How Somatic Work Transforms Relationships | with Lauren Zoeller

Michael: Lauren Zoeller, welcome to the podcast. I'm super excited to talk to you about love life, dating relationships, the somatic experience, and ultimately how one becomes their most integrated self. So thank you for being here.

Lauren: I'm excited to be here.

Michael: Yeah. Why don't you first begin by telling us a little bit about your background and what childhood was like?

Lauren: So, I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. I had a brother that was younger than me, but I grew up in what most people would consider a very cookie cutter, healthy childhood upbringing. My mom and dad actually just celebrated; I think it was their 43rd wedding anniversary. They're still madly in love. And I, for a long time, like for the majority of my life, that was my crutch. I'm like, Oh, I don't really need to look at my childhood. Nothing happened. Like I am fine. I'm good. I had loving parents, never wanted for anything, always had food on the table, always, had my needs met. And I would say that even though I grew up in a very, quote unquote, healthy childhood dynamic, like most people would look at and say, Oh, you had no problems. I had a lot of trauma, relationally, that I stuffed underneath the rug. And I came from what most people on the outside would say was a really cookie cutter childhood experience growing up, but there was a lot of nuance in the way that I grew up, and I think that really held me back. There's a lot of, some people that come from that same, exact cookie cutter background. They're like, Oh, I was fine. I don't need to talk about my childhood. I don't need to talk about the way that my mother parented me and the way my father parented me because I was good.

Michael: So Trojan horse, right? Because you, you look at it at this one end and I see this all the time. And a lot of people I've coached over the years where they're like life was fine and yet my money sucks. My relationship sucks. My health sucks. So you're growing up in this environment, obviously probably obtuse to it because who would know any different? When did you notice that it was impacting you?

Lauren: For me it and this is part of the reason I'm in the work that I am in now. It showed up. And the way that I related to other people, my relationships work. Can I cuss on the show?

Michael: Oh,

Lauren: Okay. Relationships. My relationships were an absolute shit show.

Michael: Sure.

Lauren: Like a nightmare. And I think that is really what…

Michael: Was that like intimate relationship?

Lauren: Intimate relationships, and honestly, friendships to anything that any sort of relationship, and now that I look at it, hindsight's 20, 20, my relationship to money was shit, my relationship to my health was shit, it was all in relationship to everything, all of it was shit, right? But, it showed up and I really was able to go in deeper through the lens of really close, intimate relationships, specifically with men. But it also showed up in friendships too.

Michael: Why do you think it was like that? Because if on this one hand, and this is what's so interesting, and, I'm not saying you had a traumatic childhood, that's for you to figure out, but what I always think about is we are faced with this reality that we are and the reality is that we're the sum total of all of our experiences. And no matter what, even in the nuances of what looks like something amazing, there's still these adaptations that we make that create who we are. And then you're sitting in your life at 25 or 35 or 45 or whatever, and you're like, why is everything shit? But what were there certain things that started to come to pass that were a very pivotal reminder of childhood. What was that? What did those look like? ‘Cuz this is where I think people get lost.

Lauren: Right? So I had And I'll give you, they give you like the short story of my rock bottom moment where it all shifted for me because I Was about eight and a half years ago. I was living the epitome of a highlight reel If you followed me on social media, you would have been like, Oh, wow. She's living her best life. My business was, I was being featured in, the New York times, NBC news. I was traveling the world with my, I use friends and air quotes, but my so-called friends, I had my own real life version of what I like to call my Kendall. That was like traveling with me. I had this perfect looking life and at that time too, I was doing all of the We as successful men and women are taught to do. I was reading one personal development book every single month, reciting my morning affirmations. I had a team of therapists. I had a team of coaches was doing everything. And what people really didn't see was that externally I was putting on this show, but internally I was a nightmare. Like I was an absolute nightmare. And my whole life, at least the life that I knew at that time came crashing down. It was one Wednesday. I was standing in front of the mirror reciting my morning affirmations. And I looked down at my phone, and I had several missed calls from my perfect Kendall boyfriend, from his mom, calling to let me know that he had checked himself into rehab for the sixth time that year. That was call number one. Call number two came a few hours later from my accountant, calling to let me know that my business was 30k in debt and we were plummeting hard because I was spending money quicker than I could make it And then a few hours later third call was from my doctor calling to let me know a biopsy I had taken Earlier that week had come back as potential cancer So here I was Living this life that I thought was perfect and everything that I had my relationship to my health my relationship to my to money my business my relationship to another man But It all just imploded. And I realized in that moment, wait a second. I've been running this way my entire life. Something would be okay, and then it would crash. It'd be okay, and it would crash. And so, I recognized in that moment that there was something deeper that I wasn't really looking at, and that was the through point. And I was like, okay, there's a pattern here that I've got to figure out, and I've got to get to the bottom of. And I think that a lot of people have those moments, but they don't ever really use them to ask themselves the deeper questions. Because I was doing everything that we're taught to do. I was in therapy. Talk therapy. I had coaches. I was, exercising every day, eating, right. But it wasn't until I had that moment that I knew something needed to shift. And I needed to start looking deeper into what was going on, relationally. With the things in my life.

Michael: What was it?

