Trauma Resilience and Healing w/ Jennifer Burton Flier

so that I can unhook that. Toronto Burke, the founder of the Me Too movement, in her two thousand eighteen Ted Talk, declared that we as a society were collectively traumatized by the reckoning we were having around sexual harassment and assault. At the time, I'm that declaration felt like the truth to me and got me thinking about the other potential collective traumas we might be experiencing as a society. I am deeply aware of the collective trauma of repeatedly

seeing black bodies murdered on camera. For me, as a black trans woman, the violence against trans folks that is often also captured on camera repeatedly. I found also deeply traumatizing a global pandemic, the greatest economic downturn America has experienced since the Great Depression. Collectively, we are experiencing trauma on top of trauma. My own work in therapy over the past four years has focused specifically on trauma resilience and if we are indeed collectively traumatized, how do we

collectively heal? So to have this conversation, I wanted to talk to my very own therapist, Jennifer Burton Fly. I mean, I taught her all the time, but I wanted to have that conversation here publicly to talk about how we can build trauma resilience individually and collectively. I really believe it's one of the most important skills we can develop right now. Jennifer is a licensed marriage and Family therapist.

She is certified in Expressive Arts Therapy. She has also certified in Burnet Brown's Daring Way and Rising Strong Models as well as E M d R. She has a senior faculty member with the Trauma Resource Institute and has traveled extensively in the US as well as Northern Ireland. To share wellness skills with various groups and cultures. Please enjoy my conversation with Jennifer Burdenfly Hi, Jennifer, Welcome to the podcast. How are you failing today? I'm feeling pretty grounded.

I was using all my skills before we got on today, so feeling okay now I of it. I can't wait to tell everyone about the tools and the skills. So about four years ago, I had moved to Los Angeles.

I really didn't want to move here. I came here kicking and screaming, and my showrunners, Joan Raider and Tony Phalon invited me to a barbecue at their house in Pasadena, and invariably, the subject of therapy came up, because of course it always does, right, And one of the partygoers named Krista, said that somatic therapy is the only therapy that worked, and I was like, okay, this is the second time that the topic of semantic therapy has come

up in the past year. A doctor of mine in New York City had told me about somatic therapy about a year earlier and said, you really should try it. It is the best thing, and so I said, okay. The universe is trying to tell me something. So I reached out to Christa. She suggested you, and four years later, here we are. So can we start by you telling everyone what somatic therapy is. Yeah. I think it's really important for people to understand that there are many different

modalities that use somatic therapy. And the word for somatic actually derives from the Greek word soma, which means living body, and the therapy is really grounded in the relationship between mind and body. So the overview really of thematic therapy is that it uses the body as the entry point for healing versus the thinking part of the brain. We've all been impacted by things in our lives, and the point of using the body is to tap into our

innate resiliency that really lives in us. We are built for survival, but we're also built to cultivate resiliency, and we do have to work at cultivating it, and that's really the purpose of thematic therapy. And by cultivating the resiliency, what happens is we often uncouple or take out the glue of the traumatic, stressful responses that we have. We can extinguish those cues, whether they're external or internal, cues

for trauma and stress. The way that it kind of crystallized to me was talking about the stress response when we feel where we're under threat. We are hardwired as human beings to have a fight response, a freeze response, or a flee response, and so the body releases adrenaline, cortisol, releases hormones, stress hormones, so we can either fight that bear, flee that bear, or freeze. But then that's not sustainable

to constantly be in this place. A fight flighter freeze is not sustainable to always be sort of living with these stress hormones. And it became very clear to me after we started doing our work together that my whole life was fite flighter freeze, and then my whole life was bears in the woods and I didn't have other ways of existing. Do you want to talk a little bit about that. Yeah. I also want to highlight that

there's several different responses. We do have fights freeze, there's also below a freeze response collapse in the nervous system where we just everything shuts down, and that's when we

really are under extreme life threat. And then there's also tend and be friend or some people call it some schools call it fawning that when we move toward a threat to deescalate and oxytocin, which is a bonding hormone, is also released along with the adrenaline and corsol, so it actually a quiet the system so that we can actually stay in some kind of social engagement and then my chances of being attacked might be lessened in those circumstances.

