Latest / hol+ with Dr. Taz MD | The Future of Medicine is Holistic / Rewiring Your Brain for Emotional Safety and Mental Health with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau
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- Rewiring Your Brain for Emotional Safety and Mental Health with Sophie Grégoire Trudeau === Sophie Gregoire: Mental health is not just the absence of a mental illness. We are all vulnerable to this crisis. Ooh, we got to stop. You have to say that again. This expression of what you got or didn't get or got too much of or not enough of expresses in every single relationship that you'll ever have. When one of us. Sophie Gregoire: in a Dr Taz: family works to reset our nervous system or to heal trauma. It indirectly impacts the nervous system and the DNA of our other related family members. We have it all in us. It's in us. We're not using it. Welcome to whole plus my next guest is Sophie Gregoire Trudeau is such a treat. I can't wait for you guys to listen to this conversation. Dr Taz: She is a best selling author, a celebrated public speaker, and a passionate mental health advocate. Her first book, Closer Together, Knowing Ourselves and Loving Each Other, was a number one bestseller in Canada and number one on Audible. She explores the science behind brain health, talks to us today about emotional literacy and intelligence and what leadership really means. Dr Taz: Sophie, welcome to Whole Plus. Thank you. It's such an honor and such a privilege to have you here. I've been stalking you. I've seen all the amazing work you've done. It's incredible. We'll go into all of that shortly, but I want to get right into it. Your book, Closer Together, Knowing Ourselves and Loving Each Other, was the number one bestseller, number one on Audible. Dr Taz: In that book. In Canada. In Canada. Hey, it counts. It all counts. You gotta be humble in life. You gotta be humble. But yes. But I, I wanna, I wanna actually quote you. These are your words. And it just resonated with me so deeply. And I want to talk about these words. So you write, as your emotional biography sets the musical scale of your life, your unwounded soul writes the final symphony. Dr Taz: Ultimate symphony. What ultimate symphony? What did you mean when you were writing Sophie Gregoire: those words? What were you trying to say? We don't know this because we're not taught this. But we come into the world pretty much perfect. We'll set aside, you know, babies with malformations or, you know, deficiencies from a neurological perspective. Sophie Gregoire: But we come into the world where, of course, the in utero experience when we were in the room of our parents. mothers. Um, if we, if we went under stress into the womb, we do come out with a tone in our nervous system. That could mean that there is a little music in there. Um, that might not sound so good to us because it didn't feel safe in the womb, right? Sophie Gregoire: Our nervous system were a little bit jacked up in, in, in alert mode. So. Apart from the in utero life where you can come and be birthed into the world, you're perfect, right? If you were under difficult circumstances when you were in the womb, yes, you do come up with some little tweaks that could be, um, that could be soothed by proper care, nurturance, stable, um, presence from your, from your parent. Sophie Gregoire: And you know, that quality and that quantity can really. Relax your nervous system. And again, rewire some, you know, neurons in your brain to make you feel safe. Validated, cared for, um, and seen. So when that is done in a secure way, we'll just classify it in the two big families of secure or insecure, bonds of attachment to the person who took care of us, whether it's a mother, an auntie, an uncle, whatever, anyone, um, when that takes place in a secure environment, you have more chances of feeling at ease in the world. Sophie Gregoire: of trusting others, of trusting yourself, of knowing that you are worth being here. And everybody comes into this world with this, that same worth and should be treated with kindness and love and compassion, but that's not the case. So when I wrote this book, I realized that In that quote, when I talk about the fact that your emotional biography is what you come into the world with, even if you went through the most brutal circumstances and events, you can still rewire your brain and your nervous system and you can, your soul is untouched. Sophie Gregoire: Your body might be right from abuse or from, from even from verbal abuse. Your body is answers that and, and, and, and is under stress, but it is really important to know that the neuroplasticity, and that's been a buzzword we've been talking about for years, right? Our brains can relearn. We can relearn. We can build more resilience in our bodies. Sophie Gregoire: And we'll go maybe deeper into that, into mitochondrial resilience and all of that. It is fascinating how we can affect our bodies and our brains and our minds and therefore our emotions and our thoughts because you can never out think your way out of stress. Yes. It doesn't work. No, talk therapy is great. Sophie Gregoire: Don't get me wrong. I've done it too. But it's not enough, right? And so your soul always remains perfect and untouched and, and beautiful. And people have to know that they are worth the beauty of their own soul. Dr Taz: I feel like so much of what I see people struggle with is such an attempt to fully express their soul and their soul's desire and they struggle with that. Dr Taz: You know, Chinese medicine, which I've spent a lot of time in. You know, 5, 000 years ago, they talked about this concept of chi, or energy, right? And you were gifted a certain amount of energy, and then you could replenish it and grow it, or you could deplete it, depending on what happened throughout your life. Dr Taz: So I love seeing this come full circle, right? That's a big part of my mission of Whole Plus, is to bring all this together. Now, Um, when we are wounded through life, let's say we didn't get the nurturing, we didn't get the attention we need, what are we seeing play out? Is this what you think might be happening when we think about this mental health crisis that's global now? Dr Taz: It's not U. S., it's not Canada, it's global, you know? I have chills. What do you, tell me what you think is happening. Sophie Gregoire: Yeah, I mean, it's not what I think is happening is that I've been doing, you know, I'm a student of life just like you are. Right. I mean, I keep. Uh, track of what science and facts and data is showing us and that even in in our days is under danger and it's It's, you know, we're toying with the truth and that's very, very dangerous for a democracy, for human beings, for families. Sophie Gregoire: Going through it right now. Right? Exactly. So I think that, um, mental health, mental wealth is not just the absence of a mental illness. Right. We're all one trauma away from each other. I've 20 years and people are like, what do you, what do you mean? It takes one traumatic life event. To change your brain and the way you interact with yourself and other people, that homeless person, something happened to them. Sophie Gregoire: Yeah. You're not born homeless. Right. Well, yes, in some countries you are, but you know what I mean? So it's not just the absence of mental illness. And I think mental health is It's a right to self knowledge, it's a right to knowing how to regulate your own human body because you have one in this lifetime. Sophie Gregoire: