Healing Your Nervous System from Stress and Burnout

Summary

Podcast Summary: Overcoming Distractions – Thriving with ADHD, ADD

Episode: Healing Your Nervous System from Stress and Burnout
Host: David A Greenwood
Guest: Brit (Brittany) Piper, author of Body First Healing: A Revolutionary Guide to Nervous System Recovery
Date: May 16, 2025

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Main Theme

This episode explores how chronic stress and burnout impact the nervous system, particularly for adults with ADHD working demanding jobs or juggling busy lives. Brit Piper, an expert in trauma-informed care, shares her insights on how past trauma, modern lifestyle pressures, and nervous system dysregulation contribute to burnout—and more importantly, practical somatic techniques listeners can use to heal, regulate, and build resilience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nervous System Under Modern Pressure

• Safety and Connection:
  The nervous system thrives on a sense of safety (internally and externally) and genuine connection—both of which are jeopardized in today's hyperconnected but emotionally disconnected world.
  • "We have each other at our fingertips, but we are not actually touching each other." (Brit, 07:36)
• Chronic Stress Environment:
  From technological interruptions to work/life demands, these unrelenting pressures leave many stuck in a physiological state of defense.
  • "We live in a world right now where things do not feel super safe—from the food we eat, to the air we breathe, to our political climates." (Brit, 07:16)

2. Misconceptions Around Stress and Burnout

• Simplistic Solutions Fall Short:
  Advice such as “just rest, take breaks, or do yoga” fails to address the underlying allostatic load (“wear and tear”) from unprocessed stress.
  • "It's misinformed advice. We're telling people to rest more when really what it is is that the nervous system is under too much pressure." (Brit, 08:59)
• Pressure Cooker Analogy:
  Unreleased stress accumulates like steam in a pressure cooker, leading to "explosions" (panic, rage) or "implosions" (burnout, depression).

3. How Stress Manifests Somatically (in the Body)

• Physical Symptoms:
  Chronic stress and trauma can appear as migraines, digestive issues, muscle tension, TMJ, and more.
  • "There are neuroanatomical changes in the body when you're in certain nervous system states." (Brit, 11:18)
• Face, Ears & Sensory Processing:
  Stress can alter blood flow, muscle tension (especially in the face), and even ear function—shifting what frequencies we pay attention to (predator sounds when in fight or flight).
• Invisible, Overlooked Signs:
  Medical professionals often miss the stress connection, focusing on physical tests rather than exploring life context.
  • "Not one doctor said, what do you do for work? What's your home like? What's going on in your life?" (Dave, 15:42)

4. Trauma’s Role in Building or Undermining Resilience

• Early Attachment Patterns:
  The presence, attentiveness, and responsiveness of caregivers in the first five years shape nervous system resilience. Absence or unpredictability (even without overt trauma) can wire lifelong anxiety and lowered stress tolerance. (Brit shares her own experience – 21:01)
• Developmental Trauma:
  Even environments deemed "safe" externally may create internal insecurity leading to chronic survival responses later in life.

5. The “Autonomic Loop” in High Achievers

• High performers with ADHD often get stuck in cycles of adrenaline-fueled overdrive followed by system crashes—rooted in incomplete or misdirected stress responses from earlier life.

6. Defining and Achieving Presence

• Being versus Doing:
  True presence isn't intellectual—it's experienced in the body. Somatic techniques ground the body in the present, moving from defensive scanning (for threats) to exploratory orienting (engagement with the current environment).
  • "One of the quickest ways to access presence is through the senses." (Brit, 26:01)
• Practical Sensory Techniques:
  • Slowly allowing the eyes, head, and neck to wander (peripheral gaze)
  • Listening to subtle environmental sounds (air conditioning, distant noises)
  • Using tactile objects (like a hair clip) to anchor sensation

7. Barriers to Pausing and Practicing Presence—Especially for ADHD Brains

• Automatic Resistance:
  The nervous system equates familiar (even stressed) patterns with safety; new routines feel threatening at first.
  • "There's going to be resistance... The rule of the nervous system is same equals safe." (Brit, 29:37)
• Tiny, Scheduled Intervals:
  Start with micro-moments: set an alarm for 2 minutes, 2–3 times a day, to practice exploratory orienting with your senses.

8. The Constant "Alarm" of ADHD

• Many with ADHD live in a near-constant "fight/flight" state, always scanning for threat, worrying about tasks, leadership, or performance.
  • "Think of it like a security system. Your nervous system is always scanning...even if it's not there." (Brit, 31:15)

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Techniques for Healing and Regulating the Nervous System

1. Somatic Practices at Your Desk (48:34–51:14):

Brit shares simple, actionable exercises for busy professionals:

• Edge of Seat Press:
  Sit on the edge of your chair, feet on the floor; press down with your legs as if about to stand (hold 30 sec, then relax and notice sensations).
• Heel Drops:
  While seated, lift and drop your heels one at a time (alternate, then speed up for 30 seconds). Increases limb circulation, helps release stress.
• Chair Drops:
  Tilt your chair onto the back legs (safely) and then drop down—engages muscles and the vestibular (balance) system.
• Walking Breaks:
  “Even just going on a walk on your lunch break—just get some air in your face.” (Dave, 51:14)

2. Exploratory Orienting (Sensory Reset):

• Use your senses to take in the environment. Notice colors, textures, sounds, temperature.
• These "glimmers" (the opposite of triggers) signal the nervous system that it's safe to slow down.
  • “You’re just taking a moment to show the nervous system—hey, there’s a moment of safety here too.” (Brit, 32:05)

3. Mindful Technology Use (35:04–41:53):

• When you instinctively reach for your phone, pause and observe what you feel in your body—craving distraction is often a cue of impending overwhelm.
• Set intentional "device-free" hours (Brit shares her family practice: 5-7 PM = no phones).
• Recognize the difference between true connection and digital "dissociation."

