6 Ways Trauma Rewires Your Nervous System and Alters Your Biology

And I asked her, if you didn't need to hold your trauma down so well, what would you be able to do? As a very successful multi million dollar business owner, she says, I would become unstoppable. And we see the body expressing that all the time, even through things that aren't going to be diagnosed, but the body expresses it through sleep problems and GI problems and rashes and just aches and pains. This is how the body expresses. I'm in a state of overwhelm and you're not listening to me.

I love the idea of being able to self diagnose, take care of this for yourself. But we all know people who are clearly traumatized dealing with it, or they're showing physical symptoms like it's gotten bad. It all begins with saying, hey, look, I need some help, or I see.

Someone I can help just with the foundational journey. People getting off of their pain medications, people getting off of their steroids, their autoimmune conditions, their thyroid medications. And as a physician, I'm like, but that's impossible. But this truly is the power not only of the nervous system, but that each one of us can do for ourselves.

Hey, this is Mike Koenigs. Welcome to another exciting episode of Capability Amplifier. I have a very special treat today. This is Dr. Amy Apigian. Say hi.

Hi.

All right. What if there was a way to scientifically decrease depression and anxiety, increase a sense of safety, and reduce fatigue and sleep problems? According to trauma experts and groundbreaking research here in beautiful San Diego at UC San Diego, it's been said that trauma is the root cause of chronic fatigue, physical fibromyalgia, chronic pain, depression, IBS, autoimmune challenges, including rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, psoriasis, Hashimoto's, and dozens of other health challenges. That's why I brought in Dr. Amy Apigian, MD, double board certified in preventive and addiction medicine, with a master's in biochemistry, general surgery training and a master's of Public health, who's informed over 450,000 people on the biology of trauma, including 4,624 at last count, who participated in her trainings courses and worked on their own trauma healing journey. After a recent speech at Oxford University, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the author of New York Times bestseller the Body Keeps the Score, he acknowledged her as the future of trauma. She's been featured alongside leading trauma authorities and experts, including Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr. Stephen Porges and Dr. Bruce Lipton. Now, after developing a framework that addresses a missing link in medicine and trauma, Dr. Amy and her practitioners take clients and patients through a step by step system that produces shifts and changes that result in improved health, better relationships, a reduction in coping mechanisms and a better life. So first of all, thank you for being here and welcome.

Thank you, Mike. It's good to be here.

All right, so I think the place to begin, I always.

Love to begin just with some of the numbers. And then I'm going to ask you a little bit of your own story. But sometimes the statistics don't lie. So let's just talk a little bit about trauma by the numbers. But also.

You know, at the end of the day, your core science, all your work, all your research, it's a double board certified surgeon MD really come down to the same old thing, which is all about biology of trauma. And the first time you said that to me, I'm like, now that sounds super interesting. So let's get this party started.

Yeah. The numbers don't lie. And when you look at the numbers, it really paints a picture of how trauma is our current epidemic. And we don't see that because we're seeing other diagnoses. We're seeing a diagnosis of chronic fatigue, we're seeing diagnoses of autoimmunity, chronic pain. And so we have all of these siloed diagnoses without realizing that they all have a root cause. And that root cause is stored trauma in the body. And when we understand the role that the nervous system plays in really becoming the operating system for our whole health, then we see that all of these conditions are contributed greatly by stored trauma in the body. And so when you look at numbers, I mean every chronic disease then is going to be a result of this biology of trauma that's creating the health problems. Everything from the autoimmunity, for example. I mean, that's a multi billion dollar business. Chronic pain is even more than I think it's now like $600 billion industry because of how big of a problem it is in our medical system without us realizing that the real work really is with the nervous system.

Okay, so the nervous system, tell me what that means.

What that means is that most people think that they are stressed, most people think that their health symptoms are a result of stress. And yet what they don't realize is that they've actually been carrying trauma in their body. And these symptoms, conditions, diagnoses are a result of the trauma response in their body, not actually stress. And people will look back on their childhood or even on their life. Some of them see clear trauma, and yet many don't. And so they never make that connection. Of my current health symptom is a result of trauma in my body. Some of the very high functioning people, you would never think that, oh, they're carrying trauma in their body. And yet I would say differently because even a recent multimillionaire women business owner I met, and as I was talking to her about what I do, she says, I probably need your help, but I carry my trauma so well hidden. And I said, that sounds like a lot of energy that it takes to hide your trauma well. And I asked her, if you didn't need to hold your trauma down so well, what would you be able to do as a very successful multimillion dollar business owner? She says, I would become unstoppable. Another business owner that I met the other day, we were talking over dinner and he says, you know what the crazy thing is, is that I've had this sciatica back pain. He was in his 30s, he's 39, and he has always had what he thought was a good life. And then he came across a book that said that his back pain might be related to childhood insecurities. And he looks at me and says, but I didn't have trauma as a childhood, so how can that be? And I said, let me redefine trauma for you. Because what we have thought is stress has actually been a trauma response in the body. And so when we're working with the wrong diagnosis, thinking that it's chronic stress, when really it's trauma, then we're going to have the wrong solutions because it's the wrong diagnosis.

Okay, that makes a ton of sense. And I know.

You know, anyone who's dealing with pain or fatigue or anxiety, sleep disease, and that's ultimately how it manifests.

I can remember I. For a while, I came to the conclusion that when I had cancer, it was a disease of behavior and bad thinking and probably even some youthful trauma that just came and roosted. But I'm curious when you know the book the body keeps the score, Many, many people have heard of that before. And one of my good friends, Joe Polish, talks to Dr. Gabor Mate. And I have a good friend who worked with Dr. Bruce Lipton. Like all the big experts who have been working on this. I mean, ultimately, why did you choose to do this and how did it pick you?

