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Trauma Rewired
Perfectionism and Rejection Sensitivity
00:42:56
In a world obsessed with being competent and perfect, it’s no wonder so many of us slip into the role of a perfectionist. Some of us even wear it like a badge of honor. Sure, it’s helped us in some ways—but let’s be real: at what cost?...
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- [00:00]
A
What if the drive to be perfect isn't always ambition, but a survival strategy? And what if that strategy is actually breaking down your body and harming your health? Today, we're looking at many forms of perfectionism, reframing it as a reflexive protective response that's shaped both by personal survival strategies and also bigger systemic societal norms. We're going to try to connect some dots between perfectionism, rejection sensitivity, chronic pain, disease, and emotional suppression. 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 Brain Based, an online platform where we use applied neurology and somatics for stress processing, emotional processing, and trauma resolution. And I'm also the founder of the neurosomatic Intelligence Coaching certification.
- [01:01]
B
And I'm your co host, Jennifer Wallace. I'm a neurosomatic psychedelic preparation and integration guide, and I bridge the modalities of neurosomatic intelligence with one of nature's most powerful tools, cultivating the embodiment necessary for one to receive the messages, downloads, and truths from the body. And today we are joined again by Piper Rose from Shadow Clay Coaching. We are so excited to have you back today, Piper. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [01:27]
C
Hi, Elizabeth and Jennifer. I'm always so happy to be here with you.
- [01:31]
B
You were pretty excited to have this conversation about rejection sensitivity. And so could you share a little bit with our listeners today about why this conversation is important to you and what made you so excited to want to share it with us and our listeners?
- [01:46]
C
Well, I think for me, rejection sensitivity is actually a newer. A newer understanding that came a few years ago. And not just rejection sensitivity, but rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Learning what that meant helped me look back at my life and understand how much of my life was controlled by my fear of rejection, how much I said no to what it was that I said yes to, and looping it back into perfectionism, how it ultimately helped me select perfectionism as a core coping mechanism. Perfection inside myself so that I could be good enough to receive love and perfection outside myself where I needed the world to look perfect for me, to feel safe. So this is a very exciting conversation for me. And how it all feeds into itself as a little like ouroboros or as a very like, complex garden is how I like to think about it. All of the elements that lead to growing certain things and perfectionism and RSD are definitely growing in the same garden. So I'M excited about this conversation.
- [02:58]
A
Yeah, I'm really excited for this conversation too. And we talk a lot about perfectionism as a trauma response on here. But before we dive into too deep into this conversation, I want to define a little bit and explore a few key concepts. First of all, really reframing perfectionism a bit, right? Perfectionism is different from like excellence or striving for growth. It can look similar on the surface, but they're coming from fundamentally different places. Perfectionism is more rooted in fear or shame or that need for external validation. And we're really looking for safety by avoiding mistakes, by avoiding rejection. And, and it can be very rigid, really, driven by anxiety and coming from that survival state place where the goal is to minimize failure at all costs. And then in contrast to that, we have like being growth oriented or striving for excellence, which is coming more from our internal values, from a growth mindset. And it's fueled more by curiosity, a desire to learn that intrinsic motivation to improve. So we just want to parcel those apart a little bit because when we're in that place of, of going for excellence, that is something that's really positive. And it allows us to embrace mistakes as part of the process. Right? It allows for that creativity and flexibility and progress without self judgment. And perfectionism, on the other hand, can really constrain our experience. Like you were talking about all the things that you don't say yes to, the things that you do that maybe aren't really in alignment. And so we want to first just kind of separate that out because we're not talking about not striving for growth and self improvement.
