Latest / System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation / Guest: Dave Berger (Somatic Experiencing)

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Guest: Dave Berger (Somatic Experiencing) · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over:
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the System Speak Podcast, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to longtime listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Dave Berger is a somatic psychotherapist, physical therapist, and body worker. Dave is a senior international faculty with the Somatic Experiences Trauma Institute. He teaches all levels of the SE training. He is also part of Doctor. Peter Levine's initial legacy faculty being monitored by Doctor.
• 1:20
  Levine to teach SE master classes. Dave's own base relational bodywork and somatic education training for trauma practitioners is an integration of his decades of work in behavioral and physical health. As a therapist, teacher, consultant, and mentor, Dave's passion and commitment to deep healing guide his work. An internationally recognized somatic psychotherapist, Dave brings his knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and function of the body and of psychological and relational dynamics to help clients improve their physical well-being and psychological health. With forty years of clinical practice, Dave provides a unique blend of clinical care for people healing from traumatic injuries and accidents, anxiety, back and neck pain, post traumatic stress disorder, headaches, panic attacks, and chronic pain.
• 2:12
  He uses a diverse array of traditional and complementary healing practices integrating his understanding of the relationship between an individual's emotional challenges, their family systems dynamics, and cultural issues. In therapy, a client may expect to talk, use body awareness relaxation, trauma renegotiation, hands on when appropriate and safe interventions, movement, and exercise to help in their healing process. Family systems, psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychobiology, and a number of other psychotherapeutic theories inform Dave's work as a psychotherapist, understanding the relationship between physiology, body usage, and psychology and emotions. Dave works in integrative continuum in his clinical psychotherapy work. Dave received his bachelor's degree in somatopsychology from the University of Maryland and graduated degrees from Stanford University Physical Therapy and California Institute of Integral Studies Psychology with a specialty in somatic psychology.
• 3:16
  He has been a professor in physical therapy and psychology and has been adjunct faculty at several colleges. Dave is on faculty with the Somatic Experiences Trauma Institute and Ergos Institute. He consults internationally with somatic experiencing and based students and practitioners as well as others interested in the field of somatics. Welcome, Dave Berger.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Great. Great. Where are you? Remind me where you are. Kansas City.
• 3:43
  Oh, okay. Congratulations. I'm in California. I'm in California.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: Thank you. It was a big deal here.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: I owe many of my teaching assistants a coffee next month when I'm there teaching.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Oh my
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: because I was rooting for the 49ers.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow. Yeah. The kids got out of school and everything.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. That's ridiculous.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That's what I thought. I've got six kids. Oh, goodness. So it it should be pretty simple.
• 4:15
  Just very conversational. I'll let you introduce yourself a little bit. I'll ask you sort of what your understanding of trauma and dissociation is just to sort of get a general framework. And then obviously your specialty is this bodywork that I really think they need to hear about. But however you wanna go there and whatever feels natural and comfortable to you is totally okay.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. Great. I thought, yeah, I could talk about base work and ASCE work.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Sure. Okay. So just for us to get started, if you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself to the listeners?
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Certainly. Yeah. My name is Dave Berger, and I am in Northern California, although, like, control over the world. And my background, my professional background includes physical therapy and psychotherapy, but especially in somatic or body oriented psychotherapy. And I have trained in and studied many kinds of body work as well.
• 5:15
  So I really am trained in, licensed in, and work in a continuum of approaches all that interrelate with one another. I do a lot of work with people with post traumatic stress, a lot of people with anxiety, depression, etcetera, and a lot of work with people with chronic pain and the like.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Just to sort of get into things, how do you talk about trauma and dissociation with people you work with?
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: A part that depends on who I'm talking with. If I'm talking with someone who's highly educated, for example, neuroanatomy, behavioral sciences, I will talk about it and the like, I'll talk about it one way. If I'm talking with somebody who is highly educated in other areas, let's say engineering or someone who works in the home and may not may not have a formal education. I'll talk about it differently. So it really varies.
