Episode 26
Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast, a place to explore where female physiology and feminine energy dance together to shape our life experience. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, functional nutritionist and integrative health coach and I'm inviting you to journey with me through both the scientific and spiritual facets of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance and become deeply and fully nourished despite living in a society that is increasingly desperate to erase our female set-apartness. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary. And please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
Introducing: Jenna Hamm
So today's guest is Jenna Hamm. And if you haven't heard of Jenna, or you're not familiar with her work, she's an integrative trauma therapist, who I believe brings a very unique perspective to the nervous system regulation, trauma healing space. A lot of the information out there right now is kind of that sick game of telephone, as I like to call it, where everyone's just kind of parroting everyone else's information. And a lot of time on social media, you find that everyone's kind of saying the same thing. And you know how much I liked that she has this beautiful way of weaving together the nuance to the general advice for people who are burned out and overwhelmed and kind of burning the candle at both ends is to slow down to rest, to be still to balance out your work with your rest. And as important as nourishment and rest and becoming aware are, she brings an enlightening perspective and nuance to that discussion, she talks about things like when it's appropriate to mobilize stuck energy and how to do that. She talks about what real rest and junk rest is. And my favorite thing that I took away from our conversation — I learned so much from her — was how to kind of boldly look life in the eye and say, I can handle the dynamic aspect of it, I can handle the highs and the lows, and be resilient through it all.
And with all of her education, it seems that that is what she's truly after helping people with is a true resilience, a very practical approach to the nervous system. So without further ado, I hope you really enjoy this interview as much as I did.
Jessica: Thank you so much for being here.
Jenna: Thank you for having me, I'm really excited to be here.
Jessica: I am so excited to have you. So before we hopped on, we're talking about just how we kind of found each other, but your work is so different, I guess I should say like, I feel like it is a breath of fresh air for so many people that read it. And I just wanted to highlight it to my audience, because I'm sure that they will get that kind of breath of fresh air feeling. But we'll dive into your thoughts and just your insights. But just tell me a little bit more about your story. I would love to know just how you kind of arrived here in this place. Just a little bit more about you.
Jenna: Oh, man, I feel like I never know how much to share or where to start. When I was five, I know I mean, I was trained as a therapist or I got like a master's degree in clinical social work and wrapped that up at the end of 2018. And right away kind of started getting certified and things because I'm a bit of an education junkie. So I was learning all about, I did EMDR training and the nervous system stuff and then internal family systems. And then I got really sick, like really, really sick for about two years. And for the first year I was still like working and pretty engaged with life. And the second year I was like not at all, like not parenting, I was in the hospital, it was really bad. Looking back, I'm like realizing a reason I wanted to become a therapist was actually to like not be inside my own stuff. Like, oh, I'll just help everybody else with their stuff. And then I never have to look at me. And that'll be great and perfect. And I'll be fine. And so I think that that was I mean the timing was really interesting. And I'm sure not unrelated. But I was getting more and more into helping other people and deeper into their systems and then just ignoring mine. And then there was a huge crash. And so when I finally started to get better, it was about actually applying all the stuff that I knew up here like to myself deeper down. And I've learned so much along the way. Like initially I was I was so focused on Oh, it was the moldy house that made me sick and now I'm like, Oh no, it was a million other things. You. And in large part, the fact that I just paid no attention to what my body was saying and what my body needed. I was really just always telling my body what to do, and then trying to ignore and suppress and think like a lot of us are. So I don't even know where I'm going with this and how this relates to your question about who I am and myself.
Jessica: Oh, that's amazing.
Jenna: I basically, I think I just feel really passionate now. Because, yeah, I have the education. But I also have this like experience of what it's really like to have things get that extreme. And so there's so many little lessons that I've found along the way. And now I just like want to share all of this, I would say access information, but it's not really access, because I think it's really important for a lot of us to know this stuff. So I'm just really, I really love to share what I've learned with other people and kind of give people the best shot at recovering from their own stress.
Jessica: That's super powerful, super powerful. I feel like I'm sure so many women resonate with the idea of always telling your body what to do, but never actually listening to when it needs or what it wants and kind of being in that dance or that feedback have back and forth and back and forth. Just kind of like head down barrel through life, and never any awareness. And then we have this new, I feel like the work that you got educated in is exploding in popularity, you know, this idea of nervous system regulation and somatic therapy, I feel like everywhere I look at everyone's talking about it, but it feels like the more aware people are of what they perceive to be their problems. It doesn't necessarily seem that we're getting any more regulated and actually feels like we're almost getting more dysregulated. Or we're worse than ever before. And I'm just curious if you see that in your work, too, because you're so much closer. What are your thoughts on that?
