TU89: Neurofluency – with Dr. Lou Cozolino, Applied Neuroscience Made Understandable

Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) means just that, a medicine used as a tool to deepen the possibilities for healing.  It’s not the drug, it’s the therapy. NOTE: Find TU listener activities, upcoming meeting etc on FB HERE Psychedelic-assisted therapy: We don’t have to rely on the medicine work to do everything. “Plant medicines aren’t designed to fix us. They help us recognize our truth and lead us towards the next steps we have to take to heal. This is our work to do. When we become clear with who we are, we can bring our shadow into the light.” – Dr. Dan Engle  The use of psychedelics is slowly gaining favor as part of a holistic approach and is radically changing the way we think about therapy and psychiatric medicine. In this episode, Sue Marriott LCSW, CGP discusses the therapeutic use of psychedelics with Dr. Dan Engle, the Founder and Medical Director of Kuya Institute for Transformational Medicine in Austin, Texas. Dr. Engle shares his vision for transformative medicine and how he sees the industry moving forward as it reforms into a transformative model. Tune in and learn more as we explore treatment for various debilitating mental health issues with powerful ancient molecules. Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) refers to professionally supervised use of ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin, LSD and ibogaine as part of a carefully elaborated psychotherapeutic process. Clinical results so far have shown safety and efficacy, even for “treatment resistant” conditions, and far superior effects than traditional therapies alone, or traditional medicines such as antidepressants.  In addition, the treatment is short-term and typically has little side effects or risk with careful and adequate screening. If you enjoy the excellent content in our episode library please support the show by joining our online community! Click here This treatment isn’t new, actually, the use of plants to achieve non-ordinary states of mind for wellbeing is ancient.  But there has been a renaissance in exploring non-ordinary states as route to healing and the PAP model opens up interesting questions regarding diagnostics and explanation of psychological distress.  It may serve to advance novel explanations for mental disorders and their treatment, in a way that considers social and cultural factors, historical adversities, and acute trauma.     Show Notes: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:11 The Kuya Institute And Community 00:06:41 Sparking An Interest In Psychedelics 00:12:45 Understanding Body And Mind 00:20:03 Exploring The Effects Of Psychedelics 00:28:51 Therapeutic Accessibility Of Psychedelics 00:31:04 Innovating Treatment Models 00:33:21 Ketamine And Its Usage 00:35:11 Ketamine Safety And Psilocybin 00:38:50 Psychedelic States And Safety 00:41:13 The Conscious And Subconscious Mind 00:43:46 The Role Of Facilitators 00:47:34 Tuning Into The Subconscious 00:50:40 MDMA Focused Therapy 00:57:58 MDMA And Altered States 01:01:56 MDMA Side Effects 01:11:26 Contacting Dr. Engle Complete transcript published below, keep scrolling. Important Links: Psychedelics and Neuroplasticity – A Systematic Review Unraveling the Biological Underpinnings of Pychedelics Sept 2021, Psychiatry MAPS – Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies Kuya The Second Brain My Stroke of Insight MAPS Organization A Dose of Hope Jill Bolte Taylor – Past Episode Anatomy of an Epidemic Trey Ratcliff – Past Episode DrDanEngle.com FullSpectrumMedicine.com ThankYouLife.org About Dr. Dan Engle Dr. Dan Engle has a unique background in integrative psychiatry, neurocognitive restoration, peak performance medicine and psychedelic research. Dr. Dan unitizes his profound knowledge and experience to help individuals shift from illness and trauma to health and happiness. Dr. Dan’s trans-disciplinary approach focuses on healing all aspects of the mind, body and spirit in order to help individuals achieve optimum health, wellbeing and sustained fulfillment. Dr. Dan is the Founder and Medical Director of Kuya Institute for Transformational Medicine in Austin, Texas; Full Spectrum Medicine, a psychedelic integration and educational platform; and Thank You Life, a non-profit funding stream supporting access to psychedelic therapies. Dr. Dan is the author of The Concussion Repair Manual: A Practical Guide to Recovering from Traumatic Brain Injuries, as well as his new book, A Dose of Hope: A Story of MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy. TYou are invited: JOIN OUR ONLINE COMMUNITY HERE  Support the show AND get access to many cool neuronerd things… including your own private feed that has no ads and tons of extra episodes.  Transcript: Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy With Dr. Dan Engle Dan Engle MD, Author of Dose of Hope, A Story of MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy Edited (for clarity): Welcome aboard, Dr. Dan. We’re so happy that you agreed to join us. Thanks for having me on, Sue. It’s going to be so nice. We’re going to have an expert who’s going to walk us through the state of the state, the state of the art, what’s happening with psychedelic medicine, in particular with an eye towards the medicines that are in the queue, psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine, which is the legal one at this point. Would you mind going ahead and jumping in and doing a little warm-up here? Get people oriented to the subject, partly. Say a little bit about yourself, where you are, who you are and a little bit about your background. You’ve got an interesting story that will lead us right into some of these conversations. I’m happy to do that. Now, I’m in Austin, Texas, back home. I’m from San Antonio and Austin. We’re neighbors. We’re right down the road from each other. Next time we’re having this conversation, it’ll probably be in person. That’d be awesome. I opened up my center, Kuya. It’s already been beautiful to see the community build and start. We’re wanting to reform and rebirth the new vision for what mental health and mental centers can look like. We have an excellent suite of services. We have a beautiful facility and those two things still sit on top of the fertile, rich foundation, which is our community. The way we’ve practiced mental health, psychology, psychiatry for the last many decades has been primarily in isolation. When a person goes to see their therapist or their physician, it’s usually in isolation. It’s not connected to a community. We wanted to reform that. Our community is based on a transformational model where everybody is going through their own process of transformation through their own experience and through their own lens so the community starts to be able to support itself and lift everybody up. When you say community, what do you mean specifically? You can have people go through mystical states and experiences, whether it’s through the veil of a near-death experience or a spontaneous realization. We have a 10,000-square-foot facility, 2,000 square feet of that are community space. Do you mean the Austin Community or your community of clinicians or patients? All of the above. We see clients from all over the country and the sweetest services because we have a 20% sauna, cold plunges, float tanks, an IV lounge and a tea and tonic bar. We have a lot of associated therapeutics that we can put around the medicine work to support the medicine work doing its job even better. We don’t have to rely on the medicine work to do everything. We wanted to build this around a community model. Principally around our clients and our patients coming in the door but also around the recognition that many people who come to see us are going to become, to heal a particular constellation of symptoms depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, pain. Our services are very good. We have an excellent track record and we’re tracking all of our data. We want to be able to tell them not only the new story of this transformational medicine approach. We want to show the data because the story moves culture but data moves science. When we can show the data and showcase not only the people’s transformational experience, we can say, on paper, it makes sense that people would be feeling better because their chronic inflammatory markers are down. Their organic etiology and cause for their longstanding depression has been identified and worked towards resolution whether it’s an adrenal issue, a thyroid issue, gut dysbiosis, immune system dysregulation, particularly in the midst of COVID or a variety of other non-organic issues, lifestyle issues, sleep dysregulation, toxicity and the diets. These are all part of the assessment that we have to look at because of this beautiful, complex biopsychosocial spiritual machinery. If we’re only looking at the neurochemistry from the standard of care psychiatric model then we’re losing the majority of the whole picture. Our suite of services is very good. In regards to the healing orientation, when we put people through our protocols. That same suite of services is very good for people that are also optimizing because if somebody doesn’t necessarily have a thing that they want a “heal or fix,” is still good to do a sauna, a cold plunge, float, get IVs, optimize and make sure that the dietary approach that you’re using is good for your physiology and your constitution in the right time of the year. The balance of your micro macronutrients. All of this has the opportunity to tell a different story, which we’re all in the hairless monkey suit going through our process of transformation, doing it a little bit differently. When we can combine optimization and a healing community then, by osmosis, it allows people that have been stigmatized and labeled with chronic refractory conditions and diagnoses and illnesses that they’re always going to have it. It offers us the opportunity to tell a different story. When you say IVs, what is in the IV? What’s happening? Is it ketamine? Is it something else? No, we don’t use ketamine in an IV administration. We do our ketamine therapy in intramuscular injections and the majority of it. Also some in sublingual or oral trophies or rapid dissolving tablets. IV ketamine has the benefit that you can stop it. If somebody starts having a freakout or bad trip, you can stop it. For us, as a transformational community, I’m curious about that. If somebody has a bad trip, that’s excellent information that their stuff is right on the surface. Let’s understand that further. Let’s create an opportunity with the right set and setting with excellent facilitation to recontextualize a person’s ability to lean into that thing that’s most uncomfortable because there’s so much opportunity for growth there, as you know. It gets into like the mechanism for healing. There are such great results that are coming out of this. As a matter of fact sometimes I get worried. People can become almost evangelical about it. Like, “Everyone, put it in the water.” I worry about that. As a group therapist, if there’s only one note being hit, probably something’s being missed. However, there are fantastic numbers and effectiveness being shown with these medicines. I am curious because they’re all a little different. I want to get into the details of the different psychedelics. To understand, first of all, say you have one person and they have a choice of the different psychedelics. What should they be considering? How do you see them used differently in general? You have, say, the medicines and what are the populations that you feel like each one speaks to? I want to understand how does this works? How is this so effective? Those are a couple of questions there. I’ve had a long history of intermittent depression. I was probably kindled for that. There’s a long history of depression in my family, suicide, real intense dysregulation. That layered on top of half of a dozen severe concussions throughout snowboarding soccer, diving and breaking my neck and all of the different things. I had an organic etiology as well. No one that I saw, even though all my medical training. I got into psychiatry and neurology because I was fascinated by the fields. I was in my neurology training when I had my 6th concussion. My 5th one was when I broke my neck. That was three weeks before medical school started. I started med school in a big halo, which was an awesome orientation to get into psychiatry and neurology. A few years later, in my neurology training, I had my last concussion. Because of the way I hit, I knew it was bad. I put an 8-inch crack in my helmet. There was this internal voice that said, “You crossed the line.” I was like, “That didn’t sound so good.” Sure enough, over the coming weeks and months, I started having the severe post-concussive syndrome. I asked my neurology attending physicians. I said, “I got pretty wrecked. Now my sleep is dysregulated. My mood is dysregulated. I can’t think. I feel like I’m thinking through the mud. My attention, focus, concentration, short-term memory, shifting sets. All of that. My executive function was lousy.” They all said the same thing. They said, “You had a concussion. You have post-concussive syndrome. Go home, get some rest. We hope it gets better.” I’m like, “That’s all you got? Wow.” We have excellent diagnostics and crappy therapeutics. I got in the lab and I wanted to understand neurorehabilitation. That dovetailed with my work with Ayahuasca. It was the first time that I felt my brain come online. I closed my clinic at the time. I moved down to the jungle. I lived in the jungle for a year cleansing with Ayahuasca. I have this understanding and appreciation of the hardware sciences and neurology and the software sciences, psychology. That’s essentially what we built at Kuya as a transformational medicine center where we bring both together, the hardware and the software. To answer your last question about IVs, the IV therapeutics that we offer are vitamin and mineral cocktails, peptide therapies. We were working with exosomes and stem cells, particularly for people who have concussive issues and need more of that neurorehabilitation and the accelerated scaffolding for neurologic repair. The FDA has cracked down on biologics and that includes exosomes and stem cells. You must think of stem cells as like seeds for new growth. They start to support regenesis. What was the other thing, exosomes? Exosomes are the fertilizer for that growth. They’re their signal messengers but anyway, we can’t do that as much. What we do is we use all the therapeutics that are appreciated in the space to be regenerative performance tools. We put that around a person’s experience of where they’re are orienting to the goals that they have and if they’re coming from a healing community then largely, they’re going to be desiring to heal from a variety of conditions. If they’re an organic etiology, I also have historically had chronic cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr Virus. My titers have been high if I’m stressed and I’ve done a lot of travel or it’s in the winter months. I’m not getting as much vitamin D. When those titers flare, I know I have a higher predilection towards depression. We know those two viral chronic viral infections lead to chronic severe depression. This is an example and because of how I hit, when I dove off a pier and hit a sandbar and my centrally broke C5. I was total upside down. My brain smashed into my skull plate and vice versa too. What happens then is you have pituitary dysregulation and you have an issue that looks like hypopituitarism. It’s primary hypopituitarism because the primary injury is in the pituitary gland but it looks like hypothyroidism, low adrenal glands and low testosterone. We’ll continue to create new therapeutic models to be able to offer the medicine at scale and yet not compromise clinical excellence, efficacy, and safety. All of that, if you’re looking at the labs and you’re not looking at the brain, you’re going to be like, “All these hormones are low. Let’s give you hormones.” That’s not the issue. The glands are fine. The brain can’t tell those peripheral glands how to work. You have to repair the brain at the central axis. Not to get too complicated but this is an example of where we’re going in medicine, which is the appreciation that we’re this integrated system. You can’t separate the mind from the brain like you can’t separate the person from the environment. Gabor Maté’s legendary quote and it’s true. We have to understand the complexity of the human organism. That includes looking at our brains, doing brain map systems and taking a good history and physical exams and understanding. Also, there’s a great article in Forbes magazine I was reading about the reformation of the entire mental health system. I don’t know that we need the entire reformation because it’s hardware and software together. What they’re saying is maybe many of what we call mental illnesses aren’t illnesses at all. They’re adaptive responses. There’s a lot of truth there. Depression and anxiety can be an adaptive response, especially when we understand what the core issue is, the core wound or the core trigger. That’s where medicine comes in. The last thing I’ll say about the IV suite is, people can optimize with IV therapeutics. Oftentimes, people who have chronic mental health challenges or psychological constellation of symptoms, oftentimes they have chronic inflammation and that can look like or be stimulated by a variety of different things, including gut dysbiosis, not having awesome diets, GI inflammation. We know in Michael Gershon’s book, The Second Brain like the neuroendocrine axis also includes this digestive understanding and appreciation. For example, most of the serotonin is produced and stored in the gut. It gets transferred to the brain. Our serotonin, which we understand like modulates mood. Most of that comes from the gut. If your guts are off, everything’s off like sleep. Sleep is off, everything’s off. We have to understand how all of this stuff fits together. We recognize, we start giving people IV vitamin mineral cocktails, they start feeling good because it mainlines a lot of the building blocks to optimize neurochemistry and neuro-regulation. All of that then brings us to medicine work. When we understand and we have this hardware framework, the brain and body, physiology framework then we can identify what those organic etiologies are. In complement to that, we want to understand what the software etiologies are, what I would use software meaning like mind, heart and soul. The mind orientation, essentially, if we’re thinking about it as a computer, that’s where we’re receiving all of our belief systems, identification fields, expectancies around who we need to be in the world to get the love that we want. This interpersonal neurobiology starts through that mental filter. We come into life born to bond and what was our early imprinting like. What are our attachment styles like? What was the safety arena? If I look at my own experience, I was born six weeks early. I spent the majority of my first year in and out of the hospital on a respirator because my lungs weren’t developed and they didn’t have surfactant as a common treatment back then. If I think about my little self and this little incubator thinking, “What the hell is happening? I’m in this sterile environment. I want some warm connection. I want mom. I want the boob. I want all of that connection time.” We can tell a story about what that might look like and what that might mean. All of these are just stories. We try and understand to the best of our ability what’s underneath the hood but until you get into work that’s able to uncover the subconscious material, we’re telling stories and it’s all like guesswork. What are the processes that get into the subconscious and the superconscious? Let’s say the narrative is mostly a horizontal process but the medicine work is a vertical process. We get into the subconscious, the deep soul-level work and the superconscious like our relationship to God source and spirit and all of that. The experiences offer us that degree of self-examination. In this day and age, the number one in the pole position is psychedelic therapy. It’s because it’s becoming more appreciated, interesting. The data’s super freaking good. When held in the right sentence, setting psychedelic therapy is head and shoulders above the standard of care as far as efficacy rates and safety rates for that matter but it’s not new to the extent that we’ve been exploring psychedelic and transcendent states since we were more hairy monkeys, banging rocks around the campfire. Simon goes back in the foster records a million years. There’s evidence that we’ve been exploring altered states for psilocybin for close to 200,000 years when we transitioned from Homo erectus, Homo sapiens. There may have been part of this exploration and connection with transcendent states through mind-altering substances that helped us get to where we are. We do have biology and a need for transcendence and exploration. Psychedelic therapy is in the new modern context is standing on the shoulder of the evidence and the experiences that have come before. That being said, psychedelic therapies are one way to look deeper under the hood. Psychedelic-assisted therapy: It’s amazing to get under the hood when the ego can just rest its defense mechanisms long enough to have some flexibility and curiosity about actually becoming intimate with those things that we fear the most. You can get to that level of exploration in altered states through meditation, fasting, Vision Quest, holotropic breathwork, hypnotherapy. I studied hypno for years before I was even aware of psychedelic therapy because it’s amazing to get under the hood when the ego can rest its defense mechanisms long enough to have some flexibility and curiosity about becoming intimate with those things that we fear the most. I was a lot. No, you’re covering some great stuff. I can feel we’re working up to mechanism and how things change. I was speaking to Jill Bolte Taylor. She’s the woman who did My Stroke of Insight. She’s the neuroanatomist at Harvard that watched her brain shut down. One of the best TED Talks of all time. Twenty-eight million views. Part of what that means is there’s something she’s saying that people are drawn to. In the middle of the conversation, what happened to her was her left brain, her default mode network went offline. I had the association to psilocybin or to the psychedelics as far as mechanisms. Being able to quiet the conscious, the separateness, the different like, “I am me, you are you,” and all the chatter. You’re right. There are different ways of getting at this. We don’t want to have head injuries, which by the way, in some of your exploration, I was wondering, “Did you ever look at your high risk-taking behaviors and unconsciously, you may have been acting out with all those head injuries?” I bet I’m not but it is interesting. My sense was that there is something about the language that is like getting around, getting to, allowing. There’s something about a release in order to gain access to these other parts of our mind that are not supported in our Western culture that are devalued by our left thinking brain. Not to make it simple as left and right but the idea of the literal, logical, linguistic part of the mind that can think that it knows everything, what I roll at the idea of mysticism and things like that. The mystical is, in my experience, where the magic is. It’s real. You can’t measure it but you can’t deny it. It was Einstein who was talking about the mystical being the language of consciousness that permeates all life, all experience. We can’t be removed from it, nor should we try to. Nor should we try and support medical systems that are divorced from the appreciation of the mystical. In my medical training, we made that wrong. Animism was this old archaic belief of tribal cultures that has no place in modern society. Not only did we shun it, we made it wrong. We developed a pathology around it and it’s unfortunate. We’re in the midst of trying to rehab all of that. The mystical experience, part of that magic that is a little scary to the medical establishment and paradigm because we haven’t been able to quantify it and everybody’s experiences are a little bit different. You can have people go through mystical states and mystical experiences whether it’s through the veil of a near-death experience or a spontaneous realization. One of my early mentors, he had a clinic that was oriented around people having spontaneous awakenings that they didn’t know how to contextualize and what might that look like. He was studying more of an Indian perspective, an Ayurvedic perspective and there’s something called the noughties and the energy system from a Chinese medicine perspective that would be the Meridian system. The energy centers in the body all connect to the brain and they go out the top like if you look at the energetic lines of the Earth. It’s set up as a tour where we field to like a donut that energy comes in the North and up back around through the South. Our systems are like that too. The energy comes in and it can go up. Sometimes you can have one of these spontaneous awakenings and that can look and feel like people are going crazy because it might mean like now your antenna is tuned to a radio station that you’re not familiar with to listen to. It might even be our own internal voice. It could be the voice of our ancestors or of information. Classically, we would call those auditory hallucinations and psychotic. If you have that for too long then you have schizophrenia. If it causes too much discomfort then we’re going to label that even with more pathology and a requirement for medication. You might have to stay on the medication for your entire life. There are a few things that need to be taken into consideration when you think about medicine work, first and foremost is legality and safety. If you look at, it’s Robert Whitaker and the book Anatomy of an Epidemic. Our outcome measures for schizophrenia treatment are worse now than they were a hundred years ago, even in the advent of all of our fancy pharmaceuticals. That’s not to say pharmaceuticals don’t have their place. Like if somebody’s standing on a ledge or if somebody is a danger to themselves or others because they have an experience that they can’t manage then yes, let’s use those but let’s understand that we should only do that while we’re looking at the underlying causative factor and reasons for that. All of that to peel it back and say, “In the midst of taking a more whole person perspective,” and what I would say interpersonal or if we talk about like concentric circles. Intrapersonal within, interpersonal between people and transpersonal like our relationship with life and God itself. When we take it from that perspective then we see, we have to appreciate that the medicines have an opportunity to open up each of those spheres. If somebody comes into an engagement or an experience without knowing what’s possible then it can freak them out. Even ketamine therapy is done in an IV environment where you try and put people to sleep and ride the default mode network reset and the inflammatory lessening that happens when we clear out the glymphatic system in the brain. The body has a lymphatic system. The brain has a glymphatic system. It might be that ketamine is very good for shunting out some of that intracerebral inflammatory load. It’s a great neurologic reset but there’s also psychological opportunity. Ketamine, psilocybin and MDMA are this triads now because ketamine is legal. MDMA and psilocybin are going to become legal early to mid-2023. They all have different mechanisms of action, different approaches and different felt experiences. What ketamine is doing is it’s offering us the opportunity to solidify our systems, tell a different story and get people in the collective, rehabilitate the propaganda of the war on drugs, which never worked, which was inaccurate and which is unfortunate because it’s made many of these medicines wrong. That’s taken a while to rehabilitate that entire propaganda approach but it was very effective. Ketamine because it’s legal and because it’s very convenient, slots into these 60 to 90 minutes sessions because that’s about the usual half-life or experience. It’s telling people in the medical collective and the lay-person collective that it can be safe to go through a controlled altered state experience. There might be a therapeutic benefit whether it’s hitting the brain or in the psyche itself. All of that’s helping to reform our relationship with altered states so that when MDMA and psilocybin become legal, there’s more availability, more appreciation and more grassroots demand that these therapeutics not only become legal but they also become available. Now, the way MDMA is set up, when it becomes legal, it’s going to be about $14,000 to $16,000 per person to go through treatment. I was going to bring that up about the accessibility issue that certainly has concerns about that. When we can have the grassroots movement to demand that these therapeutics are not only legal but they’re also available to the best of our ability to support everybody that needs them, that means we need an entire reformation of the mental health care system. We’re in the midst of that. I certainly hope and pray that we are but it’s in my full expectation that’s going to happen too because if you look at the trajectory that we’ve been on. Massive props continue to go out to Rick Doblin and the MAPS Organization for holding the light for so long. All the people are supporting that. They’ve done what they’ve needed to do, which is have these patient conversations and relationships with the feds in order to put the evidence in front of the policymakers so that MDMA moves out of schedule one and discuss. That as part of the issue, though because then you have to have these protocols that are measured and have been proven. In order to get into that protocol, we’re talking about sometimes multiple therapists hours and before and after. The folks that would be able to access that narrows the scope, unfortunately, partly based on how we have to get it out into the world. You lived overseas. You immersed yourself and there weren’t necessarily those protocols but there was a lot of healing that happened with natural healers I imagine. It’s not an unsolvable problem but you still keeping it set in settings, still keeping everything to maximize the benefit of the therapy of it. Not just having a trip but using medicine to do the therapy, to unleash the therapy that you need to do. Psychedelic-assisted therapy: The mystical experience is the part of that magic that is a little scary to the medical establishment and paradigm, because we haven’t really been able to quantify it, and everybody’s experiences are a little bit different. We’ll continue to create new therapeutic models to be able to offer the medicine at scale and yet not compromise clinical excellence, efficacy and safety. That’s what we do. We innovate. We identify crisis situations, see the opportunity, innovate a solution and continue to iterate towards maximization of its efficacy. We’re going to do that with the medicine work. Now, to your point, MDMA support psychotherapy has been done in three sessions, minimum of two. People can opt-in for a third and the vast majority of people do. Let’s call it three sessions and you have three psychotherapy sessions before anything happens and after all of that happens and in between the sessions. That’s 3 treatment sessions, that’s 12 psychotherapy sessions and that’s with 2 therapists. You have the time to compensate the therapist for their time. You have the cost of building in the research parameters and observation parameters and the bureaucratic requirements and administrative infrastructure to make sure all that happens in a good, safe way. You can understand why the costs would be so high. There is a ton of money in psychedelic therapy. There are a few companies now that collectively are inching towards two plus billion dollars individually in evaluation. There’s no lack of interest, demand and money. It’s about understanding, can we move from such a capitalistic orientation towards a service-based orientation to serve the clients that need these treatments. Do that with innovative care and in a reformed medical system that the therapists are reimbursed for what they require for their time that the insurance companies have built this into their model. That small business owners have built this into their models as well. I think we’re going to see a lot of innovation, which is on the leading edge of it now. That’s the macro. That’s the big picture. How about if we go into a little bit more detail. You mentioned ketamine. As a therapist, I’ve worked with people that are doing ketamine treatment and it’s interesting. It’s not even a psychedelic is that right? Ketamine is not a psychedelic. It’s a dissociative anesthetic. It was used in surgical care, the ‘50s and ‘60s. That was originally in veterinarian medicine and it switched over to human care. It seems less about, at least, how it’s been implemented that I can