EP #115: How Somatic Experiences Regulate The Nervous System with Ali Kates, Certified Trauma Coach

(gentle music) Welcome back to another episode of Everyday in Dorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. For those who don't know me, I am your host, Stella Stephanopoulos. And before I give the intro to the fabulous guest for this week's episode, I wanna talk a little bit about like divine timing. So the reason I bring this up is because a lot of the topics that I discuss in this podcast is around somatic experiencing. And I actually attended a panel conversation two nights ago in New York City at the 92nd Street Y. And the panel was basically on this exact topic, but the conversation was more so focused around learning how to build love within yourself. I got to hear Dr. Nicole Lepera speak about her new book called How to Be the Love You Seek. For those who are maybe more familiar with her Instagram, her username is the holistic psychologist. And I came across her stuff probably just like on my discovered page. Anyways, whoever's listening should go check out her content because it is so on the nose, like the way she describes certain experiences or feelings or just the way she shares her wisdom honestly is just so articulate and to the point, at least for me, really resonated. She takes a really unique perspective on somatic experiencing and how learning to tap into your body is a really critical practice that actually helps us learn the power of developing safety within ourselves and how that's related to regulating our nervous system and how when you actually learn how to calm yourself down and self-soothe through these various practices, these modalities, you then open up like a portal within your heart to be more open, to receive love and to give it to yourself. So that's a tangent, but what I'm trying to say here is that I went to this conversation at the 92nd Street Y two nights ago, totally on a whim. Her conversation blew me away and I feel like it's no coincidence that this week I am releasing an episode on these topics really around somatic experiencing how our body source trauma, how our body processes emotion. So finally, here is the intro that I've been trying to get to for the past two minutes. My guest for this week is Ali Kates, who is an emotional health and certified trauma coach. She talks a lot about her own personal story and battles with health issues, suffering late stage chronic Lyme disease, multiple autoimmune disorders, how she experienced certain trauma in her life and how her own lived experiences helped her to become more informed around really how our bodies are impacted by trauma, how we move through these emotions, what it's like experiencing chronic illness and how we can tap into more somatic practices to feel more in control of our lives and our emotions. I really loved getting to interview Ali. It was a lovely conversation that we had months ago and clearly it's timeless because now releasing this in November and having heard this panel discussion two nights ago, it feels like it's very full circle for me, but I hope that everyone out there listening can take away something actionable and apply it into their own lives. Anyways, I am really excited for you guys to listen to this episode. So before we dive right into it, reminder to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. - Hi, Ali. Thank you so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins. It is so great to see you. - Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I knew the minute that we started messaging on Instagram that we got connected that you just had a really inspiring story and it feels like such an honor to get to sit with you today. And it couldn't be better timing because I remember that when we initially connected, I started reading the body keep score, which for those of you who are listening and haven't heard of it or haven't read it, it's an incredible book about how our body holds on to trauma and these experiences in life that are stressful and how our body really does keep the score of these experiences that are profoundly impactful without really consciously recognizing it. And I know that through your story, you've had a very wide variety of experiences in your life that I think really resonate with a lot of the findings that this book talks about. So I'm just really thrilled to have you here. And I want to start off by giving you the opportunity to share a little bit about yourself and more particularly some of those milestone experiences that you've had that have really shaped your perspective on the premise of that book, how our body does keep the score. - Well, thanks again for having me. I'm so excited that you're reading that book because it's such a good book to read, especially if you're trying to learn about trauma and nervous system regulation and everything. It's a really heady book is what I tell people, like it's kind of dense, but it's really incredible. But my story really starts when I am 22 and my husband and I lose three people and nine and a half months. And these deaths brought up all of this suppressed trauma that I had shoved down and really disassociated from for years. And I remember just feeling so out of body and I went on this kind of healing quest and I tried everything. You know, when you're going through stuff, people were like, have you tried this? Oh my gosh, this really changed my life. And this helped. And have you tried this type of therapy? So I tried it all. I mean, I tried CBT, which is cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, hypnotherapy, neuroplasticity. It had ketamine therapy. Like I really did try all of these things. And none of them seemed to really move the