https://www.listennotes.com/e/000bd5c681354a9b9e2e3582e34c4322

I have anxiety about if I'm going to get a ride, like an Uber or something, I'll have a lot of anxiety. Or I did like if I was going to miss my ride or if I was going to be late or I thought this is irrational. And my husband's an amazing IFS coach and he worked with me on that. And we went back to the origin and I had this part that was trapped in the past. When I was six years old, my mom got stuck at work and forgot to pick me up from school and I couldn't figure out how to walk home. She eventually came and it was, you know, it was probably like 20 minutes but to a 6 year old it just felt like an eternity and I was freaking out. And it was so interesting because when he helped me unburden that part, that anxiety was released around that. And I noticed the next time I ordered an Uber I was much more calm about it.

Welcome to the Radical responsibility podcast. I'm Dr. Fleet Mall and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfulness practices, positive psychology, and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimism. This is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change, helping you find alignment with the person you were always meant to be. Let's get started. What if transformation isn't just about thinking differently, but feeling differently? Science shows us that true change happens when we align not just our minds, but also the neural networks and in our hearts and guts. This Heart mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience and expanded awareness. That's why I created the Heart Mind All Access, Membership and Community, a space designed to help you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live with greater clarity and purpose with over 1000 hours of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs. You'll learn from world renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists and experts in neuroplasticity, all sharing powerful tools to help you shift your mindset and heartset, regulate your emotions and unlock your full potential. You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit and course we've ever produced, a treasure trove of Wisdom worth over $10,000 and growing, plus live gatherings and an inspiring global community to support your journey. If you're ready to step into a more heart centered, connected and conscious life, I invite you to join us. Click the link to learn more and start your journey today. My name is Dr. Fleet Maul, your co host for this session And I'm really thrilled to be here today with friend and colleague Sunny Strasberg. Welcome, Sunny.

Hi, Fleet. So great to see you today. Thank you.

Great to see you. We get to do this periodically and have these really incredible conversations. So I'm really looking forward. So I almost hesitant to ask somebody to encapsulate their life story in a minute or two, which. But we got a lot to cover today. But I would like to start off with a little bit of your origin story of how you got into being a therapist, how you got oriented in particular around ifs and archetypal psychology and emdr, and then also psychedelic therapy. I know that could be a long story, but maybe there's something about the highlights of what took you in that direction. Wow.

Okay. Yes. It's so funny, I think in life, when you look back and it thinks it seems like your life had all these disparate, unrelated pieces when they were happening, but then you look back and everything was just meant to be. I was originally an artist and really interested in art and worked in video games as an animator, and that just felt empty to me. So I decided to go back to school for therapy. And I was really interested in Carl Jung because archetypal psychology was very akin to my art. I went back to school and I was fascinated that I really loved being a therapist in my internships. I was so surprised by that. I was really actually going to use it to do art therapy and improve my artistic skills. But I really wanted something with meaning, and I found a lot of meaning working with people. And I'll curate the story more to how I got into working with trauma and fear and anxiety. You know, for this conference, my first internship, it was at a drug and alcohol rehab center. And we had a lot of veterans. You know, we know now this is, you know, two decades ago. We know now that, you know, addiction is often caused by trauma. But at the time, that wasn't really thought of that way. And I was leading. I was the group therapist. I was leading a group therapy session. And there was this big guy in the group therapy. There was this big vet, really muscular and huge guy, tough guy. And there was a rainstorm outside, and there was this huge clap of lightning outside. Thunder. And he ran from his chair across the room and jumped behind the couch and was cowering behind the couch, trembling. I had never seen anything like that. I didn't have a lot of experience. And I went over and tried to talk him through it and say, you're fine. I'm trying to have Logic with the guy, and he was just in a freeze response. I didn't know what that meant. I'd been taught archetypal psychology and kind of cognitive behavioral psychology. And I realized at that moment, talking about trauma does not heal trauma. Talking about anxiety does not help. Telling someone to calm down never helped. So that set me on this mission to figure out how to work with this. I knew something was happening in the body. So I started studying with Bessel van der Kolk, got interested in emdr, got certified in emdr. That led me to get interested in internal family systems and certified internal family systems. And all the time I was interested in psychedelics because I was doing my own work in Latin America and saw this huge transformation in my own trauma story and anxiety story. Right. So really a reorientation for me around understanding where the anxiety was coming from, soothing my nervous system. So the minute I could combine these things, emdr, ifs, and psychedelic therapy, I did. I got on the train pretty early, trained in psychedelics and ketamine, and then started training other clinicians in ketamine assisted psychotherapy. And now I use that technique to work with my clients. This is a little bit of my origin story. But that moment with that veteran was so pivotal in my career about wanting to understand. Wow, this is beyond talking about, right?

