Welcome to my podcast. Happily, even After. I’m life coach, jen, I’m passionate about helping people recover from betrayal. I rode the intense emotional roller coaster and felt stuck and traumatized for years. It’s the reason I became a trauma-informed, certified life coach who helps people like you navigate their post-betrayal world. I have the tools, processes and knowledge to help you not only heal from the betrayal but create a healthy future. Today we begin to help you live happily even after. Hey friends, welcome to today’s podcast. Today I’m so excited I have my good friend, trisha Jamieson on.
I met Trisha a little over a year ago and we were in an advanced training on the nervous system and Leah, who is our coach, our trainer, the person who certified us coach, our trainer, the person who certified us. She connected Trisha and I together and we have been meeting every Monday for a year, except for in the summer when we got really busy. But anyways, I’ve just loved getting to know Trisha. She’s also a coach like me and she coaches on relationships and she has a podcast which is such a great podcast. It’s called the Q&A Files and I love it because she is on with her husband, who’s a doctor, as well as a therapist named Tony Overbay, and so they talk about all sorts of things. So for sure, go check that out. I’m going to ask Trisha is there anything else you want me to want to say about who you are? I’m going to ask Trisha is there anything else you want me to want to say about?
who you are. Well, about three years ago I was certified as a functional nutritionist and lifestyle practitioner and so I’ve been able to incorporate that a lot into my practice and I’ll be talking about that a little bit today. And I have six children and almost 11 grandchildren by the end of the year, so that’s going to be really exciting. And, yeah, we just live in Spokane, washington. It’s a beautiful day today.
Yeah, it’s beautiful here in Utah. That’s what I love about Zoom and being able to connect with people all over the world. It’s amazing, yes, Okay. So today we since we’ve learned about our nervous system together we’re going to talk about how the body keeps the score, and Tricia is an expert on this and she has learned so much from our trainings and just life in general. Right, so what does that mean? Especially regarding betrayal trauma? Right, If you’ve been betrayed, it’s really a traumatic. It’s just not like a regular something. It feels deeper than that, right? Yeah, and the book, it says the body keeps the score. What does that mean?
Yeah, so I just I work in Tony’s group, so Tony has a group and Tony is Tony Overbay.
He’s the third person in our the Q&A filed in our podcast, and he has a group of women and it’s called waking up to narcissism. And then he has a group on the side and there’s about 700 women and he and I take turns teaching in that group. One of the things that I’ve really seen is how the body does keep the score. How many people get sick. It’s like that.
Your body is like a storage unit for trauma, and you might not be able to mentally move past the trauma, but your body doesn’t forget, and I think that that’s what’s so important to remember, and this is what Dr Biesel van der Kolk means when he says the body keeps the score. The tension, anxiety and physical pain you might feel for months or even years after the betrayal are your body’s way of holding onto that experience. And so when you have different things that happen in your body whether it’s migraines or digestive issues or, you know, just a myriad of aches and pains there’s a reason your body’s trying to tell you something. And so, unless we take time to stop and listen to what our body’s trying to tell us, it will continue to wreak havoc, and so you may be able to you know, mentally move through some of the trauma. But until you take time emotionally to move through that trauma, you are going to feel a lot of this physical pain.
So yeah, I love that. And Bessel, he actually wrote a book. The Body Keeps the Score. He’s for sure an expert on this. I love that. And Bessel, he actually wrote a book. The Body Keeps the Score yes, he’s for sure an expert on this. I love that. And it is true, I don’t think a lot of us we don’t listen to our bodies and when we go to the doctor they just look at the symptoms. I think we treat the symptoms and we don’t treat the root of the issue and many of us maybe aren’t ready to deal with it. I mean, I didn’t even realize I had betrayal trauma until many, many years like 26 years that I was like oh, this is what’s going on with me, right?
Well, and when you are in that space, it’s like your whole world just got flipped upside down. You don’t even know what end is up, and so your amygdalas gets hijacked and your critter brain gets on. You know, is the focus that your emotional part of your brain, your limbic system and I’m sure that have you shared with your listeners regarding how to put your CEO back online? Yeah, well, I would love. Yeah, tell us. Yeah, I mean. So.
