Episode 85: How Trauma Gets Stuck in the Body & What to Do with Irene Lyon
/Our kids may have experienced unpleasant events as they are growing up. This can lead to trauma that can affect their sense of safety and trust. and this can manifest as aggression, anxiety, and fear. As a parent, it hurts to see our child having to deal with that. And so for this episode, I have invited a friend. She is a trauma specialist whom I have admired because she helped me so much in dealing with my trauma. And we are going to talk about:
What is trauma and how it gets stuck in the nervous system
How to help a child who may have traumas
How to help kids handle their anxiety
Healthy aggression in kids and the difference between healthy shame and toxic shame
To get more support in dealing with trauma, follow Irene on social media and visit her website.
Instagram: @irenelyon
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lyonirene
YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/IreneLyon
Website: irenelyon.com/
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts, and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody! This is Dr. Laura Froyen and I'm so glad to have you with me on the Balanced Parent Podcast today because I am bringing on a guest that I have to say I'm really excited about, she's someone who is a trauma specialist and who I have admired and been helped by so much in my own life. I just feel thrilled that I get to bring her on and we're gonna be talking about trauma and how it can affect children and how to help our kiddos out. So please welcome to the show Irene Lyon, I just love her in a door Irene I'm so glad to have you here, I'll stop fangirling now but will you tell us more about yourself and what you do?
Irene: Good to meet you and make that connection even though you've known each other for three years.
Laura: I know that people listening have the same feeling towards me at times you know and so it's fun to be in that place in that chair of just like wow somebody I admire someone I've learned from and now I get to share you with my community. I'm so excited.
Irene: Yeah, no I'm excited for our talk, we're gonna talk about some good stuff.
Laura: Absolutely. So why don't you just start us off and tell us a little bit about yourself, you know who you are and what you do.
Irene: Well where shall I start? I am currently sitting in Vancouver, British Columbia. So that's my home in Canada and I got into this work not my choice necessarily and not by accident but I just kind of followed a path after I graduated from high school that just kept me going on these journeys of learning about the human body, learning about biology, physiology, rehabilitation of the physical body, mainly because I had a few very significant injuries to my knees and my knees were injured through ski racing of all things So like hurling down a mountain, you know, really fast and all that stuff and had a lot of reconstructions on my knees, so fixing them. And when that was happening in my 20's, I was also studying exercise science and it was the injury that got me interested in studying the body.
So I got into that, got my degree, my bachelor's degree in Science, I was a personal trainer. I studied and applied human nutrition. I was working at gyms, all that, you know, kind of fitness nutrition thing. I felt like I was missing something and I knew I was missing something when I had probably not, probably, it was the worst injury of my life, my kneecap, so my patella broke in half spontaneously walking down some stairs after another knee surgery. It's a very long, complicated story.
But needless to say there's a reason why mob bosses break people's kneecaps in the movies. It really is one of the more painful things I've ever, I still haven't experienced pain quite like that. So I broke this kneecap of mine, my left one and had to obviously get surgery, reconstruction and the recovery after that wasn't so simple, it was not cut and dry physical therapy, it wasn't just about getting some exercises and stretching and balancing my body, everything in my system had been thrown off and so everything I had learned in back my bachelor's degree and my fitness degrees in my exercise rehab trainings, nothing was working for my own system. And so I kind of was like what the heck am I missing here? Because I just spent seven years learning in university.
My parents just put all this money you know into my education and I can't even help myself. So luckily I had a PT. Who was like something's not right here, you're clearly fit, you're clearly balanced like visually you look fine but there's something inside alright, there's something in and he didn't even use the word I think nervous system because that just wasn't how people talked back in like the 1999, 2000. But he said you need to go see this other colleague of mine who is also a PT. Who does something called the Feldenkrais method. I was like okay I'm like I'm super young right? I had no clue what I was doing.
So I went and did this work with this other person and for lack of a better you know word or long story short I did that work, concentrated for four weeks. I stopped all of my PT. All of the massage. All of the chiro. I did no more stretching. I did no more exercises other than swimming and walking and biking like the cardio kind of stuff and I was like completely shifted after four weeks. And what I did now that I understand what happened is I reprogrammed and re-patterned my movement and I got the shock out of my system From that injury from being on crutches for almost six months and all the things that go with it. Now that helped, that worked. I then decided to study the Feldenkrais Method in 2004.
I did that, loved it, Started a private practice and was still working in fitness. But then in 2008 there was a summer where I was just seeing a lot of people who weren't getting better even with this new thing. I had learned what the f is going on. Like, I just spent another four years training to work with the human body at a very deep level that helps me now, what am I missing? And so I started asking questions. I'm just always looking for answers. That's how my brain works. And I came across Peter Levine's work.
So this is where the trauma stuff comes in and somatic experiencing, which is his body of work and he's still alive to this day and I'm like, oh my goodness, this is another missing piece. And what I learned through finding that. And then I trained in that work was that our systems as human beings. We trap traumatic stress. We trapped the fight flight and freeze and we can get into that in our systems, but not just in our nervous system, in our tissues and our bones and our fascia and our digestion and our immune system in our brain, like in how we relate to the environment and it just blew my mind, I was like, oh my God, I need to do this and I need to do this hard and study it. So I did. And then even when I finished that, you know, there's always higher levels.
