6: Understanding and Regulating Your Nervous System, with Leah Davidson

In this episode I interview Leah Davidson, a life coach and speech-language pathologist, who shares her expertise on nervous system regulation and her journey as a missionary mom. Leah discusses the challenges she faced with her son's mission, including anxiety and the emotional impact on her work and personal life. She explains nervous system activation, hyperarousal, and hyporarousal and emphasizes recognizing and regulating nervous system dysregulation. Leah introduces a three-step process for nervous system regulation involving safety assessment, body check-ins, and relaxation techniques. She also highlights the vagus nerve's role in achieving a parasympathetic state and the need to address both body and mind for effective regulation. Additionally, Leah speaks about growing the zone of resilience through challenges and the growth opportunities for missionary moms. The episode concludes with Leah offering resources for listeners and discussing the importance of Christlike attributes and support in achieving resilience.

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Transcript

Michelle: 0:29

Welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to have a guest with me today. This is going to be such a treat. I cannot tell you the amount of knowledge I have learned from this individual because she has her own podcast and her name is Leah Davidson. And Leah, tell my listeners about you and like what it is you do and all the

Leah: 0:50

things. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me to start with. So my name is Leah Davidson. I am a life coach and I am also a speech language pathologist. And that is sort of where I got started with everything to do with the brain and the nervous system. I've worked for the past 25 years in the area of traumatic brain injury. So really working with people who have been in accidents and who have a lot of challenges post accident, helping them deal with you know, regaining their cognitive communication skills is what we call them, their executive function skills and so forth. And as I was working with them, I started to see the importance of nervous system regulation, which we're going to be talking about. As well as mindset work. it just naturally progressed. I started coaching. I became certified. I became certified several years ago and then certified, in different areas and different certifications. And then I currently work with people on nervous system resilience and teaching people all about regulating their nervous system and what that even means. and how the nervous system works. I run an advanced training in nervous system resilience for people who want to do a deep dive coaches and so forth. And upcoming in the spring, I have another program that I'm going to be offering for others to just learn about their nervous system. So that's a bit about me professionally. And then personally, I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my husband. We are official empty nesters for the past few months. So we're just exploring what that's like. We have a blended family. excuse me, of five children. And, so that's a bit about me.

Michelle: 2:31

Okay. Awesome. So you have been a missionary mom.

Leah: 2:35

I have been a missionary mom. Yes. I was actually born and raised in the LDS faith in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. And then I've been in Toronto for the past, I guess about almost 25 years as well. And Out of our family of five kids, I have one who chose to go on a mission and he chose to go right pre COVID. And so he was so excited to receive his mission call. And part of the excitement was he was sent to 50s. And my dad passed away when my son was just two years old. So to me, it really felt that this was such a blessing. And that he would have, you know, the opportunity to really walk in the footsteps of his grandfather and have the opportunity to get to know his grandfather in that way. And that's even what, when they, you know, set him apart as a missionary, this is what they had said that one of the reasons that he was going to, he's serving in Tahiti actually, one of the reasons he was going to serve was to learn about his grandfather and all wisdom. So it was my first time sending out a missionary. I felt it, did I even have friends? I don't know if I even had too many friends. I actually had my, my brother and sister in law. My brother had served a mission and my sister in law as well. They both had served missions and I had a couple of nieces and nephews, but I had never had the experience. I felt a little uneasy about the preparation. I felt desperately sad and I felt like I, I wanted to hide that because this is such a wonderful thing that he was doing and I wanted to be so supportive of everything that he was doing. But I, I will say I had my own emotions. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle it. But I, you know, like I'm sure most moms, I'm used to communicating with my child. Multiple times a day and having that check in of even if we're not communicating verbally, I can see their face, their movement, their posture. I can sort of went sense what's happening now. Luckily, they had just changed the rule where you were allowed to have more frequent contacts. But I also knew he was going to a mission that at the time was still a non technology mission. So it was We weren't going to be able to, you know, have the different methods like Facebook Messenger or things like that. It still would be a big challenge. So my heart was very, very heavy. And at the time, my nervous system was very concerned. I felt a lot of anxiety, a lot of worry. And I didn't know how to prepare him and what to expect. So, he went off on his merry way and he had a great experience in the MTC and which in the missionary chain, I'm sure most of your, your audience is LDS people. So I don't, I always feel I have to explain'cause my audience is not an LDS audience, but had a great time and went out to Tahiti and relatively, I mean, he had been out for just a little bit. He's experiencing a lot of homesickness and just really missing home. And this was something that was kind of unfamiliar to him. He had grown up in two homes because his dad and I divorced when we were, when he was quite young. So he was used to sort of being without someone all the time. He had done a ton of traveling. He. Was assigned in Tahiti, they speak French and Tahitian, but he already had a nice base of French because in Canada, he had been in French Immersion. So, logically, there was no quote unquote reason why he would be feeling homesick, except for this was just difference. And it started progressing and he was having more and more homesickness and, and feeling more and more inadequate. And I think that was a piece of it that just the, the mission rules were very overwhelming to be in a different culture. His companions were also of different culture and just lots being very overwhelmed. And then he actually got dengue fever and that. Just sent us all spinning. He got very, very ill and that brought on, you know, so many other concerns and it brought on huge levels of anxiety and depression and things that he really struggled with. And it was hard to communicate with him because like I said, it was a non technology mission. It was hard for him to even get support because they had a counselor who was in another island who they would agree on a certain time, but, you know, sometimes the lines were down and they try to call so he wasn't able to get as much of the support. So it was a very difficult time, not only for. Him as missionary, but for me as a mom, I, my husband will, he'll share with you and my other kids will share with you. I was like beside myself at times, just really the, the lack of knowing of not being able to be there of whether something I could have done beforehand to help him prepare for some of these challenges. That he would face. So there was a lot of, a lot of uncertainty. And I would say that, you know, it's an experience that really left an imprint on me. And so I have, whenever I hear about a missionary mom or talk to a missionary mom, I am so filled with love and compassion. And I'm like, anything I could do to help support you, like, please reach out. I definitely would, would love to help support you in any way I can.

