107. When Survival Is No Longer the Only Goal | Will Rezin on Trauma, Attachment, & The Body

"Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. The salvation, then, is to be found in the body..."

What if trauma isn’t something to heal or release but something that formed intelligently in response to life?

In this episode, I sit down with Will Rezin of Trauma & Somatics for a deep, grounding conversation on trauma, attachment, procrastination, nervous system regulation, and why so many of us never actually feel completion, only “what’s next?”

This episode isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about understanding how you formed and what becomes possible when survival isn’t the only goal anymore.

🎧 Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro & why this conversation matters
02:00 – What trauma actually is (and isn’t)
08:45 – Outcomes, productivity, & pressure to perform
12:30 – Why completion never lands
15:40 – Attachment styles in the body
19:30 – Anxious vs avoidant vs disorganized 
24:20 – Earned secure & nervous system repatterning
28:40 – Story follows state
31:00 – Why “safe space” language can backfire
40:20 – Boundaries as skills, not traits
44:00 – Dogs, co-regulation, & Boudreaux 
49:30 – Trauma & Somatics trainings 

Free Anthony de Mello Lecture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pttMPB1EPdXjIkj3q-ZQ6GCuOQfhGa5k/view

The next cohort of Attachment & Somatics begins on Feb 13th, 2026, with the first class scheduled for Feb 16th. 

The next cohort of Trauma & Somatics begins May 2026.

🌐 Connect with Will:
https://traumaandsomatics.com
https://www.instagram.com/willrezin
https://www.instagram.com/traumaandsomatics
https://substack.com/@traumaandsomatics
https://traumaandsomatics.com/the-somara-collective/ (Membership)

Transcript

Kristin 0:00

A word or phrase you wish facilitators would stop using immediately.

SPEAKER_06 0:04

Oh, there are a couple of those. Okay. This is a safe space. That would be one I wish they'd stop using. You got to feel it to heal it. Release trauma. There's no such thing.

Kristin 0:16

Oh shit. Wow. That's all over the place.

SPEAKER_06 0:18

Oh, yeah. Catharsis is the answer. You got to get scream or get loud in order to heal. Outrage. That's not what we do. It's actually not helpful. It's not useful. It can be re-traumatizing.

Kristin 0:28

What? Oh, wow. Good to know.

SPEAKER_06 0:30

Neuroscience shows that you can't do that.

Kristin 0:33

But moving forward, right?

SPEAKER_06 0:34

I mean, it can be it can be an experience that can be meaningful for us to do these things, but it doesn't heal trauma.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 0:42

And that's the that's the subtle distinction. Um people can sometimes misunderstand and think that I'm not for uh big expressions sometimes. I'm definitely for it. I think there are there's a time and a place for us to express and to be big and to, you know, to get in touch with our emotions. That's like we've been cut off from them. But does it cause healing? No.

Kristin 1:03

Well, guys, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today, for some reason, I've got a little cotton mouse. I've got some mints over here that I may pop in. I have Will Reason on. He's the creator founder of traumaandsomatics.com. And I just signed up for the course. And so I'm excited to dive in. Um, and so I'll see y'all on the other side of it. And I have a ton of questions that I have for you, but also if we want to flow with it and throw them out, I'm cool with that too.

SPEAKER_06 1:31

So I'm happy to have direction from you to start us off. I'm sure we'll meander in all sorts of places.

Kristin 1:38

Kind of like I do in life.

unknown 1:40

Yeah.

Kristin 1:41

Sometimes I have a plan and I'm like, oh, nope. Okay, that's out the window. Yeah. So I read your article that you sent me, and I notated a couple of the questions just because I felt like I was like, oof, that's a zinger. And so how do we become who we are? What does it cost to survive? And what becomes possible when survival is no longer the only goal? I was just like, oof, kind of brings tears to my eyes. And then I love that question. Like, how do we become who we are and what does it cost to survive? And it's like, so from your years in trauma work, how do you see identity being shaped more by survival than by choice?

SPEAKER_06 2:19

And I think this is a bigger, um, almost like a culture level uh or humanity level question. Um, but trauma maybe we begin by defining terms so that the people listening to us know sort of how I'm oriented to it. Trauma is anything that's it's an implicit or memory or body-based well, body-based. I have to laugh because linguistically there's so many little nuances to what we're saying. Trauma is the reaction that comes up in our body to an experience. It's not the thing that happened. And I think as a result of Dr. Gabor Mate becoming really popular, we we now have a bit of that shift culturally around how we understand what that word points towards. But for the sake of definition, he he Gabor says it really well. He says, you know, it's not the head injury, but it's the concussion that might follow. So it's what happens inside of us as a result of what happens to us. Now, how does that shape identity? How does that shape us as humans? Um, it takes it does it in various different ways. Now, humans have this beautiful adaptive way of interacting with the world, and it it's part of our process of developing and surviving. But when trauma occurs, we have these adaptations that form very intelligently to protect us or to orient us in our environment to what's happening. But where it becomes not supportive anymore is when the circumstances are no longer present, but our body's responding to the world as if they are. And that starts to shape our perception of the world around us. And so, now the article that I sent you is in this, I'm really working through an idea about how this shapes humans as a species as opposed to just us in the United States and us in Texas. Um, and the way our bodies respond to life, um, I believe is shaped by how culture shapes us and our process of domestication. So our identity forms around or sort of out of these the stacking of these experiences through our lives. And we think that's who we are, but it's not really it's who we may have become, and it's sort of these automatic components of that that are just running in the background inside of us.

Kristin 4:49

Aaron Powell Does that include like the stories that we tell ourselves about it and like the meaning we assign to it?

