The Unintended Health Consequences of “Keeping Safe” with Micaela Giles

Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Because trauma is such a loaded wordthat some people don't even identify as having
trauma. It's also it implies neglector abuse or intentionality that just isn't there.
And I'm really naming that there's acultural deviation away from what our primitive
biology needs to develop a hardwired senseof safety and an expectation that our needs

(00:25):
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(00:48):
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(01:14):
up now at Understanding autoimmune dot com. Now back to your host Sharon Saylor.
Welcome everyone to the Autoimmune Hour.I'm Sharon Saylor from Sharonsailor dot com
and as always, it's my honorand pleasure to be with you here on
another brand new episode of The AutoimmuneHour, and you can find all the
other Gosh, we're approaching five hundred. I think are around four hundred and

(01:37):
eighty episodes now over at Understanding Autoimmunedot com, including tonight's return guest.
We have a couple of shows withher and her business partner and with her
separately. And her name is MikaylaGiles, and I'm so happy to have
her returning because one of her specialtiesis something that I learned early on,

(01:57):
and then I met Mikayla and justwas profoundly enlightened till I say that my
understanding that our past traumas are pastslike our childhood. And I hate when
sometimes when people call them big tease, little seats. I don't do that
to me others, Mikayla agreeing tome, A trauma's a trauma, however
your brain encodes it, that's whathappens. So when I learned that early

(02:23):
on in my recovery from autoimune.It profoundly changed my health and the way
I thought about health. And sotonight we're going to talk to Mikayla.
Let me read her bio really quickfor you, because it's amazing. She
is the co founder of Origins CollaborativeCare, and she is the director of
the Mind Body Education and Healing.She considers her most invaluable learning to be

(02:45):
her own hard one experience, asshe charted a course of healing from severe
complex chronic illness and from the manyassociated losses personal, relationship, financial,
and beyond. Mikayla brings nearly fifteenyears of highly specialized education and training and
certifications such as energy healing, somaticmovement, complex and developmental trauma, poly

(03:07):
Bagel, THEIA. We're going toall of that. Understanding the autonomic nervous
system I learned from her, andthat was another AHA moment. A breakthrough
moment is when I understood how biga part the autonomic nervous system plays in
healing and recovery from autoimmune as wellas other things. But for me and
tonight we're just talking about autoimmune.She's also certified Safe and Sound Protocol Practitioner,

(03:30):
among many other things. So Iwould just want to get to it
now. And welcome back, MICHAELA. It's so lovely to see you.
It's wonderful to see you. Twothings for having me, Sharin Now,
I always love where we go inthese conversations, and you and I have
chatted over time since we first meta few years ago, and one of

(03:51):
the things that has always fascinated meis how we store our memories and how
those memories. Just a little sidenote, if you talk to my family
members, my siblings, we grewup in entirely different families. We did
not guys. Everything was the sameexcept our ages, of course. But

(04:12):
it's interesting how our brain encodes whathappens around us, and how something that
one person may find upsetting the otherperson may find traumatic and another person may
go, huh, what was that? No big deal? Right? Absolutely,
it's true a memory. I thinkpeople when they have a memory of

(04:34):
something, they assume it is prettyfixed, and they're accurate. The truth
is that every time we recall amemory. I think this is a fascinating
tidbit, but every time we recallthe memory, some bit of it is
lost and something is added to it. So really, genuinely, our memories
do shift and adapt over time.But of course what you're referring to as
well is that depending on so manydifferent variables, the way someone experiences something

(04:59):
originally is very different. And there'sstudies about orchids and dandelions in terms of
our sensitivity and resilience. I don'tknow if you're familiar with that at all.
Sharon does that that's an interesting visualbecause I have both, and one
is a weed in my yard andthe other has a prime spot in my
kitchen. Sure, it really hasto do with our constitution and how we

(05:20):
respond and react to things in ourenvironment. And some people are just genetically
born very sensitive. More like theorchid, there's just the right amount of
water. People have all sorts ofstrategies, like an ice cube once a
blank amount of time tending to thisorchid can sometimes be precurious and it's very
sensitive, whereas a dandylion will growand grow and grow resiliently no matter what.

(05:40):
So that's just if people want togoogle that. It's just a way
of reflecting that we are some peopleare genetically more sensitive than others too different
environmental stimuli. And not to beatmyself up if I am the organ dandilion
or a hybrid of the two.That's right, No, not at all,
not at all. I love metaphor. I find them so helpful in

(06:01):
relating to our world. Yeah,something I would love to talk about,
Sharon at some point is one thingI want to dispel the notion of big
tea and little tea altogether, becauseyeah, it's really got to go.
And I hear that, because it'snot about me from the outside putting any
sort of label on what your experiencewas. Yeah, and more importantly,

(06:25):
these relational breaches that happen to us, especially pre verbally, before we have
any recollection or any ability to havea conscious memory at all, those are
those have really the most significant impacton each and every one of us in
our modern culture. I'd love anopportunity to talk more about that, because
that is really under poorly understood,and it is something that we work with

(06:47):
at Origins Collaborative Care. But it'sreally it would be labeled typically as little
tea trauma, but what we're positingis that it's actually the most significant trauma
any of us have, but wedon't even we don't even like to label
it that way. If you're invitingme. I'd love to tell you a
little bit more about what we're talkingabout. Oh, absolutely, Because to

(07:09):
me, when I think about trauma, and like I said, I don't
categorize it, however you experience itis that's you experience it. But I
think the problem, especially from childhood, things that go on like not only
yes, we live through the moment, but as we grow up, we're
reliving the moment and then we're likerenegotiating with ourselves, Oh, that person
couldn't have been I don't know,I'm just going to throw out that mean

(07:30):
or whatever. And then we're alwaysretelling this story too. And so I
don't think it's a conscious thing whenwe add or delete from our story.
I just think it's how our memorieswork, because we're constantly at least my
understanding of our unconscious mind is Okay, we can relive it, but then
we're renegotiating if I'd only done this, or if they'd only done that,

(07:54):
or if the weather'd been different,whatever. We're renegotiating eating things that are
impossible to change. But the problemfor me comes in as we grow older
the context changes and being able toput it into some sort of I don't
like the word proper not that's theonly words that coming to mind. Guys,

(08:15):
some sort of context, yes thatallows us to deal with it or
cope with it or absolutely yeah.In fact, I'd love to call what
I'm about to share some context formaybe helping people to understand a little bit
more about what they're experiencing in theirown bodies and to normalize it, even
though it's not normal at all.It's not normal for us as humans.

