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In this episode of We Know Nothing, the hosts discuss the challenge of helping people understand the physiological aspect of how emotions get stuck in our bodies. They explore the importance of recognizing triggers and the impact of experiences from the first seven years of life. The hosts share personal experiences and emphasize the need to bring these subconscious triggers to a conscious level in order to clear them. They also highlight the instinctual survival response that children have during this time and how it influences their emotional development. Hello. Welcome, everyone, to another episode of We Know Nothing. I am your host, Trinity, and my beautiful, amazing psychotherapist co-host, Cheryl, and we are here today to discuss all the things about the things that we don't know. Cheryl, was there anything that maybe you wanted to lead in with? I think that, I think my biggest frustration in working with people is how to help them understand the physiology of how things get stuck inside of our bodies. It's very easy for people to understand on a cognitive level, because, you know, you know, you know a lot about what's going on and how you think and how you feel, the emotional level, you know, those are pretty, pretty fairly quick ways to help people figure out what's going on in their life, because those also involve a lot of communication with other people. And I think the difficult part, at least for me, is to help people understand their physiology and how it feels, maybe on a physiological level, when something gets stuck, when something is stuck there. I was trying to explain it to people this week. It's like, it's almost like a feeling of, almost like a feeling sometimes of how you feel maybe if you've eaten a little bit too much. And you kind of feel that full feeling inside, but it's also a little uncomfortable, like maybe you shouldn't have eaten that much. It's a very subtle feeling inside. And it's so interesting to me, because I can sometimes hear the stuckness of where someone is and trying to figure out what's going on in their life. I can even hear it in their voice. So when they are in the stuck space, and I know you obviously have physical tools to help them through, like, whether it be a meditation or breathing, and I know, like, you're so passionately driven to help them release these things. So what is their resistance in letting go of being able to understand that it's safe to be uncomfortable for a minute? Because the stuck feeling must be more uncomfortable to me than the actual practicing of how to unstuck yourself, so to speak. And that's true. And I think the difficulty is that we've talked about and we've shared references to people, other professionals who talk about the first seven years of our life, where we take so much information into our bodies. And during that time, we don't have any brain developed level of cognition that has really come in yet that doesn't come in usually until after you're seven, between seven and eight or around eight years old. And so for me, I always go back to help trying to explain that to people that that's part of what happens is that we don't, there are things we take in, like we hear or we look at somebody and they have a, they have a mean look on their face, or they're mad at us, or they're scared for us, or whatever that look might be. We know how to kind of interpret that. And we know how that goes inside our body that how we take that in to our body. The physiological part, I don't think we understand as well. And I think the biggest part of that is to realize that that first seven years is when we take so many things in that we do not understand, but they become markers inside of us. They are physical, physiological aspects that are there inside of us. One of the examples I'll use is like, if you're in a grocery store, and you might hear a mom, you know, scream at a kid or don't touch that, or, you know, be careful, you're going to fall or something like that. And it might be a small child. And the first, what is the first thing you see them do? They usually flinch. Yes. So that to me is a marker that goes into your body, and you don't know necessarily that it's there because you might be a year and a half old, you might be three years old, you might be five years old, and you don't know what just happened, but it was scary. But that marker stays, I think that marker stays in our body and is part of what happens when something is stuck there, because that's the original imprint of that. So I actually have a story to share with you, or an experience, not a story, it's an experience that I had myself. And it's interesting, because I want to know maybe if this experience could have gone even deeper than what I had happen for me, because I'll call it that. And because we chatted last week, and so I went to the hockey game with Cam last Thursday night for his birthday. And I, because I've been listening to this particular audible about incident receiving, that's going to be for a later date. So but listening to what she talks about, and the things that in our physiological upbringing, and she was talking about like what babies are born, like babies are just inherently born worthy. Right? Because we ate, and we are obviously gifted to this life experience. All of that being said, and I know that you and I are very focused on the data from the zero to seven. But I just I want to ask you this just because of the experience that I had, because I didn't take me back as far as being zero to seven. But the way that this person reacted to me, it made me understand that I was definitely dealing with his projection, not that it had anything to do with me. But something triggered up inside of me that, you know, because we do this work, we're talking about this work. And I was really, quote unquote, shook, surprised by my irritation in the moment. Because I know, I know that it has nothing to do with me. I know it has everything to do because I mean, I don't want to be all