#11: Amy is an alchemist working to transform her traumatic childhood experiences into a life of her own choosing. Two years ago, Amy changed her life when she reached out for help from an amazing psychotherapist. Through the healing process, Amy discovered a passion to provide a voice for the voiceless through documenting her journey on Instagram. Amy now uses art as a creative process for coping with trauma. In her spare time, she balances her work as the Operations Manager for an online public school with managing a degenerative skeletal-muscular disease (Klippel-Feil Syndrome) and most importantly, finding time to cuddle up to Netflix with a phenomenally kind, patient, and loving husband. She's one hell of a woman!
#11: Amy is an alchemist working to transform her traumatic childhood experiences into a life of her own choosing. Two years ago, Amy changed her life when she reached out for help from an amazing psychotherapist. Through the healing process, Amy discovered a passion to provide a voice for the voiceless through documenting her journey on Instagram.
Amy now uses art as a creative process for coping with trauma. In her spare time, she balances her work as the Operations Manager for an online public school with managing a degenerative skeletal-muscular disease (Klippel-Feil Syndrome) and most importantly, finding time to cuddle up to Netflix with a phenomenally kind, patient, and loving husband. She's one hell of a woman!
Our Sponsor:
Lionrock Recovery (http://www.lionrockrecovery.com)
Follow us here:
Podcast Website: (http://www.lionrockrecovery.com/podcast)Facebook: (https://www.facebook.com/LionrockRecovery/)Twitter: (https://twitter.com/lionrockrecovry)Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/lionrockrecovery/)
Questions, comments or feedback? We want to hear from you! Email us at podcast@lionrockrecovery.com
Show Notes:
3:35 - Amy starts discussing her background and childhood
7:35 - The sexual assault: beginnings and what it turned into
8:45 - The start of being sex trafficked
10:38 - How Amy figured out what it was called/what sex trafficking actually looks like locally
16:10 - Becoming the “sacrificial lamb” of the family
21:02 - The first time she was raped + dissociating
22:50 - Being waterboarded at age 9
26:27 - Assaulted at age 17
31:38 - Using substances to cope
36:27 - Making the decision to seek out therapy
41:15 - Adding EMDR to her therapy and treatment plan
43:28 - Discussing her therapy assignments and the high value of therapy
47:30 - College and choosing an education for herself
51:56 - Discussing her recovery from trauma
53:38 - Getting re-triggered by trauma as an adult, and how she was able to work through the incident by creating her Instagram account @cptsdchronicles
1:00:15 - Hearing from others who were trafficked
The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor, Lionrock Recovery, for their support. Lionrock Recovery is an online substance abuse counseling program where you can get help for drinking or drug use from the privacy of your own home. For more information, visit http://www.lionrockrecovery.com.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people, welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley, and I will be your host. Today we are talking to Amy, Amy is a survivor of sex trafficking. She changed her life when she reached out for help from an amazing psychotherapist two years ago. Through that healing process she discovered a passion to provide a voice for the voiceless through documenting her journey on Instagram, where we found her. She is incredibly open and authentic about the reality of healing from this long-term abuse, and recovering from addiction. She now uses art as a creative process for coping with her traumas. In her spare time she balances her work as the operations manager for an online public school, while also managing a degenerative skeletal muscular disease, KFS, and most importantly finding time to cuddle up to Netflix with a phenomenally kind, and patient, loving husband.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
She is one hell of a woman, you guys, seriously. One of the things that really struck me about Amy's story was that sex trafficking looks nothing like what the picture in my head that comes up when we use that terminology. It very much was happening in a neighborhood like most of suburban America, and I found that to be very eye-opening, and an important part of the discussion around addiction and trauma, and healing, that this type of stuff is going on, and it doesn't look the way that many of the media outlets portray it. I thought that was very helpful, and of course Amy's journey is really incredible, and her willingness to share the details of her therapy have been really fascinating. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. All right, Episode 11, let's do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All right, Amy, I'm so grateful that we were able to get in touch with you, and that you're here on the program, welcome.
Amy Peterson:
Thank you, I am super excited to be here.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I found you through your Instagram, which is at cptsdchronicles.
Amy Peterson:
Yup.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And you talk about your journey through therapy, and dealing with post-traumatic stress in the most beautiful way. I love that you always put a trigger warning on the first image, and then you show your writing about it. I was really moved by you sharing what the journey of therapy, and particularly complex PTSD looks like, because I don't think a lot of us know what that looks like. We just know you go into a room with a therapist or you go into a session, and then you come out, and you're supposed to be better, and they call it work. You know?
Amy Peterson:
I mean it's not too far off.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, I know, that's true. It feels very mysterious like, "What are they doing in there? Is it like magic?"
Amy Peterson:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But you have really shown what that's like, and I really love that, and I know that a couple years ago you got into therapy for this complex trauma that you have from your childhood. You were actually a victim of sex trafficking. So talk to us, I want our listeners to hear about your story, and what you actually dealt with, and then let's talk about what you've been doing in therapy, and what's been working, and how that's going, but can you give us a little bit of your background?
Amy Peterson:
Sure, I'm happy to do that. So I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, which is just about an hour South of big city Seattle. I think it's kind of beautiful that I was raised there because our local nickname is Grit City, and I think that's really perfect for my tale because it took a lot of grit to get to where I am today.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Amy Peterson:
It was kind of interesting in talking with my therapist, when we first started she kind of asked about my life before I was even born, and I though, "Well, that's a weird-ass question." I don't really know, but the more I kind of dig into it the more I find it has such deep meaning for me, because of this world of generational trauma that I'm coming from that seriously informed my life. Before I was even born my parents, this is going to sound weird, but they were members of a Catholic cult. Catholicism isn't a cult in it of itself, they got into this local group, which they actually called The Group, they ended up tithing their cars and their houses, and they were assigned marriages and-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
For people who don't know, tithing is where you give money, so you give ... they gave their cars to the church, and all these different things?
Amy Peterson:
Yup, and they had to give all of their excess income, every little aspect of their life was just controlled, to the point where they eventually told my parents that they had to get rid of their family, and can no longer have contact with them, and that's when my mom kind of drew the line, and pulled back a little bit from religion. It stayed a bit part of their lives, but they were like, "No, we're not doing that thing." So I come from this very deeply religious kind of messed up background of my parents, which kind of influenced a lot of what ends up happening in my life.
