Dr. Christine Gibson Interview Notes
Physician, speaker, trauma clinician, and specialist, “TikTokTraumaDoc”
Book: “The Modern Trauma Toolkit: Nurture Your Post-Traumatic Growth with Personalized Solutions”
YouTube: “Arash’s World Interview with Physician TikTokTraumaDoc Dr. Christy Gibson on holistic healthcare, trauma, and Post-Traumatic Growth”
Podcast: “On Individual and Collective Trauma, Holistic Healing, and the Difference between Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth with TikTokTraumaDoc Christy Gibson”
In this episode, I have the great pleasure of speaking with the versatile and multi-talented TikTokTraumaDoc Dr. Christy Gibson who wears many hats including but not limited to being a physician, speaker, trauma clinician & specialist, and the author of “The Modern Trauma Toolkit: Nurture Your Post-Traumatic Growth with Personalized Solutions”!
We talk about the prevalence of trauma, how it can affect each one of us on different levels and at different places and workplaces, and how it often goes unnoticed and is not processed to the detriment of one’s own health and well-being as well as to that of others.
Dr. Gibson wrote the book to provide us with simple and useful body-based somatic tools to manage and deal with stress. Her approach is holistic in nature and includes a variety of personalized solutions and activities that are evidence-based and based on neuroscience and that reach and address the subconscious, preverbal memories and experiences encoded in our implicit memory.
Moreover, she talks about the current hesitation of changing and updating approaches, methods, and systems that are not or are no longer beneficial to our overall health and wellness. Since trauma is a reality and has affected and continues to affect all of us in different ways and manners, ranging from the pandemic to political conflicts and climate change, it is more than necessary to use the proper and effective tools to not only attain resilience but to tap into the new and more encompassing realm of posttraumatic growth.
Finally, with more research and more openness to innovation and respect for the individual’s lived experiences, the medical system would see dramatic shifts and improvements in healing trauma and disease while at the same time maintaining, fostering, and boosting overall physical, mental, and emotional health with a holistic paradigm at heart and in mind.
00:40: Personal Intro:
A doctor and a physician, but she feels that she does not fit into a box very well. Wears many hats and does things like trauma therapy, international work, and social innovations. Trying to figure out who she is and what to do next.
01:28:
Talking about book “The Modern Trauma Toolkit”. She had the book in her head for a long time. It only took her three months to write the first draft. The book she always wanted to give to her patients and an explanation of what's happening in the brain. Not a one-size-fits-all but rather personalized solutions. Also looking at solutions at the community and policy level.
03:16:
We are just starting to see and realize how we all have faced trauma coming out of the acute pandemic and other collective trauma like climate change. Being a doctor is a traumatic job as well. New dialogue where people start to recognize and openly talk about this.
03:58:
Being human is traumatic in and by itself. The insights of birth and death by Otto Rank. Birth trauma is something that we have all been through, encoded in implicit memory. Its pre-verbal. Also ancestral trauma. We might not have a language for it. She did not know all of this as a family doctor. You can use the body and semantic work to heal but not able to think your way out of it.
06:44:
At first and as a family doctor, she did not understand but trauma is the root cause of all of this. Looking for solutions, but also possible teaching the skills to children at school. Having a toolkit at our disposal, by checking in with our nervous system and manage stress by ourselves. The prevalence of psychosomatic diseases.
08:30:
The biological and psychological are intimately connected and you cannot really separate them. Any symptom that a person has is perceived through the brain, that's the only connection they have and the brain is involved in everything. Based on the amount of trauma you have faced, you will perceive symptoms in totally different ways.
09:33:
Migraines, or IBS, seen as functional in traditional medical practices. There's something wrong with the way you're interacting with your nervous system. How do we change that signal pathway? The medical profession does a lot of gaslighting with stuff, we don't understand. How microbiome and gut bacteria interact with our body. Long COVID becoming so much more prominent. The mind-body connection is a huge piece of it all.
11:13:
What started Doctor Gibson off on her journey? The catalyst was being in the earthquake in Nepal. Running an international nonprofit, she was inadvertently in Nepal. At that time, she happened to be caught in the earthquake. She noted she was suppressing a lot of trauma and her own trauma response. Started to do reading and noticed how much she was seeing in clinical practice related to trauma. This affects many healthcare practitioners and professionals as well.
