Episode 37
Dr. Aimie Apigian:
Stored Trauma in the Body and Its Effects
In this episode we talk about The Biology of Trauma (not the psychology). It is possible that everything you have ever heard about trauma is wrong! That's why I invited my friend Dr. Aimie on to share her groundbreaking work with us. This is a MUST LISTEN episode!
First Aired on: May 30, 2022
Episode 37
Dr. Aimie Apigian:
Stored Trauma in the Body and Its Effects
In this episode we talk about The Biology of Trauma (not the psychology). It is possible that everything you have ever heard about trauma is wrong! That's why I invited my friend Dr. Aimie on to share her groundbreaking work with us. This is a MUST LISTEN episode!
First Aired on: May 30, 2022
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
In this episode, Dr. Aimie walks us through why everything we think we know about trauma is wrong!
Her incredible journey that led her to eventually create The Biology of Trauma ™️ may require tissues!
She helps us shift perspective on the historically faulty trauma healing approaches and right away tells us some ideas we may have had wrong.
Time does not heal!
Love does not heal!
Trauma is not about events!
We have had it all wrong!
The Biology of Trauma™️
Instability and insecurity in early childhood leads to nervous system dysregulation.
This subconscious/unconscious process occurs when we feel unsafe and leads us to become someone other than we really are.
The freeze response aka overwhelm
Autoimmunity
Chronic Pain
Chronic Fatigue
Fibromyalgia
and more are expressions of the freeze response
Supporting your system when you're in the freeze response is possible, but typical stress management may flare your symptoms.
LISTEN TO YOUR BODY
Trauma is stored in your body!
Dr. Aimie's one step to take today to improve your health is holding your heart ❤️
Her incredible journey that led her to eventually create The Biology of Trauma ™️ may require tissues!
She helps us shift perspective on the historically faulty trauma healing approaches and right away tells us some ideas we may have had wrong.
Time does not heal!
Love does not heal!
Trauma is not about events!
We have had it all wrong!
The Biology of Trauma™️
Instability and insecurity in early childhood leads to nervous system dysregulation.
This subconscious/unconscious process occurs when we feel unsafe and leads us to become someone other than we really are.
The freeze response aka overwhelm
Autoimmunity
Chronic Pain
Chronic Fatigue
Fibromyalgia
and more are expressions of the freeze response
Supporting your system when you're in the freeze response is possible, but typical stress management may flare your symptoms.
LISTEN TO YOUR BODY
Trauma is stored in your body!
Dr. Aimie's one step to take today to improve your health is holding your heart ❤️
Other Resources:
Connect with Dr. Aimie Apigian
Episode Transcript
[Page//00:00:00] Julie Michelson: Welcome back to the inspired living with auto-immunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michelson. And today I'm excited to be speaking with Dr. Amy apigian the leading medical expert on addressing stored trauma in the body, through her signature model and methodology. The biology of trauma. That's right today, we're going to be talking about the biology of trauma and not the psychology of [Page//00:01:00] trauma.
[Page//00:01:01] Dr. Amy's work up levels the old methods of trauma work to address trauma's effects on the nervous system and the body on a cellular level. I promise if you think you know all there is to know about trauma or that it isn't playing a role in your life. Our conversation today will be enlightening. Don't miss it!
[Page//00:01:21] Dr. Amy, welcome to the podcast.
[Page//00:01:24] Aimie Apigian, MD: Thank you, Julie. I'm so excited for this. I'm so excited for what you are doing specifically with your clients. And so I'm really happy to be here to talk about trauma today.
[Page//00:01:33] Julie Michelson: Thank you. This is such a huge subject topic I already told you before we started, like, I don't know if one episode is going to do it. But I also think it kind of gets a little exhausted. Like people get tired of hearing certain words. And so I love you are bringing such a fresh approach and effective.
[Page//00:01:58] Cause I know what you're doing is [Page//00:02:00] making such a huge impact. For people I'm guessing when you were younger, you didn't decide you wanted to specialize in healing people by, by healing trauma. So it, would you be willing to share your story with us as to how did you go from that traditional medicine world to what you are doing now?
[Page//00:02:22] Aimie Apigian, MD: Yeah. Oh my goodness. Julie T taken me back to those times. Those are good and interesting memories for me. You know, and even as you say that I'm just blown away by the impact that the message of the biology of trauma has had an emails that I get from around the world. Right. And, and through my training program, practitioners are reaching, you know, like 250,000 people this year with the message of biology of trauma.
[Page//00:02:50] And it blows me away because there was a time in my life when for the one person. One person that mattered most to me, [Page//00:03:00] I could not move the dial at all for him with trauma.
[Page//00:03:03] Julie Michelson: yeah.
[Page//00:03:04] Aimie Apigian, MD: And so just what a contrast between like, wow, all these people around the world. And yet there was that time when there was, I could not make a difference for one person with regards to their.
[Page//00:03:17] And that was my son. So my son came to me as a four year old foster care boy. And over the next six months, I decided to adopt him. And part of the reason was that the social workers told me that he was so far along in his behavior problems, emotional behavioral problems, that if I did not adopt him, then he would go into a group.
[Page//00:03:45] At age four. And and that really all he needed was love. Right? Like he just needs someone to love him and I'm like, I'll love him. Right? Like
[Page//00:03:58] Julie Michelson: I can do that.