see from my tiny little porthole window. It feels to me like it is more mechanical, like the reset. Sometimes what I’ll say is like, the snow path with your skis and if you can shake the globe so to speak and have new paths that. It clears it out. That’s great. The psilocybin, there’s more of a sense of story that happens with that particular medicine, I believe. Could you say a little bit about the mechanism, about who you know that it’s very good for? Sue and I want to know that everybody reading appreciates that there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration when you think about medicine work. First and foremost are legality and safety. Psilocybin and MDMA and some of the other medicines we talk about are not legal. Ketamine is but it’s prescription only. It does have addiction potential. Anybody that says ketamine doesn’t have an addiction potential doesn’t know what they’re talking about or they have another agenda because it does. It’s understandable and important that it would be a controlled substance. It is being used in the outpatient setting and esketamine nasal spray. We can talk about the efficacy or benefit or approach to that but it’s still like opiate pain medications. They have an addiction potential. We know there’s an opioid epidemic. There’s still a prescription that’s schedule three. Not everybody’s ready to have a medicine experience. There are few contraindications for ketamine and psilocybin. There are contraindications for MDMA. One of those is Heart Rate Variability, not HRV, in regard to what we’re tracking but tachycardia. Elevation of heart rate by 20 to 30 points can happen. Elevation of blood pressure by 20 to 30 points can happen. Anybody who has a severe cardiac history, that needs to be evaluated. That’s some of the physical contraindications. You have the psychological contraindications, even though psilocybin is extraordinarily physically safe, there’s no LD50, which means you could eat a trash bag of mushrooms. Psilocybins are mushrooms, by the way. You can use psychedelic mushrooms, typically. There are 250 plus psilocybin species in North America alone and 60 to 70 species of those are psychedelic. When we’re talking about psilocybin, usually it’s cubensis classically in the literature people are talking about. You can eat a trash bag of psilocybin cubensis and not die. Really good facilitators are conscious of not trying to rescue their clients from their own suffering. You would probably vomit but there’s no LD50 but there’s a psychological component and blast them that happens. If people take a heroic dose, usually 1 to 2 grams dried is a mild dose. 3 to 4 grams, more of a moderate dose. Five-plus grams is usually a higher dose. Some people aren’t ready to go into the deeper waters. The disclaimer that we want to say is that as you’re getting into more specifics, that as you’re reading this, that this isn’t medical advice. This isn’t designed to help you figure out what dose you need to go take. We’re talking in general about the effect of it and the research. We do want to get into what you’re talking about but the thing that was important was that for everybody to use their discretion and that these are serious, they’re complicated medicines that are mostly illegal, probably wherever you’re reading, even though that’s changing. Having said that with discretion, you were beginning to talk about the effect of psilocybin, in particular, and the therapy. What’s the therapy part of it? You can think of it like cars. Cars are tools. They help us go from place to place. I wouldn’t want a toddler driving a car because they don’t have that skill set, nor psychological development. I don’t want many people working with psychedelic states if they don’t have the skillset or the psychological development to be able to come intimately into those places that they fear the most. Oftentimes the people say, “I want to have an experience or I want to start the process.” I said, “Great. I appreciate your eagerness or your curiosity at a minimum. Do you have a meditation practice? Do you have an experience of getting scared or up close and personal with something that feels very uncomfortable? If so, how did you manage it? Have you ever been in a float tank? Do you know what a float tank is? Can you be with yourself in the dark alone? If that’s scary, how do you deal with it? When you get triggered or stressed, how do you deal with that?” There’s a lot to talk about leading in, how to self-regulate, how to come back to breath, how to recognize when the mind goes on a crazy loop, get curious and recontextualize the interest level and move because the ego typically moves away from the discomfort, particularly in our society. We don’t like being uncomfortable and yet, that can be rehabilitated. We can tell a different story. Even the story about somebody getting very uncomfortable and that you were encouraging to be curious about that, rather than to run from it related to the ketamine example from earlier. That is one of the things that’s like is it a roar shock that you have experiences and we attribute meaning to them, that’s a version or is it that the medicine that it’s more direct than that. That it’s not just our association to the visual. That it’s more the unconscious leading us down the path of the things that we need to address, more personally and specifically. It’s well said. We have a conscious mind, a subconscious mind and a superconscious mind. We also have the collective unconscious. There are so many different layers. I would think of conscious like our conversation here is like largely ego-oriented beta way form patterns, the day-to-day. The ego is not bad. It’s how we navigate life. We can go below that into the subconscious. What we don’t know is immediately available but we can investigate with some leading technologies in therapy and looking under the hood with some of these technologies like medicine work. We can start to get underneath that. We also go into the superconscious and some people might call that like soul or high cell for connection to God. Those are all different, by the way but for examples. There are these layers of knowing, like there are layers of being. When we can start to tell a different story, it’s also true that Mike Tyson’s coach was fond of saying, like, “Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face.” I might tell a person like, “It can be helpful to lean into your fear.” They’re like, “Great. I’ll do that thing.” We can get into medicine space and they start freaking out because they got punched in the face. That’s why I’m there or you’re there or the facilitator is there so that we can help them remember like, “Let’s slow it all down. Come back to your breath. We were doing that breath training practice. Do you remember that?” That’s why I put that whole series in a dose of hope, like walking Alex through the self-regulation breathwork practices before we even got deeper into the weeds of any trauma material. In the midst of the trauma, the ego is going to go, “Holy Crap. Run for the hills or fight flight or freeze.” We go into that old neural pattern. Those are the grooves in the snow. When you have somebody who can catch you right in that moment, lovingly and supportively and say, “Let’s take a pause, take a breath, check-in. How do you feel? What do you notice? Can you put a name to it? Can you put association to it? Is there any image? How old do you feel? Where is it coming up in your system? Are there any visual representations, any memories of this?” You start adding the contextual conversation and questions around it. Psychedelics: Anybody that says ketamine doesn’t have an addiction potential doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or they have another agenda because it does. Do you do that during the experience or is that something that you’re doing like that level of questions? It’s such an art and alchemy. It’s like Miles Davis said, “The magic is the space between the notes.” Good facilitators are also conscious of not trying to rescue their clients from their own suffering. One of my teachers told me a long time ago because he would see that I want people to feel better. That’s why I’m in this work. I know a potential key for humanity is healing. He said, “You also have to check the fact that if you’re rescuing somebody from their suffering, you might be robbing them of the greatest teaching.” I was like, “That’s important for me to understand.” I’ve gotten better with the experience of being able to appreciate it like I don’t get excited for people suffering because of how it feels. I get excited about the opportunity for them to come into contact with something that they’d been avoiding for so long. I get excited about what that opportunity could serve for them in their lives. All of those questions, I’m checking whether it’s appropriate to even ask any question because somebody might be itchy, scratchy, squirmy, an intense experience. I might not do a thing because I want them to linger as long as it takes for it to get ripe. As soon as I see them start to run for the hills then I’m going to ask them to pause. If they’re in the midst of and wrestling with, they’re coming to terms with it. It’s like in an ayahuasca ceremony. If you know anything about that, medicine is a purgative. It generates a cleansing process. It’s like, “I don’t want to throw it up. I don’t want to stop that process.” Like if somebody has food poisoning, you want them to get it out. You can think about it the same way as poisoning in the psyche. It’s old trauma, wounds and programs something that’s been festering there and is ready now to be released. Let’s not arrest the process. Let’s support it and be as a humane, compassionate, directive, guiding when necessary. It’s like a midwife supports a natural process. Mom knows cellularly how to deliver this little being. That little being knows cellularly how to move through into the world. The midwives are there to make sure that if a crisis happens then there’s intervention and support. I love that analogy because it also speaks to that the body knows what it needs to do. You’re also describing a good course of therapy and the therapist’s challenge of hanging back and how massively individualized it is that there’s not a formula. In my experience, when I was exploring some of this, for me, to become aware of someone helping was very distracting. I would have to get them out of my brain so that I could have my experience instead of like, “How are they? What’s happening over there?” It’s so individual and that’s what you’re saying. That’s the art of it, feeling your way into what is going to serve them and serve this depth of experience so that they can come to see things, come to know things, let go of things, hold on to things in the way with their own little fingerprint have to do or need to do or have the option, have the opportunity to do. I think of it too like a dance. If there’s a certain rhythm playing and there’s a certain style of dance like flamingo or salsa or two-step or whatever, that has a blueprint but the chemistry shapes how it gets expressed. You have a blueprint in how you perform and offer your psychotherapy. If it’s internal family systems or discognitive behavior or DVT, psychodynamic psychotherapy, all the different blueprints and yet there’s still the alchemy. That’s the magic and some of the mysticism and some of the art. What you’re tuning into isn’t the conscious mind at all. To know, “Do I speak now or do I not?” that’s not a literal, logical experience that also you are tuning in or even like with the dance that you’re describing. Yours is not saying, “Turn now.” It’s the magic of the feeling of it. What about MDMA? A lot of people have done it recreationally. They know how to be at a big dance party and have a good time and sweat a lot. What about the therapy related to MDMA? Also, audience, I want to direct you all to a book that he published. We’re going to say more about that later. It’s A Dose of Hope. It’s in a pill so visually, there’s a pill around it. It’s an interesting, different book because it was co-written with a pseudo name of a person who went through this experience. It is walking you through detail by detail what it’s like and what the healing journey is like. I would highly recommend it. I felt fortunate to be able to get ahold of it and take a look beforehand but it’s very interesting. It’s exciting. Usually if somebody is stuck in a loop, they’re just looking at kind of a narrow sliver of the entire film of that whole context. It’s fascinating in how it works. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better molecule for working with PTSD or trauma or psychological defense mechanisms that hold us back from being our most radically true self. That might be a radically wounded self. Let’s bring that person, that part, into the center of the circle. Give that part the microphone. Let us get curious about what it has to say. When we look at the efficacy of MDMA-supported psychotherapy, phase one trials, 83% cure rate for chronic severe PTSD. There’s nothing like that in psychiatric care, very seldom. That’s a lot of very specific attention, attunement and care with the therapists and the folks that are assisting. How did they sort out? What was the medicine versus what is this intense therapeutic experience? Were there focused therapy? It’s MDMA-supported therapy. It’s not the MDMA alone. That is important. It’s not the trip. The trip opens up the opportunity to get into the deeper part of work. Michael Mithoefer, there were the leads for phase one trials. Their psychological orientation is Internal Family Systems work, IFS parts work. It was Richard Schwartz who wrote this new book called the No Bad Parts. He was the Founder of IFS. I know. We’ve been after him to bring him onto the show. We can’t quite get ahold of him. If anybody knows him, point him our way. That’s a good stag. That’s their zone of genius, doing that IFS work. It doesn’t have to be IFS. It can be a lot of other like body-centered psychotherapy, Peter Levine’s work, Hakomi. There’s a bunch but the way they provide that IFS and part of our training through the MAPS Organization was to watch them in action. They’re Jedis. They know that work well and essentially, it’s this radical playground of compassion that invites whatever part is online to have the stage and the microphone and to say whatever it needs to say. If you’re working with somebody with chronic severe PTSD, that part is probably a wounded part. It’s been hard to access by a person’s sheer will. If you were to tell them to go rescue the part of themselves that was horribly traumatized, they may have been trying to do that subconsciously as a part of their PTSD internal process of healing. That’s why they’ve had flashbacks and nightmares. They keep reliving it in order to play it through but they guard against it because the ego defenses are in place also for an adaptive response. Somebody’s massive trauma, you need to compartmentalize it. Otherwise, it feels too overwhelming. What does the MDMA do or what’s the experience of it? It does three primary things in the brain. It calms the fear center, the amygdala. It increases blood flow and the energetic valence of the prefrontal cortex so you have a better witness perspective and it increases the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. Not only do you have a better witness, you have a better memory of the full context of the experience. Usually, if somebody is stuck in a loop, they’re looking at a narrow sliver of the entire film of that whole context. Psychedelic-assisted therapy: You’d be hard-pressed to find a better molecule for working with PTSD or trauma or in psychological defense mechanisms that hold us back from being our most radically true self than MDMA. What you said is important. I know a lot of our audience will be able to track this and understand what you mean. Saying that again sometimes if I can say it back, it means the information has gotten it. You went fast. I didn’t quite keep up. I don’t know the order but the thing that I got excited about was particularly the hippocampal involvement. The amygdala we get that, we know fear, all that stuff but by stimulating and focusing the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus and you said that it regulates the fear center so it lowers your fear, it has more focus and clarity. At the same time, the one that got me excited was the hippocampus because the way we talk about it sometimes is the therapist is the hippocampus. We love the hippocampus. We’re pro hippocampus in this community that it strengthens that, it focuses that, it facilitates a connection with the higher minds and the prefrontal cortex. I haven’t heard that before. That’s new to me. That’s exciting. You hit all three. It affects the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. Through that, we have less fear, a better witness, better memory. That was the other one. That’s exciting too. Better witness also because you’re not in it that you’re witnessing it and you’re able to objectively not make yourself too big. Not make yourself too little but have this loving, compassionate witness. That’s one of the things associated, at least in my mind, with MDMA-facilitated therapy is love. You’re flooded with oxytocin. I was going to ask you is it oxytocin? You’re flooded with oxytocin, which is this bonding hormone. It’s the hormone that moms release at times of childbirth and lactating. We’re pro oxytocin and pro hippocampus. That’s the summary statement of the differential that happens. PTSD, high amygdala, low oxytocin because most of the time when people are traumatized, it depends on their attachment style if they’re avoidant or they’re anxious. Either case, the oxytocin or the bonding, let’s call it the bonding piece. The bonding piece can oftentimes feel unsafe because it can be cravy like, “I need somebody to help me with this thing,” because that part is so traumatized. It wants safety and security. How do we auto-regulate when we’re stressed? Some of us lean in and over-attach. Some of us lean out and dissociate or get the distance. We’re all going for the same thing, which is safety and security and our attachment. We only become self-realized when we have brought all of our parts home. A lot of that will come up through the process. Now, you have this pro relational oxytocin, sea of curiosity and availability, especially when facilitated by somebody who knows how to do this work, like, “This part is now coming back up to the surface. Can we give that part some space some time to say what it has to say? Let’s learn about it. Let’s get to know it. Let’s validate it.” There’s so much healing. That’s a little different than psilocybin, is that right? MDMA is interpersonal, between you and I, between anybody in the field and between all my little parts, horizontal like 3D, like I scanned the horizon. MDMA is much of this world’s medicine. Psilocybin is much a vertical medicine because it can go deep into the soul level matrix. Where do you think about where mushrooms grow? They grow under the ground. They grow in the dark. It’s a DMT-based molecule. It also goes up to God and you can have these transpersonal, transcendent experiences with it too. It depends on the direction. It can be healing. You don’t get many bad trips with MDMA but you can get bad trips of psilocybin. If a person goes too big too fast or it’s not in the right set and setting. We should say uncomfortable trips. The bad trips happen. For example somebody took a truckload of mushrooms and they went to a party. Probably not the best setting to do deep work particularly if they’ve never worked with that medicine or not done a whole lot of personal work before. I know people that take trucks loads of mushrooms and go to parties and have a fine but it’s usually because they’ve kindled that process. They’re familiar with altered states. They’d done a bit of their own personal work. I’m not a fan of getting in huge altered states and going to parties anyway because it’s a chaotic field. If you’re wanting to do deep personal growth work then have a controlled environment that’s supportive to that therapy. If you’re taking a bunch of alter states medicines and you’re going to a party, that’s a recreational experience. That’s not a therapeutic experience. Not to make either better or worse than the other. It depends on what your intention is. Even the collaboration of what the dose would be is part of the therapy, I believe. They would tend to be a little bit higher than a recreational experience. Is that right? Not necessarily. It depends on who’s partying. If you’re wanting to do deep personal growth work, then have a safe controlled environment that’s supportive to that therapy to get to layers you haven’t experienced yet. I think of some of my friends who go heavy and hard. They love to play big. I can bless them up for their choice. I know they play safe. If they weren’t playing safe, I’d probably be that guy in the stand shaking his finger, like, “You got to watch out,” because it’s not just your experience. You’re affecting everybody else’s field too. It’s about the orientation and the intention going in. The intention for recreational is usually to have an ecstatic state. Maybe a joyful process. Typically, much higher likelihood of having a bad trip. In a therapeutic arena, the orientation is growth. That means we welcome the discomfort into the space so we can look at it, learn from it, grow through it, with it and become more whole as a result. People when they are doing recreational experiences and it’s haphazard and dangerous, that’s a disintegrative process. It’s disconnecting them from what we could describe, essentially their more true essence. People going through a therapeutic process, these medicines are integrative because they’re bringing all the parts home into a greater experience of wholeness, union, self-compassion, like Maslow’s terms, self-realization. We only become self-realized when we brought all of our parts home. One of the exciting things and research is the effect with addiction. I was imagining people reading this and MDMA and psilocybin. Ketamine has the potential for addiction. I wasn’t as aware of that. It’s still mild compared to its therapeutic potency and valence but it’s still important to recognize as a part of the disclaimer. In contrast to the other ones, which I’m not as clear about MDMA but with psilocybin, that’s not typically the recreational use. Psilocybin does not have addictive potential. It’s anti-addictive. Some people might get cravy about the transpersonal state. MDMA can have a bit more addictive potential. That’s part of why it went into schedule one in the early ‘80s because people were using it dangerously. Like raves, parties, dancing all night, not drinking enough water, having electrolyte imbalances, ending up in ER either tripped out or having seizures, like, “There’s this big ecstasy thing hitting the market and hitting the road. Let’s shut it down as we did with all the other psychedelics.” It can be a bit of a physiologic kindling because you’re like, “I could only get to that elevated state by using this medicine. I’m going to keep using that medicine.” You keep chasing the high. There’s a letdown too. Especially if people have a predilection towards depression because you go on these high states, high rise and you have this crash on the other side. The ideal therapeutic container has preparation for neurochemistry. You boil up the neurochemistry, add a lot of antioxidants and on the backside, you replenish with the building blocks to re-establish healthy neurochemistry. That’s one of the reasons that disclaimer was a while ago. This isn’t just going crazy by any stretch but I do imagine if people have been following along this conversation, I can imagine people getting very excited about this. I hate to gather people and get them excited about something and say, “Sorry,” or whatever. There’s nowhere to send. I can’t refer you someplace but there’s a wider thing. If somebody is excited about this, what next? Ideally, we would do what we want to do for everybody, which is not just give them a fish, but teach them how to fish so they’re not dependent on something exogenous or external. Unfortunately, we’re on the Fed’s timeline for the legalization of MDMA. Rick Doblin’s estimate is going to be early to mid-2023. The assignment passed in Oregon as a statewide therapeutic. That was November of 2020. There’s still going to be some bureaucratic, administrative heavy lifting to get that implemented but it’s in motion. Cannabis went legal medically in California many years ago. They were the first ones to do that. There are going to be a lot of states that now come into pushing for statewide legalization. That’s all happening. Ketamine’s legal but those are the big ones. You started though, by talking about your clinic. It’s not only those medicines that they’re like you said, the breathwork, the deep meditation, finding a community that is interested in some of these more mystical states and whole-body healing that you don’t necessarily, it’s not a medicine. That’s why Kuya, we have all those therapeutic sweets. It’s amazing to be able to support people getting into medicine work by working in the float tank because they get used to being with their own process. It’s easier to start regulating your breath consciously and flotation therapy is also an amazing integration tool for ketamine work. When you put together those things with contrast therapy, sauna and cold plunging, now you have an active experience in a consistent practice of regulating your nervous system because it’s the ability and willingness to lean into something that’s uncomfortable. Finding your breath through, particularly in the cold plunge. I’m classically not a fan of cold water. I love being in the mountains and I love skiing and snowboarding but I have not classically been a fan of submerging my body in cold water. It’s a phenomenal practice. It increases norepinephrine and 500%. Only three minutes, like 40 degrees plus or minus. It doesn’t stay up there but as far as an immediate antidepressant effect, cold plunging is better than medication. It is more adaptive and resilience-building than pharmaceuticals. It has this massive anti-inflammatory effect because cryotherapy does that systemically and centrally. When we stack all of these benefits, there’s a very specific reason that I put all of those therapeutics into one umbrella because nobody had done that before. That’s one of the reasons that we’re tracking all our data because we want to be able to tell the news. That’s right. That’s why I went back to it so that there isn’t the frustration of, “Sorry, you’re not going to be able to get this.” I went back to the more well-rounded, all these options. One of the things that was told to me at some point was that conferences and if you’re a therapist, there’s MAPS that are doing training with therapists. There are trials that are happening all over. Anything else you wanted to add? If people are interested in being an MDMA-supported therapist, you have to go through MAPS because they’re the ones in right relationship with the Feds and they’re scripting and offering the training that they know is important. Rick’s been forward-facing in regards to the recognition. We’re going to need a lot of therapists trained up because there’s no lack of demand. I doubt there’s going to be a lack of demand in our lifetimes. Ideally, we would do what we want to do for everybody, which does not give them a fish but teach them how to fish. They’re still not dependent on something exogenous or external. They can develop their own resilience, develop their own skills of self-mastery and transformation. These are tools to help people get to that place to live in. That is such an important point because I think that I didn’t understand that, as deeply as I could have but I do now. It’s a big distinction. In that sense, it’s not the event itself. It’s that event or that experience that frees you to do your therapy and like EMDR. When you learn some things about how to target particular symptoms that you can begin to almost do that, you can begin to like, “If I was an EMDR, what would be my target that I’m working on?” The same thing. If you were going to have an experience like this, what would your journey be? What would your intention be? What would you want to happen? Whether or not you have that medicine, that’s still a good practice. The meditation, the writing, the journaling, taking yourself seriously. I’ve also heard spotlight consciousness and lantern conscious consciousness and they’re both good. It takes some practice, especially with a culture that doesn’t support it of moving into lantern consciousness, which I think is a parallel to what you were saying earlier about the transcendental. Many things to do to deepen our connection to the world and to one another and to spirituality with or without these medicines. I had also interviewed Trey Ratcliff. Are you familiar with him? Super interesting guy. He has a non-medicine, it’s super hard to explain but basically, it’s a 3D video that goes with some meditation apps. If people are interested in that to bring that back up. You have been so generous to share your wisdom and your experience with us. Would you say a little bit about if people are interested in contacting you, what that would look like and where they should find you? Anything else you want to share with folks around your work? Any recommendations? The top of mind these days is Kuya. I’ve been working on opening the center for years. Psychedelics: It’s really amazing to be able to support people getting into medicine work by working in the float tank because they get used to being with their own process. You’re affiliated with multiple centers, I think. I do medically advise to a variety of centers nationally and globally but this is my baby so to speak and we opened. I’m some super-stoked. It’s already showing us the opportunities that we didn’t even recognize before. There’s this organic process of me, doing my part to listen and to not think that I know where this is going. I know that we’ve built something beautiful and amazing. I want to be a student of her and this entire unfolding. I will continue to be an educator and advocate for transformational medicine because I do believe that’s on the horizon and one of our biggest opportunities in mental health. I don’t have all the answers. I am radically continuing to stay in that curiosity field. I wanted to build a center that is of excellence that we can iterate from, bring people too that’s part of the community. I want to create more of the consortium and the think tank of collaborators in the space so that we can have these conversations lifting everybody up. It’s so fun. How would they find you? Kuya.life. Kuya means love in Quechua. Kuya.life is our center. People can also find me at my website DrDanEngle.com. That has a variety of different podcasts and other educational pieces. FullSpectrumMedicine.com. That’s my education advocacy platform specifically for medicine work. I’ve got a lot of free content on there about integration practices, preparation practices. Our nonprofit, ThankYouLife.org is a funding stream to scholarship people for medicine work that wouldn’t be able to afford it themselves. I love that. That’s wonderful. I’ve worried about that. I’m happy. You’ve got your hands on a lot of different things. I was thinking. You’re still snowboarding. The ground is different. You’re going fast. May that continue to happen and what may we have as much fun doing both. Your book, you want to say that as well and where you can get that. A Dose of Hope, it’s a story about MDMA-supported therapy. Essentially, a parable narrative to be able to give the reader a first-person perspective of what it’s like to go through MDMA therapy without having to go into the doctor’s office themselves so to speak. It also is for the clinician too because I wanted to give some core, in my experience, wisdom teachings around facilitating this work but I didn’t want it to be drab and bullet point. These are the things to think about with preparation experience and integration. With kids sometimes you sneak the peas under the mashed potatoes. I wanted to get in some of the good teachings but do it in a way that was entertaining and engaging. Thank you so much. I appreciate you spending time with us and sharing this with us. I know people are going to be very interested. This is all about getting better at healing humans and transforming humans. Want to join us as a Neuronerd but you aren’t as into the audio format / podcasting part, we’ve got you covered.  Our original online platform is still going strong!  Join us through our original platform – Patreon.  Same exact pricing and levels but you get more communication from us via emails on the platform rather than extra episodes in your podcast feed. Not ready to join us officially, no sweat.  But if you are this deep into the shownotes we hope you have gotten something from the wealth of content in our episode library and we’d love it if you made sure you were actually subscribed to the show and if so, by leaving us a rating and review – that is how the how grows, word of mouth and ratings.  TKS FRIEND!

