July 31, 2021 • 23 mins
- Somatic Approach vs. Talk Therapy
- How perceived and real danger can cause trauma
- Nervous system regulation vs. dysregulation
- Retraining our bodies to feel safe using “the voo” breath
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't let my body out be outwit everything that
I'm made do. Won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning a love who I am, I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me
it is beautiful and then will always out way if
(00:23):
you feel it. With joys in the air, she's some
love to the boom. I am there. Let's say good
day and did you and die out? Okay, welcome to
Outweigh today. Lisa and I are excited to be joined
by Eileen Smith. And Eileen is a Somatic experiencing practitioner SEP.
(00:46):
And so Eileen, quickly, before we get into our chat,
can you just share with people what it is that
you do, because you know, I feel like I'm well
versed in a lot of therapy and I personally had
to look the stup and I was very intrigued. Well,
first of all, thanks for having me here. I'm really
excited to talk to you both. So a little bit
about semantic experiencing and we as we call it in
(01:09):
the community se work. You know, we talk a lot
about therapy and the cognitive peace and you know, all
these therapies like cognitive behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, psycho drama.
All of that is what we call a top down approach.
So we're approaching therapy from our highest level of functioning,
(01:31):
from working with like the prefrontal cortex and our executive thinking. Right.
So the the idea and those kinds of therapies is
that if we change the way we think, will change
our behaviors. Semantic experiencing and top and bottom up approaches
actually approached therapy from a more primitive part of the
brain where trauma resides. So if you break the brain
(01:55):
up into three parts, you have like what we call
the reptilian brain, which is our survival brain. Um, then
we have our emotional brain, and then the top the
executive functioning. We're approaching it from the survival part of
the brain because if you really look at this carefully,
at least you know, working with eating disorders, I've never
seen an eating disorder patient that doesn't have a history
(02:19):
of trauma, and that trauma and energy gets locked in
the body. And when we go into our survival states
of fight, fight, and freeze, that's all body based, right,
because the language of that part of the brain is sensation.
Think about reptiles. So that's the difference between approaches like
somatic experiencing and more top down approaches. I hope that
(02:43):
made sense, because I mean, there's so many different directions
I can go on with it. It is a great
job explaining it. And I think what I'd like for
you to define for us and next is some people
may not really think that they have trauma because they,
for whatever reason, perceive it to be this big thing
that has to happen. But can you share with us
(03:04):
how you define trauma and then maybe how there's a
big tea and little tea, Like there are various types
of trauma. It doesn't mean that you've had to experience
some huge thing or you can compare it to someone
else's trauma and then think that you don't really have it. Sure,
so we often think of trauma as an event, but
trauma is really the energy that gets locked in your
(03:26):
body around real or perceived threat. And that's why many
times ten people can have the same experience one and
have ten different reactions to that experience. And the way
an event becomes traumatized is how quickly we bounced back
from an event, how safe we felt after after the event,
(03:47):
and how resilient we felt going into the event. So
it's not necessarily the event, but it's the energy that
gets locked in there, and the way it gets locked
in there has to do with variety, the variety of
reasons like that. I'm mentioning. We're all familiar with PTSD, right,
and so we think of PTSD, right, it's an acute
event complex. PTSD is a series of stressors that you
(04:10):
experience early on in your life. And I mean it
could be later, but generally it's early on, So it
can be it can start in utero. It can start
from a mother having a very stressed nervous system and
that impacts the baby. It can be birth trauma. UM,
something as simple as pushing off the vaginal walls is
regulating for a baby's nervous system. So a c section, UM,
(04:33):
early operations, a mother who's in UM, a lot of
dis dressed you know, after the baby is born. So
all of those things are going to impact the baby's
nervous system and possibly cause some trauma. But it goes
even further than that. UM. Now your child's growing up
(04:54):
in a house, maybe there's chas um, there's abuse, there's neglect,
maybe there's alcohol all, but when a child is raised
in an environment that doesn't feel safe, it often is
the beginning stages of what we call complex PTSD. And
when there's complex PTSD, what does a child do when
(05:15):
they don't feel safe? They're going to go into survival
and they're gonna do everything they possibly can to feel safe.
So they're going to give up their autonomy, so they're
not going to show their emotions because maybe that is
what creates the abuse, and they're going to do everything
they can to be aligned with their primary caregiver to
feel safe, and that that often means really giving themselves up.
