Latest / The Dr. Sarah Hensley Show / Episode 7, Season 2: When the Past Keeps Bleeding In: The Science & Stories of Retraumatization
Transcript
- 0:11Speaker 1: Welcome to the Love Dog Podcast. I am your co
- 0:14Speaker 1: host Raina Butcher here with our host doctor Sarience.
- 0:18Speaker 2: Like, what's up, what's up? How are you?
- 0:20Speaker 3: Oh, I'm okay, just over here with the hurt bag.
- 0:23Speaker 3: You're old lady.
- 0:25Speaker 2: She's got an old lady back, and I have an
- 0:27Speaker 2: old lady name yep.
- 0:28Speaker 3: And you know the crazy thing is, it's like I
- 0:32Speaker 3: bent down to get something today before I did my workout,
- 0:35Speaker 3: and that's when I was like, ah, all right.
- 0:37Speaker 1: We never hurt ourselves like doing things that you would
- 0:40Speaker 1: think you would hurt yourself doing. It's always like sleeping.
- 0:42Speaker 3: Wrong, yeah, or picking up your phone off the floor
- 0:45Speaker 3: or something.
- 0:46Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've got a bumny too. We're just officially there.
- 0:49Speaker 3: Yeah. There was this video a long time ago and
- 0:53Speaker 3: I laughed so hard because my husband's a veteran and
- 0:55Speaker 3: he has to go to the VA. But it was
- 0:57Speaker 3: like going to the VA with like a new complaint
- 1:00Speaker 3: and it was like, oh, you just have a shitty
- 1:01Speaker 3: knee now, like I don't know what to do, Like
- 1:03Speaker 3: there's really nothing wrong with you. It's just kind of
- 1:06Speaker 3: a shitty And that's.
- 1:08Speaker 1: Just the threshold and everything kind of it's funny because
- 1:10Speaker 1: I was watching something a video Trey Kennedy, and hopefully
- 1:14Speaker 1: I can mention his name, but I'm giving him credit.
- 1:17Speaker 1: He did a video on like thirty five and I
- 1:19Speaker 1: was watching it.
- 1:20Speaker 2: I was like, dude, you don't even know.
- 1:23Speaker 3: I am almost forty four. So I'm like in that
- 1:26Speaker 3: mid forties range. And they say that like you accelerate
- 1:30Speaker 3: your aging at certain points, and it's forty five is
- 1:33Speaker 3: one of.
- 1:34Speaker 2: Them, and sixty excellent.
- 1:36Speaker 3: Yeah, start to approach that, like I get hurt easier,
- 1:40Speaker 3: and just like I need to make sure I get
- 1:42Speaker 3: my eight hours of sleep. If I don't get my
- 1:43Speaker 3: eight hours, and I'm like, you can't function, I can't
- 1:46Speaker 3: function as well. And I used to be when I
- 1:47Speaker 3: had horrible insomnia from trauma, which is something that we're
- 1:52Speaker 3: going to talk about today, I could. I mean I
- 1:55Speaker 3: survived on such a little sleep, and like when my
- 1:57Speaker 3: kids were little and not sleeping, I was like, how
- 1:59Speaker 3: do I do that? Because now if it's just like
- 2:01Speaker 3: seven hours, I'm like, oh man, I could have really
- 2:03Speaker 3: used that extra hour.
- 2:04Speaker 1: Same even thirty minutes, fifteen minutes right snows as many
- 2:10Speaker 1: times as I possibly can.
- 2:11Speaker 3: Be able to never hit this snooze button.
- 2:13Speaker 2: Yeah, that's Josh too.
- 2:14Speaker 3: He will jump right out of bed and we will
- 2:17Speaker 3: get going like immediately, and he's like, well, I figure,
- 2:20Speaker 3: what's fifteen more minutes going to do. I'm like, my
- 2:21Speaker 3: brain just thinks that it will do something great.
- 2:24Speaker 2: Same, I'm the same way.
- 2:26Speaker 1: But you know when you're when you have trauma and
- 2:28Speaker 1: your adrenals are so you know, just depleted. Yeah, and
- 2:34Speaker 1: so actually that's what we're going to talk about today,
- 2:36Speaker 1: not specifically trauma, but retraumatization.
- 2:39Speaker 3: Re traumatization, because so many of my clients go through
- 2:44Speaker 3: re traumatization because they are repeating their insecure attachment patterns,
- 2:49Speaker 3: because they are finding partners that put them through the
- 2:53Speaker 3: same type of hell over and over again. And even
- 2:56Speaker 3: if someone has maybe a narcissistic partner and then they
- 3:00Speaker 3: jump to a dismissive avoidant, which I see all the time.
- 3:02Speaker 3: I see narcissists to a DA because people are so
- 3:08Speaker 3: like I should say, bamboozled by the stoicism and the
- 3:13Speaker 3: emotional control of the DA at first that they're like, oh,
- 3:17Speaker 3: this is so opposite of the narcissist.
- 3:18Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna say, I think it feels like it
- 3:20Speaker 1: displays a sense of safety.
- 3:21Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes them at first feel very safe until
- 3:24Speaker 3: they become profoundly emotionally neglectful, and then they're re traumatized.
- 3:29Speaker 3: And although their trauma might not happen again in the
- 3:32Speaker 3: same way, some of it is overlapping. Like a narcissist
- 3:36Speaker 3: can be very neglectful, so can a da So those
- 3:39Speaker 3: specific circuits are activated, and we just need to talk
- 3:42Speaker 3: about retraumatization in the brain because it is a different beast. Yeah,
- 3:45Speaker 3: and your initial trauma. And a lot of people doubt
- 3:47Speaker 3: about my.
- 3:48Speaker 1: First question, like what's the biggest difference between initial trauma
- 3:52Speaker 1: and then retraumatization.
- 3:53Speaker 3: Right, Well, if you have initial trauma, even if it's
- 3:56Speaker 3: complex trauma and it's not repeated after you get out
- 4:00Speaker 3: of the situation, like say you had a really bad
- 4:05Speaker 3: upbringing and your parents were really abusive, and then you
- 4:09Speaker 3: actually find a really secure partner, which is a little
- 4:11Speaker 3: bit more unlikely because you're likely to come out with
- 4:13Speaker 3: attachment insecurities that would make you pick an insecure partner.
- 4:16Speaker 3: But you have people sometimes that just land in the
- 4:19Speaker 3: right hands early enough that they can do some healing
- 4:24Speaker 3: work because that person who they're with creates such a
- 4:27Speaker 3: safe space that they're able through therapy and through inner
- 4:31Speaker 3: work to overcome their childhood right, and so they have
- 4:35Speaker 3: these trauma circuits in their brain. I want everybody to
- 4:38Speaker 3: think of a trauma circuit as like a groove in
- 4:40Speaker 3: the brain. Like if you were to walk across your
- 4:42Speaker 3: lawn from your front porch to your car every morning
- 4:45Speaker 3: in the driveway, if you walk that same path, it
- 4:48Speaker 3: like digs a groove. Right. That's what happens every time
- 4:53Speaker 3: you have an old circuit from old intimacy patterns, whether
- 5:00Speaker 3: those are from your caregivers or from adult relationships, that
- 5:02Speaker 3: is essentially lit back up because it fires, right, because
- 5:06Speaker 3: there's some stimulus or something about the interaction that your
- 5:10Speaker 3: subconscious goes, oh wait, no, that happened to us in
- 5:12Speaker 3: the past, and it's the same thing, right. So the
- 5:15Speaker 3: initial trauma, it's sort of like getting cut in the
- 5:17Speaker 3: same place one time, and then you leave it alone,
- 5:20Speaker 3: and then you do some work, You baby it, you
- 5:22Speaker 3: doctor it, maybe you get stitches, whatever, you might come
- 5:26Speaker 3: out of the minimal scar. Right now, let's say you
- 5:30Speaker 3: take a razor blade to that scar over and over
- 5:32Speaker 3: and over again. You're gonna start damaging nerves. You're gonna
- 5:34Speaker 3: start sensitizing the area around the cut. So these pathways
- 5:40Speaker 3: like expand and they become more sensitized over and over again,
- 5:45Speaker 3: which makes the healing work harder later because you have
- 5:49Speaker 3: to understand that it's like a physical injury happening over
- 5:54Speaker 3: top of the same place. So it's a neural circuit
- 5:57Speaker 3: that is getting reused. And we know that what fires
- 6:01Speaker 3: together wires together. So if you're lighting those circuits up,
- 6:04Speaker 3: those neural connections inside of those circuits are getting tightly
- 6:07Speaker 3: wound every single time.
- 6:09Speaker 1: That's why it's so important to learn things the first time. Yes,
- 6:13Speaker 1: we don't be one of those people that likes to
- 6:16Speaker 1: learn things the hard way.
- 6:17Speaker 2: Yeah, like I take or like me, where it.
- 6:20Speaker 1: Takes so many times or so many bad relationships before
- 6:23Speaker 1: you're like okay, no more.
- 6:24Speaker 3: Right before, your brain is just going to tell you enough.
- 6:27Speaker 3: I mean eventually, if you don't have enough, your brain
- 6:30Speaker 3: is going to say enough, yeah, and you're gonna end
- 6:32Speaker 3: up with some kind of disability or autoimmune disease or something.
- 6:37Speaker 3: You're gonna end up with something because the body and
- 6:39Speaker 3: the brain can only handle so much relational trauma. Because
- 6:43Speaker 3: access to safe connection is the core fundamental human need
- 6:47Speaker 3: aside from safety and food and physiological needs, like access
- 6:52Speaker 3: to safe connection is a fundamental human need. And when
- 6:55Speaker 3: it is denied from us and actually we learn the opposite,
- 6:59Speaker 3: that connection is so unsafe. I mean, our brain just
- 7:03Speaker 3: becomes profoundly changed. And like the tipping point is what
- 7:07Speaker 3: we call central sensitization. And I've talked about this on
- 7:10Speaker 3: previous episodes, but I'll just remind my listeners of what
- 7:12Speaker 3: that is. It is essentially where the brain becomes so
- 7:16Speaker 3: oversensitized that the smallest little environmental triggers will set off
- 7:22Speaker 3: funky firing. So the brain actually can start misfiring a lot.
- 7:27Speaker 3: Think about it, like a car engine that's like puttering
- 7:29Speaker 3: out right, it's gonna misfire. Maybe it starts up once
- 7:32Speaker 3: and then it doesn't start and then the transmission slips
- 7:36Speaker 3: or like you know, who.
- 7:37Speaker 1: Knows, right, So, what are some real life examples of that,
- 7:40Speaker 1: like ailments showing up in the body?
- 7:42Speaker 3: Yeah, ailments showing up in the body. I think one
- 7:44Speaker 3: of the biggest signs that you have central sensitization is migraines.
- 7:48Speaker 3: I know we've talked about that ad nauseum as as
- 7:51Speaker 3: well as gut issues. But skin issues are such a big, big,
- 7:55Speaker 3: big like aladinia, which is essentially when your skin like
- 8:00Speaker 3: you can start you touch it and it feels like
- 8:02Speaker 3: pain or it feels like burning. We which we have
- 8:05Speaker 3: that experience.
- 8:05Speaker 1: It's like why do I feel sunburned when I just
- 8:09Speaker 1: like this?
