The Body Keeps the Story - Trauma, Memory & The Nervous System’s Silent Language

Why are so many people anxious, emotionally exhausted, chronically overwhelmed, numb, reactive, disconnected, and physically unwell… while being told they simply need to “cope better”?

What if the problem is bigger than individual weakness?

What if human nervous systems were never designed for the level of emotional pressure, overstimulation, disconnection, suppression, and performance modern life now demands?

In this emotionally charged and thought-provoking episode of Psychology & the Soul™, Kellee White, LMFT, and Dr. Shirley Impellizzeri, PhD, expose the deeper psychological and physiological realities of trauma, chronic stress, emotional suppression, and nervous system overload.

Because trauma is not just remembered emotionally.
It is lived physically.

And many people are carrying pain in their bodies they were never given safety, language, or space to process.
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In This Episode, We Explore:
• Trauma stored in the body and nervous system
• Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses
• Anxiety, panic attacks, and emotional shutdown
• Emotional suppression and physical illness
• Childhood trauma and adult relationship patterns
• Why emotionally sensitive children are struggling
• The connection between modern life and nervous system dysregulation
• Somatic healing, breathwork, and body-based healing practices
• Why healing goes beyond simply “talking about it”
• The emotional cost of constantly performing strength

This episode is not about weakness.
It’s about what the body has been forced to carry in silence.
Because sometimes the body speaks…
when the mind no longer can.

Streaming LIVE on YouTube, Facebook & Instagram

#PsychologyAndTheSoul #TraumaHealing #NervousSystem #MentalHealth #EmotionalHealing #BodyKeepsTheScore #SomaticHealing #AnxietyRelief #TraumaAwareness #HealingJourney

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Hi, everybody. Hi, Shirley. How are you doing? Hi, Kel. I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing very well. Unfortunately, my dog Otis is not doing so well. Oh, I know. It's so sad. You know, he lost his beloved partner, and uh, I need some good tips for anybody that has a dog that's in grief. If anybody could help me with that, I would appreciate that. Yeah, that is so sad. I mean, how long?

SPEAKER_02 1:03

How long did he have her? Well, he was with her for six years. Yeah, that's a long time. And mammals, all mammals bond, right? And unbonding takes time. Yeah. Breathing and unbonding takes time.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Yeah, yeah. Glad that you said that. Well, hello, everybody. Welcome back to Psychology and the Soul. And this is a place where psychology and spirituality just come together in real conversations that between Shirley and me. We're going to have a lot of conversation here. And tonight we're going to talk about something that maybe could make some people a little uncomfortable because we're going to be talking about um something that maybe society minimizes, or if it medicates it, or it suppresses it, or simply tells people to get over it. And we're talking about trauma. And you know, Shirley and I have been talking about trauma, Shirley, for for a long, long, long, long time.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Yeah. Well, but everybody shies away from the word trauma, you know, and trauma I think needs to be redefined. Trauma is anything that something can be traumatic that overwhelms the nervous system. Yeah. Anything that overwhelms the nervous system puts the brain immediately into fight, flight, you know, or freeze.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Before we go any further, can you explain what fight, flight, and freeze means in a simple way?

SPEAKER_02 2:26

That's an automatic response of the brain when something hits us that feels overwhelming. So fight is fight back to save your life. Flight is run away, take off running to save your life, or freeze when the brain determines, and that's the primitive part of the brain. It's not our thinking brain. Wait a minute, how should I react to this thing? You know, because if we did that, we die. The threat would come and hit us. It's automatic. Some people can feel so guilty because why didn't I run? Why didn't I fight back? If the primitive part of the brain determines that freeze and just sitting still is what's going to save your life, that's what you're going to do. So it's so important not to judge it or criticize it, you know. Even if other people do, it's very easy when we hear a case of something, you know, of someone, I don't know, uh being assaulted and the person didn't react. Well, I would have done this. Well, you know what? Moment, you might not have. So true. So we have to really respect how our brain, because the the most, and I've said this so many times, the most important function of the brain is to keep the host alive. And it'll do anything and everything to try and keep the host alive. So if these is what the brain determines in that moment, it's going to save life, kind of like plain possum, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Um, that's what the brain is going to do.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Okay. Or to run, that would be to flight, that that would be what you could do too. Exactly. If that's what the brain determines.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

If that's what the brain determines, the primitive part of the brain determines is what's going to save your life.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Wow. Well, many people are walking around carrying years and sometimes decades of stress, of grief, of fear, of heartbreak. Oh gosh, I've seen that so many times, of loss and a survival inside of their bodies while they're still trying to function as though everything is normal. And I know that you know people like this, Shirley. And I think one of the biggest questions that people ask right now is why do people feel so exhausted or anxious or reactive or overwhelmed or disconnected or emotionally numb? Is something wrong with us? And I get that a lot in therapy. Why people will ask me that, or is it surely our nervous system responding exactly what you just said, as it was designed to respond after all these years of caring too much? So, from a psychological perspective, Shirley, what are you seeing these days?