Amy Peterson:
Then about 10 years-ish after they left that they were super surprised to have me, which I found out last year my mom actually has terminal brain tumor, and so it's led to some really interesting conversations in my life, of sharing things I probably wouldn't have otherwise heard which was, "You weren't really a wanted baby," and I'm like, "Oh, that's-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, boy.
Amy Peterson:
"So fascinating." That actually explains so much. She wasn't really prepared to have me, and so one of the ways she dealt with her own mental health issues, and her incapacity to be a mother at that time was to send me over to grandma's, which had a lot of really great moments with some family members, but it also kind of tragically enabled my uncle to have access to me, and he-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Is this your maternal or paternal uncle?
Amy Peterson:
Yeah, it's my maternal uncle, my mom's youngest brother.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay.
Amy Peterson:
He ended up sexually abusing me from the time I was three, the last time that he did was when I was 17. So I've got this very long history of complex trauma between the sexual abuse that was also pretty physically violent, enabled by my family from kind of a religious perspective of it's the woman's fault even if she's four.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow, so how did it turn from sexual abuse to trafficking?
Amy Peterson:
It kind of started as my uncle molesting me in his bedroom at my grandmother's home where he lived, eventually started to include things like him having me watch pornography with him, or like through Hustler Magazine, which then escalated to him then using that material to inspire our time together, and he began filming his sexual abuse of me, as well as photographing it, which for a long time I just thought he had those awful videos and pictures in the back of his closet that I always avoided, and just felt this terrible shame around. It turned out that he had been selling them to friends and family, and by the time I was probably late five or late six he decided that he ... I am guessing, this is all kind of ideas because I've never talked to him about it, decided to make some more money off of me, as well as, I think getting something out of further humiliating me.
Amy Peterson:
He took me to a local amusement park one day, and met up with a man I'd never met, and sold him a tape that I saw him grab out of the back of his closet, and I kind of thought that was going to be the end of that, and we were going to go around having a nice day at the park. Because it wasn't always just abuse, which is I think what kind of makes it hard and challenging with this, was also to everyone else, which I'm sure helped with the denial, this really great friendly, outgoing, charismatic character, that really was in my perspective a character that enabled him to do these awful things that were ultimately his goal. That day at the amusement park he ended up selling me to the stranger.
Amy Peterson:
I didn't often fight back against him because I learned very quickly that any sort of no was only going to lead to violence in my life, or some sort of torture whether it was emotional or physical, but I was so genuinely terrified at this point, I actually whimpered, "No, no, no." Then the sort of violent individual started to come out in a controlled manner at the park, and I just knew that it was going to be better for me if I went with this complete stranger than if I didn't. He just let this man take me off into the amusement park, he didn't follow him or anything. This man could have kidnapped me, he could have killed me in the park, he could have done anything, I just ... genuinely I have a lot of anger and grief around that right now, and it's actually kind of the topic we're working on in therapy.
Amy Peterson:
When I started to think about how I was going to talk to my therapist about this, there is the, "Oh, my God, is someone going to believe me?" Like the story, how tragic, how can it be real? Like would I even believe myself?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Amy Peterson:
It is super difficult, so I took to the internet, and I was like, I don't even know what to call this, because child prostitution to me is not ... I mean it's a term we hear, but I don't think it's illegitimate because you aren't choosing to sell yourself as a child, you're being victimized.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, and you're not ... the money is not going to you. I mean it's so interesting, because you and I talked a bit about this, about the trafficking aspect to it, and how I hear on the news or I hear, and I see campaigns about trafficking, and I ... you know, "Trafficking is going on in your community," and I'm like, "How? Who? Who? Who? [Inaudible 00:11:31]?" I was telling you, like I'm trying to picture trafficking, and then I hear your story, and I hear about you being sold to this man in the amusement park, and then I know that you were returned to your uncle, so it's like a ... it was a transaction there, and it's not pimping someone out, it's not because ... you're not opting into, I mean it is trafficking. You are being sold for sex, and then returned.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It blew my mind on a lot of levels of course, as just a human, but it blew my mind it's like, "Oh, this is what we're talking about. This is the topic of sex trafficking. This is a topic." It's situations, intergenerational trauma, these crazy situations, access to children, these are going on over a long period of time. They have access to children over a long period of time, and then it happens, you know this is how it happens. Your story was like, "Oh, okay, this is the topic. This is what's happening," and of course I know that was just the first time.
Amy Peterson:
Yeah, and you have verbalize so well exactly what I was thinking when I took to the internet to search, and I was like, I had this image in my mind of trafficking being, you know people being brought in from other countries, to the US through shipping containers or cross over a border, or even people taking advantaged of, and groups in America, even if it was in borders it was always this distant understanding of people being moved from one place to another to be sold for any number of reasons. But when I actually went, looked up the definition it perfectly actually describes my situation, which is the selling of a human being against their will, in this case for sexual purposes. It just, it hit me like a ton of bricks that, "Oh, my gosh I'm a trafficking victim." I never thought about it that way, and I don't know anyone in my life who would think about it that way.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Amy Peterson:
I think there's such power in that like you were saying, of realizing this is going on probably in a lot of neighborhoods, are in proximity to where all of us live, and it's just so tragic, not only the events, but just the lack of information, the lack of resources and awareness around such a difficult topic that affects millions of people across the world all the time.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it really is. It's really eye-opening. We talked a lot about date rape, rape, sexual assault, we talk about domestic violence, we talk about these issues, and it's wonderful in the sense that as we talk about them more they've become more mainstream-able topics. Sex trafficking, I think is one of those, still one of those exotic terms. You know, to be honest with you I've always pictured kind of you described it, but it's a foreign issue, like it's literally with foreigners. I don't know, and that's my image in my head that comes to mind, and I'm sure that's related to media images.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
One thing I have wondered when people talk about child porn is like, "Where are they getting this porn? How does this happen? What is this?" You're ... then you're describing it, and so it really talk ... What I hear is, "Here is a way to get to the root cause of the problem," like, "How do we stop it?" People are catching large amounts of child pornography after it's been filmed, and when it's already in a bank of films, and it's being distributed, this is from the ground level, and talking about that. Then also treating the victims, the survivors so that we don't perpetuate this intergenerational trauma cycle, that is so huge because your mother, and I know several people in this very situation where one person in the family, typically an older male abuses like four generations of people, and they're all abused by the same person. As a result, I mean I have close friends that this has happened, as a result everyone is silent because everyone has experienced that same brainwashing by that same person. It sounds like that was a lot of what happened, was that your whole family was complicit.
