24. How to create your own authentic messages of safety

In this episode of the Heal with Grace podcast, Grace interviews Vanessa Blackstone, the executive director of the Pain Psychology Center. Vanessa, who has a background in social work and is a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, shares her journey from dealing with her own chronic pain to becoming a therapist in pain reprocessing therapy (PRT). They delve into the concept of PRT, explaining how it aims to address the neural pathways in the brain that perpetuate chronic pain by creating messages of safety and soothing the nervous system. Vanessa discusses the challenges of establishing a sense of safety, particularly for those who didn't grow up in secure environments. Through her personal stories and therapeutic experiences, she emphasises the importance of slowing down, understanding one's emotions, and using authentic messages of safety to foster healing. The episode also touches on the broader aspects of creating safety in one's current life and explores how our past and present environments influence our sense of security.

Connect with Vanessa:

@that.therapst

painpsychologycenter.com

blackstonewellness.com

vanessablackstonetherapy@gmail.com

Episode 3

Resources & Links:

• FREE Top 3 tips to regulate your nervous system Training
• Work with us in therapy or coaching
• Curable: https://getcurable.com/healwithgrace

Connect with Grace:

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

Transcript

[00:00:00] Grace: Welcome back to the Heal with Grace podcast. I have a very special guest, Vanessa Blackstone, who is an ACSW citizen of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, is the executive director of the Pain Psychology Center. She earned her MS in social work from the University of Southern California. And following her own personal recovery from chronic pain, Vanessa began her career as a therapist in 2018.

In addition to chronic pain treatment, she specializes in sex therapy. Mindfulness based relapse prevention and works on film sets as an onset wellness professional. Thank you so much for being here, Vanessa. I'm really excited for this conversation. 

[00:00:42] Vanessa: I'm so excited. I'm happy. We're finally able to make this happen.

[00:00:45] Grace: I know. Right. We've connected a few times and I'm really excited for the more upcoming things that we have to do together. so first let's introduce yourself. Tell me a little bit about you, tell our listeners, how you came to be a therapist who specializes in chronic pain. 

[00:00:59] Vanessa: Yeah, so gosh, I have been at the pain psychology center now for about 6 years when I 1st started.

I really didn't intend for this path to be where my career went. I was initially planning on going into a program for mindfulness based relapse prevention. Where if you, if anybody wants to go down a hole of looking into what that is, it's actually quite similar to PRT. In fact, they have a practice called urge surfing.

That is somatic tracking. So 

[00:01:34] Speaker 3: it's 

[00:01:34] Vanessa: interesting that I ended up coming into this work because it was already familiar to me. I just didn't know it. Very fascinating area, but I was actually going into a Ph. D. For that work, and I was at my graduate school graduation and miserable and in a lot of pain and super sick and just wanted it to be over so I can get on to the next thing.

And that's kind of when I knew that I don't think this is how you're supposed to start a or a career. I think that I'm supposed to enjoy where I'm at and I'm not. I was just constantly upset and never felt like it was enough and kind of running on all 4 cylinders. And that's when I decided to defer on a P.

H. D. and just take a step back. I was a nanny at the time. I still see him once a week. He's my favorite person, but I just decided to really focus on him and just slowing down a little bit and. Figuring out what direction I wanted to go into and a former supervisor of mine during my practicum, who I think was really desperate to help me because she saw how bad I was struggling, had so many different chronic pain flare ups during my time in my practicum and I think she felt really helpless to.

And so she decided to reach out to me and say, I really think that you should apply for a position with Alan Gordon at the pain psychology center. She said, I went to a talk where he was there kind of talking about the work of pain, reprocessing. And at 1st, I thought she was just saying, like, just, you just go do this work.

And my mind was like, oh, I'm going to apply for this job. And she said, but also, like, yeah. Apply it to yourself and of course, I didn't hear that and I was like, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm just going to go do this work. But then the more that I learned about pain reprocessing work, it really started to sink in that.

It applies to me. And so when I started this work in 2018, I was doing it both personally and professionally. So it, it really challenged this imposter syndrome. Part of me that I think is really common, and those of us that experience chronic pain and are very type a, as we can often feel like such an imposter in our lives.

And gosh, did I struggle with that in my 1st. 5 and a half years, but we are in a good place now where it's been a long journey. a lot of hurdles, a lot of learning, a lot of really feeling like I. Deserve to be. Where I am at and being really patient with any kind of extinction burst along the way. So I'm just.

I'm just grateful to have kind of fallen into this work unintentionally thinking that I was gonna come here and just be the best at my job, not realizing that I needed to do a lot of learning about myself. 

[00:04:37] Grace: We actually have similar timelines and journeys because my chronic pain was the 

[00:04:45] Speaker 3: worst. I didn't 

[00:04:46] Grace: understand it.

And yeah, went down the whole rabbit hole. so that's interesting. And, and yeah, I mean, especially the fact that you had an idea, you were like, okay, this is not, this is not how maybe life is supposed to be. This is not how I want my career to be. You know, you had some kind of knowing that this. It wasn't right.

