Trauma Rewired

Anxiety

Duration:: 57m
Broadcast on:: 01 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

In this episode of Trauma Rewired, hosts Jennifer Wallace and Elisabeth Kristof are joined by Matt Bush as they unpack anxiety. The conversation starts with an exploration of how neurodivergent conditions such as ADHD and autism impact executive functioning, sensory processing, and create hypersensitivities that lead to emotional overwhelm. They highlight the importance of self-assessment and retraining of sensory systems to better manage these challenges. Elisabeth Kristof further connects developmental and complex trauma to nervous system responses, noting how trauma shapes our interpretation of signals and can keep individuals in a constant state of fight, flight, or freeze. Jennifer Wallace emphasizes the crucial aspect of self-awareness and deep self-knowledge in managing anxiety, advocating for practices that foster body awareness, emotional expression, and self-regulation.

Anxiety is not just a mental disorder but a physiological response emanating from sensory mismatches and respiratory inefficiencies. Chronic hyperventilation, for example, sends constant threat signals to the brain, keeping the nervous system on high alert. Through regular neuro training and specific breathing exercises, individuals can better regulate their nervous systems and reduce anxiety.

Let’s reframe anxious thoughts and use cognitive tools to consider positive outcomes, thereby preventing the negative spiral of anxiety and trauma.

Discuss the tangible benefits of applying neurosomatic principles to everyday life. Explore sensory mismatches, emphasizing the need to address deficits in visual, vestibular, somatosensory, and interoceptive systems to alleviate anxiety. We advocate for ongoing self-assessment and retraining as ways to establish a new baseline of wellness.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Impact of Neurodivergence
Trauma and Nervous System Responses
Self-Assessment and Sensory Retraining
Role of Chronic Hyperventilation
Anxiety as a Physiological State
Cognitive Reframing of Anxiety
Female-Specific Anxieties
Sensory Mismatch and Anxiety

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Anxiety is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States. It affects about 18% of adults, and it's one of the topics that we get the most questions about on our Facebook group, on the brain-based site, and something we really love to explore in NSI. So for this season of trauma rewired, as we're diving into the intersections of mental health, nervous system health, and complex trauma, this is an incredibly important foundational conversation to really start to understand how our lived experiences pattern our nervous system responses, and create the physical, the mental, the emotional outputs that impact our health, our well-being, and our relationships. So excited to dive into this conversation today. Welcome to Trauma Rewire, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous system, how trauma lives in the body, and what you can do to heal. I'm your co-host, Elizabeth Christoff. I'm the founder of brainbase.com, an online platform, where we train the nervous system to rehabilitate input systems, resolve trauma, and change behavior. And today we're joined again with Matt Bush and Jennifer Wallace, our other co-host. Hi, I'm Jennifer Wallace. I'm a neuro somatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide bridging the powerful modalities of medicine with your nervous system. And I'm also an educator for the neuro somatic intelligence certification program. I'm Matt Bush, one of the owners of Next Level Neuro. I'm also an NSI instructor with Elizabeth and Jen. So thanks for having me on the podcast today. All right, this is a big topic before we were getting into this, Jen and I were talking about having some of our own anxiety going into this conversation. It's one of the first recordings we've done for this season. So there's always living the work that we're talking about. And when we're talking about anxiety, I think it's important to mention for people that it can show up in many different forms. We think about this traditional manifestation of anxiety as panic attacks or hyperventilation, erasing heart, the sweaty palms. But it can show up a lot of other ways too that are a little bit more insidious in our ruminating thoughts, maybe in compulsive behaviors that we use to resolve some of the anxiety, that deep internal pressure that is happening in our nervous system. And it can show up in a social context as well in our relationships as social anxiety. And then it can be followed. A lot of times we don't even recognize our anxiety while we're in the moment. But then afterwards, it's followed with these coping behaviors that we use to help our nervous system down regulate from the stress of anxiety, self soothing behaviors that can sometimes be maladaptive, like binge eating or using substance or numbing out with social media. And so from a neurosematic perspective, we want to really keep in mind as we're going into this conversation that anxiety is not the cause of the stress or necessarily a psychological condition, but that it's a physiological state. It's the result of the stress, not the cause of it. Yeah, one of the things we talk about in NSI is that anxiety is an output, not an input. So those who have been on the podcast for a while or who've been following NSI online have seen this model before of inputs, interpretations and outputs. Anxiety is really an output. It's something that our brain and nervous system create as a way to try to send us a signal that something needs to change and also to protect us, either protect us from something that is in the external environment, protect us from something going on inside of our own body, or maybe protect us from something that it's predicting might happen in the near future. And so if we can start to reframe anxiety, not as a personality trait or part of our identity or something that we just have, like, oh, I just have anxiety, I have to deal with it. But instead, as the fact that our nervous system is actually doing exactly what it's meant to do, it is performing its job perfectly by warning us or protecting us or trying to disengage from something that it perceives as maybe a danger, it's trying to keep us alive or keep us from being injured. And that could be mentally, emotionally or physically. But when it does that, that is exactly what our brain and nervous system are supposed to do. And they're just engaging with the reflexes and the subconscious actions that they're wired with. And sometimes they've been conditioned into them to make sure that we stay safe. So when we start to view it like that, we can really take a deep dive and unpack what are the inputs that might be causing that output? Or what are the interpretations and the decisions that my