, take my car and just leave. And then they, they were discussing with each other and eventually we could convince them to leave. They obviously took my car and we were then trying to get back into town and a fishermen came past and he picked us up and my friend brother-in-law was in the police and they phoned it through and the police ended up having a shoot out with them.
Janine (03:38):
And I got my car back. It was a bit damaged, but I did get a back because at one stage I thought to myself, well, maybe the guns were fake, but they weren’t cause they were shooting at the police. And about a week after that, this was before social media and Facebook and all of that. I was actually sitting in my car on a parking lot waiting and a friend of mine who didn’t know what had happened to me, cramped up on my car and slammed his hand on my driver window. You know, wanting to give me a fried, like as a joke. But in that moment I started getting heart palpitations. It felt like I was going to have a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe. I was hyperventilating. I felt I could hear like blood rushing in my ears. And I just thought to myself, Oh my God, something is wrong with me.
Janine (04:23):
And that’s how I started to learn about PTSD and when to go and seek help, because I’m a very independent person. And I just knew I can’t live like that. I don’t want to, at the age of 18 already have this fear and not leave the house or not do the things that I want to do. And in my very first session, and this was sort of when it felt like a ton of bricks hit me, I, you know, told about my childhood and this experience. And my psychologist said to me, Janine, I believe your traumatic childhood ended up saving your life. And I looked at him and as like, are you kidding me? I was just like [inaudible]. And he said to me, the resilience that you’ve built up in your childhood and this belief that you can only rely on yourself, ended up saving your life.
Janine (05:18):
Because think if you had had this picture perfect childhood, you probably wouldn’t have defended yourself or stood up for yourself. You probably would have just, you know, done whatever you were told. And then you might not be sitting here having this conversation with me, cause that could have ended completely differently. And that was the first moment in my life where I had any sort of sense of gratitude for my past experiences, because I’d never seen it in that light. And that then got me interested in PTSD trauma. How would affect especially woman because my own mother had experienced trauma, but unfortunately never received help for it. And it just made me realize that it’s something that affects the way we show up in our careers. It affects the way we parent it affects our intimate relationships, just all facets of life. And when I had the opportunity to study psychology, I knew that I wanted to specialize in trauma and I knew that I wanted to work with women and that’s how I got to run a virtual practice. So I help women all over the world from the comfort of their homes and just try and make it as accessible and easy as possible.
Katie (06:32):
Wow. That is an amazing, amazing story. And I would love to kind of chat about what that journey was like to starting your virtual practice. Cause of course you could have gotten a degree and then gone to work for someone else, but you decided that this was something that you wanted to do on your own and create your own business. So what kind of went into that decision?
Janine (06:49):
Well, I’ve always sort of had this entrepreneurial spirit even before I became a therapist. A lot of times I was doing some sort of side hustle. You know, I started out in sales, had a corporate career, but always had some sort of side hustle going on. And when I decided that I wanted to become a therapist, I thought to myself, well, I don’t want to be chained to a building. And I live in Germany, but I want to work with women all over the world because women were starting to reach out to me, you know, from America, the UK, Switzerland, Italy, all over. And I thought to myself, why should I just work with people in Germany or expect people to come to Germany when they want to work with me where I can do it all online, you know, through video calls, these women, they don’t have to take time off work.
Janine (07:41):
They can do it in the privacy of their own homes. They don’t have to get babysitters if we do the calls at night, you know, and I thought to myself, cause I’m a mom of three that if I had had those options, that would have been so great because a lot of women need help, but through some way, shape or form, they can’t get you at orders. It’s not easily accessible or they can’t work with a personal their choice because, you know, distance and that. So I thought to myself, well, why don’t I do that? And I can do it on my own terms and have a much broader audience. And obviously then came the speaking and writing full magazine. And so I’ve sort of built my business with other women in mind and what would be easiest for my clients. And that’s basically how it came about.
Katie (08:32):
Yeah, that’s amazing. I am so fascinated by this, this new concept of telemedicine or virtual medicine and my whole family is medical. And they’ve just started hearing about this and they’re so excited about it, but some people I think are loose a little bit hesitant, but is this something that you see as a growing field? Are you one of your own when it comes to doing some of the kind of this virtual work that you’re doing?
