Why your brain keeps you stuck and how compassion is strength. Featuring Dr Kate Truitt

Transcript

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Welcome to the relationship success lab, the place for relationship empowerment and actionable tools. So you can let go of old wounds and create. A secure, trusting, loving relationship. I'm dot Sarah global award-winning expert relationships, psychologist, and consultants helping high-achievers on business leaders. To have happy and healthy relationships. Grab my relationship health quiz full free. In the link below to get started now. On with your journey to relationship success. I am so honored to be joined here with Dr. Kate Truitt again. Thank you so, so much for joining me. And today we are really going to be talking a bit more about the pandemic. biology around trauma and how it is that we can really start taking steps to healing. And before we dive in, for anyone who hasn't listened, who for anyone who doesn't know who you are, what is it that we need to know about you in terms of your journey and what it is that got you to where you're at now? Well, my educational journey is I'm a clinical psychologist, as well as what's called an applied neuroscientist. I've studied neuroscience and psychophysiology or the relationship between the brain and the body extensively. And. When the applied means it's like being a translator about what's going on in this three pound ball of goo up here and helping that be brought into the therapeutic world, which is one of my greatest passions. I have two books that focus on this in very different ways. One is healing in your hands, which is my first book. You can see it right there. And that is all about helping people create and design their own healing journey. Cause you know, therapy is a privilege and mental health and wellness as a human, right? And then the other book is actually a memoir that dives deep into why I do everything that I do when we struggle as children or we grow up in environments where we're not shown compassion or kindness or taught about emotions and emotional intelligence, which is part of being supposed to be modeled in our environment, but so many of us don't have that. Then our brains create ways to survive and often those ways that our brains learn how to survive can be really harmful. And so one of my deepest passions in life is to demystify what's going on and peel back the curtain of shame or guilt that can really honestly take lives away from us or even our own lives so that people can partner with their mind and their body system and create a loving caring environment for themselves. I guess that's a little bit of me in a nutshell. Yeah, yeah. And I think what's really important to note here is that as much as You're a professional and you've studied and you've worked hard for your studies. Um, it's not all about books, right? And it's actually the human component and your personal life and your experiences that really enable you to do what you do or support you in terms of doing that. I think that for both of us, that's one of the guiding forces is it's not the ivory tower of the doctor. It's We're very real heartfelt humans walking in the world of heartfelt humans and a lot of amazingness and also a lot of pain. Using our own stories even to cultivate compassionate awareness and saying, well, I'll, I'll, I'll pull back the curtain on my, my pain. If that might help one person see the world in a slightly different, more empowered way. It's okay. Let's do that then. And I'm completely honoured by having you here and I'm sure so many people who are listening to you this will really benefit and one of the things that I get asked a lot about is the bodily experience when we are so much. Well Either living within the trauma or actually subsequent to a trauma event, and I'm really talking about trauma bonded experiences here, because when you are in a painful relationship and you are in the day in day out trauma, you're almost on autopilot. You almost don't see what's going on. And you'll. blind to a lot of things. You know, it's not great, but knowing and feeling and doing that, they're all very different things. So there's that. And then there's also the aftermath. There's also post trauma and what do we do there? Or a post trauma bonded relationship. And Uh, it's really going back to the idea of the body and, and part of the reason why people talk about it, I know particularly for clients of mine or people that have approached me after listening to some of these episodes, is really about the fact that their body is triggered. They are experiencing so much viscerally, semantically, they don't know how to navigate these issues. And one of the things I always talk about is the fact that trauma is always held in the body. And I think this is widely known, um, particularly, I think within professionals, this is widely known. I'm not sure whether it's widely known in the general population, but the body always keeps a score. And so even if we don't cognitively remember certain things, the body always remembers and the body is the window to the subconscious mind and every experience that we have is giving us a message. Sometimes we don't know how to read those messages, sometimes we don't know what to do with those messages, but, but there is a message somewhere. And I really wanted to start off, really, by, um, asking you to give us a brief explanation, really, in terms of what Why is it that the body keeps the score? Oh, brief. Oy, Sarah. I think a really important thing resonates with my clients and those that I walk alongside is keeping in mind that our most primal brain part, one of them is known as the amygdala, which is an area of my expertise. I call her Amy, very lovingly. And she speaks first and foremost, language of the five senses. How does our body receive data? Most predominantly, but through sensory information. And honestly, we'd say six interoception. So our body awareness counts too, which is a huge part of it. So what we're touching, seeing, feeling, smelling, anything tied into our sensory experience is being processed in rapid fire speed by this very ancient part of our brain that's designed to keep us safe. And oftentimes we think of trauma and we think of fight, fight, fear, think of freeze, I think of fawn and those behaviors may not feel like they're designed to keep us safe, but fundamentally they are. And when we have trauma or living in a trauma bonded state they can