Dec. 19, 2024
Struggling with Anxiety? Discover How Your Diet and Trauma Are Holding You Back
Anxiety and stress are pervasive issues affecting many, often rooted in unresolved trauma and dietary choices. In this episode, we explore the connection between our food, nervous system regulation, and self-sabotage while emphasizing a need for personalized therapeutic approaches.
• The link between nutrition and mental health
• How self-sabotaging behaviors stem from trauma
• Understanding nervous system dysregulation
• The importance of personalized wellness strategies
• Quick fixes vs. addressing root causes
• Impact of hormonal changes in women over 40
• Importance of surrounding oneself with holistic practitioners
Join us to explore this notion with Jelena Tasakovich, a board-certified functional medicine health coach renowned for her expertise in nervous system regulation and trauma release. Our discussion casts a light on how modern dietary and lifestyle choices, particularly the intake of processed foods and sugars, contribute to stress, anxiety, and burnout. Jelena reveals how these choices can lead to nervous system dysregulation, uncovering the crucial links between chronic stress, unresolved trauma, and mental health issues.
Bio
Jalena Tasakovich is a nationally board-certified and trauma-trained functional medicine health and wellness coach with over 15 years of experience. She specializes in trauma healing as the first certified Practitioner of The Richards Trauma Process in the United States. In addition, Jalena holds certifications as a Mindfulness and Meditation Practitioner from the Awareness Training Institute and as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner from Somatic Experiencing International. Her passion is helping high-impact women have it all: balancing their work, family and personal well-being to thrive as the best, most empowered version of themselves.
Website and Social Media
Website - Jalenat.com
Social Media - Facebook
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00:03 - Understanding Stress and Trauma's Impact
07:51 - Navigating Stress, Trauma, and Symptoms
12:06 - Managing Stress Responses and Coping
15:06 - Navigating Hormonal and Traumatic Stress
29:18 - Evaluating Nervous System Regulation and Wellness
WEBVTT
00:00:03.585 --> 00:00:08.455
What is it that stress, anxiety and burnout seem to be on the rise in this country?
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I think it's for a lot of reasons.
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From a health and wellness perspective, I would say it's the foods that we're eating, or what I like to refer to as food-like substance, which aren't actually food, right.
00:00:22.121 --> 00:00:41.450
So processed carbohydrates, anything with a lot of sugar, is going to spike blood sugar, and spiking your blood sugar can present with feelings of anxiousness or anxiety, and then you can talk about what happens when you come down and your blood sugar crashes and you go into more of like a hypoglycemic state.
00:00:41.450 --> 00:01:13.653
So that's going to cause dysregulation in the nervous system and that's going to cause feelings or symptoms of anxiety or depression in the system hi, I'm glennis woods mullins and I love to help women to vibe, to be more vibrant, intuitive, beautiful and empowered in their life.
00:01:13.674 --> 00:01:14.939
So come on, let's vibe.
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I'm so glad that I can do something to help when it comes to our overall mental health in this country.
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I've been concerned for quite some time when I hear people talking about how anxious they are, how stressed out they feel, how overwhelmed and burnt out.
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And the thing I'm most concerned about, because I happen to be one of you, I'm sort of one of you.
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I don't know if I'm midlife, I'm 67.
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I don't know if that means I have to live to be 134, but you know what I mean.
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I have been a midlife woman.
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I'm on that journey, and it can be quite destructive to our overall physical health and mental health when it comes to allowing things that are going on outside of our control, allowing those to impact our health, and that's why I'm so glad that we have with us someone who knows a little bit about this, jelena Tasakovich.
00:02:10.676 --> 00:02:11.961
I hope I'm saying that right.
00:02:11.961 --> 00:02:40.104
She is a board certified functional medicine health coach with a specialty in nervous system regulation and trauma release, and the reason why I think this is so important is that she not only deals with the symptoms, but she helps you deal with the causation of what trauma and ongoing stress, chronic stress, can do to your body, and how to peel back the layers and release it, and also coping mechanisms so that it doesn't take you out.
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Because, let's face it, one of the main issues that come around with chronic disease and compromised immune systems is chronic stress.
