https://www.listennotes.com/e/78acce5fdd3948d3b8050fde47b89184

Hey, James here. Got some news for you. My book is now available for pre-order. That's right, in the show notes, you can go and pre-order it today. And if you do, I'm going to give you some incredible free bonuses. Head over to thehabibook.com that's thehabibook.com to pre-order yours today. Welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast. I'm James Lachlan, former seven-time world champion and now coach to entrepreneurs, CEOs, professional athletes all over the world. This show is for people who refuse to settle, people who are driven, people who want to grow, who know that there's so much more to learn and want to learn from the world's best. Each week I bring you insights from a special guest who's at the top of their game, whether they're in Formula One, whether they're a billionaire, whether they've started a company from scratch and ticket to the top. I bring them to you so that you can rewire your mindset, take action and lead a A life of purpose. Let's get started. Today, you're going to listen to Christine Gibson, and we are going to look at the science of trauma-informed leadership. Enjoy the show. The Lead on Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co.nz. Dr. Christine Gibson, a huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast. It's a pleasure to be here, James. I'm so glad you're here because Trauma. Let's talk about trauma. It's the stuff that most people avoid talking about. It's the stuff that we literally stuff in and avoid and push away. I grew up in a beautiful country that is torn and trauma is everywhere. The wars, the troubles, it's deep, it runs deep, and I don't think it's being dealt with with the right modalities, with the right approach. I read your book. And it was thanks to Caroline, my partner who came across your book, and we're here in New Zealand. And it was phenomenal. And I loved the title right away. Why? The Modern Trauma Toolkit. Modern. So I was like, oh, that suggests to me that what we have been doing perhaps hasn't been working very well. Hence the reason we've got a lot of the statistics around mental health that we do. So, Christy, please tell me a bit more about what got you into this work and why you decided to go with the modern trauma toolkit.

Such a good question. So, yeah, I'll maybe start with the word modern because one of the things that has been really pulling me, I'm a medical doctor and I work as a trauma therapist. But one of the things that was really interesting me is how have we historically dealt with trauma over the years? So when you say like there are these modern connotations. I think we have modern problems, but we actually also have ancient solutions. And so one of the things that I wanted to highlight in the modern trauma toolkit was not just the modern challenges that we face and the modern, you know, new things that we call old ideas and, and more modern therapies that are available, but also the fact that humans and all mammals deal with toxic stress in kind of an evolutionary way. And we also have these body-based innate mechanisms. Like our body is a self-healing organism, so it actually knows what to do. And a lot of what I illustrate in the book are the things that the body knows. And also, what did our ancestors know? And not just like people who are indigenous to land and felt like they've had these collective traumas disconnecting them from their traditional knowledge, almost all of us have been disconnected from traditional knowledge. And so I wanted to highlight not just like these are the things that you might find in a therapist's office, but like these are the things that you might find in your great grandmother's diary, you know, like these are things that we've always been dealing with. So my own personal journey kind of came in a bit of a roundabout way. I have been recognizing trauma and toxic stress as affecting my patients for my entire career. I've been involved in health equity I created a fellowship program, but it was in 2015 when I was working in Nepal and the earthquakes hit. And I was not working there as a part of the earthquake relief. I was there doing some academic consulting with this amazing medical school. And I was living in an apartment in Patton. This was a Saturday afternoon. And it was really terrifying. So a lot of buildings came down around me and I had post-traumatic symptoms. for many weeks after. And I spoke to a psychiatrist in Singapore and I said, Hey, what's going on in my brain? Like, if the garage door of the hotel opens, I like cling to the nearest thing. And I, you know, I can feel my heart jumping out of my chest. And he's like, yeah, you're having a normal response to an abnormal situation. And it just started me doing a lot of reading back in 2015 that by the time I jumped from the hospital into family practice, Firstly, recognizing how traumatic the hospital-based environment had been on me as a person, I recognized fairly quickly that all of the persons that I was seeing in family practice were heavily traumatized because of where I was working. And I thought, I have never been given the skill set. So I started doing heavy training in how to be a trauma therapist because it wasn't something they had access to. And it was so fascinating because as I treated trauma and PTSD in my family practice community, their physical health improved, their sense of hope for the future, and then the way that they looked after their own body improved. So it was the root cause of so much that I'd been dealing with in primary care. And I just love the idea of root causes because those of us who work in equity denied communities addressing the root causes kind of becomes the mantra. So the Modern Trauma Toolkit came about both as a let's get these tools into as many hands as possible, but also let's recognize the systemic causes that are contributing to modern trauma.

And I think that's something often we think of trauma, it could be, you know, as a child, something terrible happens to us or a major car accident, or like you and I, we've both been through a major earthquake. And in the Time weeks, months after that, there is this post-traumatic response. And I was the same every time there was a large truck that would go by, and I didn't know the truck was going by, I felt the ground move. I would freeze, I would feel the cortisol, I would look for somewhere to hide. It was for months, and I didn't know what was going on. I just knew I was a bit stressed and reactive. So, those are the big things. But I imagine for people that maybe were fortunate that they've got to this point in life without any big moments or losses, there's little traumas as well, little tiny things that maybe someone pointed and laughed at you at school or you weren't picked for the sports team or something minor happened. But can those tiny tees, those small traumas also build up to create larger macro trauma?

