Roadblocks to Healing: How Past Traumas Affect Your Physiology
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Remember that loud TV emergency alert system that would go off back in the day and make you nearly jump out of your seat? Your body’s trauma response is a lot like that. It’s set up to alert your body to impending danger, flooding it with hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which prepare your body for action.
But in the case of trauma, this response can be overwhelming and long-lasting, leading to a host of effects in your body. Hypervigilance, changes in your nervous system, immune system dysfunction, chronic pain, sleep disturbances, and hormonal imbalances are just a few of the changes that occur as a result of trauma.
Because of these physiological changes, past trauma can really have an impact on our health both in the short- and long-term. Past trauma creates roadblocks to healing and causes people to remain stuck in their journey despite doing all the right things to get well.
Watch the video as Dr. Ashley Woods and Dr. Brian Hooper explore the effects of trauma on physiology and life:
- Learn what types of experiences can be considered trauma
- Find out how trauma is experienced in our bodies
- Discover how these stuck patterns of trauma actually create roadblocks to healing
- Learn what you can do to help process trauma for better health
Have you been doing all the “right things” yet remain stuck in your healing journey? Uncovering the mind-body connection of past trauma may be the key to your physical healing. Watch the video to get started on your path today!
Exploring Traumas Impact on Body & Life
Trauma is a deeply disturbing experience that overwhelms our ability to respond and cope with a situation. When people think of trauma, they often associate it with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is one of the most common types of trauma. However, trauma comes in various forms, and its impact goes beyond psychological effects. In this blog post, we aim to introduce the concept of trauma, both Big T and Little T, and shed light on how it affects the body in numerous ways, ultimately influencing one’s life. It is crucial to address and heal from trauma not only from a psychological standpoint but also from a physical, psychospiritual, and social perspective.
The Pervasiveness of Trauma: A Growing Issue
In recent years, the world has witnessed an increase in traumatic experiences, possibly exacerbated by the global pandemic. Traumatic events such as school shootings, natural disasters, accidents, or personal losses affect not only the individuals directly involved but also whole families and communities. The impact of trauma on mental health and well-being is undeniable, and it is essential to acknowledge the effects it has on individuals’ physiological responses.
The Normalcy of Feeling Abnormal: Understanding Traumatic Stress
When faced with traumatic situations, it is normal to feel abnormal. Traumatic stress training emphasizes that abnormal feelings in abnormal situations are expected and valid. It is crucial to show kindness and compassion to ourselves during the healing process. Acknowledging that experiencing tears or intense emotions is part of the healing journey helps individuals tolerate and accept their responses. Giving oneself time and space for healing is essential, as repressing or intellectualizing trauma only delays the inevitable need to confront and process it.
Differentiating Big T and Little T Trauma
Trauma can take various forms, ranging from major life-altering events like war or natural disasters (Big T trauma) to less conspicuous but impactful experiences like job loss or ongoing emotional neglect (Little T trauma). Both types of trauma have the potential to disrupt one’s life significantly. Even seemingly minor traumas can have long-lasting effects, particularly if they lead to financial difficulties, emotional distress, or chronic stress. Recognizing the impact of different types of trauma is vital in understanding their consequences on physical and mental health.
The Profound Impact of Childhood Trauma
Childhood traumas, often buried deep within our subconscious, can have a profound impact on our lives. Adverse childhood events, such as neglect, abuse, or parental substance abuse, can shape a person’s mental and physical well-being well into adulthood. Studies have shown that individuals with a higher number of adverse childhood events are more likely to experience chronic diseases, have worse health outcomes, and even shorter lifespans. It is crucial to address and heal childhood traumas, as they can significantly affect the trajectory of one’s life.
The Interplay of Trauma and Physiology
Trauma affects not only our mental health but also our physiology. Chronic stress resulting from trauma can lead to inflammation in the body, contributing to the development of conditions like depression, anxiety, and even chronic diseases. The body’s stress response system, involving the limbic system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, becomes dysregulated, leading to imbalances in cortisol levels, heart rate, blood pressure, and other bodily functions. Addressing trauma requires a comprehensive approach that encompasses both physiological and psychological aspects to restore balance and well-being.
Reclaiming Control: Reparenting and Healing
Healing from trauma involves reparenting ourselves, which means learning the skills and practices that may have been lacking in our childhoods. Recognizing that we can provide ourselves with the care, support, and understanding we may have missed out on is crucial. By reparenting ourselves, we can rewire neural pathways, release trapped negative energy, and develop new connections that promote healing and well-being. This process often involves seeking professional guidance from psychotherapists who specialize in trauma recovery.
The Gut-Brain Connection: The Role of the Microbiome
An emerging area of research focuses on the relationship between the gut microbiome and mental health. The gut microbiome plays a significant role in our overall well-being, including the functioning of our nervous system and brain. Serotonin and neurotransmitters, traditionally associated with brain function, are also produced in the gut. Imbalances in the gut microbiome can have far-reaching effects on mental and physical health. It is essential to prioritize gut health as part of the healing process, as a healthy gut contributes to a healthy mind and body.