SPEAKER_06 4:54

Yep, absolutely. And that's going to be different depending on the cultural context that we live in and the language that we speak, because certain cultures have different perspectives on the thing, the residue, the way that our body interacts or or the way we form uh a sense of identity around these things that have happened. In class yesterday, actually, which you'll get to watch the recording of, um, somebody was talking about a tribe that they don't have a word for trauma because the way that they interact with things that happen is very different than the way we interact with things that happen to us. They give people a chance to tell their story, they tell it three times, and then they don't tell it again. But nobody interacts with them when they're telling the story. I thought this was really interesting. Because excuse me, they have a culture of holding the individuals but not holding on to the interpretation of what happened. And there's this kind of empathy that's there, a recognition of how life impacts us. But I don't know anything about this particular tribal culture, so I couldn't really speak much more to it, but you know, in our culture, the our process of domesticating our children is happening through all these layers of what's right, what's appropriate for a human to do or not do, withhold your emotions, don't express them. When you're scared, clamp down your body, contract yourself, don't express it. Right? Don't don't be too loud, don't dance in the store, don't you right? We have all of these ways that we're forcing humans, little humans, to develop these patterns of contraction or withholding of self. Now, on the other end of the extreme, we have a movement that is encouraging people to just overly express themselves. And that neither of these are the answer. I think that's an attempt at a course correction, but neither of them are really the answer for humans.

Kristin 6:56

I mean, yeah, I think I uh purged into a book and it was like oversharing, but it also felt like a shedding of the shame at the same time. And I was like, but I didn't have to share it with the world. And what you mentioned about that tribe, what what came up for me was the being seen and witnessed and not necessarily like changing. And I think I saw something also that you had said about not having an outcome in mind.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Yeah.

Kristin 7:21

And that helped me a lot, even just like this morning when I was journaling, like releasing or the attachment to the outcome, or thinking I've got to get to this or something too.

SPEAKER_06 7:31

Yeah, i if we understand that we are a process that is in process. In Western culture, we're trained to focus on outcomes. I must get to here and I must prove that I have achieved this, which means that I'm enough. I can I can garner acceptance from the group if I do X, Y, and Z. But if we let go of that and we understand that we are a process and that we're constantly in flux and changing, it takes away some of the um how would we say it pressure to perform. That's difficult for us to do in our culture because everything is about be the best, be number one, get the highest grades, etc., etc. etc. It's baked into our culture. Um but that's not how humans are. That's not how we grow. We have this sort of intrinsic movement or pulsation or growth that occurs.

SPEAKER_03 8:31

Um the seed of an oak tree doesn't look at a sapling and say, I need to be that.

SPEAKER_06 8:41

The seed it just grows. And at some point it grows out of the shell and there's this discomfort of that. And then the roots find the hold in the ground and then it starts to grow. It's following an intrinsic thing, it just unfolding. And we put all this pressure on ourselves to be good enough, to be perfect, to be like this or like that, or like this, or like that, rather than just being with this internal instinct to grow and to form and to develop. And when we have that freedom, there isn't the layer of shame or self-judgment that gets in the way. Our mind is free to imagine, to be creative. And I think that's what we are internally, anyway. We just we want to be creative.

Kristin 9:29

I believe that too.

SPEAKER_06 9:30

Yeah, look at a look at look at us across history. Yeah. That's all we seem to do.

Kristin 9:34

We're always creating something. I brought tears to my eyes too, because the word trust came up. It's like trusting the process um of the growth, of the evolution, of the of the and also the chrysalis of the butterfly. But I love the treat example too.

SPEAKER_06 9:50

Yeah, it was that Einstein said, um, if you measure a fish by its ability to fly, it will always be a failure or some variation of that, right? I'm paraphrasing. And we could hear that, and it can kind of be like one of those things that it's like an Instagrammable clip of something that just gets passed over. But there's real merit to that. If I'm not measuring myself by what you do, then I have the freedom to just follow whatever my instinct is. Yeah, and be. And be. And there's not a measure of good enough. I'm inherently enough because I'm uniquely me. There's no one else out there in the world that I'm in competition with. There's no other business owner, there's no other person. I'm only in competition with myself. I don't even need to be in that.

SPEAKER_05 10:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 10:40

Right? Marian Williamson said something to me at a dinner.

Kristin 10:45

I had dinner with her and some friends last year. I saw her speak in LA once and I was like, ah, two of the most pivotal books I've read of hers, A Woman's Worth and then A Return to Love. Yeah. Oh, but keep going, I've got to hear it.

SPEAKER_06 10:58

She was she was saying something and and um we were we were all at dinner and we were talking about something, and she said something. She said, We're making distinction between trust and faith. Right? And faith is stepping into the path and knowing that no matter what happens on the path, we can find our way. But it's also doing it even though we can't see the end. When you go walking in the woods, you can't see the end of the winding path. But you have faith both in yourself and in whatever's gonna happen. Um and when when I'm not comparing myself to somebody else, I can rest in that and I can follow that inner whatever it is. We might call it intuition, we might call it the creative force, we could call it spirit, we could lots of different names for it, but it's an instinct that I believe humans have. Um and it's not a part of our culture in a made in a major way for us to trust that. There's we're given messages of comparison and good enoughness and ways to prove our worth and our value, and then we do psychology or emotional work or psychological work or emotional work or somatic work around our own sense of identity or sense of worthiness. But it but all of that we're we're working on the wrong thing. The East Eastern mystic has a saying, niti, neti, not that, not that. Right? And it's we we could be chasing this, but it's not that. It's not that at all. It's something else. Um that's the dis it just keeps us distracted. Distracted from what could be. And when we can drop all of that and it falls away, something else has room to just emerge naturally on its own.

