The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
The Healthy Post Natal Body Podcast
Healing Your Own Trauma to Raise Healthier Children with Sari Rose Barron, LMFT
This week I am delighted to be joined by Sari Rose Barron, LMFT, as we're talking postpartum mental health and how this feeds into parenting.
What happens when your four-year-old's tantrum suddenly has you responding exactly like your father did—despite promising yourself you'd never parent that way? Why do certain moments with your children trigger intense emotional reactions that seem disproportionate to the situation?
Sari explains how our childhood experiences shape our parenting in ways we often don't recognize. Sari brilliantly distinguishes between mood (our emotional states) and regulation (our ability to manage those states), explaining why even the most well-intentioned parents find themselves hijacked by unexpected triggers.
"Being a perfect parent actually fosters anxious attachment, not secure attachment," Sari explains, stating that moments of imperfection—followed by repair—are what truly build security in our relationships with our children. We discuss how trauma gets stored in the body and brain, creating automatic responses that feel beyond our control in heated parenting moments.
The conversation delves into practical approaches for healing, including EMDR therapy and other trauma-focused modalities that access the deeper, somatic aspects of our past experiences. Sari explains why traditional talk therapy sometimes doesn't reach the root causes of our reactivity, and how recognizing our own trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, and fawn) can be transformative.
Whether you're navigating the intensity of the postpartum period or the challenges of raising teenagers, you'll gain powerful insights into breaking generational patterns and creating healthier relationships with your children. Listen now to understand why healing yourself might be the most important gift you can give your family.
You can find Sari online;
Because you're wonderful people who listen to the podcast; Sari has given you a Freebie; Here is a link to a 2 minute quiz to find your Parenting Attachment Style!
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So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!
BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.
This means you can sign up after your first child, use the program and recover and then still have access after giving birth to child 2 and 3!
None of this "pay X amount a year" nonsense, once you've paid..you've paid!
This makes HPNB not just the most efficient and complete post-partum recovery program, it's also BY FAR the best value.
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Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any q
Hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal r Podcast. With your postnatal expert, peter Lap, that, as always, would be me. This is the podcast for the 18th of May 2025, and the date before music means I have a guest on Today. I am talking to Sari Rose Barron, or Sari Barron, about postpartum mental health. Yes, again, pete, again you're talking mental health again?. Yes, because it's so important, important, and I still think this is a subject that doesn't get spoken about enough and you don't hear it from enough angles.
Peter:So we're doing it again and, as I always say, you're going to love this conversation. You really are. We're going to talk about, basically, postpartum mental health, but also mental health whilst raising your kids, dealing with your own stuff whilst raising your kids. Dealing with your own stuff whilst raising your kids, why dealing with your own stuff is important, and all that sort of stuff to raise healthy kids, dealing with your own trauma, and all that sort of stuff. Like I said, you're going to absolutely love this episode. So, without further ado, here we go. So you say postnatal health isn't just about mood, it's also, it's a, it's about regulation. So what do you mean by that?
Sari:yeah. So listen, mood generally refers to emotional states like, um, there's so many different mood states depression, anxiety, irritability. Regulation is really the ability to manage those states. It's like you know, if you think about it, it's like riding the waves instead of getting pulled under. It's how we stay kind of in our window of tolerance. I don't know if you've heard that term before, but it's how we stay in that optimal zone when so much of parenting, or know whether, depending on whether you've just given birth through the stages of parenthood, we go in and out of that right, that optimal zone all the time.
Peter:So it's really about regulation is really about how we respond to our reactivity, to our emotions and mood right, yeah, no, that makes that makes complete sense, because one of the tricky bits is um is taking the time to respond to the situation, not letting the situation get on top of you, I suppose, right yes, I mean, I think what's what's so tricky is when we get triggered right, because when we get triggered it's an automatic reflex that happens.
Sari:It's usually not a choice, so we usually don't want to like lose our shit, right. So it's it's really about that awareness of when we start to kind of escalate, or whether it's kind of getting agitated or anxious in a hyper around state, or whether we actually dip into like a numbness, more dissociated state. It's really being aware of that and then finding the tools there's so many tools we can use to get back into that more regulated state, to figure out how do we want to respond to what just happened to us. And that can take some time. The triggers are real and it could be so many different things depending on what you've gone through. Right, we, we bring our own blueprint into parenting. Our kids tend. We project so much onto our kids.
Peter:Our kids remind us of different developmental states that we went through and usually it's unconsciously happening to us those body memories that are coming up right yeah, yeah, because it's, it's something that I, I personally, as you get older, you know it's, it's, and it's something guys my age and generation, I think talk about a lot. But people, guys in their 50s, basically white guys in their 50s we all have the same sort of upbringing I think of, of uh, that you know. We started thinking that, as long as we don't turn into our dad, or a slight improvement of our dad, we're doing all right, and now we're kind of figuring out that, well, maybe we can aim a little bit higher. I mean, yeah, I think, listen, we go through life doing the best we can, and our parents did the best they could.
Sari:However, I think, you listen, we go through life doing the best we can and our parents did the best they could. However, right, we are, I think, realizing, I think, especially as mental health, stigma changes, conversations change around that appreciation for, like this blueprint that we're bringing into our own parenting from how we were raised. I think there's this. There's also, you know, this strong emphasis on being like. What does a perfect parent even mean? Right, and we strive to be the best parent we can. But I think this is important this relates to attachment.
Sari:Being a perfect parent, we think we're messing up if we're not being a perfect parent but being a perfect parent. Trying to be a perfect parent actually fosters anxious attachment, not secure attachment. Why? Because you're constantly striving for perfection and that's really anxiety provoking. We don't really want our kids to be perfectionists either. Right, it's really those moments of inattunement where we do mess up. Where we do mess up, as long as it's not in, hopefully, pervasive neglect land or abuse land. Right, it's those moments of imperfection and us finding our way back to attunement.
Peter:That's where repair lives and that's like where security is built in the connection between parent and child yeah, because that's interesting, because we I've done a thing on attachment theory before and it was an eye-opener for me, right, that was really like the sort of light bulb ah moment. Yeah, um, because I think a lot of people get caught up in that, like you said, that chasing perfection, especially especially when the when the kids aren't born yet, to stick to parenting right, it's the beforehand. My child will not have an iPad. We don't do screen time, that type of thinking.
