Panic Proof. Taking Control of Your Anxiety and Getting Your Life Back with Dr Nicole Cain

I think that that moment came when I decided I needed a giant pattern interrupt. And when I made that decision, I was like, you know what? I am too close to the. To the tree to see the forest. I'm so zoomed in and nothing is working. And so I just need a giant pattern interrupt.

You're listening to the Simplicity Sessions podcast. I am your host, Jen Pike. Join for weekly doses of simplicity, education, conversations and inspiration all around. Women's health and hormones, movement mindset, motherhood and business. All of the audacious elements of who I am, what I bring to the world, and quite honestly, a permission slip for you to do the same. Together, we are going to create more simplicity and ease in all that you do while living your most audacious life in business, your health and and building your wealth. Don't forget to leave a rating and review as well as hit that subscribe button so that you never miss an episode. And while you're at it, take a screenshot and tag me enpike to share on Instagram. I will reshare that baby out to the community and once a month I'll be doing a draw from those reshares and be sending you something pretty special. Thanks so much. Now, onto the show.

Three, two, one. Yeah.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another weekly episode of the Simplicity Sessions podcast. I am Jen pike, your host. I've really been looking forward to this interview. We have had it on the calendar for a little while now and it is with Dr. Nicole Kane, who is a leading expert in trauma, informed clinical psychology and holistic medicine for anxiety and panic. She is also the author of the acclaimed book Panic Proof, which we are going to talk about today. It just released this year. And what I love so much about Nicole's approach is that the most poignant element of her work is shifting the energy from asking, what is wrong with me? To what is my body telling me? And this. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know for X amount of time, you'll know that this is the frequency and the lens I come through is that our symptoms and the way our body is expressing what is going on is literally the story unfolding and is the messenger of messengers in this case as to what's going on and for you to sleep, slow down and to tune inward and pay attention. And we live in a time where we are constantly being told, don't trust your body, don't trust yourself. Outsource. And this book and her wisdom and her expertise helps to bring this all back into your body. And help you understand how to understand your immune function, your gut function, your endocrine system function. All of this is so interconnected. When we talk about women's health and hormones, we talk about perimenopause, menopause, the journey beyond even understanding what's going on. Like, I think of, you know, my kids who are teenagers, just all these different early warning signs that we can be given where we can really peel that top layer pack, go a little deeper, understand our own common stress response, and how to retrain and recalibrate our body stress response. So I'm just so excited to have you here today. Welcome to the show.

Oh, my goodness. That was the most. Like, my soul is just glowing from that introduction because I feel like you're speaking the language that my heart has been longing to share and to spread for so long. And people out there in the world like you that are reclaiming our glorious, amazing, beautiful, brilliant bodies and our power, that just. That's the best. So I'm just so grateful for you, your audience, this conversation. Thank you for having me.

Oh, thank you. Well, I love when the synchronicities just happen, right. And we're pulled together for. For good reason. So before we get into the depth of the conversation, I always love to talk about the origin. Like, there's a lot of areas you could have specialized in that you could have written about and talked about. Why is this area so. So important to you?

This is the book that I wish I would have had when I was a little girl. And my story begins with inherited family patterns. It's the epigenetic material, the. The belief systems, the gut microbiome that I inherited from my mother. Experiences, behaviors. All of this I inherited. And we, as human beings, we all inherit this. And from the very beginning, we're programmed with this information. Our brains are constantly scoping out our interior environment and our exterior environment and trying to make reason and trying to adapt to whatever that is. And that can be the beautiful, good things. It could also be the bad, terrible things, and it could be the absence of. Of things. And, you know, Bruce, Perry and Oprah, they talk about what happened to you. And I think it's really important to also acknowledge what didn't happen to us, what we needed. And my story begins, I was born to two very young adults that hadn't, arguably, I don't know if they. If any of us ever do figure ourselves out, but they sure hadn't. And my role became the person to calm their ire and to soothe their stressors and I became very good at reading nuance and behaviors and the facial expressions and the tone of voice, and I adapted. That was an adaptation that better helped me to survive, to take care of my family. And. And that adaptation, I like to use the metaphor, it's like you put on a big fluffy coat when it's cold outside. And so that hyper vigilance, that very attuned emotional expansiveness, if you will, helped me very much. And then as we continue to go through life, if we don't continue to readapt, if those adaptations are sticky, maybe like you put that coat on and the zipper gets stuck and you can't take it off, even though now it's hot outside, then those adaptations become problems. And so I was more sensitive growing older and more easily upset or easily offended or, oh, my goodness, did I say something wrong? And then going back and analyzing past conversations or past things that I did. And that set a foundation for anxiety later in life. And the dominant medical model teaches us that anxiety is a problem to be solved. And moreover, is that the doctors, the authorities, knew more about my mind and body than I did. And so I was programmed to then go with my symptoms. I'm. I'm gesturing kind of with palms up, and it's like, please help me. You know, going to the authorities. And then the. Since the 1960s with the chemical imbalance theory advent is we primarily treat that with medications. Oh, well, you must have low serotonin. Let's give you a drug to increase that. And so thus began my journey. And as a helper and a caretaker, I went to counseling school. I obtained my master's in clinical psychology, and then went on and studied integrative medicine, naturopathic medicine. And then it all, if you will, it all went to hell. And it was 2015. I was. I was starting a new business. I was building an integrative practice with a partner, and I stopped sleeping. I would lay awake at night and I'd be like, oh, I gotta call that person. Or, oh, my gosh, did I pay the Internet bill? Or, oh, this, this person hasn't followed up. And what if I missed something? So lots of self doubt, not sleeping, and then that spiraling into total autonomic arousal. And then suddenly I am the expert that people are turning to for anxiety help. And I'm like, I got, I got supplements, I got acupuncture points. I have yoga, I have meditation. Okay, fine. None of those are working to stop the anxiety and to knock me out, make me sleep. All right, I'll use Pharmaceuticals, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, Ambien, and all of the things that I was trying to use to suppress the symptoms, to suppress the language of my body weren't working. And then there's this greater sense of, I have no power, I have no control. I'm. I'm trapped, right? And in those moments, this, like, juxtaposition in this dark circle of hell, we have the decision to burn everything to the ground that we thought we believed and to get really, really curious. And that's what I did, or give up. And I wasn't ready to give up. I wanted to fight. I got really, really curious and started to discover some really important messages from my symptoms and started to re examine what my. My eclectic teachers said. And I started to own that. Leaning into the anxiety, listening to the messages, following those down the rabbit hole, looking at my trauma, looking at the subsequent adaptations of my winter coat. And that's when my life changed. And so that's the birth of the book. That's the beginning of. I've been in practice for many, many years seeing these strategies play out with my clients and with my audience. And I got really excited, wrote a book, and here we are.