(08:37):
But to really name that in ourmodern culture, our primitive mammalian biology is
really needing and expecting something extremely differentfrom what is available really from the womb
and immediately once we were born.So I want to talk about this cultural
deviation. There's a brilliant researcher nameddoctor Darsha Narravayez and she refers to the

(09:01):
evolved nest. The evolved nest,just to quickly describe what it is.
It's a set of conditions that everyspecies has evolved to come to expect for
health and resilience and to thrive.And for us as human mammals, we
evolved to need a set of conditionsfrom early on when our neural pathways are

(09:22):
just being formed, that no onein our modern culture gets. So I'd
love to talk a little bit aboutwhat that could have looked like in our
primitive time and how that would haveset us up for health, and how
different it is from the modern culture. Right now, at Origins Collaborative Care,
we're calling it the original insult.Insult is a medical term, and

(09:43):
this is a little bit different.We like to use original insult instead of
developmental trauma because trauma is such aloaded word that some people don't even identify
as having trauma. It's also itimplies neglect or abuse or intentionality that just
isn't there. And I'm really namingthat. There's a cultural deviation away from

(10:03):
what our primitive biology needs to developa hardwired sense of safety and an expectation
that our needs are going to bemet in relationship to other people. And
this cultural deviation and the consequences ofit cause disconnection in our bodies from ourselves,
our somatic experience, our sensory experienceof our own bodies in infancy,

(10:26):
and a chronic perception of threat,and that shifts our biology away from health
growth and restoration and toward a stateof protection, which is autonomic nervous system
work when we're in a chronic stateof protection and disconnection from our own bodies.
So that's the setup. We callit again, the original insult,
and that's universal to absolutely everyone.I'm thinking about mostly historical communities. We're

(10:52):
definitely more the idea of a relationship, and usually the household had more than
just mom and dad and sibling.It had other generations or cousins or whatever,
so there were more of a tribetype effect going on than and I
found I'm just going to relate itto recent history in my mind that I

(11:16):
understand a lot of it is frommy previous shows and all of that.
And yet during the pandemic, theisolation was really hard. Even though I
could rationalize all of that, primitivepart of me still had a hard time
with it. Yes, and youwere in good company there, because again,
intellectually understanding something or having context forit, it's valuable, it's important,

(11:39):
and yet safety is an experience that'sfelt in the body, and our
intellectual understanding of something does not necessarilychange our very reflexive, autonomic, automatic
experience in our bodies. And that'sthe system that we're really talking about,
that is hyper vigilant to threat,and especially in relationship, and when we're

(12:00):
talking about autonomic nervous system dysregulation,that's our focus is in relationship. The
pandemic presents a very perfect example thatis really illuminating for so many of us.
How fear, and it was realfear combined with isolation, separateness,
not being able to be physically touched, oftentimes separated from our loved ones,

(12:22):
and really distant, not having thesocial gatherings, being alone. All of
that has unintended consequences, even thoughon the one hand it was all designed
to keep us safe. The unintendedconsequences that we are seeing this is a
very significant problem for a lot offolks. It actually created suppression of the
immune system in many ways and overactiveI should say it's both suppression in certain

(12:46):
aspects, overreactive and hypervigil and proinflammatory in other ways. Consequences to digestion,
consequences to detoxification. People had significanteither sudden onset of illness issues during
the pandemic, especially that first year, and a severe worsening of already present

(13:07):
chronic illness issues. So it's likeunintended consequences of trying to keep us safe
are things that we are still workingto help people heal from. On the
other side, those unintended consequences thatare still present in their system. I
could see that from the mental andemotional level, and also from the physical
level, because I'm thinking of mychildren when they were young and in daycare

(13:31):
situations or childhood playing situations there whereit was exposed to a lot of dirt
and germs and everything else that whenyou're isolating, you're not exposed to.
And I feel like my immune systemregressed a little bit. When I first
went out into public again, Ifelt like my immune system had regressed a
little bit because it hadn't been exposedto all of those little things in little

(13:52):
bits instead of a big on slotat once. Stay on why we did
what we did. But still again, I'm starting to reevaluate my own response
to that time and what I mightdo differently in the future. I think
it's a good comparison because anytime thatthere's fear, it shifts our biology.
We can either be in a stateof health, growth and restoration. This

(14:13):
is the place where all healthy physiologicfunction happens, healthy cell turnover, normal
maintenance type activities in the body digestionand our cognition, our immune system,
our detectification system, all of thesehealthy cell turnover. All of those things
happen when we're in that state wherewe feel very safe and connected, and

(14:35):
when we're not, when we're ina stress response because we're responding, even
if it's being late to an appointment, all of those metabolic resources are we
allocated toward fighting our fleeing. Again, most of the situations we find ourselves
in that cause a stress response arenot things we need to punch our way
out of or run from. Andyet the primitive biology that we were talking

(14:58):
about earlier, from a very differenttime, that's still the system that we're
operating with. And so all ofthose metabolic resources are taken away from the
healthy physiologic function and toward defense.And part of that defense is autonomic nervous
system, Okay, adrenaline, cortisol, mobilizing blood flow and all of those

(15:18):
resources to the limbs so that wecan fight or fleet. Right, And
then there's our mass cell system,and those are directly linked. What instructs
the mass cells to degranulate is theautonomic nervous system. So I've talked about
this a little before. But Ican't resist saying. But an autonomic nervous
system that is perceiving threat instructs themass cells to degranulate before the message has

