Triggers, Trauma & the Body: What ADHDers Need to Know About Somatic Healing with Brittany Piper

Content Warning: This episode includes discussion of sexual assault, suicidal ideation, and eating disorders. Listener discretion is advised.

In this deeply impactful episode, I sit down with the incredible Brittany Piper—international speaker, author, somatic experiencing practitioner, and founder of the Body First Healing program. Brittany shares her powerful story of overcoming trauma and explains how misdiagnoses like ADHD can sometimes mask deeper trauma responses.

We dive into the science of the nervous system, the power of somatic healing, and how trauma lives in the body long after the mind thinks it’s moved on. Brittany shares how her journey led her from survival to recovery, and how she now helps others understand their body’s language to reclaim safety, connection, and joy. If you or someone you love struggles with trauma, anxiety, ADHD, or PTSD, this episode offers real hope, powerful insight, and practical tools for healing.

Episode Highlights:

[0:49] Meet Brittany Piper and a glimpse into her work and background in trauma-informed care.

[3:05] Brittany opens up about her early life and how trauma impacted her mental health.

[5:56] Grinning and bearing it: how unresolved trauma showed up as ADHD, anxiety, and depression.

[8:41] The exhausting toll of a two-year trial process and its re-traumatizing effects.

[12:08] Rock bottom: the jail cell moment that sparked Brittany's healing journey.

[13:49] Introduction to somatic experiencing and how Brittany began healing her nervous system.

[17:47] Why talk therapy alone wasn’t enough—and how polyvagal theory changed everything.

[22:10] Understanding nervous system responses and how to rewire for safety.

[24:20] Trigger vs. activation: decoding what your body is really telling you.

[28:56] How repeated exposure through the body can neutralize trauma responses.

[31:49] Real-time somatic work: what healing looks like on a body level.

[35:15] How somatic IFS and nervous system awareness help you lead from your most regulated self.

[42:53] Why trauma recovery requires slowing down and building foundational safety.

[44:47] The truth about regulation: it's not about "fixing" yourself—it's about changing how you relate to your emotions.

Guest Bio:

Brittany Piper is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, author, and international speaker specializing in trauma-informed care and nervous system healing. She is the founder of the Body First Healing program and author of Body-First Healing: A Revolutionary Guide to Nervous System Recovery.

Links & Resources:

• Learn more about Brittany's work: bodyfirsthealing.com
• Follow Brittany on Instagram: @healwithbrit

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Transcript

Brittany Piper: 0:00

He was ultimately sentenced to 60 years. And I remember thinking along the way, and maybe I didn't consciously think this, but looking back now, I'm like, I must have thought, when he gets convicted, I'll be okay. Just muscle through, just muscle through. When he gets convicted, if he gets convicted, I'll be okay. And I remember the weeks after the sentencing feeling like that was the lowest point in my life, and I think it's because my nervous system was finally like, okay, you can take off the armor. You don't have to be scared anymore. But I was still stuck in this debilitating terror in my body and in my life, and so the alcohol intake actually increased even more in less than 30 days after the sentencing, I actually found myself in a jail cell because of an alcohol related incident.

Brooke Schnittman: 0:49

Welcome to successful with ADHD. I'm Brooke schnittman. Let's get started. Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of successful with ADHD. Today I have Brittany Piper, who is an international, renowned speaker and author of somatic experiencing practitioner, and she's an expert in sexual violence prevention and trauma informed care. We'll get into that when we dive into her book that talks about her story. Over the past 13 years, Britney has delivered more than 400 programs across three continents. Her work has been recognized by the US Army, the Department of Justice, the Laura Bush Institute for Women's Health, cosmopolitan Elite Daily and others, and as a rape survivor and leading advocate on sexual violence prevention. Brittany speaks to 10s of 1000s of rape survivors each year. She's a forensic neurobiology expert. She conducts trauma informed trainings with US Army and sex crimes detectives. And she's the creator of heal with bread, and founder of the internationally acclaimed body first healing program. So we're going to dive into, and that's not even all of it both, but we're gonna dive into what makes Brittany so renowned in the work that she does on somatic experiencing. So welcome Brittany. First of all, thank you for being here. Thank you, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah. Thank you so Brittany and I got to speak a little bit before we hopped on the podcast, I was asking her about some of her diagnoses. She was actually misdiagnosed with ADHD when she was younger. And I just, I find that fascinating, and this isn't something I was going to mention, but because you mentioned that, I know from your story that you share in the book, and we're going to get into that you have been through hell and back growing up. Yeah, yeah, can you? Can you talk a little bit about that, and you know how the impact of what you went through looked like ADHD and PTSD and anxiety at the time. Yeah.