And what's happening now is that we are actually, you know, ADHD, ADD, um, uh, autoimmune diseases, you know, we're skyrocketing in all the disease that we're going through as a population. And we come into the world with the two most basic needs. And this is true for every single human being that comes on this planet. Sophie Gregoire: Attachment. So we talked about it. Did your attachment to your caregiver, whether it was in a secure or insecure environment. Take place and how did it take place and how did it affect you? So that need for attachment just to feel loved and validated is the first need. It's biological is visceral. And then the second one is authenticity. Sophie Gregoire: Being able to express who you are without having to change your behavior. to please. Come on, between you and I. Right. Dr. Taz, we all do it. Okay. We all change our behavior. We all do it. We all do it. But today we live in a society that rewards us for doing it. We live in a world where we are rewarded and praised in different ways, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Sophie Gregoire: Uh, anti aging, surgeries, and psychologically, oh, showing your perfect side all the time, right? So, we're being rewarded for self betrayal, and Dr. Gabor Mate, who, you know, is an ally on this path, yeah, and who helped me, um, says it so well, if you can't express who you truly are, you know, when all systems have been tried, you're fight, you're fight, you're freeze, nothing works. Sophie Gregoire: Because you're living in abnormal circumstances. Because the way we compete in this market to succeed, um, we want to be recognized instead of contributing to the world. We are competing constantly against one another. Uh, we are not accepting aging. We are obsessed with eternal youth. All of our energy is geared towards things that are not authentic. Sophie Gregoire: Therefore, we become what we consume. Whether it's people, food, which our food, that's another another, that's a whole Dr Taz: hour. Right? Right. So that's also a Sophie Gregoire: big problem because if we don't get the right nutrients to nourish our gut and our brain, which is a relationship that can never be dissociated, and now we see health as a holistic approach where you're, the brain in your, um, in your head, the brain in your heart that has a sensory capacity. Sophie Gregoire: All communicating. Exactly. And in your gut. Exactly. So all the signals, 75 percent of the signals from your gut go to your brain. We were thinking before that it was more the brain to the gut. That's not true. So I think mental health in this case. It means two things, one, the way we live is abnormal. We are reacting in our bodies and in our minds to abnormal circumstances. Sophie Gregoire: We are not meant as human beings to be sitting in front of a, you know, office desk and computer for it has so many different negative impacts. And then, and then the way we lost community, we're out there alone in the world, we got to fend for ourselves. Um, when you're taught from a very young age that you want to be recognized and you're a self made woman or a self made man, that doesn't exist. Sophie Gregoire: Nobody is self made. Nobody is. Right. No one. That is a pure lie. We're here. Everybody you meet, whether it was positive or negative, it forms you. It leaves an imprint in you. You decide to deal with it with strength and courage or you decide to be overwhelmed by it. Now, the problem is. We're on dopamine highs all the time. Sophie Gregoire: So dopamine like makes you feel like you're kind of like high, right? And it, it, it's perfect. It gears you towards action and we need it, but we're constantly looking for that next high. What relationship, what type of food, what type of, you know, um, movie, whether it's violence or horror or whatever, what's my next high, right? Sophie Gregoire: So right now, teenagers who are the next generations and children, because they're always on screens and always. Yeah. Constantly being probed with and stimulated with, um, with incentive reward. You know, lights that are never stop blinking. They find the relaxing hormones very boring. Mm hmm. Though that serotonin, that oxytocin, all the relaxing hormones that are meant to bring us back home to ourselves. Sophie Gregoire: We don't think we're worthy of rest, but the only way the body and mind make sense of life is through rest. So it's quite a pickle we're in, but it's not, everything is explainable. If you, if you have enough knowledge to see why there is this type of human behavior, why there is divisiveness and polarization between human beings, it's not that difficult to understand. Dr Taz: When I listen to you, I see such a connection between The unwounded soul, right? And then attachment issues being present in the culture of today. And then sort of this precipice of developing a mental health crisis. And I feel like we are all across race, socioeconomic status, country. Party, it doesn't matter vulnerable to this crisis because of the culture that you have just described, you know And I think that one of the things the the issue of the times and the challenge of the times whether we're talking about Our youth our teenagers women men family units, and I know we're going to get into all of that in just a minute You know is how do we unwind this? Dr Taz: I mean you have been a tireless Advocate for mental health throughout Canada and across the globe, you know, what, for somebody listening to us right now and understanding that they have fallen, either they individually or their family has fallen right into this pit of mental health issues, which we probably need to tease apart a little bit more anyways. Dr Taz: You know, what would you tell them? Where do you start? Where do you begin? How do you have these conversations? And some of this is personal for me, and I'll share that with you have chills right now because, Sophie Gregoire: because I suffered from eating disorders. I've seen people who have been suffering in their own lives, you know, through the years. Sophie Gregoire: And for me, I love humans, and I believe in our potential, and I will never put my hands down and arms down thinking, okay, it's over. The darker forces are going to take over. No. Transcribed There's not, not a chance. Not in my lifetime. Until my last breath. And I know you're the same. I'm there with you. Sophie Gregoire: Come on people. Yes. Come on. We love you. But here's the thing. Right. I think it's two, two answers to this question. The first one is, it comes from, uh, it's neurobiology. It's a science, but it's simple. Safety. Oh. And there are so many people who don't feel safe in their own family units, in their workplaces, in their work, you know, in, in their schools. Sophie Gregoire: shootings, like just think about everything that's happening. Oh yeah. If the human beings don't have emotional safety, you know, the famous Abraham Maslow pyramid where you had got a food on your table, a roof over your head. If emotional safety is not there, physical and emotional safety, it's game over. Sophie Gregoire: You don't have anything. It's your system will not be able to move forward without emotional and physical safety. So if we get to Make the threads of community a little bit more solid. And if we use techniques, which are not that difficult to integrate into schools, into families, I teach it, right? Yeah. Sophie Gregoire: Just how to reset your nervous system. Uh, breathing exercises, yoga, walks in nature. We have it all in