May 12, 2020 • 53 mins
Ify and Dani kick off Mental Health May, with therapist Karen Erlichman. Together, they take a look at the history and therapeutic practice of somatic therapy.
Footnotes:
- Interview with Peter Levine
- Somatic Therapy
- Bessel Van Der Kolk
- Hakomi Method
- Monica LaSage TED Talk
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Nerd fam, I hope you're still doing healthy and well.
We are really excited to kick off mental health. May.
We have a lot of cool interviews and topics and
brain science that we are covering. I just wanted to
say that there is a slight trigger warning. You know.
We talked about some really difficult UH situations and things
in this UH and and therapy and trauma in this episode.
(00:21):
So if you are in a difficult place right now,
you might want to hold off on this episode or
wait until you're feeling a little bit better. And here's
our episode. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
(00:42):
NERD Difficent. I am one half of your host if
you wad way, and sitting across from me digitally is
Danny Fernandez. And I'm so excited for this month, IFFI,
I'm so excited that we're doing this. We this is
our first episode of men Total Health. May. I think
it's always relevant, but incredibly relevant right now. Yeah, I
(01:06):
think now more than ever it's a good time to
have that discussion. You know, you can see a lot
of folks I don't know, it's just being alone with
your thoughts for all all this time. You know, it
has different effects on everyone. And I think it's also
good to talk about mental health so people know it's
okay to seek help and to talk about it and
(01:29):
it's not something that a little sleep or what have
you as gonna deal with. Yeah, and also, you know,
because this is a nerd based podcast, there's so much,
so much cool science behind treatment. UM. I've been pretty
vocal about the different treatments with trauma depression that I've done,
and I just find them so fascinating and I'm constantly
(01:51):
learning about new ones UM. And today we have a
wonderful guest to talk to us about healing as well
a somatic therapy, and that is Karen or Lickman. She's
a therapist and spiritual director in San Francisco. Hey, everybody, Hey,
thank you so much for joining us. Karen. Oh, it's
my pleasure. It's my honor and my pleasure. So I think,
(02:14):
first off, the first question we'd love to talk about
is like what you do and what your expertise is,
just for the listeners to get to know you. Sure,
I thought you were going to ask me what I
was nerding out too. Oh my gosh, now we should
do that. She listened to our wonder Woman episode and
thank you so much. You are a thousand percent correct.
(02:36):
We always start with what we're seeking out about. I
think we were just excited to but no, yes, what
are you seeking out about? Let's talk about that. Okay,
So two things. One is um cooking. I'm totally geeking
out on cooking and um, that's been really awesome. Actually,
so last night I made a spicy roasted colleigue hour
(03:00):
with feta, and UM, so good. It's gonna I'll be
my lunch when we're finished today. And then the other
thing I'm geeking out too is um these videos that
are called high Kids. This is like a great uh
stress coping strategy. They are these little five minute videos
(03:20):
of kids, um trying weird food, or kids meeting people
who have unusual professions or who like a farmer, gang member,
a farmer, really homeless person. And kids are so awesome
because they just say whatever. They don't censor the way
adults do, and it is hilarious. So, UM, I love
(03:43):
the high Kids. Oh I'm definitely going to check that
out because yeah, it's you know, just watching the way
kids taken information, watching like Naomi grow up. There's this
like both like pureness, but this unfiltered where it's like
I'm gonna just say it because I don't know, like
I'm not you know, thinking about whether or not it
(04:04):
hurt your feelings. But I'm just I want you to know.
But one thing that she's doing that I'm really uh into,
she like is giving us like status updates all the time,
like she's like I'm happy or um or like I
remember one time I thought, I was like, oh, you
watched too much TV. You're gonna read books, and then
she was like, I'm sad because I want TV. You're
(04:29):
gonna have to be sad right now. I'm sorry. But yeah,
I'm also on the cooking train. I've been uh, I've
you know, I feel like I've been so in my
instant pot especially the my my selling point that I've
been telling all my friends is jasmine rice in four
minutes like that that is that is enough to get
(04:49):
so so I have like a bag of rice ready
because that was the thing is I was always the
only reason I didn't. I would always do like beans
or lentils. Uh. And I'm talking about straight out the
can just because those were quicker because rice is such
a long process and now that I can get it
out in like four minutes. And um, you know we
I've watched this movie, the Better Half, Alice Woo's second film,
(05:12):
and there's this sausage maker character in there, like his
family makes sausages. So I bought like a bunch of
broad worst and I've been cooking like lots of sausage.
Uh so yeah, I'm I'm I'm also on the cooking train.
But in the iffy physical media saga, the latest films
I got was I got John Wick three on Blu
(05:33):
Ray and uh and Big Lebowski because I always have
to a copy of The Big Lebowski. Maybe I feel
like you could just like wait and watch it on
f X like literally any day. Oh, I have The
Big Lebowski on DVD, but I wanted to own it
in four K. And yeah, that's it's my favorite movie.
(05:54):
You needed to see the pores up close? Yeah? Um
for me, the thing that I'm king out about is
the Mandalorian documentary The Behind the Scenes on Disney Plus
It's Disney Gallery Star Wars the Mandalorian. I loved how
they had a round table of the directors. Um and honestly,
(06:16):
also I mean Deborah Chow, which is just seeing like
Jon Favreaux, like just you know, gush over her uh
and the action sequences, um, watching Tyka be Tyka and
silly behind the scenes. And then Bryce Dallas Howard, who
I still to this day. Her episode of Black Mirror
is some of the best, like her best acting I
think ever. UM and I just love I don't know.
(06:39):
I love all the risks that they're taking with having
different directors. I love seeing the behind the scenes. And
I'm really excited for the next UH season, which I'm
sure is going to have baby. He better still be
a baby. I'm not ready for him to be old
man Yoda anytime soon. I think it will literally take
like seven hundred years because he's only five. Now. Well,
(07:01):
there was the picture that just went out the other
day of UH, which was one of the horror directors.
Uh is it? Now? That's not Ramaro? What's what are
the who did Grindhouse? Oh? Um? The other the one
opposite of Quentin Tarantino who owns l Ray Oh? That's um?
(07:26):
Uh Robert Rodriguez, Yes, let me see, I think it
might have been him. Um, maybe not, Yeah, Robert Rodriguez. Yeah, yeah, no, no,
I mean made him. He eighteen hours ago posted a
picture right next to baby Yoda and said, I'm truly
humbled to say I have now had the rare privilege
of directing the biggest star in the universe. So Robert
(07:49):
Rodriguez directed an episode in the next season which I'm
so curious to see what that, you know, just knowing
his work, like, is it going to be a heavy
act and pulpic I would love that so much? But yeah,
so and in the pictures, Sorry, the reason I brought
it up. In the picture it's still a baby. Yeah,
(08:10):
there you go. So still going to cash in on that.
Um well um kicking off our mental health may super
excited again about this episode. But Karen, I just kind
of wanted to get into why you chose this field.
I feel it's such a it's such a giving like
(08:31):
to be someone that that people can turn to, uh
to help heal. It's uh, I think at times can
be very blessed and thankful but also thankless, I think
at times. And so I just wanted to know what
specifically made you go into this field. Well, I am
I'm a licensed clinical social worker, so like my training
(08:55):
and my education is as a social worker. And I
never thought I was going to become a therapist. I
was like an activist and a community organizer and you know,
I wanted to like run ship and make change. And
I do come from a family of people who are
of service, like teachers and therapists. And my mom was
(09:17):
a big activist and like you know, took us to
demonstrations when I was a kid, and so I was
really raised with this strong value of being compassionate and
taking action. And but the first like ten years of
my work life, I actually worked a lot with homeless
(09:38):
pregnant drug addicts and UM was just like a basic
kind of on the ground social worker in a health
care setting and certainly brought like took a lot of
classes about how to do therapy and what therapy is.
But UM, I've always had this philosophy of you know,
how do I be with people where they are? Um,
(09:59):
there are some people who are just like never going
to go to therapy. It's not their thing. They've shame,
there's a stigma against it, whatever are the reasons. And
so working in that hospital setting, even though I wasn't
doing therapy, but I was able to be there as
a resource and as an advocate and a support. And
I still there are still a couple of UM women
(10:20):
that I met at the hospital, like thirty years ago
who still periodically will call me and say like, oh,
my kids graduated from college, or like I've been sober
for twenty five years, or just like it's so amazing.
So I eventually got totally burned out on working in
the health care system and decided, like one of the
reasons I also became a social worker was because there's
(10:42):
just so many different things you can do UM, and
I also care about the larger context, like it's not
just about what your toilet training is like, but it's
also about gender and race and class and um you know,
global trauma and like what we're all dealing with right
now in some ways in terms of a global pandemic
(11:03):
is a global trauma in a certain way. So UM
I thought, well, I'm gonna try private practice and see
how it is, and turned out I really loved it.
And UM I started out and was certainly trained in
some way in what might be considered traditional talk therapy,
(11:24):
but I because I always worked with people who had
experienced trauma, so like, for example, my second year of
graduate school, I had an internship working in a rape
crisis center, so I worked with women who had been
either sexually assaulted as adults or as children. And um,
(11:44):
I was amazed at like how the brain and the
body works to keep people safe and alive, Like we
are biological organisms at our core. And I remember I
was um co leading a group. I had a supervisor
at the time who specialized in something that used to
be called multiple personality disorder, which is actually quite rare
(12:08):
and we don't call it that anymore. But and um,
I was leading a group, co leading a group with
my supervisor, and this the woman would literally like come
in and switch personalities, which was very disconcerting to the
other people in the group. And so my supervisor just
said to her one time, We're just going to ask
(12:29):
you to bring I'm going to make up a name
Amy to the group and leave everybody at else at home.
Would that be okay? And she was like okay. I
was like, wow, that is so magic, Like it was
so it was amazing to me. And I remember thinking
how cool it is that our brains have this way
of protecting us by you know, what we call dissociation
(12:50):
right where you like, something's happening to you, but you're
separate from yourself because the pain would be too unbearable.
