The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
Dr. Aimie Apigian: Exploring the Impact of Trauma on Our Food Choices and Behaviours
Have you ever considered the profound ways in which trauma shapes our health, behavior, and the very foods we long for in times of stress? Dr. Aimie Apigian joins us to explore this intricate tapestry, unraveling how our bodies' responses to trauma are far more than psychological - they're deeply rooted in our biology. Journeying through our autonomic nervous system, we examine why certain comfort foods seem irresistible and the unexpected role of the vagus nerve in our quest for emotional balance.
Many of us have felt the paradoxical pull towards the very foods that don't agree with us, especially during periods of emotional upheaval. This episode peels back the layers of this mysterious craving, revealing how our bodies may be seeking immediate survival through an energy boost. Dr. Aimie and I discuss the hidden power of gluten and dairy to bind to our nervous system's opiate receptors, offering a temporary numbing effect that can mimic comfort. It's a revelation that underscores the importance of understanding our body's survival responses and the transformative potential of cultivating inner safety.
But it's not all about the science. In the latter part of our conversation, we engage in practical strategies and exercises that can help us navigate through and beyond these overwhelming experiences. From the 'push away' technique to the calming presence of a pillow, we provide listeners with tangible tools to foster self-regulation, evoke the body's relaxation response, and embark on a deeper journey of healing. With Dr. Aimie's expertise and heartfelt guidance, this episode is a beacon of hope for anyone seeking to transform their relationship with trauma and find a path to lasting well-being.
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Welcome everybody to the KickSugar Summit.
Speaker 1:I'm here today with Dr Amy Apigian, who is a double board certified medical physician in preventative medicine and addiction medicine, and she is more recently also certified as a functional medical doctor.
Speaker 1:She has a master's in biochemistry and a master's in public health, and she's also certified in a variety of trauma therapies, including Instinctual Trauma Response Model, somatic Experiencing, developed by Dr Peter Levine, and Neuroaffective Touch by Dr Aline Lapierre, and coaching platform academy. That helps both individuals as well as colleagues, professionals working in the healing arts space, to understand what is trauma and how to heal it, and how understanding trauma is truly essential to restoring the health of both mind and body. Dr Amy would be considered an up-and-coming. She's already a world expert, but explosively explosively becoming known as a leading edge leader in the space of trauma recovery, and she integrates all of her training all of her training into helping us understand that almost all of us have trauma and that it touches all parts of our lives. So even if you think this interview is not going to be relevant, I guarantee you it will be. Welcome, dr Amy.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm excited for this conversation and, like you say, yes, I'm here to help everyone see the trauma that is in them. They may just not have been able to see that before in that way.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I will say that I am in Dr Amy's Academy I'm six months into her one-year practitioner trauma training program and it is gobsmacking and it is amazing and absolutely everybody should check her out and that her podcast, even though it's for professionals, is equally interesting to everybody. So don't, yeah, get right on tapping into Dr Amy. She has a 21-day journey. She calls it it 21 day journey to calm aliveness that everybody starts. Everybody starts there. So you know you're going to take it now. So just put that in the back of your head and we'll get into this some of the details about why this is relevant to almost every human on the planet. Dr Amy, let's start by talking about what is trauma.
Speaker 2:Amy, let's start by talking about what is trauma. Oh, my goodness, what a great question. Because I was one of those that I never thought that I had trauma. So I looked at my childhood, especially compared to Miguel, who I adopted when he was four from the foster care system. My life had been so different from his that again, kind of going into that comparison, I'm like what was my childhood compared to his? And so it wasn't until I had my own journey. I got really sick. I noticed that I had uncontrollable eating patterns, that I really needed to look at my own stuff and what was driving it, and what I found was oh, this, this is trauma. I had to redefine trauma.
Speaker 2:So how I define trauma now is anything that, for any reason at that time in your life, overwhelmed you. Overwhelmed you in the sense of overwhelmed you in your ability to understand what was happening, understand and be able to process what was happening. And so when things come at us either too much, too fast or we've had too little of something that we need for just too long, then our body it almost compartmentalizes what it's not able to understand and process and it's like I'll deal with that later, not knowing when that later is and we start to accumulate life experiences that we just are, we feel like they're just too much for us at that time and we start adding another box, and another box, and another box. Until pretty soon we've got all this stored emotional life experiences that we've never processed because we've never had the tools to do so, we've never had the space to do so, we've never had the safety to do so, and then it starts causing real problems in our life.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately for me, florence, what I've noticed is that it usually takes a lot of pain, a lot of problems, for someone to be willing to say okay, I know that I need to do the work, let me go do it.
