Krystal Boothe author of Deep Inner Soul – Healing with self empathy shares tips from her book on how to heal childhood trauma. In the depths of trauma's impact, the journey to healing often begins with, self-empathy. Krystal's book delves into the profound role, self-empathy, plays in the healing process, guiding individuals towards transformative recovery. Krystal introduces concepts from her book that unravels the layers of trauma, while providing practical tools and exercises for self-nurturing and healing.
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Introduction
Krystal Boothe is a licensed clinical social worker and owner of Wings of The Future. Krystal grew up in Detroit Michigan from an underprivileged family in an abusive home. Her father had two wives (didn't know that was legal in America) the abusive environment made a major impact on her schooling she had a special education classes.
As a result, she found herself repeating the cycle of abuse and became a victim (always happens). After leaving her abuser she married her current husband in 1999, but after 14 years of marriage they divorced only to reunite three years later. Together they founded Wings of The Future shortly afterwards. Krystal work now focuses on the, complex trauma, in the adult population. she works with a diverse population of adults adolescents and children with anxiety, depression, bipolar, PTSD, ADHD and a host of other diagnosis.
Myrna: Krystal I want to start off by asking you in your work as a clinical social worker what did you personally learn or discover in life that led you to this point to write books about, healing trauma?
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Childhood trauma leads to toxic relationships
Krystal: It kind of started all out when I was in Los Angeles County working for the county at a facility for teenagers who are involved in the legal system. I noticed that all of the clients they would give me, all of them had childhood trauma. During the Discovery process and assessments all of them had trauma.
I just started to see the repeating underlining causes of why they were incarcerated and why they were having problems in school. Including learning, focused concentration, memory problems, and the inability to have healthy relationships resulting in a lot of toxic relationships. That discovery led me on this path as well as my own struggles with focused concentration and memory.
I was not able to do well in school myself and so I started to connect the dots and that's when I started to realize that trauma was the underlying cause of these problems. It wasn't just Mental Health, it's been proven. Science shows that whenever you see someone with trauma, the psychologist can go back and pinpoint a certain point in your childhood, not even maybe as a teenager it started.
Trauma can starts very early and it impacts the way you see the world and how you see yourself.
Myrna: I've had several people on the show that confirmed this. And you are correct a lot of times those behaviors or those traumas, leads to incarceration and problems with the justice system.
Key elements to healing trauma: Self-empathy
Myrna: Can you describe the process of, healing trauma, and what are some key elements for people to learn how to heal from trauma?
Krystal: One of the key elements that I mentioned in the book, is the inability to be vulnerable and authentic with yourself. A lot of times trauma brings a lot of shame and so people typically will not want to open up anymore. They'll shut down and that's just one of the byproducts of trauma, and so the ability to be vulnerable and honest with others and themselves.
Deep Inner Soul Healing with self-empathy addresses how to get back to that place before you were damaged. The book teaches you how to do that through the, empathy exercises.
Myrna: I know you've got personal experience from being a child in an abusive home, then you were able to start your career and see it in others. What inspired you to write this book and what message do you hope readers will take away from the book?
Deep Inner Soul Healing with self-empathy
Krystal: What I realized is that the key component to help trigger the brain to get back to that place of vulnerability and authenticity honesty was that the person was waiting to be cared for. They were waiting for someone to say something kind to them, someone to validate them. That led me on a scientific Journey with my clients up creating these empathy exercises.
Before I even wrote the book, I decided to just go through these, empathy exercises, with the client pinpointing the specific traumas and see what happened to the brain, and what happened to the heart. These exercises allowed my clients to hear for themselves what they were expecting other people to tell them.
As they began to receive what they needed to heal, it was almost like an antidote, they started to let naturally. Let go of the pain that was causing them to be unable to forgive or being unable to let something go or be unable to move forward and think of anything else other than what had happened to them.
Healing with self-empathy allows us to move forward
Trauma has devastating effects on the brain and on the body and in so many other areas. God gave me the word, I heard it in my spirit, empathy exercises, and I thought to myself, empathy exercises, okay. I know what an exercise is it's something that you do over and over again and I know what empathy is but then I said he's meaning, self-empathy.
So then I started to say, self-empathy, what does it look like, what would it sound like, what would it feel like? I started writing out some things that were empathy because I have a very high emotional intelligence so I was able to discern what people needed to hear. I'm going to trigger the same emotional reaction in their physiological body and in their brain and thereby get them where they want to go.
Myrna: Are these exercises affirmations? A lot of times affirmations don't work because your brain is saying oh that's bull crap. Give me an example of a of a, self-empathy exercise, that someone will do and that their brain will believe it.
Krystal: I teach people how to reconnect in their body and in their hearts and when they go into their heart that's where this work takes place this work does not take place in the brain. It affects the brain, it helps rewire the brain, it helps the brain to let things go; but everything that they do they is from the heart not the brain.
Self empathy reconnects with the heart and body
I teach them to how to reconnect with their bodies and a lot of times people do not want to reconnect with their bodies because that's exactly where the pain is. So I teach them how to slowly but surely isolate various incidents that have happened to them. We go through and unpack all that stuff, get it clear what we're going in for and then we go into the heart, we don't go into the brain. The brain only believes with the heart.
Once you shift over into to true empathy for yourself, you realize that oh someone cares for me. That someone is you.
Myrna: That's actually pretty good work. What do you want people to walk away with after reading your book?
Krystal: One of the biggest message I want people to walk away with is that I can heal. People lose hope because they have tried everything, they've done everything. I want to reinstall in people that there's hope, that they can actually heal. Because once a person hope is activated, they are willing to do the work.
Conclusion
Myrna: so how can someone pick up a copy of your book and also get a hold of you for therapy? Your company is called Wings of the future.
I am on social media I'm on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/wingsofthefuturepp/. I'm going to be starting a little small group where I'm going to be allowing people to kind of meet with the author of the book where they're going to get actually meet with me. I'm going to go through the book with people and it's just going to be for a very small nominal monthly fee. They're going to be able to meet with me if they can't go to therapy, because not everybody has money for therapy.
Additional Resources
Embracing Change Together: The Transformative Power of Group Therapy
