Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Training Your Nervous System To Release Anxiety – With Victoria Albina

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

// R E A D Y • S E T • R E S E T This episode is all about codependency, perfectionism, and anxiety. Plus, we talk about moving ourselves out of fight or flight and the differences between venting and complaining. Victoria Albina (she/her) is a Certified Life Coach, UCSF-trained Family Nurse Practitioner, and Breathwork Meditation Guide with a passion for helping women realize that they are their own best healers to break free from codependency, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and reclaim their joy. She is the host of the Feminist Wellness Podcast, holds a master's degree in public health from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College. Victoria has been working in health & wellness for over 20 years and lives on occupied Lenape territory in New York's Hudson Valley. In this podcast, we cover: The power of collective thinking Why social connection is the best path to happiness Intelligence is in the flesh: how we can tune into the body Simple ways to relieve stress and anxiety How to determine the difference between venting and complaining // R E S O U R C E S  M E N T I O N E D Feel the impact of Organifi - use code PELZ for a discount on all products!  15-Day Fat-Burning Experience Victoria's 6-MONTH SELF-LOVE PROGRAM Victoria Albina Free Mediations  Book: Into the wreck Book: Rushing Women's Syndrome // M O R E  O N  V I C T O R I A  A L B I N A Instagram Podcast Facebook LinkedIn // F O L L O W Instagram | @dr.mindypelz & @theresetterpodcast Facebook | /drmindypelz & /theresetterpodcast Youtube | /drmindypelz Please note the following medical disclaimer: By listening to this podcast you understand that this video is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. Always seek the guidance of your doctor with any questions you may have regarding your health or medical condition.  

This collective matter, right? Your growth is my growth. When you thrive, I thrive because we, we can move together. We can be in a collectivist way of thinking, a collective framework. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders, and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again. My name is Dr. Mindy Pels and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I am bringing you guys Victoria Albina.

Now, let me give you a little background on what you're about to hear and who Victoria is. So what I love about her is she has a really strong foundation in functional medicine, specifically as a nurse practitioner. And she is now moved into more of a certified breath worker. She's a life coach. She's an herbalist. And she has an amazing podcast called The Feminist Wellness Podcast. Now, let me tell you what I wanted to chat with her about.

I want to talk about codependency. I want to talk about perfectionism, anxiety. You know, one of the deep questions that I have asked myself over and over again is, are we doing life wrong? Do we set ourselves up for failure and for stress? And this conversation was a total whack on the side of the head because she had some incredible research and Twitter. tools and ways for us to look at our nervous system and how our nervous system responds to stress. But then she brought in as what you'll hear, she talks about the more woo-woo of some real strategies we can do like breath and breath work. And she talked about different squeezing techniques we can do. She talked about how do we move ourselves out of fighter flight and

what's the difference between venting and complaining? This was a deep conversation. So if you're dealing with anxiety, you're dealing with depression, you're looking for a completely different way to approach this. This is absolutely the episode for you. So Victoria Albina, enjoy. I hope you laugh as much as we did as we were going through this conversation together. Enjoy.

We have to start with this idea. Because this is something that baffles me. And I think we can actually help reframe for people. Why the heck is everybody so tightly wound right now? Why are people so anxious? You know, where my brain goes is, are we doing life wrong? Are we approaching this thing that we do day to day with the wrong focus? why do we have to be such overachievers? Why do things have to be so perfect? Like, these are questions I would love to answer for people. So we're starting off casual.

We're starting off light. Is that, is that it? We're just like, no big deal. Am I doing a life wrong? Says Dr. Yes. Just casual? Just casual?

I'm a deep thinker. No, I know. Like, if you came to my house for dinner, this is how we would start. I love that. Yeah. So listen, are we doing life wrong? I mean, kind of, right? Yeah.

Like when we look at all the studies and all the parameters, the indicators of human joy and happiness, the number one thing time and time again is human connection. Yeah. Right? And so when we think about our human connection, I mean, we had a spritz of pandemic, you know, that made it. a little extra challenging what with the not leaving our fifth floor Brooklyn walk up for you know yeah that was cute but yeah what are you going to do but yeah you know I think we are we're lacking not only in connection with one another in that deep quality way I too am an asker of like tell me all deepest everything we just met so I'm with you there right so that we're that that

connection is missing for so many of us, but also connection with Pachamama, with Mother Earth, right, with nature. Before we started, you shared that you were gardening before our conversation, right? That connection with hands in the dirt, dirt under the nails. Yeah. Right. It makes you think of my friend, Dr. Maya, she treats book, The Dirt Cure, right? How can we, oh, Dr. Maya is amazing. But like, you know, she's, she's tops. But like our interaction, right? So there's there's that cellular layer, that microbiome layer, right? How are our bodies as an organism interconnecting, interacting?

How is your immune system impacting mine? Right. There's that spiritual level of am I connecting with the sky above the earth below all of my relations on either side of me? Yeah. There's that energetic layer as well. And, you know, then there's just that layer of like being isolated F's with our head. Being isolated, right?

And not in not feeling seen. So my work since I transitioned out of primary care and as being a functional medicine provider into life coaching, my focus has been to support human socialized as women with codependent, perfectious and people pleasing thinking. And when we really drill down in that, and yes, I'm so answering your question, when we drill down in that, what we get to is this lack of anchored, embodied self-worth. And from self-worth, we say, I cannot connect with others unless I show up perfectly. Right? Unless I have.

But is that so is, oh, God, I have so my thought. Sorry to interrupt you. Go, go, go. Interrupt, interrupt. Is that our own like bar we've set for ourselves? Because, you know, like you and I connecting right now, we're just being our authentic selves. We're enjoying this conversation. But some people go into conversations and they feel like I need to be a certain way.