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I know it doesn't seem that way, but absolutely, and I think a lot of times we think we're handling it okay, but actually we are storing it in our bodies.
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There's a wonderful book and I've mentioned it before called the Body Keeps the Score, and it talks about what chronic stress and ongoing anxiety and other kinds of emotions that are toxic to our bodies, what it can do to our bodies over time.
00:03:12.245 --> 00:03:16.112
So we need to have someone like Jelena in our lives.
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Jelena, thank you so much for being on the Vibe Living podcast.
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It's wonderful to have you here today.
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It's a pleasure and an honor to be here with you as well.
00:03:25.491 --> 00:03:26.442
Well, thank you so much.
00:03:26.442 --> 00:03:28.912
I am so excited to talk with you about this.
00:03:28.912 --> 00:03:44.646
Just yesterday, I had on the podcast someone who was talking about a book she wrote called America in Therapy, and I think right now, given the time of the year, and for those of you who are listening to this later on, this is right before the election in 2024.
00:03:44.646 --> 00:03:57.020
And even prior to that, with the pandemic and other things that have happened, the natural disasters, we have all been pretty stressed out and, as a result, there have been all kinds of other things that have popped up.
00:03:57.401 --> 00:04:03.123
I always say that one of the reasons why I think the COVID hit us so hard is that we were basically unhealthy.
00:04:03.123 --> 00:04:15.169
Our immune systems were compromised, and one of the culprits of that was chronic stress, chronic emotions that aren't being eradicated or dealt with and they just sit in the body and they present in all kinds of different ways.
00:04:15.169 --> 00:04:18.987
So tell us, how is it that you do what you do?
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How does that help us?
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Tell us a little bit about you, what you do and how it helps people deal with their stress and anxiety.
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Yeah, so I work through a few different modalities as a board certified health and wellness coach.
00:04:31.932 --> 00:04:42.648
We approach nervous system regulation and overall well-being from lifestyle factors right, which I think probably a lot of your audience are doing or they've been aware of.
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A lot of your audience are doing or they've been aware of diet, exercise, these sorts of things.
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But what I realized at some point in helping my clients was they knew exactly what they needed to be doing and they weren't doing it.
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So it became this perpetual cycle of I can make progress with them for four to six weeks and then they're self-sabotage, and then they're kind of in self-sabotage for a while and then they make progress for, you know, two months and then it's self-sabotage.
00:05:14.125 --> 00:05:21.805
So it became this cycle of, like, you know, you know what needs to be done and we're talking about it, but they can't do it.
00:05:21.805 --> 00:05:46.392
That is really what led me into trauma work, subconscious programming and the nervous system and how those things the nervous system, the subconscious programming most of the time is, which we pick up from childhood actually impact our sense of safety in the world.
00:05:46.392 --> 00:05:55.954
And if our body, either consciously or subconsciously, doesn't feel safe to do something, then we self-sabotage, right?
00:05:55.954 --> 00:06:00.572
So self-sabotage from a nervous system perspective is actually self-protection.
00:06:02.740 --> 00:06:07.230
So yeah, self-protection which happens to be sabotaging our bodies.
00:06:07.230 --> 00:06:10.043
Can you give us an example of what that might?
00:06:10.083 --> 00:06:25.853
be the easiest example that I have is if we think about women who have been sexually abused, for example, and after a sexual abuse happens, sometimes there'll be a lot of potentially weight gain Like this is just one example.
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Right, on some subconscious level, as you gain weight, you become more self-protected, right?
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Does that?
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Does that?
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example, insulating, insulating, yeah.
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Yeah, it's like don't anything that keeps people from engaging with you and that don't look at my body, don't physically see me in that way.
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So somebody might want to lose the weight and consciously they're like I really want to and the subconscious doesn't think it's safe.
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So this is where those what we call in our society self-sabotage comes in.
00:07:03.156 --> 00:07:10.389
What we call in our society self-sabotage comes in, and this could be for a multitude of different traumas.
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You know some.
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I've worked with clients whose parents put them on diets at like six years old and then these are people who go on to have body image issues into adulthood and consciously they recognize that they're what they want to achieve, but subconsciously they can't because they were subconsciously programmed from such a young age.
