54: Healing in Safe Relationships
With Audrey Burke, LMBT, SEP
Do you have mysterious fatigue or physical symptoms? In this episode, I talk with Audrey Burke, LMBT, SEP about the somatic impact of stress and trauma as well as:
• Connections between early life trauma, emotional dysregulation, and high sensitivity
• The different types of trauma present from birth through adulthood
• The long-term impact of adverse babyhood and childhood experiences
• How to increase resilience and begin healing through safe relationships
Audrey is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, massage therapist and Transforming Touch practitioner based in Durham, North Carolina. As a highly sensitive person herself, she discovered somatic work through her own healing journey and found that somatic support was the missing piece in her path to mysterious health symptoms and feeling at home in her body. Now, she helps other highly sensitive people heal from shock trauma, developmental trauma, chronic stress, and nervous system dysregulation, supporting them in feeling safer in themselves and the world.
Keep in touch with Audrey:
• Website: http://www.restorativepresence.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somaticswithaudrey
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@somaticswithaudrey
Resources Mentioned:
• Somatic Healing Guide: https://www.restorativepresence.com
• Book a Session with Audrey: https://calendly.com/restorativepresence-1/
• Find a Local Touch Practitioner: https://coregulatingtouch.com
Thanks for listening!
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This episode is for educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for treatment with a mental health or medical professional. Some links are affiliate links. You are under no obligation to purchase any book, product or service. I am not responsible for the quality or satisfaction of any purchase.
Episode Transcript
Audrey Burke: 0:32
When these traumas happen in a relationship. They really are best healed through a relationship, when we're healing relational wounds, especially if you didn't get the attunement you needed. It's about having reparative experiences Now. As an adult, working with a practitioner is super, super important for these early wounds. So often people with developmental trauma have been doing it all by themselves for a really long time.
April Snow: 1:08
Welcome to Sensitive Stories, the podcast for the people who live with hearts and eyes wide open. I'm your host, psychotherapist and author, april Snow. I invite you to join me as I deep dive into rich conversations with fellow highly sensitive people that will inspire you to live a more fulfilling life as an HSP without all the overwhelm. In this episode, I talk with Audrey Berg about the connection between early life trauma, emotional dysregulation and high sensitivity, as well as how to start the healing process at any age. Audrey is a somatic experiencing practitioner, massage therapist and transforming touch practitioner based in Durham, north Carolina. As a highly sensitive person herself, she discovered somatic work through her own healing journey and found that somatic support was a missing piece in her path to mysterious health symptoms and feeling at home in her body.
April Snow: 2:06
Now she helps other HSPs heal from shock, trauma, developmental trauma, chronic stress and nervous system dysregulation, supporting them in feeling safer in themselves and the world For more HSP resources and to see behind the scenes video from the podcast, join me on Instagram, tiktok or YouTube at Sensitive Strengths or sign up for my email list. Links are in the show notes and at sensitivestoriescom. And just a reminder that this episode is for educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for treatment with a mental health or medical professional. Let's dive in. Hi Audrey, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today.
Audrey Burke: 3:07
Yeah, I'm really excited to be here.
April Snow: 3:09
Thanks for having me, yeah of course, it's so lovely to connect in person, real time. I do want to start off by asking you about your HSP discovery story. If you remember how or when you realized that you're highly sensitive.
Audrey Burke: 3:22
Yeah, I love reflecting on this story and like continuing to reflect on it. So I didn't realize I was an HSP until I was about 34 years old and it was during a time where I was feeling really overwhelmed. I had roommates and I would look at my roommates and be like why do they all seem okay and I'm like overwhelmed all the time. You know, my roommates were really comfortable with like having people sleep over and like having events at the house and I like that to some degree. But I was like reaching my thresholds, yes, and it was even there was some traffic noise by where we live and it was like really bothering me and they all seemed fine and I was like why, how am I different? Like what's going on here? And then there were a couple events. Right after that one, I had a doctor's appointment with an integrative doctor and when I went in he was asking me about stress in my life and I was like well, you know, I'm living with roommates.
Audrey Burke: 4:21
I just feel overwhelmed all the time and I don't even know why this word came out of my mouth. But I just said I'm starting to realize I'm a really sensitive person. And he looked at me and was like well, I could have told you that. Okay, so you know, we had a conversation about it and it just really blew my mind that, you know, here I am 34 years old and no one had ever pointed that out to me before. And then, shortly after that, I was looking for a new roommate or just like a new living situation, and I met one woman who was really lovely, like, lived in a quiet town like 30 minutes outside of the city where I lived in, and she fed me this like nourishing dinner and had like a cute cat, I mean the whole environment was like perfect.
Audrey Burke: 5:09
And I was explaining to her why I was looking for a new place to live and she was like, oh, you might be a highly sensitive person, like I am one too. And then she gave me the book. I was like here you go, just keep it.