Amy Peterson:
Yeah, there was this really challenging incident for me that I worked from, that was probably several months before he started to traffic me, which was my younger sister had just turned three, and I was so worried for her because it had happened to me at three, and a perfectly logical for a young child like, "This is going to happen to her next," and so it started to. My grandmother at the time was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer, and so my mother and her brother's half-sister came up to help kind of take care of us at my grandmother's home while my parents would take my grandmother to cancer therapy. My uncle decided to do movie day in the bedroom, let's go hangout, which then led to him trying to coral me into teaching my sister how to be a good abuse victim.
Amy Peterson:
I was just paralyzed with fear for her because I already, by the age of five kind of knew this was going to be my life, but I didn't want that for her, but I also was so accustomed to the violence, and so terrified that I, at five, didn't know how to protect her from this. So just begrudgingly went along with it, and so as he had started to have me essentially perform a sexual act on him to demonstrate for my sister my aunt actually walked into the room, and found him. At first, I was just intensely embarrassed and ashamed of the secret that wasn't supposed to be found that I felt so dirty about. She screamed at me to get out of the room, and immediately I felt like I had done something wrong, and so I kind of walked to the living room, and she literally dragged my uncle out of the room by his ear like he was a child.
Amy Peterson:
I had this huge sense of hope well up within me like, "Oh, my gosh, maybe this isn't going to happen to my sister, maybe this is going to be the last day for me, and life is just going to get significantly better because someone finally knows what's going on." She ends up chastising my uncle, and I'm just sitting there like, "Thank God-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're in the same room while the chastising is going on?
Amy Peterson:
Yeah, so she pulls us out of his room, down the hallway to kind of this like kitchen living room area, and she holds up the Hustler Magazine he was perusing with us, and she starts chastising him for having the pornography, and I'm like, "Okay, so this is a start. She's just going to explain to him about what was going on." She kind of starts to, and she's like, "I can't believe you would do this to you Amy's little sister. That is just so wrong. You can't be doing this to kids anymore. It's not okay. She's too young." I'm like, "Okay, okay, here it comes," like I'm finally free, but then at this point she says, "You can keep doing this with Amy, she's old enough to figure it out. You need to focus your attention on her, and no other children."
Amy Peterson:
So I kind of became the acceptable abuse victim in the family, which at first when I worked through it I was so intensely angry and furious at my aunt, which is completely understandable because she would condone the abuse.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, a sacrificial lamb.
Amy Peterson:
Yeah, that's exactly I think the term I used.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I mean that's what it was. It was basically like, "Okay, we need to contain this guy to one child." That's what it sounds like, that's what I'm hearing.
Amy Peterson:
Yup, that's exactly it. It was ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Unreal.
Amy Peterson:
I think that's where I found some sense of compassion for my aunt to be able to kind of work through it. It helped me to understand her actions, and be able to work through the anger to go. She knew who he was, like they grew up with him, I later found out that the exact same acts he did against me he did to my mother, like in weird level of details that actually helped me to finally start to accept that this was real. She ended up rescuing my sister that day, and taking her out of the house, which was excellent for my sister, and I was so very thankful that had happened for her, but it left me in this position where he was now chastised, and seen for who he was.
Amy Peterson:
I was left in the house alone with him, and so that ended up being the very first time that he raped me was that day. He was just so furious, he dragged me by my hair to the back of his room and assaulted me, I just remember having this weird out of body experience where it just felt like I split into two people, and literally saw what was occurring. It grew into this kind of other part of me that existed in voices, and thoughts, and for the longest time I thought I was crazy.
Amy Peterson:
It took me almost, I think a year to talk to my therapist about it, but for me this part, who for me is named Scarlett, has her own whole identity, not that I have disassociative identity disorder, I don't, but it's just a sort of structural disassociation that occurred as a result of the severe trauma. She helped me survive it, and my uncle ended up locking me in a box that day because I fought back, and I just remember being in that box, and having this disassociated part outside the box, being able to calm me at least into sleep to be able to survive. My parents later came up to pick me up that day, and obviously was very torn apart, and physically sick they had to have known something was wrong.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, and from what I know of your story if you did not comply he would frequently waterboard you. So you ended ... your uncle ended up getting you pregnant, is that right?
Amy Peterson:
Yeah, so at age nine my uncle had escalated to this point where he was assaulting me in my grandmother's bathroom when she was either out of the house or were taking a nap, and he would essentially waterboard me under a running faucet, or as the water rose until I met some specific sick goal he had in mind for that day. One time it just really went too far, and I ended up drowning, to the point where I was completely removed from my body, and saw myself unconscious in the tub with him still assaulting me, and that sort of bright light cliché thing going on, and I just thought, "Oh, my God, I'm dying." It's here, this day I feared so long is here, and I'm ready to let go, but he became aware of what was happening, and ended up having to revive me with CPR, and so that ended up being the last day in my childhood that he sexually abused me.
Amy Peterson:
It was a number of years before it happened again, but it did happen again a couple of times. From that point on he just stuck to harassing me, even in front of my parents, and family and friends, and I remember I used to always just hide behind the couch in the living room so I could just be out of sight, out of mind.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What do you mean by harassing?
Amy Peterson:
Once I hit puberty it was, "Oh, you have really grown a nice rack there, I'd sure like to get my hands on those."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got it, okay.
Amy Peterson:
Or you know, just-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Amy Peterson:
Disgusting comments like that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Amy Peterson:
That unfortunately too many of us hear, and then by the time I was 15 I had completely blacked out this memory, but in pulling out my journals, and doing therapy work he had actually cornered me against a wall at my grandmother's house when other people were in the kitchen, and getting ready for this backyard barbecue, and had ended up groping my chest. I was just so horrified, I think I hit him, and I freaked out, and I took off, and just disappeared, and went home because my parents lived probably like a half a mile ways so it was easy to get there, and got in trouble for running off from the family barbecue, and just ate the getting in trouble because if I told them this I was going to have to tell them everything that happened. That was my mindset.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Amy Peterson:
But about a week later I ended up telling them on a car ride, because I just couldn't live with it anymore, and I just said, "He's been harassing me, and he touched me last week at the barbecue, and that's why I took off." I thought they would have my back. I thought there's no way they can deny this anymore, I'm telling them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Amy Peterson:
They didn't deny it, but what they did say was, "That's what men like him do, and we just keep our mouth shut, and we move on because there's nothing we can do."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, because that was their experience.
