Post-Traumatic Growth with Krista St-Germain

Soul Healing Sundays Ep #1:

Post-Traumatic Growth with Krista St-Germain

Welcome to my new series – Soul Healing Sundays! What better way to kick off the series than with the wonderful Krista St-Germain. Krista is a fellow certified life coach, who, following the tragic death of her husband, was left questioning her purpose in life. She now helps others deal with life’s stressful trials and tribulations by teaching them how to feel empowered and respond to trauma as victors rather than victims.

Trauma and grief are painful, and it’s often impossible to see them as opportunities. But when you can recognize the difference between the things that happen to you, and your ability to decide who you want to be when they happen, the rest of life gets so much easier! We have a choice in how we deal with things. We are our own champions, and we’re in control of our thoughts – we just need to learn how.

Join us this week for a fascinating discussion about posttraumatic growth, and how to view grief and trauma for what they are – subjective. There is no right or wrong; no more or less traumatic; just human interpretation. We’ll discover how grief can propel us into growth and how our mindset plays a huge role in the way we cope with bad experiences. This is such a powerful episode for anybody looking for help in dealing with difficult times!

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

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How growth can come as a result of trauma.

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How to turn a bad situation into something powerful.

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Why people see being a victim as their only option and how to change it.

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Why things that happen are factual and it’s our brains that add judgment.

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Why grief affects people in different ways and all feelings are valid.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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Check out more episodes of the podcast here!

TRANSCRIPT

Susan Crockett: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast, with Dr. Susan Crockett. You are listening to bonus episode number 1 of Soul Healing Sundays: Post-traumatic Growth, an interview with fellow certified life coach, Krista St-Germain. This episode is dedicated to Hugo.

Female Announcer: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, where women learn to love their lives. Do you find yourself frustrated by society’s expectations? Looking for practical advice on how to discover your talents and level up your life? You’ve found the right place. Here’s your host, US News top doctor, robotic surgeon and certified life coach, Dr. Susan Crockett.

Susan Crockett: Hello, my virtuosos and my VITs, my virtuosos in training. I am so excited to be with you today. I am your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. And as always you can call me Sue because today I’m not doctoring on you. You’re not one of my patients I’m doing surgery on today. So today you’re listening in on a very intimate conversation between me and my friend, Krista.

Alright, so I wanted to say just a little bit about doing a show on Sunday, this is a little bit unusual for us. I had the opportunity to do this very special interview with Krista and we couldn’t think of a better time to do this than on Sundays. And we decided that maybe we would start calling our Sunday releases, which will be bonus episodes, we’re going to call them Soul Healing Sundays.

And I am super excited about this, as you all know, I had started off the podcast with teaching and now I’m doing more interview style. But I kind of miss the teaching, and I’ve heard from some of you that we – that you miss the teaching too. So I’m considering maybe doing a couple more of these releases on Sundays that will be more focused on teaching in special episodes, let me know what you think.

It is a gorgeous day in New Braunfels today, as always, my little dog, Ollie is tucked in next to me on my chair, the sun’s shining, it’s bright. All is well in the world, and so why would I want to talk about this topic? The topic we’re talking about today is one that’s super important in life, it’s called Posttraumatic Growth. Now, that may seem a little bit heavy for you guys, I promise you, this topic is going to be something that you will use over and over again, and it may take you through a little bit of heaviness.

But I am going to share with you my experiences and Krista is going to share with you our experiences about going through life events that seem very stressful, or trials and tribulations. And we are going to end on a really helpful note, like this education about this topic is part of one of the really important things about growing and becoming into your virtuosa self, or your best version of yourself. And it’s going to be a lot of fun.

So I first met Krista actually as one of my coaches, and by one of my coaches, I don’t mean one of the coaches that works with me at Virtuosa Coaching. She actually coaches me, I have done her program.