us. It's in us. We're not using it. And it's not our fault. It's nobody's fault. We haven't been taught how we were supposed to know about this. Dr Taz: Why in the world do we, okay, so when you say the word safety, I'm latching. Dr Taz: So safety first. Safety first. And I know for the person watching or listening, they're thinking like, I am safe. I have a house. I have a car. I have a great life. I love that. What do you mean I'm not safe? Right. But you're talking about emotional safety. Yes. Explain that. Okay, Sophie Gregoire: so you could be living in a, I don't know, 22 bedroom home. Sophie Gregoire: But, um, You're stressed out. Oh, you're depleted. You're trying to hold everything together for your kids, for your husband, for your family, or you lost your family, or you, you were going through a divorce. There are so many external elements that can make us feel unsafe emotionally. And we don't know this, but when we feel stressed out all the time, which is most people, it affects our sleep. Sophie Gregoire: It affects our energy levels. And when sleep is affected, our emotional resilience is affected. We don't feel as we can. Conquer ourselves and the world with as much, you know, positivity and grit and strength. So our bodies are meant to be tested. We're meant to activate ourselves so we can, um, encounter obstacles. Sophie Gregoire: in order to know what we're made of. But we're not talking about the obstacles that, that we just referred to, like constant stress at work, not being able to pay for your rent at the end of the month. Whether you are living in a 22 bedroom home or in a tent, if you feel safe in that tent and your needs are met, but you don't feel safe in that 22 bedroom house, it is what it is. Sophie Gregoire: You won't be able to just, I love this, not be stressed. It has nothing to do with this. Right? So safety is just like trauma or like I would say, no, safety is not just, um, the absence of threat, but it's the presence of connection. Ooh, Dr Taz: we got to stop. And this is, you have to say that again. Sophie Gregoire: Okay. So safety is, I have chills again, is not just the absence of threat. Sophie Gregoire: It is the presence of connection. Dr Taz: And I think that is what we are all missing nowadays. Exactly. And that is why we have a Sophie Gregoire: mental health crisis. So the second element, the first one was safety and you said it in your question. You didn't, you didn't. I didn't catch myself. No, no, no. But it's perfect. You talked about, you said vulnerable, vulnerability. Sophie Gregoire: So if you look right now at all the leaders in the world. I'm not going to name any names, but just think, okay, it doesn't matter which political party you're from. I want you to just think here. So people who adhere to, um, let's say extreme, you know, extremism or really, um, right or really left wing ideologies or, you know, conspiracy theories. Sophie Gregoire: So they are looking at right now or fascism. Uh, there was a recent study and, uh, I think it's Gabor Mate actually who wrote the article in the Guardian and they, they, they, they went into the brains of people who. Um, are, um, attracted by these movements and the amygdala, which is the almond shaped kind of space in your brain, uh, that gives you signals for danger. Sophie Gregoire: Okay. Uh, it's good when there's a car crossing across the street and you don't want to be hit by the car. They made the level go bing, bing, bing, be careful. Don't cross the street. Perfect. Right. But when usually in your childhood years, when you went through trauma, when you went through neglect, when you went through all the things that should have taken place that didn't. Sophie Gregoire: Right? Because trauma is not just something bad that happened to you. It's also something that should have taken place just like safety, but that didn't, right? That's trauma. So, when you've had this in your childhood, most people who have gone through trauma will not have the same sense of safety and trust in others and in the world. Sophie Gregoire: The more fragile you are, the less trustworthy you are of others, and the more threatened you are by their difference. Think about the movements of populations right now and the politics. I'll continue. Now, people who have had difficult childhoods, and this is not their fault, I'm saying this with compassion. Sophie Gregoire: So you're connecting. Not finger pointing. You Dr Taz: are connecting this mental health. issue, this lack of emotional safety. This is fascinating, guys. You're connecting this lack of emotional safety to what we're seeing play out at a macro level across the world today with extremism. There's no doubt about it. Dr Taz: Fascism, all these ideologies. There's no doubt Sophie Gregoire: about it. If you take examples like, and this is not me, I'm not doing this correlation, science and research and the researchers. I'm just, I'm just a student. And I'm, I'm, I'm, I love, um, making this accessible to people because I didn't know this don't 10 years ago, It's time for us to really look at the truth, but it's not convenient and it hurts. Sophie Gregoire: Right. And it's hard. And it's hard. Yeah. But we can do it. We can really do it. So the vulnerability part, I'm going to it now, is that people who, for example, who are committing atrocities in my book, Closer Together, I talk with David Livingstone Smith, who's an expert on dehumanization. Right. And he has, he says, Sophie. Sophie Gregoire: It's not because I have, you know, I want to excuse their gestures of committing just atrocious crimes, right? But there is an underlying need for connection. Hatred actually stems from an underlying need from connection that never happened. Wow. Yes. Powerful. It's beyond powerful because it means that it is not impossible one to, I mean, we'll push all the extreme cases aside here, Dr Taz: but Sophie Gregoire: you know, I, I remember reading even in the article about Hitler and how he had an incredibly difficult, traumatic and abusive childhood. Sophie Gregoire: And there are other leaders right now in this world who have gone through very difficult childhoods with, you know, father figures that, you know, We're not nourishing or, or, or stabilizing or validating. And what happens is that these people who feel attracted to these movements, they're, they're trying to get away from the vulnerability of the child because they were vulnerable and they almost died from it because nobody paid attention. Sophie Gregoire: So, they try to get away from vulnerability and they're looking for a father figure to feel protected. They want to, um, get away from weakness and come closer to power, but in a way that is not, uh, healthy. It's almost like the false prophet. Right. Yes. That's what that's what that sounds like. And they don't want to take responsibility because they have low self esteem and they don't, they don't feel they have the capacity to regulate themselves. Dr Taz: Now let's bring, so that is so clear with what's happening in the world, you know, we could talk about that all the time, but let's bring it back to the family. Yeah. Let's bring it back to our kids. Yeah. You know. And I will say one more thing about leadership in general, and it's just a personal journey too as I've built my companies and, you know, nobody should be in leadership, whether it's leadership of a country, a company, or a family. Dr Taz: If you have not done a certain amount of due diligence around your own emotional kind of guardrails, barriers, blind