#36 Processing Bootcamp - Intro to Protectors | Recovery Secrets Series

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Intro to Protectors: The Missing Step in PTSD Healing Why You Keep Getting Triggered: Understanding Your PTSD Protectors From Triggers to True Self: A New Way to Heal PTSD How “Protectors” Keep Trauma Survivors Stuck (And How to Heal Them) PTSD Processing Bootcamp: Meet the Parts of You That Are Trying to Help When Your Inner Protector Takes the Wheel: Trauma, Triggers, and Healing Turning Trauma Walls into Inner Strength: The Protectors Framework Is It Really You… or a Protector? How PTSD Hijacks Your Reactions From Self-Sabotage to Self-Love: Rewiring Your Trauma Protectors How to Stop Overreacting After Trauma: The Truth About Protectors and Parts

Host: Brad Schipke • Overcoming PTSD Podcast • Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching

In this Processing Bootcamp episode, Brad introduces “protectors” — a simple but powerful way to understand why you get triggered, shut down, or overreact after trauma. Instead of seeing these reactions as random or broken, Brad shows how they’re actually protective parts of you doing their best to keep you safe.

You’ll learn how to recognize your “true self” — the calm, loving, grounded version of you — and how trauma slowly builds walls around it in the form of protectors. Using visuals like castles, walls, cars, and even purple paint, Brad breaks down a complex inner world into something you can actually work with.

This episode lays the foundation for the rest of Processing Bootcamp week, where Brad will walk you step-by-step through how to identify, understand, and eventually heal these protectors with honesty, patience, and self-love. Today is all about awareness, language, and perspective so you can finally see what’s really happening when PTSD takes over.

By the end, you’ll walk away with a hopeful and practical frame: there is nothing “wrong” with you — there are just parts of you that were hurt, got stuck in time, and are trying (sometimes in messy ways) to protect you. And they can be healed.

💡 What You’ll Learn

• How protectors form after trauma to keep your true self safe

• Why PTSD triggers feel like “someone else” took over your body and mind

• The difference between your true self and protector parts

• How to spot protectors in your body through tension, stress, and emotional spikes

• Why overreactions, shutting down, or lashing out are signs of protectors at the wheel

• Simple ways to start naming and mapping your own protectors

• How to respond with love instead of anger toward your protectors

• How to recognize protectors in other people and deescalate with compassion

• Why healing protectors actually makes your true self bigger, stronger, and more whole

🧠 Key Takeaway

Anytime you’re not acting from calm, love, and peace, it’s not that you’re broken — it’s a protector trying to keep you safe the only way it knows how.

🔗 Next Steps

Subscribe for new weekday episodes from the Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching archive.

To go deeper or work with Brad directly, visit https://overcomingptsd.com/consultation.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Introduction to Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching 00:36 Welcome to Processing Bootcamp Week 00:47 Understanding the Protector Tool 01:42 Conceptualizing Pain and Emotions 05:54 The True Self and Protectors 07:46 Building and Deconstructing Walls 14:36 Visualizing Protectors 18:56 Healing Protectors with Love 20:59 Deconstructing Walls and Absorbing Protectors 21:38 Identifying Protectors in Yourself and Others 22:19 Body and Emotions: The Link to Protectors 22:38 Techniques to Identify and Separate Protectors 24:23 Naming and Understanding Your Protectors 24:47 Challenges and Introspection with Protectors 27:13 Healing Protectors and Reassigning Roles 28:42 Non-Invasive Conversations with Protectors 35:41 Pattern Interrupts and De-escalation Techniques

Topics Covered:

PTSD recovery • trauma healing • protectors and parts work • inner child work • emotional triggers after trauma • nervous system regulation • emotional regulation tools • trauma coping tools • processing traumatic memories • self-love and trauma recovery • honesty and patience in healing • dissociation and PTSD • understanding overreactions • how to stop PTSD outbursts • healing through self-compassion • Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching • Overcoming PTSD Podcast