Yeah. And it's interesting that took you in a somatic direction. Study with Bessel Vanicle, his seminal book, the Body Keeps the Score, and EMDR and other somatic practices. So I want to talk about psychedelic therapy as a treatment for psychedelic assisted therapy as a treatment for fear and anxiety or anxiety specifically. But I'm also wondering just the somatic piece. So when we talk about, obviously this summer, the title of this summit, Rewiring Fear and Anxiety. So we're coming at it from a neuroscience neurophysiological perspective, but we'll be coming at it through various perspectives in this conference. And you can think about this in neurophysiological terms, you can think of it in neurochemical terms, you can think of it in purely psychological terms. You know, my understanding of IFS and a parts work, it's kind of a psychological model. EMDR is very specifically somatic. Things like EFT tapping are very specifically somatic. Peter Lena Bessel Vanicles Trauma work is very specifically somatic. So I wondered how you integrate the parts work with a somatic focus. Maybe that will go there first. And then. Then I want to talk to you more about psychedelic therapy and anxiety.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Trauma is held in the body in different areas of the body. So when we start working with internal family systems, and I don't know if I should give an overview a little bit about how Internal family systems.

Yeah, yeah. If you could just a very brief kind of.

Yeah.

To understand parts. If people aren't familiar with parts work and so forth.

Yeah. So the idea is that behind everything, we have this self energy with a capital S. Calm, confident, not really attached to anything. Just as benevolent. Well, being. Right. Compassionate, wellbeing. And layered on top of this, our parts break down into subcategories. We have parts that are managers and they kind of keep the show on the road. They're very proactive. They want us to seem normal to the outside world. They want to keep things under control. We have extreme parts that are called firefighters. And those protectors are parts that just want to get us away from pain. So they do things like get us addicted to substances in extreme ways. It could even become suicidal. They just want to escape from pain. Okay. Behind the protector system are what's called exiles. And exiles are young parts of the system that hold hurt and hold trauma. And the protectors protect the exiles. They keep them kind of tucked away so we don't have to think about them and feel them. But the exiles are constantly trying to let themselves be known. And so they percolate up, often at inopportune times, trying to get us to pay attention to the pain. And exiles can be the parts that hold anxiety. Sometimes the managers can be the parts that hold anxiety. And so when we start and open the process of ifs, we start with a somatic experience. Where do you notice that? In or around your body? And it's fascinating because each of these parts hold a somatic expression, a physiological expression in the body. So interestingly, protectors are usually up in the upper body or in the head, and exiles are usually in the lower body. This is really interesting kind of how they're oriented and held inside the system. And people will feel a physiological shift as we unburden those parts and allow them to be more connected to that self energy. Right. So the whole ifs process is really formed around the somatic experience and checking in with the body again and again to make sure that the somatic experience is tracking with the unburdening of the parts.

