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After a vulnerable post from @Vanessa Cormier I wanted to use her question as a guide to speak about safety in relationships and why we can lose capacity to be in healthy secure relationships.
Without this awareness, we slip into patterns and repeat the same cycle again and again.
To learn how to break the cycle, pay attention, and grab a pen.
Welcome to the TriggerProof podcast.
This is the first season of the Podcast which are audio renditions of
Facebook Live Video Transmissions done for the “TriggerProof” Facebook Community.
These were set up by request of our community members who wanted an opportunity to listen
to insights, tools, and strategies to help heal relationship dynamics, deepen intimacy,
and master the fine art of Autonomic Nervous System Regulation so that we can build resilience,
heal from the past, and become active operators of our mind, body, and life.
This first season wasn’t designed to be a podcast, so you’ll notice the audio isn’t
Professional Studio Quality (like it is on season 2 as we’ve upgraded incrementally).
These trainings are designed to introduce and deepen you to the most critical 2 skills we’ve never been taught:
1) The skill and practice of taking our triggers (Nervous System Activations) and turning them into deeper safety and self-love,
2) The skill and practice of taking conflict (that happens in any relationship) and turning them into deeper intimacy between the parties involved.
Not learning these two critical skills at this time in history costs us dearly: Physical and Mental health is on the DECLINE.
Doing this deep level of healing work can break the cycle of Intergenerational Trauma that didn’t start with you.
It didn’t start with you, but it can end with you,
#Cyclebreaker.
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Join my Facebook Group to help you understand yourself, control your triggers, regulate your nervous system and know what's keeping you stuck in these times of crisis:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/triggerproof
Hello Hello! Can you see me? Can you hear me? It's good to do another trigger proof transmission. Today's transmission was inspired by Vanessa. She did a little post in the Facebook community and wow! I could feel the angst in her post. I could feel and sense this deep experience of
shame, this experience of unworthiness, this experience of anxious attachment. Talking about an affair... my goodness... Like what's more triggering than going through a relationship, discovering that there's an affair and then you have to navigate your way through that. Rebuild the trust again hopefully you have a partner, who you know, if they do the work... if they get, really get the foundation, the fundamentals of understanding nervous system, understanding safety, you know what that entails... if they can... if they can do that... a breakdown like an affair can actually be a godsend, worked with. I can think of one two three couples right now that I'm just off the top of my head... Three people off the top of my head who reached out to me because of affairs and all three of them were at a point where they were almost ready to call it quits. At some point they got to... I want... I need to call it "quits" and now based on the work that they've done, their relationships are actually stronger and one of them in particular is a couple Caleb and Jenna. They both decided to actually do the work together which is very inspiring and so guiding them through all of this has been really inspiring and if you asked me 10 years ago... if you know that if you told me 10 years ago in other words that I was going to be helping people through this level of crisis and conflict as a chiropractor, I'm like what the hell! Like what right do I have as a chiropractor to be helping people through this. Well! I can guarantee you that wasn't my intention starting off. I wanted to understand my anxiety that was where it all became but this is where my journey, you know when I first graduated from chiropractic, I thought you know the anxiety of my life... this constant push push push... go go go... this "not-enoughness" that's driving me... it's got to stop somewhere and I thought that by the time I graduate... when I became a chiropractor then it would go away because hey I made it right! I graduated... I'm smart... I have a doctor in front of my name and I realized that at every stage, there's a new anxiety and I didn't get it. I thought it would go away and it was very frustrating so very quickly within my chiropractic practice. I realized I had to address that. I had to really go back and address it because I wasn't enjoying coming to work and I felt like a [ __ ] hypocrite. If I could be honest with you. I felt like I didn't have a right to be talking to people about health and wellness, when I myself was worried about my student loans. I was worried about relationships. I was you know, 25, 26 and I was just, oh my God! I was just a gong show. Just dating everything and trying to bang everything that walked at that time. Even started Salsa dancing because I wanted to you know get laid. It was all about getting laid and getting paid. If I could... if I could be honest with you, 26 ,27... and all of a sudden I'm overcome by this anxiety which led me to exploring the work of Dr. John D. Martini, who's also a chiropractor. Who's moved on and teach us how perceptions can impact our way of being and I discovered that by simply asking myself a series of questions, I can change my perception of the stress that's in front of me and kind of have like an opening... have an insight... have with what he calls the breakthrough experience. This... you've had it before, where you have this awakening, awareness and you see, you kind of like, you feel expansive. Now to the next level and I just really dug his work and I started delving more into these perceptive kind of shifts and lo and behold, I became successful. I could teach others how to do it but the one area of my life that suffered was relationships. The anxiety of relationships. I would keep repeating patterns again and again and again and no matter how much I try to cognitively change the story and I would do that you know all these Demartini worksheets and judge your neighbor worksheets and I would do that but there was one thing that really I couldn't get a a firm grasp on and that was to "how to really feel safe in my body?" "How to have a relationship that felt secure?" That wasn't transactional. That wasn't based on her... You know but based on kind of rescuing the other person because I would always end up in rescue operations in some way. Being rescued for my loneliness and insecurity and then rescuing her from her emotional issues, physical issues... you name it. I could fix your issues. That's how I... That's how I became very very good at attracting people into my life, whether it was clients, business. It's because I can really kind of tune in and fix things. I've learned so many skills on healing... you know! My wife