become prolonged, we can be stuck in that type of state, like you said we can difference we knowing something versus feeling something. And even fawning behavior can become a normal behavior. I think that is people pleasing. And so if we start to feel interceptively in our body that we are unsafe and we're in a trauma bonded relationship where our partner knows how to flip from good to bad, they can use that as a weapon to play with our sensory data and change the way our brain is making sense of the information in the current environment. That impacts our body more quickly than our thoughts. And so then our thoughts eventually catch up and go, this means this, but it's based on the interpretation of how the amygdala has shifted or responded to the sensory data in the environment. So that's one thing I wanted. One thing that I wanted to ask just tapping into this is the idea of memory and sensory data, how that gets registered when we are in a trauma bonded relationship. So for instance, I sometimes have clients where they will say, Oh, the song came on and. I broke down, or I had the smell, I smelt something, and it just, all of a sudden I felt like I was being chased, I felt like I was gonna die, so something huge, and you know, they're talking about something, um, you know, that's, that might be innocuous to somebody else, um, but, but, uh, Yeah, I suppose I just wanted to really explore that area with you in terms of how things get registered because it's clearly registered within a trauma, but it gets listed in a slightly different way. Yeah. And post trauma and into day to day life, not just when we're in the relationship, but that's one of the hardest things about exiting a relationship or in the post period, the recovery period. Same. It's actually not that dissimilar for grief or traumatic grief is our system isn't trying to reconcile this encoded experience tied to a trauma. And our brain has learned that when this stimulus shows up, it's like a math equation, a plus B equals C. My partner comes home and puts on this song. I know he's in this type or she's in this type of mood, and that's going to be this type of outcome. Positive or negative. And then anytime that song comes on in a coffee shop, the grocery store, driving in the car. The brain goes, I know what's coming next, a has now occurred and it's been trained to anticipate see smell is even tougher because smell has a direct amygdala. It's one of our most critical sensory. Factors because think about the idea of smelling a fire. We go back a millennia, millennia is the smell of a fire is danger. 300 million years ago, you smell a fire, you know, get out, run, don't stay there. And so that's been hardwired into our system. And so now we smell a perfume or a cologne. We smell, I mean I had a lot of clients who've grown up in childhood homes where there are certain things that mom would cook when they know dad was coming home in a particularly bad mood and mom would be trying to soothe dad and that soon as they smelled meatloaf for example they knew they were in for a night. I think what's interesting about this is that What I'm about to say is, I suppose it's a pro and a con, um, in the sense that you've got a cue, the cue being the smell, the sound, the, um, vibration in the air, but, but, but, you know, you've got a cue. Well, the vibration in the air is real, I want to highlight that. It is, it is a vibration in the air, yeah, but, but you've got a cue and. you feel something automatically, viscerally, it hits you before you, your conscious brain has any time to process what, what's going on. Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's exactly as the amygdala, it, it just hits, but you've got a cue. And so the pro, kind of inverted quotes, but the pro is that you've got a cue. So when you've exited the trauma bondage relationship, when you recognize what the cue is, then you've got something to work with in terms of how do you unlearn some of these things. And then you start recognizing that these things were associated with this person, this situation, this relationship. And, and you know, there's a bit more, there's a bit more containment because we know what the cue is. But the Con, I suppose, is that sometimes we don't have a cue and this is the issue, right? Because, uh, many clients of mine have ended up in difficult relationship after difficult one, after difficult one. And it's almost like, well, the face has changed, but it's really the same person. It's still the same person. It's still the same situation that's caring. And the smells are different. The sounds are different. And so it's almost like, well, the cues are different. And so, and so what they do when, when they're talking to me about this, they're saying, Oh, no, but you know, we share control. This person isn't that controlling or they're really accepting. They're really loving. Oh, no, no, they're not. They're not as harmful as they're willing to talk. And, you know, they, they, they create this narrative that things are different when really they're not. Yeah. I mean, they might be different to some degree, but, but actually they're still being positioned or they're still positioning themselves in the same way in the relationship, that they're subordinate, that they're submissive, that they're helpless, that they don't have power or control. And you know, they enter that really difficult state again. So it's almost like the body has still responded, even though it, and it's harder to detect the cue. So that's really when the subconscious is kicking in and it's really taking the reins, right? It's 95% governing our behaviors and our decisions and what it is that we do. And, and, and so it's really detecting all of these cues, but they're cues in vibration. They're cues in the subtleties. They're not cues in the, the, um, even the knowingness can actually blind us even more. That sense of, I know the pattern now, so I know what to look out for. I'm checking the boxes of this person. Isn't this way? Which can then in a way create a false sense of safety or lure any of us. And this is not just for survivors. All humans are susceptible to this, especially if there's certain types of patterns that are unfolding around us to getting caught in a pattern that our nervous system is used to. And that's where that childhood piece plays such a huge and significant role. If we're used to being a people pleaser, if we're used to chaos or feeling unsafe, our brain then normalizes