Why on Earth Do I Feel This Way? W. Dr. Jolene Arasz

[00:00:00] Nurses is basically like five-year-old stuck in an adult body. When I talk about trauma, I talk about it very closely interrelated with anxiety because anxiety is a theruit of everything. She is the author of an amazing book called Why On Earth

[00:00:14] Do I Feel This Way? Understanding anxiety and mental health through control theory. The focus needs to be on the social-emotional regulation and it's not. When we have trauma, we've got stuck emotions, right? That's trauma creates an emotional

[00:00:29] charge that we're holding onto that gets stagnant and stuck within us. There is a mechanism behind our anxiety, the brain is, you know, it knows what it needs to do. It's trying to protect us. Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of Awakener. I'm your host Corissa Stepp

[00:00:45] and today I'm going to be chatting with Dr. Jillian Ares. She is the author of an amazing book called Why On Earth Do I Feel This Way? Understanding anxiety and mental health through control theory. She's also a practicing psychologist in Northern New Jersey and she specializes in anxiety

[00:01:03] management as it is at the root of any mental health issue. She's currently in private practice, working with adolescents, adults, and families and she received dual degree in psychology from all-bright college. From there she attended the Massachusetts School of

[00:01:17] Professional Psychology to earn her doctoral degree in clinical psychology. Jillian, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm super excited to be chatting with you. Today we're going to be chatting about how trauma impacts the body and I'm going to ask you

[00:01:30] million and one questions, but first just welcome to awaken her and thank you for being here with us. Thank you so much. I really appreciate being here and being able to talk about this on

[00:01:39] another platform so I really appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely. More people need to hear about your work in the world because what you're doing is absolutely tremendous. So let's dive right in. I'm a podcast. We've talked about trauma before. However, for any of our new listeners,

[00:01:52] I'd love for you to please share with us what your definition of trauma is because I think so many people tend to think about it as those big catastrophic events that caused trauma like

[00:02:01] natural disasters, war violence, so on and so forth. So can you just give us a little definition? No, that's a great question, a great starting off point. So I agree with you. A lot of people do

[00:02:13] think of trauma in those terms as something huge, something catastrophic. But when I talk about trauma, I talk about it very closely interrelated with anxiety because again, anxiety is a the root of everything. Anxiety is even a root of trauma. And when I talk about anxiety,

[00:02:30] I'm really looking at it from a very general perspective. I'm looking at anxiety as any general or any uncomfortable feeling that we experience. So it could be anger, sadness, irritability, feeling scared, any uncomfortable feeling, that's anxiety. It's our body telling

[00:02:46] us that something's not right here. We go into our natural defense mechanisms. So it's any uncomfortable feeling as far as how it's manifested. It could be manifested in our behaviors. It's manifested throughout our body. We all have different symptoms. I don't stick to the

[00:03:02] diagnostic manual of diagnoses because I feel like it doesn't capture nothing for me, not information about a person when they're experiencing these different symptoms. And there are so many different symptoms for anxiety. It's different from one person to the next. But as far

[00:03:16] as we're that anxiety is rooted in, the anxiety is rooted in a lack of control. And this is where I've done a lot of my own research and work with my own clients over the past 15 to 20 years

[00:03:27] and really thinking about, okay, here there are symptoms, but something's precipitating those symptoms, what's going on and just kind of peeling back the layers or keep going back and time to figure out when did all of this start? In every setting, every client, it's let me

[00:03:42] to situations that they felt a lack of control. So it could be something minor or it could be something major. So anytime that our personal sense of control is limited or minimized,

[00:03:54] then our anxiety automatically shoots up. So I use a scale as kind of the basis of my work from 0 to 10 to gauge the level of intensity of anxiety as we go up on that scale and as we're going up on

[00:04:05] that scale, our personal sense of control is dropping. So we want to be able to navigate that anxiety in a healthy way to bring it down and as that comes down automatically, that control goes

[00:04:14] up. So we want to shift it on that scale. But just for trauma, trauma can be, it can be prolonged, chronic anxiety. It can be situations that they could be, you know, people may not necessarily

[00:04:29] look at them as traumatic experiences but it depends on how the person is experiencing them. And a lot of our trauma is rooted in the way in which we're brought up, the attachment that

[00:04:40] we have with our caregivers or lack thereof. But it's really when we are experiencing situations or events and living with that alone. It's that piece when we are sitting in that alone

[00:04:54] and nobody's in that with us. And so I'm not able to really process my trauma or work through it in the ways that I need to. I'm literally just sitting alone in my trauma, whatever happened to me.

[00:05:07] So it's that alone piece that really causes that trauma-dization versus, you know, we all have traumatic stress in our life. Everybody's got traumatic stress. That traumatic stress just varies and degree or intensity or severity. However, if we have support systems to work through it and we're

[00:05:28] not in it alone, it doesn't mean that we're going to be traumatized if we experience the trauma. I can experience different traumas in my life and still not be traumatized. It's if I'm sitting

[00:05:40] in that alone, that's what causes me to become traumatized. Yeah, there have been studies that have shown where people have gotten into car accidents, right? One person could walk away and they will have obviously experienced the same trauma but they're not traumatized because the EMT

[00:05:56] was literally asking them questions about what happened, what did they see, what happened right before and just getting them to basically talk about the event being able to recall and talk about what just happened can actually significantly reduce whether or not they become traumatized

[00:06:13] by that event later on and experience the PTSD. Yeah, I'm just super fascinating to me. Yeah, there's a lot of studies that have come from Post 9-11 interviewing people who are witnessed to what happened there or very closely related to what went on there and talking to them

[00:06:32] six months afterwards, a year afterwards, three years afterwards, five years out and looking to see how they were impacted from that event. These studies, they were finding that people were not traumatized. There wasn't PTSD because everybody wasn't it together. Everybody's talking about

