Why Does My Body React Before My Brain?!

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Hello, and welcome to Why Am I Like This, the podcast for those who didn't get enough hugs as a child.
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I'm Laura Wood and I'm a trauma therapist.
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And I'm Michaela Beaver.
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I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner.
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I'm so glad you asked.
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We all have patterns we don't fully understand.
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Ways we react, think, and feel that seems to show up no matter how hard we try to change them.
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On this podcast, we explore how our past relationships, experiences, relationships, and nervous systems shape who we are today.
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Together, we asked the question we all wondered about at some point, why am I like this?
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And more importantly, how can we understand ourselves a little more discussion?
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Yes, and today we are talking about how our body keeps the score.
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We read the book by Bessel Vanderkolk, The Body Keeps the Score, and I'll link that in the show notes.
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Um, and so we're gonna try to answer the following questions.
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Why does my body react before my brain?
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How does sorry, what does trauma actually mean?
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How can I manage these responses?
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So to get started, I'm wondering if you can think of a time where your body reacts, but your brain is like, I don't understand this.
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Yes, I love that question.
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Um, and we're I was trying to think of something before we started, and I think like what comes to mind is um I was having a conversation with a client and they asked me a personal question, and I wasn't like really prepared, like or expecting it.
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And all of a sudden, like my face gets bright red, and um I wasn't really feeling nervous, like I didn't mind ask answering the question.
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It was something you know super benign, but I think that like there was definitely uh like things were not, you know, connecting.
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Like, I don't know why I react I my body responded in that way.
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Yeah.
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So you're like you're having this response, and you're trying to manage that response, like with your patient right there, and you're like, I don't know why I'm doing this, but my brain is or like my body's having this response reaction.
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Yeah.
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And I like and like they know obviously they could they were like, Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to like embarrass you or whatever.
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And I'm like, oh no, I'm not embarrassed.
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I think I was just like taken off guard more than anything.
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Um, and then I I think if I think back to what the real cause was, like after like kind of like analyzing it a little bit, I honestly think that it was like I was I was more embarrassed by like the answer because it was like something that I should have been doing, but I wasn't doing.
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You know what I mean?
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I'm wondering if it has more to do with like the oh yeah, I guess I'm not being maybe a very good patient myself.
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Right.
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Like I'm about to say that I'm not doing what I tell them to do.
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And I'm about to admit that like I'm not actually like taking as good care of myself as I should be or whatever.
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Yes, absolutely.
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What about you?
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Have you had that experience?
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I totally have that experience.
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I mean, I can really in the same way with um with clients, like my body, like whenever it feels like there's like um a big insight happening or like a moment of like attunement, my eyes water, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like they're gonna think I'm crying.
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Or and like I feel like my face gets red, and I always am like worried that they're gonna see that, but like I can't help it, it just happens, and so like I use that as information, like it tells me like if this is happening for me, like I'm wondering what's happening for them.
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You know what I mean?
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Like, I'm wondering like if they're having an internal reaction as well.
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But another time that another you had told a story one time and it reminded me of um something that happens for me, which is that like um I'll be in a moment and at like a stressful moment, and everything will be going, and you know, I'm trying to keep it together and manage and whatever, and I'm kind of just like going along.
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And then at the end, I'll be like, oh, I should have said this, I should have said this, I should have said it, and I'll come up with like all the exact right things to say, like in every single moment, like after the fact.
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And it's like that's so annoying.
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I want my like I want my thinking brain to like my cognition to be like on when I'm in that stressful situation, so that I can handle it like a boss, you know what I mean?
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Like I can say the right thing, I can I can totally crush the whole thing, you know.
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And so, like, that's kind of what I thought of.
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Well, I wonder if that's part of the reason why our brain shuts off is because we want to crush it and um that pressure is just like I'm done.
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Yeah, for sure.
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Like, um, you know, when I'm I can think about like negotiating for a car or something like that, right?
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Like, oh you know, oh, I want this best deal, and then you're like, yeah, okay, I guess.
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Like you like cave, right?
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And then you're like, oh, I should have hold held my ground, I could have saved another $500 or whatever, right?
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Like that's what that's kind of what I think of.
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Like, I should have, I should have said this, or or like after a fight with like a partner or something like that, and like you get in an argument with your partner, and then after it's over, you think of like these zingers, like everything that you would have said, like right then and there, like to call them out and to hold them accountable.
