Becoming UNNUMB: Healing Trauma, Survival Mode & Reconnecting With Yourself | Dr. Stephanie Byerly

What happens when trauma doesn’t just hurt you… but disconnects you from yourself?

In this deeply powerful episode of Breaking Curses with Excellence, Dr. Stephanie Byerly joins us for an honest, transformative conversation about emotional numbness, survival mode, high-functioning trauma, radical self-compassion, and what it truly means to become “UNNUMB.”

Dr. Stephanie Byerly is an anesthesiologist, trauma-informed professional coach, TEDx & keynote speaker, founder of The UNNUMB Method & The UNNUMB Coaching Collective, helping people reconnect to themselves through healing, awareness, purpose, and emotional safety.

In this episode, we discuss:

✨ How trauma quietly lives in the body and nervous system

✨ Why many high-achieving people secretly feel emotionally disconnected

✨ The hidden impact of survival mode, burnout, and perfectionism

✨ Reframing pain without minimizing your experience

✨ Radical self-compassion and reconnecting with your identity

✨ Learning how to live through a new lens of power, possibility, and purpose

This conversation is for the person who has spent years being “strong” while silently carrying emotional exhaustion, grief, pressure, or unresolved pain behind closed doors.

You are not weak for feeling numb. Many people learned numbness as protection. Healing begins when we safely reconnect with ourselves again.

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and everywhere podcasts are streamed.

Connect with Dr. Stephanie Byerly:

🌐 http://www.stephaniebyerly.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniebyerlymd

If this episode touched your heart, helped you feel seen, or encouraged your healing journey, and you would like to support the continued mission of these conversations, donations of any amount are greatly appreciated:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This episode of Breaking Curses with Excellence. I'm your host, Christy Christina. And we have a special guest here with us today.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

I'm excited to be here. Thank you. I'm really, really grateful to be here. Excited to talk about all these topics. They're my passion to talk about. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

