Transcript for Writing Your Resilience Podcast Episode 76

Writing for an Audience Without Losing Yourself: Trauma-Informed Storytelling with Beth Docherty

What does it mean to write the truth when your story includes trauma—and how do you do it without retraumatizing yourself or your readers?

That’s what I’ll explore with this week’s guest, Beth Docherty—a trauma-informed healthcare educator, musician, and emerging memoirist—as she shares her journey from research chemist to advocate for safer, more compassionate care. Together, we dive into one of the most important questions memoirists ask: How do we write about hard truths in ways that are honest, responsible, and healing?

To help us explore this issue, Beth opens up about her own trauma history, how storytelling became a tool for connection, and the care it takes to write bravely without burning out. We explore how to regulate your nervous system while writing, what your readers really need from you, and how to know when your story is ready for the world. Whether you're writing about survival, shame, or resilience, this episode will help you write from a place of self-trust, not self-sacrifice. Let’s dive in. 

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:00]
Well, hello, Beth. It is so exciting to see you, and for listeners, I get to see Beth twice today because we had class. So welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast.

Beth Docherty [0:12]
Thank you so much for having me, Lisa. It's a true honor. You know I have such the highest respect for you, so I just really appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:20]
I'm excited to have you on because you have a great question that I know listeners also have, so I'm excited for you to share that. But before you do, can you tell us a little about yourself—who you are as a writer, anything else you want us to know—and then you can end with that question.

Beth Docherty [0:37]
Yeah, thank you. So, I started my career as a research chemist. I was trained in structure and precision and logic, but life, as we know, is not always predictable. I have a trauma history. And you know, our vulnerabilities come out in the strangest places, and mine came out in the healthcare setting.

I avoided care. Even routine appointments were really traumatic and overwhelming for me, and I eventually found out that I wasn't alone in that—that so many people avoid. So many survivors of trauma, especially sexual abuse, avoid and actually enter the space feeling unsafe, which is never good for anyone.

That was kind of a life changer, and it led me to becoming an educator and advocate for trauma-informed healthcare—teaching healthcare providers how to understand how trauma shapes the body, the brain, behavior, and healing.

A couple of years ago, I began writing my first memoir. Music has always been a creative outlet for me—I've had it since the beginning of time. I think I was born with it. But I never considered myself a writer. Writing opened up something new in me. It was just another way to process my experiences and share them with others—with care.

At the same time, I've always carried a little bit of fear of traumatizing someone else. I know how powerful stories can be—and how hurtful words can be, too. For example, my tolerance level might be more than someone else's. Maybe I'm ready to say something, but somebody’s not ready to hear it. That makes it complicated.

So, I guess my question is, as a trauma-informed writing coach, how do you approach balancing the truth and truth-telling with care for the reader? And how do we really write responsibly without silencing ourselves?

Lisa Cooper Ellison [2:30]
That is such an important question. And I just want to say—you are doing such incredible, important work in the world. That’s one of the things I love about getting a chance to work with you.

We have different trauma histories; different ways we've experienced the healthcare system. I have the privilege of knowing your story, so I know these differences—and yet, what can be very similar for many people, whether someone has been harmed by the medical industry, or maybe has a chronic illness, being in that setting again and again—there can be trauma in that. It can show up in so many different ways.

I’m so glad you are such a powerful advocate in this space, and your story is so powerful. People are going to get a taste of it soon—I'm so excited about this for you, because you have a HuffPost article that's going to be coming out. We don't know exactly when yet, but I’m very excited.

So, let’s dive into: what does it mean to write in a trauma-informed way?

When we’re thinking about being trauma-informed, we’re thinking about how trauma impacts the nervous system and the setting. In this case, the setting is writing.

So, when we're thinking about writing in a trauma-informed way, the first thing we want to consider is ourselves—as writers. How do we write in a way that either keeps us in the window of tolerance... and I say this lightly, because we all go outside that window. I'm a writer too. There are plenty of times where you think something is a five—it’s not that big of a deal—and then you start writing about it, and it turns out it's a twenty. Suddenly, you're in the trauma.

The window of tolerance is the space where we can write about something, and it may be slightly activating, but it doesn't feel out of control in terms of how our nervous system perceives it. We want to try to write within that window at all times, knowing we’ll sometimes come out of it. And when we do get dysregulated, we need different strategies to help ourselves re-regulate.

First, know what your window of tolerance is. As you said so astutely, sometimes trauma survivors have a really high window of tolerance. That means you can go deep into the trauma and write about it in a visceral, graphic way. Other people can barely touch it. Maybe they're not even on the page—they're writing about everyone else because it feels too dangerous to write about themselves. So, each person’s window is different.

