May 17, 2024 • 36 mins
In this important episode, Gia had the pleasure of welcoming back Kristen Radke, a seasoned clinical therapist, to dive deeper into the topics of anxiety, trauma, and how they uniquely affect high-performing women.
Kristen shared her insights on the neurobiology of trauma, emphasizing the importance of understanding the connection between our mind, experiences, and nervous system. She explained the difference between the parasympathetic (rest and digest) and sympathetic (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) nervous systems, and how trauma can disrupt this balance, leading to symptoms like anxiety and panic attacks.
They discuss the challenges high-achieving women face when dealing with trauma, particularly the defense mechanisms and walls built to protect against shame.
The conversation also touches on the concept of imposter syndrome, exploring how it's can be rooted in deep-seated shame from childhood experiences for some.
For those struggling with trauma-related anxiety, Kristen recommends starting with nervous system regulation techniques, such as proper breathing exercises, to establish stability before tackling emotional healing. She also spoke about the benefits of somatic yoga, which combines breath with movement to help release stored emotions and trauma from the body.
To learn more about Kristen's work and to find additional resources, visit her website at kristenradke.com.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call or text 988, chat 988lifeline.org or your local mental health helpline.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now, the go-to podcast for
extraordinary women who are ready to step into their next chapter with
authentic confidence. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua, empowerment coach,
motivational speaker, children's book author, and girl mom. Whether
you're a corporate powerhouse or an entrepreneur, this show is
designed for you. Your Future Starts Now is more than
(00:20):
just a podcast. It's a movement, a movement towards rewriting
the rules of success for high-achieving women. Are you ready
to get unstuck and step into your next chapter? If
so, you are exactly where you need to be. Your future starts
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua. I wanna thank you
(00:41):
for joining us. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome back to
the show, Kristen Radke. Kristen is a highly experienced,
respected clinical therapist based in Arizona. With extensive experience
providing counseling to individuals, couples, and families, Kristen uses
modern therapeutic techniques combined with biblical wisdom to help clients
heal from anxiety, depression, relationship conflicts, and
(01:02):
shame. Back by popular demand, Kristen, welcome
to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be back. So
last time you and I talked about taming the busy
mind and this concept of high functioning anxiety,
and it really seemed to resonate with our audience. So
I thought today we could follow up and go a little bit
(01:24):
deeper on the topics of anxiety, trauma, and
high performing women. So talk
to us a little bit, when you have women that present or
clients that present in your practice who have experienced trauma,
how do you explain the concept of trauma
(01:45):
Yeah. So oftentimes when clients come in, and
I'm specifically going to talk about the clients that don't know that
they experienced trauma, like they know that something was difficult to happen in
their life. They know that they're not feeling great. They can't necessarily explain
those symptoms. But they're coming into counseling and they're like, hey, I'm a
little more anxious. I'm experiencing panic attacks, you know, and
(02:06):
they're explaining these different symptoms. One of the things that we
do first is we talk about the neurobiology of
trauma because I want them to understand the symptoms that
they're experiencing has a root cause. And
the root cause is that connection between the mind and
what they experienced and their nervous
(02:28):
system. So one of the things that we start
with as we talk about the nervous system specifically, and
the difference between what we call the parasympathetic, which is
your rest and digest, that's your really calming part of your
nervous system, and the sympathetic nervous
system, which is what we call fight, flight, freeze, or
(02:49):
fawn, right? And so that's gonna be where we start explaining
the differences between the two as well as the connection with the brain. And
what I often find when I'm explaining these things to clients is that they
are like, yeah, that explains so many. They're like
checking off things like that explains how I felt here. That explains what
happened here. And they're amazed that this is all rooted
(03:13):
in a traumatic experience that is stored in
Wow. So interesting. And I do want to talk more about the
nervous system regulation and how trauma manifests,
not just emotionally and psychologically, but physically and
physiologically as well. First, I want to just
(03:34):
go back to something you said about when your clients present, they maybe
don't know the full extent of the
trauma that they experienced. And I think
that tends to be very common amongst high-performing
women in the sense that Even
personally, from personal experience, I know cognitively I told myself, yes,
(03:56):
I've dealt with these things. And I check them off of my list.
And it wasn't really until I started EMDR that I realized the
full extent of there's levels of
healing that need to happen. And so I was
curious if you could expand upon your experience with
Yeah. I think that a lot of people, especially more in the high-achieving, perfectionistic
(04:19):
realm, Because the fact that perfectionism
is as a result of like trying to outrun shame, they're
using things like intellectualizing as a defense mechanism. So
they know that they went through something. But
they're also like, yeah, but like, it's fine. Like, yeah, I got
through it. We're okay now. Because they don't want
(04:41):
to sit with the feelings that come with healing, right?
Because they're like, okay, we need to, in order
to outrun shame, I have to perform. But
I can't perform if I have to sit with the
grief of my experience. And so
I think that a lot of times I have to slow those
(05:02):
people down and go, hey, like, we need to really like,
let me just repeat back to you what you just told me
about your experience. Let me just tell you, I know you
said it this way, but let me just tell you what happened. And
they're like, yeah, no, I know. And we have to slow down and
we have to go back and let me tell. And I don't do that so that
(05:25):
they can blame other people and get
really mad and break off all these relations. I tell them that
because I need them to start to break down that defense mechanism
of intellectualizing and really sit with their
experience. Because oftentimes when
they do that, they realize, wow, I need to grieve what
(05:45):
I did not have. I need to grieve the childhood
that I wasn't allowed, the innocence that I lost. And
that can be really powerful, but it's hard, especially with high achieving
women because they are on the go. Let's heal. All right, check.
We've healed. We're moving on. And healing and
(06:07):
It's not. And I love the way you said that. And it is a lifelong journey
in my experience, professionally and personally. You
know, I guess it's a good question is can we hold
space for being high achieving and
hold the space for the feelings of
(06:28):
shame and blame that come up, you
Yeah, and I think just being able to recognize
you can hold two feelings at the same time, even if those feelings are
competing, right? So I can hold the grief of
what I didn't have at
(06:49):
the same time of being grateful for where I am.
