#22: PTSD and Relationships, with Elizabeth Polinsky

Love Is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect

PTSD has a tremendous impact on all areas of a person's life, including on their relationships. PTSD is an internal reaction to trauma that helps a person cope with an overwhelming event. It can also keep that person stuck in a place of pain and fear, which makes it difficult to relate to others. The good news is that there are ways to heal.

Today I talk with Elizabeth Polinsky, who works with couples who are dealing with the effects of trauma (amongst other issues). She talks with us about PTSD, how it impacts us in our relationships, and how we can start to heal.

Elizabeth Polinsky is a Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist practicing in Virginia Beach, Virginia. In her counseling practice she provides weekly counseling and weekend-long marriage intensives to couples looking to overcome personality and communication differences so they can leave tense disagreements feeling closer and more connected. Growing up in a military family and now as a military spouse, she has a special passion for helping military couples navigate the unique challenges of military life. She is licensed in four states, including Virginia, Nevada, South Carolina, and Arkansas.

Learn more about Liz:

www.ElizabethPolinskyCounseling.com.

CommunicateandConnectpodcast.com

Learn more about the types of therapeutic models described in this podcast:

https://iceeft.com/ufaq-category/find-a-therapist-directory/

https://cptforptsd.com/cpt-provider-roster/

Karin's website:

www.drcalde.com

TRANSCRIPT

Podcast Introduction:

[00:00] Karin: You. This is Love is Us: Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing, the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love is Us.

Episode Introduction:

[00:50] Karin: Hello, everybody, and welcome to episode number 22. Today I'm going to be interviewing Elizabeth Polinsky, and Elizabeth is a therapist. She specializes in working with couples, and in particular, she helps couples who are dealing with the effects of PTSD in their relationship. So when I say PTSD, I'm talking about trauma. She works mostly, but not exclusively with military couples, and so that is a passion of hers. She also feels really strongly about the methods that she uses. She uses EFT, or emotionally focused couple therapy and also cognitive processing therapy for PTSD. And these are well tested models. They're very popular. They are more of your traditional models when it comes to therapy. And what's interesting is that next week on episode number 23, I'm going to be talking with Peg Hurley Dawson, who is also a therapist, and she uses completely different methods. So it might be interesting for you to listen to both and figure out if you were to engage in therapy or coaching, what kind of method seems to maybe feel more comfortable or feel better for you, because there is quite a range. So, finally, I just want to offer just a big bit of a trigger warning because we are talking about trauma today and mentioning some things that might be difficult for some people. We don't go into a lot of detail, but I want you to make sure that you take care of yourself. I hope you enjoy the episode. And here we go.

Episode Transcript

[02:33] Karin: Hi, Liz. How are you?

[02:34] Liz: I'm good. How are you?

[02:36] Karin: I'm doing well. Tell us where you are in the world.

[02:40] Liz: Okay. Yeah. So right now, I'm physically located in a very rural town called Fallon in Nevada, which is where Naval Air Station Fallon is, and it's where Top Gun is. So for all your listeners who are like, where is she? I'm where Top Gun is. Okay.

[03:00] Karin: And this is kind of maybe a more interesting question for you because you end up moving around a lot. Is that right?

[03:08] Liz: Yes, I do. Yeah. My husband's in the Navy. He's an aviator, a naval flight officer in the Navy, and that's why we're stationed here. And so we do move around. I'll say our home base area is Virginia. Beach, Virginia, and the likelihood is that we'll continually move there, move away, move back over the years, but that's sort of our home base, and that's where my counseling practice is primarily located.

[03:39] Karin: Where are some of your favorite places that you've lived?

[03:42] Liz: Oh, gosh. So we met in Pensacola, Florida, when he was in flight school, and I was working there. I was working for the Veterans Affairs Hospital as an outpatient therapist when I met him, but that's probably my favorite. I had a very hard time leaving. So, so far it's just been Virginia and Fallon, and there's a there's a chance we might end up in California next or potentially go back to Virginia, so we'll see. But Pensacola was my favorite place. I had a very hard time leaving like that. The white sand and the clear, crystal blue water. It was a gorgeous place.

