Speaker 1: Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show of Reduction of shondaland
Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with My Heart Radio. I can certainly
Speaker 1: tell you of somebody who used to suffer from panic
Speaker 1: attacks that if somebody said to me, calm down, don't
Speaker 1: you think I would have done that already? I would
Speaker 1: have already done that if I knew how to do it.
Speaker 1: But I don't know how to do it because my
Speaker 1: body is like on fire right now and I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna die, And so it really becomes how
Speaker 1: do I intervene at the somatic, at the body level,
Speaker 1: so that I can unhook that. Toronto Burke, the founder
Speaker 1: of the Me Too movement, in her two thousand eighteen
Speaker 1: Ted Talk, declared that we as a society were collectively
Speaker 1: traumatized by the reckoning we were having around sexual harassment
Speaker 1: and assault. At the time, I'm that declaration felt like
Speaker 1: the truth to me and got me thinking about the
Speaker 1: other potential collective traumas we might be experiencing as a society.
Speaker 1: I am deeply aware of the collective trauma of repeatedly
Speaker 1: seeing black bodies murdered on camera. For me, as a
Speaker 1: black trans woman, the violence against trans folks that is
Speaker 1: often also captured on camera repeatedly. I found also deeply
Speaker 1: traumatizing a global pandemic, the greatest economic downturn America has
Speaker 1: experienced since the Great Depression. Collectively, we are experiencing trauma
Speaker 1: on top of trauma. My own work in therapy over
Speaker 1: the past four years has focused specifically on trauma resilience
Speaker 1: and if we are indeed collectively traumatized, how do we
Speaker 1: collectively heal? So to have this conversation, I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to my very own therapist, Jennifer Burton Fly. I mean,
Speaker 1: I taught her all the time, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: have that conversation here publicly to talk about how we
Speaker 1: can build trauma resilience individually and collectively. I really believe
Speaker 1: it's one of the most important skills we can develop
Speaker 1: right now. Jennifer is a licensed marriage and Family therapist.
Speaker 1: She is certified in Expressive Arts Therapy. She has also
Speaker 1: certified in Burnet Brown's Daring Way and Rising Strong Models
Speaker 1: as well as E M d R. She has a
Speaker 1: senior faculty member with the Trauma Resource Institute and has
Speaker 1: traveled extensively in the US as well as Northern Ireland.
Speaker 1: To share wellness skills with various groups and cultures. Please
Speaker 1: enjoy my conversation with Jennifer Burdenfly Hi, Jennifer, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. How are you failing today? I'm feeling pretty grounded.
Speaker 1: I was using all my skills before we got on today,
Speaker 1: so feeling okay now I of it. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to tell everyone about the tools and the skills. So
Speaker 1: about four years ago, I had moved to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I really didn't want to move here. I came here
Speaker 1: kicking and screaming, and my showrunners, Joan Raider and Tony
Speaker 1: Phalon invited me to a barbecue at their house in Pasadena,
Speaker 1: and invariably, the subject of therapy came up, because of
Speaker 1: course it always does, right, And one of the partygoers
Speaker 1: named Krista, said that somatic therapy is the only therapy
Speaker 1: that worked, and I was like, okay, this is the
Speaker 1: second time that the topic of semantic therapy has come
Speaker 1: up in the past year. A doctor of mine in
Speaker 1: New York City had told me about somatic therapy about
Speaker 1: a year earlier and said, you really should try it.
Speaker 1: It is the best thing, and so I said, okay.
Speaker 1: The universe is trying to tell me something. So I
Speaker 1: reached out to Christa. She suggested you, and four years later,
Speaker 1: here we are. So can we start by you telling
Speaker 1: everyone what somatic therapy is. Yeah. I think it's really
Speaker 1: important for people to understand that there are many different
Speaker 1: modalities that use somatic therapy. And the word for somatic
Speaker 1: actually derives from the Greek word soma, which means living body,
Speaker 1: and the therapy is really grounded in the relationship between
Speaker 1: mind and body. So the overview really of thematic therapy
Speaker 1: is that it uses the body as the entry point
Speaker 1: for healing versus the thinking part of the brain. We've
Speaker 1: all been impacted by things in our lives, and the
Speaker 1: point of using the body is to tap into our
Speaker 1: innate resiliency that really lives in us. We are built
Speaker 1: for survival, but we're also built to cultivate resiliency, and
Speaker 1: we do have to work at cultivating it, and that's
Speaker 1: really the purpose of thematic therapy. And by cultivating the resiliency,
Speaker 1: what happens is we often uncouple or take out the
Speaker 1: glue of the traumatic, stressful responses that we have. We
Speaker 1: can extinguish those cues, whether they're external or internal, cues
Speaker 1: for trauma and stress. The way that it kind of
Speaker 1: crystallized to me was talking about the stress response when
Speaker 1: we feel where we're under threat. We are hardwired as
Speaker 1: human beings to have a fight response, a freeze response,
Speaker 1: or a flee response, and so the body releases adrenaline, cortisol,
Speaker 1: releases hormones, stress hormones, so we can either fight that bear,
Speaker 1: flee that bear, or freeze. But then that's not sustainable
Speaker 1: to constantly be in this place. A fight flighter freeze
Speaker 1: is not sustainable to always be sort of living with
Speaker 1: these stress hormones. And it became very clear to me
Speaker 1: after we started doing our work together that my whole
Speaker 1: life was fite flighter freeze, and then my whole life
Speaker 1: was bears in the woods and I didn't have other
Speaker 1: ways of existing. Do you want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that. Yeah. I also want to highlight that
Speaker 1: there's several different responses. We do have fights freeze, there's
Speaker 1: also below a freeze response collapse in the nervous system
Speaker 1: where we just everything shuts down, and that's when we
Speaker 1: really are under extreme life threat. And then there's also
Speaker 1: tend and be friend or some people call it some
Speaker 1: schools call it fawning that when we move toward a
Speaker 1: threat to deescalate and oxytocin, which is a bonding hormone,
Speaker 1: is also released along with the adrenaline and corsol, so
Speaker 1: it actually a quiet the system so that we can
Speaker 1: actually stay in some kind of social engagement and then
Speaker 1: my chances of being attacked might be lessened in those circumstances.
