← Trauma Rewired
Trauma Rewired
Burnout, Functional Freeze, and Depression
01:00:11
Depression is one of the most researched mood disorders, but if we look a bit deeper into how depression is able to develop, it is more nuanced than we think. This means, treating depression isn’t a one size fits all solution. It is agreed upon...
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Transcript42 lines
- [00:04]
Elizabeth Kristof
Welcome to Trauma Rewired, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous system, how trauma lives in the body, and what you can do to heal. I'm your co host Elizabeth Kristof, founder of Brainbase.com, an online community where we use applied neurology and somatic practices for resilience, behavior change, emotional processing and lasting transformation. I'm also the founder of the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification, an ICF accredited course for coaches, therapists and practitioners to bring transformation from the body to the brain.
- [00:34]
Jennifer Wallace
And I'm your co host Jennifer Wallace.
- [00:36]
Matt Bush
I'm a neurosomatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide and I bring your nervous system into your peak somatic experiences. We work with your nervous system first to prepare.
- [00:45]
Jennifer Wallace
We create safety, we learn to regulate.
- [00:47]
Matt Bush
Our emotions and we make space in our bodies for new truths and broader awarenesses. We integrate those truths into a nervous system that can receive and embody them, creating resilience and a new path. And I'm also one of the educators for the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching Certification.
- [01:04]
Imagine being the kind of leader in your organization, in your business, in your community, in your own life who stays calm, grounded and fully present even in the most challenging conversations, truly hearing others and guiding clients or teams. From Reactivity to Resilience At a time when burnout and overwhelm are at an all time high, people are craving this kind of leadership and it all starts with a regulated, adaptable nervous system. If you're a coach, a therapist or an organizational leader ready to elevate your practice, join us for a free online workshop, Rewire and Rise Building Resilient Leaders with Applied Neurosomatic Intelligence. It will be January 15th at noon Central with me and with one of our lead NSI educators, Matt Bush. In this session we're going to go beyond understanding how your nervous system works.
- [01:52]
Elizabeth Kristof
You'll learn how to work with it.
- [01:54]
Matt Bush
Directly to calibrate responses and build capacity to lead with resilience. Plus, we'll stay after live to answer your questions and share details about the next cohort of nsi. You can sign up now at neurose omatic.
- [02:06]
Elizabeth Kristof
Com.
- [02:07]
Matt Bush
We would love to see you there and connect with you live. A replay will be available after the workshop. You just have to register@neurose omatic.com and.
- [02:18]
Elizabeth Kristof
Then often burnout comes with functional freeze, right? That's one of the outputs that you can experience when your stress bucket is constantly overflowing. And we just want to remember that freeze is a protective output of the nervous system. It immobilizes us in situations where there's too much stress. And we also don't see a potential for escaping that stress. And so when we're talking about functional freeze, it is our body reacting to protect us. Maybe because we don't have enough fuel, maybe because there's been too much chronic stress socially, emotionally or physically. And we find ourselves unable to move through the world and situations in the way that we really want to. And functional freeze can manifest as immobility or flop heaviness, inability to take consistent action. It's like we can show up when we have to, but then we crash afterwards. We're doing the minimal amount of action to survive. That's why it's functional. But even while doing it, there could be some dissociation, there could be some abandonment. And self care often really suffers in this time because again, we're in this survival state, showing up, doing the absolute necessary tasks. But often, especially for those of us with complex trauma, that doesn't include the taking care of ourselves. Right? We're going to do what we need to do to, to make money, to keep relationships intact. But our, our self care goes and then we find ourselves, even in those situations, showing up with brain fog or memory issues, not at our full cap. And that is a little different from an acute freeze response because it's ongoing, it's chronic, as we're staying in that depleted state of burnout. And it's this real mental, physical, emotional state where we find ourselves immobilized by inertia, lacking like the drive that we need to be able to pursue our goals or engage in activities, even when they're activities that bring us joy. And there's a huge emotional component to that because we can become really numb to what we're feeling when we're freezing. We're not able to to process emotions and emotionally regulate or even feel the emotions, both the good and the bad. And so we lose that ability to feel the excitement of the, the growth from our business or from the relationship connections to feel the joy and the connection which I think then leads to more burnout because now we're going through the motions and we're not getting those positive experiences too. And then there can be grief and shame about what our capacity really is. There can be anger about all the ways that we feel like we have to perform or show up that exceeds our capacity. And because we're in that state of functional freeze, it's really difficult to feel, experience and process those emotions. And, and then that leads to more Emotional dysregulation and then more stress in.