Yeah, I was in that camp where I was headed through medical school and I was very focused on the science and the research. And I had no idea that I would be going into trauma work. But my initiation into trauma work and how I started to learn all of this started with learning about attachment trauma. Because I decided to become a foster parent right after completing my master's in biochemistry. And I had a few months where I wanted to do something very meaningful with my life before jumping back into third year of medical school at Loma Linda university. And so I became a foster parent in southern California. And just as I was going back into internal medicine rotation, I get a phone call from Rosa, the social worker, and she has a boy, and she wants to play some with me. And Miguel came into my life. He was four years old at the time, And I knew that because of his life experiences, that I was learning about more than anything else. He needed love. He needed to be loved. He needed a stable home. I could provide both of those for him. And so I knew that he was going to be able to rise above his past. And as I took him to the therapies, and over time, things were continuing to get worse with his behaviors, I realized I did not understand trauma, and I threw myself into learning about attachment. And from there, all that I was learning about started to become so much of how it affects our biology, and it becomes our programming for our life. At this time, I did not yet know the entire programming for our biology. I was more reading the experts as they were talking about the programming for our psychology. And what was so fascinating for me is that now that I'm a physician, now I'm in general surgery residency, I'm starting to hear all of this psychology in my patients. And I thought, no, this is impossible. How could it be that all of us really are walking around with programming in our psychology, yet not recognizing that we actually all have attachment trauma? But it wasn't really until I had my own health crash, and this was my body finally expressing its stored trauma, that I had to learn the biology aspects of trauma and how to undo those effects and change that programming once we even become an adult.

Okay, so got a bunch of directions we can go here. Why don't you explain the difference between trauma and stress?

Yes, and I'm so glad you asked that, because there are very distinct physiological states in our body. And so I define stress and trauma as. As by our physiology. And they are very different states of our body. We've been taught that there's a survival response of fight, flight, or freeze. And actually, those are very different states. They do very different things to our Biology. And so let me take you through the body's instinctual trauma response. And it always starts with a startle. And this is where our nervous system detects a potential danger. Whether it's something we see, we hear, we smell, we taste, it really doesn't matter. Our nervous system is always tuned into, am I safe or is there a danger? And as soon as it senses a potential danger, we feel our energy increase and we're like, what's that? And we lean in to gather all the information we can about what is this? And we have about 30 seconds in that startle response physiologically to determine is this a real threat or was that just my child jumping out from me, out at me from behind the couch and everything is fine and I can tickle them and go on with my day and be fine. And so in those 30 seconds, our nervous system is gathering information. If we gather information or if we pass that 32nd mark, our system actually goes into a higher energy state. If we were driving a car, this would be like the sports mode of the car where we are in the highest performance, we are burning through fuel like nothing else because it's such high energy. Our heart rate is at max, our blood pressure goes up, our breathing goes up. Everything changes in our biology to give us energy for a very specific purpose. And that one purpose of the stress response, I want people to hear this. The one purpose of the stress response is to take action.

There's a threat, we must act. And so even how our blood is moved through our body, it's move to our muscles, it's away from our digestive system, the adrenaline rushing through our blood. Everything in our biology in the stress response is set up to force us to take action. And it's because we have all of this energy that's being resourced and moved in order to help us do that. But the moment in which we sense that the problem is either too big for us or we're going to run out of gas, then the body has an innate design to shut off that high energy mode. And this is the trauma response. And it starts with this initial moment of what we call freeze, where it's like the body senses like, stop.

We don't think that we're big enough for this, or this may take more of our resources than what we have to give. And we gotta pivot our survival mode here. And rather than using up energy like we do in the stress response, in the trauma response, we now conserve energy. And so it literally feels like we shut down. And that's what many people describe as they go into that state. It feels like a collapse. It feels like somebody just pulled the batteries out of their backpack. It just is an immediate like collapse of my energy. And also you can see it in their posture. And now their thoughts change. And so the thoughts that one has in the stress response are, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do whatever it takes. How dare they. And it's a very action oriented thoughts. Whereas as soon as the body goes into the trauma response, a person will notice that their thoughts change to ones of, well, I can't do this. I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough. No one's here to help me. I'm all alone, I'm lost. These are all words and thoughts that are characteristic of the trauma response. And so the stress response and the trauma response are two completely different physiological states. And that's why with the trauma response, I've been able to say, you know what, why don't we just call the trauma response a state of overwhelm? Because as we look back at our life, we can recognize moments in which we felt overwhelmed. Overwhelmed where we actually had a low energy. And every time that we felt that degree of overwhelm, that was your body going into a trauma response, not a stress response. That was a trauma response.

Okay, so I got the clear the clarity here, which is stress moves us into action, and then where we often think we're stressed, it's actually trauma. But let's talk about what happens next, which is talk a little bit about misdiagnoses and improper protocols and how we can follow a sequence so, you know, feeling a sense of overwhelm, feeling a sense of stress, and not knowing that it's trauma seems to be part of the problem. So explain.

What you do next. Yeah.

So what happens is that the body stores these experiences of overwhelm, and when we don't know how to complete them, they stay in the body. And because they stay in the body, it changes our biology, it changes our immune system, it changes our GI system, it changes our hormones, it changes our neurotransmitters, it changes everything in our biology. Because now we're operating from the state of I better conserve energy rather than feeling safe and resourced. And I have everything that I need.

Okay, And I'm just gonna. I remember the first time we were talking and you really talked about the biology of trauma. I immediately had an intuitive hit. Yes, this is real. And I hadn't heard it described that way before. And what you just described right now was another one of those. Yep. It just makes sense that everything changes when you're under constant stress and trauma. And I've heard before that, you know, back in the days of Holocaust survivors, for example, their DNA, in fact, changed. There's, you know, medical proof of that, scientific proof of it now. So, again, this is an easy leap to take. I. I know I interrupted you, so keep on going. But again, I just want to, you know, say that one of the things about your work is it intuitively feels true besides the science.

