Redefining Mental Health From An NSI Perspective

Hey y'all, and welcome back to Trauma Rewired. We are back baby, with a brand new season looking at outputs of nervous system dysregulation in many forms. And we are excited to tell you all about season four. So thank you so much for joining us today. 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 a neurosomatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide, and I'm also one of the educators at the Neurosomatic and I'm also one of the educators at the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification Intelligence certification program. And I'm your co host Elizabeth

Christoph. I'm the founder of Brainbase.com and the founder of Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching certification course where we help therapists, coaches, healers to bridge the gap from mindset work to embodiment in somatics. Using the nervous system, we teach a powerful framework and practical tools. We're enrolling now if you're interested. Neurosomticintelligence.com dot

this season we are going. To be redefining mental health from a neurosematic intelligence perspective and looking at the underpinnings of nervous system health, trauma and structural forces on many types of quote unquote diagnoses from depression to anxiety, neurodivergences like ADHD and autism, also personality disorders, and even physical health issues like autoimmune, gut health and chronic pain.

Yeah, it's going to be a big season and with each of these topics we're going to explore what is happening in the brain and the nervous system. Keeping in mind that from a neurosomatic perspective, we view all of this as outputs, outputs of the nervous system.

So what are the forces behind the outputs? The inputs that cause chronic stress, dysregulation, that underlie these issues, from maybe nervous system deficits to how the brain and the body have been impacted by developmental trauma, to systemic issues that are

continuously impacting health and regulation. Our brain's interpretation of those sensory inputs, big issues like racism or gender bias or hustle culture, disconnection from nature, social isolation, our screens, or maybe like the fact that the world was created for neurotypical folks and that impacts people who express a natural diversity in brain function and

sensory processing. And we've talked a lot on here about the stress bucket, imagining your nervous system as a bucket with all kinds of stressors coming in, from relational stress to financial stress to real physical deficits in your sensory systems that cause chronic stress and create outputs because your nervous system is trying to drain that water so that the stress doesn't overflow the bucket, it doesn't overwhelm the system. And there are many different faucets, if you

will, pouring water into that bucket. But we want to highlight a couple of these as we move through the season, looking at, like, what is the. What's the water coming from? A genetic faucet or an injury or a physical issue faucet, the trauma faucet, and the societal faucet. Where is all this water coming from? And where are the intersections between all these issues? How does

complex trauma overlap with neurodivergence? How does systemic racism or socioeconomic inequality shape our brain and our nervous system to impact pain or disease or mental health? So, can we really create a more complete picture of mental health that questions the current paradigm, and by doing that, shifts the way we approach healing? Yeah, we're going to have some really powerful episodes looking at how these diagnoses. They. They shape our identities, they shape our beliefs, our relationship

to ourselves, our relationships to others. And it's really an exploratory season. Right. We are going to be presenting to you a compilation of science, of, um, of shared experiences. We're going to share many perspectives, interviewing a range of experts on different topics, and nothing is definitive. And particularly when we are talking about a nervous system.

And we want to show you what's out there and contribute our own understandings of the brain and nervous system, how it impacts each of these topics that we talk about. And when we share our own experiences, we relate to having a broad spectrum of the diagnosis that are planned for the rest of the season. And so think of these episodes, these conversations, as like audio essays. Presenting with you a picture of things to consider in all of these issues is a lot

to understand, and it's really a lot to take in. We are not giving any medical advice or saying anyone's perspective is right and is the right way to approach your healing journey. But it's about broadening our collective perspective on what mental health means and what it could mean. Yeah. Because, really, one thing we do kind of know is that the mental health system needs questioning. It's broken. You

know? Gabor mate says that the prevailing model of mental illness not only fails to explain the phenomena it seeks to encompass, it also exacerbates them, and that the mental health system's adherence to the medical model not only neglects the complex interplay of genetic, developmental and environmental factors, but also serves to stigmatize and marginalize those who suffer. And we can just look at the data to know

that this is true. People are over diagnosed, they're over prescribed, they're over institutionalized. Emotional pain is dismissed as irrelevant. And we pathologize the human condition a lot, which doesn't leave a lot of room for also recognizing people's potential for growth and adaptation and understanding the nervous system and neuroplasticity to create new outcomes. We know that we operate in a mental health system where BIPOC men and women are deeply underrepresented as

practitioners and in this world, having a voice. Children who are sexually abused are so often later diagnosed as borderline or bipolar and re traumatized with institutionalization or over medication and stigma. And still today, even though the ace research came out, you know, 30 years ago or more, people with an ace score of six or higher still have a significantly truncated lifespan. Not to mention are seven to 800 times more likely to