Turning Off the Emergency Signal: Reconnecting Mind and Body
Reestablishing the mind-body connection and alleviating the constant emergency signal caused by trauma is a complex process. Various therapeutic approaches can assist in this healing journey. Techniques such as hypnotherapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), brain spotting, and somatic sensing therapy can help individuals process trauma, rewire neural pathways, and reduce the physiological stress response. These approaches work in conjunction with other practices such as breathwork, guided imagery, and cognitive-behavioral therapy to promote a sense of safety, relaxation, and overall well-being.
Conclusion: Healing from Trauma Holistically
Trauma can have profound and long-lasting effects on the physiology and life of an individual. Understanding the multifaceted nature of trauma is essential in recognizing its impact on mental, physical, and social well-being. Healing from trauma involves a comprehensive approach that addresses both the psychological and physiological aspects of the individual’s experience. By acknowledging and working through trauma, individuals can reclaim control, reconnect mind and body, and embark on a path of healing, resilience, and overall well-being. Remember, healing from trauma is possible, and seeking support from trusted professionals is a vital step towards recovery.
Are you ready to take charge of your health? Schedule your free 20-minute discovery call with our New Patient Coordinator to see how you can become a patient at MaxWell Clinic and start your healing journey today.
hi I am Dr Ashley Woods here at the Maxwell clinic in Brentwood Tennessee and
I am joined today and very grateful for Dr Brian Hooper who is a
a practices so I wouldn’t mess it up who is a state licensed clinical pastoral
therapist how do I think that’s right exactly there’s a lot of words and um he is here at the Maxwell Clinic he sees adults and
um DC kids individuals and couples I don’t see children I will see older teens okay yeah very good and his practice is a profit practice and is not
part of the Maxwell clinic but it is um it feels like it is because he he’s a
gift to us I just yeah being here it’s a gift to me too because he very much integrates into what we do and um we collaborate we share space
and we share people and we share the I can I think I can speak for both of us that we share the um desire to have people thrive and become the fullest version of themselves I
think that’s very accurate and I happen to um have a real love for a functional medicine
is an approach to psychiatric issues even though I’m not a prescriber it’s a real pleasure to be able to work with informed Physicians who are able to look
at other aspects to help people with emotional distress using food and exercise and evaluation and their medication when necessary
absolutely absolutely and I think that’s I think it’s important to have a team
approach um I need to do a little housekeeping here at the beginning and thank you for
joining us and if you have questions in regards to anything we say today please
put them in the Q a your microphones are muted so you can’t be seen or heard and
this is being recorded but your questions can be put in the Q a and we’ll have time to answer those at the very end so today our uh our main topic is trauma
and what trauma does to the physiology of the body and not just the physiology
of body but to the life of the entire human and when people think of trauma they think of post-traumatic stress disorder that’s sort of I would say
probably the most common one but there are all different types of trauma and so our goals today are to introduce you to the concept of trauma Big T Little T
and to let people understand how it can affect the
body um in so many different ways and subsequently your life and that it’s
important to deal with and work through and and heal not just from a
psychological standpoint but from a physical standpoint exactly and so um
psychospiritual physical and social absolutely because it can affect whole
families entire communities sure does so um and it feels like to me that the
world is becoming a little not becoming but it just feels like since the pandemic
there’s just been a lot more trauma that’s come to life and I think I think
we’re all affected by lots of things that happen in the world whether they directly touch us or not the Covenant School shooting here in Nashville was very
um impactful um directly indirectly to so many so many people in lives and so um anyway trauma is really any disturbing deeply disturbing
experience that you have that really overwhelms our ability to
respond and cope with it so we all go through stress every day and stress is
not trauma but all trauma is stressful I think that’s important to recognize it’s
what overwhelms our natural and develop capacity to respond and the first thing
I learned in traumatic stress training was that it’s normal to feel abnormal in
an abnormal situation I think that’s really important and and one of the things
I emphasize is as we work through trauma is being kind to ourselves
absolutely you know having empathic being compassionate with ourselves that
we’re not weak because all of a sudden after a traumatic event out of the blue
we just find ourselves with lots of Tears that’s part of our healing and we need to be able to tolerate and accept that yes and just giving yourself time
in space to do the healing that you need absolutely because I think the tendency
what what I see the tendency is for people to intellectualize it put a story on it pack it up and stick it in the closet and I have an analogy that
when she when she pack everything up and stick it in the closet and something else happens you stick it in the closet because you’re like oh I can’t I can’t deal with that today that
at some point you’re going to need to get in that closet and the boxes will come spilling out and it’ll be a hot mess and you’ll feel like a hot mess
um because it hasn’t been properly worked through or packaged um and processed because the body the body actually takes on the alarm system
that’s right it goes off as Dr vandercult says the body keeps
the score that’s the title of this book but highly recommend that book yeah the body keeps the score
um yeah we physically experience the trauma not only during it but after the
fact as well but let’s go ahead and talk about you said there’s large trauma with
a capital t and a small team different types of trauma so why don’t we talk a little bit about what those type of traumas are well they can be you know a big
