Mental Health May: Somatic Therapy

wait until you're feeling a little bit better. And here's our episode. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of NERD Difficent. I am one half of your host if you wad way, and sitting across from me digitally is Danny Fernandez. And I'm so excited for this month, IFFI, I'm so excited that we're doing this. We this is our first episode of men Total Health. May. I think it's always relevant, but incredibly relevant right now. Yeah, I think now more than ever it's a good time to

have that discussion. You know, you can see a lot of folks I don't know, it's just being alone with your thoughts for all all this time. You know, it has different effects on everyone. And I think it's also good to talk about mental health so people know it's okay to seek help and to talk about it and it's not something that a little sleep or what have you as gonna deal with. Yeah, and also, you know, because this is a nerd based podcast, there's so much,

so much cool science behind treatment. UM. I've been pretty vocal about the different treatments with trauma depression that I've done, and I just find them so fascinating and I'm constantly learning about new ones UM. And today we have a wonderful guest to talk to us about healing as well a somatic therapy, and that is Karen or Lickman. She's a therapist and spiritual director in San Francisco. Hey, everybody, Hey, thank you so much for joining us. Karen. Oh, it's

my pleasure. It's my honor and my pleasure. So I think, first off, the first question we'd love to talk about is like what you do and what your expertise is, just for the listeners to get to know you. Sure, I thought you were going to ask me what I was nerding out too. Oh my gosh, now we should do that. She listened to our wonder Woman episode and thank you so much. You are a thousand percent correct.

We always start with what we're seeking out about. I think we were just excited to but no, yes, what are you seeking out about? Let's talk about that. Okay, So two things. One is um cooking. I'm totally geeking out on cooking and um, that's been really awesome. Actually, so last night I made a spicy roasted colleigue hour with feta, and UM, so good. It's gonna I'll be my lunch when we're finished today. And then the other thing I'm geeking out too is um these videos that

are called high Kids. This is like a great uh stress coping strategy. They are these little five minute videos of kids, um trying weird food, or kids meeting people who have unusual professions or who like a farmer, gang member, a farmer, really homeless person. And kids are so awesome because they just say whatever. They don't censor the way adults do, and it is hilarious. So, UM, I love the high Kids. Oh I'm definitely going to check that out because yeah, it's you know, just watching the way

kids taken information, watching like Naomi grow up. There's this like both like pureness, but this unfiltered where it's like I'm gonna just say it because I don't know, like I'm not you know, thinking about whether or not it hurt your feelings. But I'm just I want you to know. But one thing that she's doing that I'm really uh into, she like is giving us like status updates all the time, like she's like I'm happy or um or like I remember one time I thought, I was like, oh, you

watched too much TV. You're gonna read books, and then she was like, I'm sad because I want TV. You're gonna have to be sad right now. I'm sorry. But yeah, I'm also on the cooking train. I've been uh, I've you know, I feel like I've been so in my instant pot especially the my my selling point that I've been telling all my friends is jasmine rice in four minutes like that that is that is enough to get so so I have like a bag of rice ready because that was the thing is I was always the

only reason I didn't. I would always do like beans or lentils. Uh. And I'm talking about straight out the can just because those were quicker because rice is such a long process and now that I can get it out in like four minutes. And um, you know we I've watched this movie, the Better Half, Alice Woo's second film, and there's this sausage maker character in there, like his family makes sausages. So I bought like a bunch of broad worst and I've been cooking like lots of sausage.

Uh so yeah, I'm I'm I'm also on the cooking train. But in the iffy physical media saga, the latest films I got was I got John Wick three on Blu Ray and uh and Big Lebowski because I always have to a copy of The Big Lebowski. Maybe I feel like you could just like wait and watch it on f X like literally any day. Oh, I have The Big Lebowski on DVD, but I wanted to own it in four K. And yeah, that's it's my favorite movie.

You needed to see the pores up close? Yeah? Um for me, the thing that I'm king out about is the Mandalorian documentary The Behind the Scenes on Disney Plus It's Disney Gallery Star Wars the Mandalorian. I loved how they had a round table of the directors. Um and honestly, also I mean Deborah Chow, which is just seeing like Jon Favreaux, like just you know, gush over her uh and the action sequences, um, watching Tyka be Tyka and silly behind the scenes. And then Bryce Dallas Howard, who