And I'm so excited to have you, uh Dr. Byerly. Thank you, Stephanie. Please, thank you. Stephanie, Stephanie. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. Let's jump in to um you right? We'll start with you before we get deep dive into trauma. Uh can you share a little bit of about your story? Yes. A little about your journey, what led you to what you are today, the unumb movement.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Mm-hmm. Yes, I um I have a life now that people would look at and think, oh, you know, she's had this great life, this easy life. She's a doctor, you know, all these things. She she must have, you know, had it all, but it actually is the complete opposite of that. And um I grew up um in a household with a lot of abuse. Um my mother was a single parent. My father left when I was two. And um I don't know how she did it, but she took care of my two sisters and I uh on her own back in the day when women couldn't even have a credit card by themselves and without a cosigner. Um, but I uh was pretty sick as a kid in the hospital a lot, um, but also experienced a lot of trauma, including sexual abuse and abandonment, and had to start working when I was 15 to pay rent to my mom. And I actually became her caregiver from the time I was about nine years old. But I um in I was in the hospital when I was four years old for about a month because I had a really bad pneumonia, almost died, and then um was in and out of the hospital after that. And I think that experience, I saw healthcare workers as these amazing people who took care of people who needed help, who maybe didn't have people to take care of them. So I think growing up, I always saw healthcare workers as these amazing people. And when I was 15 and had to start working, I got a job in a very um famous uh hamburger uh franchise. I'll just say that. And I told them that I wanted to be a cook. And they said, girls don't cook, they're only cashiers. And I and I was like, really? Well, watch me. All right, so I became the first cook, female cooks. I think you know, all of this was percolating as far as being so dedicated to women and um really, you know, having gone through a lot of trauma. And I uh became a doctor, and I thought, you know what, I outran my life. Like my life was gonna have I'm gonna have a house with a white picket fence and the dog and the two kids, and I'm gonna, it's gonna be like none of that trauma ever happened. And then I got married to somebody who was very abusive, narcissistic, and it was that abuse was almost more detrimental to me than what I had grown up with. And and and then um the our divorce was very, very ugly. I have two daughters that I became responsible for, um, and the trauma just sort of continued. And uh I have a daughter who's in recovery from addiction, and when things were really bad for that six years, uh up until 2017, those were probably the worst six years of my life. And when she you know, went to um when we did her intervention, it was an intervention for my life as well, and I really started understanding the impact of my trauma. Um and so I at that point, uh, after I started really understanding my trauma and how I was making decisions as you know, a woman in her 50s who was very accomplished and all the things, I started understanding I was making decisions from things that have happened to me when I was four years old. And I didn't understand that about the trauma and how it the physiology of trauma. And so I when I finished with that, or well, never finished, but when I got through a lot of that, I thought, you know, I have to help women in a different way. Um, I had uh struggled with burnout earlier in my career during my divorce, back when burnout wasn't even a word or a topic. You know, nobody talked about burnout, right? And you thought it was just you and you were suffering in silence. Right. And so I originally became uh a coach for women physicians for burnout, and that was all during COVID, and then thought, you know, there's more, there's more to this story that I need to help women with. And I became a trauma-informed coach as well, and I do a sp a special kind of coaching for women called women-centered coaching and a special feminist coaching, and a lot of it is based on um the marginalization of women, but women in general, and about how we have all these additional barriers that keep us trapped. And so went on this quest, and one of the biggest epiphanies of my life was um when I was 40 and I was on my journey of trying to understand trauma. This was way before they started talking about trauma and what it was and how it affected you. I did something called psychodrama. Have you ever heard of that? No, I haven't. So I tell this and I have to almost laugh because it's a voluntary thing that you go do. And when I look back, I'm like, I can't believe I did this. But you go with a group of people, the same people. It's it's usually every like six weeks to every two months, and you spend three days together, and there's a facilitator, and you reenact your traumas. So you're in a location, right? And you set up a stage to replicate what was going on during your trauma, and you pick people that you trust, you know, you trust because you spend a lot of time with these people and they play the parts, and yeah, and so you rewrite the trauma as an adult. So basically, you're you're altering the neural pathways of the trauma. And on Saturday night, after two grueling days, the facilitator said to me, Why did you become an anesthesiologist? And I kept answering her, and she said, Stephanie, why? And she used some expletives, which I won't mention. And I said to her, I said, Shirley, I guess I don't know. Please tell me. And she goes, You have been numb your entire life. What do you do every day? You're an anesthesiologist, you make people numb, you put them to sleep so they don't feel the most horrific things that could be happening during surgery. And I was like, my whole life flashed before me, and I saw myself in every field as numb, physically there, but mentally somewhere else. And so all of this combined, yeah, it just really was like, you know, I I have to help people in a in this different way. And so to be able to um coach high achieving women, and I do trauma coaching in other lenses in some federal organizations, trauma-informed leadership. But when I can explain to a high achieving woman who has checked all the boxes, she did everything she was supposed to do, right? To to feel successful, to be seen, um to be made worthy, that you're worthy, you're valid, right? And then to help them understand through life coaching and through this women-centered coaching and trauma-informed coaching that they're not broken and that where they are, there's no other way they could have could be until they understand this, right? And they've conquered and achieved. So guess what? You get to write your new story now. We look at the old story, we understand why that's there, and then we we create the new story from a very different lens.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Can I can I just say that just from what you've said so far, I feel like I've learned, I feel like it's helped ease some struggles that I've been having. So I'm I'm so thankful for what you're sharing. Um, it is it is very true. We get to rewrite. And and you do, uh I I resonate with the part of your story where you said you had this idea that I've outran my life. I'm gonna have the white picket fans, I'm gonna have the two kids because I thought, okay, you know, I was in a religion, um, and there was different sacrifices you can make, different volunteering you could do. And I had done, I'd done construction, I had learned another language, helped people who spoke that language. I was full-time volunteering, you know, I worked part-time just to make enough to to support, I'd moved across country, I'd done a lot of the things, right? And so then I felt, okay, as a woman, now I can get married in in my head, right? This is just purely in my head. And that's not the way that works. That's not the way that works. And so I didn't get married till probably I want to say it was 15 years later. You know, it's just it's just how it goes. And it's funny that we those of us who had some of us, you know, painful stories, we have that like almost like uh Disney like mindset that it will be for us the rest of the way. You know, that we're we're gonna get all the things and all the things are gonna be great, and we're gonna be the princess, and we're gonna, you know what I mean, we're gonna be the queen, whatever the case may be. Um I always found that as a unique phenomenon. I talked to multiple people who have the had the same thought about the future after they got out the abuse, right? Yeah, and sometimes you walk right back into it.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Um because it's familiar, right? Your nervous system, it's familiar to your nervous system, right? So I think when you've had trauma, you either go in one of two directions in general, right? And so um you can either, you know, totally be is be in that mode of victim, and that everything is just happening to you, which is totally understandable how that happens. Yeah, and then there's the other side of it where you become the achiever and you you try to, as you said, you know, outrun your your your trauma. But unfortunately, what I've learned uh is is trauma has to be processed or it comes out sideways.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yes, you're absolutely I I completely concur. If you don't face it, it'll it'll be like I always say it's like the uh you know how kids clean their room and they stuffed everything in the closet, and the minute the closet gets moved or something, everything starts busting out the sides. I feel like that that's the way that it can be. If you don't face your trauma, it will come out like you said, sideways.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Yeah, but you know, you know, most people don't even know though, like they think, oh, I have had to have a big T. You know, we talk about big T and little T trauma. It really, you and I could experience something that's traumatic, but maybe not, you know, something horrific. And your nervous system will process it one way and mine will process it another way, and it may not affect me and it may affect you. So it really is individually based, and it doesn't matter what the severity of the trauma is. And the the thing is that when people understand that it lives in your nervous system, and so trauma is not necessarily in one of the definitions from Dr. Gabor Mate is it's not what happened to you, but it's what happened inside of you because of what happened to you. Oh wow, wow, that's a perfect way to describe it, right? Because your body, by the time you were seven, decided if you were gonna you were gonna have trauma responses that were fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. By the time you're seven, so you don't choose. And it's all based on how safe your nervous system felt. And so then as an adult, your nervous system may sense danger, and you can't put a memory to it. It's not like, oh, I remember this happened to me, so now I'm getting into fight or flight. Your nervous system just senses danger, but it's it's instantaneous, and then you're in that mode, and you sometimes don't even know why.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Right. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yeah, and then when when we have these reactions, right, we we can be reactionary. I used to be very reactionary before I understood, and relationships get ruined, or jobs get ruined, or you know, all the things that happen. And so that's why I'm so passionate about this, because I just want people to know first off, they're not broken. There's no other way it could be, and there is a way to have us start seeing a light instead of so much darkness.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Oh, that thank you so much for for sharing that. Um you know can you give I know we talked about it, right? Uh briefly, but can you give us a idea of how unresolved trauma affects the way we love, receive love, trust people, you know, even ourselves, see ourselves, trust ourselves. Um can you share a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Yeah, I I um you know there's a couple of ways that people will uh show up after having trauma in in relationships. But the first piece is whether or not you actually trust yourself. And we have to understand that it isn't um something that's in our conscious mind. This is all very deep. And so probably the time most of us were harmed was when we were younger. So if you can imagine, say you were five, six, seven years old, what a brain your brain would be doing at that age and how it would process what's happening. And so there's parts that get put in there that get exiled and stuffed away because they've been harmed so much. And so you can you can either sort of never trust yourself or you can develop a sense of armor, and that's what I had was just guns ablazing, I'm untouchable, you know, just come at me, be ready, you know, always ready for battle. Because what it does is it makes you so someone whose trauma maybe wasn't significant, and someone who's had a lot of trauma, your nervous system is vibrating up here. So it is literally scanning for danger constantly. And so it's like if you think about your smoke detector and your ceiling, it's gonna pick up any little thing. So it's gonna it may misfire. That's what we're doing when we've had a lot of trauma. So you hear a loud noise and you're like, oh my god, someone's behind me, and then you turn around and like your cat jumped off the table. Like, so you're so wired, and so what that does is you know, and depending again, you may do fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. So it really depends. But you never we're so um out of our bodies. That's like sort of what happens when you have trauma. You don't live in your body at all because it was never safe to be in your body because we'd been traumatized, right? So our body was like, uh-uh. And so we live in our head, uh, we don't feel oftentimes. And so we um don't really we can't connect. First of all, we're not connected to ourselves, and then we can't connect to others, and oftentimes we we find other people who've been traumatized as well. So now you have two traumatized people, which not there's no nothing to say bad there. It's just the two people who don't understand how their their nervous systems are gonna interact from a place of neither they want so desperately to connect and love and feel safe, but they can't, and they don't know why. So then it's like, well, it's me, no, it's me, no, it's you, no, it's you know, and you go back and forth, right? And and and it gets it can be frankly, you know, very ugly, and things happen, you know, and it's it's sad because people trying to heal, but they don't understand really what's happening inside of them and how you have to heal. Because, like we talked about, we just want to say, you know what, I did it, I made it out, I outran it, right? I'm done.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Right, I'm done. I'm good. Yeah, no, no, that's not at all, not at all. I am updating figuring out wow, that that was that was the little girl. That was a little girl's reaction to what just happened, you know. That that was that injured little girl trying to get approval. Like, right on a dating, I'm realizing these things, and I'm like, well, there's another area we need to work on, you know, there's another area that I need to, you know, take the therapy or you know what I mean, talk to my spiritual advisor about. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

And that and you know, um, here's the thing. Have you heard of the ACES, the ACES score adverse childhood experiences study that was done in the 1990s, a Kaiser permanent?