Speaker 1: But oftentimes, in any of these survival responses, what we
Speaker 1: see a lot is we pathologize ourselves, or we blame
Speaker 1: ourselves or shame ourselves for whatever the survival response was
Speaker 1: in a given moment or in a given situation, or
Speaker 1: like what you're talking about, I'm always failing, like the
Speaker 1: bear is coming after me. Nothing is safe, if everything
Speaker 1: is dangerous, nothing is safe. For my colleague Jen Click
Speaker 1: calls it the ability to distinguish between a forced fire
Speaker 1: and a match. And when we can't make that distinction,
Speaker 1: it really doesnt number yes on the mind and body.
Speaker 1: It causes illness in the body. It causes a constant
Speaker 1: state of stress. It causes us to misread our environment
Speaker 1: to the point where we also can misread social cues.
Speaker 1: We could get into fights or altercations with our partner.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're on top of each other all the
Speaker 1: time now, and we can misread the situation if we're
Speaker 1: in a survival response, especially if it's firing all the time.
Speaker 1: What really resonated from me, and it's one of our
Speaker 1: early sessions, is when you define trauma as too much,
Speaker 1: too fast, too soon. And you said to me that
Speaker 1: the nervous system can experience good things as too much,
Speaker 1: too fast, too soon, as well as things that can
Speaker 1: be challenging or feel like a threat. And so much
Speaker 1: of the work of somatic therapy is I understand, it's
Speaker 1: really about resetting and regulating their nervous system in relationship distressors. Correct. Seeah,
Speaker 1: so again when I said earlier, there's all these different
Speaker 1: schools of somatic therapy. The primary one that I practiced
Speaker 1: through the Trauma Resource Institute, and that's the community resiliency
Speaker 1: model and trauma resiliency models. One is a clinical model,
Speaker 1: the other one is really meant for the wider community.
Speaker 1: And we've taught all over the world. So the definition
Speaker 1: of trauma in that vein is too much, too fast,
Speaker 1: too soon, or too little or too much for too long,
Speaker 1: too little, or too much for too long? Can you
Speaker 1: explain that? So? I would say that the too little
Speaker 1: or too much for too long can be from the
Speaker 1: developmental perspective of developmental trauma and stress. But I think
Speaker 1: also of right now that the time that we're in
Speaker 1: we've had too much for too long and too little
Speaker 1: for too long. We're so disconnected now from each other,
Speaker 1: from being able to see one another. I think this
Speaker 1: is why we see people chomping at the bit to
Speaker 1: get back together or to have family gatherings, even though
Speaker 1: we know it might not be safe to do. Because
Speaker 1: it's been too little for too long. That sense of
Speaker 1: isolation and disconnect becomes almost unbearable, and that is what
Speaker 1: we would call cumulatives. So a sort of deprivation of
Speaker 1: human contact can also be traumatic. Yes their childhood neglect,
Speaker 1: for example, if there's been a neglectful parent or caregiver,
Speaker 1: that can absolutely stimulate that trauma response in the body.
Speaker 1: Because we are hard wired to connect to each other.
Speaker 1: This is how we come into the world, ready to connect.
Speaker 1: And if we don't get that, what we call an attachment,
Speaker 1: it makes it very hard for us to self soothe
Speaker 1: or self regulate throughout our lives. The truth of it is,
Speaker 1: we do need coregulation in our lives. We're wired to
Speaker 1: be in community, in connection for the most part. Some
Speaker 1: people might feel connection when they're in nature, or connection
Speaker 1: when they're with a pet. Different aspects of being able
Speaker 1: to have that regulation happen. But I would say also
Speaker 1: that when we get that coregulation, like let's say within
Speaker 1: a therapy office or with a loved on, we're going
Speaker 1: to have a deeper capacity to self regulate or do
Speaker 1: that kind of self soothing on our own when we
Speaker 1: aren't with someone. We just have a deeper capacity to
Speaker 1: be able to do that when we get that coregulation.
Speaker 1: So I think in context of a global pandemic that
Speaker 1: this is literally traumatizing what we're going through in this
Speaker 1: isolation right absolute, And the piece that you always bring
Speaker 1: up with me is how do we sense that in
Speaker 1: our bodies? And I think that should lead us into
Speaker 1: krim or the community resiliency model, which I think is
Speaker 1: amazing and everyone should know about because the tools are
Speaker 1: in a way very simple, but they're really complicated to
Speaker 1: put into practice to police, tell us about the community
Speaker 1: resiliency model. What is it and what are the tenants
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, it's a set of six wellness skills.
