» Brain-Based Wellness

S3 E24

“…it’s such a heightened time in childhood this season. There’s so much sensory stimulus coming in and so many big emotions. There’s excitement. There’s joy. There’s fun. There’s good tastes. There’s all of this, right? It’s such a big sensory experience that it really pulls up those parts of ourselves that we don’t always come in contact with our five year old self or our 10 year old self as those neurotags are activated and as the experience or process. And then we feel a lot of those emotions that child was feeling and it’s layered…”

-Elisabeth Kristof, Co-Host of Trauma Rewired and Founder of Brain Based Wellness and the Neuro Somatic Intelligence Coaching Certification

The holiday season, with its twinkling lights and festive tunes, often conceals a multitude of emotions and complexities beneath its cheerful facade. It can be a magical time full of celebrations and connection that can also evoke feelings of loneliness and overwhelm — especially for those with a history of trauma. This duality of emotions can be hard to navigate.

In this episode, we’re looking at the layers of holiday stress, offering insights into how our nervous systems respond to the heightened sensory experiences and societal expectations during this time of year.

Elisabeth revisits the concept of neurotags to illustrate how simple sensory inputs like sounds or smells can trigger emotional and physical responses linked to past traumas. Then, we delve into the impact of family dynamics, societal pressures, internal and external expectations, highlighting the importance of self-care and boundary setting.

As always, we’re sharing our own personal experiences with holiday-related trauma and reflecting on coping mechanisms that have evolved from maladaptive to healthy over time. Jennifer discusses her transformation from poor coping mechanisms to a place of embodiment and self trust. And Elisabeth shares her strategy for providing herself with a respite from the intensity of the season.

Keeping in line with our commitment to practicing what we preach, the podcast is taking a holiday break. And we’re sharing our excitement about Part 2 of Season 3. We have amazing guests and topics to look forward to.

As we unwrap the layers of holiday stress, Trauma Rewired offers a compassionate guide to understanding and navigating the complexities of the season. We invite you to explore your own capacity, establish boundaries, and embrace a more intentional and self-aware approach to holiday well-being.

And join us on the site for 2 weeks, for free. While we’re taking a break from the podcast, we’ll still be on site working with folks. We would love to connect with all of you, because that community is really wonderful. It means a lot to us and we’d love to have you in it. Go to RewireTrial.com to get your free 2 weeks and work with us live and in community.

Topics discussed in this episode:

The concept of neurotags and the holidays
Emotional complexities of the holiday season and trauma
Triggers and maladaptive behavior
Expectations versus capacity
Self-care and setting boundaries
The holiday season’s impact on our health
Healthy coping strategies for the holidays
What to expect next season on Trauma Rewired

Listen to more episodes of Trauma Rewired HERE

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Jennifer: Really when you think about the holidays, they’re so loaded, it’s so layered. Whether you are isolated with no family, isolated within your family, completely enmeshed with your family. There’s just so many scenarios that someone could be in during this time of year. Not to mention the societal pressure and beliefs and values that the external is driving into our lives. The perfectionism, the food, the relational connection.

[00:00:35] Elisabeth: All the things. Yeah. I feel like no matter who you are and whether or not you celebrate the holidays, if you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or whatever it is, it is just a loaded time of year where there’s still so much going on socially. And you’re also bombarded with images of people in relationship, family expectations of what an idyllic family situation would look like. There’s just, there’s a lot going on for everyone.

[00:01:05] Jennifer For everyone, that’s right. So welcome to Trauma Rewired, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous system, how trauma lives in the body and what you can do to heal. I’m your co host, Jennifer Wallace, a Neuro Somatic Psychedelic Preparation and Integration Guide.

[00:01:23] Elisabeth: And I’m Elisabeth Kristof, founder of Brain Based Wellness, an online platform that teaches you how to train your nervous system for resilience and to change your behavior.

[00:01:32] Elisabeth: And if you’re interested in getting on the site and partaking in two free weeks of nervous system training with us, go to RewireTrial.com. It would be a great gift to give yourself through the holiday season to arm you with some practical, actionable tools that you can use to help you self regulate and to process some of the stress so that you can have a different experience of the holiday season. So join us at Rewiretrial.com.