Amy Peterson:
Yup, exactly, and so again, like I finally, after 12 years of this abuse had worked up to telling someone, and nothing, it was my fault-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Not what you expected.
Amy Peterson:
For feeling something, is what it felt like. So then two years later having grown up in this really rough neighborhood, my parents didn't want to leave me even at 17 alone in our house, because there was a lot of gang activity, our house had bullet holes from drive-bys. People were frequently breaking in. We live next door to a met house, like it was not a good situation, so I understand they're not wanting me to be at home alone, but it would have been safer because they ended up sending me to stay with my uncle. My grandmother was dying at the time from Alzheimer's and other complications, so she was completely out of it, so I remember-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He was still living with her?
Amy Peterson:
He was still living with her, probably in his mid-50's I think at this point. So I just knew the entire night like, "Oh, my God, it's going to happen again. I want to get out of here," but I also was so terrified of my family at that point, and their level of, or their capacity for rage that I was like, "Okay, I'm just going to risk it. I'm not a child anymore maybe he's not interested. It will be okay, I'll get through it." So that night he ended up just throwing on this overtly sexual, but not pornographic videos, and I just have this sinking feeling in my gut, and then as he had done many times in my childhood, kind of gave me some liquor, which I believe he probably laced with something because I just kind of went to this weird, woozy, have to go to bed right now phase.
Amy Peterson:
I just remembered laying, looking at the clock for hours wondering when he was going to come into the room, and finally started to fade off to sleep, and he did. So he came into the room, and I attempted to just pretend I was completely passed out from sleep, and the drugs and the alcohol, but I wasn't. At one point he became aware of it, and this became really hard for me to process because I felt a lot of guilt around it in therapy, but it ultimately kind of has become an empowering moment for me, which was he was just about to rape me, and he just paused me, and told me, "I know you're awake. You're going to do this or we're going to be here all night."
Amy Peterson:
So he put me in this disgusting position of having to be in charge of my own abuse, and so I just kind of went along with it at the time, and at a certain point was just like, "Well, this, if I'm going to be stuck in this position." I don't know, at some ... I don't know if it was Scarlett or some other part of me that was more protective, and empowered was like, "I'm going to throw him off kilter, and I'm taking charge." So I felt this intense shame because I kind of rolled him over, and took a power position over him, and just ... I don't know. Everything I say is going to ... This is like, it sounds awfully sexual in my head, I'm like, "I blew his mind. No, no, don't say that, Amy." That sounds so awful, but you know-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, no, it's a really good thing to share because here is the thing, we, when we're in this terrible situations, and I've been ... It's not the same situation, but I've been in a situation, multiple times, where I thought to myself I'm either going to get raped or I'm going to go along with this. I was like, "You know what? I'm just going to go along," and so because that was easier, and that made, that changed the power dynamic because someone was going to have the power, right?
Amy Peterson:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's it. That's the way it was going to be, and when you're female in a weaker position, in those situations you're making survival decisions.
Amy Peterson:
Yup.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's it, and so you made a survival decision. It's him having the power, it's me having the power, might as well be me.
Amy Peterson:
Yup, exactly. I think this exact incident that I worked with my therapist, I don't remember her exact words now, I know I have a post about them, it happened almost exactly a year ago because it came up at my Facebook feed, and it was something along the lines of, "That young woman who survived this tragedy did the thing she knew how to do to survive, and to take power, and she sacrificed herself so that you could be here today, and our work is here to honor that sacrifice." It gave me this understanding of who I was as a person, the tenacity, and the grit, and the perseverance, and the risks I was willing to take to ensure my survival against all odds. It really allowed me to connect with her in a way that after that our relationship just blossomed into this wonderful therapeutic relationship I look forward to as like my safe home twice a week.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Were you ever using substances to cope?
Amy Peterson:
I definitely was using substances to cope, particularly at this point. So [inaudible 00:31:45] a few months, I had this really great at 16 where I was like, "Oh, my God, my life is finally turning around. This is amazing, I have a loving, caring boyfriend. I finally have friends, and people I can rely on. My life is going to be so good from here on out." Then I had consensual sex for the first time in my life, and it was absolutely amazing, and life-changing, and affirming, and it filled me with so much hope, and what I didn't realize at the time is the guy I was dating wasn't such a great guy after all, and was also very charismatic and charming, and I fell for it again. He started to emotionally abuse me, which then led to physically abusing me, and ultimately even if we'd start a consensual sexual act if I changed my mind when I was triggered, very understandably from all of my severe childhood trauma, that wasn't acceptable to him.
Amy Peterson:
Being a little bit more grown, I had at least an awareness that I could daze myself out of the situation, and not deal with it. So I started to drink, and my parents were super religious, but people have always gifted them alcohol, but they never touched it, and it literally gathered dust in the cupboard, so it gave me this great access to years worth of booze to start numbing myself. Then shortly before this incident at 17 with my uncle, I had dislocated my shoulder during swim team practice, enough that it put me off swim team for the rest of the year, in my senior year, but it gave me access to muscle relaxers, and Vicodin, which I then essentially milked the injury for months and months, and months after saying that it just wasn't healing.
Amy Peterson:
I needed more drugs, so that I could be able to stay in this just numb state of not wanting to deal with this abusive boyfriend, the trauma with my uncle, and essentially all of this abuse that had started coming back to my mind around 14 or 15, which I had just mentally buried, and blacked out that come back up. I was trying to deal with all of my memories, while dealing with this uncle, and this boyfriend, and I just couldn't live with it at that point. For me, the best option at the time since I just wanted the pain to stop was to numb out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I think that's a very common ... and it's ... One thing we talked about, you know I'm in recovery from drugs and alcohol, and stuff for lesser things I suppose, and from it all, baby, I'm in recovery from life, and -
Amy Peterson:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
One of the things we talked about is how drugs and alcohol were a survival mechanism for me that worked, at some point in my life they were very, very valuable, they very much worked for me. As time went on they became the problem, they became destructive, that set in, but in the beginning I needed something, and they served that purpose, and it sounds to me very much like that's what was going on for you was ... I mean this was life-saving, right? This was a survival technique to get through it, same with disassociation, all the different ... same with fantasy, all these different things, they are coping mechanisms, and if you don't have someone, I mean even if you do, right? But if you don't have someone teaching you like, "Hey, when you are triggered, when you have trauma, when this happens this is how you handle it. You're going to find a way to handle it, and we are going to naturally be averse to pain, so we're going to try to find something to anesthetize what's happening." It's just a normal reaction to those things.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What you did later on in life was you sought out a way to unpack all these insane trauma, and you have been doing that, and sharing your journey, and it's just, I mean jaw-dropping, what you've been able to do, and where you've been able, and you're really doing the work. I mean, I see it, I hear it in what you're writing, what has that been like for you. Tell us about recovery from this, and tell us about some of your challenges, and then other things you've overcome.