Brittany Piper: 3:06

So I am, first of all, thank you for having me on. Like I said, I'm, I'm really excited to be, you know, be here with you and your community. And I know that even from the introduction, even reading kind of my my intro, it's like, Whoa, this is heavy. And I just want to preface by saying it doesn't have to be heavy, but yeah, so for me, I share a lot in the book. My book is body first healing. It's kind of like, you know, one part memoir, one part one part roadmap to recovery through somatic or body based healing. And so I share a bit about my story just to make it relatable, so that people can see themselves in the pages and be like, this isn't just a science book. This is a book that I feel like, Oh, I see myself in this I can relate to that. When I was born, I was actually taken from my mother by Child Services, and I was put into foster care because there was methamphetamine found in our system. So I was in foster care for a few months, until my mom, you know, seemingly got her life back on track. I was actually reunited with my mom, but knowing what I know now about trauma, and not just verbal memory, but body memory, you know, our body starts to form memory, body memory at seven weeks in the womb. And so trauma in utero can certainly happen, and that's a lot of the work that I do as a somatic practitioner is helping people to kind of work through being stuck in survival mode and adulthood because of things that happen, maybe during birth, you know, birth trauma, or even prior, you know, in utero. So the cards were kind of stacked against me from day one, and, you know, even before that, and so I grew up feeling very I had this this fear of abandonment, like this, just this feeling that I wasn't enough, that my parents would leave, that they would never be around. And so that created a lot of anxiety. I had this very anxious attachment style. I didn't ever want to be alone. Wanted to, you know, I really clung to people. And then my brother passed away when we were in high school in a car accident, and we were incredibly close. So I have a half brother, and then I have my my full brother and but my older, my older brother was kind of the one constant in my life. And so losing him, I felt like I certainly lost a big part of who I was. You know, my parents were always working. It was kind of him and I against the world. And so that created a lot of, again, just very intense symptoms. And for me, that showed up as a lot of self medicating. I grew up in a household where you didn't really talk about the problems or the pain, we just threw stuff under the rug. We muscled through. We moved on a lot of

Brooke Schnittman: 5:46

our generation, right? I mean, we're close in age, close enough. And I think that was the thing. You just grin and bear it, right? Like you talk about in your book,

Brittany Piper: 5:56

yep. And so grew up where you didn't really talk about the problems that were seemingly happening in your life. And so, I mean, I think even after my parents or after my brother passed away, my parents were back at work the following week or a week later, you kind of just move on. And knowing what I know now, I know that that's not how our body and our brains are really designed to heal and recover, and that avoiding isn't the same thing as healing, and that at some point you're going to have to kind of face, face the music and process that. But the symptoms for me started to show up as, again, self medicating, just this really strong urge to want to numb. So I did that through alcohol around the time, you know, drugs, and that was kind of the, you know, what most of my high school years look like. I then went off to college, and it was a perfect environment for that to continue. For me, it got so bad to the point where I ended up in a in a hospital with alcohol poisoning, you know. And then I, in some ways, started to turn my life back around. I left that college, I came back home, and I decided, you know, I want to change. You know, I want things to be different. I don't want my life to continue down this path. But then, when I was 20 years old, I was sexually assaulted by a stranger who helped me change my flat tire. And that kind of brought back a lot of those patterns, again, of wanting to numb and self medicate and the trial process itself. Now, when I work with survivors, there's usually the incident, you know, the assault, and that's traumatic in itself, but what oftentimes, many survivors find is that the aftermath of the experience can be just as traumatic, if not more traumatic, sure whether it's having to share with people who don't believe you or who shame you, or having to be around your perpetrator and what that feels like in your body, or having to now navigate relationships in this new way that can feel terrifying. And so the aftermath for me, we went down a two year trial process. He was apprehended, caught, yeah, long time. And when defense teams know that the person that they're representing doesn't have a case to stand on, what they'll typically do is they'll try to postpone or do what they call a continuance of a trial as a way to, like, almost like, emotionally wear down the victim so that they'll eventually give up. And so in my case, over that two year period, the trial was continued nine times. And so you know, every time that happens, you essentially have to do like a dress rehearsal for trial in the days leading up, because they wouldn't tell you that it was postponed again until the night before. So

