Update Your Response to Stress, Stop the Symptom Reaction Cycle

Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor.

I'm curious how do you currently view any symptoms or impulses or urges you experience in your body. Are they something to be fixed? Are they wrong or bad? Are you afraid of them when they increase? If you said yes to these questions, you might notice how does it feel in your body to view the body's symptoms and impulses as wrong, bad, fearful, and need of fixing? You might observe that viewing symptoms and urges in this way intensifies how you feel in your body. Maybe you notice an increase in your heart rate, your breath gets shallow, your belly becomes tight, and your shoulders start to rise. Something I've been teaching for a while is that your food coping mechanisms are not a problem. Often, what needs to be updated is how you respond to your body when it is sending you communication through a symptom, impulse, or urge. What if you started to invite that reaction to the table and make it alright that this is what you're experiencing? How do you notice your body respond to that?

I chat about this some more today with Ali Damron. Ali is a hormone expert, licensed acupuncturist, and a certified personal trainer. She has a virtual practice where she helps women all over balance their hormones and have better moods, sleep, periods, and energy levels. She loves helping women reduce stress by healing the nervous system. She works 1:1 with patients, has digital courses, a YouTube channel, and a podcast called The Ali Damron Show. We chat about understanding neuroplastic pain, the complexity of emotions in healing, updating your relationship to stress, updating your body's story, understanding the role of fear in physical symptoms, embracing discomfort, anxiety as a messenger of information, and the importance of naming your feelings and emotional check-ins. I just created a brand new workshop called Move Through Binge Urges and Binge Pitfalls with Somatic Eating®, and I will be teaching it live on Wednesday, April 30th at 1:30 pm ET. It will be recorded to watch the replay. I'll leave the link in the show notes to learn more and sign up. Now, welcome Ali!

I am thrilled to connect with you again. For anyone who doesn't know, I've actually been on Ali's podcast twice, and so we've been exploring lots of things around the Somatic Eating® approach of body image and relationship with food. And so I'm excited to have you on to share your work and your backstory. And I'm first just curious, I know you have a really interesting journey that you have been on, so I'd love for you to just start there and sharing with listeners.

Ali Damron 03:27

Yeah, absolutely. So I am in women's health now. I work with women on anything from hormones to thyroids to digestion, fatigue, anxiety, regulating their nervous systems, because we all know that these symptoms are basically arise from a nervous system that is dysregulated. So to kind of set the stage for how I got here, I think as a kid, was nervous, a worrier, a goodest. Always wanted to be the good girl, kind of quiet, people pleaser, that sort of a thing. And I went through some kind of big traumatic things when my dad passed when I was 19, and about five or six years later, I started to develop back pain, and I was a personal trainer, and like in really great shape in my life at that point, didn't have kids yet, and I bent over at the gym one day and picked over a 10 pound weight, and my back went out. To make a really long story short, I tried every single thing under the sun. It was chronic for five years where I did I was in acupuncture school, actually at the time, so did acupuncture, I did chiropractic, I did PT, massage, I got injections. I did all these different things. And one day, my husband Googled stress and back pain because he thought it might be due to stress. And I had been told by other practitioners over the years that, like, you know, maybe this was due to stress, and, I mean, had the control issues and all these things. And I was like, well, you know, what do you do about that? How do you do that? And so I found this book called Healing Back Pain by Dr John Sarno. It was about how, you know, this was in the 80s that he made this so this is all kind of evolved since we read this book. But he talks about how, like, repressed emotions created pain in people because of it being a distraction and repressed emotions being so terrifying to the brain that it would much rather give you back pain or any other sort of symptom than deal with those repressed emotions. And so I read this book. It was a super fast read, and I read myself on every single page of this book. And I was like, okay, this is what's going on. And I actually got a book here, which is where, like, your body feels safe enough. You're like, I figured it out. I know what's going on. I feel safe in this pain. There's nothing actually structurally wrong with me. I'm not gonna have to be like this for the rest of my life. And it got better. And then, of course, it came back, because life was stressful, and I hadn't addressed any of the patterns on why things had come there in the first place. And so I worked on calming my nervous system down, more of the story, teaching myself that it's called neuroplastic pain, that this pain was actually safe. I didn't need to fight it and fix it and have urgency and anxiety around it anymore. And then I started slowly working on fixing the people pleasing, perfectionism, the pressure I put on myself, all of those things that were dysregulating my nervous system. And after the back pain completely went away, it was like an anchor for anxiety. And so then after that, I dealt with a lot of anxiety that kind of rushed to the surface from there. And so over the past about 10 years, I've just kind of been on this path of realizing that this is kind of my life's work, of just constantly understanding myself, looking at triggers. Life is always changing. There's always new things happening, and learning how my response to those things either what I call gives myself messages of safety that we're okay, this is fine, or messages of danger of kind of the freak out, the fear, the desperation, despair, frustration, those things. And so what I realized is, going through Chinese medicine school and extra training for women's health and hormones, I started to realize, you know, we talk about cortisol, stealing progesterone and impacting our hormone levels and causing anxiety and fatigue and insomnia and all of these other things. And so I started to realize, well, you know, I healed my back pain and my anxiety this way, but it's actually very much correlates into our women's health and hormones as well. And so now I fast forward all of these. Years later, I work with patients on chronic pain, but I also work with them on these other symptoms too, because since Dr Sarno spoke in the 80s, now we know that things like migraines and dizziness and IBS and vertigo and hives and, you know, other pains and tinnitus, like all of these other weird symptoms for people that come and go, can actually be related. In fact, are most commonly related to this idea of something called neuroplastic pain, or neuroplastic symptoms, which is driven by the nervous system feeling scared, basically.

