Dissociation 101: What Huberman Didn’t Tell You About PTSD

Dissociation is a common element of trauma that’s rarely discussed but should be. Kicking off Season 3 of How We Can Heal, host Lisa D gives us an introduction to the concept and causes of dissociation, as well as a preview of the new season dedicated to exploring this subject. Lisa also shares her view on the messaging and application of the increasingly popular trauma treatment EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), and specifically her response to how it was discussed on an episode of The Huberman Lab Podcast.

Huberman's podcast episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31wjVhCcI5Y

This podcast is a production of Bright Sighted Podcasting 

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• This transcript was auto-generated

Lisa Danylchuk 0:01
Hi, everyone. I'm Lisa Danylchuk. I'm a licensed psychotherapist specializing in post traumatic stress and complex trauma. And this season kicks off with dissociation 101. What Huberman didn't tell you about PTSD All right, everyone. Welcome back to the how we can heal Podcast. I'm very excited to share Season Three with you. My name is Lisa Danylchuck, if we haven't met before, I'm a licensed psychotherapist specializing in complex trauma treatment. I'm also a graduate of Harvard University and UCLA go Bruins. And last year, I served as president of the International Society for the Study of trauma and dissociation. So I was working all year with top clinicians and researchers around the world in the fields of trauma and dissociation. They are amazing. They have incredible work. A lot of people don't know about them. Some of them are a little, you know, more out there than others. But I'm telling you, it's gold. I've invited some of them into this season onto season three of the how we can heal podcast. And there's a little bit of a story as to how and why they got here Matala in a moment. But I just want to underscore this is gold. This is stuff where like, I went and lectured at Harvard, one of my professors invited me back for a guest lecture. And my professor was like, wow, this is amazing information. Why don't we teach this here. So you're really getting something that most people who even go through psychological training programs, they don't get until after they graduate. And they go do clinical work. And they have a hard time with it. And they find an organization like ISS, TD, and they go to conferences, and then they meet these people. And I'm going to bring them directly to you this season. And so I'm hoping that will help just close a gap. In terms of information, it takes a long time for information to get into textbooks. These are the people that write those textbooks. I'm not even joking. And so I feel super blessed to talk with all of them. They're also just amazing human beings, because doing this work brings that out somehow we have to reflect on ourselves and grow and be humbled multiple times in this work. And so they're really amazing human beings, I think you'll enjoy getting to know them. I know you'll appreciate some of their work. And there's so much more to dive into from where we start with this season. So super excited to share it with you. And I also want to share how this season came about. So in what year are we 2021. I came into it, we're in 2023. But in 2021, I've never actually been a big podcast listener and I talked about this at the end of season two, when Alex came on, my partner came on and interviewed me, we reflected on the two seasons of how we can heal podcast. And you know, he was a big part of planning that idea in my head that that I might want to do a podcast. I've never really been into podcasts like, hadn't really followed, you know, an episode here or there someone will send to me, I usually wouldn't finish it. I'd like have it on my phone as a to do until I was like, Okay, I gotta scratch that one because I'm not doing it. So in 2021 dear friend and colleague, Carrie Orko, who's also been on this podcast. She's a yoga teacher who focuses a lot on Play and movement and joy and just different ways to be embodied and is very well steeped and respected. In the yoga world. She shared with me this podcast, and said she was really loving it. It's a lot of science. It's a scientist out of Stanford University. And it's the Huberman lab podcast. So I hopped on that train, and I rode that train, all of 2021 I was training for an Iron Man, actually, I call it iron person anyway. But I was training for an iron person, a half Iron person. And I was on my bike for, you know, at least an hour most days I was, you know, running and sometimes in the water as well. So I was out and usually on my bike rides, I would have the time to listen to a full podcast. So with that training, I listened to every single episode throughout the year of 2021. Didn't miss a single one. So I don't know if any of you maybe this is your podcast that you do that with maybe, I don't know if any of you have been that like dedicated, where it's really a part of your life, right? You have this person in your ear. It's a beautiful thing. And so I started hearing, Huberman Andrews, who's in first name, saying that he wanted to do a podcast about PTSD or people were asking for that, of course, right. We've been through so much collective