Jenna: Yeah, it's kind of like similar to what I was just saying about that, like telling the body what to do thinking we can stay in the cognitive, I think that's like a huge piece of the puzzle. I was like, raised not raised, but you know, coming into my 20s, I guess at the time when it was like Women's Health magazine, and these like bootcamp style workouts and 1200 calories is how you look good. And so it was like, Yeah, okay, I learned this. And then I apply it to my body and like, make it behave, make it look like this, make it do things and it kind of worked. And it kind of in then it was very miserable, whatever. In the same way, I think we're like, getting access to all this information, whether it's even nervous system regulation stuff or other information. We're just, we're so cognitive. So we're using this prefrontal cortex so much, and neuroscientists actually call this part of the brain, I think they describe it as, like, the primary responsibility is to suppress impulses, which is great, because I don't want to have I don't want to start screaming at you, if you say something annoying to me in this example, right? Like, I want to be able to suppress impulses. But the problem is, we start doing it all the time. So even when it's safe to express some of those inner impulses, those instincts, that we have to kind of mobilize the stress that we pick up during the day, we don't, and it stays really stuck. I hate that word. Because it's becoming, I always hate popular words like that, you know, it really does like it really just starts to accumulate and tax our systems. And so then we go out and we face something relatively minor, and we're like, we don't have any room for it. We're so full of this stressful energy that we just like, go bananas over every little thing. And then I think, you know, of course, our mind can tell big stories about those things that we learn to so whether it's IBS is always psychosomatic. And we might get obsessed with that and not even not accept help at the level of the gut as well. You know, like, we can be so extreme with this stuff, like everything is nervous system regulation, never take a supplement. Again, don't change your diet. It's like, well, that's not great either. We are such complex beings. And so we need to incorporate it all. What else can I think of? Why are we becoming less resilient? I think the constant stimulation is huge. I don't think we realize like, I actually funny that I just talked about our guts, but I compare it to digestion. So I'm like, imagine if you ate as much food as you do. Consume material on your phone or wherever, right? If you're always in a podcast, you're always taking in information. Imagine what would happen to your digestion if you just ate basically, all the time, unless you were asleep. Like it wouldn't feel very good. And so our nervous systems, our brains really need time to process too. So kind of similar, I guess to what I was saying about just never letting ourselves release like we also don't let ourselves truly rest and like process and assimilate all of these experiences. Like every sound every new piece of information like that all kinda needs a chance to move through us in a sense. And that might sound a bit weird or extreme, but it's very true. And it's not that challenging for our systems to do, we just need the space to do it. And we don't tend to give ourselves that kind of real space. Avoiding big stressors, I think is a big problem too that's been really common. I love Jonathan Haidt’s work. I don't know if you've ever read it, but around like the Coddling of the American Mind, he's focused on children. He's doing some work around tech too, which is really cool. But but basically just how Yeah, we avoid bigger stressors in large part, and instead kind of get obsessed with micro stressors that don't lead to like adaptations and resilience. So we're like, even like kids, you know, it sounds so terrible to say not that I want my kids to like, get her to the playground. But like kids, playgrounds are like padded, everything's soft, and they can't get injured, and they're so monitored. And then we monitor adults, monitor each other's opinions. And the language is like, we're so obsessed with these little tiny potential injuries. And then we like lose, or and we're not even trying to, we lose our capacity to handle big things. And then we're avoiding big things. And so there's no adaptation to get stronger. You know, we don't really adapt to those like micro stressors, we don't get stronger from them. If anything, they just can keep taxing us and making us less and less resilient. So does that answer your question, then I always have massive tangents because I'm way too passionate about it.
Jessica: No, it's beautiful. You have so much to unpack there, I felt like, I mean, I feel like I've that's where because you hear especially in the health space, which I think a lot of my listeners are in the health space. And you constantly hear and I'm even guilty of this, where I'll tell women, you know, lower your stress, like lower your stress. But what I really should be saying is, it's not necessarily lower your stress. But let's shift the whole way that we look at stress, you are resilient. I think a lot of women are walking through life because they don't feel resilient to anything. But it's interesting how you said, it's not from like a lack of information or a lack of knowledge. It's possibly from a lack of rest or a lack of being able to actually assimilate that information and just sit with it, and figure out how it interacts with your very real and dynamic physical body that is really powerful, because I think so many women think I'm so undernourished, under nourished, under nourished. There's been this kind of theme of undernourishment where I need to just fill up, fill up, fill up, fill up, fill up, but what if your cup is so full? That you feel like you can't move at all? Right?
Jenna: That's an interesting way to put it. Yeah, I relate to that in the sense that, like, I kind of came, maybe less from the nourishing perspective and more on the like, Oh, my body needs all this help to detox. Because I thought I was dealing with mold. I was dealing with mold. I really don't think that was as big of a thing as a one stop. But anyway, I felt like what I was getting from this world is headspace was like my body needed help to purge this mold. I needed to detox and I needed certain supplements to do this. And that and like, force my body to do things. And like, my body was like not having it. I could take like a micro dose of a supplement, my body would go bananas. And I was like, What's wrong with me? Like, how am I ever gonna heal if I can't take all these things that are going to heal me? And really, it was like, yeah, there's so much stress. Like it was such a stressful period. I mean, my whole life had been stressful leading up to that point. And then it was obviously a terrible couple of years, like not knowing what was going on. And then I was like, asking my body here, take on more and like, figure out what to do with this supplement and that supplement, keep changing. And it's like, all I really needed. And truly, this was like, all I could tolerate for a long time was she took me outside, like I needed to walk and I needed to see the sun. I need to play with my kid. Like, that was it truly, and I got so much better in weeks just from turning my attention towards those things that brought me a sense of peace. That gave me a little bit of movement that brought light into my eyes. Like it was so simple. So I think a lot of the time when we're just yeah, we're like stuffing ourselves with things and thinking like, Oh, I'm so broken. I need this to help fix me whether it's to nourish or to detox, or to give me the neurotransmitter that I want more of whatever the body's like, I am trying to do a billion things that you've been asking me to do. And I can't take this like I'm not. I can't handle this extra supplement. And I'm going to show you through symptoms of some sort. And so please listen.
Jessica: Wow. Yes. And it's almost like a vicious cycle because the more you go down these rabbit holes and you feel like you're broken. You're almost in this manic state where you're just, you're just searching and searching and searching for the answer outside of yourself where it is not as complex as we make it out to be and it's so simple and sometimes right in front of us like what we we don't need the biohacking tool. We don't need the device. We don't need the, you know, whatever the program or the course, like sometimes we just need to, like you said, just get outside and like play with our children or just have some time with our dog or something so simple to be present.
