Want to Stop Binge Eating? Learn About the Power of Nervous System Regulation

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. Iâ€TMm thrilled to introduce you all today to Jamie McCoy. Jamie is a licensed integrative psychotherapist and trauma coach for over 10 years. Her own journey with chronic illness led her to uncover the incredible importance of a regulated nervous system. She aims to build a bridge between the mind, body and spirit in order to develop the resilience that's required to deal with stress without crashing into survival mode each time a trigger hits. Welcome Jamie!

Jamie McCoy 00:50

Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here.

Stephanie Mara 00:53

I am so excited to get into this topic about the nervous system. I'm personally very passionate about teaching others just this system in our body that is so important to work with. And I would love to just start out first though, hearing a little bit more about you your history and how you got into this work.

Jamie McCoy 01:12

Yeah, so as you said, I started my career as a traditional talk therapist. And so I was doing typical talk therapy, not getting too deep, more behavioral cognitive behavioral methods, trying to change your thoughts, all that stuff. And at the same time, I was going through my training and working one on one with people, I was getting some serious symptoms popping up here and there chronic fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, fibromyalgia, going from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what's going on, my body's breaking down, and I don't know what's happening. And so I was basically collecting diagnoses from one doctor to the next and just feeling pretty, you know, hopeless. By the end of it all, I did get the diagnosis of Lyme disease, I found out I had been living in a public apartment with toxic mold in it. And so that was another contributing factor. But at the end of the day, what I realized when I was you know, at the point of being bedridden having to leave work that there was a lot of unresolved trauma in my nervous system in my body that just wasn't being addressed. And it led me on a mission to really further my education and how that affected my immune function and my nervous system, and how is it connected to what was happening in the breakdown of my body. And so I basically got continuing training in the biology of trauma. And that is what I specialize in now is how can we connect the brain in the body so that our immune function can be at its best, and we are functioning at the optimal level.

Stephanie Mara 02:43

Yeah, so I know you teach a kind of nervous system 101. And I would love to, like when you were first starting to explore individual's relationship with their nervous system, where do you start?

Jamie McCoy 02:57

Yeah, that's a good question. And so it can be it seems like a it's a trendy topic these days. And it can a confusing topic like what does that even mean, and a lot of the work is that I do is based in somatic practice, but also having like what you do with the holistic nutrition, which is a huge piece of that, because if you've been running on stress hormones, for a while, you do get depleted in the nutrients, you need to make energy, which is so important if you're going to be healing trauma. But the first thing that I do is teach people the different states of their nervous system. And so we do this through tracking. So I have a customized tracker that I give everyone and they have access to that in my beginner program, which is the nervous system 101 that you mentioned, and we do a deeper dive where I have live coaching I do with people in my nervous system reset that goes a little bit deeper. But the beginning stages are really about starting to track. What does it mean when I'm in certain states of my nervous system? And how does that present in my body? So I know what's happening. And then what are the tools I can use to help regulate myself back to a state of safety? And that's, that's where we start.

Stephanie Mara 04:02

Yeah. So what does a dysregulated nervous system even mean? Like, how does someone start to know that their nervous system is dysregulated?

Jamie McCoy 04:12

Right. So I would say this looks like when you are, so we're not meant to stay in one state of our nervous system all the time. And so I think it's often kind of a confusing topic. Like we're supposed to be these calm Zen monks on the mountaintop. And that's what it means to be regulated. No, no, no, no. We want to have regulated systems means you can go in and out of a stress state and come back to a place of regulation and not crash and shut down. So if you find yourself frequently going to states where you're very activated in that fight or flight stress, which feels like anxiety, worry, agitation, a lot of stress in the system that can get stuck there. We can get stuck in that place of ruminating kind of obsessive thoughts and that kind of thinking, and that is more of your stress response. And then oftentimes If you're not staying in that state for a certain period of time, the body loses energy for running on those stress hormones. And then you crash into more of a shutdown state where it's more of what we call a freeze response. And you're a little bit more disconnected and numb, running on autopilot, where things are just a little foggy, or there's more fatigue. And oftentimes, what I see very common with a lot of my clients is they bounce back and forth between these two states all the time, without really experiencing much of that safety in their system at all, or any kind of that relief from these two states, just going back and forth, back and forth, high anxiety, shutdown, high anxiety, burnout. And that's just a very common pattern we see in dysregulation.