(05:37):
If those things don't work, what happens a child might
go into fight or flight. If that doesn't work, their
system shuts down and they go into freeze. So you
can see that they're going into these survival states. That's
like the gist of complex PTSD, and I've seen over
and over is is that when there's been complex PTSD
(05:58):
and an individ jewel has detached from their body, it
often manifests an eating disorder because the eating disorder is
just simply a way to try to regulate a disregulated
nervous system from an sc perspective. I just want to
highlight that you said very early on when talking about
trauma that it could be a result of a perceived
(06:19):
or a real threat. I feel like we glossed over that,
and I think the word perceived is a really important one,
especially for me. Um. I grew up you know, with
a roof over my head, physical safety, no signs of
neglect or abuse in the way that we typically think
of trauma. And at the same time, I do recognize
(06:42):
that there was a lot of trauma in the way
that I grew up, and as a result of trying
to find safety, I developed signs of disordered eating. I mean,
I think that it's a complex, it doesn't just involve
the trauma. But I think for all of our listeners,
just to give yourself a moment to recognize, you know, Okay, hey,
maybe there is some trauma in your life. Maybe it's
(07:03):
worth taking a look at how your nervous system, how
your body is responding to events before your mind is,
and giving yourself permission to say, hey, life was kind
of hard, even if it wasn't hard in a movie
script type of hard type of way where it's so
dramatic and I just I just wanted everyone to kind
of just hone in on that important fact. So I
(07:24):
talked about the nervous system a lot. I spend a
lot of time regulating mine, and that is a topic
that you just brought up and what this whole thing
is about. So can you kind of break down to
us what a regulated verse disregulated nervous system is. I'm
only I'm laughing and I'm smiling because I think that
when we've had disordered eating, it's just an ongoing process
(07:46):
to try to regulate the nervous system. A regulated nervous
system can manage intense emotions and come out the other
side without total disregulation. So when are nervous systems regulated,
I'd like to use this term, we have a greater
window of tolerance to manage stress. It doesn't mean that
(08:08):
we're not going to have stress in our life. That
is part of life, but it's it's how we move
through the experience and our ability to stay present with
the stress and not go into completely maladaptive ways of
dealing with the stress. When the nervous system is regulated,
we tend to be able to stay more connected, We're
(08:30):
more functional, we're more in social in our social engagement systems,
So several things when we're regulated will come online. We're
we sleep better, our physiology feels better, our digestion is better.
So it's a combination of all those things. But I
just think the big thing to think about is that
everything in the way you're moving to your life feels balanced.
(08:52):
I feel like when it comes to managing stress um
on a day today, it's very easy to go through
a checklist of things on a random day and kind
of feel like, Okay, I'm doing my stress management techniques,
I'm breathing, I'm going for walks, I'm doing my gratitude
journal from maybe, I'm you know, doing all the things
that feel good. And then for me again, somebody who
(09:13):
hasn't had those big teas as our friend Cat calls
them big traumas. We have a lot of little teas.
If that little T trauma button is hit, it usually
comes out of nowhere and you know, flips me on
my head and I feel like I'm at square one.
It's such a nervous system response that can make you
(09:35):
feel like a failure at taking good care of yourself.
How can we learn to better become aware of the
hot buttons I guess so that they don't feel so hot.
So I think the big thing with this, right, like,
healing is such a journey, right the stresses are going
to calm and we're not always going to manage them
exactly the way we want to. But if you continue
(09:56):
to do all those things that, whether it's to breathwork
or you go or you know, the variety of different
things that we do to keep ourselves present, that it's
almost it's like building a muscle, right Like each time,
Like my guess is where you are today and how
how quickly you can bounce back when you get out
of balance. It's very different than where you were five
(10:18):
years ago or ten years ago before you started this
healing journey. And I think it's really important for people
to realize that we didn't get to where we are overnight,
so we can't expect to be let's just say healed overnight.
It's really it's it's a process. It takes a long time,
you know. I think about things like my own journey, right,
(10:41):
I've had let's just say, every every version of an
eating disorder other than bulimia because I hate throwing up.
So you know, for me, early on being out of
behaviors for two days was a victory, and then five
days was a victory. Then you know, a month was
the big race. So I think we have to really
look at it as knowing that like even we get
(11:05):
off balance, it's how quickly we get back on track
is an indication of where we are. I think it's
a much better way to look at it, um and
to see our progress. I read a book Brain over Binge,
and she would talk about the I think it was
the reptile brain. Yeah, the reptilian brain that I was
(11:25):
having to rewire innocence. And everyone might be different, but
this is what you suggested in the book, and I
tried it and happen to work for me. But when
I would go towards the pantry, right, because I would
find myself in a binge cycle, but a lot of
times too because I was restricting, and then I didn't
realize the two win hand in hand. Um. So every
(11:48):
time I would stop at the pantry and walk away,
like I would stop and breathe and walk away every
time I didn't open the door, I was reworking that
part of the rain of like you're not in control.