Yeah. And I've witnessed both Dick Schwartz and you doing ifs in retreats and so forth with clients and with participants. And yeah, there's often that check and where are you feeling that? In the body and so forth. And that does Help people really connect with the part. And I've been involved. Some other parts work, like voice dialogue and so forth. And there's no question that when people are connecting with a voice or a part and something is coming through, and it's very clear, it's very unique, it's almost like they're channeling something. It's very clear people are connecting with something. And I know Dick talks about that we have all these parts not through some kind of fragmentation that happened, but we're actually born with some constellation of parts already. Now, I'm open to that possibility. I have a little hard time wrapping my mind around it and relating it to other systems of understanding, you know, how we got here and what we arrived with and all that. But it's certainly a possibility. But so from what you're saying, then, bringing this back to a neurophysiological perspective, would you say that the parts we have would have correlated neural networks, you know, would be represented in our brain and neural architecture in the same way? Habits are, for example.

That's a great idea. And yes, I do. So I'm thinking about a study that Pagani did with emdr, but this applies to IFS as well. They did a functional MRI scan of someone's brain who has trauma. When you are in a trauma response or if you're in active, you're being actively traumatized, the brain lights up the exactly the same way. So if you have unmetabolized trauma and you think about the traumatic event or a trigger happens, your brain lights up just like it's happening right now. The frontal lobes are shut off. So that's your higher thinking Broca's area, the language center shut off. The limbic system is activated. This is the fight, flight, or freeze. And the right amygdala is activated. That's your smoke detector. There's something wrong. There's something wrong. There's something wrong. They did eight sessions of EMDR and then rescanned the brain and had the person recall the same traumatic memory. And the brain lit up just like it would normally light up with a normal memory. Frontal lobes are online. Broca's area is online, right amygdala quiet, limbic system quiet. So if you think about that through the IFS lens, when those parts are activated and burdened, the brain's gonna light up like that. Frontal lobe shut off, Broca's area shut off, right amygdala on you. Unburden that part. Similar to the EMDR process. You unburden that part, scan the Brain. Again, I haven't seen a study on this, but I would assume, because the people behave the same way, they come out of it and they say, you know what? It's okay. Now, that was then. That happened a long time ago, and this is now, and it's not happening right now. The definition of trauma is that we think things are happening right now when we're anxious. We're scanning our environment for something horrible happening right now that may not. Is probably not happening right now. So your brain is lighting up in a specific way that that part has its own neuronal network that's lighting you up a certain way. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. It's fascinating. And, you know, you kind of think of the parts. We have memories, we have belief systems. All of these are represented and impactful in our neural architecture. And I think it's helpful. You know, sometimes we want to have a very somewhat simplistic, mechanical view of the brain, like a circuit board, and that there's this part, maybe this part of the brain, I mean, this. But it's more like the brain is this holistic, interdependent, energetic orchestra going on. And it does have circuits, and you can see the mechanical nature of it. But it. And then when different things happen, whether it's a trauma that gets triggered or a memory or perhaps one of these burden parts, then that influences the whole rest of the brain, the way it shows up. So you almost have a different brain online. Right. And it was kind of in the way you were describing what would light up on a functional mri. It's really interesting to think about that. And parts are certainly seen to be very much related to memory, or they hold memories, or they're related to memories. And I know in Dr. Chopra's book Quantum Body, he associates most of our suffering with memory. It's basically memory is the foundation of our suffering. It's our identification with memories that creates most of our suffering. Right. So it's just really interesting to think about all that. So how does psychedelic therapy, your experience with ketamine assisted psychotherapy, and integrating that with things like EMDR or the archetypal view, or internal family systems, what are the mechanisms of healing there? Then you talked about an ifs unburdening these wounded parts or these exiled parts and so forth, which can. Allows, then allows a reintegration or an inner harmony of support that maybe then gives us more access to self with a capital S. So how does the psychedelic experience facilitate that?

