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- [00:00]
TherapyNotes Announcer
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Laura Reagan (Intro)
Therapy chat podcast episode499.
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Laura Reagan (Host Introduction)
This is the therapy chat podcast with Laura Reagan, LCSWC. The information shared in this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed mental health professional. And now here's your host, Laura Reagan, LCSWC.
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Laura Reagan (Intro)
Hi welcome back to Therapy Chat. I'm your host Laura Reagan and this week I'm bringing you a fascinating conversation about the vestibular system. How it impacts us throughout development and throughout our lives. How sound impacts it, how trauma impacts it. My guest today is Kim Bartell. Kim Bartell is a Canadian occupational therapist, a multidisciplinary speaker, mentor and best selling author who's active in supporting people in many contexts. She's passionate about understanding complex behavior, neurobiology, trauma sensitive and neurodiverse, affirming practice, sensory processing, attachment movement and mental health. In 2025, Kim was honored to receive an award from Attach for Innovation in the Treatment of Children with trauma. And with 41 plus years of practice, she's still learning every day. You can hear the interest and the passion that both of us have for this topic in the conversation and I hope you'll learn something like I did. Let's dive right in.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat. I'm your host Laura Reagan and today I'm so happy to be finally connecting with someone I've wanted to talk to for a long time, Kim Bartell. Kim, thank you so much for being my guest on Therapy Chat today.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Laura, thank you. I too have been anticipating this conversation with you and am honored to be a guest in dialogue in your podcast.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
Thank you. Well, I'm very honored you are a very busy person. We were trying to coordinate time zones when you were in Australia and I was in the US and you know, the day and a half or whatever difference. I was like, I can't figure it out. But we finally made it happen. So here we are. I'm super thrilled to be talking with you because you're so knowledgeable and I heard you speak in 2023 at the Master Series in Oxford about safe and sound protocol. And, and this is what convinced me after I had been kind of circling around it for years, to finally go ahead and do it, to, you know, do it for myself and become certified in the method. Because the video you showed just, I admit I came in about a third of the way through, so I could have missed some other videos, but this one video that I saw that you showed just really made me realize just how powerful it is for co regulation. So I want to talk to you about that and so many other things. But before we get into it, will you just start off by telling our audience a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Sure. That's always such a wow question to start with. Who are you and what do you do?
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Who am I?
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
I am a human who has a deep love for humanity and, and my mission in my work is to support the conscious evolution of the human spirit. My occupation is complex in that I am an occupational therapist by trade and am voracious in my learning about neuroscience as it applies to therapy and psychotherapeutic process. And this is my 42nd year of being a clinician and that makes me a junior senior in, in my, in my age and in the capacity to have so much vast experience both as a learner from patients, clients, as well as a teacher. Teacher of clinicians all over our world.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
But I think I like to start with what it is that the why.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
What, what is my why? Each moment that we evolve brings us.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
To a greater awareness of something that we were not aware of a moment ago.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
Well, along with that, can you say more about how you are supporting the evolution of human consciousness in a wide variety of ways?
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Occupational therapists are kind of unique. I think we think we're unique anyway in that the training that we have brings us into a very global, human holistic perspective. So that when we are studying occupational science, as it's called today, it looks at mind, body, spirit, heart, emotion, and all the interactive components that make up why we do what we do and how healing is a journey rather than a, a destination. And, and that's a very unique profession that sits in that medical realm. So for me, consciousness is a state of awareness of how I am embodying my day to day experiences that are coming from within as I interact with the world around me as well as with the people around me. And so with increased awareness and connection, the capacity to stay connected to those experiences in their full realm of the range of what we experience as humans, I believe gives us a chance to elevate, elevate our ways of relating, relating to each other and to the world. And so how do I do it? In a wide variety of ways. Teaching, having conversations, holding mentorships. This week we are about to do an in person program we call Moving to Higher Ground, which is a five day program for clinicians to come and treat kids. Kids are my specialty, by the way, in person and receive support as well as personal growth alongside their clinical skills. And so that's an example of embodiment, embodied learning, doing.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
I agree.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
That's the only kind of learning I really like anymore. I like to experience.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
I'm with you. I'm with you.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
Feel the thing we're doing and not just talk about it in a heady way. Just what you shared there really got me thinking about the limitation of the medical view of our organs as having certain functions. Our heart pumps and makes our blood circulate and sends oxygen to the brain and. But there's a coherence in our heart that's different from that. And our gut is sure it digests our food, it's where our immune system is. But so much more happening in our gut. Just, just when you were talking about the evolution of consciousness, I was thinking.