But oftentimes, in any of these survival responses, what we see a lot is we pathologize ourselves, or we blame ourselves or shame ourselves for whatever the survival response was in a given moment or in a given situation, or like what you're talking about, I'm always failing, like the bear is coming after me. Nothing is safe, if everything is dangerous, nothing is safe. For my colleague Jen Click calls it the ability to distinguish between a forced fire

and a match. And when we can't make that distinction, it really doesnt number yes on the mind and body. It causes illness in the body. It causes a constant state of stress. It causes us to misread our environment to the point where we also can misread social cues. We could get into fights or altercations with our partner. I mean, we're on top of each other all the time now, and we can misread the situation if we're in a survival response, especially if it's firing all the time.

What really resonated from me, and it's one of our early sessions, is when you define trauma as too much, too fast, too soon. And you said to me that the nervous system can experience good things as too much, too fast, too soon, as well as things that can be challenging or feel like a threat. And so much of the work of somatic therapy is I understand, it's

really about resetting and regulating their nervous system in relationship distressors. Correct. Seeah, so again when I said earlier, there's all these different schools of somatic therapy. The primary one that I practiced through the Trauma Resource Institute, and that's the community resiliency model and trauma resiliency models. One is a clinical model, the other one is really meant for the wider community.

And we've taught all over the world. So the definition of trauma in that vein is too much, too fast, too soon, or too little or too much for too long, too little, or too much for too long? Can you explain that? So? I would say that the too little or too much for too long can be from the developmental perspective of developmental trauma and stress. But I think also of right now that the time that we're in we've had too much for too long and too little

for too long. We're so disconnected now from each other, from being able to see one another. I think this is why we see people chomping at the bit to get back together or to have family gatherings, even though we know it might not be safe to do. Because it's been too little for too long. That sense of isolation and disconnect becomes almost unbearable, and that is what we would call cumulatives. So a sort of deprivation of

human contact can also be traumatic. Yes their childhood neglect, for example, if there's been a neglectful parent or caregiver, that can absolutely stimulate that trauma response in the body. Because we are hard wired to connect to each other. This is how we come into the world, ready to connect. And if we don't get that, what we call an attachment, it makes it very hard for us to self soothe or self regulate throughout our lives. The truth of it is,

we do need coregulation in our lives. We're wired to be in community, in connection for the most part. Some people might feel connection when they're in nature, or connection when they're with a pet. Different aspects of being able to have that regulation happen. But I would say also that when we get that coregulation, like let's say within a therapy office or with a loved on, we're going to have a deeper capacity to self regulate or do that kind of self soothing on our own when we

aren't with someone. We just have a deeper capacity to be able to do that when we get that coregulation. So I think in context of a global pandemic that this is literally traumatizing what we're going through in this isolation right absolute, And the piece that you always bring up with me is how do we sense that in

our bodies? And I think that should lead us into krim or the community resiliency model, which I think is amazing and everyone should know about because the tools are in a way very simple, but they're really complicated to put into practice to police, tell us about the community resiliency model. What is it and what are the tenants of it. Yeah, it's a set of six wellness skills. This is a model we've taken all over the world and we've also brought it into marginalized communities to increase

and enhanced resilience resilience there. And basically it's about helping people understand the biology of traumatic stress reactions to restore a sense of well being in the body, mind, and spirit. And when we increase our resiliency, we have an increased sense of hope. And basically it's a skills based model,

and we can use it individually and collectively. So going back to the attachment piece, we can share it with one another, we can do it in community, but we can also do it for our own self care, which I absolutely love. That's so beautiful because I believe we are collectively traumatized now and the question for me that always comes up as if we're collectively traumatized, how do we collectively heal. Let's take a short break. When we come back, we'll talk about the six skills we can

all learn to reset and regulate our nervous systems. Welcome back, let's break down we can all do to help build stress and trauma resilience. Can you talk to us about UM those six skills of the community Resiliency Model, Clay, and I think we should also talk about resilien zone, high zone and low zone as well. Yeah. This was developed by Elaine Miller Cares and essentially, as Elaine says, it's about chasing the resilience in your nervous system UM.

And so there's six skills. Of the six skills, I'm just going to list them is tracking, resourcing, grounding, gesturing, help now, and shift and stay And a lot of those skills are actually available, and there's an app called eye Chill. It's available for free. It's also available in Spanish. Our materials have been translated into a lot of different languages.