SPEAKER_00 17:47

No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

So um there were a group of pediatricians who started noticing that kids were coming in with the same types of disease processes, asthma, like all kinds of things. And they were like, you know, what's going on here? So they started studying it, and they came up with 10 questions, and it is based on like neglect, um, abuse. If you are uh if you are marginalized, like your voice isn't heard. So there's 10 questions, and the highest number you can get is a 10. And based on your score, it tells you actually that your life expectancy may be decreased. And so if you have a score, and my score is a nine. So I will say the only thing that I didn't have it in my and and not to be for pity me, but just no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, understand, you know, the impact. And it is um the only thing I didn't have was there was no I didn't have anybody close to me that was incarcerated. Okay. Okay. But when you have a score of four or more, your life expectancy can be decreased because you're you have chronic inflammation in your body. So you can imagine that you have you're in fight or flight or freeze or fawn, right? You're always in some kind of response. And your endocrine system, so like your cortisol is always high. And so we have this inflammation that we know causes most diseases now. And so you have a higher likelihood of getting cancer, heart disease, diabetes, like everything, and higher risk of substance abuse, of anxiety, of depression, of be of getting in jail, panic, all these things, right? And so who knew that if this was set in place by the time you're seven, how would you know? How would you know? How would you know, right? And it's interesting too, is if you have a score of four or more, you have a higher likelihood of going into a helping profession because you want to take care of people the way you were not taken care of. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely correct. Wow, yeah, and so it's when you start looking at your ACES score from a place of non-judgment and curiosity of like, wow, this is so informative. And it only goes up to age 18, but we know trauma doesn't they study people up to age 18, right? But trauma doesn't stop, right? Right, and so if we look at our lives today and what we do in society, um, I don't know your age, but I will say that my age, you know, we never growing up, we never saw the things we see on TV 24-7 or social media, like wars, right? You know, we never so what we don't understand, we don't understand, and even if we think about COVID and all the things, that's vicarious trauma. And even Doom scrolling on social media, so our brain doesn't understand, it thinks it's happening to us. So even though we're seeing it on a screen, it's processing it as if it's happening to us.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Because I I I I have used that to relax, relax, you know, doom scrolling. And um my my wife has gotten off of social media completely because she can't she can't handle it. We think like, oh, it's because I'm empathetic, right? I I see other people's pain and I feel bad. But if my brain is is taking it as it's happening to me, I'm adding, I'm compounding my tribe.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

Well, well, but there's a reason for that, right? If you think about it, we started in tribes, right? And so we have this thing called limbic resonance where we actually um to be connected to other people, we feel their we so we co-regulate together our nervous systems, and we so we it it isn't you know that something's wrong with you. That's the natural thing when you don't understand.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yes, yes. Wow, there's so much insight, so much insight that wow, wow, I I'm blown away. Please tell me um if you can, or email me or even put it in our chat that that test. Can you take it? Yes, I will.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Can somebody yes? Okay. It's called the ad um ACE score adverse. Childhood experiences survey. And I can g send you the link to all of that. And you know, uh Adverse uh Childhood Experiences Survey. So ACE AC. Okay, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

I can always Google it. That's also a thing.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Well, and you know the thing that's amazing is California, they actually have an ACES initiative. And so, yes, it's pretty remarkable that they're so advanced in that way, and that every child that comes goes to a pediatrician or any any you know a hospital is gonna get asked these questions. And it's um it's it's remarkable because again, when you look at it and you realize what you've been through, right? It's it's almost like it lifts a burden off of your shoulders in a big way.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

And to and actually though, to really understand there's a way that you can start to deal with it. Right, right. And it and everything shifts. Everything shifts. You ever feel alive? Yeah, you start to feel alive again.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Yes. I I know that when I went to intense therapy, um, it was it was like an unclogging of yeah, you know, my creativity. I didn't even know I was a creative person, right? Like I so many things came out of just just that portion of healing, you know? Um, so it's so true. Everything shifts when you start to see things as they are, you know, it's it's not an easy journey, but it's so worth it. It's so worth it.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

And even even simple things like going outside and sitting in the sun or looking at the trees or the burr, like things that you never could do before because your brain was in survival mode all the time.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Yes. I even I even had where I moved out with roommates and things that, you know, little things that they paid attention to, I had no perception of because I I couldn't, you know. I'm trying to avoid basically the monster in the house. I'm trying to make sure that I keep everything so you know, whether the the the shower curtain was inside or outside, all those things, I couldn't, my brain didn't even, you know, and so yeah, I'd love to explain that to you if you would if you like to this may be really helpful, you know.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

Um think about uh when you are uh something act we call it activates you, and you're it it's not something life-threatening, but there's something that's got you anxious, okay? Your brain shifts everything, so blood flow diverts from different areas of your body to like your heart and the organs that need if you need to run. So, really what your brain does is it shuts off and it says, anything that I don't need to expend any extra energy on right now because we have to run. We're we're in survival mode. And so if you think about when that happens, our prefrontal cortex goes offline and our amygdala is running the show. So any ability to be um confident, collaborative, creative, all of those things goes away because your brain's like, I don't need to worry about those things because we're right now, we're literally trying to survive. Right. So there's all these things happening around you, and it's almost like you have this 3D goggles on and you can't see just some of the things around you, right? And so for people who have not experienced trauma to the point where that their their nervous system responds that way, to them, it's like, what is wrong with her, right? Right, right, and so um, have you read uh the book What Happened to You by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry?

SPEAKER_00 25:57

No, I'll have to definitely I love is audiobook, they have an audio.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

You could do audiobook, yes, I love it, I don't know. Yes, and she tells her story, and he tells he really explains trauma through story, and you really understand it. And they say, What if we could start looking at people as what happened to you instead of what's wrong with you? Oh wow, no and how different that would be.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

You know, yes, so much opportunity for compassion and understanding, and and things can be prioritized accordingly, right? Um what we expect of people. Um it would be so much better if we could see each other that way. Yeah, as humans, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

We're humans, humans in earth school, right? We're in we're here in earth school and we're trying to so we die.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Right? Let's go. We're trying to figure it out. Yeah, you know, I want to go back to when you talked about being numb and why you became an anesthesiologist. Um for people who may not realize that they are numb. Yeah, numb, what are some of the first signs that trauma is still living in their body, in their mind? Something they can look out for.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