And now it's been a couple of years since I
read it, so I'm paraphrasing. She definitely had a lot
of thought and some science that went behind this, But
(12:10):
like for me, I just remember going to the pantry
and walking away, and even that in itself, like I knew, okay,
I'm working my brain towards this now. Then I didn't
go to the pantry anymore, but I remember her talking
about that, and it's not as simple as that at all.
I don't know if you have any thoughts on that,
because I haven't read the book in quite a bit,
(12:30):
and not that you've read that book, but that reptilian
brain and kind of because I was restricting it. It
thought I needed to eat, eat, eat, eat, but I
was having to retrain it right, And it makes perfect sense.
So when we restrict right, we go into that survival piece.
And then, I mean, I haven't read the books. I
(12:51):
don't know exactly what she's talking about. I could just
tell you there's a couple of things that are coming
to mind as you're sharing. The first thing is by
going to the pantry and to and talking to yourself,
you're bringing yourself back into the present moment, because my
guess is there was a big piece of dissociation. Every
(13:12):
time you were going to and from the pantry. Yes,
and you weren't. You weren't actually experiencing your hunger and
fullness cues. You were just experiencing this disregulated nervous system
that you wanted to disconnect from your body, like your
body was that survival pieces. Uh, you know, fight or
flight's not working. Okay, I'm going to go into this
(13:33):
totally dissociated state and just try and um suit then
soothe my system. In eating disorder treatment, I believe that
we have to get our brains and our bodies moving
in the same direction. Right Because you can know all
day what to do and what not to do, it
doesn't keep you out of behaviors. So calming and regulating
(13:54):
the nervous system is going to organically start shifting the behaviors.
And I think that's what she's probably talking about in
the buck. I'm actually now curious to go and read it.
I think that it helped me to look at it
from that point of view, and a lot of the
tools that I've gained from Lisa as well I used
together in my work towards healing, and as I'm in recovery,
(14:18):
but being able to realize that, oh, this is just
me trying to save myself, protect myself, Like, this is
what my body is doing to help me, even though
it's not necessarily what I need to ultimately be doing,
but you can look at it. I try not to
have shame around it because I did for so long.
(14:40):
But in a way, I'm like, oh, wow, I was
doing what I needed to do to survive in that
season of my life, and now I'm using that as
kind of a chapter in my life to help me
move forward in the right direction, take making the next
best decision for myself. And I just want to offer people,
(15:01):
um that hope that you can get to the other side.
But when you look at it as like your body
was trying in your brain and everything was trying to
protect you because you were in the survival modes, then
I guess it just for me, it helped take away
some of the shame because I was just doing the
best that I could right. And it explains the physiology
(15:22):
versus you know what's wrong with me, because it really
is physiology that you're talking about. It's survival through physiology,
and our survival physiology always wins it's way stronger than
any of our higher level function because think about it,
it's it's your body trying to survive. We just had
(15:42):
Dr Kristen f who I don't know if you're familiar
with her work and self compassion. I know that you
mentioned self compassion a lot in your Instagram post. There's
so much wisdom in your Instagram post. We're gonna link
that below. But just like Amy kind of just said,
like looking at her behavior and then and seeing it
through the lens of I'm doing the best that I
had in this moment kind of opens the door for
(16:03):
us to change the cognitive approach. And you have a
post that I love that just says things mindful people
do differently, and I saved it, and as Amy was
talking about her own thought process, it's very clear that
you know, Amy, you've moved through shame and then into
a place where you're able to look at your thoughts
(16:24):
a little bit differently and make a little bit of space.
So I mean the post that you wrote says things
mindful people do differently. They don't believe their thoughts and
they don't take them seriously. They don't try to avoid emotions,
they understand things come and go, they practice being curious,
they're fully present when listening without trying to control or judge,
and the list goes on. But for a lot of
(16:46):
our listeners that's been on Amy's Dirney, you know, it's
a recent ish journey. So to really see that, it
starts with recognizing, oh, this is why I do this.
