Grief and Joy Together, The Nervous System Knows Why

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Trauma Rewired

Episode: Grief and Joy Together, The Nervous System Knows Why
Hosts: Jennifer Wallace & Elisabeth Kristof
Date: September 22, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of Trauma Rewired explores the concept of ambivalence—the experience of holding multiple, often opposing, emotions at the same time. Through the lens of affective neuroscience and neurosomatics, hosts Elisabeth Kristof and Jennifer Wallace unpack the neurobiology behind emotional duality, especially in contexts of trauma recovery, identity transitions, and healing. They stress that feeling grief and joy—or pain and gratitude—simultaneously is not a sign of dysfunction or failure, but a profound and necessary part of the healing journey.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Ambivalence and Its Importance

• Ambivalence is described as "the internal experience of holding opposing truths or desires at the same time" (02:35).
• It's not indecision or self-sabotage, but a neurobiological phenomenon—a reflection of how the nervous system holds complexity.
• Ambivalence often emerges at transformational thresholds, such as leaving a toxic relationship or redefining one’s identity.

2. Emotional Duality: Both Grief and Joy

• Leaving a toxic relationship, for example, “is not just gonna be relief. …but there will also be grief and there will also be a loss of something. And all of those things are existing.” (00:00, A)
• Emotional complexity is natural and necessary: “When you hold two opposing truths or desires at once…it’s your brain and body responding with competing signals about how to protect you.” (08:47, B)

3. Neurosomatics & Emotional Construction

• Emotions are constructed in the brain—not fixed responses, but “reflections of how our predictive brains are constructing meaning from our past experiences.” (07:21, A)
• Multiple brain regions interact—the insular cortex (mapping internal sensations), amygdala (tagging danger), anterior cingulate (processing conflict), and prefrontal cortex (regulating and narrating).

[Key Quote]

“Our brain is a…pattern recognition and prediction [system]…so sometimes when things are in that messy place of many different conflicting emotions, that can raise the threat level in our nervous system…” (09:49, A)

4. The Threat Response & Overwhelm

• Ambivalence can activate both the sympathetic stress response (fight/flight) and the parasympathetic shutdown (freeze/numbness) at once, leading to feelings of being stuck or disconnected (11:55, B).
• “It’s like the body is preparing to act and to retreat at the same time. And that’s why ambivalence often feels like being stuck or foggy.” (11:55, B)

5. Emotional Neglect, Limited Vocabulary, and Dissociation

• Many people “don’t have the patterned understanding knowing somatically...to parcel apart these emotions,” especially if they experienced emotional neglect growing up (12:49, A).
• Good/bad binaries diminish the full human experience: “To diminish one emotion is really to diminish all of them.” (14:18, B)
• Dissociation often arises as a way to avoid the confusion when emotional capacity is low.

6. Trauma, Attachment, and Self-Protection

• Attachment changes—setting boundaries with family, for instance—are especially ambivalent, blending relief and grief (24:00, A).
• “Change is scary for the brain. Change is very threatening. …That could create a whole dynamic experience of emotions as you try to navigate relationship from this new place.” (25:36, B)

[Quote from Ram Dass]

“If you think you’re so spiritually evolved, go spend a week with your family because they will pull you back so fast into an old dynamic.” (26:54, B)

7. Identity Transitions and Grief

• Identity shifts—such as career changes or embracing new diagnoses—often prompt dual emotions: excitement, possibility, AND loss, fear, grief (28:07–29:29).
• “There's loss when it comes to identity transitions. …Grief is the medicine to the loss that we experience. Even when we really want it, we have to really honor that.” (30:58, B)
• The path forward is “not lit because it’s a change of path for us.” (28:07, B)

8. Integrating Pain and Gratitude: Post-Traumatic Growth

• The hosts describe the “tender form of ambivalence” in feeling pain/grief for trauma, and gratitude for the growth and gifts that emerged (33:03–37:27).
• “Pain is valid. The gratitude is valid. And neither one of these…they don't cancel each other out.” (36:56, B)
• This integration is described as a sign of post-traumatic growth: holding multiple, somatic truths without collapsing into a single narrative.