18 Jan 20221h 10min

Everyone is familiar with reacting “in the heat of the moment,” but do we really understand what that means? Regulation basics include the protection or connection pathways to interpersonal relating. Get 2 months free with this link! In this episode, Sue Marriott and Ann Kelley unravel the mystery behind our nervous systems auto-pilot settings: protection vs connection. They simplify otherwise complex ideas by breaking in to 2 main points.   Becoming aware whether you are in the Protection/Defense versus Connection/Secure pathways in our nervous system helps us manage them. Also, how does our story affect how we react and deal with conflict, and how can we mitigate it? Tune in for this insightful and eye-opening discussion on our internal working models when interacting with others. Show Notes about regulation and the protection or connection pathways: 00:00 Understanding our internal working model 01:05 Our body responds so much faster than our mind 03:11 The story we tell amplifies the body’s response 05:30 Story vs State: Protective System and the Relational Connective System 08:11 Awareness of our state and identifying the tells of a protective system 16:12 The awareness of self in the presence of another, the relational system 17:49 Our smartest brain 19:30 Tells when you’re in a relational, connective, and reflective place 25:21 Tolerating difficult emotions 29:32 Use your own name to identify yourself 31:24 Ways to calm your body down 36:40 Pre-emptive strike; we get defensive because of the threat inside of our body 39:26 Positive interpretation of a story 41:02 Conclusion FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW Keep scrolling – Important Links: Steve Porges, of course!  We have tons of stuff on Polyvagal Theory in our library, but here is a previous episode with Dr. Steve Porges directly, plus it includes lot’s of other resources click here!  Great regulation PDF resource by former guest, Deb Dana – Rhythm of Regulation If you enjoyed this content, please send it on to somebody you feel could use it. Word of mouth helps the podcast grow so more people can benefit from this free resource. Sharing is caring they say, and so are ratings and reviews!  🙂 Help support Therapist Uncensored by becoming a Premium member. Join our private Neuronerd community and support the production of this indie-produced cis-female led show!  As a bonus to helping spread this content, you will receive all episodes ad-free, deep dive premium episodes, access to reading and learning opportunities, extra episodes, plus of course discounts on everything we produce. We love options so we are giving you a choice: if you are more visual and prefer direct communication and staying closely in touch with our activities join here: https//www.Patreon.com/therapistuncensored.  If you love listening to additional content and prefer to easily download bonus audio content to your normal feed, join us here: https://www.therapistuncensored.com/join. Either way, you will be part of our Neuronerd community and receive all of the ad-free episodes and bonuses. Platinum level Neuronerds and Benefactors meet with us, personally and get their own thank you page on our website!    Join our Neuronerd online community – click the image above! Protection or Connection Nervous System Regulation Pathways, Ep 166 Transcript When we talk about understanding ourselves, we talk about it through understanding the spectrum and our internal working model. Let’s simplify it. What do you think? It’s simplified but it’s also going deeper. I would almost call it going deeper. We start getting interested in colors, up and down is it dorsal vagal, ventral vagal or whatever. Your idea of deep-diving into the basics of this is what I love about the way you talk about it because it feels so usable. Recognizing what internal working model that we function in is important but every day, our body is responding to our environment and to itself. What do you mean responding to itself? You know how we’re always talking about story follows state. In fact, we might even start there. People always say, “What do you mean by story follows state?” What does that mean? There’s a part where our body responds so much faster in our minds. We say this all the time on our show but we give way too much credit to that frontal lobe of ours and the story that we’re telling. An example is we’re having this crappy time at work and we’re so stressed. All we can think about is how sucky the people are that we work with or the job we have and that’s causing us to feel anxious and bad. Our story is people at work are bad, my job is bad and that’s why I feel anxious and upset. Regulation We go, “Here it goes again. We have another meeting.” We then begin to look for information that supports our story. That’s the repetitive nature we talked about, that habitual when we feel trapped by the repetitive, the prediction and now we know it’s going to happen. It sucks. Part of what we mean is 90% of what goes on in our brain comes from inside of our body. This is where the story becomes so important. Neuroanatomists talk about that feeling is 90 seconds. Your example of the work is like if something happens, you get a bad review, you’re going to have an actual primary affect but it’s only 90 seconds of shock, anger or shame. After that, we continue that response in our body through the story we tell. What we say is, “The only reason I got a bad review is that so-and-so doesn’t like me or they’re jealous.” We’re having the state issue wherein the feeling in our body whether our heart rate’s gone up or we’re feeling anxious, we feel that and we got to figure out how to change, stop or handle it. One of the first things we do is we look outside of ourselves, “Who’s causing this? It’s my job.” Our body responds so much faster than our mind. I suck and messed up again. That’s a story. I love that because it’s not just telling the story of the victim in the world where you can say, “I suck.” It’s the story that we tell that amplifies in our body, our heart rate and even the hormones that we send off, the more we feel anxiety. We think it’s because, “I’m trapped. My partner sucks. My business sucks,” and we start amplifying. The truth is we’re amplifying the chemical reaction in our body. We’re talking about it as if those words come across a screen or we’re aware of saying, “I suck.” How do you experience the story part? Isn’t that interesting to think? Do we hear it in our minds? My story becomes a little repetitive and ruminative. I think it’s words and it’s different for different people. It could be images for some people or words for others but I can feel the pit at times. I’m looking for what around me is the risk and the threat. I will feel the pits like, “What happened last night? Why am I feeling this anxiety?” I’m searching for, “What is the event that happened that is making the pit of my stomach feel that?” When you’re saying, “I’m searching for,” it is accurate 100% but as far as the felt experience, I don’t think it feels like we’re searching for a story. The story is as is like, “She’s late again. She thinks she’s better than me.” Anything in your mind as you’re reading that has the flavor of, “This always happens.” This is a repetitive story, “My husband never listens to me. My wife has never been happy with me. No matter what I do, she feels critical of me. I can do nothing right.” The important part of this episode is why is it so important that we’re talking about the story versus the state? Conceptualizing how we take care and tune into our bodies instead of thinking about it at this moment, this internal working model. I want to make it simple but deep and that is, “Are you aware of what nervous system in your body that you’re activating?” We have the part of our system that we talk a lot about that wants to be protective and defend us. It feels like a threat in the environment that activates our body in a threat response. For this purpose, we’re going to call it our protective system. For a while, we were playing with calling it the peace and security department and the defense department. I like where you’re going of, “Are we are in our protective system because it’s a whole dynamic cascade?” For neuro-atypical folks, it’s not necessarily other people that cause that sense of wellbeing but it’s like, “Are you open to yourself? Are you open to others?” That is what you’re calling the relational protective system. Relational can be in relation to yourself as well. It’s not just in relation to somebody else but is your system open or closed? When we feel danger, we have to have our system closed down. That is in our human nature. A lot of times, I’ll say something about somebody being in threat and they’re like, “I’m not scared. I’m not in threat.” That person’s an idiot. The felt experience is not a threat but what you’re trying to say is what we’re looking for is what our body is doing in order for us to figure out what’s happening instead of us thinking, “I am in threat.” I never think that. What you’re saying is instead of trying to do it through our cognition, where you’re going with this is around helping people identify that binary, “Are you an open place or not?” Connective Nervous System: Recognizing what internal working model we function in is really important. It’s both, “Are you in a protective place or are you activating in others a protective place?” If we bring into conflict in any relationship, it could be a spouse, child, sibling. It doesn’t matter. Think about your state separate from the story. We’re in a fight, we’re pissed, my husband never listens to me and my wife always criticizes me. Those are the stories but if we slow down like, “What state is my body?” That’s what we want to invite you to think about. How can you tell? Let’s start with the protective system. If I’m in a protective or more of a defense. It doesn’t matter if you’re up-regulated or down-regulated. We’re saying, “Are you in defense? Are you in a protective mode?” One of the ways that you can tell is you’re feeling the heart rate go up. That may be one example but it also can be you’re going flatter. There are lots of ways to tell. It depends on what is activating. You mentioned, “Are you going up or down?” You’re going to have different signals that you’re in your defense depending on what you’re doing. You can go, “Which system am I? Am I in my protective system or in my connective?” The funny thing is we think so often we’re in the connective because, “I’m pissed at you, Sue and I need to tell you why I’m pissed. I need to tell you now. I can’t wait. I’m telling you that you need to sit down. We need to talk about this now. I am pissed. This is important and we can’t wait until later. I don’t know what my story is, why I can’t talk about it. You know why I can’t. It’s because my heart rate is up. The pressure is happening behind my eyes. The sound in my ear is changing. “Because I’m having a state that is activated, I believe I have to act on it.” You believe it to your toes. I feel the pressure. That’s one indicator. We think we’re smart like we can, “She’s always dodging. I’m going to not let her dodge this time. We’re going to talk about it now.” We’re not in any uncertainty and that’s another clue. The certainty is the problem. If you know like, “I have expertise in this area and you need to listen to me.” If you say that a lot, I want you to be self-aware that you might live in your protective system. Some of us live more because of our history and more in our protective system. It’s like if our feet are unintentionally resting on the accelerator or if the idea of chronic vigilance feels familiar, your body is oriented in this protective way. 90% of what goes on in our brain comes from inside of our body. If you feel defended and a little confident all the time but uncomfortable with the more difficult emotions of other people, you might act on your own and live more in your protective state. This whole dialogue is also going to sound familiar because it’s including the internal working models that we might live more in red or in blue. We want you to think about the protective versus the connective and the fact that the more that we can look at our system and we can go, “This conversation I want to have with you Sue is important and I could feel this pressure.” I’m going to realize, “Am I in my protective system?” I’m busy now. Can we talk about it later? Now, my heart rate went up and I’m more pissed. I’m increasing my story. You’re going to blow me off. You’re not going to talk. My narrative is all about you and I have to work even harder. When we’re in our protective state, it has become often about the other person. If I’m feeling defensive and somebody is like, “Listen to you.” It’s very difficult to reflect. If you’re very confident, you know what you know and you can see what you see, there’s no urgency. You can hold it lightly and deeply know in your solar plexus that you don’t have an urge to convince, control or persuade. All of those things are cooled off because there’s no threat to you making your point or not making your point because you have a deep sense of security and knowing. One of the clues is a sense of urgency. We’re not the advocate, nor do we act this out all the time. We’re all going to get on our defensive or protective systems. They’re going to activate our body and we’re going to act out on it. That is the most human nature thing. What we’re working on here is not getting everybody to live in a state of, “That would be great.” What we want to do is awareness. The pressure I’m feeling towards you to talk now is because I feel activated. It isn’t because you’re being a jerk, won’t listen to me or my body is on high alert. One of the suggestions even when you’re there is, “I am way too activated to talk but I’m upset. This is super important and I want to come back to it.” This is so important that let’s set a time where we’re going to come back and talk about it. I love that. The reason we’re calling the other part of our nervous system, where our longtime readers in which we’re talking about our ventral vagal, the green zone. The reason we want to approach it from that way is because it’s when we’re in our connective experience, we have the ability to feel safer in our body and not being ruled by the story so we can be more reflective. It’s also super important. If I walk up to you and I’m in my defense or my protective posture, I’m going to activate every of your body to come right back for the attack. We can’t help that. That’s the neural Wi-Fi. If we could all do a practice of learning our tells when we are not in that open and connected place sometimes you can see it in someone else. Their face get still and there’s a little bit more of a mask that goes on. They’re saying, “I’m open. I’m not defensive.” That’s the thing. The idea is to get to know your own tells. If you’re even asking the question, you’re above your limbic system. The more that you’re curious, that’s another sign. We haven’t talked much about the sign of being in our relational, safe or connected place. Curiosity is a good one. It could be that or this. It’s even the awareness of self while in the presence of another. The awareness of self and the fact that I can be aware that I’m in my defense or protective system. I’m already closer to my relational system. The reason we’re in our protective system is we sense danger. That’s the only reason our body responds like that. It’s your dumb amygdala that senses danger. There’s no actual danger necessarily. It’s the belief that we’re in danger that continues to tell the story. Try this at home, “I’m not in danger even if Sue doesn’t listen to me now. I am not in danger even though I’m pissed off.” I get to be mad still and I could feel like I was treated but I don’t have to tell myself I’m in danger. The more we communicate to our body and even the treatment of being trained to get trauma into a different place is to let yourself know that you are safe, even while you’re having a big experience. I can be safe, know I’m not in danger and still feel upset. How you know you’re moving towards the relational system is that awareness or the ability to go, “I can wait. I feel pressure. I’m rushing. I’m aware that I’m not in danger. I can see myself.” We talked about having the sunglasses on and they get darker and darker the more upset we get. To be clear, this is a model that we talk about when we’re in our grounded, integrated, balanced, thinking and feeling self, that’s our smartest brain. It’s when we can clearly see what’s happening outside and in us. As we get more dysregulated, the sunglasses gets more and more distorted in different directions. We’re talking about moving into your reflective place rather than staring through those sunglasses. You take them off. You still have the color but you’re looking at it. You know you’re holding them like, “My glasses are colored and I know it. I’m going to need some space and time.” Just what you said, you’re halfway there. I want to talk about it even when we’re not activated. When we’re talking about something hard for our child or we’re thinking about it and start to feel our body activate. Think about a fight that’s unresolved. You begin to feel what your body feels like in activation. There you are having the thought and your state but the feeling of threat starts to hit. What we could do in this session is give some real specific ways to bring someone’s body back into a relational space. For some reason, I’m also having the urge of knowing where we’re going. Can we talk for a minute about tells when we are in our connective to ourselves, the Earth, the world and your community? When you’re open and connected, wherever you’re reading from, do your own body scan. Maybe you want to get a sense of how your job is or what’s the pace of your thought. One of our examples is heightened activity in your body. We must tolerate difficult emotions. This might be a good time if you want to hit pause for a second and spend the moment reflecting and learning about yourself and your own habits or things that you can tell. One of the interpersonal ones, if we talked about ourselves, what is our heart rate doing? Do we feel the ability to think about our thoughts and our body and have that reflective space? If we’re with somebody, do you feel open to listening? Are you sitting with somebody? This also happens with anxiety. You’re sitting with somebody and start to think three steps ahead of what you’re going to say because you’re anxious. You’re in your protective state, “What am I going to say next?” In that state, it would be, “I’m not in danger. This person loves me.” Slow down and say, “I want to listen.” When you say listen, say a little more about what that looks and feels like. The feeling of listening is the feeling of openness. Can you maintain eye contact? Can you find interest in what someone is saying and hold your position without this pressure to speak, interrupt or interject? That’s such a sense of peacefulness. It also means that you’re not in your next thought. Do you know how we used to talk about ping pong, catch and stuff? It’s the catch. It’s like, “I’m letting you enter me through my ears, eyes and heart.” I’m hearing you and taking you in. I’m not going to pare back what you said. The word that comes to my mind is penetration. I’m in this receptive place. If you’re on an fMRI, you can tell if somebody is in that receptive place. What’s so interesting is as you open up and listen, you’re doing two things. The thing that’s so essential is, “If I’m a little anxious and protective, what if I slow down?” I say, “I’m safe and I’m going to listen.” I do that step. The interesting thing is it does two things about moving to our nervous system and that is by me slowing down and listening to you, your body opens up to me so you signal more safety. Our bodies are such communicative critters. If I slow my system down, I’m communicating to my brain that I’m safe. By being able to go, “I’m in my protective system.” If I can move myself out of it, no matter what the story is, what relevance or no relevance, I’m signaling to my brain that I’m safe. That calms my cortisol down, slows my heart rate, creases my pupils and signals to my whole body that I can be more in a reflective place. I like it because we can think about breaking it down into the pace. If you can slow down, that’s halfway there. If there is a pause or air around the next moment, you’re in a much safer place for yourself and the other person. What’s our resistance to slowing down? That word penetration is like we’re receptive and can be impacted, which is part of what makes us safe from the other person because they have an influence over us but that can also be a very scary thing to do. If you’re thinking about it at home or wherever you are reading, if you can feel your body rise about slowing down, compassionately care about that. Take a look at that and don’t criticize yourself because if it’s scary for you to slow down, there’s a reason that your body doesn’t feel safe. Connective Nervous System: If there is a pause, if there’s air around the next moment, you’re in a much safer place for yourself and for the other person. What you’re introducing is talk to yourself but you are safe. What is the urgency? Slowing down seems like a good one. It could be this or that. One of the things to talk about here that would be important is to be able to be aware that you’re in your protective system and the best chance of moving it is to learn. We must tolerate difficult emotions. The thing that’s hard about our protective system is that it gets protective because we have an intensity or rush of what feels like a threat. If we can’t tolerate whatever gets activated, we tend to have to act it out. One of the powerful things to say to yourself is, “I can handle these strong emotions.” That’s one of the most important parts of relating to ourselves and other people. If we don’t do that, we have to quickly come to the fix. That’s that part where I have to be in the know. If I can’t tolerate the emotion of being in an unknown, I have to fix it so I have to correct you, tell you you’re wrong and interrupt you because if I don’t, I might have a surge of emotion or panic. These aren’t thoughts. You’re not thinking, “I’m going to panic if I slow down.” You are impatient. We’re using words to describe a state that is often wordless. That’s why we’re doing it because we want there to be words with it because you’re going to have your hands on the dial. You’re going to be able to manage better. The truth of the matter is if you don’t have your hands on the dial somebody else is responsible for you and that sucks. That’s the part of giving your agency away. If you believe your story and you stay in your story, you’re most often giving your agency to that story. Even thinking, “What else could be my story?” I listed impatience because that’s a good one. We can all relate to it a little bit. When you notice you start to feel impatient, one of the first things we want to do if we’re not aware of our own system and we don’t know that we’re in our protective system, we want to correct the exterior so that we don’t feel it. If you didn’t dilly-dally, I wouldn’t have any deep feelings and we would be great so now I’m pissed. If you say, you’re irritable with me. I’m like, “It’s because you’re so slow.” Here’s a key to think about. If you would stop being you, I wouldn’t feel me. Let’s stop and think about that. If I am the one taking ownership of my own dysregulation of my emotions and I still want to come to you but I need to know that to come to you and have a meaningful conversation about something that you may, in fact, have done, I need to be in my reflective place. It is my job to get me there. I might need help and we want to help each other. We’re big into helping each other get there. To summarize here, which system I am, how do I help myself get more reflective and get in my connective before I come to you? You were starting to say that and I diverted us a little bit about if you recognize that your teeth are clenched, you’re in a hurry and there’s urgency. Another way I often talk about it is that the stakes feel high and we want to move it to low stakes. You’re on a balance beam on the ground. You’re not 20 feet in the air with nothing under you. Can you say a little bit more about, “I either have the urgency or the stakes feel high. What’s next?” One of the things is using your own name to identify yourself. I know that sounds like a shocking thing to do. Make your strategy personal. “Sue, calm the crap down.” If you can’t recognize her name. That was my name. I’m talking to myself, “Calm your butt down.” If you were talking and in a reactive place, you don’t have to have this conversation now. You’re going to get your ass into another place and calm your butt. I’m talking to me instead of the whole narrative being about you. I always tell people to give yourself 30 seconds to 1 minute or maybe the 90-second rule is better to make it be about the other person. That’s fair. We’re not immediately going to go here. We’re not creating doormats here. As a matter of fact, the calmer you are and the more connected you are to yourself, your power is going to increase. Give yourself 90 seconds to be pissed and say, “Sue, I’m pissed,” in your own mind or verbally. Calm yourself down. You do not have to push forward at this moment. It will not be as effective and I can tolerate the experience of what’s going on inside me. “Sue, you can handle this.” “You can slow down and you can do this.” I’m not going to die if I have this feeling. I am not in danger. I just have big feelings and I can handle it. I have big gorgeous feelings. They’re beautiful and we love them. How rocking is that when you go, “I can handle this. I don’t have to be scared of it.” It’s because I’m talking about me. We can do anything from that place. We were super-powered. There are some ways to calm your body down. Peter Levine does an amazing job talking about some strategies, the hand on the stomach, heart and forehead. Sometimes, I’ll put both of my hands on my cheeks and squeeze my face or cheeks as a mother would with a child in a loving way. If you imagine that, your story will get introduced in that. It’s the same stimulus, which is a mother’s hands are on each side of a child’s head, that is, their cheeks. For some reason, I imagined somebody pushing it off. For me, when I think of that, it calms my body down and that feels so warm. If you’re one out there going, “Are you kidding?” I would whack those hands-off so fast. That’s your body and state holding that. You would probably knock those hands-off without even realizing why. That’s the state and it gets triggered. It’s for a reason. What’s happening is that your body does remember something that was threatening that contact or the feeling that’s in that and those cells remember. They’re protecting you. It’s not unconscious. It’s automatic. Connective Nervous System: You can hear the self-fulfilling nature of this because our story basically perpetuates our internal working model, which is why we’re saying, “slow down and question your story.” That is a great example of the state follows a story. Those hands are not dangerous to you but you will hit those. You’re not thinking about it. You have no cognitive awareness but your body feels that threat based on your history and you will act that state out in your heart. Let’s say you’ve done that to me. You are trying to be caring and I do that. Instead of being aware of me, I’m pissed at you that you did that. You can hear the self-fulfilling nature of this because our story perpetuates our internal working model, which is why we’re saying slow down and question your story. We love uncertainty. “That did piss me off but I’m curious why.” I want to tell a very quick face story. I may have already shared this on the show. For some reason, it feels familiar but probably most of you don’t know about it. When my son was very young, I can’t remember what initiated it but he came up to me and put his hand on my cheek. It was super sweet. I’m like, “What are you doing?” He goes, “I’m giving you a melt.” Apparently, what had happened when I would touch his cheek, his body would melt. He had done that with me before and it feels like my body melts. It became in his mind a melt so he was giving me a melt by touching my cheek. I could melt by just saying it. I can remember and feel him giving it to me, which is apt. What I love about that is you were saying, “Let’s talk about different strategies.” Make your strategy personal. For you that strategy of when you’re trying to calm yourself down, putting your hand on your cheek and think about that moment. If we bring ourselves into a moment of safety while we’re not, our whole body will respond in that and it will slow our whole system down. What happens right after that melt or the calm is a whole different trajectory. It changes the trajectory of what’s going to happen, which is why we want to help break this down. Don’t worry about red, blue and green. Don’t worry about up-regulated, downregulated or polyvagal. We love it all. This is all incorporated. We’re saying, “Are you in a connective place or in your defense system?” We were using the metaphor of the planes are out and scanning for danger versus if you’re in this peace and security department. These are other ways we’ve said it. We’re calling it, “Are you in your protective defense system or are you in your corrective relational?” We’re defending ourselves because we think we’re in danger. That’s what we’re defending but instead, we think we’re defending ourselves from the external source out there, which most often is not a life threat. That is why it’s defensive. We get defensive because of the threat inside of our body. The danger is us feeling a feeling. I have a big feeling and you stop that so I don’t have the feeling. If you’re going to tell a story, positively interpret it. You were talking about expanding our capacity to be uncomfortable. No matter what we’re feeling, it’s just a feeling. Nobody has died of having a feeling. You get to have the biggest feelings. It’s what we do with it that could kill us or somebody. That’s also an inability to tolerate the feeling. Many of our negative interaction or conflicts that continue and become repetitive is the intolerance of that feeling and the anticipation of that feeling. Your partner starts talking, you anticipate where they’re going and you anticipate what is going to make you feel, which is usually negative if it’s a conflict. It’s the anticipation. Whatever they’re about to say is going to make you feel that bad feeling that you get. You’re going to do a preemptive strike. This isn’t the answer to all conflict but to slow yourself down and go, “I am interrupting because I am not in my system.” I can say, “I’m not being my best self. I can feel it. I do not feel open to you.” “I can feel that I’m responding defensively. Give me a minute.” If your partner’s in a defense place, “Can we take a break?” Also, know that the break is to calm, not to load your arsenal. Wrapping around, most of our examples of the story follows state have been scary. I don’t think that we are thinking that we’re in threat or danger. Our bodies are pushed off of the hands. If that person is not thinking, I don’t like that. Their hand flies up and pushes it off. That story following state is true on the side of security. For example, the story that I tell based on all of our experiences is that something’s wrong. It’s still a story. Therapists might call that positive transference. You might think of that as love or trust that we’re still filling in the story and we’re taking care of the other person. It’s like a positive interpretation but we’re still filling in the story. Another way we’re saying this is if you’re going to tell a story, positively interpret it. If you’re not sure of two things, go ahead and give them the benefit of the doubt. That’s how powerful the story versus state is. Sometimes, you will defend somebody very quickly if somebody might be having a problem with them. It’s like, “I’m sure they didn’t mean such and such.” Part of why that’s happening is that there’s a story there around the validity and trust of that person or maybe even the story is, “I need to defend them from you.” That’s still a story. They’re not even here and I say something. Either way, if it’s like, “I know this person and this person would never do that.” That’s a story. Connective Nervous System: So many of our negative interaction or conflicts that continue and become repetitive is the intolerance and the anticipation of that feeling. What part of your system is the story coming from? Is it coming to defend and protect yourself or because you feel connected, relational and you can give the benefit of the doubt? Flexibility, low stakes, no rush and curiosity then you’re in great shape. You get to have your stories because you can play with them like, “I never knew that about that person. That’s fascinating.” The other part of it is it’s the smart brain. It will learn and take in new information. It’s reflective. It’s good. The more positive engagements that you build up with these positive stories, the safer and safer it is. You’re on a different trajectory that the world is safe and you deserve it. You have control of that trajectory.

