45. Emily Roper - Why Your Trauma Started Before You Could Talk

What if the work you are doing on your trauma at 40 is the exact thing a good parent can teach a toddler at 2? 

I sit down with Emily Roper, a neuro-developmental delay therapist and midwife's assistant who has attended more than 600 births. 

We get into how pregnancy, birth, and the first year of life shape the brain and nervous system for decades, why so much of adult trauma traces back to attachment, and the counterintuitive reason most trauma therapy backfires when you skip that foundation.

Along the way: why a baby is an active participant in its own birth, what the medicalization of birth actually costs us, how an infant startle reflex stuck in survival mode shows up later as adult hypervigilance and PTSD, and why naming a feeling does more than fixing it ever could. 

Whether you are a parent, a veteran, or someone deep in your own healing and integration work, this one connects dots you did not know were connected.

Guest Bio

Emily Roper is a neuro-developmental delay therapist, certified midwife's assistant, and the founder of Early Roots, a practice focused on childhood development and supporting children with developmental delays. With backgrounds in psychology, midwifery, and neurodevelopment, she has spent over a decade working with kids navigating ADHD, autism, anxiety, dyslexia, sensory challenges, and other developmental difficulties. She has also attended more than 600 births. She is passionate about helping families and professionals understand how pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and early infancy shape long-term brain, nervous system, and emotional development.

Links & Resources

• Emily Roper / Early Roots: earlyrootstherapy.com
• Early Roots on Instagram: instagram.com/earlyroots
• Early Roots on Facebook: facebook.com/earlyroots
• The Early Roots Podcast

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Plant Medicine for PTSD podcast. This episode was awesome, in my humble opinion. But I was joined today by a woman named Emily Roper, who, according to her official bio, is a neurodevelopmental delay therapist. Whatever that means, but really it it it my understanding is it means that she bridges a lot of different fields with like biology and psychology and so forth. To do what I would call primarily like occupational therapy kind of stuff. I think she even describes it as um most of her interventions are like occupational therapy, which for those of you who didn't go to PT school probably means nothing. It's not like she's doing job training for three-year-olds. Occupational therapy is just kind of about like doing stuff in the world. And so Emily works with all kinds of children who have developmental delays or neurodevelopmentally different things. I don't know what the politically correct term is nowadays, but you know, stuff like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, sensory issues, things like that. I I really wish that honestly I had done more research into this stuff so I could have had a more informed discussion with Emily. This is one of those things, like when I was in PT school, I paid such little attention to the pediatrics classes, and I fucking hated pediatrics when I was in school. And obviously now I am a dad, so I kind of care a little bit more about all of this stuff. And what's also fascinating is Emily's actually a midwife assistant too, and she's personally attended more than 600 births. Uh, as a dad of a kid who was born at home with a midwife, this is also extremely interesting to me. So the real reason I wanted to have Emily on this podcast, because obviously this is not a podcast just about childhood development and birth and stuff, but increasingly as I continue to do this work with our integration program, I am realizing more and more that fucking every problem that we have can be traced back to childhood. And it's it's kind of annoying. Like I used to roll my eyes when people talked about childhood trauma, because it's just like it's fashionable to have childhood trauma. I don't know. But really, like we're we're realizing that everything has roots to childhood and birth, and even like prenatally, what's going on in the environment of the womb. And I mean, now science even knows with epigenetics and stuff, like the mental state and the mental and physical health of the mother and father before conception actually determine a lot in terms of health outcomes for that child. So there's a lot here in this episode that was fascinating for me just from a sort of like professional and personal interest point of view. But then also in terms of how it actually relates to our experience of trauma and our experience of issues as adults, which for you guys listening, I know a lot of us are uh veterans or first responders out there who are maybe starting to realize that we're dealing with some issues and especially realizing how those issues are impacting the environment that you guys are raising your children in. Like so many people who actually come into our program want to get better because they see what their PTSD is doing to their children. So, in light of that, this is a very, very interesting episode. And I'm actually kicking myself now in retrospect. There's a lot that I didn't ask Emily because I wasn't trying to get bogged down in like political stuff. Um, I think Emily's on the same page as me with a lot of this. But I believe that during COVID, um, the American Pediatric Association literally pushed back certain milestones. Where, you know, previously it was like, hey, if your child doesn't do X by age 18 months, there's a delay. And they just push that to like 24 months or 36 months. And so now they can be like, oh, these see these children are fine, when in reality they're hitting those milestones so much later. And I know even just within our program, we've got a bunch of people whose children were born during COVID and now have various anxiety disorders and developmental delays and stuff like that. So yeah, Emily and I could have talked all fucking day about this. So I'll I'll shut up now. It's enough of a preamble here. I hope you enjoy this episode with Emily. If you are in Colorado, you can actually go see her in person if you have a child that you feel like needs some help with this stuff. And I believe that she works online, definitely with people all over the United States. I think with people even all over the world, similar to what we do with our online coaching. So if you do have a child with a development delay or anything like that, strongly encourage you to reach out to Emily and see if she can help you guys out. So thank you very much for being here. Thank you for listening. And with that, let's get into this episode. How do you kind of introduce yourself these days? Like when you talk about your work or like who you are, like what is your like elevator pitch on encapsulating that? It's always interesting to me like how people portray themselves. If like you're introducing yourself at a party or something, like how do you tell other people about your who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Oh, well, if I'm introducing myself at a party, I don't really like have a fair. Maybe party's a bad example.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Party's a bad example.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

If I'm like uh on a podcast where I'm talking professionally. Okay. Um so normally I just say I'm a developmental delay therapist and a midwife's assistant uh that I work with kids who have a lot of like a wide variety of developmental issues. So ADHD, anxiety, early trauma, um, sensory processing issues. So I do that. That's kind of my main practice job. And then I work part-time for a midwife-free practice. So doing birth and postpartum care for local families.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Does that work? Like, is that ever intertwined where you would like be at a kid's birth and then follow them into your practice, or it's almost just like you're passionate about that? So you also happen to do both?

SPEAKER_02 6:06

So mostly I happen to do both. Um, I have I just I think mostly don't like to be bored and want a variety of different things to do. So I just love both professions for one. But I do have some families actually that have come to me for therapy services, like after and I was at their birth, which was cool.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

I think that's awesome. Like, talk about continuity of care, you know. Like we have we have two nannies, and one of them was the assistant to our midwife. So she was there when our daughter was born, and then she just hangs out with our daughter for the last two years.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yeah, it's it's really special to me to get to be with kids and work with kids uh when I was at their birth. I don't they I don't know what it is. They just have kind of a special place.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah, it's awesome. So just just doing that in America is kind of rare. I guess maybe it's catching on more now, just like homeschooling is kind of becoming the norm. People are becoming more aware of that stuff. So we don't have to make this a whole talk just about home births and like alternative birthing processes, but maybe especially informed by your actual clinical work. What are like the benefits that you see to a more, I don't even know how you describe it, traditional birthing practice, like not medicalized. Like how do you see the carryover of like what happens literally at birth in or out of the medical system to how that affects development of the kid?

SPEAKER_02 7:31

Yeah, that's a great question. It's actually why I got into midwifery work.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Um so the type of therapy that I do looks at a lot of pieces of early development. So things that are happening prenatally, things that happen during birth, and then things that happen during that first year after birth. There's just so many brain and body connections that are being made and so many different things that are built being built during those stages. And when things go wrong, kind of during that time period, it leads to all sorts of delays and problems later on. So things, you know, that parents tend to be worried about, like focus and attention, reading and writing, emotion regulation, all of those more advanced skills are built on these early developmental pieces. And so we know like a lot about pregnancy and how pregnancy impacts babies long term. You know, we there's a lot of research out there on like stress levels, for example. Moms experience high stress levels in pregnancy tend to have babies who are more reactive and sensitive to stress, not just after birth, but kind of that seems to be a bit of a baseline for them long term. Um, and so I learned a lot about prenatal development and kind of the importance of prenatal time during my like undergrad and psych courses, but nobody ever really talked about birth until I got into like this post-grad um work. And one of the things they found when they were trying to develop screenings for kids to see if this type of therapy would be like effective for them and kind of what are the contributing factors that cause these types of delays. One of the biggest contributors that they found was birth practices. And that um kids that were born by C-section were born with vacuum or forceps delivery, uh, kids that experienced a lot of trauma, like prolonged um low heart rate, oxygen deprivation, kids that were separated from their mom after birth for extended periods of time. Those were some of the biggest risk factors that you would see these types of neurological delays later. So once I learned that, I was really interested. I also kind of came from a background of that. My mom had me at home. Um, and you know, like 33 years ago, that was really unheard of. So I always knew that there was like alternative ways of doing things. Um, but once I was learning about that and kind of learning about the birth connection to development, I got really interested. And so I I went and did a like a midwifery school, like went to midwifery school after my undergrad and just kind of fell in love with it and have been doing both ever since.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Was your mom just like a crazy hippie back in the day?

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Or like why was she and she was not? Actually, it's really funny because she's way more of a hippie now. She's kind of like embraced her inner hippie as an adult. Um, but back then she was just like we grew up in like this really religious, buttoned-down, like Christian cult, actually. And so it she was more like that spectrum of things, which also does attract a lot of home birthers. So maybe that was it too.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, yeah. There is uh some weird overlap with like all of the very crunchy health things and then like super weird, alt-right, ultra-conservative religious groups. Uh so yeah. Man, that is crazy. Uh, all right, I want to talk more about the birth stuff, but rewinding a second, you said that you can see like how how things in the development prenatally at birth and postnatally impact things later on that you actually see clinically. Can we talk prenatally for a second? Because like the stress is an obvious one. There's a ton of research on like exercise uh for the pregnant mother being beneficial for the brain health of the baby. Obviously, things like supplement levels, and that's why we have the prenatals and all that stuff. What are some of the less obvious things, in your opinion? Like, what do you kind of wish that more pregnant mothers knew actually affected their baby? What should my wife be doing is the real question. She's four months pregnant right now. What should we be doing that we're not doing?