(15:41):
even gotten too. The adrenals torelease the cortisol and adrenaline from a stress
response, the mass cells have degranulated. It's the first system to know.
So they're working together, and themass cells don't know what the threat is.
It doesn't matter. They're the firstline of defense. The really primitive
thing. All these mediators, there'sa thousand or more, probably we think

(16:03):
several hundred of them are pro inflammatory. We don't know what the threat is.
I'm gonna throw everything I've got underthe kitchen sink at it and hope
that some of it works. Right. But when you get into chronic states
of protection, then you've got chronicmassyle activation and degranulation, and you're caught
in what is what we call athreat perpetuation cycle, where now there's excess

(16:26):
inflammation in the body and symptoms andconsequences, and it is draining us of
energy, which is a threat ofcourse to the autonomic nervous system too,
and so it really we can getcaught in a vicious cycle that's very hard
to step out of. And again, these are two systems in our body
that are charged with keeping us safe, but they become overwhelmed with so many

(16:48):
different things to keep us safe fromthat they are now hypervigilant and overreacting in
a way that instead of keeping ussafe the unintended consequences of keeping us safe,
they're actually part of the problem that'smaking sick. And that's really where
we need to be focusing our attentionand energy and how do we work to
interrupt that threat perpetuation cycle so thatwe can stop the inflammation and create a

(17:10):
little more safety in our system.And I'm thinking about how fast that happens
too, because sometimes even when Iget into a situation and I might feel
the spidy sense a little bit likeam I safe? It's my question instead
of I'm not safe, it's justokay, this feels a little odd,
where am I at? I canfeel that the autonomic nervous system is already

(17:33):
ramping itself up before I feel thatthought, am I safe? And that
right, give myself time to answerall of that behind the scenes stuff is
already ramping itself up to leap intoaction. And it may leave me in
action before I answer that question,oh yeah, I'm safe here, and
it is. It's wonderful if youactually have the ability to assess your environment

(17:55):
and really consider am I safe oram I not? And it is helpful
to your system to be able tohave that conscious assessment to reassure that you're
actually safe. A lot of people, no matter how they're trying to reassure,
of course, the system is stillI'm not sure I believe you.
Your ability to do that is actuallyit shows your growth in that area,
being able to really be in dialoguewith your autonomic nervous system and partners with

(18:18):
it so that you can help reassureit. But you're exactly right, we're
talking milliseconds that your neuroception, whichis totally unconscious, right, but no
conscious awareness whatsoever. Neuroception is perceivingthat there may be a threat, and
there may or may not be one, we don't know, but it's perceiving
something familiar from the past, isawakening something saying hey, Sharon, this

(18:40):
might be a problem. And again, like you said, that goes up
to the brain for interpretation. Butyou're right, all of that cascade of
things has already taken place. You'reprobably a little there might already be like
from the mass cells degranulating, theremight already be some physical manifestations of that
response. Never mind the adrenaline fortosolor the racing heart or all of that.

(19:03):
But that's already all off to theraces while your brain gets to work,
like, wait a minute, forgottenwhat's going on? And am I
actually okay? Mine was this kindof Now, in hindsight, you can
easily say, wow, that wasgoing to overreaction turn. But it's where
I noticed at first was I wasin a large department store and several aisles

(19:25):
over I could not see the person. I heard a very loud cough,
a series of It's not just likewind clearing throat. It was a series
of cops. I'm telling you.The brain went off to the race,
the body went off to the races. Okay, do I want to stay
here? Do I want to keepshopping? That was it? Yeah?
That I'm really pretty sure in myselfthat if that had happened let's say twenty

(19:47):
fifteen, I wouldn't have had thesame response. Sure, But using that
example, you were able to identifyconsciously what the perception of threat was about.
But imagine again in twenty fifteen ornow now, there might be some
something your neuroception is picking up onthat you can't identify the source. This
is where the threat perpetuation cycle reallygets going, where we're not sure and

(20:11):
we start oftentimes we'll just really confabulatea reason to explain the distress that isn't
even really a part of the narrativeat all. The body is saying there
is something wrong, there's anxiety happening, and we go in search. This
is what the brain does. Itgoes in search of the problem so that
it can solve the problem and makeus safe. But what about a system

(20:33):
that is confused where like you said, disproportionate, but also when we have
a disproportionate reaction, oftentimes it's theway that the body is responding to something
and really it's the past, somethingthat has happened in the past that genuinely
was threatening. Then the system isthinking, maybe there's something that could be
similar to that happening now. Butif you go in search of the solution

(20:56):
in the present and you don't havethe context for understanding that it may be
something from the past. Really thatis triggered is the word. We don't
use that word at OCC just becauseit has so many connotations with wanting to
suppress or move away, or liketriggered is something we need to control.
But triggered is the word where it'sawakening something in the body. And then
you know, how do we respondto it then? And if we don't

(21:18):
understand some of this autonomic nervous systemdysregulation and how it appears, then we
assume there's something wrong with the presentmoment and we go in search of it
until we try to identify something.Oh yeah, it's so surprising to me
how fast it happens. But onceI had the conscious knowledge from OCC and

(21:38):
others about this concept of Okay,your autonomic nervous system is responding. And
it was not that I solved theissue. I would still run away for
a little bit, but just havingthe conscious knowledge, okay, is this
a my autonomic nervous system overreacting?Is there a real threat? And you

(22:00):
go, I make this checklist inmy mind. The other day, I
was out in my yard and itwas odd. I just started smelling smoke,
like firewood's type of smoke, andI'm like, yes, the autow
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(22:22):
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(23:10):
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(23:33):
I could be you could be mejust oneur, if we could find a
way to get inside each other's mine, welcome mile in my shoes, Welcome
all in my shoes. Well beforeyou abuse criticize the cues, welcome out

(24:00):
in the shoes. And my firstthought was, did I leave my stovon.
It was interesting how even with thatkind of situation, which I know
is another obvious thing. You smellsmoke, you're going to think about things.
But my first thought was did Ileave my snovon exactly? And but