This is not, this can't be right for, this can't be your body forever. This can't be your experience forever. Like there was some intuition there. Is that right? 

[00:05:15] Vanessa: Absolutely. It was, it was exactly that. I just had this feeling at graduation. My first thought was, I just want to get this over with. I want to go celebrate for other, for other people.

And I just want to be done. I'm not into this. And at that moment, I thought, there's no way that this is normal. I don't think this is how I'm supposed to be living my life. And I spoke to a mentor of mine, my grandfather. And he said, you, you need to pause, like you need to not enter into a PhD like this.

And gosh, that was a hard decision, but yes, I am right there with you. Grad school was the worst and it was just so intuitive, I guess, to feel like there's something wrong. I, I, I remember 

[00:06:08] Grace: having a similar feeling of, okay, I don't know what's going to change or how, but I can't live my life. The rest of my life like this.

I'm acting like I'm 80 years old and I'm in pain and miserable. I didn't know what the future held or how to get out of it, but thankfully found. therapy in a different way. so yeah, yeah. Well, okay. So then actually, can you explain to our listeners exactly what pain reprocessing therapy is? What's the pain psychology center.

[00:06:38] Vanessa: Yeah. So the pain psychology center, is. A large group practice that was founded, I believe in 2014 and at the pain psychology center, pain, reprocessing therapy was created. Okay. The founder of pain reprocessing therapy and the pain psychology center is Alan Gordon and the goal of the acronym is PRT.

So, the goal of PR team is. To recognize that the symptoms that we feel in our body are coming from a part of our brain, whose job it is to send us the signals in the 1st place. So that we know to pay attention to whether or not we're in danger. But it's understanding that sometimes our brain doesn't always get it right.

And sometimes our brain gets stuck in this on switch. And PRT focuses on recognizing that after a certain amount of time, the brain starts to build these neural pathways of chronic pain that are behaviors, beliefs of chronic pain, conditioned responses, what we call avoidant behaviors, everything that we do to stop, ignore power through the pain.

And we build this whole little world in this neural pathway of how we respond to pain. And what our relationship is, like, with the pain and aims at on learning that neural pathway that keeps you stuck to provide pain reduction or eradication. It uses work that aims at tending to the nervous system on more of a moment to moment basis.

So that the system that's actually sending you pain signals to your body. Gets addressed. Typically, we're addressing our body, the aftermath of a pain signal, but pain reprocessing therapy is getting a jumpstart and saying, well, let's address the source of the pain signal. 

[00:08:37] Grace: Yeah, so then when people say rewiring your brain, that's.

That's what you're saying, right? Changing those neural pathways, creating new neural pathways so that there's more safety instead of danger signals. 

[00:08:50] Vanessa: Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. And it sounds so strange to think that we can do that in therapy, but if you think about it, therapy involves soothing your nervous system.

That's what any therapy is. It's rewiring, whether it's cognitive distortions. Whether it's reprocessing and building a different relationship with past trauma. Right, whether it's understanding behaviors that keep us stuck. All of therapy is aimed at tending and soothing the nervous system. So that's why we as therapists can talk about pain in our bodies in this way.

Is because therapy is based on soothing the nervous system and as is PRT, 

[00:09:37] Grace: it's a radical shift, right? So, when we're talking about this, I recognize you and I are both very versed in it, but I remember back to when I'm learning about this, I mean, it's a full 180 of how we see pain, physical ailments, health.

Right. Because like you said, usually we're addressing it from the physical body based side, which is just the symptom, but the root to the underlying, yeah, it's happening in the nervous system and the brain. So it takes some time to make that click to help you people really understand, Oh, okay. Get it. You know, 

[00:10:11] Vanessa: I tell clients all the time, especially when they get frustrated with themselves, They'll say something like, Oh, you said that last week and I don't know why I didn't do it this week because it's really counterintuitive.

It's not instinctual. It's more instinctual for you to go. What's wrong with my body? And like, that kind of a response. It's really counterintuitive to take this other approach, but it doesn't mean it can't be learned. It just means it's going to take time to really let it sink in because you may understand this work logically, but to understand it emotionally, that's an entirely different process.

[00:10:51] Grace: Yes. And one that as humans, we're not really taught in the first place how to pay attention to our emotions. And so as a whole learning process around that as well, and learning how to do it in a way that we feel safe, that our bodies, our brains, our nervous systems feel safe. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely.

So we've mentioned safety a few times, like, can you help us understand what it means to create messages of safety? Why? That's so important. 

[00:11:19] Vanessa: Yeah, absolutely. So. Messages of safety come from a place of just what the aim of PRT is soothing your nervous system, tending to your nervous system on more of a moment to moment basis.

Messages of safety come from a place of almost like being able to provide yourself a sense of reassurance, a new narrative, a part of rewiring that neural pathway. And they're important because we need something to tell ourselves when we're starting to panic. We need something to tell ourselves when we need a reminder about what's really going on.

We need something that reminds us that this sensation is not the whole story of what's going on. And by having messages of safety, it really allows us to write a new narrative. One that has a different relationship with the sensations in their body. Something that I have above my desk, actually, and it's been here for years.