[00:01:57] Jennifer: That’s right. And not only a different experience, but real time tools to support you. Whether you are in a dressing room or a closet or a bathroom. That’s where I find myself a lot having privacy throughout the holidays. Or that’s what it’s looked like, you know, historically up until really, I’m really still trying to find my own way within the holidays because I’ve unburied myself from so much of the societal pressures and released myself from the bondages of like so many Christmas and holiday invitations. Because it is like a big time where there’s a lot of expectations as to where you are going to show up. And that can feel really threatening to the relationships that you have to those people when you don’t want to go to the party.

[00:02:53] Elisabeth: Hmm. Yeah.

[00:02:54] Jennifer: On top of the social anxiety

[00:02:55] Elisabeth:. Mm hmm. Yeah, for me it’s the car. I find myself in the car using my neuro tools a lot. You and me, and a lot of our clients, travel with our little baggie with our neuro tools. Before I go to an event, I stop in my car and do some regulation, you know, so that I can have a different experience. And then honoring that minimum effective dose, honoring my capacity and stepping away when I need to.

[00:03:23] Jennifer: Yeah, let’s wind it back a little bit and take it down to foundationally how it could be within us that the holidays are a threatening time.

[00:03:35] Elisabeth: Yeah, I think some people want a different experience. And that’s beautiful and we deserve that. And our brains function on pattern recognition and they’re primed for our survival. So within our body, our nervous system, and our brain we have these things called neurotags, which is just this idea of neurons that fire together, wire together.

[00:04:01] Elisabeth: So we have experiences and they create these neurotags of linked sensory inputs. So as I experience certain sensory inputs, and when I talk about inputs I’m talking about smells, visual inputs like what you see around you. I’m talking about the reading that you’re getting from other people’s nervous systems, their body posture, their vocal tone, the felt sense on your skin, the signals coming from inside of your body, tastes. These are all different sensory inputs that your brain takes in and integrates.

[00:04:36] Elisabeth: And when these sensory inputs are around during times of high stress, or maybe it’s even a big T trauma, they get linked into what’s called a neurotag. And when one of these pieces of sensory input reminds your brain and your nervous system of this other time, the whole neurotag is activated. So that whole experience starts to happen in your brain, in your body and throughout your whole nervous system. And it only takes one sometimes of these pieces of sensory information to bring that whole reaction up inside of you. And so when we’re in the holidays, there’s a lot of very strong sensory input in terms of sounds, smells, family dynamics that can definitely be enough to pass that threshold of neurotag activation.

[00:05:36] Jennifer: And you don’t need to be around people for these to get activated. You could be shopping out in the mall. Like think of how many different sensory- the lights, the smells, the sounds of the music that goes along the holidays, whether that’s Halloween or Christmas. There’s a whole sensory experience that comes with some of the holidays and some are bigger than the others. I know you’ve told it on this story before about the oranges, so it’d be good for you to share it again because it’s fascinating.

[00:06:10] Elisabeth: Yeah, I think the oranges are a really good example. I think we all have neurotags that are being activated, whether we know it or not. Like that’s just the way that our brain categorizes information. And this was just a really clear example to me. I was eating an orange and smelling it and having like a real sensory moment with the orange. It was a time when I was really connecting to that experience of eating the orange. And I noticed in that moment that my nose started running, my eyes started watering, and I was getting an immune response to that. And I had at the same time- and this was not common for me- I had a flashback. An actual visual flashback of being in Germany and seeing Christmas stuff all around. Then I had an emotional response inside of my body. I started to feel very overwhelmed and lonely. I started to experience some big loneliness inside of my body. And what I know now was that that particular bit of sensory information at Christmas time in Germany, there were always oranges around.

[00:07:19] Elisabeth: It’s a big part of celebrating Christmas in Germany. And you get them in your stocking. It’s just everywhere. And so my brain, when I smelled that smell and tasted that taste with it, with all neurotags, I experienced a physical response in my body. I experienced an emotional response and I had a cognitive reaction that time too.

[00:07:43] Elisabeth: And the response was protective because remember our immune system is there to protect us. When our body and our nervous system think we’re going into a threatening situation where we might get hurt, it ramps up inflammation. It ramps up inflammation and immune response. And so that is all part of the protective response of my nervous system. That threat could be social, it could be emotional, or it could be physical. So I think the threat there was emotional, but my body was responding in a really physical way with that immune response because it was all part of that neurotag.

