Why do some emotions seem impossible to process? For many, the struggle with emotional processing is deeply rooted in our earliest experience and the body's response to trauma. It's not just in your head, it's in your nervous system. For years, I tried to figure out my behavior and address my physical symptoms, my behavioral symptoms, in traditional ways. I would intellectually try to understand my outputs. But emotions were so hard for me. I felt numb. And when I did start to process emotions,
my body would react in really strong protective outputs. I would find myself in maladaptive numbing behaviors. I might experience a rash or get autoimmune symptoms. Everything was deeply repressed, and it has been a journey to begin to express. But the more I dug into that journey, the more I realized that emotional processing was
the missing key for me. And it wasn't until I began to truly process my emotions that I saw really profound changes in my nervous system, health and my behavior and in my overall health, too. And so today, we're looking to dive a little bit further into this conversation, really focusing on the emotional processing aspect of emotions. So 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, Jennifer Wallace. I'm educator at the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching certification. And I'm also a neurosomatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide where I bridge the power of your nervous system into your peak somatic experiences. And I'm your co host, Elizabeth Christoph, founder of Brainbase.com, an online community where we work with applied neurology, somatics and emotional processing for resilience, stress
processing, and behavior change. And I'm also the founder of the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching certification program where we help coaches, therapists, leaders to bridge the gap from somatic work to nervous system work and mindset. So I'm really glad to be having this conversation and going a little bit deeper because I think this is
such an important topic. And before we dive too much deeper into it, I do really want to help people connect some dots because it can be a big leap to think about your physical symptoms, your health outcomes being connected to your emotional experience. I was a movement practitioner most of my life, and I could appear pretty healthy on the outside, but at this, like, intrinsic level, like, I wasn't doing well, I had all of these autoimmune issues flaring up.
Digestion was really difficult for me. I would get migraines, I would shut down, binge Eating was a huge thing for me that I just. I could know better, but I couldn't get out of that cycle. And as a kid, too, like, sick a lot, had eczema, all kinds of digestive issues in and out of the hospital.
And when I started to really take a deeper dive into my health at that somatic level, at the level of my emotions, some really big dots connected for me, because I would have experiences of trying to process the emotion, like going to a somatic therapy session and having someone have me feel into my body or have a little bit of, you know, mobilization of something come through. And, gosh, my body was so reactive. And I would get eczema all around
my eyes, eczema under my armpits. I would have. My joints would swell up, my digestion would get really bad. I'd have. Everything that I experienced got amplified. And I realized, oh, my God, my body is reacting to these emotions that have clearly been really repressed. And I don't have the skills to regulate around that, to create safety with that. And that's when I started to understand, like, oh, this is something that I'm gonna have to learn. This is gonna
be a whole new journey. But it was difficult. And we've been exploring what happens to our bodies, how our emotional health impacts our physical health. There are many reasons why emotional processing would be challenging, particularly under the context of complex trauma and dissociation. There's a vastness to emotions, and there's nuances. There's so much
to feel and to take in. And if we've been living in a state of emotional repression, for whatever reason, fragmentation, neglect from the way our society keeps us from expressing emotions, then maybe also emotions were really big. As you were a little developing nervous system, and it was too overwhelming for your system, especially with an environment that could not support that level of emotional charge. And so you learn adaptively to repress, maybe so that you don't sever
attachment bonds. It's really quite complex. And in our bodies, we have many layers of healing. And then as I was researching, there's just so much research out there to validate that our emotional health is deeply tied to our physical health. There were studies on the relationship between emotional repression and chronic pain that really looked at how repressed emotions, particularly anger and sadness, could be associated with chronic pain conditions like fibromyalgia or
tension headaches. And really suggested through the findings that this contributes to chronic pain because of the increases in muscle tension and that perpetual stress response that goes on in the body. There's so much research looking at the link between immune function, physical health, and emotional repression.
