Why Does My Body React Before My Brain?!

We talk about why the body can react before the brain, and how trauma gets stored as sensations and states instead of a clean story. We redefine trauma as overwhelm, connect it to adverse childhood experiences and chronic stress, and share ways to get grounded so you can respond with more choice.  
• body-first reactions in real life, from blushing to going blank  
• “flipping your lid” and why the prefrontal cortex goes offline  
• cognitive, emotional, and sensory processing channels and what they are for  
• emotional shutdown, dissociation, and the electric fence metaphor  
• sensory numbing, athletic push-through culture, and survival responses  
• ACEs study links between childhood stress and adult mental and physical health  
• trauma as overwhelm beyond “big events,” including neglect and parentification  
• fragmented memory, triggers, and why the hippocampus loses time context 
• grounding and orientation skills to return to the present  
• progressive muscle relaxation as a safety signal  
• therapy as relational safety, plus EMDR reprocessing and “name it to tame it” 
• practicing regulation daily, wise mind, and building self-compassion  

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This show is sponsored by: 

Core Self 

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Benavieri Counseling & Coaching
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Active Healing Psychiatric Services
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Transcript

Welcome And The Big Question

Laura 0:03

Hello, and welcome to Why Am I Like This, the podcast for those who didn't get enough hugs as a child. I'm Laura Wood and I'm a trauma therapist.

Michaela 0:13

And I'm Michaela Beaver. I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I'm so glad you asked. We all have patterns we don't fully understand. Ways we react, think, and feel that seems to show up no matter how hard we try to change them. On this podcast, we explore how our past relationships, experiences, relationships, and nervous systems shape who we are today. Together, we asked the question we all wondered about at some point, why am I like this? And more importantly, how can we understand ourselves a little more discussion?

When Your Body Reacts First

Laura 0:50

Yes, and today we are talking about how our body keeps the score. We read the book by Bessel Vanderkolk, The Body Keeps the Score, and I'll link that in the show notes. Um, and so we're gonna try to answer the following questions. Why does my body react before my brain? How does sorry, what does trauma actually mean? How can I manage these responses? So to get started, I'm wondering if you can think of a time where your body reacts, but your brain is like, I don't understand this.

Michaela 1:28

Yes, I love that question. Um, and we're I was trying to think of something before we started, and I think like what comes to mind is um I was having a conversation with a client and they asked me a personal question, and I wasn't like really prepared, like or expecting it. And all of a sudden, like my face gets bright red, and um I wasn't really feeling nervous, like I didn't mind ask answering the question. It was something you know super benign, but I think that like there was definitely uh like things were not, you know, connecting. Like, I don't know why I react I my body responded in that way.

Laura 2:11

Yeah. So you're like you're having this response, and you're trying to manage that response, like with your patient right there, and you're like, I don't know why I'm doing this, but my brain is or like my body's having this response reaction.

Michaela 2:25

Yeah. And I like and like they know obviously they could they were like, Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to like embarrass you or whatever. And I'm like, oh no, I'm not embarrassed. I think I was just like taken off guard more than anything. Um, and then I I think if I think back to what the real cause was, like after like kind of like analyzing it a little bit, I honestly think that it was like I was I was more embarrassed by like the answer because it was like something that I should have been doing, but I wasn't doing. You know what I mean? I'm wondering if it has more to do with like the oh yeah, I guess I'm not being maybe a very good patient myself.

Laura 3:06

Right. Like I'm about to say that I'm not doing what I tell them to do. And I'm about to admit that like I'm not actually like taking as good care of myself as I should be or whatever. Yes, absolutely. What about you? Have you had that experience? I totally have that experience. I mean, I can really in the same way with um with clients, like my body, like whenever it feels like there's like um a big insight happening or like a moment of like attunement, my eyes water, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like they're gonna think I'm crying. Or and like I feel like my face gets red, and I always am like worried that they're gonna see that, but like I can't help it, it just happens, and so like I use that as information, like it tells me like if this is happening for me, like I'm wondering what's happening for them. You know what I mean? Like, I'm wondering like if they're having an internal reaction as well. But another time that another you had told a story one time and it reminded me of um something that happens for me, which is that like um I'll be in a moment and at like a stressful moment, and everything will be going, and you know, I'm trying to keep it together and manage and whatever, and I'm kind of just like going along. And then at the end, I'll be like, oh, I should have said this, I should have said this, I should have said it, and I'll come up with like all the exact right things to say, like in every single moment, like after the fact. And it's like that's so annoying. I want my like I want my thinking brain to like my cognition to be like on when I'm in that stressful situation, so that I can handle it like a boss, you know what I mean? Like I can say the right thing, I can I can totally crush the whole thing, you know. And so, like, that's kind of what I thought of.