[04:25] Karin: So you really loved living on the coast and by the water?

[04:29] Liz: Yes, I do. Yeah. I grew up in El Paso, Texas, which is desert, and so living here in Fallon feels very kind of homey because it's desert also. But I so miss just looking at the water and being being around water. I love that.

[04:45] Karin: Yeah, it feels very healing to me.

[04:48] Liz: Yeah, deep in your soul.

[04:52] Karin: Yeah, I agree. So speaking of healing.

[05:00] Liz: What do you do for work? Yeah, I am a marriage counselor, and I do mostly marriage counseling with military and veteran couples or couples where one or both have PTSD. That's sort of my specialty area in the world of marriage counseling.

[05:19] Karin: Okay, and how did you come to do that work?

[05:22] Liz: Yeah, I always knew that I wanted to do marriage counseling ever since grad school, I should say. I wasn't sure initially if I wanted to be a counselor, but when I was in grad school, I was learning about emotionally focused couple therapy, and I was like, this is the therapy for me. This is what I want to do. I want to help couples. When I graduated, I did a postgraduate fellowship for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and that got me on this track doing individual counseling, especially trauma, trauma focused therapy. And I did really love that. I enjoyed it so much, but there wasn't an opportunity in the government setting, really, to do couples therapy. It was so individual therapy focused. When I met my husband and we were going to move around, I was like, woohoo, now I have this chance. I can do more couples therapy and pursue this other dream that I've had. And I decided I really wanted to still work with veterans and military couples. One, because it's a passion. Both my parents were military. Now I'm a military spouse. But also when I was working with the veterans at the Veterans Affair Hospital, some of them had been through combat. Some really horrific things had happened, which was often what they were coming to therapy for. But there were some people who would tell me that the hardest part of their military experience was the impact on their relationship and the loss of their partner, even above and beyond the traumatic things they had gone through. Yeah, and I know my parents divorced as well, so they were dual military couple, and the military played a role in the decline of their relationship. And so this has just been, I don't know, like, a long passion of mine that has continually got reconfirmed over the years that I want to help military couples stay together.

[07:38] Karin: It's interesting how so many of us have had these childhood experiences that lead us to the work that we're doing now.

[07:47] Liz: Yeah.

[07:48] Karin: So, yeah, it sounds like it really is important to you, this work personally, and also that you see how much it affects people out in the world.

[08:01] Liz: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It has a lot of personal fulfillment to it.

[08:06] Karin: And so there are a couple of things that I'm hoping you could start out with. First of all, you mentioned, let's start with PTSD, so maybe you can just give us a little bit of an overview of what PTSD actually is.