15:01:
Using metaphors, the language of our subconscious minds. Resilience is when you are floating along, undergo a challenge and it sinks you underwater and getting back to baseline whereas post-traumatic growth is learning how to swim. Bringing in new beliefs and skills, believing that swimming is possible. The Serenity Prayer, what we can and cannot change and knowing the difference.
17:22:
Specific example activities from her book. Practices that are based on the body but anybody could learn somatic bottom-up practices. One is called “havening”. Creating calm brain waves. Gently brushing off the skin. “Tapping” or “self acupressure” help you to dial down your emotional experiences. And “tremoring” the way a dog or horse would shake something off. Humans also have the capacity and allow it and give your body permission to tremor and letting go of things. Fight and flight system that's locked within our nervous system and our tissues. It allows us to release it alongside the tension in our muscles.
21:48:
The cognitive practice of “Iffirmations”. Something different than affirmations. Just stick the words “what if” in front of the statement. It then sounds like possibilities, it's a softer approach. This got popular on TikTok.
23:23:
The body needs to feel safe first before you can use your thinking brain. Acceptance and Commitment therapy focused on values. In traditional CBT, the premise is that there is something essentially wrong with your thinking.
24:55:
On the move from traditional medical model to trauma-informed holistic health care. Family physician not expected to do trauma work. We are looking for more holistic solutions, not just handing out a pill for every problem. Root cause work involving nutrition and the microbiome, or sleep and the immune system. Paradigm changes take a long time. Not recognizing the interplay of everything, especially when it comes to specialists who tend to compartmentalize.
28:01:
The practice of intermittent fasting. Medical doctors often discount lived experience of the patients. The medical model is often top-down, but what if we looked at the patients as experts?
30:14:
On workplace trauma and how to deal with this. Understanding toxic stress that people hold. Give them ways to process it. How it shows up and interactions. Finding a common language and common skill set. Fight mode where people are aggressive, irritable, and jumpy. Flight mode when people are restless, moving from project to project and not finishing anything, multitasking and restless moving energy. Freeze mode not showing up at all. Can't get out of bed. We keep blaming the people, but we're not looking at the systems that are creating the trauma. Causing those responses. We saw it in the Great Resignation. Getting to systems that work better for people. Making things at the workplace better every time.
32:52:
Embodied leadership and the mind-body way. The body knows so much that we often don't realize making sure that toxic environments are not encouraged and that are so harmful to employees.
Physician, speaker, trauma clinician, and specialist, “TikTokTraumaDoc”
Book: “The Modern Trauma Toolkit: Nurture Your Post-Traumatic Growth with Personalized Solutions”
YouTube: “Arash’s World Interview with Physician TikTokTraumaDoc Dr. Christy Gibson on holistic healthcare, trauma, and Post-Traumatic Growth”
Podcast: “On Individual and Collective Trauma, Holistic Healing, and the Difference between Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth with TikTokTraumaDoc Christy Gibson”
In this episode, I have the great pleasure of speaking with the versatile and multi-talented TikTokTraumaDoc Dr. Christy Gibson who wears many hats including but not limited to being a physician, speaker, trauma clinician & specialist, and the author of “The Modern Trauma Toolkit: Nurture Your Post-Traumatic Growth with Personalized Solutions”!
We talk about the prevalence of trauma, how it can affect each one of us on different levels and at different places and workplaces, and how it often goes unnoticed and is not processed to the detriment of one’s own health and well-being as well as to that of others.
Dr. Gibson wrote the book to provide us with simple and useful body-based somatic tools to manage and deal with stress. Her approach is holistic in nature and includes a variety of personalized solutions and activities that are evidence-based and based on neuroscience and that reach and address the subconscious, preverbal memories and experiences encoded in our implicit memory.
Moreover, she talks about the current hesitation of changing and updating approaches, methods, and systems that are not or are no longer beneficial to our overall health and wellness. Since trauma is a reality and has affected and continues to affect all of us in different ways and manners, ranging from the pandemic to political conflicts and climate change, it is more than necessary to use the proper and effective tools to not only attain resilience but to tap into the new and more encompassing realm of posttraumatic growth.
Finally, with more research and more openness to innovation and respect for the individual’s lived experiences, the medical system would see dramatic shifts and improvements in healing trauma and disease while at the same time maintaining, fostering, and boosting overall physical, mental, and emotional health with a holistic paradigm at heart and in mind.
00:40: Personal Intro:
A doctor and a physician, but she feels that she does not fit into a box very well. Wears many hats and does things like trauma therapy, international work, and social innovations. Trying to figure out who she is and what to do next.
