Good morning. Hi, everyone. We are super excited to be here today. As usual, we love this time where we get to talk to each other and talk to you about all things mental health, and especially trauma. Today's episode, we're going to dive into the nervous system. And as you know, we're doing a new year new nervous system challenge starting in January of 2023. And we're super excited because the nervous system has been so instrumental in our own healing. So Lena, what, how do you understand the nervous system? And let's talk about
that. This is kind of funny because, um, you remember Mr. Newbold taught science as well as Driver's Ed High School, okay. So he taught, he taught me biology, and I still remember his his lecture on the nervous system that we have, I know, crazy, that we have what's called the autonomic nervous system ans. And the autonomic nervous system is what regulates all the necessary functions of the body to keep it imbalance. And we've talked about this before on some other podcasts, but it's the rate of your breathing, how frequently you, you blink, how fast your heartbeats, that sort of thing. And I still remember that from from ninth grade. And so as I've learned more about this, it's helped me understand how to better regulate my own nervous system and understand that the limbic brain is hyper sensitive to perceived threat and that everything that sends my body into some kind of reaction is not necessarily life threatening.
I think that's a great point. And one of the things I find really interesting about what I've learned about the central or autonomic nervous system, is that it is, it is basically a gate, there's a nerve, a nerve that is a gateway between our brain and our entire body. And what I find so interesting is that for so long, we have focused trauma recovery and mental health on what's going on in our brain or our mind, which is very important. However, when we start to understand the nervous system, and we understand the connection between the brain and the body, we realize that there is a set of nerves, that communicates it sits lands at the base of the brain. And it communicates to the whole entire body through basically your spine. And it sends messages back and forth. But what's what I think is so interesting is before our brain can register, even the fight flight, our body is already communicating. And so our body ends up being the very first place that we understand threat. But so many of us are cut off from feeling our body. I mean, I know that's a very common trauma response. And for years, I mean, I would cut myself and not realize it, because I was I was literally cut off from my body. I would I wouldn't even I would be in pain and not know it until nighttime or when I was in labor with our first child. I was in active labor for two weeks and had no idea I was super surprised when my water broke at church. That's how emotionally cut off I was for my body. Well, that's a trauma response. So here's, here's the rub, when we are cut off from our body, but our body is our first sign of anything going wrong emotionally, we can miss some of those cues. Right? So when we start to really understand that and we really start to understand how important the body is in trauma and toxic stress. We want to get really intentional about connecting with our body and listening to it.
And that's a hard habit to develop after you've detached from your body. And you mentioned that that's a common trauma response which it is so common because it is so consciously determined to be protective, if I can't feel you can't hurt me. But it also is really common in the culture of do more, keep going shaking, it's not that bad, don't rest, keep your nose to the grindstone, that kind of thing. And so our culture in a lot of western world is also very invested in giving us the message that we shouldn't pay attention to our boss. Absolutely.
And, you know, when, when I was teaching, we we identify, you know, the Decart. I think, I think therefore, I am, as the really that, yes, as really the origin of that separation between mind and body that the West has kind of embraced. And that's, you know, it's been hundreds of years. So it's, it's very deeply ingrained in us that the thinking part of our selves, the brain, the mind is superior, and has more knowledge. And what we are, what we are going to work on this whole entire month of January, as well as this is what we work on in our program is prioritizing the knowledge that is kept in our body. Because it's not intuition. It's not. It's not a feeling. It is a it is a physical and physiological reaction to safety and connection, or perceived threat. And it happens before we even register in the brain, if we can really like niche down and start to reconnect, not only can we accurately perceive threat a little bit better, which is really helpful for those of us who have had trauma, because we see threat in places where there is no threat. But we'll also be able to enrich our connections with people and that's one of our basic drives as well. Yes,
well, and, um, it the this response in the body happens before there's any awareness in the brain. And and, and I think that's a really important thing to remember. And that's one of the reasons why we talk about how when you're mending from trauma, it's not enough to just talk about the trauma, that when you talk about the trauma only, it's really likely that you're going to reinforce that neuro that those neural pathways around the trauma and make it more challenging and more activated for you. And I love how in our program, we talk a lot about being able to understand what's happening in our body as a way of information of gathering information. And I'm thinking that if we start there with our new year new nervous system, just helping people realize how to pay attention and have awareness, without any judgment at all. That increases the learning curve. And people become much more aware much more quickly. Because when they're aware of it, instead of being mad at themselves, because they're tired, or they're having a physiological reaction, they can get benevolently curious and wonder about what's happening without any criticism or judgment. I love that. And
that's what will absolutely walk people through is, you know, understanding how to be kind to what we're discovering, as well as skills in order to regulate the nervous system. So we are super excited about I'm like, I always love New Beginnings anyways, and I love I love setting goals for myself, and I love learning and it just, it really gets me excited. And so I am super excited to share this really effective and important information with anyone who wants to learn and wants to in a very, I think it's non threatening way, learn to work on some of their toxic stress and trauma responses. Go into the nervous system for a little bit. We have a couple more. We're gonna do a couple more episodes this month where you'll learn more about the nervous system. But is there anything else that you want to talk about in terms of a bottom up approach that would help our listeners
Sure, the bottom up approach, I believe comes out of UCLA from the psychiatrist, Dan Siegel. And he talks about the bottom up approach being focusing on the body, understanding what's happening in the body, and using that information to reach a place of better emotional regulation. So we're not as reactive. And the best way to practice that is again, just to notice what's happening in your body. We've been trained not to notice that. So even if you're frustrated, because you're not noticing, if you can be kindly curious and say something like, given the circumstances of how, you know, our culture is in the Western world, it makes sense that I keep trying tuning out my body, being able to be kindly curious and understand and offer your really your autonomic responses for yourself, self compassion around that, that will really help increase awareness and insight, and then you can go from there. Thank you.
Okay, so we'll talk more about the nervous system as the month continues, but we hope to see as many of you in our community as possible. Again, go to mending trauma.com backslash new you, and we will see you there. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for listening to the universe's your therapist this week. If you have any questions or looking for more information, you can find us at many trauma on Instagram, as well as many trauma.com Our website and if you're enjoying our content, we'd love it if you could rate review and subscribe to the show. We'll see you all next week.
