Attachment, Relational Stress, and Rewiring Complex Trauma

Today we're diving deep into the connections between complex trauma, attachment wounds, and the body's response to stress in relationships. In this episode, we're reconnecting with some powerful insights from past conversations. Like our episode on complex trauma is an attachment wound and our exploration with Matt Bush

on stress response in relationships. Our goal in bringing these episodes back and weaving them together is to bring these concepts together in a new way to help you connect some dots or digest the information on a deeper to really integrate it differently and understand how these different elements shape both our internal and

our external world. Because while every relationship holds some level of stress, because none of us are perfect communicators, the big question really is, does that stress get resolved or does it build over time? As children, we're not equipped to set boundaries or articulate our needs fully. We really rely on adults around us to help regulate that stress. But if we don't have that support, the nervous system is left in a heightened state. A constant stress response,

bracing, resisting connection. And even though that initial response is protective, if the stress doesn't relent over time, the body becomes very depleted and exhausted. We can only maintain that state for so long. So today we're gonna look at how unresolved stress, especially relationally from attachment wounds of complex trauma, affects our nervous system,

our health and our behavior. And we'll explore how the stress shows up in our bodies, shapes our patterned responses, and impacts our ability to connect, to communicate, to set boundaries now in adulthood. So by weaving these episodes together, we hope you'll have a clear understanding of how attachment, stress and the nervous system are intricately woven

together. And also some new tools and ways of thinking about this that offer maybe a little bit more self compassionate, a little bit more altitude and practical practices that you can use to navigate through this in your own life. Welcome to Trauma Rewired, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous system,

how trauma lives in the body, and what. You can do to heal. I'm your co host, Elizabeth Christoph, founder of Brainbase.com, an online platform that integrates applied neurology, somatics and emotional processing for behavior change, trauma re patterning and personal growth. And I'm also the founder of Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification, an ICF accredited course for therapists, healers, practitioners to bridge the gap between cognitive and

somatic work. And I'm your co host, Jennifer Wallace, a neurosomatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide. And I bring your nervous system into. Your peak somatic experiences, maximizing your potential for healing and Growth. And I'm also one of the educators at the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching certification. I'm so excited to sit here with the two of you, Matt and Elizabeth. I'm excited to be back. Thanks for having me back on the

podcast. And yeah, there's a lot we can talk about with the way that our brains develop as young people and individuals that start to create a lens or perspective where stress is naturally and kind of always part of the equation. And then what happens because of that within our stress responses, our physical body and our neurology as well.

So this will be great. Our brains are social organs crisscrossed with neural networks dedicated to communicating and receiving the messages between one another. Not only did our brains develop for communication through language, but through bodily processes, emotions, physiological reactions, and our brain structures are really built to convey messages across the

social synapse. We talked about that social synapse in episode one, which is the space between each other where we communicate through subconscious and nonverbal messages, nervous system to nervous system. And so when we interact with each other, we're really impacting each other's biological state and influencing the long term construction

of each other's brains. And if we think about all of that, how we are constantly interacting with each other and impacting our brain function in this way, we can really see how our attachment patterns play such a huge role in our current, past and future brain function. Right? The health of our nervous system, our

stress load. And in some ways, self regulation is not really an accurate term that doesn't really exist because it's always regulation and relationship, whether that's regulation with nature or our senses or parts of ourselves as human beings, other parts of ourselves as human beings.

And did we develop in a way where relationships feel safe, where connection is regulating, or are we primed for protection over connection and our relationships, by and large, and I know this is changing on an individual basis all the time, but like, by and large, are relationships dysregulating and stressful? Do our patterns drive us to develop relationships and support networks that are conducive to our health and our growth, to feeling safe, exploring the world around us, or towards enmeshed,

dysregulating, stressful relationships? And in that way, complex trauma is at its root, an attachment wound. And the long term effects of developmental trauma on our health, our ACE scores, disease, mental health, addiction, all of this can stem from deficits in or hypervigilance or a lens of threat in our

social brain and nervous system. And so when we interact with this web of human connection, how we are primed for attachment really changes what we're experiencing inside of our physiology, inside of our body. And so human beings aren't isolated. Part of being a human being is in being in relationship. And with complex trauma, maintaining connection and relationship can be inherently dysregulating with a heavy increase in chronic stress.

