EP 109: Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness | Dr. David Treleaven

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out.

In this episode of the Radical Responsibility Podcast, I'm happy to share with you an interview I did with my colleague, David Trelevan, Ph.D. the author of Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, one of the leading voices in how to offer the practice of mindfulness, or instruct the practice of mindfulness in ways that are accessible to anyone, regardless of their personal background and the kinds of traumas they may have suffered in the past that may still be active in their lives. So we talk a lot about what trauma is and debunk some of the misunderstandings of that. We explore Dan Siegel's idea, the Window of Tolerance, and how to practice mindfulness and teach mindfulness from within that window. And in general, just how to make the remarkable benefits of mindfulness more available to everyone in a world where we know that so many suffer from all forms of trauma.

How you doing, David?

Good, thanks. Good to see you.

Welcome. Good to see you again. David and I have worked together before and David's on our online faculty with the Engage Mindfulness Institute, our teacher training program. We're so happy that he's part of that work with us and brings his trauma sensitive perspective. So David is a trauma expert and he's the author of a really well received book, Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness. And he's developed an online trauma sensitive mindfulness community where people can join and have lots of resources to learn how to bring a trauma sensitive approach into their own mindfulness practice. And for those of us who are mindfulness teachers or clinicians that use mindfulness based interventions to infuse our teaching practice and our clinical skills with that trauma sensitive approach. So it's really important work and so needed in today's world. And you know, obviously right now, you know, we're going through this COVID 19 global pandemic and it's hard to imagine a much more traumatic, I mean, there are more traumatic situations. Depends on where you are, if you're immediately impacted right now or your family. It's an extremely traumatic and it's traumatic for all of us. And you know, in the background of that, one of the reasons that inspired this Global Resilience Summit, even in the background of that, we have the looming or already present climate, emergency and just all the potential disruptions, economic, social, political and so forth. And you know, we are living in very challenging times and probably all human beings have already always thought that. But I think these really are the most challenging times. And it's really pretty much off the charts right now. And you know, we will get to the other side of this particular pandemic and. But there's a danger and a risk that we could really come through pretty traumatized on the other end of it. So, Dave May, we could just start off with talking about what is the relationship between trauma and resilience.

Great. Yeah. I think Fleet, it's such an important time, almost like the intersections of trauma, any kind of contemplative practice, call it mindfulness right now, but trauma, mindfulness and resilience that you're having this summit seems like a really important moment to be talking about resilience and not talking about resilience as any kind of skip over or blowing sunshine or just trying to make nice here that, you know, from your framing right there, it's immediately like, how is resilience going to support us all given the different amounts of stress that we're under? And I really appreciate that you named. It's a traumatic time and then it's going to be impacting people and communities in such different ways. So talk about prison populations, even just talk about families who are in a certain level of quarantine isolation. There's just such a random, as I've seen this last couple weeks, very wide spectrum of how people are being impacted, including people who have had traumatic experiences around isolation and are finding themselves in an environment where, wow, it's like I can't reach out. I feel isolated. So just as a caveat, I think it's a great time to be talking about resilience and I think of resilience as, you know, as you're just saying our ability to bounce back from adversity and difficult experiences. And I'm curious about you. It's a very interesting moment around time where what does it mean to be faced with a threat that for some is right here on their doorstep or they're being impacted right now? And then we also are being told that, you know, a week, two weeks, three weeks out, that we could be also experiencing ongoing waves of traumatic stress. So I think it's a very unique time for all of us in the different communities that we're in about how do we do well by this moment? And I think resilience, as we're going to be talking about here is, is a really important practice that we should all have, especially if we're doing contemplative practice.

Well, from a, you know, from a scientific perspective, it would be very useful if we had some studies going on right now to track how we're all moving through this together. You mentioned that question of time because. And I'm sure we'll talk about various forms of trauma with secondary trauma. You know, we're all hearing the news. Every time we hear the news, our brain is very much going, that could have been me, or that could be me, or maybe that's going to be me. So we're all getting that, you know, neurobiological reaction, neurochemical reaction, to whatever degree, as if we're right in it. And, you know, then there is the way the news is unfolding and where it is and look in relation to where we're located. And, you know, as you mentioned before, I mean, the most vulnerable among us are always the most immediately in this and the first impacted when that. And that's extremely true on all kinds of levels. And at the same time, one of the interesting thing is that this virus really isn't respecting any boundaries, even boundaries of privilege.

Isn't that true?

You know, we're all.

We're all really experiencing this. And it's really interesting to see how that works in terms of our exposure to traumatic stress.

Absolutely. And I think actually that could be a good way in here to talk about trauma and resilience when we were just talking about our tendency to be focusing on, for example, threat that we have this, as so many people will now hear, we're hardwired to have a negativity bias to really focus on what's threatening. And you could, you know, of course, there's evolutionary, evolutionary benefits to have had that negativity bias over time. And many writers talk about this from a number of different angles. But Rick Hansen talks about our brains being, what is it? Velcro for. Velcro for what's negative, but Teflon for the good. So we were going, we're going to have this negative, this automatic negativity bias. And then here we are inundated by so much news about potential threats. And then as we're trying to understand what's happening. And so that's where I think resilience is so important, where we are purposefully actually shifting inside of practice towards places that bring a sense of stability. And that's not. To get away from the legitimate threat. We still need to be making good decisions. It's not like an ostrich, but resilience, as I see it, and resilience practices are a way to support our inner resources, to help buoy us in times of difficulty. But actually Fleet, as I see it and as I learn more about resilience, it's actually to build our capacity to be with difficulty. It's actually increasing what I talk about as the window of tolerance, as Dan Siegel talks about, which I'd love to get into with you here, it's increasing our capacity to be with difficulty, whether an individual or community, which is going to be huge going forward, not just right now, but for the months and years to come.

