Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
REPLAY: How Stress Leads to Overwhelm and Trauma that Imprint in the Nervous System w/ Dr Aimie Apigian
190 Plays2 years ago
Children's health consulting (autism, ADHD, gut dysfunction, etc.): https://christianyordanov.com/childrens-health-consulting/
Get 3 FREE video courses instantly when you sign up to my members' community here: https://members.christianyordanov.com/
The courses are:
- The Healthy Gluten-Free, Casein-Free Diet for Autism. ADHD, and Gut Dysfunction
- Nutrient Supplements for Autism, ADHD, and Children's Health
- Health Challenges Autistic Children Experience
You will learn a ton and there will be more educational content for parents on the free member plan. Members can also suggest topics for me to research and publish in the community platform. Join us today: https://members.christianyordanov.com/
The above 3 courses cover topics such as gut dysfunction and infections, clostridia bacteria, Candida, oxalates, methylation, excitotoxicity, zinc / copper imbalance, going gluten-free and how to do it well, heavy metals and chemical toxicity, probiotic supplementation, mitochondrial dysfunction, immune system dysregulation, neuroinflammation, and much much more. I even show you how to select high-quality supplements and avoid the junk and hype - with real examples and analysis of ingredients on screen...
Every parent of an autistic child must know this information that is why I want to share it with you for free. And parents with kids that have an any health complaint will also learn a ton. In fact, every parent will learn a lot of value information from each of these courses - so please help me share this information with more parents! Thank you so much.
Links to my book "Autism Wellbeing Plan: How to Get Your Child Healthy":
US Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Autism-Wellbeing-Plan-Child-Healthy/dp/1916393004
UK Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Autism-Wellbeing-Plan-Child-Healthy-ebook/dp/B084GBBDL9
Website: https://christianyordanov.com/
---
In this episode we have Dr Aimie Apigian and we talk about how stress and can lead to overwhelm and subsequent trauma that can get imprinted into our nervous systems. Pretty riveting stuff and very relevant to the current stressful environment.
Dr. Aimie is a Board-Certified Preventive Medicine Physician who specializes in trauma, attachment and addiction medicine, and optimizing our nervous system to feel our best and do our best. After throwing herself into finding answers on how to help her foster-adopted son as he struggled with severe emotional and behavioral issues, she started to see how much of trauma is biology, not psychology.
Website: https://draimie.com/
Shift to Calm Aliveness course: https://traumahealingaccelerated.mykajabi.com/Shift_to_Calm
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Episode Relevance
00:00:10
Speaker
Connecting Minds is a space dedicated to honoring the amazing authors, researchers, clinicians, artists, and entrepreneurs who are contributing to our collective evolution or simply making the world a better place. These thought-provoking conversations are intended to expand our horizons, so come with an open mind and let us grow together. Here is your host, Christian Yordanov.
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Connecting Minds podcast. My name is Christian Jourdanoff, your host. Thank you so much for joining me today on our 15th episode of the podcast with Dr.
Dr. Aimee's Journey into Trauma Medicine
00:00:51
Speaker
Aimee Appigian. Now, I think the stuff we talk about on this particular episode is pretty pertinent for the times we live in, you know, with all this corona related stress and overwhelm and
00:01:07
Speaker
and the related economic declines and side effects causing a lot of people to just be in a state of constant stress and fear. So let me read you Dr. Amy's bio. Dr. Amy is a board certified preventative medicine physician who specializes in trauma, attachment, and addiction medicine.
00:01:30
Speaker
and optimizing our nervous system to feel our best and do our best. After throwing herself into finding answers on how to help her foster adopted son as he struggled with severe emotional and behavioral issues, she started to see how much of trauma is biology, not psychology.
Personal Health Challenges & Discoveries
00:01:50
Speaker
After six exhausting years, the pieces came together for her son and as he successfully shifted into feeling loved and understood, she then developed chronic fatigue and autoimmune issues and discovered her own trauma patterns at the root of it. By what she calls biohacking trauma, attachment and the nervous system, she has found it is possible to rewire the insecure attachment trauma patterns and accumulated stress that is stored in our bodies.
00:02:19
Speaker
In addition to running her medical concierge focus on biohacking the nervous system, she is the founder and director of Family Challenge Camps, a weekend intensive for families, and is the founder and CEO of Trauma Healing Accelerated, an LLC dedicated to providing education and courses for those wanting to help themselves and or their children.
00:02:40
Speaker
She has written a roadmap to accelerating the rewiring of trauma patterns, runs the intentional parenting for attachment three month program, and has created self-guided online courses, including the shift to calm aliveness course to get people started with the basics of somatic experiencing, a powerful body-based therapy. She loves seeing the change happen that can happen so quickly by working directly with the body and optimizing one's biology for connection and aliveness.
00:03:10
Speaker
So there's so much that we covered in this episode that I will probably have to re-listen to it two or three times more to fully grasp the concepts that Amy's putting forth and do some extra research on.
00:03:28
Speaker
Because we hear about the rest and digest nervous system and the fight or flight nervous system, but what she explains really well is that we also have the freeze response and this is very common and very misunderstood.
Nervous System Reprogramming
00:03:47
Speaker
It has to do with when we get overwhelmed. So the stress causing the fight or flight response becomes too much or is there for too long. And then we can enter this freeze response. So a lot of her work is around helping folks understand these patterns better and consciously reprogram, repattern their nervous system.
00:04:10
Speaker
to basically just live with a higher quality of life. So I really love what she's doing, and I'm so glad that I can share her work with you. Highly encourage you to check out the further resources linked in the episode description, the show notes on the website. The video is also going to be on YouTube. So without further ado, it's a great honor to present to you our guest today, Dr. Amy Pigian.
00:04:39
Speaker
Today on the Connecting Minds podcast, we have Dr. Amy Apigian. Amy, thank you so much for joining us today. Absolutely, Christian. I'm excited about this.
00:04:50
Speaker
Awesome, awesome.