(24:23):
that my brain was already going througha whole checklist of things that's right.
And that's actually a great example.I use that one a lot. Imagine
you're sleeping. Neuroception works on theunconscious level, so you're sound asleep,
but your neuroception is still scanning eventhough we're asleep. And if it's it
smells smoke, right, In otherwords, we don't consciously smell it,

(24:45):
but neuroception picks up on the ideaof smoke. You're going to sit up
and you'll have the whole response,right, the adrenaline, the heart racing,
all of that is going to happen, and then your brain gets to
work to use your senses and yourcognition to try and identify the source of
the problem. It's not conscious yet, But that's a perfect example of how
the system ideally works. So thatyou can go find the source of the

(25:07):
smoke in the middle of the night, right, so that you can keep
yourself safe. That's a perfect exampleof how it should work. But again,
especially in relational settings, this isreally critically important. It's when we're
in relational threat, our needs arenot being met. We should probably be
setting a boundary, but it doesn'tfeel safe to do it. We should
probably be saying no, but it'scaught in our throat. We're in conflict

(25:30):
with someone, We're feeling scared orthreatened in some way in relationship. There
are all of these ways that weare experiencing that threat response that are really
sticky because they are loaded with historicalthings, ways that our needs were not
met. Again, I want tobring it back and hopefully have another opportunity
to talk about the original insult.Because those memories, they're not conscious memories.

(25:52):
They are body memories. They're sensory. The only way that we experience
them. They get awakened in ouras sensation, but then they get blended
with whatever the present day moment situationis. So if we feel like maybe
we're going to be abandoned or rejectedin a moment, right we're feeling threatened
in a relationship with someone, whetherit's actually true or not, or it's

(26:15):
the fear that we're bringing with usfrom the past. It's very difficult to
resolve it on this level when there'sa very disproportional body memory of terror or
threat, big huge anxiety that isactually about a time before we even have
preverbally, before we even have anyconscious memory of it at all. Again,
without that context, it seems likewhat's happening right now is the urgent,

(26:38):
emergency threat. But this is whereit's tricky to work with autonomic nervous
system regulation, because relational threats arestored in the body and then we're perceiving
them, often very inaccurately. That'swhat dysregulation is in the present, since
the unconscious mind doesn't keep time theway we keep linkings found where the current

(27:02):
relationship. It could just be atone of voice that took me back to
my fifth grade teacher, whatever itis, And I find that interesting that
it's like instantaneous time travel, thatit all comes flooding back and in that
particular situation that comes to mind,It was not intentional on the other person's
part. It was just the inflectionof the voice and the breathing pattern,

(27:25):
that kind of thing that was like, oh my gosh, it sounded just
like what happened when I was akid, and the time travel was so
rapid back yes, being that muchsmaller person that didn't have any at the
time boundaries or ability to have consciousability or context to deal with whatever was

(27:47):
going on at that time. Thatwas fascinating to me. How sometimes when
you talk about relationships and that kindof thing, and people will immediately take
it to my partner, I needto leave my partner because there are all
these sorts of bad things. Butoftentimes to me, it's so out of
context. It's just as simple asthey raised an eyebrow at you and it
reminded you of when your grandpa gotmad at you, you know. Yeah,

(28:11):
And that's the thing we say thatvery often, the body is always
telling the truth. It's just confusedabout the time. So you can be
sure that whatever you feel in yourbody that would cause that moment where you're
reacting or responding to a situation inthe present day, the body's telling the
truth is just confused about the time, and that complicates things, especially when

(28:33):
you're dealing with someone else who alsohas an autonomic nervous system and their own
historical things. So it's so veryeasy to have those body memories awakened and
to have it confuse and muddy thepresent day situation. So the intensity of
what we're experiencing is very real,and it is alive in the body.
People know this is not something thatwe can easily control when it's happening,

(28:53):
and that's because it's survival driven.The reason it is so feels, especially
in the really white hot, intensemoments, it feels so outside of our
control because it actually is. It'sgetting caught in this brainstem die encephalon area,
which is our most it's the earliestmemories. Again, it's from this
early time, and it's not makingit up to the prefrontal cortex where we

(29:17):
would have choice and volition and reasoningand being able to think something out the
autonomic nervous system it controls. Forexample, Sharon, are breathing and heart
rate. Your breathing and heart rateis just operating without you needing to be
involved in it at all. That'sgoverned by the autonomic nervous system too.
It's charged with your survival, andwe can think about our breathing and we

(29:38):
can influence it. I can slowit down, I can speed it up.
In both cases that would also influencethe heart rate, but we can't.
We don't have ultimate control. Soin other words, just like someone
will necessarily have to draw a breath, it won't be their choice. The
ans will insist that they draw abreath underwater at a certain point in time.

(29:59):
Likewise, when we are really awakenedwith something that previously had been a
threat to our survival and I wantto flag that threat to our survival at
a younger point in time, thenthe A and S will take over and
promote whatever strategy it thinks is best, usually based on whatever worked best from
us in our early development. SoI want to say, like most people

(30:22):
often did, this is not truefor everyone. But most people maybe we're
not actually in life threat with theirparents or caregiver in their young childhood in
early development. But what we aresaying is absolutely true is that as dependent
mammals, our perception was potential lifethreat, being cast off, not being
accepted again, delays in caregiving whenwe're a completely dependent infant is experienced in

(30:49):
the body as life threat to aninfant. So those body memories are in
us, and they're very real,they're very primitive, and they are autonomically
governed, So we don't have controlin those moments. We have to have
so much compassion for ourselves and otherpeople who are often reacting in that reflexive
way. Wow, a thought cameup to my mind of when I was

(31:11):
raising my first child. This wasthe conventional theory and how much I'm learning
about conventional theory nutrition when I wasgrowing up is totally different than conventional theory
now. But back then, theconventional theory was if you had a fussy
baby, let them cry it out. And what I just heard is that's
not a good strategy. No.And here's the thing, and this is

