This episode welcomes special guest Carrie, a highly certified expert in nervous system regulation, betrayal trauma, and somatics. The episode dives deep into understanding the nervous system and its critical role in shaping our experiences and relationships.
Carrie introduces the concepts of sympathetic and parasympathetic states, polyvagal theory, and the 'window of tolerance,' offering practical advice on how to recognize and regulate a dysregulated nervous system. The discussion emphasizes the importance of reconnecting with one's body to facilitate healing and build a foundation of trust with oneself.
Connect with Carrie here: https://www.instagram.com/healwithcarriejean/
Follow along on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/wtfdoidonowpodcast/
This episode welcomes special guest Carrie, a highly certified expert in nervous system regulation, betrayal trauma, and somatics. The episode dives deep into understanding the nervous system and its critical role in shaping our experiences and relationships.
Carrie introduces the concepts of sympathetic and parasympathetic states, polyvagal theory, and the 'window of tolerance,' offering practical advice on how to recognize and regulate a dysregulated nervous system. The discussion emphasizes the importance of reconnecting with one's body to facilitate healing and build a foundation of trust with oneself.
Connect with Carrie here: https://www.instagram.com/healwithcarriejean/
Follow along on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/wtfdoidonowpodcast/
All right. Welcome back to another episode of WTF do I do now? I'm so excited to invite the next guest to the show, Carrie. She is so well versed in nervous system, betrayal, trauma, somatics, and there's such a large umbrella. I don't even want to go into details because I want to allow you to introduce yourself because I know about you because you have so many amazing certifications and I remember when I was going through the betrayal you were the first person I found who was actually talking about the importance of nervous system regulation and somatics and it's just it's so powerful and I think it's something that needs more attention when we discuss betrayal trauma or just any type Of healing in general.
So thank you carrie for joining the show i'll let you go ahead and just welcome or introduce yourself so the listeners can have a better understanding of who you are and what you do
Oh thank you for having me on. And I got to say when you, I got, I felt that when you said that I was one of the first, as you're going through your own journey that was a big reason why I got into this work. Because in my own healing from betrayal trauma, I didn't feel like it was talked enough about.
It wasn't addressed. And it's been one of my big pushes is to bring more awareness to somatics in betrayal trauma. So I'm so glad that, that resonated with you on your journey. Yeah, I, so I've been married. Just give it a little background to me, but I'm married for 15 years. Almost be 15 years this summer and the first 10 years were hell.
That's me saying it nicely. And it just felt like it was never going to end. And it was really, would I survive? That was like, it got to a point of, was I going to survive physically? Literally, can I keep living? In this life, that's never, that's gonna, never gonna change. And it was in year 10 that we hit a rock bottom and then things change.
I hit my point where it was like, I will, I can no longer, I can no longer do this. And that rock bottom, like really for both of us pushed us into our healing. And I had already been in therapy for three years at that point. I was more suicidal near the end of that, the night when I started and it wasn't until mindfulness came up that things started to shift and my husband actually jumped on the bandwagon first on mindfulness for his own pornography addiction healing and then that just grew and grew. And that's Oh my gosh, there's I've been running from my body for years and years, like slowing down, feeling the pain. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. And so actually turning to word was a game changer.
And it just grew and grew into now having so much understanding of not just sure, there's all like the trainings and everything on nervous system and somatics but understanding my own, because everybody's unique systems are shaped by all of their unique experiences. And so being so connected to mine has changed my entire life. How I show up as a parent, how I show up as a wife, how I show up as a practitioner, how I show up as a daughter, a sister, a friend, and I will love this work for the rest of forever because of the power that's in it. I know that maybe that was more than you want to know or less than you wanted, but it's I love talking about this.
So I'm excited for our discussion because there's so much healing that's possible through it. And having been in the place where you feel like there isn't you really question is healing possible. That I want to shout from the rooftops that yes, it is, and there is a way to it.
And that's through somatics
that was an amazing answer. Thank you. And thank you for being so honest and open about your journey, especially the suicidal ideation. I know I also experienced that going through betrayal and it's just that feeling of hopelessness. And I think not to minimize your pain by any means, but it's so beautiful to look at where you were and to see how you alchemized and transmuted that pain and you saved and healed yourself, but not even that now you get to. help show other women and anyone how to heal and how to talk and learn about the nervous system and somatics. So next question to anyone who's listening is like, what is a nervous system? What does it do? What's the importance of it? And I know that's such a broad question, but I know you have so much knowledge on it so just take the stage away.
