The Biology Of Trauma - And How To Heal It with Dr. Aimie Apigian | 346

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil

Episode: The Biology Of Trauma - And How To Heal It with Dr. Aimie Apigian (#346)
Date: September 22, 2025
Host: Nicole Kalil
Guest: Dr. Aimie Apigian

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Overview

In this powerful episode, Nicole Kalil speaks with Dr. Aimie Apigian—a double board-certified physician and trauma specialist—about the deeply misunderstood biology of trauma. Together, they challenge the misconception that trauma is only about catastrophic life events or is “all in your head,” exploring instead how trauma actually becomes embedded in our bodies, quietly shaping our health, energy, relationships, and even intuition. Dr. Apigian shares her clinical experience and personal story to offer hope, practical steps, and a reframing for high-achieving women feeling “stuck” despite talk therapy or personal insight.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Trauma: Beyond the Obvious

• Trauma isn’t just about the event:
  Dr. Apigian stresses that trauma is less about what happened and more about how your body internally responds. Whether an experience is “big” or “small,” its impact is determined at the somatic (body) level.
  • “What makes it a trauma is what's happening inside of you... when you are in a moment where you feel like there's nothing that you can do to make something scary, scary or bad stop, your body will have the same internal experience and response.” (Dr. Apigian, 09:36)
• We tend to downplay our trauma:
  High-achieving women often dismiss their pain because it’s not “as bad as” someone else’s, causing self-compassion and healing to stall.

2. Trauma as a Present-Day Biological Reality

• The body remembers, even when the mind moves on:
  Symptoms like chronic fatigue, hormone imbalances, autoimmunity, migraines, and anxiety are signs of trauma living in the body—not just psychological problems.
  • “Trauma doesn't just live in our minds... Trauma stores itself in our cells and then shows up in ways we might not expect…” (Nicole, 01:26)
• Disconnect between intellectual and somatic healing:
  Many women feel they’ve “done the work” mentally but remain physically burdened.
  • “That understanding hasn't actually translated into my body experiencing freedom from the past. My body still feels like it's burdened down.” (Dr. Apigian, 04:26)

3. How the Body “Holds” Trauma

• Trauma has three levels:
  • Mind: Self-talk and understanding, though helpful, are not sufficient.
  • Body: Somatic or “muscle” memory, manifesting as automatic reactions or tension long after an event.
  • Biology: Deep biological changes—chronic inflammation, imbalances like zinc deficiency or excess copper—that reinforce trauma patterns.
  • “Trying to just do mantras, meditation, self-talk, it’s not going to be enough. There are two other levels… until it gets that reset to safety, it still believes the danger might be there.” (Dr. Apigian, 12:53)

4. The Power of Neuroplasticity: Rewiring Muscle Memory

• Learned Helplessness Experiment:
  Dr. Apigian describes Dr. Seligman's experiment with dogs to illustrate “learned helplessness”: how, after repeated failed attempts to stop pain, bodies (and people) stop trying to escape even when escape is possible.
  • “It becomes a muscle memory for us to respond with passivity to problems in our life.” (Dr. Apigian, 21:03)
• Practical Healing:
  Healing requires teaching the body new responses—not just talking about change, but moving and acting out safe, empowered patterns.

5. Pitfalls in Trauma Recovery

• More is not better:
  “I wanted to resolve all of this trauma immediately.... No, this was one of the first lessons I had to learn. More is not better, more is actually more traumatizing.” (Dr. Apigian, 27:15)
• Trauma response can be triggered by the healing process itself:
  Doing “too much, too fast” in trauma recovery, or having experienced “too little for too long,” both perpetuate trauma patterns.
  • "Our body actually needs energy to do trauma work, and when we try to do too much… it will shut down into a trauma response." (Dr. Apigian, 28:25)

6. Recognizing Signs of Stored Trauma (Especially in High-Achieving Women)

• Physical health symptoms:
  • Chronic, recurring health issues (fatigue, inflammation, digestive problems, autoimmune issues)
  • Digestive disturbances are particularly common due to the mind-gut-vagus nerve connection.
• Behavioral/emotional symptoms:
  • Constant sense of depletion or overwhelm, needing to “push through” mornings (34:07)
  • Emotional disconnection from self (“Am I friends with my body, or am I the master?”)
  • Overreliance on food, caffeine, or other stimulants to drive daily functioning
  • Perfectionism, imposter syndrome, fear of failure, fear of what will happen if you stop performing
  • “Terrified is trauma.” (Dr. Apigian, 36:24)

