How Real Change Happens Without Force or Shame: The Truth About Trauma Responses

Welcome back to the ACT OUT podcast! In this episode, host Adam Tomlin sits down with trauma therapist Trisha Wolfe for a fascinating and deeply relatable conversation about the brain, childhood trauma, emotional survival strategies, and why so many people intellectualize their feelings instead of actually processing them. What starts as a discussion about brain development quickly turns into an eye-opening look at how our earliest experiences shape the way we think, connect, regulate emotions, and navigate relationships throughout our lives.

Trisha breaks down how the brain develops from infancy, explaining how early attachment, emotional connection, and unmet needs create the neural pathways that shape our sense of safety, trust, and self-worth. Adam and Trisha explore how coping mechanisms that once protected us as children—like overthinking, analyzing other people’s behavior, or shutting down emotionally—can later become barriers to vulnerability, healing, and authentic connection.

The conversation also dives into trauma responses, nervous system regulation, emotional avoidance, and the difference between understanding emotions intellectually versus actually feeling them. Trisha shares insights from both her professional work as a trauma therapist and her own lived experience as a “recovering intellectualizer,” helping explain why so many people stay stuck in cycles of anxiety, hyper-awareness, people-pleasing, or emotional detachment without realizing where those patterns began.

Adam and Trisha also unpack the importance of safe relationships, emotional attunement, and how healing often starts by recognizing the unconscious beliefs we formed as children. Together, they challenge the idea that healing is about “fixing” yourself and instead frame it as learning how to reconnect with your emotions, nervous system, and sense of safety in the world.

If you’ve ever wondered why you react the way you do, struggle to fully feel your emotions, or find yourself constantly trying to “logic” your way out of pain, this episode offers a powerful and accessible look at how trauma shapes the brain—and what healing can actually look like.

Learn more about Trisha Wolfe here.

Tune in every Thursday for episodes that inspire, challenge, and entertain. Whether you’re here for laughs, lived wisdom, or action steps, the ACT OUT podcast is your space to rethink growth, embrace self-awareness, and act out your passions.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Act Out Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Tomlin. Today's guest is trauma therapist, Trisha Wolf. Let's roll the tape. Hey, Trisha, how are you? Hey, I'm great.

SPEAKER_04 0:11

How are you?

SPEAKER_02 0:12

I am doing phenomenal. I uh told you a little uh a little earlier. I uh I I've been looking forward to this for for so long. So thank you so much for coming on.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Of course, I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

So last night I had been watching these uh these documentaries about human ancestors and and basically how we kind of evolved to get to our present state. And one of the things it was talking about was the importance of us or of our of human ancestors being able to get a full night's sleep up in the uh up in the treetop for brain growth and brain development. And so that kind of got me thinking uh what separates us from all the other animals is our brain. Sure. And so who better to uh discuss the the discuss the brain than someone who has been able to intellectualize intellectualization?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

That's right, that's my specialty. I always speak about it saying this is not just from me as a therapist, a researcher, but a lived experience of being a recovered, recovering intellectualizer.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

There was something that you had posted uh the other day that I I had never felt more seen uh in my life. Um it was like uh one of the like I've got the matches. You know, that one and uh I think what it what it said underneath was uh whenever I discovered that if I can figure out why someone does something, then I'll never have to feel hurt again.

SPEAKER_04 1:43

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Whenever whenever I read that, I specifically remember having that literal thought as a kid. And it took so long to realize that that actually is not going to be able to help me out at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Right. It is so strange how much those adaptive things that serve us at certain situations in our life no longer do in the present, but our brain still holds on so tightly to them.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

So let's kind of uh look, let's go from the very, very beginning. Um, whenever um like whenever you're born, what is what what's happening to the brain? And then like how is it starting to uh wire itself as you get a little bit older?

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Such a good question. You know, when we are born, we are acquiring learnings in our brain from the very beginning, even when we are not conscious as infants, we learn in response to the environment around us. And as we do that, our brain is doing one of two things. It's either firing neurons, meaning building roadways in our brain, neural pathways, or it's pruning pathways, meaning we don't really use these pathways. We have a lot of neural pathways when we're born. So we need to get rid of some of the ones we don't use. So based on, we're doing a lot of early development in those first few years, but all throughout our childhood. Based on those first few years, based on the experiences we have with our caregivers and the environment around us, how they show up for us, how they meet our needs, how they connect to us or don't connect to us, our brain is very rapidly developing learnings unconsciously, even when we have no idea what's going on about what to expect from the environment and how we should behave. We know even infants can sense, for example, if when they cry, someone comes to meet their needs, great start. But if someone comes to meet their needs and they can fully connect with them, they can fully be present with them. And we'll say most of the time. We're not expecting caregivers to be perfect. We're just saying most of the time, when they show up for that infant who's crying, who's scared, who's hungry, who needs to be changed, that they are able to do so consistently and emotionally in an emotionally connected way. If that happens, the brain is forming lots of neural pathways that says it's safe for me to have needs. I can trust that the environment will meet my needs. That's one of the very first ideas that's laid down. I can trust that the environment can meet my needs. It is safe for me to have needs, I can be comforted and connected and safely attached. If we don't get that experience, then what do we learn? We learn when I have, again, unconscious, babies can't think this way, right? But when I have needs, I upset the people around me. My needs are too much for the environment. No one's ever going to meet my needs, or they're going to meet them inconsistently, which is also very scary, very overwhelming. I have no capability as a baby to take care of myself. So then those pathways start forming. And then the form the pathways that say it's safe to have needs, I can trust the environment around me, they start getting pruned, right? The brain says we're not using those. So you would be surprised how much that early environment actually starts laying down these tracks about whether we are able to have needs and whether we can trust the environment around us.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Okay. So let's uh this is going to be fun. Let's go the let's go in two different ways. So let's start and let's say that we have a baby that has a secure attachment to both uh to both parental figures. Let's kind of go into the uh to the development of what happens whenever you're like a baby growing into a toddler and kind of learning to be able to regulate.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Sure, such a great question. And just a little note about attachment, we actually know more and more that attachment to the primary caregivers is really important. You can also successfully earn secure attachment, even as a young child, if there are other people in your life who can show up securely. So that's really fascinating to know too, that say, say one of your parents was kind of inconsistent, but one could show up, and maybe you had a nanny or a babysitter who was really caring. That kind of sends us down the same pathway. So I just wanted to note that because it's yes, yes, we know more and more that you can earn secure attachment from other adults in your life. And that is a protective factor, meaning it lays down kind of the same tracks as a caregiver. So could oh, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Could you have different like uh attachment styles based on like uh like parents versus peers, or is it pretty much like the same?