Inspiration Behind Dr. Aimee's Work
00:04:51
Speaker
So today the broad topic of the conversation will be trauma attachment and potentially addiction that depending on where we take it. So with that in mind, can you give folks a little bit about your background, what you do, how you got into it and basically the type of, we know you're a medical doctor, the type of medicine you practice currently.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So my story started out as what I think would be considered as a very normal path for a physician where, you know, I was very heavy in the sciences. I even got a master's in biochemistry and it was during medical school that I felt the calling to adopt or not adopt, but start foster parenting and they placed
00:05:44
Speaker
you know, ultimately what became my son Miguel with me and he came into my life at age four. And my goodness, like I still remember that first moment when I met him. And it was just this excitement, this hope for the relationship that we would have and the connection and how I just knew that I'd be able to reach his heart and heal so many of the wounds and the
00:06:13
Speaker
painful experiences that he had had already in his early, you know, young four years of life. So I was so excited for this. And I did everything wrong, Christian. I did everything wrong because I was so excited and I knew I was wrong. But at the time, I knew that just my love would be enough to undo all of that damage. And it wasn't. And it was six very long years.
00:06:42
Speaker
trying to figure out the pieces for what he needed to actually do well and be happy and not only be happy but be able to open his heart to me to trust me and to feel safe in his.
00:06:58
Speaker
loving me and me loving him. Stuff that I never would have even thought about going through medical school and studying proteins and enzymes and medications and wrote memorizing all of these things. And then, yeah, I was handed this personal experience, which ultimately drastically changed my life and my career, from this four-year-old boy who showed up in my life and taught me, you can know all that stuff.
Nervous System Patterns & Behavior
00:07:25
Speaker
But it really comes down to the relationship, the attachment, and this stuff gets wired into our nervous system and we continue to act out what our nervous system has been patterned to do for survival and we don't even realize it. So part of my story is that after all the pieces came together for him,
00:07:49
Speaker
my own health took a crash. And so it was almost like this breath of like, whew, like we made it. We made it. What, you know, six long years and we made it. We're here. And then my own health crashed and I realized it was just that opportunity for my body to give in to the stress
00:08:08
Speaker
that I had been living under for so many years and come to find out, I realized, wait a second, like I've got these same type of patterns that he does. I don't always feel safe and secure in vulnerability and intimacy. And I feel like I need to protect myself and
00:08:29
Speaker
And it was like, whoa, wait a second. Like I thought that was just my son and his issues from having such a rough early few years. How come I have these tendencies? How come I have these what we would consider like an insecure attachment style, an insecure attachment pattern wired into my nervous system that I realized was leading to the root cause of my health issues, which became for me
00:08:54
Speaker
chronic fatigue from the stress and it even resulted in some autoimmune issues, some gut issues. And I had always been very active and I started to have more accidents. So I've broken my collarbone here on my right side four times now because of different sports injuries. And the more stuff started to happen, the more I realized, wait a second, this is my nervous system and these patterns of not being fully present
00:09:23
Speaker
And that's part of what I call the freeze response of not being fully present in our life and needing to figure out how to rewire that. So that's what I've been spending the last, oh my goodness, like six years now figuring out how to rewire this as an adult now.
Fostering Secure Attachment in Children
00:09:40
Speaker
Okay, so let's unpack that. So can you tell us, I mean, whatever you would like to share, what kind of issues did Miguel have and basically what did you feel you did wrong and what did you kind of learn is the right way to
00:10:02
Speaker
to basically help a small child begin to love, to trust, to not live in fear, this kind of stuff.
00:10:12
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And such a great question and so important for our times today where we have children who are living in fear, especially with all the changes lately this year with the pandemic. There's so much fear and insecurity and we as the adults and their parents need to know, like, how do we actually get them through this?
00:10:33
Speaker
and get them through this in a way that they feel safe, that they feel secure, that they feel happy, that they're going to be successful and not let this be one thing that leads them to be one more statistic for a mental health condition, right?
00:10:50
Speaker
And so this is such an important question for right now. And what we know of the attachment and neuroscience and all of this stuff that comes together is that young children need to feel like their parent is bigger and stronger than they are and perfectly safe.
00:11:17
Speaker
And that's a unique combination and I think that it seems that generally we have forgotten this piece of my parent needs to be stronger than me. We focus more on the love and the connection and that's what I did wrong. So knowing that my love was gonna undo all of his damage, I immediately got on the floor and I started playing with him and whatever he wanted, I just went along with.
00:11:45
Speaker
And within a few minutes, I could see that he had lost any respect for me, any sense of that I'm the one who's the leader. And in a child's mind, if the parent is not the leader, that means that they have to be the leader.
00:12:04
Speaker
And they feel very incompetent like they know that they don't know about life enough yet to be the leader and so when they when they feel the lack of that leadership.
00:12:20
Speaker
It puts them into a place of fear, realizing, feeling that they have to then fill that role. So we have this strength and leadership quality that has to be there, has to be there. And then along with that, it also has to come with a sense of safety of, yes, they are a strong leader and they have my best interest in mind.
00:12:45
Speaker
And when those two are combined, it is the recipe for ultimate trust, secure attachment, and connection. Okay. So what are some ways a parent might unbeknownst to them relate to the child unintentionally that they're not in a leadership position, that they don't got it kind of way? Sure.
00:13:12
Speaker
This can come across in many different ways. And I'd like to start with how the parent feels inside of themselves.
00:13:24
Speaker
because whatever their insecurities are, if they don't feel like they are competent, if they feel a lack of confidence in themselves and their ability to lead and make good decisions for their family, that's gonna come across Christian in their body language. It's gonna come across in their tone of voice. It's gonna come across in their facial expressions, even down to their eyes and the pupil size.
00:13:53
Speaker
And these are all ways of communicating to others that is much louder than any words that we can ever say. We don't realize how much body language we read off of people. And so they can be saying one thing, but if their body language is saying something else, and by body language, I include all of that, right, which is even their tone of voice, their rhythm of their voice, all of that are these
00:14:22
Speaker
subconscious, unconscious ways that we reveal our inner nervous system and where it's at. So we have three different nervous system states, whatever state it is in, it's going to come out in everything that we do. So that's really where the work
00:14:46
Speaker
needs to start for a parent is understanding what patterns do I have that I can work on, not to say that a parent needs to be perfect, absolutely not. But that's part of the picture, Christian, right? Is being able to be secure in our imperfection.