• 6:11
  The I think some of the common threads around trauma are that it it's the result of one of two major things. Either too much happens too quickly, too soon, and we can't respond to it in a way that supports a healthy moving forward in the moment or moving forward in life, and I can get into more details about that, or a situation that is underwhelming such as infant and young child neglect, where the infant, the young child doesn't get their needs met in a timely, efficient, and sufficient way. So that's one major part of it. And as you might be able to pull out from the descriptions of both of those, it we we get traumatized not by so much by the events and experiences we have, but that but our physiological, psychological, emotional, spiritual response to the experiences and the events. So it's really a a body physiological based response that gets interrupted when we're exposed to experiences that can overwhelm us or threaten our our mortality.
• 7:40
  That's that's that's sort of the common threads in in in in trauma and and what trauma is. So the good news on that is that it's it's it's our response too. It's not the events directly. And our our responses and how we're responding and how we're living even presently as if it's the past entirely. And our relationship to past events, that can change.
• 8:10
  The events, the experiences that we've had already, those can't change. Those are already done. So our our our history, our relationship to the past can change. In terms of dissociation, it's really quite complex and in a certain way quite simple, but mostly it's complex. When we are excuse me.
• 8:30
  When we're exposed to situations that are threatening or mortally threatening, we have really hardwired in our nervous system a way to protect ourselves, multiple ways to protect ourselves from getting overwhelmed and from feeling the the pain or the agony of moving toward toward a death state. We have our fight mechanism. We have our flight mechanism. We can connect or socially engage with other people that helps us in a protective way. We can act as if everything's okay, but even though deep on the inside where we may be fear and terror, we sort of appease, we contend and befriend.
• 9:18
  And if none of those work sufficiently or efficiently in a timely enough way, we can go into what's called a freeze or an immobilization response. You know, each of these actions are in the moments of overwhelm or underwhelm are hardwired for us to function, really go into a function and we know what to do, we know how to do it, but not to necessarily think or even feel all the emotions and physical sensations associated with those action states. It's much more efficient to run out of the way of a car than it is to think about it, have feelings about it, and then run out of the way of the car. So we're designed to do, to go into action. So do we we we dissociate from or we leave to the side our emotions, our thinking in order to function rapidly.
• 10:18
  And if those don't work, like I said, we go into a freeze or or a shutdown state, which is a deeper degree of dissociation where we don't feel. We don't feel our bodies. We begin to really not feel alive. And those are all different levels of of dissociation in a certain way. Now we are also designed to come out of that state, all of those states, to transition from fight to settling down, to relaxing, to easing up, to discharge out all that fight response.
• 10:49
  Same with flight. And same with this shutdown state. We're designed to warm up, to feel again, to begin to tremor, begin to shake. So all that energy that that was stored you know, supposed to be used for survival now gets stored, but now can get discharged from our bodies. If we can't go through that whole cycle, then some of those elements can persist really for years.
• 11:18
  And some of those elements include dissociation, really in many ways being out of the body or being not entirely in the body. So if we don't feel our bodies, like when we shut down, or if we are not clearly thinking what's going on during high urgency moments, and we don't really come out of it completely, then we may stay for some people in some level of a dissociated state or it may come and go over time, over decades.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: You really have already given me such a paradigm shift. I think this is important and why I wanted to talk to you because you said that it's not just what happened to us, but our response to it is part of what impacts us. Is that right? Is that what you said?
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. The the response to it is so vitally important. You know, two people could be experiencing the same event. Perhaps, for example, they were at home, hanging out, watching watching the Super Bowl last the other day.
• 12:25
  And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's a loud crash of the wind of a window. Something's thrown through the window, and they don't know who. I'm making this up, but it could could really happen. And and one person responds and says, well, that was interesting. What was that loud sound?
• 12:46
  Oh, I'm seeing broken glass. I think I should call the police. The other person takes a deep shock of inhalation, gets very, very scared, starts to run, and then panics and and stays in shock. Right? Two very different responses to the same event.
• 13:05
  This is not uncommon.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: That's interesting you even use that example. I have six children adopted from foster care. And when the chiefs won, there were crazy people out screaming in the street and running around and, like, normal crazy normalized for the context. Right? And people were shooting off fireworks, and it was bizarre, and all of that was celebratory for winning the Super Bowl.
• 13:31
  But for my children, it was really triggering and terrifying because of the situations they've come from.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Exactly. They have a different and somatic reference point for that kind of sound and chaotic behavior and and the noise level. So their somatic reference point supported a particular kind of response that they had, whereas yours was different. And and I assume we're happy about the way.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Wow. And the somatic piece I wanna come back to, but first, the other thing that you said was that it's not just trauma that happens, but also when, like, with neglect, there's an underdeveloped system.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. Neglect is really a state of shock for an infant and for a young child. It's even it even is for for people, for example, who are medical compromised. They need and so that that shock state that goes on over a long time, particularly with young children, where they're living in a home where the the it's a pervasive environment of neglect.