Stephanie Mara 05:40

Yeah, I love that you're bringing in that the goal here isn't to always be regulated, it's being able to adapt, and notice what's showing up and cultivate a sense of safety of oh, okay, my body is starting to tell me it needs a little bit more support, and how can I show up for it, so that you kind of don't go through this ping pong of highly stressed and then shut down.

Jamie McCoy 06:06

Exactly. Regulation, it happens in your response to yourself. It's not about you know, the perfect practice or anything. At the end of the day, it's showing that compassion, of understanding your physiology, if you are having those symptoms of dysregulation, it's doing that for a reason. And we want to just get curious, why is that there? And how can I provide the resources my body needs to show it like maybe it doesn't have to be on high alert? And so there's a lot of things we could do to approach that. But fundamentally, it's like a mindset shift of how am I going to change the way I respond to this, and relate with myself so I know that there's nothing broken about me, it's just a sign and a signal like, okay, my body needs a little bit of attention here.

Stephanie Mara 06:46

Yeah. And in your experience of what you navigated in your own body, you said, what I came upon was how much trauma my body was holding on to. And I'd love to hear more about that connection of how a traumatic experience that we might go through affects our nervous system, and then the symptoms start coming out.

Jamie McCoy 07:07

Yeah, absolutely. So there's a difference between going into a stress response and something becoming a trauma. And oftentimes, a lot of people will talk about, well, not everything is trauma. But technically speaking, when we go into a trauma response, that's simply just meaning that we go into that overwhelmed state where the physiology your nervous system is more shut down in a way to protect you, it's in a survival mode. And so that will happen. Anytime we don't have the resources to move through a situation, we don't have the capacity or energy, or a baseline level of health. And so the system will go into that hibernation shutdown mode automatically to protect you, it's overwhelmed. So that can happen a lot throughout your life. And it certainly did for me. And unfortunately, I didn't have a ton of support through the experiences I had, I was quite a sick child, that stuff wasn't being addressed appropriately. And so there were things that happened, where I didn't have the nourishment my body needed. And so eventually, you can go so long before you crash. And that's just sort of what happened to me in my 20s. By the time you know, I hit college, it just it was like running on empty, and realizing that my system was just really overwhelmed from the experiences I had. And I didn't have the support to get through those experiences. And that's really key in developing resilience that two people could go through the same exact experience, but one person's biology might respond to that as if it's a trauma, and the other one might get through it and be totally fine. And it's about did you have those resources to be able to move through that experience. And that's where the resilience comes from in the support that you have. If you don't have it, the system gets very overwhelmed. So yeah.

Stephanie Mara 08:48

Yeah, yeah, that's often where I find those that are navigating patterns of binge eating or emotional eating that at a really young age, potentially, food came in when those other resources weren't present. And so then you become this adult. And you wonder why this pattern is continuing to play out. Well, that was your resource that was your best friend and your ally at a time when you needed regulation. And that was maybe the only thing that was there regulating you.

Jamie McCoy 09:16

Of course. Yeah, I talk about this too, in my nervous system 101 just the difference between a coping strategy versus a regulating resource. And often when we're younger, we don't have those skills we are learning how do we just get by and survive these experiences. And so food is a way of coping, and it is where you learn to survive. And so thankfully, you if you figure something out to soothe yourself at that moment, but you know, there are ways to notice as you're older, how these behaviors don't really serve you as much anymore, and there are a substitute for something larger, and that just takes time to uncover and unpack and so it's totally, it's very common. It's a very common way to cope. Yeah.

Stephanie Mara 09:54

Yeah. So you were referencing already that okay, the practice here is starting to learn how do I regulate? And I'm curious about some of those initial tools that maybe you start to explore with someone. And like you also mentioned, providing the body a sense of safety, and how do we also tell the body it's safe. Like, what have you found are some really effective ways to do some of those things?

Jamie McCoy 10:19

Yeah. And it's interesting, it's like a lot of people think we can just tell it, oh, I'm safe, I should just feel safe, right? Let me just tell myself, I'm safe. But unfortunately, that doesn't work that way to change your thoughts cognitively, because it's a feeling. And so we have to have a felt sense of safety. So we bring it through a felt experience using our sensory awareness. And that's where the somatic practice comes in handy. And these are just gentle movements and touches you can use to connect the brain and the body that send the signal, like a mom soothing their baby, when they're a little, little baby. And just getting that reinforcement. You're okay, simple touches simple movement. Or you can have co regulating resources where you experience things in nature or with a partner or friend, but people that elicit that feeling of safety within your physiology. And so a lot of the things that I do in my program are centered around practices you could do yourself, but then I also encourage people to think of what are the other co regulating resources you have in your life, that deepen your connection with your physiology in a way that it brings you into that regulated state. And so we kind of track those things. And we start very slowly, because not everyone feels so safe to get in their body initially.