- [05:22]
Jennifer Wallace
The system, you know, and when we've talked about freeze before, it's like that moment where it's sympathetic and parasympathetic. And when we're dealing with functional freeze, you've got both of those. But then, like we're saying, we've got that heightened sympathetic response and then the adrenals that are burned out. So it's very exhausting to even just show up and do the minimal amount that we have to do. And I'm so glad that we're talking about self care as burnout, because self care is something that's really important to me, especially as I work to heal my gut, which we're gonna have a conversation later about. In the season, I really need to do certain things every day to manage part of my physiological functions in my body. And there are days where I don't have the energy to do that. And it just really makes me end up feeling. Feeling worse, actually. And then I feel shame because I can't take care of myself. And I think shame and masking is such a big experience of burnout, a functional freeze of chronic fatigue. Because, like, masking, when we talk about masking and mental health, you know, it sometimes could be referred to as camouflaging. And it occurs when someone is attempting to hide their mental health systems, like, or maybe just who they are in their identity, in an effort to blend in with people around them. And that's really what happened for me and my most recent burnout, which we're going to hear about later, because it's important to me, just in this podcast, to show up for not just you, Elizabeth, but for the. For the people. And I was doing so much hiding from you even, because I just wanted to put this mask on. Everything's okay. I'm keeping up. And that is so energy costly to not show up as your authentic self. And in your truth of really where you are, even though this is a super secure, safe relationship for me, where I know I can say anything to you and our attachment isn't going to be severed, like, that would have to be a major situation. But, like, to feel like I'm, like, letting you down or letting these people down is, like a really big deal. And I think that burnout is more of a resource issue. That fuel supply that we talk about, and like we talked about the one flame, but really it's several flames. It's more like fuel tanks. And as freeze as that protective response, it is protecting me. It's that output of the overflowing stress bucket that's trying to reduce the stress and keep me from continuing to exceed my capacity. And that function serves my physical survival in the work and financial space. But it also is protective from safe relationships because it keeps the hiding, the cycle of hiding.
- [08:18]
Elizabeth Kristof
Jen, your story of functional freeze was so powerful and so relatable, and it's such an interesting topic. Functional freeze, because there's a part of us that shut down and there's another part of us that's still performing, that's masking to, to stay afloat and to survive, to keep functioning in our life. And so part of us is able to still show up and in many other ways we're immobilized and we're disconnected while we're doing so. And I think that's so interesting to explore what's going on neurologically, how is that happening and what's the cost of that on our nervous system?
- [08:54]
Yeah. So what we have to remember, I think, is that there's different parts of the nervous system that can be experiencing different levels of freeze at the same time. So, like, there may be a full emotional shutdown, like numbness to emotions, difficulty feeling emotions. There may also be a shutdown of the interoceptive system, but you can still engage enough to take care of responsibilities when you need to, knowing you're going to come back to that shutdown state. So when we sometimes, when we just describe freeze as a first line traumatic response, we think of a full blown physiological freeze response where I physically freeze as well as emotional, mental. All of the parts of me are frozen and it's very short term because we say freeze to fight or freeze to flee. We're looking for another opportunity. I think in functional freeze, it's like this emotional and interoceptive system kind of stays shut down, but not physical freeze. I'm not immobilized physically. I can still show up for a call, I can still record a podcast, but I'm not all the way there. I am masking and certain parts of me are still frozen and kind of shut down. So it's just multifaceted where parts are really down regulated and the brain is repressing them. Other parts, it's like you have to show up because that's how you're going to put food on the table. Right. You have to show up because that's how you're going to protect your family or protect yourself. So you don't. In some of those, we kind of feel like we don't have A choice. But the nervous system is still not totally engaged. Like even Jen, in your examples, you show up for the client or you show up for the podcast, but you're not all the way there. And you would acknowledge that.
- [10:37]
Jennifer Wallace
Sure. There's a lack of disconnection to the world. Right. There was a misunderstanding of why I was in this state because at the same time, life looks so good. Life is exciting right now, you know, like it's all around really big stuff that's happening. And then all of a sudden like, and I'm so burned out. And now I've pushed myself further and I do. We're going to get into chronic fatigue.
- [11:00]
Elizabeth Kristof
So this is a area where we're getting into a lot of nuance between these different states of burnout, where our nervous system is really depleted and we experience chronic outputs of fatigue and pain and exhaustion and functional freeze, where there's a real nervous system component of immobility and disconnect and perhaps dissociation. And in a functional way, parts of our system may still be able to perform and to show up and be mobilized, while other parts of our system, the ability to feel and experience emotions, to stay fully cognitively present, to be whole and embodied in that experience, is not there at a neurological level. And then there's a whole other landscape that we're going to explore, which is depression and the emotional and chemical components of that as well.
- [12:02]
I think of these four, like almost a Venn diagram with four circles that are kind of overlapping. Right. Think of the four circles as being like in four different quadrants, you know, so everyone is overlapping every other one in some way. But then there's also like two that are right next to each other that are more closely related maybe than one that's in the corner. So the functional phrase is more of a short term state where I can emerge out of it when I need to. Maybe. Then there's burnout, where we have just a full emotional and physical exhaustion, mental, emotional, physical exhaustion, generally from over producing or over giving. And we often hear about that with work. But it doesn't have to be limited to work burnout. Right? You can have burnout from relationship, you can have burnout from caretaking of another individual, you can have burnout from showing up in social situations. Like there's all types of different areas where burnout can occur, but it's basically this more long term state, more chronic state of exhaustion that comes from maybe over giving. And it's characterized more like a cynicism coupled with fatigue and lethargy. I don't have a positive outlook and I don't have any energy to contribute at this point. So often we'll lose our compassion, disconnect from our sense of empathy, harder to relate to other people. Another way to say it is become more self focused in that time, I think as a protective response. And we're just like, for lack of a better way of saying it's like don't mess with me, don't give me more stuff to do, don't put more responsibility on my shoulders. Right now I need to focus on me or I need to rest. I've been giving too much, doing too much, extending myself too far and I have to gather my energy again in order to come back. So those two are very closely related. Right. Then the third one is depression.
