How Somatic Experiencing Helps with Chronic Pain and ADHD
🌟 My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is available to order here 🌟
ADHD isn’t just about focus and forgetfulness, it’s a whole-body experience.
Many women with ADHD also struggle with chronic pain, tension, migraines and hypermobility, yet these physical symptoms are rarely linked to ADHD in traditional treatments.
In this episode, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner Susanna Elias shares her personal journey of overcoming 24 years of chronic back pain and explains how trauma, stress, and emotional dysregulation can become “stuck” in the body.
She introduces Somatic Experiencing (SE) as a powerful approach to help neurodivergent people reconnect with their bodies, regulate their nervous systems, and find relief from long-standing physical discomfort.
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by your emotions or disconnected from your body, this episode will give you practical tools to understand the mind-body connection, regulate your nervous system and create a sense of balance and ease.
What You’ll Learn:
✨ How ADHD and trauma can manifest as physical symptoms such as chronic pain and hypermobility.
✨ Why traditional treatments often overlook the body’s role in ADHD.
✨ How Somatic Experiencing (SE) helps process and release stored stress and trauma.
✨ The link between emotional dysregulation and physical discomfort in ADHD.
✨ The role of co-regulation & self-regulation in managing stress and sensory overload.
✨ Regulating the nervous system is crucial for managing ADHD symptoms and overall wellbeing.
✨ Emotional experiences can lead to physical symptoms, highlighting the mind-body connection in health.
Timestamps:
🕒 01:06 – What is Somatic Experiencing? How it helps ADHD & trauma
🕒 08:18 – The surprising link between ADHD, hypermobility, and chronic pain
🕒 16:00 – How unprocessed trauma can create dysregulation in the nervous system
🕒 24:08 – The role of mind-body healing in ADHD
🕒 31:00 – Understanding how emotions impact physical health
🕒 36:04 – How co-regulation & self-regulation help with ADHD symptoms
Connect with Susanne via her website or Instagram, @susannaeliasbodymind
Links & Resources:
🌸 If you love the podcast but want more ADHD support, get a sneak peek of my brand new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit and pre-order it here!❗
🌸 Join me for a series of breakthrough ADHD Wellbeing Workshops this spring/summer
Find all of Kate's popular online workshops and free resources here
Follow the podcast on Instagram
Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.
Transcript
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.
Speaker A:After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.
Speaker A:In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.
Speaker A:Here's today's episode.
Speaker A:A huge part of my work at the moment is talking about the mind, body, the brain body connection with ADHD and understanding how it impacts us on so many different levels, but especially somatically in our body, through pain, through stuck trauma and through different physical conditions.
Speaker A:And today I'm really excited to bring in a friend of mine, someone that I've worked with, someone who's helped me personally, and her name is Susanna Elias and she is a Somatic Experiencing practitioner.
Speaker A:She's a sports rehabilitator and also has qualifications in Pilates, dry needling and manual therapy.
Speaker A:And Susannah is passionate in helping clients find freedom from chronic pain and chronic symptoms through blending of mind and body techniques.
Speaker A:And she suffered for many, many years with back pain from the age of 17 to 41 and found three of them through Somatic Experiencing.
Speaker A:So we're very excited to be able to share what Somatic Experiencing is.
Speaker A:And also we had a session together which I found incredibly helpful.
Speaker A:So I really want to share that as well.
Speaker A:So, Susanna, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thanks for having me.
Speaker A:I've been really looking forward to having this conversation with you because first of all, I've kind of been reading about Somatic Experiencing.
Speaker A:I know it was founded by Peter Levine.
Speaker A:I'll ask you some more questions about that.
Speaker A:But what we are understanding, and through my many different conversations with really eminent psychiatrists, ADHD experts, is that we are seeing this as a full brain body experiencing.
Speaker A:This is a full condition where we previously thought ADHD was just brain affects, our cognitive, our memory, our mood, things like that.
Speaker A:But actually we see how this impacts us, from chronic pain to hypermobility to tension, to all sorts of things throughout our daily life.
Speaker A:And this is why I want to break this down with you, because when we understand that, we can make the connections, especially through trauma and what we're living through, maybe what we haven't Cleared.
Speaker A:So I'm really looking forward to getting into this with you.
Speaker A:Perhaps if anyone who hasn't, you know, heard the.
Speaker A:The terminology or the phrase somatic experience, could you explain that so people understand what it is?
Speaker B:Yes, it's a really hard question because it's actually, they call it one.
Speaker B:It's a modality of trauma therapy and mind body therapy, but it's actually much more than one thing by itself.
Speaker B:So one session with one person can look completely different for the same person at another time.
Speaker B:But essentially it's connecting your emotions with the sensations that are going on in your body.
