How Do I Regulate My Nervous System? Resetting Your System & Managing Stress

Summary

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Podcast Summary: How Do I Regulate My Nervous System?

Podcast: What Your Therapist Thinks
Hosts: Felicia Keller Boyle & Kristie Plantinga
Guest: Julie Goldberg (Founder, Third Nature Therapy)
Date: April 8, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Felicia, Kristie, and special guest Julie Goldberg—an experienced somatic therapist—dive deep into the often-misunderstood topic of nervous system regulation. Through candid conversation, vivid metaphors, Reddit posts, and real-world scenarios, the therapists outline what “regulation” really means, why dysregulation happens, and how we can learn to track, soothe, and work with our bodies’ responses to modern stressors. The episode also candidly addresses common misconceptions, social media oversimplifications, and the tremendous challenges of healing relational trauma.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Nervous System Regulation

• Regulation ≠ Constant Calm
  • Julie stresses that a regulated nervous system is “not calm all the time, but it knows how to come back to that state of feeling.” (00:00)
  • Regulation is about flexibility, resilience, and being able to return to a sense of ease and flow.
• The Polyvagal Ladder
  Julie and Felicia reference Deb Dana’s adaptation of Polyvagal Theory, illustrating three main states (05:00-09:00):
  • Ventral Vagal: Regulated, connected, safe, flow (“That’s the 'I’m okay' sigh.”)
  • Sympathetic: Fight or flight, mobilized, anxious, high muscle tone.
  • Dorsal Vagal: Shut down, dissociated, “like lying horizontal on the couch scrolling through your phone.” (05:50)

2. What Dysregulation Looks and Feels Like

• Somatic Markers:
  • Dorsal: Low muscle tone, heaviness, inability to act (08:00-10:00)
  • Sympathetic: High muscle tone, tension, anxiety, readiness to fight/flee (10:00)
  • Felicia uses the motorcycle metaphor: Too much tension vs. being too slack.
• Triggers and the Polyvagal Map:
  • “Everyone’s triggers are different because everyone's different... For me... going into CVS and feeling really overwhelmed.” (13:32 – Julie)
  • Modern life, especially overstimulation, frequent transitions between sympathetic (activation) and dorsal (collapse)—see New York examples and burnout (16:09).

3. Consequences of Chronic Dysregulation

• Burnout Epidemic:
  • More people on “burnout leave” with symptoms of disconnection, substance use, erratic sleep, appetite changes, and isolating behaviors. (17:06)
  • “You’re not really clear on how to take care of yourself outside of the therapy room.” (Julie, 18:25)

4. Practical Regulation Strategies

• Simple, Daily Tools:
  • Safety Check: “Are you safe in this specific moment?” (34:00–35:20)
  • Five Senses: Use your senses to ground in the present. “Yeah, sorry about it. But truly, smell your tea.” (Felicia, 35:39)
  • Move, breathe, and take in your environment—no expensive spa, gadgets, or classes required.
  • External focus (engage with objects, sounds, sensations outside your body) can be safer for trauma survivors or the hyper-aware.
• Realistic Expectations:
  • “You’re not doing anything wrong if you are sometimes dysregulated... These are super adaptive human responses.” (Felicia, 20:35)
  • It's about spending more time regulated and pathologizing less when you move out of regulation. (21:50)

5. Technology & Modern Life’s Impact

• Social Media Doomscrolling:
  “Open your phone and it’s just thing that I’m assuming would activate our sympathetic states just over and over again…” (Kristie, 00:07, 24:16)
  • Chronic exposure to distressing information via phones can create ongoing cycles of spike (sympathetic activation) and collapse (dorsal)—akin to addiction cycles. (26:08)

6. Addressing Pop Psychology and Skepticism

• Polyvagal Theory 'Debunking':
  • Julie: “Do I care if it’s debunked?... It’s really helped me and it’s helped so many of my clients.” (38:51)
  • Both hosts underscore the importance of usefulness and lived experience, not just academic rigor.

7. The Importance of Co-regulation and Real Relationships

• Healing in Relationship:
  • “Our nervous systems are designed to regulate together... a good therapist will often be in a regulated state when they're in the therapy room with you.” (Julie, 43:58)
  • The value of attunement, co-regulation, and repair in relationships—not needing to be perfect, just human. (45:13)
• Therapists, Not Chatbots:
  • “ChatGPT is not a regulated nervous system on the other side.” (Julie, 43:58)

8. Relational Trauma: Real-Life Listener Story

• Profound Reddit Post on Social Trauma (46:55–57:12):
  • Chronic dysregulation around people, despite many therapies.
  • Julie and Felicia normalize how lifelong social trauma may take years to truly shift, especially if it’s rooted in early or complex trauma.
  • Validation: “It's not your fault, but you're in the body that's affected and it then becomes your responsibility to address it or not. And everything about that is so unfair.” (Felicia, 51:48)
  • Practical encouragement: Build on any safe relational experience, shift attention outside the self, and celebrate tiny steps as real progress (54:24, 55:25, 56:47).

9. Therapist Candidness & Real-World Limits

• Felicia and Julie share moments of real talk about therapy’s limits: Real change often requires changing your life or behaviors—not just attending therapy. (57:20+)
  “‘Therapy’s not gonna solve all the other stuff.’” (Julie, 57:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “A regulated nervous system is not calm all the time, but it knows how to come back to that state of feeling.” —Julie Goldberg (00:00)
• "You're not doing anything wrong if you are sometimes dysregulated. We don't want you to lose the ability to go into fight or flight..." —Felicia Keller Boyle (20:35)
• "This stuff is so simple and it just takes the willingness to do it. I want to go to the fucking sauna... but, like, no, actually the thing you need to do is just engage with your environment right now." —Felicia (34:44)
• "Do I care if [polyvagal theory]'s debunked? Like, is the Universe debunked?... It's really helped me and my clients." —Julie (38:51)
• “Our nervous systems are designed to regulate together... ChatGPT is not a regulated nervous system on the other side.” —Julie (43:58)
• "It's not your fault, but you're in the body that's affected and it then becomes your responsibility to address it or not. And everything about that is so unfair." —Felicia (51:48)
• "We flow in and out of these states of attunement, disattunement, and repair... the cycle of a nervous system." —Felicia (45:13)
• "I love that you talked about the ways it's currently useful to you and your clients. One of the ways that I started healing myself was engaging in somatic practices that allowed me to be present in my body in a way that felt peaceful, which was a totally foreign experience." —Felicia (40:50)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–03:16 – What is a regulated nervous system?
• 05:00–09:41 – Polyvagal Theory explained; somatic cues of nervous system states
• 13:23–17:06 – Triggers for dysregulation & the burnout epidemic
• 19:10–22:40 – Regulation is dynamic, not static; practical regulation tips
• 24:16–27:39 – Modern life: Phones, social media, and their impact
• 34:00–36:40 – Five senses exercise & realistic tools for regulation
• 38:45–42:48 – Is “nervous system talk” pop-psych? Polyvagal theory debate
• 43:58–46:55 – Value of co-regulation & healing in real relationships
• 46:55–57:12 – Addressing deep relational trauma, real-life listener story
• 57:20–58:50 – Therapists’ “come on!” moments and honest clinical boundaries