trauma. There's so much trauma out there in the world in general, that for a long time we haven't really spoken to and I think we're just starting to build this more collective awareness of Oh, mental health challenges and PTSD and let's talk about them. So I'm not surprised people were asking for that, and that he wanted to deliver right And I had this little inkling in me, that was like, I think I know how this might go. I have a sense from having listened to the episodes that what he tends to do is review the research, and then sort of present this what the research says, you know, and it's not necessarily a prescription you're getting from someone, but it's information, right, there's a deep literature review, and like a sense of this is the consensus that I'm seeing in the research is what he would share. And I know because I know, the research, and I know the practice, and I know the people dealing with the hard problems. I was like, Okay, so he's gonna see some exposure therapies coming out really strong. And I really hope he doesn't say that it's best practice or something along those lines, right. And I'll explain in a moment, but what tends to happen is people who experienced dissociation as part of trauma, which is a lot of people can actually be more triggered or even harmed by exposure practices that aren't dissociation informed, they're not inherently bad. It's just when we don't have this awareness of dissociation. It's really easy for people to kind of not get the treatment, they're they're needing, and even get, perhaps more dysregulated, or more upset, like to have more problems in their lives as a result of of seeking out these treatments. So I sent Dr. Huberman an email, and I said, Hey, heads up. This is my thought, like, you're gonna do an episode on PTSD. You might be thinking this based on the research, there's a really easy explanation to sort of fill that gap and make sure we're including the people who have experienced the most horrific harm, because those are usually the people with complex trauma and PTSD. So there's an easy way to fill that gap. Here's a few names of researchers, I think you would love. And I made a list. And I followed up like the next day with more people that came to mind. And these are the people I'm having on this season. Okay, because what happened was he respondents said, thanks so much. I don't know if he ever read or looked at their research, I get it, man, I get way more email than I can follow up on, I totally get it. But the episode came out, and I listened on one of my bike rides, and I probably am not even kidding you, I probably cried. At some point, I was so disappointed. I was so disappointed because it was exactly sort of what I was expecting, which is really common. Like, you'll even hear this. I mean, this, this person is a professor at Stanford, you'll even heard hear this in training and in universities that people just miss this piece about dissociation, which happens with the most complex, challenging traumas, which we think aren't that common. But we'll talk in one of the episodes about the real prevalence of them. We also just want to be mindful that if we're giving out some sort of direction, or advice or, you know, gleaning something from the research, that we're not continuing to neglect, the folks who fall at the far ends of the spectrum in terms of being having been harmed so profusely. So I was disappointed, because I felt like the episode would be helpful for people who kind of needed at the least people who maybe had, if this is in your language, bucks, we might talk about it this season, but had low ACE scores, right? Like not a lot of adverse childhood experiences, people who had a high resilience score, or people who had resources, growing up support relationships, places to go when there were problems.

People who have that kind of steady supported, psychological, cultural, familial, whatever base would bet tend to benefit more from what was presented in that episode. And I'll share a few clips. So you can hear the little pieces that really stuck with me. But those are the people who are going to hear oh, EMDR is helpful. Oh, telling your story is helpful. They'll go do it, and they'll feel better. Those are people who maybe grew up in a healthy happy home experienced a single event trauma, like a car accident or a natural disaster, or, you know, a single event that you can kind of constrain in time. Those recommendations are actually helpful for those folks. Now, when we talk about folks who don't have high ACE scores, who've had a lot of adverse childhood experiences, who've grown up with neglect, who've grown up with physical, mental, emotional, social, sexual abuse, who've been exploited in any way. Those are the people who if they're listening to that episode, and they go, Oh, I should tell my story. I should get EMDR it's not that those things are inherently bad or wrong. It's just that they're so delicate. The more trauma the more complex trauma developmental trauma. Someone's been Do you really need someone? And if you're gonna go and dive into these experiences, you really need someone who can hold your hand and pace with you, and know when and how to tell if those instruments if those tools are of service, right. So, I want to break all this down for you in today's episode and just spell out