Speaker 2:And already like it just in my voice. I can, you know, put myself back in that place where I went at that point, and it is like it feels like oh, this is going to be exhausting, this is going to be overwhelming, I don't want to have to do this, and that's why we put it off, and that's why we wait until there's so many problems showing up in our life as a result of it that we can't not look at that anymore, and I wish that people had the tools, had the education earlier on, so they didn't get to that point, like they didn't need to have so many problems in their life happening before they were, uh, felt able, felt ready, felt safe enough to do some of the work that we're going to talk about today. So that definition of trauma just anything that, for any reason at that time, overwhelmed your body and it felt like it needed to push it off until later to actually deal with it, resolve it, process it and integrate it- Right.
Speaker 1:And for me, bringing it back to the topic of food and disordered eating and sugar and sugar addiction and all that sort of disordered eating that we see and we struggle with, I've noticed that when I drop into the trauma response, when my body has become overwhelmed, that that's when my food thoughts are the most intense, and it doesn't even have to be black forest cake, it literally can be just oh my God, what's in the cupboard? I just need something to soothe me, to help, you know, make my world feel like I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. Can you talk about more? Why does why does food tie into this whole trauma response like that?
Speaker 2:I know and this is where, like I, both get excited about it, cause, I'm like, cause there's something we can do about it now that we understand it, and then there's like, but it has to be food Right. And then with the food comes the inflammation and the food coma and the weight gain. So why does it have to be food that is so effective at helping our body when it goes into that trauma response and when the body goes into the trauma response? And I want to just clarify for people that the trauma response is very different than the stress response. Now, most people think that they're stressed when they're in the trauma response, not knowing that, yeah, your body's in a physiology of trauma, no longer in a physiology of stress.
Speaker 2:And why would food be so helpful? And, like you say, florence, anything at that point, anything. Yes, I maybe have a preference and if I have that available I'll go to that first, but right now it's just whatever's the fastest, whatever's the easiest for me to access, because there's this thing called the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve is the mechanism by which the trauma response is communicated to the rest of our body, and that's the reason why the vagus nerve is becoming so well-known in the trauma space, because it really is the core, at the center of how that trauma response is communicated to the rest of our body, and the vagus nerve runs right behind our esophagus. So anytime that we drink something, anytime that we swallow food, we're actually soothing that vagus nerve all the way down of food. We're actually soothing that vagus nerve all the way down. And the vagus nerve is also the means by which the information from our gut, our abdomen, our belly comes back up to our brain. So if I can somehow numb out that communication coming back up to my brain, then my brain can be disconnected from this sense of overwhelm that my body is experiencing. And that helps me, because now my brain can either get a rest or it can start to plan for what it's going to do. But as long as it's being overwhelmed by all this information coming up from the body of, we don't think we're going to make it. We're getting overwhelmed. This is way too much for us. The brain is has a competition for where is it going to put its attention, and the noise from the body is so loud it can't hear anything else.
Speaker 2:And so when I think back on those days for me. I recognize that one of my patterns, florence, was that I would overeat, and I mean overeat like this, was binge eating. I would binge eat and overeat in order to quiet the noise from my body and be able to make a plan. Isn't that interesting that I would need to quiet my body by numbing it essentially with food. And that was what allowed me to then think through my problem enough to be able to come up with a plan.
Speaker 2:And I wouldn't be able to reach that point if I didn't, if I hadn't have reached for that food. So that vagus nerve and just understanding the anatomy of the vagus nerve and its relationship with communicating the trauma response, helps us understand why food, more than anything else, is such an easy and fast access to calming those sensations down and essentially numbing them. So we're numbing them with food, we're literally stuffing down those body sensations so that we can disconnect our mind, our brain, from the body and not feel all of this panic and this I don't know if I'm going to be okay Sensation from our body.
Speaker 1:Amazing. That's totally been my experience. And the other piece that I've experienced, when I've dropped into the trauma response I'm overwhelmed, I'm shutting down, I'm collapsing. I totally feel like, oh my gosh, I'm not going to be okay, I can't handle this. All unconsciously mostly it's just a body felt feeling of distress, discomfort, sometimes just despair is that I will use food, certain foods. In this case it isn't just any foods, it's very certain foods to try and jack me out of it, like give me like a little jolt of energy so that I can get back into gear, so I can run away from, I can deal with whatever is spooking me, triggering me. So, for example, chocolate, wheat, dairy sugar combos for me can actually give me a bit of a burst of energy. So can you talk a bit about that piece too?
Speaker 2:And this is so fascinating because when I was studying this for myself again, noticing that I'm right in the middle of this with my health, my body and I started tracking my energy levels, just kind of like what you're talking about Florence, where I would notice that I would go into these periods where I felt so exhausted that it's almost like I had given up the fight for life. But I didn't want to give up the fight, and so I was still looking for that energy, um, and whether it was to to keep fighting, to care or to just be able to get through my day with all the stuff that I needed to get done, all of that was on on the table, and what we know is that the trauma response is an energy problem, and we've never seen it that way. We've always seen it as a psychological problem, maybe an emotional weakness for someone, but we've never seen it as on a cellular level an emotional weakness for someone, but we've never seen it as on a cellular level. The trauma response happens when we don't have enough energy on a cellular level. So it also would make sense then that when the body goes into that, if we're fighting it, if we don't want to surrender all the way into that collapse, then we're going to be looking for ways to get energy, and food is also obviously one of those ways. Not just because of the calories, though that's an obvious way that we can get energy from food, but it's also the types of foods, like you mentioned, and there are types of foods.
