Healing from Trauma & Breaking Free from Gaslighting with Dr. Deborah Vinall

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hi and welcome to the you. World order, showcase podcast where we feature life, health, transformational coaches and spiritual entrepreneurs, stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, the coach's alchemist.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: on a mission to help coaches and entrepreneurs amplify their voice, monetize their mission and get visible leveraging podcasts. And our huge audience over on the Gnostic TV network. Today we are chatting with Dr. Deborah venal. She is a licensed mental health, therapist and psychologist, with a passion for helping people heal, cultivate self-compassion, and build meaningful connections.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and she's the author of gaslighting a step-by-step guide, recovery, guide and trauma recovery workbook for teens. It's 2 separate books. I know it. Kind of

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: squish them together, so it might have been a little confusing for you welcome to the show, Deborah. It's not great to have you here.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: It's wonderful to be with you today.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So I'm going to ask you the big question. Are you ready.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Sure.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, what's the most significant thing in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: It is such a big question, and especially right now, where the world feels for a lot of people like it's sort of spiraling out of control. And we really want to take big actions, and that is important and necessary, but also can leave a lot of people feeling really helpless as well, because you might not feel that you have the influence to make big actions. But

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Dr Deborah Vinall: I think to answer your question. It really starts small. It really does to fundamentally change the world. We have to start with our micro circles with our families, or if our close-knit people that were around us.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: so much of what goes wrong in the world, whether, that is, people who are abusive, people who assault others, people who are narcissists that take power and suppress others, all of it. Really, when we go down down we find some really dysfunctional childhoods in each individual.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: and so to really make the world a better place, we have to look at how we're impacting our own families

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Dr Deborah Vinall: for those that become parents really being intentional about how we interact with our children, about supporting them when there's wounds with effective

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Dr Deborah Vinall: trauma recovery, preventing those kinds of things by being really intentional, that will have ripple effects into the world as we raise up and become healthy individuals, so that we can see others with compassion, with empathy, rather than looking at the world in a hierarchical manner in which we're trying to climb a ladder by stepping down on others. That's the root of all suffering.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Is this hierarchical approach again? So if we can cultivate within ourselves the kind of peace and compassion that sees everybody for the worth and value that they have

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Dr Deborah Vinall: then live, that out 1% of the time that will fundamentally change the world.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Couldn't agree with you more. It's really all about healing as individuals ourselves, so that we can impact when you heal. Everybody has trauma. It's just like you don't get

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: through childhood without some kind of trauma.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: You can't.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Most of it isn't intentional. It just happens because children have children, and they're broken to begin with, too. So as as we as we're moving into this age where people are becoming aware that we all have trauma, and and really looking at for tools to to heal these deep wounds that.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you know. You may think that. Oh, you know my childhood wasn't so bad, but just an innocuous comment that was made by somebody that had authority over. You

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: probably changed the whole trajectory of your life when you weren't even looking.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Yeah, the negative words and assaults that we hear can become deeply ingrained narratives about ourselves that become very self-limiting. We might not think of them as major traumas, but they really can limit us and impact how we treat others as well.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah. And and it does come back to treating others. But

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: when you're when you're sitting in a position where you're vibrating at a certain frequency

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: based on the trauma that you've experienced, and you just you move into this almost unconsciously you become a vibrational match for other people that are wounded the same way you are. And so your life just becomes this mirror of, you know, back and forth these wounds and it you're hurting each other. But you're not even really aware that.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Gosh, I'm doing this. And then, if you can find somebody to help kind of pull you into the next level of vibration away from that group. Then you start to heal, and you start to attract other people that are are also healing. And and then it just you keep moving up, moving up, and then we're all vibrating on a on a healthier level, where we can

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: not just be messing with these wounds that are like

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: they do. We just keep hurting each other, instead of

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: helping each other and exploring the beautiful things of the world, instead of the painful things.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Yeah, we absolutely gravitate toward people who see the world in the same way that we do. It's why you see people clustering together politically or religiously, and we might endorse the well. Some of us endorse the idea of diversity being a positive, and yet we still cluster together with people who are like-minded. And so what you're talking about there, within mental health and within trauma wounding. You're right. We gravitate toward people who might have similar experiences because we