[Page//00:03:58] Aimie Apigian, MD: So I [Page//00:04:00] can do that. Like I already am crazy about this kid and I can see his potential through his anger, through. Rages through his behaviors. I can see through all of that and I can see what an incredible kid like I can love.
[Page//00:04:14] I can love the trauma out of him. And it was two years later that I'm sitting there and I'm actually rocking him. Right. Cause I'm doing attachment parenting and all that stuff now, and I'm rocking him. And what he said was not a surprise to me, but it was a moment in which the. Our journey together really hit home for me.
[Page//00:04:40] And why? I say like, I was not able to make a difference for the one person that mattered the most in my life. And he had already been trying to kill me. Right. He'd already gotten the knives out and had already tried to kill me with a knife and all, all of that kind of stuff. But as I'm rocking them and I'm [Page//00:05:00] having what I'm thinking is a very ordinary moment of connection.
[Page//00:05:04] PAF supposed to be having with our attachment parenting and working with our therapist and all the people that we had working with us. And he calmly tells me, as I'm looking down into his eyes, he calls me, tells me it's like, mommy, tomorrow, I'm going to kill you not today, tomorrow, mommy. And I'm going to poke your eyes out with sticks and that's how I'm going to kill you.
[Page//00:05:31] But not today, mommy tomorrow. And the S the sinking feeling that I had in my stomach at that moment. And as I look at him and try to maintain my composure, try to keep, keep the neutral face that I'm told that I'm supposed to have.
[Page//00:05:51] Julie Michelson: Yeah.
[Page//00:05:52] Aimie Apigian, MD: yet inside, like I'm, I could not be more. Discouraged. I could not be [Page//00:06:00] more broken.
[Page//00:06:00] I could not be more feeling like I am. I am a, I am a failure. Like, what am I doing wrong? Maybe my family was, was right when they told me that I was crazy adopting this kid as a single mom in medical school. What, what was I thinking? And, and I had some important lessons to learn there in that, in that.
[Page//00:06:20] Right. And one of those lessons that I've, that I've learned is that time does not heal.
[Page//00:06:27] Julie Michelson: Yeah.
[Page//00:06:27] Aimie Apigian, MD: And I can look at my own life for that because what I started to see through my son is that I have patterns of pushing people away. I have patterns of. Numbing my emotions when they get too uncomfortable, I have patterns of ah, relationships or life or staying small or not speaking up when I really shouldn't be speaking up for myself and look at how those have not changed over time.
[Page//00:06:57] Julie Michelson: Hence the word patterns,
[Page//00:06:59] Aimie Apigian, MD: I [Page//00:07:00] am still doing the same, the same thing. It may show up differently in different situations, but it's still the same thing. Time has not changed those patterns. We just get better at making excuses for those patterns.
[Page//00:07:12] Julie Michelson: Right.
[Page//00:07:13] Aimie Apigian, MD: So time does not heal. The other lesson that I had to learn was that love does not heal
[Page//00:07:20] Julie Michelson: That's a tough one.
[Page//00:07:21] Aimie Apigian, MD: My love could not heal him. Right. And, and for him, love was what was scary for him. Love was what had betrayed. Has his own mom had betrayed him by all of the things that she had done starting with in utero drug use. And then, you know, the, the, the number of instances where exactly where he got hurt and she never took him to the hospital and then finally got into the system and right.
[Page//00:07:49] Like there were multiple instances. So love was actually what was scary to him. So how can love heal? You. If that's, what's scary to [Page//00:08:00] you. So that was a big eye-opener because those were literally the two things that I had held as truths from my medical school training. And so what I learned was that there's this thing called biology of trauma.
[Page//00:08:17] And it's not just a matter of telling my son. I love you. And you should love yourself
[Page//00:08:23] Julie Michelson: Well,
[Page//00:08:25] Aimie Apigian, MD: that wasn't even landing.
[Page//00:08:27] Julie Michelson: Right.
[Page//00:08:28] Aimie Apigian, MD: It was, there are changes to his biology. His biology is actually continuing to play out these patterns that I need to figure out how to change the biology to then get different results. So those were the three lessons that I got to learn, Julie and him.
[Page//00:08:48] Julie Michelson: Well, and I, you see me wiping my eyes. I didn't bring a tissue because I'm like, I know her story. I'm good. I'm prepared. And it just, you know, I'm a mother [Page//00:09:00] and I just can't even imagine, however, Like we all get to do. When we look over our shoulder, you know, what a gift for all those thousands and thousands of people that you are the one who had the opportunity to learn that lesson.
[Page//00:09:20] And those are two things we all here, our whole lives, time heals, all wounds and love heals. And so I love the, I there's somebody ways I want to go. But I want to dig right into this idea of the biology of trauma. And you know, we, we hear trauma and we think psychology again, training, right?
[Page//00:09:45] These are the things, these are the patterns. This is what we tell ourselves.
[Page//00:09:49] Aimie Apigian, MD: You'll talk to a therapist about that.
[Page//00:09:51] Julie Michelson: yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Page//00:09:53] Aimie Apigian, MD: Yeah.
[Page//00:09:54] Julie Michelson: So let's really like dig down and unpack that [Page//00:10:00] you know, how, how is it different? Why are we not saying, oh, it's just second. Well, you know, poor thing, he had a data really traumatic early childhood, you know, he needs counseling for the next 50 years and then he'll be fine.
[Page//00:10:17] How is it different? The biology of.