But essentially, the primary cornerstone of the model is the resilient zone, as we keep mentioning it, but let's talk about it for a moment, the resilient sea zone or the resilient zone. Yeah, so the resilient zone. If you picture like two lines, horizontal lines with a wave going through those lines, that would be what we call our resilient zone, and that is where we are our best self, and the wave would represent our nervous system or the gas pedal and break of the body, our nervous system.

The gas pedal or the break pedal. I love these metaphors because they really kind of helped this. So so it's like it's about modulating this speed there we're going out if we're thinking about a gas pedal or break pedal. Yeah, body, mind and spirit. Right, So if I'm in my resilience zone, I'm my best self. I actually am in a securely attached place. I can read my environment around me. I can socially engage with those around me. I'm going to

perceive things better. I can problem solve there. I can be creative there. I can have my feelings and it's not a flat line. It is a wave. So I could have different feelings throughout my day, but I can handle of them. If I'm in my resilien zone, I can manage them. So I can have my sense of humor. I could actually be sad, mad, frustrated, content, happy, whatever it is, but I can communicate it. I can feel it. I can tell you I can feel it. And that

is that is really where we're our best self. And so I think what is so important and useful for me thinking about the resilience zone is thinking about that versus the higher the low zone. Because I've had several moments when I've come into a therapy session or be a zoom or in person where I was not in my resilience zone. So it was very difficult for me to actually be able to hear what you were saying. I was triggered by some kind of what I've come

to understand too. It's another phrase, when it's hysterical's historical, right, so that when I'm hysterical, but when I satically, when the vernus hysterical, that is something historical, and usually that is about some kind of trauma that's come up for me. I'm trying to think of an example from my life that I want to share. You know what, I'll share this. I'll share this. So over a year ago, when I

was going through my breakup. God, I can't believe my mestion this in front of people, but hey, it's a good example, I think when it's going through my breakup and my most recent boyfriend, over a year ago, I had a day I was doing pretty well and we broke up in June and it was September and I

woke up and I was a wreck. I was just like in this grieving process, like missing the relationship, and it just made no sense because I was very aware that like adult Lavern understood why this breakup needed to happen. An adult Lavern understood that we needed to separate, and that was all good because I was hysteric, hysterical. I was like, okay, I'm hysterical, so there's something historical going on. So then I was like, okay, but little girl of

her inner child felt abandoned. The inner child I didn't understand, and the inner child needed to scream and yell and get it out, and I I was like, okay, and I think I texted you I think that day and it was like I felt like I needed to take it to this source, so I needed to take it to the X. And so I texted him and I was like, can I see you later? This is a

few minus if you broke up? And he was lovely and he said yes, and he comes over and I said, little girl of Verney still yell at you right now, she needs to get this out. Can I yell at you? And he was very generous and said yes, and so I have my moment screamed a yell. He like, you want to hear me? I was like, not only hear that? I hit him with a pillow um with permission. Then I was able to after getting that out physically. What I understand about the somatic work now is that I

had to get that out through my body. I had to speak it, I had to like sense into it in my body. There was a grieving, there was something that was triggered in that moment that needed to be worked out so that I can get back into my zone. That was an extreme example. It's not always that extreme. There's so much that comes up for me. Was there something that came up for you from that story that you want to address or well, a couple of different things.

One is that your ex was in his resilient zone enough when he came over to be able to hold that space and hold his own sense of groundedness while you got out what you needed to get out. And then the other pieces around, is what we're getting out embodied or not? Is it metabolizing, is it digesting or is it not right? Can you clarify embodied? Is what

we're getting out embodied? Yeah? So, And I'm just gonna go with relationship to the story that you were telling, Like you're telling the story of what happens, you remember exactly the sequence of events, right, you're also able to articulate I get this, and I also get this. Maybe you weren't exactly fully in your zone, but you weren't

like all the ceiling at that point. Because sometimes we're out of our zone so high in the high zone or so low in the low zone, we don't integrate anything, and we also often won't remember what happened, so then it doesn't actually process, that doesn't actually land, and we're left looping around with the same material. You would wake up the next morning and being the same angry up that place and not have really worked that through and out.