[00:06:52] it processing it, coming together, supporting each other in these different ways and living through it together that they weren't in it individually alone. It was a collective thing and there was no traumatization that came out of it. It was obviously a tremendous trauma that happened but

[00:07:12] as far as how people were traumatized, they were able to navigate and work through that and process it with others. That's amazing. They definitely suffered from PTSD for many years after

[00:07:23] and it wasn't up until probably about four or five years ago that I was finally able to talk about it without my voice shaking and without me having a physical reaction. So yeah, I could see how

[00:07:36] if you were in an environment where you were able to talk about it and continue to talk about it and heal the group of people that maybe you were with or you had the similar experience, I understand

[00:07:45] I could see how either go either way and I didn't really have that kind of support. So to me, I'm kind of like, oh, I wish I had that kind of support but I didn't. So I did experience trauma from

[00:07:56] that. But I'd love to kind of talk a little bit about if we can get into the neurobiology of what happens to our bodies and our brain when we experience a trauma and then we can kind of

[00:08:07] move into your control theory and how we can start to manage the anxiety from these traumas that we've experienced or I mean, I guess would it be fair to say that anxiety is almost like a symptom

[00:08:19] of unprocessed trauma because that's kind of the way I see it. It can be. I think there's so many ways in which it's experienced for people that definitely the unprocessed stuff is causing a lot of

[00:08:35] anxiety that's not dealt with. We don't have control over what we don't process. Our body is still reacting to it and that's another big thing that people don't necessarily understand with regard

[00:08:45] to mental health that it's not just mental health happening in the brain. It's a whole body system. Our body is taking in information from our environment, whatever we're experiencing, we're taking in information through our senses. I mean, I'm witnessing, I'm seeing, I'm hearing,

[00:09:02] I'm smelling all of my senses or picking up information. That information comes into my body travels at my spinal cord to my brain for processing. There's where I interpret,

[00:09:11] am I okay or am I not? Am I safe? Am I not? Do I have control? Do I not? And so based on that interpretation, there's where our brain will go into a defense mechanism or there's where we decide

[00:09:25] how we want to manage that situation cognitively. But if it's two intense and our anxiety goes to high up on that scale, then our stress response system is activated. And at that point, it's our brain kind of taking over our survival mechanism because our brain literally goes into

[00:09:42] survival mode and it shuts down our frontal lobe, which is responsible for all our higher-ordered thinking. Planing, organizing, problem-solving, social-motional regulation, you name it. All of that thinking is going on in our frontal lobe. However, our frontal lobe is not needed for survival.

[00:10:01] So there's a message that basically is sent up to the top of our brain to shut down that frontal lobe and our brain just goes into survival mode. And our brain decides for us what defense mechanism

[00:10:13] we're going to go into based on my brain and body, again pick up that information and decide, what's going to keep me safest and what's going to keep me alive? I don't choose my defense

[00:10:25] mechanisms. I don't choose fight or flight or freeze, or even fun. I don't choose those. My brain chooses that for me based on what's going to keep me safest in that moment and keep

[00:10:35] me alive. So it's a very primitive function of the brain to keep us alive. So even though I may be experiencing high levels of anxiety in situations that are not threatening my life, my safety is not threatened. However, that's how my brain is going to interpret it because

[00:10:52] the intensity of that anxiety activates that stress response system and then my brain is often running trying to protect me. Yeah, that totally makes sense and I do a lot of work with my clients

[00:11:02] with their nervous system. So that's everything that you're talking about, right? It's like the autonomic nervous system which is completely subconscious. The amygdala just detects whether or not we're in danger or we're safe and then it fires off a bunch of signals that will indicate the

[00:11:15] rest of our body through different neurotransmitters and hormone secretions, whether or not we need to fight, fight, freeze or fawn and it does become very automatic. And a lot of the work that we do

[00:11:27] also is around internal family systems where we have these protector parts or as you kind of mentioned like defense strategies almost that come in to protect us. And so when I'm talking about the

[00:11:39] nervous system with my clients, we talk about anxiety being one of those protector parts. Yeah. Right? But it's like the anxiety comes in to protect us from feeling something that doesn't feel

[00:11:49] safe to feel in that moment. Right? And so, you know, I love your control theory and I want to kind of start talking about that for you to explain to us how that comes into play and how does that help

[00:12:01] us maybe even not kind of default back to these maladaptive defensive coping strategies or defensive mechanisms and coping strategies that aren't healthy for us? Right. Yeah, I do I assess as well.

[00:12:16] I feel like I tap into a number of different modalities of theories, but within all of those, what I'm seeing is that the foundation is a lack of control still. So we can approach it using

[00:12:27] different theories and I try to figure out what will work better for different clients. Sometimes one theory will make more sense for certain clients and another theory will make more sense with

[00:12:39] other clients. So I bounce around as far as a theory, but within all of that, I incorporate my control theory, which is really focusing on ways in which we can get that personal sense of control

[00:12:51] back and lesson that anxiety so that we are living a more stable life that anxiety stays down from longer periods of time, but also gives people more confidence when that sense of control drops. And that anxiety goes up our self-esteem, our self-confidence, our sense of self-everything weekends.

[00:13:11] So we're not feeling capable or that I'm able to manage my anxiety, or there's where we start to internalize a lot of negative self-beliefs or core beliefs that we start to internalize as our

[00:13:27] own sense of self. So if I'm living with high anxiety or predominantly living at a high level of anxiety and sometimes I might come down a little, but I'm just kind of circulating in this area

[00:13:40] up here at the top of that scale. And my sense of control is lower than I may very well interpret my experiences as I'm not doing enough. I'm not good enough. I'm a failure. I'm a disappointment.