And, Krista and I are part of a very exclusive group that people don’t exactly want to be members of, that is we are both widowed moms. We’ve both been widowed fairly young and with children still in the house. I’m a divorced widow which is another even smaller category. It means that my ex husband actually passed away very suddenly, the father of my kids. So I think as we move along in our society and divorce becomes more common, that this becomes an even larger group of women.

And so I’m speaking today to any of you who may have lost your husbands or your spouses, and you still are dealing with raising the children. But this lesson that we’re talking about today has a much, much broader applicability to any trial or tribulation you go through. So we hear a lot about posttraumatic stress disorder and that is certainly a real thing, I have experienced it. And this talk in no way diminishes the diagnosis or the fact that that happens.

What this talk is doing though is giving insight into other things that can happen as a result of trauma or posttraumatic events. And, man, it’s just a fascinating thing to consider, that maybe this is a point of growth and it may be even necessary for our growth. So to consider that, to become the best versions of ourselves we take what life gives us, good or bad. And even when it seems ‘bad’ it may be something that we turn into something beautiful or it works for our benefit.

So without further ado let’s get on with the interview with the podcast, here’s Krista St-Germain.

Hey, Krista, how you doing?

Krista St-Germain: I am amazing, and so glad to be with you.

Susan Crockett: I am so excited to you have on the podcast today too. Thanks for agreeing to do this with me. I am so excited to talk with you about this idea about growth being able to come from when our lives are disrupted, or when we have a trauma. Because so often we hear about PTSD and see people struggling, and certainly that’s real, but until recently, until I met you actually, I didn’t have that much of a concept around how growth can happen after trauma. So I wanted to start by you telling me a little bit about your story.

Krista St-Germain: Sure.

Susan Crockett: Tell the listeners about you.

Krista St-Germain: About my story, so yeah, I came to this work after having my own grief experience. So when I was 40, my husband – new husband, we’d only been married three months, he was kind of my dream guy, to be honest. I’d been married and had two children and that marriage did not end well. And he was kind of my redemption, he was like the proof that it could be good and life was heading in the right direction. And he was just everything that I wanted. We had never had a fight, he was just, he was an incredible man.

And he had gone with me on a trip that we were coming back from and we’d both driven separately, and as we were coming back on the interstate I had a flat tire on my car. So I pulled over to the shoulder of the interstate and he pulled up behind me. And being the typical stubborn man that he was, he didn’t want to call AAA even though he paid for it, he just said, “No, baby, I just want to change the tire.” And I just want to, “Let’s get home and I can, you know, we can talk about the weekend, cuddle and see the dog.”

And so against my better judgment I acquiesced, and as he was trying to get the tire, he was standing in between his car, which was parked directly behind mine, and trying to get in my trunk to find the spare tire, there was a lot of stuff in there. And I was over on the side of the road texting my oldest to tell her that we would be late because of the flat tire. And someone out of, you know, I just didn’t hear it coming, no brakes, no anything, but slammed into the back of the Durango and trapped Hugo between his car and mine.

Susan Crockett: Oh my goodness.

Krista St-Germain: And yeah, this happened so suddenly and later we found out that that man had meth and alcohol in his system.

Susan Crockett: Oh my goodness.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, because daylight hazard lights were on, but sometimes that’s just not enough, being cautious isn’t enough to prevent things from happening, so...

Susan Crockett: Just that totally unexpected, you know, that when Dale, my ex husband passed away too, it was a totally different circumstance. But he passed from a heart attack event when he had no prior history, he was 52, not – it was not an expected thing. And I think we as a family went through grief for the loss, but then also grief for how it happened so instantaneously, that traumatic. Yeah, I’m very sorry for your loss.

Krista St-Germain: Well, thank you, and likewise. But that is what brought me here. So then went back to therapy, I had an amazing therapist from when I had gotten my divorce actually, and went back and saw her. And she kind of helped me get back to that place where I was functioning well and looking to the outside world, like I was strong, or so they were telling me.

But in the inside, feeling empty and really just questioning what I wanted out of life. And me kind of realizing that what I was doing, even though it was keeping me comfortable in terms of a living, it really wasn’t what I believed I was put on the planet to do, and that led me into life coaching, and here I am.