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Well, what happens is, you know, when the brain goes into when there's an overwhelming event, the brain goes into fight, flight, or freeze, it'll do what it needs to do. And then typically it goes back to baseline. We've dealt with a threat and it goes back to baseline. And humans evolve for short-term stress, you know. So the stress was was, and that's what stress is, you know, something comes at us, we deal with it, and then everything goes back kind of to status quo. Once the threat is passed, the nervous system typically returns to a calm, regulated state, you know, and so the way that our we survive by having these bursts of energy that saved our life and then coming back down. However, we're not in the Neanderthal days anymore, you know, and modern life, there's stressors all the time. If it's not a deadline, it's traffic, it's this, it's that. And so the nervous system sometimes stays in the activated, so it stays activated, stays activated, exactly. And that isn't good for our nervous system. And also, you know, as little, as little kids, if we grew up in a chaotic home or a home that felt so unpredictable, then that fight or flight stays turned on and it doesn't have time to go back into the homeostasis. And that's when it starts to kind of cause um you know, symptoms of trauma, anxiety, depression, you know, exhaustion, uh uh a freeze state where you're just kind of, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Well, also, I just thought of this, but it could also go into autoimmune illness.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Well, there's been a lot of research now um that a lot of autoimmune illnesses, you know, have to do with the fight or flight response getting stuck as a you know, unhealed trauma is what we see, unhealed wounds, you know, because imagine if you're always on a threat's coming, a threat's coming, I have to be prepared, I have to be prepared, then your nervous system isn't going to have any moments of calm or not a lot of moments of calm. And so anxiety is going to shoot up and a lot of consequences from that. And so immunity, I mean, gastrointestinal issues can be to unhealed trauma because you're always in fight or flight. When you're in fight or flight, the um the energy goes to the big muscles to prepare you to punch or to run. The energy is not going to be in the stomach and the digestion because who cares about digesting the sandwich you just ate if you need to punch away to stay alive. Yeah. So then all of a sudden, a lot of gastrointestinal issues start to show up.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Well, I mean, that's such an important everything you're saying is so important because people, when they have these situations, assume that they are weak, especially in our society, or that they're failing, you know, they're they can't keep up with the social media, they're failing, or that they should be able to handle it better, you know, like, but what if their nervous system really has, you know, as you just said, never had a chance to feel safe? And what if the body was responding exactly the way it was designed to after years of overwhelm?

unknown 8:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

It's a very interesting thing to think. And one of the things that I've noticed in my work, Shirley, is that people often think that they're healed, you know, and this is what they'll do. They'll think, well, I don't think about the event anymore. And they will say, I've moved on. And it's funny because when I had a very stressful situation um years ago, and I've talked about it and I've written about it with my daughter, had a had a really bad accident when she was a baby. And um, I remember thinking, we didn't talk about it, we just moved on from it. We don't even talk about it, it happened so year many years ago. We don't talk about it until then I started getting triggered. I started getting triggered, everything started happening all at once, and even though it had happened years ago, this trigger just started coming up. And it's funny because a trigger can be a smell, it can break, it could be a sound. I would hear certain songs and I'd get triggered from from this, um, a certain situation, but then suddenly the reaction that was like, oh, everything is good and whatever becomes intense and it becomes enormous. It's almost as if the body remembers something that the mind possibly had buried, which I know is exactly what happened with me. And Shirley, what do you mean when what do they mean when they say that trauma gets stored in the body? Because that's that's where I'm going with this.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Exactly, exactly. Well, because it does, it gets stuck in the nervous system and you know, and muscles when we're not able to complete that fight or flight energy.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

So let's say something happens and it's you you just repress it, or you just think it's just moved forward. What you're saying is it is actually stuck in the body somewhere in the nervous system, in the nervous system, and the muscles, because the body, you didn't get to fight back or run away.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

So when I'm working with someone that gets triggered, you know, you say you come in and you say, you know, I was at the store, and and uh I don't know, the clerk said something and I got totally triggered, right? And so we we tune in to that, to the trigger. And more often than not, up pops maybe a childhood memory, you know, of something that happened where the child wasn't able to fight back. And so what we do is we use a lot of imagery because the primitive part of the brain doesn't know the difference between real or imagined. That's why imagery works so well. It's not because it's woo-woo or you know, there's actually it's neurobiology. So I would ask you, okay, imagine if you could have done anything and reacted and saved yourself, what would you have wanted to do? Well, I would have fought back, right? And it could even be, you know, I was working with this gentleman that had witnessed a car accident, and it was, you know, it was an awful, awful car accident. And he was having a lot of trouble um driving, and it gotten to the point where he really couldn't drive. And so I had him tell me scene by scene what happened. I'm looking for activation in the body, and there was none. It was like he was reciting a recipe, and so I'm trying to kind of move the body in different ways because it'll trigger a movement will trigger. So I had him look to the right, nothing. I had him look to the left, and that's because this is where the accident happened, and that's where we got the trigger. And so I just had him imagine if you could have in that moment, even if it's sci-fi, what would you have wanted to do? And he came up with this thing where he would have grabbed the car and put it in safety before anything happened, and blah, blah. And his body reacted because he was able to do something, he was able to fight back, he was able to save the people, he was able, and so he started to feel tingling down his arms, and that's the nervous system releasing that pent-up energy that never got a chance to release.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Wow, and it's the brilliance of this type of therapy. It's not, you know, but the next day he was driving and he was okay. What happened was that pent-up energy of the fight or flight that hadn't been able to complete was getting stuck. And so the symptoms when that happens is anxiety, fear, overwhelm. But once you help someone complete that nervous system, what gets stuck in the nervous system, all of a sudden it releases. So the anxiety can release, the symptoms of depression can release.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

I also I was gonna run this by you too. I had a woman actually last week, somebody that I had seen years ago, and she's in her 70s now, and I started seeing her again recently. I hadn't seen her for years, but I saw her years ago. And as we were having a conversation, I was asking her about her mother and some something about her mother. And she said to me, and it was just it was very simple. She said, Wait, hold that thought. Like she said, just be still for a minute with me. She said to me, I got real quiet, and then she said, I have a memory that's just popping up. She's in her 70s, and it was a pretty horrific memory that had been happened when she was, I don't know, between 10 and 12, and it just popped up. And I just was quiet and let her tell me what happened. But surely it was part of it was I'm thinking that she was able to get to a place now where she could explore that trauma. Does that happen? Do you find that happening in in the work in your work?