trauma people would think about like a war veteran um loss of a child loss of a parent a car accident um a shooting um all I mean
um there’s there’s so many I can’t even imagine a fire a flood um those can be big dramas because all of those in Nashville yeah and
um and people are resilient but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you
and you know little T trauma would be like well I lost my job well that could be a
big tea trauma if if that puts you in a hard financial way um or little traumas that happen every day in your home um or trauma that I find with
people that um it wasn’t a particular event but it was the slow drip drip drip drip of
behaviors from somebody else or neglect neglect is in childhood definitely is traumatic
um I’m going to mention a few cases as we talk but whenever I share about this I’ll never share any identity buying information so you’ll never be able to
guess who any of these people are okay and some of them from my past work with
people but um so I have one gentleman I have worked with in the past who um
his mother was a drug addict his parents divorced his father married a new woman
and she decided she didn’t want anything to do with him and he was a little boy so he was put into a foster home as a child so he he experienced neglect
um over time developed some physical symptoms with that but is exquisitely
sensitive to anything he perceives as rejection from his wife today right yeah
so we’ve had to do a lot of work in two areas one between them but also helping
him learn to notice the over reaction right and how to soothe himself in
responding to that that’s part of how he’s healing from that drip drip drip of
rejection in his Youth and I’m sure going into foster care initially was a
big T trauma version yeah absolutely well I’m glad you mentioned the childhood traumas because
um like I said those boxes that we sort of think we’ve packed away and have dealt with childhood traumas are huge and there was actually a big study um done by the CDC and Kaiser
Permanente and I think 1997 and the they were looking at childhood I knew you’re familiar with
is what I’m telling our people you’re listening they were looking at childhood traumatic events
and health outcomes and the results were astounding not only did they find that
people that had more adverse childhood events had um and there’s a test you can go online and
take it’s called Aces um which stands for adverse childhood
events Ace inventory yes and in fact here at the Maxwell Clinic you use that
as part of your intake forms and I do too in my work we do and it’s important it’s really important because um and and it’s because because of what
this study showed the study showed that people had worse Health outcomes worse
more likely to get chronic diseases and to have worse outcomes from those
chronic diseases and actually the higher the score the shorter the lifespan in
some cases and this was a big big big study I think it was 17
000 people um and there’s um there’s just so much information out
there unfortunately I didn’t really learn that much about that in medical school
um you know it wasn’t a disease that you could just slap up you know oh you’ve got this disease and you you know can have this medicine for it
um and so I think it’s very very much overlooked and I’m super glad that we pay attention to it here you know I’m glad you said that because um it’s not a
medication to and that’s part of what I love about the Maxwell approach is that
you recognize the whole person approach and it’s you’re not just about giving a
pill for an ill right which happens in a lot of Physicians office because of the way they’re set up but we won’t go into that but it’s it’s um it’s
not a pill for an ill it’s about unpacking and healing what initially
happened right in those adverse childhood events right and this is where
a lot of the work that I do actually is re-parenting people that doesn’t mean I
become your parent but it means I help you do those things for yourself
that you should have been taught if you had had really excellent parenting and that’s a really good important thing that I wanted to bring up is that you
know people people feel like maybe they’re not weak or they don’t have enough resiliency because these things happen to them and that’s not the case
at all no um and but how it affects your physiology matters immensely depending
on a lot of things like some can you talk a little bit about some of this foundational support that you need because you can have two people that
went through and lived through the same event whatever the event was that was traumatic and somebody you know is doing well and somebody somebody else may not be doing well and
just um explaining the difference between the foundations that you need in a in a
community and the support to to make a difference there so there are as you’re
alluding to external foundations and internal foundations that we rely upon to go through a
traumatic event and then to recover from that right and so external uh can be a a
family that’s supportive of a spiritual Community that’s supported absolutely
okay Connections in your broader community in other words uh having uh work that’s
solid and predictable right having education to be able to understand what’s going on what happened in your life from an educational academic kind
of perspective in some way okay um are you in poverty well that makes it
harder yeah uh or are you a person that has some means you know and then
internal resources and internal resources and I want to take just a
moment and talk about parenting if I may and and what happens if it’s really good what we
get okay and then what happens if we don’t and I’ll just take a couple minutes on this but I want you to imagine I’ve got a little guy sitting on
my lap we’ll make him about I don’t know five years old it’s sort of a sweet age right so he’s happily sitting on Grandpa’s lap and uh he’s looking
around he’s checking out you and he’s checking out you and he’s looking around the room and then he notices on the other side of the room there’s a puppy okay and he
looks at the puppy and then he looks up at me and he says papa there’s a puppy over there
and I say yeah buddy there’s a puppy do you want to go see him and he looks at me goes yeah I want to go see him so I put him down on the floor
and I said go and go see the puppy so he toggles over in that direction he stops part way and he looks back at me because what he wants to know is it okay he’s
safe he said and is he safe if I got his back right he’s not really thinking that
it’s all about keeping connection right because right now I’ve got the strength
