Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Things That Help You REGULATE Your Nervous System When You're ANXIOUS| Mini Episode

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

Another Thursday, another mini episode!Every Thursday, we’re sharing the Buy or Bye Bye segment from one of your favourite Her Discussions episodes - a breakdown of what actually works for your health. This week, we're revisiting our episode with Ailey who is a leading voice in somatic psychology. She was a professional ballerina and Miss Canada before her own trauma led her to become a chartered psychologist.In the full episode, we discuss:⭐ how to stop living in survival mode🧠 1 concept that can improve 80% of your nervous system ❄️ why you freeze instead of getting things done 👀 why you can’t make eye contact 💪 3 reasons your body is tense all the time ☀️ why a walk may work better than gratitude listsListen to the full podcast here:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/66B08nsuC8jrhKmZSq8xgC?si=XoQqN_T8SzaGg0dfF3DPYw YouTube: https://youtu.be/aeexP9knjLU Please don’t forget to subscribe - it really helps us grow the podcast.Resources & links mentioned:- Ailey Jolie: @aileyjolie - Helen (Ailey’s physiotherapist) https://tmjphysio.co.uk/helen-cowgill-physiotherapyCan I ask you a BIG favour? 💙Please leave a review or rating. It helps us grow the podcast and bring you more amazing guests.Share this with someone who wants to protect their brain, boost focus, or live smarter, it might help them feel more energized and confident.Follow us on social media or join the broadcast channel to send us your questions for our guests:Podcast Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/herdiscussionspod/⁠⁠Broadcast channel: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/⁠⁠ 🛑 Disclaimers & legal:This podcast is for educational / informational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. All opinions are those of the speaker(s).

We can be totally disconnected from our body after trauma, or we can be so acutely aware of our body after trauma. You put experiences like that, consequentially together, over a long period of time, that's going to cause developmental trauma. Ailey is a leading voice in somatic psychology. She was a professional ballerina and Miss Canada before her own trauma led her to become a chartered psychologist. Creating kind of a beautiful image on the outside

was one of the ways I distracted away. while I was hiding all this self-hatred. For me, both of those choices were really driven by trauma. Until that stuff is really acknowledged, it does continue to play out. We'll explore nervous system dysregulation, anxiety and burnout. We're going to come on to our section called Real or Real. Why do people burn out, then, in your view? When people win, they are rarely burnt out at that moment.

It's not a negative to feel overwhelmed because you have responsibility. People depend on you. people are relying on you to do something. Great. Thoughts? Good question. Before we get into the episode, I'm super excited to share with you a brand that captures exactly what this podcast is all about. Science-led, evidence-backed progress in women's health. Today's sponsor SmartStrains has developed a range of clinically proven live bacterial supplements, each designed for a specific health need and only formulations backed by clinical trials

and recommended by global health guidelines. No vague promises or one size fits or blend, like so many others you see on the shelves today. Make sure to check out their website to learn more about the live bacteria formulations that genuinely make a difference. And thank you so much to SmartStrains for sponsoring today's episode. I'm so excited that SmartStrains have even given you guys an exclusive code for 20% off. Just use the code, Fay 20 at checkout. Limited to one use per customer and can't be used alongside any other discounts. but first please do not forget to subscribe or leave a five-star review on whatever platform you're using to listen to this podcast.

It really, really helps us grow so that we can continue to help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. Ailey, our community sent in so many questions about stress and anxiety. But first, I read that you were Prima Valerina and Miss Canada at 19. Yes. And then you decided to become a somatic psychotherapist. Could you explain what led you to go into this? And also, in really simple terms, what is a somatic psychotherapist? So I will define somatic psychotherapist just so that people understand what I do and how it may be different. So a somatic psychotherapist is trained clinically in the same way. A regular psychotherapist would be trained. So we are trained to listen to stories. stories, to know how to process trauma, to weave cognitive narratives together, to reframe. We have that skill set. But we also have additional skill set of both listening to the story

