Tools for trauma & the impact of the subconscious mind on physical health with Chelsea Haines

This week on The Less Stressed Life Podcast, I am joined by Chelsea Haines. I met Chelsea at my friend Kaely's event, Restore and Reconnect, in Austin this past fall. Chelsea's just one of those people who is a ray of sunshine when you meet her. In this episode, we discuss the subconscious mind’s role in physiological healing.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Subconscious programming
• Neural pathways
• Orpheus therapy 

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ABOUT GUEST:
Chelsea Haines is the Founder of the Gut Health Agency and Certified Orpheus Practitioner, helping high performing people heal through the magic combination of functional gut testing and subconscious mindset work.

Free Poop Horoscope- a fun Gut health assessment at TheGutHealthAgency.com. Low cost Mindset Membership for anyone looking to just do the subconscious healing work together: https://chelseahainescoaching.ck.page/mindset-membership

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://chelseahainescoaching.com/
Website: http://guthealthagency.chelseahainescoaching.com/ 
Instagram: @yourgutsygal 

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

SPONSORS:
A special thanks to EveryDay Dose for sponsoring this episode. EveryDay Dose combines organic coffee, grass fed collagen, Lion’s mane for focus and has 80% less caffeine than regular coffee. To get 5 extra sample packets with your order click on this link, https://everydaydose.superfiliate.com/LESSSTRESSED. Let me know how you love it by dropping me a note or tagging me @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist on IG. 

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Chelsea Haines: Looking back and thinking about that version of myself as an adult and seeing that as an adult and truly understanding the state of confusion and pain that I was going through, I have a lot more empathy and understanding of following years and how I navigated that in my life. 

[00:00:15] Christa: Stress is the inflammation that robs us of life, energy, and happiness.

[00:00:21] Christa: Our typical solutions for gut health and hormone balance have let a lot of us down we're overmedicated and underserved at the less trust life. We are a community of health savvy women exploring solutions outside of our traditional western medicine toolbox and training to raise the bar and change our stories.

[00:00:41] Christa: Each week, our hope is that you leave our sessions inspired to learn, grow, and share these stories to raise the bar in your life and home.

[00:00:59] Christa: I have a complicated history with coffee. I love it, but sometimes it's made me jittery, anxious, and even worsen my skin because of the mold that can be present in lots of coffee. A couple of months ago, I tried everyday Dose, which combines organic coffee, grass-fed collagen, lion's main for focus, and has 80% less caffeine than regular.

[00:01:18] Christa: The results have been impressive, and that's after trying several other similar different coffee products that just didn't meet my snobby coffee standards. Here's what I noticed. Ever since I started using Everyday Dose as my daily coffee two months ago, my daily focus and concentration are better because Lion's Main is a neutropic that helps with brain clarity and focus, but unlike other products, everyday dose actually tastes like coffee and not like mushrooms, which usually taste like dirt or sit at the bottom of the cup.

[00:01:47] Christa: I've noticed I'm not jittery, which makes sense because there's less caffeine and our third party testing for mold or mycotoxins, which is a big deal. So I feel good instead of crappy from my coffee. And three, I've had no change in mood or energy right before my period starts. It's pretty common that my mood is apathetic and I'm annoyed by humans a day or two before the start of my menstrual cycle.

[00:02:07] Christa: But oddly, since I've been doing this daily Neutropic coffee, I'd had no mental dips like I had before. So if you wanna try everyday Dose, do me a solid and support the podcast by using my special link everyday dose.com/less stressed. And you'll get five extra sample packs in your order. There's no coupon code, so you'll just have to type in everyday dose.com/less stressed or grab the link from the show notes and let me know if you love it or drop me a note or tag me on Anti-Inflammatory Nutritionist on Instagram.

[00:02:36] Christa: All right. Today on the Less Stressed Life I have Chelsea Haynes, who is the founder of the Gut Health Agency and a certified Orpheus practitioner helping high performing people heal through the magic combination of functional gut testing and subconscious mindset work. What a beautifully brief bibe that tells us so much about you.

[00:02:54] Christa: I've met Chelsea at my friend Kaylee's event, restore and Reconnect in Austin this fall, and she's just one of those people who's a bit of a ray of sunshine when you meet her. An ray of light and funny, you know, it's such a small world you knew. I just know via internet, Dr. Heather Finley, who is someone who's been a bit of a mentor to you in the gut health space because your background is, I don't think nutrition and gut health stuff technically.

[00:03:18] Christa: I think it's mental health stuff, and I'll let you share a little bit about that actually. Tell us a little bit about how you kind of got into this work. Cause I think you're coming from the mental health space and then we'll jump into all things nervous system. 

[00:03:33] Chelsea Haines: Yes. I love it. Thank you. First off so much for having me, Krista.

[00:03:36] Chelsea Haines: Of course. This is always super fun and I just think it's in the world of information overwhelm, I am trying to pave a new path, especially when it comes to healing and gut health. And I think, of course most of us on this type of journey are doing what we're doing because of our own personal story. And for me that pretty much looked like childhood abandonment, the need to become a perfectionist in order to fulfill some very deep wounds and voids, all surrounding around safety, love and acceptance from a very young age.

[00:04:09] Chelsea Haines: And not believing I was worthy of any of those things. And then eventually that turning into a autoimmune disease. And the irony of that was, you know, for my entire life I was always told I was too sensitive. Oh, you need to grow a thicker skin. You know, you, you need to just. Be less emotional. And of course my very literal, very perfectionist tendency, kind of subconscious brain said, okay, I see you and I will raise the bar.

[00:04:36] Chelsea Haines: And I literally grew thicker skin and that looked like psoriasis, but later in high school. So my symptoms started early on and you know, eventually what led me to specifically gut health was right after college, 2008, 2009, I was just sick and tired of the dermatologist's approach to chronic illness. And I always say this, whenever I talk about it with.

[00:05:01] Chelsea Haines: A big disclaimer and that's to bless that medicine. You know, whatever your journey may be with autoimmune or gut health or whatever it may be, bless that medicine. And you know, biologics and steroids are all very helpful when it comes to symptom management. And I think for many of us, and probably many of your listeners here are a little bit tired of the symptom management kind of life, and as much of a blessing as it is.

[00:05:27] Chelsea Haines: I think nugs at many of us that there's something deeper happening on a root cause level. You know, at least for me, my intuition was just screaming at me. There's gotta be something more going on. And back in the early two thousands when gut health wasn't trending and Instagram wasn't a thing, I sought out a holistic nutritionist and she put me on a gut healing journey and it changed my entire.

[00:05:51] Chelsea Haines: So that was kind of a quick and easy way, a roundup of, you know, how trauma has played into my personal healing and then of course, what kind of ultimately led me to do what I'm doing. And I know we'll have an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper into all of it too. 

[00:06:03] Christa: Mm-hmm. Well, I always think, I always like to look at how many common denominators we all have in our connections and our stories can all be so similar, right?

[00:06:12] Christa: You don't rise from immediate success. You rise from just trying and failing and trying and failing and then eventually finding the right thing that brings you success. And then it's a mixture of things. I don't think you're just done then it's kind of a mixture of how do I maintain, and you spoke eloquently about a lot of emotions, which tells me that you know, this like air quote of you've done the work, which we're gonna talk about that looks like, cuz it's tricky and it kind of comes off it.

[00:06:41] Christa: It doesn't make sense to always to people. But you brought up, you're like, I had this childhood abandonment. And I think sometimes when people hear that, they're like, well, she must have been homeless or something. Right. But it wasn't exactly like that. Like what did that actually look like? Because sometimes yeah, we don't hear a story reflected there.

