Reclaim Your Voice

The Nervous System with Jess Turner

• Surita • Season 2 • Episode 8

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Today on Reclaim Your Voice, we’re diving into the nervous system with special guest Jessica Turner. Together, we explore what the nervous system is, how to recognize when your protector parts show up, and practical ways to work with a dysregulated nervous syste, and so much more.


Notes:

Jess Turner

Jess Turner merges somatic breakthroughs with soul-led creation. 

She’s a somatic coach & life + business strategist with a mission to empower founders, leaders, & visionaries to move out of survival and into regulated life force.

After her journey of discovering how nervous system work impacted the way she moved through life, Jess now blends somatics with 16+ years as a product strategist in tech, where she’s supported over 60 startups and mentored leaders.

Jess brings the same clarity she uses to build products into helping people build aligned lives and businesses.

Her work is known for being calm, compassionate, and deeply transformative  — empowering clients to move out of their mind and into their bodies so they can return to aliveness and their fullest potential.

Ways to connect with Jess:

The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, And Body In The Healing Of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. 

Peter Levine:

Peter A Levine, Ph.D., is the developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma. He holds doctorates in both Biophysics and Psychology. He is the Founder and President of the Ergos Institute of Somatic Education and the Founder and Advisor for Somatic Experiencing International. Dr. Levine recently finished his Autobiography, An Autobiography of Trauma, A Healing Journey, and is the author of several best-selling books on trauma, including Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma (published in over 29 languages). He has received Lifetime Achievement awards from Psychotherapy Networker and from the US Association for Body-Oriented Psychotherapy. He continues to teach trauma healing workshops internationally. Learn more at somaticexperiencing.com.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Reclaim Your Voice, and I'm your host, Surita Jhangiani. Reclaim Your Voice is a podcast devoted to empowering you to find your voice, awakening from the prison within, and shedding toxic beliefs to find your true authentic self. This podcast is not about folding into stories that we've told ourselves and holding on to narratives that keep us small, clinging to invisible boundaries, but to empower us to walk into and embody our truths, change our realities to become in alignment with our authentic self, our mission, and our dreams. Each podcast will leave you with key takeaways that you can implement into your daily life and then begin the process to living your truth. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where your heart is racing, when nothing is wrong, or maybe it's something you do all the time and suddenly find yourself just frozen or you're shut down in moments when you want to speak up? That's not a weakness. It's your nervous system doing exactly what it's learned to do to keep you safe. So today's episode is about the language of the body, the somatic experience and how healing isn't just something we think our way into, it's something we feel our way through. So we're diving into the nervous system, how it holds these memories, how it shapes our reactions, and how reconnecting with the body can open the door to real lasting healing. So I'm very excited for our guest today. We have Jess Turner with us who emerges somatic breakthroughs with soul-led creations. She's a somatic coach and life and business strategist with a mission to empower founders, leaders, and visionaries to move out of survival and into regulated life force. After her journey of discovering how the nervous system works has impacted the way she's moved through life, Jess now blends somatics with over 16 years as a product strategist in tech, where she supported over 60 startups and mentored leaders. Jess brings the same clarity she uses to build products into helping people build aligned lives and businesses. Her work is known for being calm, compassionate, and deeply transformative, empowering clients to move out of their mind and into their body so they can return to aliveness and their fullest potential. Jess, I'm so excited to have you here. Welcome. Thank you. I'm so excited as well. Lovely. And we're just gonna dive right in because I think this is a topic that touches so many people's lives. And I've been reading so much on it. I think everyone is really curious about the nervous system and somatics. I'm gonna start off. I'd love to learn more about your own journey. What was happening in your life that led you to focus on the nervous system?

Speaker:

Yes, yeah, it is definitely top of mind. And I don't know if because I'm in this space, I'm just like seeing it everywhere, but it is everywhere. Um, and I also love that this question. So, Serena, you and I met when I was just starting to get into this space more. So I was about eight months into starting my own business. And as many people know, when you step into your own business or relationship or anything that's like out of your norm, you can't hide from yourself. You're gonna show up here, things are gonna show up for you. So obviously, stepping into my own business started to throw me into like overthinking, overdoing, like just really not feeling like I could rest, like I was working obscene hours. I felt like if I stopped being on my laptop, if I stopped creating, then I was like unsafe. Basically, this was my nervous system being like, you need to keep going. We're not safe if we stop. And what I've learned now is that was definitely a thread throughout my whole life. I just didn't realize it because it felt normal to me. So I worked with an energy worker once and she was like, you're like FM 5000, and a regulated nervous system is AM a thousand, but it feels normal and normal to you. And that comes just from like, as anyone, I don't think anyone's like not going to go through something in their life that's gonna trigger their nervous system or hold trauma in their body. For me, that was parents separating at 10, being in an unstable home. I had a boyfriend pass away in my 20s, and so that just really was setting the foundation. So our nervous system is set from a young age. And then obviously through that, being in relationships that were chaotic because that's what I was used to and what felt normal. Fast forward to when we met at that retreat. I had started working with a counselor who focused on the nervous system. So I was starting to understand there's the sympathetic state, which is action, fight, flight. There is a parasympathetic, which is your go kind of regulated, rest, digest, or there's also the freeze. I was aware of those things. And I think that's one important thing that we, especially folks who are like logical in the mind, we can know all of these things. But if the body, like you said, doesn't feel safe, it's it doesn't matter how much mindset work that we do. At that retreat, I had my first, like, I just knew I was not in a good place. I wasn't present. I was, I think the theme of that was nurture, like someone's gonna cook for you, everything's gonna be there. I remember you just excited for the food. And I was, yes, I need this, I need this. And so little did I realize that I needed it so bad. And I was just like ready. So during one of the activities, the facilitator just she basically called me out and she's like, no, this I was like, I think I need a new strategy of my business. I don't think I'm focusing on the right thing because again, our mind, it's no, no, we can't feel anything. We're not gonna feel it, we're gonna work our way through it. And so she this was my first experience with somatics as well. And so, what that is, is it's going into basically you're getting rid of the mind, and it's just like rapid fire questions. So, in that state, um, while she was going through this exercise with me, I was like my body was getting hot, I was vibrating, my stomach was gurgling. And this is for the first time I was really connecting with what was within me uh because I had lived from my mind for so long. And then I had this huge energetic release of like giant sobs, giant, it felt like a ball of energy was coming out of my body. So if anyone's read or familiar with the body keeps the score, body keeps the score, our bodies hold trauma within us. There's a gentleman who named Peter Levine, who's an expert somatic practitioner, and I love this quote by him although humans rarely die from trauma, if we do not resolve it, our lives can be severely diminished by its effect. Some people have even called this a living death. So when we're not really feeling our emotions, we're not really alive, we're not in life. That was my first Fourier into getting out of my mind and into my body. And that set me off on this journey to where I am now.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's amazing. And you've dropped so many nuggets. First, what really caught my attention as you were talking was just that you lived in this state and you didn't even realize it. It was just like there's this, and I think you're right, like we tend to live in our brain and we're disconnected from our body. So we just ignore what's happening. We just go, go, go. And then it's you had this life-altering, changing moment at the retreat, which we were at together. And I remembered watching Jess, and she really was, she was talking about the business and logical, practical from the mind. And it was just like, wait a minute, it's and you're right, if you don't connect to your body, you don't even realize it. And it was I hope it's okay. It was, it was really amazing in the sense to witness this shift. And I think it it gave, if you were watching it, like for you, it was different because you went through it, but it gave you a glimpse of how powerful this is and just how much we we ignore the neck down and that disconnect there. So thank you for sharing that journey so openly and letting us have these insights about your own experience with it.

Speaker:

I think that you hit on something too of that witnessing it, that was a big part of it too. That was the first time that I truly felt seen and witnessed. And I think that's a thing when everything's stored within us and we don't even witness ourselves. It doesn't have a place to be. If you think of being a small kid, you fall down and you hurt yourself and nobody's there to hold you. That gets stored in your body because you're like, oh, I'm not safe. I didn't have that reassurance that you're okay. So for me, also in my journey, being witnessed in community, that was so healing for me and by women as well. I grew up with my dad and just having that, I don't know, yeah, just being held in that space. So it was, it was a really powerful moment for sure.

Speaker 1:

I love how you talk about being witnessed. And I think that's really powerful. And we, I think we sometimes live in a world where you have to be really independent, do everything on your own. And I feel like after COVID, that there's a lack of community, and there's something really powerful with being with others and just being held. The other thing that just caught me about what you're saying is there's so many instances in our lives that sometimes we brush away or we bury deep within us. And it might be something like not being seen when you're hurt, not being held. But those leave deep imprints on our body. Um, and and I love, and and I'll leave I'll in the resources, I'll have a link to you. You talked about the body keep score. And I think that's really one of the key kind of texts in the area to really help you understand what is going through your body when all these things happen and you don't acknowledge it, you don't give it presence.

Speaker:

I was like, how do we not know? How is this not standard knowledge? And and it is often in a lot more like traditional cultures, different um countries, like in the Western world, it is just it's we're not, we're kind of designed to not be in tune with the body. We're going, we're going. Yeah, you can't feel because you just have to get through this thing, but like it's keeping us all so stuck.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're like a pharmaceutical society and not getting at the root cause and connecting. I'm gonna dive into the next question. How did you learn to start listening to your nervous system to change the way that you relate to stress or even to yourself? We had this moment, and then guide us through a bit of your journey after that. How you shifted and changed?