So you have both this deep need for social interaction, for development, for co regulation, for stress relief and social safety. But you also have a need for protection against the threat and the stress that that attachment caused historically. Right. The intimacy and connection have caused us on an individual level and really primed us for

threat in that connection. The problem, especially in a developmental kind of perspective, is when the stress doesn't go away, like we stand up to it, we resist it in whatever way we know how as a child by adapting to the situation in order to survive. But if the stress remains day after day and month after month, that's when it starts to have this profound effect on our neurotags and on the physical body because of its activation

of this HPA axis. Because we're being put into a kind of an ongoing survival threat over and over and over and over. And our body's going to try to protect us, it's going to try to resist, but then eventually it's going to become fatigued and be exhausted by the situation and then we get into like a maladaptive coping mechanisms at that point. I have a nervous system that was primed for

protection over connection. And I really have always yearned for deeper connection with them my whole life, but at the same time been very scared of it. It really didn't feel safe for me and I think stemming from misattunement and an environment that couldn't help me regulate. I found myself under a lot of threat, which led to a lot of protective mechanisms like binge eating, anxiety and depression. A lot of TV numbing out

like it would just all around. It was just too much. You know, as a child with developmental child, for any child with a high chronic stress load, attachment is unsafe. And an insecure attachment develops, as we'd like to say here, due to this chronic nature of environmental stress and that becomes

hardwired in our physical bodies. And the job of one of the jobs of the HPA axis is to turn the stress and emotions into physical sensations, releasing the hormones, the chemical baths that over time these high states, which are actually ongoing threat adaptations, are problematic and could lead to disease states in the body, I. E. Stage 3 breast cancer. Like what I was training for was not a nervous system that was primed for connection, but I was training for survival.

And the nervous system of anyone with ACE scores is that the training is never over. That hardwired survival isn't over until we come to the place where we say, this is it. Like, I am going to make the intentional conscious changes and be a conscious part of the path that I'm on and get very intentional

about things. Yeah. It really links in my mind why high ACE scores and developmental trauma lead to such a high stress state in the body, and then why those physical outcomes or maladaptive behaviors are the result of that. And so much of this can be shaped during

our development. We know there are a lot of studies looking at PTSD and CPTSD as being associated with abnormalities in the function of the HPA axis, but I was looking at one particular meta analysis that was talking about emerging evidence suggesting that failures in social regulation of the HPA axis in young children that could be manifested either from neglect or abuse. So either not getting the care that you need or having abusive care could play a role in

how it shapes their corticolimbic circuits. Right. These connections between the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala and hippocampus that integrates our emotion with cognition produces a lot of these behavioral outputs. And our responses to our environment modulates pain and really is involved in processing and experiencing threat that

then we encounter later in life. So it's really shaping how we respond to stress later in life because of our development, because of the way our HPA axis becomes easily activated or responds in a really activating to the nervous system producing all of those hormones. And so now as I'm moving through the world because of that development, especially in this season and looking at it in terms of relationship, I'm primed to have a higher stress response in situations. So I'm less resilient. I'm

experiencing more of that in my body. And it's because of how all of that was formed during development. Yeah, the developmental stages and environment and circumstances play a huge role in this. And as we go through developmental stages as a young child or as an adolescent, what we're doing is basically training our nervous system of how it's going to survive not only physically, but also

socially out in the big wide world. And the period of childhood in adolescence is supposed to be, for lack of a better term, like a training grounds to allow us to learn or refine the skills, to train the skills of social connection, of self regulation, of Behavior, stress and response. Like these are things that we're training along the way without even sometimes without being aware that we're training them.

So development plays a huge role. We get in this situation where, okay, something happens as a child, trajectory shifted. Now I develop for another 15 to 20 years on top of that, just progressing down those pathways and predictive natures. And then at the end of it, I look up as an adult and I go, how did I even get here? Why are things so the way they are? Like, there's so much stress in relationships and connection, there's so much threat in

intimacy. I don't know how to communicate in a way that's able to meet my needs and maintain my boundaries. And it would be an easy way, although maybe an oversimplification to go, let's understand. First, it's not your fault, but based on that initial shift, things begin to develop in a different way, right? And then I think it's also really important to remember why connection needs are so critical to our felt sense of safety in the world, why social connection is so important,

and that it really is a survival need. And even if we trace it back all the way to infancy, if we think about what is most important to our survival as an infant, as a very young child, it's not survival of the citizen who can run fastest or hit hardest. It's who has a caregiver that's most attuned to their needs and can provide them with the things that they need. Not only food and shelter, but also co regulation and a safe place to express emotion, to explore the

world, right? And the first thing that we learn about our caregivers is the ability of our caregivers to make us feel safe, whether that exists or not. And our nervous system and our brain start adapting to that immediately because it is critical to our survival brain, to our ability

to stay alive. And then that patterning and those adaptations are happening at a really important time in our development and have long lasting impacts into how we then feel inside of our body in other relationships and other intimate relationships around other human beings, intimate or not. And so we can really replay those and be driven into stress responses or protective behaviors, or we can feel safe and be able to communicate and