And you can hold both and you can hold the feelings
of working through what this means about your relationship with
the person or persons who maybe
were abusive or whatever that experience was. At
the same time, you can also be processing through, maybe
(07:12):
I still want to have a relationship with this person, but maybe it might look different. But
you're kind of holding space for all these different emotions. It's difficult. And
I think that's why therapy can be so helpful is
because it's a nonjudgmental space where people can process through these things. But
I think it's so key. It's so key to be able to have a space where
you can sit down and hold these really heavy emotions and
(07:39):
Yeah, that makes sense. And are there specific types of
trauma in your experience that are more strongly associated
That's a really good question. I would
say in my experience, I've seen trauma that
(08:01):
has to do with the body. more
highly associated with anxiety. So we're talking about physical
trauma, sexual trauma, domestic violence. These are the ones that I
find because of the connection between the mind and the body, I find
those to be the ones that you really
(08:22):
have to sit with more, process through more
in order to heal from because
of that mind-body connection and how
it can impact you, not just
emotionally, but on a nervous system level. And
there's a book sitting up here, it's called The Body Keeps the Score, and it's something
(08:44):
I highly recommend to people who have gone through any
type of trauma. But he talks about Bessel van
der Kolk, who's one of the leading psychologists in trauma. He talks
about this connection and how the body stores the memories of
trauma. And so you may think that you've intellectually, right,
intellectualizing, that you've processed through it, but there's a deeper level
(09:05):
and there's a deeper layer that's stored in our bodies that we need to be able to
Yeah. It's such a powerful point. And I think
it takes a lot of introspection and self-reflection and
awareness of the mind-body connection. And I think that's where
the support of having a therapist or
a trauma-informed coach can really support you
(09:29):
through that process. And so just going back to the nervous system regulation
piece and how trauma impacts high-performing women,
what I want to talk about just is how does it impact high-performing women
differently? Why is it unique? So in my practice, a lot of
times I see clients who similarly have
(09:49):
you know, the low energy, the anxious feelings, the
perfectionistic tendencies, they're always on
edge, you know, extremely overwhelmed, not sleeping
well. So in your experience, I'm curious
(10:09):
In my experience, I think high performing women, I mean, or
men, but in this case, women, I think that it's
actually more challenging for them to work through trauma
than somebody who's not high-performing, at least from
what I've seen. Because oftentimes when someone comes in who's – maybe
they're just struggling through life and they've
(10:30):
really just struggled in general. I feel like they're a little bit more in
tune with those emotions. They're a little bit more in tune with what their body's experiencing.
When you get someone who's high-performing to sit down and like
you have to work through a lot of defense mechanisms and you have to work through a
lot of like walls that are protecting them from experiencing and
(10:50):
feeling that shame. And obviously the shame is
not really something that they need to own but it's something they feel
and so we have to help them kind of work through that
and start to believe
something different about the shame which we can talk about in a minute. And
(11:10):
then once you work through that, then we help them connect to their body.
But all of that brings a lot of emotions up. So
I think it's more challenging because there's a
lot more protective factors and protective walls that are
up with women who are very
(11:32):
Yeah, it's a great point. I can speak from personal experience. The walls
that we put up in the defensive mechanisms are real, and it does take
a lot of um, you know, support to
bring those down and, and trust and, um,
work to bring them down. And obviously getting to the core, right.
If those underlying feelings is really critical. So when we talk about going back to
(11:53):
the shame piece, when we talk about trauma behind
the trauma, there is some form to your point of shame, blame,
or guilt, or a combination of the three. So. And
that's hard, right? That's hard for anybody to acknowledge
and accept, especially for high performing women
(12:15):
who are used to being at the top of their game and the
appearance of being perfect, right?
To then open that door just a crack
And for those words to even be introduced, right,
can be overwhelming for people. But I think it's
important to understand the shame piece of
(12:39):
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I'm
an attachment theory therapist, so basically everything
I believe, a lot of this is rooted in those initial developmental
years, right? Infancy lasts for three years, and then after that,
those developmental years are so important because it establishes what you believe about
(12:59):
yourself, what you believe about the world. Is the world trustworthy? Is it not? Is
it safe? Is it unsafe? It establishes what you feel about
people in authority, right? Are caregivers going to meet
your needs or not meet your needs? What does that look like? Can you trust
other people? All of this is established in those early developmental years. So
typically people that experience shame They experience
(13:21):
some form. It could be abuse or neglect. It could be physical
and all of those things. It could also even just be that
you needed something and the need that you had was
either minimized or it was downplayed or
it was outright denied. And
so it could be something along the lines of you had a need as a child, this
(13:45):
is obviously repetitive, so it was a need over and over again, that
you were told, you're fine, you're fine, you're
okay, stop crying, you're good. So that
minimizing and that denying, which again, a lot of
parents follow the parenting recommendations of their day
and their generation. But if that's denied again and again,
(14:06):
you start to believe there's something wrong with you because you continue to have this need, whatever
that need is. It could be physical comfort. It could be emotional
comfort. It could be the basics of life, right?
So food and all of that. But a lot of times I
see this in people who needed emotional connection
with a parent and they were denied that emotional connection. And
(14:29):
as a result of that, they start to believe that they are bad because children
don't have the ability to process
differently. They're egocentric, right? And so everything has to
do with them. So if their parents get divorced, it's their fault. If
a parent denies them something emotional, it's their fault. So
(14:49):
they start to believe, well, there's something wrong with me. And that becomes
that thought process of I'm not good enough, which
then leads to there's something wrong with me and then there's shame. And
that feeling of shame is not something that we're very good at processing through
or working through as people. So then
we have one of a couple solutions. Either we believe that and
(15:11):
we kind of lie down in that puddle of shame, or
we try to outrun it. And we go, well, if I'm not good enough, maybe
if I perform better, I will be good enough.
And that usually in childhood leads to some
of this perfectionism, outperforming, high-functioning
(15:35):
Yeah, there's so much power in what you just said. And two things I
just want to call out. So one is proving your worth, right? So
if we are at our self-worth at its core, if we
are not strong in our own self-worth, then
we're constantly trying to prove ourselves. And I think for so
many of us who have experienced childhood trauma, that
(15:58):
is a recurring theme until you're able to really break that
cycle and heal that underlying shame. So
super powerful point. The other thing I wanna just call
out as you were talking, and it's true, a lot of us as children
were told, you can't feel certain emotions
or you're fine, you're safe, you're okay, stop complaining.