4 Jan 202239min

Social emotional learning for all of us – brain breaks not timeouts recommended Join our online community! Brain breaks and the 3 C’s for connecting. Whether you’re a parent balancing life in the pandemic or a teacher managing highly emotional kids, this episode is a resource for you. Co-host Dr. Ann Kelley and child specialist, Lindsey Kealey dive into strategies for teaching kids how to regulate their emotions and promote positive connection with others, called social emotional learning. Linsey Kealey has developed a trauma-based, neuroscience-informed program that uses social emotional learning and problem-solving strategies to help all of us make positive decisions and thrive in our relationships. She utilizes the Three C’s method, connect, calm and collaborate, to help transform the way we interact with ourselves and others. They discuss the three C method of connection to help cultivate healthy relationships and positive development in our children. . Our guest today Lindsey Kealey is a University instructor of human development and family sciences and education at Oregon State University. She is the author of PAWsitive Choices Social and Emotional Learning and the host of The PAWsitive Choices Podcast. Lindsey earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Human Development and Family Sciences with an emphasis in child development and holds a Masters of Arts in Teaching. Her university work, as well as her experience coaching families and teachers, helped her craft a curriculum that integrates interpersonal neurobiology, trauma-responsive practices, and problem-solving to help children thrive. Lindsey Kealey working with social emotional learning More about PAWsitive Choices… PAWsitive Choices is a comprehensive social and emotional learning program for families and schools that teaches children how to regulate emotions, make positive choices, learn from mistakes, and collaboratively solve problems. This trauma-responsive curriculum equips educators and caregivers with practical tools and strategies to help strengthen relationships and promote resilience. Show Transcript Lindsey: So we almost think that this is going to take a lot of time, but in the long run, you’ll find yourself having to teach less and less because they’re learning those skills. They’re internalizing them. So it can feel counterintuitive of well man setting up a brain break kid or teaching my child about problem solving. It is a task. It is something to do, but not only is it going to make them more successful and thrive, it’s going to help make our lives easier. And I think that’s motivating for adults. Today’s session on social emotional learning begins right now with Dr. Ann Kelley and Sue Marriott. Ann: Hi, welcome to the show. I’m here with Lindsey Kealey. Lindsey: Thanks for having me. Ann: I’m so glad to have you. So you are a social, emotional learning specialist for children. Is that right? Lindsey: That’s correct. Ann: Well, Lindsey, tell us a little bit about yourself. Lindsey: I am an Instructor of education and also human development and family science. With an emphasis in early childhood education. And I am a fellow neuro nerd. I love your podcast. It resonates with me so much. So I’m just really passionate about translating the science just as your podcast does to help, not only my university students and graduate students, but also families and elementary educator. So I like to synthesize the science that’s out there about our personal neurobiology and then infuse that both in my college courses and then also with family coaching. And when I go and coach in elementary schools, so it’s really just an honor and privilege to get to work with so many different people in different sectors and disseminate this great information about how we can better connect with you. Ann: And we need to continue to disseminate that for the young humans out there, because, you know, as a parent myself, all the information I could have used when my kids were younger, to help them deal with those huge, big emotions that they can have and you know, how to cope and really learn how to get ahold of themselves and to connect to other people. So when I took a look at your curriculum, I was really excited to have you on the show. Lindsey: Thank you. It’s really a neat position that we’re in, whether we’re educators or parents, or even just as we’re connecting with our partners. If someone doesn’t have children in their life, it’s a beautiful opportunity for us to get to better understand ourselves and kind of our emotional landscape. And then how that translates to. Who we’re connecting with and how we can practice that empathy and then help others understand what’s happening within them. If they’re experiencing strong feelings. And that’s something that I always talk about with my students and other adults I work with is that to begin, you want to explore your own emotional landscape and practice that emotional regulation. And that’s really what. Children can learn the best buys by modeling. So when we, you know, start with ourselves, then that’s one of the best places to start. I think, I think some teachers and parents say, well, like I need to teach my kid. I need to change their behavior right away. And I think when we step back, it starts with us. And that’s really nice because we have a lot of autonomy and agency over our actions. Young black mother taking care of her depressed little daughter at home. Ann: Well, what do you typically try to teach your graduate students and parents and teachers about how to do that? Right? Because it’s, it is such an important step instead of always being the teacher out there to our children, to really be able to understand how hard it is to do inside of ourselves and to be able to really model it. So what if some of the things that you recommend when you’re talking to parents and teachers? Lindsey: Well to begin with, I like to bring attention to the work of Dr. Kristin Neff and self-compassion because trying to navigate social problems takes a lot of self-compassion and vulnerability, I think. And so being able to just like, put your hand on your chest and take that deep breath in and just give yourself. Because as we’re trying to connect with others and teach kids, you know, regulation skills with those big feelings, they experience, it’s very likely that it could make us feel dysregulated. You know, I have this glitter brain frame. So if you think about for those listeners who can’t see this, the picture frame that has the glitter in it, and I’ve just put a picture of a brain inside of that. And if you think about the glitter as being kind of like the neuro-transmitters and chemicals in your brain, when you get really upset, I show this to my students and young children. It’s almost like the glitter in your brain or those neurochemicals get all mixed up. So it’s really hard to make positive choices. It’s hard to be our best selves and show up when we feel dysregulated. And I think one of the most encouraging things that I can tell people is that one of the best ways to model vulnerability and to help build resilience in children is to repair with them. So I have. A big glitter brain and the small one. And so when our brains get dysregulated and maybe you know, we’re not super kind, or we said, we say, Hey, I told you that five times sit down and maybe we’re not showing up how we’d like to, we can simply model for children or even, you know, our other adult relationships and say, you know what? My brain felt really mixed up. I was really upset. And I’m sorry for speaking to you the way I did. And next time I’m going to take calming breaths and I’m going to try some things out to help my own brain. And I’m sorry about. The way I talk to you. So when we repair, I think that kids learn so much, you know, we don’t have to worry about being the perfect parents to the perfect teachers or the perfect partner, but rather we can model repair and we can come together and really solve those social problems. Ann: You don’t have to hold the idea of perfection that we’re not going to make mistakes. And so often we want to rush in and explain why we did something don’t we like, no, let me tell you I’m so charged up, but this is why you need to understand. The concept of letting your brain kind of settle so that you can find your body and then come to the connection. Yeah, that’s a really important reminder, I think to us all Lindsey: yes. And I think when we start just by saying, you know, I felt really upset. I felt really dysregulated. If you’re speaking to an adult, like you mentioned, rather than going into a list of reasons of why we did a certain thing, or, well, I talk like this because you did X, Y, and Z. If we just say, you know, I had a lot of strong feelings when we had this discussion that almost lets the other person kind of take a sigh of relief and it feels like you’re on the same team rather than the other person getting on the defense and saying, well, I had these reasons why I acted like this in the first place. So if we just say, you know, I had these really strong feelings that I’m kind of wrestling with or working through that. It’s like it unites our common humanity with one another. Ann: Well, when you’re trained to help parents or teachers, let’s think about the kids with big emotions, with their bodies, for whatever reason, history experience, but they tend to have huge emotions, and dysregulate frequently. Those can be really tough times to be able to get ahold of yourself and parent. But what are the things you recommend? Like what do you talk to individuals about how to deal with a child that is extremely dysregulated and upset? Lindsey: I actually have a lot of experience. One of the beginning of my educational journey and my journey to creating a social emotional curriculum started my second year of teaching. I began as a kindergarten teacher and day one, I thought this is going to be a great year. And it turned out that I had seven students who had really strong social, emotional, and behavioral challenges or needs. And so that looked like certain students hitting one another, you know, running out of the classroom, a lot of physical aggression and violence I saw and a big part of that had to do with trauma and adverse. Experiences. And when I learned about their backgrounds and where they’re coming from, the amount of stress that was flooding their systems, it was just astonishing that they could come to school to begin with and show up. So that certainly gave me a lot of empathy, as I learned about trauma and how that affects the brain. So that kind of set me off on a pathway of how do I help children who were literally throwing chairs across the classroom or who are running out the front door of the school. And now we’re calling backups to find kids in the neighborhood. I mean, this is something that some teachers will experience really big problems and behavioral challenges. And so I kind of started with a host of behavioral challenges that were extreme. And then I kind of worked backward from there. Ann: I can imagine teachers out there can really relate to what you are saying. And I I’m thinking about being in your position and having students run all over the place and you can have deep compassion for their histories, but you also have to like manage them. And I just have such empathy for teachers out there. And I think actually after the year of the pandemic, I think a lot more of us have a kind of connection to teachers and what they have to deal with on an everyday basis because what’s coming together for them is a history. Probably many kids that have had trauma and have that manifested in terms of dysregulating and behaviors that are tough. So anyway, I just think about that from a really compassionate place for the teachers out there and for you in that moment and trying to go, ah, how do I deal with it? Lindsey: Definitely. So beginning with just connecting with yourself and again, holding space for self-compassion and telling yourself, wow, this is really hard. I mean, there was this bout of physical aggression with these students and I need to really be at a place of peace as much as you can. Right. That’s challenging to do that, but before you engage with children or with a difficult situation, being able to make sure your brain is calm and ready to teach. I think that’s really huge. So in working with children with a variety of needs, and then also with working with children who maybe don’t have trauma or a lot of challenges, I found there are three practices, three things you can do that I call the three CS and that is to connect. To calm and then collaborate. And I found that when you do those three things, really with any problem that you have, it helps you get to the end, the ultimate goal, which is to have accountability, to have repair and to really teach kids to build skills so that they learn from that experience. So when you connect with the child, that could just be acknowledging where they’re coming from, you could just narrate their experience. I could tell you a really upset when you know that student took the ball out of your hands. That really made you mad. Gosh, it’s frustrating when people take things out of our hands. So that’s just the first day just connecting with them. Ann: That’s not an easy step though, right? Like it can sound easy. Right. You know, connect first, but you’re describing kids that are hitting one another. Like how do you take a moment for the of connection when you’re in the middle of this really intense behavioral acting out. And I know parents, and even when I’ve talked with couples, when they’re really, really angry, that connection step can be so difficult. How do you help people make that first step? I want to go to the calm and the collaborate whole heartedly agree with you, but let’s take a moment at that first. What do you recommend? How do you help people connect? Lindsey: Well, if someone, maybe let’s say one person who’s trying to facilitate the problem solving is also dysregulated, you could start by just saying, I can tell you’re upset and you know, if you’re not in a head space to start to guess, well, are you frustrated? Are you sad? You could just start by saying, I can tell that your brain feels mixed up or that you feel upset. And I think that allows the other person to feel, felt like Dr. Dan Siegel. So the person just knows, oh, you can tell something is on my heart or I’m, I’m having a difficulty with the situation. So to say, I can tell you’re upset. And then I think that allows the other person to feel felt. I think that’s a pretty simple thing to say and then move on from there when you can. So maybe it’s, you’re not in a situation where like, for instance, if it’s a safety issue in the classroom to say, oh, I can tell that maybe if it’s two children, both of you are really upset. We need to change how our environment looks right now. So let’s have this student go over. I call something a brain break. So that’s allowing students and I’m showing to the screen now a little tub with calming tools inside of it. So rather than hopping to, I need to teach you a lesson or tell you why your behaviors were right or wrong. That’s the third C collaborate. We need to first get them in a place where they’re able to calm down. To be able to learn and be ready to hear what you have to say. And so you could say, we need to, you know, the second C is to calm. Let’s take some deep breaths, let’s get you in a space that’s safer, or that allows you to feel settled before we start problem solving this situation. And for adults that could be like, I can tell you’re upset. What do you need right now? So maybe the other person accused them into oh, My brain probably needs something. You know what? I’m going to go take a lap around the neighborhood cause I might need to get my energy out. So that’s something where we can help the other person identify that they need to meet one of their own needs Ann: One of things as that it can be just a quick line, right? It’s not that you have to kind of sit down and have this empathetic moment with a kid that is acting out. But what you’re saying is even if you just observe about what’s going on in the connection, I see you’re upset. You’re probably both upset. That ,in and of itself, that quick line is a step into the experience of connection. That kind of calms the nervous system in that one moment. And so often we jump up with trying to teach the lesson, and that is as a parent, as a partner, it’s like, let me tell you why I’m upset. So I know I keep saying that, but it’s so hard for our nervous systems to calm down. So I like what you’re saying. Sometimes it’s just one quick line. It doesn’t have to be a momentous moment. Lindsey: Exactly. And I found that when you skip that connection piece and you go straight to calm some of us, maybe we don’t go straight to the collaborate. And I want to tell you why you’re wrong or let’s fix this. Sometimes we start with, we want to help them calm down. We see that need, but we say you need to calm down. And oftentimes the other person isn’t necessarily receptive to that. What do you mean? I need to calm down, calm down, right? Ann: Somehow that never works. You know, if you say calm down, don’t be afraid. Okay. Let me get busy, let me get right on that (both laughing) Lindsey: It’s powerful just to say I see you. I can see something’s up and you could say, I see that both of us are upset. We both need to take a break. I think that we need to regroup or for children I say, we need to let our brains settle and then we can come back together. But you know, right now I need to go sit at my desk and take a sip of my coffee and what do you need? Okay. You can go take a brain break or maybe you can just do a lap around the recess. So, you know, the playground let’s help you calm down. So I think when you really get to the bottom of it, it’s helping children become regulated, building those skills for them, and then being able to teach. Help them understand why, whatever they did was a problem, so they can move forward and then have that long lasting behavioral change is the ultimate goal. I think with maybe even beneath that is strengthening our relationships because really kids don’t care what, you know, until they know that you care for them. So that’s a big part of it strengthening that relationship. Ann: Yeah. I like the way you’re saying .Kids don’t care what,you know until they feel like you care. That’s a really powerful statement. Lindsey: I’d have to look and see who it’s attributed to. It might be too anonymous, but that’s something that I, I always go back to with my graduate students who are thinking, well, I need to get the reading, writing, math scores up, you know, when they’re doing their student teaching placements, they’re so focused on maybe a child’s behavior. I need them to sit at the carpet and listen, otherwise their reading score isn’t going to be where I need it to be. But if we say relationships first, academic second. Then actually that’s the most productive approach to take, because if the child’s not in the learning state, if their brain’s not regulated, if their prefrontal cortex is not online, then they’re not going to get that reading skill. They’re not going to learn multiplication or division when they’re in that brain state. So it’s one of my joys in what I do is helping people make that realization and have that aha moment. Ann: In those steps we’ve talked about the three C’s and we’ve talked about the connect and then the calm. And you mentioned the brain break. Talk a little bit more about the brain break. I think that’s part of what your curriculum is based on, is that right, about ways to help individuals first connect, but then in the calming place that there’s things that they can do to calm themselves before they jump into the collaborative. Can you talk a little bit more about the brain break? Lindsey: Definitely. So I think that oftentimes as adults, we want to help children calm down and we all know that something that needs to happen, especially when you’re in an aisle at target and maybe you’re with your child and they’re having a moment because they want a toy. And you said, no. So we all want them to experience that sense of calm. But in my research, I’ve looked at the things that get in the way. And so some common practices like. Or in the educational setting and classrooms that might be, oh, you’re missing five minutes of recess or you’re missing fun Friday, or there’s different things that we do with the best of intentions, thinking that telling a child, oh, you need to go take a timeout. We think that’s going to help them calm down. However, if we look back at that, what does that ultimately accomplishing. Some of the unintended consequences of having children take a timeout is if they’re going over to a corner of the room, let’s say in the house, and they’re just sitting there rather than thinking, you know, wow, what I did was wrong. And I put that made my sister feel really upset when I did this or that. So what we really want kids to do is still feel like they’re connected to us and that they’re worthy of love and belonging. So if we say go take a. You just did something really bad that can kind of cause a rupture, a disconnection. So if we say something like, you know what, buddy, I can tell your brain feels mixed up. Let’s have you take a brain break or a calming break. That way you’re feeling better. And then we can solve this problem. So it’s really, it’s not putting the blame on the person. So that’s shame. I am that. And then. Guilds Bernay Brown’s work. What I did was bad. And so when we are able to shift our language, take a linguistic turn, so to speak and say, you know what, let’s help your brain settle down rather than take a time out. Ultimately it’s accomplishing the goal of having a child remove themselves from maybe a situation, maybe it’s Thanksgiving dinner, and they’re, you know, having a moment, they have those strong feelings. It’s allowing them to remove themselves from that environment or that situation. But we’re wording it in a way that promotes shame resilience and that fosters a secure attachment. So I think that’s powerful. So a brain break really is allowing a child to go to a space that’s safer and that’s calm for them. And then know that they have a variety of things they can do to help their brain feel settled. So that’s the goal. And when we think about how we tell them to do that, it can make a big difference. Ann: You think about shame is being sent out of the village, right? That’s kind of what induces shame historically. And. To like go take a time out is this inducement of you’ve done something bad and now we need to punish you. Right. And, and like you said, all of a sudden I have this idea of this child in the corner and no you’re right. Unlikely that me,  myself in the corner as a child or anyone else will be sitting there really having reflective functioning about how much they made a mistake and how much they desire to repair. Not so much. Right. Lindsey: Exactly. And it can go one of two ways or it can go both ways. There’s a variety of ways this can go, but it’s oftentimes either my mom or dad they’re so mean I don’t deserve this or that could also be I’m so bad and I’m not even good enough to sit at the table with, you know, at Thanksgiving or, you know, my family doesn’t care from your love and be like, I can’t even be around them. I’m unworthy. And so I would rather have a child have their response and their brain of thinking, wow, if maybe at their grandparents’ house, grandma’s really mean. I’d rather have almost have that cognitive pattern because the child’s not internalizing shame thinking that they are bad, but ultimately we don’t want our children to be having this reflective time where they’re thinking we’re all bad. Right. Right. And we want them to feel like we’re on the same page. So something that happens I think is when I propose that we can shift our understanding of time outs, I get the response from parents of, well, what do you mean time outs are bad? You know, maybe they grew up in, they were spanked or they had other forms of discipline that didn’t feel good. And so they’re thinking I don’t want to go that direction. So I’m going to go with the timeout in their mind. They’re thinking that’s so much better than these other really punitive responses that caregivers can provide. And so I think. If we’re able to let parents know, and I make this clear with my graduate students as well, is that, we’re not saying that we’re just letting accountability fall to the wayside. You know, we’re not saying, oh, your brain’s upset. And you know, kumbaya gave me a hug. Now we’re walking. We were going right along. We wanted to backtrack because it’s really important for us to have those boundaries. Right. It’s in our children’s best interest to help them learn from their mistakes rather than when parents say, oh, doesn’t a brain. Isn’t that like a permissive thing to do, but it’s like, oh, actually rather you’re allowing that child to calm down to still feel connected to you. And that’s why you have to follow up with problem solving. That’s a really important piece that has to be there. Ann: Well, I also think the piece of the brain break, as you’re talking about it, it feels like it really also supports accountability, right? Because it’s, it’s not even the, what falls after that, where the time out is not really fostering accountability where you’re saying, take a brain break. You’re suggesting your brain is dysregulated. And so you’ve got to go and actively work on calming yourself down. And I love that you have like a, a brain break bucket and it’s good for all of us. I need a brain break sometimes, you know, like, like what are the things that would go in your personal bucket as an adult, but also as a child? Like, what do you put in your bucket that actually lowers your cortisol level and calms you down, but keeps you connected. But there’s also this active engagement with yourself instead of, like you said, letting yourself run into the rumination of “I’m a victim or I’m a perpetrator”, right? Like I’m so bad or the world’s so bad. It’s like, I’m so dysregulated and I’m upset because I’ve been connected with, by, I hear you’re upset, so I’m going to, I’m going to calm myself down and it really does support that journey. Doesn’t it, to the next. Lindsey: Exactly because one of our goals is to build skills. So when, when our children progress or development, and now they’re in high school, we want them to have healthy coping mechanisms. And one of the reasons that sometimes when a parent will say, well, you know, why do I need to take the time to build a brain break kit or to teach healthy choices to my child? Let’s say five years old. Well, one of the reasons is let’s look down the developmental trajectory when they’re in high school, we want them to have skills. So when they’re under extreme pressure, we don’t want them to go out and, you know, use drugs or to do behaviors that are risky to their health or to others. So it’s important for us to take a skill based approach and to help kids understand that they have autonomy and agency over what they do when they’re feeling dysregulated. That’s really important. Ann: Absolutely. They’re also teaching that, that pause, and that reflective functioning is so important, right? Because I think of how often people, one of their brain break is they’re going to go pick up their phone, but it actually for older individuals that is not actually adding to reflective functioning, is it, it’s just like that. Like, what’s the difference between a brain break and just sort of distancing. I’m going to take a break, but I’m actually going to go away and. You know, completely disconnect from the moment in my body where a brain break is teaching from the very youngest age, it seems a way to take a moment to go and calm down and self-reflect et cetera, instead of just disappear. So it seems like it really is teaching developmentally this step of stopping and going internal and being aware of the internal. Lindsey: Exactly. And I think having intentionality around it and having a game plan of connection. So it’s not go to your room and take a brain break so we can start to shift our language. And how about you go take a brain break, help your brain feel better, but if we don’t have that wraparound where they come back and connect with us again. It can kind of undermine our original purpose. So if you say, okay, go take a brain break. When you’re ready, let’s come back and talk about this. So there’s that intentionality rather than a child grabbing their little tub and just taking the Legos out. Okay. Now it’s time for dinner. It’s almost like you’re completing the stress cycle. They they’re able to calm down. Now we come back together and we say, okay, let’s talk about that. How are you feeling now? What was going on for you? I think it’s important. Same thing with our adult relationships. If you have an argument I know from personal experience with my husband, if you know, if we have some challenges in our relationship and we say, okay, we need to take a break. I’m going to go on a walk. Okay. You’re going to maybe even play video games, maybe an adult that is helpful for them to calm down. Let’s come back together. What do you think? Three of. Okay, great. Three o’clock let’s come back and we’ll talk about this. So you have that intentionality of, we are going to connect with each other. Again, some people they scroll Instagram and maybe that’s exactly what they need in the moment. And when they know that they are going to come back and repair or connect, then I think that can really be helpful. Ann: And that’s the last, C, the collaborative, like, so you’re going to take this part to calm and to really collect yourself. And then. The idea of collaborating, we are going to come back together and then that that’s so helps. We always talk about this on the podcast of how much that promise that we are going to come back in and that plan holds that connectivity and, and you can’t completely disappear into your own stuff because you know, you’re going to be coming back and talking. So you have to reconnect to it. Kind of have some mindsight about it Lindsey: Precisely. It’s some of the things that would maybe go on a child’s brain break kit or tub. Ann: Perfect. Next question. I was going to ask you, what would you put? Lindsey: So it’s really powerful when you have a child come alongside and kind of co-create it with you. So a lot of times when I work with parents, they could have like, you know, a journal and Crayons. I think it’s powerful to have a mirror for younger kids, especially, and pair that with an emotions chart so when they sit down, they can start to think, well, how do I feel? And with the curriculum, there’s like brain breaks steps. So they really have a clear picture of, okay, I start with the timer. So I highly recommend that caregivers or even in the classroom, a lot of teachers are doing this in their classroom, having some kind of visual time. So a child knows, okay, I’m going to do this for five minutes. There’s kind of like a limit. They know whether it’s a timer like this or a sand timer. They’re watching the sand go down and they’re getting a feel for, okay, I’m halfway done with this little break of mine. Ann: So you may have a timer put in the bucket so that they’re aware of timing. Is that what you’re saying? That they’re aware like, oh, I’m going to do this and for this amount of time and they can feel it. And then you mentioned a feeling’s chart and mirror, tell me a little bit more about the mirror. Why a mirror?. And would that be for all ages? What are your thoughts about that? Lindsey: You know, it really can start as young as children who are ready for it. So if you kind of go through, if you have a clear picture for what kids can be doing, when they’re in a brain break, Write it down or you have pictures of them doing it, or, you know, if you have something kind of like a visual aid, you want them to be able to know they’re setting the timer, have them begin with breathing because it’s really difficult to connect with what your feelings are if you’re not in a calm state of mind, because it does require your prefrontal cortex and critical thinking to don’t. Well, what am feeling? And maybe for children as young as two or three, maybe they’re not in the place with their emotional literacy to do that. And that’s powerful as adults when we come alongside and sit down with them and maybe you hold the mirror up and say, I wonder how do you feel? And so if you have an emotions poster where you’re able to juxtapose what their face looks like in the mirror, and then hold that. The feelings poster and say, oh, your face kind of looks like this one, how your eyebrows are tilted down and you have a little cheer here and you’re just kind of bringing awareness to their somatic experience and helping them understand how they feel. So that’s a step certainly that a child could take. And then also you’re going to want to have them have a healthy choice of some kind. So. Kranz and a journal or Play-Doh or a favorite book, a stuffed animal, maybe like a little, you know, a set of Legos. Some kids really benefit from just starting to tinker with something that helps them calm down. Some parents will say, well, aren’t we just rewarding them. They get to go over and then play with Legos. Like right. Sometimes parents can think, wait a second. That might not feel right. But if, as long as we understand the goal is for them to settle and develop healthy coping skills. And I always say, remember when your child. Well, we want them to do something healthy when they’re upset. We want them to read a book. Goodness. If they could just play some video games or do some kind of building of some kind, rather than going out and doing risky behavior, that’s really powerful. That’s what we want. And so understanding to give kids tools like that is really powerful for them to know what to do to help their brains feel better. Sue: Hey, we’d like to extend an invitation to join our private community at Therapist Uncensored.com/join – that is supercast.com. This Group is growing, it’s thriving. There are reading pods, and you will receive an ad-free feed and you’re