Healing from the Inside Out: Somatic Psychotherapy & Emotional Regulation with Debi Fries.

“We don’t just store trauma in our minds—we store it in our bodies. Healing starts when we bring awareness to those patterns.” – Debi Fries

Have you ever felt emotions stuck in your body but struggled to articulate them? Do certain patterns in your relationships or reactions seem to play out like a broken record? In this episode, we dive into the connection between mind and body—how our nervous system, breath, and self-awareness shape our emotional responses and resilience.

Joining me is Debi Fries, a somatic psychotherapist with over 20 years of experience in Integrative Body Psychotherapy (IBP). Debi specializes in helping individuals process trauma, navigate relationship challenges, and break free from outdated emotional patterns. Through her work, she bridges cognitive, emotional, somatic, and even spiritual aspects of healing.

Together, we unpack how breathwork, self-awareness, and nervous system regulation can help us shift from reactivity to resilience. Debi also shares powerful techniques for recognizing triggers, improving self-talk, and fostering emotional balance in relationships and everyday life.

Key Topics Covered:

How Trauma is Stored in the Body – Understanding how past experiences shape present-day reactions
Breathwork for Nervous System Regulation – Practical techniques like Tactical Breathing (16-Second Breath)and the 4-7-8 Breath
Breaking Free from Old Patterns – Why we repeat emotional cycles and how to update our responses with new information
The Power of Self-Talk – How internal dialogue shapes our behavior and relationships
CHCCC Method for Emotional Regulation – Crisis, Humor, Courage, Compassion, and Curiosity as a framework for self-awareness
Mindfulness & Active Rest – How everyday activities like sketching, listening to music, or watching fish can regulate the nervous system
Healing Through Relationships – Why conflict can strengthen relationships 

Bio

Debi Fries, MFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Los Angeles, CA. She is an Integrative Body Psychotherapy (IBP) practitioner and has taught IBP in the United States and Europe since 2006. 

As a Somatic Psychotherapist, Debi believes that our bodies hold tremendous wisdom and information and are also a repository for all that has happened to us. Her strategies enable access to this wisdom while allowing for new neural pathways to take hold.

In addition to being a therapist, Debi considers herself a guide, healer, alchemist and archeologist, unearthing and transforming patterns that no longer serve us. Utilizing the breath and the body, Debi helps provide a template for how to face the intolerable, the difficult, and the unavoidable, as well as how to live from an expansive, abundant, and joyful place.

Contact

Website:  http://www.elementalfamily.com/

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to the Contrarian Mindset
• 9:28 Understanding Negativity Bias
• 17:16 The Power of Neuroplasticity
• 26:00 Exploring Automatic Negative Thoughts

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:06] Welcome to It's an Inside Job, the podcast where we equip you with actual skills to build resilience, enhance communication, foster well-being,

[0:14] and lead and coach with impact. I'm your host, Jason Lim, and every Monday we bring you expert insights and real-world stories to help you thrive and succeed. And with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:27] Music.

[0:37] Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I have a couple of questions for you before we kick off. Now, have you ever felt like your body is holding on to motions, but you don't know quite how to put it into words, how to articulate those motions? You can feel it, but you can't really define it. Maybe you've also noticed patterns in your relationships or reactions that seem to get stuck on repeat, like a broken record. Well, today in this episode, we're going to dive deeper to understand the psychology-physiological bridge, the connection between brain and body. And with me today, I am joined by Debi Fries from Southern California. Now, she is a somatic psychotherapist with over 20 years of experience in integrative body psychotherapy, or simply IBP. It's a method that bridges the cognitive, the emotional, the somatic, and even spiritual aspects of healing.

[1:33] Now, Debi believes that our bodies carry both the weight of our past experiences and the key to transforming them. Now, we are going to talk about how breath, self-awareness, and nervous system regulation, while how it can help us break free from outdated emotional responses, patterns, so we are better at building resilience, robustness, psychological strength from the inside out. Now, Debi shares her approach to recognizing triggers, shifting negative self-talk, and navigating relationships with more awareness and more harmony in our approach.

[2:12] We're also going to explore the importance of emotional regulation in communication and why conflict actually strengthens our relationships and how simple practices like mindful breathing, journaling, and even something called active rest, well, how they can bring us closer to ourselves and those around us. So if you've ever struggled with emotional overwhelm, recurring relationship patterns that seem not to work, to get stuck where you have no traction, or you just simply want some practical, time-tested tools to feel more grounded and connected.

[2:46] So I think this episode is going to be right down your alley. So without further ado, let's slip into the stream and meet Debi Fries.

[2:53] Music.

[3:02] Hey there, Debi. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm actually really happy to be here. And I'm excited to be here to share some time with you and have a conversation and collaborate a little bit on, you know, what we each bring to the world. I'm looking forward to this conversation I have been for a few weeks now. I was wondering, Debbie, for our listeners, can you introduce yourself and what you do? Sure. I am a somatic psychotherapist. I've been, I'll explain what that is in a minute. I've been practicing for 20 plus years now, maybe a little bit more. And what a somatic psychotherapist is, I've been trained in something called integrative body psychotherapy.

[3:55] Integrative body psychotherapy is a form of therapy that takes the cognitive and the somatic together and the emotional and the spiritual. And so we work with the body because the body, this is not always a reliable source, what's going on up here. And you're pointing to the brain. Yes, thank you. We have 50,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day. Most of them are not filled with loving kindness and appreciation, and they're quite the opposite. it. And so what we find is that the body has this amazing capacity to both restore.

[4:45] And also to give us information. So I'll give you an example. If something traumatic, you know, big T, little t, they're different, doesn't matter. The body really doesn't know the difference. If something happened to you at four and you come in to me at 44, if anything that comes into your experience that this is the same as similar to or familiar to that state bound experience that happened to you, your body goes, uh-oh, there is a threat in my midst.