7. The Biology of Being Stuck

• Biological underpinnings can perpetuate trauma:
  Dr. Apigian shares how her own overlooked biochemical imbalances (like a zinc deficiency or excess copper) disrupted her mood and energy, making healing via talk therapy alone impossible.
  • “There was so much of my biology that was contributing to me constantly being on that edge of overwhelm.” (Dr. Apigian, 31:17)
• Foundation before deep work:
  Gentle, supportive interventions (nutrition, rest, restoring minerals, grounding in self-compassion) must come before reprocessing deep traumatic memories.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On sizing trauma:
  “Every single patient of mine has been able to look back on their life and say, I can remember a moment...I don't care if it was a big T or small t, the inner experience of the body is still the same.” (Dr. Apigian, 10:28)
• On dissociation from the body:
  “If we have a body that is holding trauma, we can't trust our intuition because our intuition is trauma informed—not in the good way... we're not even connected to our bodies.” (Dr. Apigian, 04:55)
• The cost of “packing” trauma:
  “I have packed my trauma so well, so deep, I make sure it never comes out. But this is the cost that we pay. And there is a cost.” (Dr. Apigian, relaying a patient, 34:09)
• On self-grace:
  “What I'm hearing is to give ourselves some grace, to move a little slower, to give ourselves time.” (Nicole, 29:09)
• Reframing the healing journey:
  “My body is holding trauma. It destigmatizes, it takes it away from any judgment.” (Dr. Apigian, 26:16)
• On why we get “stuck”:
  “Our own biology is what is keeping us stuck living out our trauma.” (Dr. Apigian, 33:20)
• The ending reframing (Nicole’s summary):
  “Maybe your body isn’t betraying you. Maybe it’s trying to protect you. And maybe, just maybe, understanding that is the beginning of healing…. It doesn’t mean that you’re broken. It just means that your body remembers.” (Nicole, 38:56)

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Important Timestamps

• (01:10) Nicole’s introduction and main premise: Trauma is stored in the body, not just in the mind.
• (03:43) Dr. Apigian on disconnect between mind and body: “My body still feels like it's burdened down.”
• **(07:24) Expanding the definition of trauma to life moments that felt “insurvivable” at the time.
• **(12:32) Dr. Apigian on three levels of trauma-holding.
• **(17:18) Discussion of Seligman’s “learned helplessness” dogs experiment—connection to real life patterns.
• **(21:03-23:00) Personal story: Dr. Apigian’s childhood trauma and somatic memory.
• **(23:33) Healing mistakes: “More is not better.”
• **(28:25) “Too much, too fast, or too little, too long”—how trauma patterns perpetuate.
• **(31:17) Dr. Apigian’s own story: biology as the missing piece.
• **(34:09) How professionals hide and “push through” trauma.
• **(38:56) Nicole’s final takeaways: “Maybe your body isn’t betraying you. Maybe it’s trying to protect you…”

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Core Takeaways for Listeners

• Trauma is a biological, present-moment reality, not just a past event or mental concept; your physical symptoms or chronic fatigue may be your body’s stored trauma.
• Healing requires more than just understanding or talking; it means patiently retraining the body’s responses—with grace and at a sustainable pace.
• High-functioning, ambitious women are especially at risk for missing, dismissing, or “pushing through” trauma signals—compassion and careful self-attention are crucial.
• Before deep therapy or somatic work, build your biological resilience (“lay your foundation”)—nutrition, rest, and gentle connection to yourself.
• There is nothing wrong or “broken” about you for feeling depleted or stuck—your body is simply trying to protect you in the only way it knows.

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Further Resources

• Dr. Aimie Apigian’s book: “The Biology of Trauma” (link in show notes)
• Connect with Dr. Apigian and Nicole Kalil for programs and insights at their respective websites.

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In Nicole's words:
“Listening to [your body], trusting it, is no small thing. It's revolutionary. And it's also where your healing begins. Which is why I believe that all of this is absolutely woman’s work.” (38:56)

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(Episode summaries skip over commercial breaks and non-content segments.)