There was a big meta analysis from 2004 where they reviewed several studies linking emotional repression to weakened immune function and concluded that people who habitually repress emotions have lower quality immune responses and are more susceptible to illness, including autoimmune disease. There's a lot of links between autoimmune disease and emotional repression, and we can certainly dive into these studies. But I just want people to know that that
evidence exists. And when we're talking about emotional processing, that is stress processing. So if we can't emote, then we're staying in these states of constant dysregulation in these high stress states. And that leads to all the other impacts that we talk about on here all of the time. Right. Issues with the adrenal system, hormone dysregulation, sleep disturbances, muscle
tension, poor gut function. And so in order to be able to regulate our nervous system, because it is the same processes in the body, we need emotional regulation for the health of our nervous system. I think it's really important to remember that emotional repression is stressful in the body. That is what we're talking about. Just that's the very bottom line of it. And, you know, to speak to like the autoimmune and the gut health. I think that's why we start coming to this so much later
in life. A lot of people don't learn that they have an autoimmune until you're in your 20s, your 30s. I'm experiencing it now in my 40s. It's kind of coming into my awareness. So that is much later. Now we're talking about what's happened after decades of repressing emotions. And it's the same thing with gut health. We often don't
tackle our gut health until we're decades into it. Even though I knew from a very early age I had a gut thing, it just, it manifests because it gets to a point where you can't ignore it anymore in the body. It came to a point where I cannot ignore my gut any longer. And then through healing my gut, learning that I have mcas, which is. I don't know if that's just like a straight autoimmune or something. I'm identifying as an autoimmune because it does
feel autoimmune. Yeah, absolutely. I was just having a conversation with one of our NSI practitioners yesterday who was reaching out and is at a place where they are seeing a lot of these outputs in their life. Behavioral, but also physical. And was like, I just don't understand, why did this happen? Like, I can't think of this big childhood trauma and I have a traumatic brain injury. Like, why is this, this. And we had to kind of talk about a lot of this stuff is cumulative.
It's built up over time, and we learn to push through. We're really adaptive beings and we learn all of these ways to disconnect from our pain, to push through the pain, to mask, to continue to function in the world. Even though our body's speaking to us, we can still get by, but that is still building up over time in the body. And what happens for a lot of us is that at some point, just like you were talking about Jen, it reaches
like a tipping point. And then there might be some incident that kind of pushes the water level over the bucket edge so that we're experiencing these really big outputs, or it might just be built up over time. And then we find ourselves in this place where it's like, man, I have some pretty severe outputs going on. But it didn't start with one particular incident. And it doesn't even have to come from like the traditional traumas that you think of. Big, you know, sexual abuse or
physical abuse. It can be chronic stress that comes from a variety of places, a high stress job for a long time, emotional neglect, which we're going to talk about today, all kinds of ways. Living in a world that really isn't conducive for nervous system health just for our entire lives, and operating in a way that doesn't work for our unique brain and body expression. And so this can. There's usually not one specific incident, but these are accumulated adaptations and
chronic dysregulation that manifests over time. And particularly if you've experienced emotional neglect as one of your ACE scores, it's one of ours that we've talked about. And there's a study on childhood neglect and emotional dysregulation, a mediated pathway through emotional insecurity. And the study found that individuals who experience childhood neglect are more likely to develop emotional insecurity, which in turn contributes to emotional dysregulation in adulthood. That is so
resonant and it really just makes so much sense. If you've been emotionally neglected and your parents were not attuned to your emotional needs. If you weren't modeled emotions, if you weren't taught emotions, you're not gonna. In the realm of emotions, holding emotions, showing emotions, expression, processing, you are going to have an insecurity and it's one for me that I still have to catch myself when I am being neglected emotionally. It will even take me a while to notice because it's
patterned so well. It's the ACE score that continues to live on through my life and to catch it and to be aware of it and then to move out of that because I immediately notice. Let's define emotional neglect before I go on to a little bit further. And as I said, you know, for me, emotional neglect, really, I think I've kind of already defined it. It was that lack of attunement, that lack of just acknowledgement. The neglect was