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Absolutely. When we slow things down and we're really just kind of focusing on sensations, slow things down enough where there's enough time. And many times up pops a memory, you know, from childhood that had been suppressed for so long. And then you're able to work on it. You're able to say, Oh, you know, you're able to have empathy for what happened for the traumatic experience. You're able to say, God, if you could have done anything, what would you have wanted to do? There's the body being able to complete that fight or flight response.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

So slowing things down is so, so important. What happens with too many, we can call it traumatic events or too many overwhelming experiences, you can kind of live in this hyper-vigilant state and you never slow things down. You're always up, up, up, up, up.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

That can that wreaks havoc into your life.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Well, it really does. But I I also really believe that there are times, maybe we're headed more to those times now, that people are allowing themselves to have the memories pop up or to for the uh to work on the experience of what had happened, or to work on it, maybe. There's something about this time period that we're in, I think is is it's just people they're they're working harder than ever to kind of start to deal with their stuff. And I think a lot of people can become very frustrated. And um, you know, again, maybe they're reading books on therapy, maybe they've gone back to therapy, maybe they've done the work, but yet they still feel anxious and they can still get triggered and they still feel unsafe. So tell me, Shirley, why is awareness, just because you have an awareness of something, why is that not always enough?

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Well, that's where talk therapy can sometimes have its limitations. I mean, it's so helpful to understand why, why this happened, how it happened. But then what do you do with that? You know, that's where you have to heal it from the body in order to really heal the wound, because talk won't heal it. Otherwise, our profession wouldn't exist. We would understand things, we would make, you know, we would understand it, we reason it, it could be logical, and then all of a sudden, boop, my symptoms are gone, you know. But that's not the way it works. It's because, you know, in the of course, very uh well-known book, um, Dr. Bessel Vanderkoek, the body keeps the score because it's all stored in the body, and we need to learn how to get it from that place to heal it.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

And you know, I I was just thinking this as you were saying that. Sometimes a simple thing such as doing yoga can trigger something, can bring up some body memory or some memory or something, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Because yoga requires movement of the body. And sometimes, you know, when I'm working with people and I notice sometimes where they're, you know, and I'm exaggerating the the the um the you know the body, but I'll notice this when we're talking about something, you know, very subtle, maybe, right? And that could mean that something was coming at them from the left side and they weren't able to protect themselves. And so many times, you know, I'll ask questions and we'll go into the body and stuff, but many times I will have them do a movement like this. Yeah, and so that then allows that need to protect that they couldn't do to release, and again, more often than not, you you get the sensation of tingling or heat. That's all nervous system release response. Well, ice, sometimes ice, right? Like ice in the base that can be the freeze response melting away.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Wow, wow, yeah, it's fascinating, Mark. It really is, and the body doesn't necessarily respond to, and I love them, but in uh inspirational quotes, which is kind of you know, we'll hear them, but it doesn't mean that the body necessarily responds to them.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

They kind of they're kind of platitudes. I mean, I think there's a time and place for them. I think they're nice to hear, you know, they're not they're they can be wonderful, maybe. Exactly. I was just gonna say that they can be wonderful reminders, but they're not gonna heal trauma, they're not gonna allow someone to just all of a sudden think differently.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Right, right. So the body is gonna respond to experience, and that's where so much healing actually begins. So if we just like zoom out for a moment, I sometimes wonder if human beings were ever designed to process the amount of information that we have right now, which is you know, this amount of information and fear and stimulation and pressure that we're exposed to every day, you know, from social media or breaking news or economic uncertainty or comparison or pressure to perform or pressure to achieve or pressure to be constantly available. Um you know, and and on top of that, as you know, in the world, there are a lot of different types of personalities that we're dealing with on top of everything else. And if we're dealing with different personalities, I mean, also, well, Cheryl, you and I actually have a class on that on June 27th, dealing with um challenging personalities and helping you um helping you figure out how to set boundaries, how to deal with certain personality types. And so if you are in a situation with personality disorders, please join us on June 27th. Um Saturday, it's a two-hour class, and Shirley and I are going to cover all of this. But Shirley, how is how is our nervous system equipped for modern life? Well, it wasn't equipped for modern life. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

I mean, it kind of isn't because we, you know, short-term stress is kind of where the nervous system is. But when that can't happen, when it's one thing after another after another, we need to be very conscious and active in taking breaks, in slowing things down. If something, even even if on the news you hear something that's so impactful, take a moment to sit with it, sit with your body. Any kind of I remember I was, you know, on vacation once and I slipped, you know, actually, I'll admit I was in Greece, which is beautiful. And I slipped off you these marble steps. And I took a moment, I said, wait a minute. Wait, you slipped and fell? I slipped and fell, yeah, on my behind. Oh, and so I my partner wanted me to get up and are you okay, you know, and all this stuff. And I said, wait a minute, wait a minute. And I just sat tuned into my body and kind of just tuned into the shock that my body was in and just let it let it dissipate, let it, but you need to kind of train yourself to slow things down, especially when something like that. So whether it's a fall, slow it down, notice, just tune into the body sensations, notice what your body is doing, and eventually it'll do this and it'll come back to home.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