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Like I think about those things as like a a really tangible example of how our system is sort of like surviving through those moments, and without with with the survival mode, uh that cognitive part of our brain doesn't necessarily engage as well as it could if we were in a safe, calm space.
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Yeah.
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You think about how the basically the frontal lobe or the prefrontal cortex just goes offline, if you will, and you know, none of those thoughts that should be coming are are gonna come when we're in the in the survival brain, right?
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Right.
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Yeah, Dr.
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Dan Siegel calls it flipping your lid, like you don't have like that lid of the cognitive, like the your prefrontal cortex is like, oops, I'm out, I'm off, I'm not there.
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Um yeah, like so uh why this makes sense.
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And what's funny is that uh so I teach when I teach this in my classes, I always teach the channels of information processing, right?
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Like I teach um that we have cognitive, a cognitive channel of information processing, an affective or emotional channel of information processing, and a sensory channel of information processing, right?
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So the question I always ask is which do you think is the most important?
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Right.
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I ask everybody like which channel is the most important, and everybody says cognitive.
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They all raise really, I guess I would have said survival for some reason, yeah, like sensory, right?
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Because that has your survival value.
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Like your sensory and affective channels are what help tell they determine safety and danger in the world, and so but everybody like values initially this cognitive channel of processing, thinking like, oh, well, that's what makes us adapted, you know, evolved humans, like you know, our brains, our our thoughts, our cognition, our intelligence, right?
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But the reality is our cognitive processing channel really has no survival value.
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Like if you think about a human as an organism, you don't need that to survive.
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Sure.
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That's really interesting.
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And the other thing that came up while you were saying that is like, you know, I was thinking, you know, people might be more in tune with like their sensory, you know, channel, or they're af the and like oftentimes, you know, not very in tune with their emotional channels, right?
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You think about people who just like go, go, go, push through in the moment, and then all of a sudden they come to see us, and then they're like bawling their eyes out, and they're like, I never cry.
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And it's like, well, yeah, because you never engage in your emotional channel.
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Right, right.
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And when you don't engage in your notion emotional channel, you're not really engaging in the social engagement system, right?
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So that emotional or affective processing is where we connect with people, right?
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It's where we determine if you are a safe person for me.
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Like when I'm a baby, I need to connect with my caregiver.
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That's that attachment channel, that's where that's happening.
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And so a lot of us sort of shut that down, and then we're feeling alone in our lives.
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Like I hear that all the time.
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Like, I just feel lonely.
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I feel alone.
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Um, and why would somebody shut off their emotional affective channels?
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Gosh, for so many reasons.
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I think pain, uh like I think um we shut that down as a defense because we have experienced pain and rejection and abandonment.
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And when we experience those things, those are so um big, they're huge feelings for kids, right?
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We we shut them down after we've experienced those negative feelings as kids.
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Like these are not things that happen to us for the first time as an adult, right?
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These are things that happen to us for the first time as a child, and we learn how to cope with that and we adapt.
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So, for example, if as a kid I'm experiencing like emotional rejection from my parents, like let's say I'm I bring home a drawing from school and I'm like, mom, dad, mom, dad, you know, look at this drawing that I made.
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And they're just like, ugh, like, okay, I don't care.
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I'm busy.
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Like as a little kid, I'm like, oh man, like I'm so rejected, right?
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Okay, imagine that times a thousand over and over and over and over and over.
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Eventually I'm gonna stop going to, I'm gonna stop bringing them my drawings because they don't care.
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And it hurts more to have them tell me they don't care than for me to just like go through this process on my own internally and shut down my need for their connection.
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And that's like a benign, everyone can write like you know, everyone can remember a time where their parents weren't that interested in something they had to say because kids sometimes aren't that interesting and they are their drawings aren't that good, and so they say the same things over and over again, right?
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Or their stories don't make sense, or their stories are too long, and so everybody's got that experience.
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But what really where we shut it down is if we're experiencing that experience so often and consistently that it's too painful to reach out for that connection.
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So I always um when I was taught about attachment theory, my trainer shared this uh metaphor of an electric fence.
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So an electric fence that's on sometimes, but off other times, like you never know if it's turned on.
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You can't tell until you reach for it.
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And when you touch it, sometimes it's fine.
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Other times it shocks you.
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So you never really know.
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And so you always but you have to go through this fence in order to get past the fence to get food.
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So you have to reach for it, you have to touch this fence, but you just never know if it's gonna shock you.
