The Menstruality Podcast - Trauma, The Nervous System and Menstrual Health (Lisa De Jong)

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

What is the connection between trauma, the nervous system and menstrual health? This week we’re speaking with Lisa De Jong, who shares in depth about her personal experience with a decade of chronic pain, an eventual endometriosis diagnosis, and her experience of trauma healing and nervous system regulation. Lisa is a graduate of our Menstruality Leadership Programme and has infused the teachings with ground-breaking science and created a brilliant body of work around trauma, pain, healing and the nervous system.We explore:Why it’s harder to manage stress in the premenstrual phase (as well as perimenopause and menopause), and how our cyclical nature impacts our capacity to regulate our nervous systems. How unprocessed trauma and grief can contribute to menstrual health challenges like PMDD and endometriosis, and how to find agency in the face of collective trauma due to patriarchy, racism and other forms of systemic oppression. Nervous system regulation, polyvagal theory and what being in the ‘rest and digest’ mode of the nervous system can mean for healing and managing chronic pain, especially for highly sensitive people. ---You can now register your interest for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: www.menstrualityleadership.com---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolLisa De Jong: @lisa_dejong_coach - https://www.instagram.com/lisa_dejong_coach

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers, and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey there, it's so good to be with you today. I hope you're well. Welcome back to the podcast.

Today we're talking about a fascinating topic, the connection between trauma, the nervous system and menstrual pain or other menstrual health challenges. And I'm with Lisa DeYoung who was brilliant to talk to. She shared from her professional expertise but also her personal experience. Lisa is a graduate of our menstruality leadership program and she's taken the teachings, married them with all kinds of teachings around trauma to create this brilliant body of work around pain, healing, trauma and the nervous system and she shares in depth about her experience with a decade of chronic pain and eventual endometriosis diagnosis and her experience of trauma healing and nervous system regulation. So we explore why is it so much harder to manage stress in the premenstrual phase, how unprocessed trauma and grief can contribute to menstrual health challenges like PMDD and

endometriosis and how on earth do we regulate our nervous systems and get ourselves in this rest and digest mode that can be so supportive for healing? So let's get going with trauma, the nervous system and menstrual pain with Lisa Deong. So good morning to you, Lisa. It's really fantastic to be here having this conversation with you and lots of people have asked to speak about the topics we're going to talk about today so I'm very grateful to be here with you how's it going oh thank you Sophie good morning to you yeah really really good thank you and uh it's so nice to as we were just saying meet you kind of live over over the internet after knowing each other in the Red School world for several years.

So it's really good to be here. I'm very excited about this conversation. Thanks for having me. Yeah, me too, especially because I can feel through your work just the depth of your experience and how your experience with pain, with endometriosis, with everything we're going to be talking about, how it's crafted you. And I can relate from my own experience of chronic pain. There is just something like we are warriors, the people who have been through and live with this, there is

something that gets crafted inside us, that anyway, we'll get into it, but I can feel it in you and in your work. So I'm excited to dive in. But we'll start as we always do with a cycle check-in. So yeah, where are you at today and how is it informing how you're feeling? I am day 24 and I was flying, yes, not that far. I flew from Devon yesterday from Bristol. I was at a wedding over the weekend. And, you know, when you fly and you travel, it just changes a little bit, your cycle experience. So I'm coming back into myself today.

But yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm excited. I have this what I call activation energy in my body, but I am in inner autumn because I did notice myself a few days ago getting irritated and you know more sensitivity to noise that would be an indicator for me that I'm I've landed in autumn yeah I'm just laughing as you say that because I've just had the most like classic autumn experience around noise because we've got some building work happening in our garden and I said to my hobby can you make sure that they aren't doing anything like from quarter to 11 because I'm recording an interview and he was like yeah yeah sure and then there they were like still banging when I was getting ready and I said hey you know I asked you twice this

morning can you speak to them and he said oh but you can't hear that can you and I'm like it's literally like someone banging a hammer on my head like that's how it feels because I'm on day 21 I mean it might feel I'm a sensitive being it might feel like that on day four as well but and then you know I wasn't the most skillful in wielding my inner autumn power when I was talking to him about this and basically it turned into a fight so it's just like such a classic classic autumn moment yeah I'd probably just go and make some amends after this well think something like building it's not always there so it's not like you've had years of experience to like have that conversation you know and we stumble and it can be really an awkward conversation can't it when we encounter a new irritation in our environment

and when we're in it and it's live and we don't really have time to plan of how am I going to say this and you know like it's just it happens in in real life and yeah it's just awkward and he probably knows like he I'm sure he's clocked because we put my crossover days in the calendar in the shared calendar so he knows it's day 21 today so he's probably queued up in his head right so he's probably going to come at me with more fire so he might be like defending in advance but we'll see we'll talk through it relating through cycle awareness is like a whole other game absolutely worthy of a whole course I think yeah yeah yeah yeah I just love to start with you today really with hearing whatever you'd like to share with us about your experience of menstrual pain of endometriosis and of healing if you could sort of walk us into your story I would really appreciate that thank you um

gosh I even felt a little like pang of emotion there as you asked me that question which with such compassion and dignity I really felt that and I know that that's one of the biggest values that I integrated with in my work with Red School is to dignify my experience for myself you know I remember Alexander saying that to us in the menstrual and the MLP and at the time I didn't really understand what it meant but now sitting here in reflection on my experience in 2017, I can say that I have done that. And that feels really good. So yeah, I'm now in my mid-30s and my menstrual pain began only a couple of years after I began menstruating.