Is it's okay to not be okay and I put that there as my message of safety because we're therapists and sometimes when you're having a bad day, it makes you feel like. It's so wrong because you are trying to help other people feel better and I have to always remind myself and humble myself that I am human 1st and foremost, and I'm going to have bad days.

Even when I'm trying to help other people reduce their bad days and that's okay. So that's my message of safety. And that's been a part of my work probably since I started even before PRT. So that is a kind of staple reminder that I am trying to rewrite my narrative, the narrative of imposter syndrome and type a chronic pain that says this is not okay.

And you have to power through. And if this is here, then you're in danger. 

[00:13:18] Grace: Thank you for saying that because that's a good reminder for me to my perfectionistic mind will go to know you. Yeah, you have to be perfect and your mood and your health because yeah, you're helping others and you talk about it and you teach it.

Right? Yeah. There's a lot of pressure. My nervous system and brain puts on me. It's helpful to hear that. Yeah, and I'm sure for anyone listening to this, they can probably resonate as well because that's such a hard concept therapist or not. Right? We're taught that we have to be a certain way or have to be on top of everything and we have to keep doing and being better.

And it's a lot of pressure. It's exhausting. 

[00:14:00] Vanessa: It really is and I think messages of safety or something that we all provide to it to ourselves or to clients in any kind of scenario. I know I have clients that have faced really scary, scary diagnosis and things in their life that are completely outside of neuroplastic pain symptoms.

Loss and grief and so many different areas that like, that kind of message or a safety message that works for them is really applicable. I know that, About 3 years ago, maybe my partner and I, we ride motorcycles and 3 years ago we were hit by a car while on our motorcycle together. I have my own motorcycle, but we were sharing 1.

So I was a passenger and we were hit by a car and we flipped and flew like, 30 feet and loss of injuries. So grateful that we were able to ultimately stand up and walk away, but with not without injury and the fear of. Oh, my gosh, what is this going to lead to? What kind of long road is this going to look like?

And my grandmother has worked in insurance my whole life. So I know that these processes can take a very long time. And I was just like. Immediately starting to feel all of that and my brain was going a million miles a minute and I just remember in the uncertainty of everything, just reminding myself, it's, it's okay to not be.

Okay. I don't really know what this is going to look like, but I think we'll be okay. And we stood up and walked away. And if I'm not, okay, I have support or personal problem. boundaries to remind myself to not power through and it's okay to pause. So I truly believe that these safety messages really apply to every single area of our life.

Not just with chronic pain, but they're absolutely imperative in this journey with chronic pain and symptoms. 

[00:16:08] Grace: Yeah, because as I'm hearing you talk, I mean, what I'm thinking is so much of our suffering and pain comes from a lot of fear. Right? We haven't talked about that, but that's a part of PRT understanding that and.

So when there's so much fear, we forget that there's tools that we can use to help ourselves or just the, just the idea that it's okay not to be okay. Right. That's a tool. And so I think this work gives us the foundation, the toolkit, the support, whether it's people, whether it's messages, you know, actual skills be able to do that.

And so all I like how you say, you know, everything is. Anything can be a safety net a safety tool in a way just to help soothing. That's a whole idea of soothing your brain, soothing your nervous system. 

[00:16:55] Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:16:58] Grace: you've talked about before how safety can be a privilege. So can you share what that means exactly?

Especially when we're talking about anything can be safety. So then. Yeah. And like, so what does that mean? 

[00:17:13] Vanessa: This topic is so important to me for many different reasons. It's really easy to read someone's book, Alan's book, the way out. It's really easy to read that book and really easy to listen to a podcast and really easy to absorb this information.

Like, I was mentioning earlier logically and feel like it makes sense and say things like, I'm safe. I'm safe. I'm safe. Understand that and and maybe even believe it logically. But sometimes believing that emotionally and actually making that work for you on an emotional level, or where you're at in your life.

It can be really hard and that's sometimes really hard for us to wrap our minds around. I have a client who is very successful and in, in an above 50 years old age bracket and just with their experience and life. And their age and their logical functioning and their great success, they get very confused understanding why I'm safe.

I'm safe. I'm safe. Doesn't work for them. And it's because. They grew up with the foundation that said, you are chronically unsafe. And nothing is quiet and calm. You can't trust yourself, you can't trust your caretakers. You can't trust that you're going to be safe trying to get home. They grew up in a way that said you have to constantly be on high alert, but their logical brains like, yeah, but I'm not there anymore.

I'm here and I've done all these great things and I'm super successful. But they don't understand their nervous system is the thing that's sending them those signals and their nervous systems foundational learning said, I am unsafe. And so I say safety is a privilege because not all of us have the privilege of saying I'm safe and actually believing it and feeling it in our bodies.

And so we have to recognize that if that's not something that we grew up with, if you can't easily identify. A person, a home and environment that felt consistently safe. And was able to hold you when you felt dysregulated, then you might have a hard time actually making that message work and it's going to be much more important.