That's great. Yeah. When I was really early and Getting trained in ketamine therapy, I think it was like 2018. I was thinking about, I was super interested because they were talking about how ketamine was impacting people. And I thought that's exactly like how EMDR worked. So I looked online and found everything I could possibly find about research studies on what parts of the brain were lit up and not lit up during ketamine and emdr. And it was crazy fleet. They totally overlap. So then I thought, I bet if you combine these things together, you could really potentiate them. And so I started using EMDR really early on with ketamine therapy and for my clients. And I was seeing incredible results. Like 20 EMDR sessions in one hour with the ketamine. Right. Same thing with ifs combining ifs. I was calling it working in the golden hour. When people were coming out of ketamine experiences, their brains were fluid and plastic. I could sense that they were really open. And I knew, okay, if I potentiate what's happening right now with really anchoring with these trauma informed methods, we're going to get some good results. And I was seeing incredible results in my practice later, much later. Just recently, I read this research study by a phenomenal researcher, Gould Dolan, who discovered that when we're infants, we have a very plastic, a lot of plasticity in our brains and we can learn things really quickly. We have a lot of flexibility and new neurons can be built together and wired together. Right. And she discovered that one of the only things that opens critical learning windows again are psychedelics. The way that it down regulates that default mode network and allows the brain plasticity. And the hours and days after there's so much potential that's called critical learning window, we can go in and make change. So this gold thing that I was calling the golden hour is actually these critical learning windows that open up. So if you're with a practitioner, I mean, this underscores how important it is to be with someone that knows how to properly utilize this very magical time to help you rewire your brain in the right way so that you can have that enduring positive impact. So I think I really see a lot of synergy working with psychedelics with really good methods like IFS and EMDR and archetypal psychology, the hero, heroine's journey, right? These methods are really helpful. Somatic interventions are helpful too.

I want to continue talking about, you know, these methodologies and tools for healing, both at one that are employed by clinicians and a client could benefit from, but also maybe some tools people can apply on Their own. But first of all, maybe we could back up for a minute and what's your understanding of anxiety itself? Now we know anxiety can be trauma related and so forth, but when we talk about anxiety, what are we actually talking about? And it seems like anxiety can be experienced mentally, emotionally, it can certainly be experienced physically, somatically. Sometimes we can even get in almost kind of existential anxiety. So when you think about anxiety and how you have clients that are experiencing anxiety and talking about their anxiety and then you're in the process of healing, what are we really talking about when we say anxiety?

I think it's similar to what we're talking about with trauma, where there's this, you know, if you look at it through the ifs lens, there's a part that's carrying this physiological, psychological, emotional burden that something terrible is impending, is going to happen, even if the situation that we're in right now isn't the case. So there's some kind of maladaptive learned behavior that's scanning the environment for danger that. Right. Amygdala is just firing constantly. And there are many ways that you can work on that. You know, when you look at, you know, psychotropic medications, what those do is just force shut off that. Right. Amygdala. Right. So you're still, actually, you're still having all the cortisol. Like your cortisol levels aren't changed when you're on SSRIs. You're still having that signal, but your body's ability to respond to that signal is blunted. Right. So you know, there's ways like that. Or you can approach it in ways like ifs where you're going back to the origin of where that anxiety began and working with that part. I'll give you a small example. I have anxiety about if I'm going to get a ride, like an Uber or something, I'll have a lot of anxiety. Or I did would have a lot of anxiety coming up about like if I was going to miss my ride or if I was going to be late or. And I thought this is irrational. I have an irrational fear about that. And my husband's an amazing ifs coach and he worked with me on that. And we went back to the origin and I had this part that was trapped in the past. When I was six years old, my mom got stuck at work and forgot to pick me up from school. And I was outside waiting for her to pick me up from school and she didn't come. And I couldn't figure out how to walk home. I was so scared and couldn't figure out how to walk home if she eventually came. And it was, you know, it was probably like 20 minutes, but to a 6 year old it just felt like an eternity and I was freaking out. And it was so interesting because when he helped me unburden that part, that anxiety was released around that. And I noticed the next time I ordered an Uber, I was much more calm about it. And so the understanding in IFS is you can go in and unburden those parts that are carrying those little, little T traumas right up to big T traumas that cause the anxiety in the first place.

Right?

Now, of course, I think that we can just physiologically be born into a physiological system that's more prone to anxiety or more prone to depression. I think that we can just have that hardware that's kind of wired for that, but we can really work on those parts that can amplify that, you know, predisposition.