It's okay that I do this, and now that I'm
here doing this, I can talk back to these thoughts
and we can kind of climb up the ladder of
understanding ourselves. And I think those little things are really
(17:08):
important to acknowledge, No, for sure, And I think you
know that it has to start with if we can
name it, we can work with it and awareness and
observation like what I work with my clients, Like I
can spend a really long time just helping a client
learn how to simply observe, because observation is what keeps
(17:29):
us present, and without presence we can't heal that awareness
and being able to just be with it and to
just notice it and not label it or or make
up a story around it takes away so much of
that charge that gets us into trouble because think about it,
the shame is what gets us into trouble. Right we're
(17:51):
trying to manage the discomfort around the shame. I mean,
we spend so much time trying to do that. So
the somatic approach is really the bottom up approach that
you called it, So dealing with the body and then
moving upwards into the cognitive portion. That's how I took that.
Is that correct? Great? So for our audience that's listening
and they want to know how to drop down, that
(18:13):
might feel impossible right now. You know, so many of
us are so in our heads, so struck with fear
in the reptilian brain, and what are some things, some
tools that maybe they can do today to soften and
allow their bodies to release these emotions safely. I know
that for some big teas it might be important to
(18:35):
caution that these things should be done with a practitioner around.
But you talk a lot about touch and dancing, and
I think I love those things, so few could just
speak to them. Yeah, So I think the first thing,
there's so many, especially with eating disorders, there's such a
disconnection from the body. So as I was before, I
thought of the things where we have to really start
(18:57):
is in that observation because we're so stuck in the
stories that we lose presents. Like I believe that when
we future trip, or when we go back and we
ruminate about the past, or we go into this problem
like why why why why why, that's just taking us
away from being present. So the first thing I believe
(19:18):
that needs to happen is the dialogue with yourself needs
to shift. So, for example, it would simply be something like,
I noticed that I keep ruminating about what happened yesterday.
I noticed that I keep, you know, thinking about X,
Y and Z. So that to me is step one
along the way I think from a nervous system reset.
(19:40):
There's so many great exercises that one can do, and
I can, you know, just give you a couple of
quick ones. There's what I called it's a self hug exercise,
where you're wrapping your arms around yourself and just feeling
the boundaries of your body, because it's so important for
us to know where our bodies start and where they end,
(20:05):
and it's very soothing to the nervous system just to
hold yourself and to just touch and to be able
to get connected with what your body feels like. And
that might be hard for someone who's really struggling with
disordered eating. But that's definitely worth a try. There's all
sorts of breathing exercises. One that I like in particular
(20:26):
is what we call the voo exercise, and it's breathing
in and exhaling with a voo sound, and it's like
the quickest way you can just do a nervous system reset. Awesome.
So those those who be a couple of you know,
easy takeaways for your audience. I just feel like we
might need a demonstration of the breathing voo. Can you
(20:47):
just demonstrate it for me? Real? Like I just did
an Instagram post and one of the exercises I did
it was it was the boo exercise. But what you're
gonna do is you're gonna find a comfortable seated position
in a quiet space if you can hand, and you're
just going to breathe in and you're gonna exchale going
(21:09):
and so as long as you can, and I recommend
you know, doing it four or five times and seeing
seeing if you notice the difference in your system. I
feel a system just from hearing you do that. I
think obviously there's so much science to it that I'm
not familiar with on hand, but the vibration of noises
like that allow the receiving end to even experience it.
(21:32):
And you know that's what home is about home. When
we do it ourselves and we get that vibration, it
really just changes the nervous system instantly, and it gives
you your power back in the times where you feel
so powerless again. Not as I always get it right
when those buttons are hit for me, you know, I
snap off in other ways, but in certain times instances
I find them just so incredibly healing and great reminders
(21:56):
of how powerfulful we can be at taking care of
ourselves in those hard times. No, for sure, it's it's
interesting because like the ALM sound, and it's all the
same principles. It's what you're doing, is you're I mean,
without getting to science, e, you're toning the vegas nerve,
and the more tone the vegas nerve has, the more
capacity we have to regulate the nervous system. It's it's
(22:19):
good stuff, awesome love that. If people want to see
that demonstration video, which thank you for doing that over
the podcast. For me, it was helpful for me to
hear it because I was in my head. I was
between like like once you do, and I was like, Okay,
I'm glad she's demonstrated, but yeah, Eileen's instagram is Eileen
Smith Healing, and again, like Lisa said, we'll be linking
(22:43):
that in the show notes. And Eileen is also the
author of Moving Beyond Trauma, The Roadmap to Healing from
your Past and Living with Ease and Vitality, So we'll
also be linking your book as well. And we just
appreciate you so much for are joining us. And I
want to share something I pulled from your instagram as well,
(23:04):
and it was a self reminder that you put up,
and it says when we learned to feel safe enough
to trust our inner voice, were then able to develop
a secure attachment with ourselves and others. That was something
that I definitely needed to read, so I just wanted
to say it out loud for others that might need
that reminder today as well
I won't let my body out be outwit everything that
I'm made do. Won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning a love who I am, I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me
it is beautiful and then will always out way if
(00:23):
you feel it. With joys in the air, she's some
love to the boom. I am there. Let's say good
day and did you and die out? Okay, welcome to
Outweigh today. Lisa and I are excited to be joined
by Eileen Smith. And Eileen is a Somatic experiencing practitioner SEP.
