Ep 167: Stop Telling Yourself to Calm Down with Laura Sgro

Your body reacts before your brain can explain it and that can feel confusing, embarrassing, or downright discouraging. We sit down with licensed therapist Laura Sgro to make the “nervous system” conversation concrete, starting with what people usually mean online: the autonomic nervous system that drives automatic functions like breathing, heart rate, digestion, and your threat response. From anxiety and burnout to shutdown and dissociation, we talk about why these patterns show up and how they can change with awareness and repetition.

Laura walks us through polyvagal theory as a simple ladder you can actually use. We unpack ventral vagal regulation, sympathetic fight-or-flight activation, and dorsal vagal collapse, plus how neuroception can misread safety when you’re exhausted, stressed, or carrying trauma history. We also challenge the idea that one state is “good” and the others are “bad” because each has a purpose. The goal is not perfection, it’s flexibility and choice.

Then we get practical: how to find your baseline, how to map what each state feels like in your body, and why “just calm down” is sometimes the wrong move. We share downregulation tools like the physiological sigh, upregulation ideas like gentle movement and sensory cues, and how co-regulation works in real relationships without sliding into codependency. You’ll leave with a clearer nervous system vocabulary and a kinder way to measure progress. 
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Transcript

Welcome And A Fun Tattoo Plan

SPEAKER_00 0:13

All right, listeners, welcome back. I'm your host, Dr. Bathra. I'm glad you're here. It is another Friday and another episode about things you learn in therapy. And I am really excited to be uh recording with a guest who has been on before. Um, Laura Scrowe is here, and I am excited about this conversation about the nervous system because I think the nervous system has gotten some, you know, pretty good coverage in the media. I think it's, you know, for the most part, has a pretty good reputation. But I'm just not sure if everyone knows exactly what that is and how we can embrace this. And so, Laura, you um kind of presented this topic as understanding and befriending your nervous system, which I cannot wait to hear about how you talk about that. So can you uh start by introducing yourself to listeners in case they missed your episode from before? And uh tell us something fun you got going on right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Ooh, love that. Yeah. So hi everyone, I'm Laura. I'm a licensed therapist based in Los Angeles, California. I have a private practice here and help folks all throughout the state. And something fun that I've got going on. Well, what's so funny is uh on the date of recording this, Friday the 13th, some friends and I are planning to go to a Friday the 13th like tattoo market after this. And I might come back with a couple of little tattoos. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

My goodness. Okay, so does this happen every Friday the 13th, or is it just Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Most tattoo shops will do something on Friday. Like they'll have like special little flash sheets of little tattoos that you can get specifically for like a discount. It's a fun thing. I've always wanted to do one. I I can't believe I haven't yet, but I have a friend who goes to all the different markets and gets one every time.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

It's an actual tattoo, but it I'm guessing it's small if they're kind of like a quick turnaround.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Yeah, typically they're pretty small, like flash tattoos, like an inch or two, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

That is super fun. And I don't know if you meant something professional, but that's happening when I think this. So no, I love this fun thing. And um, I love that then, you know, when you get to tell the story about your tattoos, then you can share that that one is your um fun Friday the 13th tattoo.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Exactly. Yeah, no, it's great.

What People Mean By Nervous System

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I love that. Okay, well, that's super fun. And so when we talk about this idea about the nervous system, right? Let's just go ahead and dive in. You know, our field has been improving kind of the messaging that we're having in mainstream. I think social media has allowed uh great therapists, psychologists, helpers in the field uh to be able to get some really good content out there. And nervous system conversations, I think, come up a lot. But I also am not sure if this is one of those areas where it's just kind of like people think they might know what it is, or maybe they don't totally know what it is. And so, how can we clarify maybe misinformation that's out there, or how do you describe the nervous system and why it's important?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