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Well, I mean, you named the two biggest things that we jump to to, which is nutrition and exercise, which is just kind of like for everyone at all stages. It doesn't really matter. You know, pregnancy too. Um, those are big things. But the thing I guess that's important to understand is that when babies are developing prenatally, their brains and bodies are learning how to function and they're developing based on what mom is experiencing. So you see this kind of obviously with like blood sugar. So mom's blood sugar goes up and down. You're gonna see babies kind of mirror that in certain ways. The same is true for stress. So mom's stress goes up and down, and babies goes up and down to an extent too. And what we we don't want to avoid stress completely. We don't what we want don't want is like long chronic sustained stress. We want positive stress like you get with str with exercise, and then we want recovery. And when moms go through that cycle, babies go through a period of that cycle too, in kind of smaller, you know, doses. It's not the exact, it's not the exact same thing. Um, but everything that mom is experiencing affects what baby is experiencing too. So her physical health and well-being, and her social emotional health and well-being. And really the main thing is just to take care of your physical and emotional needs as much as you can prenatally. Um, and I'm I mean, those are really the big things.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

I'm like laughing because I'm like, that's kind of a fucking bummer. Because like being no, well, no, the reason I'm imagining most people listening to that are like, yeah, it would be fucking nice, but being pregnant is stressful. And if you already have one kid running around being pregnant the second time is extra stressful, and now there's financial worries, and hey, the world is on fire, and oh hey, the world's actually run by satanic pedophiles. I know we didn't want this to get too political, but like come on.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

But we can go there.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah, I I know. You seem cool. So yeah, it's just like, man, this is a lot. There's a lot to be stressed about, and we're doing our best. And this is me doing this stuff for a living, being aware of all this stuff. It's hard, man.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

No, me too. Same thing when I was pregnant. I wish I had like a magic fix for you, but you already know it.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah, well, we've got really good prenatals, so at least there's that.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Which Cordy throws up half the time she takes them. So really, what are we doing? Alright, so that's the prenatal stuff. What do you see having the biggest impacts at birth? Because you also mentioned like the actual trauma. The stuff with the suction and forceps is very interesting. I don't think people know too much about that. And the the this is my opinion, just with what little I know. It seems like birth in America is an industry. And just the being pregnant has been medicalized to be like a medical condition to be managed and not just the literally the most natural thing a human being could possibly do. And so we there's so many, what's the term for it? Iatrogenic issues, right? Like induced by the healthcare system itself. So what are some things you either just wish people understood more, or maybe what are like the biggest things that you see at births that predict issues later on that maybe you deal with in your practice?

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Sure. Uh I'll try to be concise.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

I mean, man, we got all the time in the world.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

But but yeah, so the thing to consider to like really emphasize your point is that your biggest in in the US, your biggest risk factor for whether or not you'll have a C-section has nothing to do with your health. It's wherever you choose to deliver. So there are hospitals that have like 70% C-section rates and hospitals that have 10% C-section rates. And we have really good data from the World Health Organization that a C-section rate for the general population should be between 10 and 15%. That's where you get benefit from C-sections without all of the kind of negative downside. Um, the US, our whole medical system is really fucky. So it's not just birth, but birth is pretty, it's pretty rough. It has become very much a monetized system. It's not about health, it's not about actually caring for people. Um, most obstetricians who are attending births have never seen a completely natural delivery by the time they're in practice. So we're talking like no meds, no epidurals, no induction, just somebody having a baby. Um, it's pretty rare if you're going through a traditional hospital system to actually have a natural, like unmedicated birth. Um, that's that's not the norm. Um, but there's there's a lot of connections that I see between birth and early development. So there's several of the big pieces that I'm looking at in kids. So on the development side, one of the things that I look at are um primitive reflexes. So babies are born with this set of reflexes that aid with the birth process, they help with survival, and they help them to develop a lot of other skills that they will need later on down the road. Included in that is our early stress response. So it's our early fight or flight reflex. Um, and the like kind of a combination of these early survival instincts and reflexes. And a normal birth process helps to strengthen and solidify all of these reflexes. And then babies are born, and these reflexes encourage a lot of movement patterns and different things that help with like nursing and they help with attachment and they help to develop motor skills. They help us to develop visual skills so that when we're older and we're learning to read, our eyes can move and track and work. It's these early reflexes are kind of setting us up to be functional adults one day. Um, but these reflexes should disappear and develop into more mature reflexes and systems later. A lot of the kids that I work with are still stuck in this early stage. So they still have a lot of these early reflexes, they still have poor visual skills, they don't process sensory information, um, like light, noises, touch sound. This our vestibular system is a sensory system in our ear that helps us with balance and coordination and spatial awareness. So all of these early skills have not developed properly. And these are things that are developing early. Um, you know, by within the first year after birth, these things should be set and pretty well, well developed.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Um then oh go ahead. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I well, I can just let you ramble forever because this is extremely fascinating. But I'm trying to do my job as podcast host and ask you questions. You said a a healthy birth or a natural birth process should strengthen those reflexes. How is how is that? Like what does the actual birth process have to do with that?

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Sure. So babies are actually they're active participants in their own birth. So they actually go through a lot of movements and motions and help participate. And the process of doing that helps to solidify these reflexes. It helps to prime their nervous system in a lot of different physiological ways to function after birth. It's not just reflexes. We I could talk about reflexes a lot, but there's a whole physiological landscape of things that are happening. Um, and things like experiencing a lot of contractions. So when mom's uterus is contracting and putting pressure on baby, that um affects their nervous system, it affects their body, it affects their reflexes. They actually go through different movements and motions when they're being born. And then after birth in that early postpartum period, they're also doing a lot of things, um, you know, like being skin to skin with mom, getting that first breastfeeding session. All of those things help to like prime those early reflexes, helps their nervous system to function better. Um, it's doing things like raising cortisol levels. So babies have very low cortisol levels prenatally. Um, they they rise and spike significantly during labor, and then they should stay somewhat elevated after birth. And that helps them make all of the transitions that they need to make from being a fetus to being a newborn. Um, that helps them to stay alive, it helps them with breathing, with you know, kind of taking over these functions that mom was doing before they were born. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

And yeah, it's I just like that phrasing that a baby is an active participant in its own birth. Because again, traditional healthcare system, the mom is even like a passive participant and it's just like, well, here, we'll cut the baby out or we'll give her some pitocin and speed this along. I've one kind of random question. I don't know if this is true, but I feel like I learned one time there's something, it's a signal that actually comes from the baby that induces labor at first or kind of starts the contractions. Is that true or am I completely misremembering something?

SPEAKER_02 19:58

No, no, that's true. That's one of the theories as to what like jump starts labor is that babies will release a certain protein once their lungs reach maturity that kind of works with mom's physiology to um encourage labor. We actually, this is something that we're studying, but don't there's still more that we don't know about it than we do, but there is this really complex dance between mom's physiology and baby's physiology that helps not just start labor but keep it going. And this is something that you see when you um like work, when you sit with moms during a lot of labors. Sometimes their labors will ramp up and then they'll slow down and they'll ramp up and slow down. And sometimes that happens when like there's a cord that's wrapped around and babies like oxygen's getting compressed a lot, or if they're having trouble getting into the right position, you'll see that mom's body will react to kind of protect that baby until they can get into the right position, until they can move lower, all sorts of things. So it's a really complicated communication that's happening that we know some about and we're there's a lot more to learn.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah, that's that's fascinating. Just anecdotally, because here in Tulum, there's a lot of home births. And I guess because we had a home birth, we have a lot of friends who've had home births, right? Um, I've met a a lot of people where like the woman didn't feel safe at home for whatever reason, and so the labor is like super prolonged, which makes sense, like just biologically, evolutionarily. Like, hey, if there's a jaguar over there, I'm not gonna have my baby right now. Like, let's get somewhere safer. It's super interesting, too, uh, because our daughter was was born with a cord wrapped around her neck, and she the labor wasn't long, but she like wasn't coming for the longest time. And we had to go from the pool onto a birthing stool. And now that you're saying that, I wonder if our daughter was like, yo guys, I'm not ready yet. Let me untangle this. Like, give me a fucking minute over here. And we like forced her to come out early. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

No, you probably didn't force her to come out early. She's probably just needing to get in position. And first, babies are a little trickier, they usually take a little bit longer. Um, but certainly you see safety play a role. I've seen Plenty of moms who like one in particular that I can think of, her partner was not a safe person at all. He was intoxicated at the birth, and as soon as we like encouraged him to go somewhere for a while, she went from nothing to dropping a baby. So you see these things a lot.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Crazy. Alright, I want to linger on one other thing. You talked about the primitive reflexes. And I I would love for you to like just define that or explain that because I've seen, I wish that I found this before to send to you because maybe you would think it was super cool, or maybe you'd be like, the guy's a fucking quack. But if some guy followed on Instagram, and this is kind of his whole thing is like integration of primitive reflexes, and so I guess that's kind of the issue, right? Is like the primitive reflexes can be there for longer than they should. And that I don't know if that causes the delay or if that's a symptom of the delay. But can you just explain what that even is, just so we can define our terms? Then I'm definitely I I want to learn more about this and understand more about this. So talk to me about the primitive reflexes, please.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Yeah, that's a that's a great question. And uh so basically these reflexes um should be active during this early stage. And then, like I said, they develop into much more like dynamic, advanced patterns. So these early reflexes are regulated by our brain stem, which is the lowest part of the brain, which means they get triggered um quickly and easily. And it means that they are like very sensitive to different changes in the environment, and they react before kind of the higher, more advanced parts of our brain can give us a more dynamic reaction. So they're there kind of in more of like the lizard function as far as brain function goes. So they're intense, they're strong, they're reactive, um, they're there for survival, but they should really like basically weaken and disappear. And then we should rely on other parts of our brain to kind of regulate our daily function. So that's what integration is. It's this process of going from kind of this immature, more survival-based functioning to this more dynamic, um, more advanced type of functioning. And the primitive reflexes are concerning for two reasons. One, they are strong, so they can't disrupt our kind of day-to-day function. And two, they're basically just are a positive sign that the brain is kind of stuck in this earlier stage of development. So they're a really easy thing to test and see and say, okay, this child or this adult's brain, their nervous system has not developed properly. There's still like a lot of these early immaturities. And when early parts of the brain don't develop, you see this kind of negative domino effect into the way the rest of the brain develops too. So they're both.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah, no, that that makes sense. We're getting ahead of ourselves here, but I like even just the phrasing, because we'll talk about psychedelic integration and how it's not like this part of you from the past was wrong or bad, but like it served you at this one point, but we can't stay stuck in it for longer. So that's kind of trippy. Uh, but I hear what you're saying of like it's just kind of a sign that there's something afoot here. Like in PT school, the only thing that has stuck with me about this is like the Babinsky reflex of like if an adult has that, it's like major red flag, there's something neurological going on. So it's kind of like that. It's just like the presence of these things. It's something you could test for and show like there's something going on here, we need to figure this out. It's not that like the reflex itself is an issue or something, it's just an indicator that this child hasn't developed past this. Okay.