Sari:Oh my God, all that goes out the window right.
Peter:Yeah, straight out the window. As soon as you know, Bluey is amazing.
Sari:Yeah, bluey is amazing and survival mode is real right. Don't appreciate actually the impact of being a new parent the sleep deprivation, the hormone changes both. Of being a new parent, the sleep deprivation, the hormone changes both for mom and dad. If you're in a heterosexual kind of marriage or whatever, but any marriage or any partner.
Peter:Oh, absolutely yeah, and you know everybody. You know there was a band I used to listen to called Thunder, a long, long time ago, and it shows my age again and that's. You know, it's the. They have a whole song about this. Basically, if you're, if you're in a fight with your spouse, the importance of not taking it out on the child or the cat and all that type of stuff. Do you know what I mean?
Sari:um, yeah, we call that displacement in the therapy world yeah, because that is quite often a huge thing.
Peter:I find myself when I'm ticked off with wendy, my wife of my lovely and then wife of like 20 or almost 20 years, um, I mutter under my breath a lot, you know, walk through the kitchen, that sort of thing, like like, like one of those annoying flies that just floats through life, um, but what I had to learn was to not take out any frustrations and they're not big frustrations, just little frustrations on anything else. Right, what? What billy burr, the comedian bill burr, said it's called the blowing up about little things, starting shouting for no reason but even just having that energy of you know, the tightening of the jaw, so to speak. Because when you're striving for that perfection, like what you're talking about, all you're kind of doing is suppressing those things rather than dealing with them, like masking those things rather than dealing with them in the moment, and then being a healthy human being to be around again rather than this ball of negativity, totally.
Sari:I mean, I love that. I actually, Peter, I really love that you're bringing up even what you're noticing in your body, because there's so much you know. Usually, when we get into arguments with our partners or our kids or anyone in our life, it's not really necessarily about the content. There's usually like an underlying need, there's an underlying thing, there's an underlying emotion and about what we're really fighting about, right.
Sari:It's not really, you haven't taken out the garbage. It's really like maybe underneath that is I'm feeling really dismissed, or I'm feeling really dismissed or I'm feeling really unheard and now I'm angry. Right Now I'm feeling angry, but so much of what our body cues us into it tells us about our needs, what we're feeling. You know, you're kind of bringing up, you know there's there's dynamics that come with just being with a partner day in and day out, and certainly parenting challenges and stressors and things and triggers. But there's also, like, if we have experienced things that it's actually triggering on from the past. What happens with, let's say, trauma is it gets encapsulated and stored in the brain. It kind of gets frozen in that developmental period in time. So when something is happening present day, it's lighting up a spot of the brain. That kind of goes and lights it up back in that same period. So sometimes we're responding to, let's say, for you, wendy, in your case, for me, ben my lovely husband who
Sari:gets the brunt of my reactivity right. Reactivity right Like they, sometimes it's like my a certain self state of mind is responding to something that's lit up rather than to something that's actually occurring in the here and now, and usually it's a mixture of both. Like there is something occurring in the here and now, but our reactivity is more intense because trauma is stored in so many different ways in our body. It's stored in our brain through images, through body sensations, through emotions, through beliefs about self, like I am not enough, I am unworthy, I'm too much, I am alone, I can't trust all sorts of different things yeah, because that is that is bang on, because that's kind of what what I missed out on on going to when I said earlier about the way we were raised.
Peter:As, in we raise a certain way, we find ourselves turning into our parents or at least like, all of a sudden a child or your spouse or whoever a colleague says something and then, just before you know it, your dad comes out. Do you know, and it's never the nice part of your dad that comes out in those moments.
Sari:I'm glad you're bringing that up too because it's very common. So let's say you had a father or a mother, whoever, that was very explosive and you've said I will never be that way with my child. And then guess what your kid does that like they're in a tantrum. Or your teen shuts the door on you and all of a sudden you find yourself in this explosive moment and you're like, oh my, oh shit, I'm just like my parents. I said I would never become that.
Sari:So part of that what's happening is we start to internalize parts of our parents. We internalize our attachment figures. So let's say we have an explosive parent or a very critical parent. Oftentimes we will internalize a part of them as our own kind of like explosive parent in us to kind of whip ourselves into shape, in us to kind of whip ourselves into shape so that if we can do that, we can stay on track, so we don't have to experience it from our parent. And so in that moment when our child is triggering us or our spouse, let's say, is triggering us, when we get triggered and we find that reactivity, we've internalized that a piece of that.
Sari:But I think what's helpful sometimes is to ground ourselves and differentiate. What makes me for in your case, for you, peter different than your dad. What makes you different in that moment from your dad? My guess is that as you start to have an awareness, you can lean into repair and maybe different ways than dad did, or take ownership and reflection over what's kind of different. I mean, the longer term healing is probably more kind of inner child trauma work, maybe EMDR, ifs, internal family systems, somatic work, different ways to actually help reprocess the way you've stored so many different experiences in your life. But the step the first step is even just starting to become aware of this triggers me. Oh gosh, I just kind of escalated. I'm not proud of that. How do I now lean into connection, find our way into repair that? How do I now lean into connection, find our way into repair, um, communicate actually what the need was underneath our explosivity, what the feeling was underneath that, because we don't want to drop that either. It's coming from a very important place.
Peter:We just are learning how to self regulate a little bit more yeah, there's, there's a lot in there in in what you said, um, because there's a I I personally fairly stronger belief these days.
Peter:And again, this is a generation of and I think lots of younger people do it americans definitely do it more than brits.
Peter:And that is going to therapy, right, british people and I live in the uk, I've done for a long time but even in Holland, nobody in Europe goes to see a therapist, right, unless there's something really, really bad that happened or they're much more self-aware at least my generation, right, you don't internalize everything and just live with it and hope, like I said earlier, that you're a slightly better version of your dad and that throughout the hundreds of years that is to follow, that therefore, your family lineage doesn't get too messed up and there's a healthy human being at the end of a millennia or something like that.