In your work to be honest with yourself and honest with that journey and honoring the fact that we're tending to our younger self by recognizing. Well, I don't even know what that means. And by creating a new found sense of safety and reassurance, something that feels more authentic to you, something that feels like it really relates with you, rather than trying to make I'm safe.

I'm safe. I'm safe work for you when that's not. Your authentic, intentional message. 

[00:20:20] Grace: Yeah, it's like, I mean, the idea that someone can have everything outside of themselves environmentally look safe, right? Look successful, look safe. That's always a little bit confusing to people. So, I can totally understand how your internal because our internal bodies are different.

Our nervous systems perceive things differently. Right? Yeah. So, then in that example, how would someone like that find safety in their system? 

[00:20:50] Vanessa: What we can start with is just by recognizing. What started to feel unsafe at what point what things can we label throughout our life? That we can say without a doubt, I felt really unsafe just unpacking that and taking time to understand Dr.

David Clark, who is the president of the P. P. D. A. that is the psychophysiologic disorder association. Think about that word as I say it. He's incredible. He's a gastroenterologist that specializes in this work and he mentions something or he has a question actually for his patients that I think is so profound and so unique to hear from a physician and the question that he asks his clients is if you were a butterfly on the wall in the house in which you were growing up in.

And you saw a child that you love going through what you went through. How would that make you feel? And it's such a powerful question that it can often be so hard to actually sit in that because automatically you might think about your children or your nanny kid, or, you know, a little sibling or just some child that you deeply care about.

And you would do everything within your power to prevent them ever having to go through what you went through. But you didn't have anybody to step in and protect you in that way. It can be really hard to unpack that and sit in that reality. It's really important to understand the impact of that kind of question and why it's so important to compare a child that you love today to the younger you and imagine if they went through what you went through.

I love that question because it just really poses The opportunity to just take a step back and see, would you want someone else going through what you went through? 

[00:23:06] Grace: And then it helps you probably understand. Okay. You can see that that younger child more objectively, and then probably can help you understand what.

And our child needed more sometimes I know that's a hard question too. Okay. What do I need? I don't know exactly, but I think that's a. That's a process in and of itself, and it's kind of a trial and error. I can imagine that. Maybe someone who from the outside as a child, but they, you know, it looked like they had everything they needed.

They looked like they were safe from the outside, but really more unsafe feelings are that you weren't attuned to your needs, right? You aren't really paid attention to your internal state or like, seen for really who you are. Those are examples too, of what someone might need that never got. 

[00:23:57] Speaker 3: And I would 

[00:23:57] Grace: imagine, yeah, that this question is really powerful, and take some time that takes time to understand to go through to process.

But if we're getting at the very core of, yeah, why, why are we dysregulated? Why is our brain on danger? So I love that. 

[00:24:17] Vanessa: I know it's always a really good one to ask. And another few things that he says that I think really helps us understand more about what felt so unsafe, right? And understanding and unpacking that a little bit more is another thing that Dr.

Clark talks about is chronic, unpredictable toxic stress. So he, he didn't develop that someone else did. And I'm the name is leaving me right now. But, it, it, the acronym is cuts, chronic, unpredictable, toxic stress and understanding the impact of cuts and understanding how that could create a foundation of a lack of safety, hyper vigilance, fear of uncertainty, desperately grasping for control, just taking the time to again, really understand, like, how might that have influenced the way that we felt growing up and how might that influence the This, like, hyper vigilance and kind of helicopter parent of a nervous system that you have that's over protecting you because, well, maybe it had to for a long time.

Yeah. And so understanding cuts is really important. And another thing that again, Dr Clark says that I've just really hung on to, like, a lot of his messages have been a lot a part of a lot of the work that I do with my own clients. 1 last thing that he says that. I use with a lot of my own clients is understanding that the traits that make us this type a person, someone who has a really hard time setting boundaries with people and maybe lack of self care people, please are really good at powering through or problem solving.

These are traits that are an example of. A child making the best out of a bad situation. So, these traits that you have being a people pleaser, you probably had to people, please, in order to survive and now you're supposed to just like. Go into romantic relationships and work and, and, you know, dealing with friends and not supposed to, you're supposed to like shut it off and not do it anymore.

It doesn't work like that. You keep people pleasing in your life and you don't know how to turn it off. And it feels terrifying to turn it off because the messaging in childhood told you that if you turn off your people pleasing tendencies, somebody is going to hurt you or say something bad to you, or you will be punished, or you be told that you're not good enough.

And that internalized message is so powerful, and it works its way into your life without you recognizing it. And then you live your life that way. But your brain is so incredible that it starts recognizing. I don't like this. This doesn't feel good, but you don't know how to turn it off because you've never stopped being a people pleaser.

And so that kind of, like, dichotomy really messes with us and so a big part of this work again. Is understanding initially what contributed to the lack of safety and what did that look like and how might the traits that you have now be a result of a child making the best out of a bad situation. 

[00:27:45] Grace: Yeah, that's so powerful and understanding those traits and characteristics.