Guess the question is how do we get embodied? So I was embodied enough to know that I was hysterical, that this was historical, and that I needed to go to the source. So I wasn't bumped out so much that I couldn't see straight exactly. So there was a certain level of resiliency that I was working with. So maybe that wasn't the best example about being out of my resilient zund well, and you might have been at the edges. So I think it's important to talk about

a range. So when we go into let's say we're going to talk about the high zone and low zones. So let's say the resilient zone. For those out there who like to number things, four through seven is in the resilient zone. Eight to ten is in the high zone. Three to one is in the low zone. So if you're at a ten or you're at a one, it's

much harder to manage and integrate. And so the high zone is like when we get really hyper vigilant, when we have panic attacks and we have rage attacks, we have those kinds of things, will always braced, being around for what's bad, the other shoe to drop, and we live in that state or we get bumped into that state for periods of time and then come back into our resiliency. Conversely, the low zone is that sluggish, depressed, disconnected, dissociated,

very despairing, hopeless, helpless place. I have another client who kind of looks at the resilient high low zone like a house, and when she's in the resilient zone, she's in the living room space. She can hang out on the couch or in the kitchen or whatever. When she goes to the high zone, she's in the attic, she can't hear what's happening in the living room at all. And when she's in the basement and really despairing, she's

really low. If she's on the floor of the basement, then she's having suicidal thoughts and she's having really extreme depressed thoughts. And we talk about actually walking up the stairs of the basement. Right, So those six tools that you outlined earlier are the ways to get us to walk up the stairs of the basement or to come down from the attic, right, to come down, to go

up into the resilient own. And tracking. I want to start with tracking because I feel like tracking it's probably the most important one, because tracking allows us to know when we're in our resilience and we were in high zone and when we're in low zone. Can you just break down tracking for us? Well, first of all, can I just say that my heart right now feels really warm and full and I have this like bubbly excitement hearing you teach me about tracking as a resilient zone.

It's very exciting. Thank you. I appreciate exactly right, that's exactly what we want to do. Tracking is used with all the skills. If we aren't tracking and paying attention to the body, then we are not actually doing thematic work. Client of mine who's called tracking the GPS of the body, and she said, if I know where I'm at at any given time, and I can't get lost, Oh, tracking is the GPS of the body. If I know where I'm at at any time, I can't get lost. Oh.

I love that. I love that. Often when I when I come into a session and I'm feeling just I've given this example a lot publicly. I'm feeling anxious, and you'll ask me where in your body do you feel that? Most often it's in the pit of my stomach. And then you'll ask me where does it feel positive or neutral? And you know, right now, it's kind of my ankles, And then you'll invite me to focus my attention on my ankles. The specificity of that getting really specific about

where we feel anxiety, joy, whatever it is. Where that we get specific about where that is in our bodies, I think it's really really an important component of this work. I think it's actually the essential cornerstone of this model and of this work and of our being able to tap into our wellness. Another piece I can share is that we years ago did a training for Children's hospital, and one of those folks, when they were teaching back to us, said, my body has always been talking to me,

but now I have a way to talk back. Now I have a way to have a conversation with my body. Oh, Jennifer, Okay, can we just pause? Can we just pause on that? My body's all it's been talking to me, but now I have a way to talk back. I think this is what I would love people to really understand and take away from this that right now, with everything that's going on in the world, with all the stressors, all the traumas, our bodies are talking to us constantly and

telling us what we need to know. Can we listen and then can we talk back and have a dialogue with our bodies and then begin to regulate. I think that this works about having that dialogue. Yes, that's exactly right. We might be accustomed to naming feelings or not, but tracking is the feeling of the feelings, the feeling of

the feeling. Can you explain that? So it's it's if I name something happy, sad, mad, or otherwise The reason why my thinking brain knows to call it that feeling word is because my body is sending cues that let me know to call it that eight of our information is delivered body up only going in the other directions of our information is delivered body up only. Twenty is the other way around. So our bodies are crucial. Yes, so we can sense things away that maybe we can't

think away. Only slow that one down to We can sense things away that maybe we can't think away. We can sense Can you just talk about that a little bit? I think you know. I'm not knocking cognitive behavioral strategies or thought stopping techniques like things that people might already use.

