The Links Between Our Nervous System, Trauma and ADHD Hormonal Sensitivity
In this week’s wisdom episode, we explore Chapter 4 (Regulate Your Nervous System) of The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit and dive into the essential connection between our nervous system, hormonal health, and trauma-informed healing.
We reflect on our conversations with Allegra Foxlie (a trauma and hormone specialist, podcast host, embodiment expert, and author of HTR: The Hormone Tension Release) and Paula Rarick (an advocate for hormonal sensitivity and brain-body integration) to explore how nervous system regulation can be the foundation for sustainable wellbeing.
What You'll Learn:
- Why the nervous system is key to hormonal and emotional regulation, especially for ADHDers.
- How trauma and early stress dysregulate the nervous and endocrine systems, leading to autoimmune conditions.
- How nervous system patterns shape hormonal responses, epigenetics, and long-term resilience.
- Practical tools like breathwork, vagus nerve activation, and habit shifts to support daily regulation.
- Why cortisol can feel addictive, and why calm may feel unfamiliar or unsafe for some.
- The value of combining talk therapy and body-based practices for deep healing.
- How ADHD, autism, BPD, and hormonal sensitivity share common nervous system traits.
🌟 My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is available to preorder here 🌟
Timestamps:
00:26 - Introducing the ADHD Nervous System
03:36 - Exploring how early life Trauma impacts the Nervous System
10:14 - Learning Healing Techniques for Trauma
19:42 - The Nervous System's Vital Role in Hormonal Sensitivity
22:59 - Looking at the Nervous System in a new way
If you're curious about how your nervous system might be shaping your emotions, hormones, and daily wellbeing, you can also watch Kate's recent webinar on this topic for even more tools and guidance [here].
Links and Resources:
- Missed our ADHD Women’s Summer Series? Get the workshops on demand [here].
- Next ADHD Wellbeing Workshop: A bonus Q&A to ask me anything about ADHD and my new book! - July 8th 24th @1.30pm. Book [here].
- Preorder my book: The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit [here].
- Join the Waitlist for my new ADHD community-first membership launching in September! Get exclusive founding offers [here].
- Find my popular ADHD webinars and resources on my website [here].
- Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
- Follow me on Instagram: @kate_moryoussef
Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled women newly diagnosed with ADHD find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity, and clarity.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of the ADHD Women's well Being Wisdom.
Speaker A:And I am back today to talk about another chapter of my new upcoming book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit.
Speaker A:And everything I talk about in the book, we talk about on the podcast.
Speaker A:And it's something I am so passionate about, that I have done workshops, I have done seminars, I've done so many different episodes on this.
Speaker A:And it's the ADHD nervous system.
Speaker A:It's something that I noticed quite a long time ago and started connecting all the dots and the curiosity around our nervous system and how we tend to live in a more hyper vigilant stress state.
Speaker A:This sort of more sympathetic nervous system means that many of us live in a chronic state of stress or burnout or feeling like we're not doing enough or that we should be doing more or this productivity driving us.
Speaker A:And it feels unsafe for us to rest, it feels unsafe for us to slow down.
Speaker A:And we have to change this default way of living, this default position that could potentially come from trauma, it can come from upbringing, it can come from living undiagnosed so not quite understanding ourselves.
Speaker A:And so I believed that this was a conversation that still needs so much more attention and awareness.
Speaker A:And that's why I've put a whole chapter in my book about the ADHD nervous system so we can really understand it.
Speaker A:And I've put my education about polyvagal theory in, in the book so we can start understanding where we are in this nervous system ladder and what triggers us and how we can find ways to move from this sympathetic state or our dorsal vagal state, which is sort of the shutdown more into this parasympathetic state where we can start finding those glimmers and learning to notice the signs of when we are in that stress state.
Speaker A:So I wanted to bring in one of the contributors of my book.
Speaker A:I've got fantastic experts, many of whom are doctors, their therapists, specialists, experts in their field that I wanted to bring into the book.
Speaker A:So it's not just my perspective that we've got scientific understanding and research.
