00:00 - Chase (Host)

The following is an Operation Podcast production. Why do we keep getting pulled back to the same unhealthy relationship patterns, even when we know that they're hurting us?

00:12 - Jessica (Guest)

When our system feels the presence of safety and there's space and we can slow down our neural nets. Open and our consciousness allows us to deal with what we've been avoiding. Open and our consciousness allows us to deal with what we've been avoiding.

00:25 - Chase (Host)

How do you know if you're in a trauma bond versus a truly healthy connection?

00:31 - Jessica (Guest)

If you're sitting there and saying, if my partner could just show up differently, if they could just not cheat, if they could just not do this, if they could just act differently. So you're in this like state which you can stay stuck in for years. It's this fantasy that if they could show up differently I'd be in peace, and them to you. And so you're both like wishing the other person could be something that they're not. It's a fantasy to think, oh, if my partner could just return to how they were in the beginning. What I see in trauma bonds is that people focus more on the other person's wounding too. Beginning what I see in trauma bonds is that people focus more on the other person's wounding too. They overempathize with their partner's little me or their partner's wounds and they lose boundaries. There's more merging. There's less healthy boundary systems. Hi, Jessica Baum here, psychotherapist and author, and I'm so excited to be on Ever Forward Radio.

01:21 - Chase (Host)

Now, if you want to get the hard copy, it's linked for you in the show notes, as always, under episode resources. But maybe listening is more your jam. I love Audible. It is my audio book platform of choice, and if you'd like to read the book and follow along to the audio book and you can actually get the book for free, all you need to do is head to audibletrialcom slash ever forward, where you're going to get your free 30-day trial. And this comes with one credit, good for free, any premium selection title that you want. And special news for all my Prime members out there you actually, with this trial, you get two credits. These credits are good for a free book, Linked for you, as always in the show notes under episode resources. But again, to get your free 30-day trial, that free credit, head to audibletrial E T R I A Lcom. Audible trialcom slash ever forward. Why do we keep getting pulled back to the same unhealthy relationship patterns, even when we know that they're hurting us?

02:24 - Jessica (Guest)

We have memory stored in our body. A lot of it is implicit memory, so it's memory stored from our earliest years. That is what we expect in relationship, so that some people will say it's unconscious. It's not really unconscious, but it's in our body and so often when we go out into the world and we find someone that we're attracted to, we're's in our body. And so often when we go out into the world and we find someone that we're attracted to, we're attracted to the familiar. So it's not that we're, like, necessarily pulled into something unhealthy. I mean, if you had a healthy, secure upbringing, you're probably going to attract someone who's more secure. But if you had an upbringing that had a lot of insecurity or chaos or neglect, that gets stored and we magnetize or move towards what's familiar, thinking it's right because it feels right to us, because it's what we know, it's what our system believes to be true, it's what we expect.

03:18 - Chase (Host)

Describe a little bit more for us stored. When you say it gets stored, what do you mean by that? What's actually happening there?

03:26 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, so when we're infants and we're really young little beings, we're right hemisphere creatures, we're sensational, so we're storing. So we don't store explicit memory like movie memory right away. We store sensational memory. So I'm going to store my connection to you. If you're my primary caregiver, are you attentive to me? Do I get my needs met? Are you emotionally available to me? Are we in connection? How is our connection? We're sharing a relational space, we're sharing a nervous system and when things happen and we don't get attended to or we're not being shown up in the way that we need, we store patterns and adapted ways to adapt to connection. When we're really little, in our nervous system, in our body, in our gut, in our fascia, in our heart, Everywhere, we are storing memory that literally the body keeps the score. I mean that's why that book has done so well, because we are keeping that memory system in our soma.

04:26 - Chase (Host)

This reminds me of a quote I pulled from your book what we can't consciously feel, we tend to act out, and what we don't feel safe to act out, we try to suppress. So my question around that is how can we begin to safely feel what we've been suppressing for years?

04:43 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, it's one of the most powerful quotes in my book that you have been to pull out.

04:50 - Chase (Host)

Starting off with a banger.

04:51 - Jessica (Guest)

I remember when I wrote that, my, my, my mentor was like, wow, where'd you get that from? And I'm like my therapist at the time. But so we store a lot of things in our, in our body and then we act out our needs Right, and that can happen consciously or unconsciously. If we can't act it out, we suppress it. We also get inflammation and this can tie into your like, health and wellness thing, because a lot of people get sick because of the inflammation.

05:17

So it's exactly what ingrid and I just talked about right yeah, so it gets stored in our body and if we don't have safe people and safe environments, we will stay in sympathetic activation, we will stay disconnected from our body or detached from what's living in our body and we'll just be in survival mode, which I talk a lot about. I did that for years. So shifting into our right hemisphere and getting in touch with streams of information and what's living in our body starts to allow us to be with what's going on inside. But sometimes we can't do that unless we have a safe environment and another nervous system to help track us and help hold what's been stored in our body. And many people suffer from inflammation, cancer, all kinds of disease because of stored developmental trauma and they don't even know that's what it is.

06:07 - Chase (Host)

Without making this about me, but I just want to share a quick example that I think is very pertinent to what we're talking about that I feel confident a lot of people can probably relate to, and this is something that blew my mind the most.

06:20

Last year, january 2024, last year, january 2024, something happened in my life and triggered what has still become a myriad of extreme panic attacks. And when I got back into regular therapy navigating it kind of helping me get to why I was blown away because I was the happiest I'd ever been in life I on that day kind of crossed this threshold of a significant healing marker in my life of the moment. That caused years of PTSD and it was so mind blowing because I was going how can my body now give me all of these panic attacks? I'm freaking out. I feel so dysregulated out in the world when I've never felt more safe and healed over this one big thing. What is it about our bodies, our consciousness and subconsciousness finally being in a safe place? That actually is a outpouring, a spout of outpouring, of all this unprocessed work. Why safety first that then kind of triggers all this other stuff to work on when we're like, wait a minute, I thought I already, I thought I healed already.

07:34 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, I mean also really powerful question, and safety is often the prelude to healing, where people think, oh, if I heal, I'll feel safe. Right, and the truth is that we need safety in order, for so many of us are in survival mode. We're left shifted. We're, when our system feels the presence of safety and there's space and we can slow down, our neural nets, open and our consciousness allows us to deal with what we've been avoiding, open and our consciousness allows us to deal with what we've been avoiding. So, because there's space for it, it's like this inherent wisdom that's within us is saying well, now you can face this.

08:12

I've even seen this happen like kind of in like a five day intensive treatment center where you're going and you're doing deep work.

08:19

I remember once in my twenties I went and I did deep work and there was this woman who was there and she was brilliant and so smart. In the course of five days she remembered a rape. She remembered a very traumatic event that she had suppressed for so long. But because we were in a container for five days and she felt the safety and the vulnerability that came, her system allowed her to remember what she couldn't get in touch with before, and I also had that experience. I got in touch with infant memories when I was in a safe environment. I finally got out of a relationship that was very chaotic and my life got calm and there was safety and I had support. And then I was like holy crap, here's my childhood trauma coming up even more. So as we slow down and as we have safe people and as we become more vulnerable, often more of our work shows up and it's an opportunity to move what's been we've been avoiding and integrate it and heal.

09:15 - Chase (Host)

I have to imagine someone is going. That sounds scary. Why would I want to get to a place of safety if my life, if my emotional state, is just going to get worse?

09:26 - Jessica (Guest)

Well, and I think yeah, I mean as someone who has walked through it you're probably hitting what most people are listening to this like F. No, I don't want to go there, but the level of internal freedom and security and peace that one gets from working through their embedded trauma or what they've been avoiding, I can't even put it into words. It's one of the free gifts that I'm offering our audience is what it feels like to move from insecurity to security and heal these wounds. Yes, it's a portal. It's not always fun and it's expansive, and it allows you to have freedom and meaning in relationships that I really can't put quite into words. It's a gift when we can face those things, but when you're going through it, it's terrifying. It can be terrifying, yeah.

