Sunny Strasburg | Healing From the Inside Out – Rewire Anxiety Through Body and Mind - Radical Responsibility Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have anxiety about if I'm going to get a
ride like an uber or something, I'll have a lot
of anxiety or I did, like if I was going
to miss my ride or if I was going to
be late. And I thought, this is irrational. And my
husband's an amazing IFS coach, and he worked with me
on that, and we went back to the origin and
I had this part that was trapped in the past.
When I was six years old, my mom got stuck

(00:21):
at work and forgot to pick me up from school
and I couldn't figure out how to walk home. She
eventually came and it was you know, it was really
like twenty minutes, but to a six year old, it
just felt like an eternity and I was freaking out.
And it was so interesting because when he helped me
unburden that part, that anxiety was released around that and
I noticed the next time I ordered an uber, I
was much more calm about it.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. I'm doctor Fleet Mala,
and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of
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(01:04):
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Speaker 3 (01:47):
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My name is doctor Fleet Mall your co host for
the session, and I'm really thrilled to be here today
with friend and colleague Sonny Strasbourg.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Welcome, Sonny, Hi Fleet, So great to see you today.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Thank you, great to see you.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
We get to do this periodically and have these really
incredible conversations, so I'm really looking forward. So Alans hasn't
ask somebody to encapsulate their life story in a minute
or two, which but we got a lot to cover today,
But I would like to stop with a little bit
of your origin story of how you got into being
a therapist, how you got oriented in particular around IFS

(03:08):
and archetypal psychology and EMDR and then also psychaic therapy.
I know it could be a long story, but maybe
there's something about the highlights. So what took you in
that direction? Wow?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Okay, yes, it's so funny. I think in life, when
you look back and it thinks, it seems like your
life had all these dispirit unrelated pieces when they were happening,
but then you look back and everything was just meant
to be. I was originally an artist and really interested
in art, and worked in video games as an animator,
and that just felt empty to me. So I decided
to go back to school for therapy, and I was

(03:40):
really interested in Carl Jung because archetypal psychology was very
akin to my art. I went back to school and
I was fascinated that I really loved being a therapist
in my internships. I was so surprised by that. I
was really actually going to use it to do art
therapy and improve my artistic skills. But I really wanted
something with meaning. I found a lot of meaning working

(04:01):
with people. And I'll curate the story more to how
I got into working with trauma and fear and anxiety,
you know, for this confidence. My first internship, it was
at a drug and alcohol rehab center and we had
a lot of veterans. You know, we know now this
is you know, two decades ago. We know now that
you know addiction is often caused by trauma, but at
the time that wasn't really thought of that way. And

(04:24):
I was leading, I was the group therapist. I was
leading a group therapy session and there was this big
guy in the group therapy. There was this big vet,
really muscular and huge guy, tough guy, and there was
a rainstorm outside and there was this huge clap of
lightning outside, thunder, and he ran from his chair across
the room and jumped behind the couch and was cowering

(04:44):
behind the couch, trembling. I had never seen anything like that.
I didn't have a lot of experience, and I went
over and tried to talk him through it and say
you're fine. I'm trying to have logic with the guy,
and he was just in a freeze response. I didn't
know what that meant. I'd been taught archetypal psychology and
kind of cognitive behavioral psychology, and I realized at that moment,

(05:04):
talking about trauma does not heal trauma. Talking about anxiety
does not help. Telling someone to calm down never helps.
So that set me on this mission to figure out
how to work with this. I knew something was happening
in the body, so I started studying with Besil vander Kok,
got interested in EMDR, got certified in EMDR. That led
me to get interested in internal family systems and certified

(05:26):
in internal family systems. And all the time I was
interested in psychedelics because I was doing my own work
in Latin America and saw this huge transformation in my
own trauma story and anxiety story. Right, So really a
reorientation for me around understanding where the anxiety was coming from,
soothing my nervous system. So the minute I could combine
these things EMDR ifs and psychedelics therapy, I did. I