[5:25] And so what we have to do and part of the work that i do is we have to bring the body feeling of fear and threat up to date with new information what's the new information and how do we do that well first of all we come back i'm pointing to my body we come back to our body we take a few breaths we look around we find our feet get your feet grounded on the floor, Is there any threat coming at me in this moment?

[5:55] This is an old feeling. It's really not about now. I have the capacity today in my adult brain to bring this old feeling up to date with some real compassion, some real loving kindness. It's an offering from the adult that I am to the child or the adolescent or wherever these misses, we call them, happened. And so I work with the body. of course I work with talk therapy. Absolutely. We talk about it. I work a lot with the breath and what's going on. As you say this, oh, your throat just closed up a little bit. Did you feel that? Or they'll say, oh, wow, I felt, I felt tightening constriction. Or conversely, I felt open and available. And that was, there was some ease to it. So that's, that's what I have found is that the body, you know, there's Peter Levine and there's a lot of people out there, body keeps the score.

[7:01] And the research today that really is giving us information about what's going on in the body is phenomenal. So it definitely supports the work I do today. I find it fascinating to, I'm going to spend an hour sort of exploring for this, because as you know, the show is about building inner resilience and however that shows up. So a lot of times I will see clients or friends or adults that have certain patterns of behavior that I think, as you said, they were patterns of behavior or defense mechanisms that helped them cope to a previous time. But as they've moved on, the world has moved on, but those patterns in their head haven't and they still get elicited, they still get triggered.

[7:55] But sometimes people don't always, they're not able to articulate or formulate why they have these patterns because maybe they don't remember that big T or small T trauma from whatever situation it is long ago. When you're working with someone who has a certain phobia or a certain reactive reaction or a behavior that is more dysfunctional than helpful, Do you spend time, Debbie, going back, trying to find what the trigger was, or do you try to work with the current challenge so they have a much more adaptive and functional way of meeting whatever situation they are?

[8:37] It's a great question, and the answer to that is both. Okay. So we look at, I do something called a primary scenario. Essentially what it is is a template that looks at, we go three generations back, and we look at sort of what was going on with your parents at the time they were married, where did they get married, where, what year, was it? You know, we kind of look at also the climate, the environment, the political climate, all of it that contributed to sort of who these parents became. We look at their parents, so a person's grandparents. And then what we've got on this board, we do it on a board or a sheet of paper, we've got two generations that preceded you. And there's a whole story going on before you even got dropped into the mix, before you even came into the world. And so we look at then what was your role? What was going on at the time you came into the world? What was going on with mom and dad or whatever the combination of partners were? And by doing that, it immediately gives somebody perspective.

[9:59] Oh, this really was never about me. I just developed adaptations in order to navigate through this environment. All the good stuff. We also look at where did you get your goodies, we call them. Where did you feel a sense of being loved and accepted and appreciated without having to do anything. Most of us think we have to do something to receive acceptance, appreciation, love, acknowledgement. And quite frankly, our society colludes with that belief. We don't really just sort of celebrate the spirit of someone. We do when they're born. But then we start to look at, okay, who does this child have to be in order to get their needs met?

[10:58] And that's a big piece of the work. And then we begin to look at all of it with

[11:04] a real sense of honesty. We say the truth. And compassion and then we learn okay what skills what do i need to do to, to not have to rely on those adaptations anymore because they don't work for me they're not relational this is what gets couples in so much trouble it's these early experiences that oh my god here is the person that i love and all of a sudden they're a threat they're not a threat, and and if they are get out of course we're not you know i'm talking yeah well i guess we're not talking where someone's uh you know a threat in the real sense but the brain somehow as you said something familiar same as or similar has seen something in a particular behavior or a mannerism or something they said that triggers some past pattern and that the brain sees it as a threat. It's a perceived threat, not a real threat. And that's the distinction to make here, right? We're talking about a perceived threat, not someone who's 100%. Yeah, that's right. Absolutely. Right. And, and, you know, we repeat the same behaviors over and over and over again, not because.

[12:28] Not because we want to, but because they're familiar. So in couples work, when couples are having a conflict, they're having the same argument, perhaps over and over and over again, but they're not really saying what it is they want. What do we all really want? What do you think we all really want in this world? I think we want to be heard, valued, felt, a sense of connection, that our contributions matter, a sense of significance. From my perspective that is exactly right from my perspective as well and yet the very behavior we engage in creates the exact opposite.

[13:11] And so we have to learn yeah yeah so we have to learn that's the good news is that our brains you know we have this neuroplasticity of the brain today that we can learn new things all the time we can change our behaviors we can we can change the way we think and the way we look at things and bring that body feeling up to date with new information i do that over and over again with people in in when you're trying to sort of decipher or reverse engineer someone's pattern.

[13:47] And to try to figure it out, do you find it's easier doing it through the body, through how they feel, how they react physically to something? Or do you find sometimes the window could be the emotions, what's the emotion kind of communicating? Or is it trying to understand the narratives, the cognition, the thoughts going through their head? Is there a particular window that you find that's easier to access the core or the hub of what is causing their habitual way of thinking or pattern?

[14:21] So I don't think there's a clear answer to that because each person comes in with something different. So one of the things we want to build in therapy is a tolerance for the discomfort that you have tried to avoid for years and years and years. So if we can begin to build some tolerance for the discomfort, then we can do both the cognitive piece. We can do the body piece of the awareness of what's going on. And then we can have some practices that we do that can help heal and soothe and change the direction. Integrative body psychotherapy, what Jack Rosenberg and Beverly Katane Morris, by the way, a shout out to them because they created this many, many, many years ago, long before all of this became sort of the new way of doing work, right, with all the science and the research behind it. But they really came up, Jack in particular, back in his day, with this way of accessing how to help people move through not just trauma, but just challenging, difficulty, everyday experiences.