- [14:04]
I think your example, Jen, is a really beautiful example of the overlap. Do you want to flesh that out a little bit more? Because I think there's components there of both functional freeze and burnout happening at the same time.
- [14:16]
Jennifer Wallace
Yeah, for sure. Life has gotten bigger. Thank you to the listeners. And NSI and trauma rewired and we're finding our place. We're finding ourselves. Elizabeth and I continue to step into places where we thought of in the future, where we are finding ourselves living lives that, that we want to live. I find myself in a place that's really kind of cush a lot of days where I get to experience work and be outside and go on hikes and hang out with my dog and like really create this life. And I find myself also times pushing against and asking too much from my system and pushing against my capacity and engaging in ways that aren't aligned with my energy sources and my energy field and not kind of not staying in my sovereignty and taking on the energies of the podcast and NSI and Elizabeth's drive is very different from mine. And sometimes as the mirror of that I find myself not being able to create as much or keep up as much and do the doing of what she does. But it's honestly because I'm just, I'm not wired that way. Right. Like I'm not her and she is not me. But I can, I can push against that of myself and really self abandon myself in the realms of the way that I work and the way that I show up and not honor what my capacity is on a fuel level. And so I'll start to burn out because I'll just ask too much of my system and then I'll be like, you know, to match her idea, I'm like, hey, let's do Instagram lives. And then I've got us doing Instagram lives for a couple of months or doing something that's kind of extra in the load that the two of us carry as small business owners in the trinities that we both live in, in our businesses and in the overlap. And so what happened was I just started to burn out. Like my fuel started to really, my light got very low and I found myself engaging in a lot of caffeine type behaviors to fuel my energy levels. And I have a slow metabolic response to caffeine, so that ends up disrupting my sleep later. And then, you know, that just starts another rest pattern. But with the functional freeze, I would setting my alarms. I had so many alarms that would set according to if I had to jump on a call. Luckily, we've, during this three week shutdown of mine, we didn't have any podcast recordings. It happened on a break. And I ended up having to have my parents come out and support me because so much of my world had started to kind of crumble because I couldn't show up enough for it. I would be able to only show up in work, but I wasn't really showing up in like cooking for myself, nurturing for myself. I would get, get enough energy to go out and pick up food or pick something up, or maybe I would just eat a little bit of fruit, or maybe I would just eat a little bit of something. But it was all really small actions and really the bare minimum of what it felt like to survive because I just couldn't maintain it. And I was masking so much because it took me weeks, months really, to get very honest with Elizabeth, to be like, hey, this is where I'm at. And I just had several breakdowns with her. And the masking, it just takes so much energy because it's just so much energy that's required to pretend like I'm passing, to pretend like I am getting by and that I am maintaining what I'm supposed to be doing. And it leads to depression, anxiety, fatigue, more burnout. And that more mental energy is required because it just gets harder and harder to maintain than fueling the burnout, fueling the depression, fueling the fatigue. It's all just this big loop. And when the mask came off, I felt an immediate sense of relief just by being honest with her and telling her where I was because I was failing and I was about to take, you know, thankfully we weren't recording because I could have just. Who knows, right?
- [18:30]
Elizabeth Kristof
Yeah, thanked totally and thank you for sharing that because I think so many people can resonate with it and being vulnerable. And we get a lot of questions around that because it is like you were saying, like, we have this big life that we want and these things that do bring a lot of joy, whether that's relationally or business wise. And then there's a component of that, of honoring capacity. And we recently got a question from a listener about. I'd love to see a podcast or information about being in functional freeze response in business, business development and building. And I think that's really what happens there, is that we get excited and enthusiastic and we have these big visions and there's a level of nervous system capacity and being able to honor that. And then when we think about burnout, thinking about that high stress state over time, right? Constantly being at that pushing past capacity and the water level in the bucket staying really high so that these protective outputs become. You're gonna experience protective outputs from the constant dysregulation of the stress hormones and the effect that that has on the HPA axis. And just what happens to our bodies when we're under chronic stress for a long time. And that can look like pain, migraine, chronic fatigue, shutdown, these chronic symptoms of a prolonged stress period.
- [19:55]
Add in a little analogy here that I've had to learn the hard way. Cause I've been through a similar story to Jen's with some serious burnout around work and family responsibilities. But I kind of had to learn that business sometimes runs almost like there's a season for planting and a season for harvesting, and you can't be planting all the time. It's like what we think from our grind culture is I gotta plant, plant, plant and sow all these seeds, and then I have to work my butt off to make the seeds grow, grow. But, like, that's not how plants grow. That's not how nature works, right? Like, for reals, you. You plant the seeds and then you leave them alone. You know, take care of the weeds every once in a while. But you have to give the seeds time to gather nutrients and water and sunlight. And then the growth happens on its own. And then you move into a season of harvest. Sometimes the harvest might be bountiful, sometimes it might be a little thin and scarce. And those times can be a little scary. But you can't have success in your business and in your life at the same time if you're always trying to plant all year long. Like, there's gotta be some time to step back and actually to harvest and appreciate what you've done, have a little rest, and then go back into another season of planting at some point in the future.