Susan Crockett: These traumatic events they have a way of doing that with us. There is nothing that has shaken my life up and made me cherish the great things and reevaluate and question the good things, like the trauma that we’ve been through with this.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, it’s strange isn’t it? You don’t see, we don’t usually think, trauma that’s going to be an opportunity.

Susan Crockett: No, bring it on.

Krista St-Germain: Bring me some trauma; I’d really like to grow now. Now, but when you’re faced with it, it actually can have an upside if you want it to, not that you have to, but for many of us, we choose that.

Susan Crockett: That’s a fascinating idea, right?

Krista St-Germain: Yeah.

Susan Crockett: The idea that we have a choice. I remember sitting in it for a good while, and wanting to just sit in it for a good while. But yeah, there came a point where I was like, I don’t really want to sit in this anymore. And I almost felt guilty for that, almost like you should – I hate that word ‘should’. But it almost felt like should.

So when I found life coaching and started listening to some of your work too, one of the things that really hit me was the idea that when we have circumstances that happen to us, or things that happen in our lives. That we, one, that we have a choice to think is this happening to me or for me, which is a weird thing. But the other is the idea about handling it as a victim or a hero, having those different mentalities.

Can you talk a little bit about what those look like? And can you help my listeners with the idea of it’s so easy for us to feel we’re victims? Like this happened to us and it was this terrible thing and something was ripped away, which it was, and this isn’t to take that away. But can you talk with me a little bit about pushing the mindset towards being the hero of your life even when this kind of trauma happens to us?

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, that’s one of the things that I love that you’re teaching people, is how powerful they are, because that’s really what this is, is no one would blame us for feeling like a victim. There’s nothing morally bad or good about that. But it is a choice and when we don’t know that we can make it. And we feel like we have to be the victim, because we don’t see any other option, then that’s what we create and get stuck in, and create more of that, we get stuck in that.

And that becomes our stories, the one where things are happening to us. And we end up feeling powerless, and because we feel that way then we are really so much less able to go forward and live powerfully.

And so when we can recognize that while it’s not a moral issue, and we don’t have to be the hero, it’s always our choice to figure out how we can be. And to tell the story in such a way that has us as the hero, as the heroine, so that we step back into that place of power, and choice, and intention, and then create going forward, and in the present moment from there. Which, again, it’s not morally superior, but it’s a choice.

Susan Crockett: And we’re not leaving that behind, we’re not leaving the event behind or discrediting that it happened, or painting daisies over it either.

Krista St-Germain: Well, right, yeah. I had been inspired by Brooke Castillo, my teacher, and hearing her tell her story one time, she told it three different ways. And she told kind of the super dramatic version, where her brain was just running away with itself. And then she told a very factual version of that story where there was almost no subjectivity, it was just the facts. And then she told the same story in a way that really served her, where she as the main character in her story, had her own back and was kind of her own champion.

And so that really inspired me, and I think we can all do that when we look back at anything that’s happened in our past. We can tell the victim story, and we can find evidence, because our brain is so good at finding evidence of what we’re thinking. We can find evidence of how we were wronged and how it shouldn’t have happened, and how we did it wrong, and how we should have done it differently. And we can paint ourselves into a really miserable place.

But then when we strip away all of that negative judgment, and we can also go to that place where it’s just factual, where we just see what actually happened, and everybody in the world would agree on. And when we can do that then we have the opportunity to go to the other side of it. And say, “Now, wait a minute if my brain is really good at finding evidence of my thoughts, what are the thoughts I want it to find evidence of?” And we can retell that story in a way that has us as the heroine.

Susan Crockett: To find our strength.

Krista St-Germain: Right, that we’re, yeah, where we show ourselves what it is we want to see more of. And we have our own backs, we are our own champions. And so doing that through my own loss experience was really transformative to me. Because I could tell you all sorts of victimy things that make me feel terrible and keep me small and stuck. Or I could tell you how I handled it really well and how proud of myself I am and how I grew on the other side of it. None of it would be more or less true, but one definitely serves me and is more empowering for me than the other.