I still to this day. Her episode of Black Mirror is some of the best, like her best acting I think ever. UM and I just love I don't know. I love all the risks that they're taking with having different directors. I love seeing the behind the scenes. And I'm really excited for the next UH season, which I'm sure is going to have baby. He better still be a baby. I'm not ready for him to be old man Yoda anytime soon. I think it will literally take

like seven hundred years because he's only five. Now. Well, there was the picture that just went out the other day of UH, which was one of the horror directors. Uh is it? Now? That's not Ramaro? What's what are the who did Grindhouse? Oh? Um? The other the one opposite of Quentin Tarantino who owns l Ray Oh? That's um? Uh Robert Rodriguez, Yes, let me see, I think it might have been him. Um, maybe not, Yeah, Robert Rodriguez. Yeah, yeah, no, no,

I mean made him. He eighteen hours ago posted a picture right next to baby Yoda and said, I'm truly humbled to say I have now had the rare privilege of directing the biggest star in the universe. So Robert Rodriguez directed an episode in the next season which I'm so curious to see what that, you know, just knowing his work, like, is it going to be a heavy act and pulpic I would love that so much? But yeah, so and in the pictures, Sorry, the reason I brought

it up. In the picture it's still a baby. Yeah, there you go. So still going to cash in on that. Um well um kicking off our mental health may super excited again about this episode. But Karen, I just kind of wanted to get into why you chose this field. I feel it's such a it's such a giving like to be someone that that people can turn to, uh to help heal. It's uh, I think at times can be very blessed and thankful but also thankless, I think at times. And so I just wanted to know what

specifically made you go into this field. Well, I am I'm a licensed clinical social worker, so like my training and my education is as a social worker. And I never thought I was going to become a therapist. I was like an activist and a community organizer and you know, I wanted to like run ship and make change. And I do come from a family of people who are

of service, like teachers and therapists. And my mom was a big activist and like you know, took us to demonstrations when I was a kid, and so I was really raised with this strong value of being compassionate and

taking action. And but the first like ten years of my work life, I actually worked a lot with homeless pregnant drug addicts and UM was just like a basic kind of on the ground social worker in a health care setting and certainly brought like took a lot of classes about how to do therapy and what therapy is. But UM, I've always had this philosophy of you know, how do I be with people where they are? Um, there are some people who are just like never going

to go to therapy. It's not their thing. They've shame, there's a stigma against it, whatever are the reasons. And so working in that hospital setting, even though I wasn't doing therapy, but I was able to be there as

a resource and as an advocate and a support. And I still there are still a couple of UM women that I met at the hospital, like thirty years ago who still periodically will call me and say like, oh, my kids graduated from college, or like I've been sober for twenty five years, or just like it's so amazing.

So I eventually got totally burned out on working in the health care system and decided, like one of the reasons I also became a social worker was because there's just so many different things you can do UM, and I also care about the larger context, like it's not just about what your toilet training is like, but it's also about gender and race and class and um you know, global trauma and like what we're all dealing with right now in some ways in terms of a global pandemic

is a global trauma in a certain way. So UM I thought, well, I'm gonna try private practice and see how it is, and turned out I really loved it. And UM I started out and was certainly trained in some way in what might be considered traditional talk therapy, but I because I always worked with people who had experienced trauma, so like, for example, my second year of graduate school, I had an internship working in a rape crisis center, so I worked with women who had been

either sexually assaulted as adults or as children. And um, I was amazed at like how the brain and the body works to keep people safe and alive, Like we are biological organisms at our core. And I remember I was um co leading a group. I had a supervisor at the time who specialized in something that used to be called multiple personality disorder, which is actually quite rare

and we don't call it that anymore. But and um, I was leading a group, co leading a group with my supervisor, and this the woman would literally like come in and switch personalities, which was very disconcerting to the other people in the group. And so my supervisor just said to her one time, We're just going to ask you to bring I'm going to make up a name Amy to the group and leave everybody at else at home.

Would that be okay? And she was like okay. I was like, wow, that is so magic, Like it was so it was amazing to me. And I remember thinking how cool it is that our brains have this way of protecting us by you know, what we call dissociation right where you like, something's happening to you, but you're separate from yourself because the pain would be too unbearable.

And so if we have the capacity to disc see it that way, to disconnect from ourselves, we must have the capacity to reconnect, Like if it can go one way, it can go the other way. But you know, I was still young and I was learning, and I wasn't sure exactly how that worked. And eventually, over time I UM wanted to have I had some instinct about really like helping people to work somatically, but I felt like I needed ethically and professionally to have more training, like

I need to know what I'm doing. This has to

be legitimate. I'm a licensed professional. And so I took a couple of workshops and classes and eventually found a modality called sensory motor psychotherapy that UM gave me much more training and vocabulary and tools and working with trauma and UM and it since has shaped I still do talk therapy with a lot of people, like there are some even subgroups of of semantic therapy like UM neurofeedback and brain spotting and something called e M d R, and there are some other things like that um, and

I think different therapists gravitate toward different modalities just depending on their personality and their skill set. But what I like about the semantic work is that it actually empowers people to be in charge of their healing. It gives you actually ultimately more of a sense of control, even though it can feel like less control, and ultimately that sense of empowerment, like your story does not run you.