Yeah, and it's such an interesting way that you're asking it, James, because There's a lot of people, and I even mention it in the Modern Trauma Toolkit, that there's big T's and little T's, but trauma is subjective. So trauma is not like the event that happens. It's not the earthquake that you survive or the war that you witness on, you know, social media or the way that your childhood didn't get your needs met either through abuse or neglect. Trauma is your individual response to that. So trauma is really personal. And so you can have A hundred people who survive an earthquake and some of them might have PTSD symptoms 10 years later. You can have three people in a family and they all go through the same attachment trauma and one of them might have significant complex trauma as an adult. Another might have issues with addiction, which is another one of my clinical environments. And another person might be like, well, what's wrong with you guys that you're, you know, this way? And so, so much of it isn't just like what happened to you, it's how did your mind body system respond to that. And that is so personal. And I think it's also the doorway towards hope is that just as we all have these subjective and really personal responses to trauma, we've all got really good chance of finding the right toolkit that's going to get us out of those trauma reflexes. And that's why I call the book the toolkit is because you can personalize your pathway to healing. And there's very few people who can't. And I think a lot of people who are stuck with these trauma reflexes, because it really becomes like a subconscious process. They feel like, well, that's just me. And it almost becomes a part of their identity. And it doesn't have to be. I love that.

There's a couple of things I want to highlight. I love the fact that we're talking about response rather than disorder. This is not post-traumatic disorder, because to me right away, I'm like, okay, I'm broken. Like, I'm, not normal. Whereas when you say, James, trauma itself is the response to the event or events. That's actually really empowering to go, okay, it's a response. And I actually have the tools at my disposal here with your book to influence how I respond moving forward. Would I be right in saying that?

So right. Nailed it. And it's one of the most important things that I like to share with folks is because you have so much more self-compassion for the way that you see the world and the way that you behave in the world. If you can see your own responses as protective and adaptive. So if your body is still stuck in a trauma Loop, if it's like fight, flight or freeze, that is its way. It's its strategy of protecting you. It feels like there is still ongoing danger and that you still need to be responding as if there is an imminent threat. and your brain thinks that for a reason, because you've had threat in the past, or because you're witnessing threats. So one of the things that I don't think we recognize so much is we've all been through trauma. We're all experiencing a climate emergency and an ongoing pandemic that everyone's decided to collectively ignore. We are facing political divisiveness, and we're seeing rampant inequity that's forcing more and more people to live without their foundational needs being met. All of this is traumatic. And again, if you have a hundred people exposed to these kinds of things, it's going to hit each of them differently. But the more that we're aware of how it's hitting us, and for some people, like you said at the top of the show, they're going to suppress it. They're going to push it down and be like, I'm fine. Everything's fine. What do you mean the dumpster fire behind me? No, no, I'm fine. But part of that is a bit of a freeze response because they're dissociating from the reality of how they're actually feeling. And sometimes, It's a volcano that erupts, and sometimes they just push it, push it, push it, push it down, and it turns into physical symptoms. And that's why I think I have a bit of a unique perspective as a primary care doctor, because I was able to see how those physical symptoms resolved once you get their nervous system working again. And this makes total physical sense. I know I'm rambling a bit, but I just think this is such an important thing. When you have your sympathetic nervous system that's locking you into fight and flight, it means that the part of your nervous system that's supposed to let you sleep, it's supposed to let you rest and digest, it's supposed to let your immune system function. So it prevents cancer and autoimmune disease and infection. That system never gets a chance to turn on. So it makes sense that physical health is deeply tied to what your trauma response is in your body. And so for those of us who were conditioned to suppress it, like doctors working a night shift, putting fires out, like literal first responders, teachers, parents. So many of us are facing it on top of these collective traumas, and we just say, oh, I'm fine. And I think it's really important to say that we're not. And that's okay. That's normal and it's protective and it's adaptive, but what can you do about it? And I think what I want to do is just plant that seed of hope. that there's lots that you can do. Just as your body is locked into this response, there's flexible options and other paths you can explore.

That's exciting. And it's, I guess for the person listening, just for them to see that, hey, these are some signs or symptoms that, hey, I've got something going on. So maybe skin disorders, would that be one of the signs?