10:14 - Chase (Host)

So that's kind of the struggle, then. Right is getting people, getting ourselves on board with trusting and also believing that the payoff is worth the heartache. Hey, what's up, fam? You hear me talk about quite a few different things that really enhance my wellness and my daily habits. This essential fatty acid called C15. I've been hooked now taking it daily for probably about two years now. This is the first emerging essential fatty acid to be discovered in more than 90 years. It is an incredible scientific breakthrough to support our long-term health and wellness and you guessed it healthy aging. Based on over 100 studies, we now know that C15 strengthens our cells and is a key healthy aging nutrient which helps to slow biological aging at the cellular level. In fact, when our cells don't have enough C15, they become fragile and are even shown to age faster. And when our cells age, our bodies age too. So let's squash it right here, right now. If you want to learn more about this essential fatty acid, c15, and why I love fatty 15, I've been taking it daily for pushing two years now. Head to fatty15.com.

11:26

Slash ever forward. That's F? A T T Y one fivecom. Slash ever forward. The special offer is going to get you 15% off. An additional 15% off. They're already reduced 90 day starter kit linked for you, as always in the show notes, but again, that's F-A-T-T-Y-1-5.com. Slash ever forward and use code ever forward at checkout.

11:48 - Jessica (Guest)

And I think the science of healing what's going on inside grounded me to be like, ok, this is hard, but like, oh my God, this science is proving that I'm moving in a path towards healing. The science is proving that I'm creating internal space. The science is proving that I'm moving towards earned security. The science helped me feel sane.

12:10 - Chase (Host)

Help us now with some science. That's a good place to start Feeling sane in our emotional healing journey is, I think everyone would agree we would like to get there right. So what is the preliminary science to get someone on board to entertain this idea of healing in the way that you're talking about?

12:28 - Jessica (Guest)

Well, I mean, I would first address this by saying that if you go unhealed and avoid, you're likely to repeat. So while you think maybe you're OK right now, I remember telling my mentor, like ignorance was bliss, you know? And she's like was bliss, you know? And she's like, was it really? And she was like right, like on in my body and in my life I was on fire. I was avoiding things, I was not truly happy, I might have not been in touch with it, but I wasn't truly free and happy. So, like, if you're listening and you keep making the same mistakes in relationships or mistakes, same patterns, or you keep repeating trauma bonds, which is all the things that I go over. Not healing usually means that we recreate it, recreate it, recreate it so temporary relief when you escape it and then you usually face it again. So it's always worth facing. But you can't heal it without certain things. You can't heal it without a safe environment and what I call anchors, so other nervous systems and other people to help you move developmental trauma.

13:36 - Chase (Host)

I think a lot of this is probably more tangible for someone and also I know a big part of your work in your new book in relationships. What's the difference between being truly safe in love and relationship versus just being comfortable or familiar?

13:51 - Jessica (Guest)

Well, I mean, so familiar can not be safe, right? So if you came from a childhood home of neglect or sexual abuse or extreme anxiety, you're going to attract someone and you're going to think this person is perfect. But usually you end up recreating the familiar hell. I mean Gabby Monte talks about this too Like we tend to recreate the familiar and they're like, oh my God, I'm stuck in my childhood dynamics and I'm an adult, like many people are like I married my mom, you know, right. So I forgot the other part of that question.

14:26 - Chase (Host)

What was the second part of that question? What was the second part of that question? Uh, let me go back and we'll get it verbatim here. Let me see oh, it's getting too far. What's the difference between being truly safe in love and relationship versus just being comfortable or familiar?

14:40 - Jessica (Guest)

yeah, and I think with the anxious avoidant dance sometimes this happens. We meet people and we have the illusion of safety, so anxiously attached people will keep that person close no matter what, so they don't have to feel their abandonment wound right Like. We can have the illusion of safety a lot, but then we have to like have all these behaviors that we're doing consciously or unconsciously so that we don't feel what's going on. I think true safety comes from vulnerability and intimacy with your partner and being able to like not just project and blame and go through cycles, but to be able to evolve together, to really understand how each other's childhood wounds and how each other's life impacts the relational space, to be able to grow and evolve.

15:26 - Chase (Host)

I mean, and that's a gift if you have that in your relationship what do you think is if there is a proper order of events here? Is it being able to first get vulnerable with and for yourself, or vulnerable with and for your partner?

15:43 - Jessica (Guest)

I, you know I it's like a chicken or the egg. So I do a Mago therapy. So some people don't do the work unless they're in relationship. That brings up the work for them to do.

15:54 - Chase (Host)

Oh, interesting Right Meaning like you don't really know what to work on until the relationship presents it to you, kind of thing Like you can't get there on your own.

16:02 - Jessica (Guest)

You can like. So I did a lot of work in a romantic relationship which I share deeply about. Had I had a really good therapist early on and I really slowed down, I might've done the work that way too. I was like did I have to go through this intensity to get in touch with all of my childhood neglect and terror? No, had I had the right professional, I had stuck with it. I might've accessed it in another way. So it's never one or the other, but our close relationships typically awaken our earliest memories.

16:37 - Chase (Host)

So what about to the person going? Well, chase and Jessica, that sounds great. I'm not in a relationship, I've been single forever. But I'm curious about this. I want to heal. I would love to know what I'm doing or not doing that can move me forward in life and in relationships so that when the next one comes down the line, I'm a better partner or I know what cues to look for, what questions to ask. How can we work on this single, but through the lens of being ready for partnership?

17:06 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, and I mean I'm a good example. I worked on what came up in a relationship and then I chose to leave the relationship because they didn't want to continue the work and then I spent many years working on myself out of relationship. But I was in many relationships one with my therapist and other anchors that became very vulnerable, very safe, very intimate In fact, maybe more intimate than any other relationship that I had. So you can do this work with anyone that you slow down and and I even talk about how to do the work it's like a roadmap, um, and you need anchors, but like people who can hold space, not judge you listen deeply, become a container, you can co-anchor for each other, and a lot of people who have early wounding they really struggle doing it in romantic relationships. They actually might need more individual work first, and then other people come to me in a relationship and they can do the work very much in their relationship. So everybody's journey is so different. There's just not one path.

18:08 - Chase (Host)

Who do you think is a stereotypical person in someone's life? That could be that first anchor to kind of fan that flame that you're talking about.

18:12 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, like this is one of the hardest questions, because so many clients come to me and they're like I don't have an anchor. I don't have a good relationship with my mom, or I don't have a bestie, or I don't have anyone that I can just call to, that doesn't try to fix me or tell me what to do or doesn't just sit with me.

18:26 - Chase (Host)

But do you think that's true?

18:28 - Jessica (Guest)

I think a lot of people don't have that. Yeah, I think it's true.

18:31 - Chase (Host)

Do you think no one.

18:34 - Jessica (Guest)

No. So I encourage people one if they're working with me their nervous system starting to realize it with one person, and then they can go through the Rolodex and they might be like, oh, my Aunt Lucy or someone I lost touch with, or they might start to find their anchors. But usually at first they're like I don't know who, I don't know who I will call you know. And so it only takes one present and available relationship that you can become in a healthy dependency with to help your nervous system to understand what that safety is, where you will start to magnetize more of that. So if you have one relationship and like I kind of spell out how to do that, your nervous system will start to recognize that as safety. You will start to get more vulnerable and then you'll attract more people who are more emotionally available, because you'll start to understand this is love, this is capacity. This is something I've never experienced before. So now I need to learn this and then, ironically, we will seek out more people who have that to offer.

19:35 - Chase (Host)

Reminds me of another quote I pulled from your book. A longing for warm, safe relationships is built right into our DNA. No matter how many painful experiences we have had, this yearning never goes away. Why do you think we keep yearning for safe love even after so much relational pain, then?