Speaker 1: This is a model we've taken all over the world
Speaker 1: and we've also brought it into marginalized communities to increase
Speaker 1: and enhanced resilience resilience there. And basically it's about helping
Speaker 1: people understand the biology of traumatic stress reactions to restore
Speaker 1: a sense of well being in the body, mind, and spirit.
Speaker 1: And when we increase our resiliency, we have an increased
Speaker 1: sense of hope. And basically it's a skills based model,
Speaker 1: and we can use it individually and collectively. So going
Speaker 1: back to the attachment piece, we can share it with
Speaker 1: one another, we can do it in community, but we
Speaker 1: can also do it for our own self care, which
Speaker 1: I absolutely love. That's so beautiful because I believe we
Speaker 1: are collectively traumatized now and the question for me that
Speaker 1: always comes up as if we're collectively traumatized, how do
Speaker 1: we collectively heal. Let's take a short break. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll talk about the six skills we can
Speaker 1: all learn to reset and regulate our nervous systems. Welcome back,
Speaker 1: let's break down we can all do to help build
Speaker 1: stress and trauma resilience. Can you talk to us about
Speaker 1: UM those six skills of the community Resiliency Model, Clay,
Speaker 1: and I think we should also talk about resilien zone,
Speaker 1: high zone and low zone as well. Yeah. This was
Speaker 1: developed by Elaine Miller Cares and essentially, as Elaine says,
Speaker 1: it's about chasing the resilience in your nervous system UM.
Speaker 1: And so there's six skills. Of the six skills, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to list them is tracking, resourcing, grounding, gesturing,
Speaker 1: help now, and shift and stay And a lot of
Speaker 1: those skills are actually available, and there's an app called
Speaker 1: eye Chill. It's available for free. It's also available in Spanish.
Speaker 1: Our materials have been translated into a lot of different languages.
Speaker 1: But essentially, the primary cornerstone of the model is the
Speaker 1: resilient zone, as we keep mentioning it, but let's talk
Speaker 1: about it for a moment, the resilient sea zone or
Speaker 1: the resilient zone. Yeah, so the resilient zone. If you
Speaker 1: picture like two lines, horizontal lines with a wave going
Speaker 1: through those lines, that would be what we call our
Speaker 1: resilient zone, and that is where we are our best self,
Speaker 1: and the wave would represent our nervous system or the
Speaker 1: gas pedal and break of the body, our nervous system.
Speaker 1: The gas pedal or the break pedal. I love these
Speaker 1: metaphors because they really kind of helped this. So so
Speaker 1: it's like it's about modulating this speed there we're going
Speaker 1: out if we're thinking about a gas pedal or break pedal. Yeah, body,
Speaker 1: mind and spirit. Right, So if I'm in my resilience zone,
Speaker 1: I'm my best self. I actually am in a securely
Speaker 1: attached place. I can read my environment around me. I
Speaker 1: can socially engage with those around me. I'm going to
Speaker 1: perceive things better. I can problem solve there. I can
Speaker 1: be creative there. I can have my feelings and it's
Speaker 1: not a flat line. It is a wave. So I
Speaker 1: could have different feelings throughout my day, but I can
Speaker 1: handle of them. If I'm in my resilien zone, I
Speaker 1: can manage them. So I can have my sense of humor.
Speaker 1: I could actually be sad, mad, frustrated, content, happy, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, but I can communicate it. I can feel it.
Speaker 1: I can tell you I can feel it. And that
Speaker 1: is that is really where we're our best self. And
Speaker 1: so I think what is so important and useful for
Speaker 1: me thinking about the resilience zone is thinking about that
Speaker 1: versus the higher the low zone. Because I've had several
Speaker 1: moments when I've come into a therapy session or be
Speaker 1: a zoom or in person where I was not in
Speaker 1: my resilience zone. So it was very difficult for me
Speaker 1: to actually be able to hear what you were saying.
Speaker 1: I was triggered by some kind of what I've come
Speaker 1: to understand too. It's another phrase, when it's hysterical's historical, right,
Speaker 1: so that when I'm hysterical, but when I satically, when
Speaker 1: the vernus hysterical, that is something historical, and usually that
Speaker 1: is about some kind of trauma that's come up for me.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of an example from my life
Speaker 1: that I want to share. You know what, I'll share this.
Speaker 1: I'll share this. So over a year ago, when I
Speaker 1: was going through my breakup. God, I can't believe my
Speaker 1: mestion this in front of people, but hey, it's a
Speaker 1: good example, I think when it's going through my breakup
Speaker 1: and my most recent boyfriend, over a year ago, I
Speaker 1: had a day I was doing pretty well and we
Speaker 1: broke up in June and it was September and I
Speaker 1: woke up and I was a wreck. I was just
Speaker 1: like in this grieving process, like missing the relationship, and
Speaker 1: it just made no sense because I was very aware
Speaker 1: that like adult Lavern understood why this breakup needed to happen.
Speaker 1: An adult Lavern understood that we needed to separate, and
Speaker 1: that was all good because I was hysteric, hysterical. I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, I'm hysterical, so there's something historical going on.