When you’re in this constant threat of feeling like you are in fight or fight, that’s the amygdala being hijacked and that has such an impact on your life.
It you can’t function, you can’t think clearly, you are in such a disarray of mindfulness, your focus is just so out of whack, and so being able to get your bearings in place and allowing yourself to get grounded, that is going to allow that focus to go back to your CEO, and we call that your prefrontal cortex, your decision logic, planning part of your brain, and that’s where you can think, and so, if you’re in that threat state, you can’t think clearly, and so it’s allowing yourself to feel grounded.
So one of the things that I like to do with my clients is just going outside and feeling the, you know, having your feet in the grass or in the sand or something, and just imagine those, your roots growing from your feet down, and that just allows you to feel more grounded. You know, just pulling in the five senses and just looking at, you know, a tree, and just really focusing on the very specific texture of the tree and the color and the smell of the air and you know the breeze on your face, just that allows those five senses to make you stay present and that present state will prevent you from going backwards. And so it’s just allowing yourself to kind of stay in this place of I’m okay, and it can start to allow your body to relax. And when that happens, then your CEO can go back online.
Yeah, I love that so much. What are some other practical steps that someone can do to release the trauma out of their body? So grounding sounds like one.
Yeah, grounding, pulling in your five senses, scanning. I love to do the body scan where you it’s like, a lot of times when you have those deep sensations, you become hypervigilant and a lot of times that pain is really felt. So are you feeling pain in your head, are you feeling pain in your chest, your back, your stomach? You know where is it that you’re feeling that pain, and then it’s imagining what’s happening. So I mean, sometimes even, like you know, I’ll have clients say it feels like I’ve got these two huge weights on my shoulders and I just I cannot get them off.
And so just allowing yourself, first of all, to validate that you have feelings, that you have had trauma, yeah, it allows you to recognize that there’s a problem. And so that’s the first step, is just validating yes, I have a problem. This is something that’s super uncomfortable. This is where I’m feeling this extra stress and weight. And so, once you can acknowledge that and then allow yourself to kind of do this body scan, allow yourself to kind of do this body scan and then you focus on breathing, you focus on lifting that weight off your shoulder and the more that you’re just releasing and lifting that weight off and breathing that out that can start to help your body to relax.
Oh wow, that’s so helpful. I like the validating because I think often at least for me I judge myself a lot Like I shouldn’t be feeling this way, like something’s wrong with me doing rather than allowing our body to go through the process of this is what it is doing.
It’s not a matter and just allowing yourself to be curious rather than that judgment.
But sometimes that’s really hard.
It’s hard to not, and one of the things that we learned actually in our class and I really love this too is and I do this with my clients all the time and that is when you’re looking at a scene, you don’t focus on the litter on the ground or you know the garbage all over it’s. You focus on a specific key thing, on whether it’s a fence or a part of the road or a sign or whatever that is, and you just have curiosity. It’s just like, oh my gosh, look at all the garbage that’s all over the. You know the road or whatever. There’s no judgment, and I’ve just really incorporated that also into my life. And then when you’re in a really, I guess, vulnerable situation, you’re putting that already into practice and I have just really appreciated how that’s not something that you can just start when you’re in a trauma situation. You have to be practicing a lot of these techniques ahead of time. So then when that comes up, it will be a natural transition to go into some of these other techniques that you can use.
Yeah, I love that so much. I like the idea of practicing because it’s like you have no idea what to do when a stressful, traumatic situation comes up if you’ve never thought about it before. So I like that. I think that would be really helpful for a lot of people. So could you look at someone and see betrayal trauma, or is that something that only you can feel inside of your body, and what would be a sign of that?
Yeah, so that’s such a great question and I think a lot of people really do a nice job of trying to fake their way in life, unfortunately. But I think what I’ve seen in a lot of my clients is they have headaches, they may have digestive issues, fatigue, muscle pain, and these symptoms arise because the body is in a constant state of alertness. Even in a safe environment they still feel this tension and so when your nervous system is all keyed up, you’re in that fight or flight mode. You can’t relax, and the more that that becomes chronic, then you’re going to feel this extra weight, this pain, this constant nagging and, just like I said earlier, until you take time to stop and recognize that this is an issue.
