Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Healthy Living Through Adversity part 2
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A rough childhood doesn’t just fade; it leaves tracks in the body and mind that can guide every choice we make. We sit down with Juan, who speaks candidly from inside prison about ACEs—Adverse Childhood Experiences—and how early abuse, neglect, and instability hardwire a constant state of threat. Together we unpack the brain’s threat circuit: the brainstem scanning for danger, the amygdala firing alarms, and the prefrontal cortex that goes offline when survival takes over. If you’ve ever felt your words vanish, your appetite crash, or time slow during a conflict, you’ve felt that circuit in action.
What makes this conversation different is the bridge from science to practice. Juan shows how awareness turns into skill: noticing shallow breaths, naming the trigger, and using slow, deep breathing to keep the cortex online. We explore the heavy cost of toxic stress—cortisol flooding the body like a stuck gas pedal—and why chronic hypervigilance links to real health problems. We also confront a hard truth: dehumanization fuels violence. When trauma disconnects us from our own humanity, it becomes easier to objectify others. Reconnection is the antidote. Compassion isn’t a free pass; it’s a strategy that restores choice, accountability, and safety.
You’ll leave with a clear map of ACEs, practical tools to regulate in the heat of the moment, and a hopeful reminder that neuroplasticity makes change possible at any age. We talk about small daily practices—breathwork, brief meditation, grounding—that shift outcomes from escalation to understanding, even in high-stakes settings like a prison yard. If you’re a parent, educator, clinician, or anyone who cares about healing and public safety, this story-driven guide will help you spot triggers, prevent spirals, and build a culture that treats dignity as a design principle. If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to help others find their way to regulation and repair.
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Well, hello, and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Jill Grumbine, and today we're going to begin with part two of our news series, Healthy Living Through Adversity. We have Juan with us as our guest, and he's currently incarcerated. We were talking about trauma, stress, adversity, a concept called ACES. And Juan, you know, welcome back and let's uh get back to it.
SPEAKER_02:Right on. Thank you, Joe. Um, and just again, I appreciate you having me. So yeah, um, so when you think about healthy living through adversity, right, um, well, childhood is like the first place where we experience adversity. Right. And so that's why this is so important because we learned that um we were resilient then through whatever we had to survive. So whatever, you know, uh adversities we face today, uh, we can have confidence that we have all the tools that we need to um to get through it, you know, and be resilient. So uh right now I give a little bit more um information about um like early childhood experiences and how this shapes behavior, health, and um survival patterns. So ACEs are generally potentially traumatic events that occur before a person's eighteenth birthday. Um these experiences uh disrupt the child's sense of safety, stability, and connection. Okay, con um common ACEs include like physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, neglect, poverty, domestic violence, substance abuse in the home, mental illness and caregivers, incarceration of a parent, and separation or divorce. Okay, so that's that's generally a nutshell understanding of of aces in itself.
SPEAKER_03:And pretty much every child deal with one or more of those, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Uh and and the the remarkable thing is this, this so this is new science. A lot of this came as research that was uh conducted regarding men in prison, um, as opposed to the general population. So it it is it is staggering to like know that men in prison, a lot of us have six or more ACEs.
SPEAKER_04:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:So they know this across the board, right? Yeah, yeah. And so this sets the stage for uh I mean it it the the the all the new information that's coming out is really important to say like you know, while we may be criminalized to say, you know, why uh oh these people are horrible people or they're monsters, it was like, no, we're we were the most traumatized people in society.
SPEAKER_04:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:You know, and there's just certain things that you can expect once a person have experienced this high level of aces. It's it's it can be almost be compared to like if you plant a seed and um soil that it or or or like dirt, rocks, and weeds, you know, you you you wouldn't expect a healthy plant. No, right? And so that's the importance, right. That's the importance that trauma has in the environment. That's the important role that it plays in the child's life.
SPEAKER_03:You know, there's a passage in the Bible that mentions that, right? If you you plant the seed on rocky soil, you're gonna nothing'll grow or you won't get fruit bearing, and if you take care of it, nurture it, you're gonna have good fruit and and all of that, right?