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Tone & Takeaways

Candid, warm, validating, but also realistic and occasionally blunt. Listeners are reminded that dysregulation is normal and adaptive, that healing takes time and genuine relationship (not just quick-fix hacks), and that even the best theories are only as good as their usefulness.

Practical, daily tools—like checking for immediate safety, using your senses, or noticing safe moments in relationship—can be more powerful than they seem, and should not be overlooked even though they feel “annoyingly simple.” Healing relational trauma is painstaking and slow; progress is incremental, and real regulation is about flexibility, not perfection.

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For more resources, worksheets, or to connect with these therapists, go to BestTherapists.com or find Julie Goldberg at Third Nature Therapy.

Transcript

[Julie Goldberg]

A regulated nervous system is not calm all the time, but it knows how to come back to that state of feeling.

[Christy Plantinga]

Okay, you open your phone and it's just a thing that I'm assuming would activate our sympathetic states just over and over again.

[Julie Goldberg]

What can you do in your day to day that feels good and nourishing without making huge changes?

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

You're not doing anything wrong if you are sometimes dysregulated. We don't want you to lose the ability to go into fight or flight

[Julie Goldberg]

like, okay, come to therapy. But I don't really think

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

if you're new here. Welcome. I'm Felicia Keller Boyle, a licensed somatic therapist and clinical advisor at Best Therapists.

[Podcast Announcer]

And I'm Christy Plantingo, founder of Best Therapist and Therapy connoisseur.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

This is what your therapist thinks. A mental health show where actual therapists open up about real world stories and the questions people wish they could ask them.

[Podcast Announcer]

And by real world, we mean Reddit posts, incognito, Google searches, and the things you want to bring up in therapy,

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

but maybe you don't. You'll hear conversations on everything from the best dating advice to adhd, EMDR therapy,

[Podcast Announcer]

body dysmorphia, and more. Sometimes it will make you feel seen

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

and sometimes it'll make you laugh out loud.

[Christy Plantinga]

We're so glad you're here.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Now let's get into the episode.

[Christy Plantinga]

Welcome back to what yout Therapist Thinks. My name is Christy Plantinga. I am your host and I've been in a lot of therapy.

[Julie Goldberg]

Felicia.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

And I'm Felicia Keller Boyle, your co host, licensed somatic therapist in California.

[Christy Plantinga]

Today we are joined by Julie Goldberg. Julie specializes in helping people build a better relationship with themselves and their nervous systems to heal from trauma and create a life they love. As the founder of Third Nature Therapy, a group practice in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, she believes that real healing occurs beyond the traditional models of talk therapy. Her practice offers holistic mental health care through emdr, somatic therapy and ketamine assisted therapy sessions. Julie, welcome to the show.

[Julie Goldberg]

Thank you.

[Christy Plantinga]

I'm really excited that we are honing in on this topic because I'm pretty sure in almost every episode we've recorded, we have alluded to nervous system regulation and it's always like a really quick window of tolerance and then we just kind of move on. But we've never actually spent the time to really dial in on this topic. So thank you for being here. We are excited to learn from you.

[Julie Goldberg]

Happy to be here and dial in.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Great. Okay.

[Christy Plantinga]

I think if we can really just get a definition of what nervous system dysregulation is and maybe some examples of what triggers it.

[Julie Goldberg]

Yes, I think that's such a good question, because so many people are like, I need to regulate my nervous system. That's my focus. And no one really knows what that means. So for me, I think of a regulated nervous system as, like, a nervous system that knows how to take care of itself. It's flexible and resilient, and it's not perfect. A regulated nervous system is not calm all the time. It gets triggered, it gets activated, it shuts down. But it knows how to come back to that state of ease and flow and feeling.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Okay, I ride a motorcycle. I do wear gear, but sometimes I get a little freaked out because I'm on a bike with nothing around me with a motor between my legs going crazy fast. And I have to be like, but I am safe right now. And I remind myself to loosen up, because when you get tense and you stiffen up, you actually get less safe. And you mentioned, Julie, that part of a regulated nervous system is having that flexibility. And when you get dysregulated, part of what happens is a rigidity. You get kind of stuck, and you lose that adaptability that is a hallmark of a regulated nervous system.

[Julie Goldberg]

That is like, the perfect example. When you mentioned you riding motorcycle, I was like, oh, I want to do that. And the reason I want to do it is because when I've ridden on the back of a motorcycle, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm so calm. I feel so free. You're in flow. And when you're, like, driving that motorcycle, there's, like, tension, and you have to be on high alert. And yet you have to also learn how to come back into that state of flow, because that's kind of the whole point of doing it.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

It's such an amazing feeling, being on twisties and feeling your body move in a state of flow. And it is so different than being on the backseat, because when you're on the backseat, your job is to be a sack of potatoes. That's what I always tell my boss.

[Christy Plantinga]

I've been in the back se of Felicia's motorcycle. We've had many romantic moments together, Just me clutching Felicia, driving through Thailand together.

[Julie Goldberg]

This is such a good way to explain what a regulated nervous system is and also what a dysregulated nervous system is. So most of my language around the nervous system and framing comes from Deb Dana, studying polyvagal theory. And she uses three states of the nervous system. So this regulated present State and flowy state that we're talking about is called ventral vagal safety and connection. Like I said before, like, ah, this sigh. I'm okay. The next state is sympathetic, which is this fight or flight. And Felicia named it, like, when she's going down the twisty tourney. Christy named it gripping on the back, right? Your nervous system is really activated in that sympathetic state of mobilization. It can feel like anxiety. And then the final state is dorsal vagal, and that's like, shut down, collapsed. I think of dorsal vagal as lying on my couch, like, totally horizontal scrolling through my phone, just like, yep, dorsal, dorsal, dorsal, dorsal, checked out. I'm trying to think about it, what it would look like on the back of a motorcycle. Maybe it's like, you don't even know you're on the motorcycle.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

You're so panicked. You've gone, like, catatonic, and you're just like, I'm playing dead. Because this goes back to, like, our biological inheritance as, like, animals on this planet. Some other animals don't like to eat dead animals. So if you play dead, there's, like, two huge perks to this. One option is you do actually die, but you're not totally present to experience it. It's a slightly less emotional, psychologically painful experience. The other perk is that the animal sees you playing dead, and it's like, ew, I don't want to eat a dead animal. I'm getting out of here. Then you shake it off, you come back to life, and you live to fight another day. So, like, the dorsal vagal response is like a highly adaptive response.