become addicts. And even within looking at Aces, there's not a lot of recognition of the systemic and structural trauma that is also compounding that daily stress and leading to these outcomes. Complex trauma, it still isn't recognized by the DSM, and because that would invalidate so many diagnoses and illustrate the broken nature of the entire mental health paradigm. And honestly, we really did have some thoughts around wanting and needing to be

recognized. And we'll unpack that a little bit later when we go on to talk about resources and options with complex trauma. But, you know, also this season, we're going to be looking a lot at women's health. Women's mental health. Women's physical and mental health has been under researched, mislabeled our brains and bodies. We're really waking up to the understandings that they don't know us very well. And

thankfully, we are being explored more. And because, you know, as we talk about women's health and in particular our hormones, there's so much science now that even says as we move through our menstrual cycle, every week of the month, our brain changes every. I mean, we're constantly changing. We need more rest than men do. And there are really. There are some mental conditions

that are more common in women than there are in men. They look at depression and anxiety disorders, and eating disorders are much higher in women's statistics than men. And then there are also, quote unquote, I hate the word disorders. There are challenges that women have in our bodies because of our hormones, because we. We birth and get pregnant. Right. So there's like, apart from our menstrual cycles each month, there's perinatal depression or perinatal

OCD. There's postnatal OCD. I learned as exploring this season. There's all. There's many things menopausal transitions that we're really going to talk about. And so sometimes you might even see two episodes, one that's kind of a general neuro unpacking the brain and nervous system for you, and then one that might be a little bit targeted to another previous conversation

that we've had. And so we, like all the researchers out there, are just beginning to tease apart these various biological nervous systems, psychological factors that all come in to impact our mental health. Yeah, it is. It's so interesting to think about the CPTSD diagnosis and, like, having that be recognized

by the DSM. And like you said, we're going to have some bigger episodes where we talk about identity and diagnosis, and, you know, how that can give people more resources or connect them to community, but it can also lead to some stigma or some limiting beliefs about ourselves. So that'll be really interesting to explore. And it's going to be a very big season. We're going to be

diving deep, and we want you guys to come with us. But I also want to say here, we want to say here that you are the expert of your own nervous system, and there may be some episodes that are too upsetting, or you might find that our perspectives aren't helpful to you. And we want you to remember that you have the agency to stop listening at any time and to take care of yourself. And that really being trauma informed and nervous system literate is

understanding when you're exceeding your own capacity. And we never want somebody to do that. This information is for you and will be here if and when it resonates. But remember that you are the expert of your nervous system. And know that we come to you from our own places of truth, from the places in our heart, and from our own places of regulation, where we have our own experiences that we want to share with you.

And we always. It's one of the most important things about trauma rewired is that we want to be solution oriented as well as educational. And so to present you with some solutions, with each conversation that we have, we will offer. We will always offer strategies and ways to access tools, access other levels of education. We are able to connect you with community, the communities that like to also explore these topics. And so we hope that you take us up on these

offerings. Rewirecourse.com is a great place to start for free resources. It's a foundational understanding of neurosomatic work and a great place to start, and which we will be referencing tools for the nervous system, for

rehabilitation and for change. And so now would be a great time to start, to dive into that, if you haven't already, and begin to equip yourself with tools, practices and neuro education as we move through the season, and also know that we have two other incredible seasons that also really support the foundational understanding of where we are moving in and to and from. Yes,

definitely take us up on those resources. It's important to take care of your nervous system as you're learning all this, and also to remember that as we're moving through these, these are big topics, and we always want to come back to this idea that we're not broken or damaged, we're human beings living in human bodies, responding to different stressors. And the outputs that we experience are natural consequences of the experiences that we've had, physical, social, emotional

experiences that have shaped and patterned our nervous system. And some of what we're facing is because of big forces like inequality, oppression, injustice, and they're not necessarily personal or individual failures. And we really hope that by understanding this, it brings you more self compassion, more self awareness about behaviors, experiences, outputs. And we also want to make sure that we're always remembering that we are neuroplastic beings. We're always changing

and adapting to the stimulus that comes in. And when we know how to work with our nervous system to create new neural patterns, new networks in the brain, we can really make a tangible change in the outputs that we experience so we're not stuck. And this doesn't just fall on the individual to train their nervous system to be more resilient so we can continue to live in a society that's

harmful. With neurosomatic tools, we hope that people can help to mitigate some of the physical and mental health outcomes that result from larger societal. From a larger. With neurosomatic tools, we hope that people can help to mitigate some of the physical and mental health outcomes that result from the larger societal issues that they face.