my emotions being shut down. They weren't allowed to be. It's not that they weren't allowed to be talked about, but no one ever wanted to talk about them. And when I wanted to talk about them, I got shut down. And it has had a devastating effect on me as I move through this world. And like I'm saying, identifying with autoimmune now. And so it's a really hard. I find it's the hardest ACE score and it goes way beyond my sexual trauma, my early childhood sexual trauma. Yeah,
definitely. We did a whole episode on emotional neglect that would be great to revisit for people because it's nuanced and it's hard to identify sometimes. And so for me, there's two big places where I see it really showed up in my development. And one is just the absence of a caregiver, just really a physical absence of someone there that could attune to me and regulate with me. Right. Like, and this again, it's not to put blame on anyone, but my mom was a single mom and she had to
work a lot and I spent a lot of time alone. Right. And so I'm dealing with all these emotions. We had immigrated to the United States when I was four. English was not my first language. I didn't have a community that I could connect to. I couldn't even communicate with people when I first moved here. And then the one person that I could communicate with was gone a lot because she was working. And so there was no one there to
process the stress of that with. And so those emotions were really overwhelming to my little nervous system. Didn't have a place where I could safely process that or anyone to show me any kind of skill to do that. And so I learned to repress it. I learned to find maladaptive coping behaviors. Self harm was something I started at a really early age. Binge eating was something I started at a really early age to Manage these big emotional experiences. I
didn't have another way. And then the other thing too is when I did have my mom there, my primary and my grandma, sometimes, you know, my emotions, they were really big, right? I was really dysregulated. I had this big disorganized attachment, the early childhood sexual abuse, all of this stuff going on. And I would have these massive tantrums. And my mom was already really stressed out. And that stressed out my mom more. And my little nervous system understands that. It
feels that. And so there's a threat to dysregulating your caregiver because that leads to a less stable environment for yourself. And so, again, adaptively, you start to learn to repress these big expressions of emotion that are naturally coming out, because it doesn't feel safe to do that because it's making your environment too unstable, because the primaries don't have the skill to hold the space for those emotions
and dissociation. When we have caregivers that are dissociated, that is also a level of emotional neglect. Because if you are not here, even if you are here with me, but I can feel your lack of presence, I'm going to know that we are not connected. I'm going to feel your disconnect and know that I am now part of this, too. And I may start to take that on as my fault. And that would be another reason for me to turn my emotions down, to just go a little bit silent. Maybe just like not even silent
in my voice, but how silent. I am just moving around in the environment and in the home. And it's really. It is so stressful as a young person to think that it's your fault. I still think it's my fault when I catch that. I'm experiencing it right now with my. With my caregivers. I'm experiencing emotional neglect. And I went through about three or four days where I really thought, it's me, I'm bad, I caused this. It's the way that I developed. I was shaped in this emotional
dysregulation. I was shaped in this trauma. And now it's my fault. It is my fault that I am not being connected to in the way that I need to. And it's not my fault. It is really not my fault. And it's a lot to take on. And I understand that there's a lot of shame that comes up in the emotional neglect space from a primary, because if I can't get my emotional needs met, my God, you think if anyone, you should get Your emotional needs met through your
primary. But if I can't and when I need to, I experience shame as the. It's the first output that comes through because I think I am bad. I am the bad one. Yeah, absolutely. It really reminds me, as you were talking, it reminded me of another study that I was looking at on the impact of childhood emotional neglect on emotional dysregulation, the role of
attachment and self compassion. And the study found that when we have emotional neglect in childhood, it really significantly predicted emotional dysregulation in adults, but particularly low levels of self compassion and insecure attachment. And you know, there's just so many reasons that that emotional neglect and dissociation occurs. Right. It's not just on the primary. We live in a society that really teaches us to disconnect from our body, to push through pain,
to push through emotional sensations. It is the norm to not have these skills. Right, From. From mother to mother to mother just being passed down of like we just aren't connected. And so then we're born into these environments where the people raising us also don't have the skills and get really dysregulated with emotions. And there's certain cultural components to that. You know, there's a lot of different cultures where you just don't talk about the things