[Julie Goldberg]

Yes, yes, yes. It's like, how do we survive? Okay, we collapse and vacate, and we are not primitive animals anymore, so we need to remember that we have this ability, and then we can bring ourselves back into regulation. We have to learn how to actually, like, mobilize and move through different states to come back to feeling.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Okay, I love that you just mentioned that we're not a primitive animal anymore and we still have this biological inheritance. Right. Even if you are a relatively safe person and your life is very privileged, you can still get triggered and dysregulated

[Christy Plantinga]

as if a lion was about to

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

bite your face off.

[Christy Plantinga]

Yeah, I kind of wanted to know, what does a dysregulated nervous system feel like? Because it sounds like there are actually two ways that that works. And then I want to get back

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

to triggers a little bit.

[Julie Goldberg]

Yeah, let's start with the dorsal, because it's at the bottom. So the way that Deb Dana really explains your nervous system and nervous system regulation is by using what she calls a polyvagal ladder. And at the bottom of the ladder is this dorsal state. Dorsal is collapsed. I think of dorsal as like, you're so heavy, right? You're so tired. You're, like, on the couch. And the idea of making yourself dinner is just absolutely impossible. You have laundry to do. And that is the most absurd thing that you've ever heard in your life. Like, you don't know how you ever have done a load of laundry before, right? The world is just, like, too much. And then the middle state, the middle of that ladder is the sympathetic. And that's when your body gets really activated. That's a mobilized state. So your heart rate speeds up, right? You might feel adrenaline or energy moving through your arms. Your stomach might clench. You might get short of breath. This is what so many people describe as anxiety. They're feeling this sympathetic activation. And the reason I love this latter visualization is because in order to get off the couch and actually do that load of laundry or make yourself dinner, you have to mobilize. So you have to move through that middle state. You can think about it as, like, you're horizontal. You mobilize, you stand up, you activate your system to get to the top of the ladder, which is that ventral vagal state of regulation. And that feels like ease flow, ability to tolerate things, move through stresses or triggers.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

That's a fantastic description. I want to reiterate something that you just said, because I think it's really helpful for listeners to understand about, like, how to notice what kind of state your nervous system is in, right? So you talked about that lowest rung of dorsal vagal and, like, thinking about it from a somatic lens or thinking about the actual muscular tone of your body. When I think about dorsal vagal, I think about that being the nervous system state where there's the least muscle tone. There's kind of like this slackness in the body. And like you said, it feels like laying down on the couch and scrolling on your phone and just not being able to imagine that you could move at all. And then you've got the sympathetic nervous system being activated, and that's where there's a lot of muscular tone. There's kind of too much, like I mentioned about riding on the motorcycle. It's like when I'm holding the handlebars and my arms get tight, and then I'm going into a turn, and it's actually much harder. It's like I am in my sympathetic Nervous, nervous system arousal. I have too much muscle tone, and I'm not flexible enough. But if I were in my dorsal vagal place, I would be too slack on the motorcycle. I'd just, like, fall off of it. Right. So being in the ventral vagal state is about, again, having that right amount of muscle tone, right amount of effort, right amount of activation and presence to engage with your life, to engage with yourself, to engage with others. And it literally feels different in your body.

[Julie Goldberg]

The visual of the ladder, you can also sort of overlay it onto your body. So the dorsal state is around our stomach. It's where our digestive organs live. Our sympathetic state is back of our spinal cord, middle of our chest. Our ventral vagal is our face, our neck.

[Christy Plantinga]

Right.

[Julie Goldberg]

The dorsal vagal was the first part of our nervous system to develop. It's the oldest, most primitive part. And then it moves up through our system through the sympathetic into ventral vagal. So the ventral vagal is like the most. I'm hesitant to use the word intelligent, but it is, right? It's like the wisest.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

It's like the most evolved.

[Julie Goldberg]

Yeah, right.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

So you mentioned that ventral vagal systems are related to our necks, our faces, our heads. And one of the ways that we can backwards engineer getting more regulated is to look around, rotate our heads, notice our environments. Because one of the things that we do when we're in the dorsal vagal or the sympathetic system is we're either, like, shut down, disconnected, bleh, not interested. Not able to connect with people, not really even able to connect with ourselves. We're trying to vacate. Right. Or we're in our sympathetic activation, and we're like predator or prey mode. We are not taking our time, looking around, connecting. We're like, I either got to kill you or get the hell out of here. So we're not taking in our surroundings. In order to activate your ventral vagal nerve, you do want to rotate your head and look around. And even if you're not feeling safe in the moment, actually just doing this action can help you get back into that more regulated state. This is one of the coolest things I learned when I was in grad school. I'm like, this is amazing, and it's intuitive. And you'll notice when you do it yourself, you'll feel the difference in your body.

[Julie Goldberg]

I describe sympathetic as like having tunnel vision. You can only look at that one thing 100%. And then the ventral vagal state is like, oh, there's the tree. Here's the plant. I love the Way the room smells, your senses kind of come online.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Absolutely. What would you say are some of the triggers for nervous system dysregulation? Like, what are people experiencing that can throw them out of whack?