9. Tools for Emotional Processing and Capacity Building

• Emotional processing varies: sometimes energetic (shaking, vocalizing), sometimes slow and gentle (floor work, stillness) (43:12–48:25).
• “You build the capacity to…not even hold more, but to, like, move more…we're not just holding it, we're...conduiting.” (49:05, A & B)
• Curiosity and continued practice strengthen the ability to tolerate, metabolize, and integrate emotional duality over time.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Ambivalence is not confusion or self sabotage, but wisdom and your nervous system's signal that both matter.” (00:34, B)
• “To diminish one emotion is really to diminish all of them.” (14:18, B)
• “Grief expands our heart in such a big, powerful way that allows for more connection.” (15:24, A)
• “Your nervous system does not need to resolve conflict immediately.” (16:06, B)
• “The pain is valid. The gratitude is valid. And neither one...they don’t cancel each other out.” (36:56, B)
• “Ambivalence is a bridge. It’s not a block; it’s a bridge into a different experience.” (49:37, B)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00–02:35: Introduction of ambivalence; grief and joy in leaving relationships
• 07:21–09:49: Neuroscience of emotion construction
• 12:49–15:24: Emotional neglect and the cost of suppressing emotions
• 24:00–26:54: Ambivalence in changing family/attachment patterns
• 28:07–29:29: Identity transitions and emotional complexity
• 33:03–37:27: Integrating pain and gratitude—post-traumatic growth in action
• 43:12–48:25: Personalized emotional processing practices
• 49:37–50:08: Ambivalence as a bridge to healing

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Conclusion

The capacity to hold dual emotions—grief and joy, pain and gratitude—is a hallmark of healing and nervous system resilience. Rather than a problem to be solved, ambivalence is an invitation for growth, integration, and deeper embodiment. Over the episode, the hosts illustrate how understanding neuroscience, cultivating somatic awareness, and practicing emotional processing can help us metabolize the full human experience for sustainable, life-changing outcomes.

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Suggested Next Episodes

• On Alexithymia, emotional vocabulary, and feeling “numb” (upcoming)
• Exploring complex emotions like jealousy and disgust

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For more:

• rewiretrial.com for neurosomatic training and resources
• Subscribe for more on affective neuroscience and post-traumatic growth

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Transcript

[A]

If you are in a toxic relationship and you make the decision to leave that relationship, it's not just gonna be relief. You will feel relief and maybe some joy or pride for getting yourself out of that situation, but there will also be grief and there will also be a loss of something. And all of those things are existing. And it doesn't mean that you're wrong for feeling those feelings that, and that you haven't like evolved in your healing journey to know when you need to leave a toxic relationship just because you also experience the grief.

[B]

And then we have also too the mirror of other people witnessing our, witnessing our stories and saying, oh, you should feel this. So it's like some of the emotions like you say, like grief, they're not really honored by sometimes the people around us who are there to support us. And there's this real 10 tension that can happen in the body where it's almost like a tug of war. And so when you are just trying to go into one emotion and you're just totally ignoring the other one, it is still pulling at you. Have you ever felt torn between two truths, like you wanted something deeply and were also really afraid of it? And that's what we're talking about today. Ambivalence, not as confusion or self sabotage, but as wisdom and your nervous system signal that both matter. And as we expand our capacity in the nervous system, it allows us to feel the richness of duality and the duality of the full human experience.

[A]

We'll unpack ambivalence through the neurosomatics of emotion, how emotions are constructed in the brain, live in the body, and what that means for healing and growth. We'll talk about ambivalence in a new way, why it's not something to fix, but something to metabolize. You'll walk away with insights and nervous system strategies for yourself and possibly for your clients to build capacity to hold duality without collapse or without urgency. 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 somatics for growth, resilience, personal development and behavior change. And I'm also the founder of the Neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching certification, an ICF accredited course for therapy therapists, coaches, practitioners to bring the nervous system and root level change into all of the good work that you do.

[B]

And I'm your co host Jennifer Wallace. I'm a neurosomatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide and I bring your body and your nervous system into peak somatic experiences so that you can embody the wisdom and get yourself on a path of true growth and lasting, sustainable change. I'm also one of the educators at the neurosomatic intelligence coaching certification. This season we're diving into emotions, aff of neuroscience and nervous system health and post traumatic growth. And so you want to hit subscribe whether you're listening or watching us on YouTube so that you don't miss one of these important conversations. Let's define ambivalence, what it is and why does it matter? So ambivalence is this internal experience of holding opposing truths or desires at the same time. It's not indecision or self sabotage. It's a neurobiological phenomenon. And to give you some relatable examples, maybe you really want connection, but you're also afraid of being seen or like you love this person and at the same time you feel resentment or maybe you're ready to grow and you are growing, but you're also scared at the same time of letting old things go. It's like being in the excitement of change and also being afraid, being scared. Right. And so a lot, our nervous systems can hold a lot of different emotions at one time. And that's really about holding the full human experience in your body. And I really thought it was important to have this conversation today because as we get into these paths of healing, we really start to notice ambivalence in our bodies and that we're holding it. And I think, you know, as we're exploring emotions and affective neuroscience, one of these dualities is the experience of joy when we're not used to experiencing joy. And then another, I think another part of this conversation has to do with the primaries and our parents and realizing that the people who raised us also have complex trauma. So there's this connection that we want to have. There's also a lot of maybe anger or grief that can come up and the understanding of that they also have complex trauma. So there's this idea of grace coming in, compassion, compassion, and then also all the feelings of like disgust and fear and anger and all of those emotions and witnessing that. And that's been two really big parts of my experience in the, in the emotional state of my nervous system.