[00:08:21] Jennifer: Yeah, that’s really. It really is fascinating for me. It was for the younger years of my Christmas. My uncle was around for the holidays and I used to eat a ton. I grew up and like hug your uncle, be kind, be nice, show up like this, smile, be grateful. And it was never having the agency of having my own experience with people. I was always just kind of trying to be the good girl, but I hated my uncle. And to be quite honest with you, I really did not like the whole family that came with them. So the interesting thing about my holiday experience is that my holiday experiences were incredible. They were something you see on Lifetime, honestly. They were wonderful. My parents went to huge lengths to see that I had a good, happy Christmas and what it looked like like that.

[00:09:15] Jennifer: So it was really confusing for me to not feel good and safe in my body. And to feel, to know now how dissociated I was. And then to, you know that was in our little family, but then as we went into the extended family where I had to be around socialize with my uncle, which no one knew was the actually the physical threat in the room, except for you with no way to voice that and a lot of my food behaviors came out in that way.

[00:09:43] Jennifer: And as the dynamics changed, as I grew into adolescence and then into adulthood, as I started drinking and becoming a little bit more dysregulated now with substances, and then with the change of our family dynamics, like really broke apart, Christmas went from this really what it was supposed to look like in my mind to a shattered image of that. And that didn’t happen til a lot later in my life. Honestly, that part. And when growing up with complex trauma, I found my family a lot of times in the television, in those moments of families and feeling that and it was often Christmas would often be one of the only times that I would really feel that. I might not feel it on a Thursday, but I did usually feel it at Christmas. And so the shattering of that, even though it happened as an older person, it’s been 20 years that I’ve really been trying to fill that and figure it out for myself. Of course, that uncle is long gone. Decades gone. But it’s just interesting.

[00:10:50] Elisabeth: You brought up something that I think is really important to touch on. And that was the behavior that was also coupled with the experience. Like you talked about eating a lot of food probably is as a way to self regulate in those times of big dysregulation being around a nervous system that was incredibly threatening to you. You were in a high threat situation. And also the Fawning that goes on when you’re forced to hug and come in contact with someone that you don’t want to and you can’t uphold those body boundary violations.

[00:11:24] Elisabeth: And then the behaviors are also part of the neurotag, right? Like those are the outputs. So when that neurotag gets activated, And remember, we have that activation threshold and that’s different for everybody. And we don’t know how much different stimulus is going to be required to activate that neurotag. But when it is activated, it’s not even just the physical response in the body or the emotional response or the cognitive thoughts, but then there’s also behaviors that our brain has learned is adaptive to cope with the survival threat of that neurotag. And so you’ll find yourself also moving into the behaviors that your nervous system has learned are what’s going to protect you, help you regulate and stay safe in that moment that were the most adaptive for you then. So that’s why a lot of people struggle with binge eating during the holidays, drinking too much, experiencing all kinds of physical pain outputs that are coming with the activation of those neurotags.

[00:12:33] Jennifer: It’s just so much. It’s just so overwhelming. And you’ve got all these nervous systems coming together at one time. When you’re a child, you don’t understand what the adults are going through. Then you grow up and you understand what’s happening in the adult family dynamic and you get to be a part of that. And then there’s this initiation then of what really is happening in the family. And worlds can shatter over just even kind of growing up and learning the truths of what your family has been in that you thought was, I mean, I’m speaking of my own experience, honestly.

[00:13:11] Jennifer: But, all different parts of ourselves come alive during the holidays. There’s all sorts of inner child wounding and inner child joy that also is going to come up. Once again, back to my own experience, it’s really hard and I love Christmas music. I love lights. I love singing. I love presents. I love the whole thing. And I really struggle with the isolated feelings.

[00:13:40] Elisabeth: Yeah, I think for many of us, it’s such a heightened time in childhood this season. There’s so much sensory stimulus coming in and so many big emotions. There’s excitement. There’s joy. There’s fun. There’s good tastes. There’s all of this, right? It’s such a big sensory experience that it really pulls up those parts of ourselves that we don’t always come in contact with our five year old self or our 10 year old self as those neurotags are activated and as the experience or process.