19:54 - Jessica (Guest)

Connection is a biological imperative, and so what I mean by that is that we can't survive as infants and young ones without connection. So we are wired to go towards warm, receptive connection as a survival way to get through life, and we lean towards that as humans, and it's how we procreate, it's how we survive, and so it's part of our biological wiring is to go towards warm, nurturing, safe relationships.

20:28 - Chase (Host)

Describe, maybe, a relationship where people might think they're going to that warm, safe space because of maybe it's all they know, maybe, for whatever reason, their belief system is that this is safe or this is quote normal. Describe for us a relationship where they might think that but it's actually not.

20:50 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, I mean I talk about in chapter seven. I talk about intensity and I talk about how people mistake love for intensity and trauma bonds so that we can go towards what's familiar and what is releasing a lot of like dopamine and other neurochemicals in our brain and it can feel exciting and it can feel intense, but it's not necessarily safe, right, because all of that is happening and we're not going slow enough to like gauge. Does this person have moral character? Can they go slow? We're just kind of rushing in and if our trauma pattern matches theirs perfectly, we can get stuck in something that feels like home, literally becomes our original home all over again.

21:33

And I've done it, I study this, I'm guilty of it, it's okay, I got conscious in it, that's what I wanted. I think we all do it to some degree. We're like, oh my God, here I am again. I think we all do it to some degree. We're like, oh my God, here I am again. It's that feeling of I'm all alone in the world again, just like I was when I was a kid and realizing I like pick someone in my life that when their trauma got activated they would leave Right, and that's the very thing that my trauma was. So we we tend to recreate this over and over and over again until we get conscious together or there's some agency to get conscious and do the work regardless sure, sure.

22:07 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, it makes me think or maybe this is an assumption of mine, but I have to think that people who are, let's say, dating, maybe they're not in a regular long-term relationship. I feel like this probably comes to the surface more for those people. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, maybe if you are in a long-term relationship, how can we still get there?

22:30 - Jessica (Guest)

Well, I actually think that it comes. So there's usually a natural progression in most relationships where in the beginning there are no protectors and there are no wounds. So in the beginning, usually showing up as your best self, you're projecting your unmet childhood needs onto your partner. It can feel euphoric. And then later, as the relationship develops and you individuate, you hit protectors, you hit wounds, and then you're like you wake up one day and you're like who did I? This person is hurting me the same way my mom did, or so critical of me. So when you're dating, maybe it's hard to build the connection. Initially that's like another whole area.

23:11

But I actually think as relationship stages develop, it's actually like the middle stage where you're just really activating each other where you need to get really conscious that you can get to the over that stage, like it's another level of growth, and you're lucky if you have a partner who's willing to do the work with you.

23:31 - Chase (Host)

What advice would you give somebody who wants to maybe start at the middle? Maybe you know, for whatever reason, that they don't want to just casually date or on the first date instead of you know how was your day. It's like what's your childhood trauma. Is there a way to get to the middle from the beginning Without scaring everybody away?

23:51 - Jessica (Guest)

Well, I mean, like when you're looking at anxious and avoid like go slow, you know, build a solid connection that's not built on like lust and fantasy, you know, get to know the person really well, those kinds of things can help you understand. I mean, I try not to like meet someone and be like so what's your childhood trauma and how's this going to show up in the relationship, which would be very easy for me to do. But I mean, sometimes you have to let these things kind of unfold. If you're listening and you're struggling, I think there are resources out there for you, like a MAGO therapy or emotionally focused couples counseling, like there are people who specialize in how this, these woundings, come up in your relationship and can actually help you get conscious and move past it. And sometimes you need the extra help, Like you need that outside nervous system in person to help you guys get out of your familiar patterns and nervous system dances.

24:44 - Chase (Host)

You've mentioned a MAGO a couple of times now. What is that?

24:47 - Jessica (Guest)

Yes, I'm a certified Imago therapist. It means image in Latin, and it means that we attract people that are positive, negative images or traits of our primary caregivers, and it's a whole type of therapy that is set up with dialogue to help you evolve past what you're recreating with your partner so you both can heal. It's a wonderful therapy and, for those of you listening, you can go on the Imago website. There are certified Imago therapists all over the place. I highly recommend going to someone like that than just a therapist who's not trained in couples counseling.

25:19 - Chase (Host)

Okay, is there a way that someone can, um, therapize themselves here? Let's say, you know, maybe barrier to entry is cost availability, whatever to go through a MAGO therapy or any kind of professional insight like this? I'm sure a lot of this is in your book and in your work, but you know top two ways someone right now can therapize themselves, for lack of a better term here, um, to kind of help us get into this area of safety.

25:47 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, I mean for sure it's spelled out in the book. But, um, if, if not, like I talk about core wounds like you're, you're kind of asking me like how can someone gain some insight right now in this conversation? I think if you can feel into your body and you're listening and you have any wounds, like I'm going to be left or I am unlovable, or you can start to track. You know, where is this stored in my body? What is the theme that keeps getting repeat, like repeated in my life? Where does it live in my body and when's the earliest I experienced that? Can I even access that? And you know, am I running on running and running away from that theme and how is it being repeated? And it might not be your intimate relationship, it might be with your boss, it might be with your critical boss, it might show up different ways, but usually we have a sense Like for me, I'm always going to be a left alone, was like my core wound and that was like literally my childhood.

26:39

And then I would get into these relationships where people would really be attentive but at some point completely abandoned and I'm like, oh, here I am again. You know, so I had to evolve past, trying to heal my wound with another person and actually grieve the fact that that was a big part of the reality of my childhood. And once I did that, I didn't need to like recreate it again. I didn't need to like put myself in a situation where I thought, oh, here's the solution. Again I met someone who's going to meet my needs. Now it's like totally shifted for me. Does that make sense?

27:10 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm sure every individual is going to be totally different, but you know we're all human right and there are so many commonalities in the human experience, especially what we're talking about in relationship, in really intimate relationship, personal, professional relationship and relationship with yourself.

27:29 - Jessica (Guest)

so there has to be some kind of overlap and in that overlap there has to be I'm saying has to be clues or tools that most of us could use, or at least try right yeah, I think they're core wounds and I think that when you think I have a list of them and I wish I could say them all, and that's not even an extensive or exhausted list but when you hear something like I'm a failure, do you believe that, does it live inside of you and where right that starts to tell you okay. Well, let's track the charge. Let's understand that it's living in your body, let's understand that it's something you internalized, probably from early on, because it's in your body. We know it's earlier and we can already start to understand how this is being repeated in your life because it's living in your body.

28:14 - Chase (Host)

I'd like to take just a quick second and give a shout out to one of my absolute favorite products and partners of Everford radio, pushing five years now, and that's element and their amazing electrolyte drink mix and flavored sparkling waters. Whether you're crushing workouts, hiking your favorite trail, running marathons or just chasing your kid around the yard or the house, your body's performance depends on proper hydration, and that means more than just water. We need electrolytes I'm talking sodium, potassium, magnesium in the proper balance, scientifically backed ratios, like we find in Element. We need them to fuel our muscles, sharpen our focus and keep our energy steady. Element delivers the perfect electrolyte ratio with zero sugar, no artificial junk and, more importantly, I think, flavors that we actually look forward to. Drinking. Element is hydration done right and, if you like free, stay tuned because you can actually get a free 8-pack variety sample with any purchase of any flavor when you head to drinkelementcom slash everforward. That's D-R-I-N-K-L-M-N-T dot com slash ever forward. Stay hydrated, stay strong. Drinkelementcom slash ever forward.