Speaker:

Yeah, okay, so much. I think that was the first time again, just learning to tap into the body and what it has to say. So after that experience, I'd say it took me, so that was 2023, and it's taken me like you'd go to these retreats, you do these things, and then you kind of go back into life and like life takes over, but you are left with this piece of knowledge. So I was like, okay, I want to be more in tune with my body. And it's funny if I even look back at journal entries before that, it was all so mind-based. It was trying to figure out what happened in this conversation and I need to be focused and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'd say after that, then I started to actually tune into, well, wait a minute, how am I actually feeling in this moment? How does my body feel? What is it trying to tell me? So that still, I'd say 2023 to 2024, I was still getting my business going. Everything was still coming up. I just need to get enough contracts and enough clients, but I and I still wasn't listening to the things that didn't feel good. And so I was just saying yes to everything. I was taking too much on. And this is just this goes to show like how deep our programming can be, but also how malleable it is and how we can change it as we learn more about it. It's small, subtle shifts actually create the big shifts just by going to that retreat, being aware of it, catching myself in these moments where it was almost like logging in. Hey, this didn't feel good. I'm not in a space yet to really figure this out. Yeah, but I'm just gonna put a bookmark in there and I'll come back to it when I can. And then I'd say once I started to, there's a thing with nervous system regulation too, is you can't regulate yourself out of something that's not aligned. I think that's a misconception, is like you said, a pharmaceutical country, people also use regulation as, well, I'll just soothe myself through this thing that doesn't actually feel good for me in my life, whether it's how you're running your business, a relationship, you can do all the breath work, all the somatics, but if there's still things in your life that aren't aligned that aren't feeling good to you, you're still gonna be dysregulated. So it's like a signal that says, as you start to become more aware of your body, the things that don't feel good are going to become louder. So it's gonna be the signal of, hey, I need to shift this. As I started to get to like a more stable state in my business, because I think financial security also plays into the nervous system too. So once I hit that, I was able to step back a little bit more and really play with, okay, well, I've hit this, but what do I need to take off of my plate? What do I really need? And as I started to have more space and started to continue connecting to the body after that retreat, I did another retreat in 2024. This one was a week long. So this brought in somatic dance, it brought in breath work, it brought in sound baths. I had never done these things before, but again, they're modalities that shut off your brain and get you into your body. And when I left that, I was like, oh my God, there's so much more here. And one of the facilitators at that one during the somatic dance, after I had had that one experience, I had a very specific memory that came up. So every time I had, let's call it a somatic release, I'd be like, What was that? Why did that happen? So I was still in the brain of trying to make sense of it. So at this retreat, I had heard the notion of you don't need to know what it is, just allow it to release. And that was another unlock, I guess, for me. You don't have to, your body's so smart and intelligent. So through these experiences, I started to get my arms would shake during breath work. My leg during one of the sound baths, I was like, I swear it looks like I'm going through an exorcism right now, but I'm just gonna allow my body to do its thing because our bodies are so wise and intelligent. But again, when we don't pause and give it the space to do what it needs to do, um, I'm doing a breath work training right now, and they showed a video of an antelope being attacked by a jaguar and it went into a freeze state and something distracted the jaguar and it left. And as soon as that freeze state started to wear off, the antelope was shaking again, similarly looking like an exorcism because it's just the body releasing energy. So animals shake. We often, like you said earlier, is like when we just hold it in. If you imagine that energy is getting just getting stuck in the body and it's not gonna feel good. So that was my foray into again getting more connected to body and somatics. And like now I talk to my body, I talk to my parts, I ask it how it's feeling. And going through that training, obviously give me more tools to be able to use as I go through life.

Speaker 1:

Hey, Jess, you have dropped so many nuggets. One, this idea of disorder, you know, we disconnect from the mind and the body, and then we we try to rationalize. We just need to know the why and how. And sometimes we just like even sobbing. Sometimes you don't know why, but you just need to cry and you just need to let it out. But we want to put a cork in it, right? And it just builds up. And I think there's a lot of work that relates it to disease as well. When we don't release it, we tend to harm our own bodies and it turns on us.

Speaker:

Yeah, it's like the it's not it's dis-ease. So, like emotion unexpressed becomes or suppressed, that can then become put you in a depressed state. It can put you in an anxious state. Because if you imagine, I owe like it's just swirling in your body almost, or it just feels really heavy. There is a literal like weight lifted off of you. You can feel when you start to let these things go.

Speaker 1:

And I and I love that you're you're talking about this because I think there's this notion of we need to suppress our emotions. There's a lot of toxicity related to you shouldn't express emotions. You need to be a stoic person and have these ideas of what it means and how emotions should not be expressed. But when we don't, it leads to this disease, this discomfort, this separation. And the other thing that I think you said that is so powerful is uh we are in this uh I want to say a culture that really turns out hey, when you're stressed out, just breathe. But I love what you said that if it's not aligned for you, you can breathe all you want and try to regulate your your body, but if your nervous system is still dysregulated, like if you hold on to something that doesn't fit with you, a relationship, a job, whatever it may be, you can breathe all you want, but you're not getting to the root. Is there anything more you want to add? It just think we're taught all the time, just okay, you're feeling that, just take a moment and breathe. Like maybe that's a starting step, but it's not the step.

