0:00

Hi, my friends. Welcome back to

0:02

the podcast. Um, I

0:05

really wish I had a really fun topic to

0:08

talk about, but I actually decided to

0:10

talk about something that is

0:12

hard because I don't think it gets talked

0:14

about enough and I,

0:21

whew , I'm having surgery tomorrow

0:25

is not the topic, but I am having surgery

0:27

tomorrow. Uh, if anyone's been, if you

0:29

guys have been following, I hurt

0:32

my shoulder almost two months ago. I've

0:34

been wearing a sling. I've been trying to figure out how to

0:36

, uh,

0:39

uninflamed. We thought, you know, this

0:41

is inflammation. I got an x-ray and they said the x-ray

0:43

was fine. So there was a lot of confusion about what

0:45

was wrong and how to heal it. And I thought maybe

0:48

this is tendinitis and a flareup because

0:52

insurance , um, is a little tricky to

0:54

get approval to , uh, get

0:56

an M r I . So I got an m r I

0:59

two weeks ago. For those who don't know, X-rays

1:01

show bones. So

1:04

if you have a broken bone, you need an x-ray, but

1:06

if it's a tendon or a ligament, you need an M

1:08

R i . If it's soft tissue and x-rays

1:10

are way cheaper. And so MRIs require

1:13

a more rigorous

1:16

approval process. And so I finally

1:19

got approval to go in for an M R I and

1:21

they said, yep , your shoulder is torn like two

1:23

places. We gotta sew it back up and anchor

1:25

it, otherwise it's gonna keep dislocating.

1:28

I was like, cool, cool. So

1:31

I spent all of last week , uh, processing

1:34

that and preparing for surgery

1:37

and planning for surgery. And

1:40

lucky me, I've already had two shoulder

1:43

surgeries in my twenties, so I very much

1:45

know what to expect. Um,

1:48

I made a lot of food and put it in the freezer.

1:50

I bought , um, disposable

1:53

plates. I bought

1:56

way more cheese, puss and chocolate than

1:58

I could ever need. And kind of like

2:00

a prepper. Now there's like a whole section of the pantry

2:02

downstairs that is just like bulk food

2:05

because I really wanted to not have to leave the house

2:07

and have foods that I could eat for the next few

2:09

weeks. I'm gonna be in a sling for six weeks,

2:12

but certainly the first week and a half are, I'm

2:15

hoping those are the hardest. And then it starts to get better. But

2:17

I actually don't know. Um, I went to the

2:19

Salvation Army and bought some button down shirts and

2:21

some cardigans , um, and just setting

2:23

up my room to be really ready for all this and wrapping

2:26

up my day job and making sure everything is handed

2:29

off and has backup and all this stuff.

2:31

So there's been all this logistical stuff, which honestly

2:34

I excel at. I this

2:36

is a benefit side to being a deeply anxious person,

2:38

is I'm always expecting everything

2:40

to go wrong. And so I anticipate

2:42

all the problems that could possibly happen and think

2:45

about solving them before I even get to the event.

2:47

So by the time the surgery happens, I'm

2:50

like, yeah, I'm ready. I've like, I've read the instructions

2:52

three times. I've done all the things I needed to

2:54

do. Um, I feel really good about that. So I'm

2:56

kind of in that place now. And

3:00

the reason I wanted to talk about it, you

3:02

know, today is because part

3:05

of what happened last week was I was having these,

3:10

I thought they were deeply anxious moments where

3:12

I just like couldn't get clarity in my brain and couldn't

3:14

like, see straight and was just like, what is going

3:16

on? And I finally realized

3:18

that I really have like medical

3:21

trauma and it's

3:23

not a really well-known thing. And I know

3:25

that the word trauma is now being sort of from

3:28

never being used is now being used a lot.