(05:50):
got on the train pretty early trained in psychedelics and
ketymine and then started training other clinicians and ketemine assisted psychotherapy,
and now I use that technique to work with my clients.
There's a little bit of my origin story, but that
moment with that veteran was so pivotal in my career
about wanting to understand, Wow, this is beyond talking about right.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, and it's just took you in a somatic direction.
It's very best of aanaical is seminal book.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
The body keeps the.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Score and EMDR and other somatic practices. So I want
to talk about psychic therapy as a treatment for psychic
assistant therapy as a treatment for peering anxiety or anxiety specifically.
But I'm also wondering just the somatic piece. So when
we talk about obviously this summer, the title of the
summit rewiring peer and Anxiety, So we're coming at it
from a neuroscience neurophysiological perspective, but we'll be coming at

(06:44):
through various perspectives in this conference. And you can think
about this in neurophysiological terms, you can think of it
neurochemical terms, you can think of it in purely psychological terms.
You know my understanding of IFS and the parts work,
it's kind of a psychological model. EMDR is very specifically
somatic things like EFT tapping or very specifically to sematic
peerle in a bessel anicles. Trauma because very specifically somatic.

(07:07):
So I wondered how you integrate the parts work with
a somatic focus. Maybe that will go there first, and
then then I want to talk to you more about
psychoic therapy and anxiety.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, I appreciate that trauma is held in the body
in different areas of the body. So when we start
working with internal family systems, And I don't know if
I should give an overview a little bit about how
internal family system.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, yeah, if you played just a very brief kind
of yeah, to understand the parts, and people.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Aren't familiar with parts work and so forth.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah. So the idea is that behind everything we have
this self energy with a capital S, calm, confident, not
really attached anything, just as benevolent well being, right, compassionate
well being. And layered on top of this are parts
break down into subcategories. We have parts that are managers
and they kind of keep the show on the road.

(07:58):
They're very proactive. They want us to normal to the
outside world. They want to keep things under control. We
have extreme parts that are called firefighters, and those protectors
are parts that just want to get us away from pain.
So they do things like get us addicted to substances
in extreme ways. It could even become suicidal. They just

(08:18):
want to escape from pain. Okay. Behind the protector system
are what's called exiles. And exiles are young parts of
the system that hold hurt and hold trauma, and the
protectors protect the exiles. They keep them kind of tucked
away so we don't have to think about them and
feel them. But the exiles are constantly trying to let
themselves be known, and so they percolate up, often at

(08:41):
inopportune times, trying to get us to pay attention to
the pain. And exiles can be the parts that hold anxiety.
Sometimes the managers can be the parts the whold anxiety.
And so when we start and open the process of IFS,
we start with the somatic experience. Where do you notice
that in or around your body? And it's fascinating because
each of these parts hold a somatic expression of physiological

(09:05):
expression in the body. So interestingly, protectors are usually up
in the upper body or in the head, and eggsalve
they're usually in the lower body. This is really interesting
kind of how they're oriented and held inside the system.
And people will feel a physiological shift as we unburden
those parts and allow them to be more connected to

(09:25):
that self energy. Right, So the whole IFS process is
really formed around the somatic experience and checking in with
the body again and again to make sure that the
somatic experience is tracking with the unburdening of the parts.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, and I've witnessed both stixports and you doing iopacy
and retreats and so forth with clients and with participants,
and yeah, there's often that checking where are you're feeling
that in the body and so forth, and that does
help people really connect with the part. And I've been
involved some other parts work, like voice dialogue and so forth,
And there's no question that when people are connecting with
a voice or part and something is coming to and

(10:02):
it's very clear, it's very unique. It's almost like they're
channeling something. It's very clear people are connecting with something.
And I know Dick talks about that we have all
these parts, not through some kind of fragmentation that happened,
but we're actually born with some constellation of parts already.
Now I'm open to that possibility. I have a little
hard time wrapping my mind around it and relating it
to other systems of understanding, you know, how we got

(10:24):
here and what we arrived with and all that. But
it's certainly a possibility. But so from what you're saying, then,
bringing this back to a neurophysiological perspective, would you say
that the parts we have would have correlated neural networks,
you know, would be represented in our brain and neural
architecture in the same way habits are.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
For example, it's a great idea, and yes I do so.
I'm thinking about a study that PEGANI did with EMDR,
but this applies to ifs as well. They did a
functional MRI scan of someone's brain who has trauma. When
you are in a trauma response, or if you're in
active you're being actively traumatized, the brain lights up exactly