(16:21):
Where we started this conversation was women intellectualizing our
trauma and downplaying our trauma. And whose
voice is that that we are playing in our head when we're
telling ourselves it's fine. It's not a
big deal. Yeah. Right. And so I'm constantly reading,
you know, information about how as parents,
(16:43):
our voice becomes their inner voice. Yes. So
Yeah. A hundred percent. I think it's, it's
hard because you have people and, and I understand intellectually
what people were trying to do. Um,
but it's really damaging. It's really damaging because. just
(17:07):
because you validate a child's experience and you comfort them,
it's not going to turn them into somebody who is
not strong and independent
and able to take care of themselves. And for some reason, there's this lie, this
myth that says that it's coddling and you're
going to turn this kid into like a puddle of dependence. And
(17:31):
that's just not true. You actually see quite the
opposite, that the kids that receive more of that secure attachment
in those early developmental years, they're actually more independent.
They do better. They have an easier time
going into classrooms and schools and things like that because
they have this secure anchor to go back to. They
(17:53):
know their parents there. They know that they're loved. They know
that they have a place to go home to and like things are dependable
and they're reliable. And
so this myth of like, you know, don't
comfort them, like tell them that they're fine. So they'll be strong is
(18:15):
And many of us carry that through adulthood. Is that right? This concept of having to
be stoic and having to be strong and not
allowing ourselves to feel those big quote-unquote
Right. And so my question is, okay, so you're
going to basically like cut off that emotional
(18:36):
like spectrum that you have, and then
you expect your child to be able to handle all
of the spectrum of their emotions? They're not seeing you handle them.
Right. They're seeing no emotions. Right. Or they're seeing frustration or
anger, which is obviously a secondary emotion. And
so I just think, you know, it's so much better for us
(18:58):
to model how do we handle
emotions in a healthy way? How do we heal from
things in a healthy way? How do we help them process through their
big emotions that they don't know how to handle yet? Something
I'm very conscious of as a therapist, but as a parent. Yeah. So yeah.
(19:18):
Yeah. It's a great point. It's a great point. I think You know, as you
mentioned, the generational parenting concepts, I think we've evolved, which
is great to see. You know, there's sort of new ways of
thinking about parenting and emotional support
and attachment, which I think is much healthier. And I
think there's still room to go. So while we're on the
(19:40):
topic of the inner child, Kristen, I'm curious, you
know, we talk a lot about as women, I
hear a lot about imposter syndrome and there's different
theories on it and there's different ways to approach it. I
want to look at this from a little bit of a unique lens that you and I sort of
both share, which is how imposter syndrome
(20:01):
can be more than just feeling like
you're not enough in a professional
capacity. Because I was having a conversation with
a beautiful woman this morning who is an author. And
we were talking about an experience of, you know, being a corporate woman in
a boardroom, and not just feeling like you're not good
(20:23):
enough to be there. But this feeling of
that inner child is the one who's sitting in
that chair feeling not enough, which I
think is more prevalent than we talk about. So I
Yeah. I mean, there's so
(20:43):
many directions I could take that. I mean, we could even go into more IFS and
the parts of yourself and all of that. But I would say, Imposter
syndrome, again, I think if we go back to this idea
of shame and the fact that we
(21:04):
show up in these rooms and we feel like we're not enough or
we don't belong there, we're not good enough for these rooms, those
beliefs are rooted in in
that belief of shame, I'm not good enough. It's rooted, it all
goes back to that. It all goes back to the fact that it's not just
that I'm a professional and I'm learning how to handle
(21:26):
my own in this profession, it's that I have had this
negative core belief since I was a child that any room
I walk into where there
are authority figures that remind me of parents or remind me of just
other people that are better than me, right? Because that comparison starts
(21:47):
early on, that I start to feel that
imposter syndrome. I start to feel like I'm not good enough. I don't belong here.
And then you're trying to outperform that, right? Because you're like, okay, well, there's
that feeling of shame again. I need to outperform. Okay,
so now I'm going to overcompensate for the fact that I feel like I don't
belong here. And I think that often,
(22:09):
it's not that it's obvious, but it's also something clearly that
if that's what your experience is, that's something you need to process through.
Because it's not true. It's not that you're
not good enough for that room. It's
that you've had this belief for a very long time, and
your brain has believed this one path, this
(22:32):
one thought. all
the way stored in that body of yours. And so you
have to work through the layers of that so that you are
able to walk in and go, no, it's not that I'm
better than anyone here, but I belong here. I have something
to offer. And
(22:52):
getting from that point of imposter to knowing
that I have a place at the table and I have something to
offer, it takes time and it takes healing.
Yeah, it's a great point. And it is much deeper than I think what
we typically talk about, right? When, when people refer to imposter
(23:13):
syndrome, I think it's sort of on a, on a different level. Um, and
certainly doesn't apply to everybody, but I think there's probably a good percentage of
people that, um, that relate to exactly what
you're saying. So around that self worth piece and,
and the shame piece, you know, if. People listening are,
do have that experience and have that coming up for them. Obviously,
(23:35):
therapy is a great place to start. What other
tips, tools, or advice would you give to high-performing
women or anyone listening who has struggled with trauma-related anxiety and
Yeah. I think for
clients that I work with, the first thing that we need to understand is
(23:58):
the connection between the traumatic
memories and the experiences that you had and
what your body is physiologically doing right now.
A lot of times anxiety can come
from unresolved trauma because what's happening is your body's
been telling you for a long time, something's up, something's up, hey, something's
(24:20):
up, you know, emotionally and maybe even
physically, right? Different symptoms of anxiety or panic. And
then it gets to a point where you can no longer ignore it. And
your body's like, dude, you need to deal with this and
you need to deal with it now. And this is when, you know, people, I usually see people
because they're like, well, It wasn't that bad and then it got worse and
(24:41):
then I ended up in the ER and I thought I was having a heart attack and then now
I'm here. And that's usually when we go, okay, the very first thing
we're going to do is we are going to work on helping you regulate your
nervous system. Before we get into all the thought work, before we
get into the past work about your childhood trauma, before we process through
anything emotionally, you have to have stability. And
the stability that you have is understanding the connection between your
(25:07):
sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, and your parasympathetic nervous
system, rest and digest. And the connection there is that they
are opposing systems, which means that one of them, if
one of them is on, the other one's off. They can never be on at the same time. So
the beauty of that is that if you learn how to activate your
parasympathetic nervous system, then you will know
(25:29):
how to get out of fight or flight. The problem is the connection between
when your sympathetic nervous system is on, when
fight or flight is on, Um, you lose access
to your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that
has logical thinking, right? So this is when
(25:49):
people come in and they're like, I have no idea why I did that. I don't know why I couldn't,
or here's, here's one. If you've been a victim of crime, someone
attacked you, someone assaulted you. And you're like, why
didn't I fight? What I
will tell you is. You couldn't have
fought because your body did what it knew how to
(26:11):
do because it wasn't connecting to the
logical thinking part of your brain. You didn't sit there and go, hmm, what
should I do here? You can't because historically speaking,
your body was created this way so that you could react
quickly. So you could flee, so you could freeze, so
you could fight, right? And so your body reacted
(26:34):
the way that it did because that's how your body was designed. So
what we talk about is we talk about, okay, you can't,
you don't have logical thinking when you're in your sympathetic nervous system. So
what you need to learn how to do is you need to repeat the
things that activate your parasympathetic nervous
(26:54):
system. And you need to repeat them often so that you know, so
it becomes kind of this muscle memory thing of when my body goes
here and I'm safe, I'm going to do
the things that I know how to do to get my body back into
my parasympathetic nervous system. And a
lot of times clients will come in and they're like, yeah, but I've like done
(27:14):
the breathing thing and that doesn't work. And that's
when I say, well, I think that you probably haven't learned how to
do the breathing, the breathing thing, because the parasympathetic nervous
system is directly linked to your exhale breath. So
learning how to breathe properly. not hyperventilating, not
breathing a bunch, but learning how to breathe properly will
(27:37):
get you out of fight or flight. It will. It'll
relax your body because you cannot be in fight or flight in
a relaxed body. When your muscles are relaxed, you
So we start there. Yeah, I love that. It's
so beautifully stated. you know, you mentioned this
(27:58):
concept of not feeling not safe. And
I think oftentimes, again, intellectually, we can tell ourselves, we're
safe, right in our environment, and look around and logically say, there's
nothing, I'm not in any line of threat or danger.