3:30

So I'm not like medically

3:33

diagnosing this. I just kind of wanna talk about what

3:35

trauma is, what it looks like,

3:37

and what the healing process of it is, because

3:41

that's what I realized we don't talk about. Um,

3:45

so kind of the, the overview of trauma,

3:48

it happens. There's kind of like three things.

3:51

One is that you think you're gonna die. One

3:53

is that you feel like you have no agency over

3:56

whether or not you're gonna die. And

4:00

no , I guess two things. And so

4:03

a car accident can be traumatic.

4:06

Um, you know, often we

4:08

talk about rape and victims of sexual assault

4:10

feeling really traumatized. And often

4:12

, uh, the two most associated

4:14

are women and sexual assault or men and

4:16

sexual assault , uh, or non-binary.

4:19

And sexual , sexual assault in general is the

4:21

problem that causes trauma. Um, and

4:23

also , um, soldiers

4:26

and military coming back from war, those

4:29

are the places where there's like this sense of something

4:32

terrible is happening and you can't fix it. And

4:34

what trauma does is because the brain

4:36

feels so overwhelmed that

4:38

it has no solution and doesn't know how to like

4:41

get through this moment, it sort of

4:43

like steps out of time and locks

4:45

it in and then afterwards goes

4:47

back to living. And

4:50

it's incredibly adaptive 'cause it allows you to

4:52

go through really overwhelming, terrifying,

4:55

unbearable things. The

4:57

problem is that normal memory works

5:01

sort of like a river. You

5:03

broke your arm when you were six and

5:06

it gets like processed

5:09

and then it becomes the river of your story

5:11

goes into, you know, when you talk about

5:13

having broken your arm when you're six, most people are just

5:15

like, it's, it's a story, it's an anecdote.

5:18

You don't feel the pain, you don't feel the

5:20

fear of falling, you don't feel that stuff because

5:22

your brain has processed it. And the brain

5:25

takes stories and events and

5:27

and sort of catalogs them. And

5:30

chronologically there's a

5:33

word in there, right? Makes, puts them chronologically. And

5:36

once they've been filed away, they're

5:38

, you know, stories and events that you can remember

5:40

and recall, but you won't have that

5:43

same immediacy. Trauma

5:46

is sort of the opposite because your

5:48

brain shut down and wasn't

5:50

able to process that. It

5:53

is out of the river of your

5:55

chronological storytelling. So

5:58

when people have flashbacks or when people

6:00

feel , um, like they're

6:03

repeating that trauma and it's being triggered

6:05

in them, they go right back to that moment

6:07

of complete. It's

6:11

like more than panic, right? It's more, it's more

6:13

than anxiety. It's more than panic. It's like life

6:15

or death. You can't, you're frozen.

6:17

You can't figure out what to do and

6:20

you don't feel like you can fix anything about it. So

6:22

you're just in this state. And what's

6:24

hard about traumatic memory is that it

6:27

always flashes in this

6:29

way that brings the person right back into this

6:31

state of , um, complete

6:34

overwhelm and shut down . And

6:41

They're discovering that, you know,

6:43

I don't know again that I not

6:46

diagnosing myself as medically traumatized,

6:48

but they are learning that, especially

6:50

people with chronic illnesses, people who've spent

6:52

a lot of time, it's my third shoulder

6:55

surgery who spent a lot of time going

6:57

to doctors and being told nothing is wrong, who

7:00

spent a lot of time getting poked and prodded

7:02

, um, and feeling a sense

7:04

of vulnerability

7:06

, um, and, and,

7:10

and panic that my body is broken and

7:12

nobody can fix it. Or the people who can fix it don't

7:14

know how to fix it. And now I just feel like

7:17

panic. I feel, I feel like I'm

7:19

trapped in my body and I feel like there is

7:22

no solution. I am just trapped in this

7:24

body that hurts. And

7:27

I had surgery 15 years ago on

7:30

my shoulder and they sent

7:32

me to physical therapy. And the

7:35

physical therapy made everything hurt more. And

7:37

I would tell that to the physical therapist and they said,

7:39

we don't know why you're doing the most basic exercises.