unknown 25:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Um, man, super cool. Okay, so I don't know that we've actually answered my initial question. So, what things happen at birth that predict positively or negatively these outcomes? Like, are there things as you're hearing a patient's history where they describe the birth and you're like nodding your head, like, yes, I can see how they ended up this way, like those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Yeah, so the biggest risk factors that we look for first would be induction because that kind of disrupts that physiological process. Also, there's a couple reasons for induction, too. You want to consider one, that you're starting labor before a baby might be ready. So neurologically, they might just already be a little bit immature and not ready to make that transition. So that can affect how they develop after. You also are have to wonder why they're being induced. Is it just like a doctor convenience thing, or is mom having health issues that are a you know a secondary factor and that this baby is maybe not actually okay and we need to get them out because they're growth restricted or they're having some other problem that would also affect brain and body development. So induction's one, um, vacuum and forcep delivery are one. And those are big ones for a couple of reasons. Um, one, when a baby is born with forceps or vacuum, you're bypassing their participation. So it can affect their reflexes in some way. It's also a lot of pressure and can be a lot of trauma on their head and their neck. And most of the early reflexes that I'm looking at are triggered when babies move their head. So they move their head in certain ways, and then you see a reaction in the body. And they're very like babies are very head forward. They like a lot of their movements and things start with with their head. And so if they have head and neck injuries, it really affects the way that they move their heads after birth, which affects things like breastfeeding, um, which affects the way that they like move and develop and all of these other pieces. So you can see this kind of negative cascade where if they're not moving properly, they don't develop their vestibular system properly, their eyes don't develop properly, all of this thing, these things.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Um C-sections are similar to you're obviously bypassing babies participation. They're going from being inside to being outside. You have to wonder why the C-section is being done. So it was it just a planned C-section and babies perfectly fine, but they never experienced labor. They never got any of that physiological prep. They just go from one day being in the womb to one day being out with like none of that, like no transition to help them there. Um, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

No, no, no, no, go ahead. I'm just thinking out loud, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Um the other thing is you have to wonder why uh the c-section is happening. Is the baby in distress? Is this an emergency C-section? Are there complications? Are there other factors that are going into that? And then babies, when they're born by C-section, are more likely to need other interventions after birth, like deep suctioning. They're more likely to be separated from mom, they're more likely to experience these other factors. Uh, when you're born vaginally, you get this like massive squeeze. So all of that fluid gets pushed out of their lungs. It helps them to breathe better. We know that babies that are born by C-section are at higher risk of having asthma and lung issues later on. Yeah, of having um like allergies, asthma, that kind of that whole spectrum of things. Also, when you're born vaginal, you're exposed to a lot of bacteria in the vaginal canal that seeds your gut and is one of the things that kind of provides the foundation for your gut microbiome, which has huge implications for mental health, physical health, all of the above. So Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

I I knew the bit about like the microbiome seeding. I noticed C-sections were related to the lung issues, but I guess that makes sense if that's part of it is like priming the lungs and getting the fluid out. Um yeah, just connecting dots as you're speaking. Because like I learned some of the stuff in PT school, and then we had a home birth, and then I do this work for a living, right? So I feel like I can fucking talk to you all day, Emily. Uh quick question on induction, just a squirrel. So I'll give you the disclaimer, this is not your medical advice. But thank you. I I believe um the recommendation is that somebody who goes past 42 weeks should be induced. Is that accurate? Is that just like a Mexico thing?

SPEAKER_02 29:37

No, so the that number kind of varies depending on location and your scope of practice. So most midwives' places have like a 42-ish week cutoff. So there is there is some like there's some good things about that. What happens, the reason we induce is that the placenta ages the longer we're going. And so your risk of stillbirth, your risk of bats not not functioning properly and kind of stopping working and baby not oxygenating well goes up. So your risk of stillbirth goes up. Those numbers, and I don't have them with me right now, are still relatively quite small towards the end of pregnancy. So it all kind of depends on care provider comfort. There's a lot of um OBs that will go 33, 34 weeks with like a lot of monitoring and some other factors. It it really depends on the case.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

I had no idea that thing about the placenta. I thought it was literally just like the babies getting into the territory of being too big to actually pass through the vaginal canal, and now we're like risking other things. It's almost like the placenta like expires before the baby comes out. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

Yeah, it is kind of crazy. It's really, really rare. Not something that happens typically, but it does.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Uh, dude, so every question you answer, I have 17 more questions. Uh I don't know how crunchy, weird, spiritual hippie you are with this stuff. Uh, what's your opinion on people consuming the placenta afterwards? Because like people, right? People make it into like pills and a powder and stuff or just eat it raw. What is your take on this?

SPEAKER_02 31:05

Sure. Uh so what was really interesting is I worked in a practice in Oklahoma that had like one of the first ladies that started doing research on placenta encapsulation back like before it was really a thing. And uh it was met with initially like a lot of ugh. Um, but she was doing a lot of research on it. She was huge on it. She started it, like started recommending it to a lot of the moms in our practice. And what I can say anecdotally is that we noticed a big drop in postpartum depression and anxiety uh with like once we had moms that were doing that regularly. It's all very anecdotal. There's not a ton of evidence out there. There's a lot of arguments that people make. Um, but it's something, especially if you have a history of postpartum depression or anxiety, it might be worth trying. If you have a history of like low iron levels, that can be helpful too, because there's a lot of irons. Um things like that.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

We I think we had ours turned into capsules, and my wife thought it was too gross to actually take it. Because I mean, it I guess it makes sense. It's very nutrient-rich, but then the other argument is like, well, that's mediating and filtering toxins out that aren't passed to the baby, so when they accumulate there. But then we take liver supplements, which that is its literal function. So like I still have no fucking idea what to actually make of that. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

No, you have great thoughts on it. That's something I I see a lot online is people arguing about it's a filter, it's a filter, but it's not an air filter. It's not like your car, it's not just lifting. Yes, yeah, exactly. It's not how the sex works. The real filter is your liver, and liver's very nutrient dense, and we do eat those. So I don't think the filter arguments a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

Yeah. All right. We have a print of the placenta, which is cool to look at. I don't know. It seemed important at the time to do that.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

I love placentas.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

I think they're cool, but yeah, it's fucking crazy. All right. Um, the other thing I was reminded of, we use this analogy when we talk about shadow work with our clients, that it's like going into this cocoon. And if you know anything about butterflies, they almost like dissolve into this amorphous goo in the cocoon, and then they like emerge reborn as a butterfly. And I thought about that when you're talking about the C-section robbing the baby of its opportunity to be a participant and all the benefits that actually come from that pressure that's applied to it. My knowledge of this comes from an episode of the TV show Lost, so it definitely could be not factual. But the idea is that if you like cut that caterpillar out of the cocoon, it doesn't have that struggle, and so now it's not strong enough to actually use its wings as a butterfly. I should really research if that's true because I repeat it all the time. But it I feel like this the same logic applies here, whether that's real or not. Alright, so there's we talked about the prenatal stuff, we talked about the birth. When you look at the postnatal, because I mean that's technically your whole life, right? Like, am I still in my postnatal stage at the age 31? So, like, what factors are you seeing right away? Are you talking about like the skin to skin stuff? Are you talking about like stress in the household? Like, what factors are the most predictive of things in that window? And how how long is that window that you actually look at?

SPEAKER_02 34:02

So it depends on kind of what context we're talking about. For like birth, we look at the postpartum period as a few weeks to a few months. Um when I'm looking at like risk factors for kids, I really look at the first six to 12 months and things that happen in that stage. Although, like our nervous system is constantly adapting to environments. So traumas and negative things that happen at any stage are going to affect us just in different ways depending on what kind of stage of development we're at. Um, but the a lot of the risk factors that I'm looking at uh for that early postpartum period would be things like separation from mom. Um being separated from mom dramatically affects baby's physiology, um, their stress response, the way that they respond to sensory information in the environment. Um, it negatively affects things like breastfeeding, which are really important. You know, breastfeeding is really important for a lot of other developmental things that we might not think about. It's not just about nutrients. It affects our airways, it affects the way our jaw develops, it affects the way that we breathe. All of those things affect things like sleep and stress response and things later on. Um, being separated is more likely to um negatively impact moms. So they're more likely to have postpartum depression, depression, and anxiety. They're more likely to have attachment issues with baby, which attachment is like one of the big, big things that is really important during these stages that really seems to affect people forever in some of the you know, the biggest ways. So those are the main things that I'm looking at.

