It's a really different way of looking at all of this. And I'd like for us to just start out with defining some of the stuff from the neuro somatic perspective, complex trauma and neurodivergent so that we can really look at where these identities and these experiences overlap more broadly.
Welcome to Trauma Rewire, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous system, how trauma lives in the body, and what you can do to heal. I'm Elizabeth Christoff, founder of brainbase.com, an online community where we use applied neuroscience and somatics to increase resilience, three pattern stress response, and really create meaningful change. And I'm also the founder of the neuro somatic intelligence coaching certification course, which is an ICF accredited course with therapists and coaches that teaches you to bridge the gap between cognitive frameworks and somatics.
by working with the nervous system. And I'm your co-host, Jennifer Wallace. I'm a neuro somatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide. And I work through NSI and psychedelic healing to help people integrate their messages and bring them those messages into the body safely, to rewire for new pathways and really a new life. And in our episode on complex trauma impacts brain development, we define complex trauma as when a series of events
leaves the brain and the nervous system with an inability to regulate and integrate into the present moment. And we talked about it as the water that we swim in, either during development or maybe during a period of prolonged stress, especially in the context of relationships, and how this begins to shape.
our nervous system, how we take in information about the world around us and the world inside of us. And then how that in turn influences how our brain interprets that information and integrates it. And then that drives our outputs that we experience in our life. Our bodies become more sensitive to perceiving threat that can lead to more chronic stress and long-term outputs like dissociation or freeze or chronic pain and eventually big health issues like autoimmune.
And all of that really stems from living in that constant state of dysregulation and prolonged stress. And as we've been recently looking at neurodivergence, we see that whether this is caused by developmental experiences or it's just a reflection of natural biodiversity, there are a lot of overlaps that neurodivergence involves how our nervous system processes the sensory inputs that are
coming in all of the time about the world around us and then how our brain interprets those inputs and conditions like sensory processing disorder or ADHD, often result in having a hypersensitivity, that sense of threat and stress, and then living in that state can be traumatic because trauma is something that overwhelms the nervous system beyond its ability to positively adapt to stress.
And so when we have sensory processing issues or neurodivergent ways of interpreting and integrating information, navigating the neurotypical world isn't always optimal for our healthiest expression, for living a life that is really in alignment with health and regulation.
And so there's also just this idea of having that experience and it being a little bit traumatic because if we think of trauma as when the intensity of stimulus is such that it overwhelms our nervous system so that our brain and our body can't adapt to that stressor in a healthy way and in an integrated way,
Then that means if you're just even born with a brain and a nervous system that process information differently, but you're living in this neurotypical world that is often overwhelming your nervous system, there's a chronic stress load with that. And so a lot of the outputs can be the same. Mental and physical health outputs as living in a state of chronic stress during development or in your life. And so a lot of the physiological effects can end up being really similar.
I think it really comes down to that, that it's an inability to integrate and regulate into the present moment. And so that's what creates the dissociation, the disconnect, the inability to process, emotions, feelings, thoughts, inability to speak, like it shows up in all kinds of ways. And then it begins to change and alter the way our brain predicts the future as well.
So it doesn't only affect me right now.
It also affects my ability to predict and plan for the future. It's almost like you're looking at the world through a different color lens, right? Like that's what we're going to get to today in this talk is it changes your lens. It changes how you, how you see physically and metaphorically. So it's really important and valuable for me for us all to be talking about this because there's a altered reality that someone with complex trauma lives in a moment to moment basis.
But there's also difficulty preparing and planning for the future. And it kind of just keeps us stuck in this repetitive complex trauma where we can't integrate, we can't regulate, we can't plan appropriately. I don't think any of us live any longer in a neurotypical world. I don't think there's anything such as a neurotypical world at this point.
Yes, to everything that both of you just said and to build upon that, you know, I really think of complex trauma as a fragmentation of self. And that can happen, you know, talking about that, the roads that we have to navigate each day. It's the understanding what's self relevant.
and understanding even the internal emotional life that I'm having, the what's happening as my experience like internally but also externally in the world. And we talk so much about how the brain is wired for threat and how that can change the filtration system. Will that changes my entire experience through life?
It affects learning ability. It affects your emotional regulation. It changes your experience completely in the world and recalling your memories and looking into the future, just like you're saying, is really hard for someone who doesn't understand how to be in their bodies.
right? When you are detaching in all ways, and I think complex trauma, it just has a very disruptive quality to it about it, the way that it just continues to move in through life. And when we're talking about actual brain dysfunction, we are talking about the limitations of the brain being able to communicate with each of those separate parts, like your three major networks. We are talking about
the underdevelopment of areas that are necessary for you to feel like you are doing life in a really well way where you have joy.
The three of us have had many conversations already this season where even in the reframe, I feel like it brings a huge sense of relief. I know to my body and I hope it's happening for you, the listener out there and, you know, connecting the dots between complex trauma and neurodivergence really felt like a missing link for me in my world because fundamentally we know from our conversations that complex trauma does.
alter the way the brain and the nervous system function. And so if complex trauma is reshaping the brain's ability to regulate and process sensory information, it makes an individual more prone to stress and protective responses. And so similarly, neurodivergent affects sensory processing and interpretation.