(11:04):
is in the same way. So if you have unmetabolized
trauma and you think about the traumatic event or a
trigger happens, your brain lights up just like it's happening
right now. The frontal lobes are shut off, so that's
your higher thinking, Broca's area, the language center shut off.
The limbic system is activated. This is a fight flight
or freeze, and the right amygdala is activated. That's your

(11:25):
smoke detector. There's something wrong, there's something wrong. There's something wrong.
They did eight sessions of EMDR and then rescanned the
brain and had the person recall the same traumatic memory,
and the brain lit up just like it would normally
light up with a normal memory. Frontal lobes are online,
Broca's area is online, right amygdala quiet, limbic system quiet.

(11:46):
So if you think about that through the IFS lens,
when those parts are activated and burdened, the brain's going
to light up like that front lobe shut off. Broca's
area is shut off, right a migduala on. You unburden
that part, similar to the EMDR process, you unburned that
part scan the brain.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
Again.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
I haven't seen a study on this, but I would
assume because the people behave the same way. They come
out of it and they say, you know what, it's
okay now. That was then, that happened a long time ago,
and this is now, and it's not happening right now.
The definition of trauma is that we think things are
happening right now. When we're anxious, we're scanning our environment
for something horrible happening right now that may not is

(12:25):
probably not happening right now. So your brain is lighting
up in a specific way. That part has its own
neuronal network that's lighting you up in a certain way.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (12:34):
It does some fascinating and you know you kind of
think of the parts. We have memories, we have belief systems.
All of these are represented and impactful in our neural architecture.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
And I think it's helpful.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
You know, sometimes we want to have a very so
much simplistic mechanical view of the brain, like a circuit board,
and that there's this part, maybe this part of the brain,
I mean, but it's more like the brain is this holistic, interdependent,
energetic orchestra going on, and it does have circuits, and
you can see the mechanical nature of it. And then
when different things happen, whether it's a trauma that gets

(13:10):
triggered or a memory or perhaps one of these burdened parts,
then that influences the whole rest of the brain the
way it shows up. So you almost have a different
brain online, right, And it was kind of the way
you were describing what would light up on a punctional MRI.
It's really interesting to think about that. And parts certainly
seem to be very much related to memory, or they
hold memories, or they're related to memories. And I know

(13:31):
in doctor Choper's book quant Them Body, he associates most
of our suffering with memory. It's bostically memory is the
foundation of our suffering. It's our identification with memories that
creates most of our suffering, right, So just really interesting
to think about.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
All of that.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
So, how does psycholic therapy, your experience with kedemine assist
in psychotherapy and integrating that with things like EMDR, the
archetypal view or internal family systems? What are the mechanisms
of healing there? Then you talked about an ifs unburdening
these wounded parts, of these exiled parts and so forth,

(14:07):
which can allows and allows a reintegration or an inner
harmony of so forth that maybe then gives us more
access a self of the capitalist. So how does the
psychiatic experience facilitate that?

Speaker 1 (14:18):
That's great. Yeah, when I was really early and getting
trained in ketemine therapy, I think it was like twenty eighteen,
I was thinking about I was super interested because they
were talking about how ketemine was impacting people, and I thought,
that's exactly like how EMDR worked. So I looked online
and found everything I could possibly find about research studies
on what parts of the brain were lit up and
not let up during ketamine and EMDR, and it was

(14:40):
crazy fleet they totally overlap. So then I thought, I
bet if you combine these things together, you could really
potentiate them, And so I started using EMDR really early
on with ketymine therapy for my clients, and I was
seeing incredible results, like twenty EMDR sessions in one hour
with the ketamine right, same thing with IFS combining IFS.