what's in my mind. Right? Crying on the bike. Like, why I loved your dog, you've done me wrong. The sad thing is like, I have mad respect for anyone running a podcast. That's a super successful podcast. I give a shout out to Huberman for all he's put together. And I mean, I know from listening, like he prepares like, there's work, right. And I know from running a podcast, like there's work, especially if you're putting it out weekly. Like I'm not trying to be a hater, but maybe a little bit of a squeaky wheel and that we do need to pay attention to these things. I stopped listening the podcast after that, like I was crestfallen, I was disappointed. And I even tried, because Carrie told me carrier workout told me he did one on Play soon after that, and was like, oh, I want to listen. But honestly, I kind of lost a sense of trust in the information. Because I felt like I was really leaning into it, you know, this information on exercise science, or whatever. And then I started going well, if I feel this way, who else is like, really niche in a field. And there's things that are missing. So kind of, sadly, it broke that foundation of, I'm really leaning into this information and applying it to me, I always listen with a grain of salt. Don't get me wrong, anything about physiological, like exercise science and performance. I'm like, Was this done on middle aged women, because if it was done on young men is a totally different story. So always listening with a grain of salt, but I actually just couldn't, really couldn't listen anymore after that. So it was sad. But I also just got fired up about sharing these people with you, sharing this information with you, and hopefully starting a conversation that leads towards collective individual healing that helps us sniff out pathways, where we can find our own unique ways of healing from horrific, terrible things that I think we'd all agree, we wish wouldn't happen to anyone. But they do. And we're left with the aftermath of them. So I want to back up a little, because you might be just dropping into season three, we've talked in season one and two about trauma and dissociation and healing and movement and yoga, and dance and play. All these beautiful things. We've had amazing researchers, we've had amazing clinicians, incredible people on this show. And we have started to define dissociation. But it's something that it's important to come back to. So what is dissociation?

So a lot of people will say the word disassociate, or disassociation, because that's kind of you know, how language works. In the clinical world, we use dissociation. And what we're talking about here, on just a linguistic level, is anytime something is differentiated, it's split apart, when we're talking about a mental health, challenge or condition, or I would also say adaptation, right? Because this is usually a response to an experience or multiple experiences. When we're talking about dissociation in that context, there are a number of things that fold in. And this splitting, differentiating separation is part of that. It's a big part of that. But I want to share that we're all I think, at this point in time learning about trauma and really interested in our nervous systems, and in our brains. And what happens when there's an emergency when there's a crisis when something traumatic is happening. And we're getting pretty good and understanding in general culture. I've heard it in songs and commercials, maybe not yet, but we're getting there probably where we're aware of this fight or flight response, right? We're like, okay, something emergency happens. I get adrenaline and cortisol and my heart rate goes faster, and I just feel strong and I move into action. Right? Most of us are pretty on board with that's a thing, right? Most of us have experienced that. Even if we're just in a car and we have to stop fast. We get that big, you know, rush of cortisol, adrenaline, and honestly, even tension in our bodies, this move towards action. What we haven't quite integrated is freeze. And we can even go into I mean, I could go into 1000 definitions of different types of trauma. I could go into 1000 manifestations about what this looks like but in a boil down general sense. We also need to be aware of that freeze. Now I wanted it for Don't you think about a soft freeze? Which is there's loud noise. What was that? Wait, am I okay? Am I safe was that somebody dropping a book or a gunshot? Very different scenarios, right. And if we go up, somebody dropped a book, cool. The energy that kind of had us freeze for a second loosens up. And we might be a little extra aware for a moment, if there's another bug that's gonna fall or another shoe that's gonna drop or whatever, right. But we go about our day, it's done. A hard freeze is very different. And it's very common for people to get to this place, especially with physical and sexual assault and abuse. So we start with maybe a soft freeze what's happening. And then if we go, Oh, I'm not safe, we might run, we might fight. And then if that's not working, there's a tipping point. Sometimes we'll call this fright, right? Where it's like, an ocean moment. Oh, shit. I'm trying to get to safety. This monster is chasing me down the street. I tried running, it's catching up to me. I'm trying to fight it, it's much bigger than me. And what our bodies