It's something that, yeah, when I'm working with people, as we start to uncover, it's a lot of those aha moments like, 

[00:27:56] Speaker 3: oh, 

[00:27:58] Grace: I had no idea those traits were, you know, contributing. 1 to my pain, but also just understanding why they're even there, you know, when you're going through something that you don't know how to handle, especially if it as a child, you want to control something because you feel out of control and those mechanisms like people pleasing, rigid thinking, you know, feeling anxious, right or wrong, it helps us feel more in control.

But, yeah, over time, they don't help us, actually, more often than not, they create more fear. Yeah. Oh, that's powerful. 

[00:28:33] Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah. And it really can allow us to get started with. Well, what do you think that you needed to hear and we might not have the quick answer for that. It might take time to develop that a little bit, but by unpacking it and discovering what it is that you did receive, it helps us understand what you might needed to what you might have needed to hear.

Yeah, right. And there's this, this exercise that I do with my own clients that can help us shift towards making our own authentic messages of safety. 1, that we were not privileged to have. And it's this lost child in the department store kind of exercise. Where I ask a client and now I did steal this from Alan.

I will say that I heard him say it once and I was like, I like that. I'm going to grow on it. And so I took his original, expression of this example and then I've kind of grown on it and used it in more elaborative ways with clients. But the way that I started with a client is just lightly asking them to kind of imagine, like you have a couple of hours to yourself or the day to yourself.

If you have kids, someone else is watching your kids and you get to go to target uninterrupted. If anyone has kids and you know what it's like to take your kids to the store, I'm sure it's a lot and how nice it is to just leave them with someone. Be able to go and just wander aimlessly. You don't have to be asked to buy a toy.

None of that. You just get to walk through Target without anyone on you with your Starbucks in your hand. And you get to go to every single aisle and just see if there's anything that you want. Like, this is so cool. It's the epitome of self care, right? So whether you have kids or not, I don't, but I can actually relate to that.

No partner, nobody to bug me, tell me to hurry up, no work, right? All that good stuff. So I'll, I'll play it really lightly in the beginning like this with the client based on how I know who they are and if I know that they have kids, I'll use that example, right? Cause we can surely relate to that. And just starting by saying, we're just going in your favorite department store.

You get to just walk around aimlessly. It's so nice to be able to look an aisle and aisle. And let's say you decide to stop in the handle aisle. I don't know if they like candles, or if there's something else that we want to choose as your favorite. My client recently was like that Magnolia aisle. I'm like, okay, that's where we're stopping that whole section.

Okay. And so, okay, great. We're stopping there and you're just like taking it all in. Do I need this? Do I want this? I don't need it, but I want it just kind of walking around. But then you have to kind of stop dead in your tracks because you hear a familiar sound. And I don't know what it is, but us as adults, whether you have children or not, you instinctually know when you hear a sound of a child in a state of distress, that kind of feels a little like rattling.

Like, you just know, I don't know how we know, but we know it's instinctual and you realize that it's coming from the next aisle. And so you put the item down that you're contemplating on whether you actually need or not. And you go to the next aisle over and you see this child. And you can tell automatically again, that, like, adult intuition kicks in and, you know, that something's wrong that they're lost.

You see them scanning their environment, crying fingers in their mouth, terrified. There's no parents around. And all these signs within a matter of seconds tell you that something is wrong and I will ask a client, how would you approach this child? So, a client will usually say, I'm like, lower my body and, like, talk really nicely and be like, hey, are you lost?

And my response is, yeah, you wouldn't go up to them and go, what's wrong with you? Why are you lost get on loss? Like, you're being stupid. You would never say that you would lower your body. What? I like to call low and slow, whether you actually do it to someone, or you do it for yourself. Low and slow, lower your body.

So your town, you would talk in a way that's really reassuring. You would ask questions. And then what would you do so a client will typically say, I will ask them if they know their phone number or try to find their parents. I'm like, yeah, you might take them up to that. Intercom thing, I don't know if we still do that these days, but that's what we did when I got lost in Kmart when I was, you know, the intercom and yeah, I call your parents and.

So, you would take them up there and then I ask and what would you do next? Would you just say, okay, you're with the manager like, good luck. Bye. I hope you find your parents and go on your day. Typically people say, no. Like, I would stay like, right, you'd probably be like, wait for a meeting, or you'd give up your whole hour of perusing around just to just for the peace of mind.

Just to know that that child was okay and back with someone. That is what your nervous system needs from you. It needs this moment to moment tending to it needs the slow and slow. It needs you to stick with it all the way through. It needs you to show up in the way that a lost child in an apartment store would need.

And by doing that. Then we can start to learn what it means and what it looks like to take care of our nervous system in this way that we've always needed. And then we can start understanding what our messages of safety are.

[00:34:43] Grace: Wow. I love that. It paints such a wonderful picture because, again, we're stepping outside of ourselves and looking at an example in front of us. It's. You know, similar to, okay, how would you treat a friend? How would you treat someone else? You're not going to treat them the same way that you treat yourself, that you talk to yourself, right?