I need to say a certain thing. So are we setting the bar too high for ourselves when we go into connections with others? I mean, I think you're asking nature or nurture. And I think the answer is yes. Right? I think the answer is right. So we are all, so our nervous system patterning gets set in those earliest years of life, zero to three, zero to seven. We can also overlay that with the, with the development of the chakras, but maybe that's a different show. So if we focus again on that we won't go to Wu,

but you know I will. Available for Wu. It's okay. We can go Wu. Woo's the best. Yeah, especially when we can tag science to the Wu. Oh my God. Then it rocks. Isn't that so amazing? My favorite is when TCM, A or Veda, Western herbal, right, wise woman transition, the shocker, when it's all literally saying the exact same thing.

I'm like, come on. We actually give it a name now. We call it neuroscience. And we give it like all this like put it on a pedestal. And it's like, no, this is just how science is explaining woo-woo. Right? Yeah. Oh, I love it.

I love the witchcraft. Yeah, so hold, please. I lost my train of thought, but I can find it so easily. So neuroscience. So, right, in the development of our neurology, of our neural grooves, of that nervous system-based story of what it means to be safe and secure as a small animal in the world, right? That gets set so early. Our attachment system, right?

our framing of whether it's safe to be independent, interdependent, or if codependent's the only way to be safe, if the only way to get love and care and attention and praise and anything from our, like, attunement from our adults is to like always be the good girl, always be perfect. Look, I got straight A's. Will you love me? Right, right, right. Then we bring that into the rest of our lives. lives until until we learn to become our own watcher.

Right? And through mindfulness. And I always point folks towards mindfulness versus meditation. Meditation for folks with a trauma history can actually not be super cute. I can need to more anxiety. We start with mindfulness. And then we try out meditation with an open heart, open mind. But mindfulness is available for all of us.

Right. So let me ask you this. Yes. So as we're growing up, especially from zero to seven, our subconscious patterning is kicking in. Our neurology is kicking in. We're adapting to the people around us who tell us this is right. This is wrong. And when we grow into our middle school years and our high school years, the way it is now, this wasn't the case for me.

But the way it is now, now I get to go to social media. And I get to compare my life to the life. of everybody else. And now I can make even my own self-diagnosis of how I'm showing up in the world. Right. Do you think, again, I'm going to go back to why we have so many anxious people, right, especially the younger generation, are we in this comparison model that is mixed with our own desire to be perfect that is leading us to suffering?

Yes. And I'm going to go ahead. And for anyone who knows my work, they will not be shocked. They'll be shocked. It took this long. I'm going to go ahead and throw the patriarchy and late stage capitalism right under the bus. White settler, colonialist thinking right under the bus. Okay.

Explain. Give it to me like in a day to day. Joy. Right. Because these are frameworks that say we are not one. Yeah, they are not collectivist frameworks. They're frameworks who. who are predicated on pitting us against one another,

that your success is my loss. She got married, which means I'm a failure if I'm not. He got that job. I'm a failure if I'm not versus, right? And I am not indigenous. I am South American, but I am of white settler colonialist lineage. And with appreciation, not appropriation, I will flag an overarching indigenous way of thinking.

about the world that says this collective matters. Right? Your growth is my growth. When you thrive, I thrive because we can move together. We can be in a collectivist way of thinking, a collective framework. That is beautiful. So if I go to social media and I see somebody doing something amazing instead of feeling separate and saying, hey, what they're doing makes me a bad person. I could say, how cool that they, they, they're the same person as me. We, when they do something amazing, I, that that means that I have the potential to do something amazing or I am doing something amazing. Could we reframe it as a collaboration moment?

Ooh, a collaborative moment. That's so juicy, right? Thank you for that language. A collaborative moment. I think of it like the four minute mile. So when they broke the four minute mile, now everybody was able to do it. It was just a mindset, right, that shifted. So if social media is not going away, then how do we go to social media and redefine it? Your win is my win. What would we need to do to be able to make that happen? Yeah. So in my work, I use two frameworks that work as a collective to support us in changing our lives. The first comes from the understanding that about 20% of our lived experiences, humans is top down. The brain and our thoughts, our cognition, our prefrontal cortex teamed with the old monkey mind and that reptile brain, feeding information down our nervous systems through the vagus nerve into our body and creating our lived experience as our The other 80% of our lived experience is bottom up, body up, right?

Is the vagus nerve, the gut, that deep intuition. And again, this is where feet on the earth, right? We get that divine wisdom, that energetic flow of connection with Pachamama with Mother Earth. And so that's 80% of our lived experience as human animals is that wisdom, that intelligence coming up that we then interpret through our minds. And so what I teach is a combination of somatic practices that look at the body and help us to connect inward to the body to see what we're feeling and feel what we're feeling. Because my clients, and most of us these days, don't really feel our feelings.

We sort of think our feelings. Yep. Right? Like, oh, I feel so sad. And it's like, really? Yeah. Your energy feel, your face, your body language, like, are you feeling sad or are you thinking sad? Yeah.

And how, so, okay, if you ask yourself that question. Yeah. How, I think that's a great reframe. Yeah. So how would I know the difference between thinking, sad and feeling sad. Yeah. Yeah. So that's when we slowly and we titrate this work very carefully, tune into the body.

Right. As much as feels safe, as much as feels available for a given person. in a given moment, we tune into the body and see if we can locate that felt sensation somewhere. Okay. So we can begin to open up a portal of communication between ourselves and lived, felt somatic experience of being us. So if I'm having an anxiety attack and I'm like, my heart is racing, I feel tense, I turn into my body and I'm like, oh, I don't like the way my body feels.

I wouldn't do that. I would vote. I would vote. I'm not going to veto, right? Because you do you, babe. But like, but honestly, please don't do that as a first go. So what I would do if you're having an anxiety attack is to recognize that you're in sympathetic activation, right? You're in a fight, flight moment where your vagus nerve, your nervous system is activated. And there's, there's pent up. There's a activation. And. energy within your physiology, right, within your musculature, within your tendons, that needs to be released. Okay. And so some of the things we can do is shaking our hands, taking a brisk walk, something we can push, right? So you can put both hands at a wall and push. You can grab the desk in front of you and grasp it and breathe and grasp it harder and breathe. When we talk about deep breathing for anxiety. It's not the deep breath. Actually taking a deep breath and can engage the barer receptors in the chest and can actually make you more anxious. Okay. So we want to focus on is that long breath out. It's that breath out. Is that exhale out that lets your body know? Wait a second.