It's the question of why, it's like, whyDoes the nervous system matter? Why do nervous system work? And that's an important thing. So the nervous system is the lens with which everything the way that you see yourself, the way that you experience relationships, the way that you experience the world, in general, everything happens through the nervous system.
Now, granted I'm specifically when people are, when nervous system work is buzzing right now, we're talking specifically the autonomic nervous system. Okay. So there's, there are lots of aspects to the nervous system. We're talking more of the autonomic, automatic. It's a way to, to think of it.
So primarily subconscious. Now there's a myth that we have been led to believe that the mind controls emotion. How many times have we been, Oh, just stand in front of the mirror, tell yourself that you're confident or just tell yourself to get over it or just to let it go. Or this idea that you can choose to be happy.
If we could all just choose to be happy and I'm happy, the world would be in a much different place than it is right If it was that easy, everyone would be shouting for joy and get over it. Okay, I'm over it. Thank you so much for that suggestion. I would have never thought about it.
yeah, exactly. It's I'm sorry, what? No one chooses to feel pain to the point of wanting to die. So that really has infiltrated the way that we have seen therapy is we just we need to work with cognition, work with the way that your thought patterns are.
However, and I want to recognize that. We didn't have enough information about the body until just a few decades ago. So it was in the thirties, thank goodness for technology, the pros and cons. Right. But a big pro was in the nineties. There was a big boom and we call it the decade of the brain because technology allowed us to see More and imaging of things.
We could see more of what was going on in the body. So with that, we gained a greater understanding of the communication between the mind and the body. So we're talking about nervous system, the autonomic, the communication between the mind and the body, okay, passes through it's called the vagus nerve.
That's probably a term that many people are hearing now because stimulate your vagus nerve and vagel nerve bagel nerve toning are also trending. That communication between the two is bi directional. So we have information that goes up from the body information that comes down from the mind as they're communicating.
Now, this is where the term or bottom up beings and why the nervous system matters so much is the amount of fibers. The amount of fibers that are passing information up, the amount of fibers that are passing information down, they're not equal. 80 percent of the communication that our mind receives comes from the body.
Only 20 percent of those fibers are from the mind to the body. So
this is yeah.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, so this is why the idea of, I don't know if you tried this, but I was in group therapy early on. I tried out group therapy for b betrayal right out the gate. It was free, and they were talking about affirmations and everything, and my therapist also at the time specialized in b betrayal trauma was also like, Hey, let's just be happy and affirmations and all that stuff.
And so I would stand in front of the mirror with all of the affirmations and recite them. I am confident. I am beautiful. I am enough. That's like a big one. I think we feel a lot when we're going through partner betrayal is I'm not enough and I'm reciting all of those things and I go back to my therapist.
I'm like, I'm bullshitting myself. Like I. I'm being lied to enough. I don't want to, like, all of these things I'm trying. I'm just lying to myself more. Essentially, with those affirmations, we're trying to use that 20 percent to change the way the 80 percent feels. No,
Doesn't math up
it doesn't. But let's say that you have been like you've a couple of days, if you haven't showered, you're feeling grungy, you're eating crap, you don't sleeping well and you feel right.
You
stand in front of that mirror, you're like, I'm confident, I'm beautiful.
No.
But when you've been eating well and you get lots of water and you're getting dressed and you're doing hair, you're doing makeup, you've exercising, you stand in front of that mirror and you're like. I am beautiful. I am confident.
The story changes because the state of the nervous system change. We work with the nervous system because the nervous system is what shapes everything else that we're seeing. We say the state creates a story. The state of the nervous system Shapes the narrative or the thoughts that we're having. So that is why we work with the body.
That's where we work with the nervous system, because that is where the power is now. I'm not saying that we want to negate the 20 percent because. It's still 20%, right? We want to use the whole 100. we want to take every modality that we can. And there will be different seasons, different stages of healing that different modalities are going to impact differently, but the nervous system is the foundation.
The body somatic. So soma means in the body. Somatics is the foundation of being able to do everything else because it's the foundation in which our system works.
Wow. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
Oh no. I know they work. That's
My drop the mic moment right there.