(15:04):
I was calling it working in the Golden hour. When
people were coming out of kedemene experiences, their brains were
fluid and plastic. I could sense that they were really open,
and I knew, Okay, if I potentiate what's happening right
now with really anchoring, with these trauma informed methods, we're
going to get some good results. And I was seeing
incredible results in my practice later, much later, just recently,

(15:27):
I read this research study by a phenomenal researcher, Gule Dolan,
who discovered that when we're infants, we have a very
plastic a lot of plasticity in our brains and we
can learn things really quickly. We have a lot of flexibility,
and new neurons can be built together in wire together, right.
And she discovered that one of the only things that

(15:49):
opens critical learning windows again are psychedelics. The way that
it down regulates that default mode network and allows the
brain plasticity and the hours and days after there's so
much potential that's called critical learning window we can go
in and make change. So this thing that I was
calling the Golden hour is actually these critical learning windows

(16:10):
that open up. So if you with a practitioner, I
mean this underscores how important it is to be with
someone that knows how to properly utilize this very magical
time help you rewire your brain in the right way
so that you can have that enduring positive impact. So
I think I really see a lot of synergy working

(16:30):
with psychedelics with really good methods like IFS and EMDR
and archetypal psychology, the hero heroines journey, right, these methods
are really helpful. Somatic interventions are helpful to I.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
Want to continue talking about.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
You know, these methodologies and tools for healing, both that
one that are employed by clinicians and a client could
benefit PUMP, but also maybe some tools people can apply
on their own. But first of all, maybe we could
back up from a minute and what's your understanding of
anxiety itself. We know anxiety can be trauma related and
so forth, but when we talk about anxiety, what are
we actually talking about? And it seems like anxiety can

(17:06):
be experienced mentally, emotionally, It can certainly be experienced physically, somatically.
Sometimes we can even get into almost kind of existential anxiety.
So when you think about anxiety and how you have
clients that are experiencing anxiety and talking about their anxiety
and then you're in the process of healing, what are
we really talking about when we say anxiety.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
I think it's similar to what we're talking about with trauma,
where there's this you know, if you look at it
through the IFS lens, there's a part that's carrying this physiological, psychological,
emotional burden that something terrible is impending, is going to happen,
even if the situation that we're in right now isn't
the case. So there's some kind of maladaptive learned behavior

(17:49):
that's scanning the environment for danger. That right, amigdala is
just firing constantly, and there are many ways that you
can work on that. You know, when you look at
you know, psychotropic medication, what those do is just force
shut off that right a middila, Right, So you're still
actually you're still having all the cortisol, Like your cortisol
levels aren't exchanged when you're on SSRIs. You're still having

(18:10):
that signal, but your body's ability to respond to that
signal is blunted, right, So you know, there's ways like that,
or you can approach it in ways like IFS, where
you're going back to the origin of where that anxiety
began and working with that part. I'll give you a
small example. I have anxiety about if I'm going to

(18:31):
get a ride, like an uber or something. I'll have
a lot of anxiety, or I did would have a
lot of anxiety coming up about like if I was
going to miss my ride, or if I was going
to be late, or I thought, this is irrational. I
have an irrational fear about that. And my husband's an
amazing IFS coach, and he worked with me on that
and we went back to the origin. And I had
this part that was trapped in the past. When I

(18:53):
was six years old, my mom got stuck at work
and forgot to pick me up from school and I
was outside waiting for her to pick up from school
and she didn't come, and I couldn't figure out how
to walk home. I was so scared and couldn't figure
out how to walk home if she eventually came, and
it was you know, it was really like twenty minutes,
but to a six year old, it just felt like
an eternity and I was freaking out. And it was
so interesting because when he helped me unburden that part,

(19:16):
that anxiety was released around that and I noticed the
next time I ordered an uber I was much more
calm about it. And so the understanding and IFS is
you can go in and unburden those parts that are
carrying those little little T traumas right up to big
T traumas that caused the anxiety in the first place.
Right now, of course, I think that we can just

(19:37):
physiologically be born into a physiological system that's more prone
to anxiety or more prone to depression. I think that
we can just have that hardware that's kind of wired
for that, but we can really work on those parts
that can amplify that, you know, predisposition.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, fascinating, And you know, like that a memory, a
six year old's memory, a specific incident memory, could be
still impacting someone many decades later as a kind of
anxiety that comes up that they experienced physically, emotionally, mentally
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
It's real.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
And I think what with people suffering from anxiety, often
people tell them, you know, well, it's just all in
your mind, which may be true on some level or whatever,
but they're having a real experience. There's a no, I'm
feeling it my body. This is really you don't understand
this is actually happening in my body.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Right, I'm feeling this. Don't tell me I'm not feeling this.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Right, that's the worst thing to tell someone. Calm down,
you're fired. That is, though not helpful.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
I think, you know, we do know something about the
neurophysiology of memory, but there's still a lot of mystery.
There's a lot of we don't really totally understand how
memory works neurophysiologically. So the idea of how this memory
gets carried forward across three, four or five decades to
show up as you know, specific anxiety around in your