[00:14:19] Elisabeth: And then we feel a lot of those emotions that child was feeling and it’s layered because, like you said, there’s some that are really positive and big, good emotions. But we’ve also talked in here too about how even the big emotions can be threatening to a nervous system that doesn’t have the capacity to experience those emotions. And so it’s a great time to work with those parts of ourselves and to start to allow those emotions to process through and recultivate the experience of feeling joy and pleasure and connection and maybe moving some of the big other emotions like grief or anger through the body because we now are reconnected to those parts. But they can be a hard time to do that too because there’s also so much going on that’s hard to really make time for that self practice.

[00:15:10] Jennifer: It’s so excessive. The whole season as you get older is just so excessive. There’s so much to keep up with. And the trauma could bleed out into your financials, the expectations, just all of the excessiveness, the sparkly things. And we talked about this, I think in our conversation last year, you literally morph into the sparkly thing at Christmas. There’s a way that you’re kind of supposed to move through the holidays where you start to look like it and it takes a lot of energy to maintain it.

[00:15:49] Elisabeth: I think this is a perfect place to talk about expectations versus capacity, because there are so many expectations we have. Like you said, financial, it can also be what we look like, it can also be just our capacity to be able to go to all of the things or the expectations we have for how those events are going to turn out, how we’re going to feel around our families. I always feel a lot of internal pressure to create this really connected, wonderful, warm experience. And those kinds of experiences are challenging for my nervous system. So then I’m in that experience trying to create it and I can’t. And then that gets layered with the shame and the disappointment of not being able to create that. And it’s been a very long journey and a big practice to start to recognize my own capacity and then to honor that capacity with boundary setting, with just grace for myself for when when I don’t act and I’m not capable of being as Present and connected as I want to be in certain situations like giving myself some some slack for that. And then allowing myself to have a little bit of a different experience and that being okay, too.

[00:17:09] Jennifer Expectations. I mean, they’ll get you nowhere, right? I mean, have you heard that? It’s so interesting because I totally relate to that internal pressure. I want something to happen. This expectation of this closeness, this togetherness, this joy and singing and lightheartedness. And yet, there’s no real precedence for that. So how could that even exist, right? It’s a desire. It’s this really deep desire of like all this magic. And at those times of those expectations and desires, and it’s not to say that’s not a desire still today, even though I’m regulated, but my nervous system didn’t have the capacity for all of that closeness. The bucket was way too full. The stress was already so high and with poor coping mechanisms. And so the only precedent for the expectation was internal shut down, disappointment, internal critic. That’s changed over the past couple of years now that I’ve done so much to relieve myself and unburden myself of the old belief systems I used to carry, the maladaptive behavior mechanisms, like those poor coping mechanisms. I don’t use food like that anymore. I don’t use alcohol like that, abuse alcohol, like that. And I really trust myself. I think the biggest thing here is that I’m in my body. Like, that’s the newest experience. Even though, yes, I was in my body last year, that was last year. So much time has gone by. Like, this will be a new experience in this level of my body.

[00:19:03] Jennifer: At the end of the day, of any day, I know that I am the person who takes care of myself and I know what the signals are like before the real alarm bells start going off. I mean, it’s a lot of stimulus- the people, the music, the sounds, the lights. And afterwards, I was managing myself before and through and after. And now it’s like before afterwards when it was quiet, that’s when I really needed to have more, more, more to crash. And then the crash, I think the crash really went all the way into the rest of the season and the new year and really through like the rest of winter.

[00:19:51] Elisabeth: Yeah, most of my life, I would have this really big crash in like the later part of December to midway through January where it got really dark. And we hear a lot about how high suicide rates are during the holiday season. It makes sense because there’s a lot and it’s really a lot to handle. And now, knowing what I know, I can understand why that crash came. And I’ve been able to set some boundaries around my level of engagement with the holiday season. And that in and of itself is challenging, right? Because boundary setting is a whole journey. Now for the latter part of December I leave, I physically leave. I go take a trip. And it was hard for me to establish that boundary because I felt guilt for not being with my mom and spending time with the family and creating the traditional holiday experience.