Mic dropped. That was so helpful. I've always known, not always, within the past like two years, I started doing my breathwork teacher training that was focused on somatic breathwork, ironically, a few months right before the betrayal happened. And I, I feel like that was, Honestly, my saving grace that helped me through a lot of it just because the months leading up to that I was learning about the body and the trauma and the nervous system But of course it's easier said than done to learn about it than to actually experience it And I think that's another reason why your story is so powerful is because anyone can research the nervous system anyone can take the trainings, but I don't think it's until you actually go through it and you start to learn about when you're activated, or how to calm yourself down, or when you have suicidal ideation, or when you're experiencing betrayal that you can really help others see the light at the end of the tunnel. But I would love to get your thoughts. Could you explain a bit more about What does it mean to have a regulated nervous system and go into more details about the parasympathetic nervous system, the sympathetic
Yeah, so we're talking about the autonomic nervous system. So I'm just going to from here on out, refer to nervous system. But there are two branches of this nervous system, which is the sympathetic, and the parasympathetic. Okay. Sympathetic. Think, fight or flight. So it's all about energy and mobilization.
Parasympathetic rest and digest. So this is more of an immobilization. Now we want both. We need there to be harmony, rhythm, flow between breath work. You're going to notice every inhale is a sympathetic activation. Every exhale is a parasympathetic. So when we are looking at the nervous system, I'm going to go into a little bit science here in understanding, as I've been talking about the states of the nervous system it used to be understood that the sympathetic and parasympathetic were like a seesaw that it was just either we're in that fight or flight or in the rest and digest.
It's just one of the two. And it wasn't until the nineties, early nineties. That Stephen Porges, he's the originator of this theory called polyvagal theory that he, in his research was actually in touch with some doctors that are like, Hey, this whole seesaw thing doesn't really work because there is actually danger
in this rest and digest, there is danger in this parasympathetic as well. And that got Stephen Portis very what? Because we keep thinking of it as we just always need to bring in more parasympathetic. So in his research, he found that it's more of a ladder. So these states of the nervous system, we have at the top of the ladder, that part of the parasympathetic branch, we have what's called ventral vagal.
So this ventral vagal is the vagus nerve. Ventral is it attaches at the front of the brainstem. Okay. Parasympathetic. And that's what we think of with Regulated that there's it's the social engagement. We're feeling safe to connect with other people. Our body is, there can be I'm relaxed and I'm just maybe it's I'm relaxed.
I'm hanging out on the porch with a cup of coffee and a book. Or it's also, I'm safe and I'm excited and I'm playful and I'm, at a sporting event. So we have, there's some energy there as well, but we're still like, I'm safe to experience this. Okay. Now, beneath that ventral we have what's called the sympathetic.
And that is, of course, the sympathetic branch. And that's where we have the mobilization. Beneath the sympathetic, so at the very bottom of the ladder, we have, again, parasympathetic. I know I'm getting very sciencey here.
this. is important as we're understanding the
Yeah.
So beneath the sympathetic very bottom, we have dorsal vagal. So dorsal vagals is also the vagus nerve attaching at the back of the brainstem. Okay, so it's also parasympathetic. So we have a sandwich parasympathetic, ventral regulation. We have the sympathetic and then we have the dorsal vagal also parasympathetic.
Okay, so healthy regulated system. This is really important because a lot of people are like, Hey, calm and happy all the time is regulated. A healthy regulated system is going to be a system that is able to move up and down this ladder. Without getting stuck. Okay, that you're able to be in ventral. You feel safe that you feel relaxed that you feel open and energized and motivated.
You know that's the ventral. You're able to have those moments where You're revved up. If somebody crosses a boundary, you best believe we want there to be some activation there, okay? Because that mobilizes protecting boundary. If my kid jumps out at me, I'm gonna, sympathetic, that's gonna happen.
That's a healthy system being able to do that when startled by a sound, there's a match there. What's happening here. What's happening here. There's a match. Also, there's going to be times when we experienced sadness. There's nothing wrong with being sad. We're able to go into some dorsal as well.
We're able to just, I'm tired. As women, every single day, our hormones are different. We're in a 28 day cycle. Men have a 24 hour cycle that is very different than ours. Every single day, we're different. Our cycle's going to impact where we are. Sometimes we're like, I just need to like lay in bed.
I'm so tired. We're down there more in that dorsal. That's okay. A healthy regulated system is one that's able to move fluidly up these states. Okay. So if you think of it, like we talk about the wave, like riding the wave, right? Ebbs and flows of life. If you're just like a flat line, if I'm just always calm and always happy, What do we usually say in like the medical space?
Someone flatlines, they're dead, right? We don't want to flatline. That's not healthy to just always be stagnant in this one place. That healthy is being able to have those experiences that are just normal To being human without getting stuck in them, without our experiences being thwarted without us suppressing and feeling shame that we're not allowed to feel this.