[Page//00:10:20] Aimie Apigian, MD: Yeah. And what I like, I think that what we're all take your audience with this is going back to the adverse childhood experience studies. So these were studies that were done founded by Dr. Vincent , Dr. Robert anda and they were working through it with a population of primarily women who were overweight. And they were coming from the angle of preventive medicine. I'm board certified in preventive medicine. And so the principles of preventive medicine are. We can look at all of these downstream effects, like cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and we [Page//00:11:00] can see the impact that it has not only on one person's life, but then on society.
[Page//00:11:05] And we can see, we can ask the question, okay, how do I prevent, how do I prevent those diseases?
[Page//00:11:11] Julie Michelson: a concept?
[Page//00:11:12] Aimie Apigian, MD: What a concept now. So what they discovered, what they, what they, and honestly, what we are still taught, what I was still taught is that, you know, a driving force, a driving factor in those conditions is obesity.
[Page//00:11:27] And so if you fix obesity, you'll fix all of those downstream effects. Oh my goodness. Right? Like time heals, everything love, heals, everything, just do that and everything else will be fine. Right. So what happened is that they're in this weight loss clinic, they have found a way to help these people lose a hundred pounds to 300 pounds in a year.
[Page//00:11:52] It's incredible. And they're having so much success with this program because of how much weight and how fast people are losing the [Page//00:12:00] weight and in a, what they think is a safe way, least metabolically, physiologic.
[Page//00:12:05] Julie Michelson: Which was my first thought, like, cause that's safe. That's really fast.
[Page//00:12:08] Aimie Apigian, MD: exactly my thought too. Dr. Filetti had gone into detail about what exactly they gave these people for food that mimicked fasting, and yet gave them all so that it was very safe. Okay. That's fine. Whatever let's talk about. Let's talk about what happened now, because what happened really highlights this biology of trauma idea and that is, they got frustrated.
[Page//00:12:30] Because their numbers started to get messed up. And you, you work with any doctor who's doing a study that is the fastest way to get them upset and frustrated is to mess with their numbers because they, they need their numbers to look good. Look at how well we're doing with this program. And it's going to prevent all of these diesel diseases.
[Page//00:12:47] We're going to solve the world's problems. When they looked at what was going wrong with their numbers, they found that the most, most successful people, the people who were losing them the most weight were [Page//00:13:00] the ones dropping out of the. And so they called them in and they said, Hey, I see you've gained the way back.
[Page//00:13:08] What happened? Right? Like what happened? And the patients started telling them, look, what you see as the problem of me being overweight is actually the solution to my. Wait a second. What do you mean? It's the solution to your problem? I stay overweight in order to avoid attention. I eat in order to not feel lonely.
[Page//00:13:36] I, and then you start to fill in the blanks, right? Because we each have those for them. It was eating for me. It's been biking. It's been working. It's been, it's been eating at times in my life. Right. And I have done these things in order to not feel. Fill in the blank.
[Page//00:13:55] Julie Michelson: Sure.
[Page//00:13:56] Aimie Apigian, MD: And then what they found was that, wait a second, [Page//00:14:00] as we go back into their life experiences.
[Page//00:14:03] We are seeing patterns of life experiences for them. And it started to be sexual abuse at first, but then it wasn't just sexual abuse. Sometimes it was parents divorcing. Sometimes it was parents having had problems or maybe even been to jail or having a mental health diagnosis or something that showed that there was instability insecurity during early childhood. And so out of that, they created this adverse childhood experiences study, where they highlighted some of the more common events that then seemed to be associated with these types of health conditions later in life. And Julia, they have literally by now, Associated every single chronic disease with a certain, a score.
[Page//00:14:56] Right. And even smoking. They've seen that if you have [Page//00:15:00] an ACE score above four, like every point above that, I forget the exact numbers. So don't quote me on this, but it's like, you are four times more likely to be a smoker. The higher, your ACE score above a certain number patterns that are just like, wait a second.
[Page//00:15:13] Like there's actually a predictable pattern to that. Yes. And the reason is, is because we go back to the nervous system and it's dysregulation. And so for those people who may not be familiar with that term, we have, we have a nervous system that actually keeps us alive and runs our life for us. We. Run it subconsciously.
[Page//00:15:37] Cause it just, it runs our body. So thankfully we don't have to think about it. Can you imagine if we actually had to think about keeping our heart beating while we're sitting here having a conversation, Julia would be just way too much. I'd have to stop talking to you and tell my heart to keep beating.
[Page//00:15:50] So thankfully like it runs by itself. So we call that subconscious or unconscious, whichever word you want to use. And the nervous system [Page//00:16:00] then runs our body. It runs our life. It runs our, our, our physiology, our biology in order to keep us alive. And so what happens is that when we start to feel unsafe in life, It goes into a state of dysregulation where that's literally, the problem is that we don't feel safe.
[Page//00:16:20] Our body does not feel safe. We don't feel safe. And we experienced that as, oh, I'm stressed or I'm anxious, or some people don't even realize it because honestly, Julie, like this has always been their life. You ask them like, are you stressed? No, I'm not stressed at all. Right. What are you talking about?
[Page//00:16:36] Like.
[Page//00:16:37] Julie Michelson: And then they tell me about their lives and I'm like, okay, now I'm stressed.
[Page//00:16:41] Aimie Apigian, MD: I'm stressed for you. Yes, exactly. So we, you know, we've, we've come to just live with this so long that we don't see it as anything other than this is just me. This is my personality. This is the way that I've always been. And we don't realize, well, actually that's not who you really are. [Page//00:17:00] That was a result.