You know, your trauma does not run you. You are actually the person in charge of your own life, and here are some ways you can do it. That just makes sense to me. Yeah, that's super uh, super dope and interesting. And really, because I was in Danny Knows This, I went down like a wormhole of Uh, there's a lot of not a lot. There's a few, like prominent YouTube folks who have disassociative disorder d I d UM and them kind of explaining how it is. And that's

kind of what you were saying. That's one thing I learned because they're saying that, uh, most times their new quote unquote personalities come from a trauma and then and they like, there are some personalities that are built to take in trauma, and then there are some to escape it and and when you hear it, it makes so much sense of like, oh, this is all just defense, your body protecting you, where you're protecting you, where you're like, okay, we're gonna And a lot of times the person who's

there to take in the trauma is uh an archetype that is like strong who you know that person may see as like someone who can like take that type of stuff, and it's it's it just shows you the power of the mind and why you know, and I think Danny is the number one person, but we all believe here, like you talked to a therapist, even if you think you don't have to, even if you feel like, oh I have nothing, just sitting down and talk, you'll

be surprised. And that's how you know a lot of friends, you know, we'll be in talking and they'll be like, oh, I don't think I need I was like, well, I feel like, look you got the insurance, you know, because my friend group we're all writers, so you know they have that great insurance. Because the w g A was like writers, y'all need therapy. But uh, but like I'm I like so many of them, I've just been like, just go you know, you get it for free anyway, you get it for free or cheap, just you know,

go see what happens. And a lot of them have been like, WHOA, I'm glad I did that. I was gonna say, I wanted to get into UM kind of for people that don't know what Semitic therapy is, I know that it was created by Peter Levine in the nineteen sixties. I was watching videos about it that essentially studying animals and wild and what they do with survival energy, which you were kind of touching on, UM, But can you explain it a little bit more for people that

aren't familiar with it. Absolutely, UM. Peter Levine is one of a handful of people who have pioneered this field of somatic therapy. And I think that like the general population has heard the expression fight or flight, but actually there are there are more than two, UM different responses we have Like we are animals ultimately, and there are these biological responses that we have to something that's perceived

as a threat. And UM. One of my favorite things at ways to UM illustrate this is if you look up something called feigned death f E I G N E D. Have you seen this, I see, Dan, have you heard of this real? So much so, like if an animal is being stalked by a predator, like a gazelle is being stalked by a lion or a cheetah or something like that, one of the they have all these right, they don't want to be lunch. They want

to survive. So one of the responses that they used to stay alive is that they pretend to be dead. And when you see them on the video, literally they look you can't detect any breathing whatsoever. They're dead. The predator might even pick them up in their mouth, and then they eventually because of the feigned death condition, the predator will leave and you see the animal get up, shake itself off, and just keep going. Like I could

not make this up. It's really remarkable. And so I've heard stories from people it's not exactly feigned death, but people who had trauma, especially as children, where they said I just laid there and pretended I pretended I was asleep until it was over, and UM other variations on

things like that. UM. And I think that now, of course, with technology, UM researchers have the capacity to literally see what is going on in the brain when somebody is in what I'm going to call an activated trauma state. Because the way that Peter Levine and Bessel vander Koke and some of these other UM pioneers have UM, what they've uncovered for us is that UM, there's generally people

like the fight or flight. There's either this very hyper aroused like UM fight response, like you know, I don't want to die, so I'm going to defend myself, or there's what we call the hypo aroused state, which can sort of look like I'm depressed, I can't get out of bed, I'm stuck, I'm not I can't feel, and and and so they started to learn different strategies for

helping people regulate. So just an example that I know is dear to your heart if he is physical exercise, So being able to certain ways that people exercise, like literally can have a huge impact on your body chemistry and your brain chemistry. And so UM, whether it's rigorous, really rigorous cardio or lifting, or something that's very subtle and gentle like tai chi, but like that is a way that we can actually have an impact on regulating

how our bodies respond. And then you can take a picture of the brain and you can be like, hey, the frontal lobe is completely lit up. This is awesome. Mm hmm. Now I truly believe that because, yeah, I'm a big, big fan of working out, and even you know, we're talking about the quarantines effect on our mental health. Uh. You know, one of the things that were shut down