Well, and we do have the science, and that's why we can't neglect the biology piece when someone goes to do trauma work. And yet the most common way to do trauma work is to go talk to a therapist or go do a psychedelic experience. And we're neglecting how trauma has actually become embedded on our DNA level. And when those changes happen, a very significant shift happens in the body. Where now the biology that the trauma initially caused is now the same biology that will keep someone stuck in a trauma response. And now they will become overwhelmed with seemingly small stresses. They get up and maybe they wake up already feeling overwhelmed by their day that hasn't even started. Now they get stressed out and overwhelmed if anything goes wrong in their day. And so it literally programs the body to go into that trauma response and overwhelm more frequently until they're oftentimes going into a trauma response in that state of overwhelm every single day of their life. And that even more promotes their biology and their health conditions and symptoms. And we see the body expressing that all the time, even through things that aren't going to be diagnosed. But the body expresses it through sleep problems and GI problems and rashes and just aches and pains. This is how the body expresses. I'm in a state of overwhelm, and you're not listening to me.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the body trauma loop then, because you use that diagram all the time when you diagnose someone, you bring them through the process. So explain what it is. And if our folks are watching this live, we'll have some diagrams and also some downloads available as well that people can grab. So just know that everything that we're covering right now is something we're going to give to you inside the show notes. So, yeah, explain the body trauma loop.

The body trauma loop was something that I learned as a result of my own health. And when I had to take a medical leave because my body crashed into chronic fatigue and autoimmunity and anxiety and depression. I started mapping out my energy levels and this is how I discovered this. And then I learned about polyvagal theory. And I was like, oh, this is what's happening to my body. And this is the body's trauma response, but how it becomes chronic. And so when we start with that startle, we have the stress response. And then the body, for whatever reason decides, yep, I don't have the resources for this level of danger. It feels life threatening, and I can't escape from, goes into that freeze and trauma response. And without completing it, we're now going to get into a body trauma loop where as we come out of a freeze or trauma response, the body literally goes back up into the stress response because that's the path in which it got into the trauma response. And because we go into that stress response and still don't have any more resources, we still don't have any better health, we still have just as much inflammation, we still have just as many problems, we still have just as little social support in our life, for example, nothing has changed. And so we land up in that stress response again and still have inadequate resources. And our body then just gets overwhelmed and goes back into the freeze and trauma response. And it literally loops back and forth. And so a person can be going through their day and feel stressed and then overwhelmed and then stressed again and overwhelmed. And it creates this loop without being able to change that. And that's really what creates a lot of the symptoms for a trauma related disease.

Okay, so we've put together a bunch of case studies and again, I promised this earlier, but I'm going to remember to do it right now. You can grab the diagrams and tools, some of the things we'll talk about at the end@traumahealingaccelerated.com free at any time time. So let's begin with Cat's story, because this is kind of a classic to me, a classic circumstance in a situation when you, you know, when I asked you for some good case studies to cover people who are representative, people either we know or they're us.

But let's talk about Cath. Cat with her alcoholic father.

So Kat had no idea that she was still carrying programming in her body as a result of her childhood. For her, her childhood was normal. She had an alcoholic father, but then so did many of her friends. And so she never even thought to wonder if it was still part of her life. But what she did notice was that she always had to stay busy. She was always handling a million things at the same time, she always was in a state of anxiety to the point where at one point she actually had a panic attack, her first panic attack. And that was when things changed for her. That was something new. And she knew that there was a problem. And as she started looking into, wait, what is going on with my body? She realized that she was holding her breath all the time, and she had this chronic tension in her shoulders that she was always shoulders high and then not breathing. And so as she started to come into what. What we call the work with the trauma, one of the first things that was really important for her was to realize that this breathing pattern was a result of her early childhood. And being a small girl, she would wake up at night as her father came back home drunk, and the fear that she had of, is everything going to be okay? Is my mother going to get hurt? Am I going to get hurt? It literally caused her to lay in bed and freezing. In that. Going into the freeze response, she's not moving, she's not taking action. She's just laying there paralyzed with fear. And with that comes this feeling that our breath gets stuck. And that pattern happened so many times that it just became a chronic freeze and trauma response in her body without her knowing it. But what we know is that that pattern continues to change our biology underneath the surface for decades, and then usually presents itself in our 20s or 30s. We know this from all the studies, from the adverse childhood experiences. And so we know that even though that happened long ago and she hadn't even thought about it, it didn't change the fact that it was already changing her biology. And what she noticed was that she had a lot of digestive issues and food issues, and she actually used food in order to help manage emotions and manage anxiety without even consciously aware of it. It was just something that she had learned unconsciously to get through her day. And so as she's coming through this process, what she had to learn was this freeze response. And this freeze response had created this breathing pattern in her. And she had started to do some breath work, but realized that that was not actually what was helping her body. It was actually needing to do somatic work, learn somatic work, which is learning to support our body and respond to our body's sensations. And when we do that, it naturally brings in our breath. And that's actually how we start to learn to understand our trauma response and complete these trauma responses. So for her, she's now been able to actually change her whole career as a result of what she's Learned about this trauma response in her own body. She's a nutritionist, she's been a chef. And now she really loves working with other women who have eating issues, whether eating disorder, anorexia, emotional eating patterns, all of that. Because she realizes the nervous system and the stored trauma behind those patterns and has effective tools to be able to walk them through a process that she's been through.

Okay, so this is a good time. Can we do one of the somatic exercises just so I'll experience it? Our audience can experience it too, and we can do this. Let's make sure everyone can do it with audio and video. Cool.

Yeah, I'd love to.

Let's do it.

All right, so I'm going to ask you if you have any tension in your body that you're noticing right now. Anything uncomfortable, anything tense?

Well, here's what I know. I know I don't notice it. So, like, last night I had, I got a great massage. In fact, two days ago I went in, I had a full acupuncture treatment.

And I started twitching and I didn't even feel how tight my muscles were that got released. And then last night I had a massage therapist come over, I got a two hour massage and my jaw was just like super.

Super tight. And then I had them start massaging up my head, like through my jaw, up around my skull. And, you know, parts of my body I didn't even know had pain in them were being released. So the answer is I know I have stuff I've been ignoring and we've been working all day and I've certainly been tense making sure, like, I want to make sure you get amazing results. And we do a great job with our interview today. So I know I've absorbed this. So that would be like, I don't even notice it other than I know I can feel my jaws tense and I'll feel it tonight. So let's start there.

Wonderful. Let's start there.

Okay.

And let me just put a kind of like a bookmark in that, because for many of us who had early life experiences of overwhelm, that was our survival pattern, was to cut ourselves off from our body. And so that can persist long into adulthood.