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And so shut down um or dissociation is the process of like basically putting on rubber protective gloves so that when you reach for that fence, you don't feel anything.
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Like you numb yourself.
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I love that.
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Yeah, I've never thought about it in that kind of way before.
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Yeah.
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So we have to numb ourselves out sometimes in order to protect us from that shock of not feeling the connection that we're looking for when we need it.
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And that's really that's coming from our affective channel, but like a sensory channel too.
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Think about athletes.
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Like athletes who push through pain, like I played on a broken ankle, or I, you know, I'm running and running and running, and my body is telling me to stop, but I'm not gonna stop.
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I'm ignoring that.
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And so they're they're basically training their brain to numb out that sensory channel.
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They're saying, like, no, don't pay attention to that, don't listen to that while I'm in this game.
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And so sometimes that can be healthy and adaptive while they're performing.
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The trouble is they have to learn how to discern between the athletic performance and regular life.
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Otherwise, they're gonna be sort of numbed out to their body and not listening to those signals and re-injuring themselves and not, you know, paying if they're not paying attention to those sensory signals, then that can cause them danger and harm later on.
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Right.
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Because the body is remembering this, even though we're checked out, we're ignoring, we're dissociating from the thing, the body is going to continue to remember that experience.
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So whether that means that they're gonna keep doing that after the fact, or you know, there's gonna be some kind of physical, you know, experience later that is tied to that potentially.
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Another thing that makes us numb out our sensory channel is like a physical assault, right?
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So if I sometimes when people describe an assault, they say, like, oh, I was outside my body.
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Like I didn't feel anything, right?
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Like it was, and then maybe they felt the pain after, but like during that moment, they numbed themselves to the pain because it was too much, and that it and they went into shock.
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That's a healthy, adaptive way to get through an assault, is to have your is your body's doing that for you on purpose.
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That's a survival mechanism that your body is doing, is taking you out of that moment so that you can go through this and not die, right?
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And you can survive and then you can heal later on.
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The trick is we have to reconnect with our body after that happens.
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But again, if it's chronic, it's happening over and over and over throughout your childhood, especially.
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Then your body is not going, you're not gonna reconnect with your body afterwards.
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You're gonna disconnect from your body, and then you might even have negative feelings toward your body, like you might feel like it was your body's fault for the assault, like you froze or um fawned during that time in the self.
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Then you blame yourself, exactly, and you're not connected to your body.
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So a lot of the work in therapy with somatic therapies, but also just you know, general safety finding is we connect with our bodies again.
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We have to learn how to our bodies, it's right, it sounds easy, challenging to do.
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Yeah, because we feel like it's safe, right?
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Like our bodies themselves don't feel like a safe place because our bodies have memories too.
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So if I connect with my body, then I'm gonna get that memory of the assault, and I don't want to relive that.
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Right.
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So like when we talk about trauma and we talk about big, big things like you know, assaults and things like that, but it can also be associated to like chronic stress, like just like you know, maybe your parents fighting all the time and not or you know, not knowing if you're gonna get yelled or screamed at, or you know, if your needs are gonna be met, you know, that day, right?
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Yeah, chronic stress, like so um the ACES, right?
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So the adverse childhood experiences um study was done by Kaiser Permanente and the CDC.
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Uh do you remember when it was done?
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Was it the 90s?
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I don't remember the date.
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Yeah.
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Um, but it was a while back, and it was essentially this huge study where they did they were looking at different adverse experiences that children go through to try to kind of measure, um measure how many kids experience these negative affective um experiences.
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So, like, okay, so what were some of the things in the study?
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In like the ACE study, like looking at um like parents using substances, right?
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Um, divorce is one of them.
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Um, and parents or like um sexual traumas, um like emotional abuse, getting screamed at, um incarceration of parents or family members.
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Um, I know I'm missing something else.
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Uh what some of them are witnessing the abuse, right?
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So like watching your mother be harmed by your father, I think is one of them.
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Um and then another one is um witnessing like or is is feeling unwanted or unloved.
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Yeah.
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But what was interesting is is not only did they look at these adverse childhood events to see which ones had a huge impact, or like how many, how many of these, how many kids were having um them, which was an interesting part is that like a significant portion of the population has at least one or two of these experiences.
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But they studied these people for a period of, they were looking at these people and and actually uh correlating it with physical health in adulthood.
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And you know, looking at higher, so the more adverse childhood events you have in childhood, the more likely you are to have obesity, metabolic disorders like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, things like that, um, and mental health considerations like anxiety, depression, and and whatnot.