April Snow: 5:23
Isn't that the way it happens? Someone you meet by chance and they change your whole life. Here's the book. Yeah, isn't it amazing? And you know you're saying how no one ever told me I was sensitive. And and we don't realize, because this is the only experience we know, this is the only body we've lived in. Then you start looking outside of yourself and realizing oh, something's different about me. Why am I not reacting the same way around life that my roommates do?
Audrey Burke: 5:55
Yeah, and I think the confusing thing was like some highly sensitive people when they're younger here often like, oh, you're too sensitive, but I never heard that. So like the word sensitive was nowhere in my consciousness, like I actually thought I was pretty tough, like, oh, I'm tough, I can handle all this stuff. So I wasn't someone who was told I was sensitive from a young age.
April Snow: 6:17
It's funny because when I reflect back as well I don't remember hearing that but I think a lot of times you just you show up the way you need to, Yep Right. And now, as you're saying, I'm wondering like, oh, maybe we feel like we have to be so tough because things are impacting us more and other people don't have to be so tough to get through the same experiences. Yeah, it's amazing how sometimes we don't know until much later.
April Snow: 6:44
I've met folks who didn't discover it until their fifties or sixties, or seventies even, and it's like, wow, I had no idea.
Audrey Burke: 6:52
Yeah, this was a thing, it's just really incredible, yeah, and just hearing that term really like changed my sense of self, cause, like I always knew I was kind of different, but having the words to put to it, and now also I felt like I had permission to not keep up with everyone else, or like permission to stay in, or permission to not have roommates or like whatever the thing I was like oh these needs are totally valid, you know.
April Snow: 7:16
Exactly right. Having that framework really helps a lot. Puts things in perspective like oh okay, I'm different and now I need to take care of that difference. It's not a negative, it's just I need something a little different. That's okay. Yeah, I love that. So you mentioned, you know, not growing up hearing you were sensitive or maybe even considering that for yourself but I'm wondering were there early influences that shaped your sensitivity or your nervous system?
Audrey Burke: 7:44
Oh yeah, so I am a somatic experiencing practitioner, so I very much work in the realm of trauma and the interesting thing is there's some symptoms of PTSD, or nervous system dysregulation, that look very similar to some of the traits of being a highly sensitive person. So for a bit there was that question of like am I really a highly sensitive person? Or like, am I just dysregulated or am I just traumatized? And kind of what I've come to realize is like I do feel in my bones I'm a highly sensitive person, like this is the way I was born. When I meet other highly sensitive people like you or some of the kind of spokespeople for HSPs, like Elaine Aron or Judith Orloff, I'm just like I feel like we are, we belong together, there's a kinship. There's a kinship.
Audrey Burke: 8:32
But then on top of that I do have various kinds of trauma that I think have added to. I don't even like using the word sensitivity now, because I've reclaimed the word sensitivity but has made me like, maybe narrowed my window of tolerance or led me to come overwhelmed more quickly. I also was never someone who considered myself as having trauma, even though, like I clearly had some traumatic events. I didn't really present the way I thought someone with trauma would present. So I just assumed like, oh, I'm tough, I'm resilient, like those things didn't affect me. But as I've gotten into the world of somatic experiencing, I've learned about all the different kinds of trauma and also how they don't always present the way you think it might look.
April Snow: 9:22
Yeah, it's true, you know a lot of times as sensitive people we are experiencing maybe little T traumas at a big level, or even big T traumas on a different scale, so our experiences don't always match up what we expect. I'm wondering if you're open to sharing what you thought someone who's been through trauma should look like, just for context.
Audrey Burke: 9:47
Yeah Well, I definitely thought of like war veterans, like someone who had like shell shock, but I think I had an image of someone who wasn't very high functioning, like someone who had a hard time leaving the house or a hard time like holding down a job, and I was actually like over functioning. I was like an overachiever, but in my day to day life I was very high functioning. The funny thing is, looking back, there actually were periods where it was overwhelming to go outside, but somehow I just still didn't identify with the word like traumatized. Like when I was in the yoga world and there'd be trauma, sensitive yoga. I was like, oh, that's not for me, that's for other people.
April Snow: 10:28
Right when we don't fit into the box, and I think a lot of HSPs relate to this. Like we, sometimes we don't feel like we fit into the HSP box, but we also might not fit into the traumatic experiences box. And I want to get more into your specific specialty. But before we do that, I'm just thinking about what the impact of that is, of not being able to realize what you've been through. You know, to say, oh, I have had these experiences, it has impacted me, just not in the way that I expected, because I'm also an over-functioner. So that's the direction I went to and I was like, oh, I'm Brazilian, I'm so tough and I'm, you know, I'm not so sensitive. But then realizing, yes, that is true, and kind of start to unpack the impacts of those early experiences, but, yeah, is it important to be able to recognize, oh, this is trauma, this is what I was experiencing.
Audrey Burke: 11:24
Yeah, in some ways I don't love the word trauma in general because I think it's like such a big word Some people over-identify with it.