Oh, literally anything. Okay. So autoimmune conditions, I mean, Gabor Mate talks a lot about this and he links it to personality. And I don't find the evidence quite as compelling in that way, but I would say that if your sympathetic system has you stuck in fight and flight, and what that looks like is you're angry for no reason, you find yourself more irritable, your muscles are really tense, your mind is racing, it's not letting you sleep, those can be signs of trauma. I mean, they can be signs of lots of other things too, both medical and psychological. But that means that your sympathetic nervous system is overactive and your body is saying, okay, you're dealing with dangerous experiences. I've been programmed to help you run away or fight that off. But we can't really do that in modern times with our problems because we're not usually running away from predators or, you know, although I will say that Our like human anatomy was evolved to run away from natural disasters. And there are so many more now. So we were programmed to run away from a fire and more and more and more of us are seeing that on the news. And it does kind of activate those really primal responses, like, wow, I am not safe. And that can leave us stuck in sympathetic tone. And I think so few of us realize it. But if you get on social media and you just notice that like everyone's super grumpy, that could be one of those signs of modern trauma.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I mean, I try to avoid all news, try to avoid scrolling because generally it's feeding me with lots of really negative things. I can't avoid it all, but certainly I feel it. And I'll share with you. So, about a year and a half ago, I found a lump on my left pec. And I was like, this is interesting. And, you know, I'm generally very healthy. I don't drink alcohol, don't smoke. I move my body, I meditate, I journal. generally vegan diet, like everything's kind of mostly healthy. I think, what's this? So I go and it's starting to look like potentially it could be cancerous. Then they rule that out. Then they go, hey, it's gynecomastia. I was like, okay, well, I can't really see it physically, but I'll... okay. Why? Oh, don't worry about why. It's just gynecomastia. Get on with it. I'm like, Okay, so I started to get a bit more curious and started to investigate my health and I had to end up flying out of the country because I couldn't get a full body MRI. Wanted to rule out pituitary prolactinomas and testicular cancer, all these things that could drive gynecomastia. So we get to the bottom of it and at every stage, all the physical health practitioners are saying, James, you're in incredible health. The endocrinologist was like, you're a disgustingly healthy human. So I'm like, this is fun stuff to hear. Great. However, what's driving this? So we get to the end of it and what they said is that it's a hormonal stress response. So I was like, okay, how do I manage that? What does that look like? How do I take control of this stress response? So I think the work that I do, I love, I speak on stages very similar to yourself. But apparently my body doesn't love that. There's a certain level of stress that it's under. So with your toolkit, where might I start? And there might be others that have different, whether it's skin conditions, whether it's stress or burnout, where might we start? Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for there are teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses, to large corporates, to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Caroline@jjloughlin.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

Yeah, and I'll list a few more like autoimmune conditions, high blood pressure, like you really want your nervous system to have that flexibility to spend some time in sympathetic because that's what lets us move. Like, sympathetic is good. It just can't be on all the time. And so that time of parasympathetic is that time of meditation, that time of restfulness. And a lot of us don't have that opportunity in modern times. So I designed the book to be more focused on somatic skills because so few of us learn that. And what somatic means is body based. So we keep getting taught that you can think your way out of mental health problems because CBT or cognitive behavior therapy is the gold standard. But once you've been experiencing trauma, your thinking brain is actually not a part of the response anymore. So the better doorway is the body. And I found that to be great news because I'm a total neurology nerd and I was like, wow, what does the nervous system do? Tell me more about the vagus nerve. And I just studied everything I could get my hand on. And I don't put everything that I learned in the book because, I mean, there's, I, I still have a penchant for evidence-informed practices, and that's, that is important to me. So if it makes sense on a physiologic I would just get so excited. So one of the things that is actually getting up a lot of momentum in New Zealand, interestingly, is the havening techniques. So this is just a really gentle, soothing touch across the palms, the shoulders, and the face. And this, we know that this gentle touch causes Delta and theta waves, which is the calming brainwaves. It's the ones that we get when we're in a deep sleep or just really, really chill. So we can enhance our sense of chill and restfulness by just doing this gentle touch. And there's in the modern trauma toolkit and some accompanying videos and audio practices, I explain all of this. And if that's too much, it's all for free on TikTok. I've got a whole folder called healing skills that you can find me at TikTok trauma doc. I just wanna get these skills into people's hands. But Havening, you can do some guided imagery where you would imagine like your favorite vacation and bring yourself back to that beach. You could do a practice where you imagine, oh, I'm about to do some public speaking and I'm noticing there's a little bit of anxiety and, you know, my fists are clenched and my shoulders are up a bit. And I just, I want to imagine that the anxiety is a color and a texture and a temperature. And with every exhale, I'm going to release it from my body, and I'm going to notice the parts of my body that need to release it. So that awareness, that noticing, that shifting, you're bringing it into Consciousness. You're using metaphor. So metaphor and imagery is the language of our subconscious mind, and so few of us speak it. So part of my work with the modern trauma toolkit was to try to, like, give you that language so that you can speak to your body in these new ways. So that would be one example, but the book has like 40 different practices and all of them have the intention of giving you more agency or a sense of control over your own reactions because that subconscious process takes that feeling of control away. And then the opposite of trauma isn't being happy all the time. That's like not the human experience. It's more mental flexibility. So you have that control and you can choose the pathway. So if you're noticing, Yeah, I'm giving this speech and it's gonna be a huge audience, bigger than I'm used to. Like I gave my second TED Talk in June and that kind of a talk can really get the juices flowing. So part of it is deciding, well, what amount of stress is gonna give me, I mean, it's called the Yerkes-Dodson Curve, but a certain amount of stress actually makes you really, really productive and efficient and then too much of it is going to take you overboard into overwhelm. So much of it is getting to know yourself, getting to know your nervous system. So there's lots of practices in the book where you can gain that skill. Deb Dana, one of the polyvagal practitioners, she calls it befriending your nervous system. And I just love that terminology because this isn't us against the processes. This is us befriending it and working with it.