Wait. But we also hope that by talking about these issues, it will help us all to begin to deconstruct and question our systems and contribute to meaningful change collectively and not just individually. Definitely. I think it's really important to parcel apart. Yes, we have individual work to do, and let's have these big conversations to start to make change in these big systems that are

keeping us in dysregulation and chronic stress. I think we should talk a little bit about, like, what do we mean by a neurosomatic perspective? What does that mean for us? Well, it means that the brain speaks the language of sensory inputs. And so NSI is really an ability to recognize how sensory and cognitive inputs affect our nervous system. And then we can intentionally change the inputs to produce a positive way to move through life, a positive adaptation

in the nervous system. And when we do that, we get an increased regulation and increased in groundedness in our performance and behavior change and trauma re patterning. And so to break that down a little bit, like, what does that mean when we say sensory and cognitive inputs? It means the way that our brain is looking at the world around us, that's taking in the information around us from our eyes, from our vestibular system, our proprioception, our

interoception, these are all our sensory inputs. And there's a lot more to it than that. That's just a few of the systems. But, you know, when you think about your eyes being at the top of the neural hierarchy, because your eyes are so important to deliver information about what's going on around, in the world around you, what could be a potential perceived threat. And based on that information, your brain responds to a positive adaptation or a maladaptation, a bad adaptation.

And we're also talking when we talk about cognitive inputs, our beliefs, and where do our beliefs come from? The society, the tv, our families, the people around us. And so there's. It's. It's a fascinating. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's a really a big reframe. And we talk about this a lot on here, but I think it never hurts to go back to, really, the basics of an NSI framework, which is that our

nervous system does three things. It takes in sensory information, like you were talking about from all those different sensory input systems. And it these input systems are how we know about the world around us and inside of us. Right? Our extraception, knowing about our environment around us, our interception, knowing what's going on inside our proprioception, knowing where our body is in space, takes it in, takes it and takes it in.

And then it also feeds all that information up to our brain, where our brain interprets that information and integrates it. And then it makes a decision of what to do. It generates a response, and that response is an output. So the nervous system does three things. It takes an input. It interprets those inputs, and then it generates an

output. And the outputs are how we respond to stress and how we either positively adapt or don't adapt, or like you were saying, maybe maladapt to be in this state of constant perceived threat, constant danger that's moving us into our f responses or creating more stress or keeping us from sleeping or in pain. And so with all these issues, we're looking at input, interpretation

and output. And NSI, it really also means that we understand how structural forces, developmental experience, natural neurodiversity, all impact our brains and nervous system. And structural trauma. It comes from the environment and it comes from society. It's an ongoing, chronic stress. And it refers to how social systems impact people, impact groups of people, maybe through the denial of opportunities, forced displacement, lack of resources or

opportunities. And with NSI, we want to look at how these structural forces impact an individual's nervous system, impact the nervous system of a group of people, or even as a society. And so how does it contribute to the overall stress load that then impacts beliefs, behaviors, attachment, and then health outcomes? And this is a big mental health reframe. Even the word mental health is a little bit of a misnomer because it implies that everything is just happening in our mind. But the truth is,

it's much more interconnected than that. Physical symptoms and health outcomes are reflections of our brain function and our nervous system health. Our bodily reactions and our physical health states impacts. And. And physical health states impact our emotional responses, our social experiences. These things are always interacting with one another. It's like an interactive feedback loop. And the nervous system is unifying the. The mind, the cognitive thoughts and the body. There's this

bio psychosocial model, right? Bio is the physical from the body up. Psycho is the mind, the thoughts, the beliefs, the interpretation of sensations and the emotional experiences. And social is the relationships, the societal structures, the outside forces and dynamics that impact health. And so we're weaving all of those together and really trying to understand that all of these impact our nervous system health, our resilience, our ability to modulate and regulate, and that then these all

interplay with one another, right? Because as my mental health is disrupted, then it has physical health outcomes that impacts my social situations. And it's just an ongoing interplay. And sorry, I missed a part. And so, as we reframe this, we really hope people can see that they're not too sensitive or anxious or depressed, but that your nervous system is like your surveillance system, and it's all responding to the world around you. And it maybe

has become primed for danger. It's maybe working overtime to keep you safe. And these patterns are adaptive responses because of periods of chronic stress or trauma. Yeah. And you may be asking yourself, if you're new to this podcast, like, who are we? And why would you even listen to us? What do we do? And so for me, my journey got very intentional. My healing journey, my life journey got very intentional in 2014 when I was diagnosed with stage three, her two positive breast cancer.