That's quite the introduction. Like, it feels like a chapter, right? Like it really does. And you know, there's, there's. I always find as soon as you ask somebody their origin, I don't need to ask any other questions for the interview to flow because there's so much like juice and meat that shows up in your why and other people listening. I'm sure there was like multiple moments of resonance where they're like, yeah, I can relate to that. I can relate to a hundred percent having to walk on eggshells to figure out who I had to be in the room in order to avoid World War 3 happening or in order to keep myself safe. A hundred percent people can resonate and connect to that. And then also how you described it, where you taught yourself who you had to be in the presence of your parents to be able to keep everything cool and just to survive as a girl. But then how you weren't able to turn the switch off when you went into the other parts of your life. And people will hear this. You know, they're like, I'm showing up in my relationship in this way, but that doesn't actually feel like who I am. But I don't know how to not have this behavior, or I'm showing up in my work this way or whatever it may be. And I Feel like that is the. The internal dialogue that fuels this anxiety is we feel separate from ourselves, yet it's all happening in ourselves. And so as I listened to you talking about this, that you had access to multiple toolkits because you had western allopathic in your traditional training, then you had the integrative, right? So you talked herbs and botanicals and acupuncture and all the things from the functional side, and then you talked pharmaceuticals, and still nothing was touching where it was coming from in your body at that root place. So for you, like, sitting in between this functional and this. This Western medicine approach, what was the ultimate, like, clicking moment for you where you're like, okay, this is not about the things I'm taking and the things I'm doing. There is something else going on.

I think that that moment came when I decided I needed a giant pattern interrupt. And when I made that decision, I was like, you know what? I am too close to the. To the tree to see the forest. I'm so zoomed in, and nothing is working. And so I just need a giant pattern interrupt. And so I. I sold my. My half of the business and I moved across the country.

That's like, a very common story. Everyone's like, the best, really. It's going to be when I open up my business and then they open their business and they go, oh, my God. The next best day is when I sell the business and I get.

Get the heck out of there. And the zoom out. I feel like we don't talk enough about, like, control, alt, delete, or pattern interrupts or just allowing yourself. It's like I was clenching the soil in my fist so tightly that it was falling out. And so by being willing to just let that go and let that drop, it's like when you've already lost everything, then you don't have much to lose. And that gave me the zoom out that I needed to. To say, okay, what anxiety? Like, all right, it's just you and me, girl. What is going on? And I learned transcendental meditation. I studied internal family systems, and I did emdr. And I started going into what my anxiety and my insomnia were trying to do for me and also taking that responsibility back, because I think that there's a level of accountability that we need to have as. As women, as healers, is, yes, your doctor should know a lot about hormones and testing and interventions, but you know your story, you know your history, and it should be collaborative. And for me, I was just like, please fix me. Please make it Stop. And yeah, and I see behind you on your wall, it says, write your own story. And other people had been writing my story my entire life. And I was, I was like, you know what, I gotta take that pen. I gotta take that paper and we gotta rewrite it. And that was the beginning. Pattern interrupt. Burn it to the ground. And what are we building here?

I have two questions for you about this. My first is, did people around you know that you weren't okay?

Not many. Yeah, there were a few in my life, which, which can be very painful because one of them, my business partner, she knew that I wasn't doing well. And she told me that she didn't believe that I was okay and going to be okay. And so she was really eager to buy me out and not go into business again. And that was really hard and disheartening to hear because she's also a trauma informed mental health clinician. And so even in the mental health community, there's marginalization and loss and risk there. And then my husband knew, and he's a therapist also, and he was very trauma informed. He's like, this is data. Your nervous system is doing this. That's causing your hormones to do this. Girl, we got this. So it was by people knowing there's risks and there's also gifts.

Oh, that is the exact word that was coming through was gift. Like what a gift for your business partner to actually recognize it and say, I got you buy me out. Like, it's. This is not going to serve you. Like what an actual gift that was because we wouldn't be probably having this conversation. You wouldn't have written the book that you did. So in, you know, you talked about this in the beginning. We focus so much on like the things that happened to us, but we don't give enough praise to the things that didn't happen for us. Like that clinic didn't happen for you. And thank God it didn't happen.

I feel like I'm getting therapy right now. This is so good.

Thank you. Yes.

Releasing.