- 8:10Speaker 3: And it even can be what people just laughingly joke
- 8:13Speaker 3: about is like I'm so overstimulated, like the lights are
- 8:17Speaker 3: too bright or people are too many people are talking. Yes,
- 8:20Speaker 3: that's a fundamental condition associated with like autism and ADHD,
- 8:24Speaker 3: but also can be in trauma survivors, especially people who
- 8:26Speaker 3: have had multiple traumas or been re traumatized, and these
- 8:30Speaker 3: circuits have been lit up and lit up and lit up,
- 8:32Speaker 3: and you have HPA access to regulation and sensual sensitization.
- 8:35Speaker 1: Yeah, so I have really really strong sense sensitivity. So
- 8:41Speaker 1: like my sense of smell, my sense of sight, my
- 8:44Speaker 1: sense of touch, all those are hyper hyper sensitive.
- 8:48Speaker 3: Let's put these clues together. You've had a lot of trauma.
- 8:51Speaker 3: Why do you think your nervous system behaves that way?
- 8:53Speaker 3: Why would your senses be heightened since.
- 8:56Speaker 2: You've had trauma, Because it's stored trauma.
- 8:58Speaker 3: It is stored trauma. But think about it from an
- 9:01Speaker 3: evolutionary perspective of trying to keep you alive, survival, survival, right,
- 9:05Speaker 3: because it's trying to make you uber aware of what
- 9:09Speaker 3: is around you to try to keep you safe. And
- 9:13Speaker 3: I mean I have it too, and I actually freaking
- 9:16Speaker 3: beat it till this last year. And if you don't
- 9:20Speaker 3: know what I'm talking about, go what two episodes back?
- 9:23Speaker 3: So what can I say? And then you will know why? Yeah?
- 9:27Speaker 2: And I think this is you know this is.
- 9:30Speaker 1: It correlates with the last two episodes that we did
- 9:33Speaker 1: on our series about family court because so many times
- 9:39Speaker 1: when you're getting a divorce sometimes the divorces can last years, years,
- 9:46Speaker 1: and child custody cases and hearings you're in and out
- 9:50Speaker 1: of court.
- 9:51Speaker 2: And I know about what? Yeah, what's up with that?
- 9:54Speaker 3: Why?
- 9:54Speaker 1: And I mean even with me having Meg on and
- 9:59Speaker 1: I don't think she you would care that I said
- 10:01Speaker 1: this because she knows it. You could tell that what
- 10:04Speaker 1: she's been through over the past year and a half.
- 10:06Speaker 1: And again, if you haven't watched that episode it's called strip,
- 10:08Speaker 1: it's two episodes ago. I highly recommend her nervous system
- 10:14Speaker 1: is shot.
- 10:14Speaker 3: It's shot. Yeah, And you can tell.
- 10:16Speaker 2: Her voice is shaky. Yeah, she's very breathless.
- 10:18Speaker 3: Yeah, and she'll tell you it is. Yeah, like she'll play.
- 10:21Speaker 3: She speaks about that on our platform, like, yeah, you know,
- 10:23Speaker 3: she's had a lot of central sensitization, a lot of
- 10:26Speaker 3: the skin stuff where the skin just starts behaving in
- 10:29Speaker 3: really bizarre ways. And she's had it all. She's had
- 10:32Speaker 3: all the things.
- 10:32Speaker 1: And that makes sense because I mean, you're really talking
- 10:35Speaker 1: about the biggest organs in the body.
- 10:38Speaker 3: And so when you're when you are triggered and you
- 10:42Speaker 3: go into a level one response, which is fight or flight.
- 10:45Speaker 3: Level two is dorsal vaguel freeze, okay, which a lot
- 10:49Speaker 3: of my more avoidant folks live in more of a
- 10:51Speaker 3: functional fealous of the right, whereas more anxious folks are
- 10:55Speaker 3: familiar with fight and flight. Your immune system actually changes
- 10:59Speaker 3: and it sends out all of these like inflammatory side
- 11:02Speaker 3: of kinds and inflammation and starts firing because it's preparing
- 11:06Speaker 3: for an actual physical wound. Because your brain doesn't know
- 11:09Speaker 3: the difference between an emotional wound and a physical one.
- 11:11Speaker 3: It does not know the difference, it prepares itself like
- 11:14Speaker 3: a like an attack of any kind, right, And so
- 11:19Speaker 3: it's just crazy the things that the body will do.
- 11:22Speaker 3: But central sensitization is essentially being oversensitive in just about
- 11:27Speaker 3: every way. So you become emotionally over sensitive, which means
- 11:30Speaker 3: that little triggers make you feel stressed out and out
- 11:33Speaker 3: of control. Your body is over sensitive, so your senses
- 11:38Speaker 3: can be heightened and.
- 11:41Speaker 1: You don't respond to stress, don't respond.
- 11:42Speaker 3: To stress as well, and your sensory systems can get
- 11:46Speaker 3: so bad off they start misfiring. That's what the bestibular
- 11:49Speaker 3: migraine was for me. So that's why people get dizzy
- 11:52Speaker 3: or they get you know, headaches or vertigo or whatever.
- 11:56Speaker 3: And retraumatization all it does. It's like taking a razor
- 12:01Speaker 3: blade and just swiping it right over that old wound
- 12:06Speaker 3: and everything gets amplified. And eventually it's like that wound
- 12:09Speaker 3: gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Well, these circuits get
- 12:11Speaker 3: bigger and bigger and bigger, these grooves in the brain.
- 12:14Speaker 3: And I know specifically what happened in my case was
- 12:17Speaker 3: I had this three years of bliss, three years of
- 12:19Speaker 3: an incredibly safe relationship after I had spent a whole
- 12:23Speaker 3: year doing healing work, somebody who just was very sensitive
- 12:27Speaker 3: to me as a person and loved me in a
- 12:30Speaker 3: safe way and then boom, what happened to me happened,
- 12:35Speaker 3: And it was so similar to the manipulation and the
- 12:39Speaker 3: past abuse of the system that my ex engaged in
- 12:42Speaker 3: that I just know there were certain circuits that although
- 12:45Speaker 3: they had been diminished and I hadn't had to call
- 12:47Speaker 3: upon them, which is why my symptoms were gone and
- 12:52Speaker 3: they all returned because they're all tied up in that
- 12:55Speaker 3: same groove and that same pathway associated with someone's trying
- 12:59Speaker 3: to hurt me and after my kids. Somebody's trying to,
- 13:01Speaker 3: you know, drop me through the court system. Someone's trying
- 13:03Speaker 3: to you know, just punish meulate.
- 13:07Speaker 2: Me, attack, attack you. I mean, that's what it feels,
- 13:09Speaker 2: just to.
- 13:09Speaker 3: Grade my sense of safety and my sense of safe
- 13:11Speaker 3: connection and security in the world.
- 13:13Speaker 1: And we so, you know, something happened to me over
- 13:16Speaker 1: the weekend, and we've talked about it. We talked about
- 13:18Speaker 1: it on the way here, you know, with one of
- 13:22Speaker 1: my exes. And you know, it's interesting because just when
- 13:27Speaker 1: we crossed the finish line of you know, our son
- 13:32Speaker 1: being eighteen, and there's some healing that took place. I
- 13:36Speaker 1: feel like I even talked about that on an episode
- 13:39Speaker 1: where like we were able to have this exchange of like, okay,
- 13:44Speaker 1: we did this, you know handshake, all right, Wow, that
- 13:48Speaker 1: was really healing, simple.
- 13:49Speaker 3: After eight years of no contact, after eight.
- 13:52Speaker 1: Years of like having me blocked, and I was like,
- 13:55Speaker 1: this is really good, Like we're making you know, we're
- 13:57Speaker 1: making we're covering some ground here and then you know,
- 14:01Speaker 1: lo and behold over the weekend, it was just and
- 14:04Speaker 1: it was like you said, like you let your guard down,
- 14:07Speaker 1: and then it happens again, and it's almost worse. I spiraled,
- 14:13Speaker 1: not to give him any power because he doesn't deserve it,
- 14:17Speaker 1: but you know, he basically threatened me with something, and
- 14:23Speaker 1: I was extremely triggered. And here were the responses in
- 14:28Speaker 1: my body. Heartbeat, out of control, like out of my chest,
- 14:34Speaker 1: and immediate, like immediate like as soon as the text
- 14:37Speaker 1: came through, body temperature dropped so like shivers, brain fog
- 14:44Speaker 1: and really just like emotional reactivity.
- 14:49Speaker 2: And I wish so badly.
- 14:51Speaker 1: And I told you this on the way here, that
- 14:52Speaker 1: my husband had been home because Josh knows how to
- 14:55Speaker 1: calm me down and because he again he's secure, he's
- 15:00Speaker 1: our born secure, and he's able to say, you know,
- 15:03Speaker 1: take that breath, walk away, you know, don't respond right now,
- 15:07Speaker 1: think about what you want to say. And you know,
- 15:12Speaker 1: I'll say this because I don't want to give him
- 15:15Speaker 1: any power over me in any way, because his threats
- 15:19Speaker 1: and his lies like they were old a long time ago. Dude,
- 15:23Speaker 1: Like just stop, just stop.
- 15:25Speaker 2: Like it's like if you know that you're full of cry.
- 15:28Speaker 1: Yeah, and if if you feel the need to do
- 15:30Speaker 1: what you said you were going to do, I mean,
- 15:34Speaker 1: fucking bring it, like that's what I yeah, just bring
- 15:37Speaker 1: it because I'm not afraid of you anymore. Like I'm grown,
- 15:40Speaker 1: I'm married, Like I'm happy, I'm secure for the most part.
- 15:44Speaker 3: Gosh, your son is eighteen.
- 15:46Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean like our son is raised, like
- 15:49Speaker 1: we can just kind of like he can yeah yeah,
- 15:52Speaker 1: like flipe our hands clean of it and just be
- 15:54Speaker 1: like have a nice life. With that said, I still
- 15:58Speaker 1: have a right to tell my story as I.
- 16:00Speaker 3: Say fits I said it in that episode. What can
- 16:03Speaker 3: I say? We have every right to share our lived
- 16:07Speaker 3: experiences because they happen to us. We are not lying.
- 16:12Speaker 3: We are not committing any defamation because it's true. It's
- 16:16Speaker 3: not defamation if it's not If it's if it's true,
- 16:19Speaker 3: it's not defamation. And it's not our job to protect
- 16:25Speaker 3: the reputations of people that gravely hurt us. We're talking
- 16:29Speaker 3: like they treated us a little poorly. We're talking about
- 16:32Speaker 3: like severe types of abuse, right, And I feel this
- 16:37Speaker 3: way so much about again my husband's family, Like I
- 16:42Speaker 3: feel I am so torn a lot at the time
- 16:44Speaker 3: because I'm like, my whole platform was built off of,
- 16:47Speaker 3: like me recovering from this horrific abuse and everything I
- 16:51Speaker 3: endured in the family court system and finding a happy
- 16:53Speaker 3: relationship and the work I had to do to make
- 16:56Speaker 3: myself secure to make that happen. I can't tell that
- 16:58Speaker 3: story unless I've told you where I've been.
- 17:01Speaker 1: Right, Like, how do you show up authentically without telling
- 17:03Speaker 1: that story? Which is the whole foundation of this podcast.
