PART TWO On Dissociation And The Time I Thought I Had Died

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Transcript

 Hi, welcome back to part two. This is part two of a two part series. Looking at dissociation, and I called it in very dramatic fashion episode one of this series. So part one of this series dissociation and the time that I thought I was dead. So if you haven't heard part one, have a look at episode four which is part one.

It's all very convoluted, isn't it? Episode four is part one of this two part series, and this is episode five, which is part two. And we're looking at dissociation. Yeah, in part one, I told you a story that will just kind of give you a bit of an overview of what dissociation  is. So we're going to be having a look at that in this episode in a bit more detail, looking at what do we do when we dissociate?

What is going on in our body? In our mental processes in our brains. We're going to look at things such as decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex increased activity in the default mode network or the DMN altered activity in the limbic system, all that kind of stuff. But really with the understanding that when we talk about limbic systems and prefrontal cortex and a default mode networks and connections and synapses and all this kind of thing, actually, that's just human language for.

What God has created, we as followers of Christ, as all those that may be just curious about Jesus, I'd love it if you were listening to this podcast and actually you were interested in mental health and you were just curious about Jesus and curious about what God's been doing. Says  through his word and through scripture.

I'd love it if there were some curious people here listening. I have this little phrase that curiosity killed the cat. It did not kill the Christian or, you know the person who is just kind of trying to figure it out.  I so remember that part of my journey, trying to figure it all out, trying to figure how come Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, how come this, how come, how does it all work?

So if you're curious, you are so, so incredibly welcome to just listen and hopefully it will meet you in your curiosity.  Psalm 139 tells us that we've been fearfully and wonderfully made, that we've been knitted together. Genesis, going right back into the beginning of the, of the Bible, tells us that the more the let, It tells us less of the how we have been created.

If you look to Genesis to try and explain the how, you're going to always find arguments between people who believe in a literal seven day creation and people who believe it might be metaphorical, even poetical. For me, that's kind of inconsequential. It's not so much the how, it's the why. Why have been, why have we been created?

We've been created by a God who loves us. He wants to be in relationship with us, who creates us in his own image. We read in his image, he created them male and female, he created them. And I know that that can actually be a controversial thing to say in this landscape, this cultural landscape, this cultural moment that we're living in to make a statement about gender.

But very interestingly.  Dr. Eamon, Daniel Eamon. He's on Instagram as Doc Eamon and he talks about scanning brains. He scanned over 150, 000 brains And he now scans celebrity brains He was able to scan Stephen Bartlett's brain and say do you know you've got ADHD and Stephen Bartlett was like I thought, I thought I might he scanned the brains of the Kardashians.

It's really worth looking at his stuff. And he does some really interesting work around male and female brains. Is that actually, if you want to get to the bottom of somebody's identity in that way, that scanning a brain can be a very helpful tool. But again, I digress. Don't want to make sweeping comments, but again, we see a real interesting intersection between neuroscience and scripture when it comes to identity.

and how that  outworks for us even in the landscape of our brain, the landscape of our prefrontal cortex, the landscape of the amygdala, the limbic system, all the different parts of the brains. And I'm just beginning to learn this stuff. I'm by no way, am I an expert, but anyway, back to Psalm 139, we've been knitted together and all of this language that we use in these podcasts and that's used in neuroscience, it's just human language that people have attributed to God's creation.

The way he's created us, the way he's knitted us together, the way he's made us fearfully and wonderfully made. And I heard a brilliant story the other day by somebody who was part of the Faith Filled Collective. Now, if you haven't heard of the Faith Filled Collective, this is something I do to group women together, bring women together because I found that I was always saying, sorry, I haven't got any space for one to ones, I don't do one to ones at the minute.

So I thought, I'm going to set up a subscription group. It's called the Faith Filled Collective, and we meet as a group once a month online. Then they get a free space on the webinars that I do every month. We're part of a group like a private group. We have a Facebook group, a WhatsApp group, all that kind of stuff.