Janine (08:54):
Well, I think that a lot of People will adopt it in the near future because it just makes it so much more accessible. I mean, you don’t have to take time off work. You don’t have to find parking. You can use whichever person you want to, you know, doesn’t matter if they sitting in a different country. So to me it makes a lot of sense because the way that I see it is you meet your healer when you’re ready. And if that person happens to be in a different country, technology just makes it so amazingly accessible. And especially with woman, obviously specializing in trauma, I hear the worst of the worst, especially women that maybe have been sexually assaulted or things like that for them having therapy in the comfort of their own home is so much nicer for them because they don’t have to go out after hours, you know, or maybe late at night or to secluded areas or none of that. It just takes that away in the beginning, which a lot of them find really helpful.
Katie (09:58):
Absolutely. I can only imagine. Yeah, that is such a benefit, but kind of on the flip side, have you found any unique challenges or something that surprised you about working virtually that might not be applicable if you’re working in person with someone
Janine (10:10):
Until now I’ve only experienced advantages. One of them that actually surprised me is that clients got you get that feeling that they open up a lot faster because they are in their own comfortable environment. You know, being at home, you know, on their couch with their cup of tea and a fuzzy blanket, they feel more secure. And that helps them open up faster than coming to a strange place, you know, an office that maybe isn’t as comfortable for them. So that was something I wasn’t expecting. Bump was pleasantly surprised.
Katie (10:47):
Right? Oh yeah. That’s wonderful. And that makes so much sense. And I see that you work with a lot of different people when it comes to trauma and things like that, but you also work with business owners, correct? Correct. So what kind of work that you do with them?
Janine (11:00):
Well, I noticed that, you know, a lot of my clients were female entrepreneurs and a lot of them were coming to me and saying, you know, my relationship’s going well. I’m doing well, you know, with parenting my children, but I just can’t seem to make progress. And my business, do you think there could be something going on? And very often they would have symptoms that relate to emotional baggage or unresolved trauma, you know, these painful life experiences, but didn’t make the connection to the symptoms they were having. So at one stage I had about 75% of my clients showing up with binge eating or self-sabotage procrastination, adrenal fatigue. And those are not symptoms that people immediately associate with trauma, but they are intimately connected to emotional and unresolved trauma. And I helped them make that connection. So, you know, if I, for instance, have an entrepreneur client that wants to be in the online space, but is suffering from visibility issues, you know, saying, I know I need to show up, you know, maybe do some Facebook lives or go and do podcast interviews.
Janine (12:13):
But every time that they want to do that, they end up sabotaging themselves that there is a reason for that. And very often it is in their past, you know, maybe they grew up and had parents that were emotionally unavailable or a teacher told them, listen, you’re never going to be anything. All of these things show up because the way the mind works is a drives us towards pleasure and away from pain. And when these painful experiences come up in our subconscious, the mind’s like, Oh, that was an awful experience for you. I’m going to try and keep you safe. You know what maybe you have a sore throat today. You have a headache. You don’t feel like going, going live today is not such a good idea. Maybe you should rather do it tomorrow. You know, and all these sneaky little ways that it shows up and women on, they’re not reaching their goals because they’re not taking the actions that they know they should be taking and that they actually want to take. Because whenever it’s a competition between your subconscious mind and willpower, the subconscious mind wins 100% of the time.
Katie (13:19):
Oh, that’s such an interesting insight. Absolutely. And for any women who are listening, who might totally connect with what you just said and said, you know, we’re raising their hand saying, that’s me. I do that to myself. Do you have any self reflection exercises that you may be, take your clients through? And even if people are not dealing with specifically trauma, but are finding some of those roadblocks come up and again and again, do you have any exercises that they could maybe do to increase their self awareness?
Janine (13:42):
Well, one I’ve learned with working with women now is that a lot of people don’t understand trauma and they don’t understand how the mind reacts to trauma. So if you have an experience as a six year old or a seven year old, that is emotionally scarring to you, it might not be an accident or abuse, but say for instance, you know, one of your parents has addiction issues and has a violent rant you’re in an alcohol tantrum or whatever, and says awful things to you now as an adult, you think, well, that was not so bad, I’m over it. You know, that was 20 years ago, 30 years ago. But once you don’t realize is that happened to six year old you and six year old, you was not emotionally mature or able to deal with that. And that’s where the issues come up because it’s not the actual events.