[00:13:53] So it's very easy for us to internalize those negative beliefs of who we believe we are if we're not feeling like we have a strong sense of self or self-control. So you can kind of see where that

[00:14:07] self-esteem takes a hit with that lack of control, those cognitive beliefs coming to play and really take a toll on our self-esteem and feed into depression. So when we're living at the top

[00:14:19] of that scale for a prolonged period of time, if we're not aware of our anxiety in we don't know what helps us feel better in healthy ways, then we're just going to reach for whatever's

[00:14:30] at our fingertips to help alleviate that awful feeling. So whatever I can do, whatever I can grab or pick up, I'm going to do it. I'm desperate that feeling is so awful to be high on that

[00:14:41] anxiety scale and not know what to do or desperate to avoid or alleviate that anxiety. And typically it's some kind of avoidance mechanism avoiding by physically avoiding people or places or avoiding

[00:14:55] by using substances or alcohol, you know, avoidance is easy to do. So it quickly brings us down on that scale. It brings us relief so unfortunately avoidance works but that avoidance is only temporary.

[00:15:10] You know, it brings us temporary relief and then our anxiety goes right back up on that scale. And hearing him again and if I don't know what to do, you know, maybe drinking worked before. So

[00:15:21] I'm going to do it again and again and again and there I get stuck in that defense mechanism because that's the only thing that's brought me some kind of relief but it's temporary and it quickly

[00:15:32] wears off and my actual sense of control stays down here. So I might avoid things in different ways to bring some relief in that anxiety and it gives me a false sense of control. So I might feel

[00:15:44] good temporarily or in that moment but my actual control stays down here and I'm just, you know, going right back up on that anxiety scale and getting stuck in that trap there. So we want to be

[00:15:54] able to get out of that trap because we all have avoidance mechanisms and we want to just be aware of what our own anxiety looks like, what it feels like, you know, however it's manifested and try

[00:16:05] to figure out what works for me to try to shift my anxiety and control back on that scale. So even using the different theoretical approaches are focus is still trying to shift that control back

[00:16:20] into your own hands. So with IFS we're trying to identify all of these different parts of us that are there to protect us and when we're trying to understand them, we start to get a sense

[00:16:32] of, okay I get why I did this or that and it makes sense to me now. Now I know what I can work on to change that and it brings up my sense of control again. Now I understand, if better, now I understand

[00:16:45] my own thought process or my own defense mechanisms, now I got it. I like thinking about things that this is just a little part of me. If I have a defense mechanism that now is more, you know,

[00:16:59] maladaptive and disruptive and it's not helpful anymore, it's more destructive. However, when I first used it, it helped me. It served a purpose. So you know I remember when I was working with a client

[00:17:13] who had a tremendous history of trauma and her defense mechanism since she was very young since the start of her memories was to go into a free state and then as an adult, you know, it turned

[00:17:26] into more dissociation and she felt like something was wrong with her and she didn't even tell me that she dissociates for the first, probably at least month that I was working with her until I

[00:17:39] started to go into, you know, explaining why our brain embodied do what they do and I started to explain that freeze response that it serves a purpose. The brain was taken in whatever was going on in your

[00:17:52] environment. You froze in that state because that's what was keeping you safe in that moment and keeping you alive and it literally kept her alive in those moments. Moving forward throughout her

[00:18:02] development, she would still go through a free state when that anxiety would go high. She had continued trauma throughout her development really and then as an adult, it turned into dissociation and so I

[00:18:15] was explaining to her kind of the transition of it but that it served a purpose when she was younger since that very first trauma that she experienced in its age or life. I'm trying to get her to

[00:18:26] understand that your brain and body did exactly what they needed to do and it worked. They did their job, they did exactly what they needed to do and so our defense mechanisms are extremely adaptive

[00:18:37] so it only takes one time for us to go into that defense mode and then the next time that that anxiety goes up or my control drops, my brain remembers freezing worked before. It kept me

[00:18:48] safe, it kept me alive so we just automatically go right back to that same defense mechanism. They're very, very adaptive so as we get older we want to recognize that yeah for a while it did save my

[00:18:58] life and it it served a purpose but now I'm not in that trauma anymore and now it doesn't serve the same purpose so there's where we're just gonna modify those defense mechanisms and reconfigure

[00:19:11] what's going on in the brain but that's what's really great about the brain is that it can learn new ways to manage that anxiety. So you know just going through this with my client she's thinking about

[00:19:22] it and then I see her start to tear up and she just says wow good job brain and it wasn't really cool moment because it was like that sheen just left you know for her to understand that yeah

[00:19:36] your brain is a healthy brain it protected you and it literally did keep you alive so it did exactly what it needed to do. So now we're just gonna retrain it a little and that's that so it just let her

[00:19:47] drop that shame and understand it from a neurological perspective that there was a reason for that and just understanding how the body and the brain work together because she would go through a lot

[00:19:57] of somatic symptoms and reactions and for her to understand why and listen to that it's the body communicating to you and so just kind of looking at that from a different perspective to know that she

[00:20:08] wasn't okay. Absolutely a lot of the work that I do with my clients is helping them identify what their triggers are so they can be observant of where they are in their nervous system you

[00:20:17] know whether they are in fight or flight or they're in a freeze so that they can then use tools to get themselves out of it right and bring themselves back down to feeling safe and feeling grounded

[00:20:27] and we do a lot of this through polyvagal theory I think that in using the parts work it's always like there are no bad parts of you they are just a part of you they don't define you they're not

[00:20:38] all of you and you're right it gives people so much they end up first of all becoming so much more compassionate for themselves I think is they're like oh my god like I'm not I'm not broken