So so first thing is um I say I was numb, but actually I was so anxious and I didn't even feel it. So as an anesthesiologist, being anxious is not it's not a good combination because you know, we're in life-threatening situations all the time. And so I was like, God, what is wrong with me? Why am I so reactive? You know, um, and people would say things to me and I would just like fly off the handle and you know, all this. And so even though I felt numb outwardly, I could be anxious, I could be this, I could be that. And so, um, but what you you're in um almost like a dissociation all the time where you could be physically present, say with your spouse, and they're talking to you, and you see them and your body's there, but your brain is doing like this, something else. Yes, constantly, constant constant, constant, and you may feel anxious all the time. These states of trauma responses are very, very metabolically taxing. And so thinking about um, when you say, say you're you know you're walking into work, right? And it may it makes you anxious and you don't realize that it's a you're gonna trauma response even before you walk in. Right. You think about when you go home, you're exhausted physically and mentally because your body is working to try to keep you safe. And every little thing that's happening, it's like, are we safe or not? Are we safe or not? Are we safe or not? And so in so you may feel you know have symptoms like your heart is racing, you have headaches, you have stomach aches, you um you're tired all the time, uh, you just you just don't you just don't feel good, you're fatigued, your muscles hurt. Uh but what it sort of is too is you're almost like walking around like a robot, like a zombie. People are experiencing things around you, and you're just like, God, I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything. I should feel happy, right? People will say, Oh, you, you know, anybody would want your life, you know. Why why aren't you happy? And we that's a whole nother conversation, but but you're just like, I don't know what's wrong. It must be me because you know, um, and it's so what do we do? It's like that shame cycle, too, right? So you know, we talk about shame as an emotion, but shame is really a state of being, and even for women, it's a whole nother thing. And so we just live in this constant shame and beating ourselves up about why we're broken and why we can't just be like everybody else. And I outran my childhood and I'm successful, I should just be grateful for what I have. It just doesn't work that way, and so for people to understand too that it isn't just when you're awake, it's when you're sleeping too, and your subconscious is really what's doing the work. And when we talk about our brain, um, they say we have 60,000 thoughts a day, which is kind of nutty, and they say that we are yeah, that we're conscious of five percent, which I don't know that we're we're conscious of three thousand thoughts a day. But when you wake up every day, you 80% of your thoughts are still the same negative thoughts from yesterday. Because your brain, you wake up and your brain it has this negativity bias because it still thinks we live in a cave. When you've had trauma, that is amplified to a whole nother level. So the negative thoughts that you and I think because of the trauma that we've had that we're not even conscious of, that's what's running the show. And when we can make the invisible visible, that's when everything shifts. Everything's and and there's something called well, there's something called post-traumatic resilience. And actually, when people begin to process and heal their trauma, they're unstoppable, they're unleashed. You can't you can't stop them. Because I love that yeah, the healed places makes them stronger than they were before.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Yes, better versions of themselves. Yeah, right. Yeah, having sh taken off some shame and some guilt and all the things that we've carried. Wow, that I love that post-traumatic resilience.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Yeah, and it's like you take the armor, you can drop down some of the armor, and and though, you know how to put it back on when you need to. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

You can see you can see, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:49

And and and it um you you see the world through totally different eyes. And to be able to have that radical self-compassion for yourself, but also other humans, you just start to see people differently. And like what what I do every day, it the operating room can be a very, very, very um stressful place, you know, especially if you're right, trying to save someone's life. People become their worst in those, you know, when you see another human in front of you that you're trying to save. Um and I have to stop for a second when all this chaos is happening, and I have to say, what must have happened to you that you respond this way? Just looking at people in that way, because then it just takes down the level of judgment and emotion. And and the same for myself, right? Because there's just there's humans trying to save another human. Um, but really just realizing, right, people are coming to the table usually with their best foot forward, their best intentions, but sometimes they just have no self-awareness because they don't understand.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Very true, very true, right? Very, very true. Yeah, to look at everybody that way does take a lot of pressure off, even us, you know what I mean? Um personally, yeah. Um so I know you said you you are very high achieving, right? And many high achieving people, right, look successful out for early, like you said, they look at your life and they're like, oh, you don't have any problems, but secretly they are struggling internally. You know what I mean? Like that why does trauma sometimes push people into overworking at times into perfectionism and constantly trying to prove themselves?

SPEAKER_02 33:34

Yeah. So um, you know, a lot of people who have had trauma, as you had mentioned previously, when you're young, um, you may have had a parent just say, and and we don't one of the key pieces of this is we don't blame parents, right? Like they're because so you know, so many of us live in the past and think you blame, we blame and we blame and we blame. And part of really healing and processing trauma is that you this is an inside job. And so no matter what happened to you, let's assume that you know it what it is what it is, right? And so now we have to take responsibility. Um, and the people who may have harmed us were probably harmed. And so if you have a right, if you have a parent who was traumatized and you didn't know it, so they weren't very mentally pleasant, present, right? And you were trying to get attention all the time. So the only way you may have gotten attention was saying, Oh, look, mom, I got an A on my paper, or look, I got and you may have gotten some attention, and so that became your way of being validated and thinking, okay, maybe I'll be loved if I achieve. Now there's a whole nother piece for women where we're told that we're um we don't get validation from ourselves, that we have to look for external validation, usually from men, but also from things, degrees, right? You know, looking a certain way, all right? All these things. And so, first of all, perfectionism is really fear, and we are constantly trying to optimize because the more perfect I am, the more I'll be accepted. Because for women, not being perfect and not like people pleasing and high achieving, that puts us in a place where we lose connection with people. So if we're if we if in our mind subconsciously, if it's like if you're not perfect, you're not gonna, you know, you're not gonna be loved, or you're not gonna have this job, or you're not this. So it's this inner dialogue that literally is going 24-7 and we don't even know it. And so, but oftentimes, right, we think, okay, if I do this with my life, if I become a doctor, I'll never have money trouble. Like I grew up on welfare and I had to work. That's never gonna be my life. My kids are never gonna have that. So you're always trying to, you know, achieve more. Um, and additionally, again, you know, we all want to be the best versions of ourselves. For women, we live in this achiever identity, which is everything is based on how good I am, what a good little girl I am, how I don't need my needs met, how you know, just be easy, just take care of everybody else, right? And so you right, yeah, you check the boxes, you've done it all, right? And you're like, What well, how did I get here? Like, I'm wearing this mask of perfection, and inside my soul is screaming, listen to me. There's more, right? Yes, and so what do we do? We we we get become high achieving, and then we settle, especially as women, for relationships that are not equal, for uh friendships that are not two-sided friendships. We're always outpouring and then what do we do? Then we're resentful, right? So it's just this vicious, it's a vicious cycle.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Yeah, yeah, and exhausting. It's exhausting. Yeah, so thank you so much for that. You know, um, we talked about the nervous system and what it does when somebody's been in survival mode. Um a lot, but how would you say a person who has been in survival mode can start feeling safe again? You know, sometimes the things that have sustained us through those years of survival mode, right, they're no longer needed. Right. And so now we've got to retrain our brain to know I'm safe here. I don't need to be ready to fight, I don't need to be ready to run, I don't need to be, you know what I mean, freeze. So how do we begin to change that mindset?