that. As you said at the very beginning, it's almost like our thinking brain can just kind of, the word that came up for me is like dissociate or numb out the things that we know, we know are bad, but we normalize it because we're used to it. And so if we feel like we know which boxes to check, then it's like, oh, but I've got this. It won't happen again. And this person's not, this time I'm picking something different, clearly. Which then, that sense of security, which is false, will actually lure us in more deeply. Let's talk about butterflies. Let's talk about butterflies. I want to talk about the butterfly feeling. What are your thoughts? Yeah, so define the butterfly feeling. What is your operational definition of that? Well, I'm going to go for society's definition or the general population's definition, right? So when you're dating somebody it's really exciting and I've got butterflies and oh my goodness he's messaged me back and I'm so excited because I've been waiting for him to call me and I've been waiting for him to ask me out on a date again and It's described as excitement. Yeah. And there's this, there's this, it's, it's funny because when I describe it and I'm, and I'm trying to, I'm thinking about this really hard, actually, because I'm trying to, uh, distinguish, am I talking as a professional or am I talking just as a normal person, right, as a lay person? Um, yeah, because the thing is, is that I felt the, I felt those feelings. And when I, when I sit there and I think, okay, I'm going to try and describe these actually feel on edge. I physically feel like I'm on edge, but when I say that out loud, it sounds bad. Yeah. So, so that you actually went just where I was about to go. So think about. Go back to a time and then for all of our listeners, I invite everybody to just do this little thought experiment, go back to a time where you've been really excited about something, and it could be somebody you just started seeing or you have a crush on it could be a new job opportunity. It could be waiting to hear back from a supervisor to hear if you got the promotion that you really want, or whatever it is just something that you're waiting with positive anticipation. And then just gentle breath in and release, invite your system to set shift away from that for a quick second. And notice a time where you've been waiting for some bad news, or you've been anxious that somebody is going to send you an email or a tax that you don't really want. Electrochemically, hormonally, they're very the same, very much the same. The diff, and that's why they both feel like on edge. the difference is the framing in our brain and in trauma bonding, whether it be an intimate relationship or any type of relationship, because this can happen in any type of human connection space. That is a huge part of what gets weaponized against us. Am I good or am I bad? Dopamine works in both directions. Adrenaline works in both directions. And our brain fires and wires around those things in both directions. And it can tap into either. And it's interesting because I did that experiment as you were just talking about it, and it's, it's, um, it's interesting because the excitement feeling that I was, uh, or the excited memory that I was holding onto, I actually had a couple in mind. And, What's in, so hindsight's always 20 20, right? Because I had that feeling and I could feel it physically in my chest and my gut, but my hindsight vision was also telling me, oh my goodness, you are sacrificing so much here. Um, but, but, but, but, but then that's, but that's my hindsight, right? So that's, that's me post pandemic. Doing all the processing and development and healing so, so, you know, so I've got that, uh, that I need to consider. But when I started to think about the thing that I really didn't want, I, I, all it was that I noticed was a difference that was going on inside of my head and it was just literally the story. But, um, But my sense of worth in those moments, I know now post trauma, it's a different story, but in those moments if I was to go back and if I was to ask my former self, actually how much self worth did you have there? How much self worth did you have here? Very, very different. And I would have said the moments when somebody did message me, when I did go out on that date, when I felt like I was being put on a pedestal, when I got a promotion, any of those things. I felt like I was good enough. I thought, oh my goodness, somebody else sees my value. Yes. Like I've made it somehow. Reinforcement. Absolutely. It was almost like I had the carrot dangled in front of my face and I was just, I got closer to it. Right. And then it was kind of waving and my nose hit it. So I thought, yes, I'm getting closer to that. Right. Um, but that's all it was. It's just a carrot being dangled. And. The times when I was really struggling, it was, I was struggling because I wasn't good enough. I was struggling because I didn't deserve anything. And, and it's really about the They're taken away. And it had been taken away. And something That, again, this is post hindsight 2020, this is all post processing, is this idea that nobody can ever take your energy away from you, unless if you give them permission, right? So it's this idea of, well, if I had, if I had Some kind of energetic coins in my hand, am I wanting to invest in you or not? And, and, and the thing is, is I've got my hand open, then people are able to take that away from me whether or not they even know that they're doing that. Or they can give me theirs, absolutely. And the thing is, is that the moment that you start thinking about, or at least for me anyway, the moment that I started thinking about it in that way, I had the option then of closing my hand. I had the option of not. And it's not to say that I'm no longer, Putting an effort into certain things or that I'm no longer, uh, working at certain things or maintaining relationships or it's not that, but actually nobody, nobody gets to tell me whether or not I'm worth something or not. Like that's, that's not, that's not down to them. And it's really about this idea of stepping into the essence. So, um, I, I, I, again, um, I can't tally when, when he's talking about the issue of the ego versus the essence and the essence really being this idea that we are connected to infinite worth, that actually our worth isn't, the idea of even questioning our worth is a bit weird because it shouldn't be questioned, it's just