Speaker:

Yeah, and that's the that's the thing of like I said about it when you connect with yourself, the things that aren't aligned are going to get louder. And again, when we ignore it or we push it down, I felt I can use an example of when I left. So I was working in tech for a product studio, and we were, I had been in that space for 10 years, and I was just starting to feel a call or a nudge that this wasn't for me anymore. I there was just something new. And I literally had, I'd say that the probably six months before I eventually like was able to leave, I would have such a tightness in my chest. And just the words of I quit, I were just like at, they just wanted to come out so bad. But I wasn't yet in a state. So this has been part of my journey too, is patience is we often live in a world where I just want things to happen right now. But for me to make the decision to leave, I had to have that stability to for it to feel good. Cause say if I would have just done that and I didn't have the financial stability, like that would have sent me into a different version of dysregulation. So it's that listening to it and not ignoring it. But I did back then I didn't have that language because this was before I learned all about all of this. So I was just going through it of like, why do I have this tightness in my chest all the time? Like, why does this feel so pull? And I think this when especially when we start to listen to what feels aligned, those little nudges, those little calls, you don't get them for no reason. It's again your body's so wise, there's something greater for you, there's something better to move forward in. And so when we ignore it, it's like the body will, or like even the universe, like things start to get louder, like shit starts to happen. You get really sick, or like just things happen around you. And it's like, okay, I can't ignore this anymore. Like I need to step into it. And it is, it's that matics is the language of the body and the nervous system is basically it kind of functions as an antenna. So when you're in a sympathetic fight-flight state all the time and you're always looking for safety, you're always gonna see, well, what's wrong with this situation? So even if you have something good, a good opportunity come up, you're gonna find the thing that's not good in it because your nervous system's trying to keep you safe. So it's again when we listen, when we can notice that of what part or version of me is coming into my mind as I'm trying to make this decision. Because also starting my business, my mind was, you can't do that. Who are you to do that? That's again, that's your nervous system being, whoa, this isn't this isn't, this isn't what we're used to. The more that you can talk to yourself, get curious again in those states, okay, I'm doing all of this breath work and like I'm this shit's still going wrong. Then you need to just ask yourself questions. What in my life is feeling like it's the cause of this? What can I control? What isn't serving me anymore? And that it's looking at yourself as well. What patterns do I have that aren't serving me anymore? And and just being able to talk to ourselves and like connect with that. It feels like that it's become like all the answers are within us. We just need to listen and we don't have enough space to actually do that.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I love that. What patterns are not serving me anymore? So and I mean, these are not easy questions either, especially when you're you're looking at ourselves and really sitting down to see okay, I think it's really hard sometimes just to acknowledge our own patterns because it's so easy to blame it on externals. Oh, I was too busy, this got in the way. But sometimes when we want to make a change, it's easier to say it wasn't the, you know, right time. I was busy with this and that. And and rather than kind of looking at, okay, you know, when I've had to make major decisions or I want to embark on something new, I'm always letting something get in the way because there's that fear and it relates back to our nervous system. You've started to touch on this, and just for our listeners, what's a way that you can explain the nervous system in everyday language? You talked about it already a bit, but just for a person who's never, this is new to them, how could you say it in a way that just okay, that makes sense. I get what you're saying.

Speaker:

There's like a definition that comes from polyvagal theory, so that it's kind of there's the sympathetic, and how I would describe that is that's like our go mode. So something to acknowledge too is we need all of these states. There's you're never not going to need be in fight or flight state because if you want to again make change in your life, you need to take action. So that's being able to go into the sympathetic state or fight or flight. And then there's the parasympathetic, there's the dorsal vangle side of that. So that's actually your shutdown state. That's when we go into a freeze or almost disassociated. Like, and this is this is the deep rooted your nervous system trying to keep you safe from something. So freeze will usually happen if your Experiencing something that is similar to a traumatic event that you had in the past. So that's when you it's some like public speaking is a really simple one, like somebody going on stage and you forget everything that you said. You're going into a free state because your nervous system is, oh God, we're not safe. People are seeing us. Right. We can't do that. So that one I would call. So sympathetic is the go, parasympathetic dorsal vagal is the shutdown state. And then we've got the parasympathetic ventral vagal, which is our regulated state. That's the rest digest. You're slower, you're in your grounded state. And a thing to note about the nervous system is it's it's kind of automatic. So this is that case when you're in an experience and all of a sudden it's your emotions are completely unhinged. You're crying, you're yelling, like you're super angry, and you're like, well, what nothing really happened. But that's just your nervous system taking over because it's again trying to protect you. And the crazy thing is, is it doesn't know if you're doing something in an experience that is familiar, it doesn't know the difference of the now and the past. So unless you've closed those loops, so that being witnessed again of those past events, things that feel similar are always going to trigger you, let's say. So that's the trigger is the piece of information of why did I act like that in that moment? And then you can dig a little bit deeper into that as well. Yeah, that's the simple okay.