I send lots of resources, information and. And you can be part of that group. If that, if you think, yes, I would like to connect with that. You can have a look at more for more information on my website. There's some stuff on my Instagram page at the Faithfield therapist. It works out as about five pounds. 

Twenty two pounds a month, and you can cancel at any time. But anyway, this wonderful woman who's part of the Faithful Collective told me this very funny story. That at her child's dedication they create, they ordered a beautiful cake to be created with the scripture from Psalm 139, You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

And they obviously heard the, heard the phrase wrong, didn't know their Bible, and they wrote on the cake, you are fiercely and wonderfully made. And she just said that, so brilliantly appropriate for her daughter. And I love it, I love that, you are fiercely and wonderfully made. I would like a cake.

If anyone wants to buy me a cake with your fiercely and wonderfully made on, I would really love that. Anyway, yeah, Psalm 139. It's a really good place to start with this idea that we have been knitted together. So we're going to talk about what actually happens in a brain when you have dissociated.

In the last episode, we talked about reasons why we might dissociate, so childhood trauma, substance dis What else did we talk about? Can't remember. You have to go back and have a little listen to what we talked about with regards to why we dissociate. Yeah, I think trauma, stress substance, all that kind of thing.

And then there are additional factors, of course childhood experiences. We talked about mental health conditions and talked about when people have dissociative identity, identity disorder. There's a really brilliant woman who does some excellent work on this and she's coming at it from a first hand point of view.

She experiences this after an incredibly  complicated,  traumatic, complex childhood she's called Carolyn Spring and I would. Absolutely recommend that you go and have a look at her stuff. She is absolutely at the top of her field when it comes to trauma, working with trauma survivors. She's written some excellent books, one called Unshamed, which I love.

It is almost a transcript of years of therapy.  Go and have a look at Carolyn Spring. She's absolutely brilliant. So let's have a look. What happens in the brain?

What can we do  that will help us manage ourselves in a healthy, holy way when we feel like we're beginning to dissociate? Interestingly, one of the most important things we can do to help us when we're beginning to dissociate or  we feel like we are  drifting off that kind of detached feeling that you can feel when you're dissociating.

What can we do that's healthy and holy to be able to ground us? So, let's have a look. What happens when we dissociate? We know that it's a mental process. It causes a lack of connection in our thoughts, our memory, even in our sense of identity, when we can begin to think, I don't know if I'm real. I don't know if the world is real.

We suddenly feel like we might be in the Truman show.  If you are prone to the odd existential crisis, I wouldn't recommend watching the Truman show. I watched it when I was quite young and catapulted me into another series of existential crises.  It can range from mild detachment from your immediate surroundings to a real severe disconnection from physical, emotional experiences.

But here's what happens in the brain. So you have decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. Now if you take your hand and you place it on your forehead, on your head you will kind of be, Touching the part of your skull where behind lies the prefrontal cortex and that's responsible for your higher order function so your decision making your emotional regulation self awareness and this shows decreased activity during dissociation and that reduction in activity can lead to a diminished sense of self and reality and often we feel like it can be a spiritual experience and like I said Perhaps that is going on as well at times, but it absolutely makes sense from a neurobiological point of view why we feel the way we do when we experience decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex.

We're very much in survival mode, which takes us out of prefrontal cortex, which is why I say, You cannot thrive when you're stuck in survive. Thriving and making healthy, holy decisions for yourself comes when you're regulated and you're occupying that prefrontal cortex. Now, to me, this is another beautiful intersection between therapy and theology, neuroscience, and scripture, because how do we stay regulated?

Well, we stay regulated by knowing that there is a soothing, calming presence one in which we're,  Unconditionally loved. Accepted. Honored. Valued. Now if, if we can only rely on our earthly sources for that then it means that emotional regulation is only for the privileged few. So bear with me on this, this is a thought I've been thinking recently.

It, it means that, it means that we're only able to be regulated if we have people around us who are calm, regulating, if we're in, if we're in a safe, loving, accepting environment. Now that's not everybody's experience. In fact,  a lot of people don't have that experience. 