Yeah, this is a really important clarification. Thank you. Because um the nervous system, like if we were to just call it that, that would actually encompass a lot of things. Whereas colloquially, I think what people are talking about in social media is not actually that broader concept. So a lot of the language that we're hearing right now when we hear the nervous system is likely referring to the autonomic nervous system, which is one branch of the greater nervous system in the body. And the autonomic nervous system might be familiar to folks because this is typically where you'll hear about like fight or flight or like rest and digest. This is where the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are. Um, this is also where our enteric nervous system is, which is the one that lives in our gut and how they're all related. So the autonomic nervous system is responsible for all of our automatic functions, right? So our heart rate, our breathing, our digestion, all of these different body functions that we do without realizing it. And it's also responsible for, yeah, like how we respond to perceived threat or safety. And that's where those fight or flight responses come in, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute. But yeah, so so it's really um in this the autonomic nervous system is really what we're focusing on for sure here in this episode, but also I think what a lot of social media is referring to when they talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Well, it's interesting as I hearing you describe this, and I'm I'm thinking like a listener, you know, so here we are, we're talking about these things that are happening automatically. When when you say automatically, it feels like that kind of means it's out of my control. And so, how do you help folks understand that if it's something that's out of my control, right? If if I'm making this jump to be like, well, my body's just doing this automatically, and I don't have control over how my body automatically responds. Why is it important? Why should we even talk about it if it's just an automatic response?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah. So oh, I love this question. It opens so much. So when I say automatic, it it yes, there's like this default pattern that happens, but it's not necessarily out of your control. Um, so our autonomic nervous system, especially when it comes to threat cues or safety cues, it interprets that based on things we've experienced before, like learned pattern recognition. And so, you know, there's there's again this default programming that happens, and that's the part that's automatic. It's kind of like when something happens and you have like the thought, and it's kind of like an automatic thought that you really don't have control over. The thought just comes in, but then you can kind of take a minute and have a different thought and then act on that second one. This is kind of what's happening here. So your nervous system's responding based on the learned patterns that it's developed over time, but through different exercises and through different ways of befriending your nervous system, you can actually teach it to have different patterns and therefore different responses. So it is somewhat in our control once we're aware of it. And that's that's often the hard part.

Automatic Does Not Mean Hopeless

SPEAKER_00 6:27

I love that we're kind of walking down this path because I think that's the real um bridge that I think some folks miss is that, you know, and it and it may come back to kind of the uh the main hater voice around therapy, right? Where it's like, well, you know, therapy doesn't change anything that happens, just talking about things doesn't change what happens. But I think that that's the power that we're talking about, right? That like your body is going to respond based on these patterns that you have experienced. That's our way of surviving, that's our way of kind of operating in the world. And you don't have to keep doing it that way. You can become aware of all those new patterns. Exactly, exactly. And that learning starts with the awareness that, you know what, Laura, this pattern may not be working for me anymore.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah, and what it sounds like a lot in the therapy room is like, well, why do I keep going after these people? Like, why do I keep chasing partners who, you know, just make me really anxious or who are kind of toxic? Like that's a nervous system learned response, for example, right? And and of course, that's not like, you know, a sentence for the rest of your life. You can work on that, but that comes from your nervous system and how it perceives safety and danger as an example. So yeah, like this shows up in a lot of different ways. And a lot of times people maybe are noticing how like like the consequence of what's happening, but not recognizing that that's like a nervous system response and that there's something nervous system related to be done there.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Okay, so is that kind of the power of understanding your nervous system first? And then we're gonna move into birth befriending, right? Like, does is that the understanding portion you're talking about?

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, like understanding kind of how it functions, why it functions the way that it does, what it's doing, um, that builds the awareness of like, okay, wait, maybe my nervous system is doing these things and I'm having these patterns because of things that have happened to me in the past. And that's the awareness component. And then we can figure out, okay, so what does my nervous system actually need? How do I then create the changes that I want to see in these patterns? And that's the befriending. So, you know, um, I know we talked about kind of the autonomic nervous system just at a very basic level. There's another framework I like to bring into work with clients called polyvagal theory, which is, you know, it's it's been researched by Dr. Stephen Forges for a long time. And there's been some, you know, mixed feelings about it, but I really like it as a framework because it makes sense to me and how I understand the nervous system. So where I'm just gonna give a little brief overview if that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Yeah, perfect.