Susan Crockett: And now you’re helping other women.

Krista St-Germain: Do the same.

Susan Crockett: Do the same, and what an incredible – I want to call it a ministry, I’m not sure that’s the right word. But what an incredible thing you’re doing in helping those women, that’s really cool. I was really curious about one of the things you mentioned about the five stages of grief. Because we’re taught about the five stages of grief in medicine, and growing up we hear them. But you have kind of a different idea about that. Maybe we haven’t integrated it quite the way it was meant to be. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Krista St-Germain: I think it’s important to know that the way that the five stages of grief came to pass is actually, as most people are familiar with the book, On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. And that was one of many works that she did. But when she wrote that book what she was studying was the process of dying, the process of the person who is going through the actual experience of dying in a hospice. And so she didn’t really ever mean for people to take her work On Death and Dying and apply it exactly as it was applied to grief and grieving.

So then later she, and another associate, David Kessler, wrote another book called On Grief and Grieving. Similar stages, but unfortunately how people misinterpret them is that we seem to think that one, they’re linear. So we seem to think that we’re supposed to go through, you know, we’re supposed to feel anger. And then we’re supposed to be in denial, and then we’re supposed to be bargain, and then we must experience some depression, and then finally, and only then, do we get to come to acceptance. And that’s not how grief works at all, right?

Susan Crockett: Yeah, right.

Krista St-Germain: And it’s really frustrating when you’re the griever and you’re trying to measure your progress, with a framework that was never designed to be used for that purpose. And so yeah, so we just want to understand that some people experience anger, and some people don’t. And some people experience depression, and some people don’t. And it’s much less useful to try and compare yourself with a stage and a linear process than it is to just say, “No, all of the feelings, all of the thoughts are all normal.”

It is our inclination to think when we’re grieving that we’re nuts, we’re crazy. We think we’re the only one having the thoughts and feelings that we’re having, or that there’s something abnormal about our experience. Chances are that’s not true at all. The other thing I think that the concept of stages of grief implies is that there’s some sort of destination, and when we reach it we won’t be grieving anymore. Like we think there’s a journey, therefore an end of the journey.

Susan Crockett: Yeah, which is not true, it’s just a modulation of it, it evolves.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, totally. I like to think that – we can never go back to the person we were before with any life experience, grief and loss, no different. With any life experience, we’re always picking up pieces and weaving them into the fabric of who we are and what we’re becoming. And that’s like our human life experience.

Susan Crockett: That’s the beauty of it, like yeah, so it doesn’t necessarily need to be something as traumatic as a death. It could be any loss of normalcy in our lives, where we could experience this kind of, you know, we could grieve the loss of our job, or money or the way things were before Covid, or any of these things.

Krista St-Germain: And that’s a really – there’s a really important point that you’re making right there, is what do we even define as grief? So I am talking about it in most of the work that I do, the context is actually death. But grief is just the natural human response to loss. So any time we’ve had something normal and we perceive that we lose it, then we grieve, and that can be anything.

Susan Crockett: So that’s really powerful for our listeners to hear because, well, it’s kind of hard sometimes to talk about grief. But I think the work that you’ve done with the posttraumatic growth, you’ve learned it, and taught it, and lived it from this place of losing someone you love. But the thing I want our listeners to hear is the reason I brought you on the show to do this, is because it applies to all of us. The loss and normalcy for everything that we go through is what propels us forward into either growth or stagnation.

We can choose to sit there in that loss and be victimized, or there is a different way to think, and that is exactly what you’re teaching. You’re teaching how do we manage our brains around this to propel us through growth? How do we use trauma to propel us towards growth and becoming the next person that we’re supposed to be, like closer to the person that we were created to be?