SPEAKER_02 37:58

You know, and I think it depends where you are in your trauma journey. If you're in some kind of um situation where it's like you're first realizing your trauma and you are overwhelmed um and concerned for your own safety or things like this, because you just, you know, you're you're overwhelmed by this. Professional help, always, you know, and um, you know, that first, right? Always suicide, hotline, all these things, going to a hospital, getting a therapist. But if you're in a space where you know you've had trauma, um, it is not ruling your life per se, and you feel that you could start to embody some safety because that's really what we have to do. The first piece is really acknowledging that you've been harmed. And a lot of people shy away from the word trauma. Um, so I like to use harmed a lot because I think harmed takes down a little bit of the emotionality that's uh associated, and to just think to really just realize my gosh, like and radical self-compassion for what you've been through and that you've survived and you're still here, right? And all that you've gone through to get where you are, the life you've created, and pausing, and even just sitting and putting your hands on your heart, because anytime you touch your body like this, or you hug your body, your body thinks you're getting a hug and it embodies safety. It releases oxytocin, which is the feel-good hormone, the safety hormone, versus cortisol or epinephrine or norepinephrine, which are those fight or flight hormones. And so that automatically puts our body into what we call the parasympathetic nervous system versus the sympathetic. So the parasympathetic is that vagal nerve kind of situation. And um, one thing is breath work. So as an anesthesiologist, I have to make sure people are breathing all day because I put you to sleep and your body stops breathing. So it's really amazing that I'm just like, well, we gotta gotta intentionally breathe. But when you when you really slow down and you start breathing intentionally, and I teach something called for seven, eight breathing, which is where you inhale for four seconds and you hold for seven seconds and exhale for eight. As long as the exhale is twice as long as the inhale, then your parasympathetic, your ventral vagal nerve gets activated, your rest and digest. So when I'm um in the operating room, say and there's something really terrible happening, and I can tell because my hands will start to shake, and I will catch myself and I'll do a minute of breath work and it breaks it immediately.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

Wow, okay. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

So, but the way to do this is to intentionally start to practice this. So, like making a morning routine and maybe a nighttime routine that takes 10 minutes where you you do that breathing and you put your hands on your heart and you close your eyes and you tell yourself we're safe. Doing gratitude work at the same time is also really wonderful, but not weaponized gratitude. So, gratitude's been weaponized for women. And I know I keep bringing this piece in about women, it is right. You should just be grateful, right? No, yeah, why are you not seeing the good in your life?

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Like you have so much to be happy about.

SPEAKER_02 41:15

Yeah, right. So it's something um along the lines of I'm grateful um to my husband because he cooked dinner tonight and that made me feel loved.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 41:25

So a little a detail. Um, and this breath work, and then you know, meditation is amazing. Um, and that's something there's there's oh my gosh, there's thousands and thousands of meditations on YouTube, starting with the most simple guided meditations, but it's that first slowing down, and you start to notice what's going on in your body, and you start to name it like, yeah, I've been through a lot, and right now I'm feeling activated and just slowing down because it's like, am I unsafe or am I uneasy? If you're just uneasy, it is that okay, we're safe, we know what's happening. You know, I'm gonna take care of us. The other pieces are going out in nature, and I know that sounds hokey, but even if stand in the dark yeah, stand in the dark or yeah, yeah, you can barefoot anything where you're you don't have to be barefoot if you can though, it's probably magical because the earth has these electromagnetic currents that helps us. It helps, yeah. But even shoes on concrete, but just like being in nature, and this is critical. If you can slow down and use your five senses, what do I see? What do I hear? What is something like I feel, taste, smell, that breaks the cycle. And you can start embodying safety because what you're doing is you're becoming more inside your body and you're allowing your body to feel because that's what happens is we don't feel anything, right? Because it wasn't safe to feel. So we have to remember that our nervous system did all of this out of this exquisite way it thought it was protecting us, and as you mentioned, we don't necessarily need that protection all the time anymore. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 43:13

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 43:14

And and so those are even just some simple things taking an Epson salt bath where you're just laying there and you're just allowing. And when you start this process and you start to embody, because this is like one percent a day of so um, because your body, it's gonna take a long time for your body to actually believe you that it's safe and to trust you that it's good, you're gonna continue this. And so um, what happens is then you you start to feel a difference, and so you want to do more, but the first pieces are really just allowing, and then when you can do more, is to allow the feelings. So if you feel anxious to sit there and say, Okay, I'm gonna do breath work, I'm gonna put my hands on the Hands on my heart. I know I'm safe. I'm gonna sit here for five minutes and allow the anxiety, it goes away.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

It's like name it to tame it. Okay, name it too, it just starts to go away. And here, here's something else, though. In our society today, we're told we're not supposed to have any kind of emotion unless it's happy, right? Be happy, be grateful. Yes. So for women, we're not allowed to be angry. And if we get angry, then we're stepping out of our box and we're gonna lose connection because we're stepping out of the box of what's acceptable for a woman.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

What do we do as women? We stuff it down. We have so much rage. We have so much anger and so much rage, right? But but we don't let ourselves feel it. So that's part of the piece of becoming numb, is because it's too painful to and it isn't just women, but too painful to realize how you've silenced your voice and how you've shrunk yourself to fit in. And especially if you're uh a marginalized identity where you're anything right, but I'm we're I'm talking about women here. I obviously know I'm a white woman with a lot of privilege on this call. If you're anything but a white woman, um, and for men the same, um, and is to just you know uh really start to realize the impact of all that as well, and it's all additive. So you have to be more perfect than I do. You have you know, and when you start to realize the effects of that, it's overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

It is you know, I I I talk to you know, I was raised in a predominantly white area, right? And so um a corporate it wasn't hard for me to blend in, you know, just because I'm used to you know the way I talk around certain people, right? And then the way I talk at home. Yeah um and we had somebody interview and they talked about it, and I I just thought I don't know why. I don't know why, I thought it was just me that that had to deal with that you're almost taught to have dual personalities. Absolutely from childhood, like you you can do not be this way out here, yeah. You can talk like this, you can act like this, you can be loud or whatever with your family and your friends in your homes, but out there, don't don't let them see, you know what I mean, that that side of you because it will be taken wrong.

SPEAKER_02 46:36

And and and so you you you have that piece, and then um if you think about the internal conversation, is if I'm having to be different, then there's something wrong with me. Right. And that othering, um the toll of that weather weathering is right, and just it's it's um yeah, it's it's it's overwhelming. And just to um I don't you know think about the the way that people walk around every day and the the backpack of bricks that are on their back.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Yeah. It's it's um it's it can help you have a lot of compassion and not take things so personally if you think about there's so many things that that person's going through that I have no clue. You know, I have no clue. The internal, like you said, those internal conversations, because you know, fast forward to when we moved to um a part of Ohio where it's a mixture, a good mixture. Now I'm not black enough. You know, and and that's also a thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Um so yeah, you you never know what people Well, and and I want to say something other really quickly though, and uh, but I don't mean um that people should be able to treat you in a certain way, and then you just overlook it because, like, oh what you know, not saying I just want to make that clear that I'm not because they're things that are not not acceptable. It isn't just I I have so many um my clients who say to me they're African American women or Indian women and then or Hispanic and they say, you know, um people just say to me, Oh, you you interpreted that wrong. That's not what they meant. Well, that's not the way that it worked. It's intent versus impact, right? And so that's not acceptable. Right, right. Yeah, and a lot of a lot of coaches tell people that and they try to negate what they've they've said because they don't want to deal with the tough issues of talking about, yeah, that really did happen to you. It's really happening.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

Yes, yes. I've had conversations with um people that I love, you know, and they're like, Well, you kind of just may, you know, you just kind of saw it like that, or you just you know, and I'm not even a person who carries um that mentality. I don't want to look at it like that. I truly don't, but I know what it is. So to go to somebody you love um that you feel like cares about you and then negate it is it it can be painful.