has been breastfeeding and she's got upper back pain. Well guess what her husband can fix that. I'm Mr. fix-it for everything and that's my superpower and so imagine going on first dates. I go on first dates and you know I can't shut this [ __ ] off and I would end up having these wonderful conversations with women and who you know... when you're on a first date, what are you going to talk. You're going to talk about your Ex. You're going to talk about your former relationship and so I was able to very well diagnose and kind of help them through and sometimes using my method move them to tears about something and so it's kind of like a weird superpower that I had and I would use it to my advantage but the one thing that phased me was my inability to have healthy relationships. So lo and behold... lo and behold, I find myself after my divorce, nine relationships later, finally to one that just can't be ignored anymore. It was so toxic. It was so demoralizing and I couldn't get out of it. I felt really entangled. That's why I have a webinar called "Should I stay or go?" because it's very meaningful to me. I've lived it. I'm not only speaking from a neuroscience perspective from you know, clinical application of helping people. I actually had to walk that. I'm embarrassed to say I had to actually walk that path first... and so what I discovered was that I was missing something and it wasn't my fault that I was missing. It just wasn't addressed and that was stored survival trauma that was in my body and this survival trauma that's in my body is really... it's insidious... It doesn't only come from trauma with a capital "T". I didn't realize I was carrying trauma because you know my parents are great people, you know. Sure you know the odd spanking here and there, once in a while. Like I don't like I really don't remember like abuse, abuse, like that. They're wonderful. It just had a lot of anxiety. They carried their own cultural shames and that is that comes through in body language, that comes through in just all forms of communication. The language you choose to talk to your children. It actually comes through your nervous system and so what I want to introduce you to perhaps is a concept that the the little t traumas are just as impactful if not more than the big t traumas that only happen a few times. The little t traumas of being raised with kind of toxic shame. You know... because of cultural norms. Maybe you had religious trauma. You know a lot of the the people that we help our students... the students that are working. That we're working with. A lot of them come from religious trauma and it's really slippery because you can't really see it. You can't see it but it's felt. It's felt when you know holiday seasons come up and then all of a sudden you have memories from childhood getting bullied for example or um you know arguments with different faiths and religions and you know isolating yourself from the worldly people. You know what I mean? It's like sometimes this happens. It's you know... we're born into a fish bowl of dirty water and we don't even know that it's dirty water. We just think it's water and so these conditions, these kind of systems let's call it. These family systems, religious systems, sociological systems could be little t trauma plus add in the big t traumas which you and I know exactly about and all of a sudden now... you know, you have found yourself repeating certain things in relationship dynamics that you didn't know were at all related to those things but usually in your between 30s and 40s between you know, usually the people that reach out unless you know they're really astute they start to follow this content and they're like damn this is relating Nima. I love what you're saying. This is what'll happen on DM. I love what you're saying. This is relating. I'm also Demartini student or whatever. I totally love his work. Got a lot out of it but I'm finding myself in the same patterns. How are you able to break it and I love sharing. What I went through beyond the cognitive work and I learned how to get into my body and create safety there and some of the things that I learned before I wanted to teach it to anybody else. I just needed to make sure that I was congruent with it so I found myself for the very first time in my life in a relationship where it's secure. There's a secureness there and the way that I how I know it's secure is because the way that we do conflict is so masterful. If I do say so myself. I'm so proud of us. Like how many times, after we get into an argument, we get into conflict, I give her a high five. I say I'm so proud of us you know and I feel great being able to say that because I never had conflict modeled for me. Let me know if you can resonate with that. I never had proper conflict modeled. It's called what's called ruptures. We've never had these ruptures. The repair of these ruptures modeled but it's probably the the most important skill I've learned in everything I've ever learned in my entire life. If I can keep going upstream. It's the science the neuroscience of repairing attachment ruptures
because if we don't learn how to repair them, they leave... they're left kind of like open source. It's like walking around with open source. Imagine that most people actually I find... well, I guess the ones that reach out to me are like two people living with one another with open source constantly picking at them so today's question by Vanessa which I'm just going to read what she just said there. Let me know if this is resonating with you at all. Let me know what's come up. Just take a pause and listen to your body. Let me know if this is if anything is coming alive within you. It means there's a desire within you to heal. So really listen with your body here. I really appreciate Vanessa for sending this. She said, "I'm going through a difficult time with my husband. Our communication is non-existent. We talk about day-to-day things but he doesn't share with me any of his feelings or thoughts." Okay! That's common. You know! "He doesn't share with me any of his feelings or thoughts." You could... you know... easily Vanessa! make that mean that he doesn't love you or that he's abandoning you. Right? but I'm going to share with you today's training is going to really help give you an understanding of this. She said, "we talk about day-to-day things but he doesn't share with me any of his feelings or thoughts. Assumption that she... that Vanessa's making here is that because he doesn't share his feelings and thoughts, I'm abandoned. I feel alone... I feel disregarded. I feel not important. Right! But you don't know that that's true. That's an old narrative Vanessa. In your body that comes from childhood. You don't know that that's true so and you haven't yet learned. I can tell because you haven't learned the work yet. You haven't learned yet... I say "yet" because I cross my fingers that this kind of inspires you to take action but depending on your nervous system state, you'll be too scared to take action and I'll tell you why?