And so if we have the capacity to disc see
it that way, to disconnect from ourselves, we must have
the capacity to reconnect, Like if it can go one way,
it can go the other way. But you know, I
was still young and I was learning, and I wasn't
(13:11):
sure exactly how that worked. And eventually, over time I
UM wanted to have I had some instinct about really
like helping people to work somatically, but I felt like
I needed ethically and professionally to have more training, like
I need to know what I'm doing. This has to
(13:32):
be legitimate. I'm a licensed professional. And so I took
a couple of workshops and classes and eventually found a
modality called sensory motor psychotherapy that UM gave me much
more training and vocabulary and tools and working with trauma
and UM and it since has shaped I still do
(13:56):
talk therapy with a lot of people, like there are
some even subgroups of of semantic therapy like UM neurofeedback
and brain spotting and something called e M d R,
and there are some other things like that um, and
I think different therapists gravitate toward different modalities just depending
(14:17):
on their personality and their skill set. But what I
like about the semantic work is that it actually empowers
people to be in charge of their healing. It gives
you actually ultimately more of a sense of control, even
though it can feel like less control, and ultimately that
sense of empowerment, like your story does not run you.
(14:40):
You know, your trauma does not run you. You are
actually the person in charge of your own life, and
here are some ways you can do it. That just
makes sense to me. Yeah, that's super uh, super dope
and interesting. And really, because I was in Danny Knows This,
I went down like a wormhole of Uh, there's a
(15:01):
lot of not a lot. There's a few, like prominent
YouTube folks who have disassociative disorder d I d UM
and them kind of explaining how it is. And that's
kind of what you were saying. That's one thing I
learned because they're saying that, uh, most times their new
quote unquote personalities come from a trauma and then and
(15:24):
they like, there are some personalities that are built to
take in trauma, and then there are some to escape
it and and when you hear it, it makes so
much sense of like, oh, this is all just defense,
your body protecting you, where you're protecting you, where you're like, okay,
we're gonna And a lot of times the person who's
there to take in the trauma is uh an archetype
(15:46):
that is like strong who you know that person may
see as like someone who can like take that type
of stuff, and it's it's it just shows you the
power of the mind and why you know, and I
think Danny is the number one person, but we all
believe here, like you talked to a therapist, even if
you think you don't have to, even if you feel like,
(16:08):
oh I have nothing, just sitting down and talk, you'll
be surprised. And that's how you know a lot of friends,
you know, we'll be in talking and they'll be like, oh,
I don't think I need I was like, well, I
feel like, look you got the insurance, you know, because
my friend group we're all writers, so you know they
have that great insurance. Because the w g A was
like writers, y'all need therapy. But uh, but like I'm
(16:32):
I like so many of them, I've just been like,
just go you know, you get it for free anyway,
you get it for free or cheap, just you know,
go see what happens. And a lot of them have
been like, WHOA, I'm glad I did that. I was
gonna say, I wanted to get into UM kind of
for people that don't know what Semitic therapy is, I
know that it was created by Peter Levine in the
(16:55):
nineteen sixties. I was watching videos about it that essentially
studying animals and wild and what they do with survival energy,
which you were kind of touching on, UM, But can
you explain it a little bit more for people that
aren't familiar with it. Absolutely, UM. Peter Levine is one
of a handful of people who have pioneered this field
(17:17):
of somatic therapy. And I think that like the general
population has heard the expression fight or flight, but actually
there are there are more than two, UM different responses
we have Like we are animals ultimately, and there are
(17:37):
these biological responses that we have to something that's perceived
as a threat. And UM. One of my favorite things
at ways to UM illustrate this is if you look
up something called feigned death f E I G N
E D. Have you seen this, I see, Dan, have
you heard of this real? So much so, like if
(18:00):
an animal is being stalked by a predator, like a
gazelle is being stalked by a lion or a cheetah
or something like that, one of the they have all
these right, they don't want to be lunch. They want
to survive. So one of the responses that they used
to stay alive is that they pretend to be dead.
And when you see them on the video, literally they
(18:23):
look you can't detect any breathing whatsoever. They're dead. The
predator might even pick them up in their mouth, and
then they eventually because of the feigned death condition, the
predator will leave and you see the animal get up,
shake itself off, and just keep going. Like I could
not make this up. It's really remarkable. And so I've
(18:44):
heard stories from people it's not exactly feigned death, but
people who had trauma, especially as children, where they said
I just laid there and pretended I pretended I was
asleep until it was over, and UM other variations on
things like that. UM. And I think that now, of course,
with technology, UM researchers have the capacity to literally see
(19:08):
what is going on in the brain when somebody is
in what I'm going to call an activated trauma state.
Because the way that Peter Levine and Bessel vander Koke
and some of these other UM pioneers have UM, what
they've uncovered for us is that UM, there's generally people
like the fight or flight. There's either this very hyper
(19:30):
aroused like UM fight response, like you know, I don't
want to die, so I'm going to defend myself, or
there's what we call the hypo aroused state, which can
sort of look like I'm depressed, I can't get out
of bed, I'm stuck, I'm not I can't feel, and
and and so they started to learn different strategies for
(19:52):
helping people regulate. So just an example that I know
is dear to your heart if he is physical exercise,
So being able to certain ways that people exercise, like
literally can have a huge impact on your body chemistry
and your brain chemistry. And so UM, whether it's rigorous,
(20:13):
really rigorous cardio or lifting, or something that's very subtle
and gentle like tai chi, but like that is a
way that we can actually have an impact on regulating
how our bodies respond. And then you can take a
picture of the brain and you can be like, hey,
the frontal lobe is completely lit up. This is awesome.
(20:34):
Mm hmm. Now I truly believe that because, yeah, I'm
a big, big fan of working out, and even you know,
we're talking about the quarantines effect on our mental health. Uh.
You know, one of the things that were shut down
immediately was the gym for a good reason. And I
totally felt the difference in my uh not only like, uh,
(20:57):
my general mental health, but also just to how I
viewed myself in the moment I was able to get
like a workout bench and workout at home, I just
immediately felt better and I felt and I realized that
that has been something just through doing it all this
time that I've attached to kind of normalizing my my situation. Usually,
especially if I'm on a busy schedule, of the moment
(21:18):
I can fit in the gym is when I start
to feel balanced. And it became like so apparent when
I needed, you know, the workout equipment just to feel
fine being at home absolutely well. And I'm glad you
mentioned about sheltering in place, because one of the things
I've been hearing from people a lot is that they
(21:39):
feel the urge to run, like they literally feel this
feeling in their legs, like they just want to like run,
and so um, that is can be like a natural
response to basically being trapped in the house, right, Like
anybody who's experienced trauma does not I mean, nobody likes
(21:59):
to be trapped, but if you're somebody who has actually
been trapped in a trauma, it's kind of extra potent.
And so sometimes I'll say, well, let's get up and
run and we'll run, we'll stand up, I'm stand up
to and actually like let the I sometimes refer to
it as like the body needs to finish telling the story, right,
(22:20):
It's not enough to just verbally tell the story. And
sometimes people actually don't even remember because the trauma isn't
just you know, a person to person thing that's occurred.
Trauma can also be a car accident, um, living through
a natural disaster. There's multigenerational trauma. There's people who have
(22:40):
been traumatized by um immigration experiences. There's the trauma extreme poverty,
Like there's all kinds of things that don't have to
do with mean people. They just have to do with
very painful experiences. And so it's a pretty low risk thing.
And I'm not gonna say no risk, but to say, okay,
we're going to run in place together and just move.
(23:03):
Notice what happens, and I'm right here running with you.
Because it's not a good feeling. If I were to
say this is just me personally, well, why don't you
get up and run and I'm just going to sit
here and watch you do it? Like that's not so comfortable.
But we are doing this together and let's see what happens, UM,
and we can stop any time. UM has actually been
really helpful for people. They're like, oh, I'm not insane
(23:26):
that my legs keep doing this thing. No, No, you're
not insane, honey, you're trapped in the house. Yeah. I
was going to say when I was watching uh TED
talk on somatic therapy that they were talking about it
was by Monica less Age less Age that they were
saying about becoming comfortable with trembling, that it's like the
body's natural response to energy, and your body is trying
(23:47):
to get out this energy and to be okay with
it as opposed to trying to stop it. And another
thing I wanted to say what I realized after I
graduated from I did an intensive outpatient program for trauma,
and I completely agree. I think a lot of people
think of trauma as one specific traumatic event like nine eleven,
(24:10):
or you served in the war, or you were sexually assaulted,
and those all our trauma, but it could be a
series of events of like an emotionally abusive parent that
wasn't really around or constantly called you stupid, um bullying
in middle school. Uh, these are like I'm listening off mine, um,
you know. Or for me, it's like being ghosted by
(24:31):
romantic interests and they suddenly just completely drop out of
your life. Like that to me is really traumatic, And
so it's kind of like what if he was saying that,
Like a lot of times people think that they don't
need help or they don't qualify when a lot of
these things can even an unstable not knowing where you're
gonna live, like constantly moving from from couch to couch,
(24:51):
and being scared about eating and rationing food, like these
are all traumatic and it holds tension in your body
and you can even feel it, like when I'm clenching
my teeth or when I'm constantly reminding myself to let
go and that is creating like trauma and your muscles even.
And so this to me is all just really fascinating
because it kind of opens up people's eyes to what
(25:14):
we've all lived through. I even think of it as
being a woman when I'm walking and being clenching, clenching
my keys or my body because I'm approaching men that
are calling me out and whatever like that to me
is a trauma to constantly go through since I was twelve,
you know. So it's just there's such a range with trauma,
(25:36):
and I hope that this kind of opens people's eyes
to it. You know, there is exactly this range of
trauma or continuum of trauma, and there's now been some
more research and programs that look at um trauma that's
related to um, you know, racial violence, racism, sexism, sexual violence, homophobia,
(26:00):
you know, violence against trans people, all of those things
and UM and that UM sometimes it's you know, what
people refer to as microaggressions, Like it's those things that
occur every day over time. It may not be that
you've actually been physically assaulted, but even just growing up
in a culture that views you as disposable garbage has
(26:22):
a traumatizing effect. And small tea in a certain way. UM.