Speaker B:So your body has its own language.
Speaker B:Through sort of our modern society, we've learned to just sort of dampen that down, not listen to it.
Speaker B:And it's really just about uncovering what your body's telling you and learning to listen to that and then learning to sort of process those emotions that are coming up through the body.
Speaker A:This isn't just a weekend course.
Speaker A:I know that you studied this for several years.
Speaker A:This is something that, you know, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, physiotherapists, doctors are learning.
Speaker A:What are we uncovering through understanding this body's language?
Speaker A:Like, why are we only just recognizing that what we experience emotionally and through trauma and through many different mental health conditions, like, why are we only just making these connections now?
Speaker A:Somatically?
Speaker B:It's actually not that we're just making them now.
Speaker B:I think it's like we're rediscovering them.
Speaker B:So if you look at modern medicine and how it was developed originally, if you look back to, like, tribal medicine and, you know, more traditional forms of healing, it's much more about the interconnectedness between mind and body.
Speaker B:Whereas, like, modern medicine has really separated mind and body as two separate things.
Speaker B:And we've got this thing called mental health and this thing called physical health, which I actually think is a load of nonsense because it's just health.
Speaker B:And now it's sort of coming full circle.
Speaker B:So medicine is realizing maybe there's something in it, there's something in this mind, body thing, and we should be bringing the two of them back together.
Speaker B:So I think it's a rediscovering rather than a new thing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So who is Peter Levine?
Speaker A:And like, what's his background?
Speaker A:And I know he's sort of very well thought of in more functional health category, but what's his background?
Speaker A:And I guess how long ago was Somatic Experiencing formulated?
Speaker B:So I think it was in the 60s in California, which at the time was like quite a Hippie dippy place at the time.
Speaker A:Still is.
Speaker B:Yeah, still is, yeah.
Speaker B:And he has two PhDs.
Speaker B:I can't remember what they're in.
Speaker B:But basically the more the science side and the psychological side as well.
Speaker B:So he's put the two of them together.
Speaker B:So he researched animal behavior and he found that the way that animals behave in terms of their sort of freeze and fight and flight response also applies to humans.
Speaker B:And then we had Stephen Porges, who developed the polyvagal theory, and he sort of.
Speaker B:Peter Levine sort of married the two and then further developed his somatic experiencing model to account for the polyvagal theory as well.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge fan of polyvagal.
Speaker A:I learned with Deb Danner, and that was just like mind blowing.
Speaker A:And for me, that was.
Speaker A:It wasn't specifically through the neurodivergent lens she was teaching through, but actually everything about it, I was like recognizing that what I see so much in my clients and my community.
Speaker A:Community.
Speaker A:And I know, you know, I haven't got the stats in front of me, but I know that probably every person that's been late diagnosed with adhd.
Speaker A:I'm going to talk about women specifically here.
Speaker A:So women in their 40s and their 50s, not one of them I have, you know, come across that has not had any form of physical health, hormonal health, gut issue, pain.
Speaker A:There's.
Speaker A:There's always been something.
Speaker A:It's never just been, oh, I've got ADHD because I'm scatty and forgetful or I'm late.
Speaker A:Like, it's never that.
Speaker A:That's such a surface tip of the iceberg that almost feels manageable compared to all the other things that so many women have gone through.
Speaker A:And they're really horrifically debilitating conditions.
Speaker A:And only just recognizing this, you know, unfortunately, around perimenopause, when hormones just kind of take a dip and all sorts of things, you know, go on in people's lives and then we're getting this understanding.
Speaker A:But I want to sort of talk specifically about hypermobility and I'm very happy to share.
Speaker A:My story is that I came to you many years ago.
Speaker A:I say many years ago, maybe five, six years ago, with pain, ongoing pain.
Speaker A:And I know you were just at the beginning of your journey of understanding somatic experiencing and all of that.
Speaker A:And I remember you asking me, like, what's been going on in your life recently?
Speaker A:Are you stressed?
Speaker A:Or, you know, is there stuff going on?
Speaker A:And I'd be like, well, I'm always stressed.
Speaker A:This is I actually think this is before my adhd and I was like, I just always feel frazzled.
Speaker A:And I always feel, and I used to notice this correlation between when I was feeling maybe more burnt out, more stressed, more overwhelmed, all these different things, like life just was feeling far too intense.
Speaker A:That pain would, you know, that inflammation would come and I would go thinking all I needed was some manipulation, some physio, a massage.
Speaker A:And it was very much kind of like putting that plaster, the band aid over what essentially was going on in my, you know, my nervous system was just constantly telling me I was in this fight or flight place.