If your window of tolerance is high, and you need to write vividly and graphically to understand what happened—to bear witness on behalf of yourself or the reader—do that. Especially if you’re working through it with a therapist. That can be really healing. First, you have to know what happened to you. What is the story?

Then, we get to the meaning—and that’s what the reader cares about.

We have to attend to the vulnerability piece. Ask yourself, “Does this really feel okay?” Sometimes something feels normal only because our nervous system is used to it—not because it’s actually okay.

So, practice regulating your nervous system while writing. Maybe share what you’ve written with a safe person. That might be a therapist. If they ask questions, maybe they need more details. Or they might say, “Let’s back up. Let’s focus on your body.” Those are all signals.

Once you’ve got it down on the page, that’s the first goal—not censoring yourself. People often think they need to pull back from the beginning to avoid overwhelming the reader. My invitation is: keep yourself regulated, but don’t pull back at the start. Let yourself write what you need to.

Then later, you can revise. Ask: “Does this make sense? Do I understand what it means?” Maybe do a few reflective exercises to get clarity. Then, once you understand the meaning, ask: “What does my reader need?”

Because you’ve been working in this field, and another question you’ve shared is: “How do I go beyond news reportage?” That may be a struggle due to vulnerability—or maybe it’s because you’re not sure how much of your story your reader needs.

We don’t want to re-traumatize ourselves by overexposing. We want the work to be vivid enough for the reader to understand, but not so vulnerable that we harm ourselves.

Can I take you through an exercise?

Beth Docherty [8:54]
Yep, that’s fine.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [8:56]
You have 18 years of experience working in trauma, and you also speak out about sexual assault. You’ve been doing this for a while, and I’m sure you get questions from your audience. Is that correct?

Beth Docherty [8:54]
I get questions. I get disclosures—a lot of disclosures.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [8:58]
Yeah, and that can be really hard. I'm going to wrap up this session by asking you how you’re taking care of yourself around that—but first, let’s talk about what that means. You're getting disclosures. You get questions. That means you have access to your audience.

So, when we’re thinking about what needs to be on the page, we want to attend to our readers’ desires, fears, and wants. What do you know about your readers based on those disclosures or questions? You don’t need to name anyone, but what do they want from you?

Beth Docherty [9:42]
I think the first thing would be to feel connected—to not feel so alone in what they’re going through. Just hearing that somebody else has gone through the same thing can be very powerful.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [9:53]
When they come up to you and say, “Beth, I heard your story, and it touched me so much”—what part made them not feel alone?

Beth Docherty [10:02]
The fact that I shared what I had gone through. Especially when it’s related to healthcare or to the sexual abuse, the assault, the rape—just knowing someone else experienced that too. They’re usually appreciative that I’ve shared out loud, in person, because it’s often something people don’t want to talk about.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [10:22]
So your audience needs some of those details about what happened, right? Maybe not all the details, but enough to know: “You went through something I went through.” And I’m wondering if it’s not just that you’re speaking out loud—but that you’re talking about shame. That’s huge.

What are some of the other feelings you share on a regular basis, or specific details where people say, “That part of your story touched me”? You don’t need to go into full specifics, but—

Beth Docherty [11:06]
Well, sometimes I share that I didn’t tell anybody right away. That’s very common. But when you're going through it—and when you’ve kept it to yourself for so long—it feels like you're the only one.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [11:22]
Yeah. So, the fact that you talk about something that you know is common—not telling. That you talk about feeling so alone. You share about the shame: the shame that “this happened,” the “I could have stopped it,” or all the other things in that bundle of common emotional experiences people carry—and you share that.

People want to be heard. They want to be believed. They fear they're all alone or that they're going to be misunderstood. And we’re just brainstorming here, so there are no right or wrong answers.

And listeners, I’m asking Beth to do this because this is the kind of thing I want you to do when you’re thinking about your audience and what your audience needs. So, confusing as their wants, their needs, or their desires might be—what else do you know about them?

Beth Docherty [12:09]
I know that they’re mostly women. There are men too, but the majority are women. I know it’s common—and so many people have experienced it. I know that they want to be believed. I mean, I think you already said that, but it’s a big one.