be open and express ourselves. And all of that is patterned pretty early from a survival perspective. John Bowlby, who was a British developmental psychologist, and he's best known as the originator of attachment theory, which was an evolutionary theory rooted in the innate need of very young children to develop a close emotional bond with their primaries and caregivers. He explored the behavioral and psychological consequences of both strong and weak emotional bonds between

mothers and their young children. And although through the course of his work, Bowlby does talk about the network that could become the caregivers, but he really puts a huge focus on the bond between mothers and their young children when he develops attachment theory, One of the tenets of which is that very young children who fail to develop close emotional bonds with a caregiver Will experience behavioral problems in their

life. Over the course of this evolutionary theory of attachment, Bowlby studied many different demographics and controlled studies. His maternal deprivation hypothesis was a large contributor to attachment theory. And this suggests that continual attachment disruption between the infant and primary caregiver could result in long term cognitive, social and emotional difficulties

for that infant. And it becomes a prototype for all future social relationships, Allowing individuals to predict, control and manipulate interactions with others. For example, the extent to which an individual perceives himself or herself as worthy of love and care. And information regarding the availability and reliability of others. This framework is the emotional representation of the infant's first attachment relationship and forms the

basis of an individual's attachment style. A person's interaction with others is guided by memories and expectations from their internal model, which influence and help evaluate their contact with others. And so, as we look at complex trauma as an attachment wound, we can see how the extent of this person's perception of themselves as they are worthy of love and care, or whatever information they are getting from their

mental representations for understanding the world. We can see that as complex trauma begins to take its hold and effects on a young person's body, how it would be a disruptor to the primary caregiver. If the primary caregiver is maybe emotionally unavailable, physically unavailable, or is maybe even harmful to that infant as they are growing up and viewing the world and beginning to form these attachment bonds with the. With the social world.

I've heard Matt say before, I think. In one of our NSI classes that from an NSI perspective, attachment style is basically the way a young nervous system seeks to regulate and feel safe in the room after a chaotic event. And that basically we can look at attachment styles as all different ways to regulate a nervous system. Do I engage more, Do I dissociate more? And that the child is always searching, acting certain ways for love and care. And in the end, that

could be through objects, through food and through. We try basically many things until we get there, or could go, that we rebel against things along the way as well from people that maybe we should think that we're supposed to replicate, but in turn, we rebel against it. Matt, do you want to speak to how a mother's nervous system impacts a child's?

So the quote that kind of goes along with this is we say that a parent's unconscious becomes a child's first reality, like the primary caregiver, which, if we're talking about the mother or whoever's there, like they're unconscious, their availability, their emotional state, their physical nearness to the child, all of that becomes the reality that that child is first exposed to, whether they want it or not. And their brain is going to begin to develop

within those circumstances, whether they wanted to or not. So what happens is that all of those things begin to mold and shape how that little brain develops. And so to kind of put a few different words on it, I'm going to pull a different model here and kind of layer it with attachment theory. It's a model that was created in the military much, much later, but it's called the OODA loop. And the OODA is O O D A. And just very briefly, what this stands for is observe, orient,

decide and act. Okay? And then it creates a cycle. So after you act, it creates new observations which you have to orient to make a new decision and then act again. So whenever this child is growing up in the situation where the primary caregiver may or may not be emotionally available, may or may not be physically available, may or may not be providing the nurture that's

required. And that goes to speak to everything from physical sustenance and food to safety of the physical environment, particular sites and sounds that the baby will need to develop. All of that stuff we're kind of putting under the umbrella of nurture for everything that is or is not present and provided for the baby's brain, we're going through this cycle of observing what's the state that we're in, orienting to it, making decisions, and then acting upon it. And we build

on previous experiences. Right? So that immature brain doesn't have the same reasoning ability as an adult brain. It can't go, oh, mom's not available because she has to work two or three jobs. Mom's not emotionally available because she's in threat from a relationship or lack of support or a lack of resources. The nurturing resources are not there because there are either financial struggles, economic issues, family issues going on, loss of other social support. Like there's all these things. A

baby can't rationalize any of that. Right. That immature brain doesn't understand Any of those things. So all it has to go on, all it can build upon. This is so cool because we've said this about the adult brain in previous seasons, but all that little brain has to go on is the inputs that it's receiving

or not receiving in this situation. And the whole point of this episode, in this idea of attachment theory is that the majority of inputs that are received during those early months are social inputs. Right. The brain is not as focused on the actual sensory data, like, do I see it, do I hear it, do I feel it? It's actually starting to put in layers of

social meaning and interpretation. Okay, so where the mother's nervous system can begin to impact the child in this situation is what state is the mother's or the primary caregiver's nervous system in? Are they constantly in stress and threat, like dumping adrenaline and cortisol into the system? The baby's nervous system is going to perceive those things, and it will start to predict and respond in kind.