needle until I found a practitioner in town that had been working with specifically war veterans for 40 years. And he was like, I've been working with PTSD for this long. And he said, you know, you're not going to believe me, but what you're experiencing is called trauma. And I was like, well, I haven't been to war and I was raped at 15, but I just dismissed it as like, oh, this is just something that happens, right? So even though we think of that as a big T trauma, I still was like, oh, this is just something that happens. So I come in, I start doing really intense trauma recovery work for about three and a half years. And it's three weeks before my husband and I get married. And I get diagnosed with late sage chronic Lyme and a whole host of autoimmune conditions. And I just crash and burn. And I knew enough about trauma at that point and how it sits in the body. That I knew that this was like a physical manifestation of my body going, you've been in fight or flight for so long that you're finally coming down from living this way. And here's all this stuff that you've been disconnecting from which are like all this autoimmune stuff that was happening that I was just ignoring really. So I sat in an IV room for nine and a half months, three to four times a week, six to eight hours a day, and it broke me. Like dark night of the soul, ego death, and I just remember thinking like I have to get all this IV room and help other people see that like, this is how trauma sits in the body and there is a way through it. So it's kind of my like readers digest version of what happened in my story. And there's a lot more to unpack there. But that's kind of what started me on this path of becoming a trauma recovery coach, becoming a somatic experience practitioner. I've been training under Peter Levine and just grateful to like be sharing this work to show people that they can heal from what's happened to them. - Thank you for being so open about that. And I want to get to somatic experiencing later, but circling back to something that you said around how you couldn't really reconcile with this idea of trauma where you mentioned that, well, I haven't been to war, but I was sexually assaulted. And this idea of like kind of putting it in the back of our brains and not even really thinking about that as trauma almost forgetting about it, quote unquote. I just think was a really interesting comment that you made because this is discussed in the body keeps the score specifically around sexual assault survivors and people who have had sexual abuse kind of like shutting that experience out of their memory. And the author talks a lot about the research that explains this phenomenon, how you know we dissurvivors can disassociate or physiologically what's happening in your brain and what's happening to your memory when you're going through such traumatic, experiences. So this relates a little bit to the concept of big T versus little T trauma. So before we even get there, can you kind of situate my listeners on this definition of trauma because I think that's such a broad spectrum. And if we can kind of ground more on what trauma is, how do we define that? Then I think it'll be helpful moving forward in our conversation. So trauma is really anything that left your nervous system in a specific fighter flight for longer than it takes to outrun a metaphorical tiger. So if you were out in the wild and you were trying to chase, or you weren't getting chased by a tiger and you didn't complete the full stress cycle, which is like at the top you get triggered, you go into fighter flight, you have a discharge and then you go into rest and digest. So if you don't complete that full stress cycle, it's going to be stored your body. And then what happens is then that's going to become either a little tear or a big tea trauma, right? Depending on the situation. So people are like, Oh, well, I've had all these little tea traumas, but my body feels really off. And I'm like, right, because if you have enough little tea traumas, they're going to sit in your body like what we classify as a big tea trauma. It's not always about trauma too, right? Like it's about like how things are sitting in your body and how your nervous system is reacting to it. So if you had a parent that you grew up that like completely just disconnected from you and abandoned you, like that is going to sit in your nervous system in a way, right? So I always tell people it's not just about the event. It's about how it left your nervous system after the said event. What would you say are some factors that influence that portion of the cycle, speaking about how it sits in your body? Because there is this misconception around like the severity of some sort of event and how that impacts you. But to your earlier point, maybe these small little tea traumas, if there's a lot of them and it accumulates over time, that might have a similar impact in your body as some big tea trauma. So what does that look like? I'm sure it's different for different people, but what are some examples that you could provide around the way in which these experiences are stored in our bodies? So the way that I like to describe it to people, and when I give this kind of for all my people out there that are like imagery, like need an image, this is how I describe it. And when I say this example, people are like, oh, I totally get it. But imagine there's like person A and person B. Okay. So person A comes from like a regulated home. They know how to move the emotional charge. They complete this full stress cycle that I just mentioned. That's person A person B comes from a home where they sweep their emotions under the rug. They don't know how to move the emotional charge out and