Polyvagal Ladder And Misread Threats

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Where we think think of fight or flight and like rest and digest as the two nervous system states. Uh, polyvagal theory actually introduces a third. And so Dr. Steven Portis talks about it as like a ladder. So when we're at the top of our ladder, when we're regulated, when we're calm, when we're in that rest and digest sort of uh parasympathetic nervous state, we're in what he calls ventral vagal. And that is, you know, just regulated, we're able to move in and out of situations with relative ease, we're connected, we're we're cool. Then when we perceive threat, we move into the sympathetic nervous system state, which is that fight or flight response, right? So we're activated, we're mobilized, we we need to move, we need to act in order to protect ourselves. And then if that doesn't work, if that doesn't protect us from whatever the perceived danger is, then the third state that we actually move into is called dorsal vagal. And this is a shutdown response. This is a collapse, this is a um immobilization. Almost like if you've ever watched National Geographic and you've seen maybe like an animal who's being chased by a lion and like they try to run and they can't escape. What do they do? They play dead, right? The system shuts down. It shuts down all of these different workings in your system so that you can't experience pain. You can't, you know, you know, it's dissociative. So that is a state that when people go through extreme trauma, let's say, they might get stuck in a perpetual dorsal vagal state or in a sympathetic state. So I like this ladder idea because, you know, as we get more dysregulated, often we move down the ladder. But that also means that we can learn how to regulate ourselves and go back up the ladder, back into that ventral vagal state. And all of this is happening, again, automatically. Our autonomic nervous system is scanning our environment for cues of danger. And this is where, you know, the awareness comes in because those cues of danger come from those learned responses and may not always be accurate. That process in polyvagal theory is called uh neurosception, but it's not always accurate. We're not always accurately perceiving something as safe. We might think it's dangerous when it's not. And that happens a lot to people who've experienced like chronic trauma or anxiety.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

I think this is great. And I think about folks who might be experiencing burnout in their workplace, right? And that totally sometimes when we are in this like chronic fatigue or chronic illness or chronic stress. Yes. Um, I don't know if you see this, but I know I I see it in my um clinical work, but also in my own life, right? Where sometimes my my neurosception, then when I'm fatigued or like kind of chronically just not well, my interpretations can sometimes be off where I am interpreting things as more of a threat than than they are. And so I'm curious if you have that experience. And I'm curious about another question that that someone might be thinking is okay, our brains tend to appreciate, even though it's not always helpful, like a good, bad framework, to where then it's like, okay, well, dorsal vagal is bad and ventral vagal is good. And so, how do you help folks like get away from that way of capturing this framework so they can see it more for what it is supposed to be?

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Yeah, that's such a great question. So, so first to answer your other question, because otherwise I will forget. Um, yes, definitely I see that in in my life, just like as a person who sometimes takes on too much and feels burnt out, right? That's right. And then also someone who's just like moving through life and and seeing it in friends and in clients too. Like it's so common. We when we're more dysregulated, or basically, as dysregulation goes up, resiliency goes down, right? And so with lower resiliency, we're often misinterpreting some of those things and and perceiving safety or perceiving danger, perceiving being not okay more. Um so it does skew our lens a lot. I see that a lot. Going back to this question about like, okay, so is dorsal vagal bad? Is sympathetic bad? Is ventral good? Uh, I love that you brought that up. So all of these functions in our body have a purpose. Otherwise, they wouldn't be there. Yes. So so the purpose, of course, is during perceived danger to be able to survive. That is our most, you know, fundamental biological purpose. But when we're not in that state, then the dorsal vagal system, for example, that's responsible for digestion. That's responsible for some of these, again, automatic processes in our body. So when we're regulated, they can do these things behind the scenes with relative ease, right? Um, our dorsal vagal response can make sure that those systems are doing what they're supposed to be doing. It's when we become dysregulated in that, that then it turns into a survival, shutdown, collapse, dissociative response. Same with sympathetic. If you've ever had like a deadline and felt a little stressed, but really like inspired and motivated, like that could be considered a positive, positive consequence of the sympathetic response. Like, oh, okay, I really gotta like get this going. I'm ex-I I gotta meet this deadline. That doesn't have to be bad, that mobilization, that activation. It's when it becomes dysregulatory or when it becomes in response to a cue that's not really that dangerous when we're perceiving a threat and and we don't maybe need to perceive it that way, that's when it becomes dysregulatory. So is that making sense? Like these functions have a purpose outside of survival, but they become survival responses when our nervous system detects danger.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Okay, I love that. My next question is around, for the most part, one of the most common things I tell people in therapy is slow down. Let's slow down, let's pay attention to what your body is saying to you. Let's pay attention to what your thoughts are saying to you. And so I'm curious about how folks could slow down and understand how their body is feeling and how that would help them see where they're at on this ladder, right? How do you how do people describe the differences in their bodies at various points on this ladder? And how might a person be able to like know that their body is telling them something?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Yeah. So in the therapy room, this might look like, okay, if if they're coming in and let's say that they have they look pretty regulated, they seem, you know, I I can tell that they're like socially engaged, they're connected, they're they're regulated. I might ask them, what does that feel like? Like I feel like a lot of times when we're asking people to notice their body, it's purely in dysregulation state. Yeah, that's good. Not always, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:55

