The Truth About Trauma and Your Addictions with Jennie Pool

Trauma and addiction are deeply connected, and somatic therapy offers powerful tools for healing. We are talking to Jennie Pool, MS, LCMHC, BSP, LMT, who is the Clinical Director & Therapist at MEND Counseling Center.

Using techniques like EMDR, brain spotting, and vibroacoustic sound therapy tap into the body’s natural ability to process and release stored trauma without re-traumatization.

Regulating the nervous system is key. Without grounding and restoring balance, stress can lead to nervous system fatigue. Tools like sound waves and simple grounding techniques help create a sense of safety and calm, making healing more sustainable.

Coping mechanisms come in two forms: adaptive and maladaptive. Running, for example, supports overall health, while habits like excessive drinking may feel like a relief but only create more harm. Choosing healthier ways to manage stress can transform emotional and physical well-being.

Healing starts from the inside out, focusing first on the body’s sensations before diving into thoughts and emotions. This bottom-up approach allows for deeper, lasting recovery, giving the nervous system the space to reset and reclaim balance.

Access to somatic healing shouldn’t feel out of reach. Free resources, like YouTube tutorials and mental health tips, make practices accessible, even for those who can’t afford therapy.

The body holds incredible wisdom, and when we tune in, the path to recovery becomes clear. Healing is possible, and it starts with listening to what your body needs.

Connect with Jennie

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennie_pool/

https://mendcounselingcenter.com/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Healing Emotional Wounds
• 0:36 Emotional Connections to Physical Pain
• 3:27 Somatic Therapy
• 16:45 Emotional Regulations
• 35:20 Trauma and Addiction Recovery
• 41:19 Self-Soothing and Emotional Regulation
• 42:29 Challenges of Recovery
• 1:01:01 Fentanyl Crisis
• 1:03:21 Psychedelic Assisted Therapy
• 1:08:42 Near-Death Experience

Transcript

 those wounded parts and start to give them a voice, like, what do you need to say?

And they don't know that you're 35 now. When they were six, this was happening to them. And so the trauma is not linear, it's not keeping track of time, so you have to help that six year old, go, hey, this  I'm gonna, I'm gonna release you from this emotional prison that you're in 

I can tell you after working on thousands of bodies and counseling now thousands of people is the body is self healing. It can self repair. That's why we heal from wounds. So if we will let the body heal from our emotional wounds. It will direct us.

the body doesn't work independently.

Almost always when I see people come in with physical.  like pains. There's an emotional connection.

When you're in recovery and you're going, I've hit my rock bottom, this isn't how I want to live my life anymore , it is a, brave, brave, brave. journey because it is hard.  It's easy to stay blunted , to keep self medicating and keeping yourself numb versus awakening and dealing with the mess, reconnecting.

I don't think that every file has to be reviewed and I don't think that every story has to be retold over and over again.

What we care about is, is the nervous system healing and repairing. 


  

okay, Jenny, welcome to the podcast. Hello. Okay, today's podcast is not sponsored by Topo Chico, but I'm a big fan of Topo Chico these days. I have to be a fan of something. Be a fan. And it only has 10 calories. They're good. Sparkling mineral water, which I don't know, like what makes it mineral water?

Do they put minerals in it? Or do they source it with minerals?  Carbonated water. I bet they put the minerals in. Hibiscus extract, potassium sorbate.  I don't see anything about minerals on here, do you? It's got sodium.  Magnesium? Yeah.  Maybe that's part of the carbonation.  It's made by Coca Cola.  What do we think?

Do you think it's good for you? I don't know if it's good for us, but it tastes good.  I mean, it only has 10 grams of sugar, so like. When? I  Yeah. I have my backup coconut water. You're so kind. Oh, have you tried this?  I'm going to take it. Okay. So these guys, well some of the co owners actually live in Bloomington.

Oh, which is down the street from me, right? Yeah. Well, I live in Bloomington, but they're like down the street from me. So I think it's kind of fun and they've gotten really, really big. So this is even in Walmart now. That's cool. So cocoa love.  I just think it's always cool to be like repping, repping some peeps, you know, especially local.

That's cool. Yeah. Kind of. I bet you didn't know that. Did you? I did not know that. They actually did give me like a couple of cases so we could say that it's sponsored by Cocoa Love. We could. We could.  This podcast. Well, this podcast, we're going to talk about trauma and addiction. So I invited the smartest person I knew on my podcast and here she is.

This is Jenny. Hello. Hello. Jenny Poole. So you are a therapist or what? Like what's Mental health therapist. Clinical mental health therapist. What do you have a degree in? Master's degree in clinical mental health therapy. So there's three different degrees. There's social workers and marriage and family counselors and then clinical mental health therapists or, counselors or LPCs, which are like licensed professional counselors.

And then you have your doctorate degrees, which are societies and PhDs. Okay. That's a lot. Yeah.  So you like therapy people ? Yes, I do. I do therapy with people. That's my main thing is trauma therapy. I do a lot of, oh, is it now? It is. And I do a lot of somatic trauma therapy, which means we get in when, in with the body, not just what's happening in the mind.

Yeah. Let's talk about somatic therapy for a second because,  it's an interesting topic to me, but a lot of times when I see somatics, I don't know, I just have this picture of like weird sexual things.  I don't, I don't know why maybe that's like tantrum tantrums, tantrumatics.  Well, somatic. So Soma, if you break the word up, Soma means body.

And so when you hear anything with Soma or in it, it's going to be talking about the body. So somatic. Is, therapy connected? It's a word to use to connect to something that's happening in the body, the physical body. So we're talking about the mental body, the emotional body, and the physical body. If you're doing somatic therapy, then you're referencing doing therapy that includes The physical body.

Okay. So what is that? So a lot of, I'm like, that's really nice. That sounds really nice. But like, are we like dancing around that people would know? Well, you could dance. That would be a somatic therapy. Okay. People can dance. They can shake. When you look at some of the modalities out there, a lot of people are familiar with EMDR, right?

Where you utilize, like, bilateral movement of the eyes. Brain spotting is a derivative of EMDR. I have a client who does that. That's the only reason I know what it is. Brain spotting. And I think I told you that, yeah. Yep. I do brain spotting. I, it's what I'm trained in, as far as, like, a somatic modality.

But I'm also a structural bodywork therapist, so I have a license in that as well. So, I do, quite a bit of hands on work as well.  To help release. So when we talk about trauma, it's not just what happens in the mind, what gets encapsulated, it gets encapsulated in the body as well. And if you're just talking about something  and you're never really releasing it, what I would say from the very cells of the body, like getting it out of not just the mental body, the emotional body, you've got to get it out of the physical body.

The body stores trauma, the body keeps score. Bessel van der Kolk wrote that book. A lot of people are familiar with that book. If they haven't read it, they're at least familiar with the phrase. The body keeps score. You'll hear people say that. I am familiar with the phrase, have not read the book. Yeah.

It's pretty technical. It's like reading a textbook, but he has a lot of, I would say YouTube videos that are more digestible. I'm not saying don't read his book, but it's, you're definitely going to feel like you're reading something very technical. He talks about a lot of neuro, neurobiology, neuroplasticity, what's happening in the body.

And he's a big researcher. So, but his work. I would say it's really paved, a big part of paving the way of helping people understand why somatic therapy is so important, because what's happening in the mind is also happening in the body, and you have to release both. You have to slough all of that off so the body can reclaim safety.

Yeah, I've actually, I've been over to your office, and you do have like that traditional, like, you know, couch. Which I always call that, like, circle talking.  I know therapy's really great. I've gone to therapy for years and years. But, now I've gotten to the point where I could, like, talk myself in a circle, and I'm like, okay, cool, I've got this, goodbye, you know?

 But see, you have the traditional couch, but then you also do the body work. Which I saw you for bodywork and you're phenomenal. Thank you. How do you describe that though? Because people are always like, what is it? And I'm like, oh, I just got a girl. Yeah, she does some things and helps me feel. So,  I'll explain like this.

It's different than deep tissue or massage. Structural bodywork is done where you find where an adhesion or not is in the muscle. And you're able to kind of manually force or push the body to let go of it. When you get that adhesion out of the muscle, now you've increased functionality, mobility, range of motion, and the muscle can perform properly.

So if you have an adhesion in your scapula, like your shoulder, it's not going to work as well for you when you get that out. Now it has more freedom to move and function how it's supposed to. So what I'm kind of wondering though, is if people come to you, and this is kind of what therapy really should look like, right?

Is they come to you, they can talk about it. They can do the couch talk, but then you're like, Hey, maybe you're holding onto this in a particular area of your body. Let's work it out. Is that kind of, yes. And the thing that's beautiful about somatic therapy is there's a lot of, like I have the, the flexibility and beauty of having two licenses, which allows me to do more in my scope of practice therapists that aren't going to put their hands on a client.