Stephanie Mara 08:01

Wow, thanks for sharing all that. You know, something that I hear in your story, also, of what you've been through is so often, what we're taught from wellness culture, for example, is that you just have to, like, fix the symptom, and then everything will be okay. And I love that you're pointing out that the surface level symptom, it's just that it's just the tip of the iceberg of what is actually going on underneath. And I find this similarly in kind of the disordered eating eating disorder world, that also the food behavior is just the tip of the iceberg. But like you found out that, okay, yeah, I healed my back pain, but now all this anxiety that the back was holding for you, now that's like, okay, we're going one step deeper here in a what actually, my body has been really needing my support with.

Ali Damron 09:02

Totally and I think, you know, in the more, like neuroplastic symptom community, we basically say that, like the brain feels scared. And I think, you know, you've talked about this in my in your work on my podcast, too, it is the same thing. And I, you know, have gone through a whole, like Somatic Eating® thing as well that, you know, was part of my story where body image was an issue, and diets and all of that stuff. And so it is very interesting that, you know, I started this, obviously trying to heal back pain, but you can see it like, layer by layer, you're like, oh, I'm grabbing food right now because I feel a little uncomfortable and like, just feels like food might solve this problem, but it is. It's like, hey, your nervous system is is scared, asking for something, if something is going on. So like, what is that? And something that I teach my own patients is to heal this. It's kind of like two sides of the coin. So the first side of the coin is really the response to the symptom. So like, for my back pain, I was terrified of it, the thoughts, the catastrophizing, the ruminating, oh my god, am I going to be like this forever? This is so terrible. I want to, you know, run. I was a runner. I couldn't run anymore. Am I going to have to live my life like this? What's wrong with me? Why can't they fix this? I'm hopeless with this. That was just constantly spinning all day, every day, I would monitor it. I would like bend and, you know, is it better or worse than yesterday? Okay, I did this. I walked. Is it worse? That is so much preoccupation in laser focus, which is exactly the point of these neuroplastic symptoms. Because, again, if you're focused in just ruminating on these things, you're not focusing on the repressed rage that you have from like your life, or the repressed sadness and grief that you never learned how to deal with. So it becomes easier and more societally acceptable to just be like, god, this back pain really sucks. And so that's sort of the first step, is teaching your body that, like there is nothing structurally wrong we go through and how pain exists, why it exists. There's a whole bunch of research and studies around your 44 different pain centers and how they get activated. And this is basically a glitchy message of that it's not based on true structural damage, and it actually it's interestingly so for people with back pain, if anyone has that listening, it can be a herniated disc, a disc degeneration arthritis, like you can get some of these structural diagnoses and still have it be neuroplastic, where that's actually not the cause of the pain. So sometimes becomes dicey for people because they're like, well, I have a herniated disc, of course, that's the cause of pain, but we've actually researched that over and over and over for 40 years. That's actually not the cause of pain. And so that's kind of the first step is to teach this. We get stuck in this symptom fear symptom cycle. So we have a symptom get terrified of it, preoccupied, frustrated, despair, and then that sends more danger to the brain, which is what's causing the symptom in the first place, and leads to more symptoms. And so a lot of people just sit there and stay stuck in this rumination cycle. So that's always the first step that I work with is like, okay, you're coming to me for this symptom. Let's stop this symptom fear symptom cycle, and then sort of simultaneously, but kind of down the road a bit longer, then we start to work on in your world, why is your brain terrified? And I think that this can lead into addictions and eating disorders as well, as, you know, mental health disorders, physical symptoms, like we've talked about, I think it's all the same actually, because when we think about even like addiction, it's avoidance of like that discomfort and so a we want to start to learn to manage the perfectionism. We want to start to put less pressure on ourselves in those things. But to do that, it's not just saying, like, okay, I'm going to stop being a perfectionist, because that feels, again, way too unsafe for your brain to do that at the time. You can't just say that, but I do think that you can when you have this desire to buy into the perfectionism. And again, I think some of these things are so sneaky, because for a lot of it, it's like, like housework, so like, wiping the counter in like, a normal cleanliness type of way is different than what I'm talking about. And this is like, you know, scrubbing and getting every single crumb, and then you see a crumb with the sunlight, and you're like, oh my god, I have to go get that. You know, it's kind of like an OCD thing. So it's different, but it's more about, okay, I wipe the counters for, like, a normal level of cleanliness. There's still some stuff there. Not a big deal. The house can look lived in. This is just one example I'm giving. Then it's about okay, instead of buying into that compulsion of saying, okay, I gotta go wipe it down, this isn't perfect enough for me. It is about sitting with that and saying, okay, I don't like how this feels. It's really, really uncomfortable right now to let that crumb sit there. Or, you know, not have this perfect air, quote, body right now, or my clothes feel a little tighter today, but it's about letting those feelings be there and saying, okay, this is what shame feels like. This is what discomfort feels like. This is what anger and sadness and grief and worry and all of that. What is it so, and you talk about this more beautifully than anybody, but somatically, like, how does that physically feel in your body, and I think that that step of things is about really just widening your tolerance for that discomfort and saying, like, this feels uncomfortable, but it's safe. We don't need to be in fight or flight for this. We don't need to be acting like we're being chased by a bear. This is just a glitchy message that we've gotten over our life cycle to say this isn't safe, but we actually need to rewire it and teach it that it's safe, instead of buying into it and continuing the wiring in your brain that will just make it more and more dangerous as we go.