that you're feeling. And it is, yeah, just like you said, then that all gets internalized back on the child and we adapt. How can I change myself to make this environment safer for me? How can I change myself to keep greater levels of regulation and stability, to keep my attachments connected? And so one of the big ways that we learn to change ourself is to be less emotionally expressive. It's really hard to have self compassion when in your foundation you are bad. If I am bad,
how am I going to have compassion for that? I'm just going to be seeing myself through the lens of a failure in all ways. And then you can see, or I can see how that then shaped my romantic partnerships. I can see the sexual promiscuity even coming out. I don't know that the sexual promiscuity only has to do to the sexual. The early childhood sexual abuse. I really think it goes to seeking out for the emotional connection because we know intimacy gives us connection. And so
I really feel like I can see the string of. Well, you know, y'all know if you've been listening to this podcast, that I'm on a journey still of celibacy and take. I mean, because I can see the string of Romantic partners that I had in my life. They were all emotionally available. And what I craved the most was the emotional connection. And choosing an emotional unavailable emotional partners meant that I still had to change my emotion. I still had to shut that
down. And it's a lot to contend with, to be quite honest with you. It really is. It's such a journey. It's a journey that we're on here because still I can find and you know, we've done so much work on the site once a week emotionally processing with people in community and safe spaces. You and I do so much work together. And it's still like when emotions show up in real time. Like, yes, when I'm in that space of like, it's time to process my emotions and
I'm teaching my nervous system those skills and I'm. That's okay. But like when I'm moving through regular world and my emotions come up and I express them, there's usually a component of that that I feel some shame come up in my body. Afterwards, I have like this, I will get flighty, right? Like, I was vulnerable. I expressed around these people in this situation. And all of a sudden I got to get out of here. I don't want to stay in this
space. I said too much, I was too vulnerable. Even sometimes when we do it on this podcast, right, there's just this automatic reflexive reaction of, oh my gosh, I exposed too much, I let too much come through. And it has been a real journey of then working with that shame, mobilizing out of the freeze that comes with
that. Using self soothing, using nervous system regulation, getting out in nature and trying little by little to have more curiosity about my emotions so that I'm taking away that like, I know what this means, or this is a bad emotion. This is a good emotion. Can I just tie into feeling the sensations, honoring the natural processes little by little, exploring it? What does the sensation really look like? What does it remind me of? Does it
have a color? Does it have a texture? Is there a sound that goes with it? And gradually re patterning the beliefs that I have about the emotions and coming at them from more of a neutral place. This is just a natural expression. This is my body being a human body. There's many different levels, I think, to come at it from or many different places that you can come at emotional processing. Right. Because you've just said, you know, a
number of things like about beliefs and what am I feeling? Where does it come from? What does this remind me of? And I think it does take a level of cognitive awareness to be able to have these conversations with ourselves, which then I think takes a level of regulation. If we are not regulated, we are not gonna have the capacity to explore things. But so far before, it just continues to trigger more outputs and
more protection, even through the exploration. So this is why so much of the daily practice and when I'm working with clients, we might start with a little light stress processing, but we do not start in emotions. Like, that's not the place where we start. So it's back to the daily practice that we talk about. And as Elizabeth said, we're on site four and five times a week teaching. And you can have the same.
Like, you can start building this for yourself, building this resilience to go into some of these emotional processing that we're going to talk about today by joining Rewire trial, getting two free weeks and start learning tools to expand your capacity and lower the overall stress. Because, you know, you talked about or it came up yesterday, we talked last week
a lot about shame about freeze. Chronic fatigue is one too, that I'll really notice an output of when I'm just like when I'm repressing, when something's happened that I feel like I'm kind of starting to shut down. It's chronic fatigue and food. It's like I get so tired, but I'm too wired to rest in the fatigue. So to really shut myself down, I need the food to regulate me through the protection of the freeze and the fatigue so that then I might actually get some rest. But the rest is just
to almost to like, integrate a little bit more. Not necessarily. The rest isn't resolving any of the emotions. The rest is just to lower the stress. I think there's something really nuanced about what you said that I want to highlight a little bit here. There's different types of fatigue and rest, right? There's like, I need rest after emotional processing to be able to integrate, and I need rest throughout my life.