Stephanie Mara 11:31

Yeah, thanks for pointing out that, especially because everything we learn from our culture is we have to figure out everything on our own. And so I think a lot of individuals first go towards self regulating activities, where sometimes we actually need to start with co-regulating activities first with something, nature, a person, an animal that helps us know what it feels like to feel safe in our body. And then maybe self regulation can happen. Have you found that as well?

Jamie McCoy 12:05

Yeah, I have people from the full spectrum where, you know, just simple practices of becoming aware of your environment is too much, it's too much for their symptom, for their systems. And so we just have to start with small bursts. So if that means you can only get five seconds of petting your cat where you feel safe in those five seconds, that's where we start. And we start to notice what does what happens in your physiology when you are petting that cat. So you can start to bring attention, your nervous system can start memorizing, like, Okay, this is what safety feels like. And even if it doesn't last, we just start with that. And we continue coming back to that over and over and over until you start building more capacity, maybe you can be 10 seconds longer the next time, then 20 seconds, then a minute, we really start that slow. So...

Stephanie Mara 12:50

Yeah, I love that you're breaking this down. I'm such a huge fan of tiny little bites, the body is already overwhelmed. And so if we try to practice something that continues to push us outside of our window of tolerance, it's just going to continue to perpetuate the feeling of overwhelm in our body. And so I so appreciate this of do it for five seconds.

Jamie McCoy 13:17

And the other big thing is there is no perfect right way of doing this. That's the major concern I hear from everyone who ever goes through my program, am I doing this right? There's no wrong way to do this. There is just the information your body gives us and then responding to that. There really isn't a wrong way. There's just starting with where you're at.

Stephanie Mara 13:38

Yeah, so I often find that when individuals are starting to take a pause between, let's say, I'm noticing I feel uncomfortable or starting to go into overwhelm or shut down and there's this pattern of I'm gonna go reach for food to self soothe and to start to break up that pattern they're sitting with what is sometimes even like you said, that can be too much. How do you often guide individuals in that moment of when you start to practice, maybe even five seconds was too much. What then? What do you do when you notice, oh, my gosh, I'm in I'm actually pushing myself further into overwhelm, like, what are tools that you have offered to even bring someone back into themselves into a sense of safety when they're trying to start to practice some of these things?

Jamie McCoy 14:26

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is patience with yourself around these topics around doing these practices, especially shifting into starting to get connected with yourself for the first time in a while, and that if something is too much, I don't tell people to keep going I actually encourage them to pull back and slow down. And so it's okay to pull back and take the rest of the day off or take another couple of days and let your system recover from that freeze response because that's actually how freeze naturally works is that it needs time to come out of that overwhelmed state and If we continue to try and push ourselves or judge ourselves or shame ourselves that kind of pushes us deeper into overwhelm. So we just want to be compassionate. And curious, like, isn't that interesting, I got a little bit of information from this experience. And so I'm going to let myself just take that break so that my system can naturally recalibrate, and take, you know, whatever, however long it needs to come out of that freeze response. And that's what animals do. And we kind of got to take a tip from the animals and how they naturally let themselves come out of that acute state of freeze.

Stephanie Mara 15:30

Yeah, you know, the interesting thing, I don't know if you've ever read the book Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine, you know, he talks about how you can start to become aware that let's say you're dissociated, but actually even be able to name it. So I'm dissociated right now. And that difference between being in it, where you're disembodied and disconnected and outside of yourself and actually being in it and being able to name it and stay connected in the experience.

Jamie McCoy 15:59

Yes, exactly. I think that's the key. When you're in the beginning, and you're learning to track, you're noticing, oh, wow, I didn't realize I'm actually living in this almost functional freeze state, you're noticing, oh, wow, I didn't realize I'm actually living in this almost functional freeze state, this whole time where I've been on autopilot and I'm not actually, maybe I thought I had a lot of anxiety, and I was in fight or flight, but I'm actually quite shut down 24/7. And that's just an indication that the body needs so much more nourishment, and going much more slowly as we work with that, because the chances of you going back into overwhelming and you make too many changes too much for the system. So we got to go real slow. And if you need to take some time off, you tried something, it was too much back off for a little bit, and then come back to it later. There's no rush. There's no rush.