[00:20:49] because I think at least for me like I deal with women who endured narcissistic abuse they get out of these relationships and they do feel very broken and if you've experienced a lot of

[00:20:57] significant trauma you probably do feel like you're broken in some ways because you've had these awful experiences and you don't feel connected to like your true self anymore right you feel like

[00:21:07] there's such a big disconnect and you feel numb and you feel like not yourself and you don't know why and so giving them that that little bit of information can be so liberating right which is

[00:21:19] beautiful which is such a beautiful thing so I love that and then the other thing that I was going to mention was when you were talking about these defense mechanisms that we have sometimes it's

[00:21:29] also like our bodies just craving that dopamine hit and that's what we're really getting from picking up the cigarettes or overshopping or binge eating or binge watching television or whatever

[00:21:41] it might be that might feel easier as you avoid in strategy but it's a that addiction to that dopamine that we need because we're not getting it necessarily especially if we're living in an abusive

[00:21:53] relationship which is what my clients are all dealing with or have dealt with. Yeah exactly and so we want to be able to to work with our clients to identify what works for them as far as settling

[00:22:04] their nervous system so you know when we go up on that scale I say that once we get to an eight night on that scale that's when the stress response system is activated and 10 is you know it could

[00:22:16] be that full bloom panic attack, some people have panic attacks on dawn but it's that full blown anxiety where I don't even know what to do to call myself down I can't think you know

[00:22:25] are from to low was offline I'm in a very reactive state so I try to help clients recognize you know where they are on that scale and do a self-check and just to become more self aware of what it

[00:22:37] feels like as they're moving up on that scale what is my body doing and my tightening up it can I you know is it harder to breathe what is going on when I go up on that scale and try to

[00:22:47] identify okay I'm starting to feel more overwhelmed what can I do to settle my nervous system and that's what I want them to try to make their first thing or their go to focus is just settling

[00:23:00] the nervous system. Yeah I don't want them thinking about what caused them to go up on that scale what was it that precipitated that why am I up there I don't want them thinking I just want

[00:23:10] them feeling into the body and actually activating both hemispheres of the brain to do bilateral stimulation to settle the nervous system. So when we're going up on that scale it's just the right hemisphere that's activated and the right hemisphere is more responsible for feeling into those

[00:23:27] anxieties feeling into the negative emotions it's very reactive it's a primitive part of our brain so the left hemisphere is not activated when we're going up on that scale and the left

[00:23:39] hemisphere is needed to do more of the problem solving kind of thinking through things and it feels more the positive emotions it labels what we're thinking or feeling or doing so if I'm feeling

[00:23:52] angry my right hemisphere will feel the anger we need the left hemisphere to be activated to integrate with the right hemisphere to settle that guy down so my nervous system starts to

[00:24:04] calm down so in order to do that we just need to move the body get both sides of the body moving and it's that bilateral stimulation the other thing that's going on when we're doing the bilateral

[00:24:15] stimulation and this is kind of the core work of EMDR I movement de sensitization and reprocessing is that bilateral stimulation so you're settling the nervous system the front of the log comes back online or you're trying to keep it online so you're not activating the stress response

[00:24:33] system if it's not activated yet if it is activated you're settling it back down and then the front of the log comes back online and the intensity of those anxious thoughts whatever were focused on those anxieties those memories those sensations they start to de sensitize they're

[00:24:49] not as intense because my brain is now instead of being 100% focused on my anxious thoughts and feeling that overwhelming anxiety from those thoughts now my brain split my working memory split now half of its focused on the thoughts and half is focused on my body's movement

[00:25:07] so the intensity of those anxious thoughts is not as strong so it's settled helps settle my nervous system it keeps my front to low-bond line it starts to help de sensitize those anxious

[00:25:17] thoughts and it allows me to start to process through it more effectively yeah I love that and also it's like you're controlling what you can control at that moment which is maybe just your body yeah exactly you can't control what's happening in the environment necessarily around you

[00:25:32] but you can control moving your body through it right I love that yeah so I have a question in this and bringing this back to some of my work which is all about narcissistic abuse and narcissists

[00:25:42] though so when I was reading your book and I was looking at it I was thinking about how this relates to someone who that we would maybe identify as a narcissist now I'm glad that you said in the

[00:25:52] beginning that you don't use the DSM the DSM to kind of help you define anxiety because it doesn't give you enough it can be expressed in so many different ways and it's not necessarily true for

[00:26:01] everybody so same thing with labeling someone in our assist which I don't like the word labeling but very similarly like the DSM 5 which is the part of the diagnostic in statistical manual for mental disorders only gives nine treats right or nine characteristics of a narcissist and we

[00:26:18] know that there are so many more beyond that and so what I was thinking about was I'm curious what your thoughts are in this maybe you've not thought about this before maybe haven't spent much time

[00:26:29] thinking about it but I feel like when I was reading about your theory of control right for narcissists one of the big things for them is having and maintaining control at all times and they have a belief

[00:26:45] that it's either you have power and control or you have none and it's a very black and white kind of thinking right it's a cognitive distortion that we hold or they hold now we all hold cognitive

[00:26:57] distortions right so what is it about a narcissist that you know could it be that children and of course like narcissists are created they're not born they're created by the trauma that they experienced in their childhood. Couldn't narcissists be created because the

[00:27:16] child has experienced things that unfortunately created all of this unmanageable anxiety and because they couldn't control all of these big emotions of a lower left alone and feeling them could that then lead to obviously I would say like maybe a bifurcation it could lead to someone

[00:27:38] who's become becomes very codependent or could lead them to becoming a narcissist right so a codependent is also struggling for control in some ways but the way in which they do that is different right they tend to try to control maybe how other people are feeling