[00:06:57] Christa: Whereas maybe I don't know the story exactly, but maybe your a child of divorce or, or something. Right. Which is something that affects so many people. 

[00:07:04] Chelsea Haines: Yeah, for sure. And you know, the irony of that was we were almost home. Logistically what it looked like was my dad leaving straight up, just leaving and moving to Mexico.

[00:07:13] Chelsea Haines: To this day, I'm not 100% sure why. I think it had to do with tax evasion and also just this inner anarchist that didn't want to follow the rules of society in life. So he moved to a place where he didn't necessarily have to do that anymore, his own journey. And you know what that looked like for us. My mom, who was 39 years old and now a single mother of two young children, I was 12, my brother was 10.

[00:07:37] Chelsea Haines: She, at the time was not working. He was the sole provider and she ended up having to get a job part-time at our local church and then eventually worked there for 30 years as the office administrator, but was making now truly below minimum wage. And we lost our home. So the bank came full on. Black suits knocking on the door and you have so many days to get out.

[00:08:03] Chelsea Haines: And of course, from my 12 year old brain, I had no idea what was actually going on. I actually found a journal recently, just in the last six months, going home to my mom's house. I have one bin of stuff under her bed. No, yeah, exactly. It's like the bins that never seem to disappear in life after all these years of being a nomad.

[00:08:23] Chelsea Haines: I've gotten rid of majority of my bins, but there's still one bin of childhood stuff. And I randomly flipped open this journal and I found one page. And it's so crazy because amongst. All of the pages of writing about, you know, I got in a fight with my friend today and today on the soccer field. This happened, and, you know, all the things that felt really important in my life.

[00:08:45] Chelsea Haines: There was one sentence that just made me ball my eyes out just recently. And it, and it said, yeah. So we had to move and everything's really confusing. I don't exactly know what's going on, but overall, everything's okay. And tomorrow I'm gonna hang out with Ashley after school. And then I just went on. Mm.

[00:09:03] Chelsea Haines: And to look back at that moment and think, wow, the, the key word, the takeaway there was confusing. It was a really confusing time. And you know, I think all of our parents did the best they could with what they had, and they were not equipped with the tools of the work that we're gonna have a chance to talk about as we are now.

[00:09:19] Chelsea Haines: What a blessing. But I think the way that my mom dealt with it was just to keep us safe. And in her mind, what that looked like was to keep us in the dark and to not tell us what was going on until we had to do something like, Pack what we could fit in the back of a truck and move and leave majority of our belongings.

[00:09:39] Chelsea Haines: And abandoned this home, which, you know, driving past it a few months later and seeing all of our stuff in a huge trash bin, cuz of course somebody bought the house and threw all of the rest of our belongings into the trash was traumatic and thinking wow, that was a whole life that we've lived for a, you know, at the time, a decade I was in 10, 11, 12 years old.

[00:10:03] Chelsea Haines: So to think back at that time and think, wow, this was really, you know, the only thing that was communicated to us was, hey, you know, those houses over in that neighborhood that all look the same. We call it the mushroom village. We might end up having to move there. It was is government housing. For all these crazy things that ended up happening in between that conversation and when we had to move out a week later, there was another home that was available from a parishioner of the church that my mom still lives in to this day.

[00:10:28] Chelsea Haines: She rents a two bedroom house. And you know, I, I just think back on that time and just thinking about the level of confusion and quote unquote unknown times, you know, and the irony of that phrase in 2020 and all of those old traumas, you know, coming all back up again. And I think it really is testimony to looking at our childhood and realizing that.

[00:10:48] Chelsea Haines: Even those memories that may not have seemed super traumatic. Like when I think about, yeah, I saw myself in a huge trashcan. At the time, I didn't really think anything of it. I felt a little sad, but looking back and thinking about that version of myself as an adult and seeing that as an adult and truly understanding the state of confusion and pain that I.

[00:11:07] Chelsea Haines: I was going through, I have a lot more empathy and understanding of the following years and how I navigated that in my life and potentially embarrassing moments that now I look back and almost feel cringe. Not anymore cause I've done the work to heal all of that, but for years, continued to seek love in all sorts of ways.

[00:11:27] Chelsea Haines: Being sexually active at a young time, becoming a perfectionist, you know, seeking the honorable student and the captain of all the sports teams and really burning myself out before the age of 17 years old on a, on a very literal sense. It was pretty wild. To consider, and I know, I'm sure there's aspects of all of that story that everyone can relate to, for sure.

[00:11:46] Christa: Mm-hmm. So you didn't always know that this childhood abandonment and senior things in the trash were trauma pieces. You probably had a bit of a meandering into your professional life, as many of us do. But you talk about, you know, As an adult, there's lots of exciting things that happen too. So wherever you wanna kind of jump into the story from there, because when we talk about doing the work, it feels a little confusing.

[00:12:08] Christa: There's that word again, right? Of like, how do you do the work because it, does it look like a year of therapy? Does it look like this? Does it look like that? And I just, one of our mantras here is that there's always another option. There's lots of options. And so I met with you recently to go through this Orpheus therapy because it was another option.

[00:12:29] Christa: I was, I've been investigating all of the nervous system things because one of my more recent mantras is that your health is as good as your nervous system work like the, it ends there because otherwise you, you can move forward, but you will move backwards if we do not work on our nervous system. So pick up wherever you want an adult.

[00:12:47] Christa: Sharing about how you trialed. Maybe, maybe you had a similar experience where you trialed different nervous system work and therapies and maybe where your come to Jesus was and how you jumped into the type of therapy and work you're using 

[00:13:00] Chelsea Haines: now. Yeah, totally. I mean, and it's, of course, hindsight always gives us the beautiful opportunity to look back and see these big pillars in our life.

[00:13:07] Chelsea Haines: And you know, for me, what it looked like literally, Dedicating my entire life to learning about ultimately the human mind and the body and how it all worked. So I went to college and got a degree in psychology. I knew that my childhood had impacted me some way and somehow, but I didn't realize it until later on how much it really impacted me.

[00:13:30] Chelsea Haines: And of course now it's like doing the subconscious work. So, you know, even taking the nervous system work one step further, and I'll dive deeper in just a second about that. Really looking back and understanding that pretty much my entire personality was just one big trauma response is really kind of a come to Jesus moment thinking like, wow, I'm not an extrovert, which I believed my entire life that extraversion came as a trauma response and this feeling that I have to carry the room and, and of course there.

[00:13:58] Chelsea Haines: I consider myself a social introvert now. Like I love being around people. I am a very outgoing person and I love talking. I love socializing, but I really recharge on my own and truly setting up really strong, healthy boundaries to make sure that that happens. So, you know, logistically what that the work for me looked like.

[00:14:20] Chelsea Haines: And I mean, it has been a long journey for me personally. And again, I think we live in this beautiful time and space where there are professionals like ourselves, Krista, that are allowing that journey to look a lot more efficient, a lot shorter. And I think those of us that are emerging in this space that are passionate about bringing this type of work to people is.

[00:14:39] Chelsea Haines: Ultimately the goal is to help the healing process and help the work be a lot, at least for me. It's not just easier. I mean, I love an easy button. I'm a projector by human design. I max out at about four hours of energy a day. And easy button is what it's always about, but also pleasure and desire and fun.

[00:14:56] Chelsea Haines: And for me, loved a lot of unlearning. That healing has to be hard. Healing has to require sacrifice, you know? And, and after college, learning about the human brain and kind of understanding not just my own journey, but also like why would my dad do some really crappy thing? Like, you know, like why do people do what they do ultimately?

[00:15:17] Chelsea Haines: And again, that really comes down to the subconscious minds. Trying to keep you safe. That's really what it all comes down to. And that directly affects our nervous system. But my journey then looked like gut health. It was like, okay, I feel like I've got the mind part down, at least in a liberal arts education sense, which to be honest, is kind of a little bit of a joke.