We shouldn't feel this. I'm not supposed to be angry. I'm supposed to forgive all of these things that we then have a feeling about a feeling, but really regulated is being able to be with the wide range of experiences that we have and move through them. Whether that be physical movement, whether it be internal movement, but it's being able to allow things to just flow.
You can be regulated and upset. Contrary to popular belief, you can be. So that's really good. Yes. Yes. That angry part, it deserves a place at the table. We don't want to silence it. We want to, my clients hear me say it a lot, that healing is relating differently. And so when we're on this healing journey it's, starting to all the parts of us.
I'm also, I do a lot of work and parts work, IFS. And so I use that language a lot, but all these parts of us that we have. Essentially lost connection with trauma fragments us. We want to come back into this wholeness that we're bringing all of these parts back together, but we're not allowing, them to be in the driver's seat per se.
Do we still want to be self led? We still want to be able to touch in on that ventral predominantly, but we want these other parts or these other states to still be present because they matter. They have a place they serve a purpose
Thank you, that is so helpful. And then, on the other hand, so if we're talking about a dysregulated nervous system, and correct me if I'm wrong, so would that refer to when your nervous system is either stuck in a parasympathetic or stuck in sympathetic and yes, you're nodding could you explain like what, especially after betrayal I'm sure a lot of us get stuck in the activated mode or just hypervigilance, not feeling safe. Could you describe a bit more what it would look like or like signs to tell that maybe your nervous system is stuck in the sympathetic or parasympathetic? And then if possible what are different things people could do to try to either regulate themselves down or activate themselves back up?
for your question yes, when we're talking about was dysregulated look like we're talking about being stuck in one of those states, or it can also be that there's like a yo yoing. Between this is where we see anxiety and depression. We often see them coupled together. So anxiety would be more than mobilization.
Anxiety is that flight of sympathetic or depression is that shut down collapse. Of dorsal, okay, so the yo yoing between 2, but also be a dysregulated versus being able to flow. Right so the extreme highs and the extreme lows, we're talking about there. The yo yoing. The, what are the signs of dysregulated?
Now, going to be, everyone kind of has an MO. What is their system's pattern of projection? For some, it will be They go into that fight or flight of a lot of anger or yelling. There's rage, there's blame. They go into that flight of anxiety, perfectionism, overthinking, ruminating, constantly being busy.
That was, I lived in anxiety for a long time of costly go. Like my brother once called me Energizer Bunny. He didn't realize. My life and that it was like a trauma response. But that's where I lived most of the time where in dorsal we'll see more extreme lethargy. Now I do want to name this as we're talking about these states of dysregulation.
I know we often hear fight, flight, freeze. That's how people tend to categorize those states. It doesn't give it enough information because freeze is a blended, so we have these states, but we also have hybrid states where we can access different amounts of the States, so freeze think deer and headlights would be a blend of
we have sympathetic energy, right? There's tension. There's bracing heart is racing. We're dilated, we're taking everything in. So we have sympathetic, but we're immobile. So we're frozen. We can't move. So freeze is a blend of both the sympathetic and the dorsal. So really, it should be fight.
Flight shut down. I know it doesn't sound as pretty as the fight flight freeze That's really or we say fight flight flop if you want to stick with the F sound but really that shut down and collapse is an attempt to survive All right, so some people will go into fight high intensity, fight the flight, trying to escape either physically escaping or mentally, emotionally escaping.
The flop is a way to disconnect. So fight flight, I'm going to protect. in the flop of dorsal, I'm going to disconnect. And that's where I, after a long time of being in flight, I never went to fight, to be honest, I was in flight. Our bodies aren't designed to stay there that long.
That's where the being able to move, our bodies are designed. To move into sympathetic, to move into dorsal at times, we're not meant to stay there. So when we're, we've been in a fight or flight for a long time, extreme anxiety, for example, I'm going to really speak to the anxiety because a lot of people I know relate to that one.
That's exhausting. That's like you're constantly just revving the car. It's exhausting. So we shut down that now I'm, I have to conserve because I've been in this fight or flight. And it didn't help because all of these are attempts to get back up into ventral. I need to try and get safe again. My body is firing that it's not safe that I'm in danger, but there's no safety coming back.
So if I've been here and there's no safety coming back, I dropped because I'm exhausted. And what's the point? That's where we get things like suicidal ideation. That's there in that dorsal of nothing I do is making a difference. That there is no safety here. So instead of trying to fight or flight, I'm just going to curl up in a ball and just try to conserve every ounce of energy.