- [21:16]
Jennifer Wallace
It's such a great analogy. And, you know, we take breaks from the podcast because the first time we ever took a break from the podcast, we couldn't believe how we were rewarded from it. So that became sort of, oh, we did that one time and we won. Like, let's do that. Let's rest, let's show up and, you know, be the message, be the living work. And to resolve my state of functional freeze. And I'm going to get into chronic fatigue here in just a moment. Like, I needed sleep for, like, weeks. I sometimes slept for, like, three days. Did not. It was, like, impossible to open my eyes. Like, I couldn't have done anything else. And so I know we're going to get to some of the resolve a little bit later. But, you know, I also really identify with chronic fatigue as an output. And it's also an output that I feel like kind of got pushed on me also from having chemo and being a breast cancer survivor. Because chronic fatigue, you really. It's a unique experience that I'm sure some listeners will identify with. But, like, chronic fatigue is really, really, from an NSI perspective, it's an output of an overflowing stress bucket. It's a protective mechanism of the brain where we're in too high of stress for too long. And it can be linked to burnout and to adrenal dysregulation. But chronic fatigue is a condition characterized by persistent and overwhelming tiredness that lasts for six months or longer. And unlike regular fatigue, which can be alleviated by rest, chronic fatigue significantly impacts daily life and often prevents individuals from completing their usual routines, maybe even getting out of bed. So I do think there was an overlap of some of this chronic fatigue in with my functional freeze and burnout. And what I was saying about having the chemo and experiencing that level of chronic fatigue is that I have a very measurable, somatic experience in my body of really understanding fatigue on that level. I can hit a point where I'm like, oh, no, this feels like breast cancer recovery. This feels like chemo. Like, I'm in the place now. And chronic fatigue can include, like, extreme exhaustion, sleep disturbances, cognitive impairments, dizziness upon standing. And that's one of the outputs where I'll also notice it, headaches, which will present more. I'm not someone who really gets headaches as a protective mechanism, so I know when I've gotten a Headache that I have reached a new level of the bucket. We're overflowing now if there. If a headache comes on. And then there can also be joint and muscle pain that someone could experiencing. And so, you know, treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome, it typically involves a lot of approaches. Meditation, sleep, hygiene, activity management, rest, tons of rest, neuro. And there was emotional processing that I had to do to really pull myself out of this. And once again, I really had to come to terms with like my capacity and recognizing our capacity that comes with its own grief and anger. Sometimes, you know, it's like, why can't I do this? Why can't I do this and show up? But just, you know, like Matt said with that beautiful example, we do have to honor the seasons, you know, that we're in and really honor where we are at the same time and just understand that with our nervous systems, there's so much overlap and this can all happen at the same time. So parsing out some of these nuances, it can be really helpful on a cognitive level.
- [24:55]
Elizabeth Kristof
Yeah, just really quickly as you guys were talking and thinking about chronic fatigue and Matt's example of like planting the seeds and then allowing them time to come to fruition was just this idea too, of like, we can. And like, me too, girl. Like, you know, also too, I'm someone that can get pushed into overdoing and over giving and have periods of shutdown and was really glad that you brought all of this up. But we can be at such a deficit for rest and recovery and repair that that can build up. And our system just needs more time for that regeneration and healing to take place. Because when we talk about adaptation to stress, we always talk about, you know, athletes need recovery just as much as they need training. There always has to be a component of recovery for the system to be able to positively adapt to stress, to be able to grow something. And so when we're constantly going and constantly planting seeds and then working and working and working, there's never any time for the adaptation. There's never any time for the positive growth. Whether that's in the business, if you think of the business as like a living organism or in yourself, in your life. And so having that dosing of stress and training and growth combined with the time and the space to adapt.
- [26:20]
Yeah, and I think the depletion is real. Like chronic fatigue and burnout are certainly outputs that the nervous system puts up to make us slow down. But there's also an underlying depletion of resources, like with chronic fatigue, tying that into Adrenal fatigue. We've literally given and given and given so much that we've run ourselves dry. We've then operated on adrenaline and cortisol, like our survival hormones, and eventually there's nothing left, either lacking the nutrients and the precursors to make the hormones, or the nervous system is just completely fatigued from having to run on overdrive all the time. And the crash of those comes from that depletion. It's like I just can't push anymore. And that's why it takes so long to recover. Jen's talking about needing so much sleep week after week after week, needing to sleep because one night of sleep is not going to recover. Months of overexertion from. On a chemical level or at an organ or nervous system level from the body, it can be recovered. Right. Like that's the whole message of today is you can recover from this, but it's not going to happen in a day or two. And it's not going to happen by just telling yourself to get back at it and push harder. It actually means like pausing to listen to your body and give it what it needs. Needs.
- [27:43]
Let's keep going down these nuances and parceling things out. And let's talk about then depression a little bit because they're the way that these things present are so similar. Right. Like lack of emotional experience, lack of feeling, interest in things, feeling exhausted and depleted. And then there's also depression, which is. It's a little bit different.