[15:48] With loving, compassion, kindness, appreciation, rather than bullying ourselves. Our self-talk, by the way, that's one of the biggest pieces I work with, is how to begin to change the self-talk. Because if we're talking to ourselves in a careless way, you can bet that when you get triggered, you're going to talk to that person that you love the most in the world the same way. What? Why would you do that?

[16:21] Yes, we're not always the rational creatures that we like to think we are. You know, we are emotional pattern-based creatures. And when that trigger hits us, we go to that habitual way of thinking or feeling or reacting. So that's a very good question. So you try or you help patients or individuals to find a level of tolerance for the discomfort, in a sense of equanimity.

[16:48] Because a lot of us shy away from pain. It's a natural reaction. We don't want to feel physical, emotional, what have you, physiological pain. That's right.

[16:56] How do you help someone to, I guess, systematically desensitize towards or finding a level of tolerance towards discomfort? So the first thing I would say that's really important is to be able to discern that this is something that happened to you and that what happened to you is not really, you know, Dr. Gabor Mate, I don't know if you're familiar with him. He's a very famous psychiatrist and doctor. He talks about what happened to us was really not the most important thing. It's how we made sense of what happened to us. So we have to begin to discern between the two. What happened to us, how we made sense of it, and then how we can with our executive part of our brain, right? The prefrontal cortex, our executive functioning, how can we then meet those parts with some real understanding? Like, it's almost a kind of a reparenting. We call it the corrective experience, how we can then talk to those parts of ourselves. And then become conscious about your choices, right?

[18:23] Is what I'm about to do, is what I'm about to eat, is what I'm about to drink, is what I'm about to watch, are these all going to elevate? Are they going to bring me more of what I want, which is all the things you just listed off? Connection, acknowledgement, and appreciation, wanting to be seen and heard. Or are they serving me? And if they're not serving me, well, guess what? You have the ability today with your brain to make different choices.

[18:56] I want to say something else. When you get excited or anxious, I'll answer it. I'll answer my own question. When we get excited or anxious, we often have the very same physiological responses. You ask somebody, right, and they tell you, oh, I feel like I have butterflies or my breath gets more shallow. Well, those are two ends of the exact same coin, anxiety and excitement. It is the lens through which we view them. So what I'm looking at all the time is what's the story, what's this narrative that you've created about yourself, about your partner?

[19:43] Jack used to say a great statement about um about couples he said being in a relationship is like dancing in a small closet you're bound to step on someone's toes, yeah picture yeah i know and if there's good will and and there's a foundation of trust you gotta have conflict conflict is inherent in every relationship it's essential, i i think that that is so salient right it's it's to understand that conflict is it is inherent in every relationship professional or private and i i think a lot of people shy away from conflict because conflict we generally give a negative connotation conflict means a fight conflict means someone's going to get hurt but there is constructive conflict there is civil conflict because it allows us to to to find a solution to to find a way of understanding each other maybe we agree to disagree but yes but if we can't move into conflict constructively uh diplomatically to some level then yet nothing gets resolved we we try to put a happy sheen on things all the time And there's no depth to the relationship. It just becomes...

[21:09] We avoid the minefield, per se. We don't look and dig up the minefield to get rid of it. We just both avoid it. And then slowly, what I've seen over time, I'm not a relationship therapist, per se, but I've seen that in couples and I've seen that in corporations. People slowly drift away because the connective tissue that held them together, it rots and it falls apart instead of binding and creating more stronger muscles between those relationships. because people avoid those conflicts. And of course, it's different patterns. But again, that's just from my layman's perspective. No, I completely agree. I think that you learn to either resolve conflict or become conflict avoidant in your family of origin. I think that's where we see the modeling. What was it like in your home? How did your parents resolve conflict? Did they resolve conflict? How did you deal with big feelings? Were you allowed to express your big feelings or did you have to somehow dismiss, diminish, detach from them in order to keep sort of, you know, we all play a different role in the family.

[22:21] And so we look at that as well. I think one of the most important things people can do is to practice curiosity.

[22:31] So I talk about something called CHCCC. C-H-C-C. Yes, C-C-C. There's three. So C-H-C-C-C. Okay. So the first C is we have to tell ourselves what we're feeling is not a crisis.

[22:54] Then we get to have a little humor. Can we offer a little bit of humor to this very big thing that's happening that feels so dramatic, right? It just sort of softens it a little bit. And then we go to courage. Can I have the courage to meet whatever's happening?

[23:21] Compassion. Compassion's huge for self and other. And curiosity. And curiosity is probably one of the best modalities that I can offer people. Can I get curious instead of immediately defensive? Why is my ego trying to protect me from something that I don't need protection from? This is my beloved. This is my beloved. And can I get curious about why they're having such a big reaction? In couples therapy, one of the things we get to do is look at what it was like for that little boy or that little girl growing up. So we get a real understanding. And two pieces are important about this. We are not responsible for anybody else's, for mending anybody else's wounds. However, we are responsible to not contribute to them. And by not contributing to somebody else's suffering means that you can have some perspective and some ability to actually be curious.

[24:50] You know we go into relationships and and we fall in love and everything's yummy and delicious and all the pheromones are going and then we start to right real life happens and there's dirty dishes in the sink and there's you know somebody isn't loading the dishwasher the right way or they Toilet seat self. Yeah, all the things. And then instead of looking at what's really going on, we argue about all of these things that we're not really arguing about. And I can talk a little bit more about that. But one of the things that's important is that we think our partners are mind readers. So we think if you really loved me you would know how to make me feel amazing and wonderful and adored and appreciated and then when you don't we feel deceived we feel betrayed but we've never shared what we really need and want we just expect somebody to know that.