SPEAKER_02 49:21

It is painful, and and you know, when they don't know what to do with it either, you know, it makes that one comfortable, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:27

It's true, because I'm saying that somebody that looks like you treated me like this, and so now you're maybe not even realizing it, but you're like, no, I don't want to accept that blank, right? But I'm not talking even though I'm not talking about you, I'm not talking about you know me personally. Um so I I do see that too. It's hard to accept that, yeah. Yeah, it's very, very, very painful. How how um how can the nervous system right um or trauma or the effect that trauma has had on the nervous system, right, affect people when it comes to connecting it with intimacy and affection and emotional vulnerability?

SPEAKER_02 50:14

Um so uh that's a um a multi pieces. So if we talk about people with trauma, um it it really I think depends on you know what happened to you in your in what trauma you had. But again, usually there's a sense of you're not connected to your body. Um and if you had sexual trauma, uh, you know, that has its own kind of effects on you. Um because if you think about, you know, for me, mine my sexual abuse was when I was about eight. And so what does that do when it sets you up for what you think intimacy should be, especially as a woman, where we're told that sex is dirty and that we're only supposed to do have please, you know, all it's right, right.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

You're your pleasure tool so messed up, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:09

Yes, and it really prevents you from again being connected to your body. Uh you because we're women are in performance mode all the time, anyway. We're always performing, right? And so we always sacrifice ourselves for others in every way, but you know, in the as far as intimacy, we just don't feel like we deserve it almost, and we can't accept it. And a lot, and there's a lot of different variations um of this, but it prevents us from truly allowing ourselves to be seen and to show our parts to other people because we don't even know what our parts are, but we don't um we don't feel safe with anybody, we don't feel like it's almost like in the back of your mind is like, well, if this happened to me when I was eight and the people who loved me, I thought were supposed to be the ones protecting me, but they were the ones harming me, then how is anyone that I trust, I think I trust, that I love ever make me feel safe? And so then you're always looking for red flags as well, right? You're always looking for that thing that's going on to say, oh wait, maybe this person isn't safe. So we're always scanning again. It's like you can never relax enough to be inside your body because you don't feel safe. It's not safe to be in your body, right?

SPEAKER_00 52:27

Vulnerable to be open to Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:30

And oftentimes, though, we're naive in a lot of ways too, because what happens is that your your brain, so whatever age you are when this has happened to you, your brain sort of shuts down in that area and prevents you from learning more and maturing in that area. Um, and so you may be someone, even though you've been through a lot of trauma, that was very naive and very trusting of people. And that is true. Yeah, so people who are narcissists are drawn to people who have had trauma, but also to high achieving women. Um, and then there's this whole bad, bad.

SPEAKER_00 53:10

Yes, yes, yes, yes, where they they they break down the person who is high, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:18

And when you've had trauma and you don't necessarily trust yourself, and then you meet somebody that seems so like uh in a you know, for say for a man, my knight in shining armor, and you're like, oh my gosh. And then you actually, when it when this like abuse starts to happen, you start to believe them more because you're like, well, maybe they're right, because I'm broken. You know, like I it it's such a vicious, it's a vicious cycle. Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

No, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

And though it doesn't mean that it can't be different when you start to understand it, and that's the piece that's key. Right.

SPEAKER_00 53:53

Right. Yes, to always move forward, right? And in in in a way of fixing it. You know, how how how do people stop connecting survival mode with strength? Because I I think that and I'll be honest when I say that it's very prevalent in our community for that to be seen as strength, you know, that that always having your guard up, that nobody messes with you, that you know, uh you can't uh get me basically um mentality. How can they stop connecting that with strength? Um because people think that shutting down or just being, you know, is being strong or being brass is being strong.

SPEAKER_02 54:40

I I you know, um there's a lot of pieces to this, and I I keep separating out men and women um in general, but I yeah, I think one of the biggest pieces is that when you um when you've done your internal work or you're working on it because the work never stops, you begin to validate yourself and you begin to show up, meaning how you present yourself, how you are in situations, and you get to the point where you're like, you know what? Um I know who I am and I know why I'm here. I'm showing up, I'm not raising my voice, I'm neutral, I'm this. If you don't like me, not my problem.

SPEAKER_00 55:26

Great question, right? So it's a beautiful space to be in.

SPEAKER_02 55:29

It is. You don't people please, you don't do things out of obligation. You tell friends, I've told my so many of my friends I love you, but I'm not having a one-sided relationship anymore. So if if you know if you don't want to participate, thank you. It's been wonderful, but like you set strict boundaries, and people don't get to cross your boundaries, and it's because you feel worthy, so you show up in this empowered manner, and it's not that we're perfect all the time, and a lot of times we do have to look at what we've done and say, Well, maybe I could have done that better, but yeah, but in general, people can't knock you off the rails because you are very secure in who you are, and it's really hard to get to that place because there is a lot of internal work, and for women, um, we make everything about our identity, so shame, everything is about shame. And so when we have to go deeply internal and understand that and start to break the patterns and the cycles, and then everything shifts because you realize that you're holding yourself back and that you have all the power, you have everything inside of you you need, it just needs to be unearthed, you know.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

Yeah, yes, yeah, and it's a beautiful thing to see yourself or start to see yourself, even a glimpse of your goodness, your amazingness, your your extraordinary qualities.

SPEAKER_02 56:59

Yeah, yeah, but for women, again, I'm just gonna say that there's all these other barriers. So I'll say, for instance, I started a new job a year ago, and a nurse walked up to me the first week. I didn't know her at all, and she said, Can I call you Stephanie? And I said, Do you call the male physicians by their first name? And she said, No. I'm like, well, no, you can't call me Stephanie. Right? And so we have these additional things that happen to us. You know, uh patients will say to me, You're the best-looking anesthesiologist I've ever seen, and their wife is sitting right next to it. I mean, you this doesn't happen to male physicians.

unknown 57:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

So for women in general, we I'm just not saying as if only physicians, but all women, yeah, we have these other things, right? That happen. So if you can think about the fact that women never feel physically safe, do you ever walk into a parking lot at night at dusk and not scan to make sure there's not someone? So we're never physically safe, and then our own brain is not physic is not safe. So we're in this constant sense of I'm not safe. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 58:10

When you think about that, that's crazy that that we deal with that every single day.

SPEAKER_02 58:16

24-7, because when you go to 24-7, your brain is still doing it. So for us, we uh this like high achieving and things, it it makes us feel like we belong. When we're not perfect and we're not the good little girl, and we're not this and we're not that. Literally, what our brain goes to is well, you're gonna get kicked out of the cave and eaten by a saber-tooth tiger because nobody's gonna want you.

SPEAKER_00 58:46

You know, it it it's it's so enlightening to talk about things so clearly and then at the same time you for lack of a better word, you stand in all that that that our brain, right, that our body contains and has handled and endured continually all of these things. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 59:08

Like just it's it's exquisite, right? But it thinks we're still in a cave, and then we we don't even understand like epigenetics, right? The genetics that you and I carry just as women, and then you carry the genetics of African American women, and I mean, there's all this is also what's ruling the show, and it's becoming um much more uh talked about in the literature, in the scientific literature about this, and it is incredible.