Even though five years prior I was kidnapped for sex trafficking in another country, stabbed my captor to get out of there and experience divine intervention, it still took me five years of nervous system dysregulation and a cancer diagnosis to wake me up and call me into a portal of healing. And then it was not too much longer, maybe around 2017, I met Elizabeth and learned about my nervous system. I was introduced to applied neurology through exercise

and rehabilitation. And after 20 years of a knee injury, I rehabilitated that knee and got its mobility back. And then along the way of that journey, I also was able to lower my anxiety, go through various training courses to kind of change my life and support the changing of my life as I was in recovery from all of the treatment that I experienced. And then I just began to lean a little harder onto this path. And then with Elizabeth, I began to understand that I had a score of four

and that I have some developmental trauma. I've got, had some emotional, had some emotional dysregulation. And, you know, we just really started to put all these links together between the nervous system. And then Elizabeth started to. Elizabeth started putting all these links together about the nervous system, and then we started applying it to ourselves and seeing all these massive growth and shifts. And then we just went

into the woods with it. We went into the deepest, darkest caves of our bodies, of our stories, of our beliefs and subconscious programs, and we did it. And we are here on this podcast living completely different lives than the lives that were coming from our ace scores and our. Not only our ace scores, because we are women that have lived into our forties. We have a lot of things that we also remember about our traumas. Right? I have more stories than just sex trafficking

and breast cancer, as I'm sure a lot of you do, also listening to. They're just a couple of my big stories. And so we started taking the work that we were doing on ourselves, applying it to clients, and seeing those same incredible outcomes. Really want you also to understand, like, as far as I've come on this journey, I'm still in my journey, I'm still coming to deeper understanding of my

nervous system. As we move through NSI, the fourth cohort, I am still finding myself in places where I'm like, yes, that's the next horizon for me. Oh, and now I'm learning that I have a neurodivergence, I have an ADD, ADHD, maybe with a sprinkle of, well, I definitely have a sensory processing disorder, wherever that falls on the spectrum. And then, you know, there's a little sprinkle of this and that along the

way on top of complex trauma. And so what I love about NSI is because I know in its truth, it works. I know that it works because I'm here on this awesome podcast, sharing space with Elizabeth and sharing space with you. And so I'm using my voice, I'm standing in my truth, and I'm being visible. And those were not things that I did prior to this. And I've embarked on an incredible

spiritual journey. That is all because I am so grounded in my nervous system and deeply attuned, which leads all into my greater work as I move in now into psychedelic spaces with people, helping people come into their deeper understandings as well. And, you know, have this. Having this cognitive knowing doesn't make my path easy. Doesn't make this journey easy. It's hard af a lot of days. It's not easy. It's. It's challenging. And then there are

days that are beautiful and incredible and very rewarding. But all of it comes down to having a daily nervous system practice, so that when those days are challenging, I don't get stuck in those states and shut down and not able to show up and deliver and live a life that I'm really passionate about. That makes me really joyful. And so that's why we have this podcast, is to encourage you in your NSI journey as well.

Yeah. It's such an honor and so wonderful to walk this path with Jen and go through all of these experiences. As I was thinking about, you know, my story and how I got here, I always think back to the year I turned 30. It was the year I ran my first marathon. I bought a house all by myself. I had a master's degree. I owned a movement business in Austin, Texas, with two studios. We had this national teacher training program. I was engaged, and on the outside of my life, things looked really

successful. That was also the year I attended my first applied neurology training and did a really intensive week of working with my nervous system. And after the training, I was hanging around with my business partner, and I looked up at this bar that was overhead, and I was like, I think I can do a pull up. And I'd never been able to do a pull up. I had really weak grip strength. It just. Even though I was in the movement world, it was like one of those

things that I couldn't overcome. And I just jumped up, and I grabbed the bar, and I did five pull ups. They were super buttery smooth. And at the same time, I landed, and I looked at her and I said, I don't want to get married. And that was, you know, now I know. Working with my nervous system gave my body more strength, more range of motion to do those pull ups. But also it started to bring me back into my body, to hear my intuition. And

that was really the beginning of this massive unfolding for me. And as we drove back from that training, I started to feel inside of myself for the first time. And it was actually really scary. I could see all these places where my life was out of. Of place, you know, my very real deal workaholism over training, I felt how exhausted I was. I was thinking about these weekly cycles of working myself into the ground and then crashing with binge eating until I was sick.

And I. I had the capacity to see all of that different, and I knew I wasn't okay. And I also felt inside this, like, terrible need to run, like, to run from that information. I felt like an adolescent inside. You know, when I was 24, I got sober. But before that, life looked like psych holds, self harm, hospital stays, drug abuse, abusive relationships, suicidal ideation, Duis. And when I got sober, I really buried that girl pretty deep and, you know, masked

a lot and looked functional. But as I drove home, I felt her again, and I knew that all those things were showing up in the work and the food and the abusive training. And so really, gradually, I started to change with nervous system training to connect, to wake up my capacity, change my presence, my spiritual practices. But that was really just the beginning for me. And then later, I fell in love with a man who had complex trauma, and we were navigating all of that when he was diagnosed with

cancer. And I went into being his sole caretaker. My business at that time was also falling apart because of the changes and the workaholism patterns. And I started diving really deep into trying to understand complex trauma. What was going on? Why was this happening? And I read all of those books to understand him. But what happened was that I saw myself, and

