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Your Body Is Not Broken: How Healing Begins After Trauma | Dr. Aimie Apigian · Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast, where we share stories of resilience, recovery, and hope.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Join us as we sit down with survivors, authors, and leading experts to discuss their experiences and insights, exploring the path towards healing and the power of the human spirit.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now here's your host, Dr.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Mark McNear.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, and welcome to the Trauma Meets Recovery Podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Mark McNear, and I am really glad to be with you today.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I am honored to have with me today Dr.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Amy.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I love Dr.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Amy's work.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: I love her book.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we have, she will tell you we have been juggling schedules, but you know what?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: She has been a trooper with it, and I really appreciate that.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, Dr.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Amy, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just start by saying thank you so much for the work that you do in getting information and education, but hope out to people who need it.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to go into questions because I don't want to waste any time.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, first question for you.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people who maybe aren't familiar with you, maybe you could introduce yourself and also tell them how the story has or how the journey has progressed for you.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm actually a medical physician by background.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went through medical school also getting a master's in biochemistry.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So when you think researcher, nerd, geek, like that is me.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I love cell biology.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then just after finishing my master's in biochemistry, I had several months before jumping back into the third year of medical school, and I decided to make a decision that would change my life.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I became a foster parent.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And because of the circumstances of the first foster child they placed with me, Miguel, I adopted him.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was single in medical school.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea how I was going to figure this out, but I knew that I needed, I wanted to get him out of the foster care system.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So bad.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I made the leap, and wow, I am so grateful for the gift that he was.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I had him for six years.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And while he has his story, we did eventually find all the pieces that he needed.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the grief then of that transition of him needing to go to another family, me having thought that I would be his forever mom, the grief is what actually then broke something open in me.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized looking back that I had been living my entire life, not feeling my feelings.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking about my feelings, maybe, but not actually feeling my feelings.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea how to do that.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know that I was avoiding it.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's how unconscious this was.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I had this definition of what it meant to be a strong person.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: What I was taught around being strong was you hold it all in, you stuff it inside, you keep going, you figure out how to be resilient.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that kind of just drowned me in that moment in 2014.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And literally one month after transitioning him to his new forever family, I could not get out of bed.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I developed chronic fatigue syndrome, and then we discovered autoimmunity, and then it was just this whole opening up for me of all of the ways in which stored stress and trauma had been silently impacting my biology, and I hadn't even known.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really been what started this journey into what is now the biology of trauma is I knew that I needed to do my own trauma work.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been pouring into everybody else, especially Miguel, but now also my patients.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a general surgery resident by now.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I started in surgery.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so pouring into everybody else was my way of ignoring myself.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And now was that time for me to do my own trauma work.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I did what I told all my patients to do over the years, which was you should really go talk to someone about that.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And realized in the process that that modality was only stirring things up for me, but it wasn't actually resolving anything for me.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And because I already had this massive burden that my body was bearing in terms of the impact on my biology, what that practically looked like was I would think that I had had a great therapy session.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'd opened up, I'd talked about all the stuff that they asked me about, I probably cried a lot, and then I would come home and I would be absolutely drained of energy.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: I would have a flare-up of my chronic fatigue syndrome and have to just struggle to get out of bed for about four days.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes even a flare-up of my autoimmune symptoms.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, this can't be right.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this cannot be what healing looks like.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I discovered, oh, my biology is actually creating a ceiling effect.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if I really want to heal from my past and become a better emotionally present person, I have to also figure this thing out about my biology.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can't just manage my symptoms.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started seeking training in functional medicine, advanced mental health nutrition, all of these things that I had not had in medical school or residency.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And just it opened up so many doors, one after the other for me, until I got my life back, I got my health back, I got my career back, but then I decided to change my career and really studied trauma and the body.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I switched residencies, went into preventive medicine and addiction medicine.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that is where I have learned so much more about trauma and the body from my patients.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't know how many of your listeners are familiar with addictions, but addictions is all about numbing pain, inner pain.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it has become a coping mechanism to numb, avoid, and distract.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I could see that if I could help my addiction medicine patients get into their body and actually feel things in a way that didn't overwhelm them and drown them like it had happened to me in therapy, then I really had landed on something that could help everyone else also learn to be in their body, feel their feelings in a way that brought repair, resolution, and true resilience, not just a masking of symptoms or a fake it until you make it kind of resilience.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I was a clinician, but it was all from the neck up.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and and so it was like somebody had mentioned to me, like maybe you've had trauma.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, maybe, you know, and it as it you know began to develop, and I was able to look at it, I just saw how much harm there was.