- [08:37]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Oh, and that, that holistic way that we are truly mind, body connected, that, you know, the mind doesn't just live in your head, but it is a cellular state of interconnectedness and communication. And if I can, I have an example that I just learned from a colleague. His doc is Gabriel Cram. He was just talking about how in embryology in embryological development. And this was in an online workshop I was listening to in as cells fold on each other. At one point in our embryological development, the heart is higher than the head in position. And I was like, wow. And then it migrates and he describes it as sliding across the front of the brainstem where it sends in little shoots. Makes me think of a tree with little branches into the brainstem, specifically the nucleus ambiguous and becomes part of the heart vagal connection.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Wow.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
And this is, you know, the beginnings in Many Ways of Dr. Porges Ventral vagal system that right away at one point in your development as a being, your heart is the boss and sits in front and then connects into the Brain, where they are actually one for a short period of time, and then the heart migrates further into the chest.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
But the connection lives on in the.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Way that it's wired together. And I just was fascinated at that piece of information that made me feel this idea of interconnectivity between heart and mind. Not just know it.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Right.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
Isn't it interesting how even the words describing these connections have a resonance that we can feel like a felt experience? You know, it's so interesting. It's so far beyond just memorizing the names of the different parts of the brain and things like that. Oh, gosh, there's so much more to discover. It's really exciting. And I have to say, people like you and Dr. Porges and Gabriel Cram and people who are doing these explorations, it's also Sue Carter. It's just amazing. It's unbelievable what can be found, found. And it's so much beyond just cure for illness or disease to how we work and what's really happening.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
And you know, Laura, it also helps us and humbles us to stay curious.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yeah.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Because just when you. Or this, at least this is what happens to me. Just when I think I know something, it's like there's more to know and more to expand into and sometimes stuff to disregard that.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
It's.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Some of the learning that I had when I began my career is so vastly different today that it, it, it requires a. A humility, an evolution, so to speak, of understanding how we are really made. And maybe all the things we think today in 20 years from now will say, oh my gosh, I really had that wrong too, or there's much more to it than the way I thought about it in 2025. So it's important to stay in dialogue like this.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
Yeah, that's a great point. There's no reaching an end and then you know what there is to know. And I've seen myself in my career so far. How, you know, the new discoveries in this field, in the field of trauma and attachment are just happening so rapidly. It almost just forces you to have an open mind about. We don't know what they'll figure out next, you know, and it's just like, it just keeps growing and growing and it's very, very exciting. It's an exciting field to work in for. Sure. Never boring for sure. So something that I wanted to ask you about that is not something that most of us in the mental health field learn. So one of the things I deeply value that I've learned from the field of occupational therapy is about the sensory system, you know, and of course I know like this much about it, which is mind blowing compared to what we didn't know in the mental health field and what we don't typically learn. But I guess maybe either part of that or related to that is the vestibular system and how it contributes to our ability to feel safe in our bodies and to orient to our environment and to connection with others how it relates to the vagus nerve. I would love if you could teach us a little bit about that, maybe just in relation to what would be relevant for understanding how sound healing works, you know, how sound impacts us, the ear, all that stuff.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Your question is a big one. I just wanted to say as a start to your question, for those who might be interested in perhaps doing a deeper dive to this question, there is a book that was just recently published called the Handbook of Childhood Trauma and Dissociation that was written, edited by Jill Hosier and Anagomez. And in it, on Chapter 21, is a Chapter by me, and it's called Psychosensory Intervention for the Treatment of Children with Complex Trauma and Dissociation. Given that this is a shared love of a conversation trauma and dissociation between you and I, I thought you would, you would like that. And you know, there isn't. It's a big, it's a big voluminous book, but there hasn't been a lot of a compendium for kids in history. So it's kind of a really beautiful weaving of different ways of supporting children. So psychosensory is a theory that I put together of combining sensation, movement, psychotherapy, attachment