[Julie Goldberg]

Maybe I'll answer why I'm hesitant to answer that, which is I do a polyvagal map with all of my clients, so I'm writing down what people's triggers are. Everyone's triggers are different because everyone's different. Right. For me, if I'm going to name what activates my sympathetic state, it's like going into CVS and feeling really overwhelmed that there's a million different options. I can feel the mobilization. Oh, no. Is this thing going to be locked like I'm in sympathetic that I know it's activated? So for both of you, your triggers are going to look really different and probably really random and unique to your life. But the way that it looks in all three of our nervous systems will probably look really similar. So I don't want to say. Here are the triggers for sympathetic. I can say that oftentimes if people are in a go, go, go, mobilized state all day, they'll be in the sympathetic state of their nervous system. If people do too much throughout their day, they might move to the dorsal state. Like, for me, if I schedule too many clients throughout my day, I know I'm gonna be endorsal, so I don't do it anymore. It's just not worth it.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

I think that's helpful for people to consider that in terms of order of operations. When you are triggered and you are activated, when your nervous system gets the message that there's a problem here and we need to do something about it, it's go to strategy is going to be engaging your sympathetic nervous system first. We're gonna try to fight or flee first. So that's like that keyed up sort of experience. And then if that's not working, or if you are in that mode for so long that your body kind of like runs out of that hormonal fuel, then you will naturally go into that dorsal vagal response because you're tapped out. Right. If you're a person who's constantly triggered or has experienced a lot of trauma and you've fought as much as you can fight, you've tried to flee and you couldn't get away, then you might be prone to going into that dorsal vagal response and kind of skipping over that sympathetic response. And so that can look like depression, dissociation, as opposed to the previous one, the sympathetic. That's going to look like anxiety or sometimes if you're a high achieving type person, then it might just look like working hard all the time. Oh, I'm a hard worker. It's like you might be stuck on God personally.

[Christy Plantinga]

That doesn't sound.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

It's like, I can relate to that.

[Christy Plantinga]

No, that's for someone else.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Kristie's like, how dare you?

[Julie Goldberg]

Yeah, I live in New York City and I feel like that is sort of the energy of New York City. Right. You're rewarded here, to go, go, go and then keep going some more. And it takes a lot of effort and intention to come back into regulation here.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

And it's important to note that, like, there are consequences, even though there are all of these rewards, whether it's money, promotions, praise from other people in your life, being told that you're a superhero. This has a real toll on your physical health and on your mental health. What happens, Julie, when someone is stuck on go or lapses into this dissociative dorsal vagal response? What are some of the common things that you see in your room in terms of, like, what are the consequences for people when their nervous systems have been dysregulated for months or years on end?

[Julie Goldberg]

Yeah, so I'm seeing like a huge spike in people on burnout leave. And this can look like a loss of interest in things, an increase in substance use. Maybe you have trouble sleeping at night or you're sleeping too much, feel like you can't get nourished. A lot of times I'll track in people and their nervous system's dysregulated by their food intake. So I'm not asking them to give me a food diary or counting calories. But you're sort of out of rhythm with the cycle of the day. Right. So you're skipping meals or you're not sleeping and resting when you're supposed to. You're more energized when the world's at rest. You're isolating and having a hard time to connect. And I'm sort of weaving in dorsal and sympathetic together because there can be flavors of both at the same time. When someone's dysregulated and people can move in between those two states. I got really passionate about polyvagal theory and nervous system regulation because so many people were coming into the therapy room and being like, I'm depressed, I have anxiety. Actually, I think your nervous system's dysregulated and you're not really clear on how to take care of yourself outside of the therapy. Room. We can talk about your clinical depression, but it's only going to get better if you know how to regulate your nervous system 100%.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

And the good news about this is that there are actually very practical ways to do it. And I'm sure we're going to get into that once we get into some of our examples from today. There are very practical ways to do it, and it begins with understanding the signals that your body is giving you. We already talked a lot about that. Like, how can you correctly identify the nervous system state that your body is in? And then what are some of the strategies to get you into a more regulated place?

[Christy Plantinga]

When I, you know, have over the years learned more about emotions, I always thought emotion was kind of a default.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Like, default, we should be happy or

[Christy Plantinga]

we should be content. But I learned emotions are fleeting. They actually don't last that long. So when I think about nervous system regulation, dysregulation, I'm just kind of wondering about the time aspect of all of it. Is it just our default, we're in this flow, or is that kind of like a momentary thing? Like the sigh is the sigh and then we're kind of back in our everyday lives? Or what does this actually look like in the span of a day?

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

It's a great question.

[Julie Goldberg]

So we're moving through all of these states all the time in really big and small ways. We can use the example of mobilized getting off the couch, right? We have to be mobilized to do things to follow through. I had to activate my sympathetic nervous system to arrive on time to this podcast to set everything up. And before I logged on, I made sure to like, take a deep breath, acknowledge that of course I'm feeling a little activated. It's normal. This is a new thing and I'm okay. So it's the ability to notice both and allow myself to fluctuate without thinking that something's wrong with me or getting totally stuck in that state of sympathetic.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

I do think that over time, especially through therapy and like implementing the things you're learning in therapy outside in your normal life, you can build the muscle of having a more regulated nervous system. But you're not doing anything wrong if you are sometimes dysregulated, because these are actually very adaptive responses. We don't want you to lose the ability to go into fight or flight or lose the ability to dissociate. These are super adaptive human body minds responses. But what we do want to do over time is to decrease your sensitivity to things that are not actually risks. Our nervous System has tons of false positives. Something like walking into Walgreens, like, you have some different options there. You could avoid that altogether, or you could say, you know what? I'm deciding that I really want to be more regulated. Going into Walgreens, that would make my life better. And I'm going to see if I can start to regulate myself and even through this experience. And it might look like slowly turning your head in Walgreens to activate your ventral vagus nerve. So as somatic therapists, we just want to increase the time that you do spend in a regulated nervous system, and therapy can really help you do that

[Julie Goldberg]

and to decrease the time we spend pathologizing ourselves when we move out of that regulated state. In New York, I go to cvs. If every time I went into cvs, I was like, something's wrong with me. I'm so anxious, I can't get out of this. Or I just stayed in that state, I think that'd be problematic. But instead, I'm like, yeah, this place overwhelms me. I'm gonna take a deep breath. For me, in those moments, finding gratitude is really helpful. So coming back to, like, I have choice, right? I have the ability to spend 10 minutes of my time going to a store, and I have a body that can do that. Right. Coming back to those things can help, at least for me, acknowledge that I'm in this state and move myself back to regulation in that ventral state.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

I mean, I relate to what you're saying. It's activating for so many people to walk into grocery stores or places where we might need to interact with somebody or ask for something. I feel like I talk to people all the time where even in a store or a restaurant, they feel intense amount of guilt or awkwardness when they have to ask somebody for something. And so, yeah, if you're listening to this and you're like, I too, find CVS very activating. You are absolutely not alone. Like you said, Julie, we don't want to stigmatize or problematize. The fact that you get dysregulated, that is normal. And there are very good reasons for why that happens. And if it's making your life harder, there's still something you can do about it. So, like, all of this is good news. Congratulations. You're a human with a human body that's evolved over, you know, millions of years to give you this exact nervous system. It is on purpose. It's what's kept us alive. And knowing that can help you have a better life. You Know, if we learn how to work with it, not against it.