But can still do somatic therapies. So there's somatic movements that people can do. You can get people to, to tremor, like shake the body, shake it out of the body. There's so many tools that you can use. The EMDR does it where your EMDR and brain spotting extrapolate files. Okay, when we have stuff that's entangled in our psyche, that, that is, you're good.

I'm just going to stick this mic down your throat. Are you used to having things in your, big things in your face? No, I am, I am not. 

So, when you're extrapolating that from the, the nervous system, the psyche. Okay. It, there's an unwinding that happens  and brain spotting and EMDR will take that. It's our eyes are really the window to the soul. So the beautiful thing about that modality or those modalities is it's like pulling a file.

Okay. And like playing it.  And then as you play it, you're noticing what's happening in the nervous system and you're helping people breathe, like somatically breathe through it and breathe it out. Cause somatic breathing is a way to move energy, that debris out the body. So you can untangle people without ever having to put your hands on them.

So somatic therapy, I'll just say this, it's a, it's a huge wave coming into mental health. And I think that in the future, every therapist is going to need some kind of somatic tool to help. Increase the efficacy of mental health because people can talk and talk and talk and then they can also reinjure themselves in the talking.

Like if you're not, if, if you're just talking about an injury, but you're not healing and repairing it by sloughing off what you need to, you're, you're recirculating it. No, I completely agree with that because, you know, again, I'm very familiar with talk therapy, but then I feel like when I would leave, I would be so triggered like my nervous system.

So I felt like my nervous system was never calming down. Yeah. Yeah. I felt like, um, I always had adrenal fatigue every time I left because there's not reclamation of safety. So the body wants that homeostasis, which is its happy place. So if you're going to, if you're going to play, like, if I had you watch something that was really scary to you, your nervous system would be challenged.

And if I was like, well, cool, have a good night. You'd be like, I'm. I'm going to have a hard time sleeping because we've now challenged your nervous system and we haven't brought it back to a safe place. So when you're doing trauma, and this is why you have to really pay attention to window of tolerance,  the window of tolerance for people to do trauma work has to be there.

It has to be honored. And if it's not open, then we work on grounding and coping mechanisms till the window of tolerance is open. Then we do trauma work. And when you're viewing and treading these, what I call sacred. Tender spaces with people, they need to have coping and grounding. I'm in a safe place.

I'm with a safe person. It's safe to heal and repair from this. And when,  and then when the nervous system is done, like you got to move them out. You got to move them out of the The trauma work and ground  and that's what somatic therapy does is, that's why I have the sound table, the vibroacoustic sound table because it grounds people, it emits the theta and the delta waves so that they can get grounded in about 20 to 30 minutes.

Do you have one of those at home? Like, do you sleep on it? I need to. I want one. I feel like you could do some cool shit on your ground. I know. I want to be able to have one at home. Hey baby. I mean, let's all just spend time on this table.  There are great tools,  they can be expensive and so, and there's sophisticated equipment and  I think that they're going to get better and better at making them and they're going to be more and more cost effective.

So, but they're great tools and I could just do the vibroacoustic sound table and help repair people's nervous system and they're going to be able to have way more tolerance and bandwidth in life. Oh, I like that. Mm hmm. Tolerance and bandwidth. That's, that's what you're doing when you're reclaiming safety in the nervous system is you're getting that bandwidth and that tolerance back to having more equilibrium so you can do life.

That's what trauma does is that it eats up the bandwidth. And so if you could imagine like , I think I did this on the last podcast, but pinballs, like, Spinning around, if you had one, two, drop three, or four. It's taking up so much life energy to keep those going while you're still trying to do life.

That's why trauma can, especially when it, when those injuries get awakened and people all of a sudden remember things and they're just, they can be really debilitating. Because all of a sudden their life energy is just sapped by that stuff. I've got to give like kudos to people who are like just going through recovery, from addiction.

And have real jobs.  Cause I'm like, Oh, I have a lot of time to myself. So like, I mean, I have a lot of work I have to do, but it's very,  obviously self paced here. I can do it. I have appointments sometimes like this, but I look forward to these things. But I'm like, I was having a total fucking mental breakdown yesterday, you know?

And it's like, like when you also have to go to work, cause it's not like I've had high stress jobs. Like I've worked in healthcare. I've done a lot of crazy shit, you know? But I was like, I can't imagine, like.  I was even thinking back to how I used to feel when you just have a bad day. It's like you have to get up and you were not allowed to show that at work.

So I was like, dude, kudos to all of you guys in real jobs. Yeah. Well, and that's one of the reasons why stress management and sobriety is so important because it's the stressors again, bandwidth. If your bandwidth gets ruptured, Your body's gonna pull for coping, and there's a lot of what we call adaptive coping mechanisms or maladaptive ones.

Okay. Let's define these. Okay. So, okay. I was like, you used a word I've never heard of maladaptive. Maladaptive versus adaptive. So an adaptive coping mechanism that you've created in your life is running. Right. Could that become a maladaptive coping mechanism if you just ran like 10 hours a day?

Absolutely. Mm-Hmm. . Sure. Right? Like anything in moderation versus excess like you could. You could start pummeling your body and create injuries, but you do it because it's healthy for you and you do it in a way that that works for you. And so it's an adaptive coping mechanism for you. It does a lot for you to bring all different kinds of health levels of health in your body, the mental, the emotional, the physical, right?

A maladaptive one would be like, I've had A flippin long day, a bunch of crap happened today and let me just pull her open the wine bottle and just go to town. Oh, well that's my, you know, that's my special advice. That's why we're here today. Yeah.  So, and again, is, is the wine itself this evil vessel of, you know, liquid death?

Now, you know, someone can have a glass of wine and be like, Hey, that took off the edge and I feel good. I don't like those people anymore. Three  bottles of wine later. Never dealing with your fin miss. So I listened to something really interesting. I was excited to share this on this podcast. Emotions are connected to being peptides.

So there's this huge rage in the world right now about peptides. Peptides, peptides. Mm-Hmm. are these chemical reactions in the body that help the cells open up the cells, be more functional. All this stuff. You can have peptides for your skin. You can have peptides for supplements, okay? You can inject 'em right into yourself, right?

So the peptides, and the motions are peptides. You, when you feel an emotion, you want to metabolize it and you want to process it. You want to notice what you're feeling in your body and you want to, again, then this is the tolerance. Okay. The reason people go into addictions and reach for, we're reaching for coping, we're reaching for blunting numbing.

I don't just want to flip and deal with this. Right. And those can turn into addictions because instead of learning how to soothe ourselves and work through and feel what we need to feel, metabolize the emotion. And then it goes, then we get through it. Okay. Right? Versus, if we don't metabolize the emotion, we store it.

Okay, I like the way you just described all that, and it feels like, kind of science y, but it makes sense, you know, because everyone's like, let your emotions come up and fill them, and I'm like, what the f Yeah. Like, you know, I would say the last, like, week, I've just been so angry. You know, and so I was watching videos about sobriety and anger, and they're like, just let yourself fill the emotion, and I was like, what?

Yeah, you're like, I don't want to, right? Yeah. But no, like that makes sense to me though, like letting yourself metabolize the emotion because like I can understand that in my brain, my brain can make logical sense of that. You know, like you put in food, you metabolize it, turn it into energy and you either use the energy or you shit it out.

Right. And if you, and if you don't metabolize your emotions, that's what, that's where they. They get stored and encapsulated, right? Wild. So when you think about it that way, you go, okay, if I, it's uncomfortable and as much as I annoying, or I don't want to have to feel this, or I don't want to have to cry right now.

It's so important to metabolize and move through those emotions. Cause then you're moving through them rather than like keeping them all inside. And then they become a perfect storm. Oh, I'm really good at those. I think I had one of those for a while. And I had one yesterday where I was like, here, it was the spiral.

One more, one more.  I hate my kids. Suddenly, I'm gonna get a divorce. Yeah, everything. Yeah, and I was like, divorce? Like, that's a weird word that's popping in your head, but I know it's not me, you know? It's not even how I actually feel. I was like, whoa, this is a wild ride. Yeah, like, what is happening right now?

Yeah. Right? And so, that's the bandwidth getting like, that's, you're hitting the edges of your bandwidth or blowing it. Mm hmm. When the bandwidth's blowing, everything can be irritable. I just, you know, it's, it's the range of emotions, but they're all now big. The pendulum's swinging. There's no emotional regulation.

And, It's just whipping around. So you're just kind of whipping around on the ocean and there's no regulation, right? But that's why  learning tools to reclaim safety in your nervous system as you manage your emotional health. And here's the thing. Well, when they need to have this class in like schools and high school is emotional regulation classes.