[08:22] Liz: Yes, happy to do that, because so many people are not quite sure. It's something that gets thrown around a lot. People talk about it in the media, in the newspaper, and so it's helpful to know what that is. So most people in their lifetime will go through a life threatening traumatic event. Combat experiences are certainly a traumatic event, but other things can be as well. Certain national disasters. If someone felt like their life was being threatened or someone that they really cared about was maybe going to be harmed, that could cause PTSD, a car crash, any sort of large event, school shootings. I know that so many are happening right now. Anytime my life is threatened or the life of someone who matters a lot to me, that can create PTSD symptoms along with things like sexual assault. So most people will go through a traumatic event, but they don't all develop PTSD. It's sort of if the symptoms maybe I'll say everybody after a traumatic event, the PTSD symptoms are a normal reaction to going through a traumatic event. And for most people, those symptoms go away within three months, and they kind of continue on. For people who develop PTSD, those symptoms did not decrease. Something is happening in their brain where, like, the alarm button stays on and they have a hard time. Their nervous system is not going back to the natural state it was at prior to the trauma. So there are four main categories of symptoms for PTSD. So if it's okay with you, I'll go over those real fast. For people, the first one is intrusive memories. So this is where sort of like, you could be walking around, enjoying life, going to a coffee shop, I don't know, doing whatever you do and all of a sudden you're thinking about the traumatic event that happened, and it seems like it comes out of nowhere and just like, smacks you in the face. This is a really common experience for people who have PTSD. They also have things that trigger memories. So sometimes that could be maybe if they were in a fire, I have a candle on my desk if I had it lit or something, that could trigger the memory of the fire. And so now memories are coming back up, and then they also experience something called flashbacks, which is where in their body, their nervous system responds to that trigger in their environment, like they are back in that moment of the fire for this example. So these sort of memories, thoughts, flashbacks are one category of symptoms that someone with PTSD has. Another category is avoidance, which makes a lot of sense because if I'm walking around life and I keep getting these memories and these flashbacks, I'm naturally going to want to avoid being in situations that would trigger those experiences. And so this tends to lead to kind of a shrinking of someone's life because they might start avoiding being in crowded places or public places or grocery stores, anywhere that would be a trigger that would bring one of these memories back up. This also tends to impact their thinking and their emotions, their mood. So if I'm constantly having all these memories, of course that's really stressful, really painful to have those memories. If I start avoiding places that I used to go to, things that I used to enjoy, friends that I used to hang out with, I can develop more depression and loneliness feelings from that. And then it also tends to impact people's beliefs in five specific areas. This comes from cognitive processing therapy, which I can go more in depth in a few moments if you want, but it's one of the evidence based treatments for PTSD. And in cognitive processing therapy, we are looking at how did this event impact your beliefs and your views about your safety and the safety of others? How does it impact your beliefs about trust? Do you feel like you can trust people? Do you feel like you can trust yourself? Beliefs around power and control, beliefs around intimacy, and then beliefs around your self esteem. So a very common experience for someone who's gone through a traumatic event is to feel like, oh, if I had only done this, or I should have done this, and this wouldn't have happened, which then turns into a lot of self blame, a lot of guilt, and more negative thoughts and feelings that they're experiencing. The fourth category of PTSD symptoms has to do with hyper vigilance, which really just means I'm on guard and my nervous system is constantly on guard, and it's very hard to relax. And so people might be very easily distracted, find it hard to concentrate, like they could wake up at night at the drop of a pin, something really because their nervous system is on guard. They can't just fall asleep. Any noise or movement would wake them up really easily. Or if they are in a public place, they might be scanning, sort of looking around for any possible threats or danger that could happen. So that's my overview. That's like PTSD, the main symptoms. Yeah. I don't know if you want to follow up on any of that.

[14:58] Karin: Yeah, and I will as we go. But one of the things that you said to me in our earlier conversation was that PTSD is actually quite treatable.

[15:12] Liz: Yeah.

[15:12] Karin: And I think that might surprise some people to hear. So I was wondering if you could talk just a little bit about that.

[15:19] Liz: Yes, I'm happy to talk about that, because you're right, a lot of people are surprised to hear that. It is actually one of the most, I guess, like curable mental health disorders or diagnoses, because my body will naturally recover from a traumatic event. Something is going on. When someone develops PTSD, something is going on that is preventing the body from going through its natural recovery process. So through therapy, and through specifically trauma processing type of therapy, I can get that button to switch back off, so that way my nervous system can reregulate. So there are two gold standard treatments for PTSD. One of them is cognitive processing therapy for PTSD, which is the type that I do and the type that I really love and tend to recommend to people. But there is also prolonged exposure. And those are the two most well researched forms of trauma processing therapy. A lot of people like EMDR, but the research is not quite as strong for EMDR.

[16:36] Karin: Yeah. And I had been trained in the exposure therapy, the long term exposure therapy, when I was in my training, and I've also been learning about all kinds of other exciting, up and coming different things like somatic experiencing and ifs and all of these different modalities. But you do the cognitive processing therapy?