Speaker A:And then obviously through a lot of the work that I've been doing, doing and understanding myself and my own brain and nervous system and all of that, recognizing like this is just, you know, constant dot connecting.
Speaker A:But what we do know is that hypermobility is very, very prevalent in the neurodivergent community.
Speaker A:We understand there's a connective tissue issue.
Speaker A:I had a previous podcast with Dr.
Speaker A:James Custo who talks, you know, huge amount about this.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Asad Rafi also talks about this.
Speaker A:So it's very important that people are understanding this connection.
Speaker A:But how we can help ourselves, yes, physically, through physio, through types of movement and exercise, Pilates, all these things have really, really helped me.
Speaker A:But what I do notice is that I feel the most kind of calm and I would say grounded and relaxed in my body when I've done kind of more calming things like restorative yoga, some gentle Pilates.
Speaker A:So I just think it's really important that people understand it's not a coincidence that we are experiencing all these physical conditions and issues.
Speaker A:What I wanted to maybe share is that I had this, this session with you, which I found very, very helpful.
Speaker A:And I left feeling very floaty and very relaxed and a bit more in tune with my body.
Speaker A:And this session, we did it in person, but I know you do it online.
Speaker A:All it was was us sitting together.
Speaker A:I was sat in a chair next to you and you were with me and you held space and you made me feel very calm and safe and comfortable and non judged.
Speaker A:And I went into a headspace which I find really, really hard to get into.
Speaker A:Even if I'm trying to meditate, guided, you know, meditation, even if I'm in a shavasana after a yoga class, I still feel quite restless in my body.
Speaker A:And I would say this is probably one of the first times I didn't feel restless.
Speaker A:I mean, it did, it took me a while, as you know, it took me, you know, probably half an hour to get into this place.
Speaker A:But every part of my body just kind of felt like heavy but floaty and all.
Speaker A:It was, it was so simple.
Speaker A:This is what, you know, obviously you've trained for years.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But the session felt very simple.
Speaker A:The session just didn't ask anything of me.
Speaker A:I didn't have to do anything.
Speaker A:I just had to be.
Speaker A:And that's what I find so crazy.
Speaker A:It was so simple.
Speaker A:So perhaps you can tell us a little bit more.
Speaker A:Like, why is it so simple and why did it feel so effective?
Speaker B:Yeah, so maybe it's better to sort of start back at the beginning of your question to talk about.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's a big question.
Speaker B:So we're talking about hypermobility and the sort of coincidence between all these different health conditions and adhd.
Speaker B:And then we're going into SE and how that can help with those things.
Speaker B:So our health conditions, our chronic health conditions are like a mirror to our nervous system, to our autonomic nervous system.
Speaker B:They tell us the state of our autonomic nervous system.
Speaker B:So all of these health issues that people with ADHD have, they can all be understood through that polyvagal lens, through that autonomic nervous system regulation or dysregulation lens, which I listened to your podcast with James Custo as well last night, actually, I sort of was shouting through the screen the whole time, talk about the autonomic nervous system.
Speaker B:That's sort of the missing link between all these things.
Speaker B:So if you look at all these chronic conditions, pain especially is very dependent on our sense of danger or safety in the world.
Speaker B:So our sense of danger or safety in the world is determined by how we grow up in terms of the household that we grow up in.
Speaker B:If we learn that adults are safe, that our caregiver is a safe person, then we deem the world to be a safe place.
Speaker B:If they're not, if they're emotionally untrustworthy or physically untrustworthy, the world is generally not a safe place.
Speaker B:And then our autonomic nervous system becomes dysregulated.
Speaker B:Now what that means is that that vagus nerve isn't as able to down regulate the system in a healthy ventral vagal way.
Speaker B:And it is either used to going into that fight or flight, that sympathetic system, or it's used to going into the polyvagal dorsal system, the collapse system.
Speaker B:So you've only really got these, the fight or flight or the collapse or the freeze response.
Speaker B:Freeze and collapse is slightly different actually.
Speaker B:It doesn't have an opportunity that much of the term to go into ventral vagal, because that is a place where we're safe and in connection with other people.
Speaker B:So if your body learns that it's either got the option to run away or flight or to freeze or collapse, there's no sense of just being in the world as we are with other people in a safe and grounded and relaxed way.
Speaker B:So our body then responds in the way that we either have to run away or we have to freeze, which is an unsafe place for our bodies to be in.
Speaker B:So it creates all these signals, these symptoms that tell us that we're unsafe in the world, such as chronic pain, which is really a signal that we're feel that we're in danger.
Speaker B:Now, it can be a physical danger and it can be an emotional danger, but inflammation is also a way that our body signals that we're not safe.