assumed, right? And it, unfortunately, it's the ego, even though we're. innocently trying to protect ourselves, and the ego is innocently trying to protect ourselves, we fall into this issue of, well, am I good enough? Am I going to be rejected? Am I not going to be, am I going to be accepted? And, and, and that's, the ego is always battling with this idea of the worth, simply because it's trying to avoid rejection. Survive. And it's survive, ultimately it's survive. As a child, it's not ego. As a child, we're learning as a child, our brain is navigating an environment that it did not necessarily choose. We don't get to choose our family environment. And so it's learning how to survive, which then eventually evolves into the concept of what can be called the ego. And near biologically though, it's our laying down these frameworks, schemas, cognitive framing. For how do we survive in the world? And those become our go to patterns. And to what you said about the essence of the worth. Yeah. Like. What a, what a wonderful way to frame it and explore it and say, yeah, we are all inherently worthy. We are. And yet our sweet little brain, it, it's not necessarily tied into that energetic field. It's like, if you see cheetah cubs growing up, they're just going to go do them. They're going to be the best little cheetahs that they can as they grow up. And if somebody threatens them or their pack. You know, they're going to have feelings about it and respond in a very primal way. As humans, we've got this pesky prefrontal cortex that is deciphering and thinking and overthinking and reflecting, like you said, hindsight's 2020, and developing ways to learn from the past, but also create new ways to stay safe going forward. And that 2020 hindsight, when it's still informed by trauma patterns, When it's still being informed by the old survival frameworks can create such a deep vulnerability going forward unless we give ourselves the space to grieve and to create really intentional awareness around those cues like you were talking about. To really give ourselves permission to step through the shame or guilt that comes up so readily. It's like catnip sometimes. And so I want to learn about why I'm feeling this way or why I'm once again stuck in this pattern or how that behavior was available to once again show up in this moment. That's really hard for so many of us to do, because our brain is stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fall, or grieving, and in the recovery process. How? essential is it to do the rewiring process, to heal the trauma from, from a physiological bodily standpoint? You know, our brain is changing all the time, which is great news in some instances, um, and not so great in others. The, When our brain has been wired into a trauma bond, trauma experience, or has survived really complex hard things, whether it be an acute trauma or a series of relational traumas. That rewiring with intention in so many ways is like the rainbow to the other side. And I really do believe, Sarah, in my gut, both personally and professionally, that when people really began to understand that our, the brain can be taught new things, just like it was taught survival as a child, that it's, there's a door that can start to open in terms of the possibility of a different opportunity. of a new way forward. And that's very empowering to say, wait a minute. Okay, I was handed this type of brain on a platter by base, based on these childhood experiences. But now I get to partner with my brain and I get to play a really important role in building my own future and creating my present here now. That to me is just so powerful and really important. And, and the, the, when you were talking just then, it was making me think about, You know when sometimes people have a lightbulb moment, so for example if somebody is, um, really unhealthy, that they've been smoking so much and then all of a sudden they realize, Oh my goodness, I'm, I'm really shortening my life here and then, and they take action immediately or, or you know somebody who is really, um, overweight and then they decide one day that they're going to, you know, dedicate their life to being healthier, to exercising more, to eating a good diet. And the reason why that came to mind is this idea of, actually we're not helpless, we can change, we can do stuff. And that's, that's real empowerment because if we remained in a state of, well, I'm a consequence of my environment, then we are going to be a consequence of our environment, right? Like nothing's going to change if we don't change. I'd like to step in at the stage to say that I am on a mission to help as many people as possible to reach relationship's success. And you would be helping me out more than you could possibly know by subscribing to this podcast. Rating it. And sharing it with a friend. And if you do that, I've got to totally free values, compatibility workbook that will help you and your partner feel more connected whilst being your authentic selves. Now, this workbook is not available anywhere, but I'm giving it to you. Absolutely free. If you can send me a message on the details in the show notes below sharing the love for this podcast. Thank you. And it's really about how it is that we take steps and, you know, something, and again, I don't know how you'll feel about this or anyone who's listening to this. I don't know how they'll feel about what I'm about to say, but I'm going to go for it anyway. Um, so, you know, there's always that metaphor, um, that gets battered about, which is if you, uh, a flower. If a flower doesn't grow, you don't stop blaming the flower, you actually look at the environment. Okay, and I agree with that. But I, but I think it's missing a lot of information. So I agree with that in the sense that when a seed of a flower is being planted, that's like us in terms of when we get conceived and where it is that we get birthed, the family unit that we get birthed, right? We have no option. So the seed of the flower, when it gets planted, it has no option where it gets planted. That's the environment. And sure, if the environment isn't nurturing or nourishing the flower, Then, yes, we, we can't blame the flower, that actually it is something environmental. But, but actually, as adults, we do grow. I mean, varying degrees, right, but we do grow. And, If we remain in a state whereby we're expecting the sunlight to come and shine, and we're blaming that the sun isn't coming out, or we're