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so I want people to to hear that as practitioners, sometimes we're clueless when we start this journey, and it's kind of like we we learn, and then our then our patients, like you said, then our patients teach us valuable, valuable lessons.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I but first question for you after your story is, and I love the definition that you utilize with this, Dr.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Amy, is what is trauma?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because like you, I looked back on my life and I was like, I don't think I've had trauma.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So then why do I have the physical health issues of someone who has had a lot of trauma based on the adverse childhood experiences studies?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that was when I really started studying the nervous system.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: The nervous system is our survival system, and it's what runs the operating system of our body.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's going to decide what is a stress or what is a trauma for us.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the definition of a trauma is anything that for any reason at that time in our life overwhelmed our ability to respond.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it was something external to us, maybe it was something that blocked us from being able to respond, or maybe it was something inside of us that said, you can't do that.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not allowed to express anger, you're not allowed to, and you name all the things that we can be told as we're growing up.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't matter whether it's external, internal, it doesn't matter what it was.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: It could have been a huge, horrible event.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: It could have just been living in a family where you're not seen for who you are, you're not understood.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that eventually becomes too much for our nervous system, moving it into this other survival strategy, which is really just to shut down in order to survive.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we start to notice that we've disconnected from ourselves, we feel disconnected from other people.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And rather than being fully present in our life, there's just this distance that we put, and we find things to create that distance in order to be able to get up every day and keep going.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: So moving toward your book, which I would recommend strongly, and we'll put information about that in the notes.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, the biology of trauma, tell us about that.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: The biology of trauma is actually a two-way cycle that we're going to look at.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: The first part of that cycle is the idea that trauma impacts our biology.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think we intuitively know this, even though it has not really entered mainstream medicine yet.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: We intuitively know as human beings that when we have had overwhelm, when we have been faced with what feels like inescapable life threats, and we haven't known how to reset our body or our mind back to safety, then something lingers.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And what lingers is what impacts our biology.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes that is not obvious immediately, which is why we can have had childhood pain, fear, overwhelm.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't show up into our physical health until we are adults, sometimes in our 20s, but more often in our 30s, 40s.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: For many women, it's in the perimenopause area of their life.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is one aspect of this.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: But then the other aspect is this full circle effect, which is that same biology, the inflammation, the digestive issues, the oxidative stress and damage, the damage to our DNA.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: This now becomes a signal of danger to our nervous system.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so no longer is our sense of danger in our life only from external people, places, and things.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's also coming from inside of us, which is why we can reach the point where everything in our life is relatively good and we don't understand why we have so much anxiety.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because our own biology now is saying, I don't have enough of this, I'm getting overwhelmed with toxins, my DNA is falling apart.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: We aren't going to necessarily know and hear those messages, but they are messages of danger, and our nervous system will respond to them just the same as if they were signals of danger coming from the outside in.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that is the biology of trauma.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Both.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Trauma affects our biology, but our biology can keep us stuck in our trauma patterns.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you I love this.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you you talk about this idea that that the body stores trauma.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have, I guess, two questions.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you began to talk about the one, but you know, that idea, Dr.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Amy, that it that it stores it, you know, what does that look like?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then also why does it store it?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, there's been so many discussions and debates about this over the years, hasn't there?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where exactly is this stored in the body?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: How does it store it?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is all of my section two of my book is what exactly happens that the body holds on to this.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Where it holds on to it is not in your kidneys or your big toe or maybe your hips, and you just need to do a little bit of shaking and then it's gone.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's so much deeper than that.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's really stored in our nervous system, our nervous system being our survival system.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so the way to recognize stored trauma is to see our reaction to change.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime that there is a change in our environment, our nervous system has to respond in order to keep us alive.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we do when we walk outside and it's hot.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: We sense a change in temperature, and our nervous system responds to that change.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so the way to really recognize is my body holding trauma is to see what is the reactivity to change.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is my nervous system reacting in big ways, or maybe is it not reacting like it should?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or is there this healthy flexibility and adaptability?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we want to move towards, even if we have had trauma, we want to be moving towards this healthy, flexible adaptability to life and its changes, and that's what healing actually looks like.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's how we can see that our body is holding trauma, is in its patterns of reactions.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is the same for, you know, if you're in a relationship with someone and they give you a look, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like everybody knows that look.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how are you going to react to that look?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: That is going to either reveal, do you have some stored trauma around relationships and maybe abandonment or closeness or connection or intimacy and the safety of that?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because it will show up in those moments where there has been some change, and in that circumstance, it's a change in how they looked at you or did not look at you.