01:28:
Talking about book “The Modern Trauma Toolkit”. She had the book in her head for a long time. It only took her three months to write the first draft. The book she always wanted to give to her patients and an explanation of what's happening in the brain. Not a one-size-fits-all but rather personalized solutions. Also looking at solutions at the community and policy level.
03:16:
We are just starting to see and realize how we all have faced trauma coming out of the acute pandemic and other collective trauma like climate change. Being a doctor is a traumatic job as well. New dialogue where people start to recognize and openly talk about this.
03:58:
Being human is traumatic in and by itself. The insights of birth and death by Otto Rank. Birth trauma is something that we have all been through, encoded in implicit memory. Its pre-verbal. Also ancestral trauma. We might not have a language for it. She did not know all of this as a family doctor. You can use the body and semantic work to heal but not able to think your way out of it.
06:44:
At first and as a family doctor, she did not understand but trauma is the root cause of all of this. Looking for solutions, but also possible teaching the skills to children at school. Having a toolkit at our disposal, by checking in with our nervous system and manage stress by ourselves. The prevalence of psychosomatic diseases.
08:30:
The biological and psychological are intimately connected and you cannot really separate them. Any symptom that a person has is perceived through the brain, that's the only connection they have and the brain is involved in everything. Based on the amount of trauma you have faced, you will perceive symptoms in totally different ways.
09:33:
Migraines, or IBS, seen as functional in traditional medical practices. There's something wrong with the way you're interacting with your nervous system. How do we change that signal pathway? The medical profession does a lot of gaslighting with stuff, we don't understand. How microbiome and gut bacteria interact with our body. Long COVID becoming so much more prominent. The mind-body connection is a huge piece of it all.
11:13:
What started Doctor Gibson off on her journey? The catalyst was being in the earthquake in Nepal. Running an international nonprofit, she was inadvertently in Nepal. At that time, she happened to be caught in the earthquake. She noted she was suppressing a lot of trauma and her own trauma response. Started to do reading and noticed how much she was seeing in clinical practice related to trauma. This affects many healthcare practitioners and professionals as well.
15:01:
Using metaphors, the language of our subconscious minds. Resilience is when you are floating along, undergo a challenge and it sinks you underwater and getting back to baseline whereas post-traumatic growth is learning how to swim. Bringing in new beliefs and skills, believing that swimming is possible. The Serenity Prayer, what we can and cannot change and knowing the difference.
17:22:
Specific example activities from her book. Practices that are based on the body but anybody could learn somatic bottom-up practices. One is called “havening”. Creating calm brain waves. Gently brushing off the skin. “Tapping” or “self acupressure” help you to dial down your emotional experiences. And “tremoring” the way a dog or horse would shake something off. Humans also have the capacity and allow it and give your body permission to tremor and letting go of things. Fight and flight system that's locked within our nervous system and our tissues. It allows us to release it alongside the tension in our muscles.
21:48:
The cognitive practice of “Iffirmations”. Something different than affirmations. Just stick the words “what if” in front of the statement. It then sounds like possibilities, it's a softer approach. This got popular on TikTok.
23:23:
The body needs to feel safe first before you can use your thinking brain. Acceptance and Commitment therapy focused on values. In traditional CBT, the premise is that there is something essentially wrong with your thinking.
24:55:
On the move from traditional medical model to trauma-informed holistic health care. Family physician not expected to do trauma work. We are looking for more holistic solutions, not just handing out a pill for every problem. Root cause work involving nutrition and the microbiome, or sleep and the immune system. Paradigm changes take a long time. Not recognizing the interplay of everything, especially when it comes to specialists who tend to compartmentalize.
28:01:
The practice of intermittent fasting. Medical doctors often discount lived experience of the patients. The medical model is often top-down, but what if we looked at the patients as experts?
30:14:
On workplace trauma and how to deal with this. Understanding toxic stress that people hold. Give them ways to process it. How it shows up and interactions. Finding a common language and common skill set. Fight mode where people are aggressive, irritable, and jumpy. Flight mode when people are restless, moving from project to project and not finishing anything, multitasking and restless moving energy. Freeze mode not showing up at all. Can't get out of bed. We keep blaming the people, but we're not looking at the systems that are creating the trauma. Causing those responses. We saw it in the Great Resignation. Getting to systems that work better for people. Making things at the workplace better every time.
32:52:
Embodied leadership and the mind-body way. The body knows so much that we often don't realize making sure that toxic environments are not encouraged and that are so harmful to employees.
