People-Pleasing. Overachieving. Perfectionism. Dr. Aimie Apigian on the Biology of Trauma Patterns That Hijack Your Health—and How to Heal Your Nervous System for Good

What if the anxiety, burnout, or fatigue you're feeling isn't in your head, but it's in your biology? Well, Dr. Amy Epigean joins us to break down how trauma gets stored in the body and what it really takes to feel safe, energized, and alive again. A double board-certified physician and founder of the Biology of Trauma, Dr. Amy blends personal experiences with cutting-edge science to help us understand why talk therapy isn't always enough and what to do instead. Whether you've been in survival mode for years or just feel stuck, this episode is a powerful reminder that healing doesn't have to be a mystery. It just has to start with the nervous system. I'm your host, James Barry, and welcome to Everyday Ancestral. Please enjoy this next episode. What was going on in your life when you realized traditional approaches to trauma weren't cutting it?

This first happened when I adopted. I don't know how many people know this about my story, but it was During medical school that I foster parented and then adopted. It was not my intention to adopt from the beginning. I thought I was just signing up to be a foster parent. I wanted to use my time in a meaningful way. I had a few months between finishing my master's and jumping back into the 3rd year of medical school, and I decided to become a foster parent during this time. I had no idea, James, that it would lead me to adopt. And I remember the phone call. There's a 4-year-old boy. He needs a home. And it was an immediate yes for me. My, my heart was so wide open and I'm in my mid-20s. So I have a lot of hope. You know, I think I know everything, but I also, I also think that you remember thinking that way in your 20s.

I remember my 20s. Yep. Cocky and self-righteous. Yeah.

Very much so. That was me as well. And I just knew that young kids who were coming from hard places, they needed love. They needed understanding. They needed compassion. And with stability, they would heal. And I just wanted so much to be able to help them have a better life and a real future rising above their childhood. So this was all in my motivation for becoming a foster parent. But when Miguel came, he had already been through 20 different moves, not different placements, but had been moved around 20 different times. And he was only 4. He was at the place where he had been so traumatized, not just from what placed him in the foster care system, but then during his time in the foster care system that he was so violent and aggressive and dysregulated that they were not able to place him in any home that had children or pets. They saw that I was a medical student headed to be a doctor, and they're like, she's the perfect one.

No, no, you weren't necessarily studying trauma at this time though. What kind of medicine were you studying?

I was in medical school. I was in Southern California, Loma Linda University, to be specific. And I was doing an MD, so my medical training, but then also getting a master's in biochemistry. And this was the environment in which I then became a foster parent.

You clearly weren't dating, you weren't married, cuz like what kind of person decides to like take on a foster kid, let alone adopting a kid when they're in medical school? I mean, that's just crazy. But you clearly, like, you saw yourself as having time. Or is it just that your heart was so big at that moment?

My heart was so big at the moment. I had time in the sense that I had a few months before jumping back into medical school. And so I literally was going into this just to be helpful and foster parent.

For those couple of months.

That's what I thought. By the time they called me and had a child that they wanted to place with me, I was already back in medical school. I was already back in internal medicine rotation, no less, and in the 3rd year of medical school, and I still said yes, James. So now you're getting into a window like of my own trauma patterns that would make me say yes, but—

No, that's—

I was completely unaware of that being an unhealthy thing or that even being a manifestation of my own inner people pleasing, my own inner need for accomplishment to feel worthy. And I was completely unaware of that. That would all come out when I took Miguel in and then would go through the hardest thing that I've ever been through as a result. But that's how I discovered all of this about myself. It was so well hidden from even myself.

I'm sorry that you had to go through that, cuz that sounds really intense. And I think about this a lot that we really do need contrast to understand not only our placement in the world, but our placement within ourselves. Like without contrast, there is no change. And I find everyone in the health field, everyone had to come from somewhere to get to where they currently are. So I do think that this is very powerful. that this is the traumatic or the contrast that happened to help you see that you had trauma, that you had these things going on inside you that were dictating your choices.

And I've often thought, James, that if he were any easier, I wouldn't have had the insights that I've had or had my life changed, my career path gone down a very meaningful path that I wouldn't, I wouldn't have even been aware of if he hadn't have prompted this and been so tough that I had to go on a very different journey than what I was expecting in order to try to find answers for him.