That's really powerful. Give it 2 seconds. My power disconnected here, I'm going to put a different plug in, I'm sure it'll reconnect. I'll edit this out so it'll be nice and smooth. I promise you. Awesome, there we go. So this idea of Havening is interesting, I've looked into it and there's a lot of practitioners right in my neighborhood, so I'm going to try it. I think it's fascinating. And the other thing that I've been Coming across a lot more is this poly vagus nerve. And so I understand it runs right through the body and we can stimulate it doing different things. Can you just for the person who's never heard of that, the polyvagal nerve, what is it and what impact does it have and how can we actually engage with it?

It's such a cool question. And literally, like chapter three of the Modern Trauma Toolkit is is dedicated to polyvagal theory because I never learned this in medical school. And even though the theory itself has like a little bit of holes in it, which he's, he's filling. So Stephen Porges is like the biologic researcher who came up with this theory, and he's definitely filling the holes that people have noticed clinically. This is the most useful theory that has helped me understand what's happening in front of me related to stress. So polyvagal means two vagus. And we have one vagus nerve that I learned was cranial nerve 10, and it runs from your brain stem up into your nerve and it up into your face. So it's the front vagus nerve or ventral vagal. I never use these words with my patients. I just say this is the nerve that helps you stay in a calm body. So Stephen calls this social engagement. state. It's when we can use cues like tone of voice and facial expression and decide if the human in front of us is co-regulating. So regulating their nervous system in harmony in a way that feels safe and attuned. So doctors and dentists and realtors and lawyers, we all need to get much better at this because this is when a person can stay in the safe nervous system state with you. And that's really, really important. And I think back to the years where I was in the hospital and my beeper was going off and I had 20 minutes to see each patient and I was so regularly in an activated state that I wasn't letting people co-regulate and that's not letting them heal. So that's a really important vagus nerve. The second one is the one that kicks into overwhelm if our fight and flight system has been active for too long. So our sympathetic nervous system is in charge of movement, and that's the one that's telling you, run away or fight the problem in front of you. And because we are mammals, like any dog or horse or deer or bear or any creature, we've been primed to operate in that way from stress. But We can't usually do it. So we get stuck in this tense and racing kind of state, but we can't stay there forever because we just don't have the energy for it. And then that tips us into the other Vegas response. And that's what we kind of colloquially, I don't think I could pronounce that word. And what we refer to as the tricky one. That I was like, just as I was about to leave my mouth, I'm like, I don't think I can say it. It's what we would refer to as freeze. But what it means is the system is shutting down. The system has been overwhelmed for so long that it's just saying, okay, this is too much. We're done. We're shutting down. And so a freeze state looks like a person who can't get off the bed and they can't get off their couch and they're doom scrolling social media and their list of things to do is piling up and the doctor is calling them noncompliant because they're not doing the thing they're supposed to do, but they actually can't. So one of, I think I said this is one of the first things that we talked about is starting with self-compassion is recognizing this isn't my fault. This is something that is a reflex response that got stuck. And your vagus nerve that runs from the brain stem down through the chest and abdomen is slowing your sympathetic system down so much that you actually can't move right now. So to get from freeze unstuck or to get from fight and flight unstuck looks really different. And so for people who understand polyvagal theory, the first thing that you learn when you're befriending your nervous system is, am I over activated or am I under activated? Because it's different ways to get out of each of those states. And most people don't even know they're in it.

And how do we know when we're over or under?

So some of it is physical symptoms. So when your sympathetic nervous system is on, a lot of what you're going to experience is a racing heart, sweating, your mind is so busy and you're overthinking and it's not letting you sleep. You can feel a lot of muscle tension because your muscles are constantly being activated because they think you're supposed to be running away from something. so of course there can be physical and even psychological explanations for that, but that would be like a signal to me as a doctor that I should probably check as to your stress response to see if that's what's driving it. The underactive is kind of like behaviorally how I described, like people who are just like frozen and stuck in a spot, but they might feel heavy and sluggish, they might feel dull, foggy mind. So when you're amygdalas or the part of your brain that is responsible for assessing if you're in danger or not, when they are overactive and they've decided that you have a constant threat, that a takes a lot of energy and B is just kind of stuck on. So it's, you have to imagine it's like this fire alarm that's always going off in your brain and saying, you are in so much danger. And so the underactive response is you just being like, well, if I stay in my bedroom, I can definitely avoid the danger. Unless, of course, it's coming from those internal signals, like pain and other symptoms that are being magnified. So It makes sense that these are protective strategies. Your body has been programmed to run away from or hide from the trigger. But it just doesn't really work in modern times because we're supposed to be these productive members of society and go to work and look after our kids and get to the grocery store. And when you're stuck in underactive, it's really hard to get those things done.