So I did more training with him at the master class level and then got into another branch of work that came from his work which was founded by a woman by the name of Kathy Kane and that's important for kids. So I want to bookmark her name, Kathy Kane with a K. And she also is a somatic experiencing colleague and when I met her, she was still in private practice and she was teaching. But what she was working with in her practice, we're adults who were severely unwell. Like chronic severe chronic illness, sensitivities, severe anxiety, health problems and what she was seeing wasn't classic trauma, like shock, trauma, like a car accident, trauma, that kind of thing.
But this low level chronic stuff that just didn't make any sense. And so with her background in touch and in body work, because that was her background similar to me, she started experimenting with working with things like the kidneys and the adrenals, the gut, the brain stem. So parts of the body that are very, they succumb to stress and survival stress very quickly.
And so what she discovered was that a lot of these adults when they were young, they lived in kind of a soup of stress chemistry whether they were born premature and had lots of surgeries when they were young, whether they had a really stressful abusive environment, you know whether there was a lot of strain in the family system because of poverty neglect like all these things and so she started to practice and work with the physiology in a very different way. And then the last thing I'll mention is one of her other colleagues.
One of my teachers also comes from that lens, but also from a lens of children who are adopted children who have severe troubles when they're young and how that not only impacts little life like when we're little, but how that impacts how we develop. So learning with all these amazing teachers. I was just like holy cow, there's a lot of years. I got into private practice and I was in private practice through those whole moments slowly over time as we talked before we started recording this. I've been putting things online so we can leave that part for later. But that's kind of what I do. I've got these lenses from biology, biomed sci oh and within that I also did a Master's degree in research, forgot that.
Laura: It’s a little thing, you know.
Irene: It's a little thing. I was doing my research in Australia when I was recovering that kneecap injury and it was being in that little seaside town in Australia that led me to this Belding Christ practitioner, they blew my mind open. So it was kind of this cool.
Laura: Amazing how things like that.
Irene: It wouldn't have happened if I was here in Vancouver because that world just hadn't opened up yet here.
Laura: Absolutely. Tell me a little bit more for our listeners, how does trauma get stuck in our nervous systems? Can you say a little bit more about that?
Irene: So the first thing is to define trauma from the somatic perspective and lens that I come from. So like I'll often say if anybody watches those shows like Grey's Anatomy and ER. Which I have, you know, when someone comes in with the ambulance, they go to the trauma wig or the, you know, it's the ER and they've got a trauma and there's a trauma surgeon. So that's one kind of trauma, like there's been a gunshot wound in a car accident. They had a trauma to me, that's accurate.
And then there's this other world that I live in which is the somatic healing nervous system world, we see trauma not be avenged per se, but in the somatic body and in the nervous system and the reason why we see that is we know that one person who gets into a really, this is my classic example that if someone gets into a really minor accident, like a minor car accident, like no scratches to the cars, a little boof fender bender, nothing too big. one person who gets that kind of accident, We'll just be like, oh damn, that sucks. And you know there's no damage, they drive away and they're fine literally.
Like they don't have any troubles there, just 100% of the way they were before they got into that little thing. Person B. For example, let's say they get in the exact same little tiny thunder fender and their whole life falls apart afterwards. They can't get back into a car, They get anxiety, like severe anxiety, they can't sleep, they're afraid to leave their house. They start to have symptoms of digestion, headaches, chronic tension, even though it's the tiniest little tap. So we look at that, it's like, well as the trauma in the accident in those cases not the stress, the traumatic imprint is within their system.
And so the question is, well why did person A just walk away fine with no troubles And person B is like a mess. And this is something I would see in practice all the time. My colleagues will vouch for this is that person B while they may have been living their lives fine. And I say that with air quotes fine. There was already a fullness to their system that was maxed out already. So much storage Strauss what we would call even dis regulation of the autonomic nervous system which is the fight flight and then the other portion is what we would call the freeze and we can go into those branches if you want.
But they didn't realize, typically they don't know that they're already living in that warrant of high stress. Hi, hi store trauma. And so when we look at it from that perspective, the system dictates whether or not we are resilient, whether we bounced back strong.
Laura: Yeah. So it could be like the same piece of straw. You put it on one person's pile and it's fine and then you on the other one. It's the last one they can handle in this system.
Irene: Yeah. Looking at it.
Laura: Absolutely.
Irene: And you know what's interesting is when you work with these people, eh, it's not their fault. They don't know because it's actually more prominent than we realize in society. How many people are walking around with their cups full right? But when you start to question them and inquire in session in private practice, they start to say, well, yeah, I've never really slept very soundly. I've never had a full bowel movement that's properly formed. I have trouble with my immune system. Whenever I get a cold for the flu. I'm out for six months. Right. That's not normal in a healthy system.
Getting sick isn't bad. It's how quick does our system responds to it. I always snap at my kids when they want to be expressive. I just can't handle it. I know that I shouldn't scream at them and send them to the room but I just can't handle the singing and the dancing, it's too much. Whereas person B their little ones start to sing and dance and they join, they like have fun, you know that kind of thing. So those are just two little examples but you start to piece together and then when you start working with these people they say, oh yeah, well yeah, I had that. I had that surgery when I was I forgot I had that surgery when I was three to fix a heart defect. It's like what? You never told me that or yeah, my mom, she had to go away to the hospital for six months because she had whatever problem.