What a gift he was for you in that sense. And really for all of us, because now where you are, And what you specialize in is helping so many people. So you ended up helping him find another adopted family. What was that process? Because really, it sounds to me like you accepted him to adopt him. You did that for, you said, what, 6 years? How long? 6 years. So that's an incredible amount of time, first of all, to do that while you're still in school. But now you're being faced with your own shadow. I imagine you probably didn't actually have time to really deal with that shadow side. And so then you had to make this decision, which I imagine was probably rock bottom. What was that process? And then how did you treat yourself after? Were you just beating yourself up? I mean, sorry, I'm talking a lot here, but it really triggers me because it's like, I know that when people have, for example, miscarriages, they beat themselves up. They just are like, what did I do wrong? And I can just imagine that you were so hard on yourself and it makes me feel really sad for you. So I would love to better understand that.

The short version of the story is that I poured myself into Miguel and talk about losing myself in the process, needing to put myself on the sidelines because I have a child who, James, he was so deep in his trauma. That he was talking about killing me, would attempt to kill me. My daily life was at threat. I would sit down at the table for dinner after being in the hospital all day long, seeing patients, and we'd be having dinner and he would pick up his plate. He's 2 feet away from me and throw it right at my face. So this was my environment where I didn't have the space to do any of my own personal work that was surfacing as a result of this. It was pure survival, which is why it became so necessary for me to find answers. It wasn't, well, it would be nice. It wasn't, well, I'm trying to help him. It was like, no, I'm trying to survive. I'm trying to get through today. And he is going to have a very awful future if he's even alive, because he's doing things that are putting his own life at risk. And he's 5, he's 6. So it became so necessary just for literally like physical survival. So as I'm throwing myself into this, I'm realizing that the therapies that are The evidence-based therapies are not working for him. They're actually making things worse. Talk about rock bottom. Here I am. I'm a poor medical student. Don't have any money. Don't have any time. My heart had been so open for this experience, thinking that it was going to be this version of parenting and motherhood. And I was getting this version and I couldn't even talk about it with my friends because they're dating, they're getting married, like they're doing normal 20-year-old things. I'm trying to keep a kid from killing me that day. I can't talk with my colleagues because they're telling me, Amy, like, what were you thinking? We all know that these kinds of kids end up in juvenile hall and then they go on to have addictions and then they go on to have a life of broken relationships. We know this. Why are you setting yourself up for this? And so it was this constant message of hopelessness and discouragement, even if they understood the situation. And most of my friends had no clue what I was going through. And part of the issue, and I know a lot of parents who adopt can relate to this, Miguel was one way in public with other people.

Mm-hmm.

And a very different way with me at home. He would put on his very charming self, which he had refined over his years of being in foster care system. He knew how to charm people, but he couldn't hold it together. It was only a matter of time. And then it would be the explosion and the unraveling and the falling apart because he had had to do that. So my life just became increasingly smaller and smaller and smaller. Until I couldn't even leave my home because leaving my home meant that he was going to have a rage later on. And it was going to be 4 hours on the floor holding him just because I had taken him out to the store. And these were the kinds of things that would trigger him. So this was the context. Now, there was something very significant that happened at that time that I'll share with you, which is that there had been an adoptive mother who had adopted a boy from Russia. It was a big thing in the news at that time because she put him on a plane and sent him back to Russia. There was no family to accept him there. There was nothing there for him. She was just so done, exhausted, ran out of resources that that seemed to her the only thing for her to do to survive. Everyone else was horrified. Oh my goodness, how could she do this? Inside, I was like, I get it. I get it. And what an awful place to be where you're a parent and you don't see how you can be okay, how you don't see how they can be okay. And it's that bad that you're putting your son who you adopted on a plane. Back to Russia. That was the context by which then I'm experiencing this. And I'm realizing for some people, this doesn't get better. What is my future going to be like? What is his future going to be like? Am I even going to be able to have a career? Because how do I even work? I took off a whole year after graduating medical school just to be at home with him. I had no money. Which means that I had to move to Oregon. This is when I moved to Oregon to live in someone's basement for free so that I could work for her and take care of her children so that I could be at home with Miguel. I poured everything into him and trying to find answers for him. It was an experience that few other people will ever have to go through. And thus they can't really fully understand the, the extent of the intensity of it and the rock bottomness that I experienced all the time of down on the floor, on my knees, in a fetal position, crying because I am doing my best and my best is not good enough.