they get kind of stuck in this space. They both witness a car accident at the same time. First and A is probably going to think about the car accident for maybe a week. They're going to use their tools. They're going to regulate their nervous system, etc. First and B is probably going to think about it for three to six months. Every time they drive past the spot, they're going to think about the person. They're going to want to call the hospital. It's going to really affect them. They're going to drive a little bit differently, right? And so when we think about trauma and how it sits in our body, it's really about like your background, how's your nervous system health. And whenever I explain that to people, like you can watch the same thing happen and have a completely different experience because of how your body is regulating the experience and how much tolerance is what we call it. You have in your nervous system. So that's like one example. And then I would say another example would just be kind of everyday things. Someone cuts you off on the freeway. Are you having a big explosion and like screaming at them? Are you like, okay, this person is having their moment and I'm just going to let them have their moment. Someone cancels on you. Someone reschedules. Somebody is taking a really long time at the grocery store and you have 15 minutes to get out before you miss the train or you miss like getting in the car or you're going to be late for dinner, whatever the thing is. Like these are all good examples of your nervous system health and how much tolerance you have. It's so funny. You mentioned an example of someone rescheduling with you or canceling. I am such a type a person where like I love everything in my calendar. I like to know what's happening the week ahead. Like I'm thinking two months out in advance and my the wheels are always spinning and I like get stressed out if someone cancels on me or needs to change a plan. And it's funny because when now I reflect on this, the stress that I experience is like, oh goodness, now I have to go and like do something else during this time. We're not going to reschedule my whole week and it like stresses me out, but then my body starts to feel more tense. So I'm putting all this attention towards the thoughts in my mind, but I'm not even thinking about how it's showing up in my body until I reflect back on it. And I think if we use my example here as like a lesson or rather just looking at this experience, I think it really does go to show that the thoughts that we have will influence like our bodily state and how we're feeling in our bodies, but we often put so much attention and emphasis on the actual thought that we're discounting the physiological changes that are occurring. And to my understanding, somatic experiencing and the field of somatic work is kind of flipping that on the reverse where it's like first tapping into your body to make better sense of what's going on up in your head. But I would love for you to offer a perspective on this and share a little bit more about that relationship and really what somatic work is. So I completely hear you and like the type A thing I'm the same way. So that has been my work, especially in my own business, is like, okay, this is breathe into this, like use your tools and regulate like if this is not going to be the end of the world, but it's it's really cool when you can like watch yourself and become aware of like, oh, this thing is like spiraling me out. So that's really cool that you like have that self-awareness. I feel like a lot of people don't have that. So, but I wouldn't expect anything less from you to be honest. Just the short time that I've met you. We're working on it. It is an interesting thing actually to feel as if you're observing yourself as a third party, which we can get to later, but just caveat. So somatic experiencing was actually started by this gentleman named Peter Levine. He wrote the book, Waking the Tiger, and what Peter Levine brought to trauma recovery is this stress cycle that I had mentioned before. And he specifically studied animals out in the wild and he looked at prey in particular. And he was like, how come they do not get traumatized? How come they are not in a place of fight or fight all the time? And what he saw in his research in his study is that they complete a full stress cycle. So once again, imagery here. Let's pretend you're a bunny rabbit out on the wild and you're like munching along on some grass and a coyote is kind of sneaking up on you and the coyote like breaks a branch. So you hear it. So you turn. So this is your trigger at the top of the circle, right? You run because you're running for your life. This is the fight or fight. And then the bunny rabbit runs in its finally in a space where it can feel safe and it can discharge. Then it goes to the bottom and it discharges in different methods. Right? It might yell. It might shake. It might like have different ways that it's discharging. Okay? Then it goes into rest and digest. So we heal in parasympathetic, which is like the hot topic right now. Like your sympathetic, your parasympathetic, but I'm going to get a little heady here. If you go too low into your parasympathetic, that's where depression happens. So people are like, I'm just going to be in my parasympathetic. And I'm like, well, learn more about what's happening here. But I digress. That's a whole other podcast episode. But so essentially you go into rest and digest. Okay? Most of us, this is what Peter Levine found, get stuck from getting triggered, fight or flight triggered, fight or flight. When this is happening, when you're going back from being triggered and fight or flight, you're building this emotional