subconscious brain is making to try to keep me safe from something that thinks is dangerous. And at that point, we can observe and respond and decide if we want to retrain and rewire how those systems are working. Honestly, as Elizabeth said, we were talking about the little anxiety that we were having before we jumped on here. And even listening to the reframe gave me an offload out of my body. Like, I just felt like a little weight, a cloud or something just kind of left my body because it was already like, okay, now I can have some self compassion for how I feel and start to explore why the anxiety before jumping on this call and, you know, having my tools. But I really hope that happened for our listeners as well that you just felt that immediate sort of relief from the body of like, okay, this is a really empowering reframe. And I think today with everything that we're going to explore, knowing that we have all have tools that we use for our anxiety. So, I also just want to mention quickly that, you know, to our female listeners, we recognize and honor that the female body and the female brain has been neglected from mainstream science and and in ways to approach healing. We're not really intended for female bodies. And there's a lot of research that's coming out right now, particularly around the anxiety. And we're starting to understand that our brains change, particularly around times of our menstrual cycles, pregnancy, postpartum, peri, menopause, menopause, postmenopause. And we're going to explore all of that more deeply in another conversation. But the intention for today's conversation is more of a precursor to that as well as we can explore systemic anxiety on the female level at that time as well. And some of the labels around the diagnosis. But today is more of that high level reframe of anxiety in the this this deeper dive into it being the output of stress and really of of chronic stress. And so, as I was preparing for this conversation, I came across an article that said anxiety is the price we pay for an ability to imagine the future. And I thought about that even in recording this podcast, you know, what does someone's future imaging imagining look like? Does it come with a lot of stress and panic, fear of the unknown, just in those general unknowings and uncertainties? And then that that sympathetic nervous system gets activated, right? There's this prediction from the amygdala, that high alert. And that matches hormones that are being released. And then you will find yourself in that tension, the bracing, startle reflex, lack of focus and concentration, ruminating thoughts. And you can't sleep because you're prepared for that rapid action that increase in heart rate and blood pressure vocal tone presents in smooth ways. And so, your breathing changes. And all of these high states, they get recorded and set for what sort of becomes that person's normal, that homeostasis in the body. And then we have a lot of interplay in the system where you have your vagus nerve that acts as this bridge and this connection between the stress response and the HPA axis, and that gut brain, that brain intestine axis. And it's this incredible superhighway of information and this conductor of communication. And when it can't pump the breaks on your sympathetic nervous system, when it's unable to activate a relaxation signal. And that sympathetic nervous system keeps active, it causes the person to respond impulsively and usually suffer from anxiety, because those many branches of the vagus nerve, they're pathways for promoting and restoring health, and ameliorating this physiologic unease that really gives rise to anxiety in our body. And as we know from listening to this podcast, there can be so much damage, it's almost like a disruption on the highway, right? And I was kind of thinking about that in my mind, like, what would this look like? And I love seeing like the medical images of what our bodies look like, bones and organs and all that. But I also like to envision as like this living organisms and like vines and, you know, a real microbiome as a reflection of the of the outside world that I see. And so, in my mind, this disruption in the superhighway was more of like a Indiana Jones situation where he's like crossing a bridge, the signals are trying to cross, but there's a plank missing and the rope is just barely hanging on. And that's what happens when our vagus nerve gets sort of overwhelmed with all these hormones and stress signals. And I know we'll get into the interoceptive system a little bit later. But there's a huge interplay here too with how our interoceptive system is predicting the threat to cause anxiety. So yeah, so much to explore here today. There really is. And I think let's dive into some of the underlying physiological issues that could be going on to create this output, maybe starting with looking at sensory mismatch. Yeah, I wanted to jump in on that. When Jen talks about the vagus nerve and interoception, that is a huge driver of anxiety for many people. And I was thinking about the physiology was she was talking. And I think we're going to probably hit four or five physiological drivers of anxiety in addition to the vagus nerve. Right, vagus nerves gotten a lot of the spotlight recently, a lot of publicity, right, a lot of microphone time. But there's a lot of other systems, four to five major ones that can really contribute to feelings of anxiety or this predictive response. So sensory mismatch is the term that we use to describe a lack of integration of different sensory systems. So if all the systems were coming, sending their inputs into the brain and the brain's like, yeah, everything matches up, looks great. Everybody's on the same page. We would call that sensory integration, because they're all working together on the same team. When they can't be integrated, either because the sensory input is not accurate, or the brain is unable to integrate them together, then we get sensory mismatch. So for those who aren't super familiar with this idea, a couple of examples, one might be riding in the back of the car, like you're in an Uber or a taxi, you're trying to look at your phone to check either your directions or your text message, and suddenly you get hit with this wave of like nausea, motion sickness, anxiety while you're in the back of the car. The sensory mismatch component of that is that your visual system is looking at your phone or looking at the inside of the car, and nothing's really changing. It looks like you're sitting still, just looking at a device. Meanwhile, your vestibular system is feeling your body shift and move and turn as the car is moving. So it's like your, your center of gravity and your body equilibrium are kind of shifting and changing. And then your body, like your somatosensory systems and your proprioception is also feeling the weight shift and the body movement that happens as the car is