- [04:43]
B
And as a society, perfectionism is a trauma response that can get really downplayed. It's really socially acceptable. People take a lot of pride in it too. And so it really is. When you think about perfectionism as a survival response for social safety, we can see that it really is rooted in complex trauma and that relational aspect of complex trauma that where as a small person that our attachment and social needs are not met and we can't regulate as a developing nervous system. And so these high stress environments really cue an inner critic voice. This voice develops as a protective response to ensure that our survival and safety comes from changing ourselves or thinking that we can change ourselves in such a way that we would get our attachment needs method that we would get our safety needs met. And that really is about our social safety because we are relational beings. And so like Elizabeth was saying and like, like you were saying, Piper, the, the ways that we change Ourselves to try to avoid rejection from the herd. Because when we feel separate from the herd at a really subconscious level, that could equal death for our nervous systems. And it can be really scary and threatening and. And then when it comes to physical safety, we want to avoid the harm. Like you were saying. And I felt it before, too. I would hide a lot, especially if I didn't feel like I could manipulate control in little ways. The environment that was going on around me, and it was really. It really comes at a high energetic cost. And like we're going to talk about today, all the energy, that driving energy that goes into this driving perfectionism that has its own cost. And then when we add rejection, and that is like taking a bullet for this person who is having this kind of driving perfectionism. That's what I've experienced within myself. And it really does feel truly threatening to go against this voice and to not be able to do all the things that make ourselves feel perfect. The environment perfect, our appearance, perfect cleanliness, the way we perform, the way we show up in the world. And so, yeah, it's just very deeply layered and totally for our safety.
- [07:01]
A
Yeah. And the control that you're talking about there too, Jen, the need to control for our safety. And also, I think, too, when we lack the ability to regulate ourselves internally, we start to rely on controlling our external environment or our external appearance to maintain that regulation. When we don't have those skills inside.
- [07:23]
C
Right.
- [07:23]
A
And especially if we have a difficult time regulating our emotional experience and our interaction with others when that can be really overwhelming. There's this driving need to control our environment, to not experience those big emotions because we don't have the skills for regulation around it.
- [07:41]
C
I would love to tag onto that, actually. One thing. Yes. And there's this other component which really starts to feed into how perfectionism informs us about what is right and good and what is wrong and bad. There are so many forces that shape that conditioning. And what I will also say is that it's not just about getting that coping mechanism so that we can control the external environment as best we can. Something to think really deeply about is what messages informed your perfectionistic goals. Because what's actually happening is we're attempting to control someone else's nervous system through their sense of perfectionism. It's not authentic to us. We have to question what that information and conditioning was, because it was never about us. It was about other people's ideas of perfectionism that we were attempting to live up to. And that's that huge difference between perfectionism and excellence. Because excellence is what we define as where we want to go, how we want to live most into ourselves. Right. And that resource allocation perfectionism is a high resource coping mechanism. You're always on, you're always thinking, you're always planning, you're always doing. It is a high resource coping mechanism. And when we can unbind that congestion of energy and perfectionism and redirect it towards excellence as it's defined by us, meaning what soothes our nervous system, not these perfectionist ideals that are intended to soothe someone else's nervous system so that we can be safe, but, like, what is it that we want? And then we can give all of that resource over to that vision. So perfectionism as like a healing portal is actually pretty powerful and can give us back so much of our creative self and energy.
- [09:47]
B
I want to say something too to that, Piper, because I think. I think you brought up some really good points. And I don't know if this is what we're going to get into now. I know that some of this is scheduled for sort of later in our conversation, but like when we are patterning for someone else's trauma responses, we are really enmeshed in some codependent patterning. And when we can start to peel ourselves out of that and start to create safety in myself, trust in myself, I can start to pull apart from these enmeshments and then really understand perfectionism as my point portal to healing. Because now I'm not driving my patterns to your patterns.
- [10:22]
C
Right.
- [10:22]
B
Which is so much about my awakening into my mother's perfectionism. Right. I'm pattern for her perfectionism, which I can never meet. Brilliant. Yeah. And then like self abandonment and self sacrifice, all this stuff that we're going to talk to talk about here shortly.
- [10:37]
A
Yeah. And Piper, you were talking as well about, like, the antidote to perfectionism being enoughness and wholeness and abundance. Will you talk to that a little bit and about some of the stuff that you experience with your clients when you're working on that?