Well, just to highlight in light of that, and you mentioned the negativity bias. So yes, we're set up in evolutionary terms and it makes sense to focus on threat first because job one for any species is survival.

Right.

The problem is that all of our experiences of danger and threat, any kind of negativity, goes right into long term memory, whereas positive experiences don't even go in the long term memory unless we really hold them. Which is why Rick Hansen talks about savoring the good. Right. And so what that does is it develops what's sometimes called implicit memory, where we then have a tendency to spin things to the negative. Right. And to be overly sensitive. So coming out of this, you know.

Whatever we're going to go through individually and collectively with this pandemic, could set us up to really be really over sensitized and really fearful and really manipulatable, if that's a word by demagogues and so forth. Or if we can build the experience of resilience into our implicit memory, that just that sense that somehow we can handle this or we got through this or I can do this or we can do this together.

Absolutely. And I think that's where.

Mindfulness practice, that ability to know what's happening when it's happening, will be so key. For those of us that have a practice that we can lean into, Fantastic. Knowing that our attention will be pulled and drawn, as you're saying, to these more adverse or threatening experiences. And then for people that are newer to practice how to be offering practice in a way to them that's supporting their, they need, they need the skills and how to do that in a way that's going to support them in this particular moment, I think resilience is a great way into that. For those of us that have practice, I think this is going to be a time that we're going to be really leaning heavily. I find myself doing that. I really having to be selective if I'm not paying attention to where my attention is going If I'm really being unmindful, I continually come back to, I'll just flip on the phone, I'll be on the newspaper, on the radio without even thinking about it. And again, I think that is getting to what you're saying around this implicit way that I'll keep moving right back into a potential threat as a way to try to protect my safety. But the ways that that's actually going to be unhelpful for my nervous system over time.

Yeah, I think it's very helpful that we all understand that essentially our nervous system and it's good that we have this because it's, it keeps us alive. It's, it's allowed our species to survive up till now. And. But our nervous system is continually scanning for threat all the time.

Right.

And so we have that sensitization and that's great. But if it's on overdrive, it keeps us in a state of chronic stress and anxiety. So unless we proactively do things to consciously sort of override that and have an appropriate relationship with at least relative safety or relative being resourced when we are, I mean, if we're living all the time with our brain, you know, somewhere in the back of our brain going, I'm going to die, I'm going to die. It's extremely unhealthy for us. In fact, we're not at immediate risk most of the time. So could you just. Before we go further, and we're going to ask you to lead a short practice towards the end of our conversation, but could you just kind of define what you mean by trauma sensitive mindfulness? Because mindfulness is one tool that we can all use to become more resilient.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So.

It'S, this is one of the third or fourth conversation I've had recently about, well, why would a mindfulness, why would mindfulness need to be trauma sensitive at this point? And if people are watching this, they'll know how powerful attention can be and how useful mindfulness can be. And that when it comes to certain levels of stress over attending, as we will tend to do to what I'd call traumatic stimuli or extreme adversity can actually end up creating more problems than it would otherwise. So it's both this tricky spot of we both need mindfulness and then we need to be very discerning about how we're using the power of attention, especially if we're teaching it to others. So to answer your question around defining trauma sensitive mindfulness, there's a 4R definition that comes from the national center for Trauma Informed Care that I've been incorporating, I find really helpful. It goes like this. It's realizing the widespread impact of trauma, recognizing traumatic symptoms, responding effectively, and actively avoiding re traumatization. So for those of us that are practicing mindfulness in a trauma sensitive way, we've done enough work to know traumas around us, we know the prevalence rates and we can recognize symptoms both in ourselves or in others, then respond effectively, which you know, you and I have talked about. But there are modifications that we can make to basic practices, basic contemplative practices that can help us respond when we are out of our window, which we could talk about. And then behind this all is the commitment that we're doing no harm. That as a base, as a, as a foundation to our own practice, we're making sure that we're, if we're challenged, if we're stretched beyond our capacity, we're not just doubling down, we're not just white knuckling our way through a practice, whether it's for ourselves or whether we're offering the practice to others. That's a basic trauma sensitive framework, is that we're sensitive to the needs people can have around trauma. And you know this. But it's not to baby people, it's not to coddle them, it's not to walk on eggshells or say, oh, we all just need to be comfortable actually, it's just acknowledging trauma exists and, and how can we move skillfully with it with everything that we know right now around how trauma impacts the brain and the body.

Yeah, I'm really glad that you made that point and I'm familiar with that in your work that, you know, there is a lot of trauma in the world and many of us have experienced a lot of trauma and some of us a lot more than others. And sadly, some of that is caused by systemic and structural issues of racism and all kinds of injustice.

But this is not about helping us become fragile. It's actually about how in a, how in a safe way can we become more resilient in order to be able to handle our lives. And clearly this is a time when it would seem that as human beings on this planet, you know, we actually need to become a bit stronger and more resilient because things are really challenging and it doesn't look like they're going to get any easier anytime soon.