driving, but they're not in charge of it. They're not making it happen. So now two systems are saying that there's movement going on while one system is saying that we're sitting still. And when those sensory inputs all reach to your survival brain, which just a side note is non-cognitive, it's non-rational, so this is like your brain stem, your amygdala, they don't know what a car is. They don't know that you're in a car. They just know that two systems that you're moving and one system says you're not. And they're like, wait a second, everything is now unpredictable. I can't tell if I should trust my visual system and we're actually sitting still. In that case, where's all this movement coming from? Or should I trust my body movement, my somatosensory and my vestibular, but then I have to discard my vision, which is actually at the top of the neural hierarchy for survival. So the brain's like, what the heck, dude? Like, what is going on? I can't figure out where I am. I don't know what's going on around me. It's unpredictable whether I'm safe or not. So the anxiety and the motion sickness coming on are protective mechanisms. Remember, we said action signals that are like, hey, stop this thing, whatever it is, get out, like get back on solid ground so that I can get my three different systems all back on the same page. Because if I can get out and walk around on solid ground, now my vision says I'm walking, my vestibular says I'm walking, my somatosensation says I'm walking. Everybody's on the same page, right? So that's a type of a situational sensory mismatch. Like I would have gotten myself into the situation that caused a problem. And so then that's the result, right? But there's also ongoing systemic sensory mismatch where I have a, may have a chronic deficit from one of the sensory systems giving my brain information. So maybe I have a visual deficit. That could be in just a blurry vision or lack of clarity. But these days, a lot of people have corrective lenses like glasses or contacts or what not, even like laser corrective surgeries. But it doesn't have to be clarity. It could be like, I have a problem with eye movement where my eyes don't track moving targets or I have a problem with peripheral vision. Like I'm not my brain's not able to process everything that's going on in the periphery or I have trouble switching between different targets or changing from near to far, especially sometimes as we age, our eyes near vision gets a little blurry, far vision gets a little blurry, night vision gets a little blurry. So any of these things that happen within the visual system would now cause a systemic deficit where the visual system is always giving different information from vestibular somatic sensation and proprioception. So now I have ongoing chronic sensory mismatch every moment of the day, every minute, every hour, every single day for the whole month, for the whole year, for the whole decade. And when you start to think about that, imagine the discomfort of being in the back of the Uber or the taxi and how bad that feels and then translate that in your brain and expanded out to being like days, weeks and months at a time and going into years and years and years. When your brain literally can't figure out where am I, what's going on around me, am I safe? And it's the answer to the question is, I don't know. It's unpredictable. Naturally, it's going to step into this chronic protective mode because as far as the brain is concerned, unpredictability might as well be called unsafe. It's never going to think something unpredictable is totally easy and safe. That's too risky because it only has to be wrong once before something really bad would happen. So it could be a visual deficit, it could be a vestibular deficit, like from a traumatic brain injury, concussion, whiplash, a viral infection, even some medications can really disrupt the vestibular system and create a chronic deficit in that system that translates into sensory mismatch. It could be a somatosensory problem. It could also be an interoceptive problem. We haven't introduced that went into the conversation yet, but I'm currently working with two different clients, totally different backgrounds who both have a mismatch between, well, one of them is a vision and interoception mismatch. So when she puts on her glasses, she says everything feels fine. When she takes off her glasses, she feels like her vision is about six or eight inches disconnected from the rest of her body. So she literally has kind of the feeling of an out of body experience and being ungrounded every time she takes her glasses off. So interoception, vision, or split. And the brain's like, I don't know where I am. I don't have any depth perception. I can't tell what's going on. Right? The other client has a mismatch between somatosensation and interoception, where actually the feelings that she's feeling from sensory inputs like clothing, or carpet on her feet, or touching an outside object, sometimes they feel like they are actually part of her body system. And sometimes she says, it feels like that's someone else's body that's being touched. It doesn't even feel like my body anymore. There's all kinds of ways that can go wrong. There's so many combinations. When sensory mismatch becomes systemic and becomes chronic, it is so easy for the nervous system to generate anxiety as the protective output. Because it doesn't necessarily want to generate ongoing physical pain. That would become so debilitating that we couldn't move. But this ongoing anxiety, like I can still function, but I'm going to be extra cautious, overthink, over prepare, like constantly be ruminating about the what ifs. You know, so all of these extra layers of protection are now in place from the anxiety because possibly my brain can't figure out on its own what is actually going on. So sensory mismatch is a huge deal in a big physiological driver before a lot of anxiety comes into play. Yeah, I really can't stress enough for people how important it is to think about the quality of those input systems and where we have deficits and where that sensory mismatch might be occurring for most of my life. I had some pretty intense visual deficits and I did so much work, meditation and grounding practices and cognitive behavioral therapy and could not get out of that sense of impending doom that followed me everywhere. I could escape it in these little moments when I had my eyes closed and I was reducing that stress level in a meditation, but then as soon as I go back out into the world, those deficits were still there and that stress load was still coming into the nervous system and so the outputs were the same. And it wasn't until I really understood that through applied neurology and began training those systems that there started to be some real change in that constant day in day out stress. And Matt's going to actually be doing a workshop on this in July that I would