that someone is saying through their words, but also the story of the body. So that means I'm going to notice when your eye contact breaks. I'm going to notice how many times you blinked. I'm going to notice, okay, your breath is actually not moving into your abdominal cavity. And I'm going to use what I notice. I'm going to gather evidence through my time together, but also through what I experience in my body. So I have to kind of already know, did I come into this session anxious? Did I come in a little stressed or with tension? I didn't. So actually sitting in the presence of this person after a few moments, I'm really tense or I'm really anxious. And we're going to kind of have a little bit of an inner dialogue around what's going

on with our body that we may be picking up from the other because we know, and you could probably add to this, our mirror neurons are constantly communicating with the other person. They live our prefrontal cortex and they give us really wonderful information around the people we're around in regards to safety, danger, emotional resonance. And so we use that information in the therapy. So a client may be sharing a story and it can be sometimes a bit abrupt as well and we'll say, I notice when you said that your affect changed or have you noticed through this session you haven't taken a big breath at all or notice you're not breathing right now or it's really hard for you to make eye contact, can we pause here? And can we notice what it would be like to bring eye contact in

or what it would be like to take eye contact away for the rest of the session? And it's really interesting when you just make those body-based contact statements how much of the experience of therapy changes. Because how often, first of all, in our waking life when we're walking around, does someone actually deeply listen to us to just our cognitive verbal story? And then Also, how rare is it that someone sits across from us and gives their full presence, not just my mind, my entire body. And I'm monitoring that entire body to actually be deeply attuned and listen to you. And with that level of presence, something interesting does happen.

And the story does start to change. So that's kind of what a semantic psychologist does. I know if you take a little scroll on Instagram or TikTok, they'll be like lots of videos shaking and catharsis and screaming. And that can totally be part of it. I'm not going to sit here and say that I have not screamed, no, and held my client's hand at the top of my lungs or had sessions where we sat on the floor together.

Those things happen. But when they do happen, they've been really built into the therapy and they're really built on this strong foundation of trust through those simple moments of saying, it's really hard for you to make eye contact with me today. Let's play with that. So it's got this little bit of experimental element to it. So that's my first answer to your second question.

Yes, I trained, did a lot of ballet, had a small little moment performing with the Royal Moscow Ballet when they came to Canada. And then spent some time in the Miss Teen Canada, Miss Canada world, which feels like a whole other life. For me, both of those choices were really driven by trauma. And I feel always forever so grateful. Obviously not for my experiences of trauma. I wouldn't wish them on anyone. And if I could, I, but that was the circumstances in which I was born into and what happened to my body. But while those experiences of trauma were happening as a little person, I did have dance.

And so it was this one place where I could express freely and move my body and be in connection to something else. And it was this one place where I felt so safe. and like anything, when that's like the only place you feel safe, you're probably going to take it to an extreme, which I absolutely did. And it led to a lot of perfectionism, a lot of overachievement and also a lot of compensation. I had a lot of shame and self-hatred and confusion around the trauma I'd experienced and was experiencing. And creating kind of a beautiful image on the outside was one of the ways I distracted away from that. And I can definitely see that now with my personality, I'm quite introverted. a lot of the things that you would associate with someone who does pageants, like, really don't fit my personality.

But nonetheless, it created this beautiful mask for me to kind of still be in the world and move through the world while I was hiding all this self-hatred. And so what led me to somatics, I think you can kind of pick up some of those themes there with the dance and movement being this place of free expression. I went through, I guess what you'd call, like traditional eating disorder treatment. I, you know, did the inpatient, did the outpatient. And to great credit of this therapist, I was relatively well. I was functioning. I did respond well to that treatment. But nonetheless, when I was about 22, I would say, yeah, 22.

So I'd already gone through treatment. I just kept finding myself in these, like, really harmful relationships, like, with really unwell people, wonderful people, but, like, very unwell. And I was like, this is weird. Like, I went through all this therapy. I know that real, like, kind, loving relationships are possible. Didn't see them in my childhood, but I've been with enough therapists to know how to communicate. And yet, I, like, am really drawn to these kind of, like, twisted dark souls.