Brooke Schnittman: 8:41

talk about re traumatizing you over and

Brittany Piper: 8:43

over and over again. And there was that, and then there was also, like this anticipation of I see this man again in the flesh, which was also really terrifying. But that dress rehearsal looked like meeting with the legal team, going through depositions, listening to your tape statements again, practice being on the witness stand. I mean, it was like exposure based therapy to the extreme. But I was in, again, a very dissociated place in my life. And I was also, you know, 20 to 22 years old. I was still in college, trying to manage a full course load and working part time, and, you know, doing this thing on the side. And so, of course, it was hard for me to pay attention in school. It was hard for me to function. And I remember just going and seeing a therapist and them saying, I wonder if you have ADHD and I don't think that they really considered like my brain is just scattered because it's I'm stuck in this trauma response. So I was put on ADHD medication. I was also put on anti anxiety. At one point, I was put on Lexapro for, you know, antidepressants. I mean, I was just kind of on this cocktail of medications. And in some ways, it helped, but I knew that it wasn't going to be a long term thing for me. You know, on the outside, people saw like, wow, she's functioning really well, and the medication helped and but. Behind the Scenes. What people didn't know is that my life was in complete disarray. So I was really struggling with suicidal ideation, extreme eating disorders, substance abuse, again, the alcohol to cope. And so after the trial, it finally came to trial date, and he was ultimately sentenced to 60 years. And I remember thinking along the way, and maybe I didn't consciously think this, but looking back now, I'm like, I must have thought, when he gets convicted, I'll be okay. Just muscle through, just muscle through. When he gets convicted, if he gets convicted, I'll be okay. And I remember the weeks after the sentencing, feeling like that was the lowest point in my life. I mean, it was, and I think it's because my it's like my nervous system was finally like, okay, you can take off the armor. You don't have to be scared anymore. But I was still stuck in this debilitating terror in my body and in my life, and so the alcohol intake actually increased even more in less than 30 days after the sentencing. I actually found myself in a jail cell because of an alcohol related incident. So and I'm we might get into that, but that was kind of the the turning point for me. And I remember the judge looking at me a couple of days later at processing, she knew who I was. She said, You're the survivor from that sexual assault case. I said, Yes, ma'am, I am. And she said, we're going to drop the charges. But, and I put this sentence in the book, because it was really the this big statement that just made such a difference in my life. She said, You need to learn to live with the pain better. And it wasn't like learn to get past it, learn to get over it, learn to move on, which is all I had ever known, and all I can bear it right smile. That really was a turning point for me, of learning to kind of posture and pivot myself to turn towards my pain in a way that felt tolerable, in a way that felt accepting, rather than, you know, avoiding and running away, yeah, and that was, that was 2011 so that was for about almost 15 years ago now,

Brooke Schnittman: 12:09

wow, yeah, I can't imagine living with all that and being able to show up today in a way that you are a mother of a five year old, a two year old, married, right? Like thriving. Your nervous system is so calm, all of these things that you have exposed yourself to, and really, it sounds like healed a lot of the the trauma in your nervous system. Yeah. So yeah, curious you talk about in your book how talking about it when you were living it was causing you more of a shutdown and depressive state. Yeah, so, and I can totally relate to that. I was also bullied from eight to 35 and that's my story. And every time I would go to a therapist, it was a talk therapy, I had to just relive it. And then there were no tools that I had. I kind of was just left there feeling depressed, yeah, so not to say that talk therapy doesn't have its place, but it didn't have its place for that. So I'm curious, like, can you talk a little bit more about besides the exposure that you had, showing up in court over and over again and having to live with your pain, what type of things have you done to get to this point? Because I know a lot of the listeners here have ADHD, but they also have PTSD. They also have anxiety, they also have depression. They've had trauma, either from their unmanaged ADHD symptoms or not even related, but it's comorbid to their