really encourage people to come learn more about this issue and learn some practical tools because it is a huge component. And when we talk about a chronic stress load to another system that can be creating that daily day in day out stress that pushes us into anxiety is issues with our respiration. Many, many people are chronic hyperventilators, meaning that we're over inhaling oxygen, we're taking too many breaths per minute. And so that is constantly sending a signal from the body to the brain that we are under a little bit of threat. These issues in the mechanics of our breathing and the physiological mechanisms of breathing, we have not enough CO2 in our blood to get a good fuel supply to the brain. And so now our brain is threatened for a number of reasons, right? Our body's sending the signal all of the time because we're taking so many breaths that there is some kind of threat. And also we're not getting good fuel to our brain. We're not getting glucose and oxygen that allows our higher order thinking systems to stay online and not having fuel is a really important for our brain's sense of safety and well-being. And so these chronic hyperventilation issues can come from so many different things. It can come from postural issues. It can come from the levels of oxygen and CO2 and the blood that we've kind of adapted to that that becomes our baseline state. It can come from a lot of different sources. And it's really prevalent. So one of the most important things that people can do is start to train their respiration on a daily basis to have their nervous system be comfortable taking less breaths per minute, start to change the ratio of oxygen and CO2 in the blood so that we're actually getting more fuel supply to the brain. And we're not sending that constant threat signal of there must be something going on because my breathing is really rapid. And when we're talking about this, we're not talking about breathwork necessarily. In fact, breathwork is hyperventilation. Breathwork is intentionally disregulating the nervous system to create these F responses and then process the trauma and the stress in a safe container. We're talking about minimum effective dose daily practice of working with our respiration systems to make us better at breathing, to make us more efficient, and to start to change the way that we're breathing on a regular basis so that that stress load over time reduces. And without also addressing this, it's difficult, just like with sensory mismatch, to move out of the output of experiencing the anxiety when we have this really physiological mechanism going on that's driving that state. Have you poured your energy into meditation, mindfulness, and mindset practices, trying to find relief from anxiety, but despite your efforts, you still experience intrusive thoughts and stress response, or maybe you work with your clients to guide them through various techniques and refames, but you still find them trapped in these endless cycles of ruminating thoughts, insomnia, or panic. Here's the deal. Anxiety is not the cause of our stress. It's a symptom, and it's not just cognitive. And we are so excited to bring you a workshop with NSI educator, Matt Bush, to really peel back the layers of anxiety and find a framework and practical, actionable tools using applied neurology, somatics, and brain science to repattern this so that you can experience lasting results. And whether that's for yourself or your clients, have a new way to approach anxiety. You can register for the workshop at neurosematicintelligence.com. It's July 25th from noon to 3 p.m. Central Time. There's a workshop replay available and also a live Q&A with Matt. I want to jump in really quick before I go to the next one, because the two things that you just talked about, Elizabeth, are really important for people who are struggling with anxiety. And the first one was, you said, in your experience, like you would kind of chase the relief from the anxiety, right? So you would do the meditations or the other practices, and every time you close your eyes, you'd feel better. Maybe not even knowing that's what it was at the time. But then get back into the world, the stress comes back. A lot of people do the same thing. Like they may seek that out through meditation, through their breath practice, through body work, like massage, acupuncture, reiki, energy work. And those are great practices. But the thing to be aware of, the reason I would say this is, if you've been seeking relief from the anxiety, and all of those things are helpful, but then you get back into the real world, and the anxiety almost immediately comes back, rather than thinking about my nervous system is just anxious, I would like to suggest that you start thinking maybe there is some kind of sensory mismatch going on. That's a really good indicator. Something works, but then the anxiety comes back, and it works, and it comes back, and it works, and it comes back. That means there's something deeper going on. And the same thing for breathing, because when we often go into those relief sessions of various kinds, and we modify our breathing, we breathe more slowly, more deeply, sometimes the anxiety decreases, and then we get back in the real world, it comes right back. So the second thing that you said that's really important is if it's not sensory mismatch, it may be respiration. And it's the same pattern. It relieves and comes back, and relieves and comes back. It's very high chance that there's either a mismatch or respiration issue going on, if that's the pattern that someone's been walking through. Matt, is sensory mismatch a sensory processing disorder in a way, like at a level? Yeah, well it is. Yeah. I mean, that's what it sounds like. I mean, I'm about to start, you know, we're going to go into a little bit of neurodivergence and sensory processing disorder, but as I'm really listening this and taking it in again, it's like, that sounds like sensory processing disorder. That's exactly what it is. I'm just thinking of the nervous system and how layered this all is. The one difference, sometimes sensory processing disorder gets lumped in with highly sensitive persons, and they, meaning we, as we hear about it, as a general public, even practitioners, they sometimes make the assumption that sensory processing disorder has to deal with hypersensitivity to stimulus. That's what I mean by lumping together, and that's not true. Sensory processing disorder can be a lack of input or a lack of processing and integration. The difficulty is even most medical practitioners who are diagnosing sensory processing disorders aren't going to the level of actually assessing the system to find out, is this really a problem with the sensory organ, with a nerve that's transmitting the signal, or with the brain area that is receiving and interpreting? They're just labeling it with a diagnosis and then shuffling people over to a specialist