That is very true. You really helped me because I fell a few weeks ago. I tripped over my dog Charlotte, actually. And uh, but I remember going down and I remember thinking, I'm gonna complete the fall, like I was gonna complete, like you've taught me like complete different things, and you also you really helped me. I said, I have to go, I had to go take a nap. I mean, it really just made me very, very exhausted. But I instead of what I would have done, which is oh, get up and I didn't. I actually listened to my body with that one, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Just a lot from you with this. Yeah, well, thank you. I learned a lot from Dr. Levine, who you know created this type of failure. Yeah, but um, you know, but also when we hear terrible news, yeah, very you know, to sit with it. How did that feel? What are you noticing to sit with it and let your body have its dysregulation and then come back to baseline? And we can't always do that. But you know, there's this other wonderful teacher that I learned from Dr. Gina Ross, who she was over our show years ago. She was, yeah. And she's written these wonderful books, and in one of them, it's you know, uh brush the nervous system. So at the end of the night, you kind of go through your day, okay, and you notice the events that kind of maybe, you know, dysregulated, that were dysregulating, and you kind of sit with them, and you you um let the nervous system do what it needs to do to go back to baseline. And that's a wonderful practice to do. And these are things that we have to be very conscious and purposeful. They're not just going to come naturally. Coming naturally is this happened, get up and go, especially in modern life when you say, you know. And so we don't, we, we, we don't stop, we don't slow things down.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

And it's funny you say that because we've almost normalized burnout and we've almost normalized anxiety and exhaustion, and again, being overwhelmed, and and really almost. Normalized emotional numbness. Yeah. Well, at some point, survival mode must have become the standard operating system for adulthood. Don't you think?

SPEAKER_02 22:10

Well, that's what we're trained to do, even as little kids. I mean, and again, we don't do this maliciously, but like when a kid falls, you know, and and and riding the bike falls and starts crying, no, no, you're okay, you're okay, you're okay. You know, we get so, you know, instead of going, wow, God, that must have hurt. That was scary to fall off the bike. And help the child slow things down so they can know what they're feeling. Even invite them, what are you noticing? You know, is your tummy okay? Is your chest okay? Is your and help them slow things down? One of the most incredible gifts that we can give ourselves and of course our kids is to be able to be in touch with our emotions, you know, to expand our window of tolerance for emotions, especially the real uncomfortable ones, you know, to sit with them, know that they will pass. Right. You know, true.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Shirley, does stress impact um our concentration?

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Many times what we see as ADHD is really so much fear as a child, you can't focus on reading this book, you know, or doing homework because there was too much threat and danger out there. So I have to be, I have to be, you know, ready for anything. So sometimes ADHD, we have symptoms of it, but it really comes from a chaotic childhood. And that somatic therapy can really help.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Wow, wow. Wow, that's amazing. And I want to ask everybody a question that might challenge everybody, but I'm curious, are more people actually more, are people more traumatized today? Or are we talking about what previous generations never talked about? Because, you know, we do a lot of family constellation work. And back in the day, you know, our grandparents and great-grandparents, they really didn't, well, depending on what who they were, some of them were real talkers about their about their past, but some of them really, I had no idea about some of the things that people would have gone through because our parents and our grandparents survived really some incredibly difficult experiences, you know, war and abuse, addiction, poverty, loss, heartbreak, and they survived, but survival isn't necessarily healing. So, what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Yeah. Well, you know, it isn't. And I think we're just more open to talk about it now. I don't think that there was anything, you know, less, less um, you know, that our parents and grandparents suffered any less traumatic experiences. I think we're just talking about it now. I mean, back then it was about really survival between the depression and stuff. It was about keeping a roof over the head, food on the table, and everything else got suppressed and repressed. You know, and now we're talking about it more. There's a greater awareness of mental health, there's more language for trauma, the effects of trauma, um, you know, the as you just mentioned, the generational trauma. And so we're talking about it more. So people aren't, it's not, it's not a stigma like it used to be to talk about that. You know, trauma is still a word that people feel uncomfortable with, but if you just kind of viewed it as it's whatever overwhelms the nervous system, then then it kind of takes the stigma away.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And I think that many people now are doing the emotional work that again our previous generations just didn't do, they didn't have the resources. And the other, you know, they therapy back in the day, you know, it was almost seen as a, you know, something was you were must be really crazy if you went into therapy. Now, maybe there are some some people that still think that, I don't know, but we were not, you know, we're not just dealing with ourselves at this point. We are often dealing with generations of patterns, whether it's addiction or loss or betrayal, you know.