Speaker 2:What I noticed was that I was reaching for foods that I would later find out were ones that I had food sensitivities to, and just with the histamine release, just with the inflammation reaction that was happening almost immediately, that would give you a little jolt of adrenaline because of the stress response that you're creating, your body, creating for your body, when you eat something that you're sensitive to. And so that's a common pattern that I see in people, where they're reaching for specific foods that we then later find out. Well, of course, you were reaching for those because you have sensitivities to those, and so just the inflammation response, the immune system responding, reacting that histamine, is going to give you a temporary burst of energy. Now, later on, is the energy crash, and you're going to need to decide what you're going to do then. Are you going to eat some more, are you going to finally rest, or what are you going to do later on? But that's not how our body thinks. When it's in survival mode, it just thinks of right now.
Speaker 2:And then you're mentioning that there are these other foods like the gluten and for me it's gluten dairy. So it's like that combination of you know, brownies and ice cream as an example, and why are those foods that so many people reach for? Or this is also your pasta dishes, right? So your pasta with cheese grilled cheese sandwich craft dinner.
Speaker 2:We call those comfort foods right. Well, why are they comfort foods? There's a scientific reason why our body craves those kinds of things, and what has been so fascinating to understand is that those are ones, those foods are ones that also bind the opiate receptors in our body and in our nervous system opiate receptors. Well, what are opiate receptors? Opiate receptors are what pain pills work on in order to numb pain. So, essentially, you are eating something that will numb your pain. Well, what kind of pain?
Speaker 2:All of it, your opiate receptors help block physical pain and help block emotional pain. And so, when our body is going into this trauma response, that is what it wants, it wants to not feel, it wants to not feel that emptiness, that loneliness, that sensation of feeling lost and alone and out of control. And eating those foods that will bind those opiate receptors, like gluten, like the dairy proteins they they call the, we're calling calling those mimicry proteins, meaning that they are close enough to our endogenous, um opiate proteins that bind those receptors, that they bind those receptors and have the same not as strong, but similar effect. And so we are essentially helping numb the emotional pain that our body's experiencing while in the trauma response when we eat those foods.
Speaker 1:So amazing. I did not know that about the histamine reaction, but it makes sense to me because back in the day they used to test if you're allergic to foods by whether or not your heart rate went up and I thought what is that Mystery solved? So interesting. And you also think why would my? How many times I've been frustrated by my body thing? Why would you crave something that you know is going to trigger a migraine, that you know is going to make you sick, like how stupid can my body be?
Speaker 2:No, actually, how smart is it all intelligent design of our body that it craves those things that are intended to help it in the short term right now? Because that's all that our body is thinking of when it's in the survival response.
Speaker 1:Totally Immediate, immediate, immediate gratification. Got it, and I know that those mimicry opiate proteins from dairy and gluten are called glutomorphine, gluteomorphine and casomorphine. Is that right, exactly, okay, so people can research that if they're thinking. What's she talking about? It's a thing, it's really. It's a thing, and I think it's documented, it's published, we can understand this.
Speaker 2:And so it takes the mystery out of it. Like you're saying, it takes the mystery out of it of why would I continue to do something that has a cost later on. Like I know this is going to happen. It's happened so many times that I know exactly the cost that it will be. So why do I feel in this moment Like if I don't, I will die? So why do I feel in this moment Like if I don't, I will die? And I am going to the refrigerator, I'm going to the cupboard against my own will? That was what bothered me the most about it is I have committed so many times I mean I mean committed and I have a pretty strong willpower. I have committed to never doing this again. And yet here I am right here again. How is this possible? What can be more powerful than my willpower? Oh, it's my body's survival system Got it.
Speaker 1:Right, I will keep you alive. So if we have been triggered, we're overwhelmed. Our nervous system has been swamped by something too much, too fast or too little for too long, and it's moving into the phrase response. It's collapsing, it's wanting to curl up in a ball and numb out so that the brain can come up with a plan. Okay, how can I make the world safe again? How can I address this threat? There's gotta be a better way than food. So can you talk to us about what are other ways of getting our lovely selves out of the freeze response without turning to food, Because that's that's the thing everyone wants to know right.
Speaker 2:That's. That's what we want to change. That has felt unchangeable in the past, and what I learned was that I needed to connect with my body in a way that I'd never connected with my body before, so that I could change how my body felt. I could take that sense of overwhelm and, within a few minutes, bring it out of the overwhelm and into a place where it felt contained, it felt safe enough, and I was able to do that for myself. It's not something where I could call my therapist and make an appointment for the next week because I don't want to spend the next week in the freeze while I'm waiting for that appointment.