immediately was the gym for a good reason. And I totally felt the difference in my uh not only like, uh, my general mental health, but also just to how I viewed myself in the moment I was able to get like a workout bench and workout at home, I just immediately felt better and I felt and I realized that that has been something just through doing it all this

time that I've attached to kind of normalizing my my situation. Usually, especially if I'm on a busy schedule, of the moment I can fit in the gym is when I start to feel balanced. And it became like so apparent when I needed, you know, the workout equipment just to feel

fine being at home absolutely well. And I'm glad you mentioned about sheltering in place, because one of the things I've been hearing from people a lot is that they feel the urge to run, like they literally feel this feeling in their legs, like they just want to like run, and so um, that is can be like a natural response to basically being trapped in the house, right, Like anybody who's experienced trauma does not I mean, nobody likes to be trapped, but if you're somebody who has actually

been trapped in a trauma, it's kind of extra potent. And so sometimes I'll say, well, let's get up and run and we'll run, we'll stand up, I'm stand up to and actually like let the I sometimes refer to it as like the body needs to finish telling the story, right, It's not enough to just verbally tell the story. And sometimes people actually don't even remember because the trauma isn't just you know, a person to person thing that's occurred. Trauma can also be a car accident, um, living through

a natural disaster. There's multigenerational trauma. There's people who have been traumatized by um immigration experiences. There's the trauma extreme poverty, Like there's all kinds of things that don't have to do with mean people. They just have to do with very painful experiences. And so it's a pretty low risk thing. And I'm not gonna say no risk, but to say, okay, we're going to run in place together and just move. Notice what happens, and I'm right here running with you.

Because it's not a good feeling. If I were to say this is just me personally, well, why don't you get up and run and I'm just going to sit here and watch you do it? Like that's not so comfortable. But we are doing this together and let's see what happens, UM, and we can stop any time. UM has actually been really helpful for people. They're like, oh, I'm not insane that my legs keep doing this thing. No, No, you're

not insane, honey, you're trapped in the house. Yeah. I was going to say when I was watching uh TED talk on somatic therapy that they were talking about it was by Monica less Age less Age that they were saying about becoming comfortable with trembling, that it's like the body's natural response to energy, and your body is trying to get out this energy and to be okay with

it as opposed to trying to stop it. And another thing I wanted to say what I realized after I graduated from I did an intensive outpatient program for trauma, and I completely agree. I think a lot of people think of trauma as one specific traumatic event like nine eleven, or you served in the war, or you were sexually assaulted, and those all our trauma, but it could be a series of events of like an emotionally abusive parent that wasn't really around or constantly called you stupid, um bullying

in middle school. Uh, these are like I'm listening off mine, um, you know. Or for me, it's like being ghosted by romantic interests and they suddenly just completely drop out of

your life. Like that to me is really traumatic, And so it's kind of like what if he was saying that, Like a lot of times people think that they don't need help or they don't qualify when a lot of these things can even an unstable not knowing where you're gonna live, like constantly moving from from couch to couch, and being scared about eating and rationing food, like these are all traumatic and it holds tension in your body and you can even feel it, like when I'm clenching

my teeth or when I'm constantly reminding myself to let go and that is creating like trauma and your muscles even. And so this to me is all just really fascinating because it kind of opens up people's eyes to what we've all lived through. I even think of it as being a woman when I'm walking and being clenching, clenching my keys or my body because I'm approaching men that are calling me out and whatever like that to me is a trauma to constantly go through since I was twelve,

you know. So it's just there's such a range with trauma, and I hope that this kind of opens people's eyes

to it. You know, there is exactly this range of trauma or continuum of trauma, and there's now been some more research and programs that look at um trauma that's related to um, you know, racial violence, racism, sexism, sexual violence, homophobia, you know, violence against trans people, all of those things and UM and that UM sometimes it's you know, what people refer to as microaggressions, Like it's those things that

occur every day over time. It may not be that you've actually been physically assaulted, but even just growing up in a culture that views you as disposable garbage has a traumatizing effect. And small tea in a certain way. UM. And I'm so glad you said what you said, Danny about shaking, because if you've ever seen like if you if you own a dog, for example, and you watch a dog like, um, try to find a comfortable position, and how it kind of like circles around and round. Um,

it's doing something physically to find its comfortable place. Or you might see a dog that's been like swimming or

out running or whatever and it'll shake itself off. And so sometimes what we need to do to to reset our nervous systems is to actually I'm a big and of um dancing for that right, like to put on some music and um, now because I'm working with people on Zoom, I'll say to people, turn your camera off so you don't have to worry about me or anybody else seeing you, and put on some music and just you know, shake it out. Um. And for some people

it's much more about like stillness and quieting. But there are these amazing strategies that we can use to basically reset ourselves. And then it's helpful to have the talk part of therapy to to think about want to have a safe, supportive person who's going to be able to say it's not your fault, you're not crazy, and I'm here with you for the long haul, and then also like to help you build like a toolkit for yourself.