If I'm being chased by a lion, do I have the time to exhale slowly? Oh, I guess not. maybe I'm okay. Right? The nervous system. Yeah. Yeah, calms down. So we're always asking that question, what signals internally? There is no lion here.

So I highly recommend not, again, going inward, but orienting to the environment. So that is a beautiful nervous system trick. And I actually have a recording of myself walking folks through an orienting exercise that you can get on my website. Maybe we can link to that. Yeah, let's link to that. We have so many people with anxiety right now. I feel like whenever something's happening to everybody, I feel like we need to look at the common denominators, which is why I started off with,

are we doing life wrong? Because what we've been taught is how we do life is not producing happiness for the majority of the humans, at least here in America. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. So orienting is a quick, and I'll just quickly share, it's a practice of, again, not going in interiorly, not going into your body if that doesn't feel safe, but really letting your nervous system know, I am awake and aware to where I am physically in the, in the world on this earth. And I can look around and see that there is absolutely not a lion here. So you may look around and count the number of squares, one, two, three, four. Great. Count the number of blue things. One, two, three, four, five. Count the number of different

smells. I smell my palisanto deodorant. Smells really great. Right. So that's a smell I can connect us. So we start to use our different senses. You can take your hand and really get curious about the texture of your shirt or your necklace. The texture, you know, those little rivets at the top of your jeans. Give those some love. Feel them. Really allow each of your senses to ground in and to settle. Remembering reptile brains don't like to be left alone.

They like a job. They're like Labrador retrievers that way, right? So I try not to leave my reptile brain without like actual homework. Okay. I love that. Yeah. So just give it some work. And then it will allow you to calm.

Yeah. It reminds me of like a toddler, like that's having a meltdown and you just pick him up and put it, redirect them. Right. And now all of a sudden they switch into happiness. Right. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the work that I do with my clients is around reparenting, which for me

doesn't mean going back into the trauma and digging around in the trauma. That's not what we're doing here. What we're doing is finding these small moments throughout our day, our week, our life, when we can show up for ourselves with the compassion, care and gentleness that we would want to give a toddler. I love that. I love that. Be your own toddler. Yeah, be your own. Be your own toddler. There's a whole course right there. Right. That's so good. Okay, so dive in to polyvagal theory. And part of why I know you talked about how you like that, once I understood polyvagal theory, I was like, here is the problem with the teenagers right now and why they're

struggling. Here is the issue on why mental health needs to be addressed. This is why when you look at and I want to kind of dissect, you know, what just happened at the Olympics with Simone Biles and how we get to these points of anxiety where we can no longer move forward. We go into freeze mode. And I think the polyvagal theory really explains that. Yeah. So to put it as succinctly as I can, Polyvagel is the work of Dr. Stephen Porges, PhD. He was a researcher who mostly worked in the neonatal ICU

and worked with very, very small, like three pound size humans measuring heart rate variability and stress hormones. His work was made, quite frankly, and I have a degree in epidemiology, and yet I find that his work sometimes a little anyway. I read, Deb. Well, he's a researcher. Right. No, I know.

It's meant to be that way. So Deb Dana is the social worker who took his work and made it into palatable English. It's still written for clinicians, but I find that it's a lay audience can just eat it on up. So Deb Dana. Okay. So Polly Vagel is about there being PollyVagels. So the Vegas here we're referring to, Vegas is the 10th cranial nerve. It's the longest nerve in the human body.

And it enervates or gives nerve function to effectively the whole middle of the animal going through the middle of the animal. It's divided into two parts, the dorsal and the ventral. And it sort of stops, the division stops at the diaphragm. And ventral gives energy to the bottom. and dorsal gives energy to the top of the animal. Okay. So what we learned from polyvagal, so I don't know about when you were in school,

but when I was at UCSF, we learned they're sympathetic and there's parasympathetic. Yes. Good night. End of story. Right. And that was about how long that lecture was and about how in depth. And I was like, cool UCSF, thanks.

Yeah, real helpful. Yep. So what we now understand is there's the sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight. adrenaline, noropenephrine, eventually cortisol there. And then parasympathetic has two branches. And this is for me where it gets super interesting. There's ventral vagal, which is this forward-facing, safe and social, making eye contact, smiling a sincere smile, really connected with another human mammal, with a non-human mammal, with a tree, like connected to the world outside and feeling.

safe inside. And then there's dorsal, which is the part of a parasympathetic that I hadn't previously, like I didn't learn about in my medical training, which is the freeze part. Yes. And dorsal is the nervous system moment of last, last, last resort. So as humans, and this goes back to your question about anxiety, because we started by talking about connection. Yeah, and how vital true connection, not social media connection, true connection is. So ventrothagal just wants us to be in connection. As human pack animals, what we want is the collective. What we want is community. What we want is, I need you to see me. I want you to see me. I want to see you. And that is our, that is our most natural state, right? That is our most joyful state.