[17:00] Liz: I do. I mostly work with couples now, so I'm doing couples therapy. But when I have individual therapy clients who want to really work on their PTSD symptoms, that's what I do. And I think one of the things that can maybe help clarify this is any type of therapy could help with trauma symptoms. I sort of think about trauma therapy in three stages. The first stage is stabilization. And any type of therapy approach could help PTSD at this stage. It can help someone learn coping skills, help them understand what's going on for them, help them feel like they can cope and make life more enjoyable and pursue life goals and not have PTSD hold them back. What I'm talking about is specific trauma processing, where our goal is to get rid of PTSD symptoms. Yeah, that's where that gets a little.

[18:06] Karin: More specific in your work with couples. You got really excited in graduate training like I did on EFT, which is Sue Johnson's model, working with couples. So can you tell me a little bit about EFT and why that seems so exciting to you and why it might be effective for the couples with whom you work?

[18:29] Liz: Yeah. Oh, gosh. Where to start? I think just like, as a personal note, the military had a really rough impact on my parents relationship. They both had a lot of trauma in their backgrounds. And I struggled a lot in relationships in my early adulthood, my first dating type of stuff. And I just couldn't figure out why were all of my relationships failing all the time? So then I started reading and listening to podcasts and going super in depth into the relationship science. What is proven to work and what am I doing wrong, I think was how that started. And that's how I came across Sue Johnson and her work. I think her first book that I read was Love Sense, which is sort of about the science behind love. And I also read this book called The Science of Happily Ever After. I have like three copies of that book and have read it many times, at least in my training, there was so much emphasis on evidence based treatments like let's do the type of therapies that have research to support them and say that they work and they do what they're supposed to do. And currently EFT, or emotionally focused couple therapy is the only evidence based treatment for couples, according to the American Psychological Association. So these were some of the things that got me have, like this personal component related to relationships. But then also I want to do what works and what's proven to work in the research. I don't think I answered all your questions. Maybe a little tangent there.

[20:39] Karin: That's okay. Maybe you can give us an overview of what EFT is.

[20:44] Liz: Yes. So the basis of EFT is that we all form attachments. Typically these attachments are like our first ones are to our caregivers, our parents, and then as we age, as we create romantic relationships, we develop an attachment bond to our significant other. And the quality of that bond really leads people to having a sense of feeling secure in their relationship or feeling insecure in their relationship. And so EFT, the focus of that is to help couples build a relationship together that feels really secure. And so usually couples are coming in, both are feeling insecure in some way in the relationship and are having difficulty coping. And oftentimes the way that they cope when they feel insecure then causes their partner to feel insecure. And then the way their partner copes with feeling insecure then triggers the other partner, like the first partner to feel insecure. So they get kind of stuck in this loop where their coping skills trigger insecurity in their partner. And then they're just both feeling insecure all the time. So EFT helps couples work on changing that sort of pattern, learn to talk about their feelings of insecurity with each other and then develop use those skills, those communication skills that they're working on the whole time to develop a secure bond between the two of them.

[22:27] Karin: So when you were describing cognitive processing therapy, you talked about the beliefs and views and a couple of things that popped out at me, although I can see how all of those different things under there could impact a relationship. But two that primarily jumped out at me were the beliefs and views about trust and intimacy. And I can imagine that that's huge when it comes to relationships. So how does trauma come into this work for you and EFT? And how do all these things intersect?

