Transcript
Speaker: When people say we have to change the system, we have to fix the system. When you recognize that we are the system and it takes tiny shifts within ourselves to create the wider movement, that is an exciting prospect, right?
Speaker: And I do believe we can make intergenerational healing and well-being as inevitable as intergenerational trauma. Welcome back to Wired for Connection, Polyvagal podcast. My name is Mac with the Polyvagal Institute, and today I'm excited to chat with Kate Woodson.
Speaker: Kate is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and founder and director of the Invisible Threads Impact Lab, which focuses on building the human and relational capacity democracy depends on.
Speaker: For two decades, she reported and led global news teams for Voice of America, al Jazeera English, and The Washington Post, covering upheaval from Cuba to Cambodia and Hong Kong to Washington, D.C.
Speaker: Her reporting on the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack left her with complex PTSD and a visceral understanding of how trauma is a cause and effect of polarization.
Speaker: I was in the field with a colleague on January 6th. We put on bulletproof vests and had, you know, helmets. And and so ultimately, i you know, I was diagnosed with complex PTSD, new trauma, wakes up old trauma.
Speaker: After her team won the Pulitzer Prize for public service, she left traditional journalism, unwilling to perpetuate a culture that treats trauma as the price of truth. During our conversation, we discuss the current media landscape and newsroom culture, and we identify how to foster civic resilience in the face of democratic decline worldwide.
Speaker: We also highlight the role our collective nervous system plays in a healthy democracy. Kate will be expanding on some of these topics at our 2026 international gathering as well, where she's one of the keynote presenters.
Speaker: Here's my conversation with Kate. Kate, thank you so much for joining Wired for Connection and for being a part of this show. And we're excited to have you at our 2026 International Gathering coming up here in a couple months. ah You're one of the speakers that will be presenting there. But I was just hoping we could start with ah you introducing yourself to just the polyvagal community if you want to share a little bit more about yourself and your work.
Speaker: Thank you. I'm excited to be in conversation with the community and then spending time in person in Spain. It'll be phenomenal. um I call myself a civic resilience architect and a journalist. And I'm also the founder and director of the Invisible Threads Lab, which looks at the hidden connections between human well-being and democracy.
Speaker: um And a civic resilience architect is someone who is thinking about the human capacities that are required to have healthy relationships with ourselves and healthy relationships with other people so that we can build or improve the systems that uphold democracy, dignity, trust, and collective well-being.
Speaker: that's That's so interesting. And part of the reason why I'm so excited to have you join for this conversation is there's so many different ways to apply a polyvagal lens or a nervous system lens into our work.
Speaker: you know our professional and personal lives. ah But this is the first time that we'll we really be sharing a little bit more of perspectives from you know from a journalist, um from ah a civic resilience expert. So i just wondering if you could share a little bit more about you know how you came into this line of work, just I know from your history as a journalist, but um what led you down this path that you're on now?
Speaker: Yeah, you know, in some ways it's like, how how the heck did you get there? But then in other ways, it makes total sense. So I spent 23 years as a journalist um working for the Voice of America, the Al Jazeera English and the Washington Post.
Speaker: And I began my career outside of the U.S. from Cuba and Cambodia to Hong Kong to eventually winding my way back to Washington, D.C., And in every country and culture that I was in, i was always formally and informally looking at power dynamics and trying to understand why and how people abuse power and what happens to the people who are living under um policies, practices and cultures where there is abuse of power and varying levels of accountability.
Speaker: um This was informed in part by my family's own history. I grew up in a very ah volatile family with generations of trauma. And, um you know, I i essentially navigated a lot of uncertainty and lack of safety in my own life. And so I was inspired.
Speaker: um to look at this within larger contexts of communities and governments and cultures. And so in in all of these different places, Cuba, Cambodia, hung Hong Kong, D.C., I saw this connection between collective trauma, polarization, and democratic decline.
Speaker: And what I mean by that is when a person experiences an event that ruptures their sense of safety, that ruptures their connection to themself and to the world around them, and makes them inherently see the world as dangerous, so that you're constantly scanning for threats.