And I was left with my real evil aunt. Like I've heard these stories before and they don't think of that as bad because they weren't beaten, they weren't neglected with, not, you know, they had what they needed. But there was something that just wasn't right. And so you start to hear these stories and that is a sign that is the history that shows that that little person when that big person who's person b his life fell apart after the car accident that they actually were under a high level of stress growing up and they didn't have the tools and they didn't have the modeling and the person, the adult mature human to help them come out of that stress response. And so what happens Laura is that, let's just say we have that kid who you know, is being looked after by the evil and the evil stepmother or wherever you want to call. It's always the evil stepmother, isn't it? It's never the evil stepfather. One of the two.
Laura: Let's not put that on set moms.
Irene: I know the adult that is not doing what they should with the kid, we'll just go there. You know, they don't realize it, but it really impacts that little system and that little system never had a chance to cry freely and let that stress out or scream. I hate you. I want you to die. Right. These are the things that little people want to say when they're being harmed. But if they know that if they say that they're going to get more hurt or more shut down, they'll actually shut up will stop expressing themselves. Okay.
Laura: So I had a lot of listeners who just right there and in that moment thought to themselves, oh wait, so you mean, what should I do then when my kids says, I would think it as a kid, I would think in my head, but I would never let myself say it out loud and my kids say it out loud to me all the time and I welcome it.
I hope I try to figure out what's going on that they feel like they need to do. You know, I feel very curious about because lots of parents, things like that, so disrespectful. I would never have said that to my parents, how come they can speak to me that way? What do we do when they say I hate you?
Irene: Well, yeah, I mean, I think why is the little one saying that is a question to be so usually okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna change a gear. For example, if we think about the wild, like if a mother bear has her cute little baby cubs, you know, they're so cute. If that mother bear swats the cub because it's about to fall into a hole, right? Or is doing something that's going to harm them, like playing with a bee nest or something? Yeah. The little baby bear the cub isn't going to say mama, I hate you. Why did you just yank me away from that danger? Right? It won't and it won't for a few reasons.
One, they're animals, they're mammals, but they are not as complex as us with the higher brain. And in that environment, you have to teach the cub to not do that thing dangerously right? Because it will risk its survival. And basically that's what it comes down to in the wild is survival, right? So if we think about us as humans, God we’re so complex because we don't raise our kids exactly the same here as someone would over there versus across the street versus in the southern hemisphere. And it's not because we shouldn't raise them the same. It's just, we've gone off this track of domesticating plants and animals, industry, agriculture.
I mean, it's a long story as to why we're not just treating our babies in the way that we should. So if we think about the, the moment when the infant or not the infant, the toddler, the five year old can say that. So one thing would be, is there a moment in life either that week, that day or for four years where the parents and this is going to be, may be triggering for some, didn't understand their own emotions and survival, stress and physiology. Therefore they didn't allow their offspring, their cubs to be truly who they are.
And so is there a riff in that healthy aggression and the parent that doesn't have the capacity to maybe enforce a strong boundary and rule, don't touch that hot stove, you don't pull the dog's tail share with your sister, whatever, right? You know, you can't have cake for dinner. Like all these things like I hate you, I want, it's like, oh, that's okay, that's fine. But we're going to eat this. This is what we're eating tonight, right? Anyway, the first thing is as the adult and this doesn't have to just be a parent.
This can be someone who is working with kids at school like a nature because God only knows I had some bad teachers growing up who were awful to us. You know that just how were they allowed to even be teachers, the things that they did and if I think about my parents generation and they're like you know, being hit with rulers and all these things, the adult, mature adult who's handling the child, do they have the capacity to listen to their own physiology and allow their angers and frustrations to come out so that they can then be with a little person and they're immature. We forget that children are totally immature right there, little cubs, they need to be learned. They need to learn these boundaries and they also need love, right? The mama bear is never going to make that baby cub sleep in a separate den.
Laura: Mhm. Yeah.
Irene: And here we put kids in their own rooms in the darks, even even infants, we put the baby monitor, there is a need for that connection. So here's, I mean this is, it goes so many places here. But it can be so simple as little Johnny really wants to sleep with mom and dad because he's scared because he thinks there's monsters in the closet. But no, you're a big boy, you have to sleep in your room by yourself.
He does it because if I defy that I don't know what's going to happen to me and then the next day at breakfast when he tries to assert himself. No, I want that for breakfast. No, little Johnny you have to have this, I hate you. It's not about the food necessarily. He was denied that soothing. That fear that he had with the monsters in the closet. You know, come into the room, I might want to sleep with you, go back to your room and I'm just this is like an example right?
Laura: Yeah.
Irene: So there's these ways that these little things we don't think of, they show up later and it could also be you know a little one who had a surgery when they were young and they don't cognitively remember it because pre verbal when a baby can't talk when a kid can't talk yet they don't log the memory in their cognition. It's somatic.