(00:46):
And so Eileen, quickly, before we get into our chat,
can you just share with people what it is that
you do, because you know, I feel like I'm well
versed in a lot of therapy and I personally had
to look the stup and I was very intrigued. Well,
first of all, thanks for having me here. I'm really
excited to talk to you both. So a little bit
about semantic experiencing and we as we call it in
(01:09):
the community se work. You know, we talk a lot
about therapy and the cognitive peace and you know, all
these therapies like cognitive behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, psycho drama.
All of that is what we call a top down approach.
So we're approaching therapy from our highest level of functioning,
(01:31):
from working with like the prefrontal cortex and our executive thinking. Right.
So the the idea and those kinds of therapies is
that if we change the way we think, will change
our behaviors. Semantic experiencing and top and bottom up approaches
actually approached therapy from a more primitive part of the
brain where trauma resides. So if you break the brain
(01:55):
up into three parts, you have like what we call
the reptilian brain, which is our survival brain. Um, then
we have our emotional brain, and then the top the
executive functioning. We're approaching it from the survival part of
the brain because if you really look at this carefully,
at least you know, working with eating disorders, I've never
seen an eating disorder patient that doesn't have a history
(02:19):
of trauma, and that trauma and energy gets locked in
the body. And when we go into our survival states
of fight, fight, and freeze, that's all body based, right,
because the language of that part of the brain is sensation.
Think about reptiles. So that's the difference between approaches like
somatic experiencing and more top down approaches. I hope that
(02:43):
made sense, because I mean, there's so many different directions
I can go on with it. It is a great
job explaining it. And I think what I'd like for
you to define for us and next is some people
may not really think that they have trauma because they,
for whatever reason, perceive it to be this big thing
that has to happen. But can you share with us
(03:04):
how you define trauma and then maybe how there's a
big tea and little tea, Like there are various types
of trauma. It doesn't mean that you've had to experience
some huge thing or you can compare it to someone
else's trauma and then think that you don't really have it. Sure,
so we often think of trauma as an event, but
trauma is really the energy that gets locked in your
(03:26):
body around real or perceived threat. And that's why many
times ten people can have the same experience one and
have ten different reactions to that experience. And the way
an event becomes traumatized is how quickly we bounced back
from an event, how safe we felt after after the event,
(03:47):
and how resilient we felt going into the event. So
it's not necessarily the event, but it's the energy that
gets locked in there, and the way it gets locked
in there has to do with variety, the variety of
reasons like that. I'm mentioning. We're all familiar with PTSD, right,
and so we think of PTSD, right, it's an acute
event complex. PTSD is a series of stressors that you
(04:10):
experience early on in your life. And I mean it
could be later, but generally it's early on, So it
can be it can start in utero. It can start
from a mother having a very stressed nervous system and
that impacts the baby. It can be birth trauma. UM,
something as simple as pushing off the vaginal walls is
regulating for a baby's nervous system. So a c section, UM,
(04:33):
early operations, a mother who's in UM, a lot of
dis dressed you know, after the baby is born. So
all of those things are going to impact the baby's
nervous system and possibly cause some trauma. But it goes
even further than that. UM. Now your child's growing up
(04:54):
in a house, maybe there's chas um, there's abuse, there's neglect,
maybe there's alcohol all, but when a child is raised
in an environment that doesn't feel safe, it often is
the beginning stages of what we call complex PTSD. And
when there's complex PTSD, what does a child do when
(05:15):
they don't feel safe? They're going to go into survival
and they're gonna do everything they possibly can to feel safe.
So they're going to give up their autonomy, so they're
not going to show their emotions because maybe that is
what creates the abuse, and they're going to do everything
they can to be aligned with their primary caregiver to
feel safe, and that that often means really giving themselves up.