Speaker B:So it's like you're talking about in your podcast that I would listen to yesterday.
Speaker B:It's about external stimuli.
Speaker B:Our body realizing that we're unsafe and it's fighting against those external stimuli, but it's also internal stimuli.
Speaker B:So if we think that say, for example, crying is not a valid thing to do, that we shouldn't cry, you know, or we shouldn't get angry, that's an internal signal in our body saying, danger, danger, you know, these emotions are dangerous, we shouldn't be doing them.
Speaker B:And then our body's going to fight against them and it's going to create those signals of.
Speaker B:Of pain or inflammation, nervous system reactions.
Speaker B:We see a lot of like hearts that disorder on me, a type of thing.
Speaker B:So all of these symptoms of just ways of our body telling us that were not safe and that we're not able to go into that ventral vagal state and live there more of the time.
Speaker B:And that's what se is trying to do.
Speaker B:So it's trying to help you be in that ventral vagal state most of the time.
Speaker B:So the end of the session where we have that little bit of chat after you're feeling that nice and regulated place where we have that little bit of a chat at the end of the session, that's actually a really important place to complete the session because it's going into eventual vagal state, being in connection with the therapist, but from a point of view of you being in a ventral vagal state and me, I should be in that state as well.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, it was interesting.
Speaker A:Do you find it calming doing the sessions?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of mirroring going on.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I have to be very aware of my nervous system state before going into a session.
Speaker B:So I can't run into a session not having had a break beforehand, being stressed, being whatever.
Speaker B:My state needs to be regulated before I come and have a session with somebody else.
Speaker B:Because if we, if we think about how the nervous system develops, the first way that we learn to regulate is through co regulation, through, you know, the caregiver should teach us how to regulate our system.
Speaker B:You know, when we're upset, we go to that caregiver and they give us a cuddle and we calm down.
Speaker B:And their state, if they're calm, will influence our state.
Speaker B:We will calm down.
Speaker B:If they're all like, oh, what's going on?
Speaker B:You know, are you okay?
Speaker A:Are you okay?
Speaker B:Then we're gonna get more activated and we're gonna get, you know, out of our heads.
Speaker B:So in the session we're sort of mimicking that first state of learning to co regulate.
Speaker B:Once we've, once I'm able to affect your state, once you're able to co regulate with me, then we can work on you learning to self regulate you learning to do it for yourself in the world, which is an adult, we should be able to do.
Speaker B:But a lot of people haven't been taught how to co regulate first.
Speaker B:So it's not a really, you know, it's not a surprise that they can't self regulate.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:It's so important, this conversation, because this is why so many of us don't understand that we may have experienced trauma.
Speaker A:You know, we can talk about the trauma, like big T trauma which, like big horrific events in our life, but also that continual time in our life where like you say, we haven't felt that safety or that connection.
Speaker A:And if we've lived in an undiagnosed neurodivergent family where people haven't learned to regulate themselves, they don't have the tools and the skills, the resources.
Speaker A:Then like you say, this co regulation probably hasn't happened.
Speaker A:And there's just constant dysregulation in the, in the family and chaos and shouting and not feeling safe.
Speaker A:And so many of us kind of go, well, my childhood was okay, you know, there was shouting, there was this.
Speaker A:But it wasn't like we didn't have one terrible event.
Speaker A:But we don't understand why our nervous system is constantly sort of like hyper vigilant.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And this is a huge part of my work and wanting to bring this awareness to people to know that you can still feel trauma and you can still have, you know, CPTSD if you've had a very sort of, and I say in quotes, non eventful kind of life, but didn't feel quite safe or cared for or you didn't live in a regulated, you know, household.
Speaker A:And then some people can say, well, is any household regulated?
Speaker A:And you kind of think, yes, there's always going to be arguments and there's going to be sort of, you know, disagreements and things like that.
Speaker A:But essentially co regulation is having that adult as a, when you're a child help you feel seen and heard and looked after and validated.
Speaker A:And many of us haven't had that experience.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:I mean, if you look at like the, you know, the way that they're talking about ADHD nowadays is that it's a combination between the genes and the environment obviously.
Speaker B:But if you look at neurodivergency that runs through families, you can see that massive sort of component of environment in terms of how you have been brought up will affect your ability to be present with your emotions, to be able to self regulate.
Speaker B:So it's really not a surprise when somebody comes from a lineage of ADHD when they're not able to self regulate because they haven't been given the tools.
Speaker B:I always tell my clients it's like a tool for life, their self regulation.
Speaker B:It's something like learning to speak, learning to drive a car, learning to ride a bike.
Speaker B:If you haven't been taught them at home, you wouldn't expect to be able to do them.