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. You know, and and and the funny thing is why we expect something different when we're di dealing with human beings. You know, why would we expect for us who have been subjected to some of the worst things that a human being could be subjected to and yet blame us for the decisions that we've made. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a certain level of accountability that definitely uh this is not to get away from someone being accountable for their actions. It's just really um just really uh explaining how you know these experiences or a person's environments really shape who they become as people. And how, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I think it also puts a big light on where we should put attention to, right? Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I mean the the main thing is it's is understanding this with compassion, right, and treating people um with dignity and care, uh, and knowing that no one was born evil. You know, uh things happen things happen to us, you know, and um one thing that we'll discuss later on is is how to reprogram. So if you look at um the human brain as a computer, um and the conditioning or the conditions that we grew up in, you know, it wired our brains a certain way, and we were just operating on those programs, you know. And so the good thing about the the the human brain is you know, they have this thing called neuroplasticity, which means it can we can rewire our brains. You know, our brains can be rewired. This is not a incurable problem as we have been.
SPEAKER_00:This call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.
SPEAKER_02:So what we're gonna be tracking here is is how do you get to that point? So we're in the right now, we're in the awareness stage, right? Just becoming aware of cases and how it affects a person. Um, we're not trying to fix it at this point, we're just trying to really understand it.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And so with that, I'll give I'll give you this this uh quote by Dr. Uh Carol Darcy, which defines trauma as a stressful event that leaves a person powerless and overwhelmed. Trauma creates a disconnect within the person, so you may find yourself disconnected from your body, your mind, your thoughts, your emotions, and even other people. Um so, and she says, so the way to help is to really find ways to reconnect to yourself. This disconnect is very important, um, and one worth elaborating on because, like, well, when I seen this, I was like, oh wow, disconnect. So psychologically, they know it it it's it's it's proven that you could not, we have these filters in place. We could not hurt hurt or harm anyone if we acknowledge their humanity. If we saw their humanity, we could not hurt them. So this disconnect that it's talking about, when when I disconnect from myself, I disconnect from humanity. Well, the problem with that is if I disconnect from my own humanity, then I disconnect from other people's humanity. And so now people are no longer human beings, they're objects.
SPEAKER_03:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:Right? And this is a like and like and like you said, what do you do? Well, we have to understand in order to solve this crime problem or this violence problem, it's it's really a disconnection problem that a person um you know uh experience as a result of their own trauma. So and like she said, so the the only way to help is to reconnect back to yourself. You have to and then the journey that I my journey was connecting back to my humanity. Because again, if I connect back to my humanity, then I can connect back to other people's humanity, and that that that connection of me not being able to harm another human being is now brought back um online.
SPEAKER_03:Wow, that's heavy. I I you think of um a prison as a very difficult place to connect and find your humanity. My brief experience with incarceration. Um showed me that uh the the jail I was in uh for just a few months was uh it seemed like they were trying to disconnect you from your humanity. It seemed like they were trying to dehuman in in the way they treated you, the way that things set up. So you you got quite an obstacle to overcome in a place that and not only that, you understand the complexity of the problem, right?
SPEAKER_02:Because often these institutions or these systems, they are they profess to be rehabilitative places, right? Where someone is supposed to learn, they're supposed to be corrective, right? But it's like, well, how can you have this rehabilitative approach, but at the same time you dehumanize people?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Right? So there's a conflict there. But the good news is uh the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, they are making some changes. I will say that. They are making some changes in how they are uh yeah, they are making some changes in how they interact with incarcerated people, um, because of all this new science.
SPEAKER_00:So there is hope in that uh they are at least making uh a training This call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So um now if you want, we can take a look at how this shapes your worldview. Oh yeah. So often, you know, this is so often this comes like we often uh and I could say myself, but you know, I feel like I don't matter. I can't depend on anyone. I'm not enough. The world is a dangerous place, no one would take care of me or my needs. Right? There's a constant threat of danger at all times. There is nothing in me worth knowing. So these are like and and and this is different for everyone else, right? But these are just some examples of like where low self-esteem comes from, no confidence in yourself come from.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:You know, because uh we didn't we didn't have anyone like or someone to reflect our worth back to us.
