Olivia: A study of over 17,000 people found that a high score in childhood trauma could slash your life expectancy by 20 years. That’s not a metaphor. That’s a biological reality. Today, we’re exploring a story about what it means to live with—and heal from—that reality. Jackson: Twenty years? That is staggering. It’s the kind of statistic that stops you in your tracks. It reframes trauma from a purely psychological issue to a full-blown public health crisis. Olivia: It absolutely does. And that research is at the heart of the book we're discussing today: What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. It’s a memoir that has been widely acclaimed, hitting the New York Times bestseller list and resonating deeply with readers and critics for its raw honesty. Jackson: Right, and what’s so compelling is that Foo isn't a psychologist; she's an accomplished journalist, an Emmy-winner who worked on shows like This American Life. She came at this not as a patient, but as an investigator trying to solve the mystery of her own life after a shocking diagnosis. Olivia: Exactly. She wrote the book she wished she’d had when she was first diagnosed—one that’s compassionate, scientifically grounded, and busts the stigma around a condition many people have never even heard of. Jackson: And that diagnosis is really where her story, and our discussion, has to begin. Olivia: It is. Her investigation starts with a single, life-altering moment in a therapy session.

Olivia: So, Stephanie Foo has been in therapy for eight years. She’s in her early thirties, living in New York, a successful radio producer. But she’s plagued by this constant, low-grade feeling of unhappiness and a lack of focus. She’s on a Skype call with her therapist, Samantha, complaining about it. Jackson: A feeling I think many high-achievers can relate to. You have all the external markers of success, but internally, something just feels… off. Olivia: Precisely. And she’s trying to self-diagnose. She asks her therapist, "Do you think I might be bipolar?" And Samantha, her therapist, just shuts it down and finally gives her the answer she’s been circling for years. She says, "You have complex PTSD from your childhood, and it manifests as persistent depression and anxiety. There’s no way someone with your background couldn’t have it." Jackson: Wow, just like that? After eight years of therapy? That must have been like a bomb going off in her life. Olivia: It was. And Jackson, can you clarify for us what Complex PTSD, or C-PTSD, actually is? How is it different from the PTSD we usually hear about, often in the context of soldiers? Jackson: That’s the crucial distinction. Traditional PTSD often stems from a single, terrifying event—a battle, a car crash, an assault. But C-PTSD, as Foo learns, comes from prolonged, repeated trauma, especially during childhood, in a situation where you can't escape. It's not one explosion; it's a thousand tiny wars fought in your own home. Olivia: And when Foo looks up the symptoms, she’s horrified. She says the list reads like a biography of her life: difficulty regulating emotions, dismal self-loathing, trouble maintaining relationships, an unhealthy connection to her abuser. She has this devastating realization, and I’m quoting here: "Everything—everything, all of it—is infected. My trauma is literally pumping through my blood, driving every decision in my brain." Jackson: That feeling of being fundamentally broken, that your own biology is working against you. It’s a terrifying thought. How did this "dread," as she calls it, actually play out in her life? Olivia: Well, it sabotaged everything, especially her relationships. There’s this heartbreaking story in the book about a man she was dating, a "cyberpunk boyfriend." They shared this interest in dystopian fiction, and for a while, things were great. But one day, he takes her to a gun range, and it turns out, she’s an incredible shot. Jackson: Okay, I’m intrigued. Where is this going? Olivia: A week later, he breaks up with her. And his reason? He tells her she’s "too intimidating," and that he’s afraid one day she’ll wake up and shoot him in the head. Jackson: Oh, that is brutal. Her competence, her strength, becomes the very thing that makes her seem dangerous and unlovable. Olivia: Exactly. It’s a perfect example of how the trauma manifests. It creates this aura of intensity that pushes people away, reinforcing the core belief that she’s inherently flawed. But here’s the paradox, and you touched on this earlier. Jackson: The idea that this same trauma-response also fueled her success? Olivia: Yes. She connects her workaholism to what one trauma expert, Pete Walker, calls the "flight" response. It’s a type of C-PTSD where the person is constantly busy, constantly achieving, using work as a way to outrun the pain. Her ambition wasn't just ambition; it was a survival mechanism. Her career was, in a way, a symptom of the very thing that was breaking her. Jackson: That's a fascinating and deeply unsettling idea. That the very thing society rewards you for—your drive, your success—is actually a trauma response. It makes you question the whole narrative of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. And it feels like that same journalistic, investigative drive is what pushes her to do something most people would never dream of doing.