Speaker: um it makes a lot of sense that people would begin to look at the world in terms of more black and white thinking, in terms of us and them, because you're looking for who do I stick with to be safe, right? so when you have that on an individual basis, that'll affect your relationship relationships and your families. When you have more of that, whether it is families or communities or entire countries, that scales, right? to polarization, to this us versus them stance that is a protective measure, but ultimately can lead to greater divides moving through the world through fear and uncertainty. And when you are looking at the world as an unsafe place,
Speaker: and a leader, whether it is a person in a family or a person in a workplace or a person at the helm of a government, when that leader tells you that only they can protect you and that the world is dangerous and only if you stick with them will you be safe, and if you don't stick with them, you'll be punished, then there is a tendency to think, okay, if I want to stay safe,
Speaker: I'm going to sign up with the person that I think is going to protect me from the greatest threat. So you see this pattern over and over, um in different countries.
Speaker: And then I saw it play out in Washington, DC, um, 2021. So I was with the Washington post at the time. i was, um, the head of a video and documentary unit and also, um, reporter in the field. We had staffing shortages, and so I had to be both a player and a coach. and my team and I had been covering in 2020 the pandemic, racial justice protests after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. We had been covering the election, then the contested election. And then, of course, what turned into the insurrection of January 6th.
Speaker: um And so we were, i was in the field with a colleague on January 6th. We put on bulletproof vests and had, you know, helmets and went to cover the president's speech. At the time it was President Trump. And he um had been perpetuating disinformation that he lost the 2020 election. And he called on his supporters to protest the election results. And we were at his speech outside of the White House and then followed the crowd from the White House to the U.S. Capitol, where the rally turned into a riot and a violent attack on not only the building, but on the democratic process.
Speaker: So what was happening on January 6th was the certification of electoral votes to confirm the winner of that election, who was Joe Biden by popular vote. And um and and so we saw a violent eruption of and expression of of polarized thinking of people who were informed by information that wasn't factually accurate and a whole lot of dysregulated nervous systems.
Speaker: um And so in that I was surrounded and threatened um By members of the mob, they saw me as a member of the press. they They asked who I worked for, and when I told them that I worked for the Washington Post, some members of the um you know some rioters surged at me and screamed at me um and accused me of being an enemy of the people, of being a traitor. And they essentially
Speaker: thought that I was part of the downfall of democracy and a a direct threat to them. um I take a deep breath because, ah you know, I'm just saying it like it's just the facts, this is what happened, but it was ah it it was an extraordinarily um scary um experience. And I think what was particularly hard is that when you are looking at people and interacting with people who have all the power because they outnumber you, um who were emboldened at the time by the president, and who were working off of information that was, we did not share a reality. So we had two different realities, right? And not only that, but they were ah carrying the, you know,
Speaker: The patterns and wounds and opportunities of their entire histories, right? Their nervous systems that were very dysregulated and treating me as a threat. were operating off of information that made me look like a threat, but they were also operating on an entire lifetime of who knows what challenges, right? Or opportunities.
Speaker: And then that met my nervous system, which was informed both by how to stay calm under pressure and from reporting around the world, but a nervous system also informed by growing up in a violent household. how to stay calm and appease a parent that was not safe so that I met them with that nervous system. um And I was able to de-escalate the situation. i was able to actually crack a joke and de-escalate the situation, and everyone, you know, moved out and I looked really calm on camera. um But in the aftermath of that, i really struggled. My nervous system got so overwhelmed and I wasn't able to discharge the energy of that threat because I just kept working.
Speaker: I just kept working. um And so ultimately, i you know I was diagnosed with complex PTSD, new trauma, wakes up old trauma. um i I had to really work very hard to um establish stability within myself and to redevelop a sense of safety within myself. um And in that process, as i began not only, you know, really working on deep trauma work, but also began researching the science of trauma, neuroscience, the science of healing, as I stabilized, I really started to think about if we have good science on healing trauma and we know that um there are stages of repair,
Speaker: why aren't we applying this to a systemic level? And so it was in the aftermath of January 6th that i began to recognize that the crisis facing our democracy and the crisis facing, I think, our collective health, our collective mental health are interrelated, that the democratic crisis is a public health crisis and that we need to apply neuroscience and the practices of healing trauma to actually stabilize and restore our democracy.