What happened to help you finally have the strength to just say, I'm not the right person for him. He's not the right person for me. What kind of came together to assess that?

So James, here's the hardest part of the story is that I actually found all the answers that he needed. I am one of those people, again, talk about my trauma patterns. I understand. I am one of those people that when I set out to do something, there is no way that I would have stopped and I kept going. And I did everything. This included putting him into boarding schools. I mean, I did everything, anything and everything. I was still all in and it eventually worked. I found the last piece that he needed. It actually happened when he was 9 and we did a week-long therapy session of a specific therapy that then it worked so well that I went and got trained in it because I needed to understand it. But it built on the foundation that I had created, but it was the last piece then that he needed. And I remember James being out, it was in West Virginia where we were at this place doing, doing this therapy. And every single day I was seeing such dramatic changes inside of him that it was my dream come true. I mean, it was more than what I had ever thought would be possible given my experience with him up until that point. I remember day one, day one, I pick him up from the therapy and that evening he's like, hey mom, can I do the dishes for you? And I about fell down on the floor.

I think any parent would fall down on the floor if their kid said that to them.

Any parent would fall down on the floor. And especially me, given that what I usually would hear would be, Mom, I wanna kill you tomorrow.

What was the therapy?

The therapy is what led me to start to study the biology of trauma. The therapy actually was an art narrative process that broke it down into very specific segments of one's inner experience during a trauma, not what was happening on the outside, the inner experience of that trauma. And you Map each step out of that inner experience on a different sheet of paper so that there's a total of 8 pieces of paper and you walk through the whole thing and then you create a different ending where now you are safe. And sometimes that means like, well, then right here, right now, because I've never felt safe in my life. Or sometimes it was, if it was a car accident, you're like, well, no, I was able to go to the hospital and they checked me out and everything was fine. And Whew, the story is over. But so much of what I was learning at that time was that the body holds on to trauma and it holds on to it because it never got the sense that the danger was over. So for Miguel, he's still living in his past. He's still living in the middle of, my mom might give me up. My mom might send me away. My birth mom is neglecting me. My birth mom is— Gone. I don't even know where she is. And when she is here, she's not emotionally present. She's on substances. He was still living in that sense of danger. I didn't know this. I thought that by bringing him into my home and giving it time that he would adjust and he would be able to realize, oh, I'm not in danger anymore. But one of the first things I had to learn about trauma was that it's actually not what our mind thinks. It's what our body believes. And our body needs a reset to safety. And most people, including Miguel, including myself, had never had a reset, a complete reset to safety. So our body was still living as if it were in the past, even though our mind could consciously look around and say, Well, no, we're, we're fine now. We're in a different home now. We have a different mom now. She loves us. Our mom before didn't, but this one does. That is all cognitive reasoning, and that has no place in the actual determination of our body of whether we remain in danger mode or not.

So what I hear you saying is that trauma is stored on a cellular level. It's, it's in our body. And that talking through it is not necessarily the remedy. The remedy is something physical, but how does that look? Maybe walk us through what you would advise someone if someone came to you and had stored trauma, how would you work with them physically?

There are 3 levels that need repair. And so we have our nervous system and specifically our autonomic nervous system where the trauma is actually stored. In our autonomic nervous system. And it runs this constant background calculation of, am I safe or am I under threat? It's a subconscious calculation. It's happening every moment throughout our life because it's the job of our nervous system to keep us alive. So it has to keep track of, am I in danger or am I safe right now? Do I need to start running or can I relax and rest right now?

Very primal, very, very primal.

Yeah.

Very basic, right?

