What Does Trauma Informed Mean to You?

Paula and her friend Kerri unpack what trauma-informed care really means — beyond training modules and checklists — and argue it must include how trauma rewires the body on a cellular level. They share personal experience with lifelong trauma, traumatic brain injury, and the limits of conventional medicine, and call for a holistic approach that connects brain, gut, hormones, sleep, and metabolism.

Highlights:

• Why the ACE score matters for long-term physical and neurological health.
• How trauma can disrupt serotonin, dopamine, methylation, and other systems that drive addiction, sleep, and chronic illness.
• The gap between functional medicine and mainstream care, and the need for accessible testing and integrated treatment.
• A call to action: Paula is searching for providers who treat trauma across the lifespan and at the cellular level.

https://thecourageoussurvivor.com/


Disclaimer:

The content shared on this podcast and YouTube channel is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I, Paula Walters, am not a licensed medical professional, and the information provided should not be construed as medical advice. I am sharing my personal journey of healing—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual—based on my own experiences and the research I have found to be beneficial for me.

Please consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making any decisions regarding your health or treatment options. What works for me may not work for you, and it is important to find a path that is right for your unique needs and circumstances.

Transcript

00:00:10:19 - 00:00:53:15
Paula
Hello Everybody. And welcome to the Courageous Survivor. We are going to have a very impromptu conversation. I have Kerri with me today, and we actually were having a conversation via zoom about trauma informed care and stuff. And, I just decided to ask her, like, hey, how about we record this and we put it out there because, I have so much frustration about the the phrase trauma informed care, and I'm not coming at any one organization or any single person or anything I am.

00:00:53:18 - 00:01:36:00
Paula
I'm coming at frustration from everybody that does trauma, because I think that when we say trauma informed, we want to, but it's just this phrase that we just tossed around. And as somebody who has been impacted by trauma throughout my whole life, and someone who's really trying to address it, I'm frustrated because I've been having so over the last couple of months, I've had all of these labs drawn, and I think that, when we talk about trauma informed care to be truly trauma informed care.

00:01:36:04 - 00:02:01:10
Paula
So whether you're taking care of of trauma people impacted by trauma or whatever it is we really need to be thinking about, like people that have been impacted on the cellular level. Yeah. So that's what Carrie and I were talking about because like I was telling Carrie, I'm like, I'm so frustrated because I love I love doctor Mike and Doctor Eric that I've worked with at The Neuro Connection.

00:02:01:12 - 00:02:23:16
Paula
I love them. They have helped me. I am alive, probably because of those two. However, even them as functional neurologists can only go so far and, you know, and they're running these labs on me and I'm like, so I have this is just one look at look at this, you guys, for those of you that are seeing this on YouTube, this is just one test.

00:02:23:18 - 00:02:59:06
Paula
And there is stuff on here like I have been changed from trauma on the cellular level. Like not just my brain injury, not just my blood brain barrier being broken from the trauma, but like things that I was reading to carry some things earlier. Before actually right before we got on here that like processes in my body that like help, you know, clean up the inflammation that like, helped me sleep that have to do with serotonin, have to do with all of these things.

00:02:59:12 - 00:03:07:17
Paula
Methylation and everything have been disrupted because of trauma. And you.


00:03:09:01 - 00:03:41:07
Paula
You can't just talk a talk and think that you understand how that impacts us. And I think that the other thing on this is my belief in and I'm going to then I'm going to hand it over to Carrie to give her thoughts is when we say trauma informed care. And I know that I'm gonna have people come at me for this, but the ace score matters as well, because the higher the ace score, I think that people think like, oh, you have a high ace.

00:03:41:10 - 00:04:16:09
Paula
You're trying to say, oh, I'm likely to be an addict. I'm, I'm, I'm likely to be this. I'm no, I'm talking about the way structurally a neuro nerd, you know, neurologically and biologically, trauma changes you on a cellular level that as you go into adulthood, would raise these concerns or, hey, we need to, like, start thinking about the chronic illnesses that you may be facing and stuff like that, like trauma informed care.

