A New Way To Treat Trauma and Addiction, with Jan Winhall

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

When Jan Winhall landed her first job running a group for incest survivors in a psychiatric ward, she discovered something revolutionary: the young women's self-harming behaviors weren't signs of pathology – they were brilliant survival strategies orchestrated by dysregulated nervous systems. This revelation launched a 45-year journey that would transform how we understand trauma and addiction.

Today, Jan brings her Felt Sense Polyvagal Model to parents navigating the bewildering landscape of their child's substance use. Her approach flips traditional treatment on its head: rather than analyzing thoughts and willpower, she teaches us to decode the body's wisdom.

Your child's behaviors – the ones that terrify you most – might actually be their nervous system's desperate attempt to regulate between hyper-vigilance and shutdown. Jan's work reveals why true healing happens not through confrontation or consequences, but through co-regulation, physical connection, and understanding the body's protective mechanisms.

You'll learn:

• Why your child's "crazy" behaviors (cutting, bingeing, substance use) are actually sophisticated nervous system regulation strategies that shift them between states of survival

• How to become a co-regulating presence for your dysregulated child through physical touch, synchronized breathing, and embodied connection – even when they're pushing you away

• The critical difference between "bottom-up" body-based healing and traditional "top-down" cognitive approaches – and why talk therapy alone often fails with trauma and addiction

• Simple daily practices (like extending your exhale or humming) that activate your ventral vagus nerve, creating the safety your child's nervous system desperately seeks

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Janwinhall.com - Jan’s website (find a practitioner)
• Jan Winhall's YouTube channel
• Friendly Circle Berlin
• Unplugged Canada
• Arial Schwartz - Resilience Informed Therapy

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Transcript

Brenda: Thanks for sitting down with me today, this is such an honor, truly to have you here. You have such deep expertise, uh, in this field, and I'm just, I'm tickled. So thank you for joining me. 

[00:00:10] Jan: It's a pleasure. Really. It always is.

[00:00:14] Brenda: I came across you Well, because I'm, you know, a little neurotic and I'm always searching for new, interesting things. But I had Cece Sykes on, uh, talking about internal, um, family systems and she, you know, so then I follow up with people and. I came to you and I was like, oh my goodness, how have I not had you on the podcast yet? Wonderful. Because you do something a little different than what is sort of mainstream addiction treatment, which I'm always looking for, and you're the creator of the Felt Sense Polyvagal model, which is a mouthful and I'm sure scares some people off.

[00:00:54] Jan: We just call it FSPN for short. Okay. FSPM. 

Brenda: That's [00:01:00] great. I like, I like a good acronym. I used to work at Microsoft and we had like a million acronyms, so I'm very careful. 

Jan: Well, the psychotherapy field does too. I-F-S-D-B-T-C-B-T. Yeah, 

[00:01:12] Brenda: exactly. Exactly. And your, your very famous book is Treating Trauma and Addiction with the Felt Sense Polyvagal Model, a bottom up approach, which I wanna ask you about.

[00:01:23] Brenda: But then you have a new book out, 20 Body Practices for Healing Trauma and Addiction. And when I hear that, I am like. In like, get me on the phone with this person. So, um, tell us a little bit about how you got into this. I think it's helpful to have some context for how somebody comes into what they're doing and then we're gonna talk about all this good stuff.

[00:01:44] Jan: Yeah, that is an important question, I think. Um, yeah, and you know, I could answer it in many different ways depending on where I start in my life journey. Um, right, right. With, you know, family members who struggled with [00:02:00] trauma responses and addiction. Um, and then, uh, when I was just getting out, I just got out of grad school.

[00:02:10] Jan:: The first job I got was in a hospital setting, a psychiatric ward. Um, in a hospital just north of Toronto, here in a really, uh, difficult area, like lots of families with multiple needs. And, um, it was very unusual. But we, in this program, this, uh, psychiatric ward, they had a, a group for incest survivors. Wow.

[00:02:39] Brenda: And the psychiatrist in charge, 

[00:02:42] Brenda: this is your first job 

[00:02:43] Brenda: in the field. This is my first job in the field. 

[00:02:46] Brenda: Nothing like jumping into the fire. 

[00:02:48] Brenda: And so they wanted me to run this group and oh my goodness. Um, but you know, everything I've done and developed has come from [00:03:00] my experience with those young women.

[00:03:02] Brenda: Everything. And every time I talk pretty well, I talk. I start with them because they really taught me the basis of what I use now as a kind of, uh, marker grounding, yardstick, orienting kind of principle for how I'm understanding the world of trauma and addiction. And it all came from, uh, a really right away, a de pathologizing approach because.

[00:03:36] Brenda: I already was kind of like that anyway. I was a habi and I was challenging the norms and my mom was a feminist. And so I had very, I really had awareness around misogyny and I got into this hospital setting and I could not believe the way these women were being treated. It was shocking. And you know when, when [00:04:00] Judith Thurman's book came out, trauma and Recovery in the nineties.

[00:04:03] Brenda: She actually said in that book that these women are treated with contempt. And if your listeners haven't read her book, I mean honestly, the Woman is The Word Iconic is used so often now, but just an amazing woman, really a psychiatrist. Uh, lives well, she was part of the Boston Group with Bessel VanDerKolk, and.

[00:04:26] Brenda: And when she, when I read that and, and she said that, I thought, wow, I'm not crazy. This is exactly what I'm seeing is all these young women who were victims of crime Yeah. Were being labeled as having borderline personality disorder and then basically just shoved off to the side. It was like, you deal with them 'cause we don't want to.