29:45 - Jessica (Guest)

Why, where You've said that a couple of times now what value does knowing where this feeling land in our body hold for us to evolve? A lot of mirroring and like attuning to us and helping us feel what's going on inside. And many of us didn't get that kind of attunement. So we're disconnected from our body and in order to heal relational trauma, relational wounds, we need to get in touch with our body, like, and we need to hold the experience in our body and understand that if your gut's falling to the floor, if your heart is racing and you're feeling a lot of sensation inside, that actually is memory. It's not about just what's happening in the here and now. We're also tapping into implicit memory, which my book if you read my book, it's like it's a concept to understand memory and like how memory is stored in the body in a new way. That's all I can. It's complicated. Complicated, I mean I can.

30:38 - Chase (Host)

I can share more, but please, yeah, that's why we're here yeah.

30:41 - Jessica (Guest)

so I think I shared in the beginning when we're born, we're right brain to right brain, beings and we're sensing beings. So just think of this. Like little baby in the world, like we're we're, we're coming into the world and we don't have the ability to think or store memory. Like I'm in a room right now, all we're doing is storing experiences on a sensational level and that's for a while. And so, whatever experiences that we have, we're taking in and storing more sensory experiences than we are explicit, taking in and storing more sensory experiences than we are explicit.

31:16

So when we're in relationship, like if you were my partner and you rolled your eyes and picked up your phone, or you gave me a blank stare and dissociated, my body might light up and be like oh my God, you don't care about me. But also if you dissociated right now and gave me a blank stare and there's a lot of research my infant self might be like oh, my parent, because now you're my primary attachment is not connected to me in this moment, which is terrifying for a child. So in our adult relationships, when our partner disconnects like that, our body usually goes on fire and then we get reactive right. So what we're really doing is we're sensing are you with me? Are you not with me? Am I safe? Am I not safe?

32:00

Every nanosecond, our system is scanning the environment for cues. Am I safe? Are you with me right now? And that's happened from an early age, throughout. But when we are in disconnection, we store those experiences inside, and so when that something similar shows up in our life as an adult, our system remembers and still has a sympathetic activation or a dorsal shutdown through oh my God, you have a blank stare on your face. You're not with me right now. I remember this experience from early on, and I'm gonna be in fetal position, or I'm gonna yell at you or I'm gonna you know'm going to have some reaction to the fact that I don't feel safe in this moment.

32:40 - Chase (Host)

What is a dorsal shutdown?

32:44 - Jessica (Guest)

So yeah, we're talking polyvagal, stephen Porges' work and so, and the embodied brain, so it's like the skull brain, to like the heart and the gut, like these are all. There's like a neuro, there's like a whole system that connects right, like in neuroscience. We say this is the brain, because it's 80 percent more information is being set up this way than down this way the majority of information goes from a gut to the brain, then the brain to the gut correct via the vagus nerve yes, okay, so you are well aware of that.

33:14 - Chase (Host)

So just kind of sharing a little bit more information for the audience.

33:16 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, yeah. So when we're not so, our highest engagement system is kind of like what you're having with me right now, although I'm a little nervous, but there's a sense of eye contact, there's a sense of fluidity, there's a sense that you're with me, we're open, we're receptive, we feel safe. This is how we've evolved in our highest evolution.

33:37 - Chase (Host)

Well, I'm glad you feel safe here. Yes, me too. That's a big goal of mine on the show. It's a safe space, right.

33:44 - Jessica (Guest)

And if you and I were to not feel safe which could happen in a nanosecond you could shift into sympathetic activation, so you could start having thoughts of like she'll like me or I don't know she just whatever. If, if it got really scary, let's say someone came through the door and I had a history of trauma I could go into dorsal, which is preparing my body to die. So your blood, you, you're, you kind of like everything in your system shuts down and you're like dead to conserve energy your blood restricts away from the extremities goes to the primary organs.

34:16 - Chase (Host)

Metabolism shuts down. Right justin shuts down and you're like dead to conserve energy. Blood restricts away from the extremities goes to the primary organs. Metabolism shuts down. Digestion shuts down, yeah. Primary organs kick in, yeah.

34:22 - Jessica (Guest)

Right. So we're always fluctuating through these different states and I don't like to say dorsal, sympathetic, ventral, because the truth is, even when we're having sex or we're playing, we're actually in a mixture of states. You know, we're never really, and in this conversation we're probably floating through many states and I hate when people are like regulate your nervous system and that's like it's not about having a perfect nervous system, it's about getting back into homeostasis and honoring your nervous system when it's fluctuating. But in a nanosecond our nervous system can go from a ventral state to a state of. I'm in danger right now based on nuances or little things that are happening between the energy field, between me and you.

35:09 - Chase (Host)

I want to share. I'm pulling up some notes actually from wow, over two years ago, this, this interview. Do you know B and Azria Benjamin and Azria Becker. I share this quote a lot when I'm talking about subject matter like this and I think it ties in perfectly. This is from their book becoming, but also kind of loosely from our interview. As you discover a version like the goal here of nervous system regulation to your point uh and you know, healing is as you discover a version of yourself that is deeply solid but is never rigid, you will emanate a warmth that makes other people's nervous systems unwind in your presence without you saying a single word. How do you, how do you interpret that? Does that land on you?

35:58 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely so. We're telepathing nervous system to nervous system all the time. So I don't know if I'm fully in ventral right now because I'm nervous, but when you're in a ventral state, your whole body is saying come closer, I'm safe.

36:12

You can be with me and that's where your work shows up, like you were saying before. But you could be walking down the street in a state of ventral. You'll notice more people make eye contact, more people will say hello to you. You will notice more people. You're in sympathetic. You're not. You're not an open, people aren't going to approach you. So we're reading, unconsciously, we're sensing people's nervous system all the time and your nervous system and my nervous system are connected and if you're my partner, they're really connected. And that's where things can get really unsafe, because your nervous system can get dysregulated, which then can make my nervous system dysregulated, and then we can be mad at each other, because we're both. Our nervous systems are dysregulated meanwhile. We didn't mean to do that to each other, we just got dysregulated it's like our, our nervous systems sync up yeah, the relational space is shared.

37:04 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, yeah it's funny, I I get this sensation a lot. Um, I personally I like to microdose psilocybin and I've done, you know, protocols on off kind of thing, taking breaks, and I actually I get that sensation a lot. I get stopped and I stop other people when I'm microdosing. Any insight as to that? It's like is there, like this, this, this physiological barrier that is finally let down because of something like that that allows other people's nervous systems, literally just in passing, to like cause, hey, just you know I got a good vibe, kind of thing? Or hey, like just kind of stopping and engaging more, but it's, it's to your point. It's like that barrier, those barriers meet, that the energetic experience meets long before the actual person to person does.

37:53 - Jessica (Guest)

You're probably more in a ventral state. So you're probably more in a state of safety.

37:58 - Chase (Host)

Okay.

37:58 - Jessica (Guest)

Because you're in a state of safety, your system is registering and it's more open and other people are unconsciously picking up on that and you are literally pulling people towards you. Hmm.

38:10 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, interesting, yeah, fun fact about chase. Another quote people bonded by trauma identify with their partner's pain to the point that they become lost in it, kind of like what we're talking about. This is with the nervous system syncing up ish. So my question around that quote is how do you know if you're in a trauma bond versus a truly healthy connection?

38:32 - Jessica (Guest)

healthy connection. Yeah, Such a good question. I would say that with Trauma Mon and I dive deep. It's layered. But if you're sitting there and saying if my partner could just show up differently, if they could just not cheat, if they could just not do this, if they could just act differently, so you're in this like state which you can stay stuck in for years. It's this fantasy that if they could just act differently, so you're in this like state which you can stay stuck in for years. It's this fantasy that if they could show up differently I'd be in peace, and them to you, and so you're both like wishing the other person could be something that they're not.

39:08 - Chase (Host)

It's like the old I'll be happy when right.