7:42

And I said, okay, but it hurts.

7:45

What do I do? And essentially they said,

7:47

we don't know how to help you. And

7:50

so for a year I was on anti-inflammatory

7:53

medication, which really up your stomach.

7:56

And I just stopped using my shoulder.

7:58

Like I just, nobody had a solution.

8:00

So I stopped reaching for things, I stopped lifting things.

8:03

I just did what

8:05

I could do to get through that. And so this new

8:07

surgery is bringing up a similar anxiety

8:10

of a lot of pain post-surgery.

8:13

And then this fear of what if I'm

8:15

left with a sho ? What if I'm left with a shoulder that

8:17

I can't heal that nobody can fix that is

8:19

just in pain all the time? And that to me

8:21

feels incredibly panicky

8:23

and overwhelming and I don't, I don't know

8:25

how to process that, right? It

8:28

just my, we go into our

8:30

lizard brain, we go into our animal

8:33

fight or flight, survive or

8:35

die brain. It's not logical.

8:37

I can tell it. Yes. I really like my surgeon.

8:39

Yes, I really like my team. Yes, I am,

8:42

you know, doing , um, doing

8:44

the best research and the best care and the best.

8:46

You know, I'm going into this aware

8:49

that there could be a possibility and like the most

8:51

prepared I've ever been, the most wise I've ever been. 'cause

8:54

I've learned so much on my medical journey. But

8:57

the part of me that is freaking the out doesn't

9:00

hear that. And that's part of what's really , um,

9:03

hard about trauma. And this is

9:05

where , um, Bessel VanDerKolk

9:07

wrote this book that blew up, I think 10 years ago

9:09

called The Body Keeps the Score. And

9:12

it was based on his work with , uh,

9:15

P T S D in Army vets , um,

9:17

at a VA hospital. And what

9:20

he was finding was a lot of the group therapy

9:22

and a lot of the attempts to help people coming

9:24

back from war zones was to have them talk about

9:26

it. And he actually found that talking about it

9:28

more retraumatize them , it

9:30

put them through that experience all over again

9:33

and it didn't actually help. And

9:36

so what we're learning is that just having

9:39

logical, you've got this, you're

9:41

safe now doesn't talk

9:43

to the part of our brain that is

9:46

in lizard mode that is just fight

9:49

or flight. I doesn't have language. And

9:54

I bring this up because there are actually , uh,

9:58

a lot more tools available to us. We

10:00

know so much more about trauma and so much more

10:02

about how to heal it and so much more about what can be

10:04

done when it's experienced. I

10:06

think, again, not a doctor, but

10:08

from my own research and understanding of

10:10

trauma healing, what we've come to learn

10:13

is , um, the

10:15

goal is to be

10:18

able to bring up that memory,

10:20

bring up that sense memory

10:22

experience, and create

10:24

enough safety in us now

10:27

that the brain knows it can handle remembering

10:30

that knows it can handle going through that

10:32

moment and then rewires

10:35

it to come out the other side. That's

10:38

hard work. And the

10:40

first part of that is actually a lot of somatic.

10:43

So body-based exercises,

10:46

because what we also know is fight or

10:48

flight can't actually connect

10:50

to the logical brain That right

10:53

is gonna tell you that you're safe and is gonna go back

10:55

into that story and see maybe a different

10:57

way in which you did advocate for yourself, or in which

10:59

case I did fix my shoulder as much

11:01

as I could and I did get it functional for 15

11:03

years, you know, and all the ways in

11:05

which , um, I

11:09

made it through that experience and came out stronger

11:11

for it. Um, right now that just feels like,

11:13

yeah, yeah, yeah, I roll. Um, and

11:16

the reason why is because what needs

11:18

to happen first is calming that triggered

11:21

reaction. And so we're

11:24

learning a lot of these things. Um, and

11:26

so I realized that I started

11:29

for myself. You

11:32

guys know I love a checklist and you guys know I love stickers.