00:04:16:09 - 00:04:29:25
Paula
To me, if you're a provider or you're dealing with anything with trauma informed care, and you are asking me about my childhood trauma, about the trauma that I have seen as a paramedic, like all of those things. Don't tell me you're trauma informed. Yeah. Kerri, what's your thoughts?

00:04:29:28 - 00:04:58:08
Kerri
Well, I agree, I mean, a few years ago, you know, maybe five years ago or so, trauma informed care became this thing, and then everybody was working towards becoming trauma informed care organizations, providing trauma informed care, you know, strategies in trying to deal with people or help people or whatever. And, you know, you're right. What does that really mean?

00:04:58:10 - 00:05:27:09
Kerri
Does that mean you took a three hour course? Does that mean that you did research on the internet, or does that mean that you, you know, put some, you know, put some things together for your organization, some guidelines to follow? I mean, those are all great, but it doesn't deal with what has happened to those of us.

00:05:27:11 - 00:05:58:09
Kerri
And, you know, and I was telling you, you know, I mean, yes, everybody can have traumatic things happen. And traumatic incidences are different for everybody. But for somebody like you who's had multiple traumas since you were a child, I have two since the age of three, pretty much through most of my life, and credibly just like you, incredibly horrific things that people do not normally go through.

00:05:58:11 - 00:06:24:04
Kerri
You know, you have really, really, you know, you struggled for so long to find something that would help you to be able to work through that and get better and get healthier on a, you know, not just a mental level and emotional level, but a physical level, which I think is amazing and I'm in awe of what you do and still do.

00:06:24:06 - 00:06:56:04
Kerri
I'm 62 years old and I have done a lot of work over the last 20 years on myself. Realistically, for me. I still struggle with a lot. I am overweight, you want to talk about addiction. I'm overweight. I comfort eat eating for me as a child was the only thing that made me feel better. I had nothing else.

00:06:56:04 - 00:07:05:04
Kerri
I had no one else and I still struggle with that. I'm exhausted every day. I don't sleep more than.
Three hours, broken sleep, and it's been that way for years. And, you know, I see doctors and I have a person that, you know, has prescribed me mental health medications and, I mean, I take enough sleeping pills at night just to be able to sleep. That should knock a horse out. Doesn't work anymore. And I know that that's because it's not tackling what's really at the root of it.
And I know that. And, you know, and that's what I think drives both of us. And, you know, you were talking about the aces score. And if you are watching this on YouTube, anybody look up Nadine Burke Harris Nadine Burke Harris did an amazing TEDx talk quite a few years ago now, but it's still very relevant on the Aces score and what it means and how that score.
The higher your score, the more things are likely. It's not for certain, but the more things are likely to impact you in how you grow and function and learn and be in the world. And you know, the Aces score is a list of ten different questions, and it covers quite a wide, wide variety of things. Not all the things, of course, that can happen.

You know, I had eight, my score is eight, and the only two that I didn't score on was were your parents divorced? Mine didn't divorce, and was a parent in jail. Neither one of them are in jail. But everything else absolutely. And it I mean, it's changed my life. I know it's changed your life. And so that's you know, we just got on this and it's like, oh my gosh, that hits a nerve doesn't it?


Paula
Go back up for people who don't know what ace means. It's an adverse childhood experience. Yes, you can look that up online and you can take the test. But the whole reason that we got on this subject was, like, I just, I am so mad. I was talking to Carrie about, I want to find somebody.


Paula
And I'm going to say this because I'm hoping that, like, people will share this and I'm. And, you know, as much as I would love to, you know, end up being able to spread the story, I want to look for somebody, and I'm looking for somebody who, like, realistically. So. So I want to talk about, like when you look at, like my 600 pound life, you look at hoarders, you look at the addiction problem that we have in this country.