And that's often people are experiencing heightened insensitivity to stimulus and this persistent state of stress in the body. And it's almost like with both having a neurodivergence and having complex trauma, well I have complex trauma, so I have a neurodivergence.
These intersections present in so many various ways into the tapestry of what it means to be human, whether these present neurologically in a postural way, in an emotional way, in a physical manifestation. I just really want to honor the expression of neurodivergence and that
Wouldn't it be nice if we all lived in a world where we just assumed that people were doing the best that they could versus the mold, the mold that has been just like choking us out of our expression?
So people could not miss out on the magic of what other people offer and the gifts that we have. And that is a really missed opportunity when we have an expectation that we're all the same inside, built the same, wired the same, or don't, that we all don't have a unique expression to share.
So I want to go back to neurodivergence really quick and talk about a basic definition. The way I think of neurodivergence and what the research really seems to support is that a neurodivergent brain is one that has either additional or different connections than what you typically find in a textbook. Okay. And I'm not even going to say them what you typically find in a normal brain because as I just said, I don't think that exists. But what you find in a textbook, what should be there according to the medical world is what they define as neurotypical.
So neurodivergence just means we have more connections or different connections between different brain areas and regions. And here's the thing, all humans, every human baby ever born has thousands more neurological connections than it actually needs.
We're born with tons and tons and tons of connections between different brain areas that are actually going to be pruned away. Just like when you're pruning a tree or a bush and cutting away the parts of the plant that are not necessary or that are kind of running in the wrong direction, our brain prunes itself and dismantles the extra connections that it doesn't find necessary.
But when you take a step back and look at that, you'll, how does it know what's necessary? It's based on what is exposed to. Exposure creates activation of those neural pathways. It's going to keep the ones that it uses. It's going to discard the ones that it doesn't. And then if complex trauma is our inability for our brain and body to respond appropriately to sensory input, to handle those, to adapt, that's actually the word that I'm looking for.
If complex trauma is our inability to repeatedly adapt to a stressor, of course, this kind of makes sense. The complex trauma is a neurodivergence. So we talked in one of our earlier episodes, how growing up with complex trauma changes the way your brain perceives sensory inputs, how it processes threat, how it integrates you into the world and the environment around you.
and how it's now kind of living in this state of high threat hypervigilance. So it will actually keep more connections that make it hypervigilant, that make it more aware, that make it perceive more sensory input and stimulus.
and pick up on things on a sensory level that maybe other people, their brain has decided to discard because it's not that important. But for someone who's repeatedly exposed to stress, their brain from a survival perspective is going to go, I can't discard those neural pathways. I need to be aware of that information so that I can stay safe and stay alive.
As it rewires the nervous system over a period of months and years, it creates what we're calling a neurodivergent brain because it maintains all of those extra connections that are necessary to stay safe and stay alive.
Yeah, and I think in talking about the long-term neurological impacts of trauma, it's kind of at the heart of it, and it's really critical to look at integration and how dissociation, compartmentalization, and repression that caused by trauma can impact our brain integration, just like you were both talking about our sensory information and the integration of that sensory input and the filtration system.
And then also to the integration between the cognitive mind and the limbic system, the emotional center, and the body. And so really exploring those facets of integration I think is going to make for a really interesting conversation. And impaired integration is such a hallmark of the traumatized brain. It disrupts our ability to balance our nervous system. It keeps us in differentiated parts. That's a great place to lead into talking about a little bit what we mean by integration.
from an NSI perspective. And on the neuro side of things, just like integration is my ability to take in, interpret and create appropriate outputs. If we're integrated, we can be present, we can be associated, not dissociated, right? With ourself in the present moment, physical, emotional, intellectual, all staying together in the body, like in the moment.
Think of this as our holistic felt experience, physical, emotional, intellectual, with all of the richness of sensory input to be able to take in all of that at one time. And it makes sense. I understand it. And most importantly, it feels safe.
That's really what high level integration creates. And being able to sense the richness of all of the sensory inputs. But where I think what we're trying to build and help people to create through NSI is an ability to like have that moment.
but have it continue, right? It's not only a moment where the environment is totally controlled and everything is peaceful and everything is already known to be safe. So then I could integrate. It's almost like my own little bubble of safety that I get to take with me wherever I go.
like any environment I find myself in, any place that I'm at, any sensory overwhelm, loudness, bright lights, crazy crowds of people, someone where there's some emotional dissonance between us. And regardless of the environment, I still kind of have this bubble of safety where my nervous system kind of goes, I can handle this, I can integrate all of this, I can stay regulated in all of this.