11:34

And because I was feeling this sense of overwhelm

11:37

because I felt like I was just counting down the days until

11:39

someone was gonna put me under anesthesia and cut

11:41

into my shoulder. And that was

11:43

super triggering to me. Um, I

11:46

started a build back better plan

11:48

and it had all of these things that I could

11:50

do, like making sure my right arm, the

11:53

unaffected arm was strong 'cause

11:55

it's been doing extra work because my left arm has

11:57

been broken and torn for a while . Um,

12:00

making sure I was walking and drinking water

12:02

and journaling and just the things that I sort of

12:04

do regularly. My brain was having

12:06

a really hard time like remembering

12:09

it. Just the

12:11

experience of being triggered is , um,

12:15

you fall outside of time. Like you just

12:17

end up in this space where you fall outside of like who

12:19

you are now. You, you fall outside

12:21

of this , um, identification,

12:24

this recognition that you know, I am a grownup.

12:26

I pay my own bills, I have decision making , strategy

12:30

and um, agency in this process. And

12:33

you revert to whatever part of you was in that

12:35

situation that feels completely powerless and completely

12:37

afraid and completely in danger. And

12:40

so that messes with your sense of time, that

12:42

messes with your sense of focus, that messes with your sense

12:44

of being able to deliver

12:47

on stuff. Um, and

12:49

you sort of just, for

12:52

me, it often feels like this. Everything

12:55

goes white as though like I can't

12:57

see or hear anything. Everybody thing sort of buzzes.

13:01

Um, and it always

13:03

feels like my atoms are about

13:05

half a foot away from my

13:08

body and they are just vibrating

13:10

at such an incredibly fast speed that

13:13

I can't, like I'm just buzzing

13:15

in a way that feels incredibly dangerous and I dunno

13:17

how to sit still. And I don't know how to go anywhere and I dunno

13:19

what to do and I dunno what to think and let , like all my problem

13:21

solving capacity is not just for surgery, but

13:23

everything go out the window. I'm suddenly not

13:25

able, I don't know

13:27

how to bring myself back from that. And

13:30

so what we're finding is that there are a lot

13:33

of things that we can do. Not one of them on

13:36

its own necessarily brings us back into our

13:38

body. It's um, I read this

13:40

thing that was great and also terrible, which is

13:42

, um, of all the somatic

13:45

practices, each one of them maybe brings you

13:47

10% back into the ground

13:49

and into your body. And so it's the accumulation

13:52

and the compounding effect of doing a lot of

13:54

these. So some of the somatic practices are

13:57

yoga, tai chi, anything that connects

13:59

your breath to your body, putting

14:01

your feet in the grass, sitting in

14:04

the sun , um, meditating.

14:09

And I'll also say some of them work for people and some

14:11

of them don't. I find meditating not

14:13

helpful right now. I find pacing way

14:15

more helpful and getting my thoughts out. Um,

14:19

listening to music, singing

14:21

is a really, really good one actually. Anytime

14:23

that you make vibrations, it could be chanting, it

14:25

could be humming, it could be clapping, it could be snapping.

14:28

All of that actually produces vibrations.

14:30

And vibrations help reset the brain.

14:33

So singing is really good. I find listening to

14:35

podcasts easier. I have a hard time reading

14:37

when I'm triggered. It's just like my brain can't,

14:41

it just can't connect , um, visually, but

14:43

it can listen. And I often think of it as

14:45

if I just play nonstop, you

14:48

know, self-development , um, uh,

14:52

podcasts, which for me are the ones that I love

14:54

the most to listen to and help me feel the most grounded.