Janine (14:36):
You know, I tell clients, even if they’ve had like really bad car accidents or they’ve been sexually assaulted, your body will heal broken bones heal. But the issue is that the subconscious mind hangs onto the emotions from these events that is triggers you. So if you have this belief that you’re not good enough, and you for instance, have a client or a boss or a family member bring up that feeling in you, that you’re not worthy, or you’re not good enough, your mind remembers that it’s like, Oh, I know this, this reminds me of that incident when I was six year old. So I tell clients, you know, make a list of all the events in your life that you think could have squad you emotionally. You know, when I meet women, they always sort of seem to underplay or to diminish their own trauma.
Janine (15:25):
They’ll say, Oh, you know, I was only bullied in school. At least I wasn’t raped, you know, sort of this sort of comparing and to see if their trauma is good enough or if they actually deserve to get help. So I tell them, write down, I list off all the things that you can remember that made you feel sad or not good enough, or that you think could cause emotional baggage. And then once we have that list, I then look for themes. And a tool that I love using is regression hypnosis because when we’re children, our minds are like sponges and we soak up what the people around us say to us say about us and how their energy affects us. You know? So even if you had a good childhood, if your parents weren’t emotionally available, or you maybe had issues at school, those things stay with us.
Janine (16:23):
When we don’t know how to process these emotions, whenever that feeling gets triggered, that’s when we sort of fall into procrastination or the self sabotage. So once they have that list, I then look for any possible negative beliefs. And then with regression hypnosis, we can find out exactly when, where, and how that started, because your mind provides you with evidence. You know, if you, for instance, have someone tell you you’re not good enough, maybe at the age of five, six, seven, and then at 10 years old, you want to do a talk in front of your class or you want to be in the school play. And something happens that that doesn’t work out well for you. Your mind will then remind you of that and say, you see this, isn’t a good idea for you. And so it starts providing this evidence for you that your subconscious mind clings to. And that’s what we want to get rid of.
Katie (17:21):
Oh, that’s so interesting. Yeah. I think that’s, that’s a great way to approach things. And I guess kind of the next step that I’m just thinking in my mind is as something akin to goal setting, and I would love to hear if that’s something that you work with your clients, but, you know, that has to be something that you do within your business as a business owner. So it’s kind of a twofold question. But do you mind just kind of touching on goal setting?
Janine (17:41):
So when I start working with women, especially if they’re entrepreneurs, I usually work with them for about six and this was part of my paint purpose Academy, where in the beginning, we’ll look at the goals that they have for themselves, not only in their business, but their personal life, their relationships, maybe they have a toxic family and, you know, they want to improve things. There, we look at all of their goals and I then get a treatment plan tailor made for them. That includes therapy and coaching because a lot of people are either therapists or they coaches. And I like to combine them because as we dealing with all of these blocks and negative beliefs, the coaching part then helps to instill these habits and routines and mindset that helps them to achieve those goals. So I always ask them, you know, if you knew that success was inevitable, what would you love to do?
Janine (18:43):
And very often the woman that I work with and you know, starting businesses or changing jobs, because they realize that they’ve been playing small or staying in their comfort zones or not doing what they really want to do, because it was just the easier choice. It was familiar to them. And once the confidence increases and they start getting, you know, mindset, routines and a morning routine, and really start, you know, looking after themselves, cause I’m a big advocate of self care. Then they start realizing, okay, what would make me really happy? Because what would make me happy would probably look completely different to UK T. And so it is for everyone. And once we know what will make us happy, it’s a lot easier to set realistic goals that will actually get us closer to that. Yeah.
Katie (19:37):
Wonderful. And you mentioned self care. Do you have a self care routine that you do in your everyday life?
Janine (19:41):
Yes, I do. So I have a morning routine. I am somebody that is a morning person after eight or 9:00 PM. I always joke and say, I’m pretty useless after that. So I like to get up early and I always do some form of mindset work, whether it’s meditation, journaling I’ll even listen to hypnosis recordings, basically checking in with myself and saying, how do I feel today? Is there anything that’s concerning me worrying me? What are my priorities for the day? Then, you know, exercise comes into it. I believe that meal prepping is a form of self care. I know that a lot of people don’t think about that as self care, but, you know, I will plan my meals for the week to make sure that if, for instance, I’m seeing an American client, which is, would, would be in my evening, you know, that I prepare meals in advance.