or to a psychiatrist, but there is more investigation that can be done, and a lot of these systems can't actually be retrained. I've experienced, in our exploration of neurodivergence, which we are diving into this season, I've found myself so much in ADD, ADHD, and so there can often be that lack of prefrontal cortex, executive functioning and action in that part of the brain, and a challenge prefrontal cortex and struggling executive function. But also these neurodivergences often, you'll see deficits in balance and coordination, sensitivities to smells and touch, and deficits like you were saying, appropriate reception, interoception, and vestibular systems, and there's this over-reactivity or under-reactive responsivity to touch or to noise that can often be quite polarized responses, and there's like needs to be this sort of sensory modulation in this person's life. There's like this maybe experience of like easy overwhelm, but at the same time craving a lot of stimulus, and we talked about interoception a little bit earlier today, and you gave some really great examples of like how that might feel in the body, and we often defined interoception as that sense that connects us to our internal felt sense of the body, and you gave those examples, but what I found so fascinating is we were just in NSI recently talking about interoception, and your interoception plays a huge role, and it's all going to circle back together in time awareness, flexibility of thought, personal space, self-awareness, emotional well-being, I mean it just goes on this like incredible list of things that you really wouldn't know had a lot to do with interoception, and then when you look at some of the kind of outputs that people experience in sensory disorders like maybe ADHD or autism, you do see that like challenging and regulation of stimulus that's coming in emotional overwhelm sensitivities, logistical challenges, right? Getting to things on time, missing dates, showing up, like leaving the house on time, and it's like I can see from my own self, from my vision training, and from my overall nervous system training that I do experience more prefrontal, executive functioning, the more I train, and the more regular and consistent I am with my practice, I am more on top of my things, and well of course respiration is playing a role in that totally too, because I totally relate to being the chronic hyperventilator for sure, and so there's once again just a lot of overlaps, and the deficits of the input systems, and some of the diagnoses that people are finding themselves out in the world today. Those deficits and sensory, the deficits and the areas that are hypersensitive that all kind of mixed together to create this type of sensory mismatch, and I think everything we've talked about in this physiological section actually kind of blends together. It's rare to have only one of these things, like oh all my sensory inputs are totally healthy, but I hyperventilate, well probably not, because if everything was healthy there would be no reason for you to hyperventilate, like your autonomic nervous system control would be a little bit more on point, my you know if you go oh my introception is messed up, and I breathe you know kind of weird, but now I'm having this weird visual vestibular thing, but yeah those are probably connected, so the key to all of this is to be able to do a little bit of a self-assessment and that could be just observations and kind of paying attention to feelings and behaviors, and then getting involved either with a program or a coach that can help you retrain those sensory systems, and Elizabeth mentioned this before, but if anyone's kind of struggling to figure out is this what I'm dealing with, is this what's behind my anxiety, the workshop that we're going to do in July on sensory mismatch is going to answer a lot of those questions, so even if you have no background in neurology education you can still attend the workshop and learn more about this particular topic, and how it might fit into kind of what you're going through, but it's all about retraining, and rehabilitating some of those areas. Yeah I think it's, there's so many intersections of all of this as we go through the work intersection between the different input systems and the way the deficits or hypersensitivity affect one another, intersections between trauma and how that shapes the nervous system, societal and structural issues, and how that shapes the nervous system, it's really fascinating to explore, so one of the things I wanted us to really look at too is the overlap between developmental and complex trauma, and how this obviously can lead to anxiety, but also how this can shape some of our physiological responses, and the ways that we see the sensory mismatch presenting, and one of the biggest ways is just the hypervigilance that's created when we are developing in an environment where there is a lot of threat all of the time, threat not necessarily to our physical survival, but also to our social safety, to our emotional safety, where there's not ability to emotionally regulate, and it's so important to remember that, you know, our nervous systems, we are these very malleable beings that are constantly taking in, stimulus from the environment, signals from our caregivers, sensory inputs from the environment, taking it and taking it and adapting and responding all of the time, so we're always being shaped by these forces, and we've talked about complex traumas being the water that we're swimming in, and again that's socially, that's with our primary caregivers, that's with our community, and internally, right, like the environment inside of ourselves that's shaping the way our brain and our nervous system responds to the world, and if we have these long periods, especially during development where there is a lot of stress or threat, we're becoming patterned to perceive that threat more all of the time, that predictive nature of our nervous system, so that when I'm now an adult in a different situation, my brain, my nervous system, interprets signals differently, and that could be somebody's facial expression, their vocal tone, it could be social situations, the feelings that are coming from inside of my own body, and the way that I respond to that is going to be more reactive because I've had so many experiences where that was threatening for my survival, and so from an NSI perspective, we're always looking at how we take in information about the world around us, those extraceptive systems, our eyes, our proprioceptive system, and then also the interceptive system that you guys have been talking about, how we take in the felt signals from what's going on inside of our body, and then how we interpret that information and make a decision safe or unsafe to create an output, and so if I'm more primed to constantly be thinking unsafe, that's going to push me more into an F response more of the