I have to keep myself alive. So this is where we see more of the disconnection. Maybe I'm feeling more. numb. I'm just feeling more like I can't even name a sensation. I don't even know what I'm feeling. I just feel so blank. I'm like a walking zombie. I'm going through the motions, but I'm not really engaged or present.
Okay. So that's where we see that more of that dorsal. Now the response that we have Is going to differ for each person based on experiences that you've had, because your body is going to go through instantaneously and say, given the information that I'm taking in right now, and given the experiences that I've had in the past.
Whether that be I personally experienced this, I've witnessed this, I've read about this. I've seen this in a movie, all of those things. This is the best way to respond. So for some, like my mother she went into people pleasing. That was her way of surviving. My, my father is very emotionally abusive.
And so I gravitated based on what I learned. How do you handle someone like my dad who I married someone like my dad? He's no longer like him, but he started out like him. How do you survive that? This is the way you survive that. So my body learned, we're going to, we're going to go into this people pleasing in order to survive We're going to just stay busy with projects all the time in order to survive.
We're not going to honor ourselves. We're going to abandon ourselves and our needs and our wants to focus on the other person. Okay. These are all survival strategies body is just going to decide instantaneously in the moment. What's the best way to handle this? And as much as we may be like, I hate that I do this, and this is so wrong, and this is annoying, and this is hurting me even more, that strategy symptom of what we call a dysregulated nervous system, mental illness, they all started from an attempt.
To get safe in an unsafe situation that's where they originated. So to your other question of how do we get regulated? How do we essentially move up into. Ventral again. If there are lots of definitions to trauma, you're going to see them all over the place. Everybody has their different take. I really try to simplify it all down.
Now I'm trained in a lot of relational stuff, so I like to keep thinking the relational language. Trauma is essentially a rupture to your system's sense of safety that has not had adequate repair. So when we're trying to come back into regulation, we have to repair the rupture to our system sense a safety.
Okay. Sense being a key word there because we can legitimately be safe, but trauma when we're talking about unresolved trauma, your body still playing it out as if it's present. It hasn't quite distinguished that was then. And this is now that's also why the things like just let it go.
And. Stop worrying about it. Those things don't do anything. It's the part of the brain that actually time stamps what was past and what was present. Okay. It's called hippocampus. It actually will shrink in trauma. So
it does. It's not. So it's not able to actually distinguish. So the body is not able to distinguish.
We also have, we get more into the brain. There are a lot of areas I could take all of this, but the body doesn't keep track the body. Does it no time the body knows experience the body knows the sensation and emotion. So we're talking about creating safety, repairing that rupture. We have to have the body experience the sensation and the emotion of safety.
When we have the safety restored, then we have greater access to the mind. So I'm going a little bit deeper there on the science of what I'm saying, because this is a really important, especially when we're in the thick of it. And we're like, okay, I'm learning all these things. I have this awareness and everything I'm learning, but I don't even know what to do with it.
And I'm behaving in this way and I don't know how to stop and logically and rationally. I know that things are fine, but things aren't really getting better. Dan Siegel is a if you've heard of the window of tolerance, Dan Siegel is the creator.
literally just wrote a note saying window of tolerance because I wanted to ask you about that.
Yeah, so I love window of tolerance. I think it's a great visual representation. It's basically so Stephen Porges did the the poly bagel ladder. Okay. So the 3 ways and Dan Siegel, basically, it's like, putting that ladder into a window. So here in the center in this window, we have, I wish I had I don't have one handy, but we have the ventral.
So that's where we think of, regulate our level of resilience or level of tolerance. And I'm doing this because it expands and contracts just like a window up top. We'd have hyper activation or sympathetic down beneath the window. We have the hypo activation dorsal. Okay, dan Siegel is one who originated the window of tolerance, and he does what I love to use, which is a hand model for the brain.
So my little hand model here, we have the vagus nerve. Okay. Vagus nerve communication with the body, actual communication between the brain and the body. So that's my forearm here. The information comes up and down here, my wrist, I don't know if people can see this or if they're just listening. So I'll describe it too, but down at my
They'll mostly be listening,
Okay, good.
I'm going to actually then describe my hand right now. My hand is closed, my thumb in my palm, my fingers clasped over my thumb. Now, the wrist is the reptilian brain. And the reptilian brain first to develop is really focused in on, am I safe?
It's handling the basic functions of the body. So like heart rate, breathing lungs, the digestive tract, it's just basically focusing on keeping the body operating the reptilian brain. Information continues to pass up and here I have my thumb in the, in my palm center of the brain. We're talking about the limbic system.