And it was bad. And I won't go into all of the details, but it was bad. I had to, you know, my mom would have to collect me from school and I'd be fainting in the bathroom and, you know, on and off the pill, different pills, different medications. And at the time, obviously there was no like open public conversation around the menstrual cycle and menstrual cycle awareness and shame and all that so I was a school girl alone with pain hiding this pain and on top of that I remember as well there was a lot of pressure on me to perform highly in school and to look a certain way and I was in a very sporty school so there was like academic pressure and sporty pressure and then peer pressure and then you know there was just a lot to hold a lot of

clinging on and holding um and then obviously this this menstrual pain and thankfully I had have a very compassionate mother who looked after me very well and I remember one of the most powerful things I learned from her before I understand now you know the intricacies of the nervous system and pain psychology and the menstrual cycle I was in pain you know one one of many times and she was sitting on my bedside looking after me and, you know, how menstrual cramps come in waves in the same way that like, you know, birthing contractions do for me, it came in these like really strong waves and then it would dissipate. So mom would say to me, and she would see that happening in my body. And she said to me, Lisa, relax your body as much as you can when there is a break in the waves and it was just such power

for her to say that and I really listened to that and I allowed myself to lie there and my whole body just relaxed in between but then the next wave of pain would come you know and I would be bracing and tensing and sweating and shaking and you know it would be very light-headed um so so I guess I began to be curious about my body during this experience and I did I suppose thinking back now that I'm sitting here thinking back and I did start to build this intimate relationship with pain itself from a young age um you know but it wasn't pretty and you know there was a lot of conflict in my, in my understanding of it and in my relating to it. So, so that is kind of where it all began. And long, long story short, I ended up then looking into alternative health options, changing my diet, changing my lifestyle, changing all my cosmetics, getting rid of parabens,

things like that. Doing a lot of of meditation building a relationship with my womb to then discovering and finding red school and then doing a lot of the red school the menstrual cycle awareness work and I also had surgery had surgery twice and I was ultimately diagnosed with endometriosis so the first time I was diagnosed with it was through the laparoscopy, which is the surgery to diagnose it. But then again, another long story and that didn't get properly treated. So then I ended up actually traveling to the UK. I'm based in Ireland. So I went to the UK two years ago and I had a second laparoscopy with a surgeon in the UK who treated it better than they did here in Ireland

so so it's been a journey of navigating both the conventional medical system Sophie and also lifestyle a lot of inner healing trauma healing diet and then currently where I am now is I do have a lot less pain but but I don't have no pain. And so I'm navigating this place of meeting what is and that's still, you know, I struggle with that and a little bit of acceptance work several years ago only to find that there were other options I could still explore. You know, so it has been this journey of discerning action and non-action. because I mean I get it from my personal experience and I can I just have so much respect for how you you've been able to hold all of these paradoxes over all of these years of okay on one hand I can do work to accept this and on the other hand I have agency and I can take action I think there's kind of false friends on both pathways because acceptance can become collapse and depression and hopelessness.

And the agency path can become pushing and striving. And like if I just do more, which often only contributes to the pain. So I just feel like it's a bit of a tightrope to walk between them yeah and even as I actually feel myself tearing up listening to you really um point that out because it's such a um it's kind of a sacred middle space you know it really really is and it's a constant you know ever-changing cycle of moving between the masculine the feminine the via positiva the via negativa as we talk about in in in the work of um alexander and shani and learning to discern that and you know i get it wrong all the time like i get it wrong and i i push into sympathetic you know fight or flight do do do what else can I do and making decisions and googling symptoms

yet again even though I've done that so many times you know what else have I not looked into and then and then maybe being afraid and then coming back into not doing something and and then realizing oh I've let actually some of my self-care that is important to me slip and like for example diet things usually will trigger me um because I'm trying to um step away from too much to do of the to-do list on my self-care plan you know because that can also if I say if for example I don't do a certain thing that I'm used to doing and then I get pain then I go into self-blame and then say to myself oh I got pain because I had that one you know half slice of bread or something like that or or I didn't do enough of my my massage or um those things are all really really helpful and they really really are but it's not helpful for me

to be using the tools of self-care against myself when pain does arise um so yeah it is it is like you say a tightrope um and for me it has been very much a journey of um understanding on a very deep level my relationship with myself and my relationship with pain and how I relate to being a woman and having a menstrual cycle. And then where do I sit in the world in that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you've, you've pointed to so many different threads here that I would love to follow. And I'm, I'm just, I'm just feeling a lot in my heart as I listened to you too. You know, I think there's an emotional dance going on between us because there's, there's empathy and, and I can also, I'm also tuning into the people in our audience you know the people listening who are experiencing pain right

now and hopefully there's just something about this exchange which is healing for everybody just to be in this shit together be in the paradox together and and just to be real about it and you know there is something it does craft us into something doesn't it it does um awaken humility for example in a way that nothing else in my life has I mean childbirth and postpartum life gave me another like when it came to that but did like sort of 10 years of chronic pain that I've had it's just I feel like I was just like right up eyeballing life, you know, and I took a little quote from one of your Instagram posts recently, because it's so real. You said when that physical pain comes knocking, I am being reduced to pure flesh and bones. Yeah.