- [10:49]
C
Yeah, absolutely. So the etymology of perfection is interesting. Yes. There is this component of like, without flaws, but there's this other really huge piece that is not gifted to us in our current weaponized perfectionistic relationship, you know, is completeness, is wholeness, actually. So an etymological root of perfection is wholeness, completeness. And our completeness and wholeness is defined only by our unique purpose and our essence as we come into this world. So thinking about each move we make as enough and a gesture of wholeness. As in, it could not possibly be more whole simply because it's not right. I couldn't be any more or less of anything that I am right now. I'm bound to that. And that it is enough. It is complete, it is whole. There's not a hair out of place. And that there's an abundance of time, connection, love, belonging. If there's an abundance of these things, then we don't need to be anything other than what we are to get as much as we have access to in a moment. And our best possible outcomes rely on us being in our own sense of trust, our own sense of worthiness, and knowing who we are and what we need so that we can forge real relationships that aren't defined by someone else's perfectionism. So I'm not sure if that made a ton of sense, but I will also say that that's like a cute meme, you know, like, you are enough. Like, that's a cute meme. And in reality, in practice, when we go into all of the conditioning that we've received and the ways that our brains have been reshaped from trauma, it's the realest of the real. Like, it is the rubber meets the road. It is where we feel discomfort, challenge, growth, power, shame, brilliance, you know, death, birth, life. Like, all of it. It's like, I am enough is not just a bumper sticker. It is a path of practice and acknowledging the abundance around us, the rightness within us, the wholeness that is always, unbreakably, unshakably here, and then enacting it through our relationships with our needs and our desires and our vulnerability. So I hope that that. That got at the heart of what you wanted me to point to.
- [13:36]
A
Yeah, absolutely. It's beautiful. And it is like the. The foundation and like the apex mountaintop of all of this healing work that I do to be present with myself and to feel like that truth of who I am. And then, as you were talking about, it goes so far beyond just this kind of platitude of, like, I'm enough, and affirmation of self acceptance. Because when we're dealing with complex trauma and the structures around us, there's so much there that really do change brain function and neurological response. And so let's dip into rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria a little bit while we're here. Because I think this might be a new term for some people. Some people might be really familiar with it, But I just want to talk about it a little bit. It. By defining it, and it really is this Intense emotional reaction to perceived or actual rejection. So it can absolutely be perceived and is often very disproportionate to the event. And rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria. There are actual things happening in the brain and the nervous system with this reaction.
- [14:49]
C
Right.
- [14:49]
A
The amygdala, our brain's threat detection center, becomes very hypervigilant to perceived or actual rejection. It triggers these physiological emotional responses. The prefrontal cortex, which is very important for our ability to regulate our emotions, to keep our executive functioning, has reduced capacity to downregulate those big intense reactions. And that leads to a lot of difficulty processing the rejection with altitude, with really having them coming at it in the way that we want to. Our interior cingulate cortex, right, which is this area that we've talked about on here several times before, associated with pain perception. And also social inclusion or exclusion can tend to really amplify the emotional and even the physical pain of the experience. So it can feel very overwhelming, very deeply personal, and there can actually be physical pain that accompanies with it. And so we talked a lot in a recent episode about chronic pain and how pain is an output based on the interpretation of our inputs. And so the evidence shows, and I'm sure we have, many of us have experienced this, that social rejection shares the somatosensory representations with physical pain. And you feel that in your body. And pain can very much be an output when we have this experience of heightened sensitivity to rejection.
- [16:20]
B
While we're here, I would just. This isn't on our outline, but this is a thought that's just coming up for me right now. Like, when I hear the word rejection, it kind of has this, like, implicit. I'm being rejected from a person, right? Like, it's only happening relationally. But what I've experienced in this with someone else is that to go into them with any sort of course correction, any correctional, like, any instructional, like, hey, this is actually how you do this. Or this is a corrective criticism. Like that feel, feels rejecting to them. Like there's any sort of. Is this making sense?
- [16:57]
C
Oh, yeah. So I think. I think what you're getting at is like, this is a vague term in some ways. Rejection.
- [17:03]
B
I think it's a broad term.
- [17:05]
C
Yeah, yeah, it's vague. It's vague. It's super broad. It's super vague.
- [17:09]
B
Just like to flush that out for.