[00:27:54] but they do that in a way where they're manipulating others through their own behavior right so they're not hurting other people but maybe they're sacrificing their own needs once they're not able to communicate what it is that they need because they've learned over time maybe

[00:28:08] that that's not important and they're trying to control by controlling others people other people's way of thinking their actions their decisions like trying to control everything yes a way yeah a big component of the developmental trauma is sometimes kids don't learn

[00:28:32] emotional regulation they're very disregulated so they're trying to figure out ways any way possible where they can have some sense of control and you're right a lot of times it does

[00:28:44] turn into well if I can't control what's going on with me i'm gonna control what I can around me or others around me and it's hard for them to accept then what they don't have control over

[00:28:56] and they don't have appropriate responses to that lack of control they have a hard time accepting or they don't accept what's not within my control and that's a part of our anxiety management is

[00:29:09] learning how to accept what's not within my control and shift our focus to okay well if I can't do this over here what can I do instead you know let's go to plan B let's go to plan C

[00:29:18] I'm doing more of a cognitive shift or cognitive work there so I'm able to navigate that and regulate myself that yeah stinks if something doesn't go the way I wanted but you know there are other

[00:29:31] options and so to have that flexibility in thinking but you're right with high intensity anxiety or narcissism and even you know borderline personality there's this split it's all or nothing

[00:29:45] black and white and they are not able to be in this great area of thinking they're not able to be flexible in their thinking it's all or nothing and if things don't go my way then it's a disaster you

[00:29:57] know and they really have a hard time regulating that so not being able to accept what's within their control I feel as a big factor another major factor especially with narcissism is not being

[00:30:11] able to take accountability if they don't learn how to take accountability it's everybody else around them that is the problem where you see a lot of blaming behavior a lot of justification of my own

[00:30:22] behavior well I did this because of A B and C I'm not wrong you're wrong kind of thing there's a lot of that kind of defense mechanism but that lack of accountability is is probably from what I

[00:30:35] have experienced in my work one of the biggest red flags if somebody is not able to take accountability then it's likely rooted in deep-seated childhood trauma some people you can start to work with

[00:30:48] and you can kind of gauge where they're at but if they're not able to bring in a different perspective than their own then you know there's your flag I mean I think because for them it goes back to a

[00:31:01] black or white belief that they have to be strong they can't be weak and when you take accountability you're actually being vulnerable and vulnerability is perceived as weakness yes so yeah absolutely

[00:31:15] because I think in the book you mentioned how one of the other ways we can kind of move through anxiety through the lens of the control theory is also just focusing on ourselves sorry it's a focusing on

[00:31:24] what we can control but it's also part of that is also being self aware of knowing what your needs are had to communicate them setting boundaries like all of these things that for a narcissist it's like

[00:31:36] their biggest fear is that someone would actually see them for who they are because oftentimes they have had experiences where they hold an inordinate amount of shame yeah and that she

[00:31:50] and of itself I think can also cause anxiety of like oh no people are going to see that I am a failure or I am not good enough or I'm not important or I'm not lovable or I don't have

[00:32:01] power or I'm weak or whatever the belief those negative beliefs are and so I think that that's a whole other aspect of it as well yeah absolutely it's very scary for them to

[00:32:12] allow any kind of vulnerability the way I always say it it's like narcissists basically are like five worlds stuck in an adult body they never learned how to emotionally regulate you know it does stem from

[00:32:26] attachment and not having somebody who they feel safe with growing up you know every person's were born that's what we're striving for if it's cry to get their needs met so if they're

[00:32:37] sued and they're fed and they're taken care of and they have that eye contact with their caregiver they're learning who is their safe person that if I cry this person is going to meet my needs so you

[00:32:50] know when we're born the amygdala the firelerman brain that is activating the stress response system it's actually larger when we're born because we have to learn immediately if I'm safe you know so that

[00:33:03] immediate cry and getting my needs met in that soothing and an eye contact with my caregiver sends that information to my brain that I'm safe I'm okay so again my body is picking up that

[00:33:15] information the cognitive piece is not there so they're not thinking about any of this or recognizing any kind of emotion it's really rooted in that safety and attachment so if physically

[00:33:26] feeling safe with my caregiver and I know that this person will meet my needs if I cry which is my way of communicating then my body and my brain are learning okay I'm safe I'm being taken care of

[00:33:39] so as quickly as I'm learning that physically that amygdala in the brain that starts out large and sensitive because it's ready to go off to keep me alive it starts to shrink so it shrinks don't

[00:33:51] do the size that it should be because it doesn't need to be a sensitive anymore it knows my body brain know that I'm safe I'm being taken care of I have that attachment that safe attachment

[00:34:02] but if I don't get that from the beginning then I'm already dysregulated and that amygdala is sensitive and my body is searching for any cue to have some kind of controller safety unfortunately people don't get the safety piece yeah they're need for control is really a cry for

[00:34:25] connection yes yeah and I teach this a lot but it's like having compassion to see the nurses as to somebody who's really just deeply wounded and sometimes they're not even consciously aware of

[00:34:38] their behaviors and how they're hurting other people and they're not able to see it not because there are many things wrong with them or that they're terrible people it's just that again I

[00:34:47] feel like a lot of times it's like that shame kind of keeps them from being able to look at it because it's so painful so yeah thank you so much for talking through that because that's also really

[00:34:56] important for people to understand and I think if you're looking at your children because I think a lot of times people even are like my child is in our system well guess what like your child

[00:35:04] is meant to have a lot of narcissistic tendencies up until the time that they're prefrontal cortex completely is online which is not until they're in their mid 20s yeah later 20s yeah I

[00:35:15] you mentioned in the book how our emotional regulation and aspect of our brain is not really fully formed until we're in our 30s so yeah it's kind of hard to diagnose the young child with narcissism