[Julie Goldberg]

How amazing is it that we're in these bodies that send us messages all the time and let us know if we're feeling safer. Okay. Or if we're in danger or if it's too much?

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

It's so sweet, right? Yes, the world is fucked. Yes, you still have that deadline. Yes, you got in a fight with your partner. All of these things are true. And that is shitty. And where are we now? Okay, we're in cvs. Am I safe? Yes, technically. All right, let's start there. Right? Let's just start with that one thing, that fundamental okayness, and we'll work on the rest later.

[Christy Plantinga]

So as therapists, when you're kind of just assessing the landscape right now, like at the time of this recording, the US is in a war. We are just in this time of absolute turmoil. Burnout is on the rise. You know, I feel like as a society, it's like you open your phone and it's just thing that I'm assuming would activate our sympathetic states just over and over and over again, as somatic therapists do, just look around the world and see this epidemic of a dorsal state. Or is that oversimplifying things?

[Julie Goldberg]

Is that not true? I mean, yeah, when you open your phone and log on to Instagram and see a 30 second video of like, I'll just say someone being bombed, what do you think happens to your nervous system in that moment? You are in a fight or flight response because that's how we're designed. You are saying war on your phone even though you are nowhere near there. And then it's too much for you to take in. So you move to shutdown and then we just stay in that state and we scroll and we scroll and we scroll and these companies meta has convinced us that we're not informed enough if we're not getting our news on these social media platforms. And I think the reality is like you're actually not supposed to know, know all of that information all at once. At the same time, it's too much for you to take in. And so you can't really do anything right. You move to that collapsed state and it's really hard to activate and do something about all these terrible things that you're seeing on your screen.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Yeah, 100%. It can actually contribute to numbing out and even impact your ability to meaningfully respond to these things. Because like you just said, Julie, you're kind of like in this cycle of a quick spike into your sympathetic nervous system. And then you're just so inundated by all of this information that you can't really do much about. In some cases, it's like the scale of the response feels so small compared to the pain and suffering that's existing. And that is such a heavy load. And I'm also thinking about addiction cycles. So often in substance abuse, there is this nervous system spiking and downregulating that happens. Like that cycle is part of why addiction is addiction. And when I think about being on our phones and this activation cycle, we are going through this spike and this plummet cycle again and again and again. And the thing about a regulated nervous system, it's very peaceful. It's not particularly entertaining. There is something about this spike that can be really addictive. And when you slow down into that regulated state, it can feel a little boring. You're not like, rushing to fix a problem, or if you are fixing a problem, it's in this, like, mellow, staid sort of response. And if you're used to just being on high alert or totally zoned out, that can actually feel deeply uncomfortable. To be regulated.

[Julie Goldberg]

Oh, yeah. And just like you need to learn to track and be comfortable when you're in the sympathetic or dorsal, most people, including myself, need to learn how to be in that regulated state too. I got obsessed with polyvagal theory from hearing about it from my clients, but also applying it to my own life. I spent the past four years teaching myself how to build a schedule and a routine and a lifestyle for myself that prioritizes my nervous system first and foremost. And when I say four years, I'm like, oh, it's a long time.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

New York City, of all places, not the easiest place to pull that off.

[Christy Plantinga]

So this is a great question in relation to my question around time. And I also think it's a nice way to maybe insert some of those really practical things that people can implement right away to regulate their nervous system. Which is one of the reasons I love talking about this, because I think so much of self healing feels like a really long process. But there are some kind of, like, quick fixes, at least in an immediate sense that you can do. But anyways, this is from the subreddit CFS nervous system work. What does a full day of nervous system regulation look like for someone at the severe level? I would like to commit to this more fully, but I'm having trouble figuring out what to do with my time. Currently, I spend pretty much all of my free time scrolling or messaging on my phone. Which is very bad for me, and I'm not respecting my limits very well. I'm curious to know exactly what someone's day looked like, starting from bed, bound with this strategy. What did you do with each hour of the day? Because I can do meditation and breath work, but not for that long. And I don't know how else to fill my day in a way that is truly restful and calming. Okay.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

So cute that this person is like, what did you do for literally every hour of the day? It's so sweet. This tells me this person is probably spending a lot of time in their sympathetic activation, because they're like, what is the plan for every hour, Julie, what do you think?

[Julie Goldberg]

I also hear a lot of dorsal right. They're like, I message people and I'm on my phone and I scroll, and to me I'm like, oh, you're in a dorsal state. And it's such a sweet post. And I think it kind of alludes to a theme that I often hear like, okay, to become more regulated, I need to go to a breath work class. I need to go to yoga five times a week. I have to meditate every day, and I have to cold plunge and sauna. And it just becomes this laundry list of to dos, which when I say that right now, not relaxing.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

No.

[Julie Goldberg]

I can feel the sympathetic activation in my. My system. And it's also a lot of outsourcing. It requires, like, a lot of time and money. And I try to support people in, like, what can you do in your home, in your day to day that feels good and nourishing without making huge changes? You don't need to move. Maybe you need to move, but you don't have to change your job. You don't have to hire a masseuse.

[Christy Plantinga]

Right?

[Julie Goldberg]

What can you do in your house and then bring in those things after you? You already tend to just your basic routine. And I say maybe you have to move. Because I think oftentimes when you start to look at these things, you might notice that your nervous system is actually kind of dysregulated from where you live. It's helpful information to sit with and, yeah, it can be hard to navigate and ways that your home could impact your nervous system. If it's really loud, if you don't have private space, if you don't feel safe in your home, if you don't have somewhere to do those basic things to take care of yourself, if you don't have somewhere to sit, and it doesn't have to be a huge couch but maybe like a small cushion just to bring connection and attention back towards yourself. If you don't have a bed that you can rest in at night, all of those things will impact if you have a regulated nervous system or not.

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[Felicia Keller Boyle]

That's a tough one. It's a toss up between a fancy pants hotel or camping in the great outdoors.