[00:20:58] Elisabeth: But for right now in my life where I’m at, that has really served me to be able to take that time and space. Then we do a holiday celebration earlier at a different time or later where I’m not under so much stress and I haven’t been triggered by so many different things and now I don’t experience that same really intense output.

[00:21:18] Jennifer: You may be finding yourself on some sort of spectrum as to how we’re reflecting on our experience. And when we explore nervous systems and our capacity versus the experience in reflection, when we find our wins and we see how we were in our bodies, stayed Present, ate more intuitively, drank less to cope, whatever the wins are they are never too small. They are always big and those wins are part of new patterns that you’ll start to have. Then what we call measurable experiences and that’s when you know that your daily nervous system practice is working and taking shape because that’s neuroplasticity. We offer many entry points into the work we do. You can start now and have the tools to create a new measurable experience. Find our free offerings in the show notes or you can go to RewireTrial. com.

[00:22:32] Jennifer: I’m really trying to forge new ways in holidays and the way that I move in and through holidays and what my relationship is to the holidays in a non capitalistic way. That is something that is really important for me to move away from and to honor what the time is for in the season. I mean, that’s another thing, right? We’re naturally supposed to be going into deep periods of slumber and rest, not getting amped up by all of this stuff happening externally. These are times when our bodies naturally know- things are gonna get a little darker, right? We’re going into the winter. And yet outside, we are just go, go, go, go, go. It’s a way that we really go up against our natural rhythms and patterns. That is over time, really, I think detrimental. It’s another way that the society keeps us dissociated and disconnected from ourselves.

[00:23:29] Elisabeth: Well, the crash makes perfect sense when you look at it that way, right? Our natural internal clock is winding down. The days are shorter. We’re biologically wired for more rest in the winter and slowing down, eating different foods. All of these things have a huge impact on our internal rhythms. And then we’re pushing so hard against that with all of this social engagement and all of these financial pressures and the hustle of the new year and all the goals and big expectations for that.

[00:24:07] Elisabeth: And so the threat bucket that we talk about so much, the stress level inside of the system, is just rising, rising, rising probably at a faster rate because we’re going against our own biology. What happens when the water in the bucket overflows is the protective outputs. It’s the chronic fatigue, it’s the migraine, it’s the pain, it’s the dissociation. And so we find ourselves in these outputs because we’ve exceeded the capacity because we’re not really hearing or listening to the signals that our body is sending.

[00:24:46] Jennifer: As a culture, we have exceeded capacity. We’ve talked so much about how our nervous systems are linked and always communicating and so going against, you know, we’re pushing against ourselves. We’re feeling the other nervous systems around us also pushing against themselves, right? So we’re feeling the undercurrent of anxiety. We’re feeling that under current buzz that’s in them. Or maybe it’s isolation or shutdown. We’re feeling that from them. And then the new year comes and goes and then boom the whole country exceeds minimum effective dose and shuts themselves down. And then they talk about the weather, the winter, being so big and it’s all that we’re hitting the depressing time of year. And it’s like, does it have to be that way? No, it doesn’t.

[00:25:41] Elisabeth:When you zoom out and look at it that way, it’s like, when you look at the big collective nervous system, I just see it alive with energy, just pulsing, frying itself. And it just seems like this massive collective dysregulation. And of course, it all feeds itself, right? Because like you said, everybody’s nervous system is responding to everybody else’s. And it’s just compounding, compounding. And it’s very unhealthy.

[00:26:16] Jennifer: And it serves one group of people. Then we talk about this and relational threat with Victor. Where you were just saying recently, when we even talk about emotions, there is an at large system that doesn’t want you to feel your emotions because they can’t handle you feeling your emotions, right? And it’s the same thing with the holidays.

[00:26:35] Elisabeth: Well, there’s capitalism. I mean, there’s a lot of money to be made.

[00:26:43] Jennifer: That’s what I said. I got to get away. Like, I’m really trying so hard to break… Every time we talk about the spiral and healing, getting more altitude and my altitude every little bit, like, can I just pull away from this capitalism just a little bit more this year? How can I take myself out of this a little bit more and get really connected to what they push on us of what the holiday “means”, right? Family time, special time with people that you love. So how can it be more like that? It’s so important because those social connections, like real social connections with Presence, the holidays can be a really beautiful time to experience that if we are intentional and working with our body in a way that it’s possible to actually have those connections. It can be so beneficial for the health of our nervous system, our immune system to really connect with other human beings. And we deeply crave that.