Speaker: That was a long winded answer, but that's how I got here. Well, it was a beautiful answer. So thank you, Kate. Um, and first of just want to say, you know, Sounds like a lot.
Speaker: And i hope that you've been able since that time to um just start to navigate um the the trauma. i you know I have a few family members who have complex PTSD and you know as I'm sure many listeners and and people know, and you don't really know what it looks like until you're in it. and it's case by case dependent on the person. And as you said, you know new traumas wake up old traumas.
Speaker: um So I hope you've had some time and some space to to come towards healing since then. um But I also wanna thank you for taking us through the events of 2020 and into 2021 so thoroughly because this is an international you know polyvagal community. We have listeners all across the world. um Myself, um I live in the States, but it was it was really helpful to hear that retelling and just a reminder of how much was happening at that time to our collective nervous system. um, from 2020 into 2021.
Speaker: Um, so thank you for that, that retelling as well. But I think what's coming up for me mostly is, um, just, you were kind of talking about this recalibration of your nervous system. And i know on polyvagal terms, you, we would refer to that as, as neuroception, you know, the external ah scanning for safety and threat. Uh, and, and Dr. Porges has talked about this extensively, how that can get recalibrated as, you know, depending on what happens to you individually. Um, I'm just wondering how you see the recalibration of not only your individual nervous system as a result of that trauma, but also kind of getting into ah the collective citizenship, um, nervous system, how, how that's happening on a, on a, um, national and global scale right now.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. and And, you know, thank you for your empathy. And I think whenever i have hard times, I always, it is the empathy that comes forward for me. And I think what a window into the experiences of other people, right? And so I think so many people in this world for your global audience, and certainly in the United States, are living with complex PTSD.
Speaker: And so it's wonderful if you can take a break and go to a week-long trauma program But most people are facing, many people rather, are facing chronic instability from poverty, from racism, from systems that are designed for scarcity, right? And so um even if you don't have a diagnosis or haven't had um you know a tremendous rupture of your sense of safety, many, many people across the world are living with this chronic state of uncertainty, of feeling like they can't catch their breath or get their bearings, which creates this kind of cloudiness of thought and uncertainty about who should connect to. And sometimes even, should you even try to engage in changing the systems around us, right?
Speaker: And so to your question about, um, How do we essentially stabilize our individual nervous system so that we can stabilize the collective nervous system?
Speaker: I think a lot about moving from awareness, agency, to action. And so a lot of the work begins with just noticing your states of stress, your states of relaxation, right? So I got trained as a certified resilience toolkit facilitator, which is a modality developed by a brilliant woman named Enchem and Defo. And it it uses parts of Dr. Porge's polyvagal theory, motivational interviewing, you know, a weaving together of different approaches. But one of the baseline ah tactics is to begin to notice your states of stress and relaxation.
Speaker: And when you're able to notice that, then you can begin to say, is it helpful for me in the moment? And a lot of people are working in states of stress that are not necessarily helpful to the moment.
Speaker: And so if you are more activated, if you're ready for a fight because of what has happened in the past or because you're consuming so much horrible information all the time that you feel like you're in a fight, you might have... um more clipped conversation. You might feel more irritable. you might feel um less open to collaborating. There are some days where I wake up and I think I hate everyone. That's an indication to me, right, that my stress is like higher than it necessarily needs to be. And so that first step of awareness, what is my state of stress? Is it helpful to me? Is part of personal resilience, is part of civic resilience, because ultimately,
Speaker: A democracy is made of relationships, right? It's our ability to have a healthy relationship with ourselves so that we can have a healthy relationship with other people, so that we can build trust, collaborate across difference, exercise discernment in the midst of information uncertainty. um So it's baby steps. Awareness is number one.
Speaker: Then you need agency. You need the skills to recalibrate. right? You need the skills not only to recalibrate yourself, but then to practice discernment. So it's, you know, applying journalistic critical thinking skills. How do I know this is real?
Speaker: um Am I rushing to a conclusion because I want this candidate who I think will protect me? Am I supporting that candidate who I think will protect me, even though all of the evidence says that this candidate might not be um actually working in the interest of collective well-being, right? There are different levels of democratic discernment.
