Things That Help You REGULATE Your Nervous System When You're ANXIOUS| Mini Episode

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Ailey** (0:29)
We can be totally disconnected from our body after trauma, or we can be so acutely aware of our body after trauma. You put experiences like that, consequentially together over a long period of time, that's gonna cause developmental trauma.

**Dr Faye Bate** (0:46)
Ailey is a leading voice in somatic psychology. She was a professional ballerina and Miss Canada before her own trauma led her to become a chartered psychologist.

**Ailey** (0:55)
Creating kind of a beautiful image on the outside was one of the ways I distracted away while I was hiding all this self-hatred. For me, both of those choices were really driven by trauma.
Until that stuff is really acknowledged, it does continue to play out.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:12)
We'll explore nervous system dysregulation, anxiety and burnout. We're gonna come on to our section called Real or Real. Why do people burn out then in your view?

**Ailey** (1:22)
When people win, they are rarely burnt out at that moment. It's not a negative to feel overwhelmed because you have responsibility. People depend on you. People are reliant on you to do something great.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:32)
Thoughts?

**Ailey** (1:32)
Good question.

**Dr Faye Bate** (1:35)
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Thank you. Ailey, our community sent in so many questions about stress and anxiety. But first, I read that you were a prima ballerina and Miss Canada at 19

**Ailey** (2:57)
Yes.

**Dr Faye Bate** (2:58)
And then you decided to become a somatic psychotherapist. Could you explain what led you to go into this?
And also in really simple terms, what is a somatic psychotherapist?

**Ailey** (3:13)
So I will define somatic psychotherapist just so that people understand what I do and how it may be different. So somatic psychotherapist is trained clinically in the same way a regular psychotherapist would be trained. So we are trained to listen to stories, to know how to process trauma, to weave cognitive narratives together, to reframe. We have that skill set, but we also have additional skill set of both listening to the story that someone is saying through their words, but also the story of the body. So that means I'm going to notice when your eye contact breaks, I'm going to notice how many times you blinked, I'm going to notice, okay, your breath is actually not moving into your abdominal cavity, and I'm going to use what I notice. I'm going to gather evidence through my time together, but also through what I experience in my body. So I have to kind of already know, did I come into this session anxious? Did I come in a little stressed or with tension? I didn't. So actually sitting in the presence of this person after a few moments, I'm really tense or I'm really anxious, and we're going to kind of have a little bit of an inner dialogue from what's going on with our body that we may be picking up from the other, because we know, and you could probably add to this, our mirror neurons are constantly communicating with the other person, they live in our prefrontal cortex, and they give us really wonderful information around the people we're around in regards to safety, danger, emotional resonance. And so we use that information in the therapy. So a client may be sharing a story, and it can be sometimes a bit abrupt as well, and we'll say, I noticed when you said that your affect changed, or have you noticed through this session, you haven't taken a big breath at all, or notice you're not breathing right now, or it's really hard for you to make eye contact. Can we pause here? And can we notice what it would be like to bring eye contact in? Or what it would be like to take eye contact away for the rest of the session? And it's really interesting when you just make those body-based contact statements, how much of the experience of therapy changes, because how often, first of all, in our waking life when we're walking around, does someone actually deeply listen to us, to just our cognitive verbal story? And then also how rare is it that someone sits across from us and gives their full presence, not just my mind, my entire body, and I'm monitoring that entire body to actually be deeply attuned and listen to you. And with that level of presence, something interesting does happen, and the story does start to change. So that's kind of what a somatic psychologist does. I know if you take a little scroll on Instagram or TikTok, they'll be like, lots of videos are shaking and catharsis and screaming, and that can totally be part of it. I'm not going to sit here and say that I have not screamed no and held my client's hand at the top of my lungs or had sessions where we sat on the floor together.