Speaker B:So it's sort of a big ask to expect us to be able to regulate our emotions without having been having grown up in a house where we, where we could do that.
Speaker B:And you know, with parenting it's not, it doesn't have to be perfect.
Speaker B:You know, there's a lot of talk about the good enough parenting.
Speaker B:But if you think to yourself, you know, did I have somebody that I could go to when I was upset?
Speaker B:Could I really be seen fully as my whole self and accepted as my whole self?
Speaker B:You know, that's enough to give you the clues to, you know, whether you had enough as a child.
Speaker B:And yeah, when you talk about trauma, it's really important to say that it really doesn't have to be those big things like sexual abuse or war trauma or any of those things, because they talk about trauma as being sort of too much, too fast, too soon.
Speaker B:That's the definition of it.
Speaker B:But it also, in childhood development it's, it's about not enough, it's not getting enough, not being seen enough, not being Validated enough, not being heard enough, not having your neurodivergent needs met, which is what, you know, nowadays we're getting better at that.
Speaker B:But certainly when we were growing up 30 years ago, it wasn't great out there.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So that's really powerful for people to hear that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And to let that land a little bit because we can suddenly start connecting those dots of looking back and going, yeah, like I wasn't heard or seen enough, I wasn't supported enough.
Speaker A:And to recognize that maybe that's why there's an element of maybe perfectionism or hyper vigilance or never feeling good enough or having to try much harder and experiencing these cycles of burnout.
Speaker A:All of this can be helped by se, can't it?
Speaker A:Like, I know that you obviously can work with people who have experienced like severe trauma.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But you can help people who have had these cycles of burnout or these cycles of just feeling like they need to be productive.
Speaker A:And I remember during our session I had this itching feeling of is this productive?
Speaker A:Like, am I doing something?
Speaker A:Doesn't feel like I'm being productive.
Speaker A:And that kind of chatter at the beginning of, at the beginning of the session going, this is not going to be.
Speaker A:I need something a bit like, come on.
Speaker A:Because I'm used to just come on, like quick, fast.
Speaker A:I need effective.
Speaker A:And that's my ADHD saying to me, like, come on, you need to be.
Speaker A:Do more, there's more to do.
Speaker A:Like you've got a world to conquer.
Speaker A:And actually that doesn't serve me in my, in my kind of nervous system.
Speaker A:So I kind of fight this ambitious part of me that wants.
Speaker A:It's got.
Speaker A:Feels like there's so much to do and so many people to help.
Speaker A:And I just want to create so much awareness.
Speaker A:But then I'm so conscious of how sensitive my nervous system is and how, you know, my energy depletes and how I experience burnout quite regularly.
Speaker A:So there's this constant balance.
Speaker A:And what I'm interested to know is, can we learn to do SE on our own?
Speaker A:Do we need a therapist?
Speaker B:I think you need somebody to guide you at first.
Speaker B:But I mean, yeah, definitely.
Speaker B:I've done so much work on my own.
Speaker B:Like I say, it's a tool and you can learn to do it.
Speaker B:And I really encourage the people that I work with to practice every day because it's about resetting the nervous system, resetting that baseline level of functioning to something more.
Speaker B:So rather than your nervous system going like this in massive waves activation and freeze and we're looking for more of, like, ups and downs and expanding our window of tolerance through that so that we get more space to function.
Speaker A:What drew you to wanting to kind of like.
Speaker A:You obviously went into sports rehabilitation and you're doing a lot of manual and physical, kind of like help with people through injury.
Speaker A:But what was it in your life, I guess, that you started to think, there's more to what I could do here.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So sort of.
Speaker B:Well, a bit of a long story, but I'll try and just shorten it.
Speaker B:So I had my kids quite young, and at 7, at 17, before I had my kids, I had a disc herniation and I had the kids.
Speaker B:And after I had the kids, a disc prolapse.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:So after I had the kids, I realized that I wanted to do something and I still had the back pain on and off after the disc prolapse.
Speaker B:So I decided to go and do this sports rehab degree at Salford.
Speaker B:And it was a brilliant degree.
Speaker B:I absolutely loved it.
Speaker B:I still.
Speaker B:Still passionate about it.
Speaker B:But then about eight years, six, seven years later, I did a course about physio, about rehab, and the lady that was running it was talking about the nervous system and talking about trauma and how it can create pain and dysfunction.
Speaker B:I don't like the word dysfunction, but different ways of the body moving or suboptimal ways of movement.
Speaker B:And through that course, we were doing a lot of sort of self exploration in terms of our movement.
Speaker B:And I realized that I was really disembodied through my left side.
Speaker B:I just couldn't feel it in the same way as I could the other side.