Like, what is this? And so I decided to put myself in, and there's a great amount of privilege in this, decided to put myself in a trauma center program that was outpatient. And at that time, Gabour Matte was not Gabour Matte. He was just one of the clinical directors and clinical advisors at this treatment center. So all the therapists that I saw were already deeply in the work that he offers today, had deep relationships with him. And those therapists offered somatic psychotherapy. It wasn't really well known at that time.

It wasn't spoken about. I remember going to the sessions and being like, that was so weird. what is happening here? This place makes no sense. And like, you know, the therapist would invite us to meditate before, go to acupuncture, do gentle movement and then come into a therapy session. Or remember one therapist, like the whole session, I had to have my hand on my head to contain myself. And I was like, this Donald was so weird. It changed my life that.

Whenever I'm all overwhelmed, I feel the impulse with the client to just like contain it. Because it's still so ingrained that that's how I so soothed my anxiety. And you look in the research behind what he was. doing posturally, totally checks out. So I had this embodied experience quite young, because I do think in what I've perceived in the field, coming to somatic psychotherapy and training in that way, it's usually something therapists do later in their career. And because it is quite fringy and it is getting more mainstream, but it's quite unknown. So that's a bit of my journey to where I am today and also what the heck is a somatic psychotherapist

because it's not a common thing. That's a beautiful answer and I think that it will resonate with so much of our community because I know that a lot of them are also perfectionist, high achiever women. When you were saying you created this mask, I think that's something that I relate to a lot where maybe my self-worth was not at its best. I probably used these obsessions or academic validation to mask over the fact that actually at my core, my self-worth was probably not great. And I know that that is something the community will really, really resonate with.

We're going to come on to a section in just a little bit called buy or buy by, where we'll ask you some products that, whether you'd recommend them or not. But before we come into that, I wanted to ask you, who do you think benefits from somatic psychotherapy over maybe traditional psychotherapy? Because I think I've seen, again, probably some TikToks, which is not the most reliable source of information, where I think the way someone described it is, you know, a lot of women are quite emotionally in tune.

They kind of understand their feelings or they think they understand their feelings, but maybe they don't necessarily understand their nervous system reaction or, you know, it may be more suited to those. If you feel like you understand your feelings, maybe even you're a little bit of an overthinker, then maybe somatic therapy might be a better fit. But yeah, what's your, who do you think it's better for?

You are naming it, absolutely. I think with how semantics has been presented in online realms, it's presented as sometimes even just like a practice that you step into and you shake and you move. And I'm like, that's all great. But that's more somatic movement. That's not semantic processing. Of course, I'm a stickler for semantics because I have a master's degree in this, but I don't expect everyone else to be.

So no judgment. But semantics psychotherapy is really great for the same thing. people who already have a strong cognitive framing. Because when those people go to therapy, if they already know their story and they've reframed it in their mind and they can identify all the villains and all the good people, all the characters are well known, they'll go into talk therapy and like, they might not get a lot out of it because they've already done that over-processing. And we are in a culture that really does train people to do that over-processing. And in some environments, that includes critical thinking, and some environments not, but we are pretty over-intellectualized and

pretty disembodied. So I always start my somatic therapy by kind of gauging with my client how much of their history, how much of their narrative is really clear and cohesive and known to them, because we need that strong cognitive kind of structuring to actually go into the body. And so exactly what you're saying there, the people that, you know, are quite, you know, maybe they know how to identify their emotions already, they know their history, they kind of know the areas of growth, they're going to be quite quick to benefit from somatics. It's still going to be hard. It's always hard when we've maybe really developed our mind to drop into our body and connect. It's still going to be hard, but they're going to respond a lot easier, whereas individuals who you might assume are going to

really flourish in somatic psychotherapy like my dancers and my artists and my creatives, it's really hard for them because this is something they know quite well. They know the territory of the body or it's become a tool or a vehicle for creativity. But it's not actually something that they have that type of relationship with. And the mind also doesn't have a story. So then we have to kind of go in and get that strong cognitive framing so we can drop into the body. because unless we have that, it's not going to feel safe to be in the body. And that's like the piece that I always emphasize to people is that somatics really does rely on having some type of felt sense in your body or in your mind.