Speaker 1: So then I was like, okay, but little girl of
Speaker 1: her inner child felt abandoned. The inner child I didn't understand,
Speaker 1: and the inner child needed to scream and yell and
Speaker 1: get it out, and I I was like, okay, and
Speaker 1: I think I texted you I think that day and
Speaker 1: it was like I felt like I needed to take
Speaker 1: it to this source, so I needed to take it
Speaker 1: to the X. And so I texted him and I
Speaker 1: was like, can I see you later? This is a
Speaker 1: few minus if you broke up? And he was lovely
Speaker 1: and he said yes, and he comes over and I said,
Speaker 1: little girl of Verney still yell at you right now,
Speaker 1: she needs to get this out. Can I yell at you?
Speaker 1: And he was very generous and said yes, and so
Speaker 1: I have my moment screamed a yell. He like, you
Speaker 1: want to hear me? I was like, not only hear that?
Speaker 1: I hit him with a pillow um with permission. Then
Speaker 1: I was able to after getting that out physically. What
Speaker 1: I understand about the somatic work now is that I
Speaker 1: had to get that out through my body. I had
Speaker 1: to speak it, I had to like sense into it
Speaker 1: in my body. There was a grieving, there was something
Speaker 1: that was triggered in that moment that needed to be
Speaker 1: worked out so that I can get back into my zone.
Speaker 1: That was an extreme example. It's not always that extreme.
Speaker 1: There's so much that comes up for me. Was there
Speaker 1: something that came up for you from that story that
Speaker 1: you want to address or well, a couple of different things.
Speaker 1: One is that your ex was in his resilient zone
Speaker 1: enough when he came over to be able to hold
Speaker 1: that space and hold his own sense of groundedness while
Speaker 1: you got out what you needed to get out. And
Speaker 1: then the other pieces around, is what we're getting out
Speaker 1: embodied or not? Is it metabolizing, is it digesting or
Speaker 1: is it not right? Can you clarify embodied? Is what
Speaker 1: we're getting out embodied? Yeah? So, And I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: go with relationship to the story that you were telling,
Speaker 1: Like you're telling the story of what happens, you remember
Speaker 1: exactly the sequence of events, right, you're also able to
Speaker 1: articulate I get this, and I also get this. Maybe
Speaker 1: you weren't exactly fully in your zone, but you weren't
Speaker 1: like all the ceiling at that point. Because sometimes we're
Speaker 1: out of our zone so high in the high zone
Speaker 1: or so low in the low zone, we don't integrate anything,
Speaker 1: and we also often won't remember what happened, so then
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually process, that doesn't actually land, and we're
Speaker 1: left looping around with the same material. You would wake
Speaker 1: up the next morning and being the same angry up
Speaker 1: that place and not have really worked that through and out.
Speaker 1: Guess the question is how do we get embodied? So
Speaker 1: I was embodied enough to know that I was hysterical,
Speaker 1: that this was historical, and that I needed to go
Speaker 1: to the source. So I wasn't bumped out so much
Speaker 1: that I couldn't see straight exactly. So there was a
Speaker 1: certain level of resiliency that I was working with. So
Speaker 1: maybe that wasn't the best example about being out of
Speaker 1: my resilient zund well, and you might have been at
Speaker 1: the edges. So I think it's important to talk about
Speaker 1: a range. So when we go into let's say we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the high zone and low zones.
Speaker 1: So let's say the resilient zone. For those out there
Speaker 1: who like to number things, four through seven is in
Speaker 1: the resilient zone. Eight to ten is in the high zone.
Speaker 1: Three to one is in the low zone. So if
Speaker 1: you're at a ten or you're at a one, it's
Speaker 1: much harder to manage and integrate. And so the high
Speaker 1: zone is like when we get really hyper vigilant, when
Speaker 1: we have panic attacks and we have rage attacks, we
Speaker 1: have those kinds of things, will always braced, being around
Speaker 1: for what's bad, the other shoe to drop, and we
Speaker 1: live in that state or we get bumped into that
Speaker 1: state for periods of time and then come back into
Speaker 1: our resiliency. Conversely, the low zone is that sluggish, depressed, disconnected, dissociated,
Speaker 1: very despairing, hopeless, helpless place. I have another client who
Speaker 1: kind of looks at the resilient high low zone like
Speaker 1: a house, and when she's in the resilient zone, she's
Speaker 1: in the living room space. She can hang out on
Speaker 1: the couch or in the kitchen or whatever. When she
Speaker 1: goes to the high zone, she's in the attic, she
Speaker 1: can't hear what's happening in the living room at all.
Speaker 1: And when she's in the basement and really despairing, she's
Speaker 1: really low. If she's on the floor of the basement,
Speaker 1: then she's having suicidal thoughts and she's having really extreme
Speaker 1: depressed thoughts. And we talk about actually walking up the
Speaker 1: stairs of the basement. Right, So those six tools that
Speaker 1: you outlined earlier are the ways to get us to
Speaker 1: walk up the stairs of the basement or to come
Speaker 1: down from the attic, right, to come down, to go
Speaker 1: up into the resilient own. And tracking. I want to
Speaker 1: start with tracking because I feel like tracking it's probably
Speaker 1: the most important one, because tracking allows us to know
Speaker 1: when we're in our resilience and we were in high
Speaker 1: zone and when we're in low zone. Can you just
Speaker 1: break down tracking for us? Well, first of all, can
Speaker 1: I just say that my heart right now feels really
Speaker 1: warm and full and I have this like bubbly excitement
Speaker 1: hearing you teach me about tracking as a resilient zone.
Speaker 1: It's very exciting. Thank you. I appreciate exactly right, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what we want to do. Tracking is used with
Speaker 1: all the skills. If we aren't tracking and paying attention
Speaker 1: to the body, then we are not actually doing thematic work.