Brittany Piper: 13:49

ADHD. I'll go back to the and maybe this is actually a good moment. I can close up my my story, and then move into a bunch of the science, because I'm such a nerd and I love talking about the science, because it's honestly having the conceptual awareness of the science and how your brain and your body really work and function. It's like, oh, I make sense. Like, you know, the way that my body has responded to these really intense things. I'm actually not broken, and I make a lot of sense. So I'll talk all about that. But I think where it really started for me was the reason I ended up in that jail cell. So I was out again. This was less than 30 days after the sentencing. I was out with my boyfriend who was drinking and driving one night, and I always say that's a really good representation of where I was at at the time in my life. He was pulled over, he was arrested, and when the police officers went to just pull me out of the car, physically remove me from the car to give me a ride home. In my impaired state, I had also been drinking, I had a flashback of the night of my assault, which had happened in a car with a stranger, and my nervous system went back into the survival. The survival response that it enlisted during my experience, and this is where Somatic Experiencing can come in. But during the assault, there was a moment where I tried to fight back, but I was overpowered, so I went into a fight response, and then my body went into a freeze response. So that's how I ended up in a jail cell with two counts of battery on an officer with injury because my I was trying to fight back not recognizing, you know, my nervous system didn't know, hey, this is a different scenario. This is a different experience and so. But I always say it was in that jail cell. I was forced to sit in that jail cell for about two to three days before I was processed because my parents didn't want to bail me out, kind of a tough love thing, and I'm glad that they I'm glad they decided not to, because in that jail cell, I refer to it as not my rock bottom, but my concrete bottom, because there wasn't alcohol, there wasn't really unhealthy relationships, there wasn't distraction, There wasn't pills, there wasn't anything there to disconnect me from my pain. I had to sit there in that cell and for the first time, I was able to start to metabolize and experience through my body decades old, grief and trauma and pain. I've never been through something like a drug withdraw. But I commonly tell people that that's maybe what it looked like. There was intense sweating. My body was trembling and shaking. I remember tears, so many tears. It was like my body was finally purging and expelling all of this, this charge that had been stuck with within my body. And I remember walking out of that facility feeling different, very different in my body, my posture felt different, the weight of my body felt different. My center of gravity felt different. And this was after two days. This was after two days? Yes, yep. And so I got really curious. At the time, I was seeing a conventional talk therapist, cognitive behavioral therapist, and we did a lot of what you just mentioned is that we would talk a lot about the trauma, right exposure, recall therapy. And I remember telling them what happened in that jail cell, and they saying, Maybe you should start to do some body work, or work with someone who works with the nervous system. So they referred me to a somatic therapist who was trained in polyvagal theory at the time. And so polyvagal theory is the newest theory, or the newest science, you could say, the upgraded science of the nervous system. And that's where it started for me. And so I just became so incredibly curious about what had happened, and then when I started to do the somatic work of healing trauma through the body, and I saw remarkable progress that didn't ever feel too overwhelming and didn't ever feel re traumatizing. I was like, Why does no one else know about this? And so the nerd that I am, I just started eating it up. I got all the books, and one of the first books I did read was waking the Tiger by Dr Peter Levine, who's the developer of somatic experiencing. You know, of course, there's the Body Keeps the Score, the body remembers, and there's so many other wonderful books. But essentially, Peter's question was the somatic experiencing framework, which is what I'm trained in now. It's a naturalistic approach to trauma recovery through the body. And the way that we look at trauma is any experience, any experience that overwhelms the nervous system's capacity to cope. And when that happens, your nervous system gets stuck in the survival states that it used back then to survive, but it gets stuck here in the present, and we call this the stress response cycle, right? So if you weren't able to fight or flee when you were a child, then your system might have gone down into a shutdown response, or kind of like a freeze response, and you can and that starts to create patterns where that's now the predictable response of your nervous system is that you shut down a lot, or you remain shut down. And so he asked the question, why do animals in the wild, although they routinely face threat, why do they not remain I'm using air quotes, traumatized like human animals do, and the reason is, is because they allow their body to do something, what we call discharge. They allow the body to release all of the adrenaline and cortisol, the stress or survival hormones that are released into the body when we go into a survival response. They allow their body to discharge that, and they do it through maybe shaking, through trembling, and you'll see animals. I remember during my se trainings, we had to watch these animal videos. I'm like, is this a National Geographic training? Like, what is happening here? Yeah, but humans, they have identical nervous systems to animals in the wild. But what makes us different is that we also have this wonderful human brain. Brain, you know, the the neocortex, this conscious, thinking, rational brain. And so what we find is that we often don't allow our bodies to experience things like anxiety and some of the the trembling that comes with that, or anger and the clenching of the viscera and the clenching of our jaw and the the heat that rises because we've been so conditioned to believe that our big emotions are bad emotions, so we push them down, and what happens is this adrenaline and cortisol starts to turn into this toxic soup within our body, and we we now have chronic stress that's that's trapped, and that can start to create chronic mental, emotional, physical health problems. But all that to say, for me, a lot of the work has looked like because I was in such a shutdown and associated state for much of my life. The work first started with recognizing, oh, I have a body and it's allowed to feel and that didn't mean going straight into the trauma. Yeah, straight into the work, straight into I need to be able to process the grief right now and cry it out. And I need to be able to be with the anger and the fighting back during my assault. It was actually the first step is building a foundation, what we call the felt sense of safety. You can kind of think of your nervous system like a security system that's always working in the background, and it's always scanning, am I safe or not safe? Safe or not safe? It's called neuroception, and this happens in three areas inside, outside, between. So we're always scanning internally in our bodies, right? Like, am I clenching, or is it open? Is my heart racing? Or is it calm, and we don't realize that the scanning is happening our body and our subconscious brain is doing this. So that's inside, outside is, Am I safe in my outside environment? And then between is between us and other nervous systems. So like my nervous system is scanning yours right now, subconsciously for signs of welcome or signs of warning, safe or not safe?

Brooke Schnittman: 22:03

What is it saying right now? Right now it's being safe, yeah,

Brittany Piper: 22:10

yes, yeah, all the things. But what can happen is that when we get stuck in trauma or stuck in that stress response or survival mode, it's like our security system is either constantly alarming for danger even when it's not there, or it's not alarming for danger even when it is present. And so this is like the we should show up in relationships that are really not healthy, or environments that aren't healthy, and but for most of us, it's Danger, danger, danger, even though it's not present. And so the first order of business is actually kind of deactivating that alarm. And the way that we do that is kind of recalibrating the nervous system to start scanning for safety again, what we call glimmers and not triggers. So it's recognizing, like we do this through the senses and the sensory motor system like just orienting around a space and taking it in through your senses slowly, and noticing what that does to your body. And it will have a certain effect of like, Oh, I'm noticing, as I'm seeing that vase that I did at that little clay class, back to this memory, and now I'm noticing, oh, my my shoulder diaphragm just dropped or right. So your body is always taking in cues. And what we can do is we can first start to rewire the brought the body and nervous system to find safety again, which then starts to open our capacity to feel a little bit more present. So once we create a bigger capacity to feel safe, then we start to work with the capacity to be with things that don't feel safe, like anxiety, anger, grief, shame, you know, anything that's activating. So that was kind of the first steps for me.