Jenna: Yeah really like to explain, and this is not as common, so the IFS internal family systems, this whole parts work thing, the inner child stuff is popular, but that's like the pop psychology version of like, I don't know, here, do it at home, play with your inner child or whatever. Internal Family Systems is this whole framework of therapy that's really beautiful and can be applied at home. But anyway, the reason I'm bringing it up is because I think it's helpful when people find themselves in that place of like, Oh, I really need this, oh, you know, this influencer said that this device is going to be the thing. And if I don't get it, I'm just gonna die. Or when we're like, in a flare of some sort with symptoms, which is like inhaling supplements, the way that we see that from the IFS framework is, there's like, there's pain at the bottom, there's something needing our attention, that's usually causing the symptoms that we don't want. And then we have these protective parts. And their entire job is to prevent pain. So they can get so reactive, and they kind of get bigger and bigger and bigger. As the bigger the pain gets, the bigger those protective parts need to get to suppress the pain. And it's just I see this constantly, it was a huge part of my system, that anytime there was a symptom, I would either be looking outside of myself for distraction. And if the symptom continued to get bigger, which it usually did, then I would just be like just grabbing anything, I'll do the most crazy detox I can find, I'll buy those supplements, I'll do this, I'll search Instagram for someone who's posted about this. And I'll find the solution. Like it was just this desperation, it felt like to suppress it. And all I really needed to do was like turn towards, hey, what's the pain? What am I ignoring, and it still shocks me to this day that it's usually I don't want to say it's something simple, in the sense of, it's insignificant, because it's never insignificant. It's usually, I don't know, something around connection, or I had this interaction with somebody on the internet. And it really hurt a younger part of me, they really insulted that part. And that part just needs to know, needs me to know that it hurt, you know, and that's it. And I know parts where it can sound a little wonky, but it's so wild, how much it can shift things. When we stop looking for external, we've kind of stopped letting those protective parts search for external suppressors, and just turn towards it and say, Oh, that's it, and how the symptoms can just settle. Like, it truly still blows my mind every single time it happens with the client or with myself, that that's it. I spent years looking at like, what's, what's the chemical like, oh, I have ammonia, I have glutamate. I have this, like, so obsessed with all of that. And yeah, maybe that's true. But it can also resolve when we tend to the emotion sometimes, you know?
Jessica: Yeah, that is very powerful. I know, I had to do a lot of parts work. And specifically, like I kind of came to the same conclusion is, wow, the hoops that we will jump through to avoid our pain or avoid ourselves, like what our body is trying to say. Because maybe, I don't know, maybe we're not ready to face it yet. I don't know. But we if we continue to run and run and run and like you said distract, distract, distract it, it really never gets us anywhere. And in fact, just keep going down these spirals, I feel like we're getting in some ways will get worse. I mean, the pain will drive us to, I think, have you said you were struggling with mold, like burn all your things, you know, or just get rid of all of your life's possessions because you are afraid of this mold? You know, it's there is some some very deep layers like wow, what we're willing to do to avoid that pain. Totally.
Jenna: Yes. Yeah. It's amazing. Amazing to see.
Jessica: I love what you said. I mean, I know you had said on your one of your posts, I was just like, oh, that hits hard. You had said, Are you using your pharmaceuticals and supplements and devices and diets and homeopathic remedies to save you from the mistakes that you're knowingly making? And that one, I was like, Whew, that really hits hard. Because I do think in this, I mean, I don't know, I would be curious to hear your thoughts. But if we kind of always feel like we're a victim of something outside of ourself, in fact, we kind of live in this place of almost a victimization of, I am now a victim to stress or I'm a victim to these things. And then we're always looking I call it like white knight syndrome, where we're like always looking for the white knight to come save us. Yeah, when in reality, we have to kind of save ourselves and take some personal responsibility, which can be very difficult when we're feeling awful. We just want to cry and have a pity party. But at what point are we kind of ready so I guess I don't know. Your thoughts on just I don't want, don't ever blame people. It's not about blame. But I do think there is a level of personal responsibility that at some point, we have to say, I need to face, I need to face it.
Jenna: I don't know if my head's just going in this direction, because we were just talking about parts work. But I know that it's like, people get really up in arms about this whole idea that like, nobody's coming to save, you got to save yourself. And I really get why that sucks. Because usually, when we're at the point where we need saving, we're like, I can't save myself, I am in trouble here. I have nothing. And yet, there's nobody else who can attune to your to you the way that you can, nobody else is going to find it. I tried to get other people to find it, even when it came to finding the mold. Like it was kind of me who was like, oh, maybe this is part of the problem. Like I had to find that. And of course, it wasn't going inside yet. But it was something I had to do. Even when I thought I could never find it, I never would have had the energy to discover that, you know, but it's like, I think we do it. We do it with our partners, we do it with practitioners, we do influencers, even with like friends and therapists, right, which is like, Oh, you'll do this. And nobody can get it. Right. They just can't. And I know when I'm, you know, working with somebody one on one that I try to get it right, sometimes I try to say, oh, maybe this is happening, and like, that's never what's happening. You know, not it, maybe I can kind of give them an idea and insight, and then they follow it. And they'll always find something different from what I thought they were gonna find, you know. So it's just even if someone were there, and they stay, they tried to save you, they wouldn't save you, they just wouldn't find what you can find. And, and I love I think what's so beautiful about IFS is like, it really does help in the sense that those parts of you that desperately want to be saved, still get to be saved, but they get to be saved by you, you gain access to this inner strength that we all have. But it's just been so covered up by all the all the burdens that we carry. And once we can find that and go towards the sick parts of us, the parts that feel like they need saving, the parts that are so protective, and so suppressive, then we can kind of get out of that feeling like a victim, and at the same time also have so much self compassion. It's it's really the coolest approach in the sense that it's not like, yep, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get up and nobody cares about you. And not you know, it's really beautiful and loving. And yet, it is very much about taking responsibility for your own inner world, right?
Jessica: Absolutely. I feel like in a way, it's almost a mothering of yourself, where sometimes the love of a mother is actually quite tough. It's hard, I think of like, mama bird kicks her baby bird out of the nest, because it needs to learn how to fly. And she's there to like, catch, catch them. But that is kind of tough. But that is the loving nurturance that sometimes we need. And you know, we live in the culture of like self love, self love, like go take a bath or go, whatever veg out and Netflix and sometimes that's appropriate. But a lot of times the love that we need is is a little bit tougher, a little bit like, we need to tell ourselves, you can do this, and you're going to do this and it's going to be okay.
Jenna: Yeah, yeah, that's a huge, huge part of it, like self care is not always luxurious. Actually, I almost think it's never luxurious, like I think of self care, as like the self attunement of actually going inside and like tending to what's there and letting the ugliness come out. And there's nothing beautiful about that until maybe the end, whatever it is that you're working through. And then yeah, like you said, also loving yourself in the sense that you're not going to let yourself have no life, right? And a life without stress is just no life. So like, walking yourself through challenges and saying, like, you're gonna do this, and you might fail. And even if you fail, it's gonna be okay. But not not kind of letting your world shrink, I think is really a big part of what self care is.