00:15:06
Speaker
rather than feeling so insecure if we don't have it all figured out and not reaching out for the support in a healthy way and so getting overwhelmed and then we start snapping at our families, snapping at our kids because we feel overwhelmed with everything else and they are one more responsibility or they are a burden because there's so
Understanding Nervous System States
00:15:33
Speaker
many other burdens in our life.
00:15:35
Speaker
So it really does start with a parent becoming aware of which state their nervous system tends to hang out in. And there's the three different states. Which state do they tend to hang out in most? Because whatever that is, that's going to come across. And there's just the one state which is called
00:15:55
Speaker
There's a couple different words for it, but it's the social engagement system, parasympathetic system. When we are in that state of our nervous system, we are fully present. We are able to engage. We're able to connect. We are aware of ourselves. We are aware of other people. And so we are fully alive, fully alive. And that's the state in which we are naturally going to step into the leadership roles.
00:16:25
Speaker
wherever we are in our life, whether it's in our career, whether it's in, you know, in our family with our parenting, we will naturally step into those roles when we are in that state. So the real work is just making sure that we know our body well enough to know when we are in that state, when we are not in that state, and then how to shift our state back to where we will naturally, it won't have to be something that we think about, it will just be a natural
00:16:53
Speaker
assuming of the roles, of the responsibilities of that leadership and do it with confidence and competence. Okay, so what are the other two states? Yes, so there are two survival states.
00:17:13
Speaker
So I just talked about the state that is the non-survival state, and that is where we thrive. We are going to be our healthiest. We are going to be our most creative. We are going to be happy. We're going to be experiencing joy and connection. And so that is where we want to be, and that is where healthy nervous systems are. And then there are two survival states.
00:17:40
Speaker
And we can easily recognize these. One is the scientific names for it are the sympathetic state. The other names for it that people might recognize more are called the fight and flight. And I like to tell people, think of that hamster on the wheel.
00:18:02
Speaker
The anxious, the hypervigilant, the stressed, the hamster on the wheel, you feel it in your head, your thoughts are racing. That is the sympathetic fight or flight survival response. And we go into that state whenever we sense a danger or a threat.
00:18:25
Speaker
And this is a natural biological thing. There is nothing that we can do to change that. This is what our body does and it will override our logic in order to try to help us survive. So this is where that blood flowed
00:18:41
Speaker
goes down to the logical parts of our brain and it goes into what we call the limbic system, which is all about memory and Association and have I ever experienced something like this before have I seen this type of danger or threat before how did it work out for me? So what do you think I should do now? And that's where we get the racing thoughts because the We have gone into survival mode and we haven't figured out what all I should do to try to survive and
00:19:10
Speaker
And so people will recognize this, right? And be like, well, I understand that, but I feel like I'm always in that state, which is quite possible because our body does not differentiate between an actual physical threat, like someone walking down the street and they look threatening, or an emotional threat.
00:19:32
Speaker
psychological threat, where we feel like we might be unlovable, where we feel like someone might be criticizing us. And if they criticize us, then that means that we are incompetent, that we might be rejected, we might be abandoned.
00:19:47
Speaker
So there's so many different types of threats that we can experience. And a lot of that goes back to our very early childhood and those relationship dynamics that influence what we experience as a threat now. But it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, Christian, our body sees all of that as threat. And it will go into the sympathetic survival response every single time in order to try to help us survive.
00:20:16
Speaker
So let's talk about the second survival state.
00:20:21
Speaker
This is one that is the most misunderstood Christian. And it drives me nuts because it's so common, so common. And the more I've come to study the freeze response, the more I've come to see it in many people. I see it all around. I see it in my patients, but I see it in CEOs and executives of multimillion-dollar businesses.
00:20:49
Speaker
The freeze response is the second survival response that we go into when something becomes overwhelming. So there is stress, and when we are stressed, we are in the sympathetic state that we just talked about. But when we get overwhelmed, when we cross that line and it's like, whoa, okay, this is too much.
00:21:18
Speaker
or this has been going on for too long, I can't do this anymore. There's that line that our body, our biology says, I can't do this anymore. I can't mount a survival response anymore and I'm gonna shut down. And it actually is a very protective mechanism because we go into this state where we don't care anymore.
00:21:49
Speaker
We've been so overwhelmed, so worn down that we stop caring anymore. And this is where people will start to check out, zone out, numb out. And so for some people, yeah, let me just say that for some people that does look like an addiction.
00:22:12
Speaker
not just to a substance, but maybe a behavioral addiction, maybe an eating disorder. Any of those types of things are always the root cause is always this type of freeze response that is in their nervous system. And in order to numb out and bring the level of intensity of the overwhelm and the shame down,
00:22:36
Speaker
they engage in those substances or behaviors that help them feel better, bring the intensity down. But for other people, it's coming home and sitting in front of the TV, zoning out, right? They're just mentally kind of checking out.
00:22:54
Speaker
People will even do this in meetings. I notice this at work quite a bit where people will sit down and it's almost like immediately if they don't have something that they're doing right there, their mind will kind of drift off and they'll be thinking about something else entirely.
Trauma's Impact on Health & Behavior
00:23:11
Speaker
They may not even hear what's going on around them. They're that disconnected because their mind tends to drift off, check out, zone out in order to
00:23:24
Speaker
help the overwhelm, the baseline overwhelm feeling. So this is where so much of the danger lies though in terms of the long-term consequences because anytime Christian, anytime we're talking about overwhelm and having crossed that line from stress to feeling overwhelmed, that is a trauma.
00:23:53
Speaker
That is the definition, the biology definition of trauma. We have psychological definitions and all that kind of stuff. But what's actually happening in the biology is this is a trauma to one's biology. And by trauma, what I simply mean is that it has lasting effects on our biology. Things that don't go away after that event or situation has passed.