Brooke Schnittman: 23:53

Yeah, you talk about activating, right? And in that, I know that you also use the word trigger. I can't tell you how many times I hear that word every day. Yep. What are your thoughts about the word trigger? What is a trigger? And are people triggered multiple times a day or activated? So I don't

Brittany Piper: 24:20

often use the word triggered. I use the word triggered only as a way to introduce the concept of activated, and I think it's exactly because of what you're talking about, because we we loosely use this term for for everything. Okay, so let me give you the example. I love analogies, just because I feel like these are big concepts that don't have to be big so we can simplify them. So another analogy, kind of like the security system, is the polyvagal ladder. So I'm also, I trained at the polyvagal Institute. And one of the things that we that Steven Porges, the developer of the polyvagal theory, created, was something called the nervous system ladder to kind of symbolize or visualize what the nervous system is. So. The nervous system. Ladder has three sections. At the top is rest and digest, what we now call safety and connection, or your ventral vagal state. The middle section of the ladder is your sympathetic state of fight or flight. The bottom of the ladder is your state of what we call dorsal it's your shutdown state, kind of like a freeze state, although freeze is a blended state, so it's a shutdown state. Now, these can be characterized up at the top, rest and digest is where your nervous system and your body and brain are prioritizing connection. So at the top, we feel safe enough to connect to our bodies, connect to others, you and me right here, or connect to the environment around us. When we come down, the nervous system starts to prioritize not connection, but protection. So here we start to get again, flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, stress hormones to mobilize us to fight or flee. And then down at the bottom we go from not connection, not protection, but disconnection. So here we can disconnect from the body, from others. Yeah, exactly. Yep. We have higher levels of neuronephrine, epinephrine, numbing hormones. But also, you can kind of think of it as this is not the state of mobilization, but the state of immobilization. We retreat, but evolutionarily speaking, this is the state of hibernation, right? So humans also had to have kind of those hibernation mechanisms during intense weather. And so what's important to note, though, is that what moves us down the ladder is when there's any neuroceptive Cue. So again, neuroception is that scanning when there's a neuroceptive cue of danger, which is a trigger, which is activation, and that happens through the senses, or it's situational. But what's important to know is you actually move up and down that ladder roughly 100 times a day. People assume your eyes got big, yeah. People assume that regulation means staying up at the top of the ladder. Connection. Yes. But a regulated nervous system in the polyvagal world, we call it a flexible nervous system, is one that has flexibility and fluidity, not one that has rigidity. So dysregulation is when we get stuck at the bottom in one of those two bottom states, or we're stuck in an autonomic loop. You see this a lot with burnout and overachievers, where they're like, flight, flight, flight. They use their adrenaline and cortisol to go, go, go. They use work as a distraction, as a way to escape. So they stay busy, but then they're using way too much adrenaline and cortisol, and now they're down in shutdown and burnout. And so it's this loop of Go, go, go, too much. I'm shut down. Go, go, shut down. And so all that to say, when you think about triggers from that lens, which, again, I just call that, we just call activation, we're activated all throughout the day, and triggers or stress is actually really healthy for us, like you know when they do stress tests for your heart, stress is a good thing, and so it's not about, again, being calm in the cool waters all the time. It's about being able to navigate our stress in a way where we don't get

Brooke Schnittman: 28:17

stuck. Sure, I'm so glad that you say that too, the stress is so often associated as a bad thing, but it is. If a bear is coming at you and your stress that's a good thing, because you're going to run the other way question. So if you're activated, right, you have these tools that you've learned in your practice and in your own work on yourself. So if you're activated, does it take less time to come down when the trigger or the activation or the perceived threat actually really isn't threatening?

Brittany Piper: 28:56

Yeah. So what can happen over time? What is now a red flag for you can start to become a neutral flag or a green flag, right? And so the things that once triggered you intensely think of like a volume dial, the volume of that can start to be turned down, and maybe eventually it's something that no longer triggers you. Let's use the certain sound of something, okay, yeah, so we can use over stimulation and sound, right? So, yeah, if you grew up in an environment where there was a lot of chaos, and maybe you had caregivers that would yell at night when you're in your room, and there would be really intense fighting, right? You might find it hard now, and you might not recognize this you know consciously, but your body. And here's the thing, there's what we know, and then there's what we feel. And the nervous system operates from the subconscious, subcortical brain, which is the emotion, feeling, sensation brain. It doesn't operate from the cognitive, human conscious brain, the rational brain. So that's why, when we get, I'm using air quotes here, triggered or. Activated, it can feel really irrational sometimes. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Dr Russell Kennedy, the anxiety. MD, he's a good colleague of mine and author, and he's wonderful, but I remember one time I had a workshop with him, and he said a trigger is just an emotional age regression. And he's also a neuroscientist, so it's emotional age regression. It is your body going back to an emotional somatic experience, back in time. And so in somatic work, what we do is we help the body and the nervous system catch up with what the mind already knows. The mind knows we're safe, but your body feels something different. So there's these loud noises, right that are, that are starting to happen. And so what we can do with resourcing is, I'm sorry, with with somatic work, is we kind of titrate that. So if I were working with a client in a session as an SE practitioner, I might say, can you remember a time recently where you were in an environment that felt mildly activating? Let's not imagine like a hockey game or being at an arena at a concert, but like, you know, just recently, grocery shopping on a busy Saturday, and they start to think about it, they start to reflect back. They're naming back, like, what they see, what they're experiencing. And then I'll say, and what are you noticing in your body right now? And it's like, oh, because, and I'm probably already picking up on it, because in the SE world, again, Peter studied animals in the wild, which is, I always get it wrong. It's either ethology or Ethnology. So SES study human impulses and movements on like micro, micro movements. So I'm already probably picking up on, Oh, her tongues in the roof of her mouth right now, and her shoulder diaphragm just tensed, her pupils talking

Brooke Schnittman: 31:43

about me right now, or are you talking about I'm like, actually, all that's happening right now.