[00:04:49] Brenda: And the good thing about that is that I was left to create my own. Spa, nobody looking over my shoulder. The bad thing was that [00:05:00] back then, 45 years ago, I mean, we didn't have proper good supervision. We didn't really talk about vicarious trauma, so we were really, you know, we were really struggling. But I used my own experience as a client.

[00:05:17] Brenda: I was lucky in adolescence, in my adolescence. Uh, really struggling with a lot of anxiety and panic. I found this amazing therapist and I used what I learned from him to really be able to just listen to what these young women were telling me and showing me through their bodies, through their self-harming behaviors that became addictive because they worked.

[00:05:49] Brenda: But how did they work? You know, it was like, how is cutting your body helping you? How do we make sense out of that? Because [00:06:00] in the traditional model, it was like they were masochistic, they were attention seeking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But when I helped them to track what was happening for them. Like, well, what happens before you?

[00:06:19] Brenda: Um, you repeat some kind of a behavior that is soothing, but also harmful, like cutting the body or binging and purging, or drinking lots of alcohol, or doing lots of drugs or engaging in unsafe sex. All of those behaviors, right? Even things like sucking on bars of soap. What was that? Wow. Well, now we, I understand it.

[00:06:42] Brenda: Yeah. What they were aware of was that before the behavior, as we slowed it down, they were in acute stress, which now we would understand as a flight fight state in the pa, in the nervous system, in our autonomic [00:07:00] nervous system. Everybody knows, you know, that flight fight place in the body. 

[00:07:05] Brenda: Mm-hmm. 

[00:07:06] Brenda: And something about the behavior.

[00:07:09] Brenda: So then we tracked, well, what happens after you do this thing? Is that they would often go to sleep or just numb out and we would, we would trace it to dissociating as we would call it now, and so it made sense that if they engaged in something that hurt them, they were also on some level receiving help by numbing the body right.

[00:07:40] Brenda: And that became the thing that I started to really track over time. And then I just found different people who I learned things from, uh, the felt sense. Part of that was through Eugene Glin, who is a brilliant philosopher and psychologist [00:08:00] who created, uh, an embodied practice called Focusing and Felt sensing.

[00:08:05] Brenda: So it was a way that I learned to help. People slowly come into their bodies because in trauma and with these young women, they, it's very unsafe to go into the body. Right. The body hurts you because it's been hurt. It's hard to be in there. And the protective feature of the body through the autonomic nervous system is to dissociate to get out of there, uh, because it's, sure.

[00:08:33] Brenda: That makes sense. Yeah. It's just too overwhelming. 

[00:08:37] Brenda: Mm. 

[00:08:37] Brenda: So first it, it was gentleman's work with felt sensing. And then I found other things, and also of course polyvagal theory, which is, um, a huge influencer now in what's happening in the trauma world. And I'm trying to make it a big influencer in the addiction world.

[00:08:59] Brenda: [00:09:00] Yes, because we don't hear about this a lot, especially in adolescent and young adult treatment. You know, we, um, I don't wanna get sidetracked there 'cause I have so many questions I wanna ask you. Let me come back to that. I'm, we're gonna come back to the a. And, and all of that. But you said something interesting about when you were working with these young women that you noticed in their body.

[00:09:24] Brenda: Mm-hmm. And I'm just curious as, because you know, people listening are parents Yeah. They're usually with their kids either living in the home Yeah. Or they see them frequently. And I wonder if you could share what, what I saw you saw? Mm-hmm. Like how, 

[00:09:39] Brenda: yeah. What I saw were bodies that were held in either.

[00:09:45] Brenda: Very constricted flight. Fight ways, right tension, a lot of tension, hyper awareness, hyper arousal, hyper sensitivity, uh, [00:10:00] exploding or terror with a lot of panic and anxiety. The body's attempt to try to, to mobilize and deal with overwhelming feelings inside. And so the body will go through the nervous system into flight fight first, uh, to try to manage and be, and get into safety.

[00:10:24] Brenda: And if that, so that looks like, like this, you know, that rabbit in the headlights and mm-hmm. And raging or just crazy kind of, um, acting out and just big feelings, you know, uh, that are really hard to contain. And in adolescence that can often look like, you know, anger, a lot of anger and rebelling and that kind of thing.

[00:10:48] Brenda: Or, 

[00:10:49] Brenda: or, right. And that's what we call it. That's what we call it. Oh, she's so rebellious, or, oh, he's so angry. And we stop there. Yeah, yeah. Right. We just [00:11:00] identify, we label it like that. The outward behavior say 

[00:11:02] Brenda: it's a problem, the rebelling behavior is a problem. Mm-hmm. And it's a defense. But what it's showing us is a nervous system that feels really unsafe.

[00:11:14] Brenda: Mm-hmm. You know, addictions don't occur when we feel safe. Who's happy and safe and addicted. You don't see that so Right. What we understand then is that addictions occur when a body is in a state of threat. Now, there's lots of reasons for that. Reasons that have nothing to do with parents this these days.

[00:11:42] Brenda: Please say that again. Yes. Reasons that often have nothing to do with good loving parents who are really struggling with a global trauma epidemic and with global addictions. Um, we were just talking before we [00:12:00] started the podcast about, I'm in Toronto and I just heard on the radio this morning. The parents have started this group called, uh, um, Canada Unplugged for their children who are between the ages of, well, up until I think 14, they said.