[00:15:36] Chelsea Haines: But that's a whole different story. And that's, you know, my own personal opinion, at least for me. Going into then gut health and exploring gut health. And of course, where I first started in 2009, it, my thought was, you know, I, I must have a food sensitivity. I must be allergic to something. I, there must be something that I'm consuming that's causing my skin to react in this certain way.

[00:15:53] Chelsea Haines: And the beauty of that was, there's truth to that. But of course the root cause wasn't the food sensitivities. The root cause was leaky gut that was caused from chronic, chronic chronic stress over years and years and years of a hyper dysregulated nervous system due to childhood trauma and abandonment.

[00:16:08] Chelsea Haines: So it's cool to be able to look back and say, oh, now I know what I know and I understand what I do. But without having these pillars in my life of self-healing and learning, I wouldn't be where I'm at. Fast forward years and years, I became a yoga teacher. So that was sort of like the next step on my journey was like, okay, I've got the mind piece.

[00:16:25] Chelsea Haines: I feel like I've got the body piece, now I need the soul piece. So, you know, I, I got a degree in psychology. I went on the gut healing journey, and then I became a yoga teacher. So, of course I have a tendency to go all in. I did a, a yoga teacher training in Costa Rica, and my skin cleared up during that month.

[00:16:40] Chelsea Haines: So, of course, you know, when you think of the combination of, well, the, the foods you're eating are not eating, the alcohol you're drinking are not drinking, and then, you know, just being in some salt water and moving your body all day, every day, your nervous system and is, is in a really awesome kind of place.

[00:16:54] Chelsea Haines: Mm-hmm. But of course, you know, looking at it, at the time, I didn't quite understand the connection of that. And as soon as I got back, I was in a marriage that I wasn't happy in anymore. My symptoms came back with full force. And then we decided to get divorced in 2015 and. A whole nother layer of healing for me because now, you know, experiencing divorce myself, it was this opportunity where I was now given the tools and the understanding to say, okay, this isn't just about healing my divorce now, but this is also about healing the wounded inner child that didn't understand what was happening when my dad left.

[00:17:29] Chelsea Haines: And seeing and understanding the parallels based on the years of education I know I'd had, of what I was seeing and feeling and experiencing in 2015 compared to what I was experiencing back in 1995, something like that. Right? So that catapulted me again in another self-discovery. And as, as in true Chelsea Haynes fashion, I, I don't do anything half ass.

[00:17:51] Chelsea Haines: So I sold all my belongings. I quit my job, I got all of. Classes covered. I was teaching yoga full-time and I, I decided to become a yoga teacher on super yachts and nomad and went on this like minimalist journey. I thought, I need to become a minimalist. I need to just let go of everything in my life and go like the real yogic route and holy moly.

[00:18:12] Chelsea Haines: I mean, I don't know if you really wanna do some self-reflection. It's like working at a restaurant and never being able to go home or, or being in a fraternity or a sorority and that being your entire life. It's like there, there's really, I mean, every mirror to yourself, you are just plopped right in the middle of it.

[00:18:28] Chelsea Haines: So thinking back at that time, I thought, wow, that's pretty wild. But you know, of course, like I'm really fast forwarding through the story because I think ultimately then what led me to the next step was life coaching. And I was always resistant to life coaching. The term life coach always turned me off.

[00:18:43] Chelsea Haines: I. You know, what the hell does that even mean? I need something more logistic than that. So I was way more attuned to the term health coach. So I of course came dual certified in health and life coaching and that really helped piece all the pieces together for me. You know, looking at my formal education and psychology and then of course looking at the aspects of yoga practice and you know, all these different practices and gut health that I couldn't quite put together in like a really pretty package.

[00:19:14] Chelsea Haines: My health and life coaching certification did that for me, which was great. And that's really ultimately what led me down this. Okay, there really is something to this mind body, soul connection. Now I feel like I have the tools to be able to teach somebody else to get to where I'm at. Not over two decades, but maybe over a year or less.

[00:19:34] Chelsea Haines: And. The final come to Jesus moment. And I, and you know, I, it was kind of an open-ended question, so I hope this ultimately is landing, you know, where we are today in 2020. Of course, not only did the entire world shut down, but just six months prior to that, we dramatically lost my father-in-law to gut cancer.

[00:19:55] Chelsea Haines: So, you know, the irony of that was, you know, I've been studying gut health for a long time. I'd done extended courses with Dr. Heather Finley. I did gut practitioner. I've deep dived into understanding the functions of gut health. And then here's my father-in-law with a big tumor in his stomach. And 90 days later he passed.

[00:20:11] Chelsea Haines: And the traumatic piece of that wasn't even so much, just of course, the awful situation of losing a loved one to cancer so quickly, but then also the repercussions of people who didn't know how to deal with grief. You know, extended family who projected their grief onto my husband and I as his only son and his wife, and just the judgment and the pain that we felt.

[00:20:35] Chelsea Haines: From people who didn't have the tools to do the work, people who didn't understand that what they may be experiencing was deep grief and that their opinions. Aren't helpful, they're just hurtful. So, you know, the work at that point all came to a head for me, the late 2020, of course, being a nomad during our worldwide pandemic is also a whole nother layer to it all.

[00:20:58] Chelsea Haines: Where are we gonna live? Where are we gonna go? How long can we stay there? Let's find the next Airbnb. Are we allowed to get there? That was like a whole nother piece of the pie, which at that point wasn't even that big of a deal. Cause we had been nomads, true nomads living out of our only belonging in one suitcase for six years.

[00:21:11] Chelsea Haines: But this moment where I said, okay, I looked at my husband and I said, I can see this so clearly. I have decades of education to where I can comprehend and understand and know why my skin is flared up right now, and even on a deeper level, why these people are doing what they're doing, right? So I had accomplished what I set out to do.

[00:21:33] Chelsea Haines: I wanted to learn why people did what they did, even the messed up things in life. I understand it and I see it, and I know why these people are doing what they're doing despite how hurtful it is. My body is responding and I feel it. It's almost like an out of body experience. I can feel the redness.

[00:21:49] Chelsea Haines: Rising up on my neck. I can feel the psoriasis patches, the hives, the, the heat. I'm also very Pitta ayurvedically. I'm very Pitta and I'm Capricorn. So it's like all perfect storm to be just like a raging bowl on fire when it comes to survival states. And my skin is the first thing that shows that in rashes and hives and psoriasis.

[00:22:11] Chelsea Haines: And it was literally a, an e pray love crying on, you know, first chapter, crying on the bathroom kind of moment where it was like, God, there's got to be another way. Because despite logically knowing what's happening in all the talk therapy in the world, getting me to understand this, my nervous system is responding like I am in a bowl ring, which I have been in a bowl ring before.

[00:22:35] Chelsea Haines: So like that's very true, which was a fun story. And the next day, my mentor in Orpheus. Popped up on my discovery feed and that was that. And that was my first introduction to subconscious work. And again, I wanted to go into this with the understanding that, okay, first off, am I just seeking more answers?

[00:22:55] Chelsea Haines: You know, there's a lot of self-reflection involved here. Like when does it end? When does the learning ever end? And of course, I don't think it really ever does end, but in this moment where I prayed to God and I said, despite knowing all that I know my body is still having these symptoms. So this is the theoretical.

[00:23:11] Chelsea Haines: I'm doing all the things, but I still feel like shit. And I know I know better, but I can't help myself. But to get angry, but to get upset. And the first time I did an Orpheus track, which is a subc. Modality to take it beyond nervous system regulation cuz there are many amazing nervous system regulation tools out there.