Speaker 2:This is something that I realized that I needed to learn how to do for myself in the moment, and not in a way that was again pushing my body through something, forcing my body to pull it together, you know, pull up your bootstraps, kind of thing. This was something that I realized that I had done enough of that. That was no longer working and my body was really no longer listening to me either, so that even when I said I am not going to do this, my body would just kind of laugh at me, be like well, I'll show you what I'm going to do. And I had to change the entire relationship that I had then with my body and learn these three different states of the autonomic nervous system so that in the moment I could tell exactly where I was and then not only work with it when it was going into that freeze response or in that freeze response, but then even being able to start to notice when it might go into the freeze response. And how can I intervene now so that we can avoid all of that? Because once I'm in there, everything is so much harder because you are literally fighting the very survival essence of your body. And that's a very hard fight to win because, like you said, your body, your autonomic nervous system, its job is to keep you alive no matter what. And so when it has decided that eating, that one thing is exactly what you have to do, not could do, you have to do to stay alive, have to do, not, could do, you have to do to stay alive, I don't care how many affirmations or mantras you can say it, this is a survival thing. That those, those are instincts that will come over you and overpower all logic and all willpower. And so I noticed that the more that I could start to catch it earlier and then earlier and start to even notice the more subtle sensations that were happening in my body that suggested this is kind of maybe where we're going, because we just had a trigger that I had never even realized on a conscious level Florence right, like it was just something, that this is life, this is how you get through life. Someone looks at you, you feel like you don't belong kind of all the time and you just deal with it, you just get through it and you just kind of ignore those feelings and you operate from this end. And so realizing that all of this stuff that I could bring to a conscious level and that I could learn tools to meet my body where it was at and be able to provide exactly what it needed Does it need safety? Right now, I can do that. Does it need support? Right now? I can do that. What does it need that I can provide in this moment.
Speaker 2:And then what I noticed was that all of my coping mechanisms kind of fell away without me even having to try, because what was driving those coping mechanisms no longer existed. And at this point I had already been participating in Overeaters Anonymous. I had already been on several diets trying to force myself to eat differently in order to lose all the weight that I had gained from the years of overeating and binge eating, and I was really just making myself sicker in the process. And I noticed that once I took my focus off of that and I put my focus instead on not only building this connection with my body that I'm talking about, but learning the specific tools that I could apply in the moment to provide safety and support.
Speaker 2:All of these other coping mechanisms including the overeating, the binge eating, which then resulted in weight loss All of it just went away without such strong effort that I had been applying to it for years, without it being effective. It was fascinating to me to see that the solution was actually putting the focus inward and actually learning how to work with my body and help it in these moments, with these overwhelming sensations, rather than keeping the focus on what am I eating? What am I not supposed to be eating? How can I stay away from that? Let me make another promise to myself Let me lose the weight, let me go on this diet and that's and that's yet still kind of what I see in the marketplaces. That's where a lot of the focus is, and boy I wish that I could just help people turn that focus inward, because all of that would fall away when we have this ability to shift the sensations in our body that are driving those coping mechanisms.
Speaker 1:Thank you, amazing so. So basically, what you're saying is that you're you're guiding people to sort of work upstream, a little bit work upstream. Let's look at the root, like what's really going on at the level of the body? It's it's scared. Going on at the level of the body. It's scared, it's overwhelmed. It has genuine needs for safety, support, energy, and what can we do to actually give it what it needs so that it can face the challenges of life without collapsing and going? I just have a brownie, please. Let me go raid the freezer for the ice cream. So you're kind of working and you're catching it before, because once you're in the freeze, response like you said.
Speaker 1:I mean, I I find it extremely difficult. The food chatter and the food thoughts and the pull towards what the body knows is going to do the job and it would. And you know I'll say well, how about we go have a bath? It you know it gives me the bird Like you can take your bath, your bath, your hot bubble bath, and shove it right Like not interested. So the other thing I wanted to talk about is for me it had to start with the self-regulation piece, that there's all this talk of co-regulation and how important it is for us to be able to reconnect to humans and to feel safe and supported and seen and heard. And that's all awesome.
Speaker 1:I am in a very warm, loving marriage. Truly, I hit the jackpot. My husband, sean, is beyond lovely and a couple Sundays ago I don't know what I hit, it was some old piece of trauma. I was in a flashback and I was just hanging on for about six or seven hours. I was in a freeze. I had collapsed and it was really difficult and I was doing my pushaways and I was doing my tools and they were lasting for about two or three hours.