Jackson: She goes back to fact-check her own abuse. Olivia: She does. It's one of the most remarkable parts of the book. She’s a journalist, and her mind is trained to question everything. After the diagnosis, she starts to question her own memories. She writes, "Our memories are fallible... the very act of conjuring a memory can change it." So she becomes terrified that she’s exaggerated her past, that she’s an unreliable narrator of her own life. Jackson: That’s a terrifying place to be. To doubt the very foundation of your own story. So what does she do? Olivia: She flies back to her hometown, San Jose, to investigate. She wants to know, as she puts it, "whether my trauma is personal or communal." Was she the only one, or was this a shared, unspoken experience in her community? Jackson: And this community is a key part of the story. It’s a "majority minority" city, mostly Asian and Hispanic immigrant families. Olivia: Yes, and this is where she confronts the "model minority" myth. She reconnects with her old high school's social worker, a woman named Yvonne Gunter. Foo asks her directly, "Are we being overlooked because of the incorrect stereotype painting us as the model minority? The AP students? The well-behaved kids with swimming pools?" Jackson: What exactly is the 'model minority' myth, and how does it create this... this pressure cooker environment? Olivia: It’s the stereotype that Asian Americans are all inherently successful, intelligent, and well-behaved. It’s incredibly damaging because it erases the diversity of experiences within the community and, crucially, it masks suffering. Teachers, administrators, even parents themselves, might see a high-achieving student and assume everything is fine, while that student could be experiencing immense pressure and even abuse at home. Jackson: So it creates a culture of silence. Olivia: A profound one. And Yvonne, the social worker, confirms it. She tells Foo that physical abuse is so common she basically assumes any student who walks into her office is experiencing it. She has a caseload of over 230 referrals for everything from anxiety and self-harm to incest and psychotic episodes. The model minority image was a complete facade. Jackson: So the 'dread' she felt wasn't just in her head. It was a product of a real, verifiable, but hidden, communal trauma. Finding that out must have been both validating and devastating. Olivia: Completely. It validated her experience, but it also revealed the depth of the collective pain. And once she confirms the trauma is real, the question becomes: what do you do about it? This is where the book shifts from investigation to reconstruction.

Olivia: The healing journey is messy, and Foo is brutally honest about it. She tries different therapies, and not all of them work. But she eventually finds a therapist, Dr. Jacob Ham, who introduces her to an idea that completely reframes her understanding of her own anger. Jackson: I love this part. This is the "Incredible Hulk" analogy, right? Olivia: It is. Dr. Ham explains that a trauma-triggered rage response is like Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk. There's a loss of control, a surge of protective anger, and a decrease in higher-level thinking. He tells her the goal isn't to kill the Hulk, but to "make friends with the Hulk." To understand that this part of you is trying to protect you, even if its methods are destructive. Jackson: That's brilliant. It takes the shame out of it. Instead of 'I'm a monster,' it's 'My Hulk came out.' It gives you a language to explain it to yourself and to others, like your partner. Olivia: It’s a powerful tool for self-compassion. And that compassion is what allows her to do the deeper work. She undergoes EMDR therapy, which is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s a technique designed to help the brain process traumatic memories. Jackson: And this leads to one of the most intense scenes in the book. Olivia: It does. To prepare for a session, she re-watches the movie Mommie Dearest. The infamous "No wire hangers!" scene triggers a memory of her own mother beating her with hangers. In her EMDR session, she revisits this memory. Jackson: What happens in that session? What does she discover? Olivia: She has this profound breakthrough. As she’s processing the memory, she realizes that as a child, her primary job wasn't to be a child; it was to manage her parents' emotions. Her role was to make them feel loved. And in that moment, she finally, truly understands and says to herself the sentence she’s been avoiding her whole life: "My parents didn’t love me." Jackson: That is a foundation-shattering realization. To accept that the people who were supposed to love you unconditionally were incapable of it. Olivia: It is. And it’s the key that unlocks her healing. She says, "Just because the wound doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean it’s healed." She had been spackling over it, intellectualizing it. The EMDR session forced her to feel it. Jackson: So is the book saying EMDR is the cure? Or that this one realization fixes everything? Olivia: Not at all. And that’s the beauty of the book's final act. It’s not about a single cure. The EMDR session is a catalyst, but the real, lasting work is what comes after. It’s what Dr. Ham calls "the repairs." It’s about learning how to rebuild relationships. She tells a wonderful story about Mott Haven Academy, a school for foster kids in the Bronx, where the focus isn't on punishment, but on teaching kids how to repair relational ruptures. Healing, for Foo, is about building a new community, a new chosen family. Jackson: It’s a shift from an internal, individual process to a relational, communal one. Olivia: Exactly. It’s about finding people who can see your "Hulk" and still love you. It’s about building a life that is strong enough to hold the trauma, without being defined by it. She learns that healing isn't about erasing the past, but about integrating it into a new, more compassionate story about yourself.

Jackson: So what I'm really taking away from this is that healing from this kind of deep, complex trauma isn't about finding a magic bullet or simply forgetting the past. It’s not a destination you arrive at. Olivia: Precisely. It's about becoming an archeologist of your own life. Foo shows us that you have to dig, investigate, and understand the source code of your pain with the rigor of a journalist. But then, you have to become an architect and build a new structure around it—one made of community, self-compassion, and the radical acceptance that your trauma doesn't have to be the end of your story. Jackson: And in a strange way, it can even become a source of strength. Olivia: It can. She writes beautifully about how, during the chaos of the pandemic, her C-PTSD, which she calls a "mental illness in times of peace," actually became a kind of superpower. The hypervigilance, the ability to stay calm in a crisis—these were skills forged in trauma that now allowed her to care for others. Her brokenness contained a hidden gold. Jackson: It’s such a hopeful, yet realistic, message. It doesn't promise a life without pain, but a life where pain doesn't have the final word. It makes you wonder, what are the 'invisible architectures' running our own lives, and what would it take to start investigating them? Olivia: A powerful question to leave our listeners with. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.