Speaker 1: Client of mine who's called tracking the GPS of the body,
Speaker 1: and she said, if I know where I'm at at
Speaker 1: any given time, and I can't get lost, Oh, tracking
Speaker 1: is the GPS of the body. If I know where
Speaker 1: I'm at at any time, I can't get lost. Oh.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that. Often when I when
Speaker 1: I come into a session and I'm feeling just I've
Speaker 1: given this example a lot publicly. I'm feeling anxious, and
Speaker 1: you'll ask me where in your body do you feel that?
Speaker 1: Most often it's in the pit of my stomach. And
Speaker 1: then you'll ask me where does it feel positive or neutral?
Speaker 1: And you know, right now, it's kind of my ankles,
Speaker 1: And then you'll invite me to focus my attention on
Speaker 1: my ankles. The specificity of that getting really specific about
Speaker 1: where we feel anxiety, joy, whatever it is. Where that
Speaker 1: we get specific about where that is in our bodies,
Speaker 1: I think it's really really an important component of this work.
Speaker 1: I think it's actually the essential cornerstone of this model
Speaker 1: and of this work and of our being able to
Speaker 1: tap into our wellness. Another piece I can share is
Speaker 1: that we years ago did a training for Children's hospital,
Speaker 1: and one of those folks, when they were teaching back
Speaker 1: to us, said, my body has always been talking to me,
Speaker 1: but now I have a way to talk back. Now
Speaker 1: I have a way to have a conversation with my body. Oh, Jennifer, Okay,
Speaker 1: can we just pause? Can we just pause on that?
Speaker 1: My body's all it's been talking to me, but now
Speaker 1: I have a way to talk back. I think this
Speaker 1: is what I would love people to really understand and
Speaker 1: take away from this that right now, with everything that's
Speaker 1: going on in the world, with all the stressors, all
Speaker 1: the traumas, our bodies are talking to us constantly and
Speaker 1: telling us what we need to know. Can we listen
Speaker 1: and then can we talk back and have a dialogue
Speaker 1: with our bodies and then begin to regulate. I think
Speaker 1: that this works about having that dialogue. Yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: We might be accustomed to naming feelings or not, but
Speaker 1: tracking is the feeling of the feelings, the feeling of
Speaker 1: the feeling. Can you explain that? So it's it's if
Speaker 1: I name something happy, sad, mad, or otherwise The reason
Speaker 1: why my thinking brain knows to call it that feeling
Speaker 1: word is because my body is sending cues that let
Speaker 1: me know to call it that eight of our information
Speaker 1: is delivered body up only going in the other directions
Speaker 1: of our information is delivered body up only. Twenty is
Speaker 1: the other way around. So our bodies are crucial. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we can sense things away that maybe we can't
Speaker 1: think away. Only slow that one down to We can
Speaker 1: sense things away that maybe we can't think away. We
Speaker 1: can sense Can you just talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 1: I think you know. I'm not knocking cognitive behavioral strategies
Speaker 1: or thought stopping techniques like things that people might already use.
Speaker 1: But I can certainly tell you with somebody who used
Speaker 1: to suffer from panic attacks, that if somebody said to
Speaker 1: me calm down, or if I tried to tell myself
Speaker 1: calm down, don't you think I would have done that already?
Speaker 1: I would have already done that if I knew how
Speaker 1: to do it. But I don't know how to do
Speaker 1: it because my body is like on fire right now
Speaker 1: and I feel like I'm gonna die, And so it
Speaker 1: really becomes how do I intervene at the thematic at
Speaker 1: the body level so that I can unhook that because
Speaker 1: I cannot just tell all myself to calm down when
Speaker 1: my body thinks it's under threat. And we do, honestly, Lavern.
Speaker 1: We track all the time. Maybe we can sense when
Speaker 1: we're hot or cold, or we can sense maybe whether
Speaker 1: we're hungry or thirsty, or needs use the restroom, things
Speaker 1: like that. But typically one of those entry points is
Speaker 1: a way to know that we're already doing this all
Speaker 1: day long, every day, and if I can take a
Speaker 1: moment and go back to the resilient zone. We have
Speaker 1: a resilient zone within us. But then when we are together,
Speaker 1: we have a collective resilient zone. So you and I
Speaker 1: together as we're sitting together, have a collective zone between us.
Speaker 1: And when you talk about what's going on in the
Speaker 1: world today, whether it is the pandemic or our socio
Speaker 1: political landscape right now, our collective zone is pretty narrow.
Speaker 1: Yes it is. It is paper sin for most of us.
Speaker 1: And so not only my individual zone be narrow, but
Speaker 1: I'm also now faced with when I'm taking in the
Speaker 1: world and knowing that collect actively, it also feels pretty narrow.
Speaker 1: How can we widen that zone? So I think oftentimes
Speaker 1: when we have these things that happen in our world,
Speaker 1: I often see that Mr. Rogers quote that comes in
Speaker 1: about how his mother used to tell him to look
Speaker 1: to the helpers when things feel bleak, look to the helpers.