Stephanie Mara 14:31

I love all of that. It makes me think of someone put out a post the other day. I'm pretty sure I even re-shared it in my stories that said we can't regulate what we don't feel. You know, there's all this talk about regulation, but it's like, well, if we're not feeling the fear, like you're talking about, of getting out of that cycle of the symptom, the fear, the symptom of, if we don't give ourselves the opportunity to actually grow our capacity to feel the fear, we can't learn how to regulate in the fear so I hear a lot of that, of what you're talking about is that we first have to and actually just put out a post yesterday that was all about practicing the pause. It is so hard. I find that is actually one of the hardest somatic practices to begin to be with is just, how can I pause between the reaction and the action and be with what is showing up, and also, like you were beautifully just naming, like not seeing it as this perfectionist thing of you're gonna pause and you're gonna sit with it until that very end of what you're feeling, and you're gonna get it all out, and it's gonna be beautifully wrapped up with a little bow. But it may look like, you know what? I sat with this for one second, and then I needed to go do whatever I needed to do. And it may have been the behavior you want to get rid of, but it's not going to be just like an on off switch, like you're talking about. It's not just suddenly you're like, oh, I just need to turn this switch off. It's going to be a lot of very slow practice, like you're pointing to, of showing up for the fear to interrupt the symptom cycle.

Ali Damron 16:09

Yes, I love that. And I do think, you know, it's interesting with like. I don't know, I call it kind of like the commercialization of nervous system regulation, you know, doing like and not that these things are wrong by nature, but like the cold plunges or the drink powders or these types of things, we want this, like, as an instant gratification. We're like, okay, yes, this is what's going on. This is how I fix this. You know, unfortunately, and maybe this is a little bit discouraging, I don't know, but it is slow and it is really uncomfortable, like I say that is
someone who's been on this journey for almost 15 years now, 12 years. It is the most worth it thing I've ever done. It will help you to understand things that like you can't even think I, you know, embarked on this journey to get rid of back pain. And of course, at first I was like, hey, I'm going to do this because I need to get rid of this back pain. And that kept me stuck for a while longer, a lot longer than I'd like to admit, but now I can understand parenting better. I can understand my partner better. I can understand people better who are acting rude, like, okay, they're just in a dysregulated state like, this is nothing about me, where I used to take
everything personally. I can understand in my business, I used to be in a place of, like, always being in scarcity and pressure and urgency and all of that stuff, which was just not a great place to operate a business from, either. And now I can understand like, okay, when those thoughts still come up, because they do, they will always come up. None of us are immune to any of these things, but it's about understanding like, oh, there's that check engine light. We're in kind of this dysregulated we're buying into this urgency. There's a lot going on here. What can we do instead of just saying, like, yep, you need to do this thing. What can we do instead of
that? And to your point, I do a lot of, like, what's called somatic tracking, for, like, the physical symptoms. It's basically describing, like, the back pain, okay, it feels tight, it feels pressure, it feels like it's maybe moving up a little bit, it feels really wide or feels really narrow, and we just sit with it. And some of my patients sit with it for five seconds. Some of them are able to kind of sit with it for two or three minutes. That what I tell my patients is, it's really just the process of snatching up these little corrective experiences one by one by one, and the more that you snatch those up, just like we learned how to do a foreign language in middle school or high
school. It starts to become wired in there, but that is the process of learning, and no one learned anything on the first try.