I had all of this background in applied neurology. I had gone through a long period of education, and things just started to come together between the way that trauma disrupts our nervous system and then the outputs that we experience. And at the same time, under all of that stress, my childhood experiences started to come back. I started to learn about my ace scores, my early childhood sexual abuse, and had to dive into my own deep somatic healing. And right about that time, Jen and I were

really connecting. She was helping me through the cancer stuff as someone who had been there, and we were exploring all of these concepts, just so curious. And things just kept opening and unraveling as we started to work more and more with our nervous system in the context of somatic healing, in the context of behavior change. And eventually, over time, that led me to begin brain based. And that was the same year that Jen started the podcast, and we started to talk about all of

these things out in the open. And it's just been a wild trajectory of neuroscience and somatic work and connecting with the community. And all of this is really important to me because I know so many amazing people with complex trauma like Jen, like people that I really love, and I don't want all of us to have to experience these predicted health outcomes. And I do believe that there's a different way to go about it. And that is why we do everything that we do.

We've really been in some very painful places in our lives. Honestly, when I think of even just in the recent years with, like, food stuff and going through the food portal of healing that we did, like, that was a huge shift when we went through that in our lives. Like, that changed my life. And I can't say that anything I ever did, ever, of all the modalities I've ever engaged in, ever gave me the freedom of healing my food patterns. It's such a gift, what you've created.

I mean, really, it is. So I just want to say thank you. Well, thank you. And I would not be here without all the work that we've done together. It is very much a co creation. Man. Got a little emotional there, y'all. It's NSI. So powerful. So let's tell them what is coming this season. Okay, great. A little heavy, but here we are. So our first few episodes are going to be really interesting. We are going to look at memory, how it's impacted by our developmental

experiences, how it impacts our nervous system health. But most importantly, we're going to look at somatic memory. Like, what does that mean, that trauma lives in the body? What do we mean by that? And how does that impact our mental health, our physical health in the present moment? If we know we have trauma stored in our body, if that's our somatic memory, how is this shaping our present life? So I think that's going to be a really important foundational

episode for everyone. Agreed. And then we're going to dive into some big, broad topics like depression and anxiety. Matt Bush is going to be joining us again, and you may remember him from last season. We explored narcissism and empathy from a neurosematic intelligence perspective. So if you want a little teaser of how this could look, I totally suggest you go back to those episodes. But, you know, we're really, the intention is to be examining these and exploring them from many different

perspectives. And as I said earlier, we may be doubling down. We have, like, say we might be thinking about ADHD. ADHD. Well, what is that like in a woman's body? With all our changing cycles every month that changes? We have higher diagnoses in those areas, as I was mentioning earlier. So as science begun begins to understand women's bodies, too, we want to explore and share that information. It's a journey I'm on. Hello. Yes, we're women in

changing cycles. So it's like, it's really fascinating. It's exciting. I mean, as always, as we record these episodes, there is like a vortex that we go into of understanding ourselves

deeper. And some of it is really looking at the big foundational components of health that drive are some of the big foundational components that drive our health outcomes, like sleep, the ability to sleep, the ability to rest, and how, like, really diving into how nervous system dysregulation and trauma impact our ability to wind down at the end of the day to take pauses. How does that affect burnout and chronic fatigue and then

depression? And it's been really causing us to reflect on our own lives at an even deeper level of where some of these big pillars of true health missing. And how can we take the work even deeper? And I definitely think it's rest. Rest is one of them for sure. I mean, it's definitely, as we were saying yesterday in our, in our conversation, just, it's our next horizon, because even when we talk about integration of some of the work that we do, it's like, no, we need

integrity. Rest. Is that integration time for our brains, for our bodies and our nervous systems? And I was just telling Elizabeth, like, I don't know if I'm actually reaping the.

The true rewards of everything that I do because I'm not resting properly and still trying to explore the nuances of that and how, you know, I really see, too that it's intentional, that they do not want us to rest between the blue light, the fluorescent lights, the social media, the algorithms, the energy drinks, like it's all woven together. And as I wake up to that, I can really understand and from a different perspective, we say

all the time on here, rest is revolutionary. And it really is when you get down into your, into maybe microscoping our lives out a little bit. And so I'm excited to rest, honestly. We'll get into rest a little bit later in the season because we're trying some new things out right now, exploring some new resting techniques. And it's, it's a big world out there for our rest.