Peter:But it's the working on yourself, I suppose, with regards to that type of stuff, recognizing your triggers and dealing with that childhood trauma, so to speak. It's probably a good idea to start that either before you fall pregnant and this is not aimed at the women, by the way, but when I say before you fall pregnant, I include the husband in the falling pregnant thing, even though I absolutely hate that description, that's probably the best time to start this, if not earlier, right?
Sari:Listen, I think that in a perfect I'm a therapist, so I am biased right, and I am also an American therapist, so take that for what you will. But listen, in a perfect world, we'd all be self-realized and have all of it together prior to becoming parents.
Sari:And if you're able to kind of do some of that deeper work and deeper healing prior to becoming a parent, great. But the reality is and this is what I've seen in so many of my clients, whether they have big traumas or little traumas I will say that, um, there's, there's only so much there. You can do the best you might. You might kind of do therapy and be like all right, ready to be a parent, and then you have a child and it starts to uncover maybe deeper things that weren't touched on, or you start to get triggered in ways that you thought were kind of like cleaned up, you've gone to therapy about it and now you feel so much shame. So I think shifting actually the belief that okay, if I don't go to therapy before I have a baby, then I'm screwing my kid up, versus you know what it's growth, self-growth, is like a journey.
Speaker 3:And our kids.
Sari:It is inevitable they're going to hit our buttons, there are going to be triggers, and that is a normal part of parenting. That's a normal part of actually finding our way to secure attachments. But I do think that it's interesting you bring up you know, don't going to, not not wanting to go to therapy unless you have one of these like big t traumas. That's that's actually part of the reason I I created a course, um, for this, specifically helping parents look at what is getting triggered to to hopefully create more access for people that don't want to go to therapy and don't necessarily feel the need to do some of this like long-term therapy.
Sari:If sometimes that's enough for you to have the awareness, it starts to bring meaningful shifts, it's really when it starts to keep coming up, keep coming up, keep coming up and you feel at a loss and you feel like you're failing and it's like why can't I just prevent all of these triggers from happening? I'm becoming a version of myself that I said I was never going to become. I mean, that's where maybe you know taking a course like mine or going to therapy, that's where it kind of really illuminates, like I'm feeling stuck and you're not supposed to know how to work through it, because when you're in a trigger you're hijacked, yeah, and you sometimes need help allowing that to move through you right. We want to help to refile in a way where the trauma is stored in the body. We want to meet the needs that we weren't given then, so that real kind of we're not needing to meet them in that moment through our kids, through our spouse yeah, no, that's.
Peter:That's a good point, because I never, indeed obviously perfection isn't, isn't achievable and, like you said, everybody's gonna have triggers, right, everybody's gonna have things that kind of set you off. And I suppose it is dealing with those things, that learning to deal with that stuff and work through it, that is uh, yeah, and you're not.
Sari:There's nothing wrong with you because you're getting triggered right I like to think of it like it's like going to a doctor and they do the like me you can't see me, but I'm like slapping me right now and you know my knee is going up, my legs kicking up, it's a reflex right and it is inevitable.
Sari:I don't know one parent and usually I'm not living in all or nothing land as a therapist but I truly I do not know one parent that can say they haven't been triggered at some point with their kid, and triggered could look like agitated, sleep deprived, and let's say they're stressed and they take it out on their kid or they take it out on their spouse or partner, like it's inevitable. It is going to happen because life is stressful. External circumstances are stressful. Internal circumstances of what we're getting triggered is stressful yeah, exactly, something is bound to happen.
Peter:And I suppose then is the differences now between, I think, the younger generation to bring it back to me being old, um, the younger generations, they apologize to their kids. Now, right, that is something I don't know. Anyone with parents, anyone of my generation with parents whose parents said, oh dude, I shouldn't have done that, have done that. And, peter, I'm curious.
Sari:I don't know if you want to get too personal, but what a gift that would have been.
Peter:It would have been a game changer, because it allows you to learn that you can say sorry for messing up.
Sari:Saying I'm sorry, taking ownership, doesn't mean you're abandoning self and your needs in the car. It's taking ownership of saying I did something that impacted you and I'm sorry, and here's how. I wish I would have communicated it of the ultimate need or point of view right. Like, especially in parenting, we want to set boundaries with our kids. We don't want them to walk around in the world thinking that the world is boundaryless.
Peter:That's how we exist right.
Sari:In our jobs and we want to set them up to success. So it's not that we want to self-sabotage or self-abandon, it's just that we're taking ownership of our reactivity, saying I did something that impacted you and I'm so sorry I mean, that would have been a great gift for me too Instead of me then saying, oh my God, I'm bad, I've done something wrong, I need to shrink myself, my needs are not important, and I learned how to shove my needs away because I felt like they were never going to be met you know, yeah, and I think that goes for a lot of, like I said, a lot of at least the, at least the guys I know in my generation and I think a lot of the women as well, that I've worked with they.
Peter:They have that same experience with where realizing that you can make an apology to a child right, because there was, like I said, some on the forties are.
Peter:I think they're different, as in Dave Dave, they have that awareness that you can do that without affecting the power dynamic air quotes here, by the way, about power dynamic, because you know a lot of them and I'll get emails, but I'll just say a lot of people, people my age, we still kind of believe, especially with teenagers. So, uh, we still believe in this, in this power dynamic. I am your dad. I also kind of want to be your friend. So I need you to think I'm cool because I'm your dad even though I'm 50 and I'm not cool anymore. And if you're a teenager, I'm definitely not cool anymore. But I need you to think I'm cool that I have all the knowledge. But I also need you to respect me as the authority figure in the relationship and that then means that, because I said so, is a valid Listen, you're touching on a topic that's hot, which is like raising teens right.
Sari:So, yes, it's in this constant power, dynamic, power struggle of how do I still create containment and safety and security, because I'm still the parent and they're still living under my house and they're still the boundaries, and I still need to teach them so much about the world and keep them safe emotionally, physically, but also developmentally. Teens are at this place of individuation and autonomy.