39:11 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, I mean, it's a fantasy to think, oh, if my partner could just return to how they were in the beginning. And I think that what I see in trauma bonds is that people focus more on the other person's wounding too. They overempathize with their partner's little me or their partner's wounds and they lose boundaries. There's more merging. There's less healthy boundary systems. There's less healthy boundary systems. So, you know, an anxiously attached person might over identify with their partner's wounds and put up with a lot of abuse or put up with a lot of things or, you know, feel too empathic to them and self abandon what is going on with themselves and so we'll caretake outside of themselves rather than healing their own trauma.

39:55 - Chase (Host)

We'll try to fix, yeah, and that kind of um kind of like is, in my opinion, a little bit of a scapegoat in terms of responsibility, not to say that maybe that's not true about your partner, right, maybe I think everybody has something to work on, right, but that's just kind of relinquishing responsibility to the relationship and to yourself, and it's easier, it's the easy way out, right, it's the easy way out right, it's the easy way out of the work, versus just going what am I doing in the relationship? What contribution do I have to them not doing the work, kind of thing.

40:25 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, but I don't think it's conscious, like I don't know that, like. So I think it's a protector, because I think, if I can focus on their wounds and their healing, I don't have to be with what's going on inside of me, you know. So I think a lot of that is protecting the person from being with what's inside.

40:45 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, I'm curious, do you think? Is there any? Is there any time? Is there ever a time and a place for the focus to be on the partner instead of the self?

40:54 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, I think for especially anxiously attached people, like they'll be other focused as their adaptive strategy which I could go into detail I don't even think they're aware that they their abandonment wound is taking over or that they're so fixated on the outside that they are not really healing on the inside. I mean, I wrote the book anxiously attached which has sold so well and people were like why don't you go write a book avoidantly attached? And I'm like no one will buy it, right? Or the anxiously attached people will go out and buy it for the avoidant people, right.

41:27 - Chase (Host)

So you need this yeah.

41:29 - Jessica (Guest)

It's our. It's the anxious, more anxious attachment style to say I want to cause because of the way the wounding was and we had to leave our body to attend to our parents, we will leave our body to attend to our partner. That's the adaptive strategy. It's brilliant. So most people aren't even conscious that they're focusing so much on saving their person but really self-abandoning themselves. Or maybe they become conscious. Even with my own therapist, she's like we spend a lot of time focusing on someone else and not on you and it took a while to really shift.

42:02 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, that's not an easy thing to hear, right.

42:08 - Jessica (Guest)

Oh, she was really tough and I am so grateful for it. Now she said some things to me. I remember once I said what if I'm alone forever? She's like what if you are, can we just sit in that? And we sat for like an hour and I was like that's terrifying. She's like let's just meet all of that together. And she just never let me have like protective statements Like, oh sure you'll meet someone. Or you're beautiful and successful. What if you don't? Let's sit with that for a minute. It's like, oh sure you'll meet someone. Or you're.

42:38 - Chase (Host)

You know you're beautiful and success. What if? What if you don't? Let's? Let's sit with that for a minute. I'll share something personal here. I I'm very happily married. I've been with my wife, we've been together for 12 years and I want to be with her every day for the rest of my life.

42:57

But a few years ago, when I went kind of through my deep, deep work, uh, of just like finally things coming to a head and finally facing them with a lot of different modalities and and true truth, really, I kind of had this realization of that I would be fine if I was alone.

43:15

If, god forbid, you know something happened to her or whatever, I would be fine alone. And that felt really weird to say. Also kind of like the same feeling of when I worked through the traumatic death of my father and getting to a point of going I'm actually grateful for his passing. It's a weird thing to say out loud to go, despite all the amazing things I have in my life, whatever I've worked for, whatever you know nature, nurture, blessings, whatever privilege, whatever you want to call it If everything were to go away and I were alone, I felt like that was a major benchmark for me in my emotional state, my spiritual stages, my total ability to sit and be with myself, by myself, forever. What do you think about that? Is that a hallmark for kind of this safety space within our own walls?

44:17 - Jessica (Guest)

own walls. I think for me and, and it sounds like, for you, there comes a point in our life where we have to face ourselves in the extent of, maybe, our fears, and so I. You did it in relationship, which is beautiful, and some people do out of relationship, but now you're choosing to be with her.

44:31

And it's not coming from an unconscious fear of being alone. You are okay. It's beautiful that you did that in relationship through your own work. And now you're like I would be okay alone, but I'm choosing her versus I'm not okay alone, I need to stay in this relationship. So there's kind of an evolution to like. I feel like, because I face so much of my aloneness, which is hard, I don't need to be in romantic relationship. I would choose to be in more romantic. I have so much more intimacy in my relationships in general and it the paradox is, once you go through something like that, I'm like never alone, I'm like, so connected with everything, but the fear of being alone isn't like, isn't the, it's not the belief, or it's not like it's not making me make choices in my life anymore.

45:23

So it's beautiful that you, you came to that and you can look at your wife every day and saying I'm choosing to be with you. It's not. It's not this unconscious fear of loneliness that keeps me in.

45:32 - Chase (Host)

And it's beautiful what you said. You know you're, you're never alone. You know you're intimate with every relationship with you know yourself. I think I'm hearing it's like the same description in relationship out of relationship kind of thing. It's the same embodiment sensation.

45:49 - Jessica (Guest)

And I would say and I talk about this in the book too all in all insecure patterns, at the core there's an abandonment theme, so you might have touched on that, like through your own work, kind of touching on that deeper floor Like avoidance and anxious and disorganized. It's all rooted in deep abandonment, with our parents not being to be emotionally with us, so we lose the sense of with and we feel alone and so that gets like that shows up in our adult relationships and we have to kind of revisit that and heal that and also acknowledge what we went through and I think that kind of moves us through this feeling. Now I feel interconnected with everyone and I have such deep relationships and my abandonment wound isn't making my choices anymore All right, let's go there.

46:35 - Chase (Host)

I think this is another area for a lot of people that is scary and but also necessary.

46:41

So we've talked we've talked about, kind of like the self and in relationship. I do believe that in order for us to to really get on the healing journey, we have to go up the chain Right. We have to go to mom and dad, Walk us through what that looks like. Walk us through what that looks like how and why does going up the food chain, so to speak, of kind of sharing these needs or just kind of conversing with our parents to kind of see what's there? What value does that hold for our healing journey and getting to this place of safety?

47:10 - Jessica (Guest)

I mean, I write about it in book about asking your parents for stuff. I don't know that you have to go up the chain, but I do think you need to go down to the root. So maybe it's we're saying the same thing. Some people don't have the luxury of going to their parents, or they don't have the safety of going to their parents to find getting more information.

47:29 - Chase (Host)

Yes, Okay, yeah. So then how can we, I guess through the lens of examining our childhood and with our parents, you know, with or without them like physically kind of doing this with or without them?

47:40 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, so for me it's getting in touch with your body and it's getting in touch with your memory system. So all of our memories are stored in our body and so your body remembers so much what it felt like to be around your mom, what it felt like to be around your sister or your brother or what it. What did it feel like in your home? Like I think you have to have from my, from my own experience and my own evolution, I had an. I have an embodied sense of what it feels like to be in the crib. I have an embodied sense, yeah, of what it felt like at different stages in my life and as I revisited them, I had support. So now those memories don't feel like scary anymore. They actually are accompanied with so much support and holding.

48:24 - Chase (Host)

So are you saying that we can get to our root cause trauma, or even just root cause body sensation, emotional state back to our childhood without our parents?

48:39 - Jessica (Guest)

Yes.

48:40 - Chase (Host)

Just accessing it through ourselves.

48:42 - Jessica (Guest)

Yes, well, usually another nervous system helping you. Absolutely, it's all stored in your body. Everything is stored in your body.

48:50 - Chase (Host)

Okay, I want to poke a little bit more here, so.

48:54 - Jessica (Guest)

Your body remembers everything.