Transcript

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

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[Nicole Khalil]

Many of us have experienced trauma. Some of us talk about it, fewer of us understand it, and almost none of us were taught what it actually does to our body. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the this Is Woman's Work podcast and today we're talking about the biology of trauma. How fear, pain and overwhelm don't just impact our minds, they imprint themselves on our bodies. Because trauma doesn't just live in our minds or our memories. And even when we work really, really hard to forget or to move on, our body still remembers and it still holds on. Trauma stores itself in our cells and then shows up in ways we might not expect. Things like chronic fatigue, hormone imbalances, autoimmune conditions, trouble sleeping, migraines, foggy thinking, or just that nagging sense that you're stuck in survival mode even when everything looks fine on the outside. And while traditional medicine continues to mislabel or dismiss these symptoms, the truth is, treating only the mind or only the symptoms leaves us managing the fallout instead of addressing the root cause. It seems that in order for any of us to truly heal, we have to stop seeing trauma as a past event and start understanding it as present day biology. We need to understand trauma as something happening inside the body, not as some singular external event. Because gaining clarity on how our bodies hold onto the past and how that impacts our health, our choices and our relationships is crucial. That's exactly what today's guest is here to help us do. Dr. Amy Apigian is a double board certified physician in Preventative and Addiction Medicine with a Master's degree in Biochemistry and Public Health. She's also trained in Psychosomatic medicine. Somatic experiencing, neuro, autoimmunity, mental health, nutrition and trauma therapy. All that to say she knows what she's talking about. Her integrative approach helps us understand how trauma gets stored in the body, how it alters our ability to regul, connect and recover, and most importantly, how we can begin healing without re traumatizing ourselves in the process. Amy, thank you for being here. And I know it sounds weird to say that I'm excited to talk about trauma, but in this case, I actually am. So I want to kick us off by asking you to explain what trauma does to our bodies and our biology. Like, how is this connected? Because I feel like this is a new concept for many of us.

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

You know, I've been speaking a lot lately and I've had two women in the last two weeks come up to me and ask me essentially the same question. Nicole which is, I feel like my mind has done a lot of the healing, but my body is still burdened down. My body is struggling to keep up. My body has a response when I'm having a relationship challenge or conflict in an important relationship in my life. My body is developing health issues and inflammation and weight gain. And my body just isn't responding to the supplements that it used to. So there's this idea that my mind, I can understand different circumstances in my life, why I did what I did at that time. I can even understand my coping mechanisms now and my tendency towards perfectionism or imposter syndrome. I can understand it all, Nicole but that understanding hasn't actually translated into my body experiencing freedom from the past. My body still feels like it's burdened down. And that's been a big frustration for a lot of professional women because we need to perform, we need to be at our best, we need to be showing up and, and being able to even know what our intuition is telling us. And yet if we have a body that is holding trauma, we can't trust our intuition because our intuition is trauma informed. Not in the good way trauma informed. It's in the. No. I see fear and danger everywhere. Anyone and everyone is potentially dangerous. Anyone and everyone can possibly hurt me, betray me, run over me, or we're not even connected to our bodies. Which makes sense because if we are a high performing woman, we are not able to be burdened down by feeling tired or feeling those digestive pains and bloating after eating or the aches and pains. We can't allow ourselves to be distracted by those. And so our mind disconnects from those sensations in order to try to just be able to focus. And so now we're even cut off from our intuition. Yeah. So there's so much aspect around. No. Like, it's not just our memories, our mind, it's actually our body. And we can see evidence of the body still struggling to get through life, even though we may understand our trauma, or like me, not even think that you had trauma and be even more confused.

[Nicole Khalil]

Okay, Amy, I could go in 1 million different directions. So this may seem a little disjointed, but I think what you just said kind of was leading to. One of the questions that popped into my mind is I, I think we have a tendency to think of things in extremes. So, like when I think of ptsd, I can kind of wrap my head around body holding and storing and like having natural reactions from residual trauma. Right. But I think a lot of us, myself included, might be like, well, but my trauma isn't that bad or is it really trauma? So when we're talking about trauma in this context, how big or small, what are we actually talking about here? And are too many of us dismissing our trauma because it's not quote, unquote, big enough or trying to compare it to somebody else's?