Sari:So you're like floating that balance and guess what? That's going to be real tricky in the power dynamic. It is like a recipe for power struggles. It is like putting fuel in a fire, and so there are actually there are so many ways that you can navigate those power dynamics, because I think the biggest piece if I could give any parents like a takeaway in any really stage of parenting, but particularly through teens, is how do we get through this rocky period with a feeling of I'm still feeling connected because ultimately, we're wanting our kids, regardless of how they feel about us being the authority or the one who they still have to listen to and have all sorts of feelings about it, disappointed. What are we working on there? We're working on their distress, tolerance, disappointment, tolerance, and still feel connected.
Sari:Where they feel like, if they're freaking out, if they're having big feelings, you're still a safe person emotionally for them to come to, regardless of you're pissing me off right now, you know like I'm angry and I'm feeling and really it's coming, probably for a parent, out of a place of feeling very helpless and powerless because they're acting out in a way that, honestly, from the most part, is developmentally appropriate to them. They're they're, they're pushing boundaries, that's they're good. Good job, mom and dad.
Peter:You've raised them in a way to be developmentally appropriate, but like what the fuck are we going to do about it now, you know yeah that's very true, because that is what you and I have a lot of conversations with, with people, a lot of my clients, that are like that. They have kids and they're in their teens and but these I mean any. It starts at 12, started at 12 for them, and then now it's like 17 and the boy is 14 and the girl is 17 and it's just having having them stay in and communicating with because, uh, with the parents. That seems to be the the, the key bit, as in yes, okay, you have, you have boundaries. You're gonna have fallings out. They're gonna be a pain in the ass. You're gonna be a pain in the ass. You're going to be a pain in the ass to them as well, but as long as they can still feel like they can come back to you, you're kind of already ahead of the game.
Sari:That's right, that's honestly. I mean, I don't need to plug anything, but that is exactly what my course is. It's literally raising your team without losing your mind, and that's what it's called. It's literally. That is the substance of it. Of course it's the strategies of how to deal with social media and boundaries and curfews and all of that hard individuation stuff, but it's how to stay connected through that. It's how to get you out of that power struggle, power dynamic. Part of that is actually by realizing what's coming up in you, what's getting triggered in you, whether that's deep-seated childhood stuff, attachment stuff, or maybe just like how you're handling everyday stressors and how that's playing out in your dynamic. Because the regulation actually starts with you, the teens, your kids, toddlers, teens, everywhere in between. They're supposed to be getting dysregulated and this is their time to learn self-regulation. But if we are dysregulated, there's no way that they're going to start to co-regulate with us, which really co-regulation is like. I'm lending my calm to them right.
Sari:I'm lending my regulation and if I am up here losing out of my mind and shut down and slamming the door back at them, or maybe it's the opposite, Like I'm maybe I have attachment stuff I'm feeling so rejected in this moment because my kids said that they hate me. Like now I'm flooded with my own stuff and I'm actually getting disconnected and dysregulated. It's really about how do we find our own way to grounding so that then our kids can find their way to feeling their feet on the ground too.
Peter:Yeah, and that is a really good point, because I think we all accept that children are their own little people, right, and everybody accepts. I hope everybody accepts it and I hope everybody accepts that your main job as an adult, as a parent, is to raise as healthy a child and as rounded a human being as you can and you send them off in the world. That's pretty much right. That is the gold standard. As best you can, as a random person, as you can.
Peter:We quite often, I think, forget in the moment where there is conflict, that there is still that parenting job to be done. Do you know what I mean? It is not just a power dynamic, but if I and to be fair, I don't fall out with anybody anymore these days, but it's if I had a falling out with a friend, we are friends and we don't talk to each other. For a lot of, for a lot of parents there is and this sounds maybe a bit dumb and maybe even a bit preachy, but it's like you said your job is to to still parent the child.
Sari:There is supposed to be a moment of growth coming from that conflict totally yeah, listen, in an ideal world, our needs would be simpatico and we would be holding hands, skipping into the grass fields, right, like our needs just co-align, and it's just not the case like it's it, and actually we don't want it to be the case. We want them to have their own sense of self, right, but in a way, I think this is an important aspect to what I think you are dysregulated. That is actually not where growth and learning happens. Growth and learning happens when both are regulated. That's when, like, those teaching moments are really more. I mean, you are going to get much more bang for your buck finding those moments.
Sari:But the hard part and I think the hard part, the hard part and I think the hard part, it's a little bit of a mind shift in parents is like it's not just I need to make sure my kids are behaving, it's really how am I behaving? Because if I'm just authoritarian, do I want my kids to be growing up in just a fear-based they're only complying because it's it's fear based? No, but we're wanting them to feel like they're autonomous, they're making the decisions for themselves. But that comes from us being able to be the container and security for them and it comes from us doing our own self reflection of am I, just am I? What am I modeling for that? If I'm I, just recently, I have two kids, my youngest I you know, I got dysregulated and I yelled at him.
Sari:I know I'm a therapist, but I'm a human right. I have my own sets of triggers. So I yelled at my kid and I, and he yelled back and I said you can be angry, but you cannot yell at me. And you know what he said back to me. Joshua said back to me mom, you yell at me, so why can't I yell at you? And you know what he was right Like in that moment. He was right Like how can I expect my kid not to yell at me If my go-to is?
Sari:Of course that doesn't mean I don't teach him the behavior. But if we're both in the rafters and agitated and in a hyper aroused state, we're not in our window of tolerance, we're not in this optimal zone. He's not going to be able to trust me. But I'm saying you can't yell at me. He's like why not? We're both in this very agitated state, we both have to take a moment, come down and then we can. Hey, it sounded like you were really angry. I need to work on yelling. I also want you to work on yelling, or what's something you can work on? I'm going to work on communicating my anger differently. What's something you can work on. That's where the teaching moments happen.
Peter:Yeah, something you can work on.
Speaker 3:That's where the teaching moments happen yeah, of course.