48:55 - Chase (Host)

I agree with that, that I'm struggling to kind of so then would there be any extra value? Let's say, let's say I do have my mom, I do have my dad and I want to converse with them about getting to what I believe might be. Or is this root cause, traumatic event or even just uncovering things?

49:15 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, what's different there versus not? I mean some of the questionnaires in some of the pamphlets I get are what were your parents going through when you were in womb? What was the stress level like in your home? What was the relationship like between the two of them? So you can get a sense of your original paradigm by understanding their stress levels. Were they in survival mode? Were they anxious? Were they fighting all the time? Were they loving? All these things impact you and you can start to get an incense like oh, my mom was always anxious and my dad was never home. What would it feel like to be a sensing infant in the hands of a mother who's always anxious, so father's never home.

49:55 - Chase (Host)

Like maybe role playing this emotional state a little bit to see if it rings true.

49:59 - Jessica (Guest)

You don't have to role-play it. You have to say can we go into the body and try to re-experience it or see if you don't? Even In really good therapy, you don't even have to try in the space between with enough safety, it just the inherent wisdom and the memories just surface Like safety is the treatment. And it's amazing how much I regressed and how vulnerable you can get in a sense of safety with someone who's knowing what they're doing and they shouldn't be pushing an agenda on you. Your own conscious awareness, your own neural nets, your own memories. Mine came up organically as I moved through the process and many people are like well, I want a formula and I want a path. It comes up between us as your system starts to register. I can regress. You are a safe person and you have to also go into the body, but that's important. And they and you have to also go into the body, but that's important.

50:56 - Chase (Host)

So I'm a new parent and it almost kind of makes me wonder sometimes is there a level of too much awareness that I have around the impact, consciously and subconsciously, I'm having on my son, with my son, do you think there is such a thing, or is it just blanket statement here? Objectively good for any parent to be aware of the conscious and subconscious impact they're having on their child?

51:22 - Jessica (Guest)

I think when you understand this stuff it can be confusing, because you know how much you can kind of impact your kids.

51:28 - Chase (Host)

Perfectly said. Perfectly said yes.

51:30 - Jessica (Guest)

But also a lot for your listeners. A lot of what is happening is intergenerational trauma. So you could have the best intentions in the world, but if your nervous system goes into certain states and you can't hold emotional availability, that's not your fault. So the number one thing that creates secure attachment isn't love, it's emotional attunement, it's the sense of being with, it's being there enough of the time for your kid to know that he has a sense of safety. You could love your kid a lot, and if you can't be with him, that's not necessarily your fault. That might be because your parents weren't with you enough and you haven't developed the capacity to be there for them enough. That's why doing the work creates a capacity for you to be with more of you and as if you're with more of you, you can be more with them. It's a. It's a a system.

52:29 - Chase (Host)

I'm loving this. Help us understand. Help me understand more of okay, recognizing this isn't my fault. I don't want this to therefore then just be an out because oh, it's not my fault, then like, no wonder I can't be the parent I want to be. How can I go from I recognize this is not my fault to, or what's a better phrase um, it's not my fault, but it is my responsibility?

52:55 - Jessica (Guest)

Do your own work. So you got to do your own work as a parent. You got to check in with your nervous system. You got to get support. You got to understand what's activating you. You got to try to build some safety. You got to you can repair at any age and you got to become more conscious and try to be more conscious and provide that safety and be so kind, Like if you have a lot of terror and you have a lot of disorganization and you can't show up for your kid that way, yes, you are going to pass down your nervous system, but you can repair it right now.

53:27

You can start the repair right now. You can start the work right now. And the more work you do with yourself, the more you will show, because you're showing up for your inner child, your sensational world, differently. You're building relationship with your body. You're building relationship with your story. You're having different dialogue with yourself If you're really doing the work and you're going to have different dialogue with your kid just by the sheer fact of you doing it with yourself.

53:50 - Chase (Host)

Okay, For some reason, this aspect of um you're talking about inner dialogue right there this aspect of kind of time traveling with inner dialogue popped in. So I think we can sit here and talk to ourself and with ourself right here in the present moment. We can sit here and talk to ourself and with ourself Childhood, how or should we kind of talk to and with ourself, future self, but what value would be held there to kind of get to future plan?

54:19 - Jessica (Guest)

I don't know that I talked to my future self.

54:22 - Chase (Host)

Or is there value to be had in thinking of future self to like come back to this anchor point of hey, if you get to this state or if this ever happens, like I don't know, I'm struggling to kind of like really, I think say this Like chapter four is the internally present past.

54:38 - Jessica (Guest)

I think what most people don't understand is our past selves are always alive with us all the time, so, and usually speaking to us through sensation. So most time people think, oh, my adult self is in the room and I'm like, so I think we have part, I do parts work, ok, okay, and about meeting those parts. So we have all these parts within us and different parts get activated at different times. Based on the sensational experiences and understanding, memory and all that, we can say, oh, my god, like my little girl is here in the room or whatever. As far as my future self, I don't think I have conversations with my future self. I do live in, I do this practice that's going to be out there in the world, but in imagination, and so I'll spend time imagining what I want or how I want to feel, or I'll cultivate a feeling Is this manifesting.

55:34 - Chase (Host)

Do you consider this the same thing?

55:36 - Jessica (Guest)

It's something called somatic dreaming and it's trademarked by someone. I'll cultivate a feeling. Is this manifesting? Do you consider this the same thing? Or it's something called somatic dreaming and it's trademarked by someone, and um, but it's. It's cultivating a felt sense of something that you want, but not spiritual, bypassing what's living in your body, and I being strong with that, because big part of the work is dealing with what's stored in the body, not just escaping to what you want, and it's, it's a, it's a meeting of both. Okay, so I think that's the only kind of future thing that I do is I'm like, oh, you know, imagining, you know, and I think we need that piece, but I don't know that. I talk to my future self, but maybe you do.

56:16 - Chase (Host)

I talk to myself all the time. Okay, I think. I have another way to kind of repackage this. Okay, so you said sensory imprinting, sensation, sensation imprinting. So if a lot of what we are now becoming consciously aware of from our past was subconscious sensation imprinting, can we now, here in the present, consciously imprint a sensation that we can come back to in the future? Like to choose, to choose.

56:47 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, well it's, it's conscious. The sensory stuff is conscious. Maybe you're not aware of it, but it's living in your body right now, and so people are like, oh, and I can refer to this sensation as unconscious, but the truth is, this is very conscious. You might not just be tapping into it, but there's something called resourcing so we can like resource, like I have a really good relationship with my grandmother growing up and she was very loving and nurturing, so I can come back to that sensation in that relationship and cultivate that experience at any time. Is that what you're referring?

57:20 - Chase (Host)

to yes. Yeah, we're getting there, yeah.

57:22 - Jessica (Guest)

So you can. You can do that without spiritual bypassing. So we need to resource healthy experiences and we also need to address the scarier experiences. Are you know and not you know? Actually, one needs to support the other. So I call them inner and outer anchors and we usually in the book you spend time kind of exploring your anchors outer anchors people who are safe, and inner anchors people, places, animals that have created a sense of safety and love for you, so that when we go into the harder stuff you have some resources. So it's not just terror, right, yeah, safety and love for you, so that when we go into the harder stuff you have some resources. So it's not just terror, right. And even with one family member like I had the wheel of attachment, which is a freebie for your audience you can have secure experiences with your dad and then you can have avoidant experiences with your dad. Like you can have many different types of experiences with one relationship, so you can have safety with someone and also pain with them. It's nuanced and it's complicated.

58:22 - Chase (Host)

Do you think let's say, let's go with the dad example here. Let's say the overarching sensation, relation to father, is safety, is love, is all these things. But let's be honest, we're human, there's a very dynamic aspect of the relationship. Let's be honest, we're human, there's a very dynamic aspect of the relationship. How can we then become aware of maybe the antithesis of those? The pendulum swings both ways right. There has to be a less than ideal experience. How can we access them from a conscious place to learn from them but also not kind of like taint or deviate from the majority of safety relation we have to that relationship?