Michelle: 8:22

Yeah. So during all that time, like what was, what was happening for you?

Leah: 8:28

So for me definitely I, I understood more so about my nervous system, but a lot of activation. So a lot of anxiety, a lot of worry, a lot of ruminating with my thoughts, spinning sleeplessness. A lot of catastrophizing, going to, you know, the, the worst case scenarios. And then I would swing down to, and this is common too with the nervous system, I would swing down to feeling very hopeless, very helpless. There is nothing that I can do. What can I do? Into some of that shame, like, was there something that I could have done to prevent some of these challenges that he was going through? Did I not prepare him adequately? Was I responsible in some way? So I bounced around a lot. And then of course there was this, this guilt of this idea of I should I should be able to figure this out. I should be able to regulate myself. I should have a strong enough belief and faith and you know, I'm doubting things and and what's wrong with me for doing that. So my emotions were like all over the map and my energy was all over the map. It was impacting, really impacted my work because I I, as I said, I'm a speech pathologist. At the time I was going to people's homes. I remember, you know, pulling over to the side of the road at times, just like spending a few, okay, I've got to calm myself down because I need to go work with my client. But I am just spinning and with worry and ruminating. I did have mindset tools and nervous system tools, although I was just at the beginning of really, I was just getting certified. So some of those things were helpful. Now, I mean, I look back and I was like, they actually saved me to have these tools. It is what allowed me to continue to move forward and, and, and then also help support my son. So there was just so many emotions and then the impact on my kids at home. I didn't want them seeing that I was so stressed out and I was so worried because I didn't want them to be stressed out and worried and so forth. So there was a lot going on and that's why I think the life coaching tools that I learned were just They were lifesavers because they helped me. Okay, Leah, I've got to, I've got to get a grip here. Like I am not able to help anybody. I'm not in service of my son who's on a mission, in service of myself who's here, or in service of my kids who are also needing the support. So being able to have those tools, just

Michelle: 11:07

invaluable. Yeah. Gosh, that's an amazing story. And you can just feel like just the turmoil that you were in and yeah, and I think so many people can relate and so much of my audience like can feel that and, and they don't know what to do, which is a perfect segue into, can you just as a nervous system expert, can you talk to us about like. How to know if our nervous system has been activated, and I know it's different for, you know, everybody and physiologically, we, you know, we're made up different. But, you know, can you give us some like ideas of like, what's happening in our body? And there's nothing a matter with our faith.