So that's what we're trying to build and help people to have through all of these NSI tools. Like that's really the intent. Yeah, one of the things Jen and I talk about a lot on here is who is this neurotypical person, right? We're all running around and trying to be something that doesn't exist. And we do live in a modern world that is not conducive for anyone's nervous system help. But I do also think
that there is a difference for some people. All of this is on a spectrum like we always talk about, but for folks with CPTS and neurodivergence, the outputs that they experience can be more intense and it can compound differently from living in a world that it does impact their nervous system differently, right? So for people born with very different ways of processing sensory inputs,
that can be traumatizing in and of itself, was listening to an autism advocate re-emplace, speak about this, and she said that one of the biggest lies that autistic people are told is that their responses to things like not being able to regulate themselves when they make a mistake are just because they're autistic, and that that's not also a trauma response.
And that a lot of those reactions that are coupled with autism are actually trauma responses from living in a society that is not fit for the way that their brain and their nervous system function.
And then the social implications of that, the shame that comes with it, all of that compounds. And in fact, research shows that autistic people are four times more likely to develop PTSD. And yeah, that's partially because their nervous systems are more sensitive to the stress of a traumatic event, but it's also because
Because of the trauma that they experience from society, the shame, the pressure of masking, the way that they have to constantly be changing themselves to fit in and get their social safety needs met. And place talks about how because autistic people are developing in a society that actively shames them for their autistic behavior, they have the continuous experience of same response when they're expressing themselves. And that is CPTS.
is ongoing relational trauma during development. So like in the example of somebody being so dysregulated by making a mistake, there are a lot of rules in society that just don't make sense to an autistic person. And when they try to ask for clarification on that, they're shamed or they're told they're causing trouble because they don't understand the certain social constructs. And then experiencing that over and over and over again really perpetuates the autistic fear of being perceived.
And so she talks about this big dysregulation. When you make a mistake is actually a very quote unquote normal response to a harmful situation. And so again, there's this strong developmental overlap between complex trauma and neurodivergence. And then some of the outputs that neurodivergent people experience this extreme dysregulation in certain contexts.
might not have to do with inherently how they're different, but are trauma responses from growing up in a society where those differences are shamed. And that's traumatizing. There's a bigger threat load there for some people than others, even though the world at large is disregulating for all of us. It does have different impacts for different diagnoses, different identities. I really believe that it's natural for a human to be sensitive.
to the environment, to people, to sounds, to bright things, to like, I think that's just innate part of being a human in this world. And so it's what we're really talking about is when that dial gets really turned up and then it almost becomes finely tuned even to pick up the subtle environmental cues and
We're saying we can turn it down. It's a huge gift, but it can also be a terrible burden, especially like we talk about the insular cortex on here a lot in the insular cortex. It processes these internal sensations and it might become overwhelmed.
through it and it can lead to a really hyperactive stress response. And over time, this can also lead to burnout as the nervous system is continuously taxed internally and dissociation, which we love to talk about on this podcast.
It can occur as a protective mechanism distancing the person from the overwhelming sensory input and emotional experience and the dissociation makes it difficult for people to stay present and connected to a current moment to their bodies and then mirroring the experiences of those with complex trauma. We learn to be, we are shaped by mirroring the very, the waters that someone else is swimming in in their own complex trauma.
And so getting back to vertical integration and developmental trauma, the areas of the brain that creates what you are referring to as really good integration, and what we're describing as being present, mindful, connected, regulated into the present moment in a physical, emotional, cognitive, and relational ways, and that the three areas of the brain are the brainstem, the limbic system, and the prefrontal cortex.
Matt, can you dive into the impact that developmental trauma has on vertical integration and how someone may be experiencing this lack of integration now in their lives? So when we're talking about really good integration, and we kind of describe what that is, being able to bring presence and mindfulness and connection regulation into the present normal, right, a physical, emotional, toddler relational. So in order for that to be working,
All three of these brain areas in this vertical alignment have to be integrated and working together. So the sensory inputs that we receive from vision, auditory, balance, smell, taste, touch, they all start at the brain stem. They don't all start there, but nine out of 10, start at the brain stem. All of them at least start in the old brain, the bottom part of the brain.
And the first thing that's happening when we receive all the sensory inputs is our amygdala primarily is asking the question, am I safe? Is there any immediate threat in the environment real or perceived that I might need to protect myself from or run away from? Those sensory inputs then travel upward and they hit our limbic system, kind of the midbrain area. And the midbrain area is responsible for asking am I loved?
kind of its question and all of these inputs, everything that's happening around us, it's filtering through the lens of that question. And my love is my sense of self-safe, like my personal identity, my relationships, my social standing.
And then finally, as those signals ascend up into the cortex, which is the top part of the brain, it's like the wrinkly part of the brain you see in all the pictures, the cortex's responsibility is kind of to be asking, what can I learn from this situation? But the cortex is also asking that question in both positive and negative interactions with other people.
Like if I ask a question or say something and then somebody responds poorly, well, what my cortex can learn is don't ask that question to that person. On the other hand, if it reaches out to a friend because I need some support and that person's highly generous and caring with their time and they give me some support, my cortex learns that somebody that I can trust and rely on.
So it's not just didactic learning or like informational learning, it's also experiential and relational learning that our cortex does in every moment of the day, right? So for us to fully integrate all parts of ourselves with the environment and other people, all three of those systems have to be working together. That's what we mean by vertical integration.
where that breaks down is if either the brainstem and the old grain sense that I'm not safe, they will short-circuit the system. They're gonna start to enact protective mechanisms.