But I can certainly tell you with somebody who used to suffer from panic attacks, that if somebody said to me calm down, or if I tried to tell myself calm down, don't you think I would have done that already? I would have already done that if I knew how

to do it. But I don't know how to do it because my body is like on fire right now and I feel like I'm gonna die, And so it really becomes how do I intervene at the thematic at the body level so that I can unhook that because I cannot just tell all myself to calm down when my body thinks it's under threat. And we do, honestly, Lavern. We track all the time. Maybe we can sense when we're hot or cold, or we can sense maybe whether we're hungry or thirsty, or needs use the restroom, things

like that. But typically one of those entry points is a way to know that we're already doing this all day long, every day, and if I can take a moment and go back to the resilient zone. We have a resilient zone within us. But then when we are together, we have a collective resilient zone. So you and I together as we're sitting together, have a collective zone between us.

And when you talk about what's going on in the world today, whether it is the pandemic or our socio political landscape right now, our collective zone is pretty narrow. Yes it is. It is paper sin for most of us. And so not only my individual zone be narrow, but I'm also now faced with when I'm taking in the world and knowing that collect actively, it also feels pretty narrow.

How can we widen that zone? So I think oftentimes when we have these things that happen in our world, I often see that Mr. Rogers quote that comes in about how his mother used to tell him to look to the helpers when things feel bleak, look to the helpers. That is part of tracking and part of our awareness is not only looking for the threats, but also cultivating

and chasing the resiliency. Where are people coming together? When you see people marching together for common causes, when you see healthcare workers come into the aid of ailing people, when you see people reaching out for social justice and for dismantling and addressing structural racism. Like, if we look for those moments and we tap into that, then we're tapping into the collective resiliency of one another, and we're actually strengthening that, and we have to sense into that.

That feels like the truth to me on a really deep level. This feels like a good time to take a short break for our sponsor friends. Welcome back. Now we're going to talk about one of my favorite tools. I really want to talk about, shift in Stay. Shift in Stay it is one of the six tools you

listed earlier of the community resiliency model. I'm feeling anxiety and I'm feeling that in my guard and then you'll invite me to focus on where in my body isn't neutral and positive, right, and sometimes it's my ankles, not always, and then you'll invite me to focus my attention there. The invitation is to not be in denial about the anxiety, but the question becomes the both and peace. And so

can you talk a little bit about shift and stay? Yeah, so when I noticed what where my distress is, then I can actually actively move my awareness to someplace where it's less or where it's not. And we forget that we have a whole body while walking around with because our tendency is to dive into the middle distress again because we're wired for survival, so we're looking for the

source of threats to get outside or inside. And so this is the job of shift and stay is to be able to look around and go where is it not? Because sometimes it might be the tip of my nose, it might be my ear low of it might be my toes or you know, ankles like what you're referring to. And if I can bring enough of my awareness to those parts of my body that are less, that are pleasant or neutral and I can stay there. Typically what happens is it lessons what's going on. May not erase

it fully, but it may lessen it. And so even when we have chronic stress or illness or things like that, sometimes we'll actually get better medical attention because I can more accurately pinpoint where the trouble is rather than going my whole body or everything hurd's all over. And also when I self regulate and get back into my resilient zone, then I can do more connecting with others than I can problem solve, and I can know what the next

thing I want to do is. Versus if I get stuck in the loop of the distress of the anxiety. What just came up for me is that we all sort of become what we focus on. So if I just focus on this anxiety, all I can sense and feel is the anxiety. I'm not going to be in my zone. But if I can focus on something else energetically, then maybe that energy can shift, maybe my nervous system can shift, And I think that's just such a beautiful thing.