Speaker 1:

So let me see if I've got this. Yeah. Um, okay, so we've got our sympathetic nervous system, and this allows us to go. So if an example of this would be like um, I'm going for a job interview, I'm like all geared up, I'm ready to go. I might be feeling a little bit of anxious, but that's the good anxious. Like it gets me going, keeps me focused. And then I've got my parasympathetic nervous system, and this can be that fight, fright, flee, fight, fright or flee, freeze. Look at me. Those kind of three, the three F's there that come in. I like what you said. Our nervous system can't tell what's the past and the present. And this is where it's so important to get in tune with how our body is feeling. You know, say I'm giving a talk and suddenly I can't speak. It's that there's something in the past that happened. Oh my goodness, it's gonna happen again. People are gonna laugh at me, whatever it may be. And I think you touched on something here also about our nervous system thinks we're not safe. So there's an aspect of coming back and letting our body know that we're safe. Okay, how can you talk us through how do we get our body to understand we're safe? Because I think a lot of us have these experiences and we don't know why suddenly you're just frozen and you can't respond, or you just want to hightail it out of there. And there's nothing, nothing present that's actually gonna harm you, but our body reacts. We need to get out of here and fast.

Speaker:

Yeah, it's uh and I think just a notion too is like there's nothing wrong with you for any of this happening. Your nervous system is designed to keep you safe, so it is designed to always be scanning and always be looking for. So it's it's they say it's like the bridge between the mind and the body. So you go into a room and your body's gonna start scanning who feels safe in here? How does the energy feel? And it's gonna report that back to your mind. If like you are like, oh, that person's energy like doesn't feel good, or this even, and then again, it happens for new things. It might, it's not like a job interview. You get nervous, but it's not because it's bad, it's just it's often something we don't do frequently. So our body's like, what is going on? So being able to just catch yourself when you're when you're feeling those differences, it's just starting to learn the language of your body and noticing yourself in different states. So when I do this, I feel this, or I did this and I felt like this. And so you can start to track those patterns in your body. And then when you start to notice your breath going up, your chest feeling tight, you're just like an anxious or unease in the body, jaw tight, you can go. So in the somatic work that I do, it's you literally just go to that part and it's hey, I see you right now. What is it you want to tell me? With starting to talk to your body and giving it a voice. Because if we again, the nervous system is automatic. So if we don't check in with it, it's just gonna run the show. And and so this is when you can see when you can visibly see someone stuck in a pattern. So for me, I was stuck in that sympathetic fight flight. I was always going, couldn't rest. And so I was stuck there because it was just automatically functioning for me, even though I started to get clients, I started to have stability, it still didn't feel like it was safe. So I had to do a lot of repatterning work, having to go back in to old memories, close the loop, just kind of you go back in time almost. And once you I think of it as closing loops, and it's kind of like a spiral. You're never, you're not just gonna go through something and be like, it's done. I've I've worked through things that I had a really big loss wound because of parents separating, losing my boyfriend. Like for me in relationships, I was like, I'm gonna lose these things. So I chose a relationship that was safe and even though it wasn't good for me, but it was like I knew what it was, and it felt like I was more afraid of losing it than just being in the chaos because chaos was comfortable to me. So again, these patterns are really deep, and it's just it's a journey to getting to understand it, to closing those loops, to knowing yourself. And that's when we start, our conscious self starts to take over. So when we're regulated, we can actually tell we have more control over our emotions, we have more control of the decisions that we're making because we can check in versus just again the dysregulation taking the wheel. You're like, no, I don't trust you to do this, so I'm just gonna have us fall into this deep ball pattern that we always go into.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So I want to dive more into this dysregulation regulation system because I think you're getting at something really important within our bodies. But I just want to kind of recap. So when we're getting into this dysregulated state, it's really being aware of your body, which oftentimes we kind of just ignore, but getting a sense of the language. I love that we said learn the language of your body. Like what is it? And it's it's so it's unconscious. So sometimes we don't even recognize, but it seems okay, starting to slow down. I think we get hints when our body's saying, No, this is not what I want. And maybe one of the things is we start rationalizing right, you got that initial reaction from your body, and then you're like, no, no, you know, it'll it'll be okay because of X, Y, and Z. And I really appreciate you you bringing up your own experiences because it really brings this work to life. Just even with relationships, being able to working through this, doing this somatic work and recognizing that relationships felt unsafe. So there's this pattern of choosing certain types of relationships that the person's not going anywhere, but they're not they're not good for you either. And starting to see that it seems like one being really aware of the body and starting to notice what it's doing in the moment. And then uh talk through a bit more of this being dysregulated and what does a regulated nervous system feel like? So you started to talk about it and you get a bit more into it. Like you've mentioned dysregulation can be maybe having uh a reaction to a situation that's not warranted. It might be something small, but there's a huge kind of explosion, right? You're like, okay, for what that was, that doesn't seem to be in alignment. Yeah, can you just dive into it? Because I think this is something really important. And sometimes we don't realize because we're always go, go, go. We don't even stop to pause when we have these kind of big moments of dysregulation.