Yet, there's this script running in the background telling us the
amygdala is going off, right? And saying, Nope, we're not safe, we're
(28:20):
not safe. And it's like, well, what is that alarm in your body? And
how do we get to the root of it, right? Because again, I can intellectualize
all day, but it's not going to make that alarm go off. And
Yeah. And what's interesting about that is that trauma
is stored in the body, but it's also stored in the senses. So
if there's anything that resembles the past, so
(28:43):
like, let's say that there was someone who abused this
client and there's a smell, there's
a cologne or a perfume or something that's triggering to
them and they walk into a Sephora and they smell it.
Their body's not going to differentiate. That person isn't here.
(29:03):
They're just going to go into fight or flight because the body stores
all of those warning signs in the senses. as
a memory, right?
I'm not going to get into all the different parts of the brain, but there's a part in your brain where
basically it's scanning for those things and it's saying, okay,
(29:24):
are we safe? Are we good? And when it
sees something, there's two different pathways that it will take. But if
there's a danger, it will take the quickest pathway to your amygdala.
It will sound that emergency alarm and now your body's in fight
So it's so critical to understand those stored
(29:48):
Right. And that's why people, you know, in therapy or,
you know, wherever else, they need to understand the
triggers. And that's why we
work on triggers is because we're reteaching the brain
that you're safe. But
it takes time, it takes time for the brain to unlearn something that
(30:14):
For sure. And I can also speak from personal experience that sometimes you don't
even realize what the triggers are, right? And
your body is just reacting. And then one day you're like, oh, that's why
I have such a strong reaction to that. So first is really just
the awareness around identifying what those triggers are for you and
then unpacking kind of where that comes from and then redirecting that
(30:37):
reaction. So great advice. Kristin, I know you're
also a certified yoga instructor. Do you want to talk
Oh, somatic yoga. So basically,
yeah, I got certified back
in 2016 and I I
just love learning new things
(31:00):
to be able to help with regulating that nervous system. One of the things
that I love about doing yoga, or
really we could even just say breath with movement if you don't
like yoga, but basically is When
you experience trauma, when you experience these difficult memories and
they're stored in the body, one of the things that you might
(31:22):
find is that doing these types of movements with
your breath, one, you are slowing down your
breath, so you are intentionally getting into your parasympathetic nervous
system, which for women, high-functioning women who are typically in sympathetic nervous
system dominance, this is really good because you want
time where you can slow down and get out of that
(31:45):
fight or flight experience, right? So this forces you
to do that. You have to slow down your breath. You're breathing in,
sometimes in and out the nose. You're breathing in the nose, out the mouth, however
your instructor is guiding it. But then you're also moving.
And so what sometimes you might find is that
you might actually have emotions come up while you're doing yoga.
(32:07):
And I'll hear different experiences about which emotions. It
could be anger. It could actually be sadness. And
those emotions, those emotional releases, as I call them, it's
really healthy. You may not even realize what you're releasing, but
your body, in order to heal from trauma, you have to release things
on an emotional level. Something happened. If you didn't release it back then, you have to
(32:29):
release it now. And so
being able to move your body with the breath, get
into that calm state allows your body to be calm
enough and safe enough to release these emotions and
start even healing from things that you didn't even realize. And
so, I mean, I even had an experience like that. And there was a
(32:52):
moment where I knew what I was releasing and I released that
and the teacher that I was with held space for that. It was great.
Nothing was weird. And And
I think it's just really healthy to be able to find the things that help you
to regulate that nervous system, help you to slow down, help you to feel
like you can release things on an emotional level. And The
(33:18):
experience, I think, for a lot of people is that they
don't know how to slow down enough to
get to that point, or they don't know how to create space
for that. And so why yoga sometimes is helpful, even
like vinyasa, just the typical yoga classes that you would go to,
is that by busying the body, sometimes it
(33:41):
quiets the mind. So it even kind of brings down
some of those intellectual defenses because
we're like, I'm not thinking about all this like, how do I like keep
these walls up? I'm thinking about where am I putting my foot right now? And
am I breathing still? And so that allows your
body to kind of like go, okay, we can release some things right now because you're not
(34:03):
overthinking this whole process. So it's one of the
things that I've recommended for some clients in the past is just to
do that because I think it's helped them bring down some
of those defenses and have a safe place where they can release
Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. I think the breath with movement is
a beautiful way of saying it. It's really about
(34:25):
finding what works for you and what you feel comfortable with
and finding that safe space for you where you can down regulate and
process. So I love that. Kristin, remind our listeners where
Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me on my website, kristenradke.com.
You can follow me on Instagram, Therapy with Kris. And
(34:50):
Kristen, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your insights and expertise. This
is such a fascinating conversation. I loved it. Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me. And of course, you can visit my website at GiaLacqua.com. Reach
out on Instagram at GiaLacqua. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
leave a review. This is Gia signing off with gratitude for your time
and energy. Our mic drops, but the movement continues. Until
(35:15):
That concludes another empowering episode of Your Future Starts Now.