and he really doesn’t he’s only five right so anyway I said go on with an unknown it’s an unknown right so I said go on go go see the puppy
so he plops down next to the dog and he starts petting him the way little kids do you know they don’t have that smooth coordination necessarily and you know everything’s going well until he
finds the puppy’s tail right and he’s five and he’s a boy so he’s
going to experimentally give us a tail a little tug he gets nipped at right
and immediately what happens the tears come right and he’s overwhelmed well I
may not be the perfect grandpa but I’m good enough in the scene and I leap across the room and I scoop his little butt up in my arms and I pull him in
tight because I’m rescuing him from danger but I also realize that he’s
feeling really scared and he needs to feel my strength right it’s like I pull
him in tight and I say as I’m as I’m giving him a little hug I’m saying it’s okay you’re fine take a breath buddy and I bring him back and I sit him down on my lap
and as he starts to calm down a little I loosen up he’s feeling a little bit coming
back into his own strength so I can loosen up a little bit and I say it’s okay you’re fine
and as he kind of wipes the tears away I say hey buddy we’re not going to pull puppies tail
again our way because he doesn’t like it and you don’t like it either no I want
to do that I said okay I say you know what I’m really proud of you because you went over and you said hi to puppy and you get to do that again we’re just not
going to pull the tail next time okay and he goes okay okay so I’ve done five things for this boy I’ve encouraged him I rescued him when he got too close to
the danger point I’ve soothed or consoled him I have
lovingly corrected him and didn’t use anything that’s hugely important I
didn’t use derogative language you know I didn’t tell him he was stupid anything like that and then I celebrated the good part of what he did which was to go out right he
expanded his boundary so encourage rescue soothe lovingly correct and
celebrate if a parent does that for us then we have much more in the way of internal strength and ability to do what rescue ourselves when we go through a
trauma okay to soothe ourselves to correct anything that we may have
gotten wrong that put us in a danger position not that every trauma is your fault I’m not
saying that at all not saying that at all but it gives us some skills with which to begin to Grapple with that right absolutely and I love that story
that’s that’s a beautiful story but we also have patients that are clients that
that don’t have they don’t have that history and they have they have the traumas and and even in my experience the reason I actually really wanted to
to bring this up is not because things have gotten a little crazy in the world but it’s because I see so many patients that come to the Maxwell clinic and they
have the symptoms we’ll talk about symptoms that can relate to stress and such but
they have symptoms and they’re real symptoms they’re not in their head they’re 100 they’re real bodily symptoms and they’ve been to 12 different doctors
Specialists different clinics and they’re frustrated they’re feeling like they’re being told they’re crazy um they’re not crazy they’re people that
have real symptoms that don’t have a specific label and they have psychological effects right because they have the symptoms that aren’t being
explained and that is stress in the mountains like well it’s stress no it’s not stress I am stressed because I have these symptoms and nobody’s I
mean you would want an answer right um for instance anxiety could be a symptom that they have right right that and there’s no there’s no thing to feel
anxious about right right and there’s no understanding of you know
where this came from unless they really dig deep right right and that’s and that
is and so what that’s one reason we have our patients on their intake forms do an
a score now we don’t Dive Right into let’s talk about your childhood trauma because I’m not a therapist that’s your that’s your hat that you get to wear but
it’s important because it’s a signal to me about what systems might be upregulated in this person sitting in front of me who is struggling
um because even if a trauma was 30 years ago and they didn’t have the grandpa
with the puppy in the lab and you’re a really good grandpa if they didn’t have
that kind of parenting or that kind of support um and we as parents I can say this
because I’m a parent I was not always that parent I was like what are you doing don’t pull them down you know there there are those instances you’re not going to be a perfect human
um and our I think most of our parents probably did the best they could um with what they had but that’s where we need to learn how to parent ourselves right
we don’t have those skills and so and then what it does to the body
can be a whole Litany of sort of thing let’s talk about that for a moment so we know that
um stress chronic stress can lead to inflammation absolutely which then
in some cases can result in depression certainly depression and I think anxiety
as well so that’s where it needs to be addressed from a two-pronged approach one
physiologically what can we do to bring down the the fire and the
system the inflammation right and then and that’s your bailiwick right yes and then mine
is looking at helping people learn how to acquire the skills that
that they need in order to care for themselves because those neural Pathways in
the brain neural Pathways they think of like the old-fashioned um operator that unplugged the plug
here and plugged it in up there and made the connections you know they need to be unplugged and rerouted and plugged in in another place I’m glad you’re
talking about that because that is right yes that’s sort of a neuroplasticity because
what happens when we go through a trauma whether it’s a drip drip drip trauma or
a small t or a big trauma um we develop an alarm system goes off
in our brain and it’s like it’s like the you know the test of the
emergency broadcast system or the tornado sirens that go off around here every once in a while and you’re like oh what’s that noise and it is
it is a way that is that is to keep us safe it’s it’s a
it’s a built-in system that keeps us safe and it comes from Deep structures in the
brain the limbic system and that’s deep structures that involve the uh amygdala
um the hypothalamus and um yeah and those those brain structures
get sort of wired and ready for action because they also communicate with our hormones
they communicate with our hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis it
turns on our cortisol our muscles tense up that gets ready for action ready to run it fights light or freeze right that’s what the the amygdala is it’s