It's like something about pain brings us right into the moment and like the harsh side of life more than anything else can doesn't it yeah it really really does it does it really brings you close into your body when that's the place you're trying to escape the most yes another paradox I know and it's that it is that and you feel it viscerally you feel the paradox yeah you meet something there don't you you really meet something both sacred but also horrific it's you meet this darkness there and I think for me it has been a journey of learning to build my capacity to be with it but sometimes I really don't want to and sometimes I make the choice to completely disassociate from my body if if I'm in pain and what I mean by that

is I'll you know binge on Netflix and things like that you know and I don't do the things I'm quote unquote supposed to do and I'd rather just distract myself or I might um you know overwork kind of on purpose because I'm enjoying something in my work and I don't want to sit and rest because sometimes that can be um too much for me yeah yeah yeah yeah oh really with you um I I'd love to we'll keep picking up the threads that you've been bringing in but I'd love to speak specifically to your experience of trauma healing when it's come to your healing with endometriosis how has that worked out for you have there been is there sort of specific trauma healing work that you've done yeah there is yeah I've done um somatic experiencing so that's the work of Peter Levine and what happened was I was very

inspired by the way Alexandra actually practices because I've seen her work therapeutically in the group setting in red school years ago and I was very inspired by that and her attention to the somatic experience of people so the you know what people's bodies and what people's nervous systems were doing and how she was really supporting them with them and finding what what I now call regulation so finding ways that their body is already already in ways supporting itself um so I then started to read about the polyvagal theory and the work of Deb Dana and Dr. Stephen Porges and um I started I started reading books about that because I do coaching work and I saw in a lot of people like there was more to the story there were people coming to me who had a history of trauma and sexual abuse and when I asked them around you know when their pain started it often was rooted in you know stories and then I started exploring as you do my own

stories and um reading about that and then I I then realized oh I need I need more support with this because one of the things I was noticing was that I was in I was intellectualizing a lot of the information around menstrual cycle awareness self-care diet lifestyle um but I was intellectualizing a lot of the information around menstrual cycle awareness, self-care, diet, lifestyle. But I was struggling with that journey of bringing it from the head into the body. And so when I turned to the somatic work, that's when I started to learn, oh, okay, there's, you know, like I'm, I am in a fight or flight dynamic a lot of the time, um, for a good reason. It's always there for a good reason. You know, it's there to protect us. It's there to, you know, protect us from harm because of the past or because of our upbringing.

And, but that protection response was no longer serving me. And so, um, yeah, I had a few, you know, my, you know, a few of my own trauma stories I needed to work through in relation to different parts of my life. But I just got really interested in it. And then I could see then the more I started to work on healing trauma and working on that nervous system level, the easier it became to practice menstrual cycle awareness and to practice self care and to do all these things that I wanted to be able to do because a lot of it was rooted in fear of pain as you know I'm sure you've experienced too fear of pain and you know like like I said already like that inner critic coming in and saying oh you're doing it wrong that's the

reason why you have pain and so there was like my own personal trauma but then also like last year the piece I journeyed around the medical system that was another kind of systemic trauma and so I'm very interested in that too obviously people have individual personal trauma but then there's also systemic oppression that affects you know groups of people and I think that a lot of women can experience and the effects of that particularly in the medical system so the journey of finding my agency and getting answers navigating my insurance company all of that stuff I don't think I could have done that had I not done trauma healing and understood also um how groups can be traumatized as well as individuals and what happens as a result of that um yeah so there's just kind of a few layers there but that's you know I don't know if that

makes sense but um that's how I journeyed it yeah yeah it really does make sense I'd love to look at some of the terms that you mentioned for people who are newer to trauma work and I just for myself I'd love to hear the definitions because I'm still learning but when you talk about the fight or flight dynamic could you say more about how that showed up in your experience because I know how it shows up for me but I just I think it's helpful so that we can learn how to spot it really yeah yeah so the fight or flight um part of the nervous system and when we when we're in that place for me at least I'll speak for myself because it'll it will be different for everyone and that's really important to know for me it's um you know constant googling and looking for the next thing to try that I haven't

tried um blaming the inner critic will come in strong blaming myself for not doing whatever the thing was on the self-care list or not you know some diet related thing usually um overwhelm feeling overwhelmed confusion um like it can also show up as irritability so those would be um yeah those would be the ways that it showed up for me in relation to my experience of healing and pain and and yeah the cycle it's quite similar for me I'll often boil over it's like I'm a pan on a stove and I boil over and it comes out in anger and rage and it's a pattern that I've just been tracking for well the whole time I've been working with physical symptoms and probably before and I really like I feel like it might be my lifetime quest really like I'm a fiery person