Amy Peterson:
Sure. So about two years ago I just kind of had enough, I had never dealt with all these trauma we talked about, including the abuse with my boyfriend that ultimately led into him breaking into my home, and sexually assaulting me at knife point, ending up pregnant from my uncle, hitting this dark spot of suicide, and an actual attempt in high school that I very luckily survived. Once I got through high school I just packed all that stuff down, compartmentalized it, and moved on with my life and thought, "I'm going to be okay, it's fine, I survived." So life got a little too stressful again for me, and so around the time I was 31, I was diagnosed with a congenital life-long chronic illness that has led to daily severe pain, and ability to use muscles and nerves, and just all these horrific physical, physicality that started to bring back up the trauma.
Amy Peterson:
My husband and I miscarried our third child, and it was just too much for me, and I, at this time started coping by working 120 hours a week. I utilized my overachiever status to just work so much, it became my drug on top of overeating, and I wore my body out, and I just couldn't live with it anymore. I remember being like, you know what, it started with some suicidal ideation, which I think a lot of people go through, and I was like, "Okay, I know this is normal. It's fine, I'm going to walk though this. I did it college, I'm totally fine." But then when I started withdrawing from my husband, and withdrawing from my friends, and starting to think ... and I started thinking about, "How am I going to do this? When am I going to do this?" I knew that was a bad sign. I knew that was the, "I need to get help now, or I'm going to make a decision that I'm not even going to live to regret."
Amy Peterson:
I know in my heart all of these people love me, but I'm just not capable of feeling it because of everything I went through. I can't accept it, and I don't think I'm worth it. So that ultimately pushed me to calling my insurance company, and saying, "I don't know how to adult. I really need you to help [inaudible 00:39:01], how do I get through this?" Luckily [crosstalk 00:39:04], they gave me this list of providers, and I was like, "I just need someone even if it's not the right one right now, I just need to find someone to get me through six weeks." I just got to commit to six weeks, because that's more therapy than I've ever attempted to do before, and luckily I went into this office as a super shy person who started out probably with just like, "Yup. No. Yeah, that happened." It's like [crosstalk 00:39:34].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, no, yes.
Amy Peterson:
Yes, like staring at the floor wanting to get audit out of there, like physically, like tapping my foot, and shaking the whole session, that I was seen, and I was heard, and she just was filled with such compassion for me that was like, "Okay, I can keep doing this. I just got to keep doing this." So she just took a lot of time getting to know me, and wanted to make sure that I was comfortable before we started really processing any trauma.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, absolutely.
Amy Peterson:
I think that really gave me this solid foundation of faith in her even if I didn't quite have the trust yet, which is so freaking understandable. So she just gave me some therapy homework, and as a classic overachiever, A student, I was like, "Hell, yeah, I love homework. Homework is good." I show up with this list and list, and list of pages, and she's just so in awe of it and I'm like, "Oh, my God, someone's capable of being in awe of me, this is so weird. I love it. I'm addicted." I think that basic need of needing to be seen, and validated, and have some sense of affection in my life, apart from my husband, who I love dearly and he's always in the background, poor guy, but it allowed me to at first engage because I was getting this need met and then it's grown so much deeper.
Amy Peterson:
Because we talked about treatment options, and she had asked me, "Well, have you ever heard of EMDR?" Which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and I was like, "Ironically that's actually why I picked you, is because I saw that you had this training and certification, and I'm interested in it, and I'm willing to give it a go." After we got through this rough period at work she was like, "Are you ready to give it a go?" I'm like, "All right, let's do this like waving finger magic eye stuff I read about on the internet, in Pinterest. I mean, what's it going to hurt at this point?" It was super weird at first because I'm like, "I can't even concentrate, how the hell am I supposed to look at these fingers, and think about my feelings, and recall images, and then share this stuff with you?" It was really hard at first, but it got easier every session.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
EMDR is magic, okay. Can we just get on, can you get on my level? EMDR, trauma is magic, it really is. It's so weird. It's so weird, and the first couple of times that I did it I was like ... I wasn't ready, I didn't really, like it was so weird that I was still like, "This is weird." I kept ... You're thinking about it being weird, like it couldn't ... I couldn't access my trauma because I was like, "What is happening right now?" This is so ridiculous, right?
Amy Peterson:
Yes.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Then I finally got to a place where I could access my trauma, I was like, "All right, I'm going to give this like the good college try," and I'm telling you that the intrusive thoughts, and the obsession around it, and the ... it went away. It was so crazy. I hear the story all the time about this trauma work, it's so cool, it's just such, and I'm so happy that you knew about it, found out about it, were willing to do it because I think a lot of people are like, "This is weird, and I don't know what's going on," and so they don't do it, but I'm ... it's just so cool.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're writing, so what ... Sometimes people ask about what the work is like, "What is trauma work?" Like what is actually done in the session, can you tell us a little bit about some of these assignments like what was the writing and why was it so valuable for you to put that pen into paper or whatever, to write on the computer? Why was it ... What's the value in that? Because what would you ... Okay, let me back up, what would you tell someone who is like, "I'll get a journal. I don't need a therapist, and I'll just write down my life story." How do you explain to someone what this process has done for you?