SPEAKER_00 6:04

We know attachment is so much more flexible than it was originally designed in these 60s and 70s studies, and that it's it's much more malleable and flexible based on the environments we're in, the adults and peers that we're around, the levels of stress in our home at the time. So it's actually really good news for all of us because it means our attachment isn't quite so fixed as we thought it was. And it also means it's not quite so dire, right? This idea that you have insecure attachment or you have avoidant attachment, it's like maybe in some cases you do, but not all cases. And it's flexible, it's malleable, and there are many other factors that can shift that. But let's just say, for example, you do have two caregivers or you have some safe and trusted adults in your life when you're a baby. As you move into that next stage, the whole idea of a secure base means you have this home base of a person you know you can trust, and you as a toddler can start little bits at a time to explore the world. So you might play with your mom, your dad, your grandmother, your grandmother, whoever it is. And then maybe you are playing a little bit by yourself and you go show them.

unknown 7:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

And then eventually maybe they're cooking dinner and you're playing in the living room where you can see each other and you run over. You know, this is why toddlers are like, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, because they're saying, Oh, my mom's still there. Right? Mom, look at me, acknowledge that I'm here. And mom's like, I see you. And it's like, cool, I'm safe. I can go back to my playing. Right. So this development is happening now that says, like, I'm safe to explore the world. I will always have this safe and trusted person, or most of the time, have this safe and trusted base there for me. So then you get to start to build relationships with other people around you, other adults, other babies your age, because you know, like there's always going to be this place I can turn back to and say, I'm okay. Toddlers cannot regulate themselves, but they are learning the feeling of autonomy, meaning the capacity to say, wow, I think I might be a separate person from my mom or my dad or whoever it is. That's why they say no. That's why they say I do it. That's actually the basis of when we start learning autonomy. Like age 18 months, we're figuring out we're a separate person and we're allowed to have our own needs, agency, and experience. Like it's really hard for a lot of us to do that as adults. That starts getting laid down at 18 months.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

I have a son that is uh two. He'll be uh three, actually uh at the end of this week. Um, and um, he is very much now in that like autonomous stage. And uh, I guess I should be a proud parent, but I'm more of an exhausted parent because of that autonomous stage, I think.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Oh my gosh, it is it is an incredibly taxing stage, and you know, appropriately so because they're doing so much rapid development. But yeah, to really allow your child to be in that stage takes a lot of work of your own regulation, your own boundaries, like holding on, knowing it's not like it was in the past. We know it's not the terrible twos or whatever it is. We know it's actually rapid fire development taking place, which is exhausting.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

You know, and what you had said earlier uh is so interesting to me uh uh about attachment because whenever I I grew up in the in the 90s. And so it was very much uh especially for uh boys and men or like boys, you're not supposed to be close to your mom. You're you're gonna be a mama's boy. And uh it if you like kind of had an attachment, so to speak, it spoke more about you being like isolated and that you wouldn't want to go out and explore the world. But it seems like what you're saying is if you have that emotional safety net at the beginning, you're gonna be more willing to go out and explore, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:42

You got it, right? And I think you know, it's kind of a Venn diagram, if you will, where the middle part is like this great, mostly consistent, secure base from whomever this adult is. On one side, you're kind of lacking it, but on the other side, there can actually be too much of it, right? Too much of this constant togetherness, you don't get to develop your autonomy, et cetera, that can also make it challenging to go out and meet people. Sometimes we might call that enmeshment. It's almost like everyone's on top of each other, right? But if if you hit that middle ground, yes, you are much, much more able, we know this as development goes on, to connect, to plan and initiate activities with peers, to build relationships, to have beliefs and goals and intimacy with others. And again, I want to be clear like as new attachment research shows, it's not just about your parents. It's also about your early environments, your teachers, your babysitters, whoever you were around, and that attachment is a bit more malleable than we thought. But yes, we know that those early experiences in our environment set us up for how we learn to connect. And what we learn is our responsibility in connection. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 10:52

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Um, so uh a lot of times um on your content or in your content, you talk about uh a window of tolerance. Yes. And uh can you talk a little bit about how the window of tolerance is established in a in a securely attached child?

SPEAKER_00 11:09

I would love to. When we think about the window of tolerance, we kind of think of those two standard lines, right? And it's the room we have to move up and down in life, experience all the things we experience in life, and still feel okay, meaning safe, insecure. It doesn't mean we feel good, happy 10 out of 10, but it means we can feel angry, sad, jealous, hurt, and still feel some sense of safeness. When we are born, we have no capacity to regulate ourselves. We're babies. We cry, we eat, that's all we know how to do. We rely on our caretakers to lend us their brain nervous system and their co-regulation. So if you imagine that window of tolerance, you're starting to ramp up when you're a baby, you're getting scared, you heard a loud noise, you don't know what to do, you're shooting rapidly above that window of tolerance where you're screaming, you're upset. You rely on the caregiver to come in and lend their mind, their body, their nervous system and say, oh my gosh, you got so scared. It's okay, I'm right here. And you imagine those two lines then come together and kind of bring them back down into the window of tolerance. So we are learning how to take care of our own capacity, our own tolerance based on how our caregivers model that to us, how they lend us their regulation and what we learn about regulation. For example, is it safe to be regulated? What if every single time I start to relax and let down and trust someone's going to meet my needs, then I get punished or I don't get my needs met or I'm left alone for a long period of time. Sometimes I think about that as like the slot machine effect. It's intermittent. You never know what you're going to get. Incredibly damaging and challenging to that window of tolerance because when you get it, it feels really good, but you never know when it's going to come. So it's much safer to say, I must never get it, and I'll just live outside of the window of tolerance than to wait for it and never know if it's going to come, which is so painful. So so much of our early development is reliant on learning, like, can someone else help me feel regulated? And then internally, can I start to learn how to do that for myself little bits at a time?