00:10:00:10 - 00:10:33:01
Paula
You look at the mental health problems that we have in this country. You look at all these things, these people that are at the shooting, mass shooting, crises, and in the amount of murders and the amount of like, you know, I just saw in my in state of Ohio that we have a mom who killed her two children and folded them in a suitcase and half buried them, like we have parents killing their children and stuff like we're talking about things that
And I don't want to say that you could prevent them. But when just just this one test again, when I'm looking at this and then I have a, Dutch panel and a couple other things done like that, but this thing talks about the fuel behind that. So you're talking about the things like your oxytocin, your dopamine.

So dopamine is tied to addictions. So, you know, I mean that dopamine that has been messed up from childhood trauma or from prolonged trauma. And so then like, you kind of get addicted to it or you can, you know, your dopamine chasing. I talk about being a dopamine chaser all the time, how I need list and being able to cross them off and just little dopamine things.

But like again, on this on a cellular level, you know, your serotonin and all this stuff like this is crazy information in here. Not to mention the things. So for instance, I've had this done, this test, this particular, neural zoom or plus done twice. And I had it done in 2019, and I just had it done again.

And it's increased even though my brain and neurologically I'm like a whole nother person. Much, much better on the cellular level, I'm decreasing. Why? Because this isn't just about my brain injury. I've healed from the trauma. Nobody has addressed the cellular level like the gut, the diagnosis, the lymphatic system, the all that stuff. And I'm looking at and I was telling her, like, there's got to be somebody out here doing all of this.

If it's who's doing the work, who's who's helping people heal on a cellular level. Right? Imagine if we could imagine if this information, this test was, you know, like, not so expensive. You didn't have to go to a functional health provider that cost fortunes to be able to go to, that are hard to find on top of knowing.

I mean, I research the hell out of my results. I'm on like I just to put in perspective how important this is. You guys, I had started having a lot of neuro symptoms. If you've been following me on social media, I'm talking about like how I've really slid back neurologically. This this stuff is so important that my doc, my functional neurologist.

So he is specifically working with my brain is like, we might as well not even waste our time. We have to fix the other stuff. So we have to address the cellular stuff because it's not going to do any good. This is why it doesn't stick. This is why I have to keep going back, you know, year after year, and why I slide back.

Because it's not holding. Because on a cellular level, I've been change. That to me is trauma informed care. You guys. And as much as I love Mike, he's not trauma informed in the aspect of like special trauma. And what it does on your cellular level is not his specialty. His specialty is fixing the brain stuff in the three friends talking together and all that stuff.

After I've been kind of fixed on the same level. So who out there? And that's why you can hear me. I'm okay. Okay. I'm like, I'm so frustrated because as much as we think that we know about trauma and we have these organizations that are out there like brain injury and strangulation or DV and, you know, doing their thing, they're not talking about the cellular level.

00:14:19:13 - 00:14:53:20
Kerri
Right? No, nobody is. And, you know, if you're watching this and you don't really know, you know, our both of our backgrounds are in dealing with, intimate partner violence, which we were both victims of traumatic brain injury, which we both have. And then lifelong trauma. And so that's kind of when we talk about somebody, you know, when Paula talks about when you talk about somebody out there doing all of that together, it there really isn't.

There really isn't. And it's not just educating people about it. It's more what do you do? Okay. What do you do? I mean, I have had I don't know how many doctors over the years or physicians or people look at me like I'd lost my mind because I'm describing all these things going on with me. Nobody could find anything wrong with me.
I'm having all these physical symptoms. I'm having, you know, I'm having all this stuff go on. And I've literally had doctors just look at me and and shake their head and go, I can't do anything for you. And, you know, ridicule me and put me off. And it's like, but this is real. And, and that's, I think the part.
And again, that's the part of trauma that people don't get is that it changes you. It changes your brain, especially when you're a child. And I mean, there's even evidence now that before you're born, trauma can affect you as you're still in your mother's womb. And you know, when you have a developing brain as a child, trauma, just all those normal neural pathways and connections that someone's brain makes as they're developing.

You know, when kids have positive experience and they had nurturing in the of attention, you know, there is very strong good connections. But those of us with trauma, our brains are a hot mess. They don't wire anything like anybody else does. And so our our connections are different in the brain. And then that drives everything else. You know.