tend to do there is either start to flag really quickly, and they'll usually drop into a hard freeze. We might call this tonic immobility. We might call this you know, in terms of a polyvagal theory, dorsal vagal. And that's a whole other conversation we're not going to get into today. But there's a lot of names for it. I just call it for simplicity sake, today, a hard freeze, or a faint, even people will perhaps go unconscious, perhaps still be conscious. But body goes limp. This is a really deep brain response and decision, quote, unquote, it's not that you're thinking, Hmm, this monster is chasing me down the street, it seems pretty big. And I don't think I could fight it. Maybe I could try. Maybe not, it's not that you're getting cognitive space here. And it's not that you have the honor off switch consciously to go, let's freeze now. Or let's freeze in three seconds. Your body based on the way it's evolved, makes the judgment call this is the best way to to survive. This is the best way for me to make make it through this is to go limp, to go numb, and to not feel what's about to happen. Because if that monster is going to terrorize you and eat you with sharp teeth, it's better if you don't feel it, right. So we go into this hard freeze. Like I said, some people faint, there's different layers of consciousness, you might be very aware but not able to move your body might not be aware at all. Some people get the sense here comes dissociation of a separation of their consciousness from their body. Like they're looking at it from the outside, they're watching it happen. They're not feeling it or not in it, but they're watching it. When we talk about dissociation, we're usually describing some experience. Now I'm just using a monster running down the street, because that's probably not going to happen. I don't want to shoot I'm trying not to give stories that are going to overload you with more trauma, because you get enough in the news, right? You get enough in life. But we can most of us imagine or have experienced something where we just body turned off, right? A really important piece of this is in, particularly in sexual assault survivors, and rape survivors. People blame themselves for why didn't I fight? If the go to response to trauma is fight or flight? Why didn't I fight? Why did I push this person? Why did I? Why did I harm them? Well, if your body decided to hard freeze and shut down, you couldn't, and your body was looking out for what's gonna get you through this. That was gonna be fun or easy, but what's gonna keep you alive. So dissociation I see is a very much a survival tactic. Like your body's ability to survive really horrific things. I could say a million more things. But I think that's a good intro in summary for today. Okay. Now, when I talk about exposure techniques, and in therapy, there's something called exposure therapy, there's also things that are going for the emotion. So we might have dissociated, we might have split off a memory, we might have amnesia to an experience. We might not remember the details of what happened or not even know what happened, especially if it's when we're young. And in you know, really extreme cases with dissociation, we can even develop different sorts of personalities, identities within ourselves, some people will, you know, on social media and stuff and some people identify more as plural, and they like that term better. There's like multiple people living inside one body, like really with different identities, different genders, different stories, different emotions like this can get. I think, for someone who hasn't thought about this, like pretty complex. If we're experiencing things over and over again, our whole identity and worldview is going to shift in response to them. So exposure techniques are trying to get in there and bring up the emotion of the trauma evoke things that have been repressed or suppressed or dissociated, connect with whatever is still alive in there from the trauma that we're maybe reliving, reenacting, looping back to emotionally through dreams, through thoughts through relationships, choices, there's a big strength in in some of these techniques. And one that I practice personally is called EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, it's become very popular, I use it with clients. And it's basically started with eye movements, but but came to this foundational theory and understanding that bilateral movement, tapping in your hands movement of your eyes, listening in your ears back and forth, tends to stir something up, that allows us to access maybe some of these memories that have been fragmented, that had been tucked aside that had been saved for later because they were too much in the moment. And we can bring them ideally in therapy, we can bring them to a place where we can address some of those needs work through some of those emotions. Now, EMDR is often called a power tool, really common to hear this even in your EMDR training. Those of you who've been through it, you might have heard this EMDR is a power tool for trauma. If you've been through one thing, and there's this memory or this thing that stuck, you might want to grab that Power Tool and go for it, you got a solid foundation, all the safety checks in place. Yeah, it might just be really helpful to have that power tool.