Amy Peterson:
Sure, I mean, I'll do my best. I think on one hand, the therapy in it of itself is phenomenal, and it's a great two hours of my week. It's the best investment I've ever made, but it's only two hours of my week, and I have to be able to practice that in the other, I can't do math so whatever number of hours there are in a week, to be able to actually make a change for myself. Because ultimately it's about me making the choice to change, and utilizing this wonderfully educated, talented, compassionate individual to help me learn how to implement that. I think having that guidance of someone who knows what questions to ask to guide me down a path of self-discovery, that I so lost in trauma, might not even have capacity to think about, and maybe not be able to find on the internet. Because there's a lot of great resources that you can write about in journal prompts, but they aren't geared towards you, and your situation, and your circumstances, and who you are as a human being.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was one of the most profound journal prompts that she had you do that was specific to you?
Amy Peterson:
Oh, my God.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I know, you can take a second to think about it.
Amy Peterson:
Okay. I think, so this was a super simple one, but it opened up a door for me, was that I really have this picture in my head having talked to no one about their own life story or mine, that this was just people's lives, and this was completely normal, and it wasn't that bad. One of the first tasks she gave me was to create a trauma timeline, and so she gave me, she's like, "You can put it on a poster, you can paint it out, you can write a poem, you can put it in like a timeline," you know, do you boo boo, and so ...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love you.
Amy Peterson:
Which is solely my voice matters.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it.
Amy Peterson:
So I ended up just sitting down, and for like weeks I would just write in this journal everything that happened, and it gave me this realization of, "Oh, maybe this actually is kind of a big deal in my life," and was able to take that in, and start to talk about it and realize, and I'm still kind of coming to this conclusion, that I have never had goals or dreams, or hope because I always thought I was going to die the next day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Amy Peterson:
So she gave me this, kind of assignment to just come up with my initial goals for therapy, and I caved in, and I was like, "I got nothing. I don't know how to do those." So she was able to have the capacity to say, "Okay, let's slow down a little bit. What would your ideal life look like in five years? Let's say we work, and we do this therapy work together, or you find someone who's better suited, and you do this work together, what is your life going to look like in five years?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Which is something you had never thought about?
Amy Peterson:
No, I literally never thought about it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What about your Master's degree?
Amy Peterson:
I know, right, this is so sad. In my family it was like, "You are going to college. You don't have a choice." So I was like, "I don't really want to go to college, but I guess I'm going to college because that's what I have to do, because my parents say so." I was passionate about criminology, and wanted to help people like me, so I went and got my associates degree in criminology, but didn't have the greatest adviser, so at the end of my two years they were like, "Oh, yeah, 45 of your credits [inaudible 00:47:43], so you're going to have to stay in college another year."
Amy Peterson:
I was like, "Oh, hell, no. I didn't want to be here two years, like I'm not doing that. What are my options?" They were like, "Well, there's this like Liberal Arts College, 45 minutes down the freeway. They're super hippy, they don't do grades, like they'll take your credits." I was like, "I don't even care, just send me there, whatever, it's fine, I'll get my Bachelor's. I have no goals." They don't have a specific degree so that's going to be perfect for me. I can just go take random class, get a degree, and my life's going to magically fix itself. Once I got there the education was just so absolutely different than anything I'd experienced that I was like, "Oh, maybe I could be a teacher. I don't have any plans in life, so yeah, let's just do that."
Amy Peterson:
So I ended up getting my Bachelor's in, like a dual endorsement in English Language Arts and Math, and my dad was like, "Well, you're smart, you should get your Master's," and I'm like, "Yes, sir." So I applied for a Master's Program because I'm like I have no plan of getting a job. I don't know what I'm going to do in my life, this will give me two more years to get my stuff together. So I ended up getting my Master's in Teaching, and it was a place where I really could excel because of that sort of hard work, overachiever, keep myself super busy, and life's not going to have any problems. Then I entered this profession of teaching, which was fabulous, and I was really good at it, but my heart was so big I just felt like I was never ever doing students justice, and at the end of the day I couldn't live with it.
Amy Peterson:
So I ended up staying within the field of education, but dropped out of teaching because I just was like, "This is too big of a goal. I can't do this. I don't know how to exist being myself almost." It was super challenging, but now I'm in this super amazing school where I work as an operations manager for an online kindergarten through 12th grade public school, where I still get to be passionate about making sure students are being served well so that they can have access to education, and caring adults, and develop goals and passions with their own life, that I never felt I have the opportunity to, but with all that pressure that I feel, personally let some child down like I was let down.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. I mean it's so ... I love having people in this podcast who have these deep experiences, and deep dark is part of it, and then finding a way out. The name of the podcast is right, The Courage to Change, and that's the truth. It takes courage, it takes ... You're afraid of that change, and it's interesting listening to you talk about not having the goals. What I'm thinking to myself is, "Well, she grew up in a situation where her brain actually wired to tell herself that this could be her last day, every single day, and of course that carries on through adulthood." Because that piece of you, it's, again it's what we talked about, it's the survival piece of us, and I talked about this in my story, which was you don't know what you're capable of until you're in a situation where you believe that it's a 100% about survival.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It is a piece of you that most people don't come in deep contact with, and what you're capable of or what happens to you as a human just ... that's stuff that is, it's stuff that carries on from childhood into adulthood, and it causes some of those maladapted behaviors. So tell us about your CPTSD chronicles, what's that all about? I mean that's how I found you, is that you write about your experiences, and your recovery. How many people have reached out to you? Tell us about this. Tell us a bit more about your recovery journey.
Amy Peterson:
Awesome, I'm super excited. So this came about from a very kind of traumatic incident in it of itself. So I, oh, my God, I have so many levels of detail, I'm just going to go for it. So I'm in this job now where I have this amazing supervisor who saw who I was as a person long before I ever did, he's been like a decades of teaching, gone into administration, and he saw something in me in my first couple of months as a temp in his office that he is like, "We need to get her doing greater work." He's always pushed me to excel, and given me goals, and help me discover myself, and so I've really grown. I think I counted it yesterday because I was just accepted into this, like Top Eight in the company program, yey, for me, the other day.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Congratulations, that's amazing.
Amy Peterson:
It's one of my first goals, and I achieved it, so it's been super exciting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I love it.
Amy Peterson:
So he was one of the first people in my life, aside from my husband to ever tell me he was proud of me, and so I've just flourished in my workplace.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Girl friend, I'm proud of you.
Amy Peterson:
Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I yelled that, sorry. Sorry, [inaudible 00:53:14]. Sorry, I'm sorry I made boo boo. I am proud of you.