[A]

Yeah, it's a lot. As we go through this path and our emotional capacity starts to expand and we realize how much there is underneath all of These things as we're growing. And in order to really move through a lot of this, there does have to be capacity in the nervous system, emotional regulation and processing skill so that everything isn't so black and white and so that we don't shut down or run away from or make our decisions based on like this one emotion when it's much more complex than that. So we can really grow from an experience. And I think these times of ambivalence do often come at times when we're in a. A threshold. We're like crossing into a moment of transformation. We're letting go of an old identity or moving into a new pattern. We're starting to tell our truth in a different way. And so when we're in that spot, we can start to misinterpret it as confusion. Like, I don't really know what I want because I have these conflicting emotions, but I do know that deeper truth. It's just that all the emotions are there. Or we can start to feel failure, or we can get stuck in the rumination of some of the other emotions, the shame, the guilt, the grief that then lead us to backslide in the way that we're trying to grow. And when we start to have the capacity to embrace it all, then it starts to create that space for regulation through those emotional experiences, deeper levels of connection, moving out of self abandonment and staying connected to our experience there. And that is really what we're talking about when we talk about post traumatic growth too, having that growth to expand that way.

[B]

And you know, we do so much work in the nervous system. And what I witness in every client, everyone who comes into our community, is that they do by, by virtue of understanding nervous system, their nervous system, they start to understand other people's nervous systems. And so that idea of like what you're talking about, black and white, it really starts to diminish.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And I think as part of this season where we're really diving into the neuro of emotions, the somatics of emotions, Ambivalence is a really powerful lens to start to explore some of the latest insights in affective neuroscience, which is like the study of emotions and neuroscience and this theory of constructed emotions, how our brain constructs the emotions and then they are carried out into our body because it reveals the complexity and the nuance of how emotions are generated in the brain and both in the brain and in the body. And so rather than seeing emotions as fixed or singular, ambivalence invites us to expand that and to recognize that we can feel multiple opposing emotions simultaneously. And that, that is not dysfunction. Emotional states exist simultaneously. It's a reflection of how our predictive brains are constructing meaning from our past experiences. It's a living example of how physiolog, perception, past experience, cultural context are all converging to shape our emotional experience. And so we'll be diving into some of these theories as well so that we have a better understanding of what really happens in our brain and our nervous system as we're experiencing different emotional states.

[B]

I think it's really important, or we think it's really important to understand that, like, ambivalence has neuroscience to it, right? There is something happening, and it really matters for us to understand this because it just supports our healing and our growth. So ambivalence isn't about indecision. It's a full body experience of emotional contradiction. And that can be overwhelming. And in itself, that can be overwhelming. It can lead to freeze, it can lead to shutdown, it can lead to indecision. But as we expand our, our capacity in this process to feel, to observe emotional experiences, we can integrate all that comes with growth, which is usually not just one emotion. And when you hold two opposing truth or desires at once, like, I want closeness, but I fear getting hurt, it's your brain and body responding with competing signals about how to protect you. And in the brain, ambivalence can reflect conflicting predictions and threat assessments.

[A]

Yeah, we've talked a lot on here about the insular cortex. Right? This is a part of our brain that maps internal body sensations, and it detects. It's part of our interoceptive system that detects shifts in our heart rate, our breath, our gut tension, our organ function, all of these different interoceptive signals helping the brain to register the emotional intensity and maybe even ambiguity of a situation. Right. And at the same time as we're experiencing an emotion, our amygdala can tag certain outcomes as dangerous based on our past experience. And then we also have another part of our brain, the interior cingulate cortex, which is attempting to process the conflict and to guide our behavior in adaptive ways. So all of these things are happening together at once. And then we have our prefrontal cortex that's evaluating different options, regulating our impulses, and trying to make a coherent narrative out of everything. And remember that our brain is a. It functions on pattern recognition and prediction. And so sometimes when things are in that messy place of many different conflicting emotions, that can raise the threat level in our nervous system, in our brain, because it's Having a harder time generating a prediction that it knows is going to keep you safe, both emotionally and socially and physically. So your emotional system, though, in these times of conflicting emotions, it's not confused. It's managing multiple valid inputs, right? And the structures there are constantly in dialogue, trying to determine what is the safest outcome, what's the most congruent, most aligned outcome with my past experiences that are not just mental, but they're. But they're physiological also driven by our nervous system's patterns and our somatic responses. If you want to join us to learn the practices and the tools that we talk about all the time on the podcast, join [e-mail] for two free weeks of neurosomatic training.

[B]

We are live on site teaching five times a week emotional processing and functional neurology. And we would love to see you there. Get two free [e-mail] when we're easily pushed into threat, into a stress response by feeling emotions in the body, this often shows up as simultaneous activation and inhibition. You might feel sympathetic stress response, racing heart tension, shallow breath and parasympathetic shutdown, freeze, collapse, even numbness. And so it's like the body is preparing to act and to retreat at the same time. And that's why ambivalence is often feels like being stuck, foggy, or disconnected, because it's biologically a very complex state. And that's why I think emotional processing, which we're going to get into, is like, so important so that you can identify that you are holding this complexity.