Primal. And it would be amazing for people to understand, like, what are those cues of danger that our body receives? What are the cues of safety? Because they're not necessarily what we would normally think of. And that's the whole point is that then as we experience the impact of trauma on our body, our own body is creating a feedback loop and giving signals of danger to our nervous system that say, We're still in danger. An obvious level is the mind. So we can have self-talk and we can tell ourselves, you're stupid, Amy. And that self-talk will be heard by my nervous system. And my nervous system will be like, oh, it sounds like we're under threat because we're stupid. The self-talk actually is important, but the other 2 levels are even more powerful. There is a body tissue level. Which is involving the movement of our muscles. And when we have been in danger and powerless to protect ourselves, our body retains that memory. And it forms this belief, a programming through our neuroplasticity that I'm incapable of hard things. So then when stressors come, even if we could actually respond to the challenge, our body says, oh no, no, no, we're not capable of hard things. We should just shut down. We should just not even try. So there's this element of stored body memory in terms of our movement and our ability to move through hard things versus just getting overwhelmed and getting stuck. The third level though is the biology, and that's what you were referring to, which is the actual cellular level. And what happens is that as trauma impacts our cells and systems of our body, it disrupts our gut, it disrupts our mitochondria, it disrupts our hormones, it disrupts our cardiovascular system, our lymphatic system, our detoxification system. Because as we all know, if we are needing to run from a tiger to survive right now, now is not the best time to be eating a meal and cleaning out our toxins and lymphatic system. And so all of those systems shut down. Including our metabolism. When we go into a trauma response, one of those steps of the inner experience that we wanna map out on this art narrative therapy that I took Miguel to is this shutting down in order to survive. Our metabolism shuts down in order to survive. This is where a lot of the fatigue and exhaustion comes from, where it's our body actually saying, I don't think you can do that much, but you're not listening to me, so I'm gonna shut down and force you to do less. I'm going to shut down and force you to feel tired so that you won't go out and do all these things or follow your dreams or whatever it is that, that you're experiencing this fatigue and exhaustion from. And so that then becomes a source of ongoing danger. When our cells and our systems don't get that reset to safety, our metabolism stays in this energy conservation mode. Our hormones remain imbalanced. Our digestive system becomes imbalanced and we develop all forms of dysbiosis or inflammation, changes in our digestive system that create more problems like nutrient deficiencies. And all of this together is now becoming a cue of danger to our nervous system because our nervous system looks at our inner biology and says, ooh, Look at all those toxins. Ooh, look at that inflammation in the gut. Oh, did you see the inflammation in the brain? Did you see that imbalance of hormones? Do you see the mitochondrial compromise? Do you see the oxidative stress? And our nervous system is looking at all of that and saying, because of the damage that's still present in our biology, we don't have as big of a capacity. So We need to stay small in order to try to stay safe. And this is literally how then we get stuck in our trauma patterns.

So you were suggesting then that one of the forms of healing trauma is through functional medicine, is through actually healing your body.

This is what I'm saying. Like, it's a requirement. And that is why talk therapy, James, will never be enough because you're only addressing one level with talk therapy, you're not addressing how trauma impacted your biology and the repair that is needed. And so what I started to see as a physician is that all of these people were coming in, they're telling me that they've done all these years of therapy, and yet their body is still impacted by their past. For me, that is not true healing. True healing is where you are living free. of the effects of your past. Not that you've erased the past, but you're free of the effects of it. It's no longer holding you back. But as a physician, I'm seeing, still seeing so many people with some physical health condition that is a result of stored trauma in their body. And they're still living with that impact. And that is not a full and complete healing. that I would like them to be able to have.

So when someone first comes to work with you, are you first focusing on identifying the trauma or are you focusing on identifying the health issues?

What a great question. So here's the crazy thing. As I'm starting to learn all this, I am now faced with the question, well, what do I do with my patients? At this point, I had changed my career, so I'm no longer in general surgery residency. Yes, I did 4 years of general surgery residency. I have touched and cut the vagus nerve. And then I moved to addiction medicine so that I can really work with trauma because I felt that addiction is just one of the most clear examples of how trauma reinforces and becomes different patterns. So I'm working with my patients and I'm realizing like, where do I even start? Because the mountain is so big. There is so So much repair to do, especially with someone who's become dependent and addicted on substances. There's so much to do. Where do I even start? And if I try to throw it all at them, they're not successful at all and they get stuck. So I had to really practice and figure out where am I starting with them? The craziest thing, James, I, as a physician, I'm thinking I need to start them with diet and supplements and lifestyle.