It's true though. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

We want to know what safety feels like. We want to know what regulation feels like. And sometimes it's the answer will be like, oh, I don't know, like it just feels neutral. Okay, great. So like notice what neutral feels like because then when you're not in neutral, then you have some sort of comparison for like, oh, maybe I'm not as regulated right now. So figuring out your your baseline of regulation is one way to do that. When you're feeling really good and safe, let's say you're talking to a friend or a partner or someone that that's really safe for you. How does your nervous system know that that's positive? So an exercise that I like to do with people is um, you know, think of something that you love, whether it's a food or a hobby or something. How do you know you love it? So, like for me, I love God, I love coffee. So when I think about coffee, I think like, okay, I'm getting like excited at the thought of smelling it. You might see a little smile on my face right now. Um, you know, my my stomach maybe gets a little excited that I get to have this coffee. And those are all cues that like this is good, this feels good, this feels safe, this feels regulating. Same thing, you know, if you're going to again see someone who's safe, maybe you feel war, maybe you feel these cues that it's that it's a positive thing. On the flip side of that, when you know that there's something you don't like or that, you know, a food you hate, let's say, how well, how does your body tell you that? What are the cues that, like, no, I don't want this? They're usually quite visceral. If someone puts a food that you don't like in front of your face, you're like, oh no. So practicing in these maybe lower stakes ways first of just like what feels good, what feels safe, what feels bad, what feels unsafe, and and building up that awareness, I would say, is maybe the first step. Also, like in a moment of, you know, let's say in therapy, I could ask someone, maybe they're talking about a situation they've been in. That's what the content of our session is. Like, how did you know that that felt anxiety-provoking? What did the anxiety feel like? I think so often people are stuck in their cognitive brains, right? But we're really getting below that right now. We're really getting into some of this more um emotional places in the brain. So, what does it feel like, not just what does it sound like?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

I am right there. I mean, I think that much of my work, and I mean, and I would consider myself a cognitive behavior therapist. And so I spend a lot of time talking about thoughts. But also sometimes the thoughts and noticing the thoughts, it's not enough. Right. It's not enough just to notice what the thoughts are without the connection to the body.

unknown 18:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

So what do I do with these thoughts?

Moving Past Good And Bad States

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Yeah, right. I mean, I really feel like that's where I think that's where our field has been doing the best job is we've been talking behind the scenes, you know, about how like mind, body, connection, it all matters, you know, taking care of your health matters to your mental health. It's like on a surface level, I think we all kind of know that. But right now, I think we're also developing these theories and these frameworks around really proving to people. You know, it's like, okay, well, just stop and think. I love your challenge to start with. Well, we also have to know how our body feels safe and good.

unknown 19:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

I think we just don't always pause to think about the words. And I think if we our initial reaction is, well, I don't know. I don't know. My my body just feels fine. We don't take it a step further to say no. Like, let me really say, Yeah, like how do you know? That's right, right. We just kind of move on, next thing, move on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

It's it's interesting. There's a Deb Dana is another polyvagel like pioneer, and she has an exercise called a nervous system map. And I like to use this with clients too. Uh, I think it's really interesting where you start, let's say, in dorsal vagal. If you've ever been in a place of shutdown, let's say, again, how do you know what does it feel like in your body? What are the thoughts that come up? What are the beliefs that you have about yourself or about the world when you're in that state? And really just try to like connect with that sensation and know what that feels like. And, you know, next up, you would do it for sympathetic. What are the beliefs I have about myself or the world in this state? What does my body feel like? Again, it's likely going to feel very different. It's still maybe dysregulated, but in a very different way. What, you know, what are the thoughts that I'm having? What do I feel urges to do in this state versus endorsal? And then you would end at ventral. So when I am regulated, what are the beliefs I have about myself or about the world? What does it feel like in my body? What are the thoughts I'm having? What do I feel urges to do? Maybe in ventral, I feel urges to like see my friends and connect and like do hobbies that I I love because I'm in that state to do that. So having this like mapping exercise too, of being able to note, okay, this time that I was really activated, like this is what it felt like. And doing that for the different states can be helpful too, of just learning how to recognize A, what's happening in your body and why it's happening, and B, what it feels like, so that then you can appropriately respond to it. That's where the befriending comes in. Because a lot of the advice around nervous system regulation is, oh, we just have to calm down. That is not true. Not always true, I should say. Calming down is not always what your body needs. If you're in a dissociative dorsal shutdown, you don't need to calm down, right? You actually need to upregulate. You need more energy a little bit to get you out of that freeze. If you're in sympathetic, maybe, yeah, you need to downregulate, maybe you need to calm the nervous system a bit. But I just think it's so oversimplified that, like, oh, nervous system dysregulation, calm down. And that's not always true. So when you know what state your body's in, then you actually know what you you can figure out more easily what you actually need.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Okay, I love this. And you you said this earlier. It starts by noticing what we actually need. And so can you give us some additional examples around that upregulating and downregulating?