Before we wrap up, I want to thank this incredible community of high-achieving women.
Your energy, resilience, and commitment to growth are the driving force
behind what we do. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate
it, leave a review, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your
feedback fuels our mission to empower high-achieving women just like
(35:37):
you. And of course, share your future starts now with the extraordinary women
in your life who are also on a journey of healing and empowerment. Connect
with us on social media, share your thoughts, let us know what topics you'd like to
explore in future episodes. Stay connected on Instagram at
GiaLacqua. I encourage you to carry the energy of this conversation
into your day and keep on supporting the incredible women around you.
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now, the go-to podcast for
extraordinary women who are ready to step into their next chapter with
authentic confidence. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua, empowerment coach,
motivational speaker, children's book author, and girl mom. Whether
you're a corporate powerhouse or an entrepreneur, this show is
designed for you. Your Future Starts Now is more than
(00:20):
just a podcast. It's a movement, a movement towards rewriting
the rules of success for high-achieving women. Are you ready
to get unstuck and step into your next chapter? If
so, you are exactly where you need to be. Your future starts
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua. I wanna thank you
(00:41):
for joining us. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome back to
the show, Kristen Radke. Kristen is a highly experienced,
respected clinical therapist based in Arizona. With extensive experience
providing counseling to individuals, couples, and families, Kristen uses
modern therapeutic techniques combined with biblical wisdom to help clients
heal from anxiety, depression, relationship conflicts, and
(01:02):
shame. Back by popular demand, Kristen, welcome
to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be back. So
last time you and I talked about taming the busy
mind and this concept of high functioning anxiety,
and it really seemed to resonate with our audience. So
I thought today we could follow up and go a little bit
(01:24):
deeper on the topics of anxiety, trauma, and
high performing women. So talk
to us a little bit, when you have women that present or
clients that present in your practice who have experienced trauma,
how do you explain the concept of trauma
(01:45):
Yeah. So oftentimes when clients come in, and
I'm specifically going to talk about the clients that don't know that
they experienced trauma, like they know that something was difficult to happen in
their life. They know that they're not feeling great. They can't necessarily explain
those symptoms. But they're coming into counseling and they're like, hey, I'm a
little more anxious. I'm experiencing panic attacks, you know, and
(02:06):
they're explaining these different symptoms. One of the things that we
do first is we talk about the neurobiology of
trauma because I want them to understand the symptoms that
they're experiencing has a root cause. And
the root cause is that connection between the mind and
what they experienced and their nervous
(02:28):
system. So one of the things that we start
with as we talk about the nervous system specifically, and
the difference between what we call the parasympathetic, which is
your rest and digest, that's your really calming part of your
nervous system, and the sympathetic nervous
system, which is what we call fight, flight, freeze, or
(02:49):
fawn, right? And so that's gonna be where we start explaining
the differences between the two as well as the connection with the brain. And
what I often find when I'm explaining these things to clients is that they
are like, yeah, that explains so many. They're like
checking off things like that explains how I felt here. That explains what
happened here. And they're amazed that this is all rooted
(03:13):
in a traumatic experience that is stored in
Wow. So interesting. And I do want to talk more about the
nervous system regulation and how trauma manifests,
not just emotionally and psychologically, but physically and
physiologically as well. First, I want to just
(03:34):
go back to something you said about when your clients present, they maybe
don't know the full extent of the
trauma that they experienced. And I think
that tends to be very common amongst high-performing
women in the sense that Even
personally, from personal experience, I know cognitively I told myself, yes,
(03:56):
I've dealt with these things. And I check them off of my list.
And it wasn't really until I started EMDR that I realized the
full extent of there's levels of
healing that need to happen. And so I was
curious if you could expand upon your experience with
Yeah. I think that a lot of people, especially more in the high-achieving, perfectionistic
(04:19):
realm, Because the fact that perfectionism
is as a result of like trying to outrun shame, they're
using things like intellectualizing as a defense mechanism. So
they know that they went through something. But
they're also like, yeah, but like, it's fine. Like, yeah, I got
through it. We're okay now. Because they don't want
(04:41):
to sit with the feelings that come with healing, right?
Because they're like, okay, we need to, in order
to outrun shame, I have to perform. But
I can't perform if I have to sit with the
grief of my experience. And so
I think that a lot of times I have to slow those
(05:02):
people down and go, hey, like, we need to really like,
let me just repeat back to you what you just told me
about your experience. Let me just tell you, I know you
said it this way, but let me just tell you what happened. And
they're like, yeah, no, I know. And we have to slow down and
we have to go back and let me tell. And I don't do that so that
(05:25):
they can blame other people and get
really mad and break off all these relations. I tell them that
because I need them to start to break down that defense mechanism
of intellectualizing and really sit with their
experience. Because oftentimes when
they do that, they realize, wow, I need to grieve what
(05:45):
I did not have. I need to grieve the childhood
that I wasn't allowed, the innocence that I lost. And
that can be really powerful, but it's hard, especially with high achieving
women because they are on the go. Let's heal. All right, check.
We've healed. We're moving on. And healing and
(06:07):
It's not. And I love the way you said that. And it is a lifelong journey
in my experience, professionally and personally. You
know, I guess it's a good question is can we hold
space for being high achieving and
hold the space for the feelings of
(06:28):
shame and blame that come up, you
Yeah, and I think just being able to recognize
you can hold two feelings at the same time, even if those feelings are
competing, right? So I can hold the grief of
what I didn't have at
(06:49):
the same time of being grateful for where I am.