Michaela 5:06

Well, I wonder if that's part of the reason why our brain shuts off is because we want to crush it and um that pressure is just like I'm done.

Laura 5:17

Yeah, for sure. Like, um, you know, when I'm I can think about like negotiating for a car or something like that, right? Like, oh you know, oh, I want this best deal, and then you're like, yeah, okay, I guess. Like you like cave, right? And then you're like, oh, I should have hold held my ground, I could have saved another $500 or whatever, right? Like that's what that's kind of what I think of. Like, I should have, I should have said this, or or like after a fight with like a partner or something like that, and like you get in an argument with your partner, and then after it's over, you think of like these zingers, like everything that you would have said, like right then and there, like to call them out and to hold them accountable. Like I think about those things as like a a really tangible example of how our system is sort of like surviving through those moments, and without with with the survival mode, uh that cognitive part of our brain doesn't necessarily engage as well as it could if we were in a safe, calm space.

Flipping Your Lid Under Stress

Michaela 6:33

Yeah. You think about how the basically the frontal lobe or the prefrontal cortex just goes offline, if you will, and you know, none of those thoughts that should be coming are are gonna come when we're in the in the survival brain, right? Right.

Laura 6:50

Yeah, Dr. Dan Siegel calls it flipping your lid, like you don't have like that lid of the cognitive, like the your prefrontal cortex is like, oops, I'm out, I'm off, I'm not there. Um yeah, like so uh why this makes sense. And what's funny is that uh so I teach when I teach this in my classes, I always teach the channels of information processing, right? Like I teach um that we have cognitive, a cognitive channel of information processing, an affective or emotional channel of information processing, and a sensory channel of information processing, right? So the question I always ask is which do you think is the most important? Right. I ask everybody like which channel is the most important, and everybody says cognitive. They all raise really, I guess I would have said survival for some reason, yeah, like sensory, right? Because that has your survival value. Like your sensory and affective channels are what help tell they determine safety and danger in the world, and so but everybody like values initially this cognitive channel of processing, thinking like, oh, well, that's what makes us adapted, you know, evolved humans, like you know, our brains, our our thoughts, our cognition, our intelligence, right? But the reality is our cognitive processing channel really has no survival value. Like if you think about a human as an organism, you don't need that to survive. Sure.

Michaela 8:29

That's really interesting. And the other thing that came up while you were saying that is like, you know, I was thinking, you know, people might be more in tune with like their sensory, you know, channel, or they're af the and like oftentimes, you know, not very in tune with their emotional channels, right? You think about people who just like go, go, go, push through in the moment, and then all of a sudden they come to see us, and then they're like bawling their eyes out, and they're like, I never cry. And it's like, well, yeah, because you never engage in your emotional channel.

Laura 9:07

Right, right. And when you don't engage in your notion emotional channel, you're not really engaging in the social engagement system, right? So that emotional or affective processing is where we connect with people, right? It's where we determine if you are a safe person for me. Like when I'm a baby, I need to connect with my caregiver. That's that attachment channel, that's where that's happening. And so a lot of us sort of shut that down, and then we're feeling alone in our

Why We Shut Down Feelings

Laura 9:39

lives. Like I hear that all the time. Like, I just feel lonely. I feel alone.

Michaela 9:43

Um, and why would somebody shut off their emotional affective channels?