Leah: 11:49

That's right. There's nothing wrong with your faith. There's nothing wrong with your faith. And, you know, as you can see, and I like always being transparent as much as like this is something that I'm passionate about. And I'm so excited. spent so much time learning about when it comes down to being a mom, like it's hard to be the expert and be the mom at the same time. So that's where, you know, my story that I share with you is really, it's from that mom's space of, of really, you kind of lose your head and everything that I know is, is hard to access because my mom heart is in there. But essentially the nervous system is the way the brain and the body communicate with each other. And And the nervous system is, is running your show from behind the scenes. It runs like your heartbeat and your digestive system, your temperature, your breathing. So it's doing everything. But another job that the nervous system has is to keep you safe. It is constantly in service of your survival. So it is scanning everything for safety and danger. That's what it's like all day long, safety, danger. And it picks up on whether you are safe or danger. depending on the external cues. So what's happening outside of you, your internal cues of what's happening inside of you and the relational cues, what's going on between you. But the nervous system doesn't know the difference between a real threat and a perceived threat. So If you think back on that story that I told you, my nervous system every day was scanning and it was like danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, even though technically I was completely safe. Like I was in my home in Toronto doing my daily stuff on a daily basis getting up doing the thing I was safe My nervous system did not believe that and when your nervous system senses that you were in danger it gets ready to act for your survival. And it will do a couple of things. The first thing is if it sends that you're in danger, it gets activated. Your sympathetic nervous system gets aroused and it goes into a place of hyper arousal. I am getting ready to fight or flight. I am getting ready. So I will have, you know, more energy in my body. I may find, like, my levels of anxiety, I may have, like, as, this is exactly what I was describing, my mind is spinning, I start ruminating, I'm probably a little bit more on edge, and I call that being in team hyper. This is the place where I am activated. It's sort of like everything's turned on, and I am just there. It's a state of protection. My nervous system is like, she's in danger, we have to protect her. Bye. You know, changing her metabolism, changing her thoughts, changing her feelings. We have to get her ready because she's going to have to go to battle, so to speak, or try to run. So that's one way your nervous system. Now, if your nervous system senses extreme danger, Or, if you've spent so much time in that hyper aroused state, it's kind of like it says, listen, and this is, I described to you as well, listen, Leah, you've been spending a lot of time in worry and anxiety and overwhelm and spinning and ruminating. You are expending way too much energy. We need to conserve and so we're going to shut down. And so we go into a state of immobilization. It's a state of disconnection. It's a state of hypo arousal. So I call it team hypo. And that is where you do have the feelings of being hopeless and helpless and burnt out. And this is where shame resides. And this is where sadness and depression resides. And so you have these two, these two levels that the nervous system will send you to when you're in danger. What can also happen is both levels can be activated at the same time, which is what freeze is. And this is where, like, it's sort of like, think of it, you have the gas pedal and the brake slammed at the same time. So I am hyper, but I'm also collapsed. I'm feeling, like, totally, totally panicked. There's so much energy in my body. But I'm paralyzed and frozen and I can't do anything. So, those are sort of the feelings that I, I went through all of them. I was up at Team Hyper, I went to Team Hypo, I did both. And when you are in those states, what's important to note is your thinking skills. are not on line because your survival is at stake. And when your survival is at stake, basically the nervous system is like, I don't care about thinking or compassion or curiosity or faith or any of that stuff because we're about to die. All I care about is keeping you alive. And so all resources are going to be shifted over to dealing with the crisis that's at hand. So my thinking is not there. And, and so that means like I can't do when somebody is like rationally trying to talk with me, my nervous system is like, that's nice. I'm trying to deal with like crisis here. You know, stop talking to me because I don't have my thinking skills. That's such an important piece.

Michelle: 17:05

That is so funny. Cause it's like, I know that, like I mentioned before, you know, we started recording that mine was wrecked over, you know, my, one of my older son's missions. And people would say to me, you just need to have more faith or you just need to pray. And I remember in my mind, like, I'm going to punch you in the face and then later thinking to myself. I feel crazy, like, because I was so all over the place. That's right. Yeah. And so, the way you describe it, it makes it like, it makes it so okay, and that nothing's gone wrong here, and my nervous system was doing what it was supposed to, which I wasn't in danger, just like you said, you weren't in danger, but my son was.