Yeah. I talked to clients and students all the time about how are you talking to your body, how you're talking to your pain and more often than not in the beginning. Yeah. Pretty mean to myself actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's a wonderful picture of how to soothing or how to be more soothing to ourselves.

[00:35:24] Vanessa: Absolutely. Yeah. And sometimes we just. Don't know nobody ever taught us, or we don't know what that looks like. we learned that you're supposed to do that in different ways. Like, just ignore it, right? Just power through it. It's not a big deal. It's not important. But what we're doing is saying it's very important.

It's the whole. Start of us, I'm learning these neural pathways that have kept you stuck. 

[00:35:54] Grace: Oh, yeah, it is so important. It is so often overlooked, but it changes the, the nature of how we relate to ourselves, which changes so much. It's how our brain operates, right? If we can provide a safe nurturing, I think of like a, grounding for a garden, right?

If we can provide that soil, it's really rich and, and subtle and, and watered regularly. Things can grow, but if it's dry and not really tended to, nothing's really going to grow or change. So our normal pathways aren't going to change. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I 

[00:36:32] Vanessa: have this experience that I will share with clients sometimes if it feels appropriate or, you know, like, I feel like they're open to it just to provide some insight some a very transparent person and just to provide some insight on, like, what this could really actually look like in real time and maybe even inside them to think about their own personal example.

But for me, I grew up in a home that was really unsafe. It was really violent. We ended up actually being removed from the home and we were placed in foster care and that was our next journey. But for me, I grew up in a home where bad things happened at night. And understandably, because it's just sometimes the way that our nervous systems work and our body clock works.

I had to go to the bathroom. Every night, like, 3 or 4 in the morning, and as a child, the bathroom door felt like. Light years away, but when I really think about it, even though we moved a lot, it was still always no more than maybe 2 doors down, but it felt really far. And so I would wake up at this time. I would have to go to the bathroom.

I would always try to get my sister to get up with me, but she literally sleeps like a rock. She could not be bothered. And sometimes there would be people up and around. There would be chaos at that time, and sometimes there wasn't. But every single night, probably as early as I can remember, maybe 6, 7, I think maybe 8.

I don't know. Up until I was 20 years old, I would get up in the middle of the night and have to go to the bathroom. I would get to my bedroom door and hype myself up on the other side of the bedroom door and I would open the door and run as fast as I could down the hallway and get to the bathroom and close the door and stand there for maybe 10, 15 seconds.

To make sure that there wasn't anybody that had followed me on the other side of the bathroom door now to wait and listen, then I would tiptoe to the toilet, go to the bathroom, but I always felt like it was too loud. So hold it in a little bit and wait and then start to go a little bit more. It's no wonder that I've developed chronic pelvic floor pain as 1 of my 10 symptoms.

but then I would try to flush the toilet. It was too loud. I try to wash my hands and would do it like just under trickling water and then hype myself up on the other side of the bathroom door and then run back to my bedroom as fast as I could close the door, got under the covers and kind of just fell asleep like that for most of my life.

And sometimes there was somebody that would wake up and, and react to my panic, in not a helpful way. And sometimes there wasn't. But I have asked myself in my own kind of healing. Gosh, what would it have been like if there was an adult there that had recognized? I was feeling that way and was able to talk about it with me and to ask me why I was so afraid and maybe to teach me.

To slow down walking down the dark hallway and though that would feel so scary if there was an adult there that was like, I got you. I'm here. Nothing bad is going to happen. Let's just hold hands and walk a little bit slower. And maybe make a little bit of noise and take some deep breaths and try not to fall asleep under the blankets and like, learning that this could actually be safe.

What that would have done. Now, thankfully, I learned this a little bit down the way by the help of my partner and therapy, where there was a lot of work done and recognizing that I'm still reinforcing that I'm unsafe and certainly. Obviously, it was very unsafe during during certain times, but that I might be able to prioritize my own authentic messages.

Like. We are not in that house anymore. Those people are not here. This is your house. This, this is your life. This is your newfound sense of safety and stability, right? Those were my messages. Every time that I would get up and I would feel this urgency, even at 20, 21 years old, would want to run to the bathroom and when I lived alone, when I was 17, I judged myself.

I would say like, it's stupid that you're so afraid of the dark. What I learned throughout time and what I really practiced later on in my healing and what my partner helped me practice. Is to slow down to do the work that I wish I would have done a little earlier on and instead of running to recognize this is our home.

It's a similar pattern, but it's a new environment. You are safe now, not saying I'm safe. You are safe now. My brain doesn't feel safe and my body doesn't feel safe. But if I remind myself, but right in this home, you're safe. Right? And if I'm visiting family, and I feel a familiar sensation, oh, it's because I wasn't safe here before.

Right? Those are messages of safety that we can prioritize. Repeating to ourselves so that we feel validated and seen and so that we can show up for ourselves in the way that we needed 

[00:42:05] Grace: the more when you're talking about slowing down 1st of all, to help ourselves feel safe. It's almost like if. Yes, we can learn the tools to feel safe, but if we aren't for doing it in a hurried rushed way, and we aren't allowing ourselves to slow down and implement and attune to ourselves, it's kind of hard.