Stephanie Mara 18:31

Yeah, I completely agree with all of that, in that this is a really slow journey, all the popularity of nervous system regulation work, or somatic practices or somatic work, it's been put out there as this, like new shiny toy. It's like, oh, maybe this'll be the thing that'll like fix me. But it is such slow work. I agree with you that you know I know that you know of my journey, that you know I wanted to not have the kind of relationship I was having with food. And I'm very open that it took me about a decade to kind of have that just disappear from my life altogether. But it wasn't the same for about 10 years. It was always changing. It was like on an upward curve, so to speak, that it was getting better and better and easier and easier to like be with myself and be with my body and choose different things. But it didn't always look the same from day to day, and it was very slow work and having to practice. How do I show up for myself, and how do I be with what is happening in my body, so that I can lean on these other coping mechanisms less.

Ali Damron 19:49

You know, and you mentioned something, you know, around some kind of like the somatic practices, again, like there's the somatic exercises and breathing and all these things, and I think that they absolutely can be amazing, but when we have this like, constant idea that we need to fix ourself, that, again, like, turns on the danger signals in your brain, like, oh, we're broken. Something's not right. We got to fix ourselves. And so again, that kind of keeps us in this like, state of fight or flight, hyper vigilance, hyper awareness, which is literally what's leading to the eating disorder, the addiction, the physical symptoms, the anxiety, all of them have an a root of our brain not feeling safe. And so I think, you know, those are some definite roadblocks for people. I recommend somatic tracking, I recommend journaling, I recommend breath work. I recommend walking in nature. And like all of these things are great, but if you only do them when you're with the intention of like, okay, I have to heal. I have to fix myself. So I better journal out today. Again, you're still giving your brain back the message that you're broken. You have to do this thing to be fixed. Instead of saying, like, okay, I'm really curious what's happening internally, in my body, in my thoughts and like, what I'm hanging on to and
repressing. So I'm going to try to just take out a pen and piece of paper and who knows what will come up, not being afraid of what's going to come up, but also not using that tool as something that we have to fix is critical in the journey. Anything that we do to fix ourselves will continue to magnify any of those things in the brain. So like, for your stuff, you know, you talk about this all the time, but food, and food is a tough one, because it's always around. We have to eat. We can't just abstain from it, or any of those things. And so, you know, if you have that thing around food, like, anytime you hear food or see food, or have to think about food or your body, like, it's going to be like, ding, ding, ding. This is a really scary, horrible topic for us. What do we do? And I certainly was in a place of that in my own life, where in acupuncture school specifically, which was the time of my peak back pain. You know, well intentioned people, of course, but talked about how gluten and dairy and soy and sugar and food dyes and pesticides and additives and all of these things were terrifying. And so I got to a point in my own life where, like, I looked at food and I was like, oh my god, what am I going to do? Like, this is an organic, perfect food, and my family didn't eat that way, like my friends, we went out on the weekends, still, like that was not a thing. And so I was terrified. And then same thing when I had my first baby, you know, I was making all the soaps and making all the products and not feeding anything unorganic, and it was like a very unhealthy place to be, for sure, when I was trying to be so healthy and make all of these great decisions, it was very much mask in the form of wellness and health. But it was a really unhealthy place to be, because my brain, I could, I can still feel it, actually, when I think about it was just like on absolute high alert all the time, and could never let its guard down around me or my infant at the time.

Stephanie Mara 22:51

Yeah, you know what I hear, and everything that you were just naming was what you said at the very beginning of this underlying constant stress that is pushing everything forward and sparking that threat response in the body, and I find that it is not discussed enough in kind of these diet, wellness, fitness cultures of how much stress is an underlying thing. But I'm curious if you could speak more to that stress isn't also something we can just get rid of. You know, that's how it's often been viewed, of like you just need to manage your stress, or you need to de stress, or you need to find ways to, like, not be stressed. But stress is a part of being a human being, and I feel like with this blanket of saying we just need to manage our stress, we don't learn how to have a relationship with stress.