So it could be that he's in, what we call a "dorsal state" based on the stresses he's going through and he's dissociated from his emotions so he's trying to numb or he's trying to sedate or he's trying to hide. If he hasn't learned how to process them and communicate them, then you know, don't be surprised if you know he kind of goes into shutdown. So we'll talk about the different trauma responses in a moment. So he says that "I don't make it safe for him to share with me and that I'm not sure how to do this." Fair! Great question! I like that you said, "he says that I don't make it safe for him to share with me and I am not sure how to do this." Great point! You know... you're not sure Vanessa how to do this because you're not supposed to know because if you haven't had it modeled for you "how to create safety within a relationship?" Then don't expect to be good at it. You know expect to suck. Like most people do. Most people suck at this. He says... okay... "in 19, in 2019 he had an affair" Sorry you went through that... "Wanted a divorce and I ended up in a mental hospital." Okay sounds like you had an attachment trauma and you know, you're not okay when we have live traumas in our attachments. It's like... It's a rupture. You had a rupture. So you're not supposed to feel great during a rupture and because you don't have the skills or the support to be able to heal from those ruptures... you know we fall apart and we go into a mental hospital. "I got over that and met someone and then my husband wanted to get back together." Interesting! It's a few steps that it feels like you've skipped but that's cool we'll go with it. "He told me about the affair and I've been having a very hard time getting over it." Right. Yeah! It's tough to get over because you went through an attachment trauma. An affair is a rupture in a relationship. If you don't have the skills in healing the rupture and the two of you aren't willing to work together on healing it, then it's not just gonna... it's like a bone you break but you don't go and get it reset properly. It kind of heals wrong. Do you know what I mean. It's like you just broke your arm. That's what happened. You guys just broke your arm in your relationship. If you don't go to a proper professional to learn how to, kind of, reset it right, it then heals wrong. Right! Of course like... It doesn't like... we're not equipped with the skills to deal with this level of rupture. You know! No human can. I don't know any human who hasn't done some deep work to be able to process this together. It's, don't expect to be good at this, by the way Vanessa and your hubby! "I got over that and met someone and then my husband wanted to get back together." Oh wow! how quickly he changes his mind when all of a sudden he's afraid of losing you, right! That's a classic avoidant pattern. That's me and so you're anxious attached. He's avoidant and now you're going through this little cat and mouse dance and back and forth, push, pull, push, pull... very common... This is part of the anxious attachment and avoidant dance. "I am lost and confused and I know I have an anxious attachment style that is keeping me from being able to forgive my husband and trust him again." So it's not the anxious attachment style's fault that you aren't able to forgive your husband.
It's because of the fact that you haven't addressed the underlying root cause, underlying root ruptured attachment that happened after your husband had the affair. So in other words that affair triggered another attachment trauma which is also responsible for your attachment style being what it is because you're human, just like the rest of us Vanessa.
"I'm lost and confused and I know I have an anxious attachment style that is keeping me from being able to forgive my husband and trust him again." That's fair, you know! To trust again is very difficult. If you don't trust yourself though, there's no way to trust again. Trust him again. "So this is also causing him to pull away." That's what you said. "This is also causing him to pull away." Yeah because now he's gonna be like, is she gonna get over it or is she gonna constantly be pestering me? Because what'll happen then is... you'll be fine one day and then boom! you'll get a wave of a flashback to that whole thing and then you'll have questions. You'll be like [ __ ] what is it? what is it about her? Is she better than me? Is she prettier than me? You know! Or is it because she's more successful? Is it because she's this and I'm that and then you just driving yourself [ __ ] mental doubting yourself the whole time. Let me know if this resonates. Send me a DM. Let me know if this resonates. It's maddening because you want it to go away but the problem is, it's in your body it's a trauma response from a unresolved attachment wound you haven't addressed. So "how can we move past this betrayal you ask... as of tonight he is done trying." Okay so I wanted to address that and to address that I wanted to talk about the four trauma responses that happen every time you get triggered. So is it possible to love again? Well here's the thing and you can watch this with your hubby. This is not healable unless we understand. We learn how to become active operators of our own nervous systems. If we don't do this we then make the other person responsible and whatever he does Vanessa, he's gonna do it. Like guys you know the person who had the affair genuinely feels bad. They wish that they didn't try to go and get their needs met elsewhere. They wish that the relationship was better. Like there's a deep desire for their, I'm sure to be your first choice, to be with your partner but for some reason though that need wasn't met and he didn't know how to communicate that. You know! There's some sort of thing happening between in the field. Between the two of you that doesn't lend to safety to speak your truth. Okay that's not your fault but if we don't learn how to become active operators of our own nervous systems, we will never be able to create safety and the way that we create safety is to really understand that there are four trauma responses that will happen whenever you get triggered in relationship. Wherever there's a rupture like a betrayal, like a what you just went through, there will be four trauma responses. You are responsible to learn how to navigate and to