[A]

I think also too, when we did our episode on emotional neglect and maybe on, like, attunement and misattunement, there's this skill that is lacking to have nuance and emotion, because when we don't grow up with, like, learning how to identify, articulate, talk about, you know, feel a lot of sensations and how to process them, our emotional vocabulary becomes very limited. And there's so many emotions. And we're going to do an episode soon on Alexithymia, which is this real inability to feel emotions. But I think there's a lot of degrees of that where we just don't have the patterned understanding knowing somatically in our body and in our brain to be able to really feel and parcel apart these emotions. And so when we have these big experiences where there are a lot of different emotions happening, which is a lot of experiences, most of life is like, there's many flavors to that. It can just get really overwhelming and kind of shut us down to an experience. Or we just really see it in, like this is, is bad because I feel sad or I feel shame or I feel guilt. And there's no, like, some of this is good and some of this is exciting and some of this is growth and some of this is connection and some of this is fear and shame and like allowing all of it to exist.

[B]

Well then there's also dissociation. Right. Where we are lacking that continuity of being in our bodies. And so I think a lot of times when what I, what I experience and I witness through clients is like, like when embodiment is taking up more space than dissociation is. Emotions are really confusing. Right. And then like you said, there's been a really limited vocabulary. And so now we have to try and understand what are we identifying with here? Like, what is it? And we have to open up between be, be more than like, this is good and this is bad. Like the idea of good and bad needs to also go away because it's all informative, it's all here and showing up for some reason. And to, to diminish one emot emotion is really to diminish all of them. I mean, the idea, just like we talk about being in nervous system regulation isn't about being flatlined. It's the same thing with the emotional experience. We're here to experience all of the emotions. And so to shut any one of them down is to shut all of them down. We're not all just here to be like, be happy. Like, that is not reality.

[A]

No. And like you said, all of them carry important messages. You know, anger is such a powerful action signal. You know, there's, there's so much to learn and experience from all of our emotions. I feel like grief expands our heart in such a big, powerful way that allows for more connection. So that, yeah, like you were saying, there's no bad, there's no bad emotion. And there's no way to experience human life without experiencing all of these.

[B]

Yeah. Loss and grief and rage. There's many, there's many, many places to go with this conversation. I'm really excited that we're having it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

From a trauma perspective, it's really key to understanding ambivalence because it's often pathologized as self sabotage, but it's actually the nervous system doing its job. It's trying to hold space for multiple truths, each rooted in protection. And like when we stop treating ambivalence as something to override and, but have the capacity and skill instead to meet it with regulation, interoceptive awareness and curiosity, we make room for more wisdom, for more knowing, for the integration of an emotional experience. And your nervous system does not need to resolve conflict immediately. I think that's also something that's hard for people to really sit with because we like that it has to happen now. And your nervous system doesn't really work like that. It needs enough safety to withhold, withstand the contradiction that it's experiencing internally. And that is where NSI helps. This is where somatic work and emotional processing really come into play to support these larger narratives. And it gives the brain and body new, new options for metabolizing emotion and for the, for the sensing, for the emotional complexity and for the movement that emotions really need.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it's really true. So as we're talking about this, I was thinking a lot as we were preparing for this episode about affective neuroscience, the study of emotions and the neuroscience of emotions and some of the theories that would be relevant here. So one of the newer theories in affective neuroscience is the theory of constructed emotion by Lisa Feldman Barrett. And there's some great books on that. How Emotions are Made. Seven and a Half lessons about the brain. So if you want to dive into that deeper, but kind of a big picture of that. It used to be thought that our brain was very divided between the old brain, like our brainstem and then our limbic system and our higher order thinking systems. And that these kind of operated separately from one another, one was more evolved than the other. And it was also thought that emotions had like a very specific universal signature in the brain. Grief had a signature, anger had a signature. And what more modern neuroscience is showing is that one, all parts of the brain are communicating with one another all of the time. It's really the patterns in how they're communicating, what gets dialed up, what gets turned down. It's more this idea of neurotags, neuro neurons that fire together and wire together to create patterned ways of interpreting sensory data, of interpreting the world around you and then creating responses in your body, in your autonomic nervous a system. And so nothing is as compartmentalized as that. And our emotions don't just come from our limbic system. There's all areas of the brain contributing to that. How we take in information, how we interpret it, and then the outputs that are generated. And there's also not one pattern for one specific emotion. Really what's happening is that our unique nervous system and brain, based on our past experiences, how we construct the world around us, is taking in Information from our environment, from all of our sensory systems, reading other people's vocal tone, facial expression, our internal systems, you know, reading our heart rate and our breath taking in our environment. And it's pulling all of that data and then interpreting it to create a emotional experience that is unique to us based on how our system interprets that data. Right. Like, I could go out to lunch with someone, say I was going out on a date with someone new, and I feel some unease in my stomach and I feel my heart is beating a little bit. I might interpret that as I'm excited about this date and I have feelings for the person. I might interpret that as this person is threatening and not somebody that I want to spend with. Or maybe I was feeling a little bit under the weather. And instead I interpret those bodily signals as I think I'm getting sick and so. Or maybe I really am getting the flu and it has nothing to do with the person that I'm with. So the signals can be signals and the emotion that comes from that is based on our interpretation and then prediction and then the output. I think it's just important in this conversation to remember that because as we're thinking about all these emotional experiences, it's not like there's one appropriate emotion for something. It's always going to be relevant to our unique nervous system and how our brain interprets information. And there's going to be a multitude of patterns firing and past experiences that our system is pulling from to generate a whole emotional landscape.