Amy Peterson:
Thank you, my friend. So it's led me to these really wonderful opportunities to travel all over the US, and participate in committees, to help improve student engagement and learning, which is awesome. I'm like getting to achieve these goals now for the first time in my life, but unfortunately on one of those events we were flying out of, I think Boise, and it was a very tiny airport in comparison to my Seattle International Airport that I'm used to, and I don't know if my conspiracy theory self got flagged on some list, but I'm always the one pulled aside. In this incident they ended up doing a very, very aggressive pat down. I was just starting to do the EMDR work, and it was super raw at the time, and it just was completely triggering in it of itself, but then they didn't really ask me permission for anything, and it ended up with them pulling down my pants, and pulling up my shirt, and exposing my chest, and my underwear, and my-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What?!
Amy Peterson:
Very generous middle section to the entire airport, and I just kind of like froze, and was in a panic, and that wasn't good enough, and so they pulled me into another room to do a complete strip search.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I literally don't have words, again.
Amy Peterson:
So I like, I survived this, they didn't do anything beyond this level of intrusiveness, but it was just so triggering, I ended up going into the restroom at the airport, sitting on a toilet. Luckily my therapist had, in one of my early sessions was like, "I know it sounds weird and childish, but you need to get a stuffed animal," and I was like, "Okay, whatever." But I ended up bringing this stuffed animal that I had kind of grown to self-soothe with me, and I was so glad I have it, because I swear it was the only reason I didn't die of hyperventilation in that airport. I was just so mad about this incident that I was like, "I need a platform to talk about these things. I'm done with this. I need someone to hear the story." I'm starting to get strong enough to talk about my journey, it brought up all these feelings of myself as being so alone in childhood, and having no resources, and no one to turn to, and I didn't know anyone like me.
Amy Peterson:
I just want to put my voice out there, one, a little bit to chronicle for myself to refer back to, but also if someone else on this planet, even just one person can read this, and feel less alone, I'm starting to get teary-eyed, it would serve a greater purpose. So I ended up, my very first post is about that TSA incident, and I thought I can make this into something much more meaningful. I'm going to make this thing that happened to me, that was super rough into something beautiful, because that's the power of therapy. So I decided I'm super into this idea of authenticity, and I did my Master's research on authentic teaching practices, and I just, I know the research of being a genuine human being who speaks to real subjects, does it earnestly, and doesn't shy away from anything. I thought that's what I'm going to do with my life, even if I don't make money off of it, this is my passion.
Amy Peterson:
I had the gateway of of therapy, and tracking my therapy, and talking about it honestly through this Instagram account to help show others that, "Yeah, it is scary work, and it's terrifying to be vulnerable with another human person when you go through any sort of trauma, or anything you judge yourself, or feel ashamed about, but it is absolutely possible no matter how dark it gets, to find the right person to do the work with, and to recover from."
Amy Peterson:
I just want other people to be able to read that and feel it, and see someone who's gone through this severe emotional abuse, abandonment, neglect, sexual abuse, the whole gamut, who has relied on drugs and alcohol, and overeating, and overworking to find capacity within that world of therapy, and self-exploration, and vulnerability to heal. So that's kind of why I've taken to Instagram. I thought, "Uh, I'm an okay writer, but like who's going to believe it?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're a great writer.
Amy Peterson:
Thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, girl friend, I'm just going to come out and say it, those are the facts.
Amy Peterson:
It's true, I do need people to remind me sometimes. It's hard for ... I'm still learning to accept compliments, but we're working on it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're doing great.
Amy Peterson:
So I thought, "Uh, maybe I'll get a few likes, it's fine, I'm just going to do this for myself. I'm not going to be committed to getting followers or promoting myself or anything like that." But I think just that me being real, and being willing to share literally my raw work, like you see it [crosstalk 00:58:41].
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Amy Peterson:
Like come home from therapy, I write down verbatim stuff that happened in the session, all of my thoughts, things I withheld and was unwilling to talk to my therapist about, all of my discoveries in our discussions, all the work I do in my very happy, mental, peaceful place to survive, and I just put it out there unfiltered for everybody to read.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, you do, and it's so cool.
Amy Peterson:
So now probably, on a weekly basis I probably have three to five people who are connecting with me with their stories, and reaching out, and thanking me. It's been so incredibly empowering for me, which sounds a little self-serving, but I've never been kind of self-focused in my life so I just have to be mindfully self-compassion that it's okay to thinks positive things about myself, and recognize my hard work. At the same time I remember that I'm able to connect with them, and help them, and get feedback, and not necessarily advise, but just, you know, I've made a number of connections with really wonderful people on Instagram, who are going through similar struggles that I never would have known about. It's actually helped me to make genuine human connections for one of the first times in my life, of really just having this platform to be myself, and to accept others for exactly who they are as well.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that's so cool. That's so cool. Have you had the experience of someone else realizing that they were a victim of sex trafficking?
Amy Peterson:
For the first time this week I did have someone reach out about it, and kind of a similar conversation we just had earlier in the cast about, "Oh, my God, I didn't realize this was trafficking, but this happened to me too, and I thought I was the only one. It's just so good not to be alone," which is a thing I hear quite often, which for me really is kind of at the heart of it. At the same time I always think to myself even as a survivor who is learning to thrive it's so hard to know what to say to another human being who's been through such atrocities, and I think for me that's kind of the gateway common of opening doors, because there just aren't words, and there's just, I think mindfully sitting together through it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Absolutely, I love that, and you're so ... What I enjoy about listening to you is you're obviously very intelligent and poetic, and you understand the process, and you do an amazing job of describing the process of recovery from everything, and I just love that. I think it's so important. I don't think people understand what goes on in the room between the therapist, and the client, and why that's relevant to them, why telling your story is relevant, what's that going to do. Hearing about your experience, and having you actually show the writing, I mean that is so ... I saw it, it was like, "This is real. This is real." I mean I know the difference between edited and real, this is the real deal, people. You just ... You're so deep and committed to the work, and I think it's amazing and beautiful, and admirable, and you're going to help a lot of people.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What I want to see is you start to help those of us who don't know what sex trafficking looks like, who don't know ... to be able to, A, spot it or reach out, or help or contribute, and B, talking about it, and bringing that awareness because you have brought that awareness to my life, and our listeners are now going to have that awareness. I want people to understand why this stuff happens in our communities because we don't give it that name, and there's power in naming something, right? You probably had that experience like, "Oh, I'm going to ... There's power in giving it a name."