Speaker: um And then, you know, big picture, it is it is action. It's systems change. It's actually building the conditions within your classroom, within your company, within your community, within our laws, where we have the upstream conditions so that people have a sense of stability, um,
Speaker: to actually make these grounded, informed um connections and and steps towards well-being. For me personally, a lot of people will say, well, what does that look like personally? So um it took me a while after January 6th to even realize how greatly I was affected, quite frankly.
Speaker: um And it started with finally realizing that my muscles were twitching. um So my legs, my leg muscles were spasming and my stomach was a mess, like just awful stomach. And, um and I ah would go outside and be and just vigilant looking everywhere.
Speaker: And it was when I asked a friend to go for a walk with me to go to the market to get food that I realized, oh, I don't feel safe. I'm i'm not okay. um but it took me a while to recognize that.
Speaker: And then it it it was in conversation with loved ones and my therapist that I realized that I had been trying to get a sense of safety through overworking and control.
Speaker: So I threw myself back into work and journalism and my profession is the perfect place for dysregulated people because it's totally adrenalized and you have to, you you are in crisis essentially all the time, even if it's just a deadline, you're hitting that deadline. And i was able to to channel my dysregulation into a profession that rewarded it. And so it took me longer to recognize that I was trying to cover up my loss of control from trauma by controlling my work.
Speaker: um And so it was slowly noticing and talking to people who, you know, could see it better that I began to recognize that. um And so then i I then had to figure out like, shoot, I'm in a profession that keeps me dysregulated and rewards me for being dysregulated. And um ultimately over time,
Speaker: I decided that for me, I had a higher purpose at this stage in my career, and I didn't need to stay in a newsroom to do it. I can build something different. Not everyone has that luxury, right? And I want to recognize that. I talked to a lot of journalists, a lot of journalists, a lot of high-level corporate individuals who are stuck, who feel stuck in dysregulating workplaces that demand They operate from scarcity and fear-driven nervous systems, and they don't know ways out.
Speaker: And so to that, I would say it's building tiny islands of stability and tiny islands of agency where they can begin to exercise a sense of understanding what they need and this like reward system between a tiny action and a positive result so that they start rebuilding their sense of self. we're we're a country America is a country of human doings, not human beings. And I think i think i think how beautiful if we could begin to rehumanize.
Speaker: Well, I'm going to steal that quote for sure. We're going to put that quote everywhere we can. um i really love that. And yeah, something that's coming up for me again, really fantastic answer. Thank you. um i i think it was Dr. Frank Anderson, who's also going to be speaking at our conference, who said that love and connection heal trauma.
Speaker: So just to kind of reference him, um I'm glad that you had ah community and and and help around you to to be to begin to start to navigate the CPTSD that you were experiencing after January 6th. And then i also want to talk about what happened when you were in that high sympathetic activation, you were throwing yourself into work.
Speaker: in a quest to feel safe. I kind of want to open it up that question of these in polyvagal theory, we see these responses as adaptive, right? you're You're trying to search for safety. You're trying to find that connection again, but in the process you end up potentially hurting yourself more by you know doing all of this work, staying in that high sympathetic activation out of homeostasis where your body doesn't have the resources to to actually heal.
Speaker: And I want to bring it back to what you were saying about in a collective party who's feeling scared and you know maybe in that fight or flight response mode. They're going to select a candidate who they can connect with and who they feel will protect them.
Speaker: Could you just speak to a little bit of like the juxtaposition or just how complicated that all becomes when you're, you're in that activation and you're, you're, you actually need something differently, but your body is telling you, you know, to, to go forward. Could you speak to that a little bit and just how you see that?
Speaker: Yeah. Such a good summation, thank you for you know weaving so many different things I said together and then illuminating how complicated this is. It's so complicated because it's so human, right?
Speaker: um Our nervous system is designed to keep us alive. And so it is when it is scanning for safety or danger, um we are compelled to do what we think is is right to keep us safe. And so it is this great challenge of noticing the the trigger, creating the pause, and then having enough resources to figure out, is this a short-term safety or a long-term stability, right? and And sometimes we have to choose short-term safety, even if it's not the best choice for the long-term.