00:24:23
Speaker
This gets imprinted, stuck. This is where we talk about these books that we were just talking about before we started the recording, where when the body says no or the body bears the burden, all of these books talking about the long-term effects, this is what it comes from, is when we have crossed from a stress to an overwhelm because that is what leaves lasting effects on our health.
00:24:53
Speaker
And most of us and more and more people in society have these patterns in their nervous system where they actually go back and forth between stress and overwhelm. Stress and overwhelm. And they're never really in that alive and creative and joy place
00:25:14
Speaker
because that's not how their nervous system has been wired. And it's been so long now that they've had this pattern of stress and overwhelm. I'm done. I'm collapsing. And, and you know, like I, I, I've got low energy now and I, everything just feels
00:25:31
Speaker
Like it's, yeah, kind of numbed out. I just don't care anymore. I'm just going to get through my day, but there's no joy. And then we come out of that and we go right back into the stress. And then we get so stressed that it becomes overwhelming. Then we go back and forth between these two and so much so that they've become like highways.
00:25:54
Speaker
And in order to get our brain and our nervous system to do anything different takes intentional work that, yeah, we can talk about that at some point, but that's the intentional work of working directly with your nervous system, where these patterns are at, where this overwhelm has been stored.
00:26:15
Speaker
and then optimizing the nervous system, the neuroplasticity, its ability to rewire itself so that we can be very intentional and get the car off of the paved highways that we have and onto a new path and make that eventually our new highway. So I've been talking a lot
00:26:36
Speaker
I know this has been a lot and especially on a tough topic, right? Like overwhelm. Yeah. It's sad because I know so many people that are in such a state and you know, my heart goes out to them. And unfortunately, unless like you said, unless we do something conscious about it to get ourselves on a new path,
00:26:59
Speaker
just remain stuck potentially for life. And it's a bit of a travesty because we can access much better ways of being. I think that's great that you can help people to do that. So I think before we get into some strategies how to, you know, rewire ourselves,
00:27:20
Speaker
Can we kind of, because this will go, this episode will go on, on both of
Childhood Experiences & Nervous System Development
00:27:26
Speaker
my podcasts. So one is specifically for children's health. The other one is much more broad, but for the parents in our audience, can you tell us, can you bring us back to how, how these patterns getting printed in the nervous system? What, what can be, how, how does it happen? What can be done to prevent it?
00:27:48
Speaker
and what can be done after the fact when someone is small still and then when we're kind of older and adults. I guess it's a big question, but I feel like you can definitely explore all those topics. Sure. Let's jump into the first one of if you have a child or if you're planning to have a child.
00:28:09
Speaker
what do we do in order to make sure that they are developing, their nervous system is developing for a secure, that secure state and not be one more person that is in the insecure states, the survival states and going back and forth between the stress and the overwhelm.
00:28:29
Speaker
So when we look at early childhood, we realized from the studies, John Bowlby was the first one who really started looking at attachment work and then his graduate student Mary Ainsworth and the work that she did, phenomenal work. And what we learned from those was that a person's attachment style,
00:28:51
Speaker
or these patterns of relationship and whether we feel safe and secure in the world or not is in place by 12 months of age, one year of life. And it's interesting because as we look at that period of life, we realize that for most of that, there's not a lot of verbal communication.
00:29:17
Speaker
Right? So parents will say, you know, well, I tell my kids all the time that I love them. Well, that's great, but there's so much that gets communicated that's not verbal. Right? And we talked a little bit about this of how that nonverbal communication speaks so much louder than verbal communication.
00:29:38
Speaker
So some of the things where I see great parents that are unintentionally
00:29:49
Speaker
setting their children up to have an insecure pattern are parents who are doing a lot, right? They're doing a lot in life. They have a lot of other responsibilities. And so they're distracted. They're busy. And so their home responsibilities are just that. Like it's just one more thing on the to-do list to check off.
00:30:15
Speaker
And that results in them being so caught up in the responsibilities and the busyness that they're not getting enough time to just be with their newborn, to just be with their young child. And that is where the gold is at because the more time that a parent can do that, just be there.
00:30:45
Speaker
and not be distracted, not be trying to also take a call while they're doing this or trying to do something else while trying to get their children to tie their shoelaces, whatever it is. There's so many different examples. But even down to breastfeeding, how are we doing that? Are we using that time in order to just be and have that be a time of connection?
00:31:12
Speaker
how powerful that is. That is one of the most powerful times to really connect on a physiological, on a biological level.
00:31:21
Speaker
with an infant, then other times where we don't have that activation of their mouth and the food and the warmth in their belly and all of these positive experiences that they have with eating, we need that to be connected with the relationship piece of, I'm here, I'm present, I see you.
00:31:44
Speaker
I hear you." And in our modern world, we have so much going on that moms are taking calls. They're on a phone call while they're breastfeeding. They're trying to do stuff. They're trying to keep up with all of their work. And so the child starts to feel like they are just one more burden. They are just one more responsibility. And here is what happens, Christian.
00:32:10
Speaker
An infant, again, this is all nonverbal communication, right? So you talk to a parent, they would be horrified if they knew that that was the message that their child was internalizing. Be horrified about that.
00:32:24
Speaker
And so what happens is that an infant, they have these two survival states in place very early on. The first one that they have is the overwhelm state and the freeze response like we talked about. The second one, the sympathetic state is one that they develop more over time. And then after all of that, they develop the relationship one and the connection one. And that's all based on their relationship with their primary caregiver.
00:32:54
Speaker
which really is their biological mom. And so as they're going and having these experiences, if they start to feel like my mom is overwhelmed, an infant in order to survive will start to shut down their own needs in order to not be a burden to their mother.