And you can hold both and you can hold the feelings
of working through what this means about your relationship with
the person or persons who maybe
were abusive or whatever that experience was. At
the same time, you can also be processing through, maybe
(07:12):
I still want to have a relationship with this person, but maybe it might look different. But
you're kind of holding space for all these different emotions. It's difficult. And
I think that's why therapy can be so helpful is
because it's a nonjudgmental space where people can process through these things. But
I think it's so key. It's so key to be able to have a space where
you can sit down and hold these really heavy emotions and
(07:39):
Yeah, that makes sense. And are there specific types of
trauma in your experience that are more strongly associated
That's a really good question. I would
say in my experience, I've seen trauma that
(08:01):
has to do with the body. more
highly associated with anxiety. So we're talking about physical
trauma, sexual trauma, domestic violence. These are the ones that I
find because of the connection between the mind and the body, I find
those to be the ones that you really
(08:22):
have to sit with more, process through more
in order to heal from because
of that mind-body connection and how
it can impact you, not just
emotionally, but on a nervous system level. And
there's a book sitting up here, it's called The Body Keeps the Score, and it's something
(08:44):
I highly recommend to people who have gone through any
type of trauma. But he talks about Bessel van
der Kolk, who's one of the leading psychologists in trauma. He talks
about this connection and how the body stores the memories of
trauma. And so you may think that you've intellectually, right,
intellectualizing, that you've processed through it, but there's a deeper level
(09:05):
and there's a deeper layer that's stored in our bodies that we need to be able to
Yeah. It's such a powerful point. And I think
it takes a lot of introspection and self-reflection and
awareness of the mind-body connection. And I think that's where
the support of having a therapist or
a trauma-informed coach can really support you
(09:29):
through that process. And so just going back to the nervous system regulation
piece and how trauma impacts high-performing women,
what I want to talk about just is how does it impact high-performing women
differently? Why is it unique? So in my practice, a lot of
times I see clients who similarly have
(09:49):
you know, the low energy, the anxious feelings, the
perfectionistic tendencies, they're always on
edge, you know, extremely overwhelmed, not sleeping
well. So in your experience, I'm curious
(10:09):
In my experience, I think high performing women, I mean, or
men, but in this case, women, I think that it's
actually more challenging for them to work through trauma
than somebody who's not high-performing, at least from
what I've seen. Because oftentimes when someone comes in who's – maybe
they're just struggling through life and they've
(10:30):
really just struggled in general. I feel like they're a little bit more in
tune with those emotions. They're a little bit more in tune with what their body's experiencing.
When you get someone who's high-performing to sit down and like
you have to work through a lot of defense mechanisms and you have to work through a
lot of like walls that are protecting them from experiencing and
(10:50):
feeling that shame. And obviously the shame is
not really something that they need to own but it's something they feel
and so we have to help them kind of work through that
and start to believe
something different about the shame which we can talk about in a minute. And
(11:10):
then once you work through that, then we help them connect to their body.
But all of that brings a lot of emotions up. So
I think it's more challenging because there's a
lot more protective factors and protective walls that are
up with women who are very
(11:32):
Yeah, it's a great point. I can speak from personal experience. The walls
that we put up in the defensive mechanisms are real, and it does take
a lot of um, you know, support to
bring those down and, and trust and, um,
work to bring them down. And obviously getting to the core, right.
If those underlying feelings is really critical. So when we talk about going back to
(11:53):
the shame piece, when we talk about trauma behind
the trauma, there is some form to your point of shame, blame,
or guilt, or a combination of the three. So. And
that's hard, right? That's hard for anybody to acknowledge
and accept, especially for high performing women
(12:15):
who are used to being at the top of their game and the
appearance of being perfect, right?
To then open that door just a crack
And for those words to even be introduced, right,
can be overwhelming for people. But I think it's
important to understand the shame piece of
(12:39):
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I'm
an attachment theory therapist, so basically everything
I believe, a lot of this is rooted in those initial developmental
years, right? Infancy lasts for three years, and then after that,
those developmental years are so important because it establishes what you believe about
(12:59):
yourself, what you believe about the world. Is the world trustworthy? Is it not? Is
it safe? Is it unsafe? It establishes what you feel about
people in authority, right? Are caregivers going to meet
your needs or not meet your needs? What does that look like? Can you trust
other people? All of this is established in those early developmental years. So
typically people that experience shame They experience
(13:21):
some form. It could be abuse or neglect. It could be physical
and all of those things. It could also even just be that
you needed something and the need that you had was
either minimized or it was downplayed or
it was outright denied. And
so it could be something along the lines of you had a need as a child, this
(13:45):
is obviously repetitive, so it was a need over and over again, that
you were told, you're fine, you're fine, you're
okay, stop crying, you're good. So that
minimizing and that denying, which again, a lot of
parents follow the parenting recommendations of their day
and their generation. But if that's denied again and again,
(14:06):
you start to believe there's something wrong with you because you continue to have this need, whatever
that need is. It could be physical comfort. It could be emotional
comfort. It could be the basics of life, right?
So food and all of that. But a lot of times I
see this in people who needed emotional connection
with a parent and they were denied that emotional connection. And
(14:29):
as a result of that, they start to believe that they are bad because children
don't have the ability to process
differently. They're egocentric, right? And so everything has to
do with them. So if their parents get divorced, it's their fault. If
a parent denies them something emotional, it's their fault. So
(14:49):
they start to believe, well, there's something wrong with me. And that becomes
that thought process of I'm not good enough, which
then leads to there's something wrong with me and then there's shame. And
that feeling of shame is not something that we're very good at processing through
or working through as people. So then
we have one of a couple solutions. Either we believe that and
(15:11):
we kind of lie down in that puddle of shame, or
we try to outrun it. And we go, well, if I'm not good enough, maybe
if I perform better, I will be good enough.
And that usually in childhood leads to some
of this perfectionism, outperforming, high-functioning
(15:35):
Yeah, there's so much power in what you just said. And two things I
just want to call out. So one is proving your worth, right? So
if we are at our self-worth at its core, if we
are not strong in our own self-worth, then
we're constantly trying to prove ourselves. And I think for so
many of us who have experienced childhood trauma, that
(15:58):
is a recurring theme until you're able to really break that
cycle and heal that underlying shame. So
super powerful point. The other thing I wanna just call
out as you were talking, and it's true, a lot of us as children
were told, you can't feel certain emotions
or you're fine, you're safe, you're okay, stop complaining.
(16:21):
Where we started this conversation was women intellectualizing our
trauma and downplaying our trauma. And whose
voice is that that we are playing in our head when we're
telling ourselves it's fine. It's not a
big deal. Yeah. Right. And so I'm constantly reading,
you know, information about how as parents,
(16:43):
our voice becomes their inner voice. Yes. So
Yeah. A hundred percent. I think it's, it's
hard because you have people and, and I understand intellectually
what people were trying to do. Um,
but it's really damaging. It's really damaging because. just
(17:07):
because you validate a child's experience and you comfort them,
it's not going to turn them into somebody who is
not strong and independent
and able to take care of themselves. And for some reason, there's this lie, this
myth that says that it's coddling and you're
going to turn this kid into like a puddle of dependence. And
(17:31):
that's just not true. You actually see quite the
opposite, that the kids that receive more of that secure attachment
in those early developmental years, they're actually more independent.
