What most healing and personal development programs. Don'T tell you is that your patterns, your behaviors, your emotional responses are outputs of your nervous system trying to keep you safe. And changing your thoughts won't change those deep rooted patterns. You have to go deeper inside. Rewiretrial.com, you'll learn how to train your. Nervous system for greater capacity so that. You can navigate life with more ease, more presence, more connection. We have five live classes a week
with expert instructors. We have an on demand library with. Thousands of recorded neurosomatic training sessions. And we have an incredible, supportive, inclusive. Community of people just like you. Doing this deep work together. You don't have to keep fighting against. Your own nervous system. You can re pattern it. Start your two free week trial now@rewiretrial.com. Have you ever felt like you're floating outside your body, watching yourself from a
distance? Or like the world around you is foggy, dreamlike or unreal? This is called depersonalization and derealization. It's a survival response of the nervous system. Your brain isn't broken, it's protecting you. When stress, trauma or emotional overwhelm become too much, your nervous system shuts down awareness to help you survive. But what exactly is happening in the brain? And more importantly, how do you start feeling real again? You know, the other day I was
really triggered by an argument with my partner. It was such a small thing, but it tapped into a deep wound of feeling like I was being called crazy. That one, that one gets me every time. And I realized that suddenly it was I was speaking, but it was also like I wasn't speaking. I was watching myself speak from outside. Of my body and I had no. Idea why I was saying the things I was saying. My consciousness, it was like my consciousness left my body
and there was a. Robot version of me going through the. Motions of this conversation. These experiences, depersonalization and derealization, are survival responses of the nervous system, not psychological states. And like all outputs, they're on a spectrum. According to a 2009 study, depersonalization and. Derealization disorder affects about 1 to 2%. Of the population chronically. But these transient episodes are common in. At least 50% of the population. At
some point in life, especially if. You have complex trauma, many people experiencing DPDR feel broken or crazy, when in reality it is a nervous system adaptation to overwhelm. 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 Kristof, founder. Of Brainbase.com, an online community where we use applied neurology somatics stress processing for
improved nervous system health, resilience and regulation. And I'm also the founder of the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching certification, an ICF accredited course for coaches, therapists and practitioners who want to bring practical tools and a framework to incorporate the nervous system into. All of their practices. And I'm your co host, Jennifer Wallace, a neurosomatic psychedelic preparation and integration
guide. And I bring your nervous system health into your peak somatic experiences like psychedelic experiences maximizing your potential for healing and growth through the nervous system. And I'm also one of the educators at the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching certification. And I'm really excited to have this conversation today because we love to talk about dissociation. And there's been a lot of questions for us to prepare for this conversation. Like, we've
gotten a lot of requests for depersonalization, derealization. So we're. We have heard you and it should be good. Dissociation is a broad term and it should be good. So here we are really excited to record on this protective response. Dissociation is a broad term that describes a disruption in normal consciousness, memory, identity, perception or awareness of self and surroundings. It is a survival response often triggered by overwhelming stress
or trauma. It serves as a protective mechanism when the nervous system perceives a threat to too great to process. Depersonalization and derealization are specific types of dissociation, but not all dissociation involves them. So here we go into this deep dive of depersonalization and derealization. Yeah, I want to start out maybe. Just by defining these. Some people may be very intimately familiar. With what they are. Or maybe not so much. Right. So just unpacking a little bit what we mean.
And I'm gonna take us through a little bit on depersonalization. So again, like you were saying, Jennifer, this is a type of dissociation where. You are feeling detached from your own. Body or your thoughts or your emotions or your actions. Like you're an outside observer of yourself. And you might find that with thoughts or even saying like, it doesn't feel real or I can see myself doing things, but I don't feel like I'm the one doing them. I feel like a robot. I've lost my
emotions. This happens to me a lot. Like I'm doing something, but I don't. Feel the emotional experience of it. I've detached from that, from my internal. Sensations, from the emotional experience. And the neurological basis of this is that we have reduced activity in certain areas of the brain where we interpret and process this information, the sensory information. So we have reduced activity in the anterior insula, which is responsible for self awareness. And
also those interoceptive signals, the feelings. That come from inside of our body, we have actually increase in our prefrontal cortex activity. So at the prefrontal cortex we've talked a lot about on here. And in this situation it is actually. Turned up to inhibit our emotional processing. So our prefrontal cortex can inhibit a lot of our limbic activity and our. Brainstem activity as needed, so that we're. Not moving into as much of a triggered response, but it can also, when.