The fight or flight is an example of that. Freeze is an example of that. But that old brain can also enact things like anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, physical pain, migraines and headaches, muscle weakness, dizziness, vertigo, all kinds of stuff.
which we view those all as like these big protective behaviors or protective mechanisms, but also as like an action signal, right? So if the old brain perceives a high threat, it's going to short circuit and the other two brain areas are not going to get to work and integrate in that moment. The old brain takes over. We call that amygdala hijacking. That's the term for that.
If, however, if the old brain, everything seems safe from a physical survival perspective, but the limbic system perceives a threat, remember its question was, am I loved? If it goes, whoa, I'm not feeling loved or I'm feeling attacked, then it's going to engage similar protective mechanisms from the limbic emotional perspective.
that might mean feel an excessive amount of emotions, like the anger or the grief, or we might lash out, we might get really defensive, we might become really stubborn, like they'll tell me what to do. All kinds of these like, you might call them emotional and psychological reactions, they can do occur. And they really serve the same purpose, but just on an emotional level, they keep me safe,
from whoever might be attacking me. They protect my sense of self, my identity, my ego, and they also serve my own survival as a signal to myself that I should get out of the environment as quickly as possible. I should shut this down because I need to run away or I need to emotionally say, attack them so they run away, and then it can be out of the situation.
So the old brain could short circuit intake over. That's amygdala hijacking. The limbic system could short circuit the whole thing and take over. That's called limbic escape. A good cortex should be in control. But when we have these big protective mechanisms that show up, it's like the limbic system has escaped the control of the cortical brain. Our frontal lobe is no longer running the show.
Now I'm running on an emotional driver or emotional pattern that's going to protect me and keep me safe, but it has very little, if any, cognitive thought involved, right? So that's an overview of this vertical integration idea and then how it can be derailed either by a physical threat
the old brain identifies or by an emotional threat that the limbic system identifies, and then we're in a whole nother world at that point.
I think it's one of the most important things that we do at brain-based wellness and in the NSI program is, you know, coming up with tools to aid and vertical integration. And I think when you're doing that, you really have to work with all of those systems. And that is what has been most beneficial for me. So we have a process for
deconstructing our cognitive beliefs, looking at the beliefs that evolved and came because of our trauma, the protective beliefs, the limiting beliefs, and really looking at those from a cognitive stance. And then we also have to work with the emotions to affect the limbic system. And so we develop different ways to process emotions, to regulate emotions, to
move emotions through the body safely in a minimum effective dose way, and then also to work with the body, right, addressing all of those three components, especially the trauma patterns, the compensatory movements that are held in the body and the tension, allowing the body to release and bringing all of those things together, either through intentional
stimulus inputs that create a new experience or combining the inputs with the cognitive work with the emotional work so that we're looking at it from all sides, we're deconstructing the beliefs, we have tools for processing the emotions, and we're working with the body. And then, again, remembering that when I talk about we're working with the body for trauma resolution, it's really the primitive reflexes, the trauma reflexes, the protective postures, how you stand, how you walk,
how much you're bracing, your muscle tension, and so working to repattern those with the thoughts, with the beliefs, and with the emotions, is really powerful for vertical integration. Absolutely, and I mean, we've talked so much like it'd be hard to know what's really presenting with complex trauma. There's like end neurodivergence, there's no
clear distinguishing between the two and the outputs of my ADHD that could have me in outputs of hyperactivity or difficulty focusing, leading me to frustration and stress can also overlap with trauma responses in my body that is constantly on high alert and constantly hyper vigilant and interpreting stimulus as threats.
and maybe pushing me into a fight or bite response. And then like similarly, my outputs related to depression or anxiety often intersect with those from ADHD and trauma. So with depression, I might experience fatigue, brain fog and lack of motivation, which can also be seen in ADHD and in trauma responses. And so anxiety that could look like panic attacks, muscle tension and hyper vigilance.
That's common in both ADHD and trauma. And so these overlapping outputs indicate that the root cause is often sensory processing issues. And so whether due to neurodivergence or trauma, my brain struggles to process sensory information accurately.
And that leads to heightened stress and protective responses. So recognizing these overlaps just really helps me understand my thresholds. It helps me understand that my outputs are not isolated issues, but interconnected responses to sensory processing challenges. And that lifts a huge weight off of my body.
One of the great joys of my life is connecting with the community. That's in the neuro somatic intelligence coaching certification. It's so diverse. It's international. It's so many different practitioners taking this work into many different fields. So we want to let you hear from some of our practitioners about their experience with the course. Hi, everybody. So, I mean, I think the thank you train is going to continue because it is just like also one of the best programs I have ever
the way it has been structured because at some point I was like, because I'm out here in Europe, I kind of was afraid like, oh my God, I mess it in something that is so far. Like, I wasn't sure if I'm going to manage with the time differences and everything, but seriously, the way it has been streamlined is just insane. It just made it so, so easy to get access to everything. And yeah, just really, really great.