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

I think this is one of the most important questions for professional women because it is so easy for us and natural for us to downplay the challenges that we've been through. And this has been a common experience for me and the discussions that I've had with my patients, with my course members and I will be listening to their stories, but seeing present day patterns of, of some, one of the 5D trauma patterns, whether that be disconnection or this dysregulation, sense of depletion, or diseases that are trauma related, or this idea of disruption of forward movement in your life and you're just stuck in some area. So I'm looking for where in your life would you have experienced something that was so shocking at that moment that it changed everything inside for you? And at that moment you didn't know if you would survive. The challenge is that we can now look back on our life from our perspective now as adults. And so we can look back, whether it's our childhood or earlier times in our life, and we can say, well, of course I survived, because look at me, I'm alive now. And I, I've done this and this since that time. So of course I've survived. But my question for my patients is, no, we're not asking about now. Do you know that you survived? Let's go back to that moment. And I have them even visualize. Where were you? Where was a time in your life that as you look back, you can say, in that moment, I felt so, so alone. I couldn't believe what was happening. And it created feelings that were so awful for me to feel. I didn't know if I could feel them and be okay. I didn't know how I was going to make it. And, Nicole, every single patient of mine has been able to look back on their life and say, I can remember a moment. And whether we want to classify that as well, that was a big T moment. Whether that was a small T moment, I don't care. Because the inner experience of the body is still the same, and that's what we want to be looking at. What was the inner experience of your body? Because when you are in a moment where you feel like there's nothing that you can do to make something scary, scary or bad stop, your body will have the same internal experience and response. If it's a big thing, if it's a small thing, it doesn't matter, because what makes it a trauma is what's happening inside of you. And so let me just repeat that again so that the women listening can know, like, what are they looking for in their life? They're going to be scanning back in their lifetime being like, was there ever a moment that I didn't want to be there? Whether this was a moment when you were getting sexual attention that you didn't want. But you're a child. You don't know how to navigate this world of adults, and you don't know who you can even talk to. And so there's this scary thing happening, but you don't know how to make it stop. And you don't want to be there. You would rather be anywhere else than there, but you can't. Or if there's some other thing that you're looking at where you felt you were so alone, you felt alone. Not that you were alone, you felt alone, and you didn't know. At that time, with the resources, with the knowledge, with the emotional maturity that you had at that age, at that time, you didn't know if you were going to be okay.

[Nicole Khalil]

Right? So I don't know if it was in preparation for this conversation. I think it was in your research, but I might've read it elsewhere, that something like 70 to 80% of adults have experienced trauma. So the likelihood that you, me, and our listener have experienced it is pretty high. Is that fair?

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

I'm gonna say that it's part of being a human on this earth. Everyone has had that internal trauma response. I think that those kinds of studies are looking at the event, Nicole. Right? They're. They're looking to qualify an event. Did that event? Was that event bad enough that we can label it as trauma? And when we're looking at the event, we're still missing the entire reason for what a trauma response is. A trauma response is to protect us and help us survive what feels insurvivable in the moment.

[Nicole Khalil]

Okay, so then how does our body store that, absorb that? I don't know if that's the right word, but like, this event happens, we're experiencing it. And then like, our mind 10 years later can look back, but our body is doing something different. So what is our body doing? How is it storing or holding onto that experience?

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

There are three different ways in which our body holds on to these experiences and they become our new normal. And, Nicole, this is one of the saddest things for me is powerful women, and yet they're living in imposter syndrome. They're living in this inauthenticity because they have these stored experiences that told them that that's what they need to do to survive and be okay. So we look at these three levels, and one level is the mind level. So that self talk that we do actually is important, but that will never be enough. And if you just try to do mantras, meditation, self talk, it's not going to be enough. There are two other levels that need this reset to repeat to safety, which is what I call repair. So the reset to safety is what allows our body to be like, I'm so glad that's over. Until it gets that reset to safety, it still believes the danger might be there. And this is why there can be so much of that constant waiting for the next shoe to drop. I just know that the next danger is right around the corner. I don't even know it. I don't see what it is, but I know that it's there. And so even in the good times, I still can't relax. I'm always in survival mode. So it's our body needing specific things to reset to safety.