Janine (20:37):
So we’re not reaching for junk food or not so great options. So for me, that’s very important. And then while I get ready for the day, I will then listen to a podcast or a Ted talks. I’m doing something that is for me, my mindset, I’m doing something that is educating myself or motivating me. I’m doing something for my health, you know, some form of exercise. So I’m a big proponent of that. You know, when women say to me, why I don’t have the time I Jamie remind them that we make time for what we prioritize. And a lot of times, especially working moms that might mean getting up half an hour earlier. But when you start doing that consistently, you will notice that you start showing up as the best version of yourselves. You know, if, if I’m traveling or for whatever reason, I don’t get to do my usual routines. I know that after about a week, I’m less patient. I might start getting a bit snappy. You know, my focus isn’t there. I’m not as present in the moment. And for me to show up as the best therapist, the best wife, the best mom and friend, you know, that I can be. I know that that starts with me. It’s my responsibility to take care of myself first.
Katie (21:54):
Yes. I could not agree more. I love that having a morning routine has been really instrumental and, and you know, my self care routine as well. I love that. And so do you have anything exciting coming up and the next few weeks, or the next year that, that you could share that’s going on in your head?
Janine (22:08):
Yeah, so I am busy writing my first book, which is a wonderful and painful experience at the same time, because, you know, making the time for it sitting down and actually doing it has been a challenge for me. I will admit that I actually have to schedule that time. And the pain and purpose Academy is opening up and their women have the option to either work with me on a one to one basis or in a group. So the therapy is private, but the coaching is in a group because if it’s all female entrepreneurs, a lot of the times the issues will be relevant to everyone. But I will never do group therapy because I believe especially specializing in trauma, that that is something that I prefer to do on a one to one basis.
Katie (22:58):
Wonderful. That’s very exciting. Very exciting. And do you have any books or podcasts or courses, any recommendations that you could share with the listeners that have been helpful for you and your business journey? Sure.
Janine (23:08):
So I was very lucky. There is. We call him in our industry, the godfather of trauma and his name is dr. Bessel from Nicolock. He was one of the first psychiatrist to actually start studying trauma. And this was in the seventies and I was very fortunate that I could actually go and attend some of his seminars and, you know, really learn from him because he is one of the best in the field. And he wrote a book called the body, keeps the score. And I highly recommend that book to who knows that they’ve experienced, you know, painful life experiences and to show them how the body actually holds those emotions within itself and how the body creates symptoms, you know, auto immune disease, adrenal fatigue, all of these things that people maybe would not associate with trauma necessarily. And something that I would like to give your audience is a free heal, your inner child hypnosis, which is something that I usually do in one-to-one work, but I’ve created it in an audio version where they can do it themselves at home.
Janine (24:27):
And you can do it as many times as you like, but it just helps you to start your journey and to start, you know, I say to people, think of your subconscious mind as this attic, that you’ve been filling up with stuff every single day of your life. So, you know, if you’re 30 years old, there’s stuff in there that’s 30 years old and you go through that attic and you see what is junk, you know, negative beliefs that you want to get rid of. And what is the good stuff that you want to keep? And that hypnosis will. Number one, gives people an opportunity to find out what it’s like, because you know what people see on TV with this Vegas clucking like a chicken stuff that is not clinical hypnotherapy. It’s not what I do at all. And it’s a good starting point to, because self-development, I always say it’s like an onion, you know, you take off the first layer and then the next layer, and then, you know, you’re continuously progressing and becoming the best version of yourself. So that is a great starting point for people.
Katie (25:30):
Fantastic. I will absolutely link to that in the show notes. And I know people are going to want to check you out and follow your journey. So could you share how they could find you online? Sure. So
Janine (25:39):
I have a free private support group for women on Facebook that is called heal and transform your life. And it’s a really high vibe space for women who are into self-development and it’s a really encouraging space. You know, there’s no judgment because everyone in there has had some sort of experience that they’ve overcome. And on social media, it’s always at Janine worth worth is w I R T H.
Katie (26:11):
Fantastic. Do you need, thank you so much for coming on the show today, and I really appreciate you for sharing all of your amazing tips in your journey.
Janine (26:18):
Thank you so much. It was so nice speaking with you.