And the content, I think, my view of the world is so much deeper, and that is what I love, is that when you get so deep knowledge about something that you can then start to embody, that actually shifts the way you look at things, and the way you talk to people, the way you approach things. And some things actually became more me, and I understood, like, wow, I kind of thought that it was like that, but now I understand why.
And then you could kind of put this wizard hat on and be like, OK, but I see what's happening in the brain there. And it's like super amazing. And for me, it was super cool to see that because I was considering myself as a rather like a balanced person and how when I came in here, I got to see an experience also from the lectures. How could different outputs look like? How could different people be experiencing certain
things that I haven't experienced and how I can still get close to that perspective even without necessarily being in their fuse. And I think, you know, the practice paths really got me closer in that and also the lectures. And also the sensitivity I have in my own system now is that, okay, maybe I'm not experiencing huge outputs, but there is still a difference in how I feel day by day and how I've gotten so much closer to that.
And I think one of my biggest wins is understanding that I actually had been holding a lot of emotions in and how sometimes you can just be like the happy girl and think that you're being expressive, you're being out there all the time, but then actually you're not. So the somatic processing has been also a huge, huge thing. And then of course, regulating back to safety. And I started this course also with a huge eczema flare.
Like I had all redness around my mouth and look at this now. It's just like.
I don't know if it's only the work. I think it's a lot of things together, but it's just like saying, how is this possible? And I think the big part is also the emotional process. That's what I'm preaching about to everybody. And seriously, the safety part, I think every single person who comes around me now is only hearing about safety and regulation, the nervous system. And then if you don't have these things, then I mean, what do you really have?
And if you're interested in booking a discovery call or getting more information about the program, go to neurosematic.com. We're enrolling now for the spring cohort. So all of these inputs are coming in all of the time to the nervous system and our brain is taking in that information and using it to make predictions and move through the world. And these systems are really how we experience our life every single second. And when these systems aren't bringing in clear, accurate information,
There's a high threat level all of the time. Our brain needs that information to feel safe and make predictions and to take actions in any given situation. And also when there's too much of that sensory information coming in, it is overwhelming to our system. We can't process it. We can't integrate, like you said, into the present moment.
During development, these systems are shaped by our environment. How safe do I feel exploring the world? How safe do I feel with my primary caregivers? They provide our nervous system with the stimulus that we need for the growth and the development and healthy adaptation as we're
young developing nervous systems, and when that stimulus is absent or when it's overwhelming and the stress levels are high, we can start to interpret a lot of those signals with threat, training our nervous system to respond with a stress response to these signals. We might lack a lot of experiences that we need for healthy development, especially relational and emotional processing experiences.
From an NSI perspective, really, everything is a skill. And when we don't have these skills trained into our nervous system during development, they can deteriorate. We can get deficits in our input systems. We can become hyperbigilant. And so it's just a different way of moving through the world based on how we're taking in information all of the time.
It is in the complex trauma development will change how our brain perceives those sensory inputs, right? So it will become sensitized or highly sensitive to some types of sensory input and other types that will ignore or not catch because they're not the most important thing happening in the moment.
So, for example, someone who grows up in a home that's a stressful environment may learn to perceive the emotional state of others. They can read the energy or feel the energy in the room. They can tell by someone's body movement, their non-verbal communication, like body language, facial expression.
what kind of mood they're at. And then they may learn the social skills and the interpersonal skills to manage the relationship and keep that other person calm or laughing or distracted so that whatever else is going on doesn't rise to the surface, whether that's anger, violence, other things along those lines. But they may miss
other types of visual stimulus, auditory stimulus, movement stimulus. And these are not conscious decisions. That's the most important part to me.
developmental stages or during the actual traumatic events that create complex trauma, the choices that we make on how to deal with them are often not cognitive choices. They're not voluntary. It's a threat response, right? And we know those come from the survival brain. So what eventually happens is that our brain creates its own unique way of understanding the sensory inputs of the world.
And I use that word unique because in the research, we can actually see that neurotags or neuro signatures are completely unique to each individual person.
This is another reason why I like to have the question, who is this neurotypical person? Where do they exist? There may be a range of experiences that is usually defined as neurotypical, like maybe it's the middle of the bell curve. So the sensory processing that happens in the brain is affected by that state. And so I kind of said this earlier, but your brain is going to keep certain pathways, kind of discard other pathways.
And then those can result in changes to the body stress response.
which there's a cascade, right? The body's stress response may change. There's a hormone cascade that happens with adrenaline and cortisol. They can also affect all the other hormones in the body, right? Your circadian hormones, your metabolism hormones, your sexual hormones, all different hormones can be affected. So there's a chemical change, right? That can affect neurotransmitter creation and receptors in the brain. So you see a chemical change in the brain.
And this is where a lot of the medical industry or the medical psychiatry industry is going. We send a Medicaid to either increase or decrease receptor activity for that chemical and that's going to fix the problem.