Now, if that it doesn't feel like there's a solid foundation, or the safety checks aren't all in place, like I don't know about you, I don't use a lot of power tools. I wouldn't use like a chainsaw or drill or something without or welding, what did you call those things? Like a flame thrower. That's not what they're called. But like, I wouldn't use those things without the proper gear without the proper training. And without a sense that like, I have a narrow enough scope, that I'm going to use this power tool, and it's going to fix the little thing. So what happens when folks have experienced a lot of trauma, complex developmental trauma over time, it's interconnected and complicated in terms of their identity and the relationships. And if you just go into that with a power tool, without having some kind of lay of the land, without understanding that trauma, a connects to trauma B connects to trauma C, connects to family relationships connects to work identity, if we don't have some sense of that map. And we go in with a power tool, what do you think might happen, and I just have an image in my head of like an entire house falling down, like, you go in to fix, you know, the frame on the front door, and you don't have all the safety checks in place. And then Oh, oops, collapse. And so it's not, it's not a far reach as a metaphor in terms of what bringing in an exposure technique can do when someone has experienced really complex trauma. Okay, so EMDR is this trauma processing modality, this tool we can use in therapy, not inherently good or bad, but inherently pretty powerful. And so we need to respect that power. In terms of how it works, you know, it's going in there trying to get to the root of the trauma to bring that to light. If someone's response to something really intense, was to distance from it. I mentioned that monster earlier, right? And you're like, No, I can't see this. I'm gonna go out of my body. I don't feel any of it. And then we bring up, okay, let's go to that strong memory. What do you think they're gonna do? If we as mental health providers, or people trying to help go get in there? Tell me the story of what happened. Let's feel the feelings now. They're probably going to do the same thing again. They're probably going to go, nope. They might distance from you. And some of you may have experienced this. You have someone in your family who was in combat, they come back, you're like, Tell me tell me, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. And they're like, bye, I don't want to hang out with you. And one thing that I've seen show up in research on exposure techniques, like EMDR is researchers assuming or gathering that someone's okay. Or they're fine or they're better. Because they're not presenting with hyper arousal. They're not presenting with fight or flight, right? If someone's experience of a trauma led them to dissociate to hard freeze anything along those lines. And we reintroduce a trigger or a memory or an aspect of that trauma to them in efforts to heal It is very common, if it's too much too fast, which it can be. And often it is, in these cases for them to do the same thing again, for them to shut down for them to hard freeze. And then you go, how do you feel? Fine, I don't feel anything. And researcher takes notes, I'm just imagining a scenario done, they're fine, they're healed, they're better. But not feeling anything is not the desired outcome. There's like a common saying in somatic therapy world, like feel it to heal it. But we need to do that in a very supported, and often slow, and paced way, with these big ticket items with these really horrific traumas, one of our episodes this season, which you'll be able to listen to right away, is Megan zippin, who had her foot on the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013, the year of the bombings, it's been 10 years. Yeah, it's been 10 years. And that's not done. That's not fear that's been erased, that's not trauma that's been resolved, right. There might be aspects of it that have been healed, that have been worked through, it's different now. But there are a lot of these things that happen. And it's gonna vary individual, you know, case by case, person by person. But I think when we say we can just check the box, six sessions of EMDR, you're good, you're done, you'll move on with your life in a totally healed way. That really does a disservice to folks who've been through horrific things, and who are in a long term, maybe even lifelong process of healing from a traumatic experience. So I don't recommend EMDR in general, for complex trauma and dissociation, unless all those safety checks are in place. Now, what are some of those safety checks? A long term therapeutic relationship? mapping of like, what was your family? Like? How did this experience are these experiences we want to target? How do they fit into your overall identity or, or identities into your story into your narrative? Do we have a sense of the relationships that were impacted, and we're not going to have every detail ever even within our own minds, but we have a sense of the lay of the land, just like someone might come to your house and assess, alright, these beams are strong. So I think I can go and drill on the front door, I'm just gonna check, make sure that house isn't gonna fall down. When we have that foundation, the relationship, some kind of lay of the land, and some kind of specificity around what we're doing. What's the emotion, what's the particular time and place in a narrower as narrower scope of possible that we're going for. And typically with exposure, and with EMDR, we're looking for that earliest and strongest thing. And I think with dissociation, doing that, sometimes it's too much and too fast. And we're going to also have Michael coy on the show. And he