Stephanie Mara 16:41

Yeah, I'm curious what you found in your healing journey, as you started to address this trauma and this dysregulated nervous system, what you found in your symptoms that were showing up in your body starting to change, what did you notice?

Jamie McCoy 16:57

Yeah, so initially, I think what happens when you're in that chronic stress response, you've got the adrenaline and that eventually turns to cortisol, which, initially, cortisol is actually anti inflammatory, that the longer you have that peaking, the more it becomes toxic to the body. And so I was in more of that hyper vigilant state for very, very long time, probably years, especially going through grad school, just trying to get my work done getting a job in this new field. And then eventually, once you kind of max out and it has that toxic effect, you go into that chronic fatigue state. And that's where I would say, right before I got the Lyme disease diagnosis, and all those Fibromyalgia diagnoses, that type of stuff. That's where my body was responding. It was just low energy, very tired, achy, chronic pain, heaviness. It felt like I couldn't really move very much. There's just no energy in my system. And that was for a reason I was in energy conservation mode. That's what freezes. So that's sort of the effect that happens. Once you have gone running so long with this stress that storing up in your system without a release, you go into that shutdown state. So that's what happened to me.

Stephanie Mara 18:09

Yeah. And then, as you started to, like, what kinds of things did you play with experiment with that shifted kind of the the healing needle for you? And what did you first start to notice begin to change in your body?

Jamie McCoy 18:23

Yeah, I think for me, well, first, you know, I got kind of tired of going to all the doctors and realizing the western medicine treatments I was getting were kind of toxic to my body and my body started becoming allergic. I was taking a lot of antibiotics for a year, I had this IV port in my chest. And every day, I was giving myself these infusions. And it just started feeling very toxic to my system. And so eventually, I switched and I found alternative treatments just to nourish my body with nutrients and vitamins and things, then getting those types of infusions instead. And once I started getting a little bit more energy back, I actually experimented with some movement in my bed. So I couldn't go walking like I used to, but I started with just pumping my feet in bed as if I was just I was like wiggle your toes. I was like I can't really do much, but I can wiggle my toes, and I started there. And then I'm like, pump your feet. And then I'm like, lift your head off the pillow, move your arms, and slowly but surely, I was doing these subtle movements just to sort of wake my body up again. And then I would try and walk around the apartment. And then from there, I got a little bit more energy. And I would go at the time I was living in New York City, I'd go to Central Park, and then I would sit in the park and I just started focusing on the things that felt felt most nourishing to me. So finding something beautiful every day that I saw in the park, I would take pictures of that and it just inspired me and gave me a little bit more motivation to keep going every day. So it was these little things that built on each other of little micro movements that started adding up to bigger movements. And before you know it, I was walking around the city again, and miles and miles a day. So it started from just wiggling my toes literally.

Stephanie Mara 20:00

Yeah, that's amazing. And yeah, it goes back to just how quick we are to say Oh that was nothing, like wiggling my toes was nothing. But actually, when you're on a healing journey, every tiny little thing that you do can be quite a big deal because it is moving you towards being able to walk around the city for miles again.

Jamie McCoy 20:22

Exactly, exactly. There's so much it's just give feeding my body the nutrients it needed, it was starved for nutrients at that point. And then that combination of gentle movement to bring more energy literally and blood flow, having the blood flow get to my muscles, it's so important because it was stagnant for so long, just lying in bed. So I needed to start very slowly with that movement.

Stephanie Mara 20:43

Yeah, and I think it's also translates, because I know that those who listen to this podcast are also navigating a lot of patterns with their relationship with their body image and their relationship with food. And that this translates so beautifully in just starting with a really small place of like, oh, you know what I checked in with myself before I did my habitual food or body pattern. Or you know what I actually journaled after I did it and I didn't self abandon myself after that was over, I stayed connected to myself, even if you're still doing the habit and pattern, it's, Hey, can you notice and acknowledge yourself for the tiny little ways maybe you're starting to bring in something new?

Jamie McCoy 21:25

Right? Yeah, you're bringing that conscious awareness in. And it's the repetition of that behavior that does the rewiring, and at first, any change to the system is still a stress. And so your nervous system is going to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you trying to do here? And so there's that natural resistance that is supposed to come in. And so you're not failing just because you went back to the old behavior. It's part of the process. And you recognizing what's happening is a huge step forward. Huge.