SPEAKER_02 25:57

Absolutely, absolutely. There's so many things that if you, you know, if you if you also normalized it, you know, that that trauma is it's physiological, you know, these symptoms that we have of anxiety and of depression and stuff, it's physiological. It started with the body that then show up in behavior, you know, show up in mood. But if we change the this viewpoint, the idea that there's something wrong with us, I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling depressed, that means there's something wrong with me, as opposed to wow, what is my body? What have I not healed? You know, to be curious, what haven't I healed or what might be going on? Right, right. When someone go ahead. I'm sorry, I was just gonna say, when someone comes into my office with anxiety, you know, I think about possibly a uh an unsafe childhood, you know, and they probably didn't feel unsafe, and so they had to be hyper-vigilant all the time, and it was chaotic and stuff, and all of a sudden, as an adult, I'm anxious. And what's anxiety? Fear, constant fear.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Yeah, so true. And if we talk about children and schools and emotional overload, I mean, that's the part that really touches my heart because when I look at children today, and of course I have grandchildren, I see a generation carrying enormous pressure, and that pressure is academic, oh my gosh, social pressure, technology. Oh, Cheryl, that we didn't have that when I was younger. We didn't have that piece of it. We didn't, we didn't have that.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

We've forgotten how important play is. You know, I mean, I went years ago before COVID, I went to a three-day conference on the neurobiology of play. What was that like? Because it is so important now. Play for a child looks very different than, of course, play as adults, right? But that means playing, moving your body, the creativeness, the the creativity that comes with play, how important it is as a the problem is that we're so focused on getting things done that we don't see downtime as just as important as getting things done.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Right. It's so true. I will I'm wondering, um, are we asking our children maybe uh to process things emotionally that many adults have struggled to process themselves? I mean, are you seeing any of that clinically?

SPEAKER_02 28:17

Oh, absolutely, absolutely, you know, and we as adults many times don't know how to process it. And so we expect our child to get over something quickly, you know, or we jump into the doer instead of just holding the space for a child to have their emotions. You know, I'll never forget one time I've learned this too late. Sid was little and a dog scared her and she was crying and stuff. And the healthy response is, oh, honey, that was so scary, you know, and just being with her fear and holding her, I'll protect you, you know, and making helping her feel safe, but also letting her know that her response was so natural, you know, and okay. What does mom of the year do? No, look, the dog's safe. Look, I'm paying the dog. It's okay, the dog's safe, the dog's safe. And so she's now sitting there confused, going, okay, I got scared and I cried, but maybe that's wrong. Maybe my responses are wrong because my mom is saying it's okay and everything is safe. So not validating her? Not validating. Wow, that must have been so scary. A child feels so seen when a parent can validate, you know, just like when you say no cookies before dinner and a child throws a tantrum. Yeah, sometimes, sometimes you get mad at mommy for saying no. That's okay. And I mean, you have to be, you know, I mean, as a parent, you're not going to always be able to respond that way, but to understand that validating a child's feelings and letting them have their feelings goes such a long way. You know, a child feels seen, and actually the tantrum then lasts half as long because the child felt seen. The other way, the child feels frustrated, like they're not seen, but then they're wrong for feeling the way they date, and then that causes this whole other thing. And even as adults, you know, how many times do we have a feeling about something and we say to ourselves, get over it? What's wrong with you? And trying to push through something, exactly, exactly. Like this, yeah, you know, instead of just being with the emotion, tuning into the body, what's the sensation there? And slowing things down, knowing that they will pass. Emotions always pass, and then the body goes back into a regulated state.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Yeah, it was while you were telling this story, I was thinking about there was a great little card game. It had all these questions for parents to ask their kids or their grandkids. And so I took one of the cards out when I had my grandkids, and I said to August, who was nine, who is nine, and I said, August, here's a question for you. And he was so excited to answer it. And I said, What do you like most about yourself for a little kid? Right?

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Wow, what a wonderful question!

SPEAKER_01 30:56

And I got real quiet, and he goes, Hmm, I've never thought about that. And then here's the greatest thing was let me think about that. I said, Okay, and I held the space, I didn't try to fill it in, you know, like well, you're this and you're this. I did not. I'm learning, I am learning, and I got real quiet, and he goes, I know exactly what it is. I said, What is it? He said, I love to solve problems, that's what I like most about myself. I'm a problem solver, and he actually is.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

What a sweetheart!

SPEAKER_01 31:29

How wonderful had I jumped in, you know, to say, Well, you're this and you're that, and I would have just ruined the whole friggin' moment, and you had to feel it, absolutely, the feeling, and then it was Lulu's turn, who was six. And I said, Lulu, what do you like most about yourself? I gave believe me with this one, you give her all the space in the world, and she said, Well, and she put her little hands together and she said, She got real quiet, and she said, I know exactly what it is. I said, What is it? And she said, I love that when I create, I don't know what I'm gonna create, and then it appears for me.

unknown 32:13

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Wow, those answers, yeah. Six. I knew had I said, You're so she is so creative, you're the most creative, this or that. I didn't say a word. And so holding space for them, I think, is really important because it it helps to regulate them too.

SPEAKER_02 32:33

Well, it's so interesting that you say that because that's all also a technique in therapy. When you ask somebody something, what what do you imagine that, you know, why do you imagine that happened? You know, and you wait and you hold the space for them to come up with the answer. Oh, that's oh my god, I married my mom or something like that, right? There's it it stimulates these neurotransmitters in the brain that actually allow that then to sit in. If I were to tell them, well, listen, it's it's like you married your mom. Oh, you're right. I mean, they could go into it, but it's not the same as if you give them time to come up with it on their own.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Right. It's so true. And can't and with children, we can also, you know, label very, very quickly. Uh, you know, they're difficult, they're defiant, they're problematic, they're disruptive. Instead of asking, what happened? Which is really exactly because what happened and what are they trying to communicate? And it's up there with had I rushed the questions with my grandkids. Yeah, I mean, I slow and easy and give them all the space they need to figure this out, but what do they need? Because behavior is often just a communication, you know, that's from a nervous system that doesn't have the words.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