It is. It's one of the things I'm most excited about exploring. And we're going to be heading into the world of neurodivergence and really examining the intersections of complex trauma, nervous system development, structural trauma, and how all of this impacts our physical health. And we're going to have some great experts joining us. Megan and Neff, an autism expert, an expert on, on HSP. Mari Leon Hernandez is an NSI practitioner who works specifically

with ADHD. And really looking at like, if trauma is an overwhelm of the nervous system and our brains and our nervous systems function differently, process sensory information differently, and then we're living in a world that is constantly overwhelming the nervous system because of the way that we taken information, then how is that big picture actually traumatic all of the time? Because it's overwhelming our system beyond the capacity to cope. That's just it. Like life is a sensory

overwhelm. And sometimes when I think about that too, I can think about all the times where I was little and I can hear him now. I can hear the electrical outlets and listening to people too, and just feeling all this emotion in my body as I'm listening to the Wi Fi and these things and then just understanding. Like every time we go out of our doors, there is a sensory experience that we cannot control. And once again, some of that is intentional. A lot of it is very intentional. And

so I'm excited to explore all of this. And we're not just stopping at mental health because we cannot separate the mind and body. So we will talk about autoimmune. We're going to explore ace scores again. Hormonal health, gut health, chronic pain. We're going to have incredible practitioners, doctors and authors on, all on these topics, joining these discussions. And, you know, ACE scores have been so interesting to learn about as we have woven them into our own lives and just

dug into them a little bit. And also, we really think there's some scores missing from here. Right? And so, so there are interesting statistics around. The higher that your a score goes up, the more likely that you are going to end up with a chronic illness or disease, but it's also highly likely before it impacts even your physical health, it's going to impact your mental health. Increasing depression. With an ACE score four, you'll increase your depression by

3.6%. You're also increasing your risk of suicide. You're increasing your risk of addiction, of alcohol, with alcohol, with food, with cannabis, with all sorts of drugs. And so ACE scores are fascinating to bring into, just to bring into your realm of understanding. So we're looking forward to revisiting that like we did originally in season two. But, you know, we really believe that

chronic stress is at the root of disease. And when I think about addiction, I can't help to think about Gabor mate and his question. Ask not why the addiction, but why the pain? And so there is a correlation between our complex trauma, our developmental trauma, and even beyond to our coping mechanisms, like getting into the spectrum of

addiction. And so if we're looking at chronic stress as the root of disease and how our nervous system is the system in our body that responds to and adapts to and processes the stress, and how is that shaped by stress when we. When we are faced in development patterns, that our brain and nervous system are primed for survival instead of connection. Yeah. Ace scores was such a huge reason that we wanted to put all of this work out into the

world like we were talking about. There's just so many of us out here trying to make it through the world with these systems that have been patterned to perceive a lot of threat and as a consequence, experience a lot of dysregulation. And it's. It sucks. It sucks that people have to go through that trauma and then experience more trauma layered on top of that because of the patterns that are created, and then go into the mental health system, in the medical health system and get more

trauma and more stress and more dysregulation. And I think the conversation about all of this is growing. Like nervous system health and regulation is becoming a topic that is expanding in the collective conversation. And we just really want to be a part of that because I think there is a place for applied neurology and really working directly with the system with neurosomatic tools to start to re pattern and create change so that people don't have to experience

the outcomes on that same level. And then, of course, as we made our way through all of this exploration, it's really clear it's not just an individual issue, that there are larger structural, systemic forces that we do have to talk about to get a clear picture of what's going on. Like, we were talking about the sensory overload with neurodivergence, or the fact that the medical health system and the mental health system is not great always for women. And we're very under

researched and misdiagnosed a lot of times. The, the racial bias, everything, there's so much layered in there that in order to have a complete picture, we do have to examine that as well. And so we'll be joined by a lot of experts in those realms also. And it really sucks, too, how well they did at disconnecting us from each other, from disconnecting people, from creating separation, not only from people,

but disconnection to nature. And nature plays a huge role in our nervous system, in our gut health, because we are what you see outside. This there is, I'm hugely inspired by Doctor Zach Bush. And so I'm about to read you a kind of a summary of something that I read of his recently, because he was talking about isolation and the loss of connectivity in a human cell. When one cell is isolated, it is ground zero for disease. And that isolation, a cellular level, is a

cancer. And when a cell disconnects from an environment, it becomes the disease. And so when we disrupt nature, when, when we see out there this disrupt disruption of nature, it often has with it the intention of reducing its complexity. Well, what's interesting about the human brain is that the human brain also has this reductionist effort in its. In its way, that it patterns and survives. We've been reduced to the sensory

input, right? The sensory language. And so, and it's necessary and logical to approach this understanding of the world around us like this. And as we lose sight of, you know, a lot of, we often lose sight of these more complex relationships that we are part of. But the one that we can see the most easily, if we take the time, is that we are connected to nature, that the microbiome that exists in us and everything that we are made up of