[00:12:20] Brenda: So they're trying to help kids to stay out of that whole world with smartphones until they're at least 15 and they're doing it through linking together so that they can support each other. So, yeah. Yes, of course addiction happens with trauma. Of course it does. And, and there are absolutely folks that are really struggling with their own as parents with addiction.

[00:12:47] Brenda: And yes, that will create a dysregulated household and just put the kids at risk. And that also isn't about blaming parents. It's a cycle of trauma that lives [00:13:00] on in our bodies and. So then that's the one state in the body. If the body can't find safety through fighting, through getting out of there, or through attacking.

[00:13:14] Brenda: Mm-hmm. Through fighting the next place, the body goes in the nervous system. And this is polyvagal theory, this is Steve Porges work is into a shutdown state that we used to call numbing, that we now know is a dissociated state in the nervous system. Of collapse. And that is a state that looks like this head down, shaming, uh, feeling bad, feeling sad.

[00:13:48] Brenda: And it's a state of immobilization in the body. You can't get the kid outta bed in the morning. I went through this Yeah, with uh, [00:14:00] my. One of my kids. Um, you're just at your wit's end. They, you can't mobilize them. What's wrong? What's going on? You've lost connection. There's no real, what we call in polyvagal theory, social engagement, because social engagement is held in the body through the face, right?

[00:14:20] Brenda: Like we smile at each other, right? We give cues of safety. When we are shut down, we don't feel safe. We feel threat. And so we are not connected to each other, and that's why, particularly in addiction treatment, it's absolutely essential that people get themselves into groups where they can connect with each other and what we call co-regulate in that nervous system.

[00:14:48] Brenda: Yeah. I know you mentioned borderline personality disorder. I know that's one that for parents is so confusing and difficult and, [00:15:00] and is are, what are you saying that sometimes just the. Uh, the natural response to this trauma can look like that, or does that develop from the trauma? I'm just trying to sort of tease out what, what might look like something versus what is something.

[00:15:18] Brenda: Yeah. If that makes sense. Well, it, um, we would say in through a polyvagal or a nervous system perspective, it's not really either. So I actually wrote about borderline personality in my, in my second book, we call it adaptations. So when you understand something through the autonomic nervous system, that's the part of the body that is concerned with our safety and survival, and those nervous system states, they're, they're unconscious, right?

[00:15:50] Brenda: We don't think, oh, everything's fine. I feel good. And then there's a loud noise and we jump. We don't consciously think, oh, I better jump. That flight [00:16:00] fight response is unconscious. So all of those responses are unconscious the way. Mm-hmm. So this becomes the way that we understand behavior, not through the diagnostic and statistical manual, the pathologizing disordered MA model.

[00:16:14] Brenda: No, I never bought that. I never bought that model. I don't think it's helpful. And when I worked in the system, I mean, it was silly. Like you'd get charts of these women that were in my group, they were all diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which basically meant, ew, who wants to treat them?

[00:16:33] Brenda: They're impossible. Yeah, they're manipulative. Yeah. They, you know, they're just acting out and trying to make your life terrible, but. What I was exposed to back then, which was a radical paradigm shift, was through the feminist therapy network, and it was women like Sandra Butler who, who said things like, when a, when a young person is coming to you and [00:17:00] behaving in these ways that were diagnosing as borderline, all they're doing is showing you what they learned to do to survive.

[00:17:09] Brenda: Hmm. 

[00:17:10] Brenda: Now again, that powerful doesn't mean it's parents' fault, right? It means that that particular person has a nervous system that is struggling to feel safe in an environment for many, many different reasons. And a lot of those reasons these days have to do with the culture that we're living in. Yeah, especially for teens.

[00:17:37] Brenda: Right. I was gonna ask you about that. I mean, look at the culture they're living in, the exposure to social media that, you know, it's, we say it's a problem, but it's a serious problem. 

[00:17:52] Brenda: Yeah. I was gonna ask you, because you've been doing this for a long time, the differences that you've seen, because [00:18:00] as a parent, I think we often hear trauma and we think quote unquote big T trauma.

[00:18:06] Brenda: We think, like you said, incest. Yes. You know, sexual abuse, uh, things like that, that a, are terrifying to think about as a parent. And there's a lot of blame and shame in that if that has happened. And at the same time, I know that that's not always true. So I'm wondering what you have seen over the course of your career that has changed.

[00:18:28] Brenda: You mentioned social media, obviously. Yeah. But what are you seeing when you're, when you're talking with people and working with people? 

[00:18:34] Brenda: Uh, one, one of the things that I think is really clear is a kind of, the world is in a different place than we've ever probably seen it because of climate change, because of.

[00:18:48] Brenda: A global trauma that's happening and that we're exposed to and we know about all around the world, and this is carried in all of our bodies. There's wars all over the world we're [00:19:00] constantly exposed to all the time. And then with COVID, of course, this was a huge thing for all of us in the world, and it brings up issues around social systems of oppression.

[00:19:17] Brenda: You know, bipoc populations, trans young people that are exposed to so much now in terms of trying to figure out their sexuality. Um, part of that is a beautiful thing that we're opening paradigms and saying, well, let's look at this in different ways. Uh, there's, there's also, you know, much more awareness now around neurodiversity.

[00:19:40] Brenda: A DD is a huge, um. Uh, area that often is, is present in addictive behaviors. So some of this is good because it's coming to the surface, um, but there's so much kind of a sense of lack of [00:20:00] really settling and feeling safe in the body. We, we have a global situation that is not safe 

[00:20:10] Brenda: and our kids are seeing it play out in real time.