• 14:37
  Right? Emotional neglect, perhaps nutritional other neglect. And so their their bodies stay in this shock or relative degree of shock activated, hoping state of hoping, but also helpless state that can happen over, you know, unfortunately, for a long period of time. And so they're in this underwhelm where their neurological maturity doesn't necessarily happen in completely. Because for that to happen, we need healthy others to mirror, to learn from how to take care of ourselves.
• 15:19
  I don't mean just take care of ourselves like, you know, like going to the bathroom or getting dressed, but I mean the ability to self soothe. Right? That is not something we are born inherently with. We're born with the hardware for it, but it matures over time in relationship to another person. And if we're neglected, those neural mechanisms that allow for that to develop don't necessarily develop completely.
• 15:46
  So we sort of have, like, a nervous system template, let's say, that we use to navigate the rest of our lives, but that template is not necessarily one of the greatest resilience. Now good news on this is that this is there's a a concept in in neuro called neuroplasticity that the growth of the nervous system, the changeability of the nervous system exists throughout our lifetime. These things are changeable with the proper work. The proper work. So for example, somatic experiencing is one of the best works toward working with trauma trauma and and dysregulated nervous systems.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: So so what you're saying is one of those times where we can really say or survivors can really say, we're not just crazy, and this isn't just in our minds because you're saying our bodies are really impacted by these things long term.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: That's right. People people aren't crazy. People may do crazy things, but they're not crazy. Their their their response is to overwhelming or underwhelming situations, and they are what we call in in the field dysregulated. There's imbalance.
• 17:03
  And so it can come out that kind of imbalance come come out as behaviors that, you know, they can be quite extreme in some circumstances and less extreme than others, but they're not necessarily the most always the most, easy behaviors to be with or be around, but they are changeable.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: So that's how dissociation is not just a mental aspect, but an actual disconnect from our bodies because of the overwhelming and underwhelming?
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: That's right. It's not a mental thought thought out process. It happens as a protective mechanism. So if if I am in a situation that is threatening, mortally threatening, my nervous system, my physiology, my body knows just what to do to minimize. It doesn't always avoid it, but to minimize the feeling state of that, physical feeling state and the emotional feeling state of that.
• 18:02
  And that is a dissociative process. It's very extreme, of course, and we see at one end of the continuum something like the sensitive identity disorder order where they're like walls between personas, and one may not feel or one may feel different or and on and on and on. So they're different. But on the other end, also, if I'm you know, if if we all do this to some extent or another. If I'm distracted when I come in the door with a bag of groceries and the phone rings and my child is calling me, I'm not paying attention where I put my keys down.
• 18:43
  Right? I'm not feeling my body move my hand to put my keys down on the counter. And I wondered why two hours later when I have to go out again, I can't find my keys. Right? It's a a very, very, very mild form of not being all present, being dissociated.
• 19:01
  So you've got a whole range along that continuum.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: That really normalizes it a bit and feels somehow more compassionate, I guess, in understanding it in the context of the entire body. I think maybe there's so much stigma even that we carry within ourselves as survivors that even though we are trying to advocate for ourselves or or the survivor community is obviously in treatment, there's still this stigma of somehow it's my fault or some shame about why I can't just get over this right away or why I can't just snap out of it. But when you're talking about this being a part of a body process, there's more to it than that. It's not just that we're doing something wrong. I said not everything's online.
• 19:53
  So how how do we, as you said, warm up again?
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, a a first good step for for everybody is our own body awareness. Even something like, can you feel your body sitting in the chair right now? And it sometimes sounds like a very silly question. And if sometimes it is.
• 20:21
  And yet a number of people are quite surprised when brought to that awareness possibility, they actually don't feel their body in the chair or don't feel their steps as they walk with the car and on and on and on. And so what we do is we begin to judge you're right. We judge ourselves, and then we and then judgment turns into self blame and shame. Those are tertiary, the the judgment and the shame. Those are tertiary.