[Page//00:17:02] Of your nervous system, adapting to life experiences. And now it has stayed in that adaptation because it thinks that you're still in danger. It thinks that it's still needing to keep you safe and keep you alive. And so we can see that these all these adult diseases are not because of events. have nothing to do with the events because there's many people who have those diseases, Julie, you know, this, especially with the work that you do, that don't have those specific events, but they have other things.
[Page//00:17:34] They have other things that happened in early life that created. Baseline sense of, I don't know if I'm okay. I don't know if I'm safe. I don't like to be in my body. It's not a safe place to be. It's not a comfortable place to be. I like to be in my head. I like to think a lot. I like to talk a lot. I like to read a lot, whatever it is.
[Page//00:17:56] And, but that baseline nervous system dysregulation that we [Page//00:18:00] try to avoid and we use all these coping mechanisms to not feel. That's what creates this disease decades later decades, right? Like we're talking even the auto-immune stuff, right?
[Page//00:18:12] Julie Michelson: Oh, especially.
[Page//00:18:14] Aimie Apigian, MD: Especially the autoimmune stuff, right?
[Page//00:18:16] Like decades later and it's not, oh my goodness. What happened in the last year that you're developing this? Auto-immune no, it's what happened 20 decades ago. And it's stuff that you're not going to remember. This was mostly pre-verbal and this is where, like, it just, ah, like I, I want to shout this from the rooftops because there's so much that happens in early childhood.
[Page//00:18:39] That becomes a trauma that is just normal practices for parenting and our normal social life that we don't realize that it is traumatizing to a baby's nervous system. And so we think we're doing a great job as parents and yet what we're seeing. No, my child does have anxiety. My child does [Page//00:19:00] have whatever, whatever it is.
[Page//00:19:02] And we're not seeing that underneath all of that is this biology of trauma that has started and will result in auto-immunity in their twenties, in their thirties, in their forties. It may result in. You know, pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome or these things later on. And again, it's not events and that's where, you know, like I, ah, like I really want to stress that cause people still seem to want to talk about events that happened in their life.
[Page//00:19:27] And was it a big T trauma? Was it a little T trauma? It doesn't matter that it's not the event. It's your body's experience of that event. And if that event for you at that time was overwhelmed. For any reason, it does not matter. That was a trauma for you. And most traumas, we don't even recognize in the moment our traumas, it's not until years later, sometimes when we're seeing these patterns in our nervous system of Ooh, like, yeah, that's not a comfortable place for me to go to.
[Page//00:19:57] There's a trauma pattern that there was [Page//00:20:00] overwhelmed that has happened in our life. So I've thrown a lot at you. I think. Take a deep breath.
[Page//00:20:08] Julie Michelson: Tell your heart to be breathe.
[Page//00:20:10] Aimie Apigian, MD: That's right. That's right. Go back to my nervous system, tell it to have my kidneys work and my liver work and all this other stuff.
[Page//00:20:18] Julie Michelson: There's a, there's so much in there. You, you hit, I love you're so amazing. Pretty much as you were talking every little thought that that popped up of like, oh, people talk about it like this or people, you know, you, you hit it. All right. Big T little T real perceived doesn't matter. And, and this idea of Simon to help you shout out.
[Page//00:20:43] You know, it's not an, it's not an event. It's well, so big question. The big follow-up and I, you know, I know we wouldn't be talking about this if this were the end of this conversation [Page//00:21:00] and it was like, oh, so sad. This all started in early childhood and we're done. So how did.
[Page//00:21:07] Aimie Apigian, MD: for the rest of your life.
[Page//00:21:08] Julie Michelson: too bad, but I just wanted you to know why,
[Page//00:21:11] Aimie Apigian, MD: exactly. Yeah. Now, now we really do need that big bowl of ice cream and chocolate and brownies.
[Page//00:21:15] Julie Michelson: seriously, seriously. But, and just to reiterate what you said, I mean, literally every person that walks through my door physically or virtually, I mean, I honestly, I believe every person to some degree that's on this planet has this. Patterning that that needs to be reworked. But absolutely it's my auto-immune clients or like you said, my metabolic clients, my cancer patients might know people at the clinic that are not don't have an auto-immune diagnosis.
[Page//00:21:54] Any T anybody with chronic illness.
[Page//00:21:56] Aimie Apigian, MD: Yes.
[Page//00:21:57] Julie Michelson: We can unwind. [Page//00:22:00] And I know what we were talking about before we started, whether you think so or not, whether you're aware of it or not. And, and so
[Page//00:22:12] Aimie Apigian, MD: Well, Julie, even just the fact that a person has chronic disease or chronic symptoms that they haven't been able to control or manage that in itself is overwhelming at
[Page//00:22:22] Julie Michelson: yes, yes.
[Page//00:22:23] Aimie Apigian, MD: when we see, when we use the definition of overwhelm for trauma, we just, we literally can interchange the two because that's what trauma is.
[Page//00:22:32] Trauma is the body's experience of overwhelm in a situation.
[Page//00:22:36] Julie Michelson: Right. So take somebody with pick any auto immune disease, you
[Page//00:22:40] Aimie Apigian, MD: Any
[Page//00:22:41] Julie Michelson: somebody with, with the fatigue that goes with. That's overwhelmed. I mean,
[Page//00:22:47] Aimie Apigian, MD: that's overwhelmed.