Audrey Burke: 11:32
Some people under-identify with it, but really what it is is just like nervous system imprints. Yes, great, under identify with it, but really what it is is just like nervous system imprints and, yes, great. You know, I think re rewording it helps people relate to it maybe a little bit more, but I do think it's important. I think a lot of people downplay what they've been through because they're like oh, other people have it worse. Yes, but your nervous system isn't so much focused on what other people have been through. It's on, like, what your body's experienced. And even if other people have maybe had it worse, like your body, processing what it's been through is still really important. And another thing that I probably did in my own journey was there's probably times where I was overriding my capacity, like putting myself in situations that were maybe really outside my window of tolerance, but I'm just like telling myself I can handle it, when maybe I could have backed off and that would have been better for me.
April Snow: 12:29
I feel like that's a common experience for us as sensitive people needing to push beyond our limits. Are you open to sharing an example of what you mean by? I'm pushing myself outside of my window of tolerance for folks who don't know what that means?
Audrey Burke: 12:42
Oh yeah, yeah, a clear time in my life I remember well. An important part of my story is I did have what I call a nervous system like breakdown about 11 years ago when I was living in Bologna, italy, and then I came back to the US because I wanted to be around like practitioners who spoke English and I landed in San Francisco where my aunt lived, and San Francisco is still not the ideal environment for me to be reducing the amount of stimulation on my system. But I was really into yoga and I'm like I'm a super yogi, like I can handle anything, but I would find myself inside her apartment where you could hear buses and cars and I would have to wear headsets all the time, listening to like music therapy. And I still like had to get a job. I think at the time I was nannying but I'd have to like go out onto the streets and like find my way to these jobs on my iPhone and some of it was. I just had to do it out of necessity.
Audrey Burke: 13:42
But basically, our window of tolerance is the amount of stimulation we can handle without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. And I think, as highly sensitive people, our window like because we're taking in so much more. Not necessarily that our window of tolerance is smaller, but we're taking in so much more, we're filling it. Window of tolerance is smaller, but we're taking in so much more.
April Snow: 14:01
We're filling it up quicker.
Audrey Burke: 14:02
We're filling it up quicker, and so we reach that point of overwhelm faster. But then, if you've experienced trauma in your life, that window of tolerance starts shrinking, and so then you're hitting that point of overwhelm as well.
April Snow: 14:17
Yeah, that's really helpful visual for me to think of and I like that distinction. It's not that we have a smaller window of tolerance, innately as sensitive people, it's just we're filling up that bucket quicker so we reach overwhelm more easily. Yeah, so let's talk about the shrinking. So okay, just as a sensitive person, my window of tolerance is the same size, same capacity as another person. But if I've had a sensitive person, my window of tolerance is the same size, same capacity as another person. But if I've had a traumatic experience, then it gets smaller. I'm hitting overwhelm faster. What could contribute to that? Because we talked about that shell shock kind of the stereotype of trauma which I also held for a long time, like oh, it's war, it's a car accident, it's something more extreme. But are there other types of trauma that could shrink our window that we may not think about or identify with?
Audrey Burke: 15:09
Yeah, so I've learned there's all different kinds of trauma and I can check off a lot of the boxes. There is even starting with like ancestral trauma. So some people will say that what you're like two generations before you experienced is also affecting your nervous system. So if your grandparents were in like the Holocaust, like when you're born, your system might already be more sensitive to certain things or have less resiliency to stress to certain things or have less resiliency to stress. Also, events around your birth, even while you're in your mother's womb those things can affect your nervous system. A big piece of the work I do is around that really early developmental trauma, like things that happen in the first three years of your life, and that's particularly important because that is when your nervous system and your brain and your immune system and all of these things are forming, and so it can. What we often see is that people who had ruptures in those earliest years of their life aren't getting like a solid foundation of their nervous system to begin with.
April Snow: 16:15
Right, yeah, so you're not on steady ground, so your window of tolerance might be immediately smaller, potentially, and I think it's an important reminder that we are impacted by the nervous systems of generations before us, because, let's say, you're inside of your mother's womb, you're taking on her nervous system, but then your mother was impacted by your grandmother and so on, and just then, how the interactions, there's so much shaping that happens even before you're born, exactly, yeah, yeah. I want to see if you have anything else to share before I ask you another question about this.
Audrey Burke: 16:56
Yeah, I was just kind of soaking in what you just said of yeah, another question about this. Yeah, I was just kind of soaking in what you just said of, yeah, even just the stuff from generations prior. But then I was also thinking about as your parents are raising you. It's through their nervous systems that your systems learning how to regulate. So we co regulate before we can self regulate. And so if your parents never had experiences of really attuned co regulation when they they were children, it's likely then that you're not going to get it. So it passes down that way too.
April Snow: 17:26
Right, I don't think people realize, you know, just seeing. Sometimes folks say like, oh, let your kid cry it out or they'll take care of themselves. I'm like no, they need your nervous system, they need to borrow your regulation or to learn how to regulate through you. I don't think a lot of folks really understand that.
Audrey Burke: 17:44
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly Exactly what you just said. Yeah, and that can cause quite a ripple effect throughout your life.