Kristin 12:47

Just like even saying that is like relief or you know, lift of pressure. I definitely identify with that email of like da-da-da-da. Cause I had a friend one time and she's like, Kristen, do you ever like stop and just like celebrate a lot of the things that you have accomplished? And you know, I'm whenever I will say like writing my book was the one of the biggest acts of self-love and so illuminating. I was like, Oh my god, this is why I made this decision or how this influenced that. Um and then also I kind of forgot where I was going with that. Oh, the not enough stuff. It's like, okay, I'm like, what next? Yeah. Like I thought, you know, the elation period, and then I felt like I had postpartum after it was out in the world. Right. And then I was like, okay, now what? And then just always like the striving and and trying to earn my real worth or pride in my dad or in my parents or something.

SPEAKER_06 13:39

Yeah. And do we hold the belief that it's okay for there to be a contraction following an expansion? That that's actually part of the next expansion. And what I'm talking about is a rhythm of pulsation that's a part of life everywhere. It's it is in intrinsically built into life. Built might be the wrong word. It's a part of how life grows. There's a there's a rhythm to waves.

SPEAKER_05 14:06

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_06 14:08

Heartbeat is a rhythm. The vascular system has a rhythm, there's a pulsation, there's a contraction, and then a r a relaxation. Right? Um, everything in the body is rhythmically pulsing. And when trees grow, you can and you look at it in time lapse, it's pulsing. Up, down, up, down. It's the same with a plant. A flower, when it goes to bloom, it's open, close, open, close, open, close, open, close, open, close. I mean, you have to really speed up a time lapse to see these patterns, but they're there. Right? And so if we trust that, then it's not bad or wrong that we have a contraction.

Kristin 14:47

There's no judgment around it.

SPEAKER_06 14:49

We can rest in it, and the contraction period lasts a little it's a little shorter, maybe. But we just we trust it. It's it's oh, it's I'm just in part of the thing that is life. Right? And the not being wrong, that like holding that belief structure or the context around it helps us to be in it in a different way. I don't have to get out of this. This isn't bad, I haven't done anything wrong. Right. But to your point, right, we will often do things, the motivation, we don't realize the motivation is for us to be seen, to be worthy, to have enough. Right. And that's the illusion of it.

Kristin 15:31

Oh, yeah, I have a story about that. I was working on something or writing, and my dad, um, I wanted to get his stories out of him one way or another. So I gave him this book, and I was like, well, I it's easier for me to write about my emotions and feelings sometimes, so I'm gonna let him just like go through it. And um, I was working on a course like several months ago because I've been wanting his pride and all that stuff. And I wanna went to one of the questions, was like, Dad, what are you the most proud of? And he had written, that would be the day you were born. And like during the day you and your brother were born. And I was like, Oh, fuck. I've been working towards something that I've had since birth. And it I was like, huh, you know, just like release. And I'm like, wow, and like just also such a gift, even beyond his passing, you know. I was just like, wow, it just really landed with me. And I wrote down like attachment at some point whenever you're talking about it. I don't know if that's like the attachment attachment wounds that create those patterns, and I don't know, maybe I'll just let you riff on that. I don't even have a formulated question right now.

SPEAKER_06 16:35

Well, I think um so in our process of development as human beings, we go through stages. The, you know, the fertilization of an egg, the embryological, you know, division is called, I think it's called mitosis cellular division that's occurring, right? So we have these phases of fetal development, then we have phases of brain development and phases of personality development, right? So something that's become really popular over the past five years is talking about the nervous system. I mean, lots of people are talking about the nervous system, which is great. Well, lots of people don't know what they're talking about. Yeah, I'm like, which is okay, but at least we're talking about it. And that is a beautiful thing. Now, the nervous system is just one small component of our physiology, and it's one small component of what shapes the way we interact with the world. It's also shaped by the way that we receive love or care from the people closest to us. Are we nurtured? Um Dr. Bruce Perry wrote a book called The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. Phenomenal book. Um, he talks about his model that he created called the neurosequential model. It's a therapeutic process that he developed for working with children who've experienced extreme or extraordinary trauma. Um and the book is about his findings working with people, but it comes down to nurturing. So if if um during a certain phase of development, I don't get mirrored back to me the expressions that I make, the sounds that I make, the emotionality that I'm experiencing, my brain doesn't develop the ability to mirror somebody else's emotional state. So there's a developmental piece. I also don't receive nurturing. So I develop strategies. I'm just using one example. I develop strategies to what we would call self-soothe, but it's really to manage the overwhelm inside the body during that process of development. So what we call attachment is a form of um adaptive relational skills that are developed. And this is all it all comes back to survival. So if I'm in distress as an infant and I cry, and nobody is attuned enough to notice what I need when I don't have language, and all I really need is either to be held or to be fed. And if that's missed, I develop strategies that might look like getting louder and screaming more, but it also might look like shutting down. It might be that I learned that if I reach out for support or ask for support, no one will be there. So I develop a character structure that is independent, that is strong, that holds it all, that doesn't ever ask for help because help's not going to be there.

Kristin 19:40

You call me out right now.

SPEAKER_06 19:44

A lot of people that might feel called out, right?

Kristin 19:46

Right. I'm teasing.