And I'm so glad you said what you said, Danny
about shaking, because if you've ever seen like if you
if you own a dog, for example, and you watch
a dog like, um, try to find a comfortable position,
and how it kind of like circles around and round. Um,
(26:42):
it's doing something physically to find its comfortable place. Or
you might see a dog that's been like swimming or
out running or whatever and it'll shake itself off. And
so sometimes what we need to do to to reset
our nervous systems is to actually I'm a big and
of um dancing for that right, like to put on
(27:03):
some music and um, now because I'm working with people
on Zoom, I'll say to people, turn your camera off
so you don't have to worry about me or anybody
else seeing you, and put on some music and just
you know, shake it out. Um. And for some people
it's much more about like stillness and quieting. But there
(27:23):
are these amazing strategies that we can use to basically
reset ourselves. And then it's helpful to have the talk
part of therapy to to think about want to have
a safe, supportive person who's going to be able to
say it's not your fault, you're not crazy, and I'm
here with you for the long haul, and then also
(27:46):
like to help you build like a toolkit for yourself.
And so I wanted to give a movie example because
I think of it as people having We all have
this very fine tuned in internal security system that is
scanning for danger, and for people who have had trauma,
that internal security system is like on high alert all
(28:07):
the time, and it can be really really exhausting because
it doesn't no linear time, so it doesn't know the
difference between like a cheetah you imagine, and an actual cheetah.
There was this movie called Entrapment with Sean Connery and um,
Katherine Zita Jones, and there's a scene in there where
Katherine Zita Jones is I don't know if she's in
(28:28):
a gallery. I can't remember where she is, but she's
she's in a cat suit. I remember that. It is
a very famous scene, and she's there's this security system
with these infrared beams and basically she's trying to like
navigate through the room without setting off the security system
in the building. And to me, that scene is like
you should go google it because it is the perfect
(28:49):
metaphor for what we call in the trauma world, for
hyper vigilance, for just being like you said, you know,
with your jaw clenched and like your fists are clenched
and your heart's racing. You stop breathing, and you because
you're trying to stay alive, trying to stay alive. On
that note, we're going to take a quick break because
we gotta, you know, do these breaks even though we're
(29:10):
dropping some some major heat that fire knowledge, some fire knowledge.
But when we come back, we will continue this discussion
and we're back. How you doing listening to nerdfficent to
(29:30):
our first episode of mental health May here with Danny
and Karen Lackman, and we're talking about somatic therapy and
we're getting it's getting good. Karen, I had I had
a question. So when I was looking at somatic processing,
it's a little different than some of the therapy. Some
of the trauma therapy have done different types. But one
person was talking about how you kind of touch into
(29:52):
the smallest amount of trauma energy instead of tackling it
all or kind of all spewing it out. A little
bit different than some other stuff. I've done, you know,
I've experimented different ways. Um, can you talk about that
like kind of just that tapping into like one tiny
thing as opposed to tackling a huge or all your
(30:13):
trauma at once. Sure, I think, Um, it varies from
person to person both, you know, every therapist approaches it differently,
but also each person in their own healing journey is
going to experience it a little differently. And so like
some people have are clearly experiencing trauma as in like
(30:34):
their nervous system is like the engine of a car
that's just flooded all the time, with no memory of
anything that happened to them. And there are some people
who have very very clear memories of events in their
life that happened to them. And depending on which somatic
approach you're using, you may draw on one small It's
(30:56):
like you're sort of I'm like pulling it. It's like
you're pulling a thread, right, but you don't want the
whole thing to unravel, so you do it very gently
and very delicately. And so for me, the focus is
on how it's showing up in your life right now,
in this moment. Because our nervous systems don't know anything
(31:18):
about linear time, and so when there's something that activates people,
it's as if it's happening right now. It doesn't matter
what whether it was a week ago or a month
ago or twenty years ago, but it is real in
the moment right now. So I want to give you
like a very benign example of something that isn't exactly
a trauma, but it illustrates this pattern that we're talking about,
(31:43):
which is if you went to a restaurant. Let's say
you you went to a restaurant and you ordered a
shrimp dish and you got food poisoning, like you were
like seriously ill, you probably would think twice one before
going back to that same restaurant or to ever eating
(32:04):
shrimp again. And even if you did finally get to
the point where you were willing to eat shrimp again,
you might have a little private moment to yourself like
do I really want to do this? Is it worth it?
What if I get sick again? And because it's a
natural right, like your body and your brain are like
we are not going there again, and so um, it
(32:25):
can seem like I'm making a little circular motion with
my hand here right, like why Why are you tripping
about the shrimp? Why are you obsessing about the Okay,
but it's not it's you, it's um. It's a self
protective mechanism, and so being able to unpack that a
little bit so you can figure out, like can you
live without eating shrimp? Absolutely, But there are other things
(32:48):
that can really interfere with people's everyday lives where if
we just slow it down and take one small piece
and say, how is this showing up in your life
right now in this moment, Let's work with that. And
I wanted to say, I know that you do that.
You are a healing spiritual person, a therapist as well.
(33:10):
Are there things that people like our listeners can do
at home, um, that you would recommend that's you know,
accessible to them? Yeah? I think, Um, you know, it's
always a tricky thing to figure out. Like you know,
Peter Levine his early book is called Waking the Tiger,
(33:30):
and it's like that image of like when you once
you start to open this up, if you can imagine
a tiger that's sleeping and you start poking at it,
you don't actually know how it's going to react. So
I would really, um, while I totally support, empowering people
on their own healing. Also just want to advise people
like this is a little bit of a landline and
(33:51):
sometimes it can blow up, but there are some things
that you can do. So I'll give you a personal example.
I bought myself a little a Roman thep Be machine
for like twenty books. I ordered online. I had it delivered.
It's in my um my study right now at home,
and it is something. Engaging your senses is something that
(34:12):
is very soothing to the nervous system. And so like
being trapped in the house, which again is a small
t trauma. Um. You know, the nice calming smell of
lavender just is relaxing. Um. Or like I said, like
put some music on and dance around. So when you
can engage your senses as a way of orienting yourself
(34:35):
towards being stable and safe. So it might be calming music,
it might be a smell. Um. You know, there's a
lot of spiritual traditions use things like anointing oils and incense,
and you know there's reasons for that. Um. So engaging
your five senses. And another thing where there's actually some
(34:56):
data about this is drumming. There is some data that
shows is that drumming can be very effective for people
in reducing the effects the negative effects of trauma. So
for those of you who are trying to think about
like something new you want to try at home, Like
you don't have to go buy an expensive drum. You
can use like turning trash can upside down, or just
(35:17):
use the side of your table or something. You don't
have to be a good musician. But it's one of
those things where you have the sense of touch and
you have the sound and your body's natural impulse to
want to move to the rhythm that is very regulating
for the nervous system. That is not a listen. Drumming
on the side of your coffee table is not a
substitute for real psychotherapy, but it is something that's relatively
(35:41):
low risk that you can try at home and see
what happens. The Five Senses has literally saved me from
having a panic attack when I was like I think
it was Thanksgiving. I was out with my family. We
were like walking around a pond. There are a bunch
of people out. I don't know why, Like a memory
hit me and I is just about to spiral in
(36:01):
front of everyone, and the five senses was great because
it not only brought me back to the present moment
instead of that memory, but I had to keep my
mind going. It was like what can I see? Okay,
I see this green tree, I see red leaves, I
see this kid with purple shoes. Okay, now what do
I taste? What kind of taste? Like the ice cream
my head earlier? What am I? You know? And so
(36:22):
like your brain is trying to go through what am
I touching? I can feel my wool that I'm wearing,
and it just is like it actually is occupying my
brain where I'm having to actively in the moment. And
then I would do it again and then I would
restart what am I seeing? Now? What am I smelling? Now?
I smell a little bit of the freshly cut grass,
And it was just like I do that also with
(36:43):
breathing exercises, with meditation, I was someone literally hated when
people would tell me to meditate. I'm like, this is
you know, when you've when you've dealt with a lot
of trauma, it feels very patronizing, it feels very um
just kind of like, oh, you can get over it
with just think like meditating. And I got to a
point where I was like, I will I will eat
shoelaces whatever you want me to do to get you
(37:05):
get to a point where you're like, I will do anything.
And so I actually, um, I'm a competitive person. This
is probably not the healthiest, but I got competitive about
meditating because I used the calm app and it actually
shows me how much how many sessions and how much time.
And now I've wrapped up like five hundred sessions, which
is I'm very proud of myself for doing that. But
(37:26):
one of the meditations would literally just have you count
your breath, and that again took me out. I couldn't
think of the thing because I'm like one, two, three, four,
like and you had I had to keep track of
my numbers. So there's so many great things that you
can do, like you were saying, to ground yourself in
the present moment um, and and they do work as
(37:47):
much as I am someone who actively you know. And
and again it's also a process of finding what works
for you, but being open and willing to try it.
I think of myself as really resilient for surviving. I'm
getting emotional, sorry, I think of myself as really resilient
and like there's a part of me that's just so
(38:08):
unwilling to give up, like it's just fighting so hard,
and it's like, I'm not going to give up on myself.
I'm going to keep trying different things to find what
works for me, and if this doesn't work, I'm going
to try something else. Because there are people who have
dealt with even more trauma than I have that have
found these helpful and that you know, so there has
(38:28):
to be something behind them, and all of them, I say,
I think all of them have helped in different ways.
You know, they're not all the same, but it's kind
of created a toolbox for me essentially that depending on
what I'm dealing with, I can bring out different coping skills.
So thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that we have.
(38:51):
On that note, we have to take another really quick break,
and then we're going to go into how others can help.
If you have someone a loved one in your life, um,
how you can be a support system for them, and
we are back. UM. Thank you Karen again for joining
(39:12):
us on the first episode of Mental Health May Um.
Something that I've kind of dealt with in my life.
Very loving, great people who just don't understand, um, why
I can't get over some of the some of the
memories and things that just keep coming up for me.
(39:32):
And UM, how I guess, how can people who want
to be supportive understand that? And what are things that
they can do to help the people that they love
in their lives? Um, that's a great question. And I
guess the first thing I would say is don't give
advice unless somebody asks for it. So I'm gonna start
(39:52):
with what not to do? Um, say it again, I
mean really giving advice, won't offer suggestions, don't have The
first thing you do offer is the first thing you
do should not be offering suggestions, no advising. It's no
no fixing, no saving, no advising, no correcting. It is
not somebody else's job to fix you. So that is
(40:16):
the first thing I will say, is to just whatever.