Yeah, fascinating. And you know, like that a memory, a six year old's memory, a specific incident memory, could be still impacting someone many decades later as a kind of anxiety that comes up that they experience physically, emotionally, mentally and so forth. It's real. And I think with people suffering from anxiety, often people tell them, you know, well, it's just all in your mind, which may be true on some level or whatever, but they're having a real experience. They say, no, I'm feeling it in my body. This is real. You don't understand. This is actually happening in my body. Right? I'm feeling this. Don't tell me I'm not feeling this. Right?

That's the worst thing to tell someone. Calm down, you're fired. That is so not helpful.

I think, you know, we do know something about the neurophysiology of memory, but there's still a lot of mystery. There's a lot of. We don't really totally understand how memory works neurophysiologically. So the idea of how this memory gets carried forward across three, four, five decades to show up as, you know, specific anxiety around in, in your case, waiting for an Uber. Right? It's a little mysterious and maybe gets into, you know, into the quantum level and outside of space and time considerations where. Whereas time collapses. Right.

Khali, let's talk just for a second about how mind blowing it is to work with ifs. Because when I first learned it, I thought, oh, it's like we'll just do this little kind of fantasy with our clients and have them like, Imagine this has nothing to do with imagination. It's so wild. You'll go back, people go back and contact these parts, and the part will say, no, no, no, that's not even right. Let me tell you what actually happened. They're looping. It feels like they're looping in some dimension of reality, stuck back in time, holding these memories. And all the time my clients are shocked by what they find back there. And it makes total sense to them. And then the real test is that they feel that just once they're unburdened, they don't go back to that. They don't have those feelings anymore. It's so remarkable to me. I'm surprised all the time about what we find in the past that is just waiting for someone to come back and help them. And I have no idea how it works in the memory networks and psychedelics. It's even more profound because these memories can come back in this total visceral, very detailed way that when they're remembered, it's with crystal clarity and it's more real than real. And it's just like, where was that? Like that neuron's just living in the back of my mind. And somehow that, you know, that gets lit up and I can remember. All the saliency of this memory, you know, comes right back to me. It's really interesting.

Yeah, we don't even understand really how we have this complete sensory experience that we have in the moment of any given thing, much less, you know, recall. Right. So. And it, you know, it does really beg the question if there isn't some quantum level of brain activity that's really beyond space and time that we're dealing.

With here kind of points too, I think, with anxiety that some of us who are really sensitive to our environment are picking up on energy that's outside of the environment. I don't mean that in a woo way at all. I mean, like right now in the political system, there's a lot of tension and anxiety just everywhere in all the microfacial expressions and interactions with all the people. And some of us are highly sensitive. The world around us, it's like that Jitu Krishnamurti quote. It's no measure of sanity to be sane in an insane culture. I think we really need to listen to when we have this anxiety to listen to that and pay attention. Because maybe it's not about making that go away. Maybe it's telling us that we need to make some changes in the world right outside of ourselves to help us live in more conducive to how humans are meant to live, right?

Yeah. Probably even the least sensitive. And I don't mean to say that in a pejorative word, but maybe some of us are very resilient or maybe some of us are pretty armored up or we have thick skin, whatever, but we don't think of ourselves. Certainly not hypersensitive or even that sensitive people. But everybody, I'm sure, is experiencing a lot of uncertainty right now. I mean, just uncertainty about all the levers that are being pulled and what's happening with the economy. It's promises of it's going to get better, but it's getting worse. And you know, and what's, you know, dismantling the federal government, what everybody thinks about any of this politically, it's not the point there. Just change. The background of that is all this change with AI and how fast things are moving. I mean, you would almost have to be on some kind of relaxant or some kind of suppressive drug to not be experiencing some level of anxiety uncertainty today.

Absolutely. And what's happening? Addiction rates are exploding through the roof. Why? Because we live in a culture right now that's upsetting, that's anxiety producing, that's trauma producing, that's socially isolating. We don't live in a very humane time right now. And I think our bodies are signaling us to pay attention to that and change something.