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Dr Deborah Vinall: have a sense of you. Get me and I get you. But it can create codependency, which is when you kind of have 2 broken people leaning on each other like

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Dr Deborah Vinall: sort of supporting each other in that broken place.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And yet there's this idea of.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Surround yourself with the people who are

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Dr Deborah Vinall: who you want to be right. If, because we become like our closest circle. So if you surround yourself with people who inspire you. It might be uncomfortable. You might have some imposter syndrome, or feel like I'm not worthy. I'm not good enough, and that's those, again, those negative messagings that we need to work through. But when you can push yourself sometimes not to neglect anybody who's ever had wounding, we don't want to be those kinds of people either, but to also pull into your orbit

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Dr Deborah Vinall: or put yourself into places with people who inspire you. At least one person that will like you said, kind of raise your vibration to that place and allow you to grow.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: You're you allow

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Dr Deborah Vinall: you open yourself up to allowing others to come in and and also help you make different decisions about your life and how it's going because you're you are vibrating on a different level things. Different things become important to you and things that were really important to you in in the wound.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: They just kind of go away. They're not. It's not to minimize whatever happened. It's just it's not the focus anymore. And really, what you focus on grows

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Dr Deborah Vinall: in your, in your environment.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: True, at the same time, like real traumas, can become very stuck and very limiting if we try to just ignore them and move past them. And that's where it becomes really important to be honest with yourself and be direct and really face those wounds. I always think about like that little children's book going on a bear hunt right where it's like we can't go over it. We can't go under it. We'll have to go through it.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: and that's really true. When it comes to trauma and to grief right like we can't just skip over it. We can't just. We'd love to be on the other side. But the only way to get to the other side is to go through it to face those things that have really hurt us, and to that might involve trauma therapy. It just involves being really honest with yourself.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: and then healing really is possible, so that you're not living your life through the lens of these hard things that happened.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: You said something earlier about how we might, you know, like everybody's been through some trauma. But we always say, Oh, well, mine wasn't so bad, and that's totally true that we people are always minimizing. Well, it wasn't as bad as so and so. And I mean my specialty as a psychotherapist is working with trauma, and I hear this over and over, and I've worked with people who have been through such horrific things sex trafficking. And they'll say, Well, it wasn't as bad as So-and-so, and

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Dr Deborah Vinall: I think this is comical. Even the people who would be, I mean, I'm not laughing at them, obviously, but even the people who would be somebody else's example are still finding somebody who's had it worse, because you always can find that. But that doesn't help you heal, and it doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help the person who's been through something worse, either. What you have to do is just be honest with yourself, that the things in your life that have caused you pain, and that continue to cause you pain, even though they're historical events.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: are worthy of compassion. Your own self-compassion, so that you can address and heal from them.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And you are worthy of compassion. The whole idea that you know somebody else had it much worse than I'm totally fine.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: No own the trauma. It's yours you deserve to heal.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Yeah.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You are worthy of healing, and that that somebody else had it better or worse than I did. That's just a mirror of the idea that well, because somebody else is worse off than me, I don't deserve to heal myself. We better work on them.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: And holding on to your trauma doesn't elevate them. It doesn't heal them. All you really have control over is yourself.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Every seed that's planted of healing. Every step we take toward our own liberation creates more room for love and grace and compassion, and help to everybody else in the world as well. So you have to start with yourself.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, I so see that. So you do help people with this. This is what you do right? And how does that look when you when you're helping people.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: So the 2 main avenues through which I work to help people with trauma are through my private practice. Where I like, I said, I specialize in trauma work and through my writing. So you mentioned a couple of the books that I've published so far, and I'm working on a 3rd one right now with my agent and writing on substack. So I'm trying to. You know, I work one on one with people, and then I'm trying to give

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Dr Deborah Vinall: in a very accessible way some healing words to people who might not be able to access therapy with or with me, or sometimes with anybody, because, you know, you can buy a book for 15 or 20 bucks a lot easier than you can necessarily afford weekly therapy for some people, or that might be a limitation. So I really like having that diversity of approach. So