Exactly. And then that gets to a core definition around resilience, this ability to bounce back from adversity. Kind of like Moss, we're tamped down. And I think we are in a moment individually and then collectively of a lot of pressure being tamped down. And then what's going to support us? What are the practices that will support us to bounce back? So I agree with you. I think it's a really important time to be not talking about fragility or that we're actually a deeply. I don't know about you, but just seeing the incredible resilience and ability to actually adapt so many communities I see right now, whether it's online or otherwise, this resilient ability to just be present with what's happening and then adapt and move and that we're not. I was reading this article and I forget the author on humans being antifragile, that we're actually, even though there can be breaking points for us, like a lamp, if a lamp breaks and falls, it's fragile, it's broken. But with humans under a certain amount of pressure, that's where we grow, that's where we thrive. And all the conversations we could have about kids and helicopter parenting and this way that actually the kids need this adversity to actually grow and thrive. And how do we find the sweet spot with trauma to say, yes, we're under that pressure? Let's acknowledge some people are going to need some help right now. And then knowing, yeah, we aren't fragile, actually we can grow through this and we will. So that's why I think this resilience summit is just well timed that we're having this conversation.

Yeah, actually, I've been really paying attention. I'm sure you have, you know, kind of in the mainstream mindfulness community and other related communities related to its contemplative traditions and yoga and, you know, not exclusively so, but that particular world seems to be responding really well and really proactively in terms of supporting their communities, moving their programs online, adapting to the present situation. And I'm sure that's happened in lots of other sectors as well. But there does seem to be something of having that ground of a contemplative practice of mindfulness, some kind of mind training, some kind of reflective practice, some kind of reflective awareness seems to set us up to be able to respond better to these situations. Why don't we go ahead and talk about. You brought it up. What Dan Siegel calls the window of tolerance. I often like to call it the zone of resilience. It's really the same phenomena and it seems really important right now because.

We'Re all going to be making a lot of tough decisions. I mean, I don't know about You. My biggest decision right now with my fiance, Sophie, who I'm hunkered down with here in Western Massachusetts, is whether to try to get food delivered online and deal with whatever we think about the supply chain and the packaging and however that might work, or risk going out to our local natural food co op, which is doing a really good job of keeping its place safe. But, you know, that seems to be the high risk decision we're making all the time. And I don't mean to make light of that, because we're all faced with this. But so we, in order to be able to, you know, have access to our good judgment, experience, our compassion, our wisdom, we need to be in that. Within that window of tolerance or that zone of resilience.

Yeah, one of the. I think that's a great point about all of us. Anyone listening right now can, if the window is new, I think can be in reflection, based on what you just said, about what's the experience of being in one's window and being out. And I think we're all going through different experiences of that right now. And one thing I appreciate about Dan Siegel, when he talked about the window of tolerance, was talking around systems and that every system will have a window of tolerance. Both we could. We'll probably talk here about the nervous system, but then a family system will also have a window. And you could also talk about, you know, different institutions, even like prison industrial complex, and what prisons, the pressure that prisons are under right now. What's the window of a prison? How can we support that?

We talk about our healthcare system, which is way outside its window of tolerance right now.

Absolutely. And the fact that I believe we were coming into this moment already with a lot of collective pressure and polarization happening around the window, I think there was a very narrow window collectively happening. And then here is an intense pandemic that comes in and then pushes this out. So I think there's so many angles we could talk. But why don't we talk then about individual trauma and then tie this into resilience here? So, as you said, you know, this window is a place that when we're in our window, and this has been mapped quite well with people like Pat Ogden. Pat Ogden and a number of occupational therapists are one of the first people to map this window onto trauma and our physiology. And what Ogden said was, you know, when we're in our window, as you're saying, we're more regulated. We often feel more of a sense of choice and agency, easier to connect to ourselves and others. And then out of the window, maybe that's too much energy, hyper vigilance, or on the bottom end, we're out of our window. On the bottom, we're foggy, dissociated. That that's really common with trauma. And people who are experiencing trauma either live as right now or post traumatic stress will often have the experience of being out of their window. So I think it's a really helpful frame for all of us to be in, in any given moment. Like, where are we, our window, and what practices are going to support us coming back into our window.

I would imagine all of us are experiencing times when we're getting kind of agitated and upregulated and, you know, really concerned after watching the news or whatever it might be. And then we probably also find ourselves kind of trying to avoid it all shutting down, disassociating, you know, bouncing back and forth between those two things. Could you talk also about how the impact of trauma, for those of us who have whatever kind of trauma in our history, especially significant trauma and adverse childhood circumstances and so forth.

The impact of trauma can actually reduce and shrink the window of tolerance or zone of resilience, which is the phenomena of ptsd, where the range of experience that you can handle starts to get smaller and smaller and then figure out how do we, how do we widen that? So we may all be in that process right now of our window of tolerance shrinking or being able to at least maintain it, or maybe this is an opportunity to extend it, the idea of thriving in the face of trauma.