Krista St-Germain: Yeah. Yeah, and I also think it’s worth noting, not only do we need to be clear on what we mean by grief, the natural response to loss. But we also want to be clear on trauma, because sometimes we have really tight preconceived notions of what trauma means. And really, trauma, like anything else is subjective; it’s based on human interpretation. So what might be traumatic to me might not be traumatic to you, and vice versa. So we don’t want to confine ourselves to these strict definitions of what trauma looks like.

Research says, and I think this is underestimated, that 75% of humans have some sort of traumatic life experience. Well, that’s a lie, that’s a lot of people. So I think it’s really fair to say we all are going to have something that we interpret as traumatic. And, therefore, we all are going to be faced with the opportunity to decide what we want to do when that happens, and who we want to become because it happened.

Susan Crockett: Do we want to just have resignation and stay stuck because this is the new normal?

Krista St-Germain: It’s like dragging your nails on a chalkboard. Here’s my thing with the new normal, I think we can use it in a way that’s really helpful. And I think we can use it in a way that’s really limiting. So if we use – if when you say the term, “new normal,” you feel hopeful, you say it as though, “Okay, my old normal is no longer possible, but I can learn to love my new normal. I can choose to love my new normal. I can find value going forward, even though it’s not the old normal, this is just a new normal.” And you say it and it feels hopeful and optimistic, I like that very much, and I think that’s helpful.

But what I see so much in my work is that people kind of hide behind this idea of new normal and they say it in this resigned sad way, as if to say, “Nothing better for me could possibly exist so I’ll just get used to my new normal.”

Susan Crockett: This is just it, this is my new box.

Krista St-Germain: This is it, it’s just “meh” from here on out. It’s never going to be good. And what posttraumatic growth says, is that’s just not true at all, we always have a choice.

Susan Crockett: So yeah, this is so interesting. So I was listening to an audio book actually in my car today, Glennon Doyle’s book called Untamed, which is…

Krista St-Germain: Got to listen, everybody’s saying that.

Susan Crockett: Everybody’s talking about it. Because so much of what she’s talking about has to do with this process of growth and transformation being true to that deep dark – not dark, but deep light. That – it’s within our soul, whether you’re working towards – whatever your really just spiritual beliefs are. She talks about becoming closer by going into your soul and becoming closer to what you’re created to be.

And that’s so much of what we’re talking about here. In this case I hear you talking about using traumas and deciding how we’re going to think about that to grow deeper into ourselves, or more into ourselves. And she makes a point, she talks about it, and she doesn’t talk about it in terms that we do, like the thoughts, feelings, actions model kind of thing.

But she makes the point that one of the big keys to getting unstuck is your imagination. She’s like, “That’s where it starts.” And I thought that’s exactly what we are taught and that we are teaching when we’re talking about coaching, it starts with a thought. And if you sit there and you just resign yourself to your box and you look around and you numb yourself with whatever is available, then you’re doing the opposite of that. And the way out of it, as she describes, and I thought it was just really brilliant, was imagination.

Imagine what your best version of your life would be, or the best happiest story that you could tell about your marriage, or your kids. She was really talking about create your result for your intentional model that you want to do, right?

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, you know what, I can’t wait to read through this book, you’ve got me excited. So what I think is so interesting about it when you say imagination. So we’re always using it, and I think we don’t always know that we’re using it. We think we’re just making observations, and so the way that I see has come to pass with a lot of my clients and in the work I’ve done on myself is we believe this idea that we don’t know. We believe that we don’t know where we’re going. But really what’s happening is that we’re imagining that we don’t know.

Susan Crockett: Yeah, that’s right on, that’s it.

Krista St-Germain: But we can’t see it, because we just think that we just literally don’t know, we just think we’re making an observation. But really we’re always using our imagination but are we imagining that we do know, or are we imagining that we don’t? We’re imagining that we have to resign ourselves to something we don’t want or we’re figuring out how to imagine the possibilities of what we could want?

Susan Crockett: Exactly.

Krista St-Germain: But it’s the same power.