SPEAKER_02 13:14

I don't know if you're going to have the uh the answer to this. What is the sweet spot between being able to be uh like in tune with your with the child and being able to being able to connect with them versus Oh my gosh, I am so sorry, my mind completely blank. ADHD. Me too. Well, I'll just uh come back to it. Oh my goodness, that does. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

It sounded like maybe you were gonna ask about like connecting and soothing versus kind of letting them learn how to do it.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yes, yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Yes, yes, absolutely. Such a good question. And you know, it kind of you imagine as a child ages the way that you show up for them and and teach them how to be with themselves versus to be regulated by you, you know, it starts to separate a little bit. You know, but children of all ages and adults, by the way, we need co-regulation. We do rely on that co-regulation from other people, but we we don't want to make it so that the other person never feels any friction or any challenging emotions. That's just the other side of the same coin, right? So there's a big difference between rushing in, maybe your child falls over and saying, You're okay, you're okay, you're okay, you're okay, because you it's okay if you do this. It's not a criticism. We all have these moments. But if every time you're rushing in and saying, Oh my gosh, you're okay, you're okay, you're okay, because you feel so anxious, the child doesn't. They might say, I don't know how to feel because I I got hurt, but maybe I am okay. Or they might say, I can't be upset or it upsets my parent. Or they might say, My parents are really anxious, so I need to be extra careful to never let them know what I'm feeling or what I'm experiencing, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Well, actually, as you just said that I I was kind of imagining like being a kid and falling down and not being like scared or upset or anything, but then having my caregiver running and like showing anxiety. Yeah. Like I think there could be something in me where like I'm like, okay, wait, I maybe I maybe I'm feeling something that's wrong here because I don't feel this anxiety that my caregiver has.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Yeah, exactly right. Right. We're always we're always reflecting like what's happening in the context around me, especially from my caregiver and how should I respond to that as a child. We understand it would make sense to be fearful that something might happen to your child, right? But part of that is letting them have their own experience. You might catch your breath and go, and then you might say, Hey, what happened? You know, and they're kind of like, I fell off the slide. And you're like, oh my gosh, you did fall off the slide. Can you move all your limbs? And they're like, Yeah, I think so. And you're like, wow, my gosh, that was so brave of you to go down the slide. What are you, what's happening? How are you feeling? You know, you're just kind of like asking them, you're checking in, you're not responding out of huge alarm, but you're also not saying, I'm pretending like this didn't happen. Because the co-regulation is more about the felt sense experience of knowing I'm not alone in this versus the I will make everything okay for you all of the time, which I think happened as a result, big swing from the baby boomer era over into parents who never wanted their children to feel the way they did, which was that their emotions weren't valid or that they were alone in them or whatever it might be, and no judgment at all. But that kind of created the other side of the same coin where children never learned how to be with their own emotional experiences. And so any potential negative emotion was too much for them.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Hey, so for the first like six to nine months of therapy, uh, I call it the CNC therapy, where it was the horse says nay, but it was with my feelings. And from at the very beginning, uh our therapist would ask me like how I felt, and I would like try to like do the best body scan I could, and I'd be like, maybe my left pinky tingles a little bit. Is that is that something? Or uh this was something I would be very good at. I could give you a thought. I could tell you what I was thinking all day long. But it took so long for me to understand what uh like what is what's happening in my body and what is what what's oh okay, so whenever what whenever that my chest gets tight and uh I'm getting tense, then I'm feeling anxiety. Like it took me so long to even be able to figure out what my body was trying to tell me in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Well, we're not born knowing what body sensations mean or what feelings are. We're not even really born knowing what thoughts are, if they have meaning. They're all about how they're reflected back to us by other people, right? So, you know, when a child is really young, like a toddler, and they break a toy, which is a natural, normal sort of experience to have, and they start having a tantrum, quote unquote, you know, you might reflect back to them, like, oh my gosh, you're so mad you broke your favorite toy. That makes so much sense. I would be so mad if I broke my favorite toy too. Like, should we stomp our feet for a minute? Oh man, you know, and you're just kind of letting them know, like, oh, you might be feeling angry right now. Man, I know when I feel angry, like my body just wants to move around, right? When we don't get that experience, or when what we learn is, oh gosh, my emotions are too much. Like when I get angry or I get upset or I get afraid, my caregiver feels that way. And then I don't know what to do because now we're both feeling scared or angry or upset. Then what will I learn to do? I will learn to just turn those things down, right? Just turn them down, turn them down, turn them down until I'm not involved in a situation that feels like too much or not enough. We're very, very adaptive. And children are very good at unconsciously reading the context of the environment and figuring out, hey, how do I adapt to this to create the least amount of distress possible, even if it means disconnecting from my own experience?

SPEAKER_02 19:01

So I think that is I think that is very much uh what I learned as a kid was that if I could make everyone else comfortable and okay around me, then maybe I could feel safe. And so I think that uh, and I I think what you call this the faux window of tolerance, or I I can't remember exactly your exact words, but I very much had that faux window of tolerance where in no way, shape, or form was I regulated, but I I was able to deceive myself into thinking like that I was Mr. Regulation.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Sure. Well, I mean it's anesthetizing, you know, it gives us that faux window of tolerance that really doesn't feel faux at all. It gives us a faux sense of control that really is a sense of control. I say faux in the sense that like we don't really have control over the environment around us, but it gives us a sense of control over the only thing we have control over, us. And it makes us feel as children that we have a sense of control over the environment because we learn when I'm less express my emotions less, things in my house stay calmer. It's hard for my parents when I feel anxious, playful, joyful, silly, loud. It's hard for them. I feel their tension. So I can control that by just being so calm and so quiet. And that's really painful to me because I want to be myself. So I learn to turn that down. That's that faux window of tolerance where we just learn to turn it all down. And then we really convince ourselves, it's very functional, that hey, I'm doing great. This is just how I want to be. I'm regulated, I'm connecting, I'm doing all of these things. But it it's an anesthetized, sort of masked version of ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

Which is incredibly, incredibly harmful not only to the child, but I mean, I I think about like me as as an adult. You know, like I in my 30s and essentially still have like I still had that like that that mindset where So what what it created was a situation where I felt like I was just irreparably screwed up. Yeah. And that like well, everyone else feels this exact same way. They're just able to regulate themselves better than me. I must be broken. That was that was the assumption that I had.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Right. Well, you're not alone in that because you think the brain is always trying to determine how do I make sense out of these circumstances. So if the truth were, for example, that my parents were doing the best they can, but they simply could not show up for me. They could not show up for me in my truest self, my truest experiences, my truest needs, that is deeply painful and deeply terrifying. We rely on our caregivers to keep us alive. We need them to be functioning in whatever way they can be functioning. And so, what would make the most sense and make it the least scary if you were the problem? It's so much easier, easier, quote unquote. It's not really, but it is. It's so much easier to make ourselves the problem. Again, It puts the control back into your hand. If I'm the problem, then I just always have to be trying harder, doing more, being better, analyzing further. And thus I'll just keep going rather than feeling all of these scary and overwhelming, like the big three of like anger, sadness, and fear, so much easier to make myself the problem, so much more tolerable. Of course, in adult life, it interrupts everything.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

No, I very much I did not realize how much of me uh just saying like I'm the problem, if I could have just tried harder, was really just me trying to give myself control in a situation I had absolutely no control over. And that took so long to learn.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Well, of course it does. I mean, it's you have to understand it's not like your brain is trying to trick you, but these things are held in the implicit, unconscious side of the brain. And so they are lenses that you don't know that you're wearing. So you're seeing the world and you're like, I'm seeing this. It must be real. And it's like, until you get something that's enough to let you look over the top of the lenses that is your prescription from when you were eight years old, then you will see the world in that way. None of us see the world for exactly as it is. We all see the world through the lenses of our specific implicit learnings, which is kind of wild when you think about it.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

One of the big reasons I was excited to have you on was that I felt like if I had discovered your content before, I would have been more likely to try to get help before I did. Um because I thought therapy was not going to be beneficial to me because I already knew why everything happened. I I knew why I did these things. So I was like, there's absolutely nothing that is going to be beneficial for me in therapy.