- 17:07Speaker 1: This is the whole thing that we've said along all along,
- 17:09Speaker 1: is that we like, this is our chance to come
- 17:11Speaker 1: on and not just speak for ourselves, like we know
- 17:14Speaker 1: y'all have heard our stories. This is speaking for the
- 17:17Speaker 1: masses and the people that maybe don't have a platform,
- 17:20Speaker 1: and so that we can and they're screaming into a pillow, yeah,
- 17:23Speaker 1: so that we can cultivate change, right, So that we
- 17:26Speaker 1: can cultivate healing in the world, okay, And so people,
- 17:29Speaker 1: I want people to trust me on their journey, not
- 17:31Speaker 1: just because I was trained in school for how to
- 17:34Speaker 1: do this or because I've been doing it for so long,
- 17:37Speaker 1: but because I've lived it and I and that is
- 17:40Speaker 1: what it took for me to actually change. I actually
- 17:43Speaker 1: had to hit rock bottom and live with my choices,
- 17:49Speaker 1: which it's hard. Again, it's hard to admit, but i'ms
- 17:51Speaker 1: a freaking volunteer for a lot of it.
- 17:53Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'll say that too.
- 17:55Speaker 1: I mean, I absolutely participated in the toxicity that was.
- 18:04Speaker 2: Me and my ex, and that I know how to
- 18:07Speaker 2: take accountability.
- 18:08Speaker 3: There's that internal shame though, tied up in that right,
- 18:12Speaker 3: So becoming securely attached largely, not all all of it,
- 18:17Speaker 3: but largely is about healing internalized shame, which is one
- 18:21Speaker 3: of the best things you can do for your nervous system.
- 18:23Speaker 3: It's not the only thing, but it's one of the
- 18:25Speaker 3: best things because shame is sort of like it's it's
- 18:28Speaker 3: like this cockroach. Yeah, it just you can't kill it.
- 18:31Speaker 3: You think you've killed them all, and then it just
- 18:33Speaker 3: more shame just comes out of the corner, right, and
- 18:35Speaker 3: you're like, oh, dang it, it didn't get it all.
- 18:38Speaker 2: And that happened, I mean that happened, this, it did happen.
- 18:41Speaker 3: This speakin I mean the amount of shame. I know
- 18:43Speaker 3: you felt like this huge shame response because he shames you,
- 18:47Speaker 3: because it calls you.
- 18:47Speaker 1: Horrible names and lies about things and says awful. There's
- 18:51Speaker 1: this element of shame too when you're re traumatized. This
- 18:54Speaker 1: is a big thing. When you're re traumatized or retriggered
- 18:57Speaker 1: by someone who doesn't deserve to take any of your power,
- 19:01Speaker 1: you feel shame because you.
- 19:02Speaker 3: Allowed it to happen, right, even if it's short lived,
- 19:06Speaker 3: And that's a good thing about your situation, is like
- 19:08Speaker 3: you can wash your hands of this.
- 19:10Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, yeah, I don't know.
- 19:13Speaker 3: I don't feel like I'm ever gonna be safe until
- 19:16Speaker 3: all my kids are at least eighteen. Yeah, I don't
- 19:18Speaker 3: feel like I'm gonna feel safe. And I gotta work
- 19:21Speaker 3: on that because and I'm working on it, and and
- 19:24Speaker 3: this is the thing. It's like, I know this about retraumatization,
- 19:29Speaker 3: and I'm just like, but I still question why is
- 19:31Speaker 3: this happening? As soon as like the legal battle with
- 19:34Speaker 3: what happened to me was over, like just the symptoms
- 19:38Speaker 3: just started ramping up like I couldn't relax, and I'm like, okay,
- 19:43Speaker 3: trauma expert, nervous nervous system healing expert, sit down and
- 19:47Speaker 3: apply what you know. And I was like, yep, you
- 19:50Speaker 3: know what. This is happening because I'm finally trying to
- 19:54Speaker 3: feel safe and trying to relax and my nervous system
- 19:57Speaker 3: has become resensitized and it's like, Nope, you can't. You
- 19:59Speaker 3: can't relaxgerous. If you relax, something could jump out of
- 20:02Speaker 3: the corner and get you and you didn't predict it.
- 20:04Speaker 3: Therefore you couldn't be safe. So you need to be
- 20:06Speaker 3: on guard twenty four to seven, three sixty five. And
- 20:08Speaker 3: I'm like, you know what, fuck that? No, yeah, I'm
- 20:10Speaker 3: not doing that. I'm not living my life like this.
- 20:12Speaker 3: So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna sit with
- 20:14Speaker 3: my chest tightness and I'm gonna welcome it and I'm
- 20:16Speaker 3: gonna breathe through it, and I'm gonna use my tools
- 20:18Speaker 3: that I know work, and I'm gonna keep repeating them
- 20:22Speaker 3: for as long as it takes until this is better,
- 20:25Speaker 3: because I am not going to allow my life to
- 20:29Speaker 3: be sabotaged and to stay a victim of somebody that
- 20:32Speaker 3: wanted to hurt me. No, I will not be.
- 20:35Speaker 2: A victim, right, and that's and I won't either not
- 20:37Speaker 2: be silenced. Yeah, and that too, most definitely I will.
- 20:40Speaker 1: I will not be silenced because again, you know, the
- 20:44Speaker 1: people that were involved in my situation, they're forgiven you know,
- 20:49Speaker 1: by me. You know I forgive them, and if it
- 20:53Speaker 1: affects them in any way, then that's between them and God.
- 20:56Speaker 1: I don't, like, I can't if they're affected by the
- 21:00Speaker 1: things that I say that are fact, Like you know
- 21:03Speaker 1: that my excess parents signed affidavits you know through you
- 21:06Speaker 1: know that said I put the emotional and physical well
- 21:09Speaker 1: being of my child in danger, which had no truth
- 21:12Speaker 1: to it at all. If they feel threatened by that,
- 21:17Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but it's not my problem, right.
- 21:18Speaker 3: Because you did it right like you did it. Don't
- 21:21Speaker 3: not people to know you've done bad things. Don't do
- 21:24Speaker 3: bad things. Don't expect the people who you have traumatized
- 21:28Speaker 3: and abused to work to protect your feelings, feelings and
- 21:32Speaker 3: your reputation, your guilt, your guilt. No, speak about it,
- 21:35Speaker 3: But I always say, like, if you're speaking about it
- 21:37Speaker 3: to get revenged, that's the wrong thing. If you're speaking
- 21:39Speaker 3: about it to heal and to help people, that is
- 21:41Speaker 3: the right thing. So speaking of that and re traumatization
- 21:45Speaker 3: and in the brain, I know you had questions about
- 21:48Speaker 3: like I wish I could have responded better. I wish
- 21:50Speaker 3: I could have done this. And I have clients that
- 21:52Speaker 3: come through and they're like, if I could just step
- 21:55Speaker 3: back and think before I respond, I would be in
- 21:58Speaker 3: such a better position, And like, yes, but you have
- 22:00Speaker 3: to realize every time you get re traumatized, like if
- 22:04Speaker 3: you're in a really unhealthy relationship and that person is
- 22:07Speaker 3: like triggering you over and over again, it is harder
- 22:11Speaker 3: to heal because it's like having that open wound and
- 22:13Speaker 3: somebody's just sticking a dirty finger in it. And it
- 22:16Speaker 3: does reduce the prefrontal cortex activity and your prefrontal cortex.
- 22:19Speaker 3: And this is the main strategy behind my coaching program
- 22:22Speaker 3: is I teach people how to get so deeply aware
- 22:26Speaker 3: of their mindset and so good emotional processing somatically that
- 22:31Speaker 3: they can essentially activate their prefrontal cortex more at will,
- 22:36Speaker 3: Like it becomes something that they can sort of turn
- 22:38Speaker 3: on quicker, right, And when you have your prefrontal cortex activated,
- 22:44Speaker 3: you become curious, open, mindful, compassionate, and pathetic. You can't
- 22:52Speaker 3: be those things when you're in fight, flight, or freeze.
- 22:55Speaker 3: You can't be those things. There would be no evolutionary
- 22:58Speaker 3: benefit to being those things, because that's like trying to
- 23:01Speaker 3: ask the grizzly bear standing in front of you, like,
- 23:03Speaker 3: how do you feel about maybe eating me?
- 23:05Speaker 1: Like?
- 23:05Speaker 3: Are you feeling bad about it? You're gonna just try
- 23:08Speaker 3: to either run away, fight it off, or play dead.
- 23:10Speaker 3: Those are your three choices, and those are the three
- 23:12Speaker 3: trauma responses we're given. Sorry, it's all we got right.
- 23:17Speaker 3: And so what's happening to my clients is they've had
- 23:20Speaker 3: history of bad relationships or they have a long history
- 23:23Speaker 3: in a bad relationship, and they're at the point where
- 23:25Speaker 3: their nervous system has become so sensitive that they just
- 23:30Speaker 3: it takes the slightest thing off the handle, would they
- 23:33Speaker 3: either fly off the handle or they shut down or
- 23:35Speaker 3: whatever their trauma response is. So like avoidant people may
- 23:38Speaker 3: get kind of defensive and then hardcore shut down or
- 23:41Speaker 3: maybe they even fond which is a form of freeze.
- 23:44Speaker 3: It can be a form of fight too, but it's
- 23:46Speaker 3: mainly a form of freeze where they'll be like, Okay,
- 23:48Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Like the AP will do that,
- 23:51Speaker 3: or even DA's will do that. But then the end
- 23:53Speaker 3: AP will activate and go into over controlling mode, over
- 23:57Speaker 3: clinginess mode, trying to sell, lidify the connection, trying to
- 24:01Speaker 3: get the reassurance they need. DA's will back off fas. Yeah,
- 24:06Speaker 3: I mean they hit below the booms, will sabotage everything.
- 24:12Speaker 3: And that's what I did.
- 24:13Speaker 2: I mean everything, That's exactly what I did.
- 24:17Speaker 1: Like I I punched back and said some things. And
- 24:21Speaker 1: this is where like shame again comes up, because I
- 24:25Speaker 1: mean I spent time all day Sunday just like repenting
- 24:29Speaker 1: not just for my reaction but for all of it.
- 24:33Speaker 1: Because at the end of the day, this has nothing
- 24:37Speaker 1: to do with my ex like, it's not about you, bro,
- 24:40Speaker 1: like has nothing to do with you. And but I
- 24:45Speaker 1: also can empathize with your like your pain like you have.
- 24:50Speaker 1: He has pain, Yeah, obviously he has pain.
- 24:52Speaker 3: For PROD users have so much pain.
- 24:54Speaker 1: It's probably more, probably more pain than me, because you.
- 24:58Speaker 2: Know that was one of his things. I thought you
- 24:59Speaker 2: were so passed this and us, well I am.
- 25:02Speaker 3: I am past us, And I doesn't mean you can't
- 25:05Speaker 3: talk about it, right, how.
- 25:06Speaker 1: Can I not talk about it on a podcast that's
- 25:08Speaker 1: about relationships? And that was my longest, I guess relationship.
- 25:15Speaker 1: I mean it by far was the unhealthiest, you know,
- 25:19Speaker 1: And I mean that was a big thing. He said too,
- 25:21Speaker 1: like I'm not your MANX, I'm not even your ex really, dude,
- 25:24Speaker 1: we were together for twelve years off and on, And
- 25:26Speaker 1: I mean my response was, nobody ever said you were
- 25:29Speaker 1: my MAINX.