I mean I had a woman that I was working with and she had irritable bowel syndrome and she just I didn’t know that she had betrayal trauma, but she came to me because of her IBS and you know, you always come for something else. People always come for weight loss, but it is usually always something else. And the more that we were able to kind of unwind you know her life and what’s going on. I mean she’s had that, I think, for like seven years and she was so miserable and she’d seen doctors and she tried to get all this help and nothing was helping. And so it was nice because my husband actually had her come to me and pretty soon we got to the root cause of it. We did, you know, interject a lot of nutrition tips as well. That was very helpful for her IBS. But when she learned to just release and let go of just the trauma and just do a lot of mindset shifts, focus on her triggers, that was really helpful and then she was able to get through that really tough time.
Yeah, I love that story and it’s interesting because your husband, who’s a doctor, knows how you can help women right, or men or women, that sometimes the IBS is just a symptom of something deeper, so that was really intuitive of him.
Yeah, and something we need to remember is that we have what’s called the gut brain access, which affects nutrition and our mental capacity, and so when and it could go either way if we’ve got a lot of mental issues going on, it can affect our digestion. If we’ve got some digestive issues, that can affect our mental capacity as well, but usually as a yeah, yeah, and for me, I think I for sure.
I don’t know if I had a lot of digestive issues, but I was using food to help to soothe myself. Yes, yeah, definitely. A lot of problems right, causing me to gain weight and feel sick and gross because I wasn’t eating healthy food. I was eating sugary food and fatty food.
Well, and that’s what happens when you’re stressed. You know it leads to poor food choices and emotional eating. And it’s interesting too, because a lot of times when you’re in an emotional state, you want soft foods cheeses, ice creams because you want that comfort, that nice, soft, comforting food. But if you are angry, a lot of times you want to chew on something like chips or you know something that’s more hard, that you want to use your voice for something.
So, oh, that’s fascinating, really fascinating. It’s and it’s all unconscious, right, we don’t recognize this, but it’s very fascinating. So how can someone create like new if they feel triggered in certain situations or around certain things? Like, how, like, how can you create a new response Like how is that possible? Like what do you suggest people do?
Well, I think that that’s such a great question and one of the things that we focus on is journaling journaling your situation or your experiences, and that allows you to, once you write those triggers down, you can then read them and go back and then you can start to take a look at. Okay, sometimes it could be a smell, it could be a location, it could be you know someplace that you knew, that you haven’t even known. But sometimes you have this sixth sense in you. It’s very fascinating, but you know there’s a lot of triggers that happens. It could be a phrase, it could be anything somebody said, it could be a voice and that can cause that trigger response. And so by taking a moment and just writing those things out, then you can recognize okay, this is a trigger.
What do I want to do with this? Because you know it brings up a lot of bad memories and a lot of times again, that critter brain gets you know. Put back online the part of your brain that’s emotional, that doesn’t allow you to think through situations, and it creates a lot of havoc, like we talked about, but it’s allowing yourself to reframe. So, again, when you notice yourself being triggered. I love this word pause. You just pause, you breathe, you allow that oxygen to go back into your brain so you can think clearly and that again puts that CEO back online but it reminds you that you’re safe and in those situations it will allow your body to respond differently to these triggers.
So another thing that is helpful is just movement, just getting up and moving. A lot of times when we’re stressed we want to just curl up in a ball and just cry, and sometimes you need those times, you need to allow whatever you need. But if we can get up and just move around, it releases those endorphins, those feel good hormones and those are really helpful too and just allows that breathing to kind of take over, and not that shallow breathing when you’re really upset and crying, because it kind of keeps you in that, you know, stressful state.
Yeah, I love that is it’s a possibility to diminish or lessen the trigger, because I think some people avoid a lot of situations, myself included, of things I worry will be triggering for me, and we don’t necessarily have to do that. There are ways to heal that trigger or make it not feel so scary, which is so helpful, I think, especially in betrayal. Yeah, so how do you feel? Building a support network contributes to healing.