SPEAKER_06 19:47

No, but it's true though, right? It's like we form this, and so what happens, we develop what what we would call avoidant attachment style. That's just a strategy. It's a str it says, well, I have to become numb to the too muchness that's happening inside. And so I I learn to contract my muscular system or the various different diaphragms in my body to hold back the pulsatory flow of life, but also to hold in emotionality, maybe. Or emotionality just bubbles up and and goes too much, right? And it could be an oscillation between those two things. But I learned that I have to do it independently. So I retreat away from others and I think, well, yeah, it's just safer. I don't need connection. Like nobody's gonna be there. Maybe I don't even have the thought. This is just how I am. I'm strong, I'm independent, I'm I'm work hard. Look at everything I can do, right? It becomes a part of the way we structure our sense of self. And that's attachment. It forms in this interplay between us and other. I'm just giving an example of, you know, maybe the avoidant attachment style or the disorganized we might call, which is a blended change.

Kristin 21:00

I love the I would love another example of like maybe the anxious or whatever. I don't know if it's I've heard disorganized, I've heard fearful avoidant. I don't really know.

SPEAKER_06 21:08

Yeah, there's subcategories.

Kristin 21:09

Yeah, I'm like, because there's definitely been times where I've felt like that anxiousness and feeling. I'm like, oh my god, he hasn't texting back, I'm noticing a pattern switch or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there's definitely been like the hyperindependent, like, I've got my Nikes on and I'm running.

SPEAKER_06 21:24

Yep. Um, yeah. And usually that forms because we have inconsistent messages from our parents. Maybe we have one parent that's really intensely like um really in our world, um, but maybe the other one is not. And we have to work really hard to be noticed. Or maybe one of them is just really involved and then absent completely. Um, if a parent drank a lot of alcohol or used substances, there'd be a really confusing message that we'd be getting from them because sometimes they'd be present and they'd be attuned to us and sometimes. Sometimes they would just would be vacant and not there. Well, what we have to do is we have to become really, really good at noticing their body language, their emotional state, and and be very vigilant, right? So that we can ooh, okay, mom or dad is not here, might be really easily triggered. I need to be small or I need to be compliant, right? Oh, they're really available. I need to reach in now and I need to get close while I can. This is an example. And that forms what we call a disorganized style, which is just essentially saying I we learn to use both at different times and we we become incredibly good at reading people. Now, the anxious just cries. And they learn that by getting louder, they get the attention they need. So that becomes the strategy. Now we culturally will often label that as clingy or manipulative. But it's not. It's an instinct pattern. The child's brain is not developed enough to be manipulative.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:07

It's just discovering this is what gets me attention. Attention is survival. And we are either attached or not.

Kristin 23:17

What came up as like that longing for love when people are like wanting to cling or like to me, that's like yearning for it. I'm like, oh, please love me or hold me or something along those lines. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_06 23:29

In pop psychology, we have we're we all have heard about the four styles, right? Anxious, avoidant, secure, disorganized. Excuse me. And these are just four labels. What we don't hear if we just take those three, what we don't hear is that each of them is a result of a form of dysregulation that's happening inside, and the person's body is responding, it uses different strategies in response to the distress. So the person that's anxious reaches and needs contact in order to feel settled. The person who's avoidant cuts themselves off from feeling. And they do that and they withdraw so that they can feel settled. Connection is too much. The person that's disorganized does one or the other depending on the individual that they're with. But underneath for all of these people, it's a distress that they're feeling because of some sort of interpersonal relational dynamic that's taking place. And if we understand that, then it kind of levels the playing field. It's like we would we don't label avoidant as bad. We don't label anxious as bad.

Kristin 24:43

Yeah, I see a lot of that on uh I was chatting with someone about mother and father wounds last week. And she's like, Well, I love that you mentioned that even in those avoidant time periods, you that you still have that longing for love because there's a lot of like, oh, they're awful or like heartless or something. But to me, it's like visualizing them in a way as little kids. That's it. Like if we're all like little kids, like walking around in a way. Um and then what came up for me too is like the nervous system piece and the settling of that to maybe what I guess become secure or instead of using those adaptations.

SPEAKER_06 25:16

Well, we don't try to go at um getting rid of them right away, but um uh Dr. Diane Poole Heller says we uh we can have what's called earned secure, which what that means is over time our body relearns or repatterns its response to distress. So let's just say that I have more of an anxious style. Um when I sense that something is happening interpersonally with me and someone else, I might become more vigilant and need or reach for connection or feel really spun out when something's going on. Over time, I learn to be with those feelings without reaching out as intensely. And I learn the skill of emotional regulation. We still need connection. We still need relationship. Like the myth of the independent lone warrior is just a myth.

Kristin 26:13

Yeah, I realize like I can't I gotta have people on my island. Yes. You know, I can choose who I want on my little independent island. But I was like, oh, and it also like just I you know, you think you do the work or the play or whatever it is, and and then and then you get into a relationship and it's like, oh fuck, I gotta test all of this out. You know. So true. Because I I recently happened to meet where I was like, you know, there's there's a piece of me that's had my Nikes on my entire life. Yeah. I really want to put my slippers on and stay with you. I'm gonna tell you right now that I'm feeling a lot of things.

SPEAKER_06 26:45

That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that'll be a thing that takes the right partner who's a yes to being in the exploration together. Right. And to maybe learning a new way of interacting with you that might not be their dominant strategy. But as we know our patterns and we become conscious of them, it doesn't mean that we can just all of a sudden change them because we're conscious of it. But at least it gives us enough information that we can set up conditions to have new experiences of the rupture and the repair. Because effectively what happens is when one person's body senses or sends the signal that there's been some sort of rupture relationally, then our body does for us. It makes the choice for us at the level of the brainstem or the amygdala. It says danger, threat. And then this is our strategy. Inside Out's a great movie. It's like if we had um trying to doll it up in my memory. Uh the one with all the emotions that live inside the brain. It's a cartoon.

Kristin 27:47

Oh, I'll have I'll have to watch it. Like inside.