00:07:32.149 --> 00:07:49.148
So this is where these subconscious programs just kind of play out and they repeat in patterns throughout our lives and this shows up in relationships, it shows up in how we relate to coworkers, it can show up in a whole bunch of different places.
00:07:51.031 --> 00:07:56.026
Why is it that stress, anxiety and burnout seem to be on the rise in this country?
00:07:57.629 --> 00:07:59.192
I think it's for a lot of reasons.
00:07:59.192 --> 00:08:09.692
From a health and wellness perspective, I would say it's the foods that we're eating, or what I like to refer to as food-like substance, which aren't actually food, right.
00:08:09.692 --> 00:08:28.988
So processed carbohydrates, anything with a lot of sugar, is going to spike blood sugar, and spiking your blood sugar can present with feelings of anxiousness or anxiety, and then you can talk about what happens when you come down and your blood sugar crashes and you go into more of like a hypoglycemic state.
00:08:28.988 --> 00:08:37.351
So that's going to cause dysregulation in the nervous system and that's going to cause feelings or symptoms of anxiety or depression in the system.
00:08:37.351 --> 00:08:44.684
From a trauma perspective, trauma is really something that happened in the past, but it's showing up now.
00:08:44.684 --> 00:08:49.865
Trauma is really something that happened in the past, but it's showing up now.
00:08:49.865 --> 00:08:57.033
So anybody in your audience, or anybody listening, or maybe yourself, can relate to being triggered by something, but it's not necessarily about what's happening in the present moment.
00:08:57.033 --> 00:09:00.543
The trigger is actually tied to something from the past.
00:09:00.825 --> 00:09:04.153
Yes, I understand that concept, I talk about that a lot.
00:09:04.153 --> 00:09:08.504
But you know, you wonder why the guy in the grocery store is so upset?
00:09:08.504 --> 00:09:13.225
Because you stepped on his toe, and it's not so much the act of your stepping on the toe that did it.
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It's the accumulation of occurrences that led up to that that he is now reacting to, and he may not even realize it himself.
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And that's a simplistic example, but I hope it paints the picture of how these traumas, if not addressed, add up.
00:09:27.604 --> 00:09:34.866
But the question is, jelena, if you don't know that you've been traumatized, what do you look for?
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How do you know that you need some help in areas it could be because of the certain kinds of triggers, of things that happen that seem to take you to another direction, that don't make sense?
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How do you identify that you need the help?
00:09:47.409 --> 00:09:48.331
Usually for people.
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They might not know that they were traumatized, but they have some pattern in their life that is repeating itself, that is no longer working for them.
00:09:57.620 --> 00:10:02.408
They're blowing up at their spouse or their kids, right?
00:10:02.408 --> 00:10:05.152
They have extreme road rage.
00:10:05.152 --> 00:10:11.106
They push, push, push all week, and then on the weekends they need to numb out with Netflix.
00:10:12.190 --> 00:10:25.450
Nothing wrong with any of this, but these are signs and symptoms that something is awry in the nervous system, because we don't need to blow up at somebody who cuts us off in traffic.
00:10:25.450 --> 00:10:33.048
Right, that's a over amplified response, just as pushing through.
00:10:33.048 --> 00:10:49.852
And you know, for a lot of people, especially in today's modern culture, they're working 10, 12 hour days, they're numbing out with social media or blue screens at night, and then they're either having trouble sleeping or they're passing out really hard, but they're not refreshed in the morning.
00:10:49.852 --> 00:11:02.683
So most likely, people are noticing either physical, mental or emotional dysregulation in just how they're experiencing themselves in their life.
00:11:02.683 --> 00:11:03.245
Right?
00:11:03.245 --> 00:11:04.749
Is this all there is?
00:11:04.749 --> 00:11:06.279
Is it always going to be this way?
00:11:06.279 --> 00:11:10.167
So the questions start to arise, right?
00:11:12.610 --> 00:11:15.595
Yeah, you know, you mentioned dysregulation.
00:11:15.595 --> 00:11:19.551
Could you explain what is nervous system dysregulation?
00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:37.807
Yeah, so in nervous system work there is how I like to describe this is, let's just say we have what's called the window of tolerance and for somebody with a fairly large capacity in their window of tolerance they're going to kind of hang out and we're just.