Like what were your skills? Like were you taught as a kid how to emotionally regulate? Well, are you taught? emotional intelligence. So then as you get into the more challenges of life, if your baseline of coping skills and emotional regulation skills isn't great, what are you going to do? You reach for things that make you feel better quickly. 

Okay. So what is the direct link? This is my, my biggest question.  What is the direct link between like severe trauma? So should we use like a childhood trauma traumatic event, you know, and I think, like say something extremely severe happens, like either you're sexually molested or like maybe your mom dies or something like big and childhood.

I know there's tons, everyone has childhood trauma, and I'm kind of overhearing about it.  Yeah, she felt like it's a buzzword right now. Well, this is so if you study the one of the things I would tell your listeners, if they really want to learn more about, Trauma and so Kolk, The Body Keeps Score, Kabra Maté, he wrote In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

And if you want to read about someone who really, I think, fundamentally changed the world of addiction and moving it from this medical model of disease, versus it's a trauma, it's trauma. Is, was him. And he wrote In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and then also So what are you saying, realm? Like Yeah, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts is the book's name, and then he also wrote The Myth of Normal.

He also wrote other books, but The Myth of Normal is his new one, but, and this is, this is more encapsulating, I think, in all of his work, but when he started with In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, it was all about, you know, Wow, we are looking at addiction the wrong way. And when I read his work, I was like, jeez, every  sobriety and recovery center should be connected to his work because it was so, it's so true about where the trauma connects to the addictions.

Right. And with childhood traumas,  you know, or maybe it wasn't even childhood, like maybe you're a teenager, maybe you're an adult, like, you know, soldiers that go to war.  I know there's a high addiction rate there, especially with like Vietnam and things like that. Well, I just read this book about Vietnam vets.

So it's at the top of my head.  But like, what is. It's the direct link between trauma and then people who turn to addiction. Yeah. So it's the, it's the wanting to self soothe quickly. Right? So if you, the thing about injuries when you can see them, like if I had a huge cut that needed stitches on my arm and I came in and all the stitches were there, you'd be like, that's a gnarly wound.

And if it got reopened. and reopened and reopened, I would be in a lot of pain. Yeah. I'd be like, you should do something about that. Or if I was reopening it or something in life was reopening it, that no matter what I did, it kept getting reopened. That's, that's a trauma that is easier getting awakened and touched on through some kind of experience.

Like our bodies are really incredible in that they're intuitive vessels and they will protect us. So a lot of times, When our sense of safety in the world is ruptured one way or the other, okay, whether it's a micro trauma or a big trauma, our bodies will try and encapsulate it. And oftentimes, sometimes if it's bad enough, they'll hide it.

They'll block it. That's why you'll have people that have significant childhood traumas go, I don't remember much of my childhood because the body's going, yeah, we don't want to. Yeah. And that's a big piece I have is I don't remember a lot of chunks of childhood. And then I also don't remember chunks of when my daughter was little because I was in a severe traumatic experience relationship then.

And so I have a hard time remembering her as like a baby and like, I try to recall the memories and there's like a definite block, but some of the things I'm not remembering as a child, it's almost like I have like another being who comes into my presence and is like, do you, you don't need to open the box, but you do need to learn how to move through the box.

Yeah. You know, and I'm like, God, I've even like worked with a shaman like to move through these things, but I'm finding that it's continuously there. And it's like, I'm hitting a wall. Yeah. I'm not quite sure. Like, I don't need to relive it every single day. It was fucked up, you know, but like, how do you actually like  I don't know.

What's the, how do you keep your body from just freaking the fuck out all the time? That's where, that's where somatic, the somatics is, is, is the reclamation of safety in the very cells of your body. So the boxes don't always have to be open. Sometimes they do. Right. What has to, the, cause again, an injury that isn't healed festers.

And if we saw the injury that was a fest, we're like, you need some help, like get on some antibiotics. Right. Well, why aren't we doing that with our emotional body?  Cause we can't see it. And it's something that's very interpersonal that we're experiencing that oftentimes we don't. I don't want anyone else to know about, I'm fine, I'm fine.

Everything's fine. And it's not, there's a storm inside. And so as you, uh, you know, in your particular situation, you had a very clear part of you that was like, Hey, we don't have to necessarily revisit every part of peace in this box, but there's something hanging in your nervous system that needs to be healed and repaired.

So it's finding what that is and letting the body unwind. It's an unbinding  that happens. That allows the body to finally reclaim safety. I wasn't safe then, but I'm safe today. I'm in a safe place. I'm a safe person and I'm safe today. And then the belief that the body can go,  we are safe today and we can finally put a period on our past.

And that's where. You know, when you're, when you're traversing trauma, you have to really pay attention to again, window of tolerance and say, how much of this exposure  to the trauma do we need to revisit and help you understand and work through, and then let's get to the business of healing. And reclaiming safety because the safety was ruptured.

That's what, that's what created the trauma injury is that your sense of safety in the world was ruptured. And then if it was ruptured again and again, and again,  this nervous system is going, Oh, I don't think the world's safe. Yeah, and it's been kind of interesting, especially this time of year, typically when I go into my typical, like, I call it my holiday depression and every year I'm like, Oh, it's fine.

I've held so much. It's not coming. And then I'm like, Oh, nope, it's here. Yeah. Yeah. And it would be so great. It's just to not take that into my forties. Yeah. Well, and so that's some of the work that you can do, whether you do brain spotting with your friend or as we're doing some of the, even the body work, I have found that it doesn't, it doesn't matter if it's a micro trauma or a big trauma, the body wants equilibrium.

And we can always find it. Like I've said in front of people like, this is dumb. You're not going to find anything. And it's not, it's not as like me, I know how to hold space, but, but the body is, is what finds it. We're a big recording device. We've recorded every moment of our lives. It's recorded on the various cells of our body.

And so if, if, if you say, okay, I want you to find it, we'll find it now. I've helped people find it and they've gone. Nope.  I don't want to do this. Okay. We just, then we just reclaim safety because, and there is a delicate dance to saying, are you, are we sure? Cause you really want to heal and repair and, and so are we avoiding and is it time to push through some of that or yeah, let's regroup and reground and let's maintain safety and let's get some better coping mechanisms on board and then let's go back in.

Okay. Could you like take me through a hypothetical?  I don't know why I'm always like, these are great theories. Let me give you an example. I thought about this today. Um, so, uh, this is more of a micro trauma, but it, it, it, one, it teaches about parenting and where we can do it well and what, how quickly we can rupture the sense of safety in our little one's world.

So my son, he's 16 now, he was five.  My mom had just moved into a new house  and they got a TV and you know, those like styrofoam things. So they had pulled out the styrofoam thing, and in the garage, they had taken all these tiny pieces, him and my, my older son. Or was it like those little tiny, tiny styrofoam balls?

Well, it was a big thing of styrofoam, and they made tiny, tiny styrofoam balls. So it's like floating in the air? And so here I, and, and here's the thing about when I review what happened, I was like, man, I overreacted there. And ultimately, it's my mom's new house, I didn't want there to be a big mess, because they made a huge mess.

It was Snow, right? Yeah, there's no snow in St. George. So we're gonna make it. How creative is that? Mm hmm, right? So I had slowed myself down and be like, wow, you guys are so creative This is so cute. And let me show you how to clean it up. That would have been The perfect parent response. But instead I was like, Oh my gosh. 

I mean, I feel like that's just like kind of normal also though. You know, I'm human. So I had a huge reaction and my five year old, um, so this is, this is when you, when you press and, and to the degree that you create injury, right. Or you get injured on the press. So I was like, what are you guys doing? This is ridiculous.

This is grandma's new house. I can't believe you did this. I didn't. Like slow myself down to see the joy that they were having. I just focused on, you shouldn't have been doing this. And my five year old was like, it was him. No, it was him. And they were, and I was like, you made this choice. You did it.

You're the one that, and that's the press, right? I was like, you, you, this is you. And I could, it was crazy. Cause this part of me was like, what are you doing? But I was like, expending my frustration. Right. I was, I was rolling all of that off of me. And my son was like, he just started to go, I don't, I don't know what to say.

He's a five year old. He doesn't have a lot of skills. Right. So now he's dealing with my intense intensity. I have the better skillset and I'm just like pummeling him with my frustration. And at one point he goes, well, I guess I'm stupid. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I was like, so I immediately redirected and I was like, Hey,  I used all my skills at that moment, but it took, it took seconds to rip into my kid and it took me probably seven hours to repair him. 

I had to keep working on it and had to keep revisiting with him. Like, Hey,  I overreacted. This is my, you know, here's mom's doing her repair work and what do we believe about ourselves? You're, you know, I believe that I'm smart. So that was a micro trauma to my kid. Like did I rip into his sense of safety in the world so much so that I created a different belief system for, for him?