Ali Damron 23:51

Yeah, so this is, actually, this is, like, such a great question that I love to talk about. So my biggest issue with people discussing nervous system regulation now is that we get the definition or like, what it needs to look like wrong, and I think that it looks like a very perfectionistic, pressure filled thing. What I see when I look at a lot of content online that talks about this actually is a lot of pressure to not feel ever dysregulated, to feel calm, cool, collected, no anxiety, happy, light, all of these things all the time. And when we feel some of these like harder emotions or more difficult things to work through, or more discomfort, we are like what I'm doing is not working. See, I'm trying to regulate my nervous system, but it's not working at all. And I'm not supposed to feel this way, when, in reality, I actually think the complete opposite. I think that we are human beings. We all have these repertoire of emotions. There's, you know, research is different, but Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart talks about how many we have, and she gave us 72 different ones. And I actually think the goal with nervous system regulation is to feel safe in the emotion. So we are humans. There is no way on earth that we're ever going to eliminate anxiety or anger or grief or pain or sadness or worry or fear that is part of being here on Earth. And I think that if we cannot freak out when we have those things and say, okay, I'm feeling a lot of anger right now. I'm not going to gaslight myself out of it and say, well, so and so has it worse. You just need to stop thinking that way, or you need to pull up your bootstraps, or you need to get over it, instead of gaslighting yourself out because that's just a protective mechanism. That's just a way of saying this feels so uncomfortable, like we need to not do this right now. But instead of doing that saying, like, you know what, I am mad right now. It's okay. It doesn't mean anything about me. Thoughts actually don't equal actions. Maybe you grew up in a household where you had an emotionally volatile parent and anger feels terrifying. That doesn't mean that that's how you're going to act and respond. Now I certainly believe in taking responsibility and how you respond to the anger, but I absolutely do believe in maybe taking a few seconds and saying, okay, this feels really explosive. It feels kind of hot. I feel like I kind of want to, like, punch something. My body's feeling really tense at the moment, okay, this is how anger is manifesting in my body, and that is okay. And the thing is that people don't understand that's hard is when we process our emotions and let them be there safely. They actually process really fast. But when we try to, like, fight them, they get stored. Your brain says, oh my god, here's anger. We don't do that. Up goes the fight or flight response. On goes the symptom. Your body is like, well, we can't deal with this thing, so we're going to get some other symptom going on. And you might, I mean, you probably get this all the time, but there the amount of people who have come to me over the years that are going through like, massive stress in their life and are like, I just need to lose five pounds. I just, I
can't stand this anymore. I'm so uncomfortable. I just need to lose these five pounds. It has nothing to do with the five pounds, has everything to do with you want control and you want some safety, so let's try to get your body to feel safe, versus even discussing the five pounds, I think that's where we've led to. And I feel like there's even, like I said, just like, this perfectionistic thing around not feeling discomfort when, like I said, the polar opposite is true, allowing all the discomfort to kind of just be there, wash over you. Not judge it, not shame it. Just saying, okay, this is how I feel today. And I also think the other thing that's interesting for people is that it's very difficult to feel two things at once. So two things can be true, where you might feel relieved and grief or you might feel grateful that things weren't as bad as they could have been, but terrified as well. And I think that that's also a really difficult thing for people to kind of wrestle with. But I always tell my patients that, like two things can be true.

Stephanie Mara 27:53

Completely agree with everything that you just said, something that it reminds me of is, I kind of like to call it updating your body's story, like you were naming sometimes, how we witness things as kids, and we're like, oh, that's what anger is like, like in your example, and then we make this association in our bodies of, okay, that's scary. That was overwhelming, so I'm just not gonna feel that. And sometimes we need to update the body story of actually anger is normal. We can feel this anger, we can move through this anger. We can digest this anger. And I agree with you that sometimes it's actually the resistance or the fear to feeling what we feel that feels more intense than the feeling itself.

Ali Damron 28:39

Yes, I agree. So even with like, the physical symptoms, we teach this a lot in neuroplastic, so it's the fear of the symptom that's so debilitating versus the symptom itself. And this is true, like in so many examples, where if somebody has like, a trigger around, like, IBS, right? Like, they're just like, really every time they eat, and they're really laser focused on, like, oh my god, is my stomach gonna hurt? Am I bloated? Am I constipated? And that's something that they notice. They're not gonna be triggered by, like, a foot pain, like plantar fasciitis if they press down and they were like, oh, interesting. I have, like, this weird between my foot today. They would just be like, okay, like, that'll go away. It's not a big deal. They wouldn't, like, latch onto it. But somebody else might be the polar opposite, where they're like, really laser focused on that foot pain and so fearful of it and preoccupied and laser focused and all those things, whereas if they got a little bloated or constipated, they would just be like, oh, probably a something weird, like, not a big deal. And so we teach that a lot, that it's actually when we're healing, it's the fear itself, that we want to heal, versus like the symptom. And when we reduce the fear enough around the emotion or the symptom itself, that's when things your brain actually starts to with the symptoms, let it go, that that's the point at which the symptoms go away. Is when the fear is you could care less if it's there or not. Which sounds crazy. And I heard that when I was dealing with my back pain, I was like, reading stuff, and like, had this community of people that were going through it too, and they're like, eventually you'll get to a point where you just don't care that it's there. And I was like, I don't think I'm ever going to get there, but you do get there eventually, with just picking up these little corrective experiences, you do get to a place where you're like, okay, whatever. This has been there long enough, we're fine, and then at that point, that's when the symptom fades.