Lauren: So when I started, the big thing was that I had done a lot of deep mindset work, but I had not looked at my  nervous system. And it was like, I could sit there and my go to was that I thought I could save. I thought God put me on this planet to save people. I was taught at a super young age that. You come last. Everybody else in the room is happy first, right? My mom, to this day, everybody has to eat first before she sits down and she eats food. And I learned that at a super young age. That if everybody else is okay, then you can be okay. Everyone else is the source of your happiness. And I knew this cognitively because I had dissected it in talk therapy. But the thing was, is that my nervous system, was still seeking out that familiar pattern in everything that I was doing. I dated alcoholics because if I could get them to rehab, if I could be the source, the person that was there when they got out of rehab, then I was okay. I was worthy of love. I would never be left because saving them and being that person for them gave me the head of worthiness that I needed. to feel like I was okay, but the real, the real truth is that I was no different than the alcoholic. He would go to booze to get a hit of feeling worthy, I would go to saving men to get a hit of feeling worthy. And so I had to start to look at how was my nervous system calling all of this in, because it felt familiar, like it felt really familiar to date men who were projects, to date men who needed to be saved. Because that's what I learned in my childhood from my mom. She's still to that, to this day. That's something that she still struggles with.

Michael: I'm sure you saved other people too, right? Everyone, every time, any time you could. And Savior Complex is a real thing. And that gets ingrained in you. And what's so fascinating about that is those imprintations in our childhood really, whether we like it or not, help determine our own thoughts about worthiness. And it's you see this constantly where people will go and create, Massive lives and then destroy it all and I'm one of them. Everyone on this show knows my story ad nauseam I'm sure at this point but to go and create a grandiose life multiple times only to destroy it I was like, what is it about this that I am stuck in? Why is it that when things are working? I have to go and cheat on a girlfriend. Why is it that when I have all this money in the bank? I have to go get in debt Why is it that when I'm super fed and working all the time suddenly I have to put on 30 pounds Then I realized oh fuck it's my body Like this was the thing that was keeping me stuck is I have not yet processed the somatic side of this experience because there is something in the doing and in the changing of your own narrative in the physical realm that has to be represented in your healing process. And I don't think we talk about that enough. And I remember vividly one of the most life changing moments of my life. My life is me sitting and doing an EMDR session, almost immediately followed that same night by doing a tapping session and it was like, oh my god Like I don't feel like I'm hyper vigilant and I had I didn't have the words for it at that time It's a decade ago, but I felt peace and calm for the first time in my life. I was like, oh my god this is like magic. What? People get these awakenings, right? And they're standing in front of the mirror and the three phone calls come in, and they have to face reality. And some people do, and some people don't. And I would encourage most people to, right? And like that mirror is such an important moment for many people's journey, myself included. Why do anything now?

Lauren: Yeah, for me, I think that I was in a place where I was so tired, and I think, first off, you have to do that. If you want your life to shift, if you want to change, you're going to have to take action at some point. And I think that people do have to get to a point where they are so tired and they are so beaten down. I was in a space where one thing would fall. My relationship would fall, but I still had my business to fall back on. I still had my health to fall back on. But when something is ripped from you completely, when your health is ripped, when your relationships are ripped, when your business, your source of income is all ripped from you, I think that there comes a moment where you have to choose how tired are you? Do you want to, do you want to shift? Do you want something to be different? And that was the point. I hit that point. And some people don't choose it in that moment, but I can say this, when I did choose it and I decided, okay, there's something not working, something that I'm doing isn't working. And I think a lot of people in the personal development field, they get to this place because they invest in talk therapy. They invest in going to summits, they invest in all of these things where people are preaching. I can change your life, I can change your mindset. Which is where I was, and they get frustrated, they get jaded because they wake up and nothing has shifted. And that's a really hard, like I want to normalize that's a really hard place when you've been so beat down by the personal development world. It's a hard, it's a hard place and a hard time to look at yourself and say, wait a second. There's still something that's being missed here and my goal hopefully is to show people that there is a different way you've got to start to look at the language of the nervous system. You've got to start looking at the body versus doing all of this mindset work. That was the moment that I had to choose something differently. And I hope that people can understand if you're in that if you're in that space of being jaded of doing wasn't therapy for 10 years. And not that therapy didn't do anything for me. But I had done so much work up here cognitively, and I had not addressed anything in my nervous system. And that's where we have to start to shift the conversation around, if you want lasting change, if you really want to shift your life, you've got to be able to get the whole approach, the body approach.

Michael: Okay. And this is delicate, right? Because here's what I think about all the time transcribed One of my therapists taught me this, it singularly is a thing that transformed my life of all the things I've ever done, because it was just this very vivid shift in the way I thought about the world. And he said to me one day, he said, change only happens when you make change happen. And that was so pivotal to me because I'd been doing a lot of the work about just changing the way I thought about life and changing the way I had conversation and doing this and that, but like I wasn't accelerating. Into what I thought my potential was. And I realized that real change is actually the doing, but let's go into this. Cause I want to know your opinion. And this is where I get chopped up on the internet. Sometimes is I'm such a big proponent of no excuses, just results. And I'm, I know that as fact, because it transformed my life. It transforms the life of the people who come into my coaching programs that I speak on stages in front of. It's the thesis for why I'm here. And sometimes that requires you doing it anyway. And we live in an odd time now of, and I'm saying this with kindness, but it's just true of massive weakness. And in this massive weakness, we have allowed people the space to make excuses for why their life sucks. I've been in a position where my life sucked tremendously. You've been in a position where your life sucked tremendously. You made choices to change your life. Yeah. One of the things that I see people say all the time in the work of somatic work in regard to change is that you can't do it if you're not in a regulated nervous system. I counter that and I go that you get to a regulated nervous system by making the change. And so I'm curious about your thoughts and your approach to that.