the fight flight or freeze area of the brain and that gets turned
on and if it’s stuck like you said the old telephone systems in that kind of wiring it has to be rewired it has to be released from the body but it’s not just
the wiring in the brain it’s also the hormones in the body um cortisol what does Cortisol do cortisol is think adrenaline so it
stimulates um comes from the adrenals and it stimulates
glucose metabolism so now you got to have glucose for fuel you got to have energy to run it
um turns off the sex hormone so people say well I don’t have a sex drive well it’s because you’re in fight or flight you your your cortisol is is is up
here and it’s prioritized in from the adrenal standpoint um and it makes your heart beat faster
it makes your blood pressure go up and all these things in an acute scenario
can can create a way for you to get out of danger Keep Us Safe Keep Us Alive and
that is just an innate in us we share this with all mammals um but if it lives there it’s very
detrimental and it can lead to stay if we stay in this stuff in that stuff
constantly be constant being in an emergency yeah um and so people that are in constant
states of stress as you reference will have elevated cortisol levels they’ll
have you know higher blood pressures higher heart rate I mean there’s a lot of things renal fatigue fatigue we see that a lot um and then these have trickle-down
effects to other things I mean I see problem people who can’t sleep because they can’t turn their brains off at night hyper vigilance um headaches
um I mean migraine headaches yes um TMJ low back pain we kind of Harbor
our we keep our emotions in our hips if you follow yoga
um and some people say it’s a sense of being not supported Yeah well yeah
there’s a lot of teaching about that that’s old world medicine but yeah um I think there’s some truth too I think there’s some truth um and you
know the list is very long anxiety depression I mean definitely you think of that when you think of trauma because people are effective psychologically but heart
attacks even I mean heart attacks cardiac Strokes things that make blood pressure go up and can affect those things negatively it’s all related am I saying
I’m not saying oh this is all because you had trauma in your childhood no but it’s unhealed
system processing that never got to complete the circuit it’s
negative energy that got trapped and it you may not be thinking about it so like I’m not thinking about my 30 year old trauma I worked with the therapist
years ago for that that’s that’s better I don’t think about that but then when I see patients and they’re stuck in the fight or flight that’s a problem absolutely that’s a problem
and we’re not even if you’re eating all the right things and exercising and trying to have sleep good good sleep hygiene it becomes very
detrimental it’s like a it’s like a stone in your shoe it’s just not going
away yeah yeah and I think the body has to reprocess that in different ways it
does and that’s where you know a combination of cognitive therapy which
is one of the modes that I use can help us think about how we think about the
things we think about and think about those things differently right The Thinker as the Observer right begin to notice that one young woman I’m working
with right now who suffer has suffered with and happy to put that in the past
tense severe OCD and primarily intrusive thoughts not so much behaviors but
intrusive thoughts um who has come to the point where now she says to me I’m beginning to know
notice my thoughts and go oh there’s one of my and we use this in sort of the
popular sense right or crazy thoughts you know I don’t mean that in a clinical sense right sure but these these thoughts that where do these come
from and we know where they come from now it comes from some history where there was significant emotional abuse from her father um but she’s taking responsibility for her
life and learning how to sell soothe and detach from those thoughts but this is
very important to remember that those those neurons that got wired together
like the old priorities switchboard right fire together and that didn’t
happen overnight there may have been one problematic event that happened but it kept being strengthened by replaying it’s like those thoughts right it’s
like an energy list so it takes a while to begin to unplug those the example I like
to use is the imagine the country road where um a circular driveway uh that’s
just a it’s a dirt driveway okay and you used one part of the driveway to drive
up to the house and back out to the road up to the house and back out to the road well that’s going to get worn right you’re going to even probably get the tracks
where the tires go yeah right the other side is overgrown
but if we stop using one side and started using the other side eventually
the grass would stop growing there but the grass would start growing where
the old pathway was on the other side of the driveway so we have to learn how to
think differently we have to learn how to notice feelings and thoughts
and accept the feelings but recognize where they come from so they become less
powerful I want to go back to the alarm system you talked about that you picked a lot and the example I like to use is to imagine you’ve got a smoke detector
and you like the candles for your dining room table that shouldn’t set the smoke detector
off right right and the amygdala hidden here in the middle of our brain because
this is our brain stem here in my example and this is the executive function which is conscious the
conscious part the thinking part this part here the sapphire alarm if it’s too
sensitive what happens is it it it cuts off our access to using our internal a
rational intellect right and and that gets in the way of living because then
we do irrational things absolutely right so that’s part of what has to that’s
part what happens in the healing process right so what do you do like
um say I have depleted adrenals you know what what
um I I’m this is not a set of actually asking this question might you use like
ashwagandha to help Uganda is fantastic yes there’s a lot of different herbs
that can really support adrenals but it’s like if you had if you were out on
a river and you had a hole in your boat you’d say how do I get the water out of the boat you got to plug the hole first so you’ve got to figure out what caused
your adrenals to take like to tank to crush in the first place and are you
still in that situation uh and because when people feel completely overwhelmed
they frequently feel powerless and so giving somebody their power back to be