00:11:37.807 --> 00:11:43.549
I'm just like this wave is inside the window, right, there's a stressor but I can hang out in here.
00:11:43.549 --> 00:11:46.565
I might get a little bit stressed out but I can come back down.
00:11:46.565 --> 00:11:53.147
So when you're in this window of tolerance you're not really in a dysregulated state.
00:11:53.147 --> 00:12:05.673
Now it's normal to have moments of poking out into dysregulation, like a lot of stress, and then the threat passes and we kind of come back into a regulated state, right.
00:12:06.941 --> 00:12:16.067
What happens for a lot of people because of accumulated stress over time, they know they're no longer in this window of tolerance.
00:12:16.067 --> 00:12:32.369
So everything is either pushing them into sympathetic arousal, so more of that fight, flight, nervous, anxious kind of energy, or they go down into more of a shutdown collapse and for a lot of people they experience both.
00:12:32.369 --> 00:12:38.268
They have a lot of nervous, anxious energy and at some point they crash.
00:12:38.268 --> 00:12:44.431
So this might look like somebody who's experiencing a lot of sleepless nights.
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They have a lot of anxiety and then at some point they're just, they're out, they can't get off the couch, right.
00:12:49.597 --> 00:12:55.133
So they went from really high sympathetic arousal to a more shut down collapse state.
00:12:55.133 --> 00:13:08.241
So, and I guess the easiest way to say that is you know, you know you're not regulated when you can't come back into this place of I'm good.
00:13:08.823 --> 00:13:09.888
I've got right, it takes.
00:13:09.888 --> 00:13:10.960
It takes a lot Everything.
00:13:10.960 --> 00:13:15.765
Next thing, you know people are trying to calm you down and bringing you a cup of coffee, water, whatever seems to work.
00:13:15.765 --> 00:13:29.985
And let's talk about that a little bit, because we all have in this society these buzz techniques going around and these quick fixes that seem to help with the symptoms, even though they don't deal with the causation at all, which is not unusual, because we don't have.
00:13:29.985 --> 00:13:31.270
We have a tendency not to be.
00:13:31.312 --> 00:13:37.370
Let's deal with the causation society in general and I might have some people upset with me about that, but that's the truth.
00:13:37.370 --> 00:13:39.302
We are a band-aid society.
00:13:39.302 --> 00:13:47.785
But, as we always know, you know you get a spray, you put a band-aid on it and at some point, your mom or dad says you know, take the band-aid off so it can heal and the air can get to it, and so on and so forth.
00:13:47.785 --> 00:13:51.020
Well, it's the same thing with some of the issues that we're dealing with.
00:13:51.020 --> 00:13:56.248
If we don't cope with them, after a while, putting on the band-aid becomes a hindrance and a problem.
00:13:56.248 --> 00:14:05.522
So why is it that, you know, using some of these calming techniques like breath work and cold plunges and meditation and things like that?
00:14:05.522 --> 00:14:08.589
How can they make it worse instead of better.
00:14:10.032 --> 00:14:16.020
So the first thing when it comes to working with your nervous system is understanding what state your nervous system is in.
00:14:16.020 --> 00:14:19.005
So we'll just use cold plunging as the example.
00:14:19.005 --> 00:14:23.913
If I'm in a state of nervous system arousal, so I have a lot of sympathetic energy, that's most people are going to identify that as fight.
00:14:23.913 --> 00:14:30.412
Example if I'm in a state of nervous system arousal, so I have a lot of sympathetic energy, that's most people are going to identify that as fight, flight, right, Anxious, go, go, go.
00:14:30.412 --> 00:14:34.591
I can't slow down, Like if I sit down I'm like crawling out of my skin kind of energy.
00:14:34.591 --> 00:14:42.070
If I'm going to jump into a cold plunge, a cold plunge serves to increase the sympathetic arousal.
00:14:42.171 --> 00:14:45.154
So I'm already Explain real quickly what a cold plunge is for those who don't know.
00:14:45.419 --> 00:14:50.168
Oh yeah, so a cold plunge would I forget the temperature, but it's like jumping into an ice bath, essentially.