[00:20:13] Brenda: On their phone. Yeah. Three inches from their face. Yes. 

[00:20:17] Brenda: Yes. And, and I don't know, I mean, in large cities anyway, like in Toronto, it's impossible to do what we did, which is to, you know, buy a house, feed your family. It's, it's just economically, culturally, it's, it's such a challenging world. In terms of also climate change is, is really like at the core of what we're struck, fires, floods, all of that is carried in our bodies.

[00:20:48] Brenda: And then the demands of parents to, for women, how do you like fulfill, how do we fulfill our own goals as mothers? [00:21:00] Like I would never have just wanted to have kids. I think it's wonderful is if that's what you do, it's remarkable. It's amazing. We need to be able to have folks who really commit themselves to, that's their meaning in life.

[00:21:13] Brenda: It's beautiful. Yeah. But for me, I had books in me. Um, yes. And so trying to figure that all out. What's happening in your relationship? Are there addictive processes going on in your relationship? What's happening in your capacity for intimacy and connection with each other as moms and dads? What's happening in terms of how we even organize the family.

[00:21:38] Brenda: Families now are like, there's so many different options for families, so it's a very challenging time in terms of everything's kind of up for grabs, paradigms are shifting, and at the same time there's also a lot of rigidity in the addiction world around what's the [00:22:00] proper kind of treatment. Like we were discussing the 12 step programs and the disease, the brain disease model, which really is, um, not the only pathway and yet there's, there's so little that's available to, to kids and to parents.

[00:22:19] Brenda: That is something other than that. 

[00:22:23] Brenda: Yes, I would love to tap into that a little bit because I do. You know, kind of scanning the environment of, of adolescent and young adult treatment specifically, I would say treatment for people, you know, up until the late twenties. Yeah. It seems to be very abstinence.

[00:22:42] Brenda: Yes, it is based, yeah. And obviously nobody wants a young person to put substances on their brain. Clearly, but I wonder if what you're talking about lends itself a little bit more to a harm reduction model versus an abstinence model, and how does this play into the whole treatment [00:23:00] world? Therapeutic world?

[00:23:02] Brenda: Yeah. All of that, all of the questions about that. Yeah. 

[00:23:05] Brenda: So we have in, in the felt sense, polyvagal model, we work with, um, uh, graphics, pictures that people can see and map out where they are in the nervous system. And also we work with what we call the four circle harm reduction practice. So this is a way, it's like a roadmap and it's very much based on harm reduction.

[00:23:28] Brenda: Because in our model we are working with the nervous system, we're working with helping people find ways to regulate and ground this, particularly the ventral branch of the nervous system. So that's the part of the body that is. The, the ventral branch is connected above the diaphragm and then up into the face.

[00:23:50] Brenda: This is the part of the body that's engaged when we feel safe, so we know that in states of addiction, we're not feeling safe, [00:24:00] and so then we are in these cycles of what we call the trauma feedback loop between flight fight, and then doing whatever you're gonna do to try to survive and then shutting down and then back again.

[00:24:16] Brenda: So we see addictions as what we call state regulation strategies to help you be able to manage either being too shut down and immobilized or too overwhelmed. That's how we understand them. That's the core of the model and okay. And so it's very helpful because when we bring in, there's a lot to say neuroplasticity.

[00:24:43] Brenda: So this is. A new way of understanding how brains develop. And it's, it, it happened in the 1990s, so the 12 step program and the brain disease model happened before that. 

[00:24:58] Brenda: Yeah. 

[00:24:58] Brenda: And so what we're [00:25:00] trying to do is to awaken people, to bring in neuroplasticity into our understanding, because now we, when we understand that brains are plastic and then they keep developing.

[00:25:13] Brenda: New, um, pathways, we can say, okay, if we can help people find specific behaviors that they can do that activate this ventral branch of the vagus nerve, uh, where we feel safe in our bodies and grounded, then folks are not gonna need to engage in addictive behaviors. But we do that through. A harm reduction model.

[00:25:41] Brenda: We go slowly over time and we teach people some of the, what are these ways? So some of those ways are things like meditation, mindfulness practices, um, breath practices, drumming, chanting, practic [00:26:00] practices that other cultures that live more in their bodies singing together have known forever. But in our white, top down Western culture, we've cut off from the body.

[00:26:14] Brenda: So then we don't understand how bodies actually work and what we need to do to heal. So we're bringing the body back in. We're saying there's specific things that we can do. So at the Polyvagal Institute, we have a, a gathering coming up at the end of October, and it's all about the vagus nerve. It's all about what are the things we can do to activate this vagus nerve?

[00:26:38] Brenda: And one of those things we're doing right now. 'cause you and I, I think, have established a sense of enough safety together, uh, that we can co-regulate our nervous systems, feel comfortable to connect with each other. Um, that's all part of activating the ventral vagus. Yeah. So when people ask me how do you keep going and [00:27:00] getting up every day and writing these books when I'm not like in my thirties anymore, like, because it feels good.

[00:27:07] Brenda: It activates my ventral Vegas, I feel connected to other people. I feel a sense of meaning in the work that I'm doing. These are all things that, uh, connect us with that social engagement system. So when our teen is sitting at the dinner table like this. Mm, we wanna do something. What can we do to make a K connect?