Yeah. Could I have reinforced that over time? Like here you are being stupid again.  Can't believe you did that stupid thing. How often do we do that as parents, right? Oh, I did it last night, yeah. My son smashed his, computer monitor.  Yeah. He's garbage. Yeah. So, and again, it's not that we don't give our kids consequences and let them, like, learn from, like, choices, but in the, in the moments we want to, when we've overreacted and we've disrupted the sense of safety.

Now, That could have been an uncomfortable experience, but since I kept pressing, so it went from like, mom's mad, there's this uncomfortable experience happening to, I dug into his very like, core, and ripped it. Yeah. Right, so it was my job to come in and repair it. And I had the skills to do it, but a lot of people don't, right?

They just let their kid I was going to say, my parents would break me down until I was, you know, I was, I am a horrible person. You're right. You're right. I am horrible. And look, your belief system starts to build around low self esteem, negative core beliefs, and then they're reinforced with those messages.

And sometimes not necessarily purposely. It's not like, I think parents are sometimes like, where can I be malicious today with my kid? But it was, it was really an awakening moment for me to be like, man, I ripped my kid in four seconds. And maybe 10 seconds and it took me seven hours to repair him and it created a microtrauma for him.

I couldn't believe how long it took me to help him believe that he wasn't stupid. Yeah. And that he was smart.  And I was like, man, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna deal with this 10 years later. And, and, you know what I'm saying? Like, and not have said I did my due diligence to try and repair this. Now that's a microtrauma. 

Like, that's little. Yeah. Right? And we've all experienced probably thousands of those moments. Yeah. And so they're more repairable. I mean, even though that took me seven hours, think about sexual abuse. Like, you're, you're invaded against your will, and you're usually told if you tell anyone, we're gonna hurt you or hurt somebody else.

There's a, an intense self suff suffocation, and so to really unwind that kind of stuff is such delicate work, but it, it, it's, you can get put a period on that, but, that's the, that would be like a practical example of being able to go in and say.  Here's my voice. And that's where parts work comes in.

It's really popular right now. You'll have like, what's called IFS therapy, internal family systems. I don't think that's the only way to do parts work. I do parts work a lot of different ways, but we, we bring in those parts, those wounded parts and start to give them a voice, like, what do you need to say?

And they don't know that you're 35 now. When they were six, this was happening to them. And so the trauma is not linear, it's not keeping track of time, so you have to help that six year old, that twelve year old, that eight year old go, hey, this  I'm gonna, I'm gonna release you from this emotional prison that you're in and I'm going to bring you into the present moment where we're safer and you can heal from this.

And so that's where you come in and do that parts work and you already kind of mentioned that where you're having that part of you come in and go, Hey sis, we don't have to like, it's you talking to you, right? We don't have to come in and open this box, but we need to deal with the room that it's taking up in our psyche and how it's still causing us distress and then that would be what you focus on.

Do you think that the. ever goes away or is it just one of those things where it's like you see it and instead of it like taking the ship down you're just like oh there it is. More like that. Thanks for being here. Well so uh an encapsulated trauma memory does this in the nervous system. It would be like pulling up a weed and it's you know when like there's all that dirt.

Yeah. When you're doing trauma work you're pulling up that weed and you're shaking it off and then you might still have some. But you had to take a break, right? Shake it off. By the time you've gotten that whole, like, root shaken off, then you can put a period on it. And now it's just a memory. You're not erasing memories, but it's not one that's taking up any bandwidth.

And like, it's not, it's not any, doesn't have any charge in it, right? It's not doing this. It's just there. And it's calm. It's neutral because now your system can believe that you truly are safe in the present moment. When we have trauma, your system's going, you may say that we're safe in the present moment, but we are still six.

And we're not safe. The nervous system is still living all of, and so if it was six and if it was eight and if it was 12, you have multiple traumas. It's just a lot.  It's happening. So like I said, you can, you can put a period on the past. We're not erasing memories, just the memories won't have the charge.

And so then it's just peace. And safety in the nervous system. Yeah, it's like just part of your story versus like controlling every aspect of your life. Yeah. And how you do some of that too, because some people don't go to therapy and they've had really bad traumas and they seem okay. It's how they resource themselves, right?

It's the resources. And so when people have really good resources, they can really sometimes self heal without having to do therapy, um, and they can find peace. They're like, hey, I don't, that's not bogging down my nervous system anymore. I found a way to regain my equilibrium, and now that's just a memory of my past that has no charge.

So people can do that on their own. Sometimes it's just really hard, and they need help. Yeah. I know. I do find things fascinating. Like, even if I just use my husband as an example, I was calm. Nothing bothers him. My favorite thing conversation with this man ever was, he's like, well, tell me what's going on in your head.

And I was like, well, every day I feel like I wake up and I have to choose whether or not I'm going to live. I really don't see the point in life some days. And like, you know, and I'm thinking we're having this thing. He's like, wow, that's fascinating. And I'm like waiting for him to tell me his like in our. 

Secrets. Yeah. And he's like, what? And I'm like, so when do you wake up feeling like that? And he goes, Hmm. I've never felt like that. And I'm like, you've never once been like, there's no like, what is life or what's the point of it? And he's like, no, I don't think so. Okay. Yeah. Well, and so, so again, and you look at his system and that's, that's so unique about people is we're all so different.

And we all record and hold things differently. You can have two people in the helicopter crash and one is much more okay through it. Yeah. As far as the after story and the other person can't drive a car. Yeah. No, they can't even get, yeah. They can't. So, so again, it's really about what it takes to reclaim safety in the nervous system.

And for that, for that nervous system to believe that what happened at six, what happened at 12 is, isn't what's happening today. And, and, and that's all the parts work. That's the semantics. That's the, the, you really have got to unbind. Like if we were working on a physical muscle and had a knot in it, you have to unbind it.

So you have to unbind your emotional body and your mental body as well. They stay bound. And the cool thing about. That's really starting to come out to, this is why I think everyone's going to need somatic tools in the mental health field is the fascia and our bodies wrapped around everything. And the fascia is like a highway of connection, a connectivity.

It's like talking to your whole body. And so I've, I've worked on like little ones that have like, you know, my stomach hurts mom, I don't want to go to school because they're anxious and they don't know how to deal with the anxiety. They don't have tools. I've just simply worked on the fascia in their stomachs. 

And you start unbinding that and unwinding that and all of a sudden they can, their diaphragm can expand and they can breathe and they have room and all of a sudden they realize that they're not having belly aches and stomachs and need to go to 17 doctors. It's they've just had anxiety that's twisted up their insides and you unbind it and now they have freedom to be like, Oh, life maybe isn't so hard and scary.

You couple that with some good tools, right? About how to manage anxiety. But these little ones, life is hard and intense and sometimes they just don't know what, they don't have skills. Yeah. And so then they're like, I'm doing the best I can and, and they get, and they get bound and one more sensitive kid who has more sensitivities or is, tends to be more sensitive versus another kid that just has more, it's more chill, more resilient.

I don't know. You know, it's not about, I don't want to say resilience, but. There's a resilient factor in there, but what, again, what affects one may not affect the other, but then you have this one that won't even go to school because they get so much anxiety. And it's crazy when you start unbinding them and teaching them even just really basic skills where they're like, Oh, life doesn't have to be so hard.

The world doesn't have to be so scary.  I mean, it would be kind of cool if that was like part of your curriculum, right? Yes.  But a lot of this comes down to, to, I like how you mentioned resources. Because I, I do see it like it's a privilege that like, I can even go and see people like you. And you know, this is stuff I couldn't do 10 years ago because I could barely buy groceries.

Yeah. So a lot of it does come down to resources.  But I also have noticed that a lot of people.  Who have experienced severe trauma also kind of live in that poverty cycle as well, which also kind of lives in an addiction cycle too.

Like, have you noticed any correlation between that? Or what about like people who are listening who are like, I can't go drop, you know, a hundred dollars a week or even, you know, go on a 10, 000  Excursion. Sure. Intensive. Do you kind of get what I'm saying? Totally.  The, the thing that I love about the digital age is that if no one ever, ever went to therapy,  there are so many free resources on YouTube.

Yeah. TikTok's getting so good too. TikTok is, yes. I watch sometimes people in their lives, I'm like, I should do a couple of lives and just help some people get some equilibrium. Equilibrium.  but just  any of Bessel or Gabor's or , Peter Levine, he's another big giant in the somatic field and also somatic therapy and trauma recovery.

But there's so many, you could type in somatic exercises and there's now like instead of one video where you had to like come to find it, there's like 20 people being like, Oh, you know, move the body like this, you know, wiggle the body like this or  like focus on this kind of breathing, you know, practice somatic breathing.