00:14:50.440 --> 00:15:05.221
Okay, like they like to do in the, was it the Netherlands or someplace where they like to go, and everybody it's a traditional thing they take off their clothes they run into the icy cold water and water.
00:15:05.241 --> 00:15:06.686
And, yeah, and a cold plunge can be very therapeutic in the right setting.
00:15:06.686 --> 00:15:10.780
The problem becomes when somebody is telling you that cold plunging and breath work are going to heal your nervous system.
00:15:10.780 --> 00:15:21.927
Dysregulation yes, maybe for some people it could, but that's not true for everybody and it can actually cause more dysregulation for some people.
00:15:21.927 --> 00:15:32.850
So understanding the different states that you're in becomes very important in the tools, techniques that you use to bring more regulation on board.
00:15:32.850 --> 00:15:52.005
So now, if I'm somebody who's more in a depressive state and there's not a lot of energy, maybe some apathy, maybe some shame-based states, if I wanna jump into a cold plunge, you see that then it's going to increase the sympathetic arousal, so it's going to take me more out of that depressive state, at least for a time period.
00:15:52.005 --> 00:15:55.392
But again, these are management tools.
00:15:55.392 --> 00:16:03.312
They're not actually getting to the root cause of why the system is in that stuck state to begin with.
00:16:04.413 --> 00:16:14.932
So when someone comes to you or someone's been referred to you for help, what is the first thing you do to try to figure out where they are when it comes to their nervous system dysregulation.
00:16:15.995 --> 00:16:18.923
Yeah, so there's a couple different techniques that I use.
00:16:18.923 --> 00:16:38.413
There's the trauma release process that I use is is it's a three week on, it's working with the unconscious programming, so it's very powerful, it's very impactful and it's it's quick, but not in working with necessarily like the deep nervous system work.
00:16:38.413 --> 00:17:11.789
If we're talking deep, deep nervous system work, that's a one-on-one session usually and in the method that I am trained in I am able to attune to what is happening in their nervous system, even over a Zoom chat right, so I can see if they are more in a fight-flight sympathetic arousal, so like anxiety, or if they're more in a depressive state or if they're just kind of fluctuating somewhere between both of them and for a lot of people this they could be completely disassociated.
00:17:11.789 --> 00:17:15.803
So they probably most people who come to me don't know where they're at.
00:17:15.803 --> 00:17:30.262
So it becomes just learning their nervous system through having a conversation so they can write down their traumas and the problems they're experiencing and I can get a little bit of a glimpse into their world.
00:17:30.643 --> 00:17:50.173
But it's not really until I one-on-one and with that nervous system that I can really start to understand what's going on for them and then, once you understand what's happening, what kinds of things do you do with them to basically heal their nervous system or parts of their nervous system?
00:17:50.680 --> 00:17:51.342
Yeah, and like.
00:17:51.342 --> 00:17:53.307
Well, like I said, every nervous system is different.
00:17:53.307 --> 00:18:00.968
So if there's somebody who needs to come out of an anxious state, they're more in a fight, flight, chronic stress kind of stuff.
00:18:00.968 --> 00:18:32.866
We're going to work on finding ways to find safety in the stillness and it sounds simple, but for some people it can take time because if they've grown up in an environment where there was a lot of chaos, for example and this is where the trauma comes into the nervous system, because your nervous system is actually attuned to your caregivers from a very, very young age we're not born with our nervous system fully functioning, so we attune.
00:18:33.808 --> 00:18:47.020
So if we had caregivers who weren't safe, who weren't regulated, in a lot of ways we attune to them so we could have a dysregulated system on some level from a very young age.
00:18:47.020 --> 00:19:01.530
So the work needs to be slow and titrated and safe, because for so many people the reason we're not in that regulated space is because we lack safety.
00:19:01.530 --> 00:19:05.961
So all of this work comes back to providing safety.
00:19:05.961 --> 00:19:22.749
So, yeah, with each person it would look a little bit different, just based upon you know, are they in a freeze, a shutdown, a dorsal, vagal kind of place, or are they more in the hyper arousal and this is where the anxiety, hyper arousal this is where the anxiety?