• 20:53
  Those aren't primary responses. They can become default as if they're primary, but but they're not primary. And and so a good place to start really is, can I feel myself brushing my teeth in the morning? Do I feel the the water in the shower hitting my body? Can I feel if I can begin to feel my body now, then that's a doorway to begin to change?
• 21:22
  But I I I do wanna say something about doing this on your own. It's very, very helpful. And there is something really important to have a witness and a guide. So a somatic experiencing practitioner, for example, is a guide because there's sort of this other inbuilt mechanism we have that goes something like this. If I survived whatever it was or the many its that there were, if I survived, I must have done something right.
• 21:54
  This is in a cognitive process. This is what we call a procedural memory. A bottom up nonconscious memory. If I survived, I must have done something right. If I do something right did something right, I'll do it again.
• 22:09
  But that adaptive strategy at the time of need often becomes maladaptive later on. And so by having a guy, a therapist, a practitioner, a body worker, who is skilled in trauma work, particularly somatic experiencing from my perspective, although there are many other good trauma works too, like EMDR or sex, helps us navigate a way to to a way out a way out of our typical default responses. The guide helps I well, I I it it's sort of like this. The the the practitioner has the steering wheel, the clutch, the gas, the brake, and the stick shift, but we're using a client's gasoline, client's fuel. So we've gotta be in charge of the car or the boat or the train and where it's going and how fast it's going or how slow it's going, when does he take a rest, using the client's fuel.
• 23:09
  Because a client person that has been traumatized will often do the same thing over and over and over again. So we help we need to help shift that.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: It sounds like when you talk about having a guide or or a practitioner that knows how to help instead of only working on your own, that part of what's helpful is that outside and discernment about what's adaptive and what's maladaptive and even the pacing of things like you talked about. But also with that feedback comes some of the through procedural memory or or just the experience of it, even the experience of some other theories would talk about attunement, for example, or connection. Yeah. Is that Yeah. Is that serve some of that underwhelming and lift it back up to a little more where it should be level kind of feedback?
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It can help. It's just verbal feedback. It's really about help guiding a physiological process. And SE practitioner is skilled in helping monitor, track client's physiological process while talking about emotions, while telling us stories, thinking processes.
• 24:26
  We're mapping, we're tracking, and sensing the client's physiological responses so that they don't go into over or underwhelm or don't go into it too much. The idea is to touch it, barely touch it, allow a little bit of it, and then help shift it back to to the present, to a more resilient place. Not to go deeply into it until because a client won't be ready for that usually, for quite some time.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: In a window of tolerance kind of way?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: It's expanding the window of tolerance. Exactly. Exactly. And then the other thing about having a practitioner, especially when there's relational and emotional and developmental trauma, is that the ability to develop trust and compassion in an environment in the setting where there is a a trustworthy practitioner, a trustworthy other is really vitally important. Can a client feel the feeling of trust?
• 25:30
  Not just I trust you, but actually how do I experience trust, warmth when I'm with it. Right? Because it's really about the client's own somatic experience of that. It's not about the practitioner, but the practitioner supports and provides the environment to the client to get perhaps what they've never got before growing up.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: I know that you train about this and teach about this and do all kinds of things to educate clinicians. What can you introduce sort of your system? Is it called BASE, or or what can you introduce clinicians to a little bit?
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, sure. Yeah. So I teach two trauma trainings. Well, I teach two trainings. Somatic experiencing is a primary one, and it is a trauma training.
• 26:21
  And I've been doing this for many, many, many years. I'm a senior faculty member I'm I'm being mentored to teach some of the founder, Peter Levine, his master classes. And then I also teach a bodywork training for trauma practitioners. So it's not a trauma training per se, but it is a a body work and touch and movement training for practitioners who are psychotherapists wanting to add more touch to their practices, body workers who wanna refine their skills, movement educators, yoga teachers, etcetera. And the basis of what I was just talking about earlier is from somatic experiencing.
• 27:07
  With base work, body work and somatic education, which is a relational body work that I have founded on two main pillars. The first one is the relational component of touch and what I call the physiological conversation that a client and practitioner have. It's like the physiological conversation a parent and an infant have. Parents and infant don't speak in a verbal language. They speak in a physiological language, and they they can read each other in a nonconscious, nonverbal way.