And there are some people who can't help themselves, and
even though they love you and they care about you,
and they need to be told stop. So UM, I
think that people can say I wish I knew what
to say. It's sort of like with grieving, when you know,
if you've gone through a loss of some kind of
(40:38):
grief is very much a part of trauma also, and
people say the dumbest things when they're trying to be supportive. Um,
when they can just say, I wish I knew the
right thing to say. If there was something I could
do to make it easier for you, I would love
to do it. I'm here for you, I'm with you,
(40:59):
I will sit with you. I love you, I care
about you. I don't judge you. I can be patient
as long as you need me to be patient. So
it's that sense of if you want to be supportive
to somebody else who's dealing with this kind of pain,
to let them know that you are with them in it,
that you can just sit next to them. You know,
(41:21):
you don't even have to say anything. Sometimes the best
thing you can do is say, like, I'm going to
drop off some soup at your house. Would that be okay? Yeah,
I totally agree about listening. Sometimes people just need to vent.
And the hardest thing also is having someone who hasn't
gone through that try to advise you. It's like, oh, no,
I've already done so much of this work. It's so
(41:46):
there's also another thing that a friend friend at the pod,
we haven't had her on you but tybee disk and
she like did this uh this like I G story
that's stuck with me where she asked all her friends.
She was like, what is a way that I can
check in on you where you feel loved? Like? What? What?
How do you like being checked in on? And I
thought that was great and it's something that I've asked
(42:08):
a lot of friends of like, because it is true
where you know, some people can feel like you're hovering
if you're just like, are you okay? I know, so
if they're like, oh, if you just you know, ask
me about how's my day? Or oh, if you just
like tell me about something you've seen, and then we
start conversating from there, it really helps. So I think
that's another way to start a question, which is a
(42:31):
which is a good way too. If you have someone
that you do want to check in on and you
don't want to seem to, you know, in their face
about it, you can just ask them that simple question
and then you know what they kind of want from you.
I often feel like we should all come with a
little instruction manual that we can give to the people
in our lives and that somehow we've been taught this
(42:55):
pile of garbage that basically says it's not really garbage
because I do understand it's psychologically, but that the people
who love us should just intuitively know what we need
and does automatically give it to us. And then if
we have to tell them what we need, that therefore
they're not going to mean it when they do it,
and it's just not true. It's not true. The only
(43:15):
way that somebody else can know what you need. Some
people are very intuitive, but we all need to be
able to say. It's like when you're sick. Forget trauma
for a second. Some people, when they're sick, they just
want to be left alone. Don't bother me. Just put
the bulls suit by the door. I don't want anybody.
I don't want to see anybody. I don't want to
(43:36):
talk to anybody. Some people want to be doated on,
they want to be babied, and they want to be
taken care of, and they want all of that kind
of stuff. But if you want to be left alone
and somebody is hovering over you, it feels terrible. So
just to ask this is like, here's a little like
dating thing too. I always ask people, recommend to people,
(43:58):
ask the person, what they're like when they're are sick,
it will tell you a lot about their personality. So
just to be able to say even around basic things
like you know what I just need to be let
when I get like this, what I need is space.
That's that's so important. Oh sorry, what were you gonna say? No,
I don't mean to cut you off. Oh, I was
(44:18):
just saying just the intersection between this and kind of dating,
and because you know, I've I've I've always talked about
boundaries and what people need, and I think that is
so important, because yeah, I really want to talk about
just that idea of so much of our way of
talking with and interacting with humans are just kind of
(44:42):
like dated societal things, and I think that that we
often forget that. No, that's not true. I think especially
if you look at the way different people handle just
situations in trauma. Like one of the big things is
growing up being my sister. We will fight. I would
get on our nerves and like we would fight, like
we would get so mad at each other, like where
(45:04):
you think, like, oh man, they probably need to sit
down and hash it out, but no, we just go
our separate ways and we would just come through because
we know that we were just kind of picking at
each other. Now if there was something that actually happened,
if there was something I was actively doing, then she
would call it out. But there's the we knew the
difference of like, oh, we're just kind of picking at
(45:26):
each other because we're in the house. And I feel
like that has always uh that that kind of carried
over into because you know, uh, every the way you
interact with your family is essentially how you go out
into the world. And that it was something I had
to learn because I was so used to being like, oh,
if we have a spat, I just need to give
you some distance and we'll come back. And you come
(45:47):
back and they're like, no, I want to talk about
what just happened. And it was like, oh, that that's
a whole new world for me. But you you would,
you'd be like, well, no, this is how I perceive problems.
And it's taking that kind of open mindedness, something I
think Dani also said, just having the open mindedness to
kind of explore and see what someone else needs instead
(46:09):
of trying to operate on what you go by. I
wanted to say to our friend of the pod, Christopher
Smith Bryant. He's been on a couple episodes and he
is great. One of my best friends checked in on
me this weekend, was like, hey, I haven't heard from
you in a while. Are you okay? And I said,
not really spiraled about something and I don't want to
rehash it because that would just cause me to spiral more, um,
(46:31):
but thank you for checking in on me. And then
two days later, which was great, he was just like, hey,
just want to still make sure you're doing okay. And
then at that point I was now I didn't want
to rehash everything, but I could tell him what had
happened essentially, and I was like, you know, I had
this session. It was it was diving into a bunch
of stuff and I really appreciate you checking in on me.
So he wasn't like pressing me to talk more about
(46:52):
it in that moment. And another thing that happened was
my therapist. You know, we've talked about how healing is
this process. It just you think like, oh, I'm done,
I did the thing and I'm done, and it like keeps,
you know, healing. And my my therapist was like, I think,
you know if you want to journal, and I just
got to a point where I was like, I don't
want to journal. I don't want to do one more meditation.
(47:13):
I don't want to do one more self love exercise,
Like I've done this for years and I was so tired.
And she was like okay, Like she was just like okay, um,
I respect that she respect. And then of course, like
after a couple of days, I'm like, okay, I'm ready
to journal. I miss it, you know. And it's just
like but you get to a point and it's like
so not forcing, like just respecting where you are, meeting
(47:33):
yourself where you are, and if you just do not
feel like doing that, there's a reason why your body
is rejecting it. So allowing yourself grace and then when
you start to feel like, you know what I actually do,
think that I can sit down and do that today.
M hm. That Um. One other thing I wanted to say,
just you know from someone that that is healing and
(47:55):
dealing with trauma. I in my relation ships. One of
my exes who I love, just a really supportive, great person.
He we would get in fights, kind of like what
you were talking about. If we would get in fights
and I would bring up my trauma, like, well, you
haven't survived this and I have an autoimmune disorder and
blah blah blah. And he was like, well you're always
(48:17):
gonna win then, And I realized this is so unhealthy,
you know, and luckily I was able to work in therapy.
But I was like, I love this person, and my
illness is not a trump card over his life if
he had a problem at work, that is, I need
to honor that, like I cannot. And it's so easy
in an argument to kind of just throw that, and
(48:39):
I'm like, I'm also a firm believer your trauma is
not a trump card to harm other people. It does not.
You need to take accountability. It is a vicious cycle,
and it's one that can be broken. My dad was
really abusive and I did so much therapy did not
turn into him. But I think there is a level
of accountability that we are. You know, I'm speaking as
(49:01):
someone that has trauma cannot trump other people that we
care about. Yeah, it's just so you know. I have
literally I have in my bedroom, I have a painting
that says choose Love. And I'm really just trying to
like constantly choose love. Choose love. Um, I'm sorry, go
(49:21):
ahead related to that, because I didn't feel there was
You would ask a question earlier about spirituality, and to me,
choosing love is it's an emotional thing, it's a physical thing,
and it's a spiritual thing and um, and I'm not
talking about religion. I'm talking about meaning making and creativity
and ritual and um, resources that engage your imagination and
(49:46):
the possibility of I'm going to call it a healed future,
you know that which kind of orient you toward your
own homeless and there are so many ways that that
can be done. So I just love that image. Thank
you for that, Danny of having a painting in your
room that says, choose love as a reminder to yourself.
(50:06):
And it's probably there are some days when you look
at it a lot more than other days. Yeah, it's
so difficult, but worth it, really worth it. Um, Karen,
thank you so much again for coming on. Where can
people find you or I don't know if people can
find you on social media? If you're want people to
(50:27):
find yes, this is a new era. Um yes, so
I um. Well, my website is just my name Karen
Erlikman dot com. I have a very small social media
presence because you know, like, do you really want to
follow your therapist Twitter feed? Maybe maybe not, but k
replenish on the I G or Twitter, and um, I really,
(50:52):
you know, even now while we're in this global pandemic,
it's been amazing to be able to continue to work
with people and the innate capacity to heal our brokenness
just continues to amaze me every day. Me. I guess
you can find wherever you want to find me if
you wad Way, Twitter and Instagram, if d s on Twitch,
(51:15):
in the discord discord dot gg Ford slash Salt Squad,
which I feel I hope everyone in the Real Stuff
Discord listens to this episode because that's usually where people
go to kind of decompress and just have an open
vent session about their mental health. I will directly drop
this episode in there. Um And yeah, Super Punch is back.
(51:37):
You can watch it every night Monday through Friday, hosting
it and on Thursdays you can catch me on Rooster
Teeth with Fiona Nova f and around with if Fiona
and uh yeah, what do you you got anything coming up? Danny?
Um Oh, I've just been sharing, you know, Follow me
on Twitter and Instagram at miss Danny Fernandez. It's M S,
(51:59):
D A, N I F R and and easy I
post when I'm doing streams and and whatnot. And um
wanted to give a shout out, of course to our
super producer Joel Monique for setting this up with Karen
and also engineer Zach McKeever for constantly working with me
to make my mic sound better. I'm trying. Oh, I
(52:20):
did want to say, but almost forgot. Yeah. It was
just announced, uh last week. But in next month sci
Fi is the Great Debate, which is going to be
featuring yours truly, Danny Fernandez, and you know I pop
in there a few times. But yeah, it's gonna be
a great show. It'll be on sci Fi. You can
(52:41):
watch it, uh, and you can and see if you
can notice when we were filming before and after, I
was in both of those. I was in an episode
before the pandemic and then the day it was announced
that we like had a shelter in place. Yeah, it
was the day before it was announced. Yeah, yeah, that
was It was a wild time. Uh. But yeah, so
(53:04):
definitely check it out. It's a great show, both versions
of it, uh, and it's a fun time. We'll probably
have to have t J on here sometime. But as
we always say, stay stay nerdy, and stay healthy. Yeah,
that's that's what we should say this month. Stay healthy,
Hey, Nerd fam, I hope you're still doing healthy and well.