[B]

And it's really layered, you know, with one experience, you wouldn't automatically just be like, well, I can only express anger towards this. Right. Like, it, it will come with other emotions. It could come with fear and grief and, and sadness or loneliness, you know, and disgust is an emotion that's not talked about. We're gonna, we're gonna dive into that in another conversation this season because there are a lot of emotions, like getting back to the emotional vocabulary that are not really being talked about, but are being experienced and that are really hard for people. And so much of this plays into our attachment.

[A]

Yes. I think one of the places you can really see this ambivalence come up is when we're thinking about trauma and attachment. Right. And again, you mentioned, and this is often labeled as self sabotage, when we, like pull back from maybe the connection that we really desire, or we don't, you know, we want to have partnership, but we don't go into seeking it, or we want to have closer relationships. We also pull back from intimacy. But again, Remember, this is a protective, adaptive response and that there are multiple things going on there. So for example, like if you are in a toxic relationship and you make the decision to leave that relationship, it's not just gonna be relief. You will feel relief and maybe some joy or pride for getting yourself out of that situation, but there will also be grief and there will also be a loss of something. And all of those things are existing. And it doesn't mean that you're wrong for feeling those feelings and that you haven't like evolved in your healing journey to know when you need to leave a toxic relationship just because you also experience the grief.

[B]

And then we have also too the mirror of other people witnessing our stories and saying, oh, you should feel this. So it's like some of the emotions like you say like grief, they're not really honored by sometimes the people around us who are there to support us. And there's this real tension that can happen in the body where it's almost like a tug of war. And so when you are just trying to go into one emotion and you're just totally ignoring the other one, it is still pulling at you and it is creating real tension in a physiological level and in a way of like self abandonment in a little way, you know, and like once again back to like the fullness of what we're here to experience. And it's like we have to re. Educate ourselves in emotion and what, what emotional landscape really is. And once again, so much of that comes into the, the lens of like embodiment.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Because like we see this a lot working with our clients or on the site when people start to change the way they relate to family. This, this happens a lot as the healing journey. Setting boundaries or speaking your truth or stepping back from certain dynamics. It can really trigger a big ambivalence. Right? That can bring up a lot of ambivalence because on the one hand there is this self protection that is occurring there. You have a new level of not abandoning yourself. There can be some relief and some stress load that comes with that. Finally choosing safety or choosing to honor your body's signals, what your nervous system has been signaling for years. But right alongside that, you can also feel like parts of your identity are shifting too. Maybe you consider yourself a really loyal, loving person, the person that stands by people no matter what, or the person that performs to make other people happy. So you're letting go of those parts of yourself and that can also rupture bonds that there is grief from. So a Lot of clients end up describing it like they're self sabotaging when they are hesitating to enforce that boundary. But what's really happening is the nervous system is holding space for both truths. It wants safety. It wants to not self abandon. It wants to express needs. And at the same time it wants to preserve the attachment and maintain the relational connection that it needs for survival.

[B]

And things can get really muddy in relationship, especially when, I mean, it happened for me. I chose to change. And there's an expectation from people in my life, they expect me to show up in a particular way. And when I don't meet that expectation, it causes an internal attachment chaos to each other. And things can really get shifty there. Right. It triggers change. We talk about this all the time. Change is. Change is scary for the brain. Change is very threatening. And so change also that bleeds out into the bigger picture of our relational dynamics where change, change threatens attachment. Even when we are purposely and intentionally going into that change, it will trigger the relational dynamics. And then that could create a whole dynamic experience of emotions as you try to navigate relationship from this new place. And some relationships make it, some relationships don't. Some get a little further apart and then come back together as the person starts to learn how to experience you. That's what I've experienced. Is that like I. You throw a little bomb.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Into your relationships and your family is they. Ram Dass has a quote where he says, if you think you're so spiritually evolved, go spend a week with your family because they will pull you back so fast into an old dynamic. And it takes a lot of work in the nervous system, regulation and capacity and safety for me to continuously unfold in those dynamics.