We've spent a lot of time on this season talking about the importance of rest so that we can recover and positively adapt. And then there's chronic fatigue and that big lethargy that sometimes comes when I'm repressing an emotion. And it's my system putting the brakes on. It's a real output of my nervous system going into like a flop response, a deep freeze and a flop response
where something will happen, an emotion will be triggered. I'm maybe not even aware of it, but it taps into that deep place of there's some big anger there was maybe related to a boundary or a sense of betrayal or an attachment wound. And suddenly it's like I can't. I can barely sit up. I can barely hold my head up. I'm truly flopping. And I've had to learn to start very gently mobilizing through that. And I've had some experiences of
once. I have been practicing emotional processing and emotional regulation regularly so that when I'm in those moments, it's not completely impossible for me to do that. And if I can start to, in that moment, take the fatigue as a signal that there's something that needs to be processed here, I can start gently mobilizing, gently emoting. And then big stuff will come through. And all of a sudden, after that, I'm not so tired. Right. My energy comes
back. I can think more clearly. I'm present again in my body. But again, it's this practice of really starting to train. Train those skills intentionally in a little by little way, in safe times, so that when those moments hit, I have the skill to do that. Yeah, we talked about that, like, getting things in real time. And it can be hard. It could take days for me sometimes to realize that I'm repressing something and I'll only catch it through my
behaviors. Yep. It's one of the best ways to be able to catch ourselves is when we are in the behavior. And let's talk a little bit about the mobilizing while we're here, because it came up also in that conversation, like, how do we mobilize? And for us, that looks like we have so many different resources now. Vocalizing, tapping, bouncing, shaking. Sometimes for me, it just
looks like swaying back and forth or on the ground. A lot of times I find that my processing, I go to the ground, even if I just. I like to sit on the floor also a lot. So I'm just kind of comfortable on those lower spaces. And any little bit of movement, any tapping on my body that I can do, and just try to get any movement. And sometimes then it's like, okay, now I can, like, I can feel my back. So now my back is kind of getting involved. And maybe I could do,
like, do some hip stuff like windshield wipering things. And then maybe that can just get a little bit bigger. And so it really. I think, you know, we talk about minimum effective dose. And I think as far as mobilizing, it also for me starts really small. Absolutely. Me too. Even though I am someone, I love to move. I love big movement. But when I'm in those spaces. It's gotta start small. And starting with, like, the feet and the hands and the
face. Sensory stimulus to those areas. And like you, a lot of times I go to the ground, I lay down, I can start to connect with those sensations of, like, where I am making contact with the floor. Can I feel a little bit supported by my seat or the floor, start to anchor into some of those sensations externally, orient, feel my clothes on my skin, look around the room, and then maybe there's some gentle movement of my toes. Maybe there's some
intentional tapping and pressure on my fingers. And then that builds a little bit, like you said. And then I can kind of roll around or sway and let myself get a little bit more intuitive with it. And then that might kind of build up to a bigger climax of, like, some big sounds come out or some tears or some shaking. Not always, though, right? Sometimes it's just a little bit of rolling around.
Yeah. And I really like something that I try to focus on, too, when I am on the ground, is that as I'm experiencing, maybe shame as an output of this, I really try to stay open with my body expression. I try not to curl in any further into the shame so that I'm not flexing into it. It's already rounding us and turning us into more of a fetal position. So sometimes. Actually, that's a really great point. Sometimes
it's about being in the fetal position and then pulling myself out. It's like curling into a ball and then releasing myself fully into that because I want to keep my chest open to the emotional expression, because I'm trying to keep my heart open. Really? That's what I'm thinking about. Yes. And just noticing those patterns, like, just having the awareness and starting to see the patterns in your body, is so impactful. Like, for me, a lot of times it happens with my hands.
I'll notice I'm just clenching my fists, and I'll just think, can I open my hands and spread out my fingers? Can I do that a few times? Can I get some movement there? Or I'll notice that I'm clenching my jaw. Can I take a couple intentional yawns and just start to gradually come out of that, bracing gently, you know? And then where are the places where I am moving into those reflexive patterns? And can I just kind of shift into some
opening and some ease with that? One of the most valuable things for me has been starting to train my interoceptive system. So we talk about this a lot in here. It's the system that allows you to feel and recognize and process the signals that are coming from inside of your body. It's the system that tells us it's our sensory system for inside of us.
And when we are very disconnected, when we have a lot of dissociation from our body, it can really start to dull those signals where I don't have the ability interoceptive accuracy to. I don't have the interceptive awareness to even feel them. And then because I haven't been feeling them for a long time, I've become hypersensitive to them as well. Right. So I don't have interoceptive accuracy. I'm interpreting too much threat to those signals. When
I do feel something inside, oh my God. Brain goes into panic. I'm pushed often into a reflexive F
response. And so can I start to work with that system through gentle interoceptive stimulus, regulating around that, maybe feeling those sensations for a moment, maybe starting away from my head, away from my deep intrinsic core, just feeling my feet regulating around that, maybe doing some gentle vibration on my stomach or wearing an ab belt or something for those non myelinated C fibers in the abdomen that give interoceptive stimulus to our brain, to our insular
cortex. And can I find these little ways to start to rehabilitate that system so that I have more interoceptive awareness, the ability to feel the signals and then more interceptive accuracy to respond to them appropriately. It's important to know how your body is talking to you, right? Especially we've talked about bracing and tension so much today.