[00:27:48] Elisabeth: And so it takes a lot of questioning of the whole system and extricating yourself little by little, like you were talking about. to start to create new practices, new ways of gathering. Maybe it’s more intimate. Maybe it’s with different people that you really trust and feel safe around. Maybe it’s slowing it all down, just moving at a different speed through all of that. And the implications for health are really important.

[00:28:26] Jennifer: It’s exhausting. I mean, we’re talking about chronic fatigue that is like getting stacked up against each stacked on top of it. We’re talking about high levels of substance abuse and toxicity in the body. Not to mention, like we said, the financial threat that people are putting themselves under. You feel that in your body. There’s so many things- not having a partnership. People really worry about those kinds of things, apparently. I remember one of my girlfriends who’s dating was telling me like during the holidays relationships spike, right? Because people want someone to bring home to their families. Like, there can be a lot to live up to.

[00:29:04] Elisabeth: Oh, people will get on an app just to find someone to pair up with for the holidays.

[00:29:10] Jennifer: We might be talking to you right now. Yep. And that’s a lot. You know, that is not feeling safe in your body right there. Telltale. I’m not safe, not safe to show up and who I am, where I’m at in my truths.

[00:29:30] Elisabeth: Yeah. My hope is that as people listen to this, even if you just start to find just a few little tiny ways that you can make a shift in the environment or the expectations or the people that you gather with. Like if you can just question it a little bit and make those little small minimum effective dose shifts. That will be a really positive change that also compounds so that the effects and the experience for your nervous system is different. Even if it’s just questioning a little bit of, why am I really doing all these things? What’s this coming from? How is my body really responding to this? So that it becomes possible to look at it all with just a little bit more curiosity, a little bit more compassion for yourself. And then think about these tiny little actions that you can take to start to create that shift.

[00:30:26] Jennifer There’s so many times I would push up against the question, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? I would ask that so many times in my closet meltdowns putting my sparkly things on, why am I doing this? And to push through that, it was through the behaviors I can see now. How did I have to show up there? I had to drink a lot, or I had to smoke a lot, or I had to eat a lot. Something had to put me there to push me through it. Now I can ask myself, why am I doing this? Reflect and then make a clear decision as to whether or not I’m actually going to get dressed and walk out the door. And there is so much freedom in that, freedom of like non committal to the external. I don’t know what it is, but it’s freedom.

[00:31:13] Elisabeth: Yeah, just asking that question, why am I doing?, this is so powerful. And then checking the intentions and seeing then if you really want to take that action. If it’s in alignment with intentions that you want to be putting out. I’ve also started a practice of checking in with my body about something before I do it. Just spending a minute asking my body, how do you feel about this body? Do you want to do this? And even reassessing, testing my range of motion, testing my strength, testing how my body responds when I pose that question or think about the event or think about the situation. And allowing myself, like giving myself permission, even if it’s the day of and I’m getting ready to go. If I ask myself, why am I doing this? And the answer is not the answer that I want. And then I check in with my body and my body does not want to do it, giving myself permission to not do it, to not go, and that that’s okay.

[00:32:12] Jennifer Yeah, we’ve recorded recently on the relationship that we have to our bodies. And the communication starts, and nothing happens without me communicating to my body. And making sure that we are fully on board with this. I do a ton of muscle testing sometimes, even. I use my reassessments. Before I’m even asking my body big questions, I’ll usually do a drill. I’ll get myself regulated. I’ll ask my body a question. And then I see how she responds. Sometimes it’s muscle testing. Sometimes I lean in or lean back. Sometimes I’ll ask and I’ll reassess and I’ll know then. Your body speaks to you in so many different ways and when you can open that channel of communication, you’re going to change your world. Really. I mean, it’s all about my body.

[00:33:02] Elisabeth: And it’s so important to do that.

[00:33:05] Jennifer: I can’t trust my mind.