[00:23:31] Chelsea Haines: And we can do all sorts of things like breath work and even standing on prickly mats and doing things to regulate how we're feeling. Right? Either down-regulate if we're hyper or up-regulate if we're feeling depressed. But the key to that is, why is my nervous system doing what it's doing? Mm-hmm. And that's because the control, the command center.

[00:23:51] Chelsea Haines: Our subconscious mind, and I put my hands on the back of my head because that is our most primal lizard brain, and it pretty much only has two, two functions, rest and digest or fight or flight. You know, we are wired to survive and procreate. I honestly, honest to God, I, I've kinda lost a lot of hope in humanity over the years.

[00:24:12] Chelsea Haines: I think that's the only reason why we are still alive and well is because of the drive, the need, this nervous system response to. Survive. Mm-hmm. And you know, thanks to social media and the beautiful opportunity to know what we know and to share what we know so rapidly and quickly, I think people are understanding that yes, we've survived.

[00:24:30] Chelsea Haines: We are surviving, we've survived world wars, we've survived pandemics, all these things, but we're not thriving. And why is that? And that's because the subconscious mind is wired to survive and not to thrive. That's 

[00:24:41] Christa: it. Yeah. You mentioned earlier the subconscious is like the layer under, so I said, you know, we get as good, we heal as much as our nervous system is healed.

[00:24:50] Christa: But you brought up that subconscious work is kind of the next layer. And so let's talk about traumatized brain. So first, so that's some facts, right? Yeah. We all have trauma. Whether we like realize it yet or not is the only differentiating factor. It's not necessarily always a car accident or your dad leaving or whatever, but it's like, hmm, that's confusing.

[00:25:09] Christa: There's my stuff in the trash. That's kind of a big one too, right? Like these are all big landmarks, but it can be as little we've heard here before or other places. It can be as little as your mom was busy and she's like, I don't have time for that right now. And apparently we're all gonna do that as parents.

[00:25:25] Christa: Like we're never like, it's just our brain, our amygdala, our limbic brain is like just looking for safety cues, right? So let's talk about this traumatized brain. Yeah, getting stuck in fight or flag sometimes, you know, the internet is a funny place and sometimes when I'm scrolling through Facebook and I'm in different Facebook groups, I'll see, I saw one yesterday that said My vagus nerve is, I forgot what this person said, and they're like, I am gonna be broken forever.

[00:25:51] Christa: Like, this is why I have SIBO recurrent. I was like, I cannot even look at this. I did not need to look at this, but it's one of those things where it's like mm-hmm. Our levels of understanding. First it's like, is this even a problem? Okay. That's one layer of understanding and then kind of falling into this disempowered place of despair is not what we're after here.

[00:26:08] Christa: Right. But so anyway, traumatized brains how we get stuck in fight or flight. And you said something else earlier and that's what we're wrapping this up with as a boat, and this is what I've been looking for too, cuz one of my core values is efficiency and there's all of these modalities, but it's like, I don't want to suck at this for like years and years and years.

[00:26:26] Christa: I wanna figure out how to like calm this nervous system and do the the, but whatever this flipping work is. Yes. Right. To heal. Yes. So that way I can feel like I'm in a better place. I could acknowledge right, that I've got this stuff, but what do we do with it? So anyway, talk to us about trauma and getting stuck in fight or flight and subconscious work and just needing to rewire, let's like set the stage.

[00:26:47] Christa: Like what 

[00:26:47] Chelsea Haines: happens a little bit first. For sure. And I think this is really speaking to, I had a conversation last week with someone at a, of course at a dinner party. Again, projector by human design. Are you sure you want me to share this with you? I need permission for us cuz otherwise I'm just gonna word vomit all over you.

[00:27:03] Chelsea Haines: Cause I'm really passionate about it. But you know, her exact response was, but I had a wonderful childhood. I have no experiences in my life of trauma. And my question was, but do you resonate as a people pleaser? And she said, oh yeah, I put everyone else's needs before my own. That. The perfect, most beautiful, eloquent example of a trauma response that has now even turned into an identity of your personality from chronic, I don't even like to say small tea, big tea, because again, we're now we're D Differentiating, it doesn't matter, right?

[00:27:36] Chelsea Haines: Chronic trauma and the brain, just like what you said, perceives safety. What? You said it so beautifully there. Krista's safety signal. And for a small child, the moment that your mom says, honey, I'm too busy right now. I'll talk to you about this later. And listen, part of this work is being human. So you have to remember that your children are on a journey too.

[00:27:57] Chelsea Haines: These children need to also learn how to do the work themselves so they can become empowered adults. So as a mother, as a father, your role isn't to cushion your children, but it is to do the work yourself. So you can then hand them the tools, obviously, so you can speak better to them. So you can handle stressful situations better.

[00:28:16] Chelsea Haines: But ultimately it's not to control their response. They need to have their own responses and learn their own traumas in life too, right? But so that, like, that's just a little feather in the cap. But ultimately what happens is the brain perceives something as D. This person doesn't have time for me. Maybe I'm six years old, my mom doesn't have time for me.

[00:28:36] Chelsea Haines: Now I learn through different avenues. A certain response maybe that is, oh, if I act out, she'll finally respond to me. Or if I'm the youngest of five children, if I get sick, then my parents will finally pay attention to me. Or, you know, if I cause a scene, the whole room is gonna look at me and give me attention.

[00:28:58] Chelsea Haines: So now the brain just says, oh, if I do this thing, I've created this neural pathway to get what I need. And what I need is to feel love, to feel safe, and to feel accepted. And if I feel that someone doesn't have enough time for me, All three of those things are now being threatened. Mm-hmm. On a very literal basis.

[00:29:17] Chelsea Haines: Uh, you know, for anyone listening, I wanna remind you that this is not like we're not reaching for the stars here. This is a very simple concept and efficient concept to consider. And neuroplasticity in the study of neuroplasticity in the brain is now showing us that neurons that wire together, that fire together, wire together, right?

[00:29:35] Chelsea Haines: So it creates this literal pathway in the brain from stimulus to response. And there's a pathway that the brain follows to get what we need in what we need are those basic safety, love, and acceptance. And this is sort of like the theoretical. We will do whatever we need to do in order to meet our needs.

[00:29:55] Chelsea Haines: You know, even if we are the most devout partner, we may cheat on our partner down the road if we are feeling. Seen love or accepted, or if our needs are not being met, we will go to crazy length to get those needs met, even if they go outside of our own morality, truly, and that's because the subconscious brain is ultimately what's driving the boat.

[00:30:16] Chelsea Haines: Now, if you're listening to this, you can't see my hands. I essentially have my left hand open and my right hand open, and when I put 'em together, those bonds create perfect pathways. Over time, those pathways become strengthened with proof because we have something in our brain called the reticular activating system.

[00:30:33] Chelsea Haines: It's a literal piece of the brain that seeks out what it thinks it knows, right? Yeah. The very old example, when you buy a car, now you see them on the road all over the place, okay? Mm-hmm. What the brain thinks it knows, for example, When I'm feeling left out, I need to act out in order to become part of the group again, right?

[00:30:54] Chelsea Haines: That is how I know how to react. So I need to respond with frustration or bitterness or resentment, or in my case, it was these outbursts of anger. I need to yell really loud to get your attention in order for anyone to listen to me, right? Mm-hmm. Over time, these layers of proof that our brain seeks now just makes those bonds even tighter.

[00:31:17] Chelsea Haines: So taking it back to my personal experience, despite seeing and knowing that the family that was judging us, my brain was perceiving that as abandonment, we are grieving, this family is abandoning us in our time of need. How could they do that? I didn't even ask the question, how could they do that?