SPEAKER_04 23:56

You're not alone in that.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

So uh I guess this would be a a good time to kind of start uh start talking a little bit about uh internal family systems, um which is something that has absolutely changed my changed my life uh you know for the better. Um can you kind of um t tell the uh tell the audience a little bit, kind of like uh a little bit about what internal family systems is?

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Absolutely. Yeah, so internal family systems is a really cool modality of therapy. And if you've ever seen Inside Out, then you already have a sense of what internal family systems is. And internal family systems is a way of personifying our different patterns, our schemas, our lenses into these different parts of us. And Dr. Richard Swartz, who created this model, his theorizing is that as we experience these difficult situations in our lives, we learn how to respond to them in certain ways. So when we were talking about this overwhelming emotion and how it made more sense to make yourself the problem and give you a sense of control, that part of you, part of you, quote unquote, that holds all of those overwhelming emotions, anger, grief, all of these things, fear in internal family systems is called the exile. And it's this child part of us that holds so much pain. It's too much. It is this part of us that just we want to hide away and protect. So we create these other parts of us to protect the part of us that holds all the emotions. For example, manager parts, like an intellectualizer part that says, if I just analyze everything all of the time and I know what everyone else is going to do, I never have to risk making the exile so upset that I have to feel all of those devastating emotions. So we have manager parts. We also have firefighter parts that might hold, let's just say, the more challenging ways that we protect ourselves that could be things like dissociate, even substance use, like some of those bigger tools we might use when things are really overwhelming. But the idea is that this whole system inside of us, this family system, is allowing us to navigate the world. When you think about what parts really represent, you can understand that a part kind of represents a bundle of neural pathways. And it's a bundle of thoughts, emotions, body sensations, behaviors, and impulses and reflexes that developed at certain times in your life based on things you experienced. And those get bundled together. The brain says, Oh, I know how to handle these emotions, it's by intellectualizing. I know how to handle these emotions, it's by scrolling on my phone for eight hours and does all these experiences together. And Dr. Richard Schwartz has given name to these as parts. It's a wonderful model that allows us to relate to ourselves differently when we understand how much these parts of us we might criticize, you know, like, I hate this intellectualizer part of me or I hate this perfectionist part of me, it always gets in the way, is really there to keep us safe, keep us in connection, and keep us moving forward. So I find it to be such an incredibly helpful model because sometimes thinking about implicit learnings, which is the scientific name for it, you know, is like, what does that even mean? But when we think about these parts of us and we can start to define their experience, suddenly we can observe ourselves in a new way, which IFS calls the self with a capital S. That allows us to access something called metacognition, which means observing what's happening, that is the way in which we can make change in our brain. So something I really love about it is it gives, it's harder to intellectualize, thank goodness, right? Because it's much more like curiosity-based. And so it's not all thought-based, but it it allows us to relate in a different way because when you turn and you look at this part of you and you say, My gosh, this part of me that is so uptight, so critical, always trying to control me that I've so much tried to resist has kept me safe for three decades. Has kept me going, has kept me in connection. Wow, that's a totally different way of relating to myself.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

I've never thought that I would be in a position where I would like thank my shame or you know, like but then whenever like I think back on it, like if I if I didn't have, if I didn't have that like terrible, awful feeling that I absolutely bloat at the time, I don't know if I could have made it actually.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Exactly. But it's adaptive, it's completely adaptive. It would be like getting mad at your seatbelt for when you slam on your brakes and it kind of holds you tight in your chest, it kind of hurts a little bit. And it's like, but thank God it was there, right? You needed it.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

So whenever we were talking earlier about that securely attached child, as they're growing and but they they they fall, they get hurt, or if something happens, they get distressed. There's there's the caregiver that is there to help co-regulate. And so that they're they're uh they're able to make the neural pathway or they're connected neural pathways where like, hey, if something bad happens, I'm gonna be able to be okay. Uh you know, things are gonna be okay. So with IFS, what would happen, let's say if you have this situation and you don't have that caregiver able to come help you out. And there at that point, there's an uh there's an event. So would that that part would kind of create the exile?

SPEAKER_00 29:13

That's right. Because what's gonna happen in those moments, you kind of can, you know, I always think of these like big three emotions that are fear, anger, and sadness, which could be grief, it could be rage, it could be terror. But when we have these experiences as a child where we're not met, we're not seen, we're not supported, we're not cared for, our brain, it can't, our brain can handle that occasionally, right? Like we all have moments like that. We're we're quite flexible creatures. But when it happens repeatedly, consistently, our brain is constantly gathering that data and saying, oh my gosh, this thing keeps happening that feels absolutely terrifying. I am simply not made to live in terror. I'm not made to live in terror for too long. I can do it for tiny moments. That starts to say, oh my gosh, that's the exile that's holding all this terror, all this rage that my parents or my caregivers can't take care of me, all this grief that I can never be seen by myself as myself, by my peers. Okay, I need to learn how to protect myself from this. And so it acquires more data that says, what if I tried on being really quiet? Interesting. Every time I'm really quiet, I don't feel those big feelings. The part of me that feels terrified and rageful doesn't get activated. Well, that feels much better. And so it starts developing these manager parts. All of this happens through what are called acquired learnings. This is actually so important because a lot of times people call these core beliefs, and I understand the use of that term. They aren't beliefs. Beliefs make it seem like they just came out of the sky, like there's some faith involved or something like that. Acquired learnings, meaning they happen through experiences. That's how pathways form in our brain. They must form through an experience that happens. Okay, so all of these things that we call core beliefs are actually acquired learnings from experiences that have happened in our brain. And our brain takes all those in and it says, oh my gosh, these are really important and they happen really frequently. Let's pin these up as like the number one most important learnings. Okay, so when I'm myself, I get criticized. Boy, that's a really big that's happened repeatedly from my parents, from my teachers, from my peers. I think there might be something wrong with me. I'm gonna pin up here number one most important rule about staying alive based on what I've experienced and not getting voted off the island would be never ever ever be yourself. Build a beautiful, wonderful suit of armor, then you will be good. So these get, you know, your brain then takes new data in and says, Oh, there, it happened again. See, somebody liked you when you were pretending to be someone else. Yep, that rule is true. See, you let yourself be a little vulnerable and that kid made fun of you at recess. File that over there. So then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

