How to overcome childhood trauma by up-levelling your consciousness

Let’s get started by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit of your story and what inspired you to write the book behind the screen.

I am a trauma survivor who went through a lot of issues when I was younger. I talked about the effects of divorce as a child because I was a direct victim. I was also once in an interracial relationship where my family disowned me. Then, the person who I was dating, cheated on me and broke my heart a million times.

I shared the real raw truth behind the screen because I think too many people hide behind it and don't share their vulnerability or the truth. I believe to change and make this world a better place, we need to kind of let down our walls and learn how we can harness the power that we were born with.

I understand that we hide behind the screen to keep people, especially trauma survivors, at an arm's length away, as a defence mechanism, a coping mechanism, something to protect ourselves so that nobody can get close enough to hurt us.

I was able to change my life from being a single mother on welfare to a highly successful corporate executive, bringing in a nice six-figure salary. So to kind of share these stories and truths is a little bit scary, but that's the whole point of the book: To understand that we build these walls around our hearts, and I talked about the walls.

We are like Brick and mortar with hard cold cracks and I was just in a dungeon of darkness. You know, I struggled with depression and anxiety, and I'm the type of person who will not speak up.

That was just kind of my personality. So, now that I think of it, I feel I went through those seasons for a reason, to prepare me for a greater journey and I'm on that now, because I want to reach, teach, and transform millions of lives by sharing my stories and offering techniques to overcome your subconscious programming and inspiration to help people connect to their power, and gain the confidence that they need to overcome some self-sabotaging habits that we have. A lot of times, we're not even conscious of these behavior patterns that are negatively impacting our results in life. So, when I joke and say that my walls were made out of titanium, It's a good one.

The trick is tapping into or becoming aware of your level of consciousness because a lot of the beliefs, lies, and statements that are told in an abusive childhood environment get ingrained in your subconscious without your permission, without you having the power to say, well, no, that's not true.

So what have you found to be the most powerful tool to help you address, those sneaky little lies that snuck in there as a kid?

What did that for me was understanding that our brain is a computer program.

I call it a supercomputer! When you can understand, you become conscious of what is stored in there. Dr. Bruce Lipton explains this, by saying that kids from zero to seven years old are in a theta brainwave frequency. What does that mean? They're in almost a hypnotic state where everything that they're picking up in their outside environment is being downloaded into their supercomputer and the subconscious mind.

Its job is to store and retrieve information and it is connected to the fight nervous response, which is there to protect us. Unfortunately, we inherit these faulty programs that we continue to replay in the back of our minds, Pulling up these trauma responses from others, you know these triggers that trigger emotional responses in us later on in life, that are not helping serve our life or our happiness.

The biggest thing is gaining awareness of the power of the subconscious mind, the power of that program that was installed against your willingness to say, oh, I want this to be in my brain because nobody wants that. Unfortunately, we grow up in certain upbringings or around certain people who instil these belief systems in our minds. So, the key is not just to gain awareness of the power of your mind, but also to understand that you can reprogram your mind because it is just like a supercomputer. I was listening to an audible today on my walk, and they said that we have more circuitry in our computer.

It's like 10 trillion circuits in our minds that fire and wire together to build these little channels so that the information can flow more easily and be retrieved more easily. Now if we understand that as human beings, then we might want to learn how to get rid of those channels and reprogram new channels or ways of thinking so that we can shift the trajectory of our lives, and that's really what I wanna teach to people because I didn't know this but when I found out just the power of our mind and quantum physics, It changed my life and changed the way that I look at life. That's kind of also the title of my book Behind the Screen.

Well, what's the screen?

The screen is your lens of life. It is how you view people in your outside world, how you view the environment, and how you view yourself.

It is also the veil of reality between your conscious and subconscious mind. Sometimes, we need to get behind the screen and clean it. 'cause we're seeing life through a foggy lens. Raising your level of awareness and asking the very simple question of “why.”

Why do I think that? As parents, we can get irritated when our toddler goes through that phase of why? Why? Right? And they keep asking that question over and over and you're just like, well, because it is. But that word is so powerful. It's one of the most important words we use.

If you think about it, these toddlers are so innocent and they haven't been programmed yet. That's why they're asking why, they want to see the logical perspective of it. Sometimes I believe we pass these faulty programs down from generation to generation and so the cycle just continues because we're not even aware that we're doing it until somebody is the circuit breaker.

Yeah, I like the word “circuit breaker” Raising your level of awareness gives you your power back. It shifts the belief of, well, I'm just a victim to the circumstances that life has given me and changes it to well, I can change that, and yes, I have the power to change that!

Is that where the power that you speak about in your book comes in?

Yes, I believe that consciousness and awareness are your power. It's our gift. In the book, I talk about having an egoic lens and a spiritual lens, and how it determines which lens we're looking through at any given point in time. I teach a seven-step system of transformation, which are as follows:

• Tag it.

This means tagging these unconscious behaviour patterns or self-sabotaging habits. It is being an observer of your way of thinking and feeling and identifying that “I might have these emotional reactions from certain triggers that aren't serving me.”

• Go back on your life timeline.

This is from birth until today. Step two is about remembering it, remember the first time that you observed this particular behaviour or way of thinking. It may be from your caretakers, parents or something, but it usually goes back to childhood and you have to remember it because what you're doing is, you are trying to identify the inception point of the programming.

Like, when did it start? Then, what I have my clients do is map it out on the timeline and map out from the inception point, How often has that story played out in your timeline? And that's gaining awareness of the program to see, oh wow, so it has played out from childhood into my relationships, and I always think I attract the wrong men.