They do better. They have an easier time
going into classrooms and schools and things like that because
they have this secure anchor to go back to. They
(17:53):
know their parents there. They know that they're loved. They know
that they have a place to go home to and like things are dependable
and they're reliable. And
so this myth of like, you know, don't
comfort them, like tell them that they're fine. So they'll be strong is
(18:15):
And many of us carry that through adulthood. Is that right? This concept of having to
be stoic and having to be strong and not
allowing ourselves to feel those big quote-unquote
Right. And so my question is, okay, so you're
going to basically like cut off that emotional
(18:36):
like spectrum that you have, and then
you expect your child to be able to handle all
of the spectrum of their emotions? They're not seeing you handle them.
Right. They're seeing no emotions. Right. Or they're seeing frustration or
anger, which is obviously a secondary emotion. And
so I just think, you know, it's so much better for us
(18:58):
to model how do we handle
emotions in a healthy way? How do we heal from
things in a healthy way? How do we help them process through their
big emotions that they don't know how to handle yet? Something
I'm very conscious of as a therapist, but as a parent. Yeah. So yeah.
(19:18):
Yeah. It's a great point. It's a great point. I think You know, as you
mentioned, the generational parenting concepts, I think we've evolved, which
is great to see. You know, there's sort of new ways of
thinking about parenting and emotional support
and attachment, which I think is much healthier. And I
think there's still room to go. So while we're on the
(19:40):
topic of the inner child, Kristen, I'm curious, you
know, we talk a lot about as women, I
hear a lot about imposter syndrome and there's different
theories on it and there's different ways to approach it. I
want to look at this from a little bit of a unique lens that you and I sort of
both share, which is how imposter syndrome
(20:01):
can be more than just feeling like
you're not enough in a professional
capacity. Because I was having a conversation with
a beautiful woman this morning who is an author. And
we were talking about an experience of, you know, being a corporate woman in
a boardroom, and not just feeling like you're not good
(20:23):
enough to be there. But this feeling of
that inner child is the one who's sitting in
that chair feeling not enough, which I
think is more prevalent than we talk about. So I
Yeah. I mean, there's so
(20:43):
many directions I could take that. I mean, we could even go into more IFS and
the parts of yourself and all of that. But I would say, Imposter
syndrome, again, I think if we go back to this idea
of shame and the fact that we
(21:04):
show up in these rooms and we feel like we're not enough or
we don't belong there, we're not good enough for these rooms, those
beliefs are rooted in in
that belief of shame, I'm not good enough. It's rooted, it all
goes back to that. It all goes back to the fact that it's not just
that I'm a professional and I'm learning how to handle
(21:26):
my own in this profession, it's that I have had this
negative core belief since I was a child that any room
I walk into where there
are authority figures that remind me of parents or remind me of just
other people that are better than me, right? Because that comparison starts
(21:47):
early on, that I start to feel that
imposter syndrome. I start to feel like I'm not good enough. I don't belong here.
And then you're trying to outperform that, right? Because you're like, okay, well, there's
that feeling of shame again. I need to outperform. Okay,
so now I'm going to overcompensate for the fact that I feel like I don't
belong here. And I think that often,
(22:09):
it's not that it's obvious, but it's also something clearly that
if that's what your experience is, that's something you need to process through.
Because it's not true. It's not that you're
not good enough for that room. It's
that you've had this belief for a very long time, and
your brain has believed this one path, this
(22:32):
one thought. all
the way stored in that body of yours. And so you
have to work through the layers of that so that you are
able to walk in and go, no, it's not that I'm
better than anyone here, but I belong here. I have something
to offer. And
(22:52):
getting from that point of imposter to knowing
that I have a place at the table and I have something to
offer, it takes time and it takes healing.
Yeah, it's a great point. And it is much deeper than I think what
we typically talk about, right? When, when people refer to imposter
(23:13):
syndrome, I think it's sort of on a, on a different level. Um, and
certainly doesn't apply to everybody, but I think there's probably a good percentage of
people that, um, that relate to exactly what
you're saying. So around that self worth piece and,
and the shame piece, you know, if. People listening are,
do have that experience and have that coming up for them. Obviously,
(23:35):
therapy is a great place to start. What other
tips, tools, or advice would you give to high-performing
women or anyone listening who has struggled with trauma-related anxiety and
Yeah. I think for
clients that I work with, the first thing that we need to understand is
(23:58):
the connection between the traumatic
memories and the experiences that you had and
what your body is physiologically doing right now.
A lot of times anxiety can come
from unresolved trauma because what's happening is your body's
been telling you for a long time, something's up, something's up, hey, something's
(24:20):
up, you know, emotionally and maybe even
physically, right? Different symptoms of anxiety or panic. And
then it gets to a point where you can no longer ignore it. And
your body's like, dude, you need to deal with this and
you need to deal with it now. And this is when, you know, people, I usually see people
because they're like, well, It wasn't that bad and then it got worse and
(24:41):
then I ended up in the ER and I thought I was having a heart attack and then now
I'm here. And that's usually when we go, okay, the very first thing
we're going to do is we are going to work on helping you regulate your
nervous system. Before we get into all the thought work, before we
get into the past work about your childhood trauma, before we process through
anything emotionally, you have to have stability. And
the stability that you have is understanding the connection between your
(25:07):
sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight, and your parasympathetic nervous
system, rest and digest. And the connection there is that they
are opposing systems, which means that one of them, if
one of them is on, the other one's off. They can never be on at the same time. So
the beauty of that is that if you learn how to activate your
parasympathetic nervous system, then you will know
(25:29):
how to get out of fight or flight. The problem is the connection between
when your sympathetic nervous system is on, when
fight or flight is on, Um, you lose access
to your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that
has logical thinking, right? So this is when
(25:49):
people come in and they're like, I have no idea why I did that. I don't know why I couldn't,
or here's, here's one. If you've been a victim of crime, someone
attacked you, someone assaulted you. And you're like, why
didn't I fight? What I
will tell you is. You couldn't have
fought because your body did what it knew how to
(26:11):
do because it wasn't connecting to the
logical thinking part of your brain. You didn't sit there and go, hmm, what
should I do here? You can't because historically speaking,
your body was created this way so that you could react
quickly. So you could flee, so you could freeze, so
you could fight, right? And so your body reacted
(26:34):
the way that it did because that's how your body was designed. So
what we talk about is we talk about, okay, you can't,
you don't have logical thinking when you're in your sympathetic nervous system. So
what you need to learn how to do is you need to repeat the
things that activate your parasympathetic nervous
(26:54):
system. And you need to repeat them often so that you know, so
it becomes kind of this muscle memory thing of when my body goes
here and I'm safe, I'm going to do
the things that I know how to do to get my body back into
my parasympathetic nervous system. And a
lot of times clients will come in and they're like, yeah, but I've like done
(27:14):
the breathing thing and that doesn't work. And that's
when I say, well, I think that you probably haven't learned how to
do the breathing, the breathing thing, because the parasympathetic nervous
system is directly linked to your exhale breath. So
learning how to breathe properly. not hyperventilating, not
breathing a bunch, but learning how to breathe properly will
(27:37):
get you out of fight or flight. It will. It'll
relax your body because you cannot be in fight or flight in
a relaxed body. When your muscles are relaxed, you
So we start there. Yeah, I love that. It's
so beautifully stated. you know, you mentioned this
(27:58):
concept of not feeling not safe. And
I think oftentimes, again, intellectually, we can tell ourselves, we're
safe, right in our environment, and look around and logically say, there's
nothing, I'm not in any line of threat or danger.