[00:31:37] Chelsea Haines: Because again, my decades of education told me they're doing that because they're projecting their grief, like it's a very clear cut answer. However, My nervous system, my brain said, high alert abandonment is here. We need thicker skin to deal with this. Give me psoriasis, rashes. Literally that simple. What Orpheus does, an Orpheus, you can Google it.

[00:31:59] Chelsea Haines: Orpheus Mind Technologies, you can reach out to me on Instagram for more information. You can find them on Instagram for more information. Essentially what the founder has done is he is a trauma therapist and a computer analyst, and he essentially has taken his two specialties in life and put them together and said, listen, the brain is essentially one big computer operating on a software.

[00:32:19] Chelsea Haines: And just like any computer, we can't upgrade one new software without overriding the other one, or essentially removing the old software. So, Even things like E F T, tapping and you know, mantra work and mirror work, all of these things are wonderful, and again, it's symptom management, which there are times and places for all symptom management.

[00:32:40] Chelsea Haines: Breathwork is a tool that we use at the Gut health Agency because it is helpful for our nervous system and what we call stress resiliency, putting ourselves in stressful situations and teaching our nervous system, unlearning and reteaching our nervous system that we're actually safe, that we are no longer in fight or.

[00:32:58] Chelsea Haines: But then we take that a step further with the Orpheus therapy. So Orpheus therapy is our audio tracks. It pulls in other modalities that you may be familiar with, like E M D R and hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, E F T, tapping as well, emotional freedom techniques. So all these different techniques that are super valuable and helpful.

[00:33:18] Chelsea Haines: And then it also takes this one other step, this cadence, this timing, this rhythm, to be able to speak to the subconscious mind in a way that it can receive it. And that is the key, because the subconscious mind doesn't understand that change is a good thing. Subconscious mind perceives change as imminent death.

[00:33:37] Chelsea Haines: Well, we have survived this long with these pathways, so why would I change it? That is way too much. And you know, often as coaches we have to remind ourselves that the more change somebody needs, the less they can handle. I'm kind of here to question that because ultimately with the subconscious work, we're a lot stronger than we believe that we are.

[00:33:56] Chelsea Haines: And, and I trust and know that, you know, if if you're here to do the work, then you can handle the work and I'm gonna empower you to do that. Obviously within reason. You know, and I think this is also important too, you know, if somebody. There's spectrums of everything. And Christa, if you just said to me, Hey, last night this really awful thing happened.

[00:34:13] Chelsea Haines: Or, Hey, you know, my husband just got back from a World War and lost a limb. Like maybe there's more appropriate, or you know, a multifaceted approach that we need to take for your brain to both be able to feel safe again and to understand you're no longer in danger and to react appropriately to certain situations.

[00:34:32] Chelsea Haines: But Orpheus is a beautiful tool to add into your toolbox of things because now we can talk to the subconscious brain and wear those neurons that have wired so tightly together. Now it is open, and I'll say susceptible in a good way. We often think susceptible is a bad thing, but when we are susceptible to change, it just makes it a whole lot easier to break those bonds and to create new.

[00:34:58] Chelsea Haines: And I guess I'll wrap it all up here with just as quickly as we can become traumatized, we can become un traumatized. And I think that is something that as a society we don't talk about. I think in general, the word trauma is a really scary word. I think therapists are afraid to use that word. I think many of us in the social space, social media space feel like we have to put disclaimers out there because everyone's afraid.

[00:35:22] Chelsea Haines: Everyone's afraid of opening Pandora's box and not knowing what to do with Pandora on the inside or whatever comes out of it. And I think that's doing everyone a disservice. I think we all need to start normalizing this conversation of trauma and realizing that we all have different types of tools and that there is a time and place for it all.

[00:35:40] Chelsea Haines: If I were to get into a car accident today that was totally traumatizing and I couldn't get into a car again, just that quickly, I can also become un traumatized. I can break those bonds and make new ones just as quickly as those old ones were formed. So there's a huge element of unlearning. The fear of approaching traumatic experiences and talking about it and relearning and trusting and understanding that our mind is unbelievable and so good at what it does.

[00:36:15] Chelsea Haines: And in fact, we can rewrite that story of my traumatized brain. I'm gonna be stuck here forever into, actually, I became traumatized and I became stuck. So actually I can also become un traumatized and unstuck just as. And easily and efficiently with the right tools and with the right practitioners, and of course, having those conversations and finding the right people to do that, and it probably a team of people is ultimately what's gonna get you to where you need to be quicker, more efficiently, and easier, and with pleasure.

[00:36:46] Christa: Well, let me try to summarize a little bit of what we just talked about. So essentially we've got two states, right? Our subconscious or our amygdala and our limbic all, it's just a safety brain. Mm-hmm. And our parent brain that's like, this is gonna be fine, but our safety brain or our primitive limbic brain is like talking all the time.

[00:37:05] Christa: And most of our decisions are made out of that. So we have, uh, got all this subconscious programming and neural pathways that are built over our lives and it continues to get stacked onto. And new neural pathways are built, especially as you have consistent things. And you brought up something I don't think we underlined enough, which is that our brain seeks out what it thinks.

[00:37:23] Christa: It knows, it seeks evidence of what we think we know. So like, if we believe there's nothing that could help me, I've tried everything. It will search for evidence to make that true for you. I see that all the time. Right? And you, and you gave us a little bit less polarizing version, which is like, I learn a word or I learn, I get a new car and I see it everywhere.

[00:37:38] Christa: Right. It was always there. It was just your awareness to it, right? Yeah. So subconscious is like kind of, almost kind of the opposite of awareness, right? So we talked about how you were going through something and you were like, you knew all the things, you understood it, but it was like, how could I still be having this issue?

[00:37:55] Christa: How could I be having my symptoms flare despite knowing what to do, I cannot help myself. And then this other version of all of these things, these therapies, different things that we've maybe heard of, like tapping E M D R, right? Which is what therapists will use and different things like that. Yeah, there's a kind of a combination.

[00:38:12] Christa: I'll call it combination software, where it's like a bit of a mixture of more efficiently working through this subconscious work. And I think the most empowering statement that you brought up was that you can become traumatized quickly and you can become un traumatized just as quickly. That is, I have never heard that statement.

[00:38:29] Christa: Right. And so I think that's something I really wanted to bold and underline. That's really cool. Because I'm looking for efficient things. I spent the last like one plus, maybe it was two years, looking for opportunities, therapies, things like how can I help my clients with their nervous systems faster?

[00:38:43] Christa: Right. Because like, we don't have two years, right? Well, we do if we don't fix something. Hopefully we got, we got all the, we got your lifetime technically right. We don't have to, 

[00:38:52] Chelsea Haines: not willing. We'll wake up tomorrow and have that time, but, right, exactly. 

[00:38:56] Christa: Exactly. Like who knows, it'd be great to, uh, go ahead and reprogram the nervous system a little sooner.

[00:39:01] Christa: So you have a, actually a story about, you kind of sort of took a leap of faith, like this feels a little bit right? Like I see this thing, and then you try it and you start to notice differences that you see in yourself. Mm-hmm. Because you told me about this a week or two ago. Yeah. And so share a little bit about what you started to see inside yourself that helped, you know, like, oh, I think this works because, because, because tactically from the outside, yes, it's a bunch of things all combined, but it's kind of a mixture of identifying the right pieces and then there's a bit of a recording that's kind of helping.

[00:39:36] Christa: To either replace soft, I don't, we're just gonna call it the software upgrade. Right? Yeah. But it's like a very short, it's kind of like, oh, it's hard to believe that this could make such a difference. Yeah. Right. You know, it's kind of Exactly. Brief audio version of like different things helping you Yeah.