SPEAKER_06 27:50

It's great. I think it's a Pixar movie.

Kristin 27:51

I mean, oh totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 27:53

So it's great because it has uh there's like this control center, and all the emotions are in the control center and they take turns making the choices for the little kid. Well, our bodies like that in a way. It does we're personifying the instinct patterns in that movie. But if you know, if we just say, well, we have these instincts, okay, I learned, cry now, don't cry here, get big here, don't get big here, run after, leave, whatever it might be, right? And uh then our body makes a choice for us. It's a non-conscious choice, right? Instinct. It's like if I bump my elbow, my arm flails out.

Kristin 28:35

Yeah. Why did that happen? Right.

SPEAKER_06 28:39

Right, exactly. And it's exactly the same. Um and we've become almost um obsessed with how our mind shapes things, where the dominant cultural um belief system is that the mind is what controls the body. But that's just not true. The body sends signals to the brain, and then the brain interprets them, and then the mind has a thought about it.

Kristin 29:06

Is that how you can like repeat affirmations for all the time you want? And it's like, why?

SPEAKER_06 29:12

Why is this not helping? Yeah.

Kristin 29:19

I don't know much about this or not, so I'm gonna lean on you, obviously. Um top, bottom, top to bottom or bottom to top.

SPEAKER_06 29:27

Top down, bottom up.

Kristin 29:28

Yeah, yeah, that.

SPEAKER_06 29:30

That's the term that's often used. Yeah.

Kristin 29:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 29:32

So what we're talking about with that is are we working at the level of maybe the brainstem or our instincts, the sensory experience in our body, or were we are we working biasing the thoughts? So top-down would be thinking process changes the physiology. Bottom up would be physiology changes thinking process. Um Dr. Deb Dana said, um, and it was her synthesizing Dr. Porges' work, story follows state. And what that means is our interpretation of the world is shaped by the way our body feels. It's shaped by the signals that our body gives us. So story follows state, Dr. Deb Dana. Um and this explains a lot in the world. If we just take our where we are right now, what is it? Uh today is the 4th of February in 2026. We take a little snapshot and look at what's happening, just in our country, but in the world, we could extend further. And we say, well, there are a lot of really scared people who don't know that they're scared, who have a lot of beliefs about things because of the information, the sensory input that they're taking in. And they're responding in a way that makes complete sense given the context that they're in and the limited amount of information that their body has about what's happening. And then we formulate ideas and beliefs, and then we fight with each other about them. But what we miss is that underneath all of that, we've got scared humans behaving instinctively in a way that completely makes sense.

Kristin 31:09

Yeah. And if I was raised how they were exposed to the certain same information, like who'd say that I wouldn't believe like that. Exactly. That's right. Yep. So it's like, how can we have a little bit more compassion? I also love the story to, you know, fall of state thing, and it brought up language again. And I wanted I wanted to touch on this because it reminds me of something that you said and at the at conference that I was like, oh shit, that hit. And it was about um language and uh use in like I guess practitioner settings as far as the word safe. Yeah. And um, I think what you said, and you can uh you know, edit me, but it's like something along the lines of because trauma happens a lot of times with people who should have been safe or were supposed to be safe.

SPEAKER_06 32:03

I was like Yeah, and it often in an in a relational trauma setting, there are a lot of examples where trauma occurs. Um the act of some sort of violence or um boundary rupture comes from somebody that should be trustworthy. Right? It could be a family member, extended family, somebody close to the family. Oftentimes abuse happens in that way. It's somebody that's close enough. It's a person that should be safe. Right? Let's say we get punished with violence from one of our parents. That person is the safest person in the world, but also the most dangerous. And that becomes confusing. So when when if I were to say this is a safe space here, we can talk about whatever. The instinct inside is to say, well, I might not actually trust you as much now because I don't know that it's a safe space. You're saying these words, but maybe at some time in my life at some point in my life, somebody told me it was also safe, but it wasn't. So I omit that from my vocabulary and I allow that to emerge naturally or not. And I don't make it right or wrong either way.

Kristin 33:18

I like that. Um, ever since you said that, I started to use like all of you as welcome versus safe and telling my friends or other, you know, bodyworkers. I'm like, maybe try to edit out safe if you can, because I mean that that was um my experience anyway. So as I was like, that's why I was like, wow, watery eyes.

SPEAKER_06 33:38

Um well, and I'll add another lay of a nuance to that, right?

Kristin 33:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 33:42

It's good for us to have these North stars, right? The um all of all of you really is welcome. And can I, how do I convey that without using any words? What do I need to do inside myself or how I interact with you so that you really feel that way without me having to say a word about it? There's there's certain things or there's a certain way that I can be with you that helps that to naturally unfold. Um, and when I really understand what it takes on the inside of me, the byproduct of that is for somebody that I sit with to say, God, I feel so safe here. Or God, I feel like I really belong. Like I could just be myself. Like, yeah. Yeah. But I'm not trying. In the beginning, I tried. Yeah. Right. And there's a story that um Alan Watts tells about a um. Oh, me too. Me too. I think I discovered him in like 2000 and I've been consuming it since.

Kristin 34:48

The ones like with the um, no, that might be Ram Doss, but the different songs or the different app. And then sometimes on Insight Timer, some of his quotes will pop up, and I'm like, yes.

SPEAKER_06 34:58

Yeah, yeah. Uh so he tells a story um about I think it's a Zen Master. He says the Zen Master gives a co-on, which is like a question to live, but it's an it's also often an impossible task. And the reason that the the master gives the student the impossible task is because who you become while you're attempting to commit this impossible task makes you into the person that does it automatically. So he says the Watts tells the story, and I'm paraphrasing the master says, go out and commit a genuine act. And that's a trap because to commit a genuine act, you can't do it on purpose.