SPEAKER_00 35:33

We're we're getting there on the attachment stuff. That's that's where I'm going with all this. Um talk to me more first the breastfeeding thing and everything else that it affects. Because yeah, obviously the nutrition stuff, I think people know that. I think people know um priming the immune system, like a lot of the antibodies are passed on, which is fucking crazy, by the way, that like moms want to kiss their baby's head because then they're ingesting all of the antigens and creating the antibodies and passing them back to the baby. It's nuts. Uh what are the other things that we don't think about? Like you mentioned the breathing and the sleep. Tell me more about that. And like the connection to breastfeeding.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

So when babies are breastfeeding, you know, they're held in different positions that and they're moving their jaw in really active ways. Versus if you're giving them a bottle, um, there are bottles that help to replicate this a little bit, but they don't have to actively move as much. And that, like the way that they have to suck and use their jaw, um, and the way that they have to move their mouth in order to breastfeed properly affects the way that those muscles develop. It affects the way that their sinuses develop. It affects the way that their ears clear. So, like a lot of times moms will hold their babies and they're kind of on their side, and that helps their ears to drain properly, it helps them to not get like fluid and congestion in there. Um, it helps the way our airways are are developing. I don't know if you know much about like nose breathing birth versus mouth breathing and how like our breathing affects um our nervous system and our immune function.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

But I would love for you to explain more for the listeners who are not doctors of physical therapy.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Okay, fair enough. Yeah, so like uh we what we should do is we should learn how to basically breathe through our nose, where we are taking in most of our oxygen through our nose. It filters a lot of that, it helps us to make better use of oxygen. So we have different chemicals in our nose that helps us to like basically make better use of our oxygen. When we're mouth breathing, um, it's a way to get in a large quantity, but we don't actually utilize oxygen um the same way. And our early, you know, things like breastfeeding and when we when you get into eating solid foods, that type of thing affects the way your jaw develops, affects the way your airways develop. And again, you kind of just see this cascade of lots of different things.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

So I'm I'm familiar with some of that developmental stuff because I've read how um literally the the shape of our palate and jaw has changed over the years as our diet has gotten softer. So I I give my baby rocks to chew on to promote that development. No, but I I I know that is like a huge factor in our airways. It's interesting what you're saying about the oxygenation and the use of the oxygen. I'm not too familiar with that, so maybe you could explain that some more. But what I so in in PT school, I did uh it's kind of silly actually. You could do one extra class to earn a master's degree because you just need like two extra credits. So I did this extra cadaver lab. And I did this whole project on dissecting the diaphragm and other like accessory breathing muscles because there's some interesting research that's like obviously diaphragmatic breathing is good for relaxation. We know that with like the vagus nerve input and stuff like that. But what some other researchers were showing is that um when you're not fully oxygenating your blood, it's it's actually less about the deep breathing for the oxygen as much as it is fully exhaling the carbon dioxide, because just having slightly more acidic blood is tied to more of like a fight or flight and stress response. And this is years ago, so I don't I don't know if it's been you know advanced since then or if we know correlation versus causation, like what comes first, kind of a thing. But it definitely seems that someone who is more of a nose breather, they have better head postures. They're not like as forward head, which is related to back pain, neck pain, chronic pain, depression. There is this like uh better buffering of the acidity of their blood. So I don't know, that's where my brain went as you're describing all this. But I I don't know. It's just it's crazy like when you start pulling that thread, how far back these things go to like literally the moment that you're born. And as we discussed before, that like even before you're born, what's your mom's nutrition look like? It's wild. Um I'm not doing a good podcast host job because I just rambled at you and I don't have a question.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

No, no, that's that's right. All the things that you're listing are right. Basically, if we're not oxygenating well, our body is going to be under more stress. We don't sleep as well, and you just see this kind of cascade of additional problems. And it's not that breastfeeding is the only thing that does that. It's just kind of one of the early foundational pieces. Um, and you're right, our food softer, there's a lot of additional other things that are going into that as well.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

How uh you mentioned something about certain bottles before. So, like maybe somebody actually can't breastfeed for some like legit reason. What are some ways that they could like mitigate these things or like still get some of those benefits?

SPEAKER_02 40:24

So you want to use a bottle that does like a slow flow, basically, where they have to actually work to do it. Um, you want to position them like you would if you were nursing them so and vary up the position that you feed them. A lot of times what we'll do is put babies flat on their back and then feed them that way. And then it doesn't, they don't clear their ears in the same way. Um, they don't get like the same type of jaw movements and work that you do if you vary that position, and then just do it slower so that like we'll do what we call pace feeding, where you give them a little bit and then you kind of pull back and make them work for it a little bit more. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

Yeah, just the positioning. I never would have thought about that. But now that I am thinking of it, our daughter would always fall asleep, like on top of my wife. So my wife's on her back and then our baby's on top, and she's breastfeeding, so now she's like working against gravity to get the milk out. I I always thought like that must be such hard work. Like, how does how does that how does she find that relaxing? But I was always thought she would fall asleep. Yeah, no, totally. Um that's so that's so cool. We could talk also. I mean, I I'm curious just to hear you talk more about this. I'm fucking fascinated by all this. So I throw our baby in the air all the time, and she loves being upside down. And I know that I've seen people talk about it as like sensory-seeking behavior, as if that's abnormal, or as if it's like a sign. I've seen so many Instagram posts where it's like 12 signs your baby might be autistic. And I'm like, our daughter does every one of those, and she's fucking awesome. Like, I I don't know how much of this is just normal, but I feel like there's there's so much medicalization of stuff, and obviously fear sells to parents. But can you talk to uh talk to me briefly about the vestibular input and things like throwing your baby around or being upside down? Because obviously it's good for development, it's good for the eye tracking, all these things. Are there like other benefits that I might not be aware of or like other things parents should think about when it comes to that stuff, other than the wives who just let the husbands throw the baby as high in the air as they want to?

SPEAKER_02 42:23

As long as he can catch them and they're having fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

No, uh the vestibular some system is something that I'm I really am kind of excited about and love. It is uh a little apparatus in your ear that basically picks up what your head is doing and where you are in space. And it coordinates with a bunch of other sensory systems like our eyes, um, like the nerves and our muscles and joints to help us with perception. So both internal percep perception of what's going on with our body and then external perception about what's going on in the world around us. And our vestibular system often gets overlooked because we don't have like this really specific sensation associated with it, like we do with vision. It's a really obvious thing. Um, it's kind of a behind the scenes thing, but it plays a huge role in so many different areas of perception. It's really like our body's sixth sense. So it's really important to help us with all sorts of perceptual things. It plays a role in understanding um like social expression or nonverbal social cues and facial expressions. It affects things like uh spatial awareness and understanding our sense of like time and space and all sorts of things that are important for academics, reading, writing, math, that type of thing. Um, it really helps us to feel stable and secure in our own body. So when you have people and kids that have problems with their vestibular system, you usually see this big emotional component that comes with it. Um, so for example, I have a lot of kids that if they're like bumped or brushed, or you like kind of touch them unexpectedly. They will literally feel like they're falling over and they have this like big intense emotional reaction that comes with it just because they don't feel stable in their own body. Um, and these things all are kind of obscure if you don't experience them yourself. Because for most of us, if our vestibular systems are working well, we don't notice that there's anything going on. It's just all of these kind of underlying automatic pieces. It's once they aren't working right that you see a lot of symptoms. Um, and things like throwing your kid in the air, letting them run around, letting them play, all of those things are helping to develop their vestibular system and their brain and body connections.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

You mentioned it plays a role in social skills and like the nonverbal communication. How is that?

SPEAKER_02 44:45

So one of the kind of theories is that it helps us understand our own bodies first so that we can like relate to other people. What's really interesting about facial expressions though is I did a research paper in college on like recognizing facial expressions. And one of the things that I found was that any mental health diagnosis will inevitably result in an inability to read facial expressions as well. So things like ADHD, autism, um, anxiety, depression, bipolar, all of these things in in pretty much every population, what you see is a disconnect between our ability to read facial expressions. Specifically, that people tend to read um facial expressions more negatively. So even neutral and sometimes positive facial expressions are interpreted more negatively, which makes sense if you understand things from like a social attachment perspective when you have a hard time like relating to people when you're more hyper-vigilant and um more in that kind of survival mode, that that's one of the first things that happens.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

Well, yeah, that's I mean, that that part makes sense. Initially, I was gonna say I was surprised um because I thought that you just meant like an inability to read facial expressions, but you're really saying an inability to read them accurately because they would judge them to be more negative. Because I I think something that we definitely see is uh, you know, if you grow up in a chaotic or unpredictable environment and you become a people pleaser later in life, like you learned a lot of times those kids would be complimented on their emotional intelligence as a kid, but it's actually because they were just trying to anticipate the emotional state of everyone around them as like a safety mechanism, or trying to control things or people please, or just get ahead of those emotions. So I was gonna be surprised that they couldn't read them because I feel like they at some people become hyper-attuned to it, but I guess it also would make sense that they just anticipate everything has a negative ending, so they ascribe negative affects to things. Interesting. What was your action?

SPEAKER_02 46:47

I see both too. Like I work with some kids that really just struggle with interpreting and connecting at all. Those are the kids that aren't kind of wary of others, they're just always in their space. They might even be more drawn to people. Um, there's a lot of like there's a lot of ways in which this can be disconnected. It's not always so black and white.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Got it. The other thing on the vestibular sense, and you keep teeing me up to tie into like adult trauma and the attachment styles, and I keep like bringing us back to this basic shake because it's so interesting to me. What you shared about uh kids with poor vestibular sense having big emotional reactions and kind of coming from a place of not feeling stable or secure in their own body is so fascinating. It's one of the things that we always come back to in relationships with others is like, I don't believe your relationship to another person will ever be healthier or more stable than your relationship to yourself. And so that's why a lot of our program is around like self-love and accepting things for yourself, feeling worthy of positive things for yourself, because otherwise you'll compromise or settle in relationships. So it it seems the same. And a lot of like modern day therapy work is coming around to the topic of somatics and like experiencing things in your body, because for so long, talk therapy was a purely cognitive exercise, and especially psychedelics offer you this way of connecting to your body in a new way. And I guess I've never connected those dots on like the vestibular sense actually being part of that. Again, just my physical therapy background. I'm thinking of like uh BPPV and and things like that. Like, doesn't really have to do with like safety in our body, but I I guess it my lesson is everything actually is tied into childhood as much as I want to roll my eyes at that. Like, yeah. It's so crazy. All right. No, I mean, I I distinctly remember when I first started looking into ayahuasca and I was kind of realizing I had mental health issues too. That was a tough pill to swallow because I was like, I'm fine. Other people have issues, not me. I'm good. And like I hated when people talked about childhood trauma because like I love my parents, they're still together. I was never beaten as a kid. I never went to bed hungry. I was like, I don't have trauma, I'm fine. And then come to realize later it's not normal to have no memories before the age of like 19 or so. Like that's not actually not normal. All right, so we've talked so far mostly just about the birth stuff. Tell me before I ask all these questions about the trauma and stuff, what does your work actually look like? Like who comes to see you and like why? Like, why would someone get referred to you? Like, what are the issues that people are coming to you with?