So many people go through this, and they're not believed. Or even in situations where it happens in someone’s home—maybe the parent doesn’t believe that the uncle or somebody else did something. Hearing that kind of thing—it’s like an affirmation. Okay, it wasn’t just me. And again, it touches on the shame. It touches on all of that.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [12:45]
Yeah. So, some things your readers need from you—when we think about specifics—they might need some high-level specifics about the actual things that happened, the abuse, the terrible thing, we’ll call it.

But what they really need from you is for you to be able to talk about the shame. To talk about the fear of not being believed. They want to see how people reacted—especially if people reacted poorly—so they can compare it to their own experiences and say, “Does this relate to what I went through?”

Beth Docherty [13:14]
Absolutely. Yeah.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [13:16]
So, when we’re thinking about how you write in a trauma-informed way, you understand what the experience means to you, right? So, you understand: What would I want to tell young Beth about this?

That’s one exercise you can do to figure out: What does this all mean? Why am I writing about this? Why does it matter?

So, one thing you can do is ask yourself, “What would I tell my younger self?” and you can journal about that.

Another thing you can do is watch a bunch of Moth stories.

Beth Docherty [13:45]
Oh, I love them.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [13:47]
Yeah, so here’s what I want you to pay attention to—and listeners, if you're not watching The Moth, The Moth is great for this. I want you to watch those stories, and one of the things that happens in all Moth stories is: there’s a takeaway. In a lot of oral storytelling, that takeaway is not subtle. They’ll say, “I learned this,” or “I became this,” or “I discovered this.” They're telling you the meaning.

Pay attention to those takeaways. Notice what they are. And then, ask yourself: If I had to create a Moth version of my story, what would the takeaway be?

So those are two exercises you can do to really understand your own story. Once you understand that, then you can say, “Okay, I know the sense it makes to me—what do I need to share with my reader?”

Can I create a scene where I show myself feeling shame? The terrible thing is important a little bit, but the shame—that’s more important. Highlight that.

Beth Docherty [14:48]
I would assume the resilience would also be important.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [14:52]
Yes, yes. So how is she coping with that shame? What does she do when people react poorly? How is she handling that?

What readers want is to see how the narrator is coping with these challenges. And sometimes, especially early in a book, the way people cope is through faulty thinking, or in ways that aren’t particularly helpful. As the book progresses, we see them begin to cope in more beneficial ways.

When you’re writing in a trauma-informed way, you’re focusing on your readers’ fears, desires, and needs. You’re answering the questions they have or mirroring the experiences you know they’ve had.

Then you ask: How much of the terrible thing do they actually need to know?

Usually, it’s a lot less than you think. But they need a lot more of that emotional landscape. Because the hardest part is often not the horrific event—it’s the reverberations afterward.

Beth Docherty [15:59]
That makes perfect sense.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [16:03]
So how’s that landing for you? What is it making you think about?

Beth Docherty [16:06]
Well, it makes perfect sense, like I said. And I think one thing that really stuck out when you were talking about making sense of your story first—

You know, I teach a lot and do a lot of talking about self-care. And I remember in one of the first classes I had with you, you talked about: “How are you feeling? What is your energy level? Do you have the support you need? Are you okay to do this? What are you doing after you're done writing this piece?”

And that was a game changer for me—because I didn’t do that. I just pushed along, like I always did. Didn’t matter if I had something else going on afterward—I'd push through that too.

And I’ve totally changed the way I approach writing. Now, before I begin, I ask: “What am I going to write today? What am I being drawn to do? Do I really have the energy for that?”

Like you said—is it a five, or is it a twenty? If it’s a twenty, do I really want to write about that today? Or should I be writing about something that’s not a twenty?

That was one thing that really stuck out to me.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [17:14]
Yeah. And listeners, if you're wanting to know more about that, I actually created a video series called Becoming a Resilient Writer. I’ll add the link in the show notes.

If you want to learn more about how you can rate your writing sessions—or the topics—you might write about before you begin—that video series will teach you exactly how to do it. And that’s a great way to regulate your nervous system and write in a trauma-informed way.

So, I’m glad you brought that up.

Beth Docherty [17:47]
I'm serious—it was really powerful for me.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [17:51]
So I want to find out: Have I answered your question, or does this lead to something else you’d like to ask?

Beth Docherty [17:56]
Yes, it answers my question.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [17:58]
Great. Another thing you mentioned to me in your message was about that vulnerability piece. Like—how do I know?

So yes, we’ve talked about attending to the reader’s needs. But when we begin to share our work, how do we attend to our own needs?

Even if I know this is of high service to others, how do I know if I’m okay with sharing it?

I bring this up because I’ve seen people publish work that ends up overexposing them every single time they share it. Even if it's powerful, even if it’s well-received, even if it’s exactly what the reader needs—it may not be what you need.