It is unreal how well your brain can shape reality.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Oh my gosh, yes. Once you realize how much your brain is shaping reality, the world kind of starts to make a lot more sense because you see everyone is living in their own reality.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

I wish you could find someone else's reality.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

It's challenging, yeah. It can also be, you know, I'm actually writing a book about this right now and I'm having so much fun because it's also incredibly empowering once you realize how much your brain creates reality. Now, I'm not into positive positivity override, right? I'm not into saying, like, I create my own reality and thus I can change it. But instead, to say, I actually have agency and choice in the present that I didn't in the past. And little tiny bits at a time through learning to observe myself differently and relate to myself differently, I can change the lenses through which I see myself in the world. How cool is that? It's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

I I've noticed what you said there are tiny moments. Tiny moments. Um so I think that uh another uh kind of misconception that I had about uh therapy was that it's supposed to be one big breakthrough, like where, you know, I would I would be laying down on your couch, and you know, you ask me a question, tears roll down, and like end scene, I am healed. That's right. It's only so what is it about tiny moments that are so effective or uh the accumulation of tiny moments that are so effective of being able to rewire those uh those those lessons that we learned in the past?

SPEAKER_00 33:33

That's actually how the brain is designed to work. So the brain has something called homeostasis or allostasis. It's essentially a set point. Think about it like a temperature on a thermostat. Your brain says 66 degrees, safe temperature. And then you come in and you say, I have to change myself. I'm gonna do a gratitude journal every day. I'm gonna walk one hour every single day. I'm going to go to therapy, I'm gonna practice mindfulness, I'm gonna do all these things. And your brain says, um, I don't think so, because that's very metabolically expensive, meaning it uses a lot of calories and we need to save those calories in case there's an emergency. Number two, you're trying to turn the thermostat from 76 to 80. No way. I'm not doing that. That's ridiculous. I might be able to turn it from 76, 66 to 70 to 67, right? Like I might be able to turn it up one degree. But when we try to make these big changes, our brain, just evolutionarily speaking, right? Like safety speaking, says, no, that's too much. That's not safe. So we know through the homeostat, it's called the homeostatic imperative. It's a fancy way of saying the brain wants to keep things the same, even if how we feel now doesn't feel good. Brain does not care. Brain says, hey, this is the way it's always been, this is safe. So it's the way the brain is designed to work. And when we look at how we might rewire some of these learnings, we know that if the new thing we're trying to do, the new habit, the new therapy learning, the new emotion is too big, it overwhelms the brain. Now it also can't be too small, right? It can't be that like we never do any actions that are different. But if we can hit it just right, the brain will take the old prediction and the new prediction and reorganize it. You can think about it like microdosing change, right? We know we can microdose medications and things like that. If we have a very sensitive body, a body that gets a lot of side effects, you know, a body that like hasn't responded well to medications and things like that. They might say, we're gonna give you such a tiny dose that it's not even considered a therapeutic dose, just to see how your body is going to respond. Then we can observe and see, hey, what happens? And if it's like we're okay, then we'll give you a tiny bit more. We have to do the same thing with our brain. These tiny changes actually lead to much bigger changes in the long run. Versus if we try to make a big change, you're you're counteracting your brain's safety mechanism, right? So when people go to therapy and they say, and therapists can get involved in this accidentally, where they're saying, I'm gonna give you all this homework to do. That's what's called a counteractive therapy technique. And what that means is you're trying to counteract a behavior or an emotion you're doing. So you're saying, I feel really disconnected in my life. So I'm going to go do a self-compassion practice every day and write a gratitude list. You're trying to counteract the disconnected feeling you're having with management strategies. Okay, great. Maybe, maybe it'll work a tiny bit. But again, takes a lot of energy. And your brain says, why would I practice gratitude and self-compassion when some part of my brain says that's unsafe? When some part of my brain says, if I let myself do those things, I won't be accepted, I'll be abandoned, I'll be voted off the island. Why would your brain let you make those changes? Instead, if we can do little tiny changes, for example, of learning to observe the part of us that feels disconnected, not trying to change it, not trying to make it be different, but just to observe it, the brain will say, Well, I guess I could let you observe it for just a moment. And just by observing ourselves, this is the coolest thing in the world, just by noticing, like, oh, a part of me is feeling really disconnected and lonely right now, you fire your neurons in a different direction. That's something we really don't get told. Like, you don't need to make these big behavioral changes. You can microdose these tiny moments of observation, these tiny new experiences. And your brain takes that and it does all this work in the background and it starts forming new neural pathways like you wouldn't believe.

SPEAKER_02 37:32

The brain just like it's so cold.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

So I know it really is. Once you understand the way the brain works and you can learn to work with your brain and not against your brain, you see it's not it's hey, listen, healing is a difficult process, but we make it way more difficult as humans by trying to counteract and manage ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

As you were saying that, I I was thinking uh a lot about how I would try to handle uh parts that came up uh pre-therapy, and that was conflict. You know, I had an idea like uh I want to do this, this, and this, so this is how I'm gonna do it, and like my brain was like, this is how it's gonna be, and my body was like, Yeah, I don't I don't know if I'm feeling it, and it felt like there was this kind of like this disconnect, and instead of like trying to work with myself, it would be like, no, we're we're just gonna like white knuckle it and and drag through. Which would I could do like if there was a big moment, like something that was very, very important, oh my goodness, I'd be able to like rise the occasion, like knock it out of the parking place. This is amazing. Like this this is the guy, this is great. But then the next day, whenever like there would be nothing involved, I would not be I would be absolutely nowhere.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

Yeah, you're describing that classic conundrum, you know, when we exist in these states, like intellectualizing, people-pleasing perfectionism, it's sort of like driving a car with the emergency brake on, and then you have like a rocket fuel blaster on the back, you know. So like if it's something important where like it's pushing on one of your learnings that says you need to do this to be safe, you'll stomp the gas and you'll hit that rocket fuel button and you will override that emergency brake and you'll be off the line 100 miles an hour. Right. But on a day-to-day basis, you have no idea how to drive a car using regular gasoline. You can't move forward because you're out of fuel or you have very little fuel and the emergency brake is on. So you're stuck. Right. So if it's anything for you, anything about moving forward, connecting to yourself, et cetera, you're like, I'm here. I live here, right? But anything that's about survival, we can access that like rocket fuel.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

So I have started to go on to uh to podcast and kind of talk a little bit about like my mental health uh journey. And as I am, you know, as I'm doing it, I'm trying to you know, trying to sort of like, yeah, I mean, I had to rewire my brain. I learned a lot of lessons that were not that actually weren't accurate. Um The hardest thing for me to describe though is the process of change that I the pro that I was able to go from being like in conflict with myself and like very judgmental versus seeing versus seeing myself from a place of curiosity. So how did I do that?