That's not correct, because what it does not address is how that brain processes sensory information. You can change the neurotransmitter levels with the medications, but it doesn't change the sensory inputs on how they're processed and integrated. So at the end of the day, this sensory input
Modification, let's call it that, can manifest in a whole lot of different ways. It could show up as a highly sensitive person, ADHD, ADD, learning difficulties, social insecurities and social anxiety, generalized anxiety, right? But in trauma-rewired, in NSI, in next-level neuro, we all consider those things the outputs.
I think it's really interesting to think about the unconscious patterning that's happening. Like you said, we're being patterned by like the sights, the sounds.
the feeling of the experience as we are so small and all of that is happening like in our bodies. Our little brains are just starting to form and so we just had two really interesting conversations about memory and the idea of somatic memory versus cognitive memory and so much of this unconscious patterning is happening in the somatic part of the body before the brain can even lie down and make sense of like what's even going on around here. If we're not laying cognitive memory
down until we're almost four and the body is holding all of this unconscious patterning and it's helping to shape really how the brain is also shaping and the overlap of the outputs that we would experience through this chronic stress and I think I want to say too I think outputs get a lot of
focus and attention, you know, people want to heal their anxiety, their binge eating, their whatever it is. And oftentimes what's deeper in that is the unconscious of what's been laid down in the body. Often before we even know like, why am I like this? But like, it's interesting that we're being programmed from zero to seven, yet we have no cognitive memory forming until we're like four. And by the time we're seven, we're a go.
We've already got it all laid down. And that's because all of that is happening from the perspective of our nervous system in our little bodies. And I think a really big part of that is, you know, memory integration and a huge facet of trauma is really the inability to integrate memories and experiences, right? It means this, this traumatic memory
doesn't get properly stored in a way that it no longer affects us in our present day to day experiences and that's why the traumatized brain struggles so much and why you hear people talking about feeling stuck and feeling like they're repeating these emotional experiences or these trauma patterns or trauma loops or trauma bonds over and over again and i think one of the reasons that that happens,
is partially because of the hormones that we experience as part of the stress response that response that's mobilizing us to to take action and to protect ourselves under threat. And when that happens when we move into that stress response we have both adrenaline and cortisol moving through our system and.
while these are really important to enable us to take action and to, you know, to fight or to flee. But it can also impact our hippocampus function, and cortisol specifically can bind to receptors on the hippocampus that then impairs our ability to integrate memory and over the long haul, our memory recall.
And then at the same time, we have adrenaline releasing that actually increases the laying down of emotional memory. So we have this increase in our emotional memories, increasing the intensity and the laying down of those emotional memories with adrenaline.
but we are losing the ability to integrate and to process that memory as that's being inhibited by the cortisol and this inability to integrate memory and experiences for people with complex trauma. Not only does that keep us stuck in that pattern, but I think it's also can be really problematic for healing, especially for people with complex trauma.
So just to speak to that concept of how does developmental trauma affect this vertebral integration, it doesn't have to be an emotional or relational complex trauma that creates a dysregulation in that verticality. It can be a physical trauma that sets somebody on that path. But the results end up very similar
regardless of how the trauma occurred in the first place, that by the time you bypass those developmental windows and you get into adulthood, what you're left with is a limbic system that is unregulated. It's kind of all over the place. A survival brain that's hypersensitive to any kind of threat and a cortex that doesn't know how to control the other two the way that it really should.
So your sense of identity, your sense of self, your sense to be able to integrate and the process, those memories of like what happened, how did it happen, when did it happen? For this person I'm talking about, there's a period of time from probably age 11 to 18, where all of the memories there are skewed.
They're a recollection of what happened. And if you were to talk to a family member of theirs and say, what's your recollection of what happened, you're going to get two totally different memories of the actual facts. Like this person did this or said this, and that a family member would give you a completely different version of the story. So it's very interesting that physical trauma can invoke such dysregulation, just like emotional trauma can.
So really, until those integration skills are developed in a smaller, more subtle way that is within the window of tolerance or within minimum effective dose, as we talk about here so much, then there's really no way to stop from re-traumatizing someone until they have the capacity or the brain function to do that. And because of
the cortisol and its effects on the hippocampus or maybe just long-term dissociation over time or damage to the corpus colossum that integrates between the right and the left hemisphere. Or maybe just because there's this fundamental disconnect between the body and the emotions and the cognitive brain. And so then it can't be reintegrated. That memory, that experience can't be reintegrated if you have developmental trauma until those skills are restored. And so that can be really
problematic for healing. And also, I think it can be problematic for growth to Jennifer, as you and I were talking about recently, because it's really hard to connect to those past versions of yourself and the future versions of yourself, if all those memories are so disconnected and fragmented. Like a lot of times, I don't have the ability to bring
my cognitive mind to the memory, to the experience, right? And so I'm really just experiencing a lot of times it's just the emotion or sometimes it's even just the somatic experience, but it's not like I can't have my cognitive awareness and my rational mind and my logic. It all involved in that memory. It's completely
It's almost like I'm having the reaction of a five-year-old, but not even that much. It's just emotion. To bring a metaphor to the same thing, it's like our brain, and especially our hippocampus, instead of encoding these long-term memory center like it should, it leaves them sitting out on the desktop.