Laura 9:49

Gosh, for so many reasons. I think pain, uh like I think um we shut that down as a defense because we have experienced pain and rejection and abandonment. And when we experience those things, those are so um big, they're huge feelings for kids, right? We we shut them down after we've experienced those negative feelings as kids. Like these are not things that happen to us for the first time as an adult, right? These are things that happen to us for the first time as a child, and we learn how to cope with that and we adapt. So, for example, if as a kid I'm experiencing like emotional rejection from my parents, like let's say I'm I bring home a drawing from school and I'm like, mom, dad, mom, dad, you know, look at this drawing that I made. And they're just like, ugh, like, okay, I don't care. I'm busy. Like as a little kid, I'm like, oh man, like I'm so rejected, right? Okay, imagine that times a thousand over and over and over and over and over. Eventually I'm gonna stop going to, I'm gonna stop bringing them my drawings because they don't care. And it hurts more to have them tell me they don't care than for me to just like go through this process on my own internally and shut down my need for their connection. And that's like a benign, everyone can write like you know, everyone can remember a time where their parents weren't that interested in something they had to say because kids sometimes aren't that interesting and they are their drawings aren't that good, and so they say the same things over and over again, right? Or their stories don't make sense, or their stories are too long, and so everybody's got that experience. But what really where we shut it down is if we're experiencing that experience so often and consistently that it's too painful to reach out for that connection. So I always um when I was taught about attachment theory, my trainer shared this uh metaphor of an electric fence.

Dissociation And The Electric Fence

Laura 12:06

So an electric fence that's on sometimes, but off other times, like you never know if it's turned on. You can't tell until you reach for it. And when you touch it, sometimes it's fine. Other times it shocks you. So you never really know. And so you always but you have to go through this fence in order to get past the fence to get food. So you have to reach for it, you have to touch this fence, but you just never know if it's gonna shock you. And so shut down um or dissociation is the process of like basically putting on rubber protective gloves so that when you reach for that fence, you don't feel anything. Like you numb yourself. I love that.

Michaela 12:53

Yeah, I've never thought about it in that kind of way before.

Laura 12:59

Yeah. So we have to numb ourselves out sometimes in order to protect us from that shock of not feeling the connection that we're looking for when we need it. And that's really that's coming from our affective channel, but like a sensory channel too. Think about athletes. Like athletes who push through pain, like I played on a broken ankle, or I, you know, I'm running and running and running, and my body is telling me to stop, but I'm not gonna stop. I'm ignoring that. And so they're they're basically training their brain to numb out that sensory channel. They're saying, like, no, don't pay attention to that, don't listen to that while I'm in this game. And so sometimes that can be healthy and adaptive while they're performing. The trouble is they have to learn how to discern between the athletic performance and regular life. Otherwise, they're gonna be sort of numbed out to their body and not listening to those signals and re-injuring themselves and not, you know, paying if they're not paying attention to those sensory signals, then that can cause them danger and harm later on.

Michaela 14:07

Right. Because the body is remembering this, even though we're checked out, we're ignoring, we're dissociating from the thing, the body is going to continue to remember that experience. So whether that means that they're gonna keep doing that after the fact, or you know, there's gonna be some kind of physical, you know, experience later that is tied to that potentially.

Laura 14:34

Another thing that makes us numb out our sensory channel is like a physical assault, right? So if I sometimes when people describe an assault, they say, like, oh, I was outside my body. Like I didn't feel anything, right? Like it was, and then maybe they felt the pain after, but like during that moment, they numbed themselves to the pain because it was too much, and that it and they went into shock. That's a healthy, adaptive way to get through an assault, is to have your is your body's doing that for you on purpose. That's a survival mechanism that your body is doing, is taking you out of that moment so that you can go through this and not die, right? And you can survive and then you can heal later on. The trick is we have to reconnect with our body after that happens. But again, if it's chronic, it's happening over and over and over throughout your childhood, especially. Then your body is not going, you're not gonna reconnect with your body afterwards. You're gonna disconnect from your body, and then you might even have negative feelings toward your body, like you might feel like it was your body's fault for the assault, like you froze or um fawned during that time in the self. Then you blame yourself, exactly, and you're not connected to your body. So a lot of the work in therapy with somatic therapies, but also just you know, general safety finding is we connect with our bodies again.

What Trauma Means Beyond The Obvious

Laura 16:09

We have to learn how to our bodies, it's right, it sounds easy, challenging to do. Yeah, because we feel like it's safe, right? Like our bodies themselves don't feel like a safe place because our bodies have memories too. So if I connect with my body, then I'm gonna get that memory of the assault, and I don't want to relive that.

unknown 16:36

Right.