00:19:23.289 --> 00:19:23.609
hyper arousal.
00:19:23.609 --> 00:19:27.060
Dorsal shutdown, freeze depressive states right.
00:19:27.060 --> 00:19:36.045
So for your listeners that gives them the languaging is a little bit easier to understand from anxiety moving fast.
00:19:36.045 --> 00:19:41.011
Dorsal freeze depressive states kind of slow.
00:19:41.973 --> 00:19:48.243
And all of these are symptoms of your nervous system being basically out of whack, so to speak.
00:19:48.243 --> 00:20:02.040
You know what kinds of things can we do in terms of our lifestyle to try to minimize this and to grow our nervous system to capacity so that it is regulated better.
00:20:03.645 --> 00:20:09.970
Yeah, so since this podcast is really geared towards women over 40, I would like to kind of address it for that audience.
00:20:09.970 --> 00:20:16.981
So what I what I tell a lot of women that I work with in a lot of the women I work with are in perimenopause or menopause.
00:20:17.403 --> 00:20:17.623
Right.
00:20:18.064 --> 00:20:32.525
And, as women who are going through that stage of life, we understand that there's certain times during those phases that we just aren't able to manage stress as well, and that's just scientifically proven from a hormonal perspective, right.
00:20:32.525 --> 00:20:37.453
So it's getting really in tune with what your body needs.
00:20:37.453 --> 00:20:40.444
Do I need to ask for more support?
00:20:40.444 --> 00:20:43.050
Do I need to take a three-day weekend?
00:20:43.050 --> 00:20:48.155
Do I need to sleep in an extra hour Instead of doing a high intensity workout?
00:20:48.155 --> 00:20:49.941
Do I need to take a longer walk?
00:20:49.941 --> 00:21:06.015
So it's really getting in tune and listening to the cues that the body's giving us and that can be very supportive through those hormonal phases of both peri and menopause.
00:21:07.781 --> 00:21:14.653
As I mentioned to you before we came on, that I definitely had menopausal anxiety, but I didn't know it.
00:21:14.653 --> 00:21:24.095
I knew I had anxiety and I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, but it wasn't until I started doing this kind of work that I realized that's what I had.
00:21:24.095 --> 00:21:33.500
It was not something that my OBGYN brought up to me at all, or the psychiatrist, the psychologist, all the people.
00:21:33.500 --> 00:21:50.340
I had an event and I had to go to an ED and I talked with the psychologist there, of course, talked to the ER doc, talked to all these people and the bottom line was they said that I was exhausted and I needed to take some time.
00:21:50.340 --> 00:21:51.403
And I did.
00:21:51.502 --> 00:22:11.402
I took some time and ended up taking a whole year off from work and even then, with my and I was under a doctor's care I was taking medication to manage the symptoms of the anxiety Till one day when I ran out of the medication I got so nervous I made my husband leave work to go get it and that's why I said, whoa, wait a minute, this is not.
00:22:11.402 --> 00:22:13.308
I don't want to live on medication for the rest of my life.
00:22:13.308 --> 00:22:17.230
Now I've got another issue, because I'm all stressed out about getting my medication.
00:22:17.230 --> 00:22:18.705
I'm going to find out what it is.
00:22:18.705 --> 00:22:20.306
So I stopped taking the medication.
00:22:20.306 --> 00:22:25.285
Do not do what I do, please, what I did, please just do as I say.
00:22:25.285 --> 00:22:27.711
Do not wean yourself off of medication like that without your doctor's help.
00:22:27.711 --> 00:22:28.762
I did not.
00:22:28.762 --> 00:22:29.644
I'm stopping.
00:22:29.644 --> 00:22:36.070
And of course I went through a lot not a lot of withdrawal, but some interesting feelings and went back to feeling the anxiety.
00:22:36.070 --> 00:22:47.628
And this went on for a few years until I happened to have a guest on my podcast and she mentioned something about menopause, the hormones and cortisol and anxiety.
00:22:47.628 --> 00:22:48.672
I said whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait.
00:22:48.672 --> 00:22:49.862
Stop recording.
00:22:49.862 --> 00:22:51.464
What did you say?