Oh, I think that a support network is crucial to healing because you have like-minded people. You have there’s a lot of. Sometimes, I think that it can be re-traumatizing. So I think that you do need to be careful wherever you are in your healing process, because you don’t want to be in this position that you’re probably several months ahead and then you come into a group and then everyone’s just talking about their new experience. So that could be re-traumatizing. So it’s focusing on what is going to be helpful for you. But just connecting with people that have had your experience, there’s that understanding, that empathy that is so healing. Talking to family friends that you can trust. Being in a group you know, like your group people that have experienced it is always helpful because they know what you’re going through, they understand the trauma and they appreciate what you’re dealing with, and I think that that’s always always so helpful.
Yeah, I agree. I think we heal in community and that’s very powerful. It’s also powerful if you felt like you were the only one that’s ever been had betrayal before in your life. You feel so alone. It’s a very isolating feeling. So to realize there’s other people. You aren’t the only one.
There’s unfortunately, thousands and thousands of people right, and that’s very unfortunate, you’re right, but it’s true. And so then you can heal together, which I love so much. So what? I hear you saying that it really in order to heal from betrayal trauma, that it’s a mind body from betrayal, trauma, that it’s a mind body, yes, absolutely.
And it’s learning how to incorporate, allowing your mind, the mindset shifts, looking at triggers, focusing on reframing situations, and then the emotional piece where you allow yourself to feel, you allow yourself to recognize that these are real feelings. I really have been betrayed. This is, you know, it’s not an identity that everyone wants. You just go and, hey, this is what I’m going through, of course, but it’s just validating, it’s recognizing that this has happened to me, it’s just validating it’s it’s recognizing that this has happened to me and I’m still okay, I’m still worthy, I’m still important, I’m still loved, I can still be lovable.
And I think sometimes we kind of go into this mode of well, obviously there must be something wrong with me, and so you can kind of go down that road of blame and there must be something that I’m doing wrong.
That shame, and not that people can’t change for the better, of course. But when you’re in a marriage and somebody you know has crossed that line, that is on them, no matter what, no matter the the situation, and if they chose not to have a conversation or work through things with their spouse, that’s on them, it’s not on you, and so I think that that’s really important to remember that when a lot of times, I think for women especially we just put so much on ourselves and it must be our fault and we must have done this, and how can we change and do better. And we need to remember that, no, we take what’s ours, but initially whoever crossed that line, that is where you know we need to take a look at. No, that’s on them, that’s not on me. You know, I may have some improvement, just like I talked about, but that’s we need to take that shame off of our plate.
Yes, I agree, amen, amen. Well, trisha, thank you so much for teaching us about how our body keeps the score, how we really need to listen to our body. Don’t you think, women? We tend to focus on everyone else’s problems and we Exactly.
We take it all in and we don’t allow other people to take responsibility.
I feel like yeah, and or we’re trying to fix everyone. You know, our kids make sure they go to the doctor, but how often are we really Rarely, yeah, we’re not going to the doctor. We’re thinking we blame it on other things why we have gained weight or why we have these issues, and then, but the root of it we know, I think we all, especially if we’ve been betrayed. It’s like we have a kind of a knowing, maybe. But so thank you so much, I think, thank you so much for having me on today. Learning this can be life-changing right, and I love you gave us a lot of hope, which I think hope is what we need more of in the world. Absolutely. Thank you, yeah, yeah. So I’m going to put everything in the show notes how to listen to Trisha’s podcast, how to find her, can anyone join your group, or just how to connect with you if you want?
Yeah, just connect Trisha Jameson coaching at gmailcom, and I’d love to you know whether it’s you’re in a narcissistic relationship or you’ve been betrayed. Anything that can be helpful, I’d be there to help you through that as well, that’s awesome, All right.
Well, thank you everyone for listening to today’s podcast and if you enjoyed it, please like and share with your family and friends and I will talk to you next week. If you want to learn how to live happily even after, sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachjen with one n dot com. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at happily even after coach. Let’s work together to create your happily even after.