play, relational interventions, neurobiology, and seeing how trauma lives in the sensory systems. And as an occupational therapist historically working with children who often came with a traditional diagnosis of either ADHD or learning disability or autism, or varying, you know, wastepaper basket terms that they would come to the clinic with. I found myself landing in trauma over and over and over again. Where when children who had experienced developmental trauma, for example, and had dissociative histories of self protection, that that state of disembodiment was actually coded within how they process sensation that looked a lot like other diagnoses, where the child's capacity to know where their body is in space or make their movements be smooth or feel safe with touch or connection, that these things we had a nice little category for in our sensory integrative therapy.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
And it wasn't clear that sometimes when.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
You are in the process of embodying feeling, you for Sometimes the first time, it's not fun.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
And it also isn't always feeling safe.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
And subsequently, the child may look more dysregulated. Child and adult may look more dysregulated.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
And many therapists along the way in history have thought, well, what I'm doing isn't working. And what I have discovered is it's the combination of how I show up in those moments as the child person starts to come into connection with themself that helps to create that safety or that progressive titrated experience of safety. And in the OT lab, so to speak, we have lots of equipment that we use at our disposal. My favorite is Lycra, which is a spandex material that gives you a sense of compression and containment to your body and a boundary for your body. What I know about trauma is that all traumas in some way seem to include some kind of boundary violation. And that feeling of this is me and this is not me is an embodied experience. So it's a profound way to put a history or a story of attachment disruption of developmental trauma together with a new way of experiencing your body. And the vestibular system is fascinating in your question because it is the most primitive sensory system.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
It's the first one in your embryological development to be fully developed. In fact, you're swimming around in an aqueous environment. And you'll never have that much vestibular input again in your lifetime unless you live on the moon or underwater. The womb is a contained space. And this is where the baby first learns, I'm different from you, I'm separate from you. And that these. If the nervous system is wiring up in the way that it was designed to do, then the developing brain learns self differentiation, at least at a very basic consciousness level.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
And there's a lot of times where that wiring doesn't wire in the way that it's supposed to for a wide variety of reasons. But the vestibular system doesn't have its own cortex. Like, you know, your eyes has its.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Own cortex, the occipital cortex.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
And you have all of the temporal lobe for sound. And you have the sensory motor strip for proprioception and touch. Your vestibular input goes everywhere. It impacts all aspects of human function, emotion, cognition, motion, time and space. So when that system is struggling, it's kind of like the platform upon which other systems scaffold from don't work so well. And so this vestibular backdrop allows me to feel gravity, my reference point to the ground, hence the word, you know, groundedness to feel safe in an upright position. And, you know, I don't know about you, but I never think about that at all until I had vertigo. And then you can't think about anything else. So that referent of this is me in an upright position and how I map everything in relationship to that space.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
And all of our visual and auditory information is combined with that spatial knowing so that I know where that sound came from, or I know where that object is, or is there something in the periphery of my landscape that I need to know is part of threat. So when Dr. Porges talks about, in his polyvagal theory, the term neuroception, neuroception, which is the. I call it the satellite dish that helps us know at a very. And I'm pointing to my gut, right? At a very primitive interroenteric knowing, am I safe or am I not? And all of that sensory information that comes from within my body is part of my knowing. You know, your gut has its own brain. And so that information from within me is put together from the information that's coming from outside of me in a millisecond, telling me, am I truly safe here or not, or relatively safe. And then that becomes what we call an expected experience where, like a prediction that from that early knowing that I live in myself, that's how I expect the world to be. And then my brain is a comparator saying, did I get that right? Am I moving through space in the right way? Otherwise we wouldn't be able to drive. Or do, you know, 90% of the things that we do, it would be too slow. So the vestibular system has a lot of feeding of information constantly for readiness.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
I don't know.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
What do you think about that?