Speaker: That is very real. um I want to really clarify that this is not a left or right issue. This is a human issue, right? In the United States, we many people politicize everything and assign colors and parties to behavior.
Speaker: But this is deeply human, as most people who have studied with Dr. Porges or in the spheres around him no um so number That's one of the things I love to say and in talks with business leaders or journalists or civic leaders or students is, you know, that when there are calls for civil discourse, people always say, oh, well, you have to find common ground. And I'll say you can't find common ground if you're dysregulated, right? Like if you're if you view information as an existential threat, it's going to be really hard to find common ground.
Speaker: But one of the things that is common among all of us, unless you are a robot, is we all have a nervous system. um And it's trying to keep us safe. So the messiness of untangling, subscribing to an ideology or a leader
Speaker: who we think will keep us safe, but ultimately might be degrading our health and wellbeing. Is that kind of your question? Yeah, that's exactly it i think. Yeah. um Well, this just happened in my home state of Maine, where there is a very consequential race for the U.S. Senate. And the U.S. Senate is for the global audience is ah one of the chambers of of Congress that is supposed to be a check and balance on the president.
Speaker: And in Maine, there is an opportunity to unseat a member of the the ruling party, a member of the president's party. And so many voters in the Democratic Party of Maine, through their support behind a charismatic um populist leader, Graham Plattner, who campaigned on an anti-establishment platform, saying that essentially he was the one to save Mainers from the dangers of the outside world and would not only help to restore dignity to Mainers who are struggling with
Speaker: um health care and and grocery prices, but would also help to restore democracy in a country that is suffering greatly. um And his message resonated deeply and in a way that people ignored that he had sexual assault allegations against him, ignored that he had made racist, homophobic, and misogynistic statements online ignored that he had a a nazi tattoo until the point that it finally took ah um a credible rape allegation against him for people to step back and say whoa is this the person we want representing us um
Speaker: But this was the Democratic Party that would often scratch its head and say, how do members of the Republican Party not use more discernment to notice that the president has all of these allegations against him as well, but the Republicans are voting for the president? um Democrats would say without reason.
Speaker: Democrats in Maine, did many of them did the same thing with this candidate. um And so it was a situation where we can begin asking ourselves, you know, am I rationalizing behavior that doesn't fit with my values because I feel that there is a crisis that needs to be addressed right now?
Speaker: Am i postponing my values or am I postponing um discernment because I am in a state of fear? How do I know if I'm in a state of fear?
Speaker: Well, but that's that awareness. Begin to notice your state of stress and relaxation, right? Begin to notice if you're having catastrophic um thoughts.
Speaker: Another part is, is the candidate um using us versus them language? Is the candidate avoiding accountability?
Speaker: and pitting himself against the world. So he is the only one or she is the only one who can save this situation. And therefore, we have to dismiss, you know, allegations of wrongdoing, because it's us versus them.
Speaker: You know you also have to look at, is there personal accountability? so I think the more we understand about trauma, it's beautiful because people are developing a vocabulary and a little bit more of an emotional intelligence around trauma. But it's also becoming an excuse for bad behavior. Right. And so this particular candidate said he had trauma, probably complex PTSD from war that contributed to his misconduct.
Speaker: I can totally understand it. And at the same time, it's not an excuse for degrading, dehumanizing behavior towards others. And so we also have to ask, is there personal accountability within our leadership?
Speaker: Do our leaders actually own what they've done and show through repeated behavior over time that they've really learned and they're applying the lessons? Or are they just using the vocabulary of trauma and emotional intelligence instead of being fluent in the language?
Speaker: There's like, there there's a you know, at the Invisible Threads Lab, the group that i founded, we work on democratic discernment and helping people understand the qualities within themselves, the questions they need to be asking of the community around them and the the structures and processes that we need to apply on a systemic level to actually allow people to ask these questions without being so adrenalized.
Speaker: One other thing I'll say is when we're adrenalized, so when we when we feel like we're in a threat state, even if we're not, um adrenaline makes time speed up, right? And so you feel like there's absolutely no time for anything else. You just, there's there's no time. You just have to push for this candidate.