That is when our thyroid works best. That is when our. our digesting when the migrating motor complex and the small intestine is chugging along, right? And we're less likely to get small intestine bacterial overgrowth. That's when our large intestine is doing what we want it to do and is moving the poop along and out and excreting all those toxins. I mean, don't get me started on the cytochrome system and what the liver is up to when we are in ventral, vagal, heart, lungs, everything works better when we feel safe, when we are in a socially connected state in a life threat moment we humans will lean on social connection first and foremost so let's say right let's say you're like you're mugging me dr minnie dr mindie why you mugging me

you but okay oh my god you're the sweetest wait do you mean it I know you live in New York but in California we don't mug you just kill you I'm with taxes. All right. Okay, but for the sake of the conversation, I'm mugging you. Let's just pretend. And other Brooklyn immediate things to go to. Right. And so if you came out to me and you were like, hey, lady, give me your wallet. The first thing that 99% of us would do is be like, oh, cool, cool, cool. Take my wallet. All good. Hey, do you want my phone too? Like, we're good here. Do you want this ring? Like, take my stuff, but leave me.

alone and the way we communicate that is we're cool right we're good good good right we're cool cool cool I'm trying to make eye contact I've got my hands up right I am not a threat we are good stay in ventral with me buddy stay right here interesting interesting okay right should that fail under a life threat circumstance yeah which is what trauma is in our body is the the thought that it's game over right now when that fails, we go into fight or flight, right? So put up your dukes. I'm five, three, and a touch of nothing. I'm going to bust it out of here. I'm not punching nobody, right? So I might head for flight, right? And I notice that when I get anxious, I get antsy. Interesting. Okay. Right. My body starts to pick up that fighter flight kind of energy. And because I know that at my size, flight is my option, my body is like, okay, okay. You know, you can't see because it's a podcast, but my hand automatically starts sort of wagging around in the air. Right. My body's ready to bolt. Okay. When we have exhausted the fighter flight system, when we've got no give left to give,

meaning adrenaline or epinephrine eventually cortisol, the body's like, you know what? Enough with you. I'm not. I'm like done with this, right? It makes me think of diabetes, right? And the pancreas is like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm a beta cell.

You wanted insulin? You wanted insulin. You asked for insulin yesterday. You want more? I'm done with you. Diabetes for you. Do you know what? It's like, yep.

Right? Yeah. Right. And so the body then is like, well, what's the other option? You know what I need to do? I need to go to the way back of the cave and I need to just get really small and get far from the fire so no one can see me. Just get in the dark and then the lions won't find me. I'll be safe back there. This is depression. This is depression. This is isolation. This is self-criticism. This is the backside of anxiety. Right. And high activation

and freeze is when we're at the back of the cave, but we're anxious about it. Right. Right. That's when we're still got a little adrenaline going, but we're in the process of shutting down. So, okay, can I just rephrase so I make sure I understand this? Oh my gosh. Please. I get excited, so I appreciate it.

I love the polyvigal theory. I've never heard it explain like this. So what I'm hearing from you is that when we first go into stress, our natural state is to actually connect and to try to. please, we move in even more into rapport and we try to create a connection with that person. Can I interject with an example? Yeah. So if something stressful happens at work, you turn to the kid next to you and you're like,

boss is such a jerk. Am I right? Oh. Is this why we like to bitch to each other about like. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've got a whole show, an episode about why venting is amazing, complaining is terrible. What's the difference?

Oh my gosh. So venting is, I need to just let this go and then you actually release it. So you use that ventral connection to release it. And complaining is when from that codependent place, we're taking our venting, we're putting it on someone else's plate and we're looking for them to validate our lived experience of being angry, being annoyed, not liking this, being blah. So that's-valid me, validate me. That's complaining. And that keeps us stuck. Positive psychology shows us this. Yes. Yeah. So that's our first.

So one way we would know that we are under stress is when we're not venting, we're now complaining, but we're trying to do it in a way to create a connection with another human being. That's a part of a stress reaction. Is that correct? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So now from there, no, this is fascinating. I don't know if our listeners care, but I'm geeking out on this. I'm loving it. So it's just you and me here, right? I'm cool.

So, okay. So, yeah. So then when that doesn't work for us, now we switch over to fight or flight. And we decide we're either going to fight or we're going to run. Okay. So that's, that would be, could we say that there are different phases of stress that we may be able to label? So the first phase was you go to your girlfriend, you bitch about, you know, the boss, the spouse, somebody like that. The second thing is now I want to fight with the boss or the spouse or I want to just,

I want to quit my job, I want to leave my marriage, I want to run. And then the third is now I'm just going to go into my room. I'm going to grab a bottle of wine and I'm going to get on social media and I'm going to check out. Yep. How many humans? I mean, that's so many people. I'm going to, again, as an epidemiologist, I'm going to just.

go ahead and say all. Right. Except maybe the Dalai Lama. Maybe. Let's hope he hasn't do that. I mean, dude gets to be a human too, though, huh? Do you think, but maybe he goes, I'm going to go meditate. I just, you know, I'm going to go grab. I mean, he is a reincarnated llama. He probably is like, he's like, I'm chill on that whole process. I think you're right. I'm going to put him on my list of people I want to interview on my podcast. Drop him a podcast, a postcard, see what you, your back. Let me know how that goes. He can be on my show too. We can do it. We can team up on them and see what he says. Poor man. Poor man. The two of us. So, okay, so let's use this idea. Again, most brilliant explanation of polyvagel that I've ever heard. So well done. I love that. Thank you.

Thank you. Now, if I'm in complaining mode, what are my options? Okay, I don't want to go to fighter flight. So I'm in complaining. I'm bitching, bitching, bitching. I'm no longer venting. I'm complaining. How can I pull myself back? Do I need to go into fight or flight and run to see the cycle through? Okay. So, so, right. So completing the stress activation cycle is a really important part of this process is you don't need to go into fight or flight per se, meaning you neither need to punch a lion nor run across the Serengeti. But you do get. to check in with your body to see to see what completion of your stress cycle looks like so that could be again shaking shaking the whole animal uh for me i'm a sprinter so running not for long but pretty fast

and that one bragging um but not like like 60 seconds but real fast um that helps me you know sometimes we're in a meeting, sometimes we're at a boardroom, sometimes we're in court before the judge giving our fine, whatever, you know what I mean? Or we're with a patient and we can't exactly run. So that is when we can do sequential tightening and relaxation of the muscles. Right. And so we can start, I am squeezing my toes and curling them and curling them and tensing them so hard and relaxing. Relaxing. Love it. Right. Tighten my right calf. Tighten tight and tighten tight and tighten and tighten. And relax. least left and go all the way up and down your body. And what's beautiful about this is for folks who are carrying a lot of trauma energy or who are in a more active phase of trauma treatment, for example, you're not really going inside, right? It's not like a body scan that can be more activating. You're kind of staying outside the body and working with it. Right. Right. And for those for whom meditation is a beautiful practice. Mindfulness is part of your every day. This will be likely wildly accessible. And it really just helps your physiology to release, to tighten and release.