59:04 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, and I would say most clients come in protecting their parents and avoidant of any negative experiences. Oh well, my parents loved me and they tried really hard and I have to work really hard to. They did love you and they tried really hard and they impacted you, and so we have to move into the places where they might've impacted you. And a lot of people are necessarily protected against really getting in touch with how their parents have impacted them as a protection to survive in life.

59:30

Sure, yeah, and so some of my work is to work through those layers so that they can get an embodied sense of what other things might have happened which might have not felt so good. And so it's never about my parent being bad or good, it's just about certain experiences impacting you in certain ways and kind of really moving those experiences from the body to the right hemisphere, integrating them. It's all about integration. So I would say most people are in denial and until we have safe people in safe environments and the right way, I hope they stay in denial, because sometimes getting in touch without the right support is too overwhelming.

01:00:12 - Chase (Host)

So you've been talking about how you know the body keeps the score and these things are physically imprinted and stored there, and then also we're moving things around as we navigate this healing journey. Does that have an effect, physiologically, on our health? If the trauma is there, we find it, we address it, we release it, we move it Does that have a negative impact on our general health?

01:00:38 - Jessica (Guest)

It has a positive impact. So if you keep the body stored, we're keeping inflammation, we're repeating patterns, our nervous system staying in fight or flight or freeze. As you move through this process and like meet different parts of yourself and hold and co-regulate these experiences, you're expanding your own window of tolerance for what's going on inside of you, you're creating internal space and ease and eventually your whole body is in a state, more in a state of safety, which is earned security.

01:01:11 - Chase (Host)

So we're totally releasing these things. It's not just like taking one file and moving it from here to there kind of thing, it's just in a better place.

01:01:18 - Jessica (Guest)

It's not really releasing. I would say we're integrating and we are building a bigger container to be with our experience, through others and through support, and then the experiences loses their charge and the memory system changes and then we're actually integrating. So it lives in the body and most of us are living in our left hemisphere and disconnect. We have to move to the right hemisphere, we have to slow down, we have to become conscious of our body, we have to develop interoception. Then we can be with more and it actually moves up the stream. We re-experience it. Some of it lives in the amygdala and eventually gets integrated. So we don't get rid of anything. We actually lean in and kind of bring it all in and take it in and kind of accept it and be with it and build a relationship to it differently.

01:02:13 - Chase (Host)

You know it's kind of cliche, but you know everything that happened in our past. It's not like we can leave it there, it's always with us. I think you even said earlier, you know our past is always with this kind of thing. And again, personally speaking, I think that was one of the most, that was one of the biggest aha moments I had of addressing the hard things in my life and my past that I was running from through the lens of the proper channels. Right, I, you know I, I'm moving forward, I'm spearheading, I'm motivated, I'm disciplined, I'm just.

01:02:42

All systems go, but it wasn't until I stopped to face all those things. It's like I was just always adding another link in the chain to this giant ball that was always going to be there. I was just adding more links to get me away from it until you I turned and faced this thing, these things, and go. Okay, I have to develop a better relationship with them because I can run as far away as possible, but it doesn't mean that they're not still there. So I don't think there's a question there. I'm just sharing part of the work, right?

01:03:14 - Jessica (Guest)

You had the safety and the support and the timing where you could do that and it was like a pivotal moment in your life. Same with me. Like I left a relationship that was chaotic, I had a safe environment, I had the right support and then I could face more. You know, and that's such a blessing when something like that can happen and a lot of us are avoiding because we have to, and that's okay, Like if you're listening, that's okay, Like that's how we survive. And it's not until our system like I could sit here right now and if you were my therapist and I didn't feel safe, my systems, I can't fake safety it's not until we're truly slowing down and we feel safe that our system will allow us to really kind of access more of this.

01:04:00 - Chase (Host)

Do you think people believe they're faking safety right now?

01:04:05 - Jessica (Guest)

I think most people are doing the best they can and adaptive and surviving and long for this freedom and it's terrifying to face. These parts are terrifying and if you're listening, you're not meant to face any of this alone. You're not meant to heal alone. You're not meant to be alone in this process. You are. You need to be so supported. The irony is you need so much support and I mean that helped me but then also means you need to be vulnerable and lean on support, which is also hard for a lot of people and myself included.

01:04:37 - Chase (Host)

Yeah, it's not easy, but it is the most important thing we could ever do.

01:04:41 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, I was at a family function recently and one of my cousins said to me oh, the past is in the past. And I'm like, if you understood interpersonal neurobiology, you would never say that the past is never in the past. And if you want to think that, fine. But once you get in touch with how the past is really showing up every single day in your life, you become conscious. And when you become conscious, you evolve. And I think that's what we're here to do is keep evolving and healing.

01:05:10 - Chase (Host)

If there's one thing that's abundantly clear in my life of of moving forward and wellbeing and healing, is that the past is the most reliable thing that's always present.

01:05:21 - Jessica (Guest)

Right? Yes, and it is. But I don't know that many people are conscious of that and you can change your past memories by revisiting them. So a core piece of healing in this book is attachment. Wound happens, so let's say it's abandonment wound or shame's shame it's. You go back to the original event and you receive what you didn't get at the time. What do you mean? So if you were abandoned, let's go there and let's have another nervous system, meet you there over and over and over again, and then that memory is never alone again because you're starting to become accompanied. If you were ashamed and ashamed and ashamed, and another person starts to meet you with all these experiences, with unconditional acceptance, you're, you're disconfirming the memory.

01:06:04 - Chase (Host)

So you're changing the memory system.

01:06:07 - Jessica (Guest)

By giving yourself what you didn't get at the time of the wound, you're transforming the whole thing, and that's what we need to do. We need to receive what we didn't need, what we needed at the time.

01:06:20 - Chase (Host)

You're time traveling.

01:06:22 - Jessica (Guest)

Essentially, yes, with another person and another nervous system who said wow, you were an anxious baby or you were left alone. And let me witness that, because that really did happen. Let me meet it, let me co-regulate with you and enough of that. That lonely little girl doesn't feel alone anymore. So you're literally changing your memory system when you do the work, but you need a person to do it Like it's not really done alone. What's wounded in relationship is healed in relationship and that's neuroscience. Like that's not me saying that, that's a well-known fact.

01:06:55 - Chase (Host)

Another quote from your work is at the root of this process is the deepening compassion that healing brings. Bit by bit, we become anchored and can say I am safe, we are safe together. What role do you think specifically compassion plays in transforming our relationships into places of true safety?

01:07:18 - Jessica (Guest)

I think that through my own work it was a very humbling experience which I feel like you can resonate with and you start to realize how vulnerable we are and how impressionable we are. I think you start to realize that most people, even when they're doing behaviors that are you need to set boundaries with, most people on this planet are doing the best they can with what they received or else they would do it differently. And when you really understand that, you're like oh, this I think I wrote in my last chapter. You know, when I'm driving down the street and a guy gives me the finger and he's angry like my, my response is like oh, I bet he has like three years of crying in there and he's not been allowed and he's all this road rage.

01:08:05

And I just think you start to understand that people are so adaptive and people are really. Most people are trying or can only do as good as they received and most people didn't receive what they need. And you start to look at the world differently. You start to look at people's behaviors differently, you start to have compassion, you start to see how everyone's kind of suffering or moving through their own struggles, you just, you just have a deeper understanding or compassion for people and what we go through yeah, and then ultimately, um more compassion for yourself yeah, and I think the two kind of go hand in hand.

01:08:44

But yeah, I I have so much more compassion for people than I use. I even have compassion for people who have hurt me because I'm like their adaptive strategy was that I don't have to have them in my life anymore, but they were doing what they knew to survive at the time, to get through.