How To Notice Your Baseline

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Yeah. So if you're in this, like, I I think of sympathetic, again, this is the fight or flight sort of if we're using that kind of language. Um, sympathetic is you're mobilized, right? So your body is literally um flooding you with adrenaline and cortisol because you have to act, you have to respond to this threat threaten. situation. So what do we need then? We need to like calm down a little bit. We need to relax. We need to breathe. We need to slow down to what you said, slow down and figure out like, okay, how do I re-regulate my breathing? How do I re-regulate my heart rate? So and and the caveat here is of course if you're not actually in a situation of danger, right? If you're having a response to like burnout or trauma, let's say. So that might look like how do you bring slowness into your system there? That might look like doing some breath work, but specifically breath work for the state that you're in. So there's something called like a physiological sigh where you take um like two really short inhales and then do a long exhale that long exhale is where the magic happens, right? It's it's forcing your heart rate to slow down. That is downregulating. So when you're up here, when you're mobilized, you need to come down a little bit. Vice versa, when you're in dorsal and you're already down here, you're in freeze, maybe you need to come up, you need a little bit more energy because that's going to give you presence, right? When you're dissociated, you're not present. So that means you need to come back into presence. So that might look like introducing a little bit of movement. That could be like a little uh rocking child's pose something to just like gently become aware of your senses or like some havening or tapping on your body something that like ignites your your sensory senses because then you are introducing presence. So I would consider that more like upregulating like you need more movement whereas when you're in sympathetic you need uh maybe a little less. You need to slow down a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

That's so good. I love those examples and I think folks can really wrap their head around this. And I'm thinking about this word befriending you know that you have kind of used from the beginning. And I think about how folks who are trying to retrain their nervous system it might take a lot of practice. Yeah and how that doesn't feel like I really want to befriend that. Right? I mean I just had this idea of being like again I am in this state again. I think some folks and I think this is true of a lot of things in therapy where they're kind of like Dr. Beth here I am again thinking I'm a loser and I can't get this thought out of my mind and I can't move past it. It's like every day I've had to do these thought stopping techniques that you taught me and I'm like yes I know and so as you think about sometimes the repetitiveness that our body needs to retrain how do you encourage folks to really befriend you know this nervous system that is communicating things to them when sometimes you know I might be like I don't want your communication nervous system not anymore.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Yeah I find this happens a lot because um you know I I I do a mix of like more somatic techniques like this but then also you know some CBT and and other like more cognitive based work as well. And so what will happen a lot is someone will be like I know logically why this is happening but my body is still responding. That's right. Right. And and so they they get often very frustrated which is understandable. The reality of the situation is it's like going to the gym, right? Like you have to work the same muscle groups over and over in order to see the the progress um in order for those muscles to build. And then once they're built you have to keep training them to maintain it. So it is like that in in a lot of ways. And I think this is where the understanding comes in because when you can understand what's happening, you can have a little bit more compassion for it. So if you know that some of this is happening because of these learned responses that come from chronic burnout or trauma, you can like communicate that to yourself. You can say to yourself, you know, this is happening because of XYZ and like this is why I'm working on breaking these patterns. And I know that that's like obviously so much easier said than done. But the other component of this is like checking in with yourself periodically. So if you're doing let's say that mapping exercise or you're trying to notice like okay what did these states feel like do that periodically and you will likely notice small changes even if it's not so significant right away that you're magically having these nervous system responses that you have like you will notice gradual change and like oh maybe the beliefs shift a little bit or maybe the sensations in your body aren't as strong as they were before maybe it's not happening as often as it was before. And and ultimately like when all else fails, try to just remind yourself that this is like my body trying to survive this is my body trying to protect me. It's like a well-meaning relative who thinks they know what's best for you and and maybe they actually like don't in that moment. But like the intentions are good. And uh you know it's it is it is frustrating though when when you kind of like are having these patterns go over and over again but the only way out is through.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Yeah. I love this idea of checking in with yourself. I've actually prescribed this a lot lately because I think sometimes we need to celebrate wins and it's hard to see the wins. You know I often tell folks like the absence of symptoms is harder to recognize than the presence of symptoms. And so it's harder to be like oh wow you know I haven't been anxious since you know yesterday evening it's like you just are doing life and unless you like pause to be like well was I anxious this morning oh my goodness I wasn't let me celebrate that I've kind of been prescribing like a regular check-in with yourself two or maybe three times a day to where you can do some of this not just always noticing oh is it bad or you know am I in right this fight or flight state the more we check in the more we're aware the more we slow down I just think all of that awareness gives us more opportunity to see the growth especially when it feels like I have to keep practicing.