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: That was a change, and your nervous system responds to change, and trauma is stored in our nervous system.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it it paint a picture for me, if you would.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, here's someone who has had trauma, but not a significant amount, you know, average amount of trauma, and here's somebody that let's say has complex trauma.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: What so here's person A and here's person B.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: What how would they both react to, let's say, uh, missing their uh plane?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Missing their plane.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about the meaning that our past has created about what it will result in to miss our plane.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: For one person, it may mean, oh man, it's gonna be an inconvenience.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now I have to move some things around and it's going to be a bother, but it's not a life threat.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Someone with more complex trauma has all of these deeper meanings that they even may be unconscious of, but it involves if I missed my plane, the person who's picking me up may never talk to me again.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if they never talk to me again, well, then there's this whole scenario that plays out in their mind.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe they're going to give a talk or a presentation, and I'm going to have a major public shame for not being there.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I may not be there, or I may not do as good of a job because now I'm going to be tired because I'm going to have to catch another plane.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many more nuances to the meaning, the more complex trauma that you have had.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that is so much of that is unconscious.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even know all of the stories that just ran through your mind.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: It feels thus like a flood, and it feels chaotic, it feels messy, you don't understand it, which then means how do you work with it if you don't understand it?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we end up just repeating our pattern then of just shutting down.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that looks like giving up altogether, or maybe that looks like lashing out and having a bigger reaction than what the situation really calls for.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: But those are the ways in which we react.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're reacting to all of the different meanings and the stories that our past has created about what that could mean and the life threat that it is.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: The more complex trauma that you've had, the more that you see small things as potential life threats.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you resonate with that and just right.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be really uh vulnerable here and say that I had something come up on Tuesday and had to cancel with you.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I had written to you and you were really gracious about it, but I went from like a zero to ten and stayed at like maybe nine and a half until I I received your email.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I I think that at this point in my journey I knew that, and I was like, you know what, this isn't the end of the world.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, almost it feels like, but but not quite.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you're absolutely right.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I've had a lot of harm, and that shows up in every day, which brings me to the next question.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote this down.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you describe five patterns of Stuart trauma.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: You just you know, you talk about disconnection, disruption, depletion, dysregulation, and disease.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Can you help us to understand how they show up in everyday life or when I need to cancel a podcast with you?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what has helped me recognize that whether I understood it as trauma at the time or not, my body was holding more trauma because these were the patterns in my life, in my body.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw them playing out every day as well.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with that first one disconnection.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we experience a life threat that feels inescapable, too big for us, the survival strategy that our physiology moves into is one of dissociation.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: In that moment, we're not talking about later, right now, we're talking about in that original moment.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: In that original moment, this is so unbelievable and so awful that I can't be present to it.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is also what happens oftentimes when we even just break a bone.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: In that moment, our physiology moves into this is so painful.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: I need to dissociate from this pain.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not something, it's it's not a bad response.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very protective response.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it just disconnects us from our reality.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes it disconnects us from our reality to such a degree that we can feel like we're watching ourselves.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: We can feel like we are having an out-of-body experience.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: The mind is incredible at being able to disconnect us from the present moment when it's too painful to be there.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when we don't have that reset to safety, that then becomes this chronic pattern of disconnection.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's the chronic pattern of I'm looking to not be fully present.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we can do this with food, with exercise, with sex, with work, with shopping, with gambling.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the options are endless.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the survival strategy is still the same.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: My reality feels too uncomfortable for me to actually be fully present to it.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like myself.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like my body.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I am going to disconnect myself from my body and only be half present, only be mentally here, but not emotionally here.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: We also hear this a lot about in relationships.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: A partner can feel present, but not really emotionally present.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this is all the ways in which disconnection can show up.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Disconnection can show up.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: In how we disconnect from our problems and responsibilities from the day.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: During the day, we can have all the adrenaline that's helping us stay present to that and get things done.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in the evening, we can be like, all right, I need to disconnect.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: We find things to zone out or to check out.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Those are ways disconnection shows up.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So this can be social media scrolling, this can be movies, this can be all kinds of things.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just is my intention here to zone out and to check out.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then the other pattern, well, there's five.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the other patterns is this idea of disruption of forward movement.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we are designed to flow.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: We are designed to move through life and its phases and its stages and our experiences.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so when there is this disruption, and that's really what a trauma response is, a trauma response in the moment is such a shock to our heart, such a shock to our nervous system that we have a moment of internal paralysis.