- [17:11]
C
People with clients, sometimes it can be really helpful to look at the triggers as a start. When do you notice that your expressions, your activations, your coping mechanisms start creeping out? Like, when do you notice that? And then sometimes that can help us track back to what rejection means to us. Rejection means what? So you come to me, say, hey, this is actually how you do this? When I'm examining that trigger, I can say, what did they say? What is the story I have about that? So if I didn't get the instructions right, it means I'm stupid. It means I don't know what I'm doing. It means I shouldn't even be here. And if I shouldn't even be here, then I should just leave. And if I leave, I won't have a job, and then I'm going to die. And I'm like, okay, great. Now we understand a sort of dimension of rejection for you means that your intelligence is being rejected, your worth, your value is being rejected. And I can help it make it a little less vague on an individual basis, because, I mean, the less vague we get, the more we can sort of, like, pay attention to what's growing in our unique garden around this intersection of fear and shame and rejection. And the other thing that I think is really critical from a health perspective is that when we look at it that way, we can also say, a part of me is being rejected. Not me. A part of me is being rejected, or a specific behavior is being rejected. The other thing we can say is the other person had a need and I didn't meet it, which is different than a rejection. But it still addresses the concern I have that I won't have offered what I need to offer in that time. So there's ways of really getting into it where once we peer in and start sifting around, it starts being a really rich environment for information, for data, for understanding, for our own personal relationship.
- [19:15]
A
I think those are some really important distinctions to make. And I want to look also, too, because this season we have talked quite a bit about neurodivergence and the overlaps between neurodivergence and complex trauma and how that impacts brain development. And I know often this is defined as a type of neurodivergence. Can we pick that apart a little bit? Like, is this inherent natural biodiversity? Is this coming from trauma responses? Does it matter? Is it all. You know what I'm saying?
- [19:48]
C
I've been thinking about rsd, and I've come up with, like, a little analogy. Okay? So, I mean, RSD is the seed, and it's in all human experience. We all have rejection sensitivity as a natural way to help us know when we're at risk of losing relational safety. The seed is planted okay. And how that seed grows is dependent on the garden where it is growing. So when folks have experienced complex trauma or chronic relational stress or neurodivergence is afoot, right? Then the garden looks a very specific way. So shame becomes the soil. The gardener is the inner critic. The fertilizer is fear of losing safety and dignity and love and belonging. And what's growing wild are the strategies to assure that safety, dignity, love or belonging. And these strategies are perfectionism, people pleasing defensiveness or fighting avoidance of something, right? And so the information that natural rejection sensitivity is intended to deliver, which is like, ouch, that I care about this person and I don't want to lose my, my place in this connection or this community, right? Then that can look a specific way in a healthy environment or it becomes impacted by trauma and everything changes. So if we pay attention to the inner ecosystem, this is giving us like so much information, but mostly a way of approaching the ongoing journey because we can think of it as. It's not simply about our thoughts or our neurodivergence or shame or the inner critic or fear or developing new strategies. It's like all of it too. Not to overwhelm us, but like all of it feeds it and it's really difficult to tease out. It becomes really chicken and the eggy. And when we try to pinpoint like, oh, it's because of the adhd. And there's lots of people that say RSD is a feature of ADHD only rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, and it's nowhere else. And other things are just like rejection sensitivity of volume 11. But I don't want to get chicken in the eggy about it because the garden needs to be tended. And it's not about saying we cure this or fix this or there's this one problem that's causing all of this. Right?
- [22:14]
B
Yeah, that's a beautiful analogy. And when I think about perfectionism and rejection, first of all, to think about rejection sensitivity, it exists already within all of us. And then how is that seed nurtured? Right? Like, because when we think about shame and the herd and death and acceptance and safety and survival, it's like, yeah, we all have that. How were we nurtured and how was that watered? Because the truth is, regardless of where it came from, all of these dots get connected in our nervous systems through attunement with boundaries, using our voice and safety. And like, that's even one of the biggest questions. I think when I work with people with a high perfectionistic drive, it starts to become this Question of, like, who am I underneath of this, like, who am I and how safe is it to be me, to be myself? And so really shedding and releasing, exposing these patterns, not releasing the patterns, exposing these patterns, exposing the garden for really what it is, is already a lot for a nervous system to kind of almost start to take in. And when we add rejection sensitivity into the dysphoria of rejection sensitivity, right? The more of the chronic. When we think of the things that are chronic, outputs that are chronic, when rejection sensitivity comes into play, it just makes the loop more painful. And the pain, whether that is like a real physical pain as an output or the emotional pain is totally unavoidable for this person because it's already at the foundation. And so it's just gonna become more burdening, there's gonna be more emotional repression. And like we were saying, any slight accusation, course correction, it is internally diabolical because even that constructive criticism or correction, it is at the loss of connection. When attachment isn't rooted in security, it's already in a lack of honesty, right? There's a lack of truth there in that pattern for your survival. So the very thing that someone wants, connection and safety, when it is not rooted in truth and honesty, it's gonna always come back as that pattern for survival rooted in protective responses. The connection becomes really insecure and unattainable just by virtue of the lack of honesty and the self abandonment that comes with the way that we sacrifice ourselves.