SPEAKER_00 59:39

It's incredible. Like I I have learned so much in our time back in the day, so so much. And and even like the things that I knew, like looking at them from the perspective that you shared, um, the scientific, right? The the studies, the from a doctor's perspective, is like wow. I never I never even imagined it that way. That that's amazing, sad at the same time, but still, you know, there's there's something of of beauty and strength that can come from talking about honestly what we have been through, you know, and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:18

Um this group that I work for, um trauma group, Dr. Kimiya Sorof, she's started this group. Um and she has this amazing phrase, and it's connection mitigates trauma. And if you are like for me, I think the person in my life when I was having my trauma was a teacher who I always connected with. So if you have just one person who will just listen to you, they don't have to fix anything, but they acknowledge you and they validate you, and they may say that shouldn't have happened to you. I'm so sorry. Just that one person can change everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:56

Yes, absolutely. Um, for me, since I have been away from the religion and you know, my some of my family relationships have you know um had struggles. Uh it's been for me, I call him my spiritual advisor, he's a bishop, um, and we have weekly sessions, and um it's it's been more help than I can ever I can ever describe, you know, just having that person. I worry sometimes that I wear them out, but the the you know, it just having that that that person understands and they see my heart and you know and um can validate that those things were hard, um, or are hard even currently. Um you're right.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:45

Because there's so much non-closure, right? There's no way to fix these things in general. So it is as a human to get them out of your nervous system and have another human acknowledge your humanity, yes, and validating your experience, yes, yes, and your pain.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:05

Um I think we've talked about uh some of these things, but how can someone support, right? Um a partner, a family member or a friend who is grieving or emotionally shut down without losing themselves in the process. Can you give us uh, you know, some some guidance, some suggestions with that?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:28

Um, I think that what would be really what's very helpful is for that person, the partner of the person, to really start to understand what this about trauma. Because even um say, for instance, they read this book with Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry, or they looked up, like uh, there's so many resources now, Dr. Gabor Mate, things on YouTube, and started understanding it. Well, then they would look at their person, spouse, maybe whoever it is, and be like, Oh my gosh, I now have a better understanding of why you may be showing up the way that you are, and it really has nothing to do with me. Right. It's what you are, what you've gone through. And now I'm starting to understand this through a lens of radical self-compassion for both of us, but really understanding that your body system your body is living in survival mode, yes, and that it isn't because I um you know I I'm not a good spouse or what it's because that person's brain is looking at things differently, interpreting things differently, misfiring. Yes, and so that I think is the always the first piece to work with yourself and to understand what is happening. Um, and then it also takes a lot of the say if there's anger because of it, or because you, you know, you're getting blamed and there's just so many emotions, right? It helps you as the individual understand. Um, okay, I don't want to be angry anymore. I'm starting to have a different understanding of why this is happening. It isn't because this person is doing this on purpose, they have no self-awareness as to why this is happening. And then it is that really being very radically self-compassionate with the other person, and there's never um it's never like attacking. You always want to be in a very neutral, safe environment, and just a little bit at a time of like, I'm really starting to understand the impact. I had no idea. Yeah, I'm so sorry for what happened to you, and building the trust from a place of this other person's embody starting to embody that you really are there and you understand, and you're not gonna harm them, and you're not gonna use this against them and all this, and so building that trust together, so it's starting, it's like restarting the foundation because you're really relearning who you are when you start to understand your trauma, right? Right now, and so and I think it's hard too in relationships because there's always that honeymoon phase, right, where everything is so wonderful and passionate, and then but when it goes back to everyday life, everybody gets back to who they were before, and then so you're just thinking, well, why isn't this person responding to me the way that they were before? Well, yeah, and so that creates that whole whole different cascade. So is really understanding, okay, I'm gonna take a look at myself, I'm gonna calm myself first, and then I'm gonna start to say, Wow, okay, now I'm starting to see what's going on here. Um, when we go and and talk about trauma in like bigger settings and things, people have these revelations about their spouse or a parent or a friend or a coworker, and they're like, Oh my gosh. And that's the magic of what must have happened to that person instead of what's wrong with that person. It's it just it switches the way your brain looks at it. You know what I mean? In a very much of a non judgmental and a not a um not in a way of excavating someone's trauma because that's not what we want to do. We want to just kind of look at it and be like, this is how it's affecting you today. We're not digging up what happens. You do that with a therapist, or you know, different if you you know, and that you don't necessarily ever really need to do that, but it's really looking at what hap what what it's done to you today. And for instance, um, let me give you a quick example. This will I think will give your listeners uh an understanding. Um five years ago, so my sexual abuse would have been almost 40 years prior to this. I my significant other took my car to get fixed, and I had to go pick it up with him and pay for the car. And we went in this man's office, and I don't I couldn't stop moving. I was pacing, pacing, pacing, and I was like, What is wrong? And this man was sitting at his desk and he was telling me all the things, and Michael said to me, Are you okay? And I was like, I'm not okay, but I don't know why. And he asked me for my credit card. I threw it at him, and I was like, What is happening? So I got in my car, I told my I gotta go, and I drove around and I pulled over on the side of the road, and I realized that he looked exactly like my mother's third husband that had sexually abused me. This was 40. So my I didn't I made no association to the memory. My body instantaneously reacted danger.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:33

Yes. My goodness.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:35

So that see this and when we understand that this is the way it goes, there's no thoughts involved. You're the circuitry in your brain fires so quickly, and it goes to a part of your brain of memory of harm, and it releases it says we are we have our life's in danger, and you don't even know what's happening. So when we start to realize that trauma um comes back as a reaction, not as a memory, that it's our nervous system that is reacting, and we don't use the word triggered because triggered has a really negative connotation if you think of a weapon. So we're saying so. When we say, you know what, my nervous system is activated, that's what it is, is your nervous system is activated. It takes the level of everything down.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:25

Yes. Yes. Yes. Wow. Thank you so much for that. Now, not just my listeners, but for for me even, because um uh since we've gotten married, she's lost both of her parents. Oh gosh. Both of them and her mom most recently. And I'm gonna be honest and say I struggle with navigating it with her. Like, you know, I thought I was gonna be this great supportive spouse, and then I'm sp, you know, uh for lack of a word, spiraling, looking at her, going through it. You know, I can't do anything because she has to lean into the grief, right? She has to feel the feel, she has to go through the pain, but there's not even, you know, like even little things, you know, I want to do, I want to do something to make her smile, you know. Um, and then I have my trauma, right? That that is is and it activate your trauma. Yes, yes. So I really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:25

You know, and I think too, um, one of the most simple things that you can do to for somebody who's really in that state, uh, is to say, how can I help? What do you what do you need? What do you need? But not from a place of like uh weakness, but right, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:43

Well, how can I be of support? And I have, and a lot of times she just doesn't know. And so yeah, you know, we we go with that. We sit in silence, we'll, you know, maybe watch something mindlessly, or you know, we'll we'll do some kind of task, or I'll just let her be, you know. I she has her extra room that she can go in and just be. Um, and sometimes that's what she needs from me to just give her that space to self-regulate. But it's um I'll take to heart what you said for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:14