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[Dr. Amy Apigian]

So there's the body level and then there's the biology level. If it's okay, I want to share something about the body level and then we can go into the biology level. Perfect the body level. Nicole There was an important study done by a famous psychologist. His name was Dr. Seligman and he took dogs. He put them into a container that had two sides. They were separated by a low barrier on one side. He laid down a mat on the floor, and that would provide electrical shocks. On the other side of the container, there was no mat, there were no electrical shocks. This was the place of safety for these dogs. So he puts all of these dogs in one side of the container. Now, I am so sad to have to tell you that part of the experiment was to create a trauma response. And what he did to do that is he tied half of them to the wall with their harness so that when he turned on the shocks, those were not able to jump over the wall. They were not able to escape the bad and scary thing that was happening. Oh, they tried. They tried to jump. And the sad thing for them was that they watched their friends jump over, but they couldn't.

[Nicole Khalil]

So by the way, that is causing trauma. Dogs being said, sorry, anyway.

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

Yes, go ahead. Yes, Right. And just being able to notice, like, I'm having a visceral reaction to that. And oftentimes it's because we can relate to that feeling. Like we can relate to. No, I've either seen bad things happen to other people and I haven't been able to help them to save them, or I felt that that's been me watching my friends or other people do well in life and have healthy relationships and maybe health, just good physical health. And I haven't been able to. And I then start to form beliefs about myself. But it's more than just beliefs about ourself. Nicole. And this is what the next part of the experiment showed. Same dogs, same container, same wall, same electrical matt. Now, this time none of the dogs were tied up. He turns on the electrical shock. And just like the first time, the dogs that were not tied up the first time, for them, this wasn't even a stress anymore. This was just something like a startle, like an inconvenience and an annoying thing that happens in their day. Right? Like with us with the microphone at the beginning of the show, just like, ah, it's an inconvenience, but it's not going to ruin my life. And they knew to jump over the wall because they had done it before, they had been here before and they knew what to do. Nicole this is such an important aspect for how trauma gets stored in the body, is that we haven't known what to do. So we just sit with it, we just hold it, we spin our wheels, we get on the hamster wheel because we haven't known what to do about it other than, I guess I can go to therapy and talk about it. And that has its limitations because, again, like, we. The mind level is Only one level. We've got the body level and the biology level. But the dogs that had been tied up the first time, Nicole, did they jump over the wall?

[Nicole Khalil]

Of course not.

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

Of course not. Like, and we know this because this has been us, right? Like, we. We know the answer without even being told the answer. Because we've been in that place where we don't even try anymore. Because we already know. It's a waste of my energy. I've been here before. I've tried this before. I've tried to have healthy relationships. I've tried to. Whatever it is, I've tried. It didn't work. And why waste my precious energy anymore? That's one of the trauma patterns, actually, the sense of depletion. So that is how one way that professional women can know, oh, my body is holding trauma is do they constantly, frequently have a sense of energy depletion? Everything feels hard, Life feels hard. And what they needed to do to have these dogs now be able to learn to jump over the wall is they actually had to physically help them move their legs. In the movement that they would need to do to jump over the dogs. It had formed a muscle memory. This is why it's not just in our mind. It becomes a muscle memory for us to respond with passivity to problems in our life. It becomes a muscle memory that when a stress happens, rather than even try, we just get overwhelmed and feel sorry for ourselves or eat chocolate and brownies and ice cream or binge on movies to try to minimize the feeling that we get when there is a problem in our life. But we don't think that there's anything we can do. And so we have to engage survival and coping strategies in order to not feel that. So the way out of it for us is just the same way out with the dogs actually having to learn a new muscle memory. So professional women are going to need to learn how to engage neuroplasticity, that aspect of our nervous system that says, no, we can change, we can adapt, and we can utilize that ability of our nervous system to change in the healing process. Not just in the further reinforcing our bad habits, but actually reinforcing the healing and the growth and the authenticity and the vulnerability that we want to have as the women, professional women that we want to show up in the world. So that actual changing the muscle memory. I had a specific example when I was 12 where someone broke into the room where I was staying and they threatened to kill my life. I was 12. I believed them. I didn't know yet that adults lie about those kinds of things and tell you that they're going to kill you when they actually have no means of doing it. I believed him, and so I did exactly what he told me to do. And it wasn't until my third 30s when I realized, wait a second. I still will wake up at night sometimes, and if I'm in that same position and it's all black, my body has the same panic response that it did back then. My body has held onto that, what we call somatic memory. And I actually needed to work through that story and be able to do the movements. The movements. Like we're talking about movements, not talking about the story, doing the movements that I would have wanted to do back when I was 12, to fight that guy off, to overcome, to become the overcomer. And that is how we literally rewire the muscle memory of just going along, shutting down, giving in. In order to survive, we've got to rewire that on a muscle somatic level.