Speaker 1:And then it was coming back, the food thoughts. And I didn't want sugar or flour, I wanted absolutely no junk food. I wanted bananas and peanut butter very specifically. So my husband, fabulous as he is, steps in, offers me hugs, pulls me on the couch, wraps himself around me Everything's going to be okay, honey and I'm right here and it did nothing. It should have, it's, it should have. But it truly did not shift my nervous system and I realized that for me I had to start with the tools that you teach. I have to do this for myself. I have to be able to drop in and to be present, to notice where the sensations are where is that fear? And to do it for myself. Before I could do the self-regulation, I often hear oh, you got to self-regulate, you got to learn how to do that and then, sorry, co-regulate, and then you can self-regulate. For me it was the other way around and you taught me that, so I don't know if you'd like to speak more about that.
Speaker 2:I mean, everything you say is exactly true.
Speaker 2:Once a person becomes an adult Now, if you're working with a child, that's different Then you do start with the co-regulation.
Speaker 2:But once they hit puberty, florence, their body is essentially at the point where they need to start doing that for themselves first, because if we are not able to be accepting of ourselves, we can't even fathom being accepted by another person. And so, just like your experience, they can give us all the love and support in the world, but we don't feel it. And isn't that fascinating that someone can love us truly love us in their hearts, in their body, their soul. They love us, and we don't feel it until we love ourselves. And in this context, coming back to the regulation, until we feel and know that we are able to trust ourselves, be with ourselves, feel safe in the stillness with ourselves because we have these tools, then we won't be able to experience that safety, that stillness, that openness, that vulnerability, that acceptance, even being able to receive what they have to give us. And so, for everyone who is an adult, they have to start with the self-regulation, being able to be safe in their own embrace, before they can actually even receive safety and the embrace of another person.
Speaker 1:That's been my experience. Yeah, yeah, and I can receive Sean's love all day long, but you get me in the freeze and that shuts, that shuts off. I don't trust it, right. So it's the tools that that you teach, that I know you didn't invent, but you, you, you package them well in ways that that just helps, I think, for people to get. Oh, I get that. That feels safe. That isn't overwhelming to me. I can do OM, right, I can do an OM. I prefer OM over VU, but you might I know you teach VU. I could do a simple push away. I can do that. It's a couple minutes less right. So speak to us about how I know it feels like, oh gosh, trauma work. That's going to be painful and overwhelming and that sounds terrifying, but it isn't really, is it?
Speaker 2:When done the wrong way. Yes, it is Okay, fair when there is a reason why most people are terrified of it, and they should be terrified of it If their idea of trauma work is to go in and talk about something of your past because that's going to just stir things up without giving you the tools to process it. And that's why it was traumatic in the first place is that we didn't have the tools to process it and so, literally in just the process of bringing it up without being able to resolve it, you're re-traumatizing your body without being able to move to the healing that's beyond it. So we really want to focus on what are those things that we can do that allow things to come up in a manageable way? Most of the people who come through my 21 day journey are so afraid of doing trauma work because they feel like if I, if I open that box, everything will come out, and I know that it's too big for me to handle and I'm going to be overwhelmed. I'm probably going to fall down on the floor and be a mess, not be able to do anything. I'm going to be crying for days, and that's our idea of doing trauma work, and so being able to say you know what.
Speaker 2:There's a different way to do it, and here's the beauty of being able to tap into the intelligence of the body is that when we can start to just do simple tools to bring a sense of safety, to bring a sense of safety, to bring a sense of support the body will decide how much to bring up to the surface at a time in a way that will be manageable for us, and so we don't even need to go into the past and start digging into. Well, I need to process this event. Well, this happened to me. It's like, no, just right here, right now. What am I noticing? Ah, I'm noticing a sense of overwhelm. Let's work with what's in the present moment, because as we do that, we shift our current state into something where it's more accessible and it feels more open and it does feel safe.
Speaker 2:And now it feels more ready, and whether that's the time in which it allows something to surface, or it says this I'm good for, I'm good for today, I'm good for right now, and. And it just allows for the body to go at the pace that it feels like it can manage, which is so important because then, as it brings things to the surface, it truly is able to process, it truly is able to release it, it truly is able to resolve it so that it's no longer baggage, that we're still carrying this weight that is burdening down our body, but we're able to release that and do it in a way that it doesn't open everything all at once, that we're getting overwhelmed. And so that's why I started, when I applied these tools to myself. I mean just the relief, the relief that I didn't have to open everything all at once, that I didn't have to, you know, dig into this closet that, oh my God, like who knows how deep this is and how far back this is, cause it's been a long year, a long time, since I've been packing everything into this closet, but being able to just say you know what? I'm just going to focus on the present moment.
Speaker 2:And in the present moment, where's my body right now? Oh, we're going into the freeze response. Okay, what are my tools for the freeze response? Let me just apply those right now. I'm in the stress response. Okay, what are my tools for the stress response? Or I'm, I'm doing okay and I'm looking for some safe expansion, growth, joy, being able to learn how to express boundaries and anger in a healthy way. Okay, I have tools for those in this moment, that I can just work in the present moment with my nervous system and just increase its capacity a little bit every day. Every day, just a little bit, increasing its capacity and in the process it is so much able to resolve and heal and process a lot by itself in a safe and manageable way.