- 25:29Speaker 2: You just happen to be my worst.
- 25:33Speaker 3: You know, I get it, I get it, you know,
- 25:35Speaker 3: I get it. It's and I wish I'd have.
- 25:37Speaker 2: Been so much more mature and like calm.
- 25:39Speaker 3: And essentially, again, you had been separated from that BS
- 25:44Speaker 3: for like eight years, and then that pathway's not gone right,
- 25:48Speaker 3: it's limping along. But then you just gave it like
- 25:51Speaker 3: some robot shoes where it could run right, like those
- 25:54Speaker 3: neural circuits just fired down that old pathway associated with
- 25:58Speaker 3: his specific type of abuse, because if you read his stuff,
- 26:02Speaker 3: it was the same shit you were dealing with eight
- 26:03Speaker 3: years ago, and just calling you horrible names and saying terrible.
- 26:09Speaker 2: Things about you, using my son as employee.
- 26:11Speaker 3: Yes, bringing you know, JP into the situation. And so
- 26:15Speaker 3: even though that pathway was just like a little glimmer.
- 26:19Speaker 3: You just gave it a fireworks show. Oh you know,
- 26:21Speaker 3: and so you can't expect when you know when. For you,
- 26:26Speaker 3: time was a big part of the healing. And I
- 26:28Speaker 3: mean you've done intentional healing work too, but you really
- 26:31Speaker 3: don't know how healed you are until you get retriggered.
- 26:34Speaker 3: And that's what a lot of people ask me going
- 26:36Speaker 3: through my program. It's like, Okay, well now I'm out
- 26:38Speaker 3: of this bad relationship, but how do I know I've
- 26:40Speaker 3: actually healed? And I'm like, well, I wish I could
- 26:43Speaker 3: tell you that you will know, but you really won't
- 26:45Speaker 3: know until you get into a relationship, and then that
- 26:49Speaker 3: person's gonna shine a light on what work you still
- 26:51Speaker 3: have to do. But what I do know is that
- 26:53Speaker 3: these tools they do work long term, and if you
- 26:57Speaker 3: practice them, you're going to be one. You're gonna be
- 27:00Speaker 3: attracted to more secure people because insecure people they wave
- 27:04Speaker 3: their red flags. Don't tell me you ended up in
- 27:07Speaker 3: this bad relationship and there was not one red flag.
- 27:11Speaker 3: That is a lie. If you're telling me that, you're
- 27:13Speaker 3: a lie, because there's always at least some subtle red flags.
- 27:18Speaker 3: Even the master manipulators have some red flags, even if
- 27:21Speaker 3: it's just their love bombing, right, master manipulators almost always
- 27:26Speaker 3: love bomb and you fell for it, and that at
- 27:30Speaker 3: some point, yes, we get to go shame on them
- 27:32Speaker 3: for love bombing you, but then shame on you for
- 27:34Speaker 3: continuing to allow other people to come and love bomb you.
- 27:37Speaker 3: And I say shame on you, not because I think
- 27:39Speaker 3: shame is good. I'm saying, like, it's time to realize
- 27:45Speaker 3: that I have these patterns and I am attracted to
- 27:48Speaker 3: these types of people, and a lot of times it's
- 27:52Speaker 3: just the same package wrapped up with a different color
- 27:55Speaker 3: bow on it. And you have to get to the
- 27:58Speaker 3: root of what is going on with me that continues
- 28:02Speaker 3: to attach to people once they show me their true colors,
- 28:05Speaker 3: what is going on with me? And you can always
- 28:08Speaker 3: trace it back to their attachment wounds. It's like it's
- 28:11Speaker 3: just a very predictable puzzle.
- 28:13Speaker 1: I want to go back to the one thing that
- 28:14Speaker 1: you said, because it was a question that was in
- 28:17Speaker 1: your Facebook group the other day and I was curious,
- 28:21Speaker 1: and you know, even when I saw it, I was like,
- 28:22Speaker 1: I don't really know how to answer that. Only you,
- 28:24Speaker 1: I feel like, would know how. But like, you know,
- 28:26Speaker 1: somebody who does get out of a relationship and then
- 28:28Speaker 1: a single for a period of time, you know, is
- 28:31Speaker 1: are there any ways to know that they've reached security
- 28:34Speaker 1: without dating or getting into another relationship.
- 28:40Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a complex question, and I will say that
- 28:42Speaker 3: there are some signs. One is, overall you're more resilient
- 28:46Speaker 3: to stress. So becoming secure doesn't just make you resilient
- 28:50Speaker 3: to stressful situations in your intimate relationship. It's fundamentally about
- 28:55Speaker 3: creating resilience in the nervous system and again overriding those
- 29:01Speaker 3: old pathways with new stronger pathways around the resilient mindset
- 29:07Speaker 3: and around the resilient you know, behaviors. You are able
- 29:13Speaker 3: to fully process emotions in your body to completion. So
- 29:17Speaker 3: that's one of the fundamental things that I teach in
- 29:19Speaker 3: my program is you have to be able to actually
- 29:23Speaker 3: complete emotional processing cycles and what does that look like
- 29:28Speaker 3: in the body. And so if you are processing to
- 29:31Speaker 3: completion and you're getting those signs that like, Okay, I'm
- 29:34Speaker 3: completed in this processing cycle. So I had my cry
- 29:37Speaker 3: and then I was able to do the breathing through it,
- 29:40Speaker 3: and I was able to do the scanning and the
- 29:42Speaker 3: sematic awareness techniques that we talk about. And then I
- 29:45Speaker 3: end up with this just like sigh, and I feel sleepy,
- 29:48Speaker 3: and I feel like I can just go fall right asleep.
- 29:51Speaker 3: You've completed, You're done, You're in safety. Right. So if
- 29:54Speaker 3: you notice that your body is responding and you're able to,
- 29:58Speaker 3: actually you're not band aiding or so pressing anxious people
- 30:01Speaker 3: band aid of what did people suppress? So we all
- 30:04Speaker 3: know band aids, shopping, eating, venting to your friends.
- 30:09Speaker 1: Right, I did do a few of those things, but
- 30:12Speaker 1: just you talking about the process of Like, that's why
- 30:15Speaker 1: I spent all day Sunday pretty much like I spent
- 30:18Speaker 1: it in prayer. I spent it journaling because I knew
- 30:22Speaker 1: that there were some things that I had to actively right,
- 30:26Speaker 1: really actively other than having a good cry, but to
- 30:31Speaker 1: write out to get out. Yeah, and so I can
- 30:35Speaker 1: say from just being retraumatized literally less than forty eight
- 30:40Speaker 1: hours ago, that I experienced all those things that you're
- 30:43Speaker 1: talking about.
- 30:44Speaker 3: Yeah, And luckily, I think for you it's just a
- 30:47Speaker 3: trigger and it's not going to be this last thing
- 30:49Speaker 3: thing because you do have the ability to He.
- 30:51Speaker 4: Did blocked party again, but lasts for me, and like again,
- 31:02Speaker 4: I don't.
- 31:03Speaker 2: I want to be careful because.
- 31:06Speaker 1: I want to say this, there's no malice behind it,
- 31:11Speaker 1: like now that I have processed it, Like I don't
- 31:15Speaker 1: have hate for him, I don't have love.
- 31:17Speaker 3: He is just reactivity in the moment.
- 31:19Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have love either. I just I don't.
- 31:21Speaker 1: I'm kind of indifferent, right, Like I'm just very indifferent
- 31:23Speaker 1: to him. And of course I wish him well because
- 31:26Speaker 1: you know, he's the father of my son, and I
- 31:29Speaker 1: you know, I want good things for him because that
- 31:31Speaker 1: is that reflects on JP. But I mean, I I
- 31:36Speaker 1: don't want to block him out of resentment or out
- 31:40Speaker 1: of you know, retaliation. It's just that I know I'm
- 31:44Speaker 1: at a point in my life where health wise, like
- 31:48Speaker 1: I just can't handle it anymore. Like it's just too
- 31:50Speaker 1: it's detrimental to my health.
- 31:52Speaker 3: Right because he's the dirty finger.
- 31:53Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the wound.
- 31:55Speaker 3: And that's why I tell people you going through this work,
- 32:00Speaker 3: going through my program as a couple is so powerful
- 32:04Speaker 3: and not that one person in the couple can't get
- 32:07Speaker 3: so much out of it if they do, because oftentimes
- 32:09Speaker 3: what happens if one person goes to it, they come
- 32:12Speaker 3: out of the other end feeling more resilient, feeling secure
- 32:15Speaker 3: in their boundaries, know what is the right thing to
- 32:17Speaker 3: be doing, what is the wrong thing to be doing,
- 32:19Speaker 3: to not abandon themselves, but also to show up as
- 32:21Speaker 3: a respectful person on the for their partner. And it
- 32:26Speaker 3: may not land their partner in a place where then
- 32:28Speaker 3: they want to match that energy and change, but it
- 32:30Speaker 3: sures heck will land them in a place where they
- 32:33Speaker 3: either know how to cope with it better or they
- 32:38Speaker 3: finally set the ultimate boundaries. And usually it's more of
- 32:42Speaker 3: setting the ultimate boundaries after a while, which sometimes is
- 32:45Speaker 3: the only thing that actually gets their partner to change
- 32:47Speaker 3: when they're like, oh, shoot, they're not going to be
- 32:49Speaker 3: that anxious person that runs after me and tries to
- 32:51Speaker 3: apologize and bring me back in when I go silent
- 32:54Speaker 3: for a couple of days and I pull my avoidant stuff.
- 32:57Speaker 1: And even if the ultimate boundary has to be set.
- 32:59Speaker 1: And it's interesting because I just had a call today
- 33:01Speaker 1: talking about this like divorce, you know, and having to
- 33:04Speaker 1: maybe go through the court system if once you, I mean,
- 33:09Speaker 1: I would suggest anyone who maybe is on the verge
- 33:11Speaker 1: of divorce and maybe thinks it's too far gone, like
- 33:14Speaker 1: the you know the potential client that I spoke to
- 33:16Speaker 1: today that your program is still an answer because again,
- 33:20Speaker 1: it's helping your nervous system become resilient. And so if
- 33:25Speaker 1: you do have to go through a divorce or if
- 33:27Speaker 1: you have to go through custody, you're going to be
- 33:29Speaker 1: better equipped to.
- 33:30Speaker 2: Handle it and to co parents.
- 33:32Speaker 3: Yes, abs of freaking lutely, And I guess the whole
- 33:37Speaker 3: point of what we started talking about what I want
- 33:39Speaker 3: to circle back to, is like just people repeating the
- 33:43Speaker 3: same patterns and then this awful, awful myth that well,
- 33:47Speaker 3: if I can just get away from this one person,
- 33:50Speaker 3: then I'll be okay. Because we got away from our
- 33:53Speaker 3: quote one person that was the most toxic in our lives,
- 33:55Speaker 3: and we chose other toxic people because we didn't do
- 33:58Speaker 3: the work on ourselves, and then maybe they weren't as
- 34:02Speaker 3: toxic or abusive. So maybe it was quote unquote a win.
- 34:05Speaker 3: But I don't think profound neglect was a real win.