become really like much better at working through, right! Because if you learn that, you can actually learn it together and now you're a team. his is the only way. This is how we've had success with these with our clients and one of them successfully left. She was stuck there for a long time and she was like, that's it! I'm tired of him cheating. I'm leaving. Finally she leaves after about a year he [ __ ] stepped up and completely did his work. They were doing counseling for years and finally she reached out and said we've done counseling. I'm ready to do my own work. I'm ready to do my own work. I've been waiting for him to change. I've been wanting him to whatever and I've just... I gotta work through my own stuff. I know this is to do with my attachment wounds. She jumps in and we start working together and we start addressing it. We have nothing to do with him. This is the only way. Nothing to do with him. He didn't do any work and finally, she turns to him one day and says... it's over and he got it and he actually helped her move. After one year of living apart, dating other people, he then realizes "wow! I had the right one, the whole time" and he starts doing his own personal development work and he shifted and he stepped up to meet her, where she was at. That's the real benefit of not looking at the other person and wishing that they did their counseling to stop, you know, confronting you and triggering you and actually took it on yourself, made it a priority and said "All right! you know, I have this fantasy that he will do his work and want to change for me" and everybody wants to, you know, everybody wants the other person to lose weight. The only way to inspire somebody to lose weight is by you losing the weight. Kind of like this student that we had and he changed. He completely shifted and then they got back together. So they you know... and she was ready to move on. She had chosen and said that's it! and she couldn't do that before. She did our program. She couldn't actually do that. She didn't have the courage, for good reason too because of unresolved attachment wounds. So essentially there are rupture distress reactions that we all have. There are four of them that are kind of tied into the trauma responses. What are the trauma responses? Whenever you get triggered based on your childhood wounding and what you're experiencing, you'll go into "fight, flight, freeze" kind of like deer in headlights or fawn which is kind of like appeasing and pleasing and submitting type of thing. The four f's. Every time we get triggered in conflict, what happens is, it's a reaction, It's involuntary. It's unconscious. It's not by choice. It's not a rational choice. In fact many times you'll react. Then a week later or a couple days later you'll face palm and go why did I like... why didn't I stand up for myself? Why didn't I say so and so? Why did I... Why was I so harsh? I was mean. Oh my God! Nima! I was so mean to this person? Right! Does this resonate? So we don't consciously choose these and this is where we try to do therapy, to try to heal these but what I realized was, no matter what type of cognitive therapy I did, anger management, landmark, di martini... I couldn't actually expand that space between stimulus and response. I became reactive and so
it got so bad that actually the police had to be involved and so that was my wake-up call to actually walk in and understand the concept of becoming trigger-proof. Becoming trigger-proof is a "becoming". It's not something that happens overnight. It's something that is a lifelong progress... process to undo and to unlearn actually because quite frankly, you learned these trauma responses to keep you safe in childhood. This is where they come from. You didn't have a choice. They are adaptations to discomfort, to distress in ruptured attachments as a child from mom and dad. So what are they? Well the fight, the flight, the freeze and the fawn and they show up in ruptured distress reactions in different ways. I'm going to go over them and then show you exactly and then talk about you know, a really exciting kind of offer that we have going on. That will really help people who are are plagued by this. I've never been busier with DMS from you guys, saying what's happening? The traumas you're going through... How it's impacting your relationship? How you're ready to step up? You're like... okay! I'm ready to be a cycle breaker. I don't want to play the victim anymore and I've done therapy. You know this is why now we only want to work with those of you who've actually have invested in some therapy so that you know that you know, there is a different perception that you're able to take some ownership for it. Not blame. This isn't about blaming you but those of you who've done personal development before
My name is Dr Nima Rahamany and you've been listening to the trigger proof designed to teach you the most important skill necessary for a dramatically changing world which is nervous system regulation and becoming trigger proof doesn't mean trigger less. It means learning how to regulate ourselves, to bring us back to center so that we can then be governed by our purpose rather than from our wounds. Anytime there's reactivity, there's a wound and if you're curious and inspired to learn more join us at Breathwork and Badassery or the overview experience. There's a difference between listening to a podcast and actually showing up live and doing the work with a badass community, who's all about breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma. It didn't start with you but it can end with you, if you're willing to do the work. See you at the next perfect time!
Who've you know, invested in therapy and counseling and coaching, personal development. It's a demonstration that you're actually hungry for expanding yourself, you know. Not just keeping yourself at status quo. So this is for those of you who felt kind of stuck in that landmark and you know personal development and coaching and counseling and you've reached kind of like a ceiling and you feel kind of stuck there. There's a good reason why? And I want to show you how to undo that. So part of it is understanding these four responses so. I'm going to write them down and hopefully this works. The first one. It does work. Okay! I get to use my toy. The first one is poking.