And so I wanted to give a movie example because I think of it as people having We all have this very fine tuned in internal security system that is scanning for danger, and for people who have had trauma, that internal security system is like on high alert all the time, and it can be really really exhausting because it doesn't no linear time, so it doesn't know the difference between like a cheetah you imagine, and an actual cheetah.

There was this movie called Entrapment with Sean Connery and um, Katherine Zita Jones, and there's a scene in there where Katherine Zita Jones is I don't know if she's in a gallery. I can't remember where she is, but she's she's in a cat suit. I remember that. It is a very famous scene, and she's there's this security system with these infrared beams and basically she's trying to like navigate through the room without setting off the security system

in the building. And to me, that scene is like you should go google it because it is the perfect metaphor for what we call in the trauma world, for hyper vigilance, for just being like you said, you know, with your jaw clenched and like your fists are clenched and your heart's racing. You stop breathing, and you because

you're trying to stay alive, trying to stay alive. On that note, we're going to take a quick break because we gotta, you know, do these breaks even though we're dropping some some major heat that fire knowledge, some fire knowledge. But when we come back, we will continue this discussion and we're back. How you doing listening to nerdfficent to our first episode of mental health May here with Danny and Karen Lackman, and we're talking about somatic therapy and

we're getting it's getting good. Karen, I had I had a question. So when I was looking at somatic processing, it's a little different than some of the therapy. Some of the trauma therapy have done different types. But one person was talking about how you kind of touch into the smallest amount of trauma energy instead of tackling it all or kind of all spewing it out. A little bit different than some other stuff. I've done, you know,

I've experimented different ways. Um, can you talk about that like kind of just that tapping into like one tiny thing as opposed to tackling a huge or all your trauma at once. Sure, I think, Um, it varies from person to person both, you know, every therapist approaches it differently, but also each person in their own healing journey is

going to experience it a little differently. And so like some people have are clearly experiencing trauma as in like their nervous system is like the engine of a car that's just flooded all the time, with no memory of anything that happened to them. And there are some people who have very very clear memories of events in their life that happened to them. And depending on which somatic approach you're using, you may draw on one small It's

like you're sort of I'm like pulling it. It's like you're pulling a thread, right, but you don't want the whole thing to unravel, so you do it very gently and very delicately. And so for me, the focus is on how it's showing up in your life right now, in this moment. Because our nervous systems don't know anything about linear time, and so when there's something that activates people,

it's as if it's happening right now. It doesn't matter what whether it was a week ago or a month ago or twenty years ago, but it is real in the moment right now. So I want to give you like a very benign example of something that isn't exactly a trauma, but it illustrates this pattern that we're talking about,

which is if you went to a restaurant. Let's say you you went to a restaurant and you ordered a shrimp dish and you got food poisoning, like you were like seriously ill, you probably would think twice one before going back to that same restaurant or to ever eating shrimp again. And even if you did finally get to the point where you were willing to eat shrimp again, you might have a little private moment to yourself like do I really want to do this? Is it worth it?

What if I get sick again? And because it's a natural right, like your body and your brain are like we are not going there again, and so um, it can seem like I'm making a little circular motion with my hand here right, like why Why are you tripping about the shrimp? Why are you obsessing about the Okay, but it's not it's you, it's um. It's a self protective mechanism, and so being able to unpack that a little bit so you can figure out, like can you

live without eating shrimp? Absolutely, But there are other things that can really interfere with people's everyday lives where if we just slow it down and take one small piece and say, how is this showing up in your life right now in this moment, Let's work with that. And I wanted to say, I know that you do that. You are a healing spiritual person, a therapist as well. Are there things that people like our listeners can do at home, um, that you would recommend that's you know,

accessible to them? Yeah? I think, Um, you know, it's always a tricky thing to figure out. Like you know, Peter Levine his early book is called Waking the Tiger, and it's like that image of like when you once you start to open this up, if you can imagine a tiger that's sleeping and you start poking at it, you don't actually know how it's going to react. So I would really, um, while I totally support, empowering people

on their own healing. Also just want to advise people like this is a little bit of a landline and sometimes it can blow up, but there are some things that you can do. So I'll give you a personal example. I bought myself a little a Roman thep Be machine for like twenty books. I ordered online. I had it delivered. It's in my um my study right now at home, and it is something. Engaging your senses is something that