SPEAKER_03:You know, so that reflects kind of it reflects a feeling, right? I mean, like that's how you feel and and when you're when you're sitting there dealing with uh either a consequence or or or dealing with uh the memory or the experience of a adverse uh situation, you find yourself feeling those waves that you were just describing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. And it and it's also important that those experiences, right, um, those are the original, what you call the original trauma, which becomes like triggers. Now, when you have an emotional reaction to something, right, in the present that resembles the original trauma, your brainstem, like we haven't got into talking about the brainstem, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex, but that's the that's the um the sequence in which the information coming into your senses is processed. And so the brainstem can't tell time. So when it sees something that resembles the original trauma, you don't know that what you're experiencing right now, um you experience it as if it was happening twenty or thirty years ago or whenever the original trauma happened.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So, I mean this, yeah, this is this is really uh to me it was it was really fascinating to see how my brain um processed this information and then um how that brainstem, once something I have this emotional reaction, means something from my past is being triggered. Um that gets into the amygdala, right? So it it it the amygdala is your alarm system and it's the survival center.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_04:And what the amygdala does is it shuts down Yeah, the lizard brain, right?
SPEAKER_02:So that shuts down your prefrontal cortex, which is the place where you govern right, wrong, and things of that nature, your moral issues.
SPEAKER_03:Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:And so when you think when you think about the amygdala shutting down the prefrontal cortex, right? So now you're in survival mode as a result of this trigger. Okay. Um here's a feeling. Have you ever got so mad to where uh you lost your appetite or you cannot articulate yourself correctly? You want to say something, but something it just comes out all wrong? Sure. Okay, so that right there is what it feels like when your amygdala has taken over. Because your your prefrontal cortex is offline. Right? So now you lost the ability to talk, you're not hungry, right, and things of that nature. So the goal of what we're trying to do here is now that you understand this process, and we're you know, we're this is accelerated, you know, um like information, but now that when you start to understand this process, the goal is to keep you to keep the amygdala from shutting down your prefrontal cortex. To recognize that something from my past is being triggered.
SPEAKER_00:To understand that you have sixty seconds remaining.
SPEAKER_02:Like dissociation is my stress response.
SPEAKER_03:Well, we got one minute left. We're burning through this. So you got a lot of great information.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So uh, you know, the key takeaway here is just understanding um that you know trauma often causes us to disconnect from ourselves, right? And the only way to to heal is just to find ways to reconnect back to ourselves. And that's what we'll be discussing, and um and that's the help. Okay, that there there in therein lies the challenge, but that's the help that we're offering here to know that we can get past these uh adversities in our life.
SPEAKER_03:So, you know, hopefully this information has been helpful. That is powerful, and uh it it connects us to where our ability to make choices can be uh uh kept in the forefront even when we're going through a difficult trauma. And I I know what you're saying. Uh um uh when you have something that you get triggered by it's like almost like you lose time, like you just like you go into a dream state. But uh you can learn how to maintain at least uh one keep one foot into the the conscious uh world where you are still thinking about what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, definitely he left, but I'm here. Oh I did kind of want to add something off of what he said though, because he didn't I I'm surprised he didn't say this. But when he was bringing up like um when you get so mad and your amygdala is like your brain is in your amygdala, and um let me see if he's there on top of it.
SPEAKER_03:He says, Well, you can't you can't articulate your words and yeah, the blue town link and and you go So when he said like the digestive stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We when we did our research, it literally like stopped your digestive system. So that's why we um we're not hungry. That was so crazy to me when I read when we were reading that and stuff.
SPEAKER_03:I was like, wow, I guess wow, yeah, your appetite exactly when you get stressed out or anxious or angry or any extreme emotion like that. You you just you don't even think about food.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it just shows like more, it supports like how it impacts your body internally. You know, your organs, not even your mind, your organs. Like that is crazy.
SPEAKER_03:It it affects the brain stamp regulates your organs and and it doesn't take care of your heartbeat, your lungs breathing, your kids, your lungs. It's important that it functions that way because what if you have to think about your heartbeating? You don't die. We don't forget. We can keep on rolling here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you you mentioned about the brainstem, so another function of the brainstem is it it it so the brain stem is constantly like without you knowing it is constantly searching for a threat. Okay. And so now imagine you're walking, right? I'm sure you had this happen. Um you're walking somewhere, or maybe you're at home alone, and all of a sudden you hear this sound or something, and all of a sudden it feels like hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Sure. Right? And you're like, what is that? Right. Right? Okay, that was your brain that was your brain stem. Right. And it it was all it it's always searching for a threat to see, and it's always assessing whether you are safe or not. And then you feel that you feel that feeling like once you realize, like, oh man, you know what, that was nothing.
SPEAKER_00:Um, you know, um the leaf, you know, a this call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.