Speaker 1:Love it. So here's somebody. They've been triggered, they've collapsed, let's say they've collapsed fully into the freeze response, and by that it just means you're heavy Now, you've lost energy. There's maybe a bit of a darkness, a feeling of despair, overwhelm, distress. Those are sort of some of the things that you might look for, like what is the? That's how you feel when you're in the freeze response and they're like oh man, food thoughts are coming in pretty, pretty hard. And so the tools like we're not going to teach a lot of them here, but you, let's say, you take off one of the tools it could be a push away where you imagine something really heavy is pushing against you and you push really hard.
Speaker 2:You really put your money, your money, your muscles, your muscles and your energy Muscles, mind, money, all of it Energy, and you just you just push that away and do something that simple and then notice what's happening in your body.
Speaker 1:And so the tendency the tendency is the desire of the body is to escape, to disassociate, to disconnect. But what we're actually doing is the dead opposite we're dropping into it, into the body. I'm going to be with this feeling. I'm going to stay out of the story, stay out of the mind, to stay with the sensations of the body, right here, right now. What am I feeling? And the whole, the very thing that we're most terrified of actually doing, is the only thing that can actually heal us. And it's that whole fascinating irony that when we see that we're like, oh, I've been so busy running from that, numbing it out, shutting it down like stuffing, like oh, I'm just supposed to drop into it, but it's so terrifying, but maybe it's not.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's just a sensation. Maybe it's just a sensation and that's the experience that we get to create for ourselves. That's different than what we've had before, where it's terrifying because we've never done it before and we've never allowed ourselves to feel that, and so we don't know what will happen if we do feel it. And so this is this is where it's so helpful to have a guide, especially those first couple of times, who will lead you through that process, lead you through these exercises, so that you have some sense of I'm doing it right and being able to get through that initial fear of I don't know what will happen if I actually let myself feel this. Will I fall apart? And having just knowing that someone else is there in case I do fall apart, and then, of course, in the process, you realize that, oh, I don't fall apart. But that's such a big fear that we do need to kind of address as we create this new experience of I don't need to be afraid of feeling these sensations, and when you are able to then drop in, as you're talking about, and be with it, it can even be helpful to think of it as I'm connecting with a very young part of me that is scared to death right now. And how would I be with that young child if it were a real child in front of me? Would I leave it all alone to its panic and to its overwhelm? Or would I just come alongside it and say I'm going to be here with you through this. I'm going to just sit here with you, I'm going to contain you, let me hug you, let me hold you, let me let me let you know that this will be okay, that you will be okay, and that's essentially what I'm doing for myself, but in a way that's just, I'm able to focus on how does my belly feel, how does my chest feel, because that's how that panic shows up in those moments, as actual, real body sensations.
Speaker 2:That then I can come in and say and how can I support that right now, that knot in my stomach that just showed up, or that knife in my gut? Oh, I can feel that. And rather than going to reach for food to try to make that knot or that knife in my gut go away, what else could I do? How could I make those go away? Because when I can come in and and at least lessen them, if not completely help them go away. Then the craving and the drive for the food went away, because that craving, that intense need for food in that moment was to numb that sensation of the knot or the knife. So it's a way to like you're saying, address really what's upstream. Like you're saying address really what's upstream, and then everything that used to happen downstream doesn't happen because we have these tools that helps us connect with our body sensations in a way that lessens them rather than magnifies them.
Speaker 1:Right, just adds to the pile, adds to the stuff in the closet that we'll have to process and all the terror that we have of doing this work, of feeling the discomfort of being connected to the body, to the sensations, to the feelings, and when we realize over time that it's intimate, that it's beautiful. And when we realize over time that it's intimate, that it's beautiful, that it feels so fulfilling and loving and it's all the good feelings we get when we give it to a child with big tears in our eyes that has come for a hug, like we actually have that capacity from. You know, the self-regulation brings as much pleasure as it, you know. Just, there's pleasure in showing up for the pain, but we don't.
Speaker 2:we don't believe it until we, we do it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it feels like the great abyss, right? It feels like the great abyss of emotions. Yeah, it's going to swallow this whole. I'm going to fall in and there's no bottom to it.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Which is partly why the binge eating and the overeating is such a problem, because we're literally trying to fill up this. Well, that has no bottom to it. Right, we're never going to feel full.