We move into patterns of repression and. Dissociation like this, it can actually blunt. Some of those signals to blunt the distress. So it is overriding the emotional processing there. And there's a disconnection that's happening between. Our limbic system and, and our different sensory processing areas of the brain. And so we want to remember big picture. And we have many episodes on here. Talking about dissociation, that this is a survival response,
right? Fight or flight is not an option. And so our brain disconnects from our bodily sensations, from awareness of either our internal environment or our external environment to reduce overwhelm. And in this specific case of depersonalization. It'S often a coping mechanism for that really intense emotional pain. Our brain is numbing the felt sense. Of ourself to keep
us from being. Overwhelmed by the emotional experience. And if we have that pattern in, during development, because experiencing emotions was dangerous, right? We had these big emotions from big. Experiences and, and we weren't in an. Environment where it was safe to express them. Or maybe we weren't in a supported environment at all. Like there was no one else around. To help us regulate with that. And so we, we don't have the skills to process
those emotions. And especially at that young age, the. Nervous system can be very overwhelmed, very dysregulated. And so we develop this protective output of disconnecting from the emotional experience. And then we have derealization. And this is the feeling like external world is unreal, it's distant, foggy, or even distorted. You might find yourself saying things like everything looks strange, like I'm in a dream or a video game or something. Like sounds and sights feel muted or far
away, or colors seem washed out. The world feels two dimensional. And so on a neurological basis this is over activation of the prefrontal cortex. It's Blunting emotional and sensory experience. There's the suppression of the amygdala. The amygdala is reducing the emotional connection to the environment. And then there's also disruptions in the visual and auditory senses, in the sensory processing of the visual and the auditory senses.
And so derealization happens when the brain filters out sensory input to prevent further overwhelm. I work with a client who identifies heavily with depersonalization derealization, and she often describes her experience as being in a plexiglass box. So she can't really be part of the environment. She's distant from the sensory input and from the emotional experience and often feels like she is not there and the one experiencing the experience.
Yep. As I was preparing for this episode. I was reading some. Some from Dr. Elena Beazibova, who is an expert in depersonalization and derealization. And there was a quote from her that said, depersonalization is not a defect in perception, but a defense mechanism against unbearable affect. And so I want to break that. Down a little bit, right? It's not a fundamental character flaw in our personality, and it's not even about having a deficit in our perception,
but it is our brain and our nervous. System intentionally doing this to protect us. Because the affect, the sensory experience of the emotion, is unbearable. We do not have the capacity in our nervous system to regulate through that experience. So it's not that our brain is. Broken, but actually our nervous system is doing what it was designed to do in moments of extreme stress to create distance from those overwhelming sensations. And so I
just can see all. Of that, like, happening inside of the body of the client that you were talking about, or inside of my own. Body, like, all of this sensory input coming in, and then the internal experience, the physiology of that emotional experience, and especially when we have interoceptive accuracy and. Awareness issues where there's a large threat response coupled with those sensations, and we're. Really getting pushed into an activated state. It's like the dial has got to be
turned down. And that is on a spectrum, right? For some of us, it just gets. Turned down a little. And for some of us, it gets turned down a lot. So that. That disconnect is. Is quite big. But all of that is in proportion to how dysregulating, how activating that sensory experience is. And in dissociation, generally speaking, we have this altered connectivity between our limbic system and our. Our prefrontal cortex, our higher brain areas. And
we've talked a lot in here. About the insular cortex and that Being. A big processing center for our internal sensations, part of our interoceptive system and. Our limbic system, and how we can have a very highly reactive limbic system. And so I just want to talk about this because I think something is important to understand. It's not that those emotions are not happening in our body. It's not that our limbic system isn't. Having a big response to whatever's occurring. All of that is still
happening. It's just our brain's ability to process it that changes. And it's the ability of those sensations and that emotional experience to be interpreted and integrated in a way that it's part of our conscious experience. So even when I'm dissociating from the experience, like I'm having the argument I'm. Triggered, I'm talking, but I don't feel any emotion with it. It's not that those emotions and those physical responses aren't happening in my body.