So I love that you brought that up. I think actually I have a whole episode on it, previously and I'll link below to about the practice of slowing down and why that's so important. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that example. It's a powerful example. 

[00:42:39] Speaker 3: And, 

[00:42:43] Grace: you know, I think that when we have these examples. It paints a really great picture of okay, especially we're talking about child or child self.

That's where so much so much of this is rooted. Yes, we have experiences along the way in life, right? They can create danger and trauma. but really at the core, yeah, we're looking at. Okay. How did that little that little person that little self. Our, how are they treated? How did we treat ourselves? How did we learn to react or non react?

We need that, that attunement to explore what we didn't get. So, thanks for sharing that. 

[00:43:19] Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah. I think this conversation definitely warrants acknowledging, like, sometimes right now in our lives, we're not safe. We're not safe because of. The body that we're born into, and the way that society treats us, we're not safe because of the way that we, the way that other people, like, for some reason, interpret us and respond to us.

We know that us as women, we're taught to be a little bit more hyper vigilant about our surroundings and that creates a consistent sense of unease. Right and we know that there's a variety of ways in our current life that we cannot feel safe. It can also be at a job, a difficult boss, or just a high stakes work stress environment where there's no permission to slow down or you actually get, you don't get rewarded for taking care of yourself.

You get rewarded for burning yourself out. We might feel unsafe in a variety of different ways in a relationship with our friend group. There's so many different ways in which that may be reappearing. So, it's also important as we go back to the past to come back where we're at now and go, what is our life like now?

Now, who around us anchors us if anyone at all, what is our self care routine? Like, do we have things that we feel like we can ground ourselves in that feel very anchoring. Right and we can understand, like, how to apply that same perspective into our present day life. Because a lot of the times, actually, every time your nervous system is working very well.

In fact, it works too well. And sometimes it's working way too hard to try to keep you safe. And we need to take a 2nd to really understand what it's trying to tell us. Are there things that I need to change my life that are no longer serving me that I need to let go of, right? Or that I need to set boundaries with again to refer back to him.

Dr. Clark talks about a trigger being interacting with your ACE perpetrators and ACE is adverse childhood experiences. So if there's somebody, a perpetrator from your childhood that contributed to your adverse experiences, and we continue to interact with them without boundaries. We're going to have a hard time feeling safe now because our life might look very similar to how it did growing up.

[00:45:44] Grace: Or even a new partner that reminds us how similar traits, right? Absolutely. like you're saying, relationships, work environments, that lifestyle shift, like looking at our lifestyle and our environment and what's going on is huge, huge piece, I believe is is working through. PRT and in general healing on this kind of level, I share a lot about how I made huge strides after grad school and really decreased most of my chronic pain.

And then I did get into a relationship that. Yeah, my nervous system totally went into danger mode and I had to reorient of, okay, how is this affecting me now and what kind of symptoms, how's my, how's my body talking to me? It talked very loudly and I didn't realize it at first.but now I see, oh yeah, I was in a similar environment that was really a danger signal to my nervous system because it mimicked a childlike, you know, environment.

So, yeah, a lot of awareness here and then a lot of understanding about how to create that safety. Yeah, is there anything else that you feel like is important to say around understanding how to create safety? Anything else you want people to know? 

[00:47:01] Vanessa: Yeah, I think that in the process of trying to create safety, we have to understand that there's a bigger story than what's physically going on.

I always say this, it's not easy, but easier make difference not easy, easier to assume that the sensation is the story. It's much again, much more intuitive, familiar. Easier to assume that this sensation is just it. And if we assign a task or a solution to the sensation that it should go away. And so we lower our tolerance to ride that wave.

When the sensation is here, we start to work against our nervous system. Instead of with it, we start to constantly try to crawl out of our bodies instead of dropping in. And what that does is it continues to reinforce that you're in danger. And you're unsafe what I ask clients to do is to understand that through our work, we're trying to paint a picture of how the sensation is not the whole story of what is going on.

We're trying to. Slow down and get to know it before we make it go away so that in the event that it comes up again, you can authentically reassure yourself that you know what this is. And we're trying to really look at the full picture here so that we give ourselves permission instead of the urgency to look at a sensation through 1 lens to drop into our bodies and take a step back and look at the full picture before we assume that this is a result that there's something wrong.

All right, that's the part of you that wants to survive and it works so well, but you might not always need that part on when you feel a sensation in your body. We're trying to get the whole story of what's going on. We're trying to drop into our bodies. Practice those techniques that allow us to slow down with our breath, sit further back in a couch or a chair practice, tending to that last child in the department store.

Just take a 2nd, to interrupt yourself from assuming that this sensation is labeled as bad. And just take that little step back and understand it more from a place of compassion, patience. Intending to yourself on more of a moment to moment basis

[00:49:48] Grace: when we're able to do that. It sounds like there's a recognizing that the sensation is not the whole picture. I think it's a huge shift to kind of, we were saying it's a big shift to understand this whole idea or exactly what's going on. But yeah, when we can, then it actually release some of the pressure.