SPEAKER_02 49:22

Sure. Uh most of the kids fall into the like ADHD, autism, anxiety trauma spectrum of things. So I work with a lot of adopted kids who've experienced a lot of um childhood trauma. Work with a lot of kids um on the autism spectrum, work with a lot of kids that are in that kind of ADHD spectrum. They don't all have to have a diagnosis either. Some of these kids don't qualify for a diagnosis, but they're smart, yet they're behind in school, um, or they're like sweet, but they have big, intense, you know, behavioral and emotional stuff. A lot of kids with anxiety and kind of the spectrum of anxiety disorders that come with that. So OCD, trichotillomania, that type of thing. It's a hair pulling.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

Got it. Thank you. Um you saw my question coming. What do you make of autism and ADHD? Because nowadays fucking everybody has autism or ADHD. Is that real? Are more people actually having it? Are we just applying this label more broadly? Like what is going on?

SPEAKER_02 50:22

So I think I think there's some of both. Um, I I do think that we're seeing an actual increase of kids who are struggling. So the thing about something like ADHD, autism too, although it's a little bit more so with ADHD, is is that it's just a spectrum of symptoms. I mean, autism is too, but basically, if you qualify for the symptoms, then you qualify for the diagnosis.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

A cluster of things that you fit. It's not like here's this blood test that confirms you have this gene, right?

SPEAKER_02 50:50

Exactly. So it doesn't tell you anything about the etiology of why those symptoms exist, which can be any number of things. It's not just so I see a lot of kids that have these early development pieces that have early childhood trauma, that have this, this, and this. And you take care of those things and it takes care of the symptoms. That's not everybody. Um, but you know, there there can be a lot of reasons why these symptoms exist. A diagnosis just looks at in-depth at these things. I do think it's true that we're seeing more kids that are struggling. And I think that that is a combination of living in a toxic environment, of having a lot of parents with their own mental health issues and attachment issues. Um, I think that, you know, our food and our diet, which we know affect sleep and breathing and everything beyond. Like we're just kind of devolving into this type of mental health problems being more common, not because there's more disease, but because that is the way a normal brain reacts to toxins and abnormal environments and abnormal situations.

SPEAKER_00 51:54

It's fucking exhausting when you start pulling that thread and realize our whole world is poison and like everything is made of poison all the time. Like, I bet you do you have like cast iron or stainless steel cookware in your house and wooden utensils?

SPEAKER_02 52:09

Trying to get rid of all the plastics and yes, all of the above. Only use natural cleaners, all of it.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

It's insane. All right. Um, what do you so can you explain to me just a little bit kind of generally, what does your practice look like? Like what are the actual interventions that you do with these kids? Like how do you how do you help people?

SPEAKER_02 52:29

Yeah, so it's all uh like physical therapy type things. Um, probably closer to occupational therapy would be like the thing most people would know about. So we do different exercises, we do different like relational, parent-child relational activities. But basically, I teach parents how to do these types of therapies with their kids, and they do them at home with them, and then we meet periodically to like evaluate symptoms, see if symptoms are changing, to evaluate like all of those physical factors that we're looking at, seeing if those are changing. Um, but it's all kind of this hands-on physical type therapies.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

Is red light therapy legit? I've seen people shining lights on the back of kids' heads or in their ears. Is that bullshit? Like, how would that possibly penetrate far enough to do anything?

SPEAKER_02 53:13

I don't okay. So the research that I've seen on red light therapy seems to be like there's some pretty interesting good stuff with it. Really? I don't think it reaches the brain. I'm like when you see kids where they're doing like this type of therapy and they've got a red light going on their head, I don't say I feel like that's bullshit. I don't know. I've not looked into it, I don't use it. I've heard cool stuff about red light therapy in relation to like skin health and eye health and other things like that.

SPEAKER_00 53:42

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 53:42

I don't use it. I I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 53:44

It could be, but fair enough. This is this is this one dude falling Instagram. Yeah, no, me too. All right. Uh what I what I really was excited to talk to you about, and I I I think um, you know, when we talked initially, you're like, yeah, this isn't like gonna generate clients for me because the people listening to this podcast are not toddlers with developmental delays. But something that we see so much and what there's a lot of crossover with, I think, is the attachments and like unhealthy attachments. So talk to me first. How do you define that term? How do you look at it? Because we've kind of danced around this a few times when it came to like the breastfeeding and the separation from the mother. So, how does that fit into your world? And then I want to see like what connections we can draw to my world of like the plant medicine and therapy for trauma for the adults. Because this is really what I wanted to talk to you about is like how we can trace those things to childhood and how it makes sense. So, what when you think about attachments and attachment styles, like what does that mean in your context?

SPEAKER_02 54:40

Sure. Um, so most of my like formal education on attachment is related to child development. But recently, over the last year or two, I've started learning, like just on my own, learning so much about adult attachments and how that impacts adult things too. So I think it's very related. Um, but attachment theory is basically just the theory that the types of relationships that we form with our primary caregivers, so typically parents, shape the way that we relate and connect to people basically for the rest of our life. And that includes social relationships and it also includes our relationship with ourself and our relationship to emotions and our ability to regulate emotions. Um, and there is basically we have secure attachment, which is the ideal one that everybody wants. Um, and it's the idea that in general people are safe, that they are reliable. For babies, it means that you get your emotional and your physical needs met pretty reliably. It doesn't have to be every single time, but that in general parenting and safety is predictable. And then we have insecure attachment, which is not that. And there's a variety of different ways in which insecure attachment can look up. Um, the primary three that we look at are anxious, avoidant, and then um dismiss like fearful avoidant, basically. Um and anxious uh attachment is like basically infants that feel like they need to escalate to get their needs met. So they tend to be to rely more on other people to meet all of their needs. They don't have good, like they don't have self-trust and the ability to meet their own needs. Avoidant is the opposite. It's that we tend to disconnect from our needs and emotions, we disconnect from other people. And then the fearful avoidant is kind of a mix of both. And we can kind of go into those and we can go into those a little bit more and what that looks like.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

Well, so like what kinds of factors lead to those being created, right? Like when you say that a kid doesn't have like trust in themselves to meet their own needs, or like how like how is that fostered? Ideally, a good parent is fostering the secure attachment, right? Where when the child needs them, they're there, they learn that the parent is coming. So like when you say a child learns to escalate, like what does that mean? Like how how does this get shaped?

SPEAKER_02 56:58

Sure. So in infancy, basically, when babies are born, they're pretty much helpless. They cannot do much to meet their own needs. Um, and so they rely on parents basically to meet their physical and emotional needs. And what you see should happen is they're distressed or they're uncomfortable for whatever reason. They're hungry, they're cold, and they squirm or they fuss or they start to give signs that they're uncomfortable and then their needs get met. And that happens over and over and over again while they're developing the ability to start to do those things for themselves. And infants basically have two, we have two modes. Like we can escalate. So basically, babies can go from like squirming and showing signs that they're uncomfortable to crying, to crying more, to crying more, to really escalating until they get their needs met. Or if they don't, if they're like really neglected and not being met, then eventually they'll shut down and they'll disconnect from that.

SPEAKER_00 57:53

Because they almost learn that like it's not worth, it's not worth bothering.

SPEAKER_02 57:57

It's not like worth the calories basically to cry. Like you need to to shut down. This is not, this isn't working. Um and so that's really the only tools that they have initially. And then so when babies are small, ideally, we're really like meeting their needs quickly all of the time. We're very like tuned into them, very connected to them. And then as they get older and are able to start doing some things on their own, then we kind of naturally break away and let them begin to develop their own skills, um, begin to develop like trust in their ability to do different things. We are still supportive and helping them along the way, but you know, we kind of back off and back off as they get more and more skilled. And that's what should develop kind of a healthy, secure attachment where they learn the world is safe and kind of from this place of safety, they can then grow and develop and learn and do all of the other things.

SPEAKER_00 58:47

Is there like a sort of like a critical window where like this imprint has already happened, like by three months or by nine months or something like that? Or is it just kind of fluid and it's always being developed up until I don't know, they're five years old or something? Like do I mean both?

SPEAKER_02 59:05

So even prenatally, like there's things like what mom's experiencing prenatally, uh, her relationship to her baby affects her physiology and what they experience too. And then during, you know, the first few months after birth are really critical for developing attachment. That's where a lot of the work is done, but it's never fixed. Our nervous systems are never fixed. They're always very adaptive and they're always adapting to things that happen to us and the things that we experience. That changes based on how old we are, you know, how like there's a lot of variation to that, but we're never stuck, which is great news for those of us that grew up with insecure attachments.

SPEAKER_00 59:45

Yeah, totally. That's that's kind of what I always say is like as long as you're breathing, your body's capable of change. I guess what I meant with the critical window thing, like again, I remember learning for for eyesight, for instance, like there is a critical window where your your brain needs that input, and not to say that you're part of that your your brain just dies or whatever, but it gets rerouted to other resources. So I was just kind of wondering if this is a similar thing where like you have this opportunity to establish it and it's a little bit more fixed. Um, so when how does a how does a parent like navigate that, right? Because as our children age, we want to foster more independence. We don't just want to teach them to be a tyrant, basically, and just demand everything that they want and they get it immediately. And I'll admit, I'm a fucking pushover with my daughter, dude. She has me wrapped around her finger. As long as she's not in imminent danger, I let her do basically whatever she wants. Which aggravates my wife at bedtime when like it's time to brush, and like she will find any opportunity to not brush her teeth, and I will almost always give in to it. So in an ideal world, like how do you navigate that?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

Oh gosh, that's a really loaded question.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

Um Teach me how to parent, Emily.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:55

I'm still learning, man. My kid's four, and I'm still I have no extra.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:59

I know you're like you're like two years older than me. Your kids two years older than mine.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:02

Like No. I don't know anything yet. Um I mean, it is that is like the real question of parenthood. And it is that you make a lot of mistakes and you just keep trying, basically. But there's a lot of like there's a lot of things that go into fostering independence. Um we want kids to do as much as they can. We also want them to be safe. And it really like some of these things depend on their capacity, their ability, their age, all of those things. So it really should kind of like be focused individually on that child and where they're at.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:35

Yeah, I I appreciate it. It's impossible to give a real answer because I I think a huge part of it, this is often the lens that I look at it through is like, what is fostering more self-efficacy here? Because again, PT days, you're trying to choose an exercise for somebody. It has to be like an appropriate challenge. Because if it's too easy, it's boring. If it's too hard, they learn they can't do it. It has to be an appropriate challenge where it's like engaging and constructive at the same time. So that usually guides my decision making of like whether or not I will do something for her or let her do something. I was just wondering if you could tie it to like once they've achieved X developmental milestone, they're ready for Y thing. I don't know. You you know more about this than me. So I was seeing if there was any answer like that. But it sounds like it depends, which is the ultimate.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:19