(05:37):
If those things don't work, what happens a child might
go into fight or flight. If that doesn't work, their
system shuts down and they go into freeze. So you
can see that they're going into these survival states. That's
like the gist of complex PTSD, and I've seen over
and over is is that when there's been complex PTSD
(05:58):
and an individ jewel has detached from their body, it
often manifests an eating disorder because the eating disorder is
just simply a way to try to regulate a disregulated
nervous system from an sc perspective. I just want to
highlight that you said very early on when talking about
trauma that it could be a result of a perceived
(06:19):
or a real threat. I feel like we glossed over that,
and I think the word perceived is a really important one,
especially for me. Um. I grew up you know, with
a roof over my head, physical safety, no signs of
neglect or abuse in the way that we typically think
of trauma. And at the same time, I do recognize
(06:42):
that there was a lot of trauma in the way
that I grew up, and as a result of trying
to find safety, I developed signs of disordered eating. I mean,
I think that it's a complex, it doesn't just involve
the trauma. But I think for all of our listeners,
just to give yourself a moment to recognize, you know, Okay, hey,
maybe there is some trauma in your life. Maybe it's
(07:03):
worth taking a look at how your nervous system, how
your body is responding to events before your mind is,
and giving yourself permission to say, hey, life was kind
of hard, even if it wasn't hard in a movie
script type of hard type of way where it's so
dramatic and I just I just wanted everyone to kind
of just hone in on that important fact. So I
(07:24):
talked about the nervous system a lot. I spend a
lot of time regulating mine, and that is a topic
that you just brought up and what this whole thing
is about. So can you kind of break down to
us what a regulated verse disregulated nervous system is. I'm
only I'm laughing and I'm smiling because I think that
when we've had disordered eating, it's just an ongoing process
(07:46):
to try to regulate the nervous system. A regulated nervous
system can manage intense emotions and come out the other
side without total disregulation. So when are nervous systems regulated,
I'd like to use this term, we have a greater
window of tolerance to manage stress. It doesn't mean that
(08:08):
we're not going to have stress in our life. That
is part of life, but it's it's how we move
through the experience and our ability to stay present with
the stress and not go into completely maladaptive ways of
dealing with the stress. When the nervous system is regulated,
we tend to be able to stay more connected, We're
(08:30):
more functional, we're more in social in our social engagement systems,
So several things when we're regulated will come online. We're
we sleep better, our physiology feels better, our digestion is better.
So it's a combination of all those things. But I
just think the big thing to think about is that
everything in the way you're moving to your life feels balanced.
(08:52):
I feel like when it comes to managing stress um
on a day today, it's very easy to go through
a checklist of things on a random day and kind
of feel like, Okay, I'm doing my stress management techniques,
I'm breathing, I'm going for walks, I'm doing my gratitude
journal from maybe, I'm you know, doing all the things
that feel good. And then for me again, somebody who
(09:13):
hasn't had those big teas as our friend Cat calls
them big traumas. We have a lot of little teas.
If that little T trauma button is hit, it usually
comes out of nowhere and you know, flips me on
my head and I feel like I'm at square one.
It's such a nervous system response that can make you
(09:35):
feel like a failure at taking good care of yourself.
How can we learn to better become aware of the
hot buttons I guess so that they don't feel so hot.
So I think the big thing with this, right, like,
healing is such a journey, right the stresses are going
to calm and we're not always going to manage them
exactly the way we want to. But if you continue
(09:56):
to do all those things that, whether it's to breathwork
or you go or you know, the variety of different
things that we do to keep ourselves present, that it's
almost it's like building a muscle, right Like each time,
Like my guess is where you are today and how
how quickly you can bounce back when you get out
of balance. It's very different than where you were five
(10:18):
years ago or ten years ago before you started this
healing journey. And I think it's really important for people
to realize that we didn't get to where we are overnight,
so we can't expect to be let's just say healed overnight.
It's really it's it's a process. It takes a long time,
you know. I think about things like my own journey, right,
(10:41):
I've had let's just say, every every version of an
eating disorder other than bulimia because I hate throwing up.
So you know, for me, early on being out of
behaviors for two days was a victory, and then five
days was a victory. Then you know, a month was
the big race. So I think we have to really
look at it as knowing that like even we get
(11:05):
off balance, it's how quickly we get back on track
is an indication of where we are. I think it's
a much better way to look at it, um and
to see our progress. I read a book Brain over Binge,
and she would talk about the I think it was
the reptile brain. Yeah, the reptilian brain that I was
(11:25):
having to rewire innocence. And everyone might be different, but
this is what you suggested in the book, and I
tried it and happen to work for me. But when
I would go towards the pantry, right, because I would
find myself in a binge cycle, but a lot of
times too because I was restricting, and then I didn't
realize the two win hand in hand. Um. So every
(11:48):
time I would stop at the pantry and walk away,
like I would stop and breathe and walk away every
time I didn't open the door, I was reworking that
part of the rain of like you're not in control.