It's also one of my favorite. So a lot of my folks with insomnia, it's secondary to write, that anxious spinning mind right before bed. And sure, we can do magnesium and glycine and we can go that route. And we can think about our nervous system. So doing a full body tighten and release before bed can really signal to your nervous system. Baby, you're safe. It's okay. Yeah, go to sleep. So in that moment, what I'm hearing is sometimes you can't talk to your thoughts.

Like, and I've tried this. Let's use sleep as an example. I actually, when my kids were little or teenagers, I thought it was really great to try to solve all their problems at two in the morning. And then I learned that doesn't work. So I started to try to re-pattern what my brain was thinking. What I'm hearing you say, and I tried to talk myself out of, like you're making a problem out of something that's not even there. So we have these little conversations in our brain.

What I hear you saying is what's more effective for our neurology is to go to the body and to actually use these tools you're talking about in the body. That's my finding, right? I teach a CBT, a cognitive behavioral framework called the Thoughtwork Protocol, where we do get neutral about the circumstances of our lives, meaning we step out of adjectives, out of adverbs, out of judgment, right? So for example, if you're thinking about the kid having a problem, right? Like a kid got grade, right? We get neutral about the circumstances. And what is my habitual thought. We look at that thought and then we go to the body. What is the feeling that engenders in

my body? What action do I take ruminate and not sleep? And what's the result? I'm tired and the kid still has the same grade. And I'm not going to solve it at two in the morning. Unlikely. That's what I finally told myself. I used to call it my worry scan. I was like, you know what? You don't ever solve anything good at two in the morning. But it's almost like the brain just chats at you. It's just like, so that's why I love this idea of having something, instead of trying to talk it out of,

out of like, you're wrong. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, let me pause on, brain, you're wrong.

That doesn't work? I mean, that's like yelling at the dog for barking at the postal service carrier, right? The dog just looks at you and it's like, you're screaming? Then everything must be wrong.

Bark, bark, bark, bark. Interesting. Right. So you're pouring fuel on a sympathetic fire. If your brain is barking, it's because it believes that there is danger. So we work with my, I was a hospice nurse. My work in this world is compassion, gentleness, and open-hearted love. This is always how I walk in the world most of the time.

Sometimes I'm a human. and if you cut me off at Trader Joe's, you might see another part of me. You are a New Yorker. I'm a New Yorker. I'm also from Buenos Aires. So it's like a combo of a lot of city-based aggression. But, you know, I do what I can. So I try most of the time to lead with that open heart.

And from there, there is so much healing that is available when we start to see the things that annoy us about ourselves, the things that are challenging about ourselves, the things that keep us rolling around in. in rumination, in suffering, in anxiety as protectors. This comes from internal family systems, and I'm going to give some big ups to the somatic internal family systems, Susan McConnell's book, oh, she's a goddess, where she teaches that, you know, these parts of us that come up to create what feels like and maybe interpreted like drama and stress and strife and struggling are just parts of us that believe that

safety is the back of the cave. Believe that safety is running from your problems, right? Believe that safety is in another glass of wine or ruminating or cavetching or whatever it is that causes you pain. So all of our internal actors just want us to survive till tomorrow. So how can we, if we can't talk our brain out of what it's thinking. Yeah. And we're moving towards freeze, which I want to get to in a moment. Yes, yes, yes, yes. What what what's like give me a two in the morning technique is that where I squeeze my muscles. Yes. What I love this like trying to argue with the dog because I have dogs at home. I totally get that. Yeah. So if you and and I do this.

I feel like a schizophrenic sometimes. I'm like no, that's not that thought's not accurate. I need to think about something different. Right. And it can get a little mentally exhausting. Yeah. Yeah. So we we leave the mental alone.

We let our brain know. Hey, brain. So, um, You're actually on vacation. I'm going to be with the body for a little while. And we also give reptile brain. Like I said, some jobs, right? Okay.

What we also remember, so if either panic anxiety or freeze, dorsal shut down, we remember that the skin and the nervous system, if we go way back into our embryology days, they're coming from that same threat, that same dermatome. How cool is that to remember? member. So we can use warmth to calm a panic. We can use cold to calm a freeze. So running cool water on our wrists, particularly like where you would check a baby bottle, right? Like the empty cubital fossa right at your wrist. Right? Because that's just that cold is just going to go

love that. Is this why my chili pad? Is this why my chili pad works so well? Oh yeah. You know, like I, because when I wake up in the middle of night, I put that thing down. Yep. And I have a weighted blanket on top of me. And between those two things, boom, I'm out. Evan. Yeah. So that's all about taking me, preventing me from going into a freeze mode.

So beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, cold water on the wrist, chewing on ice, drinking something cold, you know, even just a little bit. And I can hear all the TCM folks. I know ice is bad for your cheat. but if you're actually going into a freeze, maybe we can allow it this once, right?

Yes. Just a little ice chip. Just bring that cold energy in. You know, I live now in the Hudson Valley and occupied Lenape territory. Nature half the year gives me a natural, you know, ice cooler. Just opening the window in the winter and actually in the summer at 3 a.m. too and getting that cold air on my face. Love that. Love that.

Okay. So now, I love this. And now I go into, let's say I didn't, I'm, I don't even know any of this. I just am now in freeze mode, which, you know, I've been thinking a lot about the Simone Biles thing because what's beautiful about what's happening. And at the, yeah, yeah, is that she's really bringing mental health to the surface. So, but what I'm hoping is that from here, we will have a. better discussion about how to help people with mental health. So my guess is you get to a point where you just get so exhausted, you've got to

withdraw, you've got to freeze, and there's nothing you can do. But check out. What happens when you're in that moment, whether you're at the Olympics or you're at work or you're some inner relationship and you're like, I'm feeling so much anxiety. I can't get to cold. I can't open the window. I can't get to nature. I'm going to get to a glass of wine.