Stephanie Mara 21:52

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm curious we're talking about a lot of different nervous system responses. And I kind of want to break them down a little bit. Because I think that everything is just described as stress. But there's actually a few different and then there's some combinations, like fawning, and things like that, that I would love if you could of what you know, and what you teach kind of go into how does our nervous system respond? And what sparks it? And are there different things like there might be a different tool to meet yourself when you're maybe in a fight or flight response than a tool that you might want to meet yourself when you're in shutdown?

Jamie McCoy 22:31

Right, yeah, so a lot of this is informed by the work of Dr. Steven Porges and polyvagal theory where there are three primary states of the nervous system. So that's your ventral vagal, the the state of, of safety and social engagement, and then the fight or flight response, your stress response, which is your sympathetic activation, and then the dorsal vagal complex, which is your shutdown response and the parasympathetic, where, you know, you have that freeze response as well. And so they're also blended states of your nervous system. And so you can actually have a combination of safety that ventral vagal with sympathetic activation, and that is excitement in play, and joy and happiness. Because if you think about, you know, how you feel when you're really excited and happy, there is an elevation in heart rate, there are the symptoms of activation in your system. So that's activation is not necessarily a bad thing. And then another blended state, which is when you're feeling relaxed, and peaceful, very still is your dorsal vagal shutdown combined with safety. So you can have different parts of your nervous system blended when it's blended with safety, it's one experience. And then when it's blended, or when you have more of a feeling of unsafety. That's when you're more in that stress response or complete shutdown, where survival mode, we call that and so, fawning you express is not actually a state of the nervous system. It's a behavioral adaptation that we talk about where it's a very common topic now people pleasing and shutting down and kind of putting your needs behind other people's as an adaptation, you know, what if you were younger, or if you learn to adapt to responding to other people's needs, in order for you to survive. And so that's sort of like a form of collapsing a form of that shutdown, freeze response, but a little bit more conscious awareness to it, where it's just, I've been really teaching myself that I have to modulate, you know, everybody else's mood in order to keep keep myself feeling safe. I have to be sure everyone else is okay. And that's that adaptation we call Fawning. Yeah.

Stephanie Mara 24:28

Yeah. I appreciate that breakdown. Because I think a lot of individuals when they're in a place of choosing food to self soothe, sometimes it's getting to know where is my nervous system at right now? What state am I choosing food out of? And that can actually start to shift and change food behaviors already just beginning to cultivate that awareness of where am I right now? And is food really going to be the thing that supports me and facilitates a sense of safety in my body? You know, that just that curiosity gets to start to come in.

Jamie McCoy 24:59

Right. Oh I guess I forgot one, the freeze response is actually a blending of sympathetic activation with dorsal vagal shutdown. So when you feel like you have one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake, that is actually what freeze feels like. And oftentimes, I've imagined when people are reaching for the food, it's probably a lot of the times coming from that feeling of, you know, I've got that one foot on the gas one foot on the break, I'm frozen. I don't know what to do. And so yeah, that that is a very common reaction before we often go to reach for things like food and other coping mechanisms.

Stephanie Mara 25:34

Yeah. And what have you found brings someone back into that sense of safety. So I imagine, you know, if you are already in shutdown, something would be more effective than when you are more in that fight or flight response. So I'm curious what kind of would meet a person depending upon where they're at.

Jamie McCoy 25:54

Right. And so, fight or flight is a very mobilizing response. And the whole goal with that stress response is we want this completion of this, this discharge of the stress energy, the discharge of the adrenaline, and we want that metabolization of adrenaline to occur. And that often happens through movement. And let's say you didn't have the opportunity to fight or defend yourself, that's sort of what gets stuck in the system. And so oftentimes, if you're already in that high mobilized state, having some types of movements, to move that energy forward, I have a couple of different practices that I encourage for this, because there is almost a feeling that you get up your spine, that's where the sympathetic nerves are, where it's an energy that comes up rushes up and then almost goes to your head, and like you want to get that feeling to complete and push up and out. And so there's a couple of techniques I do with somatic practice to help move that energy forward. And that is the number one way that I say is different from when you're in a freeze or shutdown state because it involves a little bit more intentional movements that could also depending on the level of the stress, you might need a stronger movement versus a smaller movement. So going for a walk might not necessarily be enough to metabolize the level of adrenaline that you have in your system, you might need something more than a walk. But it really depends on your capacity and your level of tolerance with the somatic practices. So I start with like gentle movement, and then we see how you do and then we can go into the bigger practices. But that's what you know, with stress, that's the way we respond to that. And when we're talking about shutdown and freeze, we're talking about slowly reorienting back to your body and environment in a way to connect with simple touch. And we can see how you respond to feeling. Can you feel your hands? Can you feel your feet on the floor? Can you feel your back being supported? These simple ways of just connecting am I here in this moment, grounding back in your body? And that's another place where we start.