Audrey Burke: 17:51
Yeah, the image I kind of like is if those earliest years, if you're building like a house, it's like the foundation of the house. You want a strong foundation and then everything you build on top of that. You know all your brain development, the development of your personality and all of that is going to build on top of that. And then also when we experience traumas later in life, how well you respond to those traumas will be based on that kind of baseline nervous system regulation you have. I've heard a number of teachers say if you experience like shock trauma later in life and don't recover that quickly from it, it's probably because you had those earlier ruptures where if someone did have that baseline regulation, if they experienced a trauma, they might be able to like do a few somatic therapy sessions or process it with their family and kind of move through it kind of quickly. But if you had those earlier ruptures it's going to take you a lot longer to heal from those later shock traumas.
April Snow: 18:54
It makes sense. It sounds like it could be cumulative over the lifespan, yeah, and perhaps could indicate why maybe your window of tolerance seems smaller, but you can't think of a trauma you've personally experienced. It could be because you've inherited something through the lineage of your family, or there was some type of misattunement or dysregulation happening with your parent relationship or caregiver relationship. It seems like there's so many subtle or sneaky ways this could impact you.
Audrey Burke: 19:31
There's also a big category of trauma around medical trauma and so if you had hospitalizations when you were really young or even older and I think a lot of people don't think of that category as often there's also what we call social trauma, which is, you know, for any people who's part of a minority group. Whether you're a woman, probably, if you're a sensitive person, if of yeah, like gender, gender identity, if you're queer, if you're poor, because of your race, because of your religion, all of those little discriminations you experience on a daily basis lead your body to feel like there's a threat present. So social trauma is also something that maybe people don't realize, because it's not one big event, it's something really subtle that's happening over time.
April Snow: 20:23
Right where you have to learn to be hypervigilant at a certain level. Yes, that really would degrade your sense of safety over time, yes, and really shrink your window, yeah, yeah. So, talking about the different types of trauma, you mentioned birth trauma, which I love and I know this is an area you work in. I'd love to talk about that a little bit more because I don't think folks know a lot about this area, particularly because we don't remember the events. And I've heard you talk about something called adverse babyhood experiences and I've heard of ACEs adverse childhood experiences which is linked to traumas you've experienced in childhood. But I'm wondering if you could share with the babyhood pieces, yeah, if you could define that for us.
Audrey Burke: 21:08
Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. Yeah. So a lot of people are familiar with that ACE study, which is the adverse childhood experiences study, and you could go online. There's like 10 questions, but the thing about that study is that it's only that list of 10 questions and it's not all inclusive to all the kinds of trauma. I think the ACE studies for anything that happened to you before you're 18. Yeah, I believe so.
Audrey Burke: 21:31
So the adverse babyhood experiences study was a term coined by Veronique Mead.
Audrey Burke: 21:37
She is a former family physician and then later ended up becoming a somatic therapist and now she blogs on a blog called, I think it's, chronic illness and trauma studies.
Audrey Burke: 21:49
She's also recovering from chronic fatigue, but she's looked into like over a thousand different research studies on the connection between chronic illness and trauma.
Audrey Burke: 22:00
She's actually coined eight different categories of trauma, but one of them is this adverse babyhood experiences, and she's come up with a list of 10 different things that could potentially disrupt the baby's nervous system during those first three years of life.
Audrey Burke: 22:16
Yeah, and you can go to her blog to read like all the details of all the things, but it includes it actually includes any loss or trauma experienced by the mother, so that could be like anywhere in the mother's life. So if the mother experienced trauma any point in her life, like that's going to affect the baby. It also includes things like if there's a lack of support for the mother in the two years before she gets pregnant, while she's pregnant, after birth includes like complications during birth for either mother or for baby. And the thing too about these adverse babyhood experiences is like a lot of things that are normalized in our culture now are like not actually normal for the nervous system. So like now, hospital births are like very routine, c-sections are very routine and they've become normalized, but like actually for the nervous system those things are not normal.
April Snow: 23:12
No, they're very I mean, the words come into mind. It's violent, it seems. I haven't personally given birth, but just seeing friends go through the process it's very intense, it's very stressful on your body, on your nervous system. And so what you're saying is there's so many instances where this trauma could be introduced and impact the baby's nervous system long before the baby even is conceived. And then through the birthing process and into the first few years of life. Quite a large window there.
Audrey Burke: 23:44
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's been really interesting as I was going through this somatic experiencing training. We did do some sessions around pre and perinatal trauma and I remember one practice group I was in was just kind of the memory of these bright lights, like just as you're being born, being like blinded by these bright lights in a hospital. And some of my teachers have said that planned C-sections are not great for the nervous system, Emergency C-sections a little less so, because the baby actually needs some amount of stress to help build their nervous system. Like there's needs some amount of stress to help build their nervous system, Like there's a certain amount of stress that's healthy and like the baby's programmed to like want to get through the vaginal canal and like some of that struggle to get through like helps build a healthy nervous system. And so C-section babies kind of miss out on that biological process where an emergency C-section baby still has to struggle a little bit.