charge in your body. And that charge doesn't just go away because you're never going to this place of actually discharging it. So then that charge is getting stored in your body and it's manifesting, right? In different ways, in autoimmune and disease and cancer, etc. And so what he brought to this space is actually helping people complete this full cycle through somatic experiencing. So now when we talk about somatics, there's like this is kind of like the hot topic right now is like somatics, right? And so much just really means body. So people will kind of throw this term out like, oh, somatics, somatics. And it's gotten very different language around it. But the place that I come from is somatic experiencing through Peter Levine, but somatics is really just the body. So people will talk about different exercises that you can use to help tap into your body. What are some examples of those exercises? I mean, obviously, I'm a yoga instructor. So I do feel a bit familiar with this concept of being present in your body through movement in particular, but I'd love to hear some other examples of somatic experiencing and specifically what you can do if you don't feel like you need to be in trauma recovery, but more broadly, just learning how to regulate your nervous system through somatic experiencing. So somatic experiencing is really done like the core of somatic experiencing like Peter Levine's work is done with a practitioner. So there are tools that you can use when we talk about somatic experiencing. It's done with a practitioner so they can help guide you back and forth between what's called like the trauma vortex and then like a safe space in your body. So like the way that I talk about somatic experiencing is it's almost like we're taking like digestive enzymes to emotional pain, right? Whenever I talk about this with a podcaster and then I'm like, hey, do you want like a free session? And then we do a session and then they're like, oh my gosh, I get it now. It's like really hard to like put into terms about like what's going on. So that's somatic experiencing is like you have to experience it with a practitioner, but essentially you're helping your body actually like digest these like slowly digest these emotions that have been stored in your body for a long time. So that's like one thing that I use in my coaching practice, but when we talk about somatics, like there are different tools to help you get back in your body and I always tell people like it's about just really figuring out what works for you, right? Because like for me, if I do meditation and then I tell you Stella do meditation and you just associate, then that's not going to help you get in your body, right? But anything that helps you get in your body, if that's yoga, if that's running, if that's walking, if that's having a pressure point, like this is always a good one in between like your thumb and your forefinger, having a pressure point, right? When you are out and about in your feeling frazzled, maybe you live in a big city like taking literally 15 seconds and stopping your body and looking around your space. So this is called scanning. We use this technique with clients, but you just look around and you look at everything that you're seeing. So like I see my waterloo, I see the door, I see my bag, and then you come back through center and then you look all the way to the left. What that does is it tells your body you're not being chased by a tiger. Because when you get in fighter flight mode, you're just looking like this. So when you're not in fighter flight mode, you have to signal your body, okay, you can actually take a minute to look around. I don't know if you've had that experience where you're like, oh my gosh, my cup of waters right here. Like, and you have a moment. Yes, I think those types of practices are super helpful. For me specifically, I've recently gotten into ice baths and I found that the practice of cold exposure has been so tremendously helpful in learning to approach every stressful situation in my life with 10% more ease. Rather than, oh my god, I need to fix this now or going into that immediate spiral of feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Now, even just giving myself 10 more seconds to process and slow down has helped me be more gentle with my approach on how to deal with stressful situations. And for some reason, it's ice that's been helpful. Yeah, I mean cold exposures an interesting one, right? Because if you have someone that already has autoimmune or something going on health wise and they're already struggling with like regulating their hormones and their already in fighter flight, like cold exposure is to help you break out of your head and get into your body and like test fighter flight, right? So it's helping you work with this fighter flight experience and response. And so that's why whenever people are like, oh, I'm just going to do like a cold shower and then they're kind of like spitting out and like, oh, maybe that's because you didn't have enough tolerance in your nervous system to actually experience the cold. But I love that it's working for you. Yeah, I thought that's a good point that you bring up. In my own experience, I think it's similar to when I was doing athletics, testing my boundaries, being able to do challenging things and feel really accomplished after it. I think that's what's been super beneficial. And specific to cold, when you're in an ice bath, I feel my body kind of freeze. It's like such a shock to the system. It's an induced shock to the system. But then I try to just like forget about it and come back to my breathing. And this is going to sound cheesy, but I try to focus on this inner warmth in my body. And I