going to get first crack at super exciting things that we do periodically bringing some of the authors in studying directly with for as little as $5 a month, please sign up at TherapistUncensored.com/join Ann: And so part of your curriculum is having pictorial representations of these kinds of steps. So that younger kids who can’t track all that, and don’t have the kind of sequencing that would needed to go from one step to the other. Lindsey: Some of the curriculum walks you through the steps in a pictorial way. For those that are just listening and not being able to see these pictures, have these steps along the way that can help them identify their feelings, et cetera, and help them know, oh, I breathe here. And then I go from one place to the next. I have a free YouTube video that explains how to set up a brain break, what can go inside and it’s done in a kid friendly way. So you could sit with your child, you could watch it together. So they have the background and then create your own calming kit of sorts. So that’s something that I will share with you so that listeners can have that as a resource, just to kind of get a feel for maybe if this is something they want to do.It’s a starting point for. Ann: That’s terrific. And we’ll have that in our show notes. We’ll have a link to that in our show notes. So anybody listening and can get some brainstorming ideas, how to make your own brain break. And also just, I would love adults out there to be thinking about what would be in their chest, because so often we don’t actually think about that. We engage in it, but we don’t actually engage in it in that really active, thoughtful way that says, oh, my goal here is to actually. Not get away from the person that just pissed us off. I mean, yes, initially that is, but it actually really is to settle the chemicals as you represented in the, in the shaking of your, what do you call that? Oh, a glitter, glitter, right? Okay. The shaking of your glitter brain, you’re like representing that part of what you’re trying to do is calm the chemicals in there. And I like what you’re saying, like, okay. Yes. So we have some, something that might be rewarding, but rarely are kids going to act out so that they can go and take a brain break because they likely to play with these kinds of things at other times. Also, they are not that thoughtful when we’re dysregulated and acting out. And in fact, I like it because it’s suggesting that taking a brain break is not the form of punishment. It is the form of calming down. And then, like you said, we’re coming back to the collaborativeness. Once we come back to being collaborative. Talk to us about discipline in that like we’ve hit somebody, right. Or child has hit somebody or they’ve thrown something across the room. We’ve helped them calm down. And now we’re going to collaborate with them. Are there any recommendations you have in terms of how to engage with the kind of consequences and accountablility? Lindsey: Definitely and I think you mentioned the word discipline, and I think that’s really powerful for us to think about what that means and what that means personally to us. And a lot of that has to do with our own upbringing. So when you hear the word discipline, when I do this, a family coaching, I just kind of ask, how does that feel in your body? When someone says, what does, what’s your discipline philosophy? Or even just the word. And for some people it can be anxiety or fear. It could be a lot of feelings. Okay. When we think about discipline rather than thinking, oftentimes we think discipline means punish, but if we just swap that out, it’s a little linguistic turn and we say, we equate discipline with T. That can change everything. It’s a game changer. So rather than saying, you know, maybe it’s you and your partner, how are we going to discipline our son for throwing the Legos? And it hit his brother in the face, right? How are we going to discipline him rather than thinking, how are we going to punish him? If you just think, what are we going to teach him through this experience? When you start to make that little shift in your mind that can really help you because ultimately if we’re doing discipline practices, that in the moment might seem like they’re effective in the short term, maybe some parents for their form of discipline that looks like spanking, or that might look like, okay, no iPad or no birthday parties, you know, for the month, or, you know, sometimes we just, we’re so quick to assign a consequence or a punishment for a certain behavior, Ann: Especially when we’re really pissed off. Right. Because there’s the satisfaction of you just done something and you are grounded for two months. There’s this. Oh, that feels so good because it makes me feel like I have some control, which obviously in that moment, that’s not really about teaching. That’s about retribution. It’s about anger, which is understandable. Don’t get me wrong. Like the best of them they’re too stiff, a consequences because I was really, really pissed off. But like what you’re saying, and that’s not really about teaching and we think we want to take the iPad away for a month to teach. I think you’re not saying don’t do that, but what you’re saying. How do you get to a place where, how are we going to teach them not to do that rather than how are we going to punish them for doing it? Lindsey: Yes. And I think as much as we can tie whatever followup we’re going to have with the child, whatever teaching opportunity that can look like accountability. So if a child’s being really inappropriate with a piece of technology, The appropriate accountability follow-up piece might be to take the iPad away for a month, but it’s connected. But if we go back to the situation where a child maybe was unsafe and threw some blocks that their brother’s head, and now you’re dealing with that situation, taking away TV or. Ipad isn’t necessarily, it might not be naturally connected. So how can we come up with an accountability system where we’re building empathy and we’re also following through with processing what happened? So what that can look like if I think one of your original questions was what does that look like? The collaboration piece, the followup. So that can look like I like to reframe as collaborative problem solving. So we’re coming alongside a child and helping them understand what did they do? And even before that, asking them, what were you feeling and thinking, because when they’re able to understand what was going on for them behind the behavior, that’s going to lead to the long-term behavioral change. Right? If we get to the root of it, just like in couples therapy and couples counseling, we want to understand what’s at the root of this behavior or this need. We want to do that with kids. So when we allow them to step back, think about what they were thinking and feeling, then we can go into what happened. And then once we figure out what happened, we can start to ask kids, well, why is this a problem? We can build empathy. Oh, when you did this, wow. Look, your brother has a little bump on his head and he’s crying, man. I know you were upset. So we validate that feeling. You were really mad and you were thinking, that is my block. My brother took my block and that’s mine. And you know what? That’s so normal to feel upset. All feelings are welcome, but not all behaviors are helpful. So how can we help kids understand that? And that’s the first piece is helping them understand what was going on for them. And then you move on to the accountability and a plan for next time. Ann: So the point, I guess, also of the brain break,in parenting specifically, although I, like you said, you keep bringing it back to couples and I can always relate to that. dynamic but as the child is taking the brain break, so are we, and so it’s highlighting for me as I’m listening that you’re separating the teaching consequence portion of it, the teaching process of it from when the child is really activated, but also when we’re really activated, right? Cause as the child is taking a brain break, we are. And so it separates the idea that we’re going to quickly come up with. Plan as we’re really pissed off and totally dysregulated ourselves. So we’re going to have to kind of step back and calm. And so when we come back at it and I love what you’re saying about inviting the kids to do that, like, what are your thoughts about what happened? And I imagine even like, what do you think. It’s going to help you not do that. Sometimes I even found with my kids, sometimes they would come up with stiffer consequences than I would, you know, as you kind of engage them as they get older, of course, they’re like, I think I shouldn’t. And it’s so interesting when you allow them, isn’t it to be part of it. They kind of own it more rather than just feel victimized in the. Yes. Lindsey: And I think what it allows us to do when we engage in like authentic curiosity. So when we sit down with them and we’re having a collaborative problem solving conversation, we really want to begin with curiosity. So in our head, we might be thinking you were upset because your brother took your block. Well, maybe something else was going on for him. Maybe that child was feeling really sad because, you know, no one has acknowledged him, you know, all the attention has been going to baby brother or, you know, sometimes kids are experiencing something totally different. So this is a problem solving reflection form. It’s a PDF and it’s two-sided and I’ll give a, download a PDF, download. So on the front side. So this is more of the processing of the problem, kind of what the language sounds like. It’s how were you feeling? What were you thinking then? What happened? Why is this a problem? And there’s different categories. Like it was a problem of safety that maybe effected learning. So I was coaching one family and the daughter was really having a hard time getting ready for school and she would fight it and say, no, I’m not getting my backpack on. And so when I went into the coaching session, I sat down with her and I said, well, why do you think it’s a problem to not get your backpack on and not put your shoes on? And she’s like, I don’t know. And then we talked about it more and she said, you know, I think that’s a problem because it affects my learning. Cause we get to school late and I miss half the math lesson. So really kind of helping them get to the bottom of it. And then as you mentioned about allowing them to be a part of the solution, that’s kind of like the repair, the accountability. So after you ask them, you know, what positive choice can you or someone else make the next time? We want to ask them, what’s the strategy you can use. So we know that we want to be safe with our brother. Cause safety is important for the block scenario. What can we do next time? Cause you were feeling, we identified that you were upset. Let’s say the child was really mad. What can you do when you feel mad the next time? Oh, you can take. Deep breaths. You can take a self-initiated brain break. You’ll find that maybe your child will just go over and they’re playing with the toys and they’re flipping the timer and then they come back and they keep playing with their sibling. So that’s great when they can identify, this is something I want to do preemptively. Ann: Oh, I think that really exciting for a lot of parents out there to see their child actually engage in that and to be able to catch them if they did take their brain break and like, I’m so impressed with you. I saw how you did that. Lindsey: Yeah. That’s what really seemed to help you. That was the. The full strategy used, and then you ask them, what can we do to solve the problem? And when we give children a menu of choices, so for instance, this problem solving reflection says, talk it out, apologize, make a sorry, letter, do something kind for the other person, clean up the mess. So for the students I had, who would throw chairs across the room, rather than saying we’re removing recess, or you’re going to be in the office for the next two hours, it takes let’s be a part of the solution. So that child would help me put the chairs back and the books away. They would be a part of cleaning it up and then maybe I think a big thing we can do is having a redo as part of that accountability. Okay. Let’s try again. So let’s pretend and you can have them act it out, so, okay. Let’s pretend that you’re upset again. And you could have baby brother come back in the room and let’s tell him, I feel upset when you take my toy. Okay. And, and so you help them act out what it could look like instead. And in couples therapy, that’s, you know, let’s make a plan for next time. And what would that have sounded like? So I think it really, this information applies to all people learning how to better connect with each other. But definitely, as you mentioned, having children be a part of that solution and coming alongside is really powerful because they do take ownership of. And they’re much more invested. Ann: That’s so true. And I love that the suggestions gives somebody some agency to say, I’ve done this and now I really am making the repair and the reconnection. That’s so hopeful. Isn’t it? It’s like as we can have a redo, I mean, it’s not just learning how to do it, is it, it’s not just learning how to be able to connect with your brother again or pick up the chair. It’s that feeling that’s given to the child. Of when I make mistakes, I can really re-engage and repair and it isn’t something that I just get cut off and sent away. It’s really adds so much hopefulness. Doesn’t it? It adds so much, I guess I keep coming back to the word agency and connection. Lindsey: Those are huge. And I think that, you know, adults and parents they’ll ask me, I want to make sure that I’m not doing things that are fostering shame, or I want to make sure that whatever practice I’m doing is that okay? Maybe they’re asking me if one of their approaches is okay or not. And I always say a great litmus test is asking yourself, how would that feel for me? What would that be like if this was used on me? So let’s say you’re at a dinner party and your partner, you’re talking with a group of friends and you interrupt your partner to share a story. And then, you know, they say. You just interrupted me. This is the third time this week, you know, you need to go walk away from the group or you need to go take a break. Like I, whenever I give that example, everyone’s like, oh, that feels so bad. Like I would be humiliated. That’d be the worst thing ever. So that kind of helps us understand, oh, when I invite my child to take a break, What’s a better way of saying it. Maybe it’s private. So if you’re in a family setting, I keep thinking of Thanksgiving, rather than saying, Sarah, you need to go take a brain break. Now that’s almost defeating the purpose. Sure. We’re using the vernacular brain break, but it’s done in a way where everyone’s listening and that can have a humiliating aspect. So if you come alongside and say, Hey, like you’re whispering. I do think your brain needs a break right now. Okay. Yeah. Let’s walk over together. That’s so much more honoring. So allowing ourselves to think, what would that feel like for me? And that gives adults a north star, if, oh yeah. I feel comfortable with this because it would feel okay with, so . Ann: It’s really doing a mind body. Check-in isn’t it like, was your body going to feel if that exact same thing was directed towards you? Would your body feel more threatened and wanting to disconnect and go away and hide, or was it going to feel more engaged to like, oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I keep interrupting you. I don’t mean to, right. Is, am I going to want to repair? I’m going to want to hit you, you know, like, like, right. So like, it really does allow that reflective part to feel, what would I feel like? Which is what the whole goal is, right? This connection, the interpersonal part to like, we really want with our kids or with our partners or with our friends, our goal isn’t to shame somebody for interrupting us it’s to slow them down and help them connect to us more. Right. Lindsey: Definitely. And that goal of just strengthening that foundation of connection. When I work with parents and educators who say, I don’t have time for this collaborative problem solving process, my life is so busy. We’re going to soccer games, or I’m trying to teach reading, writing, and math. I don’t have time for this. Another simulation you can do is how would you feel if you got in a fight with a coworker and you were not your best self, you’re putting yourself in the shoes of your child, you were having a bad day. You had something happened at home that was unsettling. You know, we’re not your best self with them. All of us are a lot of us, as adults would want to come back and repair we’d want the next two work to be able to say, Hey, you know what, yesterday I was so upset about this has nothing to do with you. I really apologize for the way I treated you. That’s something that for a lot of us that feels good. Like we want to be able to repair and have that follow up. So for children, if we keep moving on and we don’t take the time to like, Stop and go back and repair with their sibling or with a peer at school. It’s not allowing them to have to complete the stress cycle. It’s not allowing them to have that followup with that person. And then now with this child, there’s little ruptures in their relationships, whether it be with siblings or even other adults in their life. There’s these little ruptures and it’s like this feeling where they don’t have that repair and they don’t have that follow-up piece. And I think that can start to chip away at even their self-concept. Ann: No, I think that’s so well said. No, I really agree with you. And when we say we don’t have time, your example is we don’t have time because we’re busy with soccer and math and the social, emotional learning, the things that you’re really taking the time to focus on and really want to help our listeners. And. And to teach the social emotional learning is really what is gonna be at the core of the child’s ability to not only be happy in the future, but actually be really successful to be able to connect and not have ruptures that stay in the body. And that creates cortisol that doesn’t get resolved, right? Unresolved conflict is what sticks with our body and what adds the stress. And so by taking the time to teach the social emotional part, you really are setting your kid up for success in a different way than anything else you could do. Would you agree with that? Lindsey: I completely agree. Not only are you setting them up for success and we know that that’s something we want. Another thing I tell adults is it feels like we’re, you know, we’re crunched for time, but actually when you take the time and do this teaching with your child, you know, it’s a big bang for your buck. It’s actually going to save you time in the long run, because you’re not going to have to keep coming back and addressing the same problem over and over. So it’s really about that. Long-term behavioral change. And I’ll give you an example. I had a student in kindergarten one year and she had a lot of strong feelings and some sensory and emotional regulation skills that we were working on. And there was the same problem every day after lunch, where she would come in after lunch into the classroom and feel really dysregulated she’d run around the room and, you know, would start to touch other kids. And I would say, okay, take a brain break. And I would give different tools, but I never really, this is before. Was practicing this with fidelity, the collaborative problem solving. But when I finally took the time, maybe this is after a couple of weeks to sit down with her, have this collaborative problem solving conversation, allow her to apologize to the kids that she would, you know, go and be maybe up really close in their faces. Once I had that conversation with. It was really just one problem solving conversation and follow through the behavior stopped. So we almost think that this is going to take a lot of time, but in the long run, you’ll find yourself having to teach less and less because they’re learning those skills. They’re internalizing them. So it can feel counterintuitive of well man, setting up a brain break kit or teaching my child about problem solving. It is a task. It is something to do, but not only is it going to make them more successful and thrive, it’s going to help make our lives easier. And I think that’s motivating for adults. Ann: Absolutely. Well, I love what you have. Is there anything that we haven’t gone over that you feel, but as we’re starting to wrap up, that would be like, ah, just want this, make sure that everyone out there, especially for those that maybe wouldn’t be able to have access to some of the curriculum that you’re talking about, we’re going to put the connection to the show notes. So if they’re interested in contacting, you we’ll have your contact information in there, but if somebody is out there and they’re not able to access this kind of curriculum, what would you recommend? What was the one thing you’d want them to know? Lindsey: I think it just goes back to the three CS, making sure that with any situation you encounter, how can you foster connection? Whether that’s with yourself of whoa, I feel upset. I’m really dysregulated right now. My child’s having a moment in target and everyone’s looking at me, right? So you can connect with yourself. Wow. This is hard connect with the child or your partner. I can tell you right. So that’s kind of the first thing, just that check-in and then going back to reiterate the comm. Let’s take a break. What healthy choice works for me. So maybe you set up a brain break kit, or maybe it’s just some books and a stuffed animal. And that’s, that’s just something your child knows works for them. Maybe for yourself. It’s taking a little walk around the block. A lot of my graduate students say does Netflix and chocolate work or wine or the cake, you know, for adults it looks different. So finding some things that work for you for your own calming process. And then finally, how are you having more collaborative conversations? And maybe that just sounds like. How were you feeling what was going on for you when I observed this behavior and then what can we do to solve it? What can we do next time? I think just coming back to the three CS and just knowing I can always connect common, collaborate, even if it’s really abbreviated something else I will mention is giving yourself the gift of time. Sometimes adults, when they’re starting to learn this, they think, oh, I have to implement this perfectly. And I have to know what is my collaborative conversation sound like? What’s the accountability I’m going to implement, but rather you can just say, you know, I can tell you’re upset. I’m upset. My brain is really mixed up. Let’s problem solve this when we get home. So you don’t have to have this whole game plan in the middle of target where you’re, you know exactly what the repair is going to be. But rather, you know what, this afternoon after you come back from grandma’s, we’re going to problem solve this. So just give yourself. And I know you mentioned that when as a, child’s taking a brain break, you yourself, you’re gathering your thoughts. And you’re also having that sense of regulation. And I will maybe one less piece to add is the concept of inner regulation. And this is something, you know, Dr. Siegel speaks to and then inter regulation. So I really want to emphasize that a brain break. Isn’t necessarily telling the child to go and sit in the corner, even sit in a nice little bean bag with their bag. We also want to make sure that we’re emotionally present connected to them. So maybe a brain break is, Hey, let’s go over together. We’re going to sit down and we’ll both start doodling on a piece of paper because that closeness might be just what a child needs. Just like with our adult relationships instead of being, well, you go on a walk, I’m going to go here. Maybe you go on a walk together and you’re just quiet, but you’re still together. You know, that co-regulation or that inter regulation, that’s important. So we’re not, you know, I want to make sure that we still include that because that is really healing and helpful when we can regulate together. Ann: I love that you added that part. I love that you added that the regulation isn’t always going off by ourselves and trying to figure it out. It is that you add that interpersonal part, especially for couples and friends and like, you know, how do we reconnect? I mean, how do we calm ourselves down together? What are the things cause that allows the other person to be a resource, right? Instead of the answer is to go away and come back. It’s instead letting them know, I’m a resource, even when you’re upset, I’m a resource in your bag of resources. To me, we can be a resource. I have a friend the other day that said that every time she and her partner were having complicated experiences. They would go sit in the, they have a kind of side jacuzzi and they would go sit in it. It’s awesome. And they would have to talk about whatever it was in that dynamic. So they had developed a situation where they could find a sense of connection or another example in graduate school that I’ve always found funny is that they used to encourage couples to go when they’re having a really intense fight to go stand in the bathtub. And that’s awesome. Isn’t that awesome. It’s like, it kind of immediately brings out the situation where we’re connected through humor and in this is what you said, it sort of forms a sense of connection. As we’re trying now to work through something that would typically be firing our brains, you know? So I like that you added the interpersonal that we can together interconnect to come. And that, to think about that. Cause you said, you know, the graduate students are. Wine and Netflix and like absolutely all those can be, but it might be also helpful. I would think to help people develop what’s in their chest that makes sure that it’s not just always an escape and a disappearance in in a numbing, because we can choose to put in our chest. These are like really numbing qualities instead of also like, I like the time limit, right? Like, yes, go do that. But there’s this time that you’re going to come back. And what other activities that involve interconnectedness, not just numbing and disappearing that can calm your brain and then re-engage you, right? Because if you’re just numbing and then turning it off, maybe you haven’t actually, re-engage your desire for connection and collaborativeness. Cause that last step is collaborative, right? Like if you’ve just disappeared, how have you primed yourself for collaborative? Lindsey: Exactly. And I think that when we think about our regulation toolkit, we do sometimes resort to a revert to the chocolate and the Netflix. And I tell this to my students in a perfect world. What would be your coping skills? Oh, making a healthy snack calling my mom. Cause she’s always a great listener going on a walk. If you can kind of build a toolkit of healthy choices, healthy coping skills ahead of. And then just really get in the habit of practicing those outside of a stressful situation. Then that can be kind of the best case scenario for us. And when I speak to adults who are saying, in terms of connecting with my child, why should I do that? I don’t have time for that. I just tell them to calm down to a break. Sometimes adults say. See necessarily the value of co-regulation and I’ll just start by saying, okay, let’s look down the developmental trajectory when your child is grown up. When they find a partner to be with, how do you want them to respond to their partner, their partner, to respond to them. When they come home from work from a long, stressful day, we want to co-regulate. So if you tell your partner, gosh, I had the worst day ever. Man, my coworkers are being really challenging. You wouldn’t want your partner to say that sounds like a personal problem. How about you? Go do stuff. Right. Like we’d want to feel felt, oh, what can I do? Like, let me order us pizza. Or, you know, we want to have someone who comes alongside and regulates with us. So that is, I think as adults start to think about, oh yeah, I want to foster this value of co-regulation because that’s ultimately what I want for my child when they’re adults. And when they’re looking for someone who’s going to be a healthy partner. Ann: Absolutely. Yeah. I agree with everything you just said. And if you were a listener out there and you’re thinking actually, I don’t want somebody to co-regulate with me. I think I’m supposed to go do it on my own. My kid needs to learn to do it on our own. There’s not always somebody going to be there. I mean, yes, that is the case. But if that’s where you’re really deeply entrenched, you might want to, you know, we started off the whole podcast with talking about self awareness and looking within ourselves. And if that’s where you’re landing, it may be that you probably. Could it be chance that you were left on your own to self-regulate a lot as a child and that’s what you’ve developed as your go-to, but that might be something you want to think about. Talk about, look into, right, because it’s interpersonal connectedness is what. Helps the world go around. And if you’ve learned so many things, like I’ve got to do it on my own and pick myself up, it really might be a sign that you need some more compassion and connection, and like learning to jump out in a more co-regulating way. And to challenge yourself, to maybe take a look. That’s so powerful to think back about our early childhood experiences are kind of our cohesive narrative as we form it. And I think that giving us ourselves compassion. So maybe you naturally lean towards wanting to self-regulate or inner regulate. That could be because that was really adaptive for you. Maybe growing up, you had a caregiver who wasn’t really safe. If you were vulnerable with your emotions, maybe that wasn’t safe. And so for you to do it on your own was actually really adaptive. That worked well for you. But then we can kind of get curious and things. Does that still serve me? Right. Does that, is that still adaptive or is that actually maladaptive now? Because here I have a partner who feels like I’m stonewalling them, and this is really getting in the way of our connection. I love what you said about holding space for both. Sometimes we need time to ourselves and other times we can come together. And I think when we articulate that to someone else, like, you know what. I’m so glad you’re there for me. I am so glad you want to sit in the jacuzzi with me, but actually what I do need now is to go on a walk by myself, but let’s do that later. I think giving yourself permission to utilize both forms of regulation has really empowered. Well said,let’s he so happy to have you on the show? Thank you for joining us. If somebody does not actually have access to the show notes, if they wanted to reach out to you how would they do that? Also we want to mention that you have your own podcast. It is for all ages, and it’s called positive choices, right?. Spelled PAW. Lindsey: It’s the PAWsitive Choices Podcasts spelled what the PAW – the logo of the curriculum is a paw with the heart in it, because the curriculum that’s for young children has animal characters, and there’s a lot of American sign language integrated throughout, and they use their paws to communicate with one another. So that’s kind of where it comes from. So they can search the PAWsitive Choices podcast or go to Positivechoices.com. Those are two great ways to connect. And I have, when I leave, you’ll put it in the show notes, positivechoices.com/resources, and I have links to free downloads YouTube videos. So if someone doesn’t have access to the curriculum, they can learn about all the topics we talked about today with the three. With problem solving and with taking brain breaks. Ann: I think that’s definitely one of the goals of our podcast is to get this information out to those that might not have access otherwise. So thank you for helping us in that endeavor. Of course. And we’ve so much enjoyed having you on the show. Lindsey: It’s been great. Thank you so much. Sue: We’d like to extend an invitation to anybody, listening to join our private online community. You can find that at therapistuncensored.com/join. The reason that you might be interested in such a thing is that for as little as $5 a month, you were going to get an ad-free feed, some premium content. And really it’s a very, very cool community. Occasionally we do reading pods where we gather and read together, study groups of various things. Sometimes we’re able to meet the authors or the scholars directly as we study their work. And of course it supports the show. So please consider joining us therapistuncensored.com/join Jack: Therapist Uncensored is Anne Kelley and Sue Marriott. This podcast is edited by Jack Anderson. More resources on dealing with challenging emotions and kids, social emotional learning: https://therapistuncensored.com/episodes/tu33-adverse-childhood-experiences-a-roadmap-to-understanding-and-treatment/ https://therapistuncensored.com/episodes/tu52-using-mindfulness-movement-and-yoga-to-manage-arousal-with-guest-kelly-inselmann/ Trauma-Informed Therapy with Children, with Robyn Gobbel, MSW, RPT (Therapist Uncensored Episode 142) Helping the Intense Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach (Therapist Uncensored Episode 128) Raising Secure Children With Guest Tina Payne Bryson (Therapist Uncensored Episode 27) The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion: Kristin Neff TED Talk  Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child by Dr. John Gottman  The Power of Vulnerability TED Talk by Brené Brown Become a neuronerd! Dive deeper with us!  Join our private community to support the show and as a bonus you get extra episodes and early access to study opportunities.  Join now to get 10% off, so go ahead, it’s as little as $5 a month and takes just a couple clicks and you are in!   Check out our socials: Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn!