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Laura Reagan (Host)
Yeah, there's a few things that are coming to my mind. First thing that came to my mind is one of my children when they were a baby, had strabismus. So both eyes were crossing. And the baby had surgery at 7 months of age. And the baby just not saying which baby. It was just that for privacy. But the baby was my. I was, you know, a new mom, so I wasn't. I was tracking the developmental milestones to the extent that I understood them. But the baby wasn't sitting up yet before the surgery. And as soon as they came home from the surgery, they sat up, and it made me realize, oh, yeah, something about depth perception or something was impacted with why they weren't sitting up. And probably if they hadn't had the surgery, they would have had that developmental delay of not Sitting up in the timing that is typical.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Laura.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
This makes me excited.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
All of my occupational therapy colleagues that are watching this and listening to this podcast, because they will love this will go. Yes. Thank you for being such an awesome mom for describing it this way, because this is what we're trying to explain all the time, especially to physicians.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yeah.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
In that we call it the vestibular ocular reflex. And, you know, I have a workshop that I give called the vestibular visual system, because I don't separate them.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
They're one system. And the vestibular system, which lives in your middle ear, inside your inner ear.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Is sending information directly to a part of your brainstem that helps the eye muscles work so that you can track and shift your gaze in a smooth manner and to coordinate your two eyes together. So if there is a challenge with the vestibular system, it'll impact the eyes, and if there is a problem with the eyes, it will impact the vestibular system, because they are, you know, interactive in their. In how they're wired together. And so something that seems so subtle, like a strabismus, has impact on the neck muscles, because the neck muscles sit in between the head and the trunk has an impact on your inner core muscles, which is helping you sit up. So it's an interactive function that all has to work together in order for us to move in the way that we hope to.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yes.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
And I think about the way that this child, when they played sports, it was like there was a lot of. With soccer, like, going for the ball but just missing it, you know, And. And later we realized that their eyes weren't working together. So that just makes me wonder, too. I mean, these things are things where in the medical world, it's like, oh, you got the surgery. Your eyes aren't crossing. You're good. And meanwhile, it looks like there's possibly some impacts of this. And how do you even find out what they are, you know, or what they could be or what could be different? And then how do you address those things? So that's like a rabbit hole in a way.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
But an. But an important one, you know, because if we scaffold this conversation over to the trauma world for a minute.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yeah.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
And talk about vestibular and visual functions as a result of trauma. Well, the eyes. Let's start with the eyes for a second. They are often a outcome measure of constant states of stress. So when children are exposed to chronic danger, their nervous system adapts into a fixed survival state, and this includes the eyes. So peripheral vision becomes Often dominant over central detail vision, which keeps you in this big open eyed state of vigilance where you are constantly noticing and scanning.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
For danger, which can look like distractibility.
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Right.
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But it's the nervous system's impulse of.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Using or of harnessing a reflex that.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
We all have but for heightened protection. So you actually see an adaptive change in the visual system to be less focused and to be more oriented to the outside world in anticipation. And so this changes how the mind, I always say the mind is behind.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
The eyes, is able to connect to what it's doing. Because if you're busy protecting yourself, it's harder to get down to maybe learning in a classroom, perhaps.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
And this baby actually had a traumatic delivery that I believe is why they had strabismus, because, well, and the cord was wrapped around their neck so they were in distress. So there's a trauma for the child to be hypervigilant toward for the rest of their life, potentially if it's not addressed in some way.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
And what's so amazing about us as humans is our capacity to heal and adapt in spite of those horrific, unaddressed. The birth trauma is one of the least talked about, I think, forms of trauma and such a common human experience. And often the fact that you. I just think about the number of preemies that I know in my life and you know, you survived and that's champagne material. And then there's usually not a consideration of what that survival took. Yeah, right from, from your, from your soul, from your being to manage all of that, that dilemma that you had at the beginning. And don't forget, in addition to the negative aspects of TRA of trauma, there's amazing resilience.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yeah.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
And resourcing that comes from that as well.