blaming that the rain isn't pouring down, or, you know, we start blaming that the soil doesn't have enough nutrients, if, if we then think, okay, well, I'm the flower and I'm not really growing, therefore it's the environment's issue, or the problem is there, But there's only so much pointing that I can do. It's really great to communicate, and I'm all up for communication in terms of when you're asking other people to support you, or you're communicating your needs, I'm all up for that. But it gets We get to a certain point where actually we can't continue negotiating and it can't continue being suggestions and actually it's almost like we actually have to remove our roots and then go somewhere where there is a bit more sunlight, where there is a bit more water and sometimes we actually have to pour the water on our, on ourselves. And I suppose that there's, there's something in that where. I think it, holding it in mind in the idea that I've just described, I know this is just my personal opinion, but, um, I still feel like that's a more empowering route, because at the very least you have options, and you don't, get absorbed or potentially get absorbed into this mindset where you are fixated, you know, where you're fixed and you can't move and you can't do anything because the reality is, is that you can. So it's not about the government putting sugar in the food and therefore I'm helpless because this is the food that I eat. It's like, no, you could just direct and eat something else. I know that's a long winded way of describing it, but it was just something that came to mind. Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's so complicated and nuanced, um, because the, when we look at all the different dynamics in society and, and the tools and the resources, and even the, you know, the concept of learned helplessness, and some of that fundamental literature, um, which was, you know, really not so great to the poor puppies that were being studied at the time. And the idea that if an animal is shocked enough times, it simply stops trying to move itself away from the shock. Is it just learns that the shock is inevitable and there are times for so many humans where that really is the reality and there isn't the glimmer. They've said that they're blaming anything it's simply that the system in a way is flatlined, or there aren't resources there isn't an availability to even the water to water themselves to use the analogy. And that is where I can take it back to a larger community level and the community initiatives that we have at the Truett Institute of how do we remove barriers to access? Why do you do this podcast? How do we support the constructs of mental health literacy and reducing stigma and shame around, even if we are in those feelings and those spaces of really deep helplessness. We simply don't even know that the possibility of asking for help exists. That is very real for so many people. I mean, and culturally, in terms of resource availability. So how do we create even just the tiniest, tiniest ray of light to say there, there is a space here, but first and foremost, help people know they're not alone. I think that's huge and, and Uh, you're absolutely right and I think any, any step, no matter how small it is, Any step is a step, any step is a step and, and I know before we hit record on this, one of the things that we were talking about really was this idea of self seething and again going back to the body and that the body always keep score in terms of trauma. And really, let's talk about this idea of how we can physically start seething. Particularly when we're talking about our body, trauma's held there, this idea of touch, physical sensory experiences, because this is something that's so huge for so many people. And I think a lot of people have, you know, No idea where to start. I kind of like, I'm, I'm literally drawing blank hair. Well, and to be fair, that was me for so long. I had no idea how to regulate my emotions or to self soothe outside of less than preferable coping skills that have been modeled to me as a child. And so I was pretty dissociated because that was a great coping skill fundamentally. So one of the things that's really exciting, and this is a huge area of study of mine, and it's the psychophysiology part of my work, is knowing that our mind body system has built into it really deep and natural healing capacities. When people talk about breath work, it's Not just because yes, we breathe. It's also because it's fundamentally healing to our mind body system to bring in more oxygen and release the carbon dioxide, which is a toxin to rewire how our system is fundamentally breathing in the world around us. The use of touch, mindful touch, therapeutic touch. We have little receptors built into our skin that we all have. that are inherent to our biological makeup and actually shift electrochemically how our brain is processing information. And it's, it's interesting. There's a huge wealth of research on different touch fibers, particularly what are known as C tactile fibers, which is an area that I've spent a lot of time investigating that they create different electrochemical waves in our brain. And that's, it's been studied for two, three decades, and there's a reason why people like massages. And you think about a massage, we think about somebody's coming to take care of me. And there's been for a long time now, this evolving awareness around, well, we naturally hug ourselves. In the therapeutic field, Francine Shapiro, tapping, self havening touch, those are all terms that therapeutically have been applied to this innate biological mechanism, but fundamentally mindful touch is as old as the dawn of time in many respects. These little touch fibers, these cells are how we communicate with the world. So I want to ask you a bit more about this. And, uh, I suppose I've come across a lot of people where they don't like being touched. And they'll very openly say this and they won't go for a massage. They kind of, you know, conceptually. Cognitively they understand, oh yeah that's nice treatment, but definitely not for me. And even if, and you know, and I've got a couple of friends where I'll go to hug them, and, and, and they're willing to hug, but, but it's a very distant hug. Well, I mean it's, it's basically a tap on the shoulder, right? Like that's what the hug becomes. It's, it's really, yeah, it's, it's, you know, um, and, and, and, um, There's something there that