Right. So from a very early age, if you have an infant nervous system that begins to have this, I guess you could call it adrenal response. Right? Like activating that HPA axis of dumping adrenaline into the system, dumping cortisol, increasing survival hormones, that's going to slow or modify

brain development. Right. We. We know that as adults, if we're stuck in our survival brain and our limbic system is kind of running the show, that our frontal lobe and cognitive brain are not as engaged, we'll take the same concept and apply it to a baby's brain who's actually growing and developing through the

months and years. And the more often that that little infant brain is in survival mode, then you could say the less frequently it's actually in a really strong growth phase or strong developmental phase of those cognitive areas because they're not being utilized as much as the limbic and survival areas. So that little brain may develop over the years to have more of a. More of a lean toward that limbic protection or survival protection, maybe less trusting, maybe more

protective. And eventually we'll start to think about it as dysregulated or as Jennifer was talking about, to have more behavior issues. Right. But all of those things, they're just outputs. They're just outputs of that little nervous system and that little brain not having enough safe inputs to make it feel that it can let down its guard and just be present and engaged socially. So it. It kind of takes it on another path as

it goes through the developmental timeline. So fast forward to childhood, young Adolescence, teenage years. And you're going to have a nervous system that has built up years of experience of protective mechanisms and safety, survival that is probably going to get labeled as misbehaving. Yeah. I think at the crux of a lot of Volby's work is this idea of, like, do you have a saf place from which to go out and explore the world and like, grow and develop? How safe do you feel doing that?

And then that really drives so much development. And just like Jen was talking about, too, emotional development as well as brain function development. And I do think it's important, as we're talking about all of this, like, we hear a lot about attachment styles, you know, secure, disorganized,

anxious, avoidant. And one that we're not just talking about this in terms of in partnership, but like you were talking about working with teens as kids, as the way our behavior plays out in all human interactions and just interactions with the world, interactions with parts of ourselves, is really broad reaching. And then I think too, from a neurosomatic perspective, it is important to remember that, yes, these are really critical times in our development and in shaping our nervous

system. And also we are fluid and changing all of the time in response to the stimulus that we give ourselves. And so, you know, an attachment schema is built on these thousands of experiences with caretakers that become subconscious, reflexive predictions of the behaviors of others. And these schema can become activated in all of our subsequent relationships and lead us to seek other people that fit that pattern and

replay those relationships in life. But at the same time, even though these are reflective and deeply ingrained from personal experience, I know that, like, that can change with intentional training and intentional stimulus to the nervous system. It is a process like you were talking about. But I don't think anyone falls into, like, just one particular attachment style. Like I'm disorganized, or I'm

anxious or I'm avoidant. I think that's always changing depending on the relationship that we're in, depending on our stress load at the time, depending on the relationship that we have with ourself. And then I also think that that changes not just like in the moment, but over time, as we can have some agency in developing a healthier nervous system through intentional training and through safe emotional expression and developing intentionally safe relationships and partnerships,

like I have with you guys, like I have with Jen. You know, we get to practice expressing emotion together, having that be safe, regulating around it. That gives me those good reps to then take out into the world and practice in other experiences. So I just, I do think that though there are patterns that are definitely evident and we can lean more one way than the other. And I'll get into the

different types of attachment styles later. I do think that that's a little bit like cut and dry or black and white. When you really think about how a nervous system works, like yeah, I'm not just disorganized attachment. It's pretty jarring because we can see how our attachment styles were

developed without going too far. And so those changes that are occurring in our nervous system because causing all of these imbalances in a system that keeps us from adapting to stress and integrating memories appropriately and having a solid emotional foundation, it's really limiting. And when you are chronically dissociating from your childhood experience because you don't feel safe, you don't feel protected, you're not encoding the memories, your amygdala function or your

amygdala development gets totally off course. We've talked about amygdala hijacking and many other things about brain developmental within developmental trauma. And so you can see even from the diminished self expression that people who have complex trauma already feel. And so back to the NSI and the tools that we use here are priceless. They provide a high value to a situation where you can frequently feel lost

and unstable in. And then I think it's also really important to remember why connection needs are so critical to our felt sense of safety in the world, why social connection is so important, and that it really is a survival need. And even if we trace it back all the way to infancy, if we think about what is most important to our survival as an infant, as a very young child, it's not survival of the fittest and who can run

fastest or hit hardest. It's who has a caregiver that's most attuned to their needs and can provide them with the things that they need. Not only food and shelter, but also co regulation and a safe place to express emotion, to explore the world. Right? And the first thing that we learn about our caregivers is the ability of our caregivers to make us feel safe, whether that exists

or not. And our nervous system and our brain start adapting to that immediately because it is critical to our survival brain to our ability to stay alive. And then that patterning and those adaptations are happening at a really important time in our development and have long lasting impacts into how we then feel inside of our body, in other relationships and other intimate relationships around other human beings.