is out living outside of us. And he gives this beautiful example of when you've, if you've ever gone into, say, a beautiful forest or a wooded area, if you're in Austin, in the greenbelt. And he says, the forest doesn't survive by its roots. Yes, the trees, they do survive by their roots. They talk to each other. They share water and chemicals. But there's also a whole environment happening there, right? There's the worms and the protozoa and

the parasites and the bacteria. And then the deer comes through and uses the bathroom and then adds its itself into the microbiome. And that is how we are as well. We are complex parts of nature, and communication and sharing is the fabric of life. And you can see that in nature, and that is representative of what and who we are. It's so fascinating to think about. I can't wait to get into some of

those conversations. And then I think, you know, also, too, we want to kind of look at the history of the DSM and mental health diagnosis and question some of that a little bit, because the words and the language, the definitions, the identities, how we frame things, they can really shape our beliefs about ourselves, but they can also empower

and disempower us. And we just want to offer different perspectives on that so that people can have more consideration when they're thinking about these things and really start to examine how diagnoses shape our beliefs, our identity, and our bias. And one of the books that we were really inspired by as we were preparing for this season was the divergent mind by Genera Nuremberg. And she talks a lot about the history of the DSM in there

and poses some things to consider. Like, consider that during slavery in the United States, people named slave diseases, when slaves showed signs of unhappiness and wanting freedom. And in other errors, women who wanted to work outside the home and have professional lives, doctors said it would damage their reproductive organs. Homosexuality was deemed a mental illness until 1973. The diagnosis of hysteria for women has plagued the medical and psychiatric industry.

And that there's kind of a reframe of the DSM to be more of a reflection of politics and sociocultural dynamics rather than actually science based, evidence based, biological things that are happening in the brain and the body. And so we want to make sure we're looking at who's defining these terms and why. And where is that coming from? What's the history behind it so that we can shift perspective? Absolutely. I mean, you know, like you just said, it's a book created around political and

socioeconomical history. And even psychology was for men. Breath work originated for men. I mean, there's a lot of male centric healing that is put onto women's bodies. Last season, you know, Piper Rose was with us. And they redefined CPTSD by dropping the D. Like, what is this disorder that we all have? Like, let's stop saying that. So a lot of times through the season now, you're going to hear us referring to it as cpts and also asking ourselves, what other,

in what other ways and terms can we do? Can we drop the word disorder? Because this is a way that we have developed and there's nothing disordered about it, especially if we're. I'm. I'm always interested in, like, where's this neurotypical brain? I'm so interested to find this person. So I really believe that when n equals one in the nervous system, n equals one in the brain, and that we are all beautifully expressing in all sorts of neuro

spicy ways that we like to say through NSI. So, you know, we want to understand how these diagnoses shape us. What's the neurology of identity? What's the neurology of beliefs and bias? And how can it help us understand ourselves? How can we get access to resources when we find ourselves with these. What. Do we call it with these, what if we're not going to say disorders? Diagnoses? Yeah. What do we do once we find ourselves in these diagnoses? And where do we have our experiences

validated? Where do we find community so that we can share our experience? But also, how does a diagnosis, how does it harm someone in the way that we overcouple our identity with our outputs, which can really limit us and create a fractured reality to self, a fractured relationship to the self? And, you know, we always say around here, like, people are just outputs

of a nervous system. That's just what it is. And once you learn about the nervous system, you will actually have a lot more grace for what you see out in the world today and even in the way that people are responding to you. And so, you know, over the years of my life, I've. I've sat with many diagnoses and been on several different medications. I have an insomnia diagnosis, actually, from when I was 22, that I don't think ever really has settled, which is why I say rest is the new horizon for

me. I've had anxiety and depression. I am, you might have heard me say before, I'm just shocked when I was younger that I wasn't tested or brought into some for a bipolar or a manicure depressive kind of diagnosis. I had gut dysfunction since I was eight. And I mean, of course, I go on to have, I mean, my stress level is so bad. I go on to have breast cancer, stage three. So our little bodies go through a lot. They really hold a lot. So this, once again, this season

is exploratory. It's an open conversation. And like Elizabeth said, if you. If it doesn't resonate, you don't have to listen. And if it does, then we're so happy to be here with you. Yeah, absolutely. Jen and I both have a lot of experience with different diagnosis. Like I said, I was, you know, put in psychiatric holds. I was diagnosed bipolar and borderline and engaged in a lot of self harm as a kiddo thrashing around in the world, you know, trying to do the best that I could under

a really high state of dysregulation. And then as I grew into an adult, those patterns changed, but there was still that element of self harm and dysregulation. And so now I've moved away from a lot of those diagnoses. And I think at some points, it is helpful to have diagnosis, because you can get some validation for that. You can find community, you can find resources, and in other ways, it