00:33:22
Speaker
because they understand, instinctually, they feel it in their body, that if that is their sole source of food and clothes and warmth and physical needs, then they better shut down any emotional needs, any connection needs, any relationship needs, because they don't want to be a burden that overwhelms her
00:33:48
Speaker
that would make her not even be able to provide for their physical needs. And so as they engage with her, right, and maybe they're having a moment of play or they're, you know, they just discovered the carpet for the first time, right? These very simple moments as they start to explore their world and are more aware, you will notice that they always look to mom when they have one of these moments.
00:34:19
Speaker
I just discovered that I have a toe. Oh my goodness. Or I just discovered this thing on my face. Obviously, they don't know that it's called a nose yet, but they're in discovery mode and they will always look to mom at those moments to share that moment of discovery with her. If she is so busy and distracted that she's not catching those looks, those glances,
00:34:47
Speaker
then the message that is given to the child is, oh my goodness, like she's overwhelmed, she's busy, I better shut down that relationship part that my desire to connect with her at these moments of joy and happiness. And so they start to go into their own overwhelm pattern.
00:35:07
Speaker
in order to make sure that they are not just one more burden on busy, distracted parents. Is this making sense?
00:35:18
Speaker
It is, yeah. My girlfriend actually showed me a video today where she was telling me about Bobi's work and she showed me a video where the mom, they made her play with the kid and whenever the kid points, she's laughing and smiling and then she did the same thing with a completely flat face, emotionless and the kid is...
00:35:38
Speaker
The baby is pointing and after a few minutes, it just starts crying because the parent is completely, she's there, but she's disengaged completely. Exactly. She's there, but she's not there. Yeah. Yes. And we can provide all of the physical needs for babies, right? This was also part of Bulbi's work is we can provide all the physical needs, but if they don't get touch,
00:36:01
Speaker
if they don't get the emotional connection. That is enough to send them into developing these patterns of being in the survival states all the time. Children, their nervous system is really growing fast, developing all throughout the ages of even up to three, four, and five. Then, of course, the brain continues to mature until our early 20s.
00:36:32
Speaker
Since our nervous system is developing in these early ages, whatever these experiences are of life get imprinted at that time. So that becomes our blueprint. That becomes our foundation, our perspective from which we experience all the rest of life into adulthood. Of course, unless we become aware of it and rewire that. But this is the importance, like this is how important this
00:37:00
Speaker
foundational early infancy is for our nervous system and the rest of our life. And it's these types of nervous systems, right, that have these patterns of you can call it attachment, attachment disruption, attachment wounds, I call it attachment pain, but ultimately, it's attachment trauma, because there's that trauma in the relationship, it's that break in the connection in the relationship that they need. And it leaves lasting effects.
00:37:31
Speaker
So we call that trauma. To what age can that trauma be imprinted into a child or a person? And that's a really good question. And I'm not sure that we have an exact answer, Christian. But what we do know is that children who have experiences even out as far as three years of life around then seems to be where that change happens, where if they had
00:37:58
Speaker
everything that they needed for a secure attachment up until three years of life and then something happened. Maybe one of their parents died or there was a big natural disaster completely uprooted their whole life. They're able to manage that much better and not lose that trust, that connection, that perspective that the adults are here to help me. I can rely on them. I can go to them for my needs.
00:38:28
Speaker
rather than it's not safe to go to them for my needs, I better just shut it down in order to try to help survive. So around three years of age seems to be that mark where before then it's going to leave lasting effects on their ability to trust and be in healthy relationship and have a perspective that the world is generally safe.
00:38:58
Speaker
And after three years of life, if they've had all of that great up until then, then they're able to maintain that for the most part.
Intergenerational Trauma Patterns
00:39:05
Speaker
So I think the bottom line, we can unequivocally say that it's not just extreme things like a parent passing away or sexual abuse or kind of this violence. It's not just these things that can traumatize us and probably most of us to an extent carry something in our nervous system.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yes, that is what I have found is that most people, to some degree, they're on the spectrum, right? And some people have more than others, but most everyone has these types of patterns, attachment trauma patterns from early childhood, just because
00:39:49
Speaker
Some of that is life, right? And then what Mary Ainsworth did in her studies, which we should mention because we're on this topic, is that whatever the parents... Okay, so she did the initial study where she looked at a parent and their 12-month-old, and that's where she figured out, like, we have these patterns by 12 months of life. And then when those babies grew up and had their own children, she brought them back.
00:40:20
Speaker
And what she found, Christian, was that the style that they had had, the patterns in their nervous system that they had had in infancy is the same pattern that their children now had.
00:40:33
Speaker
because this is how it gets passed on, right? It becomes how we express ourselves. It becomes how we engage. It becomes how much eye contact we feel safe having with people. It's so much unconscious, nonverbal things that we just think,
00:40:51
Speaker
is our personality. We don't even think, we don't even realize most of what we're doing with our body, how we carry ourselves, the different tension patterns in our muscles. All of this, all of this is our nervous system and it's what we unconsciously pass on to our children then because we share our nervous system with our children.
00:41:15
Speaker
You know, last week I finished Mark Wolin's book. It didn't start with you. Yeah. And this is exactly what he talks about. And the more I reflect, the more I realize how much I've internalized, not just from my mother, father, sister, but my grandparents. Exactly. Yeah.
00:41:35
Speaker
Even some of my cousins were, yeah, it's amazing. So, okay. It is, it's like the saying that a child is a sponge is a complete understatement. Huge understatement. Children are resilient and they'll be okay. They'll get through things. And I'm like, no, it comes at a cost, right? And what is that cost?
00:42:05
Speaker
If you call people addicted to Netflix, their phones, uh, resilient or, or alcohol or drugs or coffee, are we resilient or are we just, or have we normalized how sick our society has become? That's exactly what has happened, Christian. So, okay, let's, let's talk solutions. Let's talk, how do we, how do we repattern, um, our nervous system so we can live our best selves, Amy?
00:42:35
Speaker
Absolutely. Okay. Well, I will start with what not to do, what does not work.
Effectiveness of Body-Based Therapies
00:42:41
Speaker
And because we're talking about the survival systems and how these have been imprinted into our nervous system, anything that involves just talking about it is not going to work.