[00:39:52] Christa: With your body. It's kind of reminds me, not that I've, I have not done D N R S or the Gupta program or whatever, but it feels like a much conciser, potentially version of something that they would do. Mm-hmm. Even though I have not, yeah. Done it. So I don't know if that's a very good disclaimer. Okay. Tell us a little bit about like what you saw in yourself Yes.

[00:40:08] Christa: As you tried this for yourself. For 

[00:40:10] Chelsea Haines: sure. And I also think what's gonna help bring this home? This example is, like you said, this, not only are most of our thoughts, our behaviors, our emotions governed by our subconscious mind, but also the autonomic processes in our body. Right. The automatic things.

[00:40:29] Chelsea Haines: Functions in our body that we don't think about our heart beating our liver and our pancreas, creating vile enzymes for digestion. Like I don't have to send a fax to my liver and be like, Hey man, can you like make some vile today? And yes, I say facts cuz it, it's like, it is such a foreign old concept.

[00:40:47] Chelsea Haines: Like it's, it's like I don't have to do that. I don't even have to think about it. I don't have to put the effort in it. In theory, as long as everything's working optimally just works. Right? In theory. But that's what the subconscious mind controls. The subconscious mind is essentially the one sending the faxes down to the liver, down to the stomach saying, Hey, produce stomach acid right now, or don't produce stomach acid.

[00:41:08] Chelsea Haines: Right now we have like, if you picture the command center in the subconscious mind, there's a captain that's saying right now we gotta prioritize blood flow to the heart. We gotta. Energy that's going to the digestive system and increased energy to everything else that's gonna allow you to fight. We need adrenaline, we need cortisol, we need blood flow to the core.

[00:41:27] Chelsea Haines: We, you know, we need an increased heart rate. All those things are gonna give us power to fight or flight. It's literally an on-off switch. So I think that's really important to remember too, that it's not just our thoughts. So taking it literally, truly, and looking at those nervous system. The central nervous system pathway is literally the map in our body that's controlling and talking to these different organs of the body.

[00:41:50] Chelsea Haines: It's directly related to symptoms. So, The example that really had me hit home truly was, you know, the way that my mom dealt with abandonment was to numb herself. And my mom and I are extremely close and so much love and respect there. And as a young child, seeing my mom turn to alcohol most days to help soothe her intense grief and anxiety and suffering essentially turned into daily chronic feelings of abandonment.

[00:42:23] Chelsea Haines: So not only was there just like this one big. Peace. But then it was also turned into this chronic feeling all the time. So as an adult, of course, spending time with my mom and you know, after losing our father, my father-in-law so drastically, of course you hit a certain age and you start to really appreciate and understand and realize what limited time you have on this earth.

[00:42:44] Chelsea Haines: So I kept coming back to this like, man, I just wanna spend time with my mom and appreciate the time that we have together. And for years, every time we got together and we would hang out and she would get drunk, I would be so triggered and I would be so upset. Like to a point where I, I struggled to even be in the same room as her and this had nothing to do with my love for her.

[00:43:07] Chelsea Haines: If anything, it was the opposite. I love you so much. I want to be with you and love you as who you are because I know that it's a me problem that I'm projecting on you cuz of the years of education that I have. If I can't do that, that's a me problem. It's not a you problem. So I dive into this work. The first short-term example was I no longer was triggered by the family that was triggering us after, you know, I shared with you, we lost our father-in-law.

[00:43:28] Chelsea Haines: The family was projecting all these these things. The next time they texted the next day, this awful message, I thought, oh my God, I have, I'm neutral. I'm neutral to this. I have no emotional or physiological response to that text message, which doesn't make me a Dorma. It doesn't make me not care. It just allows me to be able to handle the situation from my conscious brain rather than my survival brain.

[00:43:53] Chelsea Haines: And that is what this tool helps you do. It brings us back into the area of our brain that we need to think. Consciously and logically, and for anyone that's quote unquote seen red or been triggered, I'm sure there's a piece of you that has felt like, I feel like I'm losing my mind. I know I've said that many times in my life, especially with this circumstance with my husband's family, like I feel like I'm losing my mind.

[00:44:15] Chelsea Haines: I feel like I'm going crazy, truly because that triggered brain, that P T S D brain from abandonment was shutting down my ability to communicate in a loving, logical way, which is how I desired to communicate. So that was like a quick win. But then the longer win was, oh, let me do this on like the big trigger.

[00:44:33] Chelsea Haines: Like the big game changing thing, which was, you know, hanging out with my mom and hearing the bottle pop open. And y'all, I'm telling you, I mean, the next time it happened, I was with her and I live in Panama. She's in the States, like we're far away from each other. So again, our time together is also limited.

[00:44:48] Chelsea Haines: And no matter how much I would pump myself up, okay, this time I'm just gonna have fun. And my way of doing that was also getting drunk to deal with it, which I'm like, that doesn't help me either. Because by the end of it I feel like crap and I'm, you know, it doesn't help anyone. I was able to sit in my power completely in love for her and with her without feeling triggered every time she took a sip of her glass, whatever it was.

[00:45:14] Chelsea Haines: And that for me was the huge aha moment thinking all these years and all the anger and all the resentment and all of the times where I just walked outta the room or got drunk to deal with it. I don't have to do that anymore. I can just, Sit here and hold space for my mom, which ultimately is what she needed someone to do 25 years ago and never had.

[00:45:37] Chelsea Haines: Now I can be that person for her that I desire to be without being my wounded inner child who's just reactive to feeling like she's abandoning me again. Because that's not the case anymore. 

[00:45:48] Christa: So we talked about this being this efficient tool for reprogramming this subconscious mind, and you gave a couple examples of, I was going through this stuff with the untimely death of my father-in-law and this popped up.

[00:46:02] Christa: So it's almost like this happened quickly. Probably like maybe you started doing some morpheus therapy, essentially rewiring a modality used for rewiring. So let's talk about the first time. Do you remember how long it took before you were like, Hmm, I see the difference immediately. I think it was like once, one time.

[00:46:18] Chelsea Haines: The first time I did it. And that it was so potent and so specific of a memory for me, cuz it was so profound, which often these moments are both traumatic and un traumatic. The moment that I felt un traumatized instantly. Was instant. We were in Portugal, we were in an Airbnb locked down there and it was all going down and it was super triggering and, and we were getting nasty text messages still on the regular and just thinking about it and we would ruminate about it, you know, my husband and I would get into these like, oh, and then this, and then we would relive the trauma because that's what trauma brains do.

[00:46:52] Chelsea Haines: It's like I need to seek proof of what I think I know, and that's the way to deal with this, is to talk about it and to talk it out and talk like this. I love talk therapy and I hate talk therapy for that same reason. Like we just talk it to, no, we just kick a dead horse. Right. I don't even know what that phrase is all about, but I'm sure there's a story behind it.

[00:47:10] Chelsea Haines: And I got in the bathtub. I reached out to my now mentor and she sent me the tools and, and she said, just hit play. She said, you're really upset. You know, you're red in the. Hit play. And of course I was resistant to hitting play cause the trauma brain is also afraid of change. And I thought, what if I am fine on the other, other side of this?

[00:47:28] Chelsea Haines: Then what? What if I'm no longer angry? Well then that means they got away with it. Like that's, you know, no, that's not what forgiveness is about. Doesn't mean they got away with anything, or what they did was okay. It just means that you are now okay to set your boundaries in a graceful and loving way rather than.

[00:47:45] Chelsea Haines: F you get away from me. I hate you. Right? Like, you know that for me, my inner wounded child, those are all the things that I wanted to do. And I got into an Epson salt bath, which is also one of my hugely nervous system regulating tools that I absolutely love is the ocean and salt water. And gotten the Epson salt bath.