Michaela 16:38

So like when we talk about trauma and we talk about big, big things like you know, assaults and things like that, but it can also be associated to like chronic stress, like just like you know, maybe your parents fighting all the time and not or you know, not knowing if you're gonna get yelled or screamed at, or you know, if your needs are gonna be met, you know, that day, right?

Laura 17:04

Yeah, chronic stress, like so um the ACES, right? So the adverse childhood experiences um study was done by Kaiser Permanente and the CDC. Uh do you remember when it was done? Was it the 90s? I don't remember the date. Yeah. Um, but it was a while back, and it was essentially this huge study where they did they were looking at different adverse experiences that children go through to try to kind of measure, um measure how many kids experience these negative affective um experiences. So, like, okay, so what were some of the things in the study?

Michaela 17:52

In like the ACE study, like looking at um like parents using substances, right? Um, divorce is one of them. Um, and parents or like um sexual traumas, um like emotional abuse, getting screamed at, um incarceration of parents or family members. Um, I know I'm missing something else.

Laura 18:25

Uh what some of them are witnessing the abuse, right? So like watching your mother be harmed by your father, I think is one of them. Um and then another one is um witnessing like or is is feeling unwanted or unloved.

Michaela 18:49

Yeah. But what was interesting is is not only did they look at these adverse childhood events to see which ones had a huge impact, or like how many, how many of these, how many kids were having um them, which was an interesting part is that like a significant portion of the population has at least one or two of these experiences. But they studied these people for a period of, they were looking at these people and and actually uh correlating it with physical health in adulthood. And you know, looking at higher, so the more adverse childhood events you have in childhood, the more likely you are to have obesity, metabolic disorders like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, things like that, um, and mental health considerations like anxiety, depression, and and whatnot. So um inflammation, autoimmune disorders, uh so there is a direct link between what happens in childhood and your adult life.

Laura 20:06

And you're far more likely to experience substance use disorder as well. And I, you know, when I first learned about the ACEs study, I it totally shifted my entire perspective of like what even is trauma? Because in here is I felt unloved, I felt unwanted, right? Having that experience, that feeling, like is a traumatic, adverse experience. Um, going through having your parents go through a divorce, um, having your parents uh yell and scream at you, um, not getting your needs met, like neglect, those things are things that people come in and say, like, oh, I had a normal childhood. Right? Like my parents were fine, they were busy, they worked a lot, or you know, my dad drank, or my mom, you know, was uh my mom drank a lot of wine or whatever, like or my mom was a successful single mom who was working all the time.

Michaela 21:12

Like not like when we connected, it was great, but like we didn't connect that often. That's emotional neglect, not purposeful, not intentional. Like you're both just trying to survive, but that's still you know, not going to be conducive for emotional stability and like long-term mental wellness.

Laura 21:35

And so what that told me was you can have experienced trauma without being a victim. Like you don't have to be a victim of something to have experienced traumatic experience. Trauma is something anything that overwhelms your system to where you don't have the capacity. Ability to cope like in that moment.

Michaela 22:03

Sure. And I think too about like early parentification of children. That's that is going to create overwhelm. You're you're asking a child to act like an adult. They don't have the capacity for that.

Laura 22:19

And you're looking like you're looking to a child to solve problems that they don't have control over yet. They don't have the autonomy and the agency, but you're telling them that they need to. I remember just even like with my brother, like fighting with my brother and feeling so helpless and out of control because I couldn't get him to stop, like doing whatever I wanted him to stop doing, whether that's like elbowing me in the car or like just those little teasy things where it's like just stop. Like I need you to stop. That sense of like out of control is so big. And so imagine you're 10 years old and you're in charge of a five-year-old or two, and you're trying to get them to like behave, but they have behavioral challenges and you're so out of control and helpless, that's trauma. That is a traumatic experience. So I think today trauma gets thrown around, like, oh, everything's trauma, everything's trauma. And if everything is trauma, then nothing is. But I think we need to think differently about how we define like what that actually means. Because what are we saying when we say trauma? We're saying my system was overwhelmed and I didn't have the capacity to cope in that moment.

Michaela 23:33

Exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking. It's not necessarily the situation specifically, it's how you felt in that moment because you could have experienced the same thing that I did, but I felt like I had capacity, and therefore I didn't feel like it was traumatic.