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[Felicia Keller Boyle]

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[Felicia Keller Boyle]

use our promo code WYTT for up to 20% [e-mail] yeah, I really want to reinforce the idea that you don't have to spend lots of money. So one of the things I already mentioned is that check to see are you safe right now. And I don't mean like on an existential forever level. I mean like literally in this specific moment, are you safe? Are you not under physical threat? Do you have enough food in your body? Are you physically safe right now? And you might be like emotionally unsafe, you might be psychologically unsafe, you might be like existentially unsafe. But in this very moment, do you have a fundamental safety that is always my first go to for getting the nervous system re regulated. Because if we can go, okay, check I'm safe now, then we can move on to the next order of business, which for me and for my clients is often engaging our various senses. So you talked about this earlier, Julie. One of the ways that we can come back into the present moment is by engaging our five senses. And both of these are annoying because I think a lot of us think nervous system regulation is way more complicated. We're like, I need a gym membership and I need to go to a sauna, and I do need to hire a massage therapist. And all of those things are wonderful things to do, but most of the time, this stuff is so simple and it just takes the willingness to do it. I know for myself, I often actually want a more complicated strategy. I don't want the simple thing that is cheap and kind of easy, to be honest. I don't want to sit down and just smell the tea that I'm drinking and feel the warmth in my hand and just, like, stare at the cup like I'm seeing it for the first time. I don't want to do that. I want to go to the fucking sauna. I want to need to do the work to go get a massage. But, like, no, actually, the thing you need to do is just engage with your environment right now. And if going into your body is activating, especially if you've experienced trauma, to, like, go into your body and feel your breath. Don't go into your body. That's totally fine. Engage with something that's external. Oftentimes, feeling your hands can be a safer place to engage with sensation in your body. So if you're holding something that's warm, feel the warmth on your hand. Rub your hand against something in your environment to fill the texture. Or if being in your body at all is hard, just look at something. But engaging those five senses is free. Check to see if you're safe, then use your senses. That will help get you more regulated.

[Julie Goldberg]

I love that you brought up the five senses. I was thinking about it before coming on, and I was like, man, it's an annoying thing that all therapists do. Like, I do it with clients.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Sorry, guys.

[Julie Goldberg]

You've probably seen it online. You've probably done it in a therapy session.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

You're like, I just paid this therapist to tell me to smell my tea. Are you fucking kidding me? And we're like, yeah, sorry about it. But truly, smell your tea.

[Julie Goldberg]

We all do it, and we all do it for a reason. Because if there was danger in your environment, your senses would alert you. You would hear the sirens, you would smell the burning, you would see the flame. You wouldn't actually be able to slow down enough and feel your connection with your. Your hand on the table. You wouldn't be able to taste your tea going down your throat or in your mouth. And it's a really, like, subtle sort of mind trick that you can slow down and start Playing with yourself. The reason you're doing that and the reason you're actually able to connect with your brain senses is because you're safe and okay.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

And that's the difference between actually being in a regulated, flexible nervous system as opposed to being dissociated in that hypoarousal or dorsal vagal state. You're not zoned out, you are present. Which means if something dangerous does begin to happen in your environment, your nervous system is in a regulated space where it can then respond optimally to that threat. So I know a lot of people who have experienced trauma worry, if I'm not on high alert all the time, how am I going to keep myself safe? What if something dangerous happens? But the fact of the matter is that if you are more regulated, your nervous system is more flexible and you will not lose the ability to respond to actual threats. What you will do is stop responding to things that are not threats and suffering as a result.

[Christy Plantinga]

That makes a lot of sense. I do think for some people, maybe myself, if I got into this stuff more, I'd want to achieve regulation.

[Julie Goldberg]

I'd be like, look, I did it.

[Christy Plantinga]

You know? Like, I could totally see myself doing that. Yeah. Okay, so I would love to get the take from somatic therapists on this. This was probably a post that was made for this podcast. In theory, it is to the subreddit, ask a therapist, how much of nervous system talk is pop psychology? I've seen a couple posts here about nervous system regulation, but since I'm not a therapist. Longtime client, though, big fan of y'. All, lol. I couldn't figure out how much of the constant social media talk about our nervous system is bogus. At least in my little social bubble, people attribute any and everything to their nervous system being this or that. No, you're not blank. Your nervous system is blank. And I see it doing more harm than good to everyone. Same thing with the classic case of not knowing what trauma bonding actually means and using it to describe bonding with a friend over shared experience experiences. Would love to be able to tell whether I'm right in being angry at it or if they actually have a point. I know polyvagal theory has been debunked many times, but then again, nervous system regulation seems to be a thing. Would love your insights on this. Thanks.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Can we talk about that a little bit? Like, what is happening in the world of polyvagal theory right now?

[Julie Goldberg]

So I don't fully know, but do I care if it's debunked? Right. Like, is the Universe debunked. Is spirituality debunked? Like, it's really helped me and it's helped so many of my clients. And maybe the exact science behind the vagus nerve and the connection with dorsal vagal and sympathetics, maybe that's not perfect and it shouldn't be perfect. That's how science grows and evolves. But I think learning how to take care of yourself, learning how to understand the signals that your body is sending you to stop over identifying with DSM diagnoses, like, I think that's a net positive and I'd rather spend more time there than deep dive into the research and figuring out what it's wrong. And I think this question's great, but it's just not somewhere that I totally want to spend my time.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

I love how you responded to that, which is no theory is perfect. Like, this is the reason why it's important for research to continue for multiple studies that are testing the same hypotheses to see if we get repeatable results. Like, this is the work of science and it's very important that it continues across all fields. So yeah, it's good to learn new information and update models. So I'm so pro that happening. And I love that you talked about the ways in which it's currently useful to you and your clients. And I would agree with that completely. One of the ways that I started really beginning to heal myself was through engaging in somatic practices that did allow me to become present in my body, like consciously in my body in a way that felt peaceful, which was a totally foreign experience to me for so long. I spent so much time activated and up in my head thinking and figuring things out all the time. And when I learned to actually take the elevator down into my body and feel it and really slow down, I began to feel more present and I began to be less keyed up, but also less down, less depressed. And to me, that has everything to do with nervous system regulation. And like you said, it's a way for us to know ourselves better.