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think of like that deep inhale.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's the shock, and that's actually the freeze response.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Many people are familiar with that term, the freeze response, that's what it is freeze, paralysis.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: May not be obvious to people around you, but you can feel it inside of yourself.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: That also, just like dissociation continues to become disconnection, the freeze response continues as this continual feeling of stuckness in your life.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's projects that you just can't finish.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you start, but you can't finish, or maybe you can't even start them at all.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe there's these dreams and goals that you have, but you just can't move forward with them.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's other areas in which you feel stuck, you're not moving forward.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's how this pattern shows up.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then there is the pattern of depletion.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in an acute moment of a trauma response, one of the key survival strategies is to shut down or better dim down your metabolism.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this will help you survive because if you're not generating as much energy, then your core temperature drops a little bit.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if there's other living creatures like a monster that's looking for you, it's not going to sense your warmth.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Also, dimming down your metabolism helps to slow down your breath.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not breathing, it's harder for you to be heard and found.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it really then decreases your whole sense of energy and you start to feel heavy.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: It actually feels hard to move your muscles.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so that happens in the acute trauma response and it just continues, unless we know how to reset.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: It just continues into this chronic sense of depletion, where every day it feels hard to get up, and we have to find ways to push ourselves through our day.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: The most common way we do this is with caffeine.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: When we look at what is the most common way that people start their day?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: They start it with coffee.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes it's because they have this background pattern of depletion and they're looking for that energy to lift them up in the morning so that they can get through their day and have the energy to do what they need to do.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all of those three then become these other two.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: So those three create dysregulation.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dysregulation refers to that pattern of reactivity that we talked about in the nervous system.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I am already feeling like my tank is empty, if I'm already feeling like I'm just stuck and there's something wrong with me, I'm inherently broken, I'm inherently different.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's this sense of disconnection, I don't really know how much I want to be engaged with life, then when there is a change, I miss my flight.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those three baseline features are going to affect my reaction to missing my flight.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to feel like I have the energy to deal with the problem.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to feel like I have the flow to be able to move through this problem.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be more likely to get stuck in the problem.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also not sure that I want to or that I deserve to.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to maybe have that belief of see, bad things always happen to me.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the victim here of life.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the disconnection.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so all of those then create these patterns of reaction because those create my reaction.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: They create the meaning around why this happened to me, and it creates my reaction.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: So now we have this dysregulation, and that becomes even our dysregulated biology.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So even dysregulated blood sugar levels, dysregulated metabolism, thyroid, digestive issues, all of this starts to show up, which then creates the fifth pattern, which is disease.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now that you see that we have disconnection, stuckness, depletion, low energy, and dysregulated responses, of course, it's going to create disease.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: How could that create health?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: It will never create health.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: It will always create disease.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: It just is a matter of when and which disease.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so let me let me go back to something if I can.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: You had mentioned the AC study, and the ACE study is a good predictor of disease.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you're talking about?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and the A study measures very specific aspects of adversity in childhood.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: When I talk about these five patterns of trauma, I'm talking about anything that for any reason at that time exceeded our capacity to respond, and we did not have the resources to have a full recovery.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so our body has held it in some way and thus continues to repeat these patterns over years and sometimes decades.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the adverse child experiences and those studies are a great way to see what are some of the long-term outcomes.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And also we don't want to limit ourselves to, and these are the only reasons for why you might have these outcomes.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: So big question here.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the name of the podcast is When Trauma Meets, Recovery.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we've presented, you know, uh trauma, biology of trauma.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: What does it look like when we step into, you know, the healing practice or recovery or whatever, or whatever words a person wants to use?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is where there's so much hope, right?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the hope that you're sharing.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: You experienced change.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: You experienced that actually I can create positive change in my life, and you're wanting to share that with others and doing a fantastic job of it, by the way.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so we look at even if this has been our story, we can write a new story.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even if this has been all the chapters of my book up until now, I can still write new chapters of the book of my life.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we do that?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, first we have to establish that it is possible.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it's not possible, then why are we even going to try?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is possible.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: And between you and me and many, many other people, there is so much hope for the change that is possible.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now we come to how, especially if trauma has become our biology.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: How do we do this thing called recovery or healing?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: The way that I see it is that it inflicted a wound.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that wound needs to be repaired.