Overcome Everyday Trauma with Dr. Tracey Shors

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Welcome to the Human Beauty Movement podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of the Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self, love, empowerment, soul alignment and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Today we have a compelling topic that touches many of our lives. Trauma. Experiencing trauma can profoundly affect our brains, leading to persistent rumination, anxiety and depression. These mental states can trap us in a cycle of negative thinking and emotional turmoil, making it difficult to move forward. Our Special guest today, Dr. Tracy Shors, is here to shed light on these intricate processes. Dr. Shors is a Distinguished professor in Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology and a member of the center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University.

Jennifer Norman:
With an impressive 1150 scientific publications in esteemed journals like Nature Science, PNAS and Nature Neuroscience, her research is widely recognized and respected. Dr. Schorr's groundbreaking work has been featured in Scientific American, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on NPR and cnn. She recently received the W. Horsley Gantt Medal from the Pavlovian Society honoring her dedication to the noble pursuit Pursuit of truth. In addition to her academic achievements, Dr. Shors is the author of the popular book Everyday Trauma published by Macmillan and Flatiron Press. She is also the creator of the innovative evidence based brain fitness program Map Train My Brain, which aims to help individuals overcome the lingering effects of stress and trauma.

Jennifer Norman:
In today's episode, Dr. Shors will share her insights on how trauma affects our brains and discuss practical strategies for recovery and resilience. By tuning in, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the neurological impacts of trauma and learn actionable steps to improve mental health and wellbeing. So get ready to empower yourself with knowledge and tools from one of the leading experts in the field. Welcome to the show, Tracey. How are you doing today?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
I'm great. Thank you for having me.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, it's such a joy. I am so excited to have this conversation, because trauma impacts so many people. Just to ground us all, I would love if you can explain what constitutes trauma and how it can vary from major events to stress over time.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Trauma is a tough word to define shortly, because there's so many meanings of it. The word trauma actually comes from the word "wound". And I like to think about that in a way, because it means that something that's so intense that it almost causes a wound in our psyche, in our brain, to some extent, in our nervous system, it's different than stress. Something that's stressful isn't necessarily traumatic, but everything that's traumatic is also stressful. So stress kind of like accumulates, and then at some point, when it becomes intense enough, it becomes traumatic. So I like to think of trauma. I use this word, everyday trauma, which is also the title of my book. And sometimes I had to be careful because sometimes people think, oh, I mean that, oh, everything is traumatic.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Every little experience that we have is traumatic. And I don't mean that. I think that's not a good way to think of trauma, but rather what I mean is that when we have these experiences that are traumatic, that cause something like a wound in our nervous system, that we often think about them every day, we might ruminate on them, reactivate the memories. So to that extent, it becomes like an everyday experience. And then there's, of course, other traumas that are more chronic, like poverty, discrimination, abuse in the home, chronic illness. And those are also everyday traumas because they just, every single day it seems like they're affecting us. So it has to be something significant. You know, it has to be something that you remember.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
The other important thing about trauma, too, is it's super individual. So what's traumatic to one person isn't necessarily traumatic to someone else. Yes, and that's important because the trauma is really the individual response to the event, not the event itself.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I know that a lot of people start referring to the fact that it becomes almost to the point nowadays because there's so much to be traumatized about that people tend to catastrophize everything. Like everything is just going to fall apart at any moment's notice. And so I think that that might be a little bit different than what you're talking about.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah, sometimes people confuse it with post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, which is a diagnosable mental illness. And in order to be diagnosed with PTSD, it has to interfere with your everyday life. So that's quite different than just the traumas that most of us experience in our lifetime. In fact, it's estimated that over 70% of people in the world experience trauma. So it's not rare any stretch of the imagination. What is more rare is having so many repercussions that you can't function in your everyday life. That's more rare.

Jennifer Norman:
Right, right. So now then, how does the brain encode and store traumatic memories differently from other types of memories?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
We don't really know that they're stored that much differently. Like, the basic mechanisms of memory are probably quite similar. What is different is that when they're encoded, when the mechanisms are encoded during the experience, they're accompanied by these other processes, like the release of, say, norepinephrine from the adrenal glands, or cortisol from the adrenals, or norepinephrine and epinephrine in the body. They kind of enhance the memory. At least that's the hypothesis. The presence of these other hormones and neurotransmitters make it more memorable, but that the mechanism itself of memory is very similar to other types of memories.