Intimate or not. And so we can really replay those and be driven into stress responses or protective behaviors, or we can feel safe and be able to communicate and be open and express ourselves. And all of that is patterned pretty early from a survival perspective. I think when we're talking about stress response, one of the first things I think about is the HPA axis and how our HPA axis functions. I

can jump in with that. The HPA axis is kind of code for our hypothalamic pituitary, adrenal axis, like this connection between these three parts of the body. And it really controls our stress response kind of emotionally and physically, how our body responds to stress at a hormonal level, chemical level. So the hypothalamus is part of the brain that lives just above the brainstem. So it's not a conscious part or cognitive

area, but it lives on a non cognitive level. And it's taking stress or emotions or really any kind of stress and turning it into a physical reaction. So it works in conjunction, like with the amygdala, with the thalamus, as well as our preconceived beliefs and bias about any kind of situation as to what we believe is safe or unsafe. But anytime we start to ping stress or threat on our radar, the hypothalamus is going to start to wind up and gear up. It then sends a signal to the pituitary gland,

right? And just for super basic definitions, a gland is an organ that produces hormones. So the pituitary gland lives in our brain, but we don't really think of it as area of the brain brain as much as it is its own little organ itself. So it produces our hormones. And then the hypothalamus says, hey, I need you to activate some of those hormones. And the pituitary gland is going to send one of its hormones down to our adrenal glands, which live just on top of

the kidneys in the trunk of the body. And they produce cortisol. And so they start to activate and release cortisol into our system, which is like our long term stress survival hormone that can keep us in a state of hypervigilance, high alert, ongoing threat adaptation. And that stress response is what over time starts to create really some problems in the human body. Everything from the degradation

of physical tissue with high levels of cortisol. It's easy to lose muscle mass because our body burns through muscle for energy. And we don't have as good, what's called protein synthesis to rebuild muscle. We also store more fat on our body rather than burning fat for energy. When we have high cortisol levels, it also degrades our lymphatic system and it increases immune activity so we get

more inflammation. All of this stuff starts to happen as a response, and then over time, it can easily snowball into not only an ongoing stressed nervous system, but physical disease and illness as well. Yeah. I will say, as someone with a high score and some complex PTSD and I find myself activated and in protective mode in relationship a lot. One of the biggest tools that I've gotten from neurosomatic training is finding ways to stimulate

and train and activate my insular cortex and my interoceptive system. And I'll tell you guys, right now, I am wearing some compression around my midsection so that I'm getting a boost of interoceptive stimulus as we do this podcast, because I'm engaging in relationship with you. I'm also engaging in relationship with our audience and being pretty vulnerable and

putting myself out there. And so I have all these little tools now to help that part of my brain specifically function better and drive me more toward my higher order thinking systems as I dive into all of this work and have this conversation. And so I think it's really important to remember that the part of this work is creating change in those systems and in those structures that you talked about. Yeah.

So if I can put together a couple of ideas, because it makes it for me, it makes it a little more linear so I can understand. A leads to B and then that leads me to C, and then I get D, which is what's really bugging me. Like that's what really bothers me about my behavior. So then I can trace it back. Right. So I view an attachment schema as like a lens or a paradigm of how I see the world socially. It's like

my glasses that I'm looking through. How do I perceive other people's behavior, their actions, their intentions? Even though my brain is supplying what I assume is the intention, sometimes that's still kind of how I view it. So that attachment scheme is like my lens, how I view. And then whether I get either positive or negative attachment scheme of my own behavior. Right. That's like the output, that's the response. So I have my perception and then I have my

response. And that could be both positive or negative. Where we get into the complex trauma thing is like when we have complex trauma, it's this repeated exposure to lack of safety. Especially when we're talking about cptsd. Right. We know it's usually an ongoing environmental or social lack of safety. This repeated again and again and again and again. It's usually not one big thing that happens. Like, there can be big things, but it's not just one. It's a repetitive pattern of

unsafe behavior or unsafe environments. So if I grew up in that type of environment, naturally that's going to shape my lens of how I view social interactions. Right. It's going to change my perception not only of intimate connection or family relationships, but all relationships are going to be affected by that. And so the complex trauma is kind of what has informed my attachment schema. It's what has created my lens. Then back to the output side one

more time. This is where we actually get cptsd. So when I'm thinking of, like a neurosomatic definition of cptsd, I replace PTSD with the word output. And the C just means chronic. Like, so if I have ctps, cptsd, these are my chronic outputs that I'm using over and over and over again to try to protect myself socially or interpersonally. Okay. So I always just in my brain, I try to

simplify things to go, if I want to change the output. Oh, yeah, I have that model that says I have to go back and either change the input or change the interpretation. So changing the interpretation would be starting to change my lens, change how I view it. Right. And so we could possibly do mindset work around that. Meditations, positive psychology, like all of these cool techniques, somatic experiencing, cognitive behavior therapy, plant medicine.