Right. So there's a lot of self medication going on of all kinds. So I wanted to explore that for a moment. The connection between anxiety that is related to parts or related to past traumas and so forth, and then kind of environmental anxiety that may have to do with what's actually going on in the world and how those interact. Whether what's going on in the world could be triggering underlying anxieties that we have from past experiences and past trauma.

I love to talk about this. I think about three things within the self, between you and me, and then beyond our experience and our collective. The way that I understand working with ifs the clearest goal is to create incredible secure attachment to ourself and all of our parts internally for our internal ecosystem to feel completely safe within itself. That's a really important first step. The minute we start to do that, we start to project that outward. That self energy then starts emanating outward. And parts attract parts and self energy attracts self energy. So then we start engaging in that. So within secure ecosystem between two people, we start to have this coherence with one another, this co regulation, this self energy with each other. So we start creating secure attachment and then we can take that and then create communities of coherence. My friend Nate Hagens talks about islands of coherence. I love that term. And what does it look like to create a community that's an island of coherence for you, where you feel safe in your community? This is really important because then that's reflected around you, that you're in a safe environment. Right. And I think that's truly the task that we all have right now to create secure attachment within self, between each other and then to the greater community.

I'd like to talk about more tools for doing that. But first I'd like to talk about maybe the opposite of that for a moment. Where we find ourselves getting addicted to the news, getting addicted to doom scrolling on our phones, that there's some, you know, addiction to the fear and anxiety that's in the environment. And that probably has to do with, you know, with what's going on historically for us and in terms of our inner life, that we get caught in those patterns and actually get addicted to it. We know it's making us anxious, but we can't. We don't seem to be able to do anything about it. And we may be doing both. We may be like doom scrolling and staying focused on that stuff. And then we may at the same time be self medicating with substances or foods or so forth. And so we're jacking our nervous system all over the place. Right. And so I think there's a lot of that going on. I'm curious about your thoughts about it. What are the mechanisms of how if someone's finding themselves caught in that, what is the attraction? I mean, if I know that what's going on in the world is making me anxious, why the heck would I want to pay more attention to it?

Well, I mean, we're wired. Our bodies and psyches are not evolved to deal with the level of dopamine stimulation that we're getting with the glowing rectangles that we stare at all day. We're not wired for that. And so this hyper vigilant part, if we think about parts, it's like a firefighter that's hypervigilant, that's watching for danger. It thinks it's on the savannah watching for saber tooth tigers. That's what we're evolved for. And then now there's no way for us to pay attention to all the polyvalent forces of danger around us. We get hooked into that. A lot of the work that I'm doing With my clients now is around knowing truth and how to calm oneself within that internal ecosystem and then having that be impermeable to the outside world, that can cause us distress. So we're checking in with ourselves if we're okay within ourselves to see then if we have enough energy then to go out and pay attention to news or engaging in these things. Right. It's a delicate balance because you don't want to be an ostrich with your head in the sand and disconnect and do spiritual bypassing. Right. So we want to be engaged in community, but we are of no help to ourselves or our community if we cannot regulate our own internal ecosystem first. Right. We're unable to come to it with any kind of self energy of calm and confidence and compassion if we're completely dysregulated inside. So that's really step one.

And we know that whatever states of mind we're in, and here we're talking about, you know, fear and anxiety, and that kind of dysregulated mind state and emotional state produces a particular neurochemical mix in the brain of various neurotransmitters and hormones and stuff. And whatever neurochemical mix is in the brain more commonly or over a period of time, we tend to get addicted to that like anything else. Right. So our brain reorganizes itself to almost need that. Right. So it starts to feel like our normal. And like if that wasn't going on, we'll go seek it out. Which seems crazy, but that's just the way addiction works. And it's the way the neurochemical landscape of the brain works.

