Vision Pros Live Podcast
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What's your vision? Christy Gibson Podcast Session 1.
1,813 words · 3 speakers
Tell me about your vision.
You know, it's so interesting. Since I started studying trauma, so I'll, I'll tell you a bit of a personal story because I know that's part of what we're going to get into. I have been running an international nonprofit, the Global Family Med Foundation, since 2012. And in 2015, I found myself working in a long-term partnership with a medical school called the Patton Academy in the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. And so I was there at the time, just happened to be there when the earthquakes hit. And so I found myself having some PTSD symptoms for the first time in my life. But then I started recognizing that I'd had some of them during my divorce.
That I'd had some of them when I was working in the hospital setting. As a hospitalist, dealing with really sick patients, running codes, working night shifts for 30 hours. I started recognizing how much trauma was trapped in my body as I started researching trauma post-earthquake. And once I started recognizing how much of it was in my clinical practice and how many patients were affected by it, I started studying solutions. So the first thing I learned was something called accelerated resolution therapy, which is a quicker version of EMDR. So it's a really effective way to manage PTSD symptoms. And sometimes I would get results in a single session because I'd known my patients for
so long, they could stay in a really calm body with me, which is essential to trauma processing. And that success was not just helping their mental health, it was helping their physical health. So I'd have people with diabetes, with chronic lung disease, with hypertension or blood pressure problems, and they would suddenly improve from trauma therapy. And I thought, wow, this has such a significant impact. And at the same time that I was studying trauma, I was also studying social innovation and design thinking, which is really, how do we change systems? And I was recognizing that trauma happens in the individual, but it's a manifestation of not just the community, but our ecosystem. And that is politics, that is in the environment.
It's infectious disease. It's all kinds of things that are happening within our community. It's racism. It's ableism. It's medical trauma. So people who've had trauma at the hands of the medical system and so many relationships that I've forged have had to be through that medical trauma and me trying to work on healing it even subconsciously without really knowing what it was that I was doing. Now I have more understanding of it, how much, you know, homophobia and fatphobia and all of these things that people have been dealing with on a daily basis is showing up in all of their relationships and their expectations and their worldview, their internalized shame. So, once I started understanding that, I thought, well, the modern trauma toolkit
isn't just about like your nervous system. It's about all of the systems around us. So I talk a lot about all of these things that are impacting you and the ways that they might be. And then I also talk about not just how do we shift our nervous system, but how do we shift the systems that we're in? So, once we are in that window of tolerance that we can cope, that we can manage, what are the systemic level things that we can do to heal? So, from the first time that I outlined my book and I provided my agent like the outline, and I said, this is the book I really want to write. He said, okay, let's shop this around. And we got a lot of, you know, really awesome offers on it because I think it just resonated with a lot of people. And it was so amazing that
the outline, like every single chapter that I'd proposed is exactly what the book turned out to be. And I wrote it so quickly. I actually, because I wanted it to sound really nurturing and safe, I ended up dictating a lot of it because I know that when I'm on TikTok, I have a kind of a gentle way of approaching things. And I also knew I wanted to record my own audiobook. So, like, coming from that book proposal to, oh, sorry, I'll say that again, coming from that book proposal to, you know, the actual writing and then the reading, it was exactly the vision. Like, I had known that I'd been locking it in for so long that it just spilled out of me. And yeah, it needed a lot of editing. But
the original writing was just so.
Emergent, like it was just, it was just inside me, it was so easy to pull a string and let it come out.
You know, it's, it's so interesting. As I sit here and I listen to you, I am drawn in to what you're talking about. And I think that I'm drawn in because a- as I mentioned, it resonates and relates so much with me. But there's a part of me, Christine, that is elated, like I have an excitement inside of me. And I, I, I'm gonna get personal too. I'm so happy that I am who I am, right? Because, and, and I'm happy to have heard those stories and, and now today, understanding that I, I and people are okay being just who they are, right?
And being okay with who you are and accepting how you understand and love and, and really know that everything that happens isn't necessarily about us, right? It's about what that individual is going through. It's about the story. It's about the core, deep things that they've gone through and it's not necessarily directed at us. And so when it comes to customer service, when it comes to mean people, when it comes to traffic, I can only control what I can do, but the reason why we can only control what we can do, or I say me, is because I learned that everybody has a story and that everyone has some sense of trauma and they're not there yet to, to accept it, understand it.
And I would, I mean, a- as I mentioned before, I would have given anything to have that conversation with you to checkmark like, it's okay to hear these stories because it either develops you or it puts you in a, well, triggers you to put you in a space where the flight, bite, or freeze happens. And interesting enough, Christine, I ended up.
Leaving, I ended up flighting because I didn't understand it. And so, as you mentioned, being on TikTok and so many people resonating with you, I feel like I'm one of those people that it would resonate with because no one really talks about it. And I loved how you explained the pandemic and and now it's still, there's an effect, but then there's so much more going on in the world and trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma. And, and it's just seems like it's ongoing. So it's, it's one of those things that if, if people could have an understanding or, or be able to understand what it looks like to unveil it and, and be okay with where they were.
I think that that would be, you know, amazing for the world in general, you know, like heal the world, make it a better place.
Super excited about your book and I know we're a little bit over time, but I, I again, I grown and I, I, I was intrigued by it. Please share with individuals where they can get your book from. Uh, your website and your TikTok and other social media handles.
Um, before I do, Jevonka, I'm just gonna say that like in the first chapter of my book, I described the difference between resilience and post-traumatic growth and you totally embody that. So this is post-traumatic growth. It's, it's like this different understanding about yourself and the world. Um, so you can learn about that at the Modern Trauma Toolkit. Um, which the website is moderntrauma.com, which kind of gives you like the vibes of the book. It's really nurturing and gentle. Like literally the cursor turns into a butterfly on one of the pages. Um, and then the QR code goes to a hidden page with audio practices, videos, um, a book club guide. Um, and the last I checked, Amazon had it on sale for like $12. So it's, it's like a really good deal right now.
Um, the audiobook is also available, uh, through, you know, any, any website. Um, I also run a company called Safer Spaces Training and we engage with individuals. We're going to be running short courses this year as well as companies to learn how to be more trauma informed. So when you have those people in front of you in the public and they are emotionally dysregulated or manifesting fight, flight and freeze. Um, what do you do? How do you recognize it? How do you prevent yourself from getting kind of? Regulated in that same direction because nervous system states are contagious. So how do we, instead of kind of becoming heightened and amplified and intense ourselves, how do we kind of bring everyone down into like a calm, what we call parasympathetic state?
So because I'm working at a systems level, I'm trying to also do lots of education. One of my many letters behind my name is a master's in medical education. So my goal is to spread the word through speaking engagements, through podcasting, just trying to get more and more people aware of how trauma is showing up in themselves, in their families, in their communities, and more importantly, to have a solutions about it. So many people are aware of trauma, you know, Oprah Winfrey co-wrote a book about it a couple of years before mine, Gabor Maté's in the news. There's so many people who are more aware of trauma, but there's not as many people talking about, well, now what? What do we do?
And that's really what I want to get out there is the toolkit.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun and we'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.
Page updated November 13, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