I'm going to smoke a joint. I'm going to do something that just helps me check out. Is that bad? Oh, God, no. I am not out here to demonize any choices we make to save our own lives. Absolutely not. Am I out here saying that alcohol is a healthy life choice on the daily for the long term? No, right?

If you're doing it day after day. Yeah. Whenever we are buffering, attempting to push our emotions away, A number one, it doesn't work, as we've talked about, right? B number two, we are losing out on half of what it is to be a human, right? Because without the suffering, the anguish, the sadness, there is no joy, right? The yin and the yawn of it. Contrast.

Thank you. Yes. Right. I was just listening to you, or do you listen to Abraham Hicks? Oh, I have in the past. Yeah. I was just listening to her this morning about it just popped up on my YouTube, all about contrast and how a part of the human experience is just really when you buffer up against those tough moments, it really gives you clarity on what you want.

Yeah. Yeah. And here I'm using buffering in a slightly different sense, meaning putting a buffer between you and your human emotion, right? which is often when we reach for a substance or over exercise, right, or food or orthorexia, right? Some sort of something that keeps us from fully being present, which is the essential human task to be present, authentic, and aware. Right. Right.

So as a general way of living, I don't think buffering is very good for us. And as a nervous system resource, if we are truly, really in that place of nervous system overwhelm, we can shift the story from picking something to help us check out to helping something to help us pause. And even just changing the story while taking the same action, for me, energetically, is just such a wild shift. Right. So I think cannabis is beautiful medicine. And I think cannabis can be use to help us check in or check out. So it's how you use it. I think it's the energetics of how you use it, what your goal is.

Yeah. And it's not the right, you know, medicine. It's not the right medicine for me as a mammal. Right. Right. So if it is a good medicine for you, it can be good medicine. Do you think this is why I've been, lately, I've just been blown away at how many people are into plant medicine, just of all kinds, microdosing.

Like, I feel like it's coming to the surface. So many people are talking about it, biohackers, health influencers, doctors. I had Dr. Austin Perlmutter on and I asked him about, because he's been really into psychedelics. Yeah. And I asked him a question about it. And he said to me, well, let me ask you a question. What is it that your feeling is on psychedelics?

And I said, well, I'm looking at the. friends and I'm thinking maybe it's just a big excuse for us all to experiment and get high. And he turned to me and he said, well, if you don't mind, I'm going to push back on you. And he's like, I'm going to tell you, a neuro a neurologist. He's a neurologist. Oh, yeah. I just want to point that out. Isn't he a neurosurgeon? He's like, he may be a droplet board certified. Right. Dude, he's a nerd. Yeah. And he's like, I want to ask you to redefine that. I think how we've been looking at plant medicine, how we're looking at psychedelics has been all wrong, which goes back to how we started this conversation, that there is this sort of patriarchal way that

we approach the world that says this is right and this is wrong. And what I think may be happening with all this anxiety, with all this, the mental stress we've been under is that new ways, or they're actually old ways, but new beliefs are emerging. Would you agree? I would agree and I think you're right to recognize that they are ancient, ancient indigenous beliefs. Yes. Right. Like we're going back into what worked for us centuries ago.

And what still works in Peru and what still works in Alto Peru in the Andes and the Amazon, right? What still works here on Turtle Island, right? Like what works in communities that still sit with grandfather that sit with peyote that sit with, right? with that sit with ayahuasca communities for whom these plants are not it it's not the weekend i'm my age a weekend at the rave no one's been to a rave since like 1999 what's a rave exactly right like oh wow granny but um this is going to put the rave right there but right like these medicines are medicine when you used in context right and so again it becomes about context can social media lift you up. My feed does. It's puppies, kittens, curl techniques, and inspiration.

Yeah. That's it. I actually, on my social media, if you complain, I, I unfollow you because I want, I want positivity. I have a lot of dogs, a lot of pets. Yay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And curl care, because why not? I can always use, I can learn something new today. Yeah. Right. So, it really is that energetic of allowing anything and everything to be our medicine or not. So is it enough to walk around your day and say, okay, I'm going to observe these three things when I'm scared and I want to create complain with somebody when I'm going into fight or flight and when I'm going into freeze. And then let me look at what I have access to that makes me feel.

feel good because what I'm hearing you say is for some person, it may be smoking a joint where they get a tremendous insight. And for somebody else, it may be a hike in nature. But we need a toolbox to understand where we are in these three phases and what tool we need to pull out. Would that be the most simple way to say this? I love that. Yes, that is such a beautifully succinct way to say it. Yeah. And in there is that essential task. of living into and honoring our own individual authenticity and then coming into the relational field, into the collective field together from that embodied home. I love that.

Yeah, but awareness acceptance action, right? We got to start with knowing what we're doing before we change it. Being aware, I mean, last year in the pandemic, I walked around and I'm like, and all this, the way that people went to social media and just took the soundbite. of everything. After 2020 was done, I'm like, I don't think we have any critical thinkers. People are just numbed out and they are not thinking for themselves. So I love that you brought up that awareness part. Now, let me go back to how we started this. What I heard from you was 20% of how our nervous system is reacting is coming from the actual brain, but the 80% is coming from the body.

and that the body is very synergistic with the earth. So if I'm sitting in my cubicle all day with blue light on me, on a computer, I'm not getting access to the earth, would it be fair to say that one of the greatest preventions for depression and anxiety is just get the F out into nature a little more? Sometimes we have to make prudent decisions, right, to pay the mortgage and the student loans and we got to go to work. And what's available to us is that that fluorescently lit cubicle.

And so I would say bring a plant, bring a picture of nature. Yes, this is like the let's make do portion of our conversation versus the completely optimal portion of our conversation, right? But in that conversation, we can also remember, let's take it back to the Olympics and athletes. So when athletes are injured, one of the things they do with their coaches is, is literally go through their whole routine. Play the whole basketball game.