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: It needs to be provided an environment in which it can heal.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is where starting in surgery has really served me well because as I worked with my patients, I inflicted wounds on them.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I cut them open.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: They had skin incisions, they had deeper incisions from the surgery that we were doing.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I was able to watch the body repair.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's incredible to see what the body is able to do when it is provided the environment, the conditions, and the resources that it needs.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: We are designed to be able to go through very hard life experiences and fully recover.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're designed to do that.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if my body is not doing that, then something is blocking it.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I get to go find what are the blocks, what is holding my body back, what is creating a condition in the environment that says, nope, it's not ready or safe to heal.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: We need to stay vigilant, we need to stay braced, we need to stay on guard.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's really the work of recovery is thinking of our nervous system as the one that decides do I stay in survival mode or can I move into healing mode?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the more signals of danger that are coming into my nervous system, the more it will say, we're still in survival mode.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no amount of logic that will convince it otherwise.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot outthink your trauma, you cannot out-supplement or out-diet your trauma.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: We've all tried.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've all tried.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it is responding to its environment.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Change the environment, and it will change the message coming to your cells.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: The message now will be it's safe.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start repairing, let's start this process.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And your body has all of the processes built into it.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that we even have to control.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Our job is to create the environment, external environment, but also internal environment for the healing mode to be engaged.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where I see that there are different levels that have to be addressed.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: If we miss one of these levels, it will continue to create signals of danger to our nervous system.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so just starting at the top, this is not in order of importance, this is just anatomical.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Starting at the top would be the mind.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: We do need to look at the thoughts that we have and how long we allow ourselves to dwell on those thoughts.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: We need to look at the stories that come into our mind and how long we allow ourselves to stay repeating that story.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Versus what I teach those who come through my courses now is let's think of those as sticks on a river, that we can let them float down the river.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're not saying that they're bad.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're just saying that's a story or a thought of the past.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not helpful right now because I'm learning to be in the present moment.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to let that float down the river.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it will be back again later if I need it.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a mind level.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: However, these other layers have to also be addressed.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say sometimes they need to be addressed first before the mind level can even shift.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: The other layer is the body or the somatic layer.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: I separate body from biology.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to go to biology next, but I separate the body and the somatic layer.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: The somatic layer is an example of if you were in a car accident previously and you're driving down that same stretch of road now, it's a different day, it's a different drive.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: In your mind, you know that you are fine.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: But your body starts having a reaction.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: It starts to sweat, your heart starts to race, you grip the steering wheel.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Even though your mind will tell your body, this is stupid, this is silly, your body's like, I'm in danger, I'm sure of it.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there is this body response, and it's responding to sensory information.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: So sensory information relating to what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we smell, what we feel.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: These are the senses that we have.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's also like an interpersonal, energetic sense.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: And these become what our nervous system responds to, not our thoughts, our sensations and what has been coupled with that sensation.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: So just going back to the example of the car accident, maybe there was a tree right at that stretch of the road.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Every single time you see that tree, it's something that you're seeing.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: So this is sensory information, you see the tree, and your nervous system has coupled, coupled, coupled that tree with danger.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: That tree now means danger.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of the work is uncoupling these associations so that I can smell a perfume and it not take me back to that person who used to use that perfume.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to uncouple those things that have been associated with our sensory information and creating these automatic reactions.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: But then we've got to address the biology because if I do have trauma, stored trauma, still impacting my metabolism and I struggle to have energy, or maybe it's creating thyroid disease, or maybe imbalances in my gut, and I've always got abdominal pain, or I'm worried about the next bout of diarrhea that I'm going to have, then those are signals of danger to our nervous system.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: If we've been running on chronic stress for so long that we've run into a depletion or a deficiency of magnesium, zinc, B6, these are signals of danger to our nervous system and it creates a ceiling effect to our capacity, where our nervous system will allow us to go so far, go so high, and then it will say, I'm gonna stop this and I'm just gonna move into shutting down because we don't have enough magnesium to make more energy to tackle this problem in our life.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that is why all three of these layers will need to be addressed in the recovery process.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: As long as we neglect one, it can still be creating signals of danger to our nervous system.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And despite all the work that we're doing in the other layers, it will keep us bound.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so, whatever modalities people are using, they're gonna want to look at what am I doing for the mind level, what am I doing with for the somatic uncoupling of sensations, and what am I doing for the biology repair?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for that.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm curious.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: We had talked earlier about a video you had made, and and it was kind of like a reset with some exercises, and I was wondering, you know, I was watching it and I was like, this is so good.