Speaker A:And Allegra Foxley is a trauma and hormone specialist and she's also an embodiment expert.
Speaker A:And something that I think is so important that we understand is more of the somatic side of how ADHD manifests in our body.
Speaker A:And she's written a brilliant book called hdr, which is the hormone tension release.
Speaker A:And she's also a podcast host, the Brain and Body Podcast, and help helps people relieve stress, tension and pain.
Speaker A:And I wanted to include Allegra because not only is it really integral for us to understand our nervous system, but she has contributed her insights to the book and blends this understanding of how childhood trauma and stress on our life experiences can upset our nervous system and shows us the link between the nervous system and our hormones.
Speaker A:And not only does she share these insights, we also talk about tools.
Speaker A:It's always about tools, hence the name of my book, which is the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit.
Speaker A:Because we need these tools to help us calm the body, release this tension, release our trauma, balance our hormones.
Speaker A:And we talk about this in today's clip.
Speaker A:So you'll also hear from a recent guest of mine, which was Paula Rastrick.
Speaker A:Now, Paula shares more of her wisdom on the nervous system, and you'll hear that towards the end of the episode, but here is my conversation with Allegra Foxley.
Speaker B:So our nervous system is an electrochemical messaging system that governs our entire optimal health.
Speaker B:Now, if you think of the body as a massive Internet, the nervous system sends signals to the endocrine system, your hormonal system.
Speaker B:Okay, Telling it what hormones to produce at the right time of day and in what quantities.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But adverse childhood experiences, trauma and stress, they dysregulate the nervous system, meaning that your endocrine system, your hormonal system might not be getting the right messages.
Speaker B:And in some instances, they might not be getting the right messages.
Speaker B:Any messages.
Speaker B:Meaning that our harmonious system can fail in surprisingly hard to diagnose ways.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Your nervous system is responsible for many different things.
Speaker B:It has a controlling influence on your immune system.
Speaker B:So people with multiple adverse childhood experiences.
Speaker B:The more adverse childhood experiences you have, the more likely you are to suffer from an autoimmune disorder in your 40s and 50s.
Speaker B:And 80% of people who suffer with autoimmune disorders are women.
Speaker B:And that skyrockets during perimenopause and menopause, when inflammation skyrockets.
Speaker B:So it kind of governs everything, the nervous system.
Speaker B:Now, when adverse childhood experiences happen, I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but I grew up in a very emotionally defunct, aggressive and sometimes unavailable household.
Speaker B:I remember when things were happening, I used to, to form fists with my hands.
Speaker C:I would contract.
Speaker B:My whole muscular body would contract because the fascia, the tension's contracting because it's putting you in a stress response.
Speaker B:It's putting you in fight, flight or freeze, where you can just be totally frozen, depending on the severity.
Speaker B:Stephen Porges, the founder of the polyvagal theory he talks about.
Speaker B:People are our social nervous system.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:But if you've been brought up in a household where, you know, maybe the mother was emotionally unavailable because she couldn't quite understand she was married to the guy, or maybe it was the opposite way round.
Speaker B:Either way, as a child, you've not had anyone told you to self regulate, to produce that oxytocin, the loving hormones to calm you down.
Speaker B:And that has serious ramifications, actually, for your neural development, for your brain development.
Speaker B:It can alter your sensitivity to various different hormones.
Speaker B:So you know, trauma as an adult, if you've had adverse childhood experiences and then an event or a number of different events happen, you're far more likely to get post traumatic stress disorder.
Speaker B:You're likely to suffer with it.
Speaker B:And that will involve flashbacks, being hypervigilant, you know, heart's absolutely racing, hearing super sensitive.
Speaker B:Because trauma means that you've had to protect yourself, you've had to be on guard.
Speaker B:So you need to know if there's a tiger in the room that's going to attack you.
Speaker B:Even though the threat has gone, your body, your brain doesn't realize it.
Speaker B:Your brain speaks to your body and your body speaks to your brain, and both can be triggering.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you're obviously working with clients who are coming to you.
Speaker A:You talked about the nervous system, immune system, you're talking about autoimmune issues, disorders.