[23:03] Liz: Yes, they do intersect. Yeah. I'm going to have to just create some examples here for us to talk about. So I'll go with a combat situation, maybe. I'm a veteran who was in a combat situation and I had to rely on my buddy over here to help me and they didn't like, they dropped the ball or something like that. If I'm sort of blaming them, in my mind, I'm thinking they should have had it together. That to me would then bring up, I can't trust someone else to do it. I got to do it on my own. I got to be the sole one in charge to make sure nothing goes wrong. So one of the most common trauma experiences is sexual assault. And if that happened by, I mean, it's horrible, right? It's horrible if it happens by anybody, if it happens from somebody that I trusted. So a really big thing in the military is military sexual trauma. And for several years, I think it was actually in 2015, I think it was in 2015, it was actually the rates for men who experienced military sexual trauma were higher. There were more men in the military who had experienced military sexual trauma than women. And then that sort of shifted again in 2016. But that's like someone who's supposed to have my back. And that is a massive betrayal for people who were sexually assaulted by a family member in childhood, something like that. Again, massive betrayal by someone who is really close to me. So that would naturally lead to some beliefs of I don't know that I can be safe being so vulnerable with somebody else. I don't know that I can trust them to not hurt me. I don't know if I can trust myself to figure out if this person is trustworthy or safe. And so this can have a really big impact on a couple. So let me bridge that over to couples. So especially in instances of sexual assault, there tend to be a lot of fears and intrusive memories that come up around sex and one partner, let's say, like those memories come up those uncomfortable, anxious feelings. I don't know if I can trust you. Is it safe right now? And so they shut down sex and they start avoiding it. This is a way of coping and trying to prevent those memories and those uncomfortable feelings from coming up. But when one partner shuts it down and doesn't sort of share about what's going on on the inside of them, the other person takes it really personally. Right. Nobody wants to try to initiate sex and then have it constantly be shut down for on the other side. It just feels like massive rejection.

[26:36] Karin: Yeah, that can be such a vulnerable experience.

[26:38] Liz: Yeah. So then they might get really angry and be like, why do you keep doing this? And then the other person gets sort of, like, defensive, and then maybe even worried, oh my gosh, is my partner going to be like someone else from my past? Are they going to pressure me for sex or hurt me? And so they kind of go into a defensive thing, like, all you ever want is sex or maybe and then they get trapped in that, never knowing. Like, the one person just constantly feels unwanted and has no idea that it's trauma symptoms and fears and worries and insecurities from the past coming up. And the person with PTSD is left on their own to deal with all of those feelings. So in EFT, what we would be working on is helping both partners talk about that partner one maybe would be working on sharing. Well, I do get really anxious around sex. I end up having all of these memories, and it makes me feel really uncomfortable about engaging in that way with you. That's already a brand new conversation that can take the couple somewhere versus just leaving them both trapped.

[28:10] Karin: Even identifying that that's actually going on, I can imagine can go a long way toward helping a couple heal.

[28:19] Liz: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. And sometimes it's just not obvious. Maybe you would think it was obvious sometimes I've had couples where they knew their partner had gone through a sexual assault in the past, but they couldn't connect that to why their partner felt uncomfortable around sex with them. And so sometimes helping it's like, work to help both couples understand how or sorry, both partners of the couple understand how the trauma is impacting not just the individual, but then how they both get caught in sort of a loop around it.

[29:05] Karin: Yeah. And when they come to you, have they usually identified that this is what's going on? Where the traumatic event that triggered this? Or is this something that you also help couples just uncover?

[29:21] Liz: Yeah, that's a really great question. I think I've had both happen. I have some couples who they already know they've been in individual therapy, like trauma recovery stuff for a while, working on PTSD symptoms. And then as sometimes people, as they improve on the PTSD side, then they start thinking, oh, I need to also do work in my relationship. So then they come into couples counseling. But I have had plenty of people who came into couples counseling who were not really aware of how trauma was impacting them. Certainly they knew they had negative experiences in their past, but not that it was impacting them on a day to day or how it was showing up in their relationship. And so then that is a big part of couples therapy, too, is in general, across all couples therapy. I would hope that a couple therapists would be helping people connect how their individual lives are then being related to the couple therapy concerns. To the couple's concerns.

[30:41] Karin: Yeah. That's a big piece people struggle with. Yeah.

[30:47] Liz: But then, especially with PTSD, it often is a big educational component.

[30:54] Karin: So how do you help people uncover that?