Releasing, right? Like surrender. It's like, it's the thing we pray for. I want to be able to surrender. I want to be able to let go. And yet it is simultaneous, simultaneously the thing that we are most terrified of. Because there's no, there's no like, what comes next. That, that is by definition to surrender. Right. My second question to that is once you put yourself back in the driver's seat of allowing yourself to explore. Okay, like, what is this really about? How then did other people around you respond to the way that you were nurturing yourself and supporting yourself and some of these different modalities that you were.

Trying feel like I was really fortunate and that people were like, what is this wonderful stuff? What do you. I want in on that. What are you doing? There were some people in my past life where, you know, we talk about this in Joseph Campbell's the Healer's Journey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The hero's journey. And how sometimes when we change, when we go through something really difficult and we change when we return from the journey, sometimes we just don't fit anymore. And that could be really difficult. And I was really fortunate that my soul tribe of people were looking on and they were like, girl, you got this, and if this is working for you, then I want some. And those people that were like, ooh, this is different, and we haven't seen this before, that was. That was okay. It just didn't fit anymore. And so there's a process of releasing and reclaiming in that, too. With relationship.

Yeah. Where's the beginning point for people? Like, I know in the line of work I do now, which is primarily in the perimenopause space, anxiety is a big one for women. And they also. They don't in the beginning, necessarily know what to call it. Like, there's not a name for it. And I don't think there should always be a label for it. It's more so them saying, I don't have the same focus. I'm feeling, you know, heart palpitations. My mind is scattered. You know, I'm. I'm off. I'm panicking about things I never used to panic about before. My level of worry has increased, you know, and oftentimes, like, I just actually don't know who I am anymore. I genuinely don't connect to or recognize myself anymore.

And.

And yes, in perimenopause, there is this, you know, massive change of so many of our hormones primarily, you know, as our ovarian reserve is starting to decline. Estrogen and progesterone and testosterone impact this, but there's also neurotransmitters. They're being massively impacted. And. And I think that when we go through these huge transitions in our life, per menopause could be one of them. Motherhood could be another business relationship changing. There's a moment where we have this opportunity where the body goes, okay, you can turn right, which is the no BS journey. And there's not a lot of guarantees over there, but I can guarantee you there's going to Be no bs. And then there's the left, which is like, you could do this. There'll be a little bit more control for a certain period of time, a little bit more predictability, but it's not going to last forever. Like, which one are you going to choose? And so I'm curious to know through your lens and your expertise, when someone is starting to recognize what might feel like anxiety, panic, that disconnection from self, where do we begin?

What's coming to mind first is what we deny will amplify and what we resist will persist. And so the first step is just simply acknowledging what your thoughts are, what your feelings are and what your sensations are. And in the book I teach about the weathered house, I use this as a metaphor. And so if you imagine that we're a house, each one of us, you're your own house, I'm my own house. And when we look at the house, we see where it's been built. And maybe it was built somewhere that is really steady and the earth is solid and it's nourishing and it holds you up. Or maybe your house was built on really rocky edge of a cliff with wind and waves. And so that tells your story about where you came from. And then some of our houses are constructed really well. The people that helped build us knew what they were doing. And so this is your, your childhood parenting, your mentors, society, culture around you. Or maybe they didn't know what the heck they were doing and they were slapping two by fours together with some spit and a prayer. And so you look at that house and you look at how it's been constructed. And then you go inside of the house and you can see that there are things that belong to you. Maybe there's a metaphorical painting of your joys and your life and photographs of your stories, but then maybe there are things in that house that don't belong to you and you're like, oh, where did that cat litter box come from? That's kind of smelly, that's not my cat. Or maybe I wouldn't design the kitchen this way. There's lots of X, Y and z inside. And so as you go into the house, you can start to do an audit of what you see and start to acknowledge what doesn't belong to you. So that that whole metaphor, it sets the foundation for a lot of journaling prompts that we can do in the process of, of acknowledgement is we acknowledge our history, we acknowledge our family, we acknowledge our culture, we acknowledge our habits, we acknowledge our bodies we acknowledge the big keystone events that occurred or should have occurred, but didn't. For example, maybe you didn't get to go to senior prom because you were grounded by authoritarian parents, or maybe you had to go to rehab because you were engaged in using substances. All sorts of different things, variables that have impacted you. So then we have all that information and we've acknowledged it and we've noticed it, and then we get to get curious about the different ways our bodies, our minds and our nervous systems have adapted to that.

Right?

So the house may be a little bit sideways because the wind is blowing. And so someone put up these big sticks to hold the house from toppling it over. Well, what are those? What do those look like? So let's say that I talk about Esme in this book. And when Esme was young, she's a little girl, she grew up in a very, very abusive household. And especially her father. So her mother and her and her brother, they went to Vietnam. They escaped him and went to Vietnam. And she tells a story about how she had pcos. First of all, she had polycystic ovarian syndrome, lots of uterine pain, hormone related symptoms, terrible premenstrual symptoms, and lots of anxiety and panic and all sorts of stuff. So she's telling me this story about where they were in Vietnam and her father came bursting in the door and surprised them. And the mother froze, the son froze, and she was hiding under the table. And he starts yelling. And so she didn't know why she did this. She's a little girl. She just started screaming. And he came and he kicked her right in the gut. And the body keeps score. The body remembers, right.

And in our tissues, right. It's like all these different things we hear, you know, you've mentioned a few of them, but the issues in our tissues. And if we don't own our story, our story will own us, right? Different things.

Yes.

Yes.

And no one had told her that that was relevant to her PCOS or her anxiety. It was just a childhood memory that was really stressful for her.