- 34:08Speaker 3: After being in a toxic relationship, I think I needed somebody,
- 34:13Speaker 3: you know, like my husband, But I wouldn't have been
- 34:15Speaker 3: ready for him. He wouldn't have put up with me
- 34:18Speaker 3: at that point because and I see these people that
- 34:21Speaker 3: are just like man, I was finally in a good
- 34:23Speaker 3: relationship and then I sabotaged it. Those tend to be
- 34:26Speaker 3: the fas. And they either sabotage it if they're anxious
- 34:29Speaker 3: because they felt a little bit hurt by their partner,
- 34:32Speaker 3: and they way reacted. Their trauma circuits were retouched and
- 34:36Speaker 3: they lost their marbles and they acted like an idiot.
- 34:40Speaker 3: Either said a bunch of really mean stuff or shut
- 34:43Speaker 3: down really hard and slam the door literally or figuratively
- 34:46Speaker 3: in their partner's face, and then regretted it and begged
- 34:50Speaker 3: it and acted like a sorry, you know what coming
- 34:52Speaker 3: back begging, you know, Or they were very avoidant and
- 34:56Speaker 3: they just ghosted and then it's been too long and
- 34:58Speaker 3: they're like, oh, I don't know how to come out
- 34:59Speaker 3: of it ghosting phase and like reconnect and they just
- 35:04Speaker 3: you know, and I'm like, you went to hardcore and
- 35:06Speaker 3: you sabotaged it with your old FA behaviors. DA's do
- 35:10Speaker 3: it to aps do it to You're just going to
- 35:13Speaker 3: repeat your patterns. Even if it's with a different partner
- 35:15Speaker 3: who has a different attachment style, You're still it's not
- 35:19Speaker 3: going to work because your brain circuitry is wired towards intimacy,
- 35:26Speaker 3: triggering you in these ways. Even if it's somebody relatively
- 35:30Speaker 3: secure that's triggering you in a small way, you know,
- 35:33Speaker 3: it's still a retrigger, right, and if that happens enough times,
- 35:37Speaker 3: it becomes a retraumatization.
- 35:39Speaker 1: And I can't even give a real life example of
- 35:41Speaker 1: this what you're talking about, because guys, it's all I got. Okay,
- 35:45Speaker 1: she's got the big brain, I got the real life experience.
- 35:48Speaker 2: Okay, this is why this works.
- 35:49Speaker 1: But you know, when Josh and I first started dating,
- 35:53Speaker 1: and I would say, like Josh, for the most part,
- 35:55Speaker 1: I mean, he has some some anxious qualities sometimes, but
- 35:58Speaker 1: for the most part.
- 35:59Speaker 3: He's pretty nobody's one hundred percent secure.
- 36:01Speaker 1: Right exactly. And so there was an there was a
- 36:04Speaker 1: night that we had been out with friends. Of course,
- 36:05Speaker 1: drinking was involved, as it always has been if we've
- 36:08Speaker 1: ever fought, but I still, you know, he got triggered,
- 36:14Speaker 1: you know, because I wasn't ready to leave and he was.
- 36:17Speaker 1: And just to give you an idea of the dynamic,
- 36:19Speaker 1: like I do tend to be the extrovert in our
- 36:22Speaker 1: relationship and he is a little bit more introverted, and
- 36:26Speaker 1: he kind of threw this many temper tantrum, right, And
- 36:29Speaker 1: this was very early on in our relationship. And where
- 36:33Speaker 1: he he just left, he left the party, left me
- 36:36Speaker 1: there with no ride, and then went to my house
- 36:41Speaker 1: and like grabbed us stuff and left, right, little mini
- 36:44Speaker 1: temper tantrum. In the past, I would have handled that
- 36:51Speaker 1: in a very similar temper tantrum manner.
- 36:54Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you would. You would have hit back hard, right.
- 36:56Speaker 1: And I would have hit back really really hard. And
- 36:58Speaker 1: instead I said, I just simply said, this isn't gonna
- 37:03Speaker 1: fly with me. That type of behavior is not going
- 37:06Speaker 1: to fly with me. And if it continues, this is
- 37:10Speaker 1: this isn't going to go any further. And that firm boundary, Yeah,
- 37:15Speaker 1: that firm boundary with compassion, right, Like it was direct,
- 37:18Speaker 1: but it was compassionate. It really changed the trajectory of
- 37:23Speaker 1: our relationship. It's really what took our relationship to the
- 37:26Speaker 1: next level. And those are the things that should take
- 37:29Speaker 1: your relationship to the next level, because I think sometimes
- 37:32Speaker 1: what would have happened if I had bounced back in
- 37:35Speaker 1: a way that was you know, even more toxic, which
- 37:37Speaker 1: would have been my old behavior, right. And so that's
- 37:41Speaker 1: that's a real life example. I think of when you're
- 37:43Speaker 1: early on in a relationship, how those secure behaviors start
- 37:47Speaker 1: to show up. Boundaries just become easier to set, yes,
- 37:50Speaker 1: because you're just not willing to jeopardize your piece for
- 37:52Speaker 1: any reason.
- 37:53Speaker 3: Right, So yeah, that's exactly kind of where I wanted
- 37:56Speaker 3: to go, is like early on in the relationship, you're
- 37:58Speaker 3: going to respond to red flags with boundaries. So that's
- 38:01Speaker 3: one one thing that you can count on knowing. Two,
- 38:05Speaker 3: you know, friendships are gonna be You're probably gonna let
- 38:09Speaker 3: some friendships go. I think that's a big sign because
- 38:13Speaker 3: you're gonna start seeing people and their toxicity and their
- 38:16Speaker 3: emotional immaturity, and you're gonna be like, that doesn't feel
- 38:18Speaker 3: like I don't want to be around that. Where before
- 38:20Speaker 3: maybe it was a source of bonding or gossip or
- 38:24Speaker 3: just just being able to relate and have that you know,
- 38:27Speaker 3: sort of common ground. It's not your common ground anymore.
- 38:31Speaker 3: You don't live as a victim, you don't live as
- 38:34Speaker 3: somebody who reacts really poorly to these same circumstances. Like,
- 38:38Speaker 3: my goodness, we all know one friend that she was
- 38:42Speaker 3: more my friend than your friend. But oh my gosh,
- 38:46Speaker 3: like how many times could I be like, you just
- 38:49Speaker 3: did the exact same thing you've always done, and then
- 38:52Speaker 3: you're asking for a different result, right, and you're you're
- 38:55Speaker 3: looking for a different result here, and you can't do that.
- 38:58Speaker 3: And of course then she's she like be my friend
- 39:00Speaker 3: anymore because I told her the truth, and I was like,
- 39:03Speaker 3: I get it.
- 39:03Speaker 2: You don't have to be my friend and handle this.
- 39:05Speaker 3: No, but you're gonna you're going to start giving secure
- 39:09Speaker 3: advice to people, and your insecure friends are are going
- 39:11Speaker 3: to reject it. At They're going to make every excuse
- 39:14Speaker 3: in the world for their current crappy partner or for
- 39:17Speaker 3: their own bad behavior, and you're going to see through it,
- 39:19Speaker 3: and you're going to be like, man, you got work
- 39:21Speaker 3: to do, and you know I can't. I can't. I
- 39:23Speaker 3: can't hear the same problem anymore because if I keep
- 39:26Speaker 3: giving you advice and you keep not taking.
- 39:28Speaker 2: It, this doesn't feel like at feel like a friendship.
- 39:30Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And it.
- 39:33Speaker 1: Just feels like you're you're using me for just a
- 39:35Speaker 1: soundboard and nothing else. And then this happened, you know,
- 39:38Speaker 1: obviously with one of my friends too, which again is
- 39:40Speaker 1: so ironic. Listen, guys, Sarah, because I get asked all
- 39:45Speaker 1: the time on calls like how do you and Sarah
- 39:47Speaker 1: know each other?
- 39:48Speaker 2: And like what's the other story?
- 39:49Speaker 3: And I'm like, that is what I did to you?
- 39:52Speaker 1: Well it is, but that wasn't That's not what I
- 39:54Speaker 1: was going to say. All Right, I'm glad that our relationship,
- 39:56Speaker 1: you know, we were able to repair it. And but
- 39:59Speaker 1: like our timelines and the things that happened to us
- 40:02Speaker 1: through like really like our childhood, the way we were raised,
- 40:06Speaker 1: the way you know, our toxic exes, you know, when
- 40:10Speaker 1: we let go of our toxic friends. Our timelines are
- 40:14Speaker 1: just so uncanny in terms of how they play out.
- 40:18Speaker 3: Yeah, like our growth and improvement and self improvement journey,
- 40:22Speaker 3: attachment security and all.
- 40:23Speaker 2: Let us right here to her say exactly for sure.
- 40:26Speaker 2: And that's why it's like.
- 40:28Speaker 3: And that's why I love having you here, because you
- 40:29Speaker 3: validate how previously crazy I used.
- 40:31Speaker 2: To be girl with cuckoo all right.
- 40:35Speaker 3: And cuckoo girl was I mean, how many times could
- 40:39Speaker 3: you have told me that my ex was never going
- 40:42Speaker 3: to meet my needs? He did not have it in him.
- 40:46Speaker 1: And I was just I would be like, just end it,
- 40:48Speaker 1: just like a little bit, but he did this, and
- 40:51Speaker 1: it would be like the lowest form of attention humanly possible,
- 40:54Speaker 1: Like he.
- 40:55Speaker 2: Liked a social media Yeah, I would, and I would.
- 40:58Speaker 3: Make that I like get anything. It didn't mean anything.
- 41:02Speaker 3: And you know, it's just because again those circuitries around neglect,
- 41:09Speaker 3: even though you know it wasn't necessarily like at that
- 41:13Speaker 3: point a form of an abuse. I think when you
- 41:15Speaker 3: get in a marriage with somebody like that, it becomes
- 41:17Speaker 3: a form of abuse for sure, because it's prolonged neglect.
- 41:21Speaker 3: But I think just my ex husband would do similar things,
- 41:26Speaker 3: like when he was upset with me, go silent or ghost.
- 41:28Speaker 3: I mean, of course he would usually scream at me first,
- 41:30Speaker 3: but then but you know, but the whole like being
- 41:33Speaker 3: ignored thing, there are circuits in my brain around that, right,
- 41:35Speaker 3: So then I get into this relationship with the DA
- 41:38Speaker 3: person and then neglect circuitries where you know there's trauma
- 41:42Speaker 3: around that is all lighting up. So I'm just being
- 41:44Speaker 3: retraumatized by a new relationship.
- 41:46Speaker 2: This ball of anxiety, just ball of anxiety.
- 41:49Speaker 3: I was, I couldn't even function.
- 41:51Speaker 1: You were and you know, and I mean I've talked
- 41:53Speaker 1: about it before, but like I remember your breaking point,
- 41:56Speaker 1: oh yeah, and it was it was messy.
- 41:59Speaker 2: It was very messy, and it was scary.
- 42:01Speaker 1: I mean, it was scary as your friend to witness
- 42:03Speaker 1: it and see it and kind of feel helpless and
- 42:06Speaker 1: feel like, you know, I'm at capacity here on what
- 42:08Speaker 1: I feel like I could do, you know, And I
- 42:11Speaker 1: knew that you were at rock bottom, and you know,
- 42:14Speaker 1: having to cut a friend off when you know they're
- 42:16Speaker 1: at rock bottom, I mean, it was one of the
- 42:19Speaker 1: hardest things I've had to do, you know. And I
- 42:21Speaker 1: didn't do it like we won't get into I didn't
- 42:23Speaker 1: do it the best way. But eventually, you know, it
- 42:27Speaker 1: did come to a head where I was just like,
- 42:29Speaker 1: I love you, sis, but I can't be your counselor anymore.