[Nicole Khalil]

Before we talk about the biology, how do we retrain that muscle memory? I have to imagine there has to be some connection to the trauma, as you said, like teaching your body what you would have wanted it to do. Is this something we do for and with ourselves? Is this something we do with a licensed professional? Something in between? What are some of the ways that we reteach our body and reset it to safety?

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

Yeah. I will tell you all the mistakes that I made, Nicole.

[Nicole Khalil]

How's that? That's how I learn everything, too. We're good.

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

That's. That's been my, you know, relief is that, you know, I may make mistakes, but, boy, do I learn from them. So what I did is I realized that I needed to do my own trauma work when I was going through the biggest grief that I've ever had. And it was so big for me, I. I didn't know how to process it. I didn't know how to move through it. I didn't know how to grieve, Nicole. I didn't know how to grieve. And so what I did is I just tried to ignore it. I tried to work a lot of hours. I stuffed it with food. I did all the things.

[Nicole Khalil]

I didn't know anything about those things, by the way. I've never done any of that. Keep going.

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

Then my body finally said, no. More like, no, I'm holding this grief waiting for you to process and resolve it. I can't do this at this pace anymore. And one morning, I couldn't get out of bed. So I Had to take a medical leave. I got diagnosed with the chronic fatigue syndrome. All of these things that I had once. I hate to admit it, Nicole, I had been the physician that I didn't like those kinds of patients. They were the ones I was like, I know that I'm not going to find anything wrong. I don't know what to tell them to do. And their labs are going to be okay. I became that patient that I had always disliked, a body full of trauma. And now I see saw it because I was in that body. I was that patient. But it wasn't until we discovered autoimmunity that I had my wake up call. And I was like, shoot. All of this, the weight gain, the anxiety, the depression, the fatigue, the autoimmunity, this is all related to adverse childhood experiences. Now, I was a foster parent and then adopted. So I was used to working with kids for. From all over the world who had had such severe trauma. So, Nicole, when I looked at my childhood, I could not bring myself to say, well, me too. I've had childhood trauma too. Because who am I next to these other stories of such horrible neglect and abuse that were coming out from orphanages around the world? So that was a big shift for me even to just be able to start to accept that whether I recognized it or not, whether I believed it or not, whether I wanted it to be true or not, my body was holding on to trauma. And even just that language actually really helped me. And I would encourage other professional women who are in that same struggle to just shift that language. Rather than saying, I've had trauma, just my body is holding trauma. My body is holding trauma. It destigmatizes, it takes it away from any judgment. It's just, this is what my body is doing. And then being able to see that I wanted to resolve all of this trauma immediately. I'm a professional, I have a career. I need to get back to my life.

[Nicole Khalil]

So there's gotta be an efficient way to do this, right? Yeah.

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. You get me. I didn't want to do trauma work, but hey, if we're going to have to do trauma work, let's get this thing done. So I signed up for all of this therapy. Just bring it on, right? Because the more means the better. No, this was one of the first lessons I had to learn. More is not better, more is actually more traumatizing. And so many women re traumatize themselves in the process of trying to get help for their trauma work, because we're trying to do Too much too fast. And there are two reasons why our body will go into a trauma response every day in our life. Two reasons. One is too much too fast, and the other is just been too little for too long. Whether too little support, too little love, too little touch, too little money, too little, whatever it is, it's just been too little for too long. And by the time that we're adults, we're really operating on both, because we've been driving ourselves so hard, we haven't been filling up our own tank. Our own energy bank account is a little on the low side. So it doesn't take much then, for something to become too much too fast, given that we're already running on empty. And the same is true for trauma work. The body actually needs energy to do trauma work. And when we try to do too much too deep, too fast, and our body's like, I don't have the energy for this level of feeling this pain that I've avoided for so long, it will shut down into a trauma response. And in the very process of trying to heal our trauma, we're reinforcing the trauma response in our body.