is very soothing to the nervous system. And so like being trapped in the house, which again is a small t trauma. Um. You know, the nice calming smell of lavender just is relaxing. Um. Or like I said, like put some music on and dance around. So when you can engage your senses as a way of orienting yourself towards being stable and safe. So it might be calming music, it might be a smell. Um. You know, there's a lot of spiritual traditions use things like anointing oils and incense,

and you know there's reasons for that. Um. So engaging your five senses. And another thing where there's actually some data about this is drumming. There is some data that shows is that drumming can be very effective for people in reducing the effects the negative effects of trauma. So for those of you who are trying to think about like something new you want to try at home, Like you don't have to go buy an expensive drum. You can use like turning trash can upside down, or just

use the side of your table or something. You don't have to be a good musician. But it's one of those things where you have the sense of touch and you have the sound and your body's natural impulse to want to move to the rhythm that is very regulating for the nervous system. That is not a listen. Drumming on the side of your coffee table is not a substitute for real psychotherapy, but it is something that's relatively low risk that you can try at home and see

what happens. The Five Senses has literally saved me from having a panic attack when I was like I think it was Thanksgiving. I was out with my family. We were like walking around a pond. There are a bunch of people out. I don't know why, Like a memory hit me and I is just about to spiral in front of everyone, and the five senses was great because it not only brought me back to the present moment instead of that memory, but I had to keep my

mind going. It was like what can I see? Okay, I see this green tree, I see red leaves, I see this kid with purple shoes. Okay, now what do I taste? What kind of taste? Like the ice cream my head earlier? What am I? You know? And so like your brain is trying to go through what am I touching? I can feel my wool that I'm wearing, and it just is like it actually is occupying my brain where I'm having to actively in the moment. And then I would do it again and then I would

restart what am I seeing? Now? What am I smelling? Now? I smell a little bit of the freshly cut grass, And it was just like I do that also with breathing exercises, with meditation, I was someone literally hated when people would tell me to meditate. I'm like, this is you know, when you've when you've dealt with a lot of trauma, it feels very patronizing, it feels very um just kind of like, oh, you can get over it

with just think like meditating. And I got to a point where I was like, I will I will eat shoelaces whatever you want me to do to get you get to a point where you're like, I will do anything. And so I actually, um, I'm a competitive person. This is probably not the healthiest, but I got competitive about meditating because I used the calm app and it actually shows me how much how many sessions and how much time. And now I've wrapped up like five hundred sessions, which

is I'm very proud of myself for doing that. But one of the meditations would literally just have you count your breath, and that again took me out. I couldn't think of the thing because I'm like one, two, three, four, like and you had I had to keep track of my numbers. So there's so many great things that you can do, like you were saying, to ground yourself in the present moment um, and and they do work as

much as I am someone who actively you know. And and again it's also a process of finding what works for you, but being open and willing to try it. I think of myself as really resilient for surviving. I'm getting emotional, sorry, I think of myself as really resilient and like there's a part of me that's just so unwilling to give up, like it's just fighting so hard, and it's like, I'm not going to give up on myself.

I'm going to keep trying different things to find what works for me, and if this doesn't work, I'm going to try something else. Because there are people who have dealt with even more trauma than I have that have found these helpful and that you know, so there has to be something behind them, and all of them, I say, I think all of them have helped in different ways.

You know, they're not all the same, but it's kind of created a toolbox for me essentially that depending on what I'm dealing with, I can bring out different coping skills. So thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that we have. On that note, we have to take another really quick break, and then we're going to go into how others can help. If you have someone a loved one in your life, um, how you can be a support system for them, and

we are back. UM. Thank you Karen again for joining us on the first episode of Mental Health May Um. Something that I've kind of dealt with in my life. Very loving, great people who just don't understand, um, why I can't get over some of the some of the memories and things that just keep coming up for me. And UM, how I guess, how can people who want to be supportive understand that? And what are things that they can do to help the people that they love

in their lives? Um, that's a great question. And I guess the first thing I would say is don't give advice unless somebody asks for it. So I'm gonna start with what not to do? Um, say it again, I mean really giving advice, won't offer suggestions, don't have The first thing you do offer is the first thing you do should not be offering suggestions, no advising. It's no no fixing, no saving, no advising, no correcting. It is

not somebody else's job to fix you. So that is the first thing I will say, is to just whatever. And there are some people who can't help themselves, and even though they love you and they care about you, and they need to be told stop. So UM, I think that people can say I wish I knew what to say. It's sort of like with grieving, when you know, if you've gone through a loss of some kind of grief is very much a part of trauma also, and

people say the dumbest things when they're trying to be supportive. Um, when they can just say, I wish I knew the right thing to say. If there was something I could do to make it easier for you, I would love to do it. I'm here for you, I'm with you, I will sit with you. I love you, I care about you. I don't judge you. I can be patient

as long as you need me to be patient. So it's that sense of if you want to be supportive to somebody else who's dealing with this kind of pain, to let them know that you are with them in it, that you can just sit next to them. You know, you don't even have to say anything. Sometimes the best thing you can do is say, like, I'm going to drop off some soup at your house. Would that be okay? Yeah, I totally agree about listening. Sometimes people just need to vent.