Speaker:

Again, it's like we're high, we're hijacked. Back to my dysregulation was from long-term stress. So it was a pattern, but I think you can notice is am I being really short in my relationships? When I have a conversation with someone, like, am I being short? That's something that you can catch. I think back in when I was in the agencies, at one point I had seven projects, and that's too much for Robertson to keep track of. And I can see it now, but I would start to be short with my team. Everything was transactional. Okay, I'm in this meeting. I need to get through it as quick as possible. I need to do this, I need to do this. It's even cooking was oh, I gotta just meal prep so that I always have food if you how my voice is going faster. That was my internal dialogue. And so it was just con, and and I think a lot of moms will probably resonate with this as you're like, kids here, there, husband, but you're just constantly like orchestrating all of these pieces in your mind, and you're not actually slowing down. Um, so to catch yourself is usually you can look at what is the state of your mind right now? Is it rapid? My biggest lesson, too, as I've hit, let's been able to regulate myself more as I move through things in a lot calmer of a way than I did before. Even doing 30 minutes of cardio before, there was some part of me that felt like it was a waste of time and had to be doing something else, even though it was so good for my body. Another example of that is in traffic when you see someone just completely flip out over someone's like paused in traffic and crossing the street, and they can't see that, but they'll finger the person, they freak out. So when those things happen, it's usually because we're just at such a tipping point and it's we're just something takes over us. And again, it's our nervous system. So we're we're acting in an automatic way, not how we maybe actually would want to react in a situation. So regulating is being able to just you're you're aware of what's happening, and again, you can control your emotion. And two, regulating doesn't mean that you're never in that sympathetic action go mode. It's being able to actually toggle between the states and know, okay, I know I need to show up like this right now, so I'm going to do that. And then at the end of the day or on the weekend, I can take rest and that can be okay. I feel like when you're at least when I was in more of a dysregulated state, like my internal dialogue was just never turning off. Like, you gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta, and now I can actually just be in and that felt so foreign to me. This is the thing too. Our nervous system gets so comfortable in states. So if I go back to my example of being in, let's call it a chaotic relationship, that felt normal and safe to me. So then when I went into dating, something that was calm felt boring or unsafe because I wasn't used to it. Similar to feeling like I had to struggle through life. Things had to be hard, but that's because I was holding so much in my system. I hadn't expressed it. So now I'm starting my somatics business. I'm starting a new business basically, but it feels a lot different than when I started my strategy business. And so it feels a lot calmer because I have this trust in self and my automatic mind isn't taking over.

Speaker 1:

This is so great because you've given so many examples. I think, you know, for myself and hope for the listeners, they can start to see because sometimes it's so hard to see because it's so hardwired. It's your norm that you don't recognize that those rapid-fire thoughts that are constantly bombarding you, or it almost sounds like we had this chaotic checklist life. Okay, did we drop off the kids? Did we make the lunches? It's like we're not even taking time to slow down. And I think if that's our norm, we almost can't even recognize it. We don't realize, you know, I think driving is such a great example because it's so easy to always get mad at the other person. That person is doing that. That if we're always pointing it outwards and never recognizing how, okay, is our response maybe not justified here and seeing, okay, what's happening? Um, something that you said that I want to ask you a bit more about and help our listeners and myself understand this better is when we're regulated, we're more in control of our emotion. Can you talk a bit how this is different from when we're trying to control our emotions? So when we're dysregulated, we don't want to cry, we want to keep everything in, versus when we're regulated, being in control versus controlling seems to be a difference that you're pointing out here as I'm listening to you.

Speaker:

And I think you touched on that too of when we have when we're living life through this extreme checklist, it's also a form of control to create safety because somewhere in our past, we weren't in control of something that happened to us. So then we decided at that point in time, if I control everything else around me, I will be safe. So this goes back to the system again, not knowing the difference between the past and the present. You have to retrain yourself that, hey, we're actually safe now. I don't need to control everything and live in this state. So when we're controlling emotion as well, that's because the system doesn't feel safe to express emotions. Because probably at some point in time, you were told by an adult, someone you saw something, like you can't express emotion. That's not okay. We're so pre-programmed. Imagine when you come into the world, you're this like open vessel, you're happy, like da-da-da. And then you get these little snippets of don't do that, you can't do that. We're you're the good girl thing, is a really common thing. You can't be angry, you need to be palatable, and all of these things that all get stored in us, even though we don't aren't aware of it. So then the nervous system is just being like, nope, none of that stuff is actually safe, but we do need to express, we do need to be a full-range human. And from my own journey, learning that too, I wasn't fully living life either. Like grief. So going back to my 20s when my boyfriend passed away, I took, I didn't deal with that in a great way. I threw myself into work. I went back to the university two weeks later, a full course load working. If you can imagine what that's like on a system, and I never didn't feel that for a really long time, but that just meant that energy was spooling in me and I never felt safe. So then um, I'll give an example of late 2024. My dog passed away. We had 13 amazing years together, but I actually felt grief for the first time because I had started to build safety in my system that you can feel things and you will be okay and you're not going to die. Because that's basically what the nervous system was like is like, oh, grief is dangerous. I can't feel that. And so then it suppresses it. And then when you don't express it, you're just completely not in your fullest self. So also regulation is being able to feel the hard, hard parts of life as well, and not just, oh no, I don't want to feel that. I'm gonna hide that over here. Or again, to my example of like when you do something that's new, like expanding can feel dangerous to the system. That's why a lot of people get stuck when they're they have this vision and they want to create this life, but then they go to take the steps, and it's like, oh, procrastination comes in, and oh, maybe you can do this instead. That's all your system coming online to basically protect you. So when we are we're regulated, we can catch ourselves and be like, I see you, little part of me that's afraid of this, but this is going to be good for us. You're basically retraining your system. And then again, that dysregulated state is it's just happening, you're kind of like automatic mode. And then when you're regulated, you're like more you're in the driver's seat versus your nervous system.