- [28:08]
Yeah, Depression is more of a. It's considered more of a mood disorder, but it comes along with ongoing levels of sadness or kind of actually a physically depressed state. There can be a loss of interest in activities, a change in appetite, greater levels of fatigue, difficulty concentrating, a lack of sleep, lack of libido. So a lot of stuff is wrapped up in this title of depression. But it's probably the area where there's been the greatest amount of research over the years, over the decades really. And there's a lot of different theories about what causes depression. But when you look at the more current research, say from like 2022 until today, just the last two years, what researchers and authors are primarily saying is that it appears that there's not one single cause of depression on a chemical level. Right. It used to be thought, well, maybe there's a catecholamine issue, lack of catecholamines. This is way back, like, you know, 80 years ago. Maybe it's lack of catecholamines, which are excitatory neurotransmitters. And then it was maybe there's a depletion of serotonin, which is the feel good chemical. And still to this day, serotonin reuptake inhibitors are the most prescribed antidepressant medication. Because there's this prevailing myth that low serotonin is the problem underlying depression. That's not entirely true. There are many different chemical causes. Okay. But that is still still often prescribed as a first line of treatment. But it's not just low serotonin that's this lacking there. Then there was maybe it's low dopamine, right? And so we can talk about dopamine mean depleted states and how we can raise dopamine. Very cool and interesting conversation. Then it switched over to noradrenaline. So now there's selective noradrenaline receptor inhibitors or reuptake inhibitors, SNRIs, you know. So all of these different chemical causes have been targeted and tried to be treated by the pharmaceutical industry and by psychiatry. But the more modern literature is saying it's not just one thing. So it could be a combination of these chemical levels in any or all of them can be off and can be contributing to, can also be an output, a protective output of the nervous system that's saying, you know what, maybe there's sensory mismatch happening like we talked about in the anxiety episode. Like sensory mismatch can easily lead to depression where if the whole world is confusing to my brain all the time and I can't figure out where I am, what's going on around me, am I safe? It's easier for my brain to just down regulate so that I disengage from the world, from social interactions, from relationships and I lose interest, I become more fatigued, I stop moving and it's almost like this inactive inertia takes over at that point. All right, so it can be protective in that way. So there's a lot of different contributors. But what depression tends to have that the other three don't as much is more connection to our mood and emotions. The one persistent common thread is that depression does include this downward or negative emotional feeling, this ongoing sadness or feeling of like what's it all for? What's the point? Eventually kind of leads into some depressive apathy. That's the distinguishing factor often with depression. So it may need to be medicated. There are some times where that's recommended, but a lot can be done with neuro tools to be able to re engage socially to process stress and reduce stress, that that's chronic in one's life to do Daily neurotraining and then to re. Re engage with movement and nature as a way to overcome depression. Very interesting. Right now there's a kind of a fringe field of research all about connection to sunlight, circadian rhythms and overcoming depression that seems to be very powerful, very well grounded. It has not hit the mainstream medical world because when's the last time the medical world was interested in nature? But it's out there and I feel that it's actually very, very cool in looking at the way that different grades of sunlight and different parts of our daylight exposure regulate the chemical levels in the human brain far more effectively than medication. So anyway, lots of different stuff that could be addressed on that side of depression.
- [33:03]
Jennifer Wallace
Man, I really had something good to say and then I kind of lost it. So I'm just like feeling so bummed about that. I looked down to like look at one of my notes in this book and I just like lost it because I was, I was just really thinking so much about it just hits so different to hear these breakdowns and these reframes. And I talked about it on the anxiety episode, like hearing the reframe of anxiety and like feeling the relief in my body. And you know, I really love what Gabor Mate says when we're talking about this like, kind of emotional component, because he says that with depression, its original adaptive function is to distance oneself from emotions that are unbearable at a time in life when we want to experience them. And I think about what he says about authenticity and attachment and I think about trauma, complex trauma as the attachment wound. And I think about my own relationship to my mother and complex trauma and my ACE score, right? I have an ACE score of four, which automatically is like a three times increase in depression when you have an ACE score of four. And like 42% of women have an ACE score of four. 30% of men have an ACE score of four. And so every time we get a point on the adverse childhood experiences, what that means is that we have an increase in the way that physical symptoms could present for us in the world. Like our increase more likely to experience physical ailments such as like cancer, heart disease, diabetes. So the higher your ACE score, the higher of a chance you have to experience this and depression, it goes up even if you have an ACE score of 1. So with an ACE score of 4, you're 3.6 times as likely to be depressed. But you know, when I think about going back to my mom and being a young person who was developing with, you know, a single mom who was under A lot of stress and to feel not only like her nervous system, but to really feel and experience what she was suppressing. And that we go into these automatic places, that the brain goes into automatic places. And when we talk about neuroplasticity, you know, we get better at what we do. And our brain will make us better at feeling the depression, at being depressed. And so when we've grown up and we've absorbed these grief stricken sights, the states of our mom's nervous systems, or their dissociation, or their terror, or their panic, I mean, it's almost like as a child we could even learn to mimic and mirror these responses from our primaries. Right. To ensure our survival. So it's like depression has this also other way of kind of sneakily getting wired in there just to make ourselves relatable to the person that we base all of our survival needs on. And like if the mother is suffering, the baby suffers too.