[30:59] Liz: Yeah, well, I think part of it is in my assessment process. So when I work with couples, I usually do like, a consult just to, like, we could feel each other out, let's see if we're a good fit. And then I do sort of a relationship assessment with them together. And then I meet with each of them individually, and I learn about what were their relationships with their parents like, what were the things that they learned about relationships from their family, what were their like, if they had a previous marriage or significant romantic relationships in the past, how were those relationships? And then I also am assessing for their individual mental health concerns. So usually this comes out in that assessment process. And then if they have individual providers, I'm coordinating the care with them. So if it's somebody who already knows they have PTSD, that's easy. But I have had clients where I was like, oh, gosh, I'm feeling like, from my assessment, this is probably PTSD. And then I coordinated with their individual therapist and asked their therapist, could you do a more thorough assessment to confirm whether or not that is the case?

[32:29] Karin: It could be that people listening to this right now are connecting some dots. And so I just want to say right now, for anyone that is doing that to go slow, and if you're feeling triggered right now to really take care of yourself and to take some time to feel safe, however that might look for you. And if you need to stop this, that's okay, too. But for those who would like to take some steps in their healing, what kind of advice might you offer?

[33:17] Liz: Yeah, I think you definitely want to do an assessment with a therapist, like someone who has training in assessment for trauma to determine whether it is PTSD. I think, as you were saying, that right now for the listeners, I was thinking I've had some couples come in. I think because PTSD is thrown around a lot in the media, especially in connection with military and veterans, that they sort of assume, oh, my partner is being weird. They must have PTSD. And it's not always PTSD. It's sometimes something else. So if someone is thinking, oh, gosh, maybe this is PTSD, I think the first thing is to find out and to talk to a medical professional who is trained in diagnosing whether or not this is PTSD.

[34:20] Karin: Can you tell us maybe a couple other things that might look like PTSD?

[34:25] Liz: Yes. Yeah, this is a great question. Other things that I have heard a lot is autism, um, which has been really interesting. I've had one person who had PTSD, and I think they really did not want it to be PTSD. They wanted it to be autism, but it was PTSD. And then I have another client whose family member kept saying, like, I'm sure they have PTSD. They have PTSD. And I was like, there's no PTSD symptoms here. And through working with them, I was like, Actually, they might have autism. It's so interesting. I don't know that. I think most of the time, people don't know what to look for because maybe you could have anxiety. And a common symptom of anxiety is irritableness and a lot of anger. Anger problems. I'm doing air quotes right now. I forgot this is not video. It's just audio. So air quotes, anger problems. Often when people have, like, a short fuse, they'll say, oh, you must have PTSD. That's not necessarily the case. It's often a symptom of anxiety. And often people who have depression, men in particular who have depression, tend to have more anger outbursts. And sometimes it's just I don't know what to do with overwhelming emotions when I have them, even if I don't have a mental health diagnosis. So that's a little bit hard to say for sure. What are things that would look like PTSD? Because I think ultimately, you want, like, a trained professional to assess that.

[36:33] Karin: Yes, for sure. You don't want to self diagnose. And at the same time, I see ADHD as something that seems to really mimic PTSD in a lot of ways, too.

[36:44] Liz: Yeah. The distractibility, for sure. Difficulty concentrating those symptoms. Yeah. I think there are so many things that have some overlap with PTSD in different ways, which can be why it's hard to know if you're just, like, a regular person.

[37:06] Karin: Yeah. Well, how can couples who are dealing with PTSD and trauma, how can they connect while they're dealing with this and trying to heal? One of the things that comes to mind for me when I think of trauma is really being disconnected from yourself.

[37:26] Liz: Yes.

[37:29] Karin: So I think about connection and how to help that when people are really struggling.

[37:36] Liz: There is a big disconnection from myself because my internal experiences are so uncomfortable. It's kind of, like, painful to be connected with myself, and then it's really hard to be connected to someone else if I can't connect to myself.

[37:56] Karin: Yeah.