(31:33):
why we call it the original insult, because so many of us were instructed
exactly wanted to do the very bestthat we could for our kids. The
instructions and the recommendations that we've beengiven about how to care for our kids
in many cases are really causing whatthe experience is dorsal life threat. So,
in other words, the experience itworks to let an infant cry it

(31:57):
out like eventually, what has learnedhelplessness, No one's coming, It's dorsal
life threat and the infant gets quieteventually, which is the dorsal response,
which is immobilization or freeze as weknow it's when the other strategies aren't working.
Crying would be an example of thefight or flight response, like trying
to mobilize to get your needs metusing the sympathetic energy of the autonomic nervous

(32:22):
system, and dorsal is the responsethat happens when those strategies did not work
and there's a need that is notbeing met and so there's collapse and that
is experienced in the body as lifethreat, which is so hard to hear.
And I want to name this rightnow because I'm a mother, I
have a mother. This is painfulto feel like, oh my goodness,

(32:44):
some of these choices that were madewere experienced like this. I even had
an experience with my sweet son,who is twenty eight years old, where
I needed to be hospitalized and separatedfrom him for the very first time when
he was thirteen months old. Andthe story from my mother and brother is
that he was in and solibly cryingfor more than thirty six hours before he
got to see me again. AndI know that experience lives on in him.

(33:07):
It's very obvious his perception of rejectionor abandonment is so strong and it
is such a body based feeling.Because he couldn't understand where I went.
We couldn't explain it to him.It was just that Mom is gone.
I was still nursing him at thattime, right, food is gone,
Mom has gone, Like what Iknow for safety, I've been abandoned in
that way so much compassion. Thisis why we call it the original insult.

(33:29):
It's a cultural deviation and that's whyit's ubiquitous and it applies to literally
everyone in our modern culture. Sharon, would you mind if I explain what
our primitive biology actually does want andneed from the perspective of the evolved nest.
Absolutely, because I have so manyquestions about everything from what should be

(33:52):
done differently or so yes, pleaselet's go do there and then I'll be
able to formulate that question. Briefly, you had touched on the fact that
even in earlier cultures there was morefamily, more community, more support,
all of that. We're really goingback even beyond that before recorded history.
There's a wonderful video again Darsha andRavayas. She's a brilliant researcher that talks

(34:15):
about the evolved nest and she reallydescribes there's like all of human history and
then this little section of it isthis more modern where we had separated and
had land and all of these otherrecorded history things. This is where the
cultural deviation really began before that.And again this isn't me making this a
utopia that I'm saying we need togo back to this at all. I

(34:37):
want to really be clear about thatwith everyone, and obviously that's not happening.
I'm just saying we need to learnwhat our biology is wanting and needing
so that we can work with itrather than fighting against it, because that
is making everyone really sick. Soto go back though to what our biology
is needing, mammalian primitive human biology. Ultimately mom would have the baby be

(35:00):
born in a community with loads ofsupport. The entire pregnancy would have been
experienced in a very care giving,relational way. Yes, we are designed
actually for really big threats like potentialstarvation or a predator in the woods or
things like that. But what weare not built for and we do not
know is relational lack of safety.So when we lived in these tribes,

(35:22):
cooperation was something really organic because inorder to be a beneficiary of the tribe,
shared food gathering, shared infant care, shared fire tending, shared everything.
If you were hurt or injured,you needed the care of the tribe.
So it was like it inspired you. It was a self governing system
because everybody needed to do their partto receive these life giving, life saving

(35:46):
benefits of being cared for. Ourbiology expects we need to be in safe,
feeling connection. Even today, eventhough we have Grubhub and we can
order our groceries and all of that, right, our biology still wants to
be in really deep, safe communityand connection with our family and an extended

(36:06):
community. And so I want toname that and then as an infant things
that we could never hope to offerour infants in modern day culture. Right,
there was several alo mothers who helpedwith nursing responsibilities, helped to take
turns so that mom could sleep andthe baby was still attended to the whole
time. For the most part,the baby was worn and carried and interacted

(36:30):
with on request, on like throughoutall the time for four years. No
way, of course, can weever write parents they're on their own,
they're not sleeping enough, like it'salready a setup for failure for the parent
because there's not like that support sothat they're getting adequate sleep and help with

(36:50):
the child reary. But to bringit back to the infant in primitive times,
what that meant was an infant thatis having their needs met during the
time of neural development. For humans, our heads are so big that we
actually have to be born much earlierthan any of our other mammalian species would
have to be because our head wouldget too big and we should not be

(37:13):
able to get out, And sowe have an external womb experience, which
means that so much of that neuraldevelopment happens in the months and years early
years after that we're born. Soall of these basically the autonomic nervous system
that we're all working with is theone that was developed during these pre verbal
times, but before age two.So you're picturing this child that for four

(37:36):
years is being attended to moment.It has an autonomic nervous system that absolutely
it expects for its needs to bemet, that it is going to be
cared for. But as importantly itis so tuned into its own body sensations,
it's stimulus response, which means thatit knows it can go on.
Now that it's older, something willhappen in the body, and it would

(37:59):
know to attend to it and respondto it in some way that it actually
means something to pay attention to.Whereas what happens in our modern culture,
infants are forced to disconnect from theirown soa that is what dorsal or dissociation
is. It's too painful of anexperience, so we leave. It's not

(38:19):
a consciously painful experience on that level, is just a life threatening intensity that
is felt as sensation in the body. The same way that if you were
to get into a car accident,we can all imagine how intense that would
feel. That's the experience of theinfant that is dependent on its adult caregivers,
but there's been a lapse in care, so it does not know that

(38:40):
it will survive, and so whenthat happens, we are forced to disconnect
from our own soma, and wehave a chronic perception of threat that is
built into our autonomic nervous system,and that disconnection follows us all throughout our
lives. We are a species thatis very much in our heads. We
are very much the kind that rides. We keep pushing when we're too tired.