specializes in dissociation in EMDR, which is a rare specialty. He's going to talk us through some of that as well. If we're doing EMDR, as a clinician as a client, what are some of the things that will help it be helpful? If I have complex trauma, developmental trauma, dissociation, dissociative identity? All right, so we'll get there into specifics. But in general, I hope it's making sense as to why I wouldn't say EMDR go for it. What tends to happen is people with complex trauma histories, try EMDR. This thing that's supposed to help the everyone says is the gold standard of treatment. Now, I did it, everyone said I should do it. And I did it and it didn't work. So I must be broken. Right, there must be something wrong with me. And if you felt that if you've experienced some gnarly things in your life, some difficult trauma. And you've gone and done this technique that is celebrated and recommended maybe by therapists, maybe by friends, maybe by research, and it hasn't worked for you. I'm here to tell you. It's not you. That doesn't mean you're broken. Every single person I have worked with, in assessing their trauma history, their behaviors, their choices, their symptoms, make sense, in the context of what they've been through, it might be five years down the line that we go, Wait a minute, I just realized, this thing you do is exactly what you did. When you were three, and your parents were physically abusing you. It might take time for that to come into focus or to make those connections, even as a therapist but also as a client, and sometimes EMDR and things help us make those connections. But it's not you. So I'm here to tell you that if a modality is failing, it's just not the right modality or the right time, or maybe the right sort of structure and provider and that's There's a lot of moving pieces there. And I know when you're going for your own healing, you just want the the foundation to be strong, you just want to sit in a chair and have someone help. And I hope that you can find that. And I hope that this episode helps you to find that and helps you to know, it's not a lost cause you're not a lost cause. If you keep gently showing up for yourself, and trusting too, if something does feel like too much expressing that pacing, there is healing to be had, I've seen it, right, I've seen it, it's not always as fast or as pretty as we want it to be, it's usually not as fast or as pretty as we want it to be, which is part of the appeal of these techniques, right? We like have studies and usually the studies have limitations in terms of you know, you can't be on too many medications or have too many diagnoses to qualify. So we have these studies that are really clean and clear. But life is not a research lab, right. And so we can't always compare ourselves to that. And it's really important, I would just say that you trust yourself, and trust in your capacity to heal slowly over time, I want to underscore one more thing, which is just what's problematic about encouraging people to tell their story. Here's one of the clips I'm talking about from the episode.

Andrew Huberman 31:13
So the thing to embed in your mind is that recognition of the early traumatic or fearful event in detail over and over is key to forming a new, non traumatic association with that event, or person, a detailed recounting of the traumatic and fearful events is absolutely essential. In order to get the positive effects of prolonged exposure, cognitive processing, and cognitive behavioral therapy,

Lisa Danylchuk 31:44
I gave the example of a combat veteran returning from combat going back home. There's all kinds of ways that that can be really challenging to readjust. But again, if the thing that happened was traumatic, it's kind of by definition, too much emotion, too much too fast. Whether we went into fight or flight or a hard freeze, there was a big body reaction. There's a lot of intensity there. So when we as well meaning friends family, say, Tell me your story, it'll help it'll help you heal. We're kind of doing an exposure thing, right? We're going let's go there, let's go there. And their bodies, and the symptoms usually are trying to do the opposite. They're trying to not go there. So what's safer, is to build a relationship and rapport. And to make it possible, we can talk about it if you want, you want to go there today? No, okay, let's go for a walk to stay with that person. Because if your agenda is, tell the story, tell the story. And they're not in a place for that, like I said, they're gonna, they'll push you away with the avoidance of the intense stimuli of the trauma. So my shift on what he Romans suggested, which is the research says telling your story is helpful. At a certain point, right? Timing is really important relationship is really important. And instead of thinking of going into the trauma, again, the big reframe I want to share today is can we build a space around this person relationally. Physically, that feels safer than whatever they went through, shifts their physiology in a way where their body at a really deep level can go, Okay, I think I'm all right now. And their body can assess. You're also maybe a safe person that I can say, how I felt, I can say one thing that keeps coming back to me, that's really painful. And I can kind of, you know, give some air to pieces of this and test it out. So rather than going in there and trying to get the narrative and get, you know, let's talk about it. Let's talk about I mean, to therapists, his parents over here, they wanted to talk about everything. I was like, Please, Lord, yell at me, like do something else. I don't want to talk about that I'm young, I don't have the expressive capacity. So not just for that reason, but for all the reasons I'm sharing. If someone doesn't want to talk, let's respect