But let's just say a little one was born with a bit of a defect and had to be rushed into hospital or was in hospital had to be rushed to the ER had to get fixed and they sense mom's not here. Why did you let this doctor do this? Even though they don't understand this had to happen to save its life. There will be in many instances a stored somatic. You didn't protect me. Where were you? You know, why did that defect happen? And this is not the parents fault. You know we have no idea why sometimes we do.
Right? But so that can transfer. It might have nothing to do with sleeping or school. It could just be let's just say little Johnny is finally old enough to say what he wants and punch his fists and then all of a sudden that old somatic imprint of why did you let me go to that? ER like why did you leave me alone? Why didn't you come with me? Even though he doesn't cognitively get it? There is an anger.
Laura: It's visceral.
Irene: It's visceral. The thing I've learned Laura, of all the years working with parents and kids, I've worked with some kids. They are not trying to harm us. Of course not right. They're not trying to be difficult. They're not causing a tantrum so that we can go to our grocery shopping. Like it's not, it doesn't compute they are putting out something like I hate you because somewhere along the lines maybe we miss attuned to them and that's not a crime that's just part of learning to be a human in this world where there isn't the simplicity of mama bear has cubs and just protects the crap out of it
Laura: And doesn't have anything else to do for them.
Irene: And that's all she does. You know, if you thought about that for a second, it's like my God, imagine if every single human, you know, Utopia had pregnancies that were filled with joy and sleeping whenever you wanted and having the food you craved when you craved, it had massages and just chill and bathing and then you have the baby and this beautiful environment where there's no fluorescent lights. I mean we're getting to that more women are wanting to have their babies in home without the stress.
Laura: Yeah. But also in a culture where you're not going to have to go back to work in six weeks, even in a year because a child's nervous system is still super underdeveloped at a year. Yeah. For dads too, are, you know, we don't have work schedules that demand our presence for so long. And so then of course we need unbroken sleep. It's our whole system is not set up to support optimal development for children.
Irene: Our system in certain countries, I would say there are some countries in Europe, namely Scandinavia and I'm not good at pulling stats out of my brain, but I know that Iceland in the past has been written about because they get some crazy amount of maternity and paternity leave, No questions asked. Like you don't have to be working with a company,
Laura: It's like universal, right?
Irene: Like self employed. If I was to have a kid, I wouldn't get maternity leave, like I'd have to save to be able to not work for save two years, which is what I would want to do because I know how important that development is. And so if I think about my mother is from the Philippines and when I go back and I've been to the Philippines many times to the barrio, the little village. Those babies aren't in their own room, they're not in a crib there, sleeping on the mattress on the floor with five other family members. It's on the mother when they're cooking, there's no fancy devices, there's no toys at all. I'm dead serious here.
They just played with their, interacted with their passed along to all of the family. And this is, you know, in a healthy environment because of course there's also unhealthy environments in such countries, but there's a bit more of that kind of in arms as we would call it. The continuum concept, jean lee laws who wrote about this beautiful book in arms, child rearing. But it's not this fancy thing, it's what animals in the wild do right? They carry their babies all the time, they don't leave them. I mean sometimes they might have to leave them for very for whatever reason. Obviously birds do that mammals primarily are kept very safe and protected until they can fend for themselves.
Laura: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a lot of pressure on parents and I do want to take us back into the kind of what do we do if we see our kid as a kind of an overflowing nervous system. But I do want to just mention that there's a lot of pressure. And I think like there's this ideal way, the way that human animal babies are meant to be cared for and nourished. And then there's the reality that humans are in right now.
And so there's so much room for grace and compassion and just you know, full acceptance of whatever experience it was that the people who are listening found themselves in without any pressure or judgment on kind of what was available to you at the time. The knowledge is available to you, the resources because in our world it takes a very well resourced family to be able to have that type of existence. I know.
Irene: Very hard.
Laura: It's so hard.
Irene: You know, it's very hard and I mean, you know, I have a saying that I don't know when I started saying this, but it goes along the lines of it's no one's fault and it's everyone's fault and it's very Jordan B. Peterson right? It's like, it's kind of this we have to realize that we didn't know, but we also have to realize that now we know and we have to do better.
Laura: Yeah.
Irene: And you know, it's such an interesting thing because the parents that I have worked with who have and this is what's so cool Laura, right? And I know we want to get into those other pieces. But if we think about traumas, you asked me about trauma and what what is it? It's intergenerational, right?
It transfers through generations. I even believe in a lot of people don't like this, but past life trauma, I believe in that I believe in a soul and carrying on of us passed when we die and all these things and I've seen people who have stopped the entire lineage of their ancestry and have healed it in a matter of a few years. We think about that. If we really look at the macro when you have the right science and the right practices and the right mindset, we can actually shift some of these really insane ways that we've raised our young in a matter of like a couple of years And for some that might seem before you look at it that way. It's like what I have to do this work on myself for 2-3 years to be able to.