No.

Actually, the most important place to start them that gave them the fastest results was teaching them how to shift their inner nervous system state. They're coming in, they're anxious, they're stressed, they're overwhelmed, and they don't know how to shift their own state. And I realized that if I could get them To learn 21 different exercises, somatic self-practices is what I call them, where at home they don't even need me to do this. They can learn how to shift their own inner state. They were experiencing more changes in their physical health than any other thing that I was prescribing. That doesn't stick. That doesn't last because they still have their biology to repair. They still have their mindset and their self-talk to repair. And so I would have them learn how to shift their state, and then they would notice that throughout the day it would fall back into stress and overwhelm. And that is normal. That's what is going to happen until you put the other pieces into place. And that's where I still see a lot of people like going to therapy. They experience relief when they're on the yoga mat. They experience relief when they're doing their meditation. But not long after they've left their mat, guess where their nervous system is back in survival mode, whether stress and anxiety or just the overwhelm and the collapse and the shame and the depression. It's not sticking because their nervous system is still getting all of these cues of danger from their body, from their biology, from their own mind. And so now would come the second piece. But the first piece, if I wanted them to have the fastest results in their sleep, in their energy, in their depression, anxiety, GI issues, it was these somatic self-practices where they on their own had learned how to shift their own state in the moment whenever they noticed that they were in the spiral of stress or overwhelm.

Obviously there's 21 you shared that you share in, and is this your first book that you shared them in?

I don't go into the details of these somatic self-practices in my book, The Biology of Trauma. I'm painting the picture of, you've gotta address the biology of trauma. Here's what the biology of trauma is. I actually walk through these different steps of the art narrative process of one's inner experience that even creates this damage. And then where do we start? Where do we start? We have to start with creating that felt sense of safety. And this is how we do that. We do that through a very specific, very deliberate and intentional process of learning to shift our inner state to a felt sense of safety.

Is there one you can share? Like if our audience were to take away, you know, one or two things that they can directly start applying to their lives the minute this is done?

So James, now you get to be my guinea pig. Let's do a quick body scan. Give me any place in your body where there's any kind of tension.

It's just uncomfortable in any way, doesn't need to Oh yeah, my traps, you know, right under the neck, right?

Yes. Okay. All right. So here's what I want you to do. Give me a number for that level of discomfort.

What are we doing? 10, 5? What's the high?

Whatever you want. This is your number. So whatever you want.

Okay. Let's say that 5 is the highest and 1 is no tension. So this is about a 2.5, 3.

All right. So now we're going to forget that. And now I want you to bring your arms up and bring your hands as close to your shoulders as you can. And we're going to push away this big rock that's in front of you, James. Can you see it? It's huge. It's massive. Start pushing it away. Put your muscle into it. You have to push slow because it's so big. And you're going to go all the way until your arms are fully extended. Going as slow as you can, pushing this big rock away. Oh, I can see your muscles engaged. I've got my fingers feeling like they're digging into this rock. Push that thing away. Push it away. When you get to full arm extension, just pause there. We're not there yet, but when you get there, just pause there at full extension. And now let them drop.

Yeah, I actually don't feel it. It's a 1 right now.

It's a 1 right now. That's how simple these practices are.

I could, like, literally when we started, I could feel the tension and I don't feel the tension anymore.

This is how easy it can be to shift your inner state.

Wow. And that was like 30 seconds. I don't know, 40 seconds or whatever it was. 30, 60 seconds.

Yes. The problem is, is I teach someone an exercise like this and they're like, That's too simple. That's too easy. It should be harder. And I'm like, it's not. If you think that things need to be harder, well, then that's probably a trauma pattern that we should talk about at some point. But this idea that it actually doesn't take much time to shift our inner state. And when we shift our state, our pain levels change. So a lot of people are like, I'm in pain, I'm in pain, and they're focused on the pain. Actually, what we need to do is take our focus away from the pain, do a somatic self-practice that engages our body in a specific way. And there's a very specific reason why I have you push a rock away. There's science behind that. But when we do that, when we engage it with our body, with this movement somatic practice, that's what shifts our inner state. And that's what changes, for your case, the pain level. It's not actually by focusing on the pain, it's by shifting the state.

