TRASCRIZIONE 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:02.286 --> 00:00:17.376
So in this episode, you're gonna find out why your brain keeps running threat assessments even after your last client leaves for the week, and we're gonna do something about it right here, right now.
00:00:20.536 --> 00:00:36.426
Empowering brilliant women in healthcare over 50 to transform burnout and compassion fatigue into renewed passion, reigniting your spark to create a life that energizes you every single day.
00:00:37.015 --> 00:00:38.286
I'm your host, Dr.
00:00:38.286 --> 00:00:38.826
Jules.
00:00:39.125 --> 00:00:50.475
Let's get to it So let's think about what it's supposed to feel like, okay?
00:00:50.515 --> 00:01:04.825
After we've finished our client, after we're like,"Whoo, we've done the week." Not what people tell you it's supposed to feel like, but what it actually feels like for you in your body, because we've got to get embodied to really understand this.
00:01:05.376 --> 00:01:07.016
So let's imagine this.
00:01:07.016 --> 00:01:16.495
Your last session ends, your notes are filed, you close that laptop, and your body, for just a split second, your body softens.
00:01:16.745 --> 00:01:20.656
Your jaw unclenches half a millimeter.
00:01:21.135 --> 00:01:23.596
Your shoulders maybe drop an inch or so.
00:01:23.855 --> 00:01:31.006
Some part of you deep down goes,"Whoo, okay, we made it." But your brain.
00:01:31.555 --> 00:01:34.885
Girl, that brain is still going, still running the reel.
00:01:35.335 --> 00:01:37.096
Did I say the right thing?
00:01:37.096 --> 00:01:39.126
Did I miss something on that intake?
00:01:39.266 --> 00:01:41.096
What's Monday going to demand?
00:01:41.415 --> 00:01:43.676
Ugh, am I already behind?
00:01:43.926 --> 00:01:46.876
Was I enough this week?
00:01:48.995 --> 00:01:54.195
And here's the part that I need you to hear before I go a single step further today.
00:01:55.385 --> 00:02:13.304
You have probably been living in that split for so long that you've stopped even noticing You're not even aware it's happening Body wanting rest, brain refusing rest.
00:02:13.834 --> 00:02:19.213
You've accepted this as the texture of your Fridays, maybe even the texture of yourself.
00:02:19.813 --> 00:02:23.183
And y'all, that is not who you are.
00:02:24.033 --> 00:02:30.683
That is what your nervous system learned to do, and those things are not the same.
00:02:31.283 --> 00:02:43.294
Today, I'm gonna show you the neuroscience, real, peer-reviewed, named researcher neuroscience for exactly why that happens.
00:02:43.854 --> 00:02:55.743
And then we're gonna do a 10-minute practice that gives your nervous system one thing it's been waiting for someone to hand it, dun, dun, dun, updated data.
00:02:56.174 --> 00:02:58.764
Okay, so we're gonna start with good old Bru- um, Bruce McEwen.
00:03:00.813 --> 00:03:06.463
We've talked about him before, and he's one of the most important researchers of the last century.
00:03:06.704 --> 00:03:24.604
He spent decades documenting what he called the allostatic load, and y'all know that's the cumulative biological cost that builds in the body and brain when the stress systems that were designed to turn off and turn on are kept constantly running.
00:03:25.993 --> 00:03:30.493
Here's what he found that is critically important for every healer in this audience.
00:03:31.104 --> 00:03:35.193
Your stress response system was designed to be episodic.
00:03:35.493 --> 00:03:39.183
It fires, it does its job, it shuts off.
00:03:40.033 --> 00:03:42.764
You survive the lion, right?
00:03:42.783 --> 00:03:47.443
You rest, the cortisol clears, the hippocampus resets.
00:03:48.234 --> 00:03:51.044
That is how the system was built.
00:03:51.834 --> 00:04:06.623
But y'all, in a clinical environment or as a professor, I can honestly say, y'all professors, y'all educators out there, that kind of environment as well, where the crisis are not lions, they're humans in pain.
00:04:07.213 --> 00:04:14.503
They come one after another after another, five days a week, year after year.
00:04:15.123 --> 00:04:19.744
The system never fully turns off in between events.
00:04:20.074 --> 00:04:23.644
The shut-off signal never arrives clearly.