Mmm, that's powerful. I love how you've kind of shaped that for me, Christine. I guess I'm somewhat familiar with lots of it. I read the book and chat to Caroline, my partner about it a lot, but I know there'll be others. This will be brand new information. So I guess I'm gonna keep probing. And so if I'm over activated, what's a modality or a tool that I could use to regulate?

So we mentioned Havening. I really like somatic strategies to help the nervous system relax. One of the others that's gaining in lots of evidence is EFT. And there's two versions of EFT, so I'll qualify this one. It's emotional freedom techniques, which is kind of a vague name for tapping or self acupressure. This is now an evidence-based treatment of both PTSD, but also anxiety, cravings, all kinds of different psychological experiences. And it's based on traditional Chinese medicine. So I was describing from the beginning that there have been so many pathways to help us with the stress response that humans have known for thousands of years. And so one that I explored relates to self acupressure or traditional Chinese medicine. And another branch of that was Qigong. So there is Qigong is the healing branch of Tai Chi. So these kinds of practices have been around for thousands of years. And when I took a deep dive into Ayurvedic medicine and I became an Ayurvedic counselor, which is related to ancient Indians, 10,000 year old Vedic texts, because I was doing a lot of yoga, I wanted to know, like, well, where does this come from? So I started studying Ayurveda and one of the amazing things that I learned is that one of the concepts called the gunas or states of mind actually relates exactly to polyvagal theory. So the one that I called ventral vagal is your sattvic state or your state of calm. The sympathetic state is related to rajasic or a lot of frenetic movement. And the still state where you're stuck and frozen is a mental state called tamasic in Ayurvedic theory. So I just wanted to plug that because one of the other things I do in the book is say, like, We have always known this. So like polyvagal theory isn't new. It was mentioned 10,000 years ago in the Vedic texts. And so when we think about the different ways that our body can shift out of it, some of this is stuff we've always known. So does everybody know, or do we get taught in school how to do the EFT tapping sequence? No. And what a shame that is, is because this is something that was handed down for many, many generations. so a lot of my patients that I'll see in either the refugee clinic or the addiction clinic, I'll just say, like, there are so many body-based strategies that you can learn and just keep in your toolkit for when you're feeling stressed out and when you're overactive. Think of it like a giant volume dial in your head. And if your volume is set at an eight and you're like, I can't get anything done. It feels like my brain is on fire, like full of tumbleweeds. well, what if I could teach you how to do tapping and you could tap on that feeling of anxiety or even the, the physical symptoms that you're experiencing? You can tap on those, too. And what it does is you do a couple of rounds of the tapping sequence with a setup phrase, and you just turn the volume dial down and you get to decide where you turn it, because agency and a sense of control and flexibility is the solution. It's not getting it down to zero. It's getting it down to, like, okay, it's a three. I can handle that. I can get my day done now.

That's beautiful. Making it more manageable, bringing it and being primatic with it as well, rather than getting too stiff with protocols. What about when you're under active? Is there a specific tool that you would recommend be a good starting point?

So Stephen Porges and Deb Dana talk about an image that I like to use, and I've got some downloadable images in the book, but you'll see lots of really cool images that are, one of the things I'll also stress about the Modern Trauma Toolkit is, I worked really hard to make this not triggering because a lot of the books about trauma and stress on the market are either so academic that they just talk about things like it's no big deal and every one of my patients would get super triggered, or they use language that's just not easy to understand. So it was really important for me that there was like diversity and inclusion and a nurturing tone to the book. So even the images that I use, it's like, people that are just really soft and easy to relate to. So like I have some image of the vagus nerve and how it travels through the body and I have an image of the EFT sequence.

So.

From the underactive state, the polyvagal ladder says, and this is one of the other images that I've got in there, It's kind of like you're stuck in the mud and you kind of have to get your feet out of the mud to start climbing up the ladder. And it's all about movement. So really small amounts of movement is what activates your sympathetic nervous system, which is what gets you back up that ladder. So movement can look different for every person. And that's why I always talk about nurturing your own path. Because for some people, I'll say, hey, do you want to throw a kitchen dance party? I want you to make two playlists. one for when your brain is overactive and one for when your brain is underactive. And when it's underactive, you're just gonna start slow, something that's just gonna make you tap your foot or move your arm. And when you're overactive, I want you to release all of that stored energy, and I want you to dance like nobody's watching and. And just bounce around and really get that movement out so you can release all that muscle tension and all that stuff that's stuck in your muscles. so I'll tell people to make polyvagal playlists, an overactive and an underactive playlist to get your body moving. Underactive could also be like, do you have access to a dog that you could take for a walk? Because connecting to Nature, connecting to pets and animals, connecting to music, connecting to spirituality, that's another thing that kind of wakes us up back in our body. A lot of the somatic strategies that I use to help you take the volume dial down on the overactivity are movement based. So could you do some gentle Qigong? Could you do some gentle yoga stretches? Anything that is something you'd actually be excited to do and not feel like you're forced into it that involves movement is going to activate your sympathetic nervous system and help restore balance again.