It's a great point. And that's where with the resilience, as I see resilience as one of the key tools to widening our window, whether that's individually, collectively. So, yeah, I think that's a, it's a great point. So to talk about the way that trauma is impacted. You said it really well. And this was such a light bulb moment for me 10 years ago, realizing, oh, wow, trauma and depression will tend to shrink one's window, whether whatever kind of adversity will tend to push down. And one of the most painful things about people who are experiencing ongoing traumatic stress, post traumatic stress or ptsd, is the way, as you're saying, that the window will tend to narrow over time so that it becomes actually more and more difficult to handle. Just the visit to the normal vicissitudes of life, that we end up having this narrow bandwidth. One of the reasons that this happens is that we're ending up having.

Incomplete responses that don't. Where we don't get to have a sense of recovery. So if you're imagining that window that's happening, say, give an example, hypothetical, say I grew up in an experience where I had been abused and isolated. I had experienced that adversity in my family. And then here with the coronavirus that I'm being isolated, which is bringing up a lot of traumatic reminders and putting me out of my window. Where this gets so painful for survivors is this activation. As you're saying, we're put out of our window, but then the inability, despite our best intentions, to come back into the window and then to recover. And so what happens to our nervous system? We end up out of our window. We don't recover and come back into our window, and it leaves us quite threadbare inside. What we need to actually widen the window is to go out of the window to regulate, come back in which resilience helps with, and then to have some kind of stabilization, some recovery. So, yeah, I think that the window is. This is such an important time for us to be learning tools to actually support our regulation and our recovery.

Well, I have a question for you there. And even this could be true for someone who is significantly a survivor in some way, or really for all of us in some way. So when there's some kind of activation and we're getting agitated or upregulated or finding ourselves shutting down, disassociating, you know, one strategy is to switch our attention to something that allows us to feel more resource, some. Some experience, some memory that would really immediately pull us back into a different physiological state and back into our. Our window of tolerance or zone of resilience. And another approach, if we're able to tolerate it and able to work with it, is to kind of stay with that experience a little bit. So, for example, think now. You know, somebody hears the latest news or hears that the death numbers spiked or the cases doubled in your GE area yesterday or something like that, and, you know, feels this immediate level of fear and anxiety. And instead of, you know, sort of labeling that, allowing themselves to feel it and kind of mindfully working themselves back into their zone of resilience and thinking about how to hold that, how to frame that, you know, working with that thing kind of consciously and mindfully, if they just immediately go into avoidance, distract themselves, go focus on something else, what's accumulating there with those triggered moments that aren't sort of worked with in some conscious way, whatever strategy we might use.

This gets so to the core, I think, of the issue here around trauma Sensitive mindfulness or trauma. Mindfulness and resilience really is. How do we know when to. One of the ways I've heard this talked about, we'll get back to actually Rick Hanson here. Rick talks about being with and working with. So where are the moments where actually we want to bring our capacity to simply be with our experience in a non judgmental way? And where are times where we will purposefully nudge our experience in a different direction and say in this example, I mean a number of friends, myself included, who've been watching a lot of shows and I think there are times where that's actually a very resilient move to make. And then there's times where actually the distraction. Right as you just said it so well, where am I just sweeping something under the rug and actually not allowing my nervous system to process through the stress which is creating a higher allostatic load over time. So I think Fleet, you're hitting right on it is. And I don't think there's, in my experience, there's not a textbook answer. As much as we need to stay as present as possible and then ask ourselves, I believe that question, what is going to be in service right now of that zone of resilience? Is it. You know, I actually have, you know, I have the space and I have the muscle here. I have the capacity to actually just be with this fear, maybe even this terror or you know what, this is actually going to be too much for me right now. Let me back off, let me take a walk for 10 minutes and then come back and be with this. But I think that tension needs to be there the whole time. And if we go too far into one, we run into some trouble, I think.

Well, even if we could simply acknowledge it perhaps like something comes up and we can just not. Wow, I'm feeling pretty anxious and fearful here.

What am I needing right now? And then maybe you know, one of my go to with my fiance, our go to right now is Trevor Noah. Comic relief with Trevor Noah, you know, and things like that. Or you know, maybe. Okay, I'm going to explore this a little bit. But. But either one of those options is better than just a kind of automaticity where we just react, we just, we just get triggered into some coping mechanism that's fairly mindless and unconscious, which is normal. I mean, whatever we do, I think needs to be grounded in a tremendous level of self compassion to begin with.

Absolutely. And then that's where again with folks who have practiced mindfulness at all, that ability to know was this Just a reflexive move and of course we'll do that. You know, I've also been watching Trevor, Noah and I'll, I'll notice sometimes 10 minutes in, I didn't take a moment to say is this actually going to best serve? And of course it will be automatic and as you said, the self compassion in this particular moment. But the more that we can know what's happening in the moment that it's happening, I just think the more skillful we can be about making those decisions about what will serve, whether it's us or our family or our partner, what's going to actually serve.

So that's where the window, I don't know if you want, we could go further with the window. But I think just one more thing to say is to acknowledge the compassion piece, that there is tremendous adversity right now that we're in a moment that the collective window is more narrow. And so for those of us who I think bravely are actually doing the work of contemplative practice and turning towards this stress and adversity.

How can we work skillfully with our window? Because that will actually support and regulate other people when we go out into the experience of doing one shopping. And I thought, you know, the more in my zone of resilience or window that I could be, I think the more that I can touch others and be like, hey, we're in this together sense of community here. So I think I want us all to be compassionate inside of that window.