4. Accommodating the Stress Response Cycle (38:13–40:33):

• Understand the “polyvagal ladder:” you move up and down nervous system states 100 times per day.
• Regulation doesn’t mean staying calm continuously, but allowing stress responses to complete: feeling, expressing (crying, shaking, sighing), and then returning to ease.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Modern Connection:
  "We have each other at our fingertips, but we are not actually touching each other. There’s not that real connection there.”
  — Brit (07:36)

• On Misguided Burnout Advice:
  “We’re telling people to rest more when really what it is, is the nervous system is under too much pressure…think of it like a pressure cooker.”
  — Brit (08:59)

• On Physiological “Face Stress”:
  “When I was going through burnout, I could like feel it in my face. Like my face hurts.”
  — Dave (11:02)

• On Early Life Stress:
  “Our attachment system scans for three things: is my caregiver near, are they attentive, and are they responsive in a way that’s regulating?”
  — Brit (21:32)

• On Realistic Regulation:
  “A regulated nervous system goes up and down that ladder, moves in and out of stress roughly 100 times a day.”
  — Brit (40:33)

• On Resilience:
  “It’s not that the stress is too big, it’s that our capacity to be with the stress is too small.”
  — Brit (45:19)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 05:14–08:09 – Nervous system needs safety and connection; modern life breeds chronic stress
• 08:59–10:38 – Burnout isn’t fixed by rest alone; pressure cooker analogy
• 11:45–14:54 – Fight/flight/freeze in the body; how physiology changes under stress
• 16:15–18:47 – Medical community misses the stress/trauma connection to physical symptoms
• 20:59–23:13 – Childhood, attachment, and how early overwork shapes adult resilience
• 26:01–28:34 – Practical methods to access presence via the senses
• 29:37–31:15 – How to start building pauses for presence (2-minute rule)
• 35:04–41:53 – The phone, “doom scrolling,” and recognizing emotional cues for distraction
• 48:34–51:14 – Three actionable desk-based somatic exercises to discharge stress

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Actionable Takeaways

1. Use short, scheduled sensory pauses (2 minutes, 2–3×/day) to orient your body to safety.
2. Try desk-based somatic exercises (edge-of-seat press, heel drops, chair tilts) to release “pent-up” tension.
3. Build awareness of your “stress-relief” habits—especially technology use—and notice the bodily cues prompting them.
4. Accept that stress is normal, and true resilience means flexibly returning to ease, not eliminating stress altogether.

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Resources & Connect with Brit Piper

• Book: Body First Healing: A Revolutionary Guide to Nervous System Recovery
• Website: BodyFirstHealing.com
• Instagram/Social: See website for links

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This episode delivers a nuanced, compassionate, and practical guide to understanding—and healing—the body’s response to relentless modern stress, especially for adults with ADHD. Brit Piper’s insights into somatic regulation, the impacts of early attachment, and her concrete exercises offer hope and actionable steps for anyone seeking relief from the “pressure cooker” of contemporary life.

Transcript

[A]

I'm Dave Greenwood and this is Overcoming Distractions. If you are an adult with adhd, a busy professional, an entrepreneur, a high achiever, or just need some strategies to navigate your adult adhd, you're in the right place. Who am I? I'm an entrepreneur with ADHD and the author of two books, Overcoming Distract and Overcoming Burnout. I coach and mentor people just like you, and together we navigate the ups and downs of adult adhd, from getting out of our own way to helping people just like you thrive in the workplace. That's what I do. Want more info on working with me? Hit overcoming distractions.com ready? Let's get to today's podcast. All right, gang, welcome back. Welcome, all my distracted friends. You are on Overcoming Distractions, and if you are in that classification of being an adult with adhd, you're a demanding career, you got a lot going on at home, you are definitely in the right place because that's all we talk about here. We don't talk about kids, college kids, anything. We are solely focused on you, the busy professional with adhd. So if you're new, welcome. If you're an old listener, thank you again for hitting that subscribe button. So, and that being said, I give you my quick little, you know, 15 second speech here. If you have gained a lot of value from the podcast, but you still have some things you want to work out, you want to do some problem solving, you want to work on the mechanics of ADHD and how it relates to your life, life, just hit the website overcoming distractions.com, hit that button that says book a 15 minute Zoom chat with me and let's get to know each other for a few minutes. So. All right, cool. We just did an episode on ADHD and Burnout. As you know, we focused on before. If you've listened to the podcast for any length of time, but I think we need to keep talking about this. I'm hearing more and more of you not only having challenges, maybe getting stuff done, juggling the demands of your career and home life, but you're feeling burned out. Some of you I talked to have even decided to leave your job or place of employment because things have just gotten a little too crazy. So. And as far, ADHD wasn't enough. Many of us do fall into that burnout trap. So take technology work, demand slack teams. Right? Demands on the other areas of our life, and we start to see what we call chronic stress. And I think we'll probably chat about this in a moment, but I think there, there's Definitely a difference between stress and burnout, but we can chat about that. So we're going to talk about how our modern world keeps us in that state of chronic stress and the practices you can do to bring your nervous system back to presence. And I learned over time that trauma and stress, while we feel it mentally, a lot of it is stored in our bodies. So I think we're going to, we're going to dig into that a little bit. So. Brit Piper is the author of their new book, Body First Healing, A Revolutionary Guide to Nervous System Recovery. She's an expert in trauma informed care, and over the past several years she's delivered more than 400 programs all over the world. She's been recognized by the US Army, Department of Justice, Cosmopolitan, Elite Daily, the list goes on. So welcome. British.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you. I'm looking forward to this conversation today.

[A]

Yeah, and, and I just want to make sure you go by Brit. So. And yes, but your full name is Brittany, right?

