Welcome to the universe is your therapist. We are your hosts, Dr. Amy Hoyt, and Lena Hoyt, we are sisters. Take a seat. And let's dive into this week's episode. One of the things we've noticed is we've been getting a lot of feedback from women, especially who tend to be high achieving goal oriented. And in many areas of their lives extremely successful. Yet happiness seems really elusive. And that sense of peace and contentment seems elusive. Not only that, but there's this idea of chasing the next success. And then if you can reach the next success, that somehow that's going to bring the happiness or the sense of well being that we're looking for. And we realize that among this group of people, the data shows that high achieving women are extremely excellent at overcoming things in the past and obstacles. And so we recognize that you are here because you have overcome things. And you have blown through challenges, sometimes like they're no big deal. And that speaks to your strength and your tenacity and your grit. And there's still something blocking you. And so that's why we want to look at our subconscious patterns. So I'm going to turn it over to Lena and she's going to talk a little bit about that with us
door. So these blocks can be things that may show up with the following symptoms or through the following symptoms, you may find that you cry easily, or you may find yourself drinking more than you decided that you would that night, you may find yourself isolating yourself from others sexually shut down or hypersexual and risky, you may find yourself binging or over exercising, or in my case, under exercising. The the idea behind the block is that it is something keeping you stuck and is a subconscious imprint of the past, as Amy noted. And these are triggers that the the evidence for our having some kind of a block is in the way we are triggered by different things. Triggers are a series of memories that are subconscious. And when we have a trigger, it makes it difficult for us to think and feel at the same time we typically feel flooded with emotions. And then we go into either hyper arousal where we're terrified or angry. Or we go into hypo arousal, which we may experience as numb or paralyzed or extremely withdrawn or isolated. When that happens, our prefrontal cortex, which is where our wise mind lives, which is where our higher functioning, our executive functioning lives, that part of our brain is shut down, and that there's not very much blood flow to that part of the brain. Because when you're in fight, or fight, fight or flight, what you need is you need blood flow to your extremities. So you need your blood flow to be going to your heart to your lands, to your fingers, your feet, that kind of thing. And unfortunately, our brain is not very astute at gauging true threat. So you can have somebody say something to you. And this can send you into a subconscious memory that then triggers a reaction in you. Oftentimes, what I find is that the reaction is less than ideal for myself and that when I'm calm again, I can realize that was not my best choice and that I didn't intend to react the way I had. So we have both conscious and subconscious triggers. One of my conscious ones is being in a crowded place. I don't mate this might traumatize some of you, but I hate Disneyland. Disneyland really freaks me out and overwhelms me so I'm conscious of that. Some of my subconscious triggers are when I have hear a tone of voice or when I see the way sunlight falls in the fall. I know that sounds a little odd, but it's associated with my seasonal affective disorder. And even though I may not be conscious of it, I I am aware later that my mind has been tracking the shorter day And so that can be a trigger for myself that is unconscious or subconscious that becomes conscious. One important thing to realize when we are doing this work is that our triggers and our reactions, those responses, oftentimes come out of a nervous system response that we don't have any will or volition over there automatic or autonomic. And it happens outside our awareness, we can find ourselves more short or crabby. But we might not notice unless somebody that we're close to says something to us. And when we realize that we have reactions that occur below the conscious level, and that those reactions can drive our behaviors and can fill us with emotions. We can understand that, even though we have triggers, we also have the power. In doing some of the work of unblocking, we have the power to reduce those triggers and to have more will or volition or agency over our decisions. Some of the triggers that can happen can be smells, or noises, a song, it can send our subconscious back to the place where we maybe had a difficult experience. And it can stall us despite our hard work. If you've ever had an experience where you've remembered something from the past or you've been triggered, and then it kind of overshadows you for a few hours as you work to get your nervous system recalibrated and more even keeled. These are also examples of triggers, one thing that we can do is we can take our frustration on our loved ones. Or if we are talking about a work environment, we can take our frustrations out on our team or our assistant. And we may not notice it, but we might notice the reaction of the assistant or team or our loved ones. And they tend to be kind of taken aback because they're a little startled by our reactivity. And that is something that we can pay attention to if we are also trying to track triggers. So one of the things that we love emphasizing is that we are not trying to keep people in the past, we want to be forward focused, we want to take a look at symptoms that we may have that are lingering from difficult experiences in the past. And we want to extend the idea that there is tremendous hope in resolving some of these things. That even though some difficult experiences can be layered, and can rest on us in in certain situations, we can find ways to help our brain and our body, this or D desensitize to those events or to kind of reorganize those events and give it meaning that is more applicable in our current current situation. And even if you don't identify with some of the traumas that you've had in the past, we are indicate we find through research that because trauma or past experiences can live within us subconsciously, that these can then inadvertently block us in the goals that we have or can block our true sense of happiness or peace.
Thank you, Lena. Okay, I saw a question from Lisa. And she wrote I thought blood flow was reduced to extremities to decrease blood loss in the event of an injury. And Gina or Lena, do you want to take that?
Gina, you might want to take that I know that what blood flow is actually not decreased in the body in general, it's just decreased to the non necessary organs. Gina, how would you describe it?
Yeah, that's right. There's a shunting that happens where blood is shunted to the periphery. It goes into those smaller vessels and capillaries so that our muscles get more, but they need for action, because we might have to do flight. And it's done at the expense of our brains. So I ensure that less leading, especially if the head maybe a side benefit, but in terms of what scientists thought, at least or think about why it happens. It's because we need our muscles to to flight to to run away.
Yes. And just to nuance that I think what's so interesting about this work to me is our we're not not very good at assessing threat. So a tiger chasing us is the same as some person using a tone of voice that seems demeaning. And our body is going to mount a threat response based on both of those events. And I think that's what's so interesting is in a lot of ways, our defense mechanisms aren't very intelligent. And so we're trying to help gain some some intelligence over this process, if you will. Okay, thank you, Gina. And Lena, the next question is unblocking isn't just a general I feel blocked, we are creating physiological responses in the body that actually block our brains from working the best. Roxanne That is exactly right. That's exactly right. And it's because we're not really good at assessing threat. And it's just the human condition. So it keeps us stuck without most of the time, we don't even notice it. So I don't know if this happens to anyone, I probably the only one. You know, I'll be having a great day. And then all of a sudden, I can't figure out why I'm so irritable. And I'm everything that kids say or everything. You know, my partner says I just feel irritable, and then I start tracing it back when I get kind of quiet. And it's something that happened three hours earlier, some something I read or a comment or something that just I didn't process, but it triggered a defense response. And because, you know, none of us are perfect at this. The idea is to kind of close the gap between the event and our realization of what it's doing to our bodies. Thank you for listening to the universe as your therapist this week. If you have any questions or looking for more information, you can find us at mending trauma on Instagram, as well as mending 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.