SPEAKER_02:You know, a tree branch hit the window or something like that, then you relax, right? Well that that brainstem, that's the brainstem at work. It's always looking for a threat. Right? Um, and then but if it flags a threat, that's when it triggers and sends an alarm system to the amygdala. And that's when they uh that's your survival mode, right? So the amygdala, that's responsible for the release of cortisol, like the stress hormone cortisol. That's your fight, flight, or freeze response.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And so what the amygd what the amygdala feels like when you you know let's say you're walking through the woods, right, and then you see this bear right, your heart starts pumping, right? Your heart starts pumping, your palms get sweaty, your veins, you know, and you're starting that's that is the beginning beginning of the amygdala shutting down the prefrontal cortex, and what it's saying is it's there's no time for thinking. Right now I have to react. Okay. And again, the reason why that's important is because like when the bear walks away, then your your stress response system relaxes, right? It stops pushing all that cortisol and those stress hormones. Well, the problem with trauma is is that the bear can come home every night in the form of a spouse, in the form of a abusive parent, or any number of circumstances that triggers the stress response system. And now the issue becomes now that the bear comes home every night, this is toxic stress when a child is constantly being bathed in this cortisol. Okay, this toxic stress, these hormones, right? And it and it creates the the hypervigilance in which now because of the prolonged release of this toxic stress, right? Of this cortisol, now it's like they said it's it's like a gas pedal that's stuck down all the time. We are constantly being bathed, like our brains never shut off the release of this cortisol. And that leads to other problems.
SPEAKER_03:It it's brutal. It's the the cortisol and adrenaline that that get released when you get these issues. They put such a stress just on your body, not not in your mind and your spirit. But your body itself, uh it's it's a quite a lifetime. And and if people are dealing with all or whoever's dealing with these traumas are dealing with it over and over and over again. And it's it's as you start to understand that you realize how um how brutal that is on the system, mind, body, and spirit.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And you know the the the the with all the new research, they're actually connecting a lot of now um health issues, you know, to uh so just so everyone knows, you know, this this science that we're talking about here, it was developed between um 1994 and 2004. And so this is a lot of the new research that's coming out, and so now they're connecting a lot of mental health issues, physical health issue. All of these issues are now being cr uh connected to trauma. You know, and and like you said, the stress response or the release of that being bathed in that cortisol for this prolonged period of time and how that cortisol it modifies you know DNA, it changes your immune system. I mean there is so much to to uncover when you talk about this toxic stress. You know, and and I'm glad you know that this information is now getting out there.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah it's it's a physiological issue as well as like you say there's still accountability and choices but there's a physiological issue that is influencing the situation dramatically. It's not just a little thing it's a it's a big thing. And when you're you get to that flight like I don't know how many times I've had a close call to my life or you know something came almost got hit by a car, whatever it was, the world stopped you know time stopped to go in slow motion. You know that's all real. And imagine every time you know your your father came home or your spouse comes home or whatever the the uncle or whoever it was that that you have to deal with that kind of a of a of a drama and a trauma.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah yeah and and and that creates what they call your stress response and so now that stress response system is with us today. Right? So I carry all of those and again that's what being triggered is about so someone can do something. And there it it could be a extremely harmless um I remember watching this video with the Compassion Prison Project and to to drive this point home, you know, um a a a child was shoved in the in the closet while uh the the father was beating the mother. And later on in life he he was in the pool and a kid was just playing with him and pushed him dunked you know like kids play, dunked him into the water. Well when he came out of the water he came out he came out aggressive and and and and and and and violent and and to hurt his kid. And so what happened was within that little shove that shove triggered him being pushed in the closet as a child. You know and that's the and that's the issues that we're dealing with you know to to to your point what you're saying is you know um when someone has that fight flight or freeze that that that stress response that it gets it's it's automatic.
SPEAKER_00:This call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.
SPEAKER_02:So he got he it's not something we think about and he got dropped back you know ten years, you know, into that moment when he was being shoved in that closet again.
SPEAKER_04:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:And that's what he thought was was happening. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:It's like a flashback Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yep. You know which reminds me, I'll tell you this so they say like triggers are like trapdoors. And like so imagine like you're standing on a trapdoor, right? Those two the doors that you're you stand on and they open up and it drops you into whatever. Um so trigger triggers are like trapdoors and what's happening is so when something happens in the present that triggers something from the past is like those trapdoors open up and you're dropped back twenty, thirty forty years. Because remember the brainstem can't tell time.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So it doesn't know yeah so it thinks it's reliving it's it it really thinks and it feels you have all the physical emotions and and and um you have all the physical res um sensations of the original trauma as if it was happening in its full force at that very moment. Wow you know and you and you can't even tell the difference.