(20:56):
case waiting for an uger. Right, it's a little mysterious
and maybe gets into you know, into the quantum level
and outside of space and time considerations, where it whears
time collapses.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Right, clee.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Let's talk just for a second about how mind blowing
it is to work with ifs, because when I first
learned it, I thought, oh, it's like, we'll just do
this little kind of fantasy with our clients and have
them like, imagine, this has nothing to do with imagination.
It's so wild. You'll go back, people go back and
contact these parts and the part will say, no, no, that's

(21:28):
not even right. Let me tell you what actually happened.
They're looping. It feels like they're looping in some dimension
of reality, stuck back in time, holding these memories. And
all the time my clients are shocked by what they
find back there, and it makes total sense to them.
And then the real test is that they feel that

(21:49):
just once they're unburdened, they don't go back to that,
they don't have those feelings anymore. It's so remarkable to me.
I'm surprised all the time about what we find in
the past that is just waiting for some and to
come back and help them. And I have no idea
how it works. In the memory networks and psychedelics, it's
even more profound because these memories can come back in
this total visceral, very detailed way that when they're remembered,

(22:15):
it's with crystal clarity, and it's more real than real,
and it's just like where was that? Like that neuron's
just living in the back of my mind and somehow,
you know, that gets lit up and I can remember
all the saliency of this memory, you know, comes right
back to me. It's really interesting.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, we don't even understand really how we have this
complete sensory experience that we have in the moment of
any given thing, much less you know, recall. Right, So,
and you know, it does really beg the question if
there isn't some quantum level of brain activity that's really
beyond space and time that we're dealing with here kind.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Of points too. I think with anxiety that some of
us who are really sensitive to our environment are picking
up on energy that's outside of them. You don't mean
that in a woo way at all. I mean, like
right now in the political system, there's a lot of
tension and anxiety just everywhere in all the microfacial expressions
and interactions with all the people, and some of us

(23:09):
are highly sensitive the world around us. It's like that
GDA Christian Murdy quote, it's no measure of sanity to
be sane in an insane culture. I think we really
need to listen to when we have this anxiety, to
listen to that and pay attention because maybe it's not
about making that go away. Maybe it's telling us that
we need to make some changes in the world right

(23:30):
outside of ourselves, to help us live in more conducive
to how humans are meant to.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Live right Probably even the least sensitive. And I don't
mean to say that in a prijority word, but maybe
some of us are very resilient, or maybe some of
us are pretty armored up, or we have fixed skin, whatever,
but we don't think of ourselves certainly not hyper sensitive
or even that science of people. But everybody I'm sure
is experiencing a lot of uncertainty right now. I mean,
just uncertainty about all the levers that are being pulled
and what's happening with the economy's promises of it's going

(23:57):
to get better, but it's getting worse, and you know,
and what's you know, dismantling the pederal government. Whatever I
thinks about any of this politically, it's not the point
to just change the background of that is all this
change with AI and how fast things are moving. I mean,
you would almost have to be on some kind of
relaxant or some kind of suppressive drugs and not be

(24:17):
experiencing some level of anxiety uncertainty today.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Absolutely, and what's happening Addiction rates are exploding through the roof.
Why Because we live in a culture right now that's upsetting,
that's anxiety producing, that's trauma producing, that's socially isolating. We
don't live in a very humane time right now, and
I think our bodies are signaling us to pay attention
to that and change something right.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
So there's a lot of self medication going on of
all kinds. So I want to explore that for a moment,
the connection between anxiety that is related to parts or
related to past traumas and so forth, and then kind
of environmental anxiety that may have to do with what
it's actually going on in the world and how those interact,
whether what's going on in the world could be triggering

(25:00):
underlying anxieties that we have from past experiences in past trauma.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
I love to talk about this. I think about three
things within the self, between you and me, and then
beyond our experience and our collective. The way that I
understand working with IFS, the clearest goal is to create incredible,
secure attachment to ourself and all of our parts internally,

(25:25):
for our internal ecosystem to feel completely safe within itself.
That's a really important first step. The minute we start
to do that, we start to project that outward. That
self energy then starts emanating outward and parts attract parts,
and self energy attracts self energy, so then we start
engaging in that. So within secure ecosystem between two people,

(25:47):
we start to have this coherence with one another, this coregulation,
this self energy with each other. So we start creating
secure attachment, and then we can take that and then
create communities of coherence. My friend Date Hagen talks about
islands of coherence. I love that term. What does it
look like to create a community that's an island of
coherence for you where you feel safe in your community.