I wanted to ask you about really, how does that fit with this? Yes, and there's some couple different layers there. So, and these are a lot of my clients as well. And even if I'm integrating any type of therapeutic or mindful touch into my clinical care, I'm always bringing in modifications and different ways to apply the touch on my channel. There's even a Video that teaches different ways to bring touch safe self touch safely into one's own healing program is a lot of us have survived experiences where touch was weaponized. Different, so many different types of abuse involve harmful touch. So going back to those cues we were talking about before, if our brain has learned that touch is harmful, then our amygdala remembers that. She has little memory nuclei. She holds onto that data and says, well, that's not for me, friend. No, thank you. So for a lot of my clients who perhaps don't enjoy mindful, soothing touch, we'll do butterfly tapping because that is novel. It's different. The brain doesn't have a framework for this or more classic, whereas actual touch, not safe. And do people often, are people often able to build up into a more soothing touch space? Yeah, and that's one of the things I really love about my CPR for the amygdala protocol that utilizes different types of mindful touch with distractions. And if any of your listeners are interested in learning more than I have a huge YouTube playlist that teaches all different iterations of it. Because as we're utilizing brain games and distractions with the application of touch. It's helping specific brain shifts change, electrochemical waves change in our brain that start to reduce any emotional reactivity or activation tied to the sensory stimulus, the touch. And this is true for any of those cues. Anytime a trauma cue shows up, if somebody does CPR for the amygdala, it's creating personal resilience for the amygdala. It's a self healing tool. It's a neuroplasticity tool that changes the brain. And so you can start to shift our relationship with any negative sensory cues using that very, very easy to use protocol, which is awesome. That's one of my favorite things. And I'm definitely, oh, sorry, I interrupted. I was just going to say, I'm definitely going to include the links on this, um, in the show notes below. Yeah, well, and I have an entire neuroplasticity toolkit, um, you can send over and you can share. I can't remember if we did that last time, but, um, the other reason touch can be standoffish is often simply environmental and simply right. That's kind of an oxymoron, but. If it's culturally not appropriate to touch. I grew up in the Midwest and my mom's from Michigan. My dad's from Kansas. Neither of them had affectionate families. The Midwest is very much fine in many respects and everybody's okay. And we don't really hug and kiss and do a lot of affection back in the eighties, seventies, nineties. And so I never had a comfort with touch Anyway, affection was foreign to me personally. And then I had the double whammy of touch also being weaponized against me through a number of different traumas I had. So if our system doesn't know how to process touch as we grow up as a child, it can feel really foreign. And it wasn't until my fiance who eventually passed on, when I write about in the memoir, He was very affectionate, and in many respects, he kind of reparented my sensory nervous system around tactile engagement because he was super affectionate. And it took him, I mean, we were together 10 years. Probably for the first five or six years of our relationship, I would just naturally kind of jump or be like, I don't, this whole touchy thing is weird. Until I finally relaxed into it. Now, anybody who met me today, I am such a warm, fuzzy, huge hugger. I mean, I love affection. My husband's super, my new, my current husband's super affectionate. I, you know, now it's, it's a part of my love language. And I think that in itself is really interesting because when couples get together and one person's got physical touch as their love language, and it might be number five, it might be the bottom of the list for the other partner, it becomes, it becomes a strain in the sense that neither person are receiving the love or the the love language that they can perceive love with. And I wanted to really ask you a little bit more about this idea of, I'm going to call it flooding, but actually let's use just, um, lay language. Let's use just normal language for people who don't understand what this is. So, flooding is the idea that we get overwhelmed with the stimuli, with the sensory experience, the thing that we've been trying to avoid, but we're also trying to work towards getting better with, essentially. But, but, but it's the, the idea of being overwhelmed and it's way too much and, and actually it can be really traumatizing. It can, it can set us back. Yeah. I think of it like as a sensory trauma dump. Yeah, okay. So, so for I guess anyone who Hasn't done any work previously in terms of their healing. For anyone who is kind of starting ground zero, what advice would you give them so that they could start regulating or calming their physiological experiences, calming their body down? And also not get to a state where they're overwhelmed so that they are able to calm down. They're able to notice regularly. And, and of course as time, the more that you train, the better that you get. And so, you know, you can kind of add a bit more, but, but what would you say to someone who is starting from scratch? Uh, tongue in cheek, but go to my YouTube channel. there's so, I mean, there are so many videos that are about this journey. It's so intricate and nuanced for everybody. The, the most fundamental tool, it, it takes me back to that creating personal resilience for the amygdala tool. That's a tool that we teach every single one of our clients in the very first intake session. Oftentimes, if I'm doing a phone consultation with somebody I've never even met yet, if I notice that they're starting to become activated on the call, I'll bring in a little bit of cognitive distractions. I'll ask them, Hey, is it, would it be comfortable for you to do this type of brain game with me really quick right now just to regulate their system? And can you rub your palms together? And they go, yeah, that's fine. I go, great. And that's all the exercises, but that starts to downregulate the system right away. And even if we don't bring in any touch distractions in of themselves downregulate the amygdala. It's been known for decades. And that's why that 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 exercise of the sensory system is so powerful. 