[Julie Goldberg]

Totally agree. And for me, it's the doorway in to self. And it's the language that resonates with me and it might not resonate with everyone, and that's okay. There's lots of access points to get to know yourself. I do want to say something about the first part of the post where this person was saying, like, is this just pop psychology? Like, it's kind of annoying. All my friends are just saying nervous system stuff. And I would agree with that. I think people are Learning about nervous system things in quick fixes on small posts or 60 second videos. And then they're kind of like regurgitating things and they don't have the real like dropped in experience with it. And so yeah, it is kind of pop psychology oftentimes when people are naming it if they haven't done a deeper dive. So if you can't tell, I'm not on Instagram anymore, but when I was, about a year ago, there's tons and tons of people that call themselves somatic therapists or nervous system experts on there that are not licensed therapists, but they definitely didn't go to a graduate program in therapy. And they may be took an online course in nervous system regulation and then are regurgitating those things online. And so be really, really discerning on where you're getting your information from because a lot of people are unfortunately misrepresenting themselves.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

This is such a great plug for why it's so important to work with an actual therapist so that you can have a deeper experience with these modalities. Right. I'm not saying that you can't do some of this work outside of therapy. I really got started in this with meditation and qigong. Like that was really helpful for me. But that's not going to be the entry point for everybody. And yeah, a lot of these things do get overused. They're quick little sound bites without much of a deep understanding. And so yeah, be skeptical about where you're getting this information. This also makes me think about how people are turning to things like ChatGPT or other AIs to get support for their mental health. It would probably be kind of similar to the result that we get from social media, which is like quick validating. You're kind of always right. It's very polarizing and doesn't challenge you. And the benefits of working with a really high quality therapist is that they're validating when they need to be, but they also know how to challenge you. And that is really important if what you actually want to do is grow and heal and not just be told that everything that you think is right.

[Julie Goldberg]

You're also making me think about co regulation, like a huge benefit. Our nervous systems are designed to regulate together. So we haven't named a way that you can move back into regulation as being with another regulated nervous system. It doesn't have to be a therapist, but a good therapist will often be in a regulated state when they're in the therapy room with you and your nervous system is regulating with their nervous system and moving towards this more regulated state. ChatGPT is not a regulated nervous system on the other side. And it is just going to keep you in that state of sympathetic activation, hyperarousal, whatever you want to call it, because there's no nervous system on the other side regulating with you. Parents do this all the time with children. A child cries, they hold the child, and they use their regulated nervous system to rock them back and bring them back into peace. Sometimes parents get dysregulated, right? And they scream at the kid that's crying, and that's okay. They don't have to be perfect, but most of the time they're bringing their kid back to ease.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

And this is a process called attunement and co regulation. We literally attune our nervous systems to our loved ones, whether they're our children or a therapist working with a client. It's very important that your therapist is in a human body for exactly the reasons that you're talking about, Julie. Even if your therapist is not explicitly a somatic therapist, the fact that they inhabit a body, even if you're not working in person, even if you're using teletherapy, is so important for the therapeutic process. And the chatbot can never give you that. We are social creatures. We are pack animals. We literally belong together. That's how we've evolved. And so when it comes to healing, we need to be with other humans to facilitate that process. Now, I'm not saying you can't do any work on your own. I'm not saying if you can't work with a therapist and there's no chance for healing for you. I'm absolutely not saying that. But I am saying that most of our wounds happen in and through relationships. And so we also heal through relationships with other people. And they don't have to be perfect people either. In fact, most of us are not attuning to each other 100% of the time. So one of the other aspects of healing is the repair process, which is mediated through how nervous systems are connecting with each other. So going back to your example of parents with children, you don't have to get it right 100% of the time. You're never going to. And we flow in and out of these states of attunement, disattunement, and repair. Similarly to the cycle of a nervous system, two nervous systems interacting with each other also go through cycles of attunement, disattunement, and then repair.

[Christy Plantinga]

So this next one is a bit longer, but this is exactly what you're just talking about. About where a lot of the healing, the repair has to be done with other people. So really curious to hear what you two think about this. This is from one of our favorite subreddits, the CPTSD subreddit I'm dysregulated by people. Most of my trauma is relational, but I have no idea how TF to fix it. I've done all types of trauma therapy, somatic experiencing, ifs, inner child work, breath work, psychedelics, you name it. At best, some of it has helped me ground become present if I'm already in a safe place. But the second I'm around people, especially strangers, I get chronically dysregulated. It's like my body has already decided I'm not safe and nothing I do changes that. When I'm by myself, I'm usually fine. But the second I'm around people, especially in situations I can't fully control like work, I go straight into fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Too many people around, panic and adrenaline rush. Someone approaches me, I freeze, fawn or mask until the interaction ends. Then I spiral, beating myself up for not being funny, confident or open enough. None of this work has actually resolved trauma for me. None of it has helped me stay in my body while I'm being triggered. What actually triggers me isn't memories. I don't suppress my trauma, I ruminate on it constantly. I overanalyze it, intellectualize it, break it down, trying to understand why the people who hurt me did what they did. But it doesn't help. What dysregulates me is real people in the present moment. Here's what that looks Someone cuts me off in traffic while I'm already on edge. Full blown fight or flight rage. I'm doing an Uber shift. Someone tries to talk or a girl flirts, I fawn or shut down completely. I can't respond or stay present. And I beat myself up afterward for being awkward or withdrawn. A passenger blasts triggering music on their phone. I start fuming inside, clenching my jaw, disassociating, cussing out in my head. But I can't stop it. After enough of these interactions, my system just fries. I spiral in to shut down our rage. It's the social dynamics, the unpredictability, the power imbalance, the intrusion that hijack my nervous system every time. And it's not like I haven't tried. Last week I posted about how devastated I was to say goodbye to the only therapist who ever actually showed up for me. Not because ifs or se worked. They didn't. But because she didn't gaslight me. She was patient. She validated me even when she disagreed. She didn't try to fix me or rush me. She just witnessed me. That made me feel less insane. But she's gone now and I'm still stuck in a body that reacts to people like they're all threats, even in the smallest, most normal interactions. And nothing, nothing I found gives me relief. No technique has rewired how I freeze, fawn, panic or rage when these things happen. If anyone else relates to this, if you have made any real progress with this kind of social trauma reactivity, please tell me what worked. I'm not looking for surface level regulation tools. I need something that actually builds real world resilience. Something that helps me stay in my body and not get destroyed by normal human interaction.

[Julie Goldberg]

That was beautiful. Truly. I've been watching Felicia. I'm like, are we just over here tearing up? Like, I'm so touched.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

I've been like writing notes and just like, what a journey.

[Julie Goldberg]

Yeah. I feel so much love and care for that person. I'm responding like a real therapist right now. I'm here, I'm present. I got you.

[Christy Plantinga]

Yeah.

[Julie Goldberg]

And I'm also.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Is it possible to co regulate through what your therapist thinks? Are we like, we're attempting to like co regulate this person right now?