- 42:33Speaker 1: And this doesn't feel like a friendship. It feels you know.
- 42:36Speaker 3: And that's the thing. Your friends are gonna get worn
- 42:39Speaker 3: out with your same old patterns. And sometimes ratraumatization isn't
- 42:43Speaker 3: your fault, Oh no, you know sometimes you know a
- 42:47Speaker 3: lot of times it's not your fault. A lot of
- 42:49Speaker 3: times it's not your fault, but it can be your fault.
- 42:53Speaker 3: When you look back at your last five relationships and
- 42:55Speaker 3: they're all like either abusive or neglectful. Yeah, then it's
- 42:59Speaker 3: like Okay, what's going on with you that you you know?
- 43:03Speaker 3: Or I have a lot of people, a way more
- 43:07Speaker 3: people than I can have ever imagined, especially those that
- 43:10Speaker 3: come through my group that say my partners had multiple affairs,
- 43:15Speaker 3: multiple And if I hear the word multiple affairs, like
- 43:18Speaker 3: if I have that phrase, I'm like, it's a no go,
- 43:20Speaker 3: it's a done, it's a done, it's a you are done.
- 43:22Speaker 3: You need to be done now. You need to be
- 43:24Speaker 3: in right now, right because some people can recover after
- 43:29Speaker 3: an affair, but you can't recover after multiple because that
- 43:35Speaker 3: people don't just decide to be different, Like those are
- 43:37Speaker 3: character issues.
- 43:38Speaker 1: Well, and even if there is accountability, like accountability plays
- 43:41Speaker 1: such a big role in infidelity. So even if they
- 43:44Speaker 1: do take accountability, but they repeatedly do it, the accountability
- 43:47Speaker 1: means nothing.
- 43:48Speaker 3: It doesn't mean anything.
- 43:49Speaker 2: It's just words.
- 43:50Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was my marriage, you know. And and
- 43:54Speaker 3: also what people need to understand is like you can't
- 43:57Speaker 3: love somebody into changing them. I have we have a
- 44:02Speaker 3: friend who thinks that she can love a dude into
- 44:05Speaker 3: changing himself, and you can't.
- 44:07Speaker 2: We love her soul so much.
- 44:09Speaker 3: We won't say who you are, but she's so precious
- 44:11Speaker 3: so precious, beautiful and successful, and I just just like,
- 44:16Speaker 3: why are you taking the bottom of bear?
- 44:20Speaker 1: Bear? Like so obviously the bare minimum too, Like it's
- 44:26Speaker 1: so obvious. Listen, if they haven't taken you on a date,
- 44:30Speaker 1: and you've known them.
- 44:31Speaker 2: For over a year to know.
- 44:36Speaker 1: If they haven't met your friends, if they haven't, like
- 44:38Speaker 1: I mean, if they're only coming over to your house
- 44:40Speaker 1: after ten pm, it's no, it's.
- 44:42Speaker 2: Your hook up.
- 44:43Speaker 3: Yes, yes, And I know, Like I just have so
- 44:47Speaker 3: many clients too that come and they're just accepting the
- 44:50Speaker 3: same stuff. I have so many clients that are on
- 44:54Speaker 3: their second marriage and they're like, how did I end
- 44:56Speaker 3: up in this exact same place time number two? And
- 44:59Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, we'll tell me what the timeline was
- 45:01Speaker 3: after your divorce and what you did to heal. You
- 45:03Speaker 3: know what? It was nothing? Yeah, I practically nothing. They
- 45:06Speaker 3: either cheated on their spouse with this person, or they
- 45:09Speaker 3: were with this person right after their divorce, or like
- 45:11Speaker 3: as they were going through their divorce it took no
- 45:13Speaker 3: time to heal. They blamed everything on their partner that
- 45:17Speaker 3: it was just an incompatibility or their partner had all
- 45:19Speaker 3: these issues. They didn't have the ability to see their contributions,
- 45:23Speaker 3: or if they did see it, they thought the awareness
- 45:25Speaker 3: was enough, And that's another big mistake. Yeah, people think
- 45:28Speaker 3: that awareness of your issues is enough to change. It's not.
- 45:32Speaker 3: I wouldn't have had a nervous breakdown if it was,
- 45:34Speaker 3: because I was incredibly self aware. Okay, I knew it
- 45:38Speaker 3: at all, and I couldn't change anything about myself. My
- 45:42Speaker 3: brain was tapped out. My prefrontal cortex was probably like
- 45:45Speaker 3: tissue paper at that point, had no thickness around it
- 45:50Speaker 3: at all, because your prefrontal cortex does thin out with
- 45:53Speaker 3: repeated trauma, which, again that's your rational brain, that's your
- 45:56Speaker 3: self control and self regulation, that's your empathy, that's your compassion.
- 46:01Speaker 3: Your amygdalah, which is your threat detection and anger center
- 46:05Speaker 3: of the brain gets enlarged every time you are re traumatized.
- 46:08Speaker 3: That grows, so you know, there's this competition between your
- 46:12Speaker 3: prefrontal cortex, which is your rational brain, your responsible brain,
- 46:17Speaker 3: your empathy towards yourself and others, your compassion, your mindfulness
- 46:22Speaker 3: of your behavior, that is competing with your emotional mid brain,
- 46:27Speaker 3: specifically activity in the amygdala that is enhanced. So it's
- 46:33Speaker 3: like your more primitive brain. Your mid brain is like
- 46:36Speaker 3: it's the middle brain, and it's the It is not
- 46:40Speaker 3: the most primitive part of our brain, but it is
- 46:42Speaker 3: a very primitive part. The most primitive part of our
- 46:44Speaker 3: brain is your hind brain, which is like controls your
- 46:47Speaker 3: breathing and like your balance and your heart rate and
- 46:49Speaker 3: stuff like that. But your mid brain is where all
- 46:52Speaker 3: of the emotional centers, and it's really tied to a
- 46:55Speaker 3: lot of memory, and it's very highly tied to the
- 46:57Speaker 3: subconscious mind. And so when your attachment wounds are in
- 47:02Speaker 3: the driver's seat, you're operating from a subconscious level, and
- 47:06Speaker 3: you're operating from this place of emotion instead of from
- 47:11Speaker 3: a place of logic and emotion. So people say, oh,
- 47:15Speaker 3: we'll throw your heart out and just listen to your head. Well, nope,
- 47:18Speaker 3: don't do that either, because then you'll end up super
- 47:19Speaker 3: avoidant and you'll end up suppressed. You can't stay in
- 47:22Speaker 3: logic either. You can't think your way out of feelings.
- 47:24Speaker 3: You have to think and you have to feel, and
- 47:26Speaker 3: you have to be able to do those in ways
- 47:29Speaker 3: that are actually healthy and going to benefit you towards
- 47:31Speaker 3: your healing. When most people are just trying to think
- 47:34Speaker 3: their way out and they're thinking in these old grooves,
- 47:38Speaker 3: in these old negative thought patterns that are just they're
- 47:41Speaker 3: literally re traumatizing themselves by engaging in these old thought
- 47:44Speaker 3: patterns and they don't even know it well.
- 47:46Speaker 1: And that's what I want to hit on. Memory specifically
- 47:50Speaker 1: around trauma and re traumatization. I think is huge because
- 47:53Speaker 1: I know and you probably experienced this obviously more than
- 47:55Speaker 1: I do. But there's so much that people don't remember.
- 48:01Speaker 2: So much.
- 48:01Speaker 3: Like I mean, I do remember things, but like my
- 48:03Speaker 3: mom almost say things. She'll be remember one time when
- 48:05Speaker 3: Jared did this, and I'm like, and it's something horrible, right, No.
- 48:09Speaker 2: I know, She's like, you can't remember that. My sister just.
- 48:12Speaker 1: Today said something. I was like, you remember when he
- 48:14Speaker 1: did that? I was like, oh, no.
- 48:16Speaker 2: No memory, no memory at all. And you know.
- 48:19Speaker 1: And so I'm curious how well and I know the answer,
- 48:24Speaker 1: but yeah, how the lack of memory or the effects
- 48:27Speaker 1: of memory and the initial trauma affects the re traumatization.
- 48:32Speaker 3: Yes, so trauma memories are encoded and stored differently than
- 48:37Speaker 3: regular memories. Okay, so you have to understand that first
- 48:39Speaker 3: and foremost, trauma shrinks the material of the hippocampus, which
- 48:45Speaker 3: is your memory center, and it reduces top down prefrontal
- 48:49Speaker 3: cortex activity, which is what keeps you from having the
- 48:52Speaker 3: brain fog. Like when you have good prefrontal cortex activity
- 48:56Speaker 3: and that is the dominant sort of circuitry that's working,
- 49:00Speaker 3: you're not in brainfall. You're clear, you have clarity, you
- 49:03Speaker 3: are strategic, you can make good decisions. So some trauma
- 49:10Speaker 3: memories are going to be I if you're like in
- 49:12Speaker 3: perpetual complex trauma, you're going to have a degradation of
- 49:15Speaker 3: the hippocampus. You're going to suffer with a lot of
- 49:18Speaker 3: brain fog. You might have memory gaps of things you
- 49:20Speaker 3: just don't remember, even big periods of your life that
- 49:22Speaker 3: you don't remember. Whenever somebody comes to me and we're
- 49:24Speaker 3: doing an attachment assessment and they say they don't remember
- 49:26Speaker 3: a lot of their childhood, I can bet all of
- 49:30Speaker 3: my money that they're about to tell me that they
- 49:34Speaker 3: had a traumatic childhood yep, and what they do remember
- 49:36Speaker 3: was traumatic. Major, big traumatic events can actually be recorded
- 49:42Speaker 3: in ways that are almost like photographic. So that's like
- 49:47Speaker 3: true PTSD where you get like the photographic flashbacks, but
- 49:50Speaker 3: complex trauma where it's happening all the time, Like you
- 49:53Speaker 3: don't have the resources to encode everything that way, so
- 49:56Speaker 3: a lot of stuff gets dumped or it's they but
- 50:00Speaker 3: it's very blurry and very foggy. And then you might
- 50:04Speaker 3: have some shock traumas interwoven in there that are incorded
- 50:08Speaker 3: in like this photographic way. So for me, like I
- 50:12Speaker 3: have these really really distinct memories of like the major,
- 50:17Speaker 3: major crisis things, but the smaller crisis things are like
- 50:21Speaker 3: wiped out in my brain same and so it's like
- 50:26Speaker 3: the more traumatic and if it's like a shock trauma,
- 50:28Speaker 3: it's gonna get encoded differently than to your everyday like
- 50:31Speaker 3: complex trauma. And I always get the question. It always
- 50:36Speaker 3: seems like fearful of Wood's have ADHD, And I'm like,
- 50:38Speaker 3: they probably do, and we need to start asking ourselves
- 50:41Speaker 3: a question if ADHD is just a component of attachment
- 50:45Speaker 3: trauma and CPTSD pathology. And a lot of people are
- 50:49Speaker 3: gonna give me some hate for that because they're gonna
- 50:50Speaker 3: be like, well, my kid has ADHD and they weren't traumatized, right,
- 50:53Speaker 3: but maybe they were in ways that you don't understand.