Jessica: Wow, that is really, that's amazing, like not letting your world shrink. Wow, I had read on one of your posts, you had said it's kind of up to us whether stress heals us or hurts us. Most of us are either constantly chasing insignificant stressors or avoiding challenges at all costs. And we're too distracted to notice. Plus our internal breaks and recovery processes don't work when we're chronically distracted. So increasingly, minor stressors have an increasingly large impact. Would you say that our ability to be resilient to stress is almost like a muscle that we need to work? Like, how can we kind of reframe stress into something that is good for us?
Jenna: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. You think about a muscle if you've ever like been injured and are bedridden for any amount of time, even just a few days, sometimes, you can see like your muscles atrophy and things get really challenging. The same thing happens when we go for periods of time avoiding challenges, avoiding stress, we just get really weak. And then we have to kind of start over again and start to face things so that we adapt to be able to tolerate them again. So muscle is like a really good analogy for this for the nervous system. The nervous system is it's really just, it's so brilliant in the sense that it'll just do whatever we expose it, like, it'll respond to whatever we expose it to, right. So for like, hey, I want to do a lot of public speaking and nervous system’s, like, all right, well, at first, I'm gonna get pretty worked up about that, because it feels threatening, but over time, like, I'll get that it's not threatening, and we'll be okay. Right.? It'll just respond to whatever we choose to put in front of it. And it'll, like I said, at first, it might have some pretty big reactions to anything that's novel, or anything that seems like it could end badly for us. And we have to just learn how to be with that discomfort, because it's not comfortable when the nervous system is noticing a potential threat. But we adapt and it changes. And then we have this ability to be with bigger and bigger things. That yeah, allows us to have a bigger and bigger life. So we certainly don't want to be avoiding stress. And that that idea of like minor stressors. Yeah, like the nervous system, because it adapts to everything. And because it remembers everything. It also has memories, when we don't when we don't work on this stuff, has all these really strong memories of when we were little. And these things that are now insignificant as adults still feel big, because there's those young memories that are still like, really, really stuck in there. And we haven't done the processing work, we haven't done parts work or any kind of nervous system regulation, right? So then we can help the nervous system kind of learn that, hey, when someone criticizes me on Instagram, it's not the same as when my mom criticized me, and it really, really hurt as a six year old. Right? Like, let me help you understand that, like, we can kind of start to rewire these things. So it's just like working with the nervous system, understanding what it's doing, continuing to expose it to things so that it adapts and allows us to expand our lives and our capacity for hard things.
Jessica: Would you say that avoidance of stress is almost more stressful than facing it?
Jenna: Or I'd say in the moment, it doesn't feel that way. Avoiding stress feels great. And facing stress, maybe doesn't. But over time, what's going to happen is, it's like, how good would I compare this to you? I mean, not terrible what I was gonna say like, if a baby never had like interactions, right? If a baby didn't have exposure to environments and stuff, and then you just threw a young kid into like a school setting or something like imagine how terrifying that would be, you kept a baby like in a room with only one person, it didn't know a lot about the outside world, and then you just throw it in to a setting like that. That's pretty normal for a lot of kids, right? That's not I mean, we can get into a whole talk about the school system and level up. But let's say it's like, we know, we generally can handle it to some degree, like that kid would go bonkers. And the same thing happens to us. So we kind of lock ourselves in a room. And then we try to you know, get back to life, it's going to feel so much more overwhelming than if we continuously choose. And I'm not saying to like throw yourself into the deep end if you have been avoiding stress don't hop into like a cold plunge and then run a marathon and then like get a new job or whatever, that would be a bad idea, but like, start to try on some what feels like currently tolerable stressors, and and keep growing. Because yeah, it does, life will only get harder, the more we avoid it. Because not going anywhere like the outside world, it's not going anywhere. Right. And neither is our internal world. So might as well face it.
Jessica: Yeah. It's like you said like, you can't keep shrinking your world until you live in a bubble. And you're just now like, anything that's stressful? No, thank you.
Jenna: It’s always gonna burst that bubble, you could try but like there's going to be something something's going to happen in that bubble at some point. And then what, you know, you can't avoid everything. It's not available, not an available option, we got to stop pretending it is. Right.
Jessica: So how do you, I guess what is like an example of tools that you start using, like just an example for people if they've been avoiding stress for so long? And they need to start doing some type of processing? Like what is an example of techniques that you use in your work?