SPEAKER_03:Wow yeah so so being aware how does that help you when it would like you know you're now aware of that and and you know over time it as they're understanding how these things work it's easier to bring that to somebody's attention if you're trying to help them um what what is being aware of this how does that affect you uh for me uh it was so funny that's what we when I was explaining to you about this brainstem always looking for a threat so um I was out uh on the yard and you know I had a conflict with a guy where I wasn't sure where we were at and I was kind of like looking to see like where is he at?
SPEAKER_02:Where is he at? And the funny part was I recognize I said, you know what this is my brain stem at work. I'm looking for a threat.
SPEAKER_03:You know and and and then even like when my uh um amygdala is being triggered and my breathing is getting shallow I know I said oh I I have to interrupt this process because I know that's going to shut down my prefrontal cortex so I know take deep breaths meditate and then deep breathing you know we all hear about meditation and breathing breathing and meditation keeps your prefrontal cortex online it actually stops the amygdala from shutting down the prefrontal cortex right so I knew you you could as you can recognize a symptom of of this setting in motion and you can head it off at the pass.
SPEAKER_02:You start putting your tools in place right I knew how to start putting my tools in place start breathing. So when my breathing got shallow um because I knew I said oh that's the amygdala and it's like instantaneously now I know that's in my amygdala right and it's trying to shut down my prefrontal cortex because of this threat. So I know shallow breathing is one of my stress response and a meditative thing is to increase my breathing. So what I do is I take deep breaths right and so that calms me. And the deep breathing right that breath it helps me to stay in a safe place. It helps me to stay calm. So it helps me regulate and stay regulated so I don't go into a place of dysregulation right where I don't feel safe because of this threat. Because again if I don't feel safe then my stress response system is going to be activated and I'm gonna go into survival mode. But my prefrontal cortex tells me that something from my past is being triggered and I'm able to say oh let me stay in the cortex. This is not happening this is this is not the original trauma happening all over again. You know this is my emotional response I need to debre I need to take a second and think. So I can put all of those healthy things in place so that if I do like I did a couple uh days ago I I did have to address uh a conflict with an individual but I I addressed it while I was in my cortex. Wow and we were able to talk our I we were able to talk out our differences where uh before I would have gone in shutdown mode and straight survival like I'm trying to survive. But instead I was able to keep myself regulated and calm.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. That does have 60 seconds remaining that's a huge breakthrough right there. I I it's it's so powerful for to be able I mean you you think about that you go normally I would have gone into survival mode which means possibly violence possibly repercussions possibly you know longstanding problems and and instead you let your prefrontal cortex take over and you handled it with words. That's huge.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah exactly and and it works you know and that's and that's the good part about having this information is that now I can interrupt my own cycle of violence. I can interrupt it now. I understand it when it's happening and I can be an active participant in keeping myself regulated.
SPEAKER_03:That is that is fantastic. And well I I know we're just just about out of time again so um and I think this time we're gonna cap the episode uh we're we're a good half hour that's a good length for it so yeah a a parting shot for us one we lost him oh well you know add and I that's one of the one of the things that the challenges we have about um you know doing this this way but I think we're getting some great conversation and I think we're gonna reach and help a lot of people definitely yeah he has a he's the programs in there has definitely bring a lot of education and knowledge in only if you apply it you know and you actually want to like learn about it.
SPEAKER_01:But he's I've learned a lot of stuff about trauma. Before I met him I just was starting to get into trauma work but oh my goodness now I'm like and I even have to like sometimes be aware you know like today when it was frustrating trying to get back inside the thing and I was like I felt myself getting frustrated I just you you fall short you know right right just the more and more you put the tools in place like he said you'll get better and better and I'm sure we all know like he the circumstances he's in like you kind of have to do more accelerated or there will be reperc repercussions you know to your actions.
SPEAKER_03:Out here it's just like like if I get mad right you can you can slip around a lot and it doesn't necessarily affect you so dramatically in there you know if something goes wrong it's it's it's it's a big deal. Well listen that and I we're gonna go ahead oh is that he's not oh okay well we're gonna go ahead and wrap this episode and um we're gonna we're gonna put it in the camera so this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. This has been uh part two of Healthy Living through adversity a new series and I want to thank our listeners for making this show possible and we will see you next week or next time I guess I can