Brittany Piper: 31:50

It can be a little unnerving. Yeah, I'm like, tracking in her body what's happening. And I might say, do you notice this is happening? And what do you notice about that? And so what we do is we track that, and it might be I'm noticing I'm holding my breath right now. I'm noticing I'm bracing kind of up in the respiratory diaphragm, but I have no access down to my belly, so you're doing like, a body scan. Yeah, she's doing a full body scan. So we call that interoception, which is our ability to track internally what's going on. And so then I might suggest, you know, is there something that might help your body to feel a little bit more open right now? And it's like, can you feel into I'm noticing you're sitting on the edge of your seat. I'm noticing, though, that there's also a back to your seat. Do you want to sit into that for some support, and it's like, oh, now I can breathe, right? And it's like, okay, we're breathing, and let's see what happens next. And as we're breathing, there might be a shutter, or there might be I'm feeling tingling in my hands, usual, like telltale signs that discharge is happening in the body is heat followed by coolness in the hands and tingling, you know, tears, emoting, vocalizing through the vocal cords. The vocal cords connect to the vagus nerve, which is what communicates our nervous system. So it might be like a or, you know, communicating, saying something, it might be a micro movement or a roll of the neck. There's lots of ways that the body starts to discharge naturally. And it doesn't have to be these big, cathartic things that we always imagine. And so what you find is that we work with imagine that a trigger is at the middle of a of a vortex, right? And at the middle is where it's most intense, right? And that, and that is usually that traumatic experience, that core wound. We actually don't need to work with the core wound. We work what we call the outer edges, and we work our way in. So those are the experiences that feel similar, like, oh, when you're at the grocery store, and then maybe the next time it's like, okay, what was the time recently where it felt a little bit more activating? And so we touch into these experiences and allow the body to somatically experience, oh, I'm in this and then I'm I'm safe after so we're giving new experiences, new body memory, new evidence to the body and the nervous system that I can be with this experience in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming. And what starts to happen is that experience and that evidence then creates new expectation for the body and the nervous system that when I'm going into this environment where it's going to be loud, my system has a bit more capacity now, a bit more resilience to be with that. So again, the triggers get turned down as you do some of this work. And for some people, the triggers can completely disappear. You

Brooke Schnittman: 34:50

know it while I heard you say it, obviously my hands got sweaty and then cool and I felt the nerves, and literally you were like doing a somatic experience for me. Yeah. But I also was going into, like, I've done, some internal family system and EMDR, and it almost seems like the opposite of it, because in that case, you're going to the point of trauma right away.

Brittany Piper: 35:15

Interesting that you say that the body first healing book is based on the body first healing program. I have a six month Trauma Recovery Program. It's a somatic trauma recovery program that I created back in 2018 and the program dives into four modalities or four topics. So there's nervous system regulation and polyvagal theory, somatic healing and somatic experiencing, somatic attachment, because our attachment plays such a foundational role in how our nervous system develops, and then somatic internal family systems. So we actually explore ifs and parse work, but from a somatic lens, and that's more so recognizing that these parts of us, I always say, imagine your internal family systems, which this is kind of like inner child work, as you have all these different parts of you. So the part of you when someone ignores your phone, your your your text message, right? And they don't respond, there's a part of you that is like, me, yeah, they hate me, or they don't care about me, or that's so rude I would never do that. And then there's another part of you that's like, they're probably just busy right now, you know? Or maybe, oh, it's in the middle of pick up. They're probably picking their kids up from school, and they have all their app you know. So again, rational, irrational, and it's what you can imagine is that all these parts of you are in a car together, and they all take different turns being behind the wheel. Sometimes there's a pat someone in the passenger seat. Sometimes people are in the back seat, and sometimes you have parts of you that are in the trunk, they're out of sight, out of mind, that they're still here. And so when we are stuck in dysregulation, you can imagine that like it's these parts of you that are that are exiled, that are hurt parts of you that are triggered, that are kind of behind the wheel and they're they're guiding your life, they're guiding the direction of your life. So it's more so about taking the regulated parts of you, building them up, making their voices stronger, and putting them in the driver's seat. That's good, yeah, and then recognizing that these parts of you again, these triggers, will come up just in much less intense ways. And what actually helps in somatic parts work is that when these emotional age regressions happen again, when these smaller, these smaller or younger parts of you come up, what we do is we recognize how is that part of me showing up in my body. So they usually will show up like, Oh, that little part of me is showing up by the shoulders hiding, or the, you know, shoulder muscles coming apart, or the collapse in my stomach, or the flip in my stomach anytime I feel really nervous. And so you can start to identify like, oh, yeah, that's that part of me. They're here right now. And what we always aim to do is we aim to attune to them, rather than resist them. And it's more so like recognizing, yes, you're here right now and yes, you haven't you have good intention. But also, I can handle this too, yep, because when we try to make the flipping go away or the shoulders or anything like that, what what we resist in the body, usually just persists. Yeah, yeah. You