00:04:25.134 --> 00:04:35.603
And over time, McEwen documented that continuous running of the stress system stops being protective and starts being damaging.
00:04:36.384 --> 00:04:42.473
The brain literally begins to rewire around the assumption that the threat is permanent.
00:04:43.783 --> 00:04:48.303
So your spinning brain on a Friday is not a weakness by any means.
00:04:48.723 --> 00:05:09.053
It's a nervous system that has been running a system McEwen called the allostatic overload, and it no longer recognizes the end of clinical hours as a signal to stand down because it stopped trusting that signal a long time ago Now let's pair that with Dr.
00:05:09.053 --> 00:05:12.613
Sonia Lupien at the University of Montreal.
00:05:12.894 --> 00:05:17.954
She spent decades documenting about cortisol and threat detection.
00:05:18.834 --> 00:05:23.244
Her research identifies four factors that the brain reads as threat.
00:05:23.923 --> 00:05:24.584
Listen to this.
00:05:24.584 --> 00:05:25.863
I find this really interesting.
00:05:25.874 --> 00:05:30.463
I can really, uh, relate in my own life, so listen closely.
00:05:30.644 --> 00:05:32.353
I, I, w- I'm curious what y'all think.
00:05:33.533 --> 00:05:39.184
So here's the s- the four things, the four factors she identified: something new, right?
00:05:39.593 --> 00:05:41.384
Something unpredictable, mm.
00:05:42.053 --> 00:05:51.204
A sense of losing control, and an ego threat, a challenge to your sense of who you are.
00:05:51.684 --> 00:05:58.644
Those four factors, she shows, are present in virtually every clinical interaction every single day.
00:05:59.584 --> 00:06:08.754
So when cortisol stays elevated across repeated threat exposures, the brain doesn't just respond faster to a threat.
00:06:09.303 -->
Load full transcript
00:06:14.494
Y'all, it begins to recruit more of its architecture to be threat detectors.
00:06:14.694 --> 00:06:17.004
Your threat detection architecture grows.
00:06:18.384 --> 00:06:28.553
So more of your neural resources get reassigned to surveillance, and that reassignment doesn't automatically reverse when you close the office door.
00:06:29.124 --> 00:06:38.384
Your brain doesn't get the memo that the shift ended, because the threat it learned to watch for was never a thing you could lock outside.
00:06:40.634 --> 00:06:42.744
So here's where Dr.
00:06:42.793 --> 00:06:46.653
Marcus Raichle at Washington University in St.
00:06:46.653 --> 00:06:50.524
Louis adds the final piece, and I think this is pretty fascinating.
00:06:50.553 --> 00:06:51.954
I love looking at this research.
00:06:53.053 --> 00:07:00.074
He, um, does neuroimaging research, and he identified that the default mode network...
00:07:00.233 --> 00:07:01.543
We've talked about that a lot.
00:07:01.834 --> 00:07:10.533
Y'all remember it's that constellation of brain regions that activates precisely when you're not focused on an external task.
00:07:11.103 --> 00:07:19.403
So when the clinical day ends, your external demands disappear, and the DMN, default mode network, comes fully online.
00:07:20.134 --> 00:07:32.144
And in a brain that has been trained by years of allostatic overload and cortisol mediator- mediated hypervigilance, that network doesn't rest.
00:07:33.084 --> 00:07:40.673
Y'all, it reviews, it audits, it runs threat assessments on everything you just did.
00:07:40.843 --> 00:07:41.574
Make sense?
00:07:42.704 --> 00:07:44.954
See, it's looking for what you missed.
00:07:46.745 --> 00:07:52.216
That loop you fell on Friday, it's not anxiety as a personality trait.
00:07:52.766 --> 00:08:05.505
It's the default mode network doing exactly what your allostatic system trained it to do, using the only rest time available to keep scanning for what's coming.
00:08:06.625 --> 00:08:11.245
So sweet soul, your brain, that beautiful brain of yours, it is not broken.
00:08:12.185 --> 00:08:13.435
It is brilliant.
00:08:13.886 --> 00:08:22.536
It built an entire architecture to keep you functioning under conditions that would have broken a lot of people.
00:08:23.915 --> 00:08:30.216
It just needs updated data, and that is what we're going to give it right now.
00:08:31.466 --> 00:08:37.346
Okay, so I created a practice for you'cause, you know, I'm the creator of practices.