SPEAKER_00 40:18

That's a great question. Oh, I'm so glad you mentioned this. I talk about curiosity so much that someone actually bought me something from my office that says, be curious, because I think curiosity lights the way forward. So when we are curious, when we are observational, when we have that neutral kind of wondering, we're actually accessing something called metacognition. And it's just a fancy term for saying we're observing with curiosity. The analogy that I always use is like a wildlife documentary, like if you know David Attenborough or you know, Planet Earth documentaries, they're always they just suck you in, even if you don't care that much about nature or the earth or whatever, because they have this curiosity that's so engaging. They're not judging, right? They're not telling you what's right or wrong about the earth or the animals. They go in, they gather data, they observe, they watch, they're curious. How do they behave at night? How do they behave when they're angry? How do they behave around other species? And then they present that to you with this awe, this wonder of this curiosity. And so that process is the same within us, metacognition. It accesses a different part of our brain. And in IFS, it's called the self with a capital S, right? In NARM, which is another type of trauma therapy, they call it the adult consciousness. There's many names for this, but observing your experience with curiosity or neutrality rather than analyzing it, it's it's a whole new ballgame. And we know just the observing, just the curiosity, fires the neurons in a new direction. So that's how you were able to do that by practicing observing and being curious and noticing rather than pressuring and analyzing and managing. You were building new neural pathways. Actually, though it is a long-ish, iterative process, it doesn't actually have to be that hard. You just observe over and over again. When I say it doesn't have to be that hard, here's what I mean by that. It doesn't have to be about constant behavioral management. Hard, painful, like emotions, processing, and all of these things, but it doesn't have to be this for the rest of your life. You have to hold yourself to this checklist and do 18 things a day for you to feel like you can function. That that is not actually healing. That's counteractive management. The healing process itself, I mean, it's the work of a lifetime to me. It's like an archaeological dig. You're always going through layers and layers and you come upon new pockets of things you didn't know they were there, sometimes good, sometimes hard. Right. But the process itself doesn't have to be about, I need to learn 300 new tools and manage myself all of the time. If you know, you can always come back to curiosity. And if you're not being curious and you're going back into criticizing and controlling yourself, it doesn't matter if it's minutes, days, hours, weeks, or months, you can always come back to the curious noticing. And that shifts your brain back into the present day lenses. That's the thing about curiosity too. When you're curious and observing, you're seeing the present. When you're controlling and managing, you're seeing the past. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Yeah, it it does. And I I want a yes and I think that curiosity has made me a better parent as well. So as I am I I've noticed that the relationship that I have with myself. And if I am curious uh can understanding with myself, and I if I kind of feel connected to if I'm if I am connected to self, then I am also connected with my son Camden a lot more. And I am able to be much more caring, much more compassionate, and it has a lot more to do with just me, with with just me being curious with myself and my own feelings first. And that blows my mind.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

You're so spot on about that. And what a wonderful observation to share with other people, parents or not, because it's not just about our children, but we can relate and connect far more with people around us when we are connecting with curiosity to ourselves. It really is, I mean, I know it sounds kind of silly to say, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things that happen in healing, but that curious observer is the foundational place for connecting to ourselves and connecting to the world around us. If we can be curious, it means at least I always call it a pinky in the present. It means at least our pinky is here in the present, experiencing what's happening right now and not just what has happened in the past. So it is like the foundational skill that I teach to every person I ever work with. It's everything I teach on social media always come back to observing. And when I'm teaching, I'll often say observing is the work, right? Being curious, it is the intervention. You don't need to do a 12-step CBT process, but you can if it helps you, if it allows you to be curious.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

You just you said something doing the work. And that is something that I have I I've heard since before therapy and I kind of started therapy just like I'd be doing the work, you know everybody else is so is is that what doing the work is? Is that is it being compati or uh being curious and being an observer?

SPEAKER_00 45:34

To me it is. To me it is because you know I think it gets used in a lot of different ways in a lot of different you know the environments. I think a hard thing about it is it sort of got picked up in the modern self-help world of saying like you should be doing the work or you need to be doing more work or like doing the work looks like this and then it's this really long, complicated expensive process. Listen, whatever helps you is wonderful and different things help different people. Different modalities help different people. But what we know is that all types of therapy that actually create long lasting transformational change use the same mechanisms, the same engines, if you will. Right? So you could like a Toyota, I could like a Honda, it doesn't matter do they use an engine that can move us forward? And the biggest part of that engine is curiosity. It is observing. And I think that it takes so much pressure, especially from my fellow intellectualizers who love a to-do list, it takes so much pressure off of us to say, oh, you mean being curious and observing is all I have to do. Intellectualizers hate it. They don't want to observe and be curious, right? Like they want to have something to analyze and do, which I relate to very much, but that really is the core of so much of every type of therapy. It always comes back to being able to observe with curiosity. From there modalities branch off into different pieces that access some of those other engines, if you will, but they all start from curiosity. It's the best.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

You know I consider myself a uh a recovering intellectualizer. Yes, me too.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

I can tell you all day why I am but uh that's way more comfortable and tell you telling you how it makes me feel 100% and and you know it makes sense right isn't it so safe to be analyzing and saying why, why why and it's actually really confusing sometimes for people the difference between intellectualization and observing but again that's like the difference between doing the curiosity doing the wildlife observation or watching and reading about wildlife right does that make sense yeah that that yeah that blew my mind I I love that analogy though that is yeah it's the experience of so many people and I mean the reason why so many intellectualizers get lost in traditional therapy is because traditional therapy is set up to be counteractive, to manage behaviors, to think and analyze. And so they go to therapy and they basically feel like they're smarter than their therapist like why am I even here? I already know all these things I already know the root of my patterns and why I do these things. So what? And that's because they don't need more strategies, more things to analyze they need to look at what's getting in the way of them being present being curious being connected being themselves resting having ease and what's getting in the way is those old adaptive survival strategies that get laid down throughout our lives I still think I'm smarter than my therapist.