over the board. But what you're saying is because I'm just thinking about like a physiological response, and things that feel stuck, where I feel like, you know, I'm working on the things not being stuck. But when something comes up, and then something triggers me, I'm, I'm in that space. But I only could go back as far as I felt like seventh grade. I don't know, like how further back it went beyond that. I don't, I don't want to waste time sharing the story, because I know we are on a time crunch. And how long did you, do you feel like you stayed stuck in that space? I got out of it pretty briefly. The minute it happened, I was baffled and confused. And I, because I know work. And so then I didn't allow myself to go down a rabbit hole, so to speak, if that's what you're asking that I, I was pretty bothered by it for about like 30 minutes. Okay. And so I, it was just the way somebody responded and spoke to me in a type of way, where I felt like maybe like it was, I'll just give the seventh grade example of maybe like a hypothetical situation. But it was that type of feeling that I could use this as an analogy that like, you know, when you are in like your formative years, that, which we're now like moving past the theta, right? And so the way that this person responded to me, it made me feel like I was not allowed to sit at the cool table. And on my, not allowed to sit at my table, bitch. But at the same time, no better than to think like that. But of course, that old programming comes into my mind. And I did not react and respond towards him. I just went about my way that I was like, what the fuck was that? No, no, that, that, that, you know, that is a good example, because that's exactly what I'm talking about. And the most important thing to do when that does happen, because we will be talking a lot more about this is the most important thing, I think, to hear out of the way we're explaining it, like, like we are today is to, is to recognize the feeling that you've moved somewhere. And you can remove yourself from your current situation, go into another room, be sit still, you know, be quiet, focus on your breathing, do a guided meditation of sorts, if that works for you, to see if it can take you down into whatever memory there is there, because a lot of times the memory is very difficult to access, because it could have happened from zero to seven from that time frame, could have happened during that time. And that's very, very hard to actually go back and have clear memory of. It's to recognize the current state and then be able to bring yourself back into that current state from there. But I do, it's hard sometimes for me to really help people recognize that part you recognize, I think most people recognize an emotional trigger or somebody saying something to them quicker, but the physiology of it, and I think that takes us back into the stuff that, that, that dispense in Brayden and, and Lipton talk about in terms of that original time from that zero to seven, is really our subconscious part. And then if we bury those triggers that come into that, especially on the physiological level, then we end up sort of running our life from that subconscious place inside of us instead of, instead of moving that material that might have gotten triggered to a conscious level. And that is the goal of part of what we want people to understand about themselves is to recognize that difference. And once you can bring yourself on whatever level to a conscious level, then you can, then you can clear that. And for me, I really think that part of the reason people get very, very stuck in the physical or the physiological responses that get stuck there, I think part of it is because that relates also to the original defense system that we have when we're born in that time, like, we're into fight, flight or freeze. To me, I always explain it that it's even deeper than fight, flight or freeze. It's really when you're, when you're very young and in that zero to seven timeframe, it really truly becomes, I'm either going to live or I'm going to die. And when we're very small like that, I think we have an internal instinct that says we really need to depend on these people if we're going to survive. So we take a lot in and we hold a lot there because we do know that we want to survive. Because a child in that space, you know, thinks they're going to die. They really truly believe they're going to die because of the instinctual systems that we have that we're born with. So it's very critical to really understand the depth of that part of where things come in for us, how we perceive things, perspective, just like the, you know, the example you just used. It's like this, these kinds of things can happen all day long, every day, they can happen at work, they can happen with family, they can happen with driving, they can happen anywhere, anytime, where something comes in, and it's coming in now, but it goes into more of an unconscious place rather than conscious. And it makes it very, very difficult then to move out of that. And again, as we talk about every single week, and we will continue to talk about every single week, nobody teaches us anything about this part of our life. And if, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was just saying it's critical for us to understand. Well, because of our work together for the past almost decade, and then also recognizing when, because it's not very often these days, which I think is kind of fascinating, but I've had a couple of other experiences where I have been, and in the growth process, we're always growing. And when things feel like, oh, I've got this on lock, then something else comes up to unravel in another layer of the, because we're not going to reach true enlightenment in this lifestyle. We wouldn't be here. That's why we're doing this podcast, why we're talking about these things. And what I found fascinating is, instead of getting offended, I looked at it in a very humorous way, because, I mean, yes, inside something felt yucky. I felt