- [36:10]
Elizabeth Kristof
It's so layered. There's so many layers. And as you guys were talking, I was just thinking about, as Matt was talking about all the different theories about it's this neurotransmitter, this chemical or this part of the brain and how that keeps changing. It just seems like again there's just this over compartmentalization in a lot of healthcare where it's looking for this one specific thing to address. When really it's a system wide dysregulation. It's the stress hormones, it's the way that the nervous system has developed and responded and how that affects the hormones, the neurotransmitters, leads to deficits, affects the different receptors. And all of that can of course be shaped by our developmental experiences and the way that we are patterned to respond, to connect to people. And then again, like we've talked about so much in here, it becomes this loop that feeds on itself. Because then the depression or the burnout disconnects us from other people. It disconnects us from nature. It makes social interaction harder. We don't have the energy and the safety to connect with other people. And we need that at a nervous system level. We our sleep disturbances. The way that we are able to get natural light and have our biorhythms be set. All of it compounds on itself and comes at us from so many different, different angles.
- [37:41]
I think we're ready to talk about the social connections and the endogenous opioids. So one of the things that both of you just touched on is the social component. Where Jen kind of talked about this insidious way that depression can be wired into a our brain by mimicking someone that we're around, like our primary caretaker. And one of the best ways to overcome depression, I mean, if, if I had to pick my top three, I would do neurotraining, I would do sunlight exposure and circadian rhythms. And my third one would be social connection. And the reason for that is we have endogenous opioids, which means these are opioids that our brain creates, that we create them ourselves. So they're made within our human body, and they're basically chemicals that help us to feel better. They reduce pain, they increase pleasure, and we have opioid receptors throughout our nervous system. But in the research, people who suffer from depression or even suicidal ideation or suicidal attempts have decreased opioid receptors in their brain. So there's less receptors to take up these feel good chemicals. On the flip side of that, like, when we connect with people socially in a relationship, our opioid reception increases. We create more endogenous opioids, and we receive them because they pass from one neuron to the next over and across the synapse. When we are isolated or abandoned or neglected, our opioid activity plummets. So a break of social connection can be a big driver of decreased opioid state or activity. And that's been linked to depression in lots and lots of different research. So it's like the more that we are around people that we love and really engage socially, the more that the brain becomes awash with these opioids, our receptors get more activity and it reduces our pain physically, but also emotionally in that time. And so, like, Jen just introduced this idea of the SED principle that we've talked about before, that our brain gets better at what it does. So the more times we have social connection and derive emotional and physical pleasure from that experience, the more active those opioid sites will become and they'll stay more active. It's like we're training them to turn back on. Okay, so training through social connection, training through nature, and training through neuro, those kind of all blend together. But this social piece is so big, I just don't think we can overlook it in trying to rewire depression.
- [40:25]
Jennifer Wallace
And we see, you know, when people have, I mean, we see the coping mechanisms through the social anxiety episode that we just do. How people will engage in food and stimulants and drugs and in alcohol to create that felt sense of safety inside. And really they're just, we. I won't say they, because I was part of that too, like really, we're just, we're really altering the way that our bodies sort of mimic. Because there is, let's just say first of all, there's like a huge connection between addiction and depression. And that I think, is this is going to kind of come off of a social anxiety episode because what happens is that substance actually drive more depression and drive more chemical imbalance and it shifts those dopamine levels that you were talking about. And there are real, those real neurobiological reasons for depression. And it's just like this. Once we bring in substances, it's this really downward spiral of using the substances to create relief. But what happens is like the drugs interfere with the way that neurons send, receive and process signals when via those neurotransmitters. And so certain drugs like cannabis or heroin, it activates a certain, certain neurons and their chemical structure begins to mimic that natural neurotransmitter. But it can't actually do that because although it's mimicking the brain's own chemicals, they can't activate the neurons in the same way as the natural neurotransmitter. And it leads to those abnormal messages being sent through the network, through our network, right. And so there, all of the drugs are going to affect us really differently. Amphetamines and cocaine are going to prevent normal recycling of brain chemicals, interfering with transporters. And it really amplifies and disrupts. They really amplify and disrupt normal communication between neurons. And so I just want to also, I feel it is my place as someone who works in the psychedelic industry to just pause and say something right now, like your serotonin receptors. This is the big push for psychedelics when we're talking about anxiety and depression. And this all has to do around your serotonin receptors. While we're here talking about receptors. You know, your serotonin 1a and 2b, they're like a yin and yang in the body, right? And so your, your yin receptor is that one A. And that's what all of the western medication is targeting, that one A recept, which is passive. It's a calm state of being. But what western medicine can't do, that the psychedelics like acid, DMT and psilocybin can do, is that they activate the 2B receptor, which is the yang part of that, of your receptors. And that's the active serotonin receptor. That's the thing that makes you organizational and plan and think for the future and think like, hey, we can actually do this and stay passive and calm. At the same time. So it's like both of those receptors are activated. I just want to say also right now, like, I don't believe psychedelics are for every nervous system and that you should work to prepare your nervous system for a psychedelic experience so that you can actively work with your body and its natural composition. So back to the dopamine, that neurotransmitter, dopamine, you know, it's that reward and that also that reward, it actually drives addiction, right? Because we love that feel good feeling. Gotta chase that dragon, right? I think that's getting into much more heavy drugs, but I think you know what I'm saying here, we're chasing a pleasurable experience, a burst of dopamine, a signal that maybe it's also the receptor or transmitter that says, you know, something memorable is happening, right? This, this is, it's a signal that changes neural connectivity and it makes it easier to repeat the activity again and again without thinking of it. And that's leads to these dangerous habits. And just like those drugs produce intense euphoria, they also produce large surges of dopamine. And that powerfully reinforces the connection between the drug, the resulting pleasure, and the external cues of the experience. And so large surges of dopamine teach the brain to seek out drugs. Behavior at the expense of. It could be at the expense of your life, really, but at the expense of really healthier goals and activities instead of engaging in the tricky part is.