We are really excited to kick off mental health. May.
We have a lot of cool interviews and topics and
brain science that we are covering. I just wanted to
say that there is a slight trigger warning. You know.
We talked about some really difficult UH situations and things
in this UH and and therapy and trauma in this episode.
(00:21):
So if you are in a difficult place right now,
you might want to hold off on this episode or
wait until you're feeling a little bit better. And here's
our episode. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of
(00:42):
NERD Difficent. I am one half of your host if
you wad way, and sitting across from me digitally is
Danny Fernandez. And I'm so excited for this month, IFFI,
I'm so excited that we're doing this. We this is
our first episode of men Total Health. May. I think
it's always relevant, but incredibly relevant right now. Yeah, I
(01:06):
think now more than ever it's a good time to
have that discussion. You know, you can see a lot
of folks I don't know, it's just being alone with
your thoughts for all all this time. You know, it
has different effects on everyone. And I think it's also
good to talk about mental health so people know it's
okay to seek help and to talk about it and
(01:29):
it's not something that a little sleep or what have
you as gonna deal with. Yeah, and also, you know,
because this is a nerd based podcast, there's so much,
so much cool science behind treatment. UM. I've been pretty
vocal about the different treatments with trauma depression that I've done,
and I just find them so fascinating and I'm constantly
(01:51):
learning about new ones UM. And today we have a
wonderful guest to talk to us about healing as well
a somatic therapy, and that is Karen or Lickman. She's
a therapist and spiritual director in San Francisco. Hey, everybody, Hey,
thank you so much for joining us. Karen. Oh, it's
my pleasure. It's my honor and my pleasure. So I think,
(02:14):
first off, the first question we'd love to talk about
is like what you do and what your expertise is,
just for the listeners to get to know you. Sure,
I thought you were going to ask me what I
was nerding out too. Oh my gosh, now we should
do that. She listened to our wonder Woman episode and
thank you so much. You are a thousand percent correct.
(02:36):
We always start with what we're seeking out about. I
think we were just excited to but no, yes, what
are you seeking out about? Let's talk about that. Okay,
So two things. One is um cooking. I'm totally geeking
out on cooking and um, that's been really awesome. Actually,
so last night I made a spicy roasted colleigue hour
(03:00):
with feta, and UM, so good. It's gonna I'll be
my lunch when we're finished today. And then the other
thing I'm geeking out too is um these videos that
are called high Kids. This is like a great uh
stress coping strategy. They are these little five minute videos
(03:20):
of kids, um trying weird food, or kids meeting people
who have unusual professions or who like a farmer, gang member,
a farmer, really homeless person. And kids are so awesome
because they just say whatever. They don't censor the way
adults do, and it is hilarious. So, UM, I love
(03:43):
the high Kids. Oh I'm definitely going to check that
out because yeah, it's you know, just watching the way
kids taken information, watching like Naomi grow up. There's this
like both like pureness, but this unfiltered where it's like
I'm gonna just say it because I don't know, like
I'm not you know, thinking about whether or not it
(04:04):
hurt your feelings. But I'm just I want you to know.
But one thing that she's doing that I'm really uh into,
she like is giving us like status updates all the time,
like she's like I'm happy or um or like I
remember one time I thought, I was like, oh, you
watched too much TV. You're gonna read books, and then
she was like, I'm sad because I want TV. You're
(04:29):
gonna have to be sad right now. I'm sorry. But yeah,
I'm also on the cooking train. I've been uh, I've
you know, I feel like I've been so in my
instant pot especially the my my selling point that I've
been telling all my friends is jasmine rice in four
minutes like that that is that is enough to get
(04:49):
so so I have like a bag of rice ready
because that was the thing is I was always the
only reason I didn't. I would always do like beans
or lentils. Uh. And I'm talking about straight out the
can just because those were quicker because rice is such
a long process and now that I can get it
out in like four minutes. And um, you know we
I've watched this movie, the Better Half, Alice Woo's second film,
(05:12):
and there's this sausage maker character in there, like his
family makes sausages. So I bought like a bunch of
broad worst and I've been cooking like lots of sausage.
Uh so yeah, I'm I'm I'm also on the cooking train.
But in the iffy physical media saga, the latest films
I got was I got John Wick three on Blu
(05:33):
Ray and uh and Big Lebowski because I always have
to a copy of The Big Lebowski. Maybe I feel
like you could just like wait and watch it on
f X like literally any day. Oh, I have The
Big Lebowski on DVD, but I wanted to own it
in four K. And yeah, that's it's my favorite movie.
(05:54):
You needed to see the pores up close? Yeah? Um
for me, the thing that I'm king out about is
the Mandalorian documentary The Behind the Scenes on Disney Plus
It's Disney Gallery Star Wars the Mandalorian. I loved how
they had a round table of the directors. Um and honestly,
(06:16):
also I mean Deborah Chow, which is just seeing like
Jon Favreaux, like just you know, gush over her uh
and the action sequences, um, watching Tyka be Tyka and
silly behind the scenes. And then Bryce Dallas Howard, who
I still to this day. Her episode of Black Mirror
is some of the best, like her best acting I
think ever. UM and I just love I don't know.
(06:39):
I love all the risks that they're taking with having
different directors. I love seeing the behind the scenes. And
I'm really excited for the next UH season, which I'm
sure is going to have baby. He better still be
a baby. I'm not ready for him to be old
man Yoda anytime soon. I think it will literally take
like seven hundred years because he's only five. Now. Well,
(07:01):
there was the picture that just went out the other
day of UH, which was one of the horror directors.
Uh is it? Now? That's not Ramaro? What's what are
the who did Grindhouse? Oh? Um? The other the one
opposite of Quentin Tarantino who owns l Ray Oh? That's um?
(07:26):
Uh Robert Rodriguez, Yes, let me see, I think it
might have been him. Um, maybe not, Yeah, Robert Rodriguez. Yeah, yeah, no, no,
I mean made him. He eighteen hours ago posted a
picture right next to baby Yoda and said, I'm truly
humbled to say I have now had the rare privilege
of directing the biggest star in the universe. So Robert
(07:49):
Rodriguez directed an episode in the next season which I'm
so curious to see what that, you know, just knowing
his work, like, is it going to be a heavy
act and pulpic I would love that so much? But yeah,
so and in the pictures, Sorry, the reason I brought
it up. In the picture it's still a baby. Yeah,
(08:10):
there you go. So still going to cash in on that.
Um well um kicking off our mental health may super
excited again about this episode. But Karen, I just kind
of wanted to get into why you chose this field.
I feel it's such a it's such a giving like
(08:31):
to be someone that that people can turn to, uh
to help heal. It's uh, I think at times can
be very blessed and thankful but also thankless, I think
at times. And so I just wanted to know what
specifically made you go into this field. Well, I am
I'm a licensed clinical social worker, so like my training
(08:55):
and my education is as a social worker. And I
never thought I was going to become a therapist. I
was like an activist and a community organizer and you know,
I wanted to like run ship and make change. And
I do come from a family of people who are
of service, like teachers and therapists. And my mom was
(09:17):
a big activist and like you know, took us to
demonstrations when I was a kid, and so I was
really raised with this strong value of being compassionate and
taking action. And but the first like ten years of
my work life, I actually worked a lot with homeless
(09:38):
pregnant drug addicts and UM was just like a basic
kind of on the ground social worker in a health
care setting and certainly brought like took a lot of
classes about how to do therapy and what therapy is.
But UM, I've always had this philosophy of you know,
how do I be with people where they are? Um,
(09:59):
there are some people who are just like never going
to go to therapy. It's not their thing. They've shame,
there's a stigma against it, whatever are the reasons. And
so working in that hospital setting, even though I wasn't
doing therapy, but I was able to be there as
a resource and as an advocate and a support. And
I still there are still a couple of UM women
(10:20):
that I met at the hospital, like thirty years ago
who still periodically will call me and say like, oh,
my kids graduated from college, or like I've been sober
for twenty five years, or just like it's so amazing.
So I eventually got totally burned out on working in
the health care system and decided, like one of the
reasons I also became a social worker was because there's
(10:42):
just so many different things you can do UM, and
I also care about the larger context, like it's not
just about what your toilet training is like, but it's
also about gender and race and class and um you know,
global trauma and like what we're all dealing with right
now in some ways in terms of a global pandemic
(11:03):
is a global trauma in a certain way. So UM
I thought, well, I'm gonna try private practice and see
how it is, and turned out I really loved it.
And UM I started out and was certainly trained in
some way in what might be considered traditional talk therapy,
(11:24):
but I because I always worked with people who had
experienced trauma, so like, for example, my second year of
graduate school, I had an internship working in a rape
crisis center, so I worked with women who had been
either sexually assaulted as adults or as children. And um,
(11:44):
I was amazed at like how the brain and the
body works to keep people safe and alive, Like we
are biological organisms at our core. And I remember I
was um co leading a group. I had a supervisor
at the time who specialized in something that used to
be called multiple personality disorder, which is actually quite rare
(12:08):
and we don't call it that anymore. But and um,
I was leading a group, co leading a group with
my supervisor, and this the woman would literally like come
in and switch personalities, which was very disconcerting to the
other people in the group. And so my supervisor just
said to her one time, We're just going to ask
(12:29):
you to bring I'm going to make up a name
Amy to the group and leave everybody at else at home.
Would that be okay? And she was like okay. I
was like, wow, that is so magic, Like it was
so it was amazing to me. And I remember thinking
how cool it is that our brains have this way
of protecting us by you know, what we call dissociation
(12:50):
right where you like, something's happening to you, but you're
separate from yourself because the pain would be too unbearable.