It depends is the answer. But if kids are kids are pretty capable. And so if you notice that they're able to do something, it's good to let them try. But what we shouldn't do is just push them beyond that window of tolerance where we're seeing them just like lose it and they're just emotional, they're melting down, they're not in a state where they can learn and function, or where we're letting them do things that are actually genuinely dangerous, which again, that like level, that threshold varies. Dads tend to have a much higher threshold for that than moms, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:49

Oh yeah. So oh man, what's so funny now? Our daughter, if she doesn't want me to hold her hand like she's climbing on something and she doesn't want help, she'll say, No, I want to be dangerous. I've I dude it cried.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

Oh my gosh, that's so cute.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:04

I have a video, she was four months old when I started doing this of me balancing her in the palm of my hand, which has graduated to like she can stand up in the palm of my hand and I press her up overhead. Um, yeah, Cordy had to like look away for the longest time, but she trusted that it was good for her development. Um I alright, I have so many questions. Uh the attachment thing, then the attachment styles, how do you see this? Like, how does that manifest with the kids that you work with? What do you actually see playing out in their lives?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:36

Oh, yeah. So there's a couple of things. So when it comes to attachment things, if I see kids that have major attachment issues, then I'm bringing in an attachment therapist to work with us, because I do things like my education on that is like I understand it, I can do some small things to promote it. But if we're dealing with like a major, like a reactive attachment diagnosis, then I want somebody um else who's in there. But our like basically our relationship to our parents really, like in our attachment style, really determines how safe we feel. And a big part of what I'm working on for kids is their stress response and how their body reacts when it's startled and under stressed. Um, so I'm looking at like the physical manifestation of that. And uh I'm working on like the reflexes related to that and kind of the physical development piece. But if kids don't feel safe if they're not in a safe, stable environment, there's nothing that we can do to change the physical side of things. So we have to get that safety piece first. So that's something that I use more as a screening tool and more, you know, as kind of a guide to see if we need extra help or not.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:46

Got it. I was gonna say, I feel like a lot of your work must be actually intervening with the parents. And they probably aren't always ready for that. Cause like, cool, do all of the therapy exercises you want. But like if the dad comes home yelling after a long day of work, like that kid doesn't feel safe. Like they're learning not to express themselves. They're learning to be hyper-vigilant of other people's emotions. So I I don't know, man. That's gotta be hard for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:13

Yeah, I've had to turn away some people that I knew, like I you gotta work on you first. Like, there's not anything we can do with your kiddo because we have to be in a safe environment first. Um that's that's definitely true.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:27

That's so often when people sign up to work with us, it's because they have seen that they've fucked up their kid in some way, and they know that like they can't undo it, but they want to stop the bleeding, so to speak, and help their kid navigate that in the future. Like literally an hour before this, I had a talk with somebody who used to be a cop, and his son he just did an ibogaine retreat, so now his eyes are open to all of this stuff, and he's like, I can see how I've made my son like a perfectionist by telling him he had all this. Potential, which is really saying you're not good enough right now, but I believe that maybe one day you can be. So yeah, it's just gotta be an uphill battle with a lot of these parents. But I don't know. I I I was excited to talk to you about this because I think the attachment styles thing, it touches everything in somebody's life, and we don't recognize that very often. Again, like I used to roll my eyes when people talked about the childhood trauma, and now I realize that actually is kind of what everything comes back to. And so many of our clients, especially the ones who have the hardest time internalizing new beliefs about self-worth, particularly, so many of them had abandonment issues when they were a kid. Whether it was a purely medical thing, like they had, I'm drawing a blank on the name, but where your alveoli aren't developed enough, you don't have like the surfectant in your lungs, so you have to be in like an incubator essentially at birth. Or whether it was their parent, their mom was a drug addict and left, or man, one guy like literally he has a memory of this. When he was three years old, his mom handed him to his father and said, You keep this one, I'll take the baby, I'll see you later. And like it it it touches everything in their lives. So I know that you don't see that working with the adult, but I'm just I'm wondering from your perspectives, what else can be done to like mitigate that or to heal from that? Like, what is the mechanism by which you try to make improvements when you see things like that? Or maybe you don't have an answer because you're not the attachment specialist person, but what what what do you think of that?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:40

Yeah, well, um, I I think that for adults, focusing if you have attachment issues, focusing on that is massive. And I think there's a ton of good research out there on that. There's um a guy that I follow, his name is Daniel Brown, and he is an attachment researcher.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

Um, and he specifically looks at early childhood trauma and he looks at PTSD and complex PTSD, so CPTSD. And basically the all of his research into this found that our attachment style directly influences how things like PTSD manifest later on. And that a lot of times when you're working with adults, especially who have like disorganized or feel fearful, avoidant attachment styles, if you try to do too much trauma processing and don't deal with the attachment, you will make everything worse. And so you have to back up and work on the attachment stuff first.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:35

Um that makes a lot of sense, actually. I have met so many people who did EMDR, for instance, and like it made them so much worse because now all they did was dredge up these memories, not have like a container to actually hold it and process it, and then just sort of re-traumatize them as they thought about these things again. So I I'm I'm kind of surprised I've never actually heard of this dude before. So thank you for telling me about him because this sounds exactly in line with like what I've seen working with people like this.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:06

No, he's incredible. His his work is really incredible. Um, and what makes so much sense about that is that really the way to heal from all sorts of different traumatic things is mostly through connection with other people. Like our connections, our relationships with other people are what help us to heal. So when you have an attachment style that is avoidant or that is fearful avoidant, where you are either traumatized by attachment, like you're triggered by attachments, or you avoid attachments and connections to other people, then it makes everything worse. So you experience something traumatic if you're saying a veteran and you experience something when you're on deployment, and then you come home, and the way to actually heal that is to connect positively and relate to other people. And yet you have an attachment style that either triggers you when that happens or you avoid it, you're going to see a lot more negative consequences.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:03

That makes so much sense as like the the confounding variable that actually explains what's behind this. Cause like we we know again from research, two people can have the exact same experience overseas, one comes back all fucked up and one doesn't. Most of the time, that is actually explained by some childhood trauma, which set them up to experience it worse. So that kind of makes sense. The the mediating factor there is not just the childhood trauma, but it's that that set them up to not be able to connect on a deep level to people and therefore not be able to process what happened to them in that same way.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:38

Yes. That actually actually makes a lot of sense. The research that Daniel Brown was doing, basically, they just they took people with complex PTSD, which usually means they have like eight or nine di different diagnoses. These are like really difficult, struggling people. And they spent two years working on attachment stuff, and most of them didn't need trauma therapy after that. They just worked on attachment stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:00

That makes a lot of sense, actually. It's always kind of funny for me, again, like roll my eyes at this stuff, but very often hardcore operator type dude, fucking tatted up, yoked guy, comes to us and they think that they have all their problems from being blown up in Afghanistan or what happened to them during policing. And almost every single time, like you work through that stuff fairly quickly, or you know, you kind of gloss over it and then get to the childhood stuff. And it's like, oh yeah, I was abandoned by my mother, oh yeah, I was sexually abused as a kid, oh yeah, I was bullied or beaten by my dad. And that's where the real work actually is, which is difficult for a lot of people to to swallow. I think we're coming around to it, like that's becoming more understood. Um man, do you see so like in your practice, how much of the issues that you see do you feel like are attributable to that kind of stuff, like the interrelational or like the psychosocial stuff versus a purely somatic or purely biological thing? Because I'm sure there are kids with like a brachial plexus injury from the traction of the four steps at birth. But also I'm sure that kid's outcomes are worse if his dad is an alcoholic. So, like, can you even suss that out of like how much is the biological versus the other factors, or is that just like impossible to even answer?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:26

I mean, I think the only way to really do that at all is just individually. So I certainly have kids. Like when I when I work with kids, I do a really in-depth screening questionnaire on them first. So asking questions from prenatally through present day. So the parents are filling it out, obviously. Um, and so I'm getting a really good history as to like lots of different factors, and then, you know, also asking some about what's going on with their home life. I'm like paying attention to how mom and dad relate to the kid in the office and those types of things. Um, it's really hard to pick those things apart. For some kids, it's really obvious that um, you know, it's that they have major attachment issues, and those kids we bring in extra support. Other times we it seems like we can really just focus on the physical side of things. Um but I had one kid, honestly, that I was working with who had great, like seemed like he had a really great home life. His both both parents came to every visit. They're really like they seem very well educated, very well tuned in. They did everything, you know, like they seemed like a great family. Um, and he's just not making progress. He's getting overstimulated every time we try anything. And finally, I just like backed off all the exercises and just gave them instructions to like spend really high quality time together doing like very specific relationship, like parent-child relationship activities. And all of a sudden he would he could tolerate all of the other stuff that we're doing. So he didn't seem to have any major attachment issues, but he needed whatever it was, he needed that relationship piece. So I think that they're so interconnected that it's really too hard to pull apart.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:02

Well, in that example, what do you think was missing? Was it like actual depth of connection with the parents? Or like what what changed there?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:11

You know, I don't know other than we just like really focused on relate like him feeling safe and related and connected to his mom while we were doing the exercise. Like he needed that. That's what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:23

Because I I mean, maybe I'm just in connecting dots mode and grasping for things that aren't really there, but I'm reminded of some folks we've worked with. They fall into this trap of like optimization of everything, where it's easier. I'm thinking this one dude in particular, I'll call him out by name because he's been on this podcast, Ryan Carey. Uh he's an awesome guy. It was easier for him to wake up at 6 a.m. and do a cold plunge and a sauna and work out and then do his breath work and then do his recovery routine. He would do all of that shit for like two hours, but he wouldn't sit quietly on his balcony without his phone and just like be quiet by himself. Because all of those things were easier than just like actually being present with himself. And so it almost sounds kind of similar. Like we can do all the exercises, we can do all the things right, but it's actually skipped over just the stillness and connection that we actually need. Again, maybe I'm just fucking making things up because that's my job is to connect dots, but it makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:26

No, it it does make sense. And I think that has to do with him like relating to his own self and experience. Like all of those things are somewhat probably a way to avoid how he's actually feeling in the moment. Exactly. Um and you see that sometimes with people that are kind of in that hyper optimization mode.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:44