Speaker B:And I realized through doing more reading, reading about trauma and more, that what had happened as I had grown up had really impacted the way that I connected with my body and with my emotions.
Speaker B:So I used to imagine like, you know, an emotion.
Speaker B:And then I'd used to imagine this room with shelves and I'd put that emotion in a box on the shelf and then shut the door and then it, you know, it's gone away and I don't have to feel it and it's fine.
Speaker B:But then over time, I realized that those were just actually being held in my body and creating this pain and tension.
Speaker B:I did some.
Speaker B:I found a practitioner, did some Essie for about a year, a year and a half, and then she encouraged me to go on the course and.
Speaker B:Yeah, and we haven't really looked back from there.
Speaker B:Just absolutely so passionate about it.
Speaker B:I absolutely love it.
Speaker B:And I really love the place where we blend the mind and Body.
Speaker B:Because a lot of people will work like either psychologically or physically, like physio rehab or, you know, psychotherapy.
Speaker B:But it's that place in the middle that I absolutely love to be able to dip into both of them because people just come as a whole, them whole, the whole selves.
Speaker B:You know, they don't come and tell me, well, we're only going to deal with my back pain today, but let's not talk about the other stress that's going on in my life.
Speaker B:You know, we get everything.
Speaker B:So to be able to sort of hold all that is amazing.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker A:And I love that because very often when we're working in this sort of like these therapeutic settings, it's always a personal reason.
Speaker A:There's always something, you know, that we've.
Speaker A:I don't think I've ever met anyone that hasn't become a yoga teacher or a therapist or a mindfulness practitioner or anything if they haven't suffered or had to deal with it themselves and they start recognizing how much it impacts them and then they want to help other people.
Speaker A:And I, I do.
Speaker A:I really think that it was a really interesting session because it's kind of combines from what I understand, from my understanding, this mindfulness connection to your body.
Speaker A:It kind of put me in a bit of a kind of hypnosis state like where I was still very conscious, but I definitely felt like I could probably fall asleep if I.
Speaker A:And I don't normally ever feel like I could fall asleep.
Speaker A:My family know me as the person that's like always awake on like planes, trains, automobiles.
Speaker A:I'm the one that's hyper vigilant, sitting there like I will never fall asleep in any public setting at all.
Speaker A:Whereas then I was just like, oh, it's like could have nodded off.
Speaker A:Sure, yes.
Speaker A:And so I remember coming into the session and I wonder if it's sort of, kind of meant to be, but I just had a bit of a blow up in the house with the kids and husband and whatever and I got there and I was quite activated and you know, you obviously then had to kind of like regulate and calm thing, you know, me down a little bit so I could get into that state.
Speaker A:But I left and I genuinely had forgotten all about it.
Speaker A:Walked back into the house and I didn't even discuss, it wasn't even a conversation.
Speaker A:And it was just kind of like, you know, the rest of the day was really calm and easy and you know, that was, that showed, you know, clearly it worked because if I was just in that state for that one hour, then got back in my car, went home and I was like, then, you know.
Speaker A:But it just, it definitely regulated.
Speaker A:I kind of had this sense of equilibrium which was, which was really great.
Speaker A:How would a session like this help people if they want to build this into their daily well being or even if they're going through therapy and this can just, could this help, I guess release trauma as well and help them free whatever those stuck emotions are in their body?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I think the first thing that I forgot to mention last time that I answered a question was that the reason why SE works so well for people with ADHD is because any adhd, often we, I mean, I don't want to say always, but often we see changes in the ability for, for people to proprioceptively and interoceptively connect with their bodies.
Speaker B:So proprioception is the external noticing where our body is in space, where our joints are in space, and how we're connected to the floor and the surface that we're on.
Speaker B:But interoception is the ability to notice the sensations, what's going on inside the body.
Speaker B:So traditionally meditation and all these calming techniques will be focusing on external stimuli, what's going on externally.
Speaker B:So if you meditate, you might have to listen to the birds outside or something.
Speaker B:But with se, we're really meditating on what's going on internally.
Speaker B:And that really helps people connect to those interoceptive sensations, those things that are going on inside.
Speaker B:Which is really something that affects people who are neurodivergent a lot.
Speaker B:And I think that's also linked to the hypermobility thing.
Speaker B:So hypermobile humans tend to have lacks of ability in proprioception and interoception.
Speaker B:So they're joints.
Speaker B:So we get our ability to propriocept through the sensors in our joints.
Speaker B:And if we have excess laxity in those joints, the sensors that are built into those joints to help us sense where we are in the world won't be as able to function as easily though.
Speaker B:You get that combination of that autonomic nervous system dysregulation and that lack of ability to interocept and the combination of the lack of ability to propriocept.