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So um inflammation, autoimmune disorders, uh so there is a direct link between what happens in childhood and your adult life.
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And you're far more likely to experience substance use disorder as well.
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And I, you know, when I first learned about the ACEs study, I it totally shifted my entire perspective of like what even is trauma?
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Because in here is I felt unloved, I felt unwanted, right?
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Having that experience, that feeling, like is a traumatic, adverse experience.
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Um, going through having your parents go through a divorce, um, having your parents uh yell and scream at you, um, not getting your needs met, like neglect, those things are things that people come in and say, like, oh, I had a normal childhood.
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Right?
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Like my parents were fine, they were busy, they worked a lot, or you know, my dad drank, or my mom, you know, was uh my mom drank a lot of wine or whatever, like or my mom was a successful single mom who was working all the time.
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Like not like when we connected, it was great, but like we didn't connect that often.
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That's emotional neglect, not purposeful, not intentional.
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Like you're both just trying to survive, but that's still you know, not going to be conducive for emotional stability and like long-term mental wellness.
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And so what that told me was you can have experienced trauma without being a victim.
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Like you don't have to be a victim of something to have experienced traumatic experience.
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Trauma is something anything that overwhelms your system to where you don't have the capacity.
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Ability to cope like in that moment.
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Sure.
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And I think too about like early parentification of children.
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That's that is going to create overwhelm.
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You're you're asking a child to act like an adult.
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They don't have the capacity for that.
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And you're looking like you're looking to a child to solve problems that they don't have control over yet.
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They don't have the autonomy and the agency, but you're telling them that they need to.
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I remember just even like with my brother, like fighting with my brother and feeling so helpless and out of control because I couldn't get him to stop, like doing whatever I wanted him to stop doing, whether that's like elbowing me in the car or like just those little teasy things where it's like just stop.
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Like I need you to stop.
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That sense of like out of control is so big.
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And so imagine you're 10 years old and you're in charge of a five-year-old or two, and you're trying to get them to like behave, but they have behavioral challenges and you're so out of control and helpless, that's trauma.
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That is a traumatic experience.
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So I think today trauma gets thrown around, like, oh, everything's trauma, everything's trauma.
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And if everything is trauma, then nothing is.
00:23:21.839 --> 00:23:27.359
But I think we need to think differently about how we define like what that actually means.
00:23:27.359 --> 00:23:29.200
Because what are we saying when we say trauma?
00:23:29.200 --> 00:23:33.359
We're saying my system was overwhelmed and I didn't have the capacity to cope in that moment.
00:23:33.839 --> 00:23:34.400
Exactly.
00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:35.920
That's exactly what I was thinking.
00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:48.880
It's not necessarily the situation specifically, it's how you felt in that moment because you could have experienced the same thing that I did, but I felt like I had capacity, and therefore I didn't feel like it was traumatic.
00:23:49.119 --> 00:23:49.599
Mm-hmm.
00:23:49.599 --> 00:23:53.279
Yeah, like why do some people get PTSD and other people don't?
00:23:53.279 --> 00:24:01.680
Like that is um there's a lot of factors, resilience, protective factors that go into whether or not you experience PTSD.
00:24:01.680 --> 00:24:17.759
And one of the biggest things that you that protects against PTSD is is an affective um relational safety, like a safe relational connection right after the traumatic event or during the traumatic event.
00:24:17.759 --> 00:24:23.279
A safe relational connection during that time is the biggest protective factor against PTSD.
00:24:23.680 --> 00:24:25.519
Yes, absolutely.
00:24:25.519 --> 00:24:31.200
So they provide safety to your nervous system.
00:24:31.440 --> 00:24:31.680
Right.
00:24:31.920 --> 00:24:33.920
They provide safety to your nervous system.
00:24:33.920 --> 00:24:36.079
And your affective channel, right?
00:24:36.079 --> 00:24:41.839
Your sensory processing is not safe, but your affective channel kind of helps bring in that safety.
00:24:41.839 --> 00:25:00.880
And when you have that sense of safety, then your cognitive channel can come online and it can make sense of what just happened and it can recognize and tell the story of the event as being an event that happened and you survived, and now it's over and you're okay and you're safe and you can move forward.
00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:06.079
But traumatic events, they're not stored as stories, they're not linearly stored in your brain.