I, it's interesting 'cause I have heard before that, and this really ties into everything you're saying, is that when a bird hits a glass, a pane of glass, what usually happens is, you know, if you've ever seen it, they hit it and then they kind of shake off the ex— like they kind of just shake their entire body and then they fly away. And they talk about how that shake is nature's way of releasing the trauma of hitting that glass, the physical trauma of that. And so it seems to me like the somatic practices are, are the, you know, human form of that release of physical trauma. What are some other somatic practices that you would advise people to look into?

Yeah, I've got a whole 5-day nervous system reset. And so what I've done is I've pulled 5 exercises from my 21-Day Journey program. And I offer them to people who are purchasing my book. So this can be a gift for anyone orders the book. They get my 5-day nervous system somatic reset that has 5 of these very simple and yet very effective tools. So another one would be, as we look at the anatomy, our stomach is one of the most vulnerable areas of our body. Our lungs are important. Our heart is important for keeping us alive. Our brain is important for keeping us alive, but they are all encased in bones. Our stomach is not. And if someone were to hurt our stomach, there are vital arteries there that we would die. And so knowing this, we can actually use this to create a felt sense of safety in the moment. So another very simple technique is to bring in some kind of pillow or blanket, or if you have a purse, or if you have a book, just anything will work. To be able to just put it over your belly, tug it in a little bit, and even just talking about it now, like my body's like, oh, I remember that feeling, and it melts into a sense of safety. So knowing the science, knowing the anatomy, knowing our nervous system and what it needs, one of the reasons why I do the pushway is because space gives us a felt sense of safety. Space to think. Space to breathe. We are so rushed in our society that we don't feel like we have space. And creating a sense of space is creating a felt sense of safety for our nervous system.

It sounds to me though, like not only is that pillow or that, you know, that protection creating space, but it's also a form of touch.

It is.

And, you know, we had Mary Ruddock on our podcast and she talked about how she believes that it's our societal kind of separation from intimacy and touch is actually one of the leading causes of trauma. And it's, and I notice even when I go to sleep at night, I like to, I usually, I have like, I have multiple pillows. So I have one pillow for my head, but then I have another one. That I'm almost like, I like to just almost rest over my head so I can feel the weight, or I put sometimes on my body, but I just want the weight of something. Yeah.

I sleep with a weighted blanket for that reason. And when I am wanting to really settle it deep into my body, I've got a weighted neck shawl. I've got a weighted lap pad. That touch and that sense of gravity is very helpful for my body. To get that sense of even knowing where my body is in space. So touch is one of those things that we do need as part of our development for even being able to connect with our own body. And with different contraptions and devices and social changes that have happened over the years, it is true that children are not getting as much of those essentials for their neurodevelopment. As they used to. They don't get as much time on their belly, which is an essential component for neurodevelopment. They may not get as much touch. And so they're missing part of that element that they use to connect with their own body. And then they don't feel their body as much, James. And they don't even feel things like, I'm hungry, until they're starving and they have to eat right now. But actually, if you were more in touch with your body, You would have felt the hunger pains starting earlier. You would have known, okay, I need to start preparing myself some food to eat, but we're not feeling our body. We're not connected with our body. The same can go with thirst or temperature changes or going to the bathroom. We don't notice these things until it's now an emergency. It's because we're actually living disconnected from our body.

Do you think we are co-creating This disconnection with kind of the newer methods of media where they're short, fast cuts. When we were younger, you rented a movie from a, you know, like a Blockbuster and you only had that one movie and it's like you either watched the whole thing or you didn't watch anything. And now kids can flip around to 20 different movies immediately. We have access to so much now at the drop of a dime. Do you think that's contributing to that disconnection?