Stephanie Mara 27:51

Yeah, so imagine those that are listening are just like, okay, so how is this going to change my patterns? Like, how is this going to change my symptoms? Why is the sense of safety in my body so important, and I'm wondering if you could speak to that.

Jamie McCoy 28:05

Yeah. And so if you have a ton of stored stress in your physiology that hasn't been released, your window of tolerance to handle things in life, and your emotional regulation will be greatly affected by this. Because let's say it's like having your cup that's completely full and overflowing that the littlest stress is going to send you over the edge. When you start doing somatic practice and working on nervous system regulation. It's like emptying the cup, so that you have more space to actually move through stressors without completely crashing and burning and shutting down and overflowing your cup. And so it just gives you the space to have resilience, and move through stressors. Without that level of like, feeling like my life is over, I can't do it anymore and crashing. That's basically the biggest difference is, you want to have that space so that you can be present with your own experiences present in your relationships, and it just makes life a whole lot easier and more enjoyable. So at the end of the day, we want to be able to be present with our life and not feel like heavy thing is such a task. And it's so hard to get through everything is so stressful, you actually can build your capacity to tolerate stress. So things that used to trigger you don't have to trigger you anymore. And that happens when you build your window of tolerance through release thing that's stuck stress.

Stephanie Mara 29:26

Yeah, something that I really like to normalize is that your behavior is happening inside of your body. We can't think our way out of a threat if your body feels threatened. That's what feels real to it. And so if you are doing the eating inside of your body to change the behavior of eating, specifically out of emotional hunger reasons, we have to get back into the body and show the body that that coping mechanism isn't needed anymore.

Jamie McCoy 29:58

Right. Right. And I think that's where the sensory awareness becomes so important with this work, because the way that these survival responses and stress responses are triggered, are through matching sensory data. This is what I talk about in my programs. That means that your nervous system is going to pick up a cue, whether it's something you saw, you heard, you smell, that you touch, tasted, whatever it is, these five senses can send signals to your physiology, whether or not there's something to be, you know, we need to fight for something, or we need to shut down and protect ourselves and something's a threat. And so we have to reteach our system, what is actually a threat versus what's not. And so when you start becoming aware of your experiences, you'll notice like, oh, that's what has been triggering me. And so I can reorient myself to a cue of safety in this moment, and rewire my systems response. So it stops responding this way to this particular sensory data point. So whatever that trigger was, you once you become aware of it, you can see how that trigger sets off this nervous system state. And then you can change your state through giving the way that you respond to yourself, it's really quite amazing. The more you do this, eventually you don't react the same way you won't have the same coping behaviors as a result.

Stephanie Mara 31:16

Yeah, and like you said before, it's so takes time. You know, for those that are listening, like, oh, my gosh, this sounds so cool. And like this is gonna feel like it's gonna take forever. And I would say that as you practice it, that you start noticing little shifts and changes over time, like you notice of just starting to like wiggle your toes and like pump your feet in, it all starts to build on itself.

Jamie McCoy 31:41

Yes, yeah, it's true. And honestly, it really does, like, don't get discouraged, if it doesn't feel like, well, everything in my life is not 180 degrees different. That's not how it works. You I always tell everybody that you have to think of yourself like a baby. And the way that a baby develops, it doesn't you don't come out of the womb running, you have to first you have your tummy time, then you kind of start moving and wiggling along the floor, then you're crawling, and then you're walking. And you have to go through these stages very slowly in order for your brain to develop properly. And most of us actually skip a lot of these stages, because we get overwhelmed even as babies and so the wiring is not there, we can get more easily overwhelmed as an adult as a result. So going back and doing this rewiring work is going to take just as much time. So we have to really think of ourselves like letting ourselves go through the proper neurodevelopment that we maybe didn't get before or has been affected and compromised from trauma.