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TherapyNotes Announcer
Today's episode is sponsored by Psychotherapy Networker and pesi. If you're a therapist, be sure to check out the partner page which is linked in the show Notes where you can get discounted trainings with previous therapy chat guests like Courtney Armstrong, Dr. Leslie Korn, Dr. Arielle Schwartz, Dr. Tammy Nelson, Dr. Janina Fisher, Rebecca Case, Dr. Peter Levine, Dr. Lindsay Gibson, Deb Dana, Lori Gottlieb and many, many others. You'll find the link in the Show Notes to my partner page with PESSI and Psychotherapy Networker where you can find all these discounted training. If you need CES, this is a great place to go. TherapyNotes is consistently transforming the way therapists manage their practices with continuous updates designed to save money and improve efficiency. Their latest game changer therapy Fuel A powerful and fully integrated suite of AI tools that streamline documentation so you can focus more on your clients. With AI features that help by generating progress notes from summaries or transcriptions, creating contact notes directly from client secure messages, and automated summaries of client history forms, TherapyNotes users are already reporting hours of saved time and energy. Some other recent feature improvements include automated recurring client payments, electronic secondary insurance billing, and their constantly expanding library of outcome measures. The best time to give TherapyNotes a try is now. Sign up for your free trial by going to therapynotes.com, clicking Start My Free Trial and accessing your first two months free with the promo code CHAT. See why TherapyNotes is the most trusted EHR for behavioral health professionals today.
- [30:28]
Laura Reagan (Host)
So true. And I want to name too that in what you were speaking about earlier. With children with attention issues and various things that end up giving them a diagnosis that sends them maybe to ot, the traumas they may have experienced are so often overlooked. The parent will say, well, they haven't experienced any trauma. And the parent's thinking, I'm not abusing them, no one's abusing them. So they haven't experienced any trauma. But if they had a traumatic birth or a traumatic experience in utero, that's traumatic. And it's impossible for that baby or that young child to be able to tell you. It was really hard for me back, back then when that happened, you know.
- [31:15]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
And the child knows but doesn't know.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Right.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
You know, the, the knowing is so deep within, but it's not in intellectual language based understanding which makes that kind of trauma. So I was going to use the word tricky, but that's not even the right word. It's so foundational in the landscape of that person's life, the lens through which they live without even knowing. And I first had that conversation with Dr. Bruce Perry so many years ago when he started to talk about the neurosequential model and the different timings of trauma and how that would impact different functions of the nervous system as they evolved. And one other thing I was gonna remember to say is the vestibular system is really connected to anxiety. Okay. When you don't know where you are in space, it's very anxiety producing.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yeah.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
And in your hippocampus, which is part of memory formation and referencing of where, where did I put my keys, for example? This is highly receptive to the vestibular system. And there are special cells in the hippocampus called place cells, which actually help, you know, where things are in relationship to you and remember that. And this has been shown to be impacted by trauma, that dissociative experiences, disembodied experiences. And this is the Ruth, Ruth Lanius work. It really has an impact. The vestibular system has a deep impact on organization, identity, sense of body awareness, think of any of the eating disorders. So yes, the sensory systems play a big role in mental health and well being and because they are so much a part of how we experience the world, including relationships which are sensory.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
Oh my gosh, my mind is just all over the place like just all these thoughts and associations to what you're saying. So another thing I wanted to say that came to mind when you were talking about the vestibular system is myself as a kid when, when I was a little kid I ran around and played like all the other kids and everything was Rosie. And then my parents split up, my mom moved out and she had been my primary caregiver. So my mom left and I lived with my dad who was a safe person, but my mom was like really my primary caregiver. And after my mom left, gradually over the years I became uncoordinated. Like I couldn't dance, I couldn't kick a ball or play that way. And I'm getting emotional when I think about this. But also I struggled to do math all of a sudden when I had always found school easy. It's like, it's really, it's so hard to make these connections with the way your brain works and these experiences that were, you know, you know, they were traumatic, but it's like not exactly a trauma symptom in the way that we normally think of them. And they.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
So oh gosh, you know what you're saying, I'm feeling that. And trauma is such in the eye of the perceiver. And this word is so important because I think the dialogues around trauma have led us to think or become comparators of trauma.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
Right.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
And we all have an image of what trauma is. Anything that disrupts the authentic sense of expression of self and the feeling of safety can be coded as traumatic. And the loss of a parent is one of the single most intense traumas we can experience as humans. So you know that I think that's important for the listeners that when someone tells a story of their experience, they need to be met in it, irrespective of how traumatic it sounds or not.