Right? And so like we have all of these things that are scattered and sitting around. And so like when we're in that moment and we want to find the verbalization file so we can actually speak to what's happening or we want to find the emotional regulation center so we can have a little bit of control of those emotional
or we want to find the calm down, the somatic experience folder, just sitting on our desk. We're like, I can't find anything because all of these traumatic memories or events are just sitting out and scattered everywhere. And so it's very disorganized. And then we have talked a lot on here about the insular cortex and the interceptive system and interpreting all of these sensations that come in from the body, like not only am I able to
Hear feel those sensations but to interpret them accurately and it's that accurate interpretation that helps me stay grounded and in the present moment or am I getting like thrust into a different reality because the sensory signals are connected to threat because of that developmental training ground is it going to bring up a neurotag of an emotional flashback and that's really
that interpretation piece is so key to being able to stay present and to also being able to have positive adaptation from the work that we're doing. And again, when we're talking about neurodivergence, some of that difference in interpretation doesn't always have to come from a past experience. It can be natural biodiversity in the way that we process information and also to, like you were saying, Matt,
the amount of information that's coming in is overwhelming for all of us. And when we're a highly sensitive person or we have heightened sensitivities, there's something like beautiful about that, right? It can be an asset, it can be a gift, but it can also lead to a really heavy stress load, especially when we're in this modern world with all of the technology that we have.
it really becomes this kind of navigating between how do I stay tapped in to the way that I think differently that helps me connect all kinds of different dots and feel more and have deep relationships and have a very beautiful life experience and not be consistently overwhelming my system moving into these protective responses and maybe facing some
health outcomes that we don't want from living in that state of chronic stress.
Now that you're an adult, there's some wiggle room in the neural pathways that are there, but you're probably not going to rewire your whole brain like you're going back through those developmental stages of childhood. You're not going to change the inputs to that degree. So what we're left with now that we're adults is, can I change the interpretation? Right? Can I have enough gradual exposure?
And I'm using these words on purpose with gradual exposure, baby steps of change, and enough experiences that do not induce threat that my brain actually learns how to reinterpret rather than being triggered to go, okay, I think I can handle this, right? So the interpretation is reshaped
through gradual exposure to the stimulus in a way that is not threatening, baby steps of testing new inputs and being in new situations. And basically what we want is to, we're going to talk about dosage. We want to expose to the input in such a way that we leave early enough that we don't have a big threat response.
and when you think about how many people are affected by that and how much that underlies so many different behavioral and psychological diagnoses that people come up against and how much of that has to do with brain dysfunction and nervous system dysregulation. Let's talk a little bit about integration between the right and the left hemisphere.
We just need to clarify kind of what we're describing here first is that the idea of left brain, right brain dominance is what we're talking about here with this left brain, right brain like what happens to each side. And although that's been around for a really long time, here's the rundown. Essentially, the right brain is thought of as the more creative expression side of the brain, artistic, intuitive, emotional, maybe more imaginative, or even more musical.
while the left brain is more logical, right? The analytical, the linear side of the brain, which is also more factual and more verbal, like with our ability to communicate or articulate an idea clearly. So when you have dysregulation in that vertical piece that we just talked about,
it often also shows up as dysregulation in the right of left chemists' ears. And what tends to happen is that because the left side is more logical, cognitive, verbal, that's the side that tends to shut down a little bit more with complex PTSD.
So what you're left with is someone who seems to have a personality that's more expressive, more artistic, more creative. That's the side of the brain that's working at at least we could say closer to optimal function. While the side that's like the pure cognitive cortical control is still kind of shut down.
Because our cortex doesn't just completely shut off. It would be an oversimplification to say that our brainstem is running the show and our frontal lobe is just not turned on at all. It doesn't work that way. All brain areas are activated at all times. Because if a neuron doesn't get activation, it literally starts to die. So our cortex does stay active, even when we're in a middle hijacking Olympic escape, it just doesn't have a lot of power.
And the left side being more logical is going to have far less power over cortical outputs than the right side in this idea of left and right goggles. So it's going to be easier to express through an artistic creative way or more intuitive way, harder to express through logical verbal or written communication.
And that also creates a really nice inroads to doing a lot of CPTSD therapy and treatments, right? And so, you know, we've talked about this many times on here that we don't really want a flat line of the nervous system, but we want to be able to modulate between a synthetic and parasympathetic activation and to have the appropriate amount of nervous system activation for
the reality of the present moment to be able to act and move and be mobilized when we need to, and then also to be able to come down and rest and repair. But when we're constantly stuck in either a heightened sympathetic state with too much activation or a parasympathetic state to shut down, when we're stuck in that dysregulation, we really lose
We lose the ability to balance back from situations to be able to recover, to be resilient. And then also, too, I think to be able to then experience the growth that we could get from that experience, from the stress and unbalanced nervous system can block our capacity for resilience and stress adaptation. And so that keeps us from forward movement in our life a lot of times. And then I also think, too, that when our bodies
are stuck in these states of dysregulation, we can't release emotionally and stress-wise, we can't discharge that, we can't release what our nervous system can't regulate. So like underneath a freeze response or other protective reflexive trauma responses, we often have those big emotions.