Like, there's lots of ways to change the interpretation or change the lens, but at some point, we also want to change the input. And that's where Jennifer was talking about our NSI tool. We have the ability to kind of buffer the inputs we're receiving from the environment by using our NSI tools at the

same time. Right. So I know it may be oversimplifying it a little bit, but in my head, if I pull it all the way back to inputs, create a schema of how I look at the world, and that schema creates my chronic outputs. Now I can see it as a model that's more linear, and I can understand what do I need to do about it or what could I possibly do about

it, right? I can go back and use my tools on my inputs. I can start changing my lens and my interpretation, and I can monitor those outputs and go, hey, let's watch how they improve. Or let's watch where I need to bring more awareness and more presence into my relationships. Then we can start to change it over time. So hopefully that is helpful and not too far off of the actual real definitions. I hope I don't oversimplify too much, but that's just how I think about things is like, how do

I get it to a point where I can do something with it? Yeah. As you were talking Jen and Matt, I was kind of just replaying that sentence. There's always relational stress. Like, relationships are always. There's going to be stress because it's two different people coming together. And then thinking back about that HPA development and our neurotag development. And so where such a big difference comes in for me is when we have complex trauma or developmental trauma, our response to that

stress in relationship is different. Right. Everybody's going to face the stress. Some people are more resilient to it, and it can be processed through and you can continue on about your life. And for other people, it's so difficult to not get stuck in, like, the rumination around the conflict in the relationship or to have this really big disproportionate response to whatever's going on in the relationship. Even at, like, a physiological level, there's a bigger activation

that's occurring inside. And then also maybe not having the skills to reregulate, to process those emotions and to come out of that stress. State, which is why it's so important. I think, to talk about, too, the tools that we use that Jen was talking about that makes life different. But for me, it's really easy to see how avoidance then comes into the picture because that stress load is so high even now. I do a lot with my nervous system, but sometimes I

know relationships are big and activating. And so I'll find myself moving into pulling back from something at this almost subconscious level, because my system is just like, it's too much. It's too much stress. And so instead of having the conversation, I'm gonna go lay down and turn off the lights and pull the windows down and numb out on social media for a while. And then when I'm in a good place, I can use my tools, I can regulate, and I can move out of that

pattern. But so much of avoidant attachment style comes from a nervous system that has learned, like, these relationships are too big and too much. And so it can really lead us to a lot of isolation when we don't have the ways to start to re pattern that stress response and then also to process the stress and the emotions that come from those interactions. Okay. One of the big responses that we've spent Quite a bit of time

this season talking about is the. The inflammatory response that comes with some of this threat reaction. We talked a lot in a previous episode on shame about the inflammation that comes when our body experiences shame. And I want to see if we can start to connect some of the dots for people here because I still think it's a far reach to wrap your mind around. Sometimes, like, I experience social threat and then I get inflamed in my body, my joints swell up, I feel heavy, I feel

bloated, I feel puffy. And yes, we can tie it to the emotion of shame. But big picture, this is part of our immune response when we're in a threat situation. And if we perceive that threat is coming from social, we can have that physical response in our body. And so I'd like to circle back a little bit on why that happens and help people understand this

reaction inside. Of themselves a little better. So that inflammation, and I love that term shame inflammation, but it's like our immune system goes into overdrive. So normally, inflammation is a way the immune system uses to heal the body, like inflammation. Technically speaking, inflammation is a good thing. It's

part of a healing response. But when we have chronic inflammation and our immune system is overproducing it or overactivating an inflammatory response, those inflammatory proteins start to become damaging to our own body tissues, which is where we get the term autoimmune disease. It can also lead to a situation where when we activate the immune system enough times, the immune system itself becomes exhausted. Right. So not only does the adrenals become exhausted, but the immune system

goes through exhaustion. And that's when you're more likely to have disease states or cancerous growth. Because on the one hand, we've been holding on to all of this type of emotional distress within our body, and then we've depleted the immune system that's supposed to be able to fight against it. And so when a cancerous growth or a disease does begin, there's no more immune system to take care of it. We've lost our internal line of

defense against that kind of stuff. So it's like this self perpetuating, self fulfilling prophecy of something bad is happening. I better go find it. Well, eventually you're going to find it, either because it finds healthy tissue to attack or because it becomes so exhausted that now the immune system is more vulnerable, the body is more vulnerable to having some kind of disease or cancer or tumor begin to