April Snow: 24:41
Right. So there's more of a natural process there, where you build a little bit of resilience you're wired for that instead of just all of a sudden being pulled out with no warning.
Audrey Burke: 24:54
Yep, yep. And then there's also like being put in an incubator if you have to spend time in the NICU another one of her categories just like any separation from the mother, whether right after the birth, like ideally, you want a baby to be able to like come up the mother's chest and lie on her chest for a while after birth, and that doesn't always get to happen. Another thing I might say about some of these adverse babyhood experiences and adverse childhood experiences in general is it's not always bad things that happen. Sometimes it's like the good things that didn't get to happen.
April Snow: 25:26
Oh you know, yeah, can you say more about that?
Audrey Burke: 25:29
Yeah, well because, especially when I think of developmental trauma, some people are like, well, I don't have it because, like my parents were loving and you know we had food to eat. Because, like my parents were loving and you know we had food to eat, I lived in a safe home and it's like okay, maybe nothing overtly really bad happened, like physical abuse or, you know, living in a home where there was violence, but maybe you didn't get enough of the good stuff which your system also needs to develop. Well, Right.
April Snow: 25:56
It's like. This is like my constant HSP conundrum Like it could have been better, there could have been more right. I'm always so grief stricken by that when it's like it could have been better.
April Snow: 26:10
Yeah, it's like I think a lot of times you're right that, and I see this a lot with my therapy clients like, oh, my trauma was fine. It's like, well, let's look a little closer right, Because, yes, you could have had all your physical needs provided and even some of your emotional needs, If there was a misattunement with the parent or they just didn't understand you or see you or give you kind of just what you needed. There's still a loss there.
Audrey Burke: 26:34
Yeah, yeah, and I think of that especially with highly sensitive people, because I think most of us did not get the emotional attunement that we needed. I mean, I didn't even know I was a highly sensitive person until I was 34. So I didn't even have that mirroring of like you are highly sensitive and this is how you work with it. I really don't have any memories of going to my parents with like emotions and having them help me through that experience.
April Snow: 26:58
So, even though that's not like a big T trauma, you're missing out on that attunement, which is so essential for development, and then we miss those opportunities during those developmental stages to be our full selves, to have that full understanding and twinship, and mirroring that. We really need to really feel solid in ourselves, yeah, yeah.
Audrey Burke: 27:25
Exactly, and that's something that we see so often in people with developmental traumas, having that like weak sense of self or something with their perception of self.
April Snow: 27:35
I mean this is really putting a lot of pieces together for me with a lot of common HSP struggles. Is that, you know, lacking that solid sense of confidence or kind of just trying to live the way other people live instead of saying, no, this is who I am, this is what I need, and feeling really solid and certain in that, yeah, yeah.
Audrey Burke: 27:57
I see that very often as well. Yeah, Now one thing.
Audrey Burke: 28:01
I do want to give a little disclaimer because I don't want people to think like if they had one of these adverse babyhood experiences, that they're like doomed for life. Yes, yeah, just because you had one of these doesn't necessarily mean it traumatized you In some ways. It can be like a little bit random where in a family you have one kid who is traumatized in like a family system, and another is completely fine. So just because you've had one of these experiences doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get chronic illness, right, right, good to clarify that, yeah, because I know myself I was hearing this in the past I might start to feel worried that this means I'm gonna get sick or something.
Audrey Burke: 28:42
And also what the kind of these adverse childhood lists don't list for is there could also be like positive childhood experiences that serve as antidotes to this stuff. So if you do have positive experiences in your childhood, it helps you be more resilient. So even if you've had some of these experiences, you can overcome them. I mean children, really what they need is like at least one adult who like really loves them and really supports them, and it might not be a parent, it could be a teacher at school or a grandparent or a friend's parent, and so just want to give that little disclaimer.
April Snow: 29:19
Yeah, it's not an automatic sentence, right? So you're saying you know there's experiences during early childhood or during adolescence that can counteract those traumatic babyhood experiences? Yeah, what if, though, we're now in adults and we didn't necessarily get that in childhood? Is there anything we can do now on our own?
Audrey Burke: 29:45
Yeah, well, so those last words I just like my attention on your own. That's the tricky part, because when these traumas happen in a relationship, they really are best healed through a relationship. Traumas happen in a relationship, they really are best healed through a relationship. And I so often people asking for, like I want to learn some somatic experiencing, like give me exercises, and I'm like this isn't really something you do at home by yourself, right?
Audrey Burke: 30:08
I mean there are some practices that are helpful, but when we're healing these relational wounds and like, especially around the attunement, if you didn't get the attunement you needed, it's about having reparative experiences, like receiving attunement as adults to help heal some of these wounds. Or if you never received co-regulation that you needed, it's about having your system be able to receive co-regulation now as an adult. So I think working with a practitioner is super, super important for these early wounds. So often people with developmental trauma have been doing it all by themselves for a really long time.