This is the fight. This is kind of like the fight. You know fight or flight. This is the fight portion. This is when you're sympathetic dominant. Your nervous system is highly activated. This is the type of person that I was during my you know, last relationship. It was you know just take charge, take control type of person. By the way, we have all four of these. No one person is unidimensional. We have all of them but as I'm talking I want you to listen in with your body/. I took some notes here that I wanted to share with you and then tell me what shows up within your body. I'm curious. Just write it in the comments because I want to know. Because I'm kind of introducing this topic and it's been really transformative so this is kind of the first time that I'm being able to offer a solution for this specific thing and I want to know how this is landing for you. So this is when you have this extreme lack of trust because of unresolved attachment traumas. This extreme lack of trust and fear of betrayal. So there's a lot of unresolved anger in your body and it's from previous attachment distress responses or what I like to call "rupture distress reactions" (RDRs) from previous relationships. You got screwed over before. Like you just uh! you're holding on to this anger and so the response, the reaction is to try to keep yourself safe. You want to take control. So it's like... this it's on my terms. This is how it goes. You come across kind of like a little porcupine .This is where you know, when I'm working with somebody and I'm working and I'm tuning in to them. Their energy feels like a porcupine. It's like [ __ ] you type of energy. This is where when our adapted adolescent has taken over because it's tired of being hurt. It's the adapted adolescent from our wounded child. Now
We do it to keep ourselves safe when we are in this poking type of triggered response. We are trying to manage our anxiety. Manage our anxiety using control. This is whenever you've experienced yourself becoming really controlling and kind of bullying, you're in the poking. Type of reaction from the trigger and it's a fear of being betrayed. A fear of a complete loss of power again because there was an experience of a betrayal and a betrayal of trust and a loss of power. So you have a deep fear of a loss of power and a fear of betrayal so that you know... don't you dare [ __ ] me over... type of thing, you know! It's that kind of energy and so when you get triggered, let's say Vanessa! I don't, you know, I don't have a hidden camera in your place so I don't really know but notice the times when you are in that embodiment, right! And so that experience lands on the other person like very unsafe. They don't feel safe. They don't feel safe to be themselves. It is like walking on eggshells, type of experience for the other person and so it breaks down intimacy and the sad thing is is that deep down you truly crave it when you're... you know... when you have the the poking type of response. We crave intimacy but we're terrified of it so we use control and then it ends up kind of quote-unquote sabotaging us but it's kind of self-protection. So let me know if that resonates with you. Our work when this is predominating is to learn how to become trigger proof, to learn how to address the anger and the rage that we're carrying with us. One person that really comes to mind. This gal who is a lawyer. Who we're working with/. When I first met her, it was just like [ __ ] massive porcupine energy and as she's been working on healing, we've been kind of over the last three to six months, there's a difference in the look on her face. You know, once you heal your nervous system, your facial expressions, your vocal intonation, you feel safer in your body and then she feels and occurs a lot safer to me, you know, From as her guide, you know our team. We're working... we work together in community to help people heal these wounds but it's really neat to watch but that's the answer is to lean in to learning how to self-regulate and then restore integrity and then kind of like surrender. Learn how to surrender. Learning how... when you do, you start to become more playful. You start to have a lot more playfulness through your relationship. You're not so high strung all the time. So that's the first one. It's "Poking". The second one
is "Running".
So this is the flight. So the first one is fight. Second one is flight. So when you get triggered, this is interesting and all of your threat detectors come up. Boom! You run. One dude that I really recall. Marcus. He wouldn't have a problem with me sharing this. He signs up to help heal his traumas and he was going through a bit of a breakup and he wanted help in learning how to create secure relationships because he's like [ __ ] here I am in the same pattern again and again and again and in order for us to heal our patterns, he got that he's got to confront them but the biggest obstacle is the second that you decide to confront these patterns, the trigger will come up so you got to learn how to lean into it and it's very scary doing it alone. That's why we in entrust other people and hire guides to help us. So he hired me but it didn't matter even though he enrolled and we were working together in the community, the second he showed up at the overview experience, I said hey Marcus! you know, tell us a little bit about yourself. All of a sudden boom! He gets triggered. Cuts out. He just left the meeting. It was like what the hell just happened? As it turns out, when he was younger and he went to school, he had a traumatic experience where he was put on stage, put on the spot and he was doing a talk or he was speaking... public speaking. I mean who doesn't have a public speaking trauma story from school, from high school or something.
That was his and boom! Shame, embarrassment, ah
It came up. It was triggered and so it was pretty crazy because it took him a while but he leaned right back in and then it came up again boom! He ran away and then we were able to notice it and then he leaned right back in. See! You can't talk your way out of these traumas. You can't just talk about it once a week. You gotta actually be in a container, where you're willing to expand your capacity to feel those triggers that cause you to want to run. That's why, doing it, you know in our program so much fun for me because it's a laboratory of people who understand these trauma responses are being destructive to their lives and they're put... they're actually serious. It's like oh I want to lose weight someday versus showing up at Crossfit a couple times a week and doing the work and investing in it.