And that's why I love that God is the one that offers us through his goodness, through his kindness, through his grace, through the fact that we know Psalm 103, he's slow to anger, abounding in love. Full of compassion. We read in Matthew, Jesus saying, come to me, all who are weary and I'll give you rest. If I was going to paraphrase that through a therapeutic lens, I'd say, come to me, all who are dysregulated and I'll help regulate you.

But you cannot always rely on your earthly systems and structures and family and friends to be a regulating presence for you. The world just isn't like that. But here's the good news, the God news is that there's always a regulating, calming presence, presence available for anyone, anywhere. Anywhere, everyone everywhere, and his name is Jesus.

And we know that he's calming, soothing, full of compassion, abounding in love, all the things we need to regulate us, get us into that prefrontal cortex. So I think emotional regulation is a deeply spiritual practice. In fact, it was a guy called Ryan, I think his surname is Kja. I think it's KUJA. He says, 

nervous system regulation is a spiritual practice. And I would fully agree with that.  So  decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, where should we go next? Increased activity in the DMN. So that's the default mode network that, which is a network of brain regions that become active when the brain is at wakeful rest and not focused on the outside world.

So not hypervigilant not scanning your environment for threat. And when we have that increased activity in that. Region in those regions during dissociation that links.  Kind of gets us to that place of feeling disconnected from reality.  Altered activity in the limbic system. Now, your limbic system is where your amygdala lives, your hippocampus lives.

Now, your amygdala, I think we've talked about this before, for those of us that are interested in this kind of thing. It's Latin for almond, because it's two little almond shaped structures that sit kind of below your ears. They're obviously internal and it's like an internal fire alarm that it's always scanning your environment for threat that when there's threat, the amygdala starts firing like a fire alarm would would make a noise to say, Hey, there's a threat.

So that's your amygdala. And let's remember God created that he, he knitted that into us, into our being.  And this limbic system plays a really big role. Key role in emotional regulation in processing memory. So hippocampus is really important. I've written a post called Hallelujah for your hippocampus.

That's on my Instagram. Because it's really important with memory processing. And when we dissociate, there's alterations that happen in that limbic system that affect our emotional responses and the formation and the retrieval of memories. So if you listen to my part one of this, you will remember me saying sometimes Historically, when I would dissociate, I'd think, right, okay, what's my name, what year is it, what birth, what's my birthday, and sometimes that memory, those memories would feel difficult to grab hold of, and that's what's going on, it's because of the altered activity in the limbic system.

Then we know there's activation of the brain's defense systems. Dissociation is a protective mechanism in response to trauma or extreme stress. That's why it makes total sense. Why so many of us dissociate is because it became a very adaptive strategy. We adapted to our environment when we were younger, when we felt under threat.

And this isn't to do a character assassination of our parents or our childhood, that's not what we're doing here. We're just recognizing that there were things that made us feel like we had to adapt and we put in defensive systems and the brain's defensive systems. That's the autonomic nervous system can become really hyperactive, leading to a shutdown of non essential functions and creating a sense of dissociation as a coping mechanism.

So remember, we talked about those non essential functions in last in part one digestion, which is why often digestion gets really messy when we're feeling dissociative or when we're feeling overwhelmed, anxious. And non essential functions that include sexual function as well. All of those things that your body's like, don't worry about that.

We're just trying to survive. So let's give a summary. Dissociation is just complex. It's complex interactions between various brain regions and systems. But this, these discoveries don't just belong in a science lab or in a psychology paper, they're God's. design. This is why I'm so passionate about reclaiming this stuff and saying, wow, we really are fearfully and wonderfully made.

God isn't just some kind of, oh, airy fairy spiritual character sat on a cloud with a big white beard. Gosh, God is really clever, like hugely intelligent. In fact, he's the source of all our intelligence. You do not have to kiss your brains goodbye to follow Jesus. It's all just so intelligent and interesting and everything that we're learning about the brain, we can attribute it to God and say, wow, you're amazing, which is why I mean, that just sounds really lame, doesn't it?