Yet, there's this script running in the background telling us the
amygdala is going off, right? And saying, Nope, we're not safe, we're
(28:20):
not safe. And it's like, well, what is that alarm in your body? And
how do we get to the root of it, right? Because again, I can intellectualize
all day, but it's not going to make that alarm go off. And
Yeah. And what's interesting about that is that trauma
is stored in the body, but it's also stored in the senses. So
if there's anything that resembles the past, so
(28:43):
like, let's say that there was someone who abused this
client and there's a smell, there's
a cologne or a perfume or something that's triggering to
them and they walk into a Sephora and they smell it.
Their body's not going to differentiate. That person isn't here.
(29:03):
They're just going to go into fight or flight because the body stores
all of those warning signs in the senses. as
a memory, right?
I'm not going to get into all the different parts of the brain, but there's a part in your brain where
basically it's scanning for those things and it's saying, okay,
(29:24):
are we safe? Are we good? And when it
sees something, there's two different pathways that it will take. But if
there's a danger, it will take the quickest pathway to your amygdala.
It will sound that emergency alarm and now your body's in fight
So it's so critical to understand those stored
(29:48):
Right. And that's why people, you know, in therapy or,
you know, wherever else, they need to understand the
triggers. And that's why we
work on triggers is because we're reteaching the brain
that you're safe. But
it takes time, it takes time for the brain to unlearn something that
(30:14):
For sure. And I can also speak from personal experience that sometimes you don't
even realize what the triggers are, right? And
your body is just reacting. And then one day you're like, oh, that's why
I have such a strong reaction to that. So first is really just
the awareness around identifying what those triggers are for you and
then unpacking kind of where that comes from and then redirecting that
(30:37):
reaction. So great advice. Kristin, I know you're
also a certified yoga instructor. Do you want to talk
Oh, somatic yoga. So basically,
yeah, I got certified back
in 2016 and I I
just love learning new things
(31:00):
to be able to help with regulating that nervous system. One of the things
that I love about doing yoga, or
really we could even just say breath with movement if you don't
like yoga, but basically is When
you experience trauma, when you experience these difficult memories and
they're stored in the body, one of the things that you might
(31:22):
find is that doing these types of movements with
your breath, one, you are slowing down your
breath, so you are intentionally getting into your parasympathetic nervous
system, which for women, high-functioning women who are typically in sympathetic nervous
system dominance, this is really good because you want
time where you can slow down and get out of that
(31:45):
fight or flight experience, right? So this forces you
to do that. You have to slow down your breath. You're breathing in,
sometimes in and out the nose. You're breathing in the nose, out the mouth, however
your instructor is guiding it. But then you're also moving.
And so what sometimes you might find is that
you might actually have emotions come up while you're doing yoga.
(32:07):
And I'll hear different experiences about which emotions. It
could be anger. It could actually be sadness. And
those emotions, those emotional releases, as I call them, it's
really healthy. You may not even realize what you're releasing, but
your body, in order to heal from trauma, you have to release things
on an emotional level. Something happened. If you didn't release it back then, you have to
(32:29):
release it now. And so
being able to move your body with the breath, get
into that calm state allows your body to be calm
enough and safe enough to release these emotions and
start even healing from things that you didn't even realize. And
so, I mean, I even had an experience like that. And there was a
(32:52):
moment where I knew what I was releasing and I released that
and the teacher that I was with held space for that. It was great.
Nothing was weird. And And
I think it's just really healthy to be able to find the things that help you
to regulate that nervous system, help you to slow down, help you to feel
like you can release things on an emotional level. And The
(33:18):
experience, I think, for a lot of people is that they
don't know how to slow down enough to
get to that point, or they don't know how to create space
for that. And so why yoga sometimes is helpful, even
like vinyasa, just the typical yoga classes that you would go to,
is that by busying the body, sometimes it
(33:41):
quiets the mind. So it even kind of brings down
some of those intellectual defenses because
we're like, I'm not thinking about all this like, how do I like keep
these walls up? I'm thinking about where am I putting my foot right now? And
am I breathing still? And so that allows your
body to kind of like go, okay, we can release some things right now because you're not
(34:03):
overthinking this whole process. So it's one of the
things that I've recommended for some clients in the past is just to
do that because I think it's helped them bring down some
of those defenses and have a safe place where they can release
Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. I think the breath with movement is
a beautiful way of saying it. It's really about
(34:25):
finding what works for you and what you feel comfortable with
and finding that safe space for you where you can down regulate and
process. So I love that. Kristin, remind our listeners where
Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me on my website, kristenradke.com.
You can follow me on Instagram, Therapy with Kris. And
(34:50):
Kristen, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your insights and expertise. This
is such a fascinating conversation. I loved it. Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me. And of course, you can visit my website at GiaLacqua.com. Reach
out on Instagram at GiaLacqua. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and
leave a review. This is Gia signing off with gratitude for your time
and energy. Our mic drops, but the movement continues. Until
(35:15):
That concludes another empowering episode of Your Future Starts Now.
Before we wrap up, I want to thank this incredible community of high-achieving women.
Your energy, resilience, and commitment to growth are the driving force
behind what we do. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate
it, leave a review, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your
feedback fuels our mission to empower high-achieving women just like
(35:37):
you. And of course, share your future starts now with the extraordinary women
in your life who are also on a journey of healing and empowerment. Connect
with us on social media, share your thoughts, let us know what topics you'd like to
explore in future episodes. Stay connected on Instagram at
GiaLacqua. I encourage you to carry the energy of this conversation
into your day and keep on supporting the incredible women around you.
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