[00:35:25] because it's just they're meant to live in that me right they don't know how to get their needs met a lot of times unless they are taught how to advocate had asked for them how to communicate how to share

[00:35:37] how to express how they feel even because I think that even growing up or even adults if you're to ask them how they're feeling it's like they need one of five emotions and that's it when there's

[00:35:47] like a whole spectrum of emotions that we can feel in any given time yes exactly and kids they're part of their job as far as their development goes is to try to manipulate situations

[00:36:00] and their environment to see what they can get away with they're learning how to navigate their world so a lot of their behaviors are going to be manipulative and then it's our job as parents to teach them accountability and say okay you're making this choice then you're choosing

[00:36:14] to have a natural consequence that comes with that you know and really reiterate you know they might be mad at us but then you know our job is to really teach them that accountability well

[00:36:23] who made that choice did I make that choice for you to do abmc you know who made that choice and they learn they can't fight you on that one they have to acknowledge it was my choice

[00:36:34] so you mean that choice you ultimately made the choice to have this consequence so you know they don't like that process but they learn from it they definitely learn the accountability piece and that's one thing that is highly on my radar is making sure my kids learn accountability

[00:36:50] so I'm proud of them every time they do take accountability and it's hard they don't like to acknowledge when they're wrong but I also give them permission to call me out too and to let

[00:37:00] me know if I was wrong in something or they felt like something was not fair you know to verbally let me know communicate that to me because I am going to be making mistakes and and I tell them

[00:37:12] I need your help to make me better at parenting you know so I don't want them to feel like they can't speak up or they don't have a voice I'm gonna hold you accountable that's my job as a parent

[00:37:22] but you can also let me know if I'm missing something you know where I mess up and so having that dialogue go back and forth I feel like it really helps them you know even just build up their

[00:37:34] own sense of self and confidence and and sense of safety that it's okay to call your parent out on something that they may have done wrong and they're not going to get punished for it so I

[00:37:46] feel like it's important to go both ways yeah I mean even in that conversation it's also helping them to set boundaries as well yeah absolutely which is huge and I think that

[00:37:57] so many I think codependency is so normalized that so many of us didn't grow up in homes where there were boundaries and we didn't learn how to speak up and say what we needed or if we did

[00:38:09] something wrong it was kind of like you know yeah you were given a consequence but you may not have understood or been able to take the accountability because maybe someone else came in and swooped in

[00:38:19] and tried to fix whatever the situation was instead of wronging is to deal with the natural consequence right so yeah I think that that's it's so important to have these conversations because it

[00:38:30] starts with our children I love like I know that you're going into schools and doing some of this work too which I think is hugely powerful because so many of our children suffer with anxiety and

[00:38:41] I'm sure even from you know COVID their anxiety is probably off the scales and they probably are not being given tools to manage it yeah and they're not one thing that I feel is very misunderstood

[00:38:53] with kids behaviors both from any adult from teachers from parents is that their behaviors are the way they are communicating they don't have the language skills or left hemisphere where the language sits is not fully developed and they're not able to clearly articulate what they're experiencing

[00:39:15] what they're feeling with their thinking you're going to see their communication through their body and as they get older they're going to be able to communicate a little bit more but I always tell teachers when I'm doing a lot of professional development don't rely on what they're

[00:39:28] verbally telling you focus on the behavior know their mannerisms know your kid know it's typical for each kid and when they're not presenting in their typical selves then something's up you know look at their mannerisms look at their body language their tone of voice their energy level

[00:39:47] we can work with them and build on that but their their behaviors are going to be the main mechanism in which they communicate so a lot of their anxiety is misunderstood as students being oppositional, defiant, disruptive not listening you know they can't still they're not doing what they're

[00:40:08] it's interpreted as a negative thing and I work with teachers to try to help them understand that they're not intentionally trying to do that they're not making the choice to be disruptive or defiant but their feeling anxious and don't feel like they've got control for whatever

[00:40:27] reason and they're just trying to find some sense of control in their environment so it's really them trying to they're not they don't know how to regulate themselves if they're displaying these

[00:40:40] behaviors and so it's our job as parents and teachers to try to teach them that and with teachers I'm not asking them to be the therapist but just to know to recognize that okay they're

[00:40:51] high on the scale I use the skill with everybody and I give teachers a skill I give students a scale um if they're at an eight or higher you can't communicate with them don't try to have

[00:41:01] a conversation with them they are not there you cannot force it and sometimes I get teachers rolling their eyes at me and you know when I ask them about specific cases that they're dealing with

[00:41:13] they're not willing to look at things in a different way that the student is really struggling and you're giving them consequences and speaking at them when their anxiety's already so high on the scale they're not going to hear you they cannot hear you and they're not choosing this

[00:41:32] so that's you know those areas are I feel like big misunderstandings as far as kids behaviors go that if you see a student starting to be disruptive in any way start to get them to move their body just get them to walk around the classroom even if they're

[00:41:48] sitting at their desk tap in their hands tap in their legs moving their feet coloring drawing doodling get both hemispheres of the brain going and it only takes one to two minutes that's it

[00:41:58] so you don't have to be the therapist just know that okay they need to move their body they'll settle their body and then we'll figure out what we need to do from there and it doesn't

[00:42:05] take away from the class but you know if kids are not learning that you know what I just need to move my body I know what works for me or even coloring your drawing is the thing that helps

[00:42:14] settle my nervous system then we want them to have that accessible so I tell teachers too if you see students who are fidgety can't stop moving around taping their feet moving around or or coloring or doodling it's the brain naturally going into the bilateral stimulation we don't always

[00:42:32] consciously think about it or have to think about it because our body and brain know all right I'm I'm going you know my anxiety's coming in and let me just move the body it knows what to do just