recognize that I could be sitting in this freezing cold ice bath. But if I visualize that I'm on a tropical island and I'm under the sun and I'm experiencing this sense of warmth, I start to feel it within myself. And there's kind of a pleasure in like the numbing of the senses, not to sound like email about it or anything, but in a way, it feels good to desensitize in that way. Because then it kind of quies out everything else. It's like a form of sensory deprivation for three to five minutes. Can I ask a couple questions about it? You said you played sports. Yes, I was on a rowing team in high school. Okay, so like very intense. Okay. And then how long have you been doing the cold plunge for on and off since November. So it's been almost a year, but cumulatively like I've maybe done it eight, like I haven't done it consistently that often. Okay. And how do you feel after it? I feel refreshed. Okay, this is what's interesting is like my take on it initially. If you want it. Yeah. Is that I've had this with people that have been really intense in sports, whether it's like pro or semi pro or played really intense sports in high school is like there's is a adrenaline hit that you guys need that it's hard to find when you're not playing sports. So it's interesting how like the cold plunge is giving you that kind of release. If we go back to the circle, you're getting that release from the cold plunge is what it sounds like. Yeah, because the first time I did it, the first minute or so was so difficult like I had to get out. Obviously it was the first time, but as I was able to test my boundaries, I was able to find peace. Like I genuinely was able to sit there and not feel bothered by the discomfort. I was able to feel like I found I don't know, like some sense of inner quiet in me. That was like the peaceful part of it. But going back to sports, when you're doing something that's so physically intense on your body, that brings your body into this fight or flight all the time, I think. Well, and there's a level of like disassociation there that like has to happen. Like you have to disassociate from your body to be in that cold of water. Because if you were really feeling everything, you'd be like, holy crap, get me the F out. So there's a level of that, right? Which I think when we talk about disassociation, everyone's like, that's bad, you need to not do that. But there is like a healthy level of disassociation to survive. So I feel like as athletes too, it's like when things are painful and you have to keep on pushing or you have to keep on rowing for like the last two minutes and your body wants to give up. Like you have to let go of your body and be like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this, right? You have to push through and kind of disregard the pain that your body is like, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Like, stop, stop pushing. Right? So it's fascinating. I mean, cold plunging is I'm curious how the research comes out in like 10 years, like where we think about it in 10 years because there's some really incredible benefits to it. Absolutely. And a lot of the times that I've done it, we've started with a breath work session for 10 to 20 minutes, which calms your body into that parasympathetic state. So when you pair breathing with the ice, the breathing before primes you to be able to do that once you're in the cold. And so I think it kind of counter-balances and allows me in particular from my own lived experience to disassociate from that painful sensation when you're in the ice. But to your point earlier, I think it is about what works for you. And I think that's the beauty of navigating this more spiritual journey with regards to health and wellness because something that I've always advocated for on the show and have come to learn as I've done interview after interview is that health is incredibly nuanced. I mean, even as we're talking now about how your trauma also then manifests at an chronic illness in your body, like, that seems kind of invisible and not tangible and hard to understand. But it's so true. And we see this time and time again. But this idea that health is fluctuating and nuanced and it's so important and crucial to find the strategies that work for you. I think is a message that needs to be constantly reiterated because I feel as if the media and certain news outlets and journalism and the rise of influencing and whatnot go on and on is still depicting this picture around health being a very one-sided perspective. And I think if it's pressure on a lot of people to feel as if they need to do a million different things to support their well-being. But in my perspective, I think it's really about sticking to one or two things that work for you and being really consistent with that and doing things that actually bring you joy because then you're going to be more likely to have this intrinsic motivation to keep doing that. And then the more you do it, the more it'll hopefully help you. So that's just my two cents on it. But really interesting to hear you say that it's important to just find what works for you and stick with that. That's my message all the time. And that's why I have different modalities that I use in my coaching practice because people will come in and be like they really need to move emotional charge out and they cannot stand to be in their body for like five seconds. But they have a ton of anger, right? So then we're doing like a different type of technique. We're doing more body like physical releasing the anger by like screaming and punching and yelling not me. But like we're using different types of modalities in that way like my official release, etc. So yeah, I mean, I always say to people is