- [44:56]
Elizabeth Kristof
Where initially the drug creates a really big dopamine response. After some time, our nervous system adapts to that and we don't get the same dopamine hit from the same substance. So our usage has to grow to get the same chemical response until it's to the point of addiction, where that's almost uncontrollable, that we're reaching for that again and again and again, seeking the dopamine hit. But then it's not coming. And depression often soon follows because the dopamine has disappeared. We're now using a substance that intellectually or maybe cognitively we would rather not maybe be using. But the emotional pull or the, the rewarding dopamine pull is so strong that we continue to use it even when that action becomes detrimental to our life, health, or relationships.
- [45:50]
Jennifer Wallace
This is the real issue with cannabis, because cannabis users, the more they engage in cannabis, the more those receptors they need the activation. So they need more and more and more and more and more cannabis. And then, you know, luckily it's 20, 24, people can get a lot more strain Specific. But if you're. If you are seeking out something that's also depressing you. Right. That's back to that dangerous loop of this is actually a depressant that. And it's not. Once again, I found that pattern in my own cannabis use. It just took more and more and more, but yet I was never really coming out from the depression.
- [46:31]
Elizabeth Kristof
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a huge, really powerful overview of addiction there. When we're looking at getting our needs met through substance, that ends up further depleting us. And also the underlying causes there of having the neurological issues, the nervous system dysregulation, the developmental issues that lead to really needing alleviation from pain and dysregulation and depression. And then with the social component, too. I just keep thinking back on all of season three and how much we talked about that real social survival need. And that can be really difficult for someone with complex trauma because there is so much dysregulation and threat that also comes with having those connections. And then we find ourselves in places that of depression. I loved the three things that you talked about, Matt. Neurotraining, nature and social connection as like the pathway to get out of some of these states. And maybe saying some of the nervous system training would be at the forefront of that so that the connection is possible. Right. So that I can start to repattern my responses to expressing myself, experiencing intimacy, being around other people, being in social situations without that also causing such a huge amount of dysregulation and stress at a really physical level for my body and my nervous system.
- [48:04]
Yeah, we can use the neurodrills to regulate stress in that way and reduce the threat from our threat bucket. But doing the neurodrills also produces dopamine. The other secondary benefit is when you engage in an activity, if it's movement based, every intentional, voluntary movement that's a little bit complex is going to generate dopamine. And then if you're doing vision, vestibular breathing, integrated drills, sensory inputs every time you do something that's a little bit challenging, and then you use the assess and reassess process that we talk about. When you reassess and get a positive reassessment, that dopamine producing part of your brain goes, yes, I did it. And it gets the dopamine reward from the drill. So it's working on both sides of the equation to lower the stress, lower the threat that we have to deal with, and increase the dopamine at the same time. So I Think it's totally possible to rewire and change brain chemistry with neuro training drills. It doesn't necessarily require medication. You can change it. It's not an overnight thing. It takes a little time, takes a little effort. But totally possible to be able to do that.
- [49:18]
Jennifer Wallace
I think it is totally possible. And then, you know, when we talk about, you know, there's all of these overlaps with complex traumas. We've just finished the CPTS series in our mid season. You know, we. We have that attachment wound that makes relationships stressful, it makes them threatening, and it leads and drives more loneliness and detachment. And what the very cool thing about nature is like. Yes, we have that component of neuro that you just talked about. And like nature, we are really made up of. What you see outside the microbiome internally is a representative of the microbiome that you see outside reflected. And the way that nature heals us is through so many components. Negative ions releasing the vitamin D, circadian rhythm and. But then also through your sinuses, through going out and breathing in the places in the green belt spaces that you live in. You are breathing in what you are made of. And your sinuses are the first part of that connection between our biome and the biome that we exist in. And so when we go outside in nature and we breathe what is around us, we are taking in the elements of what we are comprised of and then starting to balance and regulate to the nature that exists within us and outside of us. It's one of the most beautiful relationships that you can secure for grounding and safety and new thought processes, actually. Inspiration.
- [50:53]
Elizabeth Kristof
Yeah. I think for me, nature has been one of the most healing parts of. Of the whole journey. And in addition to the very beautiful and complex ways that nature inherently heals us and that we are so connected, it's also a really safe way to start reconnecting socially. And we've talked about this in other episodes too where, you know, maybe it feels really threatening to start to have these new relationships and be vulnerable in this new way. But we can go outside and we can connect to other living things. The trees, the earth, we can have pets, we can start to explore relationships that way. Those are other living organisms that we're connecting to. Because healing, it can't occur just in a vacuum. There does have to be a relational component to that. And while the neurotraining is so important, I also have to be careful of like not using my neuro training as like a replacement to allow myself to stay in more isolation. Like I Have to have this time for my neuro training and do my drills and do my practices and actually letting that disconnect me more from other people and social engagements and growing and developing safety in that realm as well. And really being mindful of, like, yeah, use the tools around creating those new relational experiences around being able to show up and connect with other people, process the stress of that somatically and. And dose it appropriately, knowing how my nervous system responds. But at some point, there does have to be a relational component to that. And nature is. Is also a really great place to start with that.