Peter:Yeah, when you're in in that red optimal zone, yeah, yeah, in the optimal I, I, I relate an awful lot of this stuff just because I get emails and you know, listening interaction is a powerful thing. So I compare raising kids a lot to dogs, right, um? So I love to bring the statesesar Milan type comparison in. You know that, that whole, when they're in that red state, when they're barking, when they're snarling, get them out of the state first and then include yourself. Right, that's right, because he talks about this a lot and, like I said, I bring this up for a reason because it annoys one or two people. Uh, it is.
Peter:It is if, if the postman comes to my door, like and like I said before, recording, I've got three dogs everybody listening to this now, so I've got three dogs. When the postman comes to the door and he knocks on the door and my dogs start barking, that's kind of what their job is to let me know there's someone near the door, right? So, first of all, they're doing what they're meant to be doing, so I can't get upset about that. It's like you said with teenagers they're meant to find their own way, right? If I then shout at them to shut up. All they're doing is thinking, hey, he's parking with us, right? That guy at the door was shouting for a reason. Now, or they're thinking this is completely acceptable behavior or, even worse, we need to be scared of this guy and to bring that back to parenting.
Sari:And this is again I love that actually generational thing. It's a great parallel, it's a great metaphor oh, and I find it genuine.
Peter:It genuine all this stuff works. I didn't understand all this stuff until I started to think, really think, about what you're portraying, and then looking at loads of things. Most of the time, the way I was raised, for sure the shouting meant you'd better be scared, right. It's the old wait till your father comes home. That's sort of thing as in I am misbehaving. No doubt I'm a child. I'm misbehaving, I do stuff I'm not really supposed to do. Mother loses her mind a little bit, or at least this kind of, and then it becomes just wait until your father comes home. Not that my dad did anything, but he was the person to fear but that so I'm glad you're bringing.
Sari:I mean thank you for being so honest like that. That brings up a really good example, peter, of like when, when there's such a fear, oh god, what's dad gonna do? And I've known him to escalate, I've known him to explode. Your child you probably went into a, into a trauma response, a fight, flight or freeze right where it's like, that's what you've got right, yeah, yeah that because trauma responses are there for survival.
Sari:It's there to keep you safe in that moment. So I'm going to keep myself in check here. Now we're starting to internalize our own self critic right, our own. It's like should you behave? Behave, peter, behave, behave. You know, don't say anything, don't keep your mouth shut.
Sari:Keep your mouth shut, you don't want to hear your dad's rap and it helped you, kind of like, not get hurt, whether it was verbally or physically or right and so. But what's happening in your nervous system, in a child's nervous system, is it's going into a state of fight, flight or freeze, and freeze is a more dissociative state. Um, I don't know if anyone's ever described like the animal metaphor I know you were talking about dogs, but if you imagine like an animal in a cave, okay, so let's say there's, I don't know, like a cute little bunny in a cave and then there's a lion that's coming. There's a predator, right?
Sari:Trauma responses are based off of like studying animals too. So when it feels like it's going to be attacked, sometimes if it feels like it's a big enough animal, it will try to fight back to survive. When it feels like it's not going to win, it will try to escape. Right, it will try to flee. That's the fight or that's the flight. Now, if it feels like it's trapped, now we're in a cave.
Sari:If it feels like it's trapped, there's nowhere to go, it freezes to try to be invisible, to try to make the animal think I'm not going to attack you, I'm not going to go away, I'm going to comply, right, and sometimes it even starts to feign death, which is another trauma response, which is a much more dissociated state, right? So we're really, which is more like people pleasing, like now I'm, or fawning. Now there's another state, people pleasing I'm now going to like, do what the predator wants to make sure that it feels okay, right. So maybe with parenting, it's like I'm gonna now comply with with mom or dad, I'm gonna make them feel so good, I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna have their needs, I'm gonna do whatever. I'm self-abandoning, I'm putting my own anger, my own fear aside to make it seem like I'm okay. We're in a trauma response there and that's not where secure connection and attachment lives, right?
Peter:yeah, no, absolutely so. How can you then to bring this all back to, because I think this is great stuff. You also just described the state of the gop in amer, by the way. They're all trauma response, scared of Trump just doing whatever.
Sari:Let me, I mean let's just you know, paul. Oh my goodness, yeah, we are really winning in America.
Peter:Yeah, winning, hard going well.
Sari:Yeah, we are. It is a special state right now.
Peter:It is Bringing this all back to the thing, because this is the fascinating. So when you are, when you're aware that this is what you do, as in, you move into that. I know yelling brings out a certain response in you and you know a person yelling in the house brings it. How do you learn to move past that? Because, like I said before we started recording, I wanted to talk a little bit about EMDR and all that sort of stuff. How does that sort of thing, how do those techniques actually help people with that, and how can they then take that forward into their parenting or other relationships?
Sari:Yeah, absolutely so. Again going back to this idea of how is trauma stored in the nervous system, so sometimes just talk therapy can be great, sometimes solution-focused therapy, shorter-term therapy can be great, but when there is something that has impacted the nervous system Now trauma is not necessarily the bad thing that happened, it's actually what happened after that then fixes it into the system. How is it processed? If it never got processed, it's probably stored in your nervous system in places that talk therapy that's just accessing that, like I don't want to get too sciencey, but that's prefrontal cortex right, that's just accessing that like cognitive part of the brain.
Sari:If you're able to talk about it, you're accessing it from this prefrontal cortex. The trauma and impact lives in a sensory based part of the brain which you can't see my hands but it's this reptilian part of the brain, it's this like under part that goes into the somatic, your spine and the body. Okay, so sometimes talk therapy doesn't hit the mark. Sometimes reframes just don't hit the mark. It's like I can tell myself like I'm actually safe right now. He's not my brother, he's not my mother, right, but the system doesn't internalize it. It just doesn't believe that I'm in a trauma response. So that's where there's so many different trauma modalities that can help with that, but one in particular is emdr, which stands for eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing, and what that uses is. It's a, it's helping, re, helping, refile where trauma is stored in the brain and in the nervous system. It's finding a new spot where it helps the system go from what feels so present in a PTSD response. It's taking a trigger and it feels as if it's happening now in the system. Even if we're not sure if we can make sense out of it, we just know our system is hijacked and we're in a trauma response. It's helping differentiate something that's present from past and it does that using bilateral stimulation.