like these all sound great when it's really about finding what works for you. Like I said earlier, like doing meditation might work really well for you. But it might disassociate me or vice versa. And it's just about trying them on and being like, okay, I'm going to consistently work with this modality. And then if it doesn't work, then I'm going to move on to the next. That's a good point. And I think when we also are talking about somatic experiencing in general, and of course the mind body connection, we can't discount the experience of processing our emotions and the fact that emotions are super nuanced and complex as well. I do believe oftentimes one emotion tends to overlap with maybe a conflicting one. Happiness and sadness can coexist together, anger and disbelief together, joy and grief together. Think about nostalgia. There's a little bit of happiness. There's a little bit of sadness. How do you advise your clients when they're going through this journey of trying to uncode or better understand these seemingly conflicting emotions that are coexisting in their body at the same time? Just the first thing is about awareness. Like I think most people don't even want to say that they're sad or that they're angry because they've been taught that these things are not healthy or good emotions. So they'll come in and be like, I'm really great today. And I'm like, are you? Like it's okay if you're not, they're like, like actually I'm not okay. And I'm like, it's so like they might have a really great week and have really exciting things happen in their life. And then they come in. They're like, I'm just not okay, even though I'm having sadness. And often when we talk about it specifically in trauma recovery, these like glimmers of hope that you have, right? Like you have triggers and then you have glimmers and glimmers are like these moments of like, oh my gosh, can life really be different? Do I not have to be this upset about things all the time? Right? And you can have both of these. You can hold both of these. And so that's like the work with clients is to actually have them see like, can you actually not know how life's going to turn out and also hold that you have a plan? Like how does it feel to hold both of these things in your body? They'll be like, I don't know, I want to throw them both away. way I just want one. And I'm like, great, let's work with that. Like, how does it actually feel to hold both of these? And so it's really about just working with their tolerance and their nervous system and helping them see within themselves that they can hold both, that they can hold sadness and joy that they can hold grief and excitement. Right? So yeah, I mean, it's really just about helping them have that tolerance to be like, okay, guys, like actually this is exciting. And I get excited about as a coach because I'm like, this is the money right here is like having that feeling in your body that you're like, okay, sad about this thing, but also I'm really excited about this. And I don't have to be one or the other because emotions are energy and motion. And we often want to just be happy or excited or I don't know the good one, like the in quote, good ones that we deem good, right? But when you can really come to understand like, okay, sadness is like actually a really healthy emotion. Anger is a really healthy emotion. Healthy aggression is survival. And it's often not talked about because especially with women and females, it's like shove that down and put that away and don't have anger and it's not healthy. So yeah, I mean, it's about working with the tolerance of how much they can hold emotions or energy and motion. Everyone needs to go back and listen to what you just said in the past four or five seconds. I have been thinking a lot about this recently. How to conflicting truths can exist at once, how to make peace with that, how to reconcile that emotionally, physically and whatnot. And I think that's just something we need to constantly remind ourselves because when we feel such an intense emotion, it's easy to feel stuck in that. It's easy to feel like it's permanent and it's easy to feel like that is all encompassing and to let things outside of you that's not in your control, have so much power over your mood, over your state. We'll shift that energy, like the energetic frequency it which you operate, which I believe is then a cascade of effects, which is going to impact how you view the world around you, how you view yourself in the world, how you view your relationships and then the way in which you perceive these things that you can't control is going to dictate the behavior that you exhibit towards them. And then it's the cyclical, like feedback loop. So it's really easy to cascade down that negative spiral, but it's hard. And I think rewarding to put in that work to intervene quicker when you're noticing that you're kind of going in this spiral to redirect the thoughts, to redirect the experience and the energy. I'm into something that's going to serve you better in the long term. So I love that you mentioned that. I think that's a really key takeaway from what we've been talking about so far. So thank you for sharing that. I want to switch gears a little bit and go back to what we were speaking about earlier around this mind body connection and how illness can be manifested from traumatic experiences. So you mentioned that you've dealt with autoimmune issues, chronic illness. That's a really challenging experience to have in life, especially if it's chronic. And I believe that mindset plays a big role in the healing journey. So I want to hear a little bit more about how you maintained a positive attitude when you were going through so many different rounds