[00:42:43] like it knows what defense mechanism it needs to go into to protect me so I'm trying to help teachers understand that these are not intentionally disruptive behaviors yes I understand they can be

[00:42:54] disruptive but to try to look at it from a different perspective and try to help facilitate and encourage the students to say oh right I see that your body needs to let go of that energy

[00:43:03] it's not shameful that every student has times when they need to settle their nervous system so you're normalizing it and showing them what it physically looks like and physically feels like and they're going to remember every time they get their body moving their body is going to

[00:43:18] remember that settling feeling that okay yeah yes and I love that because just from personal experience I've had this conversation with my younger sons teacher and the principal multiple times I kept telling them I'm like he doesn't feel safe in the classroom he's experiencing anxiety it looks

[00:43:38] like ADHD it looks like he's being disruptive it looks like he's not behaving but I'm telling you right now he doesn't feel safe in the classroom environment something needs to shift we need to change something about that and unfortunately the teacher that he has has been there for

[00:43:54] 30 plus years and she just doesn't see the whole child and that's what really irritates me because I'm like you need to have an understanding like you said you don't need to be therapist you don't

[00:44:06] need to be teaching them the tools to manage it necessarily although it's good to have that support from the counselor the guidance counselors but and also like obviously me is the parent which we do at

[00:44:15] home but you know not every child has that benefit you have to be able to understand like what's actually going on at a deeper level not look at it like they're trying to be fresh or they're trying

[00:44:26] to you know give you a hard time it's not not at all there's something you're going on and I need you to get curious about what that is because I'm not in that classroom day in a day out

[00:44:37] and we've had so many conversations where I'm like I cannot wait until school is over because I was like hitting my head against the brick wall and I've even volunteered to come in and

[00:44:47] do similar to you like come in and teach and say okay how do we create this emotionally and psychologically safe environment for our students but also for our teachers who I think are

[00:44:58] also experiencing a lot of anxiety and burnout from the last four years and they don't know how to handle it and they don't know how to manage it and so they're also as the teacher co-regulating

[00:45:09] the nervous systems of the children in the classroom and if they're constantly disregulated and they're constantly you know reacting and flying off the handle or yelling and shouting and snipping at the children and having a patience for them that creates a really uncomfortable

[00:45:26] environment and especially if you've got children in there who have experienced trauma who are automatically triggered into a trauma response every single time that teacher raises her voice it feels unsafe for them and they immediately don't know what to do with that

[00:45:44] and it causes them to need to move their body, it causes them to get jittery but you know my son's been yelled at for even just shaking his leg under his desk when he's had to move and

[00:45:54] it's been a very frustrating year and so you know hopefully people like you maybe people like me can all go out there and just start to really push this education that needs to be happening within our schools you know in the classrooms parents as well because it's

[00:46:10] so important and I'm sorry I'm getting really passionate about it but like I am I wonder what you were passionate about right there with you because everything that you're saying

[00:46:18] you know there are issues in the schools where where I live as well and it's the same stuff and kids behaviors are being misinterpreted and they're being punished and suspended and as a 10 year

[00:46:31] old you know and fourth grade and it just blows my mind that the kids are not being looked at as the kid and and looked at is okay well let's think about your feeling anxious there's got to be

[00:46:43] a reason for it let's try to figure it out but it's just an automatic consequence attached to the behavior and one thing that I'm constantly trying to communicate with teachers is you know

[00:46:55] especially at the start of the year this is my main focus is just establishing connections with your students that is your key because if they don't feel safe with you they're going to be

[00:47:05] disregulated all year they're not going to feel safe with you they're not going to trust you they're not going to be able to focus or do their work they're going to be thrown off for the whole year

[00:47:13] you have to invest in the relationship and if they're able to establish those healthy connections with their students independent from each other you know you're going to have different connections with every single student but just making simple little things I contact hot you know

[00:47:26] high five any little thing to make a connection with your kids if a kid then is struggling at some point during the school year and they need that safe person they can come to you they'll

[00:47:39] feel safe with you but also if you need to hold them accountable for something that they did choose to do that they shouldn't have chosen to do and you hold them accountable they're going to

[00:47:47] listen to you they're not going to like being held accountable but they're going to listen to you and they'll respect you because you have a relationship with them they're not going to internalize

[00:47:57] it or interpret it as this teacher hates me they have a relationship so they know that I can get a consequence from this teacher or be held accountable and we're still okay yep so true and that's

[00:48:11] Chris you just literally nailed it on the head because this is exactly what happened with my younger son the teacher in the beginning of the school year pulled him out of the classroom into

[00:48:20] the hallway to address his responses on an anonymous survey and question him why he wrote what he wrote because it made her look bad and that was literally within the first month of school

[00:48:33] and it just set the tone for the rest of the school year nothing he could do was right everything he did was wrong he came home saying I'm a bad student I'm not smart I mean this is a kid who

[00:48:45] excelled and did well on all of the standardized has would always be above in not so much an in fertful and like English and stuff but like on his math was always above I don't want to

[00:48:55] use that word get in town but they used to get pulled out for like doing higher math because he was ahead of the class and this year hasn't gotten pulled out once because his grades have been reflective

[00:49:08] of the environment in which he's in and this is what I don't think teachers understand is that when the child doesn't feel safe in the classroom it's not a conducive learning environment

[00:49:17] they don't learn they cannot absorb because to your point they're in that fighter flight the whole time or they're shut down so they're in that the left hemisphere of the brain right they're not in their prefrontal cortex they're not in that logical thinking executive functioning part of

[00:49:34] the brain so they're not able to actually take in information the only thing that they can do is assess if they're being threatened further and then reacting exactly which is so frustrating that's one of the areas that I talk about with teachers is you know I understand there