14:57

It like reaches me in a different way than reading

14:59

reaches me. I find when I'm triggered,

15:01

journaling just feels impossible. And

15:03

that's strange. 'cause if you know me, I pretty much

15:06

journal. Like it's ridiculous

15:08

how much I journal. It's my favorite way to like really

15:10

work on my brain and really figure out who

15:12

I wanna be next and how I'm gonna become that person. And

15:15

I cannot journal when I'm triggered. I just, I

15:17

just don't know how. And so, you

15:20

know, there's, I'm also learning, there's

15:22

a spectrum of being triggered. You could

15:24

be triggered at a one or two where it's maybe

15:26

I could journal, right? It's like things

15:28

are starting to feel really , um, they

15:31

call it hyper aroused. Like things just feel a

15:33

little too much and like, I might explode and I don't know how

15:35

to handle this situation. Um, or just

15:37

like being in my body and breathing right

15:40

now. Um, or you could be

15:42

like at a five where maybe everything sort

15:44

of starts to go haywire, but you're kind of able to show

15:46

up for some things. Or you could be at a 10 and

15:48

you're just completely like, I'm in bed, I'm

15:50

turning off the lights. I am , I just

15:53

talk to me tomorrow, right? Like it does

15:55

run the spectrum. And part of what I'm learning to do is

15:57

to , um, check in with where I

15:59

am on the spectrum so that I'm

16:01

more available to myself and be like, okay, all I

16:03

can handle right now is like, sit in the sun. Great.

16:06

You got a sticker for sitting in the sun. And I swear

16:08

that's what I do. Like, just to give

16:10

myself a sense of agency, to give myself

16:12

a sense of progress, to give my sense of myself,

16:15

a sense of I did a thing today

16:17

and I can't remember what, and I can't remember what was happening,

16:20

but I did this thing. So I

16:24

really wanted to come today because I

16:27

feel like, yeah,

16:31

I was trying to explain this actually to a friend

16:33

of mine. Like what I was going through and realizing

16:35

I thought I was just being super anxious. I thought

16:37

I was just being super like overwhelmed. And

16:39

I realized, no, I know how to manage my anxiety

16:42

and I know how to manage overwhelm and

16:44

I'm actually incredibly prepared for this. I've asked

16:46

all the questions and I've taken all the notes and I've

16:49

prepped all the food and I'm ready. And

16:52

this level of stepping outta

16:54

myself, this level of, I

16:56

feel like I just don't know what time it's been. Like

16:58

I forget what day it is, which is not like me.

17:00

My brain is always on stuff. It's always super aware

17:03

of what date and day it is. And suddenly

17:05

I like couldn't remember this kind of, I

17:07

don't know if you guys felt this, but this was a lot of what covid

17:09

for me in the beginning was like , um, the

17:12

lockdown specifically that utter panic,

17:15

that utter sense of non-agency,

17:17

of something dyers happening all

17:19

around me. And it is killing people by

17:22

the thousands and there's nothing I can do. And

17:24

my brain had a really hard time staying grounded.

17:27

My brain had a really hard time , um,

17:29

not freaking out and, and feeling like

17:32

it was trying to run away from a

17:34

situation without actually moving. Like that's another way that I know

17:36

I'm triggered is like, I feel like every part of me wants to

17:38

run. And it also feels like every part of me is freezing

17:41

in order to protect itself. And

17:43

that push pull of those two things is unsustainable.

17:46

And so I just feel like I'm exploding out of my skin.

17:50

And one of my goals in this podcast and

17:52

in being an artist in general is to

17:55

really give language to the experience of some

17:57

of these more nuanced

17:59

but also lesser known , um,

18:01

mental health challenges. I think we all

18:03

have trauma in

18:06

our lives. There's what they

18:08

call capital T trauma, which

18:10

is often, you know , uh, someone coming

18:12

back from war or someone surviving a sexual assault

18:14

or , um, like

18:17

the things that you were a functional

18:19

human being before and this thing happened

18:21

to you and now you like can't remember how

18:24

to function, you just don't know how to go back. But

18:27

they also have little T trauma, lowercase

18:30

t trauma. And that can be things like bullying

18:32

because our sense

18:35

of self, especially let's say in middle school, which

18:37

is where a lot of this happens , um, is

18:39

so much predicated on our social , um,

18:42

relationships and to be bullied

18:44

and exiled. The brain perceives

18:47

being exiled from a group as death because

18:49

we still think like animals in a tribe.