00:16:37:25 - 00:17:02:04
Paula
Frustrated. So so Kerri and I met a couple of days ago and like I this this isn't just what I want to do. It is like who I am. I feel like this is my purpose. I mean, I love out there speaking, but I'm no longer going to accept accept stages that let me only talk about the silo like if I'm not good.
And so I started really thinking, because Kerry and I were talking about doing these, like these free, you know, giving people out like 30 day things and, and stuff like that. And like, I want, you know, a 14 day reset in because again, I started looking at what, what are other people doing that are getting them the views and the whatever on social media?
Like, I want to help people. How do I get people to like, come get the information? How do I share the information that I know? How do I because I have the big the big picture. I don't have the solution, but I at least know the pieces that have to go together. So how do I how do I help people with that?
In in I'm like, okay, I'm not I don't want to do a 14 day reset. I don't want to do ten, because then then I'm doing the same bullshit that everybody else is doing, because guess what? You can't reset your feel good chemicals in 14 days. You can't reset those things. And so I was like, okay, how do I do this?

And I'm really and a I have ideas, but I still don't have to figure it out. So y'all are just gonna have to come on this journey with me. Because what I do know is you have to start kind of where Mike is starting with me, and you have to go back to the very, very basics. And I know that very, very few people will actually come.

Come what? The stuff that I do. But at the end of the day, like doctor Mike says to me, if I'm not willing to prioritize the food that I put in my body, if I'm not willing to prioritize my sleep, and I'm not willing to prioritize my boundaries.

Then none of the other stuff matters. And I think that that that I think that that's kind of the direction. And they don't know what that looks like yet, and I'm going to work on it. But I feel like, you know, whether it's coaching and helping people, I don't know, but like, it's really this is going to sound really messed up.

It's very, very complicated to understand how the pieces all fit together and what it has done to you. However, it's really not that hard to fix. It's just understanding what needs to be fixed, in what order. So I love, love, love, love the fact that my functional neurologist did the right thing is a very ethical doctor, because I wanted to come see him and I wanted to come out, and I wanted him to fix my brain because my brain, like my brain, is just that.

It's not working. But he had the ethical standards to say, we first need to do this in this, in this. And guess what? It's stuff that I'm doing at home on my own. And he knows me well enough to give me the research guide so that I can understand this, because I want to know, like I had to go back and research and relearn the Krebs cycle.

So that, but literally for those of you, you know, if so, I'm going to take you all the way back to science class, the Krebs cycle. It's ATP and how your body uses energy and all the stuff that is that has been broken in me, like, again, cellular level. And here's the thing. Like. I'm nothing special. Like what I endured is nothing compared to some of that.

I mean, you can just read the Epstein files in, know that there are people that have lived way worse than me. So there are a lot of people out there. And I will tell you, and this is this isn't. And I'll get off my little soapbox here. But here's my problem. I was misdiagnosed with mental health disorders, with autoimmune disorders, with gut disorders, with cardiac disorders, neurological disorders, and at the root, when I have all of those symptoms show themselves at different times in my life right now.

But it's all rooted in, oh, I didn't get enough sleep. Oh, I was around somebody that is, you know, triggering to me. I ate this food. I, you know, those types of things. So when you understand the very root and understand what trauma does to the body, you can step back and be like, I don't need that pill.

I don't need that. This is, you know, I don't need the Ambien to sleep. I need to, you know, get healthy pre bed habits. I need to, you know, start kind of doing different things differently. And it really does change your life. Like I don't I mean I do I have bad days and they say they have bad days and I really I should I need to stop saying that.

But like, here's the thing. And I challenge you to do this if you can. So I have lingo. I that's the one I use. I have, I buy a continuous glucose monitor and I have problems with my sugar per say. I'm not a diabetic. However, it is very, very interesting how, my sugar will spike around conversations with certain people going to certain places.