that. Let's know that there is a lot of energy and potentially a lot of value in this story. And there's also many ways for that to come out. It can come out verbally, it can come out through art, it can process through movement. You know, for some people meditation or hypnosis, these different tools can really serve. So I hope I've outlined how exposure and how telling the story might make things worse. It's like going through your house and saying, I want to clean everything and just taking everything off the shelves at once. All your clothes, all your books, all your furniture, Pile it all in the street and then trying to reorganize. We all intuitively I doubt anyone's done that even like Marie Kondo, right, she says Just do the books, then just do the clothes. And even that, honestly a little bit overwhelming for me. I'm like all my clothes on the bed. I don't know, I don't know, I might like, go into avoidance mode. They might stay there for a week, I'll sleep on the couch. And then I'll put them all back and be like, forget it. So same thing, if there's a big mess, like if we think of this as a really complicated closet, can you just pay attention to the jackets one day? Can you just clear one shelf and other day, can you just touch the doorknob one day and be like, I hear you closet, like you're full of stuff. And today's not the day because I got a packed schedule, and I don't have space for it. Same thing when we have, you know, a closet or a bucket or a well of intense emotion from an experience. So telling the story, doing exposure might be helpful. Time and Place matter context matter. Being dissociation informed, really, really matters. dissociation is like in the DSM diagnosis for PTSD at this point. There's a dissociative subtype, it's integrated, we're aware this is a thing. So we can't just go Oh, yeah, we won't talk about that. We'll just dissociate from dissociation and leave it over there. We don't want to do that, because we're doing the most disservice to the people who are having the hardest time or have been through the most horrific and life threatening experiences. So if you're someone who's been through things most people have, and you're not feeling you're like, Yes, I don't want to talk about it. I'm not ready for EMDR EMDR was too much, then what do you do, right. And I would just say, start with that foundation of safety. Start with that foundation of care. Okay. And start with building relationships that feel safe. Yeah. And from there, you can build a foundation, where healing sort of naturally starts to bubble up from the surface where it's doable to process, the amount that comes up on this day. It's totally possible. And just the more we go at it, you know, with this fire and intensity and going for it, the more it sort of runs away. So think about it in a gentle way in an ongoing way in a habitual way. I think that's going to be what's more helpful and look for support people say, Should I go to therapy and like, Well, do you want to do it with support or without support, find supports that are going to help you build a stable ground that are going to help you feel more safe and soothed and secure and reassured. And then when you're ready, take a little piece at a time. And that might be bringing it to therapy that might be movement that could you know, there's all kinds of different pathways and trajectories. And I think a lot of the other episodes, speak to those. So I just always come back to support always come back to care. And really come back to like I said earlier, the folks who tend to do well with these types of exposure based interventions, have a warm fuzzy for the most part, cozy childhood and have long term relationships that feel helpful and have certain thoughts or ideas about themselves or the world that serve them. And so building those foundations can be so valuable and is worth even years of work in therapy. So don't feel like you have to rush. And if you're feeling a little bit shook up like even today in California, it's a windy day, and I feel like everyone's gonna shook up. Like just go back and find that shelter and find that support, find your center, find your ground, and then slow and steady wins the race. There's a saying in this work. I believe it initiated with Dr. Kluft. And he would say the slower you go, the faster you get there. So slow it down, take it easy. And just find your pace would be my recommendation. And listen to the rest of this podcast because man, we've got some some amazing people, as I said, people I respect in the highest degree. So I'm super excited to share them with you. And just to keep this conversation going. Let me know how this lands right, you can go to how we can heal.com backslash podcast, we got a whole survey there to make it easy for you to write out your thoughts. Or you can just fill in the blank at the bottom with questions, comments. You can also email podcast at how we can heal.com and just connect directly with myself and northern producers love hearing your questions, reflections and thoughts and we can incorporate those into future episodes. So thank you so much for being human in the world and enduring the things you've endured and being curious still and being here to learn and I'm glad you're out there and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode. Thanks so much for listening. My hope is that you walk away from these episodes feeling supported, and like you have a place to come to find the hope and inspiration you need to take your next small step forward. For more information and resources, please visit my website how we can heal.com There you'll find tons of helpful resources in the full transcript of each show. You can also click the podcast menu to submit requests for upcoming topics and guests. I look forward to hearing your ideas