00:25:06.079 --> 00:25:09.440
And that's why your body reacts and your brain doesn't always know what's happening.
00:25:09.440 --> 00:25:10.799
Like your thinking brain, right?
00:25:10.799 --> 00:25:19.119
Your cognitive awareness isn't always sure why I'm having this emotional reaction or why I'm having this physical reaction.
00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:43.119
Um but well, and I think that that goes back to like how our brain encodes things when we're under stress, when cortisol is high, then our that part of our brain that encodes memory is it's top the cortisol is toxic to that part of the brain, which will lead it to encode memories in fragments.
00:25:43.119 --> 00:26:00.799
And so, like all of a sudden, that gray couch, like it's when I see a gray couch, I'm triggered, but I don't really know why the gray couch, because there was a gray couch at some point in time, and now my men my memory is just saying the gray couch equals danger, right?
00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:15.839
Right, because it's associating any kind of fragmented memory with the sense of danger because it's like it's sending you that signal, like you need to get out, you need to get out, and you might not know like what it's referring to, right?
00:26:15.839 --> 00:26:21.680
So, like sometimes bringing it back to like associating the thing that's dissociated, right?
00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:29.359
So it's separated and fragmented, so you associate it with an actual experience and recognize, like, oh, that's because of this.
00:26:29.359 --> 00:26:34.319
It's not actually the couch isn't actually dangerous, correct?
00:26:34.319 --> 00:26:37.119
Yes, the couch is not dangerous, right?
00:26:37.119 --> 00:26:42.720
Um so how do we so what are that's one way of managing the experience?
00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:46.400
What are some other ways of managing these responses?
00:26:48.559 --> 00:26:54.480
Well, I think that the first thing that I would start with was just like getting back into the present moment.
00:26:54.480 --> 00:27:19.279
You know, I think that like um people have, you know, this experience where like all of a sudden we're having a panic attack or an anxiety attack or whatever, and we don't really understand why we're feeling the way we're feeling, or all of a sudden, like we can't breathe, or we get dizzy and we're like feeling, you know, maybe like that same way that we felt back when we were trauma in the traumatic experience.
00:27:19.279 --> 00:27:24.240
And so I think it's important to remember that like those things don't live in the present moment.
00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:42.160
And so doing what you can to get back into your body, to get back into the present moment, wiggling your toes, looking around the room, reorienting yourself with like what your age is, where you live, what your phone number is, those kinds of things um is what comes up first for me.
00:27:42.559 --> 00:27:43.200
What do you think?
00:27:43.200 --> 00:27:50.079
Well, I was thinking the other thing that that does, that getting into the present, it also engage re-engages your cognition, right?
00:27:50.079 --> 00:27:58.160
When you're having to think of your phone number or like say your phone number backwards, for example, like you're having to engage that prefrontal cortex.
00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:02.480
So you're inviting it to come back online in a like a variety of ways, right?
00:28:02.480 --> 00:28:08.799
So it's like safety, present day, like the in the present there is no danger, and that that cognition is coming back online.
00:28:08.799 --> 00:28:13.519
And that prefrontal cortex acts as a regulator for your brain.
00:28:13.519 --> 00:28:14.319
Yeah.
00:28:14.319 --> 00:28:21.039
So um, I think another thing that you can do is like progressive muscle relaxation.
00:28:21.039 --> 00:28:26.079
So like a specific body-based send signals to your body that you're safe.
00:28:26.079 --> 00:28:41.519
Because if you can intentionally relax your muscles, what you're telling your amygdala and your brain, your limbic system, you're telling that part of your brain that there is no danger, meaning I'm allowed to relax, it's safe to relax.
00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:44.640
So you're sending that signal of safety to your brain.
00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:55.119
So clenching your jaw, relax, relaxing your jaw, shift, you know, tensing your shoulders, relaxing your shoulders, clenching your fists, relaxing your fists, right?
00:28:55.119 --> 00:29:01.599
Like doing those things on purpose or telling your brain, like, oh, it's safe to do this right now.
00:29:01.599 --> 00:29:08.559
I don't have to be stuck in this muscle tension, um, this hypervigilance state.
00:29:08.880 --> 00:29:09.359
Sure.
00:29:09.359 --> 00:29:30.160
Well, and I think that it's good, um, especially like the neck and shoulders and jaw and stuff, and like clenching and relaxing, those parts are especially helpful because when you're in that fight or flight response, extra blood is flowing to those areas to prepare your body to like react to to run to fight all of those things.