[26:02] Yeah, if I could just rewind, Debbie, because you've made so many very salient points. So just for our listeners, what I hear what you're saying is that anxiety and excitement, they have the identical physiological markers. But as you articulated, the brain's a storytelling machine. So whether we feel anxiety, which is sort of a negative duress, or we feel excitement, which is ures, positive stress, it depends upon what we say to ourselves, right? That makes a difference. And I guess that's also similar to fear and anger, right? One thing we could be scared of something or we could be angry. It has the identical physiological markers. But as you said, there's the C-H-C-C-C, which is the crisis. Add humor. Don't take it so seriously. Don't give it more gravitas or weight than it is. Have the courage. Be vulnerable. Find the strength within the courage. Again, this is my perspective, what you're saying. You're doing great. Yep. Show self-compassion. You know, you show compassion for everyone else. Maybe turn that hose on yourself a little. Tell yourself that you're learning, you're growing, you're developing, you're evolving, and that you're human and you're fallible. And to learn from that. The major one you're telling yourself is at the end of this is curiosity.

[27:19] And that comes down to the quality of how we engineer the questions to ourselves. So instead of saying, for example, why, Jason, did you do that? Where I have to justify myself, maybe I could engineer to ask myself, what is the reason, Jason, you think you did that? Where it's more exploratory, it's more looking for an explanation behind that behavior or that thought process. Because what I really like what you said there is that, as an example, as you said, a couple gets into a fight, they go into the same pattern all the time. And jason's thinking about his wife why can't she figure it out she should know this right but jason has never shared it to her so it's just another narrative i've told myself that my wife should have you know extraordinary mental abilities to read my mind yeah it's like, then i have to show a little humor to myself i have to show a little curiosity you've never actually told her, Jason, have you? Well, no, no. What is the reason for that? Is this what I'm trying? I'm just trying to kind of. No, no, it's beautiful. It's great. And I would like to add that one of the ways we figure out what's going on is we go to the body as well.

[28:30] What's happening in my body as I have this thought? What's happening in my body as I'm expressing what I need or my desires or what, like, am I able to calm my, we, we, in order to have difficult, challenging conversations, we have to be regulated.

[28:56] We cannot give from a depleted place. We actually are not hearing someone from a depleted place just to just to rewind to operationally understand regulated are you talking about when the autonomic nervous system is that the parent sympathetic and sympathetic is at a a balanced state where we're not super stressed in in a fear state is that what you mean by regulated that's right so we first we understand the sympathetic nervous system right so that's fight, flight, freeze, and the new one they've added recently, fawn, people-pleasing. That actually is a, there's a panicky sort of feeling to people-pleasing.

[29:44] Uh-oh, if I don't say the right thing, if I, you know, we call it the eggshell walk. Uh-oh, if I have to be so careful because what's going to happen? Well, they might leave me or they might not like me. And that's an abandonment anxiety response. Again, conflict. It's a level of conflict there, right? A hundred percent. So the trick is, I mean, you know, conceptually we can all go, yeah, I'd really like to go from my sympathetic to my parasympathetic to my rest and digest state. where I have, where I'm resourced and I have access. Well, you can't do it from here. You have to actually have some real actionable things to do. Breathing, learn to meditate, a little mindfulness practice. You can do a 60 second little breath work every day, a few times a day. What you want to begin to do is rewire these pathways to say, oh, wait a minute, I'm actually in charge of my state of being, nobody else is. And there's ways to regulate and resource myself, journaling, meditation, mindfulness practices, exercise.

[31:00] Checking, making sure that our gut health is in good shape, journaling. I have a few things also, Like these are all things that we can do. Breathing, shaking. You know, they now know that you can do different things with your body movement-wise. Yeah, they get rid of the cortisol, right? Just to shake your own two or three minutes of jumping. A hundred percent. As you said, we want to be able to address these issues when we are regulated. And that means when our autonomic nervous system, the rest, digest, and the fight-flight are in balance. It's not when we are in a super activated state and not when we're depleted. And what you're saying is through certain exercises, whether it's mindfulness, breathing, journaling, exercising, making sure our nutrition, getting enough sleep, this will put us in a regulated state. And so generally in a regulated state, is there a certain time of day? I would presume that maybe in the morning after you've had your first cup of coffee, you know, maybe a light breakfast, you've gone for a walk, you'll be in a better state than at the end of the day.

[32:11] Uh to to address some of these issues so not necessarily i i think first of all in the morning when we wake up is when we're going to have our highest spike of cortisol all day what do we pair that with do we pair it with um looking at my phone oh shit i've got i don't know i have so many things in it if we pair it with that we are now on a trajectory also that first cup of coffee we need to wait about 20 to 30 minutes if possible before we have that cup of coffee if that's what we're starting our day with and what we find is that if you can have a little gratitude practice if you can do a five minute little meditation i start my day 99.9 of the time with a meditation i don't go look at my phone i turn on a meditation i do some breathing I get into my body, I say, thank you.

[33:09] There's actually studies about gratitude practice, how they actually create a dopamine response in the brain. It's amazing. Gratitude. So these are things we can do every morning. At the end of the day, there's a wonderful practice you can do with your beloved called questions to ask your beloved at the end of the day. And they sound like this what inspired you today what challenged you today why is it important to look at the challenge part the question because that we don't grow in our comfort zone we grow when we're you know when it's a little bit of a push here what surprised you today.

[33:57] What did you learn about love today? So it's a sweet little practice that at the end of the day you can do with your partner. What I do want to say, which goes back to being in a dysregulated state and trying to resolve conflict, never try to have a challenging conversation when you are walking side by side.

[34:25] I um i'll tell you why but i asked my daughter one day i said what when do you and your husband like you know what happens when you kind of get into she goes well sometimes when we're driving i'm like that's right because when we are in our peripheral vision what are we doing we're scanning for danger that is we're wired to do that so if you're walking side by side or you're driving in a car with one another and you start to have a challenging conversation, see if you can just put a pause on it, come back to it, sit across from one another, put a hand on your heart, take a breath and go from there. That's some solid advice, especially you taking in the physiology and the survival aspects of who we are and applying that right yeah right so there's there's really some real things we can do this isn't rocket science it's not magic it's about, creating an emotional maturity to be able to be in relationship.