Lauren: Yeah. So this is a great topic because I'll say this, if someone is in a chronic free state, which means they're in what we call dorsal vagal shutdown, which means their system is in such a state of survival that moving and choosing feels unattainable because the nervous system, the body has actually shut the system down, it's going to feel very difficult. The nervous system doesn't want to do it. It thinks it's in threat. It's going to feel difficult to make a move to take a radical act towards change, right? So just having that awareness, like just letting yourself orient towards, am I frozen right now? Can I not make a change? Can I not take a move to reach out to somebody to get help? That, in and of itself, can start to thaw that freeze response. The problem is that most people don't have that information. They haven't, they think that there's something, and we oftentimes will put someone in the corner and say, oh, they can't make that, they need to be in a regulated state. The way to get towards regulation, towards safety. Is to start to acknowledge that you're in a survival state. Like I am in freeze. It feels absolutely impossible to make a move right now. And maybe what I need to orient towards right now is just putting on a podcast that talks to me about being in a free state and let that start to thaw my system enough to where, okay, maybe tomorrow I feel like I can reach out for support, but we can't, if we go past what's called our window of tolerance and we try to just go straight into change. We're going to blow our nervous system out of its window of tolerance to where we're not going to be able to change or we're just going to re traumatize ourselves. So I think that it's definitely a delicate line. It's a delicate line between, yeah, you've got to move to make a change in your life. And if you've experienced a lot of trauma, your nervous system might be in a chronic free state. And the best thing that you can do is to just. Become aware that you're there and allow yourself to start to tiny baby steps orient towards okay today Can I just learn more about what it means to be in freeze today? Can I just maybe start to follow someone who talks more about nervous system right dysregulation? Or can I reach out to someone like it's those tiny baby steps But you have to have the awareness of where you are Before you can think about even making a change.

Michael: I think that comes with acknowledgement, right? One of the first things people ask me all the time is what's the first thing you do to change your life? And I'm like, be fucking honest, tell yourself the truth. I'm in a fucking disastrous situation that I've created. No one else put me here, take responsibility and stand in front of it. And what I think is really interesting is, I rewind, 24 years, no, 25 years old. And I know I'm destroying my life. It was weird. Cause it started to shift that 25 for some reason at 23, 24. I was just like, I'm just a crazy party guy. That's just who I am. 25. I'm like, no, something's really wrong here. Heading into 26. I was like, okay, my life's a complete disaster. So at 26, having this mirror moment that changed my life forever, I didn't have any of the language for what we're using right now. And I don't think many people did. This was 14 years ago, but what I did do is I was like, I know what I don't want. And I don't want this life and you're so dead on about baby steps. And I was like, no matter how I feel, cause I think we live in an era of over information and not enough education to the point that now people get trapped in like mental masturbation and they're just like consuming. And I'm like no, just go do something different. You're depressed, you're at home, you're in bed as much as it sucks because you're probably in that either flight or free state. It's like get up and go outside. Go for, even if you don't want to, because that's the exact reason that you should. And so I'm curious, like you're in this rock bottom moment without any of the knowledge of anything that we just went through, you're not in a space of over information and mental masturbation. You're just standing in front of your life. What was step one? What were your baby steps? Where did you start?

Lauren: Yeah. I'll say this. I had enough, what we call agency. I had enough agency on board because my, every body is so different and the way that you interpret trauma and what has happened to you is going to have a different effect on every human. I had enough agency on board that I could reach out and ask for help. Now, granted, it was only my, it was my best friend, but I called her and I was like. Okay. I'm broken. I feel broken right now. I wasn't broken. I don't believe anybody's broken. I don't know what to do, help me and I don't like nothing's working and it was in that moment that she said, you know I've been seeing this really great somatic therapist I know you're jaded with everything that you've been doing in the personal development world but maybe you should try to give it a try give it a go and see what happens. So that first step for me was literally reaching out and asking for help.

Michael: That's like a courageous thing to do. Yeah, right Why? Like I want to narrow that in because I think it's important because a lot of people you know I've coached thousands of people over the years 10 minutes for free I always have I always will, and that's people reaching out and ask for help. Cause at least here with what we've been able to create at Think Unbroken, like that's accessible. Most people don't feel like they have access to anything or anyone, but there's always someone like, what role does courage play in that moment? If any.