Jenna: I always it's hard because it can be different for everybody but I find a lot of people, and this is what you'll find in like most nervous system regulation approaches and programs and stuff. You start with establishing a sense of safety. So that's at the root of it right is like we don't feel safe even when we are safe. And so we're trying to find safety and all the wrong places. Okay, this this L theanine will give me safety, Magnesium will give me safety. If I stay on YouTube for long enough, I'll feel safe, we actually are kind of unconsciously looking for things that will help us to feel safe and no longer threatened. But it doesn't work because those types of external things don't support it. So finding access to what brings you safety, and that can be orienting practices are lovely. And they're so simple. And they're kind of like meditation. But ultimately, it's just this like noticing of what's actually happening in your environment. It's like this really so slow exploration of, there's a plant, there's a lamp, a window, and like truly just taking it in slow enough so that your nervous system can be like, oh, like I thought we were somewhere else. This is okay, like this is safe. And then same thing like, oh, I noticed I'm breathing, I notice the soft shirt that I'm wearing. And it doesn't sound like a lot, but it can shift things so powerfully when we start to do this. And the reason it helps so much this particular practice is because the nervous system is actually doing that all the time. So it's called neuroception, where the nervous system is just trying to pick up on what's outside and what's inside, right? What's happening in the body. Is there low blood sugar? Is there a faster heart rate? Is there something, is there a smell in my environment that could be dangerous, it's doing this all the time. But it's doing it with all of that accumulated information from the past. And so if we've had something like an asthma attack, let's say in the past or panic attack, and our breathing got really fast and bizarre, the nervous system will be particularly interested in breath rate. So then things like even going for a walk can start to induce a lot of anxiety in a person because it's like, oh, the breath is up. This could be really, really bad. This could end badly. I want to alert the person to that. So when we orient we kind of start to support the nervous system and understanding like, oh, no, it's okay. Like, this is okay, that everything is safe right now there is no threat in the environment, this breathing rhythm is safe. Okay, cool, I can settle. So that's one very simple and kind of introductory example to accessing more safety. But some people do really well with like self touch. Or even you know, you're getting some kind of bodywork done, movement can be really supportive, like slow movement, especially walking, walking is just the greatest. Breathing, of course, using different breathing strategies to come into that state of safety. So just starting there is huge, just starting to feel what it feels like to notice that you are safe. And we have to be careful about that like cognitive piece again, because you are right now might say like, I know, I'm safe. Like I'm just recording a podcast, everything's fine. But like our nervous system is probably on a bit of a blur, right? We're probably a little bit more up regulated than we were an hour ago. Because there's some pressure with the situation, I can really say something stupid, not know what how to answer that question. So it's like, there's a little bit of energy in the system. And that's okay. But we want to help it realize, like, there's no, there's no tiger here, it's going to be okay. And especially afterwards, like it's over, the threat is definitely gone. Now we can come back and recover?
Jessica: Well I think that's a really powerful piece. Because I feel like whether it's health or nervous system work, whatever it might be, we kind of start to create this idea in our head that I think we don't define it for ourselves. But we're chasing after perfection, like this idea that we're gonna get to this static place. Like, once I get to a static place with my nervous system, and I, you know, nothing is ever stressful. I'm going to be at that pinnacle of health, that's when I reach the goal, or I never have any symptoms at all. That's the pinnacle of health. And I feel like so many women are chasing this pinnacle, feeling that there's something wrong and something broken until they get to this undefined kind of unachievable place. And so to hear, Oh, it's okay, if my nervous system starts to react to a situation, but it's in our power to shift it to a response almost like instead of just a reactionary, like oh my gosh, I'm so scared. It's okay. I can feel myself, I understand why my nervous system is feeling this way. And I'm going to choose how to respond to the situation instead of a complete mindless reaction. Is that kind of what you're saying?
Jenna: Totally. Yeah. Or like our nervous system. And also our immune system, like everything within us is always going to be responding to the outside world and the outside world is always changing. So there's no static anything here, right? Like, right, we can develop, I think, the sense that we are static in the way that we trust ourselves to respond to what's going on inside like we can that can be the goal like I trust that I will always turn towards myself and take care of those things like now that I am here. I will see my symptoms as communication, I will mobilize the stress that I accumulate. At the end of every day like we can trust ourselves to do that, we can't expect, there's no such thing as static in the human body, like, we just can't expect that there's so even right now, like, there's just every second, there's so much happening inside of us, we just, we can't expect things to stay the same. But that being said, the body does tend to communicate in similar ways. So we all kind of have these unique symptom pictures typically, right? Like, I know, when my stress gets a little bit high, it's like digestion and sleep. Those are my things. Other people, it's like, they'll have PMS symptoms, it'll be more hormonal, whatever. So it's like, you get to know that those things are communication. And you can sort of tend to them a bit sooner, tend to them before they get so big that you're back in that really like chronically ill, not well state that too, is available. But yeah, getting to a place where the body stops talking to you. I mean, that's like when you die. So don't look forward to that.
Jessica: That is a perfect flight. I loved what you had said that I think you were one of your posts, you're just talking about how there can be, I think for a lot of us, we're doing everything so mindlessly, that intention and awareness is really important. But then you said some of us never needed to focus more heavily on what's inside, some of us need to learn how to get outside of ourselves. And some of us went there and got stuck. So now we're not just aware, but hyper aware of what's happening inside. And we hate working hard, we feel even more stressed and less resilient. When we're in this place and disconnected from the world around us. We are trying to build capacity, but not obsess over perceived limits. And also, I mean, we're always trying to kind of define our perceived limits. So as people start to cultivate more internal awareness, is there a place where this kind of shifts and becomes almost like we become too hyper aware and hyper attuned, and it keeps us stuck?
Jenna: Yeah. So that I was thinking about neuroception. Again, actually, so what I just described with the nervous system, kind of being aware of the external and internal world, there is often like the nervous system will start to get a little bit more focused on one or the other a lot of the time and wherever there's been threat. So if you've been chronically symptomatic, the nervous system often is like very focused on it. So there's like a lot of awareness, and then a lot of response to the sense that something inside is off. But that again, super uncomfortable. We don't like it. We hate it when the nervous system feels threatened because it feels like anxiety, and it can feel like anger and fear and sometimes even more like depression and collapse and shut down. And it's just like not a cozy place to be. And so then we will often intentionally either focus outside, that's my thing, obviously, like, I'm just like, oh, just get another degree, you know, it'll be fine. And then some people have turned, like, go over the top and focus their mind internally. And I think that that's like a big issue with a lot of the advice that's like popular on the internet, I think it feels, I think, because so much of our pain is ignored. It feels really good when we come across a post that like tells us to really focus on the pain, you know, but we're not doing it in a way that's actually healing. We're doing it in a way that's like, yeah, obsessive and anxiety provoking, or just like, oh, my gosh, I have this sensation in my stomach, oh, my gosh, I am anxious about this. Oh my gosh, I don't like what that person said,. We just have started to get our minds so trained to obsess over these things when the mind usually can't help all that much either. So it's interesting and still hard for me to remember because I can be such a cognitive perception is that a lot of time we don't need to figure anything out or like, do anything fancy. We just need to notice, like, oh, there's a sensation. Let me stay with it, and wait until it shifts or let me listen to it and see what it needs. And then that's it. Like it there's nothing more than that. We try to complicate it so much. And yeah, I think so much of the advice out there is just encouraging that you know, and the health space to where it's like this is a little bit different. But just like here's what your nails say about your health and your eyebrows and your hair, your skin. Oh, if you're bloated, a little, you must have SIBO and the parasites and you need to, like it's just so many things to focus on. And it's like, you know, I don't know, sometimes bellies bloat and then it goes away. That's like not always a thing that you need to treat. It can just be a thing that you're like, oh, I need looser pants today. Fine, right? The body is really smart at working through a lot of things. But when we add to the stress by like think now thinking about and focusing on it and then throwing extra things at it and telling big stories about it, it's less able to get through it the way that it knows how to write. So so much of this is just like let your internal world do what it knows to do. Yeah. Does that make sense?