00:29:30.160 --> 00:29:39.200
And so um by relaxing that, you're kind of counteracting some of that what's actively happening in the anxiety state.
00:29:39.200 --> 00:29:53.759
So um one of the other things that I was thinking was obviously, you know, trauma is anything that the nervous system didn't have the capacity to process at the time, right?
00:29:53.759 --> 00:30:02.799
So if we didn't have the capacity to process it at the time, and if we haven't fully processed it yet, then it's still gonna be stored and it's gonna be disjoint.
00:30:02.799 --> 00:30:29.839
But if we can go back and do therapy to to um you know improve that connection and help it be something that can be processed in a safe way, then you know, we're not gonna maybe have the same effect or we might, but we'll be able to get back, it's gonna be easier to get back out of that um dysregulation and shutdown.
00:30:30.400 --> 00:30:31.680
Yeah, absolutely.
00:30:31.680 --> 00:30:39.359
One of the things that makes therapy most effective, actually, is the safety in the therapeutic relationship.
00:30:39.359 --> 00:30:53.119
So you can have a mediocre therapist, but if you have that safety and connection in the therapeutic relationship, that's doing so much work for your nervous system that like it's not about the interventions that your therapist uses.
00:30:53.119 --> 00:30:56.400
It's actually about the safety in the room and the connection in the relationship.
00:30:56.400 --> 00:31:01.759
So that's like a novel experience for your nervous system to sort of have that sense of safety.
00:31:01.759 --> 00:31:04.240
That's actually restorative and reparative.
00:31:04.240 --> 00:31:10.880
And then a type of therapy, EMDR therapy, the R in EMDR stands for reprocessing.
00:31:10.880 --> 00:31:27.440
So you're reprocessing the memory in a safe way, in a safe state, and you're allowing all parts, all channels of processing to incorporate and consolidate that information and tell it as a cohesive story instead of fragmented.
00:31:27.440 --> 00:31:29.519
So it's putting all those pieces together.
00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:37.440
It's like if you have um, you know, a piece of a broken vase, you're gluing all the pieces back together.
00:31:37.440 --> 00:31:49.279
So there's still gonna be that that residual experience of like sadness, like, oh, I wish it wasn't, it's not, it's it's not perfect, but it's okay enough, right?
00:31:49.279 --> 00:31:50.240
It's good enough.
00:31:50.559 --> 00:31:50.880
Yeah.
00:31:50.880 --> 00:32:00.000
Well, and one of the other things that I like about EMDR specifically is that you're actually reprocessing the physical sensations in the body as well.
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:06.880
And so you're you're helping to improve those and um desensitize that response.
00:32:06.880 --> 00:32:08.160
Mm-hmm.
00:32:08.799 --> 00:32:24.480
Yeah, you're remembering, you're inviting your body to remember where you feel the stuff and what sensations your body is experiencing, and you're inviting your body and brain to process that and um really consolidate that into the memory and tell the story.
00:32:24.799 --> 00:32:25.279
Yeah.
00:32:25.279 --> 00:32:35.440
Another thing that um we talked about previously on like um the OCD stuff is like naming it to tame it.
00:32:35.440 --> 00:32:43.519
And so I wonder like just being able to like, um, how does like just being able to go, oh, my body's reacting to trauma right now?
00:32:43.519 --> 00:32:48.319
Like, how do you think that would impact um our response?
00:32:48.640 --> 00:32:54.079
Oh yeah, I think that's really important because what it's doing is it's orienting, right?
00:32:54.079 --> 00:32:58.559
You're saying, oh, I'm reacting to something that's a memory, I'm not, it's not happening right now.
00:32:58.559 --> 00:33:01.759
And that's easier said than done, right?
00:33:01.759 --> 00:33:09.680
Because memories, traumatic memories aren't stored as stories, they're stored as really you're they're relived as states.
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:22.720
And so the hippocampus, like the part of your brain, part of your brain that's sort of activated in this traumatic memory situation and has a lot to do with memory storage, it doesn't know the difference between past and present.
00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:28.720
It doesn't have access to the time component when you're experiencing a traumatic memory.
00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:31.440
So it doesn't know you're remembering.
00:33:31.440 --> 00:33:36.480
It's not it's implicit, it's not explicit, it doesn't explicitly understand that you're remembering.
00:33:36.480 --> 00:33:45.440
And so when you name it and you say that out loud, or you say that in your brain, or you send signals to your body that you're remembering, that can be helpful.