And so it. There's so many free resources. What I have found is it's not that they're not out there. It's if people will do them. And sometimes this is an interesting thing about psychology. If it's almost too easy, they won't do it.  This is true. Interesting. Well, I'm like, give me the program. Like I'm going to have to study for this.

Like I want it to be hard, you know? And the irony is unbinding, no, I will work on muscles and there are some really hard ones to unbind. And I'm like, Hey, you're gonna have to breathe through this. This is going to hurt a little bit, but on the other end of this, it's going to feel way better. Most of the time, bodywork  isn't pleasant, right?

Yeah. But on the other end of it, they're like, wow, I couldn't feel, I just feel so much better. I've worked on this. , he's a little dancer, this little guy.  The first time I worked on him, he was like, what is happening? What did you just do to my body? Cause I did one side and then I had him go walk to the door and I had him come back and he was like, I had no idea that much tension in my body.

I'm like, well, you dance for like four hours a day and you're young. It's like you're using the heck out of your body, but he just didn't understand. We're used to holding tension. Right. And we're used to holding emotional tension and mental tension as well. And until we really get connected to that, that's why I love the sound table is that people can really feel their baseline.

Like, Oh,  Oh, I didn't realize just how stressed I was or wow. I didn't realize just how tense I was. Cause it pulls the body into that Theta state, which is a calm state. When you look at brain waves, Theta and Delta waves are the like ones that we either are in deep rest or deep sleep. Okay. And,  you pull people into those states and they start to really see what their baseline is and how much tension they're actually holding on their body in all aspects.

And then you can teach them how to unwind that tension. And there's a lot of things that people can do for themselves. on their own time without, you know, without having to buy expensive tools. I would tell people if you really want to,  if you don't have money to go to therapy or you don't even have insurance, cause there's a lot of group practices out there.

Like our group practice takes 10 different insurances. We worked really hard so that people could use their insurance benefits. But if you just can't, if you don't want to get there, you just can't get there, you can't afford it. YouTube the heck out of stuff, like coping skills for trauma, somatic breath exercises, somatic,  movement exercises for trauma, healing and repairing trauma, Vessel Vander Kolk healing and repairing trauma.

There's so much out there that if you just start listening, you could learn 10 new tools in two short months. Yeah, that could just help you. Super true. You know, sometimes when I'm struggling too is, um, I'll just like say a little prayer to God, the universe, whatever you guys are feeling out there.  And I'm like, and I'm more triggered by the word God.

We could do a whole podcast on that.  But I will just be like, okay, just show me something that'll help, you know, so that I don't have to come through information. And I get messages through videos and stuff all the time. And I'm like, that's exactly what I needed to hear.  That was exactly the missing piece.

That's what we call serendipity. And I think it exists in the world. I think that when we, our bodies are these intuitive vessels. When we ask and we're searching, I think we find. Because it wants its equilibrium. It wants its, to find its happiness. The body doesn't want to be in distress when you look at addiction.

And, and I'm not saying, I won't say like concretely, like if you're an addiction, then you've had trauma, but it's, there's a really high correlation. And everyone that I work with, that's coming out of recovery, that's coming out of their IOPs, they need to do What is an IOP? It's a, um, intensive outpatient program.

So They're working through doing some intensive, um, whether they're in residential or intensive outpatient and then they move to what's called more just outpatient. Yeah. And I actually went and looked at a bunch of outpatients therapies. Yeah. Yeah. And they're just more intensive. Like you're going multiple hours a day and you're going multiple days a week versus outpatient, you can go one day a week, you know, you kind of decide your pace, but all the ones  recovery centers that are doing it well, we'll create a wrap.

It's like IOPs are about four months, four to six months though, as they're, as people are getting done with their IOP, they'll start to be like, Hey, let's get you resourced in the community so that you can continue your therapy. And almost always people are doing trauma work. And when you look at It's not a top down approach.

You got to go bottom up. If you really want to heal and repair the system, you can try and go top up, but then this, all this injurious scar tissue is going to still stay alive. So you got to go bottom.  Well, I'm going viral on TikTok right now, so you get a lot of like, people that are smarter than you making comments, you know,  but I do say 99 percent of the comments are like insanely amazing.

Like there are some fucking cool people in this world and you get the 1 percent and the comment I get a lot is, well, you know, you should figure out why you drink like that. And I'm like, well, no shit. Yeah. You're like, hello. That's why. Yeah. Well, a simple answer to addiction is it's either self soothing, blunting, or it's  Right.

Or numbing. Yeah. It almost always, when somebody gets to a place where we're not just drinking casually or using a substance recreationally, um, cause I'm not going to say that all use, like there's,  there's been substances. You know, forever and not every single person on this planet has been addicted to them.

Right. So why is that? So when you start to deal with addiction, um, there almost always is a, uh, I need, I'm using this to numb or cope. Right. And, and when you watch babies grow up, they all develop self soothing skills and those are either reinforced or not taught at all. Right. And so it's really important to teach kids self soothing skills.

And emotional regulation skills. So they have a tolerance for emotional debris because you're inevitably going to experience as a human being. And when your tolerance is low, you're going to look for blunting and coping and not mean much more quickly than just going, there's going to be an end to this.

I'll get there. I'm in a dark tunnel now, but there's always the light through the tunnel. I'm going to get there. Like I truly believe at some point there's going to be end of this. So I just need to kind of work through it and breathe through it, metabolize it. Right. And when, when you don't have the tolerance now.

To be fair, sometimes your tolerances are blown because you have 17 things happening in your life at once. I just had a baby and I have to go to work and I, and I, and now I have to pull a 50 hour week. And it's just like, yeah, so much pressure on the situational depression. Cause I experienced that right after I had Caden, you know, and I'm like, I need help.

I'm like, my husband's at war, which he was in active Afghanistan war. And you know, I'm a couple of weeks postpartum and I'm like, nobody's helping me. No one's listening to me. So you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So the thing about, I would say, just to pick back up about a addiction too, is, and 'cause sometimes people are like, wow, I was just recreationally using, and sometimes the traumas happen when the, when they're in the addiction, right? , because then you start to get into situations, oftentimes addictions where you're really compromising.

You're just not you. You're not, you're not. You're not acting like you, you're not, you're cog, you've turned off your frontal cortex, which is your, it just keeps going. It's like, you just keep cycling it. And so you get yourself sometimes in very much terrible situations. And so sometimes the traumas that people are healing from are the traumas that occurred in the addiction.

Oh, that hits home for sure. Yeah. So it's like a giant just like snowball. You're just picking up more and more and more. But really you were just trying to like, just trying to be loved. Yeah, because I mean some people were like, why I don't have childhood trauma, but I got addicted to pain pills because I had an injury, right?

And so you're, you're not trying to comb and be like, no, you've had childhood trauma. Where is it? You know, they, they might have had a pretty like  okay life and then, and then they got a bad injury and then the opiates, that's why, you know, yeah, there's so much now regulation on the opiates because, and, and there ought to be on a lot of the controlled substances because you know, they, they are addictive by nature, even people who misuse benzos, you know, benzos were never meant for long term consumption.

And I'm saying that carefully. I'm not a doctor, I'm a therapist, but in all the two decades I've watched people use them. They're meant for short term use. And then you, and then you resource, right? You build skills and you work through the events that are happening that, that want, that make you want to calm your nervous system down very quickly.

Right. But, but over time, you know, those, have been abused and people are on these high doses and then they're wondering why they had brain fog and not thinking clearly. And  yeah, you know, it's a, it's yeah. Oh, it's such a slippery slope. I was on, I, when I went through my divorce, I was like waking up at 3 AM and it wasn't even a bad divorce.

Like me and my ex husband are great friends. Like we co parent well, but it's just like these like massive life changes, right? You're, it's an event that's going. I certainly didn't  predict that this was going to happen 11 years later, right? And I remember just waking up at three and being like, what the heck is going to happen with my, I was just so uncertain and my body was just not okay.

And so I remember going to my doctor and being like, I still have to work. I have to do life. I need something. It gave me Xanax. And it was a really interesting experience to be on the other end of talking about what people were using these meds. And then to be using it, there were times where Sam, I'd be driving and I'd be like, Where am I going?

I would just lose time. Yeah. Like, and I have a very Very quick processing mind, like I, I, it's part of how I do therapy well. I, I just have really quick thinking. And I remember there were times I was talking and I would like lose one thought to the next. And I was like, this is not me. And I realized, oh, this is this med.