[35:30] Music.

[35:37] Debbie's approach to helping clients and patients well it's a blending of cognitive somatic emotional and spiritual elements in order to support more holistic healing debbie shared how this approach helps individuals process trauma by engaging both the body and the mind she made it abundantly clear that trauma capital t or small t trauma isn't just something we experience mentally is stored in the body and accessing it through body-based therapies can create lasting changes, lasting transformation. Now Debbie explained that part of the healing involves updating old emotional patterns with new information, which allows people to process and release outdated feelings. She highlighted the importance of working with the body through techniques like breathwork and talk.

[36:25] To help people access their true feelings and well to reconnect with themselves in a way that feels safe and empowering i was especially curious about how to build inner resilience so i asked debbie how she helps clients identify emotional triggers and how she helps them find a way a path to deal with current challenges she explained that her process is both retrospective and present focused She encourages clients to explore past scenarios that might have shaped their emotional responses, but also while working with them to identify and shift patterns in the here and now, in the present. She said this approach helps people develop adaptive behaviors that are better suited to the challenges they face in their day-to-day lives. We also explored how to change and transform our behavior patterns when it comes to relationships. She shared that early life experiences often shape how we behave in our adult relationships. And these patterns are often unconscious. By becoming more aware of these patterns, well, that empowers us to make conscious choices to shift the old dynamics and to foster healthier connections. Now, there's a lot to unpack in part one, so I would suggest going back and

[37:39] rewinding and replaying it to get some of those specifics to make some notes. But with that said, let's now slip back into the stream with part two of my conversation with the.

[37:48] Music.

[37:59] I want to read you a quote that I love. Please. You don't need another human being to make your life complete, but let's be honest. Having your wounds kissed by someone who doesn't see them as disasters in your soul, but cracks to put their love in, is the most calming thing in the world.

[38:22] Isn't that beautiful? It's by a poet. His name is Emery Allen. I love that. Emery Allen. it is it is you know that's that's the great thing is about poet i think if we ever send uh astronauts to new planets to discover new civilizations send a poet because he or she will be able to articulate it you know with prose and such yes i like that quote it it is when we're dysregulated it's it's just that but you said it's not like rocket science but i think it is,

[38:54] still a little bit of a complicated process because we need to catch ourselves in the moment. We need to be present and not fall into the rabbit hole or the defunctional behaviors that most of us do when we get heated, when we get emotional, when the emotions rule us instead of us ruling the emotions, then we get lost in patterns. And the things that you said earlier in this conversation were so salient. It does take self-insight, self-awareness to catch ourselves It takes self-compassion and that vulnerability to say, okay, you know, this is my bad. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm contributing to the, to this fight in a very dysfunctional way. But I also think it takes self-efficacy.

[39:39] Where we have to sort of cowboy up or cowgirl up and find a way to diplomatically and civilly try to shift the pattern. Because if we are dancing in a small closet and I'm stepping on my, as you said, beloved or significant other, but that's going to happen, right? But do we want to keep doing that where I'm jamming my heel into her toes? Or do I want to step back and have this conversation? So it does take, I think, as you said, a discernment. It takes a certain level of discipline to find that self-awareness, to catch ourselves and to be vulnerable and to admit to ourselves, okay, I'm not showing up as my best self right now. How do I want to shift? And I think that comes back down to the curiosity and the quality of the questions I ask myself. And that might not be in the moment. Maybe something went sideways like, oh, that didn't go as planned. But then it's actually some sort of debrief with myself afterwards to try to kind of learn. This is what I'm picking up from what you're saying. No, no, that's beautiful. And two things I would add to that. And one is, if you are starting to get into a conflict or one of you is saying some careless things or mean-spirited or unkind, The other one, if the other one's more regulated.

[41:07] Can say, whoa, whoa, I don't know if you're aware, but the way you're talking to me, the way what you're saying is actually landing is really hurtful. And I'm wondering if there's another way you can say it.

[41:24] Another way that I talk to couples is to say, hey, it sounds like you're really frustrated and upset. How can I help? So those are ways that we can meet one another. But the more important piece, really the most important piece of everything is the repair.

[41:50] If you have said something done something you are going to do that it's going to happen what we don't want to see happen is what you said that you have the same you keep these repetitive behaviors because then what you're doing is you're sort of locking in that old pathway that this is the only way I can meet the conflict. So that's not helpful. But if you can actually use the time once you're regulated to do the repair, and I say this to parents with young children, and I say this to parents with their adult children.

[42:32] Own it. If you did or said something, tell the truth. It doesn't have to be some big dramatic thing, but own it. Clean it up. So you're modeling for your partner. You're modeling for your children that you're human and you're fallible and you're going to make a mistake. And, you know, I wasn't really thinking clearly. And I apologize if I hurt your feelings. And we have to do the same thing to ourselves. We have to apologize and do the repair when we've spoken carelessly to ourselves. It's a game changer, Jason, truly.

[43:12] Oh, I have no doubt. I have no doubt. If someone is sort of dysregulated and they want to regulate themselves before

[43:22] they have a tough conversation, one of the top skill that you talked about was breathing. That can help us bring a sense of buoyancy back to our mindset, to our thinking and our emotional state. Could you describe some breath work that you suggest that our listeners could benefit from? Definitely. So there's some different types of breath that a person can do depending on where they're at. So if a person is very activated, you probably don't want to do a lot of what we call high-charged breathing because you want to get that nervous system calmed down. You want to create sort of a synchronicity between the calm, the rest and digest, and the excitement. We can have both, actually. It's beautiful to be able to do both. But we have to be able to sit with, explore, and express what we're feeling. And that's where journaling can really come in to just get it out but one of the breath I like is you can take you can do it right now so take a four second breath in.