Laura 23:49

Mm-hmm. Yeah, like why do some people get PTSD and other people don't? Like that is um there's a lot of factors, resilience, protective factors that go into whether or not you experience PTSD. And one of the biggest things that you that protects against PTSD is is an affective um relational safety, like a safe relational connection right after the traumatic event or during the traumatic event. A safe relational connection during that time is the biggest protective factor against PTSD.

Michaela 24:23

Yes, absolutely. So they provide safety to your nervous system.

unknown 24:31

Right.

Laura 24:31

They provide safety to your nervous system. And your affective channel, right? Your sensory processing is not safe, but your affective channel kind of helps bring in that safety. And when you have that sense of safety, then your cognitive channel can come online and it can make sense of what just happened and it can recognize and tell the story of the event as being an event that happened and you survived, and now it's over and you're okay and you're safe and you can move forward. But traumatic events, they're not stored as stories, they're not linearly stored in your brain. And that's why your body reacts and your brain doesn't always know what's

Triggers And Fragmented Memory

Laura 25:09

happening. Like your thinking brain, right? Your cognitive awareness isn't always sure why I'm having this emotional reaction or why I'm having this physical reaction.

Michaela 25:19

Um but well, and I think that that goes back to like how our brain encodes things when we're under stress, when cortisol is high, then our that part of our brain that encodes memory is it's top the cortisol is toxic to that part of the brain, which will lead it to encode memories in fragments. And so, like all of a sudden, that gray couch, like it's when I see a gray couch, I'm triggered, but I don't really know why the gray couch, because there was a gray couch at some point in time, and now my men my memory is just saying the gray couch equals danger, right?

Laura 26:01

Right, because it's associating any kind of fragmented memory with the sense of danger because it's like it's sending you that signal, like you need to get out, you need to get out, and you might not know like what it's referring to, right? So, like sometimes bringing it back to like associating the thing that's dissociated, right? So it's separated and fragmented, so you associate it with an actual experience and recognize, like, oh, that's because of this. It's not actually the couch isn't actually dangerous, correct? Yes, the couch is not dangerous, right? Um so how do we so what are that's one way of managing the experience? What

Grounding Skills To Return To Now

Laura 26:43

are some other ways of managing these responses?

Michaela 26:48

Well, I think that the first thing that I would start with was just like getting back into the present moment. You know, I think that like um people have, you know, this experience where like all of a sudden we're having a panic attack or an anxiety attack or whatever, and we don't really understand why we're feeling the way we're feeling, or all of a sudden, like we can't breathe, or we get dizzy and we're like feeling, you know, maybe like that same way that we felt back when we were trauma in the traumatic experience. And so I think it's important to remember that like those things don't live in the present moment. And so doing what you can to get back into your body, to get back into the present moment, wiggling your toes, looking around the room, reorienting yourself with like what your age is, where you live, what your phone number is, those kinds of things um is what comes up first for me.

Laura 27:42

What do you think? Well, I was thinking the other thing that that does, that getting into the present, it also engage re-engages your cognition, right? When you're having to think of your phone number or like say your phone number backwards, for example, like you're having to engage that prefrontal cortex. So you're inviting it to come back online in a like a variety of ways, right? So it's like safety, present day, like the in the present there is no danger, and that that cognition is coming back online. And that prefrontal cortex acts as a regulator for your brain. Yeah. So um, I think another thing that you can do is like progressive muscle relaxation. So like a specific body-based send signals to your body that you're safe. Because if you can intentionally relax your muscles, what you're telling your amygdala and your brain, your limbic system, you're telling that part of your brain that there is no danger, meaning I'm allowed to relax, it's safe to relax. So you're sending that signal of safety to your brain. So clenching your jaw, relax, relaxing your jaw, shift, you know, tensing your shoulders, relaxing your shoulders, clenching your fists, relaxing your fists, right? Like doing those things on purpose or telling your brain, like, oh, it's safe to do this right now. I don't have to be stuck in this muscle tension, um, this hypervigilance state.