It's impacting my cognitive functioning. And so I was like, nope.  I mean, that's great that you could recognize that. Mm hmm.  So, you know how I was super sick, like, two weeks ago?  Huh. And I ran that race really sick, and you did not.  Well, I was not gonna run. Not feeling good. No, I was like, nope, I said I was gonna do it, so.

You did, you muscled through. Let's talk about that therapy. Yeah.  , but, so they prescribed me.  I was really, really sick though. This was like medicine that I legit needed.  But they gave me a muscle relaxer cause I had locked both my SI joints and then I had laryngitis. Yeah. So the steroids and then they gave me the codeine cough syrup, which instantly I was like red flag, red flag.

 She knows me really, really well though. And she's like, I think you're going to be okay. I'm going to give you this, you know, and it's a trust factor here.  Good for her for flagging that, yeah. And she goes, I think you're going to be okay though. And I was like, oh, okay. And I was like, why would she just say that to me, you know?

And I'm in my car and I'm like, oh, it's because I'm an alcoholic.  But, yeah, that stuff was nice. It was nice to pop a muscle relaxer and then take some codeine cough syrup. And I was just like in la la land. Yeah.  But I hadn't slept for days. I couldn't walk, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't get a breath in.

Cause they probably had steroids too. Yeah.  And then , I realized, like, I was like, oh, like, I'm probably okay. I was like, how many more days could I take this and it could still be okay? Yeah. And I was like, oh, oh, oh, you fucking addict. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, we can't have this in our house. Then, I think that's where my anger started though.

I was like, I can't even have cough syrup in my house, you know? Yeah. But I'm not, I'm not super mad about it. Yeah. Well, but, and that's a, like to your point, like that's the, that's where people in recovery and having sobriety have to, there's just this extra caution tape around what it means to be around any kind of substances or people using substances or something like, Hey, you're sick and you need these meds.

And so, I mean, I've had people that have gone in surgeries and been so adamant, like that.  Here's how I have to manage my pain after, because I can't be anywhere close to this. Anyway, if you think about it, if the risk for re injury is so high that you just have to stay, give some safe space away from that, then those are the choices.

But yeah, people won't take re injury. pain pills and stuff. And like, I don't think I could do that. Is that, yeah, is, is, is to say, Hey, this is how I protect my, my, cause it can be, you know, those pathways, you can break neural pathways, the neural pathways bind. Like if I had a piece of,  sewing string, you could, and I wrapped it around your hand once.

You can break it fairly easy. They're not, but if I kept binding it. Over and over and over again, it's going to get harder and harder to break. So when you're breaking down neural pathways, you can break them down. And over time they can be really dormant and inactive and gone. Right. But, but as you're breaking them down, you can reactivate them very quickly.

It's like  a trail out in the wilderness is like, Oh, I think that this is a deer trail versus a well worn path. Okay. And eventually if you stop walking on that well worn path, what's going to happen eventually the overgrowth and it's going to look less and less like a well groomed trail, but it's still there.

It's still there. Yeah. And so you can totally deactivate neural pathways, but, but once they've been created, I, I truly think when you look at neuroplasticity and those kinds of things, the brain, it's like a, it's like those old dilapidated cities you're like, okay, let me give a minute. I can reactivate.

Yeah.  I call that the slippery slope in addiction for sure, because, you know, like if we were sitting here, Oh, let's say we go out to dinner, right. And maybe they had these like lovely espresso martinis and I can have one espresso martini like legit could. Yeah. But what would happen was that weekend I'd be like, Oh, well I had that one espresso martinis.

I think it's fine to open this bottle of wine. Yeah. And it might even like pull that off for a whole year. Yeah. But I already, I know where it leads. Yeah. And you may always have to wrap that kind of caution tape around alcohol the rest of your life, Sam. And, and the cool thing about what you're doing when I watch, even just the way that you've approached running is that you're, is that you're taking significant building blocks in your life and creating what I, what I would call really deep.

That's like laying really deep Bricks in your in life around really good adaptive coping mechanisms that that eventually really supplant and take place of anything that was that you were getting out of,  coping with the substances. Yeah. I do realize too, that I am swapping some. Addictions for other addictions, but at least like they're healthy, you know, like, yeah.

I don't really feel like I'm necessarily like an exercise addict or anything like that, or addicted to running, but for sure, like, Oh, you should see the way I take down caffeine right now. And I was like, I don't fucking care. I'll deal with that later.  Well, and that's the thing is like what what I look at when people in recovery, you know, they're like I'm doing this but it's bad and I'm like Hey, are you are living your life way better than you ever than you ever were and you actually are reconnected with your kids You're you're reconnected with life life is like When you breathe into life, it can be like, it's colorful.

It's beautiful, right? Even when it's hard, it can, it can have color. When people are in the throes of addiction, it's gray, it's dark. It's it's, you know, and that's why sometimes, sometimes you see them move the needle to just like, what's, what's the point I want to go on the planet. Because you start, when you start blunting yourself, you're not just blunting  the shitty emotions you don't want to feel.

You blunt joy and happiness. So color starts to leave your life and it's just dull. Do you know what I'm saying? Cause you can't, you can't just, it's like, you can't isolate and only, lose fat on your arms. Right. If you're, you know, or like gain weight, it's it goes across the system. And so if you're blunting and self medicating, you're going to, you're going to blunt your joy and happiness.

And so that's the, as hard as it is sometimes in recovery, that's one of the things I think is beautiful is when, is when the world is, is like, Hey, I got to learn how to emotionally regulate better. And I need to learn how to deal with hard stuff, but look how bright my world is getting. Look how colorful my world is getting as I reconnect to my loved ones and, and things that matter in my life.

Yeah. Every time I like. See that hurdle comes, you know, we'll just use our Tuesday. I should probably write this day in my calendar. Tuesday, November, whatever the hell yesterday was.  Like I felt like that was a big hurdle day yesterday. And when I get to the other side of it, I'm like, Oh, look at all this cool shit.

You know? Yeah. And that's one thing to start. Continuing to log is at some point I'm going to get on the other side of it. Any dark tunnel eventually has, even the longest dark tunnel has an end to it. And so, but that's why it's so important to, to build the skills, to have the coping skills, to have emotional regulation skills and to metabolize.

That's one of the things I do a ton of work in my office is process and fill.  Just like we digest food, you want to digest these emotions. So when we're doing the trauma work, what's coming up as we review these, these stories or these movies in our head, we're processing, digesting, we're processing, digesting while we're reclaiming safety while we're slopping off.

And so the body's like, okay, we can reclaim equilibrium. It's in, in, and I think you have to approach the body, not just the, you have to do it all. Like the body doesn't work independently. The respiratory system doesn't just function by itself. Like the card, they're all connected. And so. Our emotional body is very connected to our physical body and we pay the price when we don't listen to it.

Almost always when I see people come in with physical.  like pains. There's an emotional connection. We're, we're clearing something emotionally. I see it sometimes when someone doesn't want to talk about it, all of a sudden their bodies just get really hot and they're throwing off heat. I'll be like, it's molten lava in here.

I didn't turn up the heat. It's just their body needs to slough off the energy. Yeah. And so they'll get really hot. Oh, that's interesting. Pull somatic debris, the emotional debris while we're unbinding the body. And I'll sometimes be like, Hey, are you feeling anything right now? And if they're brave and want to, they'll be like, Yeah, that was, I'm going through something right now.

Or sometimes they're like, I don't even freaking know. I don't know why I'm emotional and it's actually kind of bugging me. I'm like, just breathe through it. Just let it, we don't even have to know. Let's just let it go. Yeah. Because sometimes you don't have to know. The body just wants to Get it off. So if you open the door, the body as an intuitive vessel will say, thank you.

Let's release.  Thank you. That's perfect. Here we go.  When you're in recovery and you're going, I've hit my rock bottom, this isn't how I want to live my life anymore, it is such a, it is a, brave, brave, brave. journey because it is hard.  It's easy to stay blunted and sometimes then get to a place where you're like, I don't want to say easy, like your life isn't easy, but to keep blunting yourself, to keep self medicating and, and, and keeping yourself numb versus awakening and dealing with the mess, reconnecting.

It's like when when people have done surgeries and they've They've interrupted the nerves when the nerves come back online. Have you ever had that where the nerves have to come back on? Yeah. Yeah. Like when I cut my finger feels weird and it hurts it doesn't. And that's, what's happening with people in recovery is they're coming back online and it's painful.

And so it's, it's a, it's a, it's a pain management and learning skills. And it's a really brave venture. Anyone who's in recovery, who's, who's, who's in it is like, okay, I'm going to do the hard thing. And, and kudos to you. It's, it's a lot of work. I know, which, you know, there's this like whole mental struggle where you're like, Oh, this should, all we're doing is we're not drinking alcohol.