[44:37] Hold it for four, breathe out for four, hold the breath out for four. It's called a 16-second breath. It was developed, I don't know the guy's name, but it was a sergeant in the armed forces. It was called Tactical Breather. It was developed to help people in very volatile, high-risk situations know how to proceed. What do I need to do in this very possibly risky moment? So the 16-second breath has worked wonders for those people. Why wouldn't it work for us? There's a wonderful meditation teacher who calls it 16 seconds to bliss. So that's one. Another one is, again, you breathe in for four, you hold for seven, and you breathe out for eight. And by the way, there is so much online that you can discover about breathing and different ways of breathing.

[45:37] That that I think could be very beneficial and and you just play with them and I use that word very intentionally play with them because if it doesn't feel right just you get to stop you know we don't just because something works for one person doesn't mean that that's the panacea for everybody we all have different ways of showing up in the world and where we came from and what we need, maybe what I need right now is going to look different 48 hours from now. So again, what that talks about to bring it back to getting to know yourself, spend time with yourself, get to know your triggers.

[46:20] Get to know what delights you, what fills you up. I keep flowers around me all the time because I actually feel a sense of delight. I have pictures of my grandbabies all over the place. Why? Because it gives me delight. I can feel it in my body. Well, we need to do more of that. So what brings you a sense of well-being? What brings you a sense of delight? I think that, you know, surrounding our environment for me is listening to sort of jazz, you know, trumpet jazz and such, you know, it's just in the background, it's instrumental, and it's playing at a low level, right?

[47:00] Or there's music, I always feel the atmosphere of wherever I am, especially if I'm by myself with music. And it can play low in the background, but it's there, my nervous system relaxes to it. That's all you need to know. That's right. That's exactly right. Yeah. And for some people, it's, I know one client who has a huge fish tank and he just sits in front of the fish tank and just watches the fish kind of going back. I have another client. She likes puzzles. She gets these like thousand piece puzzles of a blue sky and she just clicks away at it, you know, on the evening with maybe a glass of red wine and she's in her own space. Those are meditations. Those are meditations that you're talking about. That's exactly what they are. We don't have to sit and, you know, om to meditate. It's a presence.

[47:53] It's just the ability to be really in flow and in the present moment. That's what you're describing. Go ahead. You sort of tell me that. Yeah, yeah. No, it's just, I just want to tell people, it's not sort of, as you said, you know, sitting cross-legged on a mat, you know, with your hands, whatever, cupped and such, saying om. There's a multitude for me, even on a rainy day. And I feel I go sketching, you know, I've been sketching for a while. I can sit in a car and I'll just sketch another car. I'll drive to a part of the city and sketch. It may only be for 20 minutes. Maybe it's for an hour. Maybe it's two hours. But I lose myself in the sketching because you see details that you would not ordinarily see. I have another client who sits in her garden. She closes her eyes with a cup of tea. This is especially in the spring and summer. and just listens to the wind, the rustling of the leaves or the birds, just using her, I guess that's a sense of mindfulness, not so much meditation, but mindfulness, using her senses to calm down her nervous system. So there's a multitude of ways for us to be able to, as you said, regulate our nervous system so we can move into that heated moment, however that shows up for us. Is that what I understand? Because that's what I'm kind of putting the pieces together. Yes, definitely. And what I would like to add to that is that when you are in that state, doing a puzzle, sitting in your garden.

[49:18] Listening to jazz, sketching, whatever, sitting in front of a fish tank, begin to notice what's happening in your body. What am I experiencing? How do I feel?

[49:33] Oh, I feel present and my nervous system feels calm and soothed and do more of that because if we can bring attention to what feeds us and nourishes us then we can also learn how to divert and move the attention when it's not serving us.

[49:59] We are wired to scan for danger. It is just, right? We're looking out for the saber-toothed tiger all the time. So since we're wired that way, we actually have to have some real practices.

[50:17] That we can implement on a consistent basis. Continuity and consistency, it's like building a muscle. It's the same thing. we have to do it enough times to begin to see a difference and it is it's about not how long you do something but it's how often and you know when we talk about rest to find regulation there is passive rest such as sleeping and napping or sitting in front watching a good movie but all the things we've been talking about puzzling or listening to jazz or sketching or whatever it is the breathing this is type of an active rest now it sounds kind of counterintuitive when we say active and it's resting but it's it's through that through sketching listen to music painting sculpting doing puzzles whatever our creative outlet may be going for a walk you know spending time watching fish in a tank whatever it is it's a form of active rest but what i see it also it It will help us, as you've talked about, using your vernacular, regulate us so we can charge ourselves to move into that heated, demanding, emotionally demanding situation.

[51:35] That's right. So if you have a sense of what it feels like when you're calm and regulated and resourced, then you have a way to get back to it.

[51:46] I have a couple that was in the other day, and they just got back from Hawaii. Yeah. And they had the most, and they've been together a very long time, and they had the most amazing time. They felt connected. They felt seen and heard. They felt all the good stuff. And then they came home, and all the old stuff started to come up. And I'm like, hmm. So what was different in Hawaii besides being in Hawaii? What was different? And they started to describe what was different. And I'm like, okay, you now have a place to go back to. Hawaii isn't in your mind. It wasn't magic. You get to bring that feeling of connection back into the relationship with all the to-dos and all the things coming at us and all the, you get to have a, imagine you're in Hawaii and sit across from one another. Smell the air. Feel the warm breeze. hear the ocean play we have to play and and i think as silly as it sounds it's really important because when we feel connected when we feel seen and heard when we feel valued we can.

[53:05] Nothing's a crisis it's just old stuff that just needs our attention so what do i need from you as a partner and what do I need from me to take care of me?