Speaker A:What typically are you seeing?
Speaker A:So if anyone's listening here, they can get this validation for themselves.
Speaker B:So from a.
Speaker B:When I'm treating female clients, trauma shows up in the body.
Speaker B:It's absolutely fascinating.
Speaker B:So period pain, premenstrual tension, worse perimenopause and menopause symptoms.
Speaker B:So women who have had adverse childhood experiences or PTSD have a significantly higher risk of suffering with premenstrual dysphoric disorder.
Speaker B:And that is when and once a woman's ovulated, she's just come to ovulation all of a sudden.
Speaker B:So for those 14 days after, afterwards, or 12 days afterwards, depending, we've all got different cycles, she can spiral out of control.
Speaker B:She would suffer a range of different symptoms that are debilitating for her.
Speaker B:And those symptoms can range from severe depression.
Speaker B:So depression could be insomnia, big bloating, others sleep throughout, severe anger.
Speaker B:So real kind of emotional outbursts.
Speaker B:It can be completely extreme.
Speaker B:And you know, that's happening for like 14 days a month.
Speaker B:And it only kind of goes away, like day two, day three, if you bleed, very heavy bleeding, lots of pain, et cetera.
Speaker B:Because Trauma and stress dysregulate everything.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So when the brain perceives a threat, real or imagined, it activates various different protective outputs in your body.
Speaker B:You've got the stress response, fight, flight, freeze, appease.
Speaker B:You've got the pain response, you've got inflammation, tiredness and fever.
Speaker B:And you've also got adaptive thermogenesis, AKA the starvation response.
Speaker B:Now these are all protective outputs.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And they act like best friends trying to protect you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So one or all of these outputs can be activated and the stress response has a controlling influence on all of them, basically.
Speaker B:So they all contribute to worse symptoms, basically.
Speaker B:So the techniques that I teach calm the brain's protective outputs and once we've calmed them, then the symptoms disappear.
Speaker A:Every single client I've ever worked with has got trauma from childhood.
Speaker A:And they are not making the connection between their fibromyalgia, their gut issues, endometriosis, the early perimenopause, their pmdd.
Speaker A:And then we're bringing this all together and that understanding and it's all, all under the umbrella of our, I believe it's the nervous system.
Speaker A:And it's when we start working with the nervous system, because so many clients say they've been in talk therapy for years and it's, they've just not been able to release these adverse childhood experiences.
Speaker A:They've not been able to heal from them.
Speaker A:They just go over and over and it's still programs, it's stuck in their body.
Speaker A:I work with eft, with tapping and that's very effective in releasing and I'm really interested to hear maybe if there's any practical tools that you could offer now to the listeners, if there's something they can do on their own, if they are feeling particularly heightened or sensitive, especially if it's hormone related, and they would love to get some practical solutions.
Speaker B:There are a number of different things that you can do if you have a trauma background and adverse childhood experiences.
Speaker B:I would recommend doing this with a trauma informed therapist, but because things come out okay, but I think quick ones.
Speaker B:If you're feeling like hyper vigilant, if you've woken up first thing in the morning, your heart is racing, you're absolutely pounding, you feel really on edge.
Speaker B:Well, that's because your cortisol's the highest it's going to be.
Speaker B:So it started rising and if you've got that track record, you're probably more sensitive to it.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Wash your hands and feet, splash them with really cold water.
Speaker B:It's a sharp shock to the nervous system.
Speaker B:So doing Something as simple as that can actually work temporarily.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Working with the breath.
Speaker B:So the breath is a very fast, effective way to help you to self regulate.
Speaker B:When we're breathing in, we are sympathetically aroused, you know, we're in our active state.
Speaker C:State.
Speaker B:You want to take the breath, breathe in through the nose, take the breath down to the belly, maybe breathing in for a count of four, and then breathe out through the mouth for a count of eight, double it up on the exhale, because that's when our healing parasympathetic nervous system is more active.
Speaker B:There are different techniques where you can slow the breath even more and then look around the room with your eyes all the way around, come back to center all the way around the other way, and name three things in the room that you can see.