Oh, I love this conversation because it really is, I see it, more of a need to meet the demand for where our nervous systems have gone. Our nervous systems, given the disconnection, have to have faster Moments of activity and adrenaline and dopamine because we're not wired to feel more connected and to be getting dopamine from meaningful connections. And so given that this is how nervous systems have developed in our generations now, that's what is needed to grab their attention. It didn't used to be that way. We had nervous systems that, that wanted more time to focus and to think and be creative. That is not the nervous systems that are coming out of generations today. Being an addiction medicine physician is very much related to this because you're working with a different type of nervous system. And when I'm working with a nervous system who's coming off of a substance, for example, I can't expect them to be able to focus for a long period of time. It has to be fast. It has to be rapid because they are so dopamine deficient because they were getting their dopamine from their substance. That I know that if I don't provide that dopamine rush for them, I've lost them and they're going to go back to their substance because that's what they feel that they need in order to survive. We need dopamine. We're just meeting people where they're at. And that's the problem is that this is where the nervous systems are at, that they actually need that to feel alive.

Now, but how does it change then? I mean, so are you, you know, using the addict and let's just say it's a screen addict, you know, someone who's always on their phone. It doesn't have to be, you know, alcohol, but it, you know, it could be that most or all of the media is so fast cut, particularly if the kids are on TikTok or YouTube or something like that, that's so fast cut and triggering what you're talking about. How would someone change?

Change. This is the big topic and really change is dependent on how much trauma a nervous system is already holding. The more trauma burden that a nervous system has, the harder change will be, which means the slower that we need to go. So I would treat it the same way that I was treating a nervous system that's become dependent on alcohol to feel okay. I'm not going to immediately cut you off of everything because you are going to die. You're gonna quit, you're gonna leave, you're gonna be like, I'm never trying that again. So instead we manage the withdrawals and there is a withdrawal from screen time. There is a withdrawal from this type of dopamine activity. There is a withdrawal and we need to honor that so that as we're making this change, we're bringing in other things that bring in dopamine. So what other things bring in dopamine?

Right.

Movement, exercise, joy, laughter, play. Well, then bring those in because you can't expect a child or any nervous system to leave something and not have a replacement. You've gotta bring in the replacement first, and then there's less need for this to fill the need, but it is filling a need. Parents need to recognize it's filling a need. And we've gotta figure out how else can I have that need met so that the dependency on this isn't as strong, and then I can make change. more effective because I've created some other way for them to have that need met.

This is just still going back to the contrast, right? Is like someone that is where their current state is one thing, they need to experience that similar outcome, but in a different form, which is the contrast. Something I'm always kind of fascinated about with addiction is Do you think that part of the addict's addiction is that they keep calling themselves and labeling themselves and reinforcing that they are an addict with their language?

What a great question. And when you ask me that, I think of my patients who have autoimmunity. I think of my patients who have depression, anxiety, and they would come in and they would say, My depression, my anxiety. And I was like, whoa, are you sure you want to call that yours? Because if it's yours, it's going to be much harder to leave behind. Whereas if it's the depression, the anxiety, it's already putting some space between this is me and this is just something that I'm challenged with at the moment, but it's not me. It's not mine. So I think that this type of word and the labeling and how we refer to our conditions is very important. So it takes me back to the 3 levels that need repair. The mind is one of them and how we talk about ourselves, how we talk about what we're being challenged by is really important. The words that we use are really important.

It's so amazing because I, I'm hearing you talk about things specifically around, you know, addiction. I'm hearing you talk about things around trauma, around your field of expertise. And yet there's so much crossover with, with what I do, you know, and, and how, what I focus on, how I focus on, you know, getting micronutrients frequently, microdosing frequent small amounts. How I'm always talking about meeting people where they currently are. But just making small changes to their diet so that they can start to feel better in their body. So like, it's different intentions maybe, or maybe it's just different language, but it's such similar intention. Can you share a little bit of what kind of lifestyle you've taken on to support, you know, your trauma healing?

