In this conversation with Dr. Kristin Neff, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas and the pioneering researcher who introduced self-compassion into modern psychology, we explore why self-esteem is a fair-weather friend while self-compassion provides steady support through challenge and failure. Dr. Neff shares how her early mindfulness practice reshaped her own relationship with shame, and how research now shows that self-criticism keeps the body’s threat syste...
Oct 20, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 12
“Fake it till you make it” can keep you moving, but there is a cost. When the prefrontal cortex tries to do the job of the whole brain, it burns fuel fast, cravings rise, and coping loops take over. This episode breaks down emotional regulation as a full-body, brain-wide process, not a mindset trick. Matt Bush, lead educator at the NSI certification and founder of Next Level Neuro, joins Elisabeth and Jennifer for this fascinating covnersation. You will learn how integration across interoception...
Oct 13, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Trauma is not a single moment. It is an ongoing dialogue between your brain, body, and environment. In this conversation, Dr. Mbemba Jabbi explains how neuroplasticity and affective neuroscience help us understand protective patterns like hypervigilance, shutdown, and dissociation. We explore the roles of the insula, amygdala, and cingulate networks in sensing threat, shaping emotions, and connecting brain states with bodily signals such as heart, gut, and breath. Dr. Jabbi also discusses resear...
Oct 06, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Have you ever drawn a blank when asked how you're feeling? Or maybe you experience constant inner buzzing, numbness, or anxiety without any words to describe it. You’re not broken—and you’re not alone. In this deeply informative and compassionately nuanced episode, Jennifer, Elizabeth, and guest Matt Bush unpack alexithymia: a common and often misunderstood trauma-related trait that involves difficulty identifying, describing, or connecting with emotions. More than emotional “numbness,” alexithy...
Sep 29, 2025•40 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Ambivalence isn’t confusion or weakness, it’s your nervous system doing its job. Feeling both joy and grief, relief and loss, fear and excitement, is not dysfunction but survival wisdom. In this episode of Trauma Rewired, Elisabeth Kristof and Jennifer Wallace unpack ambivalence as a neurobiological phenomenon: how the brain and body construct emotions, why conflicting truths arise during transformation, and how to metabolize them without collapse. You’ll learn to notice the tug-of-war between e...
Sep 22, 2025•51 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Fawn is a nervous system survival strategy, not a personality flaw. It helps you keep connection and avoid threat by overriding your needs, smiling through discomfort, and saying yes when you want to say no. In this episode of Trauma Rewired, Elisabeth Kristof and Jennifer Wallace unpack how fawn forms around attachment and safety, why it shows up in daily life and in sex, and how to gently rebuild self trust. You will learn to notice gut and throat signals that precede a reflexive yes, set smal...
Sep 15, 2025•56 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Functional freeze is not laziness. It is a learned survival strategy that lets you function on the outside while feeling numb or shut down on the inside. In this episode of Trauma Rewired, Elisabeth Kristof and Jennifer Wallace unpack freeze, tonic immobility, and flop, and show how functional freeze can look like “getting by” while feeling numb inside. They map the differences between freeze and burnout, explain why interoception goes offline, and share gentle, minimum-effective-dose practices ...
Sep 08, 2025•55 min•Season 5Ep. 6
Emotional repression is often invisible to high performers, and it can be one of the biggest barriers to sustainable success. In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we explore how trauma-shaped survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, and fawn can create patterns of overwork, perfectionism, and emotional disconnection. You’ll learn how subconscious repression differs from conscious suppression, how shame and perfectionism drive overachievement, and why even big business milestones can feel hol...
Sep 01, 2025•53 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Ready to break free from burnout and self-sabotage?Join The Capacity Gap Workshop, register FREE at https://rewirecapacity.com The flight response is often misunderstood as weakness or avoidance, but it’s actually a deeply wired survival strategy shaped by fear and trauma. In this episode of Trauma Rewired , we uncover how the nervous system uses constant motion, through overwork, hustle, and productivity, to escape from internal sensations and emotions that once felt unsafe. You’ll learn how fe...
Aug 25, 2025•36 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Ready to break free from burnout and self-sabotage?Join The Capacity Gap Workshop, register FREE at https://rewirecapacity.com The fight response is often misunderstood as a personality flaw, but it’s actually a deeply wired survival adaptation shaped by past experiences and trauma. In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we explore the difference between healthy, time-bound anger and the chronic fight state, how they’re created in the brain and body, and why learning to process anger is essential fo...