time that then creates that reaction inside of the body of the sympathetic nervous system state, or maybe the other direction, flop or dissociation, where I'm then going to very likely respond to that situation with what people think of as anxiety. My heart is racing, my brain is foggy, I'm maybe disassociated and disconnected from my body, I don't feel okay. It's that sense of impending doom that comes from the interpretation of the signals all around us. It's so fascinating. One of the beautiful things I really love about this work, and this is what really makes it so fascinating, is that when you get into your neuro training and your rehabilitation and your daily practice, you find yourself with higher altitude in situations where you start to really understand your nervous system, and that's why we stress this daily practice so much because social threat comes with impending doom, and we're social creatures, and we just recorded the CPTS series on Trauma Rewire to just re-release, and one of those was on the inner critic, and social anxiety as two of the outputs of CPTS, and so we get that reflexive inner critic voice, that CPTS response, and it's not necessarily part of your higher order systems of thinking, it's more about survival. The voice doesn't necessarily reflect who you are and what your core beliefs are, it doesn't live in that area of the brain. Our beliefs live at a cognitive level, whereas this response of the inner critic does not, and so that was a really beautiful point actually that we brought up in the inner critic conversation. I really think y'all should go back to, but that voice, it's instinctive and reflexive, and it's a loop that plays when it tries to protect us when we get thrust into that high social threat, that protective response, that trauma response, high stress levels, and then that critic, it drives perfectionism, it drives how we show up in the world, and then like how we behave and present in the world, and it interloops and weaves into increased social anxiety, and when you experience the social threat, the inner critic loop gets activated because the brain automatically creates a behavior that you need to keep you safe in that moment, and so in this moment it could be those ruminating thoughts, it could be that driving crazy mean bullying voice that is self-criticism, and on ruminating thoughts, ruminating thoughts are so interesting too, or negative ruminations, they're these repetitive, intrusive thoughts, and they focus on past or present negative experiences, and they have a physical, emotional, and energetic charge, and from a trauma and body-oriented perspective, can usually feel like we're in stuck, like it can feel like we are stuck when we are in these places, and one phenomenon just starts to drive the other one until we've kind of spiraled into a place where we might not really recognize ourselves. Yeah, I think what you're leading into is actually that anxiety and the traumatic experiences can then generate more anxiety, like it becomes a negative spiral, almost like a self-fulfilling, you know, I would say self-fulfilling prophecy is the colloquial term, but it's like a self-fulfilling pattern of feelings, and thoughts, and emotions, and behaviors, so that's one of the times kind of that situation is when like a reframe is really helpful, right? We did one reframe at the beginning of the call to look at anxieties and output, the other one here is going to be similar, but think about whenever we have anxiety about outputs and traumatic experiences, like we have anxiety around pain, are we having anxiety around insomnia, like, "Oh, what if I don't sleep?" And then that thought causes me to not sleep, right? And it just feeds itself, anxiety about having a flashback or social situations or relationships, and it's not that we're now in those situations, we're not having anxiety because of the initial sensory mismatch or respiratory problems or the original trauma, but we're now responding to subsequent traumas that have occurred or chronic stress that has occurred that we're trying to now prevent that from happening again. So it's a kind of a spiraling snowball of that CPTS response where our brain's like, "I just want the chaos to stop, right? I don't want things to feel normal." So in those moments, the reframe is this, we want to remember that our brain is predictive, right, that it's always making a prediction and is trying to protect us in those moments from what it thinks might happen. So rather than seeing those negative outcomes as a certainty that we have to avoid, it can be helpful to think about the nervous system, kind of like when we describe the inner critic. It's trying to avoid what it's afraid of, not avoid what it knows is going to happen because it doesn't know, right? It can't possibly know the future that far in advance. So oftentimes, when I get feelings like that, I have to tell my brain, "Thanks for being aware. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'll take it from here." I got the message. You did your job, good work. I understand what to be cautious for, but now I'll take it from here. And then I'll do some kind of regulation tools or drills to get back into engaging in the present moment, right? And I'm kind of simplifying and shortening that language. When you first learn this reframe and use it as a skill, you may have to slow down a little bit and create some space for your nervous system to have, feel some of the feelings and go through some of the emotional expression. But the message is still the same, like gratitude for taking care of me. And now I'll take over from here and I'll manage the nervous system, I'll regulate, and then I'll work through it. And then when we have the cognitive rumination, it's the same thing. All those ruminating thoughts are just our brain trying to protect us from what it is afraid might happen. So when it spills into the what if loop, like what if it doesn't work? What if it goes bad? What if I'm rejected? What if it hurts? I often find myself going, what if it does work? Like just ask the opposite question. What if I'm accepted? What if it goes great? Because I don't, just because my brain is asking what ifs, that doesn't dictate the future. It doesn't actually know what's going to happen. So I try to leave a little crack in the door. Just a little opportunity, like I'm so afraid what if this goes horribly wrong? Well, what if I just rock the room and it's amazing? How would that feel? Here's one other cool thing. I don't want to take too long on this. But anytime you ask your brain a question, it is going to answer. Your brain can't help but answer questions. So when you're talking to yourself, if you haven't done this before, try not to talk to yourself so much in statements. Like, oh, that's not going to happen. Don't worry about that. Don't be anxious. Like, that usually doesn't work. But ask a question instead and frame it