Wow, you're amazing. I mean, it's  It takes us into a place of awe. For me personally, it gets me into a place of worship, much more than just singing a few kind of nice songs, which, you know, that's all good. That's good. And that's wonderful. But sometimes for me learning about this stuff, I really am in awe and think,  God, I'm in awe.

You are unfathomable, you know, way beyond my understanding. 

 So. Yeah, changes in neurotransmitter levels, serotonin, dopamine, they, dopamine, they can all be affected during dissociation. And that really influences our mood, our perception, our stress response, and that can further contribute to the whole thing, so. 

Yeah,  there's a lot going on when we dissociate, there really is. So let's have a look at coping and treatment and then I'm going to finish with some scripture  that I think can be incredibly helpful. So I've written some things down so I remember them all. Now therapy, this is why when we try and separate mental health from From faith.

It just doesn't work because God has, we all have mental health in the same way. We all have physical health. We all have a measure of physical health. Sometimes it's better than others. Sometimes we can be very intentional about improving our physical health. And it's exactly the same with our mental health.

Let's get back to that one Thessalonians five 23, that God is making you holy and whole in your body, your soul, which is your mind, your will, your emotions. And Your spirit, body, soul, and spirit. In fact, it doesn't say it in that order. I think it says spirit, soul, and body. Spirit first, spirit, soul, and body.

But God is interested in your soul, your mind, your will, your emotions. And he has a plan of health for you. Like we said in part one, some of it is intrinsically knitted into your body. It's internal. Some of it is external things that he's given us to help regulate us. Nature, community.  All those things.

So coping and treatment therapy, psychotherapy, especially trauma focused, trauma, trauma focused therapies like EMDR. EMDR is really interesting. It's incredibly powerful. Eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing. Sometimes Christians can get a bit uppity about this and say, it's new age. It's bizarre.

It's outside of God's working. Let me just bring it back to God. Let me bring it back to his creation because All EMDR does, the reason why it works, it's because it hijacks God's design for our body.  The original design is that when we're sleeping, our eyes, our brain goes into REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, and as our eyes are rapidly moving left to right, we're processing and filing away information.

That's God's design. He's created that. He's given it to us as a gift to be able to process complex emotion.  And so EMDR is essentially hijacking that. So, to me, nothing new age, nothing bizarre.  Great. It's good. Love it. CBT can help individuals process and integrate traumatic experiences. Potentially.

CBT again, Romans 12. 2. Changing the way you think before you change the way you live. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. But yeah, different, different things, different modalities and things that you can do to help you with that breathing exercises, focusing on your breath. This is why I love breath prayers, because they really deal with every area of our being.

They deal with our body, that when we breathing, when we exhale longer than we inhale, we activate our parasympathetic system, which is our rested, grounded part of our nervous system that helps override the threat system. So when you're focusing on your breath, it's impacting your body. When you're doing a breath prayer, it's helping your spirit.

It's build, it's edifying your spirit because you're speaking you're aligning yourself with the word of God and your soul, your mind, your will, your emotions, you're speaking truth to your soul. And I don't know about you, but I know so much of my drama can come when I spend time listening to my soul instead of speaking to it.

Remember you can speak to your soul, which is the power of declaration.  Breathing, so breathing exercises, it can help anchor your mind, calm your nervous system. And I love just the breath, the breath prayer, the breath prayer. So inhaling, thank you Jesus that you're with me, exhaling, whatever state I'm in, inhaling, thank you Jesus that you're safe. 

Thank you, Jesus, that I'm loved, whatever it might be. Take a scripture that you love. Thank you, Jesus, that you're with me. Thank you, Jesus, that you're for me, whatever it might be. And just begin to use that. So breathing exercises, very powerful body scan, scan, mentally scanning your body, head to toe, paying attention to any sensations and then breathing and praying into those areas.