SPEAKER_02 48:31

Just kidding Kathleen I'm just kidding. I mean you thought it was a joke for one person.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Exactly exactly no but I mean people say that to me on social media all the time like I need a therapist who's smarter than me and I'm like you don't need a therapist that hasn't a higher IQ than you but you need a therapist who can observe you and see you.

SPEAKER_02 48:49

I think I think what another thing that I didn't kind of uh realize would be so effective was the therapeutic relationship. Yes and kind of healing some of the like attachment attachment things that had you know came you know came up whenever I was you know like an infant with primary caregivers. And so I guess it's really interesting to me that something as clinical as a therapeutic relationship could be healing in that kind of sense, you know?

SPEAKER_00 49:20

I do. I do yeah it's it's incredibly cool and we know this from a lot of research to know that the therapeutic relationship can offer a a new experience essentially we know that new experiences are what allow our brain to rewire, what allow our brain to heal. And so being in the presence of another person who little by little we let see more and more of us, we express our feelings to and have them relate with curiosity, with care, with connection, even if you're not sure about it, because many people go to therapy and they're not sure about it, right? Like do I trust this person? Do I not trust this person? Your brain is taking that in and saying oh interesting right here's this person who can see these parts of me and not pull away not be distracted not abandon me. And that is what's called a juxtapositional experience. All it means is your brain wants something new that matches the old thing right that that's the opposite of the old thing. And so when you get that relational experience your brain's like wow and I make use of that all the time you know my clients might say something to me like I must sound so stupid you know and then they like kind of want to look away from the screen and I'm like if you're curious and open to it, do you want to check in with me and and just notice like do I look any different? Does my face look any different? Did my tone of voice change? Is there anything about me right now that would imply I think you're being stupid and sometimes they think it's silly but then they kind of do it and they're like no I don't think so you seem the same. And I'm like right would you want to ask me? Because you can if you want to like and and they're like well do you think I'm being stupid I'm like I don't think that at all. I think like what an important insight what an important curiosity what an important emotion. Why do I do that? Not to put people on the spot but because it offers that new experience it is so incredibly healing especially for those of us who had challenging attachment experiences in our life there are modalities of therapy where the entire mechanism of change is the relationship. That's how powerful it is it's so cool. So what is your favorite part of being a therapist gosh I think just getting to see people hit those moments where something shifts where they find that new pathway in the type of therapy that I practice because it's non-counteractive meaning it's non-behavioral sometimes it can feel to people like they're not doing enough. They want tasks to go do and I don't I don't give them that because that's the way I practice and I can see the changes happening, right? I can see them happening. But I don't try to convince them of that. I just let them know like we're here, we'll observe together. But this moment when they come in and they're like oh my gosh like this really stressful thing happened and I didn't even criticize myself or like oh my gosh I shared this really hard thing with a friend or with a partner and I just let myself do it and it's like what like that's a new neural pathway that's a whole bundle of new neural pathways and it just never ceases to be so exciting to me to get to be witness to that. And my gosh, it's just the best part of this job, you know, to be clear that moment can take some time. So it's not like I'm waiting but when it happens it's just so cool to get to see that person witness themselves in the change.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

I remember that question that I forgot earlier. Oh great what is the sweet spot between obviously you do not have to be the perfect parent a hundred percent of the time always addressing every single need so what what what's the sweet spot between like having to always you know to always regulate always be there versus like leaving them kind of alone to their own devices and learning. So like yeah like how can they still remain connected?

SPEAKER_00 53:02

That's such a good question and you know I think I would bring it back to your wonderful sharing about being curious right so it's not like you can ask a young child like do you want more or less connection from me right? But you learn to observe your child and be curious about your child the same way you're learning to be curious and observe yourself. You will learn their cues, their clues, their tells that they are feeling angry, feeling disconnected, wanting time for themselves, thriving doing whatever they're doing. And as you build up trust with yourself, you can trust that curiosity and knowing that what you're observing is true. Parents, especially parents who may have had difficult attachment experiences, they can get very anxious about like am I doing it right? Am I doing enough? Am I doing too much? Which makes sense that's that's so valid, right? But being so curious and trusting yourself to know, you will know what your child needs. And if not, try it on, try an experiment, be curious. If you come in and they pull back, observe within them, right? Do they seem like they're pulling back because they're feeling scared, because they're feeling overwhelmed, which is something kids do. Or does it seem like they're kind of pulling back and they're like, I want to do my own thing you can feel some of that resonance in your body right? We can kind of sense what other people need when we're staying connected to ourselves. Unfortunately there is no perfect clear right answer. But what I will say is just as I said about ourselves, we can always come back to that curiosity at any time. We can always come back to that as a parent at any time to know hey, if it seems like maybe our kids have been having more tantrums recently, let's use curiosity and observe like has anything changed the environment? Did anything change at school? Are they going through a big developmental phase? Maybe that's a time when we spend more time together, family movie nights, we get outside or are they in a time when they're hitting this developmental stage and they got their first hobby and all they want to do is go play chess or I don't know, whatever they're into and that's a time to kind of let them go a little bit. It always comes back to the curiosity. What I will say is the most successful parenting relationships and the most successful relationships at all romantic, platonic or otherwise are about our ability to repair. We know that a successful attachment relationship does not require anywhere near a hundred percent of secure attachment. It's maybe like 40% and the rest is about rupture and repair. So we will be curious and observe and then we will disconnect and then we'll be curious and observe and we will disconnect. So I want to say that to you as a parent and to everyone out there navigating relationships, we want to turn down the pressure of getting it right and turn up the possibility of curiosity and repair. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 55:43

Oh yeah so I whenever you don't focus on getting things right and focus instead on curiosity and connection you're probably gonna ironically get things right.

SPEAKER_00 55:55

That's exactly right. That's the funny thing about all of it when you let off the pressure and you just honor connection you're gonna be successful because that is the connection and curiosity is the basis for all relationship. And I say this too when I work with couples and they're having challenge in conflict there's actually a very well known couples therapist will have couples sit and not speak for like 15 minutes and just observe each other to start to learn their partners clues and cues about them like do they grit their teeth? How's their breathing? Like do their cheeks get red like what happens? Why? It's because we want to be curious about the other person and know when they're ratcheting up to anger, when they're sad, when they're disconnected and that's the same thing we do with ourselves and our parts and it's the same thing we do with our kids.