Absolutely. So when we talk about kids acting out, you know, or trying to suppress the acting out, uh, a more, much more helpful thing that'll eventually decrease the acting out from that deeper place is to try and understand what that behavior is communicating, you know, as opposed to trying to just squash the behavior, you know, call it bad, squash the behavior, be curious about okay, what is what are you trying to communicate? You know, and again, as parents, we're so we're stressed out, and a lot of things can happen and stuff, but to know that is kind of a rule of thumb, to be able to do that more often than not.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Well, and you always say curiosity. Explain that to everybody because I think it's a beautiful answer.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Well, again, Dr. Peter Levine, you know, stressed that in my training is to be curious about something. And and one of my other teachers, Dr. Larry Heller, always said, curiosity is the antidote to criticism and judgment. When we can be curious, even about a behavior that we don't like in ourselves, there's a big difference, but going, God, I'm curious why I reacted that way, or I'm curious why I got so angry at that, whatever it may be, as opposed to, God damn it, what's wrong with me? Why am I, you know? So the curiosity, even if it's a behavior we're not happy with or that we'd like to change, you come at it from such a different place than criticism or judgment. It's actually a compassionate, empathic way to come from something from a spiritual, and there's so much research that also shows self-compassion is so healing to be able to have compassion for the self. Everything that we do and think or that we don't like, there's a valid reason for it. It showed up as a reason. More often than not, it's an adaptation skill, survival skill from childhood. You know, explain adaptation skill. Explain that. Yeah. Well, we all have to get through our childhood, you know, we all have to survive our childhood. I have to get through it. Whether it's physical, actual physical survival or emotional survival. And we will, you know, because staying alive is the most important, we will create adaptation techniques to help us through. So, if, you know, for example, in my case, when there was emotional neglect, so my parents were always there and stuff, but no one knew how to navigate emotions, I had to shut them down. And so I became a do-it-yourself. No, I can handle this. No, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. And when I started doing my work, asking for something was so difficult because when you've had to shut all your needs and your emotions down, asking for something can create a lot of shame. But that was an adaptation, you know, adaptation technique that you know, that you had to uh that you had to go through. Some people who come from a lot of chaos all of a sudden become very rigid.

SPEAKER_03 36:42

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Adaptation, because chaos is too scary, even a even a tiny amount of uncertainty or chaos. And so they become very, you know. So it's to view it in that light, you know, as an adapt as a survival adaptation, and to have that in and of itself brings compassion to it. Yeah, that's right. And then, of course, okay, but I'd like to, you know, heal that so I don't have to be that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

And that's where, you know, our work comes in, therapy comes in. Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

Oh my gosh. Now, if we talk about medication and survival and deeper healing, this conversation may be a little more nuanced with this because medication helps many people and it saves lives, no doubt about it. Um, but I also think people quietly ask deeper questions, which is really the question is why am I struggling? Or what happened to me? Which is a great question when you get to a certain space. What happened? What happened to me? Um, how do I truly heal? I mean, these are such great questions, but where does medication fit into the bigger picture, Shirley? Well, I you know, I have this idea.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

I can't stand it when when, you know, the only medication we have a huge issue with or a stigma is medication for the brain. Because when you're diabetic and you don't metabolize sugar, nobody says, Oh, you're taking insulin. Look at this guy, you know, or we don't think twice when we take heart medication or blood pressure medication. But God forbid we have to take a medication to help balance our brain. There's like 700 trillion connections that need to be balanced for us to feel okay. It shows up in mood, and so that's why we think, okay, just will yourself to feel better, or the, you know, they're inspirational quotes and that kind of thing. But sometimes trauma can create a chemical imbalance, or your own, you know, your own um um uh, you know, what you get from your parents, the genetic stuff can create chemical imbalance in the brain. And that's all the medications are there to do, is to help balance it out. Now, sometimes do people get over medicated? Yes, you know, but I view them as vitamins to the brain. The brain is an organ like any other organ in the body. We don't have an issue when we take medications for any of the other organs underneath, you know, from the neck down, but we take medication for this organ, and all of a sudden there's a huge stigma.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

Right. Oh, I'm with you on that completely. I mean, you know, medication isn't necessarily the destination, but sometimes it is certainly extremely helpful and needed. It's a bridge. And for a lot of people, that bridge creates enough stability, if you will, that that because the brain is stabilized, you can really begin deeper healing.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think there's different entry points. Like I, you know, when I work with someone who's either extremely anxious or extremely depressed, and all I'm doing is trying to keep their head above water. I'm not I'm not able to do the deeper work, and so that's all we're doing. And so many times in those cases, I will suggest medication. Medication just takes the edge off, it's not gonna make you feel, you know, completely no anxiety or not depressed. It just takes the edge off, so then the deeper work can happen.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Right, right. And also if you're dealing with somebody who's ragingly angry, it's also maybe take a little notch of something that helps, you know, to calm the brain, so you can actually get into the anger. Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

So you can get into the anger and you can get into what caused the anger in the first place and heal those wounds. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

Absolutely. Um, because you know, and again, it's funny, you know, we talk about men now with emotion and suppression, and one of the greatest blind spots, you know, in our culture has been how to raise boys, because many boys are taught, you know, at least back in the gener back in the generation. I don't think it's so much now, but I don't, I'd like to think it's not now, but don't cry, be tough, man up, push through it. I mean, oh for goodness sakes. And 20 years later, we're shocked by addiction and rage and isolation and emotional shutdown and disconnection. It's almost as if we've confused emotional suppression, if you will, with emotional strength. What are your thoughts, Shirley?