Oh, I. I know for a fact even though I've done a lot of work, I still do it. And, you know, it's like you put everything in little boxes. This is the story of every founder, entrepreneur. I know. It's just we put it all in little boxes, set aside and march through and don't check in. So yeah, let's do an exercise.

Let's do an exercise. Okay. So I think that given that information, the one that I will have you do is one where we're going to push forward with our arms. So I don't know if you want to move your position at all, so you'll be able to do that. But what I'm going to have you do is bring your hands as close to your shoulders as you can.

Okay.

And then we're going to slowly push all the way out. But before we do that, I want you to imagine that in front of you is this big boulder. I mean, it's a big boulder. It's taller than you. It's going to take all of your energy mic to push it away.

Okay.

All of your energy.

All right.

And that's why we have to go so slow, because it is so heavy that we can't push it any faster. So we're going to start pushing. And if you want to figure out how you can push this thing, put more energy into it. I don't know if you want to put your feet really firmly on the floor or push your back into the back of your chair, whatever you can do to put as much energy into pushing this boulder as you can.

Okay.

And your pace is great. Go as slow as you can. And we're going to go all the way out until our arms are fully extended. And so just also pace your. Your energy level, knowing that we've got to go all the way to full extension, but we also want to go as slow as possible for our muscle pillow patterns. And when we get to the end, when we do get to the end, you're going to just hold it there until.

Nice. I noticed a deep breath for you. And so you can slowly drop your arms and just rest them on your chair, on the table, whatever is comfortable for you.

All right.

And I'm just going to ask you to, like, what do you notice?

What do you notice in your body right now? Okay.

I would say the biggest thing is I definitely.

Just stopping long enough to check in.

I like for the day to day, I haven't paid attention to my body really the whole day, other than I maintained energy, engagement. But I stayed, you know, I was a good soldier. Right. And, you know, you and I were talking earlier.

You and I are both performers, so I wanted. It was important that I perform and create and deliver so I have my identity wrapped up into that. And again, I do that at the cost of my physicality. So this is the first time all day I fully checked in and I sat inside my body. And of course I'm paying attention. I'm like, wow, am I supposed to. Am I supposed to push hard here? Am I supposed to imagine the boulder am I supposed to be present with? You know, I was just checking in on as many levels as I can to just feel. So I don't know if I answered your question or not, but I would definitely. I slowed down enough to check in.

Just. That is a success that you slowed down. All right, so I just want to point out a few things here that it's so common for those of us who are high functioning to have had early life overwhelm. We're not going to call it trauma, because I know that there's a lot of charge around that word. So we're just going to say that that is evidence of early life experiences that overwhelmed us and programmed us to think that, one, I've got to analyze everything.

Two, I've got to understand it before I do it. And three, I have to perform at the cost of my body.

Yeah.

Whereas when we get to a place like Kat, who has learned how to work with and release a lot of that stored trauma, she understands and is able to perform with her body, not at the cost of her body. And so that, for me, is one of the biggest features of stored trauma is when someone tells me that they're disconnecting from their body in order to get work done, in order to push through. Because when we are. When we are working with a healthy, secure, safe nervous system, then it's a team effort, and I actually get more performance with my body, connecting with my body than having to disconnect from my body. I don't know if that makes any sense.

It totally does. It totally does. It's. It's. It really comes down to consciousness and integration and checking in. And.

Again, the tendency. I know my tendency is to just ignore it all and stay focused on the mission at all costs. I believe ultimately that's what contributed to my cancer.

I ignored. And I didn't even learn how to pay attention to the warning signs or I ignored it just because I was in a constant state of fear of running out, not having enough, some form of loss. Right, right.

And when you think of how many years that that programming, again, was not just running your psychology, it was running your biology.

Yeah.

Things start to make more sense. And your story is actually very similar to Mark. I don't know if you know of Mark. He's been in my audience now for over two years. And he has just been an incredible person.

Remind me which guy he is. I have to check in. Is he the preacher? The pastor? Yeah, Pastor. That's right. Okay.

Yes. Now, he did have a very unstable childhood. He has an a score of 10 for those who know what an ace score is, your adverse childhood experiences score. And as a result of that, he became very much interested in helping hurting children and did a lot of his missionary work with orphanages, building orphanages, and helping women who were in traumatized places. And he has traveled over the whole entire world. I think the number is like 38 different countries, doing all of this missionary work, really, in order to help traumatize people. And that's what he saw as trauma. However, what happened was that he experienced burnout with his work, and he did not understand why, because he was coming at it from a Christian theology view of my relationship with God is good, so why am I experiencing burnout? And then shortly after, he got diagnosed with cancer, and he went into all of the treatments, quickly realized that those modalities were not aligned with what he thought was the real problem. And so he started his search for trauma work. And through a colleague, he got introduced to my biology of trauma and came in. And what he says is that everything started to make sense. I talk about an equation where if we looked at all of our life experiences and how many times, how many years we lived in a state of overwhelm, it would make perfect sense to see what was on the other side of that equation, whether it be burnout, whether it be autoimmunity, whether it be cancer. It makes sense when we understand trauma and how it affects our biology.

That's great. I remember watching the testimonial with Mark. It's really, really powerful.

Yes. Okay, so let's talk about. You and I both know people with autoimmunity challenges, anything from rheumatoid arthritis. Good friend of mine has that. You have Laura, who is diagnosed with Ms. At 21. So talk about the relationship between with trauma and autoimmune.

There is a very strong connection between the trauma response and autoimmunity. And in fact, the earlier that a person experiences overwhelm and our body going into the trauma response, the higher risk we have of autoimmunity. Which explains why Laura actually got diagnosed at age 21, because that's a fairly young age.

It's really young. Yeah.

And when we look at her childhood, we see something very different. Kat had an alcoholic father. Mark's childhood was unstable. Laura's childhood was perfect. So how is it that she gets diagnosed with autoimmunity multiple sclerosis at the age of 21? If it's a trauma related disease, and this is where we really have not understood trauma and the physiology that then will change our biology. Now, Laura and I don't know all of the specifics and she likely doesn't either because this stuff is programmed in, in such early years that we're not even talking at that time. We don't have any conscious memory of it. But something happened where she has a pattern in her nervous system that's called global high intensity activation. All that people need to know is that it's a pattern in the nervous system where in your first three months of life you were experiencing overwhelm that required your nervous system to shut down through that trauma response in order to protect your physiology and stay alive physically. Babies who are born premature, for example, nearly all of them that I've seen have this specific pattern in their nervous system. Babies with birth trauma, the cord wrapped around their neck, they experience, I mean, a true trauma with birth.