Speaker 1: That is part of tracking and part of our awareness
Speaker 1: is not only looking for the threats, but also cultivating
Speaker 1: and chasing the resiliency. Where are people coming together? When
Speaker 1: you see people marching together for common causes, when you
Speaker 1: see healthcare workers come into the aid of ailing people,
Speaker 1: when you see people reaching out for social justice and
Speaker 1: for dismantling and addressing structural racism. Like, if we look
Speaker 1: for those moments and we tap into that, then we're
Speaker 1: tapping into the collective resiliency of one another, and we're
Speaker 1: actually strengthening that, and we have to sense into that.
Speaker 1: That feels like the truth to me on a really
Speaker 1: deep level. This feels like a good time to take
Speaker 1: a short break for our sponsor friends. Welcome back. Now
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about one of my favorite tools.
Speaker 1: I really want to talk about, shift in Stay. Shift
Speaker 1: in Stay it is one of the six tools you
Speaker 1: listed earlier of the community resiliency model. I'm feeling anxiety
Speaker 1: and I'm feeling that in my guard and then you'll
Speaker 1: invite me to focus on where in my body isn't
Speaker 1: neutral and positive, right, and sometimes it's my ankles, not always,
Speaker 1: and then you'll invite me to focus my attention there.
Speaker 1: The invitation is to not be in denial about the anxiety,
Speaker 1: but the question becomes the both and peace. And so
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about shift and stay? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when I noticed what where my distress is, then
Speaker 1: I can actually actively move my awareness to someplace where
Speaker 1: it's less or where it's not. And we forget that
Speaker 1: we have a whole body while walking around with because
Speaker 1: our tendency is to dive into the middle distress again
Speaker 1: because we're wired for survival, so we're looking for the
Speaker 1: source of threats to get outside or inside. And so
Speaker 1: this is the job of shift and stay is to
Speaker 1: be able to look around and go where is it not?
Speaker 1: Because sometimes it might be the tip of my nose,
Speaker 1: it might be my ear low of it might be
Speaker 1: my toes or you know, ankles like what you're referring to.
Speaker 1: And if I can bring enough of my awareness to
Speaker 1: those parts of my body that are less, that are
Speaker 1: pleasant or neutral and I can stay there. Typically what
Speaker 1: happens is it lessons what's going on. May not erase
Speaker 1: it fully, but it may lessen it. And so even
Speaker 1: when we have chronic stress or illness or things like that,
Speaker 1: sometimes we'll actually get better medical attention because I can
Speaker 1: more accurately pinpoint where the trouble is rather than going
Speaker 1: my whole body or everything hurd's all over. And also
Speaker 1: when I self regulate and get back into my resilient zone,
Speaker 1: then I can do more connecting with others than I
Speaker 1: can problem solve, and I can know what the next
Speaker 1: thing I want to do is. Versus if I get
Speaker 1: stuck in the loop of the distress of the anxiety.
Speaker 1: What just came up for me is that we all
Speaker 1: sort of become what we focus on. So if I
Speaker 1: just focus on this anxiety, all I can sense and
Speaker 1: feel is the anxiety. I'm not going to be in
Speaker 1: my zone. But if I can focus on something else energetically,
Speaker 1: then maybe that energy can shift, maybe my nervous system
Speaker 1: can shift, And I think that's just such a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: And and the other tools like resourcing, like gesturing, grounding,
Speaker 1: the help now skills all of the six components. I
Speaker 1: invite everyone to go to the I Chill app to
Speaker 1: look at all of these tools and see how you
Speaker 1: can integrate them into your lives and practice. Maybe find
Speaker 1: a health care professional who can help you with this
Speaker 1: model if it resonates for you. There's something else, though,
Speaker 1: that I want to I have to talk about because
Speaker 1: I thought the first time you said it to me,
Speaker 1: and it's in a therapysition, there's so many aspects of
Speaker 1: this that I'm utterly intrigued by. But you used a
Speaker 1: phrase called completion of the survival response, and we were
Speaker 1: working on some really like childhood stuff that was really
Speaker 1: intense for me. Can you talk about completion of the
Speaker 1: survival response in relationship to everything that we've been talking about. Sure,
Speaker 1: And this is again I'm just gonna highlight that is
Speaker 1: definitely something more that needs to happen within the context
Speaker 1: of a therapeutic environment, and it's not something I would
Speaker 1: encourage people to just tap into on their own. But essentially,
Speaker 1: we're we've got a survival response continuum, and what happens
Speaker 1: is that if I hear something novel or something happens
Speaker 1: in my environment, my first response is to orient to
Speaker 1: the source. Of the threat or the sound or whatever.
Speaker 1: As I'm doing that, I'm mobilizing all the energy and
Speaker 1: my body, so cortisol and adrenaline is now coursing starting
Speaker 1: to course through my system, preparing me to fight or flee.
Speaker 1: And if I can complete a survival response, I'm going
Speaker 1: to then execute that in the form of running, fighting, yelling, gesturing,
Speaker 1: whatever I'm going to do. And once I do that,
Speaker 1: I return to a state of equilibrium. And the truth
Speaker 1: of it is, we can get thwarted at any of
Speaker 1: those places along the survival response continuum, and oftentimes we
Speaker 1: don't allow that survival response to come through and out.