Kristin 35:37

Can't think it out or plot it or plan it.

SPEAKER_06 35:39

You can't plan it. And the student will go out into the world and say, Master, master, I've completed these, I've done it. And he says, No, you haven't. You did it on purpose. A genuine act happens naturally. The thing that's left out in that is that in order to commit a genuine act, you have to become the one who does that automatically. To become the one that does it automatically, you actually have to go and practice. So part of the equation is going out and doing it on purpose and then giving up eventually. And say, Oh, I I I don't need to do this on purpose. And then it starts to become you. So it happens through you naturally as a byproduct of what you've become along the way. So practice and repetition is just as important as um as not trying anymore. I play the guitar. I never learned rudiments. I didn't study the instrument the way that I studied working with humans. But I had a natural gift for it, and I just kind of muddled my way through it and found my way. There's certain basics that I learned. I learned how to make chords, I learned what the strings were called. I don't think about chords anymore. I don't think about what the strings are anymore. I don't think about the patterns that I play anymore. They happen through me now. But when we be we if we want to acquire mastery of something, it takes that dedicated, focused effort of practicing a thing so that we can let it go and let it emerge naturally from within us. So it's a stage we can't we can't um avoid the stage.

Kristin 37:07

Like have a formula for, because I was gonna ask that. Like are there any tips or ways or you know that you would recommend to people or listeners or me?

SPEAKER_06 37:15

And then Well, I think empathy is one for sure.

Kristin 37:18

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_06 37:18

But self-awareness is another, right? I and I mean self-awareness in a number of layers. So am I aware of my posture right now? Am I noticing my breathing right now? Am I noticing my muscles? Right? Can I become aware of my sensations? Am I aware of the quality of how what I say impacts you? Can I let that in?

unknown 37:42

Right?

SPEAKER_06 37:42

And if I'm with myself, I can let myself be touched by your experience, right? And then I can also impact your experience. So there are these layers of developing that sensitivity both to the world and to ourselves. And so it Anthony Mello has a lecture. It was turned into a book called Awareness. Um, it's just the transcript, so I prefer listening to his lecture. But um and I could give this as a gift to the listeners. I'll we'll put a link in the show notes.

Kristin 38:16

Sweet, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_06 38:17

It's eight and a half hours long. Cool. It's amazing. I've probably listened to it 150 times at this point. It's sweet. But he he says, you know, um let me get back to where my thread is.

SPEAKER_03 38:29

Um, it's gone.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

Well, it'll come back if it is.

Kristin 38:35

It's meant to become back.

SPEAKER_06 38:36

Well, awareness is um is a component and oh here we I I got it. So sensitivity to the world, when we are sensitive both to ourselves and to others, what happens is it becomes less possible for me to commit an act of cruelty. Because if I'm cruel to you, I'm also cruel to me. And so the more sensitive we become to ourselves and the world, the less harmful we are to the world and to ourselves. And I believe that we are so dissociated from both our bodies and the natural environment, and that's how we can treat the world the way we do and treat each other the way we do. But that's one of those greatest skills. So to become a really good wrong word here, um sensitive or empathetic individual that has an impact on everyone that they're in connection with. That layer or level of sensitivity is necessary.

Kristin 39:39

Beautiful. I was gonna ask about hypersensitivity.

SPEAKER_06 39:42

Right. Well, so that's an overcompensation pattern. So early in life, at some point, that sensitivity was really necessary. We call highly sensitive people, right? Yeah.

Kristin 39:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 39:55

There's this whole thing about it.

SPEAKER_03 39:56

Well Yeah, that's hypervigilance. Right.

SPEAKER_06 40:00

So I might be really, really good at noticing the changes in your body language, your emotional state. And my way of making sure that I stay safe is to be impacted in enormous ways by you because that keeps me attuned to the subtlest of subtle changes in your state. Right? So for a person that's labeling themselves as highly sensitive, um, one, that's a superpower. Usually they're they make incredible helping professionals and attuned and empathetic individuals, but but the task is to learn how to have strong boundaries, is to build a sense of less permeability to what's coming in. And when we do that, we can exist in the world without the world destroying us or causing us to feel all kinds of ways, right? Well, then I don't have to demand that you treat me differently anymore. I now have the resilience and flexibility to be treated in whatever way. Well, that comes from strengthening the um the absence of a boundary between me and the world.

Kristin 41:10

So is there anything you want to share in like building those boundaries, or um there's something else that came up, but if it comes back, we'll I'll let you know.

SPEAKER_06 41:21

Building boundaries.

Kristin 41:22

Well, because I feel like, you know, I have some that are more fixed and then some that are more fluid. Or like as I evolve, maybe some things shift or change. I mean, but way back when I was like, what's a boundary?

SPEAKER_06 41:38

Like if it's not modeled to us, it's rather difficult for us to know how to do it. I think I was pausing because I was I was thinking, well, from us like depending on where we start, let's say we start start with not really knowing. We have to become aware that we're letting everything in.

SPEAKER_03 41:58

So we we start wherever we are. Let's say we're starting there, I'm flooded. It's too much. How do I disconnect and reconnect?

SPEAKER_06 42:09

All right. So having permission, like where we started with this permission to be wherever we are, an absence of judgment or shame or labeling uh where we are as bad or wrong, and approaching it as if it were building skills.

unknown 42:25

I like that.