And the hardest thing also is having someone who hasn't gone through that try to advise you. It's like, oh, no, I've already done so much of this work. It's so there's also another thing that a friend friend at the pod, we haven't had her on you but tybee disk and she like did this uh this like I G story that's stuck with me where she asked all her friends. She was like, what is a way that I can check in on you where you feel loved? Like? What? What?

How do you like being checked in on? And I thought that was great and it's something that I've asked a lot of friends of like, because it is true where you know, some people can feel like you're hovering if you're just like, are you okay? I know, so if they're like, oh, if you just you know, ask me about how's my day? Or oh, if you just like tell me about something you've seen, and then we

start conversating from there, it really helps. So I think that's another way to start a question, which is a which is a good way too. If you have someone that you do want to check in on and you don't want to seem to, you know, in their face about it, you can just ask them that simple question and then you know what they kind of want from you.

I often feel like we should all come with a little instruction manual that we can give to the people in our lives and that somehow we've been taught this pile of garbage that basically says it's not really garbage because I do understand it's psychologically, but that the people who love us should just intuitively know what we need and does automatically give it to us. And then if we have to tell them what we need, that therefore they're not going to mean it when they do it,

and it's just not true. It's not true. The only way that somebody else can know what you need. Some people are very intuitive, but we all need to be able to say. It's like when you're sick. Forget trauma for a second. Some people, when they're sick, they just want to be left alone. Don't bother me. Just put the bulls suit by the door. I don't want anybody. I don't want to see anybody. I don't want to

talk to anybody. Some people want to be doated on, they want to be babied, and they want to be taken care of, and they want all of that kind of stuff. But if you want to be left alone and somebody is hovering over you, it feels terrible. So just to ask this is like, here's a little like dating thing too. I always ask people, recommend to people, ask the person, what they're like when they're are sick,

it will tell you a lot about their personality. So just to be able to say even around basic things like you know what I just need to be let when I get like this, what I need is space. That's that's so important. Oh sorry, what were you gonna say? No,

I don't mean to cut you off. Oh, I was just saying just the intersection between this and kind of dating, and because you know, I've I've I've always talked about boundaries and what people need, and I think that is so important, because yeah, I really want to talk about just that idea of so much of our way of talking with and interacting with humans are just kind of like dated societal things, and I think that that we

often forget that. No, that's not true. I think especially if you look at the way different people handle just situations in trauma. Like one of the big things is

growing up being my sister. We will fight. I would get on our nerves and like we would fight, like we would get so mad at each other, like where you think, like, oh man, they probably need to sit down and hash it out, but no, we just go our separate ways and we would just come through because we know that we were just kind of picking at each other. Now if there was something that actually happened, if there was something I was actively doing, then she

would call it out. But there's the we knew the difference of like, oh, we're just kind of picking at each other because we're in the house. And I feel like that has always uh that that kind of carried over into because you know, uh, every the way you interact with your family is essentially how you go out into the world. And that it was something I had to learn because I was so used to being like, oh, if we have a spat, I just need to give

you some distance and we'll come back. And you come back and they're like, no, I want to talk about what just happened. And it was like, oh, that that's a whole new world for me. But you you would, you'd be like, well, no, this is how I perceive problems. And it's taking that kind of open mindedness, something I think Dani also said, just having the open mindedness to kind of explore and see what someone else needs instead

of trying to operate on what you go by. I wanted to say to our friend of the pod, Christopher Smith Bryant. He's been on a couple episodes and he is great. One of my best friends checked in on me this weekend, was like, hey, I haven't heard from you in a while. Are you okay? And I said, not really spiraled about something and I don't want to rehash it because that would just cause me to spiral more, um,

but thank you for checking in on me. And then two days later, which was great, he was just like, hey, just want to still make sure you're doing okay. And then at that point I was now I didn't want to rehash everything, but I could tell him what had happened essentially, and I was like, you know, I had this session. It was it was diving into a bunch of stuff and I really appreciate you checking in on me. So he wasn't like pressing me to talk more about

it in that moment. And another thing that happened was my therapist. You know, we've talked about how healing is this process. It just you think like, oh, I'm done, I did the thing and I'm done, and it like keeps, you know, healing. And my my therapist was like, I think, you know if you want to journal, and I just got to a point where I was like, I don't want to journal. I don't want to do one more meditation.