It's like, yeah, but think about how long that lineage of dis regulation and not allowing you to express and feel and how that wasn't allowed from your parents and their parents and their parents and now sure your kids 12 and yeah, you did some bad things when you were young with them and you didn't know, but now you can work on yourself and that 12 year old just picking 12 for some reason, sees that mom or dad is moving and having fun in the kitchen or is Setting a boundary in ways that feels good as opposed to toxic and you start to shift these things and then that little 12 year old who has a life ahead of them then starts to have this different energy around them and it's just, it's brilliant to see. and I've seen it enough times to know that yeah, we've done some stuff that hasn't been right and it's actually important I think to say, yep, that was wrong and that sometimes isn't liked, we can say you did the best you could and you did and that was also wrong and that's okay, we have to shift it, we have to heal X of that thing that was wrong.
And it's like with kids when they do something wrong, we actually have to tell them that's not right, right? This is part of healthy shame, which is another controversial topic, right? It's like, but that child they don't hear with a strong stern voice, don't touch the hot stove, don't do that strongly, it won't viscerally register and they won't know they won't learn right. And so I think we've gotten a little afraid to be stern with compassion, not just with our kids but with ourselves even.
Laura: Yeah, you know, it's funny, my my kid, everybody listening will probably think I'm the, you know me to be so kind and so compassionate and so loving, but my kids call me strict and stern, good times and so and that's that delicate balance a boundary and a limit can be held firmly with grace and compassion and kindness at the same time, they're not mutually exclusive, no.
Irene: And if they have a boo boo because they just fell off their bike, you're going to love them up and take care of them and not get mad at them for falling off their bike
Laura: Of course not, no.
Irene: exactly. And that's the discernment, right? That I think is missing. It's like, oh, well she's saying to have these strong rules and boundaries, but then when my little one starts crying for no reason, what do I do then? And the thing is, is that's a great question. If someone's at that interface being like that shows that they're stopping the reaction and being like, okay, what should I do here? And if someone doesn't know, again, this is the whole, it's not your fault, but it's everyone's fault. We don't know because somewhere when we were young, we weren't given that. And it's like, okay, I need to ask for help. Well, what? And then I might say, well, what is your gut feeling is that I just want to hug them, We'll just hug them.
Laura: No, listening will be lost. No, like, like there's so much time. Okay. Yeah. So I feel like there's two directions I could go here. One is like, I am certain that therapy listeners who are recognizing as we're having this conversation that they themselves are the person who has this kind of full cup, their nervous system is loaded right now because of things that have happened in their past, because of a year of living in a pandemic.
Like all of those things, right? And then there also are people who are listening who are thinking like, okay, I recognize this in my own child, like I, my oldest has a history of trauma, I recognize so much of her and what you're saying, you know, so she, We had a traumatic birth, she had breathing issues and so had a nick, you stay with forced separation where I was not allowed to hold her or touch her for 12 hours, it's still there for her too. She and I cry together and she has another one other significant trauma. She was, you know, a bicycling accident where she was run over by a bicyclist and broke her leg.
And so like I can see I've always seen this in her nervous system and doctors never believed me in her, like in her immune system. Like you know when she gets sick she gets really sick, like high fever fast. I've always seen that in her that's evening out and soothing, but she's always been super, super sensitive, super, just just loaded, just loaded and so like if, and I know lots of my listeners because they find me because I got to get to like this, I know lots of my listeners have a kiddo who whether or not they can pinpoint the stories so clearly as I can, I was looking for them because just because of the background, I have, who have these kids that they can see that their nervous system is at capacity. Yeah, strange. So what do we do for how can we help our kiddos is what I would love to ask you?
Irene: The first thing I think what just happened where your emotion came in was super important because it clearly is still very alive in the field. And that's okay. And then I'll also say if we think so, I'm going to I'm going to paint the picture. So she was born. It was traumatic when a little one has some kind of trauma.
At first, there's so many things that happened right? Their system goes into what we would call a near death preparing for death state. And when they're that was she full term when she came out, her nervous system was working, the autonomic nervous system was working and that her, her digestion was probably working her urine development immune system, not so much when we're born, develops those sorts of things, but her system would have gone into a shock and then you take, you know, into the ink you and separation there can then be and again, I'm just, this is not necessarily hurts.
You don't know all the stories making very general her system can go into them, what we would call when it realizes no one's coming, What we would call collapse. So I mentioned fight, breathe like the bears coming and I'm like trying to fight off there or oh my God, I can't get away from the bear. The tiger better start running. That's the fight, Ashley, I'm gonna flee from danger if I realize that I'm getting away from that bear or that tiger, my system will go into what's called a freeze stay to numb out the pain of my throat, about to being, you know, taken by this animal that just wants to eat because he's hungry, gruesome visual.
But so I go into that shut down. Now, here's what's interesting and the wild, if I am like the impala, I get eaten and I'm done. Like if the tiger or the lion or whatever gets distracted, I then run away, I'm fine. I go back to my hurt and everything is groovy. I don't talk about it after that. But if we think about a little one there in distress fighting for their life, they then get help. They don't know though that what's helping them is helpful.
They just know danger. Danger, danger, something's not right. And usually what occurs is a collapse of their system, of course, because your daughter is alive and well, they survive. And so humans are so interesting because we've got this resilience to just keep going, even when we have these survival stressors, because she has, you, you know, and she has probably her things in her books and whatever it might be that keeps her engaged. So we like we add this engagement that helps us. But then there's still this underlying stress physiology that's running in front of our bus, so to speak.