And it's just interesting. It's not tied to my food so much as, like, I literally have people who, are addicted to chaos. They love gossiping, they thrive on it, and then they just have to like, tell you and blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah blah blah because they just want to spew it. My sugar will like my, you know, you'll just see a spike in my lingo score and my sugar goes up.

But that's how insulin resistance in, you know, all of that stuff again, on the cellular level changes because the it's the trauma piece of it and it's that triggering. And it's just it's it's very, very interesting. And so I think that when people could if people could learn themselves like that, and that's what I wish we had out there.

I wish we had courses. For all of you people out there who are, you know, saying you're trauma informed, if you want to build a course, build a course on that, like how to understand yourself on a cellular level for, people to understand themselves. Because if somebody could put this, if I, I should tell doctor Mike to do that.

But what do you think? That's

Kerri
Good idea. That's a good idea.

Paula
Surely if you if people could, if people could understand themselves as well as I understand themselves, I'm telling you, people would have all new thought of them. Their mental illness, their addictions, their hoarding, their obsessive cleaning. Yeah, shopping, sex, porn. I mean, really, it's all at the same root cellular kind of function thing is.

Kerri
It absolutely is. And, you know, our society is I'm 62 now and our society is so different than, you know, I was born in 1963. Sounds like a long time ago. But, you know, things were complicated then, but they're way more complicated now. And, you know, we we don't have we have real short attention spans and we don't focus well.

And we're being pulled away in a million different directions. And, you know, life itself keeps us caught up in that. It's like being a hamster on a wheel. You just go, go go go go go go. And then all of a sudden you get a little older and all of a sudden things start showing up, and then all of a sudden you're going, whoa, what the hell just happened?

You know? Well, it's everything. It's everything. And it's really important that, you know, I mean, and, you know, we're going to talk about it. Paul is going to talk about it. But I mean, it's important that everybody gets it.

Paula
That's the thing. Like and so I'm going to put my little conspiracy hat on for a minute. But if people understood the fundamental life changes that they needed to make to heal, then we wouldn't need so many doctors appointments. We wouldn't need so many. You know, mental health appointments. We wouldn't need so many doctor's appointments. We would need so many medications, and people would get healed and people would stop addiction.
You know, being addicted people would stop needing the GOP or like you would people would start healing themselves.

00:26:23:03 - 00:26:24:06
Kerri
But then.

00:26:24:09 - 00:26:25:02
Paula
There's no money.

00:26:25:05 - 00:26:36:22
Kerri
Yeah. Where would the money go for all the doctors and all the hospitals and all the treatments and the big pharma companies? Where would that go? Guess what? It wouldn't be there and people would be.

00:26:36:22 - 00:27:11:10
Paula
That is my conspiracy. That is my tinfoil hat conspiracy theories. Call me whatever you want. There is no money to be made in healing people. Yeah, well, I had to see, let me think. Other than having to do my one yearly visit, at my doctors to be able to keep my insurance and be able to keep with that practitioner, and being in a car accident and having to go to the E.R., I have not had to see a primary care doctor for any type of cold or any type of like, even though I've been Covid since I went to functional medicine.
Yeah, well, because it it's a whole different ballgame.
Yeah, because I understand and I haven't I know where the symptoms come from. So I don't go I don't go to go to the E.R., go to the doctor for those symptoms anymore. Because if I fixed I know what it is to do to fix it.

Kerri
Right. Yeah.

Paula
Because palpitations that. What if you know what feels like the vertigo that they would give me an advert for or that, nausea feeling that I would, you know, get like the motion sickness type of stuff, like they would give me medicines and be like, oh, that's your part or that's your neuro cardiogenic syncope and stuff. I can, I can do what I need to do at home and I'm better usually within a couple of hours.

Kerri
Yeah. And that's huge.

Paula
And we don't want people like me to, you know, we don't want people to hear, like and be able to fix themselves like me. Because I guess what, no one's making money off me anymore. That's right. There.

Kerri
That's very true. That's very true. But and I it's a lot of information and you know, I know Paula will be talking more about it and hopefully I can join into. But we gotta, we gotta get people aware and, and we just we have to keep talking and talking and talking and talking until somebody listens.