Speaker B:So you're activating your vagus nerve.
Speaker B:Basically.
Speaker B:There's lots of different things that you can do temporarily, but actually if you want deep change, it's really, I would say using talk therapy and body therapy.
Speaker B:Because ultimately they say psychotherapy that only involves talk therapy is like pulling a weed out but leaving the roots.
Speaker B:The roots is in the body.
Speaker B:So you need a combination.
Speaker B:I would suggest actually you do the body therapy first to regulate your body so that you can actually pay attention and listen to the talk therapy and digest it.
Speaker B:So it just varies because if you're in a hyperactive state, if you're hypervigilant, you are not going to be able to take in what the talk therapist is potentially saying.
Speaker B:So you kind of need a combination of the two.
Speaker B:Obviously, I teach neurogenic tremoring and Neurogenic Yin and tension and Trauma releasing exercises by David Biselli.
Speaker B:And that's where we activate the brainstem.
Speaker B:We put the body through some stretches.
Speaker B:It activates the brainstem to produce naturally therapeutic neurogenic movements.
Speaker B:Sends an electric charge around the nervous system, rebooting it, regulating it, releasing tension in the fascia.
Speaker B:And it's able to help people process.
Speaker B:So, you know, it can get rid of flashbacks, can get rid of nightmares, all sorts of different stuff like that, and actually get rid of, you know, premenstrual tension, which for me was a total game changer.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So when you talk about tremoring, I know that shaking, shaking the body is a way of like releasing trauma.
Speaker A:Like we see a dog shaking.
Speaker A:Is that what you're talking about?
Speaker A:I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.
Speaker B:Yes, it is.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But you're not physically shaking the body.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:So it's.
Speaker B:We can all shake, we can all, you know, do a bit of jumping, which is great for lymphatic drainage.
Speaker B:You've got rebounding there, so that, you know, so all for that anyway.
Speaker B:But actually, what we're doing when we're practicing tre, or when we're practicing neurogenic yin, is we're activating the brainstem.
Speaker B:And so the movements are involuntary.
Speaker B:You're not doing the movements.
Speaker B:And this for some.
Speaker B:For some people, I can have them on the mat.
Speaker B:They will be laughing, they'll be like, oh, this is weird.
Speaker B:My body's doing this.
Speaker B:It usually starts in the hips.
Speaker B:These little movements will go into the pelvis, et cetera.
Speaker B:But it's a process.
Speaker B:It's taken time for you to get to this point in your life, and it's going to take time for the neurogenic tremoring to really kind of build up and to work.
Speaker B:So for me, it took three months to get to my shoulders from my hips, the movements coming in.
Speaker B:And then it took another three months to get to my hands, my frozen hands, which, you know, David Boselle thinks was from me tensing as a child.
Speaker B:But eventually all of these movements will come through.
Speaker B:You'll have them in your jaw.
Speaker B:And the body seems to have its own little strategy.
Speaker B:So it's absolutely fascinating.
Speaker B:But it's your body healing you.
Speaker B:And trauma creates independence.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:So when you've had trauma as a child or as an adult, it creates fierce independence because you never, ever want to be.
Speaker B:Want to feel that vulnerable again.
Speaker B:So it creates control.
Speaker B:Yeah, Many people are very successful.
Speaker B:They might be CEOs of companies, the whole works.
Speaker B:They're workaholics.
Speaker B:They just.
Speaker B:They never want to feel that vulnerable again.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker B:So when you get people on the mat and your body's doing something that they're not actually doing, that can be a bit uncomfortable for them initially, actually.
Speaker B:So it's about holding their hand.
Speaker B:Could be physically, could be emotionally or metaphorically supporting them.
Speaker B:Things come out in the process, and eventually what you'll find is they start to love their body.
Speaker B:They start to understand that their body is trying to be.
Speaker B:Has been trying to talk to them for years, but they haven't understood the messages.
Speaker B:They haven't understood what the symptoms were.
Speaker B:And then they're like, oh, so that's what's happened.
Speaker B:And so you've got to think of the nervous system as.