spots, and are you yourself emotionally safe? I have had to go through my own personal journey of, of walking through those doors to make sure I was treating not just my family, but my, my team the right way and building them and growing them and nurturing them. Dr Taz: So I'm thinking about, you know, You know, the mom listening today, or, you know, the CEO listening today, or even maybe, maybe there's somebody who's leading a country listening today. This idea of emotional safety and responsibility, can you tie those together for us? What does that look like? What is our personal sense of responsibility when we're talking about emotional safety? Dr Taz: Because if we don't take responsibility and if we're not accountable, then we're projecting the stuff on the people around us. So curious what you think Sophie Gregoire: there. So as somebody who, uh, was on the co political path with the Prime Minister of Canada, uh, Justin Trudeau, uh, for, for a long, a long time, I can tell you that what happens, um, when you're a leader. Sophie Gregoire: It's tied to what happens in a family and you said, should we tie them together? They are tied together, right? Um, I think that everybody's leading a country within their own family. Yes, absolutely. And so our responsibility as parents. Or mentors or guides for younger people is to, or, or partners in a relationship is to be able to look at our trauma, small T or big T, let's say it again, it's not just something really atrocious that happened to you and that's it. Sophie Gregoire: Unfortunately, that's true for too many people, but it's also something that should have taken place that did not take place. And you are still looking for that. And this expression of what you got or didn't get or got too much of or not enough of expresses in every single relationship that you'll ever have. Sophie Gregoire: Until you are willing to look at your truth, understand why you have your personality patterns, why you have your defense mechanisms. We all do. We all do. And you know, we're talking here together and we've done this work and, but it's never over. Like, I don't want people to think, Oh, you know, these two have, have done it. Sophie Gregoire: So they, they have everything in control. Excuse me. I still, exactly. Hold flat on my face. We'll get it back up. but I know that I can get back up. Yeah. Right. I lost my father like a couple of weeks ago. Dr Taz: And I Sophie Gregoire: still feel so fragile. Yeah. I'm an only child. And it reminds me of so many things. And there was addiction in my family. Sophie Gregoire: And you know, I talk about it in the, in the book and closer together how he was my mentor. And I don't know When people are listening right now, what kind of relationship they had with their dad or with their mom. Um, but the emotional nourishment that we get in our families is equal to the amount of work that both parents were able to do. Sophie Gregoire: trauma because you don't want to leave your, can I say, you know, your crap as a legacy to the, exactly to your children. So one of the, a great singer that I love, she's Canadian Serena writer. She says, you know, so, um, if you don't take care of your shit, you become full of it. Yeah, totally. Totally. It's that simple in a way. Sophie Gregoire: Um, but it's not convenient. And it asks of us to go deep, and to cry, and to be angry, and to let go of emotions that have been bottling up in little ways. It doesn't have to be in huge ways, but those little ways, they're chronic, and they're through the years. So they, they set in, and they make the personality that, that you have, and who you are. Sophie Gregoire: I know you love the science. I'm going to share some Dr Taz: of the geekiness that I usually Let's get geeky. I usually live in. But, you know, uh, I think it was 20 I don't remember the year, but I did a TED talk and I was fascinated by the research and the research showing that our thoughts and emotions live actually in our mitochondrial DNA. Dr Taz: The mitochondrial DNA gets passed generation to generation, often untouched and unchanged by whoever you mate with. It's maternal DNA, primarily. And so the research was suggesting, you know, that a lot of what's happening with us as women, you know, in terms of how we feel and how we think, we are handing down, we are passing down, and we're caring, not only are we handing down. Dr Taz: We're also carrying a few generations of thoughts and emotions with us. And so the premise of that talk was. It's our responsibility. We have to change that narrative, that dialogue, that emotional landscape that we live in. Now at the time I gave that talk, I think it kind of went over everyone's head. Dr Taz: And I remember people were like, uh, what is she talking about? But now like, again, science is catching up to even those ideas. We talk about hypothalamic inflammation, that's the area you're talking about in the brain We're having this dopamine either overrun or deficit, whichever way you want to look at it. Dr Taz: And it's creating low grade constant trauma, low grade chronic cortisol, you know. Inflammation. Inflammation. And what's inflammation? It's disease. It's disease. And so it is responsible for the very thing we're talking about today, which is a lot of the mental health stuff that's happening. But how? How do we set about, right, okay, so we're gonna deal with, we came into the world as you described it so beautifully with this unwounded soul, and we either had a wonderful nurturing environment or we had one that was not, or somewhere in between, you know. Dr Taz: It's always somewhere in between. It's always somewhere in between. How do we, my husband and I, because we'll talk about my daughter in a minute, but we're like, we, we did everything, like you had everything, we gave everything, why are we dealing with this? You know? Oh my God, same. We both have 16 year olds. Dr Taz: Yes. So we know what we're talking about. Yes. Yes. You know, so 16 we share that. Same. But, but again, okay. So everyone's in between. Are there steps that we can take? You know, owning our own trauma is one. You mentioned that. Name a couple of other things that are active, that we could do if, if we're going to understand and latch onto this idea of emotional safety, responsibility, and legacy. Sophie Gregoire: That's a huge, huge question. Uh, but the answer is a little bit more simple than one might think. We live too fast. Look at the world. We're spinning. We're spinning. Our heads are spinning. Our bodies are spinning. We're spinning on wheels inside gyms to make ourselves healthy, you know? Dr Taz: Hey, wait a minute. I just did that this morning. Dr Taz: Fine. Yes. Sophie Gregoire: They play good music. It's okay. It's a party in the morning. Gotcha. Yeah. That's my kind of thing. Um, so. We're spinning, and some of us are spinning out of control, and the language of love is slow. Dr Taz: Mmm. Sophie Gregoire: Stress is a dysfunctional Dr Taz: I feel like that's gold. Yeah. I'm going to have to say Sophie Gregoire: that again. The language of love is slow. Sophie Gregoire: Can I tell you something? When I wrote the book, Closer Together, I asked my son, he was 14 at that time, and I said, honey, what's the language of love? And he looked at me like, what the heck? Again, my mom's going cuckoo, you know? And he said, I don't know. Slow? Slow? And I'm like. Yeah, we're in the kitchen and I'm like, that's not slow. Sophie Gregoire: But I did say, yeah, hon. You have the recipe to life