[00:49:51] under pressure as far as meeting academic milestones or goals or whatever and it comes down from the state I get that I don't think that that's fair for teachers or students or you know

[00:50:03] I don't feel like that's conducive for any reason I think the focus needs to be on the social emotional regulation and it's not it's just so focused on academics that it derails kids with their social emotional functioning they're not focusing on the right things and I tell teachers

[00:50:22] all the time if you just take the time to connect with your students and help them regulate their bodies the academics will come I am not worried about kids in their academics it'll come

[00:50:33] in some form in some way it'll come it'll catch up I am not worried about that I'm worried about their social emotional functioning and when the anxiety is so high and they're just living

[00:50:43] in that heightened state of anxiety like you said you they're not going to be able to focus or concentrate or or do what they need to do but it also affects their memory so you know one of the

[00:50:53] things that happens with that stress response system is the release of cortisol the cortisol goes through the body it wreaks havoc on the intestinal system so that's one reason why stomach issues or

[00:51:03] GI issues are a big factor in anxiety but it goes back up to the brain and the cortisol hooks directly attaches directly to the hippocampus which is the memory center and if we're not able to regulate

[00:51:16] that anxiety and recover from that anxiety and get that control back and we're living in that heightened state of defense mode and that stress response system is constantly going off that cortisol will start to actually start to kill neurons on the hippocampus so the hippocampus

[00:51:32] starts to act if you and die so you're really doing a huge disservice for kids to not teach them how to regulate themselves but even for adults there they need to learn this throughout their

[00:51:43] entire lives the good thing about the brain is that we can repair all that we can undo the damage that anxiety and trauma do on the brain we can strengthen and re-regulate all of

[00:51:54] those areas of the brain that were weakened and dysregulated from anxiety and trauma so the brain is a really amazing thing but it works in conjunction with the body you can't work with one without

[00:52:04] the other and you know even in the medical sense a lot of stuff is misdiagnosed or misunderstood because they're not assessing anxiety you know even when you go to get your physical the doctor

[00:52:16] they're asking you know you do the depression scale and I asked my doctor every time I'm where's your anxiety scale this depression scale isn't going to do much if you're not tapping into the anxiety scale so I just recently had a doctor appointment with a different doctor

[00:52:30] and they had the anxiety scale and I was so proud of them for having the anxiety scale so but you've got to tap into the root of it which is that anxiety you know when we're living in that trap

[00:52:40] up here for so long and we can't regulate ourselves eventually the brain is going to feel like it hits a wall like we are going to feel like we hit a wall we feel like I can't do this anymore

[00:52:50] our brain can't live up there anymore you know we start to feel like I can't do this I don't care about certain things anymore my motivation to do things that you still enjoy is gone I'm done

[00:53:00] I'm tapped out I am physically and mentally and emotionally done so there's where the depression comes in it's a continuum of that scale so even when people come to me with depression or

[00:53:11] suicidal ideations or history of suicide attempts I'm not focusing on treating those I want to get to the root of it and when I'm getting to the root of it and that anxiety and trying to shift that

[00:53:20] control back into their lives those depressive symptoms subside suicidal ideations are gone so I'm not focused on those I'm focusing on the root cause which is the anxiety in that lack of control so it's really getting that control back into their lives I think it's also when you're

[00:53:36] talking about it's like we go into that adrenal fatigue too because if our adrenal organs are constantly pumping out adrenaline and then the cortisol to keep us in that you know hyper vigilance

[00:53:46] state then we're going to hit that adrenal fatigue and then we're going to be drained and when you're drained and you're exhausted you're going to have no motivation no focus and all of that

[00:53:54] too their bodies are so complex that there's all these things kind of going on at the same time and it's like literally like we want to run ahead but someone's holding us back by our suspenders

[00:54:03] in a way but it's like all of these other things that are happening that are keeping us stuck I love that the doctor that you want to had that anxiety scale I think that's amazing I also

[00:54:13] think that it's easier for people to tap into anxiety than to say yes I have trauma for yeah it's so much easier for people to identify for people to know that feels like

[00:54:26] then to be like okay I've had trauma and that's kind of where some of these other issues are happening too because obviously when we have trauma we've got stuck emotions right that's trauma creates an emotional charge that we are holding onto that gets stagnant and stuck within us

[00:54:42] and as a result those stagnancies cause dis-ease right because now the energy is not flowing the way it needs to flow within the body yes so I love that I think that's amazing but I

[00:54:53] feel bad because we've already been talking for a little bit of over an hour and this has been such an amazing conversation I know that the listeners definitely got a lot out of this thank you

[00:55:02] so much for being here and chatting with me today if there are any final thoughts that you'd like to share I give you the floor well I hope that people walk away understanding that there is a mechanism

[00:55:14] behind our anxiety that the brain is you know it knows what it needs to do it's it's trying to protect us it's just that sometimes when that anxiety is so overwhelming you know we go into

[00:55:25] more maladaptive behaviors but to try to just work on their own self-awareness and using the body to change the brain really tapping into their sensible awareness both physically and mentally. I love that thank you so much and listeners go check out Dr. Jolene's book it's amazing you're

[00:55:43] going to love it we're going to leave a link for you in the show notes why on earth do I feel this way thank you again so much for being here of course thanks so much all right listeners until next week

[00:55:54] be well thank you for tuning in to awaken her today's conversation may have ended but your journey towards healing and empowerment is ongoing remember every challenge you face is an opportunity to grow stronger and more resilient if our stories today inspired you consider sharing this

[00:56:13] episode with someone who needs these empowering messages I'm curious to step cheering you on as you take the steps to heal grow and transform your life keep believing in yourself and until next time stay empowered