Speaker B:And then you have, have lots of issues with I can't feel my body, I don't know what I'm doing with my body.
Speaker B:You know, if you're being told to do an exercise in a class, am I doing that right?
Speaker B:I can't feel it.
Speaker B:You know, how does everybody else know what they're doing?
Speaker B:Type of thing.
Speaker A:I've had that for years.
Speaker A:But also, does this apply to people who are dyspraxic as well?
Speaker A:Because we know that ADHD and dyspraxia go very much hand in hand.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:That's a lot of proprioceptive issues there with if I close my eyes, can I touch my nose?
Speaker B:Do I know where my hand is in space without looking at it?
Speaker B:That's dyspraxia.
Speaker B:You know, very simply.
Speaker B:Obviously there's a lot more to it than that.
Speaker B:But yeah, they're all connected, you know, sensing our body internally and externally.
Speaker B:And that's how we're going to, we're going to help that through se.
Speaker B:Through teaching you to connect more with your body.
Speaker B:And through doing that, you'll help help yourself regulate your system, you know, calm your system down.
Speaker B:And you also connect with those emotions that maybe you were protecting yourself from.
Speaker B:So it's not that they need releasing, it's that they need feeling.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And I mean, you mentioned before that you struggle to connect to the left side of your body.
Speaker A:And I remember during our session, is there something, you know, on both sides?
Speaker A:You asked me and I remember saying the left side.
Speaker A:And also interesting, most of my hip and back pain, you know, historically was always on my left side.
Speaker A:Is there a connection between the left side and the body and emotions?
Speaker B:Yes, I'm still looking for that answer, to be honest.
Speaker B:I don't think so.
Speaker B:I think, you know, everybody's.
Speaker B:I'm looking for the answer as to why people get what they get in response to different traumas.
Speaker B:And there doesn't seem to be an answer to that at the moment.
Speaker B:Hopefully there will be one day.
Speaker B:But people do tend to have like a pain memory.
Speaker B:So it's like a central nervous system sensitization for an area of the body.
Speaker B:So if you've had pain or an injury in one area and then you go and have stress at a later date, it's more likely that that pain will come back in that same area.
Speaker B:So, you know, obviously that's going to happen time and time again.
Speaker B:You know, stress isn't just a one time thing.
Speaker B:So it's going to, you know, it's going to embed that, that memory of pain in that area.
Speaker A:So also, you know, we've been talking about back pain a lot, but we can.
Speaker A:This is related to, you know, neck, shoulder pain, jaw pain.
Speaker A:I know a lot who suffer with tmj, which is this very tight jaw, which can lead to ongoing migraines and all of this tightness this tension, it is connected to our.
Speaker A:To our nervous system.
Speaker A:Would you say someone who suffers with migraines or maybe hormonal health?
Speaker A:Pmdd, pms, perimenopause, you know, again, so interconnected, all the hormonal stuff, does it help with things like that?
Speaker B:Yeah, so I think the hormonal stuff is separate to the chronic pain stuff.
Speaker B:The chronic pain, the tmj, the migraines and stuff, that's something that we see throughout the month.
Speaker B:It might be affected by where you are in the cycle, but it's always sort of there, underlying at some point.
Speaker B:The pmdd, that's obviously more about, you know, how your cycle is and when you get in your period and stuff, it's much more.
Speaker B:Comes on much more strongly at certain times of the month.
Speaker B:So talking about the TMJ and the migraines, first, we very often see with people with jaw pain that it's something to do with something unsaid, that something needs to be said, or anger, so something needs to be shouted, expressed, and it's being held back often in the jaw.
Speaker B:Now, when we talk about tension all up here, the muscles up and around the neck and into the jaw, they're so interconnected, you really can't distinguish between, you know, having one by itself.
Speaker B:So when I see people with TMJ problems, they very often have headache problems, they very often have neck problems, and they very often have shoulder problems.
Speaker B:Now, that's because the muscle that starts up around the back of your ear comes down and inserts into the.
Speaker B:One of the top ribs and, you know, into the clavicle.
Speaker B:And then you've got your rotator cuff that inserts into here that often sort of gets a bit angsty if it ends up being lived around here.
Speaker B:You know, if your neck muscles are tight.
Speaker B:So it's also interconnected, you can't really take one away from the other.
Speaker B:But you do see that when people are stressed, when people are activated, that's when those symptoms are going to sort of show up with a vengeance.
Speaker B:And people don't tend to realize or see that pattern in their lives, so.
Speaker B:Well, so I often get people to keep a bit of a diary as to, you know, what's happening in my life, what's happening with my symptoms, and it doesn't have to be every day, but just so you can see some sort of pattern with that.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I think it's really helpful for people because sometimes we just don't make those connections between all of this, the physical stuff.