[A]

Yeah, it takes a lot of capacity and also that ability to find safety inside because there is gonna be sometimes rupture and sometimes those relationships will repair. But that takes time. Right. It's not like immediate. And so we have to have the capacity to sit in that discomfort and to be able to move through those emotions in order to move into that self expression. And knowing too that that does eventually lead to more aligned relationships, greater connection that we have more of that that we're really seeking and have been seeking in those old relational patterns. But there is a murky time.

[B]

There is. Because we're talking about identity transitions, you know, with the self and coming out of these, it's a. It's a deconstruction that starts to happen. And sometimes there's diagnosis that comes into our healing and these big identity shifts they, they create and kick up a big emotional experience in the body. And often these emotions are super contradictory to one another. And, you know, there's. There can be questions about, of like, who will I be? And there's like an unknown gray area of what you're really walking into, what you're. The path that you're on is not lit because it's a change of, of path for us. Right. It's not one that you've walked before. And that, like, brings a lot of uncertainty into the, the realm of healing and ambivalence.

[A]

It.

[B]

It really can signal growth. It can signal. It can signal growth, but can also really signal risk. It's scary to do this, and it's very exciting if you can lean into the energy of excitement and joy and the idea of choice. Because a lot of times with trauma, we didn't have choice. And now we get into a place of our nervous system where there is choice. And choice can be really exciting.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like there's been so many different times where I've had big identity shifts, but I think one really concrete example of this is a few years ago, maybe four or five years ago, I decided to take brain based away from the world of movement. And like all of my life, I had been a movement teacher, a mover, and I knew I'm going in a different direction. There's a different calling, there's a. There's a different space that I am being pulled to in the somatics and the nervous system health and really drilling the focus into neurosomatics. And in order to do that, I had to let go of the movement part. But so much of my identity was tied up in that my community. And there was a real period of. Of grief and confusion about who I was without that. There were shifts in my relationships. There were clients that went because that wasn't what they wanted anymore. And in order to really stay the course with that into moving into my calling, I also had to process all of that because it was very reflexive to just spin back and be like, no, no, no, wait, I'll go back here. I'll go back. I'll redo this. Rather than face all of those things, even though I was also excited and deeply new. This is the path.

[B]

There's loss when it comes to identity transitions. Like, we experience loss and we need to grieve the loss. Like, grief is the medicine to the loss that we experience. Even when we really want it, we have to really honor that. Like, okay, this comes With a part of me, me that will not exist anymore. And I have to let her go or him go. And I. That is scary to think that I won't live like that anymore. That I am making this conscious decision to move above and beyond this because I want it. And I'm letting. I'm letting go. I'm pruning.

[A]

Yeah, I see a lot of people do that. They take a step forward into the direction of life, like aligned path. But there's so much there that they go back.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because it's. It's. It is. It takes capacity and skill takes capacity.

[B]

It does, it does. And like, once again, like that, the path isn't lit. You have to light the way. And that takes capacity and it takes tools so that you can take the next step and maybe hang out there for a minute before you take another decision. And then there's the idea that we've talked about on here, too, is like being able to pick, pivot and know, like, I'm staying here too long. I'm not moving fast enough over here. And it's like, decisions need to be made and you want to be in alignment with those decisions and move from, like a really trusted, aligned, embodied space and trust yourself. Trust is huge.

[A]

That clarity and that trust really comes from processing the emotions. Like, we're like, really hammering this in for people. But if I don't move through those emotions, I have all of these constricted patterns. I'm pushing into states of dissociation, f responses. Like I'm going into the pattern, the repressive, suppressive pattern, unless I can clear that through and then I can take action.

[B]

And when we're talking about neurotags too, we. It's beliefs that come into this. Right. If. If I believe that I'm someone who is scared or that I have to hide, that is going to already be a controversy. That's going to be contrary to the experience that I'm trying to live and create. And so that's also going to come into play in my body and create more of an ambivalent state. I think what we're about to talk about next is one of the biggest components and we actually get feedback about this part of our experience because we do understand the experience of having gratitude and experiencing pain at the same time. And this is one of the most tender forms of ambivalence that I think one can experience, especially in, like, as you get on this healing and growth path. And it's this simultaneous experience of pain and gratitude. And especially when it relates, as it relates to our trauma stories. Just the idea of having gratitude for trauma is really hard for people to accept. And it is something that we have accepted into our bodies, that we do have a lot of gratitude for what we've experienced. And I think it's something that isn't the, isn't the first part of the path. It is often something that is like a. As I look, as I get above certain things, like I can, I can find the gratitude in it. And it's not that I don't feel very deep sorrow for myself, like what I've experienced and what I've lost, but it's also like there are ways that we've been hurt and what we have had to survive. And there's also of that deep pain that comes with witnessing myself, but also deep gratitude for what these experiences have taught me, what they have brought me in my life. This, this whole trauma rewired experience, my relationship with Elizabeth. Right.