[00:33:06] Elisabeth: Yes. Yes. Because our mind so often has a different idea of what our capacity is, right? We talked about that too. Our expectations and our cognitive ideas about what we think we can handle might be really different from what’s actually going on inside of our body. And also, my nervous system is in a different state. It’s always different. It depends on my sleep and if I’m getting sick and my fuel. And other stresses that I have going on, other triggers, that might have activated a threat response in my body. So I have to have the ability to be able to decide that day with my current level of nervous system function- is this the right thing for me to do today?

[00:33:47] Elisabeth: Because even though two weeks ago when I said I would do it, I was feeling okay about it. My nervous system might not be in that same state.

[00:34:01] Jennifer: That’s right.

[00:34:02] Elisabeth: And so it has to be okay to change.

[00:34:03] Jennifer: And to honor your body. Speaking of relationship to the body that is actually going in part two of our season, which will be after the holidays. That will be releasing in January. Trauma Rewired is going to take a break this holiday season. We do often sometimes take a little bit of a break, but this season we’re really honoring what we’re preaching here, and that’s to take the rest. You and I are people who like to slow down and enjoy and relish in our time and with our people. And so we’re doing that. We’re going to take a break and then we’re going to start it off with Relationship to the Body. We’ve got a really big next part of the season coming.

[00:34:45] Elisabeth:Yeah, I think we’re really trying to practice what we preach here and model for people. It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to slow down. And that can sometimes be scary for us too. We put a lot of energy into this podcast because it means a lot to us. And you all listening mean a lot to us and we love to have these conversations with you. And in order to have the best possible conversations and create really quality content, we also need time to step away, integrate everything that we’ve been talking about, and really do what we’re talking about today. Which is take this time of the winter to rest and reflect and allow our nervous systems to adapt to all of this growth. And so we’re taking a break.

[00:35:32] Jennifer: And we learned. We had our one pain free rep by taking a break before. We took a break and we experienced epic growth. And so we know now that when we reward ourselves with rest, we are rewarded also by the rest and it feeds our creativity. Also, we get to continue to show up here in this, in this space.

[00:35:52] Elisabeth: Yeah, this Part 2 of Season 3 is continuing this deep dive into relationship and the nervous system, looking at complex PTSD as an attachment wound. And yeah, some of the guests that we have coming are just really, really exciting, phenomenal practitioners and leaders in thinking about nervous system health and relationship. So I think you guys are going to be really excited to hear everything that we go into in the new year.

[00:36:22] Jennifer: It’s really fun for us when we can share this space of big conversations that are sometimes really nuanced in the nervous system to share this space with Luis Mojica or Dr. Nicole LaPera. And we don’t have a ton of people that we get to explore all of this with. So it’s really exciting for Trauma Rewired and to explore with you also what some of our NSI practitioners are doing with the work.

[00:36:52] Elisabeth: Yeah, there’s some really cool stuff going on. We have a woman who works in the field of nutrition and brings NSI into that. We have people who are working with suicide prevention. We have people who are working to bring this work with First Responders, as you’ve heard about already here. We have many different Neuro Somatic Practitioners as the program has grown, this work is branching out into so many diverse fields. And it’s really exciting to get to hear about how the work is translating into work with nutrition, work with First Responders, work in suicide prevention, work with folks with ADHD and other types of neurodivergence. All these different avenues that these tools and this framework is coming into. And we will be doing another cohort of NSI in the spring. So we’re really excited to tell you guys more about that as it unfolds as well. It’s a really, really good time to give yourself the tools that you might need for regulation and stress processing.

[00:37:55] Elisabeth: And while we’re taking a break from the podcast, we will still be there on site working with folks and we would love to connect with all of you live because that community is really wonderful. It means a lot to us and we’d love to have you in it. So RewireTrial.com to find us there.

[00:38:10] Jennifer: It’s been such an incredible season so far, y’all. We’re so grateful to you. Thank you for listening and for your reviews, all of your feedback. Thank you for joining our community. And we just appreciate so much that you share this time with us. We love when you reach out to connect with us. And all those various ways are in the show notes, as well as all the free resources that we offer and the many entry points into this work.

[00:38:38] Jennifer: If you’re a practitioner and you’re interested in Neuro Somatic Intelligence you’ll also find that information in the show notes. Thank you all very much. Have a regulated holiday season. Please get the support you need, whatever that means. I wish you so much love and with gratitude. Happy Holidays.