[B]

It is, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Just so people can find you. So, yeah, so let's, let's start with the big picture and then we can kind of drill down a little bit. I think that, and, and I'll talk about adhd, because that's where most of our listeners are, or they, they Suspect they have ADHD. But there's a lot even in the past 20 years that has been thrown into our lives. Right. That, that maybe isn't so great for those of us who are distracted or anybody for that matter. But how, how does, like, modern life today, 2025, how does that impact our nervous systems with just all the things that we have at our fingertips now?

[B]

My goodness. So many ways. The nervous system thrives on two things. Safety, which of course we're like, I'm safe. I have a roof over my head. Right. There's no one coming to get me. But it's also this internal sense of safety. Do I feel safe in my body or, oh, am I having, is my stomach in knots or do I have a chronic migraine again today? Or am I feeling really exhausted in my muscles and in my body that doesn't actually feel safe? Do I feel safe in my relationships? You know, our relationships were really disconnected. We are very detached. There's a lot of conflict in our relationships because there's so much pressure coming, you know, in every direction. So it's, do I feel safe? We call that inside, outside and between. And then the second thing we're always looking for is connection, which kind of goes back to that, that between point. But the nervous system is, is always prioritizing connection in the service of our survival. So as humans, we have this biological imperative to be connected to one another. You see it, you know, when, when babies are born, they instinctually look to their caregivers. I remember when, when my kids were born and seeing the, the newborn look fresh out of the womb and I'm like, whoa, that's an intense gaze, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And skin to skin contact. Right. The doctors will say if the baby's regulated, put your baby on your skin and it will help their nervous system to regulate because they can't regulate yet. So it regulates their heart rate, their body temperature, their circulation, their emotional regulation. So our nervous systems are primed for safety and connection. And we live in a world right now where things do not feel super safe, from the food that we eat, to the air that we breathe, to our political climates, to the pressure that we have to succeed and make more so that we can provide for this higher cost of living.

[A]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[B]

There's. There's so many things that don't feel safe. And then on top of that, this whole concept of connection, I think we are more. It's interesting because we're more connected than we've ever been. Right. Through our cell phones, through our, our, our zoom screens, through slack things that you said.

[A]

Yeah, but do we put up the air quotes and say connected?

[B]

Yes, connected. So that. That's exactly it. It's this sword, is that we have each other at our fingertips, but we are not actually touching each other. You know, it's like there's not that real connection there. And so we live in a very disconnected society. And not only do we feel disconnected from others, but that also means that we often will then feel disconnected from ourselves.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah, it's just this breeding ground that does not feel safe, that does not feel connected. And the nervous system is not meant to thrive in that kind of world.

[A]

Yeah, I know people have, if they've listened to this podcast for a while, they know that I, that I, I go on some mini rants sometimes because I just like to dispel. I love certain things that I think are maybe not, I won't say lies or myths, but not telling the whole story. And I think when we talk about burnout, chronic stress, etc. We always see these things on, you know, Facebook or LinkedIn, these like, really cool graphics that says, oh, well, take breaks, drink more water, go to yoga, but. And like. Or reduce your workload. But chronic stress is so much more complex as you Said. Right. Like whether it's, oh, I'm, I'm like, I can't stand our political environment right now, or this is going on. Right.

[B]

Yeah. And you know, I, so I would consider that to be these misconceptions or maybe just misinformed. Yeah, these are, it's misinformed advice that we're giving. We're telling people to rest more when really what it is is that the nervous system is under too much pressure. So, and I know we're going to get into all the science and the nitty gritty of what chronic stress is and what stress is, but essentially we call it allostatic load. It's wear and tear of your body, of your nervous system that's taking on too much pressure. And the only way, like, yes, we can rest, yes, we can minimize our workload. Those things of course are important. But also think of it like a pressure cooker. Your body, over time, if we do not have the practices and the habits of releasing stress, it builds up into this pressure cooker. And stress hormones are adrenaline and cortisol, which is part of that fight or flight response. So it builds up and builds up and by the way, it starts building up from childhood and even in the womb. And so if we were never given the proper tools to lift that lid slowly and allow some of that adrenaline and cortisol or these stress hormones to be released from the body, we call this the stress response cycle. Then over time, our pressure cooker fills way too much and we either explode, which can look like panic attacks, anxiety, rage. Right. Incredibly irritable, boiling over, or we can implode, which is where burnout, fatigue, depression really come in.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I, I, I wrote about this and overcoming burnout, where, and it's interesting, at the time I had no idea what it was and I still don't fully understand it, but I'm, I'm, but I, when I was going through burnout, I could, I could like feel it in my face. You know, it was like, like my face hurts.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and I'm, and I'm like, it was just this weird feeling.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But, but I did look into it and, and a lot of people suggest that it was that, like higher cortisol levels.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That it was just like stored in my face.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. So what you're, what you're talking about, the work that I do, I blend. I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner. And somatic experiencing, soma means of the body, but experiencing, it's a body first approach to healing. Trauma through the body and the nervous system. So I blend that work with the work of polyvagal theory, which is new or what. What I like to say is the upgraded science of the nervous system.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so when I talk about, for instance, safety and connection, that comes from the polyvagal theory. But there are, you're absolutely speaking truth. So there are neuroanatomical changes that happen in the body when you're in certain states of the nervous system. So for instance, when you're in fight or flight and you're going to be like, yes, that's why I felt that way. When you're in fight or flight, this is when the adrenaline and cortisol gets released into the body. And adrenaline and cortisol, it mobilizes us to fight or flee. Yeah, we get mobilized. That's why we can get fidgety or kind of, you know, move around or feel anxious in our body. That's why we tremble, shake. But in addition to that, the blood motility in our body changes. So our blood starts to circulate outward to our limbs to also propel us to fight or flee. Which is why when we are in a fight response, we feel heated in our head, we start to sweat. When we're anxious in that flight response, we have heated hands. But yes, all of those hormones will start to go outward. And in addition, the muscles in your body changes. So your nervous system, it impacts your musculoskeletal system, your cardiovascular system, it governs your hormones, your respiratory system, your endocrine system, your digestive system, we go on and on. But the muscles in your face also change. So for instance, when you're in a fight or flight response, your eyes will start to have what we call ocular cement. So they narrow in so that you're now in kind of like predator mode in your eyes. Rather than having like a peripheral gaze, the muscles in your ears change. So like when you're in rest and digest, your middle ear muscles are activated to hear the sounds of mid range frequencies, which is human voices. Right. So which means deeper connection, better communication, which your nervous system wants for you. Or when you come into fight or flight, your lower ear muscles activate and the middle ear muscles deactivate so you can hear the sounds of low range frequencies, which evolutionarily speaking is the sound that predators make. So. Growls, thuds, bangs. Right, so you're now like I always say, it's like your spidey senses are in overdrive. But you feel that. Yeah, but you feel that in your body, you feel that. In your face. And so if we get chronically stuck in. What we're talking about right now is survival mode over time, you know, And Gabor mate, he's a trauma researcher, psychologist. He has a fantastic book on this called the Myth of Normal and How We're Not Living in a Normal Society. It's really interesting.