I've got a lot of passion and it's just it can just go that way and just turn into anger but I really would love to learn how to I think this trauma work and regulation work is so key to it to learn how to catch myself sooner before my pot bubbles over and I like I need to roar or have a shout but I know that's how it often shows up with me and just a feeling of being up up up in my head ideas rather than my body and mind racing thoughts going really really fast yeah that's definitely how it shows up for me. And when you talk about regulation, could you define that? Like what, what regulation means? Yeah. So regulation means our capa that our nervous system has capacity to process, um,

a feeling or an experience. So if you, if something bad happens to you, then, you know, like a trauma happens to you, we can go into a freeze response. Like our system goes into a kind of a hijacked response and we can go into freeze or a hijacked amount of fight or flight. So what I mean by that is, is that it's very important that when we're talking about the flight, fight or flight, that we're not judging it or it's not a bad thing. It's very normal. Like we need the fight or flight to get through life and to get through the day and it's it's there for a reason

but if we're kind of stuck in it or if there's like a huge amount of it um and we're not able to shift out of it or take the edge off it then we go into this place called dysregulation and you might experience a little bit out of body or you might react to things or regret things or um the self-sabotage might come out you know or you might be taking on too much and then go into a freeze thing I'm thinking about people who are doing business or creative projects things like that and so regulation is our nervous system capacity to be with um an uncomfortable experience because at the end of the day, we do have uncomfortable experiences in life and we do have to learn to process them and navigate them. But when it becomes too much, then we move into dysregulation and then often we we do get hijacked by one of the one of the nervous system responses and so it becomes about learning to um regulate and then integrate and building capacity in our nervous system for those big feelings and for

big experiences and so when we are doing trauma work it's very important that we move really really slowly because if we're if we immediately go into the into the deep end and look at all the dark stuff in like one or two sessions that that itself can be very dysregulating and cause cause harm actually for people so um we're always thinking about capacity in our nervous system and when it comes to regulation yeah it's fascinating hearing you speak would it be fair to say that much of our culture is coming from a dysregulated place 100 yeah like our world of politics world of business like the whole stock market must be like is there any regulation in that space like it's no wow I'm just hearing you speak it's like it feels like this newer language

that's coming out around trauma in the last five to 10 years and this better more widespread understanding is just giving us language for something that's so important for our health across the board isn't it mental physical everything yeah 100 it's so helpful and like now that I know like I have a really good sense and I know like a lot of people who are listening to this do as well or they're they're on a journey of working on it like I have a really good sense of what it feels like in my body to come out of regulation and to be in dysregulation and I have now the ability to be able to be really curious about it as opposed to react to it because sometimes it is something to do with me or a past trauma it's like it's hard to like when you're in a dysregulated state it's very hard

to like you know because by the nature of it you can't think no you can't the prefrontal cortex in our brain kind of switches off a bit that's the decision making part and the planning part of our brain it does it switches off it we go into survival mode we do and it's again for a reason so lots of compassion um but when we do this kind of, when we slowly start to work on the nervous system as well, and it you know, we do build the skill of being curious. And so when I move into dysregulation, it can actually be something helpful because it tells me there's something happening that might not belong to me either. So when I'm working with clients, sometimes I move into dysregulation as the practitioner. And if I can discern, oh, that's not actually my dysregulating thing. It's something in the dynamic as well. Or even with my partner, sometimes he might be carrying something on an unconscious level and he's not saying it. And then I'm feeling it like

I'm because, you know, I'm highly sensitive and intuitive. And I know everyone on this podcast is listening. Like it's probably the same and we pick up on these things. Right. And so what my old self would just blame myself and then go, I'm, you know, stressed all the time and I can't regulate my nervous system, but often it's actually, Oh, there's something happening in the environment or in the room or in the space. And I'm using my nervous system ability to be able to track the field if you will um now that's kind of like not necessary for everyone but that's kind of where I am with it now and I don't mean to say that I'm always getting it right or anything but it is like it's a helpful thing it's always to come back to not judging where what our nervous

system is doing but rather be curious about it because there's always a good reason why our nervous system will be moving in and out of regulation and we it always does we can't keep ourselves in regulation that's not the goal the goal is to oh that's a relief yeah because i blame myself for getting dysregulated yeah yeah yeah no the goal is to just get to know your capacity. And if you want more capacity, work on building that. And that's all about building more safety in the nervous system and building safety with particular. So, for example, you know, people who are starting their business or maybe writing a book or on a creative journey.

That can be very scary and that can send you into a freeze response if we take on too much or if our weekly goals are too ambitious and so we have to move in a way that is slightly challenging to the nervous system but not in a way that's going to throw you into freeze and avoidance mode because that can happen you know so that's a kind of a lighter example of how that would work yes it's so helpful and I'm really grateful to Shani and Alexandra for this because they naturally work in this way. I think because of like Alexandra's years and years as a therapist and Sharni's years and years as a movement teacher and hypnotherapist and also I've just got a lot of passion I just want to get on and do things and they're always like whoa pony like let's slow this down so you don't need to get it all done today and I'm like ah but it's it's so good for for my health but

also the system of red school it just keeps everything at this very steady pace which I really appreciate yeah that's I know I I witnessed how they their book writing process for their first book and it was very inspiring yeah yeah yeah it is inspiring so you mentioned polyvagal theory which I see a lot around in in the field and I wonder if you could walk us into it could you sort of like give us give us the headline of what polyvagal theory is and how it can help us yeah it's a neuroscientific term for what we've already really been talking about which is the different branches of the nervous system so and what sends us into a particular branch and how we can move towards more safety and regulation um so poly means many and vagal is coming from this vagus nerve in our