able to take actions the one thing that I would say is the most important is
sleep um because you’re not going to be able to repair your adrenals if you’re not sleeping well
um and some people can’t sleep because say why that is what sleep does oh sleep
does so much I want people to hear this because I know how much how important it is right right well sleep is when your brain self-cleans itself um it’s when it resets
so if you ran your computer all the time with a million tabs open and never turned it off it
would get buggy the brain is the same way um it that it’s it’s
where it self cleans out the debris um and lets you store and repackage memories
um in fact talking about those deep structures of the brain in the limbic
system you know we were talking about the amygdala in that deep section you were talking about
um and that processes that part of the brain processes and experiences
um alert and also emotionally charged Memories the hippocampus stores
long-term memories and when we sleep that’s when a lot of our processing
occurs and you think of REM sleep when we dream dreams are frequently very crazy and I
don’t know anything about dream analysis you probably do but that’s when where even though the dreams may not make sense or you don’t remember you
don’t even dream that is that sleep that deep sleep is when you’re reprocessing
memories some people have night terrors because of trauma um so it sleep can be a kind of
vulnerable place but you can’t sleep unless you feel safe if you don’t feel
safe your sympathetic nervous system is not going to turn off and um and feeling
safe is important now you may say that’s not true I feel safe in my mouth I just can’t sleep there’s more going on there on a physiological basis but
um it’s a reset and it’s it’s one of the it’s almost like a Vital sign around here
sleep is really that important um and it’s when your brain actually if
I understand correctly produces the neural chemicals the hormones that we need for
bodily repairs is that right you do a lot of stuff repair yes yes absolutely and so that’s why I said if somebody’s adrenals are not working well or taxed
um sleep is one thing I really hone on onto and then we do sometimes need
additional supplements there’s a lot of herbs ashwagandha is is one holy basil
um there’s there’s there’s many that can be very helpful but it depends on kind of
where you are on the curve and we measure that here at the clinic um because it’s important because people can be in that Alert state and then over
time just drip drip drip down to just a flat line and those people need even
sometimes pharmaceutical help um to sort of get up out of the hole
um another um thing that I think is important that we mention is other ways of
processing the button because you can do cognitive behavioral therapy like is what you were talking about giving people some skills and different ways
to think about things and but what about other types of therapy specifically that you do um because you do hypnotherapy can you talk about that a little bit sure
absolutely so um so the state of hypnosis is a a state of
um altered reality okay um and so I use it broadly so I may do
classical hypnosis which helps people to lower into that Twilight state but also
um do guided imagery with them um and we can we can utilize hypnosis to
help people reprocess an event that’s happened in the past okay and to access
resources is within that can help them not only reprocess in the past but live life differently
today so I’ll give you an example one one gentleman I’m working with a very successful entrepreneur on uh said you know I get really anxious
when I go to to meet new people well this the stems from trauma in his past
okay so in a state of in hypnotic State and and I have the classical Chase
Lounge in my office as well I’ve said that yeah yeah but we can also sometimes
just sitting in the chair also just close your eyes and let’s try something and they gently go into a state of hypnosis then but um so um
but he’s you know has that trauma in the background which is part of what
brings on the anxiety when he goes to meet somebody new so we had him access
a state of empowerment what does that feel like in your body where do you feel that
state of empowerment and then in his imagination holding on to that
um interacting again in his imagination with meeting a new person and he said
came back the next week and he said that was so powerful for me because I was
able to access a different state of being right and that’s also part of how we work through uh trauma is um and this is very important we all go back and forth
so people have sometimes flashbacks right or there may be an event that is triggering for them
so if a person was in a war situation allowed bang sound May trigger a
response that’s an echo right of the trauma itself it so what we do is help
them experientially so this is not just talk therapy it’s put helping them access a state
um a bodily State bodily State feeling different as they toggle back and forth
between being in that state of calm and holding on to that while they tap back
on the other right and and so we’re not asking people to relive the trauma we’re
helping them process the trauma by holding on to an internal state of being
okay right so why is this important I’m thinking of a woman who I’ve worked with
who was sexually abused as a child right and do you think that that could affect
her sexual life with her husband today absolutely so helping her distinguish
experientially in her body that awful event that happened then from
today and recognizing this right today in this moment I’m fine this is a
different experience for me than what I experienced as a child with no voice for
myself that’s not just a cognitive thing we do that using imagination yeah like
guided imagery for re-embodiment of the memory very well said thank you Dr
Wilson but that is because it is like like intellectually we can know oh yes that
happened and they you know but the embodiment in it’s just that it’s just the it’s where you’re
holding the trauma in your body and most people have no clue about that right um because it’s a subconscious thing it’s something that is sort of
hardwired in there but it’s we can change it and those are some tools that you use I’d like to also mention and this is not something that I
do but uh EMDR EMDR stands for eye movement decision um and reprocessing and reprocessing and
that is what that is doing and typically you would need to be with a certified
EMDR person that that does this and what it’s doing it’s it’s breaking up that