form. Oh, Matt, that's so relatable. Dating for me used to cause so Much internal conflict because of that insecure attachment style and relational trauma, complex trauma. And there's, there's also an emotional component to this stress that, Matt, you touched on and you started to answer so much of the question, like, what does it feel like to want connection and to be activated by it? And I really wanted to be loved. I mean, who doesn't, right? Like, that seems

like pretty basic need and wanted to be seen. But the truth was I couldn't have shown up. Honestly, I never really did because I thought I was too much. And so if anyone, if you think you're too much, then you're not gonna be seen. You can't be seen. That's just way too threatening. And so there was this desperation for love that really led to massive self abandoning. And then of course, naturally, thankfully, now in retrospect, those attachments fell apart.

And when they did, it was the real end of the world for a younger. For a younger version. For me to want something so badly, but seeking externally, love, validation. And so many times I neglected my intuition. And that's, you know, another thing that is strengthened through nsi. But really I lacked interdependency and so thankful once again for these tools which is also strengthened through nsi. My security and whether that was my relationship to myself, my body, my family, loved ones, it

was all riddled in shame. And it was what made them relationships, what made relationships so hard to bear was the level of shame that was so. And then the protective ways that I would behave, I also hid from people like the disordered eating, the chronic fatigue, the anxiety, the full shutdown. And I really had hardwired, freeze and fight responses. So back to that emotional impact. Last week in nsi, we were talking about shame in our neurosomatic intelligence

course. And it was coming up for a lot of people that, you know, there are so many constructs in society that can lead to shame. Big systemic stuff, trying to fit in to the herd, being a different race, having a different level of physical ability, being in a different body size, all of these things. Having neurodivergence that can put pressure on you. And a lot of the participants in the cohort were saying, like,

I, I don't want to experience shame around this. Shame is, I believe deeply that shame is a bad emotion all of the time. And I really believe that that's true. Of course, we don't. Cognitively, we understand that. I don't want to try to conform. I'm not bad for being the way that I am. But there's Also I think a recognition that needs to happen that this is a protective threat response in the body and that it is going to happen even though we

might know better, right? Like we have the, the conflict with the partner or my partner is also very. Moves into conflict and I back away from it. So I can really relate to that example and I can know cognitively, like it's okay. But the reaction in the body is so far below the conscious mind. These processes, these areas of the

brain that Jen was talking about, the way that our body responds. And so it's really important, I think, to understand, understand that this is happening physically inside of our body, this inflammation, this activated cortisol level. And so we do need to have ways to work with the body and work with the nervous system to just like you were saying, to re pattern to train intentionally to not have that same reaction. Not just cognitively, not just thinking, I don't want to respond this way.

I actually feel fine expressing myself or whatever it is. I have self worth and my affirmations. But I also need to really make my body and my nervous system understand that it can react differently by training it with intentional stimulus over and over and over again to do that re patterning that then eventually creates a different result in time. I think that is absolutely key. What you just said in that last sentence of recognizing that something different is

possible. There's so many examples just within our culture of adopting the ideas of this is just the way I am, or this is the way that it has to be, or it always has been, always will be kind of a final or defeatist type of mentality about a situation. And it doesn't have to be that way. That's one of the coolest things about neurology, is that it can always change. Your neuroplastic brain is always changing until you die, until you pass

away. So it's never stuck in place. But coming back to the brain areas that Jen was talking about, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula, or the anterior insula, those are trainable as well. Matt, I think you really started to answer the question like what happens now? And how do we rewire attachment from the perspective of neurosomatic intelligence? And first and foremost we have to establish safety within ourselves and within our own nervous systems and

bodies. It's learning the protective responses and asking the questions of how and why do I feel unsafe within this relationship to self, with the relationship to others and really at the society at large. And it is a slow process in the beginning, like Elizabeth was saying, but we have to cultivate the capacity to understand ourselves and to create that safety so that that

capacity can then expand and grow. And this curiosity of why and how begins to uncover subconscious patterns which encompass limiting beliefs and behavior patterns that we don't really want to engage in that may have become maladaptive over time to as a protective output from our complex trauma. And so as we uncover these patterns once again from the framework of safety, we can begin to

make new moves and take new actions. And how we are wired to create those new subconscious patterns in the way that we just ultimately move through the world. And with our NSI tools, we have the ability to override the subconscious mind and many of our brains getting up into that insular cortex that you talked about earlier and just completely bypassing the subconscious mind so that our higher order systems of thinking can do what they are intended to do. And

that is to inhibit. So that the higher order systems of thinking can inhibit the back brain and that survival brain that has us running in these limiting beliefs and patterns. Perfectly said, one of my favorite things to do is when we can take the time to do that introspection that you talked about Jennifer and asked how and why did I respond the way I did or behave the way I did? My favorite follow up question is to ask what

