Finding JOY During Traumatic Events

Itś hard to find JOY when we are suffering from traumatic events whether past or present. 

I was looking up articles recently to see how JOY and trauma relate to each other and found this great blog post about it.  https://tinybuddha.com/blog/why-joy-is-important-for-healing-developmental-trauma/ by  Irina Bengston
Even though it is specific to developmental trauma, I believe what the author says can be put into play in all kinds of trauma or when dealing with a traumatic event. I was looking for this information because of the last couple traumatic events my family has experienced.

1. Our 4 year old doggy dyeing unexpectedly in September
2. Our car burned down in our drive way just after we got out of it, in December.

Both of these events have been very traumatic for us and we have been learning how to navigate and process them.  My kids have not yet experienced death this closely yet and who experiences a car burning down in their driveway? I would think that is rare. 

This blog resonated with me. Here is what the author shares:

1. Learn to tolerate difficult emotions.
2. Live in the moment.
3. Learn to calm yourself.
4. Engage yourself fully.
5. Help or share
6. Choose joy.
   
   

There are a few others so take a look at the post and see what else she has to day.

https://tinybuddha.com/blog/why-joy-is-important-for-healing-developmental-trauma/ by Irina Bengtson

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Transcript

*Transcribed by AI*
00:08
Hello and welcome to Navigating Joy Together. My name is Lauren and I'm here with my family. Mark. Addison. Hunter and our dog Onyx. Each episode you will hear about our experiences with navigating joy together in our family, as well as tips you can bring back to your family. Thanks for spending time with us. Now let's get to it.

00:43
to Navigating Joy Together. It is Valentine's Day, actually Happy Valentine's Day to people who celebrate. I'm recording this very last minute, but that's okay. It's just how things were rolling these last few weeks. I'm really excited just to share a couple pieces of information about joy and some really great tips of something that I had read and I just thought it'd be so great to share. But before I get to that, I'm really, really excited for

01:10
my next set of interviews that will be coming out. I am going to be interviewing some incredible people who, again, use joy in the forefront of their life amongst any kind of situation. And I cannot wait to have conversations with them and share them with you. One person I've connected with has actually written a book called The Power of a Positive Mindset. And he said he's all about joy. And I love it.

01:37
I even saw a post from him recently that said he was homesick but his heart was still full of joy. I mean that is huge. So I'm so excited to meet up with him and chat and share that with you amongst many, many other people. Today though, I'm just going to talk a little bit about how you can consciously bring joy into your life daily. And I know sometimes it's hard when we get focused on the current events that are happening maybe in our lives.

02:05
or maybe something traumatic has happened, maybe it's even some traumatic experiences from the past. I found this article called Why Joy is Important for Healing Developmental Trauma, and it's from the tiny Buddha, and it's by Irina Bankston, and I'm just excited to share this because I read this, and even though I per se don't have experience in developmental trauma,

02:32
I definitely have some traumatic experiences in my life and when I was reading through this article I just thought wow anybody could really use this as something to help them heal a little bit and bring joy into their lives amongst things that are happening right. So I'm going to share a little bit about what she says and I just love the kinds of things that she came up with. The reason why I was looking up

02:58
some articles on traumatic events and just how you can incorporate joy as my family's had some interesting traumatic events just these last several months and I feel like everything's relative. I know there's people out there who have had worse things in their life and I'm not just crediting anything that anybody has been through but I know that we also have had some traumatic things happen with our dog Onyx dying. That has been the first experience that my children have dealt with death.

03:26
And so navigating that has been super interesting and it's all learning, right? And so it's important that we do have those experiences and learn from them, but nonetheless, they're still hard and they can be very traumatic. The other thing that has happened is over Christmas, our car burned down in the middle of our driveway, right after Christmas is on the 26th of December and it was right after my children and I got out of the car, it caught on fire and we were super close to burning our house down. And like I said, we just got out of the car and

03:55
that experience is still extremely surreal and it's still kind of unbelievable that it happened, but yet for all of us to witness that and knowing the events that took place before is pretty traumatic and it's scary. And there's just a lot that you think about and you try to navigate. And as a family, we've been doing that together. And some things that I've really been trying to focus on during that time are some of these.