22 Dec 202158min

Join our online community! Using neuroanatomy and her experience having a massive stroke that took her self-conscious mind, Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor and Sue Marriott discuss the 4 skill subsets in the brain that help us relate to ourselves and the world. Her TED Talk was the first one to ever go viral and has been viewed now 27 million times, so her ideas are clearly inspiring. Her new work brings together psychology, neurobiology and spiritual awakening. NOTE Dec, 2021:  We will be releasing deeper dive episodes of Jill Bolte-Taylor’s work and explore Whole Brain Living together on our private feed (only $5/mo).  In addition, once we get through the book, we will have a live discussion all together in Jan, 2022. Join us by clicking the image to the right or go to www.therapistuncensored.com/join  Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist who suffered a stroke that led her on a path to rediscovering her brain. Her viral TED Talk, “My stroke of insight,” was the inspiration for her first book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. Now she’s back to offer a deeper insight into the inner workings of the mind with her latest book, Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life. In this episode, she dives deep into how the four distinct parts of our brain dictate how we live and be in the world. She gives great insight on how we can create anatomy by truly getting to know these four characters and owning our power. Tune in for this interesting and eye-opening discussion that could change the way you live your life. Show Notes: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:30 The Beginnings Of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor 00:06:18 On her viral TedTalk 00:08:17 What science can’t explain 00:10:10 Left hemisphere vs right hemisphere 00:14:51 From My Stroke of Insight To Whole Brain Living, the individual in the left brain vs the individual in the right brain 00:19:40 The Four Characters: Character 1(top-left) & 2(left lower limbic) 00:31:38 How your brain can change the narrative 00:36:00 Regulation in the limbic system 00:40:53 The Four Characters: Character 3(right lower limbic) & 4(top-right) 00:50:08 The BRAIN Huddle and our personal power to choose how we want to be 01:00:40 What’s next for Dr. Jill 01:02:27 The harmony of all Characters as the evolution of humanity 01:04:08 How to contact Dr. Jill 01:06:41 Psychedelics and connection with the planet 01:09:50 More on how to contact Dr. Jill Hear more psychology and neuroscience in previous episodes: Episode 93 Polyvagal Theory with Dr. Stephen Porges Episode 110 Story Follows State (more polyvagal theory) with Deb Dana   Episode 117 Resilience Trauma and the Brain with Dr. Bruce Perry  — Listen to the podcast here: Whole Brain Living – Psychology + Neuroanatomy + Spirit with Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor Transcript: Ann Kelley: You are going to be blown away by this episode with Jill Bolte Taylor. We didn’t find out until after the interview that Oprah Winfrey named her as one of her all-time favorite guests and you’re going to see why. This episode is a conversational mix of fascinating life stories, insights about neuroanatomy and psychology and good inspiration. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist who started her career researching the brain and mental illness but she suffered a stroke on the left hemisphere of her brain. Through her experience of the stroke itself and her recovery, she continues to bring some of the most amazing insights regarding brain function and Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life. Her TED Talk was the very first one to go viral, I believe, with almost 28 million views. In this episode, my cohost, Sue Marriott, explores her thoughts on what made her message take off and what she was tapping into that people needed. After her first book called My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, she was awarded Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World. When we got ahold of her new book, Whole Brain Living, we knew it was exactly the material our readers would want. We are thrilled she accepted Sue’s invitation to come to the show. We’re going to be organizing a Therapist Uncensored reading pod for this new book for our supporters, our Neuronerd community. We will try at some point to put together something for the public on how to apply this material but we’re going to start with our Neuronerd community. This is a great time to jump in and become a show supporter if you haven’t already because not only will you get things like this reading pod as well as an ad-free podcast. Most importantly, hopefully, you’re also going to be helping Sue and I produce this great content for you and many across the globe who might not otherwise be able to run into it. If you can, we would appreciate it. Join us at www.TherapistUncensored.com/join. Without further ado, let’s jump in with my cohost, Sue Marriott and Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. — Welcome, Jill. I’m so delighted to have you with us. Thank you, Sue. I’m happy to be here. An audience of our show brought you to my attention. I had seen your work a while back but the exciting thing was she had brought your new book to my attention. I read it and it is incredible. There’s so much practical and real-life sense in it that I immediately wanted to bring you on and let us share this with everybody because anybody anywhere reading this is going to benefit from your thoughts. Thank you. I feel that way. Anybody who’s got a brain, the better we know. It’s an owner’s manual. How are you anatomically organized? What can you know about that? How can you differentiate those different parts, use them and recognize them in other people? You make it simple and straightforward. We’re going to get into that in detail because I want people to walk away from this show understanding these ideas. We can take half a step back and share a little bit about your journey and how you got here, picking up wherever you would like as far as what you would like us to know about you. I became fascinated with the brain as a little girl because my brother was only eighteen months older than me. We would have the same situation and walk away with very different interpretations about what happened. For example, if we were playing near the street and our mom G.G. would come running out screaming, he thought she was angry. I thought she was scared for us. It’s how we interpret the experience at the level of the brain. Eventually, I grew up to study the brain and he grew up to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. I was fascinated with how does our brain creates our perception of reality. What is reality? At a cellular level, how is it that my brother’s brain is organized and wired differently than my brain so I can connect my dreams to my reality but he could not. He ended up experiencing delusions. I was teaching and performing research at Harvard Medical School and studying which cells communicate with which cells with which chemicals and what quantities of those chemicals in which portions of the brain. I woke up one day at the age of 37 and I was experiencing a major hemorrhage in the left half of my brain. Over the course of four hours, I watched my brain completely deteriorate in its ability to process information about the external world. My right hemisphere was still onlin e but the left hemisphere completely disappeared. On the morning of the stroke, I could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life. I was an invalid in a woman’s body and I gave a TED Talk. If your readers recognize the story, it has 28 million views. It was the first TED Talk to ever go viral. The fundamental difference between having a right brain and a left brain is the right brain is in the present moment. The left brain comes online and defines with a holographic image of me, the individual. Do you have a sense of why that is? What was speaking to people? First of all, we were primed. There were only 5 or 6 TED Talks online in 2008 because Chris Anderson had purchased the company and changed it. He was bringing his modern guy and he was bringing it into the internet world. We were the first group in 2008. They said, “Half of you, we will post you. Half of you, don’t worry if you do badly. No one will ever see it.” My TED Talk was right at the beginning of the conference and it was the last talk in the first session. TED is about the big ideas and the big idea question was, “Who are we?” TED had heard my experience so they invited me. I came to it through the perspective of who are we inside of me because ultimately, regardless of how we’re looking anthropologically or sociologically as societal humanity, who are we inside of our brain? It’s to take that journey and hold the space for people to let go of their left brain, which is the identification of me, the individual or the self and to shift away from the self into the experience of all that is. Many of us have had these experiences where we feel connected to all that is. Yet, there’s that me over here and there’s this internal conflict between different value structures. People resonated through their heart consciousness, which is essentially the right hemisphere and then there is the cognitive consciousness, which is the left hemisphere. Everybody could relate to it and it exploded into the world. It makes me think of hunger that must have been there for something more that wasn’t too woo-woo and mystical where we would lose a lot of people. It was a translation of the mystical into scientific terms. We have all of these experiences that we cannot explain. It doesn’t mean we’re not having the experiences and they’re not real. It simply means we don’t have the science that is designed and structured in a way that is capable of capturing the experience and measuring the experience so that we can talk about it at the level of language and linearity, measure it and be able to duplicate it through the scientific method. By definition, the scientific method is a method. You have to have linear thinking. That is the way the left brain processes. Science is essentially measuring the physical world that we experience through our left brain. It’s not very good at being able to replicate, capture or measure these other experiences that we’re having that we would often define as spiritual or woo-woo. It makes me think of the translation and the left brain doesn’t want to hear it. It’s threatening to get into something that it can’t understand. Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life It’s easy to criticize, reject and push away when we don’t know. The fact of the matter is there’s so much that we don’t know. You can go out onto the street and say, “Do you believe in global warming?” People say, “No.” It’s like, “What do you know about global warming?” They will say, “Pretty much nothing.” We’re inclined to make this negative judgment as to the knee-jerk response to that which we don’t know or don’t understand as opposed to, “Tell me more. I’m open to the possibility.” It’s for some of the folks that believe that talking about the left brain and the right brain is old school. That’s not old school. It went a little bit crazy. There’s no question. If you want to know everything that we pretty much know a lot anyway about the differences between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere, there’s a magnificent book by Dr. Iain McGilchrist. He’s male. Second, he’s a psychiatrist and medical doctor. He’s a lovely human being. He has written this tome of what do we know based on lab work over the years. It’s called The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. He will take you into all the bird studies, even birds, other creatures and at the level of the molecules spiral in different orientations, based on how they’re organizing information. The people who are poo-pooing the difference between the right and the left hemisphere need to dig a little bit deeper at the data that we have. I will give them the argument that you’re not just this or that. We’re both. We are this combination and there are millions of circuits going on at the same time. However, the human brain can only focus on one true circuit at a time. Where is that circuit? If I’m doing my creativity then I have to release myself from the box of what is right, wrong, good and bad. Those loops are organized in the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere is good at creating structure and order in the way that it defines right and wrong but that has to be quiet for my brain to become innovative and creative. There’s no question about the way that the brain is organized. You can’t come in and say, “The right brain is all about this and the left brain is all about that. You’re either this or that.” We’re this magical mixture but the question is, “Do I know how to capitalize on all the things going on inside of my head?” That’s what my new book, Whole Brain Living is about. How do I identify and differentiate which parts of my brain I’m embodying at any moment in time? When I understand the character profiles that are radiating from the subsets of skillsets at a neuroanatomical level then I can choose to be in that character or identify which character someone else is exhibiting. It’s based on the anatomy of the brain. I’m not coming in and saying anything new. I’m saying, “Take everything that we understand to be true, all the research that we believe to be true and all the experiential that we don’t know how to measure but we know people have these experiences. Let’s put it in the brain.” Look at the anatomy of the brain, create a paradigm where we can marry our psychology and what we believe to be true on personality and put that in the brain. In Iain McGilchrist, there’s also an RSA in animation that explains this very quickly. You have had the actual experience of it so it’s inarguable. When people go and talk about the characters later sometimes they’re going to have to deal with the pushback of it. That’s too simple or something like that. It’s nice to get from the horse’s mouth. This is what you have to say about that. That will empower people to be able to use this. There are Four Characters. There are two emotional characters, one in each hemisphere and two thinking character tissue or modules of cells. Also, as you learn about the Four Characters, the part of the brain that comes out with critical hostility is a specific character inside of ourselves. Those of us who get caught up in that negative circuitry don’t like being told we’re being negative or this or that. The real power is being able to say to these people, “You also have these other parts of yourself.” If for some reason we get routinized in certain circuitry because that’s how we interact with the world, are we truly using our whole brain? We don’t want to use our whole brain because we don’t want to be miserable all the time, in pain, critical and mean all the time. We do want to rest, be at peace, get a whole bunch done and play. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could find a relationship with the love that exists in the universe that, “That’s woo-woo? That’s bad.” It’s not. It’s right there in your brain and you can find it if you’re open to the possibility. From your first book, which is My Stroke of Insight, to this book, how did that happen? Where are you with that? Book number one was a memoir of the experience of stroke through the eyes of a scientist. I had to write that book because my mother said, “Jill, you’re on the phone helping all these people, 8 to 10 hours a day and you don’t have a life. You need to write this down so that you can give them the material and distribute it so anybody in need can access it.” It was like, “You’re going to make me sit down and write.” I did because I had been sharing it so much with people in need that I did. That was book number one. It’s still pretty much in the Amazon marketplace. It’s the number one book on stroke because it’s a fascinating experience of watching your brain deteriorate through the eyes of a scientist who thinks in terms of brain circuitry. What I needed to recover is what got in the way of that recovery. The journey to book number two was that I think in terms of cells and circuits. It’s how I have organized my brain and life, especially in the rebuilding of that circuitry. To me, I lost the left brain so I lost the left rational thinking me. She was gone and I lost the pain from my past part of me and my emotional system. She died completely and had to be reborn in a new time but I had this magnificent experiential character right here of my right emotional tissue. I had this right-thinking tissue that had me connected to all that is and I was as big as the universe. The fundamental difference between having a right brain and a left brain is the right brain is in the present moment. The left brain comes online and defines with a holographic image of me, the individual. All the filtering of information for the left brain comes through the filter of me, the individual. If people don’t think there’s a difference between me, the individual and know me, the individual then they have never had that experience. It doesn’t mean it’s not real. You can ruin a group of cells in the left parietal region, which creates a holographic image of my body, where I begin and where I end. You wipe those out and I have no perception of the self as an individual. With that comes language and with language, there’s the linearity of thinking. Part of linear thinking is, “I am an individual. I am separate from the atoms and the molecules around me.” You wipe that out. I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen but you become a part of the whole with no distinction of self. I did not know what a mother was, much less who my mother was and this was pretty fundamental information. I have to have a left brain to create that information. I was living and breathing this concept of my two emotional systems and two thinking brains. I knew them very well because I lost two. I had to purposely use my right brain characters to set me up for success and regain the skillsets of my left emotion tissue and my left thinking tissue. What I realized was once they came back online, they had a personality and it was a strong personality. My Character 1 rational thinking left tissue comes back on and she says, “It’s great to be back. I want to take over the brain again. I want to be the boss in here.” We’re all in here looking at her going, “We are so glad you’re back online because we need your skillsets and we love you. Thank goodness you’re back but you’re not going to be the boss anymore. We’re going to have a democracy inside of this head.” That’s what I created. I created a tool of communication between these four very distinctive characters. When I was giving a presentation, I was talking about how great it is to talk about the brain these days because people know the terminology. They know about the amygdala, the hippocampus and the anterior cingulate gyrus. It’s all very exciting. The fact of the matter is we have 2 amygdalae, 2 hippocampi and 2 anterior cingulate gyri. There was an audible gasp in the room and I realized that was what was wrong. People think we have one emotional system. We don’t. There’s one in the present and one about me, my past and my future. As soon as we can differentiate those emotions, clarity comes in. For readers of our show, people are very familiar with the different levels. You’re right. It’s typically discussed in terms of midbrain and prefrontal cortex as one thing. One of the things that were exciting was just even beginning to think about is that it solves the left brain problem anyway because you have both. The other thing that you did with it is you personalized it. That was so lovely. One of the ways that you work with these ideas is that you wake up and check in with everybody. I was so touched by that like, “This one is not awake yet.” It’s not shaming. There’s no mortality to it. It’s cells and circuits. I am all of it. We are all of it. Each of these groups of cells is communicating with us in one way or another, even that part of us that doesn’t have language and has rage, unhappiness, desperation, attack, self-attack and all that. It’s still the energy of communication. They’re all important. There are Four Characters. There are two emotional characters, one in each hemisphere and two thinking character tissue or modules of cells. These are actual modules of cells that perform certain subsets of ability. I encourage everybody to name your character your name because it has to be important to you. I call my Character 1. She’s my rational left brain thinking tissue. That tissue is specifically designed to organize and categorize my external world so I can interact with the external world. She organizes and categorizes. She has that holographic image of me, the individual and defines me as me. She knows my name and address. You wipe her out. She defines what is right, wrong, good and bad. She thinks hierarchically. She’s materialism-based. She cares about how big the house is compared to the neighbors. She’s a control freak. She controls people, places and things. Thank goodness we have a Character 1 and I call my Character 1 Helen. It’s short for hell on wheels. She gets it done. Sue, what have you named your Character 1? I was thinking of it as Taskmaster but what I realized is I had the playful names on the right side and then the more functional names on the left side. Also, I’m still learning it and I want to teach it and share it so Taskmaster was what came to mind. That’s what it is. It’s the taskmaster. It’s going to make and follow the to-do list. The phone is going to ring. It’s going to use this tone of voice and say, “What can I do for you?” There’s a difference between the innate experience of joy, and happiness based on external circumstances. Instead of the Golden Retriever? Character 1 is busy. This part of ourselves is our Type A personality. It organizes our life and gets them done. Some of us have a lot more of that than others. You can walk into anybody’s house, open some drawers and pretty much see. Some people alphabetize their spices. I would not be one of those people. My Helen goes and works in the office. In my office, I’ve got piles but I’ve been gone for six months so I do have an excuse. Helen is on it and she cares enough to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have been gone for six months. That’s why my office is a mess.” Nobody else in my brain cares about that. Your brain might not care either. That’s Character 1. It’s the thinking rational tissue of our left brain that specifically organizes our relationship. It’s the relationship of me, the individual in relationship with the external world. I have to be organized as me, the mass in relationship with that external world. Language is important. It’s going to count well and be good with mathematics and engineering because it’s going to think linearly. It’s going to be good mechanically because it’s good at looking at pieces and putting them together. If I take this piece and stick it in there before I take that other washer and stick it in there in between, it’s not going to work. It’s that linearity and organization of thinking. That’s Character 1. It’s top-left and the left side tends to have some of the negativity. Some of it, as you said is the comparison and those kinds of things. It’s going to compare and compete. It’s me, the individual away from you. I’m now separate from you so I’m going to compete with you for that job on that hierarchy because we both want the bigger house. We want more money in our paycheck. We’re going to compete and compare with one another, “What shoes are you wearing? I can make a critical judgment while I can wear a stiletto. I got 6 inches going under me.” It’s all this comparison and competition. Do you think that this is related to some of the findings that they’re finding in psilocybin research and psychedelic research about being able to turn off those parts of the brain to experience something different? That’s essentially what happened to my brain. I wiped out my left brain characters. Psilocybin wipes out that left brain and brings you into the experiential of the peacefulness of the present moment. There are so many positive findings of that. Once you experience it, you can’t unexperience it. It’s done. This is why a very little bit of treatment can change the course. We have top-left. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey Think about the top-left versus the bottom-left. The top-left is the thinking analytical neocortex, the prefrontal cortex and those lovely things that will go in with that. Below that is the limbic emotional tissue of the left hemisphere, where the left hemisphere has linearity of time. It has the past, the future and me, the individual. My personal past got wiped out because that’s where the hemorrhage happened. The emotion, pain, trauma and craving of my addictions from the past are all going to be right there in Character 2. In the Character 2, there’s an interesting controversy that happens about the whole happiness psychology. There’s a group of people that say, “We’re happy in that left emotional system.” We are happy when what is happening outside us is what we want it to be. We’re not happy when what’s happening outside of us is not what we want it to be. It’s not just where we’re happy. It’s also where we’re sad, mad or angry from the past. It’s all our past emotional baggage. Compare that emotion to the deep inner joy of simply being alive and existing in the present moment. Joy is more what’s going on in the right brain as compared to happiness and happiness under certain circumstances. Let’s say you and I are going to go for a picnic and we’re both excited. It’s raining outside and then little Character 2 is going, “I’m not very happy because I wanted to go for a picnic with Sue and now it’s raining.” The sun shines and then now I’m happy. I can train myself to be that happy under more adaptable or flexible circumstances based on the external but inside me, I’m pretty happy anyway. I got joy going on. That is my right-brain experience. There’s a difference between the innate experience of joy and happiness based on external circumstances. I call my little Character 2 Abby. Abby is short for abandoned. I believe that the moment I came flying out of my mother’s womb where I was in a symbiotic relationship with this beautiful limbic environment, I heard the drumming of my mother’s heart and I was part of it all. All of a sudden, I’m shocked by this singularity of being. I’ve got lights burning my brain like wildfire sound and people poking, prodding and in some cases sticking needles into me. To me, that’s the moment of abandonment. Upon that circuitry, all of my pain from my childhood gets built on top of that circuitry. We have this little unhappy, critical, potentially mean, blaming, pointing-the-finger and mad at self, “I’m not worthy. I’m not good enough. I’m craving this. I need that.” All of that is inside of us inside of that little Character 2. The value of the Character 2 is those cells at the level of the reptilian brain, which is essentially our midbrain. We have that new added-on mammalian tissue of the limbic tissue, one on each side, which is going to be fight or flight in the present moment in the right and the experience from the past or fear of the future in that left. The beauty of the Character 2 is information has streamed in and gone immediately into both of those amygdalae. The amygdala of the left hemisphere emotional tissue immediately takes what is in the present moment and says, “Have I ever experienced this before? Is there a reason why I should push it away and say no?” That’s amazing. The cells themselves are jumping out of the present moment experience because the present moment experience is a level of consciousness. These cells are willing to step out of that blissful and peaceful euphoria of the present experience and say, “Have I ever experienced or seen something like that before?” For example, I’m 60 years old and I see a dog. I remember when I was ten years old, I was riding a bike and a dog that looked like that was nipping at my feet and trying to bite me. For the next 50 years, every time I see a dog like that, that amygdala goes alert, “I don’t feel safe because I have seen that dog before and that dog’s not safe. I need to push it away.” The breath is something that we can immediately bring our minds to in the present moment to stabilize ourselves in the body in relationship with these limbic cells. It’s amazing and because the Character 1 tissue is developed above and on top of Character 2 then Character 1 is designed to refine the experience of what’s going on with Character 2. That’s what’s going on in the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere is not in the present moment. It’s about me, the individual. It has the past and future because it is programmed at the level of those cells as they’re taking the exit and going into that limbic system at the left brain to step out of the consciousness of the present moment. One of the things I love about what you’re saying is this doesn’t have to be trauma. Everybody has this birth experience and lower-left limbic that has the raw feeling. The brain, the top part, comes up and makes a story. You didn’t say that exactly this way but there’s a story about why they’re feeling that way. Is that right? You’re right. We talk a lot about our narrative. What is our narrative? Can we update and change our narrative and therapy? You said a lower-left limbic. I like that. That’s for all right there, the three Ls. The lower-left limbic is dysregulation and an alarm alert, “I don’t feel safe.” I can become dysregulated from my normal neurological happy functioning self. When I move into the alarm alert, I don’t feel safe. I have anxiety and fear. I need to go and push away. We’re biologically programmed to save our lives. We have this thinking tissue that comes in as a human being. The portion of our brains that are separate from other mammals is the neocortex. That’s to find and create in the left brain me, the individual and language. I can create the story and take the energy of, “I don’t feel safe,” and weave in that left brain the story. Do we have the power to change that narrative? Absolutely. We just made it all up based on a piece of data. It’s genius at what it does. Each of these groups of cells is genius at what they do. It doesn’t mean they’re right. It just means they’re a genius and good at what they’re designed to do. They’re taking care of us. For our readers, we talk a lot about attachment. The attachment system is that you first have the biological experience. Then that gets encoded in neural grooves. I call it neural grooves. You’ve got the freeway of this is what’s happening. The internal working model is the story that gets laid on that, “People are safe. People are not safe. I’m worthy. I’m unworthy. People are going to let me down.” It’s those sorts of things. Those cells in that left brain are attracted toward that which feels familiar. Safe is defined by that group of cells as, “Does it feel familiar?” If it feels familiar then it’s safe. Let’s say I’m looking at a person. I have blonde hair and blue eyes. If someone with black hair and black eyes comes in, they represent a different religion that I’m not familiar with or if they’re a different race than I am then I am programmed at that level to push away and say, “That’s not familiar to me. Those smells of curry and different aromas, I have never had those before.” That’s a push away. Our whole racism system is at a biological level but can we train these and use our whole brain to say, “I want to go toward that instead of push away from that.” One of our taglines is, “It’s not me. It’s my medulla.” It’s the same thing. It’s like, “That’s my reaction to something novel. It’s not true and it’s not that I’m bad that I have a fear reaction.” We need that. It’s designed to save our lives a million times in our lifetime. It’s not bad. None of these systems is bad. The question is, “How do you want to live your life?” Do you want