[A]

And he's the one who wrote when the Body says no.

[B]

When the Body says no.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

He also wrote the book Scattered Minds, which I. I believe. Yeah. So he wrote that book, too, which is a fantastic book. I'm not sure if it's particularly on adhd, but I think it's very similar in that. That realm. What was I saying? I don't remember what I was saying about the Gabor. It's going to come back.

[A]

Hey, welcome to an ADHD podcast.

[B]

Yeah, here we are. Yeah, I just lost my train of thought.

[A]

But you, but you, you, you. You've touched on that. And, and I'd like to drill down a little bit. Is this, like, some of the overlooked ways that that stress shows up in people so they can recognize it? Because I don't think so. For example, the, you know, the, you know about the ears that you mentioned, someone might go to the doctor and go through a hearing test and all this, all these things. And. Or somebody might like. There's a woman that I interviewed for Overcoming burnout, where she couldn't eat, she couldn't digest food. She. She went. She went. And I didn't put it in the book because I didn't want to out. But she went to one of the best hospitals in the country.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And not one doctor said, what do you do for work? What's. What's your work style like? Or, you know, what's your home like? What. What's going on in. It just was like medical test after medical test. And I'm not bashing the medical community.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But. But I have found that a lot of these things, and you can kind of go through some of the others, that, that there's no medical reason for it other than the stress and the trauma that the body is undertaking. Right.

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I kind of liken that to, like, when a fish is sick and they're living in a ditty in a dirty fishbowl. You know, we're like, let's just. Let's just fix the fish. Let's heal the fish. But we're going to keep them in that same environment, whether it's, again, the overwhelming amount of workload and parenting and all of the pressure that we're under. Yeah, I think that's incredibly important. And we know that our medical systems today are very. I talk about this in my book. I have a lot to say about that. But, you know, they're not, they're not looking for. They're often just focusing on allopathic, you know, methods, which is symptom management. It's sick care, it's not healing care. It's not getting down to the root cause, which is a lot of what, what we do in the somatic space. But I also think it's important to say. And one of the words you just said was trauma. You know, and we all have different definitions of, of trauma. But what might be different about, let's say, this person that you're talking about. Right. Coming in and having, you know, hearing issues or not being able to, to eat or digest food, which also, when we're in certain states, our gut motility increases or decreases based on what nervous system state we're in. So most of the clients that I work with are. They have a lot of physical symptoms. It's usually digestion related. They'll have things like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, chronic migraines, and, you know, tmj and then emotional. Yeah. Anxiety, depression.

[A]

My mother, my mother used to say when I was a kid that she could hear me grinding my teeth on the other side of the house.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So that is like this squeaking, you know.

[B]

Sure, sure. So that is. Yeah, I know I'm just jumping all over the place here, but maybe.

[A]

Yeah, you're in good company. Don't worry.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

But I think those are, those are like the woman. I talked about that in the book. She, her, her friend said, hey, why don't you go to a meditation class with me tonight? She's like, yeah, but she went anyways. And then when she got out of it, she's like, holy crap. Like, I didn't know people could feel like this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And she has spent like a year going to doctors and having this procedure and that procedure. And, and again, I'll, you know, disclaimer. I'm not bashing medicine, but I just wish whether it's us asking ourselves the right questions or other people asking the right questions, I just don't think that happens enough.

[B]

Yeah. And I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is that misinformed. Right? It's misinformed care. We're missing a big part of the puzzle piece. And what I had, what I had Originally started to get to was this concept of trauma. So if you have this. This woman that you're talking about, and she's having a lot of these kind of physical symptoms, but let's say that there's another person who is using or who is experiencing the same workload, same environmental factors, and they seem to be doing okay. They seem to have more resilience to live that kind of lifestyle. What you often find is that the differentiation is that they maybe had more adverse experiences in their childhood. And so a lot of it can go back to trauma in our earliest years, especially our first five years of life. This is when the nervous system is incredibly vulnerable and it's developing. And so the nervous system needs certain things in our formative years to thrive and become resilient so that when we experience stress later on in life, we have more of a tolerance to move through that. So it could be. And we call that developmental trauma. It could be earlier things that happen. And by the way, this doesn't mean there had to be harm or abuse. Maybe it's that I didn't have a caregiver around and present. This goes into kind of the attachment theory. The nervous system, again, built on connection. It develops in a resilient way. If we have what we call a secure attachment in our first few years of life, and our attachment figures are our caregivers. And so our attachment behavioral system essentially scans through the body for three things. Number one, is my caregiver near? Are they physically near in my life?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If they're near, are they attentive? So how often do we have parents that are near, but they are so busy because they're working? I know that for me, my mom was. She lived in a different state. She commuted from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Indianapolis, Indiana, Monday through Wednesday, and then she worked remote Thursday through Friday. And she did that for 11 years of my upbringing.