And and the other tools like resourcing, like gesturing, grounding, the help now skills all of the six components. I invite everyone to go to the I Chill app to look at all of these tools and see how you can integrate them into your lives and practice. Maybe find a health care professional who can help you with this

model if it resonates for you. There's something else, though, that I want to I have to talk about because I thought the first time you said it to me, and it's in a therapysition, there's so many aspects of this that I'm utterly intrigued by. But you used a phrase called completion of the survival response, and we were working on some really like childhood stuff that was really intense for me. Can you talk about completion of the

survival response in relationship to everything that we've been talking about. Sure, And this is again I'm just gonna highlight that is definitely something more that needs to happen within the context of a therapeutic environment, and it's not something I would encourage people to just tap into on their own. But essentially, we're we've got a survival response continuum, and what happens is that if I hear something novel or something happens in my environment, my first response is to orient to

the source. Of the threat or the sound or whatever. As I'm doing that, I'm mobilizing all the energy and my body, so cortisol and adrenaline is now coursing starting to course through my system, preparing me to fight or flee. And if I can complete a survival response, I'm going to then execute that in the form of running, fighting, yelling, gesturing, whatever I'm going to do. And once I do that,

I return to a state of equilibrium. And the truth of it is, we can get thwarted at any of those places along the survival response continuum, and oftentimes we don't allow that survival response to come through and out. And that can even be with small things. If I'm having an issue with a boss and I feel really piste off at my boss, but I can't just yell at my box, and so I might damp in or

thwart that energy. And then that might also tap into, like you said, hysterical historical, it might happen to tap into other times in my life that's happened, and we can get stuck. When we do get stuck in those states, we can sometimes have this perpetual fight response on board, or perpetually wanting to flee when stress happens. And because I didn't get to execute those things at the time that they occurred, what we can do now is try to offload in the moment and then come back into

my resilient zone. I feel like the tools of the community resiliency model are a lot of them are about regulating in the moment right when we have a stressful moment or we're traumatized in a moment's about regulating that.

But then when there are historical traumas and it were they were that require deeper work, right, and this is something that has to be done with a professional based on my own experience that this with you is that for the deeper things that in terms of really building trauma resilience and and Burnet Brown and one of her taxes with a goal of trauma resilience is to put it in its place, and it's in its timeline. The body doesn't know if a trauma happened twenty years ago.

Once we are triggered, the body experiences the trauma as if it's happening right now. That to me is really deep. And so the completion of the survival response piece we were dealing with um in therapy when I bought my when I bought this condo, I was remember I was having like crazy panic attacks like I was. I hadn't

had panic attacks like this ever in my life. And we kind of talked through it and figured out what the source of that was, right, And it was a childhood thing around sort of fear of being homeless that I've had my whole life. And when we went back into that memory, their childhood memory, and I didn't say or do what I wanted to say in that moment, I did it. In that moment, I yelled and I punched, and I kind of got what I needed to say. And as I did it, I felt my nervous system ship.

It feels like it's in the past now. It doesn't feel like it's happening right now. The work of building trauma resilience is like putting it sort of in the right timeline in my life, right, that's right. The interesting thing is that the more we practice tools of resilience, and this is about practicing right. We have neural plasticity, but it's neural plasticity, can you just define that really quickly?

Neural plasticity is the ability of the brains to be able to make new pathways to create new cell growth. And we used to think back in the day, but that might not be possible, but we know now that that's just simply not true. And the more we actually tap into and cultivate resiliency, the more we strengthen ourselves, the more we widen and deepen our resilience zone, the less things bumped me into the higher low zone, and the more I'm me in the world, the more you're

using the world. Ultimately, that is about creating new neuro pathways that are not trauma informed, that are not stress informed, and so repeatedly practicing these skills and something that we do on a daily basis, multiple times a day, over a period of time, we create new neuro pathways exactly.

And as we create those new neuronal pathways, what ends up happening Over time My zone gets deeper and actually sometimes it has its own trauma reprocessing element to it, in that the stuff of my history starts to fade away a little bit, the glue there starts to unstick a little bit, and so when I start to think into what happened to me in the past, I feel so much more meat in the here and now so much more myself. That's lovely. I think that it's a

great place to end. Obviously, I could talk to you all day about this. So can you tell people where else they can get resources to do this work? Yes? So again, you can go and download the eye Show app. Also, if people don't have smartphones, they can go to www. Dot eye Show app dot com and they can actually it's its own little website landing. You can go to Trauma Resource Institute website and look at their offerings and training.