Aaron Powell Exactly. How do you actually like teach kids to connect to themselves or like feel stuff? Because like we see that with adults, right? It's like, hey, you're scrolling or you're watching porn or whatever as a means of disconnecting. What does that look like in a toddler? And then how do you correct that?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:00

So well, it's obviously very different for a toddler, but a lot of it that I'm doing is basically teaching parents to tune into them because that's going to be their best teacher, is if parents are tuned in. And then also we do a lot of like body-related stuff where we're like just bringing awareness to different parts of their body. I do some breath, like breathing and breath work type stuff where we're like being aware of what our body's doing, of where it is in space, um, like co doing some coaching with parents about like how to respond to kids' um emotions and sensations to give them some like words to um so that they can identify different things. But really the best way to learn those things for kids is to be exposed to people who know how to do those things.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:43

That makes sense. Because it it's it's kind of like what we were saying before. When a kid is born, they're helpless and they're completely reliant on parents to teach them everything in their nervous system. And that's the one thing we're very often not taught is how to actually regulate and process our emotions because we're being raised by people who never learn that themselves. Exactly. Mom, that's not a dig at you. My mom listens to this podcast. I love you. Um cut this out. I know you said everything was fair game. Uh allegedly you've been known to enjoy mushrooms from time to time. Can we talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:19

Are you like a professional person?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:22

All right. What has that changed for you? Like what has that informed for you clinically and just as a mom? So, like what when uh were you already a mom, or we were already doing this before you got into psychedelics, or has that been like a lifelong passion of yours?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:35

No, uh, so I just got into psychedelics within the last year, was the first time. So I'm in Colorado and it's legal here now. So we gotta uh decide, well, mushrooms at least are legal. So um tried that. It's been really interesting. Uh I tried it actually when I was going through a separation, like I separated from my ex um and was needing to like really figure out how to make some life decisions. I left because of a lot of the these types of parenting issues and wanting to like actually be a better parent. Um, and so it really helped me on that front. I would do, I've only done like big trips, I don't do the micro dosing. Um, and a few times have just like kind of gone in with a problem or feeling like stuck where I was at and, you know, like certain decisions or you know, not really feeling like I knew how to move forward. And I felt like the weeks after were really helpful in just giving me momentum um to and like like uh building connections that were hard for me to see, that really like I kind of knew in the back of my mind, but like they like I could feel them and I could act on them afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:46

So I yeah, I mean, well, for one thing, that's beautiful. I'm so happy that you have this in your life now. And yeah, we often say the the medicine makes this, you can't lie to yourself anymore. Because it sounds like it didn't really show you anything that you didn't at least partially know already, but maybe it gave you permission to act on or made you so painfully aware of it that you couldn't not act on things. Uh have there been any kind of surprising takeaways as it applies to your work or again just being a parent where it's like, hey, this wasn't my intention going in, but the medicine showed me this thing and now I can't unsee it and it kind of informs what I do. Has has has there been anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:22

You know, the mushrooms I feel like have been pretty mild for me on that front. Um I don't I I feel like I feel like my takeaway from it has just been like I had momentum be where before I felt really stuck in in things and like I couldn't do things. But I didn't feel like it was this super like big revelation. It was all things that were like brewing and coming, you know, especially with regards to parenting stuff, like changes I knew I needed to make, things that I was like like hard decisions that had to be made that I knew needed to happen, but I just felt stuck and I had a lot of like fear and resistance. And that honestly, it just kind of like melted away, and I feel like I had momentum.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:06

If I can give you a 90-second sales pitch on our fucking microdosing program. No, for real. I I think what you're doing sounds amazing, but this is genuinely why I love microdosing because it's just like a little bit of that every day. So instead of like a big gust of wind in your sales and you have this momentum, then it kind of fizzes out and then you stagnate and then you feel like you need it again, it can offer like a little bit of consistency in that direction. I'm not actually pitching you on our program. I would be fascinated to have you take a look at things and see what else we could teach people, given all of your knowledge on the childhood front. We could talk about this some more off air. Uh, one other thing I do want to actually ask you about. So we talked about like childhood trauma kind of like generally, we talked a little bit about the birth trauma. I'm kind of wondering, do you feel like it's actually possible to not experience trauma? Because even if we're doing our best as parents, we're fucking something up that we don't know about. So I I don't know. Do you do you feel like there's actually like a role for that? Do you feel like it's necessary in some way? Do you feel like it can be avoided? Is this just something I've thought about too much because I do this for a job and have a kid and I try not to fuck her up as much as possible?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:21

Uh I mean, I think the answer is yes, we can. Uh in reality, I talk about like all the ways things can go wrong and look at like all the problems. And especially when you look at like toxins in society, it's really easy to kind of get overwhelmed and only see things as a problem. But the reality is actually the way that I view the brain and nervous system is that we're more resilient than not, and that we really can experience a lot and recover, and that we're not actually designed to not experience hard things. We're designed to recover if we have the right environment in which to recover. Um, and that like we're really pretty resilient.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:00

I I totally agree just from a biological perspective. I think our bodies are capable of so much more than we give them credit for. And so maybe the real question is not just how do I mitigate this or avoid the trauma, but rather how do I build the resiliency, like we were saying before, the connection. Um Gabor Mate talks about this like trauma doesn't occur just because of the harm that happened, but from being alone with that hurt and not having the framework to process it. So maybe that should be the real takeaway of just like how do we get better at that?

SPEAKER_02 1:22:31

Well, I think uh this really applies, like you can see this really easily in parenting when you talk about like wanting to be emotionally responsive to your child and wanting to like be a really healthy, regulated parent. And the reality is that we aren't going to do that all the time. And actually, kids do better when we fuck up and repair than if we never mess up at all. So, like if you, you know, like get really irritated and like raise your voice at your kid and then realize like, oh shit, I did not respond well, and then come back to them later and show them like here's how you repair after disconnection, here's how you um handle mistakes, that that is actually better for them than never experiencing somebody that makes mistakes because kids make mistakes, kids get dysregulated. You like you cannot go through life being perfect. And if they see, oh, my parents can be imperfect, and this is how we handle this, and this is how we maintain connection, that that is actually arguably better than them never seeing you mess up at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:34

Also, we can't mess up. So just like modeling what to do when a mistake has been made is necessary for them again, so that they have that modeled for them from the get-go instead of never seeing it and having to figure it out. Are you when you say that's better, are you like referring, is there some like actual like I don't know, is there some research on this, or is that like your sense? Not that I'm disagreeing, but I'm just wondering like what you're referring to.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:01

I think that there is research in it, and I can't remember if it was Daniel Brown that I heard talking about research on this, or if it was somebody else in the attachment theory, but they were they were basically researching rupture and repair. So I know it's out there somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:15

Um, and I I don't want to like misquote it. So you can just take this as like my interpretation of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:21

No, no, no. That yeah, that's that's fine. I basically just wanted to do more research. Uh rupture and repair. The way you said that, it sounds like that's like an action.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:28

Rupture and repair.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:29

Okay. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:30

If you think about it as an adult, if you're distressed about something and like you messed up or you experience something that's hurtful, you don't want somebody who's perfect to come and like sit with you. You want somebody who's been there before, who like understands where you're coming from, who understands mistakes, and that's what we should be as parents. But so often as parents, we're really afraid to like mess up in front of our kids or be wrong or anything like that. We kind of have something against that.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:58

That makes sense. Emily, what have we not talked about yet that you think is important for people to understand? Either for like parenting kids with these issues or just stuff that you just like wish people knew more about.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:12

Oh man, we've covered so much. Um, I guess the the one thing that we haven't talked about that I feel like is important is on the concept of emotion regulation. And basically the idea that being regulated is not the same as being calm, and that a lot of us mistake those two things. Like we think if I'm emotionally regulated, it just means that I'm really calm. But real emotion regulation is the ability to actually sit with difficult feelings without having that change like our behaviors or our actions. And that that's a lot of what parenthood is is teaching children how to navigate hard emotions without shoving them away and disassociating from them.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:55

Okay. Define what you mean then a little bit more by like regulation. Because that's a term even we use a lot, and I don't even know exactly what it means. So explain that some more. Because I I think you're completely right, and it's something we work with adults to figure out at 40 years old instead of in toddlerhood. So what exactly does that mean to you, the regulation?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:16

Yeah, so regulation, a lot of times people think it just means that I don't feel negative things. But regulation is the ability to sit with our full entire spectrum of emotions without really like demonizing any of the negative ones too hard and sitting with them as long as they need to be there without disconnecting from the part of our brain that helps us to make like informed adult type decisions so that we're not like I'm feeling anxious about something and I'm not letting that dictate how I behave or what I do. Right. Um, but I'm also not disconnecting and disassociating from that. I'm aware of and recognizing that emotion and that sensation. I'm sitting with it, I'm letting it be there as long as it needs to be, and I'm still not letting it run the like it it doesn't get to drive the bus.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:05

Exactly. The emotion is not running the show, nor am I running away from the emotion.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:12

Okay. How do we do that? That's hard. That's why people drink and smoke and scroll and do all the things.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:20

Those that's something that we should be learning if we grow up with like really regulated, skilled parenting, and we get that, that's something that comes naturally. We learn how to sit with these things, we learn eventually how to connect to our adult self. But so many of us just didn't get that. Even if we had pretty decent parents, like we have so many generations of people who have experienced a lot of trauma, a lot of attachment issues, a lot of regulation issues. And they're just not skills that most of us learned, myself included. These are things I had to learn as an adult.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:54

I want to actually come back to how I try to do that with my daughter, but on the topic of emotions, talk to me about. Anger or frustration? Because I feel like this is a big thing with toddlers because they have for one thing, they're coming online as like a sentient being who's like other than the rest of the world, and that's frustrating. Um, and they have very little power and agency, so that's super frustrating. Um so yeah, like how do you see that with your people and just kind of how do you conceptualize like anger and frustration and like fitting into the regulation? Like, how should those be approached?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:27