- 50:56Speaker 2: In utero, in the womb anything anything.
- 50:58Speaker 3: Yeah, And if did you do cry it out as
- 51:01Speaker 3: a you know, when they were an infant. That's a
- 51:03Speaker 3: major trauma in the brain and it affects the development
- 51:06Speaker 3: of the brain. So little traumas that are repeated over
- 51:10Speaker 3: time can be just as damaging as a big shock
- 51:13Speaker 3: trauma to the nervous system. It's just that the way
- 51:16Speaker 3: that those circuits are created and encoded are a little
- 51:19Speaker 3: bit different. You might again, those little traumas create a
- 51:24Speaker 3: blank whereas the big shock drama you have that sort
- 51:27Speaker 3: of like photographic like image imprint of when it happened, and.
- 51:32Speaker 1: I would say, what is going on? It affects the
- 51:34Speaker 1: re traumatization part of it. And you can correct me
- 51:36Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, simply because you don't remember, right, like
- 51:39Speaker 1: you don't remember some of the initial trauma.
- 51:42Speaker 3: But here's some also interesting things that I want to
- 51:45Speaker 3: touch on. The body is where your trauma is stored.
- 51:48Speaker 3: It's stored not just in the brain. It's stored in
- 51:51Speaker 3: the fascia of your body, which is like connective tissue.
- 51:56Speaker 3: And so you know, a lot of the reason we
- 51:58Speaker 3: can have chronic pain is not just because of central sensitization.
- 52:03Speaker 3: A big part of it is where the brain just
- 52:05Speaker 3: becomes oversensitive and pain signals just start going wonky. We
- 52:08Speaker 3: call that neuroplastic pain, and it's a big reason why
- 52:13Speaker 3: people have chronic pain and they still keep going after
- 52:15Speaker 3: physical causes and really it's trauma, but also the fascia
- 52:20Speaker 3: in the body will start modeling itself towards these like
- 52:24Speaker 3: braced positions. So like when the trauma thing happened to you,
- 52:28Speaker 3: which I don't know, pick one of the hundred like
- 52:33Speaker 3: traumatizing things that have happened to me. When it was happening,
- 52:36Speaker 3: my body took on a certain position and literally down
- 52:40Speaker 3: to a cellular level, your fascia remember, and it tries
- 52:44Speaker 3: to continue to protect you by staying in that position.
- 52:48Speaker 1: Knowing you as well as I do and as close
- 52:50Speaker 1: as I am to you, I've witnessed this in.
- 52:54Speaker 2: Like real life because I have horrible postures.
- 52:57Speaker 1: Well no, I mean I can just think, I can think,
- 53:00Speaker 1: and you probably have witnessed it with me too. I
- 53:02Speaker 1: mean we're just that close. Our husbands have probably witnessed it,
- 53:04Speaker 1: could we could probably witness it within our husbands, just
- 53:08Speaker 1: anybody that you're that close to. You know, but when
- 53:10Speaker 1: you went through this last situation, like I was with
- 53:14Speaker 1: you a few times where you may have gotten a
- 53:16Speaker 1: text from an attorney or your whole body structure changed, right,
- 53:20Speaker 1: it was your whole demeanor changed.
- 53:23Speaker 2: I mean one you were.
- 53:24Speaker 1: Just like like laser focused, you know, and then like
- 53:29Speaker 1: you said, your body took on this position.
- 53:31Speaker 3: Yeah. And I really still struggle with my posture because
- 53:34Speaker 3: I have to, Like I will be sitting there doing
- 53:37Speaker 3: something and I'll be like, okay, Sarah. This is where
- 53:39Speaker 3: the sematic work comes in, because you cannot heal from
- 53:42Speaker 3: trauma if you don't do sematic work. And the biggest
- 53:46Speaker 3: mistake I made was I jumped into all the sematic
- 53:48Speaker 3: work without having my mindset correct and without having and
- 53:52Speaker 3: knowing what I was doing, and without tight trading my experience.
- 53:55Speaker 3: I think the thing that pushed me over the edge
- 53:57Speaker 3: to my nervous breakdown was actually something called tre trauma
- 54:01Speaker 3: release like exercise or forget what the stands for. But
- 54:05Speaker 3: it's all these posturing and positions to allow trauma to release.
- 54:08Speaker 3: And I was like trauma dumping. I was dumping this
- 54:11Speaker 3: mass amounts of energy of stored emotion too soon after
- 54:15Speaker 3: I was traumatized, and I didn't have the you have
- 54:20Speaker 3: to do prep work. So I take my clients through
- 54:23Speaker 3: a very strategic journey of before we even get to
- 54:27Speaker 3: emotional processing, we have to do the mindset work. We
- 54:30Speaker 3: have to do the awareness work, and then the mindset work,
- 54:33Speaker 3: and we prep and we prepare to finally then do
- 54:36Speaker 3: the emotional processing and we trate it. We have to
- 54:39Speaker 3: get to know what is your specific window of tolerance
- 54:42Speaker 3: for feeling your feelings inside of your body, and how
- 54:46Speaker 3: can you process at that stage and then try to
- 54:50Speaker 3: increase your tolerance.
- 54:51Speaker 1: And I think that this is really just what sets
- 54:54Speaker 1: you apart, honestly from because I mean that piece right
- 54:58Speaker 1: there that you just expe blamed, I mean it's something
- 55:02Speaker 1: that I really hadn't even thought of prior to you
- 55:04Speaker 1: saying it, because I've always thought, you know, you just
- 55:08Speaker 1: work through the body, get to know your body, get
- 55:11Speaker 1: you know, so that you can release all these things.
- 55:13Speaker 1: But you're right, You've got to be in the right
- 55:16Speaker 1: mindset way to do that.
- 55:17Speaker 3: And that's why a lot of people think, oh, well,
- 55:19Speaker 3: I just why I cry a lot, Like I have
- 55:20Speaker 3: a client, this is a cry all the time. Why
- 55:22Speaker 3: am I not better? I'm like, well, your brain has
- 55:24Speaker 3: learned that this crying experience is extremely painful, and it
- 55:28Speaker 3: started to associate that with being a negative thing. So
- 55:32Speaker 3: and then you your mindset around it, being like why
- 55:35Speaker 3: do I do this? My eyes are horrible after I cry? Like,
- 55:39Speaker 3: why you know? Do I have to keep doing this?
- 55:41Speaker 3: I don't want to do it. You're shaming yourself and
- 55:43Speaker 3: you're associating these release of emotions inside of the body.
- 55:49Speaker 3: We call them feelings because they're felt okay with shame,
- 55:52Speaker 3: and then your brain is learning that's a bad thing.
- 55:55Speaker 3: And when I go through it, it's you're going through
- 55:57Speaker 3: it in this really unregulated way or disregulated, which is
- 56:00Speaker 3: sort of like a form of trauma dumping of like
- 56:03Speaker 3: it's over releasing, right, it's pushing past your window of
- 56:06Speaker 3: tolerance for your own emotional experiences. And so you have
- 56:09Speaker 3: this like unregulated, like forty five minute cry, and of
- 56:12Speaker 3: course your brain goes that was horrible. I never want
- 56:14Speaker 3: to repeat that ever again. But you thought you were
- 56:17Speaker 3: quote feeling your feelings. Then you're coming back and shaming
- 56:20Speaker 3: yourself and being like why am I still crying? Well,
- 56:23Speaker 3: then that's a double whammy to your nervous system. Now
- 56:25Speaker 3: you're hitting it with shame, which is the ultimate dysregulator.
- 56:28Speaker 3: So there is really a science and a strategy behind
- 56:32Speaker 3: healing your nervous system and doing so in a way
- 56:36Speaker 3: that involves a mindset shift. That is the absolute foundational
- 56:41Speaker 3: prep work. You will not be successful if you don't
- 56:44Speaker 3: first do the mindset stuff. So people either just try
- 56:46Speaker 3: to go headfirst into the somatic work and it's too
- 56:50Speaker 3: much for their nervous system. They end up like re
- 56:52Speaker 3: traumatizing themselves more, or they're trying to just do the
- 56:55Speaker 3: mindset work with no somatic healing and then they're also stuck.
- 56:58Speaker 3: We have a strategic calm, a nation of prep work,
- 57:02Speaker 3: and then the emotional experience somatic true emotional processing work
- 57:06Speaker 3: that has to be done. And I hate to tell you,
- 57:10Speaker 3: but if you get re traumatized, you're just gonna have
- 57:12Speaker 3: to start over.
- 57:13Speaker 2: You need it.
- 57:13Speaker 1: So I mean, honestly, if you're looking for that strategic process,
- 57:17Speaker 1: if you want to learn that strategic process, doctor Hensley, teach.
- 57:22Speaker 2: Join my group.
- 57:23Speaker 3: I mean, don't let the word group make you afraid.
- 57:25Speaker 3: You can be anonymous in the group.
- 57:27Speaker 1: And again, like you know, I was talking to the
- 57:29Speaker 1: client today and I was like, the group is another
- 57:31Speaker 1: whole intervention that's a part of it because you can
- 57:35Speaker 1: learn so much from other people or you you know,
- 57:38Speaker 1: the sense of community that comes along with the group.
- 57:42Speaker 1: The group is an added part of it. It's it's
- 57:45Speaker 1: a beautiful part of it. You really you have couples
- 57:47Speaker 1: that you know are in same situations as you are,
- 57:50Speaker 1: and then you're able to not feel as a loan
- 57:53Speaker 1: or not feel as crazy.
- 57:54Speaker 3: Right because you're like, oh, these are actually predictable patterns. Yes,
- 57:57Speaker 3: everybody comes in you say it all the time, thinking
- 58:00Speaker 3: their relationship is unique and different, but you don't understand.
- 58:03Speaker 3: But we've got this going on, So what how are
- 58:05Speaker 3: you fighting about it? How are you handling it? How
- 58:07Speaker 3: are you guys able to meet each other's needs? Well,
- 58:09Speaker 3: there you go, because couples that can meet each other's
- 58:12Speaker 3: needs well and handle conflict can get through a lot
- 58:16Speaker 3: of problems. They can get through parenting issues, they can
- 58:19Speaker 3: get through issues with family of origin, they can get
- 58:22Speaker 3: through money problems, they can get through somebody becoming sick
- 58:25Speaker 3: or injured. But when you don't have those fundamentals in place, yeah,
- 58:29Speaker 3: you add another stressor it's going to wreck you.
- 58:31Speaker 2: I need to go through your group again. Yeah, I
- 58:34Speaker 2: really do, I really feel like I do sit in. Yeah,
- 58:37Speaker 2: I think I will.
- 58:38Speaker 1: I mean, it's just always such a good refresher and
- 58:40Speaker 1: I always feel I mean, even when I first started
- 58:43Speaker 1: and I came on, I would sit in on group
- 58:45Speaker 1: just to learn, you know, more about the foundation of attachment.
- 58:48Speaker 1: So I set in, you know, three or four times.