right in slow. My father always used to tell me, Hey, tornado, start running. You're going backwards. I understand it today. Um, so what happens, stress is a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. We're going too fast. We can't be present when we can't be present. Sophie Gregoire: We can't truly love. And we, when we can't truly love, we're actually not living the life that is dedicated and our right to be humans. is to love. So love, it could be romantic. It could be, I'm not, I don't just mean all of it. Exactly. Right. To be present, to be in tune with life. I spoke with the head of the Ottawa Hospital for Mental Health, the Royal, George Nordhoff, and he studies neuro waves. Sophie Gregoire: And he said, you know, Sophie, in depressed people, the waves are much slower. They feel like the world is passing them by. Can't get out of bed. Everything's too fast, right? You don't, you're completely out of rhythm. With your environment, your brain is out of rhythm with your environment and that causes dis ease. Sophie Gregoire: You know what, Jim Carrey, I remember seeing him say one, at one point, whatever you think of him. But, but he did say he was talking to a specialist and depressed is also deep, deep rest, deep rest from the inauthentic people that we are because we're reacting to inauthentic, uh, living cir circumstances. Mm hmm. Sophie Gregoire: So, we need a rest from wearing those masks of performance, from wearing those masks of depletion, um, that, or that everything's perfect. It's either one or, one or the other. Right, right. So, if we learn to slow down in our lives, to take time, to find time, sometimes it's five minutes. We spend hours looking at our phones and we can't breathe for five to ten to fifteen minutes. Sophie Gregoire: This can't be for real. I met a documentary filmmaker, a black Canadian, um, director X, his name is Julian, and he went into the most vulnerable places where there are shootings in schools and in the area in Toronto, and they used mindfulness and meditation to quiet the minds and the trauma. of people who actually were saying, I'm trying to save people who are still alive. Sophie Gregoire: I'm trying to grieve people who are still alive because they lost their minds to trauma and to chronic stress. Dr Taz: And it's Sophie Gregoire: working. They're using mindfulness and meditation and communities coming a little bit closer together. They're doing it in prisons. They're doing it in schools. They're doing it in with the police force and they're seeing incredible results. Sophie Gregoire: This is just one program. It's called prefrontal cortex operations, something like that. But this to say that we are all. a tiny community in our own family nucleus, nucleus of family. Yes. And because mothers are usually still today more in charge of all the chores, the, and we hold the emotional load of every family member in our households. Sophie Gregoire: Absolutely. Yep. Okay. I'm not saying fathers don't, There's incredible men out there. I absolutely adore them. And I've always been advocating on the right for the rights of boys and men to grow in a better concept of what it means to be a man and masculinity because it's an insult to their intelligence. Sophie Gregoire: They're under just as much duress and stress to wear that mask as women are to wear the other. Absolutely. Yeah. But we're seeing now That science is showing us that because women put their needs last. And this was, this was seen as, Oh, she's such a saint. She, she puts everybody else first. You do that. You can become sick, okay? Sophie Gregoire: Most women suffer from autoimmune diseases, fibromyalgia, um, lupus, MS, um, you know, so many others where they're realizing that the women who do not take care of themselves and their own needs live in a denial of what they truly need and that causes inflammation. Absolutely. So? I see this day Dr Taz: in and day out. Dr Taz: Exactly. I've been doing this for 15 years, patient after patient. Women get sick. Sick. Yeah. They get sick when they try to do it all. Yeah. And currently today, 2024, we are still doing it all. I know that. You know. I it hasn't changed for women. You Sophie Gregoire: know, parental leave is huge. Okay. Parental leave, uh, and, and having dads at home for, you know, a longer time when, when women give birth is absolutely necessary. Sophie Gregoire: Uh, it changed a lot in Canada and I have to say that we've had a very progressive government in, uh, in place for many years now. So, um, Seeing everything through a gender lens is so important, but to come back to the family unit and what people, what they can do to change their lives. So it's that wheel of health and you can't take one element and think that it's going to roll like a Ferrari. Sophie Gregoire: Okay. Right. So. How do you take care of your sleep? You move during the day. Your human body is meant to move. If you don't move during the day, you're going to set into a nervous fatigue. You won't be able to sleep well. Okay. And I'm not talking about perimenopause cause I'm writing in it and I'm waking up at 3am and it's driving me nuts. Sophie Gregoire: We'll have to talk about that later. Exactly. Exactly. So, so if you move your body during the day and you sweat even better, you burn toxins. Okay. If you exercise, you sleep better. If you sleep better. Your hunger levels are, are, are more modulated and regulated and you don't crave sugar and, and, and junk food as much. Sophie Gregoire: Then if you have that, I would say regulation where you're like, okay, I'm seeing, I'm seeing something that's, I feel better, a little bit better now that I slept well, I'm actually going to make better, better choices in what I'm going to eat for lunch. And you eat your veggies first, your fiber first, and then you go for your protein and then you go for the starch. Sophie Gregoire: Okay. Just so you know, you build kind of like a, a wall in the gut that. That really helps you keep the good bacteria, keep the bad bacteria out. So this starts with you. It starts with every single habit you have in your life. How you eat will affect how you sleep, will affect your energy level, vice versa. Sophie Gregoire: It's all a wheel. And then there's social connections. Yeah. Dr Taz: This is the one that gets missed. So I feel like the wellness industry has exploded, right? Everyone's talking wellness and health and diet and do this and take this and all this other stuff. We don't really talk a lot about connection and the power of connection, which then brings us back to this idea of safety. Dr Taz: We don't have those communities anymore that if your mother was upset and depressed, you could go to your auntie or to your grandmother or to somebody else, you know, that's disappearing. So talk to us about community and its place in this conversation around emotional resilience and safety. Sophie Gregoire: So I don't know if you're aware or if you're listening right now, if you're aware of, uh, the research that has been done in the blue zones throughout the earth. Sophie Gregoire: So people who live longer and healthier. So there's of course, nutrition, what they eat and how they exercise for sure. And you know, the quality of the water and the air that they breathe and the earth that they grow their food in. But the common denominator is social connection. So we are social beings, right? Sophie Gregoire: Um, isolation is a form of torture in prisons. There's a reason for that because we're not meant for it at all. And the