I don't want to do one more self love exercise, Like I've done this for years and I was so tired. And she was like okay, Like she was just like okay, um, I respect that she respect. And then of course, like after a couple of days, I'm like, okay, I'm ready

to journal. I miss it, you know. And it's just like but you get to a point and it's like so not forcing, like just respecting where you are, meeting yourself where you are, and if you just do not feel like doing that, there's a reason why your body is rejecting it. So allowing yourself grace and then when you start to feel like, you know what I actually do, think that I can sit down and do that today.

M hm. That Um. One other thing I wanted to say, just you know from someone that that is healing and dealing with trauma. I in my relation ships. One of my exes who I love, just a really supportive, great person. He we would get in fights, kind of like what you were talking about. If we would get in fights and I would bring up my trauma, like, well, you haven't survived this and I have an autoimmune disorder and

blah blah blah. And he was like, well you're always gonna win then, And I realized this is so unhealthy, you know, and luckily I was able to work in therapy. But I was like, I love this person, and my illness is not a trump card over his life if he had a problem at work, that is, I need to honor that, like I cannot. And it's so easy in an argument to kind of just throw that, and I'm like, I'm also a firm believer your trauma is not a trump card to harm other people. It does not.

You need to take accountability. It is a vicious cycle, and it's one that can be broken. My dad was really abusive and I did so much therapy did not turn into him. But I think there is a level of accountability that we are. You know, I'm speaking as someone that has trauma cannot trump other people that we care about. Yeah, it's just so you know. I have literally I have in my bedroom, I have a painting that says choose Love. And I'm really just trying to

like constantly choose love. Choose love. Um, I'm sorry, go ahead related to that, because I didn't feel there was You would ask a question earlier about spirituality, and to me, choosing love is it's an emotional thing, it's a physical thing, and it's a spiritual thing and um, and I'm not

talking about religion. I'm talking about meaning making and creativity and ritual and um, resources that engage your imagination and the possibility of I'm going to call it a healed future, you know that which kind of orient you toward your own homeless and there are so many ways that that can be done. So I just love that image. Thank you for that, Danny of having a painting in your room that says, choose love as a reminder to yourself. And it's probably there are some days when you look

at it a lot more than other days. Yeah, it's so difficult, but worth it, really worth it. Um, Karen, thank you so much again for coming on. Where can people find you or I don't know if people can find you on social media? If you're want people to find yes, this is a new era. Um yes, so I um. Well, my website is just my name Karen Erlikman dot com. I have a very small social media presence because you know, like, do you really want to

follow your therapist Twitter feed? Maybe maybe not, but k replenish on the I G or Twitter, and um, I really, you know, even now while we're in this global pandemic, it's been amazing to be able to continue to work with people and the innate capacity to heal our brokenness

just continues to amaze me every day. Me. I guess you can find wherever you want to find me if you wad Way, Twitter and Instagram, if d s on Twitch, in the discord discord dot gg Ford slash Salt Squad, which I feel I hope everyone in the Real Stuff Discord listens to this episode because that's usually where people go to kind of decompress and just have an open vent session about their mental health. I will directly drop this episode in there. Um And yeah, Super Punch is back.

You can watch it every night Monday through Friday, hosting it and on Thursdays you can catch me on Rooster Teeth with Fiona Nova f and around with if Fiona and uh yeah, what do you you got anything coming up? Danny? Um Oh, I've just been sharing, you know, Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at miss Danny Fernandez. It's M S, D A, N I F R and and easy I

post when I'm doing streams and and whatnot. And um wanted to give a shout out, of course to our super producer Joel Monique for setting this up with Karen and also engineer Zach McKeever for constantly working with me to make my mic sound better. I'm trying. Oh, I did want to say, but almost forgot. Yeah. It was just announced, uh last week. But in next month sci Fi is the Great Debate, which is going to be featuring yours truly, Danny Fernandez, and you know I pop

in there a few times. But yeah, it's gonna be a great show. It'll be on sci Fi. You can watch it, uh, and you can and see if you can notice when we were filming before and after, I was in both of those. I was in an episode before the pandemic and then the day it was announced that we like had a shelter in place. Yeah, it was the day before it was announced. Yeah, yeah, that was It was a wild time. Uh. But yeah, so definitely check it out. It's a great show, both versions

of it, uh, and it's a fun time. We'll probably have to have t J on here sometime. But as we always say, stay stay nerdy, and stay healthy. Yeah, that's that's what we should say this month. Stay healthy,