Stephanie Mara 30:24

I love that what you are naming is that is our reaction to the symptom, and something that I've actually never shared, I don't think on any of my podcasts before in my journey, because you just named IBS was, you know, I got diagnosed with IBS in my early 20s, which I always talk about, how it was BS, and there was all these other underlying things, but was first actually feeling the symptom in my body of digestive pain, and that actually it was the clenching that I was experiencing in my body of fear, likeyou're talking about around experiencing pain when eating that actually made the pain worse. When I started being actually able to breathe in my belly and, like, make it okay if I have a reaction to a food that even if sometimes I would get bloated, I had no pain. And so that was an interesting shift that occurred, that it wasn't actually the pain was just solely responsible because of the food or what I was eating, which was really important and I talk about that a lot of I question with a lot of people, let's get curious. Is it really the food, or is it the state that I'm eating the food in? And so I hear that in what you're talking about, of anything that we react to in our body, that we have to pay attention to the reaction rather than how our body is responding.

Ali Damron 31:53

Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of like what we teach in terms of somatic tracking with the symptoms. So it's more like, okay, instead of bracing and being really tight intense, or, like avoiding it all together, or kind of going up to our thoughts around it, like we're actually going to gently and curiously. So I always give the example of kind of like a fish in an aquarium. So we're not watching this like a hawk getting its prey, like, really intensely. We're just kind of like watching like a like, we would fish in an aquarium, just like, oh, interesting, you know, whatever. And so what I teach people to do is look at the sensation and say, like, okay, describe this like you're describing a picture on the wall to me, what does it feel like to you? And as long as you can stay there where you are feeling calm, the minute that we go to like, oh my god, I can't handle this anymore. That's when we have to stop it, because that's called a setback, meaning that we are teaching your or like, I guess, like reiterating to your brain that this sensation is dangerous, so we have to teach it that it's safe by staying calm through it. And like I said, over and over, just like these little corrective experiences, we pick up, and soon you realize okay, we felt this before we know what it does. We know what it is. It can be there or not be there. We're okay anyway, and we can carry on. And the other thing that I tell my patients sometimes with like stomach pains or anxiety, or any of these pains, I'm like, hey, you and your anxiety are gonna go to work today. You and your anxiety are going to go parent these kids today. You and your IBS are going to go to lunch today. I just kind of think about it as, like, wearing a purse, or like having it kind of tag along with me and being like, I would love for you not to be here today.It would be really great. But if you feel the need to be here today and this makes you feel safe, then you and I are going to go do this together.

Stephanie Mara 33:41

Oh my gosh. I love that. I completely agree. I always kind of call it like pulling a chair up to the table, like they may be with you in the meal right now, but welcome them to the table. They're going to have lunch with you today. So I love that description of that. And I was recently just talking about how it's not bad or wrong to have impulses or urges like what I hear you also pointing to, that I similarly talk about, is that it's how do we actually connect with the impulse, we show up with the urges, we connect with ourselves within what's happening and not make that just because thebody's having a reaction to something wrong or bad. Like, life can be overwhelming. We're processing sights and sounds and smells and all sorts of things all day, every day, and so, like, it's going to be normal for the body to react to things sometimes.

