“You can see things differently depending on how you interpret things and that influences how you respond to it.” Anita Bentata

The link between healing of trauma and neuroscience is something that has received considerable attention in practice. Our guest today, Anita Bentata, has spent most of her time researching and learning about trauma and the healing process in an effort to help people overcome their past and embody a better self.

Anita Bentata is a psychotherapist, author, online group facilitator, thought leader and speaker, specializing in trauma, abuse, stress, relationships and love. Anita is based in Melbourne, Australia and is the recipient of multi-international awards and national recognition for her approach and program for women impacted by trauma, isolation and abuse. Anita has spoken at conferences about her model and theories, as well as participated in numerous interviews and being involved as a consultant and primary interviewee for a documentary about domestic violence.

Anita’s focus is showing people they can feel free, resilient and resourced, in mind and body; no matter their past, or any current situation. So, people can embody wellbeing, healthy life energy and clarity in life choices, as opposed to passivity, repetition or reactions. After nearly 3 decades in the field, including 4 years of specialist training in trauma and defense systems, Anita came to realize why people get stuck in trauma or therapy for longer than is needed. This vital framework forms The Essentials Method™, based on neuroscience and the best of whole brain body Western and Eastern science and psychology; along with countless hours spent with clients. Combined, this led Anita to realize what was missing in personal and community life skill development, and within the field of psychology. This awareness of what was missing in the field and necessary for complete trauma resolution, and to face anything in life as well as to move forward free from the past, was also informed by the personal work Anita undertook prior to her qualification.

It was her journey as a client which led Anita to change careers from accounts and book-keeping, and into psychotherapy. Undertaking therapy to resolve trauma from a childhood of abuse and neglect, and from later escaping domestic violence with her two young children. Client journeys, parenting her children through trauma, and two significant life events led Anita to understand more of what is needed to fully resolve the unbearable and the uncomfortable.

Anita created the Living in Flow online, live, group or 1:1 program consisting of a series of modules to skill people to live life from The Essentials Method™. People are not taught now to take advantage of the brilliance of the brain and body and instead are held captive by old, learnt styles of coping. Coping methods which didn’t develop, along with other life skills, has meant people tend to know what they don’t want, and what they do want, but not know how to transition from the old to the new. People end up in with limited beliefs, behaviors and habits and perceive this is ‘normal’ not realizing what could be named as ‘normal’ and possible for healthy and vibrant living and relationships. Anita’s values are joy, ease and growth. This creates a life of love, flow and creativity.

Anita believes we’re all creators and life is about creative living, and when we don’t have access to the our whole brain and body we do keep creating, but we’re re-creating old patterns and worries, going over the past, maintaining, coping or managing through the use of any skills, including wonderful trauma techniques which of their own still do not provide the full map to move on in life and can end up deepening the connections to the past when there is not enough understanding about how the brain works and what it needs from us.

In today’s episode, Anita will discuss more about listening to their emotions and feelings rather than entirely depending on reason in healing trauma. She will also highlight on the importance of working in groups when going through the healing process.

Listen in!

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• I’ve been working in the field 26 years and it’s taken me on a huge journey that’s highly influenced my personal life. [3:26]
• I used to work in bookkeeping and accounts and I changed careers and became a therapist and did specialist studies on trauma and understanding what happens. [3:36]
• I came to this work through my own personal journey and I went into therapy to make sure I didn’t get into more abuse because I grew up with abuse and trauma. [4:46]
• My passion is about assisting people to activate the brain and the body out of the trauma response, to be able to listen and to take action. [5:27]
• My personal life experiences have given me such a gift of understanding my own journey by questioning things from a personal perspective and resonate as well as connect with my clients. [6:00]
• After working many years, I started noticing patterns with people and I started creating my own theories because I felt like there wasn’t adequate answers. [6:29]
• My organization is all about being able to tap into the whole self, and into our life energy, to be able to make better decisions and to have greater emotional muscle to go beyond the repeat. [7:55]
• I show people in my neuroscience backed program, how to have fresh thoughts and be mobilized into action that’s aligned with our feelings and our thoughts so that there isn’t an internal conflict. [8:38]
• I’m really passionate about is teaching people about our brilliant brain, because there’s nothing faulty from my perspective ever going on in our brain. [10:44]
• Often people don’t realize that it’s feelings that changes neural pathways and so we need to find a way to be able to take care of the feeling. [11:02]
• Along the way, I’ve discovered how people miss label things and I’ve created a neuroscience way of how we talk to ourselves based on how we talk to ourselves. [14:05]
• The more we know how to use our own brain, the more then we can fire and wire because feelings is what activates the wiring together. [14:33]
• I also found that people keep looping to what the brain does most recently and most frequently, not necessarily because of the trauma that’s happened. [15:55]
• People often don’t have the skills on how to move forward in a genuine way that’s not through willpower and not through positive thinking. [17:06]
• It is a powerful thing to be able to label things so that our environment doesn’t define how we are. [19:14]
• You can see things differently depending on how you interpret things and that influences how you respond to it. [20:16]
• Commercial break. [20:38]
• The most important thing is to be able to tell yourself that there are more possibilities of how I can perceive what’s going on or be able to talk to somebody that I feel like can connect with where I’m at. [23:13
• Most traumas happen in relationship to people and so we get stuck more on a social or an interpersonal level. [23:51]
• The most important thing is to be able to know there’s always a new way of addressing something that we don’t know about. [24:02]
• From my perspective based on my experience, we notice things because we’re conscious and we end up hooking into them and retelling the same story which loops us into those neural pathways. [25:40]
• It is about how to find a way to not get hooked into those old patterns and those old stories so that our system can move on. [26:02]
• We can start putting out energy and focus into firing and wiring the new map otherwise, we just keep re looping. [26:15]
• A lot of my work is actually helping people to label and talk to themselves through the transition, and how to engineer things so that it gets in that optimal generative way. [28:13]
• I also help people to trust the inner reality, and stop trusting the outer reality because the outer reality is just a momentum of what’s been happening of the past. [28:27]
• One of the most important things is, what you focus on is what keeps deepening in your system. [31:06]
• It is about taking that step for ourselves and experimenting to find out whether it feels better. [31:58]
• Just keep trying and following what feels better because if you keep following through the day, instead of following what you think you should be doing, everything will keep getting easier. [32:11]
• Often, I find that people can create a faster change quicker when they do it in a group because they’re motivated and inspired. [33:09]

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TopDog Learning Group, LLC is a leadership, change management, and diversity and inclusion consulting firm based in Orlando, FL, USA but with “TopDoggers” (aka consultants) throughout North America and beyond.

They focus on training programs (both virtual and face-to-face), keynotes and “lunch and learns,” group and 1:1 coaching, and off-the-shelf solutions.

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