That dysregulation, the inflammation, the changes in. My heart rate, like all of that is happening, I'm just not aware of it so that I don't get further. Dysregulated and pushed into an extreme stress. State that my body can't come back from. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so even if we're dissociating, it's important to remember this stuff is still. Happening in our body and does still need to be processed. And now we're not able to process. It because we're in that dissociated state.
That's right. That's right. Because with derealization, like when we dissociate, our nervous system is telling us that the environment is too dangerous for us to be fully present in. And so in this case, for the brain, we have a suppressed amygdala and altered sensory processing. This could come from trauma overstimulation or sensory mismatch, which we've talked about several times here on the podcast,
affecting perception. And so. So there's often an overactivation of the periaqueductal gray because we are moving into a freeze response. This affects our threat perception, pain modulation, and that you may feel less pain when you are in a dissociated state. The senses are muted
because the sensory input is too much. And so once again, this could be a past trauma, but also it really could be an issue with sensory processing, like a vestibular deficit, a sensory mismatch, increased sensitivity to stimulus because of natural biodiversity and differences in our sensory processing. Yeah, I think that's a really important distinction to make. When I think about these two things. I kind of split them apart. And the depersonalization is
when the internal. Stimulus is too much and overwhelming. And the derealization is when the external. Stimulus is too much and too overwhelming. And then I have that disconnect from my environment. And so when I think about a lot of like different types of neurodivergence. And sensory processing issues that could very much be leading to the derealization. Because lights and sounds and textures are. All overwhelming to the nervous system. It doesn't necessarily have to be like.
From a particular traumatic incident. It's just my capacity to process that. Amount of environmental stimuli. If you've ever felt like healing modalities just aren't working for you, like you're stuck in the same cycles. No matter how much mindset work you do, you are not broken. It's not about your willpower, it's about your nervous system.
At RewireTrial.com, we take you on a 90 day guided journey through applied neurology, somatic emotional processing and stress training so that you can map your stress response and finally understand what's been keeping you stuck. Heal dysregulation at the root. Instead of trying to fix behaviors on the surface, train your nervous system for resilience so that safety and peace come
from within. Join us for two free weeks inside Rewire and get full access to live daily classes, expert support and our massive on demand library of nervous system tools. Start your rewire journey today@rewiretrial.com and I. Think it's just a really important place to just remind people that our brain speaks a language of sensory inputs. That is the language that our brain speaks. So when we are having these blocks or voids, it's kind of perpetuating
the experience. Yes, let's talk about that for just a second. Because it does become sort of a loop, right? Yeah. It's like I am sensitive to these things, so I start to dissociate and. Repress or lose my ability to process. And integrate different sensory experiences and then that can further my sensitivity to that because I'm what we do, we get better at. Right. And so if I'm losing my skill. To be able to process and be. With those sensory inputs, I'm not getting. Fuel
and activation to the areas of the brain that process it. I'm not getting myelination on those neural pathways. And so my deficits in these different areas, whether that's interoceptive or vestibular or whatever it is that's causing that issue. It's getting less and less stimulus and less and less. Yeah, the deficit is expanding and then I'm more reactive and I'm more likely. To go into that dissociative state more. Quickly because it's just feeding on itself. Yeah,
that's exactly. That's exactly. And what we do with NSI is sensory processing. It is important because sometimes it's like. What are we doing here? You know, and people might come on. The site and be doing these little exercises and it's like, what is the point of retraining my eyes to be able to take in information from my periphery or retraining my cranial nerves to be able to function well? And it's not just for that particular. In that moment to get a better. Output, to get a
better reassessment. It's as we rehabilitate these over time, we're creating changes in this big output. By making our sensory input systems function. Better through the delivery of accurate input. Like it's so. It's so simple. Actually, I'm so excited to carry on into the rest of this conversation. I find NSI so exciting. Yeah, me too. Me too. It's such a practical path for working with some of this because it can be.
