How to Regulate Your Nervous System After Trauma with Mika Altidor and Simone Gisondi

Mika Altidor (0:00)

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Julie Lokun (1:22)

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Julie Lokun (1:24)

Hi Obsessed Family, it's Julie. And I wanted to introduce today's episode a little differently because I was not actually a part of this conversation. Our beautiful Mika sat down one on one with our guest, Simone Gisondi. And when I heard Simone's story, I knew this was an episode we needed to share over and over again. Simone survived a childhood marked by horrific abuse, fear, scarcity and oppression growing up in communist Romania. She eventually made her way to Canada, but like so many survivors discover, leaving the trauma doesn't necessarily mean the trauma leaves you. Your body remembers. Years later, Simone suffered a major stroke at just 35 years old.

That experience became part of a much bigger journey to understand trauma, the nervous system, emotional health and what happens when our bodies spend years living in survival mode. What I love about this conversation is that it doesn't stop at what happened to Simone. It's about what she did next. She learned powerful tools to understand and regulate her nervous system. She rebuilt her relationship with herself, and she turned unimaginable experiences into a mission to help other people heal. Mika guides this conversation beautifully and I think you're going to walk away thinking differently about your body, your emotions, your relationships, and perhaps even behaviors you've spent years judging yourself for. This is Simone Gisondi on The Get Obsessed Podcast.

Mika Altidor (2:57)

Welcome to The Get Obsessed Podcast. I'm so excited. I'm your host, Mika Altidor, and I am joined by the amazing, the angelic, one of the missing Charlie's angels, Simone Gisondi.

She is a breath of fresh air. You're going to fall in love with her, just like I fell in love with her when I met her. Simone, thank you for being on our show. Simone is a guest.

She is a host, not a guest. But I'm probably saying that because I will be a guest on her podcast. Yeah. She is. Yes. She is the host of Health Confidential Podcast. And I'll put that information in the show notes. Simone, welcome.

Simone Gisondi (3:42)

My goodness, Mika, you're going to make me cry. You're going to start this show off with me crying. Thank you so much for such kind words. I am so honored to be on your show, and I cannot wait to have the conversation with you on the other side of the mic on my show.

Mika Altidor (3:58)

I'm excited. We were talking before we started recording, and then something in me said, we need to record because you have a story. You were asking me a moment ago about what's going on with me, and I was sharing with you before we started recording, and I think just I've come into new awareness relates to my nervous system and things that I'm literally tracing back, including today, I trace it back to my childhood and how I learned without knowing my nervous system learned how to create safety in an unsafe environment. You know, I grew up in a emotionally and physically, verbally abusive environment, and so my nervous system related that being pretty wasn't safe, there's physical abuse. And my nervous system just adapted because as a child, you can't run, you can't fight, you're literally forced, you can't even freeze because you're having to adapt there. That's where the people pleasing for me came up, just things that I adapted to and it just traced back there. And I just became aware of it now. Then you started to share your story with me. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a recording moment.

Simone Gisondi (5:18)

Yeah, totally. It's funny because we shape so much of who we are and the way we're going to eventually address anything that comes at us. We do that early on in life and it's shaped by some of the programs that we install just by watching our parents. The idea of safety or threat is shaped in those environments. And I know exactly what you mean. And that's what we owe our connection to, because I too grew up in a highly threatening environment. There was so much, we got beaten on a regular.