nervous system and which is you know i think that means the wandering nerve it runs down the back of the skull and down into the um down the chest down to the gut and it's actually interesting because because it does go near and around the womb and the gut space so people who have chronic pain in that area or things like IBS a lot of it can be rooted in trauma because when we are in this freeze response for many years it can kind of have an impact on our organs in that area. And so, you know, that's something to explore. But to go back to your question. I want to explore that, but let's carry on. Yeah, we have two branches of the nervous system,

the sympathetic branch and the parasympathetic branch. And the sympathetic branch is the fight or flight, what we talked about. That's where, you know, do, do, do, go, go, go. We need it. We need our sympathetic mobilizing energy to have this conversation, to get up in the morning, to, you know, achieve the things we want to achieve in life. And so again, like I said before, it's not a bad thing. It's just when we get flooded with it, then that becomes kind of, it can cause harm because the adrenaline and the cortisol that is required

for the running of the fight or flight response can then cause in the long-term health problems for the rest of our body. And so that's the sympathetic branch of the nervous system. And then the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system is split into two sub branches. One is the dorsal vagal, which is the freeze response of the nervous system which is where it's the most ancient part of the nervous system and that's where we go when we experience um a trauma when we can't when we cannot fight or fight when we are not safe to fight or flight a situation it can happen often for children um and then the other part of the nervous system is the ventral vagal so that's the rest and digest and that's where we are in safety

undefended and we can rest on our you know it's it's the part of the nervous system where we also connect with humans with intimacy like i said that word undefended it's also the place where we feel on a physical level hope we experience clarity we experience connection safety and rest and digest you know it's a good good place for um the organs resting digesting menstruating um and it is a really important part of the of the system to be able to get to that place especially if we are healing from chronic pain and trauma is to build more capacity to be in the rest and digest and what i will say is that for people who have been living their lives in the sympathetic fight or flight for so long um or in the freeze response if there's a lot of trauma

um and usually what that usually looks like for people is like putting the wash on is going to be exhausting and doing the small tasks will be really, really exhausting or you're, you're disassociating a lot. You're not connected to your body. Um, when we start to do healing work, we do start to move into the ventral vagal, the rest and digest, but that itself can be dysregulating for people so then we kind of come yeah we come back then into fight or flight and into um into freeze because being in ventral vagal is pausing it's being with pleasure it's being in an intimate situation even if it's just holding a conversation with someone or someone you know making eye, those things can be too much after some time, after five seconds, after 10 seconds, after five

minutes. And so it can be hard to stay there. But as we do this work, we then build capacity for that. So the reason I want to really highlight that point is because again, there's nothing wrong with you. It's just, again, your nervous system is pulling you back into what's familiar and into what's safe you know for you or what it thinks it's safe if you're currently managing health symptoms connected to your menstrual cycle including endometriosis and chronic pain, we warmly welcome you to explore our book, Wild Power, discover the magic of your menstrual cycle and awaken the feminine path to power. In it, we share guidance and advice about how menstrual cycle awareness can support your journey to healing. And if you're currently experiencing perimenopausal health challenges or

menopausal health challenges, we recommend our new book, which is coming out on September the 20th, Wise Power, Discoverpowerbook.com. There are so many protective mechanisms at work that aren't necessarily actually helping us, but are there, like you said for a really good reason yeah it feels like with everything that we're talking about cycle awareness is so supportive of the whole process because when we're checking in each day okay i'm on day 21 i'm on day 22 i'm on day 23 it's an act of pausing and reflecting and an act of intimacy really with ourselves so i don't it might be too much to say that it's a regulating experience in

general but it feels like there's a big relationship between regulation and cycle awareness yeah absolutely it's an anchor um i think the two pieces together the nervous system work the trauma work particularly for people who have you know history of trauma and chronic pain they just work so beautifully together because what's not acknowledged in the trauma world is the cyclical experience you know this polyvagal theory is really helpful but you know they're starting to talk about it now and there are people who are you know bringing the two pieces together is that the hormones, so the dance of hormones, estrogen and progesterone will impact how someone's nervous system is presenting on any given day. Right. And then also how trauma is surfacing for someone so that there's an

intersection there. That's really, really important to acknowledge for people who have menstrual cycles. Yeah. So I immediately go to the premenstruum when you say that. And I think, well, I know that my capacity to regulate is much higher in. Well, it's changing, actually, but it historically has been much higher in winter and spring and summer and my capacity to regulate in autumn is lower yeah that's what it feels like to me is it to you well you're on to something yeah yeah because no there's a science behind that so when estrogen drops which is the premenstrual phase and it starts picking up during the inner winter right um when estrogen drops it has an impact on something called the hpa access which is uh just pain in the nervous system but in simple language it means that we are more primed to look for threats and danger

our nervous system is more on alert mode when estrogen is lower and particularly if progesterone is also low so i'm thinking about people who might have like you know they might identify with pmdd um they might have trauma and then there could be also a biological element around you know um low progesterone levels too which can contribute to that so it's yes it is like that for me too is the inner autumn can be very difficult the way the analogy i use for that is is like oestrogen is like the rug you know the stuff we push under the rug for good reasons right in the past gets pushed under the rug and then when oestrogen drops that rug gets peeled up and then our nervous system is actually exposed it's like a raw exposed nervous system it's you know it feels like yeah feels exposing yeah it's so nice to hear the science behind the feeling

