Conversations with Carolyn Spring

Podcast #21 – Learning to tolerate positive emotions

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 03:00:52 +0000

We're often used to the idea that it's hard to tolerate distressing emotions. But for many of us as trauma survivors, we can be easily triggered by positive emotions too. Good feelings can be strange, novel and frightening. When we've experienced grooming, they can appear to be the prelude to abuse. And they can feel just plain wrong! In this podcast I look at why we can find positive emotions so difficult, and what we can do about it.

Podcast #20 – How therapy transformed me

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:07:51 +0000

Therapy can be, and often is, transformational. But why? I benefitted greatly from the empathy and attunement offered by my therapist, but over time I also had to adjust my expectations about how change would occur in me. I had to learn to consider what's really going on when we feel misattuned-to as well. I needed validation and acceptance, but I also needed to be challenged. Here's the story of how that played out in one particular therapy session, and the question that at first offended, and then transformed me.

Podcast #19 – How do we learn to trust people after trauma?

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 06:00:50 +0000

Trust is so key for smooth human relationships, but it's also invariably damaged after we have suffered trauma, especially abuse. So how do we learn to build it again? In this episode I talk about how there aren't 'three top tips', but how it's a meticulous process of firstly learning to trust ourselves, to tune into our internal radar, and then to bring our front brain online to assess the data we're presented with – especially when we say 'no' to people.

Podcast #18 – How to keep going through challenging times (part 2)

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 05:00:42 +0000

In this second and final part, I look at the cognitive mindsets and practical approaches I've employed to keep going even when everything in me wants to give up: because 'keeping on keeping on' matters to me, not least because by doing so, things do invariably improve.

Podcast #17 – How to keep going through challenging times (part 1)

Carolyn Spring — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 13:01:47 +0000

There's often nothing we can do to prevent challenging times happening – they're part of life. But when they hit, how do we keep going? In this episode (part 1 of 2), I look at the painfulness of overwhelm of trauma, the heart-cry of which is often 'There's nobody there' and the need for us, in learnable ways, to develop self-compassion.

Podcast: #16 – Trauma needs a solution

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 13:37:06 +0000

Trauma teaches us that we are helpless to act in the face of danger. But recovery from trauma involves learning to act, learning to take steps, learning to start to find and create the solutions. In this podcast, I talk about the symptoms of trauma and how they drive us towards a solution.

Podcast: #16 – Trauma needs a solution

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

You can discover more of my content on my website: https://www.carolynspring.com/
For my blog posts: https://www.carolynspring.com/blog/
For my online training: https://www.carolynspring.com/online-training/
For free resources: https://www.carolynspring.com/free-downloads/

You can follow me on social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carolynspringwriter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarolynSpring/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolynspringwriter/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolynspring/

Podcast: #15 – Trauma is not just a distressing event

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 13:31:18 +0000

Podcast: #15 – Trauma is not just a distressing event

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Trauma isn’t something we’re supposed to get over easily. It’s supposed to impact us. It’s supposed to change us. That’s part of why it’s so hard to shift. The problem isn’t with us. In this podcast, I talk about the impacts of trauma and how it isn’t something that we can get over easily.

This podcast is also available at: https://www.carolynspring.com/podcast/trauma-is-not-just-a-distressing-event/

You can discover more of my content on my website: https://www.carolynspring.com/
For my blog posts: https://www.carolynspring.com/blog/
For my online training: https://www.carolynspring.com/online-training/
For free resources: https://www.carolynspring.com/free-downloads/

You can follow me on social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carolynspringwriter/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarolynSpring/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolynspringwriter/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolynspring/

Podcast: #14 – Falling down, getting back up again: my journey over the last year

Carolyn Spring — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 02:01:00 +0000

Sometimes life doesn’t go to plan. In this episode, I discuss the circumstances that led me back into therapy, the return of dissociative parts of the personality, and how I'm rising again after being knocked (and literally falling) down.

Podcast: #13 – Kindness is revolutionary

Carolyn Spring — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 13:58:45 +0000

Unkindness is rife in our society. Extreme unkindness is, in simplistic terms, called abuse. To heal from abuse, we need an abundance of kindness. But our survival-based back brain preferentially focuses on unkindness, on danger and threat. In this podcast I talk about how to retrain our front brains to focus on and notice the many kindnesses that are in fact all around us.

Podcast: #12 – What does recovery from trauma look like?

Carolyn Spring — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 15:29:47 +0000

Recovery from trauma is a journey, an orientation, a direction, not a specific location. Just head north - where you're at is less important than which direction you're headed in. In this podcast, I discuss why we can feel that recovery is impossible, how recovery perhaps doesn't look as we imagine it to, and how society needs to help with 'public transport' to help us on our way.

Podcast: #11 – Recovering from developmental trauma

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 10:41:16 +0000

Recovering from trauma takes time. In this podcast, I look at how we often missed out on developmental stages during childhood, and how we have to learn what we were not in a position to learn as children - not least our ability to regulate our emotions, which isn’t a sign of character deficiency, but simply the loss of opportunity.

Podcast: #10 – This is my new life

Carolyn Spring — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 14:15:48 +0000

When we have suffered trauma and pain, our brains find it hard to experience joy. But we need to put ourselves in the right place to find joy, and we need to cultivate it. In this podcast I talk about a life-transforming trip from 2012 and how the big breakthroughs are built on the backs of daily small breakthroughs.

Podcast: #9 – Sunshine in December

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Reindeer and suncream?! Life doesn’t always appear as we expect it to. In this podcast, I talk about how trauma anticipates danger and badness, and how to develop the imagination for life to be different.

Podcast: #8 – Shame, Unshame and who you really are

Carolyn Spring — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 08:04:53 +0000

In this podcast, I talk about the crippling isolation of shame, and how to move beyond it. I talk about how shame is a survival strategy which tries to keep us from being hurt. And how, in moving towards ‘unshame’, we need to find out who we really are and live from that place of deep self-compassion.

Podcast: #7 – Can we heal?

Carolyn Spring — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 08:00:40 +0000

Is recovery from trauma and abuse - resulting in dissociation and even a dissociative disorder - possible? That's the subject of this podcast where I talk about the vulnerability of hoping for good things, the difference between correlation and causation, and the difference between hoping for and planning for.

Podcast: #6 – The therapeutic relationship

Carolyn Spring — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 09:00:55 +0000

Join me as I talk about how important the relationship between therapist and client is, and what factors go into making a good one.

Podcast: #5 – Learning to enjoy life

Carolyn Spring — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 09:00:53 +0000

Join me as I talk about how important I found it to discover who I am as an individual, rather than as someone trying to simply 'fit in'.

Podcast: #4 – Trauma is feeling unsafe

Carolyn Spring — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 09:00:10 +0000

Join me as I talk about the most important things to focus on for survivors at the start of their recovery journey.

Podcast: #3 – Building skills

Carolyn Spring — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 09:00:58 +0000

Recovery from trauma isn't about 'getting over' something upsetting. It often requires building skills for managing emotions. In this podcast, I explain the process.

Podcast: #2 – Recovery is possible

Carolyn Spring — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 09:00:56 +0000

Is recovery possible? I'd say it is … based not just on my own personal experience, but on the fact that it’s how our bodies and brains are designed by default. Often when people don’t recover, it’s a problem with the therapy or the ‘treatment’, rather than a problem with a person. In this thought-provoking podcast, I bring hope for healing.

Podcast: #1 – Suicide

Carolyn Spring — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 10:00:00 +0000

In this episode I talk about suicide … my own experience of numerous suicide attempts, the hopelessness and sense of trappedness, and how I've moved towards recovery.