Leah: 17:55

Right. And, and I mean, then we, we go that to the point of asking ourselves, there's a difference between feeling in danger and being in danger. And so that also gets really tricky with some people because your son was in danger probably some of the times because after you've described to me some of this experience, he was an active danger, in which case you want your nervous system. To respond with activation and to be getting ready to fight or flight, the problem becomes when we're not really in danger, our nervous system just thinks we are and we spend so much time being in this activated state. It wreaks havoc on our body because Our nervous system is not meant to peek and get stuck. It's meant to peek and return and peek and return. It's meant to come back. We're meant to have the flexibility. It's okay for me to get dysregulated at times, whether hyper or hypo. That's not the problem. The problem is when I'm stuck there and I don't know how to get out of it and that I don't know how to find my way to that, this, this middle part. Which is if your nervous system senses safety, it takes you to a zone of safety. And this is what we call sort of that rest and digest state. I call it team resilient. This is where I have access to my thinking skills. I am connected with people. I'm compassionate. I'm curious. I can follow inspiration. I am filled with faith and love and unconditional, you know, affection. All these things. are when I am in a safe place. So they, they all exist, but I don't have access to them when I am in hyper or hypo. So I have to learn, okay, how do I get myself to those places so I can access. Those feelings because somebody telling me you need to have more faith. You need to be more compassionate. You need to have okay that's great, but when I'm in team hyper all my feelings my thoughts my actions are Flavored by this lens of danger. Yeah, and when I'm at team hypo all my thoughts and actions and Feelings are flavored By me being in team hypo. So I can't just switch thoughts and switch feelings and switch actions. Until I regulate myself, calm my nervous system down. And then my CEO, my thinking skills, I call her my CEO, she steps on board and she's like, right, let's see what's going on here. She can only do that when I'm regulated. And then I can start having access to compassion and kindness and faith and all those good things. I can access them when I'm feeling safe.

Michelle: 20:52

Okay. That is such a great description, and I love that because I think for a while, while my older son was on his mission, my CEO had checked out for like, I think I was impermanent

Leah: 21:06

She was on vacation. She was like, I don't know how you're gonna deal with this, but I'm going

Michelle: 21:10

away. Yeah, yeah. Because I just didn't have any of those tools in my right. I didn't have those, I didn't have access to any of those tools in my tool belt, and I had no idea, which. is really funny because that's really one of the reasons that brought me to life coaching too was because I recognized that I couldn't hustle, like my actions couldn't hustle me there because I didn't know what was going on. And so I couldn't go to the temple more. I couldn't pay more tithing. Right. And get myself into those like regulated state. So this is so great. So how do people get regulated?

Leah: 21:51

Well, I don't know. That's a secret. Now. I mean, the first thing I think it is important is to recognize when you are dysregulated. So this awareness of being dysregulated and the acceptance. of it, that nothing has gone wrong. You are not broken. You are not a bad mom. You are not weak. You are not inadequate. You're not any of those things, which I think, I know I certainly, just like I said, you know, remove the nervous system expert hat, put mom hat on. I'm like, I'm broken. I can't believe this happened to me. All these, like, what's wrong with me? Every other mom is so much stronger than me. All that stuff. So it's really recognizing. You are fine. This is not something that you did wrong. When you have that acceptance, now it's just getting curious. Oh, okay. So my nervous system thinks that I'm in danger. And I need to reassure it. So there's a couple things that you can do. We want to get ourselves back into a regulated state. And I like to teach people up front, just to make it simple, a three step process to get yourself regulated. The first step is asking yourself, am I safe? And this is, like I said at the beginning, this idea that the nervous system is scanning externally, internally, and between us. So it's taking a read, and you're going to look around in your environment. Like, am I safe? I'm at my home in Toronto. I'm sitting at a desk. I have like, ground supporting me. I have my water bottle beside me. I clearly am safe. You need your, your, to ask and answer that question because your brain sort of needs to know. Because if I'm not actually safe, then I'm not going to turn off my stress response. And if I'm not actually safe, I need to do something about this. But for the majority of us, like, Unless we're in a, you know, a war zone or right in the middle of something that is actually very dangerous and abusive situation or something like that, you are safe. So you can just say, yes, I'm safe. So that's step one. Step two is you need to get into your body. Do I feel safe? And the majority of the time the answer is going to be, no, I do not feel safe at all. And how do we know this? Well, check in with your body. If you start to notice like there's tension, there's swirling, there's cramping, there's all sorts of bodily things happening. If you feel any tension in your body, it indicates that you have stress in your body. And so your body doesn't feel safe. And so your body is sitting there saying, okay, logically you are safe. But if you send me that message, just say, don't worry about it, you're safe. Your body's like, no, I'm not. So you have to have that two way communication. Am I safe? Yes. Do I feel safe? Let's get real. Most of the time you're not going to feel safe. And so then the third component is, all right, I'm going to relax my body. And I like to just the simplest one is do something that's called the rag doll, where you just literally just drop all the tension in your body and collapse like you're a little rag doll. Because a body without tension. doesn't have any stress in it. You cannot have stress in a relaxed body. And if you don't believe me, go try yelling at your kids in a relaxed body, like ragdoll, and then try to yell at them. It's so hard to do like to yell at our kids. We need activation. We need stress. We need movement. The other thing that you can do is you can do, you can change your breathing. One of the quickest ways to get yourself into a regulated state is to extend the exhalation of your breath. So there's something that's called the physiological sigh and this is where you do two quick breaths in and then extended exhalation. So it's sort of like this and you can feel your body relax. I like to do both of them. So am I safe? Yes. Do I feel safe? No. And that can be interchangeable. Sometimes people will notice, first of all, like, I've got a lot of fluttering. I've got a lot of tension. I've got a lot of cramping on my body. Doesn't quite feel safe. Okay. But am I safe? Yes. I know I am safe. All right. Now I need to relax my body and I ragdoll and do the breathing. When you are Relaxed and your body and your brain are both in alignment. They both have communicated with each other that they are. You're good. Everything's fine. Now your CEO can step back in. She's like, all right now we can have a conversation and we can figure out what is it that we want to do? How do you want to show up here? How do you want to be? You know, what, what are some choices and decisions that we can make? And then when we do that over and over and over, what happens is we start confronting all these threats and dangers that we see throughout the day or that we perceive throughout the day, and we keep confronting them in a relaxed body over and over and over, and we become more and more regulated.