- [24:36]
C
Oh man, I talk to my clients all the time about like, you wanna start baby steps? What parts of yourself are you rejecting? Like just that even, right? Rooting ourselves in security within ourselves, like turning our soil, like turning in those nutrients so that this seed can grow. And I'm just such a huge proponent of not villainizing any aspect of us, right? Like the rejection sensitivity is there for a reason. So we can get that like, ouch. And then when we see it escalate to rejection sensitivity, dysphoria or rejection sensitivity that is now governing our life, telling us what we can and cannot do, who we need to be and who we cannot be, right? Like that's where it becomes so challenging. But there are these, these little ways we can turn to us and say, what part am I rejecting here?
- [25:33]
A
Real lasting transformation doesn't happen by sheer willpower or discipline. It happens when you work with your nervous system at the root level. That's really where Change begins. At Brainbase.com, we've created a powerful 90 day framework to help you rewire your nervous System for habit change and increased capacity. It's not about forcing change. It's about creating safety and regulation in your body so that transformation becomes a natural and sustainable process. You'll learn how to work with your nervous system, not against it, how to regulate and resource your system, your body, your brain for expanded capacity. You'll learn tools to create new patterns that stick because they're rooted in safety and regulation. And you'll get neurosomatic tools to improve brain integration, focus, clarity, and fuel your brain to support your goals. This program doesn't just address the symptoms. It helps you transform at the source. And you can start today with two free weeks at rewiretrial.com we'll give you a class a day. All the heavy lifting is done for you. It's strategically laid out, accessible, and designed to help you create transformation that lasts. So go to rewiretrial.com today to begin your journey. Transformation starts here. Yeah. Yeah. And without vilifying this response or putting in great shame on ourselves about our perfectionism or sensitivity to rejection, I do want to look at the costs of some of this a little bit in terms of our physical health, our pain, our burnout. Because I do think two reasons there's it's really. It is challenging to start to re pattern some of this, to have those conversations with yourself about what part am I rejecting, to start to take contrary action, to be embodied, to regulate around these emotions. It's a big ask for people. And I also think in general, perfectionism can be one of the trauma responses that is frequently rewarded by our society. You know, you are a people pleaser, you perform well, you can achieve a lot of success from it. Some people kind of wear that perfectionism with a badge of honor. You know, I'm a perfectionist. I dot all my I's and I cross all my T's. And yes, those can be great qualities. And there can be a big cost in terms of pain, burnout, and physical health. So I want to talk about pain a little bit. We talked about it in the chronic pain episode when we talked about Dr. John Sarno's work. And looking at how there is a certain personality profile of like, people pleasing or perfectionistic tendencies that lead to more emotional repression, particularly repression of anger, fear, resentment. And then also that leads people to distract themselves from their emotions and use pain as a distraction from that. But it also, at a really physical level, creates tension in the body, reduces blood flow to the muscles and the nerves and the tendons. And this leads to a lot of Pain.
- [28:32]
B
So.
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A
So when we are in this kind of rigid way of being with ourselves and repressing our emotions for other people's needs, it can often end up with the output of physical pain, lack of range of motion, these physical costs to our bodies.
- [28:48]
C
Can I say one thing about that? I want to rewind all the way back because I said a small step that I invite my clients into. And to your point, that small step of what part of my rejecting that doesn't come in to the client work until after we've done neurosomatic intelligence, until after we're returning some of those resources, we're expanding the window of tolerance, we're decreasing some of the stress, like approaching exactly what you just said. This body that is holding this can be a body of pain, a body that is in a state of eroding certain aspects of its health. And so when we start with, okay, what parts of yourself are you rejecting? And the system, like the health of the garden, right, can't sustain a new seed being planted or like a new way of being in that space. So, yes, thank you for bringing it back to that, because that is a place that if we start, it opens more possibility for some of this other inquiry or examination work in an environment with less pain, holding, less of that bracing, that tightness. And when we physically can't move, it's difficult for us to move any part of our being. Like when we're in pain, it's difficult for us to be in joy work. It can be challenging. So thank you for bringing it back to that.