It's important to know when you are bracing. It's doing so much internally that I don't think people are really probably even considering when it comes to like our organs or the vagus nerve, right. That vagus nerve is just going to get more impinged the more we brace. And it's so energy costly for our bodies to be bracing. And you know, there are, there are ways that our body speaks to us in so many levels, right. Our body tells us that we're
hungry. Our body tells us that there's a threat. Our body is telling us no when we're propelling into yes, our body is always. Signals come in sensations and words and images in feelings through the body. And it's interesting, one thing that I have to catch myself on interoception is not so much the bracing. This is going to be one of the ways that my body speaks because I will sometimes ignore when I have to pee and I'll often
do it at night, not throughout the day. But if, like, if I fall asleep early on the couch and I have to move myself to bed, I'll sometimes have a thought like, oh, I really kind of have to go to the bathroom, but I'm too tired. I will 100% not sleep through the night. That signal that I ignore is then now going to interrupt my sacred sleep. And so I really have to make that conscious effort at night to be like, I need to go to the bathroom before
I go to bed. This is a perfect example of starting to work with our interoceptive system and how to recognize if you have some interoceptive deficits. So, like, one is we hear those signals, but we don't go to the bathroom because we're just pushing through, you know, and then interrupting our sleep. The other, though, is if we have some real interoceptive deficits, we might not even
hear these signals. We might not be aware of them. So if you have a lot of interoceptive deficits, it might look like you don't know you need to go to the bathroom until it's an emergency. Like, all of a sudden, oh, my God, I really need to pee. I really need to go to the bathroom. But I didn't hear or perceive any of those
signals. They were there. They were coming from my body earlier, before this emergency state, or, I don't know I'm hungry until I'm, like, starving or I'm lightheaded or I'm starting to get really irritable, right? Those signals have been there earlier, but I don't have the interceptive awareness to be able to feel them. And then also, what are my patterns of ignoring those signals and just pushing through. And so it's both, right? Like, maybe I don't hear them
and maybe I push through them. And then there's lots of ways just making some of that being your interoceptive training, starting to try to recognize earlier when I might be getting hungry, when I'm thirsty. We talked with Dr. Megan Anna about some really gentle interoceptive training of just holding a cold smoothie and
feeling those cold sensations and the temperature changes. So there's all these little ways you can start to condition yourself to pay more attention to the signals and to start to get those pathways a little bit more active. And all of that will then feed into being able to feel your emotions, right? Because as we have to start smaller, if I can listen to the cues of, like, I'm hungry, I have to go to the bathroom, then maybe I'm going to Move into, oh, I'm bracing.