could I try differently next time? And you I want to answer this in a positive aspect, a building up way, not a destructive way. But the coolest thing about the nervous system is that it, it's so much seeks novelty that if I can come up with even one idea of how I could handle something differently next time when I get to that point in the future, there's a pretty good chance my nervous system is gonna try that new idea. Just because it's new and it wants to go, hey, let's see what

happens. And it can really open up new doors and create new experiences. Because even though we might have a thousand experiences that went one way, if we plant this little seed of like, maybe I could do it different. When we get to that moment, sometimes our brain will choose the one instead of the thousands just because it's new. And it'll go, ooh, this is going to be fun because it wants to experience something different. Matt, I think you

really started to answer the question like what happens now? And how do we rewire attachment from the perspective of neurosomatic intelligence? And first and foremost we have to establish safety within ourselves and within our own nervous systems and bodies. It's learning the protective responses and Asking the questions of how and why do I feel unsafe within this relationship to self, with the relationship to others and really at the society

at large. And it is a slow process in the beginning, like Elizabeth was saying. But we have to cultivate the capacity to understand ourselves and to create that safety so that that capacity can then expand and grow. And this curiosity of why and how begins to uncover subconscious patterns which encompass limiting beliefs and behavior patterns that we don't really want to engage in, that may have become maladaptive over time to as a protective output

from our complex trauma. And so as we uncover these patterns once again from the framework of safety, we can begin to make new moves and take new actions. And how we are wired to create those new subconscious patterns in the way that we just ultimately move through the world. And with our NSI tools, we have the ability

to override the subconscious mind. And many of our brains getting up into that insula cortex that you talked about earlier and just completely bypassing the subconscious mind so that our higher order systems of thinking can do what they are intended to do. And that is to inhibit. So that the higher order systems of thinking can inhibit the back brain and that survival brain that has us running in these limiting beliefs and

patterns. Perfectly said, one of my favorite things to do is when we can take the time to do that introspection that you talked about Jennifer and asked how and why did I respond the way I did or behave the way I did? My favorite follow up question is to ask what could I try differently next time? And you. I want to answer this in a positive aspect, a building up way, not a

destructive way. But the coolest thing about the nervous system is that it, it's so much seeks novelty that if I can come up with even one idea of how I could handle something differently next time when I get to that point in the future, there's a pretty good chance my nervous system is gonna try that new idea. Just because it's new and it wants to go, hey, let's see what happens. And it can really open up new doors and create new

experiences. Cause even though we might have a thousand experiences that went one way, if we plant this little seed of like, maybe I could do it different. When we get to that moment, sometimes our brain will choose the one instead of the thousands just because it's new and it'll go, ooh, this is gonna be fun.

Because it wants to experience something different. Yeah. I will say in line with everything that you guys have been saying, it is really helpful for me to think of relationships as outputs, relationship patterns as outputs of my nervous system. And just to speak really personally, like, I'm 40 years old, and I'm right now in the only safe, intimate partnership that I've experienced in my entire life. It's very

new for me. And as I have been navigating this over the past few years of being in safe partnership, a lot of these patterns have come to the surface because they have the safe foundation to start to rise up. And it was really difficult for me in the beginning. It was really difficult for me to look at that in myself, to see my own reactions, to feel it in my own body. Now that I've come out of dissociation more through neuro training, I can actually feel what's going on inside of myself. And

to have to sit with that and be with those emotions. And it has. It's been a real process. And what I know has been true for me is that at some point I knew I want this for myself. I don't want to live a life where I can't have these intimate relationships, this partnership and these connections

just because of my past. And I really made a commitment to my nervous system training, to implementing it in relationship, in presence, in relationship, and in working with my nervous system, like, I really upped my game to increase my capacity so that I could grow in this particular way and not end up getting really sick, stressed out, shut down, and overwhelmed by trying to have this relationship. And I will say, like, it's

changed. Like, it's changing all the time. It's still work. I'm putting the reps in and putting the work in, doing all the things, the therapy and the this and the that and the somatics. But with the neuro training, like I feel, and I see this tremendously deep level of healing is. It becomes possible for me and. And I watch that in myself and with my

clients. And I just. It really gives me a lot of hope about how when we create capacity in our nervous system, capacity for safety and connection and presence, the healing for that little girl, that disorganized little girl that was thrashing around and hurting herself, like so much healing is possible. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered medical or psychological advice.

We often discuss lived experiences through traumatic events and sensitive topics that deal with complex developmental and systemic trauma that may be unsettling for some listeners. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. If you are in the United States and you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health and is in immediate danger, please call 9 for specific services relating to mental health, please see the full disclaimer in the show notes.