Lauren: Yeah. It plays a huge role because so many people. If you've lived in isolation, or if you've never really sat with rejection before, like really allowed yourself to orient to rejection, and you live your life constantly trying to run away from rejection because it feels like it could potentially kill you, it feels really unsafe to be potentially rejected by someone. Like, when we're looking at a nervous system, it you know, looking at it from a nervous system lens. We are humans who are wired for connection and especially if you experience trauma as a kid and a lot of that trauma came Relationally between a parent who wasn't able to love you unconditionally or a caretaker of some sort if you didn't have parents that weren't able to love you unconditionally Someone potentially rejecting you if you reach out for help can trigger that Relational rupture of you feeling oh, my gosh, I'm not loved unconditionally. Nobody loves me. I am alone. I have to do this alone. And so what I've noticed in my practice is people won't reach out for help because it doesn't feel safe. And the reality is that when you reach out and you use your voice, you allow someone else to step into that space, but you have to start thinking differently and feeling differently into that. Because it is, it can often times be rooted in trauma. If it's hard for you to ask for help, chances are there is some sort of relational pattern that's making it's way in to your current situation where your nervous system is saying, if I reach out for help, and I'm potentially rejected, it means death. And that's why people don't reach out for help is because their nervous system is pinging survival.

Michael: I literally wrote here, rejection equals death. Yeah. And that's what it is. And if you have grown up in a home where you don't have your wants, your needs, your interests, your boundaries met. And, if you're sick and then your mom or dad doesn't take you to the doctor or if you need food and it's not in the home or something happened at school and you're told to not talk about it, that's rejection. And that fear of rejection tells you that you aren't enough, that you don't matter and that you're not important, which none of those things are true. And the hard part is that then you become silent in a lot of ways towards what it is that you need to sustain life. In the way that you need life sustained and all of a sudden you're in chaos because the fear of rejection has led down this path where instead of the willingness, which generally, and this is my experience, most people aren't actually going to reject you, but instead of the willingness to step into it semantically because it's in your body is don't you remember the last time that you asked for help? And you got beat or you got asked, you asked for help and you got ignored. And then your brain tells your body and vice versa. ‘Cause it's like this weird, fucked up, vicious, or a Burroughs that you don't matter no matter what. And it's what is this really? It's really about breaking a pattern and standing in front of rejection and taking and leveraging courage, knowing like it's the only thing that's going to set you free. And I think that's just fucking terrifying.

Lauren: Yeah, it is. It's so terrifying, but you have to, and this is part of the somatic and the nervous system work that a lot of people don't talk about. When I work with a client, we're not trying to just get to safety all the time. Our work is to be with survival energy, survival patterns, survival responses in the body, and allow yourself to be with that discomfort without it taking over you. It's embodiment work, right? And so when you can be with You know what? This feels really uncomfortable to ask for help. And, I'm not gonna die. There's no tiger in the room. My dad's not here anymore to tell me to go to my room and quit crying. I can be with this uncomfortable emotion. I can embody it. I can sit with it. And the more that you allow yourself to do that, which in essence is what we do in somatic experiencing. The more that your nervous system starts to expand its capacity for resilience and that scary thing that felt really scary starts to not feel as scary because your nervous system starts to renegotiate that survival response that's how you get to regulation. Not by breathing and tapping and trying to do everything to get your nervous system back down to safety. It's by allowing yourself to be with the thing that's really scary. And reminding yourself, hey, wait a second. Yes, this feels really big and scary. And, I'm okay. I'm not gonna die. And I think that often times can get, it gets confusing for people to say, oh, I need to have courage. Courage is something that is going to take activation. It's gonna take you stepping into it and having to feel those things that you probably wanted to run away from.

Michael: Yeah. And I think courage is doing what scares you, like all the time. What's so difficult, it becomes a skillset, right? I don't think courage is just like you're born with it. I think it's something cultivated, like anything. Maybe there are a handful of people who are born courageous and they're more willing to like, go, jump off a building with no parachute. Fine, you're the fucking 0, I'm not one of you. And in fact, it'd probably be the opposite because doing anything courageous was like, literally beat out of me as a kid. So the idea of standing up in sovereignty and agency didn't exist. And so in becoming that it was just this journey in this battle of like I'm gonna go and create this life Even if I'm fucking scared, which is really even to this day all I ever do is I just stand in front of the thing. I'm like, I'm scared of that So fuck it. I probably do it. So you're in this you call your friend you make this decision you step into a moment of agency and courage knowing I would assume like man fuck I've got to do something different here, right?

Lauren: Then I started doing the deep nervous system work and I committed to it. I started seeing my somatic therapist every week.

Michael: Can you define somatic therapist too? I don't think people are going to always be familiar with that. All be familiar with that.

Lauren: Yeah. So a somatic therapist or a somatic experiencing practitioner, which is now what I am, has led me to this point, is someone who is trained in the nervous system. So we're actually trained to map and track what is happening in your nervous system. And we help you renegotiate these survival responses inside of your nervous system so that you can start to renegotiate trauma from the lens of the body. So what we're looking at is, so for example, and I'll break this down in simple terms, when we look at, and I'm talking about the autonomic nervous system to make it and put it in simple terms, I want everyone to think about it as the automatic nervous system. When you experience something that is potentially a threat in your life, your body will go into they're all four or one of four survival responses, fight. Which is just like it sounds. Flight, which is it wants to flee away from danger. Freeze, which is everything in your body freezes, you want to play dead. And the fourth one is called fun. Which is people pleasing, simply put when you experience something traumatic, your body goes into these survival responses to get you the heck out of dodge that you can survive. It's just a natural part of our body as a human. The problem is that when you experience something traumatic. And the body doesn't have a safe container to go into survival energy and then come down into safety, those survival patterns get stuck in the system. This is what, this is triggers. When you experience a trigger from something in the past, all you're doing is reliving that survival response from what you experienced when it first happened. This is the definition of trauma, that stuck response. So as a somatic experiencing practitioner, I'm looking at, let's go into these survival responses and let's bring in what we call a counter vortex safety so we can start to renegotiate and get these survival responses renegotiated in your system so that these triggers don't feel as big. You have more agency over what's happening in a moment-to-moment basis. So if you're working with a somatic therapist or a somatic experiencing practitioner, you Much different than breathwork, much different than tapping, much different than brain spotting, EMDR. We are trained to track and watch what's happening in your nervous system. And we are all trained to renegotiate those survival responses to get you to safety so that you have more of a flexible understanding of what's happening in your body in a moment-to-moment basis.