Sure. So I I really see I don't see anger and frustration as separate from any other like big negative emotion. They're all kind of within the same spectrum. And basically, like what what you want to to conceptualize is that any of those emotions are valid and true and need to be there as long as they need to be there. But that doesn't mean that any behavior is okay. So that doesn't mean that we can, you know, for a toddler, for example, they tend to get really physical and they might hit or throw things or whatever it is. And so you can like set a limit on that behavior without trying to demonize the anger. So much of us really like focus on the anger rather than separating that from the behavior. And so what kids need in those moments is somebody who can um basically mirror to them so you can see what they're like see them in the state that they're at. You can kind of either nonverbally or verbally um assure them that you understand. So, for example, uh, I'm thinking of my son had like a whole incident with his banana where he was throwing his banana pillow away and his banana broke, and it was the end of the fucking world.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:32

Like, dude, as someone who's occasionally broken a rice cake in half when you shouldn't have, I fully understand that.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:39

Dude, I mean he was dry heaving, sobbing, went fetal on the floor type, and you're just like, okay. Um, so he's having this big, like intense emotion, and what he needs is somebody that can see why he's upset. So I said something like, Oh man, your your banana broke. Like you didn't want it to fall in the trash. And so he he knows that I'm aware of why he's upset. And then we just have to kind of sit there and let it uh run its course. And I'm trying as much as I can to just stay calm and regulated so that he can kind of borrow that, so to speak. We kind of talk about that. And then once he's calmed down a little bit, then we can offer solutions. Um, in the he was just like curled up on the floor, but there are times when he'll like start throwing things and have a fit, and then we have to like put a limit on the behavior. Um but essentially what I'm trying to teach his body is I'm trying to connect with him so he he sees that mirroring, like he he sees that I know why he's upset. I'm staying calm until he can calm down. Eventually, as he gets older, we've been able to like add in things like let's take try to take a breath or do like different things that will help him calm down faster. Until then, you just kind of have to sit and let him experience it. And then once that has run its course, then we bring in the like adult solutions. So let's get a new banana or let's try a different snack or whatever it is. Um, so when you're talking about any like intense anger and things like that, first you want to try to find a way to connect with them so that they know you understand why they're upset. Which, depending on how you do that, sometimes makes them more mad if you're talking to them too much. Like sometimes you're trying to talk to them about their anger and it just escalates things. And sometimes they just need time and space, and you just sit with it and let it be for a little while. Um, and then you can help them start to label it and make the connection between the body sensation and what that emotion means. Then you can give them skills for what to do about that as they get calmer and older, that type of thing. So I I don't know if that actually answered your question.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:37

No, no, it it it it does, and it's pretty much in line with what I was gonna say. I I work on with our daughter. And since having a toddler, I now view basically every human interaction as a toddler with slightly better impulse control, but not even that much better.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:56

Um so the the naming thing I think is probably one of the biggest pieces. Now that I think of it, it's like naming and like normalizing. And I've even caught myself, if my daughter says I'm sad, my first reaction, like with without even noticing it, the first words out of my mouth are why are you sad? As if like she has to have some justification to feel sad. And once I became aware of that, like now I'm just like, Okay, okay, like you're sad, but yeah, we're sad sometimes. We're allowed to be sad sometimes. So just especially when she's angry or frustrated, just like you said, you're mad because your banana broke in half, right? And that just like I in my experience, it shuts down the meltdown like immediately. As soon as they feel like you understand what's wrong, now to them, they're like, we can do something here. Where when they don't even feel like you understand what's wrong, like there's no path forward for them.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:51

Same for adults.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:53

I was about to say it is no different than working with a 30-year-old with military sexual trauma or a 50-year-old corrections officer. Like it is actually the same.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:04

So yeah, just naming the thing that they're feeling, and then being like, Yeah, it's okay that you feel that. Like for sure. That's a thing that we feel sometimes. Like that has done more to change her meltdowns and behavior than anything else. Yeah, it's crazy how simple that actually is, and how we're never taught that. I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:24

It's much easier to learn when you're two than when you're 32. It's a bit of a rougher ride when you have to do it as an adult.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:31

Yes. Again, mom, I love you. You did your best. I know you're listening to this. Um, all right. I want to ask you about one other thing. This is a little bit of a listener-submitted question, and you might have no idea about this at all. Um of the people that we've worked with, his child has selective mutism, is the the name of the diagnosis. I'd never really heard about that before. But I'd actually, it was fascinating when he was telling me about it, because he thought it was just kind of bullshit or like in the kid's head, but I guess there's research looking at EMG studies of their actual like voice box, and like literally when they're in like an episode of mutism, uh that's probably the wrong term, but like physiologically, they actually cannot speak. And it reminded me of some stuff that I'd seen in the physical therapy clinic. I believe the term was like a functional neurological disorder, where for instance, a kid did not actually have a stroke or was not actually paralyzed, but functionally they were, and it was driven by a neurological basis. So, do you have any experience with that specifically? And just like what do you make of that stuff as it pertains to our discussion about safety and attachment and things like that?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:43

Yeah, I actually have worked with multiple kids with selective mutism.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:46

Uh it yeah, it's moderately common. Um, it is an anxiety disorder, so it falls under the anxiety spectrum. And it very much to me is connected with like anxiety and how kids process stress and safety. Um the things that I look at for that, obviously um doing some attachment stuff, but then the main thing that I see is that most of the kids that I've worked with have a really hyperactive stress response. Um, so they still have their moral reflex, which is the infant version of our startle reflex. So babies have this really sensitive startal reflex. They're, you know, you bump them, you make a loud noise, they startle really easily. And physiologically, they have big um reactions. And part of that is adaptive because we're trying to keep those cortisol levels up to help them with breathing and all that transition. So, really important for babies in infancy. But that super sensitive startal reflex should mature into a much more dynamic, much less sensitive startal reflex as kids get older. So that's one of the biggest things that I'm looking at. And pretty much all of the kids that I'm working with that fall in the anxiety spectrum have that is one of the issues that they have going on, is that reflex didn't mature properly. Um, so they tend to be.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:04

Uh I'm sorry, I'm cutting you off. You said it's adaptive, meaning like it's a good thing when they're young because it drives arousal and like cortisol. Is that what you're saying? Okay. Because I know like you see like SIDs, God forbid, it's like their drive to breathe is actually so low. So is that kind of part of it? It's actually like promoting okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:23

And so when that's not when that's not integrated, you're just saying that's a common thing you see with folks with selective mutism. It's like that also coexists.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:32

Yes. So that retained morrow, that like really immature stress response is something that's important for infants, but you should become a lot less sensitive and a lot less easy to startle as you get older. And so it's one of the underlying factors that I see in a lot of kids with significant anxiety issues that don't have, you know, you you can have anxiety for a lot of reasons. Um, and these are kids that come from like pretty stable homes. Um, this they're not having anxiety because they're in an unsafe environment. Um, for this kiddo in particular that I'm thinking about, um, he uh had just had a really hypersensitive stress response. He didn't develop, like his vestibular system wasn't developed properly. He really struggled to connect and relate to people. He had a lot of fear and intense anxiety stuff. He went through this like behavioral um selective mutism program that made things worse. He finally went and saw like a really good selective mutism specialist that was very anxiety-based and started making some improvements. Um, but it was kind of he like got partway there. And then once we really worked on his startle reflex, now he's you wouldn't know. He's like giving speeches in school and talking and doing really well.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:45

That's yeah, I mean, well, that's amazing for that kid. Um, it was interesting to me with this guy that I'm thinking of, where his daughter, he's like, she won't shut up at home, but then she never talks at school. And I was like, I guess that's positive that she feels safe around you guys, like her parents. Like that's better than the other way around. Yeah. And it's it's really interesting. This dude is going to like a selective mutism camp with his daughter. And I'm stoked that he's now microdosing and learning about all these things, and I'm sure that will only make him better with all of this. So I will be referring him to you though for more stuff on this. Yeah. Um, tell me briefly like what your actual work looks like. So you're in Colorado, our listeners are mostly all over the US and Canada. So how do you work with people remotely? Like, what does that actually look like?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:31

Yeah, we just do everything over Zoom. So the parts that I would like the hands-on parts that I would normally be doing, I teach parents how to do it as far as testing goes. So that's the the only thing that's harder to do over Zoom is all of the initial testing. Um, it requires a little more hands-on work from parents. We usually have a little bit more back and forth. I try to have them set up different camera angles. But honestly, since COVID happened and we moved a lot, like I got used to doing stuff online and got pretty good at that. But the actual therapy parents do at home themselves. So it doesn't change whether we work remotely or not.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:05

That was my experience too. Like my first business was doing online physical therapy for jujitsu athletes. And literally it should be cool. I hated it because it wasn't my passion because I do this now. Um, and this is what I was supposed to be doing. But in theory, it should work very well. Um But yeah, that was literally it. It was like the initial eval was annoying. So it's like, do this, cool, now rotate 90 degrees and do it again, and just like stuff like that. But I hated doing hands-on work because I'm like, I'm not a fucking massage therapist. Like that's great, go to somebody else. It's just not my thing. So all I wanted to do was teach people how to work on themselves. So for me, going online was perfect because I was like, now there's no expectation for you to get massaged by me because it's not gonna happen anyway. So I love that you're able to do all this stuff because it really is just education and communication with the parents. So that's awesome. Um, Emily, thank you so much for your time. This was awesome. I could have interviewed you just about a thousand other things I find interesting for like two hours, but I was trying to make this vaguely useful for the listener and not just an intellectual exercise for me. So hopefully we achieved that. Um, thank you so much for for doing this and for taking some time. All right, guys, that's a wrap on this episode. Hopefully you found that as interesting as I did, and it wasn't just purely like an intellectual exercise of me half remembering shit from PT school and being interested in early development because I have a toddler. So hopefully there was some some interesting or some some applicable takeaways for you as it relates to your you know journey of understanding yourself and healing your trauma and all those things. So a lot of what Emily touched on with the attachment theory things and early childhood development affecting outcomes and affecting trauma as an adult, these are all things that we actually work on quite a bit within our integration program. So if that's something that you're interested in, shoot us a message and get in touch and we can see if what we do is actually the right thing to help you, or if not, maybe point you in some other direction. And I definitely encourage you, if you are a parent, to check out Emily's work. You can find her at earlyroots therapy.com or on Instagram at early roots, and we'll have all of the links in the episode description as always. So thank you very much for listening. Until next time, I hope to see you on future episodes. But be safe. God bless you. Thank you for listening.