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So. So she was. She was in her adulthood, and she's facing. Doctors are like, okay, you need either a hysterectomy, the birth control isn't working. Best we could do is just pull it all out and hope for the best. And she didn't want to do that, and hence her coming to see me at that time. And we started looking at when I notice the pain in my uterus, when I notice the symptoms that are happening, if we follow that down the timeline to the earliest moment that I remember either feeling that way or the image that comes to mind is that memory came up for her, that memory of her dad bursting in. And we did a lot of trauma work on that memory. And then when our nervous system, when our body goes through a trauma, it will adapt, not just in our thoughts and our memories, but just as you said, in our tissues. And so her hormones adapted to what happened. Her immune system adapted to what happened. And so while we were doing the trauma work, she was working on recalibrating, reprogramming, repatterning the body. And she got better. Her symptoms of PCOS went away because the voice had done that, its job. It had told her, she had listened. She'd acknowledged, she'd looked at her house, she'd done the deeper work, she'd recalibrated the complimentary systems, and she got better. So that's kind of like an encapsulation of someone's listening to this conversation or like, oh, my gosh, I'm 50 years old. I have all these symptoms. I don't even know where to begin. Begin by going into your house.

So good it is. You know, all of us can be simultaneously going through the same stage or phase in our body and in our life. Hormonally. The expression of every individual body is so unique for a reason. And those expressions of how our bodies feel anything is our opportunity to learn, to get curious and to, you know, grow from, Break a cycle or continue for that cycle to deepen and for the pattern to continue onward. And, you know, I think it's. We're so focused on outcome. Like, the outcome of no longer suffering from PCOS or painful uterine cramps or whatever those symptoms may be is so many women's goal. But we're hyper focused on the outcome, and we don't understand that we have to change a behavior or a pattern in order to change the outcome. What you're talking about here is, like, how can we even know the behavior pattern to change if we don't first yet really know, like, where this is coming from and everything we're holding onto? Like, we hold on to so much history. You're talking about this young girl who. This was her experience. But there's also so many of us that are holding on to our mother's experience, our grandmother's experience. You know, we can go back so many generational lines and studying your body, studying your habits. Trusting your body is, you know, at the end of the day, if there's one thing we can do, which is actually a free tool, it's to really listen in and to trust our body. But it's scary for a lot of people. What if the idea of what we're talking about here, which is remembering something traumatic, remembering an experience that, you know, our. Our body's hardwired to keep us safe. Our. Our brain will suppress memory and emotions and situations in order for us to keep going, to cope. So what happens for the individuals where they desperately want to do this work, but every time they go in, there's more fear and what feels like more panic and anxiety that's there because it's so painful to go back.

Yeah, I have four steps for that. I think that's a really important. An important question that you're asking. There's. I'm gonna. I'm gonna take a sidebar because I love science, and I want to substantiate this with science, especially for those listeners that are like, prove this to me.

Right.

This feels really theoretical. Okay, let's talk about science. So. And then we'll talk about the four steps. So there is this procedure that was. That's often done. It's called nasal cranial release. And they were using this procedure with young persons who had developmental disabilities, down syndrome, different things like that. And what it involves is placing a balloon on a rod up your nose and then inflating the balloon. And so then that can help with the airway. It's sort of like chiropractic medicine for the bones in your head. And so what they were looking at is the two different approaches. One approach is slowly and gently moving the bones in the skull, and then the other one is rapid velocity, kind of a wham, bam, thank you, ma'.

Am.

You go in and inflate really fast, and then you're out. And so then they were looking at outcome measures and trying to ascertain which one would stick better, which had lasting effects. And the biggest dynamic variable that the researchers were observing is that when we do an intervention really heavy, really fast, you just kind of two feet forward, jump in just like a cannonball into the pool. Is that the sympathetic nervous system, that nervous system activation that will put us into fight flight, freeze. Adrenaline, cortisol, all of those changes that when the body is in fight, flight, freeze. It's not going to hold an intervention like that as well. It's going to resist that. It's kind of like when you get into a car accident, if you're really, really tight, you're more likely to get injured versus if you're asleep or drunk, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

And. And so those who are listening is. Is that you're like, okay, I love this. I want to do the work. I want to dive in, and I want you to do. There's four steps before you even go into the trauma work, before you go into the memory retrieval, before you do any of that. And so let me walk you through those four steps. So the very first step is to calm the body and the nervous system. And so when we go into arousal, and this arousal can show up on a spectrum with green light calm. I'm chill, I'm relaxed, I'm creative, I'm feeling sexual, I'm feeling sleepy, I'm writing a story, I'm watching a movie. That green light zone can then go into a little bit more arousal, whereas now I'm feeling a little edgy, I'm a little agitated, a little activated, a little annoyed, a little tensed. And then that can go all the way up into the red light spectrum, which is crisis. So it can be panic, rage, pain, it can be anything that represents that full fledged sympathetic overdrive. Right. And so when we go into the yellow or that red zone when we're aroused, we see changes happening in the brain. And one of the changes is that our emotional limbic system, our amygdala, which is the emotional processing part, starts to become more active. And then that's gonna bypass your logical brain. And so you're gonna be trying to go in and do that work, but you won't have access to your analytical, logical brain that has your adult resourced self in the present moment. She's gonna get hijacked by the emotional brain, and then that's just gonna send a cascade of chemicals down your body and you're gonna feel awful. So the first step is you have to learn how to get out of that emotional activation and bring your body from the red or the yellow zone back into green. So practical strategies for that are the things that we learn in dialectical behavioral therapy. These are things like temperature. So cold. Hot. Especially cold around the eyes. Are you familiar with that? I see you nodding. You're like, yeah, I really got this.

Yeah.

Yeah. I like putting the cold around the eyes. And some people like it on the back of their neck.

Mm.