pandemic. It was a form of neurobiological torture because we couldn't be in contact with other humans. Right now you're sitting in front of me, okay? And people, people are going to hear this, you won't believe this. Sophie Gregoire: If you were chronically stressed and in your sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight flight freeze right now, okay? And I came in and I had a neutral, just like look at my face right now. There's no real expression, right? Um, I'm not smiling or being aggressive with my, my facial expressions. If you're not feeling well and you're chronically ill. Sophie Gregoire: anxious, you could interpret my neutral face as aggressive. Oh wow. So again, social connection is a universal common denominator that unites us all. We all need it and we regulate ourselves without knowing it. When you smile to a stranger on the street, in the subway, on the bus, in your school, when you trust in others, when you've done work on yourself so you don't feel fragile or threatened by the difference of others. Sophie Gregoire: You are connecting in a way that is. Reducing inflammation in your body and in your brain. That is, lowering your stress hormones. That is, uh, making you feel like you can lead a life and trust in the universe. And then add to that maybe faith. Mm hmm. Or awe. Awe? Is, is an emotion. We don't Dr Taz: talk about awe. Dr Taz: Yeah. Like A W E. That word's, that word's gone. Sophie Gregoire: So you know what's really cool about awe? Yeah. Is that, let's say there was an eclipse not too long ago. What, maybe in the States you didn't experience it like we didn't. We saw it. Yeah? We didn't get it. Yeah. So, great battles, apparently, thousands and thousands of years ago, years ago, were stopped in the face of an eclipse because people couldn't believe how Mother Nature was so much stronger than we are, and we are and were, and was trying to tell us something. Sophie Gregoire: Now, we would be completely ignorant today if we didn't think Mother Nature is talking to us with what we've done to her, right? Awe is a predisposition in humans to, to believe and to sense, to sense, not to think, to sense that there's something greater that unites us. And when somebody has that emotion and goes through this, you know, through faith, through a connection with nature, uh, through having seen groups regulate themselves and take care of each other through the power of community and social connection and being able to lean in with vulnerability and feel safe. Sophie Gregoire: It really relaxes your nervous system, first, first of all. And second of all, apparently when you feel that way, you make more altruistic decisions. So you don't feel like your self made world and life that you don't owe anything to nobody. Right. It's not true. Yeah. It's the opposite. I love the word all. Sophie Gregoire: So look again at the state of the world, the state of our families, right? How do we treat each other in our own family units? It's important. And I mean, I say this, I had two teenagers and a 10 year old and you know, there's stress in our family like in every other family. And sometimes I lose patience when I'm, when I breathed before, when I practiced yoga or when I went for a walk before and called my mind and nervous system, I don't react to the same way when my teenager comes down in the kitchen and says, there's nothing to eat. Sophie Gregoire: Mm hmm. Right. Okay. Or get out of my room. Yeah. Or like, you say, Hi honey. Uh, whatever. I know. Eye rolls. No more drum rolls. Eye rolls. Before it was, Mommy's coming in. Drum roll. Woo! Now it's only the dog. He's happy to see me. That's it. Exactly. But, again, and that's like a normal developmental phase and, you know, our, our children need to feel like they can differentiate from their family and still be loved. Sophie Gregoire: So they don't want our cuddles anymore and they don't want to be so close and they want to hang out with their friends. If they know that they're still loved unconditionally, they'll come back. And I say this and I could go almost become teary because, because I'm going through this right now. Oh yeah. Sophie Gregoire: Yeah. And I'm there with you. And I miss them, right? I miss them. Dr Taz: They do come back and they do. It's so funny. My daughter can, my daughter's 16 as well, and she can go from like, get out of my room, doesn't want to talk to us, to then the phone's ringing 15, 20 times a day. Like, I didn't, I forgot to tell you this. Dr Taz: I forgot to tell you this. So it is a developmental stage. If she's Sophie Gregoire: calling you to tell you, mom, I forgot to tell you this. You're good. I know. You're good. Don't you test. Dr Taz: My feelings get hurt on the days where it's like, get out of my room. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to be around you. You're this, you're that, like all that other stuff. Dr Taz: But, you know, one of the things that I'm hearing and it's just a reminder to me personally and hopefully for everybody else is that we have to lead our families to a lower cortisol state. I was having this fascinating conversation with this Chinese medicine. And he said something very interesting. He said, every family has a rhythm. Dr Taz: They have a vibration. Some have a higher stress, high, and he used Chinese medicine language to describe it, you know, but he called it. Rebellious chi or not. Exactly. You got it. He said, some have like a rebellious chi vibration, some have a low chi vibration, but every family has a vibration. And it's very important for the leaders within a family to be able to identify that vibration and help the members of the family shift in a more. Dr Taz: Slower, positive, lower inflammatory state. And so I find, you know, a lot of what he's saying very comparable to what you're, you're talking about right now in a more, much more relatable way than talking about chi and yang and all that other stuff. But he also said this. He also said that when one of us. Dr Taz: in a family works to reset our nervous system or to heal trauma, it indirectly impacts the nervous system and the DNA of our other related family members. Sophie Gregoire: I have, I'm tearing, I'm tearing up because, because it's that visceral and it's that simple. It's not, it's complex, but it's simple. It's like saying, you know, Life is complicated, but true love is easy. Sophie Gregoire: Yeah. We've been taught that, oh, true love is so complicated. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's like breathing. Yeah, exactly. And when we lean in with a vulnerability and we know where we move from and we understand our trauma, Everything becomes a little bit more simple. And what you just said is so true. And what the doctor shared with you is so true because I, I mean, I see it when I've meditated and I, I come back to the, you know, to the kids after school or I pick them up, I know that somehow they feed off of that. Sophie Gregoire: And a lot of times people ask, well, what do you tell your children? You know, about, you know, You know, life. And I'm like, well, I tell them a lot of things, but it goes through one ear and goes out the other most of the time, right? How I treat myself. Do I love myself? Am I compassionate with myself? You can be the best mom in the world. Sophie Gregoire: Are you weighing yourself? You know? Every day and talk about your weight and how unhappy you are with your appearance or How we treat and love ourselves is a direct impact onto our children Dr Taz: Well, how did you get there because you have a story of your own? Yeah, this is not a story, right? This is not like, you know, oh guys just do this. Dr Taz: This is a hard won hard fought battle on your yeah on your part So tell us a little bit. So I'm Sophie Gregoire: an only child. I grew up in nature from like zero to five. I was free Um, most of my childhood pics are like naked talking to squirrels, you know, amazing. Yeah, no, no, it's, it's the best. It's the best. And so my haven is nature. Sophie Gregoire: Like I go back to her to learn everything and to regulate my nervous system too. And then we moved to the city and My mom in those days when I talked to her today said, I think I was a little bit depressed. Um, your father was gone a lot, you know, at work and he was doing the driving between town and where we lived in, in the, in, um, in the countryside. Sophie Gregoire: And then we moved to the city and everything changed. I made a new group of friends and I remember it was less quiet than what I knew. Right. I sensed it in my, in all my senses. And there was addiction on both sides of my family in different ways, uh, whether, you know, um, there was alcoholism and untreated on, on looked trauma and, uh, but I, I was loved. Sophie Gregoire: I was loved and my parents were good people. Yeah. There was just dealing with their own crap because they were never taught how to actually process it. Right. So, um, I internalized as every child does the tensions in my own family and I. Try to save them, try to save my dad from himself, my dad from my mom, my mom from, right? Sophie Gregoire: But that cape should not be worn by, by any child. And I know very well that millions of children do this. I wore the same cape. Dr Taz: Same exact cape. Had to prevent my father from doing something. It's hard. I was the parent. Yeah. Of the family. It's hard. So, I'm right there with you. Sophie Gregoire: Thank you. Um, and so are, I'm sure, thousands of people listening. Sophie Gregoire: Right. Yeah. Like, we all have a story. And we're all connected by our stories. That's why we have to share them. Dr Taz: Yes. Because Sophie Gregoire: to be honest, I've heard, you can't even imagine the stories I've heard as a mental health advocate. The most abusive, the most neglectful, the most beautiful. And I realized, again, we're all at one trauma away from each other. Sophie Gregoire: Right. Right. And. I think that we have this responsibility that might seem gigantic, but it's not. And what happened to me when I became, when I internalized all this tension, there was a constriction and I was reading again, Dr. Mate, my friend, not too long ago, who was saying, Suffering is part of life. It's fine. Sophie Gregoire: We all suffer, right? Everybody knows this. Every day, maybe in some ways, one form or another. But when they're, when you're suffering leaves you with the constriction, with something closed inside of you, that's trauma. And there's this beautiful saying that I keep repeating and that I taught at a retreat not too long ago. Sophie Gregoire: It says this, I think it's a rain, your Maria real K and it's, I want to unfold. Let there be no place or space inside of me kept closed. Because where I am closed, I am false. Don't think that you are your trauma. You're not. Don't think that you are your flaws. You're not. But look deeply enough to know how you can reparent yourself with the most present, compassionate, and patient love. Dr Taz: I love that. I always tell women, treat yourself like your own child. Like, you are your own child. We're re parenting ourselves. Sophie Gregoire: Not to pinpoint the finger and say, because of that, that, that, yeah. But love Dr Taz: yourself, feed yourself, you know, make sure you sleep, make sure you, like, all the things we as mothers, like, constantly have running around in our head for our kids. Dr Taz: But we say Sophie Gregoire: this. Yeah. And then the 20 things they'll consume during a day will be fake faces, fake breasts, fake hips, fake teeth, fake nails, fake eyelashes, fake everything, women, please don't be yourselves. Right. Right. And. Worse than that, we've swallowed the pill of saying, Oh, I do it for myself. I don't do it for others. Sophie Gregoire: Well, you Dr Taz: talk about, you're very candid and honest with your history with eating disorder. Yes. We have that history within our home, right? We're actively dealing with that with my daughter who has come a really long way and I'm super proud of her, but. I want to hug her right now. Really long way, but it's a daily journey. Dr Taz: It's daily. It's not a, okay, we're good for a month. And that's it. day to day thing right now. Is that where all this is coming from? Being fake? Being traumatized, what's, what, I mean, as someone who's experienced this, like I have not personally, I've experienced it only one time when I was with a group of girls in medical school and we had no control and that's the way we started to manage our stress, but I got out of it very quickly, you know, and realized it was unhealthy, but I haven't experienced it the way the girls of today are experiencing it. Dr Taz: And I don't think I've experienced it the way you've experienced it. So. It doesn't matter, right? In the end. I think it's important for us to talk about it, you know, as we're talking about the present culture, emotional safety, leading within our families, I think this is a piece of the puzzle too. Sophie Gregoire: But you said it in your question again, your questions are very wise. Sophie Gregoire: Um, no, it's true. When you say, when you say, the minute I started managing my stress better, I didn't fall into the eating disorder at medical school. Well, you just said it, right? You, there was a red flag. You saw it. So by the way, our intuition as women and as men too, is so, so brilliant and deep and visceral and alive, but we've been shutting it down. Sophie Gregoire: How many times have you, you know, you felt it in your heart, you should have done something, but you really didn't follow it because you know, life and how did that turn out? Always the wrong way. Exactly. We all, it happens to all of us, right? So you said stress management. Today, the stress that girls live with and boys live with, uh, but by the way, social media affects girls, uh, so much, yeah, so much, yeah, so much research is really the data is showing it now. Sophie Gregoire: So here's the thing, when your community is now rewarding you for self betrayal, okay, the culture that girls consume every day, they're rewarding you for looking and behaving Putting your intuition, your wisdom, your self compassion aside, instead of having faith in something greater. So, you think, if I go out there and I'm not perfect, the tribe will abandon me. Sophie Gregoire: Okay? That's your primitive brain. We're not going to change our primitive brain. We are meant to get away from danger and seek comfort. That's what the human brain does. So when you come back from school or when you come back from work and you're a parent or you're a worker and you're tired. And you want to go have your beer and numb the pain and the fatigue, or you want to go on social media to see, well, you know, uh, am I making it? Sophie Gregoire: What can I find here? Am I going to feel, you know, usually you don't feel better about yourself after you've been on social media, depending on what you consume. I make choices today that really correspond to what I want to learn and what I want to share. So it's better now. Um, and I refuse