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Intro to Protectors: The Missing Step in PTSD Healing

Host: Brad Schipke • Overcoming PTSD Podcast • Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching

In this Processing Bootcamp episode, Brad introduces “protectors” — a simple but powerful way to understand why you get triggered, shut down, or overreact after trauma. Instead of seeing these reactions as random or broken, Brad shows how they’re actually protective parts of you doing their best to keep you safe.

You’ll learn how to recognize your “true self” — the calm, loving, grounded version of you — and how trauma slowly builds walls around it in the form of protectors. Using visuals like castles, walls, cars, and even purple paint, Brad breaks down a complex inner world into something you can actually work with.

This episode lays the foundation for the rest of Processing Bootcamp week, where Brad will walk you step-by-step through how to identify, understand, and eventually heal these protectors with honesty, patience, and self-love. Today is all about awareness, language, and perspective so you can finally see what’s really happening when PTSD takes over.

By the end, you’ll walk away with a hopeful and practical frame: there is nothing “wrong” with you — there are just parts of you that were hurt, got stuck in time, and are trying (sometimes in messy ways) to protect you. And they can be healed.

💡 What You’ll Learn

How protectors form after trauma to keep your true self safe

Why PTSD triggers feel like “someone else” took over your body and mind

The difference between your true self and protector parts

How to spot protectors in your body through tension, stress, and emotional spikes

Why overreactions, shutting down, or lashing out are signs of protectors at the wheel

Simple ways to start naming and mapping your own protectors

How to respond with love instead of anger toward your protectors

How to recognize protectors in other people and deescalate with compassion

Why healing protectors actually makes your true self bigger, stronger, and more whole

🧠 Key Takeaway

Anytime you’re not acting from calm, love, and peace, it’s not that you’re broken — it’s a protector trying to keep you safe the only way it knows how.

🔗 Next Steps

Subscribe for new weekday episodes from the Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching archive.

To go deeper or work with Brad directly, visit https://overcomingptsd.com/consultation.

CHAPTERS:

Topics Covered:

PTSD recovery • trauma healing • protectors and parts work • inner child work • emotional triggers after trauma • nervous system regulation • emotional regulation tools • trauma coping tools • processing traumatic memories • self-love and trauma recovery • honesty and patience in healing • dissociation and PTSD • understanding overreactions • how to stop PTSD outbursts • healing through self-compassion • Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching • Overcoming PTSD Podcast