I've known a few people who definitely that shows up and that pops up later on.

So here's the pattern of their nervous system is that I call it the sympathetic drive by, where when they have a startle, they go so fast through those steps of the trauma response that they are in that collapse and the shutdown and the low energy before they even realize what's happened. That was the pattern that Laura had and she lived all of her childhood and teenage years with that because we didn't know what to do. Right? Like we haven't been taught this stuff. We haven't been taught how to recognize it in our children, we or ourselves. And so we continue to live with this very all or nothing nervous system. All or nothing, the extremes. And that's then how her body started presenting. It actually did not start with that. She had already been having rashes for years and to the point where one day she wakes up and her left hand is all mangled. And she didn't even think anything about it because she had had so many, well, random symptoms over the years that she just thought it was another, well, random symptom that would go away. And it wasn't until it didn't go away that she realized, oh, this time it's different. And they went in and she got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Get more clients, grow your business with better marketing and messaging. Make more money and get a better life with more freedom of time, money, relationship and impact. Learn more about our three day One on One Done with youh Reinvention workshop and visit connecttomike.com to book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode. So talk about the six core attachment pains. It's something I saw in your information. What is it? What's the relationship and connection with trauma and the biology of trauma?

So what is so fascinating is that when we look at the biology for how this attachment in early life gets programmed into us, we see that there are distinct stages and needs that we have as children. Now, hold me is the very first attachment need that we have. And hold me refers to just that. Where my physiology as an infant, as a newborn is something that I can't manage by myself.

I don't know if many people realize this, but when they are born, they actually can't regulate their own heart rate. They can't regulate their blood pressure like we can as adults. And so if their heart rate starts to go too fast, maybe a dog barks, they get startled. Their physiology can become a runaway train that won't be stopped unless someone else, like their mother, like their primary caregiver, comes in and provides what we call CO regulation, where it's literally, I am going to save you from your runaway train inside your body. But if that doesn't happen, they would die unless their body shut itself down.

That shutting down is the trauma response.

And so that very initial stage that we have is this need for us to be held, not not to be loved. This is survival, like holding me is for my survival, for my own physiology. And so when we are not contained enough, when we are not held enough, that we have to rely on our own shut down emergency break in order to survive. Well, then we have the core attachment pain of hold Me. And this is one in which we will not necessarily even trust other people. But our nervous system will be on that extreme where we can't tolerate any stress. Every stress feels like it's too much for us and we shut down even as adults.

The next is actually based on our, what we call the attachment trust cycle. That happens all in the first year of life. And this is where we have a need. We cry and hopefully we get a response. Well, it depends on when that response comes. It depends on how loud we have to cry. It depends on how long we've had to wait for those responses. And so hear me is the next core attachment pain that we can have. And then we have support me where I need you to support me in my movement. I need to be Able to move and explore the world. But I can't have you abandon me like I need you to support me in that process. And so we can have that core attachment wound and then we can have one of understand me, where can I be my authentic self? Or do I have to be who you want me to be? And then we can have another core attachment pain of love me, where can I be myself and I still be wanted and I still loved and cherished, delighted in. These are all aspects that create different attachment core pains that we can have. And it's important to know that when we identify with one of those or several of them, then it's not just talking about it that will solve the problem. Because this has literally become the programming for our physical health. It has caused changes in our biology that keep us with those belief systems that keep us in that biology. And so we have to bring in the biology of changing attachment programming and even some of the movements that we would have done in that development as well. We get to evaluate even people's what we call a tummy crawl and all of this that we can actually gain information from their body that tells us so much about their attachment programming and gives us the tools to rewire it.

Okay, so here's the million dollar question then is.

Say someone's gone through your program.

Do you have step by step step diagnostic tools or a process to self identify what your core attachment pain is, Whether it's hold me, hear me, support me, see me, understand me, love me, and then there's an associated exercise or series of exercises to relieve that. So that's question number one. What's the answer to that one?

The answer to that one is yes. Each core attachment pain has a very specific somatic experience of it. And for someone who has that experience of I wasn't held enough, their needs and tools that they're going to use are different than someone who didn't maybe get the understanding or the love and support. And so each pain is associated with a specific time period and a specific need that, and I'm going to bring in a new word here, parts work as well, will be important because we have these younger parts of us and whatever attachment pain we have, well, that's a part of us. We have a part of us that needs to be held. We have a part of us that needs to be heard. And so we get to do somatic work, which is, you know, movement and exercises and listening to our body sensations and seeing how it needs us to respond to it. We have these parts Work, we're going to have biology work. Depending on a person's biology, some of them may have developed autoimmunity, and we're going to need to work with the immune system in order to change this programming. Others will have very common nutrient deficiency, like magnesium or zinc deficiency because of the chronic stress and trauma that's been part of their life. And then the movements. And so, yes, each attachment pain comes with its own, I want to say, assessment forms for how people would know, like, oh, this is me. Most of those are based off of their beliefs about themselves and their experiences in relationships and in life. We look for patterns, and that is something that I brought over from my medical training where diagnosing is all about pattern recognition. And same thing with attachment pains. And really a biology of trauma. We're still looking for patterns. And once we recognize the pattern, then we can step in with the tools that we have that are specific for that type of, in this case, attachment cord pain.

Okay, that was really awesome. So what I'm hearing is.

And this is really interesting about, in my experience, so many people who are in the healing world, you know, enter it because A, they had someone really close to them, or they're all messed up, they're looking for a solution and they're like, and I want to heal people too. Right. So I'm just curious what your reflection back on that. What has your experience been? Because you have trained a lot of people. You presented to over half a million people at this point, or close to a half million. Rather than talk a little bit about that pattern that you've seen. And then I want to talk about access to your work.

I mean, we all know the joke that, you know, psychologists or therapists go into the field to really work on themselves.