that really helps me it really helps me yeah oh yeah I'm such a nerd like I'm oh the science really helps me wow okay and so I mean neither of neither you or I have personal experience of this but then as people enter into perimenopause or the quickening as we call it at red school Wow. Okay. And so, I mean, neither of you, neither you or I have personal experience of this, but then as people enter into perimenopause or the quickening, as we call it at Red School and oestrogen is, is dropping, this could speak to the kind of, yeah, the sense of feeling exposed, feeling vulnerable and feelings like fraught and like close to the edge that happens in perimenopause and then into menopause this explains that too it's a very very real experience yeah yeah yeah which explains why

tending to trauma in these phases becomes even more important yeah a hundred percent a hundred percent like I've started working with people who identify with the PMDD symptoms and not always but very often that you know it can be rooted in trauma and process trauma and process grief there's a cyclical element to it and so I think it is very important that we start to integrate the language of hormones and the understanding of the menstrual cycle when we're working in mental health and trauma the world's slow to pick up on it but we're working on it good thank you thank you for all the work you're doing on it it's I'll always remember when I was in my you know my symptoms are so much better now because I've learned how to manage it and yeah you know I've been on a

somewhat similar sort of sister journey to yours in my own way. But one of the things I found along the way was a book called, gosh, The Tending Instinct. Have you come across this? No. Now this is digging back in my memory bags. said that up until the 80s, no research, no stress research was done on females, because the explanation was the hormones are too complex to measure. So they just didn't. So then they assumed that the female experience of stress was the same as the male experience until the 80s so this is very recent and the fury of me when I heard that just the fury of the just the lack of acknowledgement

and the lack of let alone dignity just lack of even acknowledging it and seeing it yeah but luckily work is being done right there is more progress now no I hear you with that and that's you know spoken to a lot of women who for years thought they had a certain mental health diagnosis only to realize oh they've never been asked about their hormones and their symptoms aren't every day only in their autumn you know so maybe it's something else yeah it's it's an important area and and it really is very helpful to understand that the sensitivity in your inner autumn is as can be as a result of hormones and then also the nerve what's happening in the nervous system and and like yourself sophie yeah it is it's a journey of tending and um peeling back

the layers and cycle after cycle you know just allowing small bits to come up. And I, I would also say to my clients that, you know, you do have choice and agency over what you decide to feel today. Like you can choose to distract yourself if it's too much or to, you know, go and nom out on something. If it's, if there's too much happening, like you, you don't have to do all your trauma healing in one inner autumn. So pacing yourself, titrating is the word Peter Levine uses, and that's kind of like taking it one drop at a time, little drop by drop. And that's what's so amazing about menstrual cycle awareness is that it allows for this cyclicality and a relationship with the seasons and building intimacy with the inner autumn over time gently.

Yes, gently over time. And luckily the cycles keep on coming yes we get to do that can we talk about trauma that comes from the system trauma that comes from being part of a marginalized group trauma due to racism or sexism or homophobia or transphobia or ableism all the all of the challenges that we're facing in our world yeah I know that you approach your work from a social justice lens which I think is wonderful could you speak to how we can approach this through a social justice lens yeah um so there are systems of oppression that that sophie's just mentioned so many different systems of oppression and one of the words i like to use around that is intersectionality and i know you spoke about that with abby as well and in her podcast um on

inclusivity and so there's so many different ways that a person, an individual can be privileged and or oppressed at the same time. So, for example, I'm a white woman, middle class woman, so that's my privilege. But then because I'm a woman, I am then I can be subjected to sexism, which is what men generally aren't so it's important to understand the ways in which we are privileged and the ways in which we can be oppressed and to then when we are for example navigating a system that has an internalized oppression in it for example patriarchy which tends to be the upholding of male power and the oppression of females in the medical system then things it can be very confusing because we do live in a world nowadays where there is you know less patriarchy it impacts us less than it did say for our mothers our grandmothers but then when we are in a more patriarchal system in it or in a particular

country that's more patriarchal certain things can happen um based on our gender and that can be confusing because we're not used to it so i'll just speak for for my own experience so for example when i was wanting to get surgery for the second time i re-entered the medical system after not having been in the medical system for several years. And I was really, you know, and I was navigating different support, different endometriosis support groups as well, and really looking into the work that was being done around endometriosis awareness. And it was quite shocking to me, actually, the way that women were being spoken to, the lack of agency they had the um the silencing of their voices as well around their bodies and their choices and you know certain things happened to me in the medical

system with regards to both my insurance company and a previous um surgeon that I wanted to see um but I can only just say now are as a result of this kind of systemic oppression. And so what the problem with that is, is when we're looking at from a trauma point of view, a system is bigger than one individual. And so I am not me, Lisa, I can't take down the system of patriarchy, the of oppression I can't you know I have very little power over that one particular doctor or so it seems and so then I have to start to think about okay where is my power what can I do how can I find support have I gone into freeze mode because I was I was going into freeze like a massive freeze mode it was a very very stressful

time and what it felt like was um like what systemic oppression is it's kind of a relentless form of oppression it's very hard to get out of that because it's cultural and socio like it's internalized in our society and it can really really leave people really harmed and completely powerless and completely traumatized. So it's important that if you are thinking about, you know, navigating that within your own system is to think, where do I have power? How can I overcome this? How can I find agency?