01:09:03 - Chase (Host)

I'm always curious with authors what was, if there was a revelation or just a something that surprised you when writing this book, when researching, when putting it out there because you have to know a good amount of the subject matter then you have to research it and you have to kind of put pen to paper. What was the one thing that just kind of surprised you throughout this whole process?

01:09:27 - Jessica (Guest)

it's not that I wasn't doing my work with anxiously attached I was. I was in a partnership and we did couples work, but I think with safe. I think that my own embodied experience like humbled me and brought me to my knees in a way that, like I re-experienced such early things that I was like the science or the memory, Like I think I think like everything just fell into place. I feel very embodied now and I feel like I have the lived experience you know, and I'm still healing. I'm not saying that I couldn't go, but I'm like I went through a lot of re-experiencing and that was as a practitioner. I think people expect me to have it figured out.

01:10:15 - Chase (Host)

Sure.

01:10:16 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, and like have perfect relationships and I'm in this book and I'm like I to have it figured out. Sure, yeah, and like have perfect relationships and I'm in this book and I'm like I was in fetal position. There were days where I couldn't go grocery shopping. You know, I was dissociating. So I think it was just. I guess the healing process humbled me and that's the only way I can kind of describe it.

01:10:35 - Chase (Host)

No, no, of course I would have to guess, you know. Thank you for sharing that as well. So we didn't actually get to it. But before I ask my final question, you know, safe um, s, a, f, e. What is unique about that and what are you bringing to the table with this new book, this new work? It's new approach, this um, this kind of breakdown.

01:10:54 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, I mean I think that we all want safety. Like it's such a great word I hopefully people grab it, but I think understanding how to build secure relationships and how to heal wounds and how to have more safety in your relationships people don't really know how to do that. So this book is a roadmap. It offers somatic meditations. It literally tells you what you need in order to heal. You still need other.

01:11:19

You can't heal in a book alone, but like it just provides you with so much. It also provides you with a deeper understanding of attachment theory. So it's it's beyond the labels and I have a freebie for your audience so they can see the wheel of attachment. But I want people to not look at it from the left hemisphere. I want people to start to understand the nuances and attachment and how we move on the wheel and how we're never just one style and how different attachment things come up. So this book is like a deep dive into that. And there's a lot of neuroscience in this book, so I want people to have like a grasp of the science too.

01:11:52 - Chase (Host)

It's great and I always appreciate that when anything is being presented to me. You know, when I'm reading something or talking to somebody, it's like the personal experience is always. It's humanizing and it's great and it's relatable. But when we can actually get to the science of what's going on, like what later, quite literally what makes us tick, it almost adds a new unique layer of of like compassion and understanding of going okay, there's this system I need to understand first, and then there's like the me part of it as well.

01:12:19 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah, I mean I think my some people might say that I I put too much of myself like memoir, like some people will tell me they love that I disclose so much. But this book is packed with science. Like there's so much interpersonal neurobiology. My mentor, bonnie Bannanock, who there's a video for her and I talking for your audience helped me like I had a lot of help. Like it is deep in science, even the stories and the way things are described. The science is just throughout the whole thing.

01:12:48 - Chase (Host)

You're just getting a much deeper understanding of human behavior and development and in my opinion, it kind of helps wrap our head around to go oh, healing is physiologically possible, Right, it's scientifically possible, Right. It's not just what? In my opinion it's that. And but it's not just. I did some magical work and I changed my mind, Right? Kind of thing.

01:13:11 - Jessica (Guest)

Like, oh, here we go with inner child work again, right, yeah, no, I think the science doesn't heal you, but it keeps you sane, and that's why I put it in the book.

01:13:21 - Chase (Host)

Yeah.

01:13:21 - Jessica (Guest)

Yeah.

01:13:22 - Chase (Host)

This was amazing. Thank you so much. Congratulations on the new book and all the new work you're putting out. My last question let's bring it back home to the theme of the show living a life ever forward. What does that mean to you?

01:13:35 - Jessica (Guest)

Well, you know, I told you in the beginning of the show like I have a hard time ever forward because so much of my moving forward was going backwards, right? So so much of my moving forward was actually slowing down and being with, rather than trying to get to the next spot or the next thing. So the word forward is a word that I struggle with. So for me, forward meant inward, forward meant down, forward meant pausing, forward meant collapsing, forward meant facing. It didn't actually mean forward. So I think it's hard for me to relate to that phrase.

01:14:17 - Chase (Host)

I always say there's never a wrong or right answer.

01:14:20

Right, and I was kind of sharing with you, letting you know I was going to ask that question at the beginning. I'm very much in alignment with that current definition, with the current season of my life and, yeah, I used to believe. You know, everford came from my late father and it was this mantra that he had and something that he embodied, and when he died I picked up that torch, so to speak, and I thought that that meant literally keep moving forward and sometimes, in some seasons of on, get it done. But that will get you to a place. But if you want to get to a place and actually know why, or ever want to actually know how and why to move forward in the right direction, that is embodied, that is intuitive, it came from. What you were just describing is actually stopping learning, to be still going back so that I can have complete and utter awareness of where I am now, so that I know the next time I put my foot out and I'm moving forward, it's by design.

01:15:25 - Jessica (Guest)

Right, it's with intention and direction, not just for the sake of Not in sympathetic activation.

01:15:29 - Chase (Host)

Right, yeah, and I did the same thing too. Listen, I.

01:15:33 - Jessica (Guest)

I, I climbed the ladder of success. I've done all the forward, moving to realize that I can tell, just by sitting with you and conversing with you, that you've done like so much slowing down and being with. So yeah, it's the forward word that I struggle with.

01:15:49 - Chase (Host)

Well, also, I'm locked into it now. It's the brand, it's the show.

01:15:52 - Jessica (Guest)

Sorry to give you a hard time.

01:15:54 - Chase (Host)

Maybe I need to go ever here ever present, no, no, ever forward.

01:15:58 - Jessica (Guest)

Like ever forward might be slowing down and being with it just can be different things.

01:16:03 - Chase (Host)

Well, Jessica, this is my pleasure. Thank you so much. We'll have everything linked in the show notes and video description box on YouTube. Where can they go right now to connect with you, learn more, get the book, all the things?

01:16:12 - Jessica (Guest)

Right yeah, so there'll be a free PDF for your audience, beyond the label, so they'll get the wheel of attachment right away. And then there's a 40 minute video of me and my mentor talking about what it feels like to move from insecurity to security. You can get the book anywhere Amazon, barnes and Noble.

01:16:29 - Chase (Host)

Did you do an audible audio book?

01:16:30 - Jessica (Guest)

I did love it.

01:16:31 - Chase (Host)

Okay. So if you guys want to listen to Jessica, then you can actually get it for free. Here's my hack with Audible. A lot of people have Audible. It's my favorite audio book app. Just sign up under a new email address. You can get a free 30 day trial. It's audibletrialcom. Slash ever forward. You get a free 30 day trial, which is a free book. Right and then you can cancel whenever so.

01:16:49 - Jessica (Guest)

Right, yes, that's one day. One way to get the book for free Life hack.

01:16:53 - Chase (Host)

Just create new emails. You can get freebies all over the place.

01:16:56 - Jessica (Guest)

Right, yeah, no, and I want to hear from all of you and if, if the book resonates with you, please reach out. I've been saying that on every podcast and I'm like will I be able to respond to every single person? But, um, it's really important because I did put my heart and soul and a ton of science in this book, so I hope it reaches the people that it needs to reach.

01:17:13 - Chase (Host)

Well, we'll reach at least my audience here. I can't speak for everybody else, but I have a feeling it'll be fine. I have a feeling it'll be fine. Yes, thank you. I appreciate that. For more information on everything you just heard, make sure to check this episode show notes or head to everforwardradiocom.