Ali Damron 34:35

You know, interestingly, like your work actually helped me with this. So I am kind of a grazer and, like, a bite, licks and tastes person. And I knew that that's something that I kind of wanted to explore in my life and see, like, what is this about? And interestingly, I would say, probably in the last few months, I've like, really kind of looked at that and like, okay, because, you know, like, emotional hunger typically comes on really quickly, just like a bigurge and impulse to do things. So every time that I have been doing that lately, I'm like, stop. And I'm like, hey, what's happening here? Like, you're not hungry at all. There's no need to eat this handful of chocolate chips. Like, what's going on here? Sometimes I know, like, okay, I'm bored or I'm anxious or I'm stressed or I'm tired or whatever. And sometimes I can identify what it is, and other times I actually cannot identify, like, why I used to need this, this food, but it is. It's just like, okay. It's just discomfort. It's just saying, like, okay, my chest feels like a little squirrely or my stomach feels a little squirrely or something. And it's just some discomfort. And it's just like, you don't eat food that you've eaten, you've eaten balanced meals all day. You're good. And just kind of, again, learning how to really tolerate that discomfort. And it's interesting. I talk about this a lot on my social media, of like, ways that we avoid discomfort, and it's so benign. It's, again, grabbing that handful of chocolate chips out the cupboard. It is grabbing your phone and just scrolling real quick. It is having the safety water bottle so, like, can't going anywhere else without the safety water bottle that makes what if you get anxious, or what if you get thirsty, not leaving the house without a snack food is very readily available in our society. We don't always need to have the safety and I always tell people to, like, with sort of, like, the safety compulsions. I don't think we need to have perfection there either. If it's something that like is not really impacting your quality of life at all, and it's just like, I like to leave the house with a bar in my purse every time in case. I don't think that's like the end of the world, but I do think that there are a lot of times like scrolling the phone or grabbing food or things like that, that like you don't actually want to do and are driving other symptoms that we're trying to work on that are actually they're just compulsions, and a lot of people were just so on autopilot all the time to do them that we don't even like. I posted on social media, and they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't even recognize that I like I do. I scroll my phone at the stop light because I can't handle any sort of idle time now like that just feels way too intense. Or I always have to have my safety water bottle with me, or, you know, just these things that we do. And so again, I always bring it to people's attention so they can recognize, like, this is what you're doing, and we can make the decision, is it impacting your quality of life enough to deal with it and kind of work through it? Or are we good to just do it?

Stephanie Mara 37:16

Yeah, thanks for naming that. And I love that you're bringing in nuance in this conversation, because it is nuanced that there are some things that, like, I like to see it as just bringing in conscious intention and awareness and ownership of okay. So if you want to do this thing, like do it consciously own that that's what you want to do, and also make it okay that you're doing what you're doing. And I find that there's a different even felt sense when you are potentially in a behavior that you're owning and rather than a behavior that you are doing in a disembodied state, that if you are owning the behavior and saying, okay, I want to do this thing, and I'm going to try and stay in my body while I do this thing, that I am getting the message that it would make me feel better. And then getting curious, does it actually make you feel better? Because sometimes we have associations, like in our mind or our body, that this thing is going to make me feel a certain way, and then when we actually embody the act, we're like, oh, wait a second, this isn't actually helping me feel the way I want to feel my body at all. And so I love that you're bringing in like, yeah, sometimes it isn't just trying to change everything, and sometimes something is way too much to sit with. And there is a lot of nuance here, where sometimes you are going to do the coping mechanism, and there's nothing wrong with that either. But even within the coping mechanism, can we bring more embodiment online in that as well.

Ali Damron 38:47

Yeah, I love that. Yes, you have a very much more eloquent way of explaining it, but yes, I do
agree with that, of making more conscious decisions and intentions versus just living in autopilot.

Stephanie Mara 38:58

Yeah, I'm curious, as you've worked with people around their stress response and this pausing and this getting out of the response symptom cycle, like, what have you seen be supportive for people to start doing some of these things.

Ali Damron 39:15

So actually, I think the most impactful thing, like one strategy, again, anxiety is a symptom. Chronic pain is a symptom. These things are all the same thing, but I have a lot of patients come to me for anxiety, and they have expressed to me, and I felt the same way that the most beneficial way to think about anxiety is actually kind of like, I explained it like a purse. I say it like, name it to tame it. There's a whole bunch of like phrases I use. But I think with anxiety, itself, our society has taught us to, like, get rid of it. And this can be through medication. This can be through therapy. This could be through meditation, breathing exercises, like all of them, in my opinion, are on the same level playing field in terms of you're trying to get rid of this feeling when it's not anything to get rid of, it's like a fire alarm in your brain, or like your security camera in your house. And so I teach them, I'm like, hey, so anxiety is just your brain feeling scared. There's nothing to get rid of. It can feel intense panic especially, can feel very intense. And again, there's certain like scales of it so on, like, a severity scale of zero to 10, if it's about above a seven out of 10, as sometimes panic is we actually want to do the safety coping thing, because that will get us into a state of safety. If it's below about a seven out of 10, I tend to tell them, like, try to sit with this for a little bit so that we can try to get those neural pathways going. But ultimately, we're trying to find a state of safety in this symptom. So that has actually been the most impactful thing that I have taught, I think, is just anxiety is nothing to get rid of. Everything that our society teaches us about anxiety is to get rid of it. And also, I think there's a lot of shame around anxiety. People make fun of anxious people. People feel like they don't want to be the anxious person they know they're being kind of irrational when they're in that state, and it's embarrassing. Again, I've had a really intimate relationship with anxiety, and I have felt all of those things, and so I know how people feel with it. But again, I think it's nothing to get rid of. It's your brain feeling scared. And so if we can just remind ourselves, and for me, it was a really like analytical process of understanding what is happening when I have anxiety, because it feels so out of control, that really helped provide some safety of like, okay, this feeling that I'm having these heart palpitations, this dizziness, this weird, whatever feeling is just adrenaline, my body can process that. My body can handle this. It knows what to do. And also, this is safe and very temporary, and me and my anxiety have to go to work today, or me and my anxiety have to parent my kids today. I think that, again, is super helpful. And you know this too, the nervous system is about 80% non verbal, so there's really not a lot of thinking that can think our way out of anxiety.