00:33:45.440 --> 00:33:47.839
But it that's gonna be inconsistent with what you feel.
00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:52.319
So you're having to know that feelings aren't facts in that moment.
00:33:52.319 --> 00:33:57.039
Like I can feel like something's happening right now, and I can know that as a fact, it's not happening right now.
00:33:57.279 --> 00:34:00.880
Well, yeah, because you can also ask yourself, am I safe?
00:34:00.880 --> 00:34:04.160
In this moment, am I okay?
00:34:04.160 --> 00:34:07.519
And then that can also be reorienting.
00:34:07.839 --> 00:34:08.480
Right.
00:34:08.480 --> 00:34:09.119
Right.
00:34:09.119 --> 00:34:17.039
So that orientation to your surroundings and to your body can be really restorative.
00:34:17.039 --> 00:34:25.039
And you don't always have to, I think it's important, you don't always have to know where it's coming from, like where the trigger's coming from, or like what memory it's coming from.
00:34:25.039 --> 00:34:29.199
You can just say, I know that this isn't about what's happening right now.
00:34:29.199 --> 00:34:33.280
Like, um I can't remember who said it.
00:34:33.280 --> 00:34:41.519
I was listening to a podcast recently, and they said, if you if it's hysterical, if I'm hysterical, it's historical.
00:34:41.519 --> 00:34:45.280
I love that, right?
00:34:45.280 --> 00:34:46.639
That's hilarious.
00:34:46.639 --> 00:34:54.000
So basically, what that means is if my reaction is too big, this isn't about what's happening right now.
00:34:54.000 --> 00:34:58.159
So the way that I say that sometimes is the problem isn't the problem.
00:34:58.159 --> 00:34:59.280
Yeah.
00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:02.960
So remembering that can be helpful.
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:04.800
Yes, that's hilarious.
00:35:04.800 --> 00:35:10.000
Yeah, I wish I could give credit to that statement, but I can't remember who said it.
00:35:11.360 --> 00:35:14.239
I think you know that's important to remember though.
00:35:14.239 --> 00:35:19.599
Like, if the problem like my reaction is really big, this isn't about right now.
00:35:19.599 --> 00:35:21.280
This isn't about this.
00:35:22.480 --> 00:35:24.480
Yeah, it's hard to tell sometimes.
00:35:24.480 --> 00:35:36.159
So practicing the other thing is practicing like mindfulness, meditation, calm skills, safety cues, practicing regulating your nervous system is something that you need to be doing all day, every day.
00:35:36.159 --> 00:35:43.679
It's not just to use in case of emergency, because you can't always know when you're in that state.
00:35:43.679 --> 00:35:45.519
You you can't tell.
00:35:45.519 --> 00:35:49.199
Your brain inherently doesn't realize, right?
00:35:49.199 --> 00:35:55.840
Like if you don't know that you're remembering, there's nothing in there saying, Oh, let me use this helpful tool.
00:35:55.840 --> 00:35:58.079
Like your cognition is offline.
00:35:58.079 --> 00:36:08.239
So using those tools as habits is gonna get your body to start automatically applying those things in cases of distress, right?
00:36:08.639 --> 00:36:09.280
Yeah.
00:36:09.280 --> 00:36:22.239
Well, I think that like people who have um that I've worked with, especially people that have like um borderline tendencies, you know, which is a is a response to trauma.
00:36:22.239 --> 00:36:22.639
Right.
00:36:22.639 --> 00:36:42.159
Um, you know, those, you know, I've heard them say, like, I can I can know I'm hysterical, they're hysterical in the moment, and they can know that their reaction is so big, and they don't want it to be, but they feel incapable of like reining it back in.
00:36:42.159 --> 00:36:54.239
You know, like so that like you know, we've in dbt you talk about like the wise mind, the emotional mind, and the and the um logical mind, and right, right?
00:36:54.239 --> 00:37:02.719
So it's like we want to get to this place where we're not stuck in emotion and we're not stuck in logic that we're we're able to use all those things together.
00:37:02.719 --> 00:37:22.320
But sometimes when for whatever reason the body you know reacts in those ways and and it take and it takes time to learn how to to calm down your nervous system, because you can literally be aware of it and feel as though it's out of your control, you know.
00:37:22.320 --> 00:37:26.960
So I think like if you're hysteric, the that the reason I started thinking about that was because you said hysterical.