04:23
tips and tools that I actually read through from this article I had just brought up to you why joy is important for healing developmental trauma. And again, those are not examples of developmental trauma, but I do believe what she says in this can be applied to any kind of situation. And she talks about her experience in this article, but I'm just going to kind of paraphrase it just generally for other people. One thing she talks about is...

04:50
that it's important to make a conscious decision to live in the now and to enjoy what you have. And that's something that we really were trying to focus on after our car burned down. I mean, there's five other scenarios that could have happened that night that would have been horrible. Someone could have died, people could have gotten hurt, our house could have burned down, the car could have exploded and injured our neighbors and burned other people's homes. There's so many different things that could have happened.

05:20
And so when I reflect back to that experience, I am grateful beyond belief that nothing like that happened, but I'm also really trying to be accepting of the fact that it was still a very traumatic event, and that's okay to kind of sit in that space for a little bit too. And on the other hand, I'm also trying to make sure that we do live in the now and enjoy what we have, right? Being just grateful for.

05:48
our health and that we were safe and we still have our home and nobody was hurt or injured. And those are the kinds of things to think about, but it really does take a conscious effort to do that. And I really believe all of these ideas that I'm going to read to you have to do with making a conscious effort. So I love that one. I've kind of preached that a lot in other episodes is when we are in the here and now and just focused on the moment and being a hundred percent present, that's where we can really feel intense joy.

06:17
We're not worrying about what just happened. We're not worrying about how tomorrow's going to play out or some situation. We're just focused on that one thing. And that really, really does create some joy. Some other things that she talked about was acknowledge your current situation. So, you know, acknowledge what's happened and be okay with that. And don't deny what's happened, but go ahead and acknowledge it. And I love how she says this.

06:48
Denial keeps you stuck. So acknowledging the things for what they are opens the door for healing, joy, and personal growth. And I think that's so powerful. So it's okay that we have these feelings that we might have during negative, suffering, or traumatic events. Don't deny them, right? Go ahead and accept them and acknowledge them. Okay, then we have living in the moment, which she kind of just talked about, which...

07:16
I don't think there's really anything more to be said about that. I think that was super clear. And then learn to tolerate difficult emotions. So this is that whole piece about validating your feelings instead of suppressing them and denying them, right? So these all kind of piggyback on each other, but you really want to acknowledge them. So with our kids, with our dog Onyx in the car, we really tried to...

07:43
acknowledge the feelings that they have. We had another car that we had gotten prior to this other car burning down and I could have sworn I smelt burning coming from the car and I'm sure it was probably like at first I thought maybe it was just some PTSD because that smell is very distinctive and I just smelt it and I was like this car is burning and I know my son looked at me and said can we please take the car out of the garage because this car was parked in the garage and I was like yeah like I'm gonna acknowledge.

08:11
his feeling. I didn't say anything else. We didn't talk about it. I know exactly how he was feeling and we acknowledged it and we took the car back out of the garage and just kept it out of the garage for the night or for a few nights until that had all settled. That is super important, acknowledging those feelings, right? And not ignoring them. I think that part is important. We don't do that. I know I have not done that before. I don't do that very well. And so that's something that I had been working on when Onyx died and

08:39
during this situation is really just acknowledging my feelings and you know what, if I need to sit down and sit on my couch and just be upset and cry, I'm going to let myself do that. And then I can move forward. I can then put it behind me and move forward. Learning to calm yourself. So she talks about how nobody is happy or relaxed all the time, but you can learn some skills and techniques to calm yourself. And a lot of that has to do with like some meditation.

09:09
mindfulness, I don't know who out there likes to meditate. I love to meditate. I just don't take the time to do it unfortunately. And I would love to meditate more even if it's just for five minutes I keep telling myself because that's so important and I really do believe it helps calm our mind and our self which then allows us to refocus on the here and now right and then kind of get back to that joy.