Speaker A:I've got A friend who suffers with terrible migraines.
Speaker A:And I've kind of alluded to lots of things, but she's just not quite ready.
Speaker A:She's just kind of like, I just need my migraine medication or I just need this type of, you know, thing.
Speaker A:Whereas I would love to help her and say, you know, have you considered the emotional side?
Speaker A:Have you considered that there's something else going on that's not just a physical reaction to why you're getting migraines, even just like the hormonal side?
Speaker A:So, you know, people who are listening to this will listen to this and the people who are ready to, you know, use this information.
Speaker A:And there's a lot of people who will just be very dismissive and just be like, no, it's a physical condition.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And we have to, you know, I've been reading the, the Mel Robbins book Let them and the Let Them theory.
Speaker A:And I love everything that she's saying, but a lot of it is, yeah, we have to look after ourselves first.
Speaker A:We have to, you know, we want to be able to help lots of people and we want to be, you know, people pleasing and doing all these things for people.
Speaker A:But actually when we're having pain and all these different things kind of coming up chronically, we have to focus on ourselves and just be like, let them do what they, they're doing and if they're not ready and we have to start kind of like focusing.
Speaker A:Okay, how can I help myself?
Speaker A:And it very much, I think se really helps people recognize, actually.
Speaker A:Yeah, like if I want to be co regulating a family, wanna make sure that there's a safe environment, my children feel safe and heard, we have to feel calm and regulated and we have to process and work on past trauma or we have to work on our, our emotions and learn to heal.
Speaker A:Because I think many of us, you know, in this generation, we have parents that were closed, were shut down, obviously never went to therapy, never.
Speaker A:No one ever talked about anything.
Speaker A:They went through all sorts of traumatic things growing up and it was just kind of locked away.
Speaker A:And as, as children, we then had to sort of bear the brunt of dysregulated parents or parents that just didn't know how to co regulate, you know, in the home.
Speaker A:So I think what, what you're doing is amazing and I would love people to be able to connect with you, but maybe if they wanted to see an SE practitioner as well, how can people, you know, work and try a session?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I think first of all, the first thing I want to Address is that just because I'm saying all this doesn't mean it is something physical going on in your body.
Speaker B:So all these emotions that are unprocessed, they actually produce real physical symptoms, so they actually increase inflammation, which if you're talking about your jaw over time is going to erode the tmj, the temporomandibular joint.
Speaker B:So that pain that you're feeling is actually a real physical pain.
Speaker B:But it doesn't mean that its roots, its origins are not in emotions.
Speaker B:That's that link between.
Speaker B:Yeah, those emotions, those unprocessed emotions are actually causing real physical changes in our bodies.
Speaker B:And that's what SE can help and change and mitigate.
Speaker B:So in terms of working with me, yes, you can go on my website, but there's also a national registry and I think I sent you the link actually, which you could maybe put up.
Speaker B:And the organization's called SEA uk.
Speaker B:So if you go on there, you can have a look if you want to see somebody in person in your area.
Speaker A:And I presume that's global as well because a lot of people are here listening globally.
Speaker B:I mean, I've got client, I've got a client in India, I've got a client in Japan, I've got a client in New York.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:Amazing, Amazing.
Speaker A:I think.
Speaker A:Well, what you're doing is incredible and thank you, thank you for my session because I really enjoyed it and I will make sure all the links are on the show notes as well.
Speaker A:And I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience, you know, se and, and maybe Pratt is a practitioner as well and maybe kind of your, your thinking and your understanding and your insights.
Speaker A:Because I think this is only just growing like this is.
Speaker A:None of this is going anywhere and we're only just at the beginning and the more doctors and GPs and physios, like the first line kind of health professionals that people are coming to when they have pain, when they suspect they've got, you know, ADHD or autism or they can, you know, the amount of GPs are seeing people with migraines and, you know, muscle tension and people are going to physios and we're not getting this understanding.
Speaker A:This is the conversation that needs to be shared because we need more people on these like first line places to pack to say.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Actually this could be dealt with in a more holistic way.
Speaker A:It doesn't have to just be pain medicine, which obviously has its place.
Speaker A:But ideally we want to be kind, digging a bit deeper and kind of helping, you know, from a more emotional level as well.
Speaker A:So, Susanna, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker A:I really appreciate it.
Speaker A:If today's episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for even further support, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is now available to order from anywhere you get your books from.
Speaker A:I really hope this book is going to be the ultimate resource for anyone who loves the podcast and wants a deeper dive into all these kind of conversations.
Speaker A:Head to my website, ADHD womenswellbeing.co.uk and you'll find all the information on the book there.
