In this episode of The Dr. Hedberg Show, I interviewed Dr. Shannon South to discuss healing trauma and finding joy in our lives.   Dr. Shannon D. South, aka the “Joy Doctor”, is an award-winning therapist, an Amazon best-selling author, and a professional speaker. As an expert in the field of spirituality and healing trauma for over 20 years, she knows how to assist people in finding wholeness and joy naturally. In 1994, during graduate school, Shannon had a spiritual experience during meditation that healed her debilitating anxiety and depression permanently. Since this transformative experience, she has helped thousands of clients connect to their most loving and joy-filled selves. Shannon also leads workshops and retreats for counselors, chaplains and coaches on how to integrate Spirit and Soul into their practice. Her most upcoming book, Ignite! Turn off the Chaos and Turn on the Joy is a roadmap to this unique, healing process. Shannon loves dancing, being in nature, teaching spiritual psychology and enjoying the beautiful mountains of NC where she resides with her family and friends. She can be found at www.whatsyourjoyiq.com or www.drshannonsouth.com

We answered the following questions in the transcript below:

1) Why did you start working with trauma and studying integrative approaches to counseling? (i can share a blip of my personal story in healing from anxiety, depression, and PTSD)

2) What are some of the best approaches you see/use in healing trauma?

3)Why is it important to heal unresolved trauma for health? (mind-body healing, connection to how we relate to something vs. what the something is, etc.)

4) How do clients learn to get out of stress reactivity and into the relaxation response?

5) How does unresolved trauma impact health?

6) Tell us more about Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and the research on it for healing.

7) You also use spiritual psychology in your work with clients. How is this different than traditional therapy?

8) Does healing old trauma patterns create more creativity, joy, and peace?

9 Does unresolved trauma hurt relationships? If so, how?

10) Thoughts on anxiety, depression, compulsive behavior and PTSD and healing from these…. Ex. what is the mind really meant to be used for? (instead of obsession and over thinking)

11) What are some attitudes that are important in healing from trauma from a mindfulness perspective?

Podcast Transcript:

Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome everyone to the Dr. Hedberg Show. This is Dr. Hedberg. And I'm excited today to have Dr. Shannon South on the show. We've known each other for quite a while now here in Asheville. And Dr. South, she's also known as the Joy Doctor and has a tremendous amount of information and expertise on trauma, healing trauma, and really overcoming things like anxiety and depression, and things like that. So, I want to really dig in today, and you should learn a lot from her. And we'll talk about things that if you're a patient of mine, you know, we talk a lot about. But, of course, these are things that are outside of my area of expertise and that's why I want to have around today so that we could really dig into that. So, Dr. South, welcome to the show.

Dr. South: Thank you. I'm honored to be here. I've been following your work for some time and watching your amazing healing and supporting of other people, so I'm thrilled to be a part of that.

Dr. Hedberg: Great. Before we jump in, why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're focusing on these days?

Dr. South: Absolutely. I am a licensed professional counselor and an author, and I do trainings for therapists on bringing more soul and spirit into their practice. But I also have been working with trauma and spiritual psychology for over 20 years. And I, of course as you know, we get into the field sometimes because of our own personal journeys. And when I was in my 20s, I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder which is a big word, but it happens. And so, I got into some healing practices. I think actually my therapist told me, "Go meditate. Learn some meditation." And I was like, "Well, that sounds better than medication."

So, I thought I would give it a try because I had tried medication, you know, and it worked to a point. But I really didn't like the side effects, so I was pretty determined to get off the medication. And so, I got into meditation and had an amazing healing experience around my anxiety disorder, and I never had a panic attack again. So, that kind of informed my whole journey really, and I went back and got my doctorate in what they call transpersonal psychology which is a field of study that's more holistic and really integrates the mind, body, and the spirit for helping people heal through trauma and into more joy. So, that's a bit about me.

Dr. Hedberg: So, do you think that was the reason why you started working with trauma or were there other reasons as well?

Dr. South: Well, sure. I mean I definitely had a childhood with some trauma in it. And I believe that that, you know, kind of fed my heart. I thought, "Gosh, I really wanna help these people and I really wanna understand what's happening to my family members that are going through addiction, or depression, or anxiety. And then also, understand my own issues of healing through my own trauma. And so, I think between those two things, that really fuel the fire for me to have a deep, deep desire to share what really works with people. And really getting to the crux of healing because, you know, there are so many avenues and so many ways to look at healing. But I really landed on an integrative approach that is very effective and I'm very happy about that.

Dr. Hedberg: Mm-hmm. And you have a personal story in how you overcame anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Did you wanna share some of that?

Dr. South: Well, yeah. I shared a little bit about the meditation practice I began but I was actually sitting in my apartment. I'll never forget this day of sitting in my apartment, in front of my window meditating. And I was, you know, I was a reluctant meditator. I was really not, I was like, "This is so stupid, but I'll do it anyway." And I really was sitting one day, and I started to feel my panic symptoms reoccur. They were coming up, my chest was heavy, I was getting this heat flash, and I was feeling scared again. And all of a sudden, you know, I just cried out like, you know, something, "Help me, please. I'm doing all I know to do. You know, please help me."

And this kind of wave of joy, and peace, and love just overcame my being. It kinda filled up the cells of my body it felt like, and at that moment, I think shifted. You know, in the transpersonal psychology world we talk about consciousness. And I believe something shifted in my consciousness. Whatever I was attached to, the trauma, the story, the energy, the emotion, the whole experience of the trauma I've had before, something just removed and left for good. And so, when I got to study in transpersonal psychology, they call that a peak experience, and it's available to all of us, you know? We all have the potential for these peak experiences and our healing lining up in a way that we can have permanent release from suffering in certain patterns that we've had a long time even. So, it's a pretty neat thing to know that that's possible.

Dr. Hedberg: Great. And that's one of the real bedrocks of a lot of the patients I see. Trauma is really usually underlying a lot of their health issues. And I think a lot of people think of trauma as a single event, but it could also be just ongoing stress. So, some of the common things I'll see are, if I'll see women and they had a father who was just completely emotionally detached in their entire childhood, or a mother who was overly critical, you know, nothing was ever good enough. And there's, you know, many examples. But I think we could consider that trauma even though it's not a single event. So, let's get into that a little bit as far as what you think are some of the best approaches for healing trauma? What do you like to use?

Dr. South: Well, I think you're absolutely right. Carl Young called those repetitive patterns. He said they turn into complexes, you know, the psychiatrist, Carl Young. And we get complexes, trauma complexes because of certain repetitive patterns that happen to us. And so, we want to overcome and heal those. Because we grow and change, and we want our stories, and our emotions, and our attitudes, and our stress reactivity, we want that to heal and change depending on what's going on with us now. We don't want the past running the future. And it will unless we begin to be more conscious and really look at that. So, that's where I became passionate about mindfulness-based stress reduction, that's one of the approaches I use for trauma.

Because we define trauma as too much, too soon, too fast. It's like it either happened all too, you know like a whole buffet tray got thrown on your head at once and it takes time to unwind all of that or stuff like this chronic long-term thing as you mentioned, and it's just becomes too much of the same thing over and over. So, as we unwind trauma, mindfulness-based stress reduction is one of the approaches that I find to be extremely helpful. And then I use also several spiritual psychology techniques. And I'll also use an approach called EMDR which many people may have heard of which is known for trauma release in the system by bilateral stimulation. So, there are lots of ways but those are three very effective ways to approach trauma from a healing perspective.

Dr. Hedberg: Right, right. And that's something that, you know, to any of my patients who are listening, you know, we talk a lot about this and the connections to their current health issues.