- [30:14]
B
I think it's a great time to talk about rejection, sensitivity and perfectionism and how it does lead into chronic health issues.
- [30:21]
A
So beyond chronic pain, and obviously also the burnout that can come from overdoing over giving all of the exhaustion and attacks on our nervous system, there are big physical outputs that can come from living a life where we're driven by perfectionism, people pleasing and that fear of rejection. And Fabor Mate looks at this a lot in the Myth of Normal. He has many chapters looking at the personalities that are coupled with experiencing more disease outcomes. And he mentions a study done in 1987 by psychologist Dr. Linda Timochok, who proposed the idea of a type C personality. And that's a set of traits that's really found to be linked with the onset of malignancies like cancer. And this is kind of a very different personality from your type A personality. Type C personalities are cooperative, appeasing, unassertive, overly patient, unexpressive of negative emotions. They tend to suppress their own needs and feelings in order to please others or to maybe comply with external authorities. And in this study, she interviewed 150 melanoma patients and noticed a really striking pattern that they were excessively nice, pleasant to a fault, almost never complained. And most importantly, their concerns, even about their own diagnosis, were not about themselves. It was how their diagnosis was going to affect their families, affect their loved ones, not about their own suffering. And that kind of self negation is really telling. And it hits pretty hard because it's an example of the cost of this pattern of self sacrifice and emotional suppression.
- [32:15]
C
Right?
- [32:15]
A
And so that self negation, it doesn't just happen in a vacuum. From a nervous system perspective, we know that this kind of repression of needs, of emotions, of boundaries, places a big burden on our body. It leads to constant dysregulation and chronic stress, inability of emotions to be processed through the body, and that suppresses the immune function, leaving the body in a really vulnerable disease state. Or it can go the other way and drive us into autoimmune. In. In the Myth of Normal, Gabor Mate also talks about the ALS personality and the development of Ms. With these same personality traits. And so there's a real link between some of these patterns and the development of disease later on in life.
- [33:02]
B
And there are characteristics that are really prone to this illness. Women are more highly identified with autoimmune dise than men are. There are four common traits identified by Gabor Mate that he says that women are expressing. And that's the identity that they identify strongly with duty and role, that they believe that they are responsible for how others feel. They put emotional needs ahead of their own, have poor boundaries. There is a repressed anger, the inability to say no and avoid disappointing others. And there are real studies that link poor boundaries and self sacrifice to disease and development. And when we talk about self sacrifice, really what I want to say right now is self sacrifice as self abandonment, to sacrifice the self in our boundaries, to turn away from the self into these driving acts of perfectionism or rsd. It's this unconscious choosing of survival through the inner critic versus the intrinsic knowing of, like, who we are. And we talked about this in another conversation where, like our bodies, our nervous systems know who we are inherently intrinsically, is who we are rooted in. And so when we turn away from ourselves, when we sacrifice our sovereignty and our authenticity, our voices, to perpetually be responsible for other people or repress those emotions, there is a strong implications of. For our health. And that this all really is rooted in A shame response. And we talk about shame a lot on this podcast and how shame is really an emotion that has a high physiological occurrence in the body and something that we cannot parse apart from having complex trauma also. And that shame is a hallmark of having complex trauma. It's also rooted in perfectionism and into having poor boundaries. Both of these really perpetuate a shame response. And we know a shame response is highly immobilizing and drops us into a high parasympathetic state.