That's powerful. And I mean, as you share it, the way you distill it, makes it so palatable. I can understand it. I can go, I can digest that and try that. And I mean, I work with people who are, you know, busy parents.

Yeah.

Who are working so hard at work and get home and it's chaos at home. And on the other side, I'm working with young athletes and professional athletes, and I feel like they're both, you know, performing. They're performers. And so for these athletes that are under pressure, the TV cameras are on them. I feel like these modalities that you're sharing, many of them, they could actually be using on the court.

Oh, for sure. And it's interesting that some of the evidence on these modalities is in high performance athletes. So polyvagal theory has been totally used with the athletes, but even techniques like tapping. So there are some practitioners and that is their area of focus. Even one of the other techniques that I use clinically is called brain spotting, which is The idea that at the time of trauma, the trauma was encoded in your brain. So your amygdalas always know what is the context when trauma happened. And so much of your triggers have to do with what your amygdala coded at the time. And so there's a lot of really cool modern trauma modalities like brain spotting that are emerging based on, it's called the orienting reflex or where was the position of your eyes, the position of your neck, the position of your face muscles at the time of trauma. So if you were a person who survived an earthquake like you and I were, like, it might have been the ground because you were trying to find a safe place to walk while the the earth wasn't stable. So for me, like, that would make sense that looking below the eye line might be associated with some of my trigger context. For folks who went through significant childhood trauma, it might be looking upwards because that would have been the person potentially creating some of your traumatic experience. So brain spotting is one of the things that I just found so wild to learn because you can help your brain process trauma naturally the way it was designed to by just finding the place in your visual field that was attached to that traumatic content. So can you DIY that? Not really, but you can use your gaze to relax your nervous system. So one of the activities in the modern trauma toolkit is something called pendulation. So that is Peter Levine and his somatic experiencing work, which is basically like, if you can pendulate between your sympathetic and your parasympathetic nervous system, you will help you achieve that balance. If you're a high performance athlete, you probably want to pendulate towards sympathetic and then really lock in that system of movement so you're at your highest performance. But imagine if you had that in your own control. so pendulation helps you get there. So I might teach like a gaze based therapy where, where you would decide where you're looking, whether it's close and far and where in your visual field that's going to help you activate. So there are so many really cool ways that once you understand the trauma responses, you can harness them. And even though they were always designed to be protective, You can design them to be like superpowers.

Absolutely. It's amazing that you totally shift the narrative on what trauma is and what we can actually do with it, as opposed to it kind of influence and shape us. It's really empowering. This idea of affirmations. So you have affirmations. Can you please share with the audience your affirmations?

Yeah, for sure. So, trauma work kind of happens in three phases. The first one is beneFring your nervous system. The second one for people who've been through significant trauma events usually needs you to see a professional, and that's where you actually process traumatic materials. By the time you have less activation in your amygdala is telling you're unsafe, your thinking brain comes back online. And that's where the cognitive versions of therapy come in again. So informations are part of the thinking brain strategies. to help you detach from traumatic content. So a lot of folks that I work with, they, the story that they tell themselves is that they're not good enough or that the world isn't safe. We're a combination of both, and that tends to be developmental trauma. But, I mean, for me, after surviving the earthquake, it was pretty easy to imagine that the world is not safe because things that I thought were stable kind of weren't for like what was like less than two minutes, but it felt like a lot longer when I think back on it. So it took me some time to get my thinking brain back on board and for the amygdalas to not be driving that train anymore. But once they were, then those cognitive or brain-based strategies become more available to you. So once you feel like your nervous system is calmed down enough, then you can start to work with, well, what can I do to get my thoughts to be less protective because all of those thoughts were protective, but we want to kind of shift them towards flexibility. So affirmations are one of my favorite tools. And like, it's actually the TikTok that blew up the most because everyone was like, what is this now? Affirmations are statements that you might make like, the world has my back. Good things happen to me. I have everything I need. and if you've been through trauma and you say those statements out loud, for some people, it can feel a lot like gaslighting because you're telling yourself something that you don't actually believe and you're kind of trying to manifest it, but you're like, there's no part of me that believes this right now. So an affirmation is tiptoeing towards the affirmation, and all you're doing is you're sticking a what if on the front of it. So what if the world had my back? what if I did have everything I need? And you're asking it with self-compassion and curiosity. So I always wear glasses because I'm like old enough now, and it's kind of my thing on TikTok. But I always say that I wear my glasses because the lenses are clarity and self-compassion. So if you were to look at your future and try to decide what you wanted to hope about, if you stuck what ifs in front of all of these stories that you've been telling yourself, Couldn't you feel different? So what if good things happen to me? That's a really different statement than the story you've been telling yourself about, well, only bad things happen to me. Or if you're trying to say an affirmation like, oh, good things, good things happen to me all the time when you don't really believe it. So affirmations are kind of like a, how can I tiptoe towards that? And I always say with folks that when we're working on thought-based strategies, you're planting seeds in your garden, and not all of them are going to take. But if your brain was a garden and it was kind of this jungle that you couldn't really see through, the lens of clarity helps you gain more insight to those subconscious things that your brain was kind of just doing automatically. And then the lens of self-compassion is like, well, if I've been locked into feeling like things are always going to be bad, What could it look like to explore alternate possibilities or the adjacent possible? And that mental flexibility is how I know that folks are getting really good into phase three of that trauma recovery. So you can plant affirmations all the time. If you notice that the story you've been telling yourself is locking you into something that's not hopeful, not related to your values and your goals and your dreams, for yourself and your family, plant an information. Just flip it around, add what if, and see what happens in your brain. See what grows.