Absolutely. You know, we talk about it like limbic resonance, where you have a certain. It's like a thermostat, a certain set point for a certain amount of dopamine. Right. And when I was working at the drug and alcohol rehab center, the clients would say, like they couldn't believe that I'd never been in a street fist fight. And it's just like, how is that possible? And that your life must be so boring? But, you know, I'm coming to a more serotonergic receptors, and they're looking for dopamine because that's the environment that they were raised in, and the environment that they're used to is high dopamine, you know, chaos level. Right. And so it's really about titrating that thermostat down from super high dopamine receptors that are just begging to be filled with some kind of stimulation and letting those receptors reset I think this is why. I mean, I know this is why psychedelics are really powerful, because some psychedelics can really reset that receptor system instantly. I mean, ibogaine. Ibogaine is an incredible medicine to just completely reset the opioid receptors in the brain instantly. There's instant resetting of addiction to opioids with ibogaine. Ibogaine has dangers. You have to research who's good practitioners, all of that. But it's amazing for that, you know, application.

Yeah. My wife's first husband, who's a good friend of both of ours, has been working as a counselor for years in an ibogaine clinic in Mexico after being a drug and alcohol counselor in the U.S. for many, many decades. And he's seen really amazing results. That it basically is a reset button. It just creates a neurophysiological, neurochemical reset that allows people to have a window of being free of the craving, being free of that. And they still got to step into it and create a new neural architecture that's going to support a different life, but they at least have a window of change where they're not completely driven by the craving. And the thing about, you know, it is like, most of us don't think about ourselves as addicts, Right. If we're not caught up in something like a drug addiction. But really our brain is craving certain things. Whatever our neural architecture setup is, it's craving certain things. We would hope it's craving the neural architecture of joy and equanimity and peace and relationship. Right?

Yeah. Well, these are habits that we have to work with that, you know, changing our system and our orientation. And I mean, I think. I know that anxiety can be addictive as well. Right. It's constant hyperarousal stuff, I think.

Yeah.

Not that it's a choice at all. I mean, I think we're in it and don't realize we're in it. Right. And so it is creating new neuronal pathways to help shift that behavior.

So thinking of these as patterns and stuck patterns, like, so I think that's one way to understand trauma. That some kind of stuck pattern pattern in our nervous system based on experiences we've had. There are single incidents or childhoods full of neglect or even ancestral and epigenetic stuff. But there's some kind of stuck patterns of dysregulation. Right. And then anxiety could be thought of as a manifestation of patterns, stuck patterns of dysregulation. And of course, because of all the unhealed trauma in the world and all the rest of it. Now we see society full of stuck patterns of dysregulation, right. And so there's. And so we can find ourselves in a non virtuous cycle, right. And many of our audience who are probably, you know, dealing with different kinds of anxiety right now, may find themselves in kind of stuck in a non virtuous cycle where they're doing things that exacerbate the anxiety, they're self medicating to ameliorate it. But those are, you know, maladaptive coping strategies that actually in the end create, you know, less of the neurochemicals we need to feel good probably and also create other problems of weight issues or drug reactions or, you know, we're dealing with sugar and caffeine. Whatever it is we're self medicating with is making it worse. And it's just, we're in this, it can feel really difficult to get out of that cycle. So what are some steps people can take to create a bit of a pattern, interrupt and begin building the momentum for a virtuous cycle that's going to take them into reshaping their neural architecture towards balance and harmony and so forth.