in the positive like, well, what if it does work? Because it's a question, your brain will automatically engage and start to try at least an attempt to answer that question. Like, what if it is awesome? Oh, I never thought about that. Wow, like that could be really cool. So if you reframe why those cognitive anxious loops are happening and what it's really trying to protect you from, and then you can do a reframe and you can use some cognitive skills, that can be really helpful to decrease the negative loop or the snowball that has started to come into effect. And I think this is probably a great time to talk about fear. Basil Vanderkal says, "When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of cognitive awareness will silence it." And, you know, all animals experience fear. But evidence suggests that it's humans are the ones that experience the anxiety because it's back to imagining what the future is suffering from imagination. And fear is also a protective response to direct threat. And anxieties are a response to a possible negative outcome ahead. And both of these fear and anxiety utilize a lot of the same neural circuitry with the amygdala flagging and stimulus comes in. We get all these defense protective mechanisms of vigilance, tension, heart rate. And they amygdala overpowers the part of the brain that would interpret and regulate the emotional experience as a direct behavioral response. But a lot of the brain mechanics, they start to overlap in fear and in anxiety. And so, you know, we were talking earlier that we were feeling anxiety around the recording of this podcast, right? Always in the vortex. But one thing I also want to note is that, you know, we've talked a lot about processing emotions out of the body. But part of what I experienced today is also excitement, right? I'm starting to get anxious around this recording. I'm also getting excited around this recording. It's our first recording back. The three of us with just starting season four. And so starting to understand in my body where those nuances lie. And it's really about regulating and processing all of the emotions that come with an experience like this. So processing a little bit of the fear, a little bit of that inner critic voice that's like, Oh, can I do this? Can I hold this space, you know, in my own way, right? And so it's about being excited and understanding that processing the joy and processing the fear that comes along with having some high voice invisibility and repatterning these cycles and learning to celebrate ourselves with, you know, bouncing, stomping, pushing the wall, lots of dancing and lots of expression. And I'm wearing my ab belt because my interoceptive system loves my ab belt when we have these big conversations. Yeah, I think there's so much like what you were talking about Jen with just like the sensations inside and having the capacity to begin to be with those different emotional experiences that I can experience a lot of fear or anxiety, just about feeling and expressing and moving the emotions of a lot of my life. I've been patterned to go into emotional repression and that these experiences at a somatic physical level were too dysregulating, too big, unsafe, and my whole system moves so quickly into repression, then I can't process through and get to the other side. I can't allow my body to release that stress and reregulate. And I can also really train my brain and especially my interoceptive system, my insular cortex to interpret a lot of threat to the sensations of emotions inside of my body. When I like he was talking about when you experience something embodied, maybe for the first time, it's very different and it can be quite shocking and overwhelming to actually be present for those sensations and to have the full human embodied experience and how is my brain interpreting these signals coming from within? And then what is the output generated? Do I move into dissociation? Does it decide that's too much? That's too big and block some of that sensory information from making it to my higher order thinking systems? Does it create enough response? Do I move into anxiety and panic? And so working with our emotional body and our ability to be with those sensations, changing how we interpret them with a gradual minimum effective, those training is really key to be able to get to the place to be with that experience and to find the nuances and the duality of emotions like the fear and the anxiety and have all of that. And then I also think too, anxiety can sometimes be a great destructive mechanism from feeling emotions. So when there's big grief that I can't process and be with, when there's anger that I'm suppressing or repressing, sometimes my brain finds all these things over here. Think about work and ruminate on this and think about your pain and ruminate on that and check your body and scan and look for signals to be like, look over here. Don't feel this over here. And so until also I begin to find the ways to to have healthy emotional regulation and emotional processing, I can very easily go into ruminating thoughts and distraction and anxiety from that perspective as well. So I wanted to add something in here that fits with what both of you just said because there's the anxiety of feeling all the emotions. There's the anxiety of trying to avoid the emotions. And then there's also the anxiety of masking emotions. And sometimes when we're not as confident or feeling insecurities or not sure how to read a social situation or even maybe feeling very uncomfortable, we'll mask and we'll hide what, who we really are, hide our true self, hide our feelings, emotions, thoughts, behaviors. And that when we put on that mask and become a different person, that can also create a certain level of anxiety, because now it's like I have to fit into a mole that's not really me. And my brain knows that that's not the whole truth of who I am as a person. So that masking comes at a cost, which can often be paid an anxiety. The other thing that can happen is like there's a social anxiety, or you might call it an imposter anxiety for people who have trouble reading a room or reading nonverbal communication, like body language and facial expression and tone of voice. And neurologically, that comes back to the insular cortex. The same part of the brain that does our introception is responsible for reading and understanding nonverbal communication and social cues from others. But if you don't read those well, and you're trying to fit into a group to engage in a conversation, or fit in with a tribe, and you're not sure if you're connecting, you're not sure if you're engaging, that kind of social anxiety can be a result of that. So this is another facet of, is it emotions? Is it avoiding emotions? Is it uncertain of what everybody else is feeling about me? Is it because I'm masking? All of these different things can drive a certain level of cognitive dissonance, and