00:42:57
Speaker
is not gonna work. We may call a friend, we may even go into therapy and talk about something and feel better in the moment, but it's not gonna stick, right? Because it didn't change the patterns in our nervous system.
00:43:15
Speaker
And so if we want lasting change, if we're tired of our pattern, our lifelong pattern, we've got to go deeper than that. And we've actually got to work directly with these survival patterns in our nervous system. We've got to explore our shutdown, our overwhelm. We've got to start looking at that.
00:43:36
Speaker
not in a way that's going to be too much too fast because that'll put us right back into the overwhelm, but in a way where we start to be aware of what exactly are my patterns, right? Most people don't even realize what their patterns are. And so we just start exploring that and then working directly with the body. So most of the body-based therapies
00:44:02
Speaker
are always going to work better than any type of the talk therapies or cognitive based therapies in terms of long-term change, long-term success, long-term change.
00:44:17
Speaker
And so this is where I started realizing this and as a physician, I'm going to these trainings and becoming trained in the body-based trauma therapies because I saw how effective they were at actually rewiring and resolving some of these traumatic events, situations, and patterns in our nervous system.
00:44:43
Speaker
What are some examples of these body-based therapies? Well, we were talking about Dr. Peter Levine. So he's been one who founded what's called somatic experiencing. So he's been a great resource, a great resource for building the presence of body-based trauma therapies.
00:45:10
Speaker
And then there's neuroeffective touch. And so that was founded by Dr. Aileen LaPierre. And so there's these different schools, these slightly different approaches that all involve working directly with what shows up in our body
00:45:30
Speaker
and the nervous system. And so when we talk about the nervous system, we talk about our senses, we talk about even like our movements, whether we get sweats or chills or goosebumps, how fast our heart is beating, how fast we're breathing. And so these are the things that we actually track and measure and work with in the body-based trauma therapies.
00:45:55
Speaker
And it's good to know, I think, that we don't need to have a story attached to it. We don't need to have a specific memory in order to be able to do some of these therapies because that's the beauty of it. We're looking directly at the pattern in the nervous system. We don't need to know what happened that put that pattern there.
00:46:17
Speaker
for most of our stuff, it may be pre-verbal, right? Like we don't have memory of that, but it's do I have these patterns, right? And then, okay, let's work on them. Let's rewire them. And when we rewire them, we can get to a place of what I call the earned secure attachment.
00:46:37
Speaker
where yes, now you have choice and now you can feel when your body goes into stress. You can feel when your body is approaching that line of overwhelm and now what's different is that you have a choice and you can choose to respond differently. You can choose to use the tools that you've gained to shift your nervous system back to that place of social engagement, parasympathetic, alive, curious, creative, connected.
00:47:06
Speaker
Whereas before you didn't have a choice. Your body was taking you there because that's all it knew how to do. So it's not like it completely erases those patterns. It just gives you choice now of how do you want to handle this situation? Do you want to use your tools that you have? Do you not want to use the tools that you have? But you have that choice now, which is huge, right? It's huge. To be able to have the power to
00:47:34
Speaker
change your way of responding or reacting to life, to relationships, to situations, to all kinds of situations, right? You have this whole new level of awareness of your nervous system and what state you're in and why you're in that state and how to get back to the state where you are truly your best self.
00:47:57
Speaker
So when it comes to solutions and what to do, the body-based therapies are much more effective at long-term change than any talk or cognitive-based therapies.
Online Therapy & Practical Demonstrations
00:48:11
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree. In fact, I was just going to ask, this somatic experiencing trauma therapy, can this be done online, by the way?
00:48:23
Speaker
That's a great question. And this year has brought up a lot of those questions, right? And the short answer is yes. So even I have been still meeting with some clients and some patients and we've transitioned to online. And yes, like I've still been able to work with them.
00:48:41
Speaker
In some situations, it looks a little different, right? Rather than me placing my hand on a certain spot in their body where their nervous system is acting up, I'm having them do that or I'm having them get a weighted pillow or a weighted blanket and using that for a sense of pressure and support. So yes, there's been a lot that we have been still able to do online.
00:49:05
Speaker
And it's a great place for people to gently start. And I would say no matter where you are, if you see that you have had trauma or if you don't relate to having had trauma, but just can relate to stress and some overwhelm, that would be a great place for people to start.
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah. And what does that, what does it actually look like? Like a, let's say a 45 or 60 minute therapy session with this somatic experiencing therapy. What does that actually look like? So you already kind of alluded to placing of hands, feeling, feeling parts of the body. Can you elaborate a little bit more?
00:49:42
Speaker
Well, yes, yes and no, because for every person, it's so different based on how they're showing up that day. And there's many different techniques, there's many different tools, and so each session may look completely different.
00:49:59
Speaker
Sometimes, there is no direct touch involved. Obviously, with the approach with Dr. Alina up here, with the neuro-effective touch, yes, that's the idea, right? Is that we're actually using touch to rewire some of these patterns and even identify them, identify and rewire.
00:50:20
Speaker
So, when a person is first starting out, one thing that their provider, their practitioner might be asking to start the session is, Christian, I want you to just kind of check in with your body right now and let me know where you feel any area of tension, discomfort, or anything unpleasant.
00:50:48
Speaker
And I mean, do you have any place right now in your body where you feel anything unpleasant? Lower back. Your lower back. Uh-huh. Ah, it's tight. Okay. And on a scale of one to 10, where would you rate the intensity of that tightness in your back? Probably 3.5.
00:51:10
Speaker
3.5. Okay. And is this something that you feel often? Is this something that is unusual? What would... Yeah, it's pretty often when I sit in the chair for several hours in a day. It's a familiar feeling. Okay. So one thing that I will just have you do right now then is just lift up your arms a bit and actually push away really slow.
00:51:38
Speaker
Yeah, just really slow. Bring your hands back and just like really, really slow, Christian. Just as if you're like pushing a heavy rock away. Really heavy rock. Yep, there you go. Nice. Feel your muscles engaged in your arms as you're pushing this heavy rock away. Good. And all the way out. Nice. Yep. What are you noticing?