[A]

Wow. Oh, my God.

[B]

But what's interesting is, again, like, I had a roof over my head. I was provided for. I felt. And I'm using air quotes or I thought I was safe. However, I grew up an incredibly anxious child. I felt often unworthy of love. I. That showed up in my relationships. It showed up in my body. And it wasn't until I became a mother that it really emerged for me. And I started traveling for work, and I started getting panic attacks out of nowhere. And I'm like, I'm 32 years old. I've never had a panic attack. What is happening?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I realized, oh, my gosh, this goes back to My childhood, I missed my mom, right? And so, wow, that, that impacted my ability to move through those experiences. So anyways, the attachment behavioral system, it's number one, is my caregiver near? Number two, are they attentive? And number three, are they responsive in a way that's regulating? So when a child gets upset, if the caregiver's response is more dysregulation about their dysregulation, like, oh, the baby's crying and I don't know what to do and now I'm really panicked or oh, the baby's crying and I just can't take this and I'm just gonna scream and shout, or oh, the baby's crying and I'm gonna just put the baby away. That will feel like what we call an attachment wound to this baby. And so over time, if there's consistent experiences of no nearness, no attentiveness and no proper responsiveness, then the baby's nervous system will become primed for survival and that carries on into adulthood. So these earlier experiences, you know, when people come to work with me with these symptoms, whether it's burnout, whether it's fatigue, the physical things, they'll say it's my job or it's my, my marriage that's going down the drain, or I'm overwhelmed as a parent, or I experience this trauma later on in life and we get down into the layers of the onion, they realize, wow, there are things in my first, I don't know, five, maybe more years of life that I didn't have the environment to really develop a resilient nervous system.

[A]

And that's interesting because there, there are, there's definitely things to, I guess I would say work mechanically to like the tactical day to day strategies for you to, you know, get out of that chronic stress or burnout, etc. But as you say, there's also, there's some work to be done to kind of uncover maybe some past experiences known or unknown. Right?

[B]

Yeah, well, and sometimes, you know, we get caught up in our, our, our work environment and what we actually find. So I work, you know, I've worked with a lot of high, you know, high functioning career people who are at the top of the top of their career and they experience what we call an autonomic loop is where they're go, go, go, go, go. They're overachieving, they're excelling to their peak performance and then, ooh, they crash. So we call that an autonomic loop. And what they often find is that all this Adrenaline and cortisol, again, think of it as a pressure cooker. It's been stewing in their system for so long because it was never processed, it was never brought to what we call trauma resolution. So that adrenaline, cortisol has, it has to go somewhere. So they use it in their work and in their career. And what they're realizing is that this is the incomplete response of the nervous system. Maybe there was an environment where they didn't feel safe and they wanted to run away or they wanted to set a boundary, but they couldn't. And so that adrenaline and cortisol is now being misdirected and it keeps them stuck in kind of that vicious cycle.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah, wow.

[A]

So as you can see, people, there's a, there's a lot to unpack here. It's not just I can't manage my time and I have a massive workload. There's a lot more to this. So I know we talk about being present as one of the ways to kind of work our way out of this. Or, or maybe it's a goal where we should live in the present. I know, you know, if, if you study, like Alfred Adler, that's like one of his themes is like, you know, living now, you know, in the present, not about the past. And I, obviously you just discuss unpacking the past. But what, what is being present actually mean? I mean, how do we, how do we get there? I know that's probably a three hour conversation, but the Reader's Digest version, what, what do we look for if, you know, we don't feel like we're being present?

[B]

Yeah. So there are, there are a couple of ways that you can do that. And the best way that you can do it is really through your sensory motor system, so through the senses. So there's, you know, this perspective of like, I know I'm present, but does your body feel present right now or is it really dissociated and you're feeling like, oh, I'm here but I'm not here and I'm just on autopilot and I'm. You're clacking like I'm, you know, typing away, working. And so presence. One of the quickest way to access presence is through the senses. And in the se or somatic experiencing framework, we call that exploratory orienting. So what you can do is you can allow the eyes to very slowly just, we always say, allow the eyes, neck and head to wander as if they had a mind of their own. And you really want to start to kind of open up your gaze into more of a peripheral gaze. When you do that, you send a message through the vagus nerve that then kind of enacts your, or activates your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, and then you allow just the eyes, neck, and head to just very slowly wander the space that you're in. You can then take your time to just be with sound. Even if you're in a quiet room, it's, can you hear the air conditioning? Can you hear air? And if you get really good at this, you can start to notice those really subtle things. But what this does is it transitions your sensory motor system from a place of defensive orienting. So right when we're in more of a stressed state of fight or flight, or even shut down what we call dorsal, which is where burnout lives, our ears, again, are primed for threat. And so as you start to prime your ears to hear the sounds of little feet coming down the hall or hear the sound of the wind chimes outside the window, you're essentially. There are times where your nervous system is in the driver's seat and what you're doing is you're now just kind of guiding your nervous system back into regulation. So orienting is a great way to do that. Transitioning from defensive orienting to now exploratory orienting and then also kinesthetic orienting. So touch is really, really helpful. Right. Tactile. So it's could be something as simple as me just taking the time to feel this hair clip, notice all the grooves, noticing the temperature, the weight of it. So that's actually took a breath as I did that. If you just.