Brooke Schnittman: 38:23

know, it's interesting, while you're saying this, you know, my pattern recognition is like off the charts right now, but I think of like when I got coached, or when someone gets coached, right? Like you're not focusing on the weaknesses, you're focusing on the strengths and lifting those parts up so you can feel confident and empowered, right? And when I got coached, I felt like a new version of myself. I was able to understand who I was at the core. I was able to show up differently. I was able to execute things over a long period of time, and then after that, I was able to have the space calm my nervous system and then be able to do restorative work, rather than the flip side, where you start the restorative work and your body's like, whoa. I'm not like, I Yeah. It sounds similar to me,

Brittany Piper: 39:13

yeah. And that's, I think, what so many people are are used to, to being into or being thrown into. Again, another analogy is a lot of analogies, the being thrown into the deep end of recovery work, rather than being guided into the shallow end. When we don't, you know, being thrown in, and we don't know how to swim, we don't have floaties, and it just, it's overwhelming, and so what? And also, too, we, you know, we're in a time now where we have this urgency. Everything feels so urgent. And I don't want to take away from the fact that for people who've lived with debilitating symptoms, either emotional, physical, mental, of course there's urgency. Of course there's desperation, because we don't want to live like this anymore. And so the first order of business is always trying to slow down the work and slow down the nervous system, which, for a lot of people, there's resistance to that, right? They're like, I want the fix. I want to get better. I want it now. I'm a high achiever. Don't take things away from me. I'll be less than like. I have to keep up with everything, or else I'm a failure, yes. And what that does, though, is that's just continuing the pattern of the nervous system, one that is amped up, one that is guided by adrenaline and cortisol. And so we try to work against that. And it's not easy. It's a lot easier said than done for a lot of people. And so there's a foundational element of somatic experiencing that we call titration. And so Peter, he borrowed this term from chemistry. In chemistry, they have these things called titration droppers, which is where you combine two elements, but you do it very slowly. So a titration dropper is one drop of a solution into another one. It fizzles, and then it settles, and then another drop, fizzle settle. Whereas I always use the volcano experiment, you know, kids just poor, oh yeah, whatever, and it just explodes. So your nervous system is the same way. If you do too much, too fast, too soon, you are just going to create more symptoms for your nervous system. It's going to create overwhelm. So instead, we find that slower is actually faster when it comes to trauma work, because it feels tolerable, because you're giving your system the space and the time to build the tools to do the work so that by the time you get to it, it doesn't feel

Brooke Schnittman: 41:38

overwhelming. I mean, in what reality, though, is faster, better, unless you're a race car driver, right like, if you're gaining tools that you've never used before, or you're trying to slow down, overwhelm and shut down you, like, I in my program, there's activation. I also do, like, okay, 1% right now. Like, dump and 1% you're just gonna take one step forward, and this was going to seem like so easy, and you're gonna be like, why am I doing this right now? But I promise you, at the end of the 12 weeks, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I actually executed, yeah, I know all this stuff about myself. I'm, you know, my nervous system is more regulated so, but you have to, you have to, like you said, you have to feel it right, yeah, to believe it. And

Brittany Piper: 42:22

I have, it's funny, you say that I have the same and I'm sure you probably have, there's people that resist that, right? That just, oh,

Brooke Schnittman: 42:29

yeah, this is too easy. I came to you for time management and productivity. I'm like, Oh, don't you worry. It's coming. Yeah, it's coming. But if I gave you all those tools right now, you know what's going to happen in two weeks or four weeks, you're going to shut down, you're going to go right back, even to a worse state than where you were when we first started, because now you're gonna be like, I tried this. It didn't work. I'm a

Brittany Piper: 42:53

failure. Not Not, not sustainable. The yeah and the body first healing program, we So, like I said, the program is six months. We actually don't get into core wound or trauma resolution work until MONTH three. It's great, which some people, well, some people actually do love that, because you're like, great. But for the most part, people are like, why? You know, so those first three months are a lot of like, psycho education, learning about the nervous system, but also learning about your nervous system, which can be two totally different things, you know, and then getting, again, the foundation of tools, and getting your system kind of back to baseline before you do that work. And then another analogy that I love with titration is like going to the gym, if you haven't been in a long time, you don't go straight to hitting the heaviest weights. Yeah, you're just going to injure yourself, right? You're going to do more damage. And so instead, you work small, and then you build up, you know, you add weight in over time, and that builds more sustainable resilience. And your nervous system works in the same way,