[A]

They, they.

[B]

The trauma has shaped who I have become. And it's not just the trauma that shaped who. It's the path that I chose to over to, to. I don't want to necessarily use the word like overcome, but it has led me to something else, something greater because I made a choice that it wasn't going to be what defined me. I knew there was something greater for me ahead and I walked that path. And so the further I get on that path, the more gratitude I can experience. And like, this is real emotional duality in action. It's not that I, I don't ever say I wish this didn't happen or there were times in my life where I was just angry at the experience that I had lived in my developmental experience. And I'm super grateful for who I've become, for where this has led me and what it has taught me and the gifts that have come from it. And it's like saying that hurt deeply and it's given me this other level of empathy, of compassion and of understanding. And you know, know I wouldn't wish this on anyone and I wouldn't undo anything that I've been through. And that, that, that in itself is. These are statements of duality. And you know, in the NSI framework, this is a sign. What, what we're saying here in this SEC section segment is like, this is post traumatic growth in action in, in its truth right here with you guys. And it's post traumatic integration when the system can hold multiple somatic truths needing to collapse into one narrative. Right? The pain Is valid. The gratitude is valid. And neither one of these. They don't cancel each other out.

[A]

Yeah. I think that is. That's the thing. It's that they don't cancel each other out and that both exist. Like, there is terror and there is pain and things are unjust.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And there's anger and rage and all of that. And there is the gift of our being.

[B]

You know, there's the gift of understanding that I'm in my body. Right. Dissociation was, like, traumatic in its own way. Joy. I remember a time when we did not celebrate our lives. Lives where we did not experience joy. And as we have moved forward, we've really learned how to do that, to celebrate and to bring joy into our lives. And then it's like once you shine a light on something, you also have the opportunity to allow that light to grow. And joy is a really incredible experience that at one point was really scary. And sometimes it can still be scary scary.

[A]

That's okay, I think. And I'm just gonna speak for myself, because I don't know if this is, like, a universal experience or not, But I do think that there is a deeper level of freedom and embodiment and sensation, like a deeper connection to myself that I don't know that I would have ever had had I not had. Have to work through the things that I had been through if my body hadn't got sick, if I didn't have the outputs that were coming from all of this. And I had to take the time to re. Pattern and reconnect and slow down and spend time with my body and feel my emotions because of the world that we live in. And like I said, I don't know if this is true for everyone, but because of. Of the world that I lived in anyway, none of that was patterned for me. And there was just a living in a state of constant disconnect from your body and dissociation that even without the trauma, I think I would have been there. And that might have just gone on and on and on until the day that I was no longer here. And I would have never had the experience of deep embodiment the same way without the things that also caused the dissociation and the disembodiment to be so big.

[B]

There's an honoring of it, you know, and when I think too, of, like, emotions as, like, kind of energies in the body, there's. Sometimes I get really nervous before we hit record cord. Right. But actually, I'm not nervous. I'm excited.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. I'm like there's energies in the body that sort of activate in the same way. I think emotions are like this. They sort of have a similar activation and then we have to sort of lean into the energy. That's actually the experience. Now, like there were years ago at the start of this podcast where I probably was really scared.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Really feeling fear for the vulnerability, the social threat, the relational threat, the attachment of the collection, collective nervous system. But there's a lot of times now where I'm like, wait a minute, I'm not nervous. I am excited. This is amazing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That we get to do this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's like understanding too. And I think this comes with that emotional vocabulary is also like understanding these hits in my body and leaning into the joy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The excitement.

[A]

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I agree. And I think also too, when we talk about, you know, the, the gratitude or the, the growth from our traumatic experiences, we can also see how what is happening in our, our brain and our brain function with all of that, it really is a, a way of, of growing through our past experience because we have. Have the area of the brain I talked about before, anterior cingulate cortex. And again, that is an area that is involved in both emotional conflict and meaning making. So it helps us process these layered experiences and hold cognitive emotional complexity. And then we also have the insula that's tracking all those interoceptive signals, the ache and the warmth. Right. The racing heart that is the excitement and also the nervousness. You know, so it's, it's tracking all of those signals. And then our, our prefrontal cortex is working to weave all of that into a coherent story. So when I get better at that skill of, well, the brain function too, of like reading those interceptive signals, having good fuel supply, good prefrontal cortex activation and fuel, but also working through the emotional processing to allow all of these truths to coexist, all of the emotions to coexist without rushing to resolve it or necessarily choose one right. One, make something bad or good, then that is really what is creating space for integration and the level of my brain function, like integration of these parts of my brain, communicating with one another, integration of the experience in my body to move all of that through. And I have to. I'm able to stop either romanticizing the past or rejecting it, but able to just embrace all the parts of it and just honor the full complexity of my nervous system, my body's journey. And that is a whole other level of healing and integration.