Huge difference! Everybody wants to and says they're ready but to show up at the gym and do it is a different thing. So these cycle breakers are my heroes. Showing up and this dude showed up again and again boom! Running... showing up again and again boom! Triggered and running and
What happens when we get triggered... when we're predominating by the running response is this fear of like being trapped... fear of being used... fear of being trapped. This was me in every freaking relationship. If you've ever found yourself having the battle cry. I need some [ __ ] space... boom! You've now activated this "trauma distress response". This rupture distress reaction that's causing you to boom... run. Now, if we don't this is for our safety and protection because you know all of a sudden are triggered you know. We get triggered into autopilot to self-protect and we go into this wounded... We're protecting this wounded child from shame, from embarrassment, right? From guilt, from whatever, from not enoughness, from not being enough, from not being good enough, from not being... and so that's the deep fear we're trying to avoid so boom... we run and without really understanding this, being able to be self-aware and self-assess and self-regulate, we come across as being really aloof to other people. We come across as uncaring. Others feel actually abandoned by us. Especially if you're with somebody, with an abandonment wound... boom! If their dad ran away or whatever... boom! Guess what they feel... which quite frankly, if dad left, he probably was reacting from a distress response, a ruptured distress reaction. So if dad ran away. Well! Guess what? You're going to be attracted to people with the same issues that daddy had.
He'll have a ruptured distress reaction where he wants to run away because it's just like dad and if you can get this guy and it'll be like winning dad's love that you never had as a child and so it's a really sad but true narrative that gets played out, not on a conscious level but very unconscious. It's happening in our body. You don't have a choice. You're... It's like love at first sight. There's something so familiar about this person. Oh my God! It's just... I got the butterflies. Why? Well, because I met somebody with the exact same wounds as my caregiver so that they can bring it up. They can recreate these ruptured distress reactions as an opportunity either for me to play it out and try to win them over and fail and go through this cycle again and again and again or wake the [ __ ] up. Do my own healing work. Do my trauma healing work and then learn how to break that cycle so that I can recognize it. Now when I see a woman or I meet a woman and she's got those same kind of old wounds that I was really drawn to and pulled to because of my unconscious complexes, now when I see it, I still feel that but now I'm able to pause and now realize where that's coming from and be able to regulate my autonomic nervous system rather than the old version of me which was I need to fix her. I need to solve her problems and to be the answer for her life so that I can be really important and be loved and be admired and recognized. That was what was running the show in the background, without doing that healing work. Right? It's really important that we do if we want to have the most important thing in the world. What's the most important thing? I used to think it was money and babes that was pretty much the first half of my career, my life... based on my wounding was that's what it was designed towards. Now it's really about amazing relationships. I'm not so keen on letting just anyone into our community. Like I used to be... I was like oh we'll! Take anyone and that came kind of from a place of desperation. Now we have like a interview process and we know that not everyone's the right fit. You know! We have a very... There's people have different taste buds, for morality, for you know language, some of you might say, "Oh I really would love to work with, you know, with Nima" but he says [ __ ] a little too many times and other people will be like I love that you say [ __ ] and you know everyone's got different taste buds. Right! So we know we're not for everyone and not everyone's for us and so we've been able to set some really great boundaries for people really going wow! what you're saying is resonating and I see it and I want to take responsibility. I'm done playing the victim. Those are the people and I've done some therapy before, I've done this, this, this. Send us a list of all the [ __ ] you've done because we say way to go. If you've done Tony Robbins, you've done counseling, you've done therapy, great that tells me that your growth is important to you. That's the perfect kind of signal that I see of somebody who's ready for this level of depth of work because we used to take everyone and one lady we didn't really interview her adequately. We just said okay! she's really keen. She resonated with my content and it turns out it was way too scary for her because we do deep shadow work and all the work that she had done before was kind of avoidance and spiritual bypass and just kind of like positive thinking stuff where we actually go deep into the wound itself so within two weeks she wasn't doing great and so we kind of guided her to going to kind of like a social support worker uh and she found one and then we were like okay great! You're not you know this... It didn't work out but now we've gotten a little bit better at seeing, you know, making sure because relationships are important to me, you know. The clients that I work with, now we've been working with for the past couple years, I'm so inspired by their transformations because many of them are ready to now help others and so I'm now stepping up and leading a small handful of 10 of them, 10 of my hand-picked favorite people who are really keen on learning you know, how to create content, how to write, how to help transform somebody's attachment wounds and connect them with themselves and teach them to regulate and break cycles because I can't do it alone, so I'm really excited to be connecting with them and helping them because relationships are the most important thing to me now. So because learning this work and so I was a poker and a runner. Poking and running was my ruptured distress reaction. When you get into a rupture, you have a distress reaction. Now... what's interesting is, if you're a poker or a runner or a combination of both predominantly because we all have a bit of everything, depending on what part of us is in the driver's seat, we have a bit of everything. The interesting thing is the poker and the runner is very very likely to be paired up. Poker and the runner is more of the avoider... is to be paired up with number three and four. You'll notice in your relationships, what we notice in the peeps that we work with, is that they there is a balance. It's kind of like number one and two are [ __ ] moth to a flame for number three and four. So what's number three?
Number three is
There it is... I got it.