Jessica: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And I think that sometimes the hardest thing because in today's world, it's so easy to do, like, try to try to do your way out of this, whatever it is, like carnivore your way out of this, keto your way out of this. Vegan your way out of this, like you said, protocol your way out of this. And I think there's this ever ending hunger, where you're always going to hop to the next thing, because until you listen, the pain doesn't go away. So it just keeps morphing and changing. And those symptoms will keep shifting as well. So that I mean, that's it. That's it's very hard, because I think a lot of us do that. And we almost get attached to it and we get attached to, I think there is it feels like there's almost an addictive quality to it, where we always want to continue to make it bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And in fact, is it possible for us to just like you said, sometimes bellies bloat and like, move on with our day? Total? Is it possible to not expend all this energy and resources on creating a story around every little thing in our life?
Jenna: Yeah. And it makes sense, because like, a big part of feeling safe is actually choice, which sometimes we kind of turn into control. So like, it makes sense that we would want Oh, if I just eat keto, then this uncomfortable thing, or this thing that I'm perceiving my nervous system is perceiving as threatening, that will go away. Great. That's, that's exactly what I need to feel safer. But of course, it's not really controllable. A lot of this stuff, not in the way that we want it to be like we can, we can listen to the body. And if the body is like always reacting to a certain food, like, okay, my body doesn't like that right now. I'm gonna, I'll try again in a couple months, but maybe I'll remove that stressor. Because if there's obviously like a lack of tolerance, right now, for whatever reason, maybe related to like, there's just too much, right? There's so much stress, maybe dairy’s off the table for a month or two, while I'm really stressed, and then I bring it back, and I can tolerate it later. So that is there. But this idea that we can like exert enough control over everything that we don't like, is yeah, it's just going to land us in more dysregulation. And we also tend to think that, like, the bigger the symptom, the bigger we need to react to it, right? So it's like, we're really bloated, or we're really constipated, then like, I have to bring out all the big guns. And interestingly, it's so often the opposite. Because of the body's overwhelmed. That's so often what it is like, the body is just overwhelmed by all of the inputs that we give it, we just need to do less. So like, you know, when we're constipated, just like okay, I'm gonna maybe back off wherever I can for a bit, and give my body time to process. Process, all the emotional stuff, all the you know, cognitive stuff, I'm taking in all the food, I've been eating all the supplements, I've been trying, I'm just gonna give my body time to break that all down, and it'll likely poop again. Just let it I don't have to force it.
Jessica: Well, yeah. And that can be the hardest part, I guess. Because in doing that, you really have to I know, you talked about this a lot like surrendering to the body's response, feel all of it, you had a stressful day. And there's there's a lot of adrenaline running through your veins. It's not like, oh, my gosh, I gotta go take the l like you said, l theanine, or take the herb, the Rhodiola. And I'm gonna breathwork my way out of this and yoga my way out of this and like, Okay, I gotta do this, this and this. You always talk about surrendering to the body's response. And I guess I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding what that means or what that looks like.
Jenna: Yeah, I often find that an easier place to start for a lot of us is listening to the body and then kind of following its cue. So how can I explain this in a way that makes a lot of sense, but when I approach nervous system work with people, I kind of think about these two ways of practicing, one is going towards stillness and creating safety and the other is mobilizing stress. And so sometimes, even though this is not really popular, but like nothing I say, apparently is starting with mobilizing can actually be really helpful. So when there's something going on in the body, and it feels stressful, working with it in a way that moves it a little bit, so that we start to fear these sensations less. So like, let's say we hop off this call and I'm like, Oh, my heart rate is quite elevated and I feel a bit. I just did this thing that stressed me out a little bit, my nervous system is expecting you to move because historically, if there was a stress, we would be fighting or fleeing. It's very weird to sit and be stressed. The nervous systems like, well, what is what are you doing, you're an idiot, like get going. So that I might want to do some kind of movement practice or go for a walk and like, get that flight energy out, if that's what it is. Or if I'm starting to feel angry for whatever reason, like that's usually more like Cushing type, like strength building type activities that can really support that energy. So tapping in and sort of, in an attuned and intuitive way, moving that survival stress, and then you start to recognize not just cognitively but just like felt sense way. Oh, like, I'm bigger than that, it actually is not going to swallow me whole, I can connect to it, and then I can move with it. And then there's a bit of a softening, and there's a bit of a space and Okay, cool. So for so many of us, that's like an easier place to start, it's way more accessible to do something at least we're still doing something right, like, that's our norm. So start there, do something with it, but not in like, gotta get rid of you way, in like, hey, I want to hold your hand and I want to see what you need. And let's see what we can do together. And if nothing shifts, nothing shifts. But I'm just going to keep experimenting with these ideas. And then and then maybe add on sort of the stillness and safety practice, the stillness stuff is really challenging for our systems. In part because we are such doers, a lot of us I'm sure a lot of the people listen to your podcast are coming from that place of like do, do, do do, do, all the time. And so, stillness can be challenging for that reason, it can also be challenging, because like anything that registers as traumatic, involves immobilization, and immobilization when we didn't want to be immobilized. So those traumas that get stuck, there's always like this inability to do what we wanted to do. And so stillness can kind of remind our nervous systems of that. And so yeah, it can take a little bit longer for that to feel comfortable and approachable. So starting with starting with continuing to do something with the sensation can actually be supportive to this process.