Michael: Thank you for defining that. I think that'd be very helpful for people. And so that started your journey in this deeper way as I'm going to go and work through this. What discoveries did you make in that practice?

Lauren: Oh my gosh. So many and I'm still in it. So I'm still understanding the language of my nervous system. I would say the biggest thing for me was recognizing these really deep, fun patterns in my system. So, we talked about this survival mechanism that I had of being in savior complex. Whereas I need, I needed to save everyone all the time. What would happen in those moments is that my nervous system would go into a freeze state. I would freeze, I was like, I was chronically frozen all the time and I would start to people please. I would start to shut down my voice, I would start to say yes to dating a man that I knew had clear problems with a substance I felt like if I used my voice, if I exited this type of relationship, I could potentially be rejected. I could be unlovable. I could not have the things that I really deeply desired. And so once I was able to understand how that pattern was playing out in my body, I was able to sit with it, renegotiate it, and then I started to get back out into the dating world and I realized, oh, wait a second, I'm not actually attracted to this type of guy. I don't have that sense of a rush when I meet him. I started not attracting those types of guys either because everything's a mirror. But I started to realize oh, this is an unhealthy pattern. I can feel it now in my body when I come in contact with someone like this. And I was able to start making different choices because of that. And that was the main way that things showed up for me. I would shut down my voice when it came to business. I never could make a decision. I had to consult. 10, 000 people before I would make a decision in my business because I didn't know how to actually trust my own intuition. I was so stuck in the freeze response that I couldn't function in life. Same thing with my health, right? I was stuck in a chronic freeze state with my health. I would under eat and over exercise because I couldn't actually listen to what my body needed. So it was like all of these patterns were starting to really show up in the way that I was. navigating everything. And it wasn't until I started to learn the language of my body and learn the language of my nervous system that I was able to pinpoint like, wow, I am in a freeze response right now. I can feel it. I can actually feel it in my body. Most people don't know how to speak that language. And because I can feel it now, I can be with it. And when you're able to be with it, you can renegotiate it and you can start making different choices.

Michael: There's this interesting dichotomy about understanding what you can control and what you can't control. And in that, I always come back to this idea that there are certain physical behaviors that are baked in us from childhood as survival responses to the stressors that we go through. Because especially if you come from a traumatic experience, but even in the nuances, again, looking at something like your childhood on paper looking great, but like in the nuance you go, okay, wait a second, there's little things that happen that transpire and take place that we pull into ourselves and we integrate to make it through just simply to survive. And this is a litany of things. This could be overeating, undereating, and overexercising or the opposite. It could be chronic masturbation. It could be video games. It could be drinking, it could be alcohol and cigarettes. That could be a lot of the things that separate and take us out of the pain of the discomfort of the moment. The problem is, which is really fucked up. And this is like one of the dumbest designs about humans, in my opinion. So whoever designed us, you should really think about this in V2 is that, when we are under stress, we move to self soothing practices and those self soothing practices while to some extent, especially in childhood, serve us and they help us detach and disconnect and dissociate from the pain of the moment on a long enough timeline. They actually destroy your life. And this is sex addiction, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, dating addiction, like whatever your dick video games, like maybe it's podcast, I don't know, whatever your thing is, right? But they're baked in this somatic experience. And also looking at some of yours that were probably baked in as well, how do you move through just the autonomic response to stressors that are so embodied physically in you that they're the first thing that you do when under stress?

Lauren: Yeah. Great question. First thing that you have to do is you have to be aware that it is a self soothing principle.

Michael: Okay, let's say you are. Yeah. So first thing, yes, I'm aware. I get stressed, I smoke a cigarette. Okay.