of treatment. I can imagine that feeling really defeating going through so many alternative types of treatments and methods and whatnot. How did you focus on that North Star and learn how to internally regulate? I'm sure the wide variety of emotions that you were experiencing. Yeah, you know, like my actual health journey started when I was 13 and I had gained like 30 pounds and two and a half months. And that was when I was actually bit by a tick and had acute Lyme disease, but they missed diagnosed it as thyroid as a hypothyroidism. So from that kind of point, I just remember going back and having doctors say like you should be feeling better, you should be feeling better and I never felt better. So that's where a lot of the disassociation came from is like just being like, okay, my body's supposed to be feeling better. So I'm just going to disconnect from it. Right. And then fast forward getting diagnosed with late stage Lyme and you know, five other autoimmune conditions, like I was broken, like literally spiritually, emotionally, mentally. So when you're asked, like, how did you keep a positive mindset? Like I didn't at first. At first, it was a lot of grief and sorrow and pain and thank goodness that I had some really incredible mentors and especially my trauma recovery coach that was helping me. But there was just a moment where I had had the beginning of sepsis, I had a port put in my chest and I had the beginning of sepsis and I was in the emergency room. And this was like February of 2020. So maybe yeah, end of February. And so like COVID's just kind of starting to happen and I'm like, I'm done. I'm freaking done. I was like, I can't do this to my body anymore. And you know what it was? It was really tapping back into my belief that there's something greater than me that's guiding me. And like, whether you call that God, angel spirituality, whatever it is, but the belief that like this experience was breaking me down to build me back up into the person I was meant to be. That is my true north. And that was a thing that kept on guiding me is like, "Ali, just keep going. Like, just keep putting one foot in front of the other." And a really big part of my own journey and this might be really activating or triggering to people that are currently in chronic illness and in that space was that I really felt like the victim of everything in my life. I felt like I had this mentality like you don't know what has happened to me. And there's still things I don't share publicly. But I remember just feeling like the victim of a lot of things. And the minute that someone held a mirror to me and said, "You actually don't have to be the victim." And you can take back your power was when a lot of my mindset started to shift because I just felt completely lost. Like, "Oh my god, all these things are happening to me." And like, then we were selling our brand new homes. It had mold. And there was, I had high levels of mold poisoning. And it's getting diagnosed with seizures at Stanford and had endometriosis surgery. And like, through all of that, it was really coming back to like, this is not happening to me. This is happening for me. And a lot of people be like, "Oh, that's toxic positivity." But it wasn't. I genuinely felt in my body that I was like, "Okay, this experience is bringing you back to the person that you're supposed to be." So long answer to your question. But good answer. To your point on toxic positivity, I think that, like you said, not toxic positivity because that mentality doesn't allow you to hold space for those conflicting emotions. It's like forcing this idea we need to be happy all the time. And I think that's just completely contradicts exactly what you were talking about. So more on toxic positivity, I guess separately. But, and when you were also talking about changing your belief system around not being a victim and seeing how this experience is for you, I think is so powerful. It reminds me of something that someone said during a live podcast event that I went to like a month ago. The guest was talking about how she tries to view everything in her life as a match for her. And if it's something that's uncomfortable, she'll ask herself, "I know this is a match for me. I just need to figure out how it's a match for me in this moment." And I love that language around going through hard things because it allows us, I think, to detach from the difficulty of that situation. If you're just thinking, "Okay, I know this is hard." Whatever you want to say, God, the universe, spirituality, whatever. Like something, some force is saying that this is a match for me. I need to lean into that and become curious as to how so it is. And I think when you create a curiosity for your life, things don't feel so intense in a way that's not good for you. You're able to, again, witness yourself as this third party observer. And maybe that's in line with what you were saying earlier about just taking back your power, learning to not feel so caught up in that sadness and reef and discomfort. Yeah, I mean, and I think too. So I've going through and becoming a certified trauma recovery coach. I remember this discussion that someone was like, "Well, you know, I'm a victim of sexual assault." And for me, it's like I was raped at 15. I also had sexual abuse in my childhood. And I was just like, "No, no." Like I remember specifically stopping the class and like asking the question. I was like, "This does not feel like the power is in the person, the person that's been through it." The minute that I say that I'm a victim of something, I immediately am giving my power to something else. And that to me just like does not resonate. Like that to me in my own healing has been a hard stop when