I mean, when we're at this point in the output spectrum of like dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, it's not very likely that we're going to be able to cognitively talk our way back from this. It's just already. It's not part of our consciousness. And so cognitively trying to override is a difficult thing to do in
these moments. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about this connection with CPTs and depersonalization and derealization because they are both linked to early attachment trauma, particularly early childhood emotional neglect. That was what I was able to. Find quite a bit of research on, actually. And inconsistent caregiving and attachment
disruptions. Right. So when a child is constantly lacking co regulation from a caregiver, their nervous system adapts by suppressing emotional responses and self awareness to protect them from repeated relational distress. And we've talked about this many times on here. But when our emotional experience as a child, there's several ways that this can be harmful. If we don't have the right family. Situation or environmental situation to be able to process
it. Right. When we experience emotions, if we express them, that severs the attachment to our caregiver because they're overwhelmed by it and they dissociate. Or maybe they react to it in a fight manner or fight manner, they, you know, leave us or we get punished. Right. We learn in a very deep level that it is dangerous to experience these sensations. And then also too, if we're left alone as children with these big emotions. And we don't have
anyone to co. Regulate with us or to hold space for that or to help us process. In a safe environment, it is extremely disruptive to the regulation of our nervous system to our homeostatic baseline. And we experience a lot of stress. Hormones and a lot of changes in. Our physiology that at a deep somatic level are sending huge red flags that this is not safe. And so we start to disconnect from all of this. And when we have these attachment styles that are
insecure, right. Whether that's anxious or avoidant or disorganized that we've explored so much on here. We are significantly more likely to experience. Some of these outputs like depersonalization and derealization, because we don't have the patterning. Of a secure attachment where we can. Express and feel and embody and process emotions without some kind of consequence that. Threatens our social safety. Right. Our nervous system learns that connection to these emotions or these
experiences is unsafe. And so it learns to disconnect us. As a survival strategy. It's really interesting, like the micro to the macro, because emotional childhood, emotional neglect creates a nervous system that is wired for disconnection. And so it continues to like, grow and move into different ways of the body. And children who do not receive attuned emotional responses from caregivers learn to dissociate from their own internal experiences as a means of coping.
This comes from Dr. Alan Shore from a 2019 study. And so let's talk a little bit about co regulation versus nervous system disconnection. A well attuned caregiver helps a child regulate emotions. They soothe distress through eye contact, through touch, vocal tone, and through the presence of their own nervous systems. If a caregiver is emotionally unavailable, critical or neglectful, the child has no
external regulation. Wait a minute. If a caregiver is emotionally unavailable, critical or neglectful, the child actually has no external regulation and must shut down their own emotional responses internally to be able to cope. Over time, this lowers interoceptive awareness and that ability to sense the bodily states and emotions which is central to depersonalization and
derealization. Yep. And then we also think about the derealization as an adaptive strategy for survival in unsafe environments. Right. When you're a child and you can't escape emotional neglect or abuse, the Nervous system finds another way to survive by. Shutting down those emotional responses and also. By disconnecting from reality, right? So
whether that's the depersonalization route of. Like, I don't exist, I'm disconnecting from my own body to avoid the pain or the feeling of being unwanted or unseen, that can all happen with depersonalization. And then that carries into our adulthood. As an adult who might struggle to feel present in our body. And when we're having a conversation, right? Like when we're being intimate with someone. When we're experiencing emotions, when we're trying. To process any of our life
experiences. And when that happens consistently, it can lead to questioning our identity or reality and further and further moving into those patterns of, of self abandonment and really having a, a complex relationship with knowing who we are, an embodied way, and then with derealization. It's kind of this idea over time of like, the world isn't real, right? Our caregivers are unpredictable, they're unavailable, the environment is threatening. And so we detach from the external. World to
reduce the emotional impact of. That or the overwhelm to our nervous system. And then again, those patterns can play out into adulthood. So then we become adults experiencing chronic. Derealization, feeling like we're just like you. Talked about with your client, watching life. Through a glass wall, through that Plexiglas bubble, or, you know, through a thick. Layer of fog and feeling really detached from our surroundings. And I think what's really important here. To talk about is
that to come. Out of dissociation, to come out of. These different protective outputs, we have to teach our nervous system to feel safe. To feel safe with our own internal. Sensations, to feel safe with our environment externally and not just as like an idea, not just to, again, conceptually understand I'm safe, but to have that as a felt sense reality in our body. Any one of the ACE scores is going to be an attachment rupture. Like anything in the world of complex trauma is