And so the first thing to go back to your question is super important for parents to understand this deep science. And the reason why is because when we can understand that physiological level and accept, yep, she almost died. She didn't thank God, you know, thank your gods or whatever you do for that blast gratitude. But then okay, but she's also a little animal that went into near death was, you know, recovered.
But there is still a shock in the system and the shop it sounds like is caught in the immune system. And this is just now what you said about the fever in the autonomic system of regulation and when something comes in that is remotely foreign, it's like the entire army gets ready to uh it's like okay, we got it because when she was little she was like, she couldn't fight, had to be there. And so this is where I get excited because there's so much complexity to this because we see there might not be this connection with the pediatrician or the specialist that that gut problem or the inability to process dairy for example, using that there is not bad but just whatever has nothing to do with dairy or the food or the fiber for the pollens in the air from spring because it's springtime.
Now your allergy season there, that immune system was on hyper alert when she was an innocent. And so it knows how to go into hyper alert mode as a child and a lot of the doctors, they won't make that connection. So, I've made that connection for everyone here. It's not a coincidence if there's a behavioral problem or an anger problem for a digestive problem or a cognitive problem, if you know, there was intense stress and it hasn't been dealt with head on. And so does that make sense before I go on?
Laura: It makes complete sense to me. I mean this is I've always just intuitively known this about her that there is a you know, when she has a reaction that just looks so big, it's our kind of our training, our cultural conditioning to be like that's not okay. That's an overreaction and may perhaps it is, but it's that overreaction. It's very easy to see that that is not within her willful control. That that is just how she's wired right now to react.
Irene: Exactly this is why the understanding of the serious super important because when you can understand the language of the autonomic nervous system and that fight flight freeze And then you haven't she's eight?
Laura: She's eight. Yeah.
Irene: So you have an eight year old, a six year old, a seven year old, a 16 year old, 50 year old, it doesn't matter because it carries with us. That's the other stuff with these early things, they don't go away with time. And so someone who is 70 years old may have had that birth trauma, like you just talked about and they've never made the connection that their outbursts of anger or digestive problems for their auto immunity or the depression is caused from that early imprint. And we know through the research namely the adverse childhood experiences, study that it's pretty it's not even a theory now, it's pretty damn.
Laura: It's science. Yeah.
Irene: like this is true, like when there is this early adversity this happens.
Laura: So and there's the epigenetic piece of it too.
Irene: And then there's, there's not too.
Laura: my daughter is also the great granddaughter of an Auschwitz survivor too. And so there's that piece of it that just there.
Irene: So she has got the potential to be this insanely amazing human, which she is because these things that she's feeling are going to give her so much capacity to understand all these things. Like it's kind of cool when you think about it, the understanding of the education is important and then the next thing and this is by no means like a step list that I'm just these are things that are coming do not underestimate what might need to happen for that healing to occur. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna share a vignette a case that I know of where the little the little human had brain surgery when they were really young, like massive problem with something, I don't even remember what it was.
So lots of surgeries more like tons and tons and then as she grew up, there was this huge developmental delay, anger maybe even classified on the spectrum, which I don't love that because it's like well this is a trauma response coming out. Her system is screaming. And then the work that was done to help wasn't teaching her how to manage her anger, how to read and write. It was literally allowing her to rage against the doctors that operated on her when she was an infant.
And so things like taking, you know, I'm just this is my husband's story but taking the skeleton that we have in our office like we have a skeleton with eyes and bones and she wanted to hurt it and he let her he let her light matches and burn his eyes out. Complete psychopathic annihilation anger not in a way that was destroying to her. There was so much anger so much I hate you back to that.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Irene: He let her make believe and he's not going to hurt the skeleton. It's you know, an inanimate object. But the feeling of getting her rage rage out was so important. But then after time and time and time she wanted to then he'll let him patch Mr. Skeleton up. So they would take band-aids and they would color things on him and slowly over time the behavior has changed. The attention changed. The fear changed. That's just been yet to show parents and anyone who works with kids, The kid knows what needs to be done to heal us. The big person or the therapist who has to let go of all reasons.
Laura: Yeah, we get in the way.
Irene: In from space.
Laura: But we like, I mean we have to trust our kids. I teach a course where I teach parents how to do play therapy with their kids. And it's so much of it is exactly this teaching them that, you know, just because they want to cut the head off their doll does not mean that there's some psychopathic thing. They've just got some thing that they're processing. We don't even have to know what it is. Like it's not our concern. It's not our business. Just trust them. They'll do it.
Irene: And what's interesting about what you said is like if that doesn't come out, this is what leads to people.
Laura: Yeah.
Irene: The others later in life. I mean the stories that are out there around Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber, I have a video on that. Actually. I don't want to get into the full story. We could spend an hour on that is an important one to follow up because he was put in a hospital at age six weeks for a week, uh, strapped down in a bed left alone in a room. I think it was six weeks. We had a rash all over his body and so they probably pumped him with steroids, take the rash down. I mean, I get angry just thinking about it and then the mother, because the mother has been interviewed like, what the heck happened? It's like, well, I don't know, he was a really happy baby until this happened.
