Something Scary Happened The Other Day and I Wanted To Talk To You About It | Mel Robbins Podcast

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Witnessing a tragedy can be traumatic, even if you didn't know anyone involved

  Trauma researcher Dr. Mary Catherine McDonald says we rarely acknowledge that witnessing trauma is traumatic. Vicarious trauma is real, and it can come from seeing an event or from hearing graphic details again and again. She says several of her clients have watched a rescue at sea that didn't end in a rescue, and were deeply shaken.

• 02

  Normal memories are filed within roughly 4 to 24 hours

  McDonald describes the hippocampus as a file room with workers who put each experience away within about 4 to 24 hours. A well-filed memory has three parts: the story, some of the emotion, and a meaning tag that says where it fits. That's why you can retell a funny grocery-store moment, laugh again, and get on with your day.

• 03

  In an overwhelming event, the brain switches to survival mode and memories get fragmented

  When the amygdala sounds the alarm, McDonald says the brain reprioritises 47 functions to deal with the threat, and the 'file room workers' leave to help. The result is a fragmented file, scattered sensory pieces without a full story, feelings or meaning. The brain keeps it near the front of your mind so it can try to file it properly later.

• 04

  Triggers are your brain's attempt to file the memory, which is why they set off the alarm

  When you encounter something that matches a fragment, such as a particular shade of red, the brain pushes the file forward to give you a chance to organise it. But the amygdala has tagged that cue as mortal danger, so the alarm goes off again, even if you're sitting at your desk. Mel says that for her, helicopters, the words 'rip current' and the sight of a tan Suburban now do this.

• 05

  The trauma response is adaptive, so drop the shame

  McDonald stresses that the trauma response comes from the drive to survive. It starts out helpful and only becomes unhelpful over time. People often jump to 'something is wrong with me, I'm broken', and she sees shame as the biggest barrier to healing. Her line: you're not broken; you're 'the unbroken'.

• 06

  There's no hierarchy of whose pain counts

  Mel felt guilty for being so shaken when it wasn't her son or anyone she knew. McDonald says we've defined trauma wrongly for about 150 years by ranking whose response is legitimate. Your nervous system is telling you that you need care. You wouldn't refuse treatment for appendicitis because someone else in the ER has a broken collarbone, so don't do it with psychological injury.

• 07

  The same event can affect people very differently

  A memory can fragment in countless ways, so two people at the same event may react very differently. One may cry and feel anxious; another may shut down and tell the story without feeling anything. McDonald says the second still needs to integrate the memory, because the emotional part of the file is missing. Historically, she says, the calm soldier was used to shame the distressed one.

• 08

  What happens right afterwards matters a lot

  Not everyone who witnesses something terrible develops trauma. If you can talk it through, give it meaning and feel it with someone soon afterwards, the memory may be filed normally. McDonald recalls a study, she thinks in Israel, in which terror-attack survivors who did a narrative exercise in the emergency room were something like 80% less likely to develop PTSD than those who got standard care.

• 09

  Trauma is an unbearable emotional experience with no 'relational home'

  Borrowing the term 'relational home' from clinician Robert Stolorow, McDonald defines the risk of chronic trauma as unbearable emotion plus nobody to help you hold it. A relational home is someone who helps you feel through and organise what was too much in the moment. How much you need varies: a divorce might need one every day for six months.

• 10

  Healing means integrating, not feeling nothing

  Integration means a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end, plus its emotions and meaning. Approaches include EMDR, where occupying your vision while recalling the memory helps restore balance in the brain, narrative therapy, and, she notes, psychedelics such as psilocybin or MDMA, which are thought to quiet the fear centre. McDonald favours using several approaches because the whole body is involved. Memories are supposed to carry feeling, so 'I feel nothing' is the wrong goal.