There has to be a capacity because when you go into your body, you're going to be confronted with things from your own past that you've suppressed that have been too hard or have been overwhelming. These don't have to be big acute single incident traumas. they could be developmental traumas, consistent moments where our attachment needs weren't met. But you're also going to hit both intergenerational stuff that lives inside you that comes from your ancestry. We're getting into the realm of epigenetics here. But one thing that I speak most kind of focused on is we get into cultural pieces too. When you go into your body, you're going to be confronted with your internalized narratives of ageism or misogyny. And you're going to have to kind of feel the stickiness of that and also while feeling the stickiness of that live in a world where those

narratives are still being told and they're being perpetuated and a culture's kind of thriving off them in many ways. And so the cognitive piece I always say is so important even though I know it's not what you see on TikTok. It's not what you see on TikTok. Isn't that true for a lot of things? gosh, and we've got our section Real or Real where I'm really excited to hear your opinions on a TikTok video we've picked for you. So I'm very excited for that a little bit later on. Now we're going to move on to our buy or bye bye section. First on our buy or bye bye section is a weighted blanket.

Yes. I personally love a weighted blanket. We know that it produces the same effects as like a baby being tightly held. And so it does activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which kind of puts us in that beautiful rest and digest place. For some people, a weight of blanket is like the last thing they ever want because the compression and the tightness can feel claustrophobic or threatening. So I'm a big fan of them.

I also probably overuse them to the point of overheating sometimes. So beware. But they do create some really wonderful responses in the nervous system if you are someone who, when experiencing compression or tightness, goes into a parasympathetic state. Nice. You mentioned a phrase there, which I think is in, I think if more people understood it, they would understand their nervous system just immediately so much better. It's one of those terms that I think, you know, you could understand 80% of your nervous system

if you just understood this word. Parasmpathetic system. Could you explain that to people who've never heard that term before? I can and you can please jump in. So our parasympathetic nervous system is a part of our autonomic nervous system. We have two branches, our parasympathetic and our sympathetic. Our parasympathetic is really in control of our rest and digest. So this is the state that ideally when you go to a yoga nature class, you get into, or a spa day, or any of those things.

And it's so needed because it's the nervous system state that allows the gut biome, a lot of our cells to rejuvenate and actually gives our body a little. little bit of that rest point. And so we need this state. We need kind of this calming down. We call it the calming down, often in common culture, but it's also associated with our window of tolerance. And so when we get into a parasympathetic state, we can replenish and restore so then we can go back out into the rest of the world. Oddly, I do think people talk more about sympathetic and like not wanting to be in a sympathetic or we must regulate our nervous system and always live in parasympathetic. it's ideally that these two states in the nervous system are, it's not like you can be in just one, they activate at the same time and we're doing this kind of lovely dance between the two

of them and not getting stuck in either. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you said sympathetic, maybe for anyone just really bringing it back to basics. What about the sympathetic? What's the explanation for that part of the nervous system? So sympathetic nervous system is really associated to our fight and our flight. It's also associated to high cortisol, anxiety, hypervigilance of scanning, looking around. But I also tell people it's like, it's the thing that gets you up and gets you going in the day. So we could pathologize and demonize this as being bad and wrong. And we don't ever want to be in this state because it's associated specifically in the realm of like TikTok and social media is associated with trauma responses. But it's also a lot of our momentum