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to offer it again.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I wonder if you could go through.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was on my phone and that's where it starts.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: So how would if you go from there, Dr.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Amy?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know what you're referring to is the idea that we can shift our nervous system state and in the moment.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that is where it starts.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is where recovery starts.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Recovery starts with saying, my nervous system has gone into anxiety, stress, or maybe even overwhelm mode, and I need to be able to shift it right now.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait for someone else.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I need to be able to do that for myself right now.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the fastest way to do that, I have found, is with somatic practices or a somatic exercise.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they are very simple.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be simple if they're going to work in the moment, but they are ways to just create a feeling of safer right here, right now.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Safer.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even going for 100% safe.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going for safer right here, right now.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so as I do that, one of the ways is which we can just kind of create some space.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I bring my hands up to my shoulders, and then I start to push away.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the slower that you can do this, the better the exercise works because you're actually creating a sense of space.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have space to breathe, space to think, space to pause before I react.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you would go all the way out until full arm extension, and then just pause and let your body kind of tell you when it's ready for you to be able to let your arms down.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that is one very simple somatic practice that I teach people as a way to get started with shifting your own nervous system.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are many other ways.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: One other way is humming, because humming will I want to say bring the vibration to your vocal cords that will allow you to stimulate the vagus nerve in a way that promotes safety.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as we are working to create that whole body message of safety through the vagus nerve, this is the throat is an easy way to access the vagus nerve, and we can do it just by humming.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: And again, the humming is what vibrates the vocal cords, and so that's what you want to do.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it involves like taking a full deep breath in, and I'll demonstrate it here full deep breath in all the way out, but it's not about the breathing, it's more about the vibration that that humming or the voo sound creates.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, just demonstration.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take a deep breath in.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like to feel what's happening in my body, since it's still so easy for me to go up into my head and analyze and think and not actually feel.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this has been so good.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I want to thank you, Dr.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Amy, for being with me today.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: I want to ask uh people to go out and get your book.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: So if you could talk about your book, also if you could give people information about how to connect with your courses or other information about you, I would love that.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so a good way to find me and my resources is biologyoftrauma.com.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there you will find some guides that I have, like steps to identify and heal trauma.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I have my podcast, Biology of Trauma Podcast, and I have a large YouTube channel with lots of educational videos.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And my book is definitely a resource because I walk through three different sections.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: The first section is what is trauma to the body?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: What is the physiology and the biology of trauma?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: How is it different from just distress?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Section two is then how does that become chronic?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: How does the body hold on to this trauma?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then section three is the hope and the repair.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get really practical then.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: If this is how it has impacted our life, our relationships, our body, our biology, then here's what that path looks like.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: It does need to follow the science.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: It does need to follow a sequence.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: We can't just do random things and hope for the best.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: The more precise we can be, the more forward movement we can have in our growth and our recovery.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: One more comment.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you could just share that idea that recovery is not overnight, it takes time.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I have been, I mean, I've almost fallen in love with the process of recovery.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because I can think that I've healed something, and then it'll show up in a new way in a different area of my life.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I've come to realize that healing happens in layers.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the layer that we are ready for at that time.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I have come to trust my body to present to me the layer that it is ready for.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to force it, I don't need to excavate to go find it.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: It will present what is ready to be healed.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so is the healing journey ever really over?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it will ever be over for me.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: I see it as this spiral staircase that every step that I take leads me to a better view, but also more depth.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so the healing journey is not about an intense short-term burst of therapy.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the journey of learning to befriend our body and to go at the pace that our body is able to feel safe and to integrate the the changes along the way.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I always encourage people to do it gently.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Gently, gently, gently.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: I even wrote a song about that.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have it on my YouTube.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have a music YouTube channel for songs that I've composed, and one of them is called Gently, Gently.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: Amy again, thank you so much for this.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: It has been really valuable.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, thank you, thank you for the work that you do.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Truly, truly, thank you.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for joining us on the Trauma Meets Recovery podcast.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: If today's conversation spoke to you, we would love for you to like, subscribe, or share the episode with someone to learn more or connect with us.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: Visit our website at trauma meets recovery.com.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: Until next time, be gentle and kind to yourself.