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Laura Reagan (Host)
To us, to someone else. Right. I mean, I feel like that's one of the biggest challenges in this work is to challenge the public perception of what trauma is. Because even when you were sharing about working with kids who have these challenges that look behavioral or they look neurological, maybe like neurodivergence, and now there's this big movement to a lot of people being late diagnosed with adhd. But I'm asking myself, has trauma been ruled out as the source of this interruption or this challenge? I feel like I'm. I don't want to negate anyone's experience. But on the other hand, if we're saying this is just the way someone is and that's how they are and they have to figure out how to thrive in the world as they are versus this is an effect of something that happened that doesn't have to stay like this, I would think that most people would prefer not to suffer with challenges that they have to learn how to live with when they could be addressed. It's up to each person, but it's neurodiverse.
- [36:46]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Affirming practice.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yeah.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
Is a big part of being trauma sensitive.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yeah.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
In helping us to all see each other through a sense of acceptance. It's a beautiful aspiration of evolution, for sure. And you know what I have experienced in this? Journeying with families and with clients. Many of the kids that I treated are now 40, so they're no longer kids and, you know, still have relationships with them. One of the things that happens is that you see that change across time. I'll give you a very concrete example. Last week, this is vulnerable. I went for a hearing test, and I came out and the audiologist was very good, very kind, and he said, you did very well.
- [37:40]
Laura Reagan (Host)
But.
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Kim Bartell (Guest)
I could tell by his face there was a but coming. And he said, and you have a hearing impairment. And it was fascinating. It doesn't matter how much, you know, it just hit. It hits. It hit me like a wave of wow, there. You know, there's aging, there's imperfection, there's difference. All the things that we each face. Every time we hit a. It was a little mini shock, little mini shock wave. And my first response was, oh, some. Something must have been wrong in the test. And I laughed at myself because one side of me said it, and the other side said, well, there's denial for you. And then I said, I guess that means this is what I said to him. I need to be aided. And he said, you always have a choice.
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Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
And I.
- [38:34]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
And I thought, well, that was interesting because I didn't perceive it as a choice. And then here we are one week later, and this is coming in the future, and I'm just starting to Settle into the idea of this place, of what's that going to be like? You know, how is that going to change my other senses?
- [38:52]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
How is that going to help me in my interactions?
- [38:55]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
How is it that I didn't even know like all of that reflective process? And so I'm thinking, I'm thinking that no matter what, there is trauma, meaning if I'm identified with a neural, a neurodiversity of some form, I'm going to have this process in me of landing in a knowing about myself that requires something different than maybe I expected. And that that's in and of itself, it's going beyond the label, moving into the label rather than saying, oh well, don't forget the trauma right now, this little shock, whatever experience of a diagnosis is a window into exploring more and more of, well, why do I respond that way? And that often that is the path.
- [39:47]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Into the trauma rather than it's this or this.
- [39:51]
Yeah.
- [39:52]
It's been a very fascinating experience in.
- [39:55]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Working with those with difference, especially as adults when they're late diagnosed.
- [40:00]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
And I often think to myself, you know, what does it feel like to have a diagnosis when you're 60 of autism and you've been living in yourself for 60 years?