Speaker B:It's the foundations for emotional happiness.
Speaker B:If you imagine, like my.
Speaker B:My friend Bill Jenks, he's a psychotherapist, he says this, you know, it's a bit like building a castle on sand.
Speaker B:Okay?
Speaker B:No matter how great the facade is, you can have a six pack, you can have a rocking body.
Speaker B:This castle has been built on sand.
Speaker B:The sand's your nervous system.
Speaker B:So no matter how great the facade is, if your nervous system isn't regulated, you are still at risk of sinking, if not collapsing.
Speaker B:So you've got to do the work.
Speaker B:The work is on your nervous system.
Speaker B:The nervous system is your central nervous system, including your brain.
Speaker B:It's making sure that your spine is, your major energy highway network is working correctly and your fascia, which is the connective tissue that surrounds everything.
Speaker B:Your fascia is a sensory organ.
Speaker B:You know, it's a sensory organ.
Speaker B:So we want to streamline the fascia, make stretch it out.
Speaker B:You know, things you asked me before, like what's, what's kind of good to self regulate touches, tickling, stroking, you know, all of those things.
Speaker B:If you combine all of them and do it intelligently, you should get deep change.
Speaker B:And that's going to give you freedom within your body and within your mind.
Speaker A:So thank you to Allegra.
Speaker A:And I also want to share now my conversation with Paula Rastrick, who is on a mission to help raise more awareness of the science of hormonal sensitivity and the nervous system and all these different crossovers in women's physiological and physical, cognitive and emotional health.
Speaker A:And we have to start understanding all the different layers that come with our neurodivergent understanding as women.
Speaker A:So it's connected to stress, hormones, trauma, our different backgrounds, the way we have lived with families that have been undiagnosed.
Speaker A:And all of this shapes our nervous system.
Speaker A:So it's really, really important that we, how hormones play a role in this due to our nervous systems being in a stress state response.
Speaker A:So here is my clip with Paula Rastrick.
Speaker C:The nervous system is being finely tuned in your younger years and it's very sensitive, the brain and nervous system in the formative years.
Speaker C:And that's where there should be, in my opinion, an understanding of that so that we can attune to the nervous system rather than the nervous system becoming too hypervigilant and very stress sensitive.
Speaker C:So in, in the way that I've looked at this, it's like, well, what makes a woman more hormonally sensitive?
Speaker C:And I've looked at different factors which are, and this is the ones I've identified.
Speaker C:So more stress sensitivity, more environmental sensitivity, more sensory sensitivity and more nervous system sensitivity.
Speaker C:And this is where I believe you've got the connections and obviously you've Got the biological side.
Speaker C:So you've got your biology, then you've got your psychology and you've got your psyche.
Speaker C:So it's not just a biological construct, you know, I mean when we look at some of the traits that we're talking about, emotional dysregulation or rejection, sensitivity, these are constructs, aren't they?
Speaker C:They're personality constructs that have come developed from perhaps your experiences as well as, and your environment as well as your predisposed genetic component.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean like you say with the sensitivity and the nervous system regulation, I feel like it is a bigger umbrella term where we see all these crossovers and I think trauma is always part of, of this because I don't know anyone who hasn't experienced it.
Speaker A:And that then impacts their nervous system regulation.
Speaker A:And we see that now this like we talk about stress, I read recently that cortisol is more addictive than nicotine.
Speaker A:So if we've been brought up in, you know, stressful environments and that's all we know.
Speaker A:And it doesn't feel almost doesn't feel safe to not feel stressed, to be relaxed.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's not safe to feel relaxed.
Speaker C:And that's how I grew up.
Speaker C:That's exactly how I grew up.
Speaker C:And I didn't realize that.
Speaker C:And I didn't realize that through my childhood.
Speaker C:I didn't realize that.
Speaker C:The biological components, if you like, with more hypervigilance, more hyper arousal, more heightened cortisol, more heightened adrenaline, you know, and your nervous system is really, I believe, what we should be looking at because you're dead right in what you just said.