then a level of anxiety along with them. So there can be the physiological drivers, there can be overlaps with trauma, there can be the emotional pieces, and then there's also this kind of the social and all of these stuff too. You know, we have these big conversations really to ask the question, what do we do about this? How do we work to heal our deficits, figure out our nervous systems, and really when we do this big healing work, when we are up here advocating for you to find your voice and your self-expression, your sovereignty, it is because healing is so radical, it's revolutionary, and that is what we are going back to. We do this healing work so we can get back to ourselves, where we are understanding the difference between who we are in the social norms and the beliefs and the structures that have been put on us versus who we are, and being able to understand those triggers of like, hey, my body's responding to this, is this a good idea, right? Like, why am I getting this anxiety? And all of the areas of the brain that we talk about today, and we talk about on the podcast every time, you can work with, you can work with all areas of your brain thinks to neural plasticity, and it's common typical that you would experience compounding stress in your nervous system and in your body, not just based on your early years and your developmental trauma, maybe not even some of the PTSD, but that there are structural systemic stresses that we are all living under through these times of potential wars or wars in your country. And there's the pandemic that people experience and things through. And so anxiety is going to be here. It's part of our human experience. And so what do we do about this? You know, we work intentionally to train our nervous systems and learn our sensory inputs so that we can, I don't know that I'm ever going to heal my ADD, right? Like, I don't know, I just don't know, but I'm on a journey. I'm on a path to understanding that and seeing that the outputs decrease and they're not as loud, right? Like the CPTS, I don't know that that inner critic or that, you know, self abandonment happens. It's not at that cognitive level. And I don't know what's going to happen, but it gives me hope through an SI. That's what gives me hope is knowing that like life has changed already so much. And so like back to those questions, like, what is possible? What is possible with more neuro and more processing? Like, what's possible for me in my journey of neurodivergence and complex trauma? Like it just seems like there's no cap. I feel like I'm wherever I'm at today is going to look so different for when we jump on in six months. Yeah, I think what to do about it is such a cool way to ask the question. And your perspective is awesome, Jen, like just want to acknowledge that I've been in neurology for almost 20 years now and my wife Kathy kind of coined this phrase that neurology is the science of hope. And that's kind of what you just said. Like it's the ability to change that gives you hope. You don't know where it's going to end up, but you know it can be different. And that's such a relief and a hopeful statement for so many people to know you're not stuck. It's not just the way you are. You know, anxiety is not just the way I am. It's not an identity trait or personality characteristic. It's an output and it can change. So to start the training process, you can either kind of do a top down approach from your cognitive brain or a bottom up from your sensory inputs. And I want to talk about the top down one first because it's familiar to a lot of people. But basically that means using the reframes that we've talked about, having some awareness, giving yourself the time to observe your own behaviors. Like that might mean doing a little bit of metacognition, like thinking about your thinking, thinking about your feelings, recognizing that not every feeling you have is true, nor every thought you have is true. But that's your brain kind of throwing up some protective mechanisms. And then trying not to get swept up in the sensations, but just acknowledging that your brain is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. It's performing its job perfectly, trying to protect you. And that as you become more aware and more observant that you can use some of the reframing and some of the questions that we talked about today, to at least give yourself a little perspective on it. And that might make space for some of the bottom up training of the sensory inputs. Yeah, I think as I was listening to you guys talk, two things kept coming into my mind. And one is just this idea that we've mentioned on here a couple times of like, know thyself, know thyself, and not just at this higher level of what I like and what I don't like, but like know how I work, my operating system, my brain, what affects me, what causes me to react, what creates certain outputs, and how do I start to work with myself at that deep level at the level of my body and my nervous system to create the change that I want intentionally in my life so that I can be more self-expressed so that I can live in a life that's more in alignment with my truth and that I can contribute to a society that is more in alignment for all of our health and this idea of self-care at that really deep level too, like how do I learn the ways to really care for myself, to care for my body that has been through a lot and to create safety maybe for the first time in new experiences to repattern and create, yeah, kind of the opposite of anxiety, have a new baseline of instead of walking through the world with a sense of impending doom, like walking through the world, feeling generally okay and knowing that when I'm not there, there are practices and tools and cognitive reframes that can help me get there, but that it's never fixed, it's never permanent and yeah, I can know myself and I can care for myself if I take the time to learn about how I work. Yeah, it's incredible, thank you guys so much for this conversation and NSI is open for early enrollment so if you find yourselves wanting to explore and go on this journey with us and take it much deeper dives into the neuro of anxiety and flight is in that module as well which is also overlapping then please join us at neurosemiticintelligence.com you can book a discovery call with me or Elizabeth. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered medical or psychological advice. We often discuss lived experiences through traumatic events and sensitive topics that deal with complex, developmental and systemic trauma that may be unsettling for some listeners. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. If you are in the United States and you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health and is in immediate danger please call 911. For specific services relating to mental health please see the full disclaimer in the show notes. [BLANK_AUDIO]