Jennifer Norman:
But you were also talking about this inclination to ruminate on painful memories. Like, relive them, think about them over and over again. So what kind of impact have you seen that that has on people's daily lives?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
A lot. I mean, really interesting, but they're also like, yeah, they're just really troublesome. So everybody ruminates to some extent, thinks about things over and over and over again. But some people ruminate a lot more than others. Women tend to ruminate more than men do. People that are younger tend to ruminate more than people that are older. One good thing about getting older, you.

Jennifer Norman:
Just forget to ruminate!

Dr. Tracey Shors:
I used to ruminate so much when I was young, and I still ruminate, but not nearly as much as I used to, partly because I've been studying it. So now I recognize it, and I'm less likely to kind of, like, follow it. So, yeah, ruminations are problematic, for sure. And one thing that people don't always understand about ruminations is that every time you ruminate about a past experience, you make another memory in your brain. So if you bring up a memory good or bad, but mostly ruminations are bad, bring up this negative experience, then you've made another memory of that experience in this moment. And so that's one of the reasons I think, that ruminations are so problematic for the brain is because you're just making more and more of these memories interesting.

Jennifer Norman:
And it's interesting that you say that women are more prone to ruminate than men. What is the neurological reason behind this increased vulnerability for women, you think?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah, I mean, nobody really knows. They are highly, highly associated with depressive symptoms. And we know that women are also much more likely to suffer with depression than men are. So that's one possibility that they're just kind of, they kind of coexist. In some of our studies, we found that they also coexist with anxiety. They coexist with trauma, trauma related thoughts. So because women are so much more vulnerable to these emotions and feelings, anxiety, depression, trauma, it makes sense to some extent that they also are accompanied by these ruminations. In fact, you know, some of our studies suggest that if you can eliminate or at least reduce rumination, it also reduces some of these other problems like depression and anxiety.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, interesting.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
So they're not just like coexisting, they're actually kind of dependent on each other.

Jennifer Norman:
Right. And I know that a lot of people say, oh, women are more emotional than men. And I suppose that it's not like we're trying to solve for being emotional, right? It's not like we want to just like have no emotions or just try to negate that. But we do want to be able to maybe take the edges off and see what we can do to cope or to help ourselves out of getting to the point of feeling chronic trauma or depression or anxiety. And so you've actually developed a brain fitness program called MAP Train My Brain. And so I wanted to just take a moment to have you explain what that is and how it's been proven to help, because it has been clinically proven to be able to support people in helping to alleviate anxiety and depression. Isn't that right?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah, yeah, we have quite a few studies on it now. Yeah. So about 15 years ago or so, I was working on neurogenesis in the brain. Now, neurogenesis is the production of new neurons in the brain in the adult brain. Doesn't happen in all over the brain, but just in certain brain regions like the hippocampus. And we know that learning new things and physical exercise really enhance this process in the brain, this production of these new neurons. And so kind of based on that data, I decided, well, maybe we could develop an intervention that kind of combines physical training with mental training, make more of these neurons in the brain and then keep them alive through mental training. And so that's kind of where the idea came from.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
The actual program combines mental and physical. That's what MAPS stands for, Mental And Physical. The mental training is meditation. It's a form of meditation we call focused attention meditation, where you really just focus your attention on one thing at a time, typically the breath, counting breath. And then when your mind starts to wander around, which it will, then you bring it back to the breath and just kind of start counting again. So it's way of, like, learning how your thoughts wander around in a way of learning how to not necessarily control them, but be more aware of what you're doing. If you're ruminating, for example, you're like, oh, my gosh, I keep thinking about this problem. And so you kind of, like, train your brain.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Like, oh, I keep going back to the same experience and going over it, and maybe I don't need to think about it again. So it's a kind of way of training your brain to think more, be more focused.

Jennifer Norman:
Got it.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Oh, I was just going to say. And then we follow that meditation by aerobic exercise right after that. So getting the heart rate up to, like, into the aerobic zone, meaning, like, over 100 beats per minute. So it's. Both of those activities are effortful. I mean, they require some kind of, like, concentration and effort, but they're doable for most people, and they end up being quite helpful.

Jennifer Norman:
So I understand that you're meditating for about 10 minutes in this focused state or a calm state where you're counting breath. And the point is to, like, if you are starting to ruminate or think about other things, just noticing it and bringing your awareness back to the present moment. And then 10 minutes of, like, a walking meditation, from what I saw, right where you're really just very methodically walking and focusing your attention on something in front of you for about 10 minutes. Right?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
On your feet. In your feet. Kind of like you just when your mind starts to wander around, you bring it back to your feet.