So for example, one of the things for me, and I was working with my own supervisor at the time, was to realize, oh, I have a legal right to a medical advocate. So if I'm going into a medical appointment and having a conversation about endometriosis surgery in Ireland which is highly complex and you know lots of really uncomfortable feelings in the room and then I have a certain awareness around it that you know a lot of people don't and then the doctor will make assumptions around me and it's all that stuff in the room and I, I can easily very much go into, um, either a fight or flight response

and start reacting and getting into defenses with this doctor, but that's not going to help the conversation. And it's not going to help me get to where I need to get to, or I can go into freeze and just, you know, like I don't know how to speak when that happens and I lose my words and I'll just go along with things and then it's only afterwards I realize oh I didn't actually get out of that appointment what I needed so it was to really think like how can I regulate my nervous system how can I get support oh I have a right to an advocate and I can ask permission of the surgeon to record the conversation I can go in with printed off notes, questions in advance, all these things to help me navigate what can, could be a very disempowering encounter to just trying to access my power as much as I can. You know, so it's really about asking ourselves, how can I

access my own inner power, my own agency and options and my choices within a system that is inherently oppressive. So that's kind of what I, what I think about a lot when I'm working with people. And then obviously I'm working, I am working with, with people of color, people from, you know, I was working with a woman recently enough who spent time in the Middle East and she had a very difficult experience with a, a pregnancy and yeah just you know and just for me as a coach and as a practitioner understanding the systems that people are in and understanding the the identities they hold and how that can also then feed into their own experience of trauma in their bodies that's a really really

important part of um of trauma healing because I think a lot of the trauma healing world well they're again they're like I said with the women piece with the cycle piece it's you know we do need to start talking more about how the impact of things like racism and sexism and homophobia transphobia actually impact you know individuals on their body and their and their trauma and we can work with it yeah it's really important yeah i'm thinking of say a trans man who might have endometriosis yeah and how would he navigate the medical system yeah yeah there's there's so much work to be done and i want to point people to our episode that we did with Vianney Lee about social justice in this space is a really good resource and also Karen Arthur's episode about

menopause is also an interesting resource for people who want to explore this more yeah so what you've said about how to essentially support yourself through a potentially traumatizing medical system just really stands out to me and I wondered if we could slow that down and just kind of create a bit of a list for anyone who's listening who wants you know who's looking to access their agency here so you said find your own agency and power within you yeah that's like the place to begin and then you said there were just some practical things that I thought you know I did this when I was pregnant and I'd had an IVF pregnancy there was some pressure to take me down a medicalized route that I didn't feel according to my own research and my doula didn't feel very necessary

so I had to I did some of the things that you're talking about I wrote notes I made sure that I went in with notes because I noticed that as soon as I was in the office my mind would scramble and I wouldn't be able to think clearly so yeah taking in notes and he said a couple of other things that are really useful the advocate having an advocate yeah it's a legal right you have for for medical appointments now I think that might have been in question during COVID but now it should be back yeah having an advocate is really helpful because it can be a friend or like I think there are actually people who have that as as a career as medical advocacy where

like they know the medical system you know and you can work with them on a professional setting and talk things through in a calm way where you feel supported and safe and held whereas the thing with the medical system a lot of the like gynecologists for example they do have to get through a lot of appointments in a day and and for them it's like it can feel like you're just the next number you know what I mean it's not personal for them, it's like, it can feel like you're just the next number. You know what I mean? It's not personal for them. Whereas this is our body. Like I'm sitting here in this appointment. It's my body.

It's very traumatizing, you know? So yeah, having an advocate is another one. Or just having someone in the room. Like even if you plan for them to speak, you might then end up just having them there. And you might actually end up doing the talking yourself, you know? So that's a really nice option to have. Another thing is asking for conversations to be recorded. So that's one of the things I did after surgery, because I was out of it after surgery, and I wasn't going to remember what my

doctor said to me. So I just said to him, like, can I just record this conversation? And he said, yes, so that's fine. And what else did I do? do yeah I had a list of questions um I also you know if you're if you are navigating something like surgery asking your surgeon can you ask questions over email afterwards if you forget something that's an important thing to be able to access them for communication after your actual in-person appointment to know that you can you know email or email their assistant as well another thing I like to do and I offer to my own clients is a practice called orienting so if you notice yourself slipping into a freeze response in the doctor's surgery for a lot of people you'll go into freeze or you might go into a blank mode in your mind,

or you might forget how to speak English. It's usually how it presents for me. And orienting is giving yourself a minute or even 10 seconds to look around the room and just notice your space, like be in your environment, feel your feet on the floor, let yourself fidget with something, bringing something into fidget or fidget with your hands, you know, yeah. Or with a pen, just looking around, there's usually something nice to look at, like a picture on the wall, or there might be a window and just let yourself take something in, in the space. And that can help you to arrive. It helps your nervous system to just to land and take a breath and then moving into your questions. So there's, yeah, there's like loads of things there that you can do that

I would really recommend. And I still, I still do them. Like I get scared when I go to the doctor still, you know. Yeah. What you're saying is making so much sense of my trauma orange, which is an orange, which is an orange that I have on my desk. I haven't got one right now, but I have one on my desk so that I can scratch it and sniff it to get my, to bring myself back. Yeah. And I think that's an orienting move. Coming to your senses. Yeah.