Stephanie Mara 32:40

Yeah. And love the compassion in that of if you saw a baby, and they were just learning how to walk. Very rarely would you say like, Hey, baby, like Hurry up here. You would be like, oh my gosh, you like got up on all fours today. That's the coolest thing ever. We'll try again tomorrow. And we have to treat ourselves that way as well that you might continue to engage in your familiar food and body habits and patterns over and over and over again, while you're learning to regulate your nervous system in new and different ways. And eventually there might be this moment of Huh, I didn't choose food today. And then you might do it again tomorrow. And then there might be a day where you're like, oh, I didn't choose it again. So it's that process.

Jamie McCoy 33:27

Yeah. And when you start looking at this, it's just a natural reaction from your biology, it feels a threat for whatever reason, there's a threat in the picture. So it's just doing its job to protect you. That's all that's happening. And once you can see that you can start to have a lot more compassion for yourself that it's not a conscious choice. It's an automatic response. So you consciously responding to it, it's going to take some time for that to feel a little bit more natural.

Stephanie Mara 33:52

Yeah, I really love that you brought that in of it's the autonomic nervous system, it is automatic, you are not choosing to perceive something as a threat. Something is just being perceived that way. And when you start to catch Oh, something is feeling threatening. You get to show your body and some of the regulation tools that we've talked about today, even kind of like naming what's in your environment. Actually, there is no threat here. And that's a practice that is going to have to happen maybe every single day multiple times a day for a while.

Jamie McCoy 34:28

Yes, absolutely. And there are still times like I say, you know, life is still going to happen. It's not like stress stops. And so if you continue to stack a bunch of stressors on your system, your body's supposed to react to help you mobilize to get through that. So we don't want to get rid of our stress response. We want it there to respond to threats appropriately. So we want to be able to run from the bear if it is chasing us. So we still want to have these responses. It's not about completely shutting them down. So we want to be grateful like how wonderful is it that my body automatically does protects me.

Stephanie Mara 35:01

Yeah. And I'm also hearing in that, that it's not also so overly protecting yourself that there's no pushing yourself or I don't love the word push like gently guiding yourself outside of your comfort zone to like grow and evolve and change. It's, oh, how can I get into a different relationship with my nervous system so it feels a little bit more adaptive, so that when I just I slowly go outside of my comfort zone, I feel like I can manage that experience in my body.

Jamie McCoy 35:35

Exactly. It's just what resilience is all about is having that preparation and the resources to be able to move through life, essentially. And so you're giving yourself that when you understand your physiology, and it's just very empowering to learn this stuff, because once you learn it, no one can take it away from you, you have it forever. That's what I love about it.

Stephanie Mara 35:56

I 100% agree with that. And I'm so glad you came on today to share all of this fantastic wisdom about the nervous system. I would love for you to share how individuals can keep in touch with you where they can find you and anything about your work currently.

Jamie McCoy 36:12

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm most active on Instagram @myintegrativetherapist, and I actually just started a Pinterest page. So I'm experimenting with that right now as well. And I have it my started a Pinterest page. So I'm experimenting with that right now as well. And I have it my signature program is called The Nervous System Reset, we're actually opening doors in the next live program starting September 8, and that opens a couple times a year. And it's a pretty deep dive into a holistic approach. But my beginner program, the Nervous System 101 is available all the time. And it's sort of like the basics of your biology. So if you're just wanting to get a taste of the foundations, that's definitely the place to start. And all that information is on my tree that's in the link in my bio on my Instagram, and I'm sure I could provide you those links as well.

Stephanie Mara 36:51

Yep, I will put all of those links in the show notes and love the content that you put out on Instagram. So highly recommend to follow you. And just thank you so much for coming on today and sharing this. I think nervous system and learning about this part of your body is so so so important. Like you said it's really empowering. Because then you get to be in a deeper relationship with your body.

Jamie McCoy 37:14

Yeah, and everything else in life. That's the beautiful thing. So once you get that connection with you, you're more deeply connected to everyone and everything around you. So it's just a wonderful experience. Thank you so much for having me.

Stephanie Mara 37:25

Yeah! Well to all those who are listening. If you have any questions reach out anytime I will put our contact information in the show notes. And looking forward to connecting with you all again real soon. Bye!

Keep in touch with Jamie here:

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Website: https://www.myintegrativetherapist.com/Home

Contact: info@myintegrativetherapist.com