[A]

Yeah, so, so let's, let's, let's go to the ADHD for a moment. There's. I cannot tell you how many people that, you know, I've talked to, I've worked with over the years individually, where they can't even like, hit the pause button simply for a few minutes. I'm not sure if they haven't thought of it. They just, they, they just don't do it. So for somebody like that, that is, I'm not even going to say hesitant, because I don't think they're hesitant. It's just like the way we're wired sometimes. You know, we, we, we get up, we throw our laptop in the car, we get the kids on the bus, we just run into the office. I mean, how does somebody like that do what you just described? Is it starting small? Is it like, you know, take 60 seconds or what is it?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. So I just first of all want to validate that. That there's going to be resistance.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because it's not. This isn't part of our natural routine. Right. And any change that the nervous system, the rule of the nervous system is same equals safe. Whatever feels familiar, whatever feels the same, whether it's, you know, your. Your habits, your patterns, your relationships, if it's familiar, it's safe. Even if it's really not safe or not good for you. Right. So there's gonna be resistance. And so what I usually recommend is that you can set a timer. Right. Especially for those of us who are very, like, detail oriented, you can set a timer or an alarm. And this is how most of my clients, when they start working with me, that's what they'll do. They'll set an alarm one time in the morning, one time midday, one time in the afternoon, and then all you have to do is just take 2 minutes, 2 minutes, and you'll drop what you're doing and you will just start to explore whatever space you're in. And so it's, you know, we call somatic work. Stupid simple. Because people are like. That sounds so simple. Like, what do you mean? But what you're doing is you are creating these tiny micro supports, microscopic moments, honestly, in your day. But it's these habitual little patterns that start to rewire your brain and your nervous system to slow down. Think of it like if our foot is always pedal to the metal, we're adrenaline and cortisol. Right. Driven. It's just letting up on the gas for a moment and just allowing the nervous system to slow down.

[A]

Right.

[B]

What's great about doing this is that when we're stuck in dysregulation, which is chronic stress, we're constantly in fight or flight or shutdown. Think of it like a security system. Your nervous system is always scanning in the background. Am I safe? Am I not safe? Am I safe? Am I not safe? But when you're stuck in dysregulation, it's like your security system is constantly alarming for threat, even if it's not there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like stress, stress, stress, threat.

[A]

You've kind of described adhd.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

For a lot of people. Not everybody, but. But yeah, I mean, we're on that. We're, you know, we're worried about the to do list, we're worried about our boss, we're worried about our client where, you know, it's just like we, a lot of us live like Constantly in that. That state.

[B]

Sure. Yep.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. ADHD often, you know, I have in my workbooks here, in the polyvagal theory, ADHD often falls under the category of a chronic fat flight response, which is mobilization. Go, go, go. Right. And it's a beautiful way. Although maybe, you know, not comfortable, but it's a beautiful way that the brain and the body and nervous system have in tandem, learned to adapt to the world. But so what you're doing by doing some orienting. Right. So again, we're stuck in defensive orienting. Alarm, alarm, alarm. You're just taking a moment to just show the nervous system, hey, yes, there are things that feel triggering and activating and stressful. Yes, there's threat, but hey, there's also a moment of safety. There's. And this is what in the polyvagal world we call glimmers, not triggers. So you're just allowing the sensory motor system to just. I'm noticing the texture on the wall and I'm noticing there's different shades. I'm noticing just some pictures here. Oh, and I forgot my husband got me this little snow globe from Las Vegas. And I don't know why I have that still. Right.

[A]

Because it's cute.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, because it's cute. Right. But it's just, it's this moment of we're just letting up on the gas pedal. And again, as you do that, you're. You're really rewiring the brain. And over time, this will become what we call a procedural pattern where it's less intentional and it starts to feel more autonomic. That your brain is now able and your nervous system is able to notice moments where there's ease and where there's not tension.

[A]

Yeah. There is a. There is more than a handful of people that I've spoken with, worked with that also. They get. They get stuck in that plugged in type of scenario. This can be. And you know what? I think it was the same woman I just talked about where. And I titled her chapter, just bring your laptop. Because her boss was really cool, like, oh, I'm going to take a long weekend. Oh, that's cool. Just bring your laptop. You know, I'm going to the doctor's office. I gotta leave early. That's okay. Just bring your laptop. It was like this. This, like really.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But I think there's other forms as well. And I've talked to so many people adhd, where the, the phone is. It's like it's glued to their hand. And they know it. They realize it's a massive problem. And that's that connection, as you say quotes, that's not really a good connection. So do those types of things also affect the nervous system? And do you have any advice for trying to figure out. I know it's just like, oh, just put your phone in the other room or just put it in a drawer or shut it off or it ain't that simple.

[B]

Yeah. Yes. So it absolutely impacts the, the nervous system. Right. And we can get, you know, we likely know this, we can get addicted to these things. They provide a sense of, again, we're using air quotes connection. Right?

[A]

Yeah. But it's interesting when I ask people like, what are you looking for? Like they said the doom scroll and social media, they're like, I don't know.

[B]

Yes. So and the, the reason that they don't know is because what it does is it provides a temporary reprieve from life. It provides a moment for us to be distracted, dissociated and disconnected from the stress and the pressure that we're, we're constantly under. So it gives us a reprieve. And I think that the first step of course is, you know, as they say in everything, is recognizing that. Right. But also asking the question is, yeah, maybe it's less of put it in the other room. And of course those things can be good strategies. Right. Don't use it as your alarm anymore. Use an actual alarm. You know, have. I will say, as a family, we have hours because we have very young kids. We have an almost two year old, almost five year old. So in the night, when we're with our kids, it's important that we're not on our phones and quality time with them. So we have hours where from 5 to 7 our phones are up and we're not touching them. But little things that you can do is as you're reaching for your phone, I encourage your listeners to notice what am I feeling in my body as I do this? What impulse is driving this? And maybe they'll notice that there's a dropping in their stomach or that their shoulders are kind of leaning down or that there's this sense or that they're now like just kind of falling back into the seat and yielding to support. These are all what we call postural attitudes of exhaustion. Right. Of wanting to disconnect. And so what we often find is that in moments of high stress we often will reach for things that help us disconnect from the stress.