This is also refer to just like nickname the mammalian brain. This one is am I loved? So here we have hormones release all about connection. We have emotion all here. And then my fingers, okay, they are the neocortex or the human brain, adult brain. This is where we have it rationale, logical thinking. This part of the brain is asking, what can I learn?
So we have the reptilian brain down at the bottom. Am I safe? We have in the middle of my thumb, we have, am I loved? And then we have the neocortex, my fingers. What can I learn? This is where we have language. Okay, our verbal language develops here. Last to develop, it doesn't start to come online until age around two, until we're in our mid twenties.
That's a heck of a lot of time.
Yeah, so this is why I also told my daughter I'm like don't get married to your mid twenties until your brains fully I got married at 20. So when we when the information comes in, right? It's passing that vagus nerve information comes in. Am I safe first question? Yes. I'm safe.
Great. Awesome. Am I loved? Yes. Great. Awesome. So then the fingers stay clasped and we have what's called this triune brain. My fingers are still clasped over my thumb so we can focus in on what can I learn? I have access to rationale because my body feels safe. I don't have to worry about my survival right now.
And that's the number one thing that the body cares about. Now let's say information comes in. I don't feel safe. I don't feel loved, which. Connection our body equates just as much to am I safe because as relational beings think about even as babies were dependent on another person. We survive in connection as a society
even we all need each other and in our different areas of expertise in order to keep living. So I don't feel safe. I don't feel loved. It's what Dan Segal calls, we flip the lid. So my fingers go up. So like almost like an open palm, but my thumb is still in the center of my palm. We lose access to rationale.
Okay. We brain fog. This is also where sometimes it's really hard to explain, like use words to explain what we're feeling or what we're thinking because verbal
expression goes out the window. Panic attacks. I've had panic attacks where I. I can't talk where it's just like I'm mumbling because we lose ability to speak.
Interesting.
Yep. So when we're trying to figure out how can I support my system in moving up safety has to be the number one. And this is also where we're trying to use the mind. Right? These fingers use the mind to change the way the body feels. If we don't have access to the mind in trauma because we don't feel safe or loved, then it's going to take a hell of a long time to try to change that 80%.
This is why we work with the subconscious. So we're talking about subconscious, subcortical regions. We're working with the reptilian brain and the mammalian in order to bring a felt sense of safety because when the body feels Yes, I am safe. And yes, I am loved. That love to me, I am accepted by Maybe it's not even with my partner, okay, but I have a support group.
I have friends. I have a great therapist. I have a great family, okay, that can still be there, even if we're not talking about the romantic level with it very clear. So when I have access, when I feel those, then I can regain. So in moving up to regulation to be able to flow, to be able to access ventral, we need to have a felt sense of safety, and that is going to be unique for everybody.
I can't just say, Hey, these are all things that are going to help you feel safe because they may actually trigger you, but they may be safe for me. So every system is going to be unique. And this is why in the coaching that I do with clients, we actually map out, how do you experience each state?
Because everybody's also going to experience the states differently. If some people go more into that fight versus that flight, what does that look like for you? If you go into that shutdown, what does that look like for you? What's the story when you're there? How do you experience it? Mapping out the states, because then you can also map out
what are my tools? What are my resources to help move me up? We do not want to, if we're in like shutdown and people say, Hey, a great resource is to go for a run, but I feel like I can barely get out of bed. That's not going to help my system. That's going to overwhelm me even more because my body right now is just trying to survive.
I have no energy to go for a run. So we want to match and I'll be like, what? I want to match where I'm at. I want to get out of where I'm at, to a degree. Healing is honoring. And so if our body is saying, I have nothing in my tank, I can't do anything, then maybe all it is how can I with my body because down there that door show members that disconnect that I don't have I feel so numb I don't even know what it feels like to be in me because I'm just moving through the motions to maybe there It's okay. I have no energy to do anything. So I'm just going to lay outside And just feel the warmth.
I just need to feel the warmth. What it's like to be engaged again with my body. To feel something again. Self harm we often see happen in dorsal. Because there's an attempt to try and feel something. When there's nothing I feel so, so shut down. And so numb. But I'm trying to get up. I'm trying to get up and do that sympathetic.
And we see things like self harm. We want to honor where we're at, and it's not going to be the same for everybody. Those who are more in that dorsal or excuse me, more than that sympathetic, maybe it's that they need to express that they do need to go for that run. In somatics when we're talking about, discharging or releasing energy, which is probably some things people have heard also discharging, we're essentially talking about metabolizing.