00:52:09
Speaker
You're smiling a little bit. What are you noticing? It's actually, it feels better. It does, doesn't it? Yeah, that's weird. That's kind of strange. That is the most frequent thing that I hear people say is, this is weird. I'm like, yes. In somatic experiencing, we are going to do a lot of weird things and you're just going to get used to that.
00:52:33
Speaker
Okay, so let me just explain briefly what just happens Christian K and your new number right now for your back is what I Think now I'm probably down to like a 2 Yeah a 2 so 3.5 to 2 and all you did was move your arms Okay, so what what just happened is that in our back? This is a common area for us to carry a sense of stress and overwhelm
00:53:03
Speaker
So chronic back pain has a strong association with feeling a lack of support. And that actually goes back to early infancy because when we think about a parent holding their baby, their hands are cupping the head and their arms are all up against the baby's back.
00:53:28
Speaker
That is where we first get our sense of support in life. They've got me and I feel so safe in their arms, I'm not even afraid of falling. And we're laughing, we're engaging, I'm sticking my tongue out and they're sticking their tongue out at me, right? Like there is no fear because they feel fully supported with all of that contact.
00:53:54
Speaker
and the strength, right? We talked, we started our conversation about parents being in a place of strength. That's where this first comes from. And so when we don't have adequate feeling of support, then it develops into these types of patterns of back pain.
00:54:16
Speaker
And so when we talk about, hey, what can I do to help rewire this? Since we're talking about overwhelm, this is where I often have people just start, just a basic technique that you can use anywhere, anytime, right? Is push it away, right? Because if something is overwhelming, if life is overwhelming, you got to make some space to breathe and you just push things away. And even though we're not actually pushing anything away, say that again.
00:54:44
Speaker
Do you visualize whatever you're pushing away or just push away? No, you don't need to, right? Did you visualize something that you were pushing away? No, and it worked, right?
00:54:54
Speaker
Like this is because we're working directly with the nervous system. The nervous system controls our muscles, controls the tension in our muscles, controls the movement. And so when we are just actively engaging our muscles, we're engaging our nervous system and we're doing the motion of give me space. This is too much. Give me space. You blew my mind. You just blew my mind.
00:55:20
Speaker
So that is, yeah, there's a little bit of somatic experiencing for you, Christian. I just did it on you. Do you have to be an MD too? No, not at all. I am one of the very few MDs. Most of them are some type of therapist. Wow.
00:55:38
Speaker
And some of them come from massage therapy. Some of them come from a licensed marriage and family therapy. Most of them are therapists. I am one of the very few MDs trained in somatic experience. I will look into this. This is honestly, you blew my mind. This just blew my mind because I've been suffering from, because I'm on the computer working a lot. This is one of the things that is kind of, it's a bane in my life. Yeah. Thank you.
00:56:07
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Another note I had written here, you seem to have a lot of certifications, which I love, but you are certified in art narrative trauma therapy model, instinctual trauma response model. Could you elaborate what that is, please, Amy?
00:56:32
Speaker
Yes. So our body has a very specific response to a threat that happens every single time, right?
Biological Response to Trauma
00:56:45
Speaker
We talked about that where when somebody
00:56:48
Speaker
perceives a threat, and I use that word perceived because it may or may not be actually real, right? Based on our lens, based on our insecurities, we may be perceiving threats that aren't really there. So when we perceive a threat, there's this sequence of events that happen in our biology.
00:57:09
Speaker
When we experience a trauma, there is a specific sequence that happens in our biology every single time. It is very predictable because our nervous system knows only one way to survive. And so it's going to roll out that survival response by the push of a button. It's like, okay, we got to survive here. Let's push the button for the survival response.
00:57:36
Speaker
And so that response then, because it's so predictable, we can go back and we can really, it's kind of like reliving in a sense, putting ourselves back into that situation. So this is where it would be really helpful for a specific trauma that you do have memory about, you know, like a natural disaster, a fire, a car accident.
00:58:06
Speaker
Um, something where there's specific memory, this is where this type of therapy is very helpful. Um, it can also be helpful for, for non memory, but just not as much. Right. And so what, what a person does is then they, they draw out each of the biological.
00:58:29
Speaker
responses that happened in their event, in their traumatic event. And when we do that, it allows us to now resolve that rather than staying stuck in that hypervigilant, I'm scared, I may not survive this. And that's really what PTSD is.
00:58:53
Speaker
is still being stuck in the middle of that. Our body never, never got to the place where it realized that it is now safe. It is still stuck in that I'm not safe. I'm not safe. And so this therapy through the art of drawing out, drawing out
00:59:14
Speaker
the specific events that happened in your biology. So at first you felt a startle, draw that moment out, you know, what was the startle? What did you feel in your body? What colors were around you? What were you smelling? Like all of these senses, draw it out. Okay, so that was your startle response. And then you would have actively tried to
00:59:36
Speaker
tried to survive. So there's an active process. Did you try to run away? Did you try to look for help? Did you try to, you know, break a window to jump out and whatever it was, right? Like, what did you actively try to do? Draw that out. And if you survived, if you came out of that okay, there's no trauma. It was just a stress.
01:00:01
Speaker
But it's when what we tried to do didn't work that our body decided, hey, I need to just shut down and go into the freeze response like we talked about. And the best thing for me to do is just to not feel the pain. And so our body releases a huge amount of endorphins in order to not feel the whatever it is, the physical pain, the emotional pain,
01:00:31
Speaker
of the situation. And so, like we talked about, the freeze response feels like a giving up, a giving in. I don't care anymore. Do whatever you want to me because I don't care anymore. I've had enough. But in reality, it's the ultimate way that our body has to try to survive because it's realizing that
01:00:51
Speaker
whatever I tried to actively do, it's just making things worse or it's not working. And so the best thing for me to do is just to shut down and not feel, not care anymore. And so that's the freeze response. And when we can
01:01:07
Speaker
Usually, we don't, as a society, know how to work with that. It's a very uncomfortable place to be, and so we get stuck there. We don't allow our body to resolve, and so to come out of that, we start to take care of ourselves. That's where a person, maybe after a car accident, would start to rub their body and be like,
01:01:27
Speaker
you know, I'm alive, right?