- 58:50Speaker 1: And I've always said, and I relay this to people
- 58:53Speaker 1: that I talk to. I learned something every time that
- 58:56Speaker 1: I set in each time, and so I think, I mean, gosh,
- 58:59Speaker 1: I learned something every time we sit here and talk,
- 59:02Speaker 1: you know, and it helps it helps me and and
- 59:06Speaker 1: you know, just my experience over the past weekend.
- 59:10Speaker 2: I it's always a.
- 59:12Speaker 1: Good reminder that. And I want to I want to
- 59:15Speaker 1: say this lightly because healing healing. I don't want to
- 59:19Speaker 1: ever put the stigma on healing that healing is like
- 59:21Speaker 1: this bad thing, right, it's this beautiful thing. It's beautiful,
- 59:24Speaker 1: and it's you know, even when you're you realize, oh wow,
- 59:28Speaker 1: that's still really got to me. You just have to
- 59:33Speaker 1: meet yourself where you are.
- 59:34Speaker 3: A lot of it is catching and correct thing like
- 59:37Speaker 3: that was a catch and correct moment for you. Now
- 59:39Speaker 3: had you been spiraling and texting him days later, and
- 59:43Speaker 3: like yeah, then we would be looking at like okay,
- 59:47Speaker 3: well this is a pretty big regression. Yeah right, but
- 59:50Speaker 3: you have one moment yeah, okay, So what I have
- 59:52Speaker 3: moments in my marriage that I have to be like,
- 59:54Speaker 3: you know what, babe, I just messed up.
- 59:55Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 59:55Speaker 3: I immediately regret saying that I take accountability, we say
- 1:00:00Speaker 3: earning your security. It is somewhat of a catch and
- 1:00:04Speaker 3: correct game. You learn to respond better off the cuff
- 1:00:08Speaker 3: a lot, lot lot more. But sometimes like those old
- 1:00:12Speaker 3: pathways are just sitting there waiting to be lit up,
- 1:00:14Speaker 3: and something is said in just the right way or
- 1:00:16Speaker 3: done and just the right way that triggers you in
- 1:00:19Speaker 3: a way that your subconscious goes, wait, this is really bad,
- 1:00:22Speaker 3: and so your neuro transmitters go and they go over
- 1:00:25Speaker 3: to that old pathway and light it back up.
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: And I want to get you know, I want to
- 1:00:30Speaker 1: shine light on my husband because and I'm going to
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: try not to cry. But you know, safe connection and
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: safe love, I mean, if I can, if I can
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: give y'all any hope, I mean, that's helped my re
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: traumatization more than anything. Yeah, because he he met me
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: where I was first off, you know, he gave me
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: my space and gave me my time that I needed
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: to cry out. But later on when I was when
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: I started to ruminate because I did you know, he
- 1:01:00Speaker 1: just held me. He held me, and that that that
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: body to body, skin to skin connection, and he didn't act,
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: you know, And this is this is what's so beautiful.
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: You know, I have a husband that can hold me
- 1:01:12Speaker 1: and not ask for anything else, you know, but of
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: course not not in that moment. He knows what I'd
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: just been through and he saw what it did to me,
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: and it you know, I just want to give him
- 1:01:20Speaker 1: props because so many times, you know, our partners do
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: want to fix and they do want to you know,
- 1:01:25Speaker 1: right then and there fix it. Yeah, and he you know,
- 1:01:29Speaker 1: he I think he knew that he couldn't and that
- 1:01:31Speaker 1: I just needed I just needed a minute. And and
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: that's what I was just going to say. Is that
- 1:01:37Speaker 1: safe love, which you can only or secure love, right,
- 1:01:42Speaker 1: you can only find that truly through finding secure attachment.
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: But it's the true answer when you do get re traumatized,
- 1:01:54Speaker 1: because you will, everyone does, right, That's life. I mean,
- 1:01:57Speaker 1: retraumatization can look like a lot of things.
- 1:01:59Speaker 3: It can, it can ca.
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: I mean, but when you have that safe love and
- 1:02:03Speaker 1: that safe connection.
- 1:02:04Speaker 2: It makes it. It's huge, It's just massive.
- 1:02:07Speaker 1: And I mean, honestly, I don't know if I could
- 1:02:11Speaker 1: sit here today and not feel I mean, I'm still
- 1:02:14Speaker 1: a little disregulated, and I told you that on the
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: way here, but not as much as I would have been,
- 1:02:18Speaker 1: you know, years ago without Josh, you know, absolutely, And
- 1:02:21Speaker 1: not to give him all the credit, I give myself
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: some credit.
- 1:02:23Speaker 3: Sure, absolutely, And I think you know again, access to
- 1:02:28Speaker 3: safe connection, especially safe intimate connection, is a fundamental human need.
- 1:02:32Speaker 3: It's how the human mating strategy works. We form long
- 1:02:36Speaker 3: term intimate relationships by which then we have children, and
- 1:02:38Speaker 3: we stay with those partners to help protect the children,
- 1:02:41Speaker 3: to help them grow. We're not like animals. They just
- 1:02:43Speaker 3: go out mate with everybody and it's a numbers game, right,
- 1:02:46Speaker 3: So we got to stop treating ourselves as if it is.
- 1:02:50Speaker 3: We need to realize that these intimate connections profoundly influence
- 1:02:55Speaker 3: our nervous system. And if you don't fix your own patterns,
- 1:02:58Speaker 3: you will just find another verse of some person that
- 1:03:01Speaker 3: traumatized you in a different package.
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: Or I mean, even like everyone, I mean, everyone's going
- 1:03:07Speaker 1: to lose a loved one at some point in their life. Right,
- 1:03:09Speaker 1: everyone's going to experience death. And so I mean, this
- 1:03:14Speaker 1: is why achieving your attachment security it covers everything, It
- 1:03:20Speaker 1: covers everything.
- 1:03:21Speaker 3: It takes what if to even if it's like, okay,
- 1:03:23Speaker 3: well even if this happens, because my whole brain beforehand
- 1:03:27Speaker 3: was what if? What if? What if? Now it's just like, okay,
- 1:03:29Speaker 3: even if.
- 1:03:30Speaker 2: I'll be okay, I'll be okay. I can handle this.
- 1:03:32Speaker 3: I can and okay might look a lot of different ways.
- 1:03:35Speaker 3: You know, it might look like just getting by, but
- 1:03:37Speaker 3: ultimately it will end up as overcoming and being smarter
- 1:03:43Speaker 3: and being more resilience. And you know, I can't I'm
- 1:03:48Speaker 3: not gonna lie. I can't say I'm glad this last
- 1:03:50Speaker 3: year happened to me. But it was a test, if anything,
- 1:03:55Speaker 3: and I've been able to pass it.
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: Which, well, in your marriage, your marriage is more resilient
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: because oh.
- 1:04:01Speaker 3: For sure, we're a way, We're closer than we ever
- 1:04:04Speaker 3: thought we could be because we endured it together.
- 1:04:08Speaker 1: That's what safe connection does. Connectors are things.
- 1:04:11Speaker 3: For sure, and you know, we get to know each
- 1:04:16Speaker 3: other a little bit deeper about what helps and what
- 1:04:18Speaker 3: hurts and in what somebody needs where in those states
- 1:04:21Speaker 3: where maybe you you're so justsregulated you can't communicate what
- 1:04:24Speaker 3: you need very well. And we were able to learn
- 1:04:28Speaker 3: that him and I definitely cope with drama or drama,
- 1:04:31Speaker 3: drama and trauma in a very different way, and that
- 1:04:37Speaker 3: I'm much more of an externalizer and I want to
- 1:04:40Speaker 3: talk at talk it, talk it, talk it, talk it
- 1:04:41Speaker 3: talk and talk a talka talk it to death because
- 1:04:43Speaker 3: I'm somebody who I understand things as I externalize them,
- 1:04:49Speaker 3: Like if I talk about it, then it helps me
- 1:04:51Speaker 3: understand it better. For him, he's an internalizer, so he
- 1:04:55Speaker 3: is very much in his head and he doesn't want
- 1:04:58Speaker 3: to talk about it out loud would be me and John,
- 1:05:00Speaker 3: and he wants to like think it through and he
- 1:05:03Speaker 3: doesn't want it to take over his life. I'm like, no,
- 1:05:06Speaker 3: let it take over my life for a little while
- 1:05:08Speaker 3: and then I'll get it all out and I'll be okay.
- 1:05:09Speaker 2: And let's talk about it all the time.
- 1:05:11Speaker 3: Yeah, let's keep talking. Wait, we ended that conversation, Let's
- 1:05:14Speaker 3: go back to it. Yeah. Donald's more of a like, no,
- 1:05:17Speaker 3: there's a time to fight and there's time to rest.
- 1:05:20Speaker 3: I think he learned that in the military, they'd ingrained
- 1:05:22Speaker 3: that into him, and so before we would have like
- 1:05:26Speaker 3: a court hearing or something, he'd be like pacing the floor.
- 1:05:29Speaker 3: But I was like, that was when I was bringing
- 1:05:32Speaker 3: to action, I'd be cool as a cucumber. I'd be
- 1:05:34Speaker 3: ready to go because I had been anxious beforehand. See
- 1:05:38Speaker 3: he had shut it all down, and then he was like, okay, wartime,
- 1:05:40Speaker 3: war time. Now it's time to Now it's time to
- 1:05:42Speaker 3: like really like red the nervous system up. And I'm like, no,
- 1:05:46Speaker 3: now I'm cool.
- 1:05:47Speaker 2: And there's really no right or wrong way.
- 1:05:49Speaker 1: I mean, I think that both ways could be you know,
- 1:05:52Speaker 1: especially in a marriage, can actually be kind of constructive.
- 1:05:55Speaker 3: Yeah, because if we were both externalizers, oh my gosh,
- 1:05:59Speaker 3: we would never shut up of anxiety.
- 1:06:03Speaker 1: I know.
- 1:06:04Speaker 2: So it's probably a good thing.
- 1:06:05Speaker 1: But speaking of of course, doctor Hinsley services that can
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: help with nervous system regulation. In terms of re traumatization,
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: we have to name our affiliate and thank them Armor,
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: which again, if you've had trauma, you probably most likely
- 1:06:23Speaker 1: have some tummy issues or some skin issues, and Armor,
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: I'm telling you guys, it has. It has helped me tremendously.
- 1:06:32Speaker 3: Even chat GPT verified that Armora was a really good
- 1:06:35Speaker 3: supplement for me because of my past trauma, because of
- 1:06:38Speaker 3: the immune disregulation and the gut dsregulation that my body
- 1:06:42Speaker 3: is always trying to fight and reregulate. That Armora is
- 1:06:46Speaker 3: a fantastic supplement for the gut and for the skin
- 1:06:49Speaker 3: and for the immune system to actually you know, calm
- 1:06:52Speaker 3: the inflammation which is just such a big part of
- 1:06:56Speaker 3: what we experience with trauma and retrauma and re traumatization.
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: So you can go to Armora dot com and put
- 1:07:03Speaker 1: in lovedoc for fifteen percent off for first purchases. So
- 1:07:07Speaker 1: thank you, Arma, thank you.
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- 1:07:09Speaker 2: Yep, mind you always every week, every week.
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: So and then of course please go check out doctor
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: Hensley services at the lovedoc dot com. For our listeners,
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: we offer promo code love dot twenty seven for twenty
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- 1:07:32Speaker 1: out at the lovedoc dot com And until next time, peace,
- 1:07:36Speaker 1: love and perspective.