April Snow: 30:48
Yeah, I mean, when you've been through these experiences, it seems safer to be alone because you've been hurt in relationship, yeah, yeah. But I agree with you, and I've experienced this myself, that healing does only happen in relationships, because that's where it started, and I've seen this with clients too. When we move from that solo work to that relational work, things start moving a lot faster. And you know, even doing body work and somatic work, it's so much more powerful, impactful. So how do we bridge that gap? You're saying you can work with a practitioner. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that, what that looks like.
Audrey Burke: 31:33
Yeah Well, I'm a big fan of somatic therapy. Obviously, I'm trained in somatic experiencing. There's also other kinds of trauma therapy, like sensory motor psychotherapy, but I do think when you're working with trauma, having some somatic approach, something that includes the body, is super helpful, especially for those developmental traumas that happen before the age of three, like you're not going to have conscious memories of those events. They're stored in your limbic system, which speaks the language of sensation, so those memories are stored in our body speaks the language of sensation, so those memories are stored in our body. I do think touch is a really helpful intervention for developmental trauma because, again, often touch was the missing piece of like, not having enough touch, not having enough co-regulation through touch. So you might look for a practitioner who uses touch in their practice.
Audrey Burke: 32:22
I'm a licensed massage therapist, so I touch people. There are some counselors who also use touch, but it really depends on what state they live in. Like some state boards are stricter around touch than others. So I've studied with Steven Terrell. He also co-teaches with someone named Kathy Kane. They have a website called co-regulating touchcom where you can look up all the practitioners who've trained with them. So that's a great resource. But of course, some people don't feel comfortable with touch. Maybe they have boundary violations, and so you can do this work without touch as well.
April Snow: 32:56
So you can really meet yourself where you're at. Yeah, depending on what you really need.
Audrey Burke: 33:01
And some people might need to do some work around boundaries before they're comfortable receiving touch. So they know, if I get on a massage table and there's something I don't like, I can speak up about it.
April Snow: 33:13
That does bring me to the question of when we're pursuing a practitioner that does touch. So let's say we're working with a massage therapist, because my massage therapist is trained in somatic experiencing, so I know she's working through that lens. But can I also find value in kind of a more traditional massage therapist who's maybe not looking through the somatic healing lens? Does it work either way at some level?
Audrey Burke: 33:41
I think there's definitely differences. I do think there's a lot of benefit to getting massage, but it's a little bit different when it's a somatic, experiencing practitioner who's doing touch work. There's going to be a different level of attunement and they're also like when I do the transforming touch work I do, I'm really connecting with, like the infant parts and I'm like really attuning to the body more than a massage therapist would when they're just, you know, doing manipulations to your muscles.
April Snow: 34:14
Right, yeah, I just wanted to ask that question. I can imagine if someone's just starting they might be like oh, I can go get a massage starting they might be like, oh, I can go get a massage, but there's levels.
Audrey Burke: 34:30
Yeah, I still think a massage is helpful for nervous system regulation but I don't know if it will quite heal those like relational wounds, unless it's an amazing massage therapist, right, but generally also, you know massage therapists it's a little bit tricky the scope of practice. You know they're not. It's a little bit tricky, the scope of practice. You know they're not really allowed to hold space for too much emotional experience, like they can let you have your emotion but they can't process it with you.
April Snow: 34:55
Right, right. So then you're again holding it on your own. Yeah, I mean, to me that could feel almost re-traumatizing, like here I am repeating this cycle and I'm on my own again. Potentially so helpful to have space where you can let those emotions come out however they need to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm wondering. You know you've talked about your love of somatic work and we're seeing the healing effects of it and just the transformative nature of somatic work, but I'm wondering what led you personally to doing this type of work? You've hinted at it already.
April Snow: 35:34
I'm wondering we could spend a little more time there to see how it's connected for you.
Audrey Burke: 35:41
Yeah, I'm happy to talk about my story. So, as I mentioned, I had a nervous breakdown about 11 years ago.
Audrey Burke: 35:48
I was living in Italy at the time and I'm not quite sure what like the last trigger was. I did get a bad cold. I had a really bad cough for three weeks and then it was like after that, all these somatic symptoms started, and Veronica Mead actually talks about that. Often, like before chronic illness starts, there's like one trigger and maybe you've had a lot of stuff leading up to it, but it's like one virus or something that like kicks you over into the more chronic illness. So at that time I started having more somatic symptoms that were really affecting my everyday life, like irritable bowel syndrome.
Audrey Burke: 36:25
I didn't get my period for like four years. I lost like 30 pounds and was like having a hard time putting it back on. There was a period where it was like hard to go outside in Bologna, italy, just like overwhelmed by the smells outside and the exhaust and everything. So that was what really kind of sent me on my healing path and I didn't find somatic experiencing for like five years. I tried like doctors and acupuncture and yoga and meditation retreats and all these things.