during the day as well. One thing I always say to my female clients is that our sympathetic nervous system is also associated with our tend and befriend. So we have our fight and our flight, and we also have like our fawning response or tending and befriending. And if you've been socialized female, more commonly you're going to move into that response pattern of making friends, soothing the other, appeasing as a part of your sympathetic response instead of, you know, fighting or running away. Interesting. That's really, really interesting. The next item on our buy or buy is a essential oil diffuser. I love them. Shamelessly. I definitely probably drive my partner a bit crazy because they're always going. I like always. They're just like constant. And I'm a bit picky about

them. So I actually like bring them from Canada with me. Really? Yeah. Because the quality and there's just a little bit more testing and scrutiny around what they release in Canada versus here in the essential oil diffuser land, which I've researched. Anyways, we're moving that aside, we know that essential oils, they obviously stimulate the olfactory system, which is connected to our limbic brain, which is the emotional center. For someone like me and how I know my nervous system and my experiences of trauma, I find smell and scent unbelievably soothing. Like there are certain ones that bring me back in through my limbic brain, my emotional center to specific memories that felt so wonderful and safe and gentle that as soon as I smell cinnamon, I'm just happy again.

Like it has that much of an effect on me. I also have had clients who like smell is not their safety resource point at all. And this is, you know, commonly spoken about in PTSD. We can get a little smell of something and maybe not even remember the full. full memory, but our body is going into sympathetic, some of that, like, maybe fight response or tension or bracing. And so this is also sometimes a part of somatic work is really learning. What of the many senses that we have, because we have more than five, which ones actually bring me back into center and more into that regulated nervous system state? So I love an essential

oil. They're everywhere in my life, but I know they're not for everyone. I think that's a really important point for anyone trying to navigate social media where products are just being pushed on you. Yes. And, you know, being sold as the solutions to everything under the certain. Because it is for so, you know, in this society, we really are taught to ignore our bodies, ignore our responses. But, you know, really not just looking at the products, but tuning in to how those products make us feel is so, so, so important. just taking everything you see on TikTok as gospel and you need to buy this right now. I didn't ask for the weighted blanket, do you have any recommendations that you like?

Because they can get quite high in price. And I guess for someone who they, you know, maybe you don't want to spend that money and then for it to feel really claustrophobic. Yeah, such a good question. My weighted blanket is, my weighted blanket was a gift from my part. partner. But I have looked recently and been like, whoa, this is such a massive price range. I mean, there's so many things you can try even before putting that claustrophobic feeling. I mean, like, if you're someone who has three blankets on you and that's wiggly and uncomfortable or you don't like a big squeezed hug, don't go near a way to blanket. Like this is not. So you can get this kind of

tightness compression feeling before even purchasing. That would be my answer to that one. So not one specific product unfortunately. No, that's really, really, really helpful. Next is a yoga mat or resistance bands. Yeah, I have them both. I have all the things here. With both of these products, I would just encourage people to not let them be the barrier for entry. Yes, it's wonderful to have a yoga mat to be like, this is where I do my gentle movement at home, but it's also not needed. You don't need to be on your mat. You don't need a resistance band to do those exercises or to engage with your body in that way. So if that helps you get out and add gentle movement or movement into your day, wonderful, but it's also not needed. And I'm someone who I used to travel the world

with my yoga mat. And now oftentimes it just kind of sits there and I do my gentle movement, not on it because I actually can't be bothered. Nice. Nice. That's such an important point. not making it a barrier for entry. Yeah. Journals or guided self-help notebooks. Yeah. I don't know. So I would love to answer this like so enthusiastically.

Yes. Being trained in semantic therapy, being trained in narrative therapy, loving writing, loving the practice. For me, they've never worked. I find them a bit. to formed by positive psychology. And so then I find like doing the prompts oftentimes leads me to bypassing things. And I've tried really hard.

And so that's my encouragement for people. It's just to really look at the prompts. And what angle are the prompts coming from? Are they the same every single day? Are they just framing the positive? Are they allowing you to have some space for the negative? I know Danielle Leport used to have a beautiful. product and actually had space for both. I really loved it. I also know Ruby Carr has a book

called Healing Through Words and that one I've like really enjoyed doing. But I know that there's a lot of them out there and I've been really surprised. I still don't know a client who's actually made the full way through the journal like like actually through. I think it sometimes can these issues of like you know not being able to the prompts not providing access to go into those deeper can be a little bit of a turn off for people, even though I would love to say yes, because in theory, I totally back them. Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. But for anyone listening, what do you mean by positive psychology? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Good question.