So I'm like, I'm sat in the dentist and sorry, in the opticians. waiting for my eye appointment and I noticed that I'm kind of able to manage my mind but I can feel my physical body getting tense. I can feel my stomach churning so I'm focusing on my stomach and I'm saying thank you God that if you calmed the raging seas you can calm my stomach.

Thank you God that if you breathed breath over creation at the beginning and created order out of chaos you can take my chaotic nervous system and create order in it and Just again, intersect those things. There's a really healthy, holy way of body scanning. For some of us that have struggled with health anxiety, I don't know if I always recommend body scanning because we can hyper focus on things.

If it's helpful for you, do it. If it's not.  This is one of my favorite ones. Talk about it all the time. Walking. Bilateral stimulation. You are using both your left and your right hemisphere of your brain. So, walking. Going for a walk. Paying attention to the sensation of your feet touching the ground.

The movement of your legs. If you're not able to walk and that's a problem for you, something that you can do that will activate both sides of your body. If you're not able to move your body, Tuning into, I think it's called binaural beats by now, something you can Google it and it's music that alternates between the left and the right ear.

And you can just doing that will activate the left and the right hemisphere. When we do that, we become grounded. So that can be very helpful. That's why also tapping, putting your hands, crossing your hands over your chest and tapping alternate. Alternatively on alternately on your shoulders. Again, it's the same thing.

We don't need to get all uppity about the new age this being all new agey and bizarre. Let's claim it right back from the new age. And say no, this is God's idea. It's God's design. He's created our brains. This is good, this we just Root it in scripture. Use a Bible verse when you're doing it. If that's helpful for you, pray while you're doing it, speak the name of Jesus while you're doing it.

Let's redeem this stuff that has been twisted and perverted and stolen. Let's redeem it and say, no, we'll have that back. Thank you very much. So exercise works in the same way. Stretching works in the same way. Bilateral stimulation, really helpful.  Then engaging your senses.  Let's not get uppity about engaging our senses.

Who gave us our five senses? God did. It's his original design. It's his blueprint. So you might want to hold a cold object. You might want to hold an ice cube or have a cold drink. Alternatively, I like warmth. I prefer warmth for soothing a nervous system. So my husband's very into ice baths. My husband and my two sons all had ice baths this morning.

I was like, no, I'm going to have a warm cup of tea and sit in the warm morning sunshine because that helps me regulate. I would say ice baths, all good, but they can be quite dysregulating. If you're already in a dysregulated state, it can push you further into threat mode because it shocks you. Now, if you regulated, it's great because it shocks you, shocks your body and actually creates a process called neurogenesis where you create new It helps neuroplasticity.

So you create new brain cells. You create, you become more neuroplastic.  Cold water does that. Fasting does that. It shocks the body. But if you're in a dysregulated state, you don't want shock. You want soothing. So just be, just be discerning about what works for you. And so cold objects, warm objects, aromatherapy.

I love aromatherapy for grounding me. I haven't got anything in my disco ball diffuser again today,  but I have diffusers in most rooms in my house. And I've learnt now, if I'm beginning to feel overwhelmed, I ground myself. I love frankincense. I'm like biblical. It just feels really biblical to me, to smell frankincense.

Really grounding. And again, we can get really like, ooh, oils, ooh, it's all bizarre. It's kind of new agey. I just hear this stuff all the time, and I think, oh, come on. Come on, let's begin to reclaim and redeem some of this stuff.  Okay. There's loads here. We've got the, I've written down counting grounding techniques to help individuals stay connected to the present moment, such as counting backwards doing your times tables.

That stuff really helps me concentrate and gets me going.  I'm actually awful at maths, but counting some of that stuff can just be incredibly helpful. What else have I written down here? Coloring, drawing, watching a candle or a flame. Listening to music. Singing to music. Now we know singing is incredibly powerful.

Singing, humming activates that vagal nerve and when your vagus nerve is activated, when it's working as God intended it to work, it's part of our parasympathetic system. It is our parasympathetic  nervous system, so it helps really ground us. So, singing, worshipping, listening to music, listening to nature. 