Jennifer Norman:
Two feet. Okay. And then 40 minutes of aerobic exercise.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah, it's actually 20 minutes of sitting meditation, 10 minutes of the walking, and then 30 of the aerobics.

Jennifer Norman:
Got it, got it. Okay.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
It's one hour, and that's manageable. Most people can find one hour, once or twice a week to do these activities. And it was one of my goals, too, is to make something that was doable. There's a lot of things that can help us with our thoughts and our feelings, but they take a lot of time or maybe they cost a lot of money or require, like, expensive equipment. Like, this is something anyone can do. It's completely free, and we've proven that.

Jennifer Norman:
It really works amazing. So then if somebody says, well, what if I go to yoga or I go to the gym? Is that the same thing? Or is this something that is extremely intentional and something that is built in terms of the program that you've designed?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah. I get asked that a lot. It is different than just going to the gym. Nothing against going to the gym. I'm a gym rat, so I go there all the time. But we did do a study some years ago where we tested this. So we had people who only meditated twice a week, we had people who only exercised twice a week, we had people who did one after the other, which is MAP training. And then we had people who did neither. And the people who did the combination were better off.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
They had fewer ruminations, they had fewer of these trauma thoughts, they had greater self esteem. So something about the combination is better than doing just meditating or just going to the gym and running on the treadmill.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow. I love these science backed mechanisms that help to support people's overall wellbeing. And yeah, I think if people are thinking about going and doing an hour worth of yoga or going to the gym for an hour, why not try this and know that it is actually something that has been clinically proven to be statistically significantly more of an improvement or more impactful for your mental wellbeing. Sounds very intriguing.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah, yeah, I'm really excited about it. I thought it would work, but I didn't know it would work as well as it does. We just finished a study. This was with women who had sexual violence history. A lot of them did have PTSD. In fact, all of them, except for two had, were diagnosed with PTSD. So they did this program twice a week for six weeks and they had like 40% fewer symptoms of PTSD. And nearly half of them, or over half didn't even have PTSD at the end.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
So it's very effective. But we've also done it in people with chronic depression, medical students. We did it with women who have HIV. We did it with women who had been homeless. We did it to students at the university. So it really works, it seems like for most people.

Jennifer Norman:
Excellent. Okay, so then for those who are still a little bit intimidated by all of that, what other kinds of things might be able to support somebody who has been through it, who has been through some trauma? Are there cognitive based therapies or other trauma informed care techniques that you have found to be fairly effective in mitigating the effects of trauma?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
I mean, I haven't personally, my lab hasn't really studied other interventions, but I do know a lot about them. And I would say the most accepted form of therapy for trauma in particular is exposure therapy. It's called prolonged exposure therapy. And that's where someone in the presence of a therapist typically like a cognitive, behavioral Therapist would, they would be exposed to the memory. And what happens in the brain, at least hypothetically, is that when you expose yourself to these memories, you associate the memory which was fearful, would cause a lot of fear response in the body. Heart might race, panic attack might feel like you're going to have a panic attack or something like that because you're doing it in a safe environment. With a therapist, the brain kind of learns, oh, just because I think about this thing that happened that was so terrible, I'm not afraid or not as afraid as I was. And that therapy does work.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
I mean the problem, and I don't really want to say there's a problem because I don't want, I do advocate this type of therapy particularly for severe trauma, but a lot of people don't want to do that. They don't really want to think about it, they don't want to write about it. They don't want to. Yeah, yeah, it's hard. It's really difficult as you can imagine.

Jennifer Norman:
Facing the demon, facing it...

Dr. Tracey Shors:
And I think even in our program I feel like that's part of the process that is effective because I think that when people sit in silence, because that's how the meditation happens, completely silent is that the memories tend to come up when you're sitting in silence by yourself, just listening to your own brain and the thought it creating inevitably these negative thoughts come up. And eventually because you're in a calm environment, you're sitting peacefully, maybe cross legged on the floor, nice quiet environment, the brain again kind of learns, oh, I'm not necessarily in danger, I don't have to be afraid when I think about these memories. And conversely, when you're exercising and your heart is racing pretty fast, you also learn, hey, I don't have to be afraid. This is just exercise. And maybe you're even having fun. Some of our programs we include like a dance exercise, movements and yeah, people seem to be having fun and then they learn, Their brain learns, oh, just because my heart is racing doesn't mean I'm afraid.