Lauren: So, once you're aware that you are, let's say you smoke a cigarette, like you said, you're aware that is the coping mechanism that you go to. The next thing that you need to do is you need to start to learn, okay, when I have that urge to go smoke a cigarette, what happens in my body when I have that urge? Does my heart rate start to lift? Do I feel like I need to go do it immediately? And here's what I want everyone to understand. I want you to take off. I want you to think about, I'm going to get to go smoke that cigarette. And all I want the first step to be is, okay, but can I just take this moment to notice what's happening in my body before I go and actually move towards smoking the cigarette? Can I be with that for a moment? So take, I don't ever want to smoke cigarettes again off the table. It's too much. Your nervous system is going to completely disassociate and you're going to go smoke the cigarette anyways. But if you allow yourself to sit with, okay, I notice that when I want to go smoke a cigarette, and it takes slowing down, you really need to slow down in order for this to happen. When I want to go smoke a cigarette, I notice that my heart rate lifts and I notice that my palms get really sweaty. Can I allow myself to just be with that for a moment? Can I just notice how that feels inside of my body? Just notice it and then go smoke the cigarette if you feel like you want to. But I promise you that if you allow yourself to slow down and you start to notice the sensations that come when you want to go do something that's self soothing, what happens over time is you realize, Oh wait, if I'm with this long enough and I allow myself to expand it and be with it, then it starts to fall. It starts to come over the hump and it comes back down into what we call ventral vagal connection. And next thing you know, these triggers, they start to dissipate inside of your system. Now this is a very, this is an elementary example of that. I would say the other thing is that this is part of the reason that you work with a somatic therapist. It's part of the reason that you work with a somatic experiencing practitioner, because oftentimes we can't get out of our own way when it comes to survival. You need someone to be able to help guide you, towards that sense of safety and help you renegotiate that inside of your system. There is some self-soothing that you can do, and as you start to work with a practitioner, you're going to start to understand that language even more, so that you can actually sit inside of your discomfort, sit inside of your survival responses, because you can't do that if you don't have somebody there that can hold space for you in it. So that's why you work with one, but also know that there is a reality that does exist. I always say I don't want my clients to need me for the rest of their lives.

Michael: Same.

Lauren: Right? I don't want them to need me. I want to be able to teach you the language of your nervous system so that you can be in discomfort and also know that you can get yourself to safety at some point. That's my goal. But most people can't do that on their own. They need somebody to hold their hand as it happens.

Michael: Yeah. And we're not taught how, right? No, and you're right. And what I always think about, and because also I don't want to coach my clients forever too, there's periods of time where I'm standing in front of them and I'm like, yeah, it's time to fly a little bird. And so much of that though, is that they have gotten to the point that they know how to self-regulate, right? There are certain things that we can do as individuals and there are certain things that you need guidance on. And what I think is probably an unbelievable travesty is that you can go through 30 years of schooling. And not learn anything that we just talked about. And what we've just been talking about in the last 40 ish minutes is enough to change your life forever. Just because it brings presence. And then what really becomes an interesting game that you play with yourself is, in discomfort, telling your animal body to stay. Stay here. And if you can do it for 30 seconds at a time, that 30 seconds turns into three minutes, turns into 30 minutes, turns into three hours. And then suddenly you're removing yourself from the need to satiate. And that's what's so interesting. If anything, like that's a tool that you can use and add to your life right now, you're in discomfort. Cool. Don't move. I dare you don't be a bitch. And that's language I use for myself, but it's sometimes it's that it's really you bring awareness to it. You're like, why am I trying to escape? You see this a lot in dating and relationships where you'll sit across from the person who you may love more than anyone in the world, and they love you more than anyone in the world and yet in disagreement. You go to complete shutdown. Yeah. You go to complete observation of, that's not a word. I just made a word up. You go to, it's a good one though. It becomes, I'm thinking of the word obsolete in that you turn off all of your proclivities to actually show up. Everything becomes obsolete except for the one thing that you need to do, and that's to escape. And I think that people need to step into understanding that. And this is something I teach my clients all the time. Peace is in the pause and you've got to sit in that for a moment. And so what have you had to sit in that really became awakening for you? And then what now are some of the practices that you use personally that help you navigate this discomfort?

Lauren: Yeah. There's been a lot that I've had to sit in. I would say that, the biggest one, because just talking about the trend that we've been chatting about through the whole podcast, it's still, when I start, when I got back out into the dating world, I noticed that I wanted to date projects. Like I still felt that urge. I would feel that survival response come up and be like, Oh, But he could, he will potentially be there. He'll potentially be better.

Michael: Sometimes it's an investment.

Lauren: For sure. But I had to really sit with, okay, am I had to sit with the discomfort of, am I actually entering into this dating situation? Based on potential and I had to sit with that and like really be with it or because this person can actually meet me where I need to be met.

Michael: Sure.

Lauren: And I think that's where people really have to start to get honest. When you start to recognize these survival responses inside of your body, it's being able to say, Oh, here it is again. And can I actually sit in it and get curious about it? I would say something that, I'm actively healing through now is my, I was just joking with somebody about this, but. When things feel like they're out of control, I get very reactive in my business, right? If something isn't going well, my survival response is to go into flight and to immediately make a decision. And sometimes those decisions cost me a lot down the line. And so yesterday I had a situation in my business where, I would normally, in that moment, because things weren't going well, I would normally make a very reactive decision in that moment about something that needed to happen to move the needle forward. And yesterday I was able to notice that I was in that moment, that I would normally make a very reactive decision, and I had to sit with that discomfort. What I did in that moment is I got up from my desk and I went outside and I started walking. Because I started to feel this flight of wanting to make the decision because making that reactive decision in my business is a flight response. And I said, you know what? I'm going to embody this flight response right now, but I'm going to redirect it somewhere else. And so I allowed flight to actually move me out of that situation. And I went outside until I could feel my nervous system start to come back down into ventral bagel. And. You have to be able to understand, you have to have the awareness, you have to be able to speak this language to notice that's actually happening in your system to be able to say, Oh, this is, and it goes back to what you were talking about at the beginning, being able to understand, I got myself here. What got me here? Do I have awareness around what got me here? Can I understand the pattern that's underneath what got me here? And then when it shows up, can I sit in it and allow myself to move through it? That's what understanding the language of your nervous system allows you to do. So it's your I'm always looking at parts of myself and healing it in that way