00:22:51.464 --> 00:22:56.594
And that's when I realized I knew inherently that's what it was.
00:22:56.594 --> 00:23:04.209
I knew it and sure enough, I went and had my hormonal levels done and found out that.
00:23:04.529 --> 00:23:14.471
But I also had antidotal anxiety as a result of post-traumatic stress and I think a lot of people don't realize that post-traumatic stress can also throw you off.
00:23:14.471 --> 00:23:24.883
My mother was killed by a fire truck on her way to work and I had just seen her right before and the way I found out about it was very traumatizing.
00:23:24.883 --> 00:23:29.840
And just to add a double whammy, I had just had a baby, so my hormones were already unbalanced.
00:23:29.840 --> 00:23:33.691
She was five weeks old and I had two other little ones.
00:23:33.691 --> 00:23:49.599
So for the next 25 years I didn't really deal with it that much because I was too busy raising my family, being there for my dad and my sisters, and all of that until finally, 20 years later, at the age 51, is when I had that event.
00:23:49.980 --> 00:24:04.601
So it was a combination of things the trauma from post-traumatic stress and the menopausal anxiety and one of the reasons why I was really excited to be talking with you today is that we as women need to be aware of what's going on with our bodies.
00:24:04.601 --> 00:24:07.847
I had all kinds of warnings and I just ignored them.
00:24:07.847 --> 00:24:14.372
Of course, you know A number one your mother dies from being hit by a fire truck on her way to work.
00:24:14.372 --> 00:24:15.997
That's catastrophic.
00:24:15.997 --> 00:24:22.094
Not going and talking to someone about that is really not taking good care of yourself.
00:24:22.234 --> 00:24:29.432
I did not go to a therapist or anybody for a long time and finally I think I did about six or seven years later, but still.
00:24:29.432 --> 00:24:40.170
And yet I still wasn't getting to the root, because by that time I was paleo menopausal and hormones were beginning to make differences in how I reacted and felt about things.
00:24:40.170 --> 00:24:41.740
But no one ever mentioned that.
00:24:41.740 --> 00:24:56.346
So I'm glad that you're talking about that in terms of women, because our bodies are complex and you know, we we are the carriers of life, the deliverers and the nurturer of life, and that's a lot to be dealing with.
00:24:57.228 --> 00:25:10.105
Yeah, and I wonder if, at that time, the anxiety was on board for you, if somebody would have said hey, look, there's nothing wrong with you, you're not going crazy, this is perimenopause, this is a hormonal change in your body and it's completely normal.
00:25:10.105 --> 00:25:24.542
Just normalizing it shifts how the anxiety presents for so many women, just knowing that this is normal, there's nothing wrong with you or your brain, and we're going to, we're going to work with it.
00:25:25.226 --> 00:25:26.328
Yeah, no one ever said that.
00:25:26.328 --> 00:25:28.403
It's just like you just have this disorder, you know.
00:25:28.403 --> 00:25:35.679
And it's interesting because, subconsciously, the programming going in the back of my head is that there's something wrong with me.
00:25:35.679 --> 00:25:40.909
There's something wrong with me, I'm not good enough, and all the other stuff that happens with women as they age.
00:25:40.909 --> 00:25:48.040
What saved my life, literally, I believe, is walking away from my job and I'm not advocating that everybody walk away from corporate America.
00:25:48.040 --> 00:25:49.324
That is not what I'm saying.
00:25:49.324 --> 00:26:03.372
That's what I had to do and to rebuild my life and ultimately, 17 years ago, to open this business to help women deal with what's going on with their bodies and midlife, because so much of it is not, is not discussed.
00:26:03.372 --> 00:26:15.462
So, when it comes to those simple lifestyle changes now you hear people talk about meditation and breathing and all that kind of stuff Are you saying that they should not do that, or what do you say?
00:26:16.065 --> 00:26:16.525
No, I.
00:26:16.525 --> 00:26:22.324
So all of the tools are helpful, but I just want people to understand that it.
00:26:22.324 --> 00:26:25.191
So let's meditation, for example.
00:26:25.191 --> 00:26:26.342
I love meditation.
00:26:26.342 --> 00:26:28.709
I'm a trained mindfulness and meditation teacher.