Obviously, affirmations, doing affirmations, daily gratitude practices are wonderful and great, and they can be like putting whipped cream on garbage. And I say that to my clients, like if this feels like putting whipped cream on garbage, there is research that actually just focusing on the positive also brings your mind into duality to be aware of the negative that's stopping you from feeling the positive. So sometimes it can be really helpful. Just take that out. So just going to take it out. And we're going to look for moments where you genuinely feel a little different. I'm not even saying happy to my clients.

I'm like, just acknowledge the moments when you feel a little different. and then build off those, work with those, those moments where you did actually notice the heat of the sun after three months of rain in London. Like, let's go there. Instead of, I'm going to write all the things I'm grateful for that I actually don't feel grateful for. And that's where my caution point is with some of those books, even though that's obviously not their intention. Sometimes it just can be a byproduct. That's really interesting.

you say that about positive affirmations because I've said before as from a imposter syndrome's point of view, I think women just again have lost sight of how they truly feel and actually in losing sight of how they truly feel lose sight of what is true and that I think lends itself to imposter syndrome. So when you, I learned this when I was starting working as a doctor where actually in my first few weeks, you're just. learning you are kind of bad at you're not great at your job at that point because you've just started your job and I found that actually accepting that in myself saying right now you have a lot to learn and not trying to mask over it by doing a positive affirmation and saying fair you're brilliant

fair you're this well actually I was not at that point but instead focusing on if I did something little that was good I focused on that or if someone gave me a piece of feedback that was helpful to me, you know, focusing on that, focusing on the points of truth rather than just trying to mask over everything. So, and that was something I experienced. So I feel very validated that you kind of reiterated that, you know, sometimes it is, it's important to get comfortable with what is actually going on and tune into that rather than just putting whipped cream on garbage. Yeah. And I think now my. like little resistance or a version, which I'm very aware of, inside myself also comes from

just seeing how commodified that one practice has become, like having your whatever journal beside your green juice and your dad. I'm like, how many pictures of that are there on Instagram and videos? And I'm like, okay, this is really interesting because ideally in an ideal world, if we are getting in touch with our bodies and we are really coming home, we actually start to let go of some of that stuff, of some of the capitalism or needing to purchase something or needing to put it on social media, those practices, and the journal could still be a part of that,

I have no idea, those practices actually become less interesting to showcase to the world because we're just actually living in that state and so we don't need these external markers like it's kind of become that we're like well or happy or balanced or all those things. And I think that's a part of where my aversion comes from. It's just like, if I see another video with one of those journals in it, I don't know.

I think that's so fair. That's a really useful viewpoint, really, really useful viewpoint. Because do you know what? I've been there where I'm like, maybe this will fix my mental health. I mean, it's everywhere. Yeah. Yay. Yeah.

Yeah. Enough. No, that's brilliant. Foam roller or a massage tool. Also, really big fan of both. Our fascia holds so much. So if you don't know, fascia is kind of the spider wet. I'm going to describe it as the spider web tissue that kind of holds your whole body together.

Insert any commentary you want to put on it. No, I think that's a brilliant way to describe it. That's my very simple term that way I discovered declines. And because it is that connective tissue when we do something like foam rolling or a facial roller, we do start to kind of move that around. And we know that when we experience stress, overwhelm or trauma, our body braces and holds tension unless we complete our stress response cycle. So any of those tools can be really amazing to just kind of subtly poke at or subtly change

that tension and that bracing and lead to what it feels somatically like a release. It's not a release of the experience, just so it can feel like a release or a sense of release. So I use them often. I'm often like face rolling while I'm doing emails. I have it all the time. I actually got told by my TMJ physiotherapist that I needed to stop because I was, I had like over like work overworked a muscle in some way. So it was causing like tension somewhere else. So she was like, no more for like three months.