Speaker 1:

That's just listening to you really helped to understand this. You're being controlled by it's like you're it's like your body's being hijacked, basically, what you're saying, and you're being controlled versus being in alignment with your body, and you're feeling and you're in that driver's seat. Hey, I'm I need to have a moment and maybe cry today. You're you're allowing it to pass through you versus this really tight controlled container where all that programming is. I almost see this image of this person, and there's these wires, almost like these barbed wires around them, spiraling around their body and controlling them versus the barbed wire being gone. And now they're in control, they're feeling, they're understanding. They're like, okay, this feels great. I'm doing this. And you're right, whenever you're wanting to expand, do something new and different, those protector parts come in. But it's being able to recognize and not letting the barbed wire confine you now and saying, okay, I'm doing this. This is kind of scary, but I'm safe. I'm okay. Using all those things that would maybe otherwise trap you.

Speaker:

And it takes so much energy too to like suppress everything. Like it takes more energy to suppress emotion than to like actually express it. I think it's it takes 60 seconds or 90 seconds for an emotion to pass. And when you actually feel it, you imagine it's out of your body, it's dissipated. Whereas everything that you haven't felt, like when I taught when I was explaining that energetic like vomit that happened to me that first time I had a somatic release, that was 25 years of energy leaving my body. And I had basically been carrying that first of all. And like you do, you really do feel lighter when you start to let these things go. I love, I love the barb. It is because it's like that bar bar is like it's tight. You're just a tight, you're moving through life in tightness. Whereas when you're like feeling the full spectrum, like you're kind of alive, you're flowy, you're fluid.

Speaker 1:

You you can you can be, right? You're and I love the other thing that you said. We're always rushing. And I think that's something that's really kind of is is a part of our world now. We have to be hyper-productive, constantly producing. But I think our best work comes when we slow down, we can think and be intentional instead of this rapid fire. And that again might be a manifestation of these protector parts or this programming that's in there.

Speaker:

Well, and if you think of it too, like we have a nervous system, society has a nervous system. Yes. And if you look at the state of the, it's like there's a dysregulated and regulated, I think anyone can guess of what type of nervous system state the world is operating in right now. And and I love this notion of like the more that you regulate, the more you connect with yourself, the more you give permission for others to do the same. It kind of starts with you. Cause if you think of when you're in a calm, conscious state, when you're interacting with other people, you're going to portray that. Whereas when you're in a dysregulated state, you're likely going to create more dysregulation around you. So this goes into even in family when you start to do the work. Like for me, like my sister's gotten curious, my mom's gotten curious. It just kind of starts, my friends, it starts to triple out around you, and it's really beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I love this. And it kind of reminds me of something I've read before Brownless work. It's about remembering safety. It's not about fixing, right? Like there's something wrong. And I think that leads to this kind of next question. You've touched on it, if there's um more to add, but many people feel like they're broken or failing when they're overwhelmed. And what do you wish more people understood about their nervous system instead? I think what you've talked about is so much is coming into alignment.

Speaker:

You're not broken. It's all welcome. And I think that is the giving yourself permission to not be again. We portray this. Oh, I need to show up perfect. I need to like, can't say that, can't do this. Again, it's all of that energy of you're not just being you and and it your nervous system is doing exactly what it's meant to do. That's why you might have an emotional release. That's why something might feel hard. Your system doing what it's designed to do. So it's you coming back in to reparent yourself in a way to be that reassuring source that you maybe didn't get when you were growing up. And it's being able to get a bit into inner child work and parts work, but it's you coming in and giving yourself what you need and coming into your heart. And it's just being kind to yourself. I love this notion too of speak to yourself like you would to a friend. Because we're not gonna, we're always so hard on ourselves, and that inner critic is also a part of us as well. Um, designed that at one point it kept all of these things at one point in your life kept you safe, and that's a beautiful thing. But as we grow and as we expand, they sometimes no longer serve you. So it's okay, how do I give this part of me a different job? And yeah, it's just like remember like that remembrance, like you started safe, and you just have to remember and remind yourself that you are again that disclaimer that you can't regulate yourself out of a situation that actually isn't okay.