We have all these stress hormones that are dumped into our body when we don't feel safe, what the body is designed to do, and when we Oh, I seem to calm down. I seem to calm down. Think of it like I'm calming down the ladder. I'm shoving all of that down. When in actuality, that discharging is I need to metabolize.
My body is trying to burn those stress hormones. We have, I know we talk about adrenaline and cortisol. Those are the main ones we talk about. We actually have well over 20 stress hormones, but those are just the most popular ones. Now, so we want to really honor, where are we at? What do we need? Because essentially the body is reenacting an experience that wasn't completed.
That rupture, right? I was removed from my place of safety as I'm falling down the ladder here. And I need to repair that. I need to complete this stress cycle that wasn't completed. And so our body's desperately trying to. Complete that and as we're, Oh, I just need to get over it. Oh, I just need to stop crying.
I just need to calm down. I never say calm down. I always say calm up because calming down. I think of like that. I just need to like, stop being angry and you're going to push yourself further and further down into dorsal. So now it's like everything. Is just shutting down because it's not being expressed our body wants to be able to have that need met.
That wasn't met. Then I wasn't able to find safety then. And I'm trying to, there was a need for, there's a need to run that. I wasn't able to run. There was a need to share my hurt. And I was silenced. Maybe that I was silenced was a long time ago as a kid. And now it's. being played out in the present, but there is a need that was not fulfilled that the body is trying to get fulfilled now.
So in moving up this ladder into regulation, it's. What does my body need? Not what do I think I need? Not what does the influencer with 100, 000 followers on Instagram say that I need? No. What does my body say that I need? And that's why, you can find tons of resources. You can Google what are some somatic practices, but unless you already have A foundation of connection with your body, a sense of this is how my body speaks to me.
This is how my body tells me what safety does feel like, what danger feels like, then you're not really going to know what those resources that they're working on. It's like throwing things at a wall, trying to see what sticks, but we're not really even connecting with how is the body experiencing that?
Does it feel like it's working? Does it feel safe? You don't know what safety feels like. How's it, how are you going to know? If that's working or not, so many times people are just doing these resources to avoid, to be quite honest, where it's, I want to escape this feeling. I don't want to feel this anymore, so I'm gonna go do this cold plunge to stimulate my vagus nerve.
Okay. That's great. Like we want to stimulate the vagus nerve. That's awesome. But guess what? That feeling didn't actually get processed. It just got pushed down because you're trying to get away from the feeling, not actually complete. The feeling huge difference there. I see it all over social media, people not having that awareness of what truly is a resource meant to do.
A resource is truly meant to help you to be with the experience, to complete the experience. Not just stop it. It's a huge confusion. So in trying to get regulated first and foremost, it's regaining the connection with your body, with felt sense, which felt sense it basically means embodiment. People think of it as just a sensation or emotion, but felt sense is the entirety of your experience.
So that can include thoughts that includes memories that includes images and includes a sensation, a feeling connecting with what is my body's felt sense of safety. Okay. When I know how my body is communicating with me. There's that tightness in my chest and this is what that means and it usually is in conjunction with tingling down my arms or heaviness in my legs or my daughter.
She gets a lot of anxiety when she gets anxiety, her stomach, she feels in her stomach and that's very different from Hey, is that a digestive upset? Is that a, I am hungry or is that I'm anxious. So even being able to sift out what is that? What is your body actually cueing you there? So when you reconnect with your body's language, then being able to match, okay, what is my body right now?
As I'm feeling anxious, as I'm feeling activated, what does it tell me that I need? Do I need to Go rip up paper. Do I need to run in place? I need to just shake. Do I need to just sway back and forth? Swaying is a huge one for me. I like that one a lot. Music. Music is another huge resource that I like to go to.
That works for me. Doesn't work for everybody. I actually know people who don't like music, which floors me. I'm like, what?
I know. I'm like, I like music. I just it, boggles my mind, but they're different, yeah.
Exactly. And so that's why it's a matter of how do you experience safety? What helps your body feel like it's okay to take off the armor and move out of the disconnection and the protection in order to get back to that Connection with yourself and other people.
But first and foremost, you have to understand your body's language in order to know what helps you move up the ladder. So I told you I could talk about this forever.
I could listen to you talk about this forever. I have read So many books and tried to, just tried to teach myself so much about this, but the way you describe it, it's you make such a complicated process sound so simple and straight to the point, and you can tell you're so educated and so knowledgeable on this.
I'm like, you were made to do this. Not to say that's why you had to go through your pain, of course, but It's incredible all the information you have on this I'm mind blown right now Like I need a second to process all this.