00:08:37.346 --> 00:08:39.556
And, and so this practice I call...
00:08:40.196 --> 00:08:54.395
Well, first, this practice pairs your solar plexus chakra, which y'all know is your center of personal agency and self de- definition, with the brain's threat detection loop, and I call this the sovereign stillness reset.
00:08:54.826 --> 00:09:14.355
But the reason that we need to pair this with that brain, with your brain's threat detection loop is because based on Lupian's research, this has become very clear the threat your brain is scanning for on a Friday, y'all, it's not a clinical emergency.
00:09:14.556 --> 00:09:15.956
It's an identity threat.
00:09:16.576 --> 00:09:17.316
Hear that again.
00:09:17.326 --> 00:09:20.245
Not a clinical emergency, identity threat.
00:09:21.066 --> 00:09:26.225
The question your default mode network is looping on is not, what did I miss?
00:09:27.206 --> 00:09:30.836
It is this: Was I enough?
00:09:33.508 --> 00:09:36.837
And that solar plexus is precisely where we address that.
00:09:37.597 --> 00:09:44.048
So I need you to find a seat, both feet flat on the floor, spine easy and tall.
00:09:45.038 --> 00:09:53.937
Bring one hand to rest just above your navel, right there on your solar plexus, flat palm, warm contact.
00:09:54.768 --> 00:09:58.288
This is step one, the overload acknowledgement.
00:09:58.817 --> 00:10:05.778
And all you have to do is just say this out loud I don't want you to think it.
00:10:05.967 --> 00:10:07.817
It really needs to be said out loud.
00:10:07.817 --> 00:10:09.447
Your nervous system needs to hear you.
00:10:10.408 --> 00:10:15.118
"My brain has been running the threat scan all week.
00:10:15.648 --> 00:10:16.898
Of course it has.
00:10:17.097 --> 00:10:23.227
Look at what I carry." Say it again without rushing past it.
00:10:23.748 --> 00:10:24.488
Feel that.
00:10:24.607 --> 00:10:28.618
And I would even invite you, one hand on your solar plexus, one hand on your heart.
00:10:29.067 --> 00:10:30.087
Maybe your, um...
00:10:30.658 --> 00:10:45.057
I'm right-handed, so whatever hand is your m- main, if you're right-handed or left-handed, put that hand on your heart, the other hand on your solar plexus, and say again,"My brain has been running the threat scan all week.
00:10:45.597 --> 00:10:46.748
Of course it has.
00:10:46.967 --> 00:10:55.317
Look at what I carry." So what you're doing in this moment is something that research makes clear.
00:10:55.727 --> 00:11:03.577
You're introducing a competing signal into the default mode network's self-referential loop.
00:11:04.427 --> 00:11:07.457
The network was auditing without your permission.
00:11:08.258 --> 00:11:16.967
You just stepped in front of it, named what it was doing, and removed the shame that was keeping the loop pressurized.
00:11:17.998 --> 00:11:28.847
When the audit is named and validated, other than thought, the cortisol-driven urgency that was fueling it begins to drop.
00:11:29.857 --> 00:11:31.238
Y'all, this isn't a metaphor.
00:11:31.538 --> 00:11:36.278
This is how the threat detection system recalibrates, and Lord knows we need that.
00:11:36.857 --> 00:11:38.327
Lord knows we need that.
00:11:39.378 --> 00:11:51.836
What you do is you give it a true account of what demanded, what was demanded of it, and you stop treating it like an enemy We make friends with it.
00:11:52.005 --> 00:11:56.275
Isn't that a technique we use with depression or other symptomology our clients are facing?
00:11:56.515 -->
00:11:58.265
We're gonna use that technique on ourself.
00:11:58.306 --> 00:12:01.605
We're gonna, we're gonna animate it and make friends with it.
00:12:03.176 --> 00:12:10.355
Step two is the identity anchor, and you keep that hand on your solar plexus, and I want one on your heart chakra, too.
00:12:11.025 --> 00:12:18.725
I need your body to know you're talking to it, and right there on our sternum, that's a fast direction or fast connection to our vagus nerve.
00:12:20.296 --> 00:12:22.015
Keep your hands where they are.
00:12:22.515 --> 00:12:35.046
Press gently, and girl, not hard, just present, and I want you to feel something very specific: the slight rise and fall of your own abdomen under your palm.