Jennifer Norman:
Got it.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
I think all these techniques kind of hone in on the same process. Expose yourself to the memory in a safe environment. And that's the key, has to be in a safe environment. You don't want to like go back to somewhere that really something traumatic happened. I mean that's probably not going to be that helpful.

Jennifer Norman:
Right? Right. Really good.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah, it has to be done under supervision or with some kind of method underlying it.

Jennifer Norman:
Excellent. I'd love to talk about age for a moment. Because you were talking about neurogenesis earlier, and right now, a hot topic is neuroplasticity in the field. And a lot of people say, well, after 25, I'm not as neuroplastic. I don't know if I'm making as much brain cells or neurons as I was. And so there's no hope for me. I'm completely...my brain is the way that it is, and it's stuck.

Jennifer Norman:
What would you say in terms of somebody's age and their ability to be able to release trauma or get past some of these issues or actually retrain their brains?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah, I know. I keep hearing people say that, and it's not really true. Like, our brain is always changing. Even the word neuroplasticity, it's kind of like trauma. It has many different meanings, depending on who you talk to, but it really just means neurons or the brain changes. Plasticity means plastic. Plastic, it can change. And so, of course, our brain is always changing.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
That's how we learn. And we're always learning. Like, we're always changing because our brain is always changing and responding to our environment. So neuroplasticity, at least in a broad sense, means the brain is changing. Now, does it change last as we get older? Yes, that's true. Just in general. Like, if you look at someone in their 20s, particularly puberty, but then also in their early 20s, the brain is going through massive changes. And we know that because look at our behavior in our 20s. Like, we're doing all kinds of different things that we didn't do before. And so the brain is always going to be changing.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
But as we get older, we're still changing. It's just kind of less robust. But we still are making new neurons, definitely making new synapses. Some of these activities that I'm talking about, though, they really. It's like putting fertilizer in your brain, you know, like, particularly exercise, particularly aerobic exercise, but even resistance training. I mean, all those kind of activities just flood the brain with oxygen. And that's what causes some of these robust changes in the brain.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Make more blood vessels, more neurons, more synapses. So many things we can do to mitigate the decrease that you might see with aging. And the other thing I would say, the other advice I would give, and I try to take it myself, is keep learning new things. People get older, sometimes they're like, oh, I don't want to learn anything new. I just want to go to the same place on vacation or hang out with the same friends or play the same Songs over and over again on my guitar and read the same books or watch the same movies and that's okay. But that's not going to stimulate the brain that much. You have to really kind of expose yourself to new experiences to change the brain a lot.

Jennifer Norman:
And do you think that that also helps with mitigating degeneration, like some of these diseases that we're finding, Alzheimer's, dementia, etc.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
I do. I kind of inherently do believe that it's kind of hard to prove that, you know, particularly with Alzheimer's. I mean, it depends on what disease you're talking about. Some diseases, they're just going to happen almost no matter what you do. Maybe you inherit the gene. There's not a whole lot that's going to change that. You might be able to decrease the onset of it, but in general it's going to happen. But I think there's other disorders related to dementia, which just means loss of memory. That would definitely be helped by what you do.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Like vascular dementia, for example. Vascular dementia is when you're...the vessels in your brain become like more constricted, they don't deliver as much oxygen. So again, there's an example where like aerobic activity is really going to keep those vessels healthy and strong. And there are quite a few studies suggesting that people who are more active, who have a bigger social life when they get older, are less likely to suffer with dementia.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
So there's no downside, what I would say, to maintaining those behaviors.

Jennifer Norman:
Good point.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
And it's fun, right? It's fun to do things in life that are a little challenging, kind of put yourself out there. But that's, this is our one life. You know, I try to like inspire people like this is it. We don't get to come back for seconds, as far as I know. And so you need to kind of use every day, right?