Sari:So in its most original form Francine Shapiro, she found that eye movements going back and forth accessed both the right and left hemisphere of the brain. And why that's helpful is when there's trauma. I like to think of it as like we have these electrical currents that are kind of like frayed at the end. When there's trauma they're like frayed at the end and we're wanting to access both right and left brain hemisphere to create new pathways of connection and communication in the brain that help the brain realize oh, that's past, it's not present. And we do that through this.
Sari:Again, its most original form is eye movements, but now we've known that it can happen from tapping one side of the body to the other. It can be through auditory, um bilateral stimulation with sound one ear the other ear, one ear at the other ear. So there's all sorts of ways that we can start to bilaterally stimulate the body. That's going to access where trauma is stored. There's also brain spotting, which is like a sister modality to EMDR, which I also do, which kind of focuses on where our eye movements go. So it's similar to EMDR and we lock into a trauma neural network that allows kind of this access to how things have been stored somatically in the system, in a very similar way that EMDR does, and it's done with therapy and actually it's much quicker than talk therapy and I'll even say from my own personal experience, years of talk therapy, going through my own stuff.
Sari:You know that I carry with me and now into parenting, when I started to do my own work with a therapist and heavy into trauma reprocessing with EMDR in particular, there was stuff that was coming up that I was like, oh my God, like so far back in my unconscious that I don't think years of talk therapy would have been able to access.
Sari:And it shifts body sensations. If there aren't words to explain how we feel, the body remembers. Right, a lot of people have pre-verbal trauma. Even if you think about babies, right, let's say it wasn't even like a big T trauma that we think about. But if there's enough neglect, let's say you had a parent who just never picked you up, you cried, you cried, you cried, you cried and the baby eventually stopped crying because no one came to pick them up. Right, they tired themselves out. That might be stored in the system and you have no conscious adult memory of that, of when you were in a crib. You just know there's a pervasive longing in you and EMDR and other kinds of trauma modalities can start to access those self-states, those little children in us that don't have the words sometimes to process the experience.
Peter:That's a good example, because I just spoke to someone a little while ago about, you know, cry therapy, as in what they do for what they used to do for kids. I just let them cry themselves to sleep and just ignore them. We'll be fine. You fed them Diaper is clean, they'll be fine. We don't do that stuff anymore, right? I hope Anybody listening.
Sari:Yeah, I mean it's tricky, right, there's all sorts of schools of thought still today. I mean, cry it out For me. I mean listen, if you're like attachment, parenting and dah, dah, dah, dah, you're probably not going to necessarily let your child cry out. But there is truth to be said for allowing enough dysregulation for them to learn self-regulation and then for them to feel your comfort so that they can again co-regulate. So you're not necessarily wanting to rescue them all the time, but if there is pervasive neglect, that's when their system starts to learn I'm not going to get my needs met. And maybe that translates into I'm too much or I'm too little, or I'm not allowed to exist or right, all those negative beliefs that start to form through traumatic experience. But let's say, listen, we can't always pick our kid up. Or let's say we're dysregulated.
Peter:We're going to yell at them.
Sari:We need to put them down so that we can calm down and then go pick them up. It's not necessarily a quote, unquote air quotes. Bad thing for them to cry a little bit and be dysregulated as long as they feel parents are coming back. Parents are in the same way. Fast forward time to teen parenting, right where now they need. They're saying leave me alone, I don't want to talk to you. It's like, oh, what do we do with that? What do we do with that? Do we just that? Do we just let them be? And now, as a parent, I'm dysregulated. I just want to make it better, maybe even my own serene, anxious attachment. I'm like I want to make sure they're okay, because that's what I needed as a child, right, someone?
Peter:to come check on me and say hey, are you okay?
Sari:How that? I'm so sorry. How did that impact you, right? But so okay. So I'm like all right, I'm gonna ground myself, I'm gonna give my child some space, but I'm gonna let them know when you're ready. I'm here to talk so that they're not feeling alone or abandoned in that, and then maybe I check in and if they're like I'm not ready yet or back off, you know, it's like okay, I just wanted to check. I'm here when you're ready.
Peter:I hear you, you need space yeah, we're obviously we're always talking about finding that, finding that middle, middle ground, so to speak, where you can just like you don't have to take it to extremes, like you said, when you ignore your child altogether, although we've seen that happen.
Sari:Yeah, I mean, there's so many nuances right Like that's those are just examples, but certainly if your child is self-harming or if they have deep depression or those are things that need to be you know but we're talking about, like mood dysregulation, ebbs and flows, mood swings that are very typical for teenage behavior or toddler behavior. They just have more words, you know.
Peter:Fundamentally yes, and if you want to be popular with your teenager, tell them that no no, don't tell them that Use that as their definition from now on.
Sari:Yes, exactly, parents, listen to me, that will really help your relationship.
Peter:Yeah you're just a toddler with a vocabulary. That's all you have. That will really help your relationship. Yeah, you're just a toddler with a vocabulary.
Sari:That's all you are. That's right. Don't say that. That's disconnection, not connection.
Peter:Karen.
Sari:Who is ever listening?
Peter:To be fair it is funny and sometimes that's all we've got. Yeah, people like to do. We're talking about all these different modalities and all that sort of stuff. I think, should your therapist and most therapists will be working with different modalities and where it is. But I know, um, I think people Google a lot these days, right? So I can almost imagine someone listening to this and saying, oh, I have stuff to sort out, I need to do stuff. This EDMR sounds amazing. I will now Google therapists and do EDMR in my area. Dmr sounds amazing. I will now google therapists and do edmr in my area. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is what people do these days. People don't just search for therapists in the area. They think this jackass on the podcast said something that sounds like a good idea, and I'm going to. You know pete now. I've listened to a few episodes of Pete and he kind of knows what he's talking about with this stuff. This, personally, I always think you know you're expert.
Sari:In this case, you should decide what will probably work best for you rather than the other way around, right, yeah, I mean, listen, I, I am a trauma informed therapistformed therapist, and so I, truly, like you're, really looking at fundamentally where you believe the power of change lives right, and so if you're talking to a cbt, cognitive behavioral therapist or solution focused therapist, they really believe that the power changes from reframes in the present. You know, and and probably if you're, and, oh my gosh, if you're, and oh my gosh, if you're a CBT therapist out there listening, there's much, a much better explanation.