going to rupture attachment. We spent all of season three talking about relational aspects of complex trauma. And I just want to say too, like, we have the emphasis here today on childhood emotional neglect. But for the two women that I know experience DPDR the most, their ACE score is primary sexual abuse. That is a major attachment rupture of trust and a very valid reason, any,
any abuse is a valid reason to want to leave the body. But I just want to say for our listeners who, who have experienced that primary rupture, this is a very likely experience for you. I think that you are gonna really identify with this conversation. So I just wanna honor that as an ACE score and as a precursor to feeling DDR. A hundred percent. I mean, if you think about how. Much it is for a little body. To go through early childhood sexual abuse, it seems the only natural
response would. Be to disconnect from those sensations. Absolutely. And that experience. And I think while there was some research on the emotional neglect component, and you can see very clearly, like, why emotions would be overwhelming if you were emotionally neglected. If you think about so many different. Situations, if you live in a really. Chaotic environment, if there's physical abuse or. Verbal abuse or your parents are fighting. Or you have a parent who has. A substance abuse
problem, and they're really. Unpredictable, of course you would detach from your environment. It's overwhelming. The stimulus coming in is overwhelming to. A nervous system that is not prepared to handle that. And so it becomes a natural protective output to disconnect from that environment. So I think absolutely, all the ACE scores play in
here. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, this is why embodiment is really essential for healing DPDR is because if you are so used to being out of your body, we want to get you back into your body safely in being able to feel the experience that's happening for. And, you know, this is. This is a tricky place to be, honestly. Because when you are present in the body and you don't have an interrupted continuity of consciousness, you are
starting to experience the world totally new. Sometimes you'll find yourself in a situation that you may have found yourself in a million times. And now you're here for it and you're feeling it. And we must include the body when we are dealing with any level of dissociation, like thinking about it, understanding it, just having the awareness of it is not going to be enough. We must include the nervous system and using these tools to lower ourselves into a new baseline of safety in the moment if
we need to. And just being able to receive sensory input like we were talking about, sensory stimulus is a beautiful way and a very simple technique to start bringing ourselves into the body. To be like, this is my body and I am experiencing this. I am experiencing this touch. I am experiencing the grass, the wind, the sun. Right. And being able to mend the gap of the experiences of maybe that plexiglass box that people are. Are finding that they're. They're living in.
Yes. You brought up some really important things. That I kind of want to touch on here. And one is, I think we talked. About this in our Presence episode, but. How embodiment is the most important thing and we really want to live an embodied life. And it can be quite a lot. When we first start to come back into our body. And it's something that personally has been a long journey. And I've had to really do it. In a calibrated way, like you said, starting with
gentle sensory stimulus, assessing and. Reassessing how's my nervous system responding so. That I'm not just pushing myself into these further repeated loops of dissociation because it's too much. And I think if somebody is pretty far in that spectrum of dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, I really recommend also, like, get a practitioner. And this is something that is. It's a lot to take on alone and it's something that can be quite, quite jarring. And
yes, do the tools to rehabilitate. Your nervous system and also have a whole care team that you might need for. For this kind of. Just depending on where you are on spectrum for what you're experiencing, it might. Require more, more care and more practitioners. And we talked in that episode on. Presence about some of the first times. We experienced an emotional flashback actually in our body and how big that was. I was suicidal. Yeah, I really did experience
suicidal ideation. I do not know if I can handle this. That's exactly the thought that has gone through my mind. I don't know if I can handle. This because I've been disconnected for so. Long and now all of a sudden, like you said too, it can sometimes just be these small things that we do every day. Oh, my God. This is a whole new experience when I'm feeling it in my body and I'm not disconnected. But then when those
bigger moments come too, and I'm no longer going down. The dissociation pathway because I've spent so. Much time rehabilitating my interoceptive system. And now I am here for it. I am here for that pain, the terror, the grief. And I am able to process it. And that is beautiful. That is the key to how I do it. And we had support. We had support and it's a lot. We had each other. Like I had you. That, that was. I mean, I would not have made it. Yes. I really don't. I had you and I had Grace.
Yes. And that is. That is how I stayed alive, honestly. Yeah, we have a lot of support. I've worked with somatic therapists. I've working with one now. Yeah. Yeah. We have teams of people that Support us. It takes a village. It takes a village. There's no shame in that. No, no, no, there is. Not at all. So talking about that and really thinking too, that like, in order to be able to re pattern from some of these experiences, this is like the piece that I have to be able to. Stay in my body.