And so if we have the capacity to disc see
it that way, to disconnect from ourselves, we must have
the capacity to reconnect, Like if it can go one way,
it can go the other way. But you know, I
was still young and I was learning, and I wasn't
(13:11):
sure exactly how that worked. And eventually, over time I
UM wanted to have I had some instinct about really
like helping people to work somatically, but I felt like
I needed ethically and professionally to have more training, like
I need to know what I'm doing. This has to
(13:32):
be legitimate. I'm a licensed professional. And so I took
a couple of workshops and classes and eventually found a
modality called sensory motor psychotherapy that UM gave me much
more training and vocabulary and tools and working with trauma
and UM and it since has shaped I still do
(13:56):
talk therapy with a lot of people, like there are
some even subgroups of of semantic therapy like UM neurofeedback
and brain spotting and something called e M d R,
and there are some other things like that um, and
I think different therapists gravitate toward different modalities just depending
(14:17):
on their personality and their skill set. But what I
like about the semantic work is that it actually empowers
people to be in charge of their healing. It gives
you actually ultimately more of a sense of control, even
though it can feel like less control, and ultimately that
sense of empowerment, like your story does not run you.
(14:40):
You know, your trauma does not run you. You are
actually the person in charge of your own life, and
here are some ways you can do it. That just
makes sense to me. Yeah, that's super uh, super dope
and interesting. And really, because I was in Danny Knows This,
I went down like a wormhole of Uh, there's a
(15:01):
lot of not a lot. There's a few, like prominent
YouTube folks who have disassociative disorder d I d UM
and them kind of explaining how it is. And that's
kind of what you were saying. That's one thing I
learned because they're saying that, uh, most times their new
quote unquote personalities come from a trauma and then and
(15:24):
they like, there are some personalities that are built to
take in trauma, and then there are some to escape
it and and when you hear it, it makes so
much sense of like, oh, this is all just defense,
your body protecting you, where you're protecting you, where you're like, okay,
we're gonna And a lot of times the person who's
there to take in the trauma is uh an archetype
(15:46):
that is like strong who you know that person may
see as like someone who can like take that type
of stuff, and it's it's it just shows you the
power of the mind and why you know, and I
think Danny is the number one person, but we all
believe here, like you talked to a therapist, even if
you think you don't have to, even if you feel like,
(16:08):
oh I have nothing, just sitting down and talk, you'll
be surprised. And that's how you know a lot of friends,
you know, we'll be in talking and they'll be like, oh,
I don't think I need I was like, well, I
feel like, look you got the insurance, you know, because
my friend group we're all writers, so you know they
have that great insurance. Because the w g A was
like writers, y'all need therapy. But uh, but like I'm
(16:32):
I like so many of them, I've just been like,
just go you know, you get it for free anyway,
you get it for free or cheap, just you know,
go see what happens. And a lot of them have
been like, WHOA, I'm glad I did that. I was
gonna say, I wanted to get into UM kind of
for people that don't know what Semitic therapy is, I
know that it was created by Peter Levine in the
(16:55):
nineteen sixties. I was watching videos about it that essentially
studying animals and wild and what they do with survival energy,
which you were kind of touching on, UM, But can
you explain it a little bit more for people that
aren't familiar with it. Absolutely, UM. Peter Levine is one
of a handful of people who have pioneered this field
(17:17):
of somatic therapy. And I think that like the general
population has heard the expression fight or flight, but actually
there are there are more than two, UM different responses
we have Like we are animals ultimately, and there are
(17:37):
these biological responses that we have to something that's perceived
as a threat. And UM. One of my favorite things
at ways to UM illustrate this is if you look
up something called feigned death f E I G N
E D. Have you seen this, I see, Dan, have
you heard of this real? So much so, like if
(18:00):
an animal is being stalked by a predator, like a
gazelle is being stalked by a lion or a cheetah
or something like that, one of the they have all
these right, they don't want to be lunch. They want
to survive. So one of the responses that they used
to stay alive is that they pretend to be dead.
And when you see them on the video, literally they
(18:23):
look you can't detect any breathing whatsoever. They're dead. The
predator might even pick them up in their mouth, and
then they eventually because of the feigned death condition, the
predator will leave and you see the animal get up,
shake itself off, and just keep going. Like I could
not make this up. It's really remarkable. And so I've
(18:44):
heard stories from people it's not exactly feigned death, but
people who had trauma, especially as children, where they said
I just laid there and pretended I pretended I was
asleep until it was over, and UM other variations on
things like that. UM. And I think that now, of course,
with technology, UM researchers have the capacity to literally see
(19:08):
what is going on in the brain when somebody is
in what I'm going to call an activated trauma state.
Because the way that Peter Levine and Bessel vander Koke
and some of these other UM pioneers have UM, what
they've uncovered for us is that UM, there's generally people
like the fight or flight. There's either this very hyper
(19:30):
aroused like UM fight response, like you know, I don't
want to die, so I'm going to defend myself, or
there's what we call the hypo aroused state, which can
sort of look like I'm depressed, I can't get out
of bed, I'm stuck, I'm not I can't feel, and
and and so they started to learn different strategies for
(19:52):
helping people regulate. So just an example that I know
is dear to your heart if he is physical exercise,
So being able to certain ways that people exercise, like
literally can have a huge impact on your body chemistry
and your brain chemistry. And so UM, whether it's rigorous,
(20:13):
really rigorous cardio or lifting, or something that's very subtle
and gentle like tai chi, but like that is a
way that we can actually have an impact on regulating
how our bodies respond. And then you can take a
picture of the brain and you can be like, hey,
the frontal lobe is completely lit up. This is awesome.
(20:34):
Mm hmm. Now I truly believe that because, yeah, I'm
a big, big fan of working out, and even you know,
we're talking about the quarantines effect on our mental health. Uh.
You know, one of the things that were shut down
immediately was the gym for a good reason. And I
totally felt the difference in my uh not only like, uh,
(20:57):
my general mental health, but also just to how I
viewed myself in the moment I was able to get
like a workout bench and workout at home, I just
immediately felt better and I felt and I realized that
that has been something just through doing it all this
time that I've attached to kind of normalizing my my situation. Usually,
especially if I'm on a busy schedule, of the moment
(21:18):
I can fit in the gym is when I start
to feel balanced. And it became like so apparent when
I needed, you know, the workout equipment just to feel
fine being at home absolutely well. And I'm glad you
mentioned about sheltering in place, because one of the things
I've been hearing from people a lot is that they
(21:39):
feel the urge to run, like they literally feel this
feeling in their legs, like they just want to like run,
and so um, that is can be like a natural
response to basically being trapped in the house, right, Like
anybody who's experienced trauma does not I mean, nobody likes
(21:59):
to be trapped, but if you're somebody who has actually
been trapped in a trauma, it's kind of extra potent.
And so sometimes I'll say, well, let's get up and
run and we'll run, we'll stand up, I'm stand up
to and actually like let the I sometimes refer to
it as like the body needs to finish telling the story, right,
(22:20):
It's not enough to just verbally tell the story. And
sometimes people actually don't even remember because the trauma isn't
just you know, a person to person thing that's occurred.
Trauma can also be a car accident, um, living through
a natural disaster. There's multigenerational trauma. There's people who have
(22:40):
been traumatized by um immigration experiences. There's the trauma extreme poverty,
Like there's all kinds of things that don't have to
do with mean people. They just have to do with
very painful experiences. And so it's a pretty low risk thing.
And I'm not gonna say no risk, but to say, okay,
we're going to run in place together and just move.
(23:03):
Notice what happens, and I'm right here running with you.
Because it's not a good feeling. If I were to
say this is just me personally, well, why don't you
get up and run and I'm just going to sit
here and watch you do it? Like that's not so comfortable.
But we are doing this together and let's see what happens, UM,
and we can stop any time. UM has actually been
really helpful for people. They're like, oh, I'm not insane
(23:26):
that my legs keep doing this thing. No, No, you're
not insane, honey, you're trapped in the house. Yeah. I
was going to say when I was watching uh TED
talk on somatic therapy that they were talking about it
was by Monica less Age less Age that they were
saying about becoming comfortable with trembling, that it's like the
body's natural response to energy, and your body is trying
(23:47):
to get out this energy and to be okay with
it as opposed to trying to stop it. And another
thing I wanted to say what I realized after I
graduated from I did an intensive outpatient program for trauma,
and I completely agree. I think a lot of people
think of trauma as one specific traumatic event like nine eleven,
(24:10):
or you served in the war, or you were sexually assaulted,
and those all our trauma, but it could be a
series of events of like an emotionally abusive parent that
wasn't really around or constantly called you stupid, um bullying
in middle school. Uh, these are like I'm listening off mine, um,
you know. Or for me, it's like being ghosted by
(24:31):
romantic interests and they suddenly just completely drop out of
your life. Like that to me is really traumatic, And
so it's kind of like what if he was saying that,
Like a lot of times people think that they don't
need help or they don't qualify when a lot of
these things can even an unstable not knowing where you're
gonna live, like constantly moving from from couch to couch,
(24:51):
and being scared about eating and rationing food, like these
are all traumatic and it holds tension in your body
and you can even feel it, like when I'm clenching
my teeth or when I'm constantly reminding myself to let
go and that is creating like trauma and your muscles even.
And so this to me is all just really fascinating
because it kind of opens up people's eyes to what
(25:14):
we've all lived through. I even think of it as
being a woman when I'm walking and being clenching, clenching
my keys or my body because I'm approaching men that
are calling me out and whatever like that to me
is a trauma to constantly go through since I was twelve,
you know. So it's just there's such a range with trauma,
(25:36):
and I hope that this kind of opens people's eyes
to it. You know, there is exactly this range of
trauma or continuum of trauma, and there's now been some
more research and programs that look at um trauma that's
related to um, you know, racial violence, racism, sexism, sexual violence, homophobia,
(26:00):
you know, violence against trans people, all of those things
and UM and that UM sometimes it's you know, what
people refer to as microaggressions, Like it's those things that
occur every day over time. It may not be that
you've actually been physically assaulted, but even just growing up
in a culture that views you as disposable garbage has
(26:22):
a traumatizing effect. And small tea in a certain way. UM.
And I'm so glad you said what you said, Danny
about shaking, because if you've ever seen like if you
if you own a dog, for example, and you watch
a dog like, um, try to find a comfortable position,
and how it kind of like circles around and round. Um,
(26:42):
it's doing something physically to find its comfortable place. Or
you might see a dog that's been like swimming or
out running or whatever and it'll shake itself off. And
so sometimes what we need to do to to reset
our nervous systems is to actually I'm a big and
of um dancing for that right, like to put on
(27:03):
some music and um, now because I'm working with people
on Zoom, I'll say to people, turn your camera off
so you don't have to worry about me or anybody
else seeing you, and put on some music and just
you know, shake it out. Um. And for some people
it's much more about like stillness and quieting. But there
(27:23):
are these amazing strategies that we can use to basically
reset ourselves. And then it's helpful to have the talk
part of therapy to to think about want to have
a safe, supportive person who's going to be able to
say it's not your fault, you're not crazy, and I'm
here with you for the long haul, and then also
(27:46):
like to help you build like a toolkit for yourself.