Speaker: When we... are able to stabilize or to regulate, come back into a state where we are more open and expansive in our thought, suddenly more options appear. It's almost like magic. um And so that's that's part of the process. And then beginning to notice, am i I need to consume information to stay up to date on the world, but i can am I consuming information in a way that keeps me totally activated and fear-based?
Speaker: That's like, you know, too much water can actually kill you. Does that make sense? Yes, yes. No, it absolutely does. And I'm so happy that you brought up the the way that we consume news because I've been I wanted to ask you about like when we're spurred into these sympathetic states. I think we some of my colleagues and and people i've I've heard this before, but refer to like a news headline as a modern day tiger. Totally.
Speaker: You know, because the. the the the nervous system is there to to keep us safe and that sympathetic is kind of designed to be turned on for brief periods not for you know a consistent period of time but when you're when you have a phone that gets a news headline notification of something happening that can trigger you know an elevated state you know out of rest and relax into fight and flight so how do you think about consuming news in today's day and age obviously it's omnipresent and you can get it in a lot of a variety of different ways. But how are you thinking about news and and staying informed, but also staying balanced and and healthy in that?
Speaker: Yeah. So you and your colleagues are shot on and having been in so in the belly of the beast inside newsrooms. um Yeah, it's a tricky thing. We're we're um trying people in the news industry are trying very hard to be responsible um with our words. And at the same time, we are part of an economic model and a financial incentive structure that requires readers to click on an article so that we get revenue and subscriptions in order to keep the business going. Right. And how do you grab attention? It is to activate um that fear or threat response. So I look at the
Speaker: The design of news, I look at the usage of news on different levels, on an individual communal systemic level. So I i think of everything in terms of systems. And um individually, it is that awareness. So am I consuming news in a way that keeps me stressed out? Am I consuming news to validate and confirm my own biases? Do I even know what my biases are? right Like, am I just sharing this because I feel angry with a particular party or upset about a particular thing and this makes me feel validated? So that awareness is really important. And once you have that awareness, you have agency. You can make a decision.
Speaker: Don't share the thing that activates you because maybe it'll activate someone else unless you're really consciously deciding, I want to move people to action. um And then even it's you know a question of,
Speaker: action without direction or action without so collective support to move in a constructive way? Is that, you know, is that just chaos?
Speaker: Great question for, you know, groupthink. But um so on an individual level, begin to notice why are you consuming the way you do? How does it affect you? um Experiment, you know, experiment with what time you're looking at news. Experiment with whether you're moving your body. experiment whether or not you're just like scrolling for the next thing because you're in such a chronic state of activation that it takes more activation to make you feel calm.
Speaker: um So that's, that's one part. um On a communal level, I think a lot about the journalists who don't have the structural support for them to stabilize.
Speaker: um Right. I think a lot about journalists and editors who don't have the, the intellectual or embodied knowledge or experience to understand the nervous system and what they're going through and how that might be affecting their decisions.
Speaker: And then on a systemic level, I think a lot about the economy and the design of information systems, whether they are tech platforms or political rhetoric or news, where the designers really know psychology and they do know neuroscience and and we have information infrastructure that is designed to dysregulate people. um And so I think one of the big tasks of this era is that we know better now and so we need to do better. And if there is a collective desire to improve human dignity and well-being and if there is a collective desire to
Speaker: prove and strengthen democracy, then we need to design information systems built for both. um The current structure is degrading human well-being and democracy, and um and we can do better.
Speaker: it's It's one of the things that I'm working on, and i think there needs to be a real investment in understanding and and and propagating or or supporting, rather, what I call regenerative journalism and regenerative information.
Speaker: to, to really rebuild the civic soil. Well, I know it's a, it's a very complicated problem, but could you offer something you're excited about working on right now to foster more resilience and to foster more awareness yeah in that vein?
Speaker: So, um, the invisible threads lab that, uh, I created after leaving the post. And now that I'm working with neuroscientists and trauma experts and systems thinkers, So we we have this awareness to agency action framework where we're helping people begin to recognize these invisible threads between our nervous systems and the collective nervous system.