And that has come really through changes in sensory processing and through working with my interoceptive system to improve awareness and accuracy. Right. Our interoception is the foundation of our ability to be able to feel and. To understand emotions, to regulate our bodily states and to experience ourself. Right. So, you know, if my interoception is functioning well, I can recognize my hunger. Or my thirst or my pain, but. I can also identify my emotional states.
Am I angry? Am I sad? Am I afraid? Am I experiencing joy? Like, I can feel these sensations and I can be cognitively aware of them. I can process them. And then I can regulate my stress responses and my emotional responses because I. Have that bodily awareness. And so if that has been disconnected. Through my past experiences, through my different. Traumatic experiences, or even maybe just the environment I was growing up in, little things over time, then that system really has deficits in it.
It really has gone offline to a certain extent. And so there does have to be. Time of gradually, in a minimum effective dose, spending some real time rehabilitating my interceptive system so that I can do. All these things of emotional processing that. I need to do to be able to heal. Yeah, it's been scary. It has been incredible. I mean, it's just been so many things. And like you said, like, we're here to experience that spectrum. And trauma, especially complex trauma, it
impairs the communication between the body and the brain. And this leads to a weakened ability to feel and interpret our bodily sensations. Diminished connectivity between the insula and the prefrontal cortex is going to equal reduced ability to process emotions linked to our internal bodily states. When someone experiences repeated trauma, their nervous system learns to suppress interoceptive signals. Because feeling the body
may be associated with overwhelming distress. And so healing requires repetitive practice of safely feeling these internal signals at a minimum effective dose while regulating and processing the stress of feeling those signals so that gradually it becomes safe again. And so we talk about things as skills on here a lot. And every skill is trainable, and that includes embodiment. In the beginning, embodiment could feel very threatening, but we just go in it minimum
effective dose. And as a skill, we train it. And gradually, over time, with repetition and regulation, you will Be in your body safely. And so for me, we've talked about sensory stimulus. I feel like I beat sensory stimulus over the head on this podcast. I love it. It's very simple and you can do it anywhere and everywhere. And so that is probably one of my number ones. But you brought up something very important to the interoceptive system. Just about feeling like the hunger, the thirst, like,
when do I have to go to the bathroom? Like, something as simple as honoring when I have to go to the bathroom makes a huge difference in the interoceptive accuracy. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to talk about as like little ways to start to tune into our interoception. And it can be really as simple as honoring when you have to go to the bathroom and allowing yourself to feel those signals. Or Dr. Megan Ann Neff, the autism expert that we had on gave a really beautiful tool too, of
just holding something cold, like your smoothie or, you. Know, a cold cup, and just allowing. Yourself to feel the sensation of cold and, you know, or maybe putting something warm on your abdomen and feeling that sensation and just starting with like temperature and maybe a little bit of compression. Wearing an ab belt, feeling those sensations. Sensory stimulus, like you talked about, especially starting farther away from the head, giving your feet a
little sensory stimulus, and. Then gradually over time building up to. Deeper awareness during those emotional experiences. And there is also an important point. That I want to bring up here. Too, because not all of the time do we disconnect and numb out these sensations. Sometimes it can kind of go the. Other way, where people with complex trauma or trauma experiences can become hyper aware of bodily sensations, but in a distorted way. So instead of feeling like subtle internal. Signals
might only notice extreme pain or. Panic, or I might start to misinterpret. Some of my bodily sensations as carrying. Too much threat load. So I might feel like too much. Of those sensory signals coming in. I feel every single shift, every single ache, every pain, and then I start to fixate on that and it can. Push me into a really activated state. I feel my heartbeat and that moves. Me into a panic state. A lot of sympathetic overdrive. So tuning in and dropping into the. Body and starting to
feel those signals. Can actually really push you into more. Sympathetic nervous system response, more anxiety. And then it's about rehabilitating our brain's interpretation of those signals. Like, so there's interoceptive awareness, which is just being able to feel them, and. Then there's interoceptive accuracy. Am I accurately interpreting the right amount of stress response
to this internal signal. So there's places there to not just rehabilitate being able to feel them, but also sometimes where I might need to start working to regulate around feeling those sensations and reducing the stress response and maybe not even feeling them as much. Like, can I bring my awareness to. My external environment and not be so aware of every internal sensation? Yeah, I think that's, like, really important and. And fascinating also for us to
talk about. We don't talk about that a lot, do we? About, like, the overwhelming feeling of sensations. And so I'm really looking forward to hearing from y'all who wrote to us about this to see how this is landing with your nervous systems. Because this is a lot to kind of take in, and we just want to, like, finish on some closing thoughts and just to kind of sum this up really clearly for you. Trauma dampens interoception by altering the insula, amygdala, and limbic system as a whole.