Audrey Burke: 36:54
And then I finally landed in the office of a somatic experiencing practitioner and she did do touch in her practice and it was after that first session that I just felt this huge like sigh of relief. I was like, oh yeah, this is like what I thought therapy would be and like this is what my body needs yeah, it often is that search right, trying to put the pieces together on your own, like it's overwhelming.
April Snow: 37:20
Honestly, there's so many different types of healing work out there, somatic and non-somatic, like what's going to stick, what's going to work, and five years is a long time to be searching.
Audrey Burke: 37:35
Yeah, and that was like one of the most overwhelming parts too, was like feeling like I was holding that whole process by myself, like trying different diets and trying different supplements and different doctors, and not feeling like I had someone like holding that with me Right. Yeah, it can feel really kind of scary and overwhelming.
April Snow: 37:56
You're saying something important, which is often our body will tell us what we need by sending out those symptoms, and we may not always know what it's telling us, but it's telling us something.
April Snow: 38:07
So, you might have a mysterious symptom, physical symptom or health issue. So in your process you were going in, blind, looking, searching, and I remember doing the same thing 15, 20 years ago. I'm going to the naturopath, I'm going to the acupuncturist, I'm going to the therapist, I'm doing, you know, body work, I'm getting acupressure, I'm getting colonics, so many things I've tried and then finally settled on okay, I'm doing functional medicine, I'm doing somatic work. This is what I, this is what works. But if you're, let's say, for the listener who's just starting their own process, they're having maybe some mysterious symptoms or some emotional dysregulation. Knowing what you know now, how can we start the healing process?
Audrey Burke: 38:53
knowing what I know now. Well, I think like one of the most helpful things for me was just like asking a lot of questions, like when I would go to practitioners to like even asking them like who do you recommend, rather than having to get on the computer and search for practitioners, but like asking people that you already trust. Maybe it's an acupuncturist or something like who do you recommend for therapy? Or do you know a doctor? Because they often like will be networks, so that's definitely helped.
Audrey Burke: 39:23
I think also just like trusting your gut, which I know is sometimes hard if you have not yet done somatic work, like that's like kind of this catch 22. Yeah, because I've had negative experiences with therapists before and it was like I didn't yet have the ability to be like oh, this doesn't feel good, maybe I should find a new therapist. But the best of your ability, like trust your gut and at least maybe try multiple people and that way you can compare them. Because I just went to one therapist and worked with her for two years and it probably wasn't the best fit and in hindsight I wish I had like shopped around a little bit. I didn't even know that was something people did. I just thought if I found one therapist, like all therapists were good, but they're not all good.
Audrey Burke: 40:06
And they're not all. They don't all understand high sensitivity.
April Snow: 40:09
Exactly, yeah, I mean, I think what you're saying is really important because, having done a lot of consults with people, I always encourage them take a moment. What we've talked about, check in with your gut, talk to some other people, because people don't know that they can shop around. No one tells you that and no one realizes that there are bad therapists out there. There are bad practitioners who I don't think intentionally, but they may just not be a good fit, right? Or, as you're saying, they may not understand high sensitivity and that could really turn you down the wrong path.
April Snow: 40:44
Because, then you're focusing on the wrong piece of information or you're not implementing a critical piece of the puzzle.
Audrey Burke: 40:54
Exactly.
April Snow: 40:54
Yeah, let's say you're sensitive and you do have trauma. We need to hold both of those at once, not only focus on the trauma.
Audrey Burke: 41:00
Yeah, yeah, and that brings up another good point. If you do feel like you have a history of trauma, like you'll want to interview the person, well, because there might be people who say they're like trauma informed, but it's like no, which training did you do and are you certified and how many years of experience do you have? And like you can even ask them do you have personal experience with trauma?
April Snow: 41:26
Like maybe they won't go into the whole story, but at least that way you know, like maybe they've done their own work in this field. Yes, those are great questions and I just to give people permission it's okay to ask those questions. This person is going to be holding your mental or physical health in their hands. Ask the questions, even if it has to be through an email, if you're not comfortable doing it verbally. It's okay to see if they can actually support you, if they understand you.
Audrey Burke: 41:50
Yeah, and this is where the internet comes in handy. Or even like chat GBT. You can ask chat GBT like I'm about to have a call with a new therapist, like what questions should I ask?
April Snow: 41:59
Yes, exactly, it's a great support to get you to find the right fit for what you're looking for, what you're needing. Yeah, I love that. Well, anything else here before we start to wrap up our conversation?
Audrey Burke: 42:14
Audrey.
Audrey Burke: 42:15
Well, one thing I feel like I didn't really touch on that I would like to talk about is just kind of where the root of these syndromes are from, which are often rooted in those early childhood experiences is with our nervous system.
Audrey Burke: 42:33
The like gas and brake system stop working properly. And what I mean by that is like the gas is the sympathetic part of your nervous system. It's like what mobilizes you to like get up in the morning, or like run or fight if you need to, and then the break is your parasympathetic or helping you to settle back down. And what happens with these syndromes is like the gas and brakes start not functioning optimally, so you either get stuck on on or you get stuck on off. There can also be situations where the gas and brake are on at the same time, which will look like people who are just fluctuating between those two extremes of being like in panic and then shut down. And this is where the somatic work comes in, really helpful to help get our system regulated again and to help get the gas and the brake working again.