00:37:26.960 --> 00:37:39.519
And I'm like, if you're hysterical, the first thing that you need to do is calm your body down, do your calming techniques, and work your way into a regulated state because we just don't make great choices.
00:37:39.519 --> 00:37:42.000
At least I don't make great choices when I'm upset.
00:37:42.000 --> 00:37:43.840
So I don't know about the rest of you.
00:37:44.639 --> 00:37:47.599
No, I tend not to be at my best, yeah.
00:37:47.599 --> 00:37:59.039
Um, and that's important to note because you're not gonna ignore the problem after that, you're gonna solve it, but you have to solve it from a state where you have access to all three channels of processing, right?
00:37:59.039 --> 00:38:02.559
You have access to your emotion, your cognition, and your senses.
00:38:02.559 --> 00:38:08.960
You can solve like you calm yourself down, regulate yourself, and then solve the problem, right?
00:38:10.079 --> 00:38:11.840
And the same thing goes for kids.
00:38:11.840 --> 00:38:19.519
Like, you know, how many times do you want to yell at your kid when they did something stupid and they're dysregulated?
00:38:19.519 --> 00:38:20.480
Like all the time.
00:38:20.480 --> 00:38:22.800
I just want to like be like, what are you thinking?
00:38:22.800 --> 00:38:28.079
But you have to wait for them to calm their nervous system down, otherwise they can't learn.
00:38:28.079 --> 00:38:33.840
They can't they can't even think about the situation in a different way because they're not regulated.
00:38:35.280 --> 00:38:48.880
Yeah, traumatize uh trauma prevents us from being able to learn from our experience in a like from a sense of safety because we have this like inherent unresolved sense of danger.
00:38:48.880 --> 00:39:01.519
So regulating your nervous system all the time, like all day, every day, is the key to bringing those skills up when you need them.
00:39:02.639 --> 00:39:18.559
Oh my gosh, that just like I don't know what it was about what you said or how you said it, but I was just like, hmm, so that friend that you know doesn't seem to learn and does and repeats the same things over and over again.
00:39:18.559 --> 00:39:21.440
I'm like, oh, that makes so much sense.
00:39:21.440 --> 00:39:27.360
Like I can empathize with them so much more because they're not in a state in which learning can occur.
00:39:28.800 --> 00:39:30.400
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
00:39:30.400 --> 00:39:43.440
So we can have empathy and we can have compassion for ourselves and for others who are experiencing these big responses and doesn't feel in control, right?
00:39:43.440 --> 00:39:51.440
I think um that's an important lesson too, is have empathy and compassion, not only for other people, but have it for yourself.
00:39:51.840 --> 00:39:53.760
I think you know, it's so weird.
00:39:53.760 --> 00:40:07.920
Why is it so much harder to care for ourselves than it is to be like, I was I just asked a kid today, like would you would you like would it be okay if your friend did this?
00:40:07.920 --> 00:40:08.719
No.
00:40:08.719 --> 00:40:09.840
Right.
00:40:09.840 --> 00:40:12.639
But if but like it's okay if we do.
00:40:13.199 --> 00:40:13.599
You know?
00:40:14.239 --> 00:40:18.000
So why why do we not have compassion for ourselves?
00:40:18.239 --> 00:40:18.800
I don't know.
00:40:18.800 --> 00:40:20.480
Maybe that's our next episode.
00:40:20.480 --> 00:40:22.000
Ooh, I like that.
00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:25.199
So I think that's a good place to leave it.
00:40:25.199 --> 00:40:27.599
Have compassion and empathy for yourself.
00:40:27.599 --> 00:40:32.400
Um, you know, you can't just think your way out of something your body's still holding on to.
00:40:32.400 --> 00:40:40.320
You have to use the skills uh regularly and consistently in order for your body to start engaging them on its own.
00:40:40.320 --> 00:40:43.119
So thank you so much.
00:40:43.119 --> 00:40:49.440
Thank you for this conversation as always, and thank you for listening to Why Am I Like This.
00:40:49.440 --> 00:40:54.239
If you like our show, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform.
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00:40:56.400 --> 00:41:00.960
This episode was written and produced by me, Laura Wood, and Michaela Beaver.
00:41:00.960 --> 00:41:12.719
Our theme song is Making Ends Meet by Thick as Thieves, and a special thanks to Core Self, Benavieri Counseling and Coaching, and Active Healing Psychiatric Services for sponsoring our show.