Okay, this is what bracing feels like. And then as it starts to build, then we start to have that capacity for the emotional processing that we would be having a struggle with. And then we might even be able to make the connections of like feeling something in the body to an emotional event or to an experience that we've come out of. And then it's like, okay, so we all have to start on a really small level, minimum effective dose before we can climb the
ladder of what's really possible. We talk about the output of pain on here a lot as a great agent for behavior change. There's too much stress coming in from the sensory inputs from maybe an unclear body map, an old injury that wasn't rehabbed, a visual deficit, a respiration issue, and all of this is chronic stress building up in the nervous system. And so if we're under too much stress, our brains are going to interpret some of those signals coming from the sensory inputs as
threatening. And it's going to try to get you to reduce the intensity of the signals coming in. And if you're in pain, you might take smaller steps, you might lay down, you might not work out with as great of intensity. You might call out sick to the job that you don't really like too much, and so maybe you'll even get sick. And so when we're talking about emotions and the connection to pain, your body may be interpreting the signals, the sensations in the body as threatening
and you feel pain instead of the emotion. But once again, adding to the buildup of chronic stress in the body, the experience of the emotions is too overwhelming, it's painful. And so we have the protective mechanism, the well worn path of our nervous system protecting us from the grief, from the anger, the disappointment, the rage, instead of focusing on the output like anxiety, pain or even depression. Absolutely. In the emotional
states. Absolutely. Yeah. I think the key takeaway for me as we were talking about this is just to help people start to think about where some of these outputs might be coming from, the emotional layers underneath. And then what are small ways that I can start to work with my system to be able to increase my capacity for emotional regulation, for emotional processing and remembering that that is, it's a journey
and you start where you're at. And even just being curious about it, even just starting to think about it, is an amazing place to start and see where it takes you. Yeah, we just have to start somewhere. Right? We just have to start. And maybe for you, that's gonna be a book one of the books that we've recommended today, maybe it's gonna be getting on site with us knowing too that all of this can change your experience. And it's worth
it. It's worth it. God, it's so worth it. It's so worth it to have honesty in your relationships where you can say, I'm, I'm experiencing this. I don't need you to fix me. I need you to hear me. Yes, I need you to see me. Because that's so much about the misattunement and the emotional neglect is not feeling seen and not feeling heard. So community is so important. We love our brain based community for that. And having friends and people in your life that. Or maybe it's someone, a
practitioner that you work with. Absolutely. And I think too, as we start to process our emotions and become more comfortable with emotions, we can also show up for other people in that way. Right. Like I can show up and bear witness and that makes for a much deeper life experience. Right. And not only am I getting to experience some of these big overwhelming emotions, but I also now have capacity to feel joy, to feel connection,
to feel excitement in an embodied full way. And I can be with others in community experiencing that. And there is, gosh, that makes for such a different life experience. And it's worth the time. The authenticity of emotions is so valuable and I mean, think that's like taking away the mask. It is. And one more thing I was thinking about as you were talking too. Not only do we get to be more authentic in our relationships with other people,
but in our relationship with ourself too. Right now I'm not emotionally neglecting myself. I'm not perpetuating that pattern with myself. I can witness me. I can start to tune into my instinct, hear myself, trust myself and be present with my body as it's expressing. And that is the most powerful relationship that I have with my, in my life now is with myself and my body. And oftentimes like with anything, when we repress and we bring that in, who's being affected by that?
Not the other person, not the experience that you just left, not the situation, it. All the stress all falls back onto our bodies and then rewiring for self compassion is huge and we've talked about that before. Wasn't that with Amanda last season? Yeah, yeah. Really important. It's a big deal. It's a big deal, y'all. We really hope to see you on site. Access the other resources in the show
notes and join us. Get on this journey. We are totally here to hold you and support you as much as we possibly can. Thank you for joining us. What you're about to hear next is from one of our NSI practitioners from our last cohort. NSI is currently enrolling right now and instead of us talking to you about how awesome NSI was, we thought you might want to learn and listen from
one of our practitioners. If you are interested in enrollment, then go to neurosomaticintelligence.com or find the link in the Show Notes. To book your discovery call. Please Enjoy this review. So what I noticed like the coolest thing about this was like I went from an emotional release container into this, not knowing at the time that I did the emotional release one, that I felt nothing in my body. Like I was numb, completely disassociative. And now, now I can actually feel in my body like I
actually am in my body. I can feel sensations, I can feel what's happening in my body. I can express emotion. And not only that, but like I noticed because I'm very disorganized attachment and normally I either err on super anxious or I will be extremely avoidant and I will avoid hard conversations with just not feel comfortable for me. And I've been having so many more hard conversations lately, which is super cool. That's been such a win for me because I actually, I don't feel like I'm
too much to bring that to others. I have developed more compassion for myself. And actually the way that I phrased NSI yesterday was it feels like human design for the nervous system because it allows you to actually understand yourself in a deeper way and understand the way that you were built, how your systems were like operate, and why you have deficits in certain places and knowing that it's not final, everything can always be addressed and
adjusted. But just give yourself that compassion. So I've definitely developed more compassionate understanding about myself and how I operate and. Move through the world. So thank you so much y'all. We really hope to see you on site. Access the other resources in the show notes and join us. Get on this journey. We are totally here to hold you and support you as much as we possibly can. Thank you for joining us.
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 notes.