serves to question. And again, just to echo what Jin said, like, we are just here sharing the research that we found, sharing our experience, but we're not saying to anyone, do or do not take medication, do or do not go down these certain paths of healing. That is always your choice. And we're here to support people in having autonomy and going in whatever direction serves them best. We're just having these

conversations. You know, it was interesting recently in the research while we were preparing for this episode, I went back and retook the tests of a highly sensitive, sensitive person. And I cannot believe how much lower I scored on the. And it's just, it. Once again, it's also something that's not recognized. But I scored so much lower. And I know it's because of the NSI training, because it's sensory. It's sensory. It's. So many of these presentations are coming from issues with our

sensory processing, and. And there are great gifts to being a highly sensitive person. There are many things that are a huge asset about that and ways of thinking about the world differently. I think if our brains weren't a little bit different, we wouldn't have been able to put so many of these dots together, to have the conversations that we have to explore and question some of these things. And

that goes for so many people. Right. It is a gift that we have natural biodiversity, and we also want to learn how to work with our system. So that we're not under so much chronic stress all of the time, getting sick or having outputs that we don't want to live with. So there's this balance between working with our sensory systems

to rehabilitate them and not trying to fall into this. I'm trying to change who I am or take away any of these inherent gifts, but how can I really work with my system to keep my gifts and also preserve my health? And when we think about neurodivergence and neurodiversity, and, like, our connection to nature, when nature gets repetitive, if it just kept repeating the same pattern, it would die. Nature would

die. So, like, think about that for your own brain and how you may be self diagnosing yourself or being hard about the way that your brain is and how you're showing up in the world. Like, all of that can change. I mean, a lot of what you're experiencing could really potentially change. So, you know, we thought about earlier, we talked about this. Like, do we even want. Do we want cpts to be

recognized in the DSM as a diagnosis? Like, what if we bring this into a system that's unequipped to offer healing modalities to address root causes or labels without the shame and stigma attached to it? But at the same. At the same time, recognition is really meaningful. And if it does get recognized, then it could offer people more accessibility to treatment. Because as we know, in our healing modalities and in our healing journeys, I've engaged in many. Most

of the things I do are not covered by any insurance. But what if they were? Would that help another demographic, another set of people in our country, if they did have more access with a recognition, a diagnosis, recognition. It's a really important topic to explore. And again, like we mentioned, too, we're also going to be, like we mentioned several times, we'll be looking at bigger structural forces, racism, gender bias, socioeconomic

disparity. And we have some really awesome guests coming to help us explore this. Doctor Jennifer Mullan, who wrote decolonizing therapy, and Prentice Hemphill, who wrote what it takes to heal. They're both coming on. That'll be really interesting conversations. And Piper Rose, they will be back on with us to talk more about identity and how our beliefs impact our nervous system. So there's lots of amazing, amazing conversations coming up.

That's right. And if you know Zach Bush, you can tell him I want to talk to him. We're calling him in. And, you know, it's just, we always want to go at this with curiosity. We're curious in the material that we're bringing to you. We're

curious in our own healing journeys. We're curious in these conversations and curious about the way that we move through life and how through our nervous systems, can we change that into a positive adaptation where life looks fuller and more grounded and whatever performance means to you on that spectrum of performance for the brain. And so I'm really thankful that y'all are with us this season. And just please know that there are many entry points to what we do and to what we talk about.

And so you can find all of that in the show notes. You can find all of that. You can connect with us there. And thank you for being here with us. Yeah, thank you for this. We love to connect with you guys. So find us on all the spaces. And we are excited to dive into this season. Okay. I'm so excited to share with people our newest offering. Me too. We get so many requests for in person events, and

here it is. We're doing it. Yes. So if you are ready to join the first ever trauma rewired retreat and escape to the tranquil beauty of North Carolina's appalachian mountains, you are going to love this four day immersive nervous system rewire. Yeah, we, Jen and I are going to both be there guiding everyone through daily nervous system practices, somatic movements, neurosomatic meditations, emotional processing, and then we'll also have fun and play together, too.

We're going to be hiking and swimming in the river and just spending really precious time in community. And we've joined forces with two incredible ladies that run the nature of mind body. And they are experienced nature guides and therapists. They're trauma informed, licensed therapists who have also been through the neurosomatic intelligence coaching certification. So join us for a rejuvenating retreat to reflect, recharge, rewire, and rediscover your inner balance.

Reserve your spot. Today we're keeping this intimate so spaces will go fast. So go to rewireretreat.org to book today and really embark on this journey of self discovery through working with your nervous system and being in nature and community. We can't wait to see y'all there.