Choose Upregulate Or Downregulate

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yeah and not to take us down a rabbit hole like please bring me back but like I feel like in general this is so common where it's like oh if it's not exactly like this this end result that I'm I'm wanting then it doesn't feel like it's enough right there's a little bit of a perfectionism here that I think is just so rampant in the way that we're socialized and and in our the way that our brains work. So letting that progress really be good enough that like okay like this is I'm more regulated today than I was yesterday. Like that is something that is great. And okay I still have more regulation to learn that's also okay. So like really a general attitude of like acceptance more than this has to be this this rigid kind of thing that I'm picturing. And that I mean I think that's hard for people too that's definitely hard for me.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

If I'm going to gym I want to see progress if I'm working on something three times a day I want to know I'm getting better and it just doesn't always work that way. Like the retraining of the body just doesn't always work as kind of this straight line as we would love it to.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Because like some of the signs can be oh you're able to like inhale more deeply perhaps than you were before and and most people myself included are not going to like notice that unless it's like really pronounced over time or in conjunction with other signs. So please know to anyone listening that your body is taking every bit of awareness every cue every bit of work that you're doing and it is rewiring those neuropathways it's just doing because this is like an automatic part of our our body some of these things are maybe going to feel a little less obvious you know by nature.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

How do you kind of encourage folks if they get to that place of being kind of discouraged that their body is going back to those patterns and in particular those folks who I don't know I think about both sides of this right where I've had clients who uh have had kind of a long history of trauma and they're still like I just wish my body didn't keep remembering this. And then I have other folks who perceive their you know little T trauma as not being as significant and yet it still feels like why does my body keep doing this? So how do you encourage folks to kind of see that longer game?

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah. So for one thing I I really try to differentiate like the cognitive part of the brain with the emotional part of the brain because the cognitive part of the brain is the one that's putting these judgments of like oh my little T trauma wasn't that bad. So why am I having these responses? That's purely cognitive and the cognitive part of our brain is the most recent from an evolutionary perspective like this primal emotional like lizard brain so to speak has been here for as long as we have the prefrontal cortex though has not. So I I say that because these beliefs uh in the the the body's beliefs, the what the body is holding is so ingrained from a biological perspective and is not necessarily always responding to what the prefrontal cortex thinks. So when you say like I I know that this was just trauma or oh this trauma wasn't that bad like the lizard brain's not listening. It's just doing what it thinks it needs to do to survive. So I try to really differentiate that. And I think the other thing too is I encourage like regular check-ins or I'll challenge people and be like, is it really that like there's been no progress? Right? Is it really that like you haven't been able to do anything? Because a lot of times these nervous system responses will show up in so many ways. It'll affect your relationships. It'll affect you know maybe how you can operate at work. It'll affect all these different things. And so I might ask like well aren't you having healthier friendships now? Aren't you like able to set more boundaries with family now? Even if all of these other areas maybe don't feel like where they want them to be yet like this is something that was really hard for you before that you really your nervous system perceived as dangerous that you're doing more regularly. So trying to point out those wins that you know in their frustration, which again is understandable, they're likely not seeing as easily. And then you know I I have them check in with our bodies too just doing body scans or learning how to like trust their instincts I think is a big part of this because neuroception can affect our sense of intuition so really like working with folks to practice like what are the ways in which you do feel like you can trust yourself? How do we how do we strengthen that? But you know it's it's hard folks can get really discouraged and that makes sense but I think like letting them know reminding them that it's it's it's such a cumulative process. It it you know everything counts here.