Yeah. I just know instinctively that if I'm dissociating, if I'm getting activated, that that orange can bring me back. So I call it my trauma orange. Cause it's like, like yeah it's tactile some people orient more with touch um and some people will orient more with vision or with sounds and but yeah if you can bring something that has a bit of both it's really nice you have smell you have color you know it's a lovely color and then you have touch and that can be really yeah it's a really really good idea to do that I love that that. I might steal that one, Sophie.

Please do. Yeah, it was it was given to me by a doctor friend who I think she could just see that I was dysregulated several years ago. I was like, just like smelling orange. You know, she could just see that it was something that would help. Yeah. Amazing, Susanna. Thank you, Susanna, if you're listening. So reluctantly, we need to wrap up, although I think we might need to have a part two of this conversation because there's so much to explore here and it's been really fascinating but i wonder if we could close by talking about just very practical ways to tend to our nervous systems and maybe you know that might differ throughout the inner seasons and maybe we could speak to that a little bit what it looks like as we move through the cycle month yeah you know just

listening to I was listening to Abby and yourself recently on that podcast and you know it's the same thing that's what she said it's just notice just noticing and that is the practice of mental cycle awareness is learning to notice and be with what we notice, you know, build a relationship with our experience, whether it's good or bad or uncomfortable or comfortable. But yeah, the inner seasons. For me, this spring, like something that I like take pride in is that I always have to come back to beginner's mind I really do like as much stuff I know in my head when it comes to practicing this work I I really try to um just come back to that beginner's mind because when my inner spring comes around that seductive energy in the world to run out of the period cave very quickly is just always there you know Sophie that never goes

so yeah and I always like I very often find myself feeling the flatness and the disconnection in the inner spring and so learning to learning what it is that I need to come back into some pleasure it's a nice it's a nice season for pleasure you know the spring um and then with the inner autumn does that look like for you like coming back to pleasure could you give some examples of yeah and then for me it's just walking down by the river doesn't for me because I feel I see the leaves and I see the green and I like read the smells and that's pleasurable for me and I know it's regulating walking I like exercise maybe picking up my exercise a bit as well um but if I'm tired and if I am feeling

flat and drained it would just be a walk listening to music I also love a good afternoon bath Sophie oh yes I never do that oh afternoon bath yes or like a Saturday morning like a late bath on a side you know like a bath at like 11 a.m on a Saturday before lunch you know it's such an indulgent thing to do I love that even if it's just for 20 minutes um oh yes yeah it's a real treat that is because because you kind of associate a bath with like the end of the day when you deserve it but why not have it in the middle of the day you deserve it at 11 a.m you want it that's so true so yeah an afternoon bath with like a cup of tea and sometimes a piece of cake or something you know like that's this is everything this is everything I like to layer my self-care yeah I'm gonna make a date

like for my next time when I can Saturday morning in a bath with a cup of tea and a piece of cake gluten-free dairy-free cake for me yeah me too yeah yeah layering layering self-care is great I really like to kind of see what I can do together you know so baths are good for the inner spring um yeah but that would kind of yeah just doing slow moving slowly again but I if I'm feeling really flat and exhausted in the inner spring it doesn't take a lot for me to come back you know so something like that like one bath will really help reinvigorate me um I also like getting acupuncture as well and that can be a nice thing to do around that time of the cycle

because in the inner autumn like I tend to be a bit more sensitive to the needles you know so yeah the inner spring can be nice. Yeah. What was your question again? I can't even remember what the original question was. Just like some practical ideas for how to tend to the nervous system. I think you might've just covered it with the 11 a.m. bath and tea and cake. Yeah. It's a great place to end our conversation thank you lisa i would love it if you could let people know like how they can stay in touch with you if this conversation has been inspiring you know can you tell us a bit about your your work and your offers yeah sure yeah yeah i do uh one-to-one coaching and professional training there are my two offers for people

who want to integrate this kind of trauma nervous system work into their practice and I have a website lisadeyoungcoaching.com I also have lots of free courses they can sign up for and check out my way of working there I have a podcast as well from pain to power and I'm on Instagram I think I'm on Instagram l think I'm on Instagram Lisa underscore do young underscore coach but you can find everything on my website so that's great and I'll put the links on the show notes page for this podcast on our site too if people want to find thank you Sophie thank you and thanks for having me it's been such a lovely conversation it's yeah it's really really been really fun. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it. And yeah, thank you for sharing so openly about your experience and for, yeah, I just

want to celebrate your courage and your tenacity to keep going through it. Thanks, Sophie. Yeah, likewise. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today for this conversation I took away so much about how I can take care of myself through the cycle month and take care of my nervous system and I hope you did too I really look forward to being with you again next week it would be awesome if you're loving the podcast if you could leave us a review on Apple

Podcasts, it helps us to reach more people. Okay, so I'll see you next week and until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.