Yeah, and you know, we don't want to feel grief, and we're told we're not supposed to feel negative. And our brain, when we start to feel any kind of negative emotion, our brain actually says, please do something to make me feel better. And it says, I need a dopamine hit, so go get on social media, go eat something, drink something, go watch porn, go buy something. Right. Literally, you know, and so when we actually allow, because we know that that's what we have to do and that we're safe, right? Realizing your body's telling you you're not safe, go do something, and it's really fighting that um impulse, the automatic impulse. Um, but when we take it down to neuroscience, like it's actually it's scientific. Then you start to realize, yeah, like you know, um it couldn't have been any other way.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's and and and for me, and I'm sure many uh spouses or or people in long-term relationships who um see their spouse uh suffering, they want to do something, right? Like something. I like I know I can't because from my perspective, I know I can't fix the grief, you know, the pain, right? But maybe I could do a little dopamine hit for her, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:29

Like something to support her, yeah, that she that would make her feel safe and supported and loved. That's yes, but sometimes that can be counterintuitive. That's what you know what I tell you. When you actually um most people actually, like you said, when you ask what can I do for you right now, what do you need? They don't know. And then it it but it you know when you create sort of safe spaces for them to start knowing, will you let me know I'm here? Right, I'm always here, right? And so yeah, if we all if we could just oh my gosh, if all of us can just allow each other to be human.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:04

I know we'd all be so much happier, we'd all had better connections, healthier connections. Yeah, yeah. Give me a second, I'm just gonna take a drink or something. Yeah, I get hiccups randomly. It's an odd thing, but yeah, I have hiccups. No, but thank you. What would you say? And I'll I'll make this our last question. We can go on as long as we want to from a dog, right? Um, what would you say to a listener who feels broken because they can't just move on what they've been through? Because a lot of times I feel like we're better as a society and not pushing people to let things go and do one, but it's still there. It's still that push that you know you got you just gotta get out of it because it's taken away from your life. How can you how what would you say to that kind of person?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:56

Well, I would definitely um you know reiterate the thing about your brain uh and wanting you to do things to make yourself feel better. So we are so great at distracting ourselves, right? That's why social media is an epidemic right now, because it is that let me get on social media, let me distract myself, let me make myself feel better. So when we start to really understand why we're doing things, and that it's again, a lot of it is out of our awareness, and we're just we're we live on automatic pilot, right? What do we do? We wake up every day, we do the same routine every single day. So uh it's really of that slowing down and pausing and starting to be curious. Why am I doing like why am I doing this?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:45

Let me stop living on automatic pilot and slowing down. And I think that brings up its own resistance though, because then your body's gonna go, what are you doing? This isn't familiar to me. I don't like this. Right, right. But it has to start somewhere and it and really pausing and breathing and slowing down and starting, are you safe? Are you not safe? Are you just uneasy? And realizing a lot of anxiety is gonna come up, a lot of resistance, but it's just it's a process. Because we're breaking, we're literally breaking down neural pathways in our brain, and when you think about it that way, it's science again. We literally are breaking down pathways that fire automatically in our brain, instantaneously, like instantaneous. So, you know, it there is a way you just have to be looking at and be like, you know what, I'm ready to start looking at this. It doesn't mean I'm blowing up my life, right? Uh but I want to start understanding right, right through a lot of radical self-compassion.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:51

Yeah, yeah, that part, yes, radical self-compassion.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

It's okay that I feel the things that I feel that I and normalizing it. Like, of course, anybody who would have been through what I've been through would would be in this place, position, whatever. And it's time though that I want to start, you know, one toe in the water. Let me start, let me start this. Because the thing is, is like when it does start and you feel you start to feel the difference, then it snowballs because you start to you like, oh my gosh, this is really working. Like, but it's a process, and it's I had a coach who used to say two percent less crappy a week. I mean it's it's these tiny little increments. Increments, one percent a day, or but it's that we um we have to start taking charge of our brain, yes, and when we start to understand what this really all is, because we can.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:46

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:49

Everything changes, yes, everything changes.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:51

Everything changes then. Again, to reiterate what you said before, professional help, right? We don't have to do it alone. A lot of times the damage that has been caused, some of it can be self-inflicted. So I'm not gonna ignore that part, but a lot of what we have endured and as traumatized is due to other people. So, in order to help us feel feel better, get to a better place, we also need other people, people who are trained to deal with what we struggle with. Um can provide perspective when our brain goes back into these radical thoughts, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:25

Yeah, right. And it gives if you can look at it scientifically, it makes sense. Then it then it makes sense. If someone can explain to you why this is happening, it doesn't mean you're broken, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:34

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:35

And so, and you know, people who've had a lot of trauma too tend to continue in traumatic cycles, and that's part of the process as well. Because it's familiar.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:46

Yes, it's familiar. You may on uh what do you say, like high level consciously know that that is not healthy and that's not what you want, but subconsciously it feels comfortable. You may be frustrated, irritated by it, but it's comfortable, you know. Uncomfortable, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:03

Yeah, there's so many comfortable, yeah. Uncomfortable, our body doesn't like uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:07

No, no, and and and healthy will make you very uncomfortable. It will bring out and show you some things about yourself. You're like, my goodness, I thought I never thought I was that way, you know. Um, and so there's I feel like that's where some people can also kind of self-sabotage because they they know they feel uncomfortable, they know that this is bringing out some things, showing them some things about themselves they don't like to see. So I'm just gonna sabotage it and then I can go back to what I'm comfortable with. But yeah, um, it it's it's so important to fight it. Oh my goodness. I have absolutely enjoyed this episode. I mean, more than I can can express. Thank you so much for the time that um I know this is gonna be amazing for our listeners. Um I I hope that everybody it reaches everybody to anybody who could benefit from it, even if they tell somebody else.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:02

Well, that thank you. Yeah. Becoming unnumb, right? Unnumb.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:06

Unnumbed, unnumbed. Um, and so I'm gonna, if you want to tell us some ways to contact you, I'll also put it in our caption. Um, but please tell us how we can contact with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:18

My website, which is a placeholder right now, because I'm going through my rebranding for my unnumb, but it's uh www.stephaniebyrley.com, and there's a place to book a call. Uh also on social media, all of my uh for LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, it's all the same at Stephanie Byerley MD. And my email is Stephanie at StephanieByerly.com. So I would love to talk to people and just um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:45

I'm thinking in my brain as we're talking, like I know this high achiever, I know she could benefit. You know, I'm thinking of people. Um, so I'm hoping I'm excited to see their reaction to our episode and hopefully they'll get in contact with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:58

Um that'd be great. That would be great.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:00

This is uh my passion.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:01

I still practice anesthesia. Um and it's this is this part of my life, though, is what I want to spend the rest of my career doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:11

Same, same. I still have my corporate job, but this is my passion.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:15

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:21

That can help people as well. So, again, thank you for your time. Um, to those who are listening to us, keep breaking those curses with excellence. Remember, you deserve it. You are loved, you are worthy. It healing is a journey, not a destination. And until next time, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much.