April Snow: 43:21
That's such a good piece to know like, oh, you could be stuck in these systems and it doesn't have to be that way. Right, there can be healing work that pulls you out of that you can find more equanimity. Yeah, so love that.
Audrey Burke: 43:37
And I do think it's still important to like see some medical doctors to rule out anything that actually might be medical, like maybe you're experiencing fatigue, it's like well, it could be low vitamin D, it could be anemia, it could be it could be. So I think it's a good idea to like get checked out medically to make sure there's nothing majorly obvious going on. But I do think trying out somatic work specifically focused on like regulation, regulation, regulation Well, even if you have a medical issue, being more regulated will probably help you deal with that. And then, if it isn't a medical issue, if it's more of this syndrome that doesn't have like a medical root cause but it's more from nervous systems dysregulation, the regulation, somatic work might really help with those symptoms.
April Snow: 44:25
Because I always think about how our body only has so many ways to express itself. So it could be a nutrient deficiency, it could be a nervous system dysregulation issue. But it's good to check that out, to really sift through and see what is the problem here or the root cause, and what do I need to support myself. And oftentimes it's a multi-prong approach, but good to know, because anxiety it could be you know I need more magnesium or it could be oh, I am burnt out.
Audrey Burke: 44:57
Yeah, there's a lot of different ways to get there yeah, and I do think having that what you say multi-pronged approach is helpful, because I see people sometimes like in one camp where they're like just going the medical route and they really want like a specific diagnosis, and other people who are just in the somatic route and they're like so focused on, like you know, healing something energetically and it's like, well, maybe it's a medical issue. So I think having that multidiscipline approach is really helpful.
April Snow: 45:28
All right. It's a holistic, full body, full system approach. Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah. Thank you for that. So much good information today and you shared a lot of great resources. I'll make sure I share those in the show notes for folks, along with your website, your social media. You also have a free somatic healing guide for folks. I'll share that as well, and I just want to thank you so much for being here today, audrey. This is one of my favorite topics to talk about and I feel like you added a lot of nuance to it, so I appreciate that.
Audrey Burke: 45:57
Yeah Well, I love talking about this topic and it was a pleasure to talk to another highly sensitive person about it Same.
April Snow: 46:03
I know it adds some nuance to the conversation, which I really appreciate. And before we go, though, I know that you offer one-to-one work online for folks who maybe are ready to start working with a practitioner. Can you tell folks a little bit more about what that might look like if they were to work with you online?
Audrey Burke: 46:20
Yeah, and I do see people in person as well. I'm in Durham, durham, north Carolina. But for the online work it can look a few different ways. It really depends on the person and what their goals are. Sometimes we're doing more dialogue based work, where I might be asking them to try some different exercises so we can see how the body responds, which might be like bringing our awareness outward, looking around the room. Sometimes it was bringing our awareness inwards.
Audrey Burke: 46:48
What are we noticing in the body? We're tracking things like sensation and image and impulses the body wants to have. But then I can also do this transforming touch work online, which is a lot quieter. That work is specifically targeted towards developmental trauma, so it makes sense that there wouldn't be as many words, because just like you're working with a baby, wouldn't be? Maybe you're singing to them, but a baby is like pre cognitive, pre verbal. So with that I might be inviting the person to either imagine that I have touched on them or we might be bringing our awareness to different parts of the body. And I also do the transforming touch work online, which is more targeted towards developmental trauma. So that work is a lot quieter and you know, I'm just bringing my awareness and my intention to various points on the person's body, but the main goal of just helping them to co-regulate.
April Snow: 47:41
Beautiful, and that sounds like that could be a safe way to enter into that work, where you're then in charge of the touch for yourself.
Audrey Burke: 47:49
I love that. Yeah yeah, it depends on the person, you know what feels safest to their system. True, For some people it does. Yeah yeah absolutely Well.
April Snow: 47:59
Lots of great resources. Thank you so much, Audrey. I really appreciate it. All right, Great to meet you, April. Thanks for having me. Yes, it was fun to meet you as well. Thanks for joining me and Audrey for today's conversation. What I hope you remember is that, no matter what you've been through, you can still feel whole again by surrounding yourself with the people you feel safe with and being sure to soak up whatever positive experiences are happening around you. Find Audrey's free somatic healing guide on her website, restorativepresencecom, as well as more information on working with her one-to-one, whether it's online or in person, in North Carolina. Links are in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the Sensitive Stories podcast so you don't miss our upcoming conversations. Reviews and ratings are also helpful and appreciated For behind-the-scenes content and more HSB resources. You can sign up for my email list or follow Sensitive Strengths on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Check out the show notes or sensitivestoriescom for all the resources from today's episode. Thanks for listening.