[Nicole Khalil]

What I'm hearing is to give ourselves some grace, to be. To move a little slower, to give ourselves time. And, you know, there is still a part of my brain that's like, yeah, but what do I do? And I. I want to talk about the biology. So I'm just gonna reiterate that I have to imagine you give some steps in your book, the biology of trauma, of things that we can do on the body side. So let's talk about biology, or hit pause real quick, order the book, and then let's come back and talk about biology.

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

Yes. Because there is a lot that we can do, and there is a lot that I call it. We have to lay our foundation before we do the deeper work, which, of course, it makes sense when we think about it that way. It's just none of us have been told that that's what we need to do.

[Nicole Khalil]

Right.

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

And so, yes, there is that laying the foundation before the deeper work. And that is what I go into in my book, the biology piece. This is what surprised me the most, Nicole. Which I'm embarrassed to say, because as a physician, this should have been the easiest thing for me to figure out the biology aspect of trauma. It wasn't. It was the last piece for me to figure out. So here I am, I'm trying to do my trauma work, and I've decided it's a good idea for me to Actually enroll in trauma therapy training, because that is for sure where I will learn the most amount and be able to create the fastest amount of change in my life. So here I am. I'm a medical physician, just coming out of four years of surgery. If you know anything about surgeons, I was one of those stereotypical surgeons. So here is a surgeon personality sitting in a room of therapists who just want to talk about feelings. It was one of the most contrast moments of my life, I'm sure. But I'm all in, Nicole. I am all in because I. I need to heal. I do not want this. And by this, I mean fatigue, inflammation, autoimmunity, depression, anxiety. To be the rest of my life. Did not want this to be the rest of my life. So I was driven by that motivation. So I'm here in this trauma therapy training, and I'm recognizing that as soon as they actually start teaching, I start to think about other things. I start to think about my to do list. I start thinking about what am I going to eat later on today. And I don't even realize that I'm thinking about something else until my mind comes back to the present moment. And then I realize, oh, shoot, we're 10 minutes into this training. What have they already talked about? Because I missed it all. And that's when I realized, Nicole, my body was not able to keep up with hearing these truths. The truths were resonating so deeply from my body that it was almost like it was throwing the emergency brake. It was throwing the circuit saying, whoa, this is too much truth. This is too much vulnerability. I need to dissociate, and I need to think about something else. I can't even mentally be here. And I realized that there was so much of my biology that was contributing to me constantly being on that edge of overwhelm. I discovered that I had brain inflammation. I discovered that I had biochemical imbalances, including a zinc deficiency, copper excess, which, by the way, just happens to secrete more adrenaline in your body throughout the day, which makes you have more anxiety and puts you on that edge of overwhelm. I didn't know these things. I didn't know that that copper IUD that I had in at the time was actually creating trauma responses by pushing me into overwhelm simply because of my biology. I had a number of other biology things, but you get the picture. There were things that I discovered that my own biology was now contributing to the problem, even if that trauma had created the problem, perhaps along with some genetics and some bad diet and Lifestyle and injuries along the way, of course. But you put it all together and now our own biology, Nicole, our own biology is what is keeping us stuck living out our trauma.

[Nicole Khalil]

Now I have to imagine that, like me, our listeners are thinking, I. My body's probably still storing some trauma. You mentioned several things. Fatigue, autoimmune. But are there any other signs or symptoms that we should be on the lookout for, especially for high functioning, ambitious? I think for a lot of us, our life looks fine and we might still be storing trauma. So are there any other signs that we might or should be looking for?