• 27:45
  And it's the same deep relational attunement that I teach practitioners to have when they're doing touch work. And it's done that's done vis a vis the other pillar of the work, which is very detailed, refined touch work with organs and structures and tissues of the body and the whole structure of the body because those go into a dysregulated state as well. It's not just the entire nervous system, but its actual structures in the body as well. And when they can come out, when they feel met, really met, they can come out of their dysregulated state and send sensory information back up into the brain saying, hey. You know, I feel better.
• 28:33
  You don't have to be on high alert anymore. Or I feel better. It's okay to relax and receive because what you're what I'm receiving is comforting.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: I feel like you've said something really big. We've so recently on the podcast, so our listeners have heard a lot about attunement and a lot about mother hunger and a lot about some of these connection pieces, but I feel like you just answered something I didn't even realize that I've been asking or that some of the listeners have been asking. You're saying that that attunement experience isn't just, like, emotional needs being noticed and reflected and met, you're saying it's even at a physiological level and that's why touch is so important and why touch can be so healing when it's appropriate and safe and in this context that it's so powerful because there's such a physiological actual need for that attunement at that level.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right. A true attunement is beneath emotions. It's the physiological connection, conversation that, that is, I mean, really quite literally felt in the body. Our body feels. Our brain interprets those feeling states into affect, and those are expressed through emotions.
• 30:00
  So it's what the body feels, and and that is physiological. And, yes, it can be through direct touch, hands on, but it can also be because not with hands on. Because there are times when touch direct touch work is inappropriate or a client's not ready for it. So we have to read that readiness as well. And and and and and the feeling state in the body of the body can can be experienced differently with or without direct touch.
• 30:36
  So so practitioner needs to know when and how to use appropriate touch. Yes.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: How do you approach this with or teach clinicians or talk with survivors either way. How do you approach this with people who both feel relieved that there's an answer that explains something they didn't even have words for it almost in a pre verbal way, but also have those walls up because touch has not been safe, whether it's in any kind of context, even just talking about it?
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Well, if you think about our bodies, there are different layers of protection that we have. Our skin is our physical boundary to whatever is beneath our skin. But we can feel, for example, when when a hand is coming toward our leg from a few inches out from the leg if we're paying attention. There's actually pressure changes that happen in the skin as something's approaching them. You know, that's how like, for example, you may not know, you might not see a wall that you're walking next to, but if you get too close, you sort of move around it even though you weren't looking at it.
• 31:49
  We know. We we pick up that information. Every organ, every structure in the body has a electromagnetic field, a vibration field around it. The heart, for example, is measurable up to 15 feet away from it. So we have keen receptors.
• 32:08
  Part of working with people who might be ready, aren't ready, is working off the body first, not you know, some people call it an energy field. Maybe that's what it is. Some people call it a field of resonance. Maybe that's what it is. Some people call it a social field.
• 32:24
  That's another term for it. I like to call it the space between. Luke Kozolino calls it a social synapse. There are a number of different terms for the same thing. And it it's it's a it's a place between the someone's skin and the next person's skin.
• 32:41
  And that might be the appropriate place to start, or it might be walking, you know, several feet away and playing with distance and boundaries and seeing what a client is comfortable with based on their physiological responses. And then eventually, if appropriate, when appropriate, and in an appropriate way, a way that is safe for clients, physically, emotionally, spiritually safe for a client who may move to a more direct physical contact.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: That's so powerful. How do how would a clinician find out more about your trainings?
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Well, that's very easy. Www.daveburger.net has all kinds of information about me, about the base trainings, SE trainings, etcetera. So that's a very simple resource. DaveBurger.net.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: How would a client or a survivor, how would they find a protect practitioner that knew about this safely?
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Well, if they were interested, they through my website, they could drop me an email, and I can let them know about practitioners in their areas who may have trained. And then in terms of somatic experiencing, traumahealing.org has a directory of practitioners that are listed in it. So that's a that's a resource for SC. Dave Burger dot net's a resource for my work.
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: You've really shifted my paradigm. Sorry. I'm having some trouble processing because you've just I feel like you've opened up what I understood about trauma and what I understood about dissociation and what I understood about attunement and healing, and it's just so much bigger and deeper than what I realized.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the an interesting thing is that these are all very natural processes that we have. And that as we heal, healing means different things to different people.