Yeah, fix themselves. Totally. So true.

And there's some truth to that. There is some truth to that. Because as. As we realize how much of our life is driven by our nervous system and our sense of trying to find meaning and trying to find healing, well, then we go to those places where we need healing ourselves. And this is a very common pattern and one that really excites me because as someone who, I mean, I've been through my own journey, and if I hadn't have been through my journey, I would be limited in being able to lead someone through their journey because I wouldn't know what it feels like. I wouldn't be able to know what they needed at different stages. But because I've been through that myself, I've been the one who was Lost as a physician, I was lost. And if that was me, I can lead other people who don't even have that training, that education, that background that I was benefit from and was still lost. So it allows me so many more skills and tools that I wouldn't have available if I hadn't been through my own journey. And that's what I see. So many of my practitioners and professionals in my courses having the same experience where they recognize that, ah, this is me too. I have not been spared. And really no one has been spared. When you consider our life today, trauma is part of life. And to be able to go on your own journey, go to those places that have been uncomfortable, be willing to do that and then be willing to do that for someone else, stand in the gap for someone else and say, I can't do the work for you, but I'm here to show you the way. I'm going to show you the path and then you take the steps. But I'm going to be with you as you take those steps for me. And I know for all of the practitioners that have been through my training, and I've had the privilege of asking this question, that is the most meaningful result of our own journey is feeling like there's been some meaning and value to our own hardship and our own pain.

Okay, so let's go through the trauma healing accelerated process because it for you, it begins with like a six week program when people enroll. But why don't you take us through the certification as well? Because again, I love the idea of being able to self diagnose, take care of this for yourself. But we all know people who are clearly traumatized dealing with it or they're showing physical symptoms like it's gotten bad. And it all begins with saying, hey, look, I need some help or I see someone I can help. I think the beautiful road of self discovery here is either you can fix someone else or you can fix someone. And you don't have to be an MD to go through your programs as well. You know, you work with lay people as well as a lot of professionals. So just go through, what's the process? How does this work?

I developed my process as a result of what I learned first in my surgery training and then in my work with addiction medicine patients. And the number one principle was stabilize first. You do not take a patient to surgery without stabilizing them first. I don't care how many places they're bleeding from, I don't care the urgency. They have to be stable or else they won't survive the surgery. And this is what I saw happening in many people who go to therapy where with the best of intentions, without creating the stability first, people go in and they actually trigger, retrigger, re traumatize themselves in the process. And next thing you know, their chronic health conditions are flaring up. They've got the back pain, they've got their inflammation from their autoimmune process. And this is how the body is speaking. To say that was too much for me. You didn't create the stability for me. You didn't create that container that I need in order to do this safely. The addiction medicine, patients detox is all about stabilizing. You have to stabilize them and then you keep them stable as you titrate them through withdrawals. If you don't, their withdrawals are so severe that some can die. That is the importance of stability. And that's why it has to be first. And so as I started working with people in their trauma healing process, I realized that I could throw all the medical and biology stuff at them that I could. But if the body was not stabilized first, the body wasn't receiving it. And even you think of the digestive system, you can throw all the supplements that you want at it, all the food at it, but the digestive system can still be in such a stress and trauma state that it's not absorbing anything. And so I had to learn that I needed to create stabilization first. And that is what I do in the six week process, where I start with a three week process of somatic exercises very similar to the one that I just led you through, that is.

Actually pushing big rocks.

Pushing big rocks. I call that the push away. It's one of the daily exercises in those first three weeks, 21 days. And then we do three weeks or 21 days of parts work, which really explores the internal conflicts that we have that will hold us back. And self sabotage.

I don't know if you've ever seen people self sabotage while they're. Yeah, exactly. So we just want to address that at the very beginning because otherwise it will happen. It's so predictable. What. When we try to start going into places that have felt too scary, if we're not stabilizing the system first, it's still going to feel too scary and the body will let us know. So with the first 21 days, what I'm doing is I'm really following very closely the principles of neuroscience. And it's very similar to the principles of how to rewire your brain for creating a New habit. And this new habit that I'm helping people form is connecting with their body.

And what we do is we do a short 10 minute exercise every day. Now why would I only do 10 minutes? Because we're not capable of doing anything more, right? Anything more than that. And most people are like, oh, I don't have the time for that. Or after the first three days, right? Usually that three days is all that a person can, you know, gain the energy to do. And then after that they're like, yeah, no, this is too hard, or this is too much energy. So I have to make it so easy that people can do it. But what we know from neuroscience is that a little bit, but every day it's the consistency that will change our neural patterns. And that's what we're needing to do here is actually change our neural patterns. For no, I am going to connect with my body. I'm not going to push through and ignore like I've always done in the past. And not only am I going to connect with my body, but now I have something to actually do. I can push a rock away. I'm not just sitting there and connecting with my body and then being like, but like, what do I do next? I'm feeling my body, it feels uncomfortable. And I have nothing to do with that. People need skills, they need tools, and that's what I give them in this process. Connect with your body, notice tension, notice something uncomfortable, and then do something about it. And those are the skills that I need them to learn. Now it's also important that we start to bring in community because trauma, by the definition of trauma, disconnects us from other people as well. We start to feel different. We start to feel like we don't belong. We start to feel like we're not wanted. There are all these aspects that trauma creates in our interpersonal relationships. And so one of the aspects that I've got to bring in is community. But yet how many people have gone to like a group therapy process and been even more traumatized? Right? We hear other people starting like, yeah, no, I didn't come here for that. So I've got to create a safe community. And that's what we do. So the 10 minutes that a person does is on their own time. They watch a video on their own time in their pajamas. I don't care when they do it. But it's something that's easy, that they can do. But then we also meet every single day for 30 minutes and as a group and we do the same exercise As a group, we do not share our trauma stories with each other. We come together to just do an exercise. And by sharing that experience with other people, we start to have what's called this CO regulation. All of a sudden we start to realize I'm not as different from other people and I actually like coming together with a group of people and not feeling so isolated. We have very clear agreements. We have five agreements. I have taken those from my work in the 12 step meetings. And we use those agreements to create a safe community where we get together and we share present moment experiences of just like what I asked you after you do a push away, what do you notice now in your body? And that's what we're starting to share with each other. The very important aspect that they're also developing in through that is the ability to share from present moment. Most of us live either in the past and the fears of the past, the overwhelm of the past, the stories of the past that we repeat to ourselves, or we live in the anxieties of the future. And so just being able to have that practice, and this is what it is, it's a practice, we are building muscles. We're practicing sharing and being in the present moment with our body and with someone else. And the result is that it doesn't actually just start to change their health, though it does, it also starts to change their relationships. And I will never forget John. John is your typical male and he's in his 60s and he's rough, he's burly, and yet he's doing this trauma course. Never really said a word until one day when I invited open shares at the end of a class and John got on and he tried to stay tough, but he broke down as he shared. I have not had contact with my daughter for nine years. And as a result of the work that I'm doing here.