And when I got him home from the hospital and I think about it, that was probably in the 40s, 50s, I'm not sure the age that he's not now, he was not the same. He had collapsed, he was limpless, listless, there was no energy in him. And so then we look at what occurred in his life. He went on to harm other people deeply. So do not underestimate the power that the kid has to heal themselves. We have to facilitate it. We have to allow them to express all emotion and not try to reason with them.
This has never happened with me, but one of my instructors Steve, like, he's worked with kids who have suffered severe trauma and adoption trauma. All this. He's been punched in the face and bitten many times. Bye little five year olds who are coming out of their shock. So they're living in a freeze collapsed state. And so someone might be like, what the heck do we do? Sometimes it's the play. Sometimes we have to do more specific, it's called kidney adrenal work where we're actually talking to the stressed organs that ramped up the armor to fight.
So we have to, like sometimes it's just intention, Sometimes it's actual manually working with them. Sometimes really good osteopathic work is beautiful for little people working with their bones and their nerves and all of that. But he has been working with people where little Susie comes out of her deep shutdown and her animal comes out. She's not thinking fights the arm. That's where the I hate you comes out.
But it's not, I hate you. It's like get the f off of me. And then of course this is where the parents need education because usually the parents are in that room right at that age, They're never left alone with the therapist. I hope parents are like, and if they don't understand that, that is progress. The little one will hear the gasp, oh no, don't do that. And then you screwed it up.
Laura: Yeah, you shut it down.
Irene: And so this is why parents need to understand and they have to work on their own capacity to let their anger out. What aggressions are they holding in? What tears are they holding it? Because if we're as adults are far cup is full back to that car accident technology. If our pep is full and we don't know how to cry when we're sad. If we don't know how to say to our husband or wife, that's not nice.
Don't, don't talk to me like that. Hey, you forgot, like if we don't have that boundary, that healthy impression, how are we going to allow these immature animal cubs of ours to be who they are or to heal these old things.
Laura: You cannot give what you do not have had.
Irene: You can’t. And so that's again why I always say the first thing is understanding the science and the nervous system and what's interesting Laura is when a parent can open up to that or caregiver or teacher, they start to see things, the lens changes. He that weird behavior as something to be changed or corrected or punished. But they get curious with it. You're drawing a bunch of knives. What's going on there? Like tell me about that. Like what do those mean rather than should only be drawing rainbows.
Laura: Yeah, we don't have to be afraid of those things. And I think that this is of course not to say to anybody listening that we think you should just let your kid hit you or by, you know, of course not. It's about understanding where it comes from and the very natural and somewhat healthy thing that is happening here because our body is, our nervous systems, our brains are desperate for healing.
They want to heal there. They want to, they want to be whole and healed and so yeah, and so of course no, we're not saying you just let your kid hit you, but you understand that they are not hitting you because they're a bad kid or because they don't like you, they're hitting you because their nervous systems overwhelmed, they're attempting to there in that state, that flight or freeze state.
Irene: And it depends on the age, right? Like if it's an infant and this is why observation is so critical, like if there's an infant doing some odd motions of their hands and you can tell that it's not just a playing movement and I'm kind of using my arms right now, but it's got a very distinct pattern that keeps happening and maybe they are hitting us, let it happen so that that can be completed or play with that movement. It's like, oh, you're trying to do something, let's see if we can help you as opposed to stop that.
We have to look at these asymmetrical movement patterns that might come out that don't represent just general exploration of the limbs when there's an infant. If we think about a child who, let's just say is having a fit and maybe it's just because they had a terrible day at school and they hate their teacher, that's where we need to let them get it out. But depending on the age, that's where we have to teach. Okay, okay, okay, and we don't even want to say, you know, stop that. It's like, okay, okay, let's find something like, let's stomp our feet, let's growl, you know. So we don't want to say stop that because they're naturally getting it out and expressing what has to get out If it's a teenager who has more strength.
That's a bit trickier because they are now their own more adult human, they need autonomy, but you also don't want them to hurt, like literally hurt you or their siblings for the space. Like a five year old isn't going to destroy a house in the way that same year old will 16 year old might be able to drive right and harm themselves in that way. But it's like, okay, I see you really pissed. Like, what do we need to do?
We need to go play boxing. Like, what what is it? Like, come on, let's fight, but let's not hurt each other, right? And so you got to be really creative with the age. And I say that because I was like, Oh, well, she just said that biting my arm is okay, but you're certainly not going to want your 16 year old son to bite your arm. That might cause some real damage, but five year old not so much.
Laura: Yeah, and I mean, maybe we don't want our five year old biting our arm, but if you need to bite right now here, I've got something for you to bite, bite it, pretend it's me. You know, if you need to pretend it's me bite it, pretend it's me here, this is the part, you know, this is what you can buy, or hitting is good, hitting. You need to hit right now. Your body is wise here, hit this pillow. I'm right here with you. Hit it right next to me. I accept I accept I welcome all of those things.
Irene: There are some tools and I have a video or I'll share with you that you can share please. Yeah. Where tools are good and I have a few that I can. I did a video showing different tools to squeeze and hit and stomp and there's a way that you can do that where like if a kid wants to squeeze Using the forearm are like if I had my husband and I do this and he's like a big £200 guy, like he if he gets angry about something and if I've done something to pick them off, like he I will let him squeeze my arm.