Parental Role in Trauma Processing
01:01:30
Speaker
I am alive. I actually survived that. And I'm okay, you know, I may have had a broken bone or whatever, but I'm actually, I'm actually alive. I survived that. And they go into this self care mode. And then they go into orienting where they start looking all around them.
01:01:47
Speaker
And it's this time for their nervous system to gather from the environment the message that they are now safe. The threat is over. And so by drawing all of this out and by drawing those last two stages, it allows the nervous system to now complete it and come to a sense of
01:02:12
Speaker
Whoo, you're right. I did survive that and I am safe now. And so it resolves that specific trauma. Love it.
01:02:22
Speaker
Now, let's say for a parent that their child has just experienced the trauma, or let's say for someone whose partner or someone close to them has experienced the trauma, is there anything that we can do in that moment or in the periphery to help them kind of process it so it doesn't get stuck?
01:02:47
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm so glad you're asking this because this is another moment, Christian, where parents intending to be good, intending to be helpful, actually cause more damage. And let's take the example of a kid who's at the playground and they fall off something high.
01:03:08
Speaker
and they're on the ground and they're kind of just stunned, right? Like, whoa, I'm stunned. They may be crying. They may, you know, but they're still in that phase of like, I'm stunned. This can also be true for any kind of accident or a head concussion or whatever. Like there's that moment before they start crying, before they start yelling, you know, where it's just like, I'm stunned. It was a shock.
01:03:34
Speaker
So when a person has had any kind of that, and especially a child, the tendency is for us to go over and start asking questions, right? Are you okay? Where do you hurt? What do you need? Let's call an ambulance. And it's this flurry of activity and
01:03:55
Speaker
and trying to engage them because we feel anxious right like we we've gone into sympathetic and what we need to realize is that they're at the point where like their body is still in that shock and so the best thing that we can do is to wait and let their body come out of the shock by itself.
01:04:17
Speaker
When we rush that, that is when we don't allow the body to complete its natural cycle. And it's almost like it's on a timer, right? And so we just need to give it time, even for ourselves. When we experience a scare, a startle, and we feel that like, ah,
01:04:38
Speaker
Moment of shock and we feel our heart beating fast the tendency is in our society in our world Just to keep moving right keep going don't you know don't stop keep going? and that's not what our body needs our body needs that time to like we talked about just with the two last stages to come back to a sense of Okay, I'm here
01:05:05
Speaker
I'm okay, right? I'm okay. I'm alive. And then let me start looking around and orienting. Okay, there's my mom. Okay, she looks like she's calm. She's right here with me. I'm so glad she's right here with me. Let me look around and let me, okay, I'm safe. Now let me sit up.
01:05:26
Speaker
Now, let me start getting back. And what we try to do is we go over and we pick them up. We make them sit up right away. And we don't give the body that time that it needs to stay in the shock, which is a form of the freeze, stay in the shock and let the body be on its timer to resolve its own overwhelm in that moment.
01:05:48
Speaker
The best thing is to not try to talk, to not engage, putting a hand somewhere on them, on their shoulder, on their stomach, anywhere really, with just some pressure to let them know that we are here with them, but we're not going to try to overwhelm them by more talk right now.
01:06:12
Speaker
That is so insightful. Thank you for that. I'm so glad I met you before I have kids. There's so many things I can learn from.
Resources & Expert Insights
01:06:25
Speaker
I'll definitely be reading all of your... I started reading some of your articles on your website, but I definitely will be reading.
01:06:31
Speaker
All of those and the recommended reading list that you have and folks listening, if you are interested, if this has tickled or piqued your interest, definitely I will have Amy's, Dr. Amy's website and you can check out the books she recommends and her articles. Amy, can you tell folks where they can find you on the internet, please?
01:06:55
Speaker
Absolutely. So my home website is dramy.com. So that's D-R. And then I spell my name A-I-M-I-E. So dramy.com is my home site. And from there, they can see all the different projects that we have going on, or they can go directly to trauma, healing, accelerated,
01:07:15
Speaker
And that's where I have all the resources. I have a few online programs that people can use to get started with somatic experiencing. And I guided them through a week experiential course on somatic experiencing so that they can get started with that. And that's where they can find all of that traumahealingaccelerated.com.
01:07:35
Speaker
That is awesome. We'll have the links on the website and in the episode show notes. Can you also tell folks a little bit about your BioOptimize Summit? Is it still possible for people to access the recordings?
01:07:49
Speaker
Yes. So I did just finish a bio-optimized summit. So it was a full seven-day summit. I interviewed over 45 health experts. And what I interviewed them on was basically my story between my son and then myself and what were all the pieces needed in order to
01:08:07
Speaker
rewire and get us to full health. And so some of it is the trauma stuff and I've got people talking about somatic experiencing, the neuro-effective touch, parts work. And then I have people talking about the actual biology of the nervous system and how to increase the neuroplasticity
01:08:25
Speaker
the mitochondria, which are the powerhouses for making energy. Why is that important? Because if that is not working well, our nervous system will not be able to shift. It feels like it does not have the resources, the nutrients, and it will stay stuck in survival mode. And so we have to be creating the biological environment for our nervous system to feel supported and resourced and safe. And then when we do these therapies,
01:08:54
Speaker
it just accelerates the results and maximizes the results that we can get when we combine both of these approaches. Yes, they can still access those recordings and I'll give you that link so that they can look at those and see which talks that they would be most benefited from at this time. Awesome. Amy, I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing your insights. Amazing, amazing, amazing stuff. Thank you so much.
01:09:24
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you Christian. Thank you for listening to Connecting Minds.
01:09:39
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed this conversation and found it interesting, illuminating, or inspiring. For episode show notes, links, and further information on our guests, please visit christianjordanov.com. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with someone who might also enjoy it. Thank you for being here.