You need to stop. So I'm just like compulsively. That's the perfectionist overachiever that I can really, really relate to. I'm like, oh, I can do this. I'm going to do it 150%. She was like, never twice a day. I was like, okay. never mind so I'm off it right now but I deeply miss it nice um you said something that I think is

really really important to go into a bit deeper is the stress response cycle can you talk us through what that is yeah absolutely so it does tie back to our autonomic nervous system and the parasympathetics again that's that rest and digest place that you maybe get to go when you do yoga needer or something like that and are sympathetic so that fight or flight or kind of tend and befriend, fawning, which is more socially trained into people. So when we go through any type of experience, that could be getting on the tube and feeling claustrophobic, because maybe you don't like compression or tightness on you. Don't get a weighted blanket if this is you. Or it could be, you know, seeing a thousand emails and you're like,

I don't know how to answer this. Or an experience of trauma, any of these things that overwhelm our body's capacity to stay connected to self or other are going to put us in this stress response cycle to some degree or another. Obviously, when we see our emails, it's not going to be as an extreme of expense as potentially a trauma. Maybe it is for you. Not my place to judge that or say. But nonetheless, it activates the stress response cycle. And so when that happens, and we don't get to actually complete. So when thousands of years ago, or maybe not even, depending on your ancestry, when we get into our stress response cycle, maybe we saw a threat, a lion, someone that we thought was going to harm us, the stress response cycle would mobilize and we would fight or we'd freeze.

And then later as civilization, but also the technological development, we kind of had those more tend and befriend. And so what happens when we go in that stress response, our body still thinks that the lie. or the threat is there and it starts to mobilize. But because it is just emails, we don't complete it. We don't actually run. We just kind of move on with our day. And essentially that accumulates throughout our day and our lifetime. And it leads to patterns of tension, to bracing, disconnection from the body, numbness, all these types of things.

So when someone comes to see a somatic psychotherapist, what I'm actually like really listening for right at the start. And this is why the narrative is important is to. to find out when they experience a stressor, overwhelm, again, trauma, could be a relational breakdown. It's not my job, again, to judge. Whatever activates the stress response, where do they most commonly go? And I've been trained to be able to read that through their breath pattern, through their eye contact, through their movement, and through their posture. So I already have a sense of that. And then my job is ideally, when they're sharing about their present moment, through acknowledging the body and naming the breath or the icon or whatever it is,

inviting them to kind of amp up that stress response a little bit in the therapy room, which we can do through the body. So then they actually get an experience of completing. So completing could look like shaking. It could look like saying no really loudly. It could look like getting up. It could look all different types of way. But this is the kind of stress response cycle.

Emily Nijowski does a wonderful job of tying the stress response cycle into pleasure and sexuality and I always invite people to go give her kind of a checkout in that area because she does a wonderful job of bringing it out of the realm of trauma and into just our daily lives like I've just tried to do so that because it does oftentimes get really associated to trauma when in actuality it's happening all the time. Yeah, yeah. That's really, really interesting. Final bye or bye-bye is I Acupressure mats and foot massages. I love it. Again, have them both.

Have an acupressure mat for my feet that sits under there when I see clients. So yeah, definitely practice in those. Again, not for everyone. I know some people that absolutely detest them, do not like them at all. I've had periods in my life where I can't go near them because it just feels my body feels too sensitive. there's too much hypervigilance. I'm in a stress response from just like my body's way too overwhelmed for that type of contact.

And then there's sometimes it feels great. So again, you kind of already know like if you are someone who when stress doesn't like to be touched, that would be something I'd invite you to like be a little bit more gentle and exploring. Maybe just get the acupressure ring. You can kind of tell before going into like purchasing the whole thing. Thank you for listening. If you would like to hear the full episode with even more jam-packed knowledge, then just click the link in the description.