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

100%. And I'm reminded of this multimillionaire entrepreneur woman from Atlanta. And I'm having a conversation with her, and she asked me what I do. I'm always curious about how people are going to respond when I'm like, I help people resolve their stored trauma. She stops dead in her tracks. She stares at me for the longest moment. And what she says is so true for many of us. And what many women will know, this is how they would know that they're storing trauma. She said, amy, I have packed my trauma so well, so deep, I make sure it never comes out. But this is the cost that we pay. And there is a cost so we can look at the cost. Do you feel that you are having to push yourself, push your body in order to survive? Do you have that drive to keep going or else everything will fall apart? What's your first thought of the morning when you wake up? If your first thought is one of overwhelm. Ugh, does it have to be morning already? I don't want to get up. I'm already overwhelmed by my day that hasn't even started yet. But thank goodness there's caffeine. And my coffee has been programmed to have my cup ready for me so that as soon as I get out, I can have that boost of adrenaline and dopamine to help me push through. Through. What are the reasons why you reach for food throughout the day and what time of the day? Those are ways in which we can well, have insights into. I think you're using that food to push through, to give yourself a little extra energy to do a little more. And we get to ask those questions and become curious. What would happen if you didn't do a little more? Well, then I, whatever my business might fail. My, you know, the, the, the horror list starts going. And that's when we realize we're living constantly terrified of what would happen if we don't show up and perform and terrified is trauma. And so we can look at the disconnection. Do I feel disconnected from myself? Do I feel disconnected from others? From my family primarily, though, Nicole, Do I feel disconnected with myself? Do I feel disconnected from my body? Am I actually friends with my body? Or am I the master of my body? No, you will do what I tell you to do. You will feel what I want you to feel. And you will not feel tired, alone, sad, because those only slow us down. Right? So there's these kinds of signs that we can use. Of course, there are the physical health signs. And. And, Nicole, every single chronic health issue doesn't even need to be a diagnosis issue, because I know many professional women, they never take the time to go in and actually get a diagnosis for something. So I'm just gonna say health issue. Any recurring chronic health issue. Digestive issues are so common in those bodies that are storing trauma. The vagus nerve is intimately connected with our whole gut, the nervous system. So digestive issues, whether it's pain, bloating, inflammation, sensitivities, constipation, diarrhea, all of it, it's all a sign of imbalance. And imbalance that is chronic is always trauma driven because it gets stored in the nervous system. That can only create imbalance.

[Nicole Khalil]

Amy, thank you for doing this incredible and profound and needed work. I think I speak for all of us when I say that just having any sort of insight into why we're feeling this way or why everything feels so hard or we're so drained all the time. As scary as it is to think about our trauma, it's also freeing and knowing that there can be another side to this. Thank you for this conversation, for writing the book again. The book is the Biology of Trauma. We'll put the link to that and all the other ways you can find and follow Amy in show notes. Thank you for taking on such a heavy and yet needed. I don't know if topic is even the right word. That doesn't seem big enough, but thank you regardless.

[Dr. Amy Apigian]

Well, Nicole, I mean, you work with trauma all day long, right? That's what imposter syndrome is. Trying to be someone that we're not or feeling like we're not good enough, like all of that is trauma. So you have been. You have been pioneering this work with women for so long, and it's truly an honor to be here to share with your audience.

[Nicole Khalil]

The honor has been mine. Thank you. Okay, friend, here's what I'm sitting with after this conversation. Healing doesn't always start in your mind. It starts in your body. And maybe the exhaustion, the brain fog, the stuckness that you've been trying to push through isn't a mindset problem. Maybe it's a trauma pattern. Maybe your body isn't betraying you. Maybe it's trying to protect you. And maybe, just maybe, understanding that is the beginning of healing. So if things feel harder than they should, or you can't explain why you're tired all the time, or you're just sick of the band aids and the surface level solutions, know this. It doesn't mean that you're broken. It just means that your body remembers. And listening to it, trusting it, is no small thing. It's revolutionary. And it's also where your healing begins. Which is why I believe that all of this is absolutely woman's work.

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[Dr. Amy Apigian]

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[Dr. Amy Apigian]

The ones you got me back in the day. I think they're pace breakers.

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[Dr. Amy Apigian]

Vacation and I think I left them in my hotel room.

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[Dr. Amy Apigian]

That Lulu hoodie you got me.

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[Dr. Amy Apigian]

Where you got them? Thanks, bro. Talk soon.

[Nicole Khalil]

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[Dr. Amy Apigian]

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