- [35:11]
C
I want to mix into this too. Thank you, Jennifer and Elizabeth. In order for this conditioning that is sometimes subtly and sometimes grossly implied, something that is absolutely necessary is that we are separated from our body, right? In order for this conditioning to be believable, we have to start ignoring our felt sense, our feelings. We have to ignore the signals and cues of our body. So when we talk about the impact of this coming back into our body in a safe way, coming back into, receive these signals is critical as an initial step. And when I think about the chronic pain or the autoimmune outputs, right, to me, that's, that's the body screaming. That is the body saying, I have tried to tell you for so long, long that this is not sitting right in my gut, in my heart, in my womb, in the body, right? And, and you're not listening. And so these signals become stronger and stronger until ironically, they're debilitating, ironically, they start to erode our ability to exhibit those coping mechanisms. So the coping mechanisms, they can't be long term solutions anyway. Like, that's the strange irony of it. But we'd also live in Western capitalist culture that's centered on exploitation, you know, exploiting something until it cannot give anymore, exploiting something until it's actually left in disarray in it, in a complete, devoid of health. And that happens with the earth. It happens with many different marginalized identities that are breaking their backs to uplift 1% of people that we deem perfect enough, worthy enough, whatever, through those goalposts and those lens to, to be allowed to be like, alive. And so, yeah, there's a lot there. And I just really appreciate the intersection of this conversation and the return to something that we can each come back to when we're ready, which is the body. And through neurosomatic intelligence. It's what I appreciate is the gentleness, but also the depth. It's gentle, but we're going to the nervous system, which is deep.
- [37:57]
A
I'm glad you brought that up too, about that. These can come from individual experiences. But there's also a lot that's shaped by our society. And there's many forces that patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, all of these different things that compound the stress and can also create and result in these outputs of the nervous system, these coping, survival strategies. And then it's not always on an individual level, but collective as well. I just would invite listeners and myself and anyone contemplating this stuff to start to just develop a relationship about looking at all of this with curiosity. What does it feel like in my body? Where is it pushing me into dysregulation? Where is it creating that stress? Are there places where I need to regulate around it? Are there places where I need to work on boundaries and embodiment and hearing those signals that you talked about. So we don't get so far down into the spectrum of these protective reflexive responses, harming us later down the road and having a more present relationship with all of this and working with it so that we can show up and give and be in relationship with others, but also have that balance between attachment and authenticity and knowing what, what serves us and receptivity.
- [39:22]
C
Right. Like we need trust in order to receive, we need safety in order to accept. So like the option, the opposite of rejection is being accepted by someone. But we actually need that trust and safety. But trust and safety happen in the body. These are not concepts. Right. We feel trust or safety. So going into the body and coming in with that NSI lens allows us to again like till into the soil what we need so that what's the seeds are growing from that trust and that safety.
- [39:54]
B
Yeah, because the chronic stress load is just too much. And so we use nsi, we use our tools every day in a daily practice to start to unload some of that stress so we can ask ourselves some of these bigger questions about who we are, what we want in life and how we want to show up in our authenticity and in like who I am and shine in my full self expression. And that having that relationship with your nervous system is really where it's all at. This is all nervous system issues because we're talking about survival strategies and they get locked into the way that our nervous system responds and shows up all the time. And so when we start to interrupt these patterns, we do it through repetition, but also with minimum effective dose. And we need to work in our nervous systems, not just talk about it. It's not enough to just understand what your nervous system is doing and to have all the words to describe what you're doing and how you're being. It's about that daily practice working directly in the nervous system and starting to re pattern some of the autonomic response and remembering that the nervous system is using these outputs to inhibit actions that could threaten our social bonds and that it's a very common experience to to be enmeshed in perfectionism and want to be small and want to be invisible to avoid that potential disconnection from people. And so always talking about that daily.
- [41:19]
A
Practice on trauma rewind always comes back to that daily. Daily.
- [41:24]
C
Yeah, I mean, I just am obsessed with this garden metaphor now and it's like the the garden needs to be tended daily.
- [41:32]
B
Thank you so much for joining us today, Piper.
- [41:34]
C
Yeah, thank you Jennifer and Elizabeth. And I just love NSI so much. So it's a joy to be here and I hope that anyone who needs to receive this particular podcast does and hears that encouragement from all of us to come into your unique, awesome essence and let us all share in the gifts that everyone has to offer from from those authentic places of self.
- [42:06]
B
So love it and we'll have the links where people can find you in the show notes as well.
- [42:10]
C
Thank you.
- [42:12]
D
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 notes.
- [42:47]
A
It.