00:12:36.346 --> 00:12:44.466
That movement, and this is exciting, that's your aliveness, not your productivity, not your case outcomes, not your billing hours.
00:12:44.806 --> 00:12:50.556
Your aliveness right here, right now, outside of all of it.
00:12:51.846 --> 00:12:52.416
See, Dr.
00:12:52.416 --> 00:13:09.446
Lupien's framework tells us that one of the four threat factors, the one that keeps the cortisol running longest, is the threat to self, the question of who you are when you're not performing your function.
00:13:10.645 --> 00:13:29.096
The solar plexus practice addresses that threat directly, not with an affirmation, with sensation, with your own warm hand telling your nervous system,"There is a you here that exists outside of work.
00:13:29.485 --> 00:13:30.225
She's here.
00:13:30.326 --> 00:13:35.316
She's real." The threat scan is looking in the wrong direction.
00:13:37.275 --> 00:13:44.296
So stay with that contact for three slow breaths, unhurried exhales.
00:13:44.296 --> 00:13:47.035
Not deep breaths, just unhurried ones.
00:13:47.285 --> 00:14:06.648
Let each exhale be a little longer than the inhale Step three, the off-ramp statement On your third eye, uh, well, yes, we love our third eye, but we're not working there right now.
00:14:06.648 --> 00:14:11.467
We're working with our solar plexus and our, uh, our solar plexus, and I've got your hand on your heart, too.
00:14:12.008 --> 00:14:13.837
Um, but on your third...
00:14:13.898 --> 00:14:14.548
Let's try this.
00:14:14.567 --> 00:14:15.248
Exhale.
00:14:15.587 --> 00:14:20.418
Say these words The week is complete.
00:14:21.158 --> 00:14:23.278
What I carried was real.
00:14:24.187 --> 00:14:26.148
I am real outside of it.
00:14:27.817 --> 00:14:32.388
See, girl, that sentence, that sentence right there is new data.
00:14:33.067 --> 00:14:49.378
Every time you say it, hand on solar plexus, hand on heart, after a week of carrying what you carry, you are making a deposit into a nervous system that McEwen showed us has been running a deficit for years.
00:14:50.368 --> 00:14:53.158
You are not doing positive thinking.
00:14:53.447 --> 00:14:55.868
You are doing neurological accounting.
00:14:56.298 --> 00:15:06.087
You are updating the allostatic ledger in a system that has been spending without a reset for far too long.
00:15:07.707 --> 00:15:32.975
So my friend, that is the sovereign stillness reset, your solar plexus meeting the allostatic brain, your own hand as a signal that the threat scan can finally, finally stand down So, sweet soul, three things I invite you to carry into this weekend.
00:15:33.926 --> 00:15:37.846
Your brain's inability to rest on Fridays is not a character flaw.
00:15:38.336 --> 00:15:48.375
It is allostatic overload, documented, named, researched, and it has a mechanism that can be interrupted.
00:15:49.586 --> 00:15:56.196
The default mode network does not run the threat audit because something is wrong with you.
00:15:57.265 --> 00:16:02.916
It runs because you gave it years of data saying threats don't end.
00:16:03.346 --> 00:16:06.645
You get to give it new data, starting right here.
00:16:08.696 --> 00:16:16.245
And the question s- your spinning brain is really asking is not, what did I miss?
00:16:17.385 --> 00:16:20.145
It is, was I enough?
00:16:20.686 --> 00:16:32.995
And sweet, beautiful soul, the answer to that question lives in your body, not, not in your case notes, your billing hours, your service, your performance.
00:16:33.485 --> 00:16:43.087
It's in your body So I want you to go be soft with yourself this weekend.
00:16:44.138 --> 00:16:47.388
I want you to love on yourself.
00:16:48.467 --> 00:17:00.235
You, my friend, sweet soul, you have more than earned it Sweet soul, give yourself what you actually need.
00:17:00.596 --> 00:17:14.895
Tap the show notes right now to discover your somatic signature because if bubble baths and breathing exercises could fix this, you'd already be back to your radiant self.
00:17:15.635 --> 00:17:17.165
You need the right map.
00:17:17.806 --> 00:17:23.895
Let's find out which of the four somatic signatures your body is using.
00:17:24.726 --> 00:17:26.026
Girl, this isn't homework.
00:17:26.435 --> 00:17:27.826
This is a homecoming