Michelle: 27:17

Okay, so this, this takes practice, it's not like a one and done.

Leah: 27:24

No, it really is like, you know, you've heard the expression, like, you got to brush your teeth three times a day, you're going to be drinking water, you know, eight times a day, you're going to be regulating your nervous system hundreds of times a day, because like I said, your nervous system is constantly scanning and the majority of time it's, it's recognizing threats. And threats aren't necessarily. Things externally, they're just things like, well, she looked at me funny, or, you know, I have a podcast interview later on, or I'm, you know, one of my kids, I have to drive in traffic. These are all things that will activate us. So every time we're activated, we have to meet that activation with reducing. reducing that stress in our bodies. And I just want to mention one of the reasons why the body piece is so important and not just the head because often we do the mindset piece where we're just like, okay, I'm totally fine. Everything's good. And then we continue on our merry way, but it doesn't work and it doesn't work. Because your body serves as like a lie detector. And so it's like, you're telling me that you're safe, but I don't feel safe, so I don't believe you. And that's because in your nervous system, one of the main, one of the main nerves that is responsible for moving you from a state of activation to what we call a parasympathetic state is something called the vagus nerve. And this vagus nerve is a, is a, one of the largest cranial nerves in our body. Starts sort of in our brain stem. It comes through, it has branches to our face, it has branches to our heart area, it comes down branches to all our organs. So it is primarily responsible for getting us into a calm state. Well, it is a bi directional collection of fibers. And 20 percent of the fibers Communicate from the brain down to the body and 80 percent communicate from the body up to the brain. So if you are only trying to cognitively tell yourself you're safe, you're only using 20 percent of the fiber. So if you think of it like, you know, we got a five lane highway, you're using one lane that's going down. And you have these four other lanes that are like, you know, you could use me. And when we communicate from the body up to the brain, it's much more effective. That's why we have to get them both on board. That's why it is so important that you learn about your nervous system, that you learn how to regulate your nervous system, that you learn the role, because otherwise, you're constantly just using 20 percent of what biologically were designed to be using both directions, and 80 percent coming up from the body.

Michelle: 30:11

Okay. You use the example of driving. And so my husband actually shared this with me and I was like, that is a perfect way of figuring out like your nervous system because we're already on alert. We're scanning for danger. We're looking for other drivers, like what's happening, changing lanes. And so when somebody is experiencing like road rage, it's not a big leap because they're already activated and then they get whatever a little bit more activated. Okay. And then you can see, like, fight mode coming out. Exactly. Yeah. And road rage is, and, and, and normally they're like totally normal humans. They don't do irrational things, but when you get them behind a, you know, the wheel. Yeah. Exactly. In the driver's seat. And they, like, lose their minds. Yeah. And you're like, this is so bizarre, but it's not really.