18:51

And if we are exiled from that pack , we

18:54

can't survive, right? So it might

18:56

not be affecting you every single day. It might not

18:58

be stopping , um, as much of your

19:00

productivity or I hate the word productivity,

19:02

but as much as your cognitive ability

19:04

to show up for yourself and be creative. But

19:08

especially if you get in a situation where maybe you're

19:10

feeling that again, this is where people have

19:12

outsized reactions to small,

19:15

seemingly small situations. Like maybe your coworker says

19:17

something and you misunderstand it and you have this incredible

19:20

shame spiral over this incredible, like, you

19:22

can't see straight, you're just filled with rage,

19:25

right? People experience triggers differently

19:27

and what their fight or flight looks

19:29

like can be something different. And so people explode

19:31

into a rage. This is why a lot of P T s

19:34

D and vets is rage

19:36

explosions because they're having this experience

19:38

that they don't know how to survive. And their , their

19:40

system is going into fight or flight and they're choosing flight,

19:42

they're getting aggressive. Mine tends to

19:44

be shut down, but everyone's different in

19:46

how they do it. And it's,

19:50

it's this thing

19:53

that I hope we talk about more. It's this thing

19:55

that I hope we're able to have

19:59

better language for our insides

20:01

because everyone looking at someone else's

20:03

outsides doesn't have a clue that that's

20:05

happening. And I think that's very much to our detriment.

20:08

'cause we're all experiencing some amount of

20:10

hardship and loss and grief and

20:13

um, unexpected difficulty. And we're all

20:15

having to process that. And we're all doing it in

20:17

our own ways. And there's so much to be learned from each

20:20

other. And I think this is where the part of

20:22

going through this experience returns me

20:24

to what I prize

20:28

most about being an artist. What to me is

20:30

the most precious thing, which is how do I

20:33

communicate an experience that I

20:35

don't have language for? I'm

20:38

inside of it. And because I spend a lot of time thinking

20:40

about my internal

20:42

experience and really working on

20:44

healing myself, I forget that others have

20:47

no idea what this is, have never had trauma,

20:49

don't have triggers, don't have

20:51

the same sense of like suddenly. And

20:53

again, like I'm having surgery, I kept thinking

20:56

for a lot of people, she's like, oh, I'm having surgery. That

20:58

sucks. I'm scared I don't want to, but they're

21:00

just, you know, gonna go about their day and I'm literally

21:02

feel like I'm falling on

21:04

my knees or falling underwater all the time. And

21:06

I'm like, what? You know, it's 'cause it's an outsized

21:09

reaction to an event that's coming up. It's

21:11

retriggering so much old , um,

21:14

medical testing and being

21:16

stuck in MRIs where I felt absolutely no

21:18

agency and wanted to run. Um, having

21:20

surgery and feeling like I got put

21:22

under the knife. Like there's just so much that

21:24

my body has gone through.

21:27

And because I didn't have the tools even of

21:29

just sitting with my body and letting

21:31

it process that

21:33

very animal of the body fear of

21:35

being cut into, of having pain,

21:38

you know , uh, sort of like, you

21:40

know, post-op, like you're inviting pain

21:42

or you're being put in pain 'cause it was, your body

21:45

was cut into that. It's,

21:47

it's terrifying. The body feels that

21:49

fear. And so it needs that processing

21:52

in order to come out the other side and be like, oh yeah, this

21:54

is a thing that I did and now my body is

21:56

better and now I'm just working on rehabbing and

21:58

now I'm just working on being this stronger

22:00

version of myself. So I

22:04

think also , um, I will

22:06

bring this back to being kind of an artist in

22:08

the world. There can be lowercase

22:10

trauma from putting yourself

22:13

out there and being turned down right

22:15

from being, from having

22:17

something that means a lot to you. Maybe you're

22:19

have a gallery opening and nobody shows up and

22:21

it's your last gallery opening that

22:23

can have little t trauma that can be so overwhelming.