[37:58] Liz: So there is a. Way that part of trauma treatment is learning to be able to reconnect with my internal world. And that's also part of what we're doing in couples therapy, is helping both people understand their emotions, be able to identify them, talk about them, and talk about them with each other. Even when I can't go deep, I can still say something kind of surface level, like, I'm feeling really uncomfortable and I want to get out of this situation. I think this is a great first start to this whole process, because instead of just walking away, leaving a party, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a situation again. So I'm thinking right now about Walmart. Walmart has lots of trauma triggers for someone who's gone, who has PTSD. And maybe they're kind of white knuckling it through grocery shopping and they're kind of short and irritable, or they sort of say, like, no, I'm done. I'm going to go wait in the car, and they storm off and go. If they can say, like, I'm just feeling really uncomfortable, that is going to have a whole big change on the interaction with their partner. Their partner can then say, okay, something about this situation is uncomfortable. They're leaving, they're going to the car because it's uncomfortable. It's not that they are mad or impatient with how long I'm taking it shopping.

[39:46] Karin: Yeah. And I can imagine the partner then being able to realize, oh, this is not about me, this is about them. And so having them kind of own that I'm uncomfortable, it can be a lot easier to then manage their own feelings around it and not let it lead to a rupture of some kind or a fight.

[40:08] Liz: Absolutely. And then they can somehow support their partner in that moment. I don't know what the partner will need. Maybe the partner will be able to say, like, I just need to get out of here, or something like that. But if I'm not taking it personally, if I know just a little bit of what's going on with you enough that I'm not taking it personally, then that changes the whole interaction between them.

[40:34] Karin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So one of the things that you help people do is voice what's going on for them.

[40:43] Liz: Yes. That's a great way of saying that.

[40:47] Karin: Yeah, because that is so much I was talking to someone recently who was on an episode that will be coming out before this one about how sometimes we get really stuck on how to communicate, and sometimes we just need to communicate. We just need to say what's going on? The what that really speaks to that.

[41:10] Liz: One of the hardest things, I think, for people to learn is how do I even describe what's going on on the inside? Especially for I'm thinking, like, there's kind of a double whammy, maybe a triple maybe a triple whammy in military service members who have PTSD, because if the military does like military culture. To be prepared in a combat situation does so much to push my feelings down, to be able to respond in this moment and to ignore whatever's going on on the inside, not let it impact me. If you have a male service member, then they also have conditioning from society about what are men supposed to do with emotions? Can they have them or not?

[42:04] Karin: Yeah.

[42:06] Liz: And then if you also have PTSD, one of the ways I like to describe it is it's sort of like a whirlwind on the inside of so many emotions that it is hard to sift through what exactly is going on because it just feels so chaotic.

[42:24] Karin: Yeah, that's a great description. Yeah. And they were asking them to then describe, what are you feeling and talk about it. Wow. Yeah. So that's a big leap for so many people.

[42:35] Liz: Yes. Which is why both at least cognitive processing therapy and emotionally focused couple therapy. Like the process, the beginning process is the same of let's get used to identifying emotions and talking about them and understanding like, okay, this is what I'm feeling, this is how it's making me think, and this is what I'm doing to cope when I feel this way.

[43:08] Karin: Is there anything you'd like our listeners to know before we wrap up?

[43:14] Liz: I think what do I hope listeners would take away is probably a couple of things like when in doubt, an assessment would be great and to know that it is absolutely curable. And when I say curable, I don't mean that it won't be a difficult memory because it will be a difficult memory for the rest of my life. Right. If I go through something traumatic, there will be a way that it stays with me, but I don't have to have all the intrusive memories, and I don't have to have the flashbacks or the feeling unsafe in Walmart or being easily startled and woken up at the drop of a pin. Those symptoms can go away with trauma processing therapy. And if that feels like too hard to do, then I would start with, of course, individual therapy is great, but I love couples therapy. Obviously, because I'm a couples therapist, I'm biased. But one of the really difficult things about trauma is how isolating and alone it makes you feel. If you can just be together with your partner, and your partner can be together there with you. That goes so far in just improving quality of life, even if I'm not ready to do, like, a trauma processing type of therapy.