- [40:08]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Why did you need that?
- [40:10]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
And for some it's like validation of all the suffering I've had for all this time.
- [40:15]
Yes.
- [40:16]
And for others it's like now I can begin to explore myself. It's fascinating the diverse views of which we enter into this journey of self discovery, really. So I hold them both in mind all the time. Because in my perspective we all have continuums of shock trauma in our psyche, in our being, and it's on our timelines.
- [40:42]
Laura Reagan (Host)
I feel the same way. And attachment wounds, which many people look at as being different from trauma. I consider it developmental trauma. But because we're not living in a way that's really aligned with our true nature and living in civilization and modernity, we don't have the ability to connect with small groups the way that maybe we're meant to. I mean, we can find ways. I'm not saying there's none, but you know, we're disconnected. We're in this hyper individualized culture and there's a lot of violence in the world and so there's a lot of deprivation, there's a lot of greed and all of those things lead us to experiencing new traumas throughout our lives.
- [41:32]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Yeah. And how we cope with both in the moment and across time shapes the way we move. So our bodies, you know, they inform us but they also are recipients of it. So muscles become collapsed, they become hypertense systems, our immune systems have an impact on them. Our organs work differently, our hormones work differently because they are designed to keep us in alignment with what we are experiencing. So each of our bodies shape all of their functions to what we are experiencing. And I find that knowing that at least helps me to be kinder to myself and to try and get ahead of it. So that if I feel something in my body or I notice something talking to me, instead of responding from fear, it's a way to say, ah, you're giving me a little bit of information.
- [42:37]
Laura Reagan (Host)
You have such a broad knowledge base with your 42 years of your career and your continued curiosity, it seems. And I would love to sit at your feet and just ask you questions for hours and hours, but we can't. So for now, will you talk to our audience a little bit about how the vagus nerve comes into what we're speaking about with the vestibular system?
- [43:05]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Well, the vagus nerve. I asked Steve Porges that question once. What is the connection between the vagus.
- [43:11]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Nerve and the vestibular system?
- [43:12]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
And his response was, we don't really know, Kim. So specifically with respect to that particular system, we don't have a true interconnection. But what I want to say is everything is so interconnected, period. The vagus nerve is not the only nerve or the only part of us that is responsible for regulation. Regulation takes your whole brain. However, all parts of our brain connect into autonomics. That's how I like to think of it, with clarity. It's like, many roads lead to Rome, and it's all this weaving of. Because our autonomic nervous system is both our output for survival as well as our registrant of danger and safety. So it's interfacing with everything. So when one aspect that we do know for sure about the vagus nerve is that the semicircular canals, which are little hoops that sit inside the vestibular system that give the brain information about the direction of movement and the speed of movement, they are predominantly, predominantly sympathetic in nature. Okay? They're predominantly driving an upregulation because you don't want to fall on your face when you're in the bus when it stops, right? You need that readiness and sympathetic. Please know. All of us need to be reminded, I think, is not negative. It is a necessary element of the autonomic soup that allows us to be alert, engaged in play, in function, in balance, in coordination. So vestibular system is mostly connected to that more sympathetic side. Now, there is one branch that we have some evidence that says, and this is the horizontal, the spinning hoop is very connected to the vagus nerve because it can make you puke, okay. And vomit. Vomiting is parasympathetic vagal, which, you know, most of us think of that as completely not fun. But it is highly protective. It's what gets toxins out of you and throwing up when you are sick or when you have had too much input. It has an inherently protective function. And so this spinning can be a quick way to help you feel more downregulated. Some people who are really, really in the out fringes of their need for downregulation towards a more rest and restore space rotation can be very helpful for that. Very helpful. One of the treatments that I have for many clients, I call it office chair therapy, where you just do a few little spins on your office chair. It changes your breath, changes your capacity in your sense of connection to yourself. It activates your diaphragm, which is part of your inner core. So it's got lots of different outcomes, this rotary function. And one other thing Steve did say in my question was when you hang upside down, there are baroreceptors in the arteries in your neck that monitor blood flow to the brain, that change your blood pressure. And so when you're upside down, you want to. You don't want all that blood to go just to your head. So the baroreceptors inform your heart to change the heart rate and the blood flow. And this is very ventral vagal, you know, very. So inversion, you know, like in yoga or. Inversions are vestibular, but they are also autonomic. So I think it's important when we think about the understanding that many of us have about the vagus nerve, we think about it exclusively like the social engagement system. But there is so much more to the vagus nerve than the social engagement functions.