[53:20] When it comes to, if I could just circle back to regulating ourselves, and you talked about there's the breathing, the tactical breathing, the 4-7-8, but you said journaling can also help us do a self-discovery, an exploration of ourselves. Are there certain questions, you know, people might be thinking, journaling, maybe that's something I should do, some sort of active writing to discover myself. Are there one or two or three questions that you think that could help prime their thinking, especially for someone who's never done it before, has done it very seldom?

[53:58] So, yeah, that's a great question. So there's so many different ways to journal. Some people like to literally just take a blank sheet of paper. Oh, by the way, they're finding that it's better to not journal with lines. Rather just have a clean sheet because the lines have a tendency to kind of constrict and direct right so right away i know so right away your brain is like trying to now fit right into this so i love your lane right keeping the lane keeping the lane yeah so um just take a piece of paper and a pen and just say i don't know what to write i have no idea i'm just gonna see and you just write. Whatever comes up, even if it's, I don't know what to write right now. That's one way. That's kind of this free form. Another way is, what am I feeling right now?

[54:54] What are my thoughts? And just stay, keep it simple. What am I feeling? What are my thoughts?

[55:04] Maybe something else might be, what do I wish I could hear right now? What do I wish someone would say to me right now see we're building sort of a sense of using your word of equanimity but we're also really beginning to find out well what do i need how are my thoughts sort of infusing my behavior impacting my behavior are they reliable um.

[55:36] Now, if we look into journaling, because I think journaling is an excellent tool, but a lot of people think, okay, yeah, it's putting pen to paper. And I always think it's better to, you know, write in cursive than to type on a keyboard. Because the reason I say this from my own experience is that my brain may be rushing with thousands of thoughts, but physically I can only write so fast. And so what actually, when I write pen to paper, it actually slows down my thinking because there's no way I can write as fast as I can think. It slows down my thinking, my emotions. It allows me to process. That's just my little caveat there. But if I have to ask you from your professional experience, if someone's thinking, okay, I get what Debbie's saying, but how often should I do it? And how long should I write each time I sit down?

[56:29] So this is my caveat here. Because the minute we start to have parameters on how long, how much, we may go back into an old pattern of being told what to do and how to do it. So I say, you know what? Just put a timer on and write for two minutes. Two minutes. Or a minute. that rather than make it one more thing i have to do and i have to do it right if you have any of that going on perfectionistic stuff going on you're gonna a you're gonna find a way not to do it or b you're not gonna do it from a place of as an offering this is an offering when you journal I rather than say I have to do something say I get to I get to journal I get to wake up and say thank you I get to look at something and appreciate it I get to empty the dishwasher I get to do the laundry that's that's a brilliant way of saying because when you say I get to what we're talking about is a level of.

[57:49] Well, you're in the here and now, but it's also gratitude, right? You're grateful that you have the ability and capability of doing whatever that action is in the here and now. And that gives you a sense of appreciation. Is that what I understand? Yes. And it tricks the brain. It's called a paradoxical injunction.

[58:09] Okay. So this is what it sounds like. I'm going to journal even though I want to. Because what do most people say? Even though I don't want to. So by saying, I'm going to do something that you're having maybe some resistance around and making it a positive, intentional action, it's kind of like a little trick on the brain.

[58:37] Paradoxal injunction. I like that. I haven't heard that term before. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. Not mine. I didn't make it up. No, no, no. No, but I think we've covered a lot of ground when it comes to regulating. And so if a couple is sitting down and, you know, they feel that both of them really want to work on the relationship and let's say they can't afford a therapist, they, for whatever reasons, they don't have access to, you know, someone of your caliber and your knowledge and your expertise. Is there something that they can do, you know, sort of nuts and bolts, or they both know they want to work on something? And I think you've touched on a lot of this during this episode. But is there something more specific or something they can ask themselves or some sort of way of doing this? Yeah, I definitely think so. I think that a couple of things that we talked about, just a gratitude practice and appreciation for who this other person is and what their experience was like growing up, having those CHCCC pieces, and...

[59:48] So there's card games I can show you. I have a couple of them right here. So do you know who Esther Perel is? She's a very famous Belgium psychotherapist. And she writes a lot about intimacy. And anyway, she's marvelous. And she has a set of card games. And they're called Where Do I Begin? So that's one thing a couple can do. Here's another one. It's called Let's Get Closer. Let's get closer here's another one called uh icebreaker by best self this one is called deeper talk and so i'll give you an example please find one so here's here's a question and they're all divided up into different categories this one in particular so this is dreams life lessons exposed right that vulnerable those are questions about how to be vulnerable courage belief self awareness so this one is self awareness and it says what moment do you wish you could relive and even change.

[1:00:59] So if you just think about some of these questions, if you're sitting down, you can play them in a group, you can just play them with your beloved, but you're sitting down and you think about these questions, you think about what is that? You're getting to know somebody on a deeper level. You know, there's an attorney who wrote a book and the title of the book is, If You're in My Office, It's Too Late. And what I loved about this book is that he taught, I listened to an interview years ago that he said, couples don't talk about all the stuff that they actually need to talk about. They don't talk about intimacy. What do you like? What feels good? How do you, what position do you like? How do you empty the dishwasher? Do you leave dishes in the sink? How do you feel about shoes? It doesn't matter. It's get to know each other. Get to know what impacts your beloved. Get to know who you are at the same time. That's why I love these games. So those are some ways sitting together, putting a hand on your heart.

[1:02:22] Another thing I love to do, and I do this with couples, is I have them put a hand on their heart. And then a hand on their beloved's heart, and just take a moment. And just take a breath. And look at who's across from you. There's no predator here. This is somebody that you said your vows with, that you want to spend the rest of your life with. Get to know them. Get to know yourself.