cluster we’ve talked about with the the telephone operator right it’s changing the connection which is also what’s happening in the hypnosis work that I do right
the same sort of thing and it can be it can be done with eye movement
um and it can be done with um hand movement it can be done with sound
um and it’s just a reprocessing a rewiring creating new neural networks
that helps the body realize oh that was a memory it’s not something that I need
to worry about now now intellectually as an adult you would know that but experience
experientially in the body it’s different the body needs to release the trauma and this is a different Journey for everybody there are certain things
that might work for somebody and might not work for somebody else um because we’re all individuals right it’s and it’s it is work it is work to
go through another technique that I use is teaching people to breathe now that sounds ridiculous because we all agree it’s just autonomously but
I teach a process called I call it cognitive behavioral mindfulness therapy and it’s the bottom line is this helping people to attend to their
breath so that they can detach from the anxious provoking thought
that they have or they can detach from some other um experience that a stimulus brings up
for them right I mean when people have trauma all sorts of things can trigger them can be the sight of something it can be a smell it can be a sound it can
be a topic uh that triggers a look of somebody’s face exactly
anything could could be a quote trigger that brings back some of the memory of
the trauma or the visceral experience of the trauma really so if I can help them
learn to attend to their breath then they are creating a neural network such that when it’s
an unpleasant stimulus they can uh and bring themselves back into their own bodies and and immediately have comfort uh
so that they can escape the control of that otherwise control of
that um that provocation that trigger right and people frequently I think will
when they’ve had trauma in their life if they have not worked through it will
reach for other things that are not healthy like imagery or breathing for self-soothing we all do it I mean binging on binging on Netflix
um you know you had a bad day you just want to get home you have a drink um gambling anything that can become addictive any alcohol sex gambling
other things that are exercise even as much as I love to exercise daily right
if people can over do right not give themselves time to heal right right and
it becomes a Escape of its own right and that creates other health problems and so
um those are those are ways of self-soothing or distracting the mind that’s busy and unhappy not necessarily unhappy but just sort of
running running uh in the same loops and in a lot of ways
um another therapy that I’ll mention that we have recently added within the last year or two our office is IV ketamine which
um has we’ve had some remarkable results with people that have had post-traumatic stress traumatic events or even just anxiety and depression that has been not
uh well treated with other modalities and even even treated somewhat with other modalities but they seem to be stuck because it helps with the neuroplasticity
um and that’s that’s been really beneficial and we also do brain mapping and neurofeedback here at the office which a brain map is a quantitative EEG
and you’re looking can you tell them what an EEG is speaking medical terms an electro esophage I’m not saying the right words the uh
encephalograph thank you um and it’s like what you it’s a cap that has wires coming out of it and you’re measuring the electrical activity
in different lobes of the brain and how it’s connected to other parts of the
brain you can see what’s firing what isn’t and how efficiently it’s firing and how inefficiently inspiring and which ones are looping too much now we can’t look
at it and go oh there’s a history of trauma another we can see if there’s a history of hedron yeah that’s that’s a physical that’s a physical a physical
thing but you can see when people are um that people are hyper Vigilant you
can actually see that on an EEG electrically it’s an electrical issue
um and then neurofeedback I was just going to say and neurofeedback is an amazing process I don’t do it but we have a phenomenally skilled clinician
you’re a technician I should say that does that is quite amazing and that can
dovetail very nicely with um Talk therapy as well yeah so I think
the the overarching um message here is if you would agree
with me is that we are we’ve all had trauma in our lives in different different levels and they affect all of us differently depending on our foundations
um the family we grew up in the community we grew up in um our belief system there’s a lot of layers to that
um but it is important that as we work to heal the body we work to heal mind in
the spirit because you can’t separate those it’s all it’s all one it’s all
connected it’s just a big system of energy and if you have negative energy in your body
it needs to be released because it’s it’s not it needs to be worked through released reprocessed
um and you were talking about breathing I do breathing with patients frequently teaching them how to protect I know how to breathe I’m breathing right now of course
you are but um we all take little shallow breaths all day long because we’re busy and we’re not
focused on it but really settling in in breathing in some people I have found I’ve learned have a really hard time sitting and breathing
um sitting in the quiet because they don’t like what it has to say right um and that’s hard yeah I will say this this is a good um test if you can’t
be alone with yourself without music on or the TV on or other
chatter or beyond your scrolling through your phone if you can’t be with yourself for a day there’s something that you need to address yeah yeah and um so
I hope that this has been helpful to folks I do see we have some q and A’s oh
great here so I’m gonna click on that hold on one second if I can find my cursor
there you go yeah okay can you discuss resources neurofeedback
Etc that are used to assist in helping individuals rewire their brain and amygdala in addition to working with improving conscious thought patterns in
an effort to help that individual move out of a constant state of hyper vigilance
um yeah I think we we kind of touched on that sort of towards the end there but
we here at the Maxwell Clinic pair all of those things together um we use neurofeedback we use
um as far as the electrical brain retraining and we consider that sort of
the spark and then we work on the suit we work on the soup of of the person in
that we maximize sleep nutrition um you know so you see what’s going on