Speaker 1: And that can even be with small things. If I'm
Speaker 1: having an issue with a boss and I feel really
Speaker 1: piste off at my boss, but I can't just yell
Speaker 1: at my box, and so I might damp in or
Speaker 1: thwart that energy. And then that might also tap into,
Speaker 1: like you said, hysterical historical, it might happen to tap
Speaker 1: into other times in my life that's happened, and we
Speaker 1: can get stuck. When we do get stuck in those states,
Speaker 1: we can sometimes have this perpetual fight response on board,
Speaker 1: or perpetually wanting to flee when stress happens. And because
Speaker 1: I didn't get to execute those things at the time
Speaker 1: that they occurred, what we can do now is try
Speaker 1: to offload in the moment and then come back into
Speaker 1: my resilient zone. I feel like the tools of the
Speaker 1: community resiliency model are a lot of them are about
Speaker 1: regulating in the moment right when we have a stressful
Speaker 1: moment or we're traumatized in a moment's about regulating that.
Speaker 1: But then when there are historical traumas and it were
Speaker 1: they were that require deeper work, right, and this is
Speaker 1: something that has to be done with a professional based
Speaker 1: on my own experience that this with you is that
Speaker 1: for the deeper things that in terms of really building
Speaker 1: trauma resilience and and Burnet Brown and one of her
Speaker 1: taxes with a goal of trauma resilience is to put
Speaker 1: it in its place, and it's in its timeline. The
Speaker 1: body doesn't know if a trauma happened twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: Once we are triggered, the body experiences the trauma as
Speaker 1: if it's happening right now. That to me is really deep.
Speaker 1: And so the completion of the survival response piece we
Speaker 1: were dealing with um in therapy when I bought my
Speaker 1: when I bought this condo, I was remember I was
Speaker 1: having like crazy panic attacks like I was. I hadn't
Speaker 1: had panic attacks like this ever in my life. And
Speaker 1: we kind of talked through it and figured out what
Speaker 1: the source of that was, right, And it was a
Speaker 1: childhood thing around sort of fear of being homeless that
Speaker 1: I've had my whole life. And when we went back
Speaker 1: into that memory, their childhood memory, and I didn't say
Speaker 1: or do what I wanted to say in that moment,
Speaker 1: I did it. In that moment, I yelled and I punched,
Speaker 1: and I kind of got what I needed to say.
Speaker 1: And as I did it, I felt my nervous system ship.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's in the past now. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like it's happening right now. The work of building
Speaker 1: trauma resilience is like putting it sort of in the
Speaker 1: right timeline in my life, right, that's right. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing is that the more we practice tools of resilience,
Speaker 1: and this is about practicing right. We have neural plasticity,
Speaker 1: but it's neural plasticity, can you just define that really quickly?
Speaker 1: Neural plasticity is the ability of the brains to be
Speaker 1: able to make new pathways to create new cell growth.
Speaker 1: And we used to think back in the day, but
Speaker 1: that might not be possible, but we know now that
Speaker 1: that's just simply not true. And the more we actually
Speaker 1: tap into and cultivate resiliency, the more we strengthen ourselves,
Speaker 1: the more we widen and deepen our resilience zone, the
Speaker 1: less things bumped me into the higher low zone, and
Speaker 1: the more I'm me in the world, the more you're
Speaker 1: using the world. Ultimately, that is about creating new neuro
Speaker 1: pathways that are not trauma informed, that are not stress informed,
Speaker 1: and so repeatedly practicing these skills and something that we
Speaker 1: do on a daily basis, multiple times a day, over
Speaker 1: a period of time, we create new neuro pathways exactly.
Speaker 1: And as we create those new neuronal pathways, what ends
Speaker 1: up happening Over time My zone gets deeper and actually
Speaker 1: sometimes it has its own trauma reprocessing element to it,
Speaker 1: in that the stuff of my history starts to fade
Speaker 1: away a little bit, the glue there starts to unstick
Speaker 1: a little bit, and so when I start to think
Speaker 1: into what happened to me in the past, I feel
Speaker 1: so much more meat in the here and now so
Speaker 1: much more myself. That's lovely. I think that it's a
Speaker 1: great place to end. Obviously, I could talk to you
Speaker 1: all day about this. So can you tell people where
Speaker 1: else they can get resources to do this work? Yes?
Speaker 1: So again, you can go and download the eye Show app. Also,
Speaker 1: if people don't have smartphones, they can go to www.
Speaker 1: Dot eye Show app dot com and they can actually
Speaker 1: it's its own little website landing. You can go to
Speaker 1: Trauma Resource Institute website and look at their offerings and training.
Speaker 1: And my website is Jennifer Burton MST dot com. And uh,
Speaker 1: I think there's a beating list on my website as well.
Speaker 1: I wanted to end our conversation with the question that
Speaker 1: you often ask me in our sessions, what else is true?
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about how that sort
Speaker 1: of relates to everything we've been talking about, And then
Speaker 1: I want to ask you what else is true for you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So the what else is true is that both and place.
Speaker 1: It's that if I can chase the resiliency, it's not
Speaker 1: a denial that there's other things going on. To say
Speaker 1: that our landscape isn't what it is politically and culturally
Speaker 1: would be bananas, and to say we're not in the
Speaker 1: middle of a pandemic would also be crazy. But it's
Speaker 1: so what else is going on? What else can we
Speaker 1: tap into? That's true? And so I don't want to
Speaker 1: deny somebody's sadness, anger, feeling, frustration. I also want to
Speaker 1: see what else is available, what else, what helps us
Speaker 1: get through? What helps us get through hard times? You know,
Speaker 1: we've all been through difficult times, whether it's the ones
Speaker 1: that we're in right now were ones that we've been
Speaker 1: in the past. And how do we get through? How
Speaker 1: do we tap into our innate against strength and resiliency?
