Episode 24: Maya Benattar
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Maya Benattar is a psychotherapist and music therapist. Maya gives a lay of the land of therapy and how it differs from life coaching. We talk cultural stigmas, different approaches such as CBT or psychodynamics, and the difference between Trauma with a big T and a “little t.” Most of us have experienced (little t) trauma in the form of bullying, otherness, and insecurities such as body image. We explore the myth of being emotionally self-sufficient, Maya’s work in helping clients hold dual perspectives, picking podcasts over music, and navigating the emotional side of Tinder.
More about Maya
- Maya’s Website
- Maya on Social Media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter)
- Finding the New Normal in Our Post-Election World
Show Notes
What is trauma
We often think of trauma as “single event occurrences” that are horrific (like rape, war, genocide, death, bad car accidents, violence) — they’re considered “big T traumas.”
On the other side of the spectrum you have “little T traumas.” Pretty much everyone has experienced little T traumas. It’s true and sobering. It’s the trauma of being bullied, growing up as a child of divorce (and negotiating the push and pull between parents), being displaced from your home, and body image. Things that are more pervasive, that you may function very well on a day-to-day basis, but they happen over little bits and long periods of time. Essentially, trauma is something that you feel very deeply. Or that you don’t feel. By that definition — everyone’s experienced some form of trauma.
The long term impact of small traumas
Research has shown that if you have just one “big T trauma” (i.e. you were raped one time, and you processed it and dealt with it) it has less of an effect on your long-term functioning than a series of little T traumas (bullying, body image, difficult divorce).