Especially in menopausal and perimenopausal women, where there's like, I call them power surges. So oftentimes with autonomic arousal, we get flushes of heat, we get hot flashes. And so the cold can be. It can be magical and other things that bring us back into our body. That online or logical brain that turned down that emotional brain, sour in the mouth and so sour candies, ginger, whatever. Sour gummy worms. Probably not healthy, but they work in a pinch. Yeah, in a pinch, Right. So your vagus nerve, it innervates the root of your tongue. So the back of your tongue has receptors to the vagus nerve. Your vagus nerve is a girl's best friend when it comes to autonomic hot flashes and panic and all these symptoms. And so temperature, flavor, touch fidgets, moving the body, anything to get you in your body. So that's the first step. So I'm sure you have things that you've tried that work best for you. Like, do you have a favorite? Like, when you're stressed, the first thing.

You do, it's my breath. So I really tap into my breath and I need to ground myself in some way. So all my body has different cues. It's interesting. Like, as time goes on and I'm so much more aware. So when I'm in a time of stress, I sigh a lot. Ooh, I do a lot of sighing. And I'm like, oh, there I am. I'm sighing. And so tapping into my breath work is really important for me. Laying on the ground and being outside in nature. Like, if the way to. The quickest for me to recalibrate is to go and be outside and to do that. But some of these things you're talking about, like the temperature piece, right? And just the placement of it. Like, if we're thinking, you know, I think a lot in terms of Chinese medicine as well, and just certain points, right, like the lungs are up in the cheek and the lungs hold grief, right? When we come here in the thymus and like into the heart and the role that plays and the occiput, like, there's so much knowledge and wisdom we hold in these areas. So all these tools that you're giving and what I love as well is these cost you nothing. Yeah, you don't have to. There's no, like, biohacking tool. You have to go buy that. The biohacking tool you own is your body. You have to learn how to go into your body and do some of these simple things you touched on there. I mean, you gave a very specific recommendation for like a vasomotor symptom in perimenopause or menopause of these power surges, heat surges, hot flashes. What is the deep interconnection between. And I want to make sure we also hit on steps 2, 3, and 4. But what is the interconnection between, you know, estrogen, anxiety, and that transition into. Into menopause?

So estrogen often gets a bad rap where we think of estrogen as, oh, it's causing cramps or acne or hot flashes. And estrogen is actually panic protective. But not all estrogen is created equal. So there was this study that was done of women who were Victims of sexual assault. And this is very traumatic. And the two groups of women, one of the groups, they received emergency contraceptive that contained estrogen. The other group did not receive anything that contained estrogen. And what the researchers did is they examined long term emotional effects from the trauma and they found statistically significantly less ptsd, flashbacks, anxiety symptoms in women who received high doses of estrogen.

Wow.

Estrogen is panic protective, but estrogen declines as we go into menopause. And so what is, what is that all about? Is our, is mother nature out to get us? There's some nuance to this. And so number one is that estrogen, I'm sure you know this, but maybe some of your listeners don't. I didn't. Is it's made all over the body. Your, your brain makes estrogen yourself.

Yeah. You have receptor sites everywhere.

Everywhere.

Yeah.

And so the question, so when, when we're going into, we're getting that beautiful data and that wisdom from our body, we're getting those perimenopausal symptoms. Our FSH on our blood test is rising. It shows our ovaries are now going into their well earned retirement. So we're getting less estrogen production if we're getting symptoms. The question that I want to know is what was happening with your hormone regulation before perimenopause kicked in? Because the body isn't just producing symptoms now that estrogen is dropping, it's very likely that there was something that was out of balance before that because ideally the rest of your body is going to pick up where the ovaries left off and give you different forms of estrogen and metabolization of estrogen and the gut microbiome processing estrogen and all these different things. But if we look at what can cause dysfunctions of estrogen, I want to, I want to know about environmental toxin exposure. We know that heavy metals can get in. This is, this is double blind studied research, heavy metal environmental toxins, densities like lead, arsenic, cadmium, they can, they look similar to your body as minerals like magnesium. Right. And so if you have high environmental toxin exposure, they can insert those metals, can insert themselves into the mineral pathways and then when you get your blood tested, your estrogen is normal, but the pathway is broken.

Yeah.

Right. And so then when we have net less estrogen, that already broken pathway, you're going to feel a ton of symptoms from that. Same with mold. Right. So mold, metals, solvents. I'm thinking of xenoestrogens, like if you get food to go in plastic containers.

So I Mean, and it's us. We are the target market as women, you know, in terms of, like, we're the ones use all the products. We're typically the main shoppers of the household. Like, we are filter that everything is getting through, and the impact is massive. It's like I always say to people, if you're having a hard time thinking about and you have a household where there's men, I want you to go into the bathroom, and I want you to look at your side of the sink and under the cupboards and on the shelves. And I want you to look at the man's side of the sink and under the cupboards and on the shelves. I can guarantee you they own a razor, a toothbrush, and deodorant. You take up all their space. Yeah, and all your space. And, you know, and. And that's like one small example we're talking about from the chemical perspective, you know, from the. The neuroinflammatory perspective, from the imprint on our nervous system. That's everything you started to talk about with all of these experiences. Like, we are. We are the cumulative effect. We are the sum today of the human who has gone through every single experience we have been a part of in our whole life.

And that's the big piece that.