I met her the other night, we had dinner and it was a great experience. I was actually able to stay in the present moment with her, not go into all of our past and the stories, not go into what might happen later, but just be with her. And it was one of the best experiences I've had. And by now he's bawling and everybody else is bawling to see the impact that this has had not only on him now. But think of the daughter and the impact that this has had on her life. To have her father reach out to her after nine years, take her out for dinner and rekindle a relationship.

It's really amazing. And I had the good fortune I actually got to see a video of him. And, you know, you can't keep a dry eye when you watch this guy. It's. It's really, really beautiful. And so.

Again, now that I've had the chance to get exposed to the work and see, you know, in preparing for this interview, I've gotten to pour over a ton of your testimonials and read and see what people say and what their experiences are.

It's mind blowing. And I think, like myself and anyone who's listening to or watching this, we have people in our lives right now who are dealing with enormous amounts of trauma, and it's showing up and manifesting even in just, you know, just flat out straight obesity. There's always a reason why, right?

I think everyone can benefit from this. And some of it just has to do with just, well, you just said the thing, which is stabilize.

So there's a whole bunch of tools that we have. And why don't you talk a little bit more about the program? Because he described the process, but there's also a ladder that you go through when you go through the full certification. So just to give people a taste of what that looks like. What's that experience?

Yeah. So coming out of the foundational journey, coming out of stabilizing their system, having their system now be what I call safe for surgery, now we. Now we can really open up and change some of these deeply embedded patterns in our nervous system that would not be accessible if the system were not stabilized first. And where we have to start is the freeze and the trauma response. And most people think that they have to start with the anxiety, that they have to start with the stress, and that's where they go wrong. Because what is fueling that? If we go back to the body trauma loop, what's fueling that stress is this trauma response that never got resolved and so is stayed stored in our nervous system. And so until we can work with that and take that out of the equation, it's going to continue to trigger that body trauma loop. And so even for those people who say, you know, I don't really feel like I'm in that overwhelmed place all the time, I feel like I'm mostly in the anxiety and the stress and the high energy. The trauma response is still where we have to start, because as long as that is there, that is feeding everything on top, it really is working the most upstream to affect everything downstream. And so that's where we have to start. And we literally reverse engineer the process of how trauma got stored in the body. And so when we work with that freeze and trauma response, people start. Well, I mean, they start feeling, but what starts to happen is their body becomes more alive. When that happens, grief starts to surface. Now, this can be grief that they have stuffed down. This can be grief that they have suppressed, repressed. This can also be grief over realizing how much of their own life they have been not fully present for. This is where they realize the gap between what they could have done and what they have done. And that causes a lot of grief. So the next step is for us to work with that grief. If we don't, that grief will keep them in that place of overwhelm and that place of, well, I really even shouldn't try.

Yeah.

And so we've got to work with the grief. Now. Grief shows so much in our lungs, our diaphragm, but really the gut. And our gut holds so much emotion. But with grief, there is so much of the diaphragm that would naturally bring in our breath that gets stopped. And when you think of a period of your life when you experienced a severe loss and grief of that, you do you feel your breath kind of just stop. And yet that breath is actually so important for bringing health into our whole digestive system through the changes in pressure and flow and all of all of the movements that come with that. So we have to look at all the areas, the biology of our gut that will keep us stuck in. In grief. Not many people realize that we really do need to talk about your diet. We really do need to talk about gut inflammation and leaky gut and those things that tear up your gut that actually is going to keep you stuck in grief and thus a freeze and trauma response. If we don't address that as well, then there is one more piece that will keep us stuck in this freeze and trauma response. And it goes back to the attachment, because that attachment was so early in our life that it is our programming. When you think of overwhelm that we would have experienced while our nervous system was developing, as opposed to overwhelm that would have happened after our nervous system was developed, those are two very different experiences. Our nervous system during our early years, its whole job is to adapt to this thing called life. And so every life experience is so influential in informing our nervous system. This is the life that you were born into. So this is the life that you must adapt to for your best survival. Whereas if someone experienced a very stable, secure early life, their nervous system adapted to that security and that stability and Then a trauma happens to them later on, Their nervous system is much more equipped to handle it, to process it, to bounce back. It may not even be a trauma for that person because of the state of their nervous system. And so the attachment then will be what keeps us programmed to go into the freeze and trauma response. So that's what we get to look at next as part of this sequential process.