- [47:36]
Laura Reagan (Host)
Right. That makes so much sense. And Dr. Ariel Schwartz, I've done a lot of training with her and she has shown in her trainings how helping ourselves, using balance to kind of bring you back to center. So even though you're. You're standing on one foot or something so that you're actually off balance, but like that how that regulates your system.
- [48:01]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yeah.
- [48:02]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Oh, that would be such a cool conversation, wouldn't it?
- [48:07]
Laura Reagan (Host)
Maybe I should have you and Ariel on together. And what a.
- [48:10]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
What a utopic opportunity that would be.
- [48:13]
Laura Reagan (Host)
That would be, yes, glorious for me. And, and just sit back and soak it all up. But yeah, it's so much more than just trying to be regulated. It's so much more than just trying to be in ventral vagal. And we know that part of the idea of polyvagal theory is that it's our survival. It's literally our life and death are managed by this.
- [48:40]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yes.
- [48:41]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
And. And the true nature of gratitude that we have to have for that. I call it Norton Antivirus running in the background.
- [48:49]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Yes.
- [48:49]
Laura Reagan (Host)
Oh my gosh. I. I could just really learn from you for hours and hours and hours. And I. I know you said that you were recording a course with Pesi that's about sound and the kind of the. Like the mechanics of sound healing. I'm really interested in that too.
- [49:08]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
That particular conference is in the month of August.
- [49:12]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Okay.
- [49:13]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
And it's called the Polyvagal Practice Summit.
- [49:16]
Kim Bartell (Guest, continued)
Great.
- [49:16]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
By Pezi on the 28th and 29th of August. And there are lots of wonderful speakers, but there is a strong sound music listening theme to the conference.
- [49:31]
Laura Reagan (Host)
That's incredible. I can't wait for that. I'll be sure to link to that in the show notes. And I partner with Pessy often, so they'll probably give us a special discount or something for people to sign up. So thank you for telling me about that. And as we come to a close, is there anything else you want to share with our listeners that you're doing? I'll write about the Ana Gomez book that you contributed to in the show notes.
- [49:59]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Well, when I think about what we're doing, we're headed out on another world tour starting in September. Three, four different continents. And there. There's a. So our website is Kim Barthel CA and wide varieties of connection, but mostly trauma sensitive practice work themes around regulation. Attachment Matters is my brand new course which we're opening in Sydney and Melbourne in November. And this is attachment 2025. I've been studying attachment theory since. I don't know, I think I was 30. But a real current deep dive into how do we think about this in our life today and our clinical practice. So thank you for asking. The upcoming events in 2025.
- [50:51]
Laura Reagan (Host)
I'll put a link to your website in the show notes. And so the Attachment Matters is in person, right?
- [50:59]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
It is actually. All of the work in the fall is in person.
- [51:03]
Laura Reagan (Host)
Beautiful.
- [51:04]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Back on the road again.
- [51:06]
Laura Reagan (Host)
I love it.
- [51:07]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Yep.
- [51:07]
Laura Reagan (Host)
Well, I'm so grateful that you could sit down for a little bit of time and be with me and Kim, it was lovely to be with you today. Thank you so much for being my guest on Therapy Chat.
- [51:18]
Kim Bartell (Guest)
Thank you Laura.
- [51:19]
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- [52:03]
Laura Reagan (Host Introduction)
Thank you for listening to Therapy Chat with your host Laura Reagan, LCSWC. For more information please visit therapychatpodcast.com.