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Absolutely, absolutely, because suppression doesn't mean that you're regulated, that just means you're not that. Yes, and we are emotional beings. All mammals have emotions, so we can either if we don't feel emotions, now it's all on a continuum. Some people are very sensitive to emotions and feel them hi, hi, hi, low, low, low, you know, and some people not so much. Interestingly enough, that's the piece that is genetic, you know, our level of our level of sensitivity. Oh, I don't think I realized that. Okay, yeah, when someone says you're too sensitive, there's no such thing as too. That's just my level of sensitivity. And if my parent isn't, well, they're suppressing it because somehow I got it from one of those two, right? So yeah, so suppression isn't regulation, suppression just means that we're not allowing ourselves to feel it, and that can, again, as we've said in already, can create other issues, can create uh physical issues, you know. Um, the best thing to do is to learn how to uh increase your window of tolerance to tolerate emotion. No one it doesn't feel good to sit in sadness, to sit grieving, to sit with anger, to sit with these emotions that don't feel good. But it's so important to teach yourself to be able to sit with them, knowing that they will pass, even if they feel like a tsunami at times, knowing that they will pass.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

Yeah, and from a spiritual perspective, emotions are information. So we call them they're the messengers. So when we when we refuse to listen to you know our our emotions, they don't disappear, they simply get louder. And um, you know, and then you know ultimately the body might say that's enough. So many people actually will hit a wall, yeah. They'll have a panic attack, they'll burn out, they'll have exhaustion, they'll have illness, yeah, emotional collapse, and then they think that they're breaking. But sometimes I wonder if the body's actually saying, I cannot carry this anymore. I'm done. Yeah, what happens, Shirley, when the body finally says enough? Like you get to that place.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

Well, that's just it. You know, everybody has its limits, you know. Peter Levine would always say, even the toughest Navy SEAL has its limits. You know, the nervous system has a limit. And so you need to, you need to um notice when you're reaching that limit and either take a little bit of time, do your exercises, tools that help grounding yourself is a great way to help regulate, you know. Um, and you it's a connection between mind and body. You know, when I first started this work, I used to put a post it with the word feet on it just to remind me notice my feet, notice my feet. The more connected we are with our body, the more we're able to notice when things dysregulate us, because the research shows. The body will respond seconds, milliseconds before the brain is aware of what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

So even if I'm out, you know, and about, and I notice my body have a response, and I'm so connected with my body that I notice that that lets me know something just happened. I just got triggered. Right. It's so the moment to take a step back. So I'm not just reacting all over the place, but I'm able to take a step back. What did what just happened? Right. Oh, that person looks like someone that assaulted me a year ago, you know, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Exactly. Um, and what if the breakdown that somebody has is not a failure? Because it's really an invitation, and it's the invitation to stop surviving and start to heal. That's that's right.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Doesn't that make sense, Shirley? Just it, a breakdown. You know, how could that be failure? Why not be curious? Wow, I just broke down, I wonder why.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Right. I have a question for you. I have a question for you, Shirley. And this is actually someone just wrote this, and it's such a good question. Somebody just said maybe that's why people get tattoos to connect with the body. Let's talk about that. Oh, thank you, Melanie. That's a great observation. Possibly.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

They also get tattoos to kind of in a way show their trauma. I mean, when I see someone, especially with a tattooed face and tattooed, you know, they want to disappear. Yeah, they don't want to show their true self because that's too that, you know, maybe too vulnerable. I mean, I'm guessing, right? I'm theorizing, but if someone came into my office, it looked like that, that's what would inform my questions, my curiosity, you know? Um, but yeah, yeah, and and certainly from what I understand, I don't, I don't, I don't have any, but they're extremely painful. So it could be a way to connect.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

Yeah, yeah, could be. Um, and so for the person that's watching tonight who realizes they've been surviving for years, Shirley, where do they begin? If you feel like if you've been uh if you hear anything that we're saying and you feel like you have been surviving, Shirley, where is the best place for them to begin?

SPEAKER_02 46:09

The first is um to be if you notice yourself being critical or judgmental, shift into curiosity. Okay. There's a valid reason why you feel that way, you react that way, you you know um think the thoughts that you do, even if it's stuff that you're not happy about. You know, um there's so much, there's so much information outside. You know, we have such an issue sometimes with social media, but there's also wonderful information. Look up tools to regulate the nervous system, tools to learn to regulate, connecting your mind and your body. You know, when when there's when we come from you know traumatic experiences, we tend to disconnect because it's too painful. You know, so how can we start to connect again with our body? You know, and like you know, the simple way that I did it was just to remind myself, notice your feet every throughout the day, notice your feet. If I invite you now, Kelly, to notice your feet, or if I invite people watching to notice their feet, all of a sudden you're connected. Yeah, yeah. Yes, in the next minute, you might be back up here. But the moment I invited you to notice your feet on the ground, or even notice your feet, whether on the ground or not, you're connected.

SPEAKER_01 47:29

I like that. Yeah, I like that. Well, here's a quick question, Shirley. And I think it's not a quick question, but I'm gonna ask the question from Tracy. How does a person heal from family trauma and grief when you live where you are constantly reminded of the trauma?