with them biochemically yeah yeah that’s what you mean by you have to do that the suit the biochemical parts of it um Dr Rossi likes to refer to it as
spark and soup but the spark is the neurofeedback part um and
um and there is some retraining there the breath work that’s that’s working on increasing vagal tone we didn’t talk about the vagus nerve much but I will mention it
briefly here um the vagus nerve starts in the deep brain stem and runs all the way down uh through
the diaphragm it innervates the diaphragm which is the big muscle that keeps us breathing if the baker’s nerve is cut you’re done for you can’t breathe
because that’s what pumps pumps the lungs up and down um and
to exercise the vagal nerve I have people take a really deep nice long breath
and when we let it I find when we let it out slowly and let instruct people to
experience the sense of release that comes as they exhale slowly but that
immediately brings down um the anxiety calms heart rate he does
lowers blood pressure I believe yes and it’s a practice it’s a practice because in the moment you know you can take a deep breath in the side but if you practice 10
minutes I tell my patients to practice 10 minutes of deep slow meditative breathing
like bookends on the day 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes before bed and it really sets the intention for the day and helps pack it up for for the
evening but that what that diaphragm expansion does in addition to helping you take a deeper breath it just sort of sends little neural chemicals up to
your brain because the vagus nerve was stretched and it’s just like Oh we must be relaxing now but this is good um because you can’t stay in a fight or flight State
and be relaxed at the same time right right and you have to practice that it’s it’s a it’s a practice and I tell people don’t be
making your grocery list while you’re you’ve got 10 minutes on your phone um just set it aside set a timer and do that um so those are the things the second
question is what if you’re really sure like what if you’re not really sure
where you are in regard regards to processing drama I like this one yeah I
think in that case um make an appointment with a psychotherapist that you trust
um and have a conversation about what feels like it’s not quite healed for you
perhaps and um and what what is healed and bring the
uncertainties out and just discuss them have an evaluation and see where you are
yeah I I have a lot of people that come with physical symptoms and they don’t come talking about trauma that comes up much later after we’ve made sure we’ve
crossed all the t’s and dotted all the eyes and made sure everything is tucked in another question we have is another unrelated question the microbiome in the
gut thank you for a person who is asking this question because that is important seems to be getting more and more attention as having a profound impact on
the state of our bodies nervous system and brain can you discuss this and how
an unhealthy good microbiome packs the overall healthy process oh yes yes we
can just keep going for hours here but this is an important question if your gut is not healthy your brain is not healthy because you’re the gut
microbiome we’re learning more and more through science about what a big role it
plays in our overall mental and physical health um and I think the more research
we do more we know I mean I think if I understand correctly from the fellowship year I did an integrative Psychiatry that the the gut produces the neurochemicals the brain
needs in order for us to feel good and balance most people think that that serotonin and neuropreneur only produced in the brain actually it’s produced in the gut and
the gut sends more information to the brain the brain does to the guts I know right yes yes so you
know we usually start with some gut work so a great carbon that’s a great question that’s a great question yes okay last question here is
thank you so much for generally uh generosity with this webinar what you
were saying makes so much sense I am recovering from a TBI and an accident
for through an accident for three years in a trauma that unknowingly got packed
into a closet has been spilling out while I have worked hard weekly in
different therapies to physically heal after these years I understand that the
roadblocks and recovering from the undealt with trauma in the brain and the mind and body disconnection some pain much of what you have talked
about already continues Frozen in the body despite the work with PT and OT vision therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy what you’ve said about the
immedi listen amygdala makes so much sense how can you turn the emergency signaling off and get the mind and body working together not triggering each
other I am sorry if I missed it he missed you have packed so much excellence in facts in a short time do you work with patients
outside of Tennessee okay this is sort of a long question but I am I am so glad that you asked this
question um a a TBI which stands for a traumatic brain injury can cause your gut to be leaky
um in addition to all the other things that can come with a traumatic traumatic injury
um and I think your question embedded in here is what do you do to turn off the
emergency signal and that’s sort of what we’ve been talking about
um hypnotherapy the EMDR there’s also brain spotting
which is very similar to EMDR we we don’t specifically do that here um there are other types of therapy um that that are somatic sensing
therapy and doing really good work exercising the vagal nerve with breath
work guiding imagery working with a good therapist um doing doing good cognitive
behavioral work I think we’re at time now and um if you have questions that we weren’t able
to get to please reach out to us I’d like to to be able to continue to answer your questions if possible um or if you’re interested in becoming a
patient at the Maxwell Clinic go to www.mexwellclinic.com or if you’d like
to reach Dr Brian Hooper he is I’ll let you share your information yeah the best
way to reach me is through my website and uh the website is www.dr Brian b-r-i-a-n Hooper h-o-o-p-e-r.com Dr Brian hooper.com
and there are forms there you can just fill out a selective email form send me that or
you can call my phone number directly it’s on there as well so I just want to take a moment and thank you so much for thank you today this was fun this was
fun to talk it’s fun and it’s important it is important it’s really important so
um reach out if you would like more information and have a blessed day bye
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