Amy Peterson:
I absolutely agree. I've had so many experiences where someone's always like it's not about the letters, which I totally get because in some way you don't want your letters to be your identity, and at the same time thinking about having complex trauma makes me go, "Oh, I'm not just this weird socially withdrawn freak, who doesn't have emotions," or who if she only has emotions has anger outburst and it will let me go, "Oh, no, this is just a symptom of trauma. It's not who I am," but it's able to give me something to identify behaviors in myself with.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What makes your trauma complex?
Amy Peterson:
So for me, I think what makes it complex is the number of individuals who have had access to abuse me over my life, because it wasn't just my mother's brother, the aunts who found us, her husband also sexually abused me over the summer when I would go to visit. My uncle would rope in cousins who would end up abusing me, he would sell me to individuals at amusement parks and fairs, and eventually got so bad he would even bring them to my grandmother's house. Then that led to me being vulnerable, I guess, and you know, predators being able to pick out a vulnerable child. I didn't necessarily talk about this in the history portion of my timeline, but I was also sexually assaulted by a youth pastor/teacher from my religious school in church when I was in middle school, and of course the boyfriend. So there's all these layer of numbers of people making it complex, as well as the length of time in which it had occurred over 14 years.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, okay.
Amy Peterson:
I think the level of violence, and literally being caged at some points or waterboarded or tied up, or starved, all these just horrible things that happened I think make it complex. Then there's the sort of layer underneath of all of these was able to happen because of the abandonment by my parents, and the emotional neglect, like they always made sure we had food and shelter, and we were in a good school, and tried to raise us with morals, and did everything that they thought they needed to do, but there was this completely emotional absence that just enabled all of it taking it to another layer of intenseness, and complexity.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, thank you for explaining that. I think most people have heard of PTSD, but I don't think most people have heard of complex PTSD, so it's helpful to have that idea. What do you want people to know who have been through trauma who don't know where to start?
Amy Peterson:
Oh, that's a great question.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, I win.
Amy Peterson:
You do win.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You win.
Amy Peterson:
You win at life. I think I would like people to know that there are resources available for everyone, and you just have to either find that resource for yourself, or be super brave and courageous, and even if it's really uncomfortable, make a life-changing decision to reach out to even one person you might have one iota of trust in, to find those resources for you if you're not able to find them yourself. That can look different for everybody, therapy, I think is a great resource, and it works for me, but [crosstalk 01:06:57]-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You called your insurance company to find a provider.
Amy Peterson:
Yup, I did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So that's an option, there's always the 800 number on your insurance card that you can call and ask.
Amy Peterson:
Right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right?
Amy Peterson:
Yup, and you know, the wonderful world of the internet is available, and at the same time I think people need to be ready for that, because I tried therapy multiple times before, and it was never effective for me because I just wasn't ready, and until that time I found ways to cope through imagination, or through writing, or drawing, and that helped get me to a place where I was able to at least find people to help me get resources.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Amy Peterson:
To be able to engage in therapy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah, definitely, I think the morale of the story is don't stop trying. It may not work this time, you may not be ready this time, but the next time you might be ready so keep trying, and would you ... What about if listeners are considering doing a trauma timeline, do you suggest doing that?
Amy Peterson:
It depends. I think it depends on the individual, if a person's able to kind of mindfully practice that timeline activity, and not feel like, and I'm guilty of this, so this isn't a judgment at all, but if you find yourself being a person who tends to kind of get sucked in and stuck in a dark place whenever you access your trauma, I think doing that without a backup plan might not be the way to go.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, yeah, I agree with that.
Amy Peterson:
Having someone to reach out to when things come up, and you're writing it down, and you need someone to talk to whether that's a friend or a partner, or a therapist, I think is fantastic.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest thing is that we can't do this alone, it's all about the connection, it's all about the community. It's all about shining a bright light on those dark places, and taking them out of our closets. We bury things alive and they grow, and they don't go away. We think they're gone, but they're not gone, they're always there, the body remembers.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So I just love your story, I love your recovery, and I think you are a tremendous human being, and I know that you are going to continue to inspire people, and do great things with your experience, and your experience is going to turn out to be an asset for you, not a liability. So I really look forward to watching that happen, and watching you become a wonderful, amazing advocate for other people in this world, and I'm pleased. I am grateful to know you. So thank you so much for coming on, and being vulnerable, and sharing your story, and I am looking forward to how it all plays out.
Amy Peterson:
Thank you, Ashley. I am so appreciative to be able to share my story here, and I've genuinely appreciated this hour together, and being able to kind of dig in [inaudible 01:10:13], and hopefully someone, somewhere will feel less alone, and maybe be inspired like others to reach out, and heal, even if that is reaching out to me, which I always welcome. If you have no one, but you need someone, and you hear this, please feel free to reach out to me, I will get back to you because I know what it's like to be that person who has no one, who just needs a smile or recognition, or something simple. I think that's the beauty of your podcast, like when you reached out to me on Instagram I just started getting into podcast thanks to my husband, and I downloaded every episode, and listened to them on this flight for work to and from California. To just hear people's stories that sounded similar to mine, even if slightly different is so incredibly powerful and I thank you for the wonderful work you're doing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely, I'm very passionate about trauma recovery, and our company Lionrock Recover, we are starting a trauma track, and the EMDR that I have been doing is actually done online through video conference, believe it or not, and it's been ... for me, it's been more successful than the in-person, which is weird, but it's-
Amy Peterson:
It's true. That's just the reality of the situation.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So that's another resource if people don't want to tell anybody about it, or whatever, check our lionrockrecovery.com, and we can help you find either a therapist or resources, or checkout the trauma track, or point you in the right direction towards local resources. I can always get you in touch with Amy as well. So thanks again, Amy.
Amy Peterson:
Thanks, Ashley.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast would like to thank our sponsor Lionrock Recovery for their support. Lionrock Recovery provides online substance abuse counseling, where you can get help from the privacy of your own home. For more information visit www.lionrockrecovery.com/podcast. Subscribe and join our podcast community to hear amazing stories of courage and transformation. We are so grateful to our listeners, and hope that you will engage with us. Please e-mail us comments, questions, anything you want to share with us, how this podcast has affected you, our e-mail address is podcast@lionrockrecovery.com. We want to hear from you.