That causes anxiety, to be quite honest, for a lot of people, as they hear that and they go, well, that's just too much. Like, how can I as one person fix all of those things or heal all of those things? And so in that first piece, what I liked is that when you're talking about these steps again, these don't cost us anything. But we have to retrain ourselves to remember to do these. You know, like, you might need to put a note, when I had to recalibrate my nervous system in 2015 after I sold my clinic. Oh, girl, I was you too, sidelining you. I literally was using my kids like window markers on my mirror in my bathroom to remind myself to breathe, to keep the main thing. The main thing to focus, to trust. And, like, I had to see that again. I had to have this repetitive reminder because we can know it in ourselves, but if we don't have these cues of resonance around us, we will so quickly just go back to what we've always done. Because as uncomfortable as it is, it's familiar. And our. Our brain will always choose familiar over ideal.

Yes, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't, they say.

So annoying. So what's step two?

Yeah. Can I provide a validating Piece of deliciousness before step two, because there's something you said that I absolutely love and I want to emphasize is that for those who are listening and if you're feeling overwhelmed, I want you to know is that your body is so capable of healing itself. Your kid falls and scrapes their knee, you accidentally cut yourself on a pair of scissors, the body's gonna heal that even if you don't pay any attention to it, your body can heal itself. And sometimes it just takes us cooperating with it.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. We have to get out of the way.

Yes, yes. So maybe less this. I'm like feeling called out about my lipstick today. I'm like strikes of garbage in it. But so just know that if you just notice these things, get out of your own way, your body can heal and it's so cool. So step one, we just, we just calmed the nervous system. I loved the grounding, the breath work. You're hacking your vagus nerve with the exhalation. So good, so good. Step two is now that you've got your logical brain back online and your emotional brain is like, okay, I'm going to take a breath. We've got this. This is when the top down therapies that we've been talking about in clinical psychology since Freud, that's when these come into play. This is when you analyze. This is the logical part. This is doing baseline testing. So what the heck is your ferritin like? I guarantee you it's probably low. That's your storage iron. What are your estrogen metabolites like? I'm not just talking about blood, but I'm talking about maybe doing urine testing if your insurance will cover it. Anything that requires thought and analysis. Collaborate with your trusted doctor with that. Make sure your ducks are in a row. Are you detoxing? Are you getting good nutrition? Logic, all those analytical things. Step three is now we're starting to bridge the gap between the top down of the mind and the information from the body. And this can be stressful for us when we're feeling. In 2015, during my epic anxiety attack, the somatic symptoms were so awful. I don't know what it was like for you, but it was like someone had grilled on a fire and they put hot coals under my chest and in my back and I had involuntary muscle jerking and it was just awful. So those physical symptoms can be very scary and they can be very overwhelming. But what we want to do is bit by bit is start to notice the information from our body in a very simple exercise that you can do today is to just breathe, suck on the ice or the sour or whatever it is that'll keep you a little bit more calm. And set an alarm for 30 to 60 seconds, and then just scan from head to toe. Just notice your body from head to toe. Oh, my back's a little tight. Oh, I feel a little hungry. Maybe I'm a little bloaty. Ooh, I've got a little bit of tingly in my fingertips. Whatever it is, you just simply practice noticing it. And this is where we employ things like meditation, mindfulness. Yoga is so good at that because we're able to like, ooh, that's a long stretch. Or ooh, this is really sore. Ooh, this is delicious relaxation, Nidra, Whatever it is, right? So that's step three. Do you have a favorite interoceptive just for you? I feel like all the things you say are so brilliant. I need to know, what do you do?

I mean, I do so much of what you talk about, so. Because I teach movement for a living as well, you know, it's like. And I actually. It's interesting in having this conversation. So we're recording this in September, and last week I was so I just turned 45 on September 5th. And I said, you know, it was like that year of 44 to 45 was. It was a big build year for me. I was really working on putting on more muscle on my body, and just like, power and strength were like the two things I was using to recalibrate. And this year, my whole energetic frequency is freedom in the year 45. So I'm actually doing a big deload right now. And yoga is something that's been part of my life since I was 17. And now it is. That is like the main way. Yoga and walking. And yes, still doing some strength, but bringing my body back to the reminder of my body, not what I'm pushing, not what I'm pulling, you know, not those kinds of things. And with yoga, the reason I love it so much is that breath becomes this beautiful metronome that creates a cadence that when you're feeling overwhelmed. And I. I just want to say to a lot of women listening as well, your anxiety may not show up like panic or, you know, over functioning. It could show up like apathy. It could show up like exhaustion. It could show up like adrenal burnout. But in reality, it's actually anxiety showing up. That's how it was for me in 2015. I didn't go and hyperdrive. My body was Just like, excuse me. We have given you warnings for a very long time now, and you think you're better than the warning. And so we're just going to flatline your ass. So we're going to prevent you from achieving and being able to be productive. And that's going to be the lesson. And I was like, oh, this feels like burnout. But when I went deeper, I was like, this is not burnout. This is how my anxiety is showing up. And so again, what a gift. What a gift. You know? And so now, yeah, those are the things for me. So it's recognizing, like, I'm in a season right now where more push and force and grunt doesn't feel good. What feels really good in my body right now are the things that nourish me. So if I come away from moving my body in a certain way, and I'm like, oh, that was a humdinger. That doesn't feel very nourishing right now. That's kind of a filter I'm running it through.

And to give language to that. So we talk about fight, flight, freeze quite often. But you're describing and fun, which is exactly what my pattern. And in. In your example, you're describing a flop where.

Oh, that's the fifth one.

And then the sixth one's fracture. Okay. Which is so interesting. And so flop is it's like, I'm exhausted. It's like such extreme autonomic arousal that we just flop. We see this with sheep actually making notes. Nicole.

So I'm like, the flight or fight. Fight, freeze. What am I saying? Fight.

I know. It's a tongue twister. So we.

Yeah, fight.