This has been a big one. And when I look at the similarities that you're mentioning, to me, this comes back to like, this is just This is how we know this is truth, is when it's obviously that it's a principle of nature. It's a principle of the body that we do microdosing of things that we need, that we meet the body where it's at, and then we guide it gently to the changes that will best help it. So it's true, like it's crossover because these are fundamental principles that we're learning about what the body needs to truly be And its best health. So my journey with food started very interesting, James. I actually grew up vegetarian and then vegan. So I grew up vegetarian around the time that I was age 10, 11. My family went vegan. I didn't even have any meat until I was 31. And I had a fish for the very first time at age 31. I thought that this was the healthiest way for me to feed and nourish my body. I struggled with so much anxiety. I struggled with so much depression. I struggled with so much exhaustion, but I was young. I was used to learning how to push through things. And as a result, I was on a lot of bread. I was on a lot of sugar carbs and I never felt really well, but then I'd never felt well. So I didn't know that feeling well was a thing and that other people didn't feel this way, because this is how I just always felt. So it wasn't until that first fish— talk about contrast, right? This is our theme for this episode, James, the contrast. I go from that to being on vacation in Cartagena, Colombia with my Mexican mom, and I'm realizing that no one is going to know if I eat a fish. No one is going to know. I'm not going to offend anybody. It'll, it'll be a secret. No one will need to know. And so with my Mexican mom, like the one person I felt safe with in my life at that time, she and I are like, okay, we're going to do this. I am going to have my first fish. I had this amazing fresh-caught fish with coconut rice. It was one of the most amazing meals of my life. But I remember within 30 minutes, James. The anxiety, depression lifted, my energy lifted, and I was like, whoa, what is this? It lasted only about 24 hours and then it faded, but it created enough contrast for me that I was like, I want to lean into this. So several weeks later, I'm back home. I'm out to dinner with my cousin. He's having a fish and I'm like, ooh, okay. I'll have a fish too. It was still so much of an obstacle for me to be able to have meat because I'd always been taught it was bad. So I have a fish, same thing happened, James. I feel so much better within minutes of eating that fish. And then it faded. But by then I knew that this was the association.

Isn't that wild though? Because, you know, you're talking about how Oh, talk therapy with trauma. So the talk therapy is your, your brain thinking that some, this is healthy. And that's basically how your diet was initially. But then once you, on a cellular level, ate something that shifted your biology, you had truth, you know, for what your body, what your body needed.

Exactly. Like this was so much of my journey to learning there is a biology of trauma and my biology was keeping me stuck. In these trauma manifestations of fatigue, anxiety, depression, autoimmunity. So it has been quite the journey for me to go from vegan to now, right at this moment, I'm on a carnivore diet.

Right.

Wow.

Huge. And I've witnessed huge shifts in your physicality as well from it. Like you, your body has completely shifted. During the time I've known you.

Completely shifted. And so I don't know if this, if this is, you know, forever. I don't, I, I don't know. And one of the areas that has changed the most for me is my ability to not need to know. I don't need to control things anymore. I can let my body say right now, I need to be on a carnivore diet and this is how I feel best. And I'm like, okay, I don't understand it. But I want to support you. And if this is how you feel best, then I'm happy to support you. It's no longer the, no, I shouldn't, or I should. Like that word has gone out of my vocabulary. It's all about how can I support you? Because when I support my body and my biology, my body can support me.

This lifetime is about loving oneself. And through the art of loving oneself, we then can love others.

We can't actually connect with others more than what we are connected with ourselves. We can't love others more than we actually truly love ourselves.

I love it. So tell us, you have a new book that is coming and/or has launched by the time this episode airs.

Yes. The Biology of Trauma, How the Body Holds Fear, Pain, and Overwhelm, and How to Heal It.

Wow. Well, we're going to have in the show notes ways for people to get it. You're going to be including those 5 somatic practices that people can utilize in their life with every purchase of the book. Dr. Amy, it's always a pleasure getting time with you. So thank you so much for joining us today. We're going to put in the show notes how people can find you, but why don't you just verbally tell people how they can continue having conversations and connection with you?

I would love to connect with them. And biologyoftrauma.com is one of the best ways to do that. That's where they can find my 5-day nervous system somatic reset for when they purchase the book. And I have other resources and guides for them on what is the biology of trauma, what does that mean for them, and what they can do about it.

And social media, where can people find your fast cutting videos? I'm kidding.

My fast cutting videos, my dopamine creating videos. Uh, YouTube. I've got a large YouTube channel. I post twice a week on there. I do have my Biology of Trauma podcast. I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram, and those are places that they can connect with me.

And what's the handle? Just—

Dr. Amy. Dr. Amy, Biology of Trauma, either one of those will get you to me.

Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing your gifts. And thank you all for joining us on this journey. Uh, stay curious, keep asking questions. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, Links and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K dot com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.