Yeah, I really want to explore that further with you and the work, the kind of community building your work you're doing online and so forth. But first, could you give us some, you know, just, I mean many of our, of our audience here, our wonderful audiences for the summit will already have a contemplative practice, but hopefully some will not. And this will be new for them. And maybe as a result they'll, they'll embrace some kind of mind, body practices, resilient practices and reflective practices and so on. So what are some of the signs that any of us could recognize when I'm starting to get triggered out of my window of tolerance or zone of resilience? Either I'm starting to go into hyper arousal, getting agitated, or I'm starting to shut down, which might even be harder to recognize in some cases into what's called hypoarousal. Right. Really shutting down, or just so what might be some practical signs that we could all be kind of paying attention to and maybe even we might even recognize them when we find Ourselves coping with the fact that we're kind of triggered and recognize whatever that coping thing we might be getting into in a reactive way.

Yeah, absolutely. It's so helpful to know those markers. It actually makes me think that if anyone is newer to practice here and is taking on that exploration of what are the signs, I would encourage you and encourage all of us to remember that these.

Leaving one's window is just a deeply wired strategy, but it's actually so intelligent for us that it's not a problem. And I know sometimes I can start to orient to hyper or hypo arousal as a problem.

Right.

I want to encourage everyone, as you're saying, to remember there's a good reason behind this, given the window being shrunk collectively and the pressure we're facing. And then for all of us to get to be curious with this question of what are the signs? For me, that would start to help me know that I might be approaching the edges of my window again, not to make that a problem, but more just to notice it and then say, okay, cool, what do I need next? So, you know, the most common metaphor that I've seen here is around the accelerator and the brake nervous system. So when we're in this hyperarousal, this top, top range of our window, it's like the accelerator slammed to the floor. So for any of us, we could reflect on, well, what tells me that my physiological arousal is sort of getting up there out of my window. I know for me, my heart starts to race. I can feel my pupils just kind of scanning the room. For some people, they might experience some sweating, intrusive thoughts, a level of.

Kind of high level vibration. And that's my experience in the mind where the thoughts are just streaming in, they're not wanted, they're coming more rapidly than others. And then on the lower end with hypoarousal, it's like a feeling of being foggy, shut down, numb, disconnected, maybe dissociated. So again, I'm curious how you instruct folks, but I see it as the more you can be curious about when the accelerator or the brake is a little bit too strong and it'll be different for all of us that we can be, you know, curious for our subjective experience and then start to note them for ourselves so that we can go forward with that information.

Yeah, I think that's exactly it. And that's very, that's very practical information. But I think all of us probably kind of know instinctually and to our own experience when we're not at Our best. Right. And when we're having a bad day and some of the things that, you know, we didn't sleep well or that, you know, or maybe we indulged too much in this or that and then we're kind of more triggerable, we're off our game. Right. So we can, we know the signs of when we're not in our zone. Right. And you know, in the zones. Some, some. Sometimes I think it's a confusion around thinking. Our window of tolerance or zone of resilience is that happy place. Actually it can, it can. You know, it's nice to have a happy place and know how to find it. But really the zone of resilience can include the full range of human emotion. It's just are we able to be with those emotions in a resourced way and stay in a responsive relationship to the world around us rather than getting triggered into, you know, fear based reactivity and so forth?

I'm so glad that you, that you said that, that come out here. I think that can be such a common misconception that the zone window means calm. And that actually can be very powerful to experience. I mean this morning I noticed feeling just. I've been inside and quarantined actually well before this. I felt this deep irritation. And there are times I could feel this morning where I was out of my window experiencing it and I wanted to just throw a frying pan across the room. And that's somewhat unhelpful for me. And then there were moments of being in the window and saying, wow, I can be with this irritation right now. And that was actually very helpful for me. So I'm glad that you said that, that reminder. But it doesn't mean we're collected. We're somehow neutral to our experience. We can be experiencing big emotions in our window.

Great. And you know, I think also there's a distinction between. And we talked about this a little bit before. For those of us who have a somewhat mature contemplative practice or mind body practice or mindfulness practice, you know, there can be a lot of value at times of being with those experiences of being outside our window or outside the zone. There's a lot of learning there and you know, but we have to be honest about our capabilities and not recklessly push ourselves into unresourced states.

But there's also very much times when we simply need to use tools to down regulate or up regulate. Right. You know, with that, the accelerator and the brake idea. So I know you'll lead us through a practice later. On when we're getting too upregulated, there are simple tools we can use to reground and come back or, or even if we find ourselves shutting down, there's ways to kind of stimulate our energy again and get it. Get ourselves back into the zone.

Absolutely. And then where I think it's so useful, as we've cultivated more mindfulness, that ability again to have a sustained level of awareness of our experience, then we can notice when we're out of our window, which is, I think, a huge asset for us in a moment like this, especially during a time of isolation and quarantine. So, you know, I happen to be living solo right now, but of friends that I've been talking to, they say it's so useful for me to get to go to my fill in the blank, my partner, my family, and to say I'm noticing that I'm at the edges of my window right now. Just that acknowledgment of what's happening, I think can be very useful. And then a family or a group can actually then make some strategic decisions about what will be supportive of that person's window or the family. A good friend of mine said yesterday they noticed that they were having a day of just being kind of upregulated and out of their window, and. And they went to their partner. And I think this gets to resilience is they said, I'm just having this day of feeling really agitated. I'm struggling to come back down into my own zone of resilience. Would you mind just sitting with me for the next 10 minutes? If we could just hang out, we don't even need to talk. But if I just got to sit with you quietly, that's really going to support me. So what are the decisions we make once we know that we're out of our window? Maybe that's where we'll go here. But having multiple tools that we can use to support our window, I think is huge right now.