Befriending Takes Reps And Time

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Everything counts here I love that reminder that everything every small thing really matters. As you were talking about relationships it got me thinking about how you know how are the ways that you see this showing up in relationships.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Oh gosh do we have time? I know right it's like let's open this can of worms to to keep it short and sweet um I think like again what this comes down to is your your nervous system is interpreting things as safe or dangerous, whether or not that's really true. So for a lot of people who you know have experienced anxiety or trauma or maybe social anxiety, whatever it might be, you learn over time through those experiences that doing certain things is maybe unsafe, right? Maybe you're afraid to set a boundary with someone because you're afraid that there's going to be this like consequence they're not gonna like you or or they're gonna be upset, whatever, whatever. And the nervous system interprets that as dangerous and that is why we avoid doing those things. So that's that's one example, right? Boundary setting um this comes up so much this could be a whole other episode that maybe we come back to around attachment and how the nervous system impacts like our attachment styles and and how we relate to one another. So I think it like it's so prevalent it can be so prevalent in how we approach other people, interact with other people and relate to one another because when you think of ventral vagal state the regulated state one of the key components of that is that we're able to socially engage and be connected. We are biologically wired for connection right and another big part of polyvagal theory is the idea of co-regulation. We didn't get into that as much today but like that is the the practice of how we like mirror one another and relate to one another for regulation. And so if we are in chronic states of dysregulation our ability to co-regulate with others is um affected. So I don't want to get into a whole rabbit hole there when we I know we don't have time but I I would say like attachment and co-regulation are huge, huge ways that people can be impacted in relationships through this.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

So when we think about maybe if we just go just toe in to the co-regulation rabbit hole for a second because I think co-regulation is also gaining traction and kind of mainstream I think people start to talk about it. I think we're not always I'm not sure we're all great at it. I know I still have moments where I'm like well actually that wasn't great. So when you talk about even just like one simple thing that folks can do in terms of co-regulation what is kind of your go-to thing to talk about um in terms of co-regulation it's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

I would say co-regulation is not codependency right so we're not rely we're not relying on other people to regulate for us but we're utilizing our connections and relationships in order to um promote safety. And so that could look like you know right now you and I uh even though we're on the computer talking we're making eye contact right we're smiling at each other like that's co-regulation that tells my nervous system oh like that is safe like this is a safe person for me to talk to and engage with like she's giving me these signals that like we're good. And so I I would say that that's a big part of it is like you're constantly giving information through your body language and your nonverbal cues just as other folks are doing that for you. So this goes back to awareness of what safety feels like right how do you know that certain people are safe for you because those are the folks that you want to lean on not depend on but lean on when um you know maybe you're in a dysregulated state and you need some help getting back to regulation.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

So I love our kind of continual connection here to safety. And maybe this will be the last sort of um little conversation we have around this topic all of our like our entire being is just sort of constantly moving toward safety right we're just like our body always wants to come back to homeostasis you know I talk about this you know from this perspective that it's like your body wants balance safety homeostasis however you want to talk about it that's that's where your body is always coming back to this idea of safety I think you and I and you know folks who are other therapists you might be really well trained at seeing and understanding safety in kind of everyday ways but I think sometimes folks who aren't trained in our field it's hard for them to wrap their head around how important safety is and how how like for us like safety is everything.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

But right like it can be so simple.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

It can be so simple that's the part I want to kind of like like land the plan here in like what are the like tiny ways that safety gets real jacked up and or ways that we just are missing like this isn't uh you know this isn't necessarily a marriage problem this isn't a teenager problem like this is a safety problem.