to live your life, always feeling that fear and push away or do you want to recognize I’m feeling anxious? There’s something out there that doesn’t feel familiar so it doesn’t feel safe. Character 1 can come on, make the assessment and say, “Do I need to fix something or rearrange something?” It’s all about fixing and controlling for you to be able to relax so that you can at that dinner party go toward that person who is different from you instead of cuddling over here on the corner with other people who are like you. That should be your next book. It’s the cultural and social implications of this. Can I ask a more detailed question if you don’t mind? I’m excited to get to the right side because that’s the fun part. Are you familiar with Stephen Porges and The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication and Self-regulation? Absolutely. He mentioned Bloomington there. We love him. I have had both him and his wife talking about oxytocin and all of that. Our audience is very interested in that kind of thing. There’s the regulation, upregulation or downregulation. Are we still talking about that happening on the left side of the lower-left? Is that both the right and left? I’m thinking of the limbic part and the defensive reaction whether we upregulate or downregulate. What I’m thinking, based on what you’re saying is that how you dysregulate is a detail within the left side or the left limbic. Is that right? I haven’t explored his wiring maps. I would have to do that. I do know that more than 70% of the fibers are coming up from the body to the brain instead of down. If we want to self-regulate in Characters 2 and 3, the limbic system is going into the body, using the body and wiring ourselves up, which is why for the BRAIN Huddle, the very first step is the breath. The breath is something that we can immediately bring our minds to in the present moment to stabilize ourselves in the body in relationship with these limbic cells. The entire stress circuit is what’s going on in the left brain in relationship to Character 1 and Character 2 going up and down. I haven’t had my head in his book for a long time. I will go back and look at that. I think of it as the Toddler. There’s the Taskmaster and then the bottom-left is a little toddler. I’m not sure if that fits but at the moment, dysregulation and seize the problem. The thing about the limbic cells is they never mature. Our little unhappy and wounded self from our past never matures. They’re different ages depending on where our traumas come in and when we stopped being heard. For some of us, it’s as infants. For some of us, we were little toddlers, 5 or 6 or teenagers. It never gets past that. For the right brain, we’ll get there. The BRAIN Huddle: Breathe, Recognize, Appreciate, Inquire, Navigate I want everyone to know what you said, which is they never grow up. It’s going to be that way. When you are doing therapy and a lot of work and you dysregulate again or regress into some of these behaviors, it’s not that you’re doing anything wrong. It’s simply that in this case, the whole brain has broken through and there are things to do about that. Certainly, it’s beating yourself up that, “I thought I dealt with that.” It’s all of those sorts of things. We don’t want to deal with it and we don’t want to make it go away. This is why, especially that Character 2. Character 2 takes the present moment, takes it into the past and says, “Have I ever seen this before? Give me a reason to push away.” It’s because of those cells that we have the potential for growth. That’s our growth edge. I know if I have an alarm alert that is based on my history, that’s where I’m stuck. That’s my growth edge. I can either try to deny it, push it down, go off into my Character 1 and rationalize my way around it or go into my Characters 3 or 4 and escape it all together into the present moment. That’s the pipe and the pipe is now getting stuffed with something in there. I need to get it unplugged. Blow out the Drano, pull that out and examine what is that bias inside of my perception that gives me this negative impact physiologically into my body. The thing about when the amygdala goes on alarm alert, our normal safe selves, which is what we want to neural regulate ourselves to. We have been stripped of that. We want to go back to that peaceful neural regulation of self because otherwise, that’s going to be a disturbance inside of ourselves physiologically. It’s going to be stimulating that stress circuitry on top of it. That’s when the cells in our body are going and that’s when we get sick. If we’re living in that stress and that of normal and healthy regulation, the whole body is on alarm alert. The brain is brilliant. The way you’re describing it is how smart that lower-left is. This is not something we want to cut out of ourselves like a bruise on an apple. This is integral and very much part of things. I love you calling it the growing edge but with enough safety only. Let’s pop right and talk about safety and being able to manage. As we’re thinking about them, we got Character 1 in left thinking and high thinking and Character 2 in the lower-left limbic. Character 3 is going to be right-lower limbic and then Character 4 will be right thinking. It’s the neocortex of that right hemisphere. With the right hemisphere, the biggest difference is I don’t exist as an individual anymore. That’s all about me. All my details are in the left hemisphere. Wipe out the left hemisphere. I experienced myself to be big as the universe. That was the gift of the stroke that I experienced. I completely wiped out me, the individual and existed in an absolute quiet brain for five full weeks. It was two and a half weeks before I had surgery after the hemorrhage and then two and a half weeks after. There’s language as the brain begins to recover. I could start hooking back into different circuits in that left brain because the blood clot that was the size of a fist in the beginning and then the size of a golf ball by surgery, once they took that pressure off then it could start to begin again. It was like tuning in to a radio that started as static. In the absence of that, I had no identity and definition of individuality. I was as big as the universe. The left hemisphere wasn’t there to participate. I was connected to all that is and I felt enormous and expansive. All I felt was this incredible experience of love. I was so happy. I would be sitting on a couch drooling and completely wounded. My mother would look at me and she would say, “Why are you so happy?” I look at her and I smile because I was in such awe that this organic thing and collection of 50 trillion cells were alive. I could experience a light coming in from the external. I could hear sound. I couldn’t make any sense out of any of it but I was this machine that was alive. I was so caught up in the awe that I would weep. People say, “When people have left brain damage, they cry all the time. They’re unhappy and miserable.” That’s a misinterpretation of data. We are in such awe that we exist and all the miracle of life makes us weep. It’s amazing. I know that there are people resonating with you around that meditate, spirituality and all of these things. I want to keep the thread of this more social piece. I love what you said about the person, the smells and things like that. If they put their forehead to the ground to pray, that’s foreign and scary. We don’t have mirror neurons versus if you hear hymns or something that you have been raised with, immediately you signal safety and even inappropriately like, “We’re together here because we’re not discerning.” There’s the bottom-right. The right limbic emotion is experiential. There’s an amygdala there, a hippocampus and an anterior cingulate gyrus. We have half the limbic system right there in the right hemisphere as we did in the left. The right hemisphere doesn’t have me, the individual. It has the experience of the present moment. What is the experience of the air? How much humidity do I feel in the air? What’s the temperature of the air? How does it feel to have these glasses on my face? What does it feel like to have the clothing on my body? It’s the energies around me, to have the warmth of the dog on my lap and the experience of the present moment. This is the part of us that is alive. It’s alert and in the present moment. It doesn’t have right, wrong, good or bad. It’s creative and open to possibility. It doesn’t have me, the individual. It’s communal and, “I want to play with you, do things with you, get lost playing music with you, do art with you and go out into the woods and explore with you.” It’s an adrenaline junkie. It’s like, “Sue, let’s go parachuting, hang gliding or do this.” It’s also the part of us that at this moment come up with a bad idea, “Let’s go pick a fight, do this or do that.” A lot of Character 3s end up in jail because they weren’t thinking, “What were you thinking?” “I wasn’t thinking. I was experiential. I was swept away by the experience.” I call my Character 3 Pigpen because of the little character in Charles Shultz’s Peanuts. Pigpen was walking around in a dust storm and he’s good. In his dust storm, he’s like, “I could have dust from Babylonia in me. Isn’t that exciting?” It’s all the possibilities. We’re playful, creative and innovative. That’s that experiential tissue. The thinking tissue that’s added on as the human being is the neocortex of the right hemisphere. It’s not about me, the individual. It’s about my connection to all that is, including the consciousness of the cells of my body. When we learn new things, the stress circuitry of the left brain is dominant. There’s the relationship between the right hemisphere, the heart consciousness, the gut consciousness and the intuition. What is intuition? It’s our ability to experience information on a bigger plane and make decisions based on that pattern response as opposed to the details of the left hemisphere. When we pray, we pray to silent the left brain and the verbiage so that we can open up the experience of the present moment where we experience something grander and greater than we are. When we meditate, we do the same thing. When we perform yoga, we step into Character 3. There are rhythmic portions of our relationship with poses in our body. We open up those energy flows so that we can experience and escape that left-brain Character 1 and 2 circuitry and open ourselves to that experience of being one with all that is. It’s beautiful there. I’ve tagged it for the moment as Buddha. We have the power to choose moment by moment who and how we want to be in the world. That’s the ultimate goal of the hero’s journey. It’s the ultimate goal of finding Christ and God. The left brain may pray or mantra to preoccupy those centers in the left brain. The ultimate goal of every religion that I’m aware of is to get from the action and operation into the experience of being. Essentially, we’re quieting the left brain so that we can open ourselves up to what is beyond or what is greater and how we are connected to all that is. In the work of Andrew Newberg, he identified that it’s a quieting of those language centers of that left brain when nuns found God or monks found peace. The word surrender comes to mind. There’s that. The left brain feels like, “That’s my ego. That’s me. I can’t surrender because surrender is synonymous with death. If I put that aside, I have to kill me off to experience the other.” It’s right there in your brain. That little group of cells is right there. You can say, “Little Character 2 and Character 1, we’re right here. You can jump online anytime you need to but for this moment, can we breathe deeply?” You’re sharing with us a little bit about how you pull these back together around the BRAIN Huddle. Have we said enough about the top-right? I hope your people think so. Otherwise, there’s a book there for them. One thing that I would do want to say is that you call your top-right Queen Toad. Queen because she’s as big as the universe and connected to all that is. Toad because I’m a bit goofy and I don’t take myself that seriously. If I die, Queen Toad is good with it because I lived and had this experience. I don’t have to be greedy and say, “I have to have 100 years of this.” It’s the phenomenon and the sense of gratitude that I exist at all. I was able to recover those other tools of that left-brain skillset. I don’t want to live under that stress. I want to be able to go there and do those things but I don’t want them making my decisions for me. My brain is now a democracy. I call it the BRAIN Huddle. BRAIN is the acronym. B stands for Breath. Bring your consciousness into your chest. Breath is something that happens in the present moment. From the moment we’re born until the moment we’re gone, there is this steady train on a track called breath. I can bring my mind into the present moment, think about my chest, amplify that, increase the frequency or the depth of my breath and consciously change it in the present moment. B means to bring your brain to the present moment. The best way to do that is to breathe. That’s why in all of these Eastern techniques, the first thing you do is focus on the breath. R is Recognize. What are the Four Characters? I got all these Four Characters in my brain. The better I get to know them, the easier it gets to recognize when they’re alive and active in me. Who walked in the room with you, Sue? You got all four too. In any relationship between two people, there are eight of us and most of us are clearly aware of that. If you walk in as your Character 2 and I’m in my Character 1, I might realize, “Sue is unhappy and needs my attention.” I got to put down my busy, go into my Character 4, come over, scoop you up and say, “I’m right here. What do you need? Do you need me to hear you? Do you need to talk to me?” I consciously shift. R is Recognize. Who am I being? Who was I being before I called this BRAIN Huddle? Who’s around me? A stands for Appreciate that I have four to pick from. I’ve got all four and they’re all available to me at any moment. The better I know them, the better I can jump into them. B is Breath and R is Recognize. Who called the BRAIN Huddle? Who was there? A is Appreciate that I have all four. I is Inquire in this next moment. It’s like with that example. Sue came in and was unhappy as her Character 2. I’m inquiring, “Character 1 is inappropriate at this moment because Sue is okay. She doesn’t have to fix anything.” In my Huddle, I’m inquiring, “Who should come out next?” N stands for Navigate the next moment. At this moment, the next moment for me is I should jump into my Character 4, which is loving, open, supportive and come and be your friend and help you as you’re in your Character 2. We connect instead of fixing, which is what Character 1 wants to do. Character 3 can come in and say, “Little Sue, can we go play? Do you want to go do this or that? Let’s go do this.” You jump into your little Character 3 and say, “Thank you for loving me, being with me and supporting me. Let’s go play.” It’s because Character 2 feels safer now. What has happened at a neurological level is each of these are four different levels of consciousness that are vibrating in different frequencies with different vibes. We all know that. If you walk into a fight, you walk into a couple of Character 2’s going. First of all, two Character 2’s will never find a resolution. Somebody has got to step out of their Character 2 to find some resolution and peace. There’s an energy. You can walk in and your Character 4 can pick up, “I walked into the middle of a fight. BRAIN Huddle, what do I do with this situation?” Do I come in as a Character 1 and try to fix it? Do I come in as a Character 2, win that and keep it going? Do I come in with a playful Character 3 and try to bring a little inappropriate humor, which may or may not work? Do I open up to, “When you’re ready, I’m going to play? Here I am.” Do I come in as that loving Character 4 and say, “I got you. I understand. I’m here. I’m with you. I’m wrapped around you. Whatever you need and when you’re ready to step into something else, we’re available.” We being my Character 4. This is personal power. We have the power to choose moment by moment who and how we want to be in the world. That’s how I ended that TED Talk. As you asked earlier, “What was the attraction of that TED Talk?” It was self-empowerment. We have the power to choose moment by moment who and how we want to be. I have had over 300,000 people write to me and say, “You had to have a stroke to figure that out. How do we do it with our brain?” My answer is the book, Whole Brain Living. That’s a ton of information. In the book, it’s in great detail and you walk us through it. I would highly recommend every person to get it whether you’re in therapy, a therapist or a lifelong learner that wants to keep up with the stuff. This is new, different and exciting. The coolest thing is we can nerd out on the cool stuff that we’re learning about the hippocampus, the amygdala and stuff like that. It’s both nerdy and practical. Let’s weave and own the power of what we are as human beings and evolve ourselves into conscious humanity so that we can feel like we’re healthy. I consider this book to be a roadmap to our peace of mind. Anybody who’s got a brain, biologically speaking, we have these four modules of cells. They exhibit very specific skillsets. If you have a lesion, have a stroke or wipe them out, it becomes very predictable. We’re pretty much wired similarly. Getting to know these by our character profiles makes so much sense. It’s easy to see in ourselves and identify in our partners, children, parents, teachers and the school system. We’re all on a hero’s journey. We’re born here. In that whole hero’s journey, the ultimate goal is to step out of the consciousness of the Character 1 left-brain thinking, which is of the rational world and relax enough to calm the little Character 2 so we can step into the true journey of learning, growth and ultimately connecting with our greatest part, which is Character 4. Consciousness is always available. That’s where our piece is and that piece is the ultimate goal of all the hero’s journeys. We have all of it. Let’s weave and own the power of what we are as human beings and evolve ourselves into conscious humanity so that we can feel like we’re healthy. This is about mental health and mental wellness. As you were talking, I could feel myself get a little emotional. That’s how much it’s touching my heart. There’s such a resonance. It’s incredible. The book also has practical stuff. It has more about how to strengthen these different parts of neuroplasticity. First of all, there are several myths in there that we’re busting out. I want you to know who your Character 1 is and answer these questions. Where does it come out? How often does it come out? Who likes this part of you? Who runs from this part of you? All these details about your Character 1 gave it an identity because it has an identity. As soon as you name it and own it, you can differentiate. It’s like when you were born. Your brain didn’t know you had two legs instead of one. You couldn’t walk because you were a big ball of energy with parts flopping around. As soon as your brain figured out you had two legs that you could move independently, you gained the ability to have motility and mobility. That’s exactly what we’re doing with the brain. We’re differentiating and refining our understanding of what is this beautiful thing inside of our head. It’s just a bunch of cells. As bringing it up to the level of symbolization, you’re right. We can have meetings and stuff like that. I was having a little fantasy of you and me walking over to the Texas Legislature, giving an all-day workshop and teaching people to get to know these parts of themselves. People come in with their Character 2 and they’re angry, spewing venom, mean and all this. They’re blaming and they’re all ugly. We got so much of that going on in our society, even out in public. We have increased our ability to be the Character 2 out in society. Wouldn’t it be great if instead of feeling, “Reject. Push away. There’s a Character 2. It’s mean, ugly and attacking,” to be able to instantaneously say in our Character 4, “That person needs love. That person needs to be heard, be listened to and be regulated back into their sanity.” We have the power to do that for one another. That’s a different society. That’s an entirely different society. Even if we’re not able to do that, we can have this regulation to navigate, go back to the brain and be able to navigate that. Whole Brain Living: We’re differentiating and refining our understanding of these smart beautiful cells in our head. Begin with the self or individual. For me, the goal is to help other people who are in pain because when we come out screaming, we’re just screaming. There’s no language and maturation there. There’s desperation and deregulation. We need to be able to wrap ourselves around people’s pain. Your pain does not scare me. The day I can walk up to you and say, “Your pain does not scare me. Please, when I’m in my pain, don’t let my pain scare you. Surround me with love and we will get to the point where we can communicate and find true negotiation.” I’m wondering what’s next for you.  Absolutely. I’m more of a Character 4 that is going to wait and see what happens. What has happened is all of these people who are running not-for-profit and foundation organizations, doing yoga in prisons, AA rehabilitation and cancer with children or teaching Daoism and Whole Brain Living in China? They are coming to me and saying, “This is what I’m doing. How do I bring Whole Brain Living into my network?” I say to them, “What do you need from me? How do I support you?” We’re building this enormous neural network and I’m inviting everybody to the table for play. One of the other things that are magnificent is I’m working with a woman who is creating a research project. She’s almost done with the proposal to the IRB to run a Whole Brain Living program in a school system. That is for the teachers, parents, children, principals and all the administration. She’s doing some data collection to show that we can change the conscious culture of a school system. If we can do one, we can do it everywhere. One of the things that the show could contribute is we have people all over the world. Some are practitioners and some are natural healers without letters behind their names, which we welcome with an open heart and learn from. We’ll have some Character 1 academics and some Character 4 wizards. I want them all. Another thing that you’re saying that’s also a little different is it’s not that we’re aiming to stay in our Character 4. It’s not that Character 1 is better. It is more of harmony. It’s all four. We have all four. As humanity, what we’re doing is a stage of neuroanatomical evolution. We have this new thinking tissue on top of this old limbic stuff. The old limbic stuff is alarm alert in both hemispheres. We have this thinking tissue placed on top of that as humans, the neocortex. We’re working the kinks out between the fibers of how we interact Character 1 with Character 2 in the left brain, Character 4 and Character 3 in the right brain, Character 1 and Character 4 through the corpus callosum, as well as Character 2 and Character 3 through the other commissures. We are uniting our brains. The evolution of humanity is combining all these parts of the brain. We are uniting our brains. The evolution of humanity is combining all these parts of the brain. I don’t want just one. As a Character 4, I can tell you it’s blissful, euphoric and fantastic but it is 100% ineffective and paralyzed. It can do nothing because there’s no perception of self in relationship to the external world. I was completely ineffective as a Character 4. I am totally incompetent as a Character 1. I know my growth edge as a Character 2. I know when to push away and when to evaluate so I can head toward. With my playful Character 3, who doesn’t want to play with Pigpen? Is there any organizing principle that’s happening that is not just little OU? I can imagine you being flooded. You said there were 300,000 contacts. Bring it. We’re at that stage where the book has been out since May 11th of 2021. People are reading it and they’re reading it 3 or 4 times. People are going to read this multiple times for sure. The material is amazing because it’s about not me. It’s about you, me and us. Whoever you are, come. I’m creating a team to catch the balls. Everybody is starting to throw balls at me. I don’t know what the balls are. I know what some of the balls are but we’re navigating it as we go. DrJill@DrJillTaylor.com is my email. Bring it. How do I support you in what you’re doing to bring this material to the world? We all have this beautiful brain and the faster we can communicate like this. I don’t take it personally when you say something to me. It’s like, “That was your little Character 2 who spit some venom at me. I love you despite yourself. Are you hungry? Are you tired? What do you need?” I’m all about it. Here’s another thing people could do right away. You’ve got the TED Talk that’s amazing. The first one was My Stroke of Insight and the one we have been talking mostly about is Whole Brain Living. You can find that anywhere. DrJillTaylor.com is my website. I have given over 100 podcasts. I’m planting seeds. What happens? It will grow organically. I’m here to catch as much of the balls as I can and I need to know what people need. Someone said, “I need one page for a leadership conference. I’m adding this Character 2 at the last minute. I need one sheet with the Four Characters at the top. What’s going on in the BRAIN Huddle that I can include?” Let me know what people know. We will be posting things on the website that you need that you can use. I’m saying go to these beautiful brains. We want to help ourselves and others. This is a beautiful tool. I’m resonating so much. I have a niece that was 24 years old when this happened. She had just graduated with her Aerospace Engineering degree. It’s not what you think of when you think of a stroke victim or a doctor. She got hit with a stroke. It was super weird that it was at age 24. It’s the same thing. This is a passionate space of losing part of your mind and bringing it back. Honestly, psychedelics is another thing. That’s another subject but that that is some of why the results are so positive and strong. The psychedelics are essentially quieting that left-brain attachment of me to self and me to the external and allowing me to have this magnificent experience of, “Without the circuitry, I am as big as the universe.” At the core of the universe is this intense feeling of love. When you come back from that, you’re going, “This left brain is a tool. It’s not who I am.” I want to live my life through the value structure of the collective whole because we got to fix that, connect with one another and heal this planet because without the planet, we don’t have a life. Us healing one another is our mental health. We do have the power to grow up to be healthy humanity. Honestly, even about climate, part of what happens with climate and the planet is that we either get overwhelmed that it’s too scary or we dissociate and can’t think of it. I love what you said earlier about, “I’m not afraid of your pain.” Part of what happened was you were freed of the fear of your pain. You were freed of it. If we could do something and create ripples of helping people not be afraid and be able to be regulated so that we can deal with the hard stuff like climate, it’s very exciting. Consider that in each of those four consciousnesses, the consciousness of Character 4 is the one that’s always there. It’s the consciousness in ourselves. If we want to heal ourselves, we need to get to that vibration and energy. I freaked out a bunch of people’s left brains because, “She’s doing woo-woo.” Woo-woo is real. There’s woo-woo we label as woo-woo. There’s woo-woo we reject because we don’t understand it. Call it something else or the circuitry of your right brain. Don’t deny the existence of those abilities simply because of a bias because little Character 2 is saying, “That doesn’t feel safe. We can’t measure it. It doesn’t work. Those people are weird. They’re different from me.” That’s just Character 2. Character 1 comes in and tells the stories, “It’s all woo-woo. It’s not real.” It’s the anatomy of your brain. We have all of these capacities. Don’t deny yourself the righteous ability to be a whole human being. Give yourself that gift in your lifetime. Why wouldn’t we want to do that? Speaking of gifts. I’m so excited. My brain is popping. I can see all kinds of fun things. This is Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and the book, in particular, is Whole Brain Living. We highly recommend it. If it moves you, we have a reading group. Certainly, contact us. We have a Supercast community and you can find it at TherapistUncensored.Supercast.com. It’s as low as $5 a month. You can have access to each other to do discussions and stuff like that. There’s always an ability to pay. I’m happy to work with you around that. That’s fine. We want it to be accessible and help you organize some of this stuff. Also, Sue, I gave a one-hour webinar over three days. It was all the material. I was talking about the BRAIN Huddle because people have obstacles and it’s like, “Let’s get around those.” I do have a Facebook page but my team is posting all of these podcasts. We can do Whole Brain Living and mom rage, Whole Brain Living and sleep problems, Whole Brain Living and Buddhism and Whole Brain Living and all these different subjects. The beauty of the Whole Brain Living is it’s all in there. It’s applicable to every single subject there is for us as humanity. The thing about it is it’s very easy and quick to understand. What is hard is the application of it and what kind of support people need to do the Huddle. To me, that’s where the juice is. How does this translate? The BRAIN Huddle is the power. There’s nothing like being able to sit back and say, “All that angst and hostility you’re feeling, I’m sympathetic to you and I don’t have to feel that.” Empathy doesn’t mean I have to go bleed and sit in your blood. It means I can hold the space while you bleed and love you back to health. Thank you for your generosity and we will stay in touch — Important Links: DrJillTaylor.com Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life by Jill Bolte Taylor My stroke of insight – TED Talk My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor www.TherapistUncensored.com/join The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication and Self-regulation by Stephen Porges BRAIN Huddle Andrew Newberg DrJill@DrJillTaylor.com TherapistUncensored.Supercast.com Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor – Facebook page https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/health/26iht-25brain.13207332.html About Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor As a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor has dedicated her life to understanding an d sharing her knowledge on the power of neuroplasticity and how we can use it as a tool to heal our traumas and live a happier, more fulfilling life. After experiencing a severe hemorrhage at the age of 37, Dr. Bolte Taylor has a first-hand account of her recovery and findings through the difficult journey. From her famous TedTalk debut  “My Stroke of Insight” to her memoir, she has inspired and educated millions through her public speaking and dedication to her field. Not only did her memoir earn a spot on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, but she continued on to release “Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters that Drive Our Life” in May of 2021. This book combines psychology with neuroanatomy to share the four distinct modules and how we can use those cells to tap in and create an inner team to help guide us on the journey to a more peaceful life. For a deeper dive into this episode and Bolte-Taylor’s work with Whole Brain Living, join our online community for as little as $5 a month and get extra content, ad-free feed, Ask Me Anything sessions and – in Jan 2022 we will meet live together to discuss this book specifically. JOIN HERE