So theoretically you're like, that should be really easy. Right. It's like, if you all of a sudden find out you can't have fluid, you're like, Oh, it kind of sucks. You want the donut, but like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. But it's not like that at all. Yeah. And my mind wants to make it super basic and super simple.

And then I'm like, Oh my God, this is so fucking hard. Why is this so hard? That's why you want. So I work with these bodybuilders too at times, and I will, I have such a respect for the like intense amount of muscle pack that they've put on their bodies  and, and how hard that is. And then I look at how much harder it is for people to do emotional work.

Like. to be vulnerable to, to get in the mess. Like it's, there's a, there's, it's sophisticated. It's messy. It's not, it's not linear. There's not like a, well, if you do plan a, you all have, there's seven plans here and you just make sure you pick one. There's like thousands. What works for some person isn't going to work for another person.

And so it's a, it's tricky. And it's probably, I think after watching people,  Work really hard on their physical bodies and like get in shape. I think getting an emotional shape and emotionally regulating yourself is so much harder to do. Like you can change a physical body very quickly within three to six months.

Sometimes the, the, what it takes to develop the emotional skills needed to traverse life, it takes so much longer and you have to practice it. Like you have to work at it. Like. Look at how many skills I had at the time when I did that with my son. I was a therapist and I ripped into him. I, and I was like, okay, like I'm human and I did a lot of good repair work and I'm glad I had the skills, but I was really blown away at, at the whole process.

The observer in me was like, wow, like that was, that was a very, very, fairly simple micro trauma to try and help him heal from. And look at these people healing from these deep, deep, deep traumas and coming back from. The depths of, of, of just total despair, especially when you're in the throes of addiction.

Cause I don't think I've ever worked with someone that was like, Hey, that was going real well for me.  Right?  I was having a blast. Yeah.  Couldn't have gone better. They usually are like, holy shit, my life was terrible and now it's finally, I'm finding some equilibrium.  So, you know, and it's also a lot of work to just, I know there's people that don't go to AA and things like that, but I'm like, that shit is a lot of work.

Especially people that go to a lot of meetings. Yeah. I'm like, damn, I applaud you guys. One way or the other, build the scaffolding. Like, I don't think it always has to be AA or NA. It's nice to have a community.  Well, we're beings wired for connection. And so we need community. We need connections and those connections also keep us accountable, right? 

Yeah, so two big things for me and one is I'm one of those people. I'm like, no, I said I was here. And so I would be like mortified to not be back the next meeting. Yeah, like, you know, it'd be like just kidding. I'm let me have it. Let me start over in my chips, you know, yeah, like that would be mortified to me.

That is awful. And then the second thing too is which I didn't realize this and it took me several months in to realize you think there's something fundamentally wrong with you. And so when you can see that there's something fundamentally wrong with other people as well, all of a sudden you're like, wait, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with me.

Yeah. Like we're, we're people trying to figure this out. And you know, like I said, there's such power. Like we used to be raised in villages. And that's why that's that saying of like, it takes a village. Well, these days we're in these sometimes tiny microcosms of our, hopefully our, our individual family systems, but sometimes finding community support is really difficult, for a lot of people.

And so when you're in recovery, there has to be scaffolding. There has to be scaffolding around these very new, it's like baby steps, right? You're if, if I were to like, I have a new wound and I pulled off the bandage and I just exposed it to all of this crap. I'd be like, well, good thing we tried to heal, but I just sunburned it and I got all this dirt out.

You know what I'm saying? Like  you're in these new spaces, like you have new skin and so you have to have scaffolding to protect it. And if you are trying to, if you're like, no, I'm fine, I don't need any of that. It's like, good, good luck because you're, this is new skin and it's very, it's very fragile and it needs.

It needs to be conditioned over time to be more and more resilient. And that's why I think the scaffolding, the community and the, St. George, I would say.  I'm really impressed with the recovery community here, whether it's premier counseling, high desert steps, hopes, hope rising. They, when they do recovery days, these programs all get together, the recovery community here, like there's so many people that know each other and they may be going to IOP at high desert, but they're going to Ryan parks breath work class over at premier, his sound bath class.

Like There's an incredible amount of support here. So if you're not using it, I almost am like it is here.  There's a lot of it. Sometimes you just don't know it's there. So like for me, like, you know, I just have to Google. Yeah. And then what's cool is once you find one place, someone like I have all these papers, like people.

They pass out brochures at these things, you guys, they're old school. And all of a sudden I've got like this brochure for somewhere else. No schedule. Yeah. Yeah. And all of a sudden I've got a phone list and I'm like, Oh,  yeah. They, they, there's an incredible amount of support here. They do recovery days.

There's these little retreats that people go to. There's sober softball. There's,  the meetings there's event. There's always events about a lot of this stuff too, is it doesn't cost anything, you know? Or like, um, I know AA will do Alcoholics Anonymous, the chapter here, or I don't know how it works.

There's lots of chapters. Yeah. But they'll do like retreats and things. And I was like, well, how much is it? And it was like, we're keeping the cost really low and it's over a hundred dollars this year. And I was like, for a four day retreat, it was like 125. And they were like, they felt bad that it was 125.

Yeah. You're like, awesome. I was like, wow. Yeah. I'm like, I know people have paid 10K to go to, Retreats. Retreats. Yeah. So if you ever wonder, you know, if, if you're feeling alone and you need more,  you know, if you're listening, if there's anyone listening, that's like, I didn't know that there was so many resources.

There is a huge recovery community here and they are always doing something. Like I work with a lot of people in recovery because we have a lot of referral partners from the different programs here and recovery centers. And I'm impressed. With the community, with the connection, with the camaraderie between programs, and rightly so, you, you know, it's, there's just, in that kind of world, you don't need to compete because you're never going to have enough programs to, to serve how many people are in addiction.

And it's not getting, the trend isn't getting better, you know, you look at the stuff that's happening with fentanyl and, and, and the meth and some of the other stuff. And you're going, okay, those numbers continue to supersede our ability to like have enough resources out there. I know. Not to make this political, but I'm hoping that some of this new  legislation, for lack of a better word,  that's, or I guess parties that are coming in, you know, that's one thing JD Vance talks a lot about is the fentanyl crisis and how it's just like pouring over the borders.

And I'm kind of interested to see if it starts trending down maybe in the next decade. Yeah, it would be interesting to see. It's a, it's a big deal. Like I, you know, I'm having conversations with my teenagers that my parents, I mean, we grew up while I'm 46. So we grew up in the lakes. I'm 39. But what was your drug in high school?

It was red ribbons and their, their, their program. What was the drug that everyone was doing? Like in high school that they were like, I would grew up in Provo. So I was okay. So it was like marijuana. Like it was never, I definitely wasn't like, Hearing about heroin and fentanyl and ecstasy. And I did hear about that one, like somas, muscle relaxers, somas.

Yeah.  I've had to sit my kids down and go like, Hey, three grains of sand of this stuff is lethal. And you don't know what it's going to be. Can't just like take. Your friends peeled it so they got it from grandma's, you know, it's from my grandma.  No, hold on. Have you listened to the Theo Vaughn and JD Vance podcast?

No, I need to listen to that. JD's like as a president, like vice presidential candidate. Well now, you know, he won, they won, but he was like, I shouldn't say this. And he's like, you can't just do Coke in America anymore. Yeah.  And like Theo's like trying to word it, you know,  he's like, let's just say how it is.

He's like, you used to be able to go to a party and maybe one time you did coke and you were like, he, he, he sure. And he's like, now you're like, could be dead. Yeah. It could be rolling the dice. I, I, I  have conversations with my kids and I'm like, man.  Be safe, and I'm not joking, like these, like, I can't believe how young some of these kids are dying from fentanyl overdoses and they didn't even know.

They had no, they didn't even know about, they weren't even trying to take fentanyl. They were just taking something they thought was something different. Well, you know, they're kind of joking, but they're like, yeah, you can't even do Coke in America anymore.  No, even with the, like the, the wave and the movement that's coming in with psychedelic assisted therapy.

And you start to look at what I would call these sacred molecules that can really help heal and repair when they're used properly. Even then you're going.  You don't want to source, you just source, when people source that and they tell me that they're doing psychedelic,  psychedelics or psychedelic assisted therapy, I'm like,  make sure you're being careful where you source it.

Well, I talked about this on our last podcast. I have lost several close friends. I just call them spiritual drug addicts now because they say that they're, you know, doing these journeys. And I'm like, girl, you're like shooting up, what's the stuff that everyone's into? I think you do it.  The ketamine.

Ketamine. Yeah. You do it. That sounded bad. I know. I was like, wait, what?  I hold space. Yes. For people who are doing the ketamine. Yeah. I have a friend who's consistently in the hospital now. And I'm like, she's literally injecting ketamine every day. Well, just like anything, right? Ketamine. If you. Ketamine.