that have been repressed or unprocessed. And like we've talked about before in the emotions episode, we may want to release them. We may know cognitively, I want to release these emotions, be present with them, allow them to move through my body. But we can't because it doesn't feel safe, right? Our amygdala says no. And so we have to ask
How safe is my nervous system with these emotions, with these sensations, with these memories, and that there's like a real direct link between the amount of safety correlated with how much release is possible, more safety, more regulation, more release can come. And so I think these imbalances in the nervous system
They keep us from being able to adapt, but they also keep us from being able to express and process emotions in that way, too. So as we're talking about all of the symptoms, we've been exploring it. Thought a lot.
weird and to dive really deep into issues and like why does it matter to think about all of this, you know, whether the issues came from my developmental trauma or maybe it's just inherent to who I am, it's the way I was born, it's a natural expression that's unique to me, like it doesn't even matter where it's coming from and the outputs might be the same. But it has been really powerful for me in some ways to start to explore neurodivergence and to see my complex trauma as a form of neurodivergence because
When I've been looking at natural biodiversity and neurodivergence, it's easy for me to start to shift and see the beauty of all of that, like to understand that nature is meant to be diverse ecosystems or diverse environments.
And that is a healthy functioning ecosystem. And so I can recognize with relative ease that there are assets that come from the way that my brain functions differently. The way I can see patterns and things, my creativity in terms of ideas and organizing information and I can value that about myself and have more self-compassion and really give myself some slack for the ways that I don't function
as typically in the world. And so when I start to reframe some of the ways that I'm different because of my complex trauma, it starts to give me some gratitude for the ways that it's made me a little bit different, see how my sensitivities make me a good practitioner or open my eyes to different things about the world questioning the paradigms that we live in. And I'm not saying that I'm grateful for the views for that anyone should be,
but it does feel like it allows me to lean into the edges more of post-traumatic growth and to be able to recognize some deep value from these experiences in the way that they made me unique.
part of why it matters is because I had such a harsh inner critic voice that really made me question myself and it made me it said things to me like you're different and I believed it in a way that me being different was a negative way of viewing myself and I know now through regulation and through I mean I've explored my healing in so many
deep ways that my difference is a gift. I embrace what makes me different and I can embrace my sensitivity now because I know that sensitivity is woven into every fabric layer of my being and it makes me that my high level attunement
Can it be a burden? Sure. When I don't have boundaries, when I didn't used to know where I ended and somebody else began, when I used to identify with like being an empath in the way that we had our podcast episode before and like talking about like being extra highly sensitive person, like it was off the charts. It was overwhelming. And it was really burdening for me. And I used to use a lot of poor coping mechanisms to make up for
for the overwhelm, like engaging in alcohol a lot for like the social anxiety that came with all of the sensory overload. And so it really matters because this is the internal health that I swim in. This is this emotional place, this place of belief. This is the undercurrent of my body. And I want this body, this vessel to be a place of nurturing, of safety, of rest, and of play. Play is something that
A lot of us are rewiring for in our lives and learning how to rest and experience joy in really new ways and I think play is a way that activates joy. Whether that play could be artistic or through movement and however the expression wants to come through and like Matt said, I'm never going to be able to go back to the beginning and totally rewire and
like that's not going to happen but it's what has been made possible through my nervous system is something an experience in my body that I could have Denver imagined because now it's like I can silence the survival and step into new ways that really help me thrive as a human being that make me feel competent and strong and capable.
and trusting in myself that, yeah, I'm kind of different. And it's not that really cool for me. And to be able to experience other people in their differences is to accept that I am different from them. And so it does matter.
I think the other really important piece of why we would want to understand this about ourselves is when we're really looking at this model of input interpretation output and allowing ourselves to recognize where there are outputs in our life that we don't want, right? There are things, the burnout, the depression, the mental health outputs that we do want to make a change in. And when we know ourselves at this deep level, it allows us to start
actually making progress on changing some of those outputs.
in a different way rather than trying to cognitively override them, but really going back and looking at this sensory input, interpretation, what's coming before the output and get out of that loop of just cognitively trying to push ourselves into a different way of being so that we don't have to experience those outputs. And it is the way that all three of us here have experienced
being able to get out of those states of chronic stress, of panic, of flight, of big bursts of emotional reactivity or overreaction, and allowing ourselves to be able to process emotions. And to address all of this, we have to start to provide the system with appropriate stimulus and to give the brain accurate information or to inhibit some sensory wear, it's overwhelmed, and get out of those chronic stress states.
I think it's important so that we can actually start to make some changes in the office that we don't want while we're keeping our gifts. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered medical or psychological advice. We often discuss lived experiences through traumatic events and sensitive topics that deal with complex developmental and systemic trauma that may be unsettling for some listeners.
This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. If you are in the United States and you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health and is in immediate danger, please call 911. For specific services relating to mental health, please see the full disclaimer in the show notes.