22:26

And so , um, you

22:28

don't even know where to begin to process all that

22:30

emotion and all of that overwhelm

22:33

and that sense again of , um, rejection,

22:37

of being exiled from the group is always

22:39

gonna be processed by our brains as

22:42

death. Even though in this world

22:44

that we live in, most of us are really, really safe

22:46

in terms of at least physical threats. And

22:49

so you're, you're potentially gonna end up in a place

22:51

where it's really hard to process

22:53

to grieve that process and then start

22:55

the next project. And I see people get stuck, myself

22:58

included in moments where I

23:01

auditioned a ton of times and that never came to

23:03

anything. And now I'm having a really hard time with like auditioning

23:05

more or having monologues or working on

23:07

scripts because in my head it

23:09

interpreted all these times when I auditioned and

23:12

I could have been amazing and I could have been terrible and we don't

23:14

know, but I didn't hear anything. And

23:16

the story that my brain made of not

23:18

belonging, of being outside of

23:20

this system of creativity that I really wanna belong

23:23

to has just caused so

23:25

much interference in my brain that

23:27

I don't have a clean slate from which to

23:29

create a new project from which to go forward. And

23:31

that's some of the work that I'm doing now. So I

23:33

don't know that it would clinically

23:35

be called trauma in the same way, but so

23:38

much of the same work, so

23:40

much of creating safety in

23:42

my body, not just by saying, Hey, you're safe,

23:44

but let's put my feet on the ground.

23:46

Let's sit on the floor. Let me put my feet

23:49

in the grass. Let me do , um, meditative

23:52

breathing. I do like the breathing, you know, box,

23:54

breath , um, which is when you

23:56

inhale for four, hold for four, exhale

23:59

for four, hold for four and start again. There's

24:01

a lot of versions of that with like sevens

24:03

and eights and different numbers, but the

24:06

act of controlling your breath triggers

24:08

your parasympathetic system, which allows

24:11

your whole nervous system to calm down.

24:13

So all of these are downregulation techniques.

24:15

All these are ways for your system to

24:17

go from this place where it just feels complete and utter

24:20

fear of death to a place

24:22

where it can kind of come back

24:24

to this moment in time, come back to this

24:26

body in time, come back to seeing what's

24:28

actually happening right now versus living

24:31

in this moment that got frozen before

24:34

that is , um, completely flooded with

24:36

panic and overwhelm. So

24:39

my hope for you is that you have no

24:42

idea what I'm talking about and uh,

24:44

therefore this is my hope that it

24:46

opens up language for those who are experiencing

24:49

this, who have trauma from

24:51

all different kinds of places. Um,

24:53

and also, you know, if there is

24:56

something about your journey

24:59

as an artist, someone who wants to

25:01

share stories that you've written or is

25:03

working on their first novel or second novel, maybe their

25:05

first novel didn't, you know, get published. If

25:08

there's something about that experience that's really holding

25:10

you back, I would just invite you

25:12

to start seeing if there's some way of

25:14

creating safety for yourself and really thinking

25:16

about it as this overwhelm

25:19

that your cognitive brain can't

25:21

process and therefore needs a

25:23

different pathway into helping it

25:25

really make peace with that experience so

25:28

that you're free to be flexible and creative

25:30

and flowy in the way that your best work does

25:32

come from. Okay,

25:36

thank you for being here. I

25:38

am assuming all good wishes for my surgery

25:40

from you guys. Um, I'm incredibly well

25:43

prepared and I know that I'm going to build back

25:45

better on the other side. Um,

25:48

and I just really appreciate you spending the time with

25:50

me. Take care .