Absolutely. I'd love to move into the kind of relational piece, you know, I'm hunkered down here with my fiance, Sophie, and, you know, we're really supporting each other and there's just moments every day throughout the day where one of us starts to get, you know, and the other one will support them. You know, we're both going like this, but we're there and we have the ability to support each other in that way. I don't think we found a moment when we were both up here at the same time.

That's good.

I still think we would have the tools help. Okay. Recognize we're both up here, we need to do something right. But you know, in the relational space. So, you know, with this whole, you know, shelter in place phenomena that's going on now.

You know, fortunately with Engage mindfulness, since we've been doing online work for so long, we were really a little bit ahead of the curve. But we also do a lot of live work and we've had to move all that online. A lot of in person work. And I know you've had this trauma sensitive mindfulness community going for a while now and it's primarily online, I think. I know you go around give live seminars and so forth, but I'm curious as to what's happening in your community and what you understand about how we can.

Create resilience together online.

Absolutely. It's such a live question for so many right now and then I think having a very honest conversation about the pros and cons of each and where are we able to leverage this online platform right now to build this sense of resilience and community? One thing that I've learned about trauma that's so important.

Without getting into all the details of it, that within the window of tolerance, we can access what's known as our social engagement system. And this is where it's most easy to connect with others, connect with ourselves, and also just to take in love and care from others. As everyone will know, it's harder when you're out of your window to feel someone's care. We're often just more dysregulated. So social engagement system is something that helps us. But we often need to feel a certain level of safety and security to also access our social engagement system. So I think Fleet, that the way here is to two things. One, for people to just be honest with themselves about their window in a moment and whether their connection with others is helpful. There's times where we might need to have a little bit of solitary time, if that's possible. And there's other times where even just seeing your face here I noticed that had me feel pretty calm and it was really helpful for me to support my window. So one just to be honest with ourselves about where are we in our window. But I do think that us using this platform is going to be key going forward. And there is research that tells us that just us tracking our little facial movements of me getting to attune with you I see you blink, I see you nod. These little moments of attunement actually being able to connect will support the social engagement system and thereby actually helping us feel more safe and stable. So there's a nice reciprocal arrangement. But I do think we need to be honest and not just assume that, you know, hey, if we're all online, that's going to help us all be in our window. I think it needs to be a little nuanced, but I'd encourage everyone to be finding those people that help.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, before this, many of us were very concerned that the whole online social media world, digital universe was actually eroding relationships and connection. And.

You were calling it our social.

Engagement.

Social engagement system.

The Facebook version or the Twitter version of social engagement system may not really be what creates connection and resilience, even though certainly it has value. But, you know, but it's been eroding. And in fact, some, I think some might argue that the whole mass movement to being online and to, you know, Twitter and, you know, the way young people communicate these days and a lack of, you know, face to face, close personal connection in our lives and the level of isolation that brings on that all that is some kind of collective response to collective trauma, individual collective trauma. But now we find ourselves in a place where maybe, maybe there's some value in this and maybe we can find ways to turn this around and bring some kind of consciousness to it and value to it. You know, I was doing a lot of.

Not, I guess, doing a product placement here, but a lot of stuff on Zoom. I use other things, other platforms as well, but I was using that so much. Sometimes I joke, I'm living on Zoom these days. That was before the pandemic. And now I'm really living on Zoom. And the other morning I actually had the thought just coming out of my meditation practice in the morning, you know, I should reach out to my family and set up a Zoom call. I have a brother and three younger sisters and they live in the Midwest. And so I reached out to her, I said, let's do a Zoom call with the five of us, the siblings and our spouses. And they said, okay, great. Some of them were more or less familiar with the technology, but we set up, we did it, and everybody was, wow, this is great. You know, because previously, you know, they all live in the same city. I'm the black sheep that moved away. But, you know, we stay in touch with a little email, a lot of texting, you know, and it's good to be in touch, but it's not the same as actually sitting there and being able to see each Other.

I think this is the silver lining in some ways about where this adversity may. I know I've had the experience, too, of coming together with people in ways that I might not have before with a certain level of, you know, intentionality. I have been feeling just scared. And there is a way that just getting to see people I care about and see their face. I think there's an important bridge here, as you're saying, to resilience, which is we can have. I had a couple days ago, I was on Zoom all day and just meeting. To meeting good people, you know, glad to be connecting. But there's a way I felt really depleted at the end of the day. And what I realized is there weren't many moments when I was on Zoom that I actually let myself notice mindfully, the fact that I was connected and that I was. There was actually some enjoyment of getting to see the faces of friends and family and more. I was running through a bit of a schedule, like, okay, I gotta talk to my mom at 11.

And then.

And I was just sort of. I wasn't super present. And that's where I feel like resilience and mindfulness can be so powerfully wed together. Is that in a moment of a resilience practice, of cultivating something that helps us feel buoyant, to actually notice it and to really receive it and take it in. So when I was talking to my brother the next day and my niece, I tried to notice, like, okay, wow, we're connected. It makes me feel a sense of warmth in my chest. Let me really notice that. Take even two or three seconds. And that had a big difference on, I'd say my resilience over the whole day and my window. So as we're on Zoom, I just encourage us to just keep noticing what is working about it, when it is. When it is working.