[A]

And that could be a cookie too, right?

[B]

Right. It could also be a cookie. Yeah. But there are. But the problem with that, and I think maybe, you know, I. I want to maybe explain this a little bit because again, going back to the misconceptions and the missing misinformedness of stress, imagine your nervous system like a ladder. Okay? We call this the polyvagal ladder. And the nervous. This ladder has three sections. So at the top is that rest and digest state. In the middle is the state of sympathetic, so fight or flight. And at the bottom is your shutdown state, which is kind of like a freeze state. Now, what happens when we go from, oh, I'm feeling fine at the top of the ladder to oh, I'm activated or I'm stressed is that adrenaline and cortisol comes in. Right. This is the hierarchy of the order. We first go into fight or flight. And if our body or nervous system cannot physically fight or flee. Okay? Or us wonderful human animals, what we like to do is we like to push down or suppress the emotional charge.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Of the fight response, which is anger. Now I'm going to just push that down. Or we push down or suppress the emotional charge of flight, which is fear, anxiety. No, I just need to calm down. Then what happens is we then go down to the bottom of the ladder. This is where shutdown is. However, that adrenaline and cortisol is still stuck within the system. So in order to regulate, we actually have to move up. I always say you can't Spider man your way to the top. We have to go back up through fight or flight. Allow the body to do what we call discharge the adrenaline and cortisol. This is known as the stress response cycle. Okay. And we can do that by just allowing ourselves. It doesn't mean like, oh, I need to let out my anger. I have to scream or rage or hit a pillow. Which is, again, misinformed. You see a lot of that on social media. It's not. It's not exactly correct.

[A]

Punch a pillow and your life has changed.

[B]

Exactly. That's. That's not how it works. It's more so when I'm feeling frustrated, can I just feel what happens in my body, which is, oh, there's heat here. Wow. There's some clenching in my jaw. Or I'm noticing there's constriction in my chest. I'm noticing my hands are sweating. We be with the first of all, the experience, the somatic experience of the body. And as we do that, the body naturally knows how to express or discharge or expel that adrenaline and cortisol. It usually takes only 60 to 90 seconds. As we start to get good at this, for the body to start to discharge and you'll feel that as like a. Oh. Or like there's sweating or. I'm sorry, there's usually tingling in the arms. That's the adrenaline and cortisol being discharged from the body. It goes outward through the limbs. It can happen through crying. It can happen through shaking and trembling, which, again, when I'm shaking, before I get on a stage, I need to make that go away, so I need to go calm down. It's more. So can I actually just notice that the shaking is here because my body knows how to move it through.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so then we end up at the top of the ladder. We have lifted the lid of that pressure cooker. We've discharged. So most people assume that regulation means being at the top of the ladder all day long. That's not a regulated nervous system. A regulated nervous system goes up and down that ladder, moves in and out of stress roughly 100 times a day.

[A]

Wow. We talked a little bit in my book Overcoming Burnout about tapping. Is that. Would that be a good thing for somebody to learn the basics of? Is that how you. You're. You can. The body can release?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So, yeah, tapping is. It's not something that I am acutely, you know, trained in, like I am with some of my practices, but it helps with. Yeah. And essentially that can also help with presence, too. Orienting. Right. Getting back in touch with the. The body. And there are certain points in the body that you can tap that help to kind of release or discharge some of those things, you know, but the. I think the reason I wanted to mention that is because you had asked the question, you know, what can people do if they're addicted to their phones and they're noticing those things? And so again, it's less of like, in those moments where it's like, when you reach for your phone, what do you feel? And maybe it's, oh, I'm noticing I reach for my phone when I'm feeling really frustrated about my boss, or I'm noticing I reach for my phone when I start to think about paying all the bills, or I'm reaching for my phone when I look at my to do list or my schedule for the week, and I'm like, holy cow. Well, I'm going to just scroll for a minute.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so the scrolling, what it does is it actually, it gets in the way of us moving up and down that ladder. And instead if it's. We just took the time to Be like, yeah, I'm feeling kind of dysregulated about this calendar and this schedule right now. That's actually your body sending you a signal that you're doing too much. But because we override where the body is at, we'll often reach for things that distract us.

[A]

Right. I know now because, you know, we'll sit at night and watch, you know, mindless tv like the Food Network or something and maybe have a beer, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I do, I do find myself, you know, grabbing the phone and maybe hopping on whatever I, I think what is. And definitely not a political discussion because I don't want to go there. But I think the, there's, for me, it's just like, why did I come here? Why did I, why did I hop on Facebook? Because everybody's complaining about politics.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

I think for others they get wrapped up on that. So there's like a, there's like a, there's like an explosion of, you know, you know, how do you, how do you, how do you deal with that? So yeah, yeah.

[B]

For, for some people it's, it, it feels like chaos. Right. Again, if they're stuck in chaos and stuck in stress in their lives, for some people, they use it as a form of escape to kind of numb out, dissociate, get wrapped up in, in the doom scrolling. I have someone in my family who absolutely uses social media as a battlefield, a place to let it out. Yeah. They use it as a place to like all this stress. I've had all this all day. I'm gonna go dump it on social. I had to unfollow this person. I mean I love them, they're in my immediate family, but it's. Right, so it's, it's exactly that too. But yeah, I think it's, it's important to also recognize that again because you move up and down that ladder all day long. When we're doom scrolling, we're in shutdown, we're kind of in that free state of disconnection. But again, we're there all throughout the day. There are moments where we're in the car and we're at the stoplight and we're just kind of zoning out for a minute. Right. And then, oh, and a minute and a half later, five minutes later, at some stop lights. We're now back on the road.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I think recognizing that we have moments every day where we're feeling anxious, where we're feeling stress, where we're feeling frustrated when someone cuts us off. And now I'M in a momentary fight response of are you kidding me?