• Feel it.

So what we don't do is, we don't process the feelings or emotions from past childhood because we build defence mechanisms to shut them out. Shutting it out is just keeping the energy stuck in your energy body and you're carrying that with you through life.

Those are three of the seven steps that can keep going.

This system of transformation is so powerful to get you to see how you think, feel, and react within certain situations because of certain triggers that are triggering your program to be activated again, and those emotions that you are carrying with you, that extra energy that you carry with you plays out in just about every area of your life when it goes unprocessed, it does come out just not in the way that you would prefer it to come out.

By following these steps, you are not just tending to one aspect of your life, you're tending to kinds of areas in your life, which is your life timeline. It is a linear pattern of experiences that we've experienced, and then, you can kind of take an objective approach and view your life from someone else's perspective to kind of see it because you are aware. This is just a program and you have a supercomputer in your brain, so it's not your fault but the key is to realize that, oh, I can change this, I can raise my level of consciousness in every present moment by learning how to become more aware and conscious in the present moment and before responding or reacting to those triggers, I can connect to my power internally, which is in my will. Your willpower, your soul, your spirit, whatever you wanna call it, and I can make a conscious choice in that moment to act differently and when you act differently, that's how you shift the results in your life. If you want different results, you have to do something different.

I'm doing it right now. I've applied this system to my life and have validated it. I continue to do so. But I went through an emotionally exhausting relationship of heartbreak and all kinds of stuff where I built walls around my heart and just shut people out. The first red flag that a guy was gonna hurt me, peace out, lose my phone number, I'm done. Like, get away from me very quickly.

After being single for eight years, still have not found a companion. I kind of was like, alright, I need to go inside and see what's going on because I must be contributing to these results and when I did that I realised something, you have to love yourself first.

Before you can ever experience real, true, unconditional love, you have to have self-love, and self-respect for yourself first. A lot of people who went through childhood trauma don't feel that way about themselves, so you have to do the inner work first. I took the time to do that. Once I did it, I said, okay, now I'm open to love, I'm open to this and I'm willing to give it a try.

I've been in a relationship with whom I call my soulmate, my best friend, and my spiritual partner for over two years now, and I identify my subconscious programming at the moment in our relationship where I have to shift the way that I would react normally.

I shut them out or do certain things because if not, I'm never gonna be in a relationship. Nobody's perfect, but you have to be able to discern between that faulty program that might still be replaying and, if that's really what you want in your life. So it takes work, but I think it's worthwhile work if you're able to. Find love, joy, happiness, and peace in your heart again.

So, for one of our listeners who is listening and is incredibly intrigued but they're at square one, what action step would recommend for them to take as their first step?

• Start to observe your way of thinking.

I'll tell you this, there's a lot of cause and effect, and this is like physics and everything down to reality. Your thoughts create your feelings. We have this supercomputer that sends electrical signals to our brains. The thoughts give out an electrical impulse that triggers your feelings, which are hormones and chemicals released into your body, which creates a feeling.

Your feelings will create your actions or reactions and those will create your results. So, if you wanna change the results in any area of your life, the first thing you have to do is look at your way of thinking.

We think over 60,000 thoughts daily.

80% of those are negative, and 95% are from the past. So the first thing you have to do is start to notice what you're thinking, I mean, step back and become an observer of your way of thinking, for at least a week. I do have exercises where I have my clients just observe their way of thinking and start to notice certain patterns or thoughts come up and jot those down. Right. And then the next week, they start to notice the way that those thoughts create feelings in their body. So, start to notice your way of thinking and feeling, because then you'll be able to relate that to your reactions.

That is the first step in raising your level of awareness. I am now a conscious observer of myself, but the key to that observance is to not feed into the energy of the thought or feeling. It's just trying to observe it objectively. The trick to observing, becoming an observer for yourself is to not judge yourself.

Yes, don't make it wrong. It's just an observation, It is what it is and just be aware. That's right. That's what I tell my clients. Don't make it wrong, don't judge yourself, don't talk down to yourself because you feel a particular way. You feel the way you feel for a reason and if you do by accident, say, I am dumb, or whatever, whatever the negative word is, immediately after that, when you observe yourself saying that about yourself, say, cancel, cancel. Cancel. I just learned this today. So I like to share the stuff I learned. Cancel, cancel, and then replace it with a positive affirmation.

That in the moment, trains your mind. And it trains your mind the way somebody is being trained to ride a bike. It takes time, it takes practice, and you have to continue. Once you catch onto it, it becomes, good programming. So, we can program our minds to do good things for us but we have to override the bad programming first. Training your mind is like going to the gym to train any other part of your body. It takes work and doesn't happen overnight.

So if our listeners want to connect with you further, how can they do that?

You can go to my website, it's https://www.carrie-schmidt.com/

I have all my social media links on there. I'm coach Carrie Schmidt on Facebook and TikTok CareBear Schmidt on Instagram. You can get my new book behind the screen on Amazon. If you do get it and read it, I would love for you to leave an honest review because those reviews help me reach more readers and me.

My mission is to speak to high schools and colleges. I really wanna get this message out to our younger people because I wish that I had known this stuff when I was 15 years old. It's great what resources we have now through podcasts, and the internet to reach a broader audience.

If this resonates with you, share it with your social group, and I'd love for you to get the book and read it. It's incredible! There's a bonus journal in the back. It's called the Life Timeline Journal. So as you read and you go through the seven-step life timeline system of transformation, you go through all of the seven steps and you can document and map out your programming on your life timeline and then take it deeper.