SPEAKER_02 56:40

If you can do that you got it you know you can't you actually I I was about to like make some kind of trend statement well yeah good luck to that. But you actually you can though it is a constant work that you're not even going to remotely get close to 100% right. But if you're just trying it makes a world of difference.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

If you let it be an iterative process which is what life is which means you will connect and you will disconnect you will visit it and you will revisit it and you don't create pressure to get it right, then you absolutely can do it. It's when we create the pressure to get it right that we feel like there's no winning you know and it can feel hard sometimes for parts of us to know like you mean I'm gonna be doing this for the rest of my life and it's like that's living babe right like living is being present being curious connecting and disconnecting if you went to the doctor and said I hate breathing out I only want to breathe in and it's like well that's great. I also love breathing in but you have to breathe out to expel the carbon dioxide right so we will connect and disconnect in our lives but as long as we can keep re-engaging in the process that is being alive that is connecting I really appreciate that that you said that because I think that I had a whole bunch of misconceptions uh about therapy.

SPEAKER_02 57:58

Yes you could not as you can tell but one of the one of the big ones though was that like I felt that I would be like that there would be like a moment where I was Sisyphus and I actually got the boulder up the hill and it was there. And I assumed what that state meant was that I was the Dalai Lama. Yes and that I would just remain like this the entire time I would never be too excited never be too down I would just be that yeah but but that's not it's it's it's it's about the it's about the journey.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

It's sometimes why I get bothered by the the increase in the term nervous system regulation because regulation is not the goal. The goal is flexibility curiosity and presence if we were regulated only all the time what does that mean? Does that mean calm? Because sometimes I want to be silly sometimes I'm joyful sometimes I'm sad sometimes I'm angry like that's the full spectrum of being a human right and so the goal isn't although I can very much understand maybe the desire to reach this pinnacle unfortunately I think that's not that's not the way it is for humans. You know it's just our processes to be in our process.

SPEAKER_02 59:06

You know but and I if you would have told me that I would have this attitude like five years ago I'd be like you're kidding but I there's like a I don't the like a sense of like optimism and I almost joy that it is a process and that it's something that like I'm I don't see it as like I have to do it. It's like hey I get to do this. I don't I don't know if I'm saying that right.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

No, that makes a ton of sense to me you know and um in NARM for example which is another style of therapy that's not too dissimilar from IFS but it's a really cool model they talk about how doing this work reconnects you to your vitality and your aliveness. Right. And so that to me that's a little bit of what you're describing like there's this optimism this joy this sense of like I'm alive and I'm engaged in my life and that's very different from the anesthetized frozen state of being intellectualized and needing to control everything. So that makes total sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:03

I want to end on uh a hopeful note um something that I had not heard of until I saw your uh content are uh glimmers. Yes. Can you tell the audience what a glimmer is and do you mind sharing an example of a glimmer that you've had recently?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

I would love to. So glimmers came out of the work of Deb Dana she's a uh somatic psychotherapist and she you coined that term to talk about little moments of goodness the best way I like to teach it is Kurt Vonnegut, you know, the famous author he would tell this story about his uncle and he would talk about how you know they would be sitting on the porch talking about something, drinking a glass of lemonade on a beautiful day and his uncle would interrupt and say, this isn't nice, I don't know what is and so he was sharing this story about his uncle that like no matter what they were doing, he would pause, look at a flower, look at the sky and just say, if this isn't nice, I don't know what is and that perfectly encapsulates glimmers. So glimmers is a practice of throughout your day, at any time, at any moment, just noticing something that makes you curious that brings you joy that puts a little smile on your face and the whole purpose isn't to make it work, to make it something to do, but rather a moment of curiosity. And when we do this, we actually rewire our brain as cool as that sounds we really do, because we change what our brain is predicting. If we're really tight intense and feeling like we're in this controlled state and then I pause for a moment and I just say oh it's been raining all day you can see the sun has come out behind me and I just feel a little bit of warmth on my back. I'm a big sunshine girl. So even that little moment that I'm noticing, my brain goes, oh here I am Monday March 16th 2026 and I feel a little warmth on my back. And then it helps my brain see what's happening in the present which is that things are safe, things are okay, things might even be nice or good, sends a little signal of safety to the brain, the brain inputs that into the data model and it updates our capacity to feel safe and curious in the present. So it is like one of the best practices I use it all the time to just try on this moment of curiosity without the pressure of needing to like make it a list. You know what I mean? So it's something you can incorporate literally you could be laying in bed not even feeling your best and you could look around your bedroom and see a color or a shape or the way the light is entering the room or the nice glass of water on your sore throat and that's enough in the moment to shift your brain.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

And your body so this morning I was uh I woke up like really early like 4 30 um and it wasn't even because of my son this time. Um no I was I was a little nervous about this you know I've uh I've been really excited I wanted to do a uh do a good job and I went outside for uh for a walk and I live excuse me I live like three blocks from a canal.

unknown 1:02:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:53

And so I I was I was walking alongside it and the way that the uh the lights from the buildings were were hitting off of the water and reflecting. It was like in that moment I changed from like oh my god like I'm not gonna I'm I'm not gonna be eloquent. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna ask stupid questions. Oh my god this is gonna be awful it went from that to being like I feel really sick right now like I I I'm I live somewhere where it feels like home. I am about to like be able to like talk to like a really cool person about like some really cool things. It's amazing how just looking at the water completely shifted my mindset where I was still thinking about still thinking about this. And what was bringing anxiety before instead that it was joy that was replaced.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:47

It's such a great example of how powerful it is and you didn't go into doing that to try to control yourself right you didn't go into saying I have to do this or I'm going to be anxious. Just when you notice that you send a little signal to your brain to shift back into the present and say actually everything's okay and I'm even looking forward to this right and it's like that's that's the coolest thing in the world. I'm so glad you shared that example that's exactly what it's like when we can shift our brain back to the present. Now sometimes it's like that where it's very demonstrative and sometimes it's tinier moments but every little moment of noticing something like that helps our brain shift back to the safe present. And that forms new neural pathways like healing's not simple but in a sense that's one step on the pathway. That's one brick laid down on the new road right that's awesome. Hey go me.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:37

Yeah go you that's pretty cool I I want to make sure that I ask you this while you're on camera kind of feel like uh feel like a sense of obligation. Can you please come back on? I would love to I would love to talk to you again.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:49

I would love to if you can't tell I love talking so no problem.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:54

This was this was so much fun Trisha thank you for acting out with me.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:57

Thank you. I had the best time