SPEAKER_06 42:26

Yeah, so if I hired a personal trainer, which I don't work with a personal trainer, and I honestly don't train a lot. So if I decided to do that, there's gonna be a long learning curve on certain things, certain movements I just don't do on a regular basis. Um I'm gonna have a lot of competency with some things and almost none with others. Well, I don't have the expectation that working with that um personal trainer is gonna instantly get me results. And I don't judge myself necessarily for not having the coordination to do certain things. Let's say I want to take on martial arts. Like I want to do backflips, I want to do front flips, you know, I want to, I want to do some gymnastic activities.

Kristin 43:02

I want to be a black spell. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_06 43:04

I'm not gonna expect to get there in a year. Yeah I'm gonna know that it's gonna require so much failure and it's gonna require consistency. But at first, I have to figure out where my competency is and where it's not. And so there are gonna be activities that I do that are gonna help me to become aware of what I'm good at and what I'm not, and then I can focus on developing the micro skills necessary. Well, it's the same with anything because the human is the consistent piece. So uh exercise or martial arts are great analogies for developing um the skill emotionally or relationally. So there are micro skills that we need to learn along the way. One of those micro skills is emotional regulation, the flexibility to be impacted by something without it taking us over. Right? And there are various ways we can learn those skills. We can work with a skilled practitioner that can help us to develop little. Micro skills for self-regulation, but also having a safe enough other helps us to have a person to ping to and develop a skill. As children, we don't develop a skill on our own. We develop it in the presence of another who's not dysregulated by our dysregulation. So let's say I start crying. Well, if no one sat with you while you were crying, you might get really uncomfortable that I started crying. You might c start squirming and not know what to do. Right? But if you had a person that sat with you and was not scared, was not upset in any way that you were upset, you will know exactly how to be with me. You'll just sit with me. You're not gonna tell me it's okay, right? You're just gonna be with me. And that's one of the things Levine said in his book uh in an unspoken voice. He said, Trauma's what happens in the absence of an empathetic witness. Well, the empathetic witness is a person that isn't scared because we're scared, isn't upset because we're upset. They're calm, they're with us, and our body learns oh, it's okay for me to be in this state. It's not gonna hurt me. And then what happens is the body self-regulates. Our bodies know what to do. We just often get in the way.

Kristin 45:22

Yeah, yeah. I wrote down the ad like emotional regulation, soothing. And it reminds me of a story of my puppy. Because when I'm like initiation with my puppy, but I also have heard, you know, like a puppy is like a mirror. And so I know I like whenever he was doing something, I was like, You're supposed to be my like emotional support animal. You're causing more anxiety. But I remember at one point, I don't forget what he was doing, but it I was like, like, how do I? You know, and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go take a bath and I'm gonna chill myself the fuck out and like come back. I'm gonna get out of this bathtub a different human or a different woman, like and go into the living room and sit and chill. And I'll be damned if he did not just like sit next to me and was so much more calm. And I was like, oh, okay. And those so those moments, I giggle at it now too, because like some of those moments when I'm like, he's just so like anxious or law. I'm like, how am I feeling right now?

SPEAKER_06 46:21

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Dogs are really, really attuned to our emotional state. Highly attuned. When we're upset, they might bring us toys, they might try to get us to play because for them, that helps them. And they might express the anxiety for us.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 46:41

They might start to behave the way we're feeling. That doesn't always make us feel better. No. Most of the time, we're like, quit being that way.

Kristin 46:50

But looking at it now as like him wanting to play or like what worked for him, it just like brings tears to my eyes from my little boudreau.

SPEAKER_06 46:58

Do you have a little dog or big dog?

Kristin 47:00

Well, he's what now, like a little over a year. He was 20-something pounds, fringey. Okay. Oh yeah, fringy. Sometimes I just pick him up for the warmth. And I'm like, uh so I guess we co-regulate together sometimes, but it's awesome. And I want to see like what else. Okay, I'll get oh shit. The time flew by. I love it when that happens. We were in flow. Yeah, we are. Um well, I'll I'll give you the space to drop anything you want. And then I have another little lightning round if we want to play around with it.

SPEAKER_06 47:30

Cool. Well, um, if anybody's interested in finding me, I've got two places on I've got them actually a number of places on social media. So there's um my Substack account, which is where I really think through and write long form um working through the ideas as I'm writing a book. And um Instagram at Trauma and Somatics, and that's a place where we share about our trainings and clips of me teaching and um some of the rest of the team teaching. We have a membership that's um pretty inexpensive. It's $57 a month if you want to do monthly, or it's $4.70 for the year. It's a container where we're building it out. It's it's so much value. The team keeps saying, you need to charge more, you need to charge more. And I keep saying, I don't want to charge more. I want it to be a place that's not expensive for people to come be with us. So four times a month, it was two last year, but four times a month, we get together for two hours and we practice somatics. So it's it's almost like a dojo. We have guest presenters come in from all over the world. The thing that makes it unique is that every time we gather, it's experiential.

unknown 48:42

Right?

SPEAKER_06 48:43

So we're not learning about somatic practices, although there is some learning interwoven. We're doing them together. And we're building a culture and a community together, and it's it's amazing how deep we go.

Kristin 48:56

That's cool. I get visions of the ripples that that creates in like other people's lives too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:02

Some of them are students, some of them aren't students, and it doesn't really matter. We just we just come together. We've had some pretty cool people come in so far, and this year we're having a lot more.

Kristin 49:10

Sweet. Okay, I might check that out as well. Yeah, but I'll link all of this up in the show notes.