(39:01):
We show up when we really donot have the resources to do things
we're ignoring, pushing through pain,medicating pain, medicating discomfort, like this
is the consequence of disconnection from ourselves. And finally, we manage our safety
through other people. That's a learnedbehavior, meaning we needed to stay in

(39:22):
connection with our adult caregivers to survivewhen we were young. You brought up
that example, like, now you'rean adult, you have agency and choice
and all sorts of different ways ofhandling any given situation. As a child,
your survival depends on being in relationalconnection to an adult caregiver. So
we learn to manage our safety throughthe adult caregiver, and that follows us

(39:45):
into adulthood, where we manage oursafety outside of ourselves rather than inside of
ourselves. That's a mouthful, Iknow, but that is where we are.
I definitely have a yes, andthere most people do. I don't
want to like being challenged, Sharon, so go ahead. Yeah, My
first thought was rather fatalistic. OhI'm screwed. Now, can if we

(40:10):
had the dissociation and going into doorsalthose sorts of things as a child,
and maybe we're fairly self sufficient adultnow, yeah, we could see parts
of us that are dissociated, theparts of us like, Okay, come
back, I'll come over, comeback here. Are we screwed? Or

(40:30):
can we learn to reparent? Yes? Great question? And I love that
because that's exactly what I say inclass. At some point, I go,
we wouldn't be here if it wasjust like I'm just letting you know,
we're all screwed. I promise there'sa way to address this. And
just to even say the word dissociated. People often that's a term that association

(40:53):
means disconnection, that's what it means, So there's assorted ways. It does
not necessarily mean that there's a dissociatedexperience of being out of your body,
but it is actually out of body. If we're thinking constantly, if we
can't have a moment of silence,we have to have TV or podcast on
at all times, if we areworking and can't do still, if we
doom scroll Facebook, or are mindlesslyeating or shopping or using alcohol, to

(41:16):
numb, recording numbness in an assortmentof ways. We all have all sorts
of different ways of doing that.But we were disconnected, which means we're
dissociated away from our bodies experience.And also we're generally ignoring this system that
is charged with survival. It doesn'tlike to be ignored. It's like it
escalates its signals until it gets yourattention because there's value in what it's saying.

(41:40):
That's ultimately what's really very important here. And the reparenting ourselves is literally
about connection. It's not so muchas psychological phenomenon, although we could work
with it that way like a littleme version and really relating to certain things
as like a parent would. Butthe truth of it is, what we're
really trying to get back to ishow do we undo the consequence of the

(42:02):
disconnection that happened at that early time, which means invitation to be deeply attuned
to our bodies' experiences we docc Wework with polyvehgel theory. A lot our
population is coming to us most ofthe time with really severe and complex chronic
illness, so a lot of pain, a lot of symptoms, a lot

(42:23):
of discomfort in the body on thislevel. That's a population that is uniquely
challenged and feeling safe in their bodiesright because their bodies are screaming at them
please, something's wrong. But wehave developed, thankfully, a way to
really meet this population and be ableto develop safety even for them to get

(42:44):
back to how where's the miscommunication happeninghere? It's like in a strange relationship,
Sharon, it really is. It'sthe parallels are exactly spot on.
There's miscommunication happening the ans and theUS as a conscious human We're not understanding
each other very well. We've beenimpatient and neglectful, and we've been ignoring.
We have not been very good listeners. And this one's yelling now to

(43:07):
try and get its point across.It's like that, and how do we
reconnect and start to build a littlebit of trust and wet occ We're like
the marriage counselor or the mediator.I think what they're trying to say is
like that because the communication is sobroken down. But that is the path
back, and we're seeing it.It's really Our program has developed quite a

(43:27):
bit over the last two and ahalf years, and we recently revamped it.
We have a class that started inMarch. They're thriving in such beautiful
ways based on this new understanding andapproach, and it really has everything to
do with starting here, reconnecting toour bodies and learning how to trust and
really see that our bodies, foras much as they seem like they're failing

(43:49):
us, are actually they're never givingup on us. It's just about the
communication and learning to understand it differentlyand working with it differently to restore the
way that nature intended for us tobe in connection. That's so powerful to
understand as well. As I wantedto bring up though, just speak a
little bit to the fact you wentthrough fairly quickly things like overeating or listening

(44:12):
to always having to have the televisionon or something like that, those sorts
of things. I'm curious part ofme has been taught like, oh,
that's just a bad habit. AndI was hearing, yeah, I was
hearing this, It's more than justa bad habit. You can, you
know, force your will yourself outof a bad habit. Supposedly I've ever
been able to do that. Talka little bit about this idea that some

(44:37):
of these coping mechanisms that's my word, I don't know what your word would
be for that. But some ofthese coping mechanisms actually just look on the
surface like, oh, you justneed more WheelPower, please everyone. If
if you hear me say anything today, that's it's so not true. A
body that is healthy, a bodythat feels safe, chronically safe, right

(44:59):
in other words, that we talkabout being chronically unsafe, that's what dysregulation
is. But a body that trulygenuinely feels safe and cared for is one
that would have adequate mitochondrial energy.I want to really name this as especially
as we are in approaching metal age, most people's mitochondria is a mitochondrial inefficiency.