Relationships And Co-Regulation Basics

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Yeah which isn't everyone right everyone's every capacity to feel safe feel unsafe yes yeah yeah in in the polyvagal world we would call these like glimmers right these would be called glimmers glimmers of safety the the opposite of triggers right if triggers cue you to things that are unsafe glimmers cue you to things that are so you know whether you use that language or not the idea is the same. I would say like for example for me things that can almost instantly remind me about safety on a subconscious level because again this is all happening underneath conscious awareness. That's right um petting my cat number one thing petting my cat like just noticing like the softness of her fur, feeling her purring like the that is like safety instantly for me or like hugging a partner, a loved one a friend. But it can also be something like going out into nature or even just like looking out the window at nature. Like I could go into a whole other sub podcast episode about like nature and how that regulates us. But um that's that's something it can be on your daily walk like stopping and noticing the flowers it can be reading getting back to like a hobby or reading a book that you're excited about at the end of the day. Like these glimmers can really exist anywhere you need them to if we just know how to look for them.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Present oriented is what I wrote down right everything you described.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Yeah exactly is present oriented. And present oriented and like present looking for like moments of joy. Yeah right because joy signals to our systems safety. And if joy feels like a lot for some people that are listening neutrality is okay too we can start there. But what we want is like things that that make us feel good. I hate to use the good or bad language but things that make us feel um yeah like protected or like this is what matters to me. This is what life is about like those moments.

Glimmers Of Safety And Right Words

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Yeah. I agree I mean I think there's so many words you know I do a lot of trainings and there are just so many words that you have to just like find the right connecting word you know because I agree like some people are going to be like well I rarely experience joy. And it's like well like if you're picturing joy like the four year old who just got a cupcake like that joy looks different than like a 45 year old woman who is content with you know a bowl of cereal and a great show in you know what I mean like joy comes in a lot of flavors and and I was thinking about the word peace and comfort and as you and I will find your word. Yes it's like this thing that's hard to put one all-encompassing word on but this idea of safety might encompass a few different things.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

That's what I was gonna say is maybe the word is safety, right? Or maybe the word the the phrase is not unsafe.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

Yeah yeah well the other thing that I wrote down that we don't have time for today but um I had a I was in a a spiritual direction session where the director challenged me to think about my feelings of safety versus my feelings of security ooh I really I mean that really messed me up you know and then when you said that I was gonna say another word that just came to my mind when you said it is stability.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Like we've got safety security stability like all these different things.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

And for me they are nuanced. Yeah and I can feel safe but not necessarily secure totally and you know in various situations maybe or maybe not stable. And so it's so interesting the words we use and you know obviously my my focus is to make words matter for good. So I just love words and I love to like just sit around and like ponder trying to find the right word. But when you're talking about emotions or like states of being sometimes there's just not a great word that resonates with everyone.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Yeah for sure it's not one size fits all at all. And it's so funny you say that because my clients will all if any of them ever listen to this they will they will laugh because I say constantly like I know I'm being semantic about language but it's because language matters and we relate differently like like a word that I use is is not always going to land for someone. And so it's important to figure out what is your language, what is your nervous system's language what is what do you and your nervous system respond to so you know we could probably talk about that all day too.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

I I know I know and don't worry about I'll be back for the right for the for the listener who maybe doesn't believe us, you know, fine or good just ain't gonna cut it for people that love you and want to support you. You know it's like they need a better word than that. And so it's kind of on us to spend the time in reflection and pausing and slowing down to figure out what that word is. And and that word may be different from day to day season to season that you're in um and so that checking in I think is just so critical. Yeah 100% okay listen I know we just I know both of the bubbles I guess we have to end this right the bubbles over both of our heads is like I have another question. I want to talk about another it never ends but we are going to land display okay so Laura tell folks how they can find you and the work you're doing.

Where To Find Laura And Closing

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Yes um if anyone wants to connect on Instagram you can find me there at Out of the Woods with Laura um you can also check me out on my website ootwtherapy.com that's the website for my private practice out of the woods therapy um I also have a newsletter with um different tips that come out every week different Anxiety, trauma, regulation tools, all kinds of things like that. Um, and if you're interested, if you join my newsletter, you can get access to my nervous system guide for free called Rooted and Regulated. And it has so much of what we've talked about today, but also um more specific exercises for upregulating and downregulating. So you can definitely check that out on my newsletter.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

I will link to your site in the show notes for folks who need that. And so thank you for saying yes to being here. And um always being such an amazing, thoughtful, um, just so brilliant today and sharing today. So I'm so grateful for you. And listener, I am grateful for you. I always end this way just saying how grateful I am that you're taking some time out of your day to listen grow alongside us. And so until next time, stay safe and stay well. Ciao.