It also interrupts vagus nerve function. Vagus nerve and the interoceptive system, they are each other. You can't separate them. And so all of this creates disconnection from bodily sensations, leading to DDR, emotional numbing, and chronic stress disorders. Rebuilding interoception through somatic and neurosomatic tools is essential for healing. And we didn't talk a lot about the vagus nerve on this conversation today, but when I finish my practices, I always end
with a little bit of vagus nerve love. It's always about showing the vagus. Like, bringing the vagus nerve in to my embodiment practices is really essential for me. I just feel like it is a way to kind of put the bow on the practices, if you will, because it's just like, okay, I've done all of this expression, I've done some
somatics, I've done my drills. And then it's like to finish, it's like the icing on top is to re regulate the vagus nerve and just give it some love through the vocals, maybe even through some lip rolls. Yeah, I think that's so important for a couple reasons. Right. Our vagus nerve. One thing is that it's going to. Be helping your parasympathetic system to kick in and help you come down and rest and relax from that emotional experience. So as we stimulate the vagus nerve or we decompress
it through all kinds. Of things, you can do vocalization, gargling. Vibration, vagus nerve decompression so that we're mobilizing the vagus nerve all of these things will help our body to re regulate. And the more I can create regulation. Around these emotional experiences, the more I'm teaching, teaching my nervous system, it's safe to experience this. I can come back to a regulated state. And often we have lost the skill. Of modulation through these experiences. We
get really activated and we don't have the skill to come back down. And we get kind of stuck in that state or we get shut down. But either way we're staying stuck in either like a freeze flop dissociated state. Or we're staying really activated and panicked. And we don't have the ability to flow in our nervous system and respond to the experience. So if I can use tools around my emotional expression, kind of sandwiching that emotional expression and sensory stimulus that my.
Nervous system likes, I'm helping my nervous system. It's like I'm just giving it a little bit of hand, a little bit. Of a boost to be able to regulate around. And then I'm teaching my brain, my. Body, my nervous system, it's safe to do this. I can come back, I can regulate, I can process and still be come. Back to myself and my baseline. And so the more we do that. The more we re pattern so that. We don't have to
move into these. Other big protective responses. We give our system that one good rep of being able to process and return to safety, to modulate through the experience. So I think it's just, it's a practice like everything that we talk about on here. It's one thing to intellectually understand it and to say like, okay, this is what's happening in my brain, these areas are affected. But the real like where the rubber meets the road is can
I actually work with my nervous system in the. Language that it understands, which is sensory. Inputs, to create a new experience inside with my external environment or my internal environment. And can I really commit to doing that over and over and over again. So that I am re patterning the. Response that I
have? And we really want to encourage you to join us@rewiretrial.com because if finding someone to work with one on one is not in your means right now, the site is entirely designed to mentor you and hold you through what you are experiencing. It is an incredible resource for live classes and on demand. So you will also get the community there that we talk about in communal healing. So don't shut yourself off if being one on one is just not where you are right now. You will get everything that
we talk about. We are not gatekeeping anything from you just because we don't share tools on here with you. We have everything for you@rewiretrial.com and Elizabeth has laid out an incredible 90 day journey for you to follow. Yeah, we would love to see you. On there and it really is a great resource. It was really
designed to be able. To the main like the heart of brain based is emotional processing and using applied neurology around different somatic practices to make emotional processing safe and to expand that with your practice. And even if you come and learn the tools to take into another container with a therapist with other healing modalities that you do, that is beautiful too, right? Come get some tools, use them in your other practices so that you have ways to work with the nervous
system. Thanks y'all. Thank you. 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 911 for specific services relating to mental health, please see the full disclaimer in the show.