(45:20):
It is it does not have enoughenergy left to be able to perform
all of these functions. And thatin and of itself is a way that
we find ourselves in conservation of dorsal, even though it may not even have
a like a depression or loneliness ora story associated with it. But if
anybody knows the feeling of just basicallythe switch has been flipped right, the
breaker is off. Like you aredone. You are in conservation. Maybe

(45:44):
it's at the end of the day, but like you can barely immobilized.
That is actually the body. It'stoo metabolically costly to keep pushing any longer,
and there's a way that especially thenwhen this prefrontal cortex takes a lot
of fuel, sharing a lot ofenergy. So when we have pushed and

(46:05):
we're exhausted and in general we don'thave enough energy to do all of the
things, we'll get to a certainpoint at the end of the day,
and most people will recognize that fivesix, seven PM is when some of
these behaviors that you were saying,maybe they're bad habits, they're actually they
really are coping. They're numbing,and we don't have the energy to bring
them. I would prefer to bedoing this because later it will serve me

(46:29):
to have gone to bed early,or it would have been better to make
myself a nourishing meal. That partof our brain is totally offline because it
takes too much fuel. So whatwe're dealing with is like our reptilian part
of our brain. It only caresabout helping you to survive right now,
and what it is helping you tosurvive right now might be doing scrolling.
It's an analgesic. It might bemindlessly eating. It's analgesic. It's taking

(46:52):
us away from the discomfort that ispresent in the body. There's so many
different ways that we do that,but it is involuntary. There's not volition
there. In fact, you cancheck with yourself. Am I endorsal?
Would be? Do I even feellike I know I don't really want to
be doing this activity? But doI really have volition? Could I invite
myself up to take a nice hotbath and just be quiet or take a

(47:15):
rest or Am I like really likeI'm watching myself and I'm like addicted almost
to this thing. Which, bythe way, a lot of these are
high dopamine reward behaviors, and that'spart of what incentivizes us toward them.
That's a Sharon. We could doa whole show on dopamine pathways, but
we'll skip that for now. Theseare these. Let me just say this
one thing. The body that isrested and safe, it is not a

(47:38):
procrastinating body. It is not alazy body. It is not one that
doesn't care to do anything. Ifyou're experiencing yourself this way, it is
not a personal feeling. It isnot a character defect. You are not
like all the ways that we arelike feeling bad about ourselves. Please,
this is your nervous system saying I'mcutting the breaker literally just the same way

(48:02):
all the energy. Like in ahouse, if there's a surge of energy,
the breaker flips so that we don'tburn the house down. That's literally
what dorsal is trying to do preventfurther injury in the body. And then
it comes out in some of thesebehaviors that are wherein it's trying to help
you. Conservation of energy rather thanrestoration of energy. That requires our prefunnel

(48:24):
cortex to get there. That meanswe have to feel safe enough, connected
enough, and have enough energy leftover to bring this on where it would
be like what would really serve menow would be a gentle yoga practice,
right, Like that requires a differentlevel of cognition and energy that usually is
depleted, especially toward the end ofthe day, and for some of our

(48:44):
chronic illness people is never back onlinefully, So we have to work with
it that way. And part ofit is not beating ourselves up about it.
Please be gentle with yourself everybody.Oh, I love that. And
just for a little bit of clarification, go through the levels again because dors
that freeze level. But go throughthe levels again so people can see that
once that level where you're at.Yeah, So the way that it's a

(49:09):
hierarchy, the autonomic nervous system isa hierarchy. And we are a mammalian
species, which means that we dependon other people for survival literally and so
the most recently evolved part of ourautonomic nervous system is known as the ventral
vehicle system. This is actually thevegas where it travels. It innervates the

(49:30):
strided muscles of the face, andour fearings and our larynx and our middle
ear. How it perceives human voiceor other types of sounds. Because it's
our social engagement system, it isthe part of us that to start with,
tries to stay safe using connection,using being in relationship, relating even

(49:50):
a conflict, you would start byusing your ability to relate and think about
someone else's feelings, be a goodlistener, try to be patient. Right,
These are the kinds of thing thatyou would bring to try to resolve
a conflict, let's say, usingyour malien ventral vehicle system. That is
the state of safety and connection inthat place. That's where all that healthy
physiologic function happens, all health growthand restoration, healthy cell turnover, immune

(50:16):
function, digestion, detoxification, allof that happens in the ventral vagal state.
And then let's say you cannot resolvewhatever perception of situation or perception of
threat with your ventual vehicle system,you'll move into sympathetic that was evolved before
the ventral vehgle system. Sympathetic.There's really two very distinct flavors of that.

(50:38):
As people know it's fight or flight, they're very different energies. Fight
is a little more aggressive, holdsyour boundary. I'm I will see if
I can mobilize energy to really standmy ground here. It tends to have
like critical thinking or blame or angeror agitation energy to it. And then
there's flight, which is a littlemore on the running side, anxious,

(51:00):
maybe taking on other people's stuff,feeling like anxious or scared or wanting to
hide and run away. So that'sfurther down the ladder, closer to the
dorsal system. We will employ thesemobilization strategies to try to stay safe,
and if they don't work, thenwe have to resort to a mobilization,

(51:21):
and that's a state of conservation.It is the gazelle that is running from
the lion, right, and itgets caught and then goes to freeze.
Right. All of the adrenaline andcortosol is still in that gazelle's body,
but it goes to a mobilization,partly to endure. It's an analgesic.
It helps to endure the pain thatmay be about to happen before death.

(51:42):
It's also an effective strategy because maybethe line gets distracted and there's an opportunity
to hop up and get out ofhere, right, So it's an effective
strategy on that level too. Andthen people know that maybe they've seen videos
where the if the gazelle were ableto get up, it actually has to
shape that sympathetic energy out of itits body, which is something that we
humans don't do enough of, andit gets trapped. That energy gets trapped

(52:06):
in our bodies, which is partof what we end up feeling. For
those of you who wake up attwo or three o'clock in the morning when
cortisol rises in our bodies and thenyou're like sitting up awake. That is
the adrenaline and cortisol, the excessiveadrenaline cortisola is trapped. That's mobilization energy
trapped in the body, So conservation, this is immobilization, numbing freeze.