SPEAKER_02 47:46

Well, that's tough. I mean, that's tough, and that would be working with a somatic therapist with someone who so you can heal it, and so then you don't have to get as triggered. You can notice yourself. I mean, when I started to work with my, you know, my stuff, and we all we're all can be angry at our parents for certain things, and again, we could both can coexist. I can love my parents for everything they tried. I know that they didn't, that they weren't, they weren't intentionally trying to hurt me, and I can be angry at where they messed up at the misattunments, and we can hold both. Sometimes we're so we feel so bad with being angry at a parent when we know they tried their best and they did the best they could. Yeah, and I have a right to feel angry about stuff, right? Right. So I'll never forget. I used to go to my dad, and you know, he's poor guy, he is uh, you know, uh just very uh you know autistic and didn't know how to connect and didn't know, you know. So I'd be there. What was that, Kel? He was an engineer, he was an engineer, yeah. So engineer brain. So he'd come, hey, hey, how's it going? How's it going? Really friendly, 15 minutes. He'd turn on the TV, so it was done. That was all he's able to give, 15 minutes. And I remember it used to make me so angry because I would take it so personally. He doesn't care about me, he never asks questions. He just and I started doing this work, and when I discovered all of this, the first time I remember as I was leaving, I wasn't angry. I was hurt because I would love to have had, you know, a connection with him, a deeper connection, but I wasn't that anger wasn't there. And so that's what we that's what you will notice when you start to work through this and heal wounds. Even people who live where the trauma happened, you know, you will notice that the anger that the the the intensity of the feelings that you have when the trauma isn't fully healed, that those start to decrease in lesson. There are there still might be disappointment, of course.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Shirley and Margaret says, You got 15 minutes. She got two minutes.

SPEAKER_02 49:54

I gotta, I gotta, gotta go. Well, then I'll consider myself lucky. I got 15.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

I know what I would have done with 15 minutes from my dad. Would have been like, oh, I have to go. That's really funny. You know, it it's just it just is uh very, very funny. Um, let's see here. Um what I don't mean to laugh, but um see another good thing about working with you, Charlie, is we can both laugh at oh yeah some of the circumstances that we found ourselves in on earth. Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

But you know, it requires like it requires, you know, healing it, working with it, healing it. And you've taught me so much about, you know, just that we're here for a reason, which adds, you know, besides there's a valid reason for why I feel I feel with my human family, but also there's a bigger reason.

SPEAKER_01 50:49

Oh, there's a bigger reason. And the other thing, as a bigger, on a bigger note here, this time period period that we're in, we did want to heal ourselves that heals the generations behind and the generations going forward. We're the we were the volunteers, if you will, that said, all right, yeah, I'll do it. All right, yeah, I'll get here. Then you get here and you forget, but that is accurate, and that's why there is so much help out there now. I mean, just be curious about how do you feel? Just how do you feel? And then just get real quiet and allow the things to start to come up. Exactly. And slow things down when slow it down, right?

SPEAKER_02 51:26

Slow it down when something happens, a startle or anything, slow it down, tune in, you know. It'll it'll pass, but we can't. What happens is when we feel the big feelings, we shut it down right here, right? So never let the nervous system complete that. So have compassion for yourself, rest, slow things down, and don't isolate. Sometimes when we go through something, we have a tendency, whether it's conscious or not, to feel like we're the only ones and we tend to isolate. And connection and a feeling of community is so important and so healing. And this is me, you know, the person who you the loader, you know, who's now saying that because I've you know, because that's just we're we're we're hardwired to be in connection with people, right? Such an important aspect.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

That that is so true. Wait, I have to read one more of these Laura. Everybody had a different type of father. We should just do a show on dads. What kind of dad did you have? You know, um, Laura says my father, who was left-brained, would rarely talk. His facial expressions and hand gestures were the most we got from him. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 52:39

I'll never, I mean, yeah, we should do that. I'll never forget when my dad was as he was getting older, and I guess more, I don't know, had more time to be in touch with himself or whatever. One time my sister and I go visit, and at the end he goes, Okay, love you. And my sister and I walk out, what the fuck is wrong with him? You know, because we were so not used to it that it was almost jarring in a way.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

That is very funny, Shirley, especially if you weren't used to that. Melanie says it's men's mental health month. Well, I did not know, but thank you for that. That's that's a good thing to know. Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, your body may not be betraying you, it may be simply telling a story that has never been fully heard. And perhaps healing begins the moment we stop fighting and we start listening. So thank you for joining us, everybody on psychology and the soul. And all and remember, June 27th, Shirley and I are teaching a class. I think it's called Why Do They Act That Way? And we all want to know why do they act that way?

SPEAKER_02 53:48

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's important to understand, you know, understanding doesn't mean you don't set your boundaries and you don't keep yourself safe from from uh you know from behavior that that doesn't, you know, that crosses boundaries. But to understand it, we can come at it differently. We can come at it with a little bit more compassion. Yeah, that doesn't mean we tolerate bad behavior.

SPEAKER_01 54:13

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. We will not tolerate bad behavior, that's for sure. Everything we've learned. But um, we'll definitely do a show on dads, and we know we'll have to do one on moms too if we do one on dads. We'll have to do well. Father's day is coming up, so yeah, we'll have to do a you know, a show on fathers, which would really be a very funny. I think it'd be a good show. But um, everybody, thank you for joining us. And Shirley, it was always great to see you. Love you, love to see you, and bye everybody, and we'll see you Thursday on Ask Me Anything. So please join me on Thursday. Bye, everybody.