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Dr Deborah Vinall: yeah, my private practice, I work in in Southern California and online. But I work with California residents only because that's where my license is.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Okay, so that makes total sense. But you can still talk to people. And so sex a great place for that to happen.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: And it's really a kind of an amazing community, I think. For the most part, you know, I have had to block some trolls, as we all do, but for the most part there's so many warm hearted people searching out for connection and like-mindedness, and

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Dr Deborah Vinall: finding encouragement from one another, and and giving it as well. So really appreciating

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Dr Deborah Vinall: the community as it's developing there.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I, yeah, especially lately, it just seems like it's blossoming blossoming into this amazing platform for connections. And it's it's really.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it's really personal. It's not like.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you know, Facebook. We usually do drive bys or Linkedin, which is all business, or even Instagram, which

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: look at me.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Yeah, yeah, there's a there's a real egalitarianism to it, in a way, because, like you said, it's not just photos of like where we 1st judge what you look like. You know, it's ideas. It's a thought for him, and it's not just like

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Dr Deborah Vinall: twitter or blue sky where you can only give snippets because you have both the short form in the notes part, but also the long form essay subscription. So I really think it's it's a pretty unique place.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I do, too.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So how do you heal trauma in therapy? How does that look.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Like, I said. One of the most important things is being honest with yourself, and being willing to face what it is to name what it is that you've gone through.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: 2 of the trauma

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Dr Deborah Vinall: therapies that I am certified and specialize in are just incredible Emdr, which stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing and brain spotting, which is about 20 years newer and developed out of Emdr. Originally they're both subcortical

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Dr Deborah Vinall: neurological approaches, which sounds kind of nerdy. But to break that down. When we think of therapy we often think of it talking trauma is stored in a very deep way in the brain. It's stored in a very sensory way in our bodies, in our

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Dr Deborah Vinall: and in our 5 senses like, if you think about somebody, perhaps, who's been through a car accident. When those memories come back they come back in real time.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: They come as in like a sense that it's happening right now. Right? That's what a flashback is, or nightmares. They come back with the sound of like brakes squealing and glass crunching right, and the visual, like little short snippets of visuals of like

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Dr Deborah Vinall: the headlights coming at you. So all these sensory aspects. So when we just talk about something, we're analyzing it. But that's not what trauma is right. It's that sensory stuff. So we want to. And that's our senses are more like that reptilian part of the brain. That's the subcortical part, more automatic

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Dr Deborah Vinall: when something terrible is happening to you. You feel like you're. It seems like you're about to die in that car accident, or whatever the trauma was. You're not analyzing it. You're not thinking.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: am I going to die? Have I lived a good life like you're reacting from that core fight or flight reptilian survival, part of the brain. So we need to activate that part of the brain to heal it. Otherwise, we're just talking in circles around it, while those deep sensory memories remain stuck.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: So that's where Emdr or brain spotting come into play.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: So in those modalities we tap into the feeling of the events in the body in the emotions, whatever kind of sensory fragments are coming back, and then we engage either eye movement with Emdr, or a fixed visual spot in your visual field, with brain spotting that taps into these

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Dr Deborah Vinall: these feelings and fragments, and it's a lot quieter. There's less talking, there's more sitting with.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: And then bilateral stimulation is added in so bilateral meaning side to side. So with Emtr.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: you might be looking at visual stimulation that's going back and forth across your visual field, or you might get it. Be doing some kind of a tactile stimulation, like tapping on alternate hands or arms

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Dr Deborah Vinall: like this.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: with brain spotting. We use music that goes that's designed to go from one earphone to the other. So in that way, you're activating both left and right brain. So it's not just staying in the logical.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: And it's also very soothing to the nervous system. So we're soothing the nervous system while we're bringing up the activating thing and allowing that to be worked through in a really safe environment. But before we dive into any of those processes we start by creating safety. Sometimes we work with people who've been through something like the example I gave. That's what we call a simple trauma, like something that happened once. Maybe you've had an easy life got in a car accident on your way back to college at 19,