As we then work with that. Now we've really changed all of those patterns, the biology that will keep us stuck in a trauma response. And as the body comes out of the trauma response, if we remember back to that trauma, the steps of the trauma, the body's trauma response, the stress was the step right before the trauma response. Most people think that they can process their trauma and come into this state of what we call parasympathetic and calm and relaxed and happy. And that's not true. So what happens is that as the body comes out of a trauma response, even a chronic trauma response, it will go back just the same way that it went in, which is it has to go through that stress response. Most people are not prepared for that. So when they start experiencing more anxiety, when they start experiencing more anger, more of this high energy and activation, they think that they've done something wrong. And I'm telling them, no, like, this is something to celebrate. You are on your way back home to yourself. This is the path back home. But we also have to learn how to work with the stress response. And if we don't complete a stress response, our body will go back into the trauma response. And so now we're learning how to complete our stress responses and actually use that energy to move us forward in our life, to accomplish our purpose in life, so that we're using it in the right way, rather than having it take us right back to where we have worked so hard to come out of, which is that chronic trauma response. And finally, we have to look at, well, what will be those things that are contributing to baseline stress. We need to be removing unnecessary stressors in our life so that when the real stress comes, we're resourced, we're ready, and we can generate a great stress response and not be overwhelmed by it. And now we've got to look at all those things that we're holding on to, whether it be toxic relationships or toxic chemicals. They're all the same to the body. And those toxins will create a constant baseline stress that makes us then more susceptible to becoming overwhelmed, because it drains our energy, it drains our available resources. We don't have as much gas in the tank starting off. And so we reach overwhelm sooner the very last step then after we've gone through all of that. And this is where people have, I mean, people have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on therapy over the years or medical treatments over the years. By the time people come to me, some of them have been in therapy for 30 years and they're realizing that what they're learning here is giving them insights and giving them tools that they haven't had, they haven't gained for those 30 years and allows them to make this shift. And the next important shift for them to make and for everyone to make at this point in their journey is to stop focusing on the healing. If we stay focused on, well, I've got to heal, I've got to heal, we're going to stay stuck. And actually what we need to start doing at this point is shift our focus to living.

This is the trauma healing journey. This is really where the possibilities open up. And now the question comes, well, how far do you want to go? Not where's the end. Now it's an open road and it's just how far do you want to run? Because you can go as far as you want when now we have stopped focusing on healing and we're focusing on living our life. And through the living, we find what needs to be healed, but we don't go looking for what needs to be healed. We find that through the living.

Okay, so I took a ton of notes while you're going through that. So it's stabilize freeze response, grief and gut health, attachment neurodevelopment, stress response, letting go and detox. And the last one is shifting the focus to living. And I would assume, you know, it's, even if you get to the end, you're not done, you're gonna be redoing this because there's, you're gonna uncover probably the next thing and the next thing.

And that's what many people do. And so whether they are self help seekers or many of my practitioners, they are taking the courses, these journeys that I've broken up into six week journeys multiple times. Because you're right, each time they just go deeper with the information. Each time they hear something new that they didn't hear the first time. And I kind of liken it to a spiral staircase where same topics, but we're just on different levels as we revisit that same topic now in a different phase of their life or with different information now with different experiences since they last took it. And it's created such an amazing growth and expansion in their own life that I get really excited when I see and hear them sharing the expansion that they've had in their life and their health.

Yeah, well, I've. I've had the good fortune again of watching and listening to and studying. A lot of the people have gone through the program. So I think at this point we've got some. Here are some of the goodies that I know of that are available at trauma healing accelerated.com free. So you've got the Biology of Trauma Masterclass, Steps to Identify and Heal Trauma, the Attachment Trauma Roadmap, and of course, a transcript of this podcast as well.

Is there anything else people need to know other than the fact that you are leading classes that start on a regular basis? You have these going on.

And you've got the entire certification, but you're also doing the foundational work? What else do people need to know about getting involved and enrolling the programs?

I mean, I think that the most important things for them to know is first that it is possible. Whatever it is that they are challenged with in their life, there is always some component of trauma that is behind that challenge. And so it is possible and they can do it. I really want to come, come back to highlight what you said was there's so much that they can learn to do for themselves. I don't want them to become dependent on even me. I want them to become the experts in their own nervous system. I want them to become the experts of knowing, oh, my body is doing this. Oh, I'm having this symptom. Oh, this rash appeared. I know what that means, and I know what to do with it. And there is so much that they can learn to do for themselves, and this is how they do that. And I want to really highlight the importance of not just knowing the information, but of actually having this become an experience. Because information will never change us. The brain loves information. And those of us who like to stay out of our bodies because our bodies have become filled with trauma, we love to understand and analyze, but then when it actually comes to the experience, we're like, ah, I'll watch. I'll watch someone else do it. Maybe it feels too scary. Maybe it feels. I don't know, whatever. Whatever the reason is, it can show up. But at the end of the day, only experiences change our nervous system, and our nervous system can't change. It's called neuroplasticity. And more important than neuroplasticity even is this ability to Change our state in the moment. And an example would be a somatic exercise within two minutes, being able to go from a state of I feel like I'm losing control to no, right here, right now, I am safe. And when we can change our state that quickly, that's what's going to give us the tools to really change our health symptoms as quickly as possible and to be able to have these courses available online. They can do a lot of this work on their own time. I strongly encourage as many of the group classes as possible. But even for those who haven't been able to attend every group class, they've still had amazing changes because they're learning how to connect with their body, how to listen to their body, and most importantly, what to do. They have something to do.

Yep. No, that's terrific. Well, I think the, the best place where to take this right now is what I'll say to you when you're, if you're listening or watching is if you yourself or you know someone who could benefit from this work, who's going through some sort of health challenge. Clearly a stress or traumatic challenge. Definitely check this out. Go grab some of the additional goodies@trauma healingaccelerated.com there you can learn more about Dr. Amy her work. Also see some of the testimonials of people going through the program. They're really touching and very, very emotional. Because what I saw personally was these are people who.

Some of them said and knew they needed help. Some of them wanted to go and do the work, but everyone benefited from doing the work and being able to turn this into something that they could extend. And many of them have turned it into a business as well. Or if they're already therapists, body workers. I've seen people who do yoga, all sorts of work. This becomes an additional tool in their toolbox that they've been able to use to create massive changes both in their lives and people they care about. So with that, any last words before we wrap this episode up?

I just love to share hope, right? And so as I think of the hope, I think of, again, all the stories of what people have told me that I've even been surprised at as a physician, I would be like, no, that's impossible, right? Like, just with the foundational journey, people getting off of their pain medications, people getting off of their steroids, their autoimmune conditions, their thyroid medications. And as a physician, I'm like, but that's impossible. But this truly is the power not only of the nervous system, but that each one of us can do for ourselves.

Yep, I agree. Fantastic work. Well, with that, this is another episode of Capability Amplifier. Hope you enjoyed watching. Make sure that you share this episode with someone you care about, someone who could benefit from this work. And of course, we always appreciate your ratings and reviews as well. So with that, let's say goodbye. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in the next episode. Bye. Bye.