Well, I'd like to ask you a further question about that. And then I think we're kind of reaching about time here. I will ask you to lead us in a short practice.

Yeah, great.

So in terms of what you were just talking about, I had a great learning experience with Dan Siegel a few years ago when I did one of these remote recording interviews with him for our Engage Mindfulness Teacher training. And I'll never forget it. He was on a treadmill. Like, a treadmill of some kind that he.

Oh, really?

He has a desk where he can work standing up and be kind of walking on the treadmill while he's doing it. And at first, I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. And then he actually, you know, said what he was doing, but he also was talking about what he was feeling in his body. He was talking about what he was recognizing in my body and my posture, you know, and we got into this really.

You know, tuned in zoom conversation with each other where, you know, both really embodied and both tuned into each other's, you know, signals in terms of posture and eye gaze and facial expression and so forth, and really got into this beautiful connected zone together. So I think that's entirely possible. But the question I have is my sense from my own experience as well as I think the current science bears this out, that the more awake we are, right, the more present we are, the more time we spend in the present moment and the more deeply embodied we become. Like, not just sort of observing our body kind of at a distance, right? But actually dropping into the body and feeling the body directly, all the way down to the bones, activating what we call interoception or interoceptive awareness. And so being deeply embodied and being awake that we actually absorb less trauma than we would otherwise. Because, as you know, the two types of secondary trauma, one is that, you know, we hear about stuff which we're all experiencing right now, but also being around people that have a lot of trauma in their nervous system, which is a major issue in the work I do in corrections and, you know, the criminal justice field, work with both prisoners and guards because they're constantly re. Traumatizing each other. So could you say something about the way that trauma will embed in us when we're not so conscious, not so mindful, not very embodied, versus if that's less. If we can ameliorate the impact of being in traumatic situations like we are now by being more embodied and more present.

There's so many pieces we could talk about this, like, what are the factors or resilient factors that enable us to not be traumatized in a moment? And I've been thinking about this. With this wave coming in many ways for many different communities here, what can be. What can be put in place for us knowing this wave is coming? One of the pieces being.

Research tells us that trauma will be more entrenched over time. The more of a sense of helplessness that we feel and often isolation. So the more that we can be connected to ourselves and especially to others in that moment, that will be key. So maybe I'll put a pin in that and bookmark that. But to your question about interoception, feeling ourselves, I think that's right on the money is the more that we can be using practice to be aware of our internal world. As you're saying, interoception, that might be just sensation based. It could also be what's happening around the quality of my thoughts. The more that we're tracking what's happening for us as Dan was on the treadmill, the more regulated we can be and the more I believe the more useful we can be in relationship with others without leaving ourselves. And as you're saying, that's where we become more vulnerable to actually experiencing secondary trauma. We lose a sense of connection with ourselves. We might become overwhelmed and flooded by someone else else's experience.

Whereas if I was more, for example, say we were having a really activating conversation right now, if I'm in, I'm not on a treadmill, but if I was really dropped in, aware of where I am right now, the sensation of my body, I might notice a feeling of being flooded. I'm leaving my window. I might then make a request of you to say, hey, can we pause here for a moment before we move on? I can make different choices as opposed to you're overwhelmed now I'm overwhelmed, and then we're both actually drowning. So I think there's something important about whatever metaphor you want to use. You know, put your mask on before helping someone else or having the life preserver. And I think we can do that effectively by as this example with Dan Siegel. The more we're feeling ourselves, our interoception, more tuned in, the more we can make effective decisions. Can I just give you one example of that? I've been working.

Yeah, absolutely.

Have you heard of this empathy dial?

Empathy dial? I don't think so.

Yeah, this was a new. So I work with a woman named Babette Rothschild and she's a trauma specialist down in LA who's been teaching on trauma for a long time. And she's often working with people right along what you're saying. She's not a mindfulness teacher, but. But she'll work with people who are really in close with people who are going through trauma. And what she talks about is we all have a dial for our empathy and that especially if you're a very sensitive person who, as I imagine many people in the MY community are like, who can really feel others, that there's a way that we can learn to modulate our empathy. To take it from an 8 to a 4, for example, for me, it's like I feel my back, I feel my feet. That helps me actually Turn down that kind of open empathy I can have. And what Babette's pointed out is people will still feel our presence. We don't need to be at an 8 to attend to support people, actually. We need to be feeling ourselves at a four and then actually, you know, be in it for the long haul with others. So that's been really helpful for me.

That's a wonderful, wonderful tool. Absolutely. Because, you know, we're all empathic and it's a critical human skill. The quality of our relationships depends on it. And of course those of us who are involved in caregiving and teaching and you know, it can take us into that fork in the road of where we're hitting empathic distress. And if there's some transformative, resilient way of working with it, it actually can take us into further resilience and further compassion and thriving even. Or it can take us into distress and burnout and so forth and embedding further trauma. So being able to modulate or titrate that, I think. And so what you're saying is by, you know, if we're going to be really present for another, we need to be really present for ourselves at the same time being grounded, being in the body, reflective of our own needs and what's going on for us and then from that place in a self resilient way, then offer whatever we can offer to someone else.