[00:27:31] Brenda: It's not gonna be about disciplining, right? It's gonna be about, doesn't matter, whatever's going on. At some point in the day, you've gotta put whatever that is aside and try to make a connection. And how, how do you make that connection with your kid, you know? Um, my son would like it. He, it would be okay with him if I would just touch him a little bit.

[00:27:58] Brenda: Um, [00:28:00] sometimes we would put music on in the kitchen and dance so it didn't matter if he was being a little muck other places. If we could find this place where we could be together for a part of the day or the week or the month and find that energy again. Of connecting and loving or even liking and being together.

[00:28:24] Brenda: Yeah. So other ways are, are of course being connected to your friends, to your peer group. And that's a big problem in addiction because what do you do with your peer group if you're in addiction, you're doing the thing you're addicted to with your peer group. 

[00:28:38] Brenda: Right? Big 

[00:28:39] Brenda: problem. Right? So that's why these safe houses and whatever are great ideas in a lot of ways.

[00:28:44] Brenda: And I'm not, I'm not saying that I think the 12 step program is bad. Um, I'm actually really doing a lot of work right now with a wonderful group I wanted to tell your listeners about, called Friendly Circle Berlin, uh, with Patrick mc tier where [00:29:00] we 12 step. There's a lot of folks in there that are in 12 step programs or have been in 12 step programs, and I see the wonders of that in terms of the way they're able to co-regulate with each other.

[00:29:11] Brenda: But in this particular group, friendly Circle, Berlin, they're really curious about new ways of understanding. Yeah. And so they're really loving reading my book and see sight's book and understanding, oh, how do we, how do we bring in these new, uh, kinds of knowledge about healing and not cut ourselves off from that, but be open.

[00:29:38] Brenda: And then how does that work in as a parent in how we can reach out with our kids? So maybe it's, it's helping. You know your daughter to expose her to something. Well, and as I heard on the radio today, it's like, do something active so that you're not sitting on your phone. [00:30:00] You know, go take dance lessons.

[00:30:04] Brenda: Yeah. Or, um, and if you can do it together, that's even better. Even better. 

[00:30:12] Brenda: Yeah. What I'm wondering too is I. At least I know with my son, I did get to a point where I was just so. Frustrated at not being able to understand why he was doing the things that he was doing. And I would ask him, what are you trying to numb out?

[00:30:30] Brenda: What are you trying to, what is this doing? And he didn't. Either he didn't know and couldn't articulate it or he wouldn't. Mm-hmm. And I know a lot of kids, I heard a statistic the other day that, I don't know if it's true, but somebody said that the average age that a person reveals sexual childhood sexual abuse is like.

[00:30:49] Brenda: 52, which is horrifying that somebody would carry that with them for more than half of their life. So what could a [00:31:00] parent do if a, if somebody's listening and they're like, yes, yes, yes. This makes so much sense. Right. I get it. I know my kid's been through some stuff. Mm-hmm. But, but their child is very resistant, right?

[00:31:12] Brenda: Very shut down. Not want, I don't wanna talk about this either because it, maybe I don't really understand what has happened to me. Or maybe I just am, I can't, I'm still in shutdown mode. I can't talk about it. As a parent, I guess I would love to hear like, what should we be doing and what should we not be doing to try and help?

[00:31:35] Brenda: You know, maybe soften some of that a little bit and to even be able to offer some help that doesn't sound like you're going to detox or you're going to rehab. Right. Because that's, that doesn't sound appealing to anybody, I don't think. But some of the work that you're talking about does sound a little bit more appealing.

[00:31:56] Brenda: Mm-hmm. Breath work. Mm-hmm. And mm-hmm. Drumming [00:32:00] and some meditation and stuff like that. So I guess help parents get an idea of what can we be doing if we recognize if this is like sending off all kinds of signals in somebody's head and they don't really know what to do with it. Yeah. 

[00:32:15] Brenda: Well, a couple of things.

[00:32:16] Brenda: So one thing is to be more aware of what's going on in your own body as a parent, because. It's so easy to just get to a place where we are stuck in flight fight. We're either trying to just avoid it or we're just so angry and frustrated. Right? And that's a problem. So it's finding some help for you to be able to get through blame and shame.

[00:32:52] Brenda: And find some level of safety in your own body because that impacts how you're relating to your kid [00:33:00] enormously. It's the most important thing is what state you're in, in your body. You come to your child in anger, they're gonna feel it 'cause they're gonna tense and feel how you are. And if you come to them in desperation and helplessness, which I, I mean, to understand both of those things, but it's not gonna help your kid 'cause your kid.

[00:33:19] Brenda: Actually is needing your guidance, not your helplessness and frustration. And, and that's why it's so hard 'cause we're just human too and we love our kids and we feel bad when they're not okay. And how are we gonna be okay when they're not okay? But we have to find a way to do that, which means finding some different kind of help for you that is more based in your body and your nervous system.

[00:33:45] Brenda: I really believe this is key. So. Come and find me@jenlynhall.com. We're, yeah, starting groups through my, uh, institute in, in the winter time and we're do offering free things through [00:34:00] Friendly Circle Berlin Somatic Mondays, where we're going through, Hey, I love a Somatic Monday. We're going through my book, 20 Embodied Practices.

[00:34:08] Brenda: So come and find us. Oh, um, yeah, and then. The other part of it is if you can find a place in you that can settle enough a little bit to be able to engage and to really try to listen. And I know that is so hard because when kids are shut down and they're shut down in adolescence anyway 'cause they're trying to figure out stuff without us.