Hiding. This is also what is known as the freeze response. This is when we kind of like... get in triggered... get triggered, get into a conflict and then instead of you know, showing up as the functional adult and being able to kind of work through stuff and talk, we can't. We shut down. We go within. People who predominate in the hiding, the freeze response, come from trauma where it was safer just to leave your body because it was too painful. It's too scary. He didn't feel seen, didn't feel understood or heard and so what happens is, we then... the nervous system is too much, too fast, too soon. Conflict is too scary so then we pretty much dissociate. We hide and the biggest fear that we have, when we are running a... Hiding distress response reaction is, we are exposed as being bad, as being inadequate. One of the people who reached out to me, to work with him, he was going through a divorce. There was affairs. Just at the beginning of their separation, he was a hider and soon as we got in and started connecting with those younger parts, where there was a great deal of shame, he was a witness to you know, an event in his home, where there was sexual abuse and he froze as a little five-year-old. He couldn't do anything about it. It was in his family dynamic. Couldn't do anything about it and so he's been carrying because he you know, froze. He's been carrying such deep shame ever since. So shame becomes the predominant emotion running in the background that drives this whole hiding
response. Whenever you get into conflict and you shut down and you go into hiding, it is very challenging for being on the receiving end of that because what happens, is you are so... when we're in that space, we're run by shame that we just want to like we want to just hide. I mean there's no better way of saying it so because we're shaming ourselves so much and sometimes when the bid for their connection becomes too annoying to us, we then turn around and we shame them because we have such shame within ourselves. Does this make sense? Is this resonating with you at all?
I think it's very difficult to be in a relationship with somebody who has this
response because you don't even know that you have it. The problem with this is that when you have this response, you can't tell you're in it because you're in it. You're possessed by it. We can't see any of these when we're possessed by them so it takes some skills and neural exercises to be able to separate ourselves from them and this one is hard as [ __ ] and there's no way that I could get out of my freeze response because I went into hiding. I could not do that alone. The secret to undoing the hiding thing is co-regulation. We must do it together but here's the biggest obstacle. The last thing you want to do is connect with anybody. There's the conundrum. How many times have I gone on a discovery call with somebody and all of a sudden their attachment distress response, their rupture response comes up. They feel some sort of a disconnect between me and them and they go into hiding and they just ghost. This is the people who ghost you. The "ghosters" are the hiders and it's a very very painful on the receiving end because you feel abandoned. You feel shamed and you don't know, like you know when it's gonna turn on? And so this can come at a moment's. Notice so it feels like the person you're with, you know... if you don't get this right, the person that you're with feels you as completely bipolar and unable to work with you. Unable to like a secure relationship is damn near impossible. It would be like they would have to abandon themselves again and again and again in order to work with you, in order to be with you and so this disconnect will also you know, perhaps... Cause you know, in my relationship, in my first marriage actually, I didn't know this work at the time. She was in hiding. There was an attachment. There was a rupture and from there, she protected herself by going and hiding and kind of like a freeze response and I felt a lack of connection so I left the marriage. Right? So this can be the cause of a breakdown in a marriage. This is exactly what it is and you can do all the therapy and counseling and tell your side but without really understanding myself and being able to actively operate my nervous system and communicate and learn the skills of vulnerability, asking for what I need, leaning into co-regulation when it's not safe. You gotta actually practice it in a container of people. You're not gonna be able to read a book and solve it. The answer to this unfortunately doesn't come from a book it comes from training and being guided and so number four
is "Submitting"
This is what we call the freeze response. Sorry, this is what we call the "fawn", not the freeze. This is what we call the fawning response. The fawning, this is where people who run in the submitting, kind of just like blend in. Notice my voice? I just don't want to you know be trouble for anybody. I just no, no. I don't want to be any trouble for anybody. I'm going to over accommodate. Whatever it is you want... you know, submitting is driven by a deep deep wound fear of abandonment. You know with unresolved childhood woundings. Our wounded inner child are adapted adolescent
We didn't feel safe and we felt disconnection so over accommodating, you know. This is what happens when you know there's oftentimes sexual abuse can happen. This is where you know, your mom and dad weren't safe. They were abusive but you learn to put aside your own needs and just put on a mask and just dance like a monkey and be whatever you need it to be in order to be safe and it worked for you. This is brilliant adaptive strategy. The problem is, when you're in your 20s and 30s and 40s what happens is... you get into these dynamics. There's always this deep grief that you're living because deep down you know you've abandoned yourself. The human being breaks down energetically, psychically, emotionally and your health starts to break down as a response from self-abandonment. In fact, I noticed this as a chiropractor. Patients who would come in with fibromyalgia, chronic pain, chronic illness, they were run by these you know distress responses. These rupture distress responses. So they were trying to get, you know, pills, medications but they were never learning how to transform their rupture distress responses so that they could now show up not submitting but you know, like a functional, adult feeling worthy and deserving of having their needs met because the submitting rupture is very very much run by a deep deep undeserving and so we abandon ourselves and this is where chronic health issues, chronic fatigue and here's where the problem is as a frustration from my end of the spectrum, from people who are in number three and number four. The pokers and the runners, you know, they have enough sympathetic activation energy to do something scary which is to resolve it. Resolving it and requires fear. So the pokers and the runners are like [ __ ] it! Damn it! I'm tired of this and then they're the ones who don't really have a problem uh kind of taking this work on and committing to becoming a cycle breaker because you got to kind of be like [ __ ] enough! Enough is enough! but the problem is the hiders and the submitters, the hiders and the submitters who apply to work with us are really... They used to piss the [ __ ] out of... They pissed me off. It would because I would be like [ __ ] what's the hell's... the matter and then until I started realizing that they were acting out of their trauma responses. There was a deep desire for them to heal but all of a sudden to heal, they don't realize that in order to heal they must trigger these attachment responses. So if you're in number... you primarily run by number three and number four. Please understand that to heal it, you must be willing to feel sensations that are going to make you want to run and submit. Okay? So