Leah: 31:04

It's just, they sort of tipped over. I actually have one of the I created a free video series called the 30 Second Solution to Burnout. And essentially, the 30 Second Solution to Burnout is learning about your nervous system. So I walk you through teaching about your nervous system. And one of the first videos I do is I talk about driving. And I use an analogy of, you know, like driving and, and you hit. Like that speed limit. This is why we have a speed limit. It's the optimal. Pace for us to go, you know too slow. You're in danger too fast. You're in danger So you want to be in that zone? But what can happen is if you suddenly just like accelerate like crazy You could potentially like lose control of the car you can cause more accidents You have pushed down too far. You have put too much energy. You've tipped over. And so what do you need to do? You need to learn how to release the gas, put the brake on, you need to learn how to watch to see what your speed is. And because if you're never paying attention to that, you may never know what your speed is. That's why awareness is so key. So it is a beautiful analogy to use because that's exactly what's happening. You've just got too much gas or not enough gas.

Michelle: 32:16

Yeah. Okay. I love that. Okay. So is there anything else that you want to be, to tell my audience that you think would be beneficial as, you know, just these missionary moms and their hearts and dropping their missionaries off and getting these emails and all the things?

Leah: 32:34

Well, I will say that, that as learning to regulate yourself and learning all those things will be so beneficial, but we also know that this zone that I talked about, this zone of safety, what I call the zone of resilience. It is important that we are doing things to help grow that zone because what happens is many of us have not felt safe throughout our lives. Whether, you know, like past experiences, just, just genetics, there's lots of trauma that people have endured. So we have very small zones of safety. And when we have a small zone of safety, it means we're going to get easily dysregulated. We're going to easily topple over into team hyper, team hypo. But there are things that we can do to grow our zone of resilience. There's lots of things like, you know, like breathing and meditation and exercise, all the basic things. But another thing that's really interesting is that sometimes we do want to do hard things and push ourself. We call these sort of like the amplifiers of life. So sometimes To grow our zone, we do need to take on challenge. We do need to push ourselves into a little bit of discomfort. When I look back on my experience now as being a missionary mom, yeah, there were things that for sure, I'm like. I think I have some trauma associated with that just because it was very overwhelming. But I also know that both me and my son tremendously grew that zone of resilience. Because as we were going through some of the challenges, Learning how to navigate them, learning how to deal with them. I was becoming more resilient. I was learning how to, you know, to cope in a much healthier way. I was learning how to advocate for myself, advocate for my son. So in hindsight, I see how it was such a great experience to grow that zone. And so just remind yourself that A, you're much more resilient than you think you are. Like so often you think I can't do this. You are much more resilient than you think you are. And this is also an opportunity for you to be growing your own resilience. And it's such a great example to be setting for like other kids that you may have that. This is hard. I also have to learn tools and I have to I, I will fall down and pick myself back up. So it's also an opportunity of growth. That's what you have to think of it

Michelle: 35:05

like. Yeah, and I think that so much emphasis is put on the missionaries and their growth, but there is this whole level of growth that's going on for the moms. For sure. And especially like if they graduated from high school and like off they go, that's right. Yeah. That, that is a big opportunity for you as a mom to be able to expand and really learn how to regulate. And I love that. This has been a great conversation. So where. Can my listeners find you, where are you hanging out? Tell us all the things, and I'll make sure I list these in the show notes too. If you're not

Leah: 35:40

coming to Toronto, then you'll find me on Instagram or Facebook, I'm at Leah Davidson Life Coaching. And then my podcast is called Building Resilience. So you will find lots of resources, lots of things that I share, different tools to help you understand your nervous system. I created like a road map that shows you sort of the top 11 episodes that will help you in understanding your nervous system. So you can look at that and yeah, that's where I hang out.

Michelle: 36:09

Awesome. Thank you so much, Leah. This has been so beneficial. I, I know that there's going to be so many people that have benefit from this conversation and just, and it's so nice to know that we're okay, right? There's nothing that's a matter with us. Even when it feels like we're in crisis, like we're still okay and we can, and we can down regulate and get into that zone of

Leah: 36:33

resilience. Exactly. And I will add that when we think of the zone of resilience. Like a lot of the attributes are there. Those are sort of like the Christlike attributes, but I like to think it because that's where that's everything we emulate in that is, is Christlike, but he is so willing to come down to team hypo. And to come up to Team Hyper with us and be that anchor for us in safety. So sometimes when you feel, and I remember feeling that too when I was up in Hyper, I up in Hypo, sometimes it's just reaching out for that support because he's grounded. and resilience. He's the most regulated, safe person ever. And so sometimes it's just having that anchor can really help. Yeah,

Michelle: 37:21

that's so beautiful. All right. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. This is so great. We'll probably have to have you back. I mean, I'm not going to worry. Oh, all right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us today. And if you could drop us a rating, that would be amazing on your favorite platform. And we will see you next week. Bye bye.