Jennifer Norman:
I totally agree. Now tell everybody about your book, Everyday Trauma. You have written this amazing book and so can you elaborate on some of the things that people will learn if they read your book?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Okay, yeah. I started writing this book about four or five years ago, I guess came out end of 2021. And it's a little bit of what I've just been talking about. It's somewhat about trauma. Well, it's actually a lot about trauma, but it's kind of divided into three parts. So the first part is more about what is trauma? How is trauma different from stress? How does your brain respond to these experiences? What are the diagnoses of trauma? What are some of the symptoms. And then the middle part is a little bit more neurosciencey. I talk about neurogenesis, how it changes our brain and how learning increases the number of these cells in our brain.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
It's a little more neurosciencey. I don't think too much. I think anyone could understand it. It's not terribly technical. And then the third part, the last part is more about interventions, about exposure therapy, which I mentioned earlier when we were talking about it, some of the therapies for trauma. But then also of course, this MAP Train My Brain program and how it helps people. So it kind of covers a little bit of everything.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah, kind of was my goal is like if you're interested in the brain, there's something in there for you. If you're interested more like in the psychology of trauma, there's something. If you're more interested in like kind of self help, there's a little bit of that. Yeah. So tried to touch all those bases.

Jennifer Norman:
Got it. Is there anything in particular aside from exercise and, you know, the ability to help get people out of their ruminating? Is there anything from your perspective that you would want people to know and wish that they would incorporate into their lives if they were to experience some sort of trauma in their lives?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah, I mean, the main thing I think to know is that there is help. These activities that people do, do help. I guess the other thing I do want to mention is that some of these activities actually prevent some of the responses to trauma, not just help them after they've happened. So, for example, we did a study during COVID Covid first happened and there was no vaccine. A lot of us were at home. This was like summer of 2020. So the first summer of COVID when it was really the worst. People were dying and it's really frightening.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
I don't have to tell everybody, like we all live, that everyone in the world practically had experienced this trauma. And one of the populations that we knew would be particularly vulnerable were teachers. Like K through 12 teachers or they were going back to school or maybe not. They were really nervous about taking care of the children, bringing it home to their home, etc. And so we provided this MAP Train My Brain program to teachers that summer before school started again. And what we found is it helped them. So the teachers who participated in this MAP Train My Brain program twice a week for six weeks had less rumination, less anxiety, less depression. But what was even more interesting, I think, is that the teachers who didn't do the program became more anxious and more traumatized as the summer progressed.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
And so what that means is that this program not only helped people in the moment, it prevented some of these symptoms from arising in the future. So it's a really good example of why you should keep your brain fit. Sometimes people, they worry about their brain after something happens, but it's important to kind of keep it healthy before something happens, and then you won't be as affected.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow. I'm curious also, if you are a fan of supplements or any of the types of herbal ingredients or medicines, things like that, what is your stance on.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
For the brain? Yeah, I'm not really an expert on that, so I'm not really...

Jennifer Norman:
Okay, that's fair.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Yeah. I can't really say. I don't know how I feel. I feel like a lot of them haven't been tested. So I would be suspicious because I am a scientist and I like to see actual data. I do think that there are certain things that are definitely necessary, like calcium and vitamin D. Things like that just for bones in general are great. But I am suspicious of some of the supplements that I hear, particularly the ones that say they focus on memory.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
For example, I think if there was something that really helped with memory that you could just go down to the drugstore and buy and work, we would know about. It wouldn't be ambiguous.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay, fair enough.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
I think the thing I do want to say, too, is that I think that people want a quick fix, and I understand that they want something. They could just take a pill or, I don't know, take a mushroom or all these different things, and it's miraculously, like, cure all the problems. And I just. I don't know if that's true. I mean, it'd be nice if it was true, but it's not. And things that really help take some effort, you know, they do. They just take. They take some time. They take some effort.

Jennifer Norman:
Dr. Tracy Shors. How can people find you if they want to know more about you and your work?

Dr. Tracey Shors:
My website is maptrainmybrain. My Gmail is maptrainmybrainmail@gmail.com, that's pretty much it. You can find me there. I even have a course, if someone's interested, that someone can take. It's a video course of Map Train My Brain, and that's available on my website.

Jennifer Norman:
Fantastic. Well, I hope that everybody goes and takes a look at Map Train My Brain, which can be extremely useful if you are looking to mitigate trauma or get past some ruminations that might be a result of a past traumatic experience. Dr. Tracey Shors, thank you so much for being on the show today. It was lovely to have you and so, so helpful.

Dr. Tracey Shors:
Thank you, thank you. I really enjoyed myself.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to the Human Beauty Movement podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more@thehumanbeautymovement.com thank you so much for being a beautiful human.