5 things you're seeing, 4 things you're hearing, 3 things you're smelling, tasting, touching, or whatever order of people want to go in because different sensory systems are comfortable for each person. And That in of itself creates a little bit of space. If we're being flooded, we're distracting our amygdala away from running our sensory system. If we're in a really intense experience of flooding, picking up some ice, bringing in some other type of almost shocking sensory, we don't hurt yourself, but this is one of the reasons some people self injure. Either to bring themselves back in their body because they're dissociated so deeply from their system that they feel like they have to feel pain, or it takes such a shock to the system to pull them out of the flood. And so using ice or really, really bitter candy, uh, there's old warhead. They're not old, but I know it's 1980s candy. It's still around. I checked warheads. Don't eat a lot of them, but the shock and the bitterness of a warhead candy can downregulate the brain. So just to clarify, they're very, they're only available in the U. S. So I've got a lot, but even biting a lemon, I was going to say something that's super sour. That's yeah. Yeah. So I've had clients who have really intense dissociative episodes who would keep lemon and lime wedges. And also even in our refrigerator here in the office, I have a team of clinicians here. And our, if you go into our freezer, we have a whole slew of ice packs. And oftentimes before specific clients come in, we just go and grab our ice packs and bring them into session. We want them ready just in case. And it's loving. All of these things are loving acts. Going back to the idea of deservingness and worth. We're showing ourselves that, yeah, Hey Brian, you're, you might have some steps that you're working through. So I'm going to take loving steps to help care for you. That's really important. There's something about the narrative, the story that's being told, or the story that we're telling ourselves rather, during these moments. And I think you just alluded to that just now, because if you are, for example, somebody who has been in A trauma bonded relationship previously or we've had other past traumatic experiences and then you're in adults you're in a great relationship and You're still on edge, you know, you even described it yourself and it takes years, right? But but there's something there where We're, we're almost having to get the hearts, or I describe it the heart, but you know, we're having to get our body, the emotion, and the head in alignment, they have to be on the same page. And more often than not, we are in different places, and there's, there's this disconnect within ourselves. And so. Even though we logically might have a story of, okay, well, things are good, but I'm still feeling anxious. And then, and then we start questioning it, right? So then, because we have this visceral response, we have this physical anxiety tension, sends signals. And we then start interpreting those signals of, oh my goodness, something really bad here is happening. And is this really good? I'm missing them. And we start questioning something that is potentially healthy. And we actually end up being the red flag because we are pushing our partner, we're testing them, we're doing so many different things. But, but, you know, the thing that's really important here is the story that we're telling ourselves in, in, in, in tangent to what it is that we're doing. So if we are, for example, being hugged, Right, that might be a big step for some people, but, but you know, if, if we're having that. Physical contact, even if it's with ourselves. And again, this might not be for everybody, depending on your stage, however safe you feel, but if you are at that stage where you're hugging yourself, it's really about the story that you're telling yourself when you're hugging yourself. Actually, it's really about bringing in that inner child, it's really about bringing in that innocence that you have and I think often people are really battling with this self shame and this guilt and this self loathing and this hatred and this non deserving and you know, this huge self critical narrative that when they come to this idea of, okay just love yourself more, um. I love the idea of gaslighting, honestly. It's, yeah, absolutely. Impossible. It's impossible, and this is one of the things, and I say this to a lot of people who approach me, is that as much as I love the idea of self love, and I would love for self love to be that easy, I have a real problem with it. And the problem is, is that it's, if you've been trauma bonded, It's not going to be possible. Not in that moment, anyway. Like, it can be possible. It can be. But if you're, yeah, yeah. And you're a, oh yeah, absolutely. Thank God. Those moments. And that's the, that's a problem I have with affirmations. If our brain and I have one of my classic favorite lines that people know me for is our amygdala hates when we lie to it. Amy hates when we lie to her. Her job is to keep us safe. And so if we're flooding her with affirmations like I am lovable, I am deserving, I am okay, and our amygdala is freaking out, we're lying to our brain. And guess what happens in so many trauma bonded relationships? We are taught to believe that we're crazy, that we're broken, we are taught to gaslight ourselves. And so running down the world, the street of affirmations, we're gaslighting ourselves because our brain's not on board. Exactly what you just so beautifully describes that we, the alignment. And so it's partnering with the brain and finding that space that feels possible. Yeah. Lovable, maybe not possible right now. And even going, Oh, that's okay. That that actually don't tell Amy his self loving. Giving ourselves permission to be exactly where we are is such a critical part of the process. Yeah. I'm so grateful you brought that up because that alignment is for so many of us. It's hard one. It's such a hard one. And there's always this resistance that happens inside of ourselves. And it is because we are lying to ourselves, right? Because, because the voice of self criticism or the voice that we're not enough, the voice of threat. But that voice, I'm going to just call it the negative voice, right, just to encompass the