- [52:39]
Jennifer Wallace
You know, I think a point, too, getting back to the neuro is that the neuro is what creates, you know, that strengthens the interoceptive system we talked so much about in the anxiety episode. And in that it really cultivates sovereignty. It really cultivates boundaries. Right. And so that neurotraining practice, although it is like this physical thing that we do, it really moves into an energetic way, the way that we present and the way that we feel in that safety. And it's like, if I can feel safety now, I can say, hi, I can maybe ask for the support that I need or just engage a little bit more to get my needs met. And what it also helped me do was sort of identify where I was in my pattern so I could find myself like, oh, I'm starting to. I'm in the grocery store and now I want ice cream. Do I want ice cream? Or do I need connection right now? Because I know what ice cream and the binge cycle represents for me as the threat. So that's why I say that back to the social part. And a lot of times I can just pick up the phone, reach out, leave a WhatsApp message to one of my friends, and get a little bit more vocal about where I'm at. And that's all really thanks to the. To the daily neuro practice. The emotional stuff, the emotional processing and the nature. Just like wrapping up those. Those three that you said. And so then there's also socioeconomic stress. Elizabeth, you want to talk to us a little bit about that structural trauma and increased rate of depression.
- [54:11]
Elizabeth Kristof
Yeah. So I think as we're talking about all this, it's important to understand that this doesn't all just fall on an individual level. It's not just the way that our unique nervous system developed because of our complex trauma, but that we live in a society that does kind of disconnect us from a lot of these things. And even Jen, as you were talking about going out in nature. There's people that don't have access to green spaces that are healthy and positive for their nervous system. There's many ways that we have been disconnected from one another, where we start to find relationships primarily through digital means. And that has a real impact on our nervous system. There's the constant stress load of socioeconomic stress, financial stress, and then big systemic stress of racism or oppression or gender bias. And again, as we were talking about all of these issues being driven by the dysregulation and the stress on the nervous system and how that affects our brain chemistry, our hormones, there are larger forces that are also there for people to contend with that make a real difference in our experience of depression.
- [55:33]
I think that's one of the places where NSI makes a big difference. And for each person who's listening to the podcast and training and regulating your nervous system, using some of the tools that Elizabeth and Jen talk about here, you have the opportunity to start to make a difference in your community, in your family, in your social tribe, whatever that is. Like, there's a very interesting conversation that I hope we get to get to on a future podcast about how societal and cultural state translates into the individual nervous system and affects, like, my brain or your brain and nervous system, and then also how it translates back out and affects the larger society and culture. Because all the Western research on neurology is individually focused. It's like your individual brain neurons. There's only now becoming some researchers who would be considered on the fringe that are starting to talk about the holistic or the community nervous system, the tribe nervous system. That type of, like, larger social regulation of our bodies and our nervous system and emotions have been around thousands and thousands of years, obviously, but it's never been researched in the modern, like, Western culture. So it's a very, very interesting conversation to talk about how the larger society does have an effect on the individual. Like, I perceive safe or unsafe based on what's happening to my culture or what's happening to my people, what's happening to my tribe makes me, as an individual person, feel safe or unsafe, even if it's happening across the world. And right now, as we're recording this, we're clearly seeing that with two different wars that are happening in our world, that people all over the planet are highly engaged with what's going on completely across the globe. Right? So something can be happening to a group that is translating into a singular individual feeling, emotion, or kind of threat. And then as we regulate how do we put energy back out that's going to affect the culture of the society that is literally around the world. It's a very interesting topic, but I think what you just said all about that socioeconomic and cultural and structural stress and trauma. The more we can start to understand that, the more we can be the ones to bridge the gap. Because even NSI and our neuro tools have largely been focused on the individual brain. How do I regulate my nervous system? But the goal isn't just to regulate me inside of a bubble, it's to regulate and then to share that with other people around me and to help them manage their threat and then to help the whole culture or the whole society change the way that it perceives and views some of these issues and then how we can respond to it. So I think it's like becoming the catalyst for that change so that those types of things can happen.
- [58:40]
Neurosomatic Intelligence Certification Host
If you're a practitioner, therapist, coach or trainer who's been listening to trauma Rewired and you're interested in working more with the nervous system, I would highly recommend you check out the Neurosomatic Intelligence Certification. It's now open for enrollment and the NSI Certification is a 12 week program that takes practitioners on a journey of learning about the nervous system, about how it integrates with somatics, and how you can use regulation tools, sensory inputs as well as vision, vestibular interoception exercises, and belief and mindset tools to help your clients adapt and retrain through previous trauma, somatic healing and nervous system regulation. Check it out@neurosomaticintelligence.com we'd love to see you there.
- [59:27]
Matt Bush
This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered medical or psychological advice. We often discuss lived experiences through traumatic events and sensitive topics that deal with complex developmental and systemic trauma that may be unsettling for some listeners. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. If you are in the United States and you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health and is in immediate danger, please call 911. For specific services relating to mental health, please see the full disclaimer in the show.
- [60:02]
Elizabeth Kristof
Notes.