Brooke Schnittman: 43:58

yeah? Well, this is a lot. It's really helpful to be able to listen to your story. Been through a lot. You've come out on the other side, and you're helping people. You're spreading, you know, the work that you've done on yourself, because it's been so powerful to so many 10s of 1000s of people who need this, who really need this. And I appreciate you coming on. I know my population is ADHD, but like I said, I the research says that 70% of adults with ADHD have trauma. I would challenge that and say 100% of adults with ADHD have trauma. It might not be the big T, might be the small t, but we all are experiencing trauma of some sort. So thank you for being here. And if you were to leave one message to our listeners before they walk away, what would that

Brittany Piper: 44:47

be? Yeah, the one message I would leave with. And just because I'm seeing, you know, the somatic work has been around for a long time, since the 70s. It's just that now, I think in the past five, maybe 10 years, it's. Really come into the mainstream and in like, I mean, this tidal wave of presence, and so it's really exciting to see. But at the same time, I feel like there's often misconceptions about somatic and nervous system healing. So one of those was that you move up and down the ladder all day long. It's not remaining calm all the time. And then the second one I would say, is that you can do all of the regulation practices, somatic practices, until you're blue in the face. However, if you're not changing the way that you relate to yourself, and this is kind of where that parts, where it comes back in, if you're not changing the intention behind the work that you're doing, like if you're doing it from a place of I need to fix myself. I need to get better. I need to get this anxiety out. I need to get rid of this anger. Then what's going to happen is you are just going to constant, constantly be needing tools, because the way that you relate to yourself and your natural experiences, your emotions, the discomfort that is actually going to play a bigger role in the re in how you regulate and how quickly you can regulate, rather than all of the tools that you're doing. And so in interrelational focusing, we call this the feeling that you have about your feeling. So for instance, if anytime anger comes up, or, let's say, your anxiety is back, and you're like, gosh, I'm just frustrated that I'm feeling anxious about this. This is so silly or so stupid, or like, why am I feeling this? Again, what that does is that actually creates a compound of a stress response. So not only are you activated by something that's making you anxious, which makes sense, we're going to get activated, but now you're activated by the fact that you have the anxiousness as well, which actually just increases, increases the anxiousness. And so again, I a lot of people are coming to me now, and they're like, Hey, can you give me some somatic tools or some things to do? And it's like, yes, the tools are great, but they're not everything. It's also about changing how we relate to ourselves. So yeah, I would, I would leave it with that too. Is that it's, it's less about regulation and also about how we are relating to our very natural experiences.

Brooke Schnittman: 47:04

It's so funny. I know we're on the end of this conversation, but when you said that, I thought of my oura ring. Are you wearing an aura ring? Or is that just okay? Yeah, I thought I saw that. And when I first started wearing it, my stress was like, two hours, 30 minutes, three hours, 30 minutes, and we're like, so I'm seeing that I was stressed out. Was stressing me even more. I'm like, I need to throw this oura ring in the garbage. And then, like, the excitement of the ring kind of wore off a little bit. ADHD, so I don't check as much, and guess what? The stress went down.

Brittany Piper: 47:40

Stress has gone down. Yes, exactly. Because what what you're doing is you are creating what we call attentional networks within the brain to seek and track, seek and track for danger or threat or a sign that something is wrong. I also do want to say when people start to do this work again, it's recognizing we go up and down the ladder and we're not calm or dissociated all the time, your stress levels will start to go up, and that's not a bad thing, because you're gaining your window of tolerance. And what we're also finding is that as you start to come out of, you know, maybe years long periods of being in shutdown or dissociation, your nervous system has to go back up through that middle part of the latter, we can't Spider Man our way to the top, so we have to go through some fight response or anxiety. We have to experience Express and expel the anxiety or the anger that's being suppressed within the system. And so oftentimes, people will look at that as a sign of regression. It's actually a sign of progression. It's like your body is saying we can handle this now, we can hold this now, we can move through this. Now, as

Brooke Schnittman: 48:45

cliche as it sounds, it reminds me of when you're building muscle and it hurts. It really hurts. It's not easy, and your muscle has to wear down to rebuild new muscle. So that's going to happen before you get to the bigger and more muscular tissue than you had. Yeah, yeah.

Brittany Piper: 49:08

Well, thank you so much for being here today. Where can people find you? If they want to get in touch with you, Brittany, yeah, they can find me on social media at heal with Brit 2t like Brittany, or if they want to find out more about the book Body first healing, or my program, or just how to work with me, they can go to body first healing.com.

Brooke Schnittman: 49:30

Love it. Thank you again for your time.

Brittany Piper: 49:33

Thank you. This was wonderful. Thanks

Brooke Schnittman: 49:35

for listening to this episode of successful with ADHD. I hope it helps you on your journey, and if you need any additional support for you or a loved one with ADHD, feel free to reach out to us@coachingwithbrooke.com and all social media platforms at coaching with Brooke. And remember, it's Brooke with an E. Thanks again for listening. See you next time you.