Sari:I am not an expert in that. However, I I am a trauma informed therapist and I believe that we the past does influence present and it comes up a lot, especially in parenting. And so, whatever you're seeking out, I think it would be helpful to see whether there's a therapist that has what lens they work from, so whether that's psychodynamic, whether that is also having EMDR and maybe certified I'm certified in a consultant, but there's different levels of training. There's also sensory motor therapists. There's internal family systems, which has a lot of parts work and that's a lot of. And for me, I integrate a lot of different approaches because I really try to attune to what the client is needing, because so much about healing, even with EMDR, is how we're kind of reparenting ourselves while we're parenting our children right.
Sari:Like, how do we start to meet our own needs that never went met then, so that we don't need to get them from our children. We're getting it from now parts of ourselves. So there's so many different ways but I would encourage whatever therapist you're looking for, if you feel like there's some past stuff that's influencing or getting touched on present day stuff, I certainly would encourage you to look for therapists that are more trauma informed. That's usually going to be somewhere on their website or even in a consultation that you have with them just asking about you know, mentioning that there's some past stuff, how do you work with that? Um, you know, and and also that it's normal for you to not know what you need to work on right, like that's part of what a really good, solid therapist can help through the relational component Also, what gets played out in therapy.
Sari:Start to kind of illuminate. Help you notice patterns as you talk about present day triggers. There's so many ways that it's like for me sometimes my doorway in is gosh. As you're talking about you getting heated with your teen, where are you noticing in your body? Oh, my God, my chest All right. Well, if we were to like trace that same sensation back in time. Does that feel familiar? Yes, okay, if we were to even go back to like little you, can you remember a time that you felt that same sensation in your?
Speaker 3:Oh, my God, yes.
Sari:You know, and sometimes it's not so clear, sometimes it's pre-verbal, sometimes it's not necessarily influenced by past, and that's okay too.
Sari:We're not going to create trauma where there wasn't any right Just by opening the doors I think some people are worried about that and nervous about that, you know, especially it sounds like, maybe, when there's a feeling of I only go to therapy for big problems.
Sari:It's like, you know, there's so many ways that you can find relief by going for things that are not necessarily these like big, big, obvious traumas. But I'd like to think about it more as how have things impacted me? Because everything in life impacts us, whether it's positive, negative, neutral, like we're ambivalent and so, and one part of you may feel like I should be able to get through this without therapy, and there might be another part of you that's like frozen, feeling like I feel so unsafe. I feel so unsafe, or I feel so in flight or in fight, you know, and angry, and I just don't know how to stop it, but I should be able to get through it. Right, we are different self-states that are at war with each other and you're not supposed to know how to get through it on your own no, and I think that's that's a that's a very powerful point, because I think that is.
Peter:This is why I always tell people to work with an expert and not, before you go to work with an expert, don't self-diagnose too much. That's right, because because let's be honest, I mean that's tempting, right, it's, it's and I know lots of pts uh, physical physiotherapists are the same. The amount of people that come across that I come across to say, hey, pete, fix my shoulder. It's the only thing that's wrong with me, because this hurts. And then you look at them and you get dude, your back is messed up, your pelvis, your everything is.
Peter:You're a wreck. Your shoulder hurts and that's annoying you now, but we really.
Sari:Oh my god, that's such a good, that's such a good example, right. Like I went to years of pt I probably should have. I wish I would have known you and flown to europe, right. But like I went through so many years of chiropractor PT where I'm like my neck, my neck, my neck- and it wasn't until someone was like you have a hip disparity.
Sari:No wonder you're neck, you know like, and it's similar to therapy, right? People come in when, when a when a client comes in or when I work with parents or adults or teens. Even when they come into my office, they're usually coming in for symptom relief, symptom management, and what I'm looking at is what's causing the symptoms. Similarly to what you described like dude. It's your back. You know I'm looking at like. Of course you can't stay in a serious relationship.
Sari:Of course you're losing your shit on it, Because look at how, like, if we look at how little you know, sarah had to survive through yada, yada, yada, like of course you're feeling impacted. There's a huge part of you it's so scared to trust Right, so again it goes into attachment. It goes a huge part of you it's so scared to trust right, so again it goes into attachment. It goes into all sorts of things and I think it helps give you an appreciation for what your symptoms are today. And actually, while it feels like a little daunting sometimes to step into some longer-term work, there's so much longer-term relief that can come from that. Oh sure, real, meaningful shifts.
Sari:And oftentimes, if there is something that is kind of fueling an undercurrent of present day triggers, sometimes just reframing or staying solution focused. Oftentimes clients come to me when they've tried that kind of therapy because certainly it works for some people, yeah, but there's a lot of shame like why, what's wrong with me? I can't just do the homework and now it's I'm better, like there's something wrong with me, I keep failing, and other shame, when actually there's nothing wrong with you. Your system is just responding exactly the way it's supposed to be.
Peter:It's trying to protect you from actually feeling those pain points yeah, no, and that, again I mean that really translates directly to any any, because I have a lot of physios and pts listening to this and just, and then medical professionals and they. This translates exactly to what we're always talking about, right, it is you have an issue that you're aware of and I don't know, you punch the wall and you're like I have my wife to go into the middle-aged guy mindset of the I don't want to go anywhere, but my wife says I have to go because I keep punching walls, and she's a little bit concerned, right? Not that type of stupid thinking, thinking that it is just hey, you're saying it, I'm not, yeah, no, exactly, I can say that because I'm an asshole but it's thinking that I just need this solution so I can stop doing the one thing. Right, because that is quite, it's what gets you through the door Totally, and oftentimes that happens, right?
Sari:Either you've lost control in your parenting you've lost control in your parenting you've lost control in your marriage. Sometimes it's substance use, sometimes it's I mean, who knows? And sometimes it's about a partner saying you got to take like, you got to get some help, because I can't stay in this if blah, blah, blah blah.