Michael: Yeah, and one of the things like speaking of dating relationships and love This is one of the areas people who have traumatic backgrounds shut down the most. This was my And probably will forever be the thing that I'm standing in front of is being able to sit in the discomfort of the acceptance of love, of gratitude, of gifts, of friendships, of happiness, of joy, of peace, of all of those things. And I assure you I'm a million miles from where I began this journey, but there's always going to be that feeling. thing that kind of presents itself in front of you. And there are so many people who feel unworthy of love, who feel unworthy of dating, who date below them. And look, I'm calling it what it is. There are levels to this game and there are people who will date the project and the person that they can fix and the person that, no, they're so good. I know that they yell at me and smack me sometimes. It's no, hold on. We got to hit the fucking pause button here for a moment and really understand this. What role does the somatic experience play in dating and relationships?

Lauren: Yeah, it gives you context. I always say that everything that you attract in the dating world is a reflection of your most predominant frequency when it comes to your nervous system. So you will attract from your baseline. Always. So often people will, women will make their way to me and they'll say, Oh, I just, all I attract are men who ghost. All I attract are men who are emotionally unavailable, men who won't commit to me. And once we start to get into the nervous system work, we start to recognize that's a really familiar pattern that they're doing to themselves, right? They're not showing up for themselves emotionally. They're ghosting when it comes to having to be vulnerable. With themselves and so you're always attracting from whatever state your nervous system is in a moment to moment basis So I think it's really important that when you start to recognize that you start to look at the patterns It's like when we look at ghosting for instance. That is someone who is very uncomfortable being with big emotions If they were comfortable being with big emotions that either would have a told you they weren't interested You Or B, leaned in and said I'm really interested and I want to continue to do this, but that's really scary to someone. So what they do, they go into flight and they just ghost, they go into a flight response and they just leave. They flee from the danger.

Michael: Do you think part of that's also cultural?

Lauren: I do, but I think that as a culture, we're in, Heightened survival response.

Michael: True. I would agree, right? We probably always have been though.

Lauren: Always have been I mean It's going to be the norm and it's I can't tell you I mean we've been speaking about, emotional availability I can't tell you how many men I've worked with who grew up I mean think about society tells men Don't cry go to your room. No crying baseball, right? I'm crying in sports, which it's that narrative is shifting but for the longest time that's how our parents were raised you that taught men to shut down, to go into flight, to not have to be with big emotions. So it became this societal norm that we've all just accepted. But when we look at it from the lens of the body, it's not healthy. It's a survival response. So when you start to recognize that, you can start to be with those responses. And you'll start to notice, right? It's not that, it's not that we're Like you said, we're not getting to safety and we never have these triggers again. We're just learning to have a more flexible relationship to what comes up. And that's what you have to remember when you're dating, when you're in relationship with anyone.

Michael: Yeah. And I think also be accepting of the reality that I don't know part of it is also I think we put so much of an onus on the idea of Perfection and the people that we're seeking and dating and it's like you're fucking nightmare Like you are like I tell any woman I've ever dated at the very beginning. I'm like, I'm a nightmare Chances are this isn't gonna end well, right but it's some of its me being funny But then I'm a very particular kind of man entrepreneur I'm up at 530 on the road all the time like it's intense You Dating me. I get that. But I also understand that in the reality that we live in, we put a shit ton of pressure on each other. And I can't imagine what that does to our nervous system. How often do we fall into this place of they're not exactly everything that I ever wanted always. And so now your body has a reaction to that. And then I feel like you start training your body into that reaction. And I think that's how you get to ghosting. Like when I really think about this and I break it down and I'm looking at it I'm like because I've been ghosted a bazillion times. I've done it. I'll admit it But it's something that as I understand it more and that I no longer do is that it is Really about you're standing in front of that emotion and having a very difficult conversation And you've got to fucking stand in it. Yeah, and this goes both ways and it's fascinating to me How often women will say these guys are always ghosting me when I can bring up other people All of my guy friends right now, and I promise you it's a 50 50 game play. For sure.

Lauren: Yeah. And I think this brings up another point, and this is, this is the title of my book and now it's getting here on the show, but, it's the, when we look at the missing language of love, we hear everything, and I know the personal development world talks about this, everybody knows their love language. It's five love languages.

Michael: I think they're six. They're six. Ooh, I'm curious. Let's see if, can I tell you what I think my sixth one is? Yeah, please. And see if it's the same. Okay. Reciprocation. Ooh. That's what I think the sixth one is.