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

The body tenses and then we feel this flash of heat and we clench and then, oh, we're back noticing and recognizing that it's okay to be in those moments, I think maybe just gives us a bit more permission to be with those experiences. But what a dysregulated nervous system is, is one that's stuck in those bottom states and never comes out. And so what we call a resilient nervous system is one that's flexible, that can move up and down that ladder a of lot all day long without getting stuck. Which means we experience stress all throughout the day.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Right. And I've never really heard it phrased that way. And that's very interesting that you, you will probably never avoid all stress in your life. And learning how to ride the wave, so to speak, is sure is how we thrive. Right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's not the stress is too big. It's that our capacity to be with the stress is too small.

[A]

Right. That's a great way of putting it.

[B]

Yeah. And that's, and that's something that, that we can change. So.

[A]

Yeah. So as we wrap up, I always want people to walk away with some actionable items, things that they can, that they can do in their lives. So if the things that you discussed really resonate and ring a bell with people listening. I know you talked about one way of trying to be present, but other, some other simple things that people can begin to do to start to kind of work their way out of chronic stress. We know it doesn't happen in, you know, one day, so. But what, what are some of the simple things they can begin to put into practice to, to start to work their way out of that chronic stress?

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah. So the, the, the presence or the exploratory orienting, that's more so what we call a tool for resourcing. And resourcing is anything again, that brings in that felt sense of safety, presence, connectedness. That's what you feel when you're at the top of the ladder. However, when we're down towards the bottom of the ladder, we want to be doing things that more so allow the body and the nervous system three E's to experience what we're noticing, express, allow the body to express what we're feeling, which then leads to the expelling. So in my book Body First Healing, there are roughly 80 different somatic practices. But maybe I can give a couple now, maybe the, the, the flight response. So when we're feeling really mobilized, anxious in that flight response. When we're feeling fidgety, scattered. Any of those things, we can. And I'm going to just lower my thing here so I can have my feet on the ground. But some things that we can do, again, recognizing that the blood motility goes out to the limbs. Okay. Some somatic practices you can do is you can work with the limbs. So for instance, if you're sitting at your desk and you're working, my encouragement or my invitation would be, can you actually sit on the edge of your seat? Okay. And then can you start to, with your feet firmly in the ground, start to put pressure into your legs as if you're about to get up, but you're not. You'll feel that the large leg muscles, you'll feel your calves start to engage and activate. Okay. And you want to be with that for about 30 seconds. Okay. Allow the muscles to just engage. And then you're just going to allow yourself to kind of sit back and notice what happens. You might find that there is a flash of coolness through the legs, that there's tingling, that there is a. An, you know, an impulse to want to then stretch the legs, which is what we call a pandiculation, where we stretch and then. Right. So that's the body's way of discharging. So again, working with the limbs is great. You can also do. And I'm just going to give you a bunch of stuff while we're at our desk, since we're working with, you know, talking about working professionals.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You can also do heel, heel drops. Okay. So as you're sitting, what you want to do is you'll lift one foot onto your toes, lifting the heel up, and then drop it, and then do the left side and drop it. It's almost like you're kind of like running in place. Right. And you'll do that for about 30 seconds and then pause and you'll start slow and then start to go faster, faster, faster, faster, faster for 30 seconds. Then again, you'll pause and just see what happens, what this does. It's likely going to increase your heart rate. It's going to increase your circulation, it's going to increase your. Your breathing and respiration. But again, you're lifting the lid of that pressure cooker. You're allowing some of that adrenaline and cortisol to be released. And then you'll see how does that feel? So then the question I always ask is, after you do that practice, what do you notice or what happens next? And you Might notice that there is like again, you might stretch or you might feel the need to start to look around the room, which is your body being like, oh, we're back in exploratory orienting. Or there might be signs that you have discharged as well and you're now coming back up to the top of the ladder would be a sigh, a yawn, a swallow, a bit of like a shot shake. Those are all things that show that your body has discharged some of that, those hormones. So anything with the limbs can really help. You can also do chair drops, so I'll just give you a third one here. Chair drops is where essentially you will lean your chair into the back two legs, lifting the front two legs and then drop down, lift it again and drop down again. You're engaging the muscles, but you're also working with your vestibular system, which is your center of gravity. And your vestibular system is always communicating back and forth with the nervous system. So what you're doing is you're showing your vestibular system that you're nice and grounded here. And again, that can bring in some more regulation too. So those are just. Yeah, a couple of, couple of practices that you can do in moments where you feel really overwhelmed or kind of anxious in a, in a work environment.

[A]

No, I think that's, that's fantastic because you're right. A lot of us are sitting at our desks and maybe you're, you're trapped at your desk and you do these simple things just to kind of get just.

[B]

Yeah, even just, just going on a walk on your lunch break. Right. Like getting, getting a quick 5 minute, 10 minute walk in, just walk around the building or. Yeah, those things can be really helpful to the nervous system to just kind of get some of that out.

[A]

Yeah, I think I'm a huge fan of that and it's something I always recommend. Just go take a walk for a few minutes.

[B]

Just right.

[A]

You know, go get some air in your face or.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Cool. All right. Where can people find out more about you? I'm assuming the book is everywhere as they say, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Book is everywhere. But if they want to find more about me, the book, my program, Body First Healing, how to connect me on social media. Everything can be found at Body First Healing dot com.

[A]

Cool. All right, well, we will have the link in the notes. The book is Body First Healing, A Revolutionary guide to Nervous System Recovery. This has been fascinating and we could probably go on forever. So you are welcome back anytime to continue this conversation.

[B]

Thank you this was a lot of fun.