Speaker: And that awareness is really exciting because then people want the skills. And so we're training journalists. I actually went back to the Washington Post and trained a cohort of journalists um to better understand their nervous systems and to build resilience skills so that they not only are more grounded, but their questions are informed by these these concepts. Like imagine if more journalists were covering um social and political happenings based on an understanding of how
Speaker: our upstream conditions are are supporting or degrading our stability and safety rather than just he said, she said back and forth, like how amazing. So training um journalists, I'm working with Georgetown University to help them understand the brain health democracy connection. I'm working with in the very early stages of helping to develop training and systems change um knowledge centers for civic leaders. So again, if our civic leaders who are setting the agendas for laws, for policies, they're setting the civic culture by the way they talk, imagine if they understood that their nervous systems are scanning for safety or danger. Imagine if they could actually begin to to come back to base and ask different questions and relate in different ways.
Speaker: um You know, culture is set up at the set at the top. And so our business leaders, our civic leaders, our our educational leaders, and then everywhere, we need an increased not only awareness, not just an intellectual awareness, but an embodied awareness of this That's brilliant. The way that you're speaking about it is it's so cutting edge and innovative. And i think it'll be so helpful for so many people to start to reconsider their relationship with information. i Kind of want to close with bringing it back to our international gathering coming up here in a couple months. As I mentioned, you'll be speaking. And would you mind just sharing a little bit of a preview of what guests can expect when they'll be attending that either Cichas, Spain or or virtually as well? Yeah. So, um you know, I think it's very clear. I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm not um and a therapist. I'm a translator of of these concepts and this knowledge and this wisdom to the the real practiced world. And so what I'll be talking about is what I refer to as the nervous system of democracy and tracing that very personal, hopefully relatable experience of being a person in an overwhelmingly uncertain, dysregulating world and how our own well-being is affected by the systems around us and how the systems around us are affected by our well-being.
Speaker: um Specifically, dissecting and looking at that moment on January 6th. So there's footage of me at the Capitol And you can actually see you know people's mirror neurons in action where there is this ripple effect from the from the activation to the de-escalation. And so we go from that you know catalytic moment to zooming out to what does this mean about our information systems and political systems and economic systems to come back to what can we do about it?
Speaker: And um so I think... you know, there is everywhere I go around the world, there is this big existential, how did we get here? How did we get to, you know, a point where by all accounts, democracy is is is really dramatically declining and under threat in the United States and in in many places around the world? And how did we get to a collective mental health crisis? And so that I think that the conversation will be very illuminating for people about the connections between
Speaker: ourselves in the world around us. And even though that can be upsetting and overwhelming, it actually is very empowering because when people say we have to change the system, we have to fix the system, when you recognize that we are the system and it takes tiny shifts within ourselves to create the wider movement, that is an exciting prospect, right?
Speaker: And I do believe we can make intergenerational healing and wellbeing as inevitable as intergenerational trauma. Thank you, Kate. i appreciate that answer. And I'm very much looking forward to our conference here in a couple months. And lastly, where can people find you and your work? Where can they learn more about you and the invisible threads and and all the work that you're doing?
Speaker: Thank you for asking. So you can follow on Substack, substack.com.katewoodsom or katewoodsom.substack.com. It'll be linked in the bio or in the the the paragraph. Don't worry. Yeah. Google go all the things. Yeah. Invisible threads lab.com. Invisibles. www.invisiblethreadslab.com is where you know the lab sits in a description of our work. And you can always email me if you want to collaborate or if you're interested in bringing me to your organization or my collaborators. We're we're keen to spread the word and and listen to what other folks are doing. So it's Kate at www.invisiblethreadslab.com. Awesome.
Speaker: awesome Thank you so much, Kate. It was such a great conversation. and and thank you for your insights and sharing about nervous system of democracy, resilience. Everything was amazing. So thank you so much.
Speaker: This your beautiful conversation. Thank you so much for the space. Thank you for listening to this episode of Wired for Connection, a Polyvagal podcast.
Speaker: This show is produced by the Polyvagal Institute, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a safer and more connected world. Polyvagal Institute provides education, resources, and community to those interested in learning more about polyvagal theory and applying polyvagal principles in personal and professional contexts.
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