Jessica: Well, that's not something that you hear a lot said, but it makes so much sense. It's like, if you feel like you're being, I don't know, let's say, chased by a tiger. And you just sit there, I kind of experienced this too, when I was first really starting to attune myself into my nervous system, I would always have these feelings of terror and dread. And I think that's exactly what you're describing is, I hear I am so stressed, I'm running from a tiger and I'm just sitting here immobilized. Yeah, and I love what you said about just moving with it. And this idea of walking would be that, that flight energy or strength training and pushing those weights would be that fight energy, like there's something that feels so good about exercising, and maybe it's not just the endorphins on the, you know, the insulin sensitivity and all the, you know, the super cognitive things that we try to explain exercise with. But I think of all the women right now who have gotten to a place of such stress, you know, “adrenal fatigue,” I put quotation marks around that, where maybe they didn't have a good relationship with exercise, like you described. So what do they do? They just stop exercising altogether, because they feel like they're exercise intolerant every time they exercise. But you had mentioned earlier, I love what you mentioned about how, you know, maybe there's something there with getting your heart rate up, you've associated that with some type of danger. And I do think of like, all the education out there right now that if you over exercise, you are going to burn yourself out or stress yourself out. And so some of us have maybe associated exercise with, oh, no, this is the thing that hurt me before. So I'm not I can't do that right now. It's not safe for me. And maybe it's the actual thing that you need to mobilize some of that stress.
Jenna: Totally. Yeah, it will. And the interesting thing about chronic fatigue and fatigue in general is, yes, sometimes we have been so stressed that we've depleted all of our energies or resources. And so we can't like we can't get out of that fatigued and shut down place. So the shutdown state of the nervous system where you're like just collapse, that's essentially the nervous system often will choose that state, when it senses that there's no internal resources, like you can't go into fight or flight. So you need to collapse at home until you recover some energy. That's true that happens. And a lot like to get out of that we need movement, like we need to climb back up that ladder, we actually need to go through that sympathetic state, which is really hard and I think part of a deterrent to kind of getting out of that chronic fatigue state because as we start to maybe move or engage with the world more, we do tend to feel our fight flight energy that was never discharged. So then people get totally well, okay, I tried to move and then I felt anxious. And so I just go back down into my fatigue state, but we have to move through that to come out of the fatigue and shutdown state. And then it's interesting too, because when I was healing from whatever it was my combination of nervous system dysregulation, mold, overdoing life burnout situation, I like needed to move. And maybe in part, I was also like a fitness instructor in a past life and loved boot camp and all that kind of thing and ran marathons like that was so my style. And so maybe part of it was just, I had parts that needed to do that to feel good. But I think a lot of it was like, I had so much stuck stress in my body, and I would go online, and everyone would tell me that cardio is gonna, like, kill me or whatever. Like I need it, I couldn't, I was one of those people who needed to enter this work in a really big way, by mobilizing first and then finding safety later, right. So like I couldn't, for the longest time, I couldn't engage in any parts work if I didn't work out first. Or if I didn't do more like a somatic type of mobilizing, practice something intentional to discharge the energy and then settle in and become aware of my system. So that stuff, it's hard, it's hard for me to read, because it's so like, it's spoken as if it applies to everybody. And there are cases, obviously, of like exercise and tolerance where Yeah, you gotta be careful. But we really do need movement, like we're really built to move the nervous system expects us to move, the more stressed we are the more movement that's expected from our nervous system. So avoiding it altogether, it's not going to get us too far, we have to find ways to incorporate it. And it can be tough when we have that history of excessive exercise to know like, Okay, what is what is listening to my body? And what is listening to the part of me that thinks I need to work out this hard to be good. Right. And that can be hard to figure out. But we can usually find it the body at that point is usually telling us to symptoms when we've overdone it. But yeah, I think I think we need movement. And I think it not just walking, and not just strength training. Like I think we need to get our heart rate up. And we always did. I think it's I don't know what this, I think this is more in your realm of things this world of, you know, women shouldn't exercise hard women never have it's like, I don't know about that. I think women are probably pretty involved in getting things done. And their heart rates probably went up pretty high several times. You know, and I think we can continue to do that.
Jessica: Yeah, I think about how, really, I mean, as women especially, we've always kind of evolved with the slow steady all day movement, I think about we didn't have the modern conveniences that we now have like a washer and dryer, which thank God, right. But we would sit there and wash the clothes by hand and we would sit there and you know, work the dough. And we would be always playing with the children picking them up. And you know, because we kind of lived in this more community basis. So there was always work to be done, you know, squatting down and picking things up. We were always, you know, carrying water and carrying milk. And then there were going to be times where you're running or there's some some, you know, spurt of energy that's used. But we were using our bodies all day long, this kind of very laborious work. And now ourselves. We're like, wait a minute, what's going on? We're not using our bodies at all. We're not. We're not moving at all. I think it makes us feel fragile. I think it makes us feel like we're like this glass that's about to just shatter and break. And it's just, it doesn't work out for us. But I also think like you said, there's so many women who this was me, athlete, all my life moving all my life just always had a very cognitive approach to exercise. Like I was always on a plan, always reaching a goal. And for me, getting out of that and just moving my body in a way that felt good for a couple of years was really important for me. But there is this there's a craving for pushing my body. And when I felt that craving for pushing my body again, it was time to start challenging my body again. It wasn't like this is bad. Like I can't work out. Like, it's so bad for me. But I do wonder if all of the running that's really popular right now. Like I feel like running is like getting back into popularity. And it just makes me think of what you said. You were mobilizing that flight energy and so many women have said like it's been so great for my mental health. I know the cardio is bad for be cardio is not bad for you. It's just using it to distract that can be a problem but that's simple. It's just awareness is the answer to that.
Jenna: Yeah and if you notice your mental health is improving afterwards like that means it's good for you because was it you would feel terrible you would? Especially I don't know how old you are. I mean, I'm heading into my late 30s I don't like to talk about it but like in my 20s Yeah, okay, we got away with that a little bit more. I'm I was definitely working out in a way that was pushing it. Although again, I had a lot more resilience than too, I didn't have kids, I didn't have as many responsibilities. So maybe it was, it was not as terrible as if I were to implement it now. But now our bodies do warn us. So it's like, if you were going to spin, you probably wake up feeling like foggy and groggy if it was too much, you wouldn't wake up with way better, way better perspective and outlook on life. It's like your, your brain is part of your body, too. Right? Your brain is going to feel bad in addition to your body when you do things that aren't attuned.