Aug 18, 2025•55 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Your brain is constantly scanning your body and environment, deciding in split seconds whether you’re safe or unsafe, and those decisions shape everything from your emotions to your physical health. In this episode, we dive into Applied Neurology and Neuro Somatics, revealing how targeted sensory training can rewire your nervous system for greater safety, resilience, and growth. You’ll discover the science of neuroplasticity, the impact of sensory deficits, and how trauma reshapes the brain’s in...
Aug 15, 2025•46 min•Season 5Ep. 2
What if your constant stress, emotional triggers, and exhaustion aren’t a mindset problem, but a sign your nervous system is stuck in survival mode? In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we explore the science of nervous system reset, nervous system regulation, and how to restore the nervous system after chronic stress and trauma. Jennifer Wallace and Elisabeth Kristof unpack how the autonomic nervous system governs your reactions, why trauma is stored as patterns in the body, and how to begin the ...
Aug 11, 2025•45 min•Season 5Ep. 1
What if the emotions you were never allowed to feel are the same ones making you sick? In this powerful episode of Trauma Rewired, we explore the lifelong impact of emotional neglect and suppression, and why emotional processing is often the hardest part of healing. From childhood modeling to nervous system adaptations, Jennifer Wallace and Elisabeth Kristof break down how early emotional neglect leads to emotional insecurity, chronic shame, and deep patterns of dysregulation that affect everyth...
Aug 04, 2025•39 min•Season 4Ep. 64
Shame doesn’t live in your head, it lives in your body. In this deeply vulnerable and enlightening episode, somatic practitioner Luis Mojica returns to Trauma Rewired to share the biological impact of trauma, the hidden costs of fawning, and how embodiment is not about peace, it’s about presence. Together, we explore how unprocessed shame can drive chronic inflammation, gut dysfunction, and boundary collapse, long after the traumatic event has passed. Luis also shares his own story of sexual tra...
Jul 28, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 63
Did you know that women are twice as likely to experience depression, yet less than 40 percent of research includes them? This statistic is staggering, highlighting society's inadequate attention to women's mental health and the complexities of their nervous systems. Often overlooked in scientific studies, women's experiences, particularly regarding menstrual cycles, create significant gaps in understanding their physiological, emotional, and hormonal health. This omission, influenced by societa...
Jul 25, 2025•54 min•Season 4Ep. 62
Explore the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification: https://neurosomaticintelligence.com/ Chronic pain isn’t just about injury, it’s a whole-body experience shaped by your brain, nervous system, and unresolved trauma. In this episode of Trauma Rewired, Elisabeth Kristof and Jennifer Wallace are joined by Matt Bush, educator and founder of Next Level Neuro, to unpack the neuroscience of pain. Together, they explore how chronic pain is often a protective output from a dysregulated nervou...
Jul 21, 2025•52 min•Season 4Ep. 61
Explore the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification: https://neurosomaticintelligence.com/ What if perfectionism isn’t ambition, but a nervous system reflex for survival? In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we’re joined by returning guest Piper Rose of ShadowPlay Coaching to explore perfectionism and rejection sensitivity through a neuroscience and trauma-informed lens. We reframe perfectionism as a high-cost survival strategy rooted in complex trauma, societal conditioning, and early ne...
Jul 14, 2025•46 min•Season 4Ep. 60
Explore the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification: https://neurosomaticintelligence.com/ What if the invisible responsibilities you carried as a child are still shaping your adult life? In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we explore parentification—a hidden form of childhood trauma where children are forced to become the emotional or physical caretakers of their parents. Whether you managed your parent’s emotions or became “the responsible one” too early, these patterns can wire your n...
Jul 07, 2025•37 min•Season 4Ep. 59
Why do some people develop PTSD after trauma while others recover? What if it’s not about the trauma itself, but the state of your nervous system when it happens? In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we’re joined again by Matt Bush, founder of Next Level Neuro and a lead educator in the Neurosomatic Intelligence program, for a deep dive into the latest PTSD research and how it’s reshaping what we know about trauma, memory, and healing. We explore how traumatic memories start out as broad fear asso...
Jun 30, 2025•44 min•Season 4Ep. 58
When we think of ADHD, we often define it as a list of symptoms: distractibility, impulsivity, hyperactivity. But what if this view is incomplete? What if ADHD is not a deficit at all, but an intelligent set of adaptations your nervous system made to survive in a world that didn’t feel safe? In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we’re joined by Mari De Luna, certified Neuro-Somatic Intelligence practitioner and trauma coach specializing in neurodivergent clients. Mari sits down with Elisabeth and J...