Speaker 1:There will never be enough sugar. There will never be enough. There will never be enough. We will never get satisfied. There will always be another binge that we think well, this will be the last one and I will finally be full. Yeah, yeah, totally Sorry. There was one more thing I wanted to point you in the direction of. It's not coming, I know. So let's go back to the idea that someone has fallen into the freeze and they're like okay, this sounds great, it sounds like there's some exercises I can do that can start this process of me dropping in, dropping into, connect to what I think I'm, you know, will be really terrifying and too much, and for me, I feel like I'm going to lose my mind. That's how I feel I'm going to. I'm going to lose my mind. It's going to make me lose my mind. It doesn't happen. But you teach one exercise, one of your favorite exercises that you use when you're in the freeze.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I'm immediately thinking like what would be probably one of the more powerful ones that I could teach your audience, Florence and I, and I think that I think that for those who struggle with um food, that let me do. Let me do the stomach support and for the stomach support, what I'm going to do that's different is I'm just going to go for a pillow. And so, if you're listening to this, just grab a pillow. Doesn't matter what size right now, Just grab anything. I've got one. I don't have a pillow, but I have a stuffy, I'll grab it.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, and so what you're doing is you're just grabbing, really, something that you can put in front of your stomach, and if you're sitting down, you can just kind of place the pillow and then decide how you want your arms. Do you want your arms just resting on it? Do you want your arms tightly hugging it? What feels the most comfortable for you? And do you notice anything different now that you're just kind of settling in with having something over your belly? Do you notice anything changing in your body?
Speaker 2:Now, if you're not used to dropping into your body, it may be hard for you to notice what changes happen. So know that that if you're not noticing anything, that's perfectly fine. That's normal for your stage. But what I'm noticing already, florence, is that, like my shoulders dropped, there's a spontaneous deep breath for me, and I'm also noticing that my belly feels like it, just like ah has has softened, and I didn't feel that it was tight before. I didn't feel that my shoulders were up before. So isn't that interesting that as soon as I put this this for me it's more like a blanket I put it in front that that's the change that I noticed. What are you noticing, florence?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I noticed that I was, that I'm taking deeper breaths and I'm also feeling like I don't have quite the right. I've got this little stuffy and it kind of sort of keeps dropping on me so I probably would fuss and find another prop, but but that I did notice that I started to take the deep, the deeper breaths.
Speaker 2:Interesting that, even though it wasn't the perfect prop, that even that deeper breaths.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Amazing, amazing. So now what I'd like for you to do, if you're listening to this, is just kind of again check in, like, okay, this is what it feels like to have the pillow here, or blanket or whatever it is that you're using, and now take it away. Slowly, just take it away, and however you want to take it away, whether you want to just place it on the side, let it drop on the floor. And now notice what do you notice that's different? And you can maybe just start with some simple questions of does this feel more pleasant or less pleasant? Does this feel helpful or not helpful? Does this feel more comfortable or less comfortable?
Speaker 2:That's a good place to start If you've never really done these types of exercises and used to describing different sensations in different places of your body. And for me, I will tell you this is less pleasant to not have the blanket in front of my belly. I feel that, um, I don't know if there's this kind of constriction in my chest. My belly has tightened up again and I can notice that it's tighter now and, uh, yeah, like my shoulders just don't have that relaxed, settled feeling that they did, and so I'm definitely going to say that this is less pleasant, less comfortable than when I had the pillow or the blanket in front of my belly. And so, as you've had a chance to just notice, florence, what is it for you more pleasant or less pleasant to not have the prop?
Speaker 1:Um, it is more pleasant to not have the prop. It's more pleasant, but, as I was reflecting on that, I think it's because the prop I would have had to fuss a bit to get, oh, just a little bit of a feeling of support and I can relax into it a bit, and I think my system doesn't want to relax. I'm interviewing Dr Amy and my body's like all keyed up. This is so great, and so I think there was a part of me going no, no, I like that idea, just not right now, exactly. Just not right now, exactly.
Speaker 2:Just not right now. This is not the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, if you're listening to this, I'd like you to, one more time, grab that blanket or that pillow, just so that we can notice the contrast and notice the difference. So, as you put that back over your belly and I guarantee you that some of you listening are going to enjoy this so much that you're going to stay right here, you're not going to put the pillow away after this interview, you're going to stay right here, noticing that for you not for Florence, but for you this is more pleasant, it's more comfortable, even if you don't necessarily have the words or know why.
Speaker 2:And that's part of the benefit of this work, isn't it, florence? Is that we don't have to understand the why, we don't have to analyze it, we just get to experience. Oh, I have found something that just helped my system feel more comfortable, and I don't even need to know why. Why I can just experience it and enjoy it. For as long as our system can enjoy comfort, because for some people, their system is. Is it still in that place where it's like, no, it's not safe to be comfortable. No, it's not safe to relax. I always have to be on guard and so we can have this reflex bracing, this reflex anxiety, and for you, if that's happening to you, it's just one of those things that we say in the 21 day journey isn't that interesting? And we just learned one new thing about your system.