Jessica: Yeah, yeah, there'll be like dread there. They'll feel like you're just mustering up everything you have inside of you to make it happen. Yes, yeah. And then I guess, looking at the flip side, so I think, you know, we have this this problem where we're not moving, but we're also not resting. So I know, you talk about fake rest, and real rest. And I think some women haven't felt real rest in years. What how would you describe real rest versus kind of this fake rests that we're all about right now?
Jenna: Fake rest is like you described it earlier, like the Netflix and the bath. And you know, it's still, a bath is fine. And Netflix is fine to do, I watch plenty of TV. But it's like never giving ourselves the mind and body break, right. Like, that's what rest looks like. And it is, of course, challenging. Because I mentioned already, like stillness is often related to times where we didn't have, we didn't want to be still and we had to be that can be like a medical intervention, or an assault or something horrible. We can also be related to those busy lifestyles that we have, that stillness is a challenge. So I don't want people to just be like, Okay, I'm just gonna go lay in the dark for two hours every day, like, you're not going to feel right. But starting to have even if it's just like mini breaks, or something I heard somewhere one time was actually, anytime you're switching tasks, taking 10 Deep breaths. So just before, so instead of, I close my laptop from here, and I like grab Instagram or go to my emails right away, it's like, as you're switching tasks, just take a mini break. And over time, you'll have the capacity to take longer and longer breaks. But ultimately, that resting of the mind, and body is all about that processing and digestive process that the nervous system needs that our brain needs. And what's cool is that we are designed to do it automatically. So you don't have to go and be like, Okay, I'm gonna think about everything that happened in the last hour and make sense of it and figure it out. And you know, it's not, that's because that's still not restful. But when we lie down, and we just breathe, and there's nothing, the brain starts to do that, like, it just starts to like, Okay, what do I need to retain from what happened? And what can I let go of? This also happens when we walk and when we get adequate REM sleep. So there's these like automatic processing mechanisms in the brain so that we don't remain kind of bombarded with these short term memories, right. So when we don't move short term memories into long term memory, we have just too much information, we just we all that stuff that we take in, which is already way too much. We keep it and we've got it all day, I went to the grocery store, and I saw this thing on Instagram. And it's like all of the emotional impacts of that to remain stuck in this place where it's impacting us and day to day. So when we practice stillness, and we are kind of regulating our nervous systems enough that we're getting REM sleep at night, and we're going for those silent walks, like then things can move and process and assimilate. And that's, that's kind of what the rest is restoration. It should feel restorative, it should feel like afterwards, we come out of it. And we have more energy. And it can be I think people get really, they think when I talk about this, that it means like, Okay, I want you to rest as much as you are active during the day. And we're not built for that either. Like we are really meant to be engaged with the world most of the time. And we only need mini, we do need these mini resets. So it can be Yeah, that anytime we're changing tasks, take a few breaths, it can be once a day for half an hour, 20 minutes, I'm going to like lay down and do some guided breathing or do like a non sleep deep breath practice or whatever, right like anything I can tolerate. I'm going to do that every day just to give that little digestive break. And then I'm going to carry on with busyness and it's so profound, it really is the impact that that can have.
Jessica: Yeah, that's that is so powerful. I I think you had mentioned one time that productivity that results in something good that you have created. You benefiting people think that feels good. There's nothing wrong with that. Whereas now we kind of we are so kind of impulsively busy all the time. We try to just stay busy with insignificant things. But if we're really intentional about our rest and our work, we can find a lot of healing out there, it doesn't have to be perfectly balanced. It's just about being tuned.
Jenna: Exactly. Yeah.
Jessica: Wow, your work is just so powerful. And just reading some of your stuff has just profoundly impacted me. And I'm sure my audience is thinking, I mean, I could keep you here forever. But I'm sure my audience is thinking like, oh, how do I get more of this? Where do I find Jenna? How do I get involved in her work? Like, just tell us all about where to find you? And what you offer?
Jenna: Yeah, sure. My Instagram handle is felt sense. And then it's WPG people never know. Like, they think it's like all one word felt sense. felt sense. WPG, it is all in one word. And then I have a membership. It's $25 a month Canadian, which right now the Canadian dollar sucks. It's very cheap for Americans. And that's just where I have a ton of these practices. So around safety, around mobilizing hearts work, all the things, and it's guided. So you kind of start and you know, learn a little bit. That might be repetitive. Now, if you've listened to this podcast, but you kind of learn a little bit, and then you'll try it on what does that feel like to actually do in real time? And then that the practices are kind of just available to you to pick and choose, as you get to know yourself? And like, which ones work for me and which ones don't? And what do I need, at what time, so there's that. And then I have an e book as well, which is really for the people who are more heavy with it. So it's like the same content, but in more in depth. And what I found is a lot of people who are drawn to my work because I'm a thinker, or they're also thinkers, and it's kind of like they're those protective parts, because they are thinking parts are productive. They won't let them do this stuff until it makes total sense. And so the book is really for people who are like, hey, I need to get it. I really need to get everything about this. Because otherwise I'm not willing to try. Try another thing that might hurt me, right. And so many people have tried a billion things. And they're like, I'm not going down this again, unless I know for sure that it makes sense for me to. So those are my two things right now, I can only work one on one with people in two provinces in Canada that I'm licensed in. So that is limited. But that's it. That's what I have. That's me.
Jessica: That's amazing. Those two offerings on amazing is so well thought out to you for who you're working with. So incredible. Well, I hope everyone checks it out. I know I'm gonna go check it out. Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much for being here. And thank you for all that you've shared with us. It's just so incredible. I've learned so much today. I love learning from you. So thank you.
Jenna: Oh thanks for having me. This was fun.
Episode Links
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