(26:08):
This is really important because then that's reflected around you
that you're in a safe environment, right And I think
that's truly the task that we all have right now,
to create secure attachment within self, between each other and
then the greater community.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
I'd like to talk about more tools for doing that,
but first I like to talk about maybe the opposite
of that per moment where we find ourselves getting addicted
to the news, getting addicted to doom.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Scrolling on our phones.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
That there's some you know, addiction to the peer and
anxiety that's in the environment, and that probably has to
do with, you know, what's going on historically for us
in terms of our inner life, that we get caught
in those patterns and actually get addicted to it. We
know it's making us anxious, but we can't We don't
seem to be able to do anything about it.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
And we may be doing both.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
We may be like doom scrolling and staying focused on
that stuff, and then we may at the same time
be self medicating with substances or foods and so forth
to and so we're jacking our nervous system all over
the place, right, And so I think there's a lot
of that going on. I'm curious about your thoughts about
it and what are the mechanisms of how if someone's finding
themselves caught in that, what is the attraction? I mean,

(27:16):
if I know that what's going on the world is
making me anxious, why the heck would I want to
pay more attention to it?

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Well, then we're wired. Our bodies and psychees are not
evolved to deal with the level of dopamine stimulation that
we're getting with the glowing rectangles that we stare at
all day. We're not wired for that. And so this
hypervigilant part, if we think about parts, it's like a
firefighter that's hypervigilant, that's watching for danger. It thinks it's
on the savannah watching for saber tooth tigers. That's what

(27:45):
we're evolved for. And then now there's no way for
us to pay attention to all the polyvalent forces of
danger around us. We get hooked into that. A lot
of the work that I'm doing with my clients now
is around knowing truth and how to calm oneself within
that internal ecosystem and then having that be impermeable to

(28:08):
the outside world that can cause us distress. So we're
checking in with ourselves if we're okay within ourselves to
see then if we have enough energy then to go
out and pay attention to news or engaging in these things. Right.
It's a delicate balance because you don't want to be
in an ostrich with your head in the sand and
disconnect and do spiritual bypassing. Right, So we want to
be engaged in community, but we're of no help to

(28:31):
ourselves or our community if we cannot regulate our own
internal ecosystem first, Right, We're unable to come to it
with any kind of self energy of calm and confidence
and compassion if we're completely dysregulated inside. So that's really
step one.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
And we know that whatever states of mind we're in,
and here we're talking about, you know, and fear and
anxiety and that kind of disregulated mind state and emotional
state produces a particular neurochemical mix in the brain of
brands neurotransmitters and hormones and stuff, and whatever neurochemical mix
is in the brain. More commonly or over a period

(29:09):
of time, we tend to get addicted to that like
anything else, Right, So our brain reorganizes itself to almost
need that, right, so it starts to feel like our
normal and like if that wasn't going on, we'll go
seek it out, which seems crazy, but that's just the
way addiction works, and just the way the neurochemical landscape
of the brain works.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
Absolutely. You know, we talk about it like limbic resonance,
where you have a certain it's like a thermostat a
certain set point for a certain amount of dopamine. Right,
And when I was working at the drugon now called
rehab center. The clients would say like they couldn't believe
that I had never been in a street fistfight, and
it's just like, how is that possible? And that your
life must be so boring. But you know, I'm coming

(29:49):
through from a more serotonergic receptors and they're looking for
dopamine because that's the environment that they are raised in
and the environment that they're used to is high dopamine,
you know, chaos level, right, And so it's really about
ty trating that thermostat down from super high dopamine receptors
that are just begging to be filled with some kind