Susan Crockett: Like we have all the power.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, it’s the same power, but she’s using it, I think she’s teaching it in the context that imagination is good. But it can also be we can really limit ourselves by our imagination. But everything we’re interpreting, what has happened, what hasn’t happened, what will happen, it’s all our imagination.

Susan Crockett: Right, that’s a good point.

Krista St-Germain: So it’s like what kind of imagination?

Susan Crockett: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Alright, Krista, this has been really fun. If we’re going to say what is the big take home point here that you want our listeners to get out of us talking today, what would you want to?

Krista St-Germain: The big take home point for me, I think, is when you can recognize the difference between the things that happen to you and your ability to decide who you want to be when they happen. I think the rest of life gets so much easier.

When you can keep yourself in that powerful place where you’re focused on what you can control, then the sky is the limit. And it doesn’t matter what’s happened to you in the past, big trauma, you know, big T Trauma, little t trauma, whatever, you can always be in your center of creation, and intention, and power, and create the life that you want.

Susan Crockett: Say that one more time, that was so good.

Krista St-Germain: You know what I think.

Susan Crockett: You can always be in the center.

Krista St-Germain: You can always be in your center of power, because all of your energy is focused on the parts of life that are yours to control, your thoughts, how you feel, how you show up.

And you aren’t spinning your wheels focusing on what has happened that you can’t control, other people doing things that you can’t control, the future that you can’t yet control. You’re in the present moment and you’re keenly aware of what you can control, which is what makes you so powerful. And what enables you to create, not only now, but to create the future that you want, which is literally only limited by your imagination.

Susan Crockett: Amazing, brilliant. Krista, I so enjoyed talking with you today, this was so much fun, I hope you come back another time.

Krista St-Germain: I would love it, Sue, would absolutely love it, thank you so much.
Susan Crockett: You’re welcome, bye.

Wasn’t that awesome? The idea that growth can come from trials and tribulations, in fact, maybe it only comes through trials or tribulations. No, I don’t think so because if I think about my time as a musician, I practiced and grew through diligence and practice and a more deliberate way of growth. But certainly, trials and tribulations can be an accelerator for personal growth and for becoming the next version of our virtuosa selves, much faster than if we were going along in a smaller deliberate way.

So I really want to thank Krista for talking with us today. I let her choose what we’re listening to and what we’re reading this week. So the song that she’s been listening to is called Getting Good by Lauren Alaina. And just a beautiful song about being at peace and being good right now, where we are now. We don’t have to wait for it to get good, it can be good now, even in the midst of our trials and tribulations.

And then the book that she chose is about the new psychology of posttraumatic growth, it’s called What Doesn’t Kill Us: The New Psychology of Posttraumatic Growth, it’s by Stephen Joseph. And this is a really incredible book; this is the science behind this new idea of posttraumatic growth.

Also if you are interested in working with Krista or you know somebody who may benefit from working with her, like I did, maybe you know somebody who is a widowed mom or struggling with their grief. You can find Krista at coachingwithkrista.com, that’s Krista with a K, and we’ll put the URL in the notes. And she also has a wonderful podcast called the Widowed Mom podcast, which is available through her website at coachingwithkrista.com or on Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your podcasts.

Alright, so thank you so much for enjoying this bonus episode of Becoming Virtuosa, this came about because I had a one-off opportunity and I decided to release it on a Sunday, so we’re calling it a bonus episode for Soul Healing Sundays.

I am actually contemplating doing more of these episodes on Sundays with teachings as I’m doing more of my interviews on my Wednesdays. I’d love to hear your feedback, if you want to write to me at sue@virtuosacoaching.com. Let me know about what you like about the podcast, if you’d be interested in me doing more teaching type podcasts like I originally did on Sundays, then we might expand this out a little bit.

But in the coming week I’m going to see you on Wednesday for our regular podcast release, we’ve got a fabulous interview podcast and I’ll see you on Wednesday.

Have a wonderful week my virtuosas, I love you all. Love always, Sue.

Female Announcer: Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. If you want to find out more, come check out virtuosacoaching.com. That’s virtuosa - with an A - coaching.com. See you next week.

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