Ketamine. Ketamine's a dissociative, it's less psychoactive than like psilocybin, but I have,  I could do a whole nother podcast about ketamine.  Some of the way it's being used is so injurious. It's not like you don't give someone a shot, leave them alone on the couch in a white wall room and go, Hey, good luck.

You also don't need to do ketamine every day. You don't need to do ketamine. And ultimately,  listen, if you're trying to heal and repair trauma and you want to move the needle on getting some stuff done without. a little bit about the overwhelming reactivity that can come with the fear or having to view and have this emotional intensity.

Like these, these, what I call these kind of sacred molecules help you look at stuff in a more, the power of ketamine is a dissociative medicine. And so it helps you look at things with neutral energy. It's a neutral. And so if you're neutral, then you can look at something that was really hard and go, Oh, I'm not sure.

And then healing and repairing from it without all that emotional debris around it can. So these are meant to create,  magnificent movement in healing and repairing. And if you're not using them that way, then why are you using them? Well, that's what I'm saying. There's a difference between like going to therapy and like having a licensed therapist, like take you through this traumatic event using ketamine versus shooting it up in your bathroom.

Yeah.  That seems like numbing and blunting. Yeah, yeah. You know, so, and, and the, the neurochemistry, right. The blanketing of the neurotransmitters, the calming, uh, like our brain can either be hot or, or when you're depressed, the brain is like shutting down. Right. And when you're anxious, the brain's ramping up.

So like ketamine as a medicine can come in and like, really like blanket those neurotransmitters and calm,  Calm the brain one way or the other, but when it's used in a way that, I mean, I've had people come in and they've been like, I did ketamine treatment and I don't feel okay. Like I had so much come up so fast because again, these things will mine, they're going to mind stuff.

You're going to mind stuff in your psyche. So we don't have help with that. I, when ketamine first came out years ago, I would. That was a part of some of the follow up sessions, and I couldn't believe how many people weren't getting follow up therapy. I was like, you are seeing some pretty intense stuff.

Well, and they're just doing them in big houses that some girl rented and claimed she's a shaman. You know, because I've been there, I've done those. I've never done convening, but the first time I did a psilocybin journey, Was like a big house that they had rented and they were like taking us through this journey But I felt really grateful because there were some people there who had like full breakdowns So I was like what is going on and you're tripping on medicine So you're like why is not medicine, but that's what they call it drugs You're tripping on drugs and i'm like why is that guy freaking the fuck out, but I had a really interesting experience where I had a giant fight Giant filing cabinet that came up through the floor and it was like they, I don't know who, you know, whatever I was seeing would flip through and pull a file out and ask me if I wanted to look at it.

And then we would open it and I would like kind of experience the experience from a neutral perspective. And then this giant pile of cat food was like moving so fast. We'd go again  and I would say yes or no. And there was some stuff where I was like, nope.  Isn't that cool that in all of that you still were able to utilize your free agency, right?

Free agency was honored. I think there's such a big piece of that in healing and repair is here's what I'm ready for. Here's what I'm not. And then our job is,  as a mental health provider that helps hold space is to help. Is help create safety in that space and go, Hey, let's, yeah, let's not write or, Hey, do you think that we need to, and you're just avoiding it because it's going to be painful.

And I'm here. You're in a safe place with, you know what I'm saying? So, so having the discernment to go. Let me help you with this or hey, let's not ever look at that and just move on. Yeah. Cause I don't think that every file has to be reviewed and I don't think that every story has to be retold over and over again.

What we care about is, is the nervous system healing and repairing. Cause if it is, you'll know, you'll tell, you can tell cause your life starts to, you just start to feel like you have more equilibrium. More, you're more grounded, you're more balanced, your bandwidth fills, like you can handle stress and it's not, it's not blowing you out of the water all the time, right?

Nervous system tension is obvious. You just know if you're healing from it or not. You know if you're bogged down with it or not. Oh, I like that. Okay, this is my last question for you. Okay. How does Jenny, I was like Jenny, I've never probably heard that one before, have you? All the time, yeah. You know people used to say to me all the time, they don't that much anymore, but they'd be like, do you like greenings and ham?

Yeah. And they wanted me to say I do not like them. Sam I am. Sam I am. Yeah. I'm like.   But how does Jenny like take care of Jenny?  I finally just got back into doing a way more self care for myself. So I, after my last baby, he's five now, I just was doing a lot. I was working 10, 12 hour days. I had three different jobs and then I built mend.

 Can my counseling, you know, group practice and you know, when you talk about depletion and I had not pregnancy with, I have easy pregnancies. That last pregnancy was not easy and I actually had a near death experience. Like I flatlined on the table for 90 seconds and I got shoved back into my body. Do you remember any of it?

Do you have any cool stories? Yeah, I have some cool stories that they're long, so I definitely believe in life after death. I'll tell you that. I love those I studied actually near death experiences as a part of my grad school, like project. And so I've always read books about them. I love this shit. I think that there's something after this, but having my own experience, I was like, yep, for sure.

Cause I didn't die. Like I was going somewhere else. Did you go somewhere else? Mm hmm. Yep, and I interacted with people and, and then I eventually was like, what kind of people? Like they were people that I, I mean, I couldn't tell you, it was like Julie and Eric. It was like, I knew that they were my family, like people that were connected to me.

And that literally at one point I was like, this is real nice here. I remember saying that, seeing all of my kids and being like, they have so many people that love them. And I was not distressed at all about staying. I was like, I think I'm going to stay here. This is real nice. I was like, and they were like, nope, and shoved me.

And I was like, boom, back in my body. And I was thrown so hard. I, this is the cool thing, like about understanding how the magnetic force in our bodies keeps our, like literally our soul in our body. Cause I was, it was so fast. I was so disoriented that my brain was working, but I literally was so like, I could not talk.

I tried to talk and I went, and I couldn't say anything. So there I went.  And I didn't have a baby to, I went under and then I woke up to having had the baby.  And so my partner, Beau's like bouncing the baby. There's like about like 30 people in the room and there's just chaos. I was like, and I couldn't talk and I kept trying to talk and I couldn't, and I was like, why is my brain working  and I can't say anything.

So then I started getting frustrated. And. And there was, and, and they were saying a million things to me. This one guy was like, what day is it? What time is it? How old are you? And at one point, Beau, my, he's my guy. He's like, stop talking to her.  They're just trying to assess where you were at.  He's like, Oh my God, like, that's those questions slower.

So anyway, finally I locked eyes on my doctor and he like walked over here and he's like, so something happened to you. Stopped breathing and I was like, just tears. Cause I couldn't do anything else. I was like, well, yeah, I don't know when I'll start talking again, but if I've lost my voice, I'm gonna be really mad.

Okay. Well, you have to take me, I was gonna say we could go out for wine, but  we're gonna go get a latte. Mocktails. You have to make some. Yeah, I'll tell you all about it. And you can tell me all about it. Yeah. So, but you know, when you look at, when you look at people reclaiming equilibrium and you look at people wanting to heal and repair their nervous system, just, you can, you can really trust that the body is an intuitive vessel.

And all the time that I've done this work, I can tell you after working on thousands of bodies and counseling now thousands of people is the body is self is self healing. It can self repair. That's why we heal from wounds. So if we will let the body heal from our emotional wounds. It will direct us. 

There's like an actual baby crying. I can hear it. Hey baby. So when you go in and you see that part of you that's going, Hey, here or look here, that's your intuitive vessel going. This is what we want to attend to. This is what we need to work on. And then you just find ways to work on that, whether that's with the help of someone else or that, you know, you resource and, and find things for yourself.

So, Oh, I like that. Yeah. Okay. So you hang out on the Instagram.  Yes. But if someone wants to reach out and work with you, best way to do that.  The best way to do that is to call it. Well, our website is mend. So people think I'm saying men, but it's mend and  D like we're mending hearts, right? Oh, there you go mend.

So mend counseling center. com.  I wish I had my number, our office number memorized, but Hannah's our, Hannah's our office manager and she,  we have a great team. Like I am teaching so many therapists in the community, somatic healing tools, and then my own team somatics. So we have a lot of therapists that are doing somatic therapy and then we have other therapists that are doing EMDR, brain spotting,  there isn't, I think a lot we can't capture in the mental health field unless they need a higher level of care.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. Well, thanks for your time and thanks for chatting today. Absolutely, thanks for inviting me. We can have like Will you come back again? I will. Okay, I love it when you're here. We can talk about near death experiences. I know, I'm like, hmm, hmm, hmm. I'll come with all my questions. Yes. And all my books.

Yes.  Awesome, well thank you so much, Jenny. You're a beautiful soul. Thank you. Always fun.