Do the whole, you know, sports words. I'm out of sports words. But they do those sports word things. And that- I'm sure what a sport word is, but go for it. Right. Like with basketballs, I don't even. Like a motivation, like an affirmation.

Oh, no. I literally meant I don't, what are the names of sports? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Keep going. Never mind. Keep going. You're on a roll.

Oh my goodness. So, right. So what they do is like literally visualize every step of their sport, sportings. And it actually improves performance. So we cannot forget the power energetically of the mind and the impact. And the fact that body and mind are one. Right. Right. Dear Descartes, right. Like go jump off a bridge, buddy. Like these are not separate things. we were sold a false bill of goods there. Right. Right. And so if you're at that cubicle, put an alarm on your phone or your computer to pause.

Picture a field. Picture your favorite tree from growing up. Right? And even if you grow up in Buenos Aires or in New York City or there's trees, baby. Right. Right? You don't have to have grown up. Yeah.

In Vermont. So if I wake up, like I have a morning routine where I'm, I do meditation. I read something positive. Like I really set my intention before the day goes. So if I visualize, hey, this is what I want my day to look like today. Is there evidence that that is actually calming to my nervous system? Or is that perfectionism? Is that I'm setting up some type of standard for the way the day should unfold?

And if I don't match that, now if I have a reaction to it, I've only set myself up for failure. I love your brain. It's deep. I told you. It's so good. I'm actually coming over for dinner right now. I'm actually at JFK, getting on a plane. This is a fake backdrop.

I'm at JFK. I'll be there in six hours. So what's for dinner? No. So I think that it's the energy of the thing, right? So it's our thoughts that create our feelings, right? Our emotional state, when they're cognitive. mediated. And so it's the thought that you bring into that practice that creates the way you feel

and the action you take. So the example I love to use is, you know, you can, if you are underweight and want to gain weight, if you're overweight, you know, over and underweight, like let's problematize this and how racist it is like in just a minute. But stay with me because it's an easy metaphor. So let's say you want to lose five pounds and you do that with self-love. You're like, I'm really stoked about this actually. Like I want to feel this specific way. I want to look this specific way. I'm doing this because I love me. You lose it and you're cool. But you do it from self-hate. No one will love me until I am not a right, a good enough girl until I'll never find that perfect partner until. Yeah, lose the five. Then you're going to want the 10 and the 20 and then, you know,

never enough. So it's the energy. It's so it's okay. So the energy and the intention. So if I get up, in the morning. I did this this morning. I was like, what do I want my day? And this is, you're part of my manifestation now because part of what I said today was, I just want joy. I just want experiences of joy today. Now, as long as the intention behind that is I want the experience, if I said, I want to feel joyful today so I could stop feeling so crappy about myself and all the horrible things in my life. Right. That sounds like it's conditional. Yes. which is what you're saying with the weight loss.

If I lose the weight to get the partner, that's conditional. If I lose the weight because I just want that experience of what it's, yeah, that's, now you're in alignment with a more pure sense of what your nervous system wants. Yeah. Yeah. And it really makes it about the energy source for that choice and that set of actions is self-love. I love that. I love it too.

So can you do this then? I'm going back. Now you got my brain going. Yeah. Now you go back to the toolbox. Okay. So I have these three different types of stress response. Right.

I've got a toolbox that I can use. That's everything from walking to looking at nature on the wall to using psychedelics to understand my brain more. Yeah. And now I look at other people in my life. These are, this is my toolbox. Other people may use other tools. So judging their tools is not necessarily going to be helpful to my nervous system. Yeah.

I mean, in that so much of my work is around codependent thinking, I would say that the more we can keep our eyes on our own work, the better our lives are, right? And then asking that question, why is it that I think, that I believe that them living in a different way would impact? how I feel in my life. Right? Like, why are you giving that power away, my darling? Why does it matter if he's angry, if they're annoyed, if she's sad?

Why? Why are you allowing that to impact your mood? Oh, right? We're going to put this episode out right before the holidays. I know, right? I'll come back on and we'll talk, we'll talk holiday boundaries, right? That Ram Dass quote, think you're so enlightened to go spend a week with. your family. Yeah. So we can't control anybody's happiness. In fact, we, if we're, if we're looking

at somebody in our life and we're feeling unhappy, right. We're actually doing ourselves the disservice and we have no control over the other person. Correct. We have a, we have a responsibility for the impact of our choices, right? If you hit someone without consent, if you say something racist. If you, right, we have a responsibility for the impact. Yeah. And we don't have to give our power away, right? They're sort of, they're like concurrent but parallel processes, if that makes sense. I just always want to be careful that people don't hear me saying, you don't control other people's feelings.

And then they're like, oh, well, then I can say any garbage I want. And like, you can't be upset with me. It's like, they actually can. Yeah. Good point. Good point. spoken like a professional. Well, I thank you, darling.

It sounds like you've done some work with people before. So, I mean, I've also put my foot in it plenty of times. You know what I mean? So you learn. So if I go to social media and I look at somebody and I, they anger me. I don't like their political slant. I don't like how they're approaching, you know, the pandemic. And I'm now angry.

Is that their problem or my problem? This is where we, you know, life is complicated. And here's where it gets complicated. It's not their problem. They're a stranger on a little screen in your pocket, right? Yes. What if they're a relative? What if they're my friend? You get, I continue to hold that you do get to choose how you want to feel in response, right? Let your thoughts create your feelings. But if we're talking about like someone said they don't, you know, here's one that I hear all the time. The holidays spark this. Every time I go home, the first thing my mom does is makes a comment about my body or what I'm wearing or how she hates my tattoo or how she doesn't like my, you know, like that sort of

interpersonal, what can feel like an attack. That is when we get to pull back and say, that is squarely hers. That's her judgment, not mine. I don't need to take that on as my. I believe about myself. Not available, not interested. Love it. Thank you. Love it. I'm like super busy not hating myself.