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Dr Deborah Vinall: and sometimes we. I work with somebody who's grown up with complex, lifelong trauma. They've perhaps they've been sexually abused from the time they were 3 years old by their stepfather. Something like that, and the traumas came at a time where they really hadn't matured enough to develop coping skills. And how do you cope with something like that? And so it's really become deeply ingrained in their personality and

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Dr Deborah Vinall: and there's just never been a sense of safety in their life to tap into. So the idea of going back to those memories and those feelings is absolutely overwhelming. So we're going to start by developing a sense of safety in therapy about developing self-regulation skills, coping skills, grounding skills so that you don't dissociate the 1st time we start talking, but the hard thing and dissociation is kind of when you sort of feel that sense of floating out of your body not really being present in

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Dr Deborah Vinall: in where you are at the time. So we're going to go more slowly when there's been more complex trauma. But we're always going to make sure that the person that you in therapy have some ability to self-regulate. So that not only is the therapy session not flooding. You're not leaving my office, going home and then completely falling apart, and then you're on your own. So the pacing also is really going to be very individual.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Interesting. And so how do people get in touch with you if they wanted to? Well, let me ask you about the decision tree worksheet first.st So tell us about that.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Yeah, I'm all on my website, which is Dr. Dr. deborahvanal.com. When you go there you'll see. Have an option to

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Dr Deborah Vinall: get a free decision tree worksheet, which is a tool I created within my 1st book, gaslighting a step-by-step recovery Guide. And you can just get that as like a Pdf from a website. So that is for helping people to determine if you're in a toxic or abusive relationship.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: what steps you want to take.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: because it's not a 1. Size fits all solution.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Whether this person is your mom and you're an adult or your husband. And you've got kids or your boy. It all depends on your life circumstances. And so the decision tree kind of walks you through, you know, like any decision tree does. Yes, no. If then, to help you kind of come to an idea of what are some steps you might want to take, whether it's setting more boundaries or leaving or making a plan to to figure out what's

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Dr Deborah Vinall: maybe help you decide for yourself what's best for you in your situation. Nobody else is the expert in your life but you, but it can be kind of helpful to sort through your thoughts and your decision making. And there's also a second resource available on my website, which is a trauma checklist for teens which was developed for my trauma recovery workbook, which is just a very user friendly worksheet to kind of

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Dr Deborah Vinall: determine if maybe what your mental health struggles are are connected to. Perhaps trauma or Ptsd.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Interesting, interesting. And so people can find that on your work on your website. But they can also find your books on your website.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Yes, yeah, and there's links to purchase them from your favorite retailer as well. So both gaslighting a step-by-step recovery guide and the trauma recovery workbook for teens and and you can stay tuned for announcements about my next book there, as well.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Share the name, or are you not there yet?

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Dr Deborah Vinall: I don't know if I'm supposed to release it yet. I have to stay in consultation, but I will give you a spoiler that this one is focusing on the experience of being feeling like a misfit, and the search for belonging in the world.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Oh, I hardly wait for that to come out.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And so where can people find you on substack? Also? Let's let's give a plug out to that.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Can they find.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Set that on your through your website.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Well, I think so. I think all my socials are linked there. But to substack it's D. Vanal. So my 1st initial D for Deborah, and then VINA LL as substack.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Perfect, perfect. Thank you so much for joining us today, Deborah.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: Well, thank you for having me. It's been lovely chatting with you.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And to my listeners, please be sure to visit Dr. debravinal.com to get her books, book time with her, or to get the decision tree worksheet, or what was the other worksheet? The.

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Dr Deborah Vinall: The trauma symptom, checklist.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The trauma symptom checklist

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and thank you for tuning in with us today. If you have a podcast or you're interested in starting one to get your message in front of our huge and active audience. Be sure to reach out to us at jill@gnostictv.com. We love to help spiritual entrepreneurs and coaches, amplify their voice and monetize their mission, and offer a variety of ways to do this on the Gnostic TV network platform, join us for our next episode as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency. And remember, change begins with you.

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Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and you have all the power to change the world, start today and get visible.