[44:57] Karin: Yeah. One of the things that comes up for me in talking about the importance of finding a trauma therapist is the difficulty in finding one. And I know that this has been the case over the past few years. I don't know, maybe it's getting a little bit better now that we're getting through the pandemic, but can you tell people how they might find someone.

[45:21] Liz: Gosh, it is really hard because there are a fun fact from one of Sue Johnson's book, her most recent book. There are over 400 types of therapy. It is hard to find what you're looking for in a therapist. So the main types of therapy for trauma, like the two the two big trauma processing ones, are prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy for PTSD. So there are a lot of therapist. Directories like therapy? Den psychology today. Zencare There are several others that will allow you to search for therapists in your area based on the type of therapy that they provide. They often commonly have a search function that is for the type of issue that someone wants to work on. So, like anxiety, depression, and usually there's something that says trauma or PTSD. So even if they do EMDR or another type of somatic experiencing, or ifs whatever type they do, if they specialize in using that for trauma, then they will likely have clicked the trauma thing. I will say I tend to encourage people to go to a specialist versus a generalist. Sometimes I look at those therapy profiles and they like, every problem ever listed is listed on their profile.

[47:00] Karin: Yeah. And really, trauma is a different beast. You really do need specialized training and trauma to really be able to help support someone. I agree with that 100%.

[47:15] Liz: Seeing if in their bio they write about trauma and how they work with trauma, or if on their website it talks about trauma, that would give someone a good starting point to know, like, is this really a trauma therapist or is it kind of a generalist therapist.

[47:35] Karin: Who has some minimal training in trauma?

[47:38] Liz: Yeah. In terms of couples counseling for EFT, specifically, there is the Iceft directory. Let's see. Iceeft.com, I think, might be not sure. But the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy is what it stands for. Isaft has a therapist directory so you can see who does EFT in your state and what level of training they have.

[48:16] Karin: Yeah, and I'll put it in the show notes, too, so that people can access it that way.

[48:21] Liz: Cool.

[48:22] Karin: Yeah.

[48:23] Liz: CPT also has that. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, there's a Cognitive Processing Therapy therapist directory as well.

[48:30] Karin: Great. As we close, what role does love play in the work that you do?

[48:35] Liz: Oh, my gosh. Love is everything. Love is everything. I mean, because I am a couples counselor and I'm pretty exclusively working with couples now, they're often coming to couples counseling because they love each other so much and they can't figure out what is going wrong in the relationship and why they keep having fights or disagreements or tension moments. And it's so wonderful when I can help them figure that out and they can see the love that they have for each other. Again, that is one of the most special moments of couple therapy. It's probably the thing that I love the most that gets me, like yeah. It's like a live romance movie in front of me. When they can feel that love again between the two of them, that's just being kind of hidden by that pattern of feeling insecure and coping and the other one feeling insecure and coping.

[49:42] Karin: Yeah. So you're putting more love out in the world, and that's what we need. I love that. Or helping people to do that. That's great. You are licensed in four different states, is that right?

[49:54] Liz: Yes. And if we keep moving to more states, it'll probably grow. But currently I'm licensed to do counseling in Virginia, and most of my clients are from the Virginia Beach area but anywhere in Virginia, South Carolina, Arkansas, and Nevada. And if anyone is looking for me, it's Elizabeth Polinskycounseling.com. I also have a podcast that is specific to military relationships, and so that is called the Communicate and Connect Podcast. You can find it on any podcast platform, or you can go to communicateandconnectpodcast.com.

[50:38] Karin: Well, thank you, Liz, for taking the time to talk with us today. This is a really important topic, and I'm glad that you could come and share your wisdom.

[50:47] Liz: Yeah, thank you. I've enjoyed it.

Outro:

[50:49] Karin: Thanks for joining us. Today on Love Is US. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the Love and Connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, ali Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.