(30:11):
of stimulation and letting those receptors reset. I think this
is why, I mean, I know, this is why psychedelics
are really powerful, because some psychedelics can really reset that
receptor system instantly. I mean, ibi gain ibogain is an
incredible medicine to just completely reset the opioid receptors in
the brain instantly. There's instant resetting of addiction to opioids

(30:32):
with ibileen. Ibagain has dangers, you have to research whose
good practitioners all of that, but it's amazing for that,
you know.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Application Yeah, my wife first Sasmando was a good friend
of both of us has been working as a console
for years in an Apple Gain clinic in Mexico after
being a drug and alcohol counsul in the US for many,
many decades, and he's seen really amazing results that it
basically is a reset button. It just creates a neurophysiological,
neurochemical reach that allows people to have a window of

(31:02):
being free of the craving, being free of that, and
they still got to step into it and create a
new neural architecture. It's going to support a different life,
but they at least have a window of change whether
they're not completely driven by the craving. And to think
about it, you know, it is like most of us
don't think about ourselves as addicts, right if we're not
caught up in something like a drug addiction. But really,
our brain is craving certain things. Whatever our neural architecture

(31:24):
set up is, it's craving certain things. We would hope
it's craving the neural architecture of joy and equanimity and
peace and relationship right.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Now, Yeah, well, these are habits that we have to
work with that, you know, changing our system and our orientation.
And I mean I think, I know that anxiety can
be addictive as well, right, it constant hyper arousal set.
So I think, yeah, not that it's a choice at all.
I mean, I think we're in it. You don't realize
we're in it, right, And so it is creating new

(31:52):
neuronal pathways to help shift that behavior.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
So thinking of these as patterns and stuck patterns like, so,
I think that's one way to understand trauma. That's some
kind of stuck pattern in our nervous system based on
experiences we've had, or single incidents or childhoods full of neglect,
or even ancestral and epigenetic stuff. But there's some kind
of stuck patterns of dysregulation, right, And then anxiety could

(32:16):
be thought of as a manifestation of patterns, stuck patterns
of dysregulation.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
And of course, because of all the unhealed trauma in
the world and all of.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Us that now we see society full of stuck patterns
of dysregulation, right, and so we can find ourselves in
a non virtuous cycle.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
Right, And many of an audience or.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Are probably you know, dealing with different kinds of anxiety
right now, may find themselves in kind of stuck in
a non virtual cycle where they're doing things that exacerbate
the anxiety. They're self medicating to ameliorate it. But those
are you know, maladaptive coping strategies that actually in the
end create you know, less of the neurochemicals we need
to feel good probably and also create other problems of

(32:58):
weight issues or drug reactions or you know, we're dealing
with sugar and capping. Whatever it is we're self medicating
with is making it worse. And it's just we're in
this and it can feel really difficult to get out
of that cycle. So what are some steps people can
take to create a bit of a pattern and interrupt
and begin building the momentum for a virtuous cycle that's

(33:19):
going to take them into reshaping their neural architecture towards
balance and harmony and so forth.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
It's great because this is where the rubber hits the road, right,
how can we really maintaine? So I'll start by saying
how important it is for people to create a physiological
state of wellbeing as best we can, so paying attention
to our hormones, you know, consulting with a natural path
about proper supplements to take, how to eat well. All
of that is so important, and not to discount that

(33:48):
getting proper sleep, also having daily practices of meditation or
yoga or exercise, right, all of that, I would say,
on top of all that, the most beneficial tool that
I can teach you, and I teach this to all
of my clients, is being able to unblend with a
blended part, like a blended anxiety part. And I use

(34:09):
this technique on myself too. So the first step is
just to recognize that you are not your trauma. You
are not your anxiety. Right, we don't even say you
say my trauma, my anxiety. You don't say I trauma,
I'm anxiety. We know that it's a part of us.
So the first thing is just to recognize that when
you're flooded with anxiety, recognize, okay, this is a part

(34:31):
of me. The minute you can start recognizing that, you're
creating a conscious awareness that's separating a little bit away
from it, so you're not at this is huge. So
what you want to do is really leverage that distance
between you and the anxiety so you can observe it
as a part. This does sixty percent of the work
for you. So the more, you can get curious about

(34:51):
I wonder what this anxiety is, and you start to
kind of talk to it in your mind. You start
to put more of your conscious awareness onto talking to
the part. So then you're really getting into self energy,
and the key to that is curiosity and compassion. So
the first step is curiosity. I wonder what this anxiety
is about. I wonder what's happening in my body? Where
is this occurring in my body? What is this about?