Speaker 1: And I guess if if you're going to ask me
Speaker 1: about it personally, So I I lost my grandmother about
Speaker 1: a week ago, and she was one of my primary
Speaker 1: attachment figures and I feel blessed to have had her
Speaker 1: for fifty one years of my life. But I have
Speaker 1: found myself in this kind of see of grief and
Speaker 1: feeling as sometimes really piste off at the pandemic for
Speaker 1: robbing me of seven months I could have been with her,
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't um COVID that took her from me,
Speaker 1: I feel like the pandemic took those months and those
Speaker 1: times of connecting away from me, and when I feel
Speaker 1: myself pulled in that direction, I actually tap into the
Speaker 1: connection with her of how she's still with me. You
Speaker 1: know what she would want for me now, how she
Speaker 1: would be with me, and what she would say. And
Speaker 1: so I do have the grief, and I have the love,
Speaker 1: and I have that she'll be with me in infinite,
Speaker 1: myriad ways for the rest of my life. And I
Speaker 1: have pictures and I have all this other stuff and
Speaker 1: memories that no one can take from me. And it
Speaker 1: helps with the sadness so that I don't get so
Speaker 1: swept away by that river, because I can just feel
Speaker 1: so sad so much of the time around this and
Speaker 1: and I let the tears come when they will, and
Speaker 1: I can also do the other So I feel, really
Speaker 1: that is my what else is true right now? And
Speaker 1: that's the most present what else is true? Thank you
Speaker 1: for sharing that. Um. I think it was a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago you texted me and said you had to
Speaker 1: reschedule because your grandmother died, and it was I was like,
Speaker 1: what do I, how do I? What do I say
Speaker 1: to Jennifer? And how do I? How do I? It
Speaker 1: just felt so completely inadequate in that moment, and so
Speaker 1: sort of I thought it thinking about the one sided
Speaker 1: it's of our relationship. Um, when it's something like this happens,
Speaker 1: is that there's I don't know if there's anything that
Speaker 1: we can really say. I'm so grateful that you're in
Speaker 1: my life. I do you want to say that. I'm
Speaker 1: so grateful you're in my life. I'm so grateful for
Speaker 1: our work. I'm so sad that you had this loss.
Speaker 1: It's I'm so sad, but I'm pardoned by your what
Speaker 1: else is true? And I think everything you're saying right
Speaker 1: now is that testament to our connection and our relationship,
Speaker 1: because yes it's in a therapeutic context, but make no mistake,
Speaker 1: it's a relationship and it is a connection. And I'm
Speaker 1: just so touched by what you're saying to me right now,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to hold that as my other what
Speaker 1: else is true? And it's secure attachment, which I a
Speaker 1: lot of issues with in my life, and many times
Speaker 1: sessions you'd be like, well and you sense into like
Speaker 1: the connection we have, and I'm like, no, not really,
Speaker 1: but I can sense into it right now and I'm
Speaker 1: very grateful for it. So I thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Jennifer for four years of work together. I thank you
Speaker 1: for sharing your expertise and everything that you share today.
Speaker 1: Thank you listening back to this conversation. What always hits
Speaker 1: me when I talked to Jennifer is when she talks
Speaker 1: about something being embodied. As a trauma survivor, as an
Speaker 1: abuse survivor, and probably also as a transperson, my default
Speaker 1: response is to leave my body right, to not be
Speaker 1: present in my body because it's just too painful to
Speaker 1: be there. And if we can use a resource. Resourcing
Speaker 1: is another tool of the community resiliency model for me,
Speaker 1: often a resource sometimes even singing opera for me when
Speaker 1: I'm in an airport, I'm often insanely anxious and airports
Speaker 1: and if you see a person walking through the airport
Speaker 1: in advisor and um um COVID mask singing opera, it's
Speaker 1: probably me. Do not approach, But I am singing to
Speaker 1: self soothed. I'm singing to regulate my system. It's a
Speaker 1: resource for me to help me get through the anxiety
Speaker 1: of being in the airport. But singing connects me to
Speaker 1: my breath, something that gets me in my body. Dancing
Speaker 1: is something that gets me in my body, and I
Speaker 1: can tap into those resources to turn the volume down
Speaker 1: on the anxiety that I have in the airport and
Speaker 1: turn the volume up on the things that are neutral, positive,
Speaker 1: the things that helped me get through the what else
Speaker 1: is true? So I encourage you to check out the
Speaker 1: Eye Chill app to explore UM the components of the
Speaker 1: community resiliency model. And even though I do it very imperfectly,
Speaker 1: the day we recorded this, I was very much in
Speaker 1: high zone. I was totally freaked out. I was the
Speaker 1: first day we recorded UM the Verne Cox Show. But
Speaker 1: this has really really helped me a lot. It's a
Speaker 1: work in progress, and here's to widening your resilient zone
Speaker 1: individually and all of us widening our resilient zones collectively.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to The Laverne Cox Show.
Speaker 1: Feel free to subscribe, rate and share. Join me next
Speaker 1: week when I'll be talking to Kimberly Foster, the founder
Speaker 1: of the online black feminist community for Harriet, about beauty
Speaker 1: as capital. Is it a good investment? Kimberly has thoughts.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Laverne
Speaker 1: Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real until
Speaker 1: next time, stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show
Speaker 1: is the production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast from Chondaland Audio, visit the
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.