6 Dec 20211h 18min

Join our online community here! Breaking down the nitty-gritty of attachment and assessment! There were so many exciting moments in the previous interview with Carol George that we couldn’t help but sit down and get into with you.  We use excerpts from Episode 162, TU162: Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) Assessment & Clinical Use with Dr. Carol George and geek out as we work to continue to learn and incorporate the feedback from this legend in the field of attachment. We also worked to make this sometimes technical material more accessible to everybody, however, we’d still call this episode dense.  Yeah, well, good content should not be over-simplified, you are welcome! If you have not had the chance to listen to the previous episode with world-renowned Attachment Assessment pioneer, Dr. Carol George – that’s ok, we cover a lot in this one but you will definitely get the most out of it as a follow up to hearing the original first. Be easy on yourself though, there is no right or wrong way to learn! We are still excited by the exceptional opportunity to learn directly from Dr. George, and for the privilege, we have in getting to sit down with so many incredible experts in the field of Attachment. We thought there was no better way to follow up than to bring you an in-depth session with Ann and Sue to really get into the heart of attachment assessment. Follow along as they explore what attachment really means, how research has evolved, and how it is relevant on a clinical level. Guided by excerpts from the conversation with Dr. George, they share personal stories, and their own knowledge of the topic to give you 40 minutes of insightful, candid conversation to expand your knowledge even greater. You won’t want to miss it! https://therapistuncensored.com/episodes/using-the-adult-attachment-projective-aap-assessment-with-carol-george/ You may also enjoy another legend in the direct science and research related to attachment, Dr. Alan Sroufe – https://therapistuncensored.com/episodes/attachment-through-the-lifespan-alan-sroufe/ Attachment Assessment Resources Galore!! AAP Flyer – pdf click here to find out more about training on the AAP Clinical Application of the Adult Attachment Projective  Adult Attachment Projective PDG article by George & West Assessing Secure Base Behavior and Attachment Security Using the Q-Sort Method The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System: Attachment Theory and Assessment in Adults Use of the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) in the Middle of a Long-Term Psychotherapy Dr. Steve Finn TU162: Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) Assessment & Clinical Use with Dr. Carol George Become a neuronerd! Want to dive deeper?  Join our private community and get ad-free content, extra episodes and early access to study opportunities.  Join now to get 10% off, so go ahead, it’s as little as $5 a month and takes just a couple clicks and you are in!   Check out our socials: Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn!

24 Nov 202137min

Depth session!  Learn about the clinical application of the attachment assessment research and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Adult Attachment Projective Join us here (AAP) with attachment pioneer, Dr. Carol George. Co-host Sue Marriott sat down with Dr. Carol George to cover a wide variety of topics, from an in-depth analysis on the misconceptions about Strange Situation and what is truly being measured, to the difference between adult attachment research in comparison to developmental attachment research. Dr. George’s impressive years of investigation and personal experiences through her own journey as a parent makes for a fascinating discussion about the truths behind understanding the attachment spectrum. There is a ton of history of how what we know as the attachment spectrum today came to be, and there is no better way to understand this journey than to hear first-hand from one of the pioneers of research. Learn more about why there has been a shift from what we’ve known as “disorganized attachment” and why professionals are adopting the term “dysregulated attachment” to better encompass the experience. Dr. Carol George Who is Carol George?  A literal pioneer in the field of attachment assessment  Carol George, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Mills College in Oakland, California, and has been a pioneer in developing attachment assessments for children and adults. George is an internationally renowned attachment expert who was a co-director of the Mills College Infant Mental Health program for 21 years. Working alongside Dr. Main and Dr. Kaplan, her dissertation helped develop the Adult Attachment Interview. She is praised for her work as an author and editor, and is known for her contributions to attachment-based representative assessments like the Caregiving Interview, the Attachment Doll Play Projective Assessment, and “Disorganized Attachment and Caregiving,” alongside Judith Soloman. Her other contributions include “The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System” with Malcolm West. Although retired from being a professor, George is still incredibly active and stays busy being an assistant editor on the editorial board of Attachment and Human Development, as well as Director of the AAP Training Consortium. Her dedication to education is still prevalent as she often hosts extensive clinical consultations to practicing therapists, graduate students, and other students of attachment. Card examples from the Adult Attachment Projective Resources: AAP Flyer – pdf click here to find out more about training on the AAP Clinical Application of the Adult Attachment Projective PDF article by George & West Adult Attachment Projective the book by Dr. Carol George Assessing Secure Base Behavior and Attachment Security Using the Q-Sort Method The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System: Attachment Theory and Assessment in Adults Use of the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) in the Middle of a Long-Term Psychotherapy Dr. Steve Finn Like what you’re hearing? Stop and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening, and while you are at it, drop us a rating and review – this is the best way to help others discover this incredible content. Looking for more?   Join our new online community of like-minded Neuronerds here!  Other episodes you’ll enjoy: https://therapistuncensored.com/episodes/attachment-through-the-lifespan-alan-sroufe     Our socials: Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn!

9 Nov 20211h 33min

Season 6 Premiere!  Move from defense and fear It’s been a ride, but hosts Sue Marriott and Ann Kelley are back in full force and ready for this exciting season. In this episode, we catch up with you and discuss the depths of the defensive process and how to resource ourselves to put down the walls we don’t even mean to put up.  Cis-women are socialized to subsume themselves to others’ needs and Ann and Sue are no exception.  They are working on holding their own voice and letting their little light shine freely. Watch this 3 min clip to see what we mean and to get into the spirit yourself! 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Acfc2gUErI Content-wise, they discuss the difference between cognitive understanding of modern attachment and regulation, and the bottom-up experience of it. We distort information coming in – either by not registering interpersonal information (dismissing/blue side of the spectrum) or by over-interpreting the importance of an exchange (up-regulating with fear). This is an unconscious process that to undo we have to have the courage and the resources to feel the feelings that cause us to defend. They walk through it with you – they don’t just tell you what to do – so join us in understanding our own defensive process. Check out our recent replays for a refresher on each of the attachment styles: TU158 TU159 TU160 Like what you’re hearing? A great way to help others find these resources is to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. This is an easy and effective way for those seeking assistance to be able to find it.  Premium Feed Subscription – here!

2 Nov 202144min

For the third and final episode of our very popular attachment series, we bring you this last replay before we kick off our 6th season. In this episode, Ann and Sue cover the 4th category of what we call the basic attachment spectrum: disorganized attachment. Learn how to bring yourself back to an organized state and focus on forming secure, deeper connections in relationships. Dropping into overwhelm and disorganization happens to everyone at times, and some more than others. When we have been exposed to serious danger, unresolved fright or major loss in such a way that it interferes with healthy coping patterns, we are left to our own to manage the world. In research terms they call this disorganized or unresolved, but we’d like to describe it as squirting squid ink to confuse who we think is the predator and making a run for it. Dropping into overwhelm and disorganization happens to everyone at times, and some more than others. When we have been exposed to serious danger, unresolved fright or major loss in such a way that it interferes with healthy coping patterns, we are left to our own to manage the world. In research terms they call this disorganized or unresolved, but we’d like to describe it as squirting squid ink to confuse who we think is the predator and making a run for it. Check out our original show notes for this episode, here! And follow us on our social media pages to get the latest updates and information: Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn! Like what you’re hearing? A great way to help others find these resources is to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. This is an easy and effective way for those seeking assistance to be able to find it. Thank you so much for your support.

26 Okt 202138min