I know it's a lot. If you're listening, take a pause if you need to. It really is in somatic experience, and they use the phrase it's stupid simple. And be quite honest, stupid is a trigger word for me because that's a core wound of mine. So I like to use the phrase, it's sweet and simple. Healing is sweet and simple that our body has an innate desire, an innate knowing of what it needs.
But because there are blessings and curses, I don't say curses, there are pros and cons. To our higher functioning mind that it often gets in the way of carrying out what the body naturally already knows. So many times with clients, they, they'll say, Oh yeah, I've already I noticed as they start to reconnect with their body, they start to notice a lot more like I've been noticing that I've been doing this thing already. I'm like yeah, because your body already has a natural drive to do it. It does not take a ton of work to heal. It takes a ton of slowing down to heal, slow down, to get into those sweet and simple things that are healing. To listen to your body. There's a lot of urgency when we're in trauma. There's a lot of I've got to hurry and get safe.
They're hurrying it safe that we lose touch with what the body is saying. It needs to feel safe. So healing is actually quite sweet and simple and it's a lot of just slowing down to notice as notice is one of my tattoos. So my favorite words notice. It's a lot of just noticing what your body is saying, because it is very wise and it has your entire lifetime of experience in knowing this is a queue of danger. This is a queue of safety. This is what I need.
Even just hearing the phrase sweet and simple healing is sweet and simple that in and of itself just sounds so much more Manageable and inspiring and empowering to make oh, I my body just needs to slow down like that's all it's asking for I just need it does I don't need to be like doing healing works like hours a day.
I just need to sit the fuck down Calm down and listen and notice like you said, which is so beautiful and I do want to be aware of time because I know we're running at the hour so I do just want to leave you with this last question if there one if there's anything you want to say that we haven't gotten to and or If there's any like woman who's listening who either just discovered her partner's porn addiction or is navigating it Is there any Anything that comes to mind that you would like to share with them.
I know that right now trust feels like the epitome at all. Right? Everything is just shattered the everything that you knew. is in question at this point, healing number one, first and foremost has to be restoring the trust you have with yourself. I know right now it's like grappling to figure out if you can trust the other person again.
And that's where in that initial it's, you broke my trust. Can I make this work? Can I trust you again? Sometimes it's even I'll never trust anybody ever again. First and foremost, restoring that trust. It is learning to trust yourself again, to reconnect with your body again. And when we have that, everything else gets a hell of a lot easier.
Every other relationship you have outside of the relationship you have with yourself starts to come into alignment. Whether that be it dissolves. Or it works out. Everything else starts to make sense when you reconnect with your own felt sense. I just made that up. I like that. Everything else starts to make sense when you reconnect with your felt sense.
That's going on Instagram post, guys.
Trademark that while you're at it.
yeah, totally, yeah. But that's hands down. I know how obliterating this betrayal has been for you and really making you question your entire world. Trust is like that framework with your nervous system. It's how you see everything. We don't live in a world without trust.
we we walk out the door. With an element of trust, we get into a car on the highway and we're trusting the other drivers. We're trusting the cashier at the store. Everything that we do is built around trust. And that's why it's so world shattering to experience betrayal. But as you reconnect with yourself and now have that solid knowing within you.
Everything else will fall into place.
Oh, that was so beautiful. Thank you. I'm like, I feel like I'm like melting into the screen. What you just said was so comforting. But thank you again so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And I guess this is the final question. If anyone wants to get in contact with you, what's the best way for them to find you and learn more about your services?
So I am definitely most active on Instagram. Managing all the different social media platforms is too much. So I hear mostly to Instagram just @ heal with Carrie Jean. So you can reach out to me there. I offer one on one group coaching and stay tuned because next month I have a big launch coming to make things even easier to access.
Yeah, Instagram is the best place to, to reach me.
Oh, that sounds so exciting and congratulations. I don't know what it is, but I know it's going to be amazing. I'll include your Instagram bio in the show notes too, just so anyone can find you easily. Yeah. I just want to say thank you so much. This conversation was, it was so insightful for me. I love podcasting because I get to talk and learn and it's amazing.
And your story is so powerful and I just want to thank you so much for all the work you're doing. I know you had to you went through a lot to get to where you are now, and I just want to honor that. And, but thank you for the impact you are making on so many people's lives. It's, you're truly making the world a better place.
So thank you.
Thank you. I'm just trying to do my little part in the corner of the world.
Thank you so much. And for anyone who's listening again, I'll put her Instagram bio in the show notes so you can easily access her. And yeah, tune in for next week, but thank you so much for listening. Have a great day.