Speaker 1:

Yes, so important. Um, and I think that's what you said something about that earlier. All the breathing work and whatever, if you're in a situation that's unsafe, don't try to you can't regulate yourself into it. And it's it's I just you said so much. That was powerful, just remembering you're safe that none of this is about being broken. Those hearts have served and protected you and you've grown. And it's how can you release them? Changes, connect. I love all this. I I've as we're coming close to the end of our podcast, I want to ask you what can listeners do? And you've given us a lot of a lot of tips along this uh talk today. If you could boil it down into kind of maybe one or two small things, what can they do to start shifting their state? What would you what would you suggest for us?

Speaker:

I think it really starts with curiosity and just noticing, witnessing yourself again, becoming the observer of yourself. And when you notice in a certain situation, how did you show up? How did you feel? Just getting curious about it. If say and if you're reflecting on it and you didn't show up in the scenario in the best way, that's okay. We're human. I think remembering that we're human as well, that we're not gonna get it perfect. But the beautiful thing is that we can learn and we can shift, but it becomes it comes from being aware of ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so there you have it. If you're gonna want to start with one small step, becoming aware, becoming curious and starting to notice, which I think is so important because it's it's hardwired and it can be hard to notice this. Jess, as you've been talking, it's really hit me that these patterns can be so ingrained in ourselves, and that sometimes it can be helpful. And I've worked with others. You have just to kind of help draw awareness into our nervous system. Sometimes we need somebody to ask us the hard questions. You know, I've heard about this work for so long, and I was recently working with somebody, and they said something just stopped me in my tracks because I sometimes you think, oh, this isn't relevant to me, or you know, whatever. And they said something like, oh my goodness, I've been doing this the whole time, and like I'm trying to figure out why I can't progress anymore. And I think it's because I have imposter syndrome or something, but no, I want to please people. I didn't even it was like this bazinga moment. And I was like, oh, for pity's sakes, right? So in the show notes, Jess, along with being this amazing person who has actually been on this journey, you're also a somatic coach and you're working with people taking on clients right now.

Speaker:

Yes, I am. Yeah, and and I think you're like you you called it out so well, Sarita, is that we are only aware of ourselves as we are aware of ourselves. So having someone else to see, and that was the biggest breakthrough for me is I had read all the books, I had listened to all the podcasts, but actually being seen and witnessed by somebody who could see me and who could reflect back, those were the most powerful shifts throughout my journey. And we're again, our mind is so intelligent. It'll be like, no, that doesn't apply to me. This is fine. But when somebody actually calls it out and it it, so what happened to you there was like all of your protector parts kind of came out and you could like see yourself. You were like, oh, okay, your guard is down. So while this work is, you can absolutely do it on yourself, it is more impactful to have someone someone work with you. So I am taking clients, I work from the somatic coaching side. This is just going into the body, learning what's there. I combine it with parts work. So it's learning the language of the body, but then also repatterning these parts of us that try to keep us safe and where the life and business strategy comes in because I've got the product background and I'm often working with founders, but I also realize that we have these big breakthroughs and we can see this is what I want to do with my life, this is where I want to go. But to get there can be really hard too, because we think of the end state. And with my product background, it's all about building product roadmaps and what are the things that we're gonna do this quarter. So this is where I bring in the life and business strategy as well. So you can have the realizations and we could just work on that part. But as you start to become clear on what paths you might want to take next, what kind of life you want to have, I can also support on how do we get you there and then that be that support along the way. And it the work never really stops, especially when we're growing and we want to expand, we're going to hit these new edges. It's like each new thing you do, each time you expand, things are gonna come up. And it's funny, I went to Costa Rica in June. I had all this downtime. I came back and I was like, Oh, I'm so regulated and life is so good. And then in one of the coaching containers I was in, we went through an exercise. And the just the way that one of my counterparts led the session, just it just triggered something in me. I was like, I didn't like the way I was frustrated. I'm like, where is this coming from? And my coaches that like our parts get very sneaky when we start to become aware of them. They're gonna, they're still gonna be there and they're gonna show up in different ways. And for me, I realized that I, because I had been so expansive, I felt I was being put into a contractive container. Right. It was going so this is how we sabotage ourselves is this automatic parts of us that come online and be like, well, no, this, and we can't see it because we're just in it. And because I was in that container, I was able to get the feedback of, oh, this is what happened. And I was like, shit.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, it's just it's sneaky. But I think what I found was just how powerful it's just it just all melted. Jess has mentioned a few books, a few individuals who do a lot of this work if you want to learn more about it. I'll also drop links to Jess so you can learn more about what she does, her world, and her work as well. If you're interested, or you just want to dive in and just learn a little bit more about the somatic system, the nervous system, which is so fascinating. Jess, thank you so much for being here. This was an amazing and insightful conversation and filled with lots of insights about what we do and how sneaky those things can be and thinking, oh, this is what's happening, but no, there's something more in it. So thank you so much for being on the show with us today. Thank you, everyone.