And now it's been a couple of years since I
read it, so I'm paraphrasing. She definitely had a lot
of thought and some science that went behind this, But
(12:10):
like for me, I just remember going to the pantry
and walking away, and even that in itself, like I knew, okay,
I'm working my brain towards this now. Then I didn't
go to the pantry anymore, but I remember her talking
about that, and it's not as simple as that at all.
I don't know if you have any thoughts on that,
because I haven't read the book in quite a bit,
(12:30):
and not that you've read that book, but that reptilian
brain and kind of because I was restricting it. It
thought I needed to eat, eat, eat, eat, but I
was having to retrain it right, And it makes perfect sense.
So when we restrict right, we go into that survival piece.
And then, I mean, I haven't read the books. I
(12:51):
don't know exactly what she's talking about. I could just
tell you there's a couple of things that are coming
to mind as you're sharing. The first thing is by
going to the pantry and to and talking to yourself,
you're bringing yourself back into the present moment, because my
guess is there was a big piece of dissociation. Every
(13:12):
time you were going to and from the pantry. Yes,
and you weren't. You weren't actually experiencing your hunger and
fullness cues. You were just experiencing this disregulated nervous system
that you wanted to disconnect from your body, like your
body was that survival pieces. Uh, you know, fight or
flight's not working. Okay, I'm going to go into this
(13:33):
totally dissociated state and just try and um suit then
soothe my system. In eating disorder treatment, I believe that
we have to get our brains and our bodies moving
in the same direction. Right Because you can know all
day what to do and what not to do, it
doesn't keep you out of behaviors. So calming and regulating
(13:54):
the nervous system is going to organically start shifting the behaviors.
And I think that's what she's probably talking about in
the buck. I'm actually now curious to go and read it.
I think that it helped me to look at it
from that point of view, and a lot of the
tools that I've gained from Lisa as well I used
together in my work towards healing, and as I'm in recovery,
(14:18):
but being able to realize that, oh, this is just
me trying to save myself, protect myself, Like, this is
what my body is doing to help me, even though
it's not necessarily what I need to ultimately be doing,
but you can look at it. I try not to
have shame around it because I did for so long.
(14:40):
But in a way, I'm like, oh, wow, I was
doing what I needed to do to survive in that
season of my life, and now I'm using that as
kind of a chapter in my life to help me
move forward in the right direction, take making the next
best decision for myself. And I just want to offer people,
(15:01):
um that hope that you can get to the other side.
But when you look at it as like your body
was trying in your brain and everything was trying to
protect you because you were in the survival modes, then
I guess it just for me, it helped take away
some of the shame because I was just doing the
best that I could right. And it explains the physiology
(15:22):
versus you know what's wrong with me, because it really
is physiology that you're talking about. It's survival through physiology,
and our survival physiology always wins it's way stronger than
any of our higher level function because think about it,
it's it's your body trying to survive. We just had
(15:42):
Dr Kristen f who I don't know if you're familiar
with her work and self compassion. I know that you
mentioned self compassion a lot in your Instagram post. There's
so much wisdom in your Instagram post. We're gonna link
that below. But just like Amy kind of just said,
like looking at her behavior and then and seeing it
through the lens of I'm doing the best that I
had in this moment kind of opens the door for
(16:03):
us to change the cognitive approach. And you have a
post that I love that just says things mindful people
do differently, and I saved it, and as Amy was
talking about her own thought process, it's very clear that
you know, Amy, you've moved through shame and then into
a place where you're able to look at your thoughts
(16:24):
a little bit differently and make a little bit of space.
So I mean the post that you wrote says things
mindful people do differently. They don't believe their thoughts and
they don't take them seriously. They don't try to avoid emotions,
they understand things come and go, they practice being curious,
they're fully present when listening without trying to control or judge,
and the list goes on. But for a lot of
(16:46):
our listeners that's been on Amy's Dirney, you know, it's
a recent ish journey. So to really see that, it
starts with recognizing, oh, this is why I do this.
It's okay that I do this, and now that I'm
here doing this, I can talk back to these thoughts
and we can kind of climb up the ladder of
understanding ourselves. And I think those little things are really
(17:08):
important to acknowledge, No, for sure, And I think you
know that it has to start with if we can
name it, we can work with it and awareness and
observation like what I work with my clients, Like I
can spend a really long time just helping a client
learn how to simply observe, because observation is what keeps
(17:29):
us present, and without presence we can't heal that awareness
and being able to just be with it and to
just notice it and not label it or or make
up a story around it takes away so much of
that charge that gets us into trouble because think about it,
the shame is what gets us into trouble. Right we're
(17:51):
trying to manage the discomfort around the shame. I mean,
we spend so much time trying to do that. So
the somatic approach is really the bottom up approach that
you called it, So dealing with the body and then
moving upwards into the cognitive portion. That's how I took that.