Lauren: I think that's a really that's definitely a language. For me, I think that the sixth language is understanding your partner's nervous system. And surprise is what my book's about, right? It's all about the missing language of love, which is understanding your partner's nervous system, understanding your nervous system, understanding the person you're in relationship with. Because the thing is that we've all been in these relational ruptures. We've had ruptures that have happened in our lives when it came to being raised by parents who couldn't be there for us. Regardless of the situation, we've all had trauma when it comes to relationships that have caused the ability to be in a perfect partnership, it's never going to happen, right? But when you can understand what your partner has been through and you're able to recognize the survival responses that they're in, because they will be in them. And you're able to be the person that can co regulate with them. That's where beautiful partnerships are made is being able to understand that language of your own, but also being able to understand your partner's nervous system.

Michael: That's such a great point. I absolutely love that. And there's so many moments to just flash through my head where I was like, if I would have understood why she did that in that moment from a biological standpoint, I could have navigated that situation better. I think you're fucking dead on and that makes perfect sense to me because. That's where you get to reactive decision making, right? Your nervous system is all out of whack. Your hippocampus is crazy. Your amygdala is all over the place. Your prefrontal cortex is definitely not working. And you're like, why did I just destroy this 12 year relationship or six months of power or whatever that thing was? And you're like, because you're having a human experience what's one thing that we can do to better understand our partner's nervous system?

Lauren: Communicate. That would be number one. You have to be able to communicate. I think that most people don't know how to communicate. And even before communication, I would say you've got to do your own work because if you do not know the language of your nervous system, if you do not know your triggers, if you don't do not know your survival responses, if you do not know your patterns, it is going to be impossible to be in partnership with someone because then you can't execute communication. You can't actually tell them, Hey, when we have a really big argument and I shut down, I do it because of this. And when I do that, all I need, I may need to leave the room for a moment, or I may need you to come over and just hug me. Even if it's a really big argument, I may need to feel like I'm safe. I need to feel that sense of you being here and not leaving. If you can't articulate that, your partner is not a mind reader.

Michael: Preach.

Lauren: So you have to know that language for yourself first before you can even think about being in partnership with someone.

Michael: Yeah, I just wrote a note and I think a question that we need to, or something we need to remember is that communication can equal rejection, which equals death. And if you I will, this is something I'm going to implement into my life with a lot of people, actually, not just an intimate partnerships, but how do you want me to fight with you? It's big, right? Because that's the that's like the missing link of all of this because we don't fight the same, right? Because how I am, I'm abrasive. I'm like, let's solve the problem now. I don't have time to wait for tomorrow. And you're like, I need 45 minutes. If you don't tell me that, I'm going to push you. You're going to go over the edge. You're going to probably fall into a flight response. You're going to leave me. But we don't learn this. And so we're wondering why our relationships don't work. We're on the opposite is if you're like, Hey, I need to create a space in which we're intimate and close and having this conversation and that feels to me contrived and you don't understand that, then I might think you're faking it because that's what my mom did when I was seven, right? And it's this shit is so complicated. Then it's if we just ask that this should might be the title of the quote the. My next book. How do you want me to fight with you?

Lauren: Yeah, it's big. That's so big because we don't talk about that. We don't talk about it. And like you just said, my go to and when I fight is I freeze. Like I freeze. I am stone cold. I just am deer in headlights. And next thing I can't move. And so if I'm with a partner who is very vocal and abrasive, it causes me to go into freeze even more. Now I need, because I know this about myself, I also know what needs to happen in order for me to be out of free, to get out of freeze and to feel safe. And so if I'm able to communicate that with you, that I clean them up and I shut down and I'm able to say to you when that happens, can you, I know that you want to scream at me, but can you just remind me, come over and put your hand on me and just be like, Hey, I'm here like that's going to solve so much.

Michael: Without that knowledge. Someone with my archetype is a nightmare for someone like you, right? And I've experienced that because I didn't know. I have a role in my life. I don't yell at people. I might jokingly say it, but that's my hard fast rule. But I will be abrasive. Like you need to talk to me and you're over here and I'm like no, now, and it's oh, But I understand that about you. You'll come to me when you're ready while understanding maybe there's a timeline parameter we built in and things of that nature that's so powerful and it's going to help you avoid those really unforgiving, emotional, reactive responses. So I absolutely love that. My friend, we are, we're out of time. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I feel like we're just now touching the tip of the iceberg. But if someone wants to learn more about you, find out what you do, have a session with you, perhaps, where can they do that?

Lauren: Yeah. So you can go to Laurenzoeller.com. I'm most active on Instagram @LaurenZoeller, and you can find everything that you need there. I have free resources. Just visit the link in my bio. If you go to my website, everything that you need is there. Then you can also check me out at my podcast, The Aligned Love Podcast.

Michael: Amazing. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Lauren: I think, for me to be unbroken, to really embody being unbroken is to recognize that it's okay, and when I say broken, I don't mean broken, but it's okay to not be okay. And when you're able to really be okay with that, that it's okay to not be okay, you are unbreakable. Because there's nothing that can come into your life that you can't be with, that you can't sit with, that you can't move through, that you can't get to regulation inside of. And when you can really grasp that it's okay to not be okay, because most people live their life trying to not, trying to be okay all the time, when you can really sit with that, it allows you to be present in what is.

Michael: Truth brilliantly said. Thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation. Thank you so much for listening. Please share this with people in your lives, especially if they are struggling with finding love, communicating and stepping into the next level of understanding themselves and each other.

And Until Next Time,

My Friend. Be Unbroken.

I'll See You.