09:35
Engage yourself fully. I love this and my husband has said this too. This is so cool. Let me see what she says here I have to find it She said no matter what you do get completely involved in it Even when you do something out of necessity like probably a chore or something It's possible to find joy in the action fully engaging and everything you do helps you discover new exciting sides to boring stuff from your to-do list

10:01
sometimes adding fun to dull repetitive activities like washing the dishes or waiting for the bus solves the problem and awakens joy I love that. I love that that makes me think of multitasking and my husband always says there's no possible way that we can multitask because When you think about doing different things and when he says this I'm like, yeah that totally happens. I Might be doing two things at once, but my mind is focused on one

10:28
So sometimes if I'm talking on the phone to somebody and I'm doing an email and I'm paying attention to email I totally don't hear what that person said to me on the phone and I have done that before so I've done that to my mom. Sorry mom I've been at work and we're talking and I might be doing an email and then I miss what she says so that Is an example of how multitasking doesn't work. So engaging yourself fully in that task, right? Okay. Another one she says is help or share

10:56
And she says social connections bring lots of joy into people's life. So even if you're connecting on zoom, which a lot of people do these days, um, or a cup of coffee, a smile, a passion of yours, um, anything that you can do to just connect or that you can just help or share with people is very joyful feeling like it totally.

11:21
fills people's hearts up with joy and it fills your heart up with joy. I always feel good when I connect or share or help somebody do something and it just makes me feel really good. My fourth graders, every week we write a kindness quote and we talk about it and then we talk through the week about, you know, what have you done or seen that relates to that kindness quote and it's so great. I'm really just trying to teach them that kindness is so important and it brings joy into your life and other people's.

11:51
lives and we've just had wonderful conversations. So helping or sharing others is huge. And the reason why I brought that up is a lot of the scenarios the fourth graders bring up is when they help somebody. And so we talk about, well, how did that make you feel in your heart? And how do you think it made that other person feel in their heart? And then finally, she just said, choose joy. More joy means lower levels of inflammation in your body, better health and greater happiness.

12:17
You're no longer a prisoner of your emotions and can consciously choose where you want to use your energy and how. Activating joy helps you reconnect with an authentic wise part inside of you that knows how to love. It means finally feeling like yourself and safe inside your skin no matter what traumas you have endured throughout your life." I absolutely love that. And then she ends with choose joy. Joy is so powerful and it is a conscious decision. When I started this journey with joy many years ago.

12:46
this is before the pandemic, I knew that it had to be a conscious decision. And so in my life, when I practice it and with my family, we have to consciously be in tune with it. And believe me, there are times where I am not, and I am not on that joy train, and I might be mad or angry or whatever. And then I realize after, oh gosh, I just wasted all that time for this. And that was a waste of time, or I just totally derailed the energy in our home, or whatever it is, or someone else did. And...

13:16
I have, I become more conscious about it. So now that I've practiced it many times, I am more conscious about it. It doesn't mean I'm a hundred percent awesome at it because I'm not, but I am more conscious about it. I hope some of that was meaningful to you and it's a good segue into hopefully what comes next. I am scheduling a bunch of interviews. I hope I can get someone to interview out in two weeks. If not, I'll have a different episode, but they are coming and it's going to be...

13:44
They're gonna be awesome conversations of how people are choosing joy in their lives daily, regardless of what's happened in their lives or what is happening. And it's gonna be so inspiring. I'm so, so excited for this and I can't wait to share them with you. I hope you found value. I'd love to hear maybe something that resonated with you out of those ideas that I shared. Feel free to share it with me. You can reach me on my Facebook at Lauren Goldman Raymond.

14:13
I have a Facebook group now being enjoyed together. Instagram, Lauren's Daily Joy, or email lauren at dailyjoy.us. And I'm so glad that you are listening. Thank you for your time. Don't forget about Drive-A-Log. If you're looking for some wonderful, authentic conversations to have with your children in the car, go and order Drive-A-Log. You get a 20% discount. The link is in the show notes.

14:37
If you put in NJT in the coupon code, you'll get 20% discount. It's so great. And actually, ours burned up in our car, so I have to get my new set. I totally forgot about that. We've been trying to replace everything that burned, and that's something I have forgotten about. So I'm going to go buy that. Okay. Have a great rest of your week. Happy Valentine's Day, and I am out of here. Did you enjoy your time with us today? If you did, please give us a review on Apple Podcast.

15:07
Your review will make navigating joy together much more fun, and we would be truly grateful if you would share this with others who you know would gain value from our podcast. Thank you again, and we look forward to sharing our next episode with you in two weeks.