So before sending something out into the world, check in with yourself: “Am I ready to share this?”

What I often ask people is: “Would you shout it in Walmart?” If you had to shout anything in Walmart—right?

And just for the record, listeners—I do not go around shouting things in Walmart! But seriously, if you had to shout it in Walmart, would you feel bad about it? Would it feel like too much?

If yes, then it’s not ready. It’s not fully cooked for you. And it doesn’t matter how good it is for others.

That’s another piece I want to talk about when it comes to vulnerability.

Beth Docherty [19:32]
And I did go through that with the HuffPost article—wondering, “Am I going to be okay with all of this going out to a large audience?” I ultimately decided yes, but it’s still a little bit… I don’t want to say scary, but—you know, I’m waiting for it to come out, and waiting to see what happens. But I decided to do it anyway.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [19:54]
And it’s okay to say that it’s scary. Because I think it is scary for a lot of people.

Beth Docherty [19:59]
Yeah. This is my first big one. I mean, I’ve been sharing my story publicly, but it’s been in smaller venues or with people already interested in the topic. So, this will be different.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [20:09]
Yeah. And since we don't know when this is—well, we know when this podcast episode is going to come out, but we don't know when that article is going to be published—when it does, I will link it in the show notes. I’d say by probably October of 2025 at the very latest, it should be out.

We’re recording this in May, so who knows? It could be out before this episode airs. We just don’t know.

This is true for all of you listeners—if you’re trying to publish something, sometimes you don’t know when it’s going to go live. So, I want to wrap up by circling back to one of the things you talked about: being a public speaker and getting a lot of self-disclosures. Right? People are sharing a lot of personal information with you—stories that are similar to your own.

And what can happen in those situations is something called vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma happens when you’re listening to other people’s stories. Often—and we won’t share anything specific—I would imagine people have shared some pretty graphic things with you.

Beth Docherty [21:30]
They have.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [21:31]
Yeah. So how are you caring for yourself in those situations, where you're the speaker, you have to be “on,” and you’re also receiving all this really intense material?

Beth Docherty [21:41]
Well, I try to be very aware of who my audience is beforehand—and even of the room. I try to look at the room ahead of time, just so I’m comfortable.

Then afterwards, I make sure I have time—I’m not going straight into something else. I’ll usually call my husband, or sometimes I’ll have a friend, and we’ll go out to lunch or something—whatever it is, I just make sure I’m not alone.

A lot of times, I might have band rehearsal that night, so I can just chill and have fun and sing and play. It’s just different ways that I discharge. I don’t take it in to the point where it’s traumatizing to me.

And I always give them resources too—places where they can get help if they need it. I'm not a therapist, so I don’t want them to start calling me about their trauma.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [22:19]
I love that. What I love most is that you have these ways of discharging the energy. Right?

Yes, when you’re in a situation where people are telling you their stories, there's a lot of energy. But you’re releasing it—you’re discharging it through fun, through your band, through going out to lunch. You’re also understanding the space, right? You’re thinking about it ahead of time: “Who am I engaging with? What does the space look like? How can I take care of myself afterward?”

And I think this is really important for all writers to hear: yes, you may have gone through something. And now you know something important that you want to share. But even if you are an expert, it doesn’t mean that it’s your job to take care of everyone.

Just because someone comes and shares their story with you, it doesn’t mean you’re in a contract where you have to care for that story, take care of them, or fix their problem. You don’t.

What I love is that you have resources. So, when someone shares their story, you can let go of it, because you’ve given them what they need to take care of themselves.

Beth Docherty [23:40]
Yeah.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [23:41]
Beautiful. Thank you.

Well, if people want to connect with you, learn more about you, and—most importantly—be prepared for that HuffPost essay, which is awesome and coming out soon, what are the ways they can connect with you?

Beth Docherty [23:44]
Well, I have a Facebook account and a LinkedIn. And I also have a new website: thetrustproject-pa.com—that will definitely be up and running before this airs.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [23:59]
Yes. So, Beth’s website and her social media handles will be in the show notes, so you’ll be able to connect with her.

And I highly encourage you to connect with Beth—especially if you’ve been harmed by the healthcare system and you want to know more about what it means to engage in trauma-informed care. Beth is an expert, and she’s advocating for that.

And the more we all know, the better we can all do when it comes to this.

Thank you so much.

Beth Docherty [24:19]
Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [24:21]
Thank you so much for being on the show today. It has been an absolute pleasure.