The forearm is actually a really safe arm to squeeze. Yeah, it's not, the bicep is different because of the arteries in there. But I have this video where I'm squeezing his arm. I'm getting some anger out about something that happened to me sometimes, depending on the situation. That is a lovely way to get that tactile feel, especially with the little ones because sometimes they actually need to feel that aggression come out in contact with another human breathing biological system. But again, you got to differentiate, you've got to discern and understand what it is that you're doing because you don't want either personally get hurt obviously.
Laura: Right and full permission to, if you have your own trauma background in history, like something like that could be incredibly triggering to you to have, have that happening. Like if you know, if you're having your child do those things and, and of course full consent, you know, and not ever within an abusive relationship, not where there's an abusive patterns, You know, I'm just putting that container of, you know, for liability purposes.
Irene: A person is like, what is my arm and they instantly feel a trigger or an activation that no, you wouldn't want to do that.
Laura: I want to do it listen to your body.
Irene: Exactly. It's sort of like you even getting aggression out by growling for some people is to activating because they're healthy, aggression is never allowed to express when they were young. Yeah, I'm working with the adults that I have in my programs, like it takes sometimes months or years to build enough capacity for someone to even go girl like that. And for someone who just is like, oh, that's easy for some people. It's terrifying.
And so this is why a lot of the way we've taught getting out anger is just so not accurate because if a person's system saw anger in a violent way or was never allowed to express their anger and healthy aggression. It's like it's like speaking a foreign language and being terrified to even try.
Laura: Yeah, that's so interesting to me. So my every, all my listeners know that my girls are constantly pretending to be dragons And I don't know if you know, but dragons are quite loud. They roar very aggressively. The lovely outlet for their aggression. But there are certainly times when my cup is filled and there's this one specific sound that they will do sometimes that is just like it's just too much for me. And that's really interesting. And I like I was not my soft emotions were welcomed as a child but my aggressive motions like emotions. My anger. Not at all in note. Like mm super interesting. You've given me something to chew on their.
Irene: Chew on it.
Laura: Yeah. Cool.
Irene: That would be a good one that you want and based on the history that you share with your daughter. I'm going to make a very big sweeping jess that like you said you to cry a lot together and that's wonderful If we were to take that one step further. What is under the tears and with anger and sadness and grief they flipped. So a lot of times if someone like you said you were good with soft emotions growing up and that's wonderful. But sometimes tears are masking deep, deep aggression. Mm Sometimes deep deep progression is masking deep at this, right?
And it's kind of you know, we typically see and I'm going to make again a generalization. Typically men and boys are taught a bit more to be angry and aggressive and it keeps them from crying and then girls are typically taught you can be emotional and cry but you certainly can't show your anger. And here's the thing humans are humans and of course hormones dictate those. You know, the female is typically has more of that oxytocin connection nurture and that's to me fine.
But we have, we both all of us have the same six basic primal human emotions. And so it would be fun to like play with that I think can be like I wonder what's under there that could be explored so that both of you could explore that healthy aggression in a healthy contained way and she might be able to even help you bring some of that.
Laura: Yeah. You're giving me some really interesting things to chew on. I know so many women who when they are angry they cry so many. That's very interesting. Well, Irene I feel like I could just we could talk forever for hours. Thank you so much for your wisdom. I want to make sure because I guarantee there's going to be people who are like this is I need this. I need more support. Where can they go and find you?
Irene: Yeah, it's just my name dot com. So irenelyons.com and that's my site and that just can take you down the rabbit hole of articles and videos and my resources and downloads and of course my online programs and I have a drop in class that I do once a month that kind of guide people through the basics all that is there. I'm not doing private practice anymore but don't underestimate, I'll say to everyone the power of the online resources. I would say that because of the way they're formulated, it really can help a person gain that capacity to start to bring up these natural emotions that really when our nervous system has good regulation and our life force energy is back. The emotions just come in a natural way, right?
As opposed to trying to work with the emotions and figure them out. If we figure out those fight flight freeze elements, the somatic self and we get that lens on board. Not that it's simple and it happens like in a week and that's not how it works. But the other stuff, the behavior shifts, the emotion shift. The boundary shift kind of spontaneously when you do that more somatic nervous system.
Laura: Yeah, it's about capacity. Its capacity. And so I think if those of you who are listening who feel like your capacity is just shot, there's no capacity, there's no space. These are good options for you that this is not about. Oftentimes I think parents are looking for, you know, what do I say? You know, what do I do? What are the things I say? And, and if we are in a place where we are losing it with our kids, where we feel overwhelmed and like we have no capacity, the work is inward, the work is with us and so thank you for doing this work. I'm holding these spaces for, for folks who have work to do, we all we all do.
Irene: We all have work to do.
Laura: Yes, yeah.
Irene: No one gets out of this without doing, I mean of course people can choose not to, but yes, there's all, we all have something that we can work on and he'll and master to a greater level. So everyone's, everyone can contribute to the healing of all of us. Um but yeah, it does take, it comes down to that building of capacity and don't underestimate how that can trickle out into every.
Laura: yes, it's not self serving or you know, it is, it trickles out, it affects every single aspect of every person and system you come into contact with. Yeah, beautiful, well thank you again, I so appreciate you.
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