That's great because this is where the rubber hits the road, right? How can we really make change? So I'll start by saying how important it is for people to create a physiological state of wellbeing as best we can. So paying attention to our hormones, you know, consulting with a naturopath about proper supplements to take, how to eat well, all of that is so important. And not to discount that getting proper sleep, also having daily practices of meditation or yoga or exercise. Right? All of that. I would say on top of all that, the most beneficial tool that I can teach you, and I teach this to all of my clients, is being able to unblend with a blended part, like a blended anxiety part. And I use this technique on myself too. So the first step is just to recognize that you are not your trauma, you are not your anxiety, right? We don't even say, you say my trauma, my anxiety. You don't say, I trauma, I'm anxiety. We know that. It's a part of us. So the first thing is just to recognize that when you're flooded with anxiety, recognize, okay, this is a part of me. The minute you can start recognizing that, you're creating a conscious awareness that's separating a little bit away from it so you're not at. This is huge. So what you want to do is really leverage that distance between you and the anxiety so you can observe it as a part, this does 60% of the work for you. So the more you can get curious about I wonder what this anxiety is. And you start to kind of talk to it in your mind. You start to put more of your conscious awareness onto talking to the part. So then you're really getting into self energy. And the key to that is curiosity and compassion. So the first step is curiosity. I wonder what this anxiety is about. I wonder what's happening in my body. Where is this occurring in my body. What is this about? What does this part need from me? Curiosity and then compassion. Oh, I'm so sorry that you're suffering like that. I'm so sorry that you feel so overwhelmed right now and you start to have compassion for your anxiety. Once you do that, you'll start to notice a shift where the anxiety isn't so blended with you and you're in it, you're able to observe it. It's really remarkable. It sounds so simple and it's harder to do than to talk about. So it takes some practice. But starting to practice, that will really help you lower anxiety. I'll do this sometimes with myself when I have insomnia, because in the night I'll wake up and I'll think about all this stuff I have to do. I'm a super busy person. So I'm at night thinking, I've got to call Fleet back. He sent me that email. I've got to send him that email. And I'll say, oh, sweetie, you work so hard all the time. I understand that you are trying to solve these problems right now and I appreciate that you work so hard, but it's okay for you to rest right now. I've got you having compassion for that. It's incredible. It works every time for me where I'll be able to fall asleep in a few minutes if I can get into that space. So I think that's a powerful tool.

And I think you pointed us in two key directions there. One is we have to get some foothold in well being somehow we have some way, you know, and it's diet and exercise or taking a walk or meditation, but we know how we can get to a relatively good place. A feeling of okayness and safety. However it is relationship with our pet, we get anchored in that and then we can start to build from there. Because I think a lot of people find themselves where they don't have any of that in their life. They're just coping with this constant state of dysregulation. And I've certainly Seen that in the prison work we do. And I've seen it working with the people that work in the prisons. Right. That's their whole world. They don't have a foothold on that kind of well being anywhere. So I think we have to create that somehow anyway to find that sense of okayness. And then I really liked what you talked about. The parts work being one form of it, but we develop that witnessing capacity, and that can be a big part of meditation training as well. Developing that ability to step back a little bit from our experience. Because that part that's observing the anxiety or maybe even at a deeper level, examining some of the parts that are involved in ifs. That part is basically what you were talking about as the self with a capital S. That's the beginning of the cultivate that distance. And from that place we can be curious, we can be, you know, we have all these other qualities that can arise.

Yes, it's powerful, it's great work. And, you know, in that daily practice that you said is so important, even if you don't have anything else, even if you're in a prison cell, what you always have is your breath. You. As long as we are alive, we have our breath. And that is a great starting point. If you have nothing else, you can start with your breath.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we spoke about ibogaine before, where just taking one really deep breath with awareness is like pressing the reset button on our nervous system. It's amazingly powerful. Well, this has been incredibly helpful, Sunny, and I think you've steered us in a lot of good directions here. Well, thank you very much for this. And where can people find out more about your work?

Sunnystrasberg.com is a great place to start. I'm on all the socials as SunnyStrassberglmft. You can find me there too.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. And with your online resources, do you offer any kind of guided practices or guided meditations around the parts work or this kind of thing?

I think that's a great idea that I need to add in or some recordings on the website for that because it is so helpful and I do meditations all the time. So, yeah.

Yeah. Even as you were describing the process there, I almost felt like you were describing it, but you were almost guiding us as you were to develop that distance. Right. And then be curious and so forth.

So, yeah, that's a great idea. I'll add it on my list to think about. Morning.

Okay. Well, thank you so much. Sunny Sassberg. Always illuminating. Thank you.

Thank you.

Be well. Thank you for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember, real change happens when we commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful, I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to you. Take care. At Ameca Insurance, we know it's more than just a car or a house.

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