whole thing. But, but that voice, we take it to be fact. We take it to be 100 percent true. So anything contradicting this fact, we, we very easily dismiss it. We kind of think, Oh, it's a nice idea. Go away. Right. Exactly. Just go away. Like you don't really know this. And, and, and we actually really easily dismiss the idea. And we, we almost feel as if it's condescending and we get more. And if in a weird way, it also actually bumps up the voice of self loathing and bumps up the voice of some person, and it reinforces that, right? Because because it's almost like it's been attacked in a weird way. It's been attacked with love. Who do you think you are? Yeah, exactly. And and and we remain in a status quo. We kind of maintain this homeostatic mechanism to maintain this voice of self criticism. And I suppose going back to this idea of the narrative that we tell ourselves and how do we get it aligned is really about, well, are there, Certain things, potentially, that we can express gratitude towards. And sometimes that can be a bit of an easier step than to go full in in terms of, oh let me hug myself let me love myself because, because, you know, we're in resistance, right. And so it might be things that we want to express gratitude to, so it's it's something that's a bit external to us, but at the same time it's It still regulates us. It still hits our parasympathetic nervous system. It still helps to soothe us in some way. And the more that we can hold on to those stories, it might not be exact, but it gets us a bit closer. It gets us like, you know, just that one step closer, two steps closer, three steps closer. And, and then we can start entering this realm of acceptance. And when I'm talking about acceptance, I'm not talking about complacency. I'm not saying about. I did deserve it. I'm not, I'm not saying any of that, but acceptance is really about recognition of what's happened's happened and what choice do I want to make? How am I going to move forward? Can I forgive myself for being in these situations or can I give, forgive myself for holding on to the self critical voice? But actually understanding that this self criticism, this negative voice, negative story, it was, it was there for the purpose of trying to be good to me. It was trying to make me better. It was counterintuitively, of course, but it was trying to make me a better partner. It was trying to get me love, but actually all I got was misery. It was trying to help me out, but it just didn't know how to. Unfortunately, I just didn't know how to say it. It wasn't taught. And that's why I was so excited about Amy the Amygdala, that personification, that separation of this, she wasn't taught before. It's not that we're bad. It's, oh, wow, Amy's having a really bad day. Or sometimes it's impossible to extend care and tenderness or gentleness to ourselves. My clients always tease me that at the end of our sessions, I'm always like, how can you be gentle today? How can we be gentle? And sometimes I'll say, how can you, how can we be gentle today? What is one thing we can do to be gentle? And sometimes that we is because being gentle towards themselves is impossible, but they can go, wait a minute. I can be gentle towards Amy today because she's just trying her best. My little amygdala is trying so hard to unlearn what she was taught as a child. So how can we be gentle for her? How can we tend to her? Because the other thing about Amy, this is one of the reasons why I love this part of the brain so much, is she's involved in our entire emotional world. And so it's not just the bad stuff, she gets a bad rep, but she's involved in all of the beautiful, amazing, tender, gentle, meaningful moments in our lives. And what you were just saying about gratitude, Sarah, is so real because we can have gratitude. I have gratitude for Zoom because goodness knows we are thousands of miles apart. And here we are having a really important conversation. I have gratitude for that. And later today, if there's a moment where I'm feeling a little dark or despairing, I can borrow that gratitude and bring it into the present moment and lean on it and use it and give it another job. And that's a huge part of the power of neuroplasticity in a really positive way. So often we're told, well, you have to go back and heal the past. You have to go heal the trauma. And I think we talked about this a little bit last time, not necessarily. Sometimes we build forward and give our brain what should have been, but wasn't and borrow those skills and those feelings and those tools that we want from our own experiences From figures that we see in the world who inspire us or who we want to be more like that's a term role model is all about. We can borrow a little bit of that energy and help our brain focus on it and go, Oh, what if I like that? That feels kind of cool. And bring more of that in and teach our brain to go in that direction. And that's a lot of what healing in your hands is all about. It's not just healing the past. It is creating the present and building that future that we want for ourselves. Absolutely peaceful. And I, and I think, and I think that final note, that message about you don't necessarily have to delve into your deepest, darkest places of the past, but actually it's really about what's coming up for you in the present. And the more that we're able to rewire the present experience, the more that we are able to start embracing a new story, And have that new story, that new voice, that narrative align with what's happening in our hearts or in our body. Yes. Our emotions. That, that's really when the game changes. Mm hmm. Because Because we're forever changing and, you know, this in itself can really reflect to every part of our being and, uh, in terms of the ripple effect that it would have on our life is huge. In the sense that we would feel better physically, mentally, emotionally, our relationships would reflect that, our physical health improves, like, you know, this is just so much really and absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. I really wanted to thank you so much for being on here again and joining me. And for anyone listening, I'm going to be including all of the resources that have been mentioned today in the show notes below. And if anybody is needing any further support, again, you can reach out to either of us. The details will be included in the show notes and until next time, take care. Take good care. Be gentle. Be gentle.