Of whatever that sensation is, right? It's not the whole picture. So we can help ourselves even more, which that's powerful too. Then there's that empowerment of, Oh, okay. Might not know right off the bat what's going on, but let me, let me use my tools, learn a little bit more, pay attention and help myself teach.

Thanks. Okay. All right, 1 last question that I like to ask everyone that comes on here, just kind of a fun 1. What are you enjoying right now? Most in your healing wellness journey, it could be anything from a new book to a recipe to a skill. Anything. 

[00:50:44] Vanessa: Oh, my gosh. I, this is probably like, it's Wednesday and this is probably the 10th time that I've talked about this because I'm that obsessed.

Stop it. Okay. There is a book. That a lot of people might know about, but may or may not have read, it has nothing to do with self care PRT. And I love that. Don't get me wrong. I love this work, but I do think it's possible to over immerse yourself in it and try to understand it logically and work and try to get it in there.

And we need to. relate to life and our journey a little differently through different stories.have you heard of the book called The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho? I have, yes, 

[00:51:25] Speaker 3: I 

[00:51:29] Vanessa: was looking for it. I thought I had it here, but I think I left it by my bed. if you don't know what it's about, there's the back story of it that I think is just as powerful as the book that itself.

So, 1st of all, the alchemist is the story about a sheep herder. I forget what region, but a couple of hours, out of Egypt. So, in in that region of the world. It's about a sheepherder who just has a, has a drive internally to want more, but not sure how to get there. And he's been, he's young and he's gotten so good at his job as a sheepherder and his young life, but he just, he is just looking for more.

And he comes across a man that ends up being a king. And the king tells him the boy, the sheep herder, that, you need to search for your personal treasure and you need to find what it is in life that drives you to something greater and look for omens along the way. And, whether it be you, whether you believe in omens or not, the storyline is actually just really beautiful and such a good read.

and so this book is essentially about this sheepherder going completely against the grain. By challenging this parts of himself that have a really hard time moving forward when something hasn't gone right, or he's seemingly lost everything, or he seems to have found someone worth stopping his journey for, and there's these little omens along the way that is saying, trust the uncertainty.

You are going to be okay.there's this part of him that wants so badly to go back to the familiar thing in his life, speaking the language of being a sheep herder. And even then there's this drive in him where he's like, I don't think that I'm supposed to go back to what is familiar. I think I'm supposed to be uncertain.

And keep going, and it's this beautiful book. I'm terrified to end it. I literally have a 20 pages lesson left and I keep putting it off because I don't want to be without it. But the story of the author is just like the book where he had this book published. It wasn't selling the publisher dropped him.

And so he was devastated and not sure what to do and he's writing a bunch of other books that weren't getting a lot of attention and was just feeling like he kind of flopped as an author. But then all of a sudden, like, almost a couple decades later, a couple decades, Bill Clinton was seen in a picture holding this book.

And then Madonna spoke about the book in a Vogue article. And it's now translated 25 years later in 90 different languages. And is like one of the highest selling books. And it's like, I get chills just talking about it. 'cause it literally is the story of the sheep murder. And I was just, oh, 

[00:54:17] Grace: oh my goodness.

I, okay, so I act, I do this a lot. I actually have the book. I haven't read it, but now I'm going to for, 

[00:54:26] Vanessa: and I didn't know that backstory. Oh, I love that. It's so good. It's when you know that story about the book, you're like, oh my gosh. This is true. Like, everything takes time and everything is a journey.

And even when it feels like everything's falling apart, it's not. It's a part of it. And I know it sucks to feel that and to go through it, but. You're not supposed to be in control every step of the way and it's literally the story of the journey of the book and the story in the book. So it's. So good.

There are so many pockets in there that I even find myself referencing back to my clients. Like when I read last night of like the, when the heart anticipates suffering, that is so much worse than the suffering itself. Like, you have to stop trying to protect your heart from suffering.

It's going to suffer. But you can handle it essentially, and it doesn't mean that you need to go back to what is familiar. It means that you need to learn to be comfortable and the uncertainty and trust the journey ahead. It truly is something I use a lot in sessions with clients, and it's such a good read.

Oh, 

[00:55:33] Grace: that that that I did the lesson in that understanding that is. I think probably I would assume most therapists is what we talk about the most because that is so important in life. No matter what you're coming to what you're dealing with. It's so huge because we feel like we can't, we have to either be perfect or we have our life has to go a certain way has to be on a certain path.

And that's just. It's not life. It doesn't always work the way we think it's going to. 

[00:56:00] Vanessa: It does not. 

[00:56:01] Grace: Yeah. Ugh. Yeah. That could be a whole other episode. We could talk all about that. We can book club it. Let's both read it. Yeah. And then we'll have we book Club The Alchemist. Love it. Okay. Okay.thank you Vanessa.

This is a really wonderful episode and I know, I know, our listeners are really going to get a lot from it, so I really appreciate you coming on here. Of course. Thanks for having me. You're welcome