[00:48:04] Chelsea Haines: Cuz I thought, well, worst case scenario, I hit play and it doesn't work. And at least I had a nice bath out of it. Mm-hmm. And I put the phone on the toilet and I turned it all the way up and I hit play. And at the beginning of the track he asks you to rate and the, the track, there's a voice and he is the founder.

[00:48:19] Chelsea Haines: It's a male's voice. And he says, rate this feeling on a scale of not to 10, 10 being the most intense. And I was like, well I'm, I'm off the richner scale. I'm, I can't even put a number to this. I'm like so flipping mad right now. Like, and so in the moment, right, I can feel it in my gut, in my throat. Like I wanna throw up, I'm so triggered by this.

[00:48:37] Chelsea Haines: And then at the end he asked you to rate it again. And I thought, I don't even know how to rate this feeling cuz I have never felt this calm before. I don't even know. This is so new to me. This feeling of ease and calm and being able to see and understand and know what's happening and not feel emotionally reactive to it.

[00:49:02] Chelsea Haines: So I guess I gotta give it some kind of number. I guess I'll give it a two or three just because I, I feel like I have to give it something because giving it nothing would be weird. 

[00:49:11] Christa: Mm-hmm. I'd be like such a wind to the other side of my brain. 

[00:49:14] Chelsea Haines: Yeah. I'm like, and I'm like, I'm doing someone a, a disservice if I don't give credit to, to all of that anger that I held onto for so long.

[00:49:20] Chelsea Haines: And then of course I did another track and I was like, well, that's stupid. I'm just gonna give it a zero now. Cause it truly, you know, like holding onto the anger, giving it credit because you feel loyal to your feelings. That's a huge, big theme in most people's lives. I feel loyal to this anger. I can't just let it go.

[00:49:36] Chelsea Haines: I didn't. Even though, and this is often the first time I do this with clients who are, are new to this kind of work, it's like the feeling of being at ease is so unfamiliar that I don't even know what number to give it. I don't even know what number to give it. It was that profound. It was that shift. And I remember going to bed that night with like just this feeling of finally, finally, I feel like a missing link has been found.

[00:50:02] Chelsea Haines: And now please like, don't hear me wrong here. Do I feel like I've, on one hand, do I have all the answers? Of course not. And of course everyone's journey is gonna be different. And that's obviously, I think a disclaimer that I don't even really need to say, but I do need to say. But at the same time, from the evidence that I have seen in myself and in my clients, and of course even from my mentors and the years of studies that they have done and the shifts that I see 100% of the time, at least in my practice and in the practice and others, and there's not many that I can say that 100% of of the time something shifts, even if it's just 1%.

[00:50:35] Chelsea Haines: I can say that, at least in my experience, I have seen this 100% of the time so far, and I wouldn't lie about that. Now, does it mean that you know, one time therapy is gonna be the answer to all your problems? No. Cause you have many problems in life and many triggers and different layers to what's happening in the subconscious mind.

[00:50:51] Chelsea Haines: But by doing this type of work, Often and on different aspects of your emotion, right? Because when we experience things in life, things come up, like anger, frustration, and then we realize, oh, and then there's sadness, and then there's guilt, and then there's shame, right? There's different aspects of this that we have to look at and understand that there's different neural pathways for each different emotional response to different triggers.

[00:51:13] Chelsea Haines: But something happens calls memory consolidation in the process, and you start to realize the more you do it, how efficient. I mean, not only do you get quick wins, but truly even on the long term and for chronic illness like myself, I mean at least the evidence is shown in my body and the lack of rashes and you know, the, the healing of rashes that have occurred in my life that used to never go away.

[00:51:36] Chelsea Haines: This is, it's pretty. 

[00:51:39] Christa: Mm-hmm. Before you went to see your mom knowing that you would get frustrated, did you do a special session? And I, I don't know if I said this when you were talking, I don't know if we fit this in. You were feeling off the Richter scale about the stuff with your father-in-law and the family.

[00:51:53] Christa: Yeah. And that was like 12, 15 minutes. Right. That was the difference. Which is kind of crazy. Right. So like when you went to see your mom next, did you like specifically do some things mm-hmm. To try to correct before you went and then you were like, okay, this worked. Yeah, 

[00:52:08] Chelsea Haines: for sure. And you know, the way that the tools work are, you know, you essentially hit play whilst quote unquote having a fit.

[00:52:16] Chelsea Haines: So you know, you go to that place in your mind that you're ruminating on. The memories that are triggering. And it's interesting because it makes, at least for me, I thought, okay, these, the big traumas versus the acute shorter things are gonna be different. That's what I assumed that like I would have to do this more often on the root cause stuff.

[00:52:34] Chelsea Haines: Mm-hmm. Than on the like more recent. Not quote unquote as traumatic or as of a big deal. And that was just proven completely wrong to me. And before I went to see her again, I did it exactly that. I put myself back into the traumatic memory. So obviously that's where like navigating the work is probably important to do it with some support because you don't wanna go to a place where you're just going to your most traumatic event of your life and like cowboying it through this.

[00:53:03] Chelsea Haines: Like we, obviously, we don't want your nervous system to go so haywire that you experience every single symptom you've ever experienced in your life all at once, which could. Happen. We wanna minimize the damage as much as possible. And ultimately this is about nervous system health, right? So if our nervous system, if we go back to the trauma and our nervous system goes outta whack, it won't be super fun.

[00:53:21] Chelsea Haines: But you know, I had done this a few times and I says, all right, let me go to this root trauma. And I just went to the most, I actually went home and I didn't really realize it at first, and now I'm remembering it correctly. The first night I was with her, I hadn't done therapy on it beforehand. It was almost like happened as I realized it.

[00:53:39] Chelsea Haines: That first night I was so triggered, I was so upset, and I was like, oh my God, bling bling, duh, light bulb. I need to do a track on this experience. So I was able to do it in that moment. Like literally after watching a movie together, I laid in bed and I hit play, and then the next day was when. 180 degree in the opposite direction.

[00:53:57] Chelsea Haines: And that's really when I was like, oh my gosh. I went literally from this triggered, you know? And, and it's was almost like this weird moment where I was like, wow, I didn't even realize how much power this had over me. I didn't realize how triggered I was over this situation until now I have eyes that are able to see it.

[00:54:16] Chelsea Haines: You know, like I've got the ability to see how triggering this is for me now. Whereas in the past, I would just drink to deal with it and move on and lean into the feelings of love that I have for my mom. But when it popped up, I thought, man, I need to do some work here. This is more important to me than I realized.

[00:54:32] Chelsea Haines: And I was able to hit play in bed that night and the next day it was a completely different experience. And I thought, man, and the irony of it is when you're doing the work, again, this memory reconsolidation that happens is really fascinating because he asks you to like really focus on the thing that's triggering you, but then other memories will pop up.

[00:54:50] Chelsea Haines: In other words, these are all the different quote unquote proofs. That your brain has sought to prove itself. Right. So all the other times that I was triggered as an adolescent and a child where at the time I just brushed it off, I didn't think this is that big of a deal, but here I am now doing this work and all these quote unquote random memories are popping up in my mind.

[00:55:11] Chelsea Haines: And then I realized, oh my God, my brain perceived all those moments as trauma. Wow. Like this. This is like layers and layers and layers of proof of this is a dangerous situation. And all these memories in the past, some validly dangerous and some definitely not that I perceived as dangerous. That all played into this same neural pathway of the bottles popping open, respond in anger.

[00:55:37] Chelsea Haines: That is literally what it came down to. Mm-hmm. Which was wild. Mm-hmm. That just that quickly as well, I was able to no longer feel that. Yeah. 