So we get angry and agitated. We're gonna fight. Flight is I just gotta get away. I gotta run away. Freeze is a deer in headlights. In freeze. We have arousal symptoms. So blood pressure goes up, Blood sugar goes up. This is. This is us getting ready. And then flop. Our blood pressure will go down. It feels like adrenal collapse. Our body temperature may go down, our blood sugars. The. The body is just kind of going into almost like a hibernation shutdown mode. And then fawn is when we try to appease the person who's the perpetrator. We try to make them not want to hurt us or make them love us. And so we. We often do that with authority. And then the last one is fracture. And we see this. I describe this a lot when we talk about parts work, which is like, part of me feels really excited about doing this work, and I feel motivated, and I'm going to listen to every single podcast that I can. And then part of me is absolutely terrified and I can't do it right. So we have different parts of ourselves and this exists on a dissociative spectrum where on one end we feel like different parts. Like, ah, part of me wants taco today party. Me wants brownie for lunch. All the way to the opposite end of the spectrum, which would be more multiple personality slash dissociative identity where we see like an actual fracturing of self. And so that's the fracture. That's the last one.

I'm like, we're 52 minutes in and I feel like, just like, I feel like we just opened a can of. Oh my gosh. Yeah, because this right here, okay, I'm having like multiple things happen right now and body and in my brain. And I'm thinking of so many conversations, so many women. I'm. I'm thinking about myself, I'm thinking about everyone in that we're all so familiar with. Fight, Flight, Freeze and Fawn, I feel like is a newer one for people, but they're starting to understand it. This is like everybody else being on the list but you. And so you just are self sacrificing. You take care of everyone and everything else and we're mad about it, but at the same time you keep doing it because it's your cop out. It's actually how you exist, how you survive. But the flop and the fracture, this is like we're on to something here. Because this by definition are. These are the two greatest things I see happening with women in perimenopause is the flop and the fracture. The flop being, I'm so burned out, I'm so overwhelmed, I give zero shits anymore. Which is also kind of liberating when you get to that age because you're really just like, I actually don't give a shite or what somebody else may think about something else. And so you, you operate less from that place of fear and more of like, you start to have the audacity. But the fracture, the fracture is the fascinating one to me because again, in order to protect ourselves, we will disassociate. And when you think about so many hormonal issues and imbalances women go through, it's like, if we had been taught that it was safe to be connected to our bodies from the youngest age possible, if we had been taught and prepared for all the different changes and processes our body were going to go through, would these fractures occur in as many of us as they do. Yes.

We had to wall off part of ourself. I was just, I, I, I work in a integrated mental health clinic, and I just before this conversation, I was going in and having lunch with some of my counseling colleagues, and one of the women there was talking about this client who is dealing with a lot of rage and a lot of anger. And this therapist, well intended, is like, how do I get her to just, like, not be so angry? And so then one part is like, we'll take the angry part and put it on a, on a, on an island in a golden bubble so she can't do anything to anybody. And I was like, why are we, why are we putting anger on an island? Why are we exiling part of ourself? Because it's uncomfortable. What if we said all parts welcome? You know? You know, that whole thing, like, good vibes only.

Yeah. Which is actually bullshit.

I'm at war with that. Yeah.

I'm also at war with the hashtag, you can do hard things. So, yes. Because I'm like, I just, I don't know any woman who's not already doing hard things. I feel like we need to do something different, which is like, hashtag, permission slip to actually not do the hard thing. And like, I, we get stuck in all of these things that then further removes us from the way we're honestly feeling. Right.

Like, is that the best thing to.

Tell a woman who is already stretched beyond belief is, you can do this. You can do hard things. Is it the best advice? Like, when you're talking about this woman with her rage, I'm like, celebrate this sacred rage. Let move. Like, this is my whole thing is like, why would we want to capture that and bottle it back up? This woman is actually having a breakthrough. Like, why wouldn't we want to allow this to be something that is sacred, to help her get it out, not in.

Yes, yes, sister. Yeah. We can alchemize. That is teach us how to take that as personal power instead of being at war against it. And that's part of what EMDR ego state parts work is all about, is that we start to understand the different parts of ourselves that may be at war with each other or may not even know about each other. And then it's sort of like looking at a tree. So we look at all the individual roots, but then as we work our way through the process, we realize that we're all one big, beautiful tree. And so there's this disintegration, this dissociation, this fracturing that takes place. And then there's the reintegration and accepting all of my parts, all of my vibes, my need to rest and just flop and my need to rage and burn things down. Right? Yeah.

How different it would be if we again, just were taught these tools and to know that these are all part of the human experience. There's going to be a time in our life when we're going to go through 1, 3, multiple, all of them. It might feel like simultaneously in our bodies were not broken. And you know, it's like just comes back to that whole thing that if we had this dialogue, this manual of understanding all the different ways that our feelings as humans could be felt and could move out into the world, we stopped labeling ourselves with the problem and instead started to focus on how we could be more solution oriented. And I think this is where like community is so important because as women, what we tend to do and we've all been taught this is like, that's not. You don't talk about that in public. That's you keep in private. You just. And so we shroud that which then fills us with shame because we feel embarrassed or shameful and that we're the only person going through this, when in.

Fact, I don't know a single woman.

Who can't resonate or relate to some aspect of what we've talked about today or some word or feeling, sensation or emotion.