[00:34:39] Brenda: So it's a double whammy. It's a very hard time. Mm-hmm. But adolescence is also an amazing time because, and we, we don't wanna forget this. We want to come together and remember, remember the great thing about your kid. Remember what did you know that your kid was good at, or loved or [00:35:00] liked? Find that again.

[00:35:03] Brenda: Help them Find them. Help them find it. Yeah, so it's not a, an easy answer, but it is really right about finding something in you that helps you to settle in yourself so that you can approach your kid without shame and blame and bring in some, some joy and hope. I mean, we have to feel hope for our children even when we don't.

[00:35:35] Brenda: Yeah, so sometimes we have to borrow hope so come and be with us. I love that. Borrow my hope. Yes, borrow our hope from the group. You know, friendly Circle. Berlin has like 300 people show up live to these things. They at tight group man, and they are, Patrick MCT is amazing and they've got all the good things about 12 Step [00:36:00] and there are lots of good things.

[00:36:03] Brenda: And they've got all the good things about what's also there, curiosity, how to be in your body, how to find hope again, how to settle in and slowly, because it's so easy to get locked into, everything becomes negative. You're just so pissed off or hopeless about your kid, or you're flying back and forth between both like they are.

[00:36:30] Brenda: Mm-hmm. That you're all locked in the trauma feedback loop in your family and you need some fresh energy coming in there from outside. Yes. So find your people. Uh, and it might be a good therapist, it might, you know, but lots of times parents have tried that. Right. And the, the therapists then, 'cause you know, a lot of people don't wanna do addiction work.

[00:36:54] Brenda: It's hard. And it's really hard when you use the disease model. 'cause then you just get into a power struggle. [00:37:00] Well, did you use this week? How did this week go? And then they're kind of like checking off the, we don't do any of that. We say, what happened this week? Oh, you struggled. You've kind of fell down there.

[00:37:12] Brenda: Well, what was going on before that? And what was, what did you feel in your body? Remember that place in your body that you can start to find where you feel safe? You know, the harm reduction model when you work somatically, when you work in the body, you don't work in a just sobriety model. So choosing sobriety is part of harm reduction.

[00:37:37] Brenda: Right, right. I think people forget that. They don't understand that. I think people forget that. I hear that a a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Well then you're just encouraging them to keep using. 

[00:37:46] Brenda: No, it's not an, it's, no. Some people would come to me and they want, they, they're absolutely clear. We, I don't wanna do this anymore and I'm not doing it anymore.

[00:37:58] Brenda: Okay. But then we gotta build what you [00:38:00] are doing. What are you gonna do if you're not doing that? And those are the, the things that activate this ventral branch of the vagus where the body feels safe and doesn't need addictions. And so those can be things like playing the piano. As one for my son. He could come into the house, you could feel the dysregulation.

[00:38:22] Brenda: He'd sit down at the piano and 10 minutes later, there he was, he emerged. Yes. And then would be the time to say, and Dylan, you know, it's not when he comes through the door and I'm upset, right. And he's up upset. So looking for the times. Looking for the things you can do, make them their favorite food.

[00:38:49] Brenda: Even if you're so upset with them, you know, would he come and see us? What do you want for dinner? Food is low if, if it comes from a family where food is low. Food can [00:39:00] also be really pro. Yeah. 

[00:39:02] Brenda: Food could be a problem too, but I get what you mean. Yes. I get what you mean for sure. One thing that I had read, I think on your website or in a one of your videos, was that you talked about how we often refer to the substance use as a maladaptive coping mechanism, and you had a different perspective on that, that I want, I'm hoping that you'll share because I think it explains a lot.

[00:39:26] Brenda: Yeah. So addictions are adaptive. Processes, adaptive behaviors in maladaptive environments. So that doesn't mean a difference. We're blaming parents. Such difference. It means that addictive behaviors are what happens in the nervous system. The nervous system goes up into threat because people don't feel safe.

[00:39:51] Brenda: Why don't they feel safe? Well, let's find out. Maybe it's 'cause your kid. Has a DD and nobody understands them and is shaming the [00:40:00] heck out of them at school or at home too. Maybe it's because I used to see a lot of kids like this that were teens that came from really loving, beautiful families, but with folks who could not relate to their kid.

[00:40:14] Brenda: They were really more conventional kinds of people, and they had a kid that was like, they had two kids that were like them. And then they have this kid. Yes. That was like where it's like, little, where'd your come from? And they loved them, but they didn't understand them. Mm-hmm. And so that child would be so confused.

[00:40:40] Brenda: It's like, I have everything. My mom and dad love me. Yeah. And even, you know, it might be like that we have money, we can go places, we can do what is wrong with me, my brother and sister. They're fine. Well. Mom and dad might need some help in really listening to who is that kid? [00:41:00] How do they tick? They don't function in the same way.

[00:41:03] Brenda: Maybe they have a kind of beautiful neurodiverse brain that isn't going to be a doctor or a lawyer. Right. And I did a lot of that work and I really enjoyed it because it was so gratifying when when parents could open and I just realized that they weren't. Giving their child what the child needed. That particular child needed to be understood and seen.

[00:41:30] Brenda: 'cause that's what we do as parents, right? We help children develop a sense of who they are, not who we want them to be, or even who we understand them to be, but who they are. Oh, you like that? Oh, tell me about that. More. Yeah, so being curious and open and listening what we call freshly without all these disorder [00:42:00] words and rebellious words and defensive words.