Thank you. I love that. Oh my gosh. That's actually a great response you could say to somebody. I can't really answer you right now because I'm too busy not hating myself. I was going to hate myself later, but then actually I'm going to not. So I'm not available for your commentary on my body. Oh my gosh.

I think that is actually, you need to like, like can that up. Yeah, put it on a T-shirt that people can wear in the holidays to like the people that have judgments and expectations of them. I think that's sorry. I can't take any of your criticism today because I'm too busy not hating myself. I love it. I love it. I'll send you the first one. Perfect.

Thank you. Right. Hot off the presses. Well, this was great. Oh, my gosh. I'm always looking for new ways for us to think about life. And, you know, when I go to social media, when I look at people around me, I realize this is why I started this off. I just have days where I'm like, we are doing life all wrong.

What we've been taught is happiness isn't happiness and we need new tools. So you gave me some good new tools and I hope other people got the same. So this was awesome. Let me do this. I'm going to end with five questions for you. Hopefully they'll be as fun as everything else I've asked. Wait, can I answer them before you ask? And then you'll ask and then I'll answer it. So I'm going to answer syphilis.

Ciphylus to start with. Then the Titanic. Then cast wars, bamboo brassier. And I'm going to go with pegleg on the last one. Okay, great. Did I nail it? Now let's go to the question. Are you ready?

Let's see. I loved it. Okay. What's the one? Now, I've got to remember the first answer was syphilis. It was syphilis. The question was what was the most important book or what was a book that changed your life that you think everybody should read? Go for it.

Victoria. Oh, my God. It was not. It was not syphilis, though I have treated so much syphilis in my life as a primary care provider in Chelsea. Yeah, that was a good time. What is, you know, I got to, oh, now my brain's flooding. I mean, I'll go here, Adrian Rich, into the wreck. I was all, right, I was all about poetry in high school.

It was my, it was my, you know, my nervous system safe place. Yeah. When I felt myself getting dysregulated was I would take space for myself and read poetry. Adrian Rich, June Jordan's, Heruko love poems, Audrey Lord, you know. Amazing. Yeah. I love it. Okay.

Second question. If you could go back and talk to your 20 year old self, maybe she was at a rave. She probably was. She had taken a lot of Molly. Let's be real. Okay. He's high on Molly at a rave. Oh, my God.

And you could give her some advice. What would you tell her? Wow. So if she's rolling on Molly at a rave, hydrate. I'm just going to tell her to hydrate. But the other 20-year-old version of myself, oh, self-worth. Self-worth. And to really take a look at the codependent patterns.

I was so deep in that codependent thought pattern. that that just kept me feeling chronically stuck and chronically dating people that I wasn't choosing. I was allowing myself to be chosen and was calling that enough and was chronically miserable because of course I was. I wasn't living with intention and I was doing the best I could with the skills I had. But oh, geez, Louise, Doc, if I could go give that kid of that advice. Right. How'd you find your way? Yeah. How'd you find your way out? community. Community had my back and loved me so hard.

It's eventually the only option was to love myself as much as I was being loved. I love that. I love that. Okay. I know. That was good. So your third question, I can't even remember what the first question. Titanic.

I think the answer to this was Titanic. What is the one health habit you do every day that you are like? I would never give this up. This one changes my life and sets my day on an amazing course. Oh my gosh. Really actively checking in with my nervous system, really actively like doing somatic practices every single day. Like breathing? Is it a breathing kind of thing? Or is it more of a breath work? But it's more the practices that really serve me right now are doing figure eights. with my arm, figure eight with your hips to bring in joy and passion. That's powerful. And I've been doing a lot of balance work. So when there's trauma in the nervous system,

it makes sense that balance is challenging because the body's just not interested in focusing there. So bringing my attention there is. And then, you know, my primary partner, my whole life and will forever be is, is, is that. exercise. We're going steady. We're actually married. Um, so yeah. Hey, that's awesome. If you're going to be married to anything, like that's exercise is something to be married to. Yeah. Primary partner. Everyone else secondary partner for sure. Yeah. Okay. My fourth question. I can't even remember what the answer was before, but we'll go with this. Okay. So you're sitting, I mean, I don't know if you're following the Olympics right now, but you're sitting with

Simone Biles, so much conversations showing up about anxiety. And she is like, I can't get out there. I can't go out and perform. And maybe this isn't just Simone. This is somebody else. What do you say? Well, how do you advise when somebody's in the freeze mode, how do you advise them to move? They may not need to. Oh, stay there. It may be a moment, right? where rest is what's called for, right? And the vanguard, the folks talking the most about rest right now, Nap Ministry, Adrienne Marie Brown, or black women who are leading the way, as always, to tell us to put down this productivity demand and reconnect with rest.

It's absolute mammalian drive to allow our minds and bodies to just shh. Fascinating. I love that. Have you read rushing woman syndrome? No. I want it now. Yes. You need to read rushing women syndrome. Dr. Libby Weaver. She's my hero. And I brought her on my podcast and interviewed her. And it was like the most amazing moment of my of this year for sure. So it was incredible. But you'll love it. And it's all about the physiology behind why women are not meant to rush. Why what you just said was so powerful. And we're just physiologically not designed to keep pushing. Nah. We move with the moon, right? Right. We are slow and steady. Oh, my goodness. I can't wait to buy that book. Thank you. Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. Last question. If you, and I don't know

remember the answer, but if you had one message for the world, that you could get into everybody's brain, what would that message be? You matter. Hey, resetters. I just want to start off by saying, thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews and those of you that have left me comments on iTunes. I just greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you're enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I've learned in just interacting with so many people is that we've really lost the art of deep conversations. And for me, the Resetter podcast, for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life, about

mindset in a way that we may not be getting on social media or in mainstream media. And so I just want to say, give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me. Because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it's impacting your life. So please let us know if there's anything we can do to make this podcast more customized to you, to make it better. We are now officially in season two, and we are working to bring you the best conversations

that health influencers have, that mindset changers can give, and to really deliver you something that you're not able to get anywhere else. So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say my YouTube, from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you. And let's get healthy together.