[B]

It is, it really is. And What I've learned about my nervous system is that I, I, I kind of need to stay on top of my emotional processing. Hygiene is what I'm going to call it. Because if I let something come into my body, like maybe something that was scared me or is a body boundary violation or, you know, I, I can really kind of get out of control. And then my fight response starts to like, the, the emotional well starts to build and then I'm in a fight response. So understanding my nervous system and being in emotional processing has really helped, helped tame that response number one, or tame any, Tame all of the F responses, to be honest with you. But for me, it's about some emotional processing calls for me to bounce, to shake it out. It's dynamic, it's energetic. I'm, I'm saying things and, and throwing my arms out and really honoring, like, oh my God, I'm really scared. And wow, this is amazing. And I'm really excited. Excited. And then sometimes the emotional processing is really slow. It's about slow full body movement. Sometimes I'm on the floor. I really love doing emotional processing on the floor, actually. Sometimes I'm in my bed. So it's also about having a range of practices and kind of knowing, like, because flight can show up in my emotional processing, where sometimes I'm just like, oh my God, I just want to like, be done with this. Yeah, I don't want to slow down. And, and it's when I hear that, when I feel that I'm like, you better slow down. You need to slow down. And it's like making. Cultivating a space for myself. And this is where I really feel the sanctuary of my, my space, my home, my, my garden, where it's like, this is my safe space to move slow. Because there was a time in my life where moving slow wasn't available. But that is where the medicine is. And understanding that, like, I'm very well worn for shame and understanding those nuances of shame and then just being like, okay, let's just move this. So it's like, I'm not someone who was patterned for a lot of movement. I never really did a lot of moving because I was like, I spent a lot of my life and in shutdown and immobility. And so the idea of movement is something that I really had to kind of work for. And I can't let that get down. You know, I have to stay in motion with, keep practicing the skill. Yeah, I do. It's a skill that I've really had to work at and to understand, like I said, just the nuances of my own nervous system of like don't let that come into the body, just let that go right away. Because we, we've had so many conversations about these little ways that we can be impacted when we're out into the world. And it's like, no, you, what has happened here emotionally is super sacred. And not anything just gets to come into my body. Now I have real boundaries around experiences and the emotional experience that that could create for me. And so I am someone. I do lean into emotional processing pretty regularly because I also want to process the excitement, I want to process the joy. And it looks very similar to processing grief and shame and rage.

[A]

Yeah, I feel like for me it's interesting when I think about my emotional processing journey. What would happen a lot in the beginning is as I started to feel sensations inside of my body, which did require some slowing down because I was living my life in a constant fight, you know, just hustling, doing. I did need stillness for my nervous system to, for to create the space, to feel the time and the space. And almost immediately I would get nauseous. Like anytime I dropped into my body, Even just for 30 seconds, I would get a protective output of nausea from feeling my internal sensations. And I have learned that I have to get still to feel the sensations, but I also have to move them right away because I will get sick. And so it really requires like pairing the sensations with vocal sounds or maybe sometimes gentle movements, resourcing myself by rolling around on the floor, maybe sometimes stacking my neuro tools with that. But my system needed, it did need movement and it needed a lot of support. And it really had to go in that minimum effective dose because my interoceptive signals were very threatening. And I got a strong protective output very quickly. And so it's that moving at that capacity, but also re educating my system how to metabolize in a way that wasn't super energy costly, that wasn't moving me back into flight and like big movement, but enough to regulate through that experience of feeling those sensations.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's a journey with the, with the self.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that's why like NSI is so. Oh God, so many words. I want to fill in the blank here. Like it, it's vital, it's so important and necessary to like understand your own nervous system so that you can find the safety, figure out what's protecting, how it's protecting, like it's just really all about being curious about your nervous system and Just the idea of the curiosity is so magnificent as an energy to take on. But, like, that also took capacity. So it's like a building experience.

[A]

You build the capacity to. To not even hold more, but to, like, move more.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, we're not just holding it. We're. Yeah, conduiting.

[B]

Holding it is gonna hold me down.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Moving more.

[B]

Yeah, moving more.

[A]

And that is too. It's a lot of what we do on the site is just these very gentle practices@rewiretrial. Where we just use tools for regulation, gentle training of that skill to feel our signals and move it. And I do think it's really important.

[B]

Yeah, it is. It is really important. I just hope that people are having an understanding that, like, all this emotional experience, this ambivalence is a bridge. Right. It's not a block, it's a bridge into a different experience. Maybe a more embodied experience or maybe a more clear experience, but it is complexity. Trauma is complexity.

[A]

It's complex trauma.

[B]

It's complex trauma. So we want to make room for this emotional duality and, like, stop bypassing and start real healing and integrating.

[A]

This season, we are taking a deep dive into emotional processing. Like Jen said, we're going to explore some of the more complex emotions, like jealousy and disgust. We'll be talking about Alexithymia with Matt Bush, so make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss an episode.

[B]

Amazing. 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.

[A]

Notes.