Jun 23, 2025•50 min•Season 4Ep. 57
When we think of autoimmune disease, we often hear the same story: the body is attacking itself. But what if that view is incomplete? What if autoimmune patterns are not self-attack, but an intelligent protective response of a nervous system shaped by trauma, chronic stress, and relational wounding? In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we’re joined by Anna Gieselman, neuro-somatic practitioner and founder of Beyond Functional. Anna sits down with Elisabeth and Jennifer for a powerful, eye-opening ...
Jun 21, 2025•50 min•Season 4Ep. 56
When we think of autism, ADHD, or even trauma, we often place them in separate boxes, as distinct diagnoses with different treatment paths. But what if the reality is far more connected? What if complex trauma itself is a form of neurodivergence? What if masking, sensory overwhelm, and dissociation are not flaws to be fixed, but intelligent adaptations of a nervous system doing its best to survive? In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we’re joined by Dr. Megan Anna Neff, clinical psychologist, aut...
Jun 16, 2025•52 min•Season 4Ep. 55
We often think of trauma healing as a personal journey, a solitary path shaped by diagnosis, insight, and effort. But what if true transformation isn’t cognitive at all? What if the real healing starts in the nervous system, in the body, and in community? In this powerful close to Season 4 of Trauma Rewired, Elisabeth Kristof and Jennifer Wallace reflect on the deepest insights and recurring themes that shaped this season: from chronic stress and burnout to neurodivergence, from shame and diagno...
Jun 09, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 4Ep. 54
We often think of gut health as a matter of diet. What we eat, how we digest, and how we eliminate. But what if your digestive issues, bloating, or IBS symptoms aren’t just physical? What if your gut is holding onto unprocessed emotional trauma, stress, and nervous system dysregulation? In this episode of Trauma Rewired, we’re joined by Christy Nault, a root cause health practitioner and founder of Hormone Glow Up and Microflow Healing. Christy sits down with Elisabeth and Jennifer for a powerfu...
Jun 02, 2025•49 min•Season 4Ep. 53
We often think of trauma as a deeply personal experience, shaped by our childhood, relationships, and emotional wounds. But what if some of our deepest pain didn’t start with us? What if trauma is embedded in the very systems we’re born into - our medical institutions, cultural ideologies, and societal norms? In today’s episode, we’re joined by Dr. Tayla Shanaye, somatic therapist, scholar, and expert in birth trauma and structural oppression. Tayla joins Elisabeth and Jennifer for a powerful ex...
May 26, 2025•48 min•Season 4Ep. 52
We often think of healing as an individual journey—going inward to process unresolved trauma, grief, and pain from our past. But what about collective trauma, grief, and pain? We rarely consider the healing that must take place beyond ourselves, addressing the unprocessed wounds we carry as a community. True healing requires creating safety both within and around us, allowing us to move beyond our personal experiences and contribute to something greater than our own individual worlds. On today’s...
May 23, 2025•47 min•Season 4Ep. 51
What happens when your body feels more than your mind can make sense of?In this deeply grounding episode of Trauma Rewired, Elisabeth and Jennifer open up a necessary and often overlooked conversation about peak somatic experiences—powerful moments of healing that happen in the body, not the mind. Whether you’re drawn to psychedelics, breathwork, or trauma release exercises, this episode unpacks the neurobiological, emotional, and spiritual layers of somatic breakthroughs. But more importantly, ...
May 19, 2025•51 min•Season 4Ep. 50
“Integration” is a word that gets thrown around in the healing world, but what does it really mean? In this powerful episode of Trauma Rewired, Elisabeth and Jennifer unravel the true meaning of integration, not as a final step, but as the heart of sustained transformation. Without integration, even the most profound somatic release, emotional breakthrough, or psychedelic insight can quickly fade back into old survival patterns. The nervous system, always seeking safety and familiarity, needs ti...
May 12, 2025•51 min•Season 4Ep. 49
Society has long framed addiction as a character flaw—but at Trauma Rewired, we know that couldn’t be further from the truth. Addiction isn’t about who we are at our core; it’s about how we’ve learned to survive in chaotic, neglectful, or unsupported environments. As humans, we’re always seeking homeostasis. When we don’t have the tools—or the environment—to support that, we adapt in the ways we know how. Just as trauma and addiction can rewire the brain, healing and regulation can too. In today...
May 05, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 4Ep. 48
Our brain and nervous systems are incredibly protective—they can shield us from overwhelming stimuli by shutting out sensations. This mechanism plays a central role in depersonalization and derealization (DPDR), causing you to feel detached and like you are observing yourself from a distance. While these dissociative states can offer short-term protection, chronic experiences can lead to further dysregulation as unprocessed emotions accumulate. In today’s episode, Elisabeth and Jennifer dive int...
Apr 28, 2025•44 min•Season 4Ep. 47