Paula
Yeah I think that my next like I think I.

I'm going to invite people to either comment on wherever you're watching this or email me, we'll put the email in the comments like, I'm curious to know if people would like to see my actual results. Like, do people want to see what I actually got tested? Like to see what I have positive, what I have negative, what that means and why?

Because I don't think so. I can tell you right now, just real quick. And in closing up, I went to, my PCP office just to do like my well, check to be able to stay a patient there. And I was telling him that I had this test done, that I had a Dutch panel, that I had the MT for, I, that I had a neuro zoomer and all this, and he had no idea what those even were.
So I was going.

00:29:28:12 - 00:29:31:22
Kerri
To, I mean to say, how confused was he?

00:29:31:25 - 00:29:40:12
Paula
He had no idea. He had he had no idea, no idea what they even were. And then I'll take it a step further. He's also an ER doc.

00:29:40:15 - 00:29:42:11
Kerri
Oh, don't get me started on that.

00:29:42:11 - 00:29:56:07
Paula
So family practice and your and like it's very frustrating because when I explain to him what they show, he was like a deer in the headlights. He had no idea.

00:29:56:09 - 00:30:24:11
Kerri
Yeah. Well because that isn't the way real. You know the, the large majority of medicine in and in, in facilities are in our system. They are pathogenic. It is a, it is symptoms. It is a diagnosis. It is a treatment pill test whatever. And then out the door. And that's the way it is. It's just boom boom boom.

And you know if you don't fit into any one of those little holes, then God help you because they may never figure out what's wrong.

00:30:34:03 - 00:31:01:01
Paula
He was like, well, because I we're he looked at the because I had one of my, my first result back and it had it kind of had talked about my ferritin and and some like neuroinflammation markers and my homocysteine and stuff like that being elevated. And he's like, well, I would write you for some iron and give you something for anxiety and I looked at him and I go, you really don't understand this, this at all.

Yeah, yeah, I just, I he goes, what do you need me for? Anything? I said, no, I just needed to make sure that I was able to stay with the primary care in case something happened. I don't need anything from you. And that was it.

00:31:13:20 - 00:31:31:24
Kerri
That's it. And you know, he left that room and never thought a thing about it, I'm sure. And just done not going. What was that? Maybe I should look into that. Maybe I should have asked for more questions. Oh, let's think outside the box.

00:31:31:26 - 00:31:49:10
Paula
I'm not mad at him. I mean, I love him. He's one of my favorite docs to. I mean, like, I love him as a provider, right? But it just shows how broken the system is, the education. We literally need to go all the way back to med school, and it needs to be completely overhauled.

00:31:49:13 - 00:31:50:05
Kerri
Oh yeah.

00:31:50:07 - 00:31:55:05
Paula
Oh sure, that's too much money. So we will continue to keep doing this, this, this trainwreck that they're doing.

00:31:55:05 - 00:31:56:28
Kerri
So exactly.

00:31:57:03 - 00:32:10:19
Paula
But anyways, if you're, if you're watching this, this was just my rant. I was I just wanted to put it out there. We're going to put it out on a podcast just because like what are your thoughts like.

00:32:10:21 - 00:32:32:04
Kerri
Yeah, let us know. I mean, you know, a lot of people say, well, you know, let us know in the comments what we really want to know. We really want to hear from you, and we want to know from you what more you would like to hear about, you know, what can we do to make you more informed.

So please just let us know and you know we will. We'll put links in the comments. We'll put emails in the comments and reach out to us. Reach out to Paula, you know, and

00:32:44:22 - 00:33:08:01
Paula
And if by some small chance, you're one of those people that know somebody who addresses trauma on the cellular level or you are provider for that, reach out to me because I'm looking for that person. Because I can't find the big picture person, the big picture provider that understand the whole life span impact. That's what I'm looking for.
So is it that you reach out? So anyways, thank you for joining us and coming along on this journey. As I just walk it out and figure it out because it is an out there. So thanks for joining us.