SPEAKER_06 49:14

Yeah, and then we have a free community that we just launched this week. We did a soft launch to our to our folks. It's open to the world. Um, you can find it at traumaandsomatics.com. But um then we have trainings. So we have the trauma and somatics training, which you just joined, and then we have our attachment and somatics training. Trauma and somatics is a really good beginning point, but it doesn't always have to be for beginners. Um we go through in a really deep way trauma physiology, we teach about the nervous system, we teach about somatic practices and how to use this um attuned state to work with people to support them, when to move them towards activation or away from activation, how to stabilize and contain different things. And it's what we call a trauma-informed training. So you're you're being you're learning to live in a way that's trauma-informed. But we're not teaching you how to protect people's feelings. We're teaching you how to be empathetic and attuned to people and how to build capacity because that's really ultimately what's necessary with trauma physiology. We don't teach people how to resolve trauma, because that would take way more in-depth training, but how to work with a person who has it. Over 70% of humanity has trauma, has experienced a traumatic event, is how the research goes. But I don't know anyone that's been a part of that research study.

Kristin 50:36

Yeah, well, and I'm like, I think it's more in a higher number.

unknown 50:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 50:41

So I believe it's somewhere around 7.9 billion people. And if I had to label it as probably 90-some percent of humanity, it might be more, but there are some people that haven't had a lot of adversity in that way. Um now, what that tells me is that we are traumatized as a species and we really need the support. So coming into trauma and somatics, practitioners learn how to be with and expect these things, but they also learn how to observe it in the body and know what to do when it shows up. And then attachment and somatics goes really deep into the forming and the arc of humans.

Kristin 51:15

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_06 51:16

So we're doing more than attachments. We're doing Yeah, we're doing procedural work, we're working with early reflexes, um, we link attachment patterns to body shape, posture, characterogy, um, nervous system states, and then we teach you what to do with all of that. And so there's a library of over, I think it's like 88 pages of somatic practices where we give you scripts and outlines and exact things to do with your clients. It's so much deeper, and I co-facilitate that with my mother, and she's the co-creator of it, and she's a psychotherapist.

SPEAKER_05 51:47

Yeah. I love that.

SPEAKER_06 51:48

So those are the ways people can work. And I do one-on-one work with uh with individuals, not a lot of them. And that's a different demographic of people that I often work with, who are usually high performers or high achievers in some way and successful already in their lives.

Kristin 52:02

Beautiful. I love the work that you're doing. And like maybe I'll just get a couple of these like lightning rounds once and then we'll let's see. Uh trauma in one sentence.

SPEAKER_06 52:11

Trauma in one sentence. Hmm. A reflex that forms out of a too much experience.

Kristin 52:23

And then is procrastination laziness or protection?

SPEAKER_06 52:28

I like that.

Kristin 52:28

I saw it on your profile. And I was like Springshot. Protection for sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 52:34

Protection for sure. Yeah. Well, uh there's so many, there's so many things I could say about procrastination. We'll maybe we'll do another, another journey to that.

Kristin 52:42

Yeah. Um But I was like, yeah, no, I now I call myself sometimes a pressure performer. There you go. When I'm uh beat if I'm beating myself up about because I know once I have that deadline, I'm like, uh-huh. You know. Yeah. Um, let's see if there's anything that I want to touch on. Oh, well, I mean, a word or phrase you wish facilitators would stop using immediately.

SPEAKER_06 53:07

Oh, there are a couple of those. Okay. This is a safe space. That would be one I wish they'd stop using. Um uh you gotta feel it to heal it. Release trauma. There's no such thing.

Kristin 53:23

Oh shit. Wow, that's all over the place.

SPEAKER_06 53:25

Oh, yeah. Catharsis is the answer. You gotta get scream or get loud in order to heal. Yeah, rage. That's not what we do. It's actually not helpful, it's not useful, it can be re-traumatizing.

Kristin 53:35

What? Oh, wow, good to know. Neuroscience shows that's our letter rage ritual, but moving forward, right?

SPEAKER_06 53:42

I mean, it can be it can be an experience that can be meaningful for us to do these things, but it doesn't heal trauma.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 53:49

And that's the that's the subtle distinction. Um, people can sometimes misunderstand and think that I'm not for um big expressions sometimes. I'm definitely for it. I think there's a time and a place for us to express and to be big and to, you know, to get in touch with our emotions. That's like we've been cut off from them. But does it cause healing? No. Sometimes if it's not done by somebody who's really skilled at observing the person's state, what we end up is dissociated, overwhelmed, performing to be good enough for the facilitator, um, and then crashing or feeling like crap afterwards, you know, it just it might cause a person to relive their trauma, and that doesn't that doesn't help.

Kristin 54:31

Cool. I think that's all I've got. Amazing. Man, this has been dope. I love having you on. And I love when it's just so in flow. And then I'm like, oh, oh, time? Really? Damn. Um, and I'll put everything in the show notes. And this has been great. And like you totally have that. I'm like, I just feel so settled, just even like talking to you. I'm like, now I'm like even going into my next interview or chat or conversation. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_06 54:57

Yeah, and I'll put a couple of freebies in and send you some links for some stuff for for those of you that are listening.

Kristin 55:02

I love that. I love that it's like accessible.

SPEAKER_06 55:05

Yeah.

Kristin 55:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 55:06

Well, thank you.

Kristin 55:07

Sweet. Thank you for being here, love, for listening with your whole heart, for listening to the very end, and for walking this wild path with me. If today's episode stirred something in you, whether a giggle, a tear, or a full-body yes, don't keep it to yourself. Share the magic, leave a review, drop me a note, or send it to a fellow sacred rebel who needs it. And remember, your story is sacred, your desires are divine, and your mess is part of the masterpiece. Keep showing up, keep feeling it all, and keep turning your life into poetry. Until next time, stay wild, stay tender, and stay true to that beautiful soul of yours. All my love, Kristen.