Somebody sent me something the other day, just absolutely wonderful about bird sound. Just listening to bird sound, what it does for us at a nervous system level. It soothes us. So there's so many things you can do. You might want to do some tactile things. Chewing gum. Having a shower, splashing your face with cold water or warm water.

You might want to use some grounding statements. You can make these biblical as you like, or say things like, I am in the present, this feeling will pass. God is with me. He is for me. And then one of my very favorite things to do is you might want to wheel off a gratitude list. We know  through the Bible.

Scripture and through study that we cannot, your brain can't be anxious and grateful at the same time. So being grateful can really help you shift your focus from distress into a place of rest. But it has, as you're leaning into gratitude, there's little things going on in your brain that are helping ground you.

So let's finish with some scripture and I really hope this is helpful for you.  This scripture leads on from what we said about gratitude. Don't be anxious about anything. But in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving or gratitude, present your request to God. And then listen to this.

The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Isaiah 41 10. So do not fear.  You could just turn that into a breath prayer, couldn't you? Inhaling, I will not fear. And exhaling, for you are with me.  Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you.

I will uphold you with my righteous hand.  Psalm 46, 10. He says, be still and know that I'm God. Inhale, I will be still. Exhale, and know that you are God. You might want to just hug yourself, do some bilateral stimulation saying, I will be still and know that you are God. And then the verse that we talked about earlier, Matthew 28, 30, Come to me all you who are weary and burdened.

Come to me all who are weary and dysregulated. And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For  I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls, your mind, your will, your emotions. God is interested in your mind, your will, and your emotions. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

That's Matthew 11, 28 30. And that was my little paraphrase that I put in there. Now I absolutely know you're not meant to add to the Bible. I'm not doing that. I'm just putting a therapeutic spin on it. Come to me all who are weary and burdened. And when we're burdened, we know we're dysregulated.  And then let's go into, let's finally go into Proverbs 3, 5 to 6.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him and he will make your path straight. So let's finish again with a breath prayer. We're at half an hour now. I think this is the longest podcast I've ever done.  So,  Let's get ready to do our final breath prayer.

I love finishing podcasts with these, so you might want to close your eyes if it's safe to do so. Don't if you're driving, haha, dad joke. Oh, now I want to delete the whole podcast because I said that, but I'm not going to. I'm just going to be compassionate and gracious to myself.  So breath prayer,  inhale for five. 

I am safe.  Exhale for seven. I'm loved.  You just get your own rhythm of breath, inhaling and saying in your head, your heart, you might manage to say it out loud. If you can do that multitask,  I am safe  and exhale for seven. I am loved. And essentially what's the main thing we need to regulate our nervous system.

We need to feel safe and we need to feel loved. And that to me is the gospel, my friends, that we're so safe eternally, existentially.  Even if our circumstances currently around us don't feel safe, with God we're safe, that He is a refuge. Psalm 91, one of my very favourite psalms, that we're under his wings, under his feathers. 

That's why I've got the feather tattoo actually, if you've ever noticed my feather tattoo. It's a nod to Psalm 91. So we need to feel safe and we know that we're loved. Scripture tells us again and again and again. And Jesus came, came to earth to say, you are loved. There is a God that loves you.  I've been listening to Joelle Barnes, This is the Gospel.

Me and my boys love it. We put it on while we're doing our journaling in the morning, which makes us sound like a very idyllic family. But it's not always like that. We're doing some journaling this morning, listening to Joelle Barnes. This is the Gospel. This is the good news. And there's a God that loves you, you know, just to take a few verses out of that.

Oh how he loves you, and he does. Jeremiah tells us he has loved us with an everlasting love. Ephesians tells us that his love is high and wide and deep and long. Romans tells us that nothing, no thing, nothing, not a dysregulated nervous system, not dissociation, derealization, depersonalization, dissociative identity disorder, none of those things can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

So let's finish on that note. You are safe and you are loved and um, my hope and prayer as always is that this has helped you. Remember, God is making you holy and whole. Bless you and see you next time.