You know what? I have to acknowledge you because you get these thought leaders, researchers, people, authors that say these are the rules for living a good life. And you got to do them. What you've done just so beautifully is you've set an invitation. you're like, hey, this is an invitation. I welcome you in. Here are some things that you can try and plant a few seeds and see if they work for you. I love it. It's not this hard, fast, kind of very, you know, Alpha kind of way of you must heal this way. It's a, hey, it's very nuanced. There are lots of tools. Here's the research to prove that they work. They may work for you. They may not. So I just want to acknowledge that that's an incredible way to approach your work. You're not kind of telling us that it's this way or no way.

Thank you. I, it's something I try really hard to do. And I mean, I went to med school, right? So, like, I was taught that there was always a right way of doing things, and I had to unlearn that a lot for myself in recovering from my own traumatic experiences, like both personal ones, which, I mean, we won't get into, but, like, like just being a doctor. Oh, my gosh, I had no idea how hard it was. And I was pushing all that stuff down for so long, but. I just hear stories of suffering all day, not all of which I can fix. That's really hard. I was ignoring my physical needs by not having to, like, feel like I had to sleep or, like, eat food. That was really hard. So there was a lot of things that I had been suppressing and pushing down for a long time, and I quickly recognized that there was no one right path. And one of the reasons why I studied all the things is because my thing isn't being the expert. My thing is sharing what I've learned. That is my sweet spot. We call it knowledge translation in academics, but my thing is knowledge translation. I can learn all the things like you could probably see. I've got literally hundreds of books in my room. I've studied dozens of modalities, and what I want to do is just learn how to share it in a way that's accessible and nurturing, and it's not telling you what you have to do, because if you have trauma responses and you can't do the thing, all I'm doing is adding to your sense of shame if you can't follow the path. If I tell you there's only one path.

I love it. And then you're masterful at it. And it looks like you are intentional about it, but it's actually just who you are. It's like, hey, this is the way I want to approach it. It's the way I want to be treated. And so you treat others the same. And I just want to say that there's a viewer or a listener right now. If you're still here right now, then clearly you care about yourself, care about others, get a copy of the book. Go into the show notes, Modern Trauma Toolkit, it's right there. You can go and get a copy for yourself. Read it, and I promise you after you read it, you'll want to buy multiple copies and give it to the humans that you genuinely care about, whether they're people you lead, whether they're people in your family, doesn't matter who your neighbors are. This book is something that all humans should have access to, and thankfully we do now by clicking that link, you can go and get it and share it. So please do. I'll also put all of your contacts in, Kristy, so that if anybody wants to follow, certainly TikTok, they need to be following you today. So I'll put all your socials in.

I'll be doing more on YouTube this year. I just haven't kind of gotten it going yet, but I, my plan is to do a lot of book reviews because I just, I read so many books, not just about trauma, but also systems. Like I just studied climate psychology, and that's another thing we don't talk a lot about, but I'm just, I'm like such a curious person. I'm constantly learning. And so my goal is to just share more of, because trauma isn't something that like, I mean, for most of us, it's not like one event that happened to you one time. There's so many different systems at play. And the reason that these things happen is because of a system that happened to, you know, an abuser or even a doctor. Like doctors cause lots of trauma. And of course we do it inadvertently. Nobody goes to med school thinking like, oh, I can't wait to cause medical trauma. But we do, we do it all the time. Like even when you're told you have gynecomastia and you're like, could we find out the root causes? And they say no, and you're like, what? Nobody's really listening to my needs here. So yeah, that was a bit long-winded. The other thing that I do is a lot of speaking and engagement through a company called Safer Spaces Training. And so this is me talking to corporations. We're going to be launching some tiny courses this year to talk about emotional regulation through tiny skills. but I really want to work at that system level because I love working in a one-on-one with my patients, but I really want to intervene with systems. So for people who want to engage at that level of whether it's workplace strategies, that's what Saver Spaces does. We're going to be soon launching some training courses for family doctors to start to learn a little bit more about what I do because I don't want to be the only person doing this. I am no guru. I just want to share what I've learned. So there's lots of ways to reach me to help me do that.