[00:42:03] Brenda: Just really trying to listen. What's going on for you. 

[00:42:08] Brenda: Yeah. I think we tend to listen to our kids through the lens of a diagnosis. Oh yeah. 

[00:42:15] Brenda: That's deadly. 

[00:42:17] Brenda: Which, yes, because it's like, okay, I'm hearing what you're saying, but am I really hearing it or is this this diagnosis? Yeah. Then we're that diagnosis.

[00:42:25] Brenda: Oh my God, are 

[00:42:26] Brenda: you schizophrenic or, yeah. Oh, oh my. You've got that borderline personality disorder thing that nobody wants to treat, and it's, I read about it and it's so hard to treat. Please just put all of that aside. Not that it's all garbage or anything. I mean, there are patterns of behavior. There are.

[00:42:45] Brenda: Folks that suffer with psychotic episodes, that's all true. But the most important thing in the beginning is just to try to listen without those filters and to notice, yeah, what's happening. [00:43:00] Do they, does your child feel safe? Where do they feel safe? How do they not feel safe? And they might tell you if you ask, I feel safe at home with you and dad.

[00:43:11] Brenda: I don't feel safe at school. 

[00:43:15] Brenda: School seems to be a big, big trigger problem, whatever you wanna call it. So many of our kids have the classic quote unquote, school refusal. My kid will not, yeah. Go to school. And what I, you know, I am by no means a therapist, an expert, anything but just the. Human in me says, well, what is it at school that is not safe, safe?

[00:43:41] Brenda: Or, of course that's, that's the question or not feeling right? 

[00:43:44] Brenda: Yeah. And, and it's, 

[00:43:45] Brenda: there's a lot going on there. That's all I know. Yeah. And it's, again, 

[00:43:50] Brenda: not blaming it, it's that there's so much being demanded now as educators and in, in our work now with my facilitators, we have [00:44:00] educators that are learning about the nervous system and saying, you know what the first and most important thing.

[00:44:06] Brenda: In medicine, in healthcare, in education, in whatever we do business, is that people come together and they feel safe enough to be together so that they can listen to each other without going into states of threat into flight fight, which is what the world is doing. We're in those states. Right, right, right.

[00:44:27] Brenda: So we're very, we're very concerned about that. It's like we have to make safety. The most important thing, safety is the bedrock. Safety is the North star. Yeah. And so we need to both outside feel enough of the outside and inside. 

[00:44:46] Brenda: Yeah, outside and inside, because I think, uh, sometimes as parents, we assume that inside meaning like in the home, at home with parents, well of course that would feel safe and maybe it doesn't.

[00:44:59] Brenda: Mm-hmm. [00:45:00] And, and that's a hard thing. I just recorded podcast yesterday about how it can really difficult as a parent to accept. That maybe your kid doesn't feel safe at home for some reason. 

[00:45:12] Brenda: Yeah. 

[00:45:12] Brenda: And that's very, very difficult, which is why we always recommend that parents have their own therapist. Yeah.

[00:45:18] Brenda: So that while they're trying to help their child, that they are getting the help that they need. Because this brings up all the gunk from the past. It's gonna just, it's gonna open old wounds as you start to. Go through this with your child, if you really wanna understand what's going on with them, you really have to understand what's going on with you.

[00:45:40] Brenda: Yes. Yes. And that might be very uncomfortable. Yeah. That's 

[00:45:42] Brenda: the co-regulation part. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's tough because they, the two choices either seem to be, you know, a hundred thousand dollars US a month to go to a. A, a luxury hotel with a little addiction treatment thrown in on the side? Yes.

[00:45:59] Brenda: [00:46:00] Honestly, at, at, just unbelievable. Or, you know, the, the sort of stereotype drinking coffee and styro in a church basement within 12 seven, which of course isn't gonna appeal to, to adolescents, but of course there are different groups and there are some groups that are, you know, much doing a much better job in terms of appealing to young people.

[00:46:22] Brenda: But I think. People have to find what is gonna work for you. Um, my message is we need to get into our bodies and we need to understand the nervous system because it's the key to understanding how your system is regulating your state. And those behaviors become addictive. 'cause you walk down them over and over and over again.

[00:46:46] Brenda: They literally build these pathways in the brain. And so they're hard to change, but we can. We can change them with these daily practices. Yeah. 

[00:46:58] Brenda: Yeah. And do [00:47:00] adolescents respond faster than adults? What I'm just thinking is they're younger, obviously. Maybe they don't, maybe they have a trauma, but they don't have 20 additional years of retraumatization.

[00:47:12] Brenda: So it seems to me, yeah, it's a time to catch them that maybe they could respond faster. Yes. And also 

[00:47:17] Brenda: the neural pathways haven't, you know, developed into that real stuck place in the same way they would 30 years down the road? Part of the problem, right. You know, when I would see, I would see a lot of people that, you know, were in their forties and fifties and you know, they've already had like 20 parents, 20, 30 years of addictive behaviors.

[00:47:42] Brenda: That you then have to, when you kind of come back into the world again, you, you have to deal with the wreckage that's behind you. Yeah. And you know, good people do bad things in the state of addiction, so it takes so much courage at a later [00:48:00] age because you've, you've, yeah. You've heard people along the way and yourself.