• 34:35
  In in many ways, as we heal, I think the similarity is that we develop an ability to be flexible, be more resilient, have a greater window of tolerance, should be able to tolerate more without getting thrown off, activated, dysregulated. And that's how we grow. That's what that's what growth allows for.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Why does that throw us
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: off if it's a good thing?
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, like, you're feeling thrown off right now? It well, it throws us. It does well, if our paradigm is shifted, it can throw us off for a little bit because we're taking in new information. But, you know, if our window of tolerance is not very wide, then a little bit can throw us off. Right?
• 35:15
  We can get dysregulated at just a little bit. But as our our we become more expansive, we have greater capacity for more, then we won't get thrown off and won't get as thrown off.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: So that's true of the somatic work too. They can learn to tolerate it or become more used to it and able to handle more of that input in good and healthy ways?
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: That's right. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Right.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: What else do either clinicians or survivors need to know?
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: You know, I'd say two real important takeaways are that trauma isn't a life sentence, and they're quoting one of my teachers and mentors, Peter Levine. Trauma is not a life sentence. It is changeable. We're changeable. And with change can come a lot of really cool, unexpected new things and something to look forward to.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: All of this sounds so foreign.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Well well, that's good. That's good because that might perks some people's curiosity and interest and and perhaps even maybe potential for I'll make up a word here. Alivability. Aliveness.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: Well and also while I still have you with us, they I know that you are known a little bit for some humor and just being pretty bright about things. How do you use that in therapy? How does that play a role in recovery?
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Well, there are two reasons I I well, maybe three reasons I use humor. One, I'm just sort of naturally humorous. Although, I don't know if everybody would think I'm humorous, but I do. You know, humor humor does several things. It does help lighten things up a little bit.
• 37:02
  And for practitioners, if you're gonna be a trauma practitioner, you've gotta have some sense of humor. Otherwise, you get it's just too much. It's too much. You need to have some sense of humor. When we're when we laugh, our breathing changes.
• 37:17
  It we have an oxygen carbon dioxide exchange, and that helps regulate begin regulating our physiology. So it's really important for that. And maybe even most importantly, if humor is used appropriately, received appropriately, there's a there's a connection that people feel through humor. This is why we like watching comedians. This is why we like these such things is because there's a connection and and really, you know, an antidote to to trauma is connection, social connection.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: So it's almost another example of somatic work that's hands off because it's through the humor.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You know?
• 38:01
  And and it's funny. It's funny. I guess humor is funny. But we we have we have this phrase in in the English language at least. Right?
• 38:10
  I'm so touched, and it and it's often associated with something emotional touching. But it we're we're often touched with humor too. We're so touched. And that's a phrase because we neurologically interpret that very similarly to real connected physical touch, untouched. Right?
• 38:31
  So there is a way to have touch without physical contact or feel touched without physical contact.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: I think that this is an area that I mean, this podcast talks a lot about trauma. It's a trauma podcast, but I think that there are so many survivors out there that still are not aware that they're even in a body almost. So to intentionally to think that there's a method out there or a way to intentionally connect with your body, I think we don't even realize that it's on the map, so to speak, that that's even a possibility.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. We I I and we, other SE practitioners, face practitioners hear this a lot. Oh, I didn't know this was possible. Oh, I have a body.
• 39:22
  Oh, I didn't even know I had a body. Where I I experienced my I've always experienced my body this way, but now that I can feel something different and I feel this, this is more who I really am.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: It's fascinating to me. I you've given me a lot to think about. I really appreciate it.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Well, great. I'm I'm I'm glad. That's that's wonderful. You know, when we're curious, when we're interested in something and curious, it's really important. That's also another antidote to well, anxiety and fear and trauma.
• 39:54
  It's you can't really do true curiosity and anxiety at the same time. They're almost mutually exclusive. They're different states of physiology. So when we're curious, like, oh, that's so interesting. We're soft.
• 40:10
  We're appropriately receptive. We're waiting. We're engaged, which is very, very different than a trauma body, a trauma environment.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: Because when we're engaged, we're connected instead of disconnected. And when we're curious, we are receptive instead of withdrawing from fear.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: And that's why I think that they are, in many ways, polarities. Right? Polar opposites in many ways.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for talking to us today.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: You are very welcome. Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: Thank you for listening. Your support of the podcast, the workbooks, and the community means so much to us as we try to create something together that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing, and you can join us on the community at www.systemsspeak.com. We'll see you there.