I'll make sure we put it all in there. And I love that humility. So, Christy, before we wrap up, I've got a couple of things. One, I want to ask you the fast five, and then I'm going to ask you the last question that I ask everyone. So a little quick fire round. So are you a morning person or a night owl?

Like, so definitively a night owl. It's actually scary. My circadian rhythm is not normal. Yeah, definitely an IDO.

I love it. One word you would use to describe yourself?

I want to say generous. It's like when somebody says something to me that really feels meaningful, it's generous. And whether that's me as a doctor or me as a human, I really want to share. I think what's harming the world the most is a sense of inequity and hoarding and greed. It's just not who I want to be. I want to decolonize my practice. I want to be really deliberate in sharing not just my financial resources, but resources. I have sent probably 600 books to different communities. My goal in writing the book wasn't, how can I get rich? It was, how can I share?

I can see that. I can feel that. It's amazing. I hope there's 600 books purchased right now from 600 listeners. That's to pay you back. What's your biggest fear?

I mean, it's pretty apocalyptic. I would say I'm a bit of a doomer. I think that we have dissociated so much from the reality of the climate emergency that we are stepping towards some pretty dire circumstances for humanity. One of the reasons that I want to do this is because the kids see it. So I joined TikTok because Gen Z is not okay. Gen Alpha is not okay. And they are recognizing that they're inheriting a really dangerous world. So I, I have some pretty large systemic fears for humans right now. And I just want to get real about that. It's why I study climate psychology is like, how can we talk about really scary stuff and stay in a calm body so that we can be solution focused? so that really matters right now.

More than anything. Yeah, I agree. And are you an introvert or an extrovert?

You know, it's funny. Before the pandemic, I was saved, said extrovert 100. But I'm now, like, because I study a lot, I'm like, so introvert is when you fill your cup by being alone. And if we can call my dog being alone, like, I really do fill my cup by having some alone time. I love to write. So I write poetry, I write fiction, I play a handpan. I should be doing more in pottery wheel, but there are things that I've learned that fill my cup and I just was not good at dedicating time to them. And that's where my parasympathetic system kicks in. So I am also on this learning journey, as I'm sure most of you are. What fills my cup?

I love that. Thank you for sharing that. And what might be your life motto?

It's funny, like I have a tagline on the book, which is like nurturing your path to post traumatic growth, but it's something around that, like I want for every individual and for us as a collective humanity to get to post traumatic growth. And it's not restoring the baseline of like where did we come from and get back to status quo. It's like how could we bounce better? So if we took all this like traumatic content that's happening to us as individuals and communities and families and the ecosystem that we're in, how could we bounce somewhere better? And that's my definition of post-traumatic growth. So I'm just going to be schmaltzy and use that tagline because I was really deliberate when I chose it.

That's beautiful. Thank you. And then very final question. So I want you to pretend for a moment that we're going to fast forward many years into the future, and you're highly aware that it's your very last day here on Earth. and someone very young comes into the room that you care deeply about. And they say, Christy, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What might you say to them?

So, I've got like a rational brain and an emotional brain response. My rational brain says, like, find your ikigai. Find the thing you're good at that the world needs that, you know, brings you joy and pays your bills. So, find your ikigai, I think would be my rational brain. But my emotional brain is like, the universe is probably going to send you signals. And so for me, after the earthquake, I'm so much more attuned to those signals. Like when I'm in flow and when I'm not in flow and doing the things that I'm kind of meant to do. So just really keep your ear to the ground on the signals because you're probably getting them and you just may have been socially conditioned to ignore them. I know that's a bit of a woo-woo thing, but I'm a bit of a woo-woo person now. I love it. CB: which I think is kind of fun. I see that event often. Like one of my clinical practices I do is medically assisted death. And I see a lot of people having really meaningful moments with their loved ones because they know this is my last day. What do I want to share? And it's like as much as there's a lot of global controversy about MAID, it's one of the most amazing things that I've seen families be able to do is to have that last moment. And even as you ask the question, it brought tears to my eyes. And one of the practices in the Modern Trauma Toolkit is like, what would a letter to your ancestor look like either in the future or in the past? And that is another way you can heal trauma.

That's beautiful. I love that. And I think there's a whole other episode we need to talk about and the work that you do in terms of the end of life. It's here in New Zealand, it's now an option as well. There's probably a long way to go with it, but it's certainly a starting point here in New Zealand. So I'd love to chat to you at length about that. And I just want to thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for your deep sense of curiosity and your desire to actually share what you learn with all of us in a way that's so reachable and so, as I say, like digestible. So, Christy, you're an amazing human and I wish you nothing but the best.

Thank you, James. You just filled my cup. That was an amazing interview. I really appreciate it.

Well, thank you. The Lead on Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co.nz. NZ. Thanks for tuning in to Lead on Purpose. If you find this episode valuable, please share it with one person that you think might benefit from it. And if you're serious about leveling up, please make sure you're subscribed to the show and continue to lead your life on purpose.