Dr. Erin Hayford [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone, and welcome to episode five of the Sacred Illness podcast. Today I'm going to be talking about something that is, I think, foundational and underpins a lot of the paradigm shifts that are part of this work that I do and the things that I talk about. So I want to start with a personal story about my own healing journey, because I was. I've been working on creating this boot camp, which is, for me, kind of like the foundational signature steps that I followed in my own healing journey and that I've done with my one on one clients that I'm trying to put down in a methodology. So I have these steps outlined for folks to continue to follow and to learn in an easy, step by step manner. And as I was reflecting on my journey, I was asking myself, where did it start? Where did the turning point happen? Where I stepped off the path that I was on, that was leading to me feeling sick and creating issues in my life and leading to dissatisfaction and pivot into the path that eventually led to the healing of my symptoms. So that pivotal moment for me began when I discovered through therapy that I had experienced childhood trauma. And the reason this was pivotal for me was because it was the first time in my life that I really deeply recognized and understood that the things that I had grew up around, the things I was told, the things that I witnessed, the things I experienced, were not normal.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:01:29]:
They were not okay. They were not safe. They were not healthy. But beyond that, what I really learned, that really started to change my life and put me on a different path, was that the thoughts and beliefs that I had inherited, so to speak, from those events were faulty. They were not really me. And beyond not being me, they had become this lens through which I was seeing my entire world. Because, for example, let's say, which is true, I adopted this belief. I am not enough.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:02:01]:
And that belief was like. It was like glasses. It was like sunglasses. It was shaded everything in my life. It changed how I perceived everything in my life. And so it prevented me from pursuing relationships that felt fulfilling, from stepping fully into jobs that felt really aligned with who I was, from saying things and speaking my needs and showing up in the world that felt really true and resonant with me. Because this belief was saying, you're not enough. So kind of like, pull back, don't go in all the way, because what do you have to offer? Who are you? Why are you anything special? And so that is just one of many beliefs that I have been working on since understanding this sort of, like, again, inheritance that I got from my childhood experiences, and all of them are part of those layers of the onion that we talked about in one of the previous podcast episodes that contributed to pushing me further and further and further away from my authentic self, is we all hold these beliefs, whether they arise out of traumatic experiences or not.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:03:09]:
It's very, very hard for us to be untouched by the environment in which we grow up, by culture, by society. There's things that influence us to create or develop beliefs about ourselves, about the world, about other people, that take us away from what we really believe, what we're really aligned with, what's really in our core self. What feels really that kind of excited inner feeling you get when something feels really, really right. Anything that takes us away from that is something that is going to change the course of our lives in some way, shape, or form, and therefore take us further out of alignment with who we are. And again, we all have some of those beliefs, and some of us, more than others, likely, those of us who experience trauma, have more of those experiences and more of those beliefs. And the reason for that is because we had to develop beliefs that were in alignment with this situation at hand to keep us safe. The number one goal of our body, of our nervous system, is to keep us safe. It's wired for survival.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:04:18]:
And so when we're encountering trauma, obviously, that is something that is indirect threat to our safety and survival. And so our brain does a really good job of imprinting this event in our memory center and in our emotional centers. And from that event, we are creating this story about what it means about us, what it means about the world. And so our brain is helping us remember this so that we can stay safe. So these beliefs serve to keep us safe. That's the belief. That's why we continue to engage in them, but ultimately, they are causing harm. But before we get into that, let's back up a second for a moment about dysregulation.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:04:59]:
This is a word that is talked about a lot nowadays, and a lot of us have some idea of what it means. But I want to get really clear on the definition of dysregulation, because it is key to a healing journey, particularly when a person is working on chronic illness and symptoms. So when we experience stress, it is normal and natural for us to activate our system, to activate and to move into a state of fight or flight. That's a normal reaction. And fight or flight is literally a physiological response that's happening inside our bodies, where the body is preparing to either fight the threat or run away from it, which is flight. If that is not an option, if we can't fight it or get away from it, then we're going to move into freeze, which is this kind of temporary state where we are shut down. And the purpose of that is to conserve resources in our bodies in the event that we are able to then run away or fight the thing later on. Again, this is normal fight flight.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:05:55]:
Freeze is not dysregulation. That is a common misconception. It is normal and natural for us to move into this state of activation pretty regularly. Freeze is not so normal, so to speak. That is kind of reserved for really worst case scenarios, again, where we cannot deal with the threat in that moment, but generally speaking, getting activated, feeling stressed, like that's a normal response, and we're supposed to move in and out of it all the time. However, it is not the state that we're supposed to stay in. It's a temporary thing that's supposed to happen to deal with the threat and then move back into a state of calm and connection with self, connection with the world, feeling safe. When trauma happens, we are chronically altered.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:06:41]:
It has such a huge impact, because the nature of trauma is that we can't cope. Our mechanisms, our survival mechanisms, are overwhelmed by trauma. It is incredibly distressing to the system. And so naturally, this leaves a huge imprint on our nervous system and changes the way that it functions. It changes the concept of safety in the world, in ourselves, between people. It permanently alters, not permanently, but pretty massively alters how we feel in terms of safety and kind of like ups the alarm bells. And what happens when that happens is we are more easily, more readily, more often shifting into a state of fight flight freeze, because it's like we're jumpy, right? Like everything was fine, everything. We would have our normal stress response, whatever trauma happens.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:07:35]:
And then all of a sudden, we're like, oh, what was that? Right? Because our system is now more on edge, because it's like, oh, I didn't know that was a thing. Let's be super prepared in case that happens again. The result of that, as I just said, is that we're moving into fight flight freeze more often than not. So we are more often in a state of activation than we are in a state of calm. And this is what we call dysregulation. Dysregulation is when we are more often activated than we are in a state of calm, which a regulated nervous system is the opposite. We are more often calm in that state of safety. And connection, occasionally going into fight or flight.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:08:10]:
And so trauma kind of reverses that dynamic. This is key to link it back to what we were talking about before the traumatic event or events, because some trauma is defined by an ongoing situation is the initial insult, right? So it's sort of the initial thing that puts us into this state of activation. But it is the story that our conscious brains, that our evolved mammalian brains develop around that event that keep it alive in our bodies. This is exactly what Peter Levine, who's the father of somatic experiencing, he's the person who really studied the somatic therapy and how trauma gets stuck in the body. He observed this when he was looking at animals and saying, well, they experience trauma. I mean, they're being hunted, they're being killed, like, they're seeing their families killed by predators, whatever, but they don't get traumatized. So what happens? What's the difference? And what he came to understand is that they have a somatic process where they shake the threat off. They process the intensity of those emotions and of the activation that happens in the system, and they return back to baseline.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:09:22]:
So they very skillfully go into fight or flight, even in these really distressing situations, and have a way to come out of it, partly thanks to the fact that they don't have evolved brains. It is the evolved part of our brain, the part that allows us to have speech and memory and learning and all the things that we do as humans, that other animals do not have. That is a blessing and a curse, because that part of our brain creates a story, a belief, an interpretation of that event that, again, our brain then holds onto and colors everything else in our life to keep us safe, which is, again, a noble goal, but ultimately, that ends up hurting us, because that lens through which we're seeing the world, as I said earlier, changes how we interact with people, the things we might say yes to, how we are going to be in relationship with people, the relationships we allow into our lives, the jobs we take, the jobs we don't take, the things we do, the things we don't do. It just starts to create ripple effects throughout our entire lives. And ultimately, what's happening is we are living out that limiting belief. We're living out that story that was born out of the trauma, which keeps that trauma alive. Because as long as we are acting out of those limiting beliefs, as long as we are kind of obeying what they're saying about us, we're communicating to our nervous system. Yeah, that threat is still here.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:10:46]:
That's why I have to stay small. That's why I have to not be enough and not say what I want to say and not say no and people, please. Or that's why I'm so angry all the time, because I have to be defensive, or that's why I'm always not committing and quitting stuff and moving on to the next thing, right. These are ways that fight, flight, freeze manifest in our day to day lives. And so our nervous system interprets that as like, okay, so the threat must still be around, because you are behaving in a way that says that it is. As long as we are continuing to engage in those behaviors, continuing to obey low self worth beliefs, we are keeping our systems dysregulated. And dysregulation is the place from which chronic illness arises. Our bodies cannot heal when our nervous systems are dysregulated.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:11:34]:
We cannot heal out of a place of fight, flight, freeze. We can only heal literally, physiologically speaking. Our bodies can only undergo the processes that we consider healing, maintenance, regeneration, renewal, when in a calm, safe, connected place. So this is why it is so important to understand this linkage between what we're thinking, how we're perceiving the world, how it's impacting us, and how it's keeping our nervous systems dysregulated, ultimately causing illness. And finally, to wrap this all up, this is why I think of the healing journey. Not so much of getting rid of symptoms. As I have said before in other podcast episodes, it's not so much about just feeling physically better so that you can get back to being functional and get back into the life of the grind that you're currently in, or to deal with the stressors in your life better. It's about getting into those limiting beliefs that came out of your trauma that are keeping you stuck small and sick.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:12:31]:
And once we start to work on those beliefs, the symptoms just kind of fade away on their own. They are sort of a byproduct of those limiting beliefs, and they're a good byproduct in a sense that they're pointing in and saying, hey, you got to tune in. Something is off here, right? Which we talked about in another episode. But the symptoms themselves become not really the goal of a healing journey. At some point, when you realize the work is deeper than that, the illness is just the surface, like red flag, but the work is deeper than this, and it just becomes something that starts to fade away as we tune into really working on those limiting beliefs. So, ultimately, the healing journey is a journey back to yourself, reconnecting with who you were when you were born, before all the layers of family conditioning and cultural conditioning and society conditioning, et cetera, took you away from that self, altered the way you show up in the world. Told you you were not enough. Took away your innate connection to your intuition, your needs, your wants and desires.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:13:34]:
Told you they were stupid, told you they were not achievable. Told you you were not worthy of having them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right? There's so many layers that we can pack on, depending on what we experienced. So again, really inviting you to think of a healing journey as uncovering these limiting beliefs, understanding that these beliefs are what keep trauma alive. So it's not enough to understand that you had trauma. It's not enough to understand that your system is dysregulated. And to do these kind of exercises we see people doing of like, okay, just breathe deeply or tap your body or do those things help to discharge the energy. But if you're not getting at those subconscious beliefs and reprogramming them, nothing is going to change until that happens.
Dr. Erin Hayford [00:14:17]:
That is foundational to the healing process on all levels, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, and beyond. So let me know what you think about this episode, and if it's helpful for you, I really encourage you to check out the sacred illness community. This is where I am teaching this methodology that I'm working through and creating about how I perceive this work to go and how we really start to get into those subconscious beliefs and rewiring them so that we can see symptom resolution and we can start to feel better. But ultimately, so that we can be ourselves and achieve the freedom and purpose and connection and life that we deserve and are worthy of, whether you're able to see that right now or not.