00:26:28.709 --> 00:26:34.892
I've spent time in Nepal at Buddhist monastery, so meditation is a big part of my core daily practice.
00:26:34.892 --> 00:26:49.148
But for a lot of people who are already in a deep shutdown state so somebody who's in a very in a deep shutdown state, so somebody who's in a very we'll call it freeze it's that freeze state and depression can be found here.
00:26:49.148 --> 00:26:55.027
Symptoms of depression can be found in that state, and some of your audience might be able to relate to this.
00:26:55.027 --> 00:27:00.464
When you meditate, it actually can bring you deeper into that shutdown place.
00:27:00.464 --> 00:27:13.808
So for a nervous system that actually needs a little arousal, the meditation until they bring regulation on board might not actually help them regulate.
00:27:13.808 --> 00:27:16.355
Does that make sense?
00:27:16.355 --> 00:27:17.219
Yes, it does.
00:27:17.970 --> 00:27:25.152
But for somebody who's really stressed out and they're hyper aroused and they can't slow themselves down.
00:27:25.152 --> 00:27:36.000
Meditation for them might be helpful because it actually forces you in some level if you're going to stick with the practice.
00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:42.414
You sit through those really uncomfortable feelings of I have to get up, I can't do this, I can't meditate.
00:27:42.414 --> 00:27:53.152
So then you're, if you sit through that and you can hold those very uncomfortable feelings, that actually, for a lot of people, can start to bring them into regulation.
00:27:53.152 --> 00:27:54.173
So it again.
00:27:54.213 --> 00:28:14.463
It really depends on where your nervous system tends to hang out to begin with, and that's why it's so important for people to know where they are and doing something like breathwork or meditating or the cold plunges all of them are tools and they're all helpful when used appropriately.
00:28:14.463 --> 00:28:39.182
But I think what's happening now and a lot of the clients I see will, they'll come to me and they'll say I went to a breathwork workshop over the weekend and I am worse than when I went in Because it's too much, too fast and their system doesn't have enough capacity to hold everything that's coming to the surface, so they can actually get more anxiety.
00:28:39.182 --> 00:28:43.493
This happens to people with plant medicine journeys, sometimes as well.
00:28:44.818 --> 00:28:52.117
That's very interesting, and this is why it's important to consult the experts before you spend too much time with Band-Aid solutions.
00:28:52.117 --> 00:28:59.556
You want to talk with someone who's certified in the modality that you're interested in, or with your doctors, your holistic practitioner?
00:28:59.556 --> 00:29:07.624
There are people out there that can really help you, such as Jay Lane, and I heard that you you mentioned Zoom, so you do have a Zoom practice, so to speak.
00:29:07.624 --> 00:29:09.705
I do have a Zoom practice yes.
00:29:14.770 --> 00:29:18.902
So people could talk to you just like we're talking right now, and you would be able to begin to help them with their situation.
00:29:18.902 --> 00:29:29.694
The thing that I think might be of interest to people that are listening to this podcast is how to know they need to talk with you and that their nervous system is out of regulation.
00:29:29.694 --> 00:29:31.660
This is kind of a new concept for some people.
00:29:31.660 --> 00:29:35.358
I know it's a new concept for me, and I've been around this for 17 years.
00:29:35.358 --> 00:29:39.153
You don't hear a lot of people say girl, check your nervous regulation system.
00:29:39.153 --> 00:29:40.255
You just don't hear that.
00:29:40.255 --> 00:29:44.221
So how do they evaluate that?
00:29:45.201 --> 00:29:57.838
Yeah, so what I say is, when it comes to nervous system regulation work, I think probably 99.9% of the population could use it and benefit from it.
00:29:57.919 --> 00:30:16.311
I would say if there's something in your life that you're just not happy with, again you're expressing anger at people, you're short-tempered, you have road rage, you're so stressed out that most days you go to work and our corporate women can relate to this it's like I'm going to quit my job.
00:30:16.311 --> 00:30:18.755
Today I have to quit, like every day.
00:30:18.755 --> 00:30:21.819
It's that feeling of like I can't do this anymore.
00:30:21.819 --> 00:30:24.684
You're having trouble sleeping, right?
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