that's the only way to heal it and the problem is, the biggest obstacle is you won't want to do that so the reason why you can't becomes the reason why you must. It's a mind [ __ ] so we've started getting better at being able to kind of discern who the people who are ready are but I really enjoy the work of of teaching people how to heal this because if it wasn't for, oh you know.. I mean, I wanted, if it wasn't for me being able to recognize these and find the source of them, this is what our work is. All of our work. It's not just your work. It's my work too. Right? It's all of our personal responsibility to find where these unconscious complexes came from. Not to blame your parents, I know it, you got some resentment towards your parents. That's normal but to actually change the step in the dance because if we don't, those patterns, you can leave this relationship that's fine Vanessa! You can leave. Sure but if you don't resolve the pattern, guess what's going to happen in the next relationship? You're going to bring those with you. Right? And there's an opportunity where you are now. This is what I tell all the clients who are like, "Can you save my marriage? "Can this be salvageable?" I'm like, I don't know. Sometimes you do the work and you get closer. Like those three. The example of those three people that I told you earlier and then sometimes, you do the work and you realize, I'm no longer bonded by trauma to this person anymore. I deserve to be met at the same level that I'm giving and this person doesn't have the capacity and I love them for it. I'm not going with resentment. You know. We could still... We could still part ways and still love one another and be amazing parents to these kids. That's a priority because I stand for healed families. So this is what it means to be a cycle breaker and if you resonate with this message and you're, you know if you're just jumping on now, welcome! It's good to see you. Let me know where you're signing in from? What your biggest takeaway was? We have about, I don't know, six weeks till Christmas! The time where you're going to have the greatest number of rupture distress reactions. You'll see them. They're going to come up again and again and again. Then you've ever experienced because it all kind of happens during the holidays. You'll see it, you know. We see it all the time. We're supporting a lot of people through those times because they're going to come up and our work is to learn how to regulate through that and you can't do it alone as Peter Levine says and no one can do it for you. Especially if you've been run by those responses because you can't see it when you're in it. You're possessed by it. You got to have somebody who's willing to hold a reflection and do it with kindness and say hey! you're cutting and running. There you go. There you go. I do this with clients a lot. I'm like you didn't show up on the group call. You're in hiding. I see you and reconnect and so their work when I'm helping them with those distress responses. Their work. I'm working with them to lean in to co-regulation. Why? Well because when we don't the people around us feel our absence, feel abandoned by us and it's not abandonment. It's just... you're just trying to protect yourself and so there's two wounded children trying to protect themselves, not realizing that love is there. No skills of self-regulation, no skills of co-regulation, no understanding of conflict dynamics. When's a good time for you to learn? When we're going through a [ __ ] global crisis pandemic, where everybody is hating one another and throwing shade at one another and families are kind of dismantling and falling apart at the seams. When's a better time than now so? I've been getting a lot of DMs and applications and so here's what we discovered. If you haven't done personal development work and you haven't invested before there, is a good likelihood that you won't be ready for this level of depth of work because it's deeper than the therapy. It's deeper than counseling. Every one of our clients have done those things before and said this is different. You're not going to sit here and talk about your story and and just get it validated. Of course that's a big part of it but we don't just stop with giving you a pat on the back and saying, "Oh poor you, it's because of your mom and dad, you know. Like there's a lot of great therapists out there and counselors I used to think there weren't any until I started doing somatic experiencing and I work with them and some of them are really keen to help you learn how to become the active operators of your nervous system and others just kind of like, just want to talk things through and if you're talking, you're not healing and so there's work to be done and if you're ready to do the work, send me a DM and give me your backstory and I will give you a link to apply. Actually I'm going to put the link below. Go ahead and fill out that application and tell me which of these attachment responses are...
are predominating in your life because I know you have a little bit of all of them. We have blended unless you're, you know, polarized towards one side but I'm curious how that's been showing up in your life and what we're doing is we're taking a handful of people through the process of healing the attachment traumas so that when you get into conflict, you're able to rebound and recover ten times faster because you will have conflict. I have conflict. Secure relationships have conflict. Are you able to navigate and gracefully ease your way through the conflict. That's what I'm really curious and interested in teaching and follow the link in the comments section if this is resonating with you and you're a little bit scared but you're actually understanding that you know, you don't want to go into the Christmas holidays without any skills and without any tools. You must be ready to you know, make yourself a priority. Those hiders and submitters will have a problem with this because you're not going to think that you're worthy and deserving of investing in yourself. You got to actually confront that. If you're willing to feel it, to heal it, follow that link and I'll see you at the next perfect time. Big love! Let me know what resonated with you on this chat? Thanks for being here and welcome to all of our new members!