to spend hours on social media. Sophie Gregoire: It's just, I don't think it's healthy. I think that it's never too late to take a step back. You know, Jonathan Height with, uh, the Anxious Generation and that book is, is really making waves because we're realizing that phones in schools, for example, yeah. It, first of all, the attention, the learning and the attention is one thing, right? Sophie Gregoire: It disrupts everything. It's the great disruptor, but it's also. It's also eroding community because everybody in their own little silo is doing their own little thing and then posting about it. But what community are we building through this? None. And we need it. We need it to feel safe, secure, properly attached, right? Sophie Gregoire: And we have to be careful because peers raising peers. It's fine for a while. Parents should still be raising their kids. Dr Taz: So the eating disorders that we're seeing, would you blame this issue with social media and lack of community and lack of connection and lack of safety, I guess. Sophie Gregoire: So yes, that's all part of it. Sophie Gregoire: But eating disorders, like any other form of addiction, and right now if you're listening, I want you to find yours because we all have micro addictions. Okay. Maybe they're not huge. Maybe they're micro, but they're there. Whether it's sex, relationships, television, um, uh, drugs, work, uh, work. Thank you. Um, shopping, um, you know, uh, over exercising, whatever your micro or micro, magnified, uh, addiction is. Sophie Gregoire: It all stems from a dysregulated nervous system, which is seeking connection and emotional nourishment. I don't care what your drug of numbness is. Don't look at the addiction. Look at the pain, look at the, where it hurts. That's where you need to look. So yes, if We're not focusing on building safer communities, on building people that, and, and, and families that can trust in each other and that could, and, and who can trust in other families as well. Sophie Gregoire: Right. And if we continue to build our successes as we are own self made women and men and girls and boys. Right. We're not going to help each other heal. So it's about community. It is. And about staying closer together. No pun intended. I had to do that. I had to do that. You know how many times I've done this? Sophie Gregoire: Because with the book tour, um, you know, I didn't choose that title by fluke. When you, when you publish a book, it's hours of like, what the heck am I going to name this book? Right. And I really, it was hard work because first of all, titles are taken or whatever. And then I was like, what. What am I doing, my, what's my life purpose, what, why am I here Sophie, why am I here? Sophie Gregoire: And what am I willing to, I would say almost die for in a way, right? Or to, to sacrifice for. And it's human closeness. Mmm. I love humans. I want humans to know what love is. Dr Taz: So I think you've just answered my next question. Oops. And I could talk to you forever and I can't believe we're out of time. I'm loving every second of this. Dr Taz: This is crazy. I haven't even like, hit half my time. Anyhow, I think you've already answered this, but I'm still going to ask it. What makes you whole? You've had a journey, multiple. What makes you whole? What brings you peace? What does that look like? What's Sophie Gregoire: next for Sophie? Vulnerability. I want to remain open. Sophie Gregoire: You know in that quote, Let there be no space inside of me kept closed because where I'm enclosed, I'm false. Oh, I don't want to be false. I want to be truth. And I'm willing to have pain in order to find my truth. And my truth is not just mine. Right now, just what we're sharing now, like I can feel the strength of the energy just between us. Sophie Gregoire: Yeah. Yeah. You're making me cry. No, me too. No, it's just, it's real. It's real. It's tangible. It's tangible. It's tangible. It's tangible. It's, we need to have each other's backs and hearts and minds. The future of our democracies, if we have democracies, which is the most perfect of all imperfect systems, right? Sophie Gregoire: We know that. It depends on our capacity to get close to ourselves and other human beings. Because if we continue to be threatened by the difference of others, Where are we going to go exactly? And how will we be able to even adapt to the changes that we're facing, the crises, unprecedented crises that we're, that we're seeing on this planet from a social or environmental point of view. Sophie Gregoire: But you know what? There's an old, and of course the indigenous know, right? Of course they hold that wisdom. They hold their wisdom. Yep. It says in the end, we will conserve what we love, love what we understand. And understand what we've been taught. Dr Taz: Powerful. So Sophie Gregoire: what we're talking about now is natural knowledge. Sophie Gregoire: It is visceral knowledge. It is scientific knowledge. And it belongs to everyone. It's a right to be able to know how your body works. How your mind works. How your social connection works. And how you can influence it for the rest of your life and for the people around you. Dr Taz: Incredible. I don't even think I can say anything after that. Dr Taz: Again, I think I got chills for the whole interview. Oh my goodness. For everybody watching and listening, there's so much here. You know, slow down, love one another, build community, stay connected. We are all one trauma away from each other. I could go on. I'll probably have to do multiple episodes off this episode to catch all the pearls and all the nuggets that were in here. Dr Taz: But for our viewers and listeners. Where can they find you? Where can they keep up with you? Where can they find the book? Maybe share that as well. Sophie Gregoire: I'm a little bit excited now because, so my website, sophiegregoiretrudeau. com, sophiegregoiretrudeau. com, you can sign in. I have a newsletter and I put stuff in it that's fun. Sophie Gregoire: You know, we forgot to talk about playfulness, but I want people to know that. We ran out of time. We have so much. Playfulness and fun is at the core of who we are. When mammals are sick, they stop playing. When humans are sick, we stop playing. We stop playing. We need this. So if you reach out to my website and you signing for the newsletter, you'll see that there's always a component of fun while we're learning about how we, how to treat ourselves and how to regulate ourselves. Sophie Gregoire: And then, um, my book closer together is available on any platform that you can order from Amazon, for example, and it will be shipped directly into your doorsteps. And then I'm coming up with, um, a new TV show. Um, I can't talk too much about it right now, but it's going to be for Francophones as we speak. Sophie Gregoire: So, you know, most people I'm sure who are listening, so maybe some of them speak French, but there's also, I'm working to bring my book into a docu serie. So closer together as a docu serie. And, uh, I, I'm just, I'm not crossing my fingers anymore. I'm manifesting the gratitude that if this comes together, I'll be able to serve better. Sophie Gregoire: You know, at 50, finally, I, I, I can manifest properly. That's the journey, that's the journey of Dr Taz: shedding the mask and really stepping into your authentic self. and really finding your soul's purpose and mission. You're an example of that. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such an honor. Dr Taz: Thank you again. Oh, love. Thank you.