And my website is Jennifer Burton MST dot com. And uh, I think there's a beating list on my website as well. I wanted to end our conversation with the question that you often ask me in our sessions, what else is true? Can you talk a little bit about how that sort of relates to everything we've been talking about, And then I want to ask you what else is true for you? Yeah? So the what else is true is that both and place. It's that if I can chase the resiliency, it's not

a denial that there's other things going on. To say that our landscape isn't what it is politically and culturally would be bananas, and to say we're not in the middle of a pandemic would also be crazy. But it's so what else is going on? What else can we tap into? That's true? And so I don't want to deny somebody's sadness, anger, feeling, frustration. I also want to see what else is available, what else, what helps us

get through? What helps us get through hard times? You know, we've all been through difficult times, whether it's the ones that we're in right now were ones that we've been in the past. And how do we get through? How do we tap into our innate against strength and resiliency? And I guess if if you're going to ask me about it personally, So I I lost my grandmother about a week ago, and she was one of my primary attachment figures and I feel blessed to have had her

for fifty one years of my life. But I have found myself in this kind of see of grief and feeling as sometimes really piste off at the pandemic for robbing me of seven months I could have been with her, even though it wasn't um COVID that took her from me, I feel like the pandemic took those months and those times of connecting away from me, and when I feel myself pulled in that direction, I actually tap into the

connection with her of how she's still with me. You know what she would want for me now, how she would be with me, and what she would say. And so I do have the grief, and I have the love, and I have that she'll be with me in infinite, myriad ways for the rest of my life. And I have pictures and I have all this other stuff and

memories that no one can take from me. And it helps with the sadness so that I don't get so swept away by that river, because I can just feel so sad so much of the time around this and and I let the tears come when they will, and I can also do the other So I feel, really that is my what else is true right now? And that's the most present what else is true? Thank you

for sharing that. Um. I think it was a few weeks ago you texted me and said you had to reschedule because your grandmother died, and it was I was like, what do I, how do I? What do I say to Jennifer? And how do I? How do I? It just felt so completely inadequate in that moment, and so sort of I thought it thinking about the one sided it's of our relationship. Um, when it's something like this happens, is that there's I don't know if there's anything that

we can really say. I'm so grateful that you're in my life. I do you want to say that. I'm so grateful you're in my life. I'm so grateful for our work. I'm so sad that you had this loss. It's I'm so sad, but I'm pardoned by your what else is true? And I think everything you're saying right now is that testament to our connection and our relationship, because yes it's in a therapeutic context, but make no mistake,

it's a relationship and it is a connection. And I'm just so touched by what you're saying to me right now, and I'm going to hold that as my other what else is true? And it's secure attachment, which I a lot of issues with in my life, and many times sessions you'd be like, well and you sense into like the connection we have, and I'm like, no, not really, but I can sense into it right now and I'm very grateful for it. So I thank you so much,

Jennifer for four years of work together. I thank you for sharing your expertise and everything that you share today. Thank you listening back to this conversation. What always hits me when I talked to Jennifer is when she talks about something being embodied. As a trauma survivor, as an abuse survivor, and probably also as a transperson, my default response is to leave my body right, to not be present in my body because it's just too painful to

be there. And if we can use a resource. Resourcing is another tool of the community resiliency model for me, often a resource sometimes even singing opera for me when I'm in an airport, I'm often insanely anxious and airports and if you see a person walking through the airport in advisor and um um COVID mask singing opera, it's probably me. Do not approach, But I am singing to self soothed. I'm singing to regulate my system. It's a resource for me to help me get through the anxiety

of being in the airport. But singing connects me to my breath, something that gets me in my body. Dancing is something that gets me in my body, and I can tap into those resources to turn the volume down on the anxiety that I have in the airport and turn the volume up on the things that are neutral, positive, the things that helped me get through the what else is true? So I encourage you to check out the Eye Chill app to explore UM the components of the

community resiliency model. And even though I do it very imperfectly, the day we recorded this, I was very much in high zone. I was totally freaked out. I was the first day we recorded UM the Verne Cox Show. But this has really really helped me a lot. It's a work in progress, and here's to widening your resilient zone individually and all of us widening our resilient zones collectively. Thank you so much for listening to The Laverne Cox Show.

Feel free to subscribe, rate and share. Join me next week when I'll be talking to Kimberly Foster, the founder of the online black feminist community for Harriet, about beauty as capital. Is it a good investment? Kimberly has thoughts. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real until next time, stay in the love. The Laverne Cox Show is the production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with I

Heart Radio. For more podcast from Chondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.