Speaker 2:So I hope this was helpful to just being able to notice that sometimes for many, for many people, depending on the situation, the timing but just bringing a pillow in front of our stomach can create a change in our system of protection. It can feel like I'm more protected, I'm less vulnerable. That's a frequent thing that comes up for people when they do this exercise. And feel free to experiment around with how you could make it even more pleasant or delicious, as we use in the 21 day journey for your system, so that it's helpful to you in the moment and again when you're noticing yourself stressed or you're noticing yourself starting to have those food thoughts. What if we just started with where's the pillow? Where's the pillow? Where's a blanket? Let me put that over my belly in the way that Dr Amy described in that interview with Florence and just see if I can bring down that level of intensity just a little bit for me to have some space to decide what to do.
Speaker 1:Give it that brain, the brain, that little pause to pause, I can Right and in that way it almost doesn't matter what one of the you know the 21 different possible tools there's so many more than that.
Speaker 1:Even it, just as long as it's getting you to drop in and you're being present in the moment, you're gauging your senses and you're connected to your body, that's it, that is, that is just the goal, goal, goal accomplished. Last place I wanted to go and the reason I want to go here is because we do talk about sugar addiction and addiction recovery. It's a piece of the picture for many of us not everyone, but for some of us and with addiction recovery there's always this sort of suggestion that abstinence first, recovery second, and earlier you had said you know sometimes that's that those food behaviors drop away like go work upstream, and sometimes for some of us we might actually need to do some of that genuine level best around the abstinence piece, because sometimes that is truly actually blocking or slowing down the trauma recovery process, that we can kind of get stuck there and we keep doing all the trauma work and we're thinking why isn't the sugar thing shifting Right? So I don't know if you wanted to have a chance to maybe end there. Some thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:And this is one of those important order for us to heal. We have to feel those things that we cannot feel, we cannot heal. And so if the sugar consumption is still blocking sensations, we're not going to be able to heal those. And so, literally, our diet sugar can be blocking our healing process because we're not even able to feel it, or we're not able to feel it to the intensity that we need to in order to process it and move through it and release it. And that's why the sugar addiction is a very real thing, because it has helped us numb discomfort. And as we let that sugar go, we can start to experience more and more discomfort and realize all that we've been numbing with the sugar. And so how important it is to bring these two worlds together and do them simultaneously, because one without the other is a setup for failure, because we can't heal what we can't feel.
Speaker 2:But yet I'm not going to be able to heal something that overwhelms me because I've dealt, I've I've dove into something too deep or I've decided to go cold turkey on sugar and just the pain of my body, because it's not just the trauma pain, it's not just the emotional pain, it's also the physical withdrawals that we go through.
Speaker 2:That might be too much for your system, and so they go hand in hand. And it's this dance that we do, with really connecting with our body and doing just the next best step. For how can I nourish my body today? How can I do something really loving for my body today? What else can I let go of today that's holding me back, and not try to tackle the whole mountain in one day. But I'm just going to do the next best step and I'm going to do it in a way that allows me to check in with my body and and do it together with my body. My body is not the enemy. My body is my ally in the healing journey. And so how can I use that relationship to build that relationship, nurture that relationship, and I guarantee you that when we are nurturing our bodies, our sugar addiction will go away in the process, because we can't want to have a nurturing relationship with our body while we continue to feed ourselves those things that hurt our body and hold us back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel so out of alignment, it feels so incongruous and out of integrity and like, oh, I don't want to do this anymore. And I also find that when I'm in the processed junk foods and by sugar I mean sugar, flour, sweeteners, alcohol, any whole food carbohydrate that's been processed is sugar in my world. And when I eat it and when I'm engaged in consuming those processed, ultra-processed foods, I'm dysregulated, like I just can't get into the paradise of the parasympathetic, as I say. I can't get there, I get kicked out, I kick myself out. So I'm constantly dysregulating my nervous system, and so it's really helpful to have these stretches where I get onto the whole foods, where I can. That in and of itself the biology piece of trauma that you're so good at talking about that can soothe the inflammation, it can bring down the histamine. It can bring down, it can remineralize my body, restore my neurotransmitters and all that magic, the magic of whole foods, can help regulate my nervous system. It allows me to do more of my deeper trauma. So they really they're just like synergistics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you really are stressing the comprehensive view, the big picture view here that I talk about so often. It said that when I know better, I do better, and yet that's not true. It's when I regulate better, I do better. Oh, I love it. Yeah, I love better, and yet that's not true. It's when I regulate better, I do better.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love it. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:And so much of our biology, so much of our food, so much of our diet directly affects my nervous system and whether it's regulated or dysregulated, and so that truly is the upstream of me doing better in every area of my life, because when I regulate better, I do better.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Is there any final words you'd like to share before we wrap up today?
Speaker 2:Oh, just the hope, right, like if you are noticing that you've just been stuck. You're obviously here because you feel stuck and you want change. You want, um, you want to see something different and I know that you've tried a million different things, right and, and that this is like what Florence is doing here is is the real solution. It's the, it's the stuff that will actually change things on a cellular level, not just a superficial level, and so I'm so so glad you're here and there is so much hope when we apply the right tools.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, dr Amy. Thank you Florence.