Yeah, yeah. And so then what do we do with that? And so that is the fourth step, because we haven't even gotten into doing the parts work and doing the trauma work is now that we've, we've calmed the body, we've given you your analytical resource back, you've started to become more aware of that mind body connection. And now we want to practice alchemizing your internal power in a way that feels controlling. And so what happens with trauma is that it's like starting a car's engine, but it doesn't totally turn over. And so it's like revving up and then it doesn't turn over. And so we engage in what's called somatic reenactment. Our body's trying to rescue us, it's stuck in this past whirlwind. Because trauma and adversity don't just get stuck in the logical time sensing parts of the brain, it's stuck everywhere. And so what that fourth step is all about is you from a place of your own personal power and agency is you put yourself into autonomic arousal and then you practice bringing it out and yoga is actually a really good example of this. So you go into a warrior posture. For example, you're holding that warrior posture. Your muscles are getting really fatigued. Your brain is like, I. When are they going to tell me I can move? You're going into arousal. And then finally, you move yourself out of that posture. It could be before they say that the time is up. It could be at the end of the time. Whatever you choose, it's all about your personal power. So you practice. You retrain your nervous system. You're reprogramming your nervous system how to go up and how to go down. Another example, this Bessel Van der Kolk and Bruce Perry teach about doing high ropes courses, things that expand our window of tolerance. So I go up on that high ropes. I'm like, holy shit, this is scary. And then you choose. I'm done now. So you practice going into arousal. You practice coming out so that when the body's like, hey, girl, I got something to tell you. And it goes into arousal, and it gives you all that beautiful data that you feel, that sense of control, of like, okay, I know how to hear this. I know how to notice it, and I know how to flow in it, and I know how to release it. So steps one through four, again and again and again, rinse and repeat. And then when you're ready, you rinse and repeat. You keep doing it while doing the trauma work, but a lot of people skip that first chunk, and they just dive in two feet forward. You will have more success if you do steps one through four. And I have it all outlined in the book so you don't have to worry about remembering it all. It's there for you.

I. I think that is symbolic of. So much of what we do is we skip the. Skip the boring basics and the foundation to jump right to the result. And then we get frustrated, and we think, well, there's something else again that didn't work. And it's like you actually skipped the whole introduction, the whole. It's like, you know, starting a book on chapter four. The first couple chapters may have felt boring, but they're actually building, you know, the backbone of what you're getting into. And I think it's true in everything, you know, in our life. So I love that reminder. You know, as we're talking in my head, I'm thinking, this kind of conversation needs to be part of. I feel like every health program. I see this as well, too. In business, and business mentorship is, you know, it's like, where we do this in one area of our life, we will inevitably do this in another area of our life. And the greatest, you know, the greatest project we'll ever work on is that of ourselves. Right. And starting to. To fill ourselves up in that way. So your book, it. Is it actually, like, officially in hand release now? Because I know it's this year, 2024.

I got my advanced author copies four days ago.

Oh, amazing.

Yeah, it's really exciting. It comes out on bookshelves October 4th or October 8th.

Okay, so soon.

Soon, yes. Yeah. And so it'll be anywhere books are sold. I love supporting local, so hopefully you can get it at your local bookstore.

Well, we'll make sure to put all of the links into the chat, but I feel like this is going to be a part one of two. I'd really love to have you back on and go a little bit deeper into, you know, the. The six ways that our nervous system really expresses, like, the six Fs of fundamentally how we feel. And to really talk about decoding some of these symptoms that women are experiencing in perimenopause and menopause, because I know it's very easy for us to all think it's just hormonal deficiency that is the reason why we have these symptoms. But we know there's more to it than that.

Yeah. Yeah. So those who are listening, your homework for today is to imagine that house. Build your house, look at the history, start asking questions, do your timeline. Because then when you figure out what did or did not happen, then the next step is, well, how have I adapted? How are these symptoms or these. Whatever's going on, how are these adaptations to what happened? Because once you know what those adaptations are, then you have some beginning keys to start reprogramming that so that they don't need to be there anymore. So that's your homework. That's it. I'm gonna.

I'm gonna follow the homework as well. Because I think this is like, you know, it.

It.

Some people can say it in this way, like, oh, the work never ends. And for me, it's so amazing. The work never ends. Like, I just hear. I have conversations like this. And all I think is we always have another opportunity to, you know, reinvent ourselves or to have a deeper connection with ourselves. And thank goodness that we have this, because even for those who are listening, who, you know, maybe you've been on a pharmaceutical because of anxiety or some of the things we've talked about, I really feel like this would be an awesome companion book to you know, just open up perhaps a different dialogue that wasn't presented for some of those people.

Yeah, it's a semicolon. And so the beginning maybe. And that's how it was for me. It's Alexa Pro saved my life. I love her. And the semicolon came after. And it's like. And okay, what are, what are my symptoms telling me?

Yeah, well, that's the beautiful part about integrative medicine. It's not about choosing one or the other necessarily. It's like, how are we able to support ourselves and do the work?

Yes.

Yeah.

Amazing. This has been one of my favorite conversations. Oh, awesome. Good.

I'm glad to. I wish we actually time here together, but we'll definitely have you back on the show. And to everyone listening, we'll make sure to connect all of Dr. Nicole's resources where you can buy the book, you can Instagram. You have your own podcast as well. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah. It's called the Holistic Inner Balance, and it's me and my good friend Hadley Garrison, and she's an Ayurveda specialist. And so we talk about all things emotional health, brain health, mental health, Ayurveda remedies, supplements. We have a lot of fun.

Oh, I love that blend. I love the fusion of that.

Yeah, it's really great. She adds so much nuance because if someone has hot flashes, there could be a vata type hot flash or kapha or a pitta. And the treatments all vary. So it's really fun. Come check it out.

I love that Will for sure. All right, ladies, we'll connect all of that for you up into the show notes, as always, wishing you more simplicity and more ease in all that you do. And we will see you back here next time. Take care, everyone.