Sari:Right and okay. So that's, that's the doorway. And, gosh, I wish it were that easy. If there was like a magic fix, I would be rich, you know. And that's why sometimes I think self-help books or things it's like if you just read this, then you're good to go. And then you end up feeling like what the fuck is wrong with me, like it didn't work right, and we start to look at okay, so there's something that gets us in the door. And for me as a therapist, I'm not looking at it with any judgment, I'm looking at it of like huh, let's get curious about that part. Let's make sense out of what's happening in you and trying to see where that dysregulation starts Certainly help with strategies around grounding, understanding body cues, anger management, management, self-regulation, all of that. But now let's try to make sense out of like what's? What's igniting the fire, what's getting triggered? Right, because if we don't address that, then chances are it's just a band-aid over the behavior, yeah, and any quick fix with any sort of stuff I'm sure
Speaker 3:it's the same with yeah, it's just quick.
Peter:We sell quick fixes right as it, or at least quick fixes sell. Let me put it that way, but they tend not to work.
Peter:And when they then fail, exactly what you said when the quick fix fails, as it always does, you end up feeling like there's something wrong with me because that thing that instagram told me would work right. And when you're talking about the tapping I've seen the tapping right, the, the neuro regulation, yeah being thing. When someone then says to me the equivalent of I'm going to try the tapping thing because I've seen on instagram that that works, I'm like, yeah, dude, you're doing this wrong do you know?
Sari:there's so many?
Peter:yeah, there are a million ways that it works. I'm not saying it doesn't, but you can't just go with the other random person on instagram, so tapping helps with some things and therefore I'll try tapping and then a week later, tapping didn't work, because you try it for a week and then you're on to the next right and yeah, it's the. Get in the door first to speak with someone who knows what they're talking about, such as yourself, and then have them say this is what we're going to be doing, and just be open-minded that there's probably more to work on than what you think there is Right, that's fair right, because that's how it always works, totally.
Sari:And also it's very normal, I will say say as people start to feel awareness, and it's a little bit of like disillusionment around.
Sari:Yeah, the glass is cracking, you know, kind of a blueprint that needs to maybe be tweaked and re-looked at a little bit. I will say that it's very normal for there to be parts of us that feel very resistant. So while there's a part that's like help me, help me, I want to come, there's also a part that's like what are we doing? Like what are you? What are you doing? Going to therapy?
Sari:This woman, suri, is trying to like uncover all the things that I figured out how to keep us in check about. I don't want to touch that. We're not coming Right. There's a lot of ambivalence and and actually I really welcome that that those parts are also allowed. In a way, it's like teens, they're allowed to say, if they're in the I love you, I hate you stage, I need you also, you know, it's all very inside out people, it's all very uh oh my god, I love that movie.
Peter:The old, therapist I've ever spoken to loves that movie.
Sari:Of course they do.
Peter:They're like that is you, I felt so seen with anxiety.
Sari:I felt so I was like I feel so seen, this is me, yes.
Peter:On that happy note. Was there anything else you wanted to touch on? Because we've covered a lot of ground, I think.
Sari:We sure have. I mean, I've just really appreciated the conversation. I like actually the correlation between the work you do and the way people come in, kind of you know taking a chance to actually like do the longer term work of healing their bodies, as what kind of happens with with therapy. And I think my if I were to give maybe a takeaway, is that there's nothing wrong with you for getting hijacked, there's nothing wrong with you for getting dysregulated. It is a part of being a human being. We are impacted.
Sari:It's more just what do we do with that? How do we? How do we kind of, if we need some help getting skills to learn how to regulate, and sometimes it's that deeper work if that just doesn't stick long-term? That's part of why I love, I mean, that's why I do my one-to-one work. That's why I created the course to really help illuminate that for potentially deeper work or maybe there's enough in there that, because it does, does ask those, it does look inward at those deeper stuff too um, yeah, and I just really appreciate the space to share.
Peter:So thank you no, that's great and, like I always tell everybody who's maybe concerned about setting foot in the room, but and and with therapy, there is still with, at least within the uk, there's a bit of a stigma around it. The nice, because everybody thinks they're going to be the worst, right, everybody thinks I'm going to walk in, I'm going to be the worst case that she has ever seen or he has ever seen. And trust me, trust me, I have seen, almost with regards to pt and all that sort of thing. I have seen wreckages walk through the door that are so much worse than anyone could ever have been. And there is still a solution there somewhere, right, there is no embarrassment.
Sari:That's right, I mean, I think people are craving to feel that there's hope, right, that there's going to be relief at the other end of it. And it takes a lot of courage, right. It takes a lot of courage to walk into your office in a wrecked state and be like, oh, all right, I'm ready.
Peter:What can we do?
Sari:Yeah, as much as it takes a lot of courage to kind of walk through the doors of therapy or even at the very least recognize like I might need some help, you know.
Peter:So, Absolutely, and I'm not happy that I might need some help, you know. So, no, absolutely, and I'm not happy that I will press stop record here, and, of course, press stop record is exactly what I did. Thanks very, very much to Sarik for coming on. Like I said, I absolutely love this conversation. This is why I like having various experts on on um, on the podcast, to discuss the same subject but from slightly different angles, because as uh as uh, sari and I discussed, you need to find the mental health professional that works for you, right and and that that that you can work with and that that fits you. And this is why you know there are loads of different, uh, different approaches, and and I I really am I'm fascinated by the emdr stuff that we discussed. So, basically, you know that's what I'm saying. I love this. I'm a huge fan.
Peter:That is me done for another week, because I realize we're just past an hour now and you're fed up listening to my dulcet tones. Next week it'll be another old one and then after that I'm doing another Q&A. So get your questions in, get your comments in either text in or peter at healthy plus natal body dot com. Whatever you prefer, here's your new bit of music. Take care of yourself. Bye now.
Speaker 3:She dies to turn to you. She's not your type of girl. She's gonna break me, break me. She's gonna break me, break me. She's gonna die, she's gonna die. Thank you. She's on a brink, a brink, a brink of cold. She's on a brink, a brink, a brink of cold. She's on a brink, a brink, a brink of cold. Thank you, I'm sorry. Thank you, you.