Absolutely. And I think that's a. It feels like the pivot that's happening as the wave of this first, first wave around the pandemic is here. My experience is that people are starting to realize the impact of the quarantine and then starting to make some decisions about this, this path going forward, and I think you're naming it, that's not selfish to be doing self work. And we still want to be of service, I think, to others. But finding that balance, I think is going to be key going forward.

Well, this is wonderful. We could keep this conversation going for a long time.

I would like to invite you to offer.

Some kind of, from your work, trauma sensitive mindfulness technique or resilience building practice, anything you'd like to offer, some kind of brief practice that I'm sure we'll find very helpful.

Yeah, no, thanks for the invitation. So the practice I'd like to offer here, given that we're in the domain here in this whole conversation around trauma, that we're really talking about survival strategies that we have in our psychobiology and how to work with them skillfully, and you said it, Fleet, right up front I think beyond anything else right now, having a certain degree of compassion for ourselves and others is going to be key. So I'd like to offer a practice here around as a sort of self compassion practice around our survival based instincts that are going to be here and up and that we might need to be working with pretty intensively going forward. So I'll just invite you here to.

Take a moment and just find yourself in a posture that works for you. You're going to want to have your eyes open enough that you can see me because I'm going to be guiding you here through an embodied practice. But just taking a moment, we've been in a conversation about a lot of topics and just noticing how this has impacted you, could even be what your current mood is or your state.

Noticing even where you are in your window or your zone of resilience, as Fleet said earlier.

And I'm going to be leading us through basically like a three to four minute practice here which is going to have a part one and a part two. It's optional practice of course. And this comes from, for me, a teacher of my name is Stacy Haynes who works in somatic psychology and social justice work.

It's also sometimes taught in Hakomi work and mindful self compassion. But what we're going to be doing is working with both of our hands. I'm going to hold my hands up here, but you're welcome to have them in your lap. I'm just having them here so that you can actually see them.

So what I'd like you to do is with one of your hands, go ahead and making a tight ball fist and clenching the hand. And again, the only job here in this practice is just to notice what's happening, to let this be an experiment. And with that fist closed, I'd like you to imagine that the job of that fist is to stay clenched. And in staying clenched, this fist is taking care of your safety. It could also be your dignity. But primarily this is taking care of your survival. So imagine that's the job of that fist. And then what I'd like you to do with the other hand for a moment is actually try to pry open the fist and literally be in the experiment of feeling what it's like to have the other hand pry open that fist. So go ahead and you can try that. If you're not already doing that, then just feel the quality. So again, the one fist is trying to stay closed, the other one is trying to open it.

Just feel what happens in your whole body.

Okay, good Then you can let that go. If you want to shake it out, you can.

And then we'll do one more round here, which is I'd like you to go ahead and again, clench that hand again. Then with the other hand, I'm going to invite you to gently place that hand beneath the fist.

And in doing so, it's like you could imagine communicating something like, good job.

And of course, of course you're clenched right now.

And you could fill in if there's any other words that feel right for you right now, but you're really communicating a sense of care.

Compassion, and understanding and unconditional support here. No agenda.

And last part here is you could even have the fist support or the hand underneath. You could even have it supporting the fist to close. Like, say, like, I'm gonna help you do this, no problem, and just feel what happens, see what that's like.

Okay, great. You can let that go then. And then just taking a moment to notice if there was a difference. There might not have been.

And then we'll. We'll shift here. So in any way that'll help you shift. Could be a breath or two, a little movement, but just letting yourself transition over. Back into our conversation here with Fleet and I.

Fleet, you want to talk about such a direct experience of dysregulation and then regulation.

Yeah. How was that for you? What happened?

Well, initially, when I was trying to pry it open, I started feeling a lot of tension and feeling physically and even started feeling a bit emotionally dysregulated. And then with the opposite one, I just really started to. Just to relax into a kind of flow and a feeling of being well regulated.

Yeah. Yeah. I offer that as a resilience practice to support the window, support our regulation, and to do that in a way that it's not just conceptual. Like, it's one thing to talk about. Talk about being compassionate to ourselves, and that's another thing to really practice embodying. How do I respond, these survival responses. Again, being hyper aroused, it makes a ton of sense right now. But how. I don't know about you, Fleet, but my first response when I'm anxious is to go, God damn it. You know why? I just. I wish I was more calm. I wish my window was bigger and how to slow down and go, yeah, of course. Of course you are. And I find I've been doing that in the morning sometimes just to remind my body of what it's like to orient to myself in that way or others. But it's not easy all the time.

Yeah. We add the self judgment, it just exacerbates the situation.

Absolutely.

And so.

Anything that can help us just take that breath and use some tool to okay what's needed here. Can I relax? And really that ground of self compassion that you're referencing.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Well, it's been wonderful, David. And.

People can find out more about your work@david trelevan.com and I really encourage people to check out David's trauma sensitive mindfulness community. And so we all need to be, you know, hooked into a part of community, I think always and especially at this time and in ways that work for us. So that's one you can certainly explore. So just thank you so much, David. It's been great being with you again.

Thanks. Sleep good to be here. Okay.

Take care, be safe and be healthy.

Yeah, thanks. You too.

Okay.

Limu Gay hoo. And Doug, here we have the Limu imu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty. Liberty Savings.

Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.

If you're an H vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Granger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.