[00:48:05] Brenda: Yeah. Whereas with somebody who's 16 or 17 Yes. Prevention. We need to get those young brains and bodies and, and meet them where they are. And really all that's why it's, it's actually wonderful to do this work because it's fresh and new and exciting and it's freeing. People feel free of shame in ways that they never have in those other models 'cause it's just your body doing what it's designed to do.

[00:48:34] Brenda: A key thing here to to understand is that you cannot stay. In either of those dysregulated states, a flight fight or shutting down forever, you would die in the sympathetic flight fight. Your heart's pumping like crazy. It's way too metabolically taxing. You can't stay there, so the body naturally instinctively seeks behaviors that shut you down [00:49:00] and release endogenous opioids that numb you.

[00:49:04] Brenda: Yeah, this is clever. Yes, it hurts you. It can hurt other people, but it's helping you to survive. And bodies don't care about morality when they're about survival. They just don't. Yeah. The prefrontal cortex goes to sleep. And then in the dorsal shut down state, you can't stay there for other either because the heart rate is lower than normal and you can die there too.

[00:49:30] Brenda: So the body will instinctively find, um. High risk behaviors or drugs and alcohol that shift you back up into flight fight, like cutting the body is a perfect example, A perfect way of shifting states. 

[00:49:51] Brenda: Yeah, that makes so much sense. When you just said that. I think that's gonna be incredibly helpful for a parent who's over here scratching their head.

[00:49:57] Brenda: Like, why is my kid doing these crazy things'? They're [00:50:00] doing them. 

[00:50:00] Brenda: I wrote that, really played that out a lot in my first book, which anybody could read. I mean, it's sort of pitched for clinicians, but if you're kind of a little nerdy about the theories and getting into it, it's a, it's, it really, I just really trace that, like, that was my mystery.

[00:50:15] Brenda: It's like, what are these women doing? Oh, and with cutting, it works both ways. So for some people, if they see the blood, it shifts them up into sympathetic from dorsal, they wake up. Which they have to do. 'cause otherwise they die. And for others, when they see the blood, it, it releases these endogenous opioids that numb you and put you to sleep.

[00:50:42] Brenda: And it's the same with with fo purging and, um, and binging. It's the same mechanism. Purging And Bing also releases these state shifts in the nervous system and brings a dissociation and numbness and also wakes the body up. So when we [00:51:00] understand these crazy behaviors through that lens, they all start to make sense.

[00:51:06] Brenda: It's like my kid is just doing what any body does to keep it alive. Right, 

[00:51:13] Brenda: right. Yeah. And that's why I asked about the adaptive versus maladaptive. It's the opposite. I think it. It's the opposite. And that made a lot of sense to me. I just wanted you to talk about it. Yeah. Because obviously you say it a lot better.

[00:51:26] Brenda: Um, before I let you go, how would somebody find a therapist who works in this realm? Yeah. Who, who understands what you're talking about in, in your method? Yeah. Like how do we find somebody? So, 

[00:51:39] Brenda: um, particularly in the addiction world. Uh, through my website, jan winhall.com. We've got a okay. A listing now of the felt sense polyvagal model facilitators who are located in internationally, different parts of the world, and it's growing.

[00:51:55] Brenda: Okay. As I keep training people, that list is growing. And then, um, the other [00:52:00] thing would be if people are struggling with more around depression or anxiety, but maybe not so much they're worried about. Problematic addictive behaviors, lots of somatic therapists, um, that are you just Google somatic therapists?

[00:52:16] Brenda: They're gonna be lots of people. The other person is a friend that I just, I love her work. Ariel Schwartz. Do you know Ariel? Because you should have her on, she, I do not. And she is, um, um, uh, an educational partner with Polyvagal Institute like I am, and she is also a yoga teacher, and so she has these.

[00:52:37] Brenda: Beautiful vagal toning practices that are wonderful for parents, and they're wonderful for kids. I mean, we've talked about adolescents, but if you have little kids, start them into this process before mm-hmm. They get to this place. Have your kids doing yoga practice. Teach them breath work. Breath the breath.

[00:52:57] Brenda: Work is the, the fastest [00:53:00] way into the nervous system if you're in that sympathetic state. If you ex extenuate the exhalation breath, you activate the ventral vagus of safety. If you're in the dorsal shutdown state, if you activate the inhalation breath, you're activating sympathetic flight fight, and moving from that immobilized state up to mobilization.

[00:53:26] Brenda: Mm-hmm. So we work with this with all different dissociation, depression, anxiety. The, the borderline personality adaptation of the nervous system is, is simply an extreme, uh, dysregulation of arousal, right? Yeah. And you see it happening. You can hardly make sense out of why or how, but it is that kind of, um, extreme dysregulation.

[00:53:55] Brenda: So looking for the somatic therapist, come and check out [00:54:00] Polyvagal Institute. We, we do often these somatic practices that are free to the general public. 

[00:54:07] Brenda: Yeah. Okay. We will all be rushing there. I am sure after listening to this. Thank you John so much. I can't, I could talk for days, but I know I have to let you go.

[00:54:16] Brenda: So if you had one word of. Encouragement for parents who might be in the thick of it right now with a kid they don't understand. Yeah. What would you say to 'em? I 

[00:54:27] Brenda: would say reach out. You know, it's so easy to get stuck with your child. Reach out. I've given you some ideas. Reach out. Yeah, do them. Because you can get into a dorsal shutdown state too, of hopelessness For sure.

[00:54:42] Brenda: And sometimes we have to borrow hope from other people. Yeah. Oh, love it. Thank you so very much. That was really my pleasure. Thanks for having me.