Speaker C:So when you look at female mental health and you start talking at and looking at things like borderline personality, you start looking at all of these DSM diagnostic standard manual sort of tick box diagnosis.
Speaker C:Honestly, I don't think you can distinguish some of them before.
Speaker C:I'm fascinated with, you know, the crossovers with hormonal sensitivity, borderline personality, narcissism, adhd, autism.
Speaker C:When you actually look at it, it's really difficult to just draw straight lines in the sand, Kate, and say, do you know what this is?
Speaker C:An ADHD profile.
Speaker C:I do not believe that we've got that right.
Speaker C:I think we're looking at a nervous system profile.
Speaker C:And then we need to understand that the nervous system profile dictates the hormonal profile.
Speaker C:Do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker C:Rather than it being, it's like, you know, when we look at the typical medical, biomedical model of what we're going to say is hormones and you'll talk about perimenopause, menopause, pms, pmdd, postnatal depression.
Speaker C:In my opinion, they've looked at that purely from a reproductive science.
Speaker C:And we've got that wrong, Kate, because we need to be looking at.
Speaker C:It's a nervous system science.
Speaker C:And, and when you look at sort of PMDD can occur at any point across a woman's life and that is because of epigenetic changes.
Speaker C:That is my belief.
Speaker C:Otherwise we'd all be crossing these spectrums at the same time and we're not.
Speaker C:It depends on those.
Speaker C:Hormonal changes impact epigenetics and that is why I believe some women are getting to midlife.
Speaker C:Their nervous system has become more and more dysregulated depending on their environment.
Speaker C:And that has then impact perimenopause.
Speaker C:That's what happened to me.
Speaker C:And I think we've kind of not got it the right way round.
Speaker C:I looked at a study the other day, a new one, about perimenopause symptoms being worse if you haven't got your circadian rhythm right.
Speaker C:So for example, blue light on the phone at 10 o' clock at night makes your perimenopause symptoms worse.
Speaker C:Well, of course it does.
Speaker C:It's exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker C:Your nervous system is what we need to be looking at, in my opinion, rather than this kind of like isolated approach to just hormones.
Speaker C:We need to understand the complex system and even little hacks like that, which is, you know, for example, get up in the morning, don't look at the phone first thing and eat before you have coffee.
Speaker C:So if you get up and you start drinking coffee and you already have a hyper aroused nervous system, you're sending that nervous system up for the rest of the day and it's just get some protein down, you get some food and then have your coffee.
Speaker C:Just these little tweaks to, to bring your cortisol down.
Speaker A:Yeah, thank you for saying that.
Speaker A:Because, you know, part of this conversation is it can feel very overwhelming to listen to because it's kind of like, oh my God, how am I ever going to, you know, get to this point of healing and you know, processing this trauma.
Speaker A:But like you say, it's just those small things every single day.
Speaker A:And I really notice, you know, you know, I'm a sucker for a coffee in the morning before breakfast.
Speaker A:But I've really noticed that if I have my coffee with some eggs, I am a much calmer, more regulated version.
Speaker C:That's what I do.
Speaker C:So I just make sure that I don't have my I have a cup of tea.
Speaker C:I know it's like but yeah, this change changed a lot for me that it was like I'm not having my coffee until I've had my eggs because otherwise my cortisol is already high, isn't it?
Speaker C:Because remember, you're getting up to and your cortisol levels are higher anyway because you're getting ready for the day.
Speaker C:If you push that system up into hyper arousal before you've even started with your environmental stimulus, your work, your husband, your four children, you are already in a dysregulated state and it's hard to come down from when you started so high.
Speaker C:So it's just these hacks.
Speaker C:I think knowing this stuff that can help maybe.
Speaker A:So I hope you enjoyed listening to this shorter episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast.
Speaker A:I've called it the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Wisdom because I believe there's so much wisdom in the guests that I have on and their insights.
Speaker A:So sometimes we just need that little bit of a reminder.
Speaker A:And I hope that has helped you today and look forward to seeing you back on the brand new episode on Thursday.
Speaker A:Have a good rest of your week.