[1:02:50] So if you can do therapy, and by the way, there's things you, you know, there's here in the United States. I don't know if you have it over there, but we have something called BetterHelp. BetterHelp, I think it is. BetterHelp. That is a wonderful, very low fee where they set you up with a therapist. Oh, that's the online psychologist. Online. Yeah. It's great. It's all, you know, it's all good stuff. Anything that gets you to get to know yourself better, to heighten your self-awareness, to find out what you need and who you are, I'm all for. And you don't have to spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands of – you know,

[1:03:29] you walk in a bookstore, there are thousands of books about how to be healthier, do better. Like they're great but you have all the answers they're all right here.

[1:03:48] We just need maybe some guidance on how to tap back into that knowing that wisdom that resides within each of us i think that's such a that you know that really hits really hits home just the way you said that you know the passion and the vibrancy in which you said that that simple statement there is such depth and within that depth there's an eloquence in which there's a lot of room latitude and altitude to explore because if you look at most couples and again we're talking about perceived threats not actual threats between couples but in perceived threats a lot of the times when you see relationships go south or completely derail it's it's just that they're embattled they They don't take time to communicate at a deeper level. And some of those questions from those card games, you know, those kind of questions are not questions we contemplate or ponder or think about on a daily basis. They come at you at such an angle that it completely breaks your pattern of thinking and allows you to think at a whole different paradigm, if I may say that, a whole different level, right? A whole different dimension, maybe.

[1:05:06] Throwing adjectives around here, right? And it's fun. And so you're adding that element of humor and playfulness, which is essential for connection. You know, I hear couples say all the time, we just don't communicate. No, you're actually communicating just fine. What you're not doing is communing. We want to commune. We can't commune from battle.

[1:05:34] We have to stop weaponizing our anger, our big feelings. Things we have to learn how to regulate and tolerate them so that then we can come to one another and get what we need and want i think it's so well said we weaponize what other people say or do and then throw it back at them right and it's just it is we keep our heads behind the parapet firing slings and bows and arrows and everything right and it says okay you know what let's just open the gates here have a sit down and as you said so well we are communicating but not in the most best way let's commune let's really sit down and i think those cards are such a what was it the icebreaker and let's get closer uh where do we begin where to begin yep those are great games those are great starters and you know they have them for family too by the way i have one it's It's called Little Talk for younger kids and families. Like, what a wonderful way to sit down with your family and do a card game, you know, once a week or something. Talk about what's going on. I mean...

[1:06:47] And sometimes, you know, it's repairing the relationship we have with ourself, you know, back to what you were talking about, the self-compassion and vulnerability. And sometimes you can take some of these questions and they may be the questions you use to journal. Maybe they become the... Great idea. Yeah, just sort of riffing off what you're saying. Yeah.

[1:07:07] Yeah. Debbie, we are coming close to the top of the hour and it's been such an enriching and intriguing conversation. Is there something you'd like to leave with our listeners to think about or food for thought? I think the most important thing I can leave somebody with is, can I offer myself the love, the compassion, the understanding that I so freely and easily give to others? Can I turn the mirror back around? Can I look deeply into my soul and offer myself devotional attunement, appreciation? Can I look in the mirror and say, Debbie, I love you. Jason, I love you.

[1:08:15] And then see how it feels and stay with that feeling and just keep shuttling back and forth. Debbie, thank you very much for such an engaging conversation today. I've learned a lot and hearing from your expertise and your deep knowledge, it also underlines some of the things that I'm doing with clients that I know

[1:08:40] I'm on the right road myself. And it's been an eye opener because you've opened some space between, let's say, step A and step B that I haven't explored, that there is something in between that. There's a deeper sense of skills. So I really appreciate learning from you today. So thank you for that. Thank you. It's been a real treat to be with you. Really appreciate it.

[1:08:59] Music.

[1:09:07] Well, folks, as we wrap up this conversation, I hope you're walking away with some practical insights on how to build resilience, how to have more self-awareness, and how to find emotional regulation. You know, all of these factors, plus a lot more that we've talked about today, well, they play a vital and critical role in how we navigate challenges and relationships and personal growth. You know, Debi shared a lot of powerful techniques for regulating our nervous system and managing stress. And this includes exercises, what she introduced, the tactical breathing, the 16 second breath or the 478 breath. We talked about all sorts of different ways we can regulate our nervous system to have those conversations with ourselves and with others. And this could be watching fish. It could be chilling out with a good book, going for a walk, sitting on a bench and listening to the rustling of the leaves. It could be sketching or drawing or painting or sculpting or maybe it's cooking a fine meal.

[1:10:10] All of this is act of rest and this helps us regulate our nervous system. We also explore the role of self-discovery in strengthening relationships, highlighting how small intentional practices like journaling prompts, gratitude exercises, and even card games, well, how they can foster deeper connection and understanding.

[1:10:29] Debi reminded us that self-compassion is key in this process, encouraging us to shift from self-criticism to self-support. And one of my favorite takeaways, we are not responsible for healing others, but we are responsible for not adding to their wounds. That simple shift in perspective, well that can change the way we approach communication and conflict in our lives. You know, if this conversation really resonated with you, I encourage you to reflect one insight you can apply today. That may be practicing self-awareness in a moment of stress, maybe it's communicating your needs more clearly, or maybe it's simply offering yourself a little more kindness, a little more self-compassion. And Debbie, a personal thank you from me to you for spending some time with me today to share your wisdom, your skills, your knowledge, and your experience with us. I found it very eye-opening and I've learned a lot from our conversation. And folks, I encourage you to check out the links if you're interested in knowing more about Debbie's work or her writings. I will leave all the links in the show notes. And if you found this episode insightful and you enjoyed it please consider subscribing sharing with a friend or leaving a review it really helps me spread the word well thanks again for allowing me to spend some time with you today i will see you friday for bite-sized fridays and until then keep well.

[1:11:52] Music.