And so I wanted to give a movie example because
I think of it as people having We all have
this very fine tuned in internal security system that is
scanning for danger, and for people who have had trauma,
that internal security system is like on high alert all
(28:07):
the time, and it can be really really exhausting because
it doesn't no linear time, so it doesn't know the
difference between like a cheetah you imagine, and an actual cheetah.
There was this movie called Entrapment with Sean Connery and um,
Katherine Zita Jones, and there's a scene in there where
Katherine Zita Jones is I don't know if she's in
(28:28):
a gallery. I can't remember where she is, but she's
she's in a cat suit. I remember that. It is
a very famous scene, and she's there's this security system
with these infrared beams and basically she's trying to like
navigate through the room without setting off the security system
in the building. And to me, that scene is like
you should go google it because it is the perfect
(28:49):
metaphor for what we call in the trauma world, for
hyper vigilance, for just being like you said, you know,
with your jaw clenched and like your fists are clenched
and your heart's racing. You stop breathing, and you because
you're trying to stay alive, trying to stay alive. On
that note, we're going to take a quick break because
we gotta, you know, do these breaks even though we're
(29:10):
dropping some some major heat that fire knowledge, some fire knowledge.
But when we come back, we will continue this discussion
and we're back. How you doing listening to nerdfficent to
(29:30):
our first episode of mental health May here with Danny
and Karen Lackman, and we're talking about somatic therapy and
we're getting it's getting good. Karen, I had I had
a question. So when I was looking at somatic processing,
it's a little different than some of the therapy. Some
of the trauma therapy have done different types. But one
person was talking about how you kind of touch into
(29:52):
the smallest amount of trauma energy instead of tackling it
all or kind of all spewing it out. A little
bit different than some other stuff. I've done, you know,
I've experimented different ways. Um, can you talk about that
like kind of just that tapping into like one tiny
thing as opposed to tackling a huge or all your
(30:13):
trauma at once. Sure, I think, Um, it varies from
person to person both, you know, every therapist approaches it differently,
but also each person in their own healing journey is
going to experience it a little differently. And so like
some people have are clearly experiencing trauma as in like
(30:34):
their nervous system is like the engine of a car
that's just flooded all the time, with no memory of
anything that happened to them. And there are some people
who have very very clear memories of events in their
life that happened to them. And depending on which somatic
approach you're using, you may draw on one small It's
(30:56):
like you're sort of I'm like pulling it. It's like
you're pulling a thread, right, but you don't want the
whole thing to unravel, so you do it very gently
and very delicately. And so for me, the focus is
on how it's showing up in your life right now,
in this moment. Because our nervous systems don't know anything
(31:18):
about linear time, and so when there's something that activates people,
it's as if it's happening right now. It doesn't matter
what whether it was a week ago or a month
ago or twenty years ago, but it is real in
the moment right now. So I want to give you
like a very benign example of something that isn't exactly
a trauma, but it illustrates this pattern that we're talking about,
(31:43):
which is if you went to a restaurant. Let's say
you you went to a restaurant and you ordered a
shrimp dish and you got food poisoning, like you were
like seriously ill, you probably would think twice one before
going back to that same restaurant or to ever eating
(32:04):
shrimp again. And even if you did finally get to
the point where you were willing to eat shrimp again,
you might have a little private moment to yourself like
do I really want to do this? Is it worth it?
What if I get sick again? And because it's a
natural right, like your body and your brain are like
we are not going there again, and so um, it
(32:25):
can seem like I'm making a little circular motion with
my hand here right, like why Why are you tripping
about the shrimp? Why are you obsessing about the Okay,
but it's not it's you, it's um. It's a self
protective mechanism, and so being able to unpack that a
little bit so you can figure out, like can you
live without eating shrimp? Absolutely, But there are other things
(32:48):
that can really interfere with people's everyday lives where if
we just slow it down and take one small piece
and say, how is this showing up in your life
right now in this moment, Let's work with that. And
I wanted to say, I know that you do that.
You are a healing spiritual person, a therapist as well.
(33:10):
Are there things that people like our listeners can do
at home, um, that you would recommend that's you know,
accessible to them? Yeah? I think, Um, you know, it's
always a tricky thing to figure out. Like you know,
Peter Levine his early book is called Waking the Tiger,
(33:30):
and it's like that image of like when you once
you start to open this up, if you can imagine
a tiger that's sleeping and you start poking at it,
you don't actually know how it's going to react. So
I would really, um, while I totally support, empowering people
on their own healing. Also just want to advise people
like this is a little bit of a landline and
(33:51):
sometimes it can blow up, but there are some things
that you can do. So I'll give you a personal example.
I bought myself a little a Roman thep Be machine
for like twenty books. I ordered online. I had it delivered.
It's in my um my study right now at home,
and it is something. Engaging your senses is something that
(34:12):
is very soothing to the nervous system. And so like
being trapped in the house, which again is a small
t trauma. Um. You know, the nice calming smell of
lavender just is relaxing. Um. Or like I said, like
put some music on and dance around. So when you
can engage your senses as a way of orienting yourself
(34:35):
towards being stable and safe. So it might be calming music,
it might be a smell. Um. You know, there's a
lot of spiritual traditions use things like anointing oils and incense,
and you know there's reasons for that. Um. So engaging
your five senses. And another thing where there's actually some
(34:56):
data about this is drumming. There is some data that
shows is that drumming can be very effective for people
in reducing the effects the negative effects of trauma. So
for those of you who are trying to think about
like something new you want to try at home, Like
you don't have to go buy an expensive drum. You
can use like turning trash can upside down, or just
(35:17):
use the side of your table or something. You don't
have to be a good musician. But it's one of
those things where you have the sense of touch and
you have the sound and your body's natural impulse to
want to move to the rhythm that is very regulating
for the nervous system. That is not a listen. Drumming
on the side of your coffee table is not a
substitute for real psychotherapy, but it is something that's relatively
(35:41):
low risk that you can try at home and see
what happens. The Five Senses has literally saved me from
having a panic attack when I was like I think
it was Thanksgiving. I was out with my family. We
were like walking around a pond. There are a bunch
of people out. I don't know why, Like a memory
hit me and I is just about to spiral in
(36:01):
front of everyone, and the five senses was great because
it not only brought me back to the present moment
instead of that memory, but I had to keep my
mind going. It was like what can I see? Okay,
I see this green tree, I see red leaves, I
see this kid with purple shoes. Okay, now what do
I taste? What kind of taste? Like the ice cream
my head earlier? What am I? You know? And so
(36:22):
like your brain is trying to go through what am
I touching? I can feel my wool that I'm wearing,
and it just is like it actually is occupying my
brain where I'm having to actively in the moment. And
then I would do it again and then I would
restart what am I seeing? Now? What am I smelling? Now?
I smell a little bit of the freshly cut grass,
And it was just like I do that also with
(36:43):
breathing exercises, with meditation, I was someone literally hated when
people would tell me to meditate. I'm like, this is
you know, when you've when you've dealt with a lot
of trauma, it feels very patronizing, it feels very um
just kind of like, oh, you can get over it
with just think like meditating. And I got to a
point where I was like, I will I will eat
shoelaces whatever you want me to do to get you
(37:05):
get to a point where you're like, I will do anything.
And so I actually, um, I'm a competitive person. This
is probably not the healthiest, but I got competitive about
meditating because I used the calm app and it actually
shows me how much how many sessions and how much time.
And now I've wrapped up like five hundred sessions, which
is I'm very proud of myself for doing that. But
(37:26):
one of the meditations would literally just have you count
your breath, and that again took me out. I couldn't
think of the thing because I'm like one, two, three, four,
like and you had I had to keep track of
my numbers. So there's so many great things that you
can do, like you were saying, to ground yourself in
the present moment um, and and they do work as
(37:47):
much as I am someone who actively you know. And
and again it's also a process of finding what works
for you, but being open and willing to try it.
I think of myself as really resilient for surviving. I'm
getting emotional, sorry, I think of myself as really resilient
and like there's a part of me that's just so
(38:08):
unwilling to give up, like it's just fighting so hard,
and it's like, I'm not going to give up on myself.
I'm going to keep trying different things to find what
works for me, and if this doesn't work, I'm going
to try something else. Because there are people who have
dealt with even more trauma than I have that have
found these helpful and that you know, so there has
(38:28):
to be something behind them, and all of them, I say,
I think all of them have helped in different ways.
You know, they're not all the same, but it's kind
of created a toolbox for me essentially that depending on
what I'm dealing with, I can bring out different coping skills.
So thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that we have.
(38:51):
On that note, we have to take another really quick break,
and then we're going to go into how others can help.
If you have someone a loved one in your life, um,
how you can be a support system for them, and
we are back. UM. Thank you Karen again for joining
(39:12):
us on the first episode of Mental Health May Um.
Something that I've kind of dealt with in my life.
Very loving, great people who just don't understand, um, why
I can't get over some of the some of the
memories and things that just keep coming up for me.
(39:32):
And UM, how I guess, how can people who want
to be supportive understand that? And what are things that
they can do to help the people that they love
in their lives? Um, that's a great question. And I
guess the first thing I would say is don't give
advice unless somebody asks for it. So I'm gonna start
(39:52):
with what not to do? Um, say it again, I
mean really giving advice, won't offer suggestions, don't have The
first thing you do offer is the first thing you
do should not be offering suggestions, no advising. It's no
no fixing, no saving, no advising, no correcting. It is
not somebody else's job to fix you. So that is
(40:16):
the first thing I will say, is to just whatever.
And there are some people who can't help themselves, and
even though they love you and they care about you,
and they need to be told stop. So UM, I
think that people can say I wish I knew what
to say. It's sort of like with grieving, when you know,
if you've gone through a loss of some kind of
(40:38):
grief is very much a part of trauma also, and
people say the dumbest things when they're trying to be supportive. Um,
when they can just say, I wish I knew the
right thing to say. If there was something I could
do to make it easier for you, I would love
to do it. I'm here for you, I'm with you,
(40:59):
I will sit with you. I love you, I care
about you. I don't judge you. I can be patient
as long as you need me to be patient. So
it's that sense of if you want to be supportive
to somebody else who's dealing with this kind of pain,
to let them know that you are with them in it,
that you can just sit next to them. You know,
(41:21):
you don't even have to say anything. Sometimes the best
thing you can do is say, like, I'm going to
drop off some soup at your house. Would that be okay? Yeah,
I totally agree about listening. Sometimes people just need to vent.
And the hardest thing also is having someone who hasn't
gone through that try to advise you. It's like, oh, no,
I've already done so much of this work. It's so
(41:46):
there's also another thing that a friend friend at the pod,
we haven't had her on you but tybee disk and
she like did this uh this like I G story
that's stuck with me where she asked all her friends.
She was like, what is a way that I can
check in on you where you feel loved? Like? What? What?
How do you like being checked in on? And I
thought that was great and it's something that I've asked
(42:08):
a lot of friends of like, because it is true
where you know, some people can feel like you're hovering
if you're just like, are you okay? I know, so
if they're like, oh, if you just you know, ask
me about how's my day? Or oh, if you just
like tell me about something you've seen, and then we
start conversating from there, it really helps. So I think
that's another way to start a question, which is a
(42:31):
which is a good way too. If you have someone
that you do want to check in on and you
don't want to seem to, you know, in their face
about it, you can just ask them that simple question
and then you know what they kind of want from you.
I often feel like we should all come with a
little instruction manual that we can give to the people
in our lives and that somehow we've been taught this
(42:55):
pile of garbage that basically says it's not really garbage
because I do understand it's psychologically, but that the people
who love us should just intuitively know what we need
and does automatically give it to us. And then if
we have to tell them what we need, that therefore
they're not going to mean it when they do it,
and it's just not true. It's not true. The only
(43:15):
way that somebody else can know what you need. Some
people are very intuitive, but we all need to be
able to say. It's like when you're sick. Forget trauma
for a second. Some people, when they're sick, they just
want to be left alone. Don't bother me. Just put
the bulls suit by the door. I don't want anybody.
I don't want to see anybody. I don't want to
(43:36):
talk to anybody. Some people want to be doated on,
they want to be babied, and they want to be
taken care of, and they want all of that kind
of stuff. But if you want to be left alone
and somebody is hovering over you, it feels terrible. So
just to ask this is like, here's a little like
dating thing too. I always ask people, recommend to people,
(43:58):
ask the person, what they're like when they're are sick,
it will tell you a lot about their personality. So
just to be able to say even around basic things
like you know what I just need to be let
when I get like this, what I need is space.
That's that's so important. Oh sorry, what were you gonna say? No,
I don't mean to cut you off. Oh, I was
(44:18):
just saying just the intersection between this and kind of dating,
and because you know, I've I've I've always talked about
boundaries and what people need, and I think that is
so important, because yeah, I really want to talk about
just that idea of so much of our way of
talking with and interacting with humans are just kind of
(44:42):
like dated societal things, and I think that that we
often forget that. No, that's not true. I think especially
if you look at the way different people handle just
situations in trauma. Like one of the big things is
growing up being my sister. We will fight. I would
get on our nerves and like we would fight, like
we would get so mad at each other, like where
(45:04):
you think, like, oh man, they probably need to sit
down and hash it out, but no, we just go
our separate ways and we would just come through because
we know that we were just kind of picking at
each other. Now if there was something that actually happened,
if there was something I was actively doing, then she
would call it out. But there's the we knew the
difference of like, oh, we're just kind of picking at
(45:26):
each other because we're in the house. And I feel
like that has always uh that that kind of carried
over into because you know, uh, every the way you
interact with your family is essentially how you go out
into the world. And that it was something I had
to learn because I was so used to being like, oh,
if we have a spat, I just need to give
you some distance and we'll come back. And you come
(45:47):
back and they're like, no, I want to talk about
what just happened. And it was like, oh, that that's
a whole new world for me. But you you would,
you'd be like, well, no, this is how I perceive problems.
And it's taking that kind of open mindedness, something I
think Dani also said, just having the open mindedness to
kind of explore and see what someone else needs instead
(46:09):
of trying to operate on what you go by. I
wanted to say to our friend of the pod, Christopher
Smith Bryant. He's been on a couple episodes and he
is great. One of my best friends checked in on
me this weekend, was like, hey, I haven't heard from
you in a while. Are you okay? And I said,
not really spiraled about something and I don't want to
rehash it because that would just cause me to spiral more, um,
(46:31):
but thank you for checking in on me. And then
two days later, which was great, he was just like, hey,
just want to still make sure you're doing okay. And
then at that point I was now I didn't want
to rehash everything, but I could tell him what had
happened essentially, and I was like, you know, I had
this session. It was it was diving into a bunch
of stuff and I really appreciate you checking in on me.
So he wasn't like pressing me to talk more about
(46:52):
it in that moment. And another thing that happened was
my therapist. You know, we've talked about how healing is
this process. It just you think like, oh, I'm done,
I did the thing and I'm done, and it like keeps,
you know, healing. And my my therapist was like, I think,
you know if you want to journal, and I just
got to a point where I was like, I don't
want to journal. I don't want to do one more meditation.
(47:13):
I don't want to do one more self love exercise,
Like I've done this for years and I was so tired.
And she was like okay, Like she was just like okay, um,
I respect that she respect. And then of course, like
after a couple of days, I'm like, okay, I'm ready
to journal. I miss it, you know. And it's just
like but you get to a point and it's like
so not forcing, like just respecting where you are, meeting
(47:33):
yourself where you are, and if you just do not
feel like doing that, there's a reason why your body
is rejecting it. So allowing yourself grace and then when
you start to feel like, you know what I actually do,
think that I can sit down and do that today.
M hm. That Um. One other thing I wanted to say,
just you know from someone that that is healing and
(47:55):
dealing with trauma. I in my relation ships. One of
my exes who I love, just a really supportive, great person.
He we would get in fights, kind of like what
you were talking about. If we would get in fights
and I would bring up my trauma, like, well, you
haven't survived this and I have an autoimmune disorder and
blah blah blah. And he was like, well you're always
(48:17):
gonna win then, And I realized this is so unhealthy,
you know, and luckily I was able to work in therapy.
But I was like, I love this person, and my
illness is not a trump card over his life if
he had a problem at work, that is, I need
to honor that, like I cannot. And it's so easy
in an argument to kind of just throw that, and
(48:39):
I'm like, I'm also a firm believer your trauma is
not a trump card to harm other people. It does not.
You need to take accountability. It is a vicious cycle,
and it's one that can be broken. My dad was
really abusive and I did so much therapy did not
turn into him. But I think there is a level
of accountability that we are. You know, I'm speaking as
(49:01):
someone that has trauma cannot trump other people that we
care about. Yeah, it's just so you know. I have
literally I have in my bedroom, I have a painting
that says choose Love. And I'm really just trying to
like constantly choose love. Choose love. Um, I'm sorry, go
(49:21):
ahead related to that, because I didn't feel there was
You would ask a question earlier about spirituality, and to me,
choosing love is it's an emotional thing, it's a physical thing,
and it's a spiritual thing and um, and I'm not
talking about religion. I'm talking about meaning making and creativity
and ritual and um, resources that engage your imagination and
(49:46):
the possibility of I'm going to call it a healed future,
you know that which kind of orient you toward your
own homeless and there are so many ways that that
can be done. So I just love that image. Thank
you for that, Danny of having a painting in your
room that says, choose love as a reminder to yourself.
(50:06):
And it's probably there are some days when you look
at it a lot more than other days. Yeah, it's
so difficult, but worth it, really worth it. Um, Karen,
thank you so much again for coming on. Where can
people find you or I don't know if people can
find you on social media? If you're want people to
(50:27):
find yes, this is a new era. Um yes, so
I um. Well, my website is just my name Karen
Erlikman dot com. I have a very small social media
presence because you know, like, do you really want to
follow your therapist Twitter feed? Maybe maybe not, but k
replenish on the I G or Twitter, and um, I really,
(50:52):
you know, even now while we're in this global pandemic,
it's been amazing to be able to continue to work
with people and the innate capacity to heal our brokenness
just continues to amaze me every day. Me. I guess
you can find wherever you want to find me if
you wad Way, Twitter and Instagram, if d s on Twitch,
(51:15):
in the discord discord dot gg Ford slash Salt Squad,
which I feel I hope everyone in the Real Stuff
Discord listens to this episode because that's usually where people
go to kind of decompress and just have an open
vent session about their mental health. I will directly drop
this episode in there. Um And yeah, Super Punch is back.
(51:37):
You can watch it every night Monday through Friday, hosting
it and on Thursdays you can catch me on Rooster
Teeth with Fiona Nova f and around with if Fiona
and uh yeah, what do you you got anything coming up? Danny?
Um Oh, I've just been sharing, you know, Follow me
on Twitter and Instagram at miss Danny Fernandez. It's M S,
(51:59):
D A, N I F R and and easy I
post when I'm doing streams and and whatnot. And um
wanted to give a shout out, of course to our
super producer Joel Monique for setting this up with Karen
and also engineer Zach McKeever for constantly working with me
to make my mic sound better. I'm trying. Oh, I
(52:20):
did want to say, but almost forgot. Yeah. It was
just announced, uh last week. But in next month sci
Fi is the Great Debate, which is going to be
featuring yours truly, Danny Fernandez, and you know I pop
in there a few times. But yeah, it's gonna be
a great show. It'll be on sci Fi. You can
(52:41):
watch it, uh, and you can and see if you
can notice when we were filming before and after, I
was in both of those. I was in an episode
before the pandemic and then the day it was announced
that we like had a shelter in place. Yeah, it
was the day before it was announced. Yeah, yeah, that
was It was a wild time. Uh. But yeah, so
(53:04):
definitely check it out. It's a great show, both versions
of it, uh, and it's a fun time. We'll probably
have to have t J on here sometime. But as
we always say, stay stay nerdy, and stay healthy. Yeah,
that's that's what we should say this month. Stay healthy,
Nerdificent News
Hosts And Creators
Dani Fernandez
Ify Nwadiwe
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