rejected. I felt defensive. I felt annoyed. I felt I wanted to attack, but that's not my nature. But these things were coming up inside of me, because he seemed to push a button that I didn't know I had. And because of what we do, and the work that you give, and are so brilliant at, and that I've learned with you, and through all of the things, it's like I was able to not make it escalate within myself, because I was definitely not going to make it escalate in a confrontational way with a person. And it was interesting, because I had to move through all of the emotions of everything that I was thinking and feeling. And why did this bother me? Because what he said had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with him, but it clearly moved something inside of me, because it was just that exchange that did something. And I'm guessing he was asleep and didn't think about what he was saying and doing. What he did, did something for me. He didn't do it to me. He did it for me. Yes. And that's what I feel like what we want to explain, because as your work as a psychotherapist, and I'm obviously in work of transformation and blah, blah, blah, that it's like all of these tools and the situations and the scenarios we're giving, it can feel challenging for most people to kind of understand that it is such deep work. And when it gets uncomfortable, that's where we're on the precipice of what's next. And that stuck feeling, like you're on the edge of the cliff. My favorite is the Fool card in the Tarot, where the Fool is on the edge of the cliff about to take a leap of faith, but that is so unnerving because there's no their own security within themselves. That's true. That's exactly right. And how to explain more of like to have that faith? I don't know. You go. I don't know. I'm kind of like all over the place. The place I would say is a good place to start is to take yourself out of the situation. If you can't physically move, like move yourself to a bathroom or to another room or excuse yourself in some way, and you really can't do that without explaining what's going on with you, then you can simply move your attention to the physical feeling that you're feeling inside. The tendency is when we do feel that uncomfortable feeling, we want to just ignore it and hope that it will go away. And instead, if you go toward it, if you go into that feeling and just sit with that feeling, look at that feeling and feel that feeling inside, be with it, get still with it. And until you can really truly be by yourself and then when you get to be able to be by yourself in another space, like another room or you get back home or whatever it is, then you can do like a guided meditation or you can do a lot of the tools that we will be assisting you with learning in these tools of what to do, just to be present with yourself. And see if by being still and actually focusing on it, what do you experience? What do you feel? What do you see? Do you see colors? Do you feel pain there? Do you feel like it's a particular space, a particular kind of space? Is it very small, like the size of a walnut or is it the size of a bowling ball? Really just think about it and recognize that it is happening inside of your own body. And that's what's so important about it. It is our physiology. So it doesn't depend on what the intention or the perspective was of the other person on the outside of us. It doesn't really matter because once we've received it, it now belongs to us. And we therefore can do something about it. But our original training from zero to seven makes that difficult sometimes because there was no form of expression we could do in those early developmental stages that we know. We don't have the cognition to know that we don't know anything at that time. So if it's something that goes all the way back to that, it becomes so difficult to remember that this physiology, what I am feeling, what I took in, regardless of the source, the person that happened from or the situation that it happened from, it doesn't matter. It now belongs to us because it moved something inside of us to a particular kind of memory. And the memory literally may only be on the physiological level. There may not be any other kind of memory that we can associate with, even as an adult. So that's what makes it so difficult to access those sometimes. But yes, there are a lot of tools that we can use to work with and to help us recognize if you have a memory inside your body on a physiological level, that's real. That is real. And it does belong to you. It doesn't belong to whatever was going on with the situation or the person outside of you that it seemed to come from. Well, I know we have to close here in a brief moment. So I do want to say I'm really excited for next week's episode because I'm going to title it part two because we really just like scratched the surface and have so many things that I am thinking about. And I really want to dive deeper into the tools because I have tools, which is why I was able to maintain myself in that experience. So we will leave it at that. And we are going to pick back up next week and we are, I mean, I'm so excited for this because I just, I feel like we've got another rabbit hole to experience and to share and give help. I mean, that's what we're doing. You know, we want to help the collective. Cheryl, I just could just listen to you talk forever. I mean, I love this so hard. This is such a gift. You have no idea. Everyone, thank you for tuning in. I mean, I love everything that I've been able to learn and grow from with working with Cheryl and for us to be able to put this out here on a podcast and a platform so we can help others that don't have the access. This is our life's work and it means everything. And thank you so much for tuning in and listening. And we are so eternally grateful. Thank you. And then we will chat next week. Do you want to say bye? I love it. I love you. Until then. I love it. Perfect. Perfect closing. Okay. All right. I'll talk to you next week. Okay. All right. Okay, bye.