Is that correct? Great? So for our audience that's listening
and they want to know how to drop down, that
(18:13):
might feel impossible right now. You know, so many of
us are so in our heads, so struck with fear
in the reptilian brain, and what are some things, some
tools that maybe they can do today to soften and
allow their bodies to release these emotions safely. I know
that for some big teas it might be important to
(18:35):
caution that these things should be done with a practitioner around.
But you talk a lot about touch and dancing, and
I think I love those things, so few could just
speak to them. Yeah, So I think the first thing,
there's so many, especially with eating disorders, there's such a
disconnection from the body. So as I was before, I
thought of the things where we have to really start
(18:57):
is in that observation because we're so stuck in the
stories that we lose presents. Like I believe that when
we future trip, or when we go back and we
ruminate about the past, or we go into this problem
like why why why why why, that's just taking us
away from being present. So the first thing I believe
(19:18):
that needs to happen is the dialogue with yourself needs
to shift. So, for example, it would simply be something like,
I noticed that I keep ruminating about what happened yesterday.
I noticed that I keep, you know, thinking about X,
Y and Z. So that to me is step one
along the way I think from a nervous system reset.
(19:40):
There's so many great exercises that one can do, and
I can, you know, just give you a couple of
quick ones. There's what I called it's a self hug exercise,
where you're wrapping your arms around yourself and just feeling
the boundaries of your body, because it's so important for
us to know where our bodies start and where they end,
(20:05):
and it's very soothing to the nervous system just to
hold yourself and to just touch and to be able
to get connected with what your body feels like. And
that might be hard for someone who's really struggling with
disordered eating. But that's definitely worth a try. There's all
sorts of breathing exercises. One that I like in particular
(20:26):
is what we call the voo exercise, and it's breathing
in and exhaling with a voo sound, and it's like
the quickest way you can just do a nervous system reset. Awesome.
So those those who be a couple of you know,
easy takeaways for your audience. I just feel like we
might need a demonstration of the breathing voo. Can you
(20:47):
just demonstrate it for me? Real? Like I just did
an Instagram post and one of the exercises I did
it was it was the boo exercise. But what you're
gonna do is you're gonna find a comfortable seated position
in a quiet space if you can hand, and you're
just going to breathe in and you're gonna exchale going
(21:09):
and so as long as you can, and I recommend
you know, doing it four or five times and seeing
seeing if you notice the difference in your system. I
feel a system just from hearing you do that. I
think obviously there's so much science to it that I'm
not familiar with on hand, but the vibration of noises
like that allow the receiving end to even experience it.
(21:32):
And you know that's what home is about home. When
we do it ourselves and we get that vibration, it
really just changes the nervous system instantly, and it gives
you your power back in the times where you feel
so powerless again. Not as I always get it right
when those buttons are hit for me, you know, I
snap off in other ways, but in certain times instances
I find them just so incredibly healing and great reminders
(21:56):
of how powerfulful we can be at taking care of
ourselves in those hard times. No, for sure, it's it's
interesting because like the ALM sound, and it's all the
same principles. It's what you're doing, is you're I mean,
without getting to science, e, you're toning the vegas nerve,
and the more tone the vegas nerve has, the more
capacity we have to regulate the nervous system. It's it's
(22:19):
good stuff, awesome love that. If people want to see
that demonstration video, which thank you for doing that over
the podcast. For me, it was helpful for me to
hear it because I was in my head. I was
between like like once you do, and I was like, Okay,
I'm glad she's demonstrated, but yeah, Eileen's instagram is Eileen
Smith Healing, and again, like Lisa said, we'll be linking
(22:43):
that in the show notes. And Eileen is also the
author of Moving Beyond Trauma, The Roadmap to Healing from
your Past and Living with Ease and Vitality, So we'll
also be linking your book as well. And we just
appreciate you so much for are joining us. And I
want to share something I pulled from your instagram as well,
(23:04):
and it was a self reminder that you put up,
and it says when we learned to feel safe enough
to trust our inner voice, were then able to develop
a secure attachment with ourselves and others. That was something
that I definitely needed to read, so I just wanted
to say it out loud for others that might need
that reminder today as well
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Amy Brown
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