[Julie Goldberg]

I'm catching in myself too. Like I wrote down a bunch of things, I'm like, I have ideas, I have things I want to say and I want to slow myself down, which maybe is the main thing that I was really hearing from that and how much of a bitter pill it can be to hear this. Like, these things take time. Especially someone that's talking about that level of trauma. It sounds like it could take multiple years. I'm in a training right now. It's called relational somatic healing. And they say that it usually takes four, four years for people to really heal deep attachment wounds that happen in relationship with other people. Four years of slowing down, being in connection and letting your nervous system calm week after week. And it's a, a long time and a big investment.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

And that's really hard. Right. One of the things that's so shitty about trauma if something happens to you is it's not your fault, but you're in the body that's affected and it then becomes your responsibility to address it or not. And everything about that is so unfair. So my heart is going out to this person and I just want to say to them, this is super shitty. And I'm sorry that you're the one having to pick up the pieces. It's fucked up. And the truth is that, yeah, it often takes a long time, especially if the trauma was complex, you know, a bunch of different things that happen throughout your life. Especially if the trauma was occurred when you were pre verbal. Right. There's something about trauma that occurs before you can tell yourself a story, using language, before you can communicate to others what's happening that is like really deep and slow, subtle work. Often. Not always, but often.

[Julie Goldberg]

Yeah. I'm so in my therapist right now, connecting with this person.

[Christy Plantinga]

Yeah.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

We both just like slowed way, way down.

[Julie Goldberg]

Yeah. One other theme that I noticed from this post which makes sense when you've experienced a lot of trauma is our brains negativity bias. Right. We're wired to notice threats and things that are bad. And it takes so much effort every single day to shift your brain and train your brain to notice the positive. And so this person named, like I have a therapist that I finally felt good and connected and seen by. Which is exactly what they're naming where the healing doesn't happen or where they feel stuck. And yet they had it with this therapist. Right. So how can they, oh, it's so hard. But slowly, over time, learn to shift and notice all the ways that things are going safe and okay or. Right. And then acknowledge that the bad moments are still going to be there. When they're driving Uber, for example. Example. Right. They probably do do a good job and then they notice and take the one time out of the 10 rides. I don't know what the actual ratio is. Right. Their brain is probably fixating on the one time that they're reactive and they can learn to shift and notice all the times they weren't and really be in that space.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

I love that you brought that up, Julie, because one of the first things this poster said was I'm completely dysregulated around other people. Right. And later on they mentioned the therapist who was like this beautiful, healing, loving relationship and it's like, ah, okay. So there's this like tiny little crack where there was a relationship that felt good. It's so annoying to have to say this, but it's like, yeah, we have to build on that sense of safety and move from there. The other thing that really struck me about this person's writing was just the hyper awareness of their internal state. I often think there's kind of two ends of the spectrum, like someone who is super unaware of their internal state. And on the other End of the spectrum. Someone who's hyper aware of their internal state. If I were working with this person, I might recommend that they put more of their attention outside of them than inside of them, because they're, like, rehashing things and they're noticing every little change and then, like, trying to tally that up as whether or not it was good or bad.

[Julie Goldberg]

And.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

And I want to tell this person to, like, stop paying attention to what's happening inside of your head and just look outside because you're spending too much time in here alone. I was that person. So I know what it's like to spend so much time in my head that everything feels fucking scary. But when I started actually getting out of my head and looking at the other people and not thinking about what I was thinking about when I was looking at them, but actually just, like, being with them and paying attention to them, not myself, I actually started to feel a little bit more comfortable. And again, that might feel really scary because you're like, but if I'm not hypervigilant, something bad might happen. You will still be able to bring your protective systems online should you need them. We're not talking about, like, getting rid of your ability to respond to threat.

[Julie Goldberg]

Yeah, that's such a great piece of advice. I also think it doesn't have to be noticing other people. You can notice the trees around you. I'm looking at two plants. You can bring your attention towards the sky. I see concrete buildings. You can notice those. Right. If people are activating, there's other things in your external world that you can shift your attention to. And it's the same thing of just, like, doing that mental bicep curl of training your mind to notice what's around you in ways that still are safe and okay.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Exactly. So start with something that feels more approachable. I'm so glad you mentioned that, Julie, because like you said, other people are very activating for op. So if you're like, I actually need to ignore this person who's in my car right now and just focus on, like, the drive. Great. You can focus on something that is not that person. Or at least attempt to. Right. These are small changes, but they do add up over time. Oh, my gosh.

[Christy Plantinga]

I have, like, so many directions that I wish we could go. But, Felicia, I believe it's time for our final segment.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

All right, so you're working with people who are stressed out, dysregulated all the time. Has there ever been a moment in therapy when you're like, come on.

[Julie Goldberg]

Oh, yes. There are many a times where I'm hearing about someone that works from 7am till 9pm Then they come home and they answer emails and then they drink to fall asleep and then they take an Adderall the next day to stay focused at work. And they're on SSRI because they don't feel great and they're lonely and isolated and I'm like, okay, you can come to therapy once a week, but I don't really think that's gonna change everything else that's going on there. Maybe you should slow down and not work so much and we can talk about why you have this need to work all the time. But therapy's not gonna solve all the other stuff.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Like we can talk about it, but the only path through is to actually change your life. And it's so hard as a therapist cuz you might be thinking that, but sometimes it's like the client isn't there. And there are times like we mentioned earlier, where you can challenge your clients and that's really supportive of their process. But sometimes we're like that wouldn't be the best thing for them. And so yet another reason to work with a therapist who is in a human body and is in a relationship with you and can use their clinical judgment to know when it's the moment to keep that to themselves or maybe share it on what your therapist thinks and when it's the time to actually challenge you in therapy.

[Christy Plantinga]

Amazing.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

If you're looking for a therapist who works somatically and can help you with regulating your nervous system, then Please head to BestTherapist.com to find a therapist that's already been vetted so you can focus on fit, not quality.

[Christy Plantinga]

This has been such a great episode. I have so much more. I wish I could ask the two of you on this topic, but thank you so much for being here, Julie. Thank you both for regulating this space. I was feeling that maybe listeners are asynchronously picking up on this regulation as well.

[Julie Goldberg]

Oh thank you both. I love talking about this stuff.

[Christy Plantinga]

If people want to work with you, learn more about your work, where can they find you? Are there any resources about nervous system regulation that you've created?

[Julie Goldberg]

Yeah, cause I have a course where I go through tons and tons of nervous system stuff and really help people figure out how to set up their day to day world in a way that helps them have a regulated nervous system. And that's on my website. It's third nature theory therapy.com and I also have a group practice here in Williamsburg where we offer lots of somatic nervous system support and EMDR and ketamine therapy as well.

[Felicia Keller Boyle]

Awesome. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

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[Felicia Keller Boyle]

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