Michaela 29:08

Sure. Well, and I think that it's good, um, especially like the neck and shoulders and jaw and stuff, and like clenching and relaxing, those parts are especially helpful because when you're in that fight or flight response, extra blood is flowing to those areas to prepare your body to like react to to run to fight all of those things. And so um by relaxing that, you're kind of counteracting some of that what's actively happening in the anxiety state. So um one of the other things that I was thinking was obviously, you know, trauma is anything that the nervous system didn't have the capacity to process at the time, right? So if we didn't have the capacity to process it at the time, and if we haven't fully processed it yet, then it's still gonna be stored and it's gonna be disjoint. But if we can

Therapy, EMDR, And Reprocessing

Michaela 30:04

go back and do therapy to to um you know improve that connection and help it be something that can be processed in a safe way, then you know, we're not gonna maybe have the same effect or we might, but we'll be able to get back, it's gonna be easier to get back out of that um dysregulation and shutdown.

Laura 30:30

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that makes therapy most effective, actually, is the safety in the therapeutic relationship. So you can have a mediocre therapist, but if you have that safety and connection in the therapeutic relationship, that's doing so much work for your nervous system that like it's not about the interventions that your therapist uses. It's actually about the safety in the room and the connection in the relationship. So that's like a novel experience for your nervous system to sort of have that sense of safety. That's actually restorative and reparative. And then a type of therapy, EMDR therapy, the R in EMDR stands for reprocessing. So you're reprocessing the memory in a safe way, in a safe state, and you're allowing all parts, all channels of processing to incorporate and consolidate that information and tell it as a cohesive story instead of fragmented. So it's putting all those pieces together. It's like if you have um, you know, a piece of a broken vase, you're gluing all the pieces back together. So there's still gonna be that that residual experience of like sadness, like, oh, I wish it wasn't, it's not, it's it's not perfect, but it's okay enough, right? It's good enough.

Michaela 31:50

Yeah. Well, and one of the other things that I like about EMDR specifically is that you're actually reprocessing the physical sensations in the body as well. And so you're you're helping to improve those and um desensitize that response. Mm-hmm.

Laura 32:08

Yeah, you're remembering, you're inviting your body to remember where you feel the stuff and what sensations your body is experiencing, and you're inviting your body and brain to process that and um really consolidate that into the memory and tell the story.

Michaela 32:24

Yeah. Another thing that um we talked about previously on like um the OCD stuff is like naming it to tame it. And so I wonder like just being able to like, um, how does like just being able to go, oh, my body's reacting to trauma right now? Like, how do you think that would impact um our response?

Laura 32:48

Oh yeah, I think that's really important because what it's doing is it's orienting, right? You're saying, oh, I'm reacting to something that's a memory, I'm not, it's not happening right now. And that's easier said than done, right? Because memories, traumatic memories aren't stored as stories, they're stored as really you're they're relived as states. And so the hippocampus, like the part of your brain, part of your brain that's sort of activated in this traumatic memory situation and has a lot to do with memory storage, it doesn't know the difference between past and present. It doesn't have access to the time component when you're experiencing a traumatic memory. So it doesn't know you're remembering. It's not it's implicit, it's not explicit, it doesn't explicitly understand that you're remembering. And so when you name it and you say that out loud, or you say that in your brain, or you send signals to your body that you're remembering, that can be helpful. But it that's gonna be inconsistent with what you feel. So you're having to know that feelings aren't facts in that moment. Like I can feel like something's happening right now, and I can know that as a fact, it's not happening right now.

Michaela 33:57

Well, yeah, because you can also ask yourself, am I safe? In this moment, am I okay? And then that can also be reorienting.

Laura 34:07

Right. Right. So that orientation to your surroundings and to your body can be really restorative. And you don't always have to, I think it's important, you don't always have to know where it's coming from, like where the trigger's coming from, or like what memory it's coming from. You can just say, I know that this isn't about what's happening right now. Like, um I can't remember who said it. I was listening to a podcast recently, and they said, if you if it's hysterical, if I'm hysterical, it's historical. I love that, right? That's hilarious. So basically, what that means is if my reaction is too big, this isn't about what's happening right now. So the way that I say that sometimes is the problem isn't the problem. Yeah. So remembering that can be helpful. Yes, that's hilarious. Yeah, I wish I could give credit to that statement, but I can't remember who said it.

Michaela 35:11

I think you know that's important to remember though. Like, if the problem like my reaction is really big, this isn't about right now. This isn't about this.

