An Interview with Dorothy Husen
I'm excited to share my latest video about breaking free from transgenerational trauma and Christianity. As someone who has personally struggled with the constraints of religion, I know how liberating it can be to break free from those limiting beliefs and find your own path.
In this video, I share my experiences and insights on overcoming the fear and guilt that can often come with questioning or leaving religion behind. I hope that my story can inspire and encourage others who may be going through a similar journey.
If you're ready to take the next step in your personal growth and exploration, I invite you to watch my video today. Thank you for being a valued member of my community.
A few months ago, I was sitting at my computer waiting for my course participants to log into our Zoom meeting (the new pandemic version of going on stage). The course I was teaching—Pain to Possibility: How to Heal at the Emotional Root of Your Chronic Illness, Pain, and Disease—was the first online seminar I’d ever created—it was my beta course. So I was putting together the content for each class as we went, week by week. Now at the halfway point, I was feeling incredibly good about what I’d presented so far and what I’d planned for this session.
As was my practice, thirty minutes before the class, I sat down in front of my computer to go over my notes. One last time, I reviewed what I’d decided to teach that day and how I’d present it. All of a sudden, I got a “better” idea for getting my concepts across, and so I decided to change my presentation. I began talking through what I’d say in my head. It was such a great idea! I got excited thinking about how impressed my students would be.
My computer binged. Fifteen minutes until my Zoom meeting. I was running out of time to sketch a full outline, let alone seriously practice what I would say. “I’ll just wing it,” I thought. “You’ll be fine; you know this stuff. You’ve taught it hundreds of times to individual clients.”
As the Zoom alert counted down the minutes in front of me and I hurriedly wrote out a few talking points, the tightness in my stomach (always there before I speak in front of people) began to spread up into my chest and arms and down into my legs. Then, for the first time in years, my body began to shake uncontrollably.
“Uh-oh,” I thought. “Not again. Not now. Please, not now.” I knew from experience that if these shakes continued, I’d have a real problem on my hands. I also knew that I’d set the stage for this panic attack.
We are all afraid of making mistakes—especially in front of other people. But because of childhood trauma, my brain is especially prone to reacting to the fear of making a mistake, fear of judgment by others, and fear of the shame all that produces. Before I worked on these issues in therapy, whenever these fears were triggered, my body would go right into the survival response of freeze. And on one occasion, this resulted in my shaking uncontrollably.
I’d been scheduled to lead a seminar for a women’s group I belonged to. While waiting to step onto the small platform at the front of the meeting room, a knot in my stomach tightened, my knees started to knock, and then all of me started to shake, including my voice. And I couldn’t stop it. Somehow, I stumbled through the event. The next day, instead of getting curious about my reaction and looking for its cause, I stuffed my pain and decided I wasn’t cut out for leading seminars—or leading anything, for that matter. I vowed never to speak in public again.
And for fifteen years following that experience, I didn’t speak in public.
In those same fifteen years, however, I did come to terms with my childhood trauma. Healing those wounds through mind/body therapy also healed much of what had made me afraid of speaking in public: that fear of judgment and shame. Eventually, I found myself at my local Toastmasters group. My new career as a marriage and family therapist demanded that I speak in public—and now I wanted to; I was ready to.
Baby step-by-baby step, Toastmasters taught me to craft and present a talk, to see criticism as constructive, to recover when I stumbled, and to find my voice and self-confidence.
Still, while waiting to make my first full speech in front of my Toastmasters group, I felt that knot in my stomach again, and I feared I’d start to shake. Miraculously, I didn’t. With one full breath, the knot untied itself. I became calm, walked into my Toastmasters meeting, and gave my speech without freezing. Then, I declared myself “cured” of the shakes.
That mistake wouldn’t reveal itself until the day, five years later, when I found myself sitting in front of my computer, staring at my Zoom alert and shaking uncontrollably once again. Though I employed the self-soothing techniques I’d learned in therapy (deep breathing, connecting to my traumatized inner child), I was too far into the attack to turn it around. So I got up from my computer, drank a glass of water, and went outside for a walk. Thankfully, I made it back to the computer in time and could control my body long enough to teach my class—though I shook slightly for the entire hour. Afterward, it took me four hours to recover sufficiently enough to move on with my day.
The mistake I made that day was setting myself up to make more mistakes in front of people—a trigger I mistakenly thought was in my past. That’s a lot of mistakes for one morning.
When we are faced with a mistake (or several), we have a choice. We can beat ourselves up, which typically keeps our triggers hot and compounds any negative fallout. We can stuff it and let the shame of it limit our lives (as I had done with my first public speaking experience). Or we can accept that mistakes are a part of living fully and use ours as opportunities to learn and grow.
By this time in my life, I’d had enough therapy to be able to see my mistakes as opportunities. Once I calmed down from this one, I thought carefully about what had happened. I started by acknowledging that even though I was more emotionally healthy than I was twenty-four years ago, I was (and am) obviously still capable of being triggered—especially when doing something new in front of people. I also realized that my desire to impress my students only put more pressure on that trigger. Finally, it occurred to me that the reason I’d avoided triggering the shakes at that first Toastmasters speech and for the dozens of public speaking events I’ve done since was that I’d prepared for those events and stuck to my plan.
All good things for me to be aware of. So good, in fact, that I developed a Mistake Management Plan—Accept, Prepare, Recover, Reflect—so I could put what I’d learned from this mistake into use whenever I’m speaking in public:
• Accept. As soon as I feel the fear of judgment coming on, I remind myself that mistakes will happen. They’re to be expected and so accepted. When I bring this kind of awareness to a situation, I take back my agency from any triggers.
• Prepare. I now acknowledge that “winging it” isn’t the best plan for me. I’m not cured. My healing is ongoing, and mistakes can be triggers. It’s best to avoid mistakes where I can by preparing and practicing before speaking in front of people. Changing my mind at the last minute doesn’t serve me.
• Recover. When I do make a mistake and get triggered, I remind myself that I have a plan for recovery, and then I execute that plan. I take a deep breath to reconnect to my body and then to my true self. I go inward and talk non-judgmentally to myself. I tell myself that I’m good enough just the way I am, and I don’t need to chase admiration from others. I remind myself that I do what I do to help people the way I was helped. I don’t do it to impress them. (In fact, I now write this at the top of every lesson plan.)
• Reflect. Once my head is clear and my body calm, I take time to think about the mistake. I learn what I can from it. And then let it go, along with any negative emotions it created for me.
The only real mistake we can make as speakers is not to be mentally prepared for the inevitable mistakes we will make. Nobody wants to mess up, but we also don’t want to be so afraid of mistakes that fear limits us. Whether we lose our train of thought, have technical difficulties, or start to shake while on stage (or on Zoom), we want to accept our mistakes, learn from them, and count each as a treasured reminder that we’re not stagnant but growing with every experience.