people were like, "Oh, well, you're never going to heal. You're always going to have Lyme disease. You will never not have seizures. Whatever the label is, you're never going to not have endometriosis. Like beat all those odds. And I think a big part of it is because of my mindset around like, "I'm not giving up. Like I'm not becoming a victim of this thing that someone has labeled me as or this prognosis, right?" And I'm like, "No." And it's a hard thing to have the courage to believe that too. Yeah. It's a difficult thing to do that. Yeah. I mean, I definitely thank goodness for like my husband because he's such a strong supporter and like he does the work and so he's incredible. But it really, it is. It takes time to like look at yourself, to look at your shadows, to look at like for me, it was like, how was I playing out this? How was I getting validation from playing victim? Was a really big hard lesson for me to be like, "Ugh, this was where my worth was, though." You know? Was like, "This is my story and this is what's happened." And now, like, no, it doesn't have to be. It can be bigger than that. And when I love that you've basically been talking about throughout this whole interview is in a way how you've been able to create a sense of purpose. and meaning through the difficult things you've gone through in life. And I believe that when we can find a sense of joy through hard times or we can communicate these difficult experiences with grace and compassion coming from a place of love and from a place of wanting to heal ourselves and help heal others, that inherently changes the nature of the experience so that it can be in service of you. Obviously this podcast is focused on happiness, endorphins, joy, all of the above. So as we wrap up today, Ali, I'd love to hear more about how your life experiences have influenced your perspective on happiness. Well, that's such a good question. I mean, they are everything. Like my experiences are the reason why I can experience joy. You know, I've experienced such loss and such depth and such grief and loneliness and depression that I can experience the opposite, which is immense joy and immense gratitude. And I remember Brunei Brown saying that is like people want to experience joy and freedom, but they won't let themselves actually feel the sadness and the grief. And I can experience like the really high highs because I have been at the lowest lows and so I can see the depth and the range of emotions. So my experiences are have created like my range of emotions and just how I can move through life. And to your earlier point, it's like glimmers when you're going through that difficult time, the lowest of the lows, it's about how do I redirect my attention to those glimmers? How can I hold on to that so that I know things are worth holding on to so that I know there's light at the end of the tunnel. And even if you're not going through a super challenging time, we are neurons that fire together, wire together, or maybe it's the reverse. I can't remember. Yeah, no, I think you're right. Right. And so it's like even if you're feeling, I don't know, baseline, why choose to put things in your environment that aren't bringing you joy, make it that practice every day to seek out those little things that give you that sense of happiness because then it becomes your baseline. And it's easier to fall back onto that when you have a stronger foundation. So in my head, I see this concept of glimmers as something really synonymous, just different language to this idea of seeking those endorphins in life. So I think this beautifully brings us to my final question to you. And that is a question that I ask every guest on the podcast. So Ali, what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? My family, like my husband and my dogs and my horse, they bring endorphins. Yeah. Just like seeing like animals and like my husband and like good friends, like connection definitely brings me endorphins. I love it. I think there's something super therapeutic around being with animals and being in nature. It's a different type of connection from maybe familial connection or being with your friends, but there's something so peaceful about that. So I love that answer. Thank you. And I just wanted to say on to your last one is that we say in the Kate's household, we say gratitude changes the attitude. So that was a big one when I was in the low of the low was like gratitude changes the attitude. Like even if it's one thing to be grateful for. Yes, just waking up and literally going in the bathroom. Like if that's your gratitude, just like really feel that great, great phrase, something to practice. And there's tons of research out there that really does support exactly what you're saying. So if you're interested in learning more even about the science behind that whoever's listening, I would encourage just googling some articles and seeing how gratitude can actually change the brain and have these profound effects on your resilience. So love that. Love the previous group that you shared about emotions too. So everyone should go back and listen to that step it as well. But Ali, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. Where can my followers connect with you and stay up to date with everything that you're sharing? Yeah, thank you so much for having me again. It's been such a joy. You can find me on Instagram, TikTok, pretty much everywhere at alleycaits.co. So dot c o. And that is ALI K A T E S. And then you can also my website is www.alliecaits.co as well. Awesome. Well, this will all be linked in the show. Check it out. And thanks for listening to this episode of Every Day Endorphins. 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