(35:13):
What does this part need from me? Curiosity and then compassion, Oh,
I'm so sorry that you're suffering like that. I'm so
sorry that you feel so overwhelmed right now, and you
start to have compassion for your anxiety. Once you do that,
you'll start to notice the shift where the anxiety isn't
so blended with you and you're in it, you're able
to observe it. It's really remarkable. It sounds so simple,

(35:36):
and it's harder to do than to talk about, so
it takes some practice, but starting to practice that will
really help you lower anxiety. I'll do this sometimes with
myself when I am insomnium, because in the night I'll
wake up and I'll think about all this stuff I
have to do. I'm a super busy person, so at
night thinking I've got to call fleet back. He sent
me that email. I guys send him that email. Well,

(35:58):
and I'll say, oh, sweetie, you work so hard all
the time. I understand that you were trying to solve
these problems right now, and I appreciate that you work
so hard. But it's okay for you to rest right now.
I've got you having compassion for that. It's incredible. It
works every time for me where I'll be able to
fall asleep in a few minutes if I can get
into that space. I think that's a powerful tool.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Truly, and I think you pointed us in two key
directions there. One is we have to get some foothold
and well being somehow. We have some way, whether you
know in its diet and exercise or taking a walk
or meditation, but we know how we can get to
a relatively good place, a feeling of outkayness and safety.
However it is relationship with our pet. We get anchored

(36:39):
in that, and then we can start to build from there.
Because I think a lot of people find themselves with it.
They don't have any of that in their life. They're
just coping with this constant state of dysregulation. And I've
certainly seen that in the prison work we do, and
I've seen it working with the people that work into prisons.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Right, that's their whole world.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
They don't have a foothold on that kind of well
being anywhere. So I think we have to create that
somehow anyway to find that sense of okay. And then
I really liked what you talked about, you know, the
parts work being one form of it, but where you
developed that witnessing capacity, and you know that can be
a big part of meditation training as well, developing that
ability to step back a little bit from our experience

(37:14):
because that parts that's observing the anxiety or maybe even
at a deeper level, examining some of the parts that
are involved in ifs. That part is basically what you
are talking about. As a self with a capitalist. That's
the beginning to cultivate that distance. And from that place
we can be curious, we can be you know, we
have all these other qualities that can arise.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yes, it's powerful, it's great work. And you know in
that daily practice that you said is so important even
if you don't have anything else even if you're in
a prison cell, what you always have is your breath.
You know, as long as we are alive, we have
our breath, and that is a great starting point. If
you have nothing else, you can start with your breath.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
You know we spoke about eyeb again before. We're just
taking one really deep breath with awareness is like pressing
the reset button on a nervous system. It's amazingly powerful. Well,
this has been incredibly helpful, Sonny, and I think you've
steered us in a lot of good directions here.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Well, thank you very much for this. And where can
people find out more about your work?

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Sonny Strasburg dot com is a great place to start.
I'm on all the socials as Sonny Strasburg LMFT. You
can find me there too.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
And with your online resources, do you offer any kind
of guided practices or guided meditations around the parts work
or this kind of thing?

Speaker 1 (38:24):
I think that's a great idea that I need to
add in. Are some recordings on the website for that,
because it is so helpful, and I do meditations all
the time.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
So yeah, even if you were describing the process there,
I almost felt like you were describing it, but you
were almost guiding us as you were, to develop that
distance right and then be curious and so forth.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
So that's a great idea. I'll add it on my
list to think about morning.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Okay, Well, thank you so much, Sonny Sasburg, always illuminating.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Thank you, thank you Fleet very well.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember,
real change happens when we commit to our growth, face
our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If
you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe
and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment.
Stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to you.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
Take care

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Sunny Strasburg | Healing From the Inside Out – Rewire Anxiety Through Body and Mind

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Sunny Strasburg | Healing From the Inside Out – Rewire Anxiety Through Body and Mind