[00:55:46] Christa: I mean, makes us excited, right? Oh yeah. 

[00:55:49] Chelsea Haines: Yeah. Tell me about it. Um, 

[00:55:52] Christa: so I have one last question before we kind of talk about work. People can find out more about Yeah.

[00:55:57] Christa: Like this particular modality, which is Yeah. Kind of the, would be potentially important for us to discuss, right? Yes. Um, but the other thing that comes up for people a lot. And the reason I thought of it was because you mentioned your now husband, you guys would ruminate about like these kind of toxic family members with his father-in-law's death.

[00:56:17] Christa: And so in relationship, you know, that's part of the trauma triggering like that happens in re like if we're living out our traumas of our history, that kind of starts to manifest in our current relationships, of course. Right? And so, yeah, it comes up a lot. People will say, well what if my so-and-so is not on board with blah, blah, blah, or whatever.

[00:56:34] Christa: So, you know, and that you don't, we don't have to have the right answer to that. But maybe from your perspective of yeah, where things have landed for you guys, is this something that your own partner has started to do as 

[00:56:44] Chelsea Haines: well? 100%. And so first and foremost, just wanna say that the beauty about doing quote unquote, the work, right?

[00:56:51] Chelsea Haines: In other words, any kind of self-reflection, any kind of self-development is the work, you know, You can Google how to do the work. I think Dr. Pedra has a, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing her name right. She's got a great book. I mean, there's a lot of different avenues that you can do to do the work. Of course, like you said, this is just one, one modality and your partner may or may not be interested in doing the work too.

[00:57:12] Chelsea Haines: But the beauty fe about doing the work yourself is that you positively affect everybody else in your life. And my husband saw the profound difference that it had in. And because of that, he was willing to do a click track, you know, a, a track, an audio track, a 12 minute track. I said, cuz he was like, really?

[00:57:31] Chelsea Haines: I mean, first off he was deep in grief losing his dad. And then the extension of that, he said, I'll try anything, you know, hit play. And it made a big difference in his ability to shift away from reliving that trauma. But ultimately the work itself, well if you are feeling triggered by your partner not wanting to do the work, we can do a track on that.

[00:57:54] Chelsea Haines: Because at the end of the day, and this is something that's been a huge theme for everyone, all of my clients this past week, is, you know, I'd say, well, you've talked about this scenario, we're kind of ruminating on it. Let's take a step back from it. I wanna ask you, what do you want out of this situation so far, a hundred percent of the time without them realizing it, the answer is, I want them to change.

[00:58:13] Chelsea Haines: In so many different words and not in those words, right? Right. If anything, it's, well, I just want that person to apologize, or I just want that person to respond to me, or I just want that person to do something different than what they're doing, and ultimately that's wanting somebody else to change. And when we realize that we can't make anybody else change and we can't control anybody else in our lives, our kids, our parents, our partner, whoever it is, there's nothing that we can do to control them, which then triggers this, I have no control of my life, which triggers the series of autonomic responses of stress and fear.

[00:58:50] Chelsea Haines: What we can control and pretty much the only thing we can control, and I'm sure you've seen all the quotes online about this, is our reaction to what those people are doing in life and then what we do about it. So what that specifically and logistically may look like between you and your partner, for example, is, okay, my partner does something that pisses me off, whether it's reasonable or not, right?

[00:59:13] Chelsea Haines: They leave their socks where they're not supposed to or something more intense, right? I can't change them. I've asked them a hundred times to not leave their socks in the middle of the room, right? They're not changing it and me getting upset about it and nagging them about it, quote unquote, is only making the situation worse.

[00:59:28] Chelsea Haines: The only thing I can do is change my reaction to the kids leaving the toys or my husband leaving his socks in the middle of the room, right? Does that mean you're gonna be okay with it? Doesn't mean that you're gonna be able to handle the situation with more love and grace, which I know you desire to do.

[00:59:44] Chelsea Haines: Yes. And what it also does is now that when you see the socks and when you see the toys or you, when you step on the toys or stub your toe with a thing in the middle of the room, you're not gonna explode like you know, a volcano waiting to erupt. You're gonna be able to say, okay, there's that thing again.

[01:00:01] Chelsea Haines: How do I want to handle this? What boundaries do I need to implement? What do I need to communicate to the people that I love? And how can I do that in a way that they are gonna be able to receive it? It's a huge key distinction because. If you're communicating to your partner in a way that they're receiving it as nagging, all of your efforts are gonna, it's fall short.

[01:00:23] Chelsea Haines: But if you are not triggered, if you are no longer emotionally responsive to this thing that is a fact, it's annoying you, you believe it's rude. That doesn't change. But what does change is your emotional response to it. It now puts you back in power. It puts you back in the driver's seat. It puts you back in the place of compassion and love and comprehension, which turns off when we're trigger.

[01:00:48] Chelsea Haines: And understanding, okay, this is what has worked. This is what hasn't worked. This is the action step that I know I need to take, and this is how I need to do it. Because I understand in my very smart brain that that person will receive what I have to say if I approach it differently. Game changer. Game changer.

[01:01:08] Chelsea Haines: Forgiveness isn't about making it right, it's about making you free from the pain and more in your power to change it moving forward. 

[01:01:18] Christa: Yeah. I'm glad I asked that question. Me too. So I feel like we're just kind of getting into the meat of, of how this works and how, how this can be transformational. But hopefully in the stories today, people have seen themselves, Chelsea, one, where can people find you online?

[01:01:35] Christa: Two. Where can people learn more about doing Orpheus? Therapy as a modality for their subconscious nervous 

[01:01:42] Chelsea Haines: system. Yeah, great question. Find me on Instagram, your gutsy gal. I have a free masterclass, which the timing of it going live will probably be premature to when this podcast launches, but the replay will be available.

[01:01:55] Chelsea Haines: I haven't figured out the logistics of that, but I'm sure there'll be a link that you can opt into and receive the free masterclass, which is going to deep dive more specifically into like, you know, if you wanna learn more about the nitty gritty science again, of what we even talked about today and like the neural pathways of the subconscious mind and nervous system.

[01:02:10] Chelsea Haines: I can share with you the link to the replay of the masterclass. But ultimately I am on Instagram all day every day. Your Getsy gal that is like my main way of loving and connecting with all of you as people. I have a me. That is as of right now, January, 2023, it's $50 a month. We go live together once a month to do group therapy together.

[01:02:34] Chelsea Haines: You know, the group is filling up pretty quickly, so I'm navigating how that looks throughout the rest of the year. I'm pretty, pretty great at just taking messy action, but ultimately Instagram is a great resource and I'll be able to direct you both to Orpheus MindTech. That is their Instagram handle as well, so you can check them out as well on their website.

[01:02:53] Chelsea Haines: If you're a practitioner, you can actually become a practitioner if you desire to add this or weave this into your practice as a whatever kind of practitioner you are, a therapist, a dietician, a health coach, whatever it may be. This is totally appropriate to start weaving into your practice. And I've got a link for that too, and probably the best way to share it is just to come find me on Instagram.

[01:03:14] Chelsea Haines: You're Guessi gal. 

[01:03:16] Christa: Thanks so much for coming on today, Chelsea. 

[01:03:18] Chelsea Haines: Thank you so much, Krista. I appreciate you. 

[01:03:21] Christa: Sharing and reviewing this podcast is the best way to help us succeed with our mission. To help integrate the best of East and West and empower you to raise the bar on your health story, just go to review this podcast.com/less stressed life.

[01:03:36] Christa: That's review this podcast.com/less stressed life, and you'll be taken directly to a page where you can insert your review and hit post.