(52:29):
It's basically again, it's tripping thebreaker to keep you safe and protected from
doing any further damage by trying tomobilize on top of a system that doesn't
have the energy to do it.Fantastic, Now I want to go tangential
really quick. Though. If you'reone of those people that wake up at
two or three in the morning,so you're saying that's the cortisol and the
adrenaline, if I shake like awet golden retriever, well I'd be able

(52:51):
to go back to sleep. Idon't This is not necessarily recommended in the
middle of the night. Maybe not, but what the I'm glad you asked,
because trying to figure out how toto let's let go of historical things
that are stored in the body.Every day, I know we are all
encountering reasons that we get mobilized intosympathetic figuring out how to shake or move
energy, exercise, walking, evenpressing your hands up against the wall and

(53:15):
really engaging those muscles but shaking intentionallydoing something to discharge some of that energy
as a practice is great for beingable to sleep through the night. It
sometimes takes a little while to getthere, but that is something that is
quite effective actually helping people to avoidthat three am cortisol Okay, so to

(53:35):
release the energy before but instead ofin the middle of the okay, yeah,
yeah. And also a body thatwe are ignoring the entire day will
speak to us at night. Whatwe see a lot with our members.
Some people have trouble falling asleep,but what we see a lot with our
members is that there's so much exhaustionthat people do fall asleep. It's that
dorsal conservation allows to fall asleep andthen just enough rest is also restored in

(54:00):
the body that when that cortosol spikehappens, they're up and then all of
a sudden there's ruminating happening and perseverating. But remember sharing as it's the body's
experience of safety or a threat thatinitiates the whole process. The thinking is
our like how do what is goingon? All The perseverating is like trying
to work out whatever problem the bodyis perceiving. Wow, Okay, I

(54:23):
could go on and on, butwe're just about out it back. We
will, absolutely, but I wantto make sure that we are able to
tell a little bit about Origins CollaborativeCare. We've dropped little seeds along lot
here, but tell a little bitabout Origins Collaborative Care and how people can
also get a hold of you guys. Yeah. Thanks, So Origins Collaborative

(54:46):
Care was started because, as youmentioned, I had a really painful and
extensive chronic illness journey eleven year odysseythat was really very painful. And my
healthcare provider is my colleague right now. She is the one who helped to
support me during that time, andwe really wanted to create a practice that
helped to serve people who have triedeverything else without success. And for those

(55:09):
folks, as it was for me, the primary obstacle was not receiving great
care. A lot of people receivethe best and functional medicine or integrative care,
but this obstacle of having autonomic nervoussystems just regulation. So that is
what we offer at our practice.We have functional medicine care available to people
in Massachusetts with Jessica that includes theautonomic nervous system regulation as the foundation that

(55:32):
is the building block for all ofthe other healing and repair that can happen
in the body. But worldwide,we can serve anyone on autonomic nervous system
regulation. We have a really amazingclass experience and other ways of working with
the autonomic nervous system ultimately to restorea bodie's capacity for healthy function and healing

(55:52):
and repair. So Origins Collaborative Carewww dot Origins Collaborativecare dot com, and
I would love you to find uson YouTube because if you're at all interested
in what we do or the sciencebehind it, we have some really great
videos on YouTube as well, absolutely, and that's Origins Collaborative Care as well.
The Little as Simple, Yes,yeah, yep, And it's a

(56:15):
great it's a great YouTube channel.You can learn so much about this.
And if you're thinking like okay,I've tried everything, try understanding your autonomic
nervous system, because that, forme, was one of the key components
of more, more rapid healing,was that understanding. It was on a
good path, as you said,with great caregivers. But each time,

(56:37):
every so often you find the goldnugget and you're like, oh, okay,
and you'll notice a big leap.And once I began to understand at
a very conscious level how the autonomicnervous system works and why it works that
way. It's an amazing system,but it's one that we take for granted

(56:57):
our whole life until all of asudden it's dysregularly and then we're like,
I'm not sure what's happening. AndI find a lot of caregivers and this
isn't I just think it's not talkedabout that. In my early search for
the right answers for my recovery safetytrauma, all of that autonomic nervous system

(57:19):
was never brought up. It wasall about this stuff on the surface.
Take care of the rash, takecare of this, take care of that.
That was a very physical intervention whichI'm sure saved my life, just
being able to speed up your healingand understanding the multiple layers and the multiple
roots. And in my case,Sharon, I was not I would not

(57:42):
get better. I tried, Idid all of the things, I treated
mold, I did lime. Iwas nothing ever really worked until autonomic nervous
system regulation. And because your audienceis really geared toward autoimmunity, on the
YouTube channel. There's a particular videocalled anatom of a Chronic Illness that I
think your audience would find fascinating.It really talks about autoimmunity and how it

(58:05):
is a predictable progression and why whichthat is not taught in general. People
think it's genetic or luck of thedraw, and it actually isn't gene expression.
It's certainly the type of autoimmunity thatwill develop and a given person has
to do a gene expression, butthe path has everything to do with the
autonomic nervous system. And Jessica,my colleague, explains that in the video

(58:28):
Anatomy of a Chronic Illness on theYouTube channels, Yes, I highly recommend
that when it's a great video.I learned a lot and I think one
thing with a lot of people whoare in that in this process of recovering
from autoimmune and I want to saythat there's all to me. I'm always
uncovering more fascinating things. Is Ihave to watch myself that I don't get

(58:50):
to this place where I know I'vedone it before, where it's oh,
this is good enough, Okay,it's better than where I was. And
yes, maybe I and grown everymorning when I get out of bed or
whatever it is, you're okay,but it's not there. But there's always
more that we can do to helpus understand what's going on for ourselves and
for family members. Just understanding theautonomic nervous system and not near as trained

(59:15):
as Jessica and Mikayla are, butjust my little understanding of it have helped
other people. So I encourage youto check out Origins Collaborative Care in their
unique way of healing and overcoming chroniclong term conditions. So thank you so
much, Mikayla, and I lookforward to having Jessica back on soon too.
And everyone have a great week whateveryour adventures. And if you're here

(59:38):
on YouTube at Understanding Autoimmune YouTube,please subscribe. It helps us bring our
message out to a much larger audienceand bring that hit. That little notice
bell I guess is what it's called, so you can get notified that every
time a new interview is launched.Hopefully it's about every Friday. That's my

(59:59):
goal. Doesn't always happen, butthat's my goal is to launch a new
interview every Friday. And so thankyou all community for being part of my
healing journey and hope to walk handin hand with you on your healing journey.
And everyone, have a great week, but have your adventures. See
you next week. Enjoy

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