Laura 35:22

Yeah, it's hard to tell sometimes. So practicing the other thing is practicing like mindfulness, meditation, calm skills, safety cues, practicing regulating your nervous system is something that you need to be doing all day, every day. It's not just to use in case of emergency, because you can't always know when you're in that state. You you can't tell. Your brain inherently doesn't realize, right? Like if you don't know that you're remembering, there's nothing in there saying, Oh, let me use this helpful tool. Like your cognition is offline. So using those tools as habits is gonna get your body to start automatically applying those things in cases of distress, right?

Michaela 36:08

Yeah.

Compassion, Learning, And Closing

Michaela 36:09

Well, I think that like people who have um that I've worked with, especially people that have like um borderline tendencies, you know, which is a is a response to trauma. Right. Um, you know, those, you know, I've heard them say, like, I can I can know I'm hysterical, they're hysterical in the moment, and they can know that their reaction is so big, and they don't want it to be, but they feel incapable of like reining it back in. You know, like so that like you know, we've in dbt you talk about like the wise mind, the emotional mind, and the and the um logical mind, and right, right? So it's like we want to get to this place where we're not stuck in emotion and we're not stuck in logic that we're we're able to use all those things together. But sometimes when for whatever reason the body you know reacts in those ways and and it take and it takes time to learn how to to calm down your nervous system, because you can literally be aware of it and feel as though it's out of your control, you know. So I think like if you're hysteric, the that the reason I started thinking about that was because you said hysterical. And I'm like, if you're hysterical, the first thing that you need to do is calm your body down, do your calming techniques, and work your way into a regulated state because we just don't make great choices. At least I don't make great choices when I'm upset. So I don't know about the rest of you.

Laura 37:44

No, I tend not to be at my best, yeah. Um, and that's important to note because you're not gonna ignore the problem after that, you're gonna solve it, but you have to solve it from a state where you have access to all three channels of processing, right? You have access to your emotion, your cognition, and your senses. You can solve like you calm yourself down, regulate yourself, and then solve the problem, right?

Michaela 38:10

And the same thing goes for kids. Like, you know, how many times do you want to yell at your kid when they did something stupid and they're dysregulated? Like all the time. I just want to like be like, what are you thinking? But you have to wait for them to calm their nervous system down, otherwise they can't learn. They can't they can't even think about the situation in a different way because they're not regulated.

Laura 38:35

Yeah, traumatize uh trauma prevents us from being able to learn from our experience in a like from a sense of safety because we have this like inherent unresolved sense of danger. So regulating your nervous system all the time, like all day, every day, is the key to bringing those skills up when you need them.

Michaela 39:02

Oh my gosh, that just like I don't know what it was about what you said or how you said it, but I was just like, hmm, so that friend that you know doesn't seem to learn and does and repeats the same things over and over again. I'm like, oh, that makes so much sense. Like I can empathize with them so much more because they're not in a state in which learning can occur.

Laura 39:28

Yeah, that's absolutely right. So we can have empathy and we can have compassion for ourselves and for others who are experiencing these big responses and doesn't feel in control, right? I think um that's an important lesson too, is have empathy and compassion, not only for other people, but have it for yourself.

Michaela 39:51

I think you know, it's so weird. Why is it so much harder to care for ourselves than it is to be like, I was I just asked a kid today, like would you would you like would it be okay if your friend did this? No. Right. But if but like it's okay if we do.

Speaker 40:13

You know?

Michaela 40:14

So why why do we not have compassion for ourselves?

Laura 40:18

I don't know. Maybe that's our next episode. Ooh, I like that. So I think that's a good place to leave it. Have compassion and empathy for yourself. Um, you know, you can't just think your way out of something your body's still holding on to. You have to use the skills uh regularly and consistently in order for your body to start engaging them on its own. So thank you so much. Thank you for this conversation as always, and thank you for listening to Why Am I Like This. If you like our show, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Follow the show and share it with your friends. This episode was written and produced by me, Laura Wood, and Michaela Beaver. Our theme song is Making Ends Meet by Thick as Thieves, and a special thanks to Core Self, Benavieri Counseling and Coaching, and Active Healing Psychiatric Services for sponsoring our show.