Stephanie Mara 41:58

Yeah, I love the saying, name it to tame it. I totally forget who came up with that, but what it makes me think of is Dr Daniel Siegel. I believe is someone who talks about how when we bring language to emotion, it shifts us out of our amygdala to our prefrontal cortex, and so it's exactly what you're talking about is when I know it seems like such a small thing, but when you actually just name either internally or out loud, I'm feeling anxious right now, you actually shift into a totally different part of your brain, where you have more capacity to logic around your anxiety, to think through your anxiety, to reason with your anxiety, rather than just having the anxiety play out in the background. So I know that sounds so small and so simple, but I love that you're naming that, because it actually, really is an important aspect of being with anxiety is first naming that anxiety is present.

Ali Damron 42:56

Yeah, and it really does, like, dial it down, just even a few notches of like, okay, we've experienced this before, especially with the physical symptoms, because anxiety gets I mean, anxiety can be crazy. It can give you all kinds of weird symptoms. I've experienced a ton of them, and it takes a second is like, is this anxiety? What is this? And so it can make it feel scarier that way. But yes, just kind of looking myself in the mirror. That's what I tell patients to do, and saying, like, hey, this is anxiety. We know what this is. It's not dangerous. It feels uncomfortable, but there's nothing wrong with this.

Stephanie Mara 43:31

Yeah, so I'm curious. You know, I usually like to offer individuals who are listening like a baby step, and I know we were just talking about one baby step of, like, name it to tame it. I'm curious if there's anything else that you would offer on this journey of, kind of, like, being with ourselves and our body's reactions.

Ali Damron 43:49

So I like to tell people at night to check in, because we didn't really get into this, but emotions build up in the body when we don't process them, and can lead to, like, different diseases, like there's several doctors who talk about how it can lead even to, like autoimmunity and things like that. And so I think processing emotions is like such a beautiful thing, and really health protective as well. So I tell my patients to start this, because this is probably something that you've never done before. It's gonna feel real clunky at first. Before you go to bed, check in with yourself like you do your partner or your kids or your friend or whoever, and just see what's there. So maybe we start to say like, oh yeah, this feeling feels sadness or anger, and some of us actually don't have the vocabulary to be able to determine what the feeling is, and that's okay too, but we want to just basically sit with it and do kind of what I said with the somatic tracking of just being like, oh, interesting. My chest feels just a little tight tonight, or my heart's beating a little bit faster, or it feels like a dull kind of ache, or it feels really superficial, or really deep tonight. And again, the goal here is not to do anything about it, not to fix, change, modify, out think, shame, judge. It's just to notice that that is what's right now and be 100% okay with it. And so I think that's a really great place to start. Maybe when we're not actively seeking a whole lot of stimulation from emotions or symptoms or feelings, it can kind of just get you into that habit. And then I think with time, you'll be able to do it a little bit more like in real time on the fly.

Stephanie Mara 45:19

I love that, and it is so important, you know, I find that if we aren't in the habitual practice of checking in with ourselves, we just have to start somewhere. Set an alarm on your phone to be like every day at this time, I'm going to start practicing checking in with myself, and especially in the evening if we've had such a busy day. So I appreciate that suggestion where it's like things will build over time, and we need to create that time to check in and kind of process what has been showing up for ourselves and kind of help our body. I always like to call it like, digest what has been showing up for us throughout the day. I love that, yeah, well, I just loved this conversation. Thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom, and how can individuals keep in touch with you and what you're doing?

Ali Damron 46:05

So I have a lot of different kind of like, free resources. I have a podcast called The Ali Damron show. I have a YouTube channel, Instagram at Ali Damron, and then my website at Ali Damron. So pretty much on any platform, just my name is where you can find me.

Stephanie Mara 46:19

Awesome. I will put all those links in the show notes and just thank you so much again for your time and for everything that you shared today.

Ali Damron 46:27

Absolutely thanks for having me.

Stephanie Mara 46:29

Yeah, well, as always to everyone listening. If you have any questions, email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime, and I hope you all have a safety producing and satiating rest of your day. Bye!

Keep in touch with Ali:

Website: www.alidamron.com
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