[Page//00:22:48] Julie Michelson: how, what do I have to do to accommodate and manage? You know, when I was laying in bed while my kids are at school, because I had to, you know, portion out my energy, you know, that's [Page//00:23:00] overwhelmed.
[Page//00:23:00] Aimie Apigian, MD: That's overwhelmed.
[Page//00:23:01] Julie Michelson: yeah, for sure. So,
[Page//00:23:04] Aimie Apigian, MD: Julia, I want to just, I want to just, ah, emphasize what you're saying so that people really understand this, that there are some conditions and diagnoses that are very much in the box. And under that umbrella of clearly like a trauma response, which I called the freeze response.
[Page//00:23:25] And it's what we've been talking about. Automated. Autoimmunity is the freeze response is a chronic freeze response. Chronic pain is a freeze response. Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia. All of those are diseases, conditions, symptoms that are classified as freeze and trauma response. And the nervous system is more in that freeze response than actually it is even in the stress response.
[Page//00:23:56] So I talk about like it almost being a spectrum where you can be [Page//00:24:00] stressed for a long time, right? Say you're a castle guard and you're out there and you're, you're on guard. You're on guard, but how long can you stay on guard? If they don't feed you, if you're not allowed to sleep, you don't get any rest.
[Page//00:24:13] No one changes you out. Like you can only stay in chronic stress for so long. And then you just crumble you collapse. Like you literally can't stand up anymore. That collapse is the freeze response. And that is where autoimmunity, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, all of those conditions lie under that category.
[Page//00:24:33] Julie Michelson: I love that. And again, you preempted me. I wanted to, I, I want to talk a little bit. More about freeze response that I love the, I will always think of the castle guard now forever. But when people hear stress and what we talk about chronic stress, most commonly, we hear, you know, fight or flight, right. Or. Fight flight [Page//00:25:00] freeze. And so, and that's what you're talking about is, you know, these are these responses. And again, I always say we're, we are made beautifully for acute stress. Like our body is designed so perfectly to run from a tiger, like really, but living on this planet with all the little chronic stressors or big, or, you know, or
[Page//00:25:24] Aimie Apigian, MD: Or just constant, right? Like the constant low grade.
[Page//00:25:28] Julie Michelson: Yeah.
[Page//00:25:29] Aimie Apigian, MD: How long, how long can you hold up that Boulder of fear before you crumble,
[Page//00:25:34] Julie Michelson: Yeah. Or you have four different little things. Maybe they don't, you know,
[Page//00:25:39] Aimie Apigian, MD: right? Yeah. But that, that's another thing where we've just been taught wrong, right? Like we've been taught wrong the time heals. Cause it doesn't, it just further ingrains it into our coping mechanisms. Love does not heal. And then the other one is that fight flight or freeze are all the same. And they're not.
[Page//00:25:57] And I think that when people have not [Page//00:26:00] understood this freeze response and have lumped it all into stress as by finding freeze is all stress we've really done ourselves a disservice because all of these conditions and symptoms that are part of the freeze response, we're using the wrong tools. Cause we're trying to use the tools for stress and they're not going to work.
[Page//00:26:17] This is the freeze response. It's completely different physiologically than the stress response.
[Page//00:26:23] Julie Michelson: Well, so you just so beautifully led me to, what are those tools, which should we be doing? What can we be doing? Cause we're not going to sit down and eat a bowl of ice cream men. Pretend it's not going on
[Page//00:26:38] Aimie Apigian, MD: Well, what about, can I sit in front of a movie and just binge watch movies then Julie.
[Page//00:26:43] Julie Michelson: a movie. You can watch a movie.
[Page//00:26:45] Aimie Apigian, MD: Can I get on my phone and just do social
[Page//00:26:47] Julie Michelson: Oh, gosh, please. Don't
[Page//00:26:49] Aimie Apigian, MD: because of how everybody else looks perfect. And they're, you know, whatever with their family. And can I,
[Page//00:26:54] Julie Michelson: give you a shovel. You can just keep digging.[Page//00:27:00]
[Page//00:27:00] Aimie Apigian, MD: the things that we do to ourselves, right? Like I don't even need anybody else to shame me and criticize
[Page//00:27:05] Julie Michelson: Oh gosh, no.
[Page//00:27:07] Aimie Apigian, MD: I've got that on my own. Thank you though.
[Page//00:27:09] Julie Michelson: Yeah, exactly. Nobody could do it better than I.
[Page//00:27:14] Aimie Apigian, MD: All right. So the freeze response is the freeze response needs time, and it needs energy. You can think of the freeze response is literally like a shock to the system. And perhaps a person in your audience has had a moment like that. Where what came at them was so much so fast that they literally felt like they had a shock.
[Page//00:27:40] Some people describe it as a kick to the gut. Right. And boy, boy, Julie, would that be a talk that we could have the gut and the Vegas nerve and intuition and how that's all trauma stuff. So there's, there's different ways that we can experience the freeze response, but it is. It's that shock. Like it is like this overwhelming Boulder [Page//00:28:00] that comes down and crushes us.
[Page//00:28:02] We want to just curl up into a ball.
[Page//00:28:05] Julie Michelson: Yeah.
[Page//00:28:06] Aimie Apigian, MD: Yeah. Yeah. Some people go to bed early. Some people don't want to get out of bed, right? Like that's the freeze response. The overwhelm is the freeze response. When we have to caffeinate in order to get going. That's the freeze response because in the freeze response, it's this exhaustion, it's this low energy.
[Page//00:28:29] Strategy in order to conserve energy. I mean, that's how our nervous system is trying to help us survive. It's like, Ooh, I've got to conserve energy for you. And so that's the strategy, but it feels very heavy. So people's body will feel heavy, heavy, heavy, and the freeze response needs time and energy in order to come out of the freeze response, the body will go from the freeze response.[Page//00:29:00]
[Page//00:29:00] Back to what? Put it into the freeze response. I would love to be able to tell people that, oh, you just come out of the freeze response and you go out and it's just roses and angels and, you know, rainbows and clouds and sunshine through those clouds and all of that. Right? Like, but no, then the freeze response, what put it into the freeze response, it's going to come right back into that fear, that anxiety.
[Page//00:29:24] The terror that put it into the freeze that was overwhelming in that moment. So then we talk about, okay, well then what does that need? Because most people, Julie will come out of the freeze response. They haven't done anything to actually manage what put them there. And so they're facing that big fear again.
[Page//00:29:42] And their body is like, oh, hell no. And it goes right back into the freeze response. So that people are literally going back and forth between stressed and overwhelmed, anxious, and depressed, running wired, and then [Page//00:30:00] exhausted and tired all in the same day. I mean, and then think about the dysregulation of your nervous system and think about the health consequences of that type of back and forth all day where the body is literally being told.
[Page//00:30:13] Okay, go, go, go, go, go. We've got a tiger chasing us. And no pretend that your debts, that the tiger won't notice us.
[Page//00:30:20] Julie Michelson: Awesome. I'm exhausted you. I, these last, like two minutes of it just worn me out, just feeling that, you know you know, I'm familiar. We all are, and there can't be anybody listening. That's not familiar in some way, shape or form with that past.
[Page//00:30:42] Aimie Apigian, MD: And that's why I think like this could literally change people's lives because it's something that we all experience and yet we have not understood. And if we understood it, we would know what tools to use to help ourselves. So I have a whole sheet, a whole guide for people on how to [Page//00:31:00] support your system when you're in the freeze response, because knowing that your body has shut down, There's certain things that you can bring in to support your biology, to then help it come out of that freeze response.
[Page//00:31:12] Those are going to be different than the stress. And this is where, you know, it still gets me all fired up and angry when people go into their doctor and their doctor's like, I think your symptoms are anxiety related and I want you to do stress management. I'm sorry. What does stress managing? What does that mean?
[Page//00:31:32] You know, like, does that mean go meditate? Does that mean go do yoga because I guarantee you that people who are further along in the spectrum, they meditation will actually make their symptoms worse if they can even do it. Because again, like their body is not a comfortable place for them to be, they don't want to drop into their body and for good reason, right.
[Page//00:31:54] Julie Michelson: safe.
[Page//00:31:55] Aimie Apigian, MD: It's not safe and asking them to do something that is not safe. I am just [Page//00:32:00] further promoting the freeze response in their body. So we're literally having great intentions and yet telling people to do things that are furthering, deepening them in their trauma self. Ooh, ouch. Right? Like, and I did that right before I knew better.
[Page//00:32:17] That's how I was trained as a physician is, you know, like, oh, definitely recognize when your patients have an emotional component to their disease and then refer them to therapy and stress management.
[Page//00:32:28] Julie Michelson: Right.
[Page//00:32:29] Aimie Apigian, MD: And that was considered the best of the best of trauma informed medical care. Ooh, ouch. And now that I know what I know, I'm realizing not like those things actually contribute.
[Page//00:32:41] More trauma. And this is where, this is where I would love for people to understand this because if they already have chronic symptoms, Julie. And they are experiencing a flare up of those symptoms. When they go do a certain therapy, that is the wrong, the wrong, it might be the right therapy, [Page//00:33:00] but at the wrong time, they might be doing too much too fast, or they might be trying to do something that would be good for the stress response, but not for the freeze response and to listen to their body, don't think like, oh, I'm, you know, something else must be going on.
[Page//00:33:16] No, your, your nervous system is dysregulated and what you just did further dysregulated. It, it wasn't ready for that. That was too much for it. We, we do need to do work and we need to do it in a very gentle and safe and effective way. So that's why I designed a 21 day journey so that people could follow an essential sequence of exercises.
[Page//00:33:43] In order to not have a flare up of their symptoms as they are starting to do this work the whole first week is just on teaching them exercises. Very short, very simple exercises that will help them actually feel safe in their body. [Page//00:34:00] I'm not talking about their psychology and then doing a ma a mantra or an affirmation about, I feel safe in my body.
[Page//00:34:07] I feel safe in my body. I do feel safe in my body. Right. Cause they don't, we, and we don't, we don't even know what it feels like to feel safe in our body. So it all is about the body's experience. Not what the mind is, is necessarily telling us. Cause that's not where trauma is. Trauma is stored in the body.
[Page//00:34:25] And the body in order for it to move out of this freeze response, it has to feel safe and we need tools to do that. So that's the whole first week of the 21 day journey. The second week is bringing in support, why support because when we come out of that freeze response and we're now in some of the anxiety, the stress response needs support, and it needs a strategy.
[Page//00:34:52] That's what the that's, what the stress response needs. It needs to know that someone has my back. I'm not alone. [Page//00:35:00] I've got someone that I can call. I've got someone who's holding my hand through this. I've got support because without support, we feel like it's too big and we go into the freeze response.
[Page//00:35:09] Julie Michelson: Yeah.
[Page//00:35:09] Aimie Apigian, MD: We also
[Page//00:35:10] Julie Michelson: more overwhelmed.
[Page//00:35:11] Aimie Apigian, MD: right?
[Page//00:35:12] There's the overwhelm and it's this cycle of overwhelm. Exactly. The stress response also needs strategy. And this is where I think many people have not understood this aspect of the stress response. The stress response is a high energy state intended, like you said before intended to run from. And so if we stop running from the tiger, we actually go into overwhelm in the freeze response.
[Page//00:35:40] Julie Michelson: because now the Tiger's going to eat
[Page//00:35:42] Aimie Apigian, MD: Cause now the tiger is going to eat it. And yet, how many times do we just kind of procrastinate? And we're like, well, since I don't know how to do this perfectly, I'm not going to do anything at all. And then we've just put ourselves into the freeze response. And so the stress response needs [Page//00:36:00] action. It needs movement and it needs a strategy.
[Page//00:36:04] And so taking. An action, even if it's the smallest step, I don't care. Right. And that's what I tell my people all the time. Just take the next best step. You don't need to have the whole path figured out, but I do need you just to take the next best step with me so that you don't go into that freeze response and we can stay managing.
[Page//00:36:26] And supporting your, your body through this stress response so that then we can find the reverse engineer it, and it lands in the parasympathetic. Hah, what a lovely place to land. Right? That's notice both of us just took a really deep, spontaneous breath with us, like,
[Page//00:36:43] Julie Michelson: I'm so glad you finally got us there.
[Page//00:36:47] Aimie Apigian, MD: That's what happens, right? Like we have these spontaneous, deep breasts with the parasympathetic response. We do feel safe. We do feel that, you know, like right here right now, everything is okay. [Page//00:37:00] I am okay. And what a shift that is from the stress response or the overwhelm and that trauma response.
[Page//00:37:11] Julie Michelson: It's amazing. And that's where the healing is. Period. That is where the healing is. I. I want, I tell, I want to talk about everything you just said, but I don't want to highlight two sentences out of all of that, that I want to make sure that listeners caught. And one is what was it? Wow. Go, Julie. Oh, listen to
[Page//00:37:40] Aimie Apigian, MD: all the time.
[Page//00:37:41] Julie Michelson: to your body, listen to your body.
[Page//00:37:44] And I know this is part of the process because I know when you're. When you're stuck, you can't hear you. I mean, that's, that's all part of the, you know, you're not in your body, it's a defense mechanism. But like you [Page//00:38:00] said, when you're, when you do, it's the same as if you're picking up a physical exercise routine, if you go out, you exercise and it flares, you know, don't do it.
[Page//00:38:12] Stop back it up.
[Page//00:38:14] Aimie Apigian, MD: You're actually creating more damage. Yes. It's not a good thing.
[Page//00:38:18] Julie Michelson: So it's the same thing. Anything that you do? That's your body communicating to
[Page//00:38:23] Aimie Apigian, MD: exactly.
[Page//00:38:24] Julie Michelson: Listen to it.
[Page//00:38:27] Aimie Apigian, MD: And let me just encourage people that with the work that I guide them through with addressing the biology of trauma, they can increase their window of tolerance so that they are able to do more and not experience that flare ups.
[Page//00:38:39] Julie Michelson: It's a process.
[Page//00:38:40] Aimie Apigian, MD: exactly. So what you start with, if your narrow window of tolerance gets bigger, as long as we're doing it in the right way, following the right steps in the sequence of that.
[Page//00:38:51] Julie Michelson: Yeah, and I love that you said, you know just take the next best step and it, and it can be tiny. I always say it should be tiny, [Page//00:39:00] you know, we don't, it doesn't need to be scary. We don't need to be adding more to this. And then the other thing that you said that I just have to highlight is the trauma is stored in the body.
[Page//00:39:16] And we know this and there's so much science behind it and you know, it's not woo, woo. It may sound woo woo. There. And it's been studied for so long. That's the that's the amazing part is what seems to me later in my life, maybe not this year, but as aha, like, oh my gosh, trauma is stored in the body. It's like, oh gosh, they've known that for so long.
[Page//00:39:42] Best kept secret. It's not in your head, it's in your body. So I just, I wanted to circle back because I think that those two things, you know, learning to listen to your body, I always say, even if you take it just as the physical [Page//00:40:00] symptoms, you look at somebody in my audience with auto-immunity. If we don't, if we don't listen, it will get louder.
[Page//00:40:10] Does. And so that goes with healing modalities. Listen to what your body's telling you.
[Page//00:40:17] Aimie Apigian, MD: Yeah. Yeah, you can either wait until something happens. Like what Julie and my story is with our health, where we experienced the crash, or you could start listening to your body earlier and
[Page//00:40:31] Julie Michelson: Yes.
[Page//00:40:32] Aimie Apigian, MD: you're headed towards that and get off the different paths. But if, if you want to learn the hard way, like Julia and me, you know,
[Page//00:40:38] Julie Michelson: Hey, we can show you that route once a week. We know that path as well.
[Page//00:40:47] Aimie Apigian, MD: That's all.
[Page//00:40:47] Julie Michelson: There's a, it's a, I'm gonna, I'm gonna one up you. It's a better path. People. I promise it's a much better path and yes, I always get. You know, people say, well, you know, who's your favorite kind of [Page//00:41:00] client to work with? And I'm like, yeah, like, you know, everyone, because I love when people who were on that same path, we were on, you know, for years and years, and years and years turn it all around.
[Page//00:41:11] That's so satisfying. But then those people who are so brilliant and they're like, Nope, I'm not going down that path. That's so satisfying also.
[Page//00:41:21] Aimie Apigian, MD: it is because we can prevent so much pain and challenges and hardship,
[Page//00:41:27] Julie Michelson: Yes.
[Page//00:41:28] Aimie Apigian, MD: but if you need to hit rock bottom, Hey, you got Julia and me as examples for you.
[Page//00:41:32] Julie Michelson: there you go. There you go. Well, and the good news is if you have already hit rock bottom and you're listening to this, it's not too late.
[Page//00:41:41] Aimie Apigian, MD: No, not at all.
[Page//00:41:42] Julie Michelson: So that's the beauty of
[Page//00:41:44] Aimie Apigian, MD: There is
[Page//00:41:45] Julie Michelson: I have so much more. I want to ask you, so I'm going to ask you if you will come back and we can do a part two.
[Page//00:41:52] Aimie Apigian, MD: Would love that Julie would love that.
[Page//00:41:53] Julie Michelson: That would be amazing because we are just about out of time.
[Page//00:41:59] And [Page//00:42:00] I'm so excited to hear how you're going to answer my final question, which is because I find that I'm always surprised what is one step that listeners can take today to start to improve their.
[Page//00:42:15] Aimie Apigian, MD: The one step that I would invite your audience to take is actually to start holding their heart.
[Page//00:42:21] Julie Michelson: Oh,
[Page//00:42:22] Aimie Apigian, MD: So you can try a different ways. You can put both hands over your heart. I even would want you to experiment and mint around with, do you like your right hand vendor or do you like your left hand and your right hand over?
[Page//00:42:37] I want you to find what feels. Better for you. There's no right way to do it. So just what feels better. And then what I do is that I will even take one hand sometimes and put it behind my back. And so then my heart has the front and the back support and that's just delicious, like talk about yumminess.
[Page//00:42:58] It's just like my heart feels [Page//00:43:00] held. It feels protected. And for me, that's such a simple. Quick easy way for me to just, again, no matter what's going on, it's just like, I've got you. I've got you. Right? Like I don't even need to talk to it. Cause sometimes when I was first starting, it was too much to talk to my
[Page//00:43:19] Julie Michelson: just was going to go there
[Page//00:43:21] Aimie Apigian, MD: So don't need to talk.
[Page//00:43:23] Julie Michelson: Sounds so simple and you can, and I can do this and tap in and it's yummy. You said, you said it it's yummy. And I see it all the time. This is one of those. You got a baby step. It, people you'd be amazed because it puts you in touch with those things that you run away from.
[Page//00:43:44] But all the really good things too, that are hiding. So I love that. See, I had no idea you were going to go there. That was awesome. Yay. Hold you. Hold your heart. Hold your heart. I'm going to play around[Page//00:44:00]
[Page//00:44:00] Aimie Apigian, MD: experiment around with how to hold your heart. Don't just hold your heart, like experiment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Page//00:44:07] Julie Michelson: And I'll invite out, I'll invite you to really drop into your heart when you're holding it and feel what that feels like. I love that. So before we wrap up, we're going to have all kinds of links in the show notes so people can find you, but for those that listen on the go, where's the best place for them to find.
[Page//00:44:28] Aimie Apigian, MD: Oh, yeah. So they can come find us over at trauma healing, accelerated.com. We've got a biology of trauma summit that we do. We've got the 21 day journey, of course. So we've got lots of things for people to learn more and jump in. If they're ready to actually put this into practice. And that would be the place to find this trauma healing accelerator.
[Page//00:44:50] Julie Michelson: Love it. Dr. Amy, thank you so much. What you have shared today is just as invaluable. And like I said, we're not [Page//00:45:00] done. We need more. We want you to come back, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[Page//00:45:05] Aimie Apigian, MD: Thank you, Julie. Thank you for what you're doing.
[Page//00:45:08] Julie Michelson: For everyone listening. Remember you can get the show notes and transcripts by visiting inspired living.show. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I will see you next week.
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My Guest For This Episode
Connect with Dr. Aimie Apigian
Dr. Aimie Apigian
Preventive and Addiction Medicine
Dr. Aimie is a Double Board-Certified Medical Physician in both Preventive and Addiction Medicine and holds Double Masters Degrees in Biochemistry and in Public Health.
She is the leading medical expert on addressing stored trauma in the body through her signature model and methodology, The Biology of Trauma™: a new lens that courageously uplevels the old methods of trauma work and medicine by reverse-engineering trauma's effects on the nervous system and body on a cellular level.
Dr. Aimie specializes in trauma, attachment and addictions after having personal experience in foster parenting, adopting and then having her own health issues that were a result of childhood and life experiences.
In addition to her medical studies that have included Functional Medicine Certification, she has sought out trauma therapy training since 2015.
She is the leading medical expert on addressing stored trauma in the body through her signature model and methodology, The Biology of Trauma™: a new lens that courageously uplevels the old methods of trauma work and medicine by reverse-engineering trauma